Qu’Appelle: Tales of Two Valleys

An Introductory Essay

—Dan Ring

The Qu’Appelle Valley has a fascination not easily resisted. Cutting through the great northern plain, the Qu’Appelle River and its chain of placid lakes glitter like a lure; down coulees and ancient trails, grid roads and modern highways, people seek its sheltered floor, irresistably drawn from the sameness of the prairie to a magical world of difference and contrast. The mysterious effect of landscape on our thoughts and feelings, the way certain places can renew or surprise us, is one of the foundations of our lives.

Whenever I approach the Qu’Appelle Valley, I experience all the sensations of abrupt change: light, foliage, color, moist fragrant atmosphere, everything suddenly different from the prairie above, yet still connected to it. Picturesque vistas of hills, river, and lakes are in startling contrast to the windswept landscape of the plains. Because of this contrast or perhaps because of the shelter it offers, the valley encourages contemplation, healing, and rest. The unearthly quality often attributed to the Qu’Appelle is reflected in its current French name, Englished as “Who calls,” and in the earlier Cree name kâ-têpwêwi-sîpiy—“What is Calling River” or “River that Calls”—which speaks of a spirit that traveled up and down the river calling with a human voice.¹

Through names and through images, we give shape to the intangible. The spirit of the Qu’Appelle, whether the voice of a dying lover in Pauline Johnson’s poem or the voice that haunts the river and talks to us, seems not to be malicious. It stands for whatever draws us to this place and, like an echo, for whatever makes us dream, when we leave it, of returning.

Curving in an arc approximately forty kilometers north and east of Regina, Saskatchewan, the Qu’Appelle Valley was formed by the retreat of vast glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age, leaving the Qu’Appelle River framed by deep, verdant hills and wooded coulees. The meandering flow that remained linked a chain of lakes: Last Mountain, Echo, Mission, Katepwa, and Pasqua, whose names evoke the ancient first nations, as well as the romanticized Old West of the trappers, whisky traders, missionaries, law-enforcers, land agents, and settlers. The Qu’Appelle Valley has been an important spiritual site, cultural crossroad, and gathering place for untold generations of aboriginal peoples and at least five generations of immigrant Canadians. For most of these, the Qu’Appelle was the vision of an earthly paradise, a respite from the dry and sunburnt open spaces to the north and south, east and west. Its tawny hills and lush green lakeshores stand out in sharp relief against the prevailing flatness of the south-Saskatchewan prairie. Long before the coming of the white man, native people traded, hunted, fished, and wintered there to escape the harsh conditions of the open plains. Fort Qu’Appelle became a focal point for aboriginal/settler relations: an Anglican mission was established there in 1854; a Hudson’s Bay post opened in 1864, to be replaced by a substantial brick building on Main Street in 1893; and a NWMP outpost in 1875. In the previous year, Treaty Four, which consolidated native lands formerly in the Assiniboine Territory, was signed there on 15 September by the representatives of Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and thirteen separate Cree and Saulteaux Nations. Alexander Morris, Lieutenant-Governor of Manitoba and father of the artist Edmund Morris, was one of the signatories. His son was to return to the Qu’Appelle to paint the native chiefs and the landscape. Edmund Morris also proposed a monument that would mark the importance of Treaty Four and the relationship between natives and settlers. The monument (in a form much different from Morris’s conception) is now situated across from suburban homes in a quiet park in Fort Qu’Appelle, an ambivalent reminder of one of the most important documents in the relations between settlers and first nations in Canada.²

Sitting Bull and a band of warriors traveled to Fort Qu’Appelle in 1881 after the Battle of the Little Big Horn; a cartoon in the Saskatchewan Archives shows him in conversation with Queen Victoria. The French were also an early presence in the Qu’Appelle area. In 1866 Oblate missionaries built a wooden church in Lebret on Mission Lake in the valley, replaced by a grand stone church in 1925. Under the directorship of Father J. Hugonnard, they also established the Indian Industrial School in 1884, cementing the union of commerce, religion, and education and imposing the values of the colonists on local native people. Young children, taken from their families, were forced to adopt European dress, the Catholic religion, and the study of farming, carpentry, and sewing in order to integrate them into settler society.

The Northwest Rebellion gave a major impetus to the completion of the CPR main line into Saskatchewan because of the need to get soldiers quickly into the area to confront Riel and his Métis and Indian warriers. Fort Qu’Appelle became a key supply depot, from which troops moved north to the battlefields. Photographers such as Oliver Buell documented the region in photo-card albums, which were widely distributed. The Marquess of Lorne was one of many visiting dignitaries who traveled the main line. In 1881 he was accompanied by artist Sidney Prior Hall, who recorded the events associated with official ceremonies, as well as the exotica of native dancers and chiefs, for the delectation of a curious public in Eastern Canada hungry for a glimpse of the rapidly vanishing /rapidly developing West.

By 1890, along the main line of the CPR ten miles or so south of the valley, the substantial towns of Moosomin, Whitewood, Broadview, Grenfell, Wolseley, and Indian Head were rapidly becoming centres of commerce, religion, and agriculture for an area where, fifteen years earlier, buffalo had wandered freely. Culturally, these towns were enclaves of a mainly English Protestant society. Soon they boasted impressive Anglican, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches, banks, schools, warehouses, and large homes, many of which were built of local brick and fieldstone by Ontario masons imported for the job. The political and economic importance of the region was demonstrated by the appointment of W.R. Motherwell as Saskatchewan’s first minister of agriculture in 1905.³

Motherwell had homesteaded in the valley area in 1882. His innovative adaptations to farming practices and his establishment of the Indian Head Experimental Farm and Tree Nursery in 1887, were to transform the local landscape. Another sign of the growing importance of the area was the establishment of the Qu’Appelle Diocese in 1884 and of St. John’s College near the town of Qu’Appelle in 1885. Here the children of white settlers studied agriculture and theology. In the genteel fashion of the English private school and country house, they also organized cricket, tennis, and rugby matches with the local townsfolk, and foxhunts, Christmas revels, and fancy dress balls. By 1894 the college had closed for lack of teachers, money, and students.⁴

There is an incongruity to this transplantation of culture and architecture to the open, windswept prairie, an evocation of imperial life that now seems dreamlike and unreal. In contrast, other, more disturbing memories also have their part in the history of the Qu’Appelle—for example, those associated with the residential school, a potent image of loss and gain for native people during the settlement period. (The seminary was destroyed by fire in 1982 and the school was demolished in 1999.) It is this mix of conflicting memories and allegiances that makes up the complex fabric of contemporary society in Saskatchewan.

After the First World War and the ensuing depression, there was a slight decline in the unbounded optimism of the early settlement period. However, through the 1920s, the valley remained an important agricultural area, while becoming a major tourist destination for those in the rapidly growing cities of Regina and Moose Jaw. Excursion trains carried people to the valley to soak up the air and sun, and families traveled by car over the rough roads from Regina to fish and camp near the beaches. Wealthier citizens built rustic cottages and created resort communities like Katepwa, B-Say-Tah, and Regina and Lumsden Beaches. Slowly the towns, coulees, beaches, lakes, and hills of Qu’Appelle acquired a nostalgic aura of the Old West. In contrast to the larger cities and towns, the valley was a place to relax and dream.

Emblematic of this sense of nostalgia and removal from the main current of urban life was Fort San, established in 1917 a couple of miles from “the Fort” as the provincial tuberculosis sanatorium. Here, amid quaint Tudor Revival and Arts and Crafts buildings set in ornamental gardens and tree-lined avenues, was a strangely utopian community. “The San” was virtually self-sufficient, with large vegetable gardens, a dairy, and cold cellars dug deeply into the hills, and a central power plant that heated the hospital and residences for nurses, doctors, and maintenance staff. This self-contained society had only limited contact with the outside world to prevent infection and to enforce rest. There was, however, a sinister and disconcerting side to the San, which can be glimpsed in a film made during the 1930s by Dick Bird and in its fictional reworking in Lisa Steel and Kim Tomczak’s The Blood Records, which explores the effects on the patients of imposed isolation and enforced medical treatments.

The dramatised past and present of the valley were merged in two pageants held at Lebret in 1925 and 1928. The inspiration for the first pageant, held in August of 1925, was to raise money for a large commemorative bronze statue of Father Hugonnard.⁵ This pageant was documented in a remarkable series of panoramic photographs by Capitol Studios of Regina, which captured natives and settlers, often indistinguishable in elaborate period dress, re-enacting the narratives of conquest. In these photographs, and others from the 1928 pageant, one can see mock battles, Indian dances, and homages to Father Hugonnard, as well as locals posing as Samuel de Champlain and his men sailing in a canoe across Mission Lake, which was presumably intended to represent the St. Lawrence River. These pageants were paralleled by other religious events and annual ceremonies that took place in Lebret during Catholic feast days such as Corpus Christi, when aboriginal girls were dressed as angels, or the pilgrimages to the Wooden Shrine on Mission Lake (allegedly burned down by the Ku Klux Clan in 1928) and later to the little chapel that replaced it on the hill overlooking Lebret.

These absurd re-enactments have a surreal quality, at once laughable and tragic. By the 1950s and 1960s there is a sense that this circle of isolation and fantasy had begun to break open under the pressure of public attention to political, social, and environmental issues. Beach development and sewage from the towns and cottages began to pollute the water, the fish were dying, and a putrid scum of green algae filled the lakes by August. The burning of the mission-style Fort Qu’Appelle Hotel seemed an augury of the deteriorating relationship between cultures in the valley. The dream was finally coming to an end.

Not all the tales of the Qu’Appelle are pleasant ones. In the forefront of our concept for this exhibition was the provision of a foil for the master narrative of colonization and its array of romantic and nostalgic symbols. Many of the images reflect a complex and conflicted site of representations that both hint at and obscure a brutal, unpredictable world where suggestions of Arcadian bliss and leisured comfort embody assumptions of class and of conquering and conquered races. This imagery, disingenuous and contradictory, at once exposes and suppresses the traces and voices that have filled the valley, mirroring in a distorted way the dramatic differences of cultures and geography.

With its compellingly picturesque vistas and reminders of the vanishing culture of Indian and pioneer, the Qu’Appelle Valley is a touchstone in the representation of the life of the Old West. Qu’Appelle: Tales of Two Valleys examines the Qu’Appelle Valley as a geographic, artistic, social, and cultural site of crucial importance not only to Saskatchewan, but also to all of Canada. The exhibition title refers to two valleys: a metaphor for the way first nations and colonists, both past and present, constructed and experienced nature, spirituality, and culture through the physical reality of the Qu’Appelle. One aim of the project is to reflect the dramatic differences in landscape and culture, as well as their points of convergence. To do so we have organized two exhibitions which, although they could easily stand alone, are bound together to create friction and stimulate interpretations that might not otherwise be as evident. One exhibition is a survey of artists who depicted the Qu’Appelle Valley from the 1840s to the present time. Co-curated by the Toronto-based art historian Robert Stacey and I, this exhibition includes drawings, paintings, newspaper illustrations, books, maps, and photographs from the early exploration and settlement period of 1845–1920. Also included are many works by James Henderson of Fort Qu’Appelle, whose poetic oeuvre is indelibly connected to the valley, along with work by Regionalist and Modernist artists such as Illingworth Kerr, Robert Hurley, Mashel Teitelbaum, McGregor and Elizabeth Hone, and John Nugent, who lived or worked extensively in the valley from the 1930s to the 1950s and after. The Qu’Appelle Valley is a place where social and aesthetic barriers dissolve. Artists such as David Alexander, Patrick Close, Gregory Hardy, and Dorothy Knowles share an interest in the landscape of the valley; others like David Thauberger, Landon Mackenzie, and Toronto video artists Lisa Steele and Kim Tomczak look both to the landscape and the social and built environment.

The other exhibition presents work by Edward Poitras, who represented Canada in the 1995 Venice Biennial. Poitras, of Métis ancestry, grew up and went to school in Lebret and Fort Qu’Appelle. Over a twenty-year period he has created a significant, ongoing body of work relating to the Qu’Appelle. His work in this exhibition is structured around the subjects of Treaty Four, land claims, the residential school in Lebret, and the mythology of the valley. This exhibition presents both earlier work, such as Offensive/Defensive (1988), and new work, including a web project. As an artist, Poitras is uniquely situated to represent the interface between colonizer and colonized in relation to the Qu’Appelle.⁶

For me, growing up in Regina and visiting my mother’s relatives in Montmartre twenty miles south of the Qu’Appelle, the valley was a visual and mental presence on the horizon. As I grew older, the valley became central to thoughts about my origins. During the Second World War, my father, in the course of his medical studies, interned briefly at Fort San, where he met the woman who would become my mother. She had been infected with tuberculosis while nursing in England and was now a patient in the San. The circumstances of their meeting led me to feel that my life was mysteriously connected to the valley.

In 1957, my brother contracted meningitis and was hospitalized at the San. I remember visiting him there, allowed to see and gesture to him only through the glass pane of a large window. This became a metaphor in my life for separation and distance between people and things. In the late sixties, my father began to work for the Saskatchewan Anti-Tuberculosis League and the family (without my mother, who had died) moved to the San to live. So life had come full circle. This was a special time, because I became aware of the valley in another way than that of a tourist. Earlier, as a teenager, I knew the valley as a place where one visited friends or relatives who had cabins or where one drove to Katepwa for the dances or Regina Beach for the sand and sun. Now I lived there and could explore the coulees and paths at my leisure in summer and winter. Along with my brothers and sister, I discovered special places and views, named landmarks, scrambled together native beliefs, art, the occult, and local history to create a personal mythology centred in the valley. While walking in the hills, I often met native people on the paths. Few words were spoken but there was a feeling in the air that seemed to ease the barrier between two worlds. This sense of openess formed the basis of my awareness of a spiritual heritage connected to a physical experience of place, which is the true message of the valley.

This exhibition and the catalogue essays grew from the personal memories and experiences of all the contributors to this project. Edward Poitras continues to visit and make art there, as does Trevor Herriot. For Robert Stacey, the exhibition is a return to the place where his grandfather, the artist C.W. Jefferys (1869–1951), painted some of his most accomplished works. This exhibition addresses many issues—aesthetic, geographic, and political—in exploring the complexity of art and society at the beginning of this millennium. When examining the narratives found in images of the Qu’Appelle, there seems always to be a thread that intertwines the land and the lives of those who live there, be they of the first nations or those who came later. Qu’Appelle: Tales of Two Valleys tells a number of stories grounded in these common denominators of geography and topography. What makes this place unique is precisely this interlacing of the old and the new and the possibilities this opens for the future. The Qu’Appelle can play an important role in the way we perceive our collective history and our future. Recently, first nations have successfully made land claims in the townsite of Fort Qu’Appelle, and this community seems to have found ways to bridge the gap between the differing mythologies and ways of life that are somehow cradled and nourished by the Qu’Appelle. In a sense the exhibition is a story of quiet triumph over the formidable odds that face us all today. While there are many tales of hatred, ignorance, and neglect here, there are also equally powerful tales of recognition, respect, co-operation, and sharing.

Notes

1. Trevor Herriot, River in a Dry Land: A Prairie Passage (Toronto: Stoddart Publishing, 2000), 8–9.

 

2. For more on the monument see Jean S. McGill, Edmund Morris: Frontier Artist (Toronto and Charlottetown: Dundurn Press, 1984). “Morris had found a sacred carved stone used for rituals by the Crees.... Morris had himself drawn a more elaborate motif, in which the sacred stone was to be flanked by two stone pillars representing the two races: the pillars were to be joined at the top by a slab of granite symbolising “brotherhood.’ On the memorial would be inscribed the names of all the participants.” (140–141).

   However, the monument that eventually was unveiled in November 1915 was a single granite obelisk with inscribed plaques listing the participants. Unlike the early proposal which “would be visible for many miles up and down the valley” (148), it was smaller and did not incorporate the sacred stone. The final choice was made by the Western Art Association. The monument was located at the old school site in the village of Fort Qu’Appelle, the original location of the signing of the Qu’Appelle Treaty with the Indians” (171). Morris was not mentioned in the inaugural ceremonies.

 

3. Motherwell was federal minister of agriculture (Liberal) in 1921 and again in 1930.

 

4. See Lucy H. Murray, “St. John’s College, Qu’Appelle, 1885–1894,” Saskatchewan History 11, no. 1 (winter 1958).

 

5. Information on pageants and the Hugonnard monument from conversations with Jim LaRocque, curator of the Lebret Historical Museum. The statue, a figure of Father Hugonnard surrounded by two adoring Indian children, was originally placed on the West side of the Residential School. It was later moved by Jim LaRocque after the school was closed in 1998 to its present site on the east side of Sacred Heart church at the entrance to the Lebret cemetery.

 

6. A publication on Edward Poitras’s work in this exhibition will be forthcoming in late 2002.