back page bridges. and arches Stephanie White
W hen looking through the Glenbow picture archives for an example of a celebratory arch, I found this one in File Hills, built in 1906 for the visit of the Governor-General of Canada at the time, Earl Grey. Arches were in their heyday in late nineteenth century England, erected usually for royal visits: in High Wycombe, a furniture manufacturing town, a huge arch was made eintirely of chairs for Queen Victoria’s carriage to pass through. In Canada many arches were built for troops returning from the First World War. Saskatoon had four placed at intervals down its main street. They were temporary constructions out in the public realm that focussed feelings of pride, celebration, commemoration, occasion. This arch in File Hills, when I chose it, seemed typical —bannered, flagged, garlanded and beribboned — and that it was on a reserve seemed to say something about the relationship between natives and the King of England that today is understood through the nation to nation treaties made between Briatian and each of our First Nations. This, however, is a case of a misleading contemporary interpretation of an historic event. File Hills was, in fact, an experiment in the ongoing war of assimilation conducted by Canada’s Department of Indian Affairs against native peoples. The File HIlls Colony in southeastern Saskatchewan was set up for ex-residential school students: each colonist was given an 80 acre lot (promoting an individual property model rather than community land stewardship) and a loan of $125 (thus engaging them in economic structures). It was reserve land already, but the group occupying it, the Peepeekisis, were not invited to participate. Colonists were individuals from other reserves, disengaged from their people. File Hillls became a model colony, a show piece of how completely natives could be alienated from traditional life. It was intensely patriotic: 28 farmers enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Forces, a higher proportion of the community than any non-native settlement in Saskatchewan. This was an era of utopian experiments in protective communities across the prairies, including Mennonites, Jews, aristocratic French and gentleman English. Sarah Carter points out that File Hillls, exceptionally, ‘was established to indoctrinate a group of people to majoritarian values’ (‘Demonstrating Success: the File Hills Farm Colony’, The Prairie Forum , p 167) If so, it was only partly successful. Fine farmers until the Dominion government disallowed modern farming practices on reserves, File Hills colonists were well-apprised of the rights and possibilities of mainstream Canadian culture, insisting on their right to dance and maintain traditional practices. The settlement had a cottage hospital, petitioned for 50 years for a school —protesting the ongoing institution of the residential school, employed white farm labourers and was, in some areas, self-governing. It started to crumble under an overly dictatorial Indian Agent in the 1930s plus the agricultural failure during the Depression. This ceremonial arch in the light of all of this is at once triumphal and deceptive, optimistic and doomed, symbol of King and Country and First Nations survival of endless experiments dedicated to their erasure.
Welcoming arch erected at File Hills Colony, near Balcarres, Saskatchewan in 1905, on the occasion of the visit of Earl Grey, Governor-General of Canada. Glenbow Museum Archives NA-3454-12.
Stephanie White is editor of On Site review.
48
ON SITE review 6: BEAUTY
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator