On Sunday, July 20, Mae Hinde and I attended the annual celebration at the Bresaylor Museum. The name of this once very active town comes from the combined letters of the three first families who settled in this area: Brebner, Sayers and Taylor. The two museum buildings are located on the north side of Highway 16 East of Maidstone and are curated by Velma Foster, who lives there, and help from other volunteers.
Tables for a delicious pot luck supper were set up outside, with a distance between the tables, and a nice breeze kept the mosquitoes at bay.
Following a sumptuous meal, Bill Dobie from Choicelandl, whose family lived in the Bresaylor area at one time, gave a most interesting demonstration of flutes that he makes in the Native American flute style. These mostly five-hole flutes are made from dead branches of several kinds of local trees. They are cut in half, centers cleaned out and then re-glued back together. He prefers not to use any electric tools in their constructions but uses tools that would have been available to the First Nations people in the early days. He explained that the first ones were made by Indigenous people when they found that if you blew in a stick that had holes in it made by birds it would make an interesting sound, and so the flute was invented. Bill Dobie had spent some time in Thailand and had some flutes he made from bamboo; when several were tied together the sounds was similar to a bagpipe. This was a most interesting and informative demonstration of flutes that were painted and decorated with rawhide and different strips of leather.
Following this, Dorothy Schwartz displayed two beaded articles given to her parents in 1934. These were a picture frame and a collar and tie rack done by Mr. and Mrs. Martell who lived on Little Pine Reserve and came to work at her parents’ farm every spring. They brought their children and camped in a tent in the pasture. This was looked forward to by Dorothy’s family as there were more children to play with. These items can be seen in the Maidstone Museum.
Draws were made for the quilt “The House on the Hill.” It was won by Christine Pike of Maidstone. Several consolation prizes made of inner tube by Helena Caplette were drawn for. The four dolls made by June Taylor were won by Bev Davis of Turtleford, Marlene Feth of Consort, Cassy Finn of Hepburn and Dorothy Rhinehart of L1oydminster.
Out of area guests were from North Battleford, Maidstone, Paynton, Hepburn and Choiceland. Thank you goes to all volunteers who helped make this event very enjoyable.
