Many people aren't exactly clear on what the original Humboldt site represents.
"It's where the city used to be before it moved," said one resident.
Wrong.
"I think it used to be a village and is the namesake for our city now," said someone else.
Well, sort of.
A municipal heritage property, the site is actually soaked in a colourful history, the kind of story that seems written for a musty book of Canadian folklore.
Under a tent on June 12, while puddle ducks quacked in the distance and a luminous sun beat down, residents, school children and dignitaries gathered to hear why this site is cashmere in the fabric of our nation.
"Today, we celebrate a big step in an amazing journey," Lt.-Gov of Saskatchewan Vaughn Solomon Schofield said to the crowd.
The 80-acre property was actually the site of the Humboldt telegraph station, a lone cabin in a scratchy field, the next hint of civilization nearly 40 kilometres away.
The event on June 12 was to not just retell the hushed story of the land, but unveil replicas of historic features that used to sit on it.
Historic features of a telegraph station?
No, the site is much more than that.
In 1878, George and Catherine Weldon moved west to work for the Canadian Pacific Telegraph Line; George built a log cabin at what is presently the original Humboldt site, and it became home to not only the Weldons, but the Humboldt telegraph station.
Catherine became known as the first female telegraph operator west of Winnipeg, and the remote cabin bore witness to memorable events, from a visit by John Douglas Sutherland Campbell, the Governor General, to the much-too-soon death of the Weldons' infant daughter, Birdie.
Three years later in 1885, the North-West Resistance had escalated, a conflict which saw the Métis people of Saskatchewan under the leadership of Louis Riel rallying against Canada because they believed the government failed to address protection of their rights and their survival as a distinct people.
The telegraph station had become a mail station by then, but was converted into a makeshift military encampment when Lt. Col. George Denison's troop of 460 soldiers were stationed there during the Resistance.
"This land is home to stories of conflict and bravery, mystery and death, love and loss," Jennifer Hoesgen, director of the Humboldt & District Museum & Gallery (HDMG), said in her speech.
Telegraph lines northwest of Humboldt had been cut, therefore the lone log cabin ensured continuous communication with Ottawa during the 1885 conflict.
"Denison said 'Humboldt is the end of the telegraph line'. I mean, you couldn't make this stuff up," Hoesgen said in an interview prior to the historic features unveiling.
After the battle was over, the station was abandoned and homesteaded by the Faul family, who converted the land into a pasture.
It wasn't until the 1950s when August Faul, upon dividing up the land, came across rifle cartridges, food containers and gun trenches and soon realized the significance these artifacts had in the settlement of Western Canada.
By the 1980s, investigation by the RCMP was underway to further explore the history of the land and in 1995 Western Heritage Services Inc. confirmed the site as the location of the original Humboldt telegraph station and military camp in 1885.
In 2009, the Original Humboldt committee purchased the land from August Faul's niece, Joan, who graciously understood the important story this land had to tell.
The site was designated a Municipal Heritage Property by the RM of Humboldt that year, and the committee has worked tirelessly ever since to present its stories to the public.
"We're incredibly fortunate to have a committee that is committed to developing and presenting culture to our residents," Mayor Malcolm Eaton said to the crowd.
The ceremony unveiled two art installations, a Red River Cart, constructed by Don Wilkins, and a replica frame to the telegraph station, built by Murray Cook.
The former represents an integral sliver of history in the settlement of Western Canada, where the Red River Cart, pulled by horses or oxen, traveled along winding trails through the prairies, the Carlton Trail that spanned Winnipeg to Edmonton being one of them.
Long before the days of the railway.
"It's so simple looking, yet so fundamental," said Wilkins of the cart. "It could carry up to a thousand pounds."
The anecdotes of the land had been muted for years, smothered under uncertainty, disregard and the years of research it'd take to coax the stories back to the surface. And the arduous years and effort that had been invested into the historical narration of the land was no more apparent than in two speeches given at the ceremony.
"You're doing a very progressive thing here today," said Robert Doucette, President of the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan, as he stood before the crowd of onlookers.
"For years, Métis wouldn't talk about this land out of fear of all the 'isms' that would be added to our story. But Métis have played a major role in the development of our country and it wasn't always recognized," Doucette went on to say.
"Well today, our history is coming alive."
Doucette, with a brimming smile, expressed gratitude to the committee for the work put into the site, noting how despite racial conflicts that still exist today, the original Humboldt site sits away from it, or rather amidst it, an example of such contention being conquered.
And there was also Harry Tatro, the former superintendent of the National Historic Sites of Canada, who spent the bulk of his career researching the unexplored stories of Canada's West, incessantly interviewing countless individuals, surveying lands, writing out maps, drafting up stories and reports, all to reawaken a story that needed to be told.
It was his research that was critical to the committee's understanding of the land.
It was Tatro who started it all, Hoesgen acknowledged, as she got choked up introducing the unassuming man, now much older, who had first visited the site 50 years ago.
The committee hopes to add walking trails and natural grass back to the site, but for now the replicates of the Red River Cart and the telegraph station will be doing the storytelling.
Maybe it was the lieutenant governor who said it best at the ceremony, quoting Louis Riel:
"My people will sleep for 100 years and it'll be the artists who awaken them."
