Recently I had a couple of experiences which really focused my thinking on the depopulation of rural Canada.
The first was a short fishing trip out to the old Togo Bridge. The fishing was slow so we toured toward the new Togo Bridge which took us through what remains of Togo.
There are a few homes, a hotel, a rink still stands, and that's about it, except for a series of boarded up storefronts which told the story that at one point in the not so distant past Togo was a bustling rural community.
While it is now something of a skeleton of what it once was, I was left to wonder if there was any hope for its future.
On the way to the second fishing hole we passed a new housing development on the hill overlooking the Assiniboine River.
It's not lakefront by a few hundred yards, but it is secluded and more connected to nature than any street in a city.
But I wonder if such developments, which pop up all over the place these days - there is a sign for acreages just west of Highway #9 north of Yorkton, and another one west toward Willowbrook - are particularly more rustic, or away from it all than would living in Togo?
The next trip was out to cover the 100th anniversary of the Village of Rhein.
Again it is a community with a thriving past.
A walk through the photo displays at the local senior centre showed that.
So did talking to those gathered. They spoke of a community which at one time numbered 500. There were grain elevators, machinery dealerships, grocery and hardware stores and a school.
All are gone now.
With each closure, elevator, store, school, a community dies a little more.
It is a death which has been repeated over and over across Canada, and actually across dryland farming areas around the world.
Anyone with a farming tie can speak to the disappearance of rural communities.
When I was pre-school age mail came to us at Clashmoor. There was a store, elevator, post office stop, homes.
Today the rail line is even gone. Not a single building, even a dilapidated pile of boards, exists. The village site is now farmland with nothing to mark it was once home to a community.
Our next address was Eldersley, a community that had two grain elevators, a fire hall, two grocery stores, a community hall, curling rink and a school.
I never attended the school though. It was announced to close the year I started and my parents opted to send me directly to Tisdale rather than having to change schools after only one year.
The school gone, the grocery stores followed, the curling rink closed from lack of interest, the grain elevators gone in the move to inland terminals. Another village all but a memory.
And that brings us back to Rhein.
While it was nostalgic to attend the anniversary, it was a nostalgia tinged by the reality that the village has little hope of existing to mark another 100 years. As one participant said, he doubted 40. He was probably right.
I recognize rural depopulation is a trend started at the end of the First World War, and the likelihood of that changing is nil.
But that said, I am left with the feeling that each time a small rural community disappears from maps the larger community of province and country are a bit worse off for the loss.
The Rheins, Togos, Eldersleys and Clashmoors of this country had a sense of community, togetherness, of making the most of what exists at hand which frankly does not translate to larger communities, and therein is the sadness of continued change.
