On Saturday August 25th, Chris, Connie, Rueben and I headed east from my shop in East Coulee, where we had stayed for the night. We headed east to the Saskatchewan border and then north up to Jack's place. Byron had driven out separately and met us at Jack's. He arrived just minutes before we did, at about 11:00AM. In April of 2017, under really miserable weather conditions, we had all worked together on Rueben's short documentary film... Forgotten Prairie. Jack was featured in the film and we were out on this return trip to visit him. Jack is 88 years old and still lives on his farm. He is a collector, and has a large assortment of old vehicles and machinery in his yard. I wanted to get out and photograph some of these under better conditions and this would be the day.
When we first arrived we visited with Jack for a while. He does not have cable TV or internet, so he had not seen the film before. We brought along a DVD copy for him, and sat down with him while he viewed it for the first time. He seemed to get a kick out of it and really enjoyed seeing himself on TV. His son Rodney was staying with him and was going to be helping with the upcoming harvest. I suspect that Rodney probably does most of the work as Jack is getting on. I'm not sure exactly how much land he still farms, but not nearly as much as he used to back in his younger days. I believe that he still has about 80 cows and farms about two quarters of grain.
We spent the afternoon with Jack, exploring around his farm and poking through all the old vehicles and equipment. Jack seemed to really enjoy it and knew exactly where every old car, piece of machinery, and bit of old metal came from. He kept commenting that he was running out of time and still had so much stuff to do. This little tour of his collection obviously brought back a lot of good memories for him as he kept telling us stories about his years on the farm.
It was till rather smoky from the British Columbia forest fires, even way over here in Saskatchewan. As most of my photography was relatively close up views of the old vehicles, the smoke really didn't matter too much, though it did yield some blank white skies. It was really good to get out again with my big camera and finally get back to my photography. I think I set up the camera about half a dozen times and probably exposed about a dozen sheets of film.
As the day was winding down we all had a coffee with Jack and visited with him a little more before saying our goodbyes. It was kind of sad to leave and he asked us to be sure and come by and visit him again.... which I hope we will.
After leaving Jacks place we headed over to Kindersley where we had a couple of rooms reserved at a local motel. We went out for dinner together, and then retired to our rooms. We stayed up for a while after dinner and had a few drinks and visited before turning in for the night.
For those that may not have seen the documentary film last year when it was released, or at the opening that we had at the Museum in East Coulee, or at the screening last winter at the Red Deer Film Festival, here is a link to YouTube...
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