Ever since Andrew and I were married (23 years ago!) I’ve heard about “the sandpit farm” every once in a while.
And then sometimes I’d hear about the large boarding house by the train tracks where my mother-in-law’s family had lived when she was a little girl.
Other times when Andrew was driving us home from my brother’s place at Saint Raymond, along the 210, I’d look west across the field to the woods where the train tracks disappeared into the woods, and wonder…
I’m pretty lucky to have a great mother-in-law whose sense of adventure matches mine pretty well. So when I mentioned to her that I wondered if it would be possible to visit the site of that house where she had spent her earliest years, she felt the answer would be yes. And then suddenly she told me the date had been selected — this past Saturday!
So I put on my best adventuring outfit — a big cotton shirt, jeans, rubber boots (easier to stride through tangled grasses and thistles and repels ticks a bit, handy if it’s muddy), and of course my trusty MHV class A engineer hat (which is now back in stock at the gift shop!) and soon I was clambering up onto the back of Andrew’s uncle’s truck.
Thankfully, Uncle Robert bought some of that land from his father and he still owns a lot of it, which allowed him to drive us pretty far into the woods, to the edge of his land. He told us that two people would have to sit in the back of the truck but recommended sitting on lawn chairs and my mother-in-law and I eagerly announced we would love to be the ones to do that.
We felt like queens and also had such an amazing view of all the fall foliage as we were driven deeper into the woods.
And then we came to the end of the trail. The truck could go no further. We climbed out and walked toward where the sandpits opened up on our left, and the train tracks ran past on our right.
In the distance were some oaks. I have always felt like stands of oaks mean historical significance. “Something has happened here.”
(I don’t know why I think that. Oaks grow naturally. But also… something has happened everywhere, really.)
We climbed up to the tracks and crossed them, which I believe is not actually legal, because danger.
Now we were standing in a grove of oaks. Uncle Robert began pointing out to us where different parts of the farm had been.
He had brought pictures of the house that had once stood here…
And I now realize I should have asked who those people are sitting on the lawn in front of the house. And I will also get other details wrong. For instance, I feel like they have told me they did not live on all the floors of the house — it was simply too big for a family of six.
But I did one good thing — I asked my mother-in-law and Andrew’s uncle Robert to pose for a picture at the site.
She was six and he was seven years old when their family moved away from this place, and into the village of Blumenort.
Uncle Robert then led us to the exact place where the house had been. The grass was tall and the ground uneven… I think maybe because that basement had not been all the way filled in. So… it was pretty dangerous going. Ha.
At one point I asked Uncle Robert where the well had been. “Oh, it had been in the basement, I believe,” he said. “That might be it there,” he added as we found a precarious hole of sorts. (Oh yikes, ha… ahhh.)
Ummm what’s down there and is what I’m standing on… stable? But also, HISTORY! SO COOL!!!!
At this point the others had enough and turned back, but I went on a bit further and found other pieces of foundation tossed to and fro — fieldstones in concrete, now covered over with long dead grasses.
Proof of a house that had once stood here.
One more thing — the driveway, that they as children had to walk to highway 210, to catch the bus to the Catholic French school in Ste. Anne.
“See that break in the trees there? That was the driveway,” said Uncle Robert.
“I see it!” I exclaimed, and went towards it.
It is very very overgrown but you can still make out the path.
When I emerged, I took a picture of the yardsite from the perspective of the driveway…
And my fellow adventurers…
A little closer to the tracks, Uncle Robert noted he had found an abandoned truck that he thought had maybe been his dad’s. I went off to see it.
I wonder if that is the same truck in front of the house in this picture.
I could say all kinds of things about the ghosts of this house and of these wonderful adults when they were small children, and I know I am prone to fantastical musings sometimes. It would be good if I were more prone to actual research. Because… what was this house? A boarding house? For what?
Okay well listen. If I were a little more interesting, a little more like Gordon Goldsborough, I would have started this post with something like, “The foundations of Winnipeg had their origin in a patch of woods near Steinbach… and today we’re going to find the TRUE birthplace of our provincial capital.” Because yeah, these sandpits are there for a reason. That train track is there for a reason. That huge house was built there for reason… and was largely abandoned by the time Andrew’s grandparents, in their early years of marriage, bought it as their first home. Crews would come from Winnipeg to dig in the sandpits and load up rail cars full of that beautiful fine sand which was used to build the foundations of many homes in Winnipeg as the city was going through its boom, probably in the 1920s. I hope to someday visit the Manitoba archives to learn more about this rail post. I think this all means that these sandpits and this boarding house were property of the City of Winnipeg, perhaps. I have no idea how this stuff works but it just seems to me. By the time Andrew’s grandparents married, probably in the 1940s, that building boom was over and this house was for sale, probably affordable.
Just a three-story boarding house at the end of the woods and prairie, along a rural train track.
Apparently there were some interesting things found in the attic of that house.
And apparently the house did not stand for much longer after the family moved away. It was sold away in bits and pieces as building materials.
Sometimes by going to a site, you might think it dispels any mystery. But I don’t find it to the be the case. At least not for me. I think I will always stare transfixed out the window to this site where we were once brought to adventure, investigate, and thankfully remain safe from danger.
But I will have to visit the provincial archives yet. I have this mystery and yet another one to investigate there.
The more the dig, the more you digging you find you will need to do.