Glendenning Days

Glendenning Days is the story of a pioneer family, starting with their departure from the UK early in the 19th century, continuing with their trek across Canadian in search of land and ending with their final assembly as homesteaders in Manitoba. Now the fourth generation, including me, has dispersed again, even further afield. I describe a way of life, growing up on a family farm and walking to a one-room country school, that has completely disappeared. All of that ended abruptly during my childhood, displaced by new methods of farming and new expectations. All traces of the Glendenning school are gone, except the wrought iron sign that marks the site. Farming has evolved from pioneer family farms to agribusinesses. Most farmers now commute from the towns and the few kids who still live in the country are bused to school. Glendenning has changed so quickly and completely that little evidence of our past life can be found.

By complementing my story with some fragments of family history I have tried to develop a narrative that locates my childhood at the end of a larger migration. The place and circumstances of my upbringing were not the products of chance, they were the result of deliberate choices made by three generations of ancestors, over a period of a hundred years. My ancestors, like many others, were driven by the need to own land. That need brought them all to Manitoba as homesteaders and marks the beginning of my story.

We also claim that their pioneer legacy that has shaped our character and values but sometimes we misuse that legacy to justify our self-indulgence. In the last chapters I discuss some examples of this misuse: pollution of our environment, climate change and aboriginal issues.