The WoodPile

food container depository. I have now decided to take my walking stick with me and rest upon it as necessary.

Last fall, my wife and I thought we would go for a short drive and see how the now demolished Saskatchewan Hospital site was looking – not a stick, brick or stone remain except for the forlorn little chapel largely surrounded by desolation and overgrown weeds. The building is in remarkably good shape but is starting to show early signs of vandalism. In front there is a cleared area, surely an ideal spot for druid ceremonies and yob gatherings and being used as such as indicated by trash and firework residue. The area is a prime target for vandals - I cannot imagine how the group planning to create a historical site will be able to protect the building and surroundings. Perhaps the chapel should be taken down stone by stone and re-erected elsewhere as with London Bridge and some dwellings and stately homes in Britain. I am sure that this treasure will eventually suffer the same fate and fire as befell the Government Ridge building. That spectacular conflagration was recorded by famed photographer, the late Menno Fieguth, and is featured in his book “The Seasons and Moods of Battleford”.

In 1987, Milton Lockhart, a most picturesque privately owned mini castle, not far from where I was born and raised in Scotland, was deteriorating and had been put up for sale. It took the fancy of Masahiko Tsugawa, a famous Japanese actor, who dismantled and shipped it block by block 9,000 miles to Japan and rebuilt it in a theme park near Tokyo. What an extraordinary example of preservation and conservation.

How sad it is that my caller, her husband and others, good, generous community-minded people, are frustrated and deterred if not defeated, by senseless vandalism and wanton thievery.