Old Wives is an unincorporated community in the Rural Municipality of Hillsborough No. 132, Saskatchewan, Canada.

History

The village that became Old Wives was formed about 1900, but it was not until 1929 that the community officially got the name. Mail delivery began 1911, when Tom Lundrigan began bringing in the mail from the post office in Mortlach. Eventually, a post office was open January 1, 1912, and remained open until it closed on October 10, 1969. The area was home to several schools, with the first opening in 1916. Bay Island School, officially Bay Island School District #4362, was a one-room school on Highway 363 just east of Old Wives, which served the community from 1919 to 1950. The building still stands today. The first general store in town opened in Mr. Bill Sheldon’s house in 1920. In 1930 a new store was built at the town site and it would operate for nearly 40 years, before closing in 1968. In 1931 the

CPR Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is an emergency procedure consisting of chest compressions often combined with artificial ventilation in an effort to manually preserve intact brain function until further measures are taken to restore sponta ...

laid tracks from Archive to

Shamrock A shamrock is a young sprig, used as a symbol of Ireland. Saint Patrick, Ireland's patron saint, is said to have used it as a metaphor for the Christian Holy Trinity. The name ''shamrock'' comes from Irish (), which is the diminutive of ...

and in 1933 a Saskatchewan Wheat Pool elevator was built alongside the tracks. On July 4, 1930, a

De Havilland The de Havilland Aircraft Company Limited () was a British aviation manufacturer established in late 1920 by Geoffrey de Havilland at Stag Lane Aerodrome Edgware on the outskirts of north London. Operations were later moved to Hatfield in H ...

DH.60 Moth crashed on takeoff from Old Wives. The fate of the pilot is unknown but the aircraft was destroyed by the post-crash fire. Old Wives has been a ghost town for several decades and while the town briefly prospered, The Great Depression and severe droughts in 1937, 1951 and 1959 began an irreversible downward spiral. Many businesses closed in the 1950s and 60s. The final nail in the coffin for the community came in 1973 when the railroad was abandoned, followed by the Pool elevator being moved to

Bateman Bateman may refer to: Places *Bateman, Western Australia, a suburb of Perth, Australia **Electoral district of Bateman, an electorate of the Western Australian Legislative Assembly, centred on the suburb *Batemans Bay, a town and bay in New South W ...

in 1975. Today, very little remains of Old Wives.

Legend

Old Wives and nearby

Old Wives Lake Old Wives Lake is a shallow saline lake in south central Saskatchewan, Canada, about 30 km south-west of Moose Jaw. The lake is fed by the Wood River but seasonal water relatively flattened the terrain, and as such results in significant ...

were named after a local

Cree The Cree ( cr, néhinaw, script=Latn, , etc.; french: link=no, Cri) are a Indigenous peoples of the Americas, North American Indigenous people. They live primarily in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations in Canada ...

legend. According to traditional stories recounted by

Métis The Métis ( ; Canadian ) are Indigenous peoples who inhabit Canada's three Prairie Provinces, as well as parts of British Columbia, the Northwest Territories, and the Northern United States. They have a shared history and culture which derives ...

guides accompanying the

North-West Mounted Police The North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) was a Canadian para-military police force, established in 1873, to maintain order in the new Canadian North-West Territories (NWT) following the 1870 transfer of Rupert’s Land and North-Western Territory ...

in 1874, sometime around 1840 a band of

hunters followed a herd of buffalo into

Blackfoot The Blackfoot Confederacy, ''Niitsitapi'' or ''Siksikaitsitapi'' (ᖹᐟᒧᐧᒣᑯ, meaning "the people" or " Blackfoot-speaking real people"), is a historic collective name for linguistically related groups that make up the Blackfoot or Bla ...

territory and made camp near the lake. Blackfoot scouts discovered this band and attacked. Although the

were able to defend themselves, they anticipated an attack by a larger

war party the next morning. The older women volunteered to stay behind to tend the fires through the night in the hope of fooling the

into believing that they were not abandoning their camp to escape. Using this diversion as cover, the rest of the

successfully fled back to their home territory in the Qu'Appelle valley. When the

arrived that morning they found only the old women, whom the

killed in vengeance. This commonly recited version of the lake's naming has been commemorated by a historical marker situated beside Highway 2 near the lake. A variant telling of this narrative states that the Blackfoot warriors were so impressed by the women's courage that they left them alone and allowed them to rejoin their own people. Another First Nations oral tradition describes how a band of Assiniboine fleeing from pursuing Blackfoot warriors abandoned the old women in their band who could not keep pace with everyone else. The women continued their effort to escape by wading across the lake. However, they misjudged the water's depth and drowned. An Assiniboine tradition associates the name with a battle which occurred at the lake around the beginning of the 19th century in which Assiniboines vanquished their Blackfoot enemies. According to some First Nations traditions, the spirits of the dead women continue to haunt a small island in the lake from which their voices can be heard at night.

References

{{authority control Unincorporated communities in Saskatchewan Ghost towns in Saskatchewan Hillsborough No. 132, Saskatchewan

History

Legend

See also

References