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

Saskatchewan Saskatchewan is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Western Canada. It is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and to the south by the ...

, 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 used during cardiac or respiratory arrest that involves chest compressions, often combined with artificial ventilation, to preserve brain function and maintain circulation until sp ...

laid tracks from Archive to

Shamrock A shamrock is a type of clover, used as a symbol of Ireland. The name ''shamrock'' comes from Irish (), which is the diminutive of the Irish word and simply means "young clover". At most times'', Shamrock'' refers to either the species ...

and in 1933 a

Saskatchewan Wheat Pool The Saskatchewan Wheat Pool was a grain handling, agri-food processing and marketing company based in Regina, Saskatchewan. The Pool created a network of marketing alliances in North America and internationally which made it the largest agricul ...

elevator An elevator (American English) or lift (Commonwealth English) is a machine that vertically transports people or freight between levels. They are typically powered by electric motors that drive traction cables and counterweight systems suc ...

was built alongside the tracks. On July 4, 1930, a

De Havilland The de Havilland Aircraft Company Limited (pronounced , ) 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 ...

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 A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town, or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economi ...

for several decades and while the town briefly prospered,

The Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank an ...

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

Legend

Old Wives and nearby

Old Wives Lake Old Wives Lake is a shallow endorheic salt lake in south central Saskatchewan, Canada, about 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 m ...

were named after a local

Cree The Cree, or nehinaw (, ), are a Indigenous peoples of the Americas, North American Indigenous people, numbering more than 350,000 in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations in Canada, First Nations. They live prim ...

legend. According to traditional stories recounted by

Métis The Métis ( , , , ) are a mixed-race Indigenous people whose historical homelands include Canada's three Prairie Provinces extending into parts of Ontario, British Columbia, the Northwest Territories and the northwest United States. They ha ...

guides accompanying the

North-West Mounted Police The North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) was a Canadian paramilitary 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 to ...

in 1874, sometime around 1840 a band of

hunters followed a herd of

buffalo Buffalo most commonly refers to: * True buffalo or Bubalina, a subtribe of wild cattle, including most "Old World" buffalo, such as water buffalo * Bison, a genus of wild cattle, including the American buffalo * Buffalo, New York, a city in the n ...

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 Bl ...

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 The Qu'Appelle River is a river in the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba that flows east from Lake Diefenbaker in south-western Saskatchewan to join the Assiniboine River in Manitoba, just south of Lake of the Prairies, near t ...

. 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 First nations are indigenous settlers or bands. First Nations, first nations, or first peoples may also refer to: Indigenous groups *List of Indigenous peoples *First Nations in Canada, Indigenous peoples of Canada who are neither Inuit nor Mé ...

oral tradition describes how a band of

Assiniboine The Assiniboine or Assiniboin people ( when singular, Assiniboines / Assiniboins when plural; Ojibwe: ''Asiniibwaan'', "stone Sioux"; also in plural Assiniboine or Assiniboin), also known as the Hohe and known by the endonym Nakota (or Nakoda ...

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

tradition associates the name with a battle which occurred at the lake around the beginning of the 19th century in which

s vanquished their Blackfoot enemies. According to some

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