Winter Prairies 2022 — Sandra Herber Photography

When I wrote the blog post about my trip to Antarctica in March 2020, the pandemic had just begun (I arrived back from that trip just two weeks before lockdown). At that time I didn’t know when I’d travel again, but I finally got the chance two years later, in February 2022. I cancelled a few trips during the pandemic, but this year I thought it was safe to travel and the place I chose was one of my favourites - the Prairies in winter. The trip took me from Winnipeg to west central Manitoba (Hamiota) into eastern Saskatchewan (Yorkton) and back into southwest Manitoba (Melita and Killarney). I had been to SW Manitoba in the summer of 2017 and I had, since then, wanted to make a return trip in the winter. This was finally my chance!

I got on the plane in late February - two years less six days from my flight back from my trip Antarctica - under a high wind warning in Toronto and a blizzard warning in Winnipeg, so even from the start, it looked to be an exciting trip.

An early morning wake up was followed by the insanity at the airport – a combination of IT issues at the airline, the Family Day long weekend and the first day of university Reading Week. The Perfect Storm of airport disasters, but after that it was all smooth sailing (or smooth flying).

I landed in Winnipeg to clear blue skies but bitter cold temperatures and crazy winds. Parts of the Trans Canada Highway were closed in the morning before my arrival and it was pretty hairy driving it even after it opened. All traffic would suddenly suddenly brake as whole lanes would be blocked by huge four-foot high snow drifts. The blowing snow wasn’t quite as bad once I got off the Trans Canada but it was still bitterly cold. I had forgotten how miserable -25C was having not been out the Prairies in so long.

My faithful companion at the beginning of the trip when she still looked beautifully clean. It was great to have the extra clearance, 4-wheel drive (though I never ended up using it) and to to stand on the running boards to get a higher vantage point for photographs.

After the drive from Winnipeg I ensconced myself in my wonderfully warm and cozy Airbnb in Hamiota, where I would be based for four nights. All the food I’d bought in Winnipeg was frozen - I had to put the hummus in the fridge just to warm it up! The next day I woke up to an Extreme Cold Weather Warning: frigid temperatures were predicted to last for the next four days.

The first full day of the trip was a day of two halves. In the morning there was lovely soft light and clear roads (and, of course, bitter temperatures, but that’s OK when the light is good and the travelling easy). I shot a few beautiful old grain elevators and other things I found along the way – a great start to the first full day of the trip. Then the clouds cleared, so I figured I’d continue the route I’d picked out that morning, scouting sites to see if I should return and shooting with b&w in mind. In the area west and south of Hamiota, the roads were like ice rinks – scary enough on foot (wish I’d brought the ice cleats I used when photographing ice fishing huts!) but doubly scary as the car fishtailed all over, including a heart-pounding romp turning onto the Trans Canada with a semi bearing down on me from behind. That got my heart beating! Just before my trip the temps went up above zero for a day and I think in this area, at least, things melted and then refroze when the temps went down again. Just a few days later, in an area not far from there, a horrible accident occurred which, it seems was caused by the icy roads. I feel very lucky to have avoided something like that.

The next few days produced the predicted frigid temperatures and, unfortunately for me, clear skies. When the light is not in my favour, I spent time scouting sites for when the clouds did come in. Once my scouting was done each day, I spent some time downloading images, relaxing and exploring the town of Hamiota (population 1,200). I know from other trips – when you have a limited amount of time in a place - that it’s hard to resist the impulse to get out and DO SOMETHING, but when the windchill is below -40 and the skies are clear it’s best to just save my energy for later in the trip. That’s why I planned this trip for twelve days - knowing that the more days I was out there, the luckier I was likely to get.

One day I bundled up and went for a walk through the lovely town of Hamiota, Manitoba. I got some quizzical looks as most everyone else was out in their cars. Outside every shop was at least one or two cars still running while people dashed in to quickly do get whatever they needed. Even hearty residents of Hamiota thought it was pretty cold! I rewarded myself at the end of the walk with a doughnut from the local bakery. There’s nothing I like more than a small-town bakery and that was a really yummy doughnut.

One of the days I went out to scout around Hamiota turned out to be the coldest temp I’ve ever shot in, at -38C on the car thermometer, and with a windchill (said the news) of -43C. Given those frigid temperatures, I only was out for a few hours. Cold of that level is really debilitating. That being said, it was a worthwhile outing. I scouted a few sites I hoped to shoot the next day when the clouds were predicted.

Gwen, the librairan, as the Centennial Library in Hamiota

On another day in Hamiota, after a morning of scouting, I returned to town for lunch: take out from J & D Restaurant. J & D is Hamiota’s only restaurant, one of the multitudes of Chinese restaurants found in almost every Prairie town. While waiting for my order, I stopped in next door at the Centennial Library to say hello to a fellow librarian. I had a lovely chat with Gwen, the librarian, and gave Buster, the library dog, a few scratches on the head. I asked her a bit about her library system, and she said the best thing about it was the ‘rotation’. “Oh. So, you rotate from branch to branch?” I asked. “No,” she said, “the books do”. Four times a year the books are packed up, and a truck comes from the main branch in Dauphin to take them to another branch. She said there’s always excitement in town when the new books come in. Given that there are 26 branches in the system, it takes a few years until the books come back again. What a cool system!

I never got the clouds I was hoping for in Hamiota, so after four nights, I headed into Saskatchewan - to Yorkton – much bigger place with a population of over 16,000. Back in 2013, a fellow photographer from Edmonton had mentioned some great shooting around Yorkton. I’d had it in my mind for years to target this area and I finally made it, almost 10 years later. The morning I left Hamiota, there was some very nice hoar frost on the trees – it was like a Winter Wonderland driving west to Saskatchewan. Around lunchtime I stopped in at the lovely Bin 22 Café in Russell, Manitoba on the invitation of a fellow photographer Mark Keating. I had a lovely London Fog to warm me up but didn’t get to meet Mark. Hopefully next time. The rest of the trip, as I got nearer to Yorkton, was spent scouting sites I could photograph over the next few days. Some clouds eventually came in, softening the light a bit around sunset and, happily, the cold snap broke the next day - highs were up around -10C.

On my first full day in Yorkton, the clouds came in around 5pm and I shot a few old churches and abandoned homesteads for an hour before sunset. The area around Yorkton is (in fact, much of the Prairies are) full of old Ukrainian churches, built by those ‘stalwart peasants in sheepskin coats’ who settled on the Prairies and whom you learned about in school (if you went to school in Canada). When I’m on a trip like this one I live in a little bubble where all I think about is weather, clouds, temperature, food, shelter, driving conditions, and scouted sites, but on this trip, I couldn’t help but hear the terrible news from Ukraine of the Russian invasion on February 24. I certainly thought about it while photographing a number of old Ukrainian churches and settlements – remnants of significant late 19th- and early 20th-century Ukrainian settlement in Canada.

While out photographing on the Prairies, I’m often approached by a car or truck to check up on me – both to see if I’m OK and to see that I’m not up to no good – to be honest, I’m not always sure which takes precedence, although everyone is always very friendly and polite. One day out shooting around Yorkton I was approached twice by large trucks – both driven by women. They were friendly but the first woman admitted that she was checking what I was up to because, as she said, “there have been a lot of shootings (of animals) around here”. I was glad she added the “of animals” part! A friend from Saskatchewan had told me of the increase in rural crime over the last few years, the changes in Saskatchewan trespassing laws and I have seen numerous signs in Saskatchewan asking people to ‘turn in poachers’, so I understood her concern, but I assured her I was ‘just taking photographs’. “Oh,” she said, “I like to take photographs around here with my good camera, too. It’s so beautiful sometimes”.

It was in Yorkton that I finally got the lovely soft light that I’m always after on these trips – what I call the Prairie Soft box. It’s hard to understand what the silence and open space are like out here, so I thought I’d share this video to give you an idea. With these soft overcast skies, it’s hard to tell land from sky. It is both disorientating and comforting - like living inside a ball of cotton wool. And that amazing silence! The silence - broken only by a crow, and the sound of my boots and my breath. To me, it’s magical.

Yorkton was as far west as I got on this trip, and the second half of the trip was a slow return to Winnipeg. I drove from Yorkton, SK to Melita, MB (population just over a thousand) - a 350 km journey which took over 10 hours with lots of stops and detours for photography along the way. The temperature was cool but not as bad as it has been (-12C) but there was a bitter wind which made the windchill around -22C. The trip took me east and south from Yorkton and I passed by the Lake of the Prairies (actually a huge reservoir) a location I’d never been before. There were ice fishing huts out on the lake, and I was tempted to go out and photograph them but there was too much else to see, so on I went. Except for a 20-minute stop for lunch, I shot all day – grain elevators, abandoned homesteads, schools, churches and minimalist scenes. All the driving (sometimes struggling with the car not to be pushed sideways on the icy roads in the crazy wind) and the cold conditions was pretty draining, but what a joy to have a whole day of great shooting conditions and a card full of images!

I had visited Melita in the summer of 2017 and thought it would make a great destination for winter. There are some great elevators nearby and the same flat, open landscape as Saskatchewan but with more trees for great winter minimalist images. It took a few years to get back here in the winter, but I finally made it.

My first stop on my first full day in Melita was one of my all-time favourite grain elevator sites: the town of Elva with its Lake of the Woods (reputed to be the oldest in Canada having been built in 1897) and United Grain Growers elevators. A friend had told me that both elevators were going to be demolished and when I arrived, I could see that, instead, they were being salvaged. The Den, who purchased the two elevators, was partway through salvaging the Lake of the Woods elevator, having stripped all the beautiful old siding. Elevators disappear all the time – after being struck by lightning, being badly damaged in a storm (and therefore susceptible to water damage and future storms), through years of neglect after being abandoned, and by being demolished. Some of my favourites – White Bear, and Dankin A and B are now gone. It was good to see that the beautiful old Lake of the Woods was being salvaged. Sadly, just a month after I returned home, the Lake of the Woods elevator at Elva burned down. The newer second elevator (the United Grain Growers elevator built in 1916) is looking close to collapse, but it is slated to be salvaged. Even though both elevators sit on the edge of a town, I didn’t see anyone and only heard the occasional barking dog. I spent a wonderful 30 minutes or more walking up and down between the two elevators shooting them from different angles and then standing in front of them just contemplating them in silence – thinking how beautiful they are, how much history is in them, how much they’d survived and the fact that this would be the last time I would see them: a bittersweet last visit.

As I slowly headed back to Winnipeg, I moved on from Melita to Killarney. I visited sites along the way, some of which I’d seen in the summer of 2017 and some of which were new to me. Flat and minimalist as the landscape is, it’s even more elemental in the winter. There were a couple of spots where I thought, “Oh, yes, I remember I tried a minimalist shot of that tree in the summer and it just didn’t work” – now, with all the snow, it’s so much easier to get these lovely minimalist shots.

The last few days of the trip were a return to bright blue skies but I headed out anyway to scout, knowing that one day I may be back. On the last day of the trip, I took a simple drive from Killarney to Winnipeg, with some stops along the way. I was sent off with some nice chilly Prairie winter weather: -21C at 10am in the morning. I tried to visit a few remote sites: an abandoned school and homestead - but was turned back multiple times by closed roads, so I guess I’ll have to save those for a summer trip.

I stopped for lunch at a restaurant I’d read a lot about: Al’s Big Burgers in Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes. Many of the signs in town are in French and the visit reminded me of reading Candace Savage’s Strangers in the House about the French (not just Metis, but also Quebecois – the people who settled Notre-Dame) settlement of the Prairies, particularly Saskatchewan. From there it was quick and easy shot to the airport in Winnipeg and the flight home.

What a great adventure this trip was, a wonderful reminder of the adventures from pre-COVID times and a promise of more to come. Despite the frigid temperatures (the coldest I’ve ever shot in) and more blue skies than I even usually count on in a winter trip, it felt good to challenge myself to do something difficult and out-of-the-ordinary after two years of the pandemic. I hope that this is the first of more post-pandemic trips to come.

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