February in Saskatchewan — Sandra Herber Photography

This trip focused on the area north and east of Saskatoon. I based myself in Warman (north of Saskatoon), Melfort, Humboldt and Blairemore (west of Saskatoon).

This was my seventh trip to photograph on the Prairies in winter since my first winter trip in 2015. The Prairies (Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba) are notoriously cold in winter, so these trips are often pretty challenging, but I keep coming back because the wide-open spaces of the Prairies in winter can be a minimalist paradise.

I first visited Saskatchewan almost 10 years ago (in July 2013) to photograph grain elevators, thinking it would be a one-off trip. Instead, except for the pandemic, I’ve taken one or two trips there every year since. On that first trip I shot in the area I’d be visiting on this trip and even though some of my favourite elevators have been badly damaged or destroyed, I thought it would be fun to revisit the area for the first time in nearly a decade.

The first day of the trip was a really good one. I was up at 3:30am (2:30am Sask time) to catch my flight to Saskatoon and was out shooting that first day until after 6pm. The clouds looked good when I landed, but I made a few quick stops to pick up water and food for the car, as I always want to be prepared in case I get stuck somewhere. That first day I headed north and east of the city to shoot a few sites I’d scouted online (mostly grain elevators and Ukrainian churches). It was chilly (-15C), but not as cold it was predicted to be as the week wore on.

At one point, I drove down an unplowed road to photograph one of those Ukrainian churches - St. Mary’s Ukrainian Catholic Church - when I thought better of it and decided to back out (it was too narrow to turn around). I wasn’t sure how deep the snow would get and I was worried that if I got stuck down that road (which, from the lack of tracks, it seemed no one had travelled on in a while) there wouldn’t be anyone coming by to help me. As often happens on rural roads on the Prairies, I couldn’t even see the nearest house, so I thought ‘better safe than sorry’. As I backed out of the road, a pickup was approaching on the crossing road and stopped to watch me back out. I slowed down as I drove by and told him “I just wasn’t sure I could make it up that road” and added, “I wanted to photograph the church”. “Well, I can lead you down there and make sure you make it,” he said. “My wife and I are just out for a Sunday drive, so we don’t mind”. So, he did. The road wasn’t too bad, but as we turned into the church, he went into some deep snow, tires spinning and got stuck. He gunned his truck back and forth and managed to get out, but for a moment I thought, “I wonder if I’m going to have to pull him out!”. As I got out to shoot, he said, “See? It was all fine - except that one spot!”. He told me the congregation, which is now based in Alvena, still has services at the church once a year and are deeply dedicated to the place. “It was built before Saskatchewan was a province,” he said. He told me that there was another church he could show me up the road, if I wanted to follow, so I did. This one was much easier to get into with a plowed access road and a cleared parking lot. He said, “It must have been cleared for the Poker Rally”. Poker Rally? In a church? Apparently yes, and there was dancing too, all to raise money to preserve another one of these beautiful old Ukrainian churches. Having just finished reading The Taste of Hunger, a novel about Ukrainian settlers in Saskatchewan in the early 20th century, the fact that the churches were still standing and were still loved and cared for by the local the community, felt quite poignant.

At that point they left me to photograph the church, and afterwards I backtracked to a fantastic field filled with hay bales that I’d seen on the way to the second church. I had a great time shooting there for the better part of an hour and thought, “If I hadn’t run into them, maybe I would never have found this great spot”. Serendipity! Late in the afternoon, the snow that had been promised came in and it was a bit of white-knuckle drive back to the hotel after a full and productive day.

The next day I headed out early in hopes of soft light in the morning but only got as far as Saskatoon (about 30 minutes from where I was staying) before I turned back because of the harsh light. I explored a bit of Saskatoon, but didn’t do much else that second day.

The next day dawned bitterly cold (-26C/-15F with a windchill of -39C/-38F), but I wanted to get out after not doing much the day before. I bundled up and went out soon after sunrise, as the morning had the best chance of having clouds. In the end, there wasn’t a lot of soft light, but there was beautiful hoar frost and the South Saskatchewan River (which goes through Saskatoon) was steaming in the cold air (see pics above). There was lots of wide-open country in blue and white as far as the eye could see. I came back into Saskatoon for lunch (a fabulous burger at Ace Burger) and visited a specialty chocolate shop recommended in the fantastic book on Saskatchewan food called Flat Out Delicious. Happy to have gotten out, I came back inside mid-afternoon to warm up my frozen fingers and toes and to savour some fabulous chocolate. I felt like I deserved it.

The next day was even colder: temps around -32C/-26F and windchills below -40C/-40F . Luckily it was a travel day, as I headed northeast to Melfort, so I mostly stayed in the car and scouted locations in hopes of soft light during my stay. Before I left the city, I did manage to stop in at a fantastic, old (est. 1920) bakery to a delicious croissant and a cinnamon roll to keep as rewards for when I finally got to Melfort and unpacked. They were both slightly frozen, but I was civilized and thawed them out before I ate them. As always on my trips, I love to visit local bakeries and this one was definitely a favourite.

The next day was another cold one. I could keep repeating that sentence in each day’s report. This was the story of the trip: it was bitterly cold for the vast majority of the ten days. Nevertheless, I stayed out that whole day, except for a trip into town to put some air in one tire (which stubbornly still read low even after topping it up) and for a quick warm-up.

The next morning was still cold (-30C/-22F at 9am). I started off with a relaxing morning at the hotel while the temps were freezing and the skies were clear, followed by an afternoon shoot.

The next day was a travel day: I moved from Melfort (the furthest north and east I went) to Humboldt, starting to circle back towards Saskatoon for my trip home. It was still cold with a bitter wind, but there were some cool sites on the drive and I got into Humboldt in time for a late lunch (of curry - the perfect meal on a cold day, in my opinion). I’m sure any Canadian who hears the name Humboldt, Saskatchewan will immediately think of the terrible bus crash in 2018 in which so many of the members of Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team were killed or injured. In town, even five years later, you can still see #broncostrong signs.

One of the sites I had marked on my scouting map and really wanted to visit was Beth Israel synagogue (below, left) which is, according to Heritage Canada, "the oldest surviving synagogue in Saskatchewan. The impetus to build the synagogue came from a group of Jewish settlers who immigrated to Saskatchewan from Lithuania via South Africa in 1906 to found the Edenbridge Hebrew Colony. Shortly after their arrival, the new settlers established a cemetery and erected the synagogue to continue their faith in their new home. The synagogue also served as a social and cultural gathering place for the community." What an amazing history that little building has seen!

The next day, the temps rose a bit (though, really, with the wind it still felt freezing), the clouds rolled in and I was had a pretty good shooting day.

Then, on my last morning in Humboldt, something kind of crazy and amazing happened! I was interviewed about my winter photography trips on two CBC Radio One morning shows. I was nervous, and of course, afterwards, I thought of all sorts of things I should have said differently or things I didn't say, but I think I did OK for my first ever radio interviews! If you want to listen, the interviews aren't too long (around seven minutes each) and here are the links: The Morning Edition with Stefani Langenegger and Saskatoon Morning with Leisha Grebinski.

The night before the interviews, there had been a great Aurora show, but I was socked in with clouds in Humboldt. The next night, however, I was lucky enough to got clear skies. The only problem was that I was just outside Saskatoon, a city of about 350,000. So, after the sun went down, I drove out of the city to a darker area to the west and - ta dah - the Aurora! The best part of the show was right at the beginning and it faded pretty quickly, but it was very cool to see - bright enough to be seen with the naked (but cold!) eye. I have “seen” the Aurora a few times before, but really only through the lens of a camera, which can capture so much more than the naked eye. This was the first time I saw it with my own eyes and it was pretty exciting.

The best Aurora show, early in the evening

On my last day, I headed south because some weather apps predicted fog. What I found was a winter wonderland of hoar frost around Dundurn. The trees looked like glinting, frosty jewels. Each time I got out of the car, I could see frosty crystals floating in the frigid air, making even the most mundane scene look magical.

All that’s left of the beautiful old grain elevator in Bent, SK.

After a nice lunch at Christie’s Il Secondo and a fun chat with a couple who had moved from Seattle to Saskatoon (and who love it!), I headed southwest of the city to check out the elevator at Bents. I knew it had been badly damaged in a winter storm in 2021, but as it was the first elevator I’d ever photographed back in 2013, I wanted to see it again. When I arrived, it looked so sad with the whole top destroyed. In a field across the way, an older man was fixing fences. I asked him how the elevator had got damaged and we got to talking. Bob (his name, as I found out after we introduced ourselves) eventually invited me into his house, where I met his wife and we talked about their life near the now-ghost town of Bents. The elevator, which had stood for nearly 100 years, had been fatally damaged when some kids had come into town and shot out every window in Bents, including one in the cupola of the elevator. Whenever the wind would blow, the empty window created terrible pressure on the opposite wall, so that when a terrible wind came in late January of 2021 it destroyed the whole top third of the elevator. It was so sad to see an iconic old wooden elevator like that destroyed.

I enjoyed chatting to Bob and his wife so much, I didn’t pay much attention to the time and then it was a major rush back to Saskatoon to catch my flight home.

The trip was, to be honest, a bit tough. The cold was bitter and ongoing and the skies were clear more days than I’d hoped (oh, photographers - never satisfied). There were still, however, moments of joy, some beautiful old elevators and churches, wonderful encounters with Saskatchewaners (including those two radio interviews) and that beautiful open space of the Prairies that I love so much.

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