: Incorporation —'-‘— the Formative Years

 

—Mildred Sheppard

“On a certain road running to the boundary, a particular engine became so
noted an offender that the settlers knew to look out whenever it came along;
three fires from it have been seen buman atone time!" A. L. Dryden comment.
Above train is a CNR train, c 1902 that travelled through Oak Bluff, Sanford,
Carmen,

engines often started fires when live coals spiralling out of the smoke-
stacks fell to the ground. Once started, the smoke would reach up to the
clouds as the fire rolled rapidly along across the flat land. When fanned
by a strong wind, the strength of the unchecked fire made fighting it
futile.

The municipal council frequently passed bylaws forbidding open
fires. In Andrew Dryden’s scrapbook are numerous published letters to
the editors of the Free Press/Tribune. One stated, “Now my idea of it is
that prairie tires cannot ‘be prevented and making it a penal offence to
start a fire only results in preventing them till the grass is so thoroughly
dry that everything is like tinder, and till a high wind and a warm day
gives the very conditions necessary for a damaging fire and when
ordinary fire guards are of no use. . . The railways that now intersect
nearly all parts of the country are the cause. . . Say what they will about
having their smoke-stacks and furnaces made safe, the jolting of an
engine at high speed, even if the smoke—stacks are secure, may cause
fire to fall from or under the train and the wind caused by the train will
send it beyond the ballasth portion of the road. . ."

Common sense seemed to dictate the bending of the laws regard-
ing setting fires on the prairies. Another of Dryden’s papers tells this
tale:

27

if
p.
w:
l:
l.»