PIONEER WOMEN: BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

The house in which I lived in Saskatchewan was built in 1902. At that time, Sask. was not even part of Canada and was called the Northwest Territories. The house when it was originally built did not have indoor plumbing, running-water, or electricity. There was what looked like a pie plate attached to the wall in the kitchen, which was from the old cook stove. This would have heated the two-story house. At the time I was considering all of this, it was -40º and the icy wind was whistling in all of the cracks of the house. I had turned on the oven with the door open to warm up the house a bit and had every bit on clothing on that I could find as the furnace was cranked up as high as it would go.

A simple chore like doing the laundry would have been an all day task. One would have to to haul the water, heat the water, even make the soap to wash the laundry in and hang it out to dry. If it were freezing out the clothes were banged against the house or a fence to break the ice before the final drying by the stove. That was one task in a brick house, but the first houses on the prairies were sod houses with dirt floors. I could not even imagine.

The painting Pioneer Women: Between a Rock and a Hard Place, was conceived as a tribute to our grandmothers and great-grandmothers. Many of these women came to Canada with their husbands, expecting one hundred and sixty acres of land and a new and better life. They packed up their linen and china and carried them over to this new land; only to find out they were living in a dirt house with a dirt floor. Many times the men were away for long periods of time and the women found that besides all of the work that they had to do to survive, they were incredibly lonely. Here I was living in a time when there was al the technology anyone could need: telephone, mail, e-mail, television…and still I was lonely.

The border of this painting is made using a tablecloth that belonged to my grandmother. On the tablecloth are prairie lilies and butterflies in gold and silver on obituaries. One cannot go through an experience like our grandmothers without being transformed. There were so many deaths that occurred, often women in childbirth due to their isolation. The life was hard and even dangerous but leaving was not an easy option either. They were really stuck between a rock and a hard place.