At the turn of the 20th Century, North America’s last great land rush took place in the Canadian West. It was on the prairies that the soil made the farmer, the herd the rancher. A lingering question for the sons and daughters of the ‘last great west’ is what, or who, are we? Overshadowed and often visually conflated with its neighbour to the south, we forget to turn our gaze to the Canadian prairies. Essential to understanding this region involves forgetting the American Frontier and forging a new account of space.
The area was settled by a unique brand of hardened frontiersmen—cowboys, ranch hands, miners, farmers, and outlaws—the dirty and determined, the persistent sludge at the bottom of every gas tank. These good ol’ boys were chasing the exalted allure of a grand landscape defined by its apparent nothingness, a landscape mystical by its inadequate representation, mystery, and whisper of being the last ‘Promised Land’.
Gone are the early remnants of the Canadian prairies but its legacy still endures. Crown Ditch and the Prairie Castle documents the places and people of the last great ‘proving out’. The project presents the space as an understudied region: a beast upon itself, a unique meeting of landscape, industry, and most importantly a breed of resilient people created by generational lessons in fortitude and fortuned circumstance.