A southeast Saskatchewan committee has been recognized for its efforts to promote heritage efforts in the area.
Heritage Saskatchewan announced the winners of the 2018 Lieutenant Governor Heritage Awards on Tuesday morning. The Souris-Moose Creek Region won the Intangible Cultural Heritage Award for its eight-video series.
The videos document history in the towns of Oxbow and Alameda, the rural municipality of Enniskillen, and the Moose Creek Regional Park.
Highlighted stories include Alameda’s Avenue of Trees, the Souris Valley Horse Thieves, the haunting of the Alameda and District Heritage Museum, a song written by Oxbow settler George S. Haines, the rum runners in Oxbow during Prohibition, the last rail station agent in Oxbow, the 1995 plow wind in Oxbow, and the importance of water in the settlement and the history of the area.
Each video is a couple minutes in length, and is narrated by someone in the region.
Tami Scott, the community development officer for the Town of Oxbow and the Rural Municipality of Enniskillen, said the Souris-Moose Creek Region is the first recipient of this award. While the committee didn’t receive any specific reasons for the award, she believes they were selected because the videos capture the cultural heritage through stories of the region.
“The Town of Oxbow had some strategic goals that they wanted to see accomplished, and one of them was working with our regional partners to promote our area,” said Scott.
In 2016, a group gathered together to discuss the kinds of things that made the area unique, and the stories that were interesting.
“We started off with writing up a story of our region, which we have captured in a brochure,” said Scott.
Last year they wanted to further the project by sharing the stories in a more compact way. They came up with the videos.
They worked with videographer Marieke DeRoos, who was living in Frobisher at the time, and gave her ideas they had. She used resources available to delve deeper into the stories, and looked for people in the communities she could talk to for some stories.
“We worked through a process where we go back and figure out what are some interesting things about our communities,” said Scott. “There are certainly a lot more stories that we can tell, and we hope over the next few years that we can do a couple more every year.
“Certainly one area that’s been missed so far is the whole oil boom of the area, and what changes that brought.”
There’s no scientific way to determine which stories to share, she said. They have to select stories that are interesting that people might not know about, but can be captured in a short video.
The videos have received a lot of positive feedback. People have been sharing the videos, and offering their own memories about their experiences, such as the plough wind of 1995.
“Sometimes they’ll share with particular people who they think will have relatives involved with the story,” she said.
Stories such as the horse thieves, the rum runners and the origins of Alameda’s name are among the more popular, because they happened a long time ago.
It was DeRoos who suggested the region submit the videos for the competition, and they were pleased when they found out they had won.
The award will be handed out on June 13 in at Government House in Regina.
