Glendenning Days is the chronicle of my family’s long trek from the British Isles to Manitoba. For them, and many others, it was a convoluted journey. As settlement proceeded westward, they made brief (often years) stops in both Upper Canada and Canada West but neither satisfied them. They were driven by the desire to own land, something impossible in the Britain that they had left, and when the Northwest Territories opened to settlement they rushed to Manitoba. As homesteaders they had achieved their goal; they became landowners, independent and self sufficient. Rural communities developed centered on family farms and one-roomed country schools. However, their complacency was short lived, within my lifetime the country schools have closed, family farms have been gobbled up by agricultural conglomerates, and rural communities have been absorbed into the towns. My brother Willard and I were born near the end of the pioneer era and shared some of their way of life, a transition period between the pioneer and modern times. We lived on the farm and walked to Glendenning School until 1952, when we left for high school in Killarney. Those were our formative years and left an indelible impression on us. Now the rural lifestyle that we knew has completely disappeared and this book is an attempt to preserve those memories before they are lost. My ancestors immigrated to escape the poverty of industrial Britain, the workhouses, and the potato famine. The new world was harsh but offered them much better opportunities. Despite two world wars and a depression they prospered, leaving us a legacy of comfort and security that must exceed even their most optimistic dreams. Unfortunately for us, prosperity comes with a cost; technical and material progress has brought a new set of troubles to confound us. Our physical environment is threatened, not because of their actions but because of our perverse avarice. The colonialists’ goals were to subdue a cruel and stubborn nature to serve mans’ needs and God’s purpose. From their perspective, the bounty of nature was limitless and their pitiful intrusions made little impact on its resources. They did not anticipate that the enormous technological capacity of the next generation would make it possible to alter nature, not just in small patches, but globally. A mind set that was appropriate for colonization and settlement becomes a liability in an age of advanced technology. Unfortunately, many today still view nature through their eyes and have brought our planet close to destruction. Technological change is not their only legacy; we have also inherited a history laced with resentment and perceived entitlement. Our ancestors’ experiences with government officials and land jobbers left them suspicious of any authority. Westerners have inherited that legacy as resentment and grievances against the rest of Canada, attitudes that still threaten our unity. Now, as never before, we need a unified front to address our environmental and social issues. Just as toppling statues will not erase the wrongs of the past, tarnishing the pioneer legacy will not guide our path to the future. We must avoid repeating their mistakes, but we must also adopt a novel set of goals and strategies to guide our way forward.
