Star-Phoenix from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada • 20

C4 LOCAL The StarPhoenix Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Tuesday, December 13, 2005 100 Celebrating Saskatchewan's Centennial. 9 05-2 005 'Rsijmm perfectly positioned Years, 100 Towns By Ron Petrie Saskatchewan News Network Two hundred fifty RPM rotations per mile, that would be, not the usual revolutions per minute. And if the number was in a geometry text, the reader would be asked to calculate the diameter of a wagon wheel. Raymore Remembers 1905-1955 concerns itself with local history, however, not math. The compilation of memories from the earliest settlers records 250 turns of the wagon wheel as a sort of early odometer calibration, a count kept by pioneers to determine, roughly, how far they had travelled along the old Prince Albert-Fort Qu'Appelle trail on their way to breaking the first furrows of this area's sod.

Wheels of Raymore have been turning ever since, faster, stronger and now for a full century on the trains that once chugged by town on coal and that now charge through on diesel two or three times an hour, on the trucks, cars and semis of the intersecting provincial highways 6 and 15 and on the threshing machines, the binders, now the tractors and the combines, sold and serviced by the town's four major equipment dealers. Raymore keeps on rolling, surviving. From a post-war mini-boom in the 1950s that resulted in a doubling of population to 500, from village to incorporated town, Raymore has held its own, maintaining its size at 625 residents in the last federal census. How? Simple answer: Location. Although the Touchwood Hills district is no less prone to faltering farm economies and rural depopulation than any other park -3 mm 11 mmmhwMi (i land region to the north or prairie district south, geography at least has been kind to Raymore.

'b "No question, we're ideally situated," says Brian Dionne, owner of the Raymore Hotel and past-president of the Hotels Association of Saskatchewan. Originally from Radville, Dionne' left British Columbia anda Career in banking, with its office cubicles and paperwork, in search of open space, career indepen-. dence and community roots, a home for his growing family. The Dionnes found 1 "If I1 Raymore 20 years ago and have been iTvUjfc I I l- I-' I 1 iierc since. "We're a good distance from Regina, one hour; we're on the CN main line, at the highway junction and close to the reserves," he says.

"Over the years we've taken in the business, the schools, of surrounding communities and as unfortunate as that has been for them, it's helped keep Raymore going." G. W. Sutherland is recorded as the area's first settler, in 1903, two years before there was a Saskatchewan, three or four before a Raymore. Townsite planning turned into a small frenzy with the survey for the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, shanties and tents serving as frontier storefronts for businesspeo-ple who jockeyed to be the first ones established, much to the curiosity of Indians from the nearby Poorman's and Kawacatoose reserves, created 35 years earlier by Treaty 4. "Many of the early settlers told of being befriended by the Indians; indeed, many might have lost their lives but for their help," wrote Jessie Cameron in the 1979 history book, From Prairie Wool to Golden' Grain: Raymore and District.

Not longer after the Grand Trunk assigned the alphabetical names to its siding points (approaching from the east Punnichy, Quinton, men for Raymore, possibly a Grand Trunk crew member, Seamans, Tate the settlement incorporated as a village in 1908, welcoming the first train in 1909. After the Grand Trunk was absorbed by Canadian National Railway in the early 1920s, the town was selected as the site for the digging of a reservoir and the construction of a water tower, projects that enhanced Raymore's status along the rails. Retired fuel dealer Lome Wallace has known Raymore for 75 years. Now 88, he arrived to the area in 1931, 13 years old when his father fled the dustbowl of the Woodrow-Lafleche district for Punnichy and work as an Indian reserve farm instructor. In 1940, Wallace married a Raymore girl, Rose Degelman.

After the war, he took a job in Kingston, as shop foreman in an army return store. "In 1946 they wanted me to me to transfer to Leader-Post photos Second from top: Long-time resident of Raymore Lome Wallace Third from top: Brian Dionne (right) and Ritchie Lang who are not only two of the many die-hard Raymore Rockets hockey fans but are also on the board House that Jack Built, as Dionne calls it, in memory of his friend who died of cancer three years ago. Jack Buitenhuis, for many years a farm implement annual challenge that pits the best from Saskatchewan's six-man nigh school teams against an all-star squad from smaller American towns that likewise have adopted the short-roster game to keep football dealer town, spearheaded a upgrade of the original rink and its adjacent pool, including alive in their communities. On July 9, the Canadi ans, from Ravmore. from Outlook, from Porcupine a new spacious lobby, kitchen, a floor of dressing rooms and indoor theatre seating.

As part of the fundraising, Raymore volunteers Dionne. "Now the young farmer is still the same-guy, and he's 40 years old" Mayor Keith Bentz, a farmer himself, banks on Raymore's future as a natural extension of its history, as first and foremost an agricultural service! centre. The town remains well-positioned, but those distances from larger centres seem to keep shrinking every year, drawing away trade. Given, the demise of so many independent rural retailers since the advent of urban big-box shopping, Bentzl cautions that Raymore's future is anything but assured. Nonetheless, the first 100 years are in the history, book, and in Raymore, those wheels keep turning, rolling into its next century.

(BEGINALEADER-POST) Plain, from Kelliher, defeated the American players, from Montana, Texas and Nebraska, 27-15. A legacy of the game, carrying Raymore football into the future, is a new park, freshly sodded and irrigated, with goalposts, seating and a soundbooth. Braman Field honours Jim Braman. teacher, coach tell back on what they knew best, grain-growing, by taking on three quarters of donated land. Farmers supplied the know- how, time and equipment; grain companies put up supplies.

Today, Raymore enjoys and community volunteer. The honour is mutual, a clear title on one of the finest arenas in Braman's admiration for Raymore no less strong. Saskatchewan, home of the Raymore Rock Toronto. I said there no way I living in Toronto. We're going back to Raymore." Parents of two boys, grandparents of six, great-grandparents of two, Rose and Lome last month celebrated their 65th anniversary, still in Raymore, always in Raymore.

to understand such deep attachment to the community, perhaps even for some insight into the reasons for the town's resiliency, beyond blind luck of the map, it helps to talk a little sports. Towns featured In ets, the quintessential Saskatchewan senior hockey club, playing in the quintessential Saskatchewan senior loop, the Highway Hockey League. Banners from the rafters boast at least one provincial championship in each decade since the team formed in 1952. Loyal Rider fans when Regina hosted the Grey Cup in 2003, Raymore won the "I came here 30 years ago from Nova Scotia and I thought would be one year," he' says. "People here are a lot like people in the Maritimes.

I like the attitude. Anything is possible. If you propose to do something, people are 100 per cent behind it" Raymore looks to the future much as do all towns in Saskatchewan, cautiously. With a new grain terminal down the railway, a relatively stable school enrolment, the finest in sports, the town is ready for whatever comes. Question is, what may come, if anything? Farms continue to grow larger, fewer people are needed to tend the land and the town, ths coming weeks I JCwtuiy it? L.

And folks are always ready to talk a little snorts in Raymore. Kyle, Thursday Wadena, Dec. 20 community spirit award, for service above and beyond town decoration and partying oeoole HoWLbader-Pot TheStaPtoaih Start with curling, the town's thriving local club, in an era when rinks in communities twice and three times the size of Raymore have closed for lack of membership. Nearby is the arena The here rally for football, too. Last summer, the Ray-' like Saskatchewan, is greying.

"When I came here more Rebels hosted the ninth Can-Am Bowl, an in 1985, the young farmer was 20 years old," says.