Reid Dickie
Pioneer house, Glenhope, MB
Long abandoned but well-lived-in, this humble pioneer home is slowly being absorbed into the prairie from which it originally arose. Thousands of basic woodframe homes like this one were built across Manitoba. Spartan and practical, they were constructed of local materials, used family and local labour and served generation after generation. Today many of them still wilt away in the heat and cold, their former inhabitants obscure, their builders long forgotten. I have no idea about the origins of this house but its history probably includes conceptions, births, stillbirths, ecstasy, death, grief and love. The house is located southeast of McCreary on the east side of Riding Mountain National Park. The only vestige of Glenhope remaining is this church across the gravel grid road from the house, St Mary’s Ukrainian Catholic Church, built 1918.
This view shows another old building once part of the yard. The house, tumbling down atom by atom, is surrounded and almost overgrown by the windbreak.
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