No more Romance

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What remains at the townsite of Romance, Sask. Photo by Matthew Olson.
Ramona Schoettler was born in the small village of Romance in central Saskatchewan in December 1937.

She didn’t know it had been bulldozed to the ground until she went to visit family that lived nearby.

“Nothing left of Romance. It’s off the map now,” Schoettler said. “Our home is gone.”
Romance was never a large settlement. It was another town that sprung up along the railways in Saskatchewan in the early days of the province. Even into her 80s, Schoettler still remembers the different families that lived in the town. There was the grain elevator agent and his children, the railway section foreman, the store keeper (that “changed hands” three or four times, Schoettler said).

She also remembers when the town started to falter.

“In the 50s they moved a hall and a church into Romance, and then the church closed in ’64,” Schoettler said.  “In ’75, the post office closed.”

Historical photos courtesy of Barb and Emilee Kowaliuk.
The reason for Romance’s struggles, Schoettler said, came down to transportation.

“Better roads,” she said. “People could travel to bigger cities, closer towns, and get better service.”

All that’s left of the town now is an overgrown gravel road, a single crumbling wooden shack, and a rail line stretching from one empty horizon to the next.

Ramona Schoettler looks at old maps. Photo by Matthew Olson.

Towns on the line

Train cars on display at the Saskatchewan Railway Museum. Photo by Matthew Olson.
In the early 20th century, the railroads were the easiest form of long-distance transportation. Cal Sexsmith, the director of the Saskatchewan Railway Museum, said many small railroad towns were doomed by more convenient transportation.

“What really killed the branch lines was the highways and the trucks,” he said.

According to Sexsmith, when a railway company laid track, they needed many sections that branched off along the main one, which are called sidings. These sidings were needed for trains to slow down for maintenance or loading and were installed every six to 12 miles (about 10 to 20 kilometres). And at many of those sidings, a town would spring up.
One major company – the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, which became part of Canadian National Rail in 1920 – was responsible for the names of many prairie towns. The company assigned letters in alphabetical order to their stations, and the name of the towns that cropped up were named after the station.
Cal Sexsmith gives a tour of the Saskatchewan Railway Museum. Photo by Matthew Olson.
Romance wasn’t built on a main line travelling east to west, but a branch line that travelled north and south. As towns began growing along the major rail lines, branch lines were constructed to connect settlements not built directly on the main line to the rest of the railway.

Romance fits almost perfectly along the branch line according to Sexsmith’s estimates: about six miles northeast on the line is the town of Watson. About six miles back, the town of Leroy. Further along the line, the now-derelict town of Sinnett.

But the development of highways changed transportation in the prairies. Rural roadways started criss-crossing the province in the 1940s and 1950s; Saskatchewan was the first province to complete its section of the Trans-Canada Highway in 1957. For farmers, it made more sense to have a truck instead of having to wait for the trains to pass through. Transporting crops became easier and so did shopping.

And with transportation so much easier, it became less necessary to have towns so close together, Sexsmith said.

“Now, if you look at the natural spacing on towns … it’s probably more like 30 or 40 miles,” Sexsmith said. “If you can do everything you need to do in a bigger town, why stop at the small place in between?”

One rural life for another

Schoettler’s front yard in Spruce Home, Sask. Photo by Matthew Olson.
When Schoettler was born, she said the population of Romance was only around 20 people. The town became more “active” in the 50s, she said, with the population climbing to around 50 at its peak, but things started closing down not long after.

Schoettler left Romance in 1963 so her husband could work on the telephone lines. They ended up in Spruce Home, another tiny farming community. Spruce Home, which was never reliant on a rail line or grain elevator like Romance, persists to this day, Schoettler said. It’s also about 20 kilometres from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan’s third-largest city.

Ramona Schoettler and her daughter Barb Kowaliuk go through old photos. Photo by Matthew Olson.

Barb Kowaliuk, Schoettler’s daughter, was raised in Spruce Home. For her, growing up in a small town provided something that the big city never could.

“I know my kids don’t have the sense of community that I did,” Kowaliuk said. “You don’t know your neighbour liked you used to … you kind of just all checked on each other and knew what was going on.”

“I think Saskatchewan is losing that.”

Though Kowaliuk didn’t grow up in Romance, she still has fond memories of visiting relatives or going to see where her mother and grandmother used to live. It had been falling apart for years and she remembers moving her grandmother into the nearby town of Watson.

“When Romance was dying, Granny was devastated. She was hoping it was coming back,” Kowaliuk added. “She absolutely adored Romance … she did not want to leave. They carried all the stuff out of her house around her.”

Schoettler and Kowaliuk said they believe the reason the remains of Romance had to be taken down was because the rural municipality had deemed it a fire hazard.

Nonetheless, it didn’t prepare her for the shock of seeing the town simply wiped off the face of the Earth, like it had never been there.

"It's kind of devastating," Kowaliuk said.
Kowaliuk and her daughter Emily had started working on a family history book in recent years, and, fortunately, finished it before the town was taken down.

Despite the old family home being gone, the memories are preserved.

“That’s kind of what I wanted, was when people looked at this it would spark memories of things they remember about Granny and Grandpa, or [things] they remember us doing together,” Kowaliuk said.

“It’s kind of devastating.”

- Barb Kowaliuk

For Schoettler, Romance hasn’t been her home since she moved to Spruce Home in 1963. She’s one of only a few people left in Spruce Home today, though she said she doesn’t expect her home to go the way of Romance in her lifetime.

But Schoettler admitted that Romance still comes to mind from time to time – and her daughter’s family history book helps with the memories.

“Some days you sit down and look in the book there and you think back and… we had a good life,” Schoettler said.

“You were a community. Now you’re not.”
Chapter 4: Banding together

Chapter 6: Fighting the inevitable