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Red Deer Express
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Red Deer Express
Exploring forgotten ruins for captivating memories
From the tragic to the mystical, tales from years past are ghosttowners’ mission
BY JOHNNIE BACHUSKY
Red Deer Express
ARDATH, SASK - From the very beginning,
eerie mysticism and tragic high drama had a
home in Ardath.
The name chosen for the Saskatchewan town
was taken from the book Ardath: The Story of a
Dead Self, a 19th century novel written by controversial British writer Marie Corelli whose
emotional prose featured a hero, in love with a
supernal angel but not yet worthy of union with
her, who traveled 7,000 years back in time to a
sweepingly fantastic world to engage in transformative adventures.
Within two decades after adopting the name
from Corelli’s book, Ardath was the locale of a
fugitive killer whose tragic and bizarre end featured his frozen body being thawed out in a jail
cell at town hall, a spectacular train accident
that claimed three lives and obliterated a grain
elevator, and a fire in the 1920s that wiped out
most of its downtown.
Ardath was one of a score of towns that sprang
up on this fertile flat land in south-central Saskatchewan. For more than a decade it prospered
but after the fire there was a steady decline to
near oblivion.
Well before the 20th century closed Ardath
was a ghost town, a place where only memories
remained.
But Ardath would see a brief revival of sorts
this past summer. It was the lively setting for
history buffs, photographers and the curious to
meet for the Second Annual Ghosttowners Convention.
Corelli’s mysticism silently hovered, and the
real-life tragedies of the past were now just
memories, which suited the group of 15 ghosttowners just fine. Memories were what they
wanted, and they were all at Ardath on a mission to preserve and honour all that mattered,
tragic, joyous or otherwise, to early 20th century pioneers.
“The convention struck a chord with me because we like driving around and looking at old
buildings, old towns and taking photographs,”
said Red Deer’s Verna Penner, an academic adviser at Red Deer College who came to the convention with Calgary boyfriend Brock Downey.
“I like the aesthetics of everything, just looking at the textures of the buildings and just how
photogenic they are. All of the barns are going
to start falling in soon, disappearing from our
landscape. They are going to gone, just like the
grain elevators.”
Downey, a Canadiana antique collector, noted
the convention was a welcome means to turn
away, at least for this year, from the typical holiday trips to California, Florida or super-sized
shopping malls.
GHOSTTOWNERS: Red Deer’s Verna Penner and Calgary
boyfriend Brock Downey came to their first ghost town
convention to get a glimpse of the fading past pioneer life.
Johnnie Bachusky/Red Deer Express
“The other thing is to look at the whole sense
of community at these places,” said Downey,
who was joyfully captivated with Penner at
the discovery of a Royal Bank brick vault in a
bush just off what was once Ardath’s busy Main
Street. “You have to wonder how these people
survived at the time, especially the families.
What was it like? How would we survive if it was
us today? We would have to toughen up.”
Indeed, the five citizens who today call Ardath their permanent home are as tough as nails
when it comes to prairie living. Ardath is as far
away from a shopping mall as one can imagine. It is now reduced to one gravel main street.
Only two original buildings still stand – the old
United Church and town hall, both constructed
in 1912.
“I am just enthralled with that old church,”
said Greg Graham, a former Canadian army
soldier who was once a member of the Canadian
Airborne Regiment, and a veteran of hard soldiering in war-torn Yugoslavia.
His last posting before retiring as a corporal
in 2004 was at CFB Edmonton.
He was already familiar with the Ardath area
and he seized upon an opportunity to buy a
home at the ghost town for $3,500.
“I’m retired now and I get to do what I want.
Life is good here,” said Graham, who loves to regale visitors on the stately old United Church.
“It is like a time capsule in there,” he said.
The church is boarded up now, but still stand-
ing proudly. It is a noble reminder Ardath once
had a meaningful existence, a place where
dreams and hopes of prosperity flourished.
But at 10:15 a.m. on March 24, 1919 things began to go horribly wrong at Ardath.
A southbound passenger train took to the
switch track at high speed and slammed through
the first of four grain elevators at Ardath.
The elevator agent had just left the office, and
was at the station to put his mail on the train.
All that remained of his office was his chair.
When the train came to a crashing halt it was
buried in grain.
Three people were killed in the accident; the
locomotive fireman, the engineer, and a passenger.
A few years later most of the buildings on Main
Street were obliterated in a fire, forcing many
of the town’s more than 150 residents to either
move out or plan their futures elsewhere.
But it was in late 1931 when Ardath experienced an episode so tragic, disturbing and
bizarre it is still only whispered more than 75
years later.
Paul Schudwitz, a German immigrant who
came to the area to start a new life several years
after the First World War, worked the late summer and fall wheat harvest for area farmer
Freeman Young, who owned an acreage three
kilometres north of Ardath.
Schudwitz was a man with limited means, living in an upstairs rooming house at Ardath’s
Main Street café.
Young, who was known in the area as a “skinflint” for not paying debts, was late paying
Schudwitz his wages, and by the Christmas season the angry impoverished German immigrant
was over the edge.
On Dec. 28, 1931 Schudwitz borrowed a .22 rifle
and walked to Young’s acreage to confront him.
It was evening and dark but Schudwitz was
convinced Young was inside sleeping.
He quietly slipped into the house and went
into a bedroom where he saw a silhouetted figure sleeping. He fired his rifle.
Thinking Young was dead, and now desperate to cover his tracks, Schudwitz lit an oil lamp
and tossed it inside the house, hoping to burn
it down with Young’s body. He then bolted from
the house into the quiet stillness of the frigid
December night.
Meanwhile, the victim was still alive. He was,
however, not Young. The victim was Hans Pederson, an employee of Young who had emigrated
from Denmark several years earlier.
The gravely wounded Pederson struggled but
managed to get outside away from the fire. But
he soon collapsed and died on a snow bank.
Schudwitz was on the run. The Mounties
soon believed he was responsible for Pederson’s
death and conducted a massive search of the entire district.
In the meantime Schudwitz started to walk
along the banks of the South Saskatchewan
River towards Saskatoon. He ended up in the
O’Malley District, about 40 kms northeast of
Ardath, and took refuge in a grain bin, eating
raw oats to survive.
On Jan. 8, 1932, a framer opened the door to
the grain bin and discovered Schudwitz’s lifeless frozen body sitting upright on a pile of oats.
He had committed suicide, shooting himself in
the head.
RCMP called in a team of horses and a sleigh
to take Schudwitz’s body back to Ardath.
However, it was frozen solid in a sitting position and could not be properly interred until it
was horizontally straightened.
Ardath locals hung the frozen body by its neck
in the town hall jail cell for more than two days
to thaw out.
When that was completed no church in the
district would hold a funeral for the disgraced
Schudwitz.
Finally, an Ardath high school teacher agreed
to facilitate the service. Schudwitz’s body was
then taken to nearby Fertile Valley Cemetery
and buried in the farthest southeast corner – ostracized from the locals in death.
It was stories like this that captured the imaginations of those who attended the ghost town
convention. With cameras and camcorders they
enthusiastically shot away, recording the final
vestiges of a time long forgotten by most.
Peter and Lynn Berghs, of Calgary, have been
touring American and B.C. ghost towns for a
decade but decided this year to come to the convention and check out Saskatchewan, and to get
a glimpse of the past.
“We have been trying to get to Saskatchewan
for a year now but every time we leave Calgary
we get diverted onto these side roads in Alberta
and we find old farms and old barns, old towns
and we just never made it to Saskatchewan,”
said Peter, a 46-year-old engineer who filmed
every stop during the convention with a camcorder.
“But we have finally made it. It is better than
we thought it was going to be.”
During the weekend the group of ghosttowners ended a day at Bents, a long forgotten ghost
town 40 kms northwest of Ardath.
As the evening sun began its final descent
along the western horizon, group members
munched on hot dogs, shared photography tips
and were already discussing next year’s convention.
There are always more stories and memories to hear. They will bring their cameras and
passion. When they leave they will be content
knowing one more forgotten part of themselves
had been captured before fading away forever.
[email protected] (403-309-5456)
BENTS MAIN STREET: Bents’ Main Street is empty
and abandoned today, as it has been for the past
four decades.
Johnnie Bachusky/Red Deer Express
ARDATH CHURCH: The United Church in
Ardath, constructed in 1912, is one of only
two of the town’s original buildings still
standing.
Johnnie Bachusky/Red Deer Express
ARDATH VAULT: The brick vault ruins from Ardath’s former
Royal Bank is hidden in the bushes behind the ghost town’s
town hall.
Johnnie Bachusky/Red Deer Express
CONVENTION GROUP: Ghosttowners from across western Canada gathered in Ardath this
summer for the Second Annual Ghosttowners Convention.
Photo by Mike Stobbs
BOUNTY HALL: Bounty, located 12
kms southeast of Ardath, has been a
ghost town for the past decade.
TESSIER WATER PUMP: A pioneer
water pump stands guard at Tessier,
located 40 kms northwest of Ardath.
Johnnie Bachusky/Red Deer Express
Johnnie Bachusky/Red Deer Express
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