Old farmsteads live on in photos

Enlarge Image

BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Wayne Benedet with some of his work now on display at Steinbach�s Mennonite Heritage Village Museum gallery. (WINNIPEG FREE PRESS) Photo Store

So far, so good. No one's taken a shot at Wayne Benedet's head yet.

Benedet photographs old, abandoned farmhouses and abandoned cars and trucks in farm fields. To do so, he accesses many farm fields with his camera and trusty pooch, Orca, a border collie.

His exhibit of 71 photographs, called Voice of the Pioneer, opened recently in the Gerhard Ens Gallery at the Mennonite Heritage Centre in Steinbach, and runs until June 15.

Benedet is careful about obtaining landowners' permission before going onto private land and snapping photos. "Landowners are getting more and more suspicious of people being on their land. Their concern is very much with vandalism," Benedet said.

However, once people learn his purpose, they are eager to help.

"People are very welcoming generally. I always carry a business card with me. Once they find out what you do, people really like the idea of preserving history."

It's hard for Benedet to articulate the lure derelict buildings and vehicles have for him. He's been compiling his dossier for the past five years. The Free Press featured his photo exhibit of old farm vehicles previously. He has added old farmhouses and other abandoned objects on the farm, such as threshing-machine relics, to the exhibit being shown in Steinbach.

"There's an attractiveness to it... maybe it's nostalgia. I get on a site and there's a sense of peace," he said.

He's found from Morden east, virtually all the old, vacant farmhouses in southern Manitoba have been torn down. That may be due to the land's productiveness and high value. But west of Morden, crossing into the Pembina Valley, "there are still lots of these old houses in pastures," he said.

That's where most of his collection was shot. He has also shot some farther west, such as around Killarney and Virden, where many grand old fieldstone houses still stand. Unfortunately, he doesn't provide locations with his building shots due to a heightened sense of privacy for landowners.

"They are out there. I find people planted trees, and planted the trees in a pattern where they built their houses, and from miles away (when he spots an island of trees), I can say, 'I bet there's a house there.' "

He and Orca have been known to walk several kilometres to find out.

-- -- --

Manitoba Conservation is upset with this little goodie buried in the recent federal budget: an end to the eradication program on chronic wasting disease in farm elk.

Ottawa has determined the disease is so widespread in Saskatchewan that destroying farmed elk herds where it is found is pointless, a federal media officer told the Free Press by email.

Well, it might be pointless to Saskatchewan, but it matters a great deal to Manitobans. Chronic wasting disease has not yet spread to Manitoba's deer, moose and elk populations. Considering that farmed elk are a potential vector of CWD, and the numbers of farmed elk that have escaped from farms in the past -- about nine are reported roaming western Manitoba right now -- the province thinks the Harper government is being short-sighted.

About 60 farm elk herds have been destroyed in Saskatchewan in the past 15 years due to chronic wasting disease.

Ottawa and Manitoba Conservation Minister Gord Mackintosh are expected to talk about how to replace the eradication program.

Meanwhile, the province's campaign to track down escaped farm elk in the Swan River region has not gone well. The early snow melt cut short an air-tracking program. Elk herds disperse after snow melt. The province will resume air surveillance in November.

The province is launching an awareness campaign with ads in local newspapers. It has also developed a rapid-response protocol to ensure faster action on reports of escaped farm elk, Mackintosh said.

The province also wants it known hunters and landowners are allowed to shoot a tagged elk, and the province will see it is tested for chronic wasting disease.

Manitoba Conservation surveillance did find one dead farm elk inside Manitoba near the Saskatchewan border. It was tested for the disease but proved negative.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 7, 2012 A6