When a windstorm damaged the big red barn two kilometres north of Moose Jaw a few years ago, the family owning it could have collected insurance and let the barn slowly fall apart.
Family members decided instead to restore the barn along Highway Two North and put up the Great West Farms sign as a double memorial to their father, Truman Bailey, and the pioneer barns that dotted the countryside.
“The barns now are disappearing in Saskatchewan and we like barns,” said Bailey’s son-in-law Kelly Anaka.
“We wanted to restore it. We did it for Dad (Truman Bailey) and to keep it looking good.”
Bailey died in 2016 at the age of 98, having farmed near Tugaske and then Moose Jaw for a total of 60 years, retiring at age 88.
An avid curler, Bailey was well known in the district.
The windstorm took out the north wall.
“We had it rebuilt, put on some original barn siding,” said Anaka.
The siding was milled in Flin Flon, Manitoba and British Columbia.
Construction by Martin Gabel of Moose Jaw involved a new roof, new west wall, and new floor.
The six figure bill was expensive but “we had insurance on some of it.”
The barn has been a popular photo shoot site.
“We get people coming in from different cities taking pictures for weddings and family reunions. They ask permission and we give them permission and they’re good.”
Settlement on the site goes back 132 years to 1888 when Moose Jaw was a boom town on the frontier. The railway had only come six years before. Canada was only 15 years old.
Bailey’s son, Frank, a retired lawyer in Calgary, found a map showing the property was registered to Charles A. Anderson on April 10, 1888.
“We don’t know anything about him.”
Nor do they know when the barn was built, although it is likely 100 years old, if not older.
Truman Bailey moved from Tugaske in 1973, buying the farm from Bill Hayes. Hayes bought the farm in 1932 just as the Great Depression hit hardest.
There might have been one two or three owners in between Anderson and Hayes, said Frank.
At one point the bottom part of the barn was removed.
“We did the same with a barn in Tugaske. We had no cattle, didn’t need it.”
Ron Walter can be reached at ronjoy@sasktel.net
