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Aime Lacelle, whose family roots in Crichton go back to the 1940s,
recalls a fellow who was recently walking along the rail line,
and who decided to check out the town, staggering up the winding
road leading up to the hamlet. The man wasn't exactly dressed
like a suave world traveler but that was okay with Aime. Visitors
are always welcome in Crichton. Aimee remembers the man taking
quite a liking to his dogs in his backyard, snapping photograph
after photograph. When Aimee approached him, the man never moved,
except to take several more pictures.
"I stood right beside him and he never even noticed me.
I followed him a bit as he did move about to take a few more photos
but he still didn't pay any attention to me," said Aimee.
The fellow kept at it, but Aimee just let him have his way. He
didn't kick him out of town, nor call the cops. Eventually, the
man finished his business and walked north up Main Street; veered
into the sunset, and down below the bluff, and back towards the
rail line to continue his solitary journey.
The rail line is now long gone and so too are any road signs
along the highway to mark Crichton. But there is a cairn on a
natural bench above the highway, honoring the hundreds of residents
who lived in or near Crichton from 1909 to 1982.
The settlement was first surveyed between July 25 and 29, 1913
by Calgary's David Townsend. The small scattering of locals chose
the name Crichton, after the Scottish poet and scholar born in
Perthshire in 1560, the son of Scotland's Lord Advocate Robert
Crichton. He was, according to Scottish legend, the original boy
wonder - dubbed "Admirable" for his brilliant intellect
- whose name became a byword for complete accomplishment - handsome,
exceptional writer and artist, a superb horseman and fencer, and
accomplished in all social graces. He died at the age of 22 in
a street brawl in Italy, killed by his pupil. Coincidently, the
first town to the west of Crichton is Admiral, now a near-ghost
town with magnificent pioneer churches.
The history of Saskatchewan's Crichton - its beginnings and ultimate
doom - is not as romantic as its Scot namesake, but it was a memorable
prairie home for almost 90 families who lived in the hamlet since
the first decade of the 20th century.
Old-timers marvel that the hamlet's first and last official residents
were women - Granny Westlake, a midwife, being the original trailblazer
because of the land's good water - and Anne Covlin, a school teacher,
being the "official" final resident.
However, Aime Lacelle, whose family first came to Crichton in
the 1940s, returned to the dying town in the mid-1980s after working
in Alberta and northeastern Saskatchewan. Since his return, Aime
and his wife Brenda have raised four children at the hamlet.
"I am not unhappy. Crichton has been good for us,"
said Aime, who raises sheep - and lovingly cares for his collection
of dogs on his acreage.
Over the decades, Crichton enjoyed periods of modest prosperity;
the site of three grain elevators, a school, a café and
pool hall, garage, boarding house, a blacksmith shop, lumberyard,
post office, livery barn, water tower, and a large warehouse attached
to the general store - owned for many years by Abraham Gibbs.
The warehouse also served as the hamlet's community centre, dance
hall, theatre and auditorium. There was even a golf course and
tennis courts built for the settlement, as well as a ball diamond
near the school site.
"Although Crichton was the smallest community in the area,
there was more activity here than in Admiral or Cadillac,"
said Aime, whose father Emile operated the general store after
Gibbs died in 1942. "Traveling artists and entertainers would
get off the train and put on shows in the warehouse."
Because of its central location in the area, Crichton also laid
claim to be the busiest shipping point of hatching eggs in Saskatchewan
between 1930 and 1940.
But like most small pioneer communities along the Red Coat Trail,
Crichton could not sustain itself over the 20th century decades,
and one by one, families and businesses left, never to be replaced.
The water tower and CPR section house were closed and torn down
in the early 1960s. The last of the three grain elevators was
burned to the ground in 1985. The general store, which included
the post office, was closed for the last time in 1970 and moved
to a nearby farm. In 2000, the school was transported to a nearby
Bible camp.
There are a few buildings still left along Main Street, as well
as a few houses in the adjacent field to the east of the townsite,
but they stand today only in quiet abandonment, except for the
home of Aime Lacelle and his family.
For several years after he returned to Crichton, Lacelle would
welcome visitors to the ghost town, many of them intrigued by
the historical cairn down below near the highway. But nowadays,
the curious are fewer and fewer.
"This summer (2002) has been the least number of visitors.
Usually, there are some who come in and who slowly drive by to
see things," said Aime. "The last guy was the fellow
who was walking along the track."
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