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With trains soon arriving daily, Loverna was to become an important
stopping point for early 20th century pioneers seeking prosperity
in the Canadian west.
By the early 1920s, the town was already a bustling community,
eventually reaching a population of 500 citizens. Loverna's business
area included a hotel, two Chinese restaurants, two doctors, four
lumberyards, two barber shops, three implement businesses, four
garages, two banks, a feed mill, two grain elevators, four grain
companies, a hardware store, two poolrooms, three grocery stores,
two real estate offices, three liver stables, a newspaper, and
even a small five-bed hospital.
"For me, it was an ideal place to grow up because it was
a small town," said Sonja Cooper, who moved to Loverna with
her family from Alberta in 1947 when she was an infant. That same
year, her father purchased the Monarch Garage, which still stands
today. "If you were going to raise kids, a small town or
a farm is an ideal place."
Soon after the first wave of settlers, Loverna quickly developed
a longstanding and compassionate sense of community, where pioneer
folks worked together - and helped each other in times of crisis
- to build and cement a lasting bond. Sports Day - held on July
1 - was an important part of that process almost from the very
start. Baseball, horse racing , golfing and rodeo were popular
past-times, with a rink first built in 1915. As Sports Day grew
in popularity over the years, so too did the participation of
neighboring communities with baseball teams from Major, Marengo,
Hoosier, Sounding Creek and Compeer making the long trek down
dusty rural roads to play the best from Loverna, and to enjoy
an after-game barbecue supper , followed by a hell-raising dance.
Beer flowed freely, and good times lasted well into the early
morning hours.
Loverna's remoteness eventually caught up with its early vitality.
Following the droughts and the Depression years, citizens began
to leave for larger and more accessible locales in the province,
and in neighboring Alberta. By the early 1960s, with the town
already in decline, a devastating fire destroyed Loverna's prime
social locale - the three-story Vernon Hotel.
The hotel was a gathering place and was the final nail in the
coffin of the town when it burned, but the town had started going
down hill long before that," said Cooper. "We had movies
in the old Legion Hall, and people would come quite a distance
to watch them, but once the movies quit, there wasn't much reason
for people to come."
Fires and the elements - including dry growing seasons and harsh
winters - continued to push Loverna to the depths of despair,
with businesses closing and families leaving to more prosperous
centres.
For those who continued to stay, it was a constant struggle to
keep the town from facing total oblivion - and from literally
blowing away.
"In 1976, the old waiting room of the curling rink was torn
down, a new cement floor poured and new walls put up. But before
the roof could be put on, a terrible wind on the night of November
17 lifted the whole rink and deposited it a few feet away in a
big pile - without touching the waiting room," recalled Cooper,
who now lives on an acreage with her husband and family about
20 kilometres northeast of Loverna. After a hasty consultation,
a new rink was decided upon, and by December 4, it was built and
completely shingled."
But their admirable perseverance could not stop Loverna's decline.
By 1980, train service to the town ended, and the line's tracks
pulled. Soon after, the last grain elevator was transported 20
kilometres northwest of town, across the Alberta border. The last
Sports Day was held in 1994. Two years later in 1996, came one
more fire, sweeping over the abandoned west side of the community.
"It cleaned out the Loverna. It took out many of the old
buildings" said Cooper. "It was a terribly windy day
and I believe the cause was determined as being an old power line
touching on trees. It also burned all the old houses in the central
part of town, and finally stopped at the curling rink, but not
before it had caused quite a bit of damage."
"Thankfully Loverna is in an area where there is a lot of
oil activity, and there were a lot of water trucks and oil patch
workers, as well as people from all over who came to fight the
fire," continued Cooper. "Loverna may be a small community,
but on that day you would not have known it, as it was full of
people working their hardest to save the little town."
Within a short time, the rink was repaired. However, the ghosts
had clearly taken over Loverna. There are now only a few full-time
residents left, including Cooper's brother Raymond, who was still
the mayor in 2002, and unofficial guardian of the town's pioneer
memories.
Even if Loverna is now home only to prairie phantoms, and to
a few diehard residents, the town's long history as a compassionate
and helpful community still lives on in the hearts of most current
regional rural residents.
"In a small community it seems that whenever there is trouble
of any sort, everyone goes that extra mile to help," said
Cooper. "Everybody takes care of everybody else. Everybody
cares."
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