Bankhead is a ghost town, near Banff in Alberta's Rocky Mountains. It was founded 100 years ago as a mining town, the coal dug out of the side of Cascade Mountain. Twenty years later the mine closed, the town died, its buildings sawn off their foundations and taken away, its pioneers dispersed with their memories. Today, the slagheaps remain, and the stumps and holes of the once busy buildings. Not far away, through the brush, are the scatterings of the camp where the Chinese workers lived. Coyotes and cougars lope in the grass in an arena surrounded by mountains, with the freshness of nearby Lake Minnewanka exciting the air.
I have visited this quiet disquieting place many, many times. For me Bankhead is more compelling, more evocative than the Forum of Rome. Its special meaning for me is partly because I come from a mining area (most of my paternal ancestors took part in the Jarrow March in the 30s), whose own working-class culture and the very buildings themselves have also disappeared. I find new thoughts waiting for me every time I visit here, about all our pasts and possible futures. Spiritually, it is encouraging to walk Bankhead's coaldusty walkways in rain, sunshine or snowfall. Here it is easier to believe that the Human World will abandon its prevailing concerns and find better things to do.
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The Men Who Sawed The Church In Half
The men who sawed the church in half
were not the men who carried away
the free top half to a living town.
Their part was just to saw that day
to saw and saw
yelling to each other
through windows emptied of glass
with one eye each
on the steeple that shuddered
as they cut.
Those others who took one half away
were not the friends
of the men who sawed
who were left behind
to saw trees if they liked
for they allowed them the saw
the great long two handled saw
the one they sawed the church with.
The men who sawed the church in half
worshipped the saw
their great long two handled saw
which sang as they stroked it
never hymns but always
a smart cruel twang
on the mountain where it sawed trees
alone with its men
who sawed the church in half with it
and talked of no other day
who held high the saw
in the stump of a church
and cried hurrahs till they died.
In the living town on the plains
the freed top half of the church they sawed
bolted down to a concrete base
coloured windows nailed in its holes
stood on a corner for 60 years
its ten dead steps counting feet
till one fine morning everyone alike
awoke at last
unbelieving
unbelievers
and laughed and laughed
going on a rampage
never so pleased
wild picnics in the mountains
where the wind stroked the rusty saw
the great lost two handled saw
the saw that cut the church in half
a sound that only beasts could hear
smart cruel wandering beasts.
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The Men Who Sawed The Church In Half
Bankhead, Banff National Park, AB
November 1999
Pastel
11 x 6"
CDN $150
click on the image to enlarge
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Rhubarb In An Abandoned Mining Town
Bankhead, Banff National Park, AB
November 1999
Pastel
11 x 6"
CDN $150
click on the image to enlarge
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Rhubarb In An Abandoned Mining Town
The rhubarb growing on the old coalheaps
Would make a poisonous stew, obviously.
So is unpicked by any visitor.
It is no longer part of the world.
Grows freely but is not free.
Because of its molested past.
Drinks that past into its red stalks.
Green flags so defiant.
Once its sweet pies aroused noses on the mountainsides.
An ordered existence behind an oblong fence.
Exhausting its patch. Becoming part of men.
Now escaped. But not far.
It rejects the cleaner home of natural ground.
Lives only in the non-world.
On black heaps of abandoned coal.
What ended here may end in every place.
So in his final report the last visitor can write:
On the coalheaps rhubarb grows.
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