Wheat Kings: Vanishing Landmarks of the Canadian Prairies

by Greg McDonnell

As the twenty-first century marches forward, the country grain elevator rapidly nears extinction. These classic wooden structures once used to store grain are being torn down by the hundreds along with thousands of miles of railway branchlines. A proud and honored way of life is coming to end. Wheat Kings is a lavishly illustrated and poignantly written look at the passing of the traditional northern prairie grain elevators and the communities and railcars that served them. The book includes photographs of grain elevators from numerous small prairie towns. Also included are images of the region's train stations, churches, farms and commercial buildings, many abandoned. The book is organized by six concise essays. These Wheat Kings is a chronicle of the end of an era as witnessed by one of North America's best-known and most-respected railroad writers and photographers. This book is sure to fascinate railway enthusiasts, transportation historians, and anyone interested in the changing worlds of farming and railroading.

120 pages, Paperback

First published October 2, 2004

Reviews

[ALLEN · Rating 4 out of 5]

Canadian photographer/essayist Greg McDonnell here turns his attention from the railroad topics which made him justly famous (PASSING TRAINS; LOCOMOTIVES) to an institution which would have been impossible without those railways: the grain elevators by the side of the tracks. WHEAT KINGS in particular deals with the hipped-roof wooden-sided structures that were endangered in the 1990s when this book was compiled, and are almost obsolete today. The photography is so luminous, and the prose so elegaic, that this book is bound to be a collector's item of some sort.