‘Like taking Punnichy off the map’: Grain elevator set to come down

The demolition of the 107-year-old grain elevator in the east-central Saskatchewan village of Punnichy is set to begin Tuesday.

Lawrence Beyer, the mayor of Punnichy, said the elevator’s leveling is just “a sign of the times.”

Beyer said it’s being torn down because the owners, a couple who farmed in the area, are retiring in British Columbia. He said they tried but failed to sell it, and are instead resorting to getting rid of it. Contractors now have until the end of October to rip down the structure and clean up its rubble.

According to the Punnichy History Book, the Pool Elevator — as it’s known to locals — was built in 1912 by the Saskatchewan Co-operative Elevator Co. Shares. Originally the metal-clad, wood structure was erected to hold 30,000 bushels. In the 1940s, a temporary 16,000-bushel annex was added to handle surplus grain.

Beyer grew up in the village and said he fondly remembers how much the elevator meant to people, especially to farmers in the area.

When he was a kid growing up in the 1930s, Beyer said he recalls there being three grain elevators lining the train tracks in town, and how they brought the community together.

“It was busy,” Beyer remembered. “There were people living on every quarter of land … They all came to town to shop, and they came in with their horse and wagon to bring their grain in. In those days, we didn’t have trucks.”

Years later, he said he recalled helping lug his oats and barley to the old Pool Elevator with his family as a young adult.

“I can remember my dad hauling it in with a team of horses in a wagon or a sleigh, and after a while he got a truck,” Beyer reminisced. “Now, the railroad won’t even stop (to pick up grain) for a small load.”

Brenda Perkin, who has lived in Punnichy for all 61 years of her life, has similar memories of the landmark.

“I remember going with my dad to unload grain, and I remember we’d get out of the truck and you’d run up and down the ramps and you’d watch the conveyors taking the grain,” she recalled. “At that time, we thought it was state of the art.”

Today, with a population of roughly 230 people, most would never know what a “booming place” Punnichy was, Beyer said.

Though the demolition might be sad to some, at 83 years old, Beyer said he’s “so used to stuff going down” in the village that he tries not to think about it.

Perkin, on the other hand, can’t stop pondering how the village’s skyline will change.

“The first thing you see is that elevator, so you know there has got to be a community there. That was the part that I thought of right away,” she said. “By losing the elevator, it’s kind of like taking Punnichy off the map.”

Beyer said he’s just thankful it’s coming down via a crane instead of flames, the way many other small-town Saskatchewan grain elevators often do.

Perkin agrees, but said it doesn’t make things any easier.

“The memories alone will help ease some of that pain,” she said. “But it’s going to come down and it’s going to come down (gracefully) — not by fire.”