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    The Story of a Grain Elevator-ologist

I saw my first grain elevator on a visit to the Prairies in the early 1980s in Harptree Saskatchewan (SE22-04-26-W2 ).  The town had a population of four; one family.  Twenty years later, when I took up residence in Saskatchewan, I returned to Harptree to find these vators were gone; apparently all, including the family home were demolished in September 1997.  This obliteration included the 120,000 bushel wood-crib vator I witnessed under construction in 1982.
If after only fifteen short years, a vator built to last forty years, was being abandoned and subsequently demolished, then other, older ones, within the province, and the prairies in general, would soon meet their demise too.  So began the quest to capture these remaining prairie giants on film and to collect any data from any source on the particulars of these icons.  The ‘Grain Elevatorologist’ was born.

After four years of living on the Prairies, 2003-2007, I have photographed nearly all the remaining vators still standing in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia.  Now residing in Ontario, I have expanded my search to the US Plains and the eastern parts of the continent.  I still find some 'undiscovered' Prairie vators on western trips through the grain elevator community and records investigations.  The searching is long and the wrecker keeps increasing the distances between my focus.  Weather is also another major factor; however, a bad, cloudy day shot of a vator is better than never getting the shot at all.