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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 80s 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 all these vators were gone, including the family home.  Apparently all were demolished in September 1997 including the 120,000 bushel wood-crib vator I witnessed under construction in1982.
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.

In the four years I have been living on the Prairies I have seen, what I believe, are all the remaining vators still standing in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, British Columbia, and most of Alberta,  I have now expanded my search to the Plains States of the United States.  This summer I hope to completed Alberta and continue to add additional images to my database.  The searching is long and the wrecker keeps increasing the distances between my focus.  The weather is also another major factor but a bad cloudy day shot of a vator is better than never getting the shot at all.