*Beauties of Land and Sky — Wyman, Marlena

Inspired by Kathleen (Redman) Strange’s letter to the Editor of the Grain Growers Guide, 20 May 1925. Kathleen came from London, England to the Fenn area of Alberta in 1920, and then moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1930. Kathleen was a member of the Canadian Women’s Press Club and the Canadian Authors Association, and a freelance journalist whose work was published in many magazines and newspapers. She told the story of her early years on the prairies in her book With the West in her Eyes: The Story of a Moder Pioneer, Dodge Publishing Co., New York, 1937.

“I had always visioned the prairie as a sort of worn-down plain, flat and treeless and dreary, offering no vivacity of landscape nor any claim to beauty or charm. I found this conception completely erroneous in almost every respect…The verdant pasturage of long coarse grass is carpeted with minute flowers and the brush coloured with the pink of wild rose throughout the summer months…The sky is as multicolored as a Persian rug, varying from the clearest blue to the deepest purple and the palest pink to flaming crimson. In this blaze of colour, heavy clouds weave patterns of indescribable loveliness. Every changing season brings new beauties of land and sky, beauties that arrest the eye and intrigue the imagination.”