THE HOME FORUM

A DUST STORM IN THE WEST

Dear Homemaker: Have any of our neighbors seen a real dust storm? Not just a flurry of sudden toy whirlwind that sometimes hits us at King and Yonge Streets, and is over by the time we get to Dundas, but a real, honest-to-goodness storm that envelopes a whole city, I mean. the past twenty-four hours, or thereabouts, I have lived in one, and it seems to me it might not only interest the neighbors to hear about it, but also help some of us to realize what our Western farmers are suf-, fering in Southern Saskatchewan.

Wednesday morning broke clear and bright, and by 9 o'clock it was hot, registering up toward 80 degrees, and by 11 well over 90 degrees. A gentle wind blew, and seemed to come out of an overheated oven some-where in the west. 

From my room window, high up in the luxurious hotel, I looked out lover the city, and in the far distance could see a light, curious, brown cloud, and as I gazed the breeze rapidly increased to a strong wina, and presently a gale-still hot, and very uncomfortable. By 2 o'clock it was fairly howling round every corner, and the light brown cloud had become a dark, threatening and rapidly advancing gloom.

In a few minutes a maid rapped at the door with: "Please close your windows, a big storm is coming from Moose Jaw" (I was then in Re-gina), and in less than fifteen minutes I was witnessing my first dust storm.

The hotel faces a fine square, in the centre of which stands the war memorial-perhaps a hundred yards from the door.

The gloom settled to a deep brown shadow. Trees bent before it, grass flattened, and the sun paled to a faint white ball hanging like a phosphorescent football in the sky. The war memorial was invisible. People who had perforce to venture out went with bowed heads, holding their hats, and struggling with wildly flapping garments.

Brown grit seeped in everywhere. Even in my room my teeth gritted with it, and I could feel it in my hair, despite closed windows!

The spotless bed coverlet and linen were dusted with it, the dressing table was covered, and if one had attempted to write one's name there the marks would have been covered up.

Thirty, forty, forty-five miles per hour blew the wind carrying this heavy sand grit. Outside it positively stung the face and hands.

Evening came, and still the gale howled on. Lights appeared, but only served to show how innefective they were. The window sills were brown now. They seemed like mahogany, instead of the polished, creamy enamelled fittings they had been in the morning.

That is discomfort in the city. What must it be beyond the limits of the town, where new, tender crops are struggling through the parched earth?

The poor leaves choked with this driven dust, and no rain to cleanse them. That is what it means, literally, Homemaker, and the result is seen in the laconic report: "A heavy dust storm did more damage to crops, already nearly ruined, over a large area in Southern Saskatchewan." 

A lull occurred in the early morning, and a gang of men went along the road beneath my windows, first scrapers with shovels, then sweepers, and finally men with a contraption like a garbage pail on wheels to cart the stuff away. They need not have troubled. Long before noon we were in it again, and not till this evening after 6 o'clock, did it really cease.

I travelled through it by train and carried a light slicker. It was green when I got on at Regina, and brown when I arrived. Looking at myself in the mirror whence I reached my room here, I found I had lost every grey hair in my head - it was a uniform dusty brown.

                                                                                                                Cockney.

Thank you, Cockney, this is very interesting - and terrible, too.

Transcription Tips

• Follow the example of transcribing provided in the first few PDF files of this diary.
• Click Edit when you’re ready to start transcribing.
• Click Detach to move the transcription box to a convenient location.
• Copy the text as it is, including misspellings and abbreviations.
• Start each new day with a new line. Otherwise ignore spacing and alignments.
• Use toolbar heading options for any headings in the text, i.e. diary titles.
• Use toolbar table generator for any tables in the text, i.e. finance records.
• Use toolbar comment option to add your own comments, i.e. illegible text or uncertain names or description of drawings.
• Use toolbar stroke through text option to transcribe crossed-out text.
• When done press "Save Transcription" to save your work.
• Note: If a line on one page appears to carry over on the same line on the next page, please check the next page and (if applicable) transcribe both pages together as if they are one page. Type your unified transcription under the first of the two pages.
• View more transcription tips.(Opens in new tab)