Free Aloha, Candy Hearts by Anthony Bidulka

she considered the rhyme.
    “Where did it end?”
    “The river?” I suggested. The muffin was delicious. “They came from wherever they came from, and started building sod shacks by the river. The river was the end of their journey.”
    “Maybe,” she drawled, not sounding convinced.
    “What else is there? They came. They worked. They died. End of story.”
    “That’s it!”
    A nearby elderly female couple looked over, with worried looks on their time-and-sun-worn faces (big golfers, I was betting).
    “Sorry, gals,” Mary apologized to the women. “I’m getting a little too exuberant for a Sunday morning, aren’t I?”
    The women smiled good naturedly and went back to their own conversation.
    “What’s it?” I asked.
    “What you just said,” Mary continued, quite enjoying her coup. “They died. That’s where it ends for all of us. You need to begin where it ended for the first residents of Saskatoon.”
    She was on to something. As I sipped my coffee, I scoured my head for something I knew was in there somewhere. Finally I had it. “There’s a cemetery near the exhibition grounds.”
    Mary nodded encouragingly.
    “Actually, I think it’s even called the Pioneer Cemetery or something like that.” I knew that because it was on the way to Diefenbaker Park where they set off fireworks every Canada Day.
    Mary looked exultant. “You’re right. It’s right on the river.
    That’s where the first Saskatoon settlers were buried. That’s got to be it, Russell,” she agreed. “And look,” she said excitedly, pointing DD6AA2AB8
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    Anthony Bidulka

    at the poem. “Next to baby Minnie, Margaret tells you what to do.”
    I looked at her, a pained look on my face. “I don’t get it.”
    “That cemetery is filled with babies’ graves.”
    I winced.
    “I know, it’s sad, but that’s just the way life was back then. The conditions were harsh—the weather, the food, the insects.
    Sometimes they didn’t have proper clothing and medicine for the children. A lot of these pioneer women were young mothers with little experience, and good doctors were scarce. A lot of babies simply didn’t survive.”
    I shook my head and looked around at the plenty surrounding us. Only a hundred years ago, the thought that someday Saskatonians would be seated in a mock jungle eating muffins and drinking designer coffee from Africa, would have been unthink-able, almost laughable. Those people struggled every day just to stay alive, to start new lives. And this is what it turned into only a few generations later. We truly did owe our pioneers an unfath-omable debt of thanks.
    “All you have to do, Russell,” Mary told me, “is go to Pioneer Cemetery and find a grave for baby Minnie.” She stopped for a moment, then said, “More of your people should visit her.”
    I gave her a questioning look.
    “Even though she was so young, she was among the first,”
    Mary said, “to give her life for Saskatoon.”
    “You are both beautiful and wise,” I praised my friend. “And hungry,” I added. “You ate most of my muffin.”

    Nutana Cemetery, also known as Pioneer Cemetery, is located where Ruth Street ends at St. Henry Avenue. It’s a narrow rectan-gular plot along the east bank of the South Saskatchewan River, right before it leaves the city limits. A plaque confirmed that it was indeed Saskatoon’s first cemetery. Although a number of graves had subsequently been moved to other sites due to riverbank slumping, the plaque went on to say that members of many of Saskatoon’s most notable pioneer families remained, including Robert Clark, who was the first resident to die (while fighting a DD6AA2AB8
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    Aloha, Candy Hearts

    prairie fire), Grace Fletcher (Saskatoon’s first businesswoman), and Edward Meeres (who died in a blizzard). No mention of baby Minnie.
    At first, there looked to be about forty or fifty headstones, but as I walked