{"id":914,"date":"2018-04-20T11:12:07","date_gmt":"2018-04-20T15:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/?p=914"},"modified":"2018-04-20T16:15:00","modified_gmt":"2018-04-20T20:15:00","slug":"fwd-andrew-knows-how-to-stop-a-train","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/?p=914","title":{"rendered":"Fwd: Andrew knows how to stop a TRAIN"},"content":{"rendered":"

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From: <\/b><\/span>SKEOCH <alan.skeoch@rogers.com<\/a><\/a>>
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Subject: <\/b><\/span>Fwd: Andrew knows how to stop a TRAIN<\/b>
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Date: <\/b><\/span>April 20, 2018 at 9:55:10 AM EDT
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From: <\/b><\/span>SKEOCH <alan.skeoch@rogers.com<\/a><\/a>>
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Subject: <\/b><\/span>Andrew knows how to stop a TRAIN<\/b>
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Date: <\/b><\/span>April 20, 2018 at 9:30:10 AM EDT
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To: <\/b><\/span>Marjorie Skeoch <marjorieskeoch@gmail.com<\/a><\/a>>
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I CAN STOP A TRAIN, DAD!<\/div>\n

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IMAGINARY CONVERSATION \u2014 REAL PHOTOGRAPH<\/p>\n


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alan skeoch<\/div>\n
April 2018<\/div>\n

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\u201cSO Andrew about 200 years  ago these great flat fields were covered with thousands\u2026even millions at one time\u2026of great buffaloes.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t seen a buffalo, Dad?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cLittle wonder.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cWhat happened to them?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cWe killed them by the thousands.  One man  bragged he shot several thousand in a single year. Another claimed he killed nearly 100,000 in his hunting days.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cWhy would he do that?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cNo good reason\u2026just blood  lust.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cReally\u2026just for the fun of it?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cWell, by the 1870\u2019s, there was a market for buffalo skins to make winter coats\u2026so they skinned them and left the bodies to rot.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cDad, I don\u2019t want to hear any more about that\u2026makes me angry.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cMe too.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cWhy didn\u2019t somebody stop the killing?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cA few tried.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cBut why did it not stop?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cYou are standing on the reason, Andrew.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cNo, Dad, I am standing on a railway track.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s one of the big reason for the slaughter of the buffalo.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cRailway tracks?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cNot tracks\u2026railway trains.  We Canadians wanted to bind our country together in 1867 and the best way to do that was<\/div>\n
to build  railways\u2026the trains would move settlers to these gReat Plains and stop the Americans from moving north<\/div>\n
and taking the land.  That was a fear.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cWhat about the Indians, Dad?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cAnother reason for shooting buffalo.  If the buffalo were shot by the thousands  then the First Nation people would starve<\/div>\n
and not cause any trouble for the new settlers.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cHistory is awful, Dad.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cDo you want to hear more?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cNo!\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cJust one more bit of history?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cNo! No! No!\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cOK. I will shut up.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cDad, how could you blame the trains?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cAre you sure you want an answer?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cSportsmen rode the first trains\u2026rich lazy hunters.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cSo what?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cThey shot the remaining buffalo from the comfort of their railway seats\u2026.just fired from the windows\u2026\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cNO!\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cThey did.  That kind of hunting was even advertised as The Great Hunt.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cNO, I don\u2019t want to hear anymore.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cAre you sure?\u201d  If that was true there would be lots of bones here beside the tracks.  I haven\u2019t seen any.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cThat was a long time ago.  The bones were gathered  up by the first settlers\u2026piled up in huge mounds right here beside the tracks.. then ground into powder and used as fertilizer.\u201d<\/div>\n

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\u201cDad, I hate trains, now.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cNot much you can  do.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cOh, yes there is\u2026just watch me\u2026I CAN STOP A TRAIN!!\u201d<\/div>\n

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Alan Skeoch<\/div>\n
April 2018<\/div>\n

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(PICTURE of Andrew Skeoch taken several years  ago in Saskatchewan)<\/div>\n

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\u201cDAD, JUST WATCH ME\u2026I CAN STOP A TRAIN!”<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n


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Begin forwarded message: From: SKEOCH <alan.skeoch@rogers.com> Subject: Fwd: Andrew knows how to stop a TRAIN Date: April 20, 2018 at 9:55:10 AM EDT Begin forwarded message: From: SKEOCH <alan.skeoch@rogers.com> Subject: Andrew knows how to stop a TRAIN Date: April 20, 2018 at 9:30:10 AM EDT To: Marjorie Skeoch <marjorieskeoch@gmail.com> I CAN STOP A TRAIN, DAD! […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}