Craven is one of the oldest communities in Saskatchewan, starting out as “The Crossing” and “The Bridge” in 1883. In fact, when it began it wouldn’t have been in Saskatchewan at all, as Saskatchewan became a province in 1905.
Rick Taylor, one of Craven’s councillors and assigned to the cemetery and community hall, has lived in Craven since 1985, 102 years after the village’s beginnings.
When asked about written history of the area, Taylor recounted his own search for information on the village.
“Sadly in 1960 our town office burnt and we lost all the records, we lost all previous records,” he said. “I did find some files, some minutes of the council meetings from the ’40s and so I’ve gone through all those and those we kind of treasure now because that’s really all we have left. Through those records I’ve found out where some of the water lines were put in, when they were put in, like the first water line went into town here in 1940.”
Instead of using written history on Craven and The Bridge, Taylor has been gathering his information the traditional, oral way.
“I’ve been studying it for the past 40 years and picking the minds of all the elderly people, the people who are still here and mostly the ones that are gone,” said Taylor.
“To find out exactly what happened, when, where that kind of thing. So, to find out exactly what happened in the town and the community, I would have coffee with these folks and just pick their brains on a regular basis and get all their stories from the y’know previous days and previous years.”
“I would have to say that Craven is an interesting spot because of the simple fact we’re nestled in between four separate valleys,” said Taylor.
He pointed out that “the Qu’Appelle valley is one long valley” going east to west but there’s also another valley “that juts off and goes towards Lumsden and then heads out, circles around, and then heads out towards Diefenbaker Lake.”
The fourth, he said, is just over to the east and called Flying Creek Valley.
“So therefore you’ve got four valleys coming together. Back in the day, I mean in the early days, long before ‘Craven’ I mean, that’s where all the natives did a lot of their rituals, because it was the meeting of them,” said Taylor.
“It had great meaning to them because it was the meeting of the four, four separate valleys. So that’s one little thing a lot of people overlook and they never stop and think about.”
As for how Craven came to be, Taylor said, “it grew from absolutely nothing on the side of a hill back in 1883. Two brothers from the community they farmed north of here. One of the biggest things about Craven is that they built a bridge just on the east side of town, which is now the current ‘Craven Dam.’”
That bridge is the reason they were known as The Bridge and The Crossing.
“That bridge was the only crossing from all of southern Saskatchewan to come up,” said Taylor. “Anybody who’s heading north had to come across that bridge. I mean, they even used, you know, some of the troops for the North West Mounted Police up at the Batoche area, they had to come across there to get north.”
