Larry's Desk
  • Welcome
  • Doukhobor Digest History
  • HISTORICAL CALENDAR
  • My grandfather P V Verigin
  • Short history of the Doukhobors
  • EWASHEN DOUKHOBOR CONNECTION
  • Eight Misconceptions Regarding Doukhobor History
  • Victoria,Oliver,Migration SK BC
  • Ideology
  • Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood
  • The Hawthorn Report
  • Oath & BC move, Verigin's watch, GMO speech, Tolstoy quote
  • DOUKHOBOR LAND SEIZURE
  • The Making of the Doukhobor Suspension Bridge
  • ALBERTA CCUB/SHOULDICE Archive
  • PETER V. VERIGIN & MIGRATION COMMEMORATION
  • Sons of Freedom @ Hope History Conference, Bridging The Past
  • Doukhobors and the Media
  • Changing Faces Of Doukhobor Culture
  • Tolstoy speaks, Essence,Tolstoy-Verigin Dialogue,Tolstoy and D's, Fraser U
  • The Spirit of 99
  • Peter Lordly Verigin, An Appreciation
  • Who Killed Peter?
  • Helen Verigin interviews:
  • The Role of Doukhobor Women
  • DOUKHOBORS AND THE BIBLE
  • Doukhobors and the Devil
  • Doukhobors & Flax
  • The C.C.U.B. Trust Fund
  • D's & Lukeria, HANKIES, Rivers
  • Short stories . . .
  • VIDEOS: DUKHOBORS RT Doc,Voices for Peace, Tour,Vedat,Psalms,Soul,Tolstoy,Lost Land,Spirit Wrestlers,D Cousins,CBC Doc,Harvest Age,Woodcock,Utopia,ladels,Museum Civil,Rugs,Ombudsman,hurrah
  • Looking Back: D tour 89, Search for Tolstoy,Petersburg,Volodya,HI-WAY 22
  • Book reviews
  • Peter's Day
  • CRESTON MUSEUM & DOUKHOBORS
  • HERITAGE TOUR 2015
  • Fred Makortoff - Peter's Day, Creston
  • Bridge A Winner! Re-opens -
  • creston doukhobor hall
  • CDS folds,Memoir Published, Sunflower
  • DUG OUT HOUSE COMMEMORATION
  • Articulate Magazine: Doukhobor Rugs,Grain Elevators,Bruce Paterson,Suspension Bridge,Tolstoy,Doukhobor Women
  • BRITISH COLUMBIA MOMENTS
  • Strategic Links
  • POETRY: INCANTATIONS TO A NAKED MUSE
  • The Legend of the Frank Slide
  • THE HOMECOMING
  • Larry's music . . .
  • Chief Seallth
  • Obit
  • Resignation from the DDC
  • The Doukhobor Store On Line
  • I LOVE CRESTON!
  • Larry A. Ewashen - Curriculum Vitae

THE LEGEND OF THE FRANK SLIDE

Picture
INTRO:
Perhaps one shouldn't reinforce apocryphal stories, but like the facts, they too can have a firm hold on one's fancy and one's roots. As a young boy growing up on a farm north of Lundbreck, Alberta, the ‘Pass' was always a place of excitement and mystery; the Frank Slide being one of the feature attractions. Years later, working in the arts, I remembered just one of the stories I had heard about the great slide and wrote it down in this treatment of the 'legend'. A man I was playing music with at the time became interested in this story and adapted it into a song; it can be heard on an album by Stompin' Tom Connors, entitled SONGS OF TRAGEDY, there called 'My God How That Mountain Came Down'.

Picture
THE LEGEND OF THE FRANK SLIDE

On the tragic scroll of the heavenly toll 
The town of Frank appears
Where a longtime ago the Blackfeet and Cree 
Carried their burnished spears 

PART I
The chieftain's tent heard many a rent 
Of a cry sent up to the stars
And the wind gently stroked the tall aspen and pine
Like a host of a thousand guitars

And these pines reached the sky to where birds seldom fly
High up on those mountains sublime
But the gray mass of rock rose for miles and more
Far beyond that timber line

And no one could tell what up there did dwell
For no one had ventured that far
But it was said that whoever could scale that stone
Could reach and pluck out a star

And away up on high one could see the faint sky
Creeping in through the mountains so wide
And it came down for miles to the valley below
And made a pass to the other side

The sap would run loose in the jack pine and spruce
The stags put their new antlers to the test 
And spring would rush in like a raven's sharp cry
In the valley of the golden Crow's Nest

But never too near would a brave man appear 
To the shrine from whence came the fountain 
For constantly creeping like a ponderous beast
Was this awesome Turtle Mountain

There were stories of men who never knew when 
To stop pursuit of the hunter's prize
And one fatal step and a thunderous crash 
Put an end to their foolhardy lives

And their captured souls played out their roles
Each night with their hideous moans
And the medicine man, the wisest of all 
Warned all of the Manitou's stones

PART II

From the east one day there came to stay 
White men in search of land
And they pressed into the valley unto the sacred ground
Ignoring the chieftain's command

And the buck and the doe and the buffalo 
Were pushed far into the back
And the braves met their doom in their glorious paint
And died at the sound of a crack

And though at one time they all had their own line
Which no other tribesman could cross
They gathered together in a council of war 
To discuss means of recovering their loss

And gathered for miles in all shapes and styles
Wigwams dotted the plain
And council fires burned far into the night 
Ancient pride was suffering pain

Where a short time before they had roamed by the score
The game disappeared in the hills
And the screeching of plows and dynamite blasts
Replaced the cry of the whippoorwills

And the wan hunger etched faces that had once known the places
Of Lords of the valleys and streams 
Discovered death and defeat before the white man
Bid good-bye to past glories and dreams

There were some who urged death unto the last breath
To regain freedom they once had enjoyed
But the old men shook their heads for they knew all too well
The ways that the white man employed

“But Manitou won't forget the children who let
The white man take over their land
Let us pray unto him to smile again
Perhaps then they will understand”.

The prayers were presented by cries half-demented
Until surely he must have heard 
"Let us reach the village where the forked-tongued ones dwell
Let us give the white man our word".

But the wise man who was chosen found the white heart was frozen
When he presented them with his plea
With scorn and derision he was greeted and hailed
As they laughed at the crazy old Cree

"What's that redskin? Let's hear it again 
You'll bring the mountain down upon us?
Hey boys, here's a laugh I ain't heard for a while
Get a load of that crazy old cuss!"

With noble heart bowed and a proud spirit cowed
He returned with a curse 'neath his breath 
Hardly daring to speak in anger and shame 
Called unto Manitou for the white man's death

Then there was some talk of war as there had been before
The hot bloods were bound for the trail 
But the chiefs and the medicine men shook their sad heads
They were sure Manitou would not fail

And in a matter of years they were herded like steers
Led off to the butcher's block
And those born to hunt in the deep forest land
Were forced to try farming in rock

"You can hunt or fish, do as you wish”,
Said the magnanimous peace treaty man
The only problem was there were few fish and no game
On this patch of hard alkali land

But they bore the pain as they bore the rain 
Which sometimes brought up a green shoot or two
And the oldest of them still sat and awaited 
The mighty spirit of Gitchie Manitou

Picture
PART III

Meanwhile a white discovered one night
As he watched his camp fire licks
That one of the stones seemed to take on a flame
And burn more brightly than sticks

An idea came so he staked out a claim 
For he had discovered the coal
And buried beneath and in the valleys nearby 
Was enough to claim many a soul

And it wasn't so long before the miners so strong
Descended to the valley in scores
And began a mine which could run nigh on forever
Before one discovered its core

So the white man gained wealth as the red lost his health
As he mouldered out on the plain
With the badlands sucking his soul from his frame
As they greedily sucked up the rain

It wasn't so long before hundreds so strong 
Came to live and mole in the pass
While casting a shadow of mockery it seemed 
The mountain smiled in its sleep at the mass
Picture
PART IV

And for a long time the red man toiled in the lime
As his numbers grew more few
The whites settled and prospered and sank the deep shafts
The boom towns came into view

As the dynamite would ring up more towns would spring
Along the Old Man River so wide
And the Indian story was lost in the past 
And his threat of the great mountain slide

But a withered old Cree in nineteen-o-three 
On April the twenty-second
Left his treaty land and came into town 
Once again to the white people beckoned

They heard the story once more as they had once before
Though not with threats or demands on this day
But he wanted them to know ere the sun rose again
The rock would stir in a most mighty way

But away they turned and his message was spurned
But there was one who told them to wait
And thought there was truth in the old Indian's tale
Asked to question him 'fore it was too late

For when he had been young he had travelled along
From the mountains right to the sea
And though he knew the country for miles around
The Indians knew it far better than he

So the council was swayed and the Indian stayed
And they listened to him carefully
Decided to investigate the mountain itself 
Its nature and its stability

So an engineer was sent and up the mountain he went
Returned and laughed at their fears
All was well, he reported, the mountain was safe
It will stand for hundreds of years

So the red's word was spurned, to the reservation he turned
With his head bowed low in doom
For he was sure he was right, the mountain would fall
And become the white man's tomb

And on the twenty-third day ere the sun came to stay
At three o'clock in the morn
A dog's howl echoed through the valley that night
And a moment in history was born

The night shift was weary, their eyes choked and bleary
With the coal dust and the dim miner's lamp 
They were looking forward to see daylight again
Their bones ached with fatigue and the damp

But their sunlight to see was not meant to be
They found the exits barred and then
A low rumble announced the tragic approach 
Of a mountain awakening again

And in the great Pass their grim fate was cast
The top of the mountain seemed to rise and then
Came hurtling down for miles and miles 
Covering all it discovered therein

Rocks large as a house were like a wild beasts aroused
Crushed all life they found in their way 
And when the dawn finally appeared not a house could be seen
Not a man saw daylight that day

Except for a girl that. somehow missed the whirl
Of the millions of rock in the valley so wide 
She was found lying among the hot stones 
And they named her Frankie Slide

On the dead man's scroll of the heavenly toll
Is written the name of a town
And those who were near still shudder in fear 
My God! How that mountain came down!

***** THE END *****  

Picture
© 2012 All Rights Reserved
A  vaerityof D items  , see: www.doukhoborstore.com/