There are a few things I’ve always loved about Saskatchewan: the bright, wide open skies; the friendly, welcoming hospitality of the cities, towns and out-of-the way places; and the fiercely inventive spirit of the people.
When you combine all those attributes, you get some marvelously creative and energetic activity.
Take Greg Hisey, for example. He describes starting Ghostown Blues Bed and Breakfast a “a backyard party gone wrong.”
“We were having a party in the backyard and someone said, ‘you should open a bed and breakfast.’ Well, I had a really pent-up need to create something.”
The little frontier village that he assembled in his backyard has grown considerably since we stayed in 2012. You can’t suppress creativity.
During our visit, Ghostown Blues featured a couple of cabins, three wagons and a few tent sites clustered around a main lodge that used to be a country church. Since then, Hisey has added a lot more accommodation.
I really enjoy these kinds of adventures. I love to discover new things on my travels: sitting down in coffee shops and bakeries, poking my head into shops, nosing around in volunteer-run museums.
The Magazine School, established by the Western Magazine Awards Foundation, called me up to talk about what motivates me to tell stories through writing and photography, and how I go about doing that. The online resource includes PowerPoint teaching presentations for instructors and professors to use in the classroom, copies of the stories to be used for instructional purposes, and interviews with the authors of Western Magazine Awards winners over five years.
Read the original article online, Westworld Saskatchewan, Spring 2015, pages 16 — 21.
Update: July 12, 2020
Ghostown Blues closed in 2020. Although the bed and breakfast in Maple Creek is no longer available, the wonderful, unique accommodations live on, after finding their way to other vacation properties throughout western Canada. Perhaps you will have an opportunity to stay in one of Greg’s lovingly restored sheep wagons, thresherman’s wagon or Eaton’s wagon elsewhere on your travels.
