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July 10th 1937 Saturday
GOVERNOR GENERAL'S TRAIN CANADA
Calgary station
My darling Baba
I am a little worried at not hearing from you for about a week, & I am so afraid that it means that Aunt Margie is worse & that you are having a fearfully sad time. I neednt say how I wish you were here as I know you like Calgary - & the amazing coloured crowd of cowboys & Indians is great fun to look at. I only wish I had Laura Knight's talent &
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could draw that sort of thing. I am taking the afternoon off as Shouldham said I might, & I find these long days which start at 10 - in the morning & end about 10 at night, pretty tiring in this heat.
We have just come from a most tragic place Alsask in Saskatchewan one of the worst bits of the drought area. You can't conceive what it is like. An area where the wheat once grew nearly as high as a man, is all khaki coloured & withered. We
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plunged in a car through drifts of sand - sand is silted up by the sides of the road & the huge skeletons of thistles lie almost everywhere. I was taken to a deserted farm which had once had a lovely garden & a lily pond (I was told proudly), & now is surrounded by moribund brown trees & a waste of sand. The people are facing there the eighth year without a crop. An old friend of Johns Alec Fraser lives in Alsask. His wife is a really magnificent woman, & through knowing them personally I got to know a lot of details which I should
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never have known under ordinary circumstances. When I say that the spirit of the people is like the spirit of the South Wales people you will know what I mean. I have heard a lot about my prairie libraries & am going back to work harder than ever at them. They really have been an utter joy to these people & helped them through the winters.
Do send me a line if you can - you have my dates I think. If you write to me by return to G.H. Victoria by the Queen Mary & put on it "air mail to Victoria from New York" I think it would just catch me there. We arrive there July 24 & leave August 10th.
Your lovingest
Susie
