In the age of electricity, automobiles and computers, communications are rapid and community resources are centralized or, as the phrase goes, "rationalized." Rail branch lines do not repay their maintenance costs and, in the name of efficiency, are torn up, leaving the farmer with a truck trip of a few more miles and ending the jobs of a few local citizens, perhaps at the post office, the station and the elevator. Giant inland grain terminals operated by computer can do the work, (faster and cheaper, it is claimed), of many elevators; large implement dealers in metropolitan centres are alone able to provide rapid repair service on their technological wonder-children; schools are consolidated and pupils arrive in buses from thirty miles around; city supermarkets, perhaps only forty minutes away on the highway, offer much more attractive goods than the local store; and city theatres, on those nights when television is uninteresting, win more patrons than does the local literary club. Prairie towns will survive, of course, and will provide a continually viable and satisfying environment for their citizens, but many hamlets will disappear in the process of adjustment to the urban ways of the next century.
This photograph illustrates yet another change which has come to the prairies in recent years. It shows a sloped bin grain elevator at McGrath, Alberta. Erected in 1980, this futuristic-looking building, the first of its kind, was designed to eliminate some of the deficiencies of the conventional elevator. Its shape allows grain to be processed more speedily and with greater ease of handling. A railway grain car now can be loaded in as little as two minutes. Furthermore, the building is constructed of concrete instead of wood, eliminating the danger of fire which plagues conventional elevators.
