Today we’re looking at the former “Pool” grain elevator in little Coleville Saskatchewan. It’s not really an old one compared to many we’ve documented, but it’s still a part of history. We’ve visited it twice, first during a prairie downpour some ten years back and again more recently while shooting an episode of the Beer Parlour Project at the Coleville Hotel. More on that in a moment.
Coleville is a community in the west-central part of the province. It was founded in 1913, when a railway came through, and close to three hundred people call it home today. Agriculture is big – of course, this is where the grain grows – and there’s oil underground. If you work in the area, it’s probably in one of these two industries.
Coleville Saskatchewan Wheat Pool “A”: a late model prairie sentinel. Dollar store history with Chris Doering & Connie Biggart (BIGDoer/Synd)
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Our subject is a fairly late example of a traditional wood-cribbed grain elevator and it’s a design dating back to the early 1900s. Built as late as the 1980s, they were all similar in appearance and construction. That’s no matter their age, their size, or the company that owned it.
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Not until late 1980s and early 1990s period did the industry change. Now it’s a whole different world and the grain elevators of old made way for giant grain terminals. They’re of concrete, steel or some combination and not of wood.
Five grain elevators have stood in Coleville, but not all at the same time. This one was the last and the largest (by many fold). It operated as the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool’s “A” facility and replaced an earlier, much smaller structure. That one dated from the mid-1920s and closed in the mid-1970s.
The exact build date for this elevator did not turn up in any documents we searched. Visually, it’s similar to others of the late 1970s period and beyond. That seems to fit. It doesn’t make mention in the town’s 1982 published history book, however it does in a 1983-1984 crop year report put out by the Canadian government. So 1983ish is most likely. Former Pool records are oddly silent on the subject, but they could be missing.
A local farmer purchased the elevator after it closed in 1998 and that’s concurrent with the railway line shutting down. They use it for grain storage. The Saskatchewan Wheat Pool sign is still intact and usually the firm painted them over when sold.
This is a single composite style grain elevator with an integral annex addition on one side and a separate detached annex on the other. This one looks older and was likely salvaged off an elevator in this town or another nearby. Annexes were a simple and budget minded way to increase the capacity of a grain elevator. It seems no two were alike.
The first grain elevators in Coleville date back to the 1914-1917 period. One was an Alberta Pacific Grain Company facility and closed early on, in the 1920s. Another, originally Scottish Cooperative, became the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool’s “B” facility in the 1940s and closed in the 1980s. It was not odd for a grain firm to have more than one elevator in any one town and these often came about due to mergers or acquisitions.
Stewart Grain built the third elevator. In the 1930s Federal Grain owned it, but in the early 1970s is became Saskatchewan Pool “C” (via their purchase of Federal Grain’s Saskatchewan holdings). While it closed in the early 1980s, it remained in place into 1998. The fourth Coleville elevator was the Pool “A”, which as you may recall the current structure replaced.
All of these were located on the same siding and in close proximity to present day Pool A.
There were thousands of grain elevators in Saskatchewan once, but now the total is in the hundreds. Many, like this one in Coleville, find use as storage buildings. Some still function as commercial grain handling facilities, but not many. Many were demolished and some were simply abandoned when no longer needed, like one we found in nearby Whitepool back a decade ago. It’s gone now.
The Saskatchewan Wheat Pool dates to the mid-1920s and ceased to be in 2007, when it amalgamated with a rival. It was a farmer owned cooperative and at its peak was the largest grain handling firm, not just in the province, but all of Canada. They had quite a network of rural grain elevators and had operations in nearly every town in the province with rail service.
There were other networks of grain elevators across the prairies but none rivaled the Sask Pool.
The former railway through Coleville has a rather interesting history. Built by the Grand Trunk Pacific, it became a Canadian National Railways property in the early 1920s. The Grand Trunk went bankrupt (as did some rivals) and the feds picked up the pieces and amalgamated them all, lest their failure ruin the entire economy.
This stretch traveled west from Biggar Saskatchewan, through Coleville and into Alberta. Known as the Dodsland Subdivision, it was a typical sleepy prairie branch line and the main commodities hauled were grain. Some petroleum products too.
In the early 1980s the railway cut back it to a point just west of Coleville at a town called Smiley. In 1987 some parts of the line including the section through Coleville, were transferred to the Canadian Pacific Railway. They operated it for the next decade or so before abandoning the line and lifting the rails. Sections of the old roadbed remain visible in many places.
The railway line ran between the elevator and Coleville’s municipal water tower. The elevator siding was to the left of the through track and in the 2025 photo we’re standing on the former roadbed.
This branch was one of countless examples lost in the 1990s and it’s a time when the railways were retrenching at an incredible rate.
On our 2015 visit the rain forced a hand. We could wait it out (but were short on time), risk getting the camera wet or just do something silly. You know what we picked.
The Beer Parlour Project spoken of earlier is a cooperative effort between analogue photographer Rob Pohl and Team BIGDoer. It’s a celebration of old, small town hotel watering holes and you can see more here (new tab): Beer Parlour Project. On our most recent visit to Coleville we dropped by the Coleville Hotel to document the goings-on and it was amazing!
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Date of adventure: June 2015 and May 2025. Location: Coleville, Saskatchewan. Article references and thanks: The government publications Grain elevators in Canada Crop (various years), Vanishing Sentinels by the late Jim Pearson, Oxen to Oil – Diamond Memories: The History of the Rural Municipality of Oakdale (Saskatchewan) and the Village of Coleville and Canadian Trackside Guides.
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