Yorkton has produced many colourful characters over the years. One of them was Fred Langstaff: cowboy, fur trader, and farmer. He was an integral and interesting part of Yorkton's early history.

Born near Toronto in 1876, he came to the Yorkton area at 16. At that time scarcely a thousand acres of prairie sod within a 20-mile area of Yorkton was broken.

Ten years before, his three brothers, Charles, Herman and Alvah, had come to the Yorkton district, followed by a fourth brother in 1906. When his mother and sister visited these pioneer brothers they travelled by way of Whitewood by ox team and then to Wallace, now known are Rhein.

Fred obtained work on a large ranch and was headquartered in the Good Spirit area of the ranch.

He told tales of his life as a ranch hand, including the time he accompanied a returning officer to deliver ballots to ranchers, fording raging swollen rivers. On one occasion the ballot box fell into the water. With great difficulty it was rescued, the ballots taken out to dry, and then put back into the ballot box.

After years of riding in the saddle and pitching hay, Mr. Langstaff joined a survey party in 1900 in charge of the Fort Pelly and Swan River districts. He bemoaned the fact that the early history of Fort Pelly was never recorded. According to him, more dramatic incidents took place there than at any other point in the district, perhaps with the exception of Fort Qu'Appelle.

Fort Pelly was a community gathering place. Mr. Langstaff used to say that in those early days civilization did not impose restrictions, with the result that the personalities of people showed through to a greater degree. The remittance men from England, he said, made a valuable contribution by infusing an element of culture into the settlement.

In 1901 Mr. Langstaff took up fur trading northwest of Fishing Lake. The goods were hauled to his trading post by horses owned by Ball Cartage of Yorkton, which became a leading freight service in the province. Freight rates were one cent per 100 pounds a mile.

Customers were mostly Indians, and Mr. Langstaff recalled there was never any attempt at salesmanship, because the Indians always computed the values for themselves, and that was the price they were prepared to pay.

Main articles for trade were cotton prints, blankets, tea, flour and jam. Sugar was sold only in loaf form, so if it was spilled it could easily be gathered up in the snow. Flour was packed in 50 pound bags to make it easier to haul on toboggans.

In 1913 Mr. Langstaff returned to ranching and four years later, with the influx of settlers, he took up farming in the Wallace district raising purebred Holstein cattle. He retired to Yorkton in 1936.

Mr. Langstaff had a phenomenal memory. One year in the 1960s there was a big snow storm in September. Mr. Langstaff phoned me at the Leader-Post office, saying that 50 years ago to the day Yorkton suffered a similar storm.

Mr. Langstaff lived his later years in a little white house at the corner of Haultain Avenue and Independent Street, on property that is now part of the Anderson Lodge site.