William & Alice Crane

The Crane family lived in the Copeland district three miles south of us on the South West quarter of section 34, a mile below the correction line.  William (Will) Crane married Alice Cox on April 1907 at the (Wesley United Church?) in Quill Lake.  Will borrowed Darwin Fish's wagon team to travel from Copeland to meet Alice at the Quill Lake train station before heading to the church.  The only people around to witness their vows beside the minister were the newspaper editor and staff from the bank.

William was a sincere and happy man with a strong faith in God, but naive to farming ways.  He had immigrated from England in 1903, but Alice did not come to Canada until 1906.  His two older sisters came to Canada in 1910 to live with them on the farm.  Will's outstanding oxen team Billy and Boley worked hard for them plowing their homestead land on SW.34.30.18.W2.  Their patent was granted to them on September 24th. 1909.  Their house was the first log house to be built at Copeland before Harold Evans and Darwin & Myrtie Fishes.  Logs were hauled from trees cut near the Day Star Indian Reserve, and milled lumber came from Quill Lake.  All the bachelor houses previous to this were just shacks built from sod dug into a hill bank. 

In 1917 William was appointed chairman of the board of trustees for the Copeland United Church of which our family were devote members.  Bill and Alice became very close friends with my parents David and Jessie.  They had one child, a daughter Doris, whom I later sang with in the Dafoe Choir.

I mention the Cranes six times in my diary.  Mom and Dad invited them over after church service on Sunday January 29th. for dinner along with the Miles family.  On May 5th. Alice came over to stay a few days to look after my mother who had just returned from Wadena hospital for treatment for high blood pressure.  Bill took his wife back home on Sunday after visiting with my Aunt Nell and the Miles'.  In the summer on July 2nd., my parents traveled to Cranes for a Sunday afternoon visit and and evening meal.

When my mother died in September 1939, Bill was honored to be a pallbearer at her funeral.

Alice Crane and Jean (Mrs. W. J.) Thornton organized a wedding shower and dance for my wife Lila and I at the Copeland community hall shortly after we were married in Saskatoon on June 29th.1940.  Miss Doris Crane and Amy (Mrs. D. H.) Fish presented the wedding gifts.  We still have Cranes signed gift card in an album.

In their later years Bill and Alice moved to Winnipeg, and Doris went to work in the USA.  Mr. Crane was quite debonair, so was always referred to locally as the English gentleman.  The Crane piano is now owned by Jessie Semour's (nee Thornton) son Don on their farm at Harris Saskatchewan.

William Crane 1877-?    Alice Crane 1876-?    Doris A. Crane 1910-?
Bill's Sisters: Martha J. Crane 1869-?    Mary E. Crane 1873-?