Episode 384: Driving the prairie roads south of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, your eyes adjust to an endless sea of grass and sky, where grain elevators rise like sentinels and ragged lines of poplar windbreaks whisper in the steady wind. It’s a landscape that makes you feel both small and free—until, in the middle of the wheat-coloured plains, you come upon a steel-hulled ship sitting high and dry on the grass. This is the Sontiainen, built by Finnish immigrant Tom Sukanen, who spent years constructing it here, hundreds of kilometres from salt water, in hopes of sailing it home to Finland. What sounds like the beginning of a folk tale is entirely true: the man, the ship, and his dream were real—and so was the heartbreak that followed.

Sources:

The Sad Story Behind the Prairie Ship of Tom Sukanen
The Tragedy of Tom Sukanen
View of Little Steamship on the Prairie: Grass-Roots Preservation and Artistic Interpretation in the Construction of Ethnic, Local, and National Identities | Scandinavian-Canadian Studies
Sukanen Ship Pioneer Village & Museum - A real location with a fictitious community.
Dustship Glory - Athabasca University Press
Sukanen Ship Pioneer Village and Museum
Dreams in the Dust: The Story of Tom Sukanen
The tragic tale of Tom Sukanen

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices