The Canadian West has long been a place people go to reinvent themselves. Sometimes these dreams take root, sometimes they wither and die. In the rolling gold canola fields east of Calgary, one community has defied the odds, slowly fading away . . . only to reinvent itself in the most improbable fashion possible.
Rosebud, Alta., is named for the wild flowers that blanket the valley. This is Big Sky Countrty, where the wind moves through in whorls and currents. It was once a bustling community, farming and coal mining mainly. But the coal mines shut down, the school closed and the families drifted away. By the 1970s, only six inhabitants remained. “It was essentially a ghost town,” says Mark Lewandowski, a long-time resident.
The tiny farming community boasts a population of 112. Photo: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Bill Graveland
With so many empty buildings available, Crescent Heights Baptist Church in Calgary chose Rosebud as the site of a summer camp, setting in motion a chain of events that would launch the community along an entirely new trajectory. The summer program included theatre classes, which led to an outdoor commedia dell’arte performance, largely improvised, which led to an arts school, which in turn helped establish the Rosebud Theatre, which now operates year-round. The local population today tops 100, including students, but as a travel destination, Rosebud has hosted as many as 40,000 visitors annually. Last year marked the 50th anniversary of that first, seminal performance, and this year, for its “season of courage,” Rosebud Theatre will mount nine productions. It begins April 5 with Chariots of Fire, based on the 1981 Oscar-winning film, includes a summer run of Little Women: The Broadway Musical and concludes with its annual Christmas performance in December.
A musical performance at the outdoor festival stage. Photo: Courtesy of 15 Minutes of Fame
Lewandowski arrived in Rosebud as a theatre student. He’s been here 32 years and is now production manager and technical director. He’s also on the local fire brigade. “We tend to wear many hats,” he says. When my wife Terumi and I visited the town last July, he showed us around this modest collection of homes and shops set amid stands of Prairie Sky poplar, taking us through the creative chaos of the theatre’s costume facility, the cavernous set department, the studio stage, then into the Opera House, Rosebud’s main stage. It began life as a grain building, was converted into a dance hall and was then reconfigured as a live theatre. “We have a great recycling program in Rosebud,” Lewandowski says. “We recycle buildings.”
A wooden windmill, relocated from Dead Man’s Flats in Canmore, Alta., is now a guesthouse. The original firehall has been transformed into a gift shop and B&B. A church has become an art gallery, a grain wagon an outdoor music stage, and the Mercantile restaurant incorporates the rusted grain-head and desiccated timber of an old farm elevator into its dining room walls.
The hamlet’s charming fire department. Photo: David Butler/Getty Images
“Bizarrely wonderful!” is how Captain von Trapp described Rosebud. OK, so not the actual captain, but the actor who played him in Rosebud’s 2023 production of the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, The Sound of Music, Ian Farthing. Farthing came to this tiny hamlet directly from Vancouver, and the contrast was stark. “A professional theatre in a town this small? I thought it would be like an actor’s retreat, but it’s more than that. I’ve been welcomed. Embraced,” he says. Farthing had best be wary. Rosebud has a way of lulling people into a cosy sense of comfort till they wake up 20 years later with a dazed look and a tranquil smile on their face. Time moves slower out here.
My wife and I had come to Rosebud specifically to see The Sound of Music. Terumi is from the humid tropics of southern Japan, far from the dry hills and arid skies of Alberta, but she attended a Catholic school, and her beloved Sister Luigina was a devoted fan of the play. The Sound of Music is popular the world over, iconic even, though in the Japanese version the lyrics have been tweaked slightly. As Terumi explains, where it’s “doe, a deer” and “mi, a name I call myself” in English, in Japanese it’s “doe for doughnuts” and “mi for mina” (meaning “everyone”).
Tickets to the play included a robust buffet (Alberta beef; it doesn’t get much better than that) at the Mercantile, just across the street from the Opera House. Though everything in Rosebud is pretty much “just across the street” from everything else. “It’s all interconnected: the town, the school, the theatre,” says Paul Muir, executive director of the Rosebud School of the Arts, explaining how the reinvention works on an individual level. “We get young people arriving not knowing where they are going or who they are, really.” In Rosebud, they find their voice. “It’s transformative.” Being attached to a professional company doesn’t hurt, either. “We’ve had students graduate with 400 performances to their credit.”
The Rosebud Opera House. Photo: Courtesy Rosebud Theatre
The biggest hazard in Rosebud? “Street talkers.” Crossing the street in Rosebud “either takes 40 seconds or 45 minutes, depending on who you run into,” Muir jokes.
When Morris Ertman, the theatre’s artistic director, speaks about this strange “Stratford on the Prairies,” he uses words like “magical” and “mystical” to express the impact it has on performers, on residents, on audiences.
Cassia Schmidt played Maria in The Sound of Music, the nun-turned-nanny-turned-mom. Schmidt watched the movie endlessly as a child, and knew the songs by heart. Indeed, her first singing role, when she was only seven, was that of the youngest von Trapp. She was part of a Chickadee children’s choir that sang “So Long, Farewell” at a Kiwanis Music Festival. “I was the smallest and quietest, so I sang Gretl’s part,” she says.
Later, Schmidt spent time in the south of France at a retreat run by nuns. As Maria did in the film, Schmidt describes seeing “the sisters taking their final vows in these beautiful habits. It was choreographed and ended with them lying prostrate. Very powerful.”
Schmidt’s husband Nathan, also an actor, is head of the school’s acting program. They are raising their four young children in Rosebud – yes, there are children in Rosebud again! – and when I asked Schmidt if any of her kids seemed inclined to follow in their parent’s theatrical footprints, she laughed. “Well, the oldest wants to be an ‘Astronaut Dad.’ But he’s four, so we’ll see.”
The thriving town of Rosebud, 1919. Photo: John Julius Martin/courtesy Kim Martin
Schmidt had clear clean vocals, perfectly suited for the role of Maria – like Rosebud, she’s small, but with a big voice – and the show ended on a standing ovation. Terumi leaned into me: “Sister Luigina would love this.”
Equally improbable is Rosebud’s handsome Georgian manor house, known by its suitably Scottish name, Banks & Braes. A young couple came to Rosebud for a performance and fell in love with the town. Never left. Built their boutique inn by the river. For Cory and Kari Eliuk this too was an act of reinvention, leaving Calgary behind to imagine a different life. “I grew up in a small town,” says Kari, “and I wanted the same thing for our children.” A yard full of kids. Playing by the river, building forts. Free-range childhoods. Rosebud is, in many ways, nostalgia made manifest.
The hallways of Banks & Braes are lined with paintings. The rooms are stuffed with antique furnishings. High ceilings, tall windows, beautiful parquet floors. Its name is taken from a line by Robbie Burns about the rivers and hills – “banks and braes” – of bonnie Scotland. My wife, a rabid Bay City Rollers fan since her youth, was especially pleased that we spent the night in the tartan-rich Scott suite. As was I, being a Ferguson of staunch Scottish stock.
An antique shop in one of the town’s restored buildings. Photo: Courtesy Country Treasures
The Eliuks have raised four children of their own in Rosebud. “We’re Rosebudians now,” Cory says, deftly avoiding the moniker used by locals: “Rosebuddies.” Yes, Rosebud is the kind of place where residents refer to themselves as “buddies.”
Dinner and a show. Musicals and grand manor homes: Fifty-one years on, and Rosebud is still going strong. Still here, still improbable, still defying the odds.
