XENA (A - Z CHALLENGE)

 Xena (pronounced: ZEE-nah) is a village about a half hour east of River City.

That's not quite true. The last building there was demolished in the 1970s. So it's a ghost village, or a vacant site. But the name is still on the road signs.

Oh, how sadly fallen.

Xena, in its day, was on the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway (now the Canadian National Railway — except it's owned by Americans, like most other things here).

Grand Trunk had a habit of naming town sites alphabetically, as the rail line snaked across the central part of the Canadian prairies. There were towns like Raymore, Semans, Tate, Undora, Venn, Watrous, Xena, Young, Zelma, Allan, Bradwell, and Clavet. Then you come to Saskatoon, which existed before the railway got there.

For me, the interesting thing is that I've been in most of those places. Can't remember when for Tate and Udora, but I remember the rest. Sometimes a church service, or a burial after a Memorial Service, or travelling through the countryside on my way to a meeting.

But like Xena, there are lots ghost towns around here. Little places that thrived for half a century or more, then just faded away, as people moved to larger centres. They're like little east-coast fishing villages described by the late Stan Rogers:
Old houses stand empty
old nets hung to dry
are blown away,
lost, and forgotten.

Have you ever lived in a community which eventually disappeared, like Xena? Or have you passed through ghost towns? If so, what do you remember of the places?

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Also brought to you by the letter X:
• x-ray
• xylophone
• xanthan
• xenon
• Xerxes

And from the New Phonetic Alphabet: X for the Spot