Back during my summer vacation, I was driving out to Saskatoon to see some old friends from there. As I passed eastward through Vegreville, Alta., I thought to myself, "I've never been to Hairy Hill."

That gap in my life experience was remedied. I headed north and then east on Highway 45.

There's not many shopping opportunities in Hairy Hill (so named because the bison used to shed their winter coats there in the spring). I didn't see one functioning business. An abandoned gas station just to the southeast of the business in the picture above listed fuel for 35 cents per litre. An early 1980s price?

Little farm hamlets like Hairy Hill -- which will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2007 and produced one politician: Bill Yurko -- are the places that the Alberta Advantage forgot. If there's no oil or petrochemical industry around, these places slowly wither and die.

My guess? A roadside cairn is all that will mark Hairy Hill in 2107.

This rural withering process has been going on since the late 1940s, as agriculture became progressively more mechanized and economic activity shifted to urban areas. That's partly why the "yesterday" sign in the middle of the door of this abandoned hardware store in this dying little hamlet caught my eye.

Yesterday's place, with yesterday's people still living there.

I was reminded of Hairy Hill in watching a CTV Edmonton story as residents of Andrew talked about Ed Stelmach becoming premier, and how they muttered under their breath about the province being run by oilmen and backroom boys.

The people who live in these places would be seen by corporate Calgary oil types and Edmonton backroom political operators much the way I suspect most true urban Torontonians would see them: As hicks and losers.

I doubt that Ed Stelmach, who lives just to the west (both towns sit on the CPR line; in between are Willingdon, Whitford and Wostok) sees people in those areas in that way. I suspect that's part of the reason why he's premier-elect of Alberta today.