For the LDS Church in Alberta, faith and history are deeply entrenched with the region's water
CBC
In an auditorium at the Magrath Junior Senior High School in the town of Magrath, Alta., on a rainy Monday evening, metal chairs are arranged in a circle, a grand piano at its apex.
Slowly, people begin to file in. It's the start of rehearsals for a musical production titled Diggers, based on the founding of Magrath in 1899 by settlers sent by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from Utah and Idaho to construct irrigation projects in southern Alberta.
"Let's start at bar 78," says Mark Mitchell, the composer of Diggers, as some of the actors paw through their individual songbooks for the first time. They're in the midst of rehearsing a hymn-like song, God Be With Them, focused on the men from Utah saying goodbye to their families before heading north.
Mitchell plays a few keys at the piano and launches into another song, the whimsical I See A Place (Levi's vision).
"I saw a place: God-blessed and beautiful as love's own pleasant face, sun-kissed and settled in this curve and coil of earth," Mitchell sings in a baritone voice.
"I saw a place. I saw fair fields: dew-dressed and nestled in the promise of a yield."
Diggers centres on famous stories in the Mormon church in Canada, including that of Levi Harker, an early pioneer from Utah who went on to become Magrath's first bishop and was the town's mayor for two terms.
On its website, the LDS church quotes a 1939 Lethbridge Herald article, written after Harker's death in 1939. It states: "No man who ever lived in [Magrath] was more deeply mourned than that of Bishop Levi Harker, 'Father of Magrath.'"
The Ottawa-raised Mitchell, who has a doctorate in composition and has written five musicals before, is a member of the church. Though he lived far from Magrath, he knew the story of Harker well.
"He came over the Milk River Ridge and had this vision. That's the music I was playing," Mitchell said.
"It's the song of his vision, of seeing the modern day Magrath, when there was nothing there but grass … all of a sudden, he saw cultivated farms and irrigation canals and a town that was thriving. And he never forgot that."
WATCH | Diggers play tells story of early Mormon settlers:
Dennis Strong is a descendant of Harker and plays him in the production.
"He looked to the north, and saw a vision of the town.… It gives me chills, just thinking about it, actually," Strong said.
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