If you drive the back roads of Manitoba long enough, you’ll see them. Weather-bleached homes eroded by the prairie wind. Windows blank, doors sagging, roofs open to the sky. Once they were the centers of someone’s life. Now, more often than not, they are collapsing quietly into the field or torn down.
Mike Parsons noticed.
Parsons, a retired northerner now living in southern Manitoba, spends his days chasing what remains of these places. He’s a photographer, but more than that, he’s an archivist of these forgotten homes. He has put thousands of kilometers on his vehicle, following rumors of old farmhouses, only to arrive and find nothing but a stump of foundation or a pile of splintered lumber.
“Every time I come over a hill and see a house still standing,” he says, “it feels like finding something rare and precious.”
What Parsons wants now is to find the stories before they vanish along with the wood. He has posted on social media and spread the word: If you own an abandoned homestead, call him. He will come with his camera and make something beautiful. He will give you the digital images for free. They are yours to keep as mementos.
This isn’t just about photography, he insists. “It’s not just for the ‘likes’ on Facebook,” he says, with a shake of his head. “It’s about the family. Who built it? When? Where did they come from? Why did they leave?”
He’s seen the other side of this too, the frustration of landowners whose properties have been invaded by photographers trespassing for the sake of an eerie Instagram shot. One farmer he met had finally torn down a handsome, century-old home, not because he wanted to, but because he was tired of chasing strangers off his land. “That was heartbreaking,” Parsons says. “That house could have still been standing.”
For Parsons, permission is everything. He will not cross a fence without it. Sometimes all he wants is a chance to walk the perimeter and ask a question or two: Who lived here? What happened? Often, the best shot is not through a broken window, but from the distance, from the moment a house appears suddenly, alone against the horizon, a sentinel of the past.
There is a certain irony in Parsons’ pursuit. He doesn’t like photographing people. “They blink, they move, they wander off,” he says, grinning. He prefers subjects that keep still: the northern lights, old cars, and now, the farmhouses that refuse to surrender. Yet in the wood and nails, he insists, you can still find a pulse.
“Every one of these places was someone’s home,” he says. “They were proud of it. They worked their whole lives to build it. And then time just… takes it back.”
Parsons is still waiting for more calls. So far, only a handful of families have reached out. He is patient, he has to be. Every photograph is an act of preservation, a stay against the prairie weather and neglect.
He knows he can’t save them all. But perhaps, with the help of the people who own them, he can save a few. Enough, maybe, that when the last of the wooden bones are gone, the stories can still live on.
If you have such a place, a house with no one left to live in it, but too many memories to let it vanish unrecorded, Parsons would like to hear from you. You can reach him at mikeparsonsphotography@outlook.com or 204-763-8968.
