Month: July 2025

George First Rider’s Stories of Summer

George First Rider’s Stories of Summer

Jared

Editor’s note: The banner image above is of Áísínai’pi/Writing-on-Stone. Source: Laura Golebiowski.

Blair First Rider is a Kainai (Blood Tribe) Elder and Horn Society grandparent, and an Indigenous Consultation Adviser with the Historic Resources Management Branch. Thank you Blair for sharing your grandfather’s stories. Suukapi!

Written by: Blair First Rider and Laura Golebiowski, Indigenous Consultation Advisers

In a previous RETROactive blog post, we discussed the seasonal round: the Niitsitapi (“the real people,” how the Blackfoot refer to themselves) concept that structures the year and our relationship to the land and one another. In this post, we learn some of the ways the Niitsitapi spent time during the hot summer months at the turn of the century.

This knowledge was shared by George First Rider, Blair’s paternal grandfather. George was born in 1904 on the Kainaiwa (Blood Tribe) reserve. His father was Dog Child and his mother was The Only Handsome Woman, also known as Catching Another Horse.

George First Rider was a kipita-poka: a grandparent’s child. Deeply loved and cared for by his family, he was afforded a lifestyle of traditional knowledges and practices. He was also a member of the Horn Society and other age-grade Societies (the complex social and ceremonial system that Niitsitapi men participate in from the age of seven or eight to adulthood. Niitsitapi women participate in the Motokis Society). Through ceremonial transfers, George learned many songs and earned the ability to conduct many ceremonies.

Dog Child, a North West Mounted Police scout, and his wife, The Only Handsome Woman, members of the Blackfoot Nation.” [ca 1890]. Credit: Trueman and Caple / Library and Archives Canada / PA-195224.
“George First Rider, Blood.” [1925-02-21] (CU 187940) by Atterton. Courtesy of Glenbow Library and Archives Collection, Library and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary.

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Remembering Rino Basso and David Leonard

Jared

Editor’s note: Alberta’s heritage sector and the Heritage Division of Arts Culture and Status of Women recently lost two dedicated and long-serving colleagues – former Historic Conservation Advisor Rino Basso and former historian and provincial archivist David Leonard.

Written by: Ronald Kelland, Geographical Names Program Coordinator and Fraser Shaw, Heritage Conservation Advisor

Rino Basso

Rino Basso was born at Nordegg, Alberta on July 22, 1946, to Pietro “Pete” Basso, a coal miner with significant carpentry skills and Barbara Basso (nee Sieben), who was a notable volunteer in her community and church and had some nursing training. The Basso family moved to Red Deer in 1947 where Pete Basso started Basso Construction and built houses. Being born in the historic mining community of Nordegg and having a carpenter and a homebuilder as a father may have set Rino on a career path in historic resources management from an early age.

Rino attended Red Deer Catholic Separate Schools, graduating from St. Thomas Aquinas High School in 1965 then enrolling in the Architectural Technology Program at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. In the early-1970s, Rino began working with the Government of Alberta as Senior Preservation Advisor in the Historic Sites Service and, as it is known today, Historic Resources Management. There is probably not a single Provincial Historic Resource designated between the 1970s and 2010s that has not seen his involvement. It seems like his name can be found on every file in Historic Resources Management’s records. Rino used to jovially remark that he had probably driven on every byway, stayed in every motel, eaten at every bakery and visited every city, town and village in the province from Edmonton and Calgary to the proverbial “Cucumber Corner,” his shorthand, all-inclusive term for the small communities and rural areas across the province whose history and heritage he dedicated so much of his career to preserving.

Rino was delighted to find that this structure, one of only two known extant, historic sod houses was still standing, 2013. Even after more than three decades working with historic places, he was enthralled when encountering a new site or building.
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