The Big Four and Alberta Place Names

rkelland

This post was originally published on July 10, 2012 in honour of the 100th anniversary of the Calgary Stampede. It highlights the place names and geographical features in Alberta named after The Big Four – the ranchers and businessmen that funded Guy Weadick’s 1912 wild west show and rodeo, which grew to become today’s Calgary Stampede. Six years later, the Stampede is once again in full swing – a good excuse to revisit the legacy of the Big Four.

On the west side of Stampede Park, rising from the seething mass of carnival rides, concession stands and humanity that is the Stampede midway is the Big Four Building. This building is named for the Big Four – the four Southern Alberta ranchers and businessmen who funded Guy Weadick’s proposed rodeo and wild west show in 1912. Intended to be a one-time event, the show and rodeo grew to become the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede. To say that the Big Four influenced Calgary’s popular culture would be a great understatement.

The Big Four with HRH Edward, Prince of Wales at the EP Ranch, 1923 LtoR: Pat Burns; George Lane; Edward, The Prince of Wales; Archie McLean; and A. E. Cross. (Provincial Archives of Alberta, A2658)

However, the legacy of the Big Four extends beyond the boundaries of Stampede Park. They left their mark not only in Calgary, but on the geography of the Province of Alberta. This blog post is the first of three that look at the Big Four – George Lane, A. E. Cross, Archie McLean and Pat Burns – and the places named for them. Read more →

Every Place Has a Story

Jared
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Strikes, war and untimely death are all part of the story of the ambitious mining venture at Leitch Collieries in the Municipality of Crowsnest Pass.

Saturday, July 7 is Canada Historic Places Day. Here in Alberta, you might be picturing a museum, an old Ukrainian farm house or that retrofitted old warehouse in downtown Calgary or Edmonton.

In reality, historic “places” can be much more than urban buildings or interpretive centres. They’re vast swaths of land where First Nations hunted or geological landmarks tens of thousands of years in the making.

Everyone across the province is invited to head out this weekend to learn about the stories, people and places that have shaped our province. We have more than 700 historic places designated under the province’s Historical Resources Act…maybe one of those is right in your neighbourhood!

When you’re out exploring Alberta’s historic places, share your stories on social media using the hashtag #HistoricPlacesDay. And head over to historicplacesday.ca to find out how a selfie could land you a chance to win $1,000.

Summer at Alberta’s Provincial Historic Sites and Museums

Alberta's Historic Places

The official visitor season for Alberta’s provincial historic sites and museums is in full swing! Explore Alberta’s heritage and interact with the past. If you’re looking for things to do over the summer season, or want to make a pit stop on your road trip, check out some of Alberta’s provincial historic sites and museums, listed below. With plenty of history to choose from, there’s something for everyone on this list!

In addition to the provincial historic sites and museums, there are many other museums and interpretive centres across the province that are fantastic. For a list of those, check out the Alberta Museum Association’s website. Several places are also participating in Historic Places Day on July 7th. This is a day to recognize places that tell Canada’s story, and bring history to life in a way that can’t be done through books and classrooms. For a listing of places and events related to Historic Places Day click here.

Alberta’s Provincial Historic Sites and Museums

Read more →

Did You Ever Hear the Blues? The Music, Film and Influence of Big Miller

Jared
JC-1980-Cover
Big Miller on the cover of the August 1980 edition of the Edmonton Jazzette. That shirt is due for a comeback. Photo provided by the Yardbird Suite.

Generally speaking, the ol’ City of Champs hasn’t been known as an international hub of art and culture as say, Montreal, New York City or Los Angeles. Artists of all stripes – musicians, dancers, visual artists – tend to get their feet wet in Edmonton then head off for the greener pastures of large international centres of creativity. So to hear stories of popular artists choosing to do the opposite and actually move to Edmonton to pursue creative endeavours (in the 1970s no less!), well, that’s something worth exploring.

Jazz music has a long history in Edmonton; incredible venues like the Yardbird Suite are recognized as important institutions in the city and former events, like the Jazz City Festival are recognized for their historical role in promoting the genre in the city and province. This week is the 2018 Edmonton International Jazz Festival. Since 2006 this festival has brought some of the world’s finest jazz musicians and acts to Alberta and has promoted local musicians at an internationally recognized venue. This week’s blog post is about one of those unique Edmonton transplants, one that may not be as well-known as jazz contemporaries Tommy Banks and PJ Perry, but one who certainly deserves to be recognized in the same ranks – the great trombonist and Kansas City Blues singer Clarence Horatius “Big” Miller. Read more →

HONOURING ALBERTA’S HERITAGE HEROES

Alberta's Historic Places

Who are the heritage heroes in your community? Help us celebrate the outstanding contributions of Albertans to the promotion and preservation of Alberta’s heritage. Nominate an individual, organization or project for an Alberta Historical Resources Foundation heritage award. Complete your nominations now.  Deadline for submission is July 15.

Awards will be presented in the Heritage Conservation, Heritage Awareness and Outstanding Achievement categories. In addition, the Foundation is proud to introduce the Indigenous Heritage and Youth Heritage Awards this year. Awards will be presented during an awards ceremony on October 25, 2018 at the Government House in Edmonton.

For a copy of the guidelines and nomination form, visit https://alberta.ca/heritage-awards.aspx or contact the Program Coordinator at 780-431-2305 (toll-free by first dialing 310-000) or Carina.Naranjilla@gov.ab.ca.

National Indigenous Peoples Day 2018

National Indigenous Peoples Day 2018

Laura Golebiowski

Aanii! Tânsi! Óki! Abawasded! Edlónat’e! Tawnshi! * Da Neh Chi?**

Tomorrow, the Historic Resources Management Branch is glad to celebrate National Indigenous Peoples Day. Held each year on June 21 and renamed last year from National Aboriginal Day, National Indigenous Peoples Day recognizes the historic and present-day contributions, success and cultures of First Nation, Inuit and Metis communities across Canada.

Edmonton is once again hosting the free-to-attend Indigenous Peoples Festival, this year in Victoria Park from 11:00 AM to 8:00 PM. The event includes a pow-wow, main stage concerts, artisan marketplace and food vendors. There are also events throughout the week at City Centre Mall, Edmonton International Airport and the Art Gallery of Alberta (free admission on June 21 for all visitors as well!).

In Calgary, there are performances, displays and workshops at both the National Music Centre’s Studio Bell and Arts Commons, or venture west to take in the parade in Canmore or an evening medicine walk at the Banff Centre with Metis guide Brenda Holder. In southern Alberta, Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump is offering special programming, with opportunities for guided tours, performances, food sampling, and story sharing with Blackfoot Elders.

There are celebrations in communities across the province: check this listing to find the gathering closest to you. Is your community hosting an event for National Indigenous Peoples Day? Leave a comment on this post with the details!

On this day, and all days, we express our gratitude to the Indigenous communities in Alberta that we have the privilege of learning from and working with. Your history, culture, stories, goals and perspectives make our understanding of Alberta’s heritage so much richer.

Written By: Laura Golebiowski, Aboriginal Consultation Adviser

* “Hello!” in Anishinaabemowin, Cree, Blackfoot, Nakoda, Dene and Michif

** “How are you” in Beaver

Title Image: Driftpile Cree Nation Pow Wow. Photo credit: Ron Ganzeveld, Government of Alberta.

The Arrival of the Hutterites in Alberta

The Arrival of the Hutterites in Alberta

Alberta's Historic Places

Thank you to guest writers Simon Evans and Peter Peller for this interesting and informative post about Hutterite arrival in Alberta. This blog was drawn from an article originally published in Alberta History Magazine titled “The Hutterites Come to Alberta” (Alberta History, Vol. 63, No. 4, (Autumn 2015), 11-19).

One hundred years ago, during the early spring of 1918, Paul Stahl and a small group of Hutterite leaders were scouring the country north of Calgary looking for land. After several disappointments, they found a splendid parcel of land along the tiny Rosebud River and purchased nearly 4000 acres from the Calgary Colonization Company. Some men stayed to build barns and residences for the rest of the community. Later, the main group left South Dakota on a special train to join them. There were almost 100 people of all ages, scores of horses, wagons, milk cows, 40 sows, and all kinds of farm machinery and household items onboard. They crossed into the Dominion of Canada at the Emerson Port of Entry and proceeded on the Canadian Pacific Railway to Strathmore. Here, they unpacked their belongings, hitched up the horses and moved by wagon to the new colony site along the Rosebud River, a trek of about 25 miles. After a week of traveling, the refugees finally reached their new home.

South Dakota Hutterite Colonies, 1917.
Hutterite Colonies along the Rosebud River, 1918.
Hutterite women and children at the new Springvale Colony on the bridge over the Rosebud River, March 1919, construction activity still evident. (Glenbow, NA 4079-75).
Rosebud Colony today, notice the residences and communal kitchen in the center screened by trees, and the barns and feedlots surrounding. The Rosebud River is in the background. (Photo by Simon M. Evans)

The Hutterites are a German speaking religious group with 400 years of history. They are Anabaptists and originated in the Austrian Tyrol during the Reformation in the 16th century. The characteristic that separates them from similar groups like the Amish and the Mennonites is that they live communally. Each family has its own apartment, but meals are prepared in a central kitchen and eaten together. They hold “all things common,” as did the early Christian church described in the Acts of the Apostles. Hutterites own few personal possessions and are not paid wages for their hard work. In exchange, the colony looks after them from birth to death. Read more →

Papa’s Babies: The Brook Family and the First World War

Alberta's Historic Places

Thank you to our guest author Ashley Henrickson for this interesting post. Ashley is a M.A. student at the University of Lethbridge and the Museum Educator at the Galt Museum and Archives. Her research examines the experiences of young people living in the Canadian Prairies whose fathers or brothers served overseas during the First World War. Ashley received the Roger Soderstrom Scholarship in 2017. The funds from this scholarship allowed her to visit archives across Alberta and present her research at “Children, Youth, and War,” a symposium hosted by the University of Georgia.

A never-ending cycle of children, chores, and neighbors cut through Isabelle Brook’s home, constantly interrupting the letters she wrote at her kitchen table. Isabelle apologized for her “jumbled up” proses as she paused to prepare dinner, answer the door, or tend to her busy children: “Alice is here wiggling around like a little eel, so I must quit”; “Gordon is wakening up I must go”; “Glen’s upset the ink over the table cloth now.” The constant movement suggests that life for Isabelle and her five children may have been lonely without their father, but it was not dull.

The hundreds of “jumbled up” letters that Isabelle wrote from her kitchen table in Craigmyle, Alberta, are a valuable and vibrant record of Alberta’s past. She sent these letters to her forty-five-year-old husband, Sidney Brook, who served on the Western Front with the Canadian Expeditionary Force from 1916-1918. In response Sidney sent hundreds of letters to his family, which were preserved alongside Isabelle’s by their descendants and then donated to the Glenbow Archives. The Brook’s collection is especially valuable because very few letters sent from families living in Alberta to soldiers serving overseas have survived to the modern day. This is because soldiers, like Sidney, were constantly moving across the Western Front and had to carry all their personal belongings with them. This forced them to destroy all but a few precious letters that they could fit in their pocket.

Letter from Sidney Brook to his wife Isabelle, January 7, 1917 (from the Brook family fonds, Glenbow Museum and Archives, http://www.glenbow.org/collections/search/findingAids/archhtm/brook.cfm).

Read more →

Ice Age Fossils and Industry

Alberta's Historic Places

The Quaternary Palaeontology program at the Royal Alberta Museum (RAM) works with stakeholders in the sand & gravel industry to recover and preserve the Ice Age fossil record of the province. As the source of thousands of the fossil specimens housed in our collections, the sand & gravel industry provides the basis for significant scientific collections, research, outreach, and exhibits. The working relationship of the RAM and the sand & gravel industry originates in the late 1980s and 1990s, when museum staff began active efforts to engage companies and their staff, most notably in gravel pits in the Edmonton area. Those efforts manifested in a number of formal (e.g., regulatory processes) and less formal ways (highlighted here), all with the intent of maximizing the recovery of fossil remains while minimizing impacts to industry.

Ice Age horse metapodials (foot bones) from Edmonton-area gravel pits. These are in the collections at the Royal Alberta Museum.

Engaging Industry

Shortly after arriving at the Royal Alberta Museum in 2008, I set up a meeting with Lafarge, a company with considerable sand & gravel interests. My intent was to rekindle the working relationship with Lafarge that was established by my predecessor at the museum. As a naïve scientist, I anticipated a low-key conversation regarding fossils in gravel pits. I walked into a meeting with seven people from Lafarge, including legal, and I quickly realized that from the company’s Read more →

Newton’s Lilacs: Edmonton’s Hermitage, 1876-1900

Newton’s Lilacs: Edmonton’s Hermitage, 1876-1900

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In a remote corner of north east Edmonton, bounded by Clareview Road and 129th Avenue, is a small unmarked parcel of land commanding a dramatic view of the North Saskatchewan River valley. Only faint ground depressions and a small interpretive marker betray the fact that this is the location of Canon William Newton’s Hermitage and the birthplace of the Anglican Church in what would become the Province of Alberta.

“The Hermitage” by Ella May Walker, City of Edmonton Archives, EAA-1-27.

William Newton was born in 1828 at Halstead, Essex, England into a family of weavers. Having obtained an education through the help of wealthy benefactors, he trained for the Unitarian Church, served as a Congregationalist minister and published two books of sermons. In 1870 he immigrated to Canada and was ordained into the Anglican Church by Bishop A.N. Bethune of Toronto. He spent four years at Rosseau and Howard Township in Ontario before being accepted by Bishop John McLean of Saskatchewan as a missionary with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel at Fort Edmonton. Read more →