Alberta History 1884-1885

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Jasper Alberta's Historic View

1884

The first Fete Nationale was organized this year in honor of the seasonal buffalo hunts. It was a summer Festival a Sports Day that took place on La Belle Prairie, a flatland half-a-mile from Batoche. Often as many as 3.000 attended the event.

Richard Secord is hired to teach school in Edmonton at a salary of $800.00 a year. He would later become a fur trading partner with John A, McDougall.

Mary Scullen (Whiteman) Sr., daughter William Scullen (Whiteman) Sr., b-1878, Marguerite Ward b-1859 Red River.

Joseph B. Tyrrell (1858-1957) discovered, while looking for coal seams, Albertosaurus a dinosaur near Drumheller (Alberta). He also discovered the largest coal mine in Canada in the same area. It is noteworthy the natives were aware of these dinosaur remains and this area (Dinosaur Provincial Park) in Alberta has the highest overall species diversity of any dinosaur site in the world.

Strathcona Plaindealer newspaper is started this year in Strathcona (Edmonton). Strathcona is named after Lord Strathcona alias (I)-Donald Alexander Smith (1820-1914) a Scot who arrived Canada 1838 as a HBC man.

Eleven RCMP men deserted Fort MacLeod in one month. One writer suggested the RCMP were a disparate - if not a desperate - lot, including broken down gentlemen, Canadian bucolics and peradoes, old soldiers, cowboys, sailors and hell rake adventurers. He also said they were making rather free with the native women, and were much addicted to alcohol. The venereal disease rate among the RCMP supports this belief.

February 1: Medicine Hat, birth, Minnie Poitras, married 1905 Glasgon, Montana, William D. Young, b-1884, Rock Island, Illinois.

March 12: Calgary, the police raided a house occupied by ladies fair, they were sentenced to 6 months' imprisonment with hard labor. The sentence, however, is not to come into effect until after the departure of the next train east, thus giving them a chance to escape and amend their lives. A man found in the house was fined $10.00 and sentenced to 10 days of hard labor.

March 29: Calgary, (Alberta), the North West Mounted Police reported the hanging of Williams a Blackman, likely Dan Williams aka Nigger Dan, the first Black Man in the north. However the Edmonton Bulletin, January 9, 1887 reported: "A party of nine came into the upper Peace River last fall from Calgary by way of British Columbia. Three named respectively Jas. Christie, Lowe and Wright, wintered above the Rocky Mountain portage, about 20 miles above Hudson's Hope, H.B. Post. The other six included Dan Williams, "Nigger Dan", went up the Finlay branch of the Peace. They had some disagreements and Dan and another separated from the rest and came down to the mouth of the Finlay where they built a cabin in which to winter. Dan took sick in the fall and gradually wasted away until he died about the middle of February. His death was not heard of until ice broke up and his companion came down to Christie's camp."

November 17: Calgary becomes a town, and Wesley Fletcher Orr becomes the first mayor. Welsley Fletcher was mayor in 1894. Others suggest the first mayor was George Murdoch, and that Murdoch, Saddlemaker, Police Chief John Ingram and Alderman Simon J. Clarke were involved in the protection rackets. Police Chief John Ingram says bribes were necessary for protection and early warning of planned raids. The population of Calgary was only 428.

1885

Some suggest Nels Bebeari arrived prior to 1885 and was one of the original settlers of Fish Creek south of Fort Calgary.

Elliot Galt's North Western Coal and Navigation Co. built a narrow-gauge railway to take coal from Lethbridge to the C.P.R.'s main line near Medicine Hat. A second line was built to the United States border to deliver coal to Montana.

Surgeon-Major George S. Riverson used the first red cross symbol in Canada during the rebellion for his hospital wagon.

The Roman Catholic Priests are recording the names of 'problematic half-breed infidels' as they call the politically active Metis. The half-breeds in Edmonton are organizing secret meetings to plan action of some kind. The call to arms had gone out throughout the North West. It is noteworthy that the Battle River Metis settlement would provided 42 men to Louis Riel and only 8-10 men remained behind to look after the women and children.

G.A. Simpson, although not a candidate, stated he did not agree with replacing appointed members of Council with elected members of Council. It is noteworthy that the Roman Catholic Church opposed elected officials and democracy in general. Father Hippolyte Leduc, of the Catholic Missions, called William Perce, of the Dominion Lands Board from Ottawa, a racist, saying that he used anti-French bias in the settling of thirty disputed property claims in the Edmonton Area. William Perce responded that the white people in Edmonton are about the worst class one can meet with on the Canadian soil.

Riel's appeal is to all Metis based on their old loyalties: "Gentlemen, please do not remain neutral, for the love of God, help us to save Saskatchewan. A strong union between the French and English Half-breeds is the only guarantee that there will be no bloodshed". On the strength of Pierre Saint Germane's forced confession, Lawrence Garneau, Metis is arrested, and both men held for trial. They are taken to Fort Saskatchewan on the flatboats on May 13, 1882. Riel's appeals met with little success in Alberta, basically because the Metis land claims are not being threatened in any wholesale manner. Father Lacombe (1827-1916), for one, had traveled far and wide attempting to keep the peace.

James Brady claims those arrested were Lawrence Garneau, Metis and Benjamin Vandal, another Metis from the Red River resistance of 1870, who was homesteading at White Mud Creek a few miles up river, and that the reason for internment was failure to abandon their farms when ordered to do so. This, and some of his supporting arguments, do not agree with the recollection of other members of the family: nor the accounts of Frank Oliver, (1853-1933), son Allen Bowsfield, of the Edmonton Bulletin. He may, however, be confusing this with another incident of less seriousness. (However this needs more research before discarding. Also Reference The Wisdom of Papaschase, A Cree Medicine Man by J.P. Brady, Glenbow archives).

There were several sharp and bitter clashes at Duck Lake, Frog Lake and Batoche. The Metis, in the last battle at Batoche Saskatchewan, although greatly outnumbered by Government troops who are using cannon and gattling gun (the first machine gun), held out for four days. Running out of ammunition, they used stones, nails, bits of metal and metal buttons, shaped to size between their teeth. All that remains of the last Metis capital of independence is a battle scarred priest's house and the little church of St. Antoine de Padoue, at Batoche, Saskatchewan. After the battle was lost, the Ontario troops stormed the church of St Antoine de Padoue at Batoche, stealing the the bell from the steeple as a war trophy. The silver bell ended up in the Royal Canadian Legion Hall in Millbrook, Ontario. In 1991 it was again stolen and is now believed to reside in the Legion Hall in Winnipeg.

Lawrence Garneau is court marshaled and sentenced to death, but due to the intervention of prominent white citizens like Frank Oliver, (1853-1933), son Allen Bowsfield, Bishop Grandin (1829-1902) and the threatened action by the Natives, his sentence is commuted to imprisonment, which he served. Other accounts suggest he spent a month in jail awaiting trial and three months later, when prosecution failed to appear, the charges of treason are dismissed. The Edmonton Bulletin reported Pierre St. Germane and Lawrence Garneau, Metis, who were arrested nearly six weeks ago on a charge of being concerned in Riel's rebellion, as released on their own recognizance, to appear and answer to the charges at the next sittings of the Saskatchewan District Court. As the court was indefinitely postponed, further detention of the prisoners without trial was not justifiable.

About 150 ranchers in the Fort MacLeod District formed the Rocky Mountain Rangers for their mutual protection, in April and May, during the North West Rebellion. John George Brown (1839-1916) of Waterton Lakes became their chief scout

The first bridge to cross the South Saskatchewan River is built by the Canadian Pacific Railway at Medicine Hat, Assiniboine, and North West Territories. Strange bubbles in the river at this crossing would lead to the discovery of natural gas.

Europeans first found fossilized dinosaurs in the Red Deer Valley (Drumheller Badlands) this year. The Blackfoot called the dinosaurs the great grand fathers of the buffalo. Systematic collecting, however, would not start until 1912.

Banff is made a National Park this year.

James Brady relates the 1885 story as follows...

During the 1885 rebellion, Canadian Government troops arrived at Fort Edmonton and declared martial law. All local residents were ordered to retire within the fort. But, my grandfather and another French Metis, Benjamin Vandal, ignored the order to abandon their farms, as they felt that they were in no danger from the Indians. Vandel, who lived on the White Mud Creek about eight miles above Edmonton, has also been a soldier in the Manitoba Metis army of 1870. They were arrested and taken before a military court, given a summary trial, and sentenced to death for disobeying a military order under conditions of martial law... Riel and his council had sent letters to my grandfather and Vandal inquiring as to the local situation and the degree of support that could be expected from local Metis. My grandfather kept this letter to read to some of the Metis sympathizers who were illiterate. My grandmother was in the kitchen when sergeant and four constables of the North West Mounted Police galloped into the yard. The sergeant bounded up the stairs to place my grandfather under arrest. The other police immediately ransacked the house. One policeman went to the actual spot where the letter had been hidden. It was evident they were acting on information from an informer. But they found nothing. My grandmother had acted with great presence of mind. She had been laundering when they came into the yard, and she reached up, placed the letter and other incriminating material in the wash tub, and calmly destroyed them by rubbing them on the washboard until they were completely disintegrated.

St. Mary's girl school, a two story log cabin, is opened this year in Calgary.

The North West Mounted Police built an outpost near Writing-on-Stone (Provincial Park) and you can still see their graffiti among the Indian writings on the wall.

Most Canadians don't realize that Canada's national railway could never have been realized if it wasn't for the Chinese workers. About 17,000 Chinese workers were hired so the railway could be completed on time. They were assigned the dirtiest, most dangerous tasks, and they received half the wages of white laborers. They were denied the food and lodging provided to their white counterparts. Hundreds of Chinese laborers lost their lives as construction pushed through the treacherous mountains of British Columbia. For those who survived, prospects did not improve after the railroad's completion in 1885 due to poverty and the introduction of the head tax which kept families apart. A Head Tax of $50,00 per person was imposed on Chinese people. This law would not be repealed until 1967.

January: The machinery, used to develop the petroleum springs near Calgary, was shipped from Brantford, Ontario. The property is owned by the The Winnipeg and N.W. Petroleum Co. of Minneapolis, and states that the tests that were made were very fine samples.

January: The machinery needed to develop the petroleum springs near Calgary was shipped from Brantford, Ontario. The property is owned by the The Winnipeg and N.W. Petroleum Co. of Minneapolis, and states that the tests made were very fine samples.

January 3: The construction of Edmonton's first school house is completed, with 25 boys and 3 girls attending. The school house doubled as the District Court House.

February: Fort MacLeod, birth George Gladstone son William Gladstone Jr., (1845-1891), and Marie Samat Vandal, b-1855.

March 27: The telegraph message wrote: "Metis attacked at Duck Lake yesterday, ten police killed. Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont victorious." Father Vegreville being hostile towards the Metis and Fathers Fourmond and Touze were arrested and forced to sign a pledge of neutrality.

April 11: The weekend of April 11, 1885 saw unmistakable panic grip Edmonton town as people stampeded to the Fort. People deserted their homes, turning stock loose and suffering great personal loss. This overreaction is triggered by exaggerated reports from Captain Griesbach. His dispatch arrived Saturday; stating that the Whitefish, Lac La Biche and Egg Lake bands are joining with the Bear for the purpose of rising, and that the Blackfoot had torn up the railway track. His erroneous report is not found inaccurate until reliable news arrived late Sunday.

Jasper Alberta's History