The past few months have been a “hare-raising” experience for the people of Canmore.

The Rocky Mountain town made worldwide headlines last November after town councillors proposed to cull approximately 2,000 feral rabbits that were roaming at-large in the community. Canmore’s loose bunnies were spared, however, after an animal rescue group stepped forward to spay, neuter and house them in a sanctuary.

Such a response would have been unthinkable decades earlier, when an army of long-eared interlopers challenged southeastern Alberta’s stalwart settlers for dominion over the drought-stricken plains.

Click here to read the rest of the column in the Prairie Post

Bow City is an unlikely spot for a metropolis.

Situated about 20 miles southwest of the city of Brooks, this curiously named community is comprised of a well-maintained park and a scattering of acreages perched atop the north bank of the Bow River. Once a bustling coal mine camp during the ’40s and ’50s, today’s hamlet no longer even merits a dot on the provincial road map.

Bow City owes its continued existence to the bridge that traverses the Bow River at this location. It owes its origins, however, to a rich deposit of coal, situated west of the hamlet, embedded deep within the towering south bank of the Bow.

The discovery and promotion of this abundant reserve fuelled a sub-bituminous bonanza in the decade prior to World War I. In just a few short years, a village materialized on the barren, treeless prairie south of the Bow; the offspring of rampant speculation and frenzied boosterism. At its peak, many predicted Bow City would become a “Pittsburg” on the prairie. Isolated and exposed, the village born unlucky was cursed by drought, world conflict, bad timing, and just plain bad luck.

Bow City Alberta History

You’ve probably heard of Captain John Palliser.

He’s the Irish adventurer whose expedition passed through these parts a century-and-a-half ago, and whose name has become synonymous with Alberta’s southeastern corner.

His description of a triangle-shaped region, encompassing modern-day southeastern Alberta and southwest Saskatchewan, as “desert, or semi-desert in character, which can never be expected to become occupied by settlers” has long outlived the intrepid captain, who passed away in 1887.

The Irishman’s observations regarding the “Palliser Triangle” are controversial. Since their initial publication in 1863, his conclusions have consistently been both debunked and vindicated, with opinions on the subject changing as frequently as the southeast’s volatile weather.

Considering the relative prosperity within Palliser’s Triangle today, the ongoing recognition we give the Captain is puzzling.

Click here to read the rest of the column in the Prairie Post

“Settlers and farmers founded this province and their values run deep.

Albertans are proud, resilient, generous and independent-minded. We believe in family and freedom, and are passionately devoted to the land on which we live.”

- Premier Alison Redford, speech to AAMDC Fall Convention, 24 November 2011

I started this blog two years ago to ensure the memories of an exceptional generation of individuals, the first homesteaders of southeastern Alberta, who endured unimaginable hardship to build the region into what is today, were not forgotten.

As most of my learning on this subject took place outside of school (post secondary included), I was keen to learn that the province intended to review the proposed Education Act, Bill 18, and was opening the discussion up to the public.

“Education legislation is not reviewed very often and I am committed to getting it right,” stated Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk, in a government media release dated 15 November 2011.

Seeing an opportunity to add some constructive comments to the discussion, I reviewed Alberta’s Social Studies Program of Study to see what our students were learning about their own history.

What I found was an education in itself.  When history is taught (this is social studies after all, not history) the emphasis seems to be national (Canadian) and global themes, with the exception of Grade Four, where students learn about “Alberta: The Land, Histories and Stories”.

Encouraged that at least one year is dedicated to teaching Alberta history, I glanced through the Grade Four Program of Study to see what students would be learning, and to gauge whether local or regional themes were included within the curriculum.

I discovered the Program of Study is broken down into “Benchmark Skills and Processes”, and in the case of Grade Four, three “General Outcomes” for students. The second of these outcomes states that students will “demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of the role of stories, history and culture in strengthening communities and contributing to identity and a sense of belonging”. Specifically students would:

• recognize how stories of people and events provide multiple perspectives on past and present events recognize oral traditions, narratives and stories as valid sources of knowledge about the land, culture and history
• recognize the presence and influence of diverse Aboriginal peoples as inherent to Alberta’s culture and identity
• recognize the history of the French language and the vitality of Francophone communities as integral parts of Alberta’s heritage
• recognize British institutions and peoples as integral parts of Alberta’s heritage
• recognize how the diversity of immigrants from Europe and other continents has enriched Alberta’s rural and urban communities
• demonstrate respect for places and objects of historical significance

The second general outcome also states that students will “assess, critically, how the cultural and linguistic heritage and diversity of Alberta has evolved over time by exploring and reflecting upon the following questions and issues”:

• Which First Nations originally inhabited the different areas of the province?
• How is the diversity of Aboriginal peoples reflected in the number of languages spoken?
• What do the stories of Aboriginal peoples tell us about their beliefs regarding the relationship between people and the land?
• What movement or migration within Canada contributed to the populating of Alberta?
• In what ways did Francophones establish their roots in urban and rural Alberta (i.e., voyageurs, missionary work, founding institutions, media, politics, commerce)?
• How did the Métis Nation and Métis settlements contribute to Alberta’s identity (i.e., languages, accomplishments)?
• How did French and English become the two languages most used in business and politics in Alberta during the 19th and early 20th centuries?
• How did British institutions provide the structure for the settlement of newcomers in Alberta (i.e., North West Mounted Police, schools, lieutenant-governor, Assembly of the Northwest Territories)?
• How did European immigration contribute to the establishment of communities in Alberta in the late 19th century and early 20th century? How did the arrival of diverse groups of people determine the establishment and continued growth of rural and urban communities? How are agriculture and the establishment of communities interconnected?

This brings me back to the quote at the beginning of the piece by Premier Redford. It’s interesting to note that when defining the values of Albertans, she selected those of the “settlers and farmers”, who are  “independent-minded”, believe in “family and freedom”, and “are passionately devoted to the land on which we live.”

Where do you suppose these values, so distinct as to be identified as uniquely Albertan by our Premier, come from, at least in part? Canadian historian, Nelson Wiseman, in a presentation to the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, offers the following suggestion:

“In delineating English Canadian political culture, many highlight the values of a decamped offshoot of revolutionary America, Upper Canada’s Loyalists. The analysis here has been of a later American offshoot, Alberta’s pioneering Americans and their formative imprint on Alberta politics. It underscores the individualist-liberal values of Alberta’s settler Americans as a founding ideological fragment. Those values congealed in the province’s formative years and they continue to define the parameters of political discourse in Alberta. Favoured by rural overrepresentation in the electoral system and their early concentration in southern rural Alberta, American homesteaders launched a politics of consensus, what C. B. Macpherson has described as Alberta’s ideologically hegemonic quasi-party system. They ingrained in the Albertan psyche an ardent individualist streak on issues of property, provincial rights, and suspicion of centralized authority, of designs crafted in a distant capital where central Canadian calculations overshadow Albertan interests. Alberta’s American market liberal and anti-communitarian heritage continues to infuse its political ethos.”

American values, introduced to our province by American settlers, who by 1916 comprised over one-third of our province’s foreign-born population, still “run deep” today, engrained in our politics, popular culture and economics. Unfortunately, this vital strain of Albertan DNA, one that is not present to any great extent in any other Canadian province, seems to have gone undetected by those who created our Grade Four curriculum.

For those who need initiating, Alberta’s American Fact has been well documented. Academics such as Wiseman, Michael Percy and Tamara Woroby, Howard and Tamara Palmer, Karel Bicha, Paul Sharp and Randy William Widdis, have covered the impact of these early American settlers, who constituted 22 per cent of Alberta’s population by 1911, on agriculture, religion and our political institutions.

According to Howard and Tamara Palmer, in their book, Peoples of Alberta:

“American settlers had a strong and lasting impact on Alberta. Their experience in dryland farming and irrigation made them ideally suited to adapt to the dry climate of the southern section of the province. Not all were successful. Some discouraged by drought, returned to the United States. But they were better suited than most groups to farm the southern Prairies.”

Even as the 20^th Century progressed, the American influence continued to be felt in oil patch and the boardrooms of the province. As Nelson Wiseman concludes:

“After the American influx at the turn of the twentieth century, the proportion of Americans among Alberta’s immigrants declined steadily. However, even in a context of relatively few American-born Albertans, their influence and ideas continued to exceed their numbers.”

By omitting the American contribution to Alberta’s identity, the crafters of our curriculum have left out a key component of what makes Alberta unique within the context of Confederation.

Hopefully in facilitating a “21^st century transformation” of our education system, we can begin to revisit the contributions made by American-Albertans during 20^th century, which were essential in making Alberta into what it is today.

When it comes to educating Albertan youth about the “cultural and linguistic heritage and diversity” of the province, we need to get it right.

…

Update: A link to these comments was submitted to the “Getting it Right- Other ideas” forum on the Alberta Education website, located here.

Update#2: It appears a Runtime error on the Alberta Education site is preventing my comment from being uploaded. I’ll keep trying…

Update#3: Quick work by @AlbertaEd has resolved the issue. Comment up, but hyperlink broken! Zounds!

Update#4: Another great resource is Paul Vosiey’s, Vulcan: The making of a prairie community, which discusses the role American settlers played in the settling of Vulcan, Carmangay, Champion and western Vulcan County.

Whose remains are buried here?

Update: No leads yet, but thanks to Michele Jarvie at the Calgary Herald for running an ever-so-slightly modified version of this article here.

During the decade after 1916, settlers fled the drought-ridden plains of southeastern Alberta en masse. As David C. Jones outlines in his book, We’ll all be buried down here- The Prairie Drybelt Disaster of 1917-1926, homesteaders often alighted with few possessions, many carrying only “the shirts on their backs”.

In some instances settlers were forced to part with something more dear, the remains of loved ones who had passed on, left behind in lonely, sometimes forgotten, prairie graveyards.

“We’ll all be buried down here in this dry belt, if we wait for the government to get us out,” Jones quotes one settler, who expressed his desire to “Quit the Dry Belt” in no uncertain terms:. “And parts of it are desperately desolate places to be buried in.”

One such desperately desolate place was Taylor Cemetery, located in Vulcan County:

Along an unremarkable stretch of road, about 17 miles northeast of the village of Lomond, Alta., lie the forgotten dead of Vulcan County.

Atop a wind-whipped knoll along the north side of Secondary Highway 539, a lonely pioneer graveyard has endured for the better part of a century.

Passing motorists would never know a cemetery exists here. There are no headstones or signs to mark the graves. Only a few sunken indentations amidst the crested wheat grass and clover remain.

No seems to know for certain who or how many were buried here. Burial records haven’t been located or do not exist. The next-of-kin are long gone, having joined the exodus from the drought-stricken Kinnondale district west of the Bow River after the First World War.

Click here to read the rest of the article…

]]> http://forgottenalberta.com/2011/11/20/who-are-the-forgotten-dead-of-vulcan-county/feed/ 1 http://forgottenalberta.com/2011/11/18/coming-soon-to-the-prairie-post-forgotten-alberta/ http://forgottenalberta.com/2011/11/18/coming-soon-to-the-prairie-post-forgotten-alberta/#comments Fri, 18 Nov 2011 18:03:41 +0000 Jonathan Koch http://forgottenalberta.com/?p=2240 I am happy to report that starting in January 2012, select articles from the Forgotten Alberta website will begin appearing in print, on the pages of the Prairie Post newspaper. My column, to be called “Forgotten Alberta – Stories of the Southeast”, will run the third week of every month for readers in SW Saskatchewan and SE Alberta.

Many thanks to Rose Sanchez at the Post for this exciting opportunity! Now I just have to think of something to write about.

In the meantime, you can read a little bit about me here in the November 18th edition, and see my ridiculous mug shot.

Rabbit Drive, Lomond, 1925 (Lomond and District History)

The people of Canmore are facing a “hare-raising” dilemma. Much has been written about the divergence of opinion arising from the decision of town council to cull the approximately 2000 feral rabbits currently hopping free in the mountain community.

In all seriousness, the prospect of exterminating a few thousand rabbits is an unpleasant one to be certain. It is by no means, however, an unfamiliar scenario in the annals of Alberta history.

Almost 90 years ago, an explosion in the southeastern Alberta rabbit population proved to be more than merely an inconvenience. Starting around 1924, multiplying rabbit populations began wreaking havoc all across the drought-ravaged southern dry belt. With crops, green feed and gardens under siege, the provincial government and farmers declared war on the rabbit, hoping to stop the insurgency, dead in its tracks.

The problem arose, in large part, due to the large-scale abandonment of farmland by drought-weary and destitute settlers following the First World War.  As homesteaders moved on, prodigious numbers of coyotes, gophers and rabbits took their place. Coyotes were especially keen to propagate, multiplying in such numbers that they soon began hunting in packs of several dozen, and adding livestock and poultry to their list of prey.

Settlers responded by slaughtering coyotes en masse. Lethbridge Herald contributor, Guri Opstad, wrote of one mercenary in the Kinnondale district, north of Enchant, who hunted “for several days… from morning until dusk, until [his] car was loaded with coyote pelts piled atop the greyhound cab and on the seat beside him.”

The merciless slaughter of coyotes left livestock and poultry populations in a less perilous position, and the sale of coyote pelts provided an additional source of income for cash-strapped farmers. The unnatural consequence of all this was that populations of coyote prey, especially rabbits, quickly multiplied. Soon the drybelt was teeming with rabbits that were decimating gardens, destroying crops, trees, or pretty much anything green or leafy they could get their teeth on.

The recollections from those who experienced the rabbit invasion may seem incredulous to us today, but serve to illustrate the true extent to which Mother Nature was on the offensive against the settler population.

Ethel McQuay recalled in Roads to Rose Lynn one winter morning in 1926 near Carolside (south of Hanna) when she witnessed “snow white rabbits walking slowly (not hopping) in single file, coming from the west as far as I could see… I watched off and on out the window all day and still they came until at dusk there were just a few stragglers. Where they came from, and where they went I’ll never know.”

David C. Jones, in his tremendous work, Empire of Dust, recounts the journal entry of Tide Lake homesteader, Arthur C. Ion, who on another occasion that same year counted “400 rabbits between his house and the well.” A later stampede by the rodent hordes, according to Ion, “sounded like a train going by.”

The Redcliff Review provided an anecdote from an anonymous gentleman in 1925 who encountered “what he thought in the distance was a flock of sheep” while on a drive through the Ronalane district, west of Redcliff:

“On approaching closer [he] found it to be a huge band of rabbits numbering at least a thousand… [t]hey were becoming so bold they went right into barn yards in massed formation and practically took possession.”

To combat the fuzzy menace, the province pulled a proverbial rabbit out of a hat, appointing an unlikely general, Redcliff resident and South African émigré, Philip Hamilton (P.H.) Wedderburn.

Wedderburn appears to have had little experience per se in the art of harvesting rabbits, save for his time as a farmer in the Harvest Vale district eight miles north of Redcliff. However, his capable conduct in overseeing relief feed and seed distribution and a campaign against grasshoppers in the dry areas, combined with his unflinching support of the U.F.A. government, convinced provincial officials he was the right man for the job.

The South African initiated the first rabbit drives in February 1925, as the critters were congregating in large groups to stave off the bitter cold. The provincial government supplied the materials needed, and the farmers took care of the rest. In return, farmers were permitted to keep the proceeds from the rabbits they destroyed to be used in whatever way they saw fit

Rabbit drives followed a particular sequence, usually involving the construction of a corral out of wire fence in advance, and the participation of numerous whooping and hollering men, women and children, spread out over several miles, and much clubbing and bludgeoning as the rabbits were herded towards their doom. (Mae L. Todd of the Vulcan-area provides a description of a typical rabbit drive from 1925 here; Harry Taylor from a 1925-26 Hand Hills area drive here.)

After starting in the Redcliff area, Wedderburn moved on to the Bow City district, where several thousand rabbits had moved in after all but a hardy few homesteaders had moved out. During a three-day period, Wedderburn’s charges destroyed 2, 360 rabbits around Bow City. A week later several thousand more were caught and killed on a farm near Lomond, with the carcasses burned or sold to fox ranchers.

Building on the previous year’s success, Wedderburn headed up another campaign in 1925-26 covering an area stretching from Brooks and Lomond, south to Manyberries, Whitla, Winnifred and Pakowki. The response from the general public was enthusiastic, and at the close of the winter of 1926, several thousand more rabbits had been exterminated.

As an added bonus, the local communities received a financial boost from the proceeds of their rabbit bounty. Residents of the Pakowki area built a hall with the money they raised. The farmers of the Purple Springs district received $188.46 for their efforts, and according to the Redcliff Review, praised Mr. Wedderburn for the “able and efficient manner in which he conducted the drive.”

With the return of wetter weather in 1927, and a modicum of prosperity, the pains of the previous decade were soothed somewhat. The respite was only brief, and within a few years, drought conditions would return, and so would increased populations of coyotes, rabbits and gophers.

As for Mr. Wedderburn, his days of combating rabbits were over. At the conclusion of the 1925-26 rabbit drive, he was placed in charge of the provincial Debt Adjustment Department in Edmonton, where he continued to serve farmers, very capably, before passing away in 1937.

A couple of exciting new initiatives have recently debuted which, had they existed in their current form five years ago, would have saved me a few trips up the QEII.

The Provincial Archives of Alberta and the University of Alberta have teamed up to digitize Alberta Homestead Records and place the on the web. Previously only available at the Provincial Archives of Alberta, these microfilm reels contain the documents related to Alberta homestead claims filed between 1870 and 1930. According to the Alberta Genealogical Society, these records normally include:

• An application for homestead
• An application for patent
• A notice that patent has been issued

And may also include other relevant information, including:

• Inspector’s reports
• Records of abandonment
• Handwritten letters
• Wills
• Naturalization certificates
• Scrip,
• Seed grain liens,
• Court
• Proceedings, etc.

When I did a search for my family records about five years ago, I found a veritable treasure trove of information  which provided me with a greater insight into my own family’s history. With these resources coming online, greater numbers of the genealogically curious, or Alberta farm families submitting their Century Farm Award application, will be able to conduct their research from home (dial-up could be iffy) or the local hot spot.

In order to search the Alberta Homestead Files, you will need to know the number of the file you are looking for. Never fear, as the Alberta Genealogical Society has several online databases containing this information, including the following:

• Index to Applications for Alberta Land Patents- 1885 to 1897
• Index to Alberta Homestead Records - 1870 to 1930
• Index to Alberta Homestead Records – post 1930 (work in progress)

Another ongoing U of A initiative, Peel’s Prairie Provinces, has been busy scanning the wealth of Alberta (and some Saskatchewan) newspapers contained within archival collections, and is placing them online. Included within their collections are several long-defunct southeastern Albertan newspapers:

• The Alderson News (1915–18; 134 issues)
• Bassano Herald (1955–58; 65 issues)
• Bassano Mail (1913–36; 847 issues)
• Bassano News (1910–14; 189 issues)
• Bassano Recorder (1937–45; 332 issues)
• Carlstadt News (1913–15; 122 issues)
• Carlstadt Progress (1911–12; 50 issues)
• Chinook Advance (1915–45; 1,279 issues)
• Empress Express (1913–36; 1,029 issues)
• Lomond Press (1916–28; 251 issues)
• Oyen News (1914–35; 839 issues)
• Redcliff Review (1910–40; 1,442 issues)
• Taber Free Press (1907–10; 122 issues)

Someone at the U of A deserves a medal for this initiative, which has proven invaluable to much of my research. One of the best things about Peel’s is the extremely user-friendly interface they use, with a tremendous OCR Text search that makes finding specific items a cinch. New issues are being added at a tremendous clip, so keep checking back to see what else is new on Peel’s.

In addition to Peel’s there are other online newspaper collections which contain titles from Alberta’s early days:

• Our Future Our Past – The Alberta Heritage Digitization Project – Includes back issues of the Empress Express, Medicine Hat News and the Youngstown Plaindealer
• Google News Archive Search – Includes Calgary publications the Herald, Daily Herald and Weekly Herald

Be sure to check out the resources page on this website for links to many other online digital resources

The Sentinel Trees - July 2011

Last summer, while researching the history of the village of Bow City, I came across an article referencing something called the “Sentinel Trees”. In a July 1984 Lethbridge Herald piece entitled “Cottonwoods among most favorite of trees”, the “Sentinel Trees” were described as a group of plains cottonwoods situated in the former Kinnondale district, north of Enchant.

Located on the homestead of American-born bachelor and farmer, Sherman Hewitt, the Sentinels were nominated for inclusion on the Alberta Forestry Association’s 1983 Honour Role of Alberta Trees by Mrs. Guri Opstad of Lethbridge. In the book, Alberta Trees of Renown – An Honour Roll of Alberta Trees, Mrs. Opstad, who passed away in 2009, provides some third-person recollections about the Sentinels, describing them as “a gift from the drylands to a girl of the Alberta Prairies”:

“At that time [1916-1923] the little girl’s Sentinel Trees were a landmark known to all the homesteaders for miles around the community. The little girl moved into a house built in 1904 by a wealthy philanthropist, carpenter and rancher of the Kinnondale area, formerly from California named Salisbury. The Salisbury house was directly across the fence from the Sentinel Trees. And neighbours used to tie their only child to one of the trees by their backyard gate to keep the little boy from wandering off…

Those enduring sentinels have lasted for four eras since they were planted by some enterprising immigrant during the heyday of the transient American ranchers. These men moved north from the United States for summer pasture to feed the growing herds of the western cattle kings but were later crowded out by the inrush of homesteaders. Through all this, the trees by the Salisbury house flourished on the drylands of Kinnondale, where no other trees existed at the time. As far as one could see in all directions, and the view was extensive, there were naught but the little girl’s Sentinel Trees, alone and superb…

Irrigation is shrinking the drylands of Kinnondale. As cattle have uprooted much of the Sentinels’ roots, they are giving way to time. Still standing on the open plain north of Enchant, these noble Sentinels certainly belong in a history of trees for they are surely among the hardiest of trees on the drylands of southern Alberta.”

Prior to discovering that article I had never heard members of my family, who have farmed in the former Kinnondale district for over a century, refer to something called the “Sentinel Trees”. When I discussed Ms. Opstad’s essay with my father, he recalled the Salisbury place, having driven past it with his father when he was younger. As I discovered, Oscar Salisbury’s prominent home remained a landmark in the area for years, even after its occupants had been driven out by drought during the desperate ‘20s. That was until sometime after 1950, when scavengers seeking weathered ornamental wood dismantled the Salisbury home and carted it away to the city. That kind of thing just happened back then, I guess.

As for the trees themselves, my father could not answer for certain whether they still existed or not. So in September 2010, I ventured north into the Lomond Grazing Lease to find out. It was a warm and windy day, and I quickly identified a homestead I assumed was the one referenced in the book.  I left, satisfied with what I had seen, only to discover upon my return home a few hours away that I taken pictures of another homestead. Therefore I vowed to return to the Lomond Lease the next time the opportunity presented itself again.

Having moved even further away during the winter, it wasn’t until last weekend that I was able to return. Arriving in the early afternoon, this time with my family in tow, we headed north up the Husky Gas Plant Rd., and then east, continuing past a massive Ducks Unlimited wetland, part of the Medicine Wheel Project (so-named for the nearby Majorville Medicine Wheel). Here we witnessed impressive numbers of wild fowl including ducks, sandpipers, and pelicans.

Pelicans and sandpipers mingle in wetlands created by Ducks Unlimited as a part of their Medicine Wheel Project.

Just beyond the wetland we reached a gravel approach about half-a-mile north of a large collection of carraganas. Not wishing to set the prairie ablaze with my car exhaust, I set out north on foot, dodging cacti, thistles and horse flies.  Emerging over a knoll the shelterbelt came completely into view, enclosed on all sides by four–strand barbed wire fence. I paused to take some photos, the location seemed to match the description I read in Alberta Trees of Renown. Having visited the only other shelterbelt within miles last fall, I concluded these must be the Sentinel Trees.

The Sentinel Trees c. 2011

What immediately stood out for me, other than the view, was the remarkably healthy condition of the carraganas running along the south fence line. Thanks to the efforts of the Lomond Grazing Association, these and other pioneer shelterbelts have been cordoned off from the cattle grazing at large in the surrounding lease. The result has been to preserve the surviving trees and bushes, which have flourished in the recent wet years.

As for the cottonwood “Sentinels” pictured in Alberta Trees of Renown, the news wasn’t so good. It appeared only one from the 1986 picture remained, the second much healthier one (possibly an offshoot of the first). However, with the moisture of the past five years, there is hope these trees, and possibly more, will be revived, and the Sentinels will stand tall again. I would have to concur with Mrs. Opstad that those trees which remain are surely among the hardiest to be found anywhere on the plains.

The last of the Sentinel Trees

For over a century the Sentinel Trees have endured. Recognized for their beauty and their value as a landmark, today they serve an even greater purpose – to provide a glimpse into a past that has all but disappeared. Hopefully they will endure.

If you haven’t caught it, Ms. Miller has been afforded the opportunity to meet William and Kate (no word on whether they will henceforth be known as “Wate” or “Killiam”) when they visit Alberta later this summer.

The opportunity arose after the tale of Ms. Miller, and her brush with royalty as a young girl, was adopted by a sympathetic journalist in Medicine Hat and received widespread publicity.

According to a Calgary Herald article on the same subject, Ms. Miller (then Miss Vockeroth) was one of many locals who had gathered at the train station in Walsh in the Spring of 1939 to greet King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, who were in the midst of a Royal Tour of Canada:

In 1939, little Frances Vockeroth stood at a small-town train station, clutching a bouquet of flowers.

Freshly scrubbed in a summer dress, her hair curled prettily, the nine-year-old waited for the Royal train to arrive.

King George VI and Queen Elizabeth were on board, travelling through Alberta on a royal tour. Frances had been chosen among classmates at her Walsh, Alta., school to present the couple with flowers.

When the big day came, the train rumbled up to the station where the little girl waited among a crowd of royal watchers, holding a bouquet almost half her size.

But the train chugged on by.

“The train continued to move on. The King came out when it was just about passed the crowd and stood there and waved, but the train just kept on moving,” recalls Frances, whose last name is now Miller. “Everyone was pretty disappointed.”

Upon reading of Ms. Miller’s childhood experience, I was reminded of a similar tale relating the royal experience of the people of Alderson in David C. Jones’ excellent work, Empire of Dust.

Much like the people of Walsh, residents of the Alderson (a former village located along the C.P.R. mainline roughly half-way between Brooks and Medicine Hat) and the surrounding area had gathered at Alderson station, hoping to catch a glimpse of the royals. As Jones relates, about sixty-or-so of the locals, some of whom waited in the hot sun for hours, had been informed the train would slow down, and that the King and Queen were appear at the rear of the train, waving as they went by. While only a fleeting glimpse, the locals, particularly Kate Cole, and English ex-pat Charlotte Cotter, were “positively ecstatic” about the opportunity to greet the royals.

Unfortunately, their experience turned out every bit as disappointing as that of the people of Walsh:

“…[t]he Royal coach chugged out of Suffield half an hour late. At last [the people of Alderson] saw the pilot train approaching, and spirits were lifted…[a]t top speed , the pilot flew by, followed by the Royal train with blinds drawn. The velocity was so great that one stunned observed claimed he could not even see the blue and silver of the coaches. Among the perspiring and jilted mob that day, few were as let down and bruised in soul as the two aging ladies, Kate Cole and Charlotte Cotter. Summoning all her reserve and all her monarchist sympathies, Charlotte spoke for the two- “Well that is that, and God bless them anyway.”