Sources: North from Edmonton, The Northern Alberta
Railways, Keith Hansen, MA; Peace River Remembers; Oxford Dictionary)
PRMA2008.056.004 - view of the warehouse district from the river
c. 1920s.
In the early years of Peace River, there was an area
of town on the east side of the river referred to as the Warehouse District in
which many businesses and industry resided close to the Peace River –
convenient to river transportation.
In the original plan of April 7, 1921, corrected
April 30, 1952, as seen in Keith Hansen’s North
From Edmonton, The Northern Alberta Railways, there are at least 13
businesses south of the railway bridge. Among them: Palace Transfer, Midland
and Pacific Grain Corp. Ltd.(2), Dominion Fruit Ltd., Alberta Pool Elevators,
Canadian Propane, J. H. Ashdowne
Hardware Co. Ltd., BA Oil Co. Ltd., Consolidated Fruit Ltd., Hudson’s Bay Co.,
Ogilvie Flour Mill Co. Ltd., Horne and Pitfield, and Marshall Wells Warehouse.
Let’s look into the history of Palace Transfer. In
October of 1928, Tony Tretick arrived in Peace River from Saskatchewan to buy
Palace Transfer, a dray business, which used a low truck or horse-drawn cart to
deliver freight – barrels, heavy equipment and such. At the time, he had two drays
with teams of horses for each. The company’s warehouse was near the railway
bridge on the east side of the tracks.
Tony sold Palace
Transfer in 1941 and started a new trucking business – Tony’s Truck Service,
which hauled freight for many years to Keg River, Hay Lakes and Fort Vermilion.
He only hauled in winter, as the trails were impossibly impassable in the
summer. The Peace River – Fort Vermilion trip took three days at the best of
times. Needing summer work, Tony started farming at Fort Vermilion in 1947 and
sold the trucking business to the Stranaghan brothers in 1967.
