Public Input for Updated 12 Foot Davis Grave Site Invited

The Government of Alberta, Northern Sunrise County and the Town of Peace River have partnered together to update the site around the 12 Foot Davis grave site including also the Dr. Greene Cairn and the Peace River Provincial Recreation Area. Tonight (January 27, 2010) there will be an Open House inviting the public to give their input on the proposed upgrades to the site. The Museum will also be on hand to pass along historical information about 12 Foot Davis, the grave site (see photograph below for original headstone) and of Dr. Greene as well.

The Open House will run for 4-8 pm at the Belle Petroleum Centre (www.bpcentre.ca/Contact.html).

Alternatively, you can go online to www.tpr.alberta.ca/parks/consult/. The link for the 12 Foot Davis park is near the bottom. Here you can view the different concepts and a map of the sites to be upgraded. There is also a online survey form where you can give your input. The deadline for giving input is set at March 26, 2010.

EDIT (January 27): Please accept my apologies for the error in this blog. The Open House was at the Provincial Building in Peace River and not the Belle Petroleum Centre.

Digitized Newspapers Available at Peace River Archives

The Peace River Museum, Archives and Mackenzie Centre has recently embarked on a project to digitize its collection of Peace River Pilot, Peace River Record, Peace River Standard, Northern Gazette and Peace River Record Gazette. The project is complete and available to researchers on-site at the Archives. The digitized collection includes the Peace River Pilot from 1910, the Peace River Record from 1914-1943, the Peace River Standard from 1917-1922, the Northern Gazette from 1932-1939 and the Peace River Record Gazette from 1943-1983.

The collection has been made into OCR (optical character recognition) pdfs which allows users to do searches by keyword or by date(s). Reproductions of specific articles for private research only are available at a cost of 35c per page.

This project will be of great benefit to all researchers allowing for easier searching and also protecting the microfilmed collection from deterioration from use. For more information, please call the Peace River Museum and Archives at (780) 624-4261 or email us at museum@peaceriver.net.

Making Their Mark

Our new travelling exhibit from the Land Surveyors Association has officially been launched! "Making Their Mark: The land surveyors role in the peaceful and orderly development of Alberta" is a wonderful exhibit which combines text, photographs and artifacts to bring to life the experiences of the early Dominion Land Surveyors all the way up to what surveying is like today. It includes a full sized tent showing the tools and supplies of an early surveyor. On display from the Museum's collection are rocks and fossils from Dr. F.H. Sutherland, an avid collector of Peace River's history.

Thank you to everyone who came out to our exhibit launch, to Ross Metcalfe for helping to host the opening event and to our local ALS members for helping to set up the display.

"Making Their Mark" will be on display until March 30, 2010

Happy Christmas and a Merry New Year!

The Peace River Museum, Archives and Mackenzie Centre would like to wish you a very happy holiday season. We also extend a huge thank you to all of our volunteers, members and donors that have helped the Museum and Archives continue to grow and preserve the history of Peace River.

Our Christmas hours are:
Dec. 26 - Open (10 - 4:30 pm)

Dec. 27 - Closed

Dec. 28-31 - Open (10 - 4:30 pm)

Jan. 1 - Closed

Jan. 2 - back to regular hours (Monday - Saturday, 10 am - 4:30 pm)

Happy 90th Birthday Peace River!

On December 1st, 1919, Peace River became a town. Here we are 90 years later celebrating the contributions made by so many people even before the inauguration of our township. Along with the wonderful work Beth Wilkins has been doing in the newspaper and on CKYL, here are some of the highlights of Peace River's history:

1792-93 - Sir Alexander Mackenzie winters at Fort Fork

1877 - After moving their post up and down the rivers near

the junction of Peace and Smoky, the Hudson's Bay

Company moves their post where the Town of Peace River

now stands.

1886 - The Anglican Church sets up the first mission on

Shaftesbury Trail

1888 - The Roman Catholic Church sets up St. Augustine

mission on Shaftesbury Trail

1898 - The North West Mounted Police make a permanent

post at Peace River Crossing
1903 - The St. Charles is the first steamboat on the Peace

1906 - Allie Brick becomes Peace River's first MLA

1909 - Peace River's townsite is surveyed

1912 - Peace River's first public school opens

1911 - Peace River holds its first agricultural show

1914 - First meeting of the Village council

1914 - Peace River's first hospital, the Irene Cottage Hospital,

opens

1916 - Railway trestle over the Heart River is completed

1917 - The Peace River Women's Institute is organized

1918 - Railway bridge is completed

1919 - Peace River is incorporated as a town

1926 - Constable Burstall and Louis Bourass complete a census

of the area

1930 - The Peace River Municipal Hospital opens

1932 - Peace River holds its first Stampede and Rodeo

1935 - Pat's Creek floods it's banks

1942 - The U.S. Army moves into Peace River in preperation

for builing the Canol Pipeline

1954 - CKYL opens

1958 - Peace River floods

1965 - The Peace River Auxiliary Hospital opens

1967 - The Peace River Centennial Museum opens

1968 - Peace River's traffic bridge is completed

1968 - Peace River Correctional Centre opens

1972 - Peace River floods

1992-93 - The bicentennial anniversary of Sir Alexander

Mackenize's journey is celebrated

1997 - Peace River floods

2004 - Peace River hosts the Alberta Summer Games

2009 - Peace River celebrates its 90th Anniversary

Peace River Remembers, Book 2 - Submission Deadline Extended!

As many of you have probably heard, the Sir Alexander Mackenzie Historical Society is publishing "Peace River Remembers" Book 2 and is inviting anyone who has called Peace River home to submit their stories for publication. The society is also looking for those who would be willing to write stories for the various businesses, social clubs, schools, religious organizations and sports groups in Peace River. Please see http://www.peacerivermuseum.com/ for more information on what stories are needed, ideas to get you started writing your story and how to submit it once it is finished.

The original deadline for submissions of November 30, 2009 has been extended to January 15, 2010!

Remembering Our Veterans

This past Remembrance Day, the Museum created an archival exhibit to honour the veterans of our town who served. The exhibit includes copies of newspaper clippings from the wars with various details, mainly from the the World Wars. Also as part of the exhibit we have digitzed a series of World War I postcards and put together an album of these. They depict various scenes from the rubble of destroyed buildings, the exodus of civilians from threatened cities and burying of soldiers on the front lines. The postcards show in vivid detail the reality of war and its effects on our land and peoples.

One of the important projects that the Museum and Archives has been working on over the past year or so in concert with the Legion is to create a comprehensive list of the veterans from this area, past and present. We have a copy of our current list in this exhibit and would welcome additions to the list. If you have information regarding veterans or those currently serving in our forces, please contact the Museum at (780) 624-4261 or email us at museum@peaceriver.net.

Uniformity: The Uniforms of Peace River

"Uniformity: The Uniforms of Peace River" will be running until December 15, 2009

A uniform often conjures up images of conformity, authority or identity. The early history of the European settlement of Canada is often characterized by those who were seeking to cast off the conformity and rules of the culture they were living in. They sought the adventure and freedom in the wilds of a new land and sacrificed many comforts in order to have that freedom.

All of these groups wore particular clothing in order to identify their authority or even just their state of belonging to a particular group. In this exhibit, the Museum is seeking not only to simply show those uniforms but to inspire us to consider our own viewpoints on authority, conformity, and identity. We invite visitors to examine their personal reactions to the way in which our society has enforced order, promoted identity and a sense of belonging using what is, in its basic state, a piece of cloth. As settlement marched westward and more and more people arrived on the land, the types and personalities of those settlers became more varied. The human inclination to organize and form social structure began to rise once again. This tendency plays out in various ways, from the moral values brought in by the missionaries, to the legal order established by the North West Mounted Police. It can be found on a national level, such as military authorities, or on a smaller scale, such as the social groups which were formed in order to build a sense of community or to teach children about their culture.

The Long Awaited Part II of the saga of the René and the Vic

René and Vic
Part 2
(Source: Northward Into the Bush and Snow 1919-1929; notes of Elmer G. Fullerton one of – Pioneer Flying in the Canadian Sub-Arctic, one of the pilots; files of the Peace River Museum, Archives and Mackenzie Centre)

As promised, this second in the series of René (G-CADQ) and Vic (G-CADP) – two versatile German Junkers all-metal monoplanes will feature the plight of pilots Elmer G. Fullerton and George Washington Gorman; mechanic William Hill; engineer S. (Pete) Derbyshire and others they met along the way.
We left the newly-named René and Vic and their crews on the tarmac of the Municipal Airport in Edmonton prior to their initial flight north to the sub-Arctic in 1921. The town of Peace River was their base.
Fullerton writes in his notes that they decided on a route along the Peace River to within 40 miles of Fort Vermilion – north-north-westerly across country to the Upper Hay River; along the Hay River to Great Slave Lake; across the south-western portion of Great Slave Lake to the mouth of the Mackenzie River; thence along the Mackenzie River to Fort Simpson and Fort Norman. The total distance was a little more than 800 miles.
The availability of fuel was in question. Thus, no advanced arrangements could be made for refueling. There was, however, credible information to suggest that trading posts along the way would have an adequate supply of motor-boat gasoline and oil. The concern, though, was for the first part of the route as far as Great Slave Lake. Consequently, the crews established a fuel cache about midpoint on the Upper Hay River.
As they were about to take off, an RCMP officer approached them with a note from Imperial Oil’s head office to take Sgt. Thorne, who had “mushed” out by dog team with a prisoner and was not looking forward to mushing back. He hitched a ride with them as far as Fort Simpson.
The two planes and crew took off from the Peace River aerodrome at 9 a.m., March 24, 1921, for ‘points north’. The day looked promising, but about 100 miles out it began to deteriorate. This meant a route change, which took them to Fort Vermilion. A short while later, they landed in a field near the Hudson’s Bay Company trading post where they were able to fill the planes’ tanks, but were unable to take off because of a blizzard. They were forced to stay the night.
A couple of days later they continued their journey, eventually making it to Fort Providence where they encountered snow so deep they could not gain enough speed to take off. After a couple of attempts, they returned to their starting point from which the five men and some locals on snowshoes tamped down the snow sufficiently to support the aircrafts’ skis. They were off now for Fort Simpson.
“Here, real trouble was encountered,” writes Fullerton. The violently uneven ice on the Mackenzie precluded their landing on that surface. They sought an alternative on a field at the edge of the settlement. “The Vic landed satisfactorily, but as the René was landing, one of her skis suddenly broke through the heavy crust of snowdrift, smashing the skis and breaking the propeller.”
No one was injured.
The pilots and crew later confirmed that about a mile south on a small subsidiary channel or “snye” of the Mackenzie, the ice was free of hummocks and would likely afford better landing conditions. They flew the Vic there to take off for Fort Norman alone with René out of commission. But, on the way, the Vic did not sound quite right. The conclusion – she would need a major overhaul before continuing.
The situation – the René had a broken propeller and ski – the Vic had engine problems. Plan – transfer the propeller and skis from Vic to René and fly René to Fort Norman. Changes were made – aircraft loaded – ready for takeoff – on their way. No! The René stalled at about 50 feet in the air. Crashed. People aboard were shaken.
The René, on the other hand, was damaged – broken propeller, slightly damaged wing and damaged undercarriage. “By an amazing bit of luck, the Vic’s ski was found to be the only part of the undercarriage which was practically undamaged.”
What to do?
The next in the series will tell about how the men and planes escaped from this dilemma.