South Peace Historical Society

    • Home
    • About / Contact Us
    • About Dorthea Horton
    • About This Collection
    • Bibliography
    • Brief History of the Peace
    • Credits
    • South Peace Historical Society Archives (External Link)
  • Table of Contents

    • Part 1: First Nations of the Peace River Region
    • Part 2: The Fur Trade Era
    • Part 3: Transportation and Communication
    • Part 4: Old Timers and the Price of Land
    • Part 5: Dawson Creek: The Story of the Community
    • Part 6: Mysteries, Adventures and Indian Legends
    • Part 7: Arts, Crafts and Recreation
    • Part 8: Agriculture
    • Part 9: Church Histories
    • Part 10: Schools
    • Part 11: Health Care
    • Part 12: Industries and Enterprises
    • Part 13: Policing the Peace
    • Part 14: Pouce Coupe, Rolla, and Other South Peace Communities
    • Part 15: Chetwynd and the Fort St. John Area
    • Part 16: The Alberta Peace
    • Part 17: Natural History of the Peace River Region
    • Part 18: Interviews with Old Timers
    • Part 19: Remembering Our Veterans

  •  

16-018: From Edmonton to Pouce Coupe

Cross-posted: 14-031: From Edmonton to Pouce Coupe

Five hundred miles through Canada’s newest west – a province in itself
This article is taken from the Family Herald and Weekly Star, Aug 19, 1925

By our Special Commissioner

Peace River Valley had its genesis as a settlement in the Klondike gold rush. In their efforts to discover an overland route to the Yukon, miners and would-be miners discovered that the plateaus north and south of the Peace River and the valleys along its tributaries were suitable for settlement by white men and of an extent that entirely baffled may of them in their attempt to reach the gold fields.

Disappointed in their hope of quick riches in the Klondike, unable or unwilling to turn back, a number of them settled in the country and formed the advance guard of what are now settled communities at different points in this great territory.

Their story and the story of those that came after them would provide a miniature history of the settlement of Canada as a nation, except that it was accomplished without the warfare, bloodshed and massacres that marked the early dawn of Canadian civilization. Its agricultural features were much the same. Houses had to be hewn from the bush, minor crops of grain sown, supplies packed in over the roughest of trails, etc., and, as with the first visitors to Canadian shores, poor provision for winters led to scurvy and other troubles in the case of greenhorns not familiar with the necessity of a varied diet. Many hardships were endured before those early adventurers developed their farms to even a moderate basis of self-support.

What a contrast today when the Peace River, with its 25,000 odd settlers, sends out thousands of bushels of wheat, oats and barley; hundreds of beef cattle, hogs and fowl; ships butter and eggs by the carload and can provide ample supplies of vegetables and small fruits for the settlers’ own use – just as Canada, as a whole, once dependent on the Mother Country for supplies, now acts as the granary for the Empire.

It was to study at first-hand the development that had made this production possible, and to gain for the Family Herald readers of other provinces an idea of the future possibilities of this “New West,” that I boarded the train at Edmonton and headed North.

Edmonton the only Gateway
Edmonton as yet is the only gateway by rail to this great province. And so long is the road and so light the traffic, that only two trains a week cover the 422 miles to Wembley and return. They leave Mondays and Thursdays and get back Wednesdays and Saturdays, and take plenty of time along the road.

Withal it is an agreeable journey. The trains carry Pullmans but no diner. It is said that when the C.P.R. first leased the line, they ran a new diner over the route “once”. It returned without a single window left intact. Since then passengers get their meals at restaurants, “cafes,” as they are blithely labelled along the route. “Twenty-five minutes for breakfast at McLennan,” says the porter, and you anticipate a lively scramble. But you have reckoned without the lunch server. Two minutes to the café, one to hang up your hat and coat and grab a chair. Before you can pull up to the table a huge platter of ham and eggs appears over your shoulder, lands deftly between the knife and fork already placed for service, and a voice in your ear says “tea or coffee, sir?”

Ten minutes later you pay your bill, saunter out to the platform and find your train split in two. One luggage car and passenger coach goes north, 71 miles to Whitelaw, 25 miles north of the Peace. Another train, with a Pullman and two coaches, travels nearly due West 95 miles to Spirit River, backs up five miles to Rycroft, crosses the outgoing train there and then travels southwest 48 miles to Grande Prairie and 12 more to Wembley, the latter a new terminal point to which the railway has only been extended within the last two or three years.

It is a twenty-six hour run from Edmonton, two hours of which were spent crossing the Smoky River, three miles in actual distance between adjacent points, but necessitating a journey of 20 miles to get there. This is the toll imposed by the Smoky, too wide with its valley to bridge at the desired point and requiring the twenty-mile detour to obtain passable grades.

Only a Corner Tapped
The trip in is well designed to make the traveller appreciate the great distances this country covers, for with all its 422 miles of trackage the railway just taps one corner of the total area of the Peace Valley.

One must go at least 150 miles West from Wembley before striking the Rockies, 200 south to the Canadian National through Jasper Park, and North? Well, no one yet knows how far North Canada’s wheat lands run. Fort Vermilion is about 150 miles north of Peace River Crossing and wheat has been ripened there for years. To say the least, the Peace River area is a vast expanse of territory. W.D. Albright, who has conducted careful experiments at Beaverlodge since 1913, and has travelled over a lot of the territory himself, says there are 30,000,000 acres there awaiting settlement. After covering nearly 1,000 miles of it by rail and motor car, I, for one, am ready to take his opinion. The million or so seen personally are certainly a wonderfully fine sample.

But it is a country still in the raw. Its railway as suggested is a pioneer railway, built and operated in the face of unbelievable handicaps through miles of bush and territory not yet producing a ton of freight and with grades that on the North line prohibit more than two or three cars of wheat at a trip.

Grande Prairie
The newness is not so apparent at Grande Prairie, which for some years was the end of the line, and in the halcyon days of the big rush in 1919, was a town of about 2,000 population. Since then it has dropped back slightly with the extension to Wembley, but it is still the business centre for all the Grande Prairie district and will some day resume a normal growth that will make for greater permanency and stability than the hectic building of the earlier boom. Wembley, the end of the line, is new. Newer than towns or villages 65 miles away that have no railway connection. It provides the station, post office and store, of the crossroads centre common to both east and west.

At Beaverlodge, 12 miles west again, the crossroads centre is repeated, but here the well-tilled plots and substantial buildings established under agreement between Mr. Albright and the Dominion Department of Agriculture, differ but little in appearance from the other stations of the experimental farms’ system. The work being done there by Mr. Albright, some of which – notably the haying operations – have been described in previous issues, is a story in itself and will be treated as such. The farm lies, however, on a long, gradually rising slope, very typical of much of the land in the Grande Prairie and Pouce Coupe sections. It is really part of the valleys of the Beaverlodge and Wapiti rivers that join nearby and form the drainage outlets for the district.

Beaverlodge to Pouce Coupe
Motoring from Beaverlodge to Pouce Coupe one passes a succession of those sloping valley lands before striking the more hilly country that surrounds Pouce Coupe. This trip I was able to take through the kindness of Mr. E.J. Lyne, owner of a local packing plant in Grande Prairie, and in the company of Professor J.R. Fryer, of the University of Alberta, and Mr. E.C. Stacey, assistant to Mr. Albright at Beaverlodge.

On the way we passed the Lee and Borden Ranch and the Gundy Ranch, the latter operated by two Toronto businessmen and comprising a leasehold of 33,000 acres. At this time, in common with many ranches in the west, cattle holding are small, the present range herds containing only 600 head of Herefords and Shorthorns. For miles the road through the ranches passes by nothing but poplar and spruce bush with an occasional opening to pasture lands or small areas of crop. Yet the road is well travelled by the trucks and cars plying between Pouce Coupe and Grande Prairie with their loads of hogs, butter, eggs, and wheat going out and mail, store-goods and general supplies coming in. No less than four trucks are on the road between these points, we were informed, travelling almost night and day when the roads are good.

Pouce Coupe like many of the towns in Western Canada is laid out with ample room to grow. Montreal’s Bleury Street traffic could manoeuvre freely in the main street, but it has an up to date hospital, a commercial hotel, bank, school, church, mill, police barracks, land office and all the appurtenances of a thriving pioneer town. Incidentally it is in British Columbia, but has to do all its correspondence with Victoria by way of Edmonton, a decidedly roundabout route.

A Busy Centre 
Mr. C. Johnson, manager of the local branch of the Bank of Commerce, took the party in charge for a tour of the district and provided a few figures. Pouce Coupe is the business centre for about 400 farmers who between them shipped out 17 cars of hogs last February and averaged about two cars a week up to the middle of July this year. One man alone sent out a carload of baby beef last spring and the nearby creamery is making and shipping 1,500 to 1,800 pounds of butter a week. On this the manager was able to get a score of 93 to 95, after sending it 100 miles by truck and 400 miles by rail to Edmonton.

Several of the biggest hog breeders were visited, one of whom has had 29 selects out of 60 hogs marketed and is breeding 10 sows this year. Another had 250 pigs last summer. On the way back a call on the local drover, Mr. Bullen, of Dawson Creek, brought the information that over 100 cars of livestock had left the district since last November – 70 cars of cattle and more than 30 of hogs. He had himself taken out 19 carloads in one trip on May 28, and most of the cattle, he stated, were grain fed stock.

Dawson Creek
It was at Dawson Creek that we found we had just missed by a day or two the local rodeo. Professor Ottewell, director of the Extension Department, University of Alberta, whom we met on our way back to Edmonton, told Professor Fryer and myself that it was the best two days’ entertainment he had had in a long while. He is some little entertainer himself, so he should know. In fact he modestly admitted that his “show”, as he termed it, proved so popular with the Dawson Creek people that he had to stay over a day and repeat it.

“They did not know quite what to expect,” said Professor Ottewell. “They were not sure whether it was a movie, a lecture, or a talk on education, and I did not tell them in advance.” He never does, and I don’t know yet what the lecture (or movie) was about.

From Dawson Creek we motored back to Beaverlodge and I accompanied Mr. Lyne to Grande Prairie – 250 miles and a dozen stops in eighteen hours, four hours’ sleep and a fresh start with Mr. A.R. Judson, agricultural representative of the district, for Waterhole and Berwyn, north of the Peace. But that is another story.

C.H.H.

« 16-017: The Town of Peace River

© 2023 South Peace Historical Society. All Rights Reserved.