By Dorthea Horton CalverleyThe Editor, Canadian Geographic Dear Sir: Concerning the Names and Places column on pronunciation (CG Aug/Sept ‘85): In the 50 years I have lived within six miles of the village of Pouce Coupe, BC, I have never heard it called ‘POOS-koop’ by anyone who wasn’t clowning. No well-mannered person would ever introduce… Read More

By Esme Tuck, ca 1955CHAPTER ONE High on the hilly slope above the river which shares her name sits the smiling little village of Pouce Coupe. Grit, endurance and enterprise put her there. At times, in summer the Chinook races madly over the golden heads of wheat and barley in her surrounding fair and fertile… Read More

By Mabel Lillian HarperOur first Christmas in Pouce Coupe was spent at the homestead, one mile from the present Kilkerran Hall. Pouce Coupe at that time was not just the village — rather the whole country was called the Pouce Coupe Prairie, with as yet no villages at all in existence. We arrived in the… Read More

East Pouce Coupe, or Briar Ridge, as it later became called is a small district bounded on the south by hills, on the east by the Alberta Boundary and on the west by the Pouce Coupe River and Bear Creek. The first land was taken in 1914 when Sam and Jack Suffern took homesteads and… Read More

Mr. Charles Kitchen came over the Edson Trail to Grande Prairie, Alberta in 1911 and filed on a homestead site. For two years he drove the mail from Grande Prairie to Sturgeon Lake. However as a young man in the army, he took up the trade of printing while stationed in India. So in 1913… Read More

If we traveled through the farm country of the B.C. Peace River District today, we would see the gently swelling contours of the fields in wide expanse down valleys to distant hills; the beautiful clear blue or many coloured sky against hill, summer fallow or cropped fields. We would wonder how this country appeared to… Read More

From information provided by Mr. and Mrs. Ben Miller and Mrs. H.W. Berge, 1957 Tim O’Callaghan was one of the earliest settlers who homesteaded in the Lake View district. He was on a survey party which surveyed most of the land in the Peace River Block. He did a lot of custom breaking around the… Read More

In 1911 the south part of the Doe Creek District of the Peace Block was surveyed and thrown open for settlers. Although a few settlers arrived soon after, it was not until after World War I that any number of them arrived. The Pollard Brothers (Jim and Wes) were the first settlers in the district… Read More

Information from the Bessborough Women’s Institute The District of Bessborough is situated approximately fourteen miles north and west of Dawson Creek. It is bounded on the north by Sunrise Valley, on the south by Devereaux and on the west by the Kiskatinaw River. The original name of our district was Willowbrook. The first settler in… Read More

By Mrs. W.W. Willis in January, 1957 The first soil cultivated was a garden put in by the first settlers, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Murphy in 1919. They grew potatoes, carrots and turnips. Now we grow most vegetables, but there are still only a few in the district that can grow tomatoes and corn because… Read More