by Dorthea Calverley Note: “Thomas” is the Anglicized form of the original family name.”  Every pioneer community has a “first settler”. Recognition of Dawson Creek’s own notable earliest comer appears in an unexpected place — the 1897 report of Inspector J.D. Moodie, of the Northwest Mounted Police. It is not, as you might surmise, because… Read More

by Dorthea Calverley When Inspector Moodie of the North West Mounted Police arrived in Fort St. John in 1897 with a party to cut “The Mounted Police Trail” to the Yukon, his journal mentioned Napoleon Thomas. Thomas, he said, was “reputed to be the best hunter around here”. “Here” was the territory tributary to the… Read More

by Dorthea Calverley Nominally the price of land in the homesteading days in the Peace was ten dollars a quarter section. That was the “filing fee”. The cost of land was something quite different. The would-be owner must have cleared and broken thirty acres. He must have built a house. He must have “lived on the… Read More

by Mary Lundquist Preface: This is a straight forward account of conditions in the Arras District from 1930. It establishes the names of early settlers. The Murphy referred to in this story had a large house and barn where the Old Hart Highway joins the new one west of Dawson Creek. The place was known… Read More

W. J. Streeper and family began this community in the spring of 1919. Mr. Streeper and his oldest son Barney came in the summer of 1918 to look for land. They lived in Mickey Shubert’s log cabin that winter and sent for his two boys, Woods and Donald. They came in April 1919, coming via… Read More

by Marjorie Coutts Step by step the Peace River Block had been prepared for settlers. In 1912 the influx began. The people who came had heard or read of the fertile lands that could be won for the $10 homestead registration fee and compliance with residence regulations. They took this opportunity gladly, disregarding the long… Read More

by Marion Parker (ca. 1970) Although I am a comparative newcomer myself…15 years…I arrived here in time to see and make the acquaintance of some of the old timers. I shall never cease to be grateful for this. They were in a class by themselves. The history of the Peace River country would not be… Read More

by Mary C. Boughen [ca. 1970] The people of southern British Columbia love to laud their province as the Canadian Garden of Eden. They boast about their mild climate, their roses in December, their beaches, their hunting and fishing and their breath-taking scenery. They moan and complain over the winter rains, without which the rich… Read More

by Dorthea Calverley No day passes [ca. 1970] that we do not hear at least one reference to the housing shortage and we think of the scorn expressed by an old-timer about the helpless humans we have become. George Robinson of Sexsmith had grown up in one of those country houses in England, where his… Read More

 Slightly Abridged from Interview:Ray Newby and Dorthea CalverleyR.N. They used to fly fish out of Rocky Mountain Lake. D.C. I have a fish story that was told to me by Ivor Johnson. I think it was Jake Smith, who ran the East Pine ferry, who told Ivor that he once caught a fish up there… Read More