A grooved stone maul. A prehistoric object, found on many continents, made by grinding or pecking the groove to attach a handle. An incredibly labor-intensive activity taking many hours to complete.
In Alberta, stone mauls were used for thousands of years. One maul was found in an archaeological site dating over 10,000 years in Alberta (Fedyniak and Giering, 2016). Unfortunately very few mauls are found in an archaeological context, allowing accurate dating. There is currently no known change in their shape and/or size through time. And, these mauls mainly occur on the southern prairies and not further north.
In the mid-1970s, while out hunting in southern Saskatchewan, I picked up this grooved stone maul in a cultivated field near the edge of a slough. The maul is made from a coarse granitic stone. This one is about 11cm high and 10cm wide. It weighs 1.3kg (2.8lbs). The groove goes almost all the way around the maul, but gets shallower on one side. The groove is about 15mm wide and 5mm deep. One side of the maul has been damaged, either through use or when hit by a farm implement.
Considerable chunk missing on one side of the maul. There is a thin, deep cut line at one edge of the fracture. Possibly made by a cultivator blade rolling over the maul, breaking off a piece.
Close-up view showing the grove in the maul that is polished and smoothed and not as rough as the rest of the stone.
At the time my buddies gathered around to see what I’d found. I confidently stated it was a grooved maul. First Nations people made and used them for pounding things.
How could anyone know so much about a seemingly foreign-looking object by just picking it up and looking at it? Good question. There’s nothing really obvious about the maul to give us a clue what it was used for. Is there? Most people would have walked right by it without even noticing it was a tool.
One method to discover the function of an object is to closely examine it. I looked at both the distal and proximal polls. The proximal poll (smaller end) contained small surface indentations and pocking from use. The distal poll showed smoothed areas, possibly from grinding. It was also slightly flattened from use. Likely from pounding or grinding things. More sophisticated methods, such as microscopic use-wear analysis, would reveal even more about how these abrasions were made.
The base of the proximal poll of the grooved maul, showing indentations and pocking from pounding.
The base of the distal poll showing a combination of indentations but also smoothing on some grains, possibly from grinding something.
Another method we use to determine the function of an object are historic references and ethnographic sources. If an object was used in a certain manner historically, then it was also possibly used in the same way thousands of years ago. This is known as ethnographic analogy. It can be dangerous and it’s always best to use multiple lines of evidence before determining the function of an object.
In his journals explorer David Thompson mentioned First Nations women used stone hammers to smash up deadwood from the trees. According to early ethnographers, “The hammers were of two sorts: one quite heavy, almost like a sledge-hammer or maul, and with a short handle: the other much lighter, and with a longer, more limber handle. This last was used by men in war as a mace or war club, while the heavier hammer was used by women as an axe to break up fallen trees for firewood; as a hammer to drive tent-pins into the ground, to kill disabled animals, or to break up heavy bones for the marrow they contained.” (Grinnell, G. B. 1892. Blackfoot Lodge Tails; The Story of a Prairie People. Scribner, New York.)
This rare photograph of a Northwest Coast Kwakiutl warrior shows a rather larger, fearsome looking stone hand maul near his right arm. Northwest Coast First Nations peoples made a very sophisticated array of ground stone tools. The shapes and varieties of these mauls are considerably different than those used by people on the Canadian prairies. (From Hilary Stewart, 1973. Artifacts of the Northwest Coast Indians. Hancock House Publishers.)
There are other ways to determine the function of an object, which I discuss in later posts. However, first we have to talk about how these mauls were made. Based on ethnographic sources and examination of the stone hammer, the groove was made by patiently pecking, or grinding away at the stone with another preferably harder stone.
The question I often ask myself is why would anyone go through all the trouble to make a stone grooved maul to pound berries, meat and other things, when you can just pick up a suitable rock and use it to pound something, then discard it when you’re finished? You wouldn’t want to carry this object too far. My colleague, Robert Dawe, Royal Alberta Museum tells me that people used the mauls at campsites and left them there when they move. The mobile Kalahari bushmen did the same thing with their heavy metal axes.
There are a few possible reasons for carrying a maul with a hafted handle permanently: 1) warfare and defense; 2) it had sacred or symbolic meaning and was used in ceremonies; and, 3) it created more leverage and force. The American ethnographer George Bird Grinnell described an old Blackfoot man’s attempts to heal a sick child. He instructed two women to sit near the doorway of the tipi facing each other. “Each one held a puk-sah-tchis, [a maul] with which she was to beat in time to the singing” (Grinnell 1892:163) (In (Fedyniak and Giering, 2016).
A hafted grooved stone maul from rawhide and wood. A handle on this stone maul would create more leverage and force. The author of this post said it took about eight hours of pecking and grinding to form the groove on this fine-grained granite rock. From, ‘Sensible Survival’: https://sensiblesurvival.org/2012/04/28/make-a-hafted-stone-axe/
As I mentioned before, making ground stone tools is very labor-intensive. But, I have read few articles on just how much work it takes to make a stone maul. One researcher conducted an experiment to make a mortar from a basalt cobble. Below are some basic results of that research.
In this particular experiment, it took about two hours to peck a cavity about 8cm in diameter, 3cm deep into a basalt cobble. From, Andrea Squitieri and David Eitam, 2016. “An experimental approach to ground stone tool manufacture. Journal of Lithic Studies Vol. 3:553-564.
Pecking the mortar hole from a basalt cobble. From, Andrea Squitieri and David Eitam, 2016. “An experimental approach to ground stone tool manufacture. Journal of Lithic Studies Vol. 3:553-564.
Finishing the mortar by polishing it with water and basalt powder. Andrea Squitieri and David Eitam, 2016. “An experimental approach to ground stone tool manufacture. Journal of Lithic Studies Vol. 3:553-564.
I guess there’s only one way to find out how long it takes to make a grooved stone maul out of quartzite. And that is to make my own grooved stone maul. I’ve nothing but time on my hands during these Covid days. I mean, how hard can this be?
The Experiment
First I went down to my local river to find some suitable rock candidates to make a stone maul. What was I looking for? Having never made one, I wasn’t sure. I checked some of the mauls at the Royal Alberta Museum collections. They come in all shapes and sizes. And they are made from various types of rocks: granite, basalt, sandstone and quartzite. But, according to research at the Royal Alberta Museum, in Alberta, First Nations people used quartzite (67%) most often to make a stone maul (Fedyniak and Giering, 2016). The reasons? Quartzite was the hardest and most abundant rock available.
A sample of stone grooved mauls in the Royal Alberta Museum collections. This photograph is taken from an article by Kristine Fedyniak and Karen L. Giering, 2016. “More than meat: Residue analysis results of mauls in Alberta.” In: Back on the horse: Recent developments in archaeological and palaeontological research in Alberta. ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF ALBERTA, OCCASIONAL PAPER No. 36.
Looking for suitable rocks to make a stone grooved maul along the south bank of the North Saskatchewan River, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. These rocks along the shore have eroded out of a higher layer of Saskatchewan Sands and Gravels. Although these deposits contain a variety of types of rocks of different sizes, by far the most common is quartzite, a hard metamorphic rock. I looked at thousands of rocks before picking one or two particular specimens.
After searching for some time, the cobble I finally decided on felt the right weight to pound things and was almost round and symmetrically shaped. This cobble was about 12cm high and 11cm wide. Before pecking, it weighed 1.38kg (3.0lbs).
The unmodified quartzite cobble I chose to make my grooved stone maul.
I’ve read some literature about stone tool pecking and grinding. According to most sources the hammer used to peck out the groove should be a harder material than the stone maul material. This is somewhat problematic since quartzite is a 7 on the Mohs hardness scale. Even granite is slightly softer being only around 6.5-6.6 on the Mohs hardness scale. And basalt is only a 6. This then posed the first problem. If prehistoric peoples were pecking and fashioning grooved stone mauls out of quartzite, then what were they using to make them? None of the local rocks in the Edmonton area were harder than quartzite.
And were they just pecking, or incising and grinding the grooves? The smooth finish on the stone maul I found didn’t help answer that question. When I used a magnifying glass I could see the granite granules were crushed and smoothed. Examination of the groove under a low-power microscope might tell me even more.
I chose these two rocks to peck and groove the maul. The one on the left is a granite (1.6lbs or 0.73kgs) and the one on the right is probably a quartzite (0.44lbs or 0.2kgs) (hard to tell with the cortex still on the rock). Only experimentation and time will tell whether these two rocks will work. I’m not that optimistic though.
I have no idea how long this will take. It may take weeks, or perhaps months. I’ll record the amount of time I spend pecking away, whether I peck or grind and how my pecking stones hold up. I’ll keep you posted on my progress, problems, success. We’ll turn this post into experimental archaeology, since there are still relatively few studies on how to make ground stone tools. Especially grooved mauls found on the Canadian prairies.
That’s it for now. Time to get to work….
The Viking Ribstones, near Viking, Alberta, Canada. In a former post (https://canehdianstories.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1776&action=edit) I mentioned these sacred rocks have lines and holes pecked or incised into the stone. The lines depict the ribs of the buffalo. The holes possibly to kill the buffalo. An example of ground stone technology on a massive scale. I marvel at the amount of work that went into making these objects.
Hockey captures the essence of Canadian experience in the New World. In a land so inescapably and inhospitably cold, hockey is the chance of life, and an affirmation that despite the deathly chill of winter we are alive. Stephen Leacock
Pregame: The Dressing Room
Harry Reed finally arrived at the rink. A little late. It was a dark, chilly, -25C Alberta night. As he stepped into the dressing room, he was greeted with loud cheers, jeers, and hellos. And the strong smell of sweaty equipment seldomly laundered.
The boys cheered loudest when they had a full dressing room. Didn’t have to work so hard in the game. ‘Things sure change,’ thought Harry. ‘Years ago we hoped three or four guys wouldn’t show up. So we could get more ice-time.’
Harry looked for a spot to park his gear in the aged rink’s crowded dressing room. Judging by its size it was built for a team of twelve-year olds, not fully grown men. Finally squeezing himself in between two players, he looked around as his white-haired teammates (at least those with hair) dressed for the game. He saw knee braces, thick black plastic Hanson-like glasses, and other protective gear in sight. A set of crutches stood in one corner. Harry wondered about that. A necessary precaution?
Unlike younger teams preparing for the game, talk focused on who did the stupidest thing the last time out. There were always plenty of fodder for that topic. Tonight discussion focused around Frank’s defense of the team’s name, arguing that he tried to stay sweat-free when playing. This got a round of applause and some cheers from his teammates, the NeverSweats.
Finally, donning their jerseys with the team logo, NEVERSWEATS etched on them in big blue letters, their goalie, Howie, led the team onto the ice. Ready to do battle. Some, more with their own physical shortcomings than with the opposition.
First Period: A Slow Start
Harry and his line mates sat on the bench looking despondently on as the other team rushed down the ice, into their end, and put another puck past their goalie. Four goals in five shots. Looked like Howie was ‘fighting it’ again tonight. Whatever ‘it’ was. Right now Howie couldn’t stop a beach ball.
Someone on the bench mumbled the S***e-word, a good hundred feet from where Howie stood in net. A word you never said in the presence of a goalie. Howie suddenly looked at his bench, yelling. “I heard that, dammit. One of you jokers want to play in net?”
Of course none of the jokers on the bench responded. Why would anyone want to throw themselves in front of a hard, fast-moving missile that could hurt you? That just seemed counterintuitive to survival.
Everyone wondered though how a goalie, supposedly hard of hearing, picked up certain words about his goal-tending prowess, at that distance. Theories abounded. The man could read lips. He had the bench wired and was listening in. He wasn’t really deaf at all.
“Come on, boys, pick it up,” shouted Coach Larry. “They’re beating us to the puck.”
‘Pick it up, boys. Pick it up,’ thought Harry. He looked over at his center man, Big Dale. They both shared that knowing look. ‘Pick it up boys, pick it up.’ Their coach, whom they lovingly had dubbed, ‘Captain Obvious’ was living up to his name. If there was anything left to pick up they would have done so. Even at this age, losing wasn’t fun.
The half-dozen fans in the rink were also shouting, ‘Pick it up, boys.’ Obviously Larry’s relatives were in attendance.
As the first period ended, the score was four-nothing for the visitors. Harry wished Roger Neilson was coaching. By now he would have put a white towel on the end of a hockey stick, raised it, and waved in surrender. Harry looked around and noticed those towels neatly stacked behind Coach Larry, who it seemed, recalled a similar incident a half-dozen games ago. Well, that’s what coaches were for – to keep the troops in line and fighting.
The players sat in the dressing room, backs slouched up against the wall, half listening to Coach Larry. Some of the players were already eyeing the beer cooler. But Coach would have none of it, deliberately sitting on it.
“Now, boys, I saw a bit of sloppy play out there. Clean it up and a little more back-checking and we’re right back in it.” Coach suddenly stopped talking and looked around. A squabble in the corner had broken out where a beach ball mysteriously appeared and was being thrown at Howie.
The rest of the team were politely nodding at Coach Larry’s sage advice, trying to avoid Howie’s glares, knowing full well that wasn’t going to happen. But Coach meant well. He became coach not because of his great insights into the game of hockey. As his last comment had just demonstrated. He often bought the team a round of beer after the game. Coaches like that were hard to find.
Plus, the boys felt bad for Coach Larry, perhaps also thinking about their own rather fragile invincibility. After blowing his knee out Coach couldn’t play anymore. He missed the boys, the camaraderie, and needed to be around the rink to stay happy.
Coach Larry, now standing but still keeping one foot firmly planted on the beer cooler, exclaimed. “And another thing boys. Stop Malone. He’s killing us. Slow him down, get in his way. Dan, whisper in his ear how you’re going to get him. You’re good at that sort of thing.
Harry looked at Dan and rolled his eyes. Dan was good at that sort of thing. Like a loose cannon out there running into everything that moved. Including his teammates. It didn’t matter.
“But coach, I can’t whisper in his ear. I can’t get near him. He’s too bloody fast. I could maybe yell at him to slow down. Or bribe him with a beer. I mean the guy had a tryout with the Oilers.”
The rest of the team nodded. Malone was hopeless. And with Howie in net. Well, the score could get really ugly.
The whistle finally blew to start of the second period. Everyone put away their smelling salts, re-taped their wobbly knees, and rubbed ointment on their already aching bodies. Thankfully now the smell of ointment, instead of smelly equipment, pervaded the room. Time to stop Malone. At least yell at him to slow down.
Coach left the room last to make sure nobody got into the beer on the way out.
Second Period: Overcoming Adversity
As Harry stepped onto the ice for his warm-up skate, there was a roar of laughter behind him. He looked back to see his defenceman, Tim, lying on the ice. Most of his teammates were bent over the boards howling with laughter. The four remaining fans were also having a good laugh.
Coach Larry looked on with feigned concern. The boys weren’t taking the game too seriously. Always a bad sign. Meanwhile, Tim was still on the ice, struggling to get up until someone suggested he take his skate guards off first.
The other team now watching, all slapped their sticks on the ice in appreciation as Tim finally stood. The sportsmanship displayed at these games was often inspiring. Especially when the other team’s foolishness threatened the integrity of the game.
The second period started much like the first. Malone was tearing the ice up. And Howie was still having trouble seeing the puck. Mumbling and complaining bitterly about the lights and shadows. No one said anything. If Howie saw shadows, so be it.
“Jeez, it’s f*****g cold in this rink. What’s the temperature do you think, Harry?”
“Well, Gerry, if it’s -25C outside, then I figure it’s about -27C inside. I don’t know their secret but they seem to be able to keep it colder inside than outside.” Right above the team bench hung a line of gas heaters. But these were never turned on for Beer League hockey.
The boys laughed at that one. This started stories about playing in cold weather. Harry remembered one time in Swift Current. “We were about ten years old and playing on an outdoor rink in January. It was hellish cold. There was a stiff breeze making little snowdrifts on the ice. Occasionally we had to stop play to remove them. Our feet were froze solid by the end of the first period. After the game the moms and dads of eleven screaming kids were carefully trying to pry their skates off.”
“Are you guys going to play hockey or jabber?,” barked Larry. “Keep it up and you’ll miss your shift.”
“Personally, I’d like to just sit and jabber the way this game’s going,” whispered Harry to Big Dale.
“I heard that,” yelled Larry. Pick it up, boys, pick it up.” Larry’s hearing seemed as acute as Howie’s.
Then the NeverSweats got their first break of the game. Dan managed to somehow bump into Malone as he was careening down the ice. It really was an accident of sorts. Trying desperately to stick-check the speedster, Dan did a toe pick, followed by a rather awkward pirouette, crashing into Malone, sending him flying into the boards. Dan was ejected from the game. Malone never returned.
With Malone gone the momentum of the game changed. The NeverSweatspicked it up. And Howie suddenly regained his vision. The puck now looked as big as a beach ball. He stopped everything. That little training session during the last intermission had kicked in.
Near the end of the period, Don had a breakaway. He rushed toward the opposition goalie, head down all the way, and let fly. Never once looking at the net, or where he was shooting. He focused only on not losing the puck off his stick. That would have brought a hail of laughter from the bench.
The puck hit the motionless goalie square in the logo. Don cursed, but ever the sportsman, slapped the goalie on the pads after, what seemed to him, a great save. Laughter burst out from both benches.
The referee blew his whistle to end the second period. The NeverSweats had closed the gap to within one goal.
No Second Intermission: The Beer is Safe
There was no regular second intermission. Just a short break. The remaining fans had seen enough and had gone home. The ice was still pretty clean and didn’t require a flood. As fatigue set in sudden stops and starts diminished. Instead, the players used long gliding turns to change direction. Creating little snow on the ice.
During the break the referee disappeared into his small dressing room.
“What the hell does he do in there every break? Weak bladder, or what?” The team had their suspicions, but no one said anything. It seemed though, as the game progressed, the referee’s vision was becoming a lot like Howie’s. But, getting a regular referee was almost harder than finding a goalie. Even one who couldn’t always see well.
Big Dale, Harry’s center, was leaning over the boards urging the boys on. Now mouthing Coach’s words,”Come on guys, if we pick it up a bit, we can beat these guys.”
Everyone went through the motions of buying in. Even though most minds were already on the ice-cold beer in the dressing room.
Then John, standing beside Big Dale, bent over and closely examined his gloves. “Heh, big guy, where did you get those gems? Museum? Are they hockey gloves or jousting gauntlets? They nearly cover your elbows. I mean, who even sells those things anymore? They look like they’re right out of the fifties or sixties.” The others now looked on, chuckling.
“I get them where I buy all my equipment. At the local Sally Ann thrift store. Fifteen bucks. You can’t beat that.”
“Well, Dale, they certainly blend in nicely with that trendy Jofa helmet and that straight-lasted wood stick. Do you get your sticks custom-made? Who still sells wood straight-lasted sticks?”
More chuckling. Dale was forever stuck in the 60’s. He would remain there until the day he died. Once they quit making straight-lasted sticks, Dale would retire from hockey.
Finally the referee appeared, a big smile on his face, and blew his whistle to start the third period.
Before starting, Coach Larry had a few parting words for his troops. “Let’s see if we can break out of our own end a little cleaner, boys. One time we couldn’t get out for two shifts.
Martin, the team wise-ass (at least for this game), put Coach’s mind at ease. “That’s a set play, Coach. It’s a trap of sorts. Lots of teams we play fall into it. We trap them in our end, and don’t let them out, until their arms and legs get weary. Then we break out. Or when they score. Whichever comes first.” The others thought this an exceedingly clever cover-up for having no plan whatsoever on how to get out of their end.
Third Period: The Comeback?
The referee dropped the puck and surprisingly play picked up. A sort of Old-timer urgency had set into the game. There were actually some stops and starts again. Plumes of frozen breath shot into the air as players battled for the puck. And low and behold! Sweat broke out among the ranks of the NeverSweats. This rarely happened, especially on a cold winter night in the Ice Palace.
The other team was feeling it too. During the brief intermission some players went to their dressing room to don more clothing. Or so it appeared.
Harry and his line mates looked on as the Rusty Nuts looked rustier by the minute. “Remember that time, boys, when we played at the Mall rink. It was -35C outside so we put on extra layers of underwear for the game.”
“Ya, I remember that one,” said Big Dale. “Nearly died of heat exhaustion by the second period. That was a real weapon that team had. Nothing like this Ice Palace.”
“More like a Sweat Palace. And the worst ice in the City. And the costliest from what I heard. It was like skating in putty. And the space behind the net was narrower than in other rinks. I remember when I first played there, watching the beauty of my pass one time, and running into the back boards cracking three ribs.”
Coach Larry shouted, “Next line. Come on boys, get out there and score.” As if anyone on this team could score at will.
“His memory is sure short,” whispered Dale. “Is that what happens when you quit playing and start coaching? You get a memory transplant. They replace the ‘player’ chip with a ‘coaching’ chip?” Dale stopped talking when he saw Coach giving him a steely stare.
Big Dale won the face-off in their end. Back to his defenceman and then over to Harry. Harry deftly chipped it up the boards to an already breaking Dale. Dale, now one-on-one with the D-man, made his custom power swoop beating him cleanly. As he moved towards the goalie he did some little thing with his stick and wrists, putting the puck over the goalie’s shoulder into the net. Harry vaguely remembered having to do something similar with his straight-lasted stick years ago to raise the puck. He didn’t remember exactly what it was anymore. Dale could score with that stick.
4-4. The only cheering Dale heard was from the players on his bench. The rest of the rink was silent except for the Zamboni getting ready to flood the ice. Two minutes left. Could the NeverSweats hang on? Maybe even win?
Sitting on the bench, Harry overheard his second line talking strategy. There seemed to be some disagreement on how to generate more offense in the other team’s end. Eric, their center man was explaining attacking tactics to his teammates, “I said dump-and-chase, guys. Not dump-and-watch. We need to pressure them in their end more.”
His winger, Trevor, responded, “Well, we’re kinda playing the neutral zone trap by staying high. Don’t want to get caught too deep in their end.” A now exasperated Eric said nothing. There was no use.
The boys were tiring. “Hurry, get up, Al. Get in the box. We’ve got too many men on the ice.” A tired Al had fallen near the team bench and was desperately trying to get off the ice. Just as he got up, a line mate bumped him and down he went again. As he tried the second time, he stepped on his stick and went down once more. Finally, a now exhausted, desperate Al gave up and just crawled the rest of the way into the team bench. There were howls of laughter from both sides. The referee looked the other way, letting the play go on.
Now with only thirty seconds left in the game, Len, their best D-man decided take matters into his own hands to get out of his end. His forwards had the offensive trap play firmly working in their end. He was making another move around an opponent, between his blue line and the center line, when a Rusty Nut stripped him off the puck and went in on Howie for a breakaway.
Players on both benches stood up and watched, holding their breaths. After a few deft moves, cleanly beating Howie, the player shot the puck at an open-looking net. Howie, however, had lost his balance and now went into to his last-effort Dominique Hashik move. Falling backwards into the net, his glove hand shot out, somehow catching the puck.
Howie was mobbed by his teammates, congratulating him on the incredible save. With time it would become the best save ever made in the minds of the guys watching. Soon to join Old Timers hockey lore.
As the teams were shaking hands, a few of the Rusty Nuts mumbled something about ‘fluky goalie’ just as Howie was about to step off the ice. “I heard that. Nothing fluky about it.”
Harry bent towards one of the Rusty Nut players. “How’s your goalie’s hearing….”
The ‘After-Flow’
There was lots of shouting and backslapping in the dressing room. You’d thought the boys actually won the game. Or the Stanley Cup. The beer was flowing freely and and stories began, breaking down the game. Trying to recreate and suck out every enjoyable minute from it. The bad parts were already forgotten.
It usually took longer to get out of the dressing room than to play the game. This became somewhat problematic if you played at seven AM on a Sunday morning. And started drinking beer at eight-thirty. Fortunately the NeverSweats had an evening ice-time. But it still needed to be carefully explained to wives and girlfriends that the post-game decompression ritual was an absolute necessity in hockey. It took hours to re-hydrate and return to normal after a strenuous workout like that.
Harry was sitting in the corner, Big Dale beside him, listening to the stories. And watching the new player, Norm, sitting off in the other corner, by himself. “Has he ‘thawed out’ yet?,” asked Harry, nodding towards Norm.
“Don’t know, Harry. Was he frozen?”
“Don’t be so thick, Dale. You know what I mean.”
“There’s hope. He’s still in a bit of shock. Leaving his former younger team, and walking into a dressing room looking more like an old folks home. I was. He’s not fighting it like some guys who think they can still make the NHL. It takes time.”
Suddenly one of the players got up, raising his beer towards Norm in the corner. “Here’s to Norm, guys. Saved at least one goal tonight on that two-on-one.” Norm, now jolted out of wherever his mind was, beamed with delight.
‘Ya, he’ll be alright,’ thought Harry. ‘All the guy really wants is to be part of the team, no matter what age or level he’s playing.’
Then Harry remembered a very blurry image of the Cabri Bulldogs crest and joining the local senior men’s team in Cabri, Saskatchewan at the age of sixteen. He was young and scared. And just wanted to fit in too with the older guys.
Harry rummaged around in his hockey bag and pulled out the now nearly 50-year old Bulldog jersey. He just didn’t have the heart to toss it. Too many memories in that sweater reminding him not only of the game but his teammates. Maybe that’s why Dale kept that ancient equipment.
He looked at his sweater, then at Dale’s gloves, helmet, and stick. “Dale, I think my old team sweater goes nicely with your equipment. Same vintage.” They both had a chuckle and talked more about their early days playing hockey.
Finally Harry stood and raised his can of beer to the his teammates . “Here’s to the best game in the world, boys. I guess the puck stops here.
…………………………..
EndNote
An increasing number of older men are playing hockey in Canada. And I’m that with time, more senior women will continue to play. Accurate statistics for Old Timer Hockey for the entire Country are hard to come by. But judging from the local Edmonton scene, Old Timer’s hockey is on the rise. To the point where it is getting increasingly harder to accommodate everyone. Fort example, the Vintage Hockey League which I had played in had three levels, based on a combination of both age and skill. The third tier contains some players in their eighties.
I used two team names, the Rusty Nuts and the NeverSweats, in this story. They nicely reflect both the age and the nature of Old Timer hockey teams. These were/are still actual team names. The Rusty Nuts were an Edmonton-based team in the 1990s (and they may still be around). The NeverSweats are an Old Timers Lloydminster team. They never seemed to sweat when they played us.
Many of us have gathered numerous great hockey stories over the years. While this story is mostly a work of fiction, some of the incidents happened during my time in Old Timer’s hockey. There are many more stories out there, as you can imagine; some are best not to repeat. I’m sure that if I interviewed those of you who played the game over the decades, I could fill a book of some pretty good Canadian hockey memories. It’s been a project on my mind for a while now. Perhaps some day it will come to fruition.
This story is dedicated to the late John H. Brumley (1946 – 2020), an archaeologist, who categorized and researched the many stone medicine wheels on the Northern Great Plains. His efforts have enriched Canadian history.
The northern Great Plains of Canada contain many places where rocks seem to grow out of the ground. At least according to the local farmers who year after year painstakingly picked them off their fields only to find new ones in the spring. Rock piles along roadsides and fields are a common sight in Alberta, Canada. This view is from near the Rumsey medicine wheel with the Hand Hills on the far distant horizon.
When I was a little kid, I would walk with my dad and pick rocks off the fields in southwestern Saskatchewan. We would toss them onto the stone boat and then dump them on a large pile along the edge of the field. These rock piles are still a common sight when driving along the country roads on the western Canadian prairies.
But, other piles of rocks on the northern Great Plains of Canada, particularly in Alberta, are not the product of seemingly endless rock picking. These are referred to as ‘medicine wheels‘. Or, “atsot-akeeh” (from all sides) by the Blackfoot.
The term ‘medicine wheel’ originated from the Bighorn medicine wheel, located on top of Medicine Mountain, near Lovell, Wyoming. Today it refers to numerous stone alignments with a central hub, spokes and circles found on the Northern Great Plains of North America. Image from: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/bighorn-medicine-wheel.
Various types and configurations of medicine wheels. A medicine wheel is made mostly from unmodified natural stone and must have a combination of at least two of the following primary components: 1) a prominent, central stone cairn of varying size; 2) one or more concentric stone rings, generally circular; and, 3) two or more stone lines radiating out from a central point of origin, central cairn or the margin of a stone ring. (This image and definition taken from “Medicine Wheels on the Northern Plains: A Summary and Appraisal.” by John H. Brumley, 1988. Archaeological Survey of Alberta, Manuscript Series No. 12)
According to First Nations informants, these ancient stone features had religious and spiritual significance. They were often markers where prominent individuals died and occasionally were interred. Some informants claimed the spokes pointed to hunting or warpaths. Scholars think the spokes and ancillary cairns pointed to important times of the year, much like Stonehenge. Still others believe the functions of these alignments changed over the centuries.
By 1988 John Brumley had compiled a list of 67 medicine wheels in western Canada and the United States which he then categorized and described in the monograph cited below. Many more likely existed but were cleared off land intended for agriculture. Additional wheels may have been added to this list since 1988. Most medicine wheels occur in Canada, and primarily in Alberta. (Map from “Medicine Wheels on the Northern Plains: A Summary and Appraisal.” by John H. Brumley, 1988. Archaeological Survey of Alberta, Manuscript Series No. 12)
Some medicine wheels may not have been single-event constructions. Instead, rocks were gradually added to the cairn and spokes for many years. The Suitor No. 2 medicine wheel in Alberta had eighteen spokes, some over thirty metres long, radiating out from a central ring.
EgOx-1, Suitor No. 2 medicine wheel, east-central Alberta, is of considerable proportions, containing additional stone circles and a possible effigy. (Image from “Medicine Wheels on the Northern Plains: A Summary and Appraisal,” by John H. Brumley, 1988. Archaeological Survey of Alberta, Manuscript Series No. 12)
Others, such as the rather sizeable Bighorn medicine wheel in Wyoming and Majorville medicine wheel in southern Alberta, would have taken a long time to build and/or a considerable number of people to assemble them.
Perhaps one of the most complex and elaborate medicine wheels in North America, the Bighorn medicine wheel is still mainly intact. However, the middle cairn was vandalized and the area around the wheel is highly disturbed. Researchers believe the outside ancillary cairns had an astronomical function. (Image from “Medicine Wheels on the Northern Plains: A Summary and Appraisal,” by John H. Brumley, 1988. Archaeological Survey of Alberta, Manuscript Series No. 12)
Lacking any ethnographic accounts, the Majorville medicine wheel (and others) was partially excavated to better understand its age and function. When excavating this wheel, archaeologist Jim Calder found that it was built over a period of 5,000 years. A few of the many artifacts recovered were for ceremonial and spiritual purposes including the presence of red ochre in the central cairn. (Image from “Medicine Wheels on the Northern Plains: A Summary and Appraisal,” by John H. Brumley, 1988. Archaeological Survey of Alberta, Manuscript Series No. 12)
Keeping an Eye on My Children: Respect the Stone Piles
On my way to Empress, Alberta last week I stopped at the Rumsey medicine wheel. As a previous Parkland Archaeologist for the Government of Alberta, once responsible for archaeological sites in this area, I have visited Rumsey many times, occasionally alone or with Blackfoot elders and interested parties. This medicine wheel, like many others, sits at the highest point in the region. It is located close to the Red Deer River Valley.
The Rumsey medicine wheel, near Rumsey, Alberta, Canada. The cairn, like many others, has been vandalized. It did contain human remains.
A drawing of the Rumsey medicine wheel. Part of the outer ring of the cairn is missing, probably from vandalism, or was still being constructed. The two excavation pits are from looting and vandalism. (Image from “Medicine Wheels on the Northern Plains: A Summary and Appraisal,” by John H. Brumley, 1988. Archaeological Survey of Alberta, Manuscript Series No. 12)
Prairie crocuses in full bloom near the Rumsey medicine wheel.
Nothing but blue sky and a great view. Like others, the Rumsey medicine wheel sits on the most prominent hill in the region, just east of the Red Deer River. From this point, you can see the surrounding countryside for many miles. These high places may have been chosen as vantage points and for spiritual reasons, but also practical ones. Imagine walking across the open prairies trying to find this particular spot. The Red Deer River acted as a linear reference point. Once you found it, you could then more easily find these high points along it.
The British Block medicine wheel on the Suffield Military Range near Medicine Hat, Alberta, has been badly messed with. People made their initials from the rocks, destroying parts of the original stone outer ring. If you look at about two o’clock just inside the outer circle, you will see a stone effigy or human figure. Artifacts found in the cairn suggest the medicine wheel dates back thousands of years. (Image from “Medicine Wheels on the Northern Plains: A Summary and Appraisal,” by John H. Brumley, 1988. Archaeological Survey of Alberta, Manuscript Series No. 12)
Markers for Important Places, People, and Events
There are still several undisturbed stone tipi rings near the Rumsey medicine wheel. And perhaps many more were there before rocks were cleared off the land for agriculture. Many medicine wheels were important places where people came back repeatedly over the centuries for a variety of reasons.
At other places in Alberta, such as the forks of the Red Deer and South Saskatchewan Rivers, medicine wheels were part of a much larger First Nations land use history. This was an important place for people for centuries, leaving behind not only medicine wheels but stone effigies, countless stone tipi rings and extensive stone drive lanes for antelope and buffalo.
The bull’s forehead on the hills in the foreground, on the south bank of the South Saskatchewan River. A prominent hill at the confluence of the Red Deer and South Saskatchewan Rivers, near the Saskatchewan-Alberta border. This area of the northern Great Plains contains considerable evidence of an Indigenous presence going back thousands of years. These two prominent hills (on the north side) occur near the confluence of the Red Deer and South Saskatchewan Rivers. The Roy Rivers medicine wheel sits on the highest hill on the left. From the highway, these hills are well over a mile away but the stone mounds are visible on the top. Most medicine wheels were recently named after places and people. They likely had First Nations names, now lost to us. Close-up view of the Roy Rivers medicine wheel looking south. The larger main central cairn of rocks is on the highest point and a lesser stone cairn sits west of it. One of the chief factors, limiting where these stone features could be built, was the presence of rocks. There were plenty of those in this area just north of the ‘forks’ in Saskatchewan.
A view from the edge of the Red Deer Valley with the Roy Rivers medicine wheel in the distance on the horizon. There are ample rocks and boulders strewn on the prairie surface in this part of Saskatchewan.
The Roy Rivers medicine wheel is unusual with an aisle or doorway oriented towards the south. The wheel contains a stone effigy at approximately ten o’clock near the inside of the outer ring. Within the wheel are fifteen small stone cairns, possibly for astronomical purposes. (Image from “Medicine Wheels on the Northern Plains: A Summary and Appraisal,” by John H. Brumley, 1988. Archaeological Survey of Alberta, Manuscript Series No. 12)
A Unique Piece of Canadian History
These rock alignments and features are important and unique pieces of Canadian history. Once disturbed or removed, they are forever lost to us. However, they are not always appreciated or respected by people who visit them. This is all too evident from the amount of disturbance to them.
I leave the last words, about the significance and meaning of these stone features, to a few Blackfoot informants, whose people were likely responsible for the construction of most of the medicine wheels in Alberta:
“I heard that when they buried a real chief, one that the people loved, they would pile rocks around the edge of his lodge and then place rows of rocks out from his burial tipi. The rock lines show that everybody went there to get something to eat. He is inviting someone every day. People went there to live off him.” (Adam White Man, South Peigan. From “Medicine Wheels on the Northern Plains: A Summary and Appraisal,” by John H. Brumley, 1988. Archaeological Survey of Alberta, Manuscript Series No. 12)
“…the lines of rock show the different direction in which they go on the warpath – they were the dead chief’s war deeds. If they kill someone, they pile rocks at the end of the rock line. If there is no rock pile present, then they just go to the enemy. Short lines are short trips.” (Kim Weasel Tail. From “Medicine Wheels on the Northern Plains: A Summary and Appraisal,” by John H. Brumley, 1988. Archaeological Survey of Alberta, Manuscript Series No. 12)
Canada’s Pied Piper, Bobby Gimby, somewhere in Canada, 1967, leading a group of children in one of the many parades he marched in that year. http://www.bobbygimby.com/#gallery_1-8
I grew up in Cabri, Saskatchewan. A community in southwestern Saskatchewan, so small some said the trains didn’t stop there, only slowed down.
Like most prairie kids, I lived hockey, curling and the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Fishing and hunting were on the top of the list too. But unlike many Canadian kids I was fortunate enough to play in a real brass band. The Cabri Brass Band. Formed in 1917 and disbanded in 2007.
You won’t find much information on this rather iconic band if you google it. In 1967, it was one of the few true brass bands in Canada. None of those reedy-sounding clarinets or squawky saxophones. Flutes? Are you kidding. Only brass instruments and drums. Majorettes, marching and lots of parades.
I was about ten years old when I started in the band. I played the trombone. Or should I say, blew into it and occasionally the right notes came out.
The year 1967 was an important year for Canada and for the Cabri Brass Band. The band turned fifty years old and Canada one-hundred. It was time to celebrate. In style. Like never before. We needed something special for this occasion.
And that somethingspecial turned out to be none other than Canada’s Pied Piper, Bobby Gimby. Author and arranger of the famous Canada Song. He was invited to come to Cabri, Saskatchewan to play his song with the Cabri Brass Band that started his career many years earlier. And rumor had it we might get to play with him.
Bobby Gimby
A teenage Bobby Gimby (left) smoking cigars with his buddies in Cabri, Saskatchewan. On the far right is Cliff Peterson. Next to Cliff might be Tom Lyster. The fellow next to Gimby has not been identified. http://www.bobbygimby.com/#gallery_1-1
Born on October 25, 1918 in Cabri, Saskatchewan, Bobby Gimby went on to become a successful professional musician and songwriter in Eastern Canada. But deep down Bobby was a prairie boy. Honest, humble and pretty down to earth.
A story in the Cabri Herald described the Gimby family as very talented musicians. Bobby in particular. Bobby joined the Cabri Brass Band at age ten and played until 1935 when the family moved to Chilliwack, British Columbia. As his neighbor Harvey Peacock recalls, Bobby honed his skills with his trumpet often practicing in his back yard. Why the back yard? Harvey thought because his mom threw him out of the house whenever he practiced.
Photo courtesy of the Cabri Herald. The Cabri Brass Band, c.1933. Bobby and his brother are seated in the first row.
“His big break came in 1941 when he joined Mart Kenney and His Western Gentlemen as lead trumpeter and toured the country. That was followed in 1945 by a starring role in CBC radio’s “Happy Gang,” a gig that lasted through the 1950s. He capped the decade as musical director for the popular “Juliette” show on CBC television.” (from the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, July 4, 2017 )
Bobby was asked to write a song for Canada’s centennial. And boy did he deliver. “I was terribly worried, because I knew the government was taking a gamble by going into show business,” Gimby recalls. “But after we’d marched in the rain to the train and given our performance, I saw a little old lady wiping tears from her eyes and she was saying, ‘I’m so proud to be a Canadian.’ I thought to myself, ‘Holy cow! We’ve scored a bull’s-eye.”http://expo67.ncf.ca/expo_gimby.html
“I’ve never seen anything like it during my 20 years in the Canadian music publishing business,” says Thompson president John Bird. “Three-year-old kids are dancing to it. High school swimming classes want to swim to it. Bike riders want to cycle to it, and drum corps want arrangements so they can beat a tattoo to it. By the end of 1967, I predict every school choir, every school band, every family with a piano in the parlor, will be playing it.”http://expo67.ncf.ca/expo_gimby.html
Bobby Gimby went on to record the largest selling recording in Canadian history. Secretary of State, Judy LaMarsh presenting Bobby with the award for his efforts. http://www.bobbygimby.com/#gallery_1-23
Bobby Gimby Comes Home
The Cabri Brass Band, around 1967. I’m in that trombone section somewhere. Probably in the back, because I played too loud.
The question was, if invited, would he come? Fortunately he still had many friends and acquaintances in Cabri, including our then band leader, Albert (Bert) Culham.
Albert (Bert) Culham my band leader throughout my time with the Cabri Brass Band. (Courtesy Michelle Culham)
Bobby Gimby playing his Canada song with the Cabri Brass Band, c.1967. (Courtesy Cabri Herald)
But Bobby didn’t forget his Saskatchewan roots. In March, 1967 he returned to Cabri to play with the Cabri Brass Band. He also marched with us at the Moose Jaw Kinsman Band Festival. Band majorette, Nancy Scott, recalls that Bobby, when offered a car to ride in for the parade, refused, marched and played with us instead.
Bobby wasn’t just an excellent musician, he was a superb entertainer. That infectious smile never left his face. He was a natural with those kids.
Bobby Gimby gave each member of the Cabri Brass Band a signed brochure of his Canada song. (Courtesy Michelle Culham)
The one thing I remember about him, when he played he was having a good time. He marched proudly with us, his old brass band, as we wound our way around the streets of Cabri and in the Moose Jaw Band Festival parade. I played that Canada song so many times that day, my lips turned purple and numb.
Bobby Gimby’s comments about the Canada Song: “The idea first came to me when I was playing an orchestra date at Manoir Richelieu in La Malbaie, Que., back in the summer of 1964,” he replies. “On St. Jean Baptiste Day I saw about 50 kids parading through the streets. The boys were dressed in quaint sacking material, and the girls had flowers in their hair, and they were all singing some delightful folk song in French.” http://expo67.ncf.ca/expo_gimby.html
Bobby said he was thrilled at how he was received in Cabri. The people of Cabri, “…spread the red carpet for me down on the gumbo mud and – oh, boy! – actually presented me with the key to the city.”http://expo67.ncf.ca/expo_gimby.html
The ever-humble Bobby Gimby thanking Bert Culham for the opportunity to visit Cabri and play with the band. (Courtesy Michelle Culham.)
Perhaps my favorite photograph of Bobby Gimby surrounded by young Canadians. A truly an iconic moment in Canadian history. (Courtesy Getty Images).
In 1967, in recognition for his work for Canada’s centennial, Bobby Gimby was made an Officer of the Order of Canada, and was named Broadcaster of the Year. In 1968, he was awarded two Lloyd E. Moffat Memorial Awards, for Best Middle-of-the-Road Record and Best Example of Canadian Originality and Creativity.
Bobby left us on June 20th, 1998, at age 79.
Here’s to you Bobby, and your great legacy. And personally, I’ve had some wonderful Canadian moments. Few surpass those few days playing with the Cabri Brass Band, and Canada’s Pied Piper, Bobby Gimby.
EndNote
It’s been over fifty years ago since we marched and played with Bobby Gimby. As someone interested in how our collective histories are passed on, this story was a bit of an eyeopener. I asked over half-dozen people, who experienced those few days with Bobby, to give me a few of their personal thoughts on the event. Only one person recalled some personal stuff not written in the newspapers. The rest of us, myself included, had trouble recalling some of our own experiences with this man. Without a strong oral history, if not written down during the moment, it’s hard to reconstruct the smaller aspects of that time.
“Now of course, the great thing about the solar system as a frontier is that there are no Indians, so you can have all the glory of the myth of the American [Canadian] westward expansion without any of the guilt. (Sarah Zettel, brackets mine)
A small group of very powerful men sat in the room, on chairs pulled closely together, bent over talking quietly. Almost in whispers as if not wanting to be overheard. On seeing this meeting one would wonder. Why? Why are they whispering? There’s no one else in the room.
One of the more prominent members of the group was speaking. “We must act soon if we are to join the Territories to the rest of Canada. The Americans just bought Alaska and are beginning to look north at our North-WestTerritories, now mostly run by the Company. Soon their greed will overcome them and they will find an excuse to move north. First, we have to buy Rupert’s Land from the Hudson’s Bay Company. We must acquire those territories at all costs.” Everyone nodded in agreement.
“And, I think if we promise British Columbia a railway, linking them to the east, they may join the Confederation.
The speaker sighed as he mentally went through the long list of things that needed doing. “We can’t build it until the Indians are removed from those territories. We need to deal with that issue as well.” He looked over at the others. Again, they nodded their heads in agreement.
“Then our course of action is clear, gentlemen. If we are to unite this Country we must face these, shall we say, somewhat distasteful realities.” At those words, the speaker’s mouth twisted into a shape suggesting he had just sucked on a lemon.
He wasn’t finished. “First we buy Rupert’s Land from the Company. Then we remove the Indians and Metis from the territories and settle for treaties and reserves. Next, we search for capital to build this blasted thing. It won’t be cheap.” He hesitated, scratching his head, as if there was something he had missed. The others looked on expectantly waiting for him to continue.
Finally, after some pause, he spoke. “Oh yes, there is one more small problem. We need cheap labour to build the railroad. Many hands will be needed which will increase costs. The work will be dangerous and there may be fatalities.”
Those present waited for him to continue. As if expecting a solution. “At this moment I don’t have a solution, but will start looking into the matter.” Again, heads bobbed in unison all around. As if this last statement was merely another one of many obstacles to overcome in their eventual quest. Nothing, it seemed, could get in the way of the national dream.
The Cree leader and his band, the Young Dogs, were tired from their long ride. His one name was Piapot or Payipwat(One Who Knows the Secrets of the Sioux). The other Kisikawasan. In his hands he held his Winchester repeating rifle. He sat on his horse, looking out onto the rippling prairie grasses at the territory he had chosen for his people, just north of the Cypress Hills. And smack in the way of the proposed new CPR mainline.
He turned to one of his men. “First the Blue Coats humiliate us, escorting us back like children to our lands. Now this man closes the fort of the Red Coats and stops feeding us unless we move to another territory. The buffalo are gone. Our people are starving. Gather them. We must move. Or many will die.”
Edgar Dewdney, recently appointed Lieutenant Governor of the North-West Territories as well as Indian Commissioner, which brought him an additional stipend of $2,000, looked on as the bands began to move north and east to other territories.
One of his subordinates, also looking on, turned his way. “Well, I guess your plan worked, Sir. You sure showed them. They go willingly enough when starving. And, finally we have removed them from the railway right-of-way. That defiant one, they call Piapot, would have put his tipi in the way of the proposed railway line if we hadn’t interfered.”
Dewdney only grunted and shook his head, in a noncommittal manner. He had just closed Fort Walsh to the Natives and stopped giving the Cree rations, unless they cooperated and moved off these lands. It was a grim business this railroad building but that was what Macdonald wanted. Even if it meant breaking the treaties, which they were already doing.
Some of the other men in Dewdney’s party overheard his assistant’s comments. And soon the rumors and stories spread. ‘The great lieutenant governor stood up to Piapot and his Young Dogs, and along with the NWMP, kicked them off their lands.’
Truth was soon twisted. And the new truth became myth.
………………….
Piapot, Saskatchewan today.
The Saskatchewan family were driving down the newly built Trans Canada Highway on the Canadian Prairies alongside the Canadian Pacific mainline. A young Harry Reed peered out the window in the back seat of his father’s car. As they passed the little village and the road sign bearing its name, Harry asked, “Piapot? What does that name mean, dad?”
“I don’t know, Harry. Makes no sense, this word, Piapot. Maybe something to do with a pot.” Harry shrugged. His parents didn’t know much about Canadian history. He would ask his teachers.
“Well, according to the stories I heard, Harry, that is the name of a prominent Cree Chief who at this very place put his tipi in the way of the new CPR line. He claimed these lands as his and was going to battle the Canadian Government for them. The NWMP came and kicked over his tipi and dragged him off the line. He was then moved to other lands.”
Harry thought about the teacher’s answer. He shook his head, imagining that past. Thinking to himself. ‘But, if he was so bad, why did they then name a village after him? To mock him?’
Myth is embedded in history. So, how can it not be true.
Put A Tax on Their Heads, 1884
“It is simply a question of alternatives: either you must have this labour or you can’t have the railway.” (John A. Macdonald, 1882, Canadian Parliament, speaking in defense of bringing in cheap Chinese labor, against the wishes of many Canadians, to build the Canadian Pacific Railroad)
Chinese workers on the Canadian Pacific Railway. Given poor food, no medical help, the lowest pay, the hardest, most dangerous work, and then abandoned to fend for themselves when the railway was completed. (Image D-07548 courtesy of the Royal BC Museum and Archives)
Williams, one of the CPR herders of the Chinese work crews, opened the door and entered the crowded Chinese living barracks beside the CPR track, deep in the Canadian Rockies. The crews were building the Canadian Pacific Railway through one of its toughest stretches. The Fraser Canyon, British Columbia.
A large plume of blue tobacco smoke, and the smell of sweat of fifty men, passed him on its way out. Williams looked at the scene. They were gambling again. Hands thrust in the air with money frantically trying to place their bets.
Williams leaned over to one the of Chinese workers who spoke broken, but decent English. And yelled at the top of his voice. “What are they doing, Li Qiang?”
Li Qiang only shook his head. “You must speak louder.”
“Are they placing bets?,” roared Williams almost losing his tonsils in the process.
“Yes, Mr. Williams. New game.” Winner makes lots of money.”
“What new game, Li Qiang? How do you fellas have enough energy for games considering how hard you work?”
“We bet on everything. Even how many railroad ties needed for certain section of track. Or, maybe how many spikes bent laying that track. You want play? Cost you your four dollars a day wages, not my one dollar a day wages.”
“That’s rather sad, Li Qiang! Why do you bet on such trivial things?”
“Why sad, Williams? Everyone count, then bet. Might as well gamble. It keeps our minds off the hard, dangerous work.”
“But why do you gamble away your hard-earned money? You should be saving to go home or bring your families to Canada.”
“We not save enough to go home. Or bring families. Only way is to gamble. This way at least some get rich.”
“Maybe we even gamble when you have accident herder, or that pig, Oderbunk.” With those words, Li Qiang spat on the floor as if trying to remove a bad taste from his mouth. Oderbunk was the Chinese contractor who brought the Chinese to work on the railway. The mere mention of his name raised the hackles of these men.
A now somewhat worried Williams noticed the room had gone silent, with the mention of Oderbunk’s name. Many of the workers were looking at him. And in a not too kindly way. He only shook his head and left, opening the door and taking more smoke and smell with him on the way out. Behind him he heard the shouting and betting start again.
‘That stupid, greedy Andrew Oderbunk is behind a lot of this madness. Treating them like animals. No wonder they almost killed him in that strike in 1881. Given their work and future, what have they got to lose? Besides their lives.’
The railroad work crews were having lunch outside one on the many tunnels in the Fraser Canyon, below the majestic peaks of the Rockies. Suddenly the blast came, followed by the concussion of air knocking them off the rail cars and onto the shaking ground. Then silence as the large plume of dust enveloped them.
Eventually out of the silence and debris, a dust-covered Chinese worker staggered, barely coherent screaming in Cantonese. Most of his clothes had been torn off, his hair and eyebrows singed, still smoldering.
“The tunnel entrance. Cheap explosives go off too soon. Everything smashed, everyone gone…” His last words failed him as he collapsed in a heap on the ground, blood now coming out of his ears.
…………………..
Chinese barracks for construction crews along the Canadian Pacific Railway. Image I-30869, Accession Number: 198401-006, 1883, courtesy of Royal BC Museum, BC Archives.
At the end of the month Williams walked into the Chinese workers’ barracks again to the same commotion and racket that had greeted him before. On the bench beside the booky stood a rather forlorn looking young Chinese man. The booky had propped his hands in the air as if in victory.
Williams looked for Li Qiang, finally seeing him among the men. “Are they betting again, Li Qiang?”
“No. First announcing winner.”
“So, I take it that’s the winner standing on the bench. He guessed how many rail ties it took to build that stretch this month? Or, whether I would die? If he won, why is he looking so gloomy? He probably won a month’s wages, or more.”
“Won bet, but lost brother in explosion.”
“But why are you betting on these things ? Surely, without betting, you can save enough money to go back to China.”
Li Qiang cocked his head to one side considering Williams. “We save little. That swine, Oderbunk take much money. We hear head tax coming. Must pay head tax to bring our families from China.”
Then Li Qiang walked off getting ready to place another bet, leaving a gaping Williams only shaking his head. Head tax? So the rumors really were true.
Chinese men gambling in railway camp, British Columbia. Image B-09758, Accession Number: 193501-001, 1886, courtesy of Royal BC Museum, BC Archives.
…………………….
Victoria, British Columbia, 1884
Telegram from John Alexander Galt, High Commissioner, London to John A. Macdonald inquiring about all the Chinese deaths building the CPR railroad. Library and Archives Canada, MG26-A, Volume 220, Page 93790, From London to Sir John A. Macdonald, “Correspondence, June 11, 1883.”
“So just how many Chinese workers died, Oderbunk? I’m getting writing cramps trying to keep up with the Prime Minister’s telegrams.” The chief commissioner was not a happy man. And he sensed this man was not being forthright with him.
The nervous Oderbunk fidgeted in his chair, licking his lips. Beside him sat Williams, one of his chief foremen to help with the details. Finally Oderbunk answered. “Well. We’re not quite sure, Commissioner, how many we’ve lost.”
The now fuming Commissioner next asked like what seemed a series of very sensible questions. “What do you mean you’re not sure? Don’t you record the deaths? You’re responsible for compensation to their families and returning their remains back home, are you not?” You pay them. When they don’t show up, well, they must be dead?”
“Well, Sir. Often we can’t recover the bodies. They fall into the canyon or the river and are swept away. And, many of these men desert to find work elsewhere. So, when they don’t show up, we’re not always sure what happened.” Oderbunk hoped this answer might appease the Commissioner. And avoid that nasty little business about not recovering the bodies or compensating the families. It did not.
After the meeting a rather shaken Williams walked away thinking some nasty, nasty things about Oderbunk. Almost ready to return to the camps where the Chinese were betting. ‘No, no, I can’t do that. Put that thought out of your mind, Williams.’
Later Immigrants and the CPR
A friend of mine gave this galvanized spike to my father, made into a bottle opener, on his retirement from the CPR. Whenever I crack a beer with it I think back to both my father and the CPR extra gangs, summer 1973.
Harry Reed sat in the living room listening to his father and uncle talk about their days with the CPR. Occasionally the conversation became quite animated. In fact, almost hostile.
“Why don’t you agree, Walter. The Company was good to us. We made a living, fed our families. Yes, we had to work a little, but at least we had work.”
‘That’s an understatement,’ thought Harry. ‘Work a little?’ But then that’s what Uncle Bob thought because Harry, in his short years on earth, had never met a harder worker. While others grumbled, Uncle Bob thrived. He loved the work.
Walter did not. Unable to listen any longer, Walter got mad. “The CPR, Robert, was SCHEISSE! They treated us worse than animals. Vie Verschissende Hunde, Robert. “While Walter’s English was a little rough, his vocabulary in swear words seemed well rounded. In English. German. Even a few Polish and Ukrainian gems occasionally thrown in there.
Walter picked up the silver railroad spike opener from the table and cracked a few beer. Red-faced he needed a drink when talking about the CPR with Robert. He looked down at the silver opener.
“See this spike, Robert. This was given to me by my son’s friend. That’s more than that God………… CPR ever gave me. One-hundred and sixty dollars pension a month after thirty years of working for them. And a piece of paper thanking me. That’s all I got. You know what I’d like to do with this spike. Shove it up some big-shot CPR’s as….” Della, also listening cut Walter off before his words landed him in the abyss.
“Now Walter. I don’t think swearing at the CPR is going to help anything.”
“Cripe-No-Mighty,” grumbled a still steaming Walter. He had designed a unique series of cuss words all his own.
Then he touched the permanent reddened part of his ear, which always itched, remembering what else he got while sitting on the little open railroad scooter inspecting the tracks on a breezy winter Saskatchewan day with windchill of minus forty degrees Fahrenheit.
But Robert, ever the optimist, continued. “Well, if you had joined the CPR extra gangs, you would have made more money and been promoted. And now your pension would be much better. Like mine.”
“Those were nothing but slave camps, Robert. What kind of life is that? Being months away from your family with little time off. How could you like that life? Nothing but a sweat house for dumb, uneducated immigrants like us. Who couldn’t find any other work.” Words that perhaps were a little over-exaggerated, but Walter didn’t care anymore. Finally he stopped and drained half his beer, hoping to drown the memories of the CPR and all it stood for.
Uncle Bob continued, but Walter had tuned out thinking about one of the many dark times he had on that cursed railroad.
Harry kept quiet and just listened. When Walter and Bob talked railroad, it was best to just stay of out of the way. Pretend he wasn’t even there.
Harry was suddenly jolted out of his referee, realizing that Uncle Bob was talking to him. “See Walter, even your son got along with the CPR extra gangs. He liked it. Even got promoted. Right, Harry?”
Harry, out of respect for his uncle, simply nodded and said nothing. ‘Wrong, Uncle Bob. I love and respect you. But on that count you are wrong. That was an awful job.’
Then Harry thought back to the CPR extra gangs. Glorious times indeed. He’d hoped those memories had disappeared into the past. But, some of them were hard to erase.
Myth, if repeated long enough, becomes the new reality.
These are the tracks that my dad and my uncle worked on, making sure the trains went through safely. Cabri, Saskatchewan, Canada on the horizon.
College Boy Meets the CPR Extra Gangs, Spring, 1973
Harry had just been interviewed by Parks Canada for a summer job as an interpreter at the historic National Site, Fort Walsh, Saskatchewan. It would have been the perfect job. It was close to home, paid well, and was the kind of work he was studying at the University of Alberta. But it didn’t happen.
“I need a job, Uncle Bob. I have to pay my university tuition and board. There’s little work out there.”
“Well, maybe I can get you on the CPR extra gangs. It’s good, steady work and I think you can handle it.”
“When can I start, Uncle”, asked the somewhat forlorn looking Harry? Walter was standing by, shaking his head. He said little, thinking. Maybe this was a good thing. His son needed some harsh lessons in reality. He was treating university like a training ground for the fine art of partying.
“O.K. Harry, give me a few days, and then I’ll phone you. We’re working on the main line near Medicine Hat. Not too far from home with your one day off.”
Harry gulped. Did he hear right? ‘One day off.’ That of course meant working six days a week. But, the worst was yet to come.
……………………
It was still dark outside. Pitch black in fact. Suddenly someone was walking through the rail sleeping car, shouting. “Time to get up boys. Breakfast is on the table. The cook grumbles when you’re late.”
Harry and others groaned trying to wake up. Sleeping was tough on the mainline. When every two hours another freight train raced by them at fifty miles an hour, eight feet away.
That voice almost had a cheerful ring to it, which made it even harder to listen to at four AM in the morning. His friend Phil, bunking next to him finally sat up. “One of these mornings I’ll strangle that cheery bastard.”
“They’ll just replace him with another one. I think they get paid extra for that voice.”
Harry finally got up and dressed. Ready for the day. After three weeks working on the gangs, his muscles were no longer screaming in agony. The blisters on his university hands had finally healed and hardened up. “Well let’s get something to eat and see what cookie burned this morning.”
As they neared the rail cook car, the noise and hubbub grew louder. Suddenly one of the the windows of the cook car blew out, closely followed by what looked like a platter of cold meat.
Then there was a lot of yelling inside the cook car. Harry heard one of his other friends, Jim’s voice, screaming. “How can you put that shit on a plate and serve it to us? Look at it. It’s green. Meat isn’t supposed to be green. I’m going to kick your ass all the way to Medicine Hat…” Then Harry heard running as cookie, fearing for his life, quickly existed the cook car. Never to return.
Well, another day starts on the gangs. What will happen next? There was still twelve hours of back-breaking work ahead. The day was young. A lot could happen.
…………………….
The ballast crew was running beside the ballast cars, on the sloped, rocky rail track trying to open the bottom doors with their hand cranks. To pour out the crushed rock around and between the new ties and track. It was a smoldering hot prairie afternoon, the air was choked with dust from the ballast.
This was one of the toughest jobs on the gangs. But, you got a little extra time off at the end of day because of the hard work. And if you wanted to get promoted to a machine, this was one way of doing it.
The train had to go at just the right speed so that the ballast could be poured evenly onto the rail bed and tracks. Too slow and too much ballast came out, derailing the cars. Too fast, and there wasn’t enough ballast to fill the tracks.
As the train reached the slope heading into Medicine Hat, it sped up. Harry’s lungs were about to burst as he ran along his rail car, trying to keep up. Someone screamed. “We’re going too fast. Tell that engineer to slow down or this will be a disaster.” In the distance Harry heard foremen screaming into their radios.
But the engineer didn’t slow down. And soon Harry’s buddies started to abandon ship. He saw John, bent over puking up the ballast dust he ingested. Then out of the corner of his other eye, he saw Amos desperately trying to hang onto his crank, sent tumbling off the grade disappearing into the rail ditch. Finally the rest of crew, including Harry, had stopped cranking.
Another day, another dollar on the extra gangs. Well, not quite that bad. Thirty-nine dollars to be fair.
………………….
The work crews stood in line for their midday lunch beside the tracks. Which was brought out to them by the cooks. One half-hour to eat and then it was back to work.
The prairie sun was blazing down on the exposed track sending heat waves into the air. The shimmering railroad track looked like a mirage in the distance. It was exposed, lying naked on the rail bed with no ballast to keep it in place.
Someone in the lunch line started pushing. And the yelling and cursing started. “Out of the way, turban-head. We need to eat and get back to work.” One of the crew, who seemed to have a particular dislike for the East Indian workers, was trying to butt in line and get his lunch before disaster struck.
Then the fighting in the lunch line broke out in earnest. Pushing, shoving. Kicking and punches thrown before the foremen stepped in and broke it up.
“Stop it, Kenny. They don’t understand English very well and you’re not exactly Mr. articulate either. They think you’re butting in. Here, step aside and I’ll sort this out.”
Uncle Bob was patiently trying to explain Kenny’s rudeness to the East Indians. “These men have to eat first. There’s no ballast on the tracks…”
His words were cut off by a loud SNAP. Followed by another SNAP. And then it happened. The Canadian Pacific railway, which had lain on this track for nearly one-hundred years, decided to take a walk. Off the rail bed towards the ditch.
Men scrambled in every direction, fully knowing what was taking place. Karl, roadmaster of the extra gang, ran up, breathless. “Hurry up. Let’s get out there before it…”
Everyone stared as the entire mile of rail turned into a writhing steel snake and began moving toward the ditch, as the now hot steel rails expanded in the noonday heat.
“Or what Karl, before the tracks go in the ditch.”
The CPR mainline was shut down for many hours. Backing up freight trains in both directions. Because of one overzealous gang boss who was trying to repair too much track at once and not paying attention to the weather. Or the laws of physics.
Harry watched with fascination. How could a mile of steel rail suddenly look like a wet noodle? And then he realized what this meant. Overtime. The men wouldn’t leave here until eight or nine tonight. Maybe midnight. That mainline had to be opened or heads would roll.
And another day on the extra gangs was finished.
………………….
“See Walter. Your son could do it. He worked on the gangs and made some good money.”
Harry rolled his eyes. Hardly. He’d managed to get on one of the machines for three weeks and did make twice as much money as before. And then they all went on strike because of the poor working conditions and wages, and Harry went back to school.
“Those were good boys, Walter and Della. They worked hard and sometimes they got into a little trouble. Some were a little rough around the edges. Like the time they got into a fight in a bar and spent the night in the Calgary jai…”
Harry, having taken lessons from his mother, cut off his uncle’s words. “Uncle Bob, I’m sure mom and dad don’t want to hear that story.” Harry anxiously looked at his mother who now had that knowing look on her face.
“Come Harry, tell your mother the rest of that story. I like stories. I can hardly wait to hear it.
……………………
EndNote:
I am not a great fan of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Or other similar corporations. I’m not anti-capitalist. I just don’t like it when large corporations become greedy. Yes, a transcontinental railway was sorely needed to tie together an enormous country and its shareholders and owners had to pay off the $100,000,000 it cost to build it. But throughout its history the CPR made considerable profits off the backs of immigrant labourers, treating them poorly, or worse. There was a lot of labour unrest and discrimination against some minorities even in the 1970s when I worked there. And today the Company still makes tremendous profits. In 2016, the CPR had a $6.2 billion revenue and $1.6 billion dollars in profit and held assets valued at $19.2 billion dollars. Its top CEO made close to twenty million dollars a year, with perks and shares in the Company.
When I was a kid, we learned that the Cree Chief Piapot tried to stop the building of the CPR mainline by pitching his tent in the way. Presumably somewhere near today’s Piapot, Saskatchewan. The story goes that he was forcefully removed by the North West Mounted Police. Historians have pored through the documents and there is not a shred of evidence to support that story. But it somehow seems to resonate better among Canadians than: ‘First Nations people were starved to force them off the lands, so that the railway could be built.’
The story of the Chinese immigrants brought over by the CPR to help build the railroad is equally sad. Their struggle and sacrifice is finally being told and recognized. In this story, I mentioned the Head Tax put on Chinese immigrants to prevent them from coming to Canada. Many Chinese workers could not save enough to either return to China or pay it to bring over their families. In the story I have deliberately changed the name of the chief contractor, responsible for bringing in Chinese workers and the horrendous conditions they had to put up with. With a little research you can easily find out his real name. Because of the poor records kept, even to this day no one knows for certain how many Chinese workers died building the railway (everywhere from 600 – 2,000).
Although I try not to judge history, and instead document and research it, I can’t help but have some deep emotional feelings for the many many ethnic minorities who toiled to build the intercontinental railway and then maintain it. My parents, relatives and some of our friends were among them.
As was I for what seemed like one of the longest summers of my life. I saw firsthand the poor working conditions and continued racism even in the 1970s. The East Indian workers were now the new Chinese. After that summer of ’73’, my university career outlook became more focused as I realized that I didn’t want to follow in my father’s footsteps. I ended up shoveling dirt anyway, but had way more fun doing it.
Whenever I think of everyday objects that bind, I think of duct tape first. And one Red Green show in particular where Steve Smith tries to prevent Quebec from separating by duct taping it to Ontario.
“A museum should not just be a place for fancy paintings but should be a place where we can communicate our lives through our everyday objects.”
(Turkish novelist, screenwriter, academic and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature.)
In a recent news article an Edmonton reporter trashed the 1966 Mercury pickup truck display at the new Royal Alberta Museum, Edmonton, Canada. It was too ordinary and boring and really was not museum worthy. I can’t imagine what she would have said about my choice of the first image for this post.
This 1966 Mercury M-100, on display at the new Royal Alberta Museum, talks to Albertans’ love for the pickup truck in the 1960s. It represents the many people who owned one for either travel or work in our province. In has meaning and a connection to our society.
The dilemma we often face when dealing with material culture, be it thousands of years or a few years old, is choice and selection. Museum staff are faced with the often impossible challenge of meeting the many expectations of many people. As formidable an experience as I have ever faced, either when curating a museum collection, or writing about human history using material culture as the medium.
We are expected to conserve and curate, inform and educate, entertain and stimulate, with the objects we choose to display or write about. Therein lies a problem. Many of those unique, precious, or rare artifacts certainly stimulate and entertain. They catch our attention. But, often they don’t inform a lot about the majority of society, past or present.
The rare bone toothbrush I posted on in an earlier blog has a certain WOW! factor to it. But, it says little about most of the people of the fur trade who didn’t use these articles. The more common duct tape however, informs more about Canadian culture than the toothbrush. I’m almost certain we have no duct tape in our Royal Alberta Museum collections. Perhaps had the Red Green show continued, duct tape would have reached museum status.
The more common folk artifact is often is underrepresented in displays or literature. While informative, it’s boring. Is there a solution?
Not be deterred or ignore the common artifact, I have chosen to write about the most mundane artifact I could think of (there are many to choose from). The common nail and that clunky railroad spike.
Even everyday things often have a complex history and perform an important role in society. And as one of my mentors, historical archaeologist James Deetz, in his book, In Small Things Forgotten once said, all material things, regardless of their size, value, or context have meaning and a story to tell. It’s up to those of us studying them to tease out that meaning and those stories.
We are all familiar with the common wire nail. Nails, like many objects, have a complex history and changed over time.
Nails, of every shape, size and material, were used for boat building, furniture making, attaching horseshoes to horses’ hooves, and of course the construction of log and wood-framed buildings. They occur in just about every society in the world that had some sort of metal forging technology. And they change in form and method of manufacture in time and space. The common wire nail you are most familiar with has had a shorter history than many of those before it.
In Canada we used hand-forged nails until about the middle of the 19th century (other dates, depending on where you live). To fashion a hand-forged nail a blacksmith heated a piece of square nail rod, then tapered it to a point. Then he put it into a nail heading jig and fashioned various types of heads depending on its function. In cross section, a hand-forged nail is tapered on all four sides from the head down to the tip.
These corroded ferrous hand-forged nails were relatively rare at the Fort Vermilion I (c.1798 – 1830) site, Alberta, Canada. Heavy iron nail rod had to be shipped inland for thousands of miles to these forts, so nails were used sparingly. Because the fort did not have a blacksmith, these nails were likely made at Fort Chipewyan and shipped upriver. This was the major nail type in western Canada until approximately the middle of the 19th century.
This rare artifact which we think is a nail heading jig was recovered from the blacksmith’s shop at the NWC Fort George (1792-1800), Alberta, Canada.
The machine-cut nail was already invented in the 1780’s (perhaps even earlier) but not present in western Canada until the mid nineteenth century. In this process a tapered nail shank is cut from sheet metal of uniform thickness (usually iron), and then a head shaped on it. In cross-section this nail is tapered on two opposite sides but the other two opposite sides are parallel to each other. This more mechanized process produced more nails faster, probably with fewer people required to make them. It was cheaper.
Machine-cut nails, from the HBC Fort Edmonton V (c.1830-1915) site. Because this site spans such a long period of time, we found hand-forged, machine-cut and common wire nails in the archaeological record.
The modern wire nail was developed in about 1880 in America and Europe. Pieces of steel wire were cut at an angle to make a point on one end, and a flat round head was fashioned on the other end. These nails were much cheaper to produce than square nails. The common wire nail began to appear by the turn of the 20th century in western Canada (likely earlier in the east).
A variety of common wire nails found at the HBC Fort Edmonton V site, Alberta, Canada.
Whenever I look at buildings of unknown age, I check out the nails. If they’re wire, the building likely dates after the turn of the 20th century. Even the common wire nail was superseded by the spiral shank nail in the early 1970s. Many different varieties followed.
This priest’s log house, at the St. Louis Mission, Fort Vermilion, Alberta was built in c.1909. Wire spikes were driven into the dovetailed log corners to better secure them. No square nails were present. Mind you, those spikes could have been driven in thirty years later.
If I were to only display this spiral wire nail there’s not much of a WOW factor here. But if I added that Gilbert Laughton, blacksmith at Buckingham House (c.1782-1800) was experimenting with some spiral square-shanked nails already 220 years ago, the story becomes more interesting (sorry, I don’t have good photo). I’m sure it didn’t leave you speechless, but more interesting nevertheless.
Many of these different nail types were gradually replaced by the newer types. However, some nails, such as the horseshoe nail and common railway spike maintained their square or rectangular shanks.
Common horseshoe nail has been around for a long time. Head shapes changed but the tapered square/rectangular shank remained.
Nails were made from various materials, depending on their function and method of manufacture. Probably one of the earliest type of fastener, performing the same function as a nail, was a wooden dowel. Dowels are still used today. And in the western Canadian fur trade, and early settlement period, where the transport of heavy finished nails or nail rod was costly, they often replaced nails in log building construction.
The logs in this building in northern Alberta were held together by wooden dowels between the logs.
The log corner of this cellar cribbing under the trader’s shop at the HBC Fort Victoria (c.1864-1898) contained a well preserved wood dowel to keep the corners together.
Other materials for nail-making include the more rust-resistant copper alloy nails used to build the first York boats in the western fur trade. However, for centuries the most common nail material was iron.
These copper alloy nails come from the HBC Fort Edmonton V (c.1830-1915). York boat building was an important industry at this fort. Boat nails had to be rust-resistant.
Both hand-forged and machine-cut nails had different head types either for decoration or better holding power. T-heads, L-heads, Rose-heads, and Gable-heads are just some of the head types found at our historic sites in Canada.
Different types of nail head types found at the HBC Fort Victoria site, Alberta, Canada. From Archaeological Investigations: Fort Victoria, 1974. Losey, Timothy, et. al. Occasional Paper No. 2, 1977. Alberta Culture, Historical Resources.
Square-shaped nails were superior to round wire nails for holding power. According to some research, the holding power of the square shank is almost double that of the round shank nail.
So, why change from a square to a round shank? Round-shank nails were easier and more economical to make despite not being as effective. However, once spiral or galvanized nails were introduced, they likely came close or were superior in holding power to the square shank nails.
So after that brief exposition on the common nail, can we now elevate it to national status, placing it beside the equally common maple leaf of national significance? Alas, despite its importance in Canadian history (what has maple leaf ever accomplished?), I just can’t visualize an image like the one below.
The Canadian flag with the common nail as the symbol of a Canadian identity. The following source seems to read a lot into a leaf: “Maple trees symbolize balance, offering, practical magic, promise, longevity, generosity, and intelligence. One reason behind these meanings is that maple trees have the ability to adapt to many different soil types and climates.” https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=the+meaniing+of+the+canadian+maple+leaf
Well, I tried. Alas, the poor common nail can’t compete with all the ideological baggage the maple leaf carries. There are few national flags that have an object(s) as a symbol. Angola, Mozambique, Portugal. The hammer and sickle of the former Soviet Union, representing contribution of the common people, is probably the best known.
Railroad Spikes
The common railroad spike. Does it have greater potential for national significance than the lowly common nail?
The 19th century railroad spike, used to build the Canadian Pacific Railway had a square or rectangular shank. As I was trying to drive these damn things into the railroad ties in the summer of 1973, I wondered (between curses) if the square hole on the rail tie plates and the square shank prevented the spike from turning (resulting in failure to hold down the rail), either during attachment or the constant pounding and vibration as the trains passed over them.
Tremendous holding strength was required from a rail road spike to make sure the rails stayed in place with the hundreds of tons of trains moving over them every day. The common spike was made from a softer iron, usually with 9/16 inch thick stock, approximately 5 1/2 to 6 inches long. The point was tapered so the spike would cut across the the grain of the wood tie to prevent it from splitting.
It cost over one-hundred million dollars to build the Canadian Pacific Railroad which was completed in 1885 at Craigellachie, British Columbia. Thirty-thousand workers labored four-and-one-half years to build the 3,200km (1,939 miles) long track across Canada. A ribbon of steel finally bound the country in which the lowly railroad spike played a huge part.
I’ve done a bit of math. Wood ties are about nineteen inches apart. There 3,250 wooden ties per mile. It would require 26,000 spikes for each mile of track laid. That number multiplied by 1,939 miles comes to a staggering 50,414,000 spikes (some claim only a mere 30 million were used) required for the job. Just for the CPR mainline. Clearly the common railway spike is one of the most important artifacts ever made and used in Canadian nation-building.
Perhaps one of the most iconic photographs in Canadian history. The driving of the last spike by Donald Smith at Craigellachie, British Columbia, 1885.
Yet this very important artifact receives little recognition. There are a few exceptions, mind you. The last spike driven at Craigellachie by Donald Smith in 1885, should be famous. It represents the completion of a national dream. Made of gold or silver perhaps. But no, it was just plain iron. And there wasn’t just one, but four.
The first one, made of silver, never reached Craigellachie in time to be used. The second one was bent by Donal Smith, when trying to hammer it home, and kept, eventually made into jewelry. The third one was pulled and mysteriously disappeared and has only recently surfaced. And the fourth one is still in the tracks at Craigellachie.
The silver spike that was to be driven at the last spike driving ceremony at Craigellachie, British Columbia by Donald Smith in 1885. But it never made it in time. Good thing. He probably would have bent it. Courtesy of the Canadian Museum of History.
What a mess. The first one doesn’t get there in time. Smith bends the second spike and makes it into jewelry. And the third one mysteriously disappears and is now a knife. How could you lose the last spike that symbolized one of the greatest engineering achievements of the time and the coming together of a nation?
We celebrate and revere the sensational, often at the expense of the common and mundane. Granted, the last spike, or the silver one on display, symbolize and solidify a great moment in Canadian history. But it’s not the only spike of significance in this story.
On that same November day, in 1885, workers who built the railway near Donald, British Columbia. This may be their version of the iconic photo of the Last Spike. Courtesy of BC Archives/D-02469. Story from https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/the-other-last-spike-feature#
The above photo and the common spike in contrast to the silver one bring up an important point. There is always an alternate story or narrative about any given object. Like the photograph above we should also revere the common railway spike as it symbolizes the sweat, work and deaths of thousands of men who built the ribbon of steel. It represents men like my father and uncle, who maintained it after it was built. Their contribution are as important and meaningful as the completion of the railway and that silver spike.
Perhaps the best way to tell these stories is to display both the silver spike symbolizing one of Canada’s greatest accomplishments alongside the common railroad spike symbolizing the work of those who built it. As close to a solution to entertaining and informing as can be expected from this particular artifact.
Working on the Railroad
I’ll end on a personal note which also partially reveals my choice of content for this post. My father and uncle worked on the CPR for many years. As did my cousin and I. We lasted one summer on the ‘extra gangs.’ I have seen way too many railroad spikes up close on certain sections of the CPR mainline. One summer was more than enough, thank you.
Our family owns a last spike of sorts. In recognition of my father’s contribution to the CPR. He received this galvanized spike from a friend of mine when he retired from the CPR in 1983. This one was repurposed for an equally great cause. Perhaps it could serve as our national emblem.
This galvanized spike sits in my kitchen drawer. As I get older it takes on more meaning than I ever would have imagined.
This modified version of the common spike reminds me of dad. And my uncle. However, whenever I open a refreshment with it, I reflect back to much tougher times working between the rails. That story is still being written.
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A Few Blog Notes
I’ve been thinking of setting up a membership list for my website. I would divide my posts into those that are free to read and a ‘silver’ category, which only paid subscribers could access. Subscribers would be charged a fee of perhaps $20.00 CAN per year to access this category. It would contain all my short stories, novelettes, etc. My rationale is quite simple – to cover costs of running this website. I have no illusions about getting rich, but feel that paying to inform and entertain you just doesn’t seem right.
Lately more visitors from the rest of the world are checking my website. Those of you looking in from the USA (some of you whom I know), Ireland, Brazil, or any other country, let me know why you dropped into my site.
In the last few years the phrase ‘cultural appropriation‘ has popped up increasingly in just about every context imaginable. One definition of the phrase is: The unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society. Literature is no exception. Including mine. Many publishers are more cautious in what they publish. I think the two words I underlined in the definition are key. But they are widely interpreted. I’d like your opinions on the subject. Especially those of you who are of Indigenous background.
In my last post I used historic documentary records to search for lost early Euro-Canadian fur trade establishments in the remote, dense northern forests of Alberta, Canada. In this post I discuss other ways we might be able to find archaeological remains hidden beneath our feet.
Infrared Photography, Magnetometer Survey, Ground Penetrating Radar, LIDAR. Archaeologists use these non-invasive techniques to find archaeological remains hidden in remote parts of the world or where any archaeological surface evidence has been obscured by construction or other ground surface disturbance. Some methods work better than others in certain conditions. They, however, can also be misleading and potentially destructive if not used properly.
First Some Extreme Examples of Non-Invasive Search Methods
While most of the above techniques have merit, others are a little more far-fetched. In 1975 I attended my first CAA (Canadian Archaeological Association) Conference in Thunder Bay, Ontario. It was pretty cool meeting and listening to all these learned people so passionate about archaeology.
As the liquor flowed freely so were the more outlandish ideas on how to find archaeological sites without, you know, all that work (walking and stumbling around in the bush, digging endless test pits). At one of the evening receptions I noticed a bunch of people gathered around a table intently watching as two archaeologists were dangling a string with something attached to the end over the map.
I casually walked over, curious to see what they were doing. Maybe they were demonstrating some new archaeological technique that I should know about. What I saw however, surprised me. One of the archaeologist was dangling an arrowhead tied to a string over a map of southern Ontario, while the other was taking notes. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Dousing for archaeological sites or remains using an arrowhead on a string. Apparently the arrowhead would point to a place on the map suggesting archaeological remains were buried there.
I couldn’t resist. So I tried this method at home. The arrowhead pointed to the Royal Alberta Museum, Edmonton, Alberta. Maybe there’s something to this method after all.
Welcome to the world of some of the more outlandish methods ever used in archaeological detection, Heinz. You might have just hit an all time low. Wow! Could these learned people be serious? It seemed so. And some of those gathered around the table also seemed convinced this method might work.
…………………
I should not have been surprised that people would use the paranormal in archaeology to help them in their investigations. Throughout the history of archaeology paranormal examples abound. Google it and you will see. Often referred to as psychic archaeology, or Psychometry, most of its claims are of a dubious nature.
In fact, it was earlier in 1974, while at my first archaeological dig at the HBC Fort Victoria, Alberta, that I was introduced to another somewhat unorthodox method of archaeological detection. Dowsing.
Dowsing (Divining, Witching) is a method whereby a person holds and forked branch or coat hangers and walks over the ground surface to detect features objects hidden beneath. Originally it was mainly used to find water (and still is) but is also applied to many other fields of detection. Including archaeology.
So we tried walking over the fort cellar depressions and palisade footer trenches holding two bent coat hangers. They were supposed to cross when you hit a buried feature. Some of the students believed it worked. Others did not. I was amongst the latter.
Even to this day, one of my colleagues (who shall remain anonymous) and I have had a 40-year debate about the merits of this technique. I’m a skeptic of any method not based in science. Others, like my colleague, are more liberal thinkers I guess. Apparently this method is supposed detect magnetic anomalies under the ground surface. That supposedly is the scientific connection. As you will read shortly not even sophisticated equipment capable of accurately measuring the earth’s magnetism are able to make that connection.
My strangest encounter (so far), while excavating at the last HBC Fort Edmonton, was with a woman who claimed, once she had held a piece of jewelry we found, it belonged to her distant relative who worked at the fort. We thanked her for her insights but did not pursue the matter any further. With this Psychometric method one holds an ancient artifact which will then send messages about its history. This method too has not gained much traction over the years among my colleagues. Nor among thieves.
Although I must admit the use of psychic archaeology is tempting when things are not going as they should in the field. My future wife and I, while at Fort Victoria in 1974, tried channeling (of sorts) one night. We tried calling up the ghost of the Clerk in charge of the fort, a Mr. Tait, I believe. We entered the old clerk’s quarters (built in 1864 and still standing on the site) at midnight. After a lot of shouting and pleading for answers we only managed to wake up a few people and totally scared ourselves in the process. I think there was liquor involved in that episode as well.
https://hermis.alberta.ca/ARHP/GetImageDetails.aspx?ObjectID=4665-0022&MediaID=129133. In 1974 when we excavated at the Fort Victoria site, the Clerk’s Quarters was in rough shape. Historic Sites Service, Government of Alberta, has done a admirable job restoring it and interpreting the site. The ghosts have probably fled by now. Either from our shouting or restoration activities.
Metal Detecting. Night hawking, as it is often referred to which, as one archaeologist put it, has had a love-hate relationship with archaeology. Yes, you can find ferric objects with this method, if that’s all you wanted to find. Even major treasures as have been recently found in England with this method. And then you rip those objects out of the ground without any proper context or worse not even recording their location. Unless palisade and building walls are made of iron, finding major archaeological features with this equipment is also problematic.
Recently, some incredible archaeological finds have been identified using metal detection. But, unless this method is used in the same controlled way as excavation, then we end up with artifacts with no context, dissociated both from other nonferrous artifacts and possible archaeological features they occur in. http://www.pastperfect.org.uk/archaeology/lo/metaldetecting.jpg
Some Slightly More Refined Non-Invasive Search Techniques
Some non-invasive search methods have proven better than the aforementioned. But nearly all have their limitations which, if not recognized, could create more problems than solve.
When I search for historic archaeological sites, I observe the surface of the ground carefully when looking for either features on a site or the site. While some features, such as large depressions or mounds are pretty obvious, more subtle features still leave surface evidence even after hundreds of years. After clearing the vegetation off the Fort Vermilion I site, in some places the fort’s original palisade trenches were still evident on the ground surface. At Fort Edmonton, where the ground had been totally landscaped and scrubbed clean of any surface fort evidence, the north palisade was evident as a slightly depressed line where the grass grew better.
Outline of the west palisade footer trench visible in the wall and on the unit floor. These ditches are dug in the soil and then vertical poles placed in them, then filled in to form the palisade wall. Even after 200 years and numerous flooding events, this trench had slumped enough to still be visible on the ground surface.
Not only does the ground continue to slump in these trenches, the soil chemistry and water regime may also change, affecting vegetation. I have seen shell middens representing prehistoric First Nations settlements on the Northwest Coast of Canada that are totally devoid of trees (in a rain forest) because both the soil chemistry and moisture regimes have changed.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/eCc8DP7IMVw/maxresdefault.jpg. This photograph of a buried shell midden along the Oregon coast shows the different vegetation on the top probably resulting from a change in soil chemistry and moisture.
Even normal aerial photography can produce some surprising results. For example, for years Parks Canada archaeologists could not find one of the missing Rocky Mountain House forts in central Alberta, Canada. Until one day, quite by accident, and luck, it appeared in a photograph.
Archaeologist Donald Steer, working for Parks Canada in the 1970s, was missing a fort. At least according to the historic records. One day while flying over the area someone took black and white photographs of a grain field along the North Saskatchewan River. Later when looking through them Steer noticed the outlines of what looked like a fort in the field. The outlines and cellar features of the fort were captured in the different growth rates of the wheat and shot just at the right light and angle to reveal the fort.
The use of infrared and other types of photography sensitive to different wavelengths of light are also proving useful in archaeological discovery.
During the late 1970s while excavating at the NWC Fort George (c.1792-1800) archaeologists were testing a new non-invasive technique. Ground Penetrating Radar.
The earth is surrounded by varying amounts of magnetism. Physicists found that subsurface features, such as extensive burning, or buried materials, give off different rates of magnetism often associated with human activities. If such a technique proved effective, it could help detect features at an archaeological site, saving countless hours in searching with subsurface testing.
The method has proven moderately effective but the anomalies are sometimes very difficult to interpret and can be affected by modern intrusions giving off what we call false positives – an anomaly which turns out to be nothing or created by some modern intrusion.
Nestled behind the Alberta Legislative building, stands the HBC Fort Edmonton V, c.1912. Courtesy of the Provincial Archives of Alberta.
While excavating Fort Edmonton V, we tried magnetometer survey, seismic testing, ground penetrating radar (GPR), and soil resistivity, to help find and better understand the subsurface archaeological remains. Some methods worked better than others.
Today’s Alberta legislature grounds. The lawn bowling green on the left and the skating rink (old lawn bowling green) on the right. Somewhere under there lie the remains of Fort Edmonton V.
Students, under the guidance of Dr. Edo Nyland, Department of Physics, University of Alberta, conducting a magnetometer survey on the skating rink, Alberta Legislature grounds, 1993.
This image represents a magnetometer survey done on the lawn bowling green on the left and the skating rink on the right, Department of Physics, University of Alberta. The different shaded areas represent different intensities of magnetism. According to our historic maps the remains of then Chief Factor, John’s Rowand’ Big House, should lie near the southwest corner of the lawn bowling green. Yet no magnetic anomaly is present. Either our maps are wrong, the method is too insensitive to pick up building remains (including large cellars), or, any former archaeological features were destroyed when the fort was torn down.This is a 3D image of the lawn bowling green and skating rink, capturing nicely a recent concrete tunnel (raised area in center) running underneath the sidewalk between the lawn and rink, and the electric light posts (raised spikes) around the lawn bowling green and skating rink. And very little else. Modern disturbance is a real problem when using these techniques. And then there’s always the problem of suggesting to the lawn bowlers that we would like to dig up their lawn to check these anomalies. This didn’t go over very well. Instead we joined them for some lawn bowling.Another method, GPR, produced some good results, showing Fort Edmonton palisade footer trench (which was first ground-proofed and evident on the surface) and the many water lines running everywhere on the site (figure on the right). We were warned by the grounds keepers not to cut the water lines because it would set off the entire sprinkling system. Of course, we accidentally cut a water line on a fine June Saturday afternoon sending numerous brides and grooms, there for their photographs, scrambling for drier grounds.
GPR has its uses but is sometimes unreliable. Not only does it create false positives (finding little or nothing of consequence) but worse, false negatives (missing things of great consequence). Imagine if you will, using this method to detect all historic graves in an area, only to miss a few before the land is developed and built on. I have seen this method miss entire cellars big enough to hide a Volkswagon in. Whether the fault of the operator, or the method, caution must be taken. However, these methods are constantly improving, becoming more reliable for archaeological work.
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Light Imagery Detection and Ranging (LIDAR). This method was developed in the 1960s by the US Space Agency and then used in the Apollo 12 missions in 1971 to map the surface of the moon. The results were spectacular.
This method uses an optical remote sensing technique that can measure the distance to a target (in this case, the ground) by illuminating the target with light using pulses from a laser. It is sensitive enough to measure ground surface elevations even under dense forests. Here are a few examples of its use at archaeological sites and features having considerable vertical depth.
LIDAR strips away all the vegetation leaving stark ground contours and relief. This is a great technique for finding mapping large features such as houses, cities and effigies such as the one you see on the right. An archaeological illusion of sorts. Sometimes when standing on the ground the objects are so big you miss or cannot identify them. Only at a distance do they become distinguishable or form a pattern.The latest LIDAR imagery called Titan Technology has a very high resolution as this image shows. The vegetation has been stripped off Tikal, revealing the archaeological remains beneath. https://lidarmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/COVERTikal2x2km_St.png
The problem with this technique, even today, is its cost. Presently in Canada there is little LIDAR coverage of the ground surface. Fortunately for us, Alberta Forestry Service had flown parts of northern Alberta with LIDAR, including the Fort Vermilion I area.
Here was an opportunity to test just how sensitive this method was in the thick northern boreal forests of Canada. We knew where the site was located. Also some of the surface features were fairly significant. They paled in comparison to the Mesoamerican settlements, but nevertheless this was an opportunity to carry out some controlled experimentation.
Fort Vermilion I in 2014, cleared of trees and brush, revealing an uneven surface. Near the left-center of the photograph is a very large cellar depression. The largest on the site.
On the left is what our site area looks like with normal aerial photography. Only major features, such as dried up river channels manage to peak out of the dense bush. The top right circle represents the Fort Vermilion I site. On the right is the LIDAR image of the same area, now with the trees stripped off leaving all major ground surface contours exposed. One of the large cellars at the site (in the above site photograph) shows up. Just below and left are possible raised mounds (which we did not know of before). On the bottom left (circled) are two more large depressions (which we also did not know of before the LIDAR imagery results). Even in this dense bush the method worked at least on the larger surface features. It might work even better if higher resolution imagery were used. But that would be very costly.This is a close-up of the lower left depressions on the image. We had no idea they were there or whether they were cultural. Only one way to find out. In 2014 we found the depression and finally tested near it in 2016. We weren’t disappointed. We found animal bones, hand-wrought nails and mud chinking from cabin construction all occurring at similar depths as the archaeological remains at Fort Vermilion I (the two sites are on the same floodplain). And then we got really lucky and found this wonderful tubular glass bead along with the other materials. Currently we don’t know if this site is an extension of Fort Vermilion I, a contemporary or even earlier unknown occupation or fur trade Company, or a habitation for the local Metis freemen who might have built near Fort Vermilion I.
A Few Concluding Remarks
Inspiration for this post came when one of my readers casually asked about one of these non-invasive techniques. I replied that it was best not to get me started on that topic. Obviously, it got me started… I’ve had some good luck and some bad luck using these methods. And I firmly believe that with more experimentation and refinement they will become more reliable in the future.
We have come a long way from dangling an arrowhead over a map of Canada in hopes of finding archaeological remains. Or using coat hangers to dowse for buried archaeological remains. Some of the non-invasive search techniques are becoming more sophisticated and reliable, allowing us to detect archaeological history on a scale never imagined before.
But, occasionally I revert back to the old ways. I hoped for inspiration by sleeping in a tent on the old Fort Vermilion I site. Maybe I would receive a sign. To help me find things. And one night I received it when a pack of wolves accidentally walked onto the site sending off the most blood-curdling howling I have ever heard in my life. A message?
Beware the hazards of sleeping in remote places in Canada’s northern forests!
This Canadian commemorative stamp for David Thompson was issued one-hundred years after his death, in recognition as a surveyor and cartographer of the then territories of Canada.
He was known as Koo-Koo-Sint (the man who looks at stars) by First Nations. David Thompson, trader, explorer, surveyor and mapmaker, became a highly renowned land geographer. Some say the best in the world. After studying his maps and how he managed to carry out his work, I tend to agree.
I’ve had the opportunity to apply Thompson’s work to furthering our history. In particular finding a few of the many fur trade posts in western Canada still lost in the wilderness. Or beneath our very noses.
This is my story of following in the shadows of these great ones. In this post I’ll focus on David Thompson. Perhaps in another post, Peter Fidler.
The sextant, one of the instruments David Thompson used to shoot angles to determine latitude and longitude.
David Thompson
Born in Westminster, Middlesex, England, in 1770, to Welsh immigrants, Thompson joined the Hudson’s Bay Company at the age of 14. He studied surveying with the Company and was soon exploring uncharted territory in the Canadian Northwest. At age seventeen, he penetrated west as far as the present-day Calgary.
In 1798 Thompson joined the North West Company and devoted all his time mapping and exploring. He comes by his reputation as a great land surveyor and cartographer honestly. His maps were accurate, and his exploits covered over 80,000 kilometers by foot, horseback, or canoe. All previous maps of western America paled in comparison to his maps.
This map of western North America drawn by Joseph La France in 1740, shows how little was known about the Canadian west. Try to find your home on this map.
In 1804, David Thompson visited Fort Vermilion, then called LaFleur’s Post, by the North West Company. We know this from his daily journal. Here is an excerpt from his journal and arrival at the post. Good luck reading it. It may strain your eyes.
A page of David Thompson’s original journal, 1804. Thompson’s script requires some getting used to. As a historical archaeologist, one of the hardest things I have had to do, is read journals, such as Thompson’s. And then, when I felt comfortable with his script, I went on to someone else’s journal and had to start learning all over.
In Search of LaFleur’s Post (Fort Vermilion I)
Before 1998 Fort Vermilion was still lost in the northern Alberta wilderness. In 1968 John Nicks (Provincial Museum of Alberta) and Karlis Karklins (Parks Canada) searched for the post but did not find it.
In 1998 a few members of the community of Fort Vermilion asked me if I would try to find the first Fort Vermilion. It was important to them because 1998 marked its 200 birthday.
I accepted their invitation. I’d found Boyer’s Post a decade ago. A post which too had been swallowed up by the northern boreal forest and lost for 200 years. This I believed would be much easier than finding Boyer’s post whose location was only vaguely alluded to by the occasional passing explorer.
One of the problems with finding old abandoned fur trade sites with vague references to their locations is the formidable bush along the lower terraces of the Peace River. For example, in 1792 Alexander Mackenzie passed the Boyer River Post on his way upriver near the Boyer River. He wrote: “In the summer of 1788 a small spot was cleared at the Old Establishment which is situated on a bank thirty feet above the level of the river and was sown with turnips, carrots and parsnips.” After finding Boyer’s Post in 1987, it took us over an hour to relocate the site in 2018. It’s in here somewhere…. The only fact we could come away with from this quote was that the fort was located on a bank near the Peace River where the Boyer River flowed into it.Not only does the dense northern bush hide any signs of human settlement, so does urbanization. If you were to visit today’s Alberta legislature grounds in Edmonton, Alberta, you would be hard-pressed to see any signs of what was one of the most important 19th century forts in western Canada. When we interviewed people visiting our excavations in the early 1990s, the majority did not know this was the original location of Fort Edmonton. The fort was hiding in plain view.
The search for these long forgotten places is often difficult. The first problem with the Fort Vermilion site was its remoteness. There were no roads near where we thought it might be, and the bush was dense along the lower terraces of the Peace River. Ground surface visibility was bad.
Long stretches of the Peace River in northern Alberta are remote and very difficult to travel along. Any signs of settlement gets swallowed up immediately in the lower terrace forests. This is the stretch of river where we eventually found Fort Vermilion. It looks good from the air. Until you get on the ground and have to walk through the bush.
So, where was LaFleur’s post? Were there any records that talked about it? Did the Hudson’s Bay Company rebuild the post when the two companies amalgamated, or, did they move it in 1821?
The earliest known record of the location of LaFleur’s post comes from David Thompson’s 1804 journals. Thompson stated the post was on the left bank of the river 17 miles downriver from the mouth of the Keg River. Those seem like pretty good details until you begin to think about them a little more. For instance, what does left bank mean? As you travel upriver, or downriver? Thompson didn’t elaborate. And then, was the Keg River the same one as today’s Keg River? Finally, what did 17 miles downriver mean? Were those river miles, or, were those a direct line to the fort from the mouth of the Keg River?
There was no way of determining on which side of the river bank the fort was located from Thompson’s left bank remark. Best to check both banks. In fact Nicks and Karklins had already checked the east bank in the general vicinity, and found nothing. Then there was the Keg River. I assumed that the historic and present names were the same. The reason for this was that Thompson noted other important landmarks in his journals, such as Wolverine Point (Carcajou) which still exists today on the Peace River.
Next was the distance of 17 miles. I examined both Thompson’s journals and other documents and found that these were river miles. Thompson used river track surveys, where he took a compass bearing and a distance to a point in the river where it turned and then repeated it as he traveled on the river. But, how accurate were these readings?
“Co. N12 E1m NE3/4m”(David Thompson’s notebook,May 3, 1804, Fort Vermilion)
David Thompson used a 32 point compass rose to estimate directions, such as those above. Each point represented 11.25 degrees. In the above quote from Thompson’s 1804 journal, he traveled 12 miles north, then one mile east, then 4 miles northeast. Reckoning speed and distance was entirely another matter. He would have needed to estimate how fast his canoes were moving and then time the distance with a watch (which he did have). One way (and not the only one) would be to pace off an accurate distance on shore and then time how fast the canoes traveled that distance, giving him some idea of baseline speed.
Whatever methods Thompson used, his maps for the period were very accurate.
David Thompson’s line track survey of the North Saskatchewan River in the 1790s, compared to the river’s actual course today. Thompson wisely made several surveys and then averaged his distances and orientation, much like that of a carpenter taking the same measurement a number of times and averaging the distance.
When I saw Thompson’s North Saskatchewan River map I realized there might be a similar Peace River map, marking all the forts along it. I quickly found Thompson’s Peace River map published in his narrative (1916). Much to my dismay this is what it looked like.
This map is a reproduction of Thompson’s original map, accurately showing the Peace River. But alas, not a fort to be seen. When I looked closely, there was a note on the bottom of the map that said: “…reduced from a tracing of photostat of the original Thompson map in the Royal Ontario Archives, which is now too dark for successful reproduction.” (Tyrrell 1916).
At the Royal Alberta museum we had a full sized reproduction of David Thompson’s original ‘territories’ map, including the Peace River. When I looked at that map, this is what I saw.
On this map all the major forts and landmarks are clearly marked. The publisher decided to remove the names and locations of these places in the 1916 publication.
And, low and behold, there was Fort Vermilion on the west bank roughly where Thompson described it in his journals.
The lesson to be learned from this was to always go back to the original documents whenever possible. One of the rules of doing history and dealing with historic documents.
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Next we needed a fine water craft to get near the location where we thought the fort might be located. Below is a photograph of the official research vessel, known locally as the Barge, owned and operated by Mike Mihaly, High Level Alberta.
Getting ready to depart from La Crete Ferry Landing on the barge on one of many expeditions to Fort Vermilion I. Captain Mike jokingly told me that the barge was first a bridge across a creek at home and then over the years morphed into this river boat. What the barge lacked in appearance was made up with both its practicality and the gear on board. Depth finders, solar array, phones and an ingenious anchoring system of poles for the constantly moving river which in a few short hours could change depth, either sinking you or leaving you dry on land if anchored too securely. I may never excavate at this fur trade site again. But, over the course of 30 years I said that at least a half-dozen times and kept comping back. Never say ‘Never’. However, to remind me of the good days and productive research between trips, I have this image on my desktop. The Barge. To remind me of those good times.
In October, 1998, two-hundred years after it was built we (Al and Marilee Toews, Fort Vermilion, and Mike Mihaly, High Level, Alberta) anchored about 500 metres from where after an afternoon of walking and stumbling through the bush we eventually found the long lost Fort Vermilion I. It was truly a day to be remembered for everyone.
As I later reflected after examining Colin Campbell’s (clerk for the Hudson’s Bay Company) journals at Fort Vermilion, we were fortunate to have such an astute observer as David Thompson. Or this fort might still be lost to us. Campbell spent nearly ten years at Fort Vermilion, keeping a journal for most of those years. There is not a single entry that would help identify the location of this and other forts along the river.
A Few Final Comments on David Thompson’s Maps and Journals
I am always amazed and somewhat in awe of how one man, using very simple, rudimentary instruments could so accurately map the Canadian West. In a canoe undergoing tremendous hardships and obstacles. Surely he deserves more recognition than a five cent postage stamp. Even the Canadian loon gets more monetary recognition.
As it turned out Thompson’s latitude reckonings (obtained by measuring the angle of the sun to the horizon at midday, or taking angle of the north star to the horizon with a sextant) were 11 seconds, or 220 metres off for the location of Fort Vermilion I. His estimation of longitude at Fort Vermilion were over 35 kilometres off. Not surprising, since you needed extremely accurate watches (one set at mean Greenwich time and one set locally to estimate longitude accurately). It would be later when Captain James Cook circumnavigated the globe mapping it, that more accurate time-pieces were available, thus producing more accurate maps.
Highly accurate time pieces were necessary to determine longitude. And they had to be small enough to carry through the Canadian wilderness. That and over a dozen mathematical computations. David Thompson was off a little over one degree in estimating longitude at Fort Vermilion. But even one degree was a considerable distance.
“…brass Sextant of ten inches radius, an achromatic Telescope of high power for observing the Satellites of Jupiter and other phenomena, one of the same construction for common use, Parallel glasses and quiksilver horizon for double altitudes; Compass, Thermometer, and other requisite instruments, which I was in the constant practice of using in clear weather for observations on the Sun , Moon, Planets and Stars…” (David Thompson)
THE STARGAZER – Koo-Koo-Sint
This is one of the first artifacts we found at the long-lost Fort Vermilion I. Can you guess what it is? Perhaps in another post I’ll write more about this very unique object.
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References
Thompson, David, 1916. David Thompson’s Narratives of His Explorations in Western America 1784 – 1812. The Champlain Society. Toronto.
High Level (2019), Fort McMurray (2016), Slave Lake (2011), Alberta, Canada! On fire, or nearly so. Fires so hot, I’m told by first-hand witnesses, that the flames jumped across the Athabasca River at Fort McMurray. A distance of more than 200 metres. A scenario which repeats itself in many parts of Canada.
And also in other parts of the world. In 2019 we witnessed horrendous fires in New South Wales, Australia. The Blue Mountains turned grey.
Katoomba, New South Wales, Blue Mountains on fire, December 2019. A few new fires broke out in less than one hour while we were there.
Yes, granted. Climate change is partially responsible for more intense, frequent fires. But, not totally. It’s way more complex than that. It’s also a result of precedence – in this case, economics over ecology. Canada’s policy of fire suppression, for well over a century, is one of the worst mistakes made in managing our forests.
Whenever I drive through Slave Lake, up to Fort Vermilion on Highway 88, I go by the burned-out area of trees on the east side of the highway. And there on the west side sit the houses of the City. The City starts where the forest stops. How can that be a good idea?
How could this happen? The answer to that question requires a lesson in Canadian history. Yes, as you will see, history can teach us important lessons to apply to the future. There’s no doubt about that. But first to learn from history, we have to read it. Too little of that in Canada.
And then, the people reading it have to be empowered to turn what they learned into policy. Too little of that too from our policymakers in Canada.
Fire, Fire: The Warning Cries
In the early 1970s, I attended lectures by Henry Lewis, Professor of Anthropology. Dr. Lewis was studying the use of fire by the Dene and Cree of northern Alberta, Canada. He just finished researching the use of fire by Indigenous people in California.
Lewis’s message was clear. The northern Dene and Cree used fire regularly to clear areas in the boreal forest to create meadows and other habitat more suitable for a diversity of game animals. And they had likely done this for centuries. The boreal forest we see today was nothing like it was centuries ago before White settlement.
And by doing so, Indigenous people, not only in Canada but throughout the world, lessened the intensity of natural forest fires. Controlled burning decreased the amount of dead vegetation, or fuel, and opened up the forests, reducing large-scale spread.
In 1976 I studied Boreal Ecology under the late Professor William Pruitt, University of Manitoba. Pruitt was a quiet man with the looks and demeanour more like Santa Claus than some ‘political shit-disturber’ which he was labelled as at the University of Alaska (for standing up against the US government’s nuclear policies). The good Dr. Pruitt repeatedly told us that government fire prevention policies in the boreal forests of North America would lead to disaster. Unfortunately, Dr. Pruitt’s words turned out to be prophetic.
High Prairie, Grande Prairie, Prairie Point, Jon D’Or Prairie, Buffalo Head Prairie, Clear Prairie, Meadow Lake. These are the names of a few settlements in today’s northern boreal forest in Alberta and Saskatchewan. There are more prairie names of settlements in the boreal forest than on the Northern Great Plains. Where did these names come from? Surely not because some nostalgic folks living in the woods, yearning for the prairies, named them.
No. These areas in the northern boreal forest, at the beginning of White settlement, contained vast prairies, kept open and maintained by First Nations people using fire.
Let’s go back and look at some of the evidence for deliberate burning practices by Indigenous peoples throughout the world.
Indigenous Use of Fire, Australia
“The “virgin lands” first observed by Europeans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were not an untouched wilderness. As several writers have noted, the “forest primeval” was a later, romanticized creation of the Euro-American imagination.” (Henry Lewis and Theresa Ferguson, 1988)
Historic painting of Australian Aborigines hunting in a park-like landscape. http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/201205/r949404_10117814.jpg
The Australian Aborigines used fires to create a park-like vista on the Australian landscape at the time of contact with Whites. Their activities were misunderstood and regarded with suspicion by early settlers. This created considerable strife between settlers and aborigines, as documented in a series of letters between the governor and settlers:
“I fear His Excellency will find it a very difficult subject to deal with, and impossible wholly to prevent, it has always been the custom of the Natives to fire the country during the summer season for a variety of purposes, first to assist them in hunting, it also clears the country of underwood, which if not occasionally burnt, would become an impenetrable jungle, infested with snakes and reptiles. “ (Letter to Peter Broun, Secretary to the Governor, New South Wales from Revett Henry Bland, Protector of Natives at York, 1846)
“If so – they burn for their food, whereas the existence of our Flocks and Herds depends on what to us is thus annually irretrievably destroyed and the whole district is now groaning under the ruinous spoliation…” (Richard G. Meares, Resident, 1846)
The outcome eventually favoured the settlers. As it would in many other parts of the world. Indigenous peoples were banned from burning and the dense bush began to encroach eventually creating the situations we saw last year in the Blue Mountains. Over the years fire suppression created more problems than it solved.
While driving through the outback of New South Wales of Australia in 2019, I noticed many goats along the roadsides. Feral goats are everywhere. Eating up the shrubbery and weeds. Keeping them at bay. Turns out in some communities goats are Australia’s new ‘fire’ to control bush and prevent major fires.
Goats, in some parts of Australia, are now the new ‘fire’, keeping dense vegetation and undergrowth under control. “On the edge of Daylesford, a town on Dja Dja Wurrung country in Victoria, Australia prone to massive bushfires, a small group of community-minded folk have pulled together to work towards restoring the ecology of their commons forest – in order to stop the future need for controlled burn-offs by the local fire authority.” Goats, it seems are the new fire. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_goats_in_Australia#/media/File:Goats_-_Wilpena_Pound.JPG)
Indigenous Use of Fire, California
Virtually the same circumstances took place in what was to become California when the Spanish arrived. They tried to suppress the use of fire by the Indigenous people, calling it “primitive” and wasteful. In 1850, the US government passed the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians, which outlawed intentional burning. According to fire historian Stephen Pyne:
“They said if we suppress all these fires, we end light burning, we will have great new forests. And we did – we had so much great new forest that we created a problem.”
In the late 1960s, the US government rethought its fire policies but is still paying the price today. Indigenous groups, such as the Yurok are again beginning to actively use fire, as they had traditionally for many centuries, to open up the forests:
Indigenous Use of Fire, Boreal Forest, Northern Alberta
In Alberta, northern Canada, at the time of contact Dene used fire to manage the forest and keep it from clogging up. According to surveyor George M. Dawson in 1879, when in northern Alberta:
“…the origin of the prairies of the Peace River is sufficiently obvious. There can be no doubt that they have been produced and are maintained by fires. The country is naturally a wooded one, and where fires have not run for a few years, young trees begin rapidly to spring up.” (Macoun 1882:125)
In the early 1970s, Dr. Henry Lewis argued that places in northern Alberta:
“…prescribed fires were once part of the Indian’s own pattern of ‘landscape management’.….their selective employment of modern fire for boreal forest adaptations indicated an understanding of both the general principles and the local specific environmental relationships that are the subject of modern fire ecology….They understood and practiced controlled burning as a part of hunting-gathering subsistence activities.” (from Lewis 1982)
By the use of fire, the people kept meadows and other areas open and refurbished:
“Why the bushes so thick is because…they stop burning—the Indians stopped burning…Did you ever see them prairies? My goodness, I even remember. It was really prairie…just prairie, you know, (and) here and there you see little specks of woods….” (Beaver woman, 69, High Level, Alberta area; from Lewis 1982:24)
Such open meadows would have attracted many large game animals, including the once-abundant woodland bison:
“Until the mid-eighteenth century bison ranged throughout much of the boreal forest, as far north as Great Slave Lake and the Mackenzie River in the Northwest Territories….it seems unlikely that either the Athapaskans or later Algonkians would have overlooked the possibilities of providing and maintaining better habitat for woodland buffalo [through use of fire].” (from Lewis 1982; brackets mine)
“People know where to hunt. Our people have a name for those burned places in the forest called go-ley-day. They tell one another about those places and when to hunt there.” (Slavey, 69, Meander River area; from Lewis, 1982)
When asked why this practice stopped, the responses were consistent and similar to other areas of the world:
“But it is years ago they did that. Nowadays you can’t burn on the trap line because it’s against the law, and it’s not so good as before.” (Slavey 73, Meander River area; from Lewis, 1982)
Indigenous people also knew that camping and living among the trees was dangerous:
“What is that name? Maskuta? Muskotaw! Yea, that’s a prairie like place. There used to be lots of places around here. Nobody built their house in the woods like they do now. If we get a forest fire now it could be really bad. All the houses would get burned up. It’s a lot safer if you got open places…you just your teepee up there.” (Cree, 78, Trout Lake [Alberta] area; from Lewis 1982)
Obviously, that lesson, learned long ago, has yet to trickle down to today’s generation.
Anthropogenic Burning and the Historic Record, Alberta
Both Indigenous people and academics have voiced these ideas for years now. But, still not enough people are listening. Recently, however, more action has been taken to better manage the world’s forests. Including Canada’s forests.
For example, ecologists working in Alberta’s Rocky Mountains demonstrated that restoring forest areas to a pre-European landscape “resulted in dramatically lower mean probability… [of high-intensity fires] …and a smaller reduction in the mean fire size” (from Poletto 2019)
My interest in anthropogenic burning lies in how long it was used. The Fort Vermilion region contained ‘prairies’ at contact and was an important place for the acquisition of meat in the fur trade. In 1987 we found one of the largest prehistoric sites in the region, which we think might have been used intermittently for the last 9,000 years. Was this place always important historically and a prairie?
Throughout northern Alberta, archaeologists and paleo-ecologists are looking at these relationships more closely. Did these historically documented prairies have a long history of human use?
During the late 18th – early 19th centuries, traders and explorers noted several places where large game, especially wood bison, were plentiful in areas with prairies or more open parkland. Here are a few of the areas shown in the map below:
These are a few of the places, circled in yellow, described by traders and explorers as containing ‘prairies’ and abundant large game animals, including wood bison. 1. Fort McKay area; 2. Lake Athabasca delta; 3. Salt Plains, NWT; 4) Fort Vermilion -High Level area; 5) Whitemud River near Peace River; and, 6) the Grande Prairie.The Salt Plains, NWT, west of Fort Smith. An open parkland area with natural salt outcroppings. Important wood bison grounds historically and today’s herds.Buffalo Head Prairie, just south of La Crete, Alberta, looking south towards the Buffalo Head Hills in the distance. Historically a vast, flat, wide open prairie, likely maintained by burning. Today it has some of the best farmland in the region. In some parts of northern Alberta, early settlers stated that they would not have cleared the land so easily had it not been for the already open prairie areas such as these south of La Crete.Our large, ancient archaeological site near Fort Vermilion, Alberta, Canada, is now mostly in a cultivated field. One of the still-standing Metis log houses was built at the turn of the 20th century.
These places contain both a high frequency and some very large archaeological sites, thousands of years old. Unfortunately we do not have sufficient evidence to connect the long Indigenous land use directly to deliberate burning and the formation of prairies and parkland in the forest.
It will take years of research to better understand this association. However, it has already begun. Paleo-ecologists are examining lake sediments in some areas of the province. They reveal a long history of deliberate burning before contact. The task is difficult as one researcher recently noted:
“Although anthropogenic fires cannot be distinguished in Sharkbite Lake’s record, the charcoal record indicates that on average, every 155 years there was a major fire episode close to Sharkbite Lake. More recent regional fire studies indicate that some areas are prone to burn every 10 years.” (Christina Potello, Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta)
With the incorporation of the Dominion Lands Act in 1872, Canada engaged in a war against fire. Good or bad. Elizabeth Ramsey’s (2015) article on the history of forest fire management in Alberta documents the views and policies that have led to today’s crisis. As one fire expert succinctly put it, by the second half of the 19th century conflicting interests about Alberta’s resources collided, “…a new logic of economics smashed against an older logic of ecology.” (Stephen J. Pyne, 2007).
While our perceptions and actions are slowly changing toward fire, in the words of one Indigenous informant, back in the 1970s:
“It would take a long time to make the country like it was before we stopped burning…maybe fifty years to get the country back (to what it was). It would take a lot of work.” (Slavey, 73, High Level [Alberta] area; from Lewis 1982)
While it’s never too late to change course, it would take a herculean effort to take our forests back to the pre-contact days. And, does it conflict with today’s economics? Perhaps. But surely our current forest policies are not the answer.
Today’s northern boreal forests are often choked with dense underbrush making travel through them almost impossible. And also finding archaeological sites. Boyer River, 2018. Somewhere in there is a late 18th-century fur trade post.
As I walked across the ancient prehistoric site near Fort Vermilion and gazed towards the Caribou Mountains in the distance I envisioned a vast prairie – parkland centuries ago, with grazing herds of wood bison and elk, stretching for miles in either direction, in what is now Canada’s northern boreal forest.
Now only open fields or dense forests appear before me. But no flocks of feral goats. We haven’t got that desperate yet.
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References
Lewis, H.T., 1982. A Time for burning. Boreal Institute for Northern Studies. Edmonton, Alberta.
Lewis, Henry T., and Theresa A. Ferguson, 1988. Yards, Corridors, and Mosaics: How to Burn a Boreal Forest. Human Ecology 16:57-77.
Macoun, John, 1882. Manitoba and the great North-West. Guelph, Ontario. World Publishing Company.
Poletto, Christina Livia, 2019. Postglacial Human and Environment Landscapes of Northeastern Alberta: An Analysis of Late Holocene Sediment Record from Sharkbite Lake, Alberta. M. A. Thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta.
Pyne, Stephen J., 2007. Awful Splendour: A Fire History of Canada. University of British Columbia Press.
Ramsey, Elizabeth, 2015. Ecology or Economy. A History of Forest Fire Management in Alberta. Alberta History:16-20.
Much of Canadian human history is written in stone. Stone tools, and detritus from making those tools, are often the only remaining physical evidence of the presence of the New World by First Nations peoples for thousands of years. That record goes back well over ten thousand years in some parts of the Americas.
I’m just analyzing the stone tools we found in 2018 at a prehistoric site in the Fort Vermilion region, northern Canada. I always marvel at the level of craftsmanship (or craftswomanship) these tools display.
This prehistoric biface, likely a stone knife, found in northern Alberta, Canada, was an important type of cutting tool for First Nations people for thousands of years.
Take for example this beautiful bifacially flaked quartzite knife. It still retains its edge, even though possibly made thousands of years ago. The reason is that quartzite, on the Mohs hardness scale, is about a seven (diamond being a 10), equivalent in hardness to a good steel knife blade.
Years ago, at Simon Fraser University, we learned how to make stone tools. We smashed our fingers, we bled, we cursed… Soon I began to appreciate just how hard it was to make even a simple stone tool. Such as this knife.
There’s a lot of thought, effort, and skill involved when making a stone knife. Let’s consider a few of the necessary steps.
First you need to know something about the characteristics of stone. And where to find the best ones. When it comes to stone tool making not all rocks are created equal.
Many stone tools are made by a method called direct percussion where the knapper (stone tool maker) drives flakes off a cobble or spall to thin and shape it. The best rocks for making stone tools have a cryptocrystalline (or having a microscopic crystalline) structure. These rocks fracture in predictable ways because the force created by the blow dissipates through them evenly. Quartzite, a metamorphosed sandstone, is such a rock.
Stone flakes from a northern Alberta prehistoric site, driven off a larger piece of rock. The dark rock on the left is chert (a hard, fine-grained sedimentary rock composed of cryptocrystalline crystals of quartz); in the middle is orthoquartzite (similar to quartzite) and on the far right, quartzite. These three types of rocks are found in northern Alberta. Prehistoric First Nations people made most of their stone tools from them.
I have wandered the North Saskatchewan River Valley looking looking for just the right quartzite cobble to flake. Because not all quartzites are equal either. I have yet to find quartzites of the quality of some of the prehistoric quartzite stone tools in the region.
For example, below are some average quality local quartzites. Notice how much coarser and grainy they are compared to the ones above. With these materials it is much harder to flake, thin and shape a tool. Over the years I have learned what cobbles to look for before splitting them. Those that have chatter marks (made from hitting other rocks or scoured by ice) on the cortex (outer oxidized layer) are usually better quality. And, when you strike another rock against them, the good ones ring a bit; the poor quality ones ‘clank’.
A quartzite flake (left) and a quartzite biface (right). These quartzites are coarser and grainier than the quartzite above. And therefore do not flake as well.
Once you have found good raw material, you then have to strike the piece you are working on just right to remove a flake. Again, easier said than done. If you don’t strike the piece at the proper angle with your hammer (often simply another stone), you either crush the striking platform or nothing happens because you did not create enough force to move through the rock to remove a flake.
Or, you could break and ruin the piece. That’s where more cursing and smashing of fingers usually comes in.
We refer to stone tool making as a ‘reductive’ technology. One major mistake and you have to start over. Unlike pottery-making which is an ‘additive’ technology and more forgiving if you make a mistake.
I started flintknaping obsidian (volcanic glass). Although dangerous it is relatively easy to work. After a few months I made some decent tools.
I made this small obsidian point by another flintknapping technique, known as pressure flaking. In this technique you push off the flakes to shape and thin the artifact with an antler tine. It takes special platform preparation, and proper angle to ‘push’ off the flakes. One slip and you could either drive your hand into the edge or drive the tine into your thigh. Done both.
This obsidian knife snapped in half when I tried to remove a thinning flake from the left end. Later my professor told me this is referred to as ‘end-shock’, where the force of the blow stops at some point in the object and then travels up. Snapping it in half. There was a lot of moaning after that incident. Obsidian is easier to work than quartzite, and achieves a very sharp edge. But it is more brittle and does not maintain an edge as well as quartzite. There is always a trade-off.
Then, while excavating a prehistoric site in Edmonton, Alberta, in the early 1980s, I decided to work with local quartzite. Well, it was as if I had never flintknapped before. Quartzite, when compared to obsidian, is much harder. You really had to whack those edges (and occasionally fingers) to get anything off. And often you couldn’t control what came off.
After months of practice I made some passable tools, like the quartzite biface below. But that took tremendous effort and many attempts. And, when you compare the thinness (a sign of quality workmanship) of my biface to the one we found in northern Alberta, it shows what an amateur I still was after all that practice.
This quartzite biface made by the author pales in comparison in workmanship to prehistoric bifaces, such as the one below. And I have seen even thinner examples in Alberta assemblages.
The northern biface on edge, showing the thin cutting edge and overall thinness of this stone tool.
My quartzite biface on edge. Not nearly as thin as the northern biface. The thicker cutting edge on my biface would not cut as well as that northern biface. And, hafting this piece onto a wood or bone handle, would have been difficult because of its thickness.
And that folks is what it takes to just make a stone knife. There are other more sophisticated stone tool making techniques that take even greater skill and are more time-consuming. Such as pecking or grinding stones to make tools.
The Viking Ribstones, near Viking, Alberta, Canada. An example of grinding or pecking stone technology. It took either many years, or many First Nations people, or both, to patiently grind away on these granite boulders to create these incised lines, which some people believe depict the ribs of a buffalo. https://hermis.alberta.ca/ARHP/GetImageDetails.aspx?ObjectID=4665-0111&MediaID=127160
Today We Occasionally Use Stone Tools
Humans and their ancestors, throughout the world, made a variety of stone tools. Some of the earliest stone tools date back to over 2.58 million years ago, and were nothing more than fist-sized cobbles with some flakes removed to create a cutting edge.
In some parts of the world, people still made and used stone tools during the 20th century. Even today we are not totally out of the stone age. Nothing, not even the best steel, compares to this obsidian surgical scalpel blade (left), with an edge thickness of approximately one micron.
When I see these Mayan artifacts, or the stone workmanship below, I only sigh with envy. And, as a Canadian, I refer to that often-used hockey analogy when viewing this piece. ‘Hell, I could have been that good (to make the NHL) if only I’d practiced more.’ Ya, right!
This begs the question, of course, why Indigenous people around the world eventually abandoned these techniques and traded for similar European tools? Answers to that question of Canadian history, are complex and often hotly debated.
Maybe, in a future post, I will elaborate further on that question with a work of historical fiction!
