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.
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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.
……………………….
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!
Hello everyone. It’s been a while since I last posted here. However that does not mean I haven’t been writing. I have. Just to a different audience – my archeological colleagues. And when I tell you that I’ve been writing about how deep objects sink when stepped on, and what that means for the archeological record, I can already hear the sighs of relief. ‘Sure glad he didn’t share that gem with us.’
For me it doesn’t get much more exciting than that. At least during these Covid times when repeatedly stepping on marbles was the highlight of my day. In fact, when I carried out some of these experiments along the banks of the North Saskatchewan River near Devon, Alberta, this summer they drew a lot attention. As in, ‘What’s that weirdo doing?‘ People were obviously bored.
After explaining to one mother and her ten year old daughter, why I was stomping on marbles in a sandbox, the mom quickly whisked her daughter away, looking over her shoulder to make sure I wasn’t following. I guess I left quite an impression. That young girl will now have forever an image in her head of what an archaeologist looks like and does for a living. And it won’t be the Indiana Jones kind, but some old guy, with long white hair tied in a pony tail, trampling on marbles, then carefully recording those results. And that poor mother’s ‘Indi’ dream archaeologist was forever shattered as well.
Just setting up my archaeological experiment in the beautiful North Saskatchewan River Valley near Devon, Alberta. As archaeologists we are always concerned about time and stratigraphy. And whether objects from one layer get mixed up with objects from another lower layer representing a different time period. Only one way to find out. Stomp on them to see how deep they go.
There are times however when my profession is a little more exciting and the things we find are jaw droppers. One-of-a-kinds, such as this bone/ivory artifact found at the Fort Vermilion I (c.1798 – 1830) fur trade post in northern Alberta. We think it’s a toothbrush, perhaps one of the earliest ever to enter the province. This perfectly preserved object, with some of the bristles still intact at both ends, currently is the only one found in Alberta and I have only seen a fragment of one like it found at a NWT fort.
So what is an object like this doing at a frontier wilderness post in what was then the middle of nowhere (and in some respects still is)? My colleagues and I have been asking ourselves that question for some time now. Aside from idle speculation, we have few definitive answers. Dental hygiene was not at a very advanced stage at the turn of the 19th century anywhere in the world, let alone some Canadian frontier trading post. Especially among the lower income fort laborer’s.
Although the toothbrush was already invented in China sometime in the 7th – 8th century A. D. by the Dang Dynasty, it took a while for Europe to catch on.
Here’s what the toothbrush history experts have to say on the subject:
“At around 1780, the first toothbrush was made by William Addis of Clerkenald, England. Addis, and later, his descendants, manufactured the finest English brushes, where the handles were carved out of the bone of cattle and the heads of the natural bristles were placed in the bored holes made in the bone and kept in place by thin wire. The natural bristles were obtained from the necks and shoulders of swine, especially from pigs living in colder climates like Siberia and China.
By the early 1800s the bristled brushes were in general use in Europe and Japan. In 1857, H. N. Wadsworth was credited as the first American to receive a toothbrush patent as America entered the growing toothbrush market.” (https://mrs-o-c.com/computers/history/toothbrush/toothbrushHistory.htm
Here is sort of a similar-looking bone toothbrush from 1844:
It’s not as if this was a common artifact in western Canada. No. It was essentially a ‘one-off.’ And how did this rather pristine, still functional object end up in the fort midden pile? We can only speculate, but it seems reasonable to assume it belonged to a person who did not linger long at this ‘silvan abode in the woods.’ (A tongue-in-cheek quote from Alexander Ross, 1825, describing the rather decrepit looking Fort Assiniboine, Alberta) Or we would have found more like it.
Let me assure you this find is unusual and not normal fur trade archaeology. But then trampling on marbles isn’t either. Both however do make for a good story. In my next post I’ll speculate even more about this object with a short story of historical fiction. I wish I could share this post with that mother and child to help restore their image of archaeology. Too late for that though.
Until then, stay safe everyone.
In the meantime, in order to fight Covid, I’m going to brush my teeth with the new toothpaste I just acquired. If they had this toothpaste in the fur trade, we would have found a lot more toothbrushes:
The Plains Bison. Once numbering in the millions on the Great Plains of North America, this animal furnished prehistoric peoples with food, clothing, and shelters. Trying to capture these animals took a great deal of effort and ingenuity on the part of their human pursuers.
Over the centuries humans invented many ways to capture and slaughter animals on a mass scale. In Canada the most well known methods include netting or trapping thousands of fish (fish weir) at a time, or driving the Plains bison over cliffs. In his renowned book Imagining Head-Smashed-In (University of Athabasca Press), archaeologist Jack Brink talks about the methods the Blackfoot of southern Alberta used to drive hundreds of bison over steep cliffs to their deaths.
The cliffs at Head-Smashed-In buffalo jump, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, west of Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada. Prehistoric peoples drove the bison off this ten metre high cliff located at the southern edge of the Porcupine Hills. The animals would then be butchered in the nearby camp which also had a source of water close by. The site may have been used as early as six-thousand years ago leaving a twelve metre thick bone bed beneath the cliffs.
The Bison Pound
One of the few historic images of a bison pound. In this drawing, by George Back, horsemen chased bison into a wooden circular corral. In prehistoric times runners would have pursued them on foot. Hunters hid around the pound fence ready to dispatch the animals with spears, bows and arrows, or firearms. The camp was usually nearby, hidden and downwind from these nearsighted animals with an incredible sense of smell. (Library and Archives of Canada, C-33615)
The bison or antelope pound is another, lesser known method of mass killing that First Nations peoples used on the Northern Great Plains and park lands in western Canada. In her monograph, Communal Buffalo Hunting Among the Plains Indians, Eleanor Verbicky-Todd, describes a number of ingenious ways people captured these animals and disposed of them. One of those ways was the pound, or surround.
Aside from Brink’s book, this is one of the best sources written about communal bison hunting. Published by the Archaeological Survey of Alberta, it describes the various methods of communal bison hunting and other ingenious ways prehistoric peoples devised to capture this animal.
What is a Bison Pound?
Bison pounds are large corrals or surrounds, between five and six feet high, made from cut trees with an opening at one end to chase bison into. Once inside the animals couldn’t escape (because of a ramp or drop into the corral at the gate) and were then disposed of with the bow and arrow, or later with firearms. Of all the methods First Nations peoples devised to capture these enormous animals, pounding was the most difficult of all.
This drawing of an Assiniboine buffalo park or surround by Edwin Thomas Denig (from Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri. 1930:532. Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology). The pound requires some key components to work. A long drive lane is spread out to funnel the animals in. A set of hills, dunes, or trees are present in front of the corral to hide it from the animals. An elevated ramp near the entrance prevents the animals from escaping. In the center of the corral there is a medicine mast (usually a striped tree) with charms attached to it by the grand-master of ceremonies. The buffalo caller.
“Success depended upon too many circumstances. The ground had to lie correctly; timber should be available; the game has to be fairly plentiful and within easy reach. Also, someone able to guide the animals in the right direction was indispensable. Under the most favourable conditions, too, the herd often escaped.” (from Robert Jefferson, 1929. “Fifty Years on the Saskatchewan.” In Canadian Northwest Historical Society Publications 1:1-160)Diagram of the Plains Cree buffalo pound (by David Mandelbaum 1979:53. In The Plains Cree). The bottom two sketches show the gate or entrance which is a raised wood platform or earthen ramp. Once the bison jump in they can’t get back out again.
Where Does Bison Pounding Occur?
In Canada bison pounds are found on the Northern Great Plains and the park lands of the prairie provinces. But, in these areas certain key elements were required: Bison, trees (to make the corrals), suitable terrain, a large gathering basin, and lots of people (to build the pound and drive lanes, drive the animals in, dispose of them, and then butcher and process the meat).
For many years known locations of bison pounds were relatively rare in Alberta. Today most pounds occur in the park lands and northern Great Plains where there are trees and proper terrain. Such as river valleys or foothills. Without trees you can’t build the corrals and drive lanes.
In 2010 there were sixteen known pounds recorded in Alberta. Most of them occur in areas with trees and hilly terrain. Early explorers, such as David Thompson, Peter Fidler and Alexander Henry, remarked that bison pounding was a major industry in the park lands of the prairie provinces. As the demand for meat and pemmican rose during the fur trade, this industry likely became more common than during prehistoric times.
Now after hundreds or even thousands of years these features leave no mark on the surface of the land. You’ve probably driven by some pounds without even knowing it.
Suitable Terrain and Trees – Bodo, Alberta
Terrain and trees were key factors to build and operate a successful pound. Hills or barriers (e.g., trees) were required to hide the pound from the bison. Sometimes the pound was placed on a slope, helping to drive the animals down into it. On a flat surface the drive lanes were sometimes curved and a ramp was built at the entrance to hide the corral. A successful pound also required a large prairie or gathering basin for bison to graze, and then to move the animals toward the pound.
The Bodo area of east-central Alberta is just such a place. Bodo, you ask? Where is that? Well, I’ll let you look it up on a map. If you visit the area when their interpretive center is open in the summer months, you can even tour the site and occasionally partake in excavations.
This is Bodo, Alberta, southeast of Provost, near the Alberta-Saskatchewan border. The area contains all the key elements to make a good pound. Treed sand hills (above left) to build and hide the pound. And a large gathering basin where bison would come to graze and drink water from the nearby creek. The photograph at the bottom shows the treed Bodo sand dunes, surrounded by vast grasslands. A perfect spot for an ambush.
Surprise and Ambush – Hardisty, Alberta
The Hardisty bison pound site is a short distance east of the Battle River and would have provided people with wood, water and the terrain necessary to drive bison successfully into a well concealed pound.
When you drive east on Highway 13 and arrive at Hardisty, Alberta and then cross the Battle River, you will see a series of oil bunkers on the right side of the highway. In the Battle River Valley below them lies the Hardisty bison pound. The site was found when the oil companies wanted to construct their pipelines through the valley corridor. What was uncovered and hidden for so many years, surprised many people.
The Hardisty site is remarkable in many ways. It wasn’t discovered until relatively recently, although it was near a major central Alberta highway and the community of Hardisty. It contains a very thick bone bed which represents use between 900 – 1,100 years ago, and then approximately 7,000 years ago, making it one of the oldest known pound sites in western Canada. It also contained an adjoining camping and processing area.
Archaeological deposits and artifacts from the Hardisty site. Top left: a bone pit. Right: prehistoric projectile points. Bottom left: pottery shards. (Photograph courtesy of FMA Consultants)
Paskapoo Slopes, Calgary, Alberta
North facing Paskapoo Slopes, looking south from the north side of the Bow River. The numbered sites represent prehistoric campsites, kill sites, and one major pound (EgPn-362). (Photograph courtesy of Lifeways of Canada)
Nestled on the Paskapoo slopes, in the heart of Calgary, Alberta, are a series of prehistoric campsites, kill sites, and a major buffalo pound site, hidden for thousands of years in plain view.
Bone bed of bison pound being excavated by archaeologists, Lifeways of Canada. Archaeologists collect all the bones and artifacts and then reconstruct what portions of the animals were used and what was left behind. (Photographs courtesy of Lifeways of Canada).Illustrations of the Hardisty pound site (above left) and the Paskapoo pound site (below right), redrawn from Lifeways of Canada and FMA Consultants, showing the shape of the drive lanes, the pound and the slope of the land. Note in both sites the drive lanes may have curved somewhat near the gate and corral. Possibly to better conceal the gate and the pound from the bison.
A Time for Ceremony, Cooperation and Feasting
Communal large game hunting, such as the operation and construction of a bison pound, took a great deal of skill, organization, cooperation of many people, and sound execution to successfully lure the animals into the corrals. Pounding was accompanied by ceremonies to bring in the animals, and feasting when the animals were caught. Often the pounds did not work and then the process started over again.
What the Paskapoo Slopes pound and processing area might have looked like. (Drawing, courtesy of Lifeways of Canada).
Bison pounds in Alberta date back as far as seven-thousand years, and possibly earlier. These are only a few of many pounds that likely occur in Alberta. Others have yet to be found. Numerous pounds are also present in southern Saskatchewan (near Estuary and Gull Lake) where I grew up. As a young boy I used to roam the river hills where Miry Creek flowed into the South Saskatchewan River. There might have been a pound near there as well.
I’ll leave you with one last perhaps more realistic description of an Assiniboine bison pound near Fort George, Alberta, described by North West Company trader, Duncan M’Gillivray, in 1794. Not a pretty picture:
“On arriving at the camp our noses were assailed by an offensive smell which would have proved fatal to more delicate organs: It proceeded from the Carcases in the Pound and the mangled limbs of Buffaloes scattered among the Lodges, but another substance which shall be nameless contributed the most considerable part of this diabolical odour. In the afternoon were were gratified by the seeing the Buffalo enter the Pound; they were conducted thither by two small fences beginning on each side of the door and extending wider the farther they advance in the Plain: from behind these the Indians Waved their robes as the Buffaloes were passing to direct their course straight towards the Pound, which was so well constructed on the declivity of a small hill that it was invisible till you arrived at the gate. The poor animals were scarce enclosed, when showers of arrows were discharged at them as they rushed round the Pound making furious attempts to revenge themselves on their foes, till at length being overcome with wounds & loss of blood they were compelled to yield to their oppressors and many of them were cut to pieces before the last remainder of life had forsook them. Of all the methods which the Indians have devised for the destruction of this useful animal, – the Pound is the most successful.” (from the diary of Duncan M’Gillivray, November 23, 1794, near the Vermilion River, Alberta.
The bison pound, when full of large, frightened, stampeding animals, would have been a chaotic, dangerous place to be near. This drawing by Robert Frankowiak is on the cover of Verbicky-Todd’s monograph published by the Archaeological Survey of Alberta. It was originally in Thomas F. Kehoe’s publication, The Gull Lake Site: A Prehistoric Bison Drive in Southwestern Saskatchewan. 1973. Milwaukee Public Museum Publications in Anthropology and History 1.
I like stories and movies where there is a really good guy/gal and then there’s the ‘dark side‘. Oh, is that phrase copy-righted? Can I use it without citing someone? Do I need permission from whoever wrote it in Hollywood to use it? I’m a little sensitive about the topic of sourcing right now.
Will I be accused of plagiarism or ‘scraping’? I’ll get into that later.
I guess, at the age of sixty-eight I’m still a little naive about some things in the world (actually, could be a lot of things). Like thinking that out there in the real world there’s no true ‘dark side’. It just exists in the minds of those movie types in Hollywood. Right? Right.
Until my website got hacked a number of times. It’s still happening. It’s affecting a lot of what I do, and want to do on this site. Then it dawned on me. When it comes to the cyber world there is a truly dark side. It’s a world where bad people do evil things to your material without ever having to face you or an adversary.
Material for this post was generated when I wanted to monetize my site. That’s right. Run a few ads and make a few bucks to cover my costs. Should be no big deal. Right? Right.
While in the process of attempting to monetize this site, I was accused of two nasty things:
Plagiarism and Making Stuff Up
In my world, either when I publish an article in a journal or post a story, those are pretty nasty accusations.
A Few Ethical Issues With Blogging
The use and publication of other peoples’ or organizations’ material is a serious matter. If you look at the literature written about the code of ethics for bloggers, it states you should always cite your sources or get permission to use the material you post. It’s almost impossible not to use other peoples’ information. It’s essential when writing that the topic being written about be given some context. And context often means citing other people who have researched or written on the topic previously. And, it’s not always simple to cite them properly.
If I use the following quote from the Hudson’s Bay Archives (HBCA), for example, I should credit them for it. Like this:
April 6th, 1822. “The advantages of this place are very few over any other except it is that ground is tilled for our gardens and being a critical place for the Natives to bring their find.” (HBCA B.224/e/1)
There. As far as I’m concerned that’s done. In academia when we use other peoples’ material, or historic material, to either support, refute, or move our research or story along, we simply cite them and that’s the end of it.
If it’s a historic painting, or quote, and you know the source, cite or credit the source and move on. I always try to do that in my posts. Sometimes I forget, but rarely. Sometimes sourcing stuff is really hard. There are grey areas.
This example is tougher to source, or even use. I haven’t read anything that says I can’t use this image of an Edmonton map from Google. It says Google right on the map. Is that enough or am I breaking copyright rules? I truly don’t know. If we had to stop and search sources and get permission for every single thing we write, nothing would get done. Or, we would simply not cite anyone or anything and then be accused of ‘making stuff up’.
As an author who has published considerably, I’m always flattered when someone uses my material and cites me (unless of course, they trash me). Actually I get more pissed off when they don’t cite my work when I think they should.
This brings me to my little problem. I’ll let you be the judge. Guilty or not? It all comes down to my credibility as a blogger, and how I present my material. Maybe I have to be more careful or thorough when posting in the future.
So I Wanted to Monetize My Site
The trouble all started the other day when I wanted to install a monetizing plugin called ‘Google Adsense.’ This program searches for relevant advertising for my web site and then puts those ads on my pages or posts.
The catch with Adsense is you have to qualify to install it on your website. So, I applied and was rejected. Twice. The first time early on in my blogging days for not having enough site content. Fair enough. One post won’t do it. Fixed that.
The second time recently I was accused of plagiarizing and not backing up my facts. Or ‘making stuff up’, as one reviewer commented. After trying to find out what the source of this accusation was all about, I finally got some of the following comments from Google’s ‘experts’.
Here’s what one so-called gold product expert (according to Google) had to say about my website:
” Corona virus infection has lost millions of lives in the world” I won’t be accepted. You are copying a lot of news reports (and images) from other sites and/or just making stuff up.”
“Hi heinz pyszczyk, A reply was marked as a recommended answer to a subscribed question:
Your posts are far too short to be usable by Adsense, and you cannot have ANY copied stuff if you want to monetise a site.
As for making things up – the quote above is untrue. The current corona virus hasn’t lost millions of lives. Hopefully it won’t. I didn’t see that particular quote, but I saw one very short post giving figures that were mostly wrong. The post said (if the translation system is correct) that some countries n Europe had more than 90,000 deaths. Not true. It said that 5 million people have recovered. Where did you get that from?? Although it’s likely that large numbers have recovered without ever being tested, there is no reliable information. Of those tested and quoted on the worldometers site, which is probably the most reliable for information, around 560,000 have recovered.”
Well, folks, as most of you know, I’ve never written a word about the corona virus on any of my website posts. And my posts are too short? Are you kidding me? Too long, if anything. And I don’t support my information? Really?
Yet, Kukana (above), whoever the hell she is, judges my website as being unreliable, citing this shit. Kukana, if you understand English, which I doubt very much you do, then listen carefully. Please go to my website and actually read the content before making stupid statements like this. If you even exist.
Here’s another one. From busterjet. Now, I’m new to this stuff, so his comments were a bit of an eyeopener:
“Hi heinz pyszczyk, A reply was marked as a recommended answer to a subscribed question:
You have a “new scraper” site, a common form of spam, so there is no chance AdSense advertisers will sponsor this content even if the information is factual.”
But, the corona virus stuff is not my information. I didn’t write it. A ‘new scraper’ site? What is that exactly? Is he suggesting I’m the ‘scraper’? After talking to my computer people, it’s likely that I’ve been hacked. Someone’s doing shitty little stuff using my website name. Thanks busterjet.
In the cyber business this stuff happens. More people from the ‘dark side‘ (sorry, don’t know who to cite here for use of this phrase) are visiting my site, than actual readers. But what gets me is that Google and their so-called experts judge my site, never having read my content. How could they have? Not a post or word ever about the corona virus is on my website.
And now I’m probably on their permanent shit list. After this post, probably forever. You’ve read many of my posts. Anything on corona virus? Is this fair? I’m thinking Kukana is probably some kind of ‘foreign’ bot. Or, someone’s ‘making this stuff up’.
Based on these statements, as it stands that’s what I’m accused of. Plagiarizing and ‘making stuff up’. At least in Google’s eyes.
The most frustrating thing is, you can’t engage these experts long enough to get to the bottom of this pile. They’re like phantoms. Here now, and then gone mysteriously into the Ethernet. I’ve emailed them back requesting more information, but nothing. It’s all so automated and impersonal. Sickening.
I hope you’re listening Google. How can you not be? You snoop into everything else on line. If I started showing interest in crocheting, suddenly a lot of articles and advertisements would pop up on the computer about crocheting. And you judge others about ethics? Your little bots are running around right now watching my every key stroke.
And to you my readers, sorry (a very Canadian response). Maybe not quite the Canadian story you expected, but a very Canadian reaction!
My wife and I, like many Canadians, own a pet. Well, pets actually. Four cats, three dogs and a horse. Two of our four cats come from animal shelters; the other two were strays. My wife, Gabriella, likes to collect them. Our cats, and my aging three English Springer Spaniels (I like to collect them) cost a lot of money for care. (Above photograph, front to back: Laser, Keagan, Ceili, and Pepsi; We re-homed Keagan.)
Canadians love their pets. Over fifty percent of Canadian households own at least one pet. We spend nearly seven billion dollars annually on our pets.
But when it comes to the proper care of pets, there’s often a downside. It’s the cost of providing for them. When does it become just too costly to own one? And do the benefits of owning one outweigh those costs?
Gabriella with Bandit. Adequate food, regular hoof trimming, fencing and shelter, and the occasional medications have kept this guy healthy for thirty years.
Pets and Your Well-Being
I couldn’t agree more with a recent post in Reader’s Digest, on the benefits of owning a pet. They’re great companions in a sometimes lonely world. They help increase our activity levels, and reduce our stress levels in a sometimes all too stressful world.
Dogs can also detect early signs of cancer. Pets help reduce heart disease. Having dogs or cats around your kids will decrease their sensitivity to allergies. And perhaps build some compassion for the animal world out there. Pets also help ease our pain when we’re sick and keep our brains sharp. This last benefit caught my aging eye (that’s why I own three dogs).
The Cost of Pet Ownership
But are those cuddly fur balls worth doling out nearly seven billion dollars a year in Canada? As Canadians, have we taken the pet thing too far? Well, if we have, we’re not alone. Most of the more prosperous countries in the world are either close behind, or ahead of us, when it comes to spending on pets:
Country
Amount Spent on Pets/year (billions of dollars)
Percent Households with Pets
Amount Spent by Person/Year
Amount Spent by Household/Year
Canada
6.6
38
$175
$1,234.4
USA
70
39
$213.3
$1,402.2
UK
5
41
$74
$424.9
Australia
12.2
42
$610
$3,458
We’re not the leaders, when compared to these three countries, on how much we spend on our pets. According to international statistics, Norway spends the most per capita on pets than any other country.
Poly, our six-toed wonder. She wandered onto our property. Dwarfed size because of early health issues. Enlarged heart and hip issues (probably from being hit by a car). Life expectancy – months.
Health Costs for Pets in Canada
In Canada the average amount spent on either a puppy or kitten during its first year of life is $710.00 and $621.00 respectively. But that’s only the beginning.
Then comes care and the medical bills. Here are parts of a table from the Canadian Veterinary Journal, March, 2016. It lists the fees for a few basic veterinary procedures across Canada:
Treatment
NFL
PEI
NB
NS
QC
ON
MB
SK
AB
BC
Companion animal examination
$66.11
$68.13
$84.03
$84.21
$63.67
$74.67
$73.51
$71.79
$62.59
$70.13
Canine examination and vaccines
$106.17
$110.62
$123.33
$111.29
$136.57
$110.02
$115.34
$101.72
$95.87
$109.39
Feline ovariohysterectomy
$309.12
$227.68
$270.99
$264.49
$191.00
$327.49
$249.13
$232.47
$242.99
$234.38
Average cost of living adjusted fee for bellwether companion and large animal treatments in 2015.
Even when adjusted to average cost of living in each province, these veterinarian fees are highly variable across the Country. But what caught my eye was how this variability then justified raising treatment fees:
“In an economically ideal situation, once the cost-of-living adjustment is applied, each treatment should have a very similar, if not identical, average fee in all provinces. For provinces that are lagging their neighbors, this investigation can serve as evidence for those veterinarians that there is indeed room to increase their fees.”
Interesting. The authors, instead of suggesting that veterinarians in some provinces might consider lowering their fees, they suggest raising fees instead.
Pepsi. Eleven year old springer spaniel. Recently, growth on toe removed. Teeth cleaned and worn teeth removed.
Should Veterinary Costs Be Regulated?
Is it time to starting thinking about regulating and standardizing fees in the veterinary industry in Canada? Is it even legally possible?
These median wages for veterinarians, in my opinion, don’t seem out of line. Given what these people have to deal with on a daily basis, and the service they provide. This would suggest that overhead costs are mainly responsible for the high cost of veterinary care.
I tinkered some more with these numbers. I compared the median wages of veterinarians to the sum-average costs of the procedures mentioned above for each province. The correlation was very poor. In other words, higher median wages aren’t related to higher cost of procedures.
Then I made the same comparison between the highest mean wages per province to the mean costs of the procedures in each province. The results were a little surprising:
With the exception of Ontario, there is a weak inverse relationship between average cost of procedure and veterinarians’ wages. In other words, the provinces with some of the highest veterinary wages had the lowest costs for procedures. Keep in mind, the number of plot points is small (data not available for all provinces).
Occasionally there’s an outcry in the media and the public about the high costs of veterinary services. Many of us assume that the reason for those high costs are veterinarians’ high salaries. Check out this post by Dr. Debora Lichtenberg, VMD. There’s anger on both sides of the debate. But, it certainly isn’t exorbitant wages that are driving up those costs in Canada.
So, when one of my dogs or cats gets really sick and I have to fork out a lot of money, what’s really to blame? In one year alone, I spent nearly five-thousand dollars on my thirteen year old springier spaniel, Ceili. And I have two more aging dogs to go. That’s a lot of money to spend to keep my mind ‘sharp’! (I’m debating whether it’s even working.)
Like our human health care system in Canada, veterinarians have a lot of bills to pay. It’s likely the high overhead (rent, cost of equipment and procedures, staff, etc.) that’s driving up those costs for pet owners.
Laser. Twelve year old springer spaniel. In the last year, neutered, teeth cleaned and surgery to remove worn and broken teeth.
Operating a Dog Pound in Canada
Our dog boarding and pound facility near Leduc, Alberta.
Does the high cost of keeping an animal lead to more abandonment of animals in Canada? Because their owners couldn’t keep up with the bills? Part of the answer lies in the many shelters where these animals end up.
My wife and I ran a dog boarding business (Blackgold Kennels) near Leduc, Alberta for about ten years. We also operated the local pound for the County of Leduc, City of Leduc, and nearby Beaumont. It was a great experience but also a bit of a reality check.
What we saw in those ten years was occasionally quite horrifying and heart-breaking. And, when an owner picked up their lost pet, or we re-homed an abandoned animal, there was a short period of satisfaction. At least until the next lost or abandoned animal arrived.
The number of owners who reclaimed their pets was on average about sixty-percent for dogs and less than twenty-percent for cats (we have yet to come up with an adequate explanation for the differences in the reclaim rates of these two animals).
For ten years we fought a mini-war trying to re-home or adopt out the abandoned animals in our shelter. Instead of euthanizing them. Fortunately, we teamed up with a number of great dog and cat rescue groups and managed to save most of the ones not reclaimed.
Smoky’s story. Abandoned in our pound in c.2014. We kept him as a kennel cat for four years. Then he was re-homed twice and eventually returned to the pet rescue group. So, Smoky became our number four.
But the reality is that tens of thousands of sound animals are euthanized every year in Canada. Here are some sobering statistics from SPCA organizations in Canada and a few other countries:
Country
Total Animals Sheltered per Year
% Animals Surrendered per Capita
Reclaimed (Percent)
Re-homed (Percent)
Euthanized (Percent)
Canada
110,000
0.29
11
58
14
USA
6,500,000
0.20
11
49
23
Australia
124,146
0.62
7.2
40
12.9
UK
102,900
0.15
—
40
—
Germany
15,000
0.02
—
90+
—
Some national statistics on numbers of animals sheltered, reclaimed, re-homed and euthanized in SPCA facilities of four other countries. Statistics are from the last two – three years. Canada ranks right up there with animals re-homed, and a relatively low percentage euthanized. From what I’ve been able to determine, Germany has one of the best animal protection and care systems in the world. And one of the worst Countries, where over 82% of animals ending up in shelters were euthanized. Japan. According to this article, “More than 204,000 pets — 82 percent of the total taken into public “animal shelters” that year — were euthanized in 2010, according to the latest available government figures. Just under 52,000 of these animals were dogs; the majority were cats.”
Here’s how our pound stacked up the National and International numbers:
Clearly, we were ahead of the curve in many categories. But it took an almost herculean effort to accomplish this. In the process we managed to convince one of our clients that it was in their best interests to promote their shelter as a ‘zero-kill’ facility.
Were we the norm when it comes to other animal shelters across the country (aside from the SPCA)? We wish it was. We believe not. And the reason for thinking so is the wording and interpretation of various provincial animal protection acts.
Do the SPCA Figures Represent the True Reality of Abandoned Pets in Canada?
Keep in mind that the SPCA represents only a small fraction of shelters taking in animals across the country. Every town, City and local municipality, much like our facility, has their own shelter to deal with abandoned animals. And there are many animal rescue groups working out there as well. This means that the total number of dogs and cats abandoned across Canada is essentially unknown. And what’s done with those animals is also mostly a mystery.
All those shelters and pounds operate under provincial government legislation guidelines regarding the care and protection of domestic animals. Once the animal is brought to our facility, then what? Here’s where things get a little murky and are open to interpretation. For example, under Section Eight of the Alberta Animal Protection Act:
“Destruction of animal 8. A humane society, in respect of an animal that has been delivered to it,or a peace officer, in respect of an animal that has been delivered to a caretaker, may destroy the animal or cause the animal to be destroyed if it has not been claimed by its owner and in the opinion of the humane society or peace officer, as the case may be, the animal is not suitable to be sold or given away in accordance with section 7.”
The exact intent of this clause is rarely followed in Alberta. It clearly states that if an animal is not claimed by its owner and “is not suitable to be sold or given away…”, it can be destroyed within a certain number of days. In Alberta, this last part of this clause is mostly ignored. After a certain number of days, if the owner is not found, the animal is destroyed. When we first started the pound, that was generally the method of operation one of our clients had previously adopted. Little effort was made to re-home animals who, for the most part, were once peoples’ loving pets. Most certainly were quite ‘suitable’ to be sold or given away.
Wording in the Animal Protection Acts of other provinces are relatively similar to ours. This clause should be rewritten emphasizing re-homing first: “every effort should be made to sell or give away a suitable animal, before it can be destroyed.”
The truth of the matter is no one really knows what other towns, cities and municipalities in the country are doing with abandoned animals. Hopefully it’s not along the lines of what a former Alberta premier once said when faced with mad cow disease in the province: ‘Shoot, Shovel, and Shut-up.’
Why Do People Abandon Their Pets?
I read an interesting article by Lisa Towell who lists five reasons people abandon their animals. They range from having to move, to allergies, or a new landlord that doesn’t allow pets. There are also those troublesome behavioral problems (aggression, cleanliness, etc.).
However, in a recent article in the Dodo, according to a major study in the US, a major reason for pet abandonment:
” A major reason? Economics….But, if there is a villain in all of this, the study suggests, it’s economics. According to the study, people with income below $50,000 were significantly more likely to re-home due to cost and housing issues.”
Is the major culprit for pet abandonment also economics in Canada? I don’t know. I’m not aware of any similar Canadian studies to the one conducted by the ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals).
Ceili. My thirteen-year old springer. In the last year, spayed, recent kidney infection requiring considerable blood work, ex-rays, ultrasound, and medication. Was near death but pulled through.
Another Possible Reason for Low Pet Reclaim Rates in Canada
We found one contributing culprit that potentially leads to abandonment. No proper I.D. on the animal. And when it did have a tattoo or micro-chip, often the owner’s personal information (address and phone number) was out of date.
Please I.D. your animals properly and keep your personal information up to date if you move or change phone numbers. You’re protecting your pet by doing so.
After our animal pound experience, we feel it should be law to have every animal properly I.D.’d. Thousands more animals would be reclaimed. And the cost of dealing with lost or abandoned animals would decrease.
Any Good News?
In Canada’s 2018 SPCA annual report, over 80,000 cats and approximately 30,000 dogs were sheltered. A lot of animals are still being abandoned, that we know of. Even more that we don’t know of. But here’s the good news. Over the last decade these figures have steadily dropped:
Are they also dropping in the many local pounds across the country? There’s no way of telling. The only thing we noticed over the years was a slow change in attitude and perhaps more care for animals. Also, more pets have proper I.D’s. What about the ones that still enter a pound or shelter? Over the years we noticed it was becoming more popular to say to your general public that you are a zero-kill facility. Meaning, every effort is made to try first to re-home abandoned animals, before destroying them. Hopefully that attitude has caught on across Canada.
Life with Our Pets
Visiting outside Lac La Biche Post. Dogs were an integral part of Canadian life in the nineteenth century. In some parts of Canada, they were more important than horses as a means of travel or moving goods in the winter. (Painting by Frederick Remington, courtesy Glenbow Archives)
Humanity’s relationship with animals goes back tens of thousands of years. Horses and dogs, for example, played invaluable roles in Canadians society.
Over the last one-hundred years, our relationship with animals has gradually changed. They are no longer primarily work animals. They are our loved companions, who bring a lot of joy and completeness to our lives. The cost of keeping them, however, continues to grow. In fairness, so does the quality of health care for them.
Should it be the right of every Canadian to enjoy a pet if they choose, regardless of their income level? Perhaps. But that may no longer be possible. The high cost of owning and caring for an animal is no longer within financial reach of many Canadians.
If this current trend continues, in the future will we see history repeat itself? Will ownership of pets will be solely for a select few in society with the means to properly care for them? Is pet insurance the new future for Canadian pet owners? Or will many Canadians be forced to make some very hard ethical decisions about where to draw the line with the cost of caring for their pets?
…………………….
To end on the lighter side of pet ownership. A friend of mine recently just sent me this cartoon.
The grave of John Rowand (1787 – 1854), renowned fur trader and Chief Factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company Fort Edmonton.
In 1854, John Rowand, Chief Factor, Fort Edmonton, while trying to break up a fight among the men at Fort Pitt, suddenly clutched his chest and fell over, dead. Probably from a heart attack. But, we’ll never know for certain.
John Rowand, Chief Factor of the HBC Fort Edmonton, was sixty-seven when he died. Only a few years younger than the average life of a fur trader.
The Things That Eventually Kill Us
Researchers currently list nine major factors that affect human longevity: Gender, genetics, prenatal and childhood conditions, education, socio-economic status, marital status, ethnicity, lifestyle (diet, exercise, tobacco use, excessive alcohol consumption, etc.), and medical technology.
In my last post, I examined the dietary habits of 18th and 19th century fur trade employees in western Canada. Many Company men and women ate a heavy meat protein and fat diet. I ended my post asking: How did a diet rich in animal protein and fat affect the health and well-being of Company employees? Without detailed medical records, there really is only one way to investigate this question. I examined how long these people lived compared to the rest of Canadians. Or, among their peers who might have eaten a different diet.
Many of the above factors also dictated how long people lived in the fur trade. But it is not possible to research all of them. Among the easiest to investigate are: 1) socio-economic status (Company officers versus laborers); 2) ethnicity (English/Scottish, French Canadians, Metis/Native); and, 3) other lifestyle factors (diet, alcohol and tobacco consumption, degree of physical labor, etc.). I examine a few of these factors here with the available fur trade records.
Fur trade company employees differed in many ways, including their status (officers versus laborers), ethnicity (Indigenous, French Canadian, Orkney, etc.), degree and type of physical labor, and other lifestyle differences (including diet). The above painting and sketch depicts many of these differences. Officers were mostly of English/Scottish descent, were the best educated, ate the best and most foods, and did the least physical labor. Fort laborers were poorly educated, of mixed ethnic descent (French Canadian, Indigenous, Orkney, etc.) and did the hardest physical labor. (Upper left image, painting by Rex Woods for the Hudson’s Bay Company; lower right image, National Archives of Canada, C-2771)
The Hudson’s Bay Company Archives (HBCA): Employee Records
We face many problems when researching immediate cause of death, or its more remote, major underlying causes, in 18th and 19th century Canada. First, there is the unreliability and absence of records and diagnosis of patients. So, for example, when I ask how a meat fat-protein rich diet in the fur trade may have affected human health, there are few ways to answer this question. It’s hard enough to answer in present-day society, let alone two-hundred years ago.
However, if lifestyle, inequality, ethnicity, or even place of work, were detrimental to the health of fur trade employees they may show up in their mortality rates, or age of death. But, where do we find these types of data?
Fortunately, the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives in Winnipeg, Manitoba contain a list of former employees. It often includes their ethnic background, birth and death dates, dates and years of service, position, post and fur trade district they worked in.
Example of Hudson’s Bay Company Archives lists of former employees, often (but not always) including their dates of birth and death. Example of my HBCA data base. I selected employees with last names starting with A, B, and C. In some cases, when I needed a larger sample of certain type of data, I continued investigating the records further, beyond the letter C.
From the HBCA data base, I compiled a list of ninety-one men, with known birth and death dates, who worked in various regions and time periods. Sometimes the list also described their positions (e.g., officer, clerk, laborer), ethnic origins (English, Scottish, French Canadian, Metis, and Native, etc.) and years of service.
Unfortunately these data have their limitations. Many records don’t contain birth or death dates. Occasionally place of birth or ethnic background is not recorded. I included the Columbia District employees, although they likely had a different lifestyle than employees living further inland. I also included employees working at York Factory/Eastmain and Red River. Both areas and their forts would have been regularly supplied by ships from England or had well established agriculture by the early 19th century (Red River).
I only have data for men. While many women lived and worked at the Company posts, they were not officially recognized as Company employees. However, in almost every human population where statistics are available, women on average live longer than men. Finally, most of the HBCA records list no cause of death. So, I really can’t directly connect death to diet (heart disease leading to a heart attack) or tobacco consumption (lung cancer).
And until recently I didn’t have any basis for comparison of these mean ages of death to people in eastern Canada, or populations from other parts of the world. But that changed when I found a great data base on human mortality and life expectancy. It’s called Our World In Data. Check it out. I will use it here to compare to our fur trade mortality rates to Canada and the rest of the world.
What was the Average Age of Death of Fur Trade Employees?
The average age of death of the employees I sampled is an incredible seventy years (ranging between 1705 – 1963). The youngest man died at age thirty-five; the oldest at age ninety-nine. Let’s put that into a global perspective. Life expectancy at birth at the beginning of the 19th century in the Americas, was approximately thirty-five years. In the rest of the world it was less than thirty years. The chart below shows life expectancy of various countries and the world through time.
This chart comes from courtesy of Our World in Data. First, some definitions. Life expectancy means the length of time that a human being is expected to live (based on statistics). For those of you interested in knowing how life expectancy is calculated, go to this page. Mortality refers to the death of large numbers of people. Mean age of death refers to the average age of death of a population (or sub-group) at any given time or place.
However, this chart gives the life expectancy of people at birth. So, these data are really not directly comparable to our fur trade data. Instead, we have to make a comparison of life expectancy at a certain age. All the statistics show that as you get older your life expectancy increases. For example, in 1850 life expectancy in Wales and England was around forty years at birth. If you reached the age of twenty, then your life expectancy was sixty. And at forty, you would be expected to live to sixty-seven years. Through time these figures all increase, as the chart below shows.
Unfortunately these data aren’t available for Canada. At least that I’m aware of. But they probably follow the English and Welsh data relatively closely. In the fur trade most Company employees were approximately the age of twenty or older when they entered the Company’s service. In Wales or England, during the 1840s, a person reaching twenty years of age could expect to live to age sixty. Our fur trade employees are living an average of seventy years.
Let’s look at the data another way. The chart below shows the percent of people who reach successive ages through time. So, for example, in 1850 approximately forty percent of the Welsh or English population reached the age of sixty. And only ten percent reached the age of eighty.
This chart comes from courtesy of Our World in Data. Keep in mind that these estimates include men and women. They would be somewhat lower for men only.
The men in the Canadian fur trade far surpassed these figures. Below is a breakdown of the percent of men reaching certain percentages.
This chart comes from courtesy of Our World in Data. The yellow line represents my fur trade data.
In the Canadian fur trade sample there is one death (drowning) listed under forty years of age recorded. (Remember, this is a sample. If I examined every record, more men likely died under the age of forty; but the sample data suggests, very few.) Over seventy percent of the men reached an age of sixty years. Twenty-four percent reach eighty, while nine percent reach the age of ninety or over. Quite remarkable, considering the living and working conditions and the somewhat high protein and fat diets of many of these people.
Is There a Difference in Life Expectancy Between the Officers and Laborers?
In my last post, I noted that the officers: 1) received more meat and fat rations; 2) were of different ethnic backgrounds; and, 3) did less physical work, than the laborers. Therefore, any/all of these factors (diet, type and degree of physical labor, and ethnicity) might account for possible differences in mean age of death.
Although this chart shows an approximately one year difference of mean age of death of the two groups, the difference is not statistically significant.
There is virtually no difference (statistically speaking) in the age of death of these two groups. None of the factors listed above was influential in shortening, or prolonging, the life of each group.
In this chart I calculated how many officers and laborers reach the age of sixty-five and over.
However, as the above chart shows, more officers are living at ages sixty-five and over than the laborer group. However, whatever is causing this difference, high meat protein and fat diet isn’t a significant factor in age of death. If it was, more laborers than officers would have lived over sixty-five years of age (because the officers consumed more meat protein and fat than laborers).
How Well did Company Employees Fare in Respective Fur Trade Districts?
The major fur trade districts of the Hudson’s Bay Company, c.1830. Borders and names occasionally changed over the years. Image from Richard Somerset Mackie. “Trading Beyond the Mountains: The British Fur Trade on the Pacific, 1793-1843. ” (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997)
Company employees were often unwilling to work at the northern posts because of the extreme hardships they faced. Such as the Athabasca or Peace River Districts which takes up most of northern Alberta. Or the even further northern Mackenzie District in the Northwest Territories.
In the words of Chief Factor John Lee Lewes, at Fort Simpson, in 1840: “…for from it [lack of food] arises more than 9/10 of the anxiety we all have to suffer from it [lack of food] in this hardest of hard Districts. Provisions, provisions….” (Brackets mine) Times were often tough in the far north.
How tough? Tough enough to affect human health, and perhaps average age of death? I grouped the data into major fur trade districts and checked. The results are shown below.
The fur trade districts in western Canada are ranked from easiest (Saskatchewan, Red River, and York Factory/Eastmain ) to hardest (Athabasca/Peace River, Mackenzie District). Not only did the more southerly Saskatchewan District and Red River posts have access to more wild game, they also acquired domestic stock and started agriculture relatively earlier. In the Athabasca/Peace River and Mackenzie Districts, this was not always possible. Also, at York Factory and Eastmain there was a more constant supply of foods coming from Britain, reducing hardship considerably. The Columbia District results are a bit of an enigma. However, they certainly didn’t increase the mean age of death. Instead, they lowered it.
With the exception of the Columbia District (coastal), there is virtually no difference in the mean age of death among the men of the different fur trade districts. Despite the constant hardships and complaints of not having enough food and supplies, which may have been real enough, the men at the Mackenzie, Athabasca/Peace River District forts did not die at an earlier age than those further south. Periods of starvation can have detrimental health affects (fatigue, dizziness, constipation, drop in blood pressure, etc.). And if too severe or prolonged, even death.
I have not conducted any detailed research on how smoking and alcohol consumption might have affected age of death (although those data are certainly available in other fur trade documents). However, a preliminary check indicates that far more employees from the Saskatchewan District, smoked and drank alcohol, than in Districts further north. But there are no discernible differences in mean age of death in these districts.
Did the Average Age of Death Change Through Time?
In the chart below, I plotted the average age of death through time. As wild game populations declined, many fur trade posts began to produce more agricultural goods and import domestic stock to supplement their diet. Thus, dietary habits changed through time, but at different rates geographically.
In the last part of the 19th century, there was a more balanced food supply and likely better medical technology for the Company men. However, the results above show a similar age of death among Company employees through time.
Was There a Difference in the Mean Age of Death Among the Different Ethnic Groups in the Fur Trade?
Given their different types of work, access to food, and genetic makeup, did certain subgroups in the fur trade fare better than others? Did those French Canadians, for example, who did most of the back-breaking work in the fur trade, die at an earlier age than their Canadian counterparts? There are suggestions they did, but never backed by any hard data. The results are shown in the chart below.
Although there is a difference of over four years between the English/Scottish group and the Metis/First Nations group, the difference is not statistically significant. Even though they worked harder, and had significantly less access to food, both French Canadian and Metis or First Nations working for the Companies fared about the same as their English/Scottish counterparts.
But, where the real difference shows up, is how many men of each ethnic group lived past the age of sixty-five. The results are shown in the chart below.
There is a significant difference in the number of French Canadians who reach the age of sixty-five and over, compared to both Metis/Native and English/Scots categories. And, if you’ve ever read how hard some of these men worked, and played, this figure is not really that surprising. My research (Pyszczyk 1987, 1989, 2015) also suggests that on average French Canadians spent more money on tobacco and alcohol than their English and Scottish counterparts (laborers).
Were Metis and First Nations People Better or Worse off Than Today?
My last question concerns the well-being of our Indigenous populations in Canada. Did they fare better during the 18th and 19th centuries, than today? Historic population data for First Nations and Inuit peoples are very hard to find. I managed to only compare Metis populations over time.
The results are a bit of a shocker. The percent of Metis who reach an age over sixty-five years are significantly lower today than during the 18th and 19th centuries. They are also lower in the fur trade than non-aboriginal employees. Here are the latest present-day statistics for the three Indigenous groups.
While I don’t have the statistics for historic First Nations and Inuit, the present-day statistics certainly tell the tale of all three groups falling behind the non-aboriginal Canadian population as they age.
All three Indigenous groups have a lower percentage of people surviving sixty-five years and older than the Canadian non-aboriginal population. Studies indicate that death from disease, drugs and alcohol, suicides, etc. are significantly higher in today’s Indigenous populations than earlier, and in the contemporary Canadian non-Aboriginal population.
What Do These Results Tell Us About Fur Trade Society?
Firstly, that rather wicked high meat protein and fat diet didn’t reduce the average life span of these people significantly. Nor did the occasional bouts of near starvation and hunger, harder work and poorer living conditions significantly reduce their length of life. Some of these factors only become important as the population aged (e.g., percent living over sixty-five).
Secondly, why did this population of men, when compared to the rest of the world and other Canadians, fair significantly better? I have some ideas. But currently no real proof or definitive answers. The men chosen for the fur trade may have been selected for their superior fitness and general good health. They therefore don’t represent the norm in either White or Indigenous Canadian society, or other world populations at any given time.
Thirdly, this population of people was relatively isolated from the rest of Canadian society. Some of the men working on the canoe brigades traveled to Montreal or York Factory annually to resupply, thus having short contact with larger centers. But most of their time was spent at the remote inland fur trade forts. Was there less chance of catching some disease, getting sick, and dying? The men living at the most remote forts in Canada don’t seem to live any longer than those less isolated, such as at Red River settlement (with a much larger population).
Or, is it my data and bias in the records? Many of the laborer class had no documented history, and therefore no birth or death dates. This is a common problem for a people without a written record. Is this sample similar to the famous 1936 Literary Digest US telephone and car registration presidential polling fiasco? When not everyone had a phone or car, and thus the polls were very skewed when using only these data. And they got the winner of the presidential election wrong. I simply can’t answer that question right now.
My last concern is with the health and welfare of our Indigenous populations. Their state of well-being seems to be heading the other direction compared to the rest of Canadian society. The cries of concern and need for more help from these people is well grounded in some of the historic population statistics. And in particular the life expectancy data.
David Thompson’s grave marker, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. One of Canada’s greatest explorers and cartographers underwent considerable hardships in the wilds of western Canada. Impoverished and destitute in old age, he lived to a ripe old age of eighty-seven.
Note: There’s always a fine line between providing too much detail (yawn) and ‘dummying down’ in these posts. Because of my background, I tend to err on the former side. I believe everyone should know what my results and interpretations are based on. And, I also know that many of my regular subscribers would prefer more than less information and facts.
Let me know what you think. Too much? Not enough?
References:
Pyszczyk, Heinz W. 1987. Economic and Social Factors in the Consumption of Material Goods in the Fur Trade of Western Canada. Ph.D Thesis. Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia.
Pyszczyk, Heinz W. 1988. Consumption and Ethnicity: An Example from the Fur Trade in Western Canada. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 8:213-49.
Pyszczyk, Heinz W. 2015. The Last Fort Standing. Fort Vermilion and the Peace River Fur Trade, 1798 – 1830. Occasional Papers of the Archaeological Society of Alberta. Number 14.
When my mother and I arrived in Canada, in the winter of 1954, she had to drag this wooden trunk full of her possessions, along with a two-and-one-half year old, through Canadian Customs, Pier 21, Halifax, Nova Scotia. It’s old, in bad need of a paint job, and missing some hardware. But, I can’t seem to make myself part with it. Like losing a piece of my family history.
The Iron Curtain, East Germany, 1948
She ran for her life. Stumbling in the dark, splashing through the frigid water. Muzzle flashes all around her, and bullets flying everywhere. Some coming too close for comfort. Women, young children, running with her. Trying to escape. Screaming for help. Falling. Pleading and begging the guards to let them go.
‘Lying, rotten Russian bastard. I thought after I gave him those nylon stockings and the bottle of vodka everything would be OK.’ A rarity for a young twenty-three year old Adelgunde Kleister. To swear. Finally she stopped running. Exhausted, alone, frightened out of her wits, but now at least safe in West Germany. Then she began to cry. And the reality of what she had just done hit here like a ton of bricks.
‘My family. Our farm in Poland. All gone. My father, my mother and brother. I’ll never see them again. Gone. I hope my sister made it across?’ She continued crying and sobbing as she walked slowly away from the treacherous Iron Curtain, dividing East from West. Away from a life she had known, a family she had loved. But dragging with her the heartbreak and memories that would cling to her for the rest of her life.
……………………
In West Germany, around the same time, Walter sat stunned listening to the Red Cross worker. “I’m sorry, Herr Pyszczyk. We’ve looked everywhere, checked every known record. They’ve disappeared, vanished.”
“But that’s impossible. They must be somewhere. My parents, my three sisters, gone? You just haven’t looked hard enough, damn it. You don’t care enough. I’ve lost my entire family, and you just calmly stand there and prattle on.”
The worker sighed. He had heard all of this too many times before in the last few years. “I’m so sorry, Herr Pyszczyk. But, you must understand. Millions of Germans from Poland went missing when the Russians moved west in 1944. They tried escaping, but the reports we’re getting are grim. If we find anything more about your family, we will contact you.”
The worker left Walter sitting there, now crying pitifully. Later he got very drunk. To forget. That didn’t work. Wishing the bullet that had gone through his leg in the war, had gone through his head instead. To end this nightmare. Walking aimlessly for miles through the city, looking for what? A miracle? He couldn’t go back and look for them. He had to move on.
Pier 21, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1954
SS Arosa Kulm out of Bremerhaven, Germany, which brought us to Pier 21, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Adelgunde pulled her large, heavy blue wooden trunk behind her toward the Canadian customs agent. Made by her friends in Stade, Germany before she departed for Canada. Heading for a new life, a new start. All her worldly possessions were in that big blue trunk. With her other hand she was holding tightly onto to her two-year old son, who was desperately trying to escape and go exploring.
“Muti, Ich muss gehen. Lass mich gehen.” (Mom I want to go. Let me go.) The young Heinz was restless, after being cooped up on the SS Arosa Kulm for three weeks while crossing the Atlantic.
He started crying. “Ich wollte auf dem Schiff schwimmen gehen. Aber, würden Sie mich nicht lassen.” (I wanted to go swimming on the ship. But, you wouldn’t let me.) Adelgunde, still looking a little pale, having suffered badly from sea sickness on the voyage, only sighed. On the ship they had to hang onto Heinz during the lifeboat drills because with his life vest on, he wanted to jump overboard and go swimming.
“Your passport and papers, please Ma’am.” The customs agent yawned as he unceremoniously dumped all the belongings in her trunk onto the counter. Then rummaged through them, caring little about keeping any order.
“Was sagt er Mama? Ich verstehe ihn nicht.” (What is he saying mom? I don’t understand him.)
Adelgunde looked worried. She didn’t either. Finally the custom agent took the papers out of her trembling hands and checked them.
After a somewhat lengthy appraisal, he nodded, pointed toward the doors, and strode away, leaving her pack her belongings back into the trunk.
‘Entlich. In Kanada.‘ (Finally. In Canada). And the start of her new life out west, in Saskatchewan, where Walter was already waiting.
Stade, West Germany, c.1953. Picture of my parents and myself taken just before my father left for Canada. Mom and I followed in 1954.
RCMP Security Services Headquarters, Ottawa, 1956
Police Constable, 1st Class, Frank Bettner, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Security Services, walked stiffly into Chief Superintendent Samuel Rolson’s office, saluted, then spoke.
“You wanted to see me sir? On a matter of some urgency, I understand.” Bettner calmly waited for Rolson to respond. The man seemed to be too busy writing to pay full attention to his special agent. Showing off his self-importance to Bettner, after his new promotion to Chief ‘Super’.
Rolson finally looked up. “Ah, yes Bettner. Take a seat. It’s the bloody Germans, Bettner. Out west in the Swift Current – Leader area, in Saskatchewan. More have arrived recently. They might be up to no good, Bettner. All crowded together like that out there. This could be a national security issue. Of vast importance. We can’t let those people organize. They could be a menace to Canadian society.”
Bettner couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘All crowded together like that?’ There were more jackrabbits than Germans in that part of Saskatchewan. He had heard rumors about Rolson. Fresh out of a smaller center from eastern Canada. Hardly an authority on the West. Newly promoted to the RCMP’s Security Service Division and ambitious as hell. Always ’tilting at windmills.’ The worst kind.
“Sir, I hardly think a few farmers, just soundly beaten and bruised in the war, want to cause more trouble in their new country.”
Rolson, now staring at something on the ceiling, replied. “Bettner, Bettner, where have you been? I have all the reports right here. When that first wave of Germans settled in the area before the First World War, they tried to turn it into a little Germany. And it would have happened if we hadn’t stopped them. Did you know they initially called the town of Leader, ‘Berlin’ and gave all the streets German names. We put a stop to that of course, before they took over the whole province. No, I think we should go have a look and see what they’re up to.”
Bettner already knew where this was heading. ‘We’ meant Bettner was going into the area, and then report back to Rolson. So, he took the initiative. “Where do you want me to go Sir? And when?”
“I’m glad you asked Bettner. Leave as soon as possible. Go out into the Portreeve – Leader area. Take on some form of disguise and fit in, Bettner. I hear there are quite a few newly arrived Germans out that way. Some of them might even be Folksdeutsche.”
Bettner, looking a little bewildered, “Folksdeutsche, Sir? What are those?”
“The worst kind I’m told. Germans from other countries, like Poland for example. Some of them Nazi sympathizers. Some were even German soldiers. They’re here now. They have to be carefully watched. Who knows what they’re up to.” Rolson, by now, had driven himself into a bit of a frenzy, fueled by his endorphins, produced by his paranoia.
“Alright Sir. I’ll leave in a few days. And see what those ‘Gerries’ are up to. I’ll report back in a couple of months.”
“Good Bettner. Take as long as you need. And don’t let me down. These people must be put in their place. They could be troublemakers.”
‘And you want trouble. Hoping for it. Maybe so you can get another promotion, you ambitious, pompous ass. So, you need a little dirt on these people. Well, I’ll find something for you alright.’
…………………….
A Farm, North of Portreeve, Saskatchewan
Claud Vigar, owner of about six sections of land, and renting even more, north of Portreeve, Saskatchewan waved Walter and Adelgunde to come over. “Della,” as he liked to call Adelgunde, “Come and meet the new hired hand, Frank Bettner. Frank, this is Walter and Della, my farm hands. They’ll show you what needs doing. You can sleep in the bunkhouse, and join them for meals.”
Frank shook hands with the couple. “Gutten Tag, Herr Pyszczyk, Frau Pyszczyk.”
Walter, a little surprised at Bettner’s German, shook hands with the tall, blond man. So was Claud. But then he realized, this was a good thing. The couple’s English was still a little shaky. Frank could help them with it.
” Bist auch ein Deutsher? Wie lange sind Sie shon in Kanada?” Walter was curious.
“I’m third generation Canadian, Walter. Born and raised here. But, I can still speak a little German. And my German laughter is excellent.” Walter nodded and smiled. Bettner calmly looked around the little house. Taking it all in at one glance. Poorly constructed, but ‘German’ neat and clean. A big blue wooden trunk sat in the corner, used to put kitchen stuff on and for storage in the small kitchen. He wondered what was in it. Maybe secret plans for the invasion of Saskatchewan.
When Claud left, Walter took a closer look at Bettner, thinking: ‘About thirty-two years old, a good six foot four inches tall, all muscle. Well over two-hundred and twenty pounds. I bet he can throw bales up on the hay wagon all day long, without breaking a sweat. And take a forty-five gallon barrel of fuel and lift it onto the truck box. He’ll do fine.’
“Come, I show you where you sleep. Bring your stuff. In one hour come for supper and we talk about work.” Walter showed Bettner the bunk house and then went back to his own house to get cleaned up for supper. The cows were milked. Chickens, ducks, geese and pigs fed. It was almost time to wrap up the day.
My mother and me, c.1955 – 1956. With all the ducks. On the farm, north of Portreeve, Saskatchewan.
…………………………
The weeks flew quickly by. There was a lot to do on the farm in August and September. It was harvest time. Bettner fit right in. And worked like a horse. Ate like one too, according to Adelgunde. He seemed to know a lot about farming and Walter was impressed. The two men got along well. About the same age. There was an endless amount of talking and the conversation occasionally turned to politics and the ‘old country.’ Whenever the conversation took this path, Adelgunde grew nervous.
“So, Walter, you were in the German army, yah?”
“Yah, air force first. When I puke all over the cockpit, they put me on the ground. Army supply transport truck driver. Until I was captured by Canadians in 1944 on western front.” Walter smiled at that. It could have been worse. He could have been captured by the Russians. He would now probably be quite dead.
“And your family, all still back in Germany I presume?”
At Bettner’s words, Walter’s mood changed. “No more family. All gone.” After that Bettner couldn’t get another word out of him about family.
“It must have been hard for both of you to pack up and leave? Everything. Everyone.” Bettner was gently probing.
“Not so hard for me. Families gone. Germany ‘kaput,’ broken. Nothing left. No work. No food. No hope. No future.”
“But your sympathies must still lie a little with the ‘Vaterland‘ and the loss of the war. That must have been hard?”
“We went through hell and back. Never knowing whether we would live or die, from day to day. I was a soldier. Did as I was told, and hoped I would see the sun rise next day.”
Adelgunde was getting more agitated by the minute. “Walter, I think that’s enough…”
“But not all soldiers were Nazi sympathizers. Not all of us believed or agreed with what Hitler was doing. In this country, they treat us like we are all Nazis.”
“Walter enough.” By now Adelaide’s voice had reached another octave. “Enough politics. That’s what we left behind. Don’t bring it into my house.” Walter shrugged and fell silent. Frank took one look at Adelgunde’s face, and didn’t prod any more.
After supper, when Frank had left and Heinz was sleeping, Adelgunde looked at Walter. “You shouldn’t talk about stuff like that. You don’t know Frank very well. Who knows what he could be telling others, the authorities.” She looked worried.
“‘Gunde, this isn’t Nazi Germany where everyone is an informant and a spy for the government. This country is different. You worry too much.”
“Maybe you’re right Walter. But, please try to be a little more careful. With our neighbors, the Schneiders and the Hecks, we can be a little more open. But you don’t know this man. Just be careful what you say.”
A few hours later, lying in bed, listening to her husband’s steady breathing, Adelgunde worried some more. Even out here in this desolate place, inhabited by few people, most of them Germans, she still could not rid herself of the repressive antics of the Third Reich that she left behind. That ghost was still following her.
And then there was Bettner. ‘Er ist zu wissbegierig und schlau.’ (He’s too inquisitive and sly.) ‘He seems to look around and take in everything at once, noting every detail. Watching us carefully. When we’re not paying attention. He reminds me too much of those German Gestapo fellows. Always on the prowl. Turning over every rock.’ But then she considered Bettner’s eyes. Those deep, deep blue eyes.
‘Seine Augen sind freundlich und vertrauenswürdig. (His eyes are kind and trustworthy.) I think he’s a good man, but there’s something about him that still makes me uncomfortable. I guess I can’t keep acting like this though. We’re in a new country and it certainly can’t be as bad as home. Can it?’
………………………
A few months later, when Bettner walked into Rolson’s office, the man was sitting behind his desk and seemed to be studying the same spot on the ceiling since the last time Bettner was here.
Bettner waited. And finally said: “Special Agent Bettner reporting back, Sir.” And then waited some more.
Rolson had seemingly solved the problem on the ceiling and looked his way. “Ah, yes, Bettner. You look tanned and fit. Farm life has treated you well? Report what you’ve found, special agent.”
Bettner merely shrugged. Then put a worried, concerned look on his face before answering.
Rolson wasn’t used to being kept waiting. “Well, Bettner, you did find something, right? All that time out there, you should have uncovered something. What are those ‘Gerries’ up to?”
“I don’t know where to start, Sir. You were right though. There are certainly some strange things happening out there. But, I’ll just describe them and let you draw your own conclusions.”
“Yes, Bettner, go on. Get it out.” Rolson was getting excited, now fully engaged. At last, maybe something he could take to his superiors.
Bettner shrugged again, taking his time. Rolson grew increasingly agitated. Finally Bettner began. “First of all they produce enough food to feed a small army, Sir. In the fall they work twelve to sixteen hours a day, harvesting the fields, gardens, canning, butchering. And there’s still more to come. I don’t know why they need all that food. My boss, Walter, put on at least ten pounds this summer.”
Rolson considered this. Food. Army. Yes, of course. Fishy-sounding alright. “Go on Bettner.”
“Most of the farm families have built these bunkers out of earth and timbers. With no windows and thick, thick, doors. I’ve watched them haul all this food in there. And store it. As if getting ready for something big, Sir.”
Rolson nodded. Maybe an invasion? Of course. Army. “Maybe we should do some aerial photography over those farms, Bettner, and see how common this really is.”
“Good idea, Sir. I never would have thought of that.”
But Rolson wasn’t listening, instead furiously writing. Already compiling his report to his superiors. As he wrote, he mumbled, “Any more Bettner? What else did you notice.”
“Perhaps the strangest behavior I noticed though is their soap making.” Before continuing, Bettner waited since Rolson was still madly writing.
Finally Rolson looked up, “Soap making? What’s so strange about that?”
“It’s how they make it and what they call it, Sir. That’s the interesting part. First they fill a large barrel full of ash from their cooking and heating fires in their stoves. The barrel has a small spigot at the bottom for drainage. When it rains the barrel fills with water. They drain off the liquid and then mix it with lard to make the soap.’
“That sound interesting Bettner, but I don’t get it. It’s just soap, right?”
Bettner, now looking grave, leaned over the desk of his superior, almost nose to nose with him. And almost in a whisper said, “It’s what they call the soap Sir. That’s what’s a little strange. They call it Lie soap, Sir.” Bettner looked conspiratorially into Rolson’s eyes, before backing off.
Rolson looked perplexed for only a moment. And then slyly smiled. “Lie soap, Bettner? How do they spell that?”
“Don’t know, Sir. They can’t write English very well, so I never asked.” Bettner did notice Rolson madly writing in his journal: ‘LIE SOAP’.
“Did they say how they used it Bettner? This lie soap.”
“Rumor has it Sir, if you wash your hands with it, you’ll come clean, if you’ll excuse my pun, Sir.”
Rolson looked flustered. “Pun? Never mind. Did you try it Bettner?”
Bettner thought this question rather foolish. But, then he looked solemnly at Rolson. “Sir, if I did that, well, my cover might have been blown. Anyway, I brought you back a few bars. Try it on some prisoners you are interrogating and see how it works.” With that Bettner plunked two large bars of white soap on Rolson’s desk.
Rolson, now looking more pleased than ever, asked, hopefully: “Anything else Bettner, that you noticed? I can’t help but think we’re onto something big here.”
Bettner only nodded even more solemnly, then went on. “Hockey, Sir. There’s going to be trouble there.”
“Hockey, Bettner? What does hockey have to do with new German Canadians?”
Two things, Sir. First, the Leader Hockey team calls themselves the ‘Flyers’. Leader Flyers. Could be nothing more than a name, but you never know. We’ve had troubles with those people before, as you pointed out in our last meeting.”
Rolson, was now rapidly connecting the dots as soon as Bettner opened his mouth. ‘Flyers, yes, maybe a secret German air force of some sort.’
Then he looked up at Bettner. “And the second thing, Bettner?”
“I noticed the young Heinz already has skates and a hockey stick. His father told me he is making great strides learning how to skate and play.” Bettner waited for Rolson to take the bait.
“What’s so important, or threatening, about that, Bettner?”
“Sir, think about it. Germans playing hockey! Where would that end? Strategic breakout plays, defensive zone coverage. Endless drills and practices. They would put skill and strategy into the game, and take all the fun out of it.” Rolson nodded again. Yes, he could see where that could ruin the game.
“And the worst of all, Sir. The father, Walter, is making a helmet for Heinz, so he wouldn’t smack his head on the ice. Can you imagine Sir, helmets in hockey? Those ‘Gerries’ with their helmets…”
“I see Bettner. That kind of thinking could ruin the league. Who ever heard of such an absurd thing? We can’t let them get started.”
Before Bettner could continue, Rolson interjected. “OK, Bettner, that will be all for now. I have more than enough information here to get me started. I have another meeting to attend in the next few minutes. What’s your next move then?”
“Oh, I’m afraid I have to go back for a few more months. This is the best time of year to gather the really good intel. You see, they all gather in the late fall, early winter, eat and celebrate. They’re having a huge gathering and fresh ‘Schwein–Gebratenes‘ (pig fry) this weekend. I can’t miss that.” Bettner was almost drooling with anticipation as he said these last words.
Rolson looked a little worriedly at his special agent. ‘Why do I get the feeling he’s really enjoying himself out there.’ He shrugged, stood, getting ready to leave for the meeting.
Before he could get around his desk, Bettner blurted out.
“A few more things, Sir. Of utmost importance. You need to hear this, Sir. Before you leave. It could really affect your career.”
Rolson hesitated. Thinking, ‘Well, so I’m a little late for a budget meeting. I hate those damn meetings anyway. And besides. What could be more important than the safety of our country.’ He looked expectantly at Bettner.
“Sir, I hear rumors about a gathering, and the words ‘sauerkraut’ keeps popping up when I’m among them. It could be code, Sir, for something. Remember, we always call them ‘Krauts’ during the war. Well, ‘Säure’ means sour. They might be putting together a crack fighting unit. The Säurer Krauts. A bunch of nasty young German mens with a chip on their shoulder. That would explain why all that food is necessary.”
“Good point Bettner. Anything else? Do they have weapons?”
“None that I’ve seen, Sir. But, sometimes when the German men get together, and have too much to drink, they start talking about, ‘Die Grosse Berta.’ (The ‘Big Bertha’). And they roar with laughter. As soon as the women approach, they shut up as if keeping some big secret.”
“Big Bertha.” I don’t understand Bettner?”
“As you recall, Sir, that was the name of the long-range artillery gun they developed in the Firsts World War. Could shoot your eye out, lobbing a shell half the size of this office all the way from Swift Current to Regina.” Rolson visibly shuddered at the thought.
“And when they get together they sing in German, and read Der Courier, a German newspaper out of Winnipeg. And occasionally I hear some sort of chanting. Something like, Sind Heil. Sind Heil. Not sure what to make of that yet, Sir. But, this next trip might tell me.”
“At their last party, one of the neighbors got so drunk, he hitched the horses backwards to the sleigh, to take his family home. They’re a rowdy bunch, Sir. That I can vouch for.” Rolson, nodded, now desperately trying to get away from Bettner, to attend his meeting. But, before he could escape, Bettner was at it again.
“But of all the things I’ve seen, what worries me most is that blue wooden trunk of Adelgunde’s. It’s always locked, and not one can look in for some reason.”
Rolson was thinking, ‘Maybe holding secret plans of some sort. What else could it be for.’
“And one last thing Sir before you go. Also, of utmost importance.” Again, Bettner leaned over conspiratorially toward Rolson, almost whispering in his ear. “I’d take this right to the top, Sir. Don’t go through the normal channels. Why, you may wonder? Well, think about it. What’s your superior’s last name?”
“Shultz,” blurted out Rolson. ‘Yes, of course, Schultz.’
“Can’t be too careful now can we, Sir? Your never know. They probably already have spies everywhere….”
Bettner winked at his superior and finally left the room. Rolson, a little shaken by these last words, just stood there, motionless. ‘That Bettner is right. Who can I trust these days?’ Then he turned and managed to catch the end of his budget meeting.
Those partying Germans, c.1956-1957. For many of you their names don’t mean much. For those of you reading this who are from the Portreeve – Shackleton area, you may recognize a few names. From the top left: the late Adelgunde Pyszczyk; the late Gustov Gotzman; the late Ida Berg; the late Walter Pyszczyk; the late Olga Gotzman. Bottom row: the late Ralph Berg; Erica Berg (Minor, Undseth), and Heinz Pyszczyk.
…………………….
Ottawa, Three Months Later
Special agent Bettner strode into the Chief Superintendent’s office, back after two more months of undercover work. Still a little hung over, and a little fatter. Gosh those Germans could cook. He looked around. ‘Strange, something’s not right here. The office is reorganized, a new secretary.’
He looked at the secretary. “Yes, I’m here to report back to Chief Superintendent Rolson.”
The secretary looked at him a little quizzically before answering. “I’m sorry Sir. Bettner is it? Chief Superintendent Rolson is no longer here. He’s been reassigned.”
Bettner put on a surprised look on his face. “Reassigned? But he just got here. Where did he go?”
The secretary shook her head. “It’s best if the new Chief Superintendent briefed you, Sir. He’s expecting you, so go right in.”
“Special agent, Frank Bettner, reporting, Sir.” Bettner eyed the new superintendent. Who was eyeing him as well. More like sizing him up. Boring into him, as if wanting to extract something.
“Sit down Bettner. How was the field work?”
“Tough, Sir. Hard keeping up with those Germans in the fall. They work their tails off to get ready for winter. And then eat and celebrate even harder.”
Superintendent Kirkland was in the process of closing a huge, fat file, with the bright red letters across its cover: CONFIDENTIAL. He continued to stare at Bettner.
“Sir, if you don’t mind me asking, what happened to Superintendent Rolson?”
Kirkland appraised Bettner further, as if deciding how much to reveal and whether to trust him. After what he had just read in the file, this one was a sly buggar.
“Yes, well, ‘Corporal’ Rolson was reassigned after what happened with this German investigation.” He waited for Bettner to speak.
“Reassigned, Sir? He’s a corporal now? Where too?”
“He’ll be working out of Cambridge Bay, and points north. All the way to Alert Bay in the territories.”
Bettner gasped in disbelief. ‘Holy shit, that’s almost in Russia.’ “May I ask why, Sir?”
“You may Bettner. But I’m sure you already know the answer. Since our now ‘Corporal’ Rolson has such a keen imagination for potential enemies of the state, we sent him north to deal with the next expected menace.”
“I didn’t know we had any menaces up there, Sir. Just ice and snow and hardly any people.”
“Oh, Rolson will find something. Real or not. He’ll conjure some up. You can appreciate that can’t you Bettner?”
Bettner gulped. He didn’t like where this conversation was heading.
“You see Bettner, his mandate up there is to warn us if the ‘commies’ prepare to invade Canada across the arctic. And the ice. He has to watch the ice.”
“Watch the ice, Sir? I don’t understand. It’s all ice up there. Nothing but ice.”
“That’s his job Bettner. To watch the ice doesn’t become a threat. And report back bi-annually, if he sees anything suspicious. Last time I talked with him, he asked specifically about you. Whether it would be possible to transfer you up there to help him out. You seemed to work so well together on this last assignment. Thought we might send you along with him.”
Bettner gulped again. A small trickle of sweat began running down his spine. ‘No. Anywhere but there. No.’ “I’m hardly suited for the arctic, Sir. I’m too tall. I would freeze instantly, and intimidate those shorter Inuit.”
Kirkland smiled. ‘Fast thinker, aren’t you Bettner. Now that your shorts are in a bit of a knot.’
“Agreed Bettner. You’ll continue to work here. For me. But, let’s get one thing straight. No more bullshit, like what I’m reading here in Rolson’s report to the Commissioner. The Commissioner. Can you believe that? Why would he do such a thing? Bypass the chain of command?” He looked suspiciously at Bettner, who now was studying that same spot on the ceiling as Rolson had before.
Gradually Bettner looked down, at Kirkland. “Yes, Sir. But, it wasn’t quite like that. I told him things and he probably used his slightly over-creative imagination I guess. Thought the information I gave him was really important to move right to the top.”
“Bettner, we’re starting off on the wrong foot here. Is there are real German threat out west? Or not?”
“No Sir. They’re a hard working bunch of people who just want some peace and stability in their lives. Good food. And, a little fun. They get together, mainly because there is no one else up there, and they understand one another.”
“The shit really hit the fan Bettner, when Rolson accused the land owner Claud Vigar of being a German sympathizer. Word got out and Claud got pissed off and went to the politicians. And reamed the crap out of them. Then they in turn reamed the crap out of us. And so on. Vigar contributes to all the strong political parties. He’s always got friends in government no matter who’s in power. Pretty stupid of Rolson to single him out. I wonder where he got that idea Bettner?” Kirkland was staring rather icily at him again. Waiting.
“Well, he might have misunderstood what I said, Sir. All I said was that Mr. Vigar seemed very friendly with his German hired hands, and his name didn’t really sound too English. That’s all I said, Sir.”
“Is that so Bettner. Maybe he should have checked his history. Vigars arrived in England, from Normandy, with the Norman Conquest of 1066. They lived in Cornwall.”
Bettner, now feeling extremely uncomfortable, just wanted to get out of Kirkland’s office. “Will that be all, Sir? I’m sure you’re busy with other more important things.”
Kirkland looked at him one final time. Again, as if sizing him up, as if fitting him for a winter parka for the Canadian arctic. “One last thing Bettner. The only good thing that came out of this pile of shit in front of me was the hockey helmet idea. The commissioner really liked that. He’s going to meet with NHL officials to discuss it. Right now we have Canadians’ brains being spattered all over the ice. That has to stop. It may take years though.”
Kirkland was already eying another file in his in-basket. Without so much as even glancing at Bettner, he just pointed towards the door. “Close the door on your way out.”
“Yes Sir. Nothing more important than national security and hockey.”
“Get out Bettner, before I change my mind and send you to Cambridge Bay. I’m sure Rolson will have a welcoming party ready for you. I hear you’ve been playing hockey with the Leader Flyers. Maybe in Cambridge Bay you could play all year ’round.”
Bettner left in a hurry. Wondering where his next assignment might be. Hopefully not in Cambridge Bay. Oh, Please God. Wondering too, ‘I never did find out what was in that wooden blue trunk of Adelgunde’s. Well, it sure wasn’t blueprints for a new weapon to take over Saskatchewan.’ He nodded to himself. Now that was solid intel.
A Few Final Notes:
I struggled writing this story. And when it was finished, whether to even post it. As I wrote it, I got a little choked up. Thinking about my parents and what they went through, as new Canadians. And, looking through those old photographs brought back a flood of memories.
I guess what finally convinced me to post it is our attitude towards newly landed Canadian immigrants. There is still a belief among some Canadians that immigrants just suck our tax money away. And somehow are a threat to our Canadian way of life.
We sometimes forget that many Canadian immigrants went through hell just to get here. Just happy to be alive. For many there were two choices: Leave, or die. I heard that a lot when growing up over the dinner table, from my parents. For my father, the loss of his family after World War II was so emotional that he didn’t want to talk much about them.
In 1999, my mother finally hooked up with what was left of her family in what was formerly East Germany. Over fifty years after escaping across the Iron Curtain, into the West. It was a very special time for her. For all of us.
As first generation Canadians, we struggled, but adapted quickly enough. Yes, we were discriminated against. The emotions of war were still raw among many Canadians. It wasn’t that long ago, we were the enemy. I was called a ‘Nazis’ at school. Some of the other kids had a great time with my last name. But we fit in a lot more smoothly than many other immigrants who come to this country. And most Canadians were considerate, sympathetic, and very kind.
How to tell this story? It runs the gamut of emotions and mood. In short story writing 101, you’re supposed to set a mood and then stick with it throughout the narrative. I had a hard time with that. The first part of this story is dark, filled with fear, hopelessness, grief and despair. The second part with the RCMP is mostly political satire and humor. Usually these emotions in one story don’t mix very well.
But, some of the things I hear about immigrants, and how they supposedly threaten our Canadian way of life, while dark, are almost humerus and hard to believe. Almost. But, scary as well. Because behind all that paranoia and xenophobia, are good people that I worked with, play hockey with, or go have a few drinks with.
I have the utmost respect for Canadian law enforcement and what our police are faced with trying to figure out who is ‘naughty’ and who is ‘nice’. There is a Rolson or two in every profession. Clearly, from the little literature I read, before and during the first world War and during the Second World War, our Canadian police were watching out for German and Japanese sympathizers. Even going so far as to inter entire families. As they did with many Japanese Canadians.
It is less clear how much RCMP surveillance there was after the Second World War, as another wave of German immigrants arrived in Canada. Many settling in western Canada. Including the Swift Current – Leader corridor. Was there an RCMP dossier on German Canadians? Perhaps on the Berg’s and the Pyszczyk’s? If those documents exist, they are probably so deeply buried in the Canadian archives it will take more than a century before they ever see the light of day.
Now that I look back on those early years, our families didn’t much ‘rock the Canadian boat’. Not even in hockey. Fancy breakout plays were not foremost on my mind when I played. I, like my Canadian teammates, was just trying to survive.
