Canadian Holiday
- Day 4 : Thursday 11th September
A fine day – and a gentle start to the day; David and
Eulene had planned to take us to “Fort Edmonton”, so we set off in David’s car,
with full tourist service in the shape of commentary on things to see en
route, including their former home.
Fort Edmonton is a heritage site, re-creating Edmonton
as it was in the 1895-1905-1915 periods; having admired a black squirrel or two,
we took a wagon ride to the oldest part of the site – the old stockade that
formed a Hudson’s Bay trading post. There was an area there got up to recreate
the trading post of the 1890’s, and a guide gave a commentary with fascinating
insights into how the Hudson’s Bay Company operated – by and large working
peacefully with the “locals” (or first people as they are sometimes known); a
total contrast to the USA … I guess down there the incomers wanted the land,
whereas in Canada the British came to trade. The building had parchment windows
made from skins; inside were various pelts, and the guide explained that beaver
fur was shipped down the river to Hudson’s Bay, taken to London, and used to
make men’s top hats – which as I remarked were called Beavers. The “currency”
was in units of 1 or ˝ “made beavers” (larger and better pelts earning 2 or 3
MB’s), and the price of goods on sale in the store was all reckoned in MB’s.
We walked round the “governor’s house”, a wooden
building of at least 3 floors, and saw on the river a replica of the sort of
boats (called York boats, for some reason I do not recall) that were used to
ship men and goods up and down the river. Then we went slowly back through the
site, gradually getting back to 1915 and then to the present day. We were told
that settlers in Edmonton lived in tents for their first 2 years, in 1905, due
to shortages of skilled labour and raw materials for house-building. So when we
had seen enough history, we adjourned to the grounds, and sampled a very generous
picnic that Eulene had prepared.
Next we went into town to meet David and Eulene’s son Tim at his office; Tim does multi-media work to broadcast quality, and has a full video editing suite in his office – he was kind enough to spend a lot of time with us, showing examples of his work, including a mining prospectus and the “sing-along” videos that Eulene has been involved with.
Our next stop
was the Edmonton Museum; there were a number of exhibitions, but the one that
grabbed our attention was the aboriginal peoples’ section (i.e. the Canadian
“Red Indians” in old terminology, no longer approved), with fascinating
dioramas showing scenes of their life, and examples of their beliefs, crafts
and culture. When this closed we still had a little while before our next
engagement, so we did a car tour of some of the places in the city that David
and Eulene knew well.
So to our
evening meal. David and Eulene had arranged a grand family get-together at a
buffet restaurant, and all their children, most of the spouses, and another
cousin and his wife, were there. This was a wonderful evening, and in between
filling plates and eating we were able to catch up with some of them. It was a
chance to bring out the 10-foot wide printout of the family tree from T Walter
Moores downward to our generation, so everyone could see how we and they
“fitted together” … and in some cases there were surprises for them to
discover. All in all a very happy evening.