Shellbrook Museum's Largest Artifact

written by Nancy Carswell

The Shellbrook and District Heritage Museum is fortunate to have as its largest artifact a railway station to house the bulk of its collection. In this photo, a passenger patiently waits at the Shellbrook station with steamer trunk and hat box. Sadly, the train will not arrive. The CNR passenger service ended in 1978.  The CNR continued with regular freight service until 1993. The last train to run out of Shellbrook would have been a Carlton Trail Railway freight train on or about April 1, 2009.

To commemorate its 40th anniversary, the Shellbrook Heritage Museum is highlighting parts of its collection. The Museum's largest artifact, the Railway Station, holds the majority of the museum's collection. The station is designated a Heritage Building.

Like the voyageur canoes that transported furs east and trading goods west, trains were the arteries of the Prairies and railway stations were the pulsing heart of Prairie towns. Trains brought the settlers and manufactured goods west and then transported agricultural produce east.

Shellbrook developed into a service center for the surrounding agricultural communities because of the Canadian Northern Railway (CNoR). Shellbrook is a typical railway town with Railway Avenue running parallel to the tracks and Main Street perpendicular. It is possible that a portable flag stop station existed in late 1909 with rail service being introduced January 10, 1910.  The existing Shellbrook Railway Station at the end of Main Street is listed as open in 1910. The $3000 station was built to standard CNoR Third Class station plans with living accommodations for the Station Agent. The three rooms along the track would have been from east to west: the waiting room, the office, and the freight room.  On the non-rail side of the office and waiting room was the living room, kitchen, and a stairway to the four bedrooms on the second floor. As the baggage/freight room ran the full width of the station, it had two large doors; one door rail side and one door non-rail side.

Visitors familiar with the Museum will recognize that this plan description differs from their experience. In 1918, the station was expanded. The new larger freight room on the west side meant the old freight room could be converted to a waiting room and the waiting room to extra living space. The station was insulated and the exterior was stuccoed in 1939. Twenty years later, in 1959, it was upgraded with indoor plumbing.

The rail side office bay window allowed the Station Agent sightlines up and down the track as well as onto the platform. Station Agents wore various hats. They sold tickets to passengers and consigned freight. Express freight would travel in a passenger car and was the most expensive. Less than a carload, abbreviated to LCL, was more expensive than carload freight. Another hat worn by a Station Agent was sending and receiving telegraphs. If the work load warranted it, another employee, a Station Operator, was hired to receive "train orders" from a central Dispatcher by telegraph, then type them up and deliver them to the train crews. Interestingly, the railways did not trust radio communication until well into the second half of the twentieth century.

The Museum recently had a visit from Eileen McLaren Tymm, granddaughter of the long-term Station Agent Wilber McLaren. Remarkably, McLaren was employed at the Shellbrook station for over 40 years. McLaren Tymm remembers visiting her grandfather. She recognized much of the living area and noted that the wall where the ticket opening would have been, between the office and the waiting room, had disappeared.

As well as the Station Agent, the railway would have employed and provided housing for a Section Foreman. The distance between stations averaged 6 to 10 miles because 10 miles was the maximum return trip a farmer hauling grain or other produce by horse and wagon could manage in a single day. A Section Foreman then would be responsible for the condition of the tracks 3 to 5 miles on either side of his assigned station. Section Foremen would have originally used handcars and in later years used motor cars (also known as jiggers or speeders) to survey their sections and assign maintenance work to section gangs.

Fred Tatler, a board member of the Saskatchewan Railway Museum (SRM), is passionate about railways and the benefits of rail travel, "On a train, you are not cramped in a constrained seat. You can stroll from car to car, enjoy a meal in the dining car, or sit in the observatory car." He also explained that passenger trains were a service industry dependent on well trained staff. On a guided tour of a sleeper car at the SRM outside Saskatoon, Tatler described how the porter would have had to physically transform the cleverly designed seats into sleeping berths in the evening and reverse the transformation in the morning without inconveniencing passengers. The psychological demands of the job were very high as porters were expected to be available around the clock and provide service with a perpetual smile.

Pre-private automobiles and public roads, railways were the ribbons of steel that bound Canada together. Voters and, therefore, politicians paid great attention to railways. In 1918, the CNoR experienced financial difficulties and the federal government responded to public fears around the loss of this vital transportation system by becoming a major shareholder in the company. Soon the government formed the Canadian National Railways (CNR) to manage the CNoR and other troubled railways it had shares in. Domestic and wartime pressure quickly lead to the nationalization of the CNR. The Shellbrook Station was sold to the Town in 1978 and then became the Museum's largest artifact.

Do you have a story about the Shellbrook railway station? Did you travel to or from Shellbrook by rail? If you are willing to share your stories or memories, please contact committee member Alanna Carswell at 747-3769.

 The Museum welcomes monetary donations for inventory show cases and other donations to help better display items to tell their stories. Please make donations to the Town of Shellbrook to receive a receipt.

Elzzie McComas Photograph Album

Added to the Digital Collections! Elzzie McComas Photograph Album R62, gift of Elzzie McComas. Elzzie was born to George Washington and Elizabeth (nee McIntosh) McComas on 23 April 1900 in Butterfield, Barry County, Missouri and died 28 May 1984.

Sit back and enjoy the slideshow or click on it to visit the Picasa web album and view at your leisure and read the transcribed captions.

Shellbrook Museum's Church Collection

written by Nancy Carswell

One way that churches brought joy and comfort to their congregations was through music. This Museum organ ordered from the Eaton's catalog in 1904 at the cost of $42 is representative of the type organ found in small churches.

The Shellbrook Heritage Museum continues to highlight parts of its collection as it celebrates its 40th anniversary. The last article focused on schools and while schools were important, after securing food for the body, settlers frequently looked to securing food for the soul before securing food for the mind.

Long before the end of the 1800s, various Christian denominations had established missions in Saskatchewan to convert First Nations to Christianity. With the arrival of immigrants, the missions assigned itinerant clergy and theological students to rural areas. These devout men were referred to as "Saddle Bag Preachers". The Shellbrook and area's history book Treasured Memories mentions in 1901 Father Lajeunesse began travelling by horse and buggy once a month to Shellbrook from his permanent post at Muskeg Lake Cree Nation. By 1907 regular Anglican services were held at "Three Creeks, Holbein, Parkside and Shellbrook."

The first church services were commonly held in private homes. As mentioned in our homemakers' article, "If the homemaker was hosting the Sunday church service in their home, Saturday housecleaning may have had extra burdens." Later, some schools served as churches and some churches served as schools. As congregations grew in size they were eager to build a "house of worship" and usually added a rectory as a home for their clergy. Treasured Memories identifies St. Andrew's Anglican Church as the first church built in Shellbrook in anno domini 1910. The Museum 's photo collection has a variety of church pictures, including St. Andrew's, and other church events.

Many denominations supplied Sunday School programs and often the Sunday School picnic was a much anticipated highlight of the church year. Sunday Schools and Vacation Bible Schools would have used Bible stories, songs, arts and crafts, and drama. The Museum book collection along with several Bibles and hymn books has a copy of The Children's Bible History. In the author's words, this illustrated book is a retelling of the Bible stories in "simple pictures and simple language." It was given as a prize to a Lilian in 1872 possibly for her ability to memorize and recite Bible verses.

Saskatchewan historian John Archer believed, "The church contributed to the spiritual and educational life of pioneer communities, bringing hope, comfort and social contacts to the lonely and frequently disheartened homesteading families." While church records are invaluable to historians and genealogists today, congregations did not see churches as indifferent recorders but as faithful partners in all life's major events; births, confirmations, marriages, and deaths.

Thanks to Bertha Johnson and others who responded to our request for information on the photo that accompanied the Museum's one room schoolhouse article. In genealogy, Johnson is a primary source as she is in the picture. She says the photo is from the school year 1946-47 and it is Miss Miller's Grade 9-10 class. Johnson corrected the spelling of her own last name from Sillespi to Gillespi. In a conversation about the photo with her classmate Joyce Brunton (nee Mansfeld), they also corrected Leonard's last name from Harvey to Harder. Also, Bernard's last name was correct from Lybon to Luyben.

To reread articles and learn more about the Shellbrook and District Heritage Museum visit http://shellbrookmuseum.blogspot.ca/. A recent addition is the Grimes Obituary Scrapbook. It is an indexed spreadsheet of the obituaries collected by Evelyn Grimes between 1961 and 1996 from the Shellbrook Chronicle and other local newspapers.

The Museum Committee and Friends of the Museum continue to invest energy in inventorying the collection. The inventorying process is the first step as the museum moves from storing artifacts to telling their stories. If you would like to help, please see Alanna Carswell at the library or call Marlene Fellows at 747-2475.

The Museum welcomes monetary donations for inventory show cases and other donations to help better display items to tell their stories. Please make donations to the Town of Shellbrook to receive a receipt.

The Museum is open and participating in the Shellbrook Street Fair on Saturday August 24.

Grimes Obituary Scrapbooks

Added to the Digital Collections!

Evelyn Grimes, between 1961 and 1996, collected obituaries of local and former community members from the local newspaper the Shellbrook Chronicle, the Prince Albert Daily Herald, and other as of yet unidentified newspapers. The names, birth dates, birth locations, death dates, death locations, and burial locations of the individuals have been indexed and the spreadsheet can be seen and downloaded from the Museum's Google Drive account. Digitization of the clippings is a future project.

Shellbrook Museum's One Room Schoolhouse

written by Nancy Carswell

This class photo from the Shellbrook Heritage Museum collection was donated by W.T. Bill Smith who is in the middle row.  1946-47 school year, Miss Miller's Grade 9-10 class. Back row: Frank Sokolowsky, Russel Kennedy, Dave Roberts, Leonard Harder, Ted Sokolowsky, Tom Bibby, Johnny Halliwell.  Middle Row: Frank Zawada, Allan Miller, Bertha Sillespi Gillespi, Marion Wilson, Lillian Stevens, Lois Canaday, Joyce Fisher, Joyce Mansfeld, Anne Hislop, Sylvia Wilkinson, W.T. Bill Smith, Earl Jewitt, Miss Miller.  Front Row: Bernard Lybon Luyben, Reta Mortensen, Betty Schaan, Alba Roberts, Joyce Shapira, Shirley Mansfield, June Goudal, Ronald Harvey Hadley.

In celebration of its 40^th anniversary, the Shellbrook Heritage Museum is sharing a series of articles focusing on a part of its collection. The homesteaders and homemakers highlighted in previous articles sought not only a better life for themselves but for their children and commonly viewed education as a foundation.

When a community had enough students, it applied for a school grant. Saskatchewan schools in the late 1800's were voluntary and taught the 3Rs—reading, (w)riting, and 'rithmetic. It was hoped that schooling would facilitate legal communication around homesteading and prevent con artists from taking advantage of immigrants who did not speak English. In the early 1900's, schools continued the 3Rs with some adding school gardens and agricultural lessons. While school was free, most students in the late 1800s and early 1900s left after achieving the mandatory Grade 4-5 to take up responsibilities on the family farm.

The Museum has a furnished one room schoolhouse from the Rayside School District #2808. It is a typical schoolroom with blackboard, teacher desk, student desks, and cloak room. Senior visitors may recognize the readers and the roll down maps. With a little imagination, one can hear a spelling bee, catch the laughter of outside games, sense the anxiety of a visit from the school inspector, and witness the splendor of an elaborate Christmas concert with students proudly presenting plays, poems, and songs.

The Shellbrook history book, Treasured Memories, explains that the first Shellbrook school was built in 1910 when the Pleasantville and Parkview schools became overcrowded.  It was located at the intersection of 1^st Avenue and 1^st Street Miss Dowling, a first year teacher, was hired.

The student population served by the Shellbrook school rapidly outgrew the one room and in 1912 a two-storey brick building opened with D.L. Fitzpatrick as principal and teacher and Miss Dowling as teacher. On January 16, 1913, the Shellbrook Chronicle reported the results of the annual meeting of the Shellbrook School District No. 252.  Some expenditures listed are: "Paid teachers' salary $1140.00", "Paid for erecting an repairing schoolhouse, outhouses, etc. $3345.19", and "Paid for school library and reference books $10.95".

Another growth spurt in student population doubled the two rooms to four in 1919 with the separate "Little" school added in 1923.  These classrooms served the student population well into the 1940's. The current Shellbrook high school name honours W. P. Sandin who dedicated over 18 years of service to improving local schools. Sandin commented that his greatest challenges were obtaining funding and agreeing on the location for schools with the Department of Education which supports the truth of the adage "History repeats itself." 

The one room schoolhouse model has modern admirers. Authors of Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns and The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined admire the one room schoolhouse's student centered approach because the teacher had to customize learning and the learner had to practice independence. In a multi-grade environment, senior students had many opportunities to review and consolidate learning when they or the teacher taught content to junior students and junior students had previews of future content and concepts. Students practiced self-discipline as they worked independently on teacher-assigned activities. The one room schoolhouse model leverages the diversity within its learning community.

The Museum Committee and Friends of the Museum continue to invest energy in inventorying the collection. The inventorying process is the first step as the museum moves from storing artifacts to telling their stories. If you would like to help, please drop in to see Alanna Carswell at the library or call Marlene Fellows at 747-2475.

The Museum welcomes monetary donations for inventory show cases and other donations to help better display items to tell their stories.  Please make donations to the Town of Shellbrook to receive a receipt.

Prosser Cloth Photograph Album

Added to the Digital Collections! Prosser Cloth Photograph Album, R802a, gift of the Prosser family.


Sit back and enjoy the slideshow or click on it to visit the Picasa web album and view at your leisure.

Museum Honours Homemakers

written by Nancy Carswell

This framed illustration donated by Mary (Wetzel) Dewar to the Shellbrook & District Heritage Museum is a resume of the activities of the Pleasantville Homemaker Club from March 1939 to February 1940. March notes that a mat made by Mrs. McTaggart now resides in the Queen's bedroom and April has an astounding list that reflects the diversity of homemaking skills; "Displays of home canned meats, fruit, vegetables, marmalade, candied peel ~ Rugs, quilts, quilt patches ~ Articles made from sacks & old clothing ~ Home spun & knitted mitts & socks. Slips of plants & garden seeds exchanged." Their May and June cemetery activities are directly related to their objective of a shelter for the cemetery pictured in the photo.

In celebration of its 40th anniversary, the Shellbrook & District Heritage Museum is writing articles focusing on a part of its collection. The previous article was about homesteaders and this one honours homemakers.

The traditional division of labour assigned the responsibilities of homemaker to women and a folk saying that recognizes the demands of homemaking is "Man may work from sun to sun but woman's work is never done." Daily, homemakers were responsible for childcare, healthcare, housekeeping duties, and making meals. Weekly the local pattern was most likely Monday laundry, Tuesday ironing, Wednesday baking, Thursday shopping, Friday sewing, and Saturday housecleaning. If the homemaker was hosting the Sunday church service in their home, Saturday housecleaning may have had extra burdens.

A homemaker of 33 years, Mrs. Sarah Zelickson of Hirsch estimated her hours and informed the newspaper the Nor'West Farmer she had "put in 48,180 hours scrubbing, cleaning and washing." This accounts for 4 hours a day. In her other hours, "I have cooked 361,351 meals, baked 78,800 loaves of bread, 12,045 cakes, 5,158 pies, preserved 3,300 quarts of fruit, churned 13,728 pounds of butter and raised 4,950 poultry." This was all manual labour; knuckle bruising scrub boards rather than washing machines, blistering heavy irons rather than electric steam irons, demanding woodstoves rather than electric stoves, inefficient brooms rather than efficient vacuums, pedal-powered treadle sewing machine rather than electric, etc. A homemaker with milk cows may or may not do the milking but would most likely separate out the cream, churn the butter, and perhaps make cottage cheese with the skim milk. Even the water was manual labour. Blessed was the homemaker who had a well with a pump and did not have to draw every bucket up by hand. The seasons also had a pattern. In the spring, the essential vegetable garden needed planting and weeding. In summer, garden produce and wild berries needed to be harvested. Berry picking could be a social event and some families would camp overnight if the berry patch was far from home. Food not eaten fresh would be preserved; fruit would be canned and cucumbers and beans would be pickled.

In the fall, the root vegetables, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, onions, and beets, would be harvested and stored in the cold room or root cellar. If the poultry was butchered early, it would be canned, while a late butchering could be frozen. Fall threshing crews of 10-20 men would need three square meals a day plus field lunches in the afternoon and the larger the homestead, the longer the crew would stay.

The onset of winter meant constantly feeding the woodstove to heat the house. Having a logger for a husband was a mixed blessing. While the income was welcome, an absent husband meant any outside chores, wood and livestock, became the homemakers if she was not doing those chores already. It is not surprising that "homemakers" often wished they were just homemakers, and not also farm labourers.

Why did women stay homemakers? Their apron strings were tied to their husbands purse strings through legislation. Joan Champ writes in "The Unenviable Circumstances of Women in Saskatchewan Before 1920" that "Pioneer women were vital to economic success of the family farm in Saskatchewan. Sandra Rollings-Magnusson argues that, because of this, the federal and provincial governments enacted and maintained legislation that limited the independence of women in an effort to ensure that women would remain tied to the farm and contribute to the grain economy." Women were non-persons—the Dominion Election Act decreed "No woman, idiot, lunatic or criminal shall vote."

As well as the endless physical work, some homemakers suffered from the psychological effects of isolation. The University of Saskatchewan found women eager to join their Homemaker Club initiative modeled on the Women's Institutes in Ontario. Champ writes the clubs "quickly became agents of adult education, providing courses in the skills of homemaking." They also provided treasured opportunities for socializing.

Like homesteaders, homemakers practiced a long list of virtues that Shellbrook continues to benefit from, especially the virtues of resilience, compassion, and grace.

Thank you to Hazel Barkway for her willingness to be interviewed. Her valuable knowledge was the foundation of this article.

The Museum Committee and Friends of the Museum continue to invest energy in inventorying the collection. The inventorying process is the first step as the museum moves from storing artifacts to telling their stories. If you would like to help, please drop in to see Alanna Carswell at the library or call Marlene Fellows at 747-2475. The Museum welcomes monetary donations for inventory show cases and other donations to help better display items to tell their stories. Please make donations to the Town of Shellbrook to receive a receipt.

Amy (Baer) Snyder Photograph Album

Added to the Digital Collections! Amy (Baer) Snyder Photograph Album, R871, gift of Phyllis Snyder. A scrapbook photograph album on black card stock with photographs dated from 1906 to 1981 and "Amy Baer in Ontario Cooking School" handwritten on the cover.



Sit back and enjoy the slideshow or click on it to visit the Picasa web album and view at your leisure and read the transcribed captions.

Educating for Sustainability

Alanna Carswell and Marlene Fellows attended the "Educating for Sustainability" Symposium offered by the Museums Association of Saskatchewan on 23 May 2013 in Saskatoon. 

Marni Gittleman lead a session called "Values: A Starting Point for Sustainability" that explored the role values make in decision making and community engagement. 

Dr. Glenn Sutter lead the "Greenburg session" in which we took on the role of a stakeholder in an imaginary community, and participated in creating a plan for building a more sustainable community.

The symposium was educational and engaging and best of all, was meeting and making personal and broad connections with the symposium attendees.

Homestead Month for the Museum

written by Nancy Carswell

Typically, a homesteader's priorities were to build a one-room starter home, dig a well or locate a water source, and cultivate enough land for a garden and a hay crop for animals. Essential hand tools shown here from the Shellbrook Heritage Museum collection are a grub hoe, ace, spade-like shovel, and scythe. (It is unlikely that the spade-like shovel was used by homesteaders but was included to represent a spade.)

One way the Shellbrook & District Heritage Museum is celebrating its 40th anniversary is with monthly articles focusing on a part of its collection. This month's homesteading focus is evident in every room, nook, and cranny in the museum. Homesteading in the Parklands followed the same governmental trail, from entry to patent, as homesteading in the Prairies but the big challenge of these two homesteading groups differed. The Prairie homesteaders had to break the land while the Parkland homesteaders had to clear the land.

The homesteading system was initiated primarily to populate the Prairies with consumers and producers to pay for Sir John A. McDonald's dream of a trans-Canada railroad. A prospective homesteader for a nominal registration fee could file for 160 acres. The homesteader then had three years to "prove" his or her homestead. (To be a homesteader one needed to be at least 18 and male or a widow.) In that three years as well as cultivating 30 acres, the homesteader had to build a house and reside on the land a proportion of the time. At the three year mark, a sworn statement witnessed by two neighbours gave the homesteader the patent; a document of ownership.

It is odd how often "clearing the land" is mentioned in sources without details. When asked exactly how clearing the land of popular and spruce trees was done, one senior cryptically chuckled, "With the help of E.B. Eddy". E.B. Eddy is not a person but a match company. So from clues from various sources, the process of clearing the land began with felling the trees with axes and saws. If a tree was suitable, it might be processed into lumber for building or cord wood for winter fuel. The remaining logs and debris would be piled and burned with the help of E.B. Eddy. While this step was demanding, the next was worse. The roots and stumps had to be removed. As decomposition helped the removal process, roots and stumps were left in ground as long as possible. After axe and spade work, the tool of choice for roots was the sturdy grub hoe. For stumps, there were person-powered and animal-powered stump pullers—some pullers were simply chains and others complex machines. Both horses and oxen supplied welcome muscle but horses may have been preferred as oxen tend to stop when they meet great resistance while horses continue to pull. The spirit of cooperation flourished in the Parkland and "clearing bees" were common where neighbours work together proving again and again that "many hands make light work".

Cultivating the land was a critical step towards securing a homestead. A Shellbrook Chronicle article of May 1912 reported a petition that the number of required acres broken to prove up a homestead be changed from 30 to 15. It is not surprising the article ends: "Every person in this district will heartily endorse this movement for reduction in homestead duties" as it would mean clearing only 15 football fields (a rough approximation of an acre) instead of 30. Shellbrook rural homesteading peaked in the early decades of the 1900's. The Chronicle mentions 351 in 1912 topping the previous year's 260 entries. The first two homestead entries were 1892 but both were abandoned. In 1893, entries by Miles A. Riggs and Samuel Halliwell were successful but there are ten other homesteaders in the same year who cancelled suggesting the odds of success were 1 to 5. Post WWI, the 1919 Soldier Settlement Act provided soldiers with loans for land, stock, and equipment but many farms failed. The 1942 Veteran's Land Act wisely offered the veteran choices and more flexibility so more farms succeeded.

The homesteaders possessed an incredible number of virtues. The first was the courage to immigrate and take on the challenges of homesteading. Government advertising was exaggerated and presented Canada as a land flowing with the proverbial milk and honey so upon arrival at the homestead they needed optimism and hope to sustain years of work; work that required persistence and strength. Their living situations also demanded creativity (necessity being the mother of invention), thrift, and resourcefulness. These and many other virtues are the foundation of Shellbrook and district.

The Museum Committee and Friends of the Museum continue to invest energy in inventorying the collection. The inventorying process is the first step as the museum moves from storing artifacts to telling their stories. If you would like to help, please drop in to see Alanna Carswell at the library or call Marlene Fellows at 306-747-2475.

The Museum welcomes monetary donations for inventory show cases and other donations to help better display items to tell their stories. Please make donations to the Town of Shellbrook to receive a receipt.

Museum Celebrates Logging Heritage

written by Nancy Carswell

A crosscut saw from the Shellbrook Heritage Museum is superimposed on a Library and Archives Canada photo "In the Woods North of Prince Albert". This is a two person saw with the second handle missing. Using a hand saw successfully requires a high level of skill and the use of a crosscut saw has the added requirement of cooperation.

The Shellbrook & District Heritage Museum is shining a monthly spotlight on a segment of its collection to celebrate its 40th anniversary. In the Shellbrook area at the end of the 1800s, the fur trade was falling in importance and forestry was rising.

After securing their own firewood, some early settlers in the area cashed in on the trees from clearing their lands. Using tools that are in the Museum collection like cross cut saws, swede saws, and axes, the settlers, men and women, would down the trees, delimb them, and drag the logs out by wagon. This wood was sold by the cord, a legal unit of stacked wood 4 feet x 8 feet x 4 feet, to fuel stoves and furnaces in homes and businesses.

During the logging boom at the turn of the 20th century, Shellbrook was between two major saw mills. To the north was the Big River Lumber Company's mill (originally the Saskatchewan Lumber Company) and to the east was the Prince Albert Lumber Company's mill.

In the Shellbrook area, the fur industry's most valued species was the beaver. For the forestry industry, the most valued species was the stately white spruce. The trees in the virgin white spruce stands grew a majestic 100 feet in height. Ted Arabsky has long been interested in the history of logging. He wrote the "Logging Era" chapter in the history book Wilderness to Neighbourhoods: Lake Four, Park Valley, Rabbit Bluff, Stump Lake, Millard Hill. Arabsky learned from loggers that many of the Prince Albert Lumber Company largest logs came from the Stump Lake district with an amazing diameter of 3 to 4 feet. This converts into a circumference of 9.5 to 12.5 using the formula πd. As a comparison, the large spruce that towers over the Museum is 5.5 feet in diameter.

Logging, like trapping, was a winter activity. The companies would set up numerous camps for 75 to 200 lumberjacks in their federally allocated timber berths. Camps consisted of a bunkhouse, kitchen and dining room, blacksmith shop, office, and barn for the horses. The companies hired excellent cooks and the workers were well feed. Before meals, men would use basins to wash up, load up their plates, and then sit down at one of the long tables. They did this in silence as silence was the rule during the business of eating. Even the cooks were not to talk while cooking. A dining room sign emphasized the rule with a succinct "Eat and get the h*!! outside".

Arabsky's chapter describes the process of harvesting a tree in detail. In the six man saw gang, the undercutter notched the tree so it would fall in the desired direction. Two sawers used the long cross cut saw to fell the tree and a limber would remove the branches. Two swampers where responsible for clearing a road. The logs were skidded by horse to a loading area where four men would roll the logs onto skids using cant hooks and from there unto a sleigh using a jammer employing the science of pulleys and more horsepower.

A good hauling road for the heavy sleigh was essential and that took more man and horse power. Stumps were cleared on main roads and "graders" armed with hoes and shovels would level it. More science would be employed to reduce the friction for the sleighs by flooding the road to make ice after cutting two ruts matching the sleigh's runners. The sixteen horse team that pulled the sleigh had specially designed horseshoes for ice and horse apples were conscientiously removed from the ice road as frozen they could tip the sleigh. Wisely, the trees along the road were left standing to shade the road from the sun's warmth in the spring. This leg of the journey to a saw mill ended at a rail loading site or frozen lake or river.

The companies would strategically damn waterways so when they opened the damn in the spring, water power would carry the logs for free. This was costly to the environment though as unnatural amounts of bark and debris destroyed fish habitat and harvesting trees along shorelines increased erosion.

It would be an understatement to pronounce that the logging industry was unsustainable and more accurate to pronounce it exploitation. At the end of the 1880s the annual harvest was counted in logs and the count was under 1000. In 1900, the count was 3.6 million board feet and in 1904, it had tripled to 15 million board feet. The Great Fire of 1919 may have had natural causes but it had man made fuel in the form of tinder dry logging waste. The fire burned 2.8 million hectares and was its most destructive in the timber berths. The big logging boom went bust.

Smaller companies with more sustainable practices became the norm. Shellbrook's own Red River Lumber and Construction Company erected a mill at a former Prince Albert Lumber Company site on the Elk Trail in 1925.

The Museum Committee and Friends of the Museum continue to invest energy in inventorying the collection. The inventorying process is the first step as the museum moves from storing artifacts to telling their stories. If you would like to help, please drop in to see Alanna Carswell at the library or call Marlene Fellows at 306-747-2475.

The Museum welcomes monetary donations for inventory show cases and other donations to help better display items to tell their stories. Please make donations to the Town of Shellbrook to receive a receipt.

Museum Celebrates the Beaver

written by Nancy Carswell

Trappers relied on the beavertail snowshoe to keep them on top of deep snow and a snowshoe was multi-purpose making an excellent shovel. The map beneath the snowshoes details the two fur trade routes that intersected in the Shellbrook area. Travelling west from Prince Albert traders could head for Fort Pitt and then Fort Edmonton or north to Green Lake and eventually the Churchill River

To celebrate its 40th anniversary in 2013, the Shellbrook & District Heritage Museum is shining a monthly spotlight on a segment of its collection. While the majority of the artifacts relate to agriculture, a few remind us that Canada was built on the fur trade. During Fort Carlton's 1810-1885 primetime, the Shellbrook area would have seen many people involved in the fur trade as busy as beavers.

The primary focus of the fur trade was beaver. Beaver pelts make an exceptional felt that was insanely popular for men's and women's hats. These hats were status symbols. (Making felt gave rise to the expression "mad as a hatter" as exposure to mercury, a neurotoxin, during the process literally drove hatters mad.)

Textbooks commonly credit Europeans with inventing the fur trade while it would be more accurate to give them credit for expanding the fur trade. First Nations had an ancient, well-organized, and extensive trading system that included furs. The previous museum article mentioned First Nations stone tools in the collection that would have travelled thousands of kilometers. Textbooks may mention trade as a flow of European technology; pots, needles, beads, knives, axes, and guns, to First Nations, but may neglect to mention the flow of First Nations technology; canoes, toboggans, snowshoes, and moccasins, to European fur traders.

Fort Carlton was strategically placed for the two sides of the fur trade. To the north of the North Saskatchewan River lay the land of the beaver. Trappers would visit the fort in the fall to outfit themselves for the winter with food, clothing, and other necessities like snowshoes. The talents of both men and women were usually employed in making snowshoes with the men responsible for the frame and the women the netting. Trappers in the Shellbrook area would have probably relied on the beavertail or teardrop style to keep them on top of the deep snow. In the spring, the trappers would return to the post with precious furs.

To the south of the river roamed the bison and other large game. First Nations bands, like Ahtahkakoop's, and Metis groups, like Gabriel Dumont's, would produce literally tons of pemmican, the power line of the fur trade. Pemmican, from the Cree pimîhkân, is a superfood. After the hunt, women would butcher the meat into thin strips and spread them out to dry. Five pounds of meat would become one pound of concentrated protein. After pounding, the concentrate would be mixed with equal amounts of fat. It would become a complete superfood when dried berries, a carbohydrate, were added.

The North Saskatchewan River was a major fur trade route. It is portage free between Cumberland House (1774) and Fort Edmonton (1795). The strong currents east of Prince Albert meant canoes were pulled upstream rather than paddled a daunting 200 kilometers. York boats were also used. The Hudson Bay Company (HBC) purchased canoes from First Nations but even the largest canoes became inadequate for the volume of furs and pemmican transported. It was also difficult to find skilled voyageurs. Enter the York boat, based on traditional Orkney design and familiar to many HBC employees who called the Orkney Islands in the North Atlantic home. Both canoes and boats were powered by men primarily fuelled by pemmican.

The fur trade was highly competitive and very dynamic—constantly reshaped by economic and political forces. The HBC was English, what would become the Northwest Company (NWC) was French and then there were some independents. Beaver became scarce in the Great Lakes area and were scarce in the Hudson Bay area, so companies pointed their canoes westward. After the HBC and NWC merger in 1821, the HBC controlled the trade and consolidated 125 posts into 52. Strategically placed Fort Carlton remained as did Green Lake. Travelling from Prince Albert, traders would leave the North Saskatchewan, follow the Sturgeon River, and then the Shell Brook eventually intersecting with the overland Green Lake Fort Carlton trail.

The Museum Committee and Friends of the Museum are investing energy in inventorying the collection this winter. The inventorying process is the first step as the museum moves from storing artifacts to telling their stories. If you would like to help, please drop in to see Alanna Carswell at the library or call Marlene Fellows at 306-747-2475.

Celebrating the Shellbrook & District Heritage Museum Collection

written by Nancy Carswell

Two boxes from the Shellbrook Museum collection show superb examples of First Nations points and scrapers. Comparing the two hammerheads in the photo, a binding grove in the middle and round ends suggests one was a war club and a binding groove offset from a flat end suggests the other was a flat peg hammer for pounding in tent pegs.

To celebrate its 40th anniversary in 2013, the Shellbrook & District Heritage Museum will be sharing a monthly spotlight on a segment of its collection. While the majority of items in the Museum collection are from the early decades of the 1900’s, there are some tools, including exquisitely crafted arrowheads, from First Nation people who lived in this area for thousands of years.

Dolores Greyeyes Sand says, “Thank heavens I was born in this time when I think of all the work involved in the life of a First Nations person.” Band members were very interdependent and therefore very egalitarian. The men would hunt, fish, and trap, and protect tribal boundaries, and they respected the women who gave birth, gathered and prepared food, and produced lodging, clothing, and other necessities. Young people too would have had responsibilities like gathering firewood and picking berries.

“Everybody had a job to do and it was all for the common good,” explains Greyeyes Sand. There would have been clear protocols for sharing the bounty. There are many edible and medicinal plants in the Shellbrook Canwood Big River area and it is rich in wildlife—fish, birds, mōswa (moose), wāwāskīsiw (elk), apisimōsos (deer), and other furbearing animals. This area is the northern edge of the paskwāwimostos (plains bison) historic range so they too would have been a resource.

Paskwāwimostos hunting would have been especially cooperative. The band would have constructed a circular aspen palisade called a pound. The members then would drive the paskwāwimostos in and the hunters would kill them. In the museum collection of First Nations tools, as well as arrowheads that can be identified as Duncan, Hanna, and Pelican Lake, there is one that is noticeably larger than the others. It may be for a spear point on a light throwing spear that would have been hurled with the use of a throwing stick, called an atlatl. Like all technology, the atlatl amplifies what humans can do, in this case, extending the arm. Archaeologists agree the use of the atlatl ended around 1,500 years ago so a spear point could be the oldest artifact in the collection.

The museum collection also has examples of scrapers used in tanning. Greyeyes Sand mentions that Cecilia Masuskapoe at age 95 is still making birch bark baskets, harvesting sweetgrass and wīhkēs (rat root) with her grandchildren, and up until a decade ago she was preparing hides in the traditional manner. Tanning hides is hard work and enormously time consuming.

Scrapers for tanning and other tools would have been very valuable and obtained through a trading network. It is probable that some tools in the collection are from the Cypress Hills area and further south into the United States. One arrowhead looks like a Knife River flint from North Dakota and another could be Obsidian from the Yellowstone River in Wyoming.

The Museum Committee and Friends of the Museum are investing energy in inventorying the collection this winter. The inventorying process is the first step as the museum moves from storing artifacts to telling their stories. If you would like to help, please drop in to see Alanna Carswell at the library or call Marlene Fellows at 306-747-2475.