a
ee 5
oe

Gorge Hotel

A. Mawer, Manager

pve
“The Home of Comfort’

LICENSED PREMISES

ove

VICTORIA, B. C.

Tillicum Road

HAY WARD’S

B.C. FUNERAL
GOED

734 Broughton St. Victoria, B. C.

Reginald Hayward, Managing Director
*

This Is Our 76th Year in Business in Victoria

THE PRIORY
GUEST HOUSE

270 Government Street

Victoria, B.C.
r)

AS TOVERY OMESEOR
IEILIDIEI ELA? PIEORILIE

arrived at Edson carrying their families in
covered Bain wagons, and set out along the
mosquito-ridden trail. The broken rem-
nants of wagons, abandoned boxes, utensils
and furniture, and the skeletons of horses
—to say nothing of the occasional grave—
told eloquently of this trek into the Last
Great West.

Many gave up in despair and returned
with little but the tattered clothes upon
their backs. The hardiest, overcoming
almost insurmountable obstacles, reached
their destination, staked out their plot of
land, erected a sod cabin and eked out a
miserable existence the following winter
snaring rabbits and doing a little trapping.

TRUE PIONEER SPIRIT

Emerson Hough could hardly have seen
or written about anything more humbly
modest and splendidly inspiring than the
toils of those settlers over the Edson tra‘l
to Grande Prairie and Pouce Coupe from
1910 to 1914. There’s a great story in that
migration—a story of quiet courage and
indomitable persistence. They were seek-
ing clean, new land, depending on the
promises of railroads to follow on the tail of
their mud-encrusted wagons. They found
clean land but not the railway.

Amongst them was the Engl’sh widow
who brought her seven children over that
terrifying trail and planted a garden co
fragrantly beautiful that men took the
longer way around to gaze on the possi-
bilities of this land of promise. Harassed
by the duties of pioneering, other women
solicitously nursed the sick and injured and
brought them in from far and near. Lacking
an educational system, they managed to
educate their children until the B. C. and
Alberta Governments provided, later, excel-
lent facilities. For years these pioneers of
the upper Peace were to all intents and
purposes marooned in a fertile oasis far from
markets, cut off almost completely by two
hundred and fifty miles of muskeg, moun-
tain and wilderness from the great Outside.

On a “mixed” train—properly so called
—we ambled out of Edson at around eight
miles an hour towards the Yellowhead,
lurched past slashes in the wilderness dotted
with hastily erected cabins, side-clipped into
the muskeg, waited till the wrecking gang

A mid-day lunch on the trail. Here the old democrat supplants the covered wagon.

Page Twelve

WILLIAMSON & SON LTD.

ARTISTS’ MATERIALS — FRAMING
Everything for the Photographer
r)

640 Fort Street VICTORIA, B.C.

|

Furniture Moving Storage

General Delivery

Phone G 7823
BRAY’S TRANSFER

LIMITED
Hauling Contractors

Light and Heavy Trucks for Hire on
Short Notice.

Licensed Limited Freight Carriers to
All Vancouver Island Points.

721 Johnson St. Victoria, B.C.

RITHET CONSOLIDATED
LIMITED
Established 1871

Commercial Finance, Insurance
and Shipping

1117 Wharf St. Victoria, B.C.

*

With Compliments and
Good Wishes
to the
B. C. PROVINCIAL POLICE
from
A FRIEND

*

ARMSTRONG BROS.

134 Kingston Street
(Shop on Waterfront)

Telephone G 1512 Victoria, B. C.

Machinists and Boat Builders
Marine Railway

Agents for Vivian Gasoline and Diesel |

Engines, Kermath Hi-Speed Gas and

Diesel, and Jacobson Power Lawn
Mowers

THE SHOULDER STRAP