One Hundred Years of Schools

Settlers one hundred years ago came into a valley which had never seen any development except the Shuswap village at Tete Jaune. Then construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway clattered and blasted its way through from Alberta.

Track maintenance sections were set up about every eight miles and if the farmland was good or timber available, people settled in the area. With the settlers and workers came families with children who needed schools. The first school was at Tete Jaune, the largest construction camp along the line.

Once a settlement had enough children for a school, a meeting was held, application made to the government and a board of trustees for that school was elected. In some communities the land was donated and the school built by volunteers.

When the McBride trustees built their first school they put it in the most convenient place which later turned out to be in the middle of First Avenue. After the government sale of lots in 1914, they were required to move it within 60 days which they failed to do. At the cost of $118 and a great deal of volunteer labour to clear trees and roots, it was moved to the present site on Main Street.

Some of the smaller communities had to wait for some years to have enough children and when the number only lacked one or two, infants were recruited to make up the names. A contentious matter in some rural areas was where the school should be. In 1935 a dispute between Tete Jaune and Shere was settled by putting a school in each place.

At that time each school had its own school board who received a grant from the government and could levy taxes. If a settler couldn't pay the taxes they were required to supply ricks of firewood for the school woodstove. Winter could be a miserable time for school children. They arrived at school on foot or horseback, sometimes wet and cold. Drying off by the woodstove took some time and those far from the heater continued to freeze. Sometimes schools had to be closed because of cold.

The 1946 Education Act disbanded the individual school boards and at that time all the schools in the valley and Valemount came under the McBride School District #58.

Some rural schools only lasted a few years as sawmills came and went, but over the hundred years these places had schools: Lucerne, Red Pass, Tete Jaune, Shere, Croydon, North Croydon, Dunster, Lee, Beaver, McBride Mountain View, Cariboo, Lamming Mills, Crescent Spur, Loos, Snowshoe, Dome Creek, Bend and Penny. In 1970, further amalgamation took place with Prince George School District #57.

The only original school building still in public use is at Dome Creek, built 1917.

- Marilyn Wheeler, 2012

The Year of the Great fire

One hundred years ago, in May 1912, fire driven by strong winds swept through the valley from Moose Lake west along the line of the Grand Trunk Pacific railway. Construction was at its height in the Yellowhead Pass where thousands of men and horses laboured in the swamps and on steep mountainsides.

April had been unusually dry, and May very hot, making accidental fires almost impossible to avoid but as eyewitness Louis Knutsen commented, "The way the fire got through is that the railroad burned the slashing and paid no attention, they let the fire go," and go it did, from Moose Lake to Fort George and beyond, scorching camps and sending workers fleeing for their lives.

That spring the Teare brothers were sent by the railway contractors to survey the townsite at Mile 90 which was to be a divisional point, later to become McBride. They camped in a clearing on the flats above Dominion Creek, not far from the Fraser River. They had set up camp when the fire suddenly roared towards them. They are said to have taken refuge in the river until it passed, expecting to have lost their tent and supplies, but were surprised to find they had been bypassed by the fire.

Fires ran through the valley and up the south facing Rocky Mountain sides. The Cariboos with their north facing slopes were largely untouched, hence the survival of the ancient forest stands from McBride to beyond Dome Creek. This quote in the Fort George Herald of June 22nd, 1912, is from a long article describing the fire and its aftermath, "The upper Fraser valley ... has been denuded of timber as cleanly as a scorched rabbit."

Teare Mountain above McBride still bears the marks of the fire as do many others. Beside it, the Lookout Mountain has a trail which begins on Mountainview Road and winds up past the halfway cabin to the alpine and the 1930 fire lookout near the top. This is a scenic hike or drive in summer to various viewpoints for panoramic scenes of the Robson Valley, and a chance to imagine spending weeks alone, watching for fires in the forestry lookout cabin.

Marilyn Wheeleer, 2012

The Road to the City

The long blacktop road, Yellowhead Highway 16, that links Prince George and Jasper through the Robson Valley is officially forty years old this year. The story of this road begins when the Grand Trunk Pacific railway was being built. People in the new towns of Dome Creek, McBride, Dunster, Lucerne and smaller settlements in the valley soon realized that they were at the mercy of the railways for freight and passenger costs.

A tote road was built during railway construction for hauling materials, but most of it was abandoned when the railway was completed. When politicians came to the valley the biggest issue was the need for a road connecting east and west. When no politicians were available letters flooded from all the organizations. A road did gradually creep from McBride towards Tete Jaune and every new stretch was hailed with enthusiasm and a race to be the first to try it out.

During the 1930s depression, road camps were set up for unemployed men. Little was achieved, but by 1935 there was a wagon road to Valemount which could be used in good weather. Camps for Japanese internees were set up between Tete Jaune and Jasper in the early 1940s. The men worked clearing brush on the Canadian Northern rail bed which had been abandoned when the railways went bankrupt after WWI. This was the beginning of the present road through the Yellowhead Pass, but there were many more years farmers who lived near infamous mud holes needed to have their teams or tractors at the ready.

By 1943, daring or desperate travellers made it through from Jasper to McBride. This trail was open in dry summer weather in some years and often maintained by local travellers. Later in the 1940s the McBride and Jasper Boards of Trade got together to promote building a proper highway. To this end they held a rally, the Mount Robson Caravan, almost every year for nearly twenty years. Hundreds of people worked their way to the site  repairing bridges and washouts, to enjoy themselves with a picnic and listen to politicians promising new and improved roads.

In the mid-1950s some serious road building took place. A new bridge and approaches were built at King Creek, only to be replaced again when the final highway was built. A seven mile stretch of wide straight gravel road was built west of McBride. It stopped at McIntosh Creek and remained so for at least ten years, used mainly by teenagers showing off in their parents' cars. It was 1968 before vehicles could finally make it through to Prince George.

August 1970 saw about 400 people at Mount Robson celebrating the opening of Highways 16 and 5 under brilliant sunshine. After 55 years the people of the Robson Valley could drive out both east and west.

Marilyn Wheeler, March 2010

FARMING IN THE WILDERNESS

One hundred years ago a man was living just west of McBride on a piece of land by the river. Little is known about him except that he was determined to clear some of the heavy bush, build a cabin and start farming. He probably came up the Fraser River on one of the first sternwheelers which were bringing people and supplies to build the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. It is likely that he used only hand tools, but he may have had a horse, mule or ox. What is known is that his name was William Taylor, he found the site for his homestead in 1910 and was the first man to file for a preemption in 1914 and acquire the legal claim to his land. He was the first farmer in what became the Robson Valley.

Once the railway was established there were many more 'firsts' in farming. The Journal, published in McBride, noted new farm machinery coming into the valley on the railway, sometimes with new settlers. Photographs were taken with proud owners such as 'Tom Wilson and the first plow at Croydon' and 'Carl Harder and the first seed drill near McBride'. The newspaper noted in 1916 that C. B. Cliff purchased a Kirsten stump puller.

John Oakley was also one of the early farmers and ran the Dominion Government Illustration Station just east of McBride. In the mid-thirties he bought a 1912 steam tractor which could pull a three bottom plow. By that time there were three threshing machines in the valley. The Farmers' Institute raised enough money to buy a seed cleaning plant which could be rented for a small fee. By the 1940s tractors were becoming more common and horse drawn equipment was being adapted to a drawbar instead of harness. Modern farming had arrived.

Some early farm machinery from the valley can be seen in McBride at the Valley Museum and Archives display on 2nd Avenue by the park.

~ Marilyn Wheeler 2011

Elegance On The Fraser 100 Years Ago

Elegance On The Fraser 100 Years Ago
by Marilyn Wheeler, 2010
As you relax for a picnic by the Fraser River near McBride this summer, or perhaps drift along in a canoe, imagine that a hiss of steam and churning paddle blades make you look up to see a towering white ship appear around the curve. Exactly one hundred years ago, this was a common sight when flood water made the river navigable. Scheduled sternwheelers such as the BC Express carried hundreds of people and many tons of freight between Soda Creek, Fort George and Tete Jaune.

The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway (GTP) was being built across the country, and it arrived in the Yellowhead Pass late in 1911. That year the railway contractors, Foley, Welch and Stewart, decided to to gain more control over the movement of their goods by moving two of their own sternwheelers from the Skeena River to the upper Fraser. The boats steamed down the coast to Vancouver where they were dismantled, sent on ten Canadian Pacific Railway cars to Calgary, up to Edmonton and west to the end of steel near Moose Lake. From there the sternwheeler parts had to go go down the tote road to Tete Jaune Cache. The next time you ride the train or drive from Moose Lake to Tete Jaune junction, imagine a team of 16 horses skidding each massive 25 ton boiler over the rough forest trail! Their destination was a shipyard a few miles west at old Tete Jaune.

There the Conveyor and the Operator were quickly rebuilt, and launched into high water in May 1912. They joined the other steamers for the next two summers, stopping at many docks along the river, including Mile 90 (McBride). Fine dining, uniformed crew, and elegance on the upper deck must have been welcome sights in the wilderness. Sadly this was short-lived. The railway they helped to create made some river bridges too low in 1913, bringing to an end this extraordinary service through the valley.

Fortunately people took photos. Visit the McBride railway station to see enlargements of these images from the Valley Museum and Archives, and books with photos and stories in the Whistle Stop Gallery.
Visit us at 241 Dominion Street, McBride BC
VALLEY MUSEUM & ARCHIVES
the golden raven: spring 2011 I www.goldenraven.ca 9

The Robson Valley has a rich heritage of gardening and agriculture

The Robson Valley has a rich heritage of gardening and agriculture from the early years of the twentieth century. Even before the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway was completed, experiments to find what would grow in the area were being carried out. A few men came up the Fraser River by riverboat, sternwheeler or canoe, found a promising piece of land and planted a variety of seeds.

An early traveller was F. A. Talbot, who described the valley as "The New Garden of Canada." It was also new in the sense that most of the weeds and plant diseases had not yet arrived. Magnificent crops could be grown, but over time unwanted plants made their way in.

The McBride Farmers' Institute, which was the only "official" voice for the community for the first twelve years, also started the Fall Fair-the first one being held in 1918. Competition was strong to show how well "exotic" plants could be grown in the area, such as apples and vegetable marrows and a variety of flowers. Farm crops such as wheat and oats, root vegetables and strawberries and raspberries were commonly grown and sold locally and in Jasper and Prince George. In recent years, most crops have been forage for cattle, horses and sheep, but some grain is still grown. For many years, farmers grew certified seed.

With warmer winters, the experimenting of the early years has been continuing with plants from further south growing successfully.

It was a matter of great pride to a farmer when the first piece of equipment of its kind was purchased, and note was made in the local paper. An exhibit of valley farm equipment is being developed by the Valley Museum and Archives Society beside the ball park across from the railway station in McBride.

The Making of a Municipality

"The greatest need of McBride at the present time is an executive body of some kind to handle the town's affairs. Owing to the fact that many of the lots in town have only been held by their present owners for a week or two, and clear titles not having been obtained, it will be impossible under existing laws, for McBride to be incorporated as a town."-from the first editorial in the first issue of James Mewhort's The Journal in May 1914.

Within the following year the Farmers' Institute was incorporated and its broad mandate allowed it to take responsibility for many matters, such as petitioning government for a Fraser River ferry at the end of Main Street, schools and improved roads. In 1927 the farmers were joined by the Board of Trade and they worked together on two of the most pressing issues-the roads and sewers. They also promoted sports and tried to develop tourism and trails and encourage new businesses.

Another editorial in 1931 noted that by not being incorporated, McBride had lost thousands of dollars over the years, quoting the village clerk of Abbotsford, the smallest village municipality in the province, as saying "incorporation has proved a boon here."

The Board of Trade called a meeting, January 1932, in the Empress Theatre (now the Elks Hall) to discuss the issue. There was general support and forty people immediately signed the petition. In February, Mr. Wall, a local businessman and chairman of the Board of Trade who had chaired the meeting, received letters of support from MLAs and the ministers of Public Works and Education. Letters Patent were signed on April 7th, completing the Incorporation of the Village of McBride.

The next step was to prepare a voters' list. To qualify to be on the list, voters had to be British subjects, twenty-one or older, and own land of the assessed value of not less than $100. Only people on the voters' list could vote. At incorporation, the provisional Commissioners were: Chairman, Samuel Birkenhead; Commissioners: H.J.Edgar and C.McNab. The Secretary-Treasurer was George Oettle.

Because no survey had yet been made of the boundaries, in August an anouncement was made "for the convenience of the public" defining the boundaries as follows: "The loop road, the lake road, the Cemetery road and the first Creek west of the Village"

A reconstruction of the facade of Mr. Oettle's village office (later McBride's first library) now can be seen beside the farm machinery display by the town ball park. A display recognising McBride's incorporation can be seen at the Museum-Library building on Dominion Street until the end of September.

Note: See early copies of The Journal at www. valleymuseum.ca

- Marilyn Wheeler, 2012