NARRATIVES OF SASKATOON

1882-1912

Genealogy, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, Pioneer,Saskatchewan history, Temperance Colony, Temperance Colonization Society, Pioneers,John N. Lake, John Lake, Saskatoon history, Saskatoon Gen Web, Genealogy, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, Pioneer,Saskatchewan history, Temperance Colony, Temperance Colonization Society, Saskatoon history, Saskatoon Gen Web

selves. We stopped the first night at Caswell's at Clark's Crosing as it was then called. We stopped at McIntosh's six miles from Fish Creek the next night. On the third night we stopped at the telegraph office at St. Lau- rent and then drove into Prince Albert on the fourth day. The roads were fairly good and we travelled in a jumper. It was sixty degrees below zero the day we arrived in Prince Albert. The ceremony was performed by Mr. Williams of the Presbyterian Church. I gave the pastor a ten dollar bill but it grieved me very much. The wedding ring was made from a ten dollar gold piece contributed by Malloy, who was in charge of the telegraph office at Clark's Crossing. We were married on March 2nd and left for home the next day. We spent the first night at Cameron's 25 miles this side of Prince Albert. We made Stevenson's the next night and stopped at Caswell's the third night. The wedding presents were, of course, numer- ous and costly-chiefly kitchen utensils. Let me tell of a trip to Battleford. It was in the winter time and there was no train service then. We didn't have the best of clothing, no fur mitts or fur overcoats as we had not expected to stay the winter. We slept in the snow drifts, putting our canvas down on the snow and wrapping it around us. In the morning we poured the balance of the tea on our mitts to keep them frozen so that the wind could not freeze our hands. When we got up in the morning there would be wolf tracks all around. All we had to eat was hard tack and pork which we cut with an axe. My house was on the west side opposite the ferry, and I often helped people to cross, but I was never ferryman. I was the only man in the settlement who knew how to splice wire ropes, and was of service in that way. When the Rebellion broke out I went to Clark's Crossing to offer my services. They wished to take me on by the day, but if I was to follow the army I wanted a better position. As they had no one else to splice their wire ropes they took me on as a combatant, and I took part in the expedi- tion of the S.S. Northcote against Batoche. But that is another story. TRAVELLING IN SASKATCHEWAN Thirty-five and Forty Tears Ago. By Ex-Mayor Clinkskill In these days you often hear people who have occasion to travel com- plain after a trip in a palatial sleeping car, of the discomfort of the cars, too hot or too cold, the roughness of the railway track or the dust or the dirt. In former days before the advent of railways when anyone made a trip there was no grumbling about the hardship: everyone took it as a mat- ter of course, or all in the day's work. It was "Jack, I am going with you tomorrow, call for me at the house," and you got in with him in the morn- ing in a big democrat or a sleigh, and started off for a four or five days' drive as if it were an afternoon call you were making. Then, on your re~- turn probably the remark you would make would be about the baulkiness of that new broncho team Jack was driving, or the bad spill you had com- ing down the hill at Eagle Creek. The heat of the sun or the coldness of the wind was a matter of no moment. The "pioneering" people talk of to day is a picnic compared with the conditions thirty-five or forty years ago. In the early eighties, when the Canadian Pacific was stretching its steel along the main line, the stage that ran from Winnipeg to Edmonton', via Shoal Lake and Battleford, was transferred to Troy (now Qu'Appelle) for a starting point. In 1882, Maclean (whose soubriquet was "Flat Boat" on a~ count of his having run a lot of flat boats down the Red River to Winni- peg with freight) had the contract for the mail to Prince Albert and Ed- monton. The conveyance was a big democrat drawn by four horses. The stopping places were Touchwood, Salt Plain, Humboldt, Hoodoo (1), . (1) The Hoodoo lakes are, roughly, 12 mIles east and 2 north from the present Cudworth. Page 47

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