Articles by Author

“If this craze for bicycle riding continues much longer our livery stable men will have to close down,” warned the editorial in the Fort Macleod Gazette in the early 1890s. “The young man and his best girl,” continued the editor, “…will shortly [...]

A depiction of a 19th century book agent canvassing a farmer. “Success in book selling is not a matter of luck,” advises a small pamphlet [...]

Topographer James McArthur and assistant W.S. Drewry carry photographic equipment to a mountaintop in 1887.

  In the fall of 1910, an inconspicuous wooden box, measuring about a foot square, arrived in the basement shipping rooms of Department of the Interior, the Ottawa-based federal agency responsible for monitoring the settlement of western Canada. A red label pasted diagonally across one side of the box read: Glass. Handle Carefully. Although the railway manifest provided no other clues as to the contents, experienced clerks in the room knew the [...]

“The mission of the…Half-breed Commission has been entirely successful,” boasted commissioners James Walker and Arthur Côté in their final report to the federal government’s minister of the interior. Writing from Calgary in the fall of 1899, Walker and Côté had every reason to be pleased with themselves. Their four-month expedition to the Athabasca country north of Edmonton had just “quieted” the land claims of some 1,200 Métis by handing out land grants or scrip worth an incredible $300,000. At [...]