To the Editor of the Prince Albert Herald: Sir : Your letter of August 27th, requesting me to write something of the early history of Prince Albert reached me a few days ago. Slight delay has taken as a result of indisposition of a minor physical nature -- to exuberant youth. I will have to go back to 1876, when I practised for nearly two years in Nova Scotia, before taking the plunge. You may eremember the Turko-Russian war was on at that time, and looking for pastures new, and finding that Turkey was in need of surgeons, I prepared to go there. Armed with letters of introduction to General Sir Feswick Williams (hero and defender of Kars) and other high officials of the Army and Navy Club, London, I was just on the eve of embarking when the war terminated with great suddenness. As we say here in the West, “I was all dressed up and no place to go,” so cast about like Alexander, for other fields to conquer. I met Sir Charles Tupper, who like Horace Greeley, advised me to go to our own great Canadian West and grow up with the country. He informed me that the C.P.R. would reach there in a short time (three years), he had been there himself, had seen the possibilities of the country and that within five years there would be millions of settlers in Manitoba and the North-West Territories. I decided to go. He gave me letters to Sir John Schultz, then Lieut.-Governor of Manitoba, Hon. John Norquay, and other prominent people. The latter, a gentleman and statesman, was prominent in the life of Manitoba and a Premier of the Province. His son Alex. was land agent in Edmonton. So off I started for the Promised Land, where I was cordially greeted and welcomed by the Hon. Mr. Norquay. He saw visions of a great city on the banks of the Red River at the site of Fort Garry, a vision that he lived to see realized in great measure. We disembarked on the river bank near old Fort Garry. The first impressions of the time was the mud; there were no sidewalks then. “The Sidewalks of New York” had not been written in these days as the war song of Mr. Al Smith, Democratic [Page Break] (To Editor Prince Albert Herald) 2. candidate of U.S. Presidency campaign, but I might have sung of the mud sidewalks of Winnipeg. Mud, mud, more mud, that stuck closer than a brother: Can I ever forget it? (I carried lots of it on my boots and clothes). I came through the United State via St. Paul, Minn., from there to Fisher’s Landing on the Red River, and from there taking the first boat and following the ice until we reached Winnipeg in the spring of 1878. When I delivered my letters to Hon. John Norquay, he introduced me to Mr. Charle Mair of Prince Albert. Mr. Mair had just reached Winnipeg, saying that the P.A. district required a doctor, that there was bonus of $2,000 a year for three years, and I was to get “all I could make”. I had never heard of Charle Mair, and at first thought he was the mayor of Prince Albert. I naturally reasoned that a town large enough to have a mayor must be a considerable size and should have a doctor. With a bonus of $2,000 a year and the C.P.R. serving it within three years time, it would be a desirable place to locate, so I engaged passage with the mayor. Long before I reached my destination I discovered my mistake and found that he was a brother-in-law of Sir John Schultz. When I left Winnipeg it would be difficult today to imagine it in the light of a great city of 300,000 of today. The Ashdown Hardware Store then existed, as did Bannytyne’s store and the usual restaurant and hotels of pioneer western towns. It is needless to describe the trip to Prince Albert. It was a hard one, especially the crossing of the Big Salt Plain. I reached Prince Albert and proceeded to follow the advice of Sir Charles Tupper, “Grow up with the country,” but the C.P.R. never got there, nor did I ever get the $2,000 bonus. We arrived some time in May about ten o’clock in the morning over the old trail from the top of the hill. It was a lovely view. I asked Mair how far it was to the town. “There you are”, he said, and I saw the old Presbyterian Mission and a few scattered houses along the bank of the North Saskatchewan River. “So this is the town! Why,” I said, “there is nobody here!” “Oh, yes,” was his reply, “there are lots of people [Page Break] (Editor of P.A. Herald) 3. in the country.” I had seen lots of country on the trip but very few people, and wondered how they could ever pay that $2,000. In fact there were not a thousand people in one th thousand square miles at the time. Well, I thought, the C.P.R. will soon be here and that will bring the people, as the railway in Minnesota was then bringing thousands of settlers to Brainerd every day. When I had reached that point on my way to Winnipeg the settlers were pouring in and I was satisfied that they would pour into Prince Albert in the same way, so that the country would never be able to contain them, or the C.P.R. to haul away the gigantic crops bound to result from their labors. Still there was the consoling thought that there was the lordly Saskatchewan with plenty of timber on its banks to build steamers that would take the overflow from the railway down to The Pas, then to Churchill by the H.B. Railway and on to Liverpool. “On to the Bay.” Well, a cargo or two has been shipped this year, and cargoes of valued and delightful liquid products of Scotland has been landed for Western consumption. We saw visions and dreamed dreams in those days. We imagined Prince Albert as a city of 100,000 people, the Lacalde Falls harnessed supplying a million horsepower to light the whole entire country. It was a wonder we did not try to harness the northern lights. The C.P.R. was then surveyed through Prince Albert (politicians disguised as homesteaders, taking up all the townsites along the C.P.R. and but for the fact that the route was changed 200 miles south of the H. B. Railway only just now completed, we might have had by this time the most beautifully located city of 100,000 population in Canada today. It is a summary of my trip and arrival at Prince Albert, but many memories of my journey were awakened in the pioneer days of my life that are not entered there. For instance I have referred to Brainerd, Minn., at which point I touched on my way to Winnipeg. While there I had seen a great number of Indians in their war-paint shortly after what was known as the Minnesota massacre. Many of these same Indians later came to Prince Albert, as did also, many after the massacre of Custer and his U.S. troops at the battle of the Little Big Horn in what is now South Dakota. The pressure of settlement was gradually driving the natives west and north, and the treatment they were receiving was making [Page Break] 4. them suspicious of the white and sullen towards the paleface strangers. Their living had been that of free nomadic hunters, living on buffalo. We were driving the buffalo from the ranges and sending them to farther parts of the wilderness and they found it difficult to adapt their life to changing conditions. In crossing the Great Salt Plain we saw nineteen buffalo quite near us and Mr. Mair said “The last of the bison; the last of the bison, and I am sure that was where he caught the spirit of that beautiful poem, “The Last of the Bison” which he dedicated to that lordly animal. A few years ago by the way, I saw him in Victoria, as far west as he could get, sitting in the shadows of his home, waiting, waiting to embark on the voyage to that greater west “from whose bourne no traveller returns”, and I feel sure that it must have been his last request that his cremated ashes be scattered when the wind was in the direction of Prince Albert. He was one of our company of dreamers years ago, who wrote “On to the Bay,” and why not? Did we not all of us see visions and dream dreams of the fleet of river boats laden with wheat that the C.P.R. would be unable to carry out of the country? Many of my old friends (of casual acquaintance) began to arrive from Winnipeg after I had settled down and hung up my shingle. Jim Sanderson and T.N. Campbell, the la latter, open his book store, arrived. In the interval there was an increasing demand for medical service in the territory. I had done some first aid and other work for some of the Indians, and they expressed themselves as very grateful. They would reward me by taking me where there were “lots of gold”. The Indians naturally thought that all the white men thought of was gold. At that time a doctor was forced to do a great deal of riding, the population sparse, the territory enormous. The Indians took me a considerable distance west of where Saskatoon now is. A terrible thunderstorm broke out and my copper-coloured brethren became rather glum. Apparently frightened by the storm, one Indian, on the pretext of hunting for his horse disappeared all day and returned to tell me that he couldn’t find any gold, so I never really saw his fictitious Golconda -- it having taken flight like the “bonus”. One fall shortly after I was sent to a point west of Carleton now called. A Methodist [Page Break] (Editor Prince Albert Herald) 5. minister on his way to Edmonton had accidentally shot himself. On arriving I found that he had been instantly killed. This was the first death that I had met in my experience. The people were amazingly robust and few were sick. Chief Factor Belanger of Fort Cumberland about this time requested me to go there on a tuberculous maternity case. This was done by canoe, the return trip being made by York boat towed by Indians. The journey and work entailed one month’s work for which I received $100. I then posed as the richest man in the settlement. Krueger, Lowenstein, and Wall Street had an honest impersonation in the N.S. physician with one hundred dollars in these days. A call to Hu Humboldt on a case of diphtheria was answered by a trip to that point by buckboard. There was no epidemic there, as there was no one to infect. The one case, an infant, had diedc had died, I found on my arrival. At about the same time an epidemic of scarlet fever broke out among the Indians and spread to Prince Albert. One of the children of my friend Charles Mair died of malignant scarlatina. There existed no means to isolate these cases, many Indians dying of it, and carrying it from point to point in their migratory trips from camp to camp. An epidemic of influenza then appeared, and it became apparent to me that the advent and the ways of the white population, their imports, etc., were introducing new medical problems. I wrote an article stating the idea that this influenza epidemic s started from tea. (read at the first meeting of the Medical Society.) I had had a touch of it myself, and as I remembered it, it differed from the 1919 ‘flu following the war, but accounted for a number of deaths. The article was republished. The coming of modern machinery too, was beginning to account for the accidents of modern industrialism. I had to go twenty-five miles to amputate a crushed hand of one of the threshing crew about this time. In 1883 I was thrown from my horse and broke a few ribs. The horse had reared as I was putting him the livery stable. It fell on me and I was carried into Tom Daw’s store, where I lay in bed for two or three weeks. I had to doctor myself on this occasion, as medical attention was hard to obtain and two doctors at one point, [Page Break] (Editor of Prince Albert Herald) 6. even if one had a few broken ribs, could hardly be afforded. Another horse went into a badger hole in a “buffalo wallow” before this accident. Since then I have ridden little. These instances will show to your readers that medical practice in Prince Albert and the Territories was fraught with more dangerous experiences and hard work than reward in currency. There was a courage and a comradeship to the early settlers of Prince Albert that was a real compensation for the hardships and struggles of the time. My memory goes back to W?J. Carter, to Simon Peter Fraser, to Justus Wilson. and many others in the days of the Riel Rebellion. Price Albert was at what was possibly the most dangerous point for the settlers of the West. Edmonton too was at a distant place, but the position of the leaders of the Rebellion and their main support, was immediately close to Prince Albert. The people of the settlement of that time understood far more about the conditions of the Indians, their moods and suspicians, than any other settlement. There was a measure of sympathy for them. Honore Jaxon, secretary to Louis Riel, was well known to all of us in the settlement as publisher of “the Voice of the People”. He was naturally a kindly well-informed man (boy at that time) though of strong radical tendencies. The Opposition bought the printer. His opinions, however, today would be considered such as would be looked upon as a mild nature when universities are going wildly red in the centres of the world’s greatest populations. W.J. Carter suffered his home to be blown up, situated at a strategic point, if the settlement had been rushed by rebels, because of his opinions as to human rights in the matter. A lengthy petition setting out all the circumstances of the trouble, making some sagacious recommendations, a petition which might have obviated or even prevented the whole trouble was prepared, but it was not possible to overcome the uniformed prejudice of the distant ones in authority. The trouble broke and when it broke nothing but loyalty even to error could prevent the loss of thousands of lives, although millions of dollars were spent and many wrongs were committed and hundreds of lives lost. [Page Break] Landed in P.A. 1878 in May. Ottawa members homesteading on the townsites on north survey 1879-80. Survey switched 200 miles south. Sask. Historical Society formed by C, Mair, Dr. Porter, Inspector M. Perry, late commissioner R.C.M.P., T.N. Campbell and others. Dr. Jardine had built Nesbitt Academy in honor Rev. Nesbitt first Presbyterian missionary at P.A. Lieut.-Gov. Royal visit met by delegates re grant for academy. Porter donated Indian relics for display, books etc all burned before rebellion. The failure of the govt. to implement to what was agreed after the first rebellion. Pioneers petitioned the govt. re grievances. No reply. White rebels. Half breeds sent Hon. Laurence Clarke, chief factor of the P.A. Hudson Bay to Ottawa. He returned and met halfbreeds at Batoche. Petition would be answered by ballots. Police under Col. Irvine to do this. Riel tried to placate and pacify the Breeds. Irvine switched his route into P.A. to avoid them. Police at P.A. called for volunteers. Stobart Eaton’s store seized at Duck Lake by the Breeds. Fight on March 18th, 1885. Napier, a descendant of Lord Napier of Magdala, Elliott, son of Judge Elliott of Ontario, Capt. Morton, Bob Middleton, about twelve killed, Capt. Moore wounded, Dr. A. Porter and Jas. Peter Fraser, Bill Drain, “Boston” Mackay (later killed in Yukon) took in the dead. Fifty miles from P.A. Accidental shot supposed by careless white Joe Mackay report that Indian attack on P.A. Fort Carleton to be attacked, 50 miles from P.A., 20 from Duck Lake. Police set fire to Carleton and returned to P.A. Settlers moved into Rev. Wm. Maclean’s brick house, stockade, fort for safety. Police strategy blew up Carter’s house -- foolish. Meant to indemnify him but Crater never received any indemnity. Four days after Duck Lake, eldest daughter born -- house was seized, horses taken, saddle Mexican, turned into barracks. No indemnity. Commission appointed by Dom. Govt. to inquire into losses, great oversight. Whit rebel petitioner the objection. Porter assisted in attending wounded after Duck Lake affray in Miss Baker’s house (teacher). Dr. Porter’s house turned into a hospital.