(First of three parts)
Miss Cora Hind of the Winnipeg Free Press visited Battleford in September of 1907 and wrote of her experiences with the Battleford steam ferry:
“You leave that nightmare of new towns, North Battleford, and with much jingling of harness and cracking of whips are rushed down to the ferry. The hills on the North are steep and you are swept around curves and ever downward at breakneck speed. At the ferry new surprises await you. On drives the first load, horses are unhitched and backed into corners, rigs packed together with poles over the edge – fourteen horses and rigs have been bestowed, when down comes a prairie schooner with three horses attached and drives on last of all, I have not heard such profane language, but up goes the gang plank and we are off downstream … Oh, Battleford ferry experience is an experience to remember.”
Indeed, a woman crossing the mighty North Saskatchewan by ferry in the company of half-domesticated farm animals and men whose language left something to be desired, must have been a harrowing adventure. This essay has several purposes. First it is about one of Battleford’s great founders and citizens of more than a century past. It’s about his exploits with respect to his community and nation building. But it’s also about this great man’s personal life, and his family life. And, of course, this essay is about transportation on the great river highways in the area before bridges, trains and automobiles.
The Battlefords old bridge was opened in 1909. The Canadian Pacific Railway arrived in North Battleford in 1905. Before that, John Oliver’s steam ferry, the first of its kind, plied the waters of the North Saskatchewan in 1900. Before that, primitive ferries, scows and rafts of various kinds crossed the river.
And, the great rivers were critical to the operations of the Hudson’s Bay Company and North West Company fur empires. The pelts of beaver especially, muskrat, fox and other cold climate animals sustained both the English and French colonies and the fledgling nation of Kanata with its tag on provinces. None of this would have been possible in the absence of the great river highways, of which the mighty North Saskatchewan was one — the eternal river with its shifting sand bars and unpredictable currents — coursing its way through the Battlefords on its way to Hudson’s Bay hundreds of miles to the northeast.
The traders, Courier de Bois, and of course the First Nation trappers, the middlemen, moved their furs to the trading posts strategically located on the Great River and Hudson’s Bay. The fur trade could not have existed without the river highways, nor could it have existed without the First Nations. The Europeans courted the favour of the indigenous people until the fur trade fell apart in the mid-18th century. Then they sought to remove their former partners in business, the First Nations people, from mainstream society through the treaties and forcing them onto reserves. It’s a sordid story and deserves a proper response (a long researched article; I assure you, I will write it.)
For now, this essay puts the Anglo Saxon conquest of Western Canada in the late 19th century into perspective. It tells what really happened to the indigenous people, the Plains Cree and Saulteaux, and the Mixed Bloods (Métis), of this area.
At the outset, I must thank Battleford resident, Don Light, for the story on an extraordinary former citizen, John Grieve Oliver, who lived and worked in Battleford, and in the surrounding area, more than a century ago. Despite the fact he is getting on a bit (in his early 80s now), Don, the son of the late Fred Light (North West Mounted Police staff sergeant and founder of the Fred Light Museum) is one of the more engaging and informed historians I’ve met. I’m always happy to talk to him because of his near encyclopedic knowledge on Battleford’s early history, and particularly as it concerns the foundations of the town of Battleford, which were laid in the late 19th century.
John Grieve Oliver was born on Nov. 21, 1846 to the honourable Adam Oliver, (a prominent and skilled politician in Prime Minister Alexander Mackenzie’s government) and Dolly Oliver at Dorchester Township, Ont.
Adam Oliver had a profound influence on young John, instilling in him the virtues of education and hard work – an Anglican work ethic. John was expected to excel in everything he did. And indeed he did – far beyond his father’s expectations. John Oliver grew up to be more than six feet tall (when the average height of men a hundred years past was about five feet, eight inches).
It would be fair to describe John Oliver as a “big and strong man” (which indeed is how reports in the Saskatchewan Herald, Battleford’s first newspaper, characterized him on more than one occasion) with extraordinary energy. He was also extremely smart – brilliant even, particularly in engineering, drafting and construction and business. His father also instructed him in the arts of leadership and administration.
John Oliver learned early how to act as foreman — as a crew boss — to lead and supervise working men. He became an extraordinary leader. To top it off, he was strikingly handsome with rugged facial features, a thick head of hair and full beard. All of this would serve him well when he moved West to the edge of the Canadian frontier – to the future area of the Battlefords and the seat of the territorial government.
Long before the Europeans arrived, and the great land explorers like Henry Kelsey and David Thompson, who claimed vast tracts of land for the North West Company, the La Verendryes, who extended west the empire of New France, and Alexander Mackenzie, who was knighted by King George III of England for his exploits and for reaching the Pacific Ocean, had crossed the inland seas and made their way across the Great Plains by canoe, horseback and foot, the indigenous people lived here. They were the rightful owners of these magnificent plains, rivers and forests.
Indeed, for hundreds of years before, any white man gazed on the great valley and the mighty river, named by the aboriginal people, Kitchekatchewan (fast flowing water), the Plains Cree traversed the great river highway, later renamed the North Saskachewan River by the Anglo Saxons who ultimately came to take the land. It was the aboriginal people who had taught the white man how to survive in a harsh and unrelenting environment – how to find their way across the great expanses of water, plains and forest, how to clothe themselves with the skins of deer and buffalo, how to tame and ride horses, how to hunt and gather food, and how to heal with medicines.
The indigenous peoples were here first – the stewards and protectors of the land. Here they had lived for hundreds of years, hunted the buffalo which supplied all of their physical needs, made war with the Blackfoot along the Fighting River (Battle River) and prayed to Manitou, the Great Spirit.
By 1860, the fur trade, which had driven the quest for new lands and beaver pelts that had sustained the fledging Canadian nation for at least 200 years, was dying (no longer sustained by European men’s fickle tastes in felt hats). And tragically, the great herds of buffalo (by one account, a herd 25 long and 10 miles wide West of Battleford in 1840 – millions of the great beasts that moved like thunder across the plains) were being exterminated by white men on horseback with lever-action Winchester repeating rifles. The buffalo could not survive the white man’s efficient technology. And the Plains Indians could only survive by surrendering to the white man’s wishes.
By 1880, there were only a few hundred buffalo left. The Plains Cree, the Saulteaux and the Blackfoot faced imminent starvation. They were forced to take treaty and moved to reserves by the North West Mounted Police whose orders came from Prime Minister John A. Macdonald. Chief Big Bear was the last hold out. After losing the last fight of the 1885 North West Rebellion (Riel Rebellion) to the legendary Sam Steel at Loon Lake, he was tried and convicted and incarcerated in the Stony Mountain Penitentiary in Manitoba. After his release, he had no option but to sign Treaty Six and relocate his scattered people to a reserve.
The reserves were generally of marginal, unproductive land. Red Pheasant, Mosquito and Grizzly Bear’s Head south of Battleford, and Sweetgrass, Little Pine and Poundmaker to the West are all good examples of this. Thunderchild reserve was originally located near Delmas, about 20 miles west of Battleford along the North Saskatchewan River on its south side. It was an exception. It was very fertile. White settlers wanted the land so the government moved Chief Pise-Awasis (Thunderchild) and his people to a hilly, stony area a few miles east of Turtleford. Now a proud people who had hunted the buffalo with such courage and immense skill, and who were hunters and gatherers, were to learn farming on unproductive land. By some accounts, the buffalo were deliberately slaughtered – exterminated – in order to bring the First Nations to their knees – to starvation. Then it would be easy to persuade them to sign the treaties, and to force them on to reserves.
Once on a reserve, on one could leave the reserve without permission from the Indian agent (this policy was in force until 1958). And First Nations people were disenfranchised. They could not vote in any federal or provincial election, not even veterans who had fought in Canada’s wars could vote until 1961. I digress, but I do it purposefully. Some things should be said when an opportunity presents itself.
Finally, the terrible legacy of the government sponsored church-run residential schools, which were designed to break First Nations children’s spirit and rob them of their language, customs, traditions and culture, wreaked havoc in the reserve communities. Because John A. Macdonald had his hands on the levers of power, and exerted great influence as prime minister and minister of Indian Affairs, he is most responsible. He is quoted as saying that the first purpose of the residential schools (which he created) is to take the Indian out of the child.
The infamous Indian Act (still in existence) was John A. Macdonald’s creation. He also oversaw the execution of Louis Riel in 1885. But John A. Macdonald wasn’t the only prime minister to hold these views. A Liberal successor, Sir Wilfred Laurier, was his equal in this regard.
By 1870, the Plains Cree economy, the great herds of bison, was gone, and the pale horse of starvation stalked the land. Prime Minister Macdonald’s National Policy dictated that the west must be prepared for settlement by largely Anglo Saxon Protestants, from Upper Canada (Ontario) first, and then from Great Britain and the United States. Later, during the last decade of the 19th century and the first two of the 20th century, waves of immigrants from Ukraine (Ukrainians and Mennonites), France, Russia and the Slavic countries, and other countries, arrived in Western Canada seeking escape from poverty and political and religious persecution.
But the American whiskey traders were still a force, and the land was lawless and dangerous. So, Macdonald created the North West Mounted Police, a magnificent idea really. The national police force marched West with a mandate to enforce the laws of the English Queen and the Dominion of Canada. Almost all recruits were stalwart Anglo Saxons (English, Scottish, Irish) from Upper Canada (Ontario) and whose forbearers had emigrated from the United Kingdom a few generations previous. Every man was prepared in a military college (ie. Kingston Military Academy). All were excellent soldiers and horsemen, young (in their 20s) and physically and mentally robust. They were actually soldiers – mounted soldiers. The indigenous warriors and buffalo hunters were mounted also and were magnificent horsemen. This was one important reason why the Plains Cree and the North West Mounted Police came to respect each other.
