Prince Albert

I t’s beautiful!” Mary breathed, while Cameron and Molly frolicked in the abundant grass at her feet, happy to be released from the confines of the buggy and the cart. They had made a rush for the river flowing just a few feet away, but Mary had drawn them back from the tantalizing water.

She could understand the impression of the Rev. James Nisbet when he had stood in almost precisely the same place not too many years before and said, “I am satisfied with the excellence of the locality for a settlement.”

Nisbet, too, had just completed the trek of five hundred miles in Red River carts drawn by oxen. He, too, had forded streams, battled mosquitoes, crossed flooded valleys on improvised scows. Here he had stood with his wife and daughter and recognized the promised land. “I have not seen any place with equal advantages,” he had said.

Not far away stood the Mission House he had erected, and behind Mary were the scattered buildings of the town Nisbet had named Prince Albert in honor of the Queen’s late consort.

The same things that had attracted Nisbet drew men today in increasing numbers—the fertility of the soil, the abundance of hay land, the clear, flowing waters, the myriad sloughs with their ducks and geese. The free land!

The trouble was—and Mary shut her eyes and shuddered, just thinking of it—the difficulty in getting here. One trail had to be abandoned because of the many creeks and valleys that must be rafted. Another trail, dry and level, was not used extensively due to the lack of wood, scarcity of water in dry seasons, and the fact that no one lived along it for great stretches.

Those trails that offered plenty of wood and water were heavily traveled, and large freighters, in wet weather, made what was a bad trail almost impossible. Over one of these the Morrison party bounced and shook, with dozens of breakdowns in the group, many delays, numerous sicknesses, and three deaths.

But Mary, and all other newcomers, recognized the Prince Albert Settlement as one of the most picturesque in the Dominion. Houses, mostly of logs, were scattered for six miles along the river. A windmill added to the unique ambiance, and over all stretched a sky as big and as blue as one’s heart could desire and one’s imagination conjure up. Wild fruit abounded in season—blueberries, saskatoons, raspberries, cranberries, incredibly sweet strawberries. And the trees! Mary basked in their lushness.

“We made it.” Angus’s voice, quiet yet filled with intense feeling, broke Mary’s train of thought. She leaned back against him and couldn’t help but wonder if she smelled. Certainly he did—of sweat, and oxen, and wood smoke. Locating water for bathing had not been the problem. But finding privacy to do it properly had been another matter. As for the family wash, an occasional day had been set aside for this purpose, near water naturally, but if the weather turned bad, the heavy garments failed to dry, were tossed into the carts or draped over the buggy seats, and grew dusty and muddy before drying.

Mary breathed a prayer of thanks to the heavenly Father who had brought them through. How often, jolting along behind a weary horse, she had lifted her voice in the hymns of praise taught to the group by Carlton Voss.

Even now, in spite of dirty clothes and sweaty body, hair too long unwashed, appetite over-gorged on rabbit, loved ones many miles away, and tomorrow’s problems too mountainous to grasp, her heart—in its newfound peace and joy—lifted in praise.

“The lots are taken all along the river for many miles,” Angus was saying.

“Why should that matter?” Mary asked. “Haven’t we been headed for this Bliss place all along?”

“One of the locals back there predicts that Prince Albert will outstrip Winnipeg when the railroad reaches here. The area is hovering on the edge of a boom in growth right now. We got here in good time. Can’t you just see—back there—” and Angus waved an arm in the direction of the settlement, “factories, machine shops, paper mills, all bringing people who love this clear sky and wonderful land, and gambling everything on a chance to have a piece of it for their very own. If they’re not farmers, they’ll fit in right here and offer goods the rest of us need.”

“There’s a sawmill and a flour mill in operation now.”

“I’ll probably have to do what many of the homesteaders do, Mary, and that is work the land in the summer months and when harvest is done, find work somewhere else—here, perhaps, or further north in the logging camps.”

Still too unlearned concerning bitter winters within the confines of a small cabin, without seeing another woman for weeks or perhaps months, Mary nodded assent to this development in the new life. Already her heart clung to the knowledge that whatever the circumstances, she had a Friend who had promised He would never leave nor forsake her.

“I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me,” she murmured. The long buggy ride had been enriched by Bible reading and memorization and acquainting herself with her new Companion, and the weary days had been brightened and the endless hours shortened, or so it seemed.

Angus’s gaze softened as he watched his wife and heard her. Her new relationship, rather than making a wedge between them, had strengthened their marriage bonds. The One who was to her the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley shed His sweet perfume through her life; to Angus it seemed that it should naturally be so, and it was a testimony to him and all who met her, in a manner beyond words. The One whom she acknowledged as the bright and morning star shone His light through her, and Angus warmed his own hungry heart at that flame. The Good Shepherd who had found Mary was, clearly, seeking another wandering lamb.

“We’ll stay here a few days and rest,” he said now. “We’ll look over the available goods—everything, by the way, has had to come over the same trail we did, or by river. The Hudson’s Bay steamer, the Lily , made six trips to Edmonton from here this year, I’m told, carrying flour and other goods as well as passengers. So,” he said, more serious than teasing, “we’re not really locked in here.”

“It surely can’t navigate in winter. And Edmonton, Angus—that’s the wrong direction.” She was, obviously, thinking of her Mam, back east.

“Knowing Kezzie,” Angus said, and it was a comfort for the moment, “she’d make it if she had to snowshoe all the way.”

“You’ve been looking over the store’s goods,” Mary judged. “Now, let’s go see these snowshoes.”

Mary rounded up the children, straightened their clothes, and herded them down the street toward the Hudson’s Bay Trading Post.

While Mary browsed through an interesting assortment of goods, Angus was engaged in conversation with a couple of men. To his surprise he learned that very little cash was available; his would be welcome, for sure.

“Good country for cattle,” he was told. “Start a herd and it may bring you returns sooner than a crop, because you’ll have to clear your land and so on. Cattle are bought by the government and the Bay for their posts throughout the territories.”

“It’s this first winter that concerns me most,” Angus said, his Scots accent fresh and strong but not strange; the Scots were well represented in the area.

“You have a couple of months before it gets really bad. Though it could be sooner . . . never know. You won’t want to let any grass grow under your feet.”

This reference to the grass that burgeoned so thickly around them caused considerable hilarity in the listeners, and when Angus responded with, “Well, if it does, I’ll cut it for hay,” he was slapped on the back and told, “You’ll do!”

A plump, rosy woman not much older than Mary entered the building, bustled over to the newcomer, held out her hand, and said, “You must be the lady from Scotland. Well, I’m Sadie LeGare—French name, of course, my husband is part French . . . we’re a motley crew here, and I welcome you to our—” Here the flow of words faltered, and a sparkle of fun lit the kind eyes—“our city,” she finished.

When Angus joined them and was introduced, the two were old friends, a mark of the camaraderie that flourished among the settlers, who needed each other so desperately. Unless he was mistaken, this Sadie LeGare was part Indian, a Métis, many of whom were being assimilated into the current society and way of life.

“The constant need for food three times a day will challenge your imagination,” Sadie LeGare was saying, following Mary to the various sections of the store. “If you don’t have it already, you’ll need flour, of course, sugar, baking soda, salt—” Mary was pointing these items out to the clerk, and they were being assembled on the counter.

“Tea . . . syrup . . . oatmeal; oh yes, oatmeal—some poor bachelors, I understand, exist on oatmeal and rabbit,” Sadie informed them. “Dried beans, rice, lard—though you can render your own from most any meat you butcher or hunt or trap. You do have a rifle, I guess?” And on and on the needs went. Mary was grateful, having felt dismayed at the prospect before her of being isolated for long periods of time, with travel impossible except, she supposed, on the aforementioned snowshoes. And did they need to buy snowshoes?

“Come over for supper,” Sadie invited cordially, “and we’ll get better acquainted. It won’t be fancy,” she explained but without apology. “Not much fanciness here, seein’ as how everything has to be freighted in or handmade. You’d be surprised, though. There’s a piano or two and some very fine silver and dainty china that managed to make it through. But not at our house.”

The Morrisons were welcomed to the LeGare log house with cheerful kindness, and they thoroughly enjoyed the fresh bread, so often missing on the trip, and the roast beef with fresh vegetables.

The dessert was sweet strawberries with mounds of whipped cream. When Angus and Mary “mmmmmmed” their appreciation, Pierre LeGare, a short, dark man of undoubted Indian as well as French ancestry, quoted, “Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did.”

Pierre LeGare was a freighter, “gone a lot of the time,” he admitted. He and Sadie were childless and took immediately to Cammie and Molly, sitting them down after supper to sorting through a box of arrowheads.

Sadie and Mary settled themselves with a last cup of tea, and the men went for a walk, where Pierre told Angus, “The plow is the most important investment you can make. And a grub hoe and of course an axe or two or three. . . .”

When, finally, the Morrisons left for their own camp, they felt they had made real friends. And in spite of the almost over-whelming list of things to buy, things to do, they were not discouraged, and only a little daunted.

“Neighborliness goes beyond tolerance,” Angus mused, “and it is so freely offered. Pierre tells me that dislikes and likes, religious affiliations and political persuasions, though not stifled or forgotten, do not interfere with neighborliness or being accountable to one another. A good feeling, that.”

“Cooperation—it seems to be incorporated into the building of the frontier. Sadie says there are working bees—”

“As opposed to drones?” Angus asked, grinning through the late evening shadows.

Mary smiled. “Bees where people come and help each other with their work, like putting up their buildings.”

“And we’ll need to be quick to do our share.”

“No locks on doors, Sadie says. Well, maybe on places of business but not on cabins out in the bush where someone might need to have shelter or food.”

“It’s a whole new way of life, that’s for sure,” Angus said as he scooped a weary Molly up into his arms. “Give us two or three days, and we’ll be on our way.”

“To Bliss.”