Joseph McDonald (1834-1921)
Joe McDonald and his wife, Margaret (Marguerite) (nee Fraser), were the first (known) to have a house in the area near the Queen Elizabeth Park, now right in the centre of Edmonton.
Joe was a son of Scotsman Donald McDonald and Metis Jeannette Beaudry
Donald McDonald (1779-?) came to Canada as employee of the HBC around the year 1800. He and Hugh Munro were sent inland by the HBC to live with the Blackfoot and investigate why more furs were not coming to the Company from that part of the countryside.
Years later, the HBC decided to build a fort directly in the Blackfoot/Peigan territory. John E. Harriot led the initiative. In 1832 Harriot, McDonald, Munro and two other legendary frontiersmen Colin Fraser and Jemmy Jock Bird built the Old Bow Fort, near present-day Morley, Alberta. This post, also called the Peigan Post, was in operation for just two years. The book The Old Bow Fort, by Douglas A. Hughes (Detselig, 2002) is a useful reference to this post. A sign along the Trans-Canada Highway 55 kms west of Calgary indicates the site of the old Peigan Post, now just a group of small piles of rocks.
About that time, in his early 50s, McDonald retired to the Red River Settlement, Manitoba.
Joe was born in the Red River Settlement (St. Andrews) a short time later.
Joe got a good education from a schoolteacher in Little Britain, Manitoba. Later said “I am indebted to the grounding he gave me for all I have subsequently been able to teach myself.”
"Joseph McDonald, Frontiersman", Edmonton Bulletin, Jan. 20, 1917.
This article is very good for info on his life, and his forebears, and the situation at Edmonton at time of his arrival (1863).
Joe was guide for Canadian exploring expedition led by J. Dawson and Hind in 1857.
1859 went with Lord of Southesk expedition to Banff, then by way of Jasper House to Edmonton, then back east to Fort Garry (Winnipeg) by way of Fort Pelly.
Edmonton at that time was a 30-year-old wooden trading post with a wooden palisade encircling it. Only a windmill and a few other structures were situated outside the fort. Tipis dotted the countryside nearby, and it is said that the tom-tom beat from all around provided rhythm to the day's chores during the days of early Edmonton.
Joe was a guide for the Palliser Expedition, 1857-1859 (Edmonton Trader, p. 245)
(Norman Barkwell, internet blogger on Metis history, does not list McDonald among Metis on the expedition. But he does not list everyone.)
Joe guided and accompanied other wealthy hunter-adventurers. This included Lord Dunmore and other officers of the Scots Fusiliers, with whom he spent some time in Montreal.
1862-1864
Joe escorted Count Castiglione through western Canada. After accompanying the Count, McDonald crossed the Rockies again through the Crow's Nest Pass, and with Hugh Munro went to Little Red Deer Riverm then to Edmonton where he wintered 1863-64. (Alberta History, Autumn 2013)
June 1864 travelled with Arctic traveller John Rae to Fraser River by way of the Yellowhead Pass, returning to Edmonton, then went by boat down to Red River.
Returned to Edmonton in 1865, to follow up on Doctor Hector's discovery of gold in the Saskatchewan Valley. He found buffalo numerous in the Saskatchewan Valley and thick between Vermilion and what is now Fort Saskatchewan. (Edmonton Bulletin, Jan. 20, 1917)
Skimming (panning) river sandbars for gold, they made $800. Joe used up his portion by prospecting unsuccessfully on the Athabasca River. He later recalled that his partner Murdoch McLennan employed his share better.
Employed by HBC, stationed at Lac St. Anne
Married Margaret (Marguerite) Fraser, daughter of Colin Fraser, famed bagpiper for the Company.
Left HBC in 1869.
Took up freighting between Fort Garry and Edmonton. driving horse-drawn cart or wagon to carrying freight. (Edmonton Bulletin, Jan. 20, 1917)
At this time the Prairies became part of Canada.
Joe was in Red River at the time of the Red River Rebellion (AKA the first Riel Rebellion or the North-West Resistance). He carried messages between the incoming lieutenant-governor McDougall to Governor McTavish.
taken captive by the rebels
endured rough handling. (Edmonton Bulletin, Jan. 20, 1917)
After his release, he commanded a company of volunteer soldiers to help put down the rebellion. (His earlier time spent with army officers in Montreal helped him in this position.) His troops were gathered from the Parish of St. Andrews, a district dominated by English "half-breeds" not supportive of Riel's Metis-based aspirations. They assembled with others at Kildonan.
(Later Joe encountered a former rebel at an isolated spot on the Carlton Trail and repaid with interest an injury he had sustained while Riel's prisoner.) (Edmonton Bullletin, Jan. 20, 1917))
Returned to Edmonton in 1870s.
In his 40s, he and his wife settled permanently in Edmonton in a log house they built along an old trail that wound along the edge of the river valley (today’s Saskatchewan Drive). His house was located near to where a trail went down to the river valley bottom, This trail, approximately 106A St., is now called Old Fort Hill Road.
Their house's address in the 1916 Henderson Directory was 10653 Saskatchewan Drive.
They are said to be the first non-First Nations family to settle on the southside. This was before Cree (Papaschase Band?) allowed others to settle there. And this was before more settled relations between the Blackfoot and the Cree made living on the southside safe. Joe had this special right due to his father's long association with the fur trade and with the Natives of the area.
When the land was surveyed in 1882, Joe was granted ownership of Riverlot #11. This land stretched from the river to University Avenue, and from 104th to 107th Streets. The land boundaries of this land became today’s roads.
Still by the 1880s, the south side of the river had little more than a scattering of pioneer farms. Each farm carried on other businesses to get by such as coal mining, selling firewood, woodworking, blacksmithing or freighting goods from Winnipeg.
There were no business buildings outside of the riverflats - Walterdale and Cloverdale. There, riverside factories were developing. John Walter was getting started in building his empire. His empire would later include river log drives, sawmills, woodworking shops, boat-building workshops, ferries, steamboats and a mine.
But in the early years there was much that was useful and desired that was not made locally. All this had to be brought in by horse-drawn cart or wagon. The trip took weeks to bring things in from Montana or two months or more to bring them in from Winnipeg.
By 1883, a railway was built to Calgary and on to the coast. After that, manufactured goods were often shipped by train to Calgary and then carted to Edmonton in "only" a five or six-day trip.
The Edmonton Bulletin of March 7, 1885 reported that Jos. McDonald had set off with sleighs to pick up flour stored at Red Deer to bring to the HBC, either to feed its own workers or to sell in the HBC store.
In 1886 the Bulletin reported that Jos. McDonald had arrived with a large train of frieght for A. Macdonald & Co. In 1886 he had arrived with a "train of carts" (Red River carts) loaded with freight destined for the W. Johnstone Walker store. Johnstone Walker's was an Edmonton institution into the 1960s.
The Bulletin of April 13, 1889 reported that "Jos. MacDonald" (almost certainly Joseph McDonald) had arrived with a train of wagons loaded with agricultural machinery purchased by A. Macdonald & Co. Likely the freight had been loaded at the Calgary train station. The Macdonald store was in the small Edmonton town on the north side, and McDonald's train of wagons had been stuck on the southside of the river waiting for the ice to go out on the river so the ferry could operate to carry his wagons across to the northside.
In 1891 a railway was built north toward Edmonton. The railway development company contacted McDonald and bought half his land. It also bought some of the land belonging to his neighbour, Tom Anderson. Together their land became the base of a new town on the southside, a competitor for the old northside Edmonton settlement. (The building of the Calgary & Edmonton Railway ended McDonalds freighting business between Calgary and Edmonton, but perhaps he merely then shifted to freighting from Edmonton to points north.)
The growth of the new town was certain when the Calgary & Edmonton Railway did not cross the river. A hotel and railway station was built where the train track crossed a trail half a mile south of the river. This trail is today's Whyte Avenue. And the Strathcona Hotel still stands on the same streetcorner where it was built in 1891.
The east boundary of McDonald's land became a road and was given the name Main Street. It is today's 104th Street.
McDonald had given up only part of his land to the company. As the small end-of-steel community grew to a town, then a city, he gradually sold off much of the rest of his land at high prices ensured by the urban growth.
But in the meantime Rossdale riverflats became a busy industrial and crossing point for the ferry. It became crisscrossed by roads after the first bridge across the river, part of today's Low Level Bridge, was built in 1900. The old Native encampments in Rossdale soon became a thing of the past, and it is likely that the McDonald family ached for the long-gone days when the HBC workers and Natives were the main local inhabitants.
Joe and wife Marguerite lived in their log cabin on Saskatchewan Drive for more than 50 years.
When he died in 1921, he was the oldest resident of Edmonton. Former gold-panner James Gibbons then became the oldest living resident of the city. Gibbons (1839-1933), like Joe McDonald, had come to stay in Edmonton in 1865, about 60 years earlier. (Joseph McDonald obit., Edmonton Bulletin, July 18, 1921)
Joe is buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery (gravesite B 63-1). (But Margaret's grave does not appear to be nearby.)
Joe was survived by Marguerite and five children.
Two daughters: Lissie at home, Mrs. John McLeod
Three sons: J.C. "Jockie" of Edmonton, Henry in BC, Donald McDonald of Slave Lake.
His pallbearers were a who's who of old Whyte Avenue: A.J. McKenzie, James Inkster, Frank Cowles, Joseph Prokop and John McLeod (probably his son-in-law).
Their old log house was long ago torn down. There are no memorials to the McDonald family. But from the old house site on the edge of the high lands, the view of the river is the same as when Joe and Margaret moved to the southside about 150 years ago.
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This article was mostly based on:
Isaac Cowie's interview of Joe, published in the Edmonton Bulletin, Jan. 20, 1917.
Other sources:
Monto Old Strathcona - Edmonton's Southside Roots, p. 29-30 (based on the following sources)
Joseph McDonald obit., Edmonton Bulletin, July 18, 1921
Barbara Johnstone, "Joe McDonald, Tripper 1835-1916" Alberta Historical Review, Winter 1957
City of Edmonton Cemeteries search (online)
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