A Peace River pioneer recorded her memories and they included this account of a time when some residents of Peace River, B.C. wanted to join Alberta.
Dorthea H. Calverley:
"It was on June 3, 1930 that Mackenzie King, campaigning for election as Prime Minister of Canada made a solemn promise — at least it sounded that way — that if elected he would provide a Peace River outlet to the sea within six months. It has been a long six months. In the end British Columbia made amends to her long neglected area by building the Pacific Great Eastern Railway herself — later naming it the British Columbia Railway.
Indirectly this was the result of another serious, comical event in our history. When the area elected its own member of the Provincial Legislature in 1937, Mr. Glenn Braden happened to sit next to a Mr. W.A.C. Bennett in the house under a coalition government. Glenn was a Peace Booster. The remainder of the Province scarcely knew that its long-lost child had “come home” to British Columbia. They didn’t care very much. In fact the difference between Dawson Creek and Dawson City, Yukon Territory, over a thousand miles north wasn’t clear, even in the Department of Education as late as 1957!
One evening a group of twenty-six Dawson Creek businessmen had a meeting. Someone remarked facetiously, “We should join Alberta!” As a joke, each “chipped in” a dollar and organized the “Join Alberta Association”. It was reported in the “Peace River Block News”. In due time his paper was sent to Mr. Braden in Victoria. He had made appeals for some notice to be taken of the problems of his far-away constituency, which could be reached only by making a long loop east to Edmonton, Alberta, then by C.P.R. or C.N.R. to the coast. He hadn’t made a dint in the unconcern.
Then a page brought his mail to his desk. A few moments after opening the paper, he rose and brandishing his paper bombshell he asked leave to address the Legislature. He read the headlines. The shock was electric. What was this? Secession from the old and august province? A Victoria newspaper printed the scoop. The Edmonton paper reprinted it. By the time the circuit was completed, Peace Country readers of the Edmonton papers found the joke was suddenly NEWS. Probably the most comical aspect of the whole affair was an alleged inquiry from the Alberta Government to the Federal Secretary of State, asking what, under the British North America Act, should be the attitude of Alberta if the B.C. Peace River country attempted to secede and “Join Alberta”.
Mr. Bennett told the story at a political rally in Fort St. John. Within a year or two, a phenomenal number of cabinet ministers found it necessary or desirable to visit “The Peace”. To such a beginning we may attribute the coming first of the John Hart Highway, and then of the P.G.E.
About twenty-two dollars of the original twenty-six, left after receipts books were purchased and other expenses covered, must still be resting in some bank in this city. This probably sets a record for the least expensive political campaign, in history!
The ED&BC became the Northern Alberta Railway but it is now [1998] just a branch-line of the Canadian National Railway. There are rumors, from time to time, that its days may be numbered and it may suffer the same fate as many other prairie rail lines."
(From
https://calverley.ca/article/16-001-the-e-d-and-bc-railway-northern-alberta-railway/)
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