Travel especially for moving freight, was done by river and water as much as possible in the olden-days when self-propelled vehicles had not yet been invented. But note that this was the case until little more than two hundred years ago.
Old-time vehicles were pulled by animals (horses, oxen, etc.) or pushed or pulled by humans. Little energy was consumed and almost all of it by animals or humans. Wind -or water-power gristmills was about the only other form of energy, leaving aside fire for cooking, heating and drying.
Sailing ships also harnessed the power of the wind.
Balloon travel and paddled boats (canoes, York boats, etc) were other forms of transportation used.
Even steam trains were not used until early 1800s.
The first auto-mobile was invented in 1886 when German inventor Karl Benz patented his Motorwagen. Cars were still very scarce until Ford got going producing his Model T's in the U.S. in 1908. (Even by 1912 there were still only 100 cars in Edmonton! Nowadays there are a hundred cars in a single city block.
In those early days, steam, electricity and gasoline were in the running for fuel of choice for automobiles. Steam had the advantage if you looked at cost, because anything combustible could be used to power the vehicle - wood scraps, logs, twigs, weeds, coal, hay, cowchips, etc. Of course, gasoline won out in the end.
Once you had the internal combustion engine, not just land travel was revolutionized but also air and water travel switched to oil and gasoline. And even trains later switched to Diesel. The U.S. Wright Brothers made the first sustained, controlled and powered heavier-than-air flight on December 17, 1903, with one of them going aloft in their one-person aircraft that burned gasoline.
Until these steam and gas-driven internal combustion machines multiplied, still relatively little energy was used and much of it was still supplied by humans and animals.
It took years for the old farm workhorses to be finally replaced by gasoline tractors. Like into the 1940s!
And during the Depression, it was not uncommon on the Prairies to see cars being pulled by a horse. Not as fast as a car with a working motor, but you did not need money to buy fuel. Horses live on grass, which is free for the taking. (Getting in hay (needed to feed a horse in the winter-time) was a time-intensive hobby in the summer but an unemployed person or farmer with burnt-out cropland had lots of time.)
Nowadays we buzz around travelling hundreds of kilometres in a single day. Travel was more difficult when walking, horseback riding or even steam locomotives were the means of transport.
The Saskatchewan river and its branches (poetically?! named North and South) was a major route when water was the easier way to travel compared to land.
The Saskatchewan River was the northern-most of the rivers that drained into the Hudsons Bay. Thus of the forts connected to the Bay, forts built along the Saskatchewan were the closest to the Northland, where the best fur-bearing animals lived.
The Saskatchewan River was handy in that the river emptied (by way of the Nelson River) into the Hudsons Bay. The Bay, the only saltwater coast on the Prairies, meant that hundreds of kilometres of land travel were circumvented compared to connecting to ships at the St. Lawrence River.
The more you could travel by sailing ship (the preserve of salt water), the easier it was to get from point A to point B. As well, the sea route from Hudsons Bay to Britain was shorter than from Montreal on the St. Lawrence. (The later Hudsons Bay Railway was of major importance to Prairie grain producers.)
Sailing ships carried trade goods, mail and workers from Britain to the Prairies by way of York Factory on the Hudsons Bay, and then they were carried by boat up the network of rivers into the interior of the continent.
Fort Edmonton, and thus the later City of Edmonton today, was placed to be as far as fur-trading boaters could get upstream in autumn after meeting British ships that had come to the Hudsons Bay.
The ships arrived at York Factory in late July or as late as September. (The Prince of Wales fort at the Bay is also of historic interest. The only stone fortress on the Arctic Ocean, it was built by the HBC in obedience with its charter that gave the HBC the responsibility with exploration and defence of the Rupert's Land, the area drained by fivers flowing into the Hudsons Bay. As if one fortress could defend an area the size of a sub-continent. And in reality it was captured by a French fleet in 1782 without a shot fired, because the HBC had not equipped it with a sufficient number of defenders.)
By then furs trapped and traded the previous winter and spring had been gathered, packaged and shipped down to York Factory and were waiting for the ships.
The York boats and freight canoes had buzzed down the river in good time, the workers sometimes paddling for 18 hours or more in a day. The relative lack of mosquitoes out in the middle of the river was an incentive for them to press on instead of going ashore for rest.
The trek upstream after getting trade goods, mail and workers from the sailing ships was slower. In 1806, it took a little more than two months for the mail to arrive at Edmonton from York Factory. It left York Factory probably a few days after August 18 and arrived on November 1. (Edmonton House Journals 1806-1821 (AHS), p. 87)
The time needed to make the downstream journey is less clear. York boats packed with furs left Edmonton between May 12 and 28, and the ships arrived at the Bay in July or as late as September. So the boaters had about a month and a half to make the trip downstream in time to meet the ships.
Actually a canoeist tells me it takes just a month.
===================================
A modern-day canoeist gives me this info:
The downstream trip from Edmonton to Hudson Bay (by way of North Saskatchewan River/Saskatchewan River/Hauer rivers) would be about 30 days, less if the weather is good.
From Edmonton to Lake Winnipeg is about 16 days (a day be car).
Lake Winnipeg to Norway House Cree Nation (Rossville) is 3 easy days.
Then there are 600 kilometres (370 mi) to go from Norway House to York Factory, which includes the Hayes River, the Echimamish and a portion of the Nelson River (now part of the designated Canadian Heritage Rivers System.)
Back during the early 1800s, the river was wild, un-dammed, portaging around the rapids and falls would have taken a day or less.
==========================================
Meanwhile it could take two or three months to walk from Winnipeg to Edmonton.
So river travel was quicker, especially going downstream, than walking.
Even in winter when it was frozen over, the river was a "highway" of sorts. Being bare of trees and bushes, travellers there were capable of more straight-line travel than those engaged in bush-ranging, or ridge-running, or any other of those old-time hobbies.
Thanks for reading.
==================================
Also note that canoeing from the Saskatchewan Crossing (Rocky Mountains) to Edmonton is 6 days.
Comments