Evidence of old fur trading post was found on site of an old power plant building in Rossdale in 2012. It was reported that the construction crews may have uncovered the remains of an old fort.
The river valley at Edmonton held many forts - two HBC Fort Edmonton's, two NWC Fort Augustus'es, an XYZ company fort probably near Victoria Park, perhaps even a fort operated by traders out of New France in early 1700s. Philip Coutu's book From Castles to Forts gives good round-up of the various forts and their guesstimated locations in the river valley.
A 2012 article gave this report:
Among the findings was an aboriginal stone pipe with a zigzag pattern etched into it. They believe it may be a possible sign that it was used by the Blackfoot tribe, who also traded at Fort Edmonton. ... Saxberg isn’t sure why this spot was chosen for the trading fort, but looks forward to finding out.
“Now we haven’t found a lot of evidence of aboriginal occupation earlier than the fur trade,” Saxberg added. “They had to have been camping somewhere in the area. What attracted them? I’m not really sure.”
Actually it is fairly well known that the present site of Edmonton was on the route of the old Wolf's Track that took travellers from Mexico right up to the Barren Lands to the north. It was also known by the name Old North Trail.
Edmonton was established as a good place to cross the North Saskatchewan River perhaps from time immemorial, due to a shallow ford near today's High Level Bridge. And the Rossdale flats was a gathering place and camping ground from time immemorial as well, according to archaeological and oral evidence.
Perhaps the Wolf's Track dates back to the time 11,000 years ago to 6000 years ago when the Ice Age peaked and left. A corridor opened in line with Edmonton, running alongside the Rockies, still encased in ice and snow, and the edge of the large icefield in the interior of the continent to the east and north. Animals and people likely moved up and down through this corridor earlier than other northern parts of the continent. Nature abhors a vacuum as we learned from the movie Jurassic Park, And that was the case back then - plants, predators and prey moving into newly de-iced locales - and humans as well.
The most recent glacial advance in North America reached its maximum extent 25,000 - 18,000 years ago, while the beginning or peak of the warming is considered to be 11,700 years ago, or about 9700 BCE. But deglaciation continued noticeably in some places as recently as 6000 years ago -- and is continuing today.
Geologists reckon that another ice age might come within the next 1500 years. In the last Ice Age, icefields extended south as far as California.
How quickly it will come when it comes is the next question.
The movie Day after Tomorrow points to super-cold intergalactic coldness flowing down to hit the Earth.
Based on book The Coming Superstorm by Art Bell who hosted the late night oogie-boogie show Coast to Coast (now no longer broadcast on CHED).
These is evidence that the last Ice Age came super quickly indeed.
Carcasses have been found of woolly mammoth elephants frozen in the glaciers. They were chomping down on leafs etc. one moment and the next were frozen. Found thousands of years later with their chewing still in their mouths. Their meat was frozen so quickly and remained frozen for thousands of years. We know this because when discovered its meat was so well preserved that it was eaten by its discoverers. Or so I have heard anyway.
I'll give you a bit of advice for when/if the cold one comes -
don't use pages out of books to try to heat a sanctuary from the deep cold.
It's hard on the books. And have you ever tried to keep a paper fire going? A sheet of paper flares up and is gone. A ball of paper or sheaf of papers will not burn well.
Bits of wood - even bits of wooden furniture, bookends, moulding and trim from the walls - is the way to go!
Essen 1945: a shivering German family breaks up a piano to feed a fire to get warm. Later realized that even in those days there were some who still had money and would have paid the family for the piano and the family could've used the money to buy firewood. And the piano's lacquered heavy hardwood was hard as heck to make a fire with. Live and learn. Hope those days don't come again.
And if your father does show up even if it is after snowshoeing across many tens of kilometres, don't let him stand in the doorway with the door open, letting all the warm air out. "Shut the door!"
The thing about wood is it takes up much space.
1 gallon gasoline (volume of four litre tetra packs) = 120,000 BTUs
1 litre gasoline = approx 30,000 BTUs
1 pound of wood = 8600 BTUs.
How large is a pound of wood?
Because wood floats, wood must be lighter (take up more volume) than water. A pound of wood thus takes up more volume than half a litre of water (1.1 pounds of water).
20 pounds of wood takes up more space than 10 litres of water (10 tetra packs of apple juice).
How many BTUs do you need?
A simple formula to determine your heating needs is:
(desired temperature change in C) x 9/5 x (cubic feet of space) x .133 = BTUs needed per hour
Say it is -30C outside and you want 15C = 45C temp change X 9/5 = 81
say room to be heated =16 feet by 16 feet X 8 = 1600 cu. ft. 12,9600
BTUs 172,000
divided by BTUs per pound 20
Thus about 20 pounds of wood per hour. And this must be based on a well-insulated house.
I'll tell you to heat a place in -30C, you need many armloads of wood even if you use an airtight stove.
A fireplace is going to have a job heating a place when it is -30C outside.
And that is partly why natural gas is so convenient. With natural gas, you don't have to go outside to bring in firewood five to ten times a day.
But wood makes nice heat - and it's renewable!
Of course even 10C or 5C or 0C is a treat when it is -30 outside.
Humans are very adaptable. This is both their virtue and their vice.
Someone once noted how he is constantly amazed at people's ability to take things for granted.
And that leads to insatiable greed for more and more.
Consider:
70 years ago Canadians did not have television (excepting those near the border who picked up U.S. channels).
100 years ago Alberta did not have radio (excepting those near the border who picked up U.S. stations).
120 years ago there was not one automobile in Edmonton. (Streetcars and cars came about the same time (1903-1912) and cars finally triumphed in the 1950s when the last streetcar ran in Edmonton. Now we have a streetcar again from Whyte Ave to Jasper Avenue during summer months. Nothing is more efficient than steel wheels on steel tracks.)
130 years ago there was no electricity in Edmonton
140 years ago there were only two telephones in Alberta, one in the old fort at Edmonton, the other at McKenny's store in St. Albert. A false report of a Native attack on Fort Saskatchewan during the 1885 Metis uprising led McKenny to stop the service!
The date the first wheel came to Edmonton is not known but likely it was built on the spot. It is doubtful if wheeled transport got to Edmonton from Red River until the 1820s or so. The trails in the woods did not take carts at first. Transport was mostly by water in summer. Frozen rivers made great roads in winter-time - as long as they were frozen!
Perhaps carts came north from Montana in 1820s. The bald prairie of southern Alberta made wheeled transport easier at least until you came to the woods north of Red Deer... Certainly carts came to here from there by 1860 when U.S. whiskey pedlars made tainted money selling booze to Natives at Edmonton. This was part reason Colonel Butler called in the 1860s for the establishment of the Mounted Police, finally established in 1874.
Here's another one:
150 years ago Edmonton did not have police (excepting the leave-well-enough-alone administration of the local boss, the HBC fort factor).
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A thoughtful person once told me she wished technology had stopped at the level we had in the 1930s. Certainly it was a quieter and less harried way of life.
Cars were slower.
Food was purer.
Alberta used proportional representation to elect MLAs in Edmonton and Calgary.
She might have something there.
Meanwhile we drive on -- to what?
It is said --
Those who think that having enough is nothing find that nothing is ever enough.
Thanks for reading.
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