Bear Cubs - 1948

We had sheep, about sixty of them. During the war, the government gave grants to people who wanted to raise sheep for wool, which was used for uniforms. In 1948, we still had the sheep, and on a spring day, I looked down and there was this big bear down there with the sheep. Well, I took the rifle and shot it.

The next day, I was down at the store, and we were talking about this bear that I shot amongst the sheep. Well, the next day, there was a ‘fella’ come to see me. He came with Glen Parsons, and he was an artist. He wanted to know the different colours of the bear, especially up around her eyes and her nose. So we went back to look at it, and there lays the old big mother bear that was killed, and three little cubs curled up on top of her.

So between us we caught them, but one went up a big black spruce tree about two feet in diameter at the base. Well, I went up after him, about 20 or 30 feet, climbing the limbs of the tree like a ladder. Then he went out on a limb, and jumped into a creek near the base. He jumped through some tag alders that broke his fall, and landed in the water. Glen grabbed him out of the water, and we took the three of them home and tried to find places for them.

We gave two of them to the tourist camp. Myron Thompson was at the store, and he took the one that jumped from the tree. He drilled a hole by his house, with an auger, put a post in the hole, and tied the bear to it.. Myron Thompson and I took that bear and raised it all summer. It was a real pet. We kept it till fall, then we got a hold of the game warden and told him about it, and he says, “Well why don’t you try and get rid of it”. He says, “I think they need a bear in the Winnipeg Zoo”. So we contacted the Winnipeg Zoo, and yes they wanted one, so we had to get permission to ship it out of the province, which we did. Myron and I went into Winnipeg a couple of months later, and as soon as we showed up by that pen he was right there. That was the last time we saw that little bear.

I don’t know what happened to the other two bears we gave to Walter and Winnie Cromp, owners of the Wick Cliff Lodge. I think they gave one to the Americans. I don’t know what happened to the other one. However, it may have escaped and while running along the "South Road", was shot by one of the homesteaders.

Today, on account of this bear that I got, is why I’m fully against the hunting of bears in the spring. Bear cubs are born in the early spring, but aren’t weaned until the late summer. They only become independent from their mothers when they are a year and a half old, so these little bear cubs, that only weighed two to three pounds, never had a chance of survival.

Story by Fred Radford

photo: Fred Radford and Myron Thompson with their bear

Josef Artur Karlsson

Josef Artur Karlsson or as he later changed it to the Canadian spelling of Joseph Arthur Carlson was born on November 28 1904 to Karl August Svensson and Selma Elise Jonsson at Torras Sweden. He was baptised in the Swedish Lutheran Church on December 27 1904 by Pastor O Svenssen.

Art as he became known grew up on the small family farm in Torras along with nine brothers and sisters. His father Karl would come to Canada to work for the Canadian National Railway for two years and return to Sweden for two years. I guess that is why there was two years between each child. Of coarse this would supplement the family income and improve the farm.. Art soon became his mothers pet, and sitting beside her on the long winter evenings she would teach him to spin, weave and knit. He became a very good cook. He attended school in Torras finishing grade ten.

After finishing school Art worked as a farm labourer for a year. At that time it was compulsory that you join the Army, which he did for about six or seven years. As he was very interested in horses he joined the cavalry division. After his stint in the army and as there was very little employment at that time he decided to apply to the King for permission to go to Canada. This was granted on April 2nd 1928 and soon after Art and his younger brother Oscar left for Canada. They made their way to Sioux Lookout Ont. Where they had a cousin by the name of Charlie Ronstrom who was a roadmaster for the C.N.R. and was able to give them work as section men. I think the first station the worked at was Colins, a little place between Sioux Lookout and Thunder Bay.

Some time later Art moved to Amesdale and was boarding at Sam and Annie Ames. When Annie became ill their daughter Kate returned frm hairdressing in Regina to look after her mother. There was Art helping out al he could. This sure impressed Kate as none of her brothers did house work or cooked. Soon they fell in love and were married in Dryden on May 7th 1932, with her sister Hazel and brother Gordon standing up for them. A year later Kate came down with TB and went to the sanatorium.

Their son Donald Arthur was born in Winnipeg on Jan 11th 1937 and a daughter Elvera Anne was born in Dryden on May 10th 1939. As Kate had to return to the san many times this was all the family they had.

Art started employment with the C.N.R. on April 24th 1928 and took retirement on May 31st 1960. Upon retirement they moved into a house in Dryden at 81 Elizabeth Avenue. Art and Kate had travelled to Red Lake to attend their son Donald’s daughter Cathy’s wedding where Kate had a heart attack the night before the wedding and passed away on Nov. 30th 1980. Art moved in with Elvera but was lost without Kate and passed away on Dec. 14th 1980. So ended the life of Art and Kate Carlson just two weeks apart. Needless to say it was a sad Christmas.

A few years later Elvera retired and moved back to the Dryden area. Donald passed away on Feb. 29th 2004.

Written by Elvera Carlson Moncrief

Pascal Moon

While you were in bed this morning of March 20, 2008, at 05:48 the Vernal (Spring) Equinox occurred, before your very closed eyes.

Men since the Middle Ages, my father among them, have said that "Easter would be observed on the Sunday after the first full moon on or after the day of the vernal equinox". This statement was true in 325 AD, when it was established by the Council of Nicea.

Reconciliation of the Lunar calendar of the Bible and the Hebrews, with the Julian and then Gregorian solar calendars of the Romans and the Western Europeans left us with the determination Easter date, by the lunisolar calendar. Apart from and ecclesiastical definition of the “Pascal Moon”, the formula remains.

Every year about this time, I recite the phrase; “Easter falls on the Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox", and I think of my Dad, Joseph Gordon Ames.

On clear mid-winter nights in Amesdale, the moon didn’t go unnoticed. The glow that "Pascal Moon" over a frozen landscape, feeling first affects of lengthening days, was a harbinger of respite from a long winter. In the dark of night, waiting by the tracks for the early morning mail dispatch and pickup from a passing train, which happened to be running late that night, Gordon surely rehearsed that formula, with thoughts of warmer nights.

Or perhaps, the formula was rehearsed as he walked the half mile homeward from a evening of improvised entertainment at the hall. He surely paused with Beatrice by his side, to catch a breath and gaze at the moonlit sky on their return from an excitement charged night of Gordon’s violin playing for the a dance, so popular in the community. The night may have been cold crisp sky with northern lights in the sky, prolonging their dance into the sky above.

For us, those who now live in towns or cities, beneath skies awash with urban lights, we seldom notice the beauty of night sky, the revolving stars, nor the phases of the moon which mark the passage of time. Yet the memories of such evenings, imbedded in our minds and hearts, are sweet reminders of days when we and folks we loved spent precious moments along the pathway home, sharing the priceless view of a moon bathing the earth with its glow, or standing in awe beneath a heavenly panorama of an aurora of green and red, blue and violet dancing in the cold night sky.

Today, Thursday, March 20th is the Vernal Equinox. Tomorrow, Friday, March 21 will be the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox. Sunday, March 23rd is Easter Sunday. In your life time, you will never again experience an Easter so early in the year.

The Ames’ First Homestead, Store and Post Office

S 1/2, Lot 9, Con. 4 Rowell Township

On a scouting trip in the summer of 1924 Samuel George Ames filed on a homestead at a place called Freda. He acquired two hundred, forty acres of land at Freda; one hundred, sixty as a homestead and eighty acres as a pre-emption. On the pre-emption there was already a log cabin, which the former owner had abandoned when his wife and family had refused to join him for a life in the bush. Sam was lucky to get a place so close to the station with a cabin of sorts, and a small clearing.

The homestead, straddled the tracks and the road between Richan and Amesdale. It was also situated just north of Twenty-Mile Creek, a swift navigable muskeg creek that ran on a west-south-westerly course from Good Lake to Pelican Lake, now renamed Rugby Lake.

Sam established a general store in the log house, and immediately put his son Gordon to work managing the store. On June 1, 1926 Gordon established a post office in the corner of the store, and became Amesdale’s first postmaster. A position he held for thirty-two years.

In June of 1927, a geologist named F.J. Pettijohn, and his travelling companion spent the night in the Ames’ home. His first view of the homestead, as they scrambled up the path from “swampy landing on Twenty Mile Creek to Amesdale”, to their destination for the night was:

“We heard a train whistle and surmised that we were indeed close to our destination. A scramble up the path disclosed an open field. We walked across, through a small patch of woods, and emerged in another, on the far side of which was the railroad track and Amesdale. All we could see was a one-story log house and outbuilding, which proved to be the residence, store, and post office combined of Mr. and Mrs. Ames.”

In 1931, with lumber from the local saw mill, a new store was built near the crossing one and a half miles to the west, and the store and post office were moved. A year later the Ames family, also moved from their first Amesdale homestead to a large new home they had build adjacent to the new store.

In 1932, Edward and Harriet Radford bought the quarter section homestead from S.G. Ames, and moved themselves and three children to the homestead. From here the children would walk a mile along the tracks to the newly constructed Rowell school house.

In 1934 the Radford moved on to an 80 acre lot north of the store and moved. I don’t know if anyone lived on the property after that, but it appears that the homestead eventually became the property of Fred Radford.

From “Memoirs of an Unrepentant Field Geologist” By F. J. Pettijohn

F.J. Pettijohn, a young graduate geologist from the University of Minnesota. In 1927 he took a canoe trip into the North. Of which he says “The canoe trip proved to be the turning point in my career.” On the shores of Abram Lake, Ontario he found an outcrop of Archean conglomerates that became the subject of his doctorate thesis. His thesis, subsequent career, and the publication of his classic text book, Sedimentary Geology earned him the highest honours of geological societies around the world.

He also spent a night spent in the home of Samuel George and Annie Eliza Ames.

Saturday, July , 1927: To Amesdale

The rain had stopped; the sun and blue sky were a welcome sight. We carried our packs and canoe back to the Wabigoon and were soon afloat, and carried by the swift current to the mouth of Pelican Creek (now called Rugby Creek). In an hour or two we reached the falls at the outlet of Pelican Lake (Rugby Lake). A short portage and a short paddle brought us to Spurgeon's cabin, on the west shore, so we stopped for lunch and spread the tent out to dry. The cabin was new, made of peeled cedar logs chinked with sphagnum moss, with a roof of asphalt shingles. The inside was neat and tidy; Jack Spurgeon was indeed a meticulous person. We left the key as instructed, and after a paddle of six or seven miles we came to the place where Twenty-Mile Creek entered the lake. Then began a slow paddle up the twists and turns of the surprisingly swift muskeg stream. It was late afternoon when we came to a half-submerged rowboat tied up at a path. This must be the trail to Amesdale. As we were getting out to reconnoiter, we heard a train whistle and surmised that we were indeed close to our destination. A scramble up the path disclosed an open field. We walked across, through a small patch of woods, and emerged in another field, on the far side of which was the railroad track and Amesdale. All we could see was a one-story log house and outbuilding, which proved to be the residence, store, and post office combined of Mr. and Mrs. Ames. As it was now late and there was no good campsite in view, we entered the store/post office section and asked Mrs. Ames about the prospect of supper and staying overnight. We struck a bargain, then hurried back to our canoe and began to portage all our rig from the swampy landing to the Ameses'. It was rapidly getting dark, and we wanted to complete the carry before the evening onslaught of mosquitoes.

After a dinner of fried potatoes and bacon and what else I don't remember, we were shown out to the bunkhouse—a log building with no door. There were double-deck bunks filled with straw. Wynne took the upper, I had the lower. We spread our blankets and soon fell asleep. The night was clear and cold, and during the night I awoke to feel something warm and furry at my feet. It was one of the large dogs I had seen wandering about. I gave the dog a shove with my foot and told him to take his fleas elsewhere.

Pettijohn, F. J. 1984. Memoirs of an Unrepentant Field Geologists, p69-70, The University of Chicago Press. Chicago.