The Cemetery

Home becomes an imprecise concept, as we scatter across the country and around the world. Regardless of how scattered we have become, if “home” is determined relative to the geographic location on this planet where our roots are deepest and dearest, for many Amesdale would be most accurately described as home.

Yet, except for the memories, stories, and feelings that we hold dear, little remains of our Amesdale home. For the most part, our homesteading ancestors have departed this realm. The works of their hands: the homes, hall, school, and store have been removed, and nature has reclaimed their field, roads, and pathways. Even so, in that place where the cemetery is the only tangible remnant of their existence and their labours, our memories still flow warm and alive with sweet recollections of their will, sacrifice, and love.

In the summer heat, as I step through that gate, and walk among the pines to the sound of dry moss and pine needles crushing beneath my feet, I feel at home. Standing on the knoll by the graves of my loved ones, in a sweet silence broken only by the breeze through jack pine boughs and the singing of a grasshopper in the grass, I feel my roots reaching deep into that soil, and sense the influence of those I so dearly remember. I gladly recall the smile, the laugh, the song, and the tease, then give thanks for the reassuring love I felt in their presence. Notwithstanding their simple lives of perseverance in the face of untold hardship and personal challenge, they each left their mark.

I have no personal memory of “the happy wanderer” named George McKay. He died before I was born, but I know a portion of his story. I know that his family is intertwined with mine, not just as relatives but as friends, as they were with other pioneering friends from the sister communities of Amesdale and Richan. In the spring of 1928, following a tragic spring storm, George McKay was the first to be laid to rest in the Amesdale cemetery. His brother-in-law Samuel George Ames and his friend Jack Nelson were instrumental in securing permission for the cemetery where he was laid.

Others followed. Years later Gordon Ames drove from Dryden with Bruce’s infant body beside him on the bench seat of his pickup. Jack Nelson fashioned a tiny wooden casket and Clarence Tilleneus painted the concrete headstone. The sad journey of the previous year was repeated in the summer of 1940, as Gordon retraced the route to bring his infant daughter Katherine home to rest alongside her brother.

On a cold wintry day in January 1943, Gordon sat with Ote Thompson, Amesdale’s original pioneer, as he passed on. He closed the eyes and placed coppers on them, straightened the body, and expressed his condolences to Phoebe and Joyce. The task of digging the grave fell on George and Bill Radford and Jack Nelson. Lucky for them, twenty-five years earlier, the deceased had selected a sandy spot for the cemetery. George Radford supplied the team and sleigh. Then amid the pines, sheltered by the horses standing near the mound of earth by the open grave, the heavily clothed mourners paid their last respects.

A generation later, I too was privileged to stand amid the pines, by an open grave, and in the pattern of men like Gordon, Jack, Clarence, George, and Bill provide a small measure of service to family and friends. Now, just beyond the once bustling frontier village of Amesdale, in that small plot where they once laboured in the service of their friends, many of these men lie at rest, with their parents, wives and children, among friends and neighbours:

ALVERSON, Allan
ALVERSON, Rosa
AMES, Annie Eliza
AMES, Beverly
AMES, Bruce (baby)
AMES, Donald
AMES, Katherine (baby)
AMES, Samuel George
AMES, Gordon
AMES, Beatrice

BAKALA, Nick
BREAU, Ed

CARLSON, Arthur
CARLSON, Katherine
CARLSON, Donald
CRANDELL, William

DAHL, Carl
DAHL, Ellen

GEVANOLE, Pete

HANSON, Mark (baby)
HEWITSON, Amy
HEWITSON, Jack
HEWITSON, Violet
HEWITSON, Wilfered

LaFORREST, David
LYNCH, Olive

McKAY, George
McKAY, Joseph
McKAY, Mary Eva
MEREDITH, George
MONCRIEF, Hugh
MONCRIEF, Katherine (baby)
MURDICK, Virginia
MURDICK, Chuck

NELSON, Don
NELSON, Ella
NELSON, John
NELSON, Margaret (baby)

OLLIS, Roy

PATON, William

RADFORD, Edward
RADFORD, George
RAMSTEAD, Agda
RAMSTEAD, Mormor
RAMSTEAD, Lorne

THOMPSON, Iotis
THOMPSON, Myron
THOMPSON, Roy

WILSON, Andrew
WILSON, Glenn
WILSON, Dorothy
WRIGHT, Joyce
WRIGHT, Donald

The Little Cemetery at Amesdale

Andrew Clement
Posted with the kind permission of

Jessie Howarth Clement

The little cemetery at Amesdale is one of many scattered about the North. It is typical of those to be found, if indeed they can be located, in small homestead settlements which began dying as soon as they started.

Every five or six years Jessie and I, while visiting in the area on a pleasant summer day, have been able to stop for a few moments of quiet contemplation on that spot where the pines are growing ever more stately, and the fragrance of the woods drifts through them.

A pretence of a fence with a little gate, barely seen among the brushes and the grass as you drive by, remains one of the vain hopes that herds of cows might some day be wandering the road.

Nature alone takes care of this burial ground. Pine needles have formed a cover over the soft carpet of moss on which only a few stunted weed can grow. The lurid devil’s paint brush adds the only touch of brightness to be found among the gravestones.

It is so quiet you can hear the crushing of the moss and needles under your feet, quiet enough to hear the long, soft sigh of the winds.

Here and there the remains of wreaths indicates that someone has come back, though perhaps five years ago, and thought haunts you that this someone, who has been spoken about in your presence with lonely heart by one of these who rest here, is himself gone, and that you too will follow and be forgotten in the awful processes of nature.

As you step over the fence and search the names – the McKays, the Ames, the Radfords, the Nelsons, Olive Lynch, Ote Thompson, Ed Brough – the terrible reality of death overwhelms the poor heart. Here beneath your feet lies dust once vibrant with life and for a moment you hear its laughter and catch the bright glance from its eye.

And we ask ourselves, “Was the life of these worth living?”

When we see the hard-won earth going back to nature, trees growing in the roads which had been made by a team and scraper in the flies and heat, and the crumbling homes soon to be hidden behind a new forest, we must surely say, “No, ‘Twas all in vain!”

Such is not the case. The weak and disenchanted had come and soon left. The precious few who remained and who are interred in this little plot had their share of happiness. One should not mourn the lives of the pioneer as being in vain, because they worked hard and died poor. Indeed at the hour of death we are all poor. The homesteader had an advantage in that everything he did from his prayers to his labour touched close upon his family and himself. Their expectations were few and humble and they learned to find joy in the simple things.

Clement, Andrew D. 1987. The Bell and The Book. Highway Book Shop, Cobalt, Ontario, p212-213

Dominion Day Picnic

Everyone turned out to celebrate July 1st, Dominion Day. It was a pleasant time of the year when the heat of the summer settled over the community, and the woodlands once again became clothed with green, and the meadows were arrayed with wildflowers. Annually, on this day the citizens of Amesdale gathered at the airport to celebrate the nation’s birthday with fun and games, and a picnic.

Since the proclamation issued to all Her Majesty’s loving subjects by Governor General, Lord Monck on June 20, 1868, the celebration of the anniversary of the Act of Confederation, and the formation of the Dominion of Canada was a national holiday. Unlike Britain, the United States, France and Germany, which achieved nationhood in war, Canada demonstrated a new way of achieving nationhood, through peace.

With another long winter behind them, Dominion Day was a time for every man, woman and child to have a good time. The men who laboured on the section gangs and in the bush enjoyed a well deserved day-off. There weren’t any flags or speeches, it was simply good fun. However, the celebration reflected the optimism of a nation and its people emerging from the bleak conditions of the Great Depression which had driven many of them from dry impoverished prairies to seek refuge in the bush.

The optimism was reborn in later years, after the war when Dominion Day had taken a back-seat to news from the front. All the “boys” had returned from overseas, having won Canada’s greatest test and proven themselves and their nation by fighting in WWII beneath their own flag, the Red Ensign. Having seen a portion of the world, they returned with new skills, and renewed optimism to establish families in the place they themselves had been raised by the first generation of Amesdale pioneers.

During the early years the celebrations had been held anywhere there was room in this community carved out of the bush. Space was first found alongside the store during the 1920s, then in the school yard beside the newly constructed school during the early 1930s. The later Depression years saw it moved to the Relief Camp, built for the construction of the airport, and there it remained even after the airport was completed and the five bunkhouses were removed. The remaining sheds and the airport custodian’s home remained the centre of the festivities with Jack Nelson, the airport custodian, together with his wife Ella hosting the event often organised by Beatrice Ames and Laurie Ames.

Through the years, the ice cream was always the highlight for the kids. In this era before modern refrigeration which never did arrive in the community, ice cream was a rare treat. In the heat of the summer, the manufacture of ice-cream relied upon ice was removed from the icehouse and mixed with salt to lower the temperature. Then after much cranking of the ice-cream tub, the prized frozen delicacy was extracted to the delight of the children. Later, Gordon Ames in his truck would deliver store bought ice-cream all the way from Dryden, packed securely in dry ice for the trip. As if for Santa Claus, the kids waited anxiously for ice-cream’s annual visit.

Regardless of the location, the games were the same year after year. Sack races, three-legged races, and tug of war were the favourites, not only for the youngsters, but also for the adults. Jean and Irene Paridis, young sisters now married to the Thompson brothers, would practice for the event and consequently always won the ladies events. Siblings, Beatrice Ames and Fred Radford enjoyed the softball games, often taking the position of pitcher in the tournaments, as would Myron and Roy Thompson. Undoubtedly, there would have been a game of horseshoes, and much visiting in the shade of the trees, interrupted only by a dip in the cool water of spring-fed Airport Lake, lying just over brow of the hill upon which the airport was built.

Being a family event, drinking reportedly wasn’t normally a part of the event, but eating was. Sandwiches, potato salad, pies, cakes and Irene Thompson’s baked beans were standard fare.

One year, during the late 1940s, lightning struck with an explosion like a bomb going off. Jack Nelson, standing beside a car was knocked to the ground, landing on his backside as the lightning bolt struck a tree not five feet from him. In the tree, standing alongside an outhouse, the lightening ploughed a three inch deep strip down the trunk, from top to bottom ripping the wood into splinters like toothpicks as the big white streak tore through the tree. Fortunately for the pregnant lady visiting from Dryden, and at that the very moment comfortably seated upon the outhouse throne, the bolt bypassed the outhouse and proceeded to strike a nearby shed. The shed, storing jute gunny sacks in the attic, immediately burst into flames, while the bolt bifurcated sending a ball of fire tumbling through the door of a nearby building.

Like a volunteer fire brigade, Fred Radford standing within ten feet of the strike, together with the other men, grabbed jute sacks now strewn about the yard, and beat out the fire. Fortunately, the event left only memories and no injuries. Everyone returned home happily from the annual event, after a particularly memorable day of games, socialising, and of course…ice-cream. Such was life at Amesdale, long days of work punctuated by rich and memorable events with family and friends.

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.