Upper berth train ride old style

The historic Canadian Northern train that runs around Fort Edmonton has an early drop-down top berth. In later versions, the convertible seats got more comfortable, with upholstery instead of wooden slats. These converted into lower berths, screened off by heavy curtains. This basic sleeper car design still endures.

When we moved from Alberta to BC in the late 1950s, I saw the Rocky Mountains for the first time. There were mountain goats beside the track, and a whole long train to explore.

I couldn't decide which was more thrilling:  to climb the ladder to the snug top berth or to lie in bed looking out the window, enjoying the changing views of sky and trees through the night, soothed by the rhythmic motion and the clacking of the train wheels.

Many years later, my mother and I rode the Canadian from Vancouver to Toronto on a three day journey. For the long trip across mountain and prairie, we took a roomette, with tiny but perfectly cosy and adequate facilities.

There were two calls for dinner, early and late, signalling the times when passengers would go along to the dining car and enjoy delicious meals set out on elegant white tablecloths served using CN dishes and heavy silver cutlery.

In Toronto, we boarded the Ocean Limited, which took us as far as Sydney, Nova Scotia. From there, the ferry took us through the early morning to the small town of Port-aux-Basques on the west coast of Newfoundland.

The remainder of the journey to my mother's home city was accomplished by bus and took all day. We boarded at 7 am in Port-aux-Basques, and were greeted by our relatives in St. John's at 5 pm.

Newfoundland once had a narrow-gauge railroad, called, with affectionate irony, the Newfie Bullet. After this last province joined Canadian Confederation in 1949, the rails were torn up and replaced by the promised new road, the Trans-Canada highway. The completion of that long road from Victoria to St. John's accompanied the overall decline of rail travel. Unfortunate.

The superior speed and increasing accessibility of airplanes heralded the end of passenger trains as serious modes of transportation. Train journeys across Canada are prohibitively expensive. In terms of cost, they have traded places with aircraft; while once only the wealthier people could afford to fly, now train travel is the expensive luxury.

Edmonton design: cowboy boot

The shape of cowboy boots gives these planters an Edmonton flair.

The shop is located on 104th Street, near Whyte Avenue.

Photo: Carol Tulpar, August 2012

Livery Stable

Photo: an old livery stable at Fort Edmonton Park, August 2012

Livery. I first heard this word from Dad. I was born on his 49th birthday, and his stories were old-fashioned, like grandpa stories. He talked about going to the livery stable when he was a kid.

The Free Dictionary defines a livery stable as a business that "boards horses and keeps horses and carriages for hire." The contemporary equivalent of a livery stable would be limo rental companies, like Park Lane Livery and Rosedale Livery in Toronto, or Brentwood Livery in Kitchener-Waterloo.

The term livery comes from Great Britain, and it has other meanings. In the past it was "a distinctive uniform, badge or device formerly provided by someone of rank or title for his retainers." Livery once referred to uniforms worn by servants, and is now the "distinctive attire" worn by officials, or maybe  even members of certain companies.

The word goes back to the medieval days, when liverer meant an allowance of food or clothing. Today it is also used to describe the distinctive marking painted on aircraft. (Dictonary.com)

The City of London currently retains 108 tradition-steeped livery companies, descended from the guilds of the Middle Ages. Each has its own insignia and rituals. Some are of recent origin: for instance, the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists was established in 1992. By scrolling down its charter, a reader can learn the history of the still common term Journeyman.

Along with the ancient Tanners, Wheelwrights, Glovers and Farriers, there are also the Hackney Carriage Drivers (or cabbies, who drive "hacks"). Their order of precedence is 104, just behind the World Traders and Water Conservators and ahead of the International Bankers and Tax Advisers.

As for the old Edmonton livery stable in the photo, it existed simply to board horses and hire out horse and carriage combinations, complete with the necessary equipment to drive them.

Iron Creek meteorite, "now that the buffalo's gone"

Photo: The Manitou Stone stands before a photo of a huge pile of buffalo skulls with a man on top, RAM Aug 2012

Long ago beside Iron Creek, a tributary of the Battle River near Hardisty, Alberta, fell one of the largest meteorites ever to descend on Canada. Mark Lowey says this irregularly shaped lump of iron weighs 145 kilograms. The Blackfoot and Cree revered the Manitou Stone, associating it with the spirit of Old Man Buffalo, provider of food, clothing, and shelter.

Offerings were placed in front of the meteorite before hunting or war expeditions. When viewed from a certain angle, the stone appears to have a human face.

By 1866 the stone had been taken away by missionaries eager for converts. The Iron Creek meteorite was moved first to the Pakan Mission near Smoky Lake, then sent away to Victoria University in Cobourg, Ontario. Later it was housed at The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. After lobbying efforts by Albertans, it was returned to Edmonton in 1973.

At the time the stone was disturbed, an old medicine man warned that taking it from its place would result in war, pestilence, and the loss of the life-sustaining buffalo herds. Sadly, such conditions did prevail afterwards. Smallpox spread among the native nations, who had no resistance to it, and the Blackfoot went to war with the Cree. The once-teeming buffalo herds were decimated as the prairie was surveyed, fenced and farmed.

Today the Iron Creek meteorite stands in the Royal Alberta Museum, in the Syncrude Gallery of Aboriginal Culture. Its backdrop is a photograph of an enormous pile of buffalo skulls that was taken in Detroit in the late 1800s, following an American government attempt to wipe out the buffalo herds so that the native people could be forced to assimilate to white ways.

Saskatchewan Cree songstress Buffy Sainte Marie alludes to this history in her haunting song, "Now that the Buffalo's Gone." The story of the Manitou Stone also inspired a beautiful painting by Aaron Paquette.

As reported by Jen Gerson in the National Post a few days ago, native elders and museum officials continue to discuss the possibility and wisdom of returning the meteorite to the place where it originally descended to earth.

Wooden sidewalks and streetcars

The picture on the left shows the shaped wooden interior of an old street car that now runs back and forth across Fort Edmonton Park. Once a common sight, a wooden barrel, now a novelty, is visible through the window.

Before concrete became the norm, wood was used for train platforms and level crossings as well as sidewalks. I walked to Grade 3 on a sidewalk like the one below.

Some days we avoided walking on the cracks, or the nails that held down the planks, believing this would bring bad luck. The  chant went like this:

Step on a crack, break you mother's back.
  
                                 Step on a nail; your father goes to jail.

Storm windows with wooden frames

I enjoyed seeing the variety of Edmonton houses. The styles are different from those here in the Lower Mainland. Some still have old storm windows with three round air holes in the sash.

Wooden storm windows like these, seen near Whyte Avenue in historic Strathcona, used to be common.

I grew up near Edmonton. As a child, I remember opening the inside window so I could poke my fingers through the holes.

Prairie memories

Seeing these Fort Edmonton Park replica buildings set against an August thunder cloud evoked memories of my prairie origins in a sleepy town of false-fronted buildings and spectacularly changeable prairie skies.

The railroad was another essential feature of our town. During the fifties, Canada was a major wheat producer. Each day CN Rail carried trainloads of grain for export -- east to the lakehead and west to the Pacific coast.