My sister and my sister’s child,
Myself and children three
Will fill the chaise, so you must ride
On horseback after we.
For a half century afterward Edmonton was an important trading and distributing point for all western Canada. Furs were sent from here down the Saskatchewan to York Factory on Hudson Bay, and supplies were packed overland to the Athabaska and taken by canoe to the head waters of that stream. Some were floated down the river to Lake Athabaska, thence into Great Slave Lake, and on into the Mackenzie, which carried them to the trading posts near the Arctic. Big cargoes of goods are still shipped by that route every year, and hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of furs are brought back over it to Edmonton, to be sent on to New York or London.
After the transfer of this northern territory from the Hudson’s Bay Company to the Canadian government, the town grew steadily. Its first real land boom occurred in 1882, when it was rumoured that the Canadian Pacific would build through here on its way to the Yellowhead Pass over the Rockies. The excitement caused by this rumour was short lived, however, as the officials decided to cross the mountains by the Kicking Horse Pass farther south. It was not until 1891, or almost ten years later, that the Canadian Pacific built a branch line to Strathcona, just across the river. A year later Edmonton was incorporated as a town, and in 1898 its growth was greatly stimulated by its importance as an outfitting post for the thousands of gold seekers who made their way to the Klondike by the overland route.
Four fifths of the coal reserves in the Dominion are in Alberta. In addition to the big producing mines, there are many “country banks,” where the settlers can come and dig out the coal for themselves.
Throughout central Alberta are many dairies that supply the creameries of Edmonton and other towns. Butter is sent from here to the Northwest and Yukon territories, and is even shipped to England by way of the Panama Canal.