In the spring of 1906, my brother and I landed in Strathcona. We walked over the Low Level Bridge, the only bridge across the North Saskatchewan River then. In Edmonton, we teamed up with Mr. Huddlestone, A.R. Kells and F. Cassan. We hired a Mr. Higgins to take us out to Wabamun to look over land. He took us via St. Albert and Onoway and west to Lac Ste. Anne, and then south of Wabamun. We stayed at the C.H. Dunn farm. Higgins sent Mr. Laight with us to look over land northwest of the Wabamun Store - then situated at the east side of the bay where the Wabamun Provincial Park is now located. We all filed on land and went back to Edmonton and worked there asll summer.
My first work in Edmonton was on the Low Level Bridge, laying three inch planks on the floor of the bridge for twenty-five cents an hour. This was the going wage but one could get a full dinner for twenty-five cents.
In the fall of 1906, we bought a team of oxen and a covered wagon and started out from Edmonton on the tenth of November. We had to leave the wheels and get sleighs as there was soon two feet of snow on the ground. It took us five days to reach Mr. Cassan's place. Mr. Boswell was on the same section and that summer he had put up hay around the beaver dams. We fed the oxen all winter with his hay and returned work for payment.
In 1907, a Mr. Peck and I built the first school in the Sylvan District. Residents later built another school two miles north on the Lac Ste. Anne Trail. I worked for Mr. C.H. Dunn (who had the store) by travelling to Stony Plain for the mail and then on to Lac Ste. Anne. When we got a post office on the McClelland place, I delivered the first mail there. There is a story about the post office and road. Mr. McClelland and Frank Oliver came to Edmonton together. We got a few thousand dollars grant for roads along with the post office appointment. But when the Federal Government changed, the post office went and so did the money for the road.
In the fall of 1907, the first coal mine was started on mR. Dunn's homestead. He ws digging for watyer and found coal about fifty feet down. He had two miners from Edmonton digging coal. R. Kells and I were filling the hopper with a wheelbarrow and it was pulled up by horse power. During the time that I was there, he shipped coal to Edmonton. The packing plants used it, but it was slack coal. That was the last work I did at Wabamun until I went out to the farm in 1920.
The Wabamun District has to be thankful to the Lakeside Coal Company and the Calgary Power Company for providing employment foe settlers as the land was poor and stony. I worked sixteen winters in the mine and that kept me at Wabamun. When I sold my property in 1958, I was the only homesteader left. I will be ninety in August and I can still walk two miles when the weather is good.