How many times
have we done this trip . . . this same route? I never appreciated the intense
yellow colour of the Canola fields before . . . both sides of the road . . . as
far as you can see.
AND the
realization that almost every town/community is the ‘Home of . . .’ something
- like Trochu is the ‘Home of the Largest Golf Tea’;
The magnificent Painted Ukrainian-Style Easter Egg at Vegreville
The Giant Sausage that commemorates a 100
years of Sausage Making by the Stawnichy’s Meat Processing and the Buffalo
in Mundare, Alberta; or
Somebody’s collection of Thrashing Machines out in the
field
And the Giant
Canadian Goose in Hanna that we found accidentally when we took a wrong turn.
The Ukrainian
Cultural Heritage Village
What Heritage Park is to Calgary, the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village is to the Ukrainians of East-Central
Alberta.
As you walk through the entrance, you walk into a rather
austere late 1800 rural Ukrainian settlement.
Most of staff is
in character
And they have
tried to make all the buildings and surroundings as authentic as possible.
The Church
The RR Station and the Grain Elevator
The stores
Farm settings
Houses and Jail
Victoria Settlement Provincial Historic Site
Sheila found
mention of this unfamiliar site in some promotional material so we decided to
visit the Victoria Settlement as part of our Alberta Historic Sites Tour.
A Methodist
missionary, Reverend George McDougall, founded the Mission here in 1862. Then this Fort Victoria site became a Hudson Bay trading post in 1864.
Not a major
trading post, it became a small agricultural community of First Nations, Métis,
and Europeans set out in the French river lot system of narrow farms extending
back from the North
Saskatchewan River.
The Fort is gone
but the Church and the Clerk’s Quarters stand along side of a Cree Tepee and
the corner posts of the old Fort.
The inside of the
Clerk’s Quarters is outfitted and furnished as it was in the 1800’s.
An outstanding attraction had to be a very well-trained and enthusiastic guide, who, dressed in costume took us through the development and history of the Victoria Settlement and fed us the cookies she made that morning in the old wood stove.
