East Central Alberta - Wetaskiwin and Beyond

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.