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Home PageThoughts on the Peter Fidler Trail
Box 120
Islay, Alberta
Sept 11, 1998
Dear Bruce,
I have been trying to reconcile the entires of the last week of Peter Fidler's
1792-93 journal with the topography I have observed by travelling back and
forth across it. I cannot. I am convinced that this is because Fidler did
not realize that the "pretty large creek with pretty good current running
south-east (journal entry for March 16th) was the Painted or Vermilion River
in township 50, range 8.
His confusion is understandable. The Vermilion is a remarkable little river.
It rises in the flats south-west of Viking and flows in a northerly direction
to turn east near Two Hills. For a time it is not so much a river as a chain
of lakes. Then, not far from the chain of lakes, and about where Fidler
crossed it in November, it turns and flows in southerly direction until,
in township 50 it again turns to flow in a roughly easterly direction past
the town of Vermilion. For a few miles it flows in a very deep valley, and
then, at what early explorers called "the Elbow", it begins to
flow in a north-easterly direction to join the North Saskatchewan River
at Lea Park. It has made a huge "S"
What Fidler mistakenly thought was the Painted or Vermilion River (Journal
entry for March 19) was most likely the creek known today as Slawa Creek.
I am suggesting that Fidler's route, after he left "Oo-cut-tux"
and the sweat lodges in township 47, range 11 was somewhat more to the east
than MacGregor's map portrays. I believe Fidler crossed the upper reaches
of Buffalo Coulee (March 15), the upper reaches of Grizzly Bear Coulee (March
16), and followed the west bank of Stony Creek to cross the Vermilion near
Claymore. The rest of the entries for the remainder of his journey now make
sense.
Allen Ronaghan
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December 18, 1998
Dear Bruce,
Further to my note to of earlier this year, if it is accepted that Fidler
and his Blackfoot crossed Grizzly Bear coulee and followed the east bank
of Stoney Creek, then several points fit into place nicely:
1. - The "pretty large creek" of March 16, 1793 is the Vermilion
river of today. (Crossed in township 50,range 8, w 4.)
2. "The Big Hill" of March 18 must be the big hill in 14-51-5
wt, and Fidler was observing it from a high drumlin in township 53-6-w4,
due west of Clandonald. The basin in which Campbell Lake lies and in which
Campbell creek flows, lies between the two hills, making such a sighting
possible, as my wife Shirley and I observed this summer.
3. That same day, March 18, they passed "a Tent place where Canadian
free men have been remaining at all winter......" This is very interesting.
Fidler is in the vicinity of Mary Lake, tp. 53-7 an area where in the beginning
of settlement days French-Canadian Métis families hunted and trapped.
There is even a Mary Lake cemetery in which the the majority of burials
are of people with French-Canadian names.
The entire area is interesting. There are many lakes. One is known as Dead
Man's Lake and the name commemorates an encampment of Crees wiped out by
smallpox in 1870. Further east is Raft Lake, where I believe Paul Kane met
Maskipiton in the 1840s. To the north is Landon Lake, believed to be Fidler's
"swampy lake" on March 19. Some of this country is good for farming,
some has considerable oil and gas development. Some of it has plenty of
wild life, even today.
Allen Ronaghan