Wednesday, February 16, 2011
The turn of the century brought a call for municipal governments
to provide parks and open spaces for recreation. These calls went
unanswered until the start of WWI. The recruitment process
highlighted the fact that many Canadians were not physically fit.
It was felt that playgrounds were part of the answer to this
problem.
Service organizations were formed, including Kinsman, Kiwanis
and the Gyro Clubs. The efforts of organizations like these helped
the playground movement gain strength in Canada.
The Edmonton and Calgary Gyro Clubs were formed in 1921. The
Edmonton club wanted to be involved in the City's rapid growth and
focused on providing amenities for children. The development of
playgrounds became a natural fit.
The first Gyro Playground in Edmonton opened in 1922 at
Patricia Square (95 st and 108 ave). The location has since been
renamed Giovanni Caboto Park. The City of Edmonton provided the
land for the playground and the Gyro members were responsible for
landscaping, equipment, painting and maintenance.
During the 1920's, the Gyro Club started an annual carnival to
help collect funds for playground equipment.
New playgrounds opened throughout the city in the 1930's and
1940's and eventually the City of Edmonton assumed responsibility
for their operation.
In 1985, the three Gyro Clubs of Edmonton combined their
efforts to construct the playground that you see at Fort Edmonton
Park.
Sunday, January 09, 2011
Even in 1827 caution should be taken when partying on New
Year's Eve.
On New Year's, as 1827 turned into 1828 in Edmonton, the
blacksmith Mr. John Welch, imbibed a bit too much, as it turned
out. He decided to fire off one of the Fort's old signal cannons to
celebrate the New Year. As they found him the next day splattered
around the walls of the bastion with pieces of the misfired cannon,
the lesson is clear: artillery and rum do not mix. (Some of you may
have to change your Christmas plans accordingly.) - Tom
Long
Stay safe this festive season and Happy New
Year's from Fort Edmonton Park.
Cannon Incident at Fort Edmonton, 1827-28
From Brock Silversides - Fort Des
Prairies:
From a story by William Bleasdell Cameron (1862-1951), a
former HBC employee and later a journalist, wrote a short account
of the sobering incident entitled "The Missing Blacksmith." It
involves the turning of 1827 into 1828, Mr. John Welch, and the
profuse consumption of alcohol at this time in the Fort.
"One of the most marked of these
annual festivals and one longest remembered occurred at
Edmonton...The place at the time was a real fort, surrounded by a
high log stockade with a bastion in each of the four corners (by
the 1880s, Fort Edmonton V was in disrepair, and had no stockade).
In each of these bastions was mounted a one-pounder gun. Most of
these guns were ancient and rusty. They were seldom used except at
times to impress the savages (generally, this means to greet
incoming trading parties) and as the years went on it became a
question of how much longer it would be safe to fire them. It had
been the custom at the Hudson's Bay Company's forts that a big gun
should be fired at midnight of New Year's Even to welcome the birth
of the New Year.
"On this particular occasion the
firing of the big gun had been delegated to the fort blacksmith who
happened to be in that happy condition when the greater the noise
the better pleased he felt. At a few minutes before midnight the
blacksmith left the white or yellow lights of the big hall where
the fiddles were squeaking and dusky couples were whirling about in
their mocassined feet and a moment later the big gun went off with
a terrific boom and everybody cheered and took another drink. Then
the dancing and the general hilarity proceeded and kept up until
dawn was peeping in at the windows. The blacksmith had not returned
but a small circumstance of this kind in the heat of the
festivities passed unnoticed. About nine the next morning, when
some of the early risers began to move about the fort square, it
occurred to somebody to wonder what had become of the blacksmith.
They mounted to the bastion and there they found him, or at least
what remained of him. He was splattered about the wall with
fragments of the big gun. The one-pounder had been fired once too
often."
Sunday, January 09, 2011
Even for men who were fed eight pounds of meat a day, feasting
was still the central part of the holiday.
Aboriginal and British culture came together brilliantly at one
holiday -not at Fort Edmonton but at a different post. George Grant
recalls a Christmas wherein the assembled gentlemen tried
desperately to make a plum pudding using an old sugar sack,
pemmican (a dish of powdered jerkey, fat and berries), and a few
extras. Their high hopes seemed to fail when, in the middle of
dinner, it was checked on and had more the consistency of stew than
pudding. But the Chief Factor, or head of the fort, recommended
sagely another half-hour of boiling while dinner went on. In the
end, he was right, as the strange 'north-country' pudding turned
out so deliciously that, as Grant reported, "there was not one of
the party who did not hold out his plate for more."
Edmonton's 1848 Christmas dinner was no less spectacular. As
reported by Paul Kane, he and the gentlemen sat down to dine on
boiled buffalo fetus, a epicurean delight of the interior, buffalo
tongue, buffalo hump, whitefish browned in buffalo marrow (seeing a
theme?), dried moose nose, beavers' tail, wild goose, potatoes,
turnips AND bread.
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