maps as archives: mapping western canada david murray
Edmonton, Alberta in the 1850s, was a destination for gold panning in the Peace Country rivers of the North West Territories, and by the 1890s a departure centre for the Klondike gold rush via the Klondike Trail, overland to the Yukon. To accommodate the influx of immigrants and visitors, many hotels were constructed. In 2007, we were working on the renovation on the 1911 Pendennis Hotel on Jasper Avenue, turning it into the Ukrainian Canadian Museum and Archives of Alberta. As we stripped out much of the shabby interior we found that a much older wood-frame hotel had been incorporated, intact, into the 1911 building. It was the California Rooming House, re-named the Pendennis Hotel in 1904. Hidden in the building we discovered a trove of historic artefacts left behind by all sorts of visitors to the then North West Territories where (Fort) Edmonton was located, including surveyors, prospectors, settlers, Californian miners, land agents and entrepreneurial chancers. Among the artefacts hidden in the walls were several maps, including a map of the Peace River Country dated 1879-80 and a 1904 map of the Peace and Athabasca Rivers, both produced by the Geological Survey of Canada. We also found a 1903 map of the Dominion of Canada, published by the Ministry of the Interior before Alberta and Saskatchewan became provinces in 1905. The Peace River Country map documented an extensive field trip in 1879-80 to assess the geological structures of western Canada, its mineral wealth and its agricultural potential. This was undertaken by George Mercer Dawson who had joined the Geological Survey of Canada in 1875. The exploratory field trip also provided advice for the construction of a transcontinental Railway to Vancouver on the Pacific Ocean, which, as the Canadian Pacific Railway, was completed in 1886 and is depicted on the 1903 map we found in the hotel. Clearly the Geological Survey of Canada was paving the way for mass European immigration, settlement and the commerce that would soon follow. George Mercer Dawson was a geologist, author, teacher, civil servant, geographer, anthropologist, and paleontologist. In 1869 he enrolled at the Royal School of Mines in London which was organised and staffed by the Geological Survey of Great Britain to promote, along scientific lines, the development of the mineral wealth of Britain and its colonies. Dawson returned to Canada in 1872 to a position with the Geological Survey of Canada as a naturalist and geologist on the international boundary survey from Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains. In 1879 he undertook his monumental exploration of the North West Territories, now western Canada, from the west coast to the prairies. 1
City of Edmonton Archives
from the top: The Pendennis Hotel on Jasper Avenue, 1911 This 1903 brochure unfolds to be a large scale Map of Canada , found in the Pendennis exterior wall cavity in 2007. The unfolded map is on page 58. Detail of the annotated map of Northern British Columbia and the Peace River Country , G.M. Dawson Geological Survey of Canada 1879-80, Sheet III, also found in the walls of the Pendennis in 2007. This particular detail shows the Indigenous name for the Athabasca River, soon to be eliminated on later maps. The full map is on page 56.
David Murray. Pendennis Archive
David Murray
1 Suzanne Zeller and Gale Avrith-Wakeam, “DAWSON, GEORGE MERCER,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography , vol. 13, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003; accessed November 23, 2022 http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/dawson_george_mercer_13E.html
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on site review 42: atlas :: being in place
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