Today we’ll be driving through Fort Macleod, Alberta. Every time we do that trip, I always remind our kids that’s where the father of one of my dearest friends was born, followed by saying that’s where Joni Mitchell was born.
This time, I said it while at my mother’s house. She then started to wrack her mind for the name of another celebrity that she thought was born there. After a few minutes of her describing who she was trying to remember, I realized that she was thinking of Fay Wray.
Vina Fay Wray (1907-2004)
Once I identified who my mother was thinking of, she realized that it was someone born in Cardston, not Fort Macleod.
Years ago Fay Wray was trending on social media because it was her birthday. My mother’s father, Leo Burgess, was born in Cardston and his grandparents were amongst the original settlers there. So I decided to look her up.
Born Vina Fay Wray, she was born near Cardston, Alberta in 1907. My great grandmother lived near Cardston with her family at that time. I wondered if the families might have known each other. They were all Mormons in the same stake (like a parish), so they could have known each other through church. Fay was born after the 1906 census, but I found her parents there. Using the census data, I mapped out where both families lived. It turns out the Wrays lived almost exactly midway between Cardston and Waterton, while my great great grandparents and their children lived east of Cardston, less than 10 km from town.
“Favourite Photo” is a perennial topic for the 52 Ancestors Challenge. The prompt started out hard enough the first year I participated in the challenge, because I had so many favourites to choose from. If I had realized back then that it was an annual topic, I wouldn’t have posted so many photos back then!
The other problem is that “favourite photo” suggests one photo that you love more than all your others. How to choose??? Simple! Simply read the prompt as “A Favourite Photo”!
Despite that, it’s still hard to choose. What I’ve decided to do is to try to post something I haven’t shared before. While maybe not my favourite, I’ve selected some photos of a memorable family road trip to Alaska in the mid-80s, when I was in grade twelve. I love road trips, and this is one that I’ve only done once (so far!).
Terrace is near the northwest coast of the province, near the Alaska Panhandle. Just over 300 kilometers away (about a four and a half hour drive) are the border communities of Hyder, Alaska and Stewart, British Columbia.
While the destination was novel, it was the journey that was the best. The easiest way to get from Terrace to Stewart/Hyder is along Highway 37. However, we took a less direct and even smaller route, Highway 113, which is now known as the Nisga’a Highway. It travels through lava beds (designated as Nisga’a Memorial Lava Bed Provincial Park in 1992) and the lands of the Nisga’a Nation.
(I’m cheating here. My photos of the lava beds and the Nisga’a territory from the road trip I’m writing about suck. In 2010, I, with my wife and some friends, took a day trip to the Nisga’a, but did not proceed any further north. My photos from that road trip are much better!)
The Nisga’a Highway ultimately connects to Highway 37, which travels north to the Yukon. My folks have actually driven the length of that highway, but we didn’t on this road trip. Rather, we turned west onto Highway 37A at Meziadin Junction. Between Meziadin Junction and Stewart is the Bear Glacier.
The glacier has shrunk an incredible amount in the decades since our road trip. It no longer touches the lake as seen in my photo and is but a sliver of its former self at this location.
At our destination, we stayed in Steward, which was (and still is) the much larger of the two villages. At the time, there was no customs or border station on either side of the border, although there was the remains of one that had clearly been used for target practice. The post office in Hyder was memorable, as it was in an old Airstream (or similar) trailer. I also remember a place selling “Northern Fried Chicken”.
This is a photo of my family at what is purported to be the start of the “Alaska-Yukon Highway.” Of course, I’m not in the photo because I’m the one taking the picture – with a 110 film camera! Otherwise, the whole family is visible here, although my youngest sister (sitting at the table) looks quite odd. It wasn’t the best of cameras, that’s for certain. While you can travel from Hyder/Stewart to Alaska, as shown in the sign, the highway does not officially bear that designation.
One thing we didn’t do in Hyder was get “Hyderized”, which involves taking a shot of Everclear at one of the village pubs. It once appeared in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most alcoholic drink in the world. (Guinness no longer publishes alcohol-related records.) No, Everclear was not something I tried until I was in university.
A great travelogue about Highway 37 (also known as the Stewart – Cassiar Highway, is Nearly 40 on the 37 by my friend Trevor Hughes.
A Deck of Ancestors 