To write any historical account of this area must include Father Grouard. Although he spent more time at other places, he was the person who allowed our Catholic Church to be built, as well as taking a nap in the attic while traveling through.
In all of the various events that took place in the early 1900’s and before, missionaries, in my opinion probably had the most profound effect on the Aboriginals and their way of life.
Father Emile Grouard was one of the first to come to the area as a young Priest. Sometimes there is no sense in re-writing something that has all of the information you want to convey so from the Redcliff Review of November 1, 1912.
There is a settlement in the far north which is coming into the public notice very much these days, because it is the head of navigation on the Lesser Slave Lake, and is destined, for a time at least, to be a distribution point for the great Peace River valley. The name of the town is Grouard. Almost everybody who is at all interested in the north country knows of the town; not so many, however, know of the man for whom it was named.
To go back in the records of time forty-nine years is no particular feat for the historian. That is what one might call contemporaneous history. But to go back that far in the history of the far north s to hark clear back to the beginning of things recorded, or nearly so.
The name Grouard has been indentified with the development of the Peace River Valley for the last forty-nine years, although the town of that name is but a few days old. It is a name which was taken
taken into the north by a man-a vary human, manly man, but yet a very good man.
Forty-nine years ago, when Emile Grouard penetrated the loneliness of the northern wilderness to carry the cross to the savage tribesman he was a young priest, invested in his holy orders only a year before. He was young in experience but he was strong in the enthusiasm of his pious mission, and brave in the faith of the greatest missionary church in the world. The perils and hardships of the north were far great than they are today, but where there was an unbaptized heathen to be taught the gospel, the obstacles could not be to great for this zealous missionary.
At that time, nobody but the agents of the Hudson Bay Co., an occasional stray trapper, and one or two representatives of the Government had ever visited the Slave Lake country. The Mounted Police had not yet sprung into existence, and the pale face was a novelty to the Indians, and not a very welcome novelty either. The civilized world looked on the north as a waste of snow and ice and worthless jungles. It was considered of not commercial interest beyond being an open range for fur-bearing animals.
Nobody but a man with the courage of a great cause could have taken upon himself to pioneer that country with the message of love, and deliberately isolate himself away from even the casual paths of civilized man. But such a zealot was Father Grouard.
Times have changed considerably since then. The Peace River valley today is the lodestone which is drawing the pick of men of the rest of the Canada, the Old Country, the United States, and a half dozen other countries. Its population, though small , is growing with surprising rapidity. From several different points railroad lines are racing to tap its mines of eternal wealth. The tide of civilization is sweeping northward like the rush of the Mississippi broken through its levees. In the fullness of his years, he can gaze from the head of Lesser Slave Lake in all directions, and see the seed he sewed in his youth bearing rich fruit.
Bishop Grouard, now a venerable, snowy, bearded patriarch of 77 years, is about to celebrate the golden anniversary of his priesthood. The event will take place on the 29th and 30th of June. The people of Grouard and the surrounding country are making elaborate preparations to mark it with a fitting celebration for such a significant event in the story of the north country.
The will be the biggest thing that has happened in a festive way so far in the history of Slave Lake; indeed, there may never by anything quite like it again. For these reasons the north folk are taking a tremendous interest in the perfection of the details of the program.
The whites will not be alone in doing the honor to the grand old man of the Peace River. Perhaps they will be only a minor feature of the celebration. For the word has been sent out among the remaining fragments of the northern Indian tribes, scattered as they are now, and from every part of the north tribesmen and halfbreeds are preparing to go to Grouard for the anniversary. These people, who have known Bishop Grouard the longest and loved him the best, see more plainly, perhaps, than the palefaces the actual significance of what they are to celebrate. To them the bishop is little less than a deity. And that may be said without impiety, for he has worked so much good among them for more than a generation that to them he is the physical manifestation of the great teaching which he brought.
So the Indians will gather from far and near, and they will pay their respects after their own way, not overlooking, of course, the great barbecue which is to be prepared. It will be the last great assemblage of these rapidly disappearing people, probably, and there is something tragically sad in the realization of this fact, and in the additional fact that it is the power of influence of one man, and he the representative of the white man’s religion, that has brought them together for the final grand pow wow.
The first sawmill and the first grist mill in the far north were built by the bishop. And he it was who first plowed the wonderfully fertile soil of the valley of the Peace. He shoe the site of the present town of Grouard and built the first house thereon. He is was who built the first steamboat on Lesser Slave Lake.