Home | The Black Settlements of Western Canada | Black Rural Communities in Saskatchewan and Alberta | Amber Valley/Pine Creek

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Amber Valley/Pine Creek

Amber Valley is clearly the best known of the Black rural settlements in western Canada, in part because of all the media attention it has received. This settlement has been the subject of Selwyn Jacob’s 1984 film, “We Remember Amber Valley,” an episode of the television series “A Scattering of Seeds” on the Edwards family of Amber Valley, a CBC radio documentary aired on This Morning in 1999, a segment on “On the Road Again” aired in 2000, dozens of newspaper, magazine and scholarly articles, and it is featured on several history websites.1

Amber Valley, also known originally as Pine Creek, is located north of Edmonton, just east of the current Town of Athabasca. The first Black settlers to take up land in the area arrived in 1910, followed by a much larger influx of people in 1911. The 1911 arrivals included family members and friends of the first settlers—a good example of chain migration—and many of the Black immigrants who accompanied Henry Sneed to Alberta and who has sparked such a strong reaction upon their arrival in Edmonton. Palmer and Palmer argue that the Amber Valley settlement had a sense of social cohesion that preceded the establishment of the community due to this process of chain migration and ties through fraternal organizations such as the Masons and Oddfellows that stretched back to Oklahoma.2 This may partially explain why Amber Valley was the only rural Black community in western Canada that survived largely intact into the post World War II period.

Like the other rural settlements Amber Valley was a remote and difficult area to homestead in 1910–11. The land was covered in heavy bush and had to be cleared by hand. This made it very difficult for homesteaders to clear sufficient land to raise commercial crops and to fulfil the requirements of the Homestead Act. Census records from 1921 indicate that after a decade of work the average farm in Amber Valley had between 30 and 40 acres planted in crops.3 In addition, the settlers at Amber Valley faced all of the same issues as at other settlements such as Breton or Wildwood. Although now just minutes away from Athabasca by automobile, in 1911 it took at least two days and often four to reach Athabasca over trails cut through the bush. The area was also low and had poor drainage so travel was actually easiest in winter when the ground water froze. The railway did reach Athabasca in 1912, but it was not until the 1920s that transportation became less of an issue.

Inevitably given these difficulties with clearing and draining land and travel to Athabasca, the residents settled into a self-sufficient, subsistence-based farming supplemented by seasonal off-farm work in sawmills, logging or construction, freighting on the Athabasca River, or working in Edmonton. Amber Valley residents, however, persevered and 75 of the original 95 homesteaders eventually received patents to their land—a higher success rate than in western Canada generally and significantly higher than the success rate in the Athabasca area.4

The community also quickly established a school in 1913 and a non-denominational church to serve the area Baptists and African Methodists in 1914. In 1915 the community began a tradition of holding an annual “picnic” that lasted for up to three days and featured sports, dances and dinners. Elements of this annual get together are still maintained through events at the Amber Valley Community Hall, and some descendants of the original Amber Valley settlers still return for these events.5 Amber Valley was particularly noted for its athletes and sports teams. Several boxers from Amber Valley achieved local and national prominence,6 as did athletes in other sports. However, it was the Amber Valley baseball teams which were particularly famed during the heyday of Prairie rural baseball in the 1930s.7

Without wishing to suggest that Canada was a “haven of tolerance,” Gwen Hooks has written that: “after the initial panic, most people settled down and accepted the black immigrants as friends and neighbors.”8 This was certainly the case with Amber Valley. The initial arrival of Black homesteaders in the area prompted the Secretary of the Board of Trade in Athabasca to write to Frank Oliver that: “when it was learned around town that these Negroes were coming out there was great indignation, and many threatened violence, threatened to meet them on the trail out of town, and turn them back.”9 In the end, no such violence occurred and as time passed the settlers at Amber Valley were eventually accepted as members of area organizations and participated in area political, social and economic life.

Unlike other Black communities in Alberta, Amber Valley continued to grow into the 1930s and probably peaked at a population of about 350 people. It was large enough to support a store, a post office and a small town centre. During World War II, however, Amber Valley lost population as some joined the Armed Forces and others moved to Edmonton and other towns and cities in search of better wages. After the war, changes in agriculture such as increased mechanization and larger farms produced a major movement of farm families out of rural Alberta, and this was true in Amber Valley as well. Many of the remaining families sold their land, and by the late 1950s Amber Valley was no longer a predominately Black rural settlement. Nonetheless, it survived as a cohesive Black rural community from 1911 to the 1950s—much longer than other settlements such as Wildwood or Campsie or Breton, and at its peak it was easily the largest of the rural Black settlements in western Canada and rivalled Edmonton in terms of the number and significance of the community organizations and activities it supported.

A number of Black families still live in the Athabasca area, and several still own land in Amber Valley. There are a number of structures associated with the community still extant—notably several farmsteads and a cemetery. One farmstead that also acted as the community post office was known as the Obadiah Place after its owner Obadiah Bowen. The farmhouse was built in about 1938 to replace the original log house on the property. It has been declared a Provincial Historic Resource by Alberta and has been partially restored. The site also includes several outbuildings that remain intact, but in need of restoration. There are other early Amber Valley farmhouses and farm buildings still extant in the community, though most are deteriorating. The other major community structure is a newer community hall and sports grounds used to host the successors to the old Amber Valley picnic and other community events. This hall dates from the early 1990s. Unfortunately the original Toles School at Amber Valley and the community church are no longer standing.

As in the case of Breton, there is considerable local interest and pride in this aspect of the history of Athabasca and area. The province has put up a roadside point of interest sign to commemorate Amber Valley. The Town of Athabasca Archives has a number of collections, including oral histories, that relate to Amber Valley, and Amber Valley features prominently in local history websites, publications and tourism materials.

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