"We would go out in teams for picking blueberries,"
Shirley begins. "There would be four or five families in a
team. They would take a lunch, go in the morning and stay all day
with their kids. That was a blast, for the kids. They'd take
washtubs, and you had to pick your berries clean, because your mom
wasn't about to spend hours picking the weeds out of them. She
kept pretty close tabs on how many pails of berries you put in
there. But we ran around in the bushes and ate a lot—"
"—and the mosquitos!" Ruby adds.
"—and ran along with the team of horses. It was just like a
picnic for us, but our quota for the blueberry season, for my home
alone, was to have 100 quarts of canned blueberries." The
system was worked out for various wild fruits to make certain the
family had fruit for the winter.
The men took jobs away form home during the early years. Wills
Bowen worked on the construction of the Banff Springs Hotel and on
the road gangs that built the Lac La Biche and Athabasca Trails.
Other job opportunities included building railroad lines, mining,
helping other farmers, hauling freight for the Hudson's Bay
Company or Revillon Frères to outposts like Wabasca, Fort
McMurrray, and Fort Chipewyan.
Obadiah Place will reflect its community. By moving buildings onto
the site or rebuilding structures like the original ones, the
Friends of Obadiah Place Society will suggest to visitors a sense
of the community that once thrived there. By 1913, a school was
begun, and a nondenominational church was started the following
year. By 1931, when Pine Creek became Amber Valley and a post
office was established, the area boasted a small store and a new,
two-room school, serving more than 300 black residents.
"In the days when I went to school, the community was very
self-contained," says Norma Jean Bowen. "We had a
seamstress that did a lot of the sewing. We had a carpenter—Mr.
Brown—who did a lot of the carpentry." Mrs. Brodie, a
trained nurse, was midwife in the area for years. "She was my
midwife when I was born in the house that is out there now. We had
a community pound—if your animals got out and into somebody
else's field, they could take them down to the pound and you had
to pay to get them out."
Heritage Community Foundation Presents
