[oldcanada]

Rocky Mountains, 1938

RCMP Officer mounted

Source - LAC

[maybeedmonton]

"Bashaw RCMP CST Peter Vanderwater Poses In Ferintosh."

[maybeedmonton]

[thefortmuseum]

Old Hudson Bay Fort

Edmonton, Alberta

[historicaltimes]

The first photograph to be taken in Canada: Niagara Falls, 1840.

[all-albertan]

Fracking at least 100 Years Old in Alberta

“Nitro shooting” enhanced production at the Dingman No. 1 Discovery Well in 1914

They called it…

View Post

[historicaltimes]

A pile of American bison skulls waiting to be ground for fertilizer, c. 1870

[thefortmuseum]

Not just buffalo were stampeded off of cliffs and canyons by First Nations people, but pronghorn antelope as well.  Image is of an ancient pronghorn hunting trap. The map is of stone drive lanes in Southeast Alberta and the photograph at right is of archaeologists mapping a pronghorn drive lane north of the Red Deer River.

To learn about the past 10,000 years of hunting in Alberta check out albertahistoricplaces.wordpress.com. 

[peashooter85]

The Short Chamber .577 - 450 Boxer-Henry Cartridge,

When the Martini-Henry breechloading design was first adopted by the British Army, the caliber of the rifle was decided to be .45 cal. with 85 grains of black powder.  The amount of powder to be used was 85 grains.  Unfortunately there was a problem, it was hard to cram 85 grains of powder into a .45 caliber cartridge.  The famous .45-70 govt cartridge, for example, only has 70 grains of powder.  One simple result was called the “.450 long chamber”.  Essentially it was a simple, straight cartridge that was unusually long so that it could accommodate all the gunpowder.  However during military trials it was proved that the .450 long chamber was too long, so long that it made loading awkward and difficult. Not a good thing for soldiers reloading in combat.

 The solution to this dilemma was created by Colonel Edward Mounier Boxer of the Woolwich Royal Arsenal in Kent County.  Col. Boxer had the idea of taking a .58 caliber cartridge (.577 Snider), and forming a bottle neck near the middle of the cartridge. This allowed for a short cartridge in .45 caliber that could accommodate 85 grains of powder.  The chamber of the Martini-Enfield Rifle would likewise be bottle-necked in order to accommodate the cartridge.  Since he used a .577 cartridge with a .45 caliber bullet, the result was called the .577-450 Boxer.  Another interesting feature of the Boxer cartridge was the metal it was made out of.  Rather than solid brass the Boxer cartridge was made out of a type of brass foil called coiled brass.  The reasoning behind this feature was explained by Col. Boxer as such,

"My invention has for its object to construct the cases of cartridges for breechloading firearms and ordnance in such a manner that they shall rapidly expand by slightly uncoiling and stretching on firing so as to fill the chamber and will contract slightly after firing so as to admit of the empty case being easily removed."

Indeed the Boxer cartridge did “expand and fill the chamber”.  By the time of the Anglo-Zulu War (1879) the foil cartridge proved to be faulty.  The cartridge did exactly what it was designed to do, except when combined with heat and gunpowder fouling, the cartridge would often become jammed in the chamber.  Attempts at removing the cartridge caused it to tear, leaving half in the chamber and effectively disabling the rifle. Eventually the problem would be rectified by producing the .577-450 Boxer using regular solid drawn brass.

The Martini-Henry and the .577-450 Boxer cartridge served the British Empire throughout the later 19th century.  By the 1890’s they were fazed out in favor of Lee-Metford and Lee-Enfield bolt action rifles chambered in .303 British.  Production of the .577-450 generally ended in the 1950’s.  Today it is only produced by exotic ammunition manufacturers and hand loaders.

[omgthatdress]

Blackfoot dress via Christie’s

[coolchicksfromhistory]

Native women of the Blood Nation (Kainai Blackfoot) dressed in traditional vestments.

1907

[maybeedmonton]

Child with horses, Amber Valley, AB, 1930s.

History of Amber Valley: “One of the Black settlements created through the persistence of the Oklahoma African-Americans remains to this day. Amber Valley was settled by Black farmers who had been denied the same rights as others and who found the laws in Oklahoma to be more restrictive regarding Black rights. At the same time, the Canadian West was opening up, and settlers were actively being sought from the American Midwest. 

Beginning in 1910 with a few individuals, then in 1911 about 200 were prepared to face the stiff border crossing questions. Successful under the leadership of Jefferson Edwards, it was decided to move to an area some distance away from Edmonton to form their own community. At its height, there were about 300 residents and they eventually had their own all-Black baseball team representing Amber Valley. More would have migrated had there been supportive measures by the Canadian government to allow family and former neighbours to join them from Oklahoma. Now only a few families remain.” [via Black History Canada]

[thefortmuseum]

Stills from from the 1978 film "Days of Heaven" starring Richard Gere.  

Ambulance seen in the photo is part of the Fort Museum Collection.  

[terresauvage]

Michael Massie

Naked Shaman, n.d.

~

"It just so happened that I had been looking for ideas on what to make next, and this is a direct result of being able to go to the College library to sign out books. This time, I borrowed books that mostly were about African Art — and a majority of the works were masks. There were a number of pieces that gave me some ideas, but it wasn’t until I tripped one night in my studio, and as I caught myself from falling, I looked up to see these two bone pieces that I had tied together up in the ceiling ages ago, and from the angle that I was at that moment to them, I could see a place to have a face.

Now, these two pieces of antler have been hanging over my bench in my studio since I built it. They were tied together in this same way, and like many things, I would work on them until I knew exactly what I wanted. This time I spent some more time going through my ideas and finally saw that if I used another piece of bone, I could connect the two pieces at the top. When I put that piece of bone in place, I saw a way to make the face and I went from there with that idea.

The idea I was working on was the negative-space created by the sinew and the copper. As students at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, we were taught to look at everyday objects in a way that was not commonly seen. This often meant that we were encouraged to draw the negative space around an object(s), say, for example, a large rubber plant, rather than the plant itself — and by looking at things this way, you end up learning more than by just looking at the object(s) itself.

When I unhooked the antlers from my ceiling and stood them up on the table, to my surprise I found that they could stand all on their own without any support. Because of that, I wanted the work to stand the same way when is was to be put together.

I also wanted the sinew, which connects the copper to the bone, to represent tattooing, and with just that simple additive it works. The piece might now look like this was an easy thing to come up with — but in reality to have it look correct with the simplicity of the design was another story! As he was a shaman, I thought it appropriate to give him hooves.”

[thefortmuseum]

Janet Merlo, the lead plaintiff in a proposed class-action lawsuit against the RCMP alleging widespread harassment and discrimination, recently released a book detailing her 20-year career with the force.

[thefortmuseum]

FM.79.52

Hide Scraper

Bone handle with metal blade attached with rawhide.   Used for fleshing hides.

Object part of the Fort Museum collection. 

[huskywithablog-deactivated20130]

Tourist Brochure by paul.malon on Flickr.

[maybeedmonton]

[thefortmuseum]

Hudson Bay Co. fort near Edmonton, Alberta, Canada