I remember the first time I was touched by history. It was back in the early 30s. Pop hitched up the horses, Jimmy and Mandy, and the family all loaded into the wagon to drive to the North Saskatchewan river to pick high bush cranberries. I never liked the high bush berries but Mom wanted to can. It was to be an all day trip so a picnic lunch was in the wagon too. There were lots of berries in several places along the river but the best were on Joe L’Heureux’s* place. To get there we went through Roecliff School District and stopped at Joe’s to ask permission. Arriving at the spot we all got our buckets and spread out to start picking. I was maybe 7 but all alone at the time with my bucket and looking for a good place to pick when I stumbled into a good sized hole. There were enough leaves in the hole to cushion my fall so I picked myself up and carried on. Looking around I could see there were other similar holes that even at the time I could tell weren’t natural.

Years later while I was working at Fort Battleford I accompanied Campbell Innes on a search for the historic Eagle Hills fur trade post from the late 1700s. Well, he guided me back to Joe L’Heureux’s place and to the same site we had been picking cranberries. We found those same holes which turned out to be the remains of cellar holes of the fur trade post. Eagle Hills was the furthest west post on the Saskatchewan River in its time.

In the early years of the fur trade up the Saskatchewan River, the competing traders leapfrogged up the river building new posts. The idea was to be the first post the natives came to on their way down river with furs to trade. At Eagle Hills Cole’s post had been destroyed. As was common at the time, liquor was often traded for furs. This time one of the natives became out of control with drink and was given laudanum to quiet him down. Unknown to the trader one of his partners had already given that man a douse of laudanum and being overdosed the man died. The rest of the group of natives retaliated and killed some of the traders, the rest abandoned the post and the natives burned it down leaving only cellar holes for me to find almost 200 years later.

This story was reported in several places that I came across in my readings of local history, one by Arthur Silver Morton. It is also reported in David Thompson’s journals

*Another time at Joe’s we heard a big commotion in the barn. We all ran, including me, to the barn. There in a stall we found one horse standing and its mate lying dead. Joe said he had just been using that horse and it was quite a young horse too. He figured it must have been a heart attack.