Fort Walsh...

5 August - The sun was shining so with a picnic packed off we set for a day trip to Fort Walsh which is located in Cypress Hills, unfortunately Chris was in the middle of Prairie Thunder exercise. I decided to take the Trans Can Highway 1 which took me out of Alberta and into Saskatchewan for a short while before we came back on ourselves into the Cypress Hills area. The journey seemed to take forever and at some points during the trip I wasn't quite sure where we were heading as after coming off the highway the roads started to twist and turn and go up steep hills (something we are not use to living on the prairie!). The scenery was beautiful, which was a welcome change from our tumbleweed and grass in Ralston, and as always lots of wildlife could be seen. Finally we came to Fort Walsh - in the middle of nowhere which straight away gave you thought as to how all the settlers all those years ago managed to trek across the prairies to arrive at such places and set up homesteads. We were pleasantly surprised to see other cars in the car park as we thought we might be the only visitors as the roads were dirt tracks and we hadn't passed anyone.

We had arrived just at the right time to go straight into a 12 minute film depicting what life had been like and the story of the 1873 Cypress Hills Massacre. Farwell's Trading Post was originally constructed to house Abel Farwell during the trading season of 1872-73. Across Battle Creek, in the same trading season, Moses Solomon and his men operated another trading post. A third group of people, the Nakoda or Assiniboine, moved into the general vicinity after a long hard winter. All three groups were involved in the Cypress Hills Massacre in June of 1873. The massacre happened all due to lawless days of the American whiskey trade at Farewell's trading post where the traders and Aboriginals had drunk too much whiskey and an accusation over a missing horse. After the event the Northwest Mounted Police came to in force law and order and built Fort Walsh. The main trade at the time was buffalo hide parchments.

After watching the film we then hopped onto a bus (typical American/Canadian yellow school bus) and set off for a tour round the hills looking at Farwell and Solomon's homesteads and where the massacre took place. We then drove to Fort Walsh and disembarked from the bus. We were greeted by 2 guides who were dressed in period Military Police costumes. Tegan and Fraser were invited with the other children to go off and get dressed up and have their own 'kids tour'. Fraser being a little shy wanted me to also go - so I think I was the biggest kid!! Mum and Dad went off with the remainder of the adults whilst Tegan and Fraser got to wear mini Red Military Police jackets and off we set for our tour. Our guide was brilliant and really played the part getting the kids to march and shout out orders. We looked at several buildings including the Sgt's mess, Offr's mess, commanders house, horse stables, gunnery, jail, courthouse. The children were told that we need to arrest 2 mums and a dad - so we offered up a Grandad - at this point I thought it was going to be a simple pull them aside. However the children had to march them to the courthouse where roleplay was carried out. The Capt was the prosecutor with the children as the jury and the 2 mums who had been caught drunk and hitting each other. My dad was being charged with supplying unlawful whiskey to traders - he was given a small card with things to say but he brilliantly improvised and the whole roleplay was hilarious.

After concluding our tour of the Fort we were driven back up to the information centre which had a small museum of artifacts to look at afterwhich we ate our lunch whilst looking at the fantastic scenery and enjoying the sunshine.

We decided not to drive home on the highway but took the cross country route through Cypress Hills and eventually coming out at Elkwater. The route took us through open pastures where the beef cattle roamed freely and often peered into our car, the road was a dirt track so I only drove at 35/40km but it was a lovely journey back. We stopped off at Elkwater for an ice cream before heading back to Ralston. We all agreed that we didn't know what to expect when we set off that morning but had had a fantastic day full of history.