Category: Telling Our Stories

Image: Herman Trelle in his wheat field, Alberta, ca. 1936. (SPRA 032.08.07.034)

In January and February, we featured Kay Trelle in our Telling Our Stories blog series. This month we’re going back a generation to meet his father, Herman.

Herman Trelle was an internationally recognized grain farmer who won many international grain championships and awards in the 1920s and early 1930s. The Herman Trelle family fonds (fonds 193) documents his life in the South Peace and journey to international renown.

Trelle took over his family’s farm with his wife Beatrice in 1920, when his parents retired.  By this time, Herman had already spent many summers proving up his homestead and working on the family farm.  He also completed an undergraduate degree from the University of Alberta, and enlisted in the 1st Depot Battalion, Alberta Regiment during World War I. After the war he married Beatrice Irene Burdick whom he had met while working in his father’s mill.

Herman and Beatrice Trelle farmed very successfully near Saskatoon Lake, and soon gained international recognition for growing prize winning grain in the Peace Country. Their first award was at the Edmonton show in 1922 for Ruby wheat and Banner oats. Only one year later, they won third prize in spring wheat at the Chicago Fair. This was the beginning of multiple awards.

In 1928 the Trelle farm won a double championship in wheat and oats at the Chicago Fair: the first time in history that the two championships had been won by a single competitor. According to an article by Ina Bruns, “from 1926 to 1934 he won 135 international awards. Between 1926-1928 he and his wife entered 56 exhibits in thirteen major shows and won 43 championships, 14 were international. In 1931, Herman Trelle won not only the wheat crown, but world titles for oats, rye, flax and timothy.”

To achieve these distinctions during the Great Depression brought hope for a hungry world. Trelle was a motivated self-promoter, and made use of his title as World Wheat King to bring international attention to the South Peace area. In 1931, after winning numerous international titles, Herman and Beatrice embarked on a promotional tour around the globe. Fonds 193 contains numerous documents related to Trelle’s World Tour, including: travel artifacts, letters, and more than 300 photographs and postcards. According to Trelle, the trip had been financed by Canadian Pacific, although this claim was later disputed when the family’s mounting debt forced them to relocate to Grande Prairie. The travel documents within the collection chronicle numerous speaking engagements and social events but provide little information on the source of financing. However, many of the postcards are from hotels owned by Canadian Pacific Railways.

On February 3, 1931, Herman and Beatrice left New York on the Empress of France on a round-the-world tour on the Canadian Pacific Steamships lines. A typical world tour lasted 128 days and included the Mediterranean, North Africa and the Holy Land, through the Suez Canal and into the Red Sea, then to India, Ceylon, Southeast Asia and the Dutch East Indies, on to China, Hong Kong and Japan, then across the Pacific to Hawaii and California before traversing the Panama Canal back to New York. The Trelle’s tour includes many of these locations but appears to have been much longer. They were still touring in January 1932 and planning to sail on the Empress Russia from Kobe, Japan in February.

Trelle’s work, along with that of other grain award winners, proved the potential of the rich farmland of the Peace River Country. His world tour turned the agricultural limelight on the north and encouraged many to settle in the South Peace. His records document the global attention and hope directed at this area during the Great Depression.

This article was originally featured in the December 2018 issue of Telling Our Stories.

Herman and Beatrice in Gibraltar, 1931 (SPRA 193.02.06.10)

Above: A diagram drawn by Kay showing “revised castering” on a bicycle. (From SPRA 438.02)

This post is continued from Kay Trelle, Missile Man: Part I, featured here on January 11, 2023.

The next project was the Boeing 747 Drone Carrier in 1969. This was “a concept for launching and retrieving un-manned aircraft, using as a carrier a modified 747 commercial airplane.” The idea was that if there was another war, commercial jets such as the Boeing 747 could be quickly outfitted as drone carriers. Kay’s responsibility was “to create and analyse various military derivatives for the 747 airplane.”

From 1971-1973, Kay spent much of his time inventing, designing, and building an expandable recreational vehicle in the basement of their Seattle home. The vehicle was completed and licensed in the state of Washington, Kay and Mae began the patenting process and explored potential markets for its production. The costs of engineering and patenting each individual part were so expensive the project was not feasible. The expandable camper sat for years in the garage on their Lake Saskatoon property.

In 1972 the Trelles returned to Canada, and in 1973 Kay assumed a new position with Lockheed, this time with their Petroleum Services (LPS) in New Westminster, British Columbia, which offered a comprehensive subsea well completion, production, and service system to the offshore oil industry. His primary function was to establish project definitions and program planning, review engineering and design in general for conformance to specifications, and good engineering/design practices.

Kay concluded his career as a Professional Engineer at TRIUMF, the tri university meson facility which is Canada’s national laboratory for nuclear and particle physics research. It is located on the campus of the University of British Columbia. TRIUMF is owned and operated by a consortium of universities to provide a world class facility for research in the areas of particle and nuclear physics, molecular and materials science, and nuclear medicine. TRIUMF was interested in building the KAON Factory, a nuclear accelerator such as they had in Caen, France, and in 1985, the Trelles traveled to see work being done on the super collider between Switzerland and France. They went on to Germany, where a linear accelerator was assisting with treating cancer of the kidney, a medical benefit of that research. They were treating brain tumors at the Caen factory. There was a lot of free exchange with no political interference, but the Canadian ambitions did not come to fruition because the accelerator was so expensive. It was, however, a rewarding end to Kay’s career.

During his lifetime, Mr. Trelle was a registered member of the Association of Professional Engineers of British Columbia; a member (Honor Pledge 1950) of Alpha Eta Rho, International Aviation – Engineering; a member of the Engineers and Architects Association, Southern California; a member of the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences, International; and a general building contractor in the State of California. Outside of his work, his hobbies included Egypt and its archaeology, geology, and designing and building models such as a geodesic dome. He also spent many years trying to solve the problems for creating the Magnet Motor which, as a source of perpetual and clean energy, he described as “every engineer’s dream.”

In 1987, Kay suffered his first stroke, and after his rehabilitation the Trelles retired to the Saskatoon Lake area near Wembley, Alberta. They purchased a property directly adjacent to the original Trelle homestead, and built their home next to the wildlife sanctuary on the shores of Saskatoon Lake. In June 2011, Kay and Mae donated their personal records to the South Peace Regional Archives; they are preserved in Fonds 438: R. Kay Trelle fonds.  Kay died four months later on October 19, 2011.

This article was originally featured in the September 2020 issue of Telling Our Stories.

Above: Kay Trelle and Rex Ford, another first year engineer from Douglas Hall, in front of the Engineering building at Queen’s University in December 1940. (SPRA 193.02.03.42)

Kay Trelle spent most of his career working for the aerospace industry in the United States. It was an interesting time of rapid growth in the aerospace industry, with the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Space Race to land on the moon. For much of that time, he worked in secrecy for Boeing and Lockheed on projects such as the Polaris and Poseidon missiles, and the drone-carrying Boeing 747. While he recognized these accomplishments, his greatest thrill was always the challenge of solving the next problem. He returned to Canada in 1973 and retired to the Lake Saskatoon district in 1990.

Roy Kay Trelle was born at home to Herman and Beatrice Trelle on August 18, 1924, near the hamlet of Lake Saskatoon, Alberta. He started his education in a two-room school at Lake Saskatoon and finished high school in Calgary when his father was stationed there during World War II. When Kay turned 18 in 1942, he enlisted in the Canadian Air Force and trained with the Commonwealth Training Program in Vancouver, British Columbia. After the war, he traveled down to the United States to visit his family who had just moved to California. While he was there, his father was murdered by a disgruntled farm worker. Extending his visit to help his mother and 12 year-old brother during this crisis, Kay overstayed his visa and was drafted into the American Army. He served for two years with the occupation army in Japan. After his military service, he stayed on in California to attend the Cal-Aero Technical Institute. He graduated in 1950 with an Honors B.Sc. in Mechanical/Aeronautical Engineering, and received a special letter of recommendation from the president of the college. He married Dorothy Smith in 1949, and was divorced in the 1950s.

After graduation, Kay worked with Convair, an American aircraft manufacturing company. In 1952, he took a position as Design Group Supervisor with Hiller Helicopters in Palo Alto, California, where he directed engineers and draughtsmen on helicopter basic structures and mechanical design. He later  went on to become a Consulting and Design Engineer for Cook Research Laboratories in Redwood City, California, in 1957.

In 1958 Kay was hired by Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, and three weeks later became part of a thirty-three member international team (called the Skunkworks) designing the Polaris Missile. He was working there during the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. The Polaris Missile is still being used today on the Trident Submarine. Kay designed the release mechanism for the missile. He received a special commendation “for demonstrating outstanding imagination and design conception versatility resulting in substantial cost conservation benefits to the Polaris Missile Design Project.” When the Poseidon C3 Task Force was formed in February, 1964, Kay was included as a design specialist and lead engineer. He received his second commendation for his work on the Poseidon “design solutions for re-entry system installations, structures, and separation devices.” The letter states that Kay’s “valuable contribution will result in missile systems of high quality and will extend the success of LMSC in missile system programs.”

In 1966, Kay married his World War II sweetheart, Mae Morton, whom he had first met while in the Canadian Air Force Commonwealth Training Program in Vancouver. The couple had lost contact during the war and Mae assumed that Kay, like too many of his fellow soldiers, had died during the war. Kay re-established contact in 1965 and, after a separation of twenty-three years, they were married in 1966.

That same year, Kay moved from Lockheed to Boeing Aircraft Corporation in Seattle as a design specialist and lead engineer, with his primary responsibility “to develop an entirely new bomb suspension concept for tactical fighters.” The fighter program was being carried out in Germany and Kay took German language classes to facilitate his work. It was all for naught as the program was abandoned in November 1966.

Image: I.O.D.E. member, Ann Watson, with Meals on Wheels, 1981 (SPRA 111.04.110)

Scattered throughout the Archives’ collections, we see evidence of communities in the South Peace coming together to feed the hungry. Friends and neighbours have often banded together when times were tough, but as the community has grown, so too has the need for more structured support. In 1919, Captain Gains and Martha Nelson established the Salvation Army in Grande Prairie. They and other local churches and organizations provided meals to those in need at free community dinners.

During the Great Depression, the relative agricultural prosperity of the region brought many debt-ridden homesteaders north in hopes of finding better living conditions. Assistance provided by the Unemployment Relief Act was supplemented by groups such as the Women’s Institutes and the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire (I.O.D.E.). These groups, and others, made hampers and hosted dinners through the Second World War and beyond.

In 1972, Meals on Wheels was introduced to Grande Prairie, delivering hot meals to those who were unable to cook for themselves at home. Many organizations helped administer this program to keep costs low, including the Royal Purple, Kinette Club, and the Welcome Wagon.

In the early 1980s, when Alberta’s economy was particularly hard hit, community groups again stepped in to offer help. The Grande Prairie Friendship Centre began offering Christmas hampers in addition to their regular programming and, in 1997, partnered with a number of community groups on the Canada Pre-Natal Nutrition Program.

The Grande Prairie food bank amalgamated with the Salvation Army Family Services in 1989 and, a few years later, opened a soup kitchen to assist those experiencing homelessness. More recently, in 2019, the Grande Prairie Friendship Centre and the Salvation Army partnered to combine their kitchens in one centralized location to better meet the needs of the community.

Especially during the holidays, these groups remind us of the power of food… and a little kindness.

Image: Wanham’s Main Street in 1931 (SPRA 018.03.50)

The following excerpt was taken from the diary of Maria Wozniak.  Maria’s diary was originally written in Polish, and has been translated and transcribed by her son Mathew.  Here she writes about the Wanham-Codesa fire of October 22, 1942.

My husband is in much pain.  The next night he can’t sleep because of the pain in his leg.  October 22, 1942, the owner of the sawmill was driving to the mill in the bush and stopped in to visit us.  It was as if the Lord sent him.  Seeing him, I asked Mr. James Emerson if he could take Antoni to a doctor.  He looked at the leg and said that in Tangent, there was a government nurse and he would take Antoni to her.  In a while, we both took Antoni by the arms and led him to the half ton automobile.

Before harvest, my husband built a small pigpen from round trees about 16 x 16 feet and the threshing machine blew straw over it.  In the pen was a door about 4 x 4 feet.  Inside the pen was spread straw and so prepared a place for our sows and other animals for the winter.  1942 was dry and the fall was without rain.

Mr. Emerson took my husband to the east to Tangent about 20 miles and in the west there began to appear clouds of smoke.  I stood the sick cow “Masia” on her feet.  I dropped her a bundle of hay for her to eat.

Fear overtook me about the fire from which so many times I defended our property.  The first thing was to harness the horses to the plow and make a fire guard in the field to the west of our buildings so the fire does not come here.  Quickly we achieved this task and were ready to plow.  Our Eddy did not go to school that day so I took him to the neighbors to the east, Hrishuks, asking them to watch over our son.  Fortunately, at the time I was plowing the fire guard, Bill Sanoski came over and took over the plowing.  The wind came up about noon and then came approaching danger.  While Bill plowed I went with fast steps to where there was a low place where water gathered in the spring, by that place we had dug a well and got some water.  Then I went to the barn and chased the cow and calf out.  From the west the fire is coming closer.  Already we can see the leaping flames.  I ran around like a lunatic, I have very little chance of saving anything.

I take out of the house anything I can carry to the garden.  Then came frightening wind like it was a storm.  Mr. Sanoski is doing everything he can and keeps plowing.  The fire jumped over in a few places and the whole field is burning.  All the pigs are running to their pen where there is much straw.  I poured full their troughs with feed that was farther away from the pens.  The hogs went to eat because they were hungry.  Soon they were ready to return to their pens.  I had armed myself with a good stick and stood in the doorway, our two dogs helped me.  I know for sure that the straw pile is on fire from the flying sparks.  Everywhere there was fire and smoke and it’s hard to breathe.

Smoke is hurting my lungs and I am tired.  I go to the garden and kneel looking at the burning buildings and granaries with grain in them.  The view is frightening and the wind goes like crazy.  Seeing the fire, people from the district gathered and began to save our neighbour.  They stood in a row, both men and women with wet sacks began to extinguish the fire against the wind and in that way saved our neighbours’ buildings.  With digging and plowing they were able to save them all.  This was the neighbour where our son was staying at.

My husband and Mr. Emerson returned and did not recognize the place.  The fire had taken our harvested crop.  Somehow our new unfinished house was saved.  On that memorable night we sat at our neighbours, Mr. Paupst’s place.  Here, too, the neighbours helped save the buildings.  People that were built to the west of our place, like Tom Bergeron Bouchard, Soquet, Fred Lewis, Wojenski, and Scott and many others, not only lost their buildings but lost livestock.

At 5:00 in the evening, the police came to see if anyone had lost their lives and how bad were the losses.  We lost practically no animals.  There were 110 hogs and the cattle were in the pasture where there was not enough grass for the fire to go.  In the evening rain began to fall and the ground was covered with snow in the morning of the 23 of October.

A note from Maria’s son, Mathew Wozniak:

The fire started some place in Wanham and a matter of a few hours went about 10 miles.  Daughter Cecelia was with Bill plowing the fire guard.  She said that they were in an open field and flames singed the horses’ manes.  In those days, bundles were hauled in to be threshed so there was very little to burn, just the stubble.  The granaries that were full of grain burned and the grain spilled into a cone and kept smoldering.  It was important to keep the livestock from getting to these grain piles.  A gallon of grain eaten by an animal that had been on grass would most likely kill it.  All land clearing at that time was done with axe, saw, and grub hoe, piled and burned so fires getting away were a common problem.

Image: Reproduction from Jerry Stojan’s slide collection: Roddy Moberly (left) and Horst Buchholz (right) display the antlers from Buchlolz’s moose. (SPRA 2018.040.23)

Jerry Stojan emigrated from Czechoslovakia with his parents in 1926. Jerry married Irene Lenoir of Ontario, and they had two children, Charles and Linda. Though Jerry spent many years occupied as a farmer and horseman, he also enjoyed time as a hunter and avid outdoorsman. In his later years, Jerry pursued a career as a hunting guide and outfitter.

Jerry’s team packed horses into the mountains southwest of Grande Prairie and established base camps before hunting season. The Kakwa-area mountains where Jerry brought his clients were home to big game animals such as sheep, caribou, elk, moose, and bear. He often worked with local guides, including Roddy Moberly and Alex Moberly. Jerry’s clients harvested animals both for their meat and trophies.

In 1969, Jerry coordinated two hunts for the American Broadcasting Corporation to be featured in the television series The American Sportsman. In a letter to the show’s producers, Jerry committed “30 head of horse (10 saddle and 20 pack) tents, heaters, camp cook, spotter, packers, food bedrolls etc. as per [their] telephone conversation” for the hunt. The episodes would feature singer Vic Damone hunting bighorn sheep and actor Horst Bucholtz hunting moose.

On October 10th, the Daily Herald-Tribune reported “the stars are whizzing through [the] city airport” as these two celebrities crossed paths in Grande Prairie: Damone leaving after a successful hunt and Bucholtz arriving to begin his own. The article boasted that “every other hunter that has gone to the camp has got his animal, with the help of Indian callers; and under the watchful eye of the Stojans it is hard to imagine anyone not getting a moose.” Horst Bucholtz was indeed successful hunting a moose.

Airing throughout the United States, The American Sportsman episodes emphasized the beauty of the Albertan Rockies, the thrill of hunting big game animals, and the knowledge of the local hunting guides. Observing a herd of caribou with Vic Damone,  Jerry explains “they’re starting to move down to the winter range. They normally range about ten, fifteen miles west of here and they migrate about sixty miles off to winter range down on the Kakwa River.” Later, approaching the bighorn sheep shot by Damone, Jerry demonstrates how to determine its age by counting the growth ridges on its horns: “every year they’ll grow during the good feeding season and in the winter, they create a ridge. That’s how you count them.”

When the episodes originally aired , Jerry travelled to the United States to watch them; later, he was provided with 16mm film copies of the episodes that he shared with friends on a projector. Jerry’s daughter, Linda, recently donated these films and contextual archival documents to the Archives, as well as a collection of slides that document Jerry’s many years of hunting and guiding in the South Peace.  These records will be added to the Jerry Stojan family fonds (fonds 253) to provide a more thorough narrative of Jerry’s life and career. They will also demonstrate how a sheep and a moose brought Hollywood to the South Peace and back again.

Image: Postcard sent by Madeline Hanni-Lozeron to her brother Pierre in Canada, 1902 (SPRA 006.04.01.01)

The history of postcards dates back one hundred and fifty years. Immensely popular, these affordable, attractive, and sometimes kitschy items likely owe their existence to stamps.

Before the 1840’s, mail rates varied depending on the number of sheets in a letter and on the distance the letter travelled. Postage was payable upon receipt of the letter. If the addressee refused the letter, the post office was out of luck. The Postmaster General of England, Sir Rowland Hill, proposed two of the changes we take for granted today: postage should be at a set rate to anywhere in England, and the sender should pay it. Proof of prepayment would be required. That proof of course, was the stamp, and in 1839, Sir Hill’s proposals were passed in the Penny Postage Act. The first penny postage (called the Penny Black because of its black background) first sold on 1 May 1840 and the first Canadian stamp (the Three Penny Beaver) was issued 23 April 1851.

The penny postage made mail affordable and more reliable. Paper cost was still an issue. Luckily, postal cards soon followed the new postage system. Like many popular, mass produced items, there is some question as to where and who developed the first private postcard. We can only be certain that, by the 1870s, governments began to issue “postals” – plain cards with a stamp image on the back.

Now people had their stationary and postage all together for one affordable price. But plain cards were not enough. Printed envelopes had become quite popular in the 1850s; the same was soon true for postal cards. This likely contributed to one of the major lasting changes in the production of postcards – the divided back.

Because original postcards were plain, the recto (front) side was used for message writing while the verso (back) side was strictly for providing a delivery address. England was the first country to approve the divided back on postcards in 1902. This provided space for writing and an address on the back of the card, leaving the front unblemished.

Postcards form a small but important part of our holdings and they convey valuable evidence about people and the places they lived and visited. Most of the postcards spread throughout our holdings are view cards (images of cities or places), greeting cards, and photographic cards (people). We are also lucky to have several “silks” (embroidered cards which were immensely popular as gifts during the Great War) and a number of humorous “topicals” from each of the wars. A timely gift to friends and family in the past, postcards can provide a wealth of information about social past-times, personal relationships, and changes in the urban and natural landscape.

You can create your own history. Next time you take a trip, send yourself postcards featuring sites of interest. Jot down a quick reminder of your special moments and when you arrive home, you will have a pictorial and a textual reminder of your holiday. You could even do this for staycations. Slip them into sleeves or a travel box and you have an instant travel archives to share with family now and in the future.

This article was originally featured in the December 2018 issue of Telling Our Stories.

Image: Lucy Lundblad taking the girls fishing, May 1940 (SPRA 175.055.05)

People often compare research at the Archives to digging for treasure. I think it is a little bit like fishing. The best place to start fishing at the Archives is through our website. Hopefully you already know your way to our online fishing hole. If not, what are you waiting for? Let’s get started.

When you embark on a fishing expedition, you need three things: bait, tools, and a place to fish. When conducting research, your search terms will act as your ”Bait.” The best way to dig up bait is to annoy your relatives with a lot of pesky questions about your great-grandaunt or that distant patriarch who supposedly robbed a train. All that annoyance activity should help you generate a list of names, dates, and places to research. Every tiny morsel has potential for your bait list.

Next, you need your tools. You will want to take notes as you go otherwise, you may find yourself returning to the same spot to retrieve that fish you lost. So grab your pencil and paper, start up that excel spreadsheet on your tablet, or open that cloud doc on your phone. Be ready to record your catch.

Now you need a place to fish. Ready your bait and cast out into the waters, or in this case, our online research “sweet spots”. Last year, over eighteen thousand visitors from around the world visited our website to fish for answers. There are several prime spots to choose from starting with the finding aids— where we list all the archival collections already arranged and described. These collections include a brief history about the creators and may yield all that you need. There are also several online databases that allow you to “fish” through indices for community history books, reference files, and newspapers, as well as our digitized photographs. Even our most experienced fishers may not realize that the Archives is also home to an expanding library related to the South Peace Region. We keep a list of our reference books online for your browsing pleasure.

In some cases, you may find all you need at our online destination: that story about great-grandaunt Sela’s lingerie and haberdashery business  in the collection biography or the photograph of that rascally five-times-great-grandpa Johnson on your mother’s side (no! your father’s side!). It was just what you were fishing for. Your successful foray may also yield bigger bait, for which you will need to take your boat into deeper waters. In this case, deeper waters is the Archives facility itself. There you can cast your line into archival folders, reference files, and photograph collections.

This part of the fishing expedition is often the most rewarding and sometimes the most disappointing. The thrill of seeing new sights does not always make up for the lack of discovery. Not all fishing expeditions are successful in the actual fish-catching department, after all. Sometimes the success is in being able to take part in the excursion.

This process of discovery is one of the beautiful things about archives in a democratic society. Except in collections where personal privacy is a consideration, our records are open to the public. Online resources and on-site collections allow “fishers” of all skill and interest levels to “fish” through the records for information about their families, local history, and government records. We keep a healthy stock of various types of fish – textual documents, photographs, maps, film and audio recordings, to name a few, in order to provide a reasonable chance that you will find the fish you are looking for when you visit our website or enter our doors.

Of course, it helps to have a guide with you when searching unknown waters for records. The friendly staff at the South Peace Regional Archives are happy to show you how to set your bait and where to fish in the hopes that you will reel in the big one. Maybe it will be the catch of the day.

This article was originally featured in the September 2018 issue of Telling Our Stories.

Bill Archer and Murray Carlisle fishing in Contrary River, 1941. (SPRA 399.09.22)

Image: Pigeons of several varieties in a pen, part of Vince Durda’s collection of exotic birds, July 1979 (SPRA 002.05.06.524)

There is no lack of exciting stories and extraordinary pieces of history to be found at the South Peace Regional Archives. Nestled among the Sports, Recreation, and Leisure reference files are news clippings detailing the unique story of a group of 10 local pigeon enthusiasts who joined forces in 1987 to create a club fit for sports fans and bird lovers alike: the Grande Prairie Pigeon Racing Club. Pigeon racing is a sport in which trained racing pigeons are released by their owners at a specific location, often ranging from 150 to 950 kilometers away. The pigeons are then monitored using a clocking machine that is placed on their legs and measures the distance travelled per second as they make the return flight home. The bird that arrives home the fastest is declared the winner of that day’s race, and often earns a sum of prize money for their owners. The Grande Prairie Pigeon Racing Club’s 1987 season ran from May to late August, with races taking place every weekend.

Bob Lange, a Clairmont resident and one of the Grande Prairie Pigeon Racing Club’s founders, had a passion for pigeon racing long before the club was established. In the 3 May 1984 edition of the Daily Herald-Tribune, Lange described his 50-year-long history of training and breeding pigeons for racing. According to the article, Lange owned about 500 pigeons from locations such as France, Belgium, England, Ireland, and the United States: some of which had cost him as much as $1,200. Lange detailed the long process of training a racing pigeon, which he recommends begins when the pigeon is about three months old. The initial training starts by taking the pigeon about 1.5 to 8 kilometers away, and having it return home from each direction. The distance is gradually increased until eventually the pigeon can complete a 480 kilometer trip. At the time the article was published, Lange was breeding pigeons using “proven birds who have flown at least 1,600 kilometers” for other clubs and individuals, however he expressed his hopes for setting up a racing club in the Grande Prairie area (DHT, 3 May 1984). Lange later accomplished this dream with the establishment of the Grande Prairie Pigeon Racing Club.

Members of the Grande Prairie Pigeon Racing Club saw their fair share of races gone wrong. Herald-Tribune staff member Stephen Fletcher once observed that “when your racetrack is in the sky, there’s no telling what an ill-timed air current can do,” leaving lots of unpredictable variables in each race (DHT, c 1990). Between the pigeons losing their sense of direction, taking a break in comfy-looking barns along the route, or the ever constant threat of prey-seeking marauders, there are plenty of opportunities for racing events to go awry. Mike Wright, a founder and former president of the club, knew this all too well. Wright shared various stories of mishaps in his pigeon racing career with the Daily Herald-Tribune. One of these involved a hawk with a very expensive palate. Just weeks after purchasing a very speedy, champion racer for $10,000, Wright learned the hard way that high prices don’t guarantee results. His new prized-pigeon became a lunchtime meal for one of the Peace Region’s many birds of prey. The truly unpredictable nature of pigeon racing means that even with proven winners and well trained racers, there are rarely any certainties when it comes to the sport.

These clippings show years of passion and dedication towards breeding, training, and racing pigeons. Through these records, it is apparent that the Grande Prairie Pigeon Racing Club gave community members in Grande Prairie and the surrounding areas a unique opportunity: to learn and appreciate the many challenges and triumphs that come along with the excitement of pigeon racing.

Daily Herald-Tribune, May 3, 1984

Daily Herald-Tribune, April 15, 1987

Daily Herald-Tribune, ca. 1990