I fully intended to write about a hike from last weekend but instead I fell down a Google-search rabbit hole. I have climbed back out several hours later, and I bring with me some interesting artifacts.
It was the search for coal that brought Joseph Burr Tyrrell west with the Geological Survey of Canada in 1884 and it was the narrow seams of coal that drew businessmen with an eye for opportunity. Then came the miners, waves of immigrants, men of God, saloon owners, police officers, union leaders, communist sympathizers, strike breakers, hustlers, hookers, bootleggers, and thousands of others looking for a steady paycheck, and boomtown adventure. In the background were the famous dinosaur hunters like the Sternberg family (that’s the famous Charles Sternberg below) and Barnum Brown, commissioned to collect dinosaur skeletons by the American Natural History Museum in New York, Chicago’s Field Museum, the Royal Ontario in Toronto, and what is now the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, among many others.
The old Drumheller thrived on and off for fifty plus years through World War I, the Spanish Flu, the Great Depression and World War II, until natural gas pushed out coal. But it was crazy times while it lasted. It wasn’t just ‘busy’, it was Sin City before there was a Sin City.
On payday visitors would have heard thousands and thousands of lit-up miners as they stood shoulder to shoulder in the streets speaking not just Canadian English, but Hungarian, Italian and Ukrainian, and a dozen other languages, and in the brogues and lilts of Britain’s mining districts. The North-West Mounted Police (later the RCMP) and the Drumheller Police Force, watched on and tried keep the peace.
The stream of miners came and went while two generations of farm families watched on, probably scratching their heads with extra conviction, as sleepy little Drumheller quickly went from spark and ignition to roaring conflagration, and then to waning embers. The coal-fired history of the place, the little that I know, is salacious, shocking, and all together fascinating.
In the 1920s Drumheller had not one but two red light districts, except one of them was inexplicably referred to as the Blue Light District. The other was the “Western Front”, names that probably didn’t fool anyone. Even during Prohibition, liquor flowed in illegal clubs. There were gambling dens. There were thousands upon thousands of young men with money in their pockets. It all led to trouble.
In May of 1923 Constable Charles Paris of the Drumheller Police Force decided that he needed to do something about it. Paris had been a constable with the Royal North-West Mounted Police. He then served as a Lieutenant in the Great War, where he was wounded. Upon return he rejoined the RNWMP. He then brought his admirable record and experience to the service of the Drumheller Police Force.
On May 2nd 1923 he and Police Chief Fletcher tried to arrest bootlegger Elmo E. ‘Ike’ Trider by jumping on the running board of Trider’s roadster. Constable Paris tried to pull the keys from the ignition. Trider drove the car through a wood fence near Drumheller’s present Railway Avenue and 6th Avenue. Our young hero was impaled on a board. He would die soon after but only after first giving testimony against Trider.
Incredibly, a jury took just 19 minutes to find Trider not guilty of murder, which sounds pretty fishy. Ike Trider was convicted of other crimes and served a paltry three-year sentence. I’d convict him just for that ‘gangsta’ name of his. As for heroic Charles Paris, his life could and should be a movie and there should be a memorial in Drumheller to him, perhaps at the corner of 6th Ave and Railway Avenue, where a long empty building sits today. The 100-year anniversary of his death is less than two years away. This is Charles Paris here.
But it’s more than that. There should also be a way to capture the busyness and romantic wildness of the Drumheller of a hundred years ago; the miners, the farmers and ranchers, the dinosaur hunters, the seamy underbelly of the town, the heroes and villains, all of it. And there is still much, much more to the Drumheller story. There is even a chapter with featuring a communist labour leader, the RCMP, and a Gatling gun. Pretty wild stuff, and that’s another story that doesn’t seem to be widely known. There are many more.
My dad Stan, now 92 years, has a vision for a public building, perhaps a barn at the junction of 6th Ave and Railway; a place to greet tourists, host farmers markets, and to salute the pioneers who did so much to build the district. Perhaps his idea can find room for a memorial to Constable Paris and maybe a documentary about, what may well be, the wildest history of any town, large or small, anywhere in Canada in the 20th century.
While I’m in full booster mood, here is a link to a short video introducing Drumheller and region Why I Love: Drumheller - YouTube. Enjoy.