Local history preserved in Art.
People with keen memories have always amazed me. Have you
ever met a person who could remember the names of everybody’s children
and of their children and what they all do for a living? Perhaps that
person could also recall that you nearly flunked grade five because you
wouldn’t pay attention in class? Doesn’t that just burn your socks?Today, I visited a dear senior friend of mine with just such an impressive memory. Anne Donaldson, a homesteader and longtime resident of the Peace Country moved with her husband Gordon to Eaglesham in 1952. Gordon, an energetic entrepreneur, had been travelling the area selling shrubs and trees for Alberta Nurseries and immediately loved the area.
At that time in the Central Peace, O.B.Lassiter, a private contractor, had been given the mandate to clear thousands of acres of bush land. This newly prepared land on the Lassiter project was then offered as ready homesteads to Veterans recently returned from the war. It was on one of these half-section homesteads that Gordon and Anne filed and settled in to make their fortune and raise a family.
I can well remember those difficult years as my parents were also homesteaders on the Project and we developed close ties with the other pioneers. Hard times seem to have a way of drawing people together and creating lifelong bonds of friendship. Homesteading on the Lassiter Project produced many a story of adventure and survival.
Now, 60 to 70 years later these often humorous stories are only kept alive by gifted people with keen memories like Mrs. Donaldson. Anne is a lady whom we all appreciate for her insatiable appetite for local history. She has two of her own books in print, “Homestead Memories” and “Tales from Mama’s Kitchen” as well as a book that she co-authored with Mrs. Peggy Ulland entitled, “As We Remember.” Anne was also the editor and a main contributor to the large hardcover local history book entitled “Smoky Peace Triangle.” This is the history of the Eaglesham, Tangent, Watino and Codesa areas.
These books have now been in print for years, and many of us have chuckled our way through them several times. Today, however, it is not her books I want to showcase but something of more complex historical fabric.
Today, Mrs. Donaldson displayed for me an historical work of art. With the help of her son Greg, she tenderly laid out a large quilt on which she had stitched the very history of the North Eaglesham homestead project. Etched in thread you can see names and dates, homesteads, cabins, rivers and creeks lovingly sewn into a map looking much like a view from Google Earth.
She tells me that the project took years to formulate in her mind, and then over two months with the help of her friend Peggy, to piece the quilt together. Now, I don’t know what it takes to impress you, but for me, I was duly astonished.
Mrs. Donaldson, thank you for so wonderfully preserving our local history with this work of art and your entertaining books. I hope we can find a way to protect and showcase this historical artwork for future generations.
Douglas W. Greenfield