Foothills residents are ready to celebrate 150 years of confederation with the rest of Canada, but in fact Albertans have another three years to go.
Okotoks historian Cathy Coutts said in 1867 when Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were given royal assent to unite as a country known as Canada, very little change was happening in Okotoks and the area did not officially join confederation until 1870.
“It was certainly much quieter,” said Cathy Coutts, Okotoks museum curator.
In eastern Canada the 3,616,063 residents were facing pressure from American invaders and the government at the time solidified its stronghold on the land by creating the confederation.
In the Foothills, European settlers had not even arrived yet.
Coutts said the Okotoks area was inhabited some of the year by the Blackfoot, who travelled nomadically.
“It was the land the Blackfoot lived on and followed the bison and lived on freely,” she said.
The two things that still remain in the Foothills from 1867 are the Sheep River and the Big Rock, she said.
At that time the area now known as the province of Alberta, was called Rupert’s Land and was a territory granted to the Hudson Bay Company (HBC). In 1869 the government of Canada bought Rupert’s Land from the HBC and broke it into territories and provinces. Alberta, Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories were all called the Northwest Territories at that time. In 1870, the Northwest Territories entered confederation with Canada.
However, it wasn’t until 1873 that the first European settler, John Glenn, put down stakes in nearby Calgary. A year later the RCMP made the great march west from Manitoba from Alberta. Fort Calgary and Fort Macleod was established and the trek between the two posts is what led to the start of settlement in Okotoks.
“The RCMP travelled between Fort Macleod and Fort Calgary and they happened to go through our lovely little valley,” Coutts said.
The route became known as the Macleod Trail.
Foothills historian Bill Dunn has been the caretaker of the Macleod Trail since 2003 and has seen four more route markers added over the years, including one in Okotoks in 2012.
He said the Macleod Trail started settlement in the Foothills.
Two men, Kenneth Cameron and John Macmillan, set up stopping houses in the early 1880s where RCMP members could take a break as they made their way between Fort Calgary and Fort Macleod. In 1884 a post office was set up at Macmillan’s stopping house.
Dunn said a mail coach that ran up and down the Macleod Trail was part of a network of wagon trails that got mail from the Foothills down to Montana, where it was taken by riverboat east on the Missouri River.
It also opened up the area to supplies and commerce from all over the world, Dunn said, that made their way from the Gulf of Mexico, up through the U.S.
“They said if you can buy it in Paris, you can get it here,” Dunn said.
When the Mounties arrived, the land was still lawless and Americans were able to come and set up shops and do commerce unchecked, Dunn said.
“The west was still considered hostile territory when the RCMP arrived,” he said, noting George Custer was killed in Montana by the Sioux in the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876.
Travelers on the Macleod Trail had to take precautions, he said.
“Travel had to happen in groups and you had to be well armed,” he said.
The arrival of the RCMP brought law to the area, but more importantly established the land as belonging to the Canadian government, Dunn said, adding the cross-country railroad also established the ownership of the west.
“It was mainly to maintain sovereignty,” Dunn said.
There were also big changes for the area’s First Nations people.
Treaty 7, signed in 1877 by the Blackfoot, Stoney-Nakoda, Siksika, Tsuut-ina, Kainai and Piikani tribes delegated reserves for these nations and changed their traditional ways of life and nomadic existence.
The Blackfoot were relegated to the Blood reserve south of Fort Macleod. The Blackfoot legend of how the Okotoks Big Rock cracked in two lives to this day.
Okotoks also took its name from the Blackfoot word for rock, Coutts said.
The rich soil and plentiful water from the Sheep River attracted farmers to the area and was established as a village in 1893. It wasn’t until the cross-country railway was established, and Okotoks got its own station in 1895, that the population in the area really took off, Coutts said.
“It opened the floodgates to immigrants, pioneers and people trying to build a better life in Canada,” she said.
In 1895 Okotoks became a town and in 1904 when Alberta became a province, the area again joined confederation.
The early history of Okotoks and its residents’ contribution to the country can be found at the Okotoks museum and archives in a number of exhibits now on display.
