After a decade of negotiations, the Innisfail and District Historical Society has finally secured the pioneer home of Isabella Sinclair, the first Caucasian female to settle in Central Alberta.
The society's acquisition of the Sinclair home, located on a farm eight kilometres west of Innisfail, is considered the final of three pieces of vital historical artifacts, all more than 125 years old, that complete a full picture of the region's early pioneer history. The society's historical village secured The Spruces stopping house more than three decades ago, and in 2012 acquired the log cabin of Napoleon Remillard, a co-founder of Poplar Grove - a pioneer settlement that predated Innisfail.
Anna Lenters, president of the society, said the Sinclair home is the perfect artifact to tell the full story of the important role pioneer women made in the earliest years of Central Alberta settlement.
“This is where the female perspective comes,” said Lenters, noting Sinclair (nee Brown), known by her pioneer peers as Bella, was a devoted homemaker.
“Women have a lot of trades and skills that are dying. They (pioneer women) were about homemaking and nutrition, and raising their children to be healthy. They were an important part of what happened here,” she added. “What this house allows me to do, through her experience, is tell the story of people coming to Alberta and settling. What I can do by having that building on our site is bring it full circle because we have two other important structures that relate to this home and then I can tell that story through her eyes.”
The current owners of the two-storey, 1,400-square-foot log home have wanted to have the pioneer structure preserved and restored for the last 10 years. It was just over a year ago the society contacted them to present a first right of refusal document, a move to ensure the society would have time to consider its acquisition if the house was in danger of being demolished.
About seven weeks ago, the society secured a $17,000 grant under the provincial Community Facility Enhancement Program to restore the structure, which under its terms, must be moved to the village within 16 months. She said a site and future uses for the Sinclair home at the village have not yet been decided.
John MacDonald Thomson, 82, is the family patriarch of the current owners of the Sinclair home. He lived in the house shortly after being born in 1933, and until 1989, when his family moved to a newer house at the 800-acre farm. MacDonald Thomson is personally pleased the Sinclair home, along with Bella's story, will be preserved.
“There is historical value here. Mrs. Sinclair was the first white woman in Central Alberta and we wanted to keep the history going,” said MacDonald Thomson, who is paying the cost to have the Sinclair home moved next summer to the Innisfail Historical Village. “We got a lot out of it ourselves and we wanted to pass it on to the community.”
The story of 16-year-old Isabella Brown's arrival to the area in 1883, when lawlessness ruled over much of the territory, and her indomitable spirit to survive alone for long periods of time, is one of perseverance, loyalty to family and courage.
At the tender age of 16, she embarked on the train from Ontario and travelled thousands of miles alone in the company of men determined to stake their own claim in the untouched frontier of Western Canada. Bella's train ride was the Canadian Pacific Railway's first passenger excursion on the newly constructed rail line to the western frontier.
“This was in the Victorian period. You did not travel unescorted without someone to protect you. You did not because your reputation was at risk. Women did not do that. It is an amazing story,” said Lenters, adding it's not known why Bella courageously journeyed alone as a young female teenager to a wild male-dominated frontier.
Bella's brother Jim, an early male trailblazer in Central Alberta, picked her up in Calgary. They then travelled 150 kilometres north by stagecoach along the old Edmonton Trail until reaching The Spruces stopping house, where Bella spent her first night in the region.
The following day the brother and sister headed west to what was known as the Oklahoma district. Bella then reached her first home -- her brother's soddy, a floorless log shack located near the Red Deer River.
Bella later met David Sinclair, a CPR worker, and they married in late 1886. After living in a CPR boxcar for three years, the newlyweds moved to their new farm, which they called Willow Bank, and into their log home. They would have five children and many grandchildren after, including William Sinclair, the first chief justice of the Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta.
The Sinclair couple left the home in 1929 and moved to a bungalow in Innisfail. David passed away in 1949. Bella died the following year.
And while their pioneer home now needs extensive restoration, its basic log structure is sound, having passed the test of time over the past 125 years.
“You couldn't really remodel it at all with the logs and stuff,” said MacDonald Thomson, adding the original roof shingles until 1970. “We haven't changed it at all except upgrading the heating system.”
Anna Lenters
"This was in the Victorian period. You did not travel unescorted without someone to protect you. You did not because your reputation was at risk. Women did not do that. It is an amazing story."
