Moving the historic Sinclair House to Innisfail is not just to honour the family.
The heritage home must be preserved and be a symbol for all the pioneer homesteaders in this region.
When the Canadian Pacific Railway started to build the line they recruited skilled tradesmen from all over Europe.
David Sinclair was a licensed carpenter from Scotland. He started working on building bridges on trestles all across Canada.
The Dominion Government passed the Homestead Act. They also passed the Alberta section of the Land Survey Act for the Prairies. This allowed hundreds of people to go out and stake land claims.
Sinclair staked his homestead in the Poplar Grove region in l883.
Dave and his brother Alex started construction by digging a trench five feet deep and to fit the size of the house. They then hauled sandstone blocks from the Little Red Deer River. That made a solid foundation for the logs to set on.
The first winter they cut trees and hauled the logs to the building site. After that they spent months squaring the logs with a broad axe. They then notched them to fit.
After setting the logs in place they started to fit windows and doors. Next was installing the hardwood floors and other interior woodwork, and then lathing and plastering completed the interior.
There were hundreds of people needing short-time work for one dollar a day. David hired two of them to nail on the cedar shingles. They wrote their names on the roof. Their names were still legible 80 years later when we reshingled the roof in l980.
People would think that one dollar a day was very low by today's standards. Shirts and jeans cost $1.50.
There was a great demand for building materials and consumer goods from the homesteaders.
A man hauled in wagonloads of lumber and hardware.
A rancher from southern Alberta brought in a load of horses to sell to the homesteaders. A blacksmith soon followed to shoe the horses and sharpen the plows. These travelling salesmen finally decided to build stores in the district. This was the start of the hamlet of Poplar Grove.
Isabella Brown, the future Mrs. David Sinclair, arrived at Poplar Grove in l883. Her brothers John and Jim Brown built a 10-foot by 12-foot log cabin with a dirt floor and a sod roof. That was called Bella House.
We have planned to honour the other homesteads with a plaque called The Homesteaders Hall of Fame. It would have the names and land numbers. This would be a great resource for genealogy researchers.
Volunteers could do the same with the names of the town businesses with the year they started.
John Thomson and his family have donated the Sinclair House to the historical village and are moving it from the family acreage six kilometres west of the town to the new site at the village at their own expense.
