C Ihe Ladies c cu. V'VVAN - History and Classics, Department of

Notrs to Pages 17-22 243ened by the implication that the women were keen to consumethe bear meat, "their first fresh meat meal."Historically, interest in women's travels because of genderwas a mixed blessing: if a woman's narrative had the appeal ofnovelty and the titillation of a woman's "adventure" outside thesafe space of domestic propriety, its authority as serious literaturewas often also discredited for those same reasons.MrWarnerIt is unclear what relation Henry A. O. ("Harry") Warner hadwith the AATC and for how long. What is known is that in 1921(presumably after he "had gone north as a teacher and hadfailed"), due to his extensive previous experience, he wasworking as superintendent and chief engineer for both theAlberta and Great Waterways Railway and the Lacombe andNorthwestern Railway (Schneider II3). However, he wasreplaced by the end of that year and must have taken a positionwith the AATC after the HBC acquired it in 1924. In that year,he was photographed with Judge Lucien Dubuc on the SSDistributor sailing north down the Mackenzie River (Dubuc,Photo Scrapbook 21 recto). In the judge's scrapbook, as well,Warner is photographed as a member of the six-manjury panel(the custom at the time in Alberta, and so in the NorthwestTerritories) for the Inuit trials presided over by Dubuc on 7July 1924 aboard the Distributor while it was at Akalvik. In hiscaption to the photograph, Dubuc lists Warner as an independenttrader at Aklavik and Edmonton (Photo Scrapbook 42verso: see also PAAA3698).the manager of the great HB Company's store, Mr Dynes,drove us round EdmontonF.E. Dynes had been appointed the store manager atEdmonton in the previous autumn. A photo of him illustratedthe announcement of his promotion in the December 1925issue of The Beaver, which described him as "a local man witheight years' merchandising experience in Chicago, two and ahalf years in Minneapolis and eight years in Edmonton"("Introducing") .wild flowers ... the beginning of a collection ... for ... theKew Gardens MuseumThe travellers' ignorance of their surroundings" may be gaugedfrom the implication that any specimens collected on CapitalHill (the site today of the Provincial Museum of Alberta and ofthe residence of the lieutenant -governor of the Province ofAlberta) would be new to the Kew Herbarium. This need, if ithad not already, would have been met by the F acuIty of Scienceat the University of Alberta, established in 1908 across the riverfrom the ladies' collecting grounds.DunveganDunvegan Yards remains on the east side of St Albert Trail,north of the Yellowhead Trail, now well within Edmonton'scity limits. It was the departure point for trains travelling the480-km (300-mi) route to Waterways on the Alberta andGreat Waterways Railway line (Kitto, North West 56). This train,which had earned the nickname of "Muskeg Limited" by 1920,when Philip Godsell rode it, was one of four Government ofAlberta lines. Construction of it began in December 1913 andwas completed as far as Lac la Biche in February 1915(Schneider 75,79: Hatcher, NorthernAlberta I).Godsell's description of it in 1920, when contrasted withVyvyan's, suggests that the train had both improved greatly butalso lost some of its colourful character by 1926:... a conglomeration of dirty red box-cars, flat-cars, andone very rickety old-fashioned coach with a caboose tackedon to the rear ....The lucky ones got hard plush-covered berths in thecoach but the majority were forced to make the best of theopen flat-cars. As the engine gave her last wheezy whistle thenondescript train, with much bumping and a good deal ofnoise and ostentation, commenced her swaying journeythrough prairie land and muskeg.Twice a day there would be a brief stop for meals, thenthe passengers would all pile out onto the track with fryingpans and tea kettles in their hands, build hurriedcampfires, sling on the kettles, warm up a tin of pork andbeans and snatch a hasty meal.After the first fire every one knew everybody else and theartificial barriers which civilization imposes were very soonlet down ....A truly remarkable railroad was the A. & G. W., as therotting box-cars, which had fallen from the crazy track intothe ditch, so amply testified. Straight ahead it went, up hill,down dale, through the woods and into the deepest muskegswhere, for hours at a time, the rails would be invisiblebeneath the watery slime. Once or twice, after frenzied