by Jean Little
While Mother paid him, I slipped the ring on and held up my hand in a shaft of sunlight to see the stone sparkle. It caught the light and flashed a brilliant blue.
The jeweller smiled and said, “Whoever chose that ring must have spent time over it. It exactly matches the lassie’s eyes.”
Then Mother said, “I think it was chosen for her mother. It was far too big for a child’s hand. I found it threaded on a cord around her neck, where her mother must have hung it for safekeeping. Perhaps she guessed she had not long to live.”
I had not wondered why the ring was too large until that moment. I held up my hand again so that the sunlight would light up the stone once more before we had to leave.
And as I gazed into it, I found the face I thought I had lost.
It is hard to write about this. Maybe I should not try. It was only a glimpse. Then Mother took my elbow and steered me out of the shop. I stumbled on the doorsill but she steadied me. And when we reached the pavement, she said very gently, “What happened, Abby?”
“I remembered my mam’s face,” I whispered. “Her eyes were blue, exactly the same blue as mine.”
“Oh, Abby,” my mother breathed. Then she hugged me right there in front of the shop.
And we held hands all the way home.
Epilogue
Abby was unhappy about the mine opening again shortly after the landslide, but no disaster followed and a few years later, the original mine was closed.
As the people in Frank rebuilt their town and recovered from the shock of the landslide, Abby kept on with her busy life. The first blow she had to endure was the death of Davy when he was six. He got pneumonia, and this time his heart could not withstand the strain. In those days, there were no antibiotics to help fight such severe illnesses.
Davy’s death left Abby grief stricken, but also freed her from having to care for him. It was a struggle for her to understand her confused feelings. It was hard for her to accept that it was normal for her to miss Davy and feel relief at the same time.
Connor and she went out together for a while, but they lost touch when his family moved to Lethbridge in 1907.
Martin Hill was involved in Alberta becoming a province in 1905, so involved that the work of running the hotel was left to the rest of the family. He had a heart attack in 1908 and, although he lived through it, he had another one a year later, which killed him.
Although Aunt Susan and Abby’s mother still worked at managing the hotel, more and more of the responsibility fell to Mark. His girlfriend’s family moved away from Frank after the Slide and, bit by bit after Connor left town, Mark and Abby drew closer. Finally they realized that, even though they had been raised to be cousins, they were not in fact related by blood. By the time Abby was in her late teens, they had grown close to each other and began to think about getting married. Abby’s old teacher, Miss Radcliffe, had moved out west and she insisted Abby go on studying literature, which she loved. But when Abby was twenty, she and Mark did marry. The two of them took on the management of the hotel and cared for their mothers as they grew unable to carry the load.
Mark and Abby had four children, two girls and two boys. Abby was fearful that one of her babies might have the same problems as Davy, but the children were all healthy and a joy to their parents.
Bird married when she was just sixteen and, although she and Abby remained friends, Bird moved permanently to settle near Pincher Creek where her family lived. Before long the two young women were so busy raising their children and working in their communities that they did not see each other as often as they wished. Whenever they got a chance to get together, however, they picked up where they had left off and filled in all the gossip they had missed while they were apart. Bird named her only daughter Abby, and Abby named one of her girls Lark.
Olivia and Jeremiah had no children for several years, which was a disappointment to them; but then, much to their delight, Olivia got pregnant and they had a son whom they called John. Polly adored him and was a doting aunt. Olivia became a teacher and gave music lessons to Frank’s children. She was also often asked to play at weddings and in concerts. Jeremiah got an artificial leg and taught himself to ride. Before long, he began to raise horses and give riding lessons. He took groups of young people on camping trips in the mountains and became a popular guide.
When John finished high school, for which he had to board in Pincher Creek, Miss Wellington encouraged him to go on to college and, with Uncle Martin’s help, he became a doctor. He never married, although his sisters did their best to find him just the right girl. He volunteered for The Great War as a doctor in 1915 and was buried when a trench collapsed on him in 1917. He was rescued, but died later from his injuries.
Abby went on keeping a diary even when she was a busy mother and hotel manager. The story of how she was found by Grandpa Hill and brought to Mother became a family legend which was prized by all the children. Often they speculated on whom she might have been, but nobody ever learned the answer.
Historical Note
Frank, Alberta, is famous because of the massive rock slide that hurtled down Turtle Mountain and swept across the southeast edge of the town and up the other side of the valley. It occurred at 4:10 a.m. on Wednesday, April 29, 1903. Although the landslide lasted only 90 seconds and happened over a hundred years ago, Turtle Mountain today shows clear evidence of the devastation. The Slide left in its wake enormous boulders, some of which are still standing. Tall as houses, some rise up like giant tombstones, marking the place where the tragedy struck.
The town of Frank, in what was then the District of Alberta, North-West Territories, owes its origin to coal. In 1900 the Canadian American Coal and Coke Company began mining large deposits of coal from Turtle Mountain in the Crowsnest Pass. The coal was abundant, fairly easy to mine, and situated near the Canadian Pacific Railway tracks — convenient for shipping it out to buyers. A short mine spur connected the mine in Frank to the CPR.
Because of the coal mines and Frank’s proximity to the Crowsnest Pass — a key route through the Rockies — the town attracted businessmen, tourists travelling through the pass, and of course, miners. By 1903 Frank had 600 inhabitants, served by an electrical plant and waterworks system, three hotels, well over a dozen businesses including a watchmaker, two restaurants, a bank, a post office, a school, a livery stable big enough to house fifty horses, a grocery store, a ladies’ wear shop, a newspaper office and a Presbyterian Church.
Men had come from across North America, the British Isles, Scandinavia and Europe to explore the West and to work in the mines. Many were single, but quite a few brought their wives and children with them. When the people of Frank went to bed on that April night in 1903, nobody was fearful of a rock slide before sunrise, especially one that would come to be called the greatest landslide in Canadian history.
Unlike coal deposits in some other areas, the coal in Turtle Mountain was reasonably easy to mine. The mountain rose some 2300 metres above the town. Huge rooms, like caverns, were dug into the mountain. The tunnels were large and men could work standing up. Horses to pull the coal cars had ample room to move.
Tremors did happen fairly regularly, especially in the early morning hours, however. Small rockfalls, especially in the spring, were common. Nearby First Nations people kept their distance. They called Turtle Mountain “the mountain that moves,” avoided the area, and would not work in the mine.
What caused the disastrous landslide of April 29, 1903? Over the years since, several reasons have been given. Perhaps the chief reason lay in the mountain’s unstable geological structure. During its formation, layers of limestone were folded into a big A-frame shape. Further pressure opened up a crack in the earth’s crust, a thrust fault, along which older layers of rock moved up and over younger ones. Other contributing factors were water freezing and thawing in summit cracks and coal mining at the mountain’s base. Weather played a part too. Three of the four years before the Slide were unusually wet. In 1903
the snowpack was average, but a large amount of snow fell in March. The week before the Slide, it was unusually warm for several days and the melting snow filled the cracks. Then, on the night the Slide happened, the temperature dropped sharply, perhaps freezing water inside the fissures and increasing the internal pressure beyond the breaking point.
Early in the morning of April 29, 1903, a massive section of Turtle Mountain’s eastern slope came crashing down. Some 82 million tonnes of limestone fell. Seventeen miners working the night shift were trapped in the mine. The mine entrance was buried. Miners’ tents and cabins, as well as some of the town’s houses and the livery stables, were crushed or buried. A 2-kilometre section of the CPR tracks was mangled under tonnes of rock. Fortunately, the Slide missed much of the town itself, including most of the commercial section. However, Old Man River, which ran near the town, was dammed up, became a lake and threatened to flood those parts of the town that had not been destroyed by the rock slide itself.
In the end, more than 90 people were killed and 23 injured. Among the dead were 21 children — some of them miners’ children, others from the part of the town nearest the mine.
There were amazing stories of rescue or close calls, though. One teenager lived because she was staying overnight at the boarding house where she worked, but her entire family died — her mother and siblings in the house and her father outside the mine. One home was carried 6 metres off its foundation, but the family itself survived. Another family’s home was horribly mangled, but the family members were unhurt. Seventeen trapped miners managed to dig their way out of the mine through a seam of coal, and after 13 hours emerged relatively unhurt. Three miners who had left the mine before their lunch break at 4 a.m., however, were not so fortunate. They were among the dead.
Amazingly, the mine reopened within weeks. The buried section of railway track was cleared and rebuilt. Later, a new mine entry was opened on the north side of the mountain, and a shaft was sunk in the valley.
Today visitors to the Crowsnest Pass gasp as they stare at the gigantic boulders. They visit the Frank Slide Interpretive Centre and are awestruck as they discover the stories of those who miraculously survived. They can also pause to see the graves of Gladys Ennis and her brother at the foot of Turtle Mountain. Gladys was not yet two when the Slide buried her in mud. Her mother, sure she was dead, carried her body to a neighbour’s house, where they cleaned her off and discovered she was in shock, but still alive. Gladys was the last survivor of the Slide; she died in 1995.
Images and Documents
Image 1: Dominion Avenue, one of Frank’s main streets, housed shops, a bank, restaurants, a photography studio, a newspaper office and other businesses. The town had about 600 inhabitants at the time the Slide occured.
Image 2: The Clark house, like so many others, was mangled by the boulders and stones that cascaded down Turtle Mountain on the night of the Slide.
Image 3: The railway tracks lay buried, and Old Man River backed up to become a lake, endangering the town, until some of the debris was cleared. Since mining was the town’s main industry, it was crucial to clear the tracks and keep the coal moving out as soon as possible.
Image 4: Some of the massive boulders that fell were as large as houses.
Image 5: After the Slide, the eastern face of Turtle Mountain lay exposed, with parts of the town still standing below it. This image, among many of the first photographs of the disaster, was taken by a local Frank photographer.
Image 6: The Slide missed some of the town, but houses nearer the mine, and the miners’ cabins, took the full brunt of the landslide.
Image 7
Image 8: The Frank Slide made headlines around the world, including this front page from the April 30, 1903, Boston Daily Globe.
Image 9: A close-up view of Frank, showing the area covered by the rock slide, part of the town layout, and where the mine entrance and some houses and cabins lay buried. Gold Creek forged a new path on the west side of the slide debris and, due to constrictions, the river slowed and widened under Turtle Mountain.
Credits
Cover cameo: © Samuel Schiff Co., N.Y.
Cover background: (detail) and image 5: View of Frank, Alberta, after the slide; Glenbow Archives NA-411-9.
Image 1: Dominion Avenue, Frank, Alberta; Marks and Buchanan, Glenbow Archives NA-414-2.
Image 2: Rescue team on site of Clark home, Glenbow Archives NA-586-2.
Image 3: Rebuilding railway to mine at Frank after slide, Glenbow Archives NA-672-3.
Image 4: Group on large rock at Frank Slide; Frank, Alberta; Marks and Buchanan, Glenbow Archives NA-3011-17.
Image 6: Remains of back row of cottages, after slide; Frank, Alberta; Glenbow Archives NA-3437-5.
Image 7: Morse Code Chart, from the website of the Canadian War Museum, courtesy of the Canadian War Museum.
Image 8: Front page from the Boston Daily Globe, April 30, 1903.
Image 9: Map © Paul Heersink/Paperglyphs.
The publisher wishes to thank Mr. R.L. Kennedy for providing information about the train schedule from Montreal to Frank; Barbara Hehner for her attention to the details; and Monica Field of the Frank Slide Interpretive Centre for sharing her encyclopedic knowledge of the Slide so generously. Thanks also to Dr. Bill Waiser for his expertise. Finally, thank you to Adria Lund and her team at the Glenbow Archives, who managed to provide images despite another disaster — the severe flooding in Calgary in July 2013.
This book is dedicated to Robert Heath, my computer doctor whose frequent house calls, endless patience and quick intelligence have saved the lives of book after book. It comes with my gratitude and deep affection.
Author’s Note
One story which prompted this novel happened to a child in my own family. When a ship coming from Ireland docked in Canada, the disembarking passengers told of how cholera had broken out during the voyage, killing many of those who were emigrating to the New World. Among those who had survived was a small child whose identity nobody knew. In all the chaos on board that ship, this small girl was left with no one to claim her. She was brought home by a kindhearted man whose family took her in while attempts were made to learn who she was. When this failed, she was adopted, given the name Elizabeth Egerton, and raised as a Canadian. Elizabeth grew up and married and became a distant relative of mine.
When I read about her in a book that told about our family tree, I was fascinated by the brief tale and longed to know more about what became of the child. Unable to find out any facts beyond the few notes in the book, I took what little I knew about Elizabeth and used it to create my heroine, Abby Roberts — hoping that Elizabeth, like my Abby, found happiness in Canada.
Another impetus for the story comes from my Aunt Jen’s diary for 1889. I am fortunate that I come from a family where several people wrote diaries and kept old letters and told stories of things that had happened in years past. If my great-aunt had not done that, when she was twenty-four years old and she and her sister Gret decided to go out West to help their cousin Andrew run a hotel, Abby Roberts would never have been born, and certainly never have gone to Frank.
The diary is full of visits Jen and Gret made, dishes they washed, games they played and brief accounts of their meetings with young men. Nothing gives away the fact that both women met their future husbands during the months they spent in the West. Aunt Jen seldom sets down her feelings — which was wise of her, since it is clear that her sister often read what she wrote.
One entry I treasure is this: We played tossing beanbags last night. Gret cheated as usual. Gret had written in tiny print up the margin that this is untrue.
Pages and pages are tedious, but every so often there is a funny bit or a surprising one. I was stunned by the entry reading: This morning I got up early and made thirteen pies.
Over and over, Jen speaks of the “sings.” I only wish she had recorded the names of some of the songs. Many would have been hymns, I suspect, but I long to know more. Her relati
ves spent a good deal of time attending church services, prayer meetings and picnics. They went on visits that lasted several days, using a horse and buggy or gig or surrey or carriage or farm wagon to transport them. They also needed to be good at walking. And when they bought their groceries, they did not find everything in a supermarket, but went to several shops — the butcher, the baker, the grocer, the dairy, the feed store, the fish shop, the dry-goods store where they bought the cloth out of which they made clothing. Today it hardly crosses our minds as we buy ready-made outfits that the word “clothes” comes from the word “cloth.”
If they got “stormstayed” during a visit, they settled down until the weather cleared. While visiting, the women helped with the housework and caught up on local news as they sewed or knitted or darned.
They played games and put on skits. There were no movies to go to, no television to watch, not even radio programs to listen to. They did have the telegraph, however, and both Aunt Jen and her sister Gret spent hours in the station working at “telegraphy.” They must have learned the Morse Code, just as Abby did, and found sending and receiving telegrams fascinating.
Down Syndrome
Before I wrote Abby’s story, a reader asked me about including a character with Down Syndrome in one of my books. That idea stayed with me and simmered for some time, but eventually took shape in All Fall Down, in the person of Abby’s brother Davy.
In this story, Davy is born with a condition we now call Down Syndrome. At the time this story is set, he would have been known as a Mongoloid and would be called, by some people, a Mongolian Idiot. The name was given to such children because of an extra fold in their eyelids which makes them appear to slant. Down Syndrome results from a child being born with an extra copy of Chromosome 21. But in 1902 DNA had not yet been discovered, and nothing was known about chromosomes.
