Canada Guide
Alberta and the Rockies
Fort Edmonton Park
Address: Southwest end of Quesnell Bridge and Fox Drive
Opening time: Daily late May to late June Mon– Fri 10am–4pm, Sat & Sun 10am–6pm; late June to early Sept daily 10am–6pm; rest of Sept Mon– Sat 11am–3pm, Sun 11am–6pm
Price: $13
Telephone: 780/496-8787
Website: www.edmonton.ca/fort
Located southwest of the city on a deep-cut bend of the North Saskatchewan River, the 158-acre Fort Edmonton Park recreates the history of white settlement in Edmonton during the nineteenth century. Everything has been built from scratch and, while you can't fault the attention to detail, the pristine woodwork of the supposedly old buildings hardly evokes period authenticity (though the carpentry methods are apparently those used around 1846). To get here take the LRT to University station and there pick up buses #4 or #106 to Fox Drive, about ten-minutes' walk from the site, which is off the Whitemud Freeway near the Quesnell Bridge. The heart of the complex is a facsimile of Fort Edmonton, a fur-trading post dominated by the Big House, former home of the Chief Factor, John Rowland, head of the (then) ill-defined Saskatchewan District between 1828 and 1854. Arranged around the house are the quarters of the 130 or so people who called the fort home and who are now represented by appropriately dressed guides pretending to be blacksmiths, shopkeepers and schoolteachers from the era. Edmonton's later, pre-railway age is represented by a rendition of Jasper Avenue as it appeared in 1885, while two other streets simulate 1905 and 1920, complete with working steam engines and trams, which you can ride at no additional cost, to bolster the period effect.