ATHABASCA – A small part of Athabasca’s history will be featured on a federal tourism campaign thanks to the efforts of one of the town’s consistent advocates.
Each year, the National Trust for Canada runs the Historic Place Days, an eight-day program that encourages Canadian’s to experience historical sites near them. This year, the historical riverfront walk along the Athabasca River made the cut thanks to its historical significance and picturesque views.
“It’s a cultural landscape that’s historic, not just the landing itself. The long curve of the river, the fact that this is the elbow of the river. The topographic distinction of the place is probably the same it has been for thousands of years, and certainly the same as it was in the 1890s when people started to come here to go north,” said Mike Gismondi, the current chair of the Athabasca Heritage Society and an Emeritus Professor at Athbabasca University.
Today, the town of Athabasca still keeps the moniker, “The Gateway to the North,” even if it holds less true than it did a century ago. For half a century, Athabasca’s riverfront was a critical stop for the adventurers, entrepreneurs, and prospectors looking to head north.
“Celebrated in photography, poetry, and literature as the 'Gateway to the North,' the Landing embodied for many the symbolic and romantic values of that era of northern exploration and exploitation,” reads the Landing’s entry on the historic place days webpage.
The walk starts at the town common boardwalk and stage, where a series of signs — the walk has more than 30 in total — transports readers back to a time when the Hudson’s Bay Company was using the spot as a starting point to reach the Arctic and northwest Canada.
Each sign features photographs from the area; as Gismondi pointed out, photographers were inspired by the river for decades, and a rich visual history remains for the town’s early years. The walk is a way to share that history with visitors year round, without relying on a physical museum.
“Archives are fantastic and we have a great one, but it’s all in one place and people don’t go there all the time,” said Gismondi.
“The idea was to get this information, and especially the photographs, available to people who are just casually walking down there, maybe to play with their kids, and then they learn something about their own hometown.”
The photographs and signs also capture an era of Alberta, and Athabasca’s, history that many never learned in school. Throughout the photos are Indigenous and Métis men and women working and living in the area: whether it’s a man pulling a scow or the many individuals who worked in the trading system, their contributions to history were ignored for years.
“The school history books when I was young didn’t teach this story; in fact, they erased the contributions of Indigenous people that opened the northwest to Europeans. Instead, (they) offered me a history of great men (seldom women) like Peter Pond and other early adventurers, missionaries and martyrs, all kinds of explorers, etc.," said Gismondi.
A map of the walk, and other publications relating to the event can be found at www.athabascaheritage.com, and information on the walking tour is also available in the Athabasca Visitors Guide.
