ATHABASCA – In today’s day and age, it may be hard to imagine how the police kept themselves busy 100 years ago in the remote, developing north of the country before the proliferation of vehicles, drugs and the myriad of modern-day crimes RCMP contend with on a daily basis.
For many of the officers that were stationed in Athabasca in its earliest days, it was actually the moonshiners that kept them the busiest, and those who were caught producing and selling liquor would often find themselves behind bars in the Athabasca Dent House, or what would later come to be known as the Alberta Provincial Police Barracks.
Originally built in 1912, the Dent House was constructed as one-storey store that never opened. By 1916, in was converted into a home by the Dent family, as its namesake implies. By 1928 though, the Dents had moved out of the building and the Alberta Provincial Police moved in, adding that much more to the historical value of the place, which remains standing at 4804 52nd St. to this day.
During its time as a barracks, the building was used to house officers, offices, and those who found themselves on the wrong end of the law and were imprisoned there — that’s where the jail cells were, and traces of where the bars were installed can still be seen.
The Alberta Provincial Police functioned out of the Dent House until the force was disbanded in 1932 due to cost-cutting measures that were taken during the Great Depression.
After the departure of the Alberta Provincial Police, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were next to work in the building. They did so until 1947 when the detachment outgrew it.
In its early years, the Athabasca Landing detachment was small, consisting of only nine members, yet the territory those nine members covered stretched all the way to Herschel Island in the Arctic Ocean — that’s 620,000 square miles, or the equivalent of one-fifth of the land area of Canada.
Some impressive patrols were made from the local detachment such as one in 1910 that stretched from Athabasca Landing to Whitehorse. Though many of these patrols were completed before the time of the Dent house, much of the rich history of our local officers still sits in the home.
“There's people in town that used to say that they slept up in the attic,” said current owner Iris Burritt, who owns the house alongside husband Jake Burritt. “At one time, if they came into town and had no place to go, they could sleep upstairs. Of course, at that time it had no power and no heat, it was like sleeping outside.”
Because of this, much of the house has been renovated to keep the building livable. The one-room that remains untouched is the attic which still maintains its original appearance.
“We put power up there, but the attic is still what it originally was,” Burritt said.
Although much of the rest of the house had walls moved and has since been insulated, the outside of the building still maintains much of its charm for anyone who takes a stroll on by to see. And the cells? They were removed, but if these walls could talk, for certain, they would likely tell quite a story.
