Category: Saskatoon

Tales of a Prairie Pioneer

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When my grandfather was a teenager in rural Saskatchewan, he hunted bobcats for cash. He would take his rifle, ride his pony across the prairie and, whenever he saw a bobcat, he would chase it. When frightened, bobcats often climb trees, but a tree doesn’t afford any safety from a boy and his rifle. After killing the animal, my grandfather would skin it. In the late 1880s, the fur of a bobcat brought him 25 cents.1

This was one of the stories Thomas Glendenning (T.G.) Hamilton,2 used to tell his own children about his adventures growing up in newly founded Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

T.G. was born in 1873 in Scarborough, Ontario, the fifth of the six children of farmer James Hamilton and his wife Isabella Glendenning. His father was a member of a Toronto-based group called the Temperance Colonization Society that was passionately opposed to the use of alcohol. The group’s members decided to establish a dry community in western Canada, which had recently been opened to settlement. In 1882, James and his eldest son, Robbie, went west as part of an advance party of the Temperance Colonization Society. They were credited with picking the settlement’s location on the banks of the South Saskatchewan River.3

James and Robbie quickly built a sod hut and started construction of a proper house for the family, but neither structure could protect them from the bitter cold, so they spent much of that first winter in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. Wife Isabella, their daughter Maggie and their other sons came west in 1883, travelling by train as far as possible and completing the journey by ox cart. T.G. was almost 10 years old when he arrived in Saskatoon.

The Hamiltons experienced many disappointments in Saskatoon. The temperance colony was unable to achieve its goal of banning alcohol in the community. James died of a heart attack in 1885 and Maggie died of typhoid the following year.4 Moreover, the winters were frigid and summer drought killed the crops.

Their lives were also disrupted by the Northwest Rebellion of 1885. The Métis people and their First Nations allies were upset because they were losing their hunting and fishing territories to the new settlers. Métis militants established a provisional government, led by Louis Riel, at Batoche, north of Saskatoon.5 The government in Ottawa sent militia forces to deal with the situation.

T.G. was at school one day when Dakota Chief Whitecap passed through Saskatoon on his way to Batoche to meet with Riel. When Whitecap entered the one-room schoolhouse, no one knew why he was there, or whether he was a friend or a foe. No one said a word as the First Nations leader walked around the classroom, touching each student on the top of the head. Then Whitecap left.6

The one-room Saskatoon schoolhouse also served as the church.

As it turned out, Whitecap remained loyal to the Crown,7 but the memory of this event stayed with T.G. for the rest of his life.

By 1891, the widowed Isabella and her now grown sons had decided to give up on pioneering and move to Winnipeg, Manitoba, where the young men could further their education. Isabella and three of her sons left T.G., now 18, and his brother Jim, 21, to wind up the farm and make their own way the 780 kilometers from Saskatoon to Winnipeg. The brief account of their journey became a cherished family legend.

The story goes that they ran out of money before they reached Winnipeg, so they sold their ponies and buckboard to a farmer for a promissory note for $30. They never got the money and they had to walk the last miles, foot-sore, dusty and weary. They finally reached their destination some three weeks after leaving Saskatoon. Later, T. G. laughed at the memory of the funny sight they must have made, trudging through the streets of Winnipeg for the first time.8

Photos courtesy Fran Solar

Notes and Sources

  1. That would be about $6 today. Bobcat trapping is still legal for licensed trappers in Saskatchewan. I heard this story in an interview with my uncle (see footnote 6.)
  2. As an adult, Dr. Thomas Glendenning Hamilton was known as T.G. or T. Glen Hamilton. When he was a child, people called him Thomas. Since I have referred to him as T.G. in several other articles, for the sake of clarity, he is T.G. here also.
  3. Historical Association of Saskatoon. Narratives of Saskatoon, 1882-1912 by men of the city: Prepared by a committee of the Historical Association of Saskatoon. [Saskatoon]: University Book-Store, [1927], p. 9, Peel’s Prairie Provinces, Peel 3742, http://peel.library.ualberta.ca/bibliography/3742/11.htmlaccessed Jan. 28, 2019
  4. James died on a trip back east and is buried next to his parents in St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Cemetery, Scarborough. Maggie was buried in Saskatoon, but her remains were eventually moved to the Hamilton family plot in Elmwood Cemetery, Winnipeg and her headstone is there. 
  5. Bob Beal, Rod Macleod, “North-West Rebellion”, The Canadian Encyclopedia, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/north-west-rebellion, accessed Jan. 28, 2019
  6. Dr. Glen Forrester Hamilton, in a videotaped interview done by James B. Nickels, Department of Psychology, University of Manitoba; Winnipeg, Manitoba, July, 1987; DVD copy in the author’s possession.
  7. Following the Battle of Batoche, Chief Whitecap was arrested for treason, but was found not guilty. Today, he is recognized as one of the founders of Saskatoon and a public school is named after him. https://www.spsd.sk.ca/school/chiefwhitecap/About/Pages/default.aspxaccessed Jan. 28, 2019
  8. Margaret Hamilton Bach, “The Story of the Canadian Hamiltons, with genealogical information from Scotland” unpublished manuscript, Winnipeg, 1983. In 2009, I transcribed and revised my aunt’s article, adding corrections and some new information.

Five Brothers

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Clockwise from top left, Thomas Glendenning Hamilton, Robert Hamilton, James Archibald Hamilton, John Stobo Hamilton, William Oliver Hamilton

The five young men posing for a studio photograph in turn-of-the century Winnipeg look serious. They probably wouldn’t have been the life of any party, but if you needed help, no doubt each would have stepped up. They were, after all, of Scottish descent, professional men imbued with a strong Presbyterian ethic of hard work and responsibility.

They shared similar square faces, gentle eyes and wavy hair, and if you guess that they were brothers, you are right. They were my grandfather Thomas Glendenning Hamilton (known to his friends as T. G.) and his brothers Rob, Jim, John and Will.

What you couldn’t know is that there is someone missing from this photo: their only sister, Maggie, who died in 1886.

They grew up in Scarborough, Ontario on the land their immigrant grandfather had cleared. Their parents were farmer James Hamilton senior and his wife, Isabella Glendenning. Robert, born 1860, was the oldest, followed by Margaret, John Stobo, James Archibald and Thomas Glendenning. The youngest, William Oliver, was born in 1875.

James Hamilton Sr. was strongly opposed to alcohol consumption and, with western Canada opening to settlement, the family decided to help establish a temperance colony on the Prairies. In 1882, Rob accompanied his father in an advance party, leaving Isabella in Toronto with Maggie and the younger boys. The following year, the brothers and their mother joined James and Rob in the newly founded Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

The pioneer settlement faced harsh winters, drought and food shortages, and the attempt to establish an alcohol-free community was a failure. Meanwhile, in 1885, the Northwest Rebellion took place almost on the Hamiltons’ doorstep. The rebels were the Métis people, angry that they were losing their hunting lands to the new settlers. James and Rob served as guides to the government militia forces sent to quash the rebellion, while Isabella and Maggie helped look after the wounded soldiers following the Battle of Batoche.

James Sr. had an opportunity to go back east with the troops, so he decided to visit his relatives in Ontario. While there, he suffered a massive heart attack and he was buried in Scarborough. The following year brought another blow to the family when Maggie died of typhoid at age 24.

Finally, Isabella and her sons decided to move to Winnipeg. The boys wanted to continue their studies and it had become clear that farming was not for them.

The family members separated for several transitional years. Rob went to Toronto to study for a career as an electrical inspector, while John taught school in British Columbia. Meanwhile, Isabella took Will, who was then about 15 years old, to look for a house in Winnipeg, leaving T.G. and Jim in Saskatoon. In 1891, with their father’s estate finally settled, the two brothers, ages 18 and 21, travelled by pony and buckboard the 800 dusty kilometers from Saskatoon to Winnipeg.

Back in Winnipeg, Rob helped to support the family while his brothers studied. During their student years, they all helped to pay their own expenses by teaching school.

John was the first to graduate from university, obtaining a degree in philosophy in 1892, followed by a degree in theology in 1895. Jim became a doctor, and T. G. followed his older brother into medicine, graduating in 1903. That same year, John gave up his post as a minister when he finished his medical degree in the United States. Will taught for five years, then articled in law and opened a law firm, Beveridge and Hamilton, in 1911.

Four of the brothers remained in Winnipeg for the rest of their lives, although they didn’t see each other often. Jim, who was single, and T. G. were probably the closest of the brothers, sharing a medical office downtown. Rob and his family lived in another part of the city. A quiet person and in poor health, he did not socialize much with his brothers, and neither did Will.

John and his wife and daughter lived in North Dakota, about 80 miles from Winnipeg, and they made frequent short visits to the city.

The Hamilton family plot, Winnipeg

In the 1920s, T. G. and his wife Lillian became interested in psychic phenomena. At the time, this was not unusual: many people wanted to communicate with loved ones who had died in the Great War or the flu epidemic. The couple had lost their three-year-old son to the flu in 1919. They hosted séances at their home almost weekly for more than a decade, and T. G. documented the paranormal events they observed. Jim attended these meetings regularly, but the other Hamilton brothers did not.

Finally, the brothers’ deaths reunited them. They all suffered from heart problems. Rob died in 1923 and Will died suddenly at his office in 1924, at age 49. John died of a heart attack in 1932, Jim in 1934, and T. G. followed in 1935. They are all buried beside their mother, their sister and other family members in Elmwood Cemetery, Winnipeg.

Sources and Further Reading

This article relies on family histories and letters written by my late aunt, Margaret Hamilton Bach, and by Alison Mossler Wright (John’s granddaughter) and the late Olive Hamilton (Rob’s daughter).

James B. Nickels, Manitoba History, “Psychic Research in a Winnipeg Family, Reminiscences of Dr. Glen F. Hamilton,” June, 2007, http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/mb_history/55/psychicresearch.shtml (accessed Nov. 23, 2018)

University of Manitoba, Libraries, Hamilton Family Fonds, http://umanitoba.ca/libraries/units/archives/digital/hamilton/index.html (accessed Nov. 23, 2018)

“Louis Riel, October 22 1844- November 16, 1885”, Library and Archives Canada, http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/politics-government/canadian-confederation/Pages/louis-riel.aspx (accessed Nov 22, 2018)