An aerial view of the updated boundary of Medicine Hat's Saratoga Park heritage area. -- ESPLANADE ARCHIVES PHOTO
Stretching 80 acres along the banks of Seven Persons Creek and at the base of Scholten Hill lies Medicine Hat’s historical Saratoga Park. For more than 80 years, these lush verdant flats were home to at least five generations of Metis families and at its peak, 20 homesteads.
With access to water, rich earth to grow their gardens, shade for their ponies and proximity to a bustling downtown, Saratoga was never “land no one else wanted.”
In October 2018, the City of Medicine Hat shared historical recollections that tell us Saratoga Park was home to First Nations and Metis people from before the earliest European settlement here. Family history of Metis Hatters today can trace their ancestors’ arrival to 1882, lineage that stretches 140 years, preceding the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The growing frontier settlement wasn’t incorporated as a town until October 31, 1898, only gaining city status in the new province of Alberta on May 9, 1906. Photographic evidence shows people residing in Saratoga Park alongside the industrial enterprises established there between 1910-1914.
Before the arrival of the Metis and the earliest settlers, this area had been part of a wider gathering place beyond living memory. Indigenous peoples including the Blackfoot and Cree crossed this region’s plains, valleys and network of waterways following the bison herds for centuries. These lands were recognized and prized for their rich natural resources. Archeological excavations in the early 1970s of the nearby Saamis Site unearthed hearths and stone boiling pits, carbon dated back to AD 1500, well before European contact.
This is all to say that Indigenous peoples have long been here. The Metis became federally recognized as Indigenous peoples in Canada’s Constitution in 1982, but had been self-governed for more than 100 years prior.
“The Metis people of the North-West…[were] free, peaceful, well functioning, contributing to the work of civilization…whose jurisdiction was more legitimate and worthy of respect, because it was exercised over a country that belonged to it.”
– Metis leader Louis Riel, 1885
In November 2022, citizens of the Metis Nation of Alberta voted to ratify a new constitution, redrawing regional boundaries into districts, with Medicine Hat lying in District Two, Battle River Territory. Saratoga Park lies well within the historical homeland of the Metis Nation.
In Saturday’s cover story of the News, senior reporter Collin Gallant referred to Saratoga’s Metis families as “Essentially squatters [who] built homes on land no one else wanted.” A journalist of settler heritage referring to Indigenous peoples as “squatters” who lived peacefully and productively on ancestral native land is not in line with the News’ own reconciliation efforts of the past 19 months (the length of time this column has been running).
Many Metis Hatters who read this story are speaking up to share their family history.
The late Henry Aaker Sr. was a third-generation and last resident of Saratoga in 2010, when he moved due to ill health and his home was bulldozed. A mature cottonwood tree stands on the site of the Aaker homestead. A part of the Aaker family’s oral history tells how Henry Sr.’s grandmother, Louisa Cayen (or Louise Cayenne, nee Boyer, 1868), was given permission from the original rancher of the time to stay in Saratoga. She built her home there and as was custom of the time some of Louisa’s 11 children and her brother built there as well. Last August, Pat Aaker, wife to Henry Jr. and matriarch of the Aaker family, led a historical tour through Saratoga Park with her young granddaughter at her heels, learning her family history from five generations back.
“Our oral histories are very important to us as they remind us of where we come from and who was there,” writes Pat.
Frances “Meme” Gosselin and her brother Carman were brought up at Saratoga. Their father built their home in 1945, and later the Gosselins recall their father purchasing the first power pole from the city grid for $75, which would in turn provide power to neighbours and permit the Gosselins their first television set.
The Gosselins’ great-great-grandfather William Hatfield Bliss was a Northwest Mounted Policeman, and also worked to build Bliss Hill, now known as Scholten Hill, with railway ties, and horse and buggy. Following the conclusion of WWI, four Bliss men returned from Vimy Ridge to live at Saratoga and later herd sheep for future Mayor Harry Veiner. When the Gosselins’ relative Mary Bliss’ home burned down, Veiner presented Mary with a key to a new one-bedroom home built for her.
Responding to the description of the Saratoga Metis as “essentially squatters”, Meme Gosselin says she “was in shock, and then I was mad, and now I’m really really hurt deeply inside.”
“Everyone worked hard all their lives for everything that they had,” says Meme’s daughter Serena.
The story goes on to refer to unidentified remains unearthed in the Scholten Hill area during construction in 1959, which in actuality were reburied that very same year at Hillside Cemetery on 10th Avenue SW. Those remains are misconstrued with others that are the focus of a renewed heritage initiative.
Publicly announced Monday, the City of Medicine Hat, the Miywasin Friendship Centre, and the University of Alberta have come together to form the Medicine Hat Ancestors Reburial Project. The Project Team is actively working together to rebury the remains and associated burial artifacts of three ancestors held in public trust at the University of Alberta since 1967. The project partners are committed to the reburial of these ancestors in a respectful manner in their original resting place of Medicine Hat. A webpage with project FAQ is available at medicinehat.ca.
Robert Wanner, former Medicine Hat MLA and previous Speaker of the Alberta legislature, has closely followed the fragmented news coverage of these ancestors for a number of years.
“It’s time for these stories to be told,” believes the former Speaker.
On November 16, 2020, the City of Medicine Hat designated Saratoga Park as a Municipal Historic Resource, and 10 months later, on September 16, 2021, then-Mayor Ted Clugston presided over a ceremony to unveil a plaque recognizing Saratoga’s deep history first as an industrial centre and later for its vibrant Metis community. No other part of the city has been identified with a specific ethnic group for such a long time.
Medicine Hat’s Indigenous heritage is living history. Saratoga’s children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are Hatters who take great pride in their homesteader family history. May we celebrate, honour and respect Indigenous culture and history through every generation, past, present and future.
JoLynn Parenteau is a Metis writer out of Miywasin Friendship Centre. Column feedback can be sent to jolynn.parenteau@gmail.com
