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Welcome to
the Peter Pond Society
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The orignal cairn honoring Peter Pond outside of Prince Albert was mentioned in Newsletter 1 (May, 2000) as follows.
1. The cairn honoring Pond that sits along the North Branch
of the Saskatchewan River outside of Prince Albert, SK has
been removed. Why? Because the Batoche National Historic Site
that oversees the area had to save it from the encroaching
river. Someone I know in Prince Albert tipped me off, and
I recently got confirmation from the Batoche official in the
following email:
"Mr. McDonald,
The cairn was removed from the site last fall. Continual
river erosion to the bank has resulted in a substantial
loss of the site itself. Discussion with the City of Prince
Albert to relocate the plaque commemorating Peter Pond have
started.
Flo Miller
Site Manager, Batoche."
So, apparently the cairn itself is no longer, but the plaque
will be relocated someplace else. I find this fascinating,
since rivers have played such a big part in Pond's history.
First, rivers are what conveyed him to this spot in the first
place to trade with Indians, then pool goods amongst other
traders and be the first white man over Methye Portage and
into history in 1778. O.C. Furniss of University of Saskatchwan,
when he found evidence of the Pond encampment in 1942 leading
to a cairn being erected in 1950, did so with the river's
help. Old narratives said Pond's house was on the Saskatchewan
about 1/8 mile from the mouth of the Sturgeon River. When
he first started looking 1/8 mile from the Sturgeon, he found
nothing. But then from a plane he saw river action had placed
the mouth of the Sturgeon at two different locations east
of its current site over the years. So Furniss paced off from
the most easterly former location and sure enough found what
he was after. After digging three or four feet down, he found
flat hearthstones arranged in semi-circular shape identical
to other fireplaces of other old trading camps found in the
past. Digging through a layer of old sandy silt showed this
had been flooded before. And now, in the year 2000, the river
was trying to reclaim the cairn itself. (Source: "Some notes
on newly discovered fur posts on the Saskatchewan River,"
Canadian Historical Review, XXIV, No. 3, Sept. 1943.)
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This is the plaque (English
and French text) set on a pyramid cairn just outside Prince
Albert, SK, on the north branch of the Saskatchewan River.
As of Summer 2000, city and federal federal officials
were searching for a new site for the plaque due to river
incursion. English text reads: "Peter Pond, 1740-1807.
In the spring of 1778 a group of Canadian traders who
had wintered at a post on this site pooled their remaining
stock of trade goods and sent one of their number, Peter
Pond, into the Athabasca country, thereby opening one
of the richest fur areas on the continent. Pond was one
of the original partners of the North West Company until
his implication in two murders forced him to withdraw
from the trade and retire to his native Connecticut in
1790. His discoveries and geographical theories had a
profound influence on the explorations of Alexander Mackenzie
who succeeded him in Athabasca." |
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PPS society charter member Peter Long, a Virginia resident who summers in Saskatchewan went and found the new cairn. By the date on the bottom of the photo you can see it was installed in 2001. Thanks again Peter!
Click on the photo to open a larger version
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