Life in the Bulkley Valley

A glimpse into the Bulkley Valley as Joseph Coyle knew it...

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Joseph, his wife Augusta Winnifred, and their daughter Ellen on her first birthday, c. August 24th 1912. (Cropped version of P1481 Bulkley Valley Museum visual record collection)

Joseph Coyle spent about a decade of his life in the Bulkley Valley, mainly in Aldermere and Smithers. However, a lesser-known fact is that his first night in the Valley was spent at a lodging house run by Tyee Mooseskin Johnny of Moricetown (now Witset). As stated in the book Proud Past: A History of the Wet’suwet’en of Moricetown, B.C.,

“Mooseskin’s was a one-room self-serve stopping place equipped with sheet-metal stove, tin cooking utensils, a table, a couple of long benches, and two sets of narrow sleeping bunks ... Travelers paid for the accommodation and helped themselves. It was a well-kept, popular place.”

Coyle's daughter Ellen later recalled that Mooseskin’s was always welcoming - even if no one was home, men could sleep inside and leave money on the table. Despite providing a necessary service to newcomers and travelers, this boarding house was later shut down by an Indian Agent - a victim of discriminatory legislation passed against Canada’s Indigenous population.  

Aldermere

Joseph Coyle’s first permanent home in the Valley was the small town of Aldermere, established circa 1904 on a ridge above the Bulkley River. Its elevation protected it from flooding, but also made it difficult to transport water and supplies up to the townsite. Furthermore, it was just out-of-reach of the anticipated route of the G.T.P. Railway. In 1907, the year Coyle arrived in the Valley, people began to move downhill to the new town of Telkwa. Coyle was one of the few residents never to make this trip. Instead, he lived in Hazelton from 1908-1909, then returned to Aldermere and remained there until his move to Smithers.

While in Hazelton, Coyle married Augusta Winnifred Bradley (usually known by her middle name), a teacher from London, England. The pair had met at Port Essington the previous year. Their first child, Joseph Henry, was born in 1909, but sadly lived only a few hours. Daughter Ellen was born in August 1911. She spent her first few years in Aldermere, where she was one of the only children present. As an adult, she would be a great source of information on the Coyle family’s time in the Valley. Another child, Patrick, was born to Joseph and Winnifred in January 1919, after they had left Smithers for Vancouver.

As Ellen explained in an interview in the 1980s, Aldermere was close-knit and self-sufficient: “it had to be. In the wintertime [we] were completely locked into the country - there was no way of getting out, there was no way of mail coming in … what few books there were were passed from hand to hand until they were absolutely worn out.” The small size and relative isolation of the town meant that Joseph the newspaper editor sometimes wore multiple hats. For instance, as he owned the only paper-cutter in town, he had the responsibility of cutting sheets of money into bills for the bank. He also co-ran the Bulkley Valley’s first brick-making operation from a ranch near Tatlow, where blue clay was plentiful.

Click here to see more photos of Aldermere on the Museum's website!

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Joseph Coyle in front of the brick kiln at his ranch near Tatlow, 1911. (P1510, Bulkley Valley Museum visual record collection)

Smithers

In 1913, Smithers was founded to serve as the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway’s midway point between Prince George and Prince Rupert. The Coyles were among the many residents of Aldermere and Telkwa who flocked to the new town. While Ellen recalls that her father was “one of the last” to leave, Aldermere was not completely abandoned until 1916, three years after the Coyles’ departure. Today, its only remnant is Aldermere Ridge road, which runs through where the town once stood. 

Ellen Coyle spent a simple, happy childhood in the young town of Smithers. Her pastimes included climbing trees behind the family home, picking bouquets of ferns from under the boardwalks, and playing with friends Muriel Adams (daughter of drugstore owner J. Mason Adams) and Vera Doodson (daughter of butcher Bill Doodson). She rode in Smithers’ first cars and watched the town’s first moving picture show - a scene of a train rushing towards the audience, leaving "everyone cringing." In later years, she would still recall “the rumble of the press and the smell of printer’s ink” from the Interior News workshop, as well as the blasting of stumps and the burning of brush as people cleared land across the street.

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Ellen Coyle as a young girl c. 1915, with Aldermere's Interior News building in the background. (P1489, Bulkley Valley Museum visual record collection).

Like many people who grew up in Smithers prior to the 1950s, Ellen was familiar with the infamous drainage ditches along Main Street. Intended to divert swamp water away from the town, these trenches proved to be quite the hazard for the unwary: “I was a little girl of five then, and to me, the ditch looked enormous … One time, I don’t know how it happened, I fell into it. I don’t remember being terribly disturbed … but mother was horrified! I went upstairs in the Interior News dripping with dirty water and all this green scum in my hair, and mother just took me and dumped me in the bathtub, clothes and all!”

Among the most poignant of Ellen’s memories are those of her father.  “He always had time for me,” Ellen recalled in 1982, “singing me endless songs of his own childhood, making kites, mending my dolls, building a wonderful swing for me at the back of the Interior News, taking me and my dolls on short trips to Endako, building a sled and taking me coasting down the Aldermere hill by moonlight.” Ellen even accompanied her father on his reporting excursions - it was a common occurrence to see father and daughter roaming the streets of Smithers together, always in search of the next news story. Despite his busy life as an editor and inventor, Joseph Coyle seems to have been a true family man.