By: Jean E. Crozier
Plaindealer, Winter 1984

(From: The Best of the Strathcona Plaindealer - The Old Strathcona Foundation, Used by Permission)

The families of Robert and James McKernan left Richmond Hill, Ontario, in the spring of 1877, to come to a land where there still were few non-Native people, and no shops, churches or schools close at hand. They traveled by rail, then by ox-cart, with their children sharing cart space with the families’ entire household belongings. Robert’s wife apparently didn’t share the men’s enthusiasm for the move, and understandably so. Sara was only 24 years old at the time, she had already bore four children, and would give birth to seven more. Her reluctance to leave her familiar, more populated home may well have stemmed from apprehension of the difficulties that surely awaited her.

In 1877 “Alberta” still was part of the great North-West Territories – there was no rail line into the country then, and even overland ox carting between Fort Garry and Fort Edmonton had begun only ten years previously. The legislation that created the North West Mounted Police had been passed only four years before the McKernans headed west. Trading between the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Native peoples was the primary economic activity of the entire North West. It would be another twenty years before Clifford Sifton’s salesmanship brought many immigrants to farm the prairies. But the McKernans came to this open land, first to live at Hay Lakes, then to move into Strathcona.

James, the younger of the two brothers, was the third man to enlist in the North West Mounted Police. He came west with the N.W.M.P., and was stationed at the old Stone Fort in Manitoba, then at Fort Macleod, Fort Calgary, and Fort Saskatchewan, before returning to Ontario in 1876. There, James sold his brother Robert on the West, and out they came the following year. The family traveled as far as they could by train, but the rail ends at Fort Garry. There they transferred to ox-carts, and joined a group of freighters for the three-month journey along the Carleton Trail. They move into their first home, a shack at Hay Lakes, on November 5, 1877.

By then, the surveys for the new transcontinental railway line had been completed, and the southerly route was adopted four years later. But the Dominion Telegraph line was under construction, and Robert and James worked to complete the link connecting Hay Lakes and Edmonton, They sent the first message along that section on November 20, 1877.

Once the telegraph line had been completed there was no reason to stay at the Hay Lakes, and the two families move to the area which would become Strathcona, where they each began farming.

Robert and Sara purchased their land from a Cree Indian named Emlow, acquiring 160 acres for the sum of $10.00. They spent their first summer in Strathcona building a house, so they wouldn’t have to spend the winter in their “soddie”. After feeling trees along the river bank, Robert hauled them to his farm at approximately the site of the present McKernan School. He designed and built a machine with which Annie, the younger daughter, could make shingles. The house was large – it had two storeys, with four bedrooms on the upper floor. It stood for over sixty years, until being demolished in the late 1940’s. John Wellington was the first child to be born in the new home, arriving on May 11, 1880. He was followed by three girls and three more boys, the last of whom (Harry) was born in 1895.

The Robert McKernan House as it looked in 1886

McKernan's Lake Strathcona

Life must have been a round of very hard work for the McKernans, with little time for social life. They raised chickens and cattle, with the children expected to do their share of the feeding, milking and egg gathering. I appear that their efforts were successful, as Robert began a milk route in Strathcona in 1893.

The McKernan children went to school in Edmonton, walking the four miles from their home to the river, and up the north bank to the McKay Avenue school site. Getting across the river was a major problem – they could cross on the ice in the winter, and on Mr. Ross’ ferry in the summer, but during spring and fall they simply didn’t got to school at all. They didn’t see those times to be vacations, as their workload at home was increased sufficiently to fill their entire day.

Although Robert was considered a prosperous farmer, he gave it up shortly after 1896 to become more involved with real estate development in South Edmonton. He built and owned the Dominion Hotel, opening it for business on October 6, 1903, and his son, John W. McKernan, built the Princess Theatre in 1914 – 1915.

The McKernans lived through much. Their home was the favorite stopping place for the freighters travelling from Calgary to Edmonton, and they were welcomed with food and shelter. They lived though the local restlessness at the time of the Riel uprising; they were in Strathcona when Alberta became a province and when the two cities amalgamated. They survived the shortages and shortcomings of supplies in the early days and the rigor of building a home an developing a farming enterprise. Robert and Sara bore eleven chidden, ten of whom grew to adulthood; Robert Delorme died three days after his third birthday in 1880. Brother James and his wife raised three daughters and a son.

It was partly through the McKernans’ efforts that the Strathcona Agricultural Society was formed, and the first Methodist church was built. Robert and Sara were present at the Thisle Rink when Lieutenant Governor Bulyea opened Alberta’s first Legislative Assembly.

Robert died in 1908, when he was 62, from the complications of appendicitis. His widow, Sara, lived to be 91. James’ life ended on October 28, 1934. During their lives the McKernan brothers were an integral part of Strathconas’s development, and their name is commemorated through the community league and school that bear it today. The lake that come to be known as McKernan’s Lake was located just east of the Robert McKernan farmstead, extending from 76th to 71st Avenues, and from 112th to 108th Streets. People from miles around came to picnic along the lake shore in summer, and to skate on the ice and toboggan down the huge, serpentine toboggan run in winter.

(This story is one of many to be found in the book, “The Best of the Strathcona Plaindealer” put out by the Old Strathcona Foundation. It is available from the Foundation or at the Old Strathcona farmers market for $17.)

Posted March 2001