Westworld Alberta
Issue link: http://westworldmagazine.ama.ab.ca/i/245179
Tavern 1903's vintage-butfunctional cash register was donated by the Lucas family, who owned the original Alberta Hotel. The Backin-Print Bears T Prairie Bells B&B in Oyen is an Eaton's catalogue home. Home-Made to Order hink of it as a 100-year-old Berenstain Bears story: four critters undertake a quest to scale a mountain and become the envy of Animal Land (though today's picture-book characters probably wouldn't head off to a chalet "for a chat and a smoke.") The Animals' Alpine Club, a copyright-1910 childrens' book by British author Graham Clifton Bingham, was recently republished by Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies in Banff, as part of a project to preserve fragile books in its collection. The book was a childhood favourite of famed Austrian mountaineer Conrad Kain, the first person to ascend Mt. Robson. The re-release is an exact reproduction of the museum's copy, says museum librarian Elizabeth Kundert-Cameron: "We could have cleaned it up – Photoshopped out the library plate, cleaned up the edges – but we would have lost something." AMA members save 10 per cent on select merchandise at the museum gift shop. AMARewards.ca/Whyte –S.R. We've all bought something from a mail-order catalogue, but what about an entire house? Turns out it was a common practice for rural Albertans back in the 1910s and 1920s, when retailers such as the T. Eaton Company and Canadian Aladdin Company published catalogues of homes. You'd simply choose the style you wanted, and a kit would arrive at the nearest railway station, blueprints, lumber, paint, nails and all. For a peek at five surviving catalogue homes, spend a few hours on a self-guided driving tour near Medicine Hat. Two of them – Prairie Bells B&B and the 1918 house at the Oyen Crossroads Museum – are open to the public. canadianbadlands.com –R.S. (VINTAGE FLAVOUR) MERLE PROSOFSKY, (HOME-MADE TO ORDER) GEORGE MCWILLIAMS, (RECORDS) ISTOCK p10-15_AroundAlberta.indd 13 S P R I N G 2 0 14 | W E S T W O R L D A L B E R TA 13 14-01-10 3:37 PM