Rose Devlin arrived in the south Peace for a visit in 1919 and remained to teach school and marry Donald W. Patterson, a young teacher-soldier-lawyer.  She was a leader in the Women’s Missionary Society of the United Church, and was instrumental in the formation of the Grande Prairie Women’s Institute, presiding over royal visits from Lord & Lady Bessborough and Duke Althone and Princess Alice.  For twenty-five years she was the voice of the Women’s Institute on CFGP radio. South Peace Regional Archives 152.02.01.02

Ancel Maynard Bezanson  

                  After his first exploratory trip into the south Peace in 1906, A.M. Bezanson began to promote the possibilities of the region through his photographs and writing.  He returned in 1908 with his new bride, Dorothy Robillard, to develop the townsite of Bezanson on the banks of the Simmonette and Smoky Rivers where the Canadian Northern Railway had staked out the original railway route. South Peace Regional Archives 1990.30.071

Annie Philips-Roberts

                  A nurse and matron of a hospital in Wales, Annie was enticed into the south Peace by a proposal of marriage from David Philips Roberts (also from Wales) who had taken a homestead near Clairmont in 1912.  They spent their honeymoon traveling the Long Trail in a caboose pulled by two oxen, and lived more than thirty years on their homestead, Trevor Farm.  Annie loved the outdoor life. South Peace Regional Archives 177.048 

Dr. & Mrs. O’Brien

                  Dr. Lewis O’Brien and his wife Alice John O’Brien arrived in Grande Prairie in 1918, in the midst of the Spanish Influenza Epidemic, to find only a small mission hospital with a staff of one nurse and one ward aid.  Dr. O'Brien actively promoted the idea of a community hospital, and was on hand to open a modern, well-equipped municipal hospital in 1929.  He often traveled long distances over undeveloped roads to operate on rural patients. South Peace Regional Archives 177.089

Jim Somerville

                  Jim Somerville worked as a surveyor on base-lines and meridians in the south Peace before Alberta became a province in 1905.   An experienced horseman, he joined Walter McFarlane’s team in surveying the land into quarter sections, and then took a homestead on south Buffalo Lake.   He married Eva Woolston, a World War I English Nurse, and raised his children on the farm his descendents still operate. South Peace Regional Archives 178.03.01

Chief Pierre Satlas

                  Chief Pierre Satlas (aka Shuttler, Chatelaine) was widely known in the Peace Country and along the northern half of the Hinton Trail.  He was a much respected Headman of Beaver Band 152B from the Horse Lake area and in 1911-1919 successfully petitioned for a reserve for them at Horse Lake.  Pierre is remembered by landmarks along the Hinton Trail, such as Pierre Lake and Shuttler Flats.  He is buried at Pipestone Creek. Glenbow Archives NA-2211-45

Julienne Gauthier Campbell

                  Julienne Gauthier, daughter of Metis healer Joseph Gauthier, was born in Edmonton.  In 1872 she rode into the south Peace on horseback from Jasper, with her infant son in her arms, in the company of her husband Alexis Campbell and her parents.  Julienne raised 17 children on the shores of Bear Creek and Bear Lake before moving to Kelly Lake in the 1920s.  She died in 1958 at the age of 109 years of age. Glenbow Archives NA-1271-3

Clyde Eldridge Campbell 

                Following World War I and a bout of the 1918 Spanish Flu, American Clyde Campbell traveled into the south Peace looking for a peaceful life.  He found it in the quiet beauty of the Red Willow valley south of Beaverlodge.  As a pianist, pharmacist, research engineer and writer, Clyde was not equipped for the work of pioneer life.   After only nine years he returned to the States because of ill health, but he bequeathed to his daughter Isabel a life-long love of the Peace. South Peace Regional Archives 1998.27.403

Dorothy Morrison Leslie

                  Dorothy Morrison was educated in Victoria, B.C., and followed her parents to the south Peace in 1918.  Teaching at the one-room schools of Crystal Creek, East Kleskun, and Somme School, this fashionable young lady would have been a role model for the girls in the community.  Dorothy married Glen Leslie area farmer Ed Leslie in 1921 and remained in the Peace Country for the rest of her life. South Peace Regional Archives 2005.69.06