Image: A film still showing the Foster home in winter, circa 1967 (SPRA 449.01.22, Fonds 449: Foster Family fonds)
Movie Monday highlights videos from the Archives’ film collection. Every week, an archival film will be featured on our YouTube channel and here on our blog. The Movie Monday project is made possible with the generous funding support of Swan City Rotary Club of Grande Prairie
Perhaps some of us would like to forgo the snow and cold that are inevitably part of winter here in the South Peace, but one can’t deny the beauty of winter! In today’s Movie Monday, we are shown exquisite scenes of the Foster home and farm near Sexsmith. Footage from various seasons is included in the film, but most was taken in the wintertime.
Winter in northern Alberta is a phenomenon that is unimaginable to many, and unappealing to most. But it does make for some great stories! One doesn’t need to dig too deep in the Archives to find some amusing (or sometimes harrowing) anecdotes about the snow and cold. An article in the January 25, 1935 edition of the Grande Prairie Herald described the current weather as a “paralyzing grip of sub-zero weather”, which was a fair description given that the temperature that week had dropped to a low of -48.9 degrees Celsius! The author stated that “anything that would not freeze at 50 below is hardly worth freezing”.
Frigid weather and deep snow also inspire ingenuity. Sometime in the 1930s, the McQuat family built a snowplane, an early version of a snowmobile that was powered by a propeller and skimmed over the snow on skis. The ‘plane’ was used for medical emergencies and transporting hockey teams – this is Canada, after all!
Take a look around our website and see what other winter-related content you can find!