Donald Had a Tough and Unsavory Reputation

by Colleen Palumbo

Donald, BC 1888

There isn’t anything that I can think of that’s a greater way to spend a quiet day than to go through an old newspaper. They bring to life a community and the people in it. So it is that I recently had the chance to go through the newspaper from Donald. BC, dated July 21, 1888. Because I understand to some degree the thinking of the editor of the newspaper, John Houston, it has even greater meaning to me but I still think you will enjoy this piece of the past.

“Donald, BC had the unsavory reputation of being the toughest place in the Dominion. Card sharpers, crooks and bummers of all kinds prey upon the workmen every payday. There was j0t (during construction days) a reputable woman in the place. Just before I reached Donald, it became again unpleasantly notorious by reason of an alleged gross outrage committed there, of which all of Canada was talking. The principal street of Donald consisted of an unbroken series of saloons. Donald is a place of not the slightest importance, of perhaps 1500 inhabitants. Found ourselves in a notorious combined saloon and dance house – the worst place in Donald – where I found several English girls, some of whom were well-known at the London music halls not long ago, who had been brought to Donald under false pretenses. The risk of detention was, of course, the principal one they had to run.

The above “rot” extracts are culled from a letter that appeared in Saturday’s Winnipeg Call, over the signature of Henry Norman. Mr. Norman is connected with the Pall Mall Gazette in London, and visited the Northwest Territories and British Columbia last spring in the interest of immigration. The Pall Mall Gazette is the paper that made the rather unenviable reputation in 1885 by publishing accounts of bestial practices indulged in by Londoners of high repute, and for which its editor, Mr. Stead, received a year’s imprisonment; and its heralded correspondent seemingly could learn nothing worthy of recording about Donald but old and exaggerated stories of her dissolute past. It is quite evident that Mr. Norman was “stuffed” by some of the many practical jokers employed on the CPR. The idea of calling a town “tough” and “of no importance” that has two churches, a public library and reading room, a free school, a Masonic Lodge, a lodge of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, one of the best hotels in the mountains, wholesale mercantile house whose sales run from $50,000 to $100,000 a year; besides it is the chief division point west of Winnipeg on the greatest railroad on earth, and had the finest climate for any town of the same size in Great Britain. Mr. Norman, you sacrificed truth and romance, simply to make a readable letter.

But what is most deserving of censure in the letter is the unwarranted license he takes with the name of the gentleman who acted as his guide when viewing the “sights” of Donald. He calls him “the Munchausen of the Northwest,” “an extraordinary liar,” “that he danced in the head set in a cotillion of very promiscuous and vigorous fears,” having for a partner one of the poor deluded virgins that was enticed away from a happy music hall in good London to be detained against her will in a wicked dance house in bad Donald, etc. The gentleman who accompanied Mr. Norman has travelled much, is well read, likes good company, and it hospitable to the extreme. While he is one of the best raconteurs in the province, it is very improbable that he related the “yarns” printed in the call letter as personal experiences. In fact, he seldom makes mention of the incidents met with a travel to intimate friends, and he certainly would not recount them to an acquaintance of a night. Mr. Norman, you are a pretty good letter writer, but also a pretty good all-around liar.”

Also in “The Truth” Shipping vegetables. Dr. Brett, of the Banff Sanitarium, orders most of the vegetables used at this hotel from William Barker, the Moberly House ranchman. This helps a home industry, and is proof that the vegetables are first-class.

Wanted – A wife. No preferences as to age or nationality. Only requirements: must be healthy and not redheaded. Address in strictest confidence, “Cassiar, Box 2, Donald.

Getting Thar. Slouch-hatted prospectors astride cayuses of all colours, with dejected-looking pack animals slowly following behind, are beginning to pass through Donald, bound for Porcupine Creek.