Ellen Ferguson

The Upper Clearwater had a population of some dozen households in the mid-1930s, spread out over 35 km of wagon-road and horse-trail. Individual families were often very isolated, and any type of community gathering was gladly welcomed. Homes, by necessity, were quite small and unsuitable for entertaining a large group. All agreed that they needed a community hall, a meeting-place big enough for dances, dinners, Christmas concerts, and whatever other good reasons neighbours might want to gather together.

During the winter of 1934/35 residents of the valley had become interested in politics and organized a CCF club. The CCF, as the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation was known, had been formed in Calgary in 1932. The forerunner of today’s New Democratic Party, it focused on the working man. The CCF club decided that a meeting-place was urgently needed, and plans for a community hall began in earnest.

Jack Hymers allowed the CCF to build the hall on his land, the south half of District Lot 2887, at a site conveniently to the immediate east of the road. There was no shortage of fire-killed timber to build with, as every homesteader arriving in the valley after the wildfire of 1926 had discovered.

Clearing the site and construction of the hall began in 1936, a community effort supplied by Jack Tunningley, Jack Norman, Jack Hymers and his son Melville, the Ludtke brothers (Charlie, Laurence, and Fred), Mr. Shook and his sons, Henry Desfosses, Henry Johnson, Lewis Rupell, Alex Fage, and Mike Majerus. Since the volunteers had work commitments of their own as well, building of the hall took two years.

Not everything could be constructed from logs, and some cash was needed. Mike Majerus donated a small Kodak camera to raffle, and Henry Johnson took on the job of making and selling raffle tickets. The Johnsons were living in lower Clearwater the winter of 1936, so Henry walked along the railway track to East Blackpool, selling tickets to anyone with the money to buy them. He caught the train as far as Little Fort and then walked back north on the west side of the river, selling tickets as he went. The raffle netted $36 for the building fund, and Shorty Miller of Blackpool won the camera.

In Henry Johnson’s book, Memories of a Depression Homestead, he writes: “Mr. Hymers hewed lagging for the roof. We put a road up to a stand of shake timber and then went up and cut enough timber for the roof. Laurence Ludtke and I cut and reeved the shakes for the roof. We got the windows, doors, and shiplap for the floor through Bill Long but we had to buy the nails. Someone gave us an old stove and, on the third of June (1938), we had our house-warming and dance. When we closed the door after the dance, we owned the hall debt-free.”

In the winter of 1938/39, a work crew comprised of Jack and Mel Hymers, Jim Lehman, Jack Norman, Henry Johnson, and Charlie Ludtke built a kitchen onto the east end of the hall. In time there would be bunk beds with straw-filled mattresses along the back wall of the kitchen, where babies could sleep while their parents danced and visited with friends.

In time, the valley residents became less politically involved. Mr. Hymers had intended the hall for the use of the CCF party, not merely as a community gathering-place, and the hall was unused for a number of years. Dances and community events then took place either in someone’s home, or at the school. Then Mr. Hymers died, and his family sold the land. The new owner, Colin Mann, was a fine musician who loved a community gathering – and he donated the hall, with 8.5 acres from the southeast corner of his land, to the Upper Clearwater Farmers’ Institute. The Women’s Institute took on the responsibility of looking after the hall and organizing events.

Left: Fire warden Jack Norman was stationed at Clearwater Lake and thought nothing of walking from there and back for a dance at Upper Clearwater Hall. The photo was taken about 1956.