V2V – Reid Hill Cemetery Memorial Traditional Cache
V2V – Reid Hill Cemetery Memorial
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"The next time you drive the road to Lomond, take a moment to remember the homesteaders from the Reid Hill area. This community area, which no longer exists, was established a little over 100 years ago -- several years before the Town of Vulcan was created.
In 1906 -- five years before the railroad was built -- Oric Reid opened a store some 11 km east of the future site of Vulcan. The year after, the North West Mounted Police established a temporary post nearby. Reid’s homestead was on a large hill, so the road east of Vulcan became known as the Reid Hill Road. Two years later, Reid moved his store to the Reid Hill Road for the convenience of customers. People came from great distances to purchase the essentials -- food, kerosene and hardware. Some walked as far as 10 km to the store. Because the store also served as the local post office, the most important items for many of the homesick settlers were the sacks of mail and newspapers that came from Stavely. Herbert Cooper took over the store and ran it until 1916, along with his duties as registrar for births and deaths for the district. The store changed hands several times until it burned down in 1937.
The nearby Reid Hill Hall opened in 1928. Virtually everyone from the area pitched in to raise money and buy equipment for construction of the building. Stewart Myers bought the hall and converted it into a popular garage. Terry Brown now owns the former hall and uses it as a workshop for his trucking business.
Across from the hall today are the headstones from the Reid Hill Cemetery, where people were interred between 1895 and 1935. Due to neglect, the two-acre cemetery became choked with weeds. Mae L. Todd secured a grant from the province to improve the site and she contacted families to get their permission to move the headstones. Unfortunately, most of the graves were unmarked.
With help from the Vulcan Lions Club, most of the cemetery property was leveled and is now farmed to keep the weeds down. Terry Brown continues to tend the grass around the headstone site.
The Reid Hill Baptist Church started services in the Reid Hill School in 1908, and opened its own church 10 years later. In the early 1920s, Reid Hill?s first schoolteacher, Ulysses Diefenbaker, brought his young nephew, a curly-headed young lawyer, to church. This young man was John G. Diefenbaker, a future prime minister of Canada. Sadly, attendance declined at the church and in 1947, members decided to sell the building, complete with piano, pulpit and pews, to Champion.
You can read more about Reid Hill in Wheat Country Vol. I, available at the Vulcan Public Library. Thanks to Marjorie Weber and the Vulcan Historical Society for help with this story. Marjorie Davidson is secretary of the Vulcan and District Historical Society. This is the first in a series of articles about the history of Vulcan County and the brave and hardworking homesteaders who kept its various communities alive."
- From The Vulcan Advocate, printed on Wednesday, April 18, 2007.
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