Excerpt from John McDougall's Writing
As the missions on the Saskatchewan were under father's Chairmanship, he concluded to visit them during the summer of 1862, and to take me along. He arranged for me to go as far as Fort Carlton on the Saskatchewan by boat, and he, at the invitation of the Hudson's Bay officers, went with them to Red River, and then rode on horseback across the plains to the same point.
We bore away north and west for Smoking Lake... Mr. Woolsey, his interpreter and two hired men comprised this settlement at the time. One small house and a roofless stable were the only improvements. Mr. Woolsey had begun here within the year and his difficulties had been neither few nor small.
We... reached the north bank of the river Friday afternoon. The appearance of the country at this point and in its vicinity pleased father so much that he suggested to Mr. Woolsey the desirability of moving to this place and founding a mission and settlement right here on the banks of the river, all of which Mr. Woolsey readily acquiesced in.
The two missionaries, moreover, decided that the name of the new mission should be Victoria.
All this time we were living in skin lodges. Mr. Woolsey aimed at putting up a large house, in the old-fashioned Hudson's Bay style - frame of timber with grooved posts in which tenoned logs were fitted into 10 foot spans - and as all the work of sawing and plaining had to be done by hand, the progress was slow. My idea was to face long timber and put up a solid blockhouse, which could be done so much more easily and quickly .... but I was over-ruled.
Our principal food that summer was pemmican, or dried meat. We had neither flour nor vegetables, but sometimes, for a change, lived on ducks, and again varied our diet with duckeggs.