Why am I creating this webpage?

This webpage is not being created by an organization, although several organizations have helped provide information and encouragement. Rather, this webpage is being done by an individual. Me. Christy Taylor.  I am 20 years old. I grew up in Smoky Lake and then moved away to go to university. For the past two years I've returned during the summer to work at Victoria Settlement Provincial Historic Site and have greatly appreciated the experience of working there.

What am I trying to do with this webpage?

This webpage is for the most part, a way for me to indirectly confront the question of what life is about. What point does life have? What purpose is there to my existence here today?

History is about what happened and is happening. Its about trying to connect how things happened and how everything interrelates. History is asking "Why was Ella McLean's life the way it was?" And, in asking that, I'm also asking, why is my own life the way it is.

History is about people. Its about seeing what remains of people and what remember about the past and how we interact with the past. Its very interesting to see what information remains about people and where that information is hidden. If you had to describe your grandparents, what would you say about them? What would you say about your great-grandparents? What would you say about your own life?

History is about stories. The stories we tell ourselves and the stories we tell other people. Its about identities. What identities do we shape for ourselves? How do we see ourselves?

This history webpage is about Smoky Lake. But in the process of looking at Smoky Lake, I'm also seeing glimpses of the world. Digging through old newspapers I see letters and editorials about the concerns people had about international, national and provincial political issues. I'm seeing how world events affected Smoky Laker's. That's neat. I want to continue to research the world so I understand more about what these different events were, that influenced the people in this interesting community.

Anyway, that said, I welcome every bit of help I can in creating this webpage. Besides the purposes listed above, this webpage is also about more practical and immediate things: like the dissemination of information and the creation of an online source for genealogical research for Smoky Lake. So I welcome anyone who has any information to contribute it.

Please... contact me.

 

Where does the information on this webpage come from?

Although the content of this webpage is coming from a wide variety of different people and sources. There are five main sources of information.

Les Hurt's Occasional Paper #7 about Victoria Settlement gives a wonderful overview of the settlements early history. Les Hurt and Alberta Community Development have both given their permission to allow this book to be placed online. As the webmaster I have attempted to make the book available as a whole entity, as well as linking to the various chapters in accordance to the topics. I have kept the page numbers in place so as to make it easily cited in research, but have shrunk the sizes of some of the pictures to permit them to load quicker and to deal with space limitations on the web.

The second distinct source is the Smoky Lake Signal. Again, I am attempting to preserve the Signal as a cohesive unit, but also to divide it according to subject matter to allow easy tracing of different topics. A main index has been created, allowing people to browse the Signal by year. Yet the articles themselves have been placed onto pages according to topic. More than one article, from more than one issue of the Signal, may be placed together on one webpage, but they will have the source sited, and a link back to the main index of the Smoky Lake Signal. Apart from the occasional spelling error, they have not been edited. However, not all articles from the Signal appear online. Due to time limitations of the webmaster, only some articles from each issue are being placed online.

The third key source is the Our Legacy History Book. Permission was granted for me to take selected articles and pictures out of the book and place them online. They appear scattered throughout the website, although perhaps if time permits I will eventually provide an index to those articles. 

The fourth source is the many people who have contributed articles or pictures to the webpage. Their names are on the Contributors list. 

And the fifth source of information is the many books, newspaper and magazine articles, archive records, etc., which I have dug through in order to find information for the website.

 

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