How the River Got Its Name.
The English poet Swinburne wrote that ‘even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to
sea’. He was speaking metaphorically, of course. His musing could be applied to the
present state of our Sturgeon River that winds so wearily that it is lucky to make it
through town never mind all the way to any sea. It was not always thus.
In tracing the story of the Sturgeon River you find its modern history starts with several
different names. It was not always the Sturgeon River as know it now. Its written history
begins not here in St Albert where we accept it as ours, and neglect it as ours, but at the
end of its flow where it enters the North Saskatchewan River near present day Fort
Saskatchewan. This is where European civilization found this area and gave it value.
There it was given the designation ‘creek’ as well as ‘rivulet’ and, finally, ‘river’. Maybe
because it was seen at different times of the year when flow fluctuated and it was
assigned a descriptive word accordingly.
In 1793 Peter Fidler, trader and explorer, traveled, as he recorded in his journal, ‘to the
Bank of the Tea river or Red willow creek sometimes called the Sturgeon river’. He was
looking for a place to establish a trading post and heard of this place on the far edge of
the Plains. Note that it was only ‘sometimes’ referred to as the Sturgeon. Where did the
name Tea river come from? It is an unusual name for a North American river. There is no
certain answer to this question, but it may have come about through some association
with the River Lea in England. It came about in the following way.
In 1795, only two years after Peter Fidler, the Northwest Company trader Angus Shaw
chose the meeting place of the Sturgeon and the North Saskatchewan as the site for a new
trading post which was called Fort Augustus. The place was described as ‘a rich and
plentiful country, abounding in all kinds of animals, especially beavers and otters’
(Alberta, a new history-Howard Palmer, Hurtig, 1990). The rivalry for control of the fur
trade between the Northwest Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company was so fierce
that the Bay built a trading post at the same location ‘within a musket-shot’ of the
Norwesters. The Baymen named their place Edmonton House.
The name Edmonton came from the English home of Sir James Winter Lake, Deputy
Governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company. It was never a mistake in those days to name
things after people of influence. By coincidence the apprentice at the new Edmonton
House also came from Edmonton, England. Edmonton is just north of London England.
A small river runs through it, a river 46 miles (74 kms) long, that flows into the River
Thames at Blackwall. This is the River Lea. A river that is very similar in size to the
Sturgeon. Perhaps the likeness was enough to influence the naming of the post at least.
Did a homesick apprentice playing with the word Lea maybe name the river Tea? Was it
just a description of the colour of the stream? It is easy to speculate.
In Place Names of Alberta-Tracey Harrison, cites the David Thomson map of 1814 where
the name is Sturgeon Rivulet. The Cree name was mi-koo-oo-pow, or ‘red willow’, a
name retained and applied by the Parks Department to the Red Willow Park which runs
along the banks of the river in St Albert.
When the Northwest Mounted Police came to this area in 1875 to maintain the peace they
built their outpost near where the Sturgeon River flows into the North Saskatchewan.
They named it Sturgeon Creek Post. Later the name was changed to Fort Saskatchewan.
It is interesting to note that there is, currently, a newspaper called The Sturgeon Creek
Post published in Fort Saskatchewan, it’s editors displaying a nice sense of pun.
In 1872 the Sandford Fleming expedition came to this area. Fleming was seeking a
northerly route through the mountains for the proposed Pacific railway. One of his party
was G.M Grant who was the keeper of the official journal of the expedition. This journal
was published in 1873 under the title of Ocean to Ocean. In this journal Grant writes that
the expedition followed the Carlton Trail to Fort Edmonton where the men ‘camped …at
a little Creek near Horse Hill [and] on the way crossed a strong, rapid-running stream
called Sturgeon Creek, from which twenty-five pound fish are often taken.’
Unfortunately ‘strong and rapid-running’ are gone from the river now as well as the
twenty-five pounders.
So, we come back to the name Sturgeon. In Fishes of Alberta-Nelson & Paetz it write
‘that river being named, no doubt, after the fish that no longer ascends this tributary’.
There it is, the fish are all gone! There is sturgeon in the North Saskatchewan River. A
brief reference in the Edmonton Journal (August 29, 2002) states that the average size of
Lake Sturgeon in that river is about 5 kilograms, but they can reach 80 years of age and
weigh up to 45 kilograms.
The Sturgeon River has given its name to a county, to schools, streets and commercial
establishments, or, more correctly, the fish species has given its name. Yet I don’t know
any of the above which display a sturgeon as a symbol. I see all sorts of displays
illustrating Tea. Maybe we finished up with the wrong name.
With special acknowledgement to The Fort on the Saskatchewan Peter Ream,2nd ed.,1974
Submitted by:
Dave Geddes, 459-3654. dgeddes@compusmart.ab.ca
Series: Naming St Albert.
Word Count:951
Date March 02/03