Finland

“Köyriä vai uunia?” — “Kekri or the stove?” That was the question visitors might put to a farm household in the Kuopio countryside when the autumn festival came around. According to a local recollection collected in 1936, they expected food or drink and threatened a broken stove if their hosts refused.

In August 1924, the Finnish-language newspaper Canadan Uutiset carried a report from Strongfield, Saskatchewan, about a dispute over a library.

In 1888, David — or Taavetti — Kautonen registered a 160-acre quarter-section northeast of Whitewood, in the District of Assiniboia in what was then the North-West Territories. His claim, SW-36-17-1-W2, placed him within the Dominion survey grid that was reshaping the geography of settlement across the Prairies.

A 1925 photograph shows a Finnish church group gathered outside Unity Hall, a white-sided building in the countryside west of Sylvan Lake. The hall was only about a year old when the photograph was taken, but it was already serving several parts of Finnish community life, from church gatherings to dances, meetings and plays.

The beams are too heavy for one family to lift. The roof cannot be finished before winter comes. Livestock will need shelter before the snow arrives. Waiting until enough money has been saved to hire workers means it might never be finished.

The Canadian Geographical Names Database places Kuusamo at 5-26-38-2-W5, approximately six kilometres southwest of Sylvan Lake. Alberta’s provincial place-name history says the surrounding area was originally settled by Finns and connects the name with Kuusamo School District No. 755.

Betty Speirs was born at Hespero, Alberta, in 1931. Her father, Neil Humalamaki, had come from Finland, as had her maternal grandparents, who took a homestead north of Eckville in 1903. Neil died when Betty was one, and her mother, Emma, moved Betty and her brother into Eckville.

Central Alberta’s wooded parkland around Sylvan Lake, Eckville and Hoadley lies largely within Treaty 6 territory, while Red Deer stands near the meeting of Treaty 6 and Treaty 7 lands. The region is also Métis homeland and was travelled, occupied and used by Cree, Blackfoot, Saulteaux, Nakota, Dene and Métis communities long before homestead lands were surveyed.