Time Setting: 1903
Genre: History
Minimum Word Goal: 90,000
Timespan: February–April
Locations: Fort Macleod, Frank, and Blairmore, District of Alberta, Northwest Territories*; Fernie, British Columbia
Main Characters: Parker Duncan, Rowynna Price
Background Information:
Born the second of three sons to a Hudson’s Bay employee and his wife in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Parker has been well acquainted with tragedy in his life.
First it was his father and brother who died in an outbreak of sickness when he was three; then — after remarrying and moving west to Swift Current, Northwest Territories — his mother died in childbirth when he was six; then his stepfather died from burns incurred fighting a grass fire when he was ten.
After that he and his younger brother were sent to an adoptive family in the area of Calgary, further west in the Northwest Territories, but the experience there was so unpleasant he and his brother ran away to Fort Macleod to the south.
There they had to fend for themselves, which included a little bit of stealing; this got his younger brother arrested, but the NWMP†, who’d arrested him had sympathy on the boys — aged thirteen and eleven — and contacted their grandparents in Halifax, who took the boys back in.
Unlike his brother, Parker didn’t adapt well to the ‘return’ to Halifax’s established urban environment — seeing how they’d been five and three when they left their recollections of the city were quite dim — and longed for the wide open spaces of the West.
Additionally, his interactions with the NWMP had filled his heart with a desire to be like them, so, when he turned eighteen, he took a gift of money from his bachelor uncle and spent it on a train fare back to Fort Macleod, where he joined the NWMP, with whom he has served for two years since.
In that time he made the acquaintance of an older officer who has become something of an older brother to him and has welcomed him into his family. As it happened, this officer had a younger sister who was both beautiful and unmarried.
She found him handsome in turn and the two started courting, becoming betrothed before Christmas, with the wedding date set for May 2, 1903.
Although he loves his fiancée and is eager to marry her, he can’t help but be worried, seeing how his father, mother, and stepfather have all died, what’s guaranteeing that his fiancée won’t be taken from him?
Thankfully his NWMP duties are plentiful and don’t give him too much time to think on such worries; although he has to admit that he actually wishes he was busier so that he wouldn’t have any time to think on them at all.
Born the youngest of seven children to a Welsh-born liveryman and his Canadian-born Irish-French wife in Stavely, Northwest Territories, Rowynna has lived a generally simple existence.
Her parents are devout Anglicans — her mother converted from Catholicism by her father — and so attending Sunday service and other church functions has always been a core part of her life; whatever free time she’s had otherwise has been occupied around the home.
Like her three older sisters, she has been educated well in the art of homemaking on all fronts, and has enjoyed learning it far more than attending church events and WCTU meetings with her mother, who admittedly has a rather overbearing personality; but she has always enjoyed her free time the most.
The majority of her free time has been spent helping her father with the horses at his stables: brushing them, cleaning their tack, and even braiding their manes and tails when she can — even though everyone aside from her youngest older sister sees that activity as frivolous.
All of these activities have been mainstays in her life in spite of the fact that her family has picked up and moved twice, first moving from Stavely south to Granum when she was ten — the livery in Stavely being left to her oldest brother, while her second-oldest brother continued south of Granum to Fort Macleod to join the NWMP — and then just two years ago moving from Granum — whose livery was given to her youngest brother — to the newly-established mining town of Frank, located in the Crow’s Nest Pass.
Now seventeen, Rowynna is setting up to be the last child remaining at home, as her oldest sister married while they lived in Granum and moved to Claresholm, and her second-oldest sister has married the nephew of Frank’s general store proprietor — in fact, the couple are expecting their first child in late April — while her youngest older sister, and lifelong closest companion, is getting set to marry a young NWMP constable who was introduced to her by their second-oldest brother.
Rowynna has no qualms about settling down and getting married herself, except for the fact that she doesn’t see anyone suitable in Frank.
The majority of the population are hard-drinking foul-mouthed miners who frequent the saloons more regularly than the churches — and are highly disapproved-of by her mother — and the other, more suitable candidates in her mother’s eyes to her are largely unhandsome bores.
What she would like would be to meet a man like her father, either that, or to be introduced to a young NWMP constable by her second-oldest brother, but as of yet neither has occurred, and Rowynna isn’t inclined to think either will happen within the next five years — by which time her mother expects her to be married — living in a coal-mining town that’s decently isolated from the rest of the area.
*Alberta (and Saskatchewan) became provinces of Canada in 1905; †NWMP is the North-West Mounted Police, who would go on to become the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 1920.
Pronunciation:
Macleod: muhklowd
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