Alberta Ghost Towns: A Personal History of Wayne, Alberta

Recently, Bob Sheridan (a Everyday Tourist subscriber) asked if I’d be interested in seeing some old photos he had of Wayne, Alberta. I said “sure” and he quickly forwarded several photos with the associated stories to me. I then asked him if he’d be interested in doing a guest blog about growing up in Wayne, Alberta. He said, “I’m not a writer, but I’ll give it a shot.”

Sheridan’s Memories

I’m standing facing a v-shaped steel coal car, burning, and smoking with acrid fumes, consuming discarded cardboard boxes, orange and apple crates, beautiful white, dove-tailed cornered butter boxes, waxed inside, along with over-ripe fruit and vegetables and detritus accumulated daily in the general store in front of me. No recycling here. 

The wooden loading dock covers half of the back of the building which houses the Central Trading Company (the last active remnant of the Western Commercial Mining Company) and Petito’s Confectionary, operated by Sam Pepito’s wife who occasionally drives a pristine 1927 Pontiac coupe, kept in an enclosed garage to the far left behind me. 

Above the store rests a large dance hall, long unused for that purpose because of my grandfather’s fear of fire that was bound to result with the meeting of smoking dancers and drinkers. Around the corner of the store to my right, a small pit recessed in the ground where salamanders accumulate near a small door to the cellar.

Every couple of months an 8-ton load of coal would be dumped through the opening, raising black clouds of dust.

Behind me is a row of outhouses, each used by designated local inhabitants who lived in the area, a few in bachelor shacks, a few above Jim Fong’s Western Café which was around the corner to my right. Alec the Sheik lived in the shack around the corner next to the former pool hall, occasionally used for dances and meetings and then the café. We all complained when the price of pop went up from 5 to 6 cents. 

Beyond the row of outhouses to my left is Jim and Tuey’s home with their 2 sons, Eddie, and Stanley, both of whom would go to the mining school in Butte, with Stanley graduating and going to work with an oil company in Alberta.

After Butte, Eddie found it more to his liking to stay around home and help with the café, play baseball and eventually golf. Stanley was one of the few people who owned a car in Wayne, a mint 1940 Chevrolet sedan. Jim could be seen driving his old model T Ford pickup erratically while commuting to his Two-Bar Ranch somewhere out in the country where he raised pigs.

Further behind me, while I stoked the fire, lived the Evans family. Luther and Mrs. Evans (who grandly sang Danny Boy) had a huge pot of lard on the stove which never got cold, to deep fry the chips to feed their large family.

Morwen, who first left for the city, and then John, the hometown hero, who skated with the Drumheller Miners, Lethbridge Native Sons, Saskatoon Quakers, New Haven Ramblers, New York Rangers, then on with the Chicago Blackhawks to win the Stanley Cup with Bobby Hull. A further illustrious career in the minors and coaching career with the San Francisco Seals, Cleveland Barons, and Hartford Whalers followed. Wayne and Edgar, my age, close friends, and schoolmates, were next in the family line followed by Luther, Jessie and Glen.  

Their neighbours were the Unchelenkos: Alex and Helen, with their kids Freddie (who along with Willie Miller and I were in Sea Cadets), his sisters Helen and Jeanne. Fred was eventually to go to Brooks to play Baseball for the Brooks Buffalos, then to own the hotel in Rockyford. 

Next door to them lived the Cunninghams: father and mother Walter and Maria, my friends Hank, Bob and Chester, and their younger siblings Theresa, Reva, June, Roy, Glenn, Leonard, and Kenneth. Hank would go with Freddie Unchelenko and Charlie Pozzo to Brooks to play ball, but later, after serving in the Canadian Army, became Operations Manager at the Calgary Exhibitions and Stampede. 

Chester would leave Wayne to go to St. Albert and begin a prominent career in counselling Indigenous and Metis peoples, culminating in the Alberta Order of Excellence and an Honorary Doctor of Laws Degree from the University of Alberta. 

Many a day Bob, Chester and I walked to the hills and tracks of Wayne, carrying our 22s, hunting for something I suppose but mainly shooting cans and bottles along the way, eating our weight in chokecherries and saskatoons. 

Across the street, not really a street because there was no pavement or curbs in Wayne, lived the Desjarlais family, with their daughters Doris, Muriel, Mildred, Phyllis, and Fay (all admired by the many young men in Wayne). Their father, Phil competed regularly at the Hand Hills Stampede. 

Last Word

Over the past two years as everyone struggles with COVID, we have all had time to clean out the closets of old photos, postcards, letters and momentos that trigger memories of the past - places, family and friends.

I hope you enjoyed Bob’s memory of growing up in Wayne, Alberta. as I did.