Page 221 Big Hill Country 1977
Walter and Mary Crowe arrived in Cochrane from Newcastle, England, in April 1904. Walter had been a coachman for the Lord Mayor of London prior to leaving England. They had three children born in England: Ernest, in December 1899; Ethel, in January 1901, and Robert, in August 1902.
They went immediately to R. W. Meicklejon’s Minnehaha Horse Ranch in Grand Valley, later called the Critchley Ranch and then the Rhodes Ranch. Walter worked there for two years, breaking horses. When the Meicklejons retired to Florida, the Crowe family moved to Banff, where Walter worked briefly for Colonel Phil Moore, who married Pearl Brewster.
Returning to Cochrane, Walter homesteaded the NE¼ 24-27-5-5 on Horse Creek. In November 1906, a daughter Mabel was born, and in April 1913, a daughter Violet was born.
Walter Crowe was instrumental in organizing the Chapelton School District, now known as Horse Creek, and donated two acres of his homestead for the school site.
In 1916 Ernest joined the 137th Battalion C.E.F. in Calgary and served with the 10th Battalion in France, at Vimy Ridge, and Hill 70, where he was seriously wounded in 1917. Walter enlisted in the 211th Battalion and served in Canada before being honourably discharged.
Prior to Ernie’s discharge in 1919, and his return to Canada, his dad had sold the farm to the Soldier’s Settlement Board. The family had moved to Cochrane, where his dad and Robert bought the Alberta livery stables. Ernie joined them in the business, selling coal and hauling freight to the stores, and carrying the mail for three rural mail routes, Dog Pound, Bottrel and Lochend, three days per week. About 1920 the Crowes bought the first Ford ton truck in the area. Even after its advent, the rural mail delivery, and trips with the doctor, had to be done in the winter and spring seasons with horses and sleighs or democrats; sometimes the mail was carried on pack horses.
In 1920 Ethel Crowe worked for Belle Truman as an operator in the telephone office. She met and married Pete Drever. Pete was well known in the Calgary Horse Show. After a year in Calgary, where their first daughter, Eileen, was born, they migrated to Mt. Kisco, New York State, and worked with horses on some large estates. Three more daughters were born: Joy, Virginia and Doris. Virginia died in Calgary in 1930, while on a visit to Cochrane with her mother and sisters. In the 1930s Pete and Ethel acquired their own riding school and stables and made several trips back to Alberta to buy potential polo and hunter horses. Pete died suddenly in June 1940. Ethel, left with three young girls, had to sell out and go to other work. She has been in retirement for the last twelve years in Bedford Hills, New York State. Her three daughters now are: Mrs. Gene Powell, Bedford Village, New York; Mrs. Jas. Barron, Arlington, Texas; and Mrs. Jack Armstrong, Bedford Hills, New York.
Robert Crowe joined the R.C.M.P. in 1927. He served at Fort Churchill on Hudson’s Bay, The Pas, Flin Flan, Island Falls and at several other stations. While on detachment at Tisdale, Saskatchewan, he married Hilda Lamb of that town. When stationed at Melfort, Saskatchewan, a son Barry and a daughter Bonnie were born. In July 1945, while Staff Sergeant at Sub Division Headquarters, Prince Albert, he drowned in Lake Waskesiu.
Barry, his wife and two daughters, live in Vancouver. Bonnie, her husband, Ken Walberg, three daughters and her mother, live in Prince George, British Columbia.
Mabel Crowe married William Bateman of Jumping Pound in April 1926. They ranched there where a son Norman and a daughter Joan were born. In 1944 they moved to Salt Spring Island, British Columbia. Three years later they went to Vancouver, where Bill worked at the Alberta Wheat Pool Terminal Elevators, until his retirement in 1968. They then moved to Langley. Norman and Joan and their families live in North Vancouver and North Burnaby, respectively.
Upon leaving school, Violet Crowe was employed as a telephone operator at Cochrane for a few years. She met and married Arnold Rushfeldt in 1930. They went to farm at Vulcan, Alberta, where two sons Douglas and Mervin, and a daughter Loreen were born. Three weeks after Loreen’s birth, Violet died in the Vulcan hospital.
Ernie Crowe was secretary treasurer for the Village of Cochrane and manager of the old Alberta Hotel for a number of years. In 1929 he became the agent for the Albert Government Telephones, a position he held until 1948. He was a charter member of the Cochrane branch of the old G.W.V.A., later called the Canadian Legion, and was also a past president of the branch. He was a member of the Cochrane school board for nine years and a Justice of the Peace for the Village.
Ernie married May Brown in 1928. A daughter Jean was born December 1929, a son Stanley in June 1937, and a daughter Connie in January 1940. Jean married James Darroch in 1947 and they had three sons and one daughter. Jean presently lives in Calgary. In 1958 Connie married Alex Lohrer in Calgary, where they reside with their daughter and son. Stanley married Gwen Scott in Vancouver in 1970. They have a daughter and a son. They are now residents of Ottawa, where Stanley is employed with the Department of Public Works.
Upon resigning from A.G.T. in 1948, Ernie Crowe went to Vancouver, where he was employed at the University of British Columbia as a security officer for 17 years, until he retired employed as a telephone operator at Cochrane in 1965. His first wife, May, died in Calgary in 1962. Later that year he married Wilhelmina Grant, a Registered Nurse, in Victoria. He and his wife are now retired in Calgary.
After going out of the livery business in Cochrane, Walter Crowe worked for some years for the Provincial Government, Department of Highways branch. After the death of his wife in 1943 at the age of 72 years, Walter went to work at the Colonel Belcher hospital and the Empress Hotel in Calgary. He died in Calgary in 1947 at the age of 74 years; both he and his wife are buried in the Cochrane cemetery
