Bad Heart, Alberta

The locality of Bad Heart, Alberta, Canada approximately 50 km north-east of Grande Prairie, was formed around the Bad Heart School District, established November 6, 1928 for the area between the Badheart and Smoky Rivers in the northeastern tip of the County of Grande Prairie.[1]) On July 18, 1929, a post office was approved in the home of R.J. Magee on the SW quarter of section 8, Township 75, Range 2, West of the 6th Meridian. [2]) The name appears to be “a translation of the Cree word maatsiti or missipi. G.M. Dawson of the Geological Survey of Canada also referred to it in 1879 as Wicked River. Either one of these may refer to the narrow 125 m-high canyon through which the river flows along its winding route, or the name might have spiritual significance.” [3]Bad Heart is also the location of the Bad Heart Straw Church, a national historic site. This church was built of straw bales in the mid-1950s by Father Francis Dates, a Redemptorist priest stationed at Sexsmith, about 50 km west, so that the people of the area would have a place to worship. [4]) After the one-room school burned down in 1948, the school district was split into North and South Bad Heart, but in 1955 both were consolidated to Teepee Creek. [1]The post office closed in 1968[5]) but the Straw Church remains in place as an historic site. [4]Information on this community and the people who lived there can be found in Wagon Trails Grown Over.[6]

References

  1. 1 2 A Grande Education: One Hundred Schools in the County of Grande Prairie, 1910-1960 (1 ed.). Grande Prairie, Alberta: South Peace Regional Archives. 2010. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-9735665-0-5.
  2. ↑ "Post Offices and Postmasters". Library and Archives Canada. Government of Canada. Retrieved 16 November 2015.
  3. ↑ Aubrey, Merrily (1996). Place Names of Alberta Volume IV (1st ed.). Calgary, Alberta: University of Calgary. p. 8. ISBN 1-895176-59-X.
  4. 1 2 "Bad Heart Straw Church". Canada's Historic Places. A federal, provincial and territorial collaboration. Retrieved 16 November 2015.
  5. ↑ "Post Offices and Postmasters". Library and Archives Canada. Government of Canada. Retrieved 16 November 2015.
  6. ↑ Wagon Trails Grown Over: Sexsmith to the Smokey (1st ed.). Edmonton, Alberta: Friesen Printers. 1980. p. 21. ISBN 0-88925-101-0.
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