Moose Jaw -
Ever since the Fourth Avenue Viaduct was constructed in 1929, people have pondered the identities of Bear Ghost and Mike Oka, two First Nations people whose images decorate the bridge's light standards.
About three decades ago, Ted Bison of Sayre, Okla., claimed that Bear Ghost, a Teton Sioux, was his great-great-grandfather who had fled to Canada in the tragic aftermath of the battle of the Little Big Horn.
Eventually Bear Ghost returned to the United States and lived to a great age in the Platte River country of Nebraska. Possibly he was the same Bear Ghost who signed treaties with the U.S. government in 1876 or the Bear Ghost who signed a treaty at Poplar, Mont., in 1888.
Mike Oka, the other face on the bridge, was probably a Blood native of southwestern Alberta. In the 1930s, a Mike Oka, an old and respected Blood, could still recall the great tribal battles fought on the Alberta plains:
"I was a boy when the great battle was fought between the Bloods and the Assiniboines of Montana," he said. "My father took part in that bloody battle and I could hear the guns very distinctly. Our camps were at Fort Whoop-Up where the fight began. Many of the enemy never reached the east shore of the Oldman River . . . I never saw so many scalps in all my life as the next day in a victory war dance. The heaviest part of the battle took place on the present site of Lethbridge."
It is unlikely Bear Ghost and Mike Oka ever set eyes on Moose Jaw or its environs.
That did not seem to bother the viaduct's designer, C.A. Turner, a Minneapolis architect. Apparently none of the detailed planning was done in Moose Jaw, and city council was kept in the dark through the bridge's planning process.
The viaduct stands over or near one of the old crossings of Thunder Creek used by fur traders through the 19th century. During the early settlement period, settlers and travellers mentioned the valley's natural beauty.
Thunder Creek meandered through swampy ponds fringed with willows. Short shrubs grew along the banks and the entire valley was a "paradise for birds."
The noted British ornithologist Walter Raine was attracted to Moose Jaw in June 1891 by the area's incredible birdlife living around ponds and swamps created by the meandering of Thunder and Moose Jaw Creeks.
For days, on a raft, Raine polled his way up and down the two creeks for a closer look at the many species nesting there.
Birds were not the only wildlife. Muskrats were abundant, and fish came in plentiful numbers up the Qu'Appelle River and into the Moose Jaw and Thunder Creeks.
From the beginning of settlement until 1910, a footpath crossed the CPR tracks at the site of the present Fourth Avenue Viaduct and a flimsy wooden bridge with handrails spanned Thunder Creek.
A generation of youngsters grew up on that footbridge which could be set rocking with little effort.
Sometimes it was called Five-cent Bridge because the kids would try to extract a toll from unsuspecting pedestrians.
By 1909, Moose Jaw and the CPR had grown sufficiently to warrant a safe crossing of the railyards at that point, and work was begun on a viaduct that would straddle the entire Thunder Creek valley.
Three concrete piers carried the 200-foot steel portion over the CPR tracks, and poles supported the bridge's remaining 915 feet. The entire length was paved with creosoted blocks.
This bridge stood until 1929 when local burgesses approved the erection of the present viaduct, and from that day to this, the images of Bear Ghost and Mike Oka have mystified a lot of bridge users.
