Sunday, August 16, 2015
After a family breakfast, we parted ways temporarily. While everyone else headed home, our family headed to Titanic. No, not the site of the sunken ship; Titanic, Saskatchewan. It’s not terribly far from Duck Lake, on the other side of Beardey’s First Nation land. The community of Titanic is no longer there, but the small area is very well kept. There’s a memorial chapel for St. Anne’s church there, and the cemetary is still there and still in use. That sounds weird. Of course the cemetary is still in use. I mean, there continue to be new occupants.
Our purpose for seeking out Titanic was to seek out Dan’s great-grandmother, Barbara Kuppenbender. We found her, as well as her sons Barthol and Aloysius. GG Barbara died in 1907, Barthol died in 1911, and Aloysius died in 1918. We also noted the spelling of their last names as K-U-E-P-P-E-N-B-E-N-D-E-R. Note to self when researching that line of the family. Jessica found two more Kuppenbender grave sights, one passed away in 1928 (?) and 1946 (?); their headstones spelled Kuppenbender without the E after the U. Dan is speculating the E immediately after the U was dropped after the First World War in an effort to disassociate from their German heritage, but we really don’t know if that’s true. I cannot emphasize how beautiful the area is. The road leading in needs some work though.
We drove back to Duck Lake, stopping briefly to see the site of the Duck Lake battle where they also had a memorial plaque for Aboriginal veterans. In Duck Lake we visited the museum, which was very well executed with plenty of well documented and exhibited information on the history of the region. The building included a central tower (for lack of a better word) which took us up three or four storeys from which we could see all around for a significant distance. We could even see Minichinas hill (or mountain, depending on who you talk to). Locally the hill is called Minitinas, and it’s right near Bellevue. I highly recommend a visit to the Duck Lake museum if you’re in the area. Uneventful drive back to Mom’s in Edmonton after that.
Guigon Travels 