New exhibit on now at the Fort St. John North Peace Museum!

Before roads, rivers were the highways of First Nations and early settlers. Birch bark canoes allowed First Nations to travel swiftly. Steamboats could travel over 500 miles along the Peace River from the chutes near Fort Vermillion to gates at Hudson’s Hope. This exhibit looks at over twelve boats, steam and gas powered, that used to navigate up and down the Peace River. 

Watch a slideshow of archival photographs, and listen to the sounds of steamboats. See what a dining table on the D. A. Thomas may have looked like. Try on a life jacket and see how it compares to one from over 100 years ago.

The Fort St. John North Peace Museum and the Alaska Highway Community Society have worked together to produce a book that compiles research and stories collected during the process to nominate sites along the Alaska Highway Corridor as a National Historic Site. Written by Julie Harris and Frank Edwards, Signposts and Promises: Canada and the Alaska Highway is a beautifully designed and lavishly illustrated large-format book that celebrates the Alaska Highway’s extraordinary natural and cultural landscape.

This book is now available at the Fort St. John North Peace Museum and is priced at $29.95.

Our special exhibit this fall, winter and spring looks at the various tasks women undertook in the North Peace from typical women’s jobs like nurse or teacher to less typical jobs such as trapper, interpreter, and politician. It also looks at a variety of handicrafts from mukluks to embroidered tablecloths made by local women. This is one of our largest exhibits with twenty-two interpretive signs spread out around the museum. These purple signs are integrated into many of our permanent exhibits, showing that women in this area were involved in all different kinds of work inside and outside this home. Marjo Wheat and Heather Sjoblom curated this exhibit. This exhibit is on display at the museum until May 31, 2019.