A History
of Hawkwood
by Anne
Burke
In Old
English, Hawkwood: hafoc (hawk) and wudu (wood) mean “the
wood where hawks fly.” The community was established in 1981 and named after a
local dairy farming family who came to the region from England in 1913. Arthur
and Isabella Hawkwood were pioneers; at first, they lived on several small
acreages and milked a few cows. Arthur worked at the CPR freight yards.
They had three children: Agnes, Tom, and Betty. In 1921, they bought a quarter
section of land near the slough where travellers rested and watered their
horses. There were four more children: Miles, John, Margaret, and Joe. All
the Hawkwood children went to the country Bearspaw School with little space for
eight grades. From their garden, the family sold potatoes to the Hudson Bay
Company and raised white Peking ducks for market. Then they bought land from
the Burns Ranch, north of their farmland which is now Scenic Acres and at
Twelve Mile Coulee. Where Silver Springs is the land was open with no fences.
In the summer blocks of ice were brought up from Alberta Ice Co. at Bowness.
Everyone worked hard during the drought and depression years of the 1930s. The
grandchildren from all the families attended Cochrane Schools. In
September 1950, the “lights came on” with electricity. In the early 1950s, hay
balers came into use. The old binders and threshing machines, horse-drawn mowers,
and rakes were obsolete. In 1953, a new house had a forced air furnace, an
electric cook stove, and indoor plumbing. Arthur Hawkwood passed away in April
1956, at the age of 68 years, and Isabella, age 88, in 1980. They are both
buried at Queen’s Park Cemetery in Calgary. In 1961, everything changed; diary
farmers had stainless steel tanks installed in milk houses attached to the
barns. The refrigerated milk was then pumped from the tanks onto the milk
hauler trucks.
References:
CHAPS
Cochrane, Sam and Margaret Chalack Family. Cochrane and Area Historical
Society; Mark Boothby, More Big Hill Country: Cochrane and Area
1945-1980; “Big Hill Country: Cochrane and Area (1978).
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