What You Didn't Know About Millet, Alberta

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:01][bell] [music] [music] >> The year was 1891 and the railway had finally reached this part of the prairie and almost overnight everything changed. Not because a town had suddenly appeared but because people started arriving to the area. Now there wasn't much here at first, >> [music] >> no proper station, no streets, no real sense of a town yet. Just a rail line and what amounted to a station that looked more like a box car sitting in seclusion at a siding.

[00:01:04]If you stepped off the train in those early years, you weren't stepping into a town. You were stepping into what was considered low ground.

[00:01:13]This area was wet, soft and often difficult to cross.

[00:01:19]The mud here had gotten bad enough that the railway had to build a wooden plank walkway out past the tracks just so people could reach the buildings on the west side of the rails without sinking up past their ankles.

[00:01:33]And that's how this place started. Not with a main street but with a plank path, a rough station and a rail line cutting through a stretch of difficult ground.

[00:01:53]>> [music] >> The name Millet didn't come from a map or a plan. It came from a person. As the railway pushed further north, Sir William Van Horne turned to Father Lacombe for help in naming the stations along the line.

[00:02:19]Lacombe chose the name Millet in honor of his friend August Millet, a canoe man, a fur buyer. August was a [music] trusted companion who had traveled with him on the western trails.

[00:02:33]Now, the name wasn't what shaped this place. It was the railway. The Calgary and Edmonton Railway Company was granted 6,400 acres of land for every mile of track it built.

[00:02:49]So, that meant the line wasn't just passing through. It was laying out the foundation for settlement. And by the early 1900s, that rough little station was replaced.

[00:03:03]First, a small platform was built. And then in 1907, a larger two-story station was erected. And that building would soon become the center of everything.

[00:03:15]Mail and freight arrived here daily like tools, coal, food, and farming supplies.

[00:03:22]Local farmers were now provided with a new opportunity. They could bring their goods here to be shipped out to just about anywhere in the world.

[00:03:34]And upstairs, the station agent lived with his family, working around the constant rhythm of trains coming and going. You could feel the railway here, not just in the movement, but in the way the whole place was organized around it.

[00:03:55]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Now, it should be noted that by the time the settlers were unloading their lives here, the line through Millet was already operating under the Canadian Pacific Railway.

[00:05:12]It carried people north with their livestock, tools, seed, furniture, and whatever else they could pack into a rail car. However, the railway could only bring them to the edge of a new life. It could not make them landowners.

[00:05:29]That part came from the government. For $10, a settler could claim 160 acres of land. It sounded simple enough, a small payment, a quarter section, and a chance to begin again.

[00:05:42]But claiming the land was the easy part.

[00:05:45]Keeping it, well, that was a different story. A settler had to prove they could live there, build something, work the ground, and make it produce.

[00:05:54]Some stayed on the land year around and tried to earn their land title quickly.

[00:05:59]Others took the longer route, living on the land for a portion of each year, making improvements over time. Either way, there was no shortcut.

[00:06:12]The railway brought them in, the government had offered the land, but after that, it came down to weather, work, and time. There was no guarantee of success, just 160 acres, $10, and a deadline.

[00:06:38]>> [music] >> After the land was claimed, well, the work began. Homesteads started sprouting up around the railway, and as more families settled onto the land, Millet had little choice but to grow with them.

[00:06:56]Ben Slaughter, a fur buyer, >> [music] >> was among the first to settle here in the early 1890s. He had a store with living quarters on the east side of the railway, and by 1896, Millet's first post office was [music] operating out of that store.

[00:07:13]That may not sound like much, but on the prairie, a store and a post office, well, that meant something. It meant people had a place to collect mail, buy supplies, exchange news, and begin forming the routines of a community.

[00:07:30]By 1901, there were already several buildings here. The next year, B. A. Van Meter built a store, and the Millet Hotel came into existence. Then, in 1903, Millet was officially organized [music] as a community. It was still small, still muddy, still tied to the railway in almost every way, but it was no longer just a stop on the line. It was becoming a place people expected to last. And by 1911, the population had doubled from 75 to more than 150 residents. The farms came first, but slowly around them the town began to take shape.

[00:08:29]>> [music] [music] >> By the 1920s, this place wasn't just receiving goods. It was also sending them out. One of the most remarkable examples came in the winter months with fish from Pigeon Lake. This wasn't local trade. This was a timed run.

[00:09:00]Around midnight, the teams were already moving. Not along paved roads, but over winter trails. Horse-drawn sleighs cutting through the dark towards the fish plant at Mulhurst.

[00:09:14]They had to be at the plant no later than 6:00 in the morning. The fish were then packed into boxes with ice ready to be loaded. Each box weighed approximately 200 lb. Roughly 42 boxes went on to each sleigh. Then, they turned around and headed back to Millet carrying thousands of pounds of fish across the frozen countryside heading [music] towards the rail station.

[00:09:40]And by 7:00 that evening, they were already on their way south, headed to markets as far as New York and Chicago.

[00:09:48]>> [music] >> Everything depended on timing, and everything depended on the line.

[00:10:03]>> [music] >> Inside the station, the agent handled more than just freight. He handled messages, telegrams, news from the outside world.

[00:10:14]During the war years, people watched the agent closely. He was often the one who carried telegrams into town. If he walked through the streets whistling, people felt a sense of relief. It usually meant the message wasn't bad.

[00:10:30][music] But if he wasn't whistling, well, people noticed because the railway didn't just bring goods into town. It brought in news, and during wartime, that news could change a family's life in a single moment.

[00:10:44]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> For decades, everything pointed to the tracks, but slowly that began to change.

[00:11:18]The old trail between Calgary and Edmonton had already been shifting over time, adjusting around sloughs and rough ground. And as the preferred mode of transportation was beginning to change, the road moved to the west side of the railway, and by the late 1930s, it was improved >> [music] >> and paved.

[00:11:43]With better roads came more automobiles, more independence, and less reliance on the train. Little by little, the routines that had once shaped daily life here began to disappear. People no longer walked to the station each evening the way they once had. They no longer gathered just to see who had arrived, who left, and what news had come in on the train.

[00:12:15]By the 1970s, the station itself, the building that had anchored the community for decades, was sold and eventually demolished. But, you can still see its influence here in the way the town was shaped, in the layout [music] of the streets.

[00:12:32]Millett didn't begin as a planned community. It began as a stop along the railway line in a low muddy stretch of the prairie.

[00:12:41]>> [music] >> But, that stop became an anchor.

[00:12:44]Around that stop came a station, stores, homes, churches, and schools, and daily routines of a growing community. [music] What began as a place to pause became a place to stay. And from that point on the line, well, Millett grew.

[00:13:04]Hey, this is Mike. Thanks for watching.

[00:13:07]If stories like this matter to you, consider liking the video, subscribing, and sharing it with your friends. That helps keep the Prairie Pride alive.

[00:13:16]There are still more towns yet to come, more stories to tell. We'll see you on the next one. Take care, y'all.

[00:13:34]>> [music] >> Magnoia [music] town was humming.

[00:13:47]Smoke lay [singing] on the ground.

[00:13:54]Yeah, Magnoia town was humming.

[00:13:58]Smoke lay [music] on the ground.

[00:14:06]Here no face [music] I recognize. [singing] And my baby can't [music] be found.

[00:14:18]I left that place in summer.

[00:14:21]Swore I'd be back by fall.

[00:14:23][music and singing] I left that place [music] in summer.

[00:14:31][singing] Swore I'd be back by fall.

[00:14:40]Now the porch is bare and broken.

[00:14:44]And her name's [music and singing] gone from the wall.

[00:15:14]Heard the church bell moaning. [singing] Down on Beale Street side.

[00:15:20]>> [music] >> Heard the church bell moan in down on Beale Street side. [singing] >> [music] >> Sounded [music] like forgiveness for the tears [singing] I tried to hide.

[00:15:48]Now I'm sitting [music and singing] with this guitar, strings hum like they know.

[00:16:00]Yeah, sitting with this [music] guitar, strings hum like they know.

[00:16:11]When love don't live [singing and music] no longer, that blues is all you own.

[00:16:29]>> [music]