Faust, Alberta, Canada

Faust is the name of the hamlet of 400 people that has been my home since 1966. In 1914 the railroad track came through, and an engineer ~ by the custom of the day and his trade ~ left the family name to the RR station here.

AKO CHI GUNNA TEKAYA TOH

An Oral History

Marie Courtoreille (nee Wichihiwesis, or Walker) lost her life in a fire at her home in Faust in 1982. She was 101. At over a century in age she had no trouble threading a needle, still had her own teeth, and needed no glasses. Marie Witchihiwesis was born on the shore of Lesser Slave Lake just west of the mouth of Old Man Creek on a day in May, 1881. Her father Henry Witchihiwesis and mother Nancy Giroux had her baptised in 1883 at the parish mission of St. Bernard at Lesser Slave Lake settlement. At 18 she married Alexander Courtoreille, stayed along the lakeshore, and in her own words, "lived on fish and meat." It is from her family that the earliest oral history of the community dates. Local tradition has it that the Native people used the location at Giroux Bay as a fishing camp where the year's supply of fish was strung on poles in the sun for drying. The place may well have been called (as tradition has it): Ako chi gunna ("that which is hung") Tekaya toh ("where it takes place"): The Place Where They Hang The Fish.

(read more local history at http://www.albertburger.com/faust.htm and of a tribal feud story at http://www.albertburger.com/tribal%20feud.htm ~ as told in 1927 by Louison Gladue to Earl Frood, in The Wabasca Adventure