Suitable for the Wilds: Letters from Northern Alberta, 1929–1931

David W. Leonard is the project historian (Northern Alberta) in the
Historic Sites and Archives Service, Alberta Community Development. He
is the author of Delayed Frontier: The Peace River Country to 1909 and
co-author of The Lure of the Peace River Coun

The first edition of the 1929–31 letters of Dr. Mary Percy was
published in 1933 under the title On the Last Frontier. In 1995, with
this book long out of print and few copies available, the letters were
reproduced and annotated, with an introduction provided by Janice
Dicken. Published by the University of Calgary Press, this most recent
incarnation includes an index, some new photos, an epilogue, and—most
importantly—transcripts of interviews undertaken with Dr. Jackson in
1994.

The Battle River Prairie north of Peace River, Alberta, was the scene
of a massive land rush in the late 1920s, with over 1,500 settlers
coming in to take up land that had just been surveyed. In an attempt to
bring some sort of medical care to this district, the Alberta government
placed an ad in the British Medical Journal. Answering the call was an
adventuresome young physician named Mary Percy. She arrived at Battle
River in the early summer of 1929. Almost immediately, she began sending
back to Britain letters describing the countryside, the people, and the
circumstances of the frontier environment where she had set up practice.
Apprehensive at first, she soon embraced her calling. After her first
month, she confided, “wild horses wouldn’t have dragged me away.”

Initially expecting to return to Britain after two years of adventure,
she shocked family members and locals alike by marrying a
homesteader/trapper named Frank Jackson and moving even further into the
wilderness, to a place called Keg River, where she remained until the
1990s. For her perseverance and adaptability to the wilds, she remains a
legend in the Northwest.