Martin Nordegg: The Uncommon Immigrant

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

The history of the coal industry in western Canada has generally been
presented to us from two perspectives—industrial development and
labor. Seldom has it elicited stories about the trials and triumphs of
the entrepreneurial spirit at the personal level. Even Andy Den
Otter’s work on the Galt family, “Civilizing the West,” is largely
an economic study.

In this thoroughly researched and well-written biography, the pattern
is broken. The life of one of the true heroes of Alberta’s coal
industry is presented in a compelling tale of risk, adventure,
ingenuity, ethnic tension, personal heartache, and valor. The work
brings to light a largely forgotten aspect of western development,
namely, the private tribulations of the individual developer setting out
to discover a resource and establish an enterprise.

Martin Nordegg was born in Silesia in 1868 and received training as an
engineer in Berlin. In 1905, he was persuaded that his destiny lay in
developing untapped mineral resources in Canada, and so he migrated
there the following year. In 1907, he discovered a stream of coal 50
kilometres east of Rocky Mountain House and soon had the Canadian
Northern Railway committed to extending a branch line there. Coal
extracted by Nordegg’s newly formed mining syndicate could be used by
CN and also shipped by Nordegg’s company to eastern markets. Before
long, Brazeau Collieries was the largest coal mine in Alberta. For his
workers, Nordegg designed and built a model town (named after himself)
based on the British “Garden City” concept.

In 1915, Nordegg’s dreams were shattered when he was declared an
enemy alien and removed from the directorship of his company. He then
moved to the United States, but returned to Canada in 1920 to advise the
federal government on international trade. During the 1930s and 1940s,
he helped resettle refugees from Europe and engaged in other
humanitarian causes until passing away in 1948.

In putting together Nordegg’s compelling story, John Koch, who also
comes from Silesia, consulted a vast array of sources in archives,
libraries, and private hands in Europe, Canada, and the United States.
Regrettably, only the photos have been cited. This work should
nonetheless be regarded as a standard for the history of mining in
western Canada, and of the social history of the eastern side of the
Rockies.