CONFLUENCE
Heritage Society
The David Thompson Puppet Show:
The David Thompson Puppet Show
Music! Laughter!
Romance! Adventure!
Two voyageurs, French and English, with the help of David Thompson tell the story of this explorer, mapmaker and fur trader.
Also stars Charlotte Small and Kootenay Appae
Performed at the Rocky Mountain House National Historic Site on Weekends starting the May long weekend and from Wednesday to Sunday throughout July and August.
Showtime is at 2 pm
Special Performances are available: contact 403 – 845-6680 (summer) or staff@confluencehs.org or the Rocky Mountain House National Historic Site at 403-845-2412
Our puppeteers
Imagine working in a gift shop and being a puppeteer on the side. The students who work in our gift shop during the summer also learn and perform the puppet show. They keep the puppets, stage and props in tip top shape and promote the show to park visitors.
How the Puppet Show Came to Be
Every good project needs money and our project began with a grant proposal to Kids @ Parks. Several of our board members spent a day together brainstorming, writing charts and charts of ideas and organizing our thoughts. At the end of the day we each took home sections of the proposal to write up. One of our members got letters of support from the local schools. The finished parts were emailed to one of the board who had agreed to assemble the proposal and send it off.
Then we waited…
Finally, good news, our proposal was accepted and we set about finding someone to create the puppet show. The script was written by Evergreen Theatre, a Calgary group that creates and performs curriculum based musical theatre.
The puppets were constructed by the Old Trout Puppet Workshop, also from Calgary.
Several meetings were held throughout the spring to iron out the many details. Finally our ruggedly handsome and erudite David Thompson and his friends were ready. Old Trout puppeteers came to have training sessions with our summer gift shop employees. And the rest is history.
Travelling Puppets
We have taken the show on the road. In the summer of 2005 the show went to the Heritage Festival in Edmonton sponsored by the St. David’s Welsh Society. The Welsh Society also sponsored performances in ten schools in September of 2006. We have also performed closer to home as well. The cost and availability of the performances depend upon the availability of puppeteers and the distance to be travelled.
The puppet show leaves for the big city
After ten years our hard working puppet show has gone back to its maker (Evergreen Theatre) for a re-vamp. It will return, fresh and invigorated, next spring for the 2012 summer season. It will be the same story of the life of David Thompson as told by David and his rowdy voyageur friends. The script will be tightened up a bit and the puppets and quite a bit of the scenery will be new. The training of the new puppeteers will start the beginning of May. And the rollicking fun will continue!
The Real David Thompson
Explorer, fur trader, surveyor, mapmaker, David Thompson has been the subject of many books and of much speculation. He came from England at the age of 14 to work for the Hudson’s Bay Company. He explored and surveyed much of what are now western Canada and the US, often travelling with his wife, Charlotte Small, and young family. As a young man, while recuperating from a broken leg, he learned to use a sextant to chart the territory he travelled. He kept journals of his experiences while travelling; recording such things as weather conditions, distance and direction of travel, availability or lack of food, comments about the people he met or travelled with, and extraordinary events. Later he used this information to create his Great Map for the Northwest Company.
He came to the newly built Northwest Company post, Rocky Mountain House, on the North Saskatchewan River and from here, in 1801, he made an attempt to cross the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific. Due to the rough and terrain and choice of route, this was unsuccessful.
“ However unsuccessful this Journey has been” Thompson wrote, “it has not been wholly without its use”.
Using knowledge gained, Thompson left Rocky Mountain House on May 10, 1807, and successfully crossed the mountains through the Howse Pass to the Columbia River. He explored the upper reaches of the Columbia and after crossing the mountains a few more times eventually reached the Pacific Ocean on July 10th, 1811
More about David Thompson
What was he thinking?
Read Columbia Journals by David Thompson and edited by Barbara Belyea.
His adventures on the Columbia.
Read Sources of the River by Jack Nisbet
His life in the fur trade and after.
Read Epic Wanderer by D’Arcy Jenish
Visit David Thompson Things
The David Thompson Bicentennial
The exploits of David Thompson are being commemorated throughout western Canada and the United States and elsewhere from 2007 to 2011 and beyond. There is everything from quilts to coins, artwork to books, festivals to voyageur treks, and much, much more. Find out about these and other goings on at the David Thompson Bicentennial
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