Native Sons in W W I
Frank Beaton and W W I In the early ‘60s I worked on a couple of ranches on the south side of the Peace River and one of those I worked with was a man named Frances Beaton Jr. better known as Frank. He was the son of a long-time Hudson’s Bay Company Factor at Fort St. John. Frances Beaton Sr. was a Scott and his wife and Frank’s mother was a Dane-zaa, better known to we pale-face as Beaver Indians – probably because the HBC could usually depend on them delivering high quality pelts. Dane-zaa group near Fort St. John 1914 Dane-zaa men near Fort St. John about 1910 Frank had many stories to tell about his up-bringing and because of a couple of those stories I gave him and his father a cameo appearance in “The Making of Jake McTavish.” One of the stories he told was about he and several other young native men meeting in Grande Prairie, Alberta and signing up for s...