by Karen Ardy

Created on: July 20, 2009   Last Updated: July 22, 2009

Catherine Schubert was born in Ireland in 1835, the youngest of nine children. When she was only 16 years old she sailed to America and became a maid in Springfield, Massachusetts. During her spare time, she decided to teach herself to read. When she was just 19 years old, she met and married a German carpenter by the name of Augustus Schubert and they moved to St. Paul. Catherine opened a small grocery store while her husband worked at his carpentry and one year later their son, Gus was born followed by a daughter, Mary Jane, two years later. When economic hardships forced the closure of the store and Augustus was finding it difficult to maintain employment, the family packed up and moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba which at the time was called Fort Garry.

Nothing terribly remarkable so far about this woman. But she went on to become a remarkable woman in Canadian history. She was the first European woman to walk - yes, walk - across the Rocky Mountains into British Columbia.

In 1858, gold was discovered in the Fraser Valley in what is now British Columbia. On May 26, 1862, 150 men arrived by boat at Fort Garry with the plans of following an overland route to the gold fields. Augustus decided to travel with these men to seek his fortune. But he did not go alone. Catherine was a determined woman and she had her own plans. She would keep her family together, now grown to include three children, at all costs and she began making the necessary arrangements to walk over the mountains. She had absolutely no intentions of being left behind to run their small store and farm and care for the three children on her own.

One can only imagine the horror the other men felt upon learning that a women with three small children planned to travel with them. Everyone else had left their families behind and it was probably believed that she and the children would prove to be a hindrance on their journey. But her determination and hard work won over at least some of the men and she was able to provide something of a 'woman's touch' on their travels.

They began to walk across the prairies. They had to carry all their provisions and equipment for mining in carts or on their backs. Today, although the prairies possess a unique beauty all their own - even traveling in a motorized vehicle - they seem endless. They had little shelter from the elements and bravely pushed on through the blazing sun, drenching rain and cold prairie nights. Although exhausted much of the

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