Denare Beach’s Northern Gateway Museum is getting ready to open its doors for its annual Discovery Day on July 27.
This year’s focus will be on the struggles and triumphs of an RCMP officer in northern Saskatchewan.
Marcel Chappuis immigrated to Canada in 1911 and toured many parts of Saskatchewan.
In 1928-29 he settled at Sturgeon Landing and later established a one-man RCMP detachment in Cumberland House.
Chappuis would retire in 1945 with the rank of Lance Corporal.
Better known as Chappy, he was “the symbol of law and order in this entire region of the north,” said Gateway Museum’s Penny Morissette.
Chappy patrolled the area by dog sled and snowshoes, covering areas between 2,000 and 3,000 miles in the winter. He kept a log of his patrols.
Flin Flon and Denare Beach — or Beaver Lake — are among the areas he patrolled. He reported about prospecting, mining and commercial fishing activities.
Chappy’s patrol turned dangerous in December 1931 as he was burned in a fire in Denare Beach.
He was transported the Flin Flon hospital and later returned to his detachment in Cumberland House.
John (Jack) S. Whidden, an owner of the mink ranch where the fire set, later succumbed to his injuries and was the first person to be buried in the Denare Beach Cemetery.
In 1980, at the age of 86, Chappy was invited to Denare Beach to act as the honorary race marshall for the famous Last Great Freight Race, which originally surfaced as a Denare Beach Winter Festival event.
The two-day, 193-kilometre dog sled race kept to similar routes of Chappy’s from his patrol days.
Chappy died in 1989 in Victoria, BC, at the age of 94.
The museum’s Discovery Day will feature preserved maps of Chappy’s route and will provide detailed information of his journey and time as an RCMP officer in the northern parts of Saskatchewan.
