Nault Centre

Mural by Jacques Martel

Wilfred Fortin married Marie Girard in Quebec in 1897. From their marriage, four children were born: Maria, Alma, Raoul, and Yvonne. The Fortin family decided to follow other francophone settlers and travelled west where they arrived in Legal in 1909. Wilfred built a store with an addition for housing freighters; the store’s addition became an overpopulated inn.

Mural by Marc and Dainel Michaud

Théodore Gelot and Eugène Ménard were French settlers working in Californian vineyards. The two friends set out for Edmonton and each purchased a homestead in 1894. To satisfy the government’s land requirements, they built a small vault on the line between their homesteads, combining them.

Mural by Marc and Daniel Michaud

The Gelot and Tieulié families present the challenges of working the land. Early settlers would cut trees down using axes and bucksaws before hauling them away with horses. These were later used for firewood or to build houses. They would then dig up the roots of the trees before plowing the land. Here, they are using steel wheeled tractors instead of horses for the task. Finally, crops were sown and later placed in stokes for harvest.

Mural by Remie Genest

Germain and Cécile Auger are depicted with their children playing instruments. Music and singing were part of the family’s yearly gatherings. These joy-filled evenings, found in so many francophone families of the past, are very much a part of everyday French-Canadian culture.

Mural by Dan Glen

This mural honors the 50th wedding anniversary of Delphis and Marie-Claire Coulombe. A farming and thinking out-of-the-box family, they are depicted harvesting hay and using horses to make the hay stack higher. In the mural Marie-Claire is using her spinning wheel and in the bottom right corner is one of their sons, who became the first priest of the Saint-Paul Diocese.