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A key element of Fort Steele in the 1890s was local production,
the ability of the region to look after its own needs. Before the
riverboats, and then trains, all goods came into the region by pack
horse or wagon. As the population, and therefore demand, increased,
it became worthwhile for local craftsmen to import raw material,
such as sheet tin and copper, and create the finished products.
Through this kind of activity developed the fact of the independent
frontier.
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This was not a crude time. The Victorian ideal was everywhere and
the demand was for attractive and refined products. Those entrepreneurs
who could meet this demand prospered. When we look at the old pieces
in our museum collection the workmanship is invariably good. The
items produced by Thomas Charles Armstrong are functional, well
formed, and have a sense of skill and competence that is easy to
attune to. Without doubt he was a successful craftsman.
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Thomas Charles Armstrong was born May 24th, 1856, in Peterborough,
Ontario. In 1886 He married Elizabeth Bridget Killeen Armstrong
of Patawawa, Minnesota, and started to move west. They had five
children with Gordon, the last, born in 1905 at Cranbrook, B.C.
T.C. Armstrong came to Fort Steele from Kalispell, Montana, in 1897.
A fully qualified tinsmith, he was looking to better his fortunes
in a new land of opportunity. He constructed a manufacturing and
retail outlet, and became a vital part of the early Fort Steele
business community. The Tinshop was destroyed in the 1898 Riverside
Avenue fire, but Armstrong soon constructed a bigger and better
two story facility.
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The 1890s was the heyday for the local tinsmith in rural British
Columbia. Mail order and mass production had not yet supplanted
the community based local producer. Tradesmen like Armstrong made
products for the households of the region and supplied roofing,
ventilating and ducting services to commercial clients. In his store,
Armstrong sold stoves and mining equipment, and manufactured tin
ware, galvanized iron and sheet metal industrial products, stove
pipes and copper ware. He also provided plumbing and pipe fitting
services. He was kept busy roofing many of the town's buildings
with tin, including the Imperial Hotel and, in 1901, the Carlin
& Durick general store at Fort Steele. The roof of the latter
still exists as a functioning roof. Armstrong even sheeted the spire
of the Catholic church at the nearby St. Eugene Mission.
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A century later tradesmen like T.C. Armstrong and Fred Stork of Fernie, B.C.,
no longer exist. In large part mail order was to blame as tinsmiths could not compete
with larger factory based production systems.
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History 
