Dead Man's Flats - Dead Man's Flats, Alberta
Posted by: 
wildwoodke
N 51° 02.353 W 115° 16.044
11U E 621469 N 5655614
This Alberta Heritage sign is for Dead Man's Flats with a story expalined on the sign and in the text below located in Dead Man's Flats, Alberta
Waymark Code: WM8N94
Location: Alberta, Canada
Date Posted: 04/22/2010
Views: 12
From the sign:
As a gateway to a major pass through the Rocky Mountains, the Bow Valley has been a transportation corridor since the time of the early Aboriginal groups, explorers, and fur traders. The arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1883 and the discovery of nearby coal resulted in the district's development.
The name of one community in the Bow Valley, Dead Man's Flats has a number of possible origins. The most prevalent is said to have arisen from a grisly incident that occurred in May, 1904.
Around 1900 Jean Marret came from France to the Canmore area to operate a dairy farm. He encouraged his brother Francois to join him. Francois did no like life as a farm hand and spent the next three yers working at odd jobs in Canmore and Cochrane. As time passed, he started hearing voices of his long-dead parents, and a constant buzzing in his head. Francois was convinced his parents were telling him his brother was trying to kill him with invisible electrical machines. In an alleged act of self-defense, Francois Marret Marrey murdered Jean with an axe as he lay asleep in bed. Then, near this spot, Francois threw his brother's lifeless body into the Bow River.
At his trial, expert witnesses stated that auditory hallucinations were a symptom of a deep-seated brain disease. This condition, they believed, had been brought on by Francois' life of privation while serving in the French Foreign Legion in Africa. Two weeks after the killing, the verdict was in. On the grounds of insanity, Francois Marret was acquitted of his brother's murder and was committed for the rest of his life to the asylum in Brandon, Manitoba.