10/15/2026
Can you guess the context of this photo? (Hint: it has to do with a major event in Onoway's history.)
If you guessed that this was a tracking dog used by the police after the 1924 Onoway bank robbery, you are correct!
Shortly before noon one day in July 1924, three men slipped off the CN train from Edmonton and concealed themselves until evening. "They proceeded to cut the telephone wires leading to the hospital two miles out of town, under the impression that they were thus severing communication between Onoway and Edmonton."
Later that night, several townspeople heard explosions coming from the Standard Bank but for various reasons decided not to investigate further.
The next morning, a safe was discovered to have been blasted open, and about $3,000 were missing. Police officers from Lac Ste. Anne, Stony Plain, and Edmonton came to investigate, but the robbers' identities were never uncovered.
(Source: 1978 Pathfinders, pp. 135-6)
