Dr. Robert Shaw Residence

This house was built circa 1920 and is another example of the Arts and Crafts style residences that were built in Sexsmith around this time. It is valued for its connection with the first resident doctor in the area, Dr. Robert Norman Shaw. Born in Woodburn, Ontario in 1880, Shaw received his degree in medicine from the University of Toronto in 1905. After first practicing in Ontario, he moved to northern Alberta in 1911 as part of the Laurier government’s call to homestead in the “Last Great West”. He sought hard work and adventure, in lieu of practicing medicine which included working as the foreman on a road crew carving out the Edson Trail to Grande Prairie, as a labourer building a ferry for Dunvegan, working at the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Sturgeon Lake Trading Post and travelling to Hudson Hope seeking gold. He came back to northern Alberta in 1913 and opened a drug store in Grande Prairie with pharmacist S. J. Shuttlesworth until Shaw sold his portion in 1915 and moved to Spirit River to homestead. There he met and married his wife Ann Anderson, whose family operated a stopping house just north of Sexsmith. He established a medical practice in Spirit River to supplement his farming income before moving to Sexsmith in 1919. He then established a medical practice in Sexsmith and formed a partnership with pharmacist Bert Smith, and opened a drug store in the community where he also based his medical practice. Dr. Shaw also worked closely with midwife Johanna Haakstad, the “Nightingale of the north” to open a centralized maternity home in Sexsmith (see item #17).