In 1907 Mary Lawrence describes the departure of her family aboard the S.S. Peace River from their home at Fort Vermilion:

"The last morning, opening brightly in July, Fred [Lawrence] took us across river and drove us the seven miles by buckboard to the Hudson's Bay Company's Post, to the steamer [S.S. Peace River]. During the previous days we had been getting our things together. We were used to travel and ready to leave. The steamer was whistling. We pulled away from each small familiar sight with a wrench of something uprooted. One moment we were calling good-by to Fred and then we were passing the first point, rounding out of sight. Smoke shadow and wake wove and blended, braided and unravelled as the wind and course shifted. Already the children had forgotten! Already they were inspecting a strange wonderful new world! Their minds gasped with the thought of it!"

Mary B. Lawrence, quoted from: Wilderness Outpost: The Fort Vermilion Memoir of Mary B. Lawrence, 1898-1907., edited by Marilee Cranna Toews. Edmonton: The Alberta Records Publication Board, Historical Society of Alberta, 2008, pp. 209-210.

In this colorful description Lawrence clearly links the use of a steamboat on the Peace River with the "strange wonderful new world" of the early 20th century.