THE GERMAN CANADIANS IN SASKATCHEWAN WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM, 1900-1930 A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Master of Arts in the Department of History University of Saskatchewan by Kurt Tischler Saskatoon, Saskatchewan c. 1978 K. Tischler The author has agreed that the Library, University of Saskat- chewan, may make this thesis freely available for inspection. Moreover, the author has agreed that permission for extensive copying of this be thesis for scholarly purposes may granted by the professor who super- vised the thesis work recorded herein or, in her absence, by the Head of the Department or the Dean of the College in which the thesis work was done. It is understood that due recognition will be given to the author of this thesis. Copying or publication or any other use of this thesis for financial gain without approval by the University of Saskat- chewan and the author's written permission is prohibited. Requests for permission to copy or to make any other use of the material in this thesis in whole or in part should be addressed to: Head Department of History University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7N OWO ii ABSTRACT Today multi-culturalism and multi-lingualism are encouraged by legislation and government agencies both federally and provincially. In Saskatchewan the Department of Culture and Youth has been charged with the task of getting the varied ethnic groups to work together to provide a sense of community without at the same time causing any individual group to make undue sacrifice. This conviction that the language and culture of the various ethnic groups is worthy of preservation is not new; it was held when thousands of immigrants were welcomed to Saskatchewan at the turn of the twentieth century. Special concessions were made to enable the immigrants to retain and to exercise their language and culture. Thousands of Germans were attracted to Saskatchewan because of the prospect of being able to retain their Deutschtum (Germanism) and the availability of fertile and inexpensive land. The majority of Germans came from countries other than Germany but they had maintained their language and culture for many decades. Upon arriving in Saskatchewan these Germans began to organize themselves again so as to maintain their Deutsch­ tum. In spite of serious obstacles such as denominational divisions and a lack of ethnic self-consciousness, the Germans were able to achieve con­ siderable success in retaining their language prior to the outbreak of . World War 1. The war had serious implications for all ethnic groups in Saskat­ chewan. However, the Germans were affected most since they spoke the lan­ the war guage and appreciated the culture of the enemy. By end of the virtually all activities designed to foster Germanism had ceased and the iii language rights the Germans had enjoyed for years had been removed through legislation. These were crippling blows to das Deutschtum in Saskatchewan. Even more critical, though, was the distrust and hatred shown the Germans during the war, especially in the "English only" controversy and through This a sense propaganda campaigns. instilled of fear into many German Canadians, aroused feelings of resentment and completely intimidated those Germans who had given leadership. As a result, for many years after the war the Germans were indeed "the quiet in the land." The German community began to reorganize and initiate steps to strengthen their Deutschtum with great reluctance. How­ ever, by 1930 the Germans had once again made considerable gains in their attempts to maintain their language in Saskatchewan. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author wishes to extend a special thank you to Dr. M. E. Hallett whose guidance and suggestions were invaluable. He gratefully acknowledges the generous and entirely free assistance of the following: the staff of the Archives of Saskatchewan, especially Mr. D. Backing, Mr. L. Rodwell and Mr. D. Hande; the staff of the University Archives, Saskatoon, particularly Mr. S. Hanson; and Professor G. Steckhan for meticulous attention to detail in proofing the translation from German to English. He also is indebted to Miss Jeanne Trach for an excellent typing job. Finally, he wishes to thank his wife, Norma, for her patience and encouragement in this lengthy undertaking. PREFACE This thesis will examine the German C�nadians in Saskatchewan with special reference to the efforts they made to retain their language prior to World War I. The thesis will also study the disastrous impact of the war on those efforts and the resulting language crisis, and conclude with an assessment of the extent to which recovery was possible by 1930. Two main difficulties arose in the writing of the thesis, the lack of secondary source material and the problem of statistics. Because no on of of errors in the Canadian census, accurate figures the number Ger­ mans in Saskatchewan during the period in question can be given. There is little reliable information on the German population living in Saskatche­ wan's towns and cities. Aside from Heinz Lehmann's book, Das Deutschtum in Westkanada, no general secondary sources are available on the Germans in Saskatchewan; none exist in the English language. Fortunately there are several good source books on some German groups. The history of the Mennonites, for instance, has been well chronicled in books such as Mennonites in Canada and Mennonite Exodus by Frank H. Epp; sources on the German Lutherans and Roman Catholics are limited almost exclusively to church histories. This lack of secondary source material necessitated considerable use of German newspapers such as Der Nordwesten, Der Courier and st. Peters Bote and a heavy reliance on Lehmann's work. Gaps exist in these sources so that it has not been possible to present a clear picture of the Germans in Saskat­ chewan particularly of their involvement in Saskatchewan politics. vi CONTENTS Page No. ABSTRACT . • iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v PREFACE vi CHAPTER I. GERMAN IMMIGRATION TO SASKATCHEWAN TO 1914 .. 1 II. THE GERMANS ATTEMPT TO RETAIN THEIR LANGUAGE TO 1914 • . • . .. 26 III. THE IMPACT OF WORLD WAR I ON THE GERMAN PRESS, ASSOCIA nONS AND CHURCHES . .. 70 IV. THE IMPACT OF WORLD WAR I ON GERMAN SCHOOLS -THE "ENGLISH ONLY" CONTROVERSY. 91 V. POST-WAR RECOVERY 122 CONCLUSION . 142 BIBLIOGRAPHY . 149 vii CHAPTER I GERMAN IMMIGRATION TO SASKATCHEWAN TO 1914 Howard Kennedy, a British journalist for Montreal's Daily Witness, was a spectator to the tremendous influx of people to Western Canada at the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1907 he predicted: It is one of the great events of history that has just begun, the peopling of the West. Historians will one day rank it with other great migrations,--with the Aryan flood that laid the foun­ dations of modern Europe; with the taking of England by the Angles and Saxons.l Although historians generally have not ranked the settling of the Western prairies as generously as Mr. Kennedy predicted, the quarter century after 1891 has been recognized by all historians as a period of great expansion and tremendous optimism. During the period Manitoba's population rose from 152,000 to 554, 000, British Columbia's from 98,000 to 456,000 and the two new provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, which held a population of under 100,000 in 1891, held over 1,000,000 in 1916.2 The rapid growth of population, especially in Saskatchewan, was due to a great tide of immigration from Eastern Canada, the·United States, Great Britain and Continental Europe. Immigrants from Europe arrived in ever greater numbers at the turn of the century. As the Canadian Pacific Railway began to build branch lines throughout the prairie provinces, 3 "extending its steel tracks like the tentacles of a fumbling octopus," settlements of Europeans were established near the rail lines, including 4 . 5 varl0US·1·co onles 0 f Swe des, Germans, Roumanlans, Danes and Hungarlans. the Of these immigrant groups settling in Saskatchewan, by far largest numerically were the Germans.6 2 Most of the Germans in Saskatchewan did not come directly from Germany but rather from German communities in countries other than Germany. In the 1916 Census, for instance, only 15,328 inhabitants of the prairie provin�es gave Germany as their country of birth, but 101,944 persons 7 indicated German as their mother tongue. Making extensive use of Cana- • dian census statistics, H. Lehmann, a German Sociologist, estimated that of the pre-World War I German immigrants to Western Canada, forty-four per- cent were from Russia, eighteen percent from Austria-Hungary, eighteen per- cent from the United States, six percent from Roumania, two percent from Ontario, Switzerland and other settlement areas and only twelve percent 8 from Germany. There were several reasons why prospective immigrants from Germany did not come to Saskatchewan. First, the general public in Germany knew little about Canada. A widely held opinion at the turn of the nineteenth century was that it was a country next door to the north pole of almost perpetual ice and snow.9 This discouraged many would-be German immigrants from coming to the prairie provinces. Instead the majority chose the more populous and developed areas of the United States, and some the climati­ cally more suitable countries of South America.lO The German government itself discouraged its citizens from emigrating. Since a rapidly expan- ding industrial nation needed an ever increasing labour force, the German government forbade the open solicitation and selection of immigrants by , 11 C ana d'lan lmmlgra't'lon au thorl't'les. Canadian immigration authorities attempted to attract Germans to Western Canada nevertheless.