Saskatchewan Bound: Migration to a New Canadian Frontier

University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for 1992 Saskatchewan Bound: Migration to a New Canadian Frontier Randy William Widds University of Regina Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Widds, Randy William, "Saskatchewan Bound: Migration to a New Canadian Frontier" (1992). Great Plains Quarterly. 649. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/649 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. SASKATCHEWAN BOUND MIGRATION TO A NEW CANADIAN FRONTIER RANDY WILLIAM WIDDIS Almost forty years ago, Roland Berthoff used Europeans resident in the United States. Yet the published census to construct a map of En despite these numbers, there has been little de glish Canadian settlement in the United States tailed examination of this and other intracon for the year 1900 (Map 1).1 Migration among tinental movements, as scholars have been this group was generally short distance in na frustrated by their inability to operate beyond ture, yet a closer examination of Berthoff's map the narrowly defined geographical and temporal reveals that considerable numbers of migrants boundaries determined by sources such as the gravitated toward more distant agricultural and published and manuscript censuses. As a result, urban frontiers and a reading of the historical scholars interested in the settlement of the Prai literature on internal migration within North rie Provinces have concentrated primarily on America emphasizes the fact that a significant the more visible European migration, ignoring number of Canadians living in the United States the migration of eastern Canadians and Amer returned home to Canada during the period ican residents to the Canadian West. 1896-1914. 2 This paper discusses three sources that may Returning Canadians were joined in their be used to reconstruct and analyze patterns of trek northward by thousands of Americans and migration from elsewhere in Canada and the United States to Saskatchewan during the pi oneer period of settlement. The sources and the methodology are part of my longitudinal re search strategy tracing migration paths and life Professor of geography at the University of Regina, histories. 3 I will particularly focus on the prob Randy Widdis is the author of twenty-one publi lem of tracing the "invisible" groups, Canadians cations, most on migration of settlers between the and Americans, in Saskatchewan, because they United States and Canada in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. had an impact on western Canadian settlement that is "completely out of proportion to the documentation of their movement and settle [GPQ 12 (Fall 1992): 254·2681 ment on the prairies". 4 254 SASKATCHEWAN BOUND 255 THE CONTEXT OF MIGRATION AND SETTLEMENT Most Canadian school children know that prairie settlement was shaped and directed by the combination of tariff, railway, land, and immigration policies developed in the post Confederation period by the Conservative gov ernment of Sir John A. Macdonald and the Liberal government of Sir Wilfred Laurier. The MAP 1. English Canadian Settlement in the success of these policies has long been the sub United States, 1900. ject of historical debate with discussion center ing on the relative roles of Canadian government policies and external forces--such as falling transport costs for wheat exports, the resump tion of international capital and labor flows, rising wheat prices as a result of industrialization in Europe and the United States, and the end The second most important source of im of the American and frontier-in bringing about migration was Great Britain, a natural choice prairie settlement. 5 Although I will not inter given Anglo-Canada's heritage and the com pret neo-classical economic theories of western mitment of the federal government to main development I wish to refer to some of these taining a steady flow of British stock into the internal policies and external forces to establish West. 8 The department employed many of the the context of immigration and settlement in same publicity techniques in Great Britain as western Canada. in the United States, advertising in newspapers, Immigration Policy. As minister of the interior presenting exhibits at agricultural shows, and from 1896 to 1905, Clifford Sifton established sponsoring tours of the West. Largely because the basic framework for immigration and set restrictive laws made it difficult to promote em tlement. He aimed his aggressive promotion of igration through government agents, the de western settlement toward farmers in the United partment did not emphasize recruitment in States and Europe. He deemed the United States continental Europe, but Sifton awarded bonuses the greatest source of "first class" settlers be to steamship agents who sent immigrants to cause American immigrants had capital, goods, Canada. Eventually these agents organized the and experience in prairie farming and because North Atlantic Trading Company to attract im Ottawa considered them "ethnically desira migrants for Canada. Emigrants who were ag ble."6 The Interior department especially wanted riculturalists received high bonuses if they to "tap the pool of discontented tenant farmers, possessed at least $100 upon arrival. 9 ambitious established farmers and ex-Canadi While Sifton was selective in his aggressive ans, all of whom might be receptive to the recruiting, he appears to have adhered to an promises of free homestead land in western Can Open Door policy with one exception-Asian ada."7 Sifton expanded the number of immi immigration. Sifton supported the existing head gration offices in the United States and began tax on Chinese immigrants, but he continued an intensive program of promotion through to believe that all immigrant groups could be newspaper advertisements and displays at public assimilated; thus justifying group settlement. His exhibitions in those areas where experienced successor, Frank Oliver, on the other hand, farmers lived. amended the Immigration Act to make entry 256 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 1992 much more difficult for certain groups, espe of American farmers. The major forces Karl Bi cially Asians. Virtually no assistance was cha identifies as driving North Dakota farmers awarded to intending settlers from central and from the land at this time apply to the American eastern Canada. The federal government could prairie region in general. They include increases not afford to encourage interprovincial migra in land prices and tenancy and mortgage rates tion given the significant rural depopulation of as well as unfavorable climate conditions. Land Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes and the in the Red River Valley that had sold for $5 to widespread concern over this loss of human re $10 an acre in the mid-1890s increased to $20 sources. tO to $40 an acre by 1900, the result of a growing The End of the American Land Frontier. Al demand for land among an expanded popula though western Canada's first Homestead Act tion. The rate of tenancy quadrupled between was passed in 1872, the region failed to attract 1890 and 1920 and by 1910 more than half of the hundreds of thousands of Europeans and the owner-operator farms in the state were North Americans moving westward. Between mortgaged. The period 1900 to 1906 saw an 1870 and 1896 adjacent American lands were abnormal rainfall with excessive precipitation filling up while the Canadian prairies remained in both spring and summer during four of these largely empty of white settlement. Canadians years, delaying harvesting and planting, and comprised a major portion of settlement of the drought in 1900 and 1903. 14 upper Midwest and Great Plains states, with Land Policy. While the free homestead was more than 120,000 migrating to the American the staple of western land policy, other devices prairies between 1870 and 1890. Kenneth Nor played a major role in settlement. The awarding rie contends that the lack of rail connections of alternate sections of land to the railway com to export points constrained the development panies ensured that the Canadian Pacific Rail of the region before 1879, but the completion way (C. P. R.) was to become the largest single of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1886 and land holder in the West. Alternate sections were the extension of its subsidiary, the Soo Line, also set aside outside the railway belts until 1908. to the Canadian border removed this barrier. 11 The Conservative government passed regu Yet high wheat prices in the early 1880s lations to provide for the creation of coloniza touched off the "Dakota Boom" and western tion companies on 23 December 1881. This Canada continued to be a "terra incognita" for legislation made provision for sale of odd-num most westward-moving migrants. The report of bered sections situated twenty-four miles south the Palliser Expedition of 1857-60 did much to of the C.P.R. line at $2 an acre to any business dissuade those who were entertaining thoughts satisfying the government of its capability and of settling in the Canadian West, for Palliser interests in promoting settlement. Companies described

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