The Landscape of Ukrainian Settlement in the Canadian West

University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for Spring 1982 The Landscape Of Ukrainian Settlement In The Canadian West John C. Lehr University of Winnipeg Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Lehr, John C., "The Landscape Of Ukrainian Settlement In The Canadian West" (1982). Great Plains Quarterly. 1655. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/1655 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. THE LANDSCAPE OF UKRAINIAN SETTLEMENT IN THE CANADIAN WEST JOHN C. LEHR To journey through parts of the western in belt where wood, water, and meadowland were terior of Canada at the turn of the century was available in abundance. Their uniformity in to experience the cultural landscapes of the appraising the resources of the land and their peasant heartland of Europe. Nowhere was this strong desire to settle close to compatriots, more true than on the northerly fringes of the friends, and kinfolk led to the formation of a parkland belt and across the. southern reaches series of large ethnically homogenous block of the boreal forest pioneered by Ukrainian settlements that eventually spanned the West immigrants from the Austrian provinces of from southeastern Manitoba to central Alberta Galicia and Bukovyna. (Fig. 1).2 Between 1892, when the fIrst small group of seven Ukrainian families settled in Alberta, THE ESTABLISHED FRAMEWORK and 1914, when the outbreak of war in Europe FOR SETTLEMENT terminated immigration from Austria-Hungary, more than 120,000 Ukrainians settled in Since the great majority of Ukrainian immi Canada. 1 Almost all of these people were of grants lacked the capital to purchase improved peasant stock and most sought land on the lands in settled areas, of necessity they sought agricultural frontiers of the West. Driven by a out the "free" homestead lands on the edge of resolve to secure the wide resource base essen settlement. There they faced a wilderness of tial for subsistence agriculture, they avoided unbroken land and uncleared bush. To the the open prairies and gravitated to the unsettled European mind, accustomed to the manicured lands on the northern reaches of the parkland order and serenity of the long-established land scapes of the Old World, the Canadian frontier seemed wild and untrammeled. But it was a bounded and ordered wilderness; dominion John C. Lehr is assistant professor of geogra phy at the University of Winnipeg. He has surveyors had slashed section lines through it emphasized the settlement of Mormons and with geometric precision, dividing the land Ukrainians in his publications, which have into townships of thirty-six square miles, each appeared chiefly in Canadian journals. subdivided into mile-square sections, which in 94 THE LANDSCAPE OF UKRAINIAN SETTLEMENT 95 --:--------- - ---,-------------, I I I \ I \ I I I I I I I I I I I I ,I ,I I ,I \ \ KEY "~I \ 1 STAR 2 PRINCE ALBERT "- 3 FISH CREEK '" \ , 4 YORKTON AREA '\ 5 DAUPHIN \ 6 SHOAL LAKE \ INTERLAKE \ \ STUARTBURN " \ 9 WHITE MOUTH I • AREA OF SOLID UKRANIAN SETTLEMENT - I, I \ ----~-----~-----------~------ Source: Public Archives of Canada, Record Group 76, Records of Homesteod Entry, and field research FIG. 1. Ukrainian block settlements in western Canada, 1914. turn were quartered into the 160-acre units immigrants stayed within the bounds of the deemed to be the efficient size for agriculture institutional framework marked by the lines in the new territory. 3 of the survey. The basic infrastructure of set Few settlers of any nationality ventured tlement-the layout of roads, spacing of farm beyond the limits of the survey. Squatting, the units, and spacing and placement of settle illegal occupation of land ahead of the survey ments-was preordained for them. The patterns and not yet opened to settlement, was not a enshrined in administrative ordinances, even if common practice. The Canadian West knew no not yet manifested on the ground, reflected equivalent of the claim clubs of the American the interests of the corporate and governmental West. Although the survey had made accommo elite of English Canada. The immigrant was dation for those established in the territory forced to accommodate to this institutional prior to its acquisition by Canada in 1870 (for framework which bound his actions, deter example, the long lot surveys granted to the mined the spatial layout of his landscape, and Metis), the government was determined to im molded his society in the new land. The Do pose an efficient, regular, and uniform system minion Lands Act required that any settler of land subdivision across the western interior. claiming homestead land had to reside upon his For a settler to move ahead of the survey was quarter section for at least six months per year risky. He stood to lose everything if his im for three years before a patent was obtained.5 provements were found to lie on a road allow The act thus precluded nucleated settlement in . ance or on lands later selected by a railway newly settled areas and made einzelhof, or company as part ofland grant.4 dispersed settlement, the norm throughout the The venturesome but not foolhardy peasant western interior. By opening only alternate 96 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SPRING 1982 sections to homestead settlement and by re tecture, farm layouts, and fence types, are serving in each township two sections for subject to the inevitable decay of material. school lands and one and three-quarters sec Furthermore, they are affected by the pres tions for the Hudson's Bay Company, the sures of cultural assimilation and the rate of Dominion Lands Act also ensured low densities economic progress. Hence they are all highly of settlement across the West. vulnerable to change. Ukrainian immigrants were accustomed to Despite these limitations on the transference village settlement. Both nucleated villages and of material culture, the Ukrainians quickly im strassendorfs, or street villages, were common pressed their presence upon the landscape. In in the western Ukraine. 6 Their society was the Hrst few years of settlement the sectional tightly knit in both physical and social senses, survey had little influence over the pattern of so the immediate concern of many Ukrainian communications. Local topography and Indian settlers was to achieve dense settlement and trails determined the Hrst pathways; only after thereby replicate the social interaction of the some years and the organization of local gov old-world village. Since village settlement was ernment districts did a road system following impossible within the terms of the Homestead the lines of the survey materialize. It was during Act, Ukrainian pioneers sought to increase those Hrst Hfteen or twenty years that the land settlement density by petitioning to settle on scape of Ukrainian settlement most closely both odd- and even-numbered sections, and resembled the landscape of their homeland. even resorted to the illegal subdivision of home Not only were vernacular forms transferred, steads into 80-acre holdings.7 For the most but there was also a return to the more simple part their efforts were of little avail. Though folk forms of earlier times, because in the fron the crown agents responsible for Ukrainian tier environment few pioneers could afford to settlement were sympathetic to their wish for invest the time and capital required to repli dense settlement and suggested the adoption cate the relatively elaborate forms of their of alternative strategies in placing Ukrainians previous houses. on the land, their superiors in Ottawa were not receptive to any departures from standard THE DOMESTIC LANDSCAPE practice.8 Nevertheless the determination of Ukrainians to live closely together led to the Effective shelter, quickly and cheaply built, creation of unusually dense settlements in was the immediate concern on the frontier. many areas, sometimes because the government Some immigrants resorted to cavelike dwellings permitted homestead settlement on both odd in riverbanks but most built a small one-room and even sections, but more often because, in hut, or sod-roofed earthen dugout, called a order to live near their friends and kin, the zemlyanka or borday. These temporary huts Ukrainians were prepared to homestead on were strongly reminiscent of the chimneyless lands refused as land grants by railway com choma khata (black houses) common in the panies and bypassed by other nationalities. 9 Carpathian region in the eighteenth century Since the immigrants were unable to trans but seldom encountered by the end of the nine fer the basic element of their cultural land teenth century. The dugout was similarly based scape-the system of village settlement-to upon a largely defunct folk form, the mountain western Canada, their new cultural landscapes hut, or staya, of the Hutsul shepherds of the were comprised of elements that were either Carpathians. 10 ephemeral or destined to be transient in the The Hrst shelters were built as temporary long term. Patterns of settlement and com dwellings and although most were used for munication are physically entrenched into only a few months (Fig. 2), some were occu the landscape, but other elements of material pied for several years. When the second, more culture, such as vernacular and religious archi- substantial, house was built, almost always in THE LANDSCAPE OF UKRAINIAN SETTLEMENT 97 FIG. 2. Temporary shelter of Ukrainian settler, Athabasca, Alberta, 1929. Public Archives of Canada. the traditional style, the first shelter was usual Horizontal log building was the most common, ly relegated to the function of store house or with saddle-notched corners on logs left in the summer kitchen (komora).

Load more