Canada and the British immigrant

by Emily P. Weaver

Prince Albert (of which the first house is said to have been the log-cabin of a Presbyterian missionary, put up in 1866) is rich in the so-called “white coal,” and before long the city will be supplied with hydro-electric power from the La Colle falls in the Saskatchewan river, which flows past her very doors. The damming of the river to develop the power will serve the purpose of improving its navigability, and it is anticipated that soon there will be steamboat communication between Lake Winnipeg and Edmonton. In the south, just within the borders of the province, near Roche Percée, and away in a north-westerly direction along the eastern escarpment of the “third prairie steppe,” lignite or “brown coal” has been found in many different places, and in Saskatchewan there were thirty mines in 1910, employing in all nearly four hundred persons.

It is difficult to exaggerate the part played in Saskatchewan by the railways. Lying almost midway between the Pacific and the communication by means of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence with the Atlantic, this region had no outlet for any of the products of its fertile soil till the coming of the railways. In truth, there were no products, but only possibilities, for the settlers came in after the Canadian Pacific Railway—the pioneer line—which crossed the province on its way to the far west; and since then branch lines and little new towns have grown up together, till now this one great railway has over two thousand four hundred miles of “steel” in Saskatchewan alone, and its single track of 1885 (which it was such a mighty feat to build through the lone prairies and across the rugged western mountains) has become a complicated network. But what this first line meant in binding the separated provinces into a real union was shown in that very year, 1885, when for the second time the half-breeds, led by Louis Riel, rose in revolt.

This time the storm centre was in the North-West Territories—from which in 1905 the new provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta were carved out—far west and north of the Red River, but though there were long gaps in the railway, the troops sent from Eastern Canada reached the scene of the disturbance in about a month, or less than half the time which it had taken Wolseley’s force to reach the Red River fifteen years earlier. During the last ten or twelve years a younger railway company, the Canadian Northern, which in 1901 had not a mile of line in operation in Saskatchewan, has been adding line to line, and branch to branch, entering new districts, where farmers had gone in on the promise of its coming, carrying into the country immigrants and “settlers’ effects” by the car-load, and out of it train upon train of wheat. It also is knotting together a network across southern Saskatchewan. Last year its lines in the province had lengthened to 1,785 miles, and it is still reaching forward in many directions, including that of Hudson Bay.

Lastly, the luxurious passenger trains of the Grand Trunk Pacific are crossing Saskatchewan, with the promise of another easy ocean-to-ocean route; and the promise also of additional means of transportation for the annual millions of bushels of Saskatchewan’s wheat. But more quickly even than the railway companies have been pushing the construction of their new lines increases the product of the fields and farms; and every new avenue of transportation, while improving the situation in certain districts, also adds to the magnitude of the problem to be solved, for there are always people, regardless of isolation and hardships, ready to go in advance of the railways.

At present the authorities are giving no encouragement to immigrants to settle in the northern part of Saskatchewan, for that district is entirely without transportation facilities, and is better suited to the wandering, adventurous lives of the hunter and trapper than of the would-be maker of a new home. The former serve best, perhaps, as heroes for boyish romances of the Ballantyne type; but the real interest of the story of the Canadian West belongs to the home-makers—the nation-builders—who are surging in to take possession of the land.

In 1901, the population of Saskatchewan was nearly 91,300; in 1911, it was over 492,400, when, by the way, the male population exceeded the female by 91,000. During 1911, 44,000 immigrants settled in Saskatchewan. Of these 59 per cent. were Americans, whose experience of farming under similar conditions makes them excellent settlers; whilst the remaining number, which entered by ocean ports, represented no less than forty-six nationalities. Amongst the homesteaders for the year, besides Canadians from the east, and people from the British Isles and from the United States, were French, Germans, Belgians and Hollanders, Swiss, Italians, Roumanians, Syrians, Austro-Hungarians, Russians, Danes and Icelanders, Swedes and Norwegians. The people from Northern Europe make particularly good settlers, and though some of the foreigners appear to be of an unpromising type as material for the building up of a nation on British lines, they are often found, on closer acquaintance, to have some special excellence to contribute to the general “melting pot.” The assimilation of all these peoples is no small problem for the young Dominion, however.

In Saskatchewan, as elsewhere, perhaps the greatest force for the Canadianizing of the newcomers is the common school, which has an influence extending into the home circles of the children who attend. It is fortunate for the nation that a large proportion of the teachers (chiefly young women) hold a high view of their calling, and therefore are peculiarly well-suited to act as guides to the newcomers.

The different churches in the province are also toiling bravely amongst the immigrants, but their task is complicated by differences of race, language and traditions; and by the tendency of the population to scatter itself in little groups—sometimes only a single family and sometimes even one individual—far and wide, wherever fertile land is to be had. Of late years immigrants have been coming in so fast, that the churches, though adding constantly to their force of men and women, clergymen and missionaries have great difficulty in overtaking the work; in fact, they cannot do it.

In Saskatchewan the leading denomination is the Presbyterian; then follow the Roman Catholics, the Methodists, the Anglicans, the Lutherans, the Greek-Catholics, the Baptists and the Mennonites.

Despite all that is being done, many of the settlers are for years out of reach of church services, and some of the groups of foreigners are practically left to themselves in this respect, for want of people to work amongst them. For enforcing law and order amongst the scattered settlers and for many other services, Saskatchewan owes much to the small body of North-West Mounted Police, who have inculcated respect for British justice in the breasts of red and white men, newcomers and old settlers.