Canada and the British immigrant

by Emily P. Weaver

Edmonton is still a centre of the fur-trade, and even now, in winter time, picturesque dog-trains arrive from the north in the provincial capital, whilst in the heart of Alberta traders, surveyors, mail-carriers and missionaries are leading the kind of life described in the “Wild West” books of our childhood. Still, on winter’s nights, in the white Albertan wilderness, many a man, for one motive or another, is sleeping out under the stars, defiant of the frost and loneliness; and still, in the long days of the northern summer, canoes ply on the rivers, which are the only roads in portions of Alberta.

Of the numerous lakes of the province, Athabasca, which Alberta shares with Saskatchewan, has a surface of 2,850 square miles, but Lesser Slave Lake, the largest entirely within the province, is only four hundred and eighty square miles in extent. The rivers of Alberta are more important than the lakes. The four principal are the North and the South Saskatchewan; the Athabasca and the Peace river, which all rise in the Rocky Mountains, flow in an easterly or north-easterly direction, and have numerous tributaries, amongst which are some which might themselves take rank as important rivers. Both lakes and rivers, by the way, abound in fish, white fish being a staple food of the Indians and of the few white men in the north, as well as of the dogs used as draught animals.

The climate resembles that of Saskatchewan in its cold winters, hot summer days, and its dry, bright weather all the year round. Sometimes the mercury sinks in winter far below zero; sometimes in summer it registers as high as 90 degrees in the shade; but the nights are never unbearably hot, and the weather is never of the “muggy” type which in some places makes exertion so distasteful. There is little difference between the mean summer temperature in various parts of the province, owing, perhaps, to the fact that the general altitude is much greater in the south than the north. As it approaches the mountains at the boundary, the country is about four thousand feet above sea-level, but it slopes gently downward towards the north and east, till in the far north the altitude is less than one thousand feet. The Peace River valley has as warm a summer as the valley of the Saskatchewan, three hundred miles to the south, and everywhere there are long hours of sunshine in the growing season.

The climate of parts of the province, even as far north as the Peace River valley, is much modified by the “chinook,” winds which, tempered by the warm Japanese current of the North Pacific, blow through the passes of the Rocky Mountains, and sometimes even in mid-winter cause a rise of temperature of fifty or sixty degrees in a few hours. One effect of this is the melting of the snow with marvellous rapidity, and in an ordinary season horses and cattle can live and thrive on the open ranges all winter, though provident farmers keep a good supply of hay on hand for emergencies. In most parts of the province there is a sufficient rainfall for the needs of the crops, and the rain comes as a rule most abundantly when most needed, but there are districts in the south where irrigation is being practised with great success and advantage.

The natural resources of Alberta are varied and abundant. First and foremost is the soil, of which a well-known English agriculturist and chemist, Professor Farmer, wrote: “Although we have hitherto considered the black earth of central Russia the richest in the world, that land has now to yield its distinguished position to the rich, deep, black soil of Western Canada.” Other experts bear almost equally strong testimony to the value of the soil of these provinces, but in Alberta it was estimated very recently that only about 3 per cent. of her hundred million acres suitable for farming is as yet cultivated.

Farming there began in the wild, free, un-English form of cattle-raising on ranches, so large that sixty to one hundred acres of pasturage was allowed for each animal, in herds in some cases numbering thousands. The natural conditions of food, water springs, and sufficient shelter were so good that little attention was needed or given, and two men were supposed to be able to manage fifteen hundred head of cattle. The ranches were bought by large companies, or (more often) leased from government, and every year thousands of beasts were sent to the markets of the eastern provinces or to those of England. A few large ranches remain still, chiefly in the neighbourhood of MacLeod.

But now the dashing, picturesque “cow-boys” are fast passing away. Their place is being taken by farmers of a more plodding type, and every year sees more railway lines cutting into the old-time ranches, and more homesteaders arriving to build their little shacks and villages in the lands which were once the pasture ground of innumerable buffaloes, and then of cattle scarcely less wild.

There are, however, a multitude of farmers who continue on a small scale the stock-raising industry, and in 1910 there were actually twice as many head of cattle in Alberta as there were in 1901, though there were still not quite as many as there had been in 1906. The fact is that though grain-growing offers the line of least resistance for the establishment of many a newcomer, who has not the means to purchase stock, and is obliged to turn to something that will speedily bring a return in ready money, the belief in “mixed” as opposed to exclusive grain farming is gaining ground in Alberta, as elsewhere in Canada. Besides its other advantages it prevents the farmer suffering so severely in a bad year, when his risk is divided between different kinds of agricultural products.

It required some experiment to discover the class of wheat best adapted to Alberta’s soil and climate; but in 1902 seed was imported from Kansas of the variety known as “Turkey Red,” and it so improved in the new region that it soon won wider fame than before under the new name of “Alberta Red.”

This is a winter wheat, and the plan is favoured in this province of sowing both spring and winter wheat, as it spreads out the labour of sowing and harvesting into two periods instead of one. Winter wheat grows best in the southern district, but, though not quite so hard when grown further north, where the rainfall is greater, “Alberta Red” still proves an excellent crop in many parts of the province, and year by year a large additional acreage is sown with it. Other grain crops usually give a very satisfactory result, though, of course, the yield is much affected by weather conditions.