Wheat field at Stanley, Churchill river.
The terms “Fertile Belt,” “Fertile Strip” and “Fertile Land” appear many times in Captain Palliser’s report, published in 1863, the first of these expressions being used no less than three times in one paragraph of the report.
The influence of a “catchy expression” in attracting the world’s attention is wonderful. Whatever the origin of the term “Fertile Belt” in this connection, its emphatic application by these independent official reports to the particular strip of territory between the United States boundary line and Saskatchewan river had immediate and lasting effects.
It arrested public attention in England and in Canada. That which had often been asserted by independent travellers, and more often stoutly denied by those whose sole interests were centred in the fur trade[[1]], had been found by scientific explorers of unquestioned veracity to be an actual fact. As Captain Palliser put it in his report:—“The whole of the region of country would be valuable not only for agriculturists but also for mixed purposes. I have seen not only excellent wheat, but also Indian corn (which will not succeed in England or Ireland) ripening on Mr. Pratt’s farm at the Qu’Appelle lakes in 1857.” Professor Hind, in his report, quoted interviews with enthusiastic settlers, who, on their prairie farms in Assiniboine valley, had for years been successfully raising prime wheat at a yield of thirty to forty bushels to the acre, “corn, barley, oats, flax, hemp, hops, turnips, tobacco and anything you wish.” He showed that similar conditions of soil and climate extended far to the westward, and, quite naturally, he wrote of this area as the “Fertile Belt.”
The Older Influences.
The Right Honourable Edward Ellice, one of the oldest governors of Hudson’s Bay Company, asked, when being examined before the British Parliamentary Committee of 1857, what probability there was of a settlement being made within the southern territories of the company, replied:—“None, in the lifetime of the youngest man now alive.” (“The Great Company”, p. 480).
Sir George Simpson, who was for forty years governor of the Hudson Bay territories and had visited every portion of them, was examined before the select committee of the British House of Commons appointed in 1857 at the instance of Mr. Labouchere, on the eve of the expiration of the license for exclusive Indian trade issued to the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1838, to investigate the state of the British possessions administered by the Company. Sir George, being asked his opinion as to the general fitness of Rupert’s Land for colonization, replied:—“I do not think that any part of the Hudson Bay territories is well adapted for settlement; the crops are very uncertain.”
By officially establishing the existence of this rich, arable area in the southern part of the territories governed by the Hudson’s Bay Company, and by associating it with such an apt designation, the Palliser and Hind expeditions brought strong popular support to those who in Britain and Canada were at that particular period actively working to secure the introduction of Canadian jurisdiction over the whole of the western part of British North America, and materially contributed to the success of the protracted negotiations which resulted in the ultimate surrender of its rights of government, etc., by the Hudson’s Bay Company. If any other proof was required to establish in the popular mind the attractiveness of the “Fertile Belt” as a desirable section for settlement, it was furnished by the written agreement under which the country was handed over to the Dominion of Canada, the term “Fertile Belt” therein receiving the stamp of the highest official recognition, and by the Hudson’s Bay Company, famous as a shrewdly managed corporation, stipulating that the grants of land to be made them were to be located within the area so designated.
Settlement of “The Fertile Belt.”