Settlements had been started twenty miles north of Prince Albert, and some years ago an American went in there and he now has a beautiful farm. The witness brought in a collection of vegetables from that country, and he never saw a better lot of farmers’ produce in his life. This original American pioneer was growing Turner raspberries, and anyone will tell you that where you can grow Turner raspberries, fall wheat will grow, and where fall wheat will grow the climate is fit for anything. The settler in question got the Turner raspberries from Mr. Cook in Prince Albert. It takes a certain climate to grow that raspberry, and they claim the same climate will grow fall wheat. It is not the wild raspberry of the country, but a variety sent out from the experimental farm in Ottawa. Wild raspberries grow all through that country. That one man starting out demonstrated that the climate was all right, and others followed suit, and there are now one hundred and fifty or two hundred settlers in that country, which was considered a few years ago as no good. The same remarks apply to the country clean out to Candle lake. That country is fairly clear and open, and there is some hazel brush, and where hazel brush will grow the land is considered good, and where poplar will grow it is also considered good soil.
Mayor Cook expressed the opinion that
Lack of Means of Communication
was all that kept the tide of settlement from flowing into that northern country. He went on to explain that the people out on the Saskatchewan and north of it anticipate being able to ship by the Hudson bay route. They are all expecting it. They consider that there is not a question of doubt but that it will be successful. They expect an open route via Hudson bay for half of July, all of August, September, October, November and part of December. Witness was speaking from the information received from people who spent their lives on Hudson bay. Many of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s officials came in to Prince Albert district to settle, after they had been superannuated. From information obtained from these old Hudson’s Bay Company’s men, his honest opinion was that it was a perfectly feasible route for the months he had given:—half of July, all of August, September, October, November and a part of December.
Mr. Cook, concluding, remarked: “When you are shipping out your cattle, you are sending them by the short route, and the shrinkage will be light. One feed, and probably none at all, would last to Churchill. The short route would also make it possible to ship out at least one-third of the crop before the frost sets in, which would be a great relief to the settlers.”
W. F. Bredin, Esq., member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, for the Division of Athabaska, and residing at Lesser Slave lake, was examined before the Senate committee of 1907 and stated that at the date of his examination he had resided ten years in the country north of Edmonton. He had been from Edmonton north to Fort Wrigley, and he had been on Peace river from Fort St. John, thirty miles inside the British Columbia line, to about five hundred miles down the Peace—from that point. Ten years previous to his examination he went down the Athabaska to the Mackenzie in boats.
Mr. Bredin referred briefly to a trip he made east from Athabaska district during the summer of 1906, when he travelled from McMurray up Clearwater river and thence across to Prince Albert. The land on Clearwater river for one hundred miles, in the bottoms, is very good. It appeared to him, from the river, however, to be very sandy back on the high rocks. He should think there would be a good deal of rock and muskeg. From where he left Clearwater river in to Prince Albert, on the North Saskatchewan, the country was more or less of a sandy nature. There were beautiful lakes all the way, filled with good whitefish and trout. The whole northern country is that way.
In his evidence before the Senate committee of 1907, Mr. H. A. Conroy remarked:—“There is some good country along the Clearwater—very nice country from an agricultural point of view.”
The Crean Reports.
A great amount of invaluable information as to the natural resources of the region south of Churchill and Clearwater rivers is contained in the report by Frank J. P. Crean, C.E., of his explorations (See p. [25]) in 1908 and 1909. It is interesting to note that this work of exploration was the first ever undertaken in a systematic way to ascertain the agricultural possibilities of Canada’s northland.