Canada and Newfoundland

by Frank G. Carpenter

The part played by Canada’s railroads in colonizing her prairie provinces can hardly be overestimated. They maintain immigration agents abroad, and spend large sums in advertising the Dominion’s attractions.

In helping a settler get started, the Canadian Pacific Railway may provide him with a house and barn built on some of the land still available out of its grant of twenty-five million acres.

All went well for a time, but the Canadians soon discovered that the Doukhobors were subject to periodic outbreaks of religious fanaticism that had many intolerable features. At times, they were seized with the notion that it was a sin to utilize the labour of animals, and so they turned off all their live stock. At other times, they had the idea that it was wrong to use machinery, and they scrapped their farm tools. But what brought them into most serious conflict with the authorities were the pilgrimages they made to meet Christ on the prairie. It was their notion that they must not appear before Him on his second coming except in their natural condition of complete nakedness. At one time seventeen hundred men, women, and children marched into Yorkton stark naked. At another, six hundred Doukhobors wandered off naked in midwinter. On each occasion of this sort, the police had to round them up and confine them until they became sane enough to put on clothes and conduct themselves normally. Later they moved some of their colonies into British Columbia and many of them returned to Russia.

There are now more than thirty thousand Mennonites in Canada. They were originally Lutherans from Poland and Prussia, who about 1787 accepted refuge in Russia from religious persecution at home. They were favoured for a time by the Russian government, and became prosperous farmers and stock raisers, and also manufacturers. Just before the Canadian Pacific Railway was built, a number of them emigrated to Canada, settling along the Red River Valley in Manitoba. Their migration was financed to the extent of a million dollars by the Canadian government. This the Mennonites later repaid, and their communities thrived and prospered.

After the World War, the Mennonites in Russia suffered severely at the hands of the Soviet government. Their lands, factories, and other possessions were confiscated. Thereupon, with the aid of wealthy Mennonites in Pennsylvania, a fresh emigration to Canada was financed. These Mennonites were taken to southern Manitoba and Saskatchewan, where they were located on desirable lands. Among them were some who before the revolution in Russia owned farms of from ten to fifteen thousand acres. One man had been worth a half million dollars, and was one of the largest horse breeders in Russia. Of the Mennonites who first came to Canada, some have since gone to Mexico, where they have formed colonies similar to those established in the Dominion.

The immigration offices of Canada are filled with stories of settlers who have made good. Many of these stories are in the form of letters written by the men and the women who have fought and won their battles with the land, some of whom are now wealthy and nationally prominent. Canada is perhaps a generation nearer the pioneer stage than we are, and on her farms of the frontier thousands are to-day laying the foundations of fortunes, as our farmers did when they settled the West. From the human documents I have examined I quote the advice to prospective settlers given by a man who, twelve years after landing from England with one dollar in his pocket, sold out his farm for thirty-five thousand dollars. These, says he, are the secrets of success in Canada:

1. Get a farm if it takes your last ten dollars.

2. If you are not married, get married, for successful bachelor farmers are not plentiful.