Canadian Seniors and Their Prairie Roots

Canadians, and especially Canadians who grew up on the prairies, all came from somewhere else.  During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, apart from roaming Indian tribes, a  few trappers, and employees of the Hudson Bay Company, the Canadian prairie was open land, wild, and uninhabited. After Ottawa acquired the vast Rupert’s Land territory from the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1870 and later completed the Canadian Pacific Railroad, the government in Ottawa looked for ways to secure this immense territory from marauding American whiskey traders and hunters.

In a powerful and inspired advertising campaign, the Canadian government promoted homesteading—an offer of 160 acres [65 hectares] of “free” land, with few conditions attached, but with a caveat; the settlers had to promise to break the land and build a house.

Large waves of immigrants from the United States, Britain and Wales responded. Even so, when Alberta, along with her sister province of Saskatchewan, became a province in 1905,  Alberta’s population, almost all of whom were farmers, was only 78,000.  In 1925, when our generation was born, the Canadian prairies were still sparsely populated.  Ottawa continued its effort to attract more immigrants, extending its campaign into the far reaches of Europe.

Farmers who once worked the land in Germany, Scandinavia, Norway, Russia, and the Ukraine, came in droves, lured by the promise of rich soil and a landscape and climate that was familiar to them. Brave and strong, with children and grandparents in tow, and leaving behind countries that denied them land ownership and religious freedom, your parents (and mine) set about transforming these underpopulated areas into a thriving base of Canadian agriculture.

If you are a 65 or older, and you lived on the prairies, you will remember  that being on a farm in the fall meant being busy! All around us, family members were working hard to harvest crops and gardens, and to prepare the farm for winter. I remember my father walking out the door in the morning looking tired and tense—a tractor or combine needed a quick repair, or a corner of a field needed to be stooked. My mother was even busier. She baked and cooked for days preparing meals for the crew of men who would be coming to feed sheaves of grain into the threshing machine. She took over care of the livestock, and spent hours in the field stooking the sheaves. My sister, at twelve years of age, and three years older than I, helped in the fields wherever she could.  I looked after the smaller children, and ran a multitude of errands.

But there was always time to pause and appreciate the miracle around us. Early in the morning, mingled with the anxiety and anticipation of  the day to come, I remember the crunch of the new stubble under my feet, the musky smell of the freshly stooked field, the hulking shapes of the combines and tractors standing by in the shadows of the dawn, and always, regular as clockwork, the cry of the Canada goose overhead.

I realize now that these sensations, this appreciation of the pristine beauty around me, even more than the work ethic and principles of my parents, shaped my character in those early days in the country.

Today’s generation is far removed from the simple, basic realities of the past: clean air, pure water, settings where not one sound disturbs the peace and quiet.  The hard work we did just to survive, the privations we endured to occupy that remote corner of the world, did nothing to take away our experience of the fearsome beauty of the prairies.

As the 1950s and 1960s approached, and more and more of us, conscious of limited opportunity at home and enticed by the attractions of the city life, left the farm for education and white-collar jobs in the cities.  For us, the prairie life of our childhood remains only in our memories, but for others, who stayed behind, life on the prairies continues in its own interminable way. In writing about the Canadian Prairies, (J.J.’s Complete Guide to Canada), J.J. McCullough so poetically concludes, and I quote:

… the  Prairies is a place where farming and mining still generate a livelihood for many, and conservative-minded folk live in small, pioneer communities separated by vast fields and open skies.

I’m interested in your reactions to this post. Do you have fond memories of your experience? If you left, are you happy you did? If you stayed on the prairies, and made your life there, was that a good choice? Either way, I welcome a response!