THE FIRST FIFTY YEARS
In 1896 an event took place which had far-reaching effects in the West -- the Dominion election which swept Sir Wufrid Laurier's Liberal party to power. A young westerner, Clifford Sifton (later "Sir") was selected by Laurier as Minister of the Interior. His aggressive immigration policies encouraged settlers from many countries. Sifton's campaign coincided with the exhaustion of free arable land in U.S.A. This resulted in a tidal wave of immigration, continuing until 1913. Between 1896 and 1903, 367,000 emigrants arrived and between 1904 and 1913 almost two and a half million more. The bulk of these people came to the prairies, first following railway lines, then fanning out to more remote regions.
Sir Clifford Sifton used every means to encourage immigrants from Great Britain and continental Europe. The government created the North Atlantic Trading Co., with headquarters in Hamburg, to seek out "the stalwart peasant in the sheepskin coat". Hundreds of thousands came -- from diverse and distinctive backgrounds, leading to an extraordinary mass immigration that changed the face of Canada.
Lured by the romance of pioneer life, many left a prosperous existence. Some brought fancy wardrobes. They found there was free land but making it yield was a different matter. Some were successful, some were not.
We have only one or two pioneers left to tell their stories, so in the following pages it is mostly the children of the pioneers who write their history. They tell of the loneliness; the homesickness; the burden of death and illness; the importance of family and neighbors; the joys of community, church; threshing gangs; and the one-room schools.
They remember the first fifty years -- 1907 to 1957.
Our history has many individual family stories in our Family Section. Early growth of business, Education, government and other local organizations is in our Growth section.
