by Merle Massie
Back to the Land
The social safety net that Canadians enjoy today did not exist prior to or during the Depression, when the inability to feed or clothe yourself or your family was generally a source of shame.42 For many, the move north allowed a measure of pride and self-sufficiency in providing (at the least) food, shelter, and fuel for their families. For the first few years of the Depression, relief measures were municipal matters, handled at the local level, with considerable assistance from churches and other volunteer groups that ran soup kitchens, shelters, or organized clothing drives. As the Depression wore on, the provincial government took over and coordinated direct relief efforts with substantial loans from the federal government. Government aid in the form of agricultural loans such as seed grain or fodder relief, direct relief for families, or assistance in moving north was recorded as a loan or lien and as such was expected to be repaid by the recipient as soon as possible.43
One of the key drivers of northern migration was a back-to-the-land idealism, a “mixture of romanticism and practicality” that emphasized self-sufficiency for families. There was a social call of back-to-the-land movements, with country life seen as a panacea to the ills of modernity. A return to a more rigorous, healthful, and wholesome life would alleviate crime and other despicable aspects of city life.44 Hallmarks of self-sufficiency included growing a large garden, keeping livestock (particularly milk cows, pigs, chickens, and sometimes sheep, goats, or turkeys), and generally “living off the land” or using the natural produce of the local environment, including fish, game, and berries.
Historian Dawn Bowen studied the municipally supported urban back-to-the-land movement in Saskatchewan during the Depression, particularly schemes from Saskatoon, Regina, and Moose Jaw, which accounted for approximately 1,000 families who went into the northern bush.45 These families were urban residents already on relief. Urban newspapers avidly followed their stories of success and dismal failure, especially those who settled around Loon Lake, sometimes called Little Saskatoon. In the final analysis, Bowen claimed, the programs were successful. They cost less than direct relief, and neither the government nor the participants expected land settlement to be permanent. Despite hardships and continued relief payments, Bowen argued, bush homesteads offered a chance for land ownership, self-respect, a measure of self-sufficiency for families and their animals, and places of refuge to ride out the Depression until times were once again good. Bowen noted that 23 percent of the participants abandoned their land within two years, but only 27 percent abandoned it after four years, significantly less than either the 40 percent homestead abandonment or the whopping 80 percent plus abandonment of the dryland disaster. At Loon Lake, two-thirds eventually gained title to their homesteads, though the settlement at Tamarack (Moose Jaw relief recipients) was more disappointing, with fewer than half gaining patent.46
Urbanites were exchanging city sidewalks for country landscapes, but not just any landscape. Saskatchewan newspapers consistently described the devastation of the open plains by dust storms and recurrent droughts, grasshoppers, and cutworms. Who wanted to move there? Urban families, both those who accepted municipal back-to-the land relief and those who made the move on their own, hoped for short-term self-sufficiency as they headed north. Stories of back-to-the-landers who left their farms after only a few years, however, have contributed to the overall assessment of the northern migration as a failure, as if the sole purpose of northern migration was to build a new farm that a family would occupy for several generations. This assessment is flawed. A proportion of northern migrants, urban relief recipients or prairie farm migrants, viewed their northern homesteads as temporary refuges—a few months to, at most, a few years, until a job came up or the prairie again had rain. As such, bush homesteads, for the most part, fulfilled their role.
The Northern Boom
The village of Paddockwood, at the end of the CNR railway line running north of Prince Albert, experienced a significant boom during the Depression in part because of the influx of southern and urban refugees. In a risky move, the local Board of Trade issued a pamphlet in 1933 that crowed Paddockwood: The Mixed Farming Paradise of Saskatchewan.47 Relief at the time was a municipal burden. Actively recruiting migrants during a major economic depression was acutely ironic. Southern municipalities were overburdened by relief requests and discouraged destitute individuals and families from relocating to nearby towns or empty farms.48 In contrast, Paddockwood not only encouraged migrants but even enjoyed a boom:
At this time Paddockwood had five general stores, a butcher shop, a drugstore, two harness repair shops, a lumber yard, hardware store, two blacksmith shops, one pool room, two hotels, three restaurants, a bakery, a second hand store, a barber shop, and twice weekly the ladies of the community could visit a beauty parlor operated in the hotel. The implement companies were represented by agents for International Harvester, Case, Massey Harris, Oliver and Cockshutt. A resident MD set bones and performed minor surgery (without anesthetic) for the people, at most reasonable rates. Talent abounded in other fields too. There were men who filed saws, repaired radios, practiced veterinary medicine, tanned robes, made illegal spirits and told fortunes. One individual was known as the “Pea Man.” He made a living of sorts by growing and selling seed peas.49
Paddockwood was full of bustle and hustle, with piles of cordwood for trade and barter, garden produce and berries in abundance, easy access to resorts and water recreation, the Red Cross Outpost Hospital, and plenty of stores and services. The nearby communities of Henribourg and Albertville, and the growing resort communities at Christopher and Emma Lakes, shared the north Prince Albert boom. They were islands in an ocean of Depression despair. The boom created an economic and cultural flow, a movement of goods and services at odds with the “broken” communities of the open plains.
Just like the urban back-to-the-landers, prairie families looked to the northern ecological edge to provide a landscape of diversity and resilience through the mixed-farm ideal. The McGowan family’s experience was an excellent example. On their newly purchased quarter section near Paddockwood, Sargent and his wife, Muriel, concentrated on self-sufficiency, using a combination of ingenuity and exchange:
We exchanged “clucking” hens for an orphan ewe lamb from our neighbour. This was the nucleus of a small flock kept for a few years until coyotes became a nuisance. Dairy cattle provided us with milk, meat, cream and butter for home use, as well as some cash from butter sold, or whole milk sold to a cheese factory at Henribourg, or cream sold to dairies in Prince Albert. Pigs thrived on surplus skim milk and provided meat, especially the cured pork so necessary for summer protein before refrigeration. Chickens provided meat and eggs. Turkeys, although more difficult to raise, provided meat as well as some cash when sold in the fall. Sheep gave us meat and wool. We learned how to clip the sheep, wash and card wool for quilt batts. The garden soil produced a bountiful supply of vegetables. Wild fruit and some hardy tame ones were usually available. Blueberry, Saskatoon, and raspberry picking expeditions were not only necessary but a pleasant break from our daily routine. Everyone canned food of every kind—fruit, meat, vegetables, and pickles.50
Muriel McGowan’s description (though idyllic) of the techniques of barter and exchange, and the combination of cash and subsistence strategies, were essential components of back-to-the-land practicality. The ideal subsistence farm was a mixed farm.
The majority of those who heeded the call to move to the forest edge found their land in one of three ways. Some found a farm to rent. Others, such as the McGowans, purchased a farm through a private deal with the landowner, with a down payment and yearly payments until the debt was cleared. Farms that had been patented with only the minimum acreage cleared were cheaper than developed farms with a larger acreage. Deals between buyer and seller were often private since banks were reluctant to issue mortgages. Finally, a migrant could enter a homestead claim and build the place of residence. The prima
ry method of farm acquisition varied from one region to another along the forest fringe: in older settlements, such as Paddockwood or the Carrot River country, 36 percent of the farms were homesteaded, while almost half were purchased. In areas developed as new settlements, such as Pierceland in the northwest, almost 90 percent of the farms were new homesteads.51
Years of mixed-farming boosterism and advertising proclaimed a difference between wheat monoculture and a more diversified, stable, and resilient mixed farm at the forest edge.52 Yet creating a mixed farm took time, energy, luck, and investment. Each family of southern refugees experienced better or worse conditions depending on several key factors: their previous residence and vocation (particularly farming experience); their method of acquisition of land (purchased or homesteaded); their age and composition when they went north; their net worth when they started (including implements, tools, stock, and furniture); their progress in clearing and breaking the land; and the productivity of the soil. A family with some cash, stock, and equipment who purchased a partly cleared farm with moderate to good soil generally did better than a virtually destitute family with few resources or stock who ended up on a new homestead with 160 acres of heavy bush covering grey podzolic soil.53
Figure 32. When wheat prices crash.
Source: Prince Albert Daily Herald, 28 July 1931.
Great Trek migrants spread out across the forest fringe. In some cases, as in the north Prince Albert region, migrants both filled out the existing land base by purchasing patented farms from previous residents and entered new homestead land. In other areas, new communities and service centres sprang up virtually overnight. In the northwest, for example, communities such as Goodsoil and Pierceland, along with the urban back-to-the-land communities of Little Saskatoon and Tamarack near Loon Lake, grew exponentially as a result of the Great Trek. In the northeast, the communities east of Albertville along the new railway to Nipawin in the White Fox Valley (Shipman, Snowden, and Choiceland, for example) exploded with Depression refugees. In general, older communities such as those in the north Prince Albert region absorbed newcomers with more ease and less social and economic distress. An established service base, a transportation system, schools, and hospitals provided infrastructure. In new communities, everything from roads to homesteads, schools, and service centres had to be built, straining limited local resources.54 In every case, the northern boom created economic opportunities similar to those experienced on the prairie during the immigration boom between 1896 and 1910.
Environmental Difficulty
On each farm or homestead, agricultural progress varied. Those facing heavy scrub and trees took longer to clear less acreage. Those who rented or purchased partly developed farms, or found new homestead land with light scrub or open glades, could clear more land in less time. In five years, a homesteader on light scrub might clear sixty acres; those who faced heavy clearing and breaking would accomplish less than half that amount. As well, clearing rates quickly went down over time. A homesteader would clear the easiest areas of the farm first. Clearing and breaking became more difficult once the farmer encountered larger trees and more scrub.55 Although mechanized methods of land clearing were available, few prairie refugees had the capital to invest in, operate, or hire tractors to do the work. Clearing trees, pulling stumps, picking stones and roots, and other duties were done by hand or with horses. It was as if “the clock of history had been turned back” to a more primitive type of agriculture.56
The amount of land that each family managed to clear, break, and turn to productive agriculture meant the difference between the continued need for relief help and the ability to eke out a living. Land clearing in northern areas to 1928 was completed primarily by the farmer, but just over 20 percent of the land was cleared by hired labour. During the Depression, farmers cleared more of their land on their own, as much as 87 percent. Hired labour rose again between 1938 and 1940, to pre-Depression levels. Stone and root picking, however, was overwhelmingly completed by the farm family, with a tiny proportion—between 1 and 3 percent—picked by hired help, often local First Nations casual day labourers.
During the Depression, later analysts noted, a family on black or transitional soil needed at least fifty acres cleared and worked to manage a bare living; on grey podzolic soil, eighty-eight acres would support a family without any off-farm income. Unfortunately, it took as many as ten years—or even fifteen—to clear that many acres on the heavy bush land common to grey podzolic soil.57 Even if a family moved north to a new homestead early in the trek—1930 or 1931—they might not have found economic sufficiency strictly from agricultural pursuits until the end of the decade, when farmers once more could afford mechanized land-clearing techniques. A family who moved later in the trek, with no cash reserves or resources left, faced an even more difficult battle.58
The amount of time and back-breaking work that it took to clear and break enough land to make a farm profitable was the single most important factor in encouraging or discouraging those who tried northern settlement. In the bush, as few as ten acres cultivated and seeded were sometimes enough to convince the homestead inspector to approve a farm patent. Patent, however, did not make a farm profitable. Settlers had to choose between continuing clearing, breaking, and seeding activities and accessing off-farm cash labour opportunities or selling the land and moving. As with the initial choice to migrate away from the prairie, the choice to stay on or leave a northern farm varied from family to family as circumstances and inclination—and opportunity—dictated.
Although optimism and hope infused most of those who went north, the reality of trying to establish a viable mixed farm in the bush produced much adversity. Historian John McDonald suggested that “many half-truths about conditions in the north continued to be circulated, engendering an optimism ... based on a distorted image of true environmental conditions in the forest fringe.”59 Another historian, T.J.D. Powell, suggested that people who moved north “received assurance through the media, government officials and word-of-mouth that the northern lands would certainly provide the necessities of life if not improve their standard of living. Some families, in fact, did improve their economic status, but others experienced poverty or even worse conditions.”60 The difference, later analysts declared, lay in the combination of experience, rate of land clearing, soil profile, and sheer good luck.61
Indeed, northern refugees “had much to learn before becoming adapted to living in bush country,” wrote “Prairie Immigrant” for the Paddockwood local history book. To clear the land to create a farm, they “first had to learn to use swede saw, axe and grub-hoe without endangering life or limbs.” Fire, though a useful tool for clearing scrub brush, had a dark side: “An innocent-looking fire, started in a brush pile, can smoulder all winter under feet of snow, consuming much of the good topsoil.” Not just people but also prairie animals had a tough transition from prairie to bush. Prairie immigrants “watched and wondered as animals began chewing on sticks, bones, harness and sweat-pads, until realization dawned that the poor beasts were in need of salt, an ingredient that was seldom lacking in their diet on the prairie.” Although the mixed-farming movement and other promoters lauded the lush northern hay crop, trekkers learned that it “proved to be more filling than nutritious and compared unfavourably with the prickly prairie wool. Brome grass and alfalfa had to be seeded to keep the animals satisfied.” Stock farmers and their animals valued the northern water sources, but farmers soon learned to fence their animals “away from dangerous muskegs, after some had become mired more than once and dragged out by the neck to dry land.” Unlike the open prairie, where a farmer could see for miles, stock hid in the northern bush. Farmers learned to “hang a bell around the neck of the ‘boss’ cow, if ever they hoped to find the herd.” Other nasty surprises included “swamp fever,” an infectious anemia thought to reside in wet marsh grass. Many horses died, and this placed incredible pressure on farm families. With agricultural commodity
prices still at an all-time low, where would a family find the money to replace valuable horses, the main mode of transportation and motive power for the farm? Such a calamity could wipe out a sense of hope or optimism and place a family in even more desperate straits than they had been in on their prairie farm.62
Map 17. Cummins Map 258, Moose Lake and Hell’s Gate. Moose Lake was in TWP 54 R25 W2. Hell’s Gate was in TWP 54 R 26 W2.
Source: SAB, Cummins files.
In the north Prince Albert region, homestead land with grey podzolic soil had been avoided or abandoned, for the most part, by soldier settlers and other northern recruits during the 1920s. The demand for land created by refugees flung north during the Great Trek, however, overwhelmed the available land base. In the Paddockwood region, a tongue of settlement north following the Montreal Lake Trail passed beyond the last vestiges of transitional soil and found itself on grey podzolic land. The area became known as Moose Lake and, west of Moose Lake, Hell’s Gate (west of the Montreal Lake Trail, across the Garden River). Its isolation, muskeg, mosquitoes, and tree cover became legendary in Paddockwood, and it carries the name Hell’s Gate to this day. Families in Hell’s Gate eked out a harsh and meagre existence, their land covered in knee-deep moss and muskeg, surviving on wild game and continued relief until a better farm or job came up somewhere else. As early as 1920, dominion land surveyor M.D. McCloskey characterized the entire township (which encompassed the Hell’s Gate settlement) as not “well adapted to farming.” He elaborated by noting that “while there are some areas of fair soil ... these areas are comparatively small and are isolated. The land is badly broken by spruce and tamarack swamps. Sandy ridges and banksian pine are prominent, with a mixed forest of aspen, spruce and pine. Boulders are plentiful in places.” Not even grazing, McCloskey noted, would be a good idea in this area. Cattle would not find sufficient grass “until the summer is fairly well advanced.” Thick forest growth, much of it untouched by the 1919 fires, shaded the ground. It stayed colder and wetter longer into spring and summer than the areas farther south.63