Forest Prairie Edge

by Merle Massie

  Cold and wet conditions plagued many northern homesteads. As settlement pushed north, the growing season, or average number of frost-free days necessary for cereal grain ripening, shrank. Late spring or early fall frosts hit farmers hard. Cereal crops, particularly wheat, suffered. Just as on the prairie, expected income from wheat disappeared when environmental disaster struck. As Muriel McGowan noted, the grain grown on their northern farm was more often than not converted to animal feed. Wheat prices were abysmal throughout the Great Depression, so meagre wheat crops were rarely worth the cost of harvesting. Freight deductions were also higher for northern farms. In addition, northern grain typically graded lower. In some years, after deductions and fees, grain cost more to ship than to keep. Farmers found themselves facing a bill rather than a cheque.64

  Flooding was a problem in some areas or on some quarters. The homestead inspector for the north Paddockwood area, James Barnett, commented on a homestead at Moose Lake in 1931: “The wetness of this country probably appeals to those from the dried out areas. This may prove the other extreme and not turn out so pleasant as it first seems.”65 In a wet season, the settler had to wait longer to get seed in the ground, further courting the risk of frost. Over time, settlers noticed that, as more land was cleared, roads built, and ditches dug, drainage and frost issues improved. As tree cover and roots were removed, the land warmed up and dried out. Soldier settlers and other older residents assured newcomers that they had also faced bush, frost, and water. Their larger acreages, somewhat more prosperous despite the ravages of the Depression, offered hope.

  As Depression refugees pushed north along the Montreal Lake Trail, it would have been difficult to tell at a glance the difference between the relatively prosperous farms near Henribourg and Paddockwood and the land farther north. Few to none of those refugees would have had access to the information provided by the original surveyors. For the Hell’s Gate region, the dominion land inspector report unfortunately turned out to be accurate. Settlers abandoned their holdings within a few months or, at most, a couple of years. Many, however, did not go far. After the Great Trek, few were willing to move on such a massive scale again. The majority of Hell’s Gate settlers relocated just a few miles south to better farmland at Forest Gate or Paddockwood. 66 In their study of northern land settlement, analysts R.A. Stutt and H. Van Vliet noted that, across the forest fringe, an average of 30 percent of the settlers originated from southern Saskatchewan. Astoundingly, though, over two-fifths of the settlers, or 44 percent, came from other places in northern Saskatchewan. If their first choice of land did not work out, then many settlers merely relocated to another part of the forest edge, continuing to reject the open plains.67

  Like the urban back-to-the-landers at Loon Lake, though, it is difficult to tell if land abandonment and out-migration represented failure or merely short-term success as a refuge for a few months, a few seasons, or a few years. Initial enthusiasm and in-migration at Hell’s Gate led to a short-lived attempt to create a new school, the Deerness School District No. 5056, in 1934. Logs had been cut and piled, but by 1936 the idea had to be abandoned. Mr. Crispin, the secretary, wrote to the Department of Natural Resources claiming that “most of the settlers have moved out and more are going ... At the present time there is not enough to form a school board.”68 Other Hell’s Gate residents were denied loans or other support from the Northern Settlers Re-Establishment Branch because their farms were too remote—they still did not have a decent wagon road or proper bridge connecting them to the Montreal Lake Trail. The Hell’s Gate community crumbled, to live on primarily in the memories of Forest Gate and Paddockwood residents as the epitome of the worst that could happen, even to those homesteaders who had come north full of hope, looking for a better life.

  Relief

  Unlike modern welfare, relief was registered as a loan by municipal or provincial authorities. Families and individuals tried to keep their relief requirements to an absolute minimum, loath to accumulate debt that would be difficult to pay back. Settlers might have hoped that the ecological edge environment would allow a measure of self-sufficiency, but the forest did not yield its living easily. The economic impact of the Great Depression was too severe. For those on poor land who faced difficult clearing with few resources, hope soon turned to resignation and almost despair. Although garden produce was usually more than sufficient, families required clothing and other supplies. Most northern families—at one time or another in their sojourn—required help, whether in the form of food, clothing, or medical relief.69 Analysts have pointed to relief records, newspaper accounts, and letters from northern settlers desperate for help as further indication of the north’s marginality and inability to adequately support newcomers.70 Within the context of the Depression, however, that analysis is unfair. No place was free of the Depression’s heavy hand. Prices for all agricultural products, not just wheat, were depressed. Although a northern farmer usually found a greater degree of self-sufficiency consuming rather than selling farm products, agricultural returns were necessary for certain expenditures or services that could not be negotiated without cash. Relief vouchers filled that gap.

  Map 18. Farm relief, Saskatchewan, 1929–38

  Source: Adapted from Historical Atlas of Canada Vol. III, 152. Used with permission.

  Relief was actually a malleable tool. One family might have lost its garden crop to frost, requiring interim food relief to get through the winter. Another might have had a bountiful garden but needed warm clothing. A third might have been doing well, but an unexpected illness or hospitalization gave them a bill that they were unable to meet. One family might require relief for several months or years; their neighbour might need only occasional or specific help. Although it has been common to speak of Depression families “going on relief” for prolonged periods of time, relief payments were generally more sporadic. Relief was tailored to each family’s situation and operated on a month-to-month basis. Officials (and personal pride) encouraged families to provide as much as possible for themselves. Through operating a mixed farm where subsistence, fuel, barter, and exchange were common, relief could be kept to a minimum.71

  A reporter for the Regina Leader investigated the northward trek to the Meadow Lake region in late 1931. The article claimed that the majority of trekkers had hopes of “making their living, arduous as it may be, with less government assistance than would have been required to maintain them on their original holdings.”72 Less government assistance, but assistance if and when necessary, the reporter emphasized. Researcher Robert McLeman noted that on average, larger families were more inclined to make the Great Trek north, while smaller families stayed on their southern farms. The chance to grow a garden, operate a mixed subsistence farm or access forest resources appeared to be a stronger pull factor for larger families.73 Yet, the optimism that the reporter found in 1931 dimmed as the years went by. Agricultural conditions stemming from poor soil, heavy bush, frost, water, and continued economic depression cast a pall over early enthusiasm. As the Great Trek continued, later migrants had fewer resources. Relief vouchers and relief work entered the northern picture in ever-increasing amounts.

  But the flame of northern hope never died out completely. Northern relief, in fact, was minimal in comparison with the seemingly endless relief rolls of prairie and urban centres. Geographer Denis Patrick Fitzgerald calculated a “startling difference between the amount of relief required in the prairies and the parklands compared with the pioneer region.”74 The amount of per capita aid per year between 1930 and 1937 averaged $385.64 on the prairie and only $2.85 along the forest fringe.75 Fitzgerald’s calculations might be high. The Saskatchewan report to the dominion Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations, however, calculated that northern relief (both direct relief and agricultural aid and re-establishment) was less than one-tenth the cost of aid to the drought regions. In 1934–35, direct relief in the drought area cost $6.5 million, while in the northern relief
areas costs were $690,083. Agricultural aid that year cost $14 million for the whole province. In 1935, direct relief and agricultural aid cost about $8 million, in the drought region, while northern areas required $793,028. In 1936, costs escalated. To the end of the relief year in August 1937, costs were an astronomical $8 million for direct relief and $10 million for agricultural aid in the drought regions. Government assistance in northern relief areas amounted to $1,030,976. Government aid for the north increased over the years, reflecting the growing population base, but clearly northern settlers required far less relief than did their counterparts in the drought regions.76 The difference, Fitzgerald noted, lay in the northern environment. Food and heating fuel, in particular, were easily procured in the forest edge landscape. He contended that the relief records provided “a very clear illustration, and abundant proof, of the north’s attractiveness during this period, repudiating some common beliefs.”77

  Analysts have typically pointed to government resettlement schemes as evidence that both the provincial and the federal governments actively encouraged northern migration. Certainly, in the case of urban back-to-the-land schemes, forest edge agricultural settlement was an important part of municipal relief management. In terms of prairie agricultural resettlement to northern farms, government aid cannot be categorized as overtly encouraging. Although loan and other aid schemes were in place, the provincial government made it more difficult for settlers to obtain land in the north through their new purchased-homestead policies. It screened applicants for the available northern resettlement schemes prior to 1935 and rejected more people than it accepted.78 Historian and economist G.E. Britnell claimed in 1939 that “government assistance in the form of loan schemes can scarcely be said to have been an important factor in northern settlement from 1930 to 1935 ... even after allowance has been made for government aid in meeting the costs of transferring settlers’ effects and livestock.”79

  Despite substantially reduced relief requirements in northern settlements, both the provincial and the federal governments were reluctant to abandon the once-profitable prairie wheat economy. In 1931, the Soldier Settlement Board of Canada sent a circular letter to its field superintendents, and copied the letter to the Saskatchewan Department of Agriculture, which endorsed it. The letter stated that “we do not wish to encourage a general or even an individual exodus from the south country. In fact, every effort should be made by our Supervisors in the south country to discourage settlers from moving north unless under the most exceptional circumstances.” The “exceptional circumstances” included tenant farmers or those on “extremely poor farms.” Northern farms, “whilst presently better so far as moisture is concerned, may not be all as he believes them to be.”80

  The Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (PFRA) was created in 1935 to investigate the drought problem and initiate erosion control and water solutions. Its creation proved the importance of the prairie wheat economy. As late as 1939, despite the economic, social, and environmental havoc wreaked by the Depression and drought, the provincial minister of agriculture defended the importance of the grain-growing open plains. Astonishingly high expenditures on southern relief efforts in the drought regions were acceptable, the minister contended, since those expenditures were “small in relation to the wealth produced in this drought area” in the years prior to 1930. Although it was a good idea to promote “thinning out the settlement of submarginal areas,” the minister steadfastly argued that “complete depopulation is not the solution to the problem.”81 Northern settlement during the 1930s found its impulse less in government support than in past northern migration, word of mouth, and the pull of mixed farming and off-farm opportunities available at the forest edge.

  Map 19. Origin of relocation settlers.

  Source: Historical Atlas of Canada Vol. III, 152. Used with permission.

  Map 20. Destination of relocation settlers. As the Depression worsened, more and more people moved by the government went outside the province.

  Source: Historical Atlas of Canada Vol. III, 152. Used with permission.

  The Northern Settlers Re-Establishment Branch (NSRB)

  The movement of thousands of drought refugees on their own, to sometimes precarious or dismal northern situations, forced the provincial government—reluctantly—to act. Some who went north “in despair had merely stopped in their tracks. They were found squatting on road allowances, on forest reserves, or in any other spot where they hoped to remain undisturbed for the time being.” Squatting meant setting up a camp, digging and planting a modest garden, and living, as much as possible, off the land. “Trappers’ cabins, old sawmill camps, and shacks of all descriptions were occupied by this latest army of pioneers,” declared Northern Settlers Re-Establishment Branch (NSRB) commissioner G.J. Matte.82

  With settlers squatting on unsuitable (even illegal) places, northern settlement was described as “chaotic,” even “intolerable.”83 Administrators were besieged with requests for assistance. Settlers refused to pay taxes, interest, or land payments. Reports declared that some northern settlers burned government offices or threatened officials. Officers sent to evict squatters were met with force.84 For those facing years of clearing marginal land, prospects were daunting, even overwhelming, and their anger and frustration boiled over. In response, the new Gardiner Liberal government made three critical policy changes in 1935 that affected northern settlers. First, the government changed its Crown lands policy. Homestead fees rolled back to the traditional ten-dollar filing fee, and the government refunded to the settler all land payments that had been made between 1930 and 1935.85 For some, the refund gave a much-needed cash infusion. For others, the land on which they had been “squatting” could be converted into a legal homestead. In the first year of the revised scheme, 10,000 inquiries regarding northern land were received.86 Between 1935 and 1939, almost 2,000 homestead entries were filed across the forest edge, indicating continued public pressure for northern land, despite its by then well-known drawbacks and hardships.87

  Second, the Land Utilization Act of 1935 gave the government sweeping power to convert land already under homestead or purchase agreement back to public land.88 Across the forest edge, land considered too marginal for grain farming—because of poor soil, excessive tree cover, or too much water—was evaluated by municipalities, often with one eye on their relief rolls. The government then required municipalities to halt financial assistance to occupants of inferior lands, essentially forcing those who had not already moved to do so. The Hell’s Gate region was an example. Refused help, the people left. Such land reverted to public control.

  Third, the government consolidated the various programs and policies administered by several departments under the NSRB. Relief aid for northern settlers was coordinated through this branch. Settlers whose land had reverted to public control received resettlement assistance to move to better land. Drainage projects, initiated to create both employment and more arable land, were established in places such as Shand Creek and the Carrot River Valley.89 Most importantly, settlers gained access to “re-establishment” funds. These funds bought everything from horses and other stock, to equipment and tools, to land clearing and breaking. The government realized that settlement schemes from the 1920s—soldier settlement or land settlement—succeeded in large part because of loans and ongoing support to farmers. Much of the northern land (after the backbreaking work to clear it) was, in fact, capable of growing crops—including the best of the grey podzolic soil.90 The NSRB purchased mechanized land-clearing equipment to break land or authorized payments to private contractors to clear and break larger acreages. From 1935 to 1940, over 6,000 families received re-establishment funds; of those families, well over 5,000 had become entirely self-supporting by 1941. Any northern resident, not just drought trekkers, could apply for re-establishment funds, extending the loan initiative to those who might have made the move north years earlier.91

  Creation of th
e NSRB signalled a major change in policy for the provincial government. Whereas relief and resettlement schemes administered in the early part of the Great Depression were regarded as little more than “stop-gap” measures to alleviate conditions in the short term, the NSRB represented a return to land settlement policies constructed to provide long-term resilience for Saskatchewan farm families. Relief records often separated direct relief from agricultural aid, and much of the aid required during the Depression was for seed grain, feed and fodder relief for stock, tractor fuel and oil, and repairs to farm machinery. Agricultural aid was calculated to help a farmer in the short term. Re-establishment aid looked to the future, providing loans for a farmer to build up stock and make machinery purchases. The NSRB initiated educational campaigns that promoted mixed farming as the most secure base for northern settlers and provided the support and funds to allow land clearing and diversification. A policy shift from relief to re-establishment indicated the provincial government’s commitment to overall northern development and expressed a measure of hope for future success.