Pioneers and Prominent People of Saskatchewan

 

 

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a Devon man and hailed from the picturesque and romantic town of Bideford, immortalized by Charles Kingsley in his heroic tale of "Westward, Ho" He came to Canada about 1840, and located on a bush farm about twelve miles from Charlottetown. The region was covered with forest and there were only footpaths through the hush. A house was elected, and, whilst the young family set to work to reclaim the land from the wilderness the father found employment at his trade as a Joiner in Charlottetown, walking out to the homestead each Saturday, bearing the weeks supplies with him and walking back to his work on Sunday. This was continued until the work of the three sons resulted in the evolution of a fine farm, which they named Brookfield. F. N. Darke, the subject of this sketch, spent the first twenty-eight years of his life farming in his native Province, but in 1891 he joined a party of neighbours who were making a journey to the North-west to spy out the land. They came west in July and, passing through Regina, went as far west as Red Deer, which at that time was the end of steel on the Calgary and Edmonton Railway, then under construction. The season of 1891 was probably the most favourable growing year the West has ever experienced, and the great stretches of fertile land about Regina attracted Mr. Darke, and he accordingly made up his mind that it was to be his future habitation. He returned home, and, making an alliance with the late Pope Balderson, arranged to move out there the following year. He sold his farm and on July 18 1892, married Miss Annie McKinnon, and ten days later arrived in Regina. Mr. Balderson had preceded him with a carload of horses, and had rented what was known as the Paul farm on the Eastern outskirts of Regina where a crop had been put in. They also leased 320 acres close by from Henry Lejeune, but 1892 was not nearly so good a year as 1891 and they just about broke even with expenses. Messrs. Darke and Balderson then bought the business of Joseph

 

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Pioneers and Prominent People of Saskatchewan