THE SASKATCHEWAN LAND COMPANY. (con't)
Perhaps we cannot do better than reproduce a letter received last
January from Colonel McRae. He writes:
"I am one of the two surviving men identified with the formation of
the Saskatchewan Valley Land Co., which has now been liquidated for
some years. You are quite correct that the Company under a Colonization
agreement made with the Government when Sifton was Minister of In-
terior, was to get 500,000 acres of land in a restricted area at a dollar an
acre, conditional upon their placing sixteen bona fide settlers in each
township in the area.
"At the time we made this arrangement with the Government we pur-
chased the odd numbered sections in the same district from the Qu'Appelle,
Long Lake & Saskatchewan Railway through A. M. Nanton of Winnipeg,
lands which he previously tried to get the Government to take back as
unfit for settlement, at a net price of $1.45 an acre. It was out of this
purchase of something over 1,000,000 acres that we made most of our
money.
"Our experience with Colonization was not unlike the experience of
those who had previously attempted similar efforts. Colonization at best
is a difficult thing, and as you will remember, we were unable to restrict
our settlement to the area prescribed and the settlers we sent in covered
the territory from Yorkton to the western boundary of Saskatchewan, and
from Regina to Prince Albert; while the area set aside was but a small
part of the area into which our settlers went. The result was that we spent
several hundred thousand dollars in fulfilling our colonization obligation.
As a matter of fact we might better have bought more land at the prices
that prevailed, than to have obligated ourselves with what I believe turned
out to be the only Colonization contract which has ever been successfully
carried out in Canada.
"Such criticism as was levelled at the Government on account of this
contract, was due entirely to ignorance, and the failure to appreciate the
conditions, and it was always a source of much pleasure to me to know
that this contract was never criticised by the people.of Regina and others
who were familiar with the actual conditions. There was never a dollar
of graft in the entire enterprise. From the beginning it was a well di-
rected effort towards colonization.
"Following the purchase of these lands, we handled some four million
acres for the Canadian Northern Railway, our total land sales aggregating
five million acres. A review of this great colonization effort with the
great increase in national and private wealth, at this time would read like
the story of the Arabian Nights.
"Of course we made a lot of money out of it, but the land was sold at
very low prices-all the way from $2.25 an acre up to $10.00 an acre; a
small percentage higher. I never expect to be identified with a business
that will afford so much pleasure or make so many friends. During my
active participation in the work covering a period of seven years, I have
no recollection of one single man who bought land from us and
failed. to make money on it. It was the most dramatic period in the history of
Western Canada. There are many incidents which can be woven into
the story. Our land Organization at one time has had as many as two
thousand agents in the U.S. A. and we brought in and actually placed on
the land, according to our records, over fifty thousand
families."
Bibliography follows:
Next Page
