 CHAPTER VIII THE PRAIRIE PROVINCES AND THE RISE OF THE NORTH-WEST The prairie country is generally known, and has hitherto been always known, as the North- West. It begins about one thousand six hundred miles west of Halifax, and con- sequently about two hundred miles west of the half-way line across the continent; while its most southerly point lies further north than the populated parts of Eastern Canada. Till 1869 the North-West had no existence for Canada. It was an unknown wilderness, used as a fur-trading ground by the Hudsons Bay Company, and under their jurisdiction. Early in the century Lord Selkirk, the philanthropic promoter of High- land immigration to Canada, had planted a handful of Scotch agricultural settlers there, who were brutally used by the fur traders. The antagonism of the traders, who resented all intrusion, together with the inaccessible nature of the country, and the bad reputation of its climate, hid it from the world as behind a curtain for many generations. |  THE PRAIRIE PROVINCES 191 It took the officials and servants of the fur companies ten weeks to travel through the wilderness by canoe from Montreal to Fort Garry, which stood on the site of Winni- -peg. Before 1870 Canada terminated where the fertile western peninsula of Ontario abuts upon Lake Huron. The former steady influx of settlers had practically ceased. All the good land in Old Canada had been occupied, and most of it converted into finished farms, while the rest was rapidly becoming so. On maps and plans there were still great tracts of forest behind the northern edge of the good and settled up countries, offered for settlement. But oversea immigrants, who had the other colonies and the United States for selection, would have none of it; it was too poor. The Canada of that day was, in short, filled up. If any were to open up the forest regions still available, it was such natives of the country who had no better alternative, and they did so in a halting fashion. Would-be immi- -grants knew now what clearing land in Canada meant. The heavy, continuous axe work, the slow progress, the years of waiting till the stumps could be removed: this was well enough on good land. It had raised thousands of poor labouring men to the position of comfortable farmers. But going through these years of toil to possess only indifferent land at the end of it was quite another matter, |
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Web Page title: URL: Web Publish Date: ? Saskatchewan History Comments View comments.....Add comments. Guestbook Genealogy Queries The West 1763-1812, The West 1812-1841, Western Canda, 1870-1920, The Praire Provinces and The Rise of the North West, North West, Prairies, prairie provinces, Western provinces, Sask Gen Web, Saskatchewan Gen Web |