The agrarian frontier near Red Deer and Lacombe, Alberta, 1822-1914.

697 Pages·2006·23.15 MB·English

by  Batchelor, Bruce Edward.

ERRATUM
Pages 348 and 349 are missing due to a typing error.
Even these l i t t l e things are affected
by revolutions of state and the change
of manners, as the storm which wrecks
an armada turns the village weathercock.
Robert Southey, Letter
7
XXIV.
THE AGRARIAN FRONTIER NEAR RED DEER
AND LACOMBE, ALBERTA,
1882-1914
Bruce Edward Batchelor
M.A., McMaster University, 1971
A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
in the
Department of Geography
@ BRUCE EDWARD BATCHELOR 1978
SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY
February 1978
All rights reserved. This thesis may not be
reproduced i.n whole or in part, by photocopy
or other means, without the permission of the
author.
In two volumes
APPROVAL
Name : Bruce E. Batchelor
Degree : Doctor of Philosophy
Title of Thesis: The Agrarian Frontier Near Red Deer and
Lacombe, Alberta, 1882-1914
Examining Committee:
Chairperson: Mary L. Barker
-7 I
Paul M. Koroscil
Senior Supervisor
-
Guy Steed, Associate Professor,
Department of Geography, University of
Ottawa
David H. Bpeen, Assistant Professor,
Department of History, University of
,
British Columbia
L. J. Evenden
I ,
, -
'tar1 J. Tracie
External Examiner
Associate Professor, Department of
Geography, University of Saskatchewan
PARTIAL COPYRIGHT LICENSE
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or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed
without my writ ten permission.
Title of ThesislDissertation :
The Aqrarian Frontier Near Red Deer and Lacombe, Alberta,
-
Author :
/ /
Bruce E. Batchelor
(name)
April 24, 1978
(date)
iii
TKE AGRARIAN FRONTIER NEAR RED DEER
AND LACOMBE, ALBERTA,
.I
1n00n~-~ly l.I i.
Volume One
4
ABSTRACT
This historical geographic study enquires into the ss-
cia1 and economi.~p rocesses of the agrarian frontier around
the Alberta parkland communities of Red Deer and Lacombe du-
ring three decades after 1882. Three hypotheses focus the
studyr 1) the evolution of a regional cultural identity
was fostered by selective historical processes in immigr?.tion
and in land policy; 2) land use intensified over time and
the increase i n the regional agricultural product arose at
least as much from intra-farm intensification as from the
augmentation of the number of farming units and 3) when the
t
failure of the rural economy to deliver the level of farm in-
come expocted by rural residents was finally acknowledged,
rural producers shifted the role of the individual in social
and economic thought. This shift was accomplished, however,
without endangering liberal notions of the .autonomy of the
individual in the marketplace, and although the change was
more particularly associated with the reform movement of the
years after the war, this study is concerned with its economic
basis. The first hypothesis concerns the immigration period
from 1882 to the end of the land rush at the turn of the
century, the second the intercensal period of 1901-11, pnd the
third the period of wild speculation, economic depression and
and war at the end of the study period.
A
W
The methods are not unusual i n historical geography.
Chronological treatment is applied to statistical and docu-
mentary sources concerning immigration and a number of selec-
ted sectors i n the rural economy. The time span of the study
is divided into three for editorial convenience and analytical
clarity. Maps from little-used Dominion statistics are pre-
sented to show change in the rural economy over the decade
1901-11 i n such sectors as hog raising, horse rearing, cattle
production, arable f srming and dairy production. The concept
of economic man is used to appraise producer decisions. Some
alternatives which hold appeal in retrospect were rendered out
of reach to parkland farmers by limitations i n the liberal so-
cial and economic creed of the time, The study uses a broad
range of documentary, statistical, cartographic, secondary
and oral sources, and concludes with s short descriptive mo-
del of land use i n the region over the three decades under
study.
The general findings of the study, taking the hypo-
theses i n order, are as follows. Immigration selectivity was
enforced in the Red Deer region in the 1880's by a combination
of poor economic conditions, the effects of the Rebellion of
1885, the emigration of many potential immigrants from eastern
Canada to the United States, and the influence of the Saskat-
chewan Land and Homestead Company. This company, part of the
corporate colonization scheme of 1881-85, exerted a profound
and lingering regional effect on land prices and on the spatial
I
focus of colonization i n the Red Deer-Lacombe corridor. Some
properties were listed i n its name as late as 1918. Most early
immigrants were Canadian or British; many of those arriving
i n the nineties were American, Among the Americans were many
who fared poorly because of the slow state of the economy
and the meagreness of their original capitalization, A colo-
ny of Jews at Pine Lake failed utterly from destitution.
With the land rush of 1900-03 the nationalistic dream
of the earlier arrivals on the frontier for an Anglo-Saxon
countryside was met in part, but the American identity of
much of the immigrant wave was resented by some who felt that
the purity of Loyalist ideals and the closeness of the Imperial
t i e were compromised. Full settlement of the countryside was
expected to lead to rural prosperity, but while some leading
farmers forged ahead economically most families were confined
t o low and irregular receipts and by 1911 there were few dis-
tricts more than 50% settled. Rural protestors typically blamed
the low rate of occupancy on outside speculators i n land, but
the feature seems i n fact to have been caused by a dynamic
regional balance in land prices, Part of the effect of this
process was to deflect potential settlers with small initial
capitalization to newer frontier zones outside the study area,
the matter of future Band purchases for farm expansion appa-
rently being of some importance.
The reliance of rural protestors on the handy stereo-
type of class economic conf lict--the speculator versus the
vii
small farmer--demonstrated an intellectual deficiency of
the reform movement, Farm protest in the Red Deer region was
led by men of education, business ability, social status and
financial achievement, and complaints were most vociferous in
periods of combined low markeths and sagging real eastate va-
lues, This pattern is reviewed by a detailed documentation of
cyclical trend in the pork and arable cropping sectors. Eco-
nomic cooperation was forestalled by protective traditional
liberal attitudes to individual rights in marketing decisions,
and by the common habit of taking short-term profits in place
of guarantees to cooperative marketing agencies,
The economic rewards of the frontier were dismal for
most farm families, the typical increase in personal worth
over the decade 1901-11 being about $1500 separate from land
value. It is argued, in support of a long tradition in western
Canadian scholarship an this matter, that farm land values
came to be seen effectively as wages for the years spent in
developing frontier farms. Despite the nostalgic images of
frontier f a r m life, rural transiency and actual depopu-
lation in some townships even before the Great War were indi-
cative of the beginnings of later difficulties i n the rural
social milieu.