Forest Prairie Edge

by Merle Massie

The second, and perhaps even greater, strength of the Home Branch was “where sickness or unfortunate disaster occurs.”81 Health, hospital and nursing care, and health information were considered top priorities, and the Home Branch worked hard to initiate public health reform and promote local medical facilities. Working with each of the provincial Departments of Health, the Home Branch promoted health examinations of every dependant of the soldier settlement scheme. Its in-depth knowledge of local needs led to agitation for cottage hospitals, nurses, and other medical services. The branch found its greatest ally in the Red Cross.

  Red Cross Outpost Hospitals

  During the war years, the Red Cross had operated a full-scale campaign to provide services and supplies to men at the front.82 At the end of the war, flush with money, the Red Cross vowed to continue its campaign.83 Activities following the war refocussed primarily on the health and welfare of returned soldiers and their families, though the Red Cross soon expanded into other areas. One of the first priorities, in part because of agitation from the Home Branch of the SSB, was establishment of Red Cross outpost hospitals. A pamphlet outlining postwar Red Cross initiatives noted that “the settlement of ex-service men on the land drew attention to the fact that many pioneer districts in Canada were woefully lacking in medical and nursing care.”84 The first of what became several hundred small outpost hospitals strung across the entire British Empire was built at Paddockwood. It opened in the fall of 1920.85

  Figure 14. Paddockwood Red Cross Outpost Hospital, 1948. Ruth Shewchuk (standing in front) was the last nurse at the hospital before it was closed. Source: SAB, Ruth Shewchuk collection.

  The hospital was a unique combination of local and Red Cross resources but directed and initiated by the SSB. F.J. O’Leary, the Prince Albert SSB district superintendent, chaired a community meeting at the log hall at Paddockwood. The community was to build and maintain a suitable building, which the Red Cross would furnish and equip and for which it would provide trained staff.86 The community got to work immediately. Situated on a hill just off the Montreal Lake Trail and near the burgeoning village of Paddockwood, the Red Cross Outpost Hospital, with its big red cross painted on the roof, could be seen for miles. It first accepted patients in September 1920. An opening ceremony attended by locals, members of the SSB, and the Red Cross was held on 8 October.87

  A resident charge nurse took care of maternity cases, deliveries, cuts, wounds, and broken bones and dispensed medical advice. The hospital operated as a local clearing-house or triage service. Minor problems were attended immediately. Those with serious injuries or illnesses were sent to the larger hospital in Prince Albert. Doctors would visit from Prince Albert once a week, or on call as necessary, which reduced local expenses but maintained a high degree of care. A local Homemakers Club, also formed in 1920, was closely allied with the hospital and over the years donated time, money, linen, and other necessities.88 The hospital operated continuously for almost thirty years, bringing a sense of self-sufficiency and pride to the burgeoning community.

  It is hard to overestimate the implications of a local hospital for development of the Paddockwood area. At the time, though the railway had been promised, there was only a graded road between Prince Albert and Paddockwood. In dry weather, this trail was “suitable for motor traffic,” an important consideration since cars were becoming more common in the Prince Albert area.89 Most of the time, however, this trail was difficult to travel. Dominion land surveyor M.D. McCloskey pointed out in 1920 that “considerable work remains to be done on local road improvement before the needs of the vicinity will be supplied.”90 He went on to comment specifically on the settlement at Paddockwood: “Road grading gangs are working at present. ... This township is badly in need of roads and another big bridge over the Garden River.”91 Simply getting to the main road from a settler’s homestead was trying. Cart tracks and trails slashed through the bush were all that could be expected of a pioneer community. If a person was sick or injured and immediate care was needed, bad roads were a complication. As settlement moved east, west, and north of the little village, transportation difficulties intensified. A hospital within the community helped to ease the fears of local settlers. In addition, the Red Cross was a universally recognized symbol of health and care. The cross-cultural appeal and recognition of the Red Cross no doubt helped Paddockwood to draw settlers to the area. Creation of the hospital in 1920 might have offset local settlement concerns caused by the delayed railway.92

  Delayed Railway

  District Superintendent O’Leary’s assessment of soldier settlers “making good” in the north Prince Albert region was probably overenthusiastic. The soil might have been first class on some farms, but soil quality was not uniform. Some quarters were less arable, with more leached grey podzolic soil and less black chernozem. Muskeg and other problems of low-lying land limited cereal crop potential but provided important hay land. O’Leary’s main description of the Paddockwood area—“timbered country”—told the tale. As the Buckland history book recorded, “those having places easily cleared, which had had light brush on them or had been well burned over, had a great advantage over the owners of land still covered with heavy bush or large stumps. These latter had a hard struggle to keep the pot boiling, let alone to pay off debts.”93 Large stumps, leftovers of extensive timber berths, had to be pulled out. Some stumps left holes deep enough to serve as root cellars.94 Extensive fires had made excellent headway for clearing, but remaining deadfall, brush, and roots had to be cleared by hand, piled, and usually burned. Sometimes such burns resulted in runaway forest fires that killed more forest acres.95 In other cases, fires went underground and consumed precious topsoil. Regardless, settlers on heavy bush homesteads had one commodity in demand on the open plains to the south: vigorous aspen regrowth could be converted into cordwood.

  Local advocates understood that the CNR, as a business, was only interested in putting in profitable railways. The best commodity for short-term profit was cordwood. Local residents, the mayor of Prince Albert, and the Board of Trade united in their tactics. A railway would offer heavy transport capabilities so that homesteaders could turn their liabilities (trees) into assets (cordwood). To that end, these groups argued that “Paddockwood district alone can supply thirty carloads of cordwood a week for the next ten years if the railroad is built into this district. At $15 a car or $450 a week—freight charges show what revenue will be derived from this one commodity.”96 The implication was that other commodities, such as grain and cattle, would increase local revenue even further.

  The communities waited in vain. By July 1919, the Prince Albert Daily Herald asked “what is wrong with the proposed railroad which was to be surveyed and graded this summer by the Dominion. A large amount of money has been invested and land has been taken up [at Paddockwood] with the expectation that these promises would be fulfilled.”97 The CNR replied that the line had not been started because the company had been unable to find an engineer to survey and grade the road but that work would commence soon. By early August, engineers and crews were busy.98 For the next couple of years, expectations were high, but results on the ground were disappointing. Surveying and grading were one thing; laying steel and opening the track were quite another. The postwar recession ground progress to a halt. By 1923, there was still no railway. Local residents were indignant. In a meeting between Sir Henry Thornton, president of the CNR, and the Prince Albert Board of Trade and local representatives, Major J.H. Lindsay spoke for the Board of Trade:

  We do not expect you are a wizard to just come along and lay the steel, but so far as the Paddockwood line is concerned, in 1919, the Government of Canada, as represented by the Soldier Settlement Board considered that was a place which should be settled. That being so, they placed in that district, two hundred, if I may say, returned men. These men went into that district on a full understanding that the line was to be constructed. These men have been waiting patiently for its construction. T
hey have seen the line graded but not finished. If that line was finished then these people would be satisfied and surely, if anyone is entitled to any consideration, then the returned men who have settled in that district are entitled to the very best consideration possible.99

  The pressure of public guilt and loyalty to returned soldiers worked. The CNR succumbed and finished the line. The first train rolled into Paddockwood late in 1924.100

  Northern Migration

  Prince Albert celebrated when the Burns family of Calgary announced that it had chosen the city as the site of their new stockyards and meat-packing plant in 1919. Securing the stockyards was a tremendous achievement, and the Prince Albert Daily Herald reported it with jubilation.101 The result of intense negotiation and heated rivalry among several cities, the stockyards heralded a significant rise in local fortunes and contributed to the popularity of the Prince Albert region as a soldier settlement and dryland resettlement destination. Cattle ranchers, long associated with southwestern Saskatchewan, looked north. Farmers and ranchers hard hit by the drought were supported by the dominion government in their efforts to secure feed or move their cattle north to graze. The temporary northern refuge became permanent for many. The Daily Herald exulted: “This whole north country is fine pasture land, and watered by innumerable lakes and streams. Grass grows in all the bush land ... and hay is cut around every little lake and slough. ... It will soon be a great cattle country.”102 Environment and local economics combined to recreate Prince Albert as the new ranching country.

  The stockyards announcement renewed interest in the scrubland north of the soldier settlement land at Paddockwood, past Township 53. Some surveyors argued that the land was unfit for agricultural homesteading, with podzolic soil, rock, and muskeg throughout. Interest in stock raising and ranching changed the general consensus. It became common to suggest that the land, if not good enough to homestead, would make a good complement for established farmers who just needed a bit more pasture or hay land. The dominion land surveyor, M.D. McCloskey, reporting in 1920, disagreed. He cautioned that “cattle would [not] find sufficient grass until the summer is fairly well advanced.”103 He was ignored. By 1922, continued pressure pushed settlement onto marginal land, not as additional hay and pasture land, but for homesteading.104

  Soldier settlers and drought migrants brought more and more cattle to the north Prince Albert region. The growing stock population led to both ecological and political distress, necessitating new farming techniques and intensifying local debates. In the first place, despite the praise of northern boosters, the supply of natural hay fell short of demand. One method commonly applied to stimulate extra hay involved manipulating the ecology of the Spruce and Garden Rivers. McCloskey reported that “numerous beaver dams existed along the streams, and smaller watercourses. To ensure a crop of hay in dry season [some of the settlers] close the beaver dam and keep the land flooded until June, or thereabouts, then open the dam and release the water.”105 Settlement thus generally followed the watersheds of the Spruce and Garden Rivers, or other well-watered quarters, before spreading out to other land.

  Increased stock numbers placed pressure on hay resources and led to debate regarding herd laws and fencing versus free-range pasturage. Stock would benefit from accessing “waste places” not suitable for farming, but it was equally important to stop the cattle from grazing on newly sown oat, barley, and wheat fields and to keep them out of areas designated for the winter hay crop.106 At times, a mixed farmer was torn: was his primary role to raise stock or to grow crops? Drought in the drylands, carloads of cattle shipped north to the forest reserves to graze, and requests for hay and feed permits from desperate southern farmers led to physical manipulation of the landscape through fences and flooding. The opening of commercial cattle facilities confirmed the connection between the edge landscape and more intensive diversification into stock raising, a hallmark of mixed farming as well as ranching.

  The majority of settlers who initiated the considerable movement out of the Saskatchewan portion of the drybelt made this move under their own steam, with no provincial help and limited federal help. A few were given railcar relief to move their goods or pasture their cattle.107 Settlers who managed to sell their farms in the south could move their stock and machinery north. If they had already homesteaded in the south and had proved up, then they could not homestead again, so they were forced to purchase or rent improved land.108 In 1923, the Department of the Interior allowed “second homesteads” in the northern settlements for those who had to abandon the drybelt. Second homesteads were a targeted and strictly controlled measure by the federal government “to provide for the removal of homesteaders from the southern part of Saskatchewan, the drought area, to the northern part.”109 Too many, though, after years of trying to hold on in the south, arrived in the Prince Albert region with little or no capital left, their stock sold and their machinery repossessed by creditors.110 It was a difficult prospect, at best, to start again under such conditions.

  The Postwar Depression

  The settlement at Paddockwood—original homesteaders, soldier settlers, and incoming dryland disaster refugees—faced the same agricultural pressures as did other farmers across the dominion. Despite the best intentions of the SSB to ease loans by negotiating farm prices and purchasing supplies in bulk, the soldiers took their loans and bought machinery and stock when prices were at their postwar peak. In the fall of 1920, agricultural commodities began a long financial slide that affected both stock and grain prices for several years. Historian Kent Fedorowich claimed that “the cost-price squeeze ushered in a period of failure, foreclosure, abandonment and indebtedness which haunted soldier settlers and politicians alike throughout the inter-war period.”111 The postwar recession hit those who had purchased their farms—the majority of SSB clients—particularly hard. As the difficult years went on and abysmal prices continued, soldiers with substantial loans either abandoned their farms or demanded that the government re-evaluate and renegotiate loans on land, stock, and machinery.112

  Settlers in places such as Paddockwood on a combination of homestead and soldier grant land carried less debt than did their counterparts elsewhere and thus were somewhat better off than those who had purchased not only stock and equipment but entire farms at wartime high prices. The Toronto Globe reported on the successes and problems of soldier settlement in 1922. Major Barnett of the SSB was quoted as saying that “the men that are getting along best and the men that are paying best are quite clearly and unmistakably those who are working slowly, who have no large cash crops of any kind, but whose revenue is made up of dribbles from this and little dabs from that, a few dollars here and a few dollars there.” Barnett continued: “These men are paying their way as they go. Their success from year to year is not large, but neither are their disappointments great, and there is never the bitter disillusionment that follows when the crop that was expected to realize thousands of dollars turns out an utter failure.” Barnett was mouthing the mixed-farming rhetoric. The SSB continued to believe that mixed farming provided soldiers with resiliency and a sure path. The Globe went on to generalize from his observations, suggesting that “the settlement of the West will proceed on a more secure foundation if the ‘one crop’ idea is relegated to the background and the land is used primarily for the purpose of raising a sufficient variety of foodstuffs for man and beast to assure the tiller of the soil against the catastrophe that in recent years has too frequently overtaken the land miners of the prairies.”113

  Yet the mixed-farming rhetoric went only so far. When McCloskey toured the Paddockwood region in 1920, he found “all the settlers interviewed were satisfied with their holdings but stated that the land was difficult to clear and that without capital a settler would be obliged to spend a portion of that time working out in order to obtain funds to carry him along when improving his homestead.”114 The Paddockwood soldier settlers might have had fewer loans to pay back, but they, along w
ith other soldier settlers across the forested regions of the dominion, also had the hardest uphill battle to clear and open their land to make it pay.115 As local residents David Dunn and Frank Stoddart knew, farming required capital, mixed farming required more capital, and mixed farming at the ecotone required both time and money to create the land in the first place. As a result, “the enormous amounts of time, energy and money required to bring the land under cultivation proved too much for some.”116 The natural environment also took its toll: “Frequent and early frosts, hail, flooding and drought wiped out even the best and most determined soldier settlers.”117 Overcome by the dual prongs of agricultural price deflation and natural calamities, many soldier settlers across Canada (including those who took land along the forest fringe) were forced to give up, leaving historians with little choice but to call the overall program a failure.

  In the Prince Albert region, however, the statistics tell a somewhat different tale. Although not justifying the booster-style exhortations of mixed-farming supporters, the local story adds an important layer of detail to the overall soldier settlement story. By 1927, the Prince Albert office of the SSB had almost twice as many soldier settlers on soldier grants established without loans as it did men with loans. It also had a higher number of overall settlers compared with Saskatoon and Regina combined: active entries in 1927 were 2,112 in Prince Albert, 1,294 in Regina, and only 494 in Saskatoon. Of course, there were also cancellations from the Prince Albert office: from an original 3,458 soldier grants in the district to 1927, 1,346 had been abandoned or cancelled.118 The cancellation numbers (39 percent)—despite the aims of the SSB, the supposed advantages of mixed farming, and the policies of intensive ongoing support through loans, advice, and the Home Branch—were similar to the abandonment and cancellation averages from all of Saskatchewan (including what was considered good agricultural land) of the prewar years. On the surface, it appears that the intensive and ongoing support was not making a difference. Abandonment, cancellations, and desertions were not any worse, though, despite complications of forested land and a severe economic deflation.119 These statistics (which, at over 60 percent, should be seen as successful) stand in contrast to those who tend to refer to soldier settlement as a failure—a failure that depended at least in part on where the farm was located and which kind of farming was done there.