Forest Prairie Edge

by Merle Massie

  Murray Point Art School

  Although the boreal north/prairie south divide fuelled much of the tourist boom, the contrast also launched a new oasis of culture in 1936—the Murray Point Art School at Emma Lake, headed by artist Augustus Kenderdine. Professionally trained and mentored in Europe, Kenderdine immigrated to Saskatchewan in 1908. He started working as an art instructor at the University of Saskatchewan in the mid-1920s and soon after built a cabin at Emma Lake. His northern excursions fundamentally shaped the future of art in Saskatchewan. He convinced the University of Saskatchewan to build an art camp on a secluded peninsula jutting into Emma Lake, renamed Murray Point after Walter Murray, the first president of the university. Murray promoted development of the art department at the university and hired Kenderdine. Reporters followed creation of the art school with great enthusiasm. Kenderdine, one Saskatchewan reporter asserted, showed prairie residents “the way to the resorts, and he leads them into beauty.” His canvases, depicting the northern landscape, offered “beautiful glimpses into the lovely lakelands.”121

  Art historian Keith Bell argued that the prairie landscape, with its agrarian settlement grid, was less and less “natural.”122 The north, with its trees and lakes, in contrast, was perceived as more natural and wild. Throughout the 1930s, prairie regions were increasingly disfigured by drought that was not only economic and ecological but also cultural. University of Saskatchewan president J.S. Thompson summed it up in 1947: “Life was becoming grim and weary [in Saskatchewan during the Depression]. It was then, of all times, that [Kenderdine] thought of beginning a summer school of art to let the young folk of Saskatchewan see beauty in a land that men were coming to hate as a place of darkness and defeat.”123

  Kenderdine’s art school in a forested landscape provided a contrast familiar to both Canadian and British eyes. For Ontarians in particular, northern “cottage country” was well established by growing tourism and the work of the Group of Seven. For British audiences, Scottish landscapes were wild and northern, “visited and experienced as a tourist in the summertime, and then left for the south when the season was over.”124 Planting an art school in what was becoming cottage country was a Saskatchewan version of similar activities elsewhere. Reflecting in large part a nineteenth-century Romantic notion of the wilderness landscape as a primeval cathedral within which to commune directly with God, students would come north and find spiritual rebirth, sanctuary, and peace. Kenderdine believed that Murray Point offered a cultural renaissance for drought-stricken southerners: clear lake in contrast to dry earth; boreal forest in contrast to treeless landscape; hope in contrast to despair.

  The main participants in the summer art school were high school art teachers from prairie agricultural communities hit hard by the Depression. Kenderdine’s vision of northern beauty would reinvigorate the Saskatchewan identity beyond its current dry dustiness and develop a broader cultural inclusion of the provincial north. “Having absorbed this transcendental experience, artists and art teachers from drought affected farming areas would be able to return home after their classes at Murray Point with both a strong personal experience and a new optimism about life in the province,” Bell suggested.125 The optimism would ideally reach students, who in future would incorporate both halves of the provincial landscape into their cultural paradigm. Kenderdine used art to do what T.C. Davis had called for in 1925—make the south acquainted with the north.

  Figure 28. Emma Lake Art Camp, c. 1936. Augustus Kenderdine (in white hat) is standing at the back right.

  Source: Glenbow na,-63-23.

  Kenderdine’s effort to establish an art school in Saskatchewan in the middle of the Great Depression has been met with bewilderment by most commentators. A deeper analysis of the north Prince Albert region, in particular the rise of resort culture and tourism, balances this picture. The Great Depression and the classic images of dust and despair represented, in part, what Kenderdine and the art students were running from, while Emma Lake and the northern forested landscape showed what they were running to.

  Conclusion

  Tourism in the north Prince Albert region was promoted using a unique cultural paradigm. Traditional tourism promotion generally rested on an urban/rural divide. Tourism in the Lakeland/Prince Albert National Park region drew its force primarily from Saskatchewan’s ecological divide, the boreal north and the prairie south. Tourism promoters understood that the majority of tourists would be Saskatchewan prairie residents with access to cars. “Northward Ho!” was the slogan that some used, eager to exchange “the bleak and dusty regions” for “the luring vista of vast expanses of forest land with silvery glimpses here and there of the small lakes.” After a tremendous holiday spent fishing, boating, camping, swimming, dancing, and enjoying the landscape, the prairie holidayer would head “back to the dusty south with fond memories of the short holiday trip and with many resolutions to be back again next year determined to see the holiday paradise of the north to its fullest extent.”126 To entice prairie tourists, promoters consistently marketed contrast, as did Davis, Kenderdine, and Grey Owl.

  Contrast was also used by those who promoted agricultural settlement along the edge of the forest, connecting the ecotone with mixed farming and off-farm economic opportunities. Although on the surface agriculture, forest resources, and trees/beauty might appear conflicting, those conflicts broke down in the local setting. The science of settlement and highly governed state intervention in the north Prince Albert region included evaluating and setting aside large areas for a forest reserve, national park, or resort. Only land considered fit for agriculture was left open to homestead regulations. Mixed-farming promoters such as the Paddockwood Board of Trade advocated a landscape-based lifestyle that promoted both use and beauty. Such marketing echoes author L.M. Montgomery’s “flowery peroration on the possibilities of the country” and HBC servant Anthony Henday’s description of the future Prince Albert region as “pleasant and plentyful.” Intensive local knowledge and use of space accommodated all concepts—farming, resource extraction, and recreation—in the same general region and sometimes on the same quarter. Resort owner George Neis at Emma Lake provided a classic example. Although he worked to develop Neis beach, he also operated a farm on the same quarter, cutting cordwood in the winter and selling eggs, chickens, milk, cream, and butter to tourists in the summer.127

  Artist Augustus Kenderdine’s vision of a northern landscape of idyllic beauty resonated as a bold and hopeful contrast to the devastation of the dirty thirties on the prairie, using art to construct a new concept that incorporated both solitudes of the provincial identity. Contrast and connection provided a point of leverage not only for local tourist development but ultimately for all non-agricultural development in the north. Responding to Davis’s claim that Saskatchewan had experienced “lop-sided” development, the agricultural, resource development, and tourism push into the north Prince Albert region provided a strong multifaceted foundation for both social and economic development. That strength underscored the pull of the north for refugee migrants of the Great Depression.128

  Chapter Eight

  Even the Turnips Were Edible

  April 1934. In the midst of a violent early spring dust storm, tenant farmer Sargent McGowan of the east Weyburn district of southern Saskatchewan loaded a boxcar at the local siding. Stripping his farmhouse, machine shed, and barn, McGowan put everything he had into the boxcar: cows, chickens, plow, other implements, seed grain, household furniture, kitchen supplies, bedding, and provisions. He loaded his horses and wagon last, driving them up the ramp and into the boxcar. Unhitch, stow, organize, tie up, and tie down. At last, all was ready. He stepped down to hug his wife, Muriel, and two young daughters, who would take the passenger train to join him after one last visit with parents and grandparents.

  McGowan climbed in to keep the animals settled, fed, and watered. As the train prepared to leave the siding, McGowan turned for one last look at
the drought-stricken land that he was abandoning, wondering once again if he was making the right decision. But the landscape answered him. A brutal wind sent clouds of once-productive black soil billowing straight across the field toward the track. Dust blocked his vision. He could not see the caboose, though his settler car was just in front of it. With a face full of dirt, he withdrew, shut the door, wiped his eyes with a handkerchief and settled in for the three-day journey.

  The train headed north to the village of Paddockwood. When the train pulled into the station, McGowan slid open the boxcar door and gasped. There were still two feet of snow on the ground, and the little town was ringing with the sights, sounds, and smells of hundreds of teams and sleighs. It was more activity than he had seen for years in the broken communities around Weyburn. The contrast between the violent prairie dust storm and the snow and busy humanity was “enough to put the memory of Weyburn back behind a huge cloud of dust, and there it stayed.”1

  In Saskatchewan, an estimated 45,000 people moved north during the Great Depression.2 The massive internal migration, known as the Great Trek, changed the face of the province: prairie farms were abandoned or sold to neighbours, parkland regions filled to capacity, and agriculture pushed back the eaves of the forest. Great Trek refugees moved, not just away from the dried-up prairie, but also toward a place of hope, a place with water, trees, garden produce, and hay. Trekkers defined the new landscape in terms of the old, comparing what they had left behind with what they found in the north. The forest edge landscape was desirable because it was not the prairie.

  The ecology and the economy were different along the forest edge. In the midst of the worst depression in living memory, forest fringe towns across Saskatchewan, including those in the north Prince Albert region, became oases in a desert landscape. “The 1930s were boom times for Paddockwood,” local residents remembered.3 Mixed farming, lumber and cordwood, freighting, commercial fishing, wild game, berries, and tourism combined to offer Depression migrants an economic as well as an ecological refuge.

  For some, moving north was a temporary retreat; others found long-term resilience, drawing back full circle to traditional First Nations use of the north Prince Albert region. The ecological edge had provided a seasonal place of refuge for prairie First Nations in times of stress, such as a harsh winter or when bison were scarce. Small forest-adapted bands found long-term resilience at the ecological edge. During the Great Depression, wheat farmers—like their bison-dependent First Nations counterparts sixty years before—faced starvation and were forced to rely on government assistance. Many chose to move north to the forest edge simply to obtain the basic essentials of life: food, shelter, and warmth. There they encountered a small but temporally deep culture embraced by both First Nations and newcomers. It was a northern paradigm of resilience that drew heavily on mixed farming, occupational pluralism, and forest resources to provide a practical, self-sufficient way of life in which subsistence was the first priority.

  As analysts have indicated, some migrants experienced worse conditions and moved away, overwhelmed by the attempt to bring agriculture to the forest landscape. Overall, though, northern migration—while difficult—was successful. Families at the forest edge required less relief than did their southern counterparts. In many places, migration continued to climb until the Second World War, after which both the southern prairie and the northern parkland/forest fringe experienced extensive out-migration. Increased farm mechanization and consolidation, urban industrialization, and the postwar population shift to urban centres were important factors underlying the movement away from both prairie and forest fringe farms. Those who stayed expanded their acreage, and in time some farms at the forest edge became indistinguishable from those in the adjoining parkland and prairie. The experiences of the Great Depression resonated strongly, though, and the forest edge culture continued to embrace self-sufficiency as a primary hallmark of success.

  Much has been written about the Great Depression in Canada, in particular its effects in Saskatchewan, where environmental and economic disaster spelled ruin for many.4 The Great Depression has been categorized as “ten lost years,” a time when “our world stopped and we got off.”5 Certainly, the defining image of those years came from the prairie, the immense dust storms that simply blew the land—and the people—away. That image, however, has obscured the story of forest edge migration, northern boom, adaptation, and hope within the province in the face of the Depression.

  Figure 29. Tractor buried in drifting soil.

  Source: Glenbow Archives, NA 2291-2.

  Tempted by stories of desperation and despair, Great Trek analysts have focussed on hungry and frantic families, devastated by drought and poor agricultural prices, forced north to a “place of last resort.” Geographer J. David Wood in particular advocated the theory that hapless migrants occupied northern farms “in desperation after the more accessible land further south had been colonized.”6 Historians and geographers have presented the migration through government relief and resettlement policy analysis, agricultural hazards, and the shocking stories of loss, brutal conditions, and bewilderment of urban and prairie people trying to eke out a living in the bush.7 Although there is ample evidence to support these characterizations, the story is incomplete. To assume that northern lands were taken only when the better agricultural land of the prairie had all been settled negates the experience of northern migrants who had already tried prairie farming and found it wanting. For those who abandoned the prairie, which was the more “marginal” landscape? The “place of last resort” storyline also dismisses the extensive “pull” factors that drew people north. Depression migration was not, in fact, a radical reaction to particular environmental and economic circumstances. The Great Trek was a proactive response, an injection of hope and energy to improve living conditions and open new possibilities for earning a living. Drought migration continued, and increased, internal migration practices that had been in place for a long time.

  Prelude to the Great Trek

  The first reference to a trek of southern refugees was in 1919—ten years before the start of the Great Depression. Northern migration gained strength throughout the 1920s, as trekkers from the Palliser Triangle or other drought regions found their way to the parkland and forest edge. Northern settlement throughout the 1920s was augmented by soldier settlement, the 3000 British Families scheme, and the work of the CNR Department of Colonization. The changing policies of the dominion government that began to invest in creating farms, not just enticing people to become farmers, supported the exodus north. Mechanization, agricultural prosperity in the latter half of the 1920s, and the new provision for second homesteads led to an explosion of interest in northern regions. The branch line from Prince Albert to Paddockwood, owned by the CNR, was a favourite northern route.

  The surge in second homestead applications in 1928 and 1929 has often been blurred by memory and faulty analysis and presented as part of the Depression migration. The two, however, should not be intertwined. A large number of families filed on second homesteads prior to the Depression, when the agricultural situation in Saskatchewan was buoyant. The Prince Albert land agency recorded a respectable 2,162 homestead applications in 1927. In 1928, that number more than doubled, to 5,615, and increased again in 1929, with almost 6,500 new homestead entries.8

  The opening of second homesteads caused a virtual land rush in northern districts across Saskatchewan, which contained the vast majority of remaining homestead quarters. Second homesteads were popular for several plausible reasons. A homestead, through hard work and good luck, could become a patented farm, to be kept and farmed or sold for profit. Much prairie land changed hands in this way, as a business endeavour rather than a lifestyle choice. Some prairie farmers, with enough capital to expand and diversify, took northern homesteads or purchased farms in an active bid to change their physical environment from prairie to parkland/forest edge. The northern environment was p
romoted as better suited to mixed-farming practices. A few of these farmers might have been interested in owning two farms, one on the prairie devoted primarily to wheat farming, one near or at the forest edge to access resources of timber, fuel, hay, and wild game. The north Prince Albert region was a popular hunting area, and some Depression migrants claimed their first experiences of the region from hunting trips. Others came to visit the new national park and the northern vacationland and liked what they found. A few families commuted between prairie and northern farms (depending on the season) throughout the Depression as finances and situations permitted. Finally, some might have experienced a pull toward the trees as a place of beauty and recreation. All of these factors contributed to the popularity of second homesteads. Families moved to those northern homesteads on a permanent basis when economic and environmental conditions in the south imploded.9

  The classic story of contrast between prairie and forest drove interest in northern farms. In some cases, the move was a rejection of the prairie environment; in others, taking a northern homestead allowed diversification and access to a broader range of locally available resources to supplement and balance farm opportunities. In either case, second homesteads could only be taken by those who had already fulfilled the requirements of their original homesteads. Those interested in second homesteads were coming from the prairie, not elsewhere.10