Review of The Prairie West as Promised Land, edited by R.
Douglas Francis and Chris Kitzan (University of Calgary, 2007) 486 pp. paper $54.95
Indexed.
With a schematic “Introduction” by the editors, this
collection of eighteen essays deals with the evolution (and devolution) of the Prairie
West as a “Perfect Society”; its European settlers as the “Chosen People”,
from about 1841 to 2005. The themes are
treated historically and culturally, with the inevitable overlapping, accompanied by the
judicious use of black-and-white photographs.
The Garden City and the City Beautiful were emblems of social
process in the Edwardian Age. Thomas Mawson,
who came to Calgary in 1912, delivered an address “The City on the Plain and How to
Make it Beautiful” to the newly formed City Planning Commission. He prepared Calgary,
Past, Present and Future, originally called Calgary:
A Preliminary Scheme for Controlling the Economic Growth of the City. The Mawson Plan of 1914 set forth the Armouries at
the end of Seventh Avenue and a proposed university. The
Bow River “itself would be the focal point of a continuous system of parks,
playgrounds, and boat reaches.” He
advised city council to reserve all riverside areas and land which could not be developed. The river escarpments were preserved for natural
park development, linked by bridges (ending at a low-level Centre Street Bridge). Other
features were railway depots, shopping malls, and open-air market, with glassed-roof
sections. He anticipated the motor-car, with
the necessity of diverting traffic out of the city centre, on diagonal spokes to the
outlying area. World War I intervened. Not only were the plans (which cost six thousand
dollars) not implemented, but they were discovered insulating the walls of an inner city
garage. (pp. 182-3)
Of merit is the account of Nellie McClung, based on her
autobiographical writing, of “Vision Of The Prairie West As Promised Land”. She was the wife of a prairie pharmacist, who moved
from Manitoba to Edmonton, in 1914, and her speeches, as an Alberta MLA from 1921 to 1926,
are mentioned.
It appeared that “Alberta was the last, best West, the last
frontier of North American settlement, the last place for a Promised Land” (p. 256)
Nevertheless, according to “Immigrant Arrivals In Canada”
(1921), (in “Uncertain Promise: The Prairie Farmer And The Post-War Era”) Alberta,
(used to growth and immigration), saw some 60,000 people leave, in the 1930s and early
1940s. By 1947, the abandonment rate of relief
families settled on farms was at 70 per cent. Edmonton
grew faster than Calgary over this period and was, by 1951, the province’s largest
city. (p. 340) Between 1921 and 1961, consolidation increased, such that the average farm
in Alberta, in 1931, was 605 acres, to over 1400 acres, by 1951. The population had decreased by almost 50 per cent. There was more machinery, albeit with fewer
farmers, who lacked political clout.
In 16) George Melnyk, on “The Artist’s Eye: Modernist
And Postmodernist Visualizations Of The Prairie West”, deals with “Prairie
Harvest”, (circa 1920), by Alec J. Musgrove; “The Exodus”, (1941), by Henry
G. Glyde; “Grainscape”, by Don Proch; “Singing the Joys of the Agrarian
Society”, (1970), and “Mixed Farming”, (1970), by Vic Cicansky; “Time
Expired”, (1973), by Joan Nourry-Barry; and “Farm Drawing”, (1977), by
Norman Yates.
In 17) on the Saskatchewan Golden Jubilee, local celebrations,
and dedication of the Museum of Natural History, (in 1956), the latter “signified the
centrality of Promised land narratives to the anniversary celebrations” (p. 393)
In 18) on Co-Operatives in Alberta and Saskatchewan,
(1905-2005), many were dissolved post-World War I; others formed, in the 1920s, were
dissolved, in the 1930s. Twelve Saskatchewan farmers, in 1934, decided to control
transnational petroleum supplies. (p. 417) The article discusses the cultural importance
of locality and social cohesion of the two provinces.
The motif of “Promised Land” is derived from the Book
of Exodus, 13:5, in which the Chosen People were led to “a land of milk and honey.”
It loosely corresponds with the American dream, of the United States of America, and
colonialist aims of the British Empire.
An essential reference is by Northrop Frye, in The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination. From
Section I “Visions Of The Promised Land”, we read about early explorers, such as
in 1) on John Palliser, Henry Hind, S.J. Dawson (brother of William Dawson) and Lorin
Blodgett, explorers of the Canadian North West. Also
mentioned are the poet Charles Mair and The Canada First Group (George Denison, R.G.
Haliburton, W.A. Foster, and H.J. Morgan, during the 1850s and 1860s).
.
In 2) we find: Ballantyne, G.A. Henry, Butler, Johnstone,
Fraser, Lumsden, Cran, all British Writers in Canadian North West (from 1841-1913). In 1895, fewer than 1,500 new homesteads were
granted in Saskatchewan and Alberta. This
number rose to more than 40,000, in 1911. (p.49, note 10)
In 3) on the Rocky Mountain Parks Act, (1887), and Romanticism,
there are mentions of aboriginal sacred sites. The
European vision was as escape or to be plundered. J.B. Harkin, was the first commissioner
of the National parks, in 1911, whose appointed author of guide books was Mabel B.
Williams. Whereas the wheat field was worth $4.91, the value of picturesque land was
$13.88 (p. 64)
In 4) Clifford Sifton, Minister of the Interior in the Liberal
government of Sir Wilfred Laurier (whose policy was of two founding peoples) was named
Attorney General of Manitoba by Premier Greenway, in 1891.
The provincial insistence was that English be the language of schooling, to
speed assimilation. The functional region
replaced the imagined region, associated with various themes, including “spin”
doctors, and a testimonial on Egg Lake, Alberta (p. 86)
In Part II “Settling The Promised Land”, in 5) “The
Plains Cree and Agriculture (to 1900”) explores why farming did not form the basis of
a viable economy for these people (treaties were broken) with die-off of the buffalo,
inadequate tools were provided, combined with unfair practices, government corruption, and
a view they were not “true” homesteaders, while the facts shows that Europeans
felt threatened by competition.
In 6) “Utopian
Ideals”, “The abortive utopia was thus a common mirage in the vanishing
landscape of the pioneering West.” (p. 150) Further, “Whether aristocratic or
democratic, liberal-anarchist, communist or socialist, the utopian experiments were a
necessary pastoral phase in the pioneer development of the West.” (p. 151) This
Edenic quest for “paradise” (1880-1914) was accompanied by “booster”
literature, democratic socialist experiments. In
1888, Lethbridge and Fort Macleod were venues for polygamy which “secures a husband
for every woman that wants one, giving her a large stock to select from, and by division
of labour, it also ensures better supervision and kinder treatment for the rising
generation” (p. 147) From a commercial
point of view, Mormon boycott of “gentile”
stores. Of interest are the Doukhobor
settlements in Thunder Hill, Swan River, and Yorkton;
the appearance of alcoholic temperance and economic difficulties; the late
nineteenth-century utopian visions of Ruskin, Bellamy, Hudson, and Morris. One may compare English with French, and, later
manifestations in the Social Credit Movement
In 7) the eligibility for homesteading was set forth in the
Homestead Act of 1915 for Saskatchewan. Yet,
it was not until 1979,that women finally
secured an equal share in matrimonial property.” (p. 167) Evidently, some settlers
were more equal than others; individual toil was not always a communal effort
In Part III “Envisioning The Prairie West As A Perfect
Society”, in 8) “Perfection by Architectural Design” reveals the Mormon
colonies were buildings based on New England. These
elements were:of private property versus
common good; urban reform through urban design and civic planning, in conjunction with the
Temperance Society.
Some of the relevant literature was: H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (1905); Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932); and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) on eugenics. Other notable figures are mentioned, such as J.S.
Woodsworth and Thomas Mawson. Mawson was born
in 1861. He designed campus plans for a
University in Calgary, for example. Coming to Calgary,
in April of 1912, he played a role in the City Planning Commission in Calgary which was
newly formed to develop a plan for an “Ideal City”. (p. 182) The Mawson Plan of 1914, quoting Ruskin, was not
implemented, due to cost, after the Edwardian Age’s spirit of optimism ended.
In 9) “Land of the Second Chance”, Nellie McClung’s
Vision is accepted as “not a naively optimistic propagandist” (p. 199).
10) J.S. Woodsworth, of the CCF, is described as “an
exemplary social gospeller”. In this context, the physical west and the social west
are components of this ideal prairie land. He
moved from the Methodist Church to social reform, believing that great economic wealth or
the spirit of materialism would harm spiritual growth.
The policy was for assimilation of problem “foreigners” as having
potential, as Anglo-Protestants or part of the
mosaic.
In 11) “The Utopianism Of The Alberta Farm Movement
(1909-1923)”, we learn about Henry Wise Wood, the UFA’s President, the “Moses
of Alberta”. There were small communes,
the wheat pool; while on the frontier, we find religious, reform movements. At the outset, agrarian co-operatives replaced
competition, by the United Farmers of Alberta, after the election of 1921, but were
replaced by Social Credit, in 1935. They first
experienced the failure of dry farming, in the 1930s, when it was feared that cities might
spread like cancer, from a pastoral view.
In Part IV “A Promised Land For The ‘Chosen People’”,
in 12) there was “No Place” for a woman, to cause gender tensions, since
1894-1996. The Gould v. Yukon Order of
Pioneers case depicts Victorian gender type of a “manly” space, nation-building
and wilderness “going”. “Typically,
women were represented as existing outside of the masculine enterprise of settlement. When women do appear, it is more often as ‘civilizers’
or ‘gentle tamers’.” (p. 265)
Some of the notables are: Ralph Connor, John Wilcox, Frances Simpson (wife of George
Simpson), and the Foss-Pelly scandal. The arrival of European
women was seen to disrupt peaceful relations and marital alliances between European men
and Aboriginal women. (p. 268) By 1920, all three prairie provinces introduced a dower
law. In 1925, a matrimonial property bill that
anticipated joint ownership, followed a 1920 women’s resolution for equal custody and
equal property rights for husband and wife. Of
note are: The Farmers in Politics (p. 279)
published in 1920. McNaughton wrote for The Western Producer.
In 13) “Preaching Purit”y was the function of the
Anglican Bishop Lloyd (1861-1940), on Immigration being the creation of a perfect
Anglo-Saxon community, which challenged the Railway and Immigration Policy.
In 14) the RCMP Policing of Communists and Ukrainians is
examined. Some of the sources are: Pierre
Berton and Jonathan Vance. There were many
mistakes made, in dealing with the unassimilated or too radical, during the Inter-War
period, with the Chinese Immigration Act and the opium trade. In 1930, 25,000 KKK in Saskatchewan, were equal in
numbers to the United Grain Growers Association. “The
fact that members of the KKK shared similar backgrounds to those in the RCMP meant that,
from the perspective of the police, the KKK did not challenge Anglo-Canadian traditions
and institutions to the same degree as the Communist Party of Canada did.” (p. 327)
In Section V: “Readjusting The Vision of The Promised Land
in the Modern Era” about “A Promised Land for the ‘Chosen People’”,
the editors would like to see the theme extended “to other groups such as Blacks,
Asians, Jews or Arabs” (p. XVII)
Like the other contributors, the editors have impressive
credentials. Francis, who contributed
“The Kingdom of God on the Prairies: J.S. Woodsworth’s Vision of the Prairie
West as Promised Land”, specializes in Canadian intellectual history and Western
Canadian History. Kitzan, who contributed
“Preaching Purity in the Promised Land: Bishop Lloyd and the Immigration Debate”,
manages content creation for the Web Content and Services Division of the Library and
Archives, Canada.
Anne Burke