They sure don't do this anymore. If you drive from Prince Albert to Saskatoon there are still a few places that look just like that little house, with a few out buildings and the railroad tracks running right alongside the house like that. A friend of mine always tells me " there's your retirement home". Now I realize what those are!!
Miningman, that would be great a farm and a view of the trains. As my granddaughter would say WOW!!! Thanks for posting
Beautiful old posters!
I read Ms. Johnson's thesis right through at first sight.
My own grandfather emigrated from Aberdeen rather earlier than the period described, in 1887 to Melbourne, Australia to participate in a "six day bicycle race" which he won. He wasn't a farmer. He and his four sons were office workers, in Banks and Insurance.
I assume that the race organisers paid his fare since he was bicycle champion of Scotland at the time. He decided to settle, and brought his fiancee out from Aberdeen.
However there were many assisted migration schemes to Australia even post WWII, even up to the time of jet aircraft, where the contribution by the immgrant was ten English Pounds.
There were several schemes for child immigrants which sometimes resulted in in mistreatment and sometimes abuse.
In other cases disfunctional families found that leaving behind former support networks resulted in an even worse situation.
David Hill, who was CEO of the NSW State Rail Authority was one of the child migrants, andhas some sad tales of his early years in Australia.
Jimmy Barnes, the lead singer of the group Cold Chisel was a member of a family from Glasgow which failed after moving to the Adelaide suburb of Elizabeth, established to provide accommodation for workers at the local General Motors plant.
There were other schemes, after WW I, to settle returned soldiers on small farms. Most of these failed due to the lack of farming experience. I note the Canadian schemes all targeted experienced farmers, even if the conditions were different from "home".
Grand ideas like "Nation Building" can sometimes trample on the people involved.
We just had a Federal Election here and I was generally unhappy with both parties and their negative advertising. I don't believe either party had a plan for the future and the winners are relying on the export price of iron ore to balance he national books.
Peter
Not a great idea to balance the Nations books on 'well known about' cyclical nature of mining commodities. Here in Saskatchewan we are in a huge pinch due to low Potash and Uranium prices. Plus we are getting bottom dollar Oil Sands type revenue for our oil and gas and coal.
Now our Canola and pork products to China are under attack.
Back to enticing immigrants back in the day. Yeah there was no such thing as PTSD back then, folks just were screwed up from stress, isolation, a strange place. It had to be incredibly difficult with no electricity, unbelievably long and extremely harsh winters, how they did it all is beyond me. I would imagine it was similiar in Australia, except the climate in the opposite direction. I'm sure isolation and few conveniences.
Our ex-CEO came from such a family. His grandfather got the farthest North and last farmland grant in all of Saskatchewan. The last laid out chunk of farmland in a place called Goodsoil, which was akin to the way they named Greenland. It inspired hope and a future but the reality was a bit different. They did not get electricity until 1958 there. He said when his mom got an electric washing machine that was THE big deal. The CNR was some distance away. Big family, lots of kids, it all worked out in the end somehow but a rough go to accomplish that. They were so far North they could not grow wheat, only barley and had cattle. They had to heat the water troughs with wood fires and the water well too with wood fires all winter. Just imagine the wood requirenments for every winter. Cannot imagine the hardship, isolation and what that did to people.
Alberta, Manitoba, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, much the same. Australian settlers would have encountered equal hardships, just different.
MiningmanNot a great idea to balance the Nations books on 'well known about' cyclical nature of mining commodities. Here in Saskatchewan we are in a huge pinch due to low Potash and Uranium prices. Plus we are getting bottom dollar Oil Sands type revenue for our oil and gas and coal. Now our Canola and pork products to China are under attack.
The example of Venezuela may be instructive. For many years Chavez institutionalized making fun of the United States because he knew we'd roll over to get the oil. Then, whoops, the same factors that have beggared the highway Trust Fund conspired to help leverage his 'economic weapon' not only out of strategic use, but even adequate delivered volume alone.
Can't say I felt at all sorry for him, or by extension the 'democracy' that kept him returned to power as long as they could 'ride the train'. But no, I wouldn't like to see Canada in a similar bind.
Back to enticing immigrants back in the day. Yeah there was no such thing as PTSD back then, folks just were screwed up from stress, isolation, a strange place. It had to be incredibly difficult with no electricity, unbelievably long and extremely harsh winters, how they did it all is beyond me ... I'm sure isolation and few conveniences. ... They were so far North they could not grow wheat, only barley and had cattle. They had to heat the water troughs with wood fires and the water well too with wood fires all winter. Just imagine the wood requirements for every winter. Cannot imagine the hardship, isolation and what that did to people.
When I was in high school a book called "Wisconsin Death Trip" had just been published. This made a study of the specific response by ever so many of the immigrants who settled that region when suffering its harsh climate... less harsh than I suspect a great many areas in Canada prove to be.
That is the truth behind why the 'American ethos' or whatever probably values the 'pioneer spirit' -- there are few things that can make greatest-generation suffering in the Depression take a distant also-ran place for hardship, but the conditions you mention, I think, qualify.
One thing's for certain, people were tough back then, for the most part much tougher than we are nowadays. I saw it with the last of the World War One generation, people closer to a 19th Century mindset than a 20th Century one.
Part of it was ethos, part of it was "You can't miss what you've never had," but put them in a room with 21st Century types and I daresay they'd scare the moderns to death.
There was a saying in the 19th Century concerning the great western migration, absolutely brutal in it's honesty, but those who said it believed it...
"The cowards never started, and the weak died on the way."
Isn't that something?
Let me tell you something from personal experience. Most Americans know (or should know) the story of American Revolutionary War soldiers marching with feet wrapped in rags (or not) miles through snow and ice covered roads and leaving bloody tracks on the road.
Well, one sleety cold winter night I tried an experiment. I walked barefoot around the building I was living in at the time, and by the time I got back to the front door I staggered into the building, in pain and damn near hyperventilating. And I was a young Marine at the time, in the peak of physical condition. Not the smartest thing to do, but what an eye-opener.
I don't know how they did it. I don't know how they did it!
And in all fairness, there were times the Redcoats had to do it too.
My Lord and my God. Those men were tough!
And nowadays people go to pieces when their Smart-phones crash.
God help us all.
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