History of Saskatchewan
Clifford Sifton, Minister of the Interior in charge of immigration, (1896–1905) induced a variety of agriculturally inclined European emigrants to Canada to settle prairie land around the transcontinental railway.
Travelling inland were the French Canadian voyageurs of the North West Company arriving from Eastern Canada, and from 1740 to about 1820 the Cree peoples were migrating westward as well, coming into contact with the Haaninin and Siksika nations already inhabiting the Saskatchewan river basins as they continued their role as intermediaries in the fur trade.
The treaties established with aboriginal groups in the area gave a sense of voice at that time, and territorial government was dominated by the euro-Canadian minority, referring to themselves as 'white' in contrast to the Métis majority in many regions.
In April 1883, a local council voted against a proposition to send a delegation to Ottawa to demand their rights, and instead supported an effort to bring Louis Riel back to Canada.
The key event was the decision to emulate the American Homestead Law by offering, at no cost, 160 acres of farmland to any man over 18 (or to a woman head of family) who settled there.
Ads in The Nor'-West Farmer by the Commissioner of Immigration implied that western land held water, wood, gold, silver, iron, copper, and cheap coal for fuel, all of which were readily at hand.
[33] In the 1910–1930 era, the provincial department of education led systematic efforts to place English-speaking teachers in every school to Canadianize the ethnic groups through the use of the English language and the teaching of British values.
They prepared bannock, beans and bacon, mended clothes, raised children, cleaned, tended the garden, helped at harvest time and nursed everyone back to health.
The largest ethnic groups were German (30.0%), followed by English (26.5%), Scottish (19.2%), Irish (15.3%), Ukrainian (13.6%), French (12.4%), First Nations (12.1%), Norwegians (7.2%), Polish (6.0%), Métis (4.4%), Dutch (3.7%), Russian (3.7%) and Swedish (3.5%).
[41] Premier Thomas Walter Scott preferred government assistance to outright ownership because he thought enterprises worked better if citizens had a stake in running them; he set up the Saskatchewan Cooperative Elevator Company in 1911.
Saskatchewan in 1909 provided bond guarantees to railway companies for the construction of branch lines, alleviating the concerns of farmers who had trouble getting their wheat to market by wagon.
It advanced the reform agenda for agricultural development, with full-time district representatives, or fieldmen, who promoted education, demonstrations of farm equipment, community picnics and rallies, and cooperative insurance, among other programs.
Bootlegging activities, gangsters such as Al Capone, and the underground trade of whisky smuggling used the caves around Cypress Hills, and the Soo Line Railroad which ended in Moose Jaw, the "Sin City of the north", or "Little Chicago".
By spring 1932, the federal and provincial governments, short of revenue, were forced to abandon expensive public works in favour of the cheaper, more efficient direct relief of giving out cash and foot baskets.
[49] The Saskatchewan CCF won in June 1944 with a "Pocket Platform" calling for home ownership and debt reduction; increased old age pensions, mothers' allowances, and disability care; public medical, dental, and hospital services; equal education; free speech, and religion; collective bargaining; and the encouragement of economic co-operatives.
The CCF set up eleven small Crown corporations including power and telephone utilities, bus and airline companies, and ventures into sodium sulfate mining, a woolen mill, and a shoe factory.
In 1959, Douglas promised universal medical care insurance, based on pre-payment, quality service and government administration, and through a scheme acceptable to both doctors and patients.
The CCF comprised two contradictory traditions – a group aligned with a rational, bureaucratic, statist approach to government and a faction dedicated to the populist ideals of democratic participation.
The Liberals had launched a strong party membership drive and engaged in vigorous campaigning on a platform demanding more private enterprise and industrial development; it promised substantial tax cuts.
Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's policies (to centralize control of natural resources in Ottawa) outraged Blakeney, and he moved closer to Alberta's position of open hostility.
The new premier was 37-year-old economist Grant Devine (1944– ),[59] who won with a simple populist message: the people should share in the wealth of the province rather than watch it contribute to the expansion of the 24 Crown corporations.
After taking over balanced books in 1982, the Progressive Conservatives spent liberally on a number of voter-friendly initiatives, including tax rebates and mortgage subsidies, as well as investing millions in several money-losing megaprojects.
He was elected as Leader of Saskatchewan's New Democrats on March 9, 2013 In 2005 two-thirds of the province's population lived in urban areas, there was a diverse economic base, and citizens enjoyed a rich cultural life.
[64] The rural towns have evolved from a very large number of widely dispersed grain delivery points in 1900, through a period of expansion over the first thirty years of the 20th century, to a pattern of relatively concentrated population and businesses in an urban-based economy by 2000.
Mechanization, especially the rapid replacement of horses by tractors after 1945, meant one family could operate a much larger farm, so some farmers bought out their neighbors, who then moved to town along with the surplus children.
Most rural communities declined continuously over the second half of the 20th century, but some grew in population, expanded their economic base, and experienced an increase in their market areas for a limited range of goods and services.
[citation needed] The Right Reverend George Lloud MA DD, Bishop of the Diocese of Saskatchewan (January 6, 1861, leader of the British Barr Colony, and founder of Emmanuel College, Saskatoon.
[citation needed] John George Diefenbaker, CH, PC, QC, BA, MA, LL.B, LL.D, DCL, FRSC, FRSA, D.Litt, DSL, (18 September 1895 – 16 August 1979) was the 13th Prime Minister of Canada (1957–1963).
[72] Paul Kane, (September 3, 1810 – February 20, 1871) was an Irish-Canadian painter, famous for his paintings of First Nations peoples in the Canadian West and other Native Americans in the Oregon Country.
[citation needed] Count Imhoff (1865–1939) painted magnificent religious murals within churches at St. Walburg, Muenster, St. Benedict, Bruno, Denzil, Reward, St. Leo, Humboldt, Paradise Hill, North Battleford etc.
