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magazine / jf05
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January/February 2005 issue |
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Drawing the lines
Setting the boundaries for Alberta and Saskatchewan was no easy feat.
There were many competing ideas on how to carve up the prairies
By Derek Hayes
Click to enlarge
When a fledgling Canada acquired Rupert’s Land and the North-Western
Territory from the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1870, the region had few
settlers. The tiny province of Manitoba had been created around the Red River
valley the same year by Sir John A. Macdonald, but this had only been a matter
of political expediency following the rebellions there. The rest of the prairie
could wait. In the beginning, just a single government unit was organized,
the North-West Territories, with its first capital at Battleford. The federal
government expected to create provinces in the West, so the division of the
prairie into administrative districts became the potential division of future
provinces.
In the end, however, the boundaries were a political decision. After 1897,
encouraged by aggressive immigration policies, Europeans spilled into the
West, and by 1904, the process of creating new provinces was ready to begin.
Many proposals were offered up before 1905 on how to divide the land (below).
Frederick Haultain, premier of the North-West Territories between 1897 and
1905, vigorously promoted one large province, but other political interests
prevailed. Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier, concerned that so much Western
power would overwhelm Central Canada, opted for two equal-sized provinces
divided at 110°W.
Here are six ways the Prairies could have looked:
A
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B
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C
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D
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E
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F
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| [click on a map to enlarge] |
The idea of a single province was first proposed by John Palliser in 1860,
following his exploration of the prairies between 1857 and 1860, and the
idea was championed by Frederick Haultain. The Calgary city council also
approved, but supported a version (A) that
gave some territory to Manitoba. The proposed single province would be smaller
and best managed, they thought, from a capital in — where else? — Calgary.
But many settlers in the eastern North-West Territories were vehemently opposed,
thinking they would be left to assume Manitoba’s debts.
In 1900, it seemed the federal government might be receptive to the formation
of a new province, so Haultain submitted a draft bill to create his version
of a single province, which he called Buffalo (B).
Two years later, Laurier rejected it. In 1876, the federal deputy interior
minister proposed a four-province subdivision (C) based
on the projected northerly route of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) through
Edmonton. When the CPR was rerouted to a more southerly line in 1881, the
four-province proposal was revised to create four provinces with roughly
the same area and resources (D). The largest
of the provinces (Provinces One and Two) had more so-called unavailable land,
including mountains and swamps.
A group of citizens in Prince Albert proposed a three-province layout (E),
which conveniently would have left that city as the only contender for the
capital of one of them.
A different two-province proposal split at about 52°N, at the boundary
between the Districts of Saskatchewan and Assiniboia (F),
was an attempt to divide by agricultural regions (the south was seen as grain
land and ranchland, while the north was rolling and well watered, suitable
for mixed farming) and by railway access (the north had the new Canadian
Northern Railway, while the south had the CPR). In truth, this proposal also
had much to do with the fact that Edmonton would be a likely candidate for
a northern capital and Calgary a southern one.
There were several other less likely options, including one in which British
Columbia annexed the entire District of Alberta and another that had the
dividing line between Alberta and Saskatchewan at 105°W instead of the
final 110°W.
Derek Hayes is a Vancouver author whose most recent book is Canada:
An Illustrated History.
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