Acknowledgements | Preface | Saskatchewan Before Provincehood l Saskatchewan Populations & Premiers
1905 | 1915 | 1925 | 1935 | 1945 | 1955 | 1965 | 1975 | 1985 | 1995

Saskatchewan Before Provincehood
J. William Brennan

Our province celebrates its centennial in 2005, but its human history stretches back thousands of years to migratory hunting and gathering peoples. Contact with Europeans first occurred through the fur trade. Aboriginal people traded beaver pelts and other furs with the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), which established its first posts on Hudson’s Bay in the 1670s, and with French traders who ventured as far west as modern-day Saskatchewan. In the 1770s a new rival challenged the HBC, the Montreal-based North West Company. Each built a network of inland posts extending to the Rockies and beyond. The HBC eventually absorbed its rival in 1821 and dominated the fur trade, and the western interior, for another half century.

Marriage between European traders and First Nations women eventually led to a distinct Métis culture. The Métis were an integral part of the fur trade. They were guides, interpreters, suppliers of provisions and a labour force for the fur trade companies.

A new era began in 1870, when Canada purchased Rupert’s Land from the HBC. To prepare the way for settlement, the federal government signed treaties with First Nations and offered scrip to the Métis, organized the North-West Mounted Police, sent out surveyors to survey the land and offered free land for homesteading. It also provided subsidies to the Canadian Pacific Railway to build the essential transportation link that would enable farmers to ship their wheat to outside markets.

The 1870s and 1880s were difficult times for First Nations. The disappearance of the buffalo resulted in starvation and disease. The signing of treaties required them to settle on reserves and put an end to their traditional lifestyle. The Indian Act of 1876 and various government policies strictly regulated their lives. For the Métis too, this was a frustrating and difficult period. Canada’s plans for massive settlement of the prairies alarmed the Métis who saw surveyors imposing the survey grid on their river-lot farms. Government ignored their concerns. Pushed to the limit, the Métis, under the leadership of Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont, declared a provisional government and prepared to defend their position. The 1885 Resistance was promptly suppressed, and Riel, convicted of high treason, was executed in Regina. Eight Indian men were also hanged at Battleford.

The population of the North-West Territories grew slowly during this period, from 56,446 in 1881 to 98,967 a decade later. Most of those who came to take up land or work in the2 few towns were from other parts of Canada–Ontario and the Maritimes primarily, or from Great Britain.

By the 1890s the trickle of newcomers became a flood, as tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands, were attracted to the “Last Best West.” Interprovincial migration accounted for part of this influx, but larger numbers came from Great Britain, the United States and Europe, especially the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires. These newcomers–Canadians and British, Germans and Scandinavians, Russians and Poles, Ukrainians and Hungarians, Mennonites and Doukhobors–helped to swell the population of the North-West Territories to 211,649 by 1901. Wheat production also began to rise. In 1901, territorial farmers harvested a 12,736,642-bushel crop.

The success of the federal government’s efforts to attract settlers to the North-West Territories soon led to a campaign for provincial status. An expanding population looked to the territorial government in Regina to construct roads and bridges, to assist in establishing schools and building railway lines, and to provide other necessary services. However, the government of Premier F.W.G. Haultain found it increasingly difficult to meet these demands. It could not borrow money, or secure revenue from public lands which were under federal control. An annual grant from the federal government was not enough.

Provincial status seemed the obvious solution, and from the turn of the century Haultain vigorously pressed the case with Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier. Finally, in 1905, the federal government created two provinces. This pleased most territorial residents, but not Haultain, who wanted a single province. Alberta and Saskatchewan were not given control of their public lands and natural resources, though each was to receive an annual federal subsidy as a substitute. Parliament approved the Autonomy Bills in July, 1905, and Alberta and Saskatchewan officially came into existence on September 1.