The desperate ‘20s
Posted on | November 8, 2010 | No Comments
Relief line up snakes into Lomond ca. 1921-23 (Glenbow Archives NA-1308-13)
The decade of the ‘20s was time of desolation and desperation for many residents of southern Alberta. For the settlers along the Bow, a half-decade of drought, windstorms, insects and weeds, crop failure had precipitated an economic and social catastrophe crisis in the region. In some areas up to three-in four-residents were receiving relief for essentials such as flour and coal. Long lineups for feed and seed grain relief were becoming commonplace along the Suffield line, leaving struggling municipalities heavily in debt and unable to keep up with the demand.
In September 1921, an inspection of the Retlaw-Enchant-Travers-Lomond area by the Canadian Red Cross uncovered a human catastrophe. Malnutrition and physical “defects” in school children were found on an epidemic scale. The lack of doctors or medical facilities in the area was making a dire situation even worse. A report to the Government of Alberta summarized the conditions as “very bad… [T]hese districts are the worst of any visited.” A massive distribution of clothing relief was quickly undertaken by the Red Cross to aid the poverty-stricken southeast.
Bow City continued to limp along, its fortunes bolstered at various intervals by the Kleenbirn coal mines operated by the Westgate family. Those who didn’t find employment at the Kleenbirn Collieries often attempted to open private coal pits to supplement their incomes. Numerous families, including the Campbells, Kerrisons, Ketchmarks and LaRosee’s operated mines with varying levels of success, but invariable failed to make a dent in the Westgate operation.
As conditions shifted from bad to worse across the south, the newly-elected United Farmers of Alberta government responded by convening the Farm Survey Board of Southern Alberta. Among other things, the board was charged with reviewing the possibilities for irrigation and to ascertain the general financial conditions prevailing in the dry areas.
The board held seven public hearings throughout November and December of 1921. During their stop in Enchant in early December, the commission heard tales of utter despair. The “three W’s” – wind, weeds and worms – were wreaking havoc on the land. Russian thistles were choking out crops, epidemics of cutworms were devouring everything in sight, and grasshoppers were finishing off whatever was left. Summer fallowing and soil drifting threatened to sterilize the soil. Attempts at mixed farming were being met with failure. Debt was crippling both the farmer and rural municipalities.
The accumulation of drought years renewed frantic calls for irrigation as the salvation of the dry land, dried-out farmers. As John Gilpin notes in Prairie Promises, no fewer than eight irrigation districts were proposed for region south of the Bow after World War I. Among them was the Eyremore Irrigation District, which was proposed to the province by the Eyremore local of the U.F.A. in 1921. After petitioning the province for its creation, the group changed their mind a year later, owing to questions surrounding the economic viability of the project.
Warnings were sounded about widespread abandonments in the area south of the Bow if condition were not addressed. However, by Fall of 1922, they were already well underway. An inspection of the Retlaw, Enchant, Travers and Lomond Districts in September 1922 reported:
“To a considerable extent in some sections, and to a limited extent in all the houses are boarded up and the outbuildings falling into disrepair. The original homesteaders’ shack has been largely super[s]eded, but a number of the abandoned places have only had improvements up to the minimum requirement, the settlers having long since departed. When they l[ef]t before the dry seasons the land was bought by neighbors [sic], but those who have gone more recently have left the mortgage companies in charge.”
As Mother Nature and mortgage companies were busy reclaiming the land they were assisted- albeit inadvertently -by the provincial government. According to David C. Jones, in his groundbreaking work, We’ll all be Buried Down Here, the Tax Recovery Act of 1922, which was intended to assist cash-strapped municipalities and school boards had some unintended consequences:
“[The Act] was meant to bring in tax arrears from farmers, mortgages and loan companies by streamlining the process of forfeiture. The operation of the Act, however… did much to destroy what was left of the local community. Squeezing a few pennies from the destitute and the hard pressed mortgage interests, it also facilitated another round of abandonments, this time by the hardiest farmers still on the land.”
Sheriffs were kept busy with tax sales, selling repossessed implements and horses left by bankrupt farmers in lieu of unpaid taxes. A mammoth tax sale in Bassano in September 1923 listed thousands of town lots in the former village of Bow City(virtually the entire area of the incorporated settlement) for sale for arrears of taxes and costs. Another tax sale at Lomond in October 1923 listed more than 400 parcels for sale, as well as about 20 lots in the hamlet of Travers. During September of 1926, a tax sale at the Eyremore Post Office placed over 120 parcels of land on the auction block, almost all of the whole quarter sections, along with a handful of lots remaining from the Bow City townsite.
By the mid ’20s, massive plagues of gophers and rabbits also wrought havoc on crops, gardens and local feedstocks, keeping hunters and local children occupied throughout the winter months. In early April 1925, one rabbit drive within the vicinity of Bow City destroyed 2360 rabbits in three days, with a large number destroyed at Lomond the following week.
The abundance of prey also contributed to an infestation of a far more menacing kind. Guri Opstad, who lived in Kinnondale district as a young girl, recalled packs of coyotes prowling the area, posing an altogether different kind of danger:
“The Kinnondale coyotes were not the usual type of wild marauders. In that community at the edge of the wilderness, the coyotes were ravenous wolves, when on the prowl. Killing sick horses, stealing the farmers’ chickens, attacking calves and colts in the farmer’s herds, the coyotes of Kinnondale were a perpetual threat to the safety of farm livestock.”
While drought conditions subsided for a brief time following 1927, the reprieve would be brief. The community limped along, and groups such as the Junior Red Cross attempted to keep spirits up, holding corn roasts and concerts. Faith helped sustain those who remained, and in the mid ‘20s, Reverend E. B. Brundage revived baseball and hockey in 1928 in Armada, Lomond, Badger Lake, Wheat Centre and Enchant for a few years, and arranged motion picture showings for local youth using lights from a car battery and a hand cranked projector.
The survivors did the best with what they had, but everyone has their limits. Starting in 1929 a global economic crisis and resumption of the punishing drought would plunge the region into a calamitous decade of depression that by the mid-30s would leave an entire region on the verge of abandonment.
Category: Stories, Vulcan County History
Tags: Badger Lake > Bow City > Enchant > Ghost town > irrigation > Lomond > Retlaw > Suffield > Travers > U.F.A. > Wheat Centre
Tags: Badger Lake > Bow City > Enchant > Ghost town > irrigation > Lomond > Retlaw > Suffield > Travers > U.F.A. > Wheat Centre
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Drawing on over 100 years of family history in the southeast, this is my attempt to shine the spotlight on southeastern Alberta's forgotten history.
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