Wedderburn’s War – The great rabbit drives of 1924-26
Posted on | November 6, 2011 | No Comments
Rabbit Drive, Lomond, 1925 (Lomond and District History)
The people of Canmore are facing a “hare-raising” dilemma. Much has been written about the divergence of opinion arising from the decision of town council to cull the approximately 2000 feral rabbits currently hopping free in the mountain community.
In all seriousness, the prospect of exterminating a few thousand rabbits is an unpleasant one to be certain. It is by no means, however, an unfamiliar scenario in the annals of Alberta history.
Almost 90 years ago, an explosion in the southeastern Alberta rabbit population proved to be more than merely an inconvenience. Starting around 1924, multiplying rabbit populations began wreaking havoc all across the drought-ravaged southern dry belt. With crops, green feed and gardens under siege, the provincial government and farmers declared war on the rabbit, hoping to stop the insurgency, dead in its tracks.
The problem arose, in large part, due to the large-scale abandonment of farmland by drought-weary and destitute settlers following the First World War. As homesteaders moved on, prodigious numbers of coyotes, gophers and rabbits took their place. Coyotes were especially keen to propagate, multiplying in such numbers that they soon began hunting in packs of several dozen, and adding livestock and poultry to their list of prey.
Settlers responded by slaughtering coyotes en masse. Lethbridge Herald contributor, Guri Opstad, wrote of one mercenary in the Kinnondale district, north of Enchant, who hunted “for several days… from morning until dusk, until [his] car was loaded with coyote pelts piled atop the greyhound cab and on the seat beside him.”
The merciless slaughter of coyotes left livestock and poultry populations in a less perilous position, and the sale of coyote pelts provided an additional source of income for cash-strapped farmers. The unnatural consequence of all this was that populations of coyote prey, especially rabbits, quickly multiplied. Soon the drybelt was teeming with rabbits that were decimating gardens, destroying crops, trees, or pretty much anything green or leafy they could get their teeth on.
The recollections from those who experienced the rabbit invasion may seem incredulous to us today, but serve to illustrate the true extent to which Mother Nature was on the offensive against the settler population.
Ethel McQuay recalled in Roads to Rose Lynn one winter morning in 1926 near Carolside (south of Hanna) when she witnessed “snow white rabbits walking slowly (not hopping) in single file, coming from the west as far as I could see… I watched off and on out the window all day and still they came until at dusk there were just a few stragglers. Where they came from, and where they went I’ll never know.”
David C. Jones, in his tremendous work, Empire of Dust, recounts the journal entry of Tide Lake homesteader, Arthur C. Ion, who on another occasion that same year counted “400 rabbits between his house and the well.” A later stampede by the rodent hordes, according to Ion, “sounded like a train going by.”
The Redcliff Review provided an anecdote from an anonymous gentleman in 1925 who encountered “what he thought in the distance was a flock of sheep” while on a drive through the Ronalane district, west of Redcliff:
“On approaching closer [he] found it to be a huge band of rabbits numbering at least a thousand… [t]hey were becoming so bold they went right into barn yards in massed formation and practically took possession.”
To combat the fuzzy menace, the province pulled a proverbial rabbit out of a hat, appointing an unlikely general, Redcliff resident and South African émigré, Philip Hamilton (P.H.) Wedderburn.
Wedderburn appears to have had little experience per se in the art of harvesting rabbits, save for his time as a farmer in the Harvest Vale district eight miles north of Redcliff. However, his capable conduct in overseeing relief feed and seed distribution and a campaign against grasshoppers in the dry areas, combined with his unflinching support of the U.F.A. government, convinced provincial officials he was the right man for the job.
The South African initiated the first rabbit drives in February 1925, as the critters were congregating in large groups to stave off the bitter cold. The provincial government supplied the materials needed, and the farmers took care of the rest. In return, farmers were permitted to keep the proceeds from the rabbits they destroyed to be used in whatever way they saw fit
Rabbit drives followed a particular sequence, usually involving the construction of a corral out of wire fence in advance, and the participation of numerous whooping and hollering men, women and children, spread out over several miles, and much clubbing and bludgeoning as the rabbits were herded towards their doom. (Mae L. Todd of the Vulcan-area provides a description of a typical rabbit drive from 1925 here; Harry Taylor from a 1925-26 Hand Hills area drive here.)
After starting in the Redcliff area, Wedderburn moved on to the Bow City district, where several thousand rabbits had moved in after all but a hardy few homesteaders had moved out. During a three-day period, Wedderburn’s charges destroyed 2, 360 rabbits around Bow City. A week later several thousand more were caught and killed on a farm near Lomond, with the carcasses burned or sold to fox ranchers.
Building on the previous year’s success, Wedderburn headed up another campaign in 1925-26 covering an area stretching from Brooks and Lomond, south to Manyberries, Whitla, Winnifred and Pakowki. The response from the general public was enthusiastic, and at the close of the winter of 1926, several thousand more rabbits had been exterminated.
As an added bonus, the local communities received a financial boost from the proceeds of their rabbit bounty. Residents of the Pakowki area built a hall with the money they raised. The farmers of the Purple Springs district received $188.46 for their efforts, and according to the Redcliff Review, praised Mr. Wedderburn for the “able and efficient manner in which he conducted the drive.”
With the return of wetter weather in 1927, and a modicum of prosperity, the pains of the previous decade were soothed somewhat. The respite was only brief, and within a few years, drought conditions would return, and so would increased populations of coyotes, rabbits and gophers.
As for Mr. Wedderburn, his days of combating rabbits were over. At the conclusion of the 1925-26 rabbit drive, he was placed in charge of the provincial Debt Adjustment Department in Edmonton, where he continued to serve farmers, very capably, before passing away in 1937.
Tags: Bow City > Brooks > Carolside > Coyotes > Ghost town > Hand Hills > Kinnondale > Lomond > Manyberries > Pakowki > Politics > Purple Springs > Rabbits > Redcliff > Ronalane > Suffield > Tide Lake > U.F.A. > War > Wedderburn
Comments
Leave a Reply
About
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.
Subscribe to our feed
