KREW KUTS: The Goose Lake Line – Part 2

By Bernie Krewski

What circumstances led Anne Clemens and Burns Peacock (Echo, March 26) and many of this community’s ancestors, including mine, to live on the Goose Lake Line (GLL)? The political and social determinants are many, but historians say these are some of the most important.

The former Canadian Northern Railway (CNoR) station at Hanna, Alberta, was constructed in 1913 on the CNoR Goose Lake Line from Saskatoon to Calgary. Photo courtesy www.historicplaces.ca

Contrary to what former Prime Minister Stephen Harper proclaimed at an international conference in September 2009, “We have no history of colonialism,” the roots of the GLL are tainted by the influences of “colonialism.” This is the practice of a state or nation, in our case Great Britain, monopolizing and powering the public policies of this country, occupying it with settlers for purposes of profiting from its resources and economy. It is important to remember that those of us born before 1947 (when the Citizenship Act was passed) were “British subjects” but not yet “Canadians!”

Thus, at the time of Canada’s confederation in 1867, much of Canada was simply designated  Rupert’s Land, controlled by the Hudson’s Bay Company, a joint-stock merchandizing company based in London, England. Ownership was transferred to the British Crown in 1869, the same year the British Isles began sending poor children to live on farms in the eastern provinces (Kenneth Bagnell, “The Little Immigrants: The Orphans Who Came to Canada”). The recently established Government of Canada “bought” Rupert’s Land for $1.5 million in 1870 and began the process of populating and industrializing this so-called “empty space.”

Bound by Britain’s historical commitments to Aboriginal peoples dating to 1763, parliamentarians passed the Indian Act in 1876, defining how settlement would occur on the Prairies. As we know so well now, this led to the establishment of residential schools, among other such initiatives.  “Clearing the Plains” is the term used by James Daschuk to describe the “disease, politics of starvation, and the loss of Aboriginal life” that followed. Treaties provided entitlement to parcels of land known as “reserves.” Eventually some were taken away with limited compensation as Bill Waiser and Jennie Hansen describe in “Cheated: The Laurier Liberals and the Theft of First Nations Reserve Land” (2023).

The building of railways across the prairies, however, was inevitable. They were an essential means of expansion, an integral aspect of economic and social growth in Canada. This process began in 1836 with the opening of the Champlain and St. Lawrence Railway near Montreal.

In 1882-1883 settlers arrived at what later became the site for the city of Saskatoon They were members of the Temperance Colonization Society, established in Ontario intending to create an alcohol-free agricultural colony. In response to their lobbying, in 1887 a branch line from the main Canadian Pacific Railway ran through their colony northward, heading in the direction of Prince Albert.  

Then the Saskatchewan Valley Land Company, a colonization company organized by a group of capitalists, purchased one million acres of land between Regina and Saskatoon.  

In 1899, William Mackenzie and Donald Mann incorporated the Canadian Northern Railway, amalgamating two small branch lines in Manitoba. In what direction future railways would be built at this point was unknown. The population that soon became known as the province of Saskatchewan was less than 100,000. Due to experimental work on varieties of grain, what was known is that some could germinate in a short growing season and a semi-arid climate.

Within a few years there were stories with headlines like this: “Goose Lake Country is Alive and Well; Something Every Minute in Towns That Spring Up and Grow in That Country.” Around Saskatoon is where the seeds were planted for the Goose Lake Line. More details about that in future issues of The Echo!