ABSTRACT
After the ranchers came the farmers, on the Canadian Pacific “settlers’ specials” and in wagons drawn by horses and oxen, from the British Isles, eastern Canada, the Midwest United States, and, eventually, from all over Europe. Free land brought them; “the Last Best West,” as Saskatchewan was called, offered the Western frontier’s final opportunity to thousands of people with dreams of establishing a homestead and a family. The earlier, pre-1910 farmer pioneers were largely indistinguishable from the cattlemen: adventurous types, interested in any way of making a living, some of whom, like the ranchers near town, combined crops, horses, and cattle with small businesses. But the majority came in 1910 and after, and the great majority of these were family men from the country and small towns: farmers, tradesmen, laborers, who hoped to create a satisfying rural civilization with its neat checkerboard countryside and numerous towns and hamlets. In a typical Jasper district, 40 per cent of the pioneer farmers were married; in a typical ranching district only 25 per cent of the pioneer ranchers had wives.
