Submitted by: agcomm,  Thu Dec 18 12:35:24 1997


Plains Folk: The Great Migration to Canada
 
Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University
COPYRIGHT 1997 Plains Folk
 
     Months ago I wrote about the great migration of North Dakota
farmers to the prairie provinces of Canada--a story told by R.
Bruce Shepard, from the University of Saskatchewan.  This
migration peaked in the years just before World War I.  More than
40,000 North Dakotans made homestead entries in Canada, and whole
districts of the Canadian prairies were occupied by American
immigrants.
     Several kind readers wrote me to say that members of their
families were part of this great movement.  Donald McKay, for
instance, wrote from Elm Creek, Manitoba.  His family roots go
back to Owen Sound, Ontario, leading thence to Voss, North
Dakota.  In 1902 his great grandparents, James and Elizabeth
McKay, and his grandparents, Neil and Alma, returned to Canadian
soil, settling at Elm Creek.  With them was the infant James H.
McKay, Donald McKay's father.  Other family members also came to
the district.  These were early representatives of the
North-Dakota-to-prairie-Canada movement. 
     From Driscoll, North Dakota, Jean Lathrop wrote to tell of
the migration of her parents, grandparents and uncles.  She says
her grandfather, John Rodenbaugh, had "itchy feet."  Of
Pennsylvania Dutch stock, he moved successively to Illinois,
Wisconsin, Minnesota and Dakota Territory, near Yankton.  Then in
1903 he and his wife Elizabeth moved to Logan County, near
Napoleon, North Dakota.
     Still not resting content, they--with two sons, a daughter
and a son-in-law--boarded a Soo Line train in Valley City and,
with their machinery and livestock, headed for southern
Saskatchewan, the Rockglen district.  Jean Lathrop's parents
followed, with their horses, the next year.  While proving up
homesteads, the men did railroad construction work with their
teams.
     Her parents came back to Napoleon early in the Great War,
but the rest of the family stayed in Saskatchewan.  Whereas Ms.
Lathrop's grandmother is buried in the Rockglen cemetery, her
grandfather lies somewhere in the vicinity of the homestead "with
a big rock to mark his grave."  
     "I've always thought I'd like to go find it," she says, "but
I don't even know where or how."  (She writes a wonderful letter,
though, probably because she taught school all her life,
including 22 years teaching English at Mandan High School.) 
     Then I heard from Michael Croteau, in Victoria, British
Columbia.  "How are the chances of a mention in a future column?"
he asks, because he figures it might help to locate some
scattered relations.  Well, Michael, here you are.
     He writes that his great-great grandfather, Flavien Croteau,
born in Quebec, was a worker on the Manitoba (later Great
Northern) railway and in 1884 settled in Rolette County, North
Dakota, near St. John.  He and his wife Zelia raised 16 children. 
"His two sons Anthime and Emile," writes Michael, "were the first
altar boys for Father Malo of St. Claude's mission near St.
John."
     Five sons lived to maturity; four moved to prairie Canada;
three of these, including Michael's great-grandfather Anthime,
settled near Debden, Saskatchewan, around 1913-15.  Anthime and
wife Irena brought only modest possessions--a little furniture, a
cow, a horse, a plow--Anthime riding with them in the boxcar.
     "Anthime arrived in Debden with about $6.50 to his name,
built a shack, and the rest is history!" says Michael.  "He
farmed his quarter section until retirement in 1946 when he sold
it to his youngest son, my great uncle Marcel Croteau, and his
wife Clara." 
     From these letters I get the impression that the migration
to Canada was just one leg of a migration saga.  These people
were on the move, and the stories of their exploits have passed
down in their families.  It would be wonderful if we could find
some documents written by the migrants themselves--letters back
to kin in the states, diaries of homesteaders, that sort of
thing.
                              ###
NDSU Agriculture Communication
Source: Tom Isern (701) 231-8339
Editor: Barry Brissman (701) 231-7866