Life in Settler Communities: Work, Rules, Faith and Fun

Remember from Grade 3

In Grade 3 you learned how settlers in Upper Canada around 1800 built log homes, cleared land and grew their own food. This year we look more closely, using four lenses that historians use: political, economic, social and cultural. We also look at a second kind of settler community: the Prairie homestead.

Let's start with a question

Imagine there is no grocery store, no electricity and no school bus. The nearest neighbour lives a long walk away.

How would you get food? Who would make the rules? Where would you learn to read? What would you do for fun?

Early settlers had to answer all of these questions.

Upper Canada settlements (about 1790 to 1850)

• Political: Upper Canada was created in 1791. It had an elected assembly, but a governor and appointed councils held most of the power. Only men who owned property could vote. Women could not vote.
• Economic: Families cleared forest, grew wheat and vegetables and raised animals. They sold timber and potash (made from the ashes of burned trees). Towns grew around gristmills (grinding grain into flour), sawmills and the general store, where people often traded goods instead of paying money.
• Social: Neighbours held bees to raise barns, clear fields or make quilts, then shared a meal. Children often went to a one-room schoolhouse with students of all ages together. Many children worked on the farm too.
• Cultural: Settlers brought their languages (such as English, Gaelic and German), their religions and their music. The church was often the centre of community life.

Prairie homesteads (about 1896 to 1914)

The government wanted to fill the Prairies with farms. Under the Dominion Lands Act, a settler could get 160 acres for a $10 fee, if they lived on the land and farmed it.

• Political: At first, the Prairies were part of the North-West Territories. Alberta and Saskatchewan became provinces in 1905.
• Economic: Settlers grew wheat and shipped it by railway. Tall grain elevators stood beside the tracks to store grain.
• Social: There were few trees, so some settlers first built sod houses from blocks of prairie earth and grass. Neighbours were far apart, so schools, churches and community halls were important meeting places.
• Cultural: Ukrainian, German, Scandinavian, Jewish, Black and other settlers kept their own languages, religions, food and music. You can still see churches with rounded domes built by Ukrainian settlers across the Prairies.

The land was not empty

Settler communities were built on the traditional territories of First Nations and Métis peoples.

• In Upper Canada, treaties opened land for settlement, but many First Nations were pushed onto smaller and smaller areas.
• On the Prairies, the government signed the Numbered Treaties (from 1871) before most settlers arrived. First Nations understood these as agreements to share the land, with promises of help, schools and support. Many promises were not kept.
• Many Métis families at Red River and elsewhere lost their lands as settlers arrived.

So one community's new beginning was often another community's loss. Historians look at both perspectives.

Primary and secondary sources

How do we know all this?

• A primary source was made at the time by people who were there: diaries, letters, photographs, maps, newspapers, objects.
• A secondary source was made later by someone studying the past: a textbook, an encyclopedia, this lesson.

For example, Susanna Moodie, a settler in Upper Canada, wrote a book called Roughing It in the Bush (1852) about her own hard years on a backwoods farm. It is a primary source. It shows one settler's point of view. It does not tell us how the First Nations around her saw the same years.