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Begun as trading and commercial hubs, Alberta’s first
European-initiated communities were within fur trading forts
and posts. For example in 1795, Fort Edmonton was originally
built near the current location of Fort Saskatchewan, was
relocated in 1802 to what is now downtown Edmonton,
relocated between 1810 and 1813 to what is now the Rossdale
Power Plant location, and then settled in 1830 on a site
that is now part of Alberta’s Legislature grounds.
Large forts had a small school room, missionaries who
gave services, sleeping quarters for company men and their
families, houses for factors, ice rooms, and garden plots.
As time progressed, established fort locations spread
outward and evolved into hamlets.
Establishing Alberta’s earliest agricultural and faith
communities outside fort or post locations came about
largely through the efforts of missionaries who were intent
on showing Native and Métis people that farming was in their
best long- term interests — especially since the fur trade
and ravaged buffalo herds could no longer provide
Missions were built and crops were planted. For example
in 1844, Father Thibault and Father Bourassa started a
mission and planted crops in the Lac St. Anne area.
Naturally, missions, grist mills, saw mills, obtaining
livestock and planting crops could not be established
without the volunteer work of the missionaries or the
volunteer work of Native and Métis people.
Father Lacombe arrived on the scene in 1852 and actively
began promoting permanent farming areas for Métis people. In
1861, he built St. Albert mission by Sturgeon River. A Métis
farming community grew around this log church.
In 1872, the Dominion of Canada passed the Dominion Lands
Act which gave settlers free land for homesteading. Farming,
with a huge emphasis on a wheat crop economy was promoted.
Under this Act, individuals could apply for parcels of Crown
land in Western Canada. The size of most homesteads was one
quarter section or 160 acres.
Homesteaders were required to clear at least 10 acres of
land, start some cultivation, build a habitable dwelling and
some farm buildings, and live on the land for six months out
of the year for three years. Once these various requirements
were met, individual homesteaders could submit an
application for title to the land.
Aware of the beef bonanza that was occurring in the
western United States, in 1879 the British government
imposed an embargo on live cattle imported from the United
States. Britain wanted to give Canadian cattlemen an
advantage in the British market.
The arrival of the railway in 1883 to Calgary and a
focused shift from a wheat crop economy to ranching economy
combined to change settlement patterns in Alberta. It was
widely thought that southwestern Alberta was too dry for
farming but possessed ideal conditions for large scale
In 1881, the federal government amended the Dominion
Lands Act that granted leases to British subjects. Only
lessees could homestead. Huge incentives included up a
hundred thousand acres (forty thousand hectares) for 21
years at a rate of $10 per thousand acres (four hundreds
hectares) which is translated into one cent per acre per
By 1881 nearly a thousand adventurous white men had
lifted a corner of the curtain of Alberta’s stage and peered
in expectantly. What they saw, whether along the
Saskatchewan River or in the chinook belt was vastly
encouraging. North of the coal along the Saskatchewan River
lay unlimited forest; south of it, rich parklands. In the
chinook belt, coal timber and rippling grasslands extended
all along the foothills, while farther east, grazed only by
deer antelope and gophers, stretched endless flower strewn,
rolling pastures scented by wolf willow or sage. In short,
they had peered into a land ready to flow with milk and
By 1884 over two thousand pioneers reached Alberta and,
now that the Canadian Pacific Railway had crossed the
prairies and provided a means of getting their stock to
market, most of them had come to try their hand at ranching.