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"Farmers continue to hold meetings and form unions for their protection. A convention to be held at Winnipeg on 15th." (Edmonton Bulletin, Dec. 8, 1883)
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In March 1883, the Qu'Appelle Settlers' Rights Association passed resolutions calling for parliamentary representation, land law reform, proper legislation for settlers and government assistance for immigrants. When William Butler had travelled through the Prairies, including Edmonton, in 1883, he had detected unrest among the Edmonton-area farmers. And it would not be many years before they began to organize together to affect political and economic change in their favour. That movement would eventually lead to the election of the United Farmers of Alberta government in 1921.
Groups such as the Qu'Appelle Settlers' Rights Association and the Manitoba & North West Farmers Union carried message of unrest from the Prairie farmers to Winnipeg, Ottawa and London, England as eaWilliam rly as the 1880s
When they were not listened to, their unrest helped cause the 1885 Rebellion. ========================================== Manitoba & North West Farmers Union At the urging of Charles Stewart, a meeting was organized in Brandon to debate what measures farmers could take to address the situation.
William Winter, Call to the Farmers! Notice of a convention of farmers (26 November 1883) Convention to be held "to consider the political situation of Manitoba and the North-West Provinces and to adopt such measures as may be deemed expedient to secure redress of the grievances under which those provinces are suffering." Brandon, MN, 1883 (Weinrich, Left bibliography, #99)
Manitoba and Northwest Farmers' Union resolutions adopted at the farmers convention held in the City of Winnipeg 19th and 20th December 1883. Instructions as to the formation of branch unions, etc. (Peel 758; Weinrich #104) In December of that year, a Manitoba and Northwest Farmers Union was organized in Winnipeg.
"A motion for repeal of Canada's constitution, the BNA Act, and the formation of a "new confederacy of the North-West provinces and BC" was only barely defeated. A Bill of Rights was drawn up, which was summarily rejected in Ottawa.
In 1884, with the approval of European settlers of the region, the Metis invited Louis Riel to return to Canada and lead a peaceful demand for improved Canadian policy toward the West.
The peaceful protest ended early in 1885 with armed conflict between the NWMP and the Metis, who were quickly abandoned by their European settler allies.... (Bumsted, Canada's Diverse People, p. 151)
The School Herald, p. 187 said the M&NW FU at its founding meeting in Dec. 1883 resolved to "demand the right of the local government to charter a railway in Manitoba [favouring the construction of the Hudson Bay Railroad], control of public lands, including school lands, compensation for lands sold and used for federal purposes," reduction in duties, etc. (google books website)
[Berton, Last Spike, p. 254 has a little bit on the M&NWFU]
Roussopoulus, Canada and Radical Social Change, p. 63
says it agitated against the "CPR monopoly, the ownership of the best land by the CPR and the HBC, high protective tariffs and the monopolistic grain companies." And then the book slides right into the 1885 Rebellion
1883 December Founding of the Manitoba and NorthWest Farmers Union on Dec. 19 and 20th in Winnipeg. Despite the extreme cold weather and the irregular train service, 100 were in attendance. Based in Brandon, this was the first farmers' organization in Western Canada.* A publication of its resolutions was published January 1, 1884. Although it laid out procedure for forming "branch unions," there is little evidence that any was established in what is now Alberta. (McLeod and Beal, Prairie Fire, p. 34; Peel's Prairie Provinces)
*although it arose from the Qu'Appelle Settlers Rights Association.
This name reminds me of the Edmonton Settler's Rights group, described by John Gilpin. Although the upset farmers of Edmonton seem to have never actually used the term "Edmonton Settler's Rights Association."
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Edmonton Bulletin, June 2, 1883: "The Qu'Appelle people have established a Settlers Rights Association and expect to have branches in Prince Albert, Battleford and Edmonton."
But there is no mention subsequently of a group under that name in Edmonton. A computer search of the Edmonton Bulletin revealed none anyway.
================================ A meeting of the M&NWFU passed resolution that Manitoba must be given control of railways and allowed to sponsor the building of a railway to the Hudsons Bay.; if not, that it be allowed to be released from Confederation or, failing that, to be re-constituted as an "independent province [probably meaning a Crown colony]." (American Railroad Journal, "Railway Locomotives and Cars", volumes 56-57, p. 357) Gwyn, Nation Maker (p. 390) mentions Charles Stewart, a a graduate of Cambridge University, who had caused the founding meeting of the Farmers Union. There is no significant reference to Charles Stewart In Peel's PP probably because Peel's PP selection of the Brandon Daily Mail is only 1882-83.
Edmonton Bulletin mentioned that Stewart is carrying on debate in Brandon Daily Mail in 1885. The FU hired Henry J. Clarke Q.C. who, with Alex Fleming, M.D. and George Purvis, of the Farmers Union, wrote up a "Statement of Claim" addressed to Her Majesty the Queen, dated May 1885 carefully worded 80?-page legal treatise on the entry of Manitoba and the NWT into Confederation, "Statement of the claims of the Province of Manitoba and the NWT to the constitutional rights of a province under the BNA Act, 1867" The Farmer Union issued a "statement of the claims of the province of Manitoba and the NWT to the constitutional rights of a province under the BNA Act, 1867" in 1885, arising from a convention of farmers in Winnipeg on March 31, 1885.
saying that Manitoba is not a province with control of its lands and railways the same as any other province in Confederation, and that after 15 years of unsuccessful pleading with Ottawa the farmers were making their claim directly to Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, or at least to her representative in Canada, the Governor-General. The detailed statement outlines how the need for the joining together of the various British North American colonies was made clear in the Annexation Manifesto [? check ] of 1849 in which many leading lights of the BNA colonies called or annexation by the U.S., and of friction with the U.S. during the Indian uprising of Minnesota of 1863[?] and during the U.S. Civil War, with the 1861 snowshoe march of British regulars from Halifax to Montreal demonstrating the need for proper inter-colonial roads; outlining how Rupert's Land was brought into Confederation through negotiations "begun and carried on upon principles and under conditions to which we are strangers, rather than that of assenting principles, responsible for its initiation and bound by its results." (p. 12)
The HBC, seeing settlement as an unwise speculation and fur trade as profitable, have cherished the latter while discouraging the former, despite the Company's reconstruction in 1863 with new pro-settlement policy under which a great road across the continent was to be built, telegraph line erected and colonization on a grand scale.
As well, a Company resolution stated it was time for an executive and judicial authority with "authority direct from the Crown" to oversee developments in "Red River and the south-western portion of Rupert's Land." (p. 12)
When the governments of Canada (Ontario and Quebec) and BC refused to underwrite the Company's requirement of four percent profit on the construction of the telegraph line, the project was shelved and the Company's shareholders deep-sixed the colonization scheme in 1866. (p. 13)
With the Company thus admitting it could not undertake colonization nor the duty and cost of government that their charter imposed, the Farmers statement noted that it seemed that the Company should make payment to the Crown for taking on these duties instead of the Crown paying the Company.
The Company had not denied this and further said it was willing to cede land fit for cultivation to Canada. So the statement of claim noted with surprise how what had been a matter of little cost had ballooned to the Company retaining half the land proposed to be surrendered and getting the benefit of other conditions, including a guarantee of profit on improvements made to their own land. (p. 14)
And anyways the HBC was only granted land in western Canada outside of that claimed by other "Christian [European] princes". France had possession of much of the Hudsons Bay coast and traded into the Prairies, and the HBC at no time built forts south or west of Lake Winnipeg, thus the country that must be excluded from the HBC Charter includes the "whole of the country known as the Winnipeg Basin and the Fertile Belt," [not including the Saskatchewan Valley?].
[this point made again on page 52-53, saying the Fertile Belt belonged to the Crown as of the moment Wolfe wrested New France from the grasp of France. and that the British Crown allowed Canada to buy Manitoba and the rest of the fertile Belt on condition that it brought the Northwest Territories into Confederation "as a Province of the Confederation", which it has not done, not even granting postage-stamp-sized Manitoba with full powers over its lands, and then further imposing on Manitoba by granting 1M acres to half-breed children and almost 200,000 acres to soldiers of the expeditionary force "that mismanagement or cupidity, rendered necessary." (p. 54)
"The British inhabitants of the Territories were treated much worse than the Indian population. With them treaties were made to secure their consent to the taking possession of the whole country; treaties that have been disregarded by federal officials. p. 23 The conditions asked by the Company were refused and a simple payment considered one in which the company was paid 1 shilling per acre, but the writer points out that land in Minnesota may sell for £1 per acre but that is land near towns or railways, land or land on which millions of dollars have been spent to make them valuable - not land on the Canadian prairies, distant more than one thousand miles from available markets, and without roads or navigable waters by which to approach them.
Anyways the new Company in 1863 paid the old Company £1.5 M for all its assets, of which only about £100,000 was for the Prairies. p. 26
14,000 loyal British citizens in Manitoba at time of entering Confederation p. 29 and a functioning Government of Assiniboia in place, that oversaw homesteading, import duties, judges, "exercised sovereign power, [and] in cases of felony, doomed the felon to death and caused the sentence to be carried into execution," etc. p. 30
What could the Government of Assiniboia and Manitoba's 14,000 loyal British subjects do, when the HBC wanted money and privilege and to shuck governmental responsibility, Canada wanted to extend ocean to ocean, British Imperial authorities wanted a BNA union and a great military highway from Halifax to BC, handy in case of war with Russia? Their written protests were ignored and after the Canada' purchase of the land and its human livestock, it sent a governor and seven ready-made statesmen to govern the North-west. It was then, the writer said, that French half-breeds took arms in their hands, overthrew the only law there was - the Government of Assiniboia which had proven itself to be weak and unable to defend the settlers, took possession of Fort Garry, formed a Provisional Government to defend the rights of the colony, and made a stand against the mercenary hucksters - and were pronounced rebels.
Her Majesty's Government, belatedly learning there were British subjects in the territory just bought and sold, informed Canada that no British troops would be sent to subjugate a British colony and make its loyal subjects slaves at the point of bayonet. So Canada dickered with the provisional Government and then launched a military expedition against it that resulted in the death of Thomas Scott and the expenditure of millions of dollars - meanwhile ignoring the constitutionally-elected government of Assiniboia. Any arrangement that Riel could have made with Canada would not have had the mandate of the people of Manitoba, anyway and would not have been accepted by the people there, many of whom were prisoners of the Provisional government at the time.
And the arrangement - setting up a postage-stamp-sized province of Manitoba, with responsibility to erect a full-fledged government with two chambers of legislators, a Governor, courts, administration of civil and criminal justice, support a police force, build roads and bridges, etc. on a paltry federal subsidy and no other form of revenue - has proved a failure. (p. 35)
Tariffs are considerably higher than under the old Government of Assiniboia, so high they exceed the value of the province's wheat crop. The tariff on canned fruit and vegetables, and clothing sometimes doubles the price of the product, money "ground out of the people of Manitoba to protect the profits of half a dozen canning operations in the Eastern provinces." (p. 42)
Farmers find they are responsible to pay school taxes, judicial district tax, law stamps, These charges mean abandoned farmers across the province [the document provides numbers showing that the amount of settlement declined from 1883 to 1884] as farmers obey the advise of a local newspaperman and "leave the country with a curse".
The other option is to "secede from Confederation and ask Her Majesty to give us the status of a Crown Colony, which would place us in a position of financial independence and allow us the opportunity to prove by acts that we are not of the lip-loyal kind of subjects of Her Majesty, but that our loyalty takes into consideration the interests of the whole British people." (p. 44)
Furthermore, the writer said that Manitoba, unlike Canada, would establish free trade with Britain and only charge duty on goods that come from other foreign nations. Thus it would be to the interest of British capitalists to loan Manitoba "money at a reasonable rate of interest to build a railway to Hudson's Bay, through which Manitoba farmers could ship their millions of bushels of grain in return for British goods and manufactures."
A Hudson's Bay railway would shorten the overland part of the shipping route by 700 miles, compared to shipping through Montreal, and shorten the seagoing part of the journey by 570 miles.
As well, pine forests and coal and iron deposits ring the Bay, while bringing immigrants into Canada through the Bay would make their journey shorter and would make them less vulnerable to U.S. railway and land agents trying to get them to abandon the British flag and move State-side.
A report by a Committee of the Legislature of Manitoba investigating the Bay said the ports on the Bay are open more than four months in the year and if put into operation would even by used by U.S. shippers shipping to Britain as the Bay is a hundred miles closer to Britain than New York.
After a year of discussion, the Manitoba Legislature unanimously adopted the Bill of Rights put forward by the Farmers Union and sent a delegation to Ottawa asking for attention - they were given a "beggarly - not to say insulting - response."
The Dominion government said that Manitoba was not like other provinces because its purchase, past bills and administration were so much more than other provinces.
Pointing out that Canada did not pay cash for the West, it issued bonds and now Manitobans are paying off the interest as well as the principal. (p. 55)
Manitoba is also debitted with more $1M the cost of the military expedition, which brought all the North-West into Confederation, not just Manitoba. With equal injustice and illogic, Canada should charge Manitoba the cost of the present unrest on the Prairies.
And the writer pointed out the present unrest arises from the same causes as the 1870 unrest:
"mismanagement, pledges unfulfilled, plunder of the Indians by Dominion agents, solemn promises of the Government of Canada to the people of the country, made 15 years ago and totally disregarded and unfulfilled", such as a pledge that "the rights of any Corporation, company or individual within the territories be respected and placed under protection of competent courts."
"Canada had a great railway to build; she had no time to attend to the rights of individuals."
The writer points out that the British Empire's Blue Book of affairs indicates that the number of settlers in Manitoba had dropped by almost half from 1883 to 1884. (p. 58)
Although the Minister of the Interior says the agitation is a result of only a few, the Legislature of Manitoba, the North-West Council and the M&NWFU have complained to the federal government of mismanagement of the Public lands of the Prairies.
Even the North-West Council, one-half of which are paid employees of the Dominion Government, and which was created for the purpose of making it easier to shift the responsibility of misgovernment off of Ottawa, due to pressure exerted at public meetings and through petitions, had to ask the federal government to respect people's rights, in vain.
"Now the war whoop of the Savage, the thunder of cannon, the crack of the rifle , the groans of the wounded and the shrieks of the dying, call the attention of the Empire to the gross mismanagement of affairs in the North-West." (p. 59)
If Canada wants to make this country a monopoly preserve and the people of this country are willing to become serfs, she may succeed in that grand National (?) object; but she cannot at the same time, make it a farming country, nor can she blind the intending settler to the fact that this is not an encouraging place for settlement and never will be until the Empire uses its influence to induce government of the Dominion to grant Manitoba at least her constitutional rights to charter railway within her boundaries and control over school lands which have sat idle and unproductive of crops or income for 15 years. (p. 60-61)
The Blue Book, basing its report on information issued by Ottawa, wrote that the claims of old settlers in the North-West, which had been unsettled for 15 years, were with a few exceptions finally settled.*
However, the writer of the Statement of claims the present fighting proves the contrary. (p. 63)
The Hay privilege was also ignored by the government. But in 1873 when the matter had been stalled for three years, the Metis of Manitoba threatened to take up arms and the government moved to settle the matter. But still a final decision was not made and it was still up in the air 12 years later, when unrest grew to boiling point again. (p. 65-66)
The Government of Manitoba also complained that of the countless number of appointments to public office made by the federal government to posts in Manitoba, nearly all are people of other provinces.
One of the causes of the 1837 uprisings was the appointment of Britons to official posts in the colonies, and now the same sort of thing was being done in Manitoba.
As this took hold, by 1884 the efficiency of public service fell, with the cost of administering the Customs and Excise rising to three times that previous while collecting less revenue. Homestead inspectors, etc. are appointed from among political helpers in Ontario and Quebec and given substantial moving subsidies and sent out west, where, not knowing the area, they then need guides to find their way around. (p. 72)
The writer also said that there was a private investigation going on in Ottawa about a land-ring where politicians and government officials worked systematically to force land claimants (old settlers and homesteaders) to pay a bribe to get their claim settled or were held off until they gave up and sold out to the land ring. (p. 75) [(Peel 1490) I think] The document presented the option that instead of building the CPR across the continent at great cost and resulting in spreading immigration uneconomically across the Prairies, incoming immigrants could have been brought by U.S. railway lines to [Duluth?] from where a Canadian line could have been progressively extended westwards as needs developed. M&NWFU met March 31, 1885 to complain of the sell-out deal the premier of Manitoba had accepted - $100,000 per year, while the writers pointed out Quebec was paid $5 M to remove the seigneurial rights inherited from New France, and Ontario was paid an equal sum, while the federal government did not take control of any of their public lands. (p. 87-88) The FU hired Henry J. Clarke Q.C. who, with Alex Fleming, M.D. and George Purvis, of the Farmers Union, wrote up a "Statement of Claim" addressed to Her Majesty the Queen, dated May [1885?] *Mr. Pearce reported that in 1884 he "went to Prince Albert and then to Battleford, Edmonton and St. Albert, and made a careful personal enquiry into all the claims of this class with the result that with the exception of one or two at Edmonton and Battleford, they have been finally and satisfactorily disposed of.
The only claims of old settlers remaining unsettled are at Lac La Biche, Victoria and Battle River."
But this was so obviously not the fact that during the 1885 fighting, the government hurriedly named a Commission to proceed to the North-West to settle the claims of the old settlers.
And Pearce later admitted that he could not settle the claims at St. Laurent because most of the old settlers spoke French and he could not and did not want to hire an interpreter. (M&NWFU, Statement of Claim..., p. 64) (Peel 1490) Gwyn, Nation Maker (p. 391) The call to restrict immigration too received little response from the federal government, and it was decided to launch a Farmers Protective Union, that would engage in the economic side of the equation, shipping farmers' grain and buying binder twine. Constitution of the Manitoba and North-West Farmers Co-operative and Protective Union, passed June 1, 1884 [Winnipeg? Peel's PP?] only two branches listed outside Manitoba: Prince Albert and Whitewood, NWT Manitoba and Northwest Farmers’ Union (Peel 758) (Weinrich 104) Manitoba and Northwest Farmers’ Union (Peel 829) (Weinrich 122)
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Edmonton-area farmers became active in the Patrons of Industry of the 1890s, then in local branches of the U.S.-based Society of Equity and the all-Canadian Alberta Farmers Association.
The merger of these groups in 1909 created the United Farmers of Alberta.
And the rest is history!
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other note:
The Manitoba and Northwest Farmers' Union
Resolutions adopted at farmers convention Winnipeg, 1883.
Brandon?, 1884
"it is plain that there are grievances that ought not to be borne without remonstrance – resistance if necessary. But we believe that a fair representation of our condition backed by a stern determination to have it remedied, will secure for us such universal sympathy and respect as will break down every obstacle to our ultimate success. Let us then continue to work as we have begun, keeping in view those rights we have inherited as subjects of a constitutional monarchy that can alone secure to this country that liberty upon which depends its prosperity." ... and whereas it is the right of every British subject to call the attention of the constituted authorities to existence of abuses and wrongs,.. therefore this convention demands... the right of representation in the Dominion cabinet. (page 6) (CIHM 30526) (Peel 1260)
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