Tales from the Homestead: A History of Prairie Pioneers, 1867–1914 by Sandra Rollings-Magnusson (review)

The homesteading era of Canadian Prairie history is often comprehended only in its generalities. Images of people packed tightly aboard Atlantic steamers and colonist train cars, lonely horse-drawn wagons slouching across the plains, settlers milling about their sod houses – these nameless (and usually placeless) impressions are what typically predominate in post-Confederation Canadian history courses and the popular consciousness generally.

As a means of providing names and places to these images, Sandra Rollings-Magnusson has gathered and edited dozens of primary source documents that offer first-hand detail on the homesteading process and life on the homesteads themselves. The reader is afforded personal accounts of seasickness in steerage, uncomfortable railway travel, the difficulties that homesteaders faced transporting their possessions and obtaining supplies, the process of locating one’s homestead – all classic elements of this period of Prairie history, which are usually not understood in their intimate details and in the words of those who experienced it. There are numerous insights into the everyday elements of homestead living, through several memoirs as well as a daily journal from 1901 written by Eliza Jane Wilson (née Brown). The more personal stories contained in Tales from the Homestead are, at their best, deeply moving: the English cellist and his wife who played music for the dishevelled and exhausted crowds of a packed train car; the mother and daughter who successfully put out a nascent prairie fire; the man who saved his brother from freezing to death in the harsh winter; the penniless Moravian who hid in a friendly German farmer’s load of hay to board a ferry. This collection also gives us insights into the decision-making of homesteaders (lack of funds often being an issue) as well as elements of life that were quite common at the time but little discussed in existing scholarly accounts (the numerous mentions of witching wells and the importance of stopping places being two examples). The book is rich with archival photographs, bringing further vibrancy to the sources. While valuable materials, the book’s contents may be less surprising to the specialist in Prairie history than to those individuals interested in other regions of Canada.

Tales from the Homestead sacrifices historical context for a focus on its sources. We are oriented to the collection by a six-page preface and to the individual source via short, paragraph-long abstracts at the beginning of each chapter. Navigating the book is a challenge given the lack of sections and the rather whimsical titles such as “True Grit,” “Never a Dull Moment,” and “Freedom of the Wild.” Other chapter titles are quotes from the source itself, though “All Gone into the Dust of Time” is much more ambiguous as to who the author is than “Life Here Was Not Like in Denmark.” Following the thirty-six primary sources is a four-page “Afterthoughts” section, where Rollings-Magnusson provides a celebratory reminiscence on the settlement period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We are told that, though “each homesteader’s experiences were unique ... they became part of a cohesive whole, all with the purpose and intent of creating homes and prosperous communities on the prairies” (241). But prosperous communities for whom? This question is never addressed, even superficially, in Tales from the Homestead. Rollings-Magnusson emphasizes stories of triumphing over adversity rather than the experience of failure or the exclusion of marginalized people.

The subtitle of the book is likely to confuse readers as to its contents. Given the brevity of its preface and afterthoughts, the reader is offered minimal historical context in which to situate these sources. Surely A History of Prairie Pioneers, 1867–1914 would include details regarding the Rupert’s Land transfer, the Numbered Treaties, Clifford Sifton’s time as minister of the interior and reactions to it, the creation of Indian reservations, discriminatory immigration policies that favoured white settlers, and so on. It is notable...