Canada Was Warned About This Land. It Farmed It Anyway.
Where the Line Fell
1,570 views
Canada was warned about this land, and it farmed it anyway. John Palliser's British expedition crossed the southern prairies between 1857 and 1860 and reported a triangle that was desert, or semi-desert in character, and could never be expected to become occupied by settlers. Ottawa then hired the botanist John Macoun, who had seen the same country in a wet period, moved the Canadian Pacific Railway south on his word, and opened the land. By 1926, Alberta was paying farm families to leave the Dry Belt by railway car.
This is the documented story of the Palliser Triangle: the warning, the homesteads, the crop failures of 1917 to 1927, the relief rolls of the 1930s, and the record the land keeps. It runs from the Great Sand Hills to Grasslands National Park, to Scotty the Tyrannosaurus rex at Eastend, and into the Cypress Hills, where tree rings put a severe drought at 1854 to 1860, the years Palliser rode through.
In this video:
1857 to 1860: Palliser's expedition, paid for by the Colonial Office; reports in 1859, 1860 and 1863
1857 and 1858: Henry Youle Hind surveys the west for the Province of Canada; in 1883 he challenges Macoun in public
1879: the government hires Macoun as its explorer in the northwest; the Canadian Pacific Railway is re-routed across the southern prairies on his word
1915 and 1916: bumper crops even in the Dry Belt; 1917 to 1927: repeated crop failures there, until the wet year of 1927
By 1926: almost 2,000 Alberta farm families relocated with up to two railway cars each, north of Calgary or to irrigated land near Lethbridge
1931 to 32: some 305,000 Saskatchewan residents, nearly a third of the province, on relief
1934: the federal effort to reclaim the triangle begins; the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act passes early the next year: dugouts, shelterbelts, strip farming, community pastures
Late 1930s: a provincial board takes over the Special Areas on the Alberta side of the Dry Belt
Great Sand Hills: about 1,900 sq km, of which about 19 sq km, under 1%, is active sand, on meltwater sediment from about 13,000 years ago
Grasslands National Park: Indigenous habitation back 10,000 years, more than 20,000 tipi rings, Canada's only wild black-tailed prairie dogs, 71 bison returned in December 2005, restoration since 1997
August 16, 1991: Robert Gebhardt finds the first pieces of Scotty near Eastend; 65% complete by 2014; in 2019 its leg bones suggest more than 8,800 kg, about 400 kg more than Sue
66 million years ago: the extinction boundary, exposed in the park's East Block
Cypress Hills: 1,466 m at Head of the Mountain, the highest point between Labrador and the Rocky Mountains; tree rings carry the streamflow record back to 1672, with severe droughts in 1794 to 1798, 1816 to 1821 and 1854 to 1860
Key figures: 2,000 families out by railway car by 1926, 305,000 on relief in 1931 to 32, and a drought record back to 1672.
Timeline: 1672 to 1857 to 1879 to 1917 to 1926 to 1934 to 1991 to 2019.
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Chapters:
0:00 The railway cars
1:41 The triangle on a map
2:24 Palliser's warning
3:22 The people already here
4:32 Macoun's wet years
6:02 Two photographs of one field
6:48 The settlement campaign
8:10 Bumper crops in the Dry Belt
8:51 The crop failures
9:34 The thirties
11:39 Dams, grass and the Special Areas
14:01 The Great Sand Hills
15:37 Grasslands National Park
17:47 Scotty at Eastend
19:58 The extinction boundary
21:11 The Cypress Hills
22:55 What the tree rings say
24:41 The answer to the railway cars
27:44 The record
Every claim in this video is drawn from the documented record: the Dictionary of Canadian Biography (Palliser, Macoun, Hind); the Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan; Marchildon, Sauchyn and Kerr, and Warren in Vulnerability and Adaptation to Drought (University of Calgary Press); the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act; The Canadian Encyclopedia; the Special Areas Board; Parks Canada (Grasslands); the Royal Saskatchewan Museum; the University of Alberta's 2019 release; Alberta Parks; the Natural History Museum; the National Drought Mitigation Center. Three lines rest on a single account, said so in the narration: the Manitoba Museum on Palliser's route and Macoun's wet period, and a 2025 GeoConvention paper (Koning and Leckie) for the Great Sand Hills figures. Scotty's age at death is not given; the museum and the university differ. Living persons are described by the official record only.
Subscribe and turn on notifications. Tell us in the comments: Palliser's report and Macoun's are both in the archive. Which one would you have handed a family before it broke its first field?
#Canada #Geography #PalliserTriangle #Saskatchewan #Alberta #Prairies #Drought #DustBowl #Scotty #CypressHills
Canada Was Warned About This Land. It Farmed It Anyway.
Where the Line Fell
1,570 views
Canada was warned about this land, and it farmed it anyway. John Palliser's British expedition crossed the southern prairies between 1857 and 1860 and reported a triangle that was desert, or semi-desert in character, and could never be expected to become occupied by settlers. Ottawa then hired the botanist John Macoun, who had seen the same country in a wet period, moved the Canadian Pacific Railway south on his word, and opened the land. By 1926, Alberta was paying farm families to leave the Dry Belt by railway car.
This is the documented story of the Palliser Triangle: the warning, the homesteads, the crop failures of 1917 to 1927, the relief rolls of the 1930s, and the record the land keeps. It runs from the Great Sand Hills to Grasslands National Park, to Scotty the Tyrannosaurus rex at Eastend, and into the Cypress Hills, where tree rings put a severe drought at 1854 to 1860, the years Palliser rode through.
In this video:
1857 to 1860: Palliser's expedition, paid for by the Colonial Office; reports in 1859, 1860 and 1863
1857 and 1858: Henry Youle Hind surveys the west for the Province of Canada; in 1883 he challenges Macoun in public
1879: the government hires Macoun as its explorer in the northwest; the Canadian Pacific Railway is re-routed across the southern prairies on his word
1915 and 1916: bumper crops even in the Dry Belt; 1917 to 1927: repeated crop failures there, until the wet year of 1927
By 1926: almost 2,000 Alberta farm families relocated with up to two railway cars each, north of Calgary or to irrigated land near Lethbridge
1931 to 32: some 305,000 Saskatchewan residents, nearly a third of the province, on relief
1934: the federal effort to reclaim the triangle begins; the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act passes early the next year: dugouts, shelterbelts, strip farming, community pastures
Late 1930s: a provincial board takes over the Special Areas on the Alberta side of the Dry Belt
Great Sand Hills: about 1,900 sq km, of which about 19 sq km, under 1%, is active sand, on meltwater sediment from about 13,000 years ago
Grasslands National Park: Indigenous habitation back 10,000 years, more than 20,000 tipi rings, Canada's only wild black-tailed prairie dogs, 71 bison returned in December 2005, restoration since 1997
August 16, 1991: Robert Gebhardt finds the first pieces of Scotty near Eastend; 65% complete by 2014; in 2019 its leg bones suggest more than 8,800 kg, about 400 kg more than Sue
66 million years ago: the extinction boundary, exposed in the park's East Block
Cypress Hills: 1,466 m at Head of the Mountain, the highest point between Labrador and the Rocky Mountains; tree rings carry the streamflow record back to 1672, with severe droughts in 1794 to 1798, 1816 to 1821 and 1854 to 1860
Key figures: 2,000 families out by railway car by 1926, 305,000 on relief in 1931 to 32, and a drought record back to 1672.
Timeline: 1672 to 1857 to 1879 to 1917 to 1926 to 1934 to 1991 to 2019.
Watch next:
Two in Three Canadians Live Within 100 km ... Two in Three Canadians Live Within 100 km of the US: the census count, and the 90% that never was
The Lake Count Crowns Canada. It Can't Spl... The Lake Count Crowns Canada: and still hands all four shared Great Lakes to the United States
Chapters:
0:00 The railway cars
1:41 The triangle on a map
2:24 Palliser's warning
3:22 The people already here
4:32 Macoun's wet years
6:02 Two photographs of one field
6:48 The settlement campaign
8:10 Bumper crops in the Dry Belt
8:51 The crop failures
9:34 The thirties
11:39 Dams, grass and the Special Areas
14:01 The Great Sand Hills
15:37 Grasslands National Park
17:47 Scotty at Eastend
19:58 The extinction boundary
21:11 The Cypress Hills
22:55 What the tree rings say
24:41 The answer to the railway cars
27:44 The record
Every claim in this video is drawn from the documented record: the Dictionary of Canadian Biography (Palliser, Macoun, Hind); the Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan; Marchildon, Sauchyn and Kerr, and Warren in Vulnerability and Adaptation to Drought (University of Calgary Press); the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act; The Canadian Encyclopedia; the Special Areas Board; Parks Canada (Grasslands); the Royal Saskatchewan Museum; the University of Alberta's 2019 release; Alberta Parks; the Natural History Museum; the National Drought Mitigation Center. Three lines rest on a single account, said so in the narration: the Manitoba Museum on Palliser's route and Macoun's wet period, and a 2025 GeoConvention paper (Koning and Leckie) for the Great Sand Hills figures. Scotty's age at death is not given; the museum and the university differ. Living persons are described by the official record only.
Subscribe and turn on notifications. Tell us in the comments: Palliser's report and Macoun's are both in the archive. Which one would you have handed a family before it broke its first field?
#Canada #Geography #PalliserTriangle #Saskatchewan #Alberta #Prairies #Drought #DustBowl #Scotty #CypressHills