MARY'S GENEALOGY TREASURES
An excerpt from a four page supplement of the October 6, 1900
issue of the Manitoba Free Press, which contained several pictures
and maps. The article itself examined the recently-completed
irrigation enterprise of the Galts, and began in the usual flowery
fashion of the day:
"From Winnipeg to Lethbridge is seven hundred miles as the crow
flies. And the line of the crow's flight would go straight west over
Manitoba, over Assiniboia and on into Alberta a line as straight
as if drawn across the map with a parallel ruler, fifty miles north,
all the way, of the forty-ninth line of latitude, along which are
set the boundary posts between Canada and the United States.
In sight of Lethbridge, this westward-winging crow, posed like
a black sea gull above ocean-like expanse of prairie, would spy
afar in the west the smoke sent up over that town by the Galt
collieries, like the smoke of an ocean liner coming up over the
sea rim. Farther on, faint along the horizon, would appear misty
shapes, becoming more distinct and yet more fairylike all the time,
in their sapphire tints, capped with glistening white--the far-off
Rocky Mountains with their snow-crowned summits.
Like attracts like, and so we may suppose that our far-voyaging
crow would alight at Lethbridge, to view the heavy black smoke
pouring out from the tall chimneys clustered where the Galt coal
is mined. Continuing his journey, still straight westward, he
would follow the line of the Crow's Nest railway and after a flight
from Lethbridge of some four score miles, would find himself
among the Rocky Mountains, in the Crow's Nest Pass--a most
appropriate place to leave him.
"The extensive irrigation enterprise we are about to go over is the
work of a company which is one of several branches of the
corporate tree whose trunk is the Alberta Railway and Coal
Company. That all these enterprises have been undertaken
and carried to success is due to the energy of Mr. E. T. Galt,
his capacity to foresee great developments and his ability to
handle large undertakings. It was he that first conceived the
project of mining for the coal which he saw cropping out in the
steep river bank below where the town of Lethbridge now
stands and who interested his father, the late Sir Alexander
Tilloch Galt, in the project.
Following upon the inception of the coal-mining enterprise came
the building of the railway from Lethbridge to Great Falls in
Montana, and the formation of the other subsidiary companies
growing out of the parent concern, of which the latest is the
Canadian Northwest Irrigation Company. Of each of these
companies Mr. Galt is president, among the British capitalists
associated with him in these various enterprises being Mr.
Lethbridge, from whom the town is named, the partner of the
late W. H. Smith, first Lord of the Admiralty and government
leader of the House of Commons, who was also interested in
Mr. Galt's enterprises, Mr. Wm. Burdett-Coutts, M.P., who is
chairman of the board of the Canadian Northwest Irrigation
Company, Lord Iveagh, Baring brothers, and the United States
Debenture Corporation, a London syndicate, which has heavy
investments on this continent. Mr. Galt is controlling head of
the enterprises centred in Lethbridge, in which a total capital
of nine million is invested.
The monthly payroll of the Alberta Railway and Coal Company is
about $30,000. It has extensive machine shops, capable
of turning out a locomotive. This completeness of equipment
being made necessary by the distance of Lethbridge from
cities where machine shops are situated which have the
plant needed for any and all repairs and machinery. The
population of Lethbridge is already 2,000, with every certainty
of a steady increase being maintained. The town, which is
admirably laid out, with its principal streets surrounding a large
public square, has in addition to its array of first class stores
and shops, branches of the Bank of Montreal, and the Union
Bank of Canada, Board of Trade, a Dominion Land Office,
Mounted Police barracks, public and Roman Catholic schools,
Presbyterian, Methodist, Church of England and Roman Catholic
churches, a public library and reading room, good hotels,
excellent telephone service, an efficient fire brigade, and
not to make the enumeration tiresome beyond measure, everything
that could be looked for in a town which makes an instant and
abiding impression upon the visitor of growing progressiveness
and prosperity. Its streets are lighted by electric light, which
is also used in the mines and in the business places and very
generally in the residences of the town, which is largely brick-built,
brick of excellent quality being among the productions of the place.
Among the noteworthy public institutions of Lethbridge, mention
should be made in passing of the Galt Hospital, which was
established by Sir. A.T. Galt at a cost of $20,000 and has since
been enlarged. It is aided by municipal and territorial grants, and
its completeness of equipment and its excellent management make
it worthy of being classed as a thoroughly modern hospital inferior
only in size to those in the leading centres of the country. It is an
institution in which Lethbridge and Southern Alberta has reason to
take great satisfaction and pride.
The town waterworks pump the water from the river up the three
hundred feet of the steep bank, to the level of the town, for
distribution. The buffalo sought out suitable places in the
banks to make paths down to the water, and crossing the
plains in all directions are their still plainly marked trails, many
of them worn into regular trenches, showing the routes along
which they trotted in regular procession to drink in the river.
Today in trenches made along sides of the streets in Lethbridge
clear water runs rippling to the river after many miles of its
meanderings across the plains in the main canal constructed
by the Canadian Northwest Irrigation Company, and in the
Lethbridge lateral canal, which crosses the plains bringing water,
just as the buffalo of old used to cross them in quest of water,
will give the town a new appearance, which will be but one
of the many improvements which will follow upon the introduction
of the irrigation system into Lethbridge itself.
It was on Tuesday, September 4 last, that the water was first
turned into the trenches along the streets of the town. There
was rejoicing among the citizens, and the small boys of
Lethbridge found the flowing water a source of much delight,
little water-wheels being set going, and sundry fish that had
injudiciously come in from the main canal to see the town being
caught, a specially large one, of the "sucker" species, falling
prey to the prowess of a youngster armed with a potato bag,
with which he whipped the fish out of the runlet in front of the
residence of Dr. Mewburn, the mayor of Lethbridge. Dr. Mewbum
deserves mention for being the first person in Lethbridge to plant
trees on the lawn about his house and on the boulevard in front
and to lay pipes about his property from the irrigation trench
running down the street on which he lives.
There was no formal celebration of the entrance of the water from
the Irrigation Canal into the town. Neither was there any
formality to mark the completion of the Canal system and the
turning on of the water at the intake head-gates down south
near the Montana border. As the Governor-General and Lady
Minto were at that time on their way homeward from the coast
on their return from their tour of western Canada which had
taken them as far as Dawson City, they were invited by Mr.
Galt to spend a day in seeing something of the Irrigation Canal...
Accordingly, on September 14, the vice-regal party... were
taken over as much of the work as could be viewed in one day ...
Two of the highest dignitaries of the Mormon Church, Presidents
George Q.Cannon and Joseph F. Smith had been invited from
Salt Lake City to meet the Governor General and Countess Minto.
President Cannon, accompanied by his daughter, and President
Smith, whose wife and two sons were with him, had come up
several days previously from Great Falls, in a special train, with
Mr. Galt, Mr. C.A. Magrath, manager of the Canadian Northwest
Irrigation Company, and Mr. P. L. Naismith, manager of the
Alberta Railway and Coal Company, ex-Judge Thomas Brady,
of Great Falls, the attorney for that company across the line,
and Hon. Timothy Collins, state treasurer of Montana, joining
the party.
Lord and Lady Minto desired greatly to see Magrath and Stirling,
the two new prairie towns established by the Mormons within
the past twelve months... For the construction of the Irrigation
Canal, the Mormon settlers furnished the labour, taking half
their wages in land, and the friendly cooperation of the
heads of the church, from the beginning of this vast
undertaking, has had a very great deal to do with making
it possible to carry the work through to its successful
completion ... The vice-regal party were taken out to Stirling
on a special train ... The head of the town of Stirling, Bishop
Theodore Brandley, bustled about affably, making the visitors
welcome, and conducting them to the meeting house, used
also for the present as a public school, which was filled to the
doors with an expectant assemblage of the townspeople, the
men altogether on one side of the aisle down the centre, the
women altogether on the other side ...
The next morning found the Free Press representative setting forth
again from Lethbridge across the prairie toward Magrath, this
time behind a team driven by George G. Anderson, of Denver,
the engineer who located the Irrigation Canal, after having had
complete surveys of the country for that purpose made during
the summer of 1898, and who has had charge of the work of
construction ... The first day out luncheon was had at a ranch
near Magrath, where the engineering staff engaged in laying out
the new railway which is to connect Stirling with Cardston were
of the party. The construction of this road is being pushed
forward rapidly, the track having been laid some eight miles out
of Stirling at that time, and the expectation being that trains would
be running by the middle of November to Spring Coulee ...
The section of the canal from St. Mary's River to the headwaters of
Spring Coulee is termed the first division. It is ten and a half miles
long ... The second division of the Canal is that diverting the water
from the bed of Spring Coulee to the headwaters of the Pot Hole ...
The third division of the Canal is that portion diverting the water
from the bed of the the Pot Hole Coulee to the level of the plains
between it and Stirling. It is only five and three quarter miles
long ... The fourth division extending from the cast bank of Pot
Hole Coulee to near Stirling, is a fair sample of prairie canal,
without any special features to note ... The fifth division is what
has been styled the Lethbridge branch ... The branch canal which
has been built westward from Magrath renders irrigable some
35,000 acres not served by the Lethbridge lateral ...
This great Irrigation Canal enterprise, it should be said, was
mooted for several years before the changed conditions in the
west permitted its being, undertaken.
The Alberta Railway and Coal Company had carefully considered
a number of irrigation projects for the purpose of making available
for settlement their lands situated between Lethbridge and Cardston,
but capital could not be secured for the carrying out of any such
undertaking owing to the lack of a convenient market for the
products of the district. The construction of the Crow's Nest Railway
made Lethbridge the gateway and distributing point to the rapidly
developing mountain mining regions of the East and West Kootenay,
in British Columbia, including the towns of Fernie, Cranbrook, Fort
Steele, Aisworth, Slocan City, New Denver, Sandon, Kaslo, Trail,
Nelson and Rossland, An idea of the rapidity of the development
of the mining interests of those districts may be gathered from the
fact that Rossland, a town of about five years existence, has
a population of over 8,000. The beginning of this new order of
things and the wide prospects it opened made it possible for
the Canadian Northwest Irrigation Company to be formed, which
purchased the lands to be irrigated and proceeded with the work
of constructing the Canal. The Free Press representative
enquired of Mr. Magrath, the manager and Land Commissioner
for the Irrigation Company, the terms on which the irrigated
lands are to be disposed of, and learned that the price had
been placed at $8 and $ 10 an acre, on easy terms of
payment extending over ten years. "In addition to the purchase
price of the land," continued Mr. Magrath, "the owner or occupier
will pay an annual water rate of a dollar per acre. As an acre of
irrigated land produces at least twice as much as an acre
depending entirely upon rainfall, this charge of a dollar per acre
for what might be termed 'crop insurance', is a profitable investment
for the farmer and necessary to the Irrigation Company for the
proper care and maintenance of the extensive system which has
been constructed ... The low freight rates guaranteed on the Crow's
Nest railway by special provision made by the Dominion government
in the charter for that line, are a most important factor in the
situation, as regards the large and constantly increasing market
assured in the East and West Kootenay regions for the products
of Southern Alberta. The local market at Lethbridge is also of
growing importance ...
From the City of Lethbridge Archives.
The water was turned into the ditch the following spring, and the
Fairfield Bros. were engaged by the above company to demonstrate
the advantages of irrigation in Southern Alberta, which they did
quite satisfactorily. In fact they were the first to introduce the
growing of alfalfa in western Canada. I might add that the Fairfield
farm, situated on the out-skirts of Lethbridge, is still producing
abundantly.
Mr. David J. Whitney commenced his operations on prairie land
adjoining the Fairfield place the same year, 1901. He specialized
in the growing of various kinds of trees including small fruit,
strawberries, etc. With it's shady trees, spacious lawns, was
the showplace of the South where many important conventions
took place. Incidentally, it was on this farm that bee culture was
first introduced in western Canada, in the year 1903.
Among the other original farmers located on the ditch were as follows:
Messrs. Gwatkin, Parry, Tiffins, Brodie, Rev. White, Keffer, McAdoo
& Van Horne, Chas. James and Angel Evans.
These were the Pioneers of irrigation in the Lethbridge district, all
gone to the happy hunting ground, and the people of today owe so
much to so few, for it was they who helped in such large measure to
put Lethbridge on the map as the "Irrigation Capital of Canada".
Forty years later a small group of these Latter Day Saints (Mormon)
people migrated north to Canada and settled at what is now known
as Cardston and district. Then, almost at once, they started
work on their irrigation schemes. Preliminary work started in the
summer of 1898 and by that December was in full swing. A large
part of the contract was awarded to the Church for completion by
the Canadian North West Irrigation Company, later known as the Alberta
Railway and Irrigation Company.
Earlier, about 1894, Sir Alexander Galt and his son foresaw that if
Southern Alberta was ever to attract many settlers, they would have
to be encouraged some way and to irrigate seemed the logical solution.
C. A. Magrath was able to get the support of Sir Clifford Sifton at
Ottawa and moneys were forthcoming for survey and work.
At this time arrangements were made with the Mormon Church to
send settlers from Salt Lake who knew how to build and handle
irrigation projects.
The Mormon Church took the large contract for half pay in land along
the right of way, which it later sold to the new settlers, and the
balance in cash.
M.D. Hammond was the overall foreman for this project. Others
sent by the church to help out were William Russell, then of Stirling
and Theodore Brandley -Stirling.
Miscellaneous Histories