Stories From Another Era By Margaret G. Hanna
I don’t know where or when this photograph was taken, but there’s my maternal grandfather, Caleb Higham, sitting on his one-disc discer. How much land could he plough in a day, do you think.
Caleb emigrated from England (Oxfordshire, to be exact) to Canada in 1913 on the Ultonia. The incoming passenger list provides some interesting details. First, he emigrated under the “British Bonus” program which encouraged steamship booking agents to recruit desirable settlers (farmer, domestics, etc.) to emigrate to western Canada. Second, it gives his destination as Regina, Saskatchewan. Third, he had $25.00 in his pocket, a modest sum even in those days but definitely not enough to buy a farm.
By 1913, almost all land available through the Canadian Homestead Act had been taken up, except for land in northern Saskatchewan, so first Caleb worked as a brakeman for the Canadian Pacific Railway, one of the most dangerous of all railway positions. Within the year, he began working as a farm hand for Will Grigg, north of Moose Jaw. There, he met and married Mary Louisa Appleton.
Caleb still could not afford to buy a farm. For the first nine years they were married, he rented farms, first at Keystown (between Moose Jaw and Regina), then Boharm (west of Moose Jaw), and lastly, Mazenod (about 70 kms southwest of Moose Jaw). In 1924, he finally bought his farm – 320 acres – six miles north of Assiniboia.
Those detours are all recounted in Searching for Home, as told by my maternal grandmother.
Margaret G. Hanna grew up on the farm her paternal grandfather homesteaded in 1908 in southwestern Saskatchewan. After 12 years of university, she worked as a professional archaeologist, first on several short-term contracts in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta, and finally as Curator of Aboriginal History at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, Regina. She retired in 2007 and moved to Airdrie AB where she lives with her husband and no pets.
She now uses her research skills to explore family and prairie history. For Margaret, writing is a portal to another dimension of reality. When she isn’t struggling to write, she gardens, reads, sews, and quilts. Her dream is one day to master the 5-string banjo, claw-hammer style.
Margaret’s books can be found through her website, A Prairie Perspective, and on Amazon.
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