1,192 miles
 |
| straw barns |
Jan 24 – Some
of the earliest settlers around Wapella were Russian Jews, followed by groups
of Germans, Ukrainians, Doukhobors (a sect of Russian Christians), Russians and
Hungarians.
Cyril E.
Leonoff describes this particular pioneer experience well in these excerpts
from his article Wapella Farm Settlement:
The First Successful Jewish Farm Settlement in Canada (1970)
Difficulties on the Canadian Prairies
The
propaganda reaching the prospective immigrants invariably failed to spell out
the primitive and hostile conditions of the Canadian northwest of those days.
These included: long and severe cold winters with snow storms and blizzards; a
short, hot growing season; vast undeveloped spaces, lack of communication and
consequent isolation; sparsity of almost all amenities; other hazards to
farming such as frost, hail, drought, wind, rust, grasshoppers, and various
vagaries of nature. In those early days there was a lack of technology and
practical experience to cope with farming problems in a northern climate. As a
result, many early homesteaders did not stay long on their farmlands.
Special
Difficulties Faced by Jewish Farmers
All pioneers
faced these problems. But the prospective Jewish farmers had additional
handicaps. They came with virtually no farming experience; in Russia they had
been prevented by law from owning land. Thus they had been forced into
occupations of unskilled laborers, petty tradesmen, or small shopkeepers. A few
had agricultural experience but this was generally limited to the job of
overseer for an absentee landlord, a role hardly relevant to Canadian
conditions. Other ethnic groups who came to Canada had been farmers all their
lives. They had labored as peasants on other lands and now had the opportunity
to work their own land.
Despite the
almost insurmountable difficulties, this was one of the early farming efforts,
which demonstrated on a small scale that Jews, given the opportunity and
desire, could return to the land. Eventually a number became capable farmers.
This same phenomenon on a greater scale has been confirmed by modern Jewish
farmers in the State of Israel.
The Wapella
settlement became the forerunner of some dozen Jewish farm settlements that
were established later on the Canadian prairies. Wapella served as an excellent
training ground for new immigrants and young Jewish men desiring to become
farmers. Several each year hired out as farm workers to established Jewish
farmers at Wapella, with a view to becoming independent farmers in other
settlements. Second generation sons of Wapella Jewish farmers, some of whom
graduated from the newly established Agricultural Colleges of Manitoba and
Saskatchewan, became progressive modern-day farmers, and were employed to teach
their skills to the new farmers of later settlements.
The only
interesting image I found of modern-day Wapella is another stone church, this
one with an interesting roof shape (inverted gambrel? bonnet roof?).
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