2. Historical Overview

Since the days of the first agricultural settlements on the prairies began trees have been an issue. To a generation whose parents toiled at removing trees from Ontario farms to make way for productive crops, the first glance at the treeless expanse of southwestern Manitoba was a revelation. They saw immediately the ease with which they could transform the grassy plain into orderly fields of cereal crops. No backbreaking hours felling the trees, and fighting with the seemingly endless stumps and tree roots that were left behind. Just plow and plant!

Of course they needed trees for fuel and building supplies, but as long a the homestead was within a reasonable distance from the wooden valleys of the rivers or the heavily forested Turtle Mountains, most preferred a flat quarter section with an unbroken horizon.

And that worked, for a while.

There were quite a few things about this land that the first settlers didn’t know.

They didn’t know that this productive land, which at first glance looked so fertile, existed in a fragile balance. The often-repeated story was of the profusion of wild strawberries, so thick that the feet of the oxen were stained red. What wasn’t told was that the succession of wet years in the early 1880’s was not necessarily a permanent state of affairs.

They didn’t know that the treeless prairie was treeless, not because it wouldn’t naturally support such growth, but because the ever-present prairie fires struck saplings down before they had a chance to get started. Where trees were established, along streambeds and in hills, the retention of moisture that they fostered was the defense against the fires. They would figure this out before long.

The Boundary Commission travels through a dry and treeless southwestern Manitoba in 1873

They didn’t know, or, in some cases willfully ignored, information from exploratory missions a few decades earlier that led several  “experts” to declare the more southerly parts of the Canadian prairies a dry wasteland that wouldn’t support agriculture. It all looked good in 1881.

They did instinctively know that planting trees was a good thing, especially around farm yards. At first it might have been about shelter from the winds and a striving for the post-card ready appearance of a “prosperous prairie farm” such as would have been featured in promotional brochures. Later they must have recognized that these early farmyard shelterbelts trapped moisture and allowed the vegetable gardens to thrive.

In fact organized horticultural efforts often focused on tree culture in both Manitoba and the North-West Territories. Settlers planted trees for a variety of reasons, including aesthetic enhancement, protection of their farmsteads from wind, and for psychological security.

Settlers were told that this is what their new farm should look like in three years. It took a bit longer.

Tree planting initiatives were evident in all early prairie villages. Lauder Mb.

A farmyard shelterbelt supported microclimates within which gardens could flourish. The Mennonites from Ukraine who settled in southern Manitoba after 1874 established agricultural street villages, which they lined with cottonwoods transplanted from nearby riverbanks. In so doing they demonstrated the viability of tree culture in areas of open prairie.

As of 1883 Manitoba’s 9,077 farmers were cultivating 120,000 hectares of land, of which 1,400 hectares were devoted to gardens and orchards. The importance of tree culture was officially recognized with the proclamation of Arbor Day in the North-West Territories in 1884, followed by Manitoba in 1886.

The Dominion government recognized trees as essential to sustained settlement and established experimental farms at Brandon, Manitoba and Indian Head, Saskatchewan, in the late 1880s. In 1915 the Dominion government established the first prairie research station devoted primarily to horticulture, at Morden, Manitoba. Its staff carried out extensive trials in small fruits, trees, vegetables, and ornamentals, and disseminated the results to the farm community.
An early role of the experimental farms was the promotion of tree shelterbelt plantations on farmsteads to create microclimates for garden and fruit culture. In 1903 a separate Dominion Tree Nursery at Indian Head was established as the basis for a large-scale distribution program.

The Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) played a supporting role in promoting western tree and flower culture in the settlement era. As the principal corporate agency of land disposal on the prairies, the CPR had a strong interest in promoting settlement through horticulture. By 1907 the company had established two early nurseries—one at Springfield, Manitoba devoted to ornamental production, and another at Wolseley, Saskatchewan for the propagation of tree, shrub, and perennial stock. In 1908 the company organized a forestry department to administer its parks and gardens and to advise officials in the planting of railway gardens and windbreaks along its rail lines.

In 1935 the Government of Canada launched the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act (PFRA). The following year two Lyleton locals, Baird and Will Murray, petitioned the PFRA to establish the Lyleton Shelterbelt Association. The PFRA provided $5 per mile of planted trees, with an additional $20 per mile, per year for the following three years of maintenance.

The efforts taken in the 1930’s were followed up with varying degrees of commitment across southwestern Manitoba in the decades that followed. Improved farming practices and new chemicals convinced many farmers that shelterbelts were unnecessary. In fact during the 50’s and 60’s many farmers sought to increase acreage for cereal crops by clearing natural belts of aspen and willow and by draining marshland. Marginal acreage that had been devoted to pastureland was brought into cultivation.

Today with the uncertain effects of climate change and a renewed interest in things such as organic farming and local and natural food production, the time would seem ripe for a renewed effort to revisit efforts to use trees to enhance agricultural productivity.