THE BELGIANS OF
SOUTH-CENTRAL MANITOBA
Based mainly on
the text by Marcel
Haegeman*,
Swan Lake - 1994
The first group of
Belgians who immigrated to Manitoba arrived at St. Alphonse,
Manitoba in the spring of 1888 to take up homesteads.
Individual immigrants had arrived earlier, but it is
believed these were the first to come as a group.
There is speculation
as to who was responsible for their coming. The Catholic
Church had sent agents to France, Belgium and Switzerland to
encourage French-speaking Catholics to settle in Manitoba.
At the same time, agents from the Canadian government were
touring the agricultural areas of Europe looking for
prospective immigrants, and trying to settle them in areas
of Manitoba that were similar to where they lived in Europe.
It would seem that both parties were equally successful, for
the church had their French-speaking Catholics. and the
district around St. Alphonse was almost identical to the
Ardennes region of southern Belgium, from whence most of the
newcomers had emigrated. Even the few Flemings ithat came
from a district in the west-central part of Belgium known as
the "Flemish Ardennes". felt at home because the rolling
wooded countryside there was similar to that to which they
had come in Manitoba. Both the church and the government
wanted agricultural settlers, and had decided that this area
in Manitoba would be suitable for the mixed farming to which
the Belgians were accustomed.
The French-Canadians
who were already homesteading in St. Alphonse in 1883
welcomed the newcomers with whom they shared a language and
religion, as even the newcomers with a Flemish background
spoke French. [Others such as Emile Lebrun and his son
Eugene came from the French-speaking part of Belgium.
Emile
wrote a letter about his experiences as a
settler.]1
The French-Canadians opened up their homes to the settlers,
and gave them temporary lodging until they got settled in
their own homes. [Some Belgian immigrants were unhappy
with the winter weather and other things not to their liking
and would have gone back but they did not have the money for
the fare back to Belgium.3
A related story is that of Isador Van De Spiegle who farmed
a few years near Bruxelles and then moved to St. Boniface
where he had an industrial accident in a mill. On recovery
he was offered another job or a lump sum as compensation. He
accept the money and moved with his family back to Belgium
in December 1930.
His oldest
daughter Leona return to Belgium with the family but was
unhappy there and at the age of 57 years in 1971 returned
for a visit. Because she had been schooled in English she
was popular in Belgium but was never happy there. When she
died in January 2000 in Belgium a Canadian flag was flown at
her funeral. 4
]
Although building
materials were available in the villages of Cypress River,
Holland and Swan Lake, the newcomers built their first homes
of logs mostly for economic reasons, but also because of
their availability. A French-Canadian family owned a saw
mill, and poplar logs could be brought there to be sawn into
lumber for cabin roofs. The one advantage poplar lumber had
was that it could be used immediately after sawing, as it
did not shrink while drying. The settlers were advised to
use it as soon as possible, for the French-Canadians said
"so that when it warp it warp straight". Within a few years
a Belgian family also owned a sawmill, so eventually more
lumber than logs was being used for building.
Shortly after building a residence, the married Belgians who
came alone would send for their families, although in some
cases it would be several years before the families could
come to Canada. One of the
requirements for obtaining a
homestead was that a residence had to be built, [so
after building their log
house, such
as that of Augustin Godard shown
here,]1
many left to look for employment elsewhere to earn money to
send to their families, or to buy whatever was needed to
begin farming, as very few of them had sufficient funds to
start. Many of them found employment on the railways. The
C.P.R. was being extended west of Cypress River, and to the
southeast the Pacific Northern Railway (later to be known as
the C.N.R.) was laying a line which would pass through
Somerset, Swan Lake and Mariapolis in 1889/90.
[The
log house shown
may seem primitive but the Henry Swennen 's father who came
to Canada with him in 1951 had lived up until the 1920's in
a thatched
hut made of clay reinforced with
branches.
Its floor was packed dirt and the animals: a horse, cow, pig
and chickens shared the same hut with the farmer and his
family! So a larger log
house such as
shown here, even if the barn was attached, on one's own
homestead must have seemed like Heaven to those that came
from Limburg and Brabant, and possibly other places in
Belgium in the early 1890's.]
Many of the settlers
would go away to find work elsewhere in summertime, and
return to their homesteads in the winter to start clearing
land for breaking. The tool they used was a grub-hoe,
also called a mattock &emdash; a tool with a sharp blade on
one side tnb cut roots, and on the other a curved hoe-type
blade to clear the dirt away from the roots. With the coming
of the railways there was also a market for cordwood. This
was a source of revenue in the wintertime and only wood cut
in the winter could be sold. Many thousands of cords of wood
were hauled to the railway stations at Holland, Swan Lake
and Mariapolis, where the wood was piled on flatcars and
shipped to Winnipeg.
In order to haul the
wood to the railways the settlers needed horses or
 oxen.
Of these the oxen were the most popular as they could "live
off the land', whereas horses needed oats which were not
always available. Also, when an ox became too old to work it
could be butchered, and the meat used for food. It was said
that ox meat was so tough you could sit down to dinner
hungry and get up tired! Oxen were slow and had a working
speed of only two miles an hour, however it was said that
when they were frightened, or when the flies were bad, they
were capable of speeds that would make a horse blush! Many
of the farmers used oxen to break the new land. They were
slow but strong and generally patient. These animals felt
the heat very much and would try to get into the water of a
nice comfortable slough if at all possible. They had a joke
about the oxen in the early days. One man had 3 animals and
he called them by name as a Presbyterian, a Baptist and a
Methodist. "Why did you use these names?" he was asked.
"Well," he answered, "the big ox was bad for bawling at
nights, so he was called a Methodist, the red one would
always lay down in the water so we called him a Baptist, and
the other, the roan, we called him a Presbyterian because we
could not make him work on Sundays.
As more land was
cleared and oats grown the homesteaders would buy horses. At
first it would be only one or two to use for transportation,
while oxen would still be used for field work as they were
cheaper to buy and more economical to work with. It was many
years before horses finally replaced oxen.
As more Belgian
immigrants arrived all available homesteads were being taken
up, and the district north of St. Alphonse, which was known
as St. Alphonse North, became the Bruxelles district, with
its own village, named after the capital of Belgium from
whence had come the first parish priest and one of the early
settlers.
 While
the lure of free land 5
was responsible for the
Belgians coming to Manitoba &emdash; 160 acres for the
registration fee of $10.00 &emdash; not all land was free.
Of the 36 sections in a Township, the odd-numbered sections
1 to 35, with the exception of sections 11 and 27, were
given by the Federal Government to the C.P.R. to compensate
for the cost of building railways in western Canada.
Sections 11 and 27 were school sections, to be sold by
public auction and the monies raised used to build schools.
Even-numbered sections 2 to 36, with the exception of
sections 8 and 26, were homestead lands. Sections 8 and 26
were given to the Hudson's Bay Company as compensation for
properties surrendered to the government, so of the 144
quarter sections in a Township, only 64 were available as
government homesteads.
Belgian immigrants
who came to Bruxelles and St. Alphonse after the government
homesteads were taken up had to purchase land from
companies, or from the government when school lands were
sold by auction. Settlers with established homesteads could
also buy company lands to increase their holdings. Shortly
after the arrival of the Belgians, many French&emdash;
Canadians, fed up with the difficulty of clearing land
around St. Alphonse, moved out west to Saskatchewan or south
to the North Dakota when land became available there. They
had no difficulty selling their farms to newcomers who had
not managed to obtain homesteads.
In 1888 a young
Belgian who was single, and had arrived with the first
group, went to Swan Lake to look for work and to learn
English. Although Swan Lake had been settled by English
farmers from Ontario in 1878, there were still homesteads
available. This young Belgian was encouraged by the English
farmers that he worked for to take a homestead there rather
than at St. Alphonse. He did so, and for several years was
the only Belgian settler in the Swan Lake district. In the
years to come other Belgians settled around Swan Lake by
purchasing land from companies, the railway, or from English
farmers who had reached retirement age and had no sons to
take over.
Some of the English
farmers from Ontario, whose fathers and grandfathers had
settled there decades earlier, sent their sons to the cities
to further their education. These sons did not return to the
farms, and when the fathers could no longer farm they sold
their land to the Belgians. Other English farmers who had
sons, but not enough land, discovered they could sell their
land to the Belgians for a good price and move elsewhere to
purchase land where more was available, or take up new
homesteads out west when they became available. Thus it is
that today in the Swan Lake district, which was once
ninety-nine per cent English, only a few English families
remain.
The Belgian
children, on the other hand, when they reached the age of
thirteen or fourteen had to leave their schooling to help
out on the farms, regardless of how much or little education
they had received. It would be several decades before many
would receive high school education. The few who did go on
to receive higher education in the early days did so to
become teachers, or to enter religious life. However, when
the Belgians first came they tried to learn English as soon
as possible. A French-Canadian Mother Superior from St.
Alphonse Convent school once remarked that "concerning
languages, one could learn from the Belgians that it is
possible to learn two or more languages, as many of them
already speak two languages and are now learning a
third."
The heavily wooded
areas around Bruxelles, St. Alphonse and Swan Lake were also
a source of income for immigrants from Belgium who had come
when homesteads were no longer available. They quickly found
work grubbing for homesteaders, or for established farmers.
Many had already spent several years doing backbreaking work
in the sugarbeet fields in France before coming to Manitoba,
so had no difficulty working in the bush day after day. Many
had come with only enough money to buy a grub&emdash;hoe
after paying for their passage. At first they would work for
daily wages, but soon discovered they could make a great
deal more money working by the acre, or a set amount of
money for a specified portion of bush. The landowners
supplied room and board. In summer grubbing began at 6 am.
with a lunch-break at 9 a.m. and again at 4 p.m. Lunch
consisted of two raw eggs and a few sandwiches. After the
evening meal workers carried on until darkness forced them
to stop. In the winter they grubbed until the snow became
too deep, and the rest of the winter they worked for the
farmer for room and board.
In the summertime
when the weather was hot the men would drink a great deal of
water, and as a result many came down with a form of
dysentery known as "summer complaint." An English doctor
advised them to put oatmeal in their drinking water, a
handful to a gallon. While the taste left something to be
desired, it did quench their thirst, and was effective in
preventing the sickness.
Because of their
occupation these men became known as "grubbers". Sometimes
the odd one would have difficulty collecting the money owed
to him, but in most cases the owners were satisfied to pay
the price agreed upon. One young grubber told of an
experience when grubbing for a farmer north of Pilot Mound.
He and the farmer had agreed on a price for grubbing a piece
of bush. Seeing how far the grubber had progressed after a
week, the farmer complained that he had been overcharged -
that the grubber was making fantastic wages, whereupon the
grubber said, "I'll make a deal with you. Come with me to
the bush tomorrow morning to start grubbing, and if you can
keep up to me for a whole day I will finish the rest of the
bluff at no cost to you. If you cannot keep up just pay me
what we agreed upon." Next morning the owner and the grubber
went to the bush at 6 am., and for the first two hours the
owner had actually done more than the grubber, but by 10 am.
he started straightening himself upright and rubbing his
back, and by 11 am. he was also looking up at the sky as
well. By noon he was ready to call it
quits, and never complained
again.
When working in
abrasive soils, grubhoe
blades would wear quickly, and would have to be taken to a
blacksmith to be heated, hammered out, tempered and
resharpened. Tempering was an art in itself, for if the
blade was tempered too much it would be brittle and break;
if not enough the metal would be soft and wear down quickly.
The Scottish-born blacksmith at Swan Lake, who was known for
the quality of his work, sharpened so many grub&emdash;hoes
that he referred to them as "Belgian
flags" - a name
by which they are known to this day.
While many of the
first Belgians left the district to take up homesteads
further west or south when they became available, most of
them were satisfied to remain in the district which they had
already traveled a few thousand miles to reach. They now
owned farms which they could never have owned in Belgium,
and eventually, as conditions improved with better housing,
roads, and availability of education, they never regretted
coming to Manitoba. As the years went by more land was
purchased by Belgians in the surrounding districts of
South-Central Manitoba. Today most can trace their ancestry
to the families who settled in St. Alphonse and Bruxelles
over one hundred years ago.
*Deceased
Sept 5, 2001
1
editor's
interpolation
2St.Alph
page143
3According
to Jules Temmerman as told by his daughter Julia.
4As
reported by his niece Julia Van De Spiegle.
5Posted
in rural Belgium in the late 1800s. Courtesy of the
Provincial Archives of Manitoba.
OR
Continue
|