Home Social Landscape Featured Articles From Pogrom to Prairie: Early Jewish Farm Settlements in Central Alberta

From Pogrom to Prairie: Early Jewish Farm Settlements in Central Alberta

by A. J. Armstrong

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During the three decades between 1880—1910, about a dozen distinct Jewish farming communities were founded on the Canadian Prairies, the vast majority in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Given the absence then of an established urban community of Jews west of Winnipeg, there was understandable reluctance to travel as far into the unknown (and away from the aid of Jewish institutions) as Alberta. Rumsey, the best-known of the Alberta settlements, was not established until 1906, and even the settlements in western Saskatchewan were established comparatively late. Consequently, the tiny, and ultimately untenable, settlement at Pine Lake, Alberta (southeast of Red Deer), provokes some curiosity.

Pine Lake was established in 1892 or 1893, and very little is known about it. At that time, the nearest Jewish communities would have been clustered around the Saskatchewan-Manitoba border, an enormous distance before the advent of extensive road networks. The Pine Lake community was only in existence for three or four years, and had fallen from an initial population of 15 families to only six after its first year. This community raises the question of why they had travelled so far west and why they failed so tellingly. Part of the answer lies in the nature of the Dominion Lands Act which dominated the structure of settlement in the Canadian West. The Act required immigrants to claim a quarter-section of land, which they would improve, reside on for a minimum of six months every year, and receive full title to only after three years. This system was very effective at settling the prairies en masse, but the requirement of residence on the land precluded the formation of the sort of settlement that was familiar to Russian Jews. Until the Act included a settlement clause — originally proposed to permit the traditional communal farming of the Mennonites — it was illegal for homesteaders to establish villages and reside away from their farms.

Some official comments about the Pine Lake Jews are instructive: "correspondence between the Agent at Red Deer and the Commissioner of Dominion Lands reveals that the Agent had warned the group to make legal entry on their lands, something they were, curiously, unwilling to do" and "the colony was operated on co-operative, or possibly communist principles, and the settlers were loathe to accept money as individuals."⁸  Their refusal to reside on their homesteads, since they preferred to live in close proximity to each other, and the apparent communal government are strongly reminiscent of the shtetl communities from which these Jews had emigrated. It is also interesting to note that the settlement at Pine Lake was composed of families, rather than the later, predominantly bachelor initial settlement at Rumsey. Furthermore, the Pine Lake community had, as its leader, an individual identified as Rabbi Blank or Blanche.⁹

The evidence indicates that the Jews of Pine Lake had sought to establish a traditional community, communally governed, with the family the base unit, under the leadership of a rabbi. In all probability, this community was originally modelled on the shtetlakh of Eastern Europe. This perhaps explains why they had travelled so far from other rural Jewish communities, which had been established along less conservative lines. Sadly, the experiment proved to be short-lived. A lack of familiarity with farming, the antipathy of their neighbours, and the devastating winter of 1895-96 finally forced the community to abandon their farmsteads. Such a traditional Jewish community was only attempted one more time in the Canadian West at Bender Hamlet near Winnipeg, in 1903.

There is little information on where the settlers at Pine Lake went. Some probably returned to Winnipeg, and may have joined later settlements. One source indicates that several of the families migrated to California, taking up (somewhat more successfully) the trade of chicken ranching, and forming a "Montefiore Society" which still exists. Little remains of their settlement. The foundation excavations for a few dwellings, now shallow and filled with stones, are scattered around a tiny lake that nearby farmers still refer to as "Blanche Lake," after the rabbi of the small settlement. These excavations probably led to the preposterous tradition, repeated in a local history, that the Jews of Pine Lake had lived in caves or holes dug in the ground.¹⁰  However, there is a footnote to the Pine Lake story. Over half a century later, but less than half a day's walk away, camp B'nai Brith, a summer camp for Jewish children, was established. There is no evidence that the founders of the Camp had any knowledge of the earlier settlement, but it is good to note that today, a century after the failure of the Pine Lake settlement, for two months every summer the area near Pine Lake boasts the largest concentrated Jewish population in Alberta.

The next attempt to form a Jewish settlement in Alberta took place at Rumsey, sometimes referred to as the Rumsey-Trochu area. This settlement was not begun until 1905-06, well into the major period of immigration for Russian Jews. The Jews of Rumsey did not arrive as a bloc; most did not know each other prior to establishment of the community. However, after the area was surveyed by the Gurevitch brothers and Elias Sengaus, word spread so that Jewish immigrants arriving in Calgary heard of the new Jewish settlement. By 1910, there were approximately 70 Jewish families living in the area. In the early years of this settlement, most farmsteads were claimed by bachelors or by groups of fathers and sons. Most wives were left in Calgary while the land was broken and the house was erected. Frequently, the wives and younger sons sought employment in Calgary in order to support the family as the farm was established. Just like their Pine Lake predecessors, the Russian Jews of Rumsey had little or no experience farming. Jack Hackman's experience is typical: "We — farmers?! We are to plow the land? I — to drive horses?! I to ride horseback? I — who had handled a pen and pencil all my young life — the only tools my white lily hands handled in the bank where I was employed?¹¹ William Sengaus reported that his father Elias had never been close to oxen or horses prior to arriving in Rumsey.¹²

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