Articles about Norwegian immigrants migrating to the Canadian prairies from the 1880s
In July 2025 it will be 200 years since the first organized group of Norwegian immigrants left the city of Stavanger, Norway. Cleng Peerson was their pathfinder in western New York in 1825, and in Fox River, Illinois, in 1833. His last 15 years in Texas have been a mystery. Most Norwegian immigrants settled in […]
From 2023: First priority Texas, Montana, Alberta and Saskatchewan Read more...
A surprising number of Norwegian-American farmers participated in the settler boom in southern Alberta after 1900. Many among their children and children’s children still live and farm in the region today. Seen from a Norwegian perspective it is both fascinating and surprising that so many Norwegians, used to farming under very wet conditions, and where
Farmers arrived in southern Alberta in large numbers after 1900 Read more...
Homesteaders exploring opportunities for settlement on the Canadian prairie west of Winnipeg, traveled along either the north or south branches of the Saskatchewan Trail. Prior to 1870 settlements in Manitoba were confined to river lots along the Red River and the Assiniboine River. Technological inventions and new agricultural practices in the decade from 1875 created
The early settling of Manitoba Read more...
Red River of the North. Created by Carl Musser, based on USGS and Digital Chart of the World. 2023*
Red River of the North, Manitoba, Winnipeg, and the Scandinavians Read more...
When professor Arthur S. Morton published his book History of Prairie Settlement in 1938, he titled his fifth chapter: “Settlement follows the Railways, 1891-1901.” The railway lines which were completed between 1891 and 1896 came to have a clear direction on the stream of settlers into new areas.[1] The Calgary-Edmonton line was one of these
Scandinavian settlements in Central Alberta Read more...
The Scandinavian emigration to the United States and Canada has countless examples of chain migration, however, it was seldom a joint action with full transplantation of communities. The forward scout was a common feature in many cases. Scouts often investigated new possibilities in another location on behalf of a larger group. Family and neighbors followed
Forward scouts in Central Alberta and Scandinavian settlements Read more...
The Laurier government was elected in Canada in 1896. It soon put into action an aggressive immigration policy campaign. “Free homesteads were offered promiscuously throughout the world, with the object of inducing settlement on the plains in Western Canada.”[1] The Canadian government placed advertisements promoting the Canadian prairies in more than 7,000 newspapers and farmers’
When the Last Best West moved north to the prairies in Canada Read more...
From the end of the American Civil War and until the economic bust in 1893, European immigrants chose to settle in the Midwest and the Northwestern parts of the United States. Even emigrants in Canada preferred the United States during those decades. At least 1.8 million Canadians moved south across the border into the United
Some patterns of Norwegian immigration to America and Canada Read more...
Between 1867 and 1870 captain James Palliser led a British expedition into the interior of Canada. James Hector, a member of the expedition, gave a vivid description of the arid parts of the Canadian Prairies, located in a triangular region of southern Alberta and Saskatchewan. It became known as Palliser’s Triangle and covered 73,000 square
Ranching in Palliser’s Triangle in Southern Alberta Read more...