By the time the Canadian Pacific Railroad was completed in 1885, only 23 homesteads had been claimed along the 400 miles from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan to Calgary, Alberta. Captain John Palliser, a British government surveyor, had surveyed the area in 1859 and deemed much of the area a semi-desert, unfit for agriculture.
But at the turn of the century, it flashed its green riches for a few wet years, blinding all who saw it to its true nature, and the prairie filled with new immigrants. Then it dwindled back to its usual dry dullness. By the 1930s many homesteaders had walked away their farms.
Penned
sovereignty was our made-up tale hammered bronzed burnished over a few short centuries hardened into coin du realm hollow at its core
freedom was the emptied plain the unbroken wind-whispering sea of grass (Palliser’s Triangle – the palest yellow on the map) soon enough railroaded and fenced soon enough fetters and false hope
