The settlement of the Canadian prairies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries led to the creation of a new sort of person, the Westerner. The experience of pioneering a new territory, breaking the land, and surviving various severe hardships including the long, bitterly cold winters, bred a special kind of person.Yet, despite the adversity the pioneers encountered, they developed a uniquely optimistic outlook on life.This is recounted by Pierre Berton in his book, The Promised Land: Settling the West 1896-1914.Berton explains that the early prairie settlers were a breed apart. “They were members of an elite, these prairie pioneers; they had come through experiences that no other Canadians would ever understand.”.It was these very experiences that made them so different from people in other parts of the country. “Westerners, of course, were different, no matter where they came from. Most shared some form of common experience, the very stuff of nationalism. They were bound together because, in so many instances, they had come through the fire and survived; and they were proud of it.”The hardships of early prairie settlement forged the bonds of affinity that bound the new Westerners together in a common identity.Having survived the intense rigour of pioneer life, settlers believed they could overcome just about any obstacle. As a result, Berton notes, being a Westerner meant more than just living in a particular geographical area, “it was also a state of mind and an attitude. To the Westerner, anything was possible; there was no problem that could not be surmounted; the future was rosy and never ending.”.This state of mind also led to the development of a political identity: “The regional pride that Westerners felt was being transformed into a new nationalism” — so much so that “Newcomers, visitors, and old hands talked of the West as if it were a separate state.”Berton writes that the Western outlook was most clearly expressed in editorials of the Calgary Herald. The three main themes of these editorials were, first of all, for the Western provinces, especially Alberta, to have greater autonomy from Ottawa. Secondly, the need for these provinces to be freed from exploitation by Eastern manufacturers. And thirdly, “the developing image of the Westerner as a distinct personality, implicitly superior to the more effete Easterner.”In one Herald editorial from May 16, 1905, there is a clear articulation of the new Western spirit: “Undoubtedly there is something about the West and western life that gives it distinctiveness and creates a certain peculiar temperament; and for lack of a definite term they call that something ‘the spirit of the West.’ The western spirit is a composite quality. National conditions of geography and climate are at the bottom of it and beget, in the first place, enthusiasm; energy and optimism are the outcome of enthusiasm; and these three are balanced with a healthy sincerity.”.By this time the West had become “a nation within a nation where, it was devoutly believed, any man could rise to the top from the humblest beginnings if he had faith in the country and was prepared for hard work.”In terms of their political outlook, a key factor binding Westerners together was hostility towards the East, meaning primarily Ottawa, Ontario and Quebec.One of their biggest grievances was the protective tariff of Sir John A. Macdonald’s National Policy. As a result of the tariff, Western farmers were essentially forced to buy their farm equipment from Eastern manufacturers at a much higher price than they otherwise would have had to pay. Back in those days, Canada’s federal government had a Trump-ian enthusiasm for tariffs because they benefited central Canada at the expense of the West..As Berton writes, Westerners “wanted free trade, or something close to it. For one thing, if the Eastern manufacturers were forced to compete with the Americans on an equal basis, prices of farm equipment would drop.” To an agricultural community like the prairies, the cost of farm equipment was a very big deal.In 1911, Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier’s Liberal government ran for reelection on a platform of free trade with the United States. This policy was wildly popular in Alberta and Saskatchewan but Laurier was defeated due to overwhelming opposition to free trade in Ontario. Western farmers would eventually organize politically and in the 1921 federal election the West voted overwhelmingly for the new Progressive Party of Canada. Berton notes that because of this outcome, “the psychological and economic split between East and West was confirmed politically in a federal election.” And not for the last time!In the 1921 election, Western “discontent had changed the political face of Canada. That discontent too was part of the Western spirit.”The spirit of the West — forged in the hardships of early prairie life — lives on. It is manifested in the current movement towards Alberta independence, which offers genuine hope for a solution to a century of conflict with central Canada.Independence, in fact, would be the ultimate achievement of the Western spirit. It would vindicate the optimistic perspective of the pioneers that “there was no problem that could not be surmounted.”
