- Michelsen Farmstead, museum in Stirling, Alberta
A block settlement (or bloc settlement) is a particular type of land distribution which allows settlers with the same ethnicity to form small colonies. This settlement type was used throughout western Canada between the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Some were planned and others were spontaneously created by the settlers themselves. As a legacy of the block settlements, the three Prairie Provinces have several regions where ancestries other than British are the largest, unlike the norm in surrounding regions.
The policy of planned blocks was pursued primarily by Clifford Sifton during his time as Interior Minister of Canada. It was essentially a compromise position. Some politicians wanted all ethnic groups to be scattered evenly though the new lands to ensure they would quickly assimilate to Anglo-Canadian culture, while others did not want to live near "foreign" immigrants (as opposed to British immigrants who were not considered foreign) and demanded that they be segregated. At the time, Canada was receiving large numbers of non-British, non-French, immigrants for the first time, especially Italians, Germans, Scandinavians, and Ukrainians. The newcomers themselves wanted to settle as close as possible to people with a familiar language and similar customs. The government did not want the West to be fragmented into a few large homogeneous ethnic blocks, however, so several smaller colonies were set up where particular ethnic groups could settle, but these were spaced across the country. [1] [2]
Similar to Block Settlements in Canada, the United States had several Ethnic Group Settlements across the Great Plains, which were founded by European settlers across the 1880s. These were towns of Czechs, Norwegians, Germans, Russians, and religious groups that were allotted land to create homesteads and farms.
Cardston founded in 1887 was the first Latter-day Saint settlement in Alberta. [3]
Hutterites are German-speaking Anabaptists who live in communal agricultural colonies. They have 188 colonies in Alberta, 117 in Manitoba, 72 in Saskatchewan and 3 in British Columbia. These Canadian colonies began with 18 colonies founded in 1919. [4] [5] Map
The Manitoba government set aside the Mennonite East Reserve now in the Rural Municipality of Hanover and the Mennonite West Reserve now in the Rural Municipality of Rhineland and the Rural Municipality of Stanley for the new Russian Mennonite immigrants coming to the province beginning in 1874. [6] Most spoke Mennonite Low German. [7] (Map)
Mennonite communities originally part of the East Reserve, Manitoba include:
Mennonite communities originally part of the West Reserve, Manitoba include:
Mennonite communities originally part of the Scratching River Settlement, Manitoba include:
Saskatchewan settlements [8] (Map)
Early Alberta settlements began in La Crete, Alberta and Didsbury, Alberta 1901 [9] [10]
Early British Columbia settlements began in Yarrow, British Columbia and Abbotsford, British Columbia 1911 [9] [11]
Meaning: people coming directly from the United Kingdom, not English-speaking people from Ontario or Atlantic Canada.
Meaning: settlers from Eastern Canada, primarily Ontario, and mostly of British and Irish origins.
Many of the Jewish immigrants to Canada came from settlements in Eastern Europe, including Austria-Hungary and the Russian Empire (later the Soviet Union).
In Saskatchewan Doukhobors, numbering 7,500, settled in three blocks in the North-West Territories (now in Saskatchewan) from 1899 to 1918. They established 61 communal villages on 773,400 acres (3,130 km2). [16] (Map)
British Columbia (1908-1938) (Map)
Alberta
Ukrainian settlements with approximate date of founding (Map):
These include French Canadians from Quebec, French Americans, and Francophones from France, Belgium, and Switzerland.
Alberta
British Columbia
Manitoba
Saskatchewan
German settlement began in the prairie provinces in the 1890s and continued until the 1920s during the homesteading period. Some also came to the region after the end of World War II. Canadians of German ethnicity remain numerous in the prairie provinces. Most of these settlers were Catholics and Lutherans, with minorities of Mennonites and Baptists.
St. Joseph's Colony (Katharinental) was established from 1886 to 1904 in southern Saskatchewan. [24] [25]
St. Joseph's Colony (Josephstal) was established in 1905 in west-central Saskatchewan. [26] [27] [28] Villages in this Saskatchewan colony included
St. Peter's Colony in Saskatchewan. [29] founded in 1903 in Saskatchewan was 4,662 square kilometres (1,800 square miles) in size. [30] It included 50 townships; townships 35 to 40, ranges 18 to 22, and townships 37 to 41, ranges 23 to 26 of the Dominion Land Survey west of the 2nd Meridian. [31] 8,000 settlers had arrived in the colony by 1910 [32] and by 1930 it was home to 18,000 Roman Catholics. Most were German Catholics. [33] Between 1903 and 1925 parishes were established at
Some French settlements were founded by Francophone Métis from the Red River settlement in Manitoba. Many began as Métis hivernants buffalo hunting camps from the 1840s to the 1870s. [34] [35]
Hutterites, also called Hutterian Brethren, are a communal ethnoreligious branch of Anabaptists, who, like the Amish and Mennonites, trace their roots to the Radical Reformation of the early 16th century and have formed intentional communities.
Mountain Lake is a city in Cottonwood County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 2,104 at the 2010 census.
Russian Germans in North America are descended from the many ethnic Germans from Russia who emigrated to North America.
The Rural Municipality of Gimli is a rural municipality located in the Interlake Region of south-central Manitoba, Canada, on the western shore of Lake Winnipeg. It is about 75 kilometres (47 mi) north of the provincial capital Winnipeg. The rural municipality's population in the 2016 Canadian Census was 6,181, making it the 12th largest rural municipality by population. The RM of Gimli has an area of 318.75 km2 (123.07 sq mi), making it the sixth smallest rural municipality by area.
The Dominion Land Survey is the method used to divide most of Western Canada into one-square-mile (2.6 km2) sections for agricultural and other purposes. It is based on the layout of the Public Land Survey System used in the United States, but has several differences. The DLS is the dominant survey method in the Prairie provinces, and it is also used in British Columbia along the Railway Belt, and in the Peace River Block in the northeast of the province.
The Doukhobors or Dukhobors are a Spiritual Christian ethnoreligious group of Russian origin. They are known for their pacifism and tradition of oral history, hymn-singing, and verse. They reject the Russian Orthodox priesthood and associated rituals, believing that personal revelation is more important than the Bible. Facing persecution by the Russian government for their nonorthodox beliefs, many migrated to Canada between 1899 and 1938, where most currently reside.
The Christian Mennonite Conference, formerly known as the Chortitzer Mennonite Conference, is a small body of Mennonites in western Canada.
The Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches (CCMBC) is a Mennonite Brethren denomination in Canada. It is a member of the Mennonite World Conference and the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada.
The Russian Mennonites are a group of Mennonites who are the descendants of Dutch and North German Anabaptists who settled in the Vistula delta in West Prussia for about 250 years and established colonies in the Russian Empire beginning in 1789. Since the late 19th century, many of them have emigrated to countries which are located throughout the Western Hemisphere. The rest of them were forcibly relocated, so very few of their descendants currently live in the locations of the original colonies. Russian Mennonites are traditionally multilingual but Plautdietsch is their first language as well as their lingua franca. In 2014, there were several hundred thousand Russian Mennonites: about 200,000 live in Germany, 74,122 live in Mexico, 150,000 in Bolivia, 40,000 live in Paraguay, 10,000 live in Belize, tens of thousands of them live in Canada and the US, and a few thousand live in Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil.
Ukrainian Canadians are Canadian citizens of Ukrainian descent or Ukrainian-born people who immigrated to Canada.
Chortitza Colony was a volost, a subdivision of the Yekaterinoslav uezd within the Yekaterinoslav Governorate. During the times of Catherine the Great, the area was annexed by the Russian Empire after liquidation of the Zaporozhian Sich. It was granted to Plautdietsch-speaking settlers for colonization northwest of Khortytsia Island. The territory of the former colony is now split between the city of Zaporizhzhia and its adjacent Zaporizhzhia Raion, within Zaporizhia it is part of Voznesenskyi and Khortytskyi districts.
Iwan Pylypiw or Ivan Pylypow was one of the first Ukrainian immigrants to Canada in 1891–93, along with Vasyl Eleniak.
Molotschna Colony or Molochna Colony was a Russian Mennonite settlement in what is now Zaporizhzhia Oblast in Ukraine. Today, the central village, known as Molochansk, has a population less than 10,000. The settlement is named after the Molochna River which forms its western boundary. The land falls mostly within the Tokmatskyi and Chernihivskyi Raions. The nearest large city is Melitopol, southwest of Molochansk.
New Iceland is the name of a region on Lake Winnipeg in Manitoba where Icelandic explorers settled in 1875.
Rama is a village in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan within the Rural Municipality of Invermay No. 305 and Census Division No. 9. It is located 44 km west of Canora and 60 km east of Wadena at the intersection of Highway 5 and Highway 754.
According to a 2022 census, there were 74,122 Mennonites living in Mexico, the vast majority of which are established in the state of Chihuahua, followed by Campeche at around 15,000, with the rest living in smaller colonies in the states of Durango, Tamaulipas, Zacatecas, San Luis Potosí and Quintana Roo.
Christianity is the most adhered-to religion in Canada, with 19,373,330 Canadians, or 53.3%, identifying themselves as of the 2021 census. The preamble to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms refers to God. The French colonization beginning in the 17th century established a Roman Catholic francophone population in New France, especially Acadia and Lower Canada. British colonization brought waves of Anglicans and other Protestants to Upper Canada, now Ontario. The Russian Empire spread Orthodox Christianity in a small extent to the tribes in the far north and western coasts, particularly hyperborean nomads like the Inuit. Orthodoxy would arrive in mainland Canada with immigrants from the eastern and southern Austro-Hungarian Empire and western Russian Empire starting in the 1890s; then refugees from the Soviet Union, Eastern Bloc, Greece and elsewhere during the last half of the 20th century.
The Beaver Hills are a range of hills located in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan.
Old Colony Mennonites are the part of the Russian Mennonite movement that is descended from colonists who migrated from the Chortitza Colony in modern Ukraine near Zaporizhia to settlements in Canada. Theologically, Old Colony Mennonites are largely Conservative Mennonites.