“I was born upon the prairie, where the wind blew free,
and there was
nothing to break the light of the sun.
I was born where there were no
enclosures,
and where everything drew a free breath."
the Great Comanche war chief, Ten Bears
the Great Comanche war chief, Ten Bears
Written by Cathern Agnes Harrison
Updated in Oct 2015 and Nov 2016
Was created with imagination and some fiction mingled with facts
Was created with imagination and some fiction mingled with facts
(Not the house in the story)
Wilfrid waited outside nervously pacing, for someone to let him know
when it was time for him to enter the sod house. He and his wife Mary had only
lived in this community for a few months and although folks were friendly and
helpful they didn’t really have many people they could count on at times like
this, because there just were not many folks around yet. A kindly neighbor had come and taken young
Nellie, their twenty month old daughter back to her home until it was safe to
bring the toddler back to her parents.
Wilfrid didn’t like being beholden to anyone as they just didn’t have
the resources to pay back good deeds yet but this was not a place for Nellie to
be right now.
Wilfrid and his wife Mary, had given up everything in their homeland in
the early spring of 1907, to start a new life in this country. It was hard work
for two people that had not been prairie farmers back home. They had given up what
seems to have been a privileged life to come to the ‘Land of Milk and Honey’, as
the recruitment poster called Canada.
Mary had worked back in England and Wales where she had been born but it was not as back-breaking work it was here and being heavy with baby made for
very tiring days, on top of having to do everything needed to keep the family
fed, clothed and clean as well as really for the upcoming Canadian Prairie winter.
Wilfrid also needed her help with the heavy outside chores from time to time. Plus there was young Jessie that need care as
well. All this with only the few tools
and necessities they were able to bring with them in one trunk. And what they
bought once they arrived at their destination.
The trip to get here back in
March had been long and difficult by boat, train and an ox drawn wagon. Mary
suffered with seasickness on the ship and had been thrown onto the floor of the
train when it derailed. Nellie who had
been in her mother’s arms, was found laying in the snow outside the train
squalling but otherwise unharmed. They all took it in stride carrying on to
their destination with hope.
Mary however, was not a very
strong person to have taken on the voyage let alone what was needed to set down
roots here but she was managing, Wilfrid thought.
The young family had survived their first half year. What the winter they would soon be expecting,
would bring was only to be guessed at he realized.
Wilfrid stopped pacing to listen did he heard what he was waiting
outside for? Yes there it was again,
this time much stronger, a baby wailed as if to say “I have arrived!”
Wilfrid didn’t wait to be called;
he hurried into the sod house to Mary’s side to meet his second child.
Standing by the bed, he
looked down on Mary and their baby son.
He was the first Harrison to
be born in the ‘Land of Milk and Honey’.
Dad (the
young boy) at a neighbor’s house
A
blizzard of posters and pamphlets, portraying the country as a land of milk and
honey, persuaded immigrants in the millions to come to Canada’s sparsely
populated West and become prairie farmers. What wasn’t mentioned were the sod
houses, backbreaking labour, regular droughts and long, killing winters.
That baby, Joseph Henry Harrison, was my father and he was born in
Saskatchewan, which had only become part of Canada two years before his birth.
In 1905 the same year
Saskatchewan joined Canada, Wilfrid and Mary were married in England.
They were lured to Canada by the
promises and glory that they could forge their way in a young, vast
Saskatchewan. After plans were made to
leave England behind and passage was booked, Mary discovered she was pregnant
with their second child.
Before the family moved to Quebec in 1924 five more children were born.
The reason the family moved had much to do with losing three years of crops due
to windstorms and drought.
Dad remembered his parents being broken heart, tears streaking down his
mother’s face as they watched their crops being destroyed by dust and wind for
the third time.
During WW I the constant need for grain had destroyed the prairie eco-cultural
system Prairie plants have a very deep
root system that holds the soil together, the grain crops had destroyed that so
to speak then when cattle and horse were left to roam at will after the war,
the soil could not hold up to the abuse.
Dad said his mother was never meant to be
a farmer’s wife that she was a lady. AND my grandfather joked about the Land of
Milk and Honey where you had to milk the cows to get the milk and fight the
bees for their honey…
Today (September 29, 2007),
Dad would have been 100.
He died in May 2000 at the
age of 92, at the time;
he was the eldest, longest
surviving member of the Harrison Clan.
Seventy-five plus members or so have been
added to the Mary and Wilfred Harrison Family Tree since they immigrated to
this great land of Canada one hundred years ago.
Wilfrid
Harrison 30 June 1880 – 7 November 1948
Mary
Agnes Morris 21 or 22 November 1880 – November 21 1971
My
Grandparents were married in Bolton Lancashire England 8 March 1905
Mary
Agnes was working nearby as a domestic servant at the Parsonage Nursery in
Horwich Lancashire.
Grandad is standing behind his father, James.
the Parsonage the Harrison home
Cannot imagine going from this to a sod house. I am extremely grateful to my grandparents for having done that and coming to make a life for all of us in the best country in the world. 
Children of Wilfrid and Mary Agnes
Nellie 1906-1990 Joseph Henry 1907
– 2000 Jessie 1909 - 2005
Jack (John) 1911 – 1983 Agnes 1914 – 1942 Edith May 1916 - 2012
Elizabeth Mary1921 – * two youngest are not in the photo
In
1924 the family moved from the Kamsack area northeast of Yorkton Saskatchewan, to
Ste Anne de Bellevue Quebec. My
grandfather worked at Macdonald College and the children attended Macdonald
School where some of the fourth generation children are going to high school
now. Dad and his brother Jack both ended
working at the collage too.
Eventually the family spread out around
Canada and the States, Dad being the only one to stay in Quebec, it is his
great-grandchildren that are now going to the school he attended when the family first
arriving in Quebec ninty-two years ago.The college, school and Ste Anne de Bellevue the town they are in has been in and out of my life now for over sixty year.
Found at
https://www.mcgill.ca/about/history/features/macdonald-college
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