Antique oil paintings of prairie fields, mountains, and garden flowers adorned the family homes our entire childhood. Even now large oils hang in my parents hallway and decorate their bedroom. Many of the oils and ceramics have been given to siblings and rest in their homes. Some carefully cleaned and reframed, proudly displayed, others, stacked one on top of the other in basements and attics. The artist of these paintings is A.E. Brown. She is my great great aunt on my moms side. Her birth name is Annie Everal Edmanson after her fathers sister named Annie Elizabeth. She was born on Dec 17 1886 in the small town of Melita in the southwestern corner of Manitoba. Her parents Robert William Edmanson and Mary Lavina Osborne both born in England arrived in Canada separately, Robert in 1856 and Mary in 1860. They met and married in Ontario. Their first child William was born in 1877. The family homesteaded and moved to Manitoba...
FREE LAND! - 160 Acres for $10 Until 1900 the CANADIAN WEST remained vastly underpopulated and under utilized and so the federal government began an intensive settlement program and marketing campaign offering cheap land and social and religious freedom. The homesteading of Canada was an organized and decisive movement which populated Canada and then managed the immigrants so they settled the areas where production of goods(mainly wheat, and other grains) was needed to fuel the burgeoning industrialization of central Canada and populate the western area of Canada in order to quell the United States claims at the time to the area. The HOMESTEAD System was developed for the three Prairie provinces in Canada, Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. It covers 200 million acres and is the Worlds Largest Serving grid laid down in a single integrated system and led to the creation of 1.25 million homesteads. And decisively to the creation of Canada a...