Canada's story - the race to populate a nation

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...

Nicholas Kelly - Paternal Grandfather Our grandfather Nicholas Kelly was born  in Buenos Aries, Argentina on April 4th 1890. Baptized at Nuestra Senora del Pilar, Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Capital Federal, Argentina on May 17, 1891. He is the father of our father Peter Kelly and is the first born child of Irish Immigrants James Foley Kelly and Claire Mary O'Shaughnessy.   His parents moved to Argentina separately.  James was educated as a "bookkeeper" and moved to join a friend who was in the newspaper business. Clare and James met and married. Nicholas Kelly was born in 1890.  Shortly after his baptism the young family moved to Toronto Canada - as family stories say - "the intense heat in South America was detrimental to the fathers health..." Toronto at the time was a bustling city of about 200,000 people. Churches dominated the skyline and paddle wheelers ploughed the waters. In 1894 Nicks little sister Clare was born and by 1900 the family once...

1st Canadian Mounted Rifles   Robert Frederick Nott Davis - Regimental # 114155         Brother to our Grandmother-Winnifreth 1st Canadian Mounted Rifles Born on Valentines Day - Feb 14th 1896 in St Anns Bristol England. Missing in action during spring fighting in Belgium 1916.  Presumed to have died on May 6, 1916, memorialized at Sanctuary Woods, Yypres, 1916.   Robert Frederick Nott Davis is a great uncle to me.  He is our Grannies (on Dads side) older brother by just 1 year.   His parents are Florence Amelia Nott and George Robert Davis - both born in Bristol England. According to the census in England his father worked as an antiques dealer and their mom as a schoolmistress, it seems the family lived on the school grounds at Chekendon School in Oxfordshire. The year after his birth, a little sister came along named Winnifreth Councel (our grandmother).  Sometime after this birth the family moved to Somerset where ...