Assignment 5;Its so cold,

hello everyone,
It is really cold, like wow! You walk out side, and in a second your eyes are watering and you can see your warm breath. Well, can you even imagine what the "Early Canadians," had to go through to even stay alive in the cold winters we have here in Canada!? Well since you don't know, I'm going to tell you :)

I did some research on saskschool.ca, and when I read the paragraph on the website, I learned first of all, some of the reasons they moved to Canada in the first place.

Here's a few;
-The government had control on their way of life
- Men were forced to serve in the army
- There were no jobs/low-paying jobs
- Many were very poor/barely made enough to survive
- Farmers wanted to own there own land
- City's were dirty, and over powered

The Government of Canada, were offering free land to people who wanted/could move to the prairies. People liked that idea because that means a good opportunity for owning your own land, and starting a new life, and for some that means making some money, and buying some new land or starting up a new business.

When they got to Canada, they were happy about what the conditions were there,though, little did they know, that very soon going to change. It would be freezing cold in a few months and would have to find ways to keep warm and survive.They faced a lot problems moving to Canada, and here are a few.

So Basically there were people living on a strip of farmland along rivers, so they could grow there crops and such. As we know the winter is terribly cold, and you don't want to be out there for too long, but too bad for the Canadian settlers, they obviously had to build there homes. Don't get me wrong there was a lot of timber there to use, though to prepare the timber was the real problem. First they had to get the wood, fell the wood, trim the wood, cut the wood into strips, then carry it to the place they wanted to build there house/shack. That's a lot of work especially when it feels like its -100.

Even when they were done all that, they still had a hard time keeping warm! If it wasn't for the fur trade, they wouldn't be able to keep warm in there house, that was usually made out of field stone/sod/wood, with just holes for windows! Lucky for them they got the fur trade because man oh man, if they didn't have those furs to keep them warm at night they would have to live on one warm bath a month! If things were as bad as this, why did people want to stay in this horrible place!? Well supposedly, before they came they were expecting way worse then what they had in Europe!

Now talking about my family, that was a different story. What I hear from the grandmother, my family a long time ago, supposedly settled in Canada, sometime in the late 1800's. My great, great grandmothers family came from Ireland, and my great, great grandfathers family came from France and settled out west and went into the grain business, then after many years they settled in Montreal. They came from France because they were persecuted, and were not aloud to live there anymore, while on my great, great grandmothers family had to move from Ireland because back then times were very difficult in Ireland and back then it was just easier to move to Canada were you were free to think what you want/be who you want to be.

Now don't you feel lucky that you have windows that open and close, and heating and air conditioning!? We will never know/experience what they went through so I believe that we are lucky to have had these relatives who brought us to Canada. A free, safe place. :)

Here are some of the websites I used;
http://www.saskschools.ca/~gregory/settlers1.html

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0006303

http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/premierescommunautes/jeunesse/021013-2051.6-e.html

http://americanhistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_pioneer_homestead