A Lake For The Prairie

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] this earth of ours has many climates many geographies [Music] the granite mountains the polar ice [Music] [Music] the tropic jungle [Music] a barren desert [Applause] one animal alone has managed to survive in all of these to live in every extreme of climate the world affords the domesticated destroyer and adapter of other species [Applause] at the center of every continent however there lies one region which man has always favored the grasslands rich in nourishment for herds and crops alike [Music] but in cultivating the grasslands man has often failed to allow for a special characteristic of these regions and this failure has added thousands of square miles of desert to the surface of the earth North Africa for instance the vineyard and granary of Imperial Rome became the Libyan desert because this factor was not appreciated on all the grasslands of the world low rainfall is normal and in the long run will be the average condition [Music] on the North American continent the grasslands are the Great Plains covering parts of a dozen states down the center of the USA and in Canada the provinces of Alberta Saskatchewan and Manitoba [Music] until a hundred years ago low rainfall did not matter much to the few inhabitants of the North American Plains [Music] [Applause] the Indians lived off the Buffalo an antelope and the first traders who invaded the area did much the same [Music] but other societies coveted the West and gradually the game was slaughtered and the Indians and mateys subdued then the exploration of these areas for agriculture began in 1857 captain John Collison of the Royal Engineers wrote in his journal the South Saskatchewan flows through a region of arid Plains devoid of timber or pasture of good quality the sage and cactus abound and the whole of the scanty vegetation bespeaks and period climate but 25 years later and professor John McCone disagreed with him and gained considerable support what has hitherto been regarded as an arid plain contains much productive land the rainfall is sufficient and the extreme winter Frost's are calculated to contribute to the success of farming operation [Music] both cease painstaking explorers agreed that a vast fertile and promising belt of partially wooded parkland extended from the foothills of the Rockies north and east finally curving in an arc southward to where Winnipeg is today but below this heart Palliser insisted there was a triangle of short grass prairie which should never be cultivated in the words of Henry Hind another Explorer who agreed with him from the character of its soil and the aridity of its climate the region is permanently sterile and unfit for the abode of civilized man [Applause] [Music] [Applause] but pressure to build a new nation soon brushed these words aside [Applause] the railway rolled West bringing land hungry colonists from many different countries inside of 50 years even the short grass region the driest and windiest part of palaces arid triangle had been homestead and the top thick Prairie sod was laid open by the plough [Music] as soon as the settlers arrived they began trying to change conditions on the windy Plains planting a windbreak was usually their first move once they had put in a crop often the young trees died in the hot dry climate but the sodbusters persisted and many a farmstead looked more green and pleasant as the years went by small dams were thrown across the tiniest Creek or ravine though often they would fail to last out the first spring flood and during the runoff mo areas were flooded so that they would grow more hay on their way across the prairies the railways built many a small dam to make sure of water for their steam engines some of these reservoirs are still being used by the villages and towns which grew up around [Applause] the few lakes which did exist in the dry region were dammed at their outlets as the population mounted to maintain levels of supply for cities growing near bar [Applause] and occasionally over the years railway and land companies promoted commercial irrigation schemes by agreement with the government for the use of river water but on the whole early attempts to control moisture were spotty and spasmodic generally people learn to put up with the dryness or move away those who had an ample well with the envy of their neighbors but drinkable underground water was hard to find [Music] [Applause] NEADS of the household and the few head of stock were often bald for many miles and rationed carefully in the lonely farmhouses [Music] but what grain you could grow weight of top milling quality matured in 115 days and with any kind of a break for rain the yield was high [Music] [Applause] 200 million bushels 400 million bushels 540 million bushels from the three prairie provinces in 1928 the quarter-section farms became sections the elevator villages grew along the railways land values boom and the outlines of great cities were surveyed and marked on the optimistic plate [Music] [Applause] but depression and the dry winds of the thirties blew most of these dreams away [Music] indebtedness and relief costs soared by the hundreds of millions of dollars on the prairies as the rich topsoil dried out and gradually became drifted Sam the farms and cities of the plains would not support the hundreds of thousands of people who were affected [Music] [Applause] the Great Depression hung heavy over the whole nation but nowhere was the sight of defeat more common than on the prairies the region suffered a major exodus the Prairie farm rehabilitation act of 1935 was recognition by Parliament that this was a national concern since then in cooperation with provinces municipalities and individuals much has been learned about the nature of the basic problem and many remedial measures have been undertaken [Music] first the accuracy of some of palaces observations was admitted farming in certain areas and on certain types of land had been a mistake [Applause] it was better that these should now be regressed and reserved for use as pasture the people still there were aided to settle on more promising ground in their new role as community pastures these lands could enable other farmers to run more stock and thus diversify their operations in the late 30s the rains gradually returned and men began to cultivate again but not just in the same old ways the lesson had been painful but it had taken effect the practice of summer fallow was extended and trash cover was now left on the surface so that the Sun could no longer bake the earth to powder on Hindi [Music] [Applause] in the old days miles of parallel furrows had abetted soil drifting to an enormous extent now a strip cropping alternate year rotation and plowing to new patterns began to counter the effects of wind erosion [Music] the topsoil stayed where it belonged and retained the moisture better than it had before but the overall quantity of moisture remained the real heart of the problem [Music] the melting snows of winter are a prime source of water for the Prairie fields since there is no adequate underground supply for much of the area the spring runoff each year is when most of the summers moisture must be caught during the 40s and 50s the enormous spaces where no streams exist became dotted with artificial ponds scooped out in low areas to hold water through the hot summit today over 70,000 of these dugouts serve individual farmers on 10,000 little creeks and coolies we copied the early settlers and built small dams and we knew better today how to build them and maintain them against spring floods and stagnation on thousands of perennial streams rivers which flow for part of the year large community reservoirs were set up serving whole districts for stock watering and were practical for partial irrigation at the same time these were usually big enough to be useful for flood and erosion control on their own watersheds and old irrigation schemes which had been commercial failures although successful to a large extent agriculturally were taken over and developed by the federal and provincial governments this was especially true in southern Alberta using the waters of the bow river and another tributary of the South Saskatchewan the st. Mary's [Music] [Applause] [Music] in addition to renewing the existing irrigation works many more had to be built [Music] [Music] [Applause] since 1940 old canals ditches and Overland siphons have been systematically renovated and new ones constructed to form a vast integrated water control system in these areas [Applause] [Music] [Music] today dozens of major concrete structures linked with numerous inland reservoirs and connected to hundreds of miles of distribution canals serve over a million acres for irrigation farming in alberta alone [Music] these developments have gradually shown what irrigation can do to stabilize prairie farming where land conditions warrant and local populations are prepared to make the necessary adjustments [Music] guaranteed forage for livestock and in rotation specialized crops such as sugar beets remove the old instability of a one crop economy [Music] and so since the thirties Western experience has been accumulating and farm practices changing to meet modern conditions [Music] but recent decades have greatly changed the rest of the nation also [Music] industry has developed enormous lis across Canada since the start of World War two the mechanization of our society has accelerated and the machines which man has created have come to influence his life in many fundamental ways [Music] great manufacturing enterprises and the cities which surround them are now employing more and more of our workers the Canadian nation is becoming urban complex highly industrialized this diversification of the economy has been occurring on the grasslands also they have many resources besides their fertile soil and these are beginning to be exploited the drive for a modern way of life is just as strong on the farms and cities of the plains as in other parts of the country but inevitably this multiplies the demand for water [Music] industry in most Prairie cities is already straining the supply to the limit with nothing left over for expansion on many and many a farm the supply for house and crop use are still to be pumped filtered and hauled for considerable distances [Music] [Applause] and despite strict conservation the specter of seven dry years such as we got in the thirties still haunts palaces trying [Music] so finally the tapping of another mighty source has begun the Saskatchewan River system the fourth largest in Canada rises in the Columbia Icefield of the Rocky Mountains and flows by a Lake Winnipeg and the Nelson River - empty finally into Hudson's Bay on the way it drains almost all of the Canadian Prairies below the 54th parallel the North branch is for the most part confined to the fertile parkland north of Palliser's triangle but the South Branch cuts down from the foothills right across the short grass prairie containing in its watershed over 65,000 square miles almost 42 million acres and the water which each year rolls unused down its broad valley is at least twice as much as that in all the ponds dams dugouts and reservoirs built to date it is as important to the dry plains of Western Canada as the Tigris and the Euphrates were to Mesopotamia and the Nile to Egypt the plan calls for a main damn-near outlook and a secondary damn-near elbow saskatchewan which together would restrain over 8 million acre feet of water initial construction will cost at least a hundred million dollars possibly as much again will be spent in later development of facilities the total split between the federal and provincial governments the end result will be a tremendous stimulus to every aspect of prairie life and a solid basis for future development of the region [Music] [Music] started in 1959 and expected to be seven years under construction a huge main dam is built not of concrete but of birth fill because of foundation conditions at the site [Music] [Music] [Music] there's almost 50 million cubic yards of Earth clay gravel and rock to be dug and moved back down before the job is done [Music] they come from Indian Head Moosejaw and swift current unity gravel burg and dal lake from shun oven willow branch and maple creek to see for themselves what the diesels are doing fathers and grandfathers dream great dreams of what this country would be like if only it had water and they can see it all in their minds I today as clear as anything they can see 500 million kilowatt hours a year to Electrify Prairie industry and Prairie towns and prairie farms they can see developing communities all across southern Saskatchewan where people don't have to worry about how much is left in the town reservoir today [Applause] they can see 475 miles of shoreline for parks and boating and fishing and swimming [Music] [Applause] they can see canning factories and contracts for crops that a man knows he can deliver because water will be pumped onto his fields whenever he needs it [Applause] [Music] they can see fodder to full crops over the year the feed and fatten the animals even when it's dry weather [Music] and they can see new car goes rolling east coupled with the traditional livestock and great [Applause] the elevator towns will be sending their manufacturers to market as well as their raw material objects [Music] [Applause] [Music] it's still just a dusty valley but the shape of what the machines are doing gets clearer every month [Music] it won't be too long now till it matches the model standing at the top of the hill [Music] it won't be too long now till that dusty Valley is a lake for the Prairie a blue lake 140 miles long which will never dry up as long as snowfalls in the Rocky Mountains [Music] [Applause] and when all that water goes to work the 20th century will have proved that captain palace' was wrong and the great potential wealth of the grasslands will finally be open to the nation [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you