The city of Lloydminster is unique because it straddles the border of Alberta and Saskatchewan.
It is a community with two identities located almost exactly halfway between Edmonton and Saskatoon, Right in the middle of the city, you will find a line of tall pillars rising 30 metres in the air.
On the west side you have Wild Rose Country, my home province of Alberta.
On the east side you have the Land of the Living Skies As you drive from one province to another; you may ask why exactly is this town split in half?
The answer is simple, but it goes back 120 years to a former clergyman and an ill planned settlement in the West.
I’m Craig Baird, this is Canadian History Ehx and today we are setting up our tents on the open prairie, staying warm in the chilly breeze and learning about The Barr Colonists!
Isaac Montgomery Barr always wanted to do something great.
Born in Hornby, Canada West, now Halton Hills, Ontario, on March 2, 1847, he was the son of two Irish immigrants and religion was always present.
His father, William, was a Presbyterian minister, while his mother Catharine Baird, tended the home.
and if you’re wondering…, as far as I know, I am not related to her.
When Barr was ten, his mom Catharine passed away.
Throughout his childhood and into his early teens, the teacher at his rural school was his father. Religion dominated every facet of his life, so it’s no surprise young Barr only ever wanted to be a preacher. Even during childhood games, he played the role of a preacher.
In 1868, Barr went to Huron College in London, Ontario with the goal of becoming an Anglican cleric. Two years later, he transferred to the University of Toronto to continue his studies.
That same year, he married Eliza Weaver, with whom he had three children.
Upon his graduation from university, Barr began his ministerial career, first in Exeter and then Woodstock, Ontario.
According to his biographer Helen Reid, Barr didn’t last long at his first few posts due to a perceived lack of humour, his belief in evolution and the fact he was unwilling to accept lower wages.
In 1875, he realized that to move ahead in his career he had to become a bit more flexible. After he apologized for being inflexible and pledged to church leaders his belief in the teachings of the church, he was sent out west to work as a missionary at the Prince Albert Settlement in modern-day Saskatchewan.
That post lasted only a few weeks. Barr left his position, without permission.
He told his superiors that he had received word that his wife and daughter were ill back in Ontario. Whether that excuse was true or not is lost to history.
Barr next went to Teeswater, Ontario but lost his job there after he denied the doctrine of the fall of man. This is a Christian belief that Adam and Eve’s disobedience to God led to the fall of humanity from a state of innocence to a world of sin, death, and misery.
He apologized again, but by now his superiors were not having it.
With little options in Canada, he went to the United States where he spent the next twenty years where he married and divorced three times during that time.
Eventually, Barr realized that being a minister and preacher was not for him.
Then his son died in 1901 from enteric fever during the Boer War in South Africa
That’s when Barr decided to travel to the land of his ancestors, England, where he found a new direction.
Enter into our story, Cecil Rhodes the founder of De Beers, who built his fortune stealing land and resources from Africa.
By his early 20s, Cecil Rhodes was a millionaire who made his fortune by purchasing diamond mines in South Africa for next to nothing and was able to corner the world diamond market then founded De Beers in 1888.
Two years later, he became the Prime Minister of Cape Colony, modern-day South Africa.
And let me tell you, Rhodes was a real piece of work.
He used his colonial political power to take land from Africans, which he then sold for huge profits, while also making it more difficult for locals to vote in elections.
If you want to trace the roots of apartheid, you are going to find Rhodes at the center.
Rhodes also believed that African archeological sites like Great Zimbabwe were built by European civilizations, not Africans.
He used part of his fortune to establish the Rhodes Scholarship and not surprisingly, there are efforts underway to change the name of that scholarship due to his controversial views on race.
In England, Isaac Barr heard about Rhodes and his efforts to establish a purely British colony in South Africa.
Barr soon believed in spreading British influence around the world and was inspired to establish his own colony.
Barr had found a new path for his life.
Without any planning, which would come to plague his future colonial schemes, Barr hopped on a ship bound for South Africa in January 1902.
Rhodes had no idea who he was, or that he was even traveling to South Africa.
By the time Barr arrived, Rhodes was in terrible health and died only two months later.
Now Barr was in South Africa without a job.
He believed in Rhodes’ colonization efforts, but he thought that Western Canada could be the perfect place for a new British colony instead of South Africa.
He saw Boer War veterans struggle in England, and he believed they could find prosperity under his colonization scheme.
The Canadian government was also opening lands in the Prairies on territory ceded from First Nations in the numbered treaties.
Barr’s plan was to create a colony with 25 families who had an agricultural background. He wanted British farmers and tradespeople, and no foreigners so non-British subjects need not apply.
He began with a letter writing and public speaking campaign in England to encourage people to join.
Barr stressed that people could leave poverty and Britain behind to live on their own estate in Canada.
He added that they would have the chance, and I quote,
“to build the Empire by planting a colony of pure British culture in the empty territory.”
He also wrote a pamphlet printed by the Canadian Commissioner of Immigration, W.T.R. Preston.
While Barr was doing this, another British man was writing letters to newspapers urging for greater British colonization in Western Canada.
His name was George Exton Lloyd.
Born in England in 1861, George Lloyd arrived in Canada in 1881 and studied theology at the University of Toronto.
Like Barr, George Lloyd was drawn to religion.
After he graduated, Lloyd joined the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada.
In 1885, he fought in the North West Resistance in Western Canada.
At the Battle of Cut Knife, which was a resounding defeat against the Cree and Assiniboine, Lloyd distinguished himself by providing cover fire to protect Edward Acheson.
Lloyd was wounded in the battle and Acheson became the Dean Acheson’s father.
If the name sounds familiar it’s because Dean Acheson became the Secretary of State for the United States and was one of the creators of NATO. He was also a key advisor to John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
It is a bit of a stretch, but Lloyd protecting Edward Acheson may have helped prevent nuclear war 80 years later.
After the resistance ended in the summer of 1885, Lloyd went to Winnipeg where he became ordained.
Then he traveled to Rothesay, New Brunswick with his wife Marion, where he started the school Rothesay College for Boys.
He returned to England in 1900 and began a letter writing campaign for British settlement of the west.
Over the course of two years, he gave 147 sermons and spoke at 700 meetings about the subject.
One letter, published on September 22, 1902, he stated,
“It grieves me to see what a fine British province is now being settled so largely by Americans and foreigners. I am not a capitalist, or I would soon take out a few thousand of good British blood to settle upon these fine farming lands. I mean take some of those who are now treading on each other’s heels in the old country, scrambling for a living.”
This is where our two protagonists’ cross paths.
Isaac Barr came across Lloyd’s letters and saw an ally. Barr reached out and the two men met at Lloyd’s home in London.
Lloyd felt Barr’s plan was the best option and the two joined forces, but they could not have been more different.
While Lloyd was rigid, meticulous and focused on details, Barr randomly chased ideas with little worry about execution.
Barr also enjoyed alcohol, while Lloyd was steadfast against it.
An Odd Couple who was going to lead a group of British settlers to the middle of the Canadian Prairies.
With both Lloyd and Barr now campaigning, people signed up in droves to be part of their colonization scheme helped by the fact that Barr made it seem like living in Canada and farming was simple.
He wrote in one letter,
“Agriculture on the prairies is simple. The work not very hard.”
In his pamphlets and letters, he gave the impression that fruit trees grew where the colony would be located, and that timber was accessible because it could be rafted down the river from Edmonton.
He added that a good road existed between the colony’s location and the railroad.
He also wrote that it was sometimes cold, but that the climate was invigorating and enjoyable.
As you can imagine…None of this was true.
I live a few hours west of the location where the colony was established.
I can promise you that not only do fruit trees not grow anywhere near there, but the winters are far from invigorating.
I would describe them as bone-chilling and a cold so intense it robs you of your breath when you step outside.
The climate is downright contemptuous of human life.
Regardless, Barr and Lloyd pressed on.
Barr traveled ahead of the future colonists in September 1902 then met with railway executives and government officials and chose the site for his new colony.
That’s right, the land he had sold as idyllic in England hadn’t been selected UNTIL he arrived in Canada.
It was a plot of land, 300 kilometres west of Saskatoon and 300 kilometres east of Edmonton.
He told officials he was familiar with the North-West Territories, citing his time as a missionary in Prince Albert, which was only 250 kilometres further east from where Barr wanted to establish his colony.
As you might be gathering Barr was fast and loose with facts.
He left out that he had only lived in Prince Albert for a few weeks and that he had not been back in TWENTY years.
Some in the government were enthusiastic about Barr’s plans and one official named James Smart stated,
“He is very clever, and I am inclined to think that he probably stands a good chance of making a success of his work. “While others, like W.J. White, the Acting Superintendent of Immigration, called his pamphlets nothing more than propaganda and didn’t think he would be successful.
Barr got verbal agreements from shipping companies and government officials stating their support, but commitments were not carried out to completion, mostly because of Barr’s disorganization. He also didn’t make concrete plans for the colonizers’ travel from Saskatoon to the final location, which had to be on foot.
Worried about Barr’s ability to pull off the colony scheme, the federal government established rest sites along the route from Saskatoon to the colony.
They also hired instructors to teach the colonists, many of whom had no farming experience, how to farm on their new homesteads.
A land agent and surveyor were brought in to assist new arrivals.
The government was not doing this out of the goodness of its heart, if anyone died, it could impact immigration and discourage future settlers from traveling to Western Canada.
When Barr returned to England in late-1903, he formulated plans to get colonists across the Atlantic.
He established various syndicates to provide the colonists with everything they needed to homestead and cover the cost of travelling by ship for people, livestock and baggage.
It all came with a hefty markup.
Barr purchased items in bulk at discounted rates and sold those items for a higher price.
That way he could inject much needed funds into his scheme and make a tidy profit for himself.
Originally Barr planned to limit the scheme to a manageable 500 settlers.
But greed got the better of him and he opened more spots.
By the time everything was ready to go, 1,962 people had signed up to his colony scheme.
Of those, only 22 per cent had any farming experience, the rest were from the city.
They hoped to escape pollution, crime and low-paying, dangerous jobs.
They saw farming and the Canadian open air as a salvation, and Barr’s omission of difficulties only enticed them more.
Barr hired George Flamank as a secretary and Christina Helberg as his typist to help organize the colonist scheme.
Reverend George Lloyd was joined by his wife and their five children.
As spring approached in 1903, the colonists said their goodbyes, loaded up their earthly possessions and prepared for a journey to a new home.
But as the first ships left England Barr realized he had bitten off more than he could chew.
On March 31, 1903, the SS Lake Manitoba, named after a water, they had never heard of in Canada, left Liverpool.
Passengers said goodbye to their homeland as they faced west and a new life as farmers.
There were almost 2,000 colonists aboard a ship meant for 700 soldiers and livestock.
As they went below, they found the walls had been painted bright white and appeared clean, but as the trip progressed and waves battered the ship l the paint flaked off to reveal a layer of manure caking the walls.
If that weren’t bad enough conditions were difficult.
Passengers got seasick, water was stale, and they were cramped.
Potatoes served were rotten, meat was so tough it could barely be chewed, and a clean dish was rare.
Colonist Ivan Crossley said,
“We didn’t die but we damn near starved to death.”
Some people were so sick they couldn’t even leave their bunk.
One colonist later wrote,
“Those who had recovered would lean out of their bunks to read in the dim light. They soon learned, however, to pull their heads back in a hurry when a seasick mate in an upper bunk shouted ‘DUCK!’”
Eventually, there was a 15-centimetre-thick layer of sawdust on the floor to sop up all the vomit from the voyage.
And if conditions were cramped, they soon got more so as the colony grew when a baby was born during the passage.
As you can imagine colonists were getting irritated on the voyage and in particular with the man in charge.
Barr had a habit of drinking heavily, and spending hours alone in his cabin with his typist Christina Helberg, which offended the passengers and Reverend Lloyd.
Barr did what he could to limit the growing unrest.
Every morning and afternoon, he gave lectures on what could be expected when they made landfall in Canada.
He answered questions, and in the evening, he held religious services.
However, some passengers were already turning to Reverend Lloyd as their leader.
A mutiny of sorts was afoot, and the cabin fever wasn’t helping.
Fights broke out between the men.
One man was even pushed down the stairs and broke his leg.
To calm the unrest, Barr stood on a box in the dining area to tell everyone he was doing his best to get them better food.
While he spoke, someone threw a biscuit about thick and hard as a rock at him.
It hit him in the face and fell off the box.
Colonist Harry Pick wrote,
“It speaks well for British love of law and order to record that only 11 fights, seven mutinies, three riots and 22 violent interviews with Barr occurred during the voyage.”
They docked in Saint John, New Brunswick on April 11, 1903, and passengers were happy to get off the cramped and foul-smelling ship.
Once they disembarked, colonists were inspected for a smallpox vaccination scar. These scars were about the size of a coin on the upper arm.
The inspection was important because a century ago, smallpox was a serious disease that killed millions every year.
Unfortunately, some of the colonists were seen pressing a coin hard against their arm before a doctor examined them, to mimic the smallpox vaccination mark.
After the smallpox inspections, the settlers waited for days for their luggage to be released from customs.
Everything had to be inspected before it could travel to its final destination.
Barr told the colonists that transportation had been taken care of, and many colonists brought far too much with them.
One man had over a ton of baggage.
There were huge piles of furniture, jewellery, and the latest technology such as gramophones and bicycles. Even bathtubs were brought, along with mountains of books and half a dozen pianos.
The luggage was placed in freight sheds, with zero organization.
A chest belonging to a family could be 50 metres away from another chest owned by them.
There was so much cargo that it was nearly impossible to walk between items.
While the passengers waited to leave, Barr’s greed grew larger and did himself no favours.
He arranged to buy 8,000 loaves of bread and sold them at double the price, at which point the colonists lost their tempers and Barr vanished.
The colony scheme had grown far too large for him to handle, and it was easier to just disappear than deal with the problems he had created.
Lloyd stepped up as the de-facto leader and he went to the Canadian Pacific Railway to get the customs inspection waived so that the 2,000 colonists and their tons of cargo could depart Saint John.
He also handed out blankets for free that Barr had intended to sell.
Finally, after days of waiting, the colonists begin their journey to Saskatoon from New Brunswick.
They left on four trains that had been set aside for them by the CPR and the last train was about to leave the station Barr reappeared, quite drunk and screaming at Lloyd about the blankets.
Thankfully he was smart enough avoid the colonist by taking a regular CPR train which also provided him with more comfort.
It seemed like his scheme was still on, and that he would continue to reap the benefits…. for now.
Traveling across Canada was easier than traveling across the ocean, but not by much.
Tired colonists were angry over the slow pace and frequent stops plus the accommodations were basic to say the least.
While tourist cars had pillows, curtains and bedding, colonist cars had nothing, but seats One colonist wrote,
“The entire coach seated eighty-four passengers. At night, the seat pulled together forming a sleeping place for two persons and the roof portion above pulled down making another berth for two … At the end of each coach was a small apartment furnished with a stove for heating water and warming up food. Wash rooms and lavatories for both men and women were also provided. There were no mattresses for the berths and no privacy if you wished to undress when going to bed.”
As they headed west the press were there to greet the colonists.
At the time, the country was dealing with an influx of Doukhobors, a religious group from Russia which had been welcomed at first, but soon many Canadians turned on them.
They were disliked simply because they kept to themselves, were pacifists and had a communal way of living.
If you want to learn more about the Doukhobors, check out my episode from 2023.
Because of the influx of Doukhobors many in the press felt a large group of British settlers were the kind of people Canada needed, and so they praised them in newspapers.
The Toronto News reported,
“Rosy-cheeked English farmers, sinewy and graceful and with a glitter of gaiety and intelligence about their eyes. They filed through into the platform yard, to carry with them into the unknown West the destiny of a nation. The hands of the West’s cradle will be strong enough to rule the world of Canada in a few years.”
The Manitoba Free Press stated the new arrivals were a fine-looking lot, above the average, manly, clean and intelligent.
When trains arrived in Winnipeg 400 settlers disembarked and abandoned the colony scheme to work on local homesteads and gain farming experience needed to succeed without Barr.
The rest continued on and three weeks after leaving Liverpool the colonists arrived in Saskatoon on April 17.
A band was there to greet them by playing God Save The King.
Then the Colonization Agent for the federal government, Wes Speers, gave a speech where he told the colonists they belonged to a race whose sons never turned back from trouble.
He then said.
“I have a vision of teeming millions in the great valley of the West where you are going, and you are the forerunners. You will not be disappointed. The valley contains the richest land in the Dominion and the Government has provided you with shelter here and will see you safely settled. March westward ho!”
What greeted the British colonists was less than what they had hoped for, remember these were mostly city folk that had been sold on a dream.
Saskatoon today is a booming city with a population of 266,000 people, in central Saskatchewan about two hours north of the provincial capital Regina.
But back in 1903, it was a small frontier town of 100 people.
When they arrived most of the colonists were ushered to live in what was called Canvas Town, a tent city erected by the government prior to their arrival.
Barr had ordered tents but in typical fashion they had been late in arriving.
The colonists were not used to such rustic accommodations.
In England they were used to stone buildings and cobblestone roadways that had been there for a thousand years.
Saskatoon had only one building, the Windsor Hotel and instead of cobblestones, it had just one muddy street going through the centre of town.
A day after their arrival, the colonists’ baggage arrived, jammed into 18 train cars with no rhyme or reason.
Barr also arrived alongside the baggage and begged the large crowd for patience.
When they revolted against him, he panicked and said that if anyone rushed the baggage cars, the North West Mounted Police would shoot them.
The empty warning did nothing to discourage them, and the huge crowd then ran to claim their items in a melee and fights broke out.
The pandemonium continued for hours until order was finally restored.
As the day came to an end, the colonists looked west from their tents and saw a fiery glow in the horizon.
But it was not the setting sun, instead it was a fire burning across the prairies.
One colonist wrote,
“We gape and wonder, for we have not imagined anything like this. Are we, too, to be immolated like the rebellious children of Israel. But the old-timers reassure us. The village road will act as a firebreak. For the moment, at least, we will be spared the ravages of nature in the great North West.”
The colonists had not yet reached their final destination and for a week they stayed in Saskatoon gathering supplies and settling affairs before their final push.
Due to the high demand and tales of wealth, local merchants charged high rates for equipment and food.
But the colonists only really blamed Barr, and it wasn’t t completely misplaced anger.
Barr had demanded that he receive 10 percent commission on all goods sold by merchants.
He also bought up all the oats in town at 40 cents a bushel, then sold them for a dollar.
He bought horses, livestock, equipment and wagons, and charged 20 to 100 percent more than the going rate.
The horses Barr sold were too old to make the journey west, but he tried to pass them off as younger.
One colonist wrote,
“They weren’t supposed to be over nine years of age, but I know some of those animals must have been with Noah when he came out of the ark.”
In response to the price gouging a mass meeting was held that Barr tried to avoid.
The Colonization Agent for the federal government, Wes Speers, dragged him to the meeting being held in a tent filled with angry settlers who berated Barr and accused him of trying to profit off their misery and claimed he was sitting on a throne of lies.
Barr was thrown out after he told the crowd it was nobody’s business what he did.
He ran back in and jumped onto the platform where he told them he had not made a cent in profits and called the settlers liars.
In response, 140 colonists petitioned the Member of the North West Legislative Assembly James Clinkskill, for help.
A few days later Clinkskill tried to speak to Barr while in the restaurant tent.
Once again, Barr showed he could not handle any sort of criticism.
He shook his fist at Clinkskill and called him a dirty scoundrel.
He ordered Clinkskill to leave the tent and with no resolution, the meeting broke up.
By now reporters were caught wind of the situation and realized that the settlers were far from the expert farmers that had been advertised by Barr.
The Toronto News wrote of their naivete “Women who spend their time in dressing and kissing ugly little pug dogs talk of going out to earn the money the first year by working in the cornfields, quite blind to the fact that there can be no cornfields there until they sow the first crop in 1904.”
A local farmer overseeing the government’s horses stated that not one man in 20 among them even knew how to hitch a horse.
Some had to use pocket charts or draw on the horses with chalk to know where the straps were supposed to go.
One of the few colonists with farming experience, Paul Hordern, wrote later that the number of true farmers could be counted on a single hand.
He smartly chose to remain in the Saskatoon area, taking up a farm south of the growing community.
He and his family prospered in their new home, and Hordern lived on that property until the day he died in 1983.
For the rest of the settlers, time finally came for them to leave Saskatoon.
That’s when government agent Wes Speers discovered that 200 of them were completely destitute and had no money.
He arranged for them to work on the railway in Prince Albert and Moose Jaw.
For everyone else, the next leg of the trip would be heading further west on foot for 300 kilometres to their destination and new home.
It was a free-for-all and people left whenever they were ready, barely knowing exactly where they were going.
One group went ahead of the rest and got lost, their ox vanished in a usually thick bog known as a muskeg.
In despair they wandered back to Saskatoon three days later, half-starved.
The first official group left on April 23, the last on May 5.
A long string of wagons stretched into the horizon.
But soon after from Saskatoon, at least a dozen wagons could be seen trapped in the mud.
Most residents were sure this motley crew of urban settlers would never reach their destination, and their bones would be bleached by the sun on the open prairie for years to come.
These dark thoughts were far from Stanley Rackham’s mind.
He had wanted to leave on the first day but the wagon he had purchased had been given to someone else before he could get it.
More wagons arrived the next day and acquired one, along with an ox.
He left on April 24 and by 4 p.m., he was stuck in a bog.
Thankfully, a Russian immigrant lived nearby. The kind of immigrant Barr and Lloyd did not want in their colony, but he helped Rackham get his cart out of the mud.
It wouldn’t be the last time immigrants deemed “undesirable “helped the settlers.
Colonists ignored warnings not to overload wagons with more than 450 kilograms of goods, the limit of what oxen could haul.
Some loaded over 650 kilograms on wagons, and they were so overloaded that women and children would have to walk for the entire distance.
Because of the overloading when wagons hit any sort of mud, they sank deep into it and forced settlers to unload everything to get them out before reloading and continuing on.
It was an exhausting exercise.
William Hutchinson was one of the last ones to depart Saskatoon, while on ship crossing. the Atlantic, he met with some old-timer farmers who told him that when he reached Saskatoon he should wait.
They cleverly surmised that waiting would allow the ground to firm up once everyone else left and goods would be cheaper once demand went down. His trip was a cakewalk compared to the others.
For those who had departed their bad luck would be made worse by one of the coldest springs on record.
Despite it being May, the ponds still had an inch of ice on them and a bitter cold wind blew, freezing colonists not dressed for the weather.
At the midway point of the journey and East of Battleford, they reached the imposing Eagle Creek Ravine.
It loomed and appeared like a nearly impassable barrier.
The ravine was eight kilometres wide and the river at the bottom was higher than usual due to extra spring runoff.
This meant that colonists had to get down the ravine wall, cross the river and climb back up on the other side before they continued their endless walk West.
Very few wagons had breaks and as the colonists descended the slope became littered with the wreckage of wagons and cargo.
Only a few locked the rear wheels with chains, which helped slow down the wagons.
After that almost insurmountable task they had to cross the water, then climb up the other steep side. It was extremely difficult on livestock and humans alike.
Some wagons needed double or triple the number of ox or horses to pull them up.
Many animals collapsed from exhaustion once they reached the top and had to be left behind.
It took them five days to reach Battleford by foot, a journey that takes an hour and a half by car today.
Some settlers turned back, unable to go any further.
Others remained in Battleford to make extra money.
At Battleford, the colonists reached the end of their rope with Barr and voted him out.
They replaced him with Reverend Lloyd.
While Lloyd was liked by most, some felt he was too rigid in his demand to keep the colony completely British.
He also prohibited alcohol, which many people disagreed with.
A few of the settlers chose to venture on their own rather than be led by either Barr or Lloyd.
One colonist said,
“We liked Lloyd very, very much, but he was a dictator with very strong ideas.”
Although he was voted out of leadership Barr did not leave the group.
He was hated but he still wanted to see his scheme to fruition and reach the final destination.
After getting more provisions in Battleford, the remaining colonists began the final 100-kilometer journey west.
Along the way, another baby was born to a mother who had only a few blankets thrown on the frozen ground for comfort.
One day, in the distance, the travellers saw a Russian village. There were log houses with white plaster, wide streets arranged neatly and happy people enjoying their lives in a new land.
It was a Doukhobor colony.
William Hutchinson the clever colonist that had waited for prices to go down visited the colony and was impressed with their progress t. He decided to take note of their success and applied it to his own plan for a homestead and life in the Canadian Prairies.
On May 9, 1903, the first of the colonists arrived in what would be their new home.
Barr had demanded no one choose homesteads until he arrived but Dominion Lands Agent, R.F. Chisholm simply ignored him and handed them out anyways.
Barr said,
“If there is bloodshed and destruction of the colony as a result I throw the whole blame on you.”
Chisholm told Barr he had no authority.
So, imagine the surprise of the first arrivals when they found no lumber and no buildings, just two government tents and one t belonging to Barr filled with goods he was going to sell.
Another Barr failed promise.
He had made no attempt to have lumber shipped down the river from Edmonton to the colony site.
Mail that arrived ahead of the colonists and it sat in a pile in Barr’s tent.
He arrived soon after s and raised the Red Ensign to finish his journey.
But he didn’t stay.
With legal action threatened against him, along with physical violence, he left the area in mid-June and never returned.
The settlers would never call their new home Barr Colony.
Instead, they chose to honour the man they felt had led them through their most difficult period, Reverend George Lloyd.
Thus, Lloydminster was born.
But what happened Lloyd and Barr?
George Exton Lloyd remained in Lloydminster until 1905.
Then moved to Prince Albert and from 1908 to 1916, he was the principal of Emmanuel College.
He helped build Rugby Chapel, which stands to this day at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon.
In 1922, he was appointed the Bishop of Saskatchewan and served until 1931 when he retired to British Columbia.
On Dec. 8, 1940, he died in Victoria.
Lloyd’s legacy is a complicated one.
While he pressured the Anglican diocese of Saskatchewan to remove gender discrimination in delegates or committee members, he had racial views that were extreme even for the time.
In 1928, he wrote a letter to the Globe and Mail criticizing the Canadian Pacific Railway for allowing Ukrainians, Polish and other Eastern European people to settle in the Canadian Prairies.
He considered them to be, in his words, ‘non-preferred Europeans’.
He also called Eastern Europeans quote,
“dirty, ignorant, garlic-smelling and undesirable.”
His views on Black and Asian Canadians were especially brutal, and he stated he wanted them all shipped back to where they came from.
As for Isaac Barr, his legacy is far less complicated.
After he disappeared from his colony he married his typist Christina Helbert in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1905.
He briefly worked as an insurance salesman, then turned to farming.
In 1910, he left North America completely.
He sold his property and moved with Christina and their two sons to Australia to the Closer Settlement.
Located 210 kilometres away from Melbourne, he and Christina built a successful farm and raised their family.
Barr died in Australia on Jan. 18, 1937, at the age of 89.
Today, many of his descendants still live in the area.
But…what happened to the colony of Lloydminster?
As they say in real estate the thing that matters most is location.
While Barr may have been a poor leader, he chose a very good location. Things were difficult early on, but the new settlers worked hard to build a life for themselves.
Helped by farm instructors, they learned to build sod houses while they broke the land.
As they grew crops and sold them, the colonists earned enough money to build permanent homes and slowly they put down roots.
The local Cree were also invaluable and provided help to the settlers.
While they had heard stories of Indigenous attacks on settlers to the Canadian Prairies before they left England, in reality the First Nations couldn’t have been kinder and more helpful to the colonists.
The Cree taught them how to make clothes from the animals they hunted, how to trap, harvest meat and live off the land whenever they needed to.
The success of the colony often ignores the Indigenous contribution to its early history and by October 1903, Lloydminster was a booming community with 75 houses, three restaurants, 10 shops, a post office and a telegraph office.
Lloyd and Barr’s desire for an all-British settlement quickly crumbled as Canadian and American settlers moved in.
The Canadian Northern Railway arrived in 1905, connecting the colony to the rest of Canada.
That same year, Alberta and Saskatchewan were created, with the provincial line going directly through the community.
For a quarter century, there were two communities named Lloydminsters on either side of the provincial line.
In 1930, the two towns amalgamated and in 1958, Lloydminster became a city.
Today, this tiny settlement established to be an island of Britain amid the Canadian Prairie is home to 31,000 people and an important transportation hub for two different provinces.
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