PRAIRIE


A10 - Friday, February 17, 2012


www.prairiepost.com Rabbit drives were a part of pioneer life


JONATHAN KOCH


FORGOTTEN ALBERTA: Sights and Stories of the Southeast


The past few months


have been a “hare- raising” experience for the people of Canmore. The Rocky Mountain


town made worldwide headlines last November after town councillors proposed to cull approximately 2,000 feral rabbits that were roaming at-large in the


community. Canmore’s loose bunnies were spared, however, after an animal rescue group stepped forward to spay, neuter and house them in a sanctuary. Such a response would have been unthinkable decades earlier, when an army of long-eared interlopers challenged southeastern Alberta’s stalwart settlers for dominion over the drought- stricken plains. During the 1920s, the southeast was in the midst of an ecological disaster. Several thousand acres of farmland had been abandoned as wind, weeds, and insects wrought havoc on the land. As settlers decamped en masse, wildlife moved in to fill the void. An abundance of prey bolstered the coyote population, who soon began hunting in packs throughout the region. In response, farmers fearing for their lives and livestock, and enterprising trappers, began slaughtering coyotes with reckless abandon. The unnatural consequence of this was that without predation, rabbits multiplied in the manner to which they are accustomed. By 1924, the south was teeming with rascally


rabbits. They devoured gardens, destroyed crops, damaged trees, and generally made life miserable for the resilient settlers who remained. In the winter, rabbits congregated in herds


numbering in the thousands. As a result, surreal sightings of rabbit mobs were reported throughout the southeast. One motorist’s encounter near Ronalane was described in the now defunct Redcliff Review:


“… [H]e ran into what he thought in the distance was a flock of sheep but on approaching closer found it to be a huge band of rabbits numbering at least a thousand… they went right up into barn yards in massed formation and practically took possession.” Pioneers, desperate for the end of the rabbit occupation, turned to the province, and a capable


& BLISS E-mail: diss@prairiepost.com


No identifying factors can be present. Prairie Post reserves the right to edit for length, timeliness, libel and decency. Can be no more than 30 words. No phone calls.


DISS: Why do people insist on ordering sandwiches in the coffee drive-thru? It takes so long. Why don’t you get out of your cars and order in a line up and save us people in a hurry?


DISS: The way fans don’t show up for Broncos’ games, they act like they don’t want a team in Swift Current. They’re losing, but they’re trying and they have entertaining games usually.


BLISS: Nice to see curling getting revitalized in Swift Current. The Battle of the Brooms will be a hoot.


Photo courtesy www.waterarchives.org Rabbit drives, similar to this one in Idaho, were a gruesome aspect of pioneer life in mid ’20s southern Alberta.


public servant named P.H.Wedderburn to quell the insurrection. Wedderburn, a South African émigré, and former homesteader north of Bowell, had experience in exterminating hoppers of the insect variety. Beginning in 1925,Wedderburn set out from his home in Redcliff to the afflicted areas to organize rabbit drives. A rabbit drive typically involved the erection of a fenced enclosure, into which the participants (area settlers) would drive the congregating herds from several miles around. There was much whooping and hollering in the process, as well as the inevitable clubbing and bludgeoning. No firearms were permitted.


Although this practice would be considered barbaric by today’s standards, the drives were effective. During a three-day period,Wedderburn’s efforts yielded 2360 rabbit-casualties at Bow City. Thousands more were killed a week later on a farm near Lomond. The following winter,Wedderburn mounted a


campaign covering an area extending from Brooks and Lomond, south to Manyberries, Whitla, and Winnifred, which yielded several thousand more carcasses. The proceeds raised by these gruesome endeavours also provided a much-needed cash infusion for economically-depressed rural communities. For example, the residents of the Pakowki area were able to build a hall with the money they earned from the sale of their rabbit pelts. Mr.Wedderburn’s second campaign would be his


last. Once the rabbit drives concluded for the winter of 1925-26, the South African headed north to Edmonton, to oversee the province’s Debt Adjustment Department. A reward, it would seem, for a job well done. Times have certainly changed, but one thing


remains consistent: Everybody loves a hoppy ending. (Jonathan Koch is an avid historian with his own


website called Forgotten Alberta: Sights and Stories of the Southeast. http://forgottenalberta.com/)


Talking to teenagers makes more sense


While I do not have any children, I did spend several years step-parenting a teenage boy, and have lived my entire 27 years with parents of my own. I am certainly no parenting expert, but I know enough to tell good parenting from bad. And I’ve definitely seen some bad


parenting. Over the weekend, a video of a


father publicly humiliating and reprimanding his teenage daughter for posting some overly dramatic and personal rant on Facebook saw more than 20 million views. In the video, after reading the daughter’s post and ridiculing her for it, the father puts down his cigarette, takes his handgun, and shoots his daughter’s laptop full of holes. This is after repeatedly mentioning just how much time and money he spent upgrading the computer the previous day. The video itself was disturbing enough, but it was the comments I saw all over the internet about the video that really bothered me. People actually agreed with this man. They were


JESSI


GOWAN REPORTER


giving him thumbs up and saying how heartening it was to see parents who aren’t afraid to discipline their children: the daughter deserved this kind of treatment after her initial post. Just a newsflash, she is a normal teenager venting about how little time she has to have a social life because she is so busy with school and chores. I understand with social media the


way it is, young people are posting all kinds of things they really probably


shouldn’t. I also think there are much better ways to deal with misbehaviour than mockery and violence. It made me thankful to realize when I was a young daughter who maybe voiced her own opinions a little too loudly, I had parents who took the time to talk with me about what was and wasn’t appropriate. And it made me very glad when I was the parent of a teenage boy, he came to me when he felt like things were unfair, and we had rational conversations about how we could make the situation work for the both of us.


Email your comments about this opinion piece to jgowan@prairiepost.com.


DISS


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36