History, Wonder Tales, Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends The Flemish | Page 275

became the Bruxelles district, with its own village, named after the capital of Belgium
from whence had come the first parish priest and one of the early settlers.
While the lure of free land 5 was responsible for the Belgians coming to Manitoba
&emdash; 160 acres for the registration fee of $10.00 &emdash; not all land was free.
Of the 36 sections in a Township, the odd-numbered sections 1 to 35, with the
exception of sections 11 and 27, were given by the Federal Government to the C.P.R.
to compensate for the cost of building railways in western Canada. Sections 11 and 27
were school sections, to be sold by public auction and the monies raised used to build
schools. Even-numbered sections 2 to 36, with the exception of sections 8 and 26,
were homestead lands. Sections 8 and 26 were given to the Hudson's Bay Company
as compensation for properties surrendered to the government, so of the 144 quarter
sections in a Township, only 64 were available as government homesteads.
Belgian immigrants who came to Bruxelles and St. Alphonse after the government
homesteads were taken up had to purchase land from companies, or from the
government when school lands were sold by auction. Settlers with established
homesteads could also buy company lands to increase their holdings. Shortly after the
arrival of the Belgians, many French&emdash; Canadians, fed up with the difficulty of
clearing land around St. Alphonse, moved out west to Saskatchewan or south to the
North Dakota when land became available there. They had no difficulty selling their
farms to newcomers who had not managed to obtain homesteads.
In 1888 a young Belgian who was single, and had arrived with the first group, went to
Swan Lake to look for work and to learn English. Although Swan Lake had been
settled by English farmers from Ontario in 1878, there were still homesteads available.
This young Belgian was encouraged by the English farmers that he worked for to take
a homestead there rather than at St. Alphonse. He did so, and for several years was
the only Belgian settler in the Swan Lake district. In the years to come other Belgians
settled around Swan Lake by purchasing land from companies, the railway, or from
English farmers who had reached retirement age and had no sons to take over.
Some of the English farmers from Ontario, whose fathers and grandfathers had settled
there decades earlier, sent their sons to the cities to further their education. These
sons did not return to the farms, and when the fathers could no longer farm they sold
their land to the Belgians. Other English farmers who had sons, but not enough land,
discovered they could sell their land to the Belgians for a good price and move
elsewhere to purchase land where more was available, or take up new homesteads
out west when they became available. Thus it is that today in the Swan Lake district,
which was once ninety-nine per cent English, only a few English families remain.
The Belgian children, on the other hand, when they reached the age of thirteen or
fourteen had to leave their schooling to help out on the farms, regardless of how much
or little education they had received. It would be several decades before many would
receive high school education. The few who did go on to receive higher education in
the early days did so to become teachers, or to enter religious life. However, when the
Belgians first came they tried to learn English as soon as possible. A FrenchCanadian Mother Superior from St. Alphonse Convent school once remarked that
"concerning languages, one could learn from the Belgians that it is possible to learn
two or more languages, as many of them already speak two languages and are now
learning a third."

275