پایه های متزلزل: آبیاری، محیط زیست، و تغییرات اجتماعی در بخش شرقی راه آهن کانادا و اقیانوس آرام ،1900–1930

This paper analyzes the introduction and development of irrigation agriculture in the lower Bow River region, Alberta, Canada. Sponsored by the Canadian Pacific Railroad (CPR) and the Canadian federal government, irrigation promised to transform semi-arid prairie into a densely settled countryside. After 1900, a mixture of policies and practices pioneered elsewhere were deployed to create the largest irrigation project of its kind in North America. Settlers faced difficult economic conditions, however, and fell into conflict with the CPR. The system as a whole experienced a range of environmental changes as irrigation water altered the land and produced new conditions for flora and fauna. By 1930, the irrigation project experienced high levels of settler abandonment and deep fiscal problems. The circumstances of the Bow River case suggest the particular qualities of social and environmental changes initiated by irrigation agriculture in the Canadian prairies, but they also provide the basis to consider comparatively the processes and difficulties attending irrigation expansion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century world.

Irrigation was one of the great tools of human resettlement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century world. Around the globe from South Asia to Australia to the US Southwest, lands that had once been judged to be desert or marginal were rapidly transformed by irrigation systems.1 New engineering techniques extended ancient systems and transcended them. Barrage dams facilitated river diversions in British India; high reinforced concrete dams allowed for massive storage and diversion projects in the US west. In a host of locations, states and developers crafted irrigation settlement policies to colonize vast tracts of land.2

The relatively late development of irrigation agriculture in the southern Canadian prairies allowed Canadian developers to borrow from international examples and leads, but not to transcend their difficulties. In a short period of time, the Canadian state and capital transformed the semi-arid prairie into a landscape grid of property, engineered canals and water conveyance systems. Irrigation had never been conceived as a mere technique. Promoters claimed that it would deliver a transformed and improved nature, a stable and prosperous society. Mixed farming could be established on lands otherwise too dry to farm. In pursuit of this vision, immigrant farmers were attracted, settled and charged fees to pay for the land and system. Homes were built and farms developed. Experiments in irrigation techniques and crop and livestock mixtures produced over time a basic model of mixed farming in the region, specializing in lamb finishing. For those who did not make the transition to this model, or who assumed too much debt in the early stages, prospects were bleak and many moved on. Those who stayed increasingly engaged with local institutions of farmers to rally against the CPR and to demand better terms. Eventually, settlers did obtain better terms and ultimately cooperative ownership of the section.