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The Peace River Valley Near Fort Saint John, British Columbia, Canada |
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The pioneering of Anglo-America began in 1607 at Jamestown on the coast of Virginia. Restless individuals and their families seeking a new life, land, adventure, maybe even wealth, created farms from the wilderness. The frontier moved steadily westward until it encountered settlement moving eastwards from the west coast — in the US the frontier was gone by the 1890's. It was here, on the Peace River that the last agricultural frontier on the continent existed, with government land available free to pioneer farmers until the late 1920's. The prairie soils are fertile, but the growing season on the Peace is short, a mere 84 days at Dawson Creek. There are really only two important crops here, clover honey, and canola. In midsummer the fields are brilliant yellow, with white beehives spaced geometrically over them. Canola, which stands for Canadian oil, is a new name for an old product, rapeseed. Dry bluffs along the upper Peace River are the northernmost location for cactus anywhere in the world. It is the same tiny prickly pear cactus (Opuntia fragilis) that grows south through the high plains as far as New Mexico. The pink flowers by the path here are wild roses, and the low gray shrub is a form of sagebrush. Next: W.A.C. Bennett Dam |