September 7, 1935-Canadian Priest Creates Homestead Colony
The Washington Daily News — Saturday, September 7, 1935
Canadian Priest Creates Homestead Colony for 100 Families
By ERNIE PYLE
BATHURST, New Brunswick — The people of East Bathurst, Catholic and Protestant alike, must love Father Allard.
He’s up day and night doing things for them, he spends his own money, and tramps around in the mud and cold for them till he gets sick and has to go to the hospital.
In three years Father Allard has created a village, and made homes for a hundred families who haven’t had homes in years. The village is named Allardville.
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Bathurst is up in the sparsely populated spruce forest country of New Brunswick, where most people are French.
Going north, I had driven for 25 miles on a gravel road thru forest so thick you couldn’t see 10 feet into it. Then suddenly, there was a log cabin in a little clearing 50 feet from the road.
Soon the cabins became regular things, on either side of the road, about an eighth of a mile apart. Kids were running around outside, washings on the line.
Then came a larger clearing, with what seemed to be a little store, and a log church and log school. I went into the store to get cigarettes, but they didn’t have any. At least they didn’t have any of whatever they thought I asked for.
I tried to ask about the settlement, but all I could get was a sweep of the hand and “100 families.” English as she is spoke in Allardville wouldn’t get anybody into Harvard.
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So I drove on 20 miles to Bathurst and there I learned that the settlement was the work of Father J. A. Allard of the East Bathurst parish.
His church is a huge, ruggedly handsome stone affair, and the adjoining rectory is big enough for a hotel. The rectory is full of mounted deer heads and moose antlers and old pictures — a delightful place. Father Allard’s study looks like a newspaper office, it is so littered with papers and correspondence.
The priest himself is a big man, under 50. He wears horn-rimmed glasses and speaks good English, and loves to talk about his people. We sat in the rectory for nearly two hours while I heard about the misery in Gloucester County.
“This county has 11,000 surplus population,” Father Allard said. “Most of them are poor as mice. Down by the shore, where the poorest ones live, there are as many as 30 children in one house.
“These people have been cutting wood since they were big enough to swing an ax. The forest is all they know. They've been on relief, but they don’t get enough, and they want to work. Like all Frenchmen they want homes of their own.
“So I asked the government to give them forest land, and let them make homes for themselves. I went to the capital and I said, ‘You’re spending 10 million dollars on new roads to bring people up here from the states to see how poor we are: why don’t you spend nine million on the roads and one million on getting these people on the land?’”
But the government couldn’t see it. Father Allard blames big business. Canada’s vast forest lands are out on long-term leases to the lumber companies. The government, he thinks, was afraid of offending the “interests.”
The red tape and opposition and dickering and stalling that Father Allard had to fight thru would fill pages. But finally the government grudgingly set aside land for 40 families in the forest, 20 miles south of Bathurst. That was in 1932.
Father Allard went with the first settlers, blessed the forest before they went in, and himself cut down the first tree.
The going was really tough for those people. Just as soon as they moved to the forest they were cut off relief. They had no money for axes or farm implements, or horses or cows or seed.
So Father Allard set up credit at a store, and the 40 families (most were Catholics but some were Protestants) within 24 hours had everything they needed.
Their cabins went up rapidly. They were ready to make their first real income — by selling firewood. But people took advantage of it, because the settlers needed money so badly, and came out and bought wood for 50 cents a cord.
Father Allard put a stop to that by contracting to buy all their firewood himself. He pays them $5 a cord for it. It costs him $7.50 by the time he gets it delivered, and he sells it for $5. He lost $500 on cord wood last year, and will lose $700 this year.
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Each family has 100 acres. They get title to the land after three years, if they have cleared 16 acres, but the lumber companies retain the lumber privileges for many years.
There are 100 families in Allardville now, and Father Allard hopes to get land for more. He has applications from 4000 families.
Even after three years, everything isn’t clear sailing by a long way. The people do have their homes of a sort. But they don’t know how to manage them, and they get into trouble, and the money-lenders rook them, and once they get a little land cleared some of them don’t work very hard.
So I guess it’s pretty much like our own homesteading projects — it’s a good idea if it works, and you can’t tell yet whether it’ll work. Father Allard thinks it will.
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