Join us in person for a fascinating look at the lives of Alberta's women homesteaders and farmers - presented by Professor Sarah Carter from the University of Alberta. Discover the challenges they faced and the opportunities they seized in shaping their communities. It's a great chance to hear stories of grit, growth, and perseverance. Don’t miss out on this inspiring journey through history!

6:30pm doors open - coffee and tea & dessert served (no cost)

7:00pm presentation begins

Summary:

Canada's land laws denied most settler women and all First Nations women the right to the free homestead grant of 160 acres. Legal and cultural obstacles and discrimination ensured that women acquired only a tiny fraction of the land that was thrown open for settlement following treaties with First Nations in the 1870s. Virtually the only settler women who could qualify were widows with children. Settler women were complicit in the dispossession of Indigenous people but they faced gendered patterns of disadvantage, they were both privileged and restricted. They were tenacious and inventive however, in their strategies to obtain land. A troubled campaign for homesteads for women of “British birth” was a failure. Despite barriers, there were female homesteaders, farmers, and ranchers in Alberta such as the famous English settler Isobel “Jack” May, who purchased a “ready-made” Canadian Pacific Railway farm at Sedgewick.

About Sarah Carter:

Sarah Carter is Professor and Henry Marshall Tory Chair Emerita in the Department of History, Classics, and Religion, and the Faculty of Native Studies of the University of Alberta. From Saskatoon, she is a graduate of the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Manitoba. She taught at the University of Winnipeg and at the University of Calgary before joining the University of Alberta in 2006. She specializes in the history of the North American West. Recent books include Imperial Plots: Women, Land, and the Spadework of British Colonialism on the Canadian Prairies (2016), and “Ours By Every Law of Right and Justice”: Women and the Vote in the Prairie Provinces (2020). Her latest book Cropped: First Nations Agriculture in Manitoba, 1871 – 1971 will appear in 2026.