Dutch migration - 2 (English subtitles)

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In Canada, after arrival, it is often another week by train, stripped of all luxury, sleeping on wooden benches. They travel from Halifax or Quebec via Ontario and Sasketchwan to the vast prairies. Then the Dutch arrive in small and rapidly growing towns like Lethbridge or Strathmore, model towns along the railway line of the Canadian Pacific Railroad (CPR) in the new state of Alberta.

Near Strathmore, the Dutch Father Van Aken started a colony around 1908. It is one of the few early Catholic attempts at emigration to Canada. And that colonization is not overly successful. They were promised mountains of gold, but when the farmers from Brabant arrive, it turns out that they still have to build their farms themselves and that it can freeze extremely hard there. No one told them that!

The CPR is determined to ensure that the colonists from Europe find their way here. The CPR is allowed to allocate large tracts of land on either side of the railway line to farmers to finance the construction of the railway. Some pieces of land are unusable, while others can be obtained virtually for free. And then there are the plots that CPR has specially irrigated by its own, self-constructed system of irrigation canals. After arriving in Strathmore, Brabant emigrant Pete Vergouwen worked for CPR's irrigation company. His grandson Rod and his wife Beth show the Andere Tijden team where the former irrigation canals run.

And thanks to that irrigation, it is possible to increase production in the fields. At the CPR railway company's demonstration farm, farmers can learn everything about cultivating the irrigated lands around Strathmore. Of the old demonstration farm from 1908, only the large barn remains, somewhere outside the village. Rhonda Stockwell and Tom Sadler from the village's historical society go looking for it together with the Andere Tijden team.