• Elementary
• Secondary
  • Infomatics
    • Facts in Brief
    • Student Text Resources
      • Land rights issues and resolution - the Métis settlements and scrip
      • Education and community life with emphasis on faith
      • Language Rights
      • Francophone Settlers in the Regions of Alberta
        • North-Central Alberta
        • Northeastern Alberta
        • Central Alberta
        • Southern Alberta
        • Northwestern Alberta
      • Bilingualism and Biculturalism
      • Cultural Societies and organizations
      • Provincial Politics and The Piquette Affair
    • Reading and More
  • Multimedia
  • Activities
• Teacher
• Biographies
• Glossary

Southern Alberta

Several Francophone communities were created in southern Alberta. Campaigns promoting settlement by French Canadians in Alberta were staged by the federal government.

• Jean-Baptiste Morin was the first official land agent for the federal government. He was a priest based in Montreal. When he visited Alberta he called upon the settlers he had recruited who had taken lands from Pincher Creek to Athabasca Landing.
• Albéric Ouellette, also a priest, actively promoted the lands of the Palliser Triangle for the Canadian Pacific Railway. He established the village of Ouelletteville, abandoned during the 1930s.

As a settlement destination, the Palliser Triangle was normally very arid. For some years just prior to settlement, the pattern was broken with several years of higher precipitation. However, the dryer environment soon returned.

• Settlers in the region had to purchase water.
• Settlers used cow dung, because there was little natural fuel. It was dried and stacked. They called it :bois de vache", (cow wood)

Many of these settlers left during the 1930s, when the provincial government offered to relocate them to other regions of the province where there was more rain.

Some Francophones did settle in Calgary.

• Judge Charles Rouleau and his brother Edouard (a doctor) who founded the little village of Rouleauville around the Catholic mission.
• A small group of French nobles ranched for a short while at Millarville.

Some came to work from the French communities in southern Saskatchewan.

• There were numerous coal mines in southern Alberta to serve the railroad. Lethbridge and the Crow's Nest Pass were at the centre of bustling mining areas.
• French prospectors and investors set up several coal mining companies such as the West Canadian Collieries in 1901at Lille. Although the village existed for only 15 years, 400 Frenchmen and Belgians lived and worked there at one time.
• Bellevue was another West Canadian Collieries town.

At one time, about seven percent of the Crow's Nest Pass population was French-speaking.