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by Adriana Albi Davies, Ph.D.
The natural environment of Southern Alberta is largely
prairie and it is this land that attracted settlers who came
to farm and ranch. A number of factors contributed to making
it an attractive destination for settlers:
- land that could be tilled;
- ready availability of water through several river
systems including the Milk and Oldman Rivers;
- moderate climate that included Chinook winds bringing
warm air over the mountains.
But there were also extensive resources of coal underfoot,
which were formed in the Cretaceous period (about 70 million
years ago) when that region was the western shoreline of an
inland sea that covered central North America. Subtropical
plants flourished and it was this rich vegetation that was
converted into coal through the passage of time and natural
processes. These included the covering of the vegetation by
gravel and mud, which compacted it, and chemical processes
involving heat and absence of air. Thick seams of bituminous
coal (1.2 to 1.8 metres) developed and these provided an
important energy resource that resulted in the foundation of
the economy of the City of Lethbridge as well as of
neighbouring communities such as Coalhurst.
 Italian immigration was directly related to the
exploitation of this resource and, in southern Alberta, is
similar to the pattern of immigration to the Rockies, Nordegg
and the Coal Branch, as well as Edmonton and Calgary. The
railways needed fuel to run and coal mines were developed to
do this, as well as to meet industrial and domestic needs. The
largest deposits are found in Alberta and BC and their
exploitation paralleled the settlement of the West. According
to Howard and Tamara Palmer in Alberta: A New History, "Coal
production increased more than tenfold from 242,000 tons in
1897 to almost three million tons in 1910, and then to over
four million tons in 1913. By 1911 coal mining employed 6 per
cent of the non-agricultural workforce in Alberta."1 As well,
western Canada, by 1911, was the largest coal producing area
of the country.
Alex Johnston and Andy A. den Otter in their Lethbridge: A
Centennial History note that an Irish-American settler,
Nicholas Sheran, opened the first commercial coal mine in the
area of the Coal Banks, which is now Lethbridge.2 The coal
seams were seen as outcroppings on riverbanks. In 1881, when
the Canadian Pacific Railway chose the southern plains as the
transcontinental route, the ready
availability of coal became
an economic driver for the development of the region. Sir
Alexander Galt, a Montreal promoter and the father of Elliott
T. Galt, the local Assistant Indian Commissioner in southern
Alberta, hired Captain Nicholas Bryant to prospect for coal in the same year. He confirmed the deposits noted by George M.
Dawson of the Geological Survey of Canada. In 1882, Sir
Alexander brought together investors to form the North Western
Coal and Navigation Company, Limited (NWC&NCo).3 These included
prominent men from Britain and the US such as William Ashmead
Bartlett Burdett-Coutts, William Lethbridge and William Smith.
The CPR tracks were 175 kilometres from the Coal Banks
works so coal had to be transported by barges and steamers. This did not prove economic and a government subsidy was
sought and obtained including railway and coal lands. The
prairie town of Lethbridge soon became an established
community with a range of social institutions, businesses and
residences. The town of Lethbridge was incorporated in 1891. The first mayor was Charles Magrath and he was a great booster
for the region. Johnston and den Otter note:
He fearlessly predicted that the abundant supply of energy,
combined with a future railway to the minerals of the Crow's
Nest Pass, would attract smelting and reduction industries to
Lethbridge, while nearby sandstone, clay and water would lure
other factories as well. In short, the newly-elected mayor was
confident that because a progressive firm was developing the
region's great coal reserves, Lethbridge would soon outstrip
Winnipeg in size and become a leading industrial city.4
Lethbridge prospered at the beginning of the 20th century
and miners believed their wages were not keeping pace with the
economy. In February, 1906, the miners of the Galt and
Ashcroft collieries joined the United Mine Workers of
America. They drew up their demands, which were
rejected, and, on March 9th, 1906, they called a strike.
While initially peaceful, when the company hired 100
strikebreakers, the miners attacked police who were protecting
the strikebreakers. Eventually, a mediator, W.L.
Mackenzie King, was brought in to find a settlement and the
mines reopened in December.
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