St. Hubert Mission
St. Hubert Mission is a former community in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, originally settled by French Counts. It was located on Pipestone Creek, about south-west of Whitewood. Access is from Highway 703. The French Counts of St Hubert stayed in the area between 1884 and the early 1900s, before World War I. St. Hubert is classified presently as an unincorporated area in the Rural Municipality of Silverwood No. 123. Dr. Rudolph Meyer was the initial European to arrive followed by others who established ranches in the vicinity of St. Hubert and Whitewood.
The 'French Counts' and the origins of St. Hubert
The French-speaking settlement of St. Hubert is atypical of the communities that developed in the wake of immigration into Western Canada. As Father B. Fallourd, parish priest at St. Hubert from 1918 to 1949, wrote in History of the Beginning of St. Hubert Mission, "…the chief originality of the parish of St. Hubert happened to be the first and only group comprising French-speaking Catholics. All came directly from France and Belgium to St. Hubert as settlers, which was erected in a parish in the limits of the Diocese of Regina and even in the whole of Saskatchewan and Alberta."Early settlement patterns
To understand how this came about, one must look back to the last quarter of the nineteenth century. When the West was being settled primarily by individual homesteaders, nine French counts, one Belgian baron and his brother, and three men of capital sought to transplant from the 'Old World' the socio-economic and cultural traditions of the French noblesse oblige. Though for the most part their efforts were unsuccessful, with all leaving the district before 1914, they left a lasting imprint on the community. Their brief tenure on the Pipestone Creek can be viewed as a golden age in the development of St. Hubert.One of the above-mentioned fourteen plutocrats, of unknown name, declared in the early 1890s to one of the first non-aristocratic settlers in the district. Mr. Frank Dunand, "Everything in this country is better than in the old country." In so indicating his almost boundless optimism regarding Canada, and his equally boundless pessimism regarding France and Belgium, the aristocrat suggested why he and his compatriots had set out for the Pipestone. The Counts probably sought escape from the adverse social, economic, and political changes that were threatening to undermine their way of life in Europe.
Their standard of living had been considerably reduced by a depression and by an increasing tax load. The Canadian frontier contrasted favourably, as a report in the January 1891 issue of the Winnipeg newspaper The Colonist reveals: "The settlers... express themselves to be heartily glad to escape the excessive taxation, exacted from them while in the old country." They also claim that fifty percent less labour is to be expended to produce an equal result with that obtained at home, while fertilizing can be entirely dispensed with.
Unfavourable conditions in Old France
The plutocrats in addition had witnessed by the early 1880s the effective elimination of Monarchist influence in the upper reaches of the French government. The hated anti-Monarchist coalition of Opportunist Republicans and Radical Republicans had secured control of the French Chamber. The coalition had dedicated itself to purging the civil service and judiciary of monarchist sympathizers. The "cement" of the coalition, as the French Catholic Deputy Albert de Mun had observed, was "religious war". By 1882, the government had introduced legislation primary schools, and by 1886 had excluded nuns and monks from teaching in state schools. The public school system was now to be staffed exclusively by lay personnel. The New Land probably offered to the Counts a new hope for survival of traditional society. On the Pipestone, they could build an aristocratic, Catholic, French 'island' far removed from such troubled waters.Early arrivals
The first settlers in the St. Hubert area, which then was a part of the South Provisional District of Assiniboia, North-West Territories, were Doctor Rudolph Meyer, an Alsacian -born agriculturalist of Maule, Seine-et-Oise, France, Meyer's cousin and a future bride of unknown name, and his gardener, Emile Renoult, of Marc, Seine-et-Oise, France. Due to conflicting reports, it is difficult to ascertain when the three arrived. Fr. Fallourd mentions that they landed in late May 1886. Donatien Fremont, in La Liberte et la Patriote, disagrees. He places the time of their arrival in the spring of 1885. Joe Sage, who was still living in the St. Hubert district in 1980, believes that they landed before 1885. He recalls that his father, Jean Sage, arrived in the district in 1886. Jean immediately began working for Count de Saurras, of Annonay, France, who had built his house one year earlier in 1885. Since Meyer, his cousin and Renoult seem to have arrived before de Saunas, this leads Mr. Sage to believe that the three may have arrived in 1884, possibly even in 1883. Kristian Sullivan, who presented a talk about the Counts of St. Hubert to the Society for Historical Archaeology places the settlement at 1885 initiated by Meyer and le Comte Yves de Roffignac from Gascony. Alan Andersen contributor to the Encyclopaedia of Saskatchewan places their arrival at 1884. The Encyclopedia of Canada's peoples places the arrival of eleven aristocrats to St-Hubert in 1889. Whatever the year of the arrival, there is no disputing the fact that they arrived sometime after 1882, when the Canadian Pacific Railway passed through Whitewood/Pipestone Valley, Meyer mentions that he had been advised by William Cornelius Van Horne and Mr. Pope to choose the area. At the time Van Horne was directing the construction of the transcontinental railway, and Pope was Conservative Minister of Railways.la Rolanderie
In an article written in a November 1978 issue of The Whitewood Herald, Ruth Humphreys, who had written many articles on the Counts tells us that the Valley and surrounding countryside so impressed the settlers that one of them exclaimed, "one could pasture a thousand goats here!" They apparently agreed that the land was well suited for producing cereal crops and raising livestock. After consulting with his cousin, Meyer decided to homestead on SE Township 4 - Range 15 - West of the Third Principal Meridian. He built his home and christened it 'la Rolanderie', in tribute to his employer, Monsieur Lorin, of Maule, Seine-et-Oise, France.. The house, located in the Pipestone Valley about one mile west of Joe Sage's farm, is owned by the Poncelet family.The name 'la Rolanderie' became synonymous with the name of the district, until approximately 1890 when the St. Hubert parish was founded. It is possible, as Fr. Fallourd suggests, that the district was named Rolanderie because Lorin had decreed that "the colony...was to be given the name." The more convincing explanation is that the district was so named because the Rolanderie farm was both the first and the largest of the farms to be established. It moreover served as a half-way house for CPR land guides and prospective settlers: much to Meyer's chagrin, for he complained in one of his letters, "I give them plentiful lodging and plentiful board without asking of either a cent." While at 'la Rolanderie', Meyer seems to have acted as a settlement agent for a Societe Anonyme. Fr. Fallourd writes that Meyer had been granted 100,000 francs by Lorin, a member of this organization, in order to establish a settlement on the Pipestone.
The Doctor's job, according to Humphreys, probably included acquiring and subdividing land, helping the new settlers to build their homes, lending them money and machinery when necessary, and setting up small businesses. By 1889, when Meyer was replaced at Rolanderie by Count de Roffignac of Limousin, France, he had increased the holdings of the ranch to include large herds of bovine shorthorn cattle, purebred horses, and pigs, and had expanded the size of the farm to. However the herd of pigs did not flourish due to a lack of feed as there was a shortage of grain produced by the Counts.