Next Year : A Semi-Historical Account Of The Exploits And Exploitations Of The Far-Famed Barr Colonists Who, Led By An Unscrupulous Church Of England Parson, Adventured Deep Into The Wilderness Of Canada's Great North-West In The Early Days Of The Twentieth Century, Harry Pick (Barr Colonist)
Pick, Harry (b. 1881)
Born in 1881, Harry Pick came to the Canadian prairies as one of the Barr Colonists in 1903, settling in the Lloydminster district. Over the next three decades he tried his hand at a wide range of occupations, including homesteader, freighter, carpenter, rancher, Ford agent, livery stable proprietor, journalist, farmer, and accountant. He also served with the Imperial Army in France during the First World War. In 1935 he left the prairies for British Columbia. His varied career provided ample material for his later writing.
Pick, Harry.
Next Year: A Semi-Historical Account of the Exploits and Exploitations of the Far-Famed Barr Colonists…
Written by a participant in the ill-fated All-British Colony of 1903, this work recounts the Barr expedition to the Canadian Northwest in fictionalized form. Drawing on firsthand experience, Pick retells the trek from England to the prairies and the hard lessons that followed, as inexperienced settlers attempted to turn themselves into farmers on the open plain.
Blending fact with caricature, the narrative casts a dry eye on grand promises, muddled leadership, and the stubborn optimism of colonists armed with teacups and little practical knowledge. Comic episodes sit alongside genuine hardship, producing a wry account of one of the more improbable settlement schemes of the early twentieth-century West.
