The Lay of the Land
by Tracy Hyatt | photo by Darren Jacknisky
U
krainians, Poles, Russians, Icelanders, Estonians. ey
came by the thousands from all over Europe to settle the
Canadian Prairies. In turn, the federal government gave
them a free quarter section (65 hectares) of land. All they had to
do was build a house, cultivate the untilled soil and promise to
stay three years.
Building a temporary shelter before winter arrived was the
first hardship they faced. With nary a tree in sight, nor building
supplies, they constructed their first homes from the only material
on hand: the land itself. ey sliced the thick sod, held together
by deeply rooted Prairie grasses – into roughly 60-centimetre-long,
10-centimetre-thick strips and stacked them like bricks to form
tiny A-frame houses. ese structures offered cool respite from
summer heat and insulation from cold winters. e more elaborate
sod houses were plastered with clay and lined with decorative wall-
paper, or even divided into multiple rooms. Nevertheless, it was
tough living. e sod houses were meant to be temporary struc-
tures, but some pioneers lived in them for years, until they could
afford to build permanent wooden homes.
By far the largest group of early settlers in Alberta were Ukrai-
nian, and one of the finest examples of a sod house can be seen
at the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village, outside Edmonton. W
66 W E S T W O R L D A L B E R T A | S U M M E R 2 0 1 5
ROADSIDE
Members save 10%
on admission to the
Ukrainian Cultural
Heritage Village.
AMARewards.ca/
Ukrainian
