STOCKHOLM, Sask. – On Jan. 2, 1888, Emanuel Ohlen sent an immigration report to the agriculture minister in Ottawa noting Scandinavian immigration to Manitoba and “the North-West” during the previous year.
“From the 1st of January 1887, up to the 1st of January 1888, arrived at Winnipeg 220 Swedes, 49 Norwegians, 63 Danes or altogether, 332 Scandinavians,” wrote the assistant Dominion immigration agent.
Some of those Swedes settled in the eastern part of what would be called Saskatchewan.
“New Stockholm colony on the Canadian Pacific Railway main line, 250 miles west of Winnipeg, got some 33 souls in 1887,” Ohlen wrote. “This colony, which was founded by me in 1885, consists of fractional Townships 18 and 19 A, Ranges 1, 2 and 3 west of the 2nd meridian.”
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A post office named after Ohlen opened in the centre of the colony Oct. 1, 1887. The settlers organized the Scandinavian Colonization Society of New Stockholm to protect their interests and promote their settlement. And they wrote to the minister of agriculture about their progress and their satisfaction with the land.
Nearly 120 years later, Pearl Nelson published a book of photographs to honour the area that became known as Ohlen.
Entitled Ohlen District Homesteads; The First Swedish Settlement in Saskatchewan, A Tribute in Photographs, the book contains pictures taken by Nelson and others of the earliest buildings in the region southeast of Stockholm.
The pictures include the Ohlen post office, which operated until 1910 and is still standing, and the homestead of Nels Johanson, one of the first settlers who was also the first Ohlen postmaster.
“I like taking pictures and I keep history,” Nelson said. “My son suggested a book for (centennial year) 2005.”
She was seldom without her camera after she began snapping homes, barns, schools, churches and halls in the 1950s.
Some she has photographed twice, and the pictures show how time has taken its toll.
Nelson said the Swedish people who came to Canada were mainly craftspeople. Her great-grandfather, for example, was a tailor.
“The young men who came over would build or thresh or do whatever needed doing,” she said. “Some had money and some didn’t”
The area where they settled reminded them of home. There were trees in the nearby Qu’Appelle Valley and lime in the hills.
However, Nelson said not everyone stayed, discouraged by fires in the summer and the winter cold. They hadn’t been farmers in Sweden and discovered they weren’t farmers in Canada, either.
Many who came were related to each other and many changed their names. The Nelson family she married into had been Berglunds.
Three brothers from another family all chose different surnames.
Nelson said the reasons for that are unclear, as is much of history.
Her book was intended to preserve what she could from her hundreds of photographs. The book has been well received, especially among people who grew up in the area and remember buildings that are now long gone.
At age 79, Nelson is still taking pictures, some of which might appear in a book honouring the next 100 years.
She received a Celebration of the Arts pin from lt.-gov. Lynda Haverstock for her work.
