Pioneers Of History

A chance conversation confirms a family’s role in building the West as part of the little-known Barr Colony.

- Joan P. Talbot-Wegert

If you’ve never heard of the Barr Colony, you’re in good company, as the name often generates a blank look even among Canadian historians. The Barr Colony, founded in 1903, was one of the last great emigration schemes in English/North American history.

Reverend Isaac Montgomery Barr, an expatriate Canadian, had long dreamed of establishing a colony somewhere in the British Empire. In the early 1900s, Barr had relocated to the United States after leaving Canada in 1883 under a cloud of failing marriages, far-fetched schemes, and financial disagreements with congregations and bishops. Heading overseas to fulfill his ambitions, Barr arrived in London, England, in January 1902, armed with several impressive letters of recommendation. One letter claimed he had a licence from the Archbishop of Canterbury to preach in England and work with the Colonial and Continental Church Society.

As it happened, the society had also just hired another clergyman with an interest in immigration and much more knowledge of Canada. Reverend George Eaton Lloyd was a native Londoner who received his theological training in Canada at the University of Toronto. Like Barr, Lloyd had spent a brief time on the Canadian Prairies as a young man, but his exploits were far more glorious than Barr’s: He was a veteran of the 1885 North-West Rebellion, serving in the Queen’s Own Rifles. Lloyd set out to spread the word through the British Isles about the opportunities available on the Canadian Prairies.

THE SCHEME