Introduction / Families / Stevenson / George Stevenson and Charlotte Corrigal / Charlotte Stevenson and Robert Reid / John Flaws Reid and Ida Estella Rae Rendall

The York Colony

In 1882 a group of Toronto businessmen formed The York Farmers’ Colonization Company to open land in Western Canada for homesteading. The district of Assiniboia, in The North West Territories (now part of Saskatchewan) had been established and the provincial government was promoting western settlement. The company’s charter provided for buying and selling land, setting up businesses, building roads, providing means of transport by operating ferries and stagecoaches, and assigning homesteads in the new colony. Settlers were sought from eastern Canada, the U.S. and Great Britain. The area was wooded with lakes and streams and possessed rich soil. The woods provided the necessary timber for fences and buildings.

The first settlers arrived in the summer of 1882. Most returned east for the winter to come back the following spring, but four stayed through the winter. The settlement was called York Colony and the little hamlet York City. The hamlet name was changed to Yorkton on 1st January 1884 when the post office was opened. Yorkton later moved about 2 ½ miles south from its original location to be situated on the Manitoba and Northwestern Railway.

One of the first settlers was John Flaws Reid who had seen a pamphlet describing the area while he was an apprentice in Edinburgh. He arrived in the York Colony in the summer of 1882, but like most others he left for the winter, spending the time in Winnipeg. He returned the following spring and was soon joined by his mother, brothers and others from Eday. They took out homesteads about 6 miles northwest of the original Yorkton settlement. This area became known as Orkney, after their homeland.

In the mid 1880s others from Eday and elsewhere came to the York settlement. In 1885 they formed a Home Guard to protect the settlement during the Riel Rebellion. The settlers at Orkney soon established a school and later a church. When a settler died in 1896 the Orkney cemetery was established, and over the next 100 years more than 70 settlers and their descendants have been buried there. The village of Orcadia was formed later.

By 1888 The York Farmers’ Colonization Company had fulfilled all its charter requirements, but it held land until 1947 when it was dissolved.