Starting around 1820 and continuing for seventy years or more many Scottish ancestors left Scotland attracted to the plains of western Canada because of the abundance of cheap agriculture land. Most of those ancestors had been raised in an agrarian society so felt comforable journeying across the ocean to take up new farm land. The western plains of Canada held many new challenges for the new settlers with possibly the biggest and greatest worry of the homesteader being not the severe winters, sickness, nor the lack of close neighbors but rather the fear of the prairie fire. The major cause for igniting them was the serve thunder storms to be found throughout the praires. Once started and if aloud to get out of control they because deadly and next to impossible to stop. There are records of prairie fires starting as far south as Montana border of the United States and traveling north for hundreds of miles. On many occassions the  Canadian Mounted Police took their lives in their hands to ride ahead of the fires, warning people to safeguard their homes and get out of the path of a oncoming fire. Settlers would all answer the call to collectively fight the fires. Some of these fires destroyed thousands of acres of grassland, buildings, animals, and several human lives as well. The beautiful prairie wool grass which made such good feed for the homesteaders livestock became the fuel which fed these fires.

The fires left nothing in their wake, and it would be another year before the lush green grass would return to the area. To protect their property farmers would carefully plow fireguards around their buildings and feed stacks. They would plow a number of furrows, leave a wide space and then plow several more furrows, they then burnt the grass between the furrows until they had a very wide fireguard. However a prairie fire with a strong wind was known to leap  great distances. It was not until more land became cultivated and roadways built, and as more settlers moved into the areas, that the threat from these prairie fires began to disappear.

Annie Bloss wife of John McWillie born in London England related her experience on seeing a Saskatchewan prairie fire for the first time. They were living in a rented home north of their homestead and south of the village of Plunkett. The home was a two story home constructed of lumber in which they slept in an upstairs bedroom. On occasions when she awoke at night she would enjoy looking out at the moon and clear blue Sky filled with twinkling stars. On this particular night she awoke and on looking out in a southerly direction over their homestead, the entire horizon from east to west seemed alight. Her first thoughts were of the lights of London which she had left a few short years ago.  But as she gazed out she was awe struck by the size of the fire and on closer observation thought their grain storage buildings were on fire. She immediately woke her husband John, who dressed and rushed out to fight the fire with assistance from neighbors. Indeed a number of their grain storage buildings were ablaze, however the fireguard prevented the home from being burnt. On another occasion later they lost all of their feed stacks when a fire jumped over the fire guard and it was only through the cooperation and generosity of neighbors that they were able to obtain sufficient feed to carry them through the winter.

When one looks over the same landscape today it is very difficult to visualize there was ever a prairie fire hazard. When one considers these dangers and other hardships that early settlers faced we begin to appreciate the hardships the settlers faced in opening up the land for farming.   Also that the major driving force that held them to that land was the knowledge that if they could overcame the hardships and, develop their own piece of property they could have a place they could call there own, and as well hopefully obtain a better life for themselves and those of us that followed.