The French Counts of St Hubert, Saskatchewan

The French Counts settled in St. Hubert, Saskatchewan which was located on Pipestone Creek, 14km south west of Whitewood, Saskatchewan. The French Counts of St Hubert stayed in the area between 1884 and the early 1900s, before World War I. St. Hubert is classified presently as an unincorporated area means there are five or more dwellings establishing a settlement, and the civic government is administered by the rural municipality of Silverwood No. 123. Dr. Rudolph Meyer was the initial European to arrive followed by others who established ranches in the vicinity of St. Hubert and Whitewood.The 'French Counts' and the Origins of St. HubertThe French-speaking settlement of St. Hubert is atypical of the communities that developed in the wake of immigration into Western Canada. As Father B. Fallourd, parish priest at St. Hubert from 1918 to 1949, wrote in History of the Beginning of St. Hubert Mission, "…the chief originality of the parish of St. Hubert (is that it) happened to be the first and only group comprising French-speaking Catholics. All came directly from France and Belgium to St. Hubert as settlers, which was erected in a parish in the limits of the Diocese of Regina and even in the whole of Saskatchewan and Alberta."Early settlement patternsTo understand how this came about, one must look back to the last quarter of the nineteenth century. When the West was being settled primarily by individual homesteaders, nine French counts, one Belgian baron and his brother, and three men of capital sought to transplant from the 'Old World' the socio-economic and cultural traditions of the French noblesse oblige. Though for the most part their efforts were unsuccessful, with all leaving the district before 1914, they left a lasting imprint on the community. Their brief tenure on the Pipestone Creek can be viewed as a golden age in the development of St. Hubert.