by J.B. Steele
The winter of 1888-1889 was a record-breaker. No snow fell at the lake and very little elsewhere in the Edmonton district. Prairie fires were on the go at different times, and the outlook for a crop was blue as indigo. Godfrey Steele sized up the situation so well that he put no crop in at all, saving his seed for the following year, but the other two settlers, Dick Steele and A.R. Moody, sowed all the grain they had for seed as they had planned to do. From the first of April till the first of August there was practically no rainfall worth mentioning. It was the driest season ever known by Halfbreeds or Indians, and has never been repeated up the present (1922). The grain sown didn’t come through the ground till well on in August and was never good enough to cut for green feed. The year was an absolute blank, so far as crops were concerned. There were cracks in the prairie that one could put his foot in, the sloughs dried up,
the lake went down several feet, and a series of comparatively dry seasons followed, though the season of 1890 was rather above normal as to rainfall.
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