and political changes that were threatening to undermine their way of life in Europe. Their standard of living had been considerably reduced by a depression and by an increasing tax load. The Canadian frontier contrasted favorably, as a report in the January 1891 issue of the Winnipeg newspaper The Colonist reveals: "The settlers ... express themselves to be heartily glad to escape the excessive taxation, exacted from them while in the old country." They also claim that fifty percent less labour is to be expended to produce an equal result with that obtained at home, while fertilizing can be entirely dispensed with. Unfavorable conditions in Old France The plutocrats in addition had witnessed by the early 1880s the effective elimination of Monarchist influence in the upper reaches of the French government. The hated anti-Monarchist coalition of Opportunist Republicans and Radical Republicans had secured control of the French Chamber. The coalition had dedicated itself to purging the civil service and judiciary of monarchist sympathizers. The "cement" of the coalition, as the French Catholic Deputy Albert de Mun had observed, was "religious war." By 1882 the government had introduced legislation (secularizing/laicisating) primary schools, and by 1886 had excluded nuns and monks from teaching in State schools. The public school system was now to be staffed exclusively by lay personnel. The New Land probably offered to 'the Counts' a new hope for survival of traditional society. On the Pipestone they could build an aristocratic, Catholic, French 'island' far removed from such troubled waters. Early arrivals The first settlers in the St. Hubert area, which then was a part of the South Provisional District of Assiniboia, North-West Territories, were Doctor Rudolph Meyer, an Alsacian (German)-born agriculturalist of Maule, Seine-et-Oise, France, Meyer's cousin and a future bride of unknown name, and his gardener, Emile Renoult, of Marc, Seine-et-Oise, France. Due to conflicting reports, it is difficult to ascertain when the three arrived. Fr. Fallourd mentions that they landed in late May 1886. Donatien Fremont, in La Liberte et la Patriote (1958), disagrees. He places the time of their arrival in the spring of 1885. Joe Sage, who was still living in the St. Hubert district in 1980, believes that they landed before 1885. He recalls that his father, Jean Sage, arrived in the district in 1886. Jean immediately began working for Count de Saurras, of Annonay, France, who had built his house one year earlier