Jim Butcher (American, B. 1944) "Saskatchewan Harvest" Signed and dated lower right. Original Mixed Media painting on Cold Press Illustration Board. Provenance: Collection of James A. Helzer (1946-2008), Founder of Unicover Corporation. This painting is the original painting which was published on the Fleetwood First Day Cover for the Canadian 17c Saskatchewan stamp issued August 27, 1980. In Saskatchewan, where winter temperatures sometimes plummet to 50 below zero, and summer temperatures rise to a scorching 110 degrees, only the strong survive. After the Canadian government purchased this land from the Hudson Bay Company, in 1870, settlers flocked from everywhere. In response to pamphlets printed in twenty languages, they arrived to claim their land. Requirements were minimal, insisting only that the settler live at least part-time on his land and turn over thirty acres of ground in the first year. Doukhobors fleeing Czarist Russia, hard-working tenant farmers from Scotland, city-slickers from eastern Canada, and Ukrainian peasants -- they all came to Saskatchewan as if it were the promised land. They camped in front of land offices for days to be sure they would have the pick of the best parcels of land. Despite the loneliness and hardship, most of the settlers stayed. Today, seventy-five years after Saskatchewan joined the Canadian federal union, this province, a melting pot of nations, is one of Canada's most prosperous areas. Bordered on the east by Manitoba and on the west by Alberta, Saskatchewan is the heartland of the Canadian breadbasket. While the plains continue to produce over sixty percent of the country's wheat, the rocky hinterlands, rich with natural resources, promise to provide the wealth of the future. But, even today, Saskatchewan's most important resource is her people -- the descendants of the strong pioneers who first challenged this forbidding frontier. Image Size: 16.5 x 14 in. Overall Size: 24.75 x 22 in. Unframed. (B06808)