The three Prairie provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta1 have been in a state of restructuring and change since settlement by European immigrants in the latter half of the 19th and the early part of the 20th centuries. From the 1880s through to the Second World War, the Prairies developed a well-earned reputation as “the breadbasket of the world”. Settlements, road and rail transportation, government institutions, research and legislation, were all created around the needs of the export grain economy.