Thanks to Steinbeck, the Oklahoma Dust Bowl and the migration of families like the Joads is well-known. Much less well-known in the non-prairie parts of Canada is what happened during the same time on the more northern parts of the Great Plains. Substantial chunks of southern Alberta and southern Saskatchewan are, 
you may recall from high school geography, known as Palliser's Triangle. Since high school may have been a long time ago, I'll give you a little recap: in the mid 19th Century, one John Palliser was sent to inspect the west (which at the time was all Hudson Bay land, since the Hudson Bay Company was very much in existence but the Dominion of Canada was not). Palliser had a good look at the prairie, and considered it barren. I suppose if you interpret barren as not able to bear fruit, and you restrict land bearing fruit to cultivated crops, he was right. After all, John Palliser saw a large semi-arid area, with solonetzic soils, dried alkali lakes, and no trees. This was short-grass prairie. And Palliser's report was quite clear that this should not be homesteaded.
The climatic record shows us that Palliser was there during one of the less-benign times in the moisture history of the semi-arid west. And Canadian history being what it is, Confederation was accompanied by the push of the railroad west, and when the CPR marched on through the prairies, the road to settlement existed. Our early history is, after all, characterized by the ever-present threat of the United States snatching all that is within their grasp, so thus the push to get the railway to the Pacific, and to settle the lands along the way. 
And the railway ran through the heart of Palliser's Triangle. In 1872, a mere five years after Confederation, the Dominion Land Act paved the way for homesteading the Prairies: $10 allowed you to file a claim for 160 acres (a quarter 
section under the western survey system). In order to convert the claim to a title, the settler had to break at least 30 acres during the first three years, build a house, and live on the property for at least half the year. The short-grass prairie was designed to be ripped up, with a homestead on most every quarter-section. And, starting in 1909, east-central Alberta received some of the waves of people that Clifford Sifton had recruited from Europe. And during the early years of World War I, moisture was good so there were good crops. Furthermore, the war meant that crop prices were high.
And bust follows boom. Crop prices dropped after the war. Worse, from 1917-1921, south-east Alberta was hit with its first serious drought since it was settled. Five years of low, low returns on homesteads that were only recently established of course took their toll. The land of promise turned into the land of despair, and homesteads turned into tax recovery lands. That is a fancy way of saying that the title reverted to the crown and people left.
And there we have the point of departure for my recent field season in Alberta. I went to that treeless short-grass prarie with the massive moisture deficit. See, something happened during the 20s and 30s. People didn't just leave, there was an instutional response. This is the Special Areas. They have a regional administration that is unlike anything else I know in Canada. Those tax recovery lands are now grazing leases, and the Special Areas administration has influenced the development of water resource adaptations including potable water pipelines from the Red Deer River, small-scale irrigation projects, re-grassing land that should never have been broken, and so on. There were three consecutive dry years not so long ago, and the Special Areas survived well - even though this area is now dominated by ranching and BSE hit during that time and thus cattle prices plummeted, even though grasshoppers came in biblical proportions and munched what little there grew during the drought. I'm not saying it was a happy time, but it wasn't the land of the Joads either.
Thing is, the long-terms GCM predictions for this area are increased summer heat, and decreased early growing season moisture. That translates to a tremendous increase in moisture deficit. And for five weeks, Gwen and I sat in farm kitchens and administrators' offices, and we poked through the water commission and rural water plants and the power plant that is in control of the raw water pipeline. 
We attended irrigators meetings and water managers meetings. Our goal was to get the story of water in the Special Areas now: who relies on it, how, what seasonal dynamics matter, what strategies are in place for drought, what was done last time, how does insurance fit into it, can you drink your well water, how do you recharge those dugouts if there isn't enough snow and what about those chinooks and how hot is too hot for crop growth and what does that mean, and what about that oil and gas development.
The oil and gas development is the boom part of Alberta right now, and while in Canada we rarely own subsurface rights, we are compensated for access. And now the short-grass prarie is dotted by gas wells and pump jacks for oil (and the oil and gas industry of course needs water too, for drilling, for fracing, for injection extraction...) And all of that, it makes a very interesting story. For those who have an on-going love affair with Canada, the country, at least.
The treeless prairie is not beautiful - not to Ontario eyes, anyway. And it's perhaps no coincidence that the only two people who knew where we even went referred to it in an extremely uncomplimentary way, comparing that part of Alberta to, well, part of the human anatomy. And while I'm not bowled away by the scenery, not by a long shot, I thought the people were some of the nicest and most helpful I've ever met. And in the late afternoon during a chinook, the prairie lights up like gold and you kind of get it when they go on about their big skies. It's not a lie to say that it grew on us.
It grew on us until that "Edmonton chinook", that horrible frigid Arctic airmass, blew through and froze us and our car. One week, the temparture difference between our part of Palliser's triangle and Toronto was over fourty degrees! We responded by escaping to B.C. to go hunt down some hotsprings. But that's another story altogether.