|
Sunny Way |
Settling the West |
The Klondike |
New Railways |
Industry |
Workers & Farmers |
Empire |
Boer War | Canadian Navy
| 1911
The settling of the west had been a key part of
Macdonald's National Policy but after an initial rush to
many areas along the railway route the immigration had
dropped off and in some cases the new settlers left for
greener pastures in the US. The world economy had been
in the doldrums at the beginning of the 1890's but had
made a comeback by the time Laurier was elected and with
the Klondike Gold Rush was growing at a very healthy
rate. The key to
encouraging settlers
to immigrate to Manitoba, and the Northwest was centred
around the growing of wheat. If the endless prairies
held the potential of producing anything it was wheat,
but that potential went back to Glasgow Scotland where a
young farmer was preparing a sample of a certain type of
wheat, a hard quick growing spring wheat, to send to a
friend of his named Fife in Ontario. Fife almost killed
the wheat by planting it in the fall but a few grains
survived and he managed to increase production,
In 1868 grasshoppers destroyed much of the wheat crop
the west and new seed gain was sent out from Ontario
which included some of Fife's gain which was now known
as Red Fife because of its red tinge. Whereas wheat
crops could easily be destroyed by an early frost in he
fall or a late chill in the spring, Red Fife started
late, grew fast and was ready for harvest before the
cold weather came. It quickly became the planting grain
of choice for the Manitoba and Northwest farmers.
In 1904 an even faster growing more
durable wheat, Marquis, was introduced and the areas of
the west that could produce grain was pushed even
further north. The bread basket of Canada had been
created and with developments in agricultural machinery
including the McCormick and Massey-Harris binders, the
railway infrastructure, the filling of all the free
land in the US with farmers and ranchers and the use of
grain elevators for shipping of wheat, the stage was set
for the immigrants to complete the equation.
The
number of immigrants between 1881 and 1896 who had
applied for the offer of 160 acres of free land was only
56,520 and of these only 40,194 had actually come west.
One of Laurier's Cabinet Ministers was the MP from
Brandon Manitoba, Clifford Sifton. Sifton had been mad
Minister of the Interior and among his responsibilities
was Immigration. He knew what the issues were that were
holding up progress in the west and immediately began to
address them. The CPR had been granted
millions of acres of land as a part of their
compensation
for building the railway but in 1896 had not yet picked
the acreage to fulfill those terms. This had prevented
anyone form determining what would be available for
homesteading so Sifton issued and edict to the choose or
lose there land and as a result he then knew what the
Government had left for Immigrants. He clarified the
regulations for homesteading, allowed young men living at
home to claim their own 160 acres of free land and set
up land agents in many communities to assist and
expedite
the process of the immigrants claiming and receiving
their free land.
The other part of
Sifton's plan was to actively recruit immigrants in
their countries to come to Canada. The two main targets
were the United States and Great Britain. Sifton flooded
the U.S. with pamphlets and advertising material about
the glories and fertility of the Canadian west and in
Britain campaigned among the British politicians to
encourage their countrymen to come to a part of the
Empire where the land was free and the living good. His
efforts did not stop here, He also sent agents to
Scandinavia, Germany, the lowlands, France, Germany and
Eastern Europe where Galicia provided a steady supply of
immigrants. The results were impressive.
In 1897 the number of immigrants had increased to 32,000
from just 16,835 two years earlier and from 1896 to 1911
over 2,000,000 immigrants arrived in Canada which in the
1901 census had only 5,371,315 people but by 1911 was up
to 7,206, 643 people. Of the arrivals 38% were from
Great Britain, 34 % were from the US and 26% from the
rest of Europe. During the same period Manitoba's
population swelled from 255,211 to 455,625 and
Saskatchewan and Alberta went from 164,281 to 867,095.
The west was filing up and the lat
part of the National Policy was fulfilled under Laurier. |
