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Immigration
With the First Nations and Métis marginalised,
a publicly-supported railway in place, and individual
homestead plots surveyed, the western landscape
was now "open" to commercial agriculture.
To this end, the last decade of the nineteenth
century saw the launch of a federal immigration
program that would see the Canadian West eventually
filled with white settlers on an unprecedented
scale.
As envisioned by the Minister of the Interior,
Clifford Sifton, the primary thrust behind the
federal program was a massive advertising campaign
which relied very heavily on posters
and pamphlets.
Although these items primarily targeted prospective
immigrants in English-speaking countries - in
particular Great Britain and the United
States - they were also, at times, distributed
in French, German, Flemish, Swedish, Finnish,
Norwegian, and Dutch.
The campaign was often monitored by overseas offices
of the Immigration Branch and used special artwork
and photographs
in combination with the latest technologies (steam
movies and lantern slides, for example). Everything
was orchestrated in an effort to impress audiences
with eye-catching images
of a modern and vibrant country with a vast landscape
that promised rich rewards. There was hardly a
country lane
in Britain or a trade
show in the United States that did not receive
the message.
The immigration campaign was not left entirely
in federal hands. Many local
communities looked to reap benefits from a
fast-paced economy that high immigration figures
promised. The railways
were also active players. They had their own land
grants, and the longer these sat empty, the longer
it would take for shareholders to receive their
dividends from the government's huge land subsidy.
The results were impressive. In 1896, on the
eve of the federal government's full-scale advertising
bombardment, a respectable 17,000 newcomers arrived
in Canada. Just three years later, when the program
was in full swing, the figure almost tripled to
45,000, and by 1905, it tripled again. In all,
two million people arrived in Canada in the period
from 1896 to the First World War. By 1911, the
Canadian West had been transformed; there was
a growing Euro-Canadian population, great expanses
of wheat and other grains, prosperous farming
towns, and a burgeoning regional identity.
Further
Readings
See also
Projecting Images of the Nation: The Immigration Program and Its Use of Lantern Slides
> Next Theme: Homesteads
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