List of Headings
- i The place for a pure life
- ii Employment problems facing immigrants
- iii A sparsely populated region
- iv Railway links with the USA
- v Not staying in Canada for ever
- vi The first major urban development in the west
- vii Taking control of the west
- viii Advertising Canada in other countries
- ix Building a transport infrastructure
- x A change in the ethnic make-up
- xi The effects of poverty in the west
Questions 1-7
Drag a heading into each box.
1. To bolster Canada鈥檚 population and agricultural output, the federal government took steps to secure western land. In 1870 a large tract of land was purchased from the company that owned it. Two years later, a law was introduced enabling settlers to acquire free land. From 1873 the west also had a police force created by the government - the 鈥楳ounties鈥?
2. Settling the west made imperative the construction of a railway to connect Canada鈥檚 two coasts. The railway would work to create an east-west economy, in which the west would feed the growing urban industrial population of the east, and in return become a market for eastern Canada鈥檚 manufactured goods.
3. Winnipeg became the metropolis of the west during this period. Its growth before 1900 was the result of a combination of factors: land speculation, increasing housing construction, and the fact that in 1881 the federal government chose the town as a major stop along the Canadian Pacific Railway.
4. This homogeneity, however, did not last very long. Increasing numbers of foreign immigrants, especially from Austria-Hungary and Ukraine, soon added new elements to the recent British and the older native American population base.
5. Not all of the settlers who came to western Canada in the 1880s, however, desired to remain there. Canada before 1891 has been called 鈥榓 huge demographic railway station, where thousands of men, women, and children were constantly going and coming, and where the number of departures invariably exceeded that of arrivals鈥?
6. The notion that urban life was 鈥榖ad鈥?began to prevail, and many of the problems were blamed on the single-male-dominated atmosphere of the cities. These same social reformers believed that rural living, in stark contrast to urban, would lead to a healthy, moral, and charitable way of life.
7. By the end of the century the government was presenting Canada鈥檚 attractions to potential overseas migrants in several ways. It offered free or cheap land to agriculturists, and established agents in the UK and other countries for the purpose of attracting emigrants.