Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Winter 1983
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 3, No. 1, Winter 1983, pp. 39-49.
Abstract
Many aspects of Canada's relationship with the United States were summed up by Canada's Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau when he told an American audience in Washington, D.C., "Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even tempered is the beast ... one is affected by every twitch and grunt." Canada has always lived next to this generally friendly elephant and Canadian policy makers have never been able to shake off the need to consider what has happened or may happen south of the border. Although the context was different in the nineteenth century, the need to take the United States into account was equally important, particularly in policies relating to the settlement of the Canadian West, where for many years there was direct competition for settlers.
Settlers coming to the North American continent tended to look at North America as a unit, but in many ways there was always a recognition of the importance of the political border. In the early nineteenth century the British North American colonies could count on attachment to the British Crown to bring in significant numbers of settlers from Britain at a time when huge quantities of land were still available in the United States. In addition, at one stage southern Ontario received large numbers of American settlers who seem to have treated Ontario as merely part of the American frontier. However, by the middle part of the nineteenth century the frontier had passed west of Ontario and the movement of settlers was from Ontario into the American Midwest. Ontario continued to attract settlers from Britain, but their numbers were not great and most British overseas migrants went to the United States. As long as the Canadian West was viewed as too isolated for settlement, British North America had no significant amount of available good agricultural land and had little incentive to try to attract agricultural immigrants. Ontario, or Canada West, as it was called before 1867, looked to western British North America as a potential destination for Canadian migrants, but until 1870 the literature was mostly concerned with establishing a Canadian presence to prevent the area from becoming part of the United States and to provide a possible destination for those wishing to remain loyal to the Crown.
During this period of Canadian inactivity, the American government gradually became more active in attracting agricultural immigrants to the United States. In 1854 Congressman Benjamin Wade of Ohio supported a free homestead bill as a way to attract poor Europeans to take advantage of America's regenerative powers. Nine years later, after free homesteads had been established, President Lincoln recommended additional encouragement of immigration. The next year the Republicans began overseas advertising, followed shortly by use of ambassadors as immigration agents. These efforts were supplemented by the agents of states and territories and of railway and land companies wishing to provide settlers for the land and traffic for the railways. The "western fever" that periodically swept large areas of the settled frontier led the agents of states and land companies to concentrate on American targets, but similar agents on steamboats and railways did not discriminate against foreigners, so that, once in the United States and on their way to the frontier, all immigrants ran the gauntlet of hucksters and promoters for numerous different settlements. By 1870 the Americans were already well experienced in promoting their frontier and attracting immigrants-activities that were intensified after 1870 as more states and land companies became involved.
Comments
Copyright 1983 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln