Laurier Boom Social Studies The Growing west 1885

Laurier Boom Social Studies

The Growing west • 1885 -1905 drastic changes in the west: • Klondike Gold Rush of 1896 -1899 • Settlement of the west through Laurier -Sifton Immigration Policies • Creation of Alberta and Manitoba in 1905

Railways • Klondike Gold rush wealth growth of industries network of railway lines. • Laurier government provided subsidies to support the Canadian Northern Railway and Grand Trunk Railway.

Laurier-Sifton

Sifton and the “Ideal Immigrant” • “a stalwart peasant in a sheep skin coat, born on the soil, whose forefathers have been farmers for generations, with a stout wife and a half-dozen children, is good quality” • How? • Promised to pay for passage • Offered free land

Open-door Policy • Open-door policy: no restriction on who can immigrate. • During Laurier era source of immigration was from: Britain, United States, and Europe. • Sifton encouraged immigration from Eastern and Central Europe.

“Home Children” • Between 1869 and the early 1930 s, Canada received over 100, 000 juvenile immigrants from the British Isles. • Brought up in poverty, and were homeless or living in the urban slums of Britain. • Juvenile immigration program was to place these children with good Canadian families but most were used as cheap labour.

Alberta and Saskatchewan • 1905: federal government recognized the need for responsible government as population

Canada’s Response to the Open Door Policy? • English Canadians: felt the immigrants from Southern Europe threatened the British character • French Canadians: feared they would lose their culture as their population • Labour Unions: fear that unskilled workers pose a threat to jobs • Racial Prejudice towards people of African and Asian descent.