Research and Advertising Project

Background

Encouraging British and European immigrants to settle on the prairies was part of Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald's plan to establish Canadian sovereignty over the newly-acquired North-West Territories. Stretching from Ontario's border to British Columbia, (still a British colony), the Territories were transferred to Canada by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1869. Settlement was an urgent matter, and so was a railway to carry settlers west. There was already talk in the mid-western United States of expanding north of the border.

The Canadian Pacific Railway, so necessary to opening up the Territories to large-scale settlement, was a massive project that took many years to finance. Surveying prairie land for railway-building and white settlement signaled displacement to Native people and Metis, and an end to their traditional way of life.

Research and Persuasive Writing Project

While the government was concerned with promoting the settlement of western Canada, you can imagine that if the Native people and Métis had the same resources as the Canadian government in 1870, they would have been painting a much more somber picture of the life that awaited the settlers of western Canada. In fact, the “picture” that the advertising painted of Canada West was much rosier than what the reality turned out to be for most of the settlers.

Research the hardships that the settlers of western Canada would have endured during the early settlement of the North-West Territories of the 1870s. Then use this information to paint the “real” picture of settling in the west. Use the government’s advertising as models and create your own advertisements to convince the would-be settlers to “stay home” and not venture west. Use images and facts to persuade the potential settlers to not move west and take over the aboriginal and Métis land.