1867-1914: Background / Fitful Growth / Changing Conditions / First Wave / Laurier Boom

Fitful Growth: Economy

Economy

Policy Foundations

Block Settlements

Exactly who was leaving is not clear. Despite the beginnings of organized immigration promotion abroad, Canada could not compete with the United States in attracting European migrants. Newcomers hoping to farm knew that railways and steamship services offered better access to American frontier lands and that farming was comparatively cheaper in the United States. But not only immigrants found the United States attractive in these years. The switch in the Atlantic provinces from the age of "wood, wind and sail," to "iron, coal and rail" in the last four decades of the century left many to contend with shrinking demands for traditional staples like timber and to depend upon central Canadian agricultural

markets. Between 1861 and 1901, poor economic prospects encouraged almost a quarter million people to leave the Maritime provinces, most of them moving to the United States. In the same period, almost 400,000 French Canadians left rural areas of Quebec to find jobs in the south. Ontario's farming lands, too, had almost all been occupied by the time of Confederation. Rising land prices and increasing numbers of dependents on family farms had already prompted an exodus to the U.S. As early as the 1850s, the sons of Ontario farmers left for nearby land and manufacturing cities in the American northeastern states.

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