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Perspective: Cost of Immigration
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National Archives of Canada (C-089536). |
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160 Acres of Free Land, ca. 1900. Immigration officials advertised in Finland and throughout Europe to attract settlers. Free land was often the lure that they used to entice newcomers to the Canadian West. |
After 1896, these provisions became attractive to hopeful settlers. The Dakota land boom in the United States was over. A significant increase in land prices there placed more farmers under heavy mortgages or forced them to employment as tenant farmers. But settlers coming north for cheaper land still encountered heavy costs. They had to purchase implements, horses, and wagons, and face ongoing operating costs. Even the cost of seed took its toll. The usual practice for farmers was to take liens on seed grain and pay the principal and interest in twelve annual installments. Settlers
commonly cut back on amenities, used magazines to paper log walls, went without windows, and diverted all money and energy into farming. The first Mennonite settlers in the 1880s lived under their wagons while improving their land. Many settlers built sod houses; that is, they lay tightly woven grass sod, natural to the prairie, over a wooden frame. Newcomers with more money purchased pre-fabricated log homes. For example Murdock McKinnon, a Clandonald settler in Alberta, bought one from the Stavelock Lumber Company in Edmonton that cost $600 in 1926 ($6082 in 1999 dollars). 2
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