Settlement in Canada

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1052, 16 August 1930, Page 29

Settlement in Canada

Comparison With New Zealand FROM time to time in New Zealand much is Heard from place-seekers, politicians and others of similar leaniujrs of what has been done to encourage settlement in Canada. It is argued quite frequently that New Zealand and Canada could he analogous in this respect, but that this Dominion is lagging well behind. The story of the development of the Canadian Pacific Railways, Ltd., makes interesting reading in this connection.

Contrary to the generally accepted opinion In many parts of this Dominion, the Canadian Government has really had very little to do with the settlement of Canada in recent years, it has been left to the big railway corporations to advertise the attractions of Canada abroad, to collect immigrants, and even to place them, first in employment to gain experience, and secondl/on farms of their own. The siory of the Canadian Pacific Railway is really one of the commercial romances of modern times. Coming into being to help the Government out of what seemed an almost insurmountable difficulty in the early seventies of last century, it has played a big part in the development of that vast Dominion ever since. As part of Its ngreement with the Government the t'apailian Pacific Railway was given the title to 25.000,000 acres of prairie lands, and it is this land that has received the greatest attention from settlers during the past half a century. until today little more than 4,t1du,000 acres await occupation. The first bale of land conducted by the company with respect to its total grant of 25,000,000 acres was held in the fall of 18S1, and it was then that Canada received its first publicity as an agricultural country. A boom resulted from this impetus, and large blocks of land could have been sold at very attractive prices, but the directors, with a wisdom which no one can now challenge, decided that settlement and not speculation was the most to be desired, and every effort was made to put the break on trafficking in land. It was put on the market at a flat rate of 2 dollars 50 cents, and sbld under contract which provided that at least half had to be broken and cutivated; a rebate of half the purchase price was granted for each acre so broken and cultivated. in the protracted slump w hich lasted from 18S2 to 1886 many settlers left their farms and, here again, the company showed considerable foresight, coming to the rescue and carrying the settlers through, even going to the extent of purchasing portion of the w heat crop at 50 cents a bushel when the market price was as low as 87 cents. Today, the company runs ex-

perimental farms in different parts of the Dominion, working in conjunction with the Department of Agriculture wherever possible. Its pedigree stock, for instance, is in demand in all parts of the Continent. Trees are also raised in nurseries for shelter belts on the farms of its settlers. A subsidiary of the company is the Canada Colonisation Association, which, in conjunction with the Overseas Settlement Committee of the British Government, has inaugurated various schemes for maintaining the flow of colonists from Great Britain. One of the first activities of the organisation was the erection of 100 cottages in Western Canada for the occupation of selected British immigrants, and the finding of employment for the strangers until they could be drafted on to farms of their own. Many schemes have been put in operation whereby the new settlers are given every opportunity for making good. When it comes to comparing opportunities for land settlement in Canada with those in New Zealand, however, it can be seen that conditions in the two countries are entirely different. Whereas in Canada the prairie lands can be broken in by the plough in the first year and, provided transport facilities are suitable, the land made to return a margin of profit within tho first year or so, in New Zealand this is not the case, especially with the land remaining unoccupied at the present time It would take much money and many years of working to bring much of * New’ Zealand’s idle lands to a state of worth-w’hile productivity. In Canada, the railways have searched out always the lands easily workable. The marginal lands have been left and would present quite as many difficulties to the settlers as the marginal lands of New Zealand.