When Thomas Wilby and Jack Haney drove their REO across the Canadian Prairies in 1912, they entered a region undergoing profound change. Railways were spreading across the landscape. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants were establishing farms, and new towns were springing up along the tracks. At the same time, Indigenous peoples who had long inhabited these territories were increasingly confined to reserves and subjected to restrictive federal policies. Wilby's journey offers an eyewitness account of this transformation.
The Railway Opens the West
The Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) was instrumental in opening western Canada to large-scale agricultural settlement. Under characters such as William Cornelius Van Horne, the CPR did far more than build tracks. The railway became part of a system linking immigration, land settlement, agricultural production, and transportation.
Canadian Pacific Railway locomotive no. 349 before 1899. Unknown location. Credit: Andrew Merrilees / Library and Archives Canada / PA-126953.
Federal legislation made large-scale settlement possible. The Dominion Lands Act of 1872 established the homestead system, under which qualifying settlers could obtain 160 acres after meeting residence and cultivation requirements. The Department of the Interior Act of 1873 created the Department of the Interior, which was responsible for Dominion lands and immigration. Notably, the minister was also responsible for Indian Affairs.
In 1870, no urban centres existed on the Prairies. By 1911, thirteen cities with populations over 5,000 had been established.
Douglas Francis and Howard Palmer, eds.
The Prairie West, Historical Readings (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press), 1992, 511.
Railways provided the transportation infrastructure. Immigrants could arrive in Canada, travel west by train, and establish farms near railway stations. Grain elevators, stores, and towns followed. The Canadian West was being reorganized around the railway.
“Give Us People!”
Canada actively recruited settlers. According to the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, approximately one million pieces of immigration literature were distributed throughout Europe in the first six months of 1900 alone.
The campaign intensified under Clifford Sifton, Minister of the Interior from 1896 to 1905. Canada particularly sought experienced agricultural families capable of establishing farms in difficult Prairie conditions.
Build Your Nest in Western Canada. Date 1907-1908. Credit: Library and Archives Canada.
Ukrainians, Germans, Dutch, Scandinavians, Mennonites, Doukhobors, Romanians, British settlers and many others came west. Concentrated “block settlements” were established where language, religion and cultural traditions could be preserved.
In 1898, 7,400 Doukhobors, literally translated from the Russian as "Spirit Wrestlers," escaped persecution by emigrating to what would become Saskatchewan. Their motto: “Toil and peaceful life.” Doukhobor women are shown breaking the prairie sod by pulling a plow themselves. Note that the women are doing the labor as a man is “steering” the plow. Date c. 1899. Credit Library and Archives Canada/C-000681.
The population exploded. Winnipeg grew from approximately 20,000 inhabitants in 1886 to 150,000 in 1911. Saskatchewan's population increased more than tenfold between 1891 and 1911.
Roads Followed the Settlers
In Saskatchewan, Wilby discovered that roads could simply disappear when cultivation ended: “where the land had not been taken up by farmers or homesteaders, the roads failed, beginning again in the cultivated areas.” A Motor Tour Through Canada, pp. 196–197.
View of Gleichen from the C.P.R. (Canadian Pacific Railway) station - (No.) 87. Note how close the houses were built to the rail track. Gleichen is a historic hamlet in southeast Alberta, Canada, located on the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) main line. Date unknown. Credit: Library and Archives Canada/PA-011721.
When there were no recognizable roads, Wilby and Haney searched for the railway: “We bumped through sand dust and furrows ... until we picked up the railroad in the absence of any other recognized route.” A Motor Tour Through Canada, p. 196.
Canada had a transcontinental railway but not a transcontinental highway. CPR and other railways had created the transportation backbone. Settlers established farms around it. Local roads then developed to connect farms to railway stations, grain elevators, and towns.
Country schoolhouse, 6 miles east of Calgary - (No.) 92 (C.P.R. (Canadian Pacific Railway)). Date between 1868-1923. Exact location is unknown. Credit: Library and Archives Canada/PA-011720.
The Reality Behind the Immigration Posters
Government and railway advertisements portrayed Western Canada as a land of fertile soil, independence, and opportunity. Wilby encountered the harsher reality behind those advertisements. In Saskatchewan, he met a homesteading family living in a dwelling he described as “little more than a door and window with some clapboards arranged rectangularly around them.” A Motor Tour Through Canada, p. 197.
Canada the New Homeland. Canada West. Poster reproduced in "Canada West." Credit: Library and Archives Canada.
The Canadian West offered opportunity, but establishing a farm could mean isolation, primitive housing, and years of extraordinarily hard work.
Poster advertising a lantern slide lecture. Date 1903-1906. Credit: Library and Archives Canada.
But the Land Was Not Empty
There is another side to Canada's settlement story. The lands promoted to immigrants had been occupied and used by Indigenous peoples for generations. The expansion of settler agriculture therefore cannot be separated from Canada's treaties, reserve system and Indigenous legislation.
Blackfeet migrating c. 1886. The title is creator-assigned. Blackfoot is the more commonly-used term. Credit: Canada. Patent and Copyright Office / Library and Archives Canada / C-001878a.
Beginning with Treaties 1 and 2 in 1871, the Canadian government negotiated numbered treaties across much of western Canada. Treaty 7 of 1877, particularly relevant to Wilby's journey through southern Alberta, involved the Blackfoot Confederacy and other Indigenous peoples.
Download Treaty 7 of 1877 here.
The Indian Act of 1876 consolidated federal legislation governing First Nations and provided the framework through which the Canadian government exercised increasing control over Indigenous life.
Blackfeet at Earnscliffe during a visit to Ottawa in 1886 "in which they presented their concerns about treaty violations to the federal government" (Caption Title, Canadian History Hall).
"Front row", left to right: North Axe, Peigan Chief, One Spot, Blood sub-chief. "Middle row", left to right: Three Bulls, half brother of Crowfoot, Crowfoot, Blackfoot Chief, Red Cloud, Blood Chief. "Back row", left to right: Father Lacombe, John L'Heureux, interpreter. The title is creator-assigned. Blackfoot is the more commonly-used term. Credit: Canada. Dept. of the Interior / Library and Archives Canada / PA-045666
The contrast with immigration policy is striking. Canada was recruiting agricultural families from thousands of miles away and helping transform western land into privately worked farms, while Indigenous peoples already living in the region were increasingly restricted by reserves and federal policies.
The Blackfeet – 1867: watercolour, gouache, pen and coloured inks over pencil on wove paper. The title is creator-assigned. Blackfoot is the more commonly-used term. Credit: Credit: Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1946-135-1 Gift of Mrs. J.B. Jardine.
Wilby and Haney drove directly into this history, approaching the Rockies in southern Alberta. Wilby wrote: “A few Indians of the Peigan Reserve, high above the dreamy valley of Old Man River, glanced up indifferently as the car passed.”
He noticed European-style clothing, houses, flowers, and laundry. But Wilby had arrived expecting the romanticized Indigenous West familiar from the literature of his time. What he encountered did not match that image. He wondered whether education had succeeded merely in “making the Indian a poor imitation of the poorest class of white man?” A Motor Tour Through Canada, p. 231.
It is an uncomfortable quotation, exposing Wilby's colonial assumptions and the expectations with which many outsiders viewed Indigenous peoples in 1912.
Sun Dance, Blackfeet Indians. The title is creator-assigned. Blackfoot is the more commonly-used term. Credit: Trueman/Library and Archives Canada/C-014106.
Two Stories on the Same Prairie
Wilby and Haney were driving through two interconnected narratives. One was celebrated as progress: railways, immigration, homesteads, grain elevators, towns, and agricultural production.
"New Canadians from 40 Schools and representing many races sing "O Canada." Location: Canora Fair Grounds, Canora, Saskatchewan (date unkown). Source: Screenshot of B&W film "Saskatchewan Schools and the New Canadians," gathering of 2,000 children organized by the Saskatchewan Department of Education. This films shows: The "New Canadians" are Eastern European children newly arrived in Canada. We see nurses inspecting their tonsils and teeth; 2000 children in a parade and singing O Canada; and visiting an exhibit train complete with a household science and an education car. Credit: Library and Archives Canada.
The other concerned treaties, reserves, the Indian Act, and the profound transformation of Indigenous territories and societies.
This is what makes the 1912 automobile journey so revealing and, in many ways, troubling. Wilby largely saw the first story. From today's perspective, we must recognize both.
Image originally identified as a C.N.R. station, but was in fact, a C.P.R station, purchased from the Canadian Northern Railway, known as the CNoR. Place and date are unknown. Credit: Trueman/Library and Archives Canada/C-014106.
Further reading: The Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 provides an excellent overview of immigration, homesteading, Indigenous displacement and Prairie settlement in Settling the West: Immigration to the Prairies from 1867 to 1914. The key legislative and treaty context includes the Dominion Lands Act (1872), the Department of the Interior Act (1873), the Indian Act (1876), and Treaty 7 (1877).
Wilby's observations are from Thomas W. Wilby, A Motor Tour Through Canada (1914), particularly his Saskatchewan and southern Alberta chapters.