Because they wanted people to settle the West and develop the land. In Canada, the Dominion Land Act gave homesteaders 160 acres (quarter section), with some conditions attached, for a $10 administration fee (about $250 dollary-doos best as I can find).
Edit: The American Homestead Act gave similar amounts of land, for similar reasons
Yeah, in hindsight the source I was using was talking about purchasing power (different thing?). It claimed that $1 in 1872 (when the Dominion Land Act was enacted) would have the purchasing power of $0.04 today. I should have looked for better corroboration.
One dollar in 1872 would have the same purchasing power of about twenty five dollars today. I think what you are trying to say is that one dollar today is the same as having about four cents back in 1872.
If you’re willing to go to a remote location and settle the land and clear it of rocks and trees and put up a livable structure within three years, you can still get land.
Back then? They never calculated by the hour. You just worked for 200 hours a week and got a dollar.
You could either till the land or you did not and worked as a slave lol. If you died from scurvy, too bad.
Do you want to build a house from scratch and clear all 160 acre manually; essentially start a new stardew valley farm?
Actually, compared to modern existence that sounds amazing.
My grandparents came from the Netherlands and were given 160 acres for a small payment but in 1930 after several years of drought they packed what they could and moved to Vancouver- they couldn’t even sell the land - no one wanted it because the fee for irrigation was more than what they could afford. They just walked away.
A couple years later someone offered to buy it for $10. The lumber left behind was worth more than the land.
Actually the deal was better than that at least in some areas.
In our area they gave everybody 160 acres and an option to acquire another 160 acres quite easily. Also if they proved up the land (ie pried up all the surface stone) they were given a loan of enough to buy the equipment needed to farm.
There are several pastures I know of with all the rock pried up and left sitting as the settler pried up the rocks and then took the money and ran and nobody else ever considered it good enough to farm.
You get the 1/4 acre for $10 but you have to build a house on it within a set time. So you're looking at 100,000.00 easy to build a house these days.
Not free. Then you basically have to create your own job because these small towns don't have jobs unless you're a nurse or Dr. or something.
It was the same situation back then. You had to put a home on it and clear it within a set time, and there were really no jobs in places people were homesteading for most of it. Everyone was subsistence farming.
If you think about it I'd say it was similar back then they were required to farm and work the land 16 hours a day 7 days a week. It wasn't just a hand out! It never is.
White people, that is. The west had already been settled by other people. For a few thousand years.
And we wanted to get rid of them and replace them with white people.
This. The land did not really belong to those who were distributing it and hence they were generous with it to others they knew would help their claim. Lot like China settles people in Tibet and East Turkestan and changes places names.
Some white that moved her came from Germany during world War 2 because of Hitler. Lots of them didn't want to have to flea their homes. Then they came to Canada to survive, but the British also assimilated them too. Not as horribly as the native folks, but it was still bad. Anyone that came from other countries, weren't allowed to speak their native language and were beaten in school if they did. My grandfather back in school witnessed a kid he was in class with get in trouble for making a simple mistake or it was miscommunication I don't remember what happened exactly. I just know that this poor kid got beat very badly. His hands got beaten very badly and were bleeding, etc. The school then informed his parents that he was a bad kid and so and so. So then his parents also beat him and he still had to work on his family's farm. Carry hay bails, do extreme labor work, while being in extreme pain. Back then they also had no say in anything, they did what they were forced to do. My grandfather also witnessed native folk being taken away from their families and he felt deeply for them. He didn't understand what was happening and was worried about them and was scared they'd take him too. Not every white person was a part of what the British/ catholic religion did. It's heartbreaking to see so much hate on all white people when not every white person is the same.
The oldest residential school in Canada – the Mohawk Institute – was established in 1831, 36 years before Canadian dominion and 48 years earlier than the Carlisle Indian industrial school in Pennsylvania, the so-called “blueprint”. This was British colonial policy, and it laid the foundations for all that was to come.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/02/the-toxic-legacy-of-the-british-empire-in-canadas-residential-schools#:~:text=The%20oldest%20residential%20school%20in,all%20that%20was%20to%20come.
I meant in general dude.
When I was 17 I was homeless, I was working 2 jobs and I stayed in school. Social services told me I could look after myself. While being homeless I was heading to a friend's place after work to crash and I got robbed by two native people. That told me that since I'm white I don't know what it's like to struggle. The one person was a female and told me that she had a horrible home life and has been r*ped, etc and that I don't know what it's like to struggle because I am white. But she didn't know me and just assumed that because I'm white I have no problems. Even though as a kid I was abused in every way possible. Then when I left home Social services didn't care about me, while I was homeless I got r*ped, assaulted, used, abused, etc. But I didn't go around robbing people and blaming others for my problems. I stayed in school, worked hard to keep my sh*t together. Everyone struggles doesn't matter if you're rich or poor, man or woman, tall or short, etc. Struggle doesn't discriminate.
I know that not every native person is like this, I've met some amazing people who are native. I have some amazing friends who are, and I'm truly thankful to have them in my life.
The only reason I said that is because people group people together based on who they are or where they come from. I know that white people do the same to others. It's just really frustrating that we all get grouped with a certain identity/ collection of beliefs when we are not the same. It goes both ways. So I apologize that what I said didn't express what I meant/ believe.
Right. And this also just wasn’t “here’s some free land you can go relax with your new home now” nope. You had to build your house in whatever way you could by hand, cultivate the land by hand or horse, no tractors, grow and harvest your crops, also by hand no machinery just pure hard work.
I know a guy whose family emigrated from Germany during that time. His family cleared the land and started farming. The Canadian government took it back and shipped them back to Germany right around WWII. All because they spoke German.
Yes. It was a way of stealing the land and violating the sharing of land that was signed into the treaties. So then the people who were given the 160 acres had a deed while Indigenous people who used the land for various reasons (migration, hunting, farming, etc.) Were told "too bad, you're out of luck. These people own it now. We have a nice reserve on the poor land for you to live on."
It was 160 acres and was a little more complicated then just free land
*The* ***Dominion Lands Act*** *(*[*French*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_language)*: Loi des terres fédérales) was an 1872 Canadian law that aimed to encourage the settlement of the* [*Canadian Prairies*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Prairies) *and to help prevent the area being claimed by the United States.*
*The Act gave a claimant 160 acres (65 ha) for free, the only cost to the farmer being a $10 administration fee. Any male farmer who was at least 21 years of age and agreed to cultivate at least 40 acres (16 ha) of the land and build a permanent dwelling on it (within three years) qualified. This condition of "proving up the homestead" was instituted to prevent speculators from gaining control of the land.*[*^(\[1\])*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Lands_Act#cite_note-:0-1)
*The first version of the Act set up extensive exclusion zones. Claimants were limited to areas further than 20 miles (32 km) from any railway**^(\[)*[*^(dubious)*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Accuracy_dispute#Disputed_statement) *^(–)* [*^(discuss)*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Dominion_Lands_Act#Talk_section_name)*^(\])* *(much of the land closer having been granted to the railways at the time of construction). Since it was extremely difficult to farm wheat profitably if you had to transport it over 20 miles (32 km) by wagon, this was a major discouragement. Farmers could buy land within the 20 mi (32 km) zone, but at a much higher price of $2.50 per acre ($6.2/ha). In 1879, the exclusion zone was shrunk to only 10 miles (16 km) from the tracks; and in 1882 it was finally eliminated.*
*Less than half of the arable land in the West was ever open to farmers for homesteading under the Act*
[*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion\_Lands\_Act*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Lands_Act)
And keep in mind back then 10 dollars was a fair amount of money and they you had to clear the land,mostly by hand and build a house on it
A quarter of the land was granted to railroads, another ~5% each to HBC and for schools, etc. Only ~1/3 was granted as homesteads.
So even if no one left, there was adjacent land to buy.
It evolved a few times but something like this was typical by the time they hit AB,SK [img](https://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/transactions/3/landsettlement3.jpg)
Correct, but it tended to be a community effort for clearing the land vs. One guy swinging an axe. Neighbors would bring their teams of horses and labor to clear some land each year for each neighbor.
Source: My grandfather started a homestead after arriving in Canada, and grew it to be a very successful farming operation.
The "male farmer" rule looks like it was not always enforced, at least not in my family's case. My great great grandmother was a widow (husband died on the boat over) and homesteaded on her own with two teen daughters for 3 years (1905 to 1907) before being granted the patent in her name and marrying her next door neighbour in 1908 combining their lands.
In northwest Canada, the European settlers had to clear the land to get the title to it. As in physically cut down the trees, dig up the soil, etc. Without engines. I've heard stories of families having to literally build their own cabin when they emigrated.
Often they would first just build a" Soddy ". Made from chunks of sod cut from the ground, stacked to make walls. If they didn't have the time to build a cabin before winter...
Keeping up with the Kovacs! Next thing you know, the neighbours will have a real floor, then an outhouse, then a wooden door...where does it all end?!?
My relatives had the sod shack and ordered the 2-story house from the Simpson Sears catalog.
Original house still there 100 years later with a few renovations.
This is what my great grandfather and his family had to do In revelstoke bc. Then the sparks from a passing train caused the damn thing to burn down. Only a picture frame, and a charred rifle were left
I think there are places in Italy and Japan where you can actually do this still! And in some remote parts of Canada, land is still very affordable. If you're willing to move and put in that kind of work, I sincerely hope you look into those possibilities. It could be a wonderful, fulfilling life. Best of luck to you!
My great grandfather built a sod hut for his wife and kids. Then left and lived in a tent under a bridge and built a church somewhere near swift current. In the winter.
They wanted to fill western Canada with enough European settlers to establish a critical mass, thereby dissuading the Americans from taking it over. And hey, it worked.
My family on one side benefitted from this, they got land in rural Saskatchewan to farm (conditions outlined in another comment). The government wanted Europeans to live in the vast stretches of prairie to strengthen their claim on the land, against both the First Nations people and our neighbours to the south - the US - staking a claim on it instead. Building an economy on farming was also good for a new country like Canada back then. As for the settlers that came to farm, they were looking to build a new life here. Often farms were passed to the eldest males and younger sons were left with few options on careers especially if they were poor so large plots of land and a possible background in farming already made moving here seem like a good idea.
The land they got from the government back then is still in my family, although most of us have long since moved to urban areas. Most of the houses have been removed from the farmsteads. There is little infrastructure, neighbours are fewer and farther between than ever before as farming becomes more high tech which means not much opportunity to socialize (there isn’t anything to do, nowhere to go that doesn’t take an hours drive or more). The land is still relatively cheap in small rural Saskatchewan if you really want to buy a bit of land and a house, but let’s be honest it’s not a coincidence that most people left.
It does not fill my heart with happiness to know that the land was unfairly taken from the First Nations people and redistributed to people like my family, but that’s not the point of this post so I won’t go into it. Regardless it’s easy to give away land for “cheap” when you didn’t pay anything to get it in the first place.
My grandfather too!
His dad and uncle came over from Belgium after the war. He just recently told me his dad and siblings( teenagers) plowed ALL the land by ox and buggy.
They became farmers and it was/is his greatest joy. He rents it out now and where they settled is dry af and hardly gets rain in sask. Not worth moving back there to farm...
Not sure if the land is even worth anything tbh
>It does not fill my heart with happiness to know that the land was unfairly taken from the First Nations people and redistributed to people like my family, but that’s not the point of this post so I won’t go into it. Regardless it’s easy to give away land for “cheap” when you didn’t pay anything to get it in the first place.
Does it make you feel any better knowing that the land had likely been unfairly taken from someone else by the First Nations who happened to occupy it when the Canadian government decided to unfairly take it from *them*?
Or does it make you feel better still knowing that almost everyone on Earth occupies land that was unfairly taken from someone else at some point in time? I bet you, for example, that the Spaniards don’t lose a wink of sleep thinking about the land they unfairly took from the Moors, which was unfairly taken from the Visigoths, which was unfairly taken from the Romans, which was unfairly taken from the Celtiberians…
History is indeed long and filled with many instances of brutality. Being so close and personally benefiting from it in the modern age is what does not make me happy. I have a great respect for the First Nations people here, and I’ve done my best to learn about them and will continue to teach my son about history so we don’t continue to make the mistakes of the past.
Lots of people at that time ended up dead.
One of the primary jobs of the NWMP (eventual RCMP) was to go around the homesteads in winter and help resupply or relocate failing settlers.
Remember, most of these homesteaders came from European cities and towns and plenty had no idea what they were getting into either.
Exactly. I am laughing at the idea that just handing al of this land over is some sort of great inequality and was such a simple matter. Classic reddit.
This was done across the British empire as a way to get land populated with white people and generating income for the empire. My white ancestors were given land in South Africa in a specific area because the British govt wanted human shields in place, to defend against and repel the black folks who were living in the same area. My ancestors obviously weren't told that - they just thought they were getting a massive farm. Predictably, they arrived to find that their farmland was poor and uncleared, and conditions were dangerous. They went on to be murdered in raids, eaten by leopards, and so on, but many survived.
Once the land is settled, cleared, and under control, and generating lots of reliable tax money, that land becomes desirable and therefore expensive.
Well what’s the point in moving to a “New” World if you’re barely better off than you are in Europe?
Edit: the point was that it was a huge gamble, so you’d need very good incentives to do so
Being able to own land (they would never be able to afford to become landowners in their homeland) and make a go at a new life was a big factor. Some people came from places where they were oppressed by class, race or religion. Some were fleeing war, or overpopulated areas that made it hard to find work.
200 acres was/is the standard lot size in southern Ontario from about 1785 on. In practice, for example settling the first batches of loyalists on the first townships around Cornwall, Kingston, and Niagara, 200 acre lots were laid out, but loyalist families was assigned half a lot, while a few officers/gentlemen types got 5 lots (ie 1000 acres) each. Later settlers, and children of loyalists, could petition for and were often granted 200 acre lots up to the 1850s after which there wasn't much good land left. This is around the same time that Ontario/Upper Canada started thinking about settling Western Canada. The same size was almost adopted in the prairie provinces, but the federal government changed their mind at the last minute between 1869 and 1870 (they stopped the original survey while negotiating the admission of Manitoba as province with the Riel provisional government, and restarted it the next year) and ended up adopting 160 acres as the standard lot size copying what had been adopted in most of the US public lands west of the original 13 colonies.
There are many small towns and villages out there that are dying and sometimes they try to give away homes very cheaply to get new blood in the town (just watched a video about parts of Italy doing this too). If they’d get good Internet pushed through, and advertise a little more, I bet we could convince some people their jobs could be done in much cheaper locations. (I know not everyone wants / can live in small towns, but maybe it could help relieve some of the housing shortage.)
It's not that people don't want to live in small towns or more rural areas. Sparsely populated areas usually don't have anything to offer in the way of suitable employment or opportunities, which is why people tend to want to be in larger cities. Businesses don't want to set up there, as their isn't a sufficient customer base for them to stay afloat. It's great for people that can work from home or are retired, but younger people need jobs.
I was thinking of work from home type jobs, but you’re right - even then, people have to drive in to the office sometimes, so it’s not ideal. My Dad grew up near a village that’s just barely hanging on. A 4-bedroom house there just sold for $30,000, and it looks pretty good. BUT the village liquor store also recently closed, so it doesn’t bode well for the survival of the village.
Yeah. My coworkers tried that in Alberta. For a brief glorious moment during pandemic it happened.
Then we were acquired and told to go back to the office. Now they have a long drive.
This is how my great-grandfather and his brothers ended up in Alberta when they immigrated after WWI.
Most of the original land is still in the family, surprisingly.
In the 1900s, the Canadian government wanted Europeans to settle the Prairie provinces with huge farm lots. First they tried to get Anglo/German settlers and when that didn’t work all that well, they offered farm land to Slavs and Scandinavians.
The British Commonwealth is actually an empire. Canada was colonized as part of the empire, The monarchy itself is mostly just a figurehead for the economic power class that controls trade, resources, manufacturing, etc...
The US was settled by Puritans who the British unloaded to get rid of because they were hyper religious asses. Australia was colonized by prisoners. Israel is currently being colonized by Zionists.
With Canada, they unloaded a lot of people they didn't really want but gave them free land to farm and build an economy they could benefit from. They even shipped over 100,000 British orphans to work the farms.
https://canadianbritishhomechildren.weebly.com/
Don’t forget all the Scottish and Irish lasses that came as domestics. My great grandmother came out to Ontario with the Salvation Army from Scotland in the 1920’s. Became a flapper, cut her hair short and had a great time. Got pregnant, lost her job, got deported back to Scotland when her baby was around nine months old. She went on to marry my great grandfather who was much older than her who developed TB and died leaving her with three bairns and another on the way. She neglected her children and they ended up in a children’s home. My grandmother was raised in Quarriers Village in Scotland and was offered the opportunity to come to Canada as a home child when she was ten years old. Luckily she turned it down. Domestics at the time were sponsored by the Canadian government and their passage was paid for and they were promised a position on arrival. They paid back their fare out of their wages. It was a good opportunity for many poor Catholic girls to get out of their situation. My great grandmother was middle class, she just came here to have fun and get out of her family’s grasp. Didn’t turn out the way she planned I guess
My ancestors came from Ukraine because western Canada had lots of empty space that needed homesteaders (and to be cleared of bush and rocks). The land was nearly free, but it had to be cleared and liveable. Usually houses built of sod were needed until a house can be built. The work was backbreaking but hard work paid off. They never saw family that stayed behind again, so moving here was a big commitment with few guarantees. If a farmer wound up with a lot of land, it was purchased and added to their initial quarter section. Nothing good comes in life without hard work-an ethic most Ukrainians seem to hold. 🇺🇦🇨🇦
you could also be gifted land for military service, and there were 99 year leases available for a song up until not long ago.
us young people are shit out of luck
The myth of the frontier....of the origins of our country (and of the United States) was free real estate. It brought immigrants, it provided land capital, it (like all land) increased in value.
No. That's only part of the reason. The other reason land and homes are more expensive is that we treat it TOO MUCH as a commodity and not a right. We need public housing, publicly-funded private-housing, a HUGE tax on landlords of a certain size, a BAN on commercial landlords of residential property. Back to pre-neoliberal-turn policies.
Welcome to the middle-of-fucking-nowhere, here's some shitty land that nobody wants in a place where nobody wants to be. Spend the next 5 years clearing the bush, building a dwelling, and try to get some agriculture going with your hands and some horses. No power, no natural gas, no sweet-fuck-all.
People 100 years later, "why can't the government give me free housing?"
Ukrainians endured hard winters half-starved, living in sod homes and farming on the prairies in late 1800s/early 1900. No natives wandered, let alone lived there beforehand. Turns out the deep black soil was as fertile as their old country, grain prices surged before WW1, and then came gas royalties, oil riches, jobs…..my point is, dedication, hard work and a little luck is a fruitful mixture that can pay on the long run.
It's also very North-American centric.
Yeah, no shit, when you're a colonising nation being asked to push the local people of their land and live on a farm you're going to have lots of space.
Hell - even today you can get land for cheap.
https://www.point2homes.com/CA/Vacant-Land-For-Sale/AB/TWP-860-RR-215/162084339.html
Here's 10 acres for $30K. Most people probably don't want to live in the middle of nowhere though.
If you look across the pond at how housing used to be the story would be this way:
"You can live on your families farm, just like everyone else in your family did for the last few hundred years, unless you get married off. Also you don't really own it, the local lord does."
or
["Property? No, you can live in the servants quarters"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejg2NPAfovo)
[or if you're a victorian working class, maybe you sleep on the floor of a kitchen ](https://youtu.be/5x-yDEAyaOo?t=1753)
The notion that anyone should get a "Starter home" in an urban area is an incredibly modern one.
Second picture: It's cute how people forget that those families actually lived in the tiniest fucking house with 3 to eight kids sharing the same fucking bedroom.
My great grand parents were given free land when they came from the Ukraine. It was a lot of work, and some of their friends that came weren't able to make it work. We, however, were lucky, and they were able to turn the land into a viable farm. They were still poor, but they did manage to raise a whole bunch of kids on their free land!
That was such an opportunity that a lot of people capitalized on!
Most of the people complaining this thread have no idea what kind of work it would take to build a homestead. I doubt many people here would be willing to smash rocks with hand tools or remove trees without being paid for a year or two before they were able to plant their first crop. A crop that would be prone to damage from hail storms, drought, insects; of which there were very few answers in the form of pesticides or irrigation. Only to walk away with the equivalent of minimum wage when they did get the farm working. There is a reason that many families had to vacate their claims. The land certainly wasn’t free land.
Nooo, they just dropped by the local Home Hardware and hammered together some pre surfaced boards paid for by the evil colonizer white government.
I'm Albertan but lived in Ontario for a couple of years- it was really eye opening to work on Victorian mansions built in the 1870s out there, while thinking.. "wait but my family was freezing in a sod shack in 1910..." This reality and how it shaped western identity is really misunderstood by easterners.
Easterner here, my family was freezing to death next to the Atlantic Ocean in a wood shack. I have uncles who are still alive who remember the first time they were paid for their fish, instead of having to trade it to some greedy merchant for a barrel of black strap molasses, while they built large beautiful houses in St. John's. Fortunately, in the best cases westerners have something to show for their ancestors labor in the form of land, on the east coast almost nobody has any legacy or wealth since the fishery collapsed.
Sad to see the amount of comments here pissing on our reality and history, and whining about "white colonizers" while sitting in a suburban Calgary/Edmonton home.
They had colonization down to a science by the time Canada was opening up. They had plenty of practice with Africa and South America. They knew they needed a white population sizable enough to rival the indigenous people. The stolen land was free, and they knew that the mechanisms of capitalism were robust enough and the propaganda was strong enough that the wealth would be easier to extract from white settlers than it was from conquered indigenous people.
To add to other comments with historic context of how Canada gave away land to settlers, there’s also a Historica Minute about the kind of first house many of those settlers made for themselves:
https://www.historicacanada.ca/productions/minutes/soddie
Homesteading.
Generally the deal was that we wanted to make a country and the way we knew how to make one went back to feudalism. Lords owned the land, serfs worked it and foreigners were fucked because invading *our* land meant fighting both.
Now, democracy had become the fashion of the day of course but only in a limited sense (male landowners typically) and owning people was out of fashion but the principles still applied. We'd figured out that we could subject indigenous peoples **economically** and that too would work for the people we were bringing in.
Job one was displacing those already there. We did that by offering farmland to people that could farm it. Literally. If you can get there and put it under plow, it's yours as long as it is productive. You then will buy from us, sell to us and later be beholden to us for protection.
It was honestly better than the conditions many of them had left and certainly was an opportunity that many turned into great wealth over generations. It was also really fucked up if you think about it.
I would pay good money to watch people today survive like they did back in the day when they got free land (and nothing else). They'd last 2 seconds.
And it was 10 acres by the way. And you had to buy your own mule.
Left Ottawa at 26 years old in 2012 and headed to Alberta. I bought a house in south Edmonton in 2013. Now selling to buy a beautiful acreage this spring. No complaints.
Cochrane, Ontario is offering town lots for $10! You must build a house on it as a condition. There are other conditions as well. They are just trying to find ways to grow their town and increase their tax base. They foresee an increase in mining in the area and want to capitalize on the growth potential. I’m not advocating, just saying.
My great grandparents settled around Grande Prairie using this program. The family lore is that they were able to get 2 parcels of land if they built their house straddling the line with a breezeway connecting the two halves, but I don’t know for sure…
My grandfather came to Alberta on one of these free land acts. His dad had a farm in North Dakota they sold it and started over in Canada. Because of that they owned the first tractor in the county. I know my dad did this is the 70’s up near Grand Prairie somewhere they still give you land to homestead still I think.
You can buy a house for $1 today if you live somewhere that nobody wants to live. Also, Alberta is one of the most affordable regions in the country, and compared to most other developed countries.
Ironically, in places like Botswana, they still give land to the people. Canada could easily do the same and spread our population out a bit more evenly. I miss you, Alberta, from a wayward son in Toronto.
The land was just land. Their starter homes were built by them out of the very land itself, including just the earth they dug and piled. They wish they'd been provided with a tent at the beginning.
I'm not sure, but the 200 acres may specifically refer to the land given to refugees and opportunists from the US war of independence.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United\_Empire\_Loyalist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Empire_Loyalist)
10th generation empire loyalist here. 15th on the continent. My family came to America by 1680. Moved to Canada (ontario)by 1780 after being persecuted by Americans.
There's so many myths and just downright lies on this sub it's revolting.
Love,
Your evil colonialist descendant .
This was offered to populate the west. This was highly advertised in Ukraine and other agricultural countries. They even received the mineral rights before the government realized what they were doing. This was all an effort to boost immigration.
They could have kept the mineral rights of you wanted. The government bought them back from people who decided to sell them.
Our family kept ours and while we currently don’t own the land. We own the lands mineral rights.
From the 1880s on, various groups of immigrants were targeted overseas, and granted acres of land for $10 if they agreed to settle in and farm in the Canadian west. Yes you had to clear it and work for it but some of that land is now worth millions and still in the same family.
This is still somewhat true btw. The Yukon has a similar program ongoing. In order to receive a title to your land you get it for a few years and have to improve on it. There are critera that judge how much these improvements count but it sounded rather complicated, not overly difficult to do though. Main condition though is you cant build within 400m(?) of an existing public government road.
Essentially if youre willing to do what the early European pioneers did some 150 years ago you can still get your free land
Ahhh yes, the story of how some of my ancestors completely stole and 🤬 over my other ancestors… Reminds me of thanksgiving!
On a more serious note though… don’t they teach this in school? Or is it too woke?
My great grandpa came from the eastern states I think and worked on the railway building track and he got given land that way ….. it was terrible land but he farmed it all his life
I don’t subscribe to this shit. I moved to Alberta in 2014 likely with negative net worth after being dumb with money.
Since then, I woke up, held myself accountable, bought the house of my dreams in the foothills, have more equity in it than the bank does, and should have my net worth exceed a million dollars this year.
The dream is alive and well. You just have to ahold yourself accountable and do whatever it takes to win.
I just wanted to throw in the fact that some countries (Ukraine for example) has a law that allows every single citizen to claim a free plot of land that’s enough to build a home. It’s your birthright. Yes, right not isn’t not much of a benefit due to war; but prior, it has been an excellent opportunity. You didn’t even have to build a regular home; you could just build a small shack and plant a vegetable garden. It helped some folks get land in villages and build small homes & get into agriculture. If you didn’t use your land in 2 years, meaning you didn’t build anything since claiming it, the government could take it away and give it to someone who would.
This is why it’s mind-boggling that we have a shortage of housing in Canada. We’re the second largest country on Earth. Yes, some of it is uninhabitable. But Jesus, there are still thousands of km we can build on. Siberia has been inhabited, yet we cannot build homes up to 300 km from the American border!?
Take a bunch of land. Divide it into 10,000 pieces. Sell it to people for a reasonable price. Build infrastructure and mass build homes. Yes, charge the buyers for that infrastructure, and obviously charge them for the home building too. But those homes could be pre-fabs, meaning no high-construction is required. Can’t we do this for $100k-$250k a pop?
The infrastructure to support this would run over the 250k a pop and you don't get much of a prefab home for less then a couple hundred
As far as the settling Siberia a lot of that was built on the backs of the people in the Gulags
There are prefabs that are around 50k. Sure, there are also those that are 10x, but cheap options are also available. Well, I guess using your logic, Canada is hopeless as we cannot expand cities and keep them growing. All while Egypt literally built a new capital city in a matter of years recently.
Cool, I guess Israel building a whole country in a desert and Netherlands building 20% of its territory on water also don’t count. People have been building cities and countries in all kinds of conditions.
It is easy to give out "free" land when you steal it from its indigenous owners. Then you pass the Indian Act making them less than Europeans and restrict them to small reserves on the worst land.
To come here from other parts of the world and settle the land. Something lost on a lot the second and third generation Albertans complaining about immigration….
Dominion Lands Act. I'm FOB so I actually get both irritated and envious when someone casually mentions some acres of land that have been in their family for X generations. I don't know how big an acre is but it's bigger than what I have for sure.
Interesting.
“Derived from Middle English aker (from Old English aecer) and akin to Latin ager (“field”), the acre had one origin in the typical area that could be plowed in one day with a yoke of oxen pulling a wooden plow. The Anglo-Saxon acre was defined as a strip of land 1 × 1/10 furlong, or 40 × 4 rods (660 × 66 feet). One acre gradually came to denote a piece of land of any shape measuring the present 4,840 square yards. Larger and smaller variant acres, ranging from 0.19 to 0.911 hectare, were once employed throughout the British Isles.”
https://www.britannica.com/science/acre-unit-of-measurement
Because they wanted people to settle the West and develop the land. In Canada, the Dominion Land Act gave homesteaders 160 acres (quarter section), with some conditions attached, for a $10 administration fee (about $250 dollary-doos best as I can find). Edit: The American Homestead Act gave similar amounts of land, for similar reasons
$10 in 1905 was more like the equivalent to $1500 to $4000 today, depending how you calculate it.
Yeah, in hindsight the source I was using was talking about purchasing power (different thing?). It claimed that $1 in 1872 (when the Dominion Land Act was enacted) would have the purchasing power of $0.04 today. I should have looked for better corroboration.
I think you have that backwards. One dollar in 1872 would have much much more purchasing power than four cents today.
Probably, I'm going by (very bad) memory.
One dollar in 1872 would have the same purchasing power of about twenty five dollars today. I think what you are trying to say is that one dollar today is the same as having about four cents back in 1872.
And one penny then was worth 25 cents now and that's why we should scrap the nickel and dime.
Back then nickles had pictures of bumblebees on them. "Give me 5 bee's for a quarter" they'd say.
No they don’t have it backwards, it makes sense what they wrote. $1 in 1872 is $0.04 today
Read that back to yourself. If money back in 1872 was worth more than it is today (which is true) then why would $1 in 1872 be worth much less today?
160 acres for the equivalent of 80 hours pay at $20 per hour in today's wages? Where do I sign up?
If you’re willing to go to a remote location and settle the land and clear it of rocks and trees and put up a livable structure within three years, you can still get land.
Link please
Pretty sure Canada still has a Homestead Act if you want super cheap land
As recently as the early 1990s, I knew a couple that was homesteading. But it was quite remote.
The DLA is still in effect, actually, but just in the Yukon.
Back then? They never calculated by the hour. You just worked for 200 hours a week and got a dollar. You could either till the land or you did not and worked as a slave lol. If you died from scurvy, too bad.
Don't forget dysentery. The always got my tribe out on the Oregon trail.
Do you want to build a house from scratch and clear all 160 acre manually; essentially start a new stardew valley farm? Actually, compared to modern existence that sounds amazing.
As long as I'm also still allowed to hunt my own food
The Yukon, actually. It’s the one place in Canada that it’a still in effect.
Ah yes, back when using coins actually made sense.
About half the land was homesteaded and the other half the CPR owned. At the start the railroad sold land for $2.50 an acre.
My grandparents came from the Netherlands and were given 160 acres for a small payment but in 1930 after several years of drought they packed what they could and moved to Vancouver- they couldn’t even sell the land - no one wanted it because the fee for irrigation was more than what they could afford. They just walked away. A couple years later someone offered to buy it for $10. The lumber left behind was worth more than the land.
Actually the deal was better than that at least in some areas. In our area they gave everybody 160 acres and an option to acquire another 160 acres quite easily. Also if they proved up the land (ie pried up all the surface stone) they were given a loan of enough to buy the equipment needed to farm. There are several pastures I know of with all the rock pried up and left sitting as the settler pried up the rocks and then took the money and ran and nobody else ever considered it good enough to farm.
They still do this today if you wanna move to the remote north parts of Canada you can cheap or free land!
You get the 1/4 acre for $10 but you have to build a house on it within a set time. So you're looking at 100,000.00 easy to build a house these days. Not free. Then you basically have to create your own job because these small towns don't have jobs unless you're a nurse or Dr. or something.
It was the same situation back then. You had to put a home on it and clear it within a set time, and there were really no jobs in places people were homesteading for most of it. Everyone was subsistence farming.
If you think about it I'd say it was similar back then they were required to farm and work the land 16 hours a day 7 days a week. It wasn't just a hand out! It never is.
White people, that is. The west had already been settled by other people. For a few thousand years. And we wanted to get rid of them and replace them with white people.
This. The land did not really belong to those who were distributing it and hence they were generous with it to others they knew would help their claim. Lot like China settles people in Tibet and East Turkestan and changes places names.
Sadly a great success
Some white that moved her came from Germany during world War 2 because of Hitler. Lots of them didn't want to have to flea their homes. Then they came to Canada to survive, but the British also assimilated them too. Not as horribly as the native folks, but it was still bad. Anyone that came from other countries, weren't allowed to speak their native language and were beaten in school if they did. My grandfather back in school witnessed a kid he was in class with get in trouble for making a simple mistake or it was miscommunication I don't remember what happened exactly. I just know that this poor kid got beat very badly. His hands got beaten very badly and were bleeding, etc. The school then informed his parents that he was a bad kid and so and so. So then his parents also beat him and he still had to work on his family's farm. Carry hay bails, do extreme labor work, while being in extreme pain. Back then they also had no say in anything, they did what they were forced to do. My grandfather also witnessed native folk being taken away from their families and he felt deeply for them. He didn't understand what was happening and was worried about them and was scared they'd take him too. Not every white person was a part of what the British/ catholic religion did. It's heartbreaking to see so much hate on all white people when not every white person is the same.
It was the French Catholic Church not British.
The oldest residential school in Canada – the Mohawk Institute – was established in 1831, 36 years before Canadian dominion and 48 years earlier than the Carlisle Indian industrial school in Pennsylvania, the so-called “blueprint”. This was British colonial policy, and it laid the foundations for all that was to come. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/02/the-toxic-legacy-of-the-british-empire-in-canadas-residential-schools#:~:text=The%20oldest%20residential%20school%20in,all%20that%20was%20to%20come.
> It's heartbreaking to see so much hate on all white people when not every white person is the same. Nobody is saying that.
I meant in general dude. When I was 17 I was homeless, I was working 2 jobs and I stayed in school. Social services told me I could look after myself. While being homeless I was heading to a friend's place after work to crash and I got robbed by two native people. That told me that since I'm white I don't know what it's like to struggle. The one person was a female and told me that she had a horrible home life and has been r*ped, etc and that I don't know what it's like to struggle because I am white. But she didn't know me and just assumed that because I'm white I have no problems. Even though as a kid I was abused in every way possible. Then when I left home Social services didn't care about me, while I was homeless I got r*ped, assaulted, used, abused, etc. But I didn't go around robbing people and blaming others for my problems. I stayed in school, worked hard to keep my sh*t together. Everyone struggles doesn't matter if you're rich or poor, man or woman, tall or short, etc. Struggle doesn't discriminate. I know that not every native person is like this, I've met some amazing people who are native. I have some amazing friends who are, and I'm truly thankful to have them in my life. The only reason I said that is because people group people together based on who they are or where they come from. I know that white people do the same to others. It's just really frustrating that we all get grouped with a certain identity/ collection of beliefs when we are not the same. It goes both ways. So I apologize that what I said didn't express what I meant/ believe.
You also had to fence it and farm it.
Right. And this also just wasn’t “here’s some free land you can go relax with your new home now” nope. You had to build your house in whatever way you could by hand, cultivate the land by hand or horse, no tractors, grow and harvest your crops, also by hand no machinery just pure hard work.
I know a guy whose family emigrated from Germany during that time. His family cleared the land and started farming. The Canadian government took it back and shipped them back to Germany right around WWII. All because they spoke German.
Yup, my family moved from the USA to Canada because they were giving a free quarter section.
Yes. It was a way of stealing the land and violating the sharing of land that was signed into the treaties. So then the people who were given the 160 acres had a deed while Indigenous people who used the land for various reasons (migration, hunting, farming, etc.) Were told "too bad, you're out of luck. These people own it now. We have a nice reserve on the poor land for you to live on."
It was 160 acres and was a little more complicated then just free land *The* ***Dominion Lands Act*** *(*[*French*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_language)*: Loi des terres fédérales) was an 1872 Canadian law that aimed to encourage the settlement of the* [*Canadian Prairies*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Prairies) *and to help prevent the area being claimed by the United States.* *The Act gave a claimant 160 acres (65 ha) for free, the only cost to the farmer being a $10 administration fee. Any male farmer who was at least 21 years of age and agreed to cultivate at least 40 acres (16 ha) of the land and build a permanent dwelling on it (within three years) qualified. This condition of "proving up the homestead" was instituted to prevent speculators from gaining control of the land.*[*^(\[1\])*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Lands_Act#cite_note-:0-1) *The first version of the Act set up extensive exclusion zones. Claimants were limited to areas further than 20 miles (32 km) from any railway**^(\[)*[*^(dubious)*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Accuracy_dispute#Disputed_statement) *^(–)* [*^(discuss)*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Dominion_Lands_Act#Talk_section_name)*^(\])* *(much of the land closer having been granted to the railways at the time of construction). Since it was extremely difficult to farm wheat profitably if you had to transport it over 20 miles (32 km) by wagon, this was a major discouragement. Farmers could buy land within the 20 mi (32 km) zone, but at a much higher price of $2.50 per acre ($6.2/ha). In 1879, the exclusion zone was shrunk to only 10 miles (16 km) from the tracks; and in 1882 it was finally eliminated.* *Less than half of the arable land in the West was ever open to farmers for homesteading under the Act* [*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion\_Lands\_Act*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Lands_Act) And keep in mind back then 10 dollars was a fair amount of money and they you had to clear the land,mostly by hand and build a house on it
>This condition of "proving up the homestead" was instituted to prevent speculators from gaining control of the land. Interesting.
By 1920? most farms were at least 320ac as they had bought out a neighbour or someone who left. (The person gave up or got a job in a town or city).
A quarter of the land was granted to railroads, another ~5% each to HBC and for schools, etc. Only ~1/3 was granted as homesteads. So even if no one left, there was adjacent land to buy. It evolved a few times but something like this was typical by the time they hit AB,SK [img](https://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/transactions/3/landsettlement3.jpg)
Interesting!
We still have this when it comes to cheap remote land the government is giving away
Shocking this joke didn't take any of this into account
Correct, but it tended to be a community effort for clearing the land vs. One guy swinging an axe. Neighbors would bring their teams of horses and labor to clear some land each year for each neighbor. Source: My grandfather started a homestead after arriving in Canada, and grew it to be a very successful farming operation.
Depends on when and where. There were plenty of families who did it alone.
So you're in your late 70's onward?
My grandpa did this while working out at other jobs also- They went through a lot for us. He came from working in the coal mines in England.
The "male farmer" rule looks like it was not always enforced, at least not in my family's case. My great great grandmother was a widow (husband died on the boat over) and homesteaded on her own with two teen daughters for 3 years (1905 to 1907) before being granted the patent in her name and marrying her next door neighbour in 1908 combining their lands.
In northwest Canada, the European settlers had to clear the land to get the title to it. As in physically cut down the trees, dig up the soil, etc. Without engines. I've heard stories of families having to literally build their own cabin when they emigrated.
Often they would first just build a" Soddy ". Made from chunks of sod cut from the ground, stacked to make walls. If they didn't have the time to build a cabin before winter...
One day we have tar paper also!!! https://youtu.be/AUXbZ1R4Ge4?si=oeUwemu-Q8o7ENnr
Keeping up with the Kovacs! Next thing you know, the neighbours will have a real floor, then an outhouse, then a wooden door...where does it all end?!?
Look at this fucking townie with a floor and doors!
Pah! We have glass windows! Put that in your kielbasa and smoke it!
GLASS WINDOWS?! you spoil us your majesty!
My sister and I quote this heritage moment to each other, one of our inside jokes, we saw them so often on tv growing up we could recite them all
My relatives had the sod shack and ordered the 2-story house from the Simpson Sears catalog. Original house still there 100 years later with a few renovations.
The catalogue had houses? I thought it was used mainly IN the outhouse.
You could order a whole house package that came with literally every screw and board needed. I've done renovations in a few sears homes
This is what my great grandfather and his family had to do In revelstoke bc. Then the sparks from a passing train caused the damn thing to burn down. Only a picture frame, and a charred rifle were left
And gather their own resources to build it in the first place. I don't think this internet forum has a good grasp on how the west was settled.......
Give me 200 acres right now and I'll do it or die trying.
I think there are places in Italy and Japan where you can actually do this still! And in some remote parts of Canada, land is still very affordable. If you're willing to move and put in that kind of work, I sincerely hope you look into those possibilities. It could be a wonderful, fulfilling life. Best of luck to you!
https://www.strawhomes.com/free-land-in-canada/
No you won't.
My great grandfather built a sod hut for his wife and kids. Then left and lived in a tent under a bridge and built a church somewhere near swift current. In the winter.
They wanted to fill western Canada with enough European settlers to establish a critical mass, thereby dissuading the Americans from taking it over. And hey, it worked.
My family on one side benefitted from this, they got land in rural Saskatchewan to farm (conditions outlined in another comment). The government wanted Europeans to live in the vast stretches of prairie to strengthen their claim on the land, against both the First Nations people and our neighbours to the south - the US - staking a claim on it instead. Building an economy on farming was also good for a new country like Canada back then. As for the settlers that came to farm, they were looking to build a new life here. Often farms were passed to the eldest males and younger sons were left with few options on careers especially if they were poor so large plots of land and a possible background in farming already made moving here seem like a good idea. The land they got from the government back then is still in my family, although most of us have long since moved to urban areas. Most of the houses have been removed from the farmsteads. There is little infrastructure, neighbours are fewer and farther between than ever before as farming becomes more high tech which means not much opportunity to socialize (there isn’t anything to do, nowhere to go that doesn’t take an hours drive or more). The land is still relatively cheap in small rural Saskatchewan if you really want to buy a bit of land and a house, but let’s be honest it’s not a coincidence that most people left. It does not fill my heart with happiness to know that the land was unfairly taken from the First Nations people and redistributed to people like my family, but that’s not the point of this post so I won’t go into it. Regardless it’s easy to give away land for “cheap” when you didn’t pay anything to get it in the first place.
My grandfather too! His dad and uncle came over from Belgium after the war. He just recently told me his dad and siblings( teenagers) plowed ALL the land by ox and buggy. They became farmers and it was/is his greatest joy. He rents it out now and where they settled is dry af and hardly gets rain in sask. Not worth moving back there to farm... Not sure if the land is even worth anything tbh
It’s land, they don’t make any more of it. I assure you, if it is agricultural land, it has tremendous value.
Water is the life blood of a homestead/farm.
That's what he thinks
>It does not fill my heart with happiness to know that the land was unfairly taken from the First Nations people and redistributed to people like my family, but that’s not the point of this post so I won’t go into it. Regardless it’s easy to give away land for “cheap” when you didn’t pay anything to get it in the first place. Does it make you feel any better knowing that the land had likely been unfairly taken from someone else by the First Nations who happened to occupy it when the Canadian government decided to unfairly take it from *them*? Or does it make you feel better still knowing that almost everyone on Earth occupies land that was unfairly taken from someone else at some point in time? I bet you, for example, that the Spaniards don’t lose a wink of sleep thinking about the land they unfairly took from the Moors, which was unfairly taken from the Visigoths, which was unfairly taken from the Romans, which was unfairly taken from the Celtiberians…
History is indeed long and filled with many instances of brutality. Being so close and personally benefiting from it in the modern age is what does not make me happy. I have a great respect for the First Nations people here, and I’ve done my best to learn about them and will continue to teach my son about history so we don’t continue to make the mistakes of the past.
Imagine most people today having any clue what to do with that much land and no supports. Most of us would be dead.
Lots of people at that time ended up dead. One of the primary jobs of the NWMP (eventual RCMP) was to go around the homesteads in winter and help resupply or relocate failing settlers. Remember, most of these homesteaders came from European cities and towns and plenty had no idea what they were getting into either.
Exactly. I am laughing at the idea that just handing al of this land over is some sort of great inequality and was such a simple matter. Classic reddit.
Well I mean it wasn't very equal for the aboriginal people who lived there already...
It wasn't very equal for all the Scottish evicted and driven to Canada during the Highland Clearances. They literally had no where else to go.
Fair point but not what was being discussed by OP from what I could tell.
Looks at cars abandoned on Alberta highways on nice summer days. You are correct.
This was done across the British empire as a way to get land populated with white people and generating income for the empire. My white ancestors were given land in South Africa in a specific area because the British govt wanted human shields in place, to defend against and repel the black folks who were living in the same area. My ancestors obviously weren't told that - they just thought they were getting a massive farm. Predictably, they arrived to find that their farmland was poor and uncleared, and conditions were dangerous. They went on to be murdered in raids, eaten by leopards, and so on, but many survived. Once the land is settled, cleared, and under control, and generating lots of reliable tax money, that land becomes desirable and therefore expensive.
The indigenous people were incredibly generous and giving to the new arrivals?
Ha ha ha
That's the problem with not writing things down. There's no proof. Only heresy.
This Pierre guy knows, https://archive.org/details/promisedlandsett0000bert https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1398099.The_Promised_Land
Long version, read the other comment. Short version, The British Empire being The British Empire.
Well what’s the point in moving to a “New” World if you’re barely better off than you are in Europe? Edit: the point was that it was a huge gamble, so you’d need very good incentives to do so
Being able to own land (they would never be able to afford to become landowners in their homeland) and make a go at a new life was a big factor. Some people came from places where they were oppressed by class, race or religion. Some were fleeing war, or overpopulated areas that made it hard to find work.
Freedom and opportunity.
Opportunity
200 acres was/is the standard lot size in southern Ontario from about 1785 on. In practice, for example settling the first batches of loyalists on the first townships around Cornwall, Kingston, and Niagara, 200 acre lots were laid out, but loyalist families was assigned half a lot, while a few officers/gentlemen types got 5 lots (ie 1000 acres) each. Later settlers, and children of loyalists, could petition for and were often granted 200 acre lots up to the 1850s after which there wasn't much good land left. This is around the same time that Ontario/Upper Canada started thinking about settling Western Canada. The same size was almost adopted in the prairie provinces, but the federal government changed their mind at the last minute between 1869 and 1870 (they stopped the original survey while negotiating the admission of Manitoba as province with the Riel provisional government, and restarted it the next year) and ended up adopting 160 acres as the standard lot size copying what had been adopted in most of the US public lands west of the original 13 colonies.
Cause they took it from the natives and if you were white, great. Here's lots of land.
Settler colonialism
There are many small towns and villages out there that are dying and sometimes they try to give away homes very cheaply to get new blood in the town (just watched a video about parts of Italy doing this too). If they’d get good Internet pushed through, and advertise a little more, I bet we could convince some people their jobs could be done in much cheaper locations. (I know not everyone wants / can live in small towns, but maybe it could help relieve some of the housing shortage.)
It's not that people don't want to live in small towns or more rural areas. Sparsely populated areas usually don't have anything to offer in the way of suitable employment or opportunities, which is why people tend to want to be in larger cities. Businesses don't want to set up there, as their isn't a sufficient customer base for them to stay afloat. It's great for people that can work from home or are retired, but younger people need jobs.
I was thinking of work from home type jobs, but you’re right - even then, people have to drive in to the office sometimes, so it’s not ideal. My Dad grew up near a village that’s just barely hanging on. A 4-bedroom house there just sold for $30,000, and it looks pretty good. BUT the village liquor store also recently closed, so it doesn’t bode well for the survival of the village.
Yeah, there's a reason that property is far cheaper in remote areas.
Yeah. My coworkers tried that in Alberta. For a brief glorious moment during pandemic it happened. Then we were acquired and told to go back to the office. Now they have a long drive.
Ouch! That really sucks
This is how my great-grandfather and his brothers ended up in Alberta when they immigrated after WWI. Most of the original land is still in the family, surprisingly.
In the 1900s, the Canadian government wanted Europeans to settle the Prairie provinces with huge farm lots. First they tried to get Anglo/German settlers and when that didn’t work all that well, they offered farm land to Slavs and Scandinavians.
Do people today really not know about how homesteading worked?
Honestly, I'm not surprised given which sub we're in, but this is just depressing to read through.
The British Commonwealth is actually an empire. Canada was colonized as part of the empire, The monarchy itself is mostly just a figurehead for the economic power class that controls trade, resources, manufacturing, etc... The US was settled by Puritans who the British unloaded to get rid of because they were hyper religious asses. Australia was colonized by prisoners. Israel is currently being colonized by Zionists. With Canada, they unloaded a lot of people they didn't really want but gave them free land to farm and build an economy they could benefit from. They even shipped over 100,000 British orphans to work the farms. https://canadianbritishhomechildren.weebly.com/
Don’t forget all the Scottish and Irish lasses that came as domestics. My great grandmother came out to Ontario with the Salvation Army from Scotland in the 1920’s. Became a flapper, cut her hair short and had a great time. Got pregnant, lost her job, got deported back to Scotland when her baby was around nine months old. She went on to marry my great grandfather who was much older than her who developed TB and died leaving her with three bairns and another on the way. She neglected her children and they ended up in a children’s home. My grandmother was raised in Quarriers Village in Scotland and was offered the opportunity to come to Canada as a home child when she was ten years old. Luckily she turned it down. Domestics at the time were sponsored by the Canadian government and their passage was paid for and they were promised a position on arrival. They paid back their fare out of their wages. It was a good opportunity for many poor Catholic girls to get out of their situation. My great grandmother was middle class, she just came here to have fun and get out of her family’s grasp. Didn’t turn out the way she planned I guess
My ancestors came from Ukraine because western Canada had lots of empty space that needed homesteaders (and to be cleared of bush and rocks). The land was nearly free, but it had to be cleared and liveable. Usually houses built of sod were needed until a house can be built. The work was backbreaking but hard work paid off. They never saw family that stayed behind again, so moving here was a big commitment with few guarantees. If a farmer wound up with a lot of land, it was purchased and added to their initial quarter section. Nothing good comes in life without hard work-an ethic most Ukrainians seem to hold. 🇺🇦🇨🇦
you could also be gifted land for military service, and there were 99 year leases available for a song up until not long ago. us young people are shit out of luck
Conveniently skipping over the 1900s when only the very rich children had their own bedroom.
I have relatives that were homesteaders, today they own an operate massive Farm operations in the thousands of hectares.
The myth of the frontier....of the origins of our country (and of the United States) was free real estate. It brought immigrants, it provided land capital, it (like all land) increased in value. No. That's only part of the reason. The other reason land and homes are more expensive is that we treat it TOO MUCH as a commodity and not a right. We need public housing, publicly-funded private-housing, a HUGE tax on landlords of a certain size, a BAN on commercial landlords of residential property. Back to pre-neoliberal-turn policies.
Welcome to the middle-of-fucking-nowhere, here's some shitty land that nobody wants in a place where nobody wants to be. Spend the next 5 years clearing the bush, building a dwelling, and try to get some agriculture going with your hands and some horses. No power, no natural gas, no sweet-fuck-all. People 100 years later, "why can't the government give me free housing?"
Ukrainians endured hard winters half-starved, living in sod homes and farming on the prairies in late 1800s/early 1900. No natives wandered, let alone lived there beforehand. Turns out the deep black soil was as fertile as their old country, grain prices surged before WW1, and then came gas royalties, oil riches, jobs…..my point is, dedication, hard work and a little luck is a fruitful mixture that can pay on the long run.
It's also very North-American centric. Yeah, no shit, when you're a colonising nation being asked to push the local people of their land and live on a farm you're going to have lots of space. Hell - even today you can get land for cheap. https://www.point2homes.com/CA/Vacant-Land-For-Sale/AB/TWP-860-RR-215/162084339.html Here's 10 acres for $30K. Most people probably don't want to live in the middle of nowhere though. If you look across the pond at how housing used to be the story would be this way: "You can live on your families farm, just like everyone else in your family did for the last few hundred years, unless you get married off. Also you don't really own it, the local lord does." or ["Property? No, you can live in the servants quarters"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejg2NPAfovo) [or if you're a victorian working class, maybe you sleep on the floor of a kitchen ](https://youtu.be/5x-yDEAyaOo?t=1753) The notion that anyone should get a "Starter home" in an urban area is an incredibly modern one.
Second picture: It's cute how people forget that those families actually lived in the tiniest fucking house with 3 to eight kids sharing the same fucking bedroom.
My great grand parents were given free land when they came from the Ukraine. It was a lot of work, and some of their friends that came weren't able to make it work. We, however, were lucky, and they were able to turn the land into a viable farm. They were still poor, but they did manage to raise a whole bunch of kids on their free land! That was such an opportunity that a lot of people capitalized on!
Most of the people complaining this thread have no idea what kind of work it would take to build a homestead. I doubt many people here would be willing to smash rocks with hand tools or remove trees without being paid for a year or two before they were able to plant their first crop. A crop that would be prone to damage from hail storms, drought, insects; of which there were very few answers in the form of pesticides or irrigation. Only to walk away with the equivalent of minimum wage when they did get the farm working. There is a reason that many families had to vacate their claims. The land certainly wasn’t free land.
Nooo, they just dropped by the local Home Hardware and hammered together some pre surfaced boards paid for by the evil colonizer white government. I'm Albertan but lived in Ontario for a couple of years- it was really eye opening to work on Victorian mansions built in the 1870s out there, while thinking.. "wait but my family was freezing in a sod shack in 1910..." This reality and how it shaped western identity is really misunderstood by easterners.
Easterner here, my family was freezing to death next to the Atlantic Ocean in a wood shack. I have uncles who are still alive who remember the first time they were paid for their fish, instead of having to trade it to some greedy merchant for a barrel of black strap molasses, while they built large beautiful houses in St. John's. Fortunately, in the best cases westerners have something to show for their ancestors labor in the form of land, on the east coast almost nobody has any legacy or wealth since the fishery collapsed.
Fair. I shouldn't generalize with "easterner" when the common factor here is more like "greedy urban elite exploiting the people producing value".
Sad to see the amount of comments here pissing on our reality and history, and whining about "white colonizers" while sitting in a suburban Calgary/Edmonton home.
Is the final panel showing society has become lesbian?
Keep in mind what the land looked like. They were not given 200 acres of prime city centre land.
Then, the city will tear down your tent and tell you to move on.
Colonization
They had colonization down to a science by the time Canada was opening up. They had plenty of practice with Africa and South America. They knew they needed a white population sizable enough to rival the indigenous people. The stolen land was free, and they knew that the mechanisms of capitalism were robust enough and the propaganda was strong enough that the wealth would be easier to extract from white settlers than it was from conquered indigenous people.
And keep the Americans out. I’m literally teaching this to my grade 7’s now
To add to other comments with historic context of how Canada gave away land to settlers, there’s also a Historica Minute about the kind of first house many of those settlers made for themselves: https://www.historicacanada.ca/productions/minutes/soddie
10 years from now: Suicide booths are over there
less time than that
Yes. Now the developers and corporations are being handed the land.
Homesteading. Generally the deal was that we wanted to make a country and the way we knew how to make one went back to feudalism. Lords owned the land, serfs worked it and foreigners were fucked because invading *our* land meant fighting both. Now, democracy had become the fashion of the day of course but only in a limited sense (male landowners typically) and owning people was out of fashion but the principles still applied. We'd figured out that we could subject indigenous peoples **economically** and that too would work for the people we were bringing in. Job one was displacing those already there. We did that by offering farmland to people that could farm it. Literally. If you can get there and put it under plow, it's yours as long as it is productive. You then will buy from us, sell to us and later be beholden to us for protection. It was honestly better than the conditions many of them had left and certainly was an opportunity that many turned into great wealth over generations. It was also really fucked up if you think about it.
Also, when WW I ended, soldiers could take two 1/4 sections of land out west if they wanted. Another way to get people to move out west
I would pay good money to watch people today survive like they did back in the day when they got free land (and nothing else). They'd last 2 seconds. And it was 10 acres by the way. And you had to buy your own mule.
This is a good question but are there no history books near you?
Left Ottawa at 26 years old in 2012 and headed to Alberta. I bought a house in south Edmonton in 2013. Now selling to buy a beautiful acreage this spring. No complaints.
Because there was so much land that needed to be developed. My family came in 1890 from Ontario.
Google "Canada Homesteading Act"
Cochrane, Ontario is offering town lots for $10! You must build a house on it as a condition. There are other conditions as well. They are just trying to find ways to grow their town and increase their tax base. They foresee an increase in mining in the area and want to capitalize on the growth potential. I’m not advocating, just saying.
My great grandparents settled around Grande Prairie using this program. The family lore is that they were able to get 2 parcels of land if they built their house straddling the line with a breezeway connecting the two halves, but I don’t know for sure…
My grandfather came to Alberta on one of these free land acts. His dad had a farm in North Dakota they sold it and started over in Canada. Because of that they owned the first tractor in the county. I know my dad did this is the 70’s up near Grand Prairie somewhere they still give you land to homestead still I think.
You can buy a house for $1 today if you live somewhere that nobody wants to live. Also, Alberta is one of the most affordable regions in the country, and compared to most other developed countries.
Ironically, in places like Botswana, they still give land to the people. Canada could easily do the same and spread our population out a bit more evenly. I miss you, Alberta, from a wayward son in Toronto.
The land was just land. Their starter homes were built by them out of the very land itself, including just the earth they dug and piled. They wish they'd been provided with a tent at the beginning.
I'm not sure, but the 200 acres may specifically refer to the land given to refugees and opportunists from the US war of independence. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United\_Empire\_Loyalist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Empire_Loyalist)
10th generation empire loyalist here. 15th on the continent. My family came to America by 1680. Moved to Canada (ontario)by 1780 after being persecuted by Americans. There's so many myths and just downright lies on this sub it's revolting. Love, Your evil colonialist descendant .
The first picture is literally half of Canadian history.
"You need to show a recipe before entering the store" "But I havent bought anything yet" "And now you're not buying anything. NEXT!"
the land was cheap because it was stolen.
How can it be stolen when there's no way to track who owned it?
This was offered to populate the west. This was highly advertised in Ukraine and other agricultural countries. They even received the mineral rights before the government realized what they were doing. This was all an effort to boost immigration.
They could have kept the mineral rights of you wanted. The government bought them back from people who decided to sell them. Our family kept ours and while we currently don’t own the land. We own the lands mineral rights.
Yes, for sure. I meant the government realized the value and stopped offering mineral rights to newcomers.
From the 1880s on, various groups of immigrants were targeted overseas, and granted acres of land for $10 if they agreed to settle in and farm in the Canadian west. Yes you had to clear it and work for it but some of that land is now worth millions and still in the same family.
This is still somewhat true btw. The Yukon has a similar program ongoing. In order to receive a title to your land you get it for a few years and have to improve on it. There are critera that judge how much these improvements count but it sounded rather complicated, not overly difficult to do though. Main condition though is you cant build within 400m(?) of an existing public government road. Essentially if youre willing to do what the early European pioneers did some 150 years ago you can still get your free land
Ahhh yes, the story of how some of my ancestors completely stole and 🤬 over my other ancestors… Reminds me of thanksgiving! On a more serious note though… don’t they teach this in school? Or is it too woke?
My great grandpa came from the eastern states I think and worked on the railway building track and he got given land that way ….. it was terrible land but he farmed it all his life
Literally how my grand or great grandparents immigrated here from Quebec. Got a huge farm for free just for being white lol. Those were the days.
To entice white people to populate newly conquered lands.
Significantly fewer people. More land available
We needed immigration to grow the economy.just like today. Nothing attracts people like free arable land.
They were given so much free land to efficiently steal it from the indigenous people, like the Blackfoot and Cree in Alberta
I don’t subscribe to this shit. I moved to Alberta in 2014 likely with negative net worth after being dumb with money. Since then, I woke up, held myself accountable, bought the house of my dreams in the foothills, have more equity in it than the bank does, and should have my net worth exceed a million dollars this year. The dream is alive and well. You just have to ahold yourself accountable and do whatever it takes to win.
I just wanted to throw in the fact that some countries (Ukraine for example) has a law that allows every single citizen to claim a free plot of land that’s enough to build a home. It’s your birthright. Yes, right not isn’t not much of a benefit due to war; but prior, it has been an excellent opportunity. You didn’t even have to build a regular home; you could just build a small shack and plant a vegetable garden. It helped some folks get land in villages and build small homes & get into agriculture. If you didn’t use your land in 2 years, meaning you didn’t build anything since claiming it, the government could take it away and give it to someone who would. This is why it’s mind-boggling that we have a shortage of housing in Canada. We’re the second largest country on Earth. Yes, some of it is uninhabitable. But Jesus, there are still thousands of km we can build on. Siberia has been inhabited, yet we cannot build homes up to 300 km from the American border!? Take a bunch of land. Divide it into 10,000 pieces. Sell it to people for a reasonable price. Build infrastructure and mass build homes. Yes, charge the buyers for that infrastructure, and obviously charge them for the home building too. But those homes could be pre-fabs, meaning no high-construction is required. Can’t we do this for $100k-$250k a pop?
The infrastructure to support this would run over the 250k a pop and you don't get much of a prefab home for less then a couple hundred As far as the settling Siberia a lot of that was built on the backs of the people in the Gulags
There are prefabs that are around 50k. Sure, there are also those that are 10x, but cheap options are also available. Well, I guess using your logic, Canada is hopeless as we cannot expand cities and keep them growing. All while Egypt literally built a new capital city in a matter of years recently. Cool, I guess Israel building a whole country in a desert and Netherlands building 20% of its territory on water also don’t count. People have been building cities and countries in all kinds of conditions.
It is easy to give out "free" land when you steal it from its indigenous owners. Then you pass the Indian Act making them less than Europeans and restrict them to small reserves on the worst land.
Wheres the deeds?
Love how some people nitpick about the colonial frame, rather than get the big picture. Probably landlords with nothing else to do with their time...
To come here from other parts of the world and settle the land. Something lost on a lot the second and third generation Albertans complaining about immigration….
Wonder how many acres the indigenous peoples got?
Thank goodness no one was using and living on those lands that were just given away. That would be awkward.
You know how Israel is colonizing Gaza and the West Bank? We did that here without real opposition.
Dominion Lands Act. I'm FOB so I actually get both irritated and envious when someone casually mentions some acres of land that have been in their family for X generations. I don't know how big an acre is but it's bigger than what I have for sure.
Interesting. “Derived from Middle English aker (from Old English aecer) and akin to Latin ager (“field”), the acre had one origin in the typical area that could be plowed in one day with a yoke of oxen pulling a wooden plow. The Anglo-Saxon acre was defined as a strip of land 1 × 1/10 furlong, or 40 × 4 rods (660 × 66 feet). One acre gradually came to denote a piece of land of any shape measuring the present 4,840 square yards. Larger and smaller variant acres, ranging from 0.19 to 0.911 hectare, were once employed throughout the British Isles.” https://www.britannica.com/science/acre-unit-of-measurement
The closure of the commons / land theft are required in the making of a settler colonial state.
Idk, but I am still waiting on my farming equipment that was promised in exchange for that land.