Immigration Westward

As Canada's economy grew with the new found riches of a newly colonized continent, it became more industrialized after the occupation and thrived during the booms of the 1890s and early 1900s. One million British and one million Americans were settled in Canada at this time.

Sir Wilfrid Laurier became the first French-Canadian prime minister since Confederation and encouraged immigration to the West. His portrait is on the $5 bill.

The Canadian Pacific Railway was built with immigrant Chinese labour for the European settlers to move further Westwards. The settlers included 170,000 Ukrainians, 115,000 Poles and tens of thousands from Germany, France, Norway and Sweden who arrived and spread across the West before 1914.

But after the Railway was completed, the Chinese labourers were left with no work and no longer seen as useful to Europeans, the railway company, and by the government of controversial Prime Minister Sir John A Macdonald who called the Chinese "a semi-barbaric, inferior race."

Macdonald's regime -- often brutal and prejudiced -- then passed the racially discriminatory Chinese Immigration Act, 1885, levying a "Chinese Head Tax" of $50 on any Chinese coming to Canada.

Later Macdonald increased the tax to $100. The injustice did not stop there, and the government further increased the landing fees to $500, equivalent to $8000 in 2003.