2.  The three major ethnic groups in Canada at the time of Confederation were the First Nations people, the British, and the French.

3.  After the end of an economic depression in Europe and North America (1873-96), a demand for Canadian foodstuffs rose.  A population explosion in Europe and a lack of free land in the United States makes Canada a prime target for immigration.  Sir Wilfred Laurier is elected Prime Minister and his government aggressively campaigns to bring immigrants to Canada.

4.  Appointed Minister of the Interior under Laurier’s government.  He believed that filling Canada’s West with farmers was the key to economic success.  Started an advertising campaign to attract immigration to Canada.

5.  Dominion Lands Act, the 1872 piece of legislation that granted a quarter section of free land (160 acres or 64.7 hectares) to any settler 21 years of age or older who paid a ten– dollar registration fee, lived on his quarter section for three years, cultivated 30 acres (12.1 hectares), and built a permanent dwelling.

6.  Sifton saw American farmers as a key population to attract.  Between 1900 and 1914 over 750 000 Americans immigrated to Canada.  The immigration office only solicited to white farmers. No attempts were made to attract black agriculturalists.

7.  The enthusiasm with which most Canadians greeted these American newcomers was summed up in the Lethbridge Herald in 1905:  Less enthusiastic were those Canadians who worried that these American settlers, because of their sheer numbers, would dominate development in the West, seizing control of its industry and edging the Prairies away from Britain and Canada and into the American sphere of influence. This concern was not shared, however, by the federal government, which continued to seek settlers from the United States during this period.

8.  Sifton’s next target population were those from eastern and central Europe.  When I speak of quality I have in mind something that is quite different from what is in the mind of the average writer or speaker upon the question of immigration. I think that a stalwart peasant in a sheepskin coat, born on the soil, whose forefathers have been farmers for ten generations, with a stout wife and a half–dozen children, is good quality.