Laurier Boom
Social Studies
The Growing west
• 1885-1905 drastic
changes in the west:
• Klondike Gold Rush
of 1896-1899
• Settlement of the west
through Laurier-Sifton
Immigration Policies
• Creation of Alberta
and Manitoba in 1905
Railways
• Klondike Gold rush
  wealth 
growth of industries
  network of
railway lines.
• Laurier government
provided subsidies to
support the Canadian
Northern Railway
and Grand Trunk
Railway.
Laurier-Sifton
Sifton and the “Ideal
Immigrant”
• “a stalwart peasant
in a sheep skin
coat, born on the
soil, whose
forefathers have
been farmers for
generations, with a
stout wife and a
half-dozen
children, is good
quality”
• How?
• Promised to pay
for passage
• Offered free
land
Open-door Policy
• Open-door policy: no restriction on who can
immigrate.
• During Laurier era source of immigration was
from: Britain, United States, and Europe.
• Sifton encouraged immigration from Eastern and
Central Europe.
“Home Children”
• Between 1869 and the early 1930s, Canada
received over 100,000 juvenile immigrants
from the British Isles.
• Brought up in poverty, and were homeless
or living in the urban slums of Britain.
• Juvenile immigration program was to
place these children with good Canadian
families but most were used as cheap
labour.
Alberta and
Saskatchewan
• 1905: federal government recognized the
need for responsible government as
population 
Canada’s Response to
the Open Door Policy?
• English Canadians: felt the immigrants from
Southern Europe threatened the British
character
• French Canadians: feared they would lose
their culture as their population 
• Labour Unions: fear that unskilled workers
pose a threat to jobs
• Racial Prejudice towards people of African
and Asian descent.