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Government of Canada

 

Wealthy Americans

PARTY OF AMERICANS
TO SETTLE IN ALBERTA


All Well-to-Do Farmers, Who Will Take Up Land in Sedgewick, Castor, and Other Surrounding Districts of Central Alberta


John W. Bascom, 1897. Deputy Sherriff of Uintah County, Utah, before moving to Raymond, Alberta. Owner of Bar B 3 Ranch.
With seventy-five American settlers travelling in three special cars, A.B. Braddick, publicity agent for the Canadian Pacific Irrigation Co., stationed at Chicago, has reached Calgary and is taking his party of Sedgewick, Castor and other points north of Calgary, where they will locate.
The settlers brought by Mr. Braddick are all fairly well fixed financially, and are farmers who have been on the land all their lives. "They are the pick of the state," said Mr. Braddick, in speaking of the new arrivals. "Everyone of them is a man of means, and they all have farms that are well stocked on the other side of the line. We have already picked out places for them to locate, and we have three carloads of effects that some of them have brought."
When asked if it was true that the United States government had started a conservation policy in order to keep them in the United States, and if many people were not using this policy as a means of knocking Canada, several of the new arrivals admitted that they had heard Canada spoken of unfavorably.
"Well, I would not go so far as to say the government men are knocking Canada," said one, "but we certainly hard a great deal about the severe winters and the dry summers here. However, what we have seen so far looks alright to us, and I guess we will stick."
Asked whether they experienced any trouble with the U.S. immigration officials on their way here, they laughed. "What trouble would we expect?" asked a man from Chicago. "They never said a word to us, although one or two agents tried to get us to stay in the United States and go to Washington and Oregon. Outside that we had more trouble with the Canadian officials than with anyone else. They put us through the usual examination as we came into Canada, but the U.S. officials did nothing."

Reprinted from the Edmonton Bulletin, Aug. 23, 1910 courtesy of The City of Edmonton Archives

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