In the period covered by this exhibition  --  the years prior to the 1930s  --  the population of western Canada increased from less than a hundred thousand to over three million. Such an unprecedented influx was made possible only by drawing on a multitude of ordinary men, women, and children from across Europe. Their arrival on the western frontier dramatically changed the history of western Canada and the ethnic makeup of the country. This exhibition explores several aspects of European arrival and settlement in the Canadian West, and provides a glimpse of those people who helped forge the new society and bring the West into Confederation.

Scope of the Exhibition
A Word about Language
Credits

Reading List
Thematic Research Guides
Links
ArchiviaNet

Scope of the Exhibition

This exhibition does not attempt to be a rounded history of western Canada nor a chronicle of pioneer life. Instead, the exhibition concentrates on those aspects of the settlement process that are documented in the collections of the National Archives of Canada. The intent is to give a general impression of the nature, variety, and vastness of the records that relate to western Canada, and in doing so, show how these records might be used by researchers.

The exhibition also serves as a gateway to the large-scale digitization of selected holdings on the West that the National Archives has recently undertaken, and will undertake in the future. The National Archives of Canada is committed to providing public access to its collections through the World Wide Web. This exhibition, and the digitized archival fonds and series that are part of it, are an example of this commitment.

A Word about Language

Since the federal government played a key role in western settlement  --  that is, until the transfer of natural resources to the western provinces in the 1930s  --  a large component of this exhibition includes (but is not limited to) documents created by the federal agencies responsible for administering the settlement process and for setting its direction (the Department of the Interior, Indian Affairs, and the Department of Immigration, for example). The majority of these documents are written in English, which was the working language of federal offices in the years before official bilingualism.