The Government and Land Selection
 The government began to take an active role in the settlement of Ukrainian
immigrants when it became apparent that most Ukrainians wished to settle among
their countrymen near the Star settlement in east central Alberta. The prospect
of a solid Ukrainian bloc settlement covering hundreds of square miles clashed
with the government's objective of assimilating and Canadianizing alien
immigrants. Complete dispersal of Ukrainian settlers was not a viable solution.
Consequently a compromise solution that combined the advantages of bloc
settlement with rapid assimilation was found. A number of smaller bloc
settlements or "settlement nodes" were established throughout the
Prairie region. Wooded areas and lands adjacent to established (non-Ukrainian)
settlements or industries were chosen so that the settlers might have an
opportunity to generate capital by selling cordwood or seeking "off
farm" employment. A number of the new sites chosen by government agents,
especially the Whitemouth district in southern Manitoba, were vastly inferior to
the settlement in east central Alberta, although there is no evidence to suggest
that the agents were conscious of this fact.
 The new "settlement nodes" were usually settled by immigrants with
no clear destination and no friends and relatives. Coercion by government
officials and confrontations with immigrants occurred on those occasions when
officials tried to settle immigrants who wished to go elsewhere in new
settlements where their fellow countrymen were absent. The confrontations were
the result of social rather than economic considerations. Settlers protested
because they wanted to be near friends and relatives, not because they suspected
the lands to be of inferior quality. In fact, land of superior quality was often
rejected in order to join friends on inferior land. Once a nucleus of Ukrainians
had been settled in all ten or so of the "nodes" the confrontations
came to an end.
Because most Ukrainian immigrants arrived with little capital and had
displayed a preference for wooded country, government officials tended to assume
that all Ukrainians wanted and required this kind of land. It was on the basis
of this stereotype that Ukrainians were directed towards the marginal areas of
the aspen parkland so that the land for the new settlement "nodes" had
been selected. But there was no conscious discrimination concealed beneath these
policies.
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