Promise of Eden: The Canadian expansionist movement and the idea of the West, 1856-1900

by Doug Owram

Through the last half of the nineteenth century, numbers of Canadians began to regard the West as a land of ideal opportuniy for large-scale agricultural settlement. This belief, in turn, led Canada to insist on ownership of the region and on immediate development.

Underlying the expansionist movement was the assumption that the West was to be a hinterland to central Canada, both in its economic relationship and in its cultural development. But settlers who accepted the extravagant promises of expanionism found it increasingly difficult to reconcile the assumption of eastern dominance with their own perception of the needs of the West and of Canada.

Doug Owram analyses the various phases of this development, examining in particular the writings - historical, scientific, journalistic, and promotional - that illuminate one of the most significant movements in the history of nineteenth-century Canada.

Genres: Canada

264 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1980

Reviews

[Dasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Owram carefully tracks the work of several Canadians who felt that “possession and development of the Hudson’s Bay territories were essential to the future of Canada.” In the 1850s, proponents of the expansionist movement saw the West as a solution to confinement and a way to ease insecurities around their role in the British Empire. The Anglo-Protestant interest in the area intertwined nation-building and morality with the West. The 1860s saw young British men travelling westward in search of adventure and excitement. Scientific expeditions such as those by Henry Hind and John Palliser, and later John Macoun, asserted the West a vast land with the potential to support a large scale agricultural economy. Once considered an untameable wild, the expansionist movement reshaped the view of the West to a docile and hospitable agricultural promise land. Thus, the West acted as a solution to Canada's woes, such as American annexation, confinement, insecurities of status within the empire, and morality questions. The movement’s vigour and pride represented a new era for British-Protestant values.
Owram brings to life the excitement, hope, and passion that individuals who partook in the expansionist movement espoused. Owram also devotes a chapter to the Red River Resistance, which Owram explains as the event which hardened expansionists’ fears around the Métis as the “instruments of French-Canadian and Catholic imperialism.” Thus, expansionism took on a more substantial racial element based on British Protestant fears. As Owram describes, Manitoba’s incorporation was built upon a social and racial order which did not include the “French half-breeds.” Owram’s focus on the expansionists’ reaction to the Red River Resistance comes to the detriment of explaining Métis’ autonomy, such as their role in negotiating Manitoba's creation and securing land plots. As well, Owram devotes little time to understanding the Métis rationale for the resistance and how the Métis views of the West contrasted those of the expansionists. Instead, Owram uses the Red River settlement as a stage for the expansionist movement to justify fears over groups that dissented from the Anglo-Protestant virtues that the West was to be founded on. While Owram observes, "the arrival of the expeditionary force in Red River…ended the actual resistance, its legacy was to be felt for many years to come," the legacy he discusses relates to how the event changed the expansionist movement, not Métis life. As well, in stating, "the Métis sought refuge both from the civilization of Red River and the intolerance of its new inhabitants," Owram associates expansion with bringing civilization to the Métis, implying the Métis were not “civilized.” This chapter exemplifies how Owram’s focus on expansionist’s goals minimizes the group's subsequent impact on Métis and Indigenous way of life.