Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
5
A Grand Trunk Railway train leaving Calgary.
© Canada Science and Technology Museum; CN002394
kept people coming from far and wide.
Alberta's population rose from 73,000
in 1901 to 375,000 in 1911.
In British Columbia, a strike by 7,000
miners looking to improve their work-
ing conditions lasted two years, from
1912 to 1914, and was fi nally broken
by the Canadian army. Certain arrange-
ments improved the situation, and the
First World War created a temporary
boom which lasted until 1920, causing
a rise in the price of raw materials and
wheat.
HARD TIMES
Life in Western Canada was hard
around the turn of the 20th century.
The coal mines of Alberta and British
Columbia were the most dangerous in
the Americas: by the end of the 19th
century there were 23 fatal accidents for
every million tonnes of coal extracted,
while in the United States there were
only six. For the farmers who came
here to grow wheat, the high cost of
rail transport, lack of rail service, low
wheat prices and bad harvests, along
with duties too high to protect the
fl edgling industry in central Canada, all
came together to make for miserable
and desperate times.
The workers remained dissatisfi ed,
though, and in 1919, the workers'
unions of the West created their own
central union, the One Big Union. As
supporters of Russian Bolsheviks, the
union's goal was to abolish capitalism.
However, a general strike in Winnipeg,
Manitoba quickly created a rift between
the workers with respect to their ob-
jectives, and demonstrated Canada's
determination not to let the country
adopt Marxist ideology. The 1920s
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