North America’s Divide - The Political Geography of Inequality - page 112

TABLE 5.1. Intercensus Net Migration Ratios,
by Province, Canada 1901-1921

Provinces 1901-1911 1911-1921

− −

PEI 13.6 16.4

Nova Scotia − 0.6 − 7.6

New Brunswick − 3.8 − 7.3

Quebec 4.3 − 4

Ontario 9.3 2.3

Manitoba 41.2 5.1

Saskatchewan 125.6 15.1

Alberta 123.8 20.9

British Columbia 69.4 14.8

Ottawa: Government Publication, 1969.p.138.

the early 20s. Clearly, not all of these immigrants were unskilled men in search
of labor. Many of them arrived into Canada escaping political, religious, or
racial persecution, not just hunger. But enough were unskilled to shape the
patterns of internal migration within the union. Table 5.1 displays the inter-
provincial migration rates in Canada between 1901 and 1921. There is a clear
population shift from the Maritimes towards the rural West, most notably,
Saskatchewan and Alberta.
In this context, the 1921 elections yielded a coalition between King's liberals
and the Progressive Party, an organization created to promote the interests of
farmers. As the economic recovery ensued during the post-WWI years, Western
farmers found themselves in need of labor. The Progressive Party led the gov-
ernment to pursue a two-fold policy on the issue: relocate the unemployed to
work on farms (the “ back to the land ” strategy), and facilitate the immigration
of unskilled workers to be incorporated both into farming and natural resource
extraction industries.
These measures only added to the migration trends reported in Table 5.1 .
Due to the harsh Canadian Winter and the nature of these industries, unskilled
workers' reliance on the West for their economic fortunes created a huge group
of seasonal, highly mobile, workers. Depending upon the time of the year, they
would be hired in different provinces across the country to perform tasks
that demanded nothing but physical effort. In good times, the seasonal nature
of employment nurtured a cross-regional flow of workers; in bad times, as we
shall see below, potential workers turn into a wave of dependents seeking relief.
This will have important political consequences during the process leading to
Canada's Unemployment Insurance Act of 1940.
The reality was quite different in the United States, as race shaped the
nature of the interplay between economic geography and mobility. During the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, racism shaped the “unfinished
democracy” (Quadagno 1994 ) at work in the southern states. The Ku Klux