The Granary of the British Empire: The Western Provinces of Canada: Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia

Canadian Pacific Railway Company Department of Natural Resources - [1914]

The cover illustration for this brochure depicts a masculine cowboy surveying his domain, lush with crops, new farming equipment, and domestic bliss. Noting that as of 1913, only about 10 million of the 170 million acres of potential wheat land in the West were under cultivation, the brochure encouraged settlers to take advantage of Western Canada’s rich soil and ability to grow “hard” wheat—that is, wheat with a high protein content, excellent for bread. Statistics emphasized increasing farm values, livestock numbers, and grain yields, but “King Wheat,” declared to be “the basis of all civilized existence,” drove the settlement of the Canadian West. As this booklet declares, “the potential wealth of the rich soil of Western Canada has attracted from all quarters of the globe men and women tired of the impoverished surroundings which are the unfortunate complement of many of the populous centres of modern civilization, and anxious, while there is yet time, to secure to themselves and their families a share of the prosperity which the boundless West holds in store for those who seek it.”