Agricultural History Conference, June 2013
Presentation Images
In his famous
definition of the “Immigrants Canada Wants,” former Canadian Minister of the Interior
Clifford Sifton (in office 1896-1905) defined a “quality” immigrant as “a stalwart peasant in
a sheep-skin coat, born on the soil, whose forefathers have been farmers for
ten generations, with a stout wife and a half-dozen children" [emphasis mine; Maclean’s Magazine, 1 April 1922, 16, 32-4].
Sifton's definition was published nearly twenty years after his administration as a comment on Canada’s post-WWI immigration scheme; even so, it so aptly reflects his turn-of-the-century immigration policies that it reads like a defense of them. This quote is so widely accepted as summative of his administration that it is often cited without noting its later genesis. Sifton's policy was highly controversial and often criticized for putting Canadian agricultural priorities somewhat ahead of cultural ones (his policy accepted white diversity, but non-white farmers were still regularly denied permission to immigrate to the Northwest).
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| Doukhobors in "sheepskin coats," arriving in Halifax, c. 1899 |
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Doukhobor women in harness, c. 1899
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Doukhobor village in Saskatchewan, c. 1901
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| Doukhobor women in harness, c. 1899 |
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| Doukhobor men pulling a wagon, c. 1902 |
Images from Jonathan Kalmakoff (www.doukhobor.org), Library and Archives Canada, and Wikipedia.
