At Your Service

by Rob Fisher, Library and Archives Canada

Introduction | Directives | Debates | Dreams | References

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Directives

The British government ultimately encouraged emigration in several ways: by making it more affordable to the poor; by supporting the efforts of individuals and companies like Colonel Thomas Talbot and the Canada Company to promote large-scale settlement; by appointing agents in British North America to assist emigrants; and by distributing handbooks and leaflets containing advice for emigrants. The British appointed A.C. Buchanan as the first Chief Agent for Emigration at Québec in 1828 and Alexander Wedderburn followed in 1831 at Saint John, New Brunswick. Agents met emigrants on arrival and provided them with advice on local conditions and promising areas for settlement.

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The advice given by agents and by the official handbooks represented a delicate balance between protecting the interests of Great Britain and providing accurate and useful information for the emigrants. Buchanan's 1832 notice of Advice to Emigrants warned newcomers of the "aguish swamps of Illinois and Missouri," while painting a rosier picture of Quebec's eastern townships, the Talbot settlement on Lake Erie, and the Huron tract of the Canada Company.

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But Buchanan also gave sound, practical advice to emigrants, telling skilled labourers to go to the towns and cities where they could earn higher wages, while advising men with large families to support to get land quickly and start clearing. He recommended potatoes as the best starter crop and advised every new settler to obtain a good milk cow as soon as possible. He cautioned settlers against the plans and schemes of non-government agents to separate them from what little money they had, or worse, to redirect them to the United States.

During the decades between the 1830s and the 1860s, the role of emigration agents evolved along with the interests of the imperial and provincial governments. Gradually, the agents began to answer to the provinces instead of the Colonial Office, as local authorities adopted a greater role in promoting immigration and the provinces moved toward greater self-government.