After reading the book New and Naked Land Making the Prairies Home, I gained a little more incite to what the hard ships of moving to the prairies really were. The book right of the bat in the introduction states "population movements, both voluntary and forced, have become so commonplace, and travel and long distance communication so rapid, that it is easy to forget how stationary people used to be and how insurmountable distances were " (Rees 1988, p 1). "People were tied to localities in ways we no longer appreciate " (Rees 1988, p 1). Rees comes right out of the gate almost bashing on ways we live and how easy it is for us to travel a distance without even looking back, we have no hardships, moving just 12 miles is nothing. .
Rees first talks about the harsh prairies of Canada, how remote and isolated they were. Between Manitoba and southern Ontario lay a thousand mile stretch of waterlogged and virtually uninhabitable Canadian Shield (Rees 1988, p 5). The completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway, Canada was on its way to glory. The C.P.R bombarded the British and continental press with information on Western Canada. Flyers, pamphlets, decoration, promotions where advertising this new land never conquered. But soon people caught word of what Canada really was Americans thought of it as "a land of ice, snow, drought, and disillusionment, " while for the English it was "the Siberia of the British Empire " (Rees 1988 p 15). Rees takes a good look at the environmental aspects of the Canadian frontier and what people would have to really face when it comes to the harsh conditions of this new frontier. He talks highly of the ranchers and farmers of the homestead in that they took on these harsh conditions and stuck with it. There was no way of knowing precisely what immigrants to the prairies expected to find on arrival, but what is clear is that few could have anticipated the reality (Rees 1988, p 26).
