The Prairie West as Promised Land

In 1906, the Sugar Maple Tree Song was just one example of the rhapsodic pieces that touted the Canadian West as the "promised land." In the formative years of agricultural settlement from the mid-nineteenth century to the First World War, the Canadian government, along with the railways and other Prairie boosters, further developed and propagated the image within the widely distributed promotional literature that was used to attract millions of immigrants from all corners of the world. The West was ripe with promise for those wishing to escape religious persecution, unproductive land, or intolerable living and working conditions.