The Promised Land: Settling the West 1896-1914

“Berton has made an invaluable contribution, rendering the grand Canadian adventure more readable than any detective story.” —The Vancouver Sun

This is the final chapter in Pierre Berton’s epic retelling of the opening of the Canadian West in the years following Confederation. After the pioneers, surveyors and entrepreneurs came the settlers—a million people lured by government propaganda, ruthless boosterism and Utopian visions of a Promised Land. The West that we know today, with its distinctive personality, its unorthodox politics, its suspicion of Central Canada, was formed in the crucible of these tempestuous years.

The reader is plunged in the centre of the action, mingling with Nellie McClung, the flamboyant suffragette; R.B. Bennett, the future prime minister; Mackenzie and Mann, railway builders; J.S. Woodsworth, the socialist saint; and other colourful characters. Above all, the author looks objectively at the record of Clifford Sifton, the Liberal Minister of the Interior and the man responsible for the country’s immigration policy. Using neglected archival sources, Berton questions the accepted view of Sifton’s sudden resignation from the cabinet and provides, for the first time, a wealth of material detailing the major scandals within Sifton’s department.