It was 1927, the year of the Diamond Jubilee of Confederation, a time of celebration but also one of some soul.searching. One topic of debate and discussion was the government's immigration policy. An increasing number of Canadians were arguing that immigration contributed little to population growth and that organized efforts, private as well as governmental, to induce people to come to Canada were a waste of money and effort. During the six fiscal years from 1921 to 1926, W.A. Irwin pointed out in MacLean`s Magazine six weeks before Canada's sixtieth birthday, the federal government spent slightly over $13,000,000 under the head of "immigration" and 667,349 new Canadians were brought to the dominion's shores. During those same years, however, 630,016 Canadians were recorded by Washington authorities as having emigrated to the United States. MacLean's illustrated the point with this cartoon by W. Gordon Wallace. The United States was a powerful attraction. Jobs were easy to find; real earnings were higher. "We were taught," wrote J.K. Galbraith in the memoirs of his boyhood in southwestern Ontario, "that Canadian patriotism should not withstand anything more than a $5-a-month wage differential. Anything more than that, and you went to Detroit." Indeed, many critics went so far as to assert that it was immigration itself which was causing large scale emigration to the United States, "good" Canadians being pushed out of jobs and off the land by "strangers" who were willing to accept lower wages and lower standards.
Courtesy: MacLean's Magazine, Vol. II, No. 10, May 15,1927, p. 3
