Not all immigrants pioneered in the bush. Many took employment in the towns and villages or found work in lumber camps. Labourers were needed for canal construction in the 1830's and 1840's, and for the building of the railways in the 1850's. Thousands of immigrants, however, experienced the isolation of a pioneer's life. Many gave it up and found their way back to the villages and cities or over the border to the United States. But countless immigrant pioneers wrote letters home to friends and relatives in England, Ireland, and Scotland, as William Miller did in 1820: "Let my brothers Robert, James and Andrew know that I wish they would come...let Robert A. and his mother and sisters know that there are farms to buy...I have nothing more to say but that I never thought such a country was here and I wish I had been some years sooner".
