The Last Best West: The Alberta Land Settlement Infrastructure Project
The catchy phrase, “last best west”, attracted many transatlantic and American immigrants to the Canadian prairies before World War One, an era of immense population expansion in Alberta and a remarkable period in the peopling of the Canadian nation. The settlement of the Canadian west is best seen as a giant social experiment: the State's policy of granting free homesteads to hundreds of thousands of takers was a major public investment strategy. Yet surprisingly little is known about the people in whom the State invested, where they came from and how long they stayed. Did the policy create a stable society of persistent settlers? Did it create a field for speculative investment? The Alberta Land Settlement Infrastructure Project (ALSIP) will construct a resource that will permit answers to these and many other questions that relate to a formative period in Canada's history and a major era of international migration.
We thank the Canada Foundation for Innovation, The Province of Alberta and the University of Alberta for their generous support.