For twenty years after 1888, the British Government conducted an experiment in colonisation on the Canadian prairies. Hoping to avoid a radical redistribution of land to alleviate distress and disorder in Scotland's Western Islands, the Salisbury Government attempted an emigrationist policy. In 1888 it authorised the expenditure of public funds to establish colonies of Highlanders in Manitoba and Assiniboia. Adverse economic and climatic conditions combined with inadequate planning to severely hamper the progress of the settlements. Problems associated with administration from London compounded existing difficulties. By 1893, a Liberal administration less inclined to favour state-aided emigration abandoned all commitments to such schemes on the basis of the experience of the struggling Highland settlements. The Canadian Government was unable to adopt a consistent policy toward the British scheme. The Department of the Interior was frequently at variance with the Office of the Canadian High Commissioner in London. The settlements received much publicity and required much administrative attention before the British Government, with financial integrity, was able to conclude the settlement scheme in 1908. It is argued that the experience of the Canadian settlements played a far larger role in determining British policy toward state-aided colonisation than has previously been acknowledged. It is maintained that the publicised difficulties of the settlements contributed to the Canadian perception that British agriculturalists made unsatisfactory settlers and to the subsequent policy preference for continental European emigrants. It is suggested that the episode stands in sharp contrast to the orthodox view of the Scottish experience in Canadian historical writing / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

THE DAWSON ROUTE: A PHASE OF WESTWARD EXPANSION The basic problem attacked in this thesis is the general lack of readily available knowledge concerning the Dawson Route. While there is much material in manuscript collections and in government publications, little attention has been paid the route in other places. Several scholars have dealt briefly with particular aspects of the route, but no person has treated it in a comprehensive fashion. This thesis sets out to rectify this situation. It has been written in the belief that a short general history of the Dawson Route — dealing with its origins, development, use, and significance — is justified and will be of some interest. Secondary problems have emerged in the course of this inquiry. In coping with these, the writer has attempted to describe the physical nature of the route and the natural obstacles overcome in its construction, and to tell why and how it was built. He has also tried to tell who used it, what it was like to travel the route during the 1870's, and to describe its relationship to other transportation routes. Finally, he has attempted to explain why it declined and to assess its significance. The thesis, in short, is a brief general history of the Dawson Route. The research for this paper has been carried forward at libraries and archives in Ottawa, Toronto, Port Arthur, St. Paul, Winnipeg, and Atikokan. Because physiography looms large in the story of the Dawson Route, a number of field trips into the area it traversed have been undertaken. Again, because the route was a physical thing, considerable effort has been expended in locating and reproducing maps and pictorial material to illustrate its use, its characteristics, and the country through which it passed. The writer has benefitted from involvement in archaeological and historical projects undertaken along the route in recent years. Several conclusions have grown out of this inquiry. In large degree, the Dawson Route was an extension and refinement of a long tradition of water transportation in the area between Lake Superior and the Red River. It was developed in the face of considerable physical obstacles and may be viewed as a triumph over those obstacles. Concern for the economic and political future of the British Northwest inspired its construction. This concern was largely a result of the expansionist temper of Americans, and particularly Minnesotans. Combined with this were transportation developments and physical expansion in Minnesota, as well as the activities of the Canadian Party in Red River, which also worked to encourage the construction of a Canadian transportation route. The Dawson Route served a useful military- political purpose in 1870, but its success as an emigrant route to attract settlers to the Red River area (for which it was primarily designed) was severely limited. It declined because of inherent weaknesses and because of developments in competing transportation facilities, both north and south of the international boundary. The relationship of the Dawson Route to the Canadian Pacific Railway was closer than has been suspected, and the fact that it survived for even a short period after 1873 was largely owing to the railway policy of Prime Minister Alexander Mackenzie. In a sense, the route was obsolete from the day it opened for emigrant travel in 1871. Nonetheless, it served a useful purpose and appears to have reflected the willingness of Canadians to marshall the resources of the new nation in the interests of an expansive national purpose. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

"To Be and Build the Glorious World" examines the educational thought and practice of Watson Thomson, the most passionate and controversial of the activist educators who worked in Canada from the mid-1930s to the mid-1940s. Using a contextual biographical methodology, the evolution of Thomson's motivational structure and world-view is examined. The opening chapters identify the educative forces that shaped Thomson's transformative-communitarian educational philosophy. Subsequent chapters analyze the interplay of Thomson's transformative- communitarian vision with the Canadian context—Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. A critical examination of Thomson's educational thought and practice shows that he adopted a consistent modus operandi. For Thomson, study-groups were to be spearheads of social change. Guided by the vision of a new, fully co-operative society, these groups would gradually initiate a social and intellectual revolution. Thomson's spearhead theory, put into practice in many contexts, was most successful in Saskatchewan. There he found support in a left populist culture. Thomson's accomplishments as an adult educator were many. First, he had a significant impact on many individual lives, helping people to see life as an indivisible whole. Second, Thomson participated in, and initiated, a remarkable range of educational ventures, some successful, others not. Thomson's educational thought and practice raises important questions on the relationship between nonformal education, social movements and policy outcomes. Indeed, a close study of Watson Thomson's career reveals the existence of a gentle, but persistent movement towards cultural revitalization in Western Canada in the 1930s and 1940s. Further, it suggests the presence of some unexpected avant-garde themes in the life of the Canadian left. This thesis, then, "explains" Watson Thomson's educational thought and practice contextually. In so doing, it also offers an explanation of the previously undocumented histories of adult education in three prairie provinces. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

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The past is the prologue. We must understand where we have been before we can understand where we are going. To understand the Blackfoot Nation and how we have come to where we are today, this thesis examines our history through Indian eyes from time immemorial to the present, using traditional narratives, writings of early European explorers and personal experience. The oral tradition of the First Nations people was a multi-media means of communication. Similarly, this thesis uses the media of the written word and a series of paintings to convey the story of the Blackfoot people. This thesis provides background and support, from the artist’s perspective, for the paintings that tell the story of the Blackfoot people and the events that contributed to the downfall of the once-powerful Nation. With the knowledge of where we have been, we can learn how to move forward. / x, 153 leaves : col. ill. ; 29 cm