{"id":225,"date":"2015-10-27T19:30:15","date_gmt":"2015-10-27T23:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/postconfederation2e\/chapter\/5-5-the-promised-land\/"},"modified":"2020-07-17T16:05:52","modified_gmt":"2020-07-17T20:05:52","slug":"5-5-the-promised-land","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/postconfederation2e\/chapter\/5-5-the-promised-land\/","title":{"raw":"5.5 The Promised Land","rendered":"5.5 The Promised Land"},"content":{"raw":"[caption id=\"attachment_223\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"400\"]\"Three<\/a> Figure 5.8 A photo of John Lanquist, Gino Pakkala, and Harold Malm Sr. in Sointula, B.C.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nBefore the Industrial Revolution, working the land was what most people\u00a0did, in one way or another. And, since\u00a0it was the norm, it was nothing special.\r\n\r\nThen cities took off in earnest, and the cities\u00a0became not merely bigger versions of their former selves but industrial hives:\u00a0crowded, dirty, dangerous, unhealthy, and exploitative, and subject to violent economic and political upheavals. Under these circumstances, the land acquired a connotation of relative purity; held up against the cities, the countryside positively glowed with wholesome and godly virtues. Avoiding city life and the prospect of working for someone else became the objective of many Canadians and immigrants. Owning one\u2019s own land and being one\u2019s own boss was highly desirable and it was seen, too, as having a special virtue.\r\n

God Made the Country, Man Made the Town<\/h1>\r\nIn a 2007 collection of essays on the settlement of the West, several scholars pursue the theme of the promised land. The suffragette, writer, and moralist Nellie McClung saw the West as a place where conditions were good for the raising of Christian-spirited, temperate (that is, free of liquor), and empowered generations\u00a0\u2014<\/strong> although she experienced disillusion in every regard by the 1920s and 1930s.[footnote]Randi Warne, \u201cLand of the Second Chance: Nellie McClung\u2019s Vision of the Prairie West as Promised Land,\u201d The Prairie West as Promised Land<\/i>, eds. R. Douglas Francis and Chris Kitzan (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2007): 217-219.[\/footnote] The leading Social Gospeller of his day (and eventually the founding leader of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation), J. S. Woodsworth, believed that the kingdom of God could be established on Earth and specifically \u201cthat the fertile soil of the Canadian prairies nurtured the right conditions for the growth of God\u2019s heavenly kingdom on earth \u2013 the Promised Land.\u2026\u201d[footnote]R. Douglas Francis, \u201cThe Kingdom of God on the Prairies: J. S. Woodsworth\u2019s Vision of the Prairie West as Promised Land,\u201d The Prairie West as Promised Land<\/em>, eds. R. Douglas Francis and Chris Kitzan (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2007): 225.[\/footnote] In this regard, Woodsworth wasn\u2019t too far out of step with Louis Riel\u2019s 1885 millenarian vision of the West as a nurturing refuge for an assortment of\u00a0religious creeds.[footnote]Thomas Flanagan, Louis \u201cDavid\u201d Riel: Prophet of the New World<\/i>, revised ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 101.[\/footnote] This became something of a reality for the Mennonite and Hutterite colonies that erupted on the Prairies and in pockets in southern Ontario and in the Fraser Valley. A similar, though more checkered, experience\u00a0was shared by the Doukhobors.\r\n\r\nParallels could be drawn, too, with West Coast utopian communities. These appeared in several locations, notably at Ruskin and, somewhat more successfully, at Sointula on Malcolm Island. While these two experiments had ethnic and working-class roots, there were others that tapped into upper-class aspirations, the best example of which is Walhachin, west of Kamloops, where well-to-do English immigrants attempted to rebuild a throwback village lifestyle in 1909, one that included a cricket oval, fox hunts, and a smart hotel which boasted a dress code. Historian Patrick Dunae has written on the widespread cultural, economic, and political impact of this cohort of \u201cgentlemen emigrants\u201d and \u201cremittance men\u201d \u2014<\/strong> second or third sons of money who were unlikely to inherit much if they stayed at home in Britain.[footnote]Patrick Dunae,\u00a0Gentlemen Emigrants: From the British Public Schools to the Canadian Frontier<\/em> (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1981).[\/footnote] There were strong anti-materialist threads in all of these enterprises, as there was in individual homesteading. These were themes that would reappear sporadically in the 20th century in the context of [pb_glossary id=\"1025\"]back-to-the-land[\/pb_glossary] movements, especially in the 1960s and early 1970s.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_224\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"400\"]\"Two-story<\/a> Figure 5.9 The hotel in Walhachin, BC, an upper-class settlement surrounded by sagebrush, rattlesnakes, and desert.[\/caption]\r\n\r\n
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Key Points<\/h2>\r\n