CHAPTER 05
Building the West
Steel can connect a country. Laws can control people. Treaties can bind governments to promises.
START HERE · PHYSICAL ORIENTATION
The promise looks simple on paper. The continent does not.
NOT A PRIMARY SOURCE
SECTION 1
The Impossible Railway
A political promise collides with the physical continent.
Canada had promised British Columbia a railway connection. Now the country had to turn a political promise into steel across a continent.
On a political map, the task can look like one line. On the ground, every kilometre required choices about route, money, materials, labour, and whose lands the tracks would cross.
THE PHYSICAL PROBLEM
Hard rock meant blasting, cuts, bridges, and enormous amounts of timber.
Wet ground made a stable railway bed difficult and expensive.
Long distances and major crossings still demanded crews, supplies, and bridges.
Steep grades, narrow valleys, snow, and avalanches made route-finding dangerous.
Trace the main line from central Canada to the Pacific. Where does the route meet the most difficult relief?
What would this railway-company map want investors and travellers to notice?
YOUR TURN
Why could a political map make the railway seem easier than it was?
FINDING A WAY THROUGH
The route through the Selkirk Mountains was a major obstacle. Surveyor Albert Bowman Rogers searched for a usable pass. The route named Rogers Pass reduced the need for a huge detour—but it did not make mountain construction easy.
Crews built bridges across deep gorges. In 1885, the original timber bridge over Stoney Creek was one of the most dramatic structures on the line. The railway could cross the mountains only by combining surveying, engineering, money, and dangerous human work.
YOUR TURN
What did finding Rogers Pass solve—and not solve?
WHO BUILT THE LINE?
Thousands of workers cleared land, blasted rock, moved earth, built trestles, laid track, cooked, carried supplies, and maintained camps. The work included Indigenous, European, and Chinese labour.
Chinese workers were central to construction in British Columbia. More than 10,000 Chinese labourers came to the province during the major early-1880s building period. On the western section, many received about one dollar a day—roughly half the pay of white workers.
They handled difficult and dangerous work while living conditions were often poor. Parks Canada records that hundreds died from accidents or illness. Their labour was skilled, necessary, and exploited.
SOURCE LIMITS
What can the worker photograph tell us?
THE SAME RAILWAY · DIFFERENT POSITIONS
national connection and control
risk and possible profit
grades, bridges, snow, and route
transportation and access to land
wages, skill, danger, and discrimination
a railway crossing homelands and accelerating settlement
THE LAST SPIKE
On 7 November 1885, Donald A. Smith drove a ceremonial final spike at Craigellachie, British Columbia. The photograph became an image of national achievement.
It is strong evidence that a ceremony happened and that particular leaders were placed at the centre. It is weak evidence of everyone who made the railway possible.
COMPARE THE EVIDENCE
Which story of railway building enters national memory?
The Last Spike was driven in November 1885. Events that occurred earlier that year belong to the next chapter. A famous photograph should not scramble the chronology.
YOUR TURN
What is the strongest conclusion from comparing the Last Spike and Chinese-worker photographs?
SECTION 2
Numbered Treaties
Agreements, different understandings, and promises that continue.
Railway construction and settlement moved through Indigenous homelands. Canada also sought agreements that it said would open large areas to settlement and state authority.
Between 1871 and 1877, the Crown concluded Treaties 1 through 7 with many First Nations. The full Numbered Treaty series eventually reached eleven agreements, made between 1871 and 1921.
WHY NEGOTIATE?
Land, settlement, and control
Canada wanted routes for settlement and transportation, access to land and resources, and a way to extend government authority.
Survival, help, and a relationship
Different First Nations had different priorities, but many sought help during severe change, protection for future generations, and a continuing nation-to-nation relationship.
YOUR TURN
Why is it inaccurate to give both sides one identical reason for making treaties?
WHAT DID THE TREATIES INCLUDE?
Terms varied from treaty to treaty. Written agreements commonly included reserve land, annual payments, and continued hunting and fishing subject to stated limits. Some included farming tools, livestock, schools or teachers, and other support.
Treaty 6 included distinctive promises: a medicine chest at the Indian agent’s house, assistance during famine or pestilence, and agricultural support.
PRIMARY SOURCE · TREATY 6
A medicine chest shall be kept at the house of each Indian Agent for the use and benefit of the Indians...Treaty 6, written text, 1876
CHECK THE TERMS
Sort each term. Some appeared widely; some were distinctive in Treaty 6.
ONE DOCUMENT. MORE THAN ONE UNDERSTANDING.
The written treaty text matters. It is not the only evidence that matters.
Treaty discussions also involved oral explanations, translation, ceremony, and First Nations laws and diplomatic traditions. The Office of the Treaty Commissioner explains that First Nations commonly understand the treaties as permanent relationships for sharing the land, while Crown officials often treated the written text as a land surrender and contract.
Records terms in the government’s legal language.
Record what negotiators said and promised during discussions.
Place the agreement inside Indigenous law, diplomacy, and a continuing relationship.
WRITTEN AND ORAL EVIDENCE
A Crown copy of Treaty 6 lists written terms. Can it prove every oral explanation made during negotiation?
BIG BEAR AND TREATY 6
Plains Cree leader Big Bear did not immediately accept Treaty 6. He was concerned that its terms did not provide enough protection. His band delayed adhesion for years.
Under severe conditions—including hunger and the collapse of the bison economy—Big Bear’s band adhered to Treaty 6 in August 1883. Delay does not mean he failed to understand the stakes. It shows agency under tightening pressure.
YOUR TURN
What does Big Bear’s delayed adhesion best demonstrate?
SECTION 3
The Indian Act
A federal law built to control—and to assimilate.
A treaty is an agreement. The Indian Act is a law imposed by the federal government. Confusing them erases the difference between negotiation and control.
The Constitution Act, 1867 gave the federal Parliament authority over the area historically worded as “Indians, and Lands reserved for the Indians.” The wording is quoted because it is the law’s historical language.
In 1876, Parliament combined earlier colonial laws into the Indian Act. It gave the federal government broad control over First Nations status, reserve lands, money, and governance. It was not negotiated as a treaty.
A LAW THAT DECIDED WHO COUNTED
The 1876 Act defined who the government would recognize under the law. It built this recognition mainly through the male line. The Act treated First Nations identity as something the Canadian state could define.
PRIMARY SOURCE · INDIAN ACT, 1876
Any Indian woman marrying any other than an Indian or a non-treaty Indian shall cease to be an Indian in any respect within the meaning of this Act...Indian Act, 1876, section 3(c) · historical legal language
A First Nations woman who married a man the Act did not recognize could lose legal status and band membership. A First Nations man did not lose status for the same reason; a non-status woman who married him could instead gain recognition through him.
APPLY THE LAW
A status First Nations woman marries a man the 1876 Act does not recognize. Her brother marries a non-status woman. What unequal result follows?
CONTROL OVER LAND, MONEY, AND GOVERNANCE
Federal law defined who would be legally recognized.
The Crown held legal title while the Act regulated possession, use, and surrender.
Government officials supervised band funds and many financial decisions.
The Act could impose election rules and limit local decision-making.
ENFRANCHISEMENT
The word sounds like gaining rights. In this law, enfranchisement meant losing legal recognition under the Indian Act in exchange for ordinary Canadian citizenship and, in some cases, individual land.
The policy assumed First Nations people should eventually stop existing as distinct political and legal communities. That was an assimilation objective.
YOUR TURN
Why is ‘enfranchisement’ a misleading-sounding term in this context?
The 1876 Act was amended many times. Later bans and restrictions should not be dropped into the original Act. The pass system was an administrative policy that operated without a legal basis in the Act; it was not a provision of the 1876 law.
THE LAW DID NOT ERASE INDIGENOUS AGENCY
First Nations people challenged officials, protected families and languages, used courts and petitions, maintained community authority, and resisted assimilation. A powerful law shaped conditions; it did not turn people into passive objects.
DO NOT CONFUSE THEM
Classify each description.
SECTION 4
Residential Schools & Assimilation Policy
The policy moved from paper into children’s lives.
Residential schools did not begin with one law on one day. Church-run schools existed before Confederation. In the 1880s, the federal government expanded a funded residential and industrial school system as part of its assimilation policy.
THE POLICY TAKES SHAPE
In 1879, journalist and politician Nicholas Flood Davin reported to the Canadian government after studying the industrial-school model in the United States. He recommended schools that would remove Indigenous children from the influence of their families and communities.
The federal government funded the system. Christian churches operated many of the schools. The partnership joined government power with church administration.
PRIMARY SOURCE · GOVERNMENT INTENTION
Indian children should be withdrawn as much as possible from the parental influence...Prime Minister John A. Macdonald, House of Commons, 1883 · historical government language
The policy was not simply about placing a school farther away. Separation was part of the design. Officials believed that removing children from parents, languages, cultures, and communities would speed assimilation.
YOUR TURN
Why was separation from family central to the policy?
SOURCE LIMITS
What can this school photograph tell us?
INTENTION AND LIVED EXPERIENCE
Government records can reveal the system’s structure and purpose. They cannot tell the whole story of what children experienced.
Survivor accounts document widespread family separation, loneliness, punishment for speaking Indigenous languages, inadequate food, poor conditions, disease, neglect, forced labour, and physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. Experiences varied, but the system’s harms were not isolated accidents.
SURVIVOR TESTIMONY · EUGENE ARCAND
I had never experienced violence. I had never experienced hunger. I had only experienced love and hugs at home.Eugene Arcand, recalling life before residential school · National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation
TWO KINDS OF EVIDENCE
Why use both government policy and Survivor testimony?
Reveals policy, structure, funding, and official intention.
Reveals lived experience, harm, survival, family, and memory.
RESISTANCE, SURVIVAL, AND CONTINUITY
Children and families were not passive. Students ran away, protected one another, used their languages when they could, remembered teachings, and found ways to survive. Families protested, sought children’s return, and maintained cultures across generations.
Survivors later organized, testified, demanded records and accountability, and taught the country what the system had done. Their evidence is central to the historical record.
A LONG SYSTEM
More than 150,000 First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children attended Indian Residential Schools over more than a century. The federally supported system expanded after the 1880s, changed over time, and did not disappear at the end of this chapter’s period. The last federally run school closed in 1996.
The Indian Act did not create the first residential schools. The schools had earlier roots, and government policy expanded through reports, funding, administration, later laws, and church operation.
YOUR TURN
Which explanation best connects the Indian Act and residential schools?
SECTION 5
Building the West: Pull It Together
Connect the engineering, agreements, laws, and human consequences.
Nothing here is new. Rebuild the chapter through geography, agreements, law, evidence, and consequence.
REVIEW 1 · BUILDING THE RAILWAY
Put the story in order. No dates are shown until the chain is correct.
- Workers blast, bridge, grade, and lay track
- Canada promises a Pacific railway connection
- The Last Spike ceremony is photographed
- A route is surveyed through the mountains
- The line reaches Craigellachie
REVIEW 2 · TWO PHOTOGRAPHS
Which story of railway building enters national memory?
REVIEW 3 · WHY TREATIES?
Match the broad interest to the party. Remember: neither side had only one voice.
REVIEW 4 · TREATY TERMS
Sort each term. Some appeared widely; some were distinctive in Treaty 6.
WRITTEN AND ORAL EVIDENCE
A Crown copy of Treaty 6 lists written terms. Can it prove every oral explanation made during negotiation?
REVIEW 6 · TREATY OR INDIAN ACT?
Classify each description.
REVIEW 7 · STATUS SCENARIO
A status First Nations woman marries a man the 1876 Act does not recognize. Her brother marries a non-status woman. What unequal result follows?
REVIEW 8 · ASSIMILATION POLICY
What linked the Indian Act and residential-school policy?
REVIEW 9 · GOVERNMENT AND SURVIVOR SOURCES
Why use both government policy and Survivor testimony?
Reveals policy, structure, funding, and official intention.
Reveals lived experience, harm, survival, family, and memory.
REVIEW 10 · CONSEQUENCES
Match each system to its clearest chapter consequence.
REVIEW 11 · POLICY CHRONOLOGY
Put the story in order. No dates are shown until the chain is correct.
- Davin reports on industrial schools
- Treaties 1–7 are concluded
- The federal residential-school system expands
- Canada gains federal authority over First Nations matters
- The first Indian Act is consolidated
REVIEW 12 · THE BIG CLAIM
“Building the West was mainly an engineering achievement.”
ONE-SENTENCE CHALLENGE
Why was the railway called an ‘impossible’ project?
ONE-SENTENCE CHALLENGE
Why can the written treaty text not stand alone?
ONE-SENTENCE CHALLENGE
Why is Treaty 6 not the same as the Indian Act?
ONE-SENTENCE CHALLENGE
Why were residential schools part of assimilation policy?
Show what you understand
Ten questions cover the whole chapter. Every answer includes an explanation.
You should now be able to...
Explain the physical and human challenge of the transcontinental railway.
Explain why Chinese railway workers were essential and exploited.
Use the Last Spike photograph as evidence—and identify its limits.
Explain why Canada and First Nations entered treaties for different reasons.
Distinguish written treaty text, oral promises, and Indigenous understandings.
Explain why Treaty 6 and the Indian Act are not the same thing.
Explain how the Indian Act imposed federal control and sex discrimination.
Explain why family separation was central to residential-school policy.
Compare government intention with Survivor evidence.
Recognize Indigenous choice, resistance, survival, and continuing authority.
BUILDING THE WEST CONNECTED TERRITORY WITH STEEL—AND EXTENDED CANADIAN POWER THROUGH TREATIES, LAW, AND ASSIMILATION POLICY.
Sources and further reading
Official curriculum, law and treaty texts, Parks Canada research, archival photographs, Indigenous-led treaty interpretation, and Survivor testimony support this chapter.
Ontario Ministry of EducationHistory, Grade 8 — official current curriculum ↗Parks CanadaRogers Pass engineering history ↗Parks CanadaChinese construction workers on the Canadian Pacific Railway ↗Parks CanadaThe Last Spike at Craigellachie ↗Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs CanadaThe Numbered Treaties, 1871–1921 ↗Office of the Treaty CommissionerTreaty understandings and continuing relationships ↗Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs CanadaTreaty 6 — official text ↗Indigenous Services CanadaThe original Indian Act, 1876 ↗Indigenous Services CanadaHistorical review of sex-based registration inequities ↗Parks CanadaNicholas Flood Davin and the 1879 report ↗National Centre for Truth and ReconciliationResidential School History ↗National Centre for Truth and ReconciliationEugene Arcand — Survivor testimony ↗