[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Canada vs. Brazil

[Jack Milner]

One Company that recruited my great grandfather, Gottlieb Altwasser from 
Volhynia  to Canada in 1905  was the North Atlantic Trading Company.   
Passengers who qualified the company for this bonus were indicated by a 
stamp on the ships passenger list   "N.A.T.C. Bonus Allowed".   
Following is a brief history of this controversial company.  Also visit:

http://members.shaw.ca/d_y_g/ssdominion.htm


Canada and the NATC Bonus

Sir Wilfrid Laurier's Liberal government elected in 1896, immediately 
launched an aggressive campaign to encourage the settlement of Western 
Canada. Clifford Sifton, the Minister of the Interior in Laurier's 
government, offered land to people who chose to make the Prairies their 
home. To attract the farm labor needed to push back the Western 
frontier, he staged high-profile recruitment campaigns that employed 
methods that were not always new, but pursued more vigorously than had 
been done previously in advertising the West's attractions. A torrent of 
pamphlets in several languages flooded Great Britain, Europe, and the 
United States. Canadian exhibits were mounted at fairs, exhibitions, and 
public displays, while editorial articles, commissioned by his 
department, were inserted in foreign newspapers. Foreign journalists 
were wined and dined on guided tours across the West, and prosperous 
homesteaders were encouraged to revisit their homelands and those 
friends and relatives they had left behind, since it was Sifton's belief 
that the most effective advertising was done by individual contact.

One such campaign involved arrangements with an Amsterdam-based 
organization of booking agents and steamship company officials. In 1899, 
Clifford Sifton sanctioned a controversial contract with the NATC 
whereby the Company acquired a monopoly on all Canadian immigration 
promotional work throughout continental Europe and Scandinavia. Under 
the terms of the contract, the Company agreed to direct farmers to 
Canada, earning a bonus from the Immigration Department for each 
settler. The organization's operations were kept secret, allegedly 
because most European countries at the time had restrictive emigration 
laws and the agents involved were risking prosecution. When details of 
the government's secret agreement with the North Atlantic Trading 
Company were revealed in Parliament in July 1905, the opposition 
Conservatives bitterly condemned the scheme. Was there indeed such an 
entity as the NATC? If so, who were its officers? How much capital did 
it have? And from where did it do its business? There were few 
satisfactory answers to these and a myriad of other questions. 
Detractors believed the NATC to be a fraud, "raking-off" government 
funds for services not rendered and a rancorous debate ensued in the 
House of Commons. The North Atlantic Trading Company contract was 
cancelled, effective April 14, 1906. The issue had become too hot 
politically and continued probes into the NATC would have further 
embarrassed the government.

Frank Oliver, who succeeded Sifton as Minister of the Interior in 1905, 
continued Sifton's policy of paying booking agents to recruit suitable 
immigrants. In fact, not only was the policy retained, it was extended. 
Less than four months after the NATC contract was cancelled, the 
Department of the Interior had new immigration offices opened in Exeter, 
York, and Aberdeen and began to pay selected European booking agents a 
bonus for farmers, gardeners, carters, railway surfacemen, navvies 
(manual labourers building the rail lines without the benefit of 
machinery), and miners.

The following year, 1907, the Immigration Branch adopted an even more 
aggressive approach to immigrant recruitment, appointing 100 government 
agents and paying each one a two-dollar bonus for every British 
agricultural labourer recruited and placed in Ontario or Quebec. Two and 
a half million immigrants came to Canada between 1904 and 1913.



Nelson Itterman wrote:

>Would that be companies or Churches? Churches played an active role in
>assisting immigrants.
>Nelson
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: ger-poland-volhynia-bounces at eclipse.sggee.org
>[mailto:ger-poland-volhynia-bounces at eclipse.sggee.org] On Behalf Of Carol
>Duff
>Sent: January-01-09 3:30 PM
>To: ger-poland-volhynia at eclipse.sggee.org
>Subject: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Canada vs. Brazil
>
>
>    Some of my family who went to Canada seem to have had their ship passage
>paid for or partly paid for. This might have been true for Brazil also. It
>seems that companies recruited settlers to come. Carol
>  
>
>>  
>>    
>>
>
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