Hardy backwoodsmen, wholesome women, and steady families: Immigration and the construction of a white society in colonial British Columbia, 1849-1871

Immigration was central to nineteenth-century colony-building, as is eviden t from an examination of mid-nineteenth-century British Columbia. This colo ny's overwhelmingly male and racially plural settler society inevitably dis appointed those who hoped to find a stable white settler colony, and the di screpancy helped to generate a spate of reformatory schemes in which immigr ation played a key and constant role. Colonial promoters' discussions of de sirable immigrants centred around three images--the 'hardy backwoodsman', t he 'steady family', and the 'wholesome woman'--that reveal overlapping conc erns with gender, class, and race. Together, these images were constructed as the immigrants able to transform British Columbia into the stable settle r society of imperialists' dreams. That they failed to do so in practice co nfirms that immigration functioned as a mechanism for inclusion and exclusi on, but not always in predictable ways.