Calgary & Southern Alberta

The agricultural and settlement potential of the West was not the only important consideration for Canadian expansionists. The long-held image of the western interior as a forbidding wilderness and sterile environment was based as much on accepted notions of its sub-Arctic climate as on reports of soil infertility. Before Palliser and Hind made their contributions, American Lorin Blodgett had challenged conventional beliefs regarding northern climates.

Although largely lacking hard scientific data, Blodgett's massive work, published in 1857, made a great impact on both scientific and popular thinking. Blodgett's radical position denied that latitude determined climate. He claimed instead that isothermic temperature lines were more instrumental. It followed, therefore, that the climate of the prairies was more like northern Europe than like Lake Superior.

Freed from climatic limitations of latitude, the Canadian prairies could be promoted as a productive region with less trepidation. The Dominion of Canada quickly incorporated such positive views into its promotion of "the Great North West". In his turn-of-the-century immigration campaigns, Interior Minister Clifford Sifton made an art of these government promotions.