Dutch migration - 1 (English subtitles)

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Life in the Netherlands is impoverished and hard for many small farmers and laborers around 1900. Therefore, they decide to leave. The Zijlstra family from Friesland goes to Argentina. Textile worker Hendrik Meijer from Hengelo tries his luck in America. And the Vergouwen family from Brabant settles on the Canadian prairies.

In Canada, we follow the Vergouwen family. Grandpa 'Pete' Vergouwen arrives in Canada by boat in 1921 and ends up in the village of Strathmore in the state of Alberta. Strathmore is situated along the railway line built by the Canadian Pacific Railroad (CPR). All things considered, that is quite a story. The CPR was commissioned by the Canadian government to build a railway line from east to west to prevent American settlers from advancing northwards to the empty Canadian prairies. To finance the construction, the CPR was allowed to sell large tracts of land on both sides of the railway to settlers who would become farmers in Canada. Those farmers had to be transported, their products had to be transported, their seeds and barbed wire—everything had to be transported... by the CPR. But there were few settlers. To bring settlers to the prairies, the CPR deployed large ships and brought farmers from Europe. Interested English speakers from Great Britain were quickly snapped up. Persecuted Jews from Poland and poor people from Austria-Hungary were eager to come, but Canada preferred to receive fit farmers from Scandinavia and the Netherlands. And not that the Dutch farmers were particularly rich; they, too, were poor and without prospects. Often, they came from families where the eldest son took over the farm, or the land was divided among the sons so that they all had a small plot.

And then, suddenly, a priest appears in the Brabant village. He gives a speech in the local café: 'A farm of your own is possible for you too! Come to Canada!' Father Van Aken recruits men in West Brabant and leaves with them several times for the vast plains of Alberta, where he promises the prospective emigrants a world of luxury.