Canada Offered Scotland's Poor and Oppressed an Escape Route to a Better World

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Scotland’s ruling classes strongly opposed emigration. They feared that the growing exodus was depleting Scotland’s workforce and armed forces. Owners of Highland estates were particularly aggrieved at the loss of their tenants and put up fierce resistance to their going. Because they did not understand the ordinary person’s longing for a decent living, the elite never appreciated the extent of Canada’s appeal. In a nutshell, Canada offered Scotland’s poor and oppressed an escape route to a better world. Although those who emigrated were not just the poor and dispossessed, they were the ones who had most to gain initially. By emigrating, people could enjoy greater prosperity and aspire to owning their own land. There was no pecking order in the New World. There were no landlords demanding high rents and no factory owners paying starvation wages for labour. They could be free-thinking individuals seeking what was best for their families, rather than serfs and wage slaves living under an oppressive regime.

--Lucille H. Campey, An Unstoppable Force: The Scottish Exodus to Canada (Toronto: Natural Heritage Books, 2008), ??.