Equating Western Expansion with the Spread of Civilization

Howe's reference to "civilization" was common among the promoters of the Northwest. By this word, they meant primarily the complex social and cultural institutions of Great Britain and Canada—the manners and mores, the schools, the representative institutions, and above all, the churches. This cultural imperialism was most explicit in the persistent efforts to civilize the Indian. But civilization was more than that. It also encompassed the whole economic paraphernalia of railways, banks, mines, and particularly modern agriculture. Howe and The Globe lamented that it was a "blot upon our civilization" that the enormous expanse of grass and parklands of the Northwest was idle and unproductive. The land had to be civilized; it had to be integrated into the economy of the new technological society. The principle of efficiency, the goal of progress, and the drive for expansion had to be applied to the western plains. In other words, they equated western expansion with the very spread of civilization itself.

--A. A. den Otter, preface to Civilizing the West: The Galts and the Development of Western Canada (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1986), x.