The Right to Homestead

Homesteading was inherently exclusionary across gendered and racial lines. Women, too, felt deserving of homesteading, and “this rationale was usually bolstered by noting that land that (British or Canadian) women deserved was going to ‘strangers’ or ‘foreigners’” (Carter and Davis, 301). In this way, the motivation for homesteading for women became increasingly fought over racial lines, as women believed land should be sold to “‘daughters of British blood’ rather than ‘hordes of men of alien race’” (308).

These arguments were being disseminated not only by leaders of women’s suffrage but also by founders and editors of the Grain Growers’ Guide. "Isobel," from the above entry in the Grain Growers' Guide, exemplifies these sentiments. These feelings of oppression was aimed most fervently toward “Mormons, Ukrainians, Jews, Doukhobors, and Asians” (309).

Source: 
Barbara Kelcey and Angela Davis, A Great Movement Underway: Women and the Grain Growers’ Guide, 1908-1928 (Winnipeg: Manitoba Record Society, 1997)