The British government began to encourage emigration to British North America (Canada). Emigration was publicized in pamphletes and newspapers, not to mention in letters from settlers already in Lower Canda and Upper Canada (Quebec and Ontario). The British government even assisted some prospective emigrants with paid passage, land grants and tools for working the land. Many of these assisted in this way were soldiers who were disbanded after the wars. Others were people in Scotland and Ireland who had lost their homes because of new agricultural techniques, or who were known to be rebels against Britian.
The majority of newcomers to Upper Canada and Lower Canada, however were not assisted in this way. There were other developments that encouraged what would beome the largest mas movement of people in human history. In some cases, private landowners or land companies attracted settlers by offering free passage and land on credit. In other cases, ship owners or shipping companies recruited settlers by offering low transportation fares so that their ships, most of which normally carried frieght from North America, would not be making a return trip empty. These were not good ships to travel on. They were not meant for humans, and the ship owners who recruited passengers did not care where the people ended up. They simply dropped them off at any random port in Canada. The majority of new English speaking immigrants ended up in French speaking Quebec!
Between 1815-1831, 319,000 people came to British North America (Canada) with 50,000 arriving in Quebec. This influx of English speakers was a huge problem in Quebec. Worse a cholera epidemic (a deadly stomach virus) swept through Quebec. Many French Canadians believed that this massive immigration, Britain was trying to dump its unwanted population that was sick in order to destroy the French population. Many British immigrants who moved to Quebec could not afford to buy their own land so they worked in the major cities of Quebec such as Montreal. Buisness owners paid these poor English/Irish/Scotish immigrants low wages that took jobs away from the local French populations. The massive amounts of immigrants to put a strian on cities as they were not enough affordable homes. Slums and homelessness grew in Montreal, Quebec City and Toronto.
