National Network for Equitable Library Service

Letters from a Young Emigrant in Manitoba first published in 1883 and long out of print, is one of the best records of Canadian immigrant life. The letters were written by Edward ffolkes, who left England in 1880 to study at the Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph and later to homestead in southern Manitoba. They describe with rare insight the daily struggles and expectations of an “ordinary” man who had the courage to take up a new life on the frontier. Ronald A. Wells has introduced the volume with a wide-ranging essay on the role of popular knowledge about Canada in Britain and the significant shift of British migration from the United States for Canada at the end of the nineteenth century.