Wooed by the lure of land, the prospect of opportunity and by respite from encroaching urbanization and industrialization, scores of settlers moved into Western Canada. From the initial Western frontiers in Manitoba to the eventual farthest reaches of the nation in British Columbia, the Western worldview and lifestyle can be distinguished from those of Eastern Canada in general terms. More liberal in many senses of the word, Western Canada developed into a bastion of radical thought, inspired in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century by Marxism, populism, and the British labor movement. However, a current of conservative social doctrine became concurrent with ideological liberalism in the West. Women like Nellie McClung typified what would become emblematic of the Reform Movement: a concern with morals, family values, traditional religious structures, and temperance. Moreover, Westerners became more noticeably class conscious than their Eastern counterparts because the West was settled and developed mainly by agrarians and miners. The labor movement took root especially fast in mining communities, whereas Progressive Party politics found fertile ground in the agricultural communities that flourished in Manitoba. While the two main industries of the West: mining and agriculture did not share the same political outlook, they both contributed to the blossoming of Reform. The Reform movement in Western Canada was sparked and fed by a series of interrelated political, economic, social, geographic, historical, and existential concerns.

             What initially distinguished the Western from the Eastern mentality continues to loosely divide the nation: a sense of alienation from national politics and culture. The railroads did much to connect western and eastern provinces, linking otherwise disconnected geographical land and people. Transport of goods, services, and human capital transformed the West from a nether land to a bread basket and fostered a regional mythos of pioneering spirit and hearty individualism.