"Sir Wilfrid Laurier - Prime Minister of Canada, 1896-1911"

"While the groundwork had been laid by Macdonald and the National Policy, it would be Laurier who would put the dream of western settlement into practice. Clifford Sifton, the Minister of the Interior, would launch a massive advertising campaign to attract setters from all areas of Europe and the United States. As the homesteaders flooded into Saskatchewan, eastern industry boomed and Canada was on its way to fulfilling Laurier's prediction that the twentieth century would be Canada's century. "