The Government is NOT your friend

Many years ago a wealthy young farmer met and married a lovely lady from a well to do family. They were happy and productive in their native Wales and soon had a large family to support. Not a problem. The farmer had many acres of land and was a wonderful shepherd and grain farmer. One day in the early 1920s a man from the government came and informed the couple that their future lay in Canada. It was for the boys you realize. The boys would have more opportunity in Canada than they would in Wales. A few months later the farmer, his wife and 8 children made their way to Liverpool where they boarded a steamer for Canada. Arriving in Montreal they disembarked and caught the train west to the land of promise - Alberta. Two weeks after they left England they found their new home. It must have been heart breaking. A two room tar paper shack on a quarter section of hard scrabble, wind blown prairie that couldn't support a jack rabbit let alone a farmer and his family. They set to work and work they did. The dirty thirties were brutal. Their life savings were gone and they had nowhere to go. The winters were cold and the summers hot and crop failure after crop failure finally reduced them to living on relief. So what has this to do with government you ask? Well you see the government of Britain decided that after WWI it couldn't support large families so it made a pact with Canada to accept large families. Of course the Canadian government was looking for loyal British subjects since much of the prairie west and Alberta in particular had been settled by Americans and the Canadian government was scared that the new province of Alberta may join the USA. In the power play of governments the Welsh farmer was caught and ruined. Yes he survived to old age as did his loving wife and their 13 children but they were a broken people. How could the government have treated them thus? The government was not their friend.