The settlement of the Canadian West should be viewed as part of the North American frontier expansion. It is significant that free land policy embodied in the Homestead Acts was employed in the disposition of public lands on both sides of the U.S. and Canadian border. Notwithstanding the fame of the U.S. Homestead Act, which is often treated as one of the most important laws in American history, the Canadian counterpart is accorded a less celebrated position in history. It is the purpose of this paper to clarify the nature of the Canadian homestead policy, and compare it to American land policy. The purpose of public land policy in the United States was to create the democratic pattern of land ownership in the West. The Homestead Act of 1862 was the symbol of its policy and the realization of Jeffersonian dream. Although Canada had her own Homestead Act as a part of the Dominion Lands Act of 1872, there seems to have been no such purpose. The Canadian West at the time of its purchase from the Hudson's Bay Company was considered to be the area vulnerable to the threat of American expansion. The settlement of the area was vital to her national security, and it was considered urgent to build a railroad to the Pacific and settle the vacant land with Canadian people. However, there was no clear idea about the character of the society which would be built in the Canadian West. The homestead policy was adopted as a means to attract settlers, and the political philosophy behind the American Homestead Act faded away when this policy went across the international border. The difference between Canada and the United States in the aims of their land policies must have originated in the very nature of public lands, although both countries employed similar disposal policies with identical nomenclature. The public land in the United States was born as the result of the American Revolution, and it was won by the common sword, purse, and blood of all the people. It is quite natural that the land belonged to the people from the beginning. In Canada, however, the public land was essentially the Crown land, which was dramatically shown in the case of Malcolm McKinney's claim to the second Homestead and the response of the Canadian government analyzed in this paper. This characteristic explains the apparent negligence on the type of society which would be built on the frontier, and accounts for the orderly settlement process in western Canada. It is no wonder that the fever associated with the American Homestead Act readily cooled off on the Canadian frontier.

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