Encouraging British and European immigrants to settle on the prairies was part of Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald's plan to establish Canadian sovereignty over the newly-acquired North-West Territories. Stretching from Ontario's border to British Columbia, (still a British colony), the Territories were transferred to Canada by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1869. Settlement was an urgent matter, and so was a railway to carry settlers west. There was already talk in the mid-western United States of expanding north of the border. Sir John's promise of a trans-Canada railway persuaded British Columbia to enter Confederation in 1871.

The Canadian Pacific Railway, so necessary to opening up the Territories to large-scale settlement, was a massive project that took many years to finance. Surveying prairie land for railway-building and white settlement signalled displacement to Native people and Metis, and an end to their traditional way of life. 1885, the year the CPR was completed, was also the year of the second Metis uprising, and the execution of its leader, Louis Riel.