The Pursuits of Prairie Settlement: Why They Failed and Succeeded this essay is about why Canadians were able to remain on the Prairies and farm, and why some weren't able to.

People came to the Prairies with a dream, a dream of a better life, where you depended on nobody but the land around you and yourself. They thought their lives would be simpler, easier when they came here. They read the advertisements of the Canadian government about free land, and all the space you could want, and they were swept away by the image of "the last best west". Settlement quickly began and flourished on …

…the fact that sometimes they could not control what happened on their farm, or what happened to grain prices back East. Farming was a high stakes risk for all those who decided to chance it and move to the Prairies. Their lives were changed upon undertaking the trade, some for the better, some for the worse. However, it taught them a lesson about the farming economy and Prairies that they would carry with them forever.