Crossing the border both ways.
Throughout the nineteenth century, the border between Canada and the United States existed on paper, but in the woods and on the waterways which divided the two countries there was little in the way of security to suppress crossing the border. The United States advanced in industry and manufacturing at a far greater pace than Canada, and Canadian workers, attracted by the higher wages paid in American cities, crossed the border to find work. Many of these were recent arrivals from Europe, who entered Canadian ports before crossing the border. Most of these arrivals were in New England and New York, though some traveled the lakes and rivers to Ohio and the Midwest.
Seasonal workers from both nations traversed the border to help plant or harvest crops on the farms of both countries. In Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington, lumberjacks, many of them of French Canadian descent on both sides of the border, crossed it freely in search of work. Gold, silver, and copper mines in Montana and in the Yukon attracted miners from the United States and Canada. They also led to another border dispute when it became apparent that Canadian gold could not be shipped overseas without resort to an American port.
The Homestead Acts which created much of the farmland across the American West led to a gradual reduction of lands available in the United States. Many farmers turned their eyes to the north. The United States and Canada thus exchanged a large portion of their native born population. The number of Canadian born citizens who moved to the United States greatly exceeded that of Americans who moved to the north. By the end of the nineteenth century more than 1 million Canadian born were living in the United States. At the time a little more than 100,000 American born were living in Canada. The number of transient workers crossing back and forth is impossible to ascertain.
Strengthened by the discovery of the natural riches of Canada in terms of coal, iron ore, gold, silver, copper, and more, by the late nineteenth century Canadian industry grew steadily. Railroads began to crisscross the country as they did in its neighbor to the south, and trade between the two countries grew steadily. Despite the shared language of the Canadians and the Americans, the two nations developed very different cultures and cultural values as they spread to the west. Canadians (and the British) opposed the American manner of dealing with the Indian tribes, for example. The Canadians also grew to resent what they saw as British catering to America.
Anti-American and anti-British resentment developed as a result of the resolution of many of the border disputes between Canadian Dominions and the United States. Canadians gradually grew to believe that Great Britain was more concerned with guarding and strengthening its relationship with the Americans at the cost of Canadian interests. Calls for greater Canadian autonomy grew stronger as the twentieth century opened. Thus the greatest single factor governing American – Canadian relationships was its developing alliance with the British Empire, as the United States took its first steps towards imperial ambitions of its own.