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The Canadian Pacific
British Columbia joined Canada in 1871 on one condition: that a railway be built across the continent within ten years. The railway is the physical precondition for Canada becoming a country from sea to sea rather than being absorbed southward. As soon as it was finished, Canada imposed a head tax on Chinese immigrants — the same people who had built it — raised it twice, and banned the immigration outright in 1923. The route ran through land that had not been ceded, and the numbered treaties were negotiated under pressure while construction went on.
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