Reginald Dawson, in his memoir Hope and Forty Acres, recalls that “the years 1903 to 1907 were the peak years of the boom in real estate in the Nelson district and every CPR boat brought its quota of hopeful embryonic fruit growers.” ¹⁵

He, like hundreds of others, was a victim to “land sharks.” Unscrupulous real estate agents who were eager to resell the land they had purchased or pre-empted at a fraction of the cost, for an enourmous profit, to unwary and inexperienced settlers.

Reginald purchased “forty acres of bush and forested land at West’s Landing for the sum of $80 per acre. At a later date, [he] found that a short time previously, this same land had been staked and Crown-granted from the government at $2 per acre.” ¹⁶

Books for immigrants warned the land-seeker of the “silver tongued stranger.” For “many new arrivals suffer[ed] grievous injustice at the hands of certain real estate agents who, by their misrepresentations, shed discredit on an honourable calling.” ¹⁷

 

15. Dawson, Hope and Forty Acres, 25
16. Dawson, Hope and Forty Acres, 4
17. Copping, The Golden Land, 141