There were long severe labour shortages on the Canadian prairies and these became extreme during the weeks of the fall harvest when millions of acres of crops needed to be brought in during a short period of time from September to October.
Thus in 1890 harvest excursions were organized by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) in which special trains would transport workers from Eastern Canada to the prairie centres.
Many of the labourers came from Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes, but as demand increased workers began to be pulled from British Columbia, the United States, and Great Britain.
In 1928 a mass of thousands of British workers who could not find work threatened to become violent and were shipped back across the Atlantic at government expense.
For the western towns the annual arrival of the raucous excursioners was a major disruption with common instances of violence, drunkenness and theft.