The University of Manitoba was established in 1877. It's mandate was to develop crops that would grow on the un-arable dry/cold zone 2 region extending from Brandon westward to the Canadian foothills. The development of hard 99 day (consecutive frost free days) wheat for that vast expanse opened, according to the British, "the largest breadbasket in the world", and "with this we shall feed the empire".

Professors from the U of Manitoba (motto "To feed the World") took their cultivars to subtropical India, boosting their wheat production  from  2 crops/yr to 3.

By the 1920s, Winnipeg (settled 1738) traded significantly more grain than Chicago, had the most millionaires per capita of any city in Canada. Thus Winnipeg's vast trove of masonic architecture from that era. CNR was formed in Winnipeg to move grain,  TCA (Air Canada} also, to move people.

Agriculture on the prairie is what transformed Canada into a modern nation. Ontario's (90% rock/shield) agriculture is not of this scale