Times change

Is it just me, or would this passage from Donald Creighton's The Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence likely not be written in the same way today: "Immediate these migrants had to come to terms with the new continent. From it they had to wrest a living; and since they were Europeans and not Indians, a living meant not merely the food to sustain life but the amenities of West-European civilization which alone could make it tolerable."