VERMILION-ON-THE-PEACE
"Lofty I stand from each sister land, patient and cheerily wise,
With the weight of a world of wonder in my quiet, passionless eyes,
Dreaming of men who will bless me, of women esteeming me good,
Of children born in my borders, of radiant motherhood,
Of cities leaping to stature, of fame like a flag unfurled,
As I pour the tide of my riches in the eager lap of the world."
--_Service_.
It is on August 27th, in the evening, that the crew, all slicked up in
their Sunday-go-to-meetings, draw us up on the beach of the City in the
Silences, this Past-in-the-arms-of-the-Present,--Vermilion-on-the-Peace.
The first thing to meet our eye is the red roof of the flour-mill of the
H.B. Co., a picture of progressiveness set in a living frame of golden
wheat, the heavy heads nodding to the harvest.
Vermilion is an old post of the Old Company. Alexander Mackenzie on his
way to the Pacific found people at work here far back in 1792. The
Vermilion of to-day stands a living monument to the initiative faith and
hard work largely of one man, Mr. Francis D. Wilson, who has had charge
of H.B. Co. interests here for nineteen years. Mr. Wilson found this
place a fur-post on the edge of civilisation, and he has made of it a
commercial, agricultural, and manufacturing centre. And his example has
been contagious, for the half-breeds around him have become farmers, the
Indians who traded furs a dozen years ago now buy harness and ploughs
and breach-loading guns from The Company, paying for the same with wheat
of their own growing.
[Illustration: The Flour Mill at Vermilion-on-the-Peace]
Vermilion is in latitude 58° 30' N.,--that is, about four hundred miles
due north of Edmonton, and on practically the same parallel as
Stockholm. The flour-mill that we now inspect is the most northerly
wheat-mill on this continent, and it has been running for five years. It
is the roller process, with a capacity of fifty barrels a day, the
motor-power being a 40 H.P. Corliss engine. The wheat which feeds these
rollers is all grown in nearby fields, and the resultant flour is
consumed by the people of the lone posts of the Peace and the lower
Mackenzie. Two years ago the H.B. Company paid to farmers, all of whom
lived within a radius of five miles from the mill, the sum of $27,000
spot cash for their wheat. An electric plant lights the mill and fort
buildings, affording fifty six-candle-power lights.
Right up to the door of the mill extends the sixty-acre wheat-field of
the H.B. Company, from which Mr. Wilson computes that he will this year
thrash two thousand bushels. If the H.B. wheat-field were to sell the H.B.
mill these two thousand bushels at $1.25 a bushel (the ruling
Vermilion price), there would be a net profit of $1500, after paying all
expense of culture, to the credit of one branch of Mr. Wilson's
commercial institution. For thirty years, wheat, oats, barley, and
vegetables have been grown in Vermilion, not as an experiment, but as
regular commercial crops. Cereals are sown late in April or early in
May, and the harvest is gathered in August. More than once, wheat has
matured in eighty-six days from seed-sowing to seed-garnering.
Vermilion farmers boast sulkies and gang-ploughs and the latest geared
McCormick, Massey-Harris, and Deering farm implements,--self-binders and
seeders. Everything is up-to-date. We ourselves counted fifteen
self-binders at work. And grain is not the whole story. The farmers own
thoroughbred Ayrshire stock and splendid horses. I happened to be at the
garden of the Church of England Mission when the potato-crop was being
harvested, and found that seven bags of seed planted in the middle of
May produced one hundred bags by the end of August. Five potatoes that I
gathered haphazard from one heap weighed exactly five and one-half
pounds. I photographed and weighed a collection of vegetables grown by
Robert Jones on the Dominion Experimental Farm.
[Illustration: Articles Made by Indians
A--Wall-pocket of white deerskin, embroidered in silk-work, and bordered
with ermine--the work of a Cree woman at Vermilion-on-the-Peace.
B--Gloves of white deerskin embroidered in silk, the work of a Slavi
woman on the Liard River (a branch of the Mackenzie).
C, D, E, F, G, H, I--Moccasins as worn respectively by the Crees,
Chipewyans, Slavis, Dog-Ribs, Yellow-Knives, Loucheux--all the work of
the women.
J.--Flour bag from the mill at Vermilion-on-the-Peace, the most
northerly flour-mill in America.
K--Sinew, from close to the spine of the moose--used by the women of the
North instead of thread.
L--Very valuable net of willow-bark made by an old squaw at Fort
Resolution. This is almost a lost art, and harks back to the pre-string
days.
M--The "crooked knife" or knife of the country.
N--Match-box made from a copper kettle by an old Beaver Indian at Fort
Vermilion-on-the-Peace.
O--_Babiche_, or rawhide of the moose or caribou--"the iron of the
country."]
One cauliflower weighed eight pounds, half a dozen turnips weighed nine
pounds each, and twenty table beets would easily average six pounds
each. The carrots and onions were sown in the open in mid-May and were
as inviting specimens as I have ever seen. Tomatoes ripened in the open
air on this farm on July 13th. Peas, sown on May 23rd and gathered on
August 12th, weighed sixty-four pounds to the bushel. Experimental plots
of turnips gave sixteen tons to the acre, and white carrots twelve tons.
Apple-trees and roses we found flourishing on this farm, with
twenty-five varieties of red, black, and white currants. The wheat story
is of compelling interest. Preston wheat, sown on May 6th and cut on
August 22nd, weighed sixty-four pounds to the bushel; Ladoga wheat, sown
on the last day of April and cut on September 5th, ran sixty-four pounds
to the bushel also, and early Riga weighed sixty-three pounds. In the
garden of the R.C. Mission we were presented with splendid specimens of
ripened corn and with three cucumbers grown in the open air, which
weighed over a pound each.
[Illustration: The Hudson's Bay Store]
Vermilion is the centre of prairie and rolling timber-land greater in
extent than the whole of Belgium. There are probably a million acres of
land immediately tributary to the place, all capable of producing crops
like those cited. Within a radius of ten miles of the H.B. post there
are living now five hundred people of whom perhaps fifty are white. They
all to some extent cultivate the soil, varying their farm operations by
hunting, trapping, and freighting. The settlement boasts two churches,
two mission schools, and two trading stores,--a happy, prosperous, and
very progressive community. Everything in the place points to this
conclusion.
The H.B. Company here, in addition to buying beaver-skins and growing
$1.25 wheat and grinding flour and importing big red binders, breaks the
monotony by running a sawmill and building modern steamboats. This
sawmill turned out all the lumber for the new steamer _Peace River_,
built here four years ago of native timber. She is a hundred and
ten-foot stern-wheeler with twenty-two-foot beam, drawing two and a half
feet and carrying forty tons burden. She can accommodate thirty
passengers in comfortable cabins, and when going with the current, makes
fifteen knots an hour. The sawmill which turned out the timbers for this
boat has a capacity of fifteen thousand feet a day.
Within this mill I took, at random, the record sheet of one raft of one
man's logs for the spring of 1906, cut in the immediate vicinity of
Vermilion and floated along the Peace to the mill. Edmond Paul's logs in
one raft gave a total of two hundred and eighty-eight logs, which cut at
the mill 27,029 board feet of lumber. The biggest log in this raft was a
twelve-foot log with twenty-six inches diameter at the small end, which
cut three hundred and sixty-three feet of lumber.
Vermilion in its soil fertility, its modernism, culture, and
arrived-ness is a source of recurring marvel and pleasure. If a handful
of people four hundred miles from a railway, as the crow flies, and
seven hundred miles by actual practicable trails, can accomplish what
has been done, into what status of producing activity will this whole
country spring when it is given rail communication with the
plains-people to the south?
Waiting for steamboat connection, we are for weeks in this glorious
autumn weather, guests in the hospitable home of Mr. and Mrs. Wilson.
Can we ever forget the generous kindness extended to us within these
walls? Months of travel in open scows, sleeping on the ground, and
stretching out in blankets on the decks of little tugs have prepared us
to enjoy to the full the comforts of a cultured home. It is a modern
house, with beds of old-fashioned pansies and sweet-Williams and rows of
hollyhocks on all sides. The upper verandah affords a view of the Peace,
here fully a mile in width, of incomparable beauty. To the visitor who
steps over its threshold, Mr. Wilson's library indicates at once the
reading man and the clever artificer. Scientific works of reference,
good pictures, the latest magazines, certainly look inviting to ragged
travellers who have opened no books, save those of nature and
human-nature, for five long months. The office furniture, hand-made of
native tamarack and birch, is Mr. Wilson's individual work in both
design and execution. Admiring the outcome of hand and head, we get also
a glimpse of a warm heart, for we are quick to notice that all these
carefully-filed magazines and papers are available for reference to any
one in the settlement, whether fort employé or not, who cares to come in
here for a quiet hour to read.
Kipling says, "You couldn't pack a Broadwood half a mile," but the
Wilson home gives the lie direct to this, blithe line. In a corner of
the drawing-room stands an old-fashioned piano with a history. The
honourable ancestress of all the modern square pianos and baby-grands of
Canada, this little instrument came long years ago in the hold of a
sailing ship to Hudson Bay, and by interior waterways was carried by
portage and York-boat into Winnipeg, and subsequently into Edmonton. It
carries on it the name of John Broadwood & Sons, London. Mrs. Wilson
tells us that when she was little it was carried by the boys from house
to house on the prairies to do duty wherever there was a social dance.
The ghost of the old thing has much quiet here in Vermilion to think of
the pretty girls in their short sleeves and muslin frocks who once trod
Sir Rogers to its sweet strains.
Mrs. Wilson, the grand-daughter of Peter Warren Dease, the explorer, and
the daughter of late Chief Factor Clarke of the H.B. Co., has put in a
life of loving service among the people of Vermilion. Her knowledge of
medicine and her devoted attention and nursing, extended in the hour of
need alike to Indians and whites, has saved the life of many a mother
and child; for doctors and professional nurses are unknown in Vermilion.
These are the pioneer days, when interdependence breeds neighbourly
kindness.
Everything on a Vermilion dinner-table is produced in the country, with
the exception only of tea, coffee, sugar, and pepper. The country
furnishes beef, pork, and fowl all locally matured; home-cured ham and
bacon; every known variety of hardy and tender vegetables; home-made
butter; bread made from flour grown and ground on the premises; pies
whose four constituents--flour, lard, butter and fruit--are products of
the country; home-made cheese; wild honey; home-made wines; splendid
fish caught from the Peace, and a bewildering variety of wild
game--moose, caribou, venison, grouse, brant, wild geese, canvas-backs,
and mallards. Wild berries furnish jams and conserves of a dozen
different kinds, such as raspberry, black currant, strawberry,
blackberry, cranberry, blueberry, and saskatoon. The salt comes from
Slave River, and sugar could very readily be produced from Vermilion
beets if there should arise a market. What more would you? The
Vermilionese on his fertile acres is as independent of the world outside
as is the Eskimo in his Arctic igloo. The farm of Sheridan Lawrence,
exhibiting its wide-stretching wheat-fields, some heads of which counted
seventy-one kernels, with its patches of one-pound potatoes, twelve-foot
sunflowers, and its quiverful of happy, tow-headed children, gives as
sweet a picture of Canadian thrift and happiness as one would wish to
see. Indeed, happiness seems to be the keynote of Vermilion, whether we
seek it within the fort walls of the H.B. Co., on the fat acres of the
farmers, or within the folds of Protestant or Roman Mission.
[Illustration: Papillon, a Beaver Brave]
We carry away with us two pictures, that we like to cherish, of the
convent kiddies of Vermilion. The first thing we saw when we peered
round a corner of this old-fashioned building was the bright face of
Sister Thomas of Canterbury playing see-saw with a dozen wide-grinning
Slavi babies. When the morning came when we were to bid reluctant
good-bye to Vermilion and all its spontaneous kindness, the last sight
that met our eyes before we turned the corner of the Peace was the whole
convent force of Vermilion perched high on stumps and fence-rails,
wishing us _bon voyage_ with fluttering pocket-handkerchiefs, while
Sister Thomas of Canterbury, on a ladder, surmounted the crowd and waved
her farewells with a table-cloth.