WINNIPEG AND THE CENTENARY
For over a century, as I have already pointed out, Western Canada formed
part of a vast theatre in which the fur traders enacted their stirring,
if somewhat squalid, drama. Of the several men who figured prominently
in the history of that period, there was one whose memory should be
revered by Canadians of To-day and To-morrow.
Philanthropy knows no higher work than to rescue capable and industrious
men from a country where they cannot support their families, and
emigrate them to a country where they can. In that work—which is so
largely a modern development rendered possible by modern
conditions—Lord Selkirk was a remarkable pioneer. He was a seer, born
far ahead of his times. One hundred years ago he saw the possibility of
settling Western Canada. In an age that knew nothing of steamships and
railroads, he had a prevision of farming on the prairie. Had his
aspirations remained an unrealised dream, we should have sufficient
occasion to honour the memory of a prophet. But that kind-hearted and
resolute Scotsman realised his dream. Encountering difficulty after
difficulty, he overcame them. He found his time of day sadly out of tune
with a scheme for putting the landless man on the manless land, but he
achieved that desirable end. It is, indeed, to the everlasting credit of
Lord Selkirk that he successfully tackled a twentieth-century job at the
dawn of the nineteenth century. While the warlike traders were losing
their tempers and their lives over the business of collecting pelts, the
unselfish nobleman was putting in some quiet, steady work on behalf of
humanity.
After the terrible Napoleonic wars, great destitution occurred among the
humbler classes in Great Britain, and specially in the Highlands of
Scotland. Lord Selkirk’s aim was to benefit his needy fellow-countrymen.
In June, 1811, three ships left the Thames to call at Stornoway, in the
Hebrides, for the first party of settlers bound for Central Canada. The
emigrants, as they went on board, were presented with a lying pamphlet
describing their destination as a Polar region infested with hostile
Indians. They were encouraged to return ashore for a good-bye spree on
their native soil. A “customs officer” stepped aboard and played
exasperating tricks with their baggage. Another bogus official came
rowing alongside to ascertain whether every emigrant was leaving
Scotland of his own free will. (Lord Selkirk’s protégés dealt with this
point by dropping a nine-pound cannon-ball into the gentleman’s boat.)
Thus early and artfully did the fur-traders of the North-West Company
seek to thwart colonising. But the emigrants sailed, and two months
later they arrived on the shores of Hudson Bay, where they remained in
huts during a long, wearisome winter and spring. In the first week of
July they started in boats down Hayes River to Lake Winnipeg, and so to
the Forks, on the Red River, where they arrived by the end of August.
Wondering Indians came to gaze at the white strangers who had arrived on
the prairie, not to collect furs and not to hunt, but—by all that was
mysterious and incredible—to make things grow in the ground.
Meanwhile another party of Lord Selkirk’s colonists had left Scotland.
Again there were unseen enemies at work. Mutiny was fomented on the
voyage, but, after one man had had an arm cut off, the affair fizzled
out. Of that second party to arrive at Hudson Bay, some eight or ten men
pushed on in the same year to Red River. Three of them tarried by the
way to do some fishing, and when they set out to accomplish the last
stage of their journey, winter set in, they ran short of provisions, and
their strength gave out. Two lay down on the windswept ice to die. “The
third,” Agnes Laut tells us, “hurried desperately forward, hoping
against hope, doggedly resolved, if he must perish, to die hard.
Suddenly a tinkling of dog-bells broke the winter stillness, and the
pack-trains of North-West hunters came galloping over the ice. In a
twinkling the overjoyed colonist had signalled them and told his story,
and in less time than it takes to relate, the Nor’-Westers were off to
the rescue. The three starving men were cared for till they regained
strength. Then they were given food enough to supply them for the rest
of the way to the settlement.”
Yearly contingents went out, and it is recorded that the emigrants of
1813 included young girls going to make a home for aged parents, a
patriarch and his wife who had been evicted from their Scottish home,
Irish Catholics, staid Scotch Presbyterians, dandified Glasgow clerks,
red-cheeked Orkneymen, younger sons of noble families, and shy and
demure Moravian sisters and brethren. They had their trials. There was
an outbreak of typhus on the voyage; on their subsequent trek across
country, they cut their feet on ridge stones, and sometimes had to wade
waist-deep through swamps; and once they ran short of food and were
reduced to eating nettle leaves.
To pave the way for his colony, Lord Selkirk had bought a controlling
interest in the Hudson’s Bay Company. But that company and the
Nor’-Westers were still at deadly feud. The peaceful settlers found
themselves in a hornets’ nest. They were terrified by the portents of a
gathering storm. Half-breeds went about singing their war songs;
musketry firing was heard at night. A section of the colonists suffered
the Nor’-Westers to escort them to the security of Eastern Canada. The
others remained to see the forts of the rival traders dealing out death
and destruction. At one time the colony buildings were set on fire, the
Selkirk settlers fled in terror to Lake Winnipeg, and nothing remained
but their charred homes and trampled crops. Then came two hundred
fighting men under the Hudson’s Bay flag, and as they brought word that
Governor Semple was on his way to take command, bringing with him 160
additional colonists, and that Lord Selkirk himself would arrive in the
following year, the agriculturists returned to Red River and started all
over again.
Governor Semple had not been long at Red River before he and his staff,
with a few other persons, were killed, whereupon the Hudson’s Bay
stronghold (Fort Douglas) fell into the enemy’s hands. Poor colonists!
they were tilling the soil in a very noisy neighbourhood. New excitement
was provided in the following year, when Lord Selkirk (now a very
warlike philanthropist) arrived with several hundred discharged soldiers
and retook Fort Douglas. After that, the colonists experienced less
troubled times; and when the two fur-trading companies coalesced in 1821
an era of peace dawned for the district. Meanwhile, harassed, weary and
ill, the founder of the colony had gone to France, where on November
8th, 1820, a noble life drew to a pathetic close.
Fate lavished her favours on Thomas Douglas, fifth Earl of Selkirk and
Baron Daer. He possessed youth, health, wealth, position and power. And
he applied those blessings, not to selfish ends, but to the service of
humanity. I like the simple words in which Lord Selkirk’s character was
described by his contemporary and friend, Sir Walter Scott. The great
novelist testified to his “generous and disinterested disposition,” and
to his “talents and perseverance.”
Lord Selkirk is to have a memorial, and a memorial worthy of the man and
his work. The Centenary of the foundation of the Selkirk settlement
(from which Manitoba has sprung) is likely to be celebrated in 1914 by
an exhibition at Winnipeg—an exhibition of a character and on a scale
to arouse interest in, and attract visitors from, all quarters of the
globe. Indeed, the Dominion has thoughts of celebrating the occasion by
holding its first “World’s Fair,” after the pattern set by London
forty-nine years ago, by Philadelphia twelve years later, by Paris in
the opening year of this century, and by Chicago in 1893.
There are several reasons why a Winnipeg Exhibition justifies high
hopes. On previous occasions, millions of people, travelling across
oceans and continents, have visited a World’s Fair in order to see—a
World’s Fair. People would be attracted to the Manitoba capital in 1914
to see that and something more. It would be an opportunity to witness a
rare spectacle—the rising of a new nation that is destined to be big
and powerful. For thousands of people it would be a chance to take a
peep at the prairie—to see with their own eyes the Great North-West.
These International Expositions are occasions when one part of the world
says to the rest of the world: “Come and see what _we_ are doing.”
Visitors go with the intention of combining business with pleasure; and
certainly no World’s Fair would ever have been held in a country that
presents such opportunities for investment and enterprise. The Winnipeg
Show would take its international public to the very border of probably
the greatest area of rich, unoccupied land to be found in the world. It
would reveal a territory that is producing sufficient wheat to supply
the whole population of England with bread, and producing it from soil
which, for the most part, was only recently brought under cultivation.
Moreover, the Winnipeg Exhibition would serve to celebrate an event of
which I have endeavoured to measure the significance. The one hundredth
anniversary of the Selkirk settlement will witness the opening of
through communication, _via_ Hudson Bay, between Western Canada and
Europe.
The Press of the Dominion took at once to the daring and delightful idea
of a World’s Fair at Winnipeg; and the more enthusiastic editors
exclaimed: “We must see to it that this is a record-breaking
exhibition.” That is certainly the right spirit in which to tackle a
great undertaking. The Paris Exhibition of 1900 holds, I believe, the
record, with an attendance of 50,860,801 visitors. But of course Paris
is situated in a more populous hemisphere than the one in which Winnipeg
occurs; so it would be fairer to regard the Chicago Exhibition of 1893
(which attracted 27,539,521 visitors) as the achievement to be eclipsed.
Though, indeed, having regard to relative population, Canada’s triumph
would be sufficiently remarkable if her first World’s Fair compared
favourably with the first World’s Fair of the United States. It was held
at Philadelphia in 1876, and the attendance was 9,910,996, or over
3,000,000 more than the attendance at either of London’s great
exhibitions.
Last year, when at Winnipeg, I called at the executive offices of
“Canada’s International Exposition and Selkirk Centennial, 1914,” and
there I learnt that preparations for the event were well advanced. The
project was associated with £1,000,000. Half was expected from the
Federal Government, most of the balance being provided by the following
grants: £100,000 from the City of Winnipeg; £100,000 from the Canadian
Pacific Railway; £100,000 from the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway; £50,000
from the Canadian Northern Railway; and £50,000 from the province of
Manitoba. To complete the £1,000,000, the business men in Winnipeg were
asked to take up stock to the extent of £100,000; which they promised to
do. The directors undertook to lay out that million pounds to advantage;
and it was estimated that buildings and exhibits provided by the various
Canadian, British and Foreign Governments would represent a value equal
to another million. So that persons who visit Winnipeg in the summer of
1914 are likely to have a good time and find plenty to see.
As a matter of fact, if they saw nothing but Winnipeg itself their time
and money would be well spent. It is a marvellous and a magnificent
city.
[Illustration: WINNIPEG OF TO-DAY]