OTTAWA
I
The run from Toronto to Ottawa, the city that is a province by itself
and the capital of Canada, was a night run, but there was, in the early
morning, a halt by the wayside so that the train should not arrive
before "skedule." The halt was utilized by the Prince as an
opportunity for a stroll, and by the more alert of the country people
as an opportunity for a private audience.
At a tiny station called Manotick farming families who believe in
shaming the early bird, came and had a look at that royal-red monster
of all-steel coaches, the train, while the youngest of them introduced
the Prince to themselves.
They came out across the fields in twos and threes. One little boy, in
a brimless hat, working overalls, and with a fair amount of his working
medium, plough land, liberally distributed over him--Huckleberry Finn
come to life, as somebody observed--worked hard to break down his
shyness and talk like a boy of the world to the Prince. A little girl,
with the acumen of her sex, glanced once at the train, legged it to her
father's homestead, and came back with a basket of apples, which she
presented with all the solemnity of an illuminated address on vellum.
It was always a strange sight to watch people coming across the fields
from nowhere to gather round the observation platform of the train for
these impromptu audiences. Every part of Canada is well served by
newspapers, yet to see people drift to the right place at the right
time in the midst of loneliness had a touch of wonder about it. These
casual gatherings were, indeed, as significant and as interesting as
the great crowds of the cities. There was always an air of laughing
friendliness in them, too, that gave charm to their utter informality,
for which both the Prince and the people were responsible.
From this apple-garnished pause the train pushed on, and passing
through the garden approach, where pleasant lawns and trees make a
boulevard along a canal which runs parallel with the railway, the
Prince entered Ottawa.
We had been warned against Ottawa, mainly by Ottawa men. We had been
told not to expect too much from the Capital. As the Prince passed
from crowded moment to crowded moment in Toronto, the stock of Ottawa
slumped steadily in the minds of Ottawa's sons. They became insistent
that we must not expect great things from Ottawa. Ottawa was not like
that. Ottawa was the taciturn "burg."
It was a city of people given over to the meditative, if sympathetic,
silence. It was an artificial city sprung from the sterile seeds of
legislature, and thriving on the arid food of Bills. It was a mere
habitation of governments. It was a freak city created coldly by an
act of Solomonic wisdom. Before 1858 it was a drowsy French portage
village, sitting inertly at the fork of the Ottawa and Rideau rivers,
concerning itself only with the lumber trade, almost inattentive to the
battle which Montreal and Quebec, Toronto and Kingston were fighting
for the political supremacy of the Dominion. Appealed to, to settle
this dispute, Queen Victoria decided all feuds by selecting what had
been the old Bytown, but which was now Ottawa, as the official capital
of the Dominion.
Ottawa men pointed all this out to us, and declared that a town of such
artificial beginnings, and whose present population was made up of
civil servants and mixed Parliamentarians, could not be expected to
show real, red-blood enthusiasm.
A day later those Ottawa men met us in the high and handsome walls of
the Chateau Laurier, and they were entirely unrepentant. They were
even proud of their false prophecy, and asked us to join them in a
grape-juice and soda--the limit of the emotion of good fellowship in
Canada (anyhow publicly) is grape-juice and soda--in order that they
might explain to us how they never for a moment doubted that Ottawa
would show the enthusiasm it had shown.
"This is the Capital of Canada, sir. The home of our Parliament and
the Governor-General. It is the hub of loyalty and law. Of course it
would beat the band."
II
I don't know that I want to quarrel with Ottawa's joke, for I am awed
by the way it brought it off. Perhaps it brought it off on the Prince
also. If so he must have had a shock, and a delightful one. For the
taciturnity of Ottawa is a myth. When the Prince entered it on the
morning of Thursday, August 28th, it was as silent as a whirlwind
bombardment, and as reticent as a cyclone.
There were crowds, inevitably vast and cheering, with the invincible
good-humour of Canada. They captured him with a rush after he was
through with the formalities of being greeted by the Governor-General
and other notabilities, and had mounted a carriage behind the scarlet
outriders of Royalty. That carriage may have been more decorative but
it was no more purposeful than an automobile would be under the
circumstance. Even as the automobile, it went at a walking pace, with
the crowd pressing close around it.
It passed up from the swinging, open triangle that fronts the Chateau
Laurier Hotel and the station, over the bridge that spans the Rideau
Canal, and along the broad road lined with administration buildings and
clubs, to the spacious grass quadrangle about which the massive
Parliament buildings group themselves.
This quadrangle is a fit place to stage a pageant. It crowns a slow
hill that is actually a sharp bluff clothed in shrubs that hangs over
the startling blue waters of the Ottawa river. From the river the mass
of buildings poised dramatically on that individual bluff is a sharp
note of beauty. On the quadrangle, that is the city side, this note is
lost, and the rough stone buildings, though dignified, have a tough,
square-bodied look. Yet the massiveness of the whole grouping about
the great space of grass and gravel terraces certainly gives a large
air. They form the adequate wings and backcloth for pageants.
And what happened that morning in the quadrangle was certainly a
pageant of democracy.
There was a formal program, but on the whole the crowd eliminated that
for one of its own liking. It listened to addresses; it heard Sir
Robert Borden, and General Currie, only just returned to Canada,
express the Dominion's sense of welcome. Then it expressed it itself
by sweeping the police completely away, and surrounding the Prince in
an excited throng.
In the midst of that crowd the Prince stood laughing and cheerful,
endeavouring to accommodate all the hands that were thrust towards him.
A review of Boy Scouts was timed to take place, but the crowd
"scratched" it. The neat wooden barricades and the neat ropes that
linked them up about a neat parade ground on the green were reduced by
the scientific process of bringing an irresistible force against a
movable body. Boy Scouts ceased to figure in the program and became
mere atoms in a mass that surrounded the Prince once more, and
expressed itself in the usual way now it had him to itself.
As usual the Prince himself showed not the slightest disinclination for
fitting in with such an impromptu ceremony. He was as happy and in his
element as he always was when meeting everyday people in the closest
intimacy. It was a carnival of democracy, but one in which he played
as democratic a part as any among that throng.
Yet though the Prince himself was the direct incentive to the
democratic exchanges that happened throughout the tour, there was no
doubt that the strain of them was exhausting.
He possesses an extraordinary vitality. He is so full of life and
energy that it was difficult to give him enough to do, and this and the
fact that Canada's wonderful welcome had called into play a powerful
sympathetic response, led him to throw himself into everything with a
tireless zest. Nevertheless, the strenuous days at Toronto, followed
by this strenuous welcome at Ottawa, had made great demands upon him,
and it was decided to cut down his program that day to a Garden Party
in the charming grounds of Government House, and to shelve all
engagements for the next day, Friday, August 29th.
The Prince agreed to the dropping of all engagements save one, and that
was the Public Reception at the City Hall on the 29th. It was the most
exacting of the events on the program, but he would not hear of its
elimination; the only alteration in detail that he made was that his
right hand, damaged at Toronto, should be allowed to rest, and that all
shaking should be done with the left.
The Public Reception took place. The only invitation issued was one in
the newspapers. The newspapers said "The Prince will meet the City."
He did. The whole City came. It was again the most popular, as well
as the most stimulating of functions. And it followed the inevitable
lines. All manner of people, all grades of people in all conditions of
costume attended. Old ladies again asked him when he was going to get
married. Lumbermen in calf-high boots grinned "How do, Prince?"
Mothers brought babies in arms, most of them of the inarticulate age,
and of awful and solemn dignity of under one--it was as though these
Ottawa mothers had been inspired by the fine and homely loyalty of a
past age, and had brought their babies to be "touched" by a Prince,
who, like the Princes of old, was one with as well as being at the head
of the great British family.
And with all the people were the little boys, eager, full of initiative
and cunning. Shut out by the Olympians, one group of little boys found
a strategic way into the Hall by means of a fire-escape staircase.
They had already shaken hands with the Prince before their flank
movement had been discovered and the flaw in the endless queue
repaired. That queue was never finished. Although, on the testimony
of the experts, the Prince shook hands at the rate of forty-five to the
minute, the time set aside for the reception only allowed of some 2,500
filing before him.
But those outside that number were not forgotten. The Prince came out
to the front of the hall to express his regret that Nature had proved
niggardly in the matter of hands. He had only one hand, and that
limited greetings, but he could not let them go without expressing his
delight to them for their warm and personal welcome.
The disappointed ones recognized the limits of human endeavour. His
popularity was in no way lessened. They were content with having seen
"the cute little feller" as some of them called him, and made the most
of that experience by listening to, and swopping anecdotes about, him.
Most of these centred round his accessibility. One typical story was
about a soldier, who, having met him in France, stepped out from the
crowd and hopped on to the footboard of his car to say "How d'y' do?"
The Prince gripped the khaki man's hand at once, and shaking it and
holding the soldier safely on the car with his other hand, he talked
while they went along. Then both men saluted, and the soldier hopped
off again and returned to the crowd.
"It was just as if you saw me in an automobile and came along to tell
me something," said the man who told me the story. "There was no
king-stuff about it. And that's why he gets us. There isn't a sheet
of ice between us and him."
Another man said to me:
"If you'd told me a month ago that anybody was going to get this sort
of a reception I should have smiled and called you an innocent. I
would have told you the Canadians aren't built that way. We're a
hard-bitten, independent, irreverent breed. We don't go about shouting
over anybody.... But now we've gone wild over him. And I can't
understand it. He's our sort. He has no side. We like to treat men
as men, and that's the way he meets us."
III
The long week-end, so strenuously begun, did, however, give the Prince
his opportunity for rest and recreation. He had a quiet time in the
home of the Governor-General at the beautiful Rideau Hall, the
attractive and spacious grounds of which are part of the untrammelled
expanses of the lovely Rockhill Park which hangs on a cliff and keeps
company with the shining Ottawa river for miles to the east of the
city. Apart from sightseeing, and golfing and dancing at the pretty
County Club across the Ottawa on the Hull side, he attempted no program
until Monday morning.
Ottawa is not so virile in atmosphere as other of the Canadian cities.
Its artificial heart, the Parliament area, seems to absorb most of its
vitality. Its architecture is massed very effectively on the hill
whose steep cliffs in a spray of shrubs, rise at the knee of the two
rivers, the Ottawa and the Rideau, but outside the radius of the
Parliament buildings and the few, fine, brisk, lively streets that
serve them, the town fades disappointingly eastward, westward and
northward into spiritless streets of residences.
The shores of the river are its chiefest attraction. Below the
Parliament bluff, there lies to the left a silver white spit in the
blue of the stream, that humps itself into a green and habitual mass on
which are a huddle of picturesque houses. These hide the spray of the
Chaudiere Falls, which stretch between this island and the Hull side.
Below the Falls is the picturesque mass of a lumber "boom," that
stretches down the river.
To the extreme right beyond the locks of Rideau Canal, is the dramatic
lattice-work of a fine bridge, a bridge where railroad tracks,
tram-roads, automobile and footways dive under and over each other at
the entrances in order to find their different levels for crossing.
Beyond the bridge, and close against it is the jutting cliff that makes
the point of Major Hill Park.
Between these two extremes, right and left, one faces a broad plain,
wooded and gemmed with painted houses, and ending in a smoke-blue
rampart of distant hills--all of it luminant with the curiously
clarified light of Canada.
From Major Hill Park the riverside avenue goes east over the Rideau,
whose Falls are famous, but now obscured by a lumber mill; past Rideau
Hall to Rockhill Park. Rockhill Park is a delight. It has all the
joys of the primitive wilderness plus a service of street-cars. Its
promenade under the fine and scattered trees follows the lip of the
cliff along the Ottawa, and across the blue stream can be seen the
fillet of gold beach of the far side, and on the stream are red-sailed
boats, canoes, and natty gasolene launches. How far Rockhill Park
keeps company with the Ottawa, I do not know. A stroll of nearly two
hours brought me to a region of comely country houses, set in broad
gardens--but there was still park, and it seemed to go on for ever.
There are two or three Golf Clubs (every town in Canada has a golf
course, or two, and sometimes they are municipal) over the river on the
Hull side--a side that was at the time of our visit a place of
pilgrimage from Ottawa proper. For it is in Quebec, where the "dry"
law is not implacable as that of Ottawa and Ontario. Hull is also
noted for its match factory and other manufactures that make up a very
good go-ahead industrial town, as well as for the fact that in matters
of contributions to Victory Loans, and that sort of thing, it can hold
its own with any city, though that city be five times its size.
The chief of the Ottawa clubs on the Hull side is the County Club, an
idyllic place that has made the very best out of the rather rough
plain, and stands looking through the trees to the rapids of the Ottawa
river. It is a delightful club, built with the usual Western instinct
for apposite design, and, as with most clubs on the American Continent,
it is a revelation of comfort. Its dining-room is extraordinarily
attractive, for it is actually the spacious verandah of the building,
screened by trellis work into which is woven the leaves and flowers of
climbers. The ceiling is a canopy of flowers and green leaves, and to
dine here overlooking the lawns is to know an hour of the greatest
charm.
The Prince was the guest here on several occasions, and dances were
given in his honour. For this purpose the lawn in front of the
verandah was squared off with a high arcadian trellis, and between the
pillars of this trellis were hung flowers and flags and lights, and all
the trees about had coloured bulbs amid their leaves, so that at night
it was an impression of Arcady as a modern Watteau might see it, with
the crispness and the beauty of the women and the vivid dresses of the
women giving the scene a quality peculiarly and vivaciously Canadian.
IV
The circumstances of Monday, September 1st, made it an unforgettable
day.
The chief ceremonies on the Prince's program were the laying of the
corner-stone of the new Parliament Buildings, and the inauguration of
the Victory Loan. But something else happened which made it momentous.
It happened to be Labour Day.
It was the day when the whole of Labour in Canada--and indeed in
America--gave itself over to demonstrations. Labour held street
parades, field sports, and, I daresay, made speeches. It was the day
of days for the workers.
There were some who thought that the program of Labour would clash with
the program of the Prince. That, to put it at its mildest, Labour on a
holiday would ignore the Royal ceremonials and emasculate them as
functions. The men who put forward these opinions were Canadians, but
they did not know Canada. It was Labour Day, and Labour made the day
for the Prince.
When the Prince had learnt that it was the People's day, and that there
was to be a big sports meeting and gala in one of the Ottawa parks, he
had specially added another item to his full list of events, and made
it known that he would visit the park.
Labour promptly returned the courtesy, and of its own free will turned
its parade into a guard of honour, which lined the fine Rideau and
Wellington streets for his progress between Government House and
Parliament Square.
As far as I could gather Labour decided upon and carried this out
without consulting anybody. Streets were taken over without any
warning, and certainly without any fuss. There seemed to be few police
about, and there was no need for them. Labour took command of the show
in the interest of its friend the Prince, and would not permit the
slightest disorderliness.
It was a remarkable sight. Early in the morning the Labour Parade
appeared along Rideau Street, mounting the hill to the Parliament
House. The processionists, each group in the costume of its calling,
walked in long, thin files on each side of the road, the line broken at
intervals by the trade floats. Floats are an essential part of every
American parade; they are what British people call "set-pieces,"
tableaux built up on wagons or on automobiles; all of them are
ingenious and most of them are beautiful.
These floats represented the various trades, a boiler-maker's shop in
full (and noisy) action; a stone-worker's bench in operation; the
framework of a wooden house on an auto, to show Ottawa what its
carpenters and joiners could do, and so on. With these marched the
workers, distinctively clothed, as though the old guilds had never
ceased.
When the head of the procession reached the entrance of Parliament
Square it halted, and the line, turning left and right, walked towards
the curb, pressing back the thousands of sightseers to the pavement in
a most effective manner. They lined and kept the route in this fashion
until the Prince had passed.
It was thus that the Prince drove, not between the ranks of an army of
soldiers, but through the ranks of the army of labour. Not khaki, but
the many uniforms of labour marked the route. There were firemen in
peaked caps, with bright steel grappling-hooks at their waists;
butchers in white blouses, white trousers, and white peaked caps; there
were tram-conductors, and railway-men, hotel porters, teamsters in
overalls, lumbermen in calf-high boots of tan, with their rough socks
showing above them on their blue jumper trousers, barbers, drug-store
clerks and men of all the trades.
Above this guard of workers were the banners of the Unions, some in
English, some proclaiming in French that here was "La Fraternite Unie
Charpentiers et Menuisiers," and so on.
It was a real demonstration of democracy. It was the spontaneous and
affectionate action of the everyday people, determined to show how
personal was its regard for a Prince who knew how to be one with the
everyday people. As a demonstration it was immensely more significant
than the most august item of a formal program.
As the Prince rode through those hearty and friendly ranks in a State
carriage, and behind mounted troopers, the troopers and the trappings
seemed to matter very little indeed. The crowd that cheered and waved
flags--and sometimes spanners and kitchen pans--and the youth who waved
his gloves back and forth with all their own freedom from ceremony,
were the things that mattered.
When, at the laying of the corner-stone a few minutes later, Sir Robert
Borden declared that, in repeating the act of his grandfather, who laid
the original corner-stone of Canada's Parliament buildings, as Prince
of Wales, in 1860, His Royal Highness was inaugurating a new era, the
happenings of just now seemed to lend conviction that indeed a new
phase of history had come into being. It was a phase in which throne
and people had been woven into a strong and sane democracy, begot of
the intimate personal sympathy, understanding and reliance the war had
brought about between rulers and people.
The new buildings replace the old Parliament Houses burnt down in the
beginning of the war. The fire was attended by sad loss of life, and
one of those killed was a lady, who, having got out of the burning
building in safety, was suddenly overcome by a feminine desire to save
her furs. She re-entered the blazing building and was lost.
The new building follows the design of the old, rather rigid structure,
though it has not the campanile. The porch where the stone was laid
was draped in huge hangings descending in grave folds from a sheaf of
flags; this with the facade of the grey stone building made a superb
backing to the great stage of terrace upon which the ceremony was
enacted. It had all the dignity, colour and braveness of a Durbar.
The Victory Loan was inaugurated by the unfurling of a flag by the
Prince. He promised to give to each of the cities and villages (by the
way, I don't think the villages are villages in Canada; they are all
towns) who subscribed a certain percentage a replica of this special
flag. There was keen competition throughout the Dominion for these
flags, Canadians responding to the pictures on the hoardings with a
good will, in order to win a "Prince of Wales' Flag."
Although the Prince was down to visit Hull at a specific time that
afternoon, he set aside an hour in order to pay his promised visit to
the Labour fete in Lansdowne Park. There was only time for him to
drive through the park, but the warm reception given to him made it an
action really worth while.
Hull, which is inclined to sprawl as a town, was transformed by sun,
flags and people into a place of great attraction when the Prince
arrived. And if there was not any high pomp about the visit, there was
certainly prettiness. The pretty girls of Hull had transformed
themselves into representatives of all the races of the Entente, and as
the Prince stood on the scarlet steps of a dais outside the Town Hall,
each one of these came forward and made him a curtsy.
Following them were four tiny girls, each holding a large bouquet, each
bouquet being linked to the others by broad red ribbons. They were the
jolliest little girls, but nervous, and after negotiating the terrors
of the scarlet stairs with discretion, the broad desert of the dais
undid them--or rather it didn't. At the moment of presentation, four
little girls, as well as four bouquets, were linked together by broad
red ribbons, until it was difficult to tell which was little girl and
which was bouquet. There were many untanglers present, but the chief
of them was the Prince of Wales himself.
The Hull ceremonials were certainly as happy as any could be. The
little girls gave a homely touch, so did the people--match-factory
girls, brown-habited Franciscan friars, and the rest--who joined in the
public reception, but the crowning touch of this atmosphere was the
review of the war veterans.
There were so many war veterans that Hull had no open space large
enough to parade them. Hull, therefore, had the happy idea of
reviewing them in the main street. Thus the everyday street was packed
with everyday men who had fought for the very homes about them. That
seemed to bring out the real purpose of the great war more than any
effort in propaganda could.
It was in the main street, too, after receiving a loving cup from the
Great War Veterans, that the Prince spoke to these comrades of the war.
He stood up in his car and addressed them simply and directly, thanking
them and wishing them good luck, and there was something infinitely
suggestive in his standing up there so simply amid that pack of men,
and women wedged tightly between the houses of that homely street.
Wedged is assuredly the right term, for it was with difficulty, and
only by infinite care, that the car was driven through the crowd and
away.