NIAGARA AND THE TOWNS OF WESTERN ONTARIO
I
The best first impression of Niagara Falls is, I think, the one the
Prince of Wales obtained.
Those who really wish to experience the thrills of grandeur and poetry
of this marvel had better delay their visit until a night in summer,
and make arrangements with the railway time-table to get there
somewhere after dark. Upon arriving they must hire a car, and drive
down to the splendid boulevard on the Canadian side. They will then
see the great mass of water under the shine of lights, falling
eternally, eternally presenting a picture of almost cruel beauty. They
will then know an experience that transcends all other experiences as
well as all attempts at description.
The curious feeling of disappointment which comes to many in daylight
will have been guarded against, and, stimulated by that wondrous first
vision, they will tide over that spiritually barren period which many
know until the marvel of the Falls begins to "grow on them."
The Prince came from Hamilton to Niagara somewhere very close to
midnight on Saturday, the 18th. He was carried through the dark town
and country to the house of one of the Falls Commissioners. From here,
through a filigree of trees and leaves, he could look across the
smoking gorge to the Falls on the American side. Batteries of great
arc lights, focused and hidden cunningly, shone upon the curtain of
white and tumbling waters, and upon the strong, black mass of Goat
Island, that is perched like a diver eternally hesitant on the very
brink of the two-hundred-foot plunge.
The ghostly beauty of the falling water through the light, now a solid
and tremendous curve, now broken into filaments and zigzag whorls, now
veiled by the upward drift of the gossamer spray, held the Prince's
gaze for some time. But even that beauty was transcended. He himself
pressed an electric switch, and the grand curve of the Canadian
Horseshoe blazed fully alight for the first time in their history, and
though from this position this could not be fully seen, this new
addition of light gave the whole mass before his eyes an additional
loveliness.
From this point the Prince motored through the town to the splendid
wide promenade that borders the Canadian side of the gorge, and spent
half an hour watching the fascinating play of falling water and spray
in the narrow cauldron of the Horseshoe.
He stood a foot away from the point where the water leaps in its
magnificent and enigmatic curve into the tortured pool below. Green at
the curve, the water is a mass of curdled white in the strong lights as
it falls. Beneath, the face of the water is a passionate surface of
whirlpools and eddies and tossing whiteness. From the tremendous
impact of the drop a column of spray shoots and curls high up in the
air. It towers quite six hundred feet above the surface of the water,
and it is hard to believe that enduring mass of spray comes from the
fall; in the distance one is convinced that it is steam arising from
some big factory.
On the next day (Sunday) the Prince saw the Falls in their every phase.
He walked up-stream above the Horseshoe to where the Niagara River
jostles down over a series of ledges in the grand and angry Canadian
Rapids, a sight as tumultuous and as thrilling in its own fashion as
the Falls themselves. He visited the big, white stone power-house to
examine with the greatest interest the machinery that traps the
tremendous latent power of the plunging water, harnesses it, and so
turns the wheels of a thousand industries, and lights hundreds of towns.
Partly walking, partly riding in a car of the scenic tramway, he
followed the line of the Falls and river downward to where the
Whirlpool Rapids curdle and eddy within the deep walls of the gorge.
Over on the American side he saw the castles and keeps of modern
industry: power-houses and factories, springing up from the very rock
of the cliff, and almost forming part of it. On the Canadian side the
people have not let their utilitarian sense run away with them to such
an extent. Where America edges the gorge with commercial buildings,
Canada has constructed her beautiful promenade, which continues the
comeliness of the Falls Park through a pretty residential district.
America has Prospect Park and the very beautiful Goat Island Park on
its side, but these are not extended along the gorge.
Below the Whirlpool Rapids the Prince descended to the level of the
river; later, he came to the top of the gorge again, and crossed,
swinging two hundred feet above the water on the spidery ropes of the
aerial railways, the great pool at the end of the river canyon, into
which the pent-up water pushes swirling before turning at right angles
towards Lake Ontario.
The Prince did not go over to the American side, but America came to
him. The white number-plates of New York State seemed to be everywhere
on automobiles, even outnumbering the yellow of Ontario. One had the
impression that every American motor-owner within gasolene radius had
decided that he would take his Sunday spin to Niagara Falls, and on to
the Canadian side of the Falls to boot.
American cars were coming over the bridges all day, and American owners
waited cheerfully along the route to get a glimpse of "The Boy," as the
American papers called the Prince. They joined themselves to the very
friendly crowd of Canadians who gathered everywhere along the route,
and their cheering, mingling with Canadian cheering, showed that
friendliness is not an affair that frontiers can manipulate.
As a matter of fact, the frontier at Niagara is the most imaginary of
lines. Now that the war is over there is no difficulty in getting to
either side. And there is no change in atmosphere either. People and
conditions are much the same, only on the American side our dollars
cost us more.
II
Western Ontario is, in the main, the most British part of Canada. Its
towns have British names, and the streets of the towns have British
names, while their atmosphere and design are almost of the Home
Counties. The countryside (if one overlooks the absence of
hedges--though rows of upturned tree-roots with plants growing among
them sometimes have the look of hedges) is the suave, domesticated
countryside of England. England is in the very air. And at the first
of these curiously English towns the Prince became an Indian chief.
Brantford, though it reminds one of a comely British country town,
preferably one with a Church influence in it, is really the capital of
the Six Nation Indians. It actually owes its name to Joseph Brant, the
Mohawk chief, who, having fought his Indians on the side of the
British--as the braves of the fierce and powerful Six Nations had
always fought on the side of the British--in the War of Independence,
marched his tribes from their old camping-grounds in the Mohawk Valley
to this place, so that they could remain under British rule.
The Indians of the Six Nations still live in and about Brantford, for,
though they have ceded away their lands to settlers, they are among the
few of the aboriginal races that have thrived and not decayed under
civilization. The Prince's visit to Brantford on Monday, October 20th,
was nearly all a visit to the Mohawks, the leaders of the ancient
Indian federation of six tribes.
This is not to say that the welcome given him by Canadians was not a
great one. As a matter of fact, it was astonishing, and it was
difficult to imagine how a small town like this could pack its streets
with so many people. But Brantford is industrial and scientific also,
as well as being Indian. After a strenuous reception, for instance,
the Prince went along to the statue that shrines the town's claim to a
place in the history of science. This was the memorial to Dr. Bell,
who lived in Brantford and who invented the first telephone in
Brantford. They will even show you the trees from which the first line
over which the first spoken message sent, was strung.
But the colourful ceremonies of Brantford were those connected with the
Mohawks. The Prince was taken out to the small, old wooden chapel that
George III. erected for his loyal Mohawk allies. It is the oldest
Protestant chapel in the Dominion. On its walls are painted prayers in
Mohawk, and it contains an old register that King Edward had signed in
1861. The Prince added his own signature to this before going into the
churchyard to see the grave of Joseph Brant.
In the little enclosure before the church were the youngest descendants
of the loyal Joseph Brant: ranks of Mohawk boys in khaki, and small
Mohawk girls in red and grey. They sang to the Prince in their own
language, a singular guttural tongue rendered with an almost abnormal
stoicism. The children did not move a muscle of lips or face as they
chanted; it might have been a song rendered by graven images.
In the main square of Brantford the Prince was elected chief of the Six
Nations. This ceremony was carried out upon a raised and beflagged
platform about which a vast throng of pale-faces gathered. Becoming a
chief of the Six Nations is no light matter. It is a thing that must
be discussed in full with all ceremonies and accurate minutes. The
pow-wow on the platform was rather long. Chiefs rose up and debated at
leisure in the Iroquois tongue, while the pale-faces in the square, at
first quite patient, began to demand in loud voices:
"We want our Prince. We want our Prince."
And to be truthful, not merely the pale-faces found the ceremony
lengthy. Gathered on the platform were a number of Mohawk girls,
delicate and pretty maidens, with the warmth of their race's colour
glowing through the soft texture of their cheeks. They were there
because they had thrown flowers in the pathway of the Prince. At first
they were interested in this olden ceremony of their old race. Then
they began to talk of the wages they were drawing in extremely modern
Canadian stores and factories. Then they looked at the ceremony again,
at the clothes the Indians wore, at the romance and colour of it, and
they said, one to another:
"Say, why have those guys dressed up like that? What's it all about,
anyhow? What's the use of this funny old business?"
The romantic may find some food for thought in this attitude of the
modern Mohawk maid.
In the end, after a debate on the fitness of several names, the Prince,
as president of the pow-wow, gave his vote for "Dawn of Morning," and
became chief with that title. But apparently he did not become fully
fledged until he had danced a ritual measure. A brother chief in
bright yellow and a fine gravity, came forward to guide the Prince's
steps, and the Prince, immediately entering into the spirit of the
ceremony, joined with him in shuffling and bowing to and fro across the
platform. Only after the congratulations from fellow-Mohawks and
palefaces, did he leave the dais to fight--there is no other word--his
way through the dense and cheerful mass that packed the square almost
to danger-point.
It was a splendid crowd, good-humoured and ardent. It had cheered
every moment, though, perhaps, it had cheered more strongly at one
moment. This was when an old Indian woman ran up to the Prince,
crying: "I met your father and your grandfather, and I'm British too."
At her words the Prince had taken the rose from his buttonhole and had
presented it to her. And that delighted the crowd.
III
The fine weather of Monday gave way to pitiless rain on the morning of
Tuesday, October 21st. All the same, the rain did not prevent the
reception at Guelph from being warm and intensely interesting.
Guelph is one of the many comely and thriving towns of West Ontario,
but its chiefest feature is its great Agricultural College that trains
the scientific farmer, not of Ontario and Canada alone, but for many
countries in the Western World. This college gave the Prince a
captivating welcome.
It has men students, but it has many attractive and bonny girl
students, also, and these helped to distinguish the day, that is, with
a little help from the "movie" men.
The "movie" men who travelled with the train had captured the spectacle
of the Prince's arrival at the station, and had driven off to the
college to be in readiness to "shoot" when His Royal Highness arrived.
They had ten minutes to wait. Not merely that, they had ten minutes to
wait in the company of a bunch of the prettiest and liveliest girl
students in West Ontario. "Movie" men are not of the hesitant class.
Somewhere in the first seventy-five seconds they became old friends of
the students who were filling the college windows with so much
attraction. In one minute and forty-five seconds they had the girls in
training for the Prince's arrival. They had hummed over the melody of
what they declared was the Prince's favourite opera selection; a girl
at a piano had picked up the tune, while the others practised harder
than diva ever did.
When the Prince arrived the training proved worth while. He was
saluted from a hundred laughing heads at a score of windows with the
song that had followed him all over Canada. He drove into the College,
not to the stirring strains of "Oh, Canada," but to the syncopated lilt
of "Johnny's in Town."
The Prince was not altogether out of the youthful gaiety of the scene,
for after the lunch, where the students had scrambled for souvenirs, a
piece of sugar from his coffee cup, a stick of celery from his plate,
even a piece of his pie, he made all these dashing young women gather
about him in the group that was to make the commemorative photo, and a
very jolly, laughing group it was.
And when he was about to leave, and in answer to a massed feminine
chorus, this time chanting:
"We--want--a--holiday."
He called out cheerfully:
"All right. I'll fix that holiday." And he did.
IV
The whole of these days were filled with flittings hither and thither
on the Grand Trunk line (the passage of the Prince being smoothly
manipulated by another of Canada's fine railway men, and a genius in
good fellowship, Mr. H. R. Charlton), as the Prince called at the
pretty and vigorous towns on the tongue of Ontario that stretches
between Lake Huron and Lake Erie to the American border.
Stratford, with something of the comely grace of Shakespeare's town in
its avenues of neat homes and fine trees, gave him as warm a reception
as anywhere in Canada on the evening of October 21st. On Wednesday,
October 22nd, the same hearty welcome was extended by those singularly
English towns, Woodstock and Chatham.
On the afternoon of the same day London gave him a mass welcome mainly
of children in its big central park. London, Ontario, is an echo of
London, Thames. It has its Blackfriars and Regent Street, its
Piccadilly and St. James'. It is industrial and crowded, as the
English London is. Its public reception to the Prince was remarkable.
It had managed it rather well. It had stated that all who wished to be
present must apply for tickets of admission. Thousands did, and they
passed before the Prince in a motley and genial crowd of top hats and
gingham skirts, striped sweaters and satin charmeuse. But though they
came in thousands, the numbers of ticket-holders were ultimately
exhausted. When the last one had passed, the Prince looked at his
wrist watch. There was half an hour to spare before the reception was
due to close. He told those about him to open the doors of the
building and let the unticketed public in.
From London the Grand Trunk carried us to Windsor on Thursday, October
23rd, where crowds were so dense about the station that they overflowed
on to the engine until one could no longer see it for humanity and
little boys. From the engine eager sightseers even scrambled along the
tops of the great steel cars until they became veritable grandstands.
Crowds were in the virile streets, and they were not all Canadians
either. A ferry plies from Windsor to the United States, and America,
which at no time lost an opportunity of coming across the border to see
the Prince, had come across in great numbers. Canadians there were in
Windsor, thousands of them, but quite a fair volume of the cheering had
a United States timbre.
A city with an electric fervour, Windsor. That comes not merely from
the towering profile of Detroit's skyscrapers seen across the river,
but from the spirit of Windsor itself. Detroit is America's
"motoropolis," and from the air of it Windsor will be Canada's
motoropolis of tomorrow. It is already thrusting its way up to the
first line of industrial cities; it is already a centre for the
manufacture of the ubiquitous Ford car and others, and it is learning
and profiting a lot from its American brother.
The Canadian and American populations are, in a sense, interchangeable.
The United States comes across to work in Windsor, and Windsor goes
across to work in America. The ferry, not a very bustling ferry, not
such a good ferry, for example, as that which crosses the English
Thames at Woolwich, carries men and women and carts, and, inevitably,
automobiles between the two cities.
Detroit took a great interest in the Prince. It sent a skirmishing
line of newspapermen up the railway to meet him, and they travelled in
the train with us, and failed, as all pressmen did, to get interviews
with him. We certainly took an interest in Detroit. It was not merely
the sense-capturing profile of Detroit, the sky-scrapers that give such
a sense of soaring zest by day, and look like fairy castles hung in the
air at night, but the quick, vivid spirit of the city that intrigued us.
We went across to visit it the next morning, and found it had the
delight of a new sensation. It is a city with a sparkle. It is a city
where the automobile is a commonplace, and the horse a thing for pause
and comment. It contained a hundred points of novelty for us, from the
whiteness of its buildings, the beauty of its domestic architecture,
the up-to-date advertising of its churches, to its policemen on traffic
duty who, on a rostrum and under an umbrella, commanded the traffic
with a sign-board on which was written the laconic commands, "Go" and
"Stop."
And, naturally, we visited the Ford Works. A place where I found the
efficiency of effort almost frighteningly uncanny. One of these days
those inhumanly human machines will bridge the faint gulf that
separates them from actual life, then, like Frankenstein's monster,
they will turn upon their creators.
Galt (Friday, October 24th) gave the Prince another great reception;
then, passing through Toronto, he travelled to Kingston, which he
reached on Saturday, October 25th.
Kingston, though it had its beginnings in the old stone fort that
Frontenac built on the margin of Lake Ontario to hold in check the
English settlers in New York and their Iroquois allies, is unmistakably
British. With its solid stone buildings, its narrow fillet of blue
lake, its stone fortifications on the foreshore, and its rambling
streets, it reminded me of Southampton town, especially before
Southampton's Western Shore was built over. Its air of being a British
seaport arises from the fact that it is a British port, for it was
actually the arsenal and yard for the naval forces on the Great Lakes
during the war of 1812.
And it also gets its English tone from the Royal Military College which
exists here. The bravest function of the Prince's visit was in this
college, where he presented colours to the cadets and saw them drill.
The discipline of these boys on parade is worthy of Sandhurst, Woolwich
or West Point, and their physique is equal to, if not better, than any
shown at those places. It is not exactly a military school, though the
training is military, for though some of the cadets join Imperial or
Canadian forces, and all serve for a time in the Canadian Militia,
practically all the boys join professions or go into commerce after
passing through.
The Prince's reception at the college was fine, but his reception in
the town itself was remarkable. The Public Park was black with people
at the ceremony of welcome, and though he was down to "kick off" in the
first of the Association League football matches, his kick off was
actually a toss-up. That was the only way to get the ball moving in
the dense throng that surged between the goal posts.
Kingston, too, gave the Prince the degree of Doctor of Laws. It is a
proud honour, for Kingston boasts of being one of the oldest
universities in Canada. But though its tradition is old, its spirit is
modern enough; for its Chancellor is Mr. E. W. Beatty, the President of
the Canadian Pacific Railways. It was from the Railway
President-Chancellor the Prince received his degree.