or six hundred tons could reach Montreal. But in 1844 the work of
cutting a deeper channel was begun. Thirty shoals had to be cut through,
and during the next sixty years nearly six million dollars, over a
million pounds, was expended, with the result that there is now a
“submerged canal, thirty feet deep and 500 feet wide,” up which, as it
is well lighted, great ships can come by night as well as day. At
Montreal, which is nearly a hundred miles above tidal influence, there
arrived in 1850 two hundred and ten small vessels; but in 1912 there
came seven hundred and thirty-six ocean liners, with a tonnage over
fifty times as great as that of 1850.
Several of the tributaries of the St. Lawrence, including the Ottawa,
the St. Maurice and the Saguenay, are navigable for great distances, and
Quebec is a province of numerous and beautiful waterfalls, upon which
the business man gazes, with calculations of the immense “power”
available for the manufactures of to-day or to-morrow. In manufactures,
Quebec comes next after Ontario. High up in the list of her industrial
products come those of which the raw material is obtained from forest or
farm, such as lumber and paper, butter and cheese, but it contains also
iron goods, boots and shoes, fur garments, clothing, cottons, cigars,
etc., etc.
Montreal, with a population of about half a million, is the largest city
of the Dominion, and a great industrial centre. Something has been said
already of its importance as a port for ocean steamers, but it has also
connections by the inland waterways with Lake Superior. In addition, it
is the greatest railway centre of Canada. Here both the Canadian Pacific
and the Grand Trunk systems have their headquarters, whilst a number of
smaller lines give connection with the United States.
In point of numbers, picturesque old Quebec comes a long way behind its
slightly younger sister, Montreal, but the former also has a fine port.
In the summer it is the point where immigrants, travelling third-class
by the St. Lawrence route, disembark to go to their various destinations
by rail. Its chief industries are connected with leather and wood. It
has also several cotton factories. Other industrial centres are Hull,
with wood-working establishments, ranging from saw mills to match
factories; Sherbrooke, where the first cotton factory in Canada was
opened in 1844; St. Hyacinthe, Three Rivers, Sorel and Valleyfield.
The forests are one of the chief assets of Quebec. Leaving out of
account the recently-annexed northern regions, eighty million acres,
estimated to be worth $450,000,000, are still the absolute property of
the province; but forty-five million acres have been leased to lumbermen
and six million acres are in private hands. Not very long ago a
government “forestry service” was established for the protection of the
existing forests and the replanting of “wild and denuded lands.” In 1905
the Laurentides National Park, designed especially for the preservation
of fish and game, was Quebec’s only forest reserve. Now ten reserves,
comprising 165,000 square miles, have been set apart to be held for the
benefit of the whole population and of posterity. The immense value of
such reserves may be guessed at from the fact that even under the old
haphazard system, the timber limits brought into the provincial coffers
during a period of about forty-five years a sum of nearly $29,000,000
(£5,800,000).
The lumber industry gives employment, during the winter months, when
most other work is slack, to over twenty thousand men, in addition to
the thousands of log-drivers required every spring to take the season’s
cut down the rivers to market. Much of the government forests (chiefly
of pulpwood) have been inaccessible, but the construction of the
Transcontinental Railway, which passes through these forests, is adding
immensely to their value, and, whenever they are opened to lumbering
operations, numerous pulp and paper mills are likely to be erected. In
1912 the province already had twenty-eight of these mills.
Quebec possesses much mineral wealth, but it is little developed as yet,
though as long ago as the first half of the eighteenth century a small
blast furnace, for smelting bog iron ore with charcoal, was established
at Three Rivers. Coal has not yet been discovered in Quebec, but the
vast deposits of peat may, in a measure, supply its place. Copper and
gold have been produced in a small way, and there are good building
stones, slates and materials from which cement, brick, tiles and pottery
can be made. But the mineral product of first value, reaching
considerably over $3,000,000 (£600,000) in 1911, is asbestos. In that
year four-fifths of the world’s whole product came from Quebec. The
deposits, of immense extent, lie in the “Eastern Townships,” about
seventy-five miles south of Quebec city, and were discovered in 1878,
when the Quebec Central Railway was being constructed.
The fisheries of the province, both from the commercial and sportsman’s
standpoint, are valuable. The former in 1909-10 gave employment with the
canneries, to nearly twelve thousand persons and brought in nearly
$2,000,000 (£400,000), cod, lobsters and bait yielding the largest
contributions to this sum. An almost equal amount, it was estimated, was
spent by sportsmen and anglers who came to the forests; and much of this
money fortunately finds its way to the settlers (generally poor) of
districts not well adapted to agriculture. In the regions north of the
St. Lawrence and in the Canadian Labrador, bears, wolves, beavers and
other wild animals abound to this day, and the fur trade, once the chief
support of New France, still brings about $1,000,000 (£200,000) annually
into the province.
Now agriculture holds the first place, and the farmers of Quebec,
represented in 1617 by one solitary tiller of the soil, Louis Hébert,
have become a great army. Enough has been said, I think, to show that
Quebec has a variety of opportunities to offer to strong and capable and
industrious immigrants; but perhaps the best of these are in
agriculture. In different districts are millions of acres of good land
still wild and uncultivated. Of these, six and a quarter millions have
been surveyed and divided into farm lots of one hundred acres each, and
these are almost given away to _bonâ fide_ settlers, on condition of
their clearing a few acres and erecting a small house, barn and stable
within five years. The price charged is at the rate of from 20 cents
(10_d._) to 60 cents (2_s._ 6_d._) an acre, payable in five instalments.
If the newcomer shrinks from the idea of taking up one of these
uncleared farms, there are plenty of more or less “improved farms” to be
bought at prices varying widely in different districts and under
different circumstances.
To British farmers with a little capital or to farm labourers from the
United Kingdom, the beautiful district south of the St. Lawrence, known
as the “Eastern Townships,” has been warmly recommended as a region
where conditions more nearly resemble those of the “Old Country” than
most parts of this new land. It was first settled by Loyalists from the
revolted American colonies, towards the close of the eighteenth century.
These earliest comers had to endure many hardships, but now the whole
district is peculiarly prosperous, possessing not only good farms, but a
considerable number of manufacturing and industrial establishments,
including the asbestos quarries already mentioned.
Most of the counties of Quebec are divided into “parishes,” but the
Loyalists had been accustomed to “townships” in the land from which they
came, hence “the Eastern Townships,” comprising an area of about four
and a half million acres, and including the eleven counties of Brome,
Compton, Drummond and Arthabaska, Megantic, Missisquoi, Richmond and
Wolfe, Shefford, Sherbrooke and Stanstead. Of this district, Sherbrooke,
which in 1911 had seventeen thousand inhabitants, may be counted the
capital. It is one hundred and twenty-five miles south of Quebec, and
being in a central situation is the distributing point for immigrants
bound for the “Townships.”
The soil of this region is generally fertile, and the climate is by no
means a bad one either for the human being or for the products of his
fields. In latitude these counties correspond with the northern portion
of Italy; but, though “Green Yules” are not unknown, someone has rather
happily described the winter as “decided” in its character, and usually
the snow comes about the beginning of December, to lie two or three feet
deep and make good sleighing for several months. The summer is also a
“decided” one; and many a fruit and vegetable which will not ripen in
the open air in England here comes to perfection. The inhabitants of the
country think the climate peculiarly healthy, and the census reports
bear out the assertion so far as to show that an unusually large number
of people live to be eighty or ninety.
It must not be supposed that in these long-settled counties there
remains any public land to be disposed of; but there are plenty of good
farms, of from one hundred and fifty to three hundred acres, for sale at
prices ranging from $2,000 (£400) to $8,000 (£1,600), and a considerable
portion of the purchase money may always be borrowed on mortgage. That
there are so many of these farms for sale is due, as in other parts of
Eastern Canada, to the attraction of the West, and of the cities and of
other professions than farming; but it is asserted that farming in this
region of easy accessibility to good markets has never before been so
profitable as it is now. For many products there is an excellent local
demand. Moreover, “the Townships” are in easy reach of Montreal and of
some of the cities of the United States, and are served by the Canadian
Pacific Railway, by the Grand Trunk and other lines—736 miles in all.
Prices of produce are now high, and (unfortunately for the consumer)
seem likely to remain so even if the supplies should be very largely
increased. That the productivity of this district could be more than
doubled if the population were doubled is no doubt true, for, though
compared to the population of Canada, as a whole (which has less than
two persons to the square mile), the Eastern Townships (with about
thirty-four persons to the square mile) are well peopled, the density of
population even here is only about one-tenth of that of the United
Kingdom.
There is generally a scarcity of farm labourers in the district, and a
year ago it was said that several thousand experienced workers could get
work at wages ranging from $10 (£2) to $35 (£7) the month, in addition
to board and lodging, or a rent-free house. As for “Old Country” girls,
able and willing to do housework, they can readily obtain places in the
towns and villages at wages of from $10 to $20 the month, that is, at
from £24 to £48 the year.
Owing to the fact that there is a demand in winter for men to work in
the lumber camps of Quebec, and that the farming carried on in this
district (and the province generally) is of the “mixed” type, there is a
fair demand for men in winter as well as summer—a most important
consideration in comparing wages and opportunities in different places.
Here, too, it is said that experience of farming gained in England
stands the newcomer in good stead to an especial degree; but, of course,
there are some differences. For instance, after dairying and live-stock
raising, the making of maple sugar is a large source of revenue to
Eastern Township farmers. The sharp night frosts and warm days of early
spring in this region are favourable to the flow of sap, and the average
farm has from six hundred to one thousand maples, and some farms have
three or four thousand. In a good year the yield of sugar may be as much
as 3 lbs. to a tree. This sells at about 8 cents the pound. But if a
farmer is an adept at making syrup, his profits may be increased.
The Townships have an agent at Quebec to meet incoming steamers and to
help new arrivals on their way; and within the last few years some five
thousand British immigrants have settled in the district. Some have
found work in the shops and mills of the towns, but most have gone to
the farms, and here and there amongst the prosperous farmers of the
district is one who could tell an interesting story of his arrival at
Quebec with scarcely a penny and of his gradual climb up the ladder to a
position of comfort.
By the way, there are plenty of churches of different denominations and
schools and other social advantages which make life pleasant in the
Townships, and probably for English-speaking people, especially for
those who are Protestants, this part of Quebec will prove more homelike
than any of the counties where the population is almost entirely
French-speaking and Roman Catholic.
To return to the province in general, though it has still too many
illiterates, there has been progress during the last few years in
educational matters, and within seven years the government grant for
this purpose was much more than doubled. Owing to the marked religious
differences, there are two classes of public schools—the regular public
schools and the “separate” schools of the minority, which may be
Protestant in one district and Roman Catholic in another. The Roman
Catholic and Protestant schools are represented, in the department of
education, by French and English secretaries or deputy-heads, under the
general “Superintendent of Public Instruction.” In the different
localities, school affairs are regulated by “commissioners” representing
the religious majority, and “trustees” representing the minority. These
are elected by the ratepayers, who pay school rates to the school board
of their own religious faith.
Recently new technical schools have been opened in Quebec and Montreal,
and the latter city now has a “School of Higher Commercial Studies.”
There are also Provincial Forestry and Veterinary Schools. Finally,
there is the great Roman Catholic University of Laval, with branches in
Quebec and Montreal, which is the outgrowth of a seminary founded in the
seventeenth century by the first bishop of Canada; and the non-sectarian
McGill University, which owes its foundation in 1814 to the bequest of a
wealthy merchant of Montreal, but has since been enriched by
benefactions from Lord Strathcona and others. It is said, indeed, to be
the wealthiest of Canadian universities. It has a large number of
departments, and is well equipped for research work in medicine,
physics, engineering, and so forth. Women are admitted to its courses on
equal terms with men. This university, by the way, owes much to the
famous Nova Scotian geologist, Sir William Dawson, who was its principal
for thirty-eight years, and during that time saw the number of its
undergraduates increase from eighty to over a thousand.
[Illustration: MONTMORENCY FALLS, QUEBEC PROVINCE.]
[Illustration: 1. DAIRY FARM NEAR SHERBROOKE QUEBEC.
2. DEMONSTRATION FARM AT KNOWLTON—QUEBEC.]
[Illustration: FROM THE LOOK-OUT, MOUNT ROYAL, MONTREAL.]
X
ONTARIO, ONCE “CANADA WEST”
WE come now to Ontario, in extent the second, but in certain respects
the first, of the Canadian provinces. Not so large as Quebec, it yet
comprises an area three times that of the British Isles, with a little
to spare. To be more exact, the figures are 407,262 square miles, having
recently been increased immensely by the addition of the new district of
Patricia, to the north of its former limits; and now the outline of
Ontario upon the map bears a rude resemblance to a great hump-backed
whale. At present it is only the tail of the monster that has much
population, and it is that portion of Ontario—the peninsula outlined by
the Ottawa River, the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes—with which the
brief, interesting history of the portion of the Empire that began its
existence as “Upper Canada” one hundred and twenty years since, has most
to do.
Canadians, like their American cousins, are sometimes accused of
worshipping mere bigness. This may or may not be true; but bigness is a
factor of the situation in the Dominion from which one cannot get away.
There is, I suppose, something fascinating to the imagination of the
average mortal in the thought of leagues upon leagues of little-known,
scarcely-explored wilderness, awaiting the coming of men, to be turned
to unguessed uses in the service of humanity (sometimes unfortunately
represented mainly by millionaires and the “big interests”).
Enough at least is known of these vast spaces to render it practically
certain that, when their day comes, they will prove to be of much value
to man. Obstructions in the waterways of the early “voyageurs” now stand
for “power” and progress. Trees, once regarded as little better than
noxious weeds, now furnish the paper for this news-reading generation.
Rocks that cost the railway companies vast expense and toil in blasting
have proved mines of precious metals. The chill waters of Hudson Bay may
yet furnish the tables of half a continent with fish; and lands,
supposed to be too far north for any useful growth, are so bathed in
sunshine during the long days of the brief northern summer that roots
and grains are forced to swift perfection, and the harvest seems to
tread on the heels of the sowing. What will the next few decades show
even in Ontario? Who can say? But bigness means difficulty and toil and
struggle, as well as opportunity; and what every province of Canada
needs is a people not only numerous enough, but big enough to make
something of themselves and of the country.
Upon the whole, Upper Canada began well with the stock of sturdy
Loyalists who had dared in the “Thirteen Colonies” to try to stem the
tide of revolution, and were cast out by their native land in very fear
of their strength and their constancy. Then came settlers from the
Motherlands—English, Scotch and Irish (the latter arriving by the
thousand during the first half of the nineteenth century at different
times of sore distress in the Emerald Isle)—and though amongst these
were wastrels and ne’er-do-wells and weaklings, the majority were men
and women strong enough and true enough to “make good” in the terrible
fight with the wilderness.
Nor was it only in that struggle to cut out their little homesteads from
nature’s stern forests that they had to toil, but also at the shaping of
a nation in the love and practice of liberty and in the fear of God. As
to the latter, many little old churches, dotted through the land, bear
witness to the zeal of the missionaries and the people of early days;
and as to the former, the free schools through all the country, the
colleges, the universities, the public libraries, the political
system—with its merits and defects—are in large measure the result of
the efforts of earlier generations.
Strange as it may appear, the most northern part of this vast province
is no farther north than the central part of Scotland, and its most
southerly point (the most southerly of the whole Dominion) is in about
the latitude of Rome. It has no high mountains, though there is great
diversity of surface, and the climate of the southerly and westerly
portions of the peninsula of old Ontario is distinctly milder than that
of Quebec or the prairie provinces. Of course there is great variety of
temperature in different parts of this vast region. The lowlying
districts bordering on the Great Lakes have, as might be expected, a
more humid climate than places more inland and of greater altitude, but
the winter of Ottawa resembles that of Montreal, and of course the cold
is severe in the far north. It is, however, a fact that Canadians
staying during the winter in England appear to feel the cold there more
than English people do in the settled parts of Canada. Often, indeed,
newly-arrived English people think that the dwellings of Canadians are
kept too hot during the winter months; and perhaps they are. The
practice of keeping the houses warm has some advantages, however. A
somewhat severe “snap” of cold weather rarely works the havoc with the
water-pipes in Canada that so frequently occurs during exceptionally
cold weather in England; and people are able to use every room of their
well-warmed habitations in a fashion which is of great advantage when
the said houses are pretty fully occupied.
In a typical summer there is much sunshine and a good deal of hot
weather; and then Canadians live much out of doors. Those of the
dwellers in the cities who can afford to do so, often move early in the
warm months to cottages beside some of the numerous lakes, and remain
there throughout the summer. These cottages are generally more like
wooden tents than houses, admitting the fresh air very freely. The
country people also live much out of doors, but both men and women on
the farms are too busy to take holidays during the hot season.
Besides her two boundary rivers, the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence,
Ontario, which is a well-watered province, has many another fine stream;
but perhaps the most striking of its natural features are its lakes,
large and small. Passing up the St. Lawrence and skirting the provincial
boundaries with one’s face turned towards the west, one comes first to
Lake Ontario; then turning south along the Niagara River (perhaps its
famous “Falls” are what most untravelled Britons would think of first of
any place in Canada), one reaches Lake Erie, passes north through the
St. Clair lake and river to Lake Huron, and from that by the wonderful
locks at Sault Ste. Marie into Lake Superior, from the head of which
inland sea it is only a few hours’ journey to Winnipeg. The interesting
part of this imaginary voyage is that by the help of a few short canals
it may be taken in reality. So every year millions of bushels of grain
come from the wheat fields of the West to Montreal; and in a short time,
thanks to improvements now under way, ocean-going steamers from
Liverpool will be able to make an uninterrupted journey to Fort William,
which is by rail almost a thousand miles from Montreal.
But if Ontario touched on none of the “Five Great Lakes” instead of upon
four, which lie between her territories and those of the United States,
she would still be a land of lakes, in right of Lake Simcoe and the
Muskoka lakes, Lake Nipissing, Lake Abitibi, huge Lake Nipigon, the
thousand-isled Lake of the Woods, and hundreds of others. Many of these
contain great quantities of fish, though, so far as the “Great Lakes”
are concerned, the “fish stories” of the pioneers read now like idle
tales; but still the commercial fisheries of the province bring in over
$2,333,000 (£480,000), and give employment to several thousand men. In
1909 the catches of trout and white fish were the most important.
Nevertheless, in this province the fisheries are a very small industry
compared to mining, lumbering, manufactures and agriculture. Some twenty
thousand men find employment in mines. The mineral taking first rank in
Ontario as a revenue-producer is silver, of which the production in 1911
amounted to nearly $16,000,000 (£3,280,000). Pig iron, natural gas,
nickel and copper came next on the list.
The discovery of the rich silver deposits at Long’s Lake, now Cobalt,
was made by contractors engaged in building the Timiskaming and Northern
Ontario Railway. About a month later—so the story goes—a blacksmith,
La Rose, flung his hammer at an impudent fox. The missile struck a rock
and made a bright metallic streak, which led to another great find. Not
quite at once was the public persuaded of the value of these
discoveries; then there was a mad rush to prospect for silver; and a
town sprang up, looking, it is said, as if its makeshift houses had been
“built between darkness and dawn.” An Indian is credited with the
finding of gold-bearing quartz on the shores of Larder lake.
Years earlier, in 1884, the vast deposits of nickel a few miles west of
Sudbury were cut into by the construction of the Canadian Pacific
Railway, but there the mineral which first attracted attention was
copper. This was sent to be smelted in New Jersey, and it was only when
experts detected the presence of nickel in the slag that the true value
of the Sudbury mines was recognized.
The forests of Ontario are of vast importance, and promise to remain so.
It is satisfactory to add that the state owns the forests, to a large
extent, in Ontario (as in Quebec), and the expenses of the provincial
government are met by the revenues from the Crown lands and the Dominion
subsidy without the need of laying a cent of taxation upon the people.
Of course, whether they realize it or not, the indirect taxes, which are
collected by the Dominion government, come out of their pockets, and
there are municipal taxes, the weight of which varies very much in
different municipalities, being naturally much heavier in the cities
than in the country.
But to return to the forests. Including about one hundred thousand
square miles of woodlands in the new district of Patricia, which is only
partially explored, the total forest area of Ontario is estimated at
202,000 square miles. Of this about twenty thousand square miles is
under licence, and in 1912 the revenue from the forests amounted to
considerably over $2,000,000 (£410,000), whilst the revenue so collected
since Confederation amounts to about $44,000,000 (£9,040,000). This has
been derived from ground rents, timber dues, transfer fees, and bonuses
(that is, sums offered over and above the fixed charges for the right to
cut timber). In 1911 the value of the timber cut in Ontario was nearly
equal to that of the “cut” in all the rest of the Dominion.
An Act passed in 1898 empowered the government to set apart “Forest
Reserves, to be owned in perpetuity by the Crown and operated for timber
crops,” and Ontario has now six forest reserves, which with Algonquin
and Rondeau parks—chiefly intended for the preservation of game—amount
in all to 20,000 square miles. The great northern forests consist
largely of spruce, and there are half a dozen pulp and paper mills in
operation in places easily accessible to these forests. Wood-pulp, by
the way, is used in making car-wheels, coffins, pails, roofing materials
and a long list of other articles. Ontario has still considerable
forests of white and red pines, the trees, which were at one time
counted by the lumbermen the only ones of value, being easily floated
down to the sea, and being in great demand for masts and other uses. In
Southern Ontario there used to be quantities of black walnut and other
trees which would now be prized for making furniture, but in the days of
the pioneers, owing to lack of transport facilities, vast piles of such
woods were heaped together and burned.
In manufacturing, Ontario is the premier province, for though its
capital comes in this respect second to Montreal, six Ontario cities are
included amongst the first fourteen manufacturing centres of the
Dominion. These are Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa, London, Brantford, and
Berlin; and in addition there are many smaller industrial centres. The
industrial establishments (taken at random) include lumber and flour
mills, agricultural implement works, shipbuilding yards, iron and steel
plants, foundries, railway shops, distilleries, canning factories,
cheese factories, creameries, carriage and motor car works. A long list
of others might be added, and these various industries offer a variety
of opportunity to skilled workmen.
But after all, Ontario is still chiefly an agricultural country; and the
value of her field crops is “more than that of any other two provinces.”
In fact, the value of her whole agricultural products was estimated in
1911 at three hundred million dollars (about £60,000,000).
The province has a great variety of soils and climates, and its older
parts are a region of “mixed farming”; where dairying, the raising of
live stock; the growing of wheat, oats, and other grain; fruit culture,
tobacco-growing, poultry-raising and bee-keeping are successfully
carried on. Dairying, according to an official statement, “is the
largest industry in the country”; and three-fourths of the dairy product
of the whole Dominion is produced in Ontario.
The province produces also three-fourths of the fruit grown in
Canada—chiefly in its southern counties bordering on the Great
Lakes—and is almost equally famous for its apples and its peaches, its
berries and its grapes. Hundreds of thousands of acres in Southern
Ontario are planted with fruit trees and small fruit bushes; and immense
areas of land equally suitable for fruit-culture remain to be
planted—in the Niagara district, along the shores of Lakes Erie and
Ontario, and in other districts.
From the point of view of opportunity for newcomers, the interesting
feature of the situation is not what has been, but what may be done. The
fact is, even in the older portions of the province, only the fringe of
possible productivity has been touched, and here in Ontario we are still
in the region where the country districts have suffered in the last few
decades by the exodus of the young—at first largely to the United
States, later to the West and to the cities. The result is that there
are plenty of good farms for sale at prices ranging from $25 (£5) to
$100 (£20) the acre—the latter price including the cost of
buildings—and a list of these can be obtained from the “Director of
Colonization” at Toronto.
The prices, by the way, of apple and peach orchards and of vineyards in
good bearing go up far beyond the prices of ordinary farm lands. As much
as from $400 (£80) to $1,200 (£240) an acre is asked in the Niagara
district for peach orchards, according to age, while apple orchards may
fetch from $300 (£60) to $500 (£100) an acre. Even unplanted lands good
for fruit culture range high—$400 (£80) the acre being asked for land
especially suitable for peach-growing.
There are many districts of Ontario where capable British farmers with
some little capital would have every prospect of doing well, for markets
for all produce are good. Conditions of life in the settled farming
districts of this province are usually found pleasant by those who like
a country life, and many things are working together to render these
even better than they were a few years ago. I will, however, return to
this matter a little later.
One of the great difficulties that Ontario farmers have to contend with
is that of obtaining sufficiency of help in the busy seasons. The best
remedy for this is to so manage the farm—by keeping a considerable
number of live stock—that help can profitably be employed all the year
round, and to have houses in which married men can live with their
families.
This brings us naturally to the other side of the question—whether or
not a good experienced farm man can get work. The wages given to a
married man range from $250 (£50) to $350 (£70) the year, to which are
added (as a rule) a rent-free cottage, and some extras such as milk and
firewood. Often both the wife and children (as they grow out of early
childhood) can also earn something. The wages for unmarried men of
eighteen years of age and upwards, according to experience, or lack of
it, range from $10 (£2) to $25 (£5) the month—in a few cases to $35
(£7)—with board, lodging and washing free. Board and lodging usually
means living with the farmer’s family, and there is no question that a
man of good physique, good intelligence, real willingness to work and
some thrift can soon attain a position of independence. As one newcomer
to an Ontario farm expressed it, here “the boss hunts for a man, not the
man for a job.”
It is often wise for a newcomer to work for a while for someone else and
to gain experience before attempting to acquire a farm for himself; but
it must not be forgotten that, besides the numerous farms in
well-settled districts that may be bought at prices which are often
little more than yearly rents asked for land in England, there are Crown
lands in Ontario, some of which are offered for sale at the nominal
price of 50 cents (2_s._) the acre—payable in four instalments with
interest—and some which are given away free. But there are conditions
attached to the sale or granting of Crown lands. In the first place,
these lands can be acquired only by a male settler over eighteen, or the
mother of a family who has residing with her at least one child under
eighteen. The settler must live for three years on the homestead, and
within this time must clear and cultivate about 10 per cent. of the
land, and build a small habitable house. The size of the grant or farm
lot is generally one hundred and sixty acres; and in the case of free
grants there is usually a provision that an adjoining eighty to one
hundred acres may be purchased at 50 cents per acre. Often, but not
invariably, the Crown lands are sold subject to timber licences or to a
reservation of minerals.
The public lands for sale are situated chiefly in Nipissing,
Timiskaming, Sudbury, Algoma, and Rainy River districts; and those
offered as free grants are in the districts of Nipissing, Timiskaming,
Algoma, Kenora, Rainy River, and in the tract of land “lying between the
Ottawa river and the Georgian bay, and comprising the northerly portions
of the counties of Renfrew, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington, Hastings,
Peterborough, Victoria and Simcoe; and the districts of Muskoka and
Parry Sound.”
Across Northern Ontario stretches the great fertile (so-called) “Clay
Belt” of sixteen million acres, discovered during the surveys for the
making of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway; and this is within easy reach
of the more settled parts of the province, viâ the town of North Bay,
which is served by the Canadian Pacific Railway, the Grand Trunk, and
the provincial government line, the Timiskaming and Northern Ontario
Railway. The latter strikes in a north-westerly direction, two hundred
and fifty miles, to Cochrane, where it joins the Grand Trunk Pacific,
passing on the way through the Cobalt mining region. Altogether, Ontario
has more than ten thousand miles of steam and electric railways, and
this mileage is increasing very fast.
The Clay Belt is well wooded, but is not very difficult to clear, and
the pioneers there, unlike their predecessors in old Ontario, find a
ready sale for their wood. One man, after paying for the cutting of the
timber on the sixteen acres of his purchase from government of one
hundred and sixty acres, which he was bound to clear to obtain his
title, sold the wood at a profit of $550 (£110), and this left him a
balance of $90 (£18) after the cost of “stumping” and ploughing the
land, which, as he put it, will “clear itself ready for crop.” The
timber is not always so valuable as this, but usually some money may be
made from it. A couple of years later this same man stated that he had
made a profit on his farm of nearly $1,200 (£240).
There is also a chance for the settler to earn ready money by working on
the roads which the government is making through the country, whilst the
demands of the railway construction camps for farm produce insures a
good market. It is only right to add, however, that _the beginner has to
face inevitable hardships_, and though a strong, capable man may not
only succeed, but enjoy the life, there are other men who might do well
under different conditions, but prove failures as pioneers. At certain
times of the year, black flies and mosquitoes are very troublesome, but
this is a condition which will improve as the country becomes more
settled.
In the study of ethnology, people are accustomed to speak of the stone
age, the bronze age, and so forth; and in the study of social conditions
in this province one might use the dwellings of the people as a
criterion. But, while thousands of families are still in the “log-cabin”
age, with all the concomitant disadvantages of roughness and loneliness,
more have passed into the age of “frame houses”—which may be models of
neatness and comfort, and are often the scenes of pleasant
sociabilities—a smaller number are in the brick age—typical of urban
conveniences and (ofttimes) conventionalities; and a very few have
arrived even at the dignity of the “stone age,” which from this point of
view stands for wealth and luxury.
[Illustration: THE MOON CHUTE, NEAR BALA, ONTARIO.]
The population of Ontario is chiefly of British origin. Within the
province are two capital cities—Ottawa, seat of the Dominion
government, and Toronto, of the Provincial government. The local House
has but one chamber, elected, it is commonly said, “by the people,” but
actually by the adult males of the population.
There is no state church, but all the leading denominations, and many
smaller ones, are represented. The University of Toronto (which has more
than four thousand undergraduates) is non-sectarian, but there are a
number of other universities and colleges connected with the several
churches. The education of children is free, and their attendance at
school compulsory. The school system begins with the kindergarten, and
leads up through the public school and the high school to the
university. There are unsectarian public schools and Roman Catholic
“separate” schools.
Amongst other valuable educational agencies in the province there were
in 1912 four hundred and seventeen public and two hundred and forty-two
travelling libraries, which reach many a remote village and lumber camp,
and three hundred and seventy-five agricultural and eighty horticultural
societies. In this connection it may be mentioned that the Ontario
Agricultural College and Experimental Farm at Guelph enrolled, in 1911,
no less than 1,500 students, whilst the Farmers’ Institutes and Women’s
Institutes number their members by thousands. There are, of course,
numerous associations and societies in the cities and towns for the
furtherance of objects of a religious, philanthropic, or educational
character, but the comparatively recent increase of associations of
farmers and farmers’ wives and daughters is especially interesting,
because the enriching and development of rural social life touches a
problem of national importance. These associations may prove of much
advantage to the newcomer willing to profit by them.
According to the last census, considerably over half the population of
Ontario is urban, but in the settled districts at least such recent
innovations as rural telephones and mail deliveries are making the
country life easier and more attractive. Men, accustomed to farm labour
in the “Old Country,” seem to be astonished at the number of
labour-saving machines employed on the farms, and, in some localities,
farmers share in the advantages of the “Hydro-Electric Power,” developed
from Niagara under the management of a government commission.
But, after all, it is not only material good things for which the
emigrant seeks when he leaves his home-land. I have said something of
the schools already, I might have said more of the churches which
everywhere—in the crowded cities, in the quiet country, and in the
lonely wilderness, sometimes nobly, sometimes feebly—are doing work for
the growing nation which only they can do. I might tell of the vigorous,
and upon the whole, successful, struggle which men and women are making
in the cause of temperance—in Ontario and in other provinces—and of
other efforts, needed even in this new land of opportunities, to prevent
the exploiting of helpless children and young girls by greedy
money-makers, to stamp out tuberculosis, to guard infant life, to
cleanse the land of evils, physical and spiritual.
Ontario—and the Dominion—is, indeed, a land of endeavour as well as of
opportunity, but the people are not too busy to find time to be helpful,
and amongst the abiding impressions left from the years spent by the
writer as an inexperienced worker on an Ontario farm, is that of the
kindness and friendliness of neighbours, some of whom remembered similar
experiences. And the hard work of the life was lightened by the
loveliness of a beautiful country, and by no little pleasant
sociability.
[Illustration: 1. TORONTO UNIVERSITY.
2. CANADIAN NORTHERN ELEVATOR AT PORT ARTHUR.
3. SPADINA AVE. & QUEEN ST. TORONTO.]
XI
MANITOBA, OLD AND NEW
THOUGH it had an area larger than that of Ireland, Scotland and Wales
combined, Manitoba for many years suffered under a sense of injustice
with regard to its restricted size. People called it “the postage-stamp
province,” but in 1912 that reproach was taken away by the addition to
it of a “new Manitoba,” more than twice the size of the old. Now the
enlarged province boasts itself as “the Maritime Prairie Province,” for
it stretches away eastward to the shores of Hudson Bay, which was the
old-time gateway of the seafaring British into the great West.
The Manitoba coast has two good natural harbours, Fort Churchill and
Port Nelson, which, while they are by rail nine or ten hundred miles
nearer to Winnipeg than is Montreal, are only about the same distance as
the St. Lawrence port from Liverpool. What this may mean in the future
to Manitoba can at present only be guessed at, but there seems little
doubt that suitably-built steamships will be able to navigate Hudson Bay
and Strait for a longer period annually than was the case with the
little sailing vessels of the Hudson Bay Company, which were sometimes
becalmed, as well as checked by quantities of ice.
But of more importance to prospective immigrants than the possibilities
of the new-old waterway to Manitoba is the climate of the province
itself. Now one must admit frankly that Manitoba has a cold winter, but
it is not usually a very long one. Often the fine weather lasts late
into the autumn, and seeding generally begins in April. Moreover, owing
to the dryness of the atmosphere and the amount of sunshine, people do
not suffer from the cold as the readings of the thermometer might lead
the inexperienced to expect. It is a country where, both for health and
comfort, it is necessary in winter to keep the houses warm and to wear
good warm clothing out of doors, but ordinarily healthy people, who know
how to take proper precautions, do not appear to dread the cold. It is,
however, very hard on the poor, though more fortunate persons find the
crisp cold exhilarating, and the climate is generally regarded as
healthy. In summer the days are often hot, but the nights are usually
cool and pleasant for sleeping, though there are seasons when flies and
mosquitoes, at least in little-settled districts, are very troublesome.
The climate is unquestionably favourable for the growth of wheat and
many other agricultural products. Despite the remarkable dryness and
clearness of the atmosphere, Manitoba is not a dry and thirsty land
where no water is, and in June there is usually ample rainfall after
seeding to give the young crops every chance of growth. The frost coming
out of the ground in spring, and the rains, have indeed a deplorable
effect on the prairie trails. Not very long ago the streets of Winnipeg
were sometimes almost impassable with mud, but Winnipeg—according to a
table recently compiled by the meteorological department in Toronto—has
a much greater annual rainfall than most other places in the province.
Manitoba has numerous and large lakes. Among those in the older part of
the province are Winnipeg, Manitoba, Winnipegosis and Dauphin lakes, all
very large according to old-world standards, and its chief rivers are
the Red, Assiniboine, Winnipeg and Pembina, each with several
tributaries. The waters of all these find their way ultimately into
Hudson Bay.
Manitoba is popularly supposed to be “as flat as a pancake,” and the
prairie about Winnipeg is extraordinarily level in appearance. But, as a
matter of fact, the prairie country of the Canadian West consists of
three distinct steppes. Of these, Manitoba contains the whole of the
first, and a portion of the second steppe. The first slopes gently from
the international boundary, where it is about fifty miles wide, towards
the far-distant Arctic Ocean, and the site of Winnipeg is only about
seven hundred feet above sea-level, but the average elevation of the
second steppe, which begins in South-west Manitoba, is about sixteen
hundred feet. The face of this second steppe forms the “Riding and Duck
Mountains,” and the Porcupine hills, in which is the highest point in
Manitoba, 2,500 feet. In the south there are two other elevations named,
like many another natural feature of the prairie regions, after birds,
fish or animals. These are the Turtle and the Tiger hills.
There are also acres of forest land in the north-west and extreme east
of the old province, and here and there are small timbered districts,
which supply the settlers with a certain amount of house timber and
fuel, though not a little has to be imported. Much of new Manitoba is
covered with forests, and is likely to supply immense quantities of
pulpwood, and timber for other purposes. It is believed also to contain
great stretches of good agricultural land; there are hopeful indications
of mineral wealth; and its fisheries must be valuable. Finally, this
wild north land certainly contains abundance of water power, which in
time may make it an important manufacturing region. As yet the worth of
its scarcely explored resources cannot be estimated, but quite enough is
known to justify the Manitobans in congratulating themselves on the
possession of this vast addition to the province.
But, leaving new Manitoba out of account, there is no lack of definite
information concerning the older portion of this first-settled of the
“Prairie Provinces.” If one goes back to explorers and fur traders, its
history may be said to begin far back in the eighteenth century with the
building of La Verendrye’s little trading post on the site of the modern
city of Winnipeg. If we do not care to go behind the first attempt
actually to colonize what is now Manitoba, the story stretches just over
one hundred years.
It was in 1811 that Lord Selkirk obtained a large tract of land on the
Red river from the Hudson Bay Company (of which he was a member), with
the view of settling upon it an agricultural colony. The first party of
British immigrants—drawn chiefly from Scotland—came in, it will be
noted, by way of Hudson Bay, a route which it is prophesied may yet be
preferred by British colonists as the shortest road to the great West.
But no Hudson Bay Railroad was dreamed of when those first immigrants
arrived, late in 1811, and it was not till the following summer that
they reached their destination on the Red river.
There they received anything but a hospitable welcome. In fact, the
Hudson Bay Company’s rivals in the fur trade deliberately set themselves
to make the place too hot to hold them, for, not altogether
unreasonably, they regarded farming and fur trading as mutually
exclusive industries. But neither their ill-will, which at last
culminated in bloodshed, nor other disasters of various descriptions,
sufficed to destroy the colony. Through all, a few of Selkirk’s settlers
succeeded in the end in making good their footing; and many modern
Manitobans are proud to claim descent from these sturdy and steadfast
folk who, with no better implements than hoes, broke up the ancient sod,
and sowed and reaped the first of Manitoba’s famous wheat crops.
A few years later the rival trading companies amalgamated; but for the
next half-century the growth of the colony—still under the rule of the
Hudson Bay Company—was extraordinarily slow. Then it was affected by
events in the eastern provinces.
Immediately after Confederation, resolutions were passed in the Canadian
parliament asking the British Government to add to the Dominion these
great regions in the north and west, and in 1869 the Hudson Bay Company
consented to give up its trade monopoly and sovereign rights in
consideration of a sum of £300,000 in money, and of about a twentieth
part of the land yet to be surveyed south of the north branch of the
Saskatchewan river and west of Lake Winnipeg.
In the Red River region there was at this time a population of about
twelve thousand (chiefly half-breeds, and more of French than of English
extraction). No one thought it necessary to consult them about the
transfer, and when surveyors were sent into the country, the Red River
farmers began to fear that their claims to their farms and their right
to cut hay on the adjacent wild lands (a privilege of great value in
their eyes) would be disregarded. Louis Riel, a young man who had been
educated at Montreal, giving voice to their vague alarm, stirred them up
to violent agitation, and soon the half-breeds were in open rebellion.
They seized the Hudson Bay Company’s post of Fort Garry (where Winnipeg
now is) and set up a “Provisional Government,” with Riel at its head.
Some who dared to oppose his authority were imprisoned, and finally a
young Irishman from Ontario—Thomas Scott—after a mock trial, was
brutally murdered. This roused a storm of indignation throughout Canada,
and a body of regular troops and militiamen, under the command of
Colonel (afterwards Lord) Wolseley, was sent to put down the
insurrection. The journey from the east was so toilsome and difficult
that, though the troops left Toronto in June, 1870, they did not reach
the Red river till August; but Riel fled on their approach, and many of
the militiamen who spent the winter in Manitoba ultimately settled
there.
In the same year the government of the country as a Canadian province
was inaugurated. Manitoba followed Ontario in having only a single
chamber in the Provincial Legislature; and it is represented in the
Dominion parliament by four members in the Upper, and ten in the Lower,
House. “The electoral franchise is practically based on residence and
manhood suffrage.”
Between the taking of the first Dominion census affecting Manitoba in
1871, and the fourth (and last) the population of the province has been
multiplied by eighteen, being set down in 1911 at 455,614; but, while
the urban population showed an increase in the previous decade of nearly
one hundred and thirty thousand, the rural population increased only by
a little over seventy thousand five hundred.
The growth of Winnipeg during these forty years has been extraordinary.
In 1871 it was a mere village of two hundred and thirteen inhabitants.
In 1912, owing largely to immigration from other lands, it was a city of
well over two hundred thousand people. Its situation at the confluence
of the Red and Assiniboine rivers was “strategic” in the days when
canoes and bateaux were the commonest means of transport, but it was the
building of the Canadian Pacific Railway which gave the first strong
impetus to its growth; and now it is a great knot in a network of
railway lines radiating in about thirty different directions. It is a
growing industrial centre, with water power available in large quantity,
and it employs over fifteen thousand workers in its factories, which
include plants turning out structural steel; making traction engines for
farmers; and occupied with food products. But still to-day it is the
railways (Manitoba, by the way, now has over four thousand miles of
railways) which give its chief importance to Winnipeg. It is the western
headquarters of the three greatest Canadian railway systems, the
Canadian Pacific, the Canadian Northern, and the Grand Trunk Pacific.
Through it pours annually the vast stream of wheat from the grain fields
of the West, for it is “the greatest grain market of the world”; whilst
another stream flows westward—of more interest and account than any
merchandize—the stream of humanity bound to the land of new chances.
But part of this human river, as everywhere, tends to drift into the
eddies. Some newcomers (foreigners and British alike) never get beyond
Winnipeg, and some, failing on the land, return thither, rendering its
social problems inexpressibly difficult.
For the past five years the Winnipeg Industrial Bureau has been
diligently endeavouring to increase the industrial importance of the
city by advertising its opportunities, giving information to persons
thinking of engaging in manufacturing, opening a permanent exhibition of
articles manufactured in the city and district, and encouraging
technical education. Moreover, and this will be of special interest to
some immigrants, it has a department to assist in bringing out the wives
and children of British workmen who settle in Winnipeg. In little more
than two years 1,591 persons have been assisted. In 1912 “234 wives, 215
children over twelve years of age and 465 children under twelve years of
age” were brought out, and “of the families reunited 79 came to Winnipeg
from Scotland, 165 from England and 14 from Ireland.” A most
satisfactory feature of the movement has been the way it has spread to
other places; and within two years “Imperial Home Reunion Associations”
were organized in Ottawa, in Montreal, Toronto, Edmonton, Halifax, and
twenty other leading towns of the Dominion.
The people of Winnipeg believe in municipal ownership, and the city owns
and operates waterworks, a street lighting system, a stone quarry, an
asphalt plant and a hydro-electric light and power plant, which has
reduced the cost of domestic lighting to less than one-third that
formerly charged by a private company. Winnipeg is, moreover, a city of
broad fine streets, and of numerous churches, schools and colleges. It
is the seat of the University of Manitoba, which has six colleges, and
of the Provincial Agricultural College, which was first opened in 1906.
This college confers the degree of “Bachelor of Science in Agriculture”
on those who successfully pass through its five winters’ course. There
is also a course of Home Economics for women, and in both cases the cost
is very low compared to the high rates of living and of wages in the
West. In connection with the college, “demonstration and instruction
trains,” with a special staff of lecturers and experts, are sent out
over “practically every line in the province,” to carry some of its
benefits to the numbers of men and women who cannot attend the college.
Of other efforts to aid and improve agriculture I have no space to
write.
As to the education of the children, Winnipeg is a city of schools, and
in the remotest settlements a school district may be formed as soon as
there are ten children of school age (that is, from five to fifteen) in
a section, and the schools are supported by grants from the provincial
government, and by taxes levied on the people by their municipal
councils. In 1905 the experiment of consolidated schools was first tried
in Manitoba, and now there are a number of such schools, the children
being carried to and from them in well-covered vans.
The growth of Winnipeg and other towns is no doubt largely connected
with the growth of manufactures, which, according to official figures,
has been phenomenally rapid since the beginning of this century. During
its first decade, in fact, the value of manufactures in Manitoba
increased by over 315 per cent. At present little mining is carried on,
and though in 1910-11 the fisheries of the province brought in about one
and one-third million dollars (£260,000), this is considerably less than
the amount received by the farmers for the article of butter alone, and
agriculture is emphatically the outstanding industry of Manitoba.
“Manitoba No. 1 Hard” wheat is famous throughout the world. Manitoba
farmers, however, are discovering many other avenues to comfort and
success than the almost exclusive growth of this grain, with the
advantage of much better prospects to their lands of continued
productivity than by the repetition, year after year, of a single crop.
Still the province raises immense quantities of wheat, but mixed farming
has its advocates, who not only preach but practise their favourite
agricultural doctrine.
Nor is this wonderful, in a community which lives chiefly by agriculture
and yet cannot begin to supply its own cities (nay, its own farmhouses!)
with eggs and meat and dairy products. Last year, says a recent
government publication, no less than $102,000 (£20,400) worth of milk
and sweet cream was imported from the State of Minnesota for consumption
in Winnipeg. At the same time, Winnipeg bought from Eastern Canada
1,700,000 pounds of creamery butter, chiefly for local distribution,
and, besides, far-away New Zealand supplied some butter for the tables
of Manitoba folk. As for eggs, three hundred thousand dozen, or
twenty-five car-loads, were imported from the United States for
Winnipeg, and smaller centres also bring them in by the car-load. Nor
was this all. Cheese and poultry, sheep by the thousand, and bacon, hams
and lard by car-loads, come from east and west and south to feed the
people of the prairies.
The point of all this is that these things might be supplied with profit
to the farmer and advantage to the consumer from Manitoba’s own land.
There is no question about the demand for dairy produce, poultry, meat,
vegetables and fruit. Neither is there any question that people, who
know how, can produce these things in quantities within the province;
and here is where one excellent opportunity for immigrants who
understand something of gardening, dairying and poultry-raising comes
in. Manitoba has excellent markets, good land, but she wants gardeners
and farmers—especially farmers who will give attention to something
besides wheat.
As for the land, only about one-sixth of the cultivable area in the
older portion of the province is yet under cultivation; and the newcomer
may either buy an improved farm (at prices ranging, according to soil,
locality, etc., from $15 to $35, $40, or even $80 the acre (£3 to £16)),
acquire school lands by purchase from the government (in which case
there are no settlement conditions), or make entry for a homestead. In
many municipalities—especially in the south of the province—all the
homesteads have been taken up, but there still remain free homesteads
available within one hundred and twenty-five miles of Winnipeg, with
government and school lands at from $3 to $6 the acre (12_s._ to
24_s._). (For conditions as to the homesteading or purchase of
government lands, see Appendix, Note B, page 297.)
[Illustration: AMONG THE WHEATFIELDS OF MANITOBA.]
The Canadian Pacific Railway also has lands for sale in Manitoba.
The change which is gradually, but slowly, taking place from
grain-growing exclusively to mixed farming is resulting in the breaking
up of the very large farms, and this will greatly improve social
conditions; enabling neighbours to be more neighbourly, strengthening
the scattered congregations of the churches, and making life brighter
for young and old alike.
Of the population, a considerable proportion are natives of Canada—some
of these speaking French—or of the British Isles. There are, too, a
number of people who have come from the United States. Nearly one-fifth
are foreigners in origin; but the younger members of the alien races
soon learn to speak English, and to adopt Canadian ways. By the way, the
famous “No. 1 Hard” Manitoba wheat is said to have been grown first by a
colony of Mennonites from Ontario, who settled south of Winnipeg. The
word is not the name of a race, but of a religious sect, and, according
to the latest census returns, of its forty-four or forty-five thousand
representatives in Canada, Manitoba can claim over one-third.
The strongest of any religious denomination is the Presbyterian, with
the Anglican second, the Roman Catholic third, and the Methodist fourth;
but forty or fifty other “religions” are represented in the province
(which is, indeed, not peculiar in this respect) by groups of adherents
counting, like the Lutherans and the Greek-Catholics, by thousands, or
like the Deists and Mohammedans, by twos and threes.
There is a great demand for workers in the busy season on the farms.
Farm labourers, during the summer, may expect from $25 (£5) to $40 (£8)
a month, and, during winter, from $5 (£1) to $20 (£4), in both cases
with board. In harvest time skilled men may receive as much as $50 (£10)
the month, or $2 to $3 (8_s._ to 12_s._) the day, subject to deduction
if bad weather prevents work. Ordinary labourers get $2 or $8 (8_s._ to
12_s._) a day without board, and lumbermen in the camps $30 (£6) the
month, with board and lodging.
Often there is also a good demand for skilled industrial workers, but
this varies greatly from time to time; and it is _most important_ that
before setting out the intending immigrant should obtain _recent
information_ concerning the industrial conditions in the locality where
he thinks of settling. For addresses of persons who will give
information, see Appendix A, pp. 295-297.
Carpenters in Winnipeg get 35 cents to 40 cents (1_s._ 5_d._ to 1_s._
8_d._) the hour. Bricklayers and masons receive about 67½ cents (2_s._
9_d._) the hour, but cannot work at their trade for more than seven or
eight months in the year. Tailors get $17 the week, and printers $18 to
$20 the week. In considering these high wages (amounting to £3 or £4 the
week), it must be remembered that house rent, food, and the cost of fuel
are also very high; but, in spite of all such disadvantages, the fact
remains that for the young, strong, thrifty worker, Manitoba has great
opportunities.
[Illustration: LOOKING DOWN MAIN STREET, WINNIPEG.]
XII
SASKATCHEWAN, THE WHEAT PROVINCE
TO borrow a threadbare but expressive phrase, “Wheat is king,” in
Saskatchewan. Go where one will, in the inhabited part of the province,
one is never allowed to forget this. One travels through miles on miles
of wheat fields, and the most conspicuous building at many a wayside
station is a giant “elevator”—if there does not chance, indeed, to be a
row of these. Every budding town seems to begin with an agricultural
implement “depot”; and near the railway stations in the cities
self-binders, gasoline engines, and threshing machines, gaudy with
yellow and crimson paint, are drawn up, awaiting their purchasers, by
the hundred.
Nor is this the only token of the empire of King Wheat! In train and
city, as well as at the tables of the farmers, the talk is of
weather—good or bad—for the sowing and the harvest, for in
Saskatchewan every man, woman and child realizes that in the last
analysis the dependence of the whole community is on the measure of
success which attends the cultivation of the soil. Wheat is king; and as
in the old days every road led to Rome, so in writing of
Saskatchewan—though this is true to a certain extent of most of the
Canadian provinces—it is impossible to avoid coming back again and
again to the farmer and his crops and his doings, his difficulties and
his successes, and his way of meeting all kinds of problems. Here at
least he is the hero of the drama—the central figure in the picture,
and therefore I shall make no apology for seeming to travel in a circle.
Let us speak first of the kingdom of wheat.
Saskatchewan, in the south, has a breadth of three hundred and ninety
miles, and a length of about seven hundred and fifty miles, or an area
of somewhat over a quarter of a million square miles, including a water
surface of about eight thousand three hundred miles, made up chiefly of
lakes, large and small. It is larger than France, and over twice the
size of the British Isles, with which it roughly corresponds in
latitude. Edinburgh, by the way, is further north than any part of
Saskatchewan yet settled, and the northern boundary of the province—the
60th parallel of north latitude—touches the two European capitals,
Christiania of Norway and St. Petersburg of Russia.
It comprises the greater part of “the second prairie steppe,” which has
an average elevation of about fifteen hundred feet above sea-level, but
Lake Athabasca, thrusting itself into its extreme north-west, is less
than seven hundred feet above the sea, and the highest summit of the
Cypress hills is over four thousand two hundred feet. Thus this “prairie
province” is by no means all a level plain. In fact, it possesses such
differences of surface that it has been said that it may be divided into
“four well-defined zones.” In the south (with the exception of some
hilly districts) and extending to Saskatoon is the rolling prairie. Next
comes a belt of mingled prairie and woodlands, dotted with small lakes,
and often described as park-like. Then, about Prince Albert, begins the
great northern forest of “spruce, tamarac, jack-pine, poplar and birch.”
This timbered belt crosses the province, and is between three and four
hundred miles wide. North of it is the fourth zone, only sparsely
wooded.
The province is situated in the very heart of the Dominion, but it is
watered by several great rivers, which have cut their way deep into the
plains. One of these, the Saskatchewan or “Rushing Water,” as the
Indians called it—has given its name to the province in which its two
branches, the North and the South Saskatchewan, unite to flow together
into Lake Winnipeg and thence to Hudson Bay. Farther north the mightiest
river is the Churchill, one thousand miles long, which by many a
tumultuous rapid hurries to the same inland sea.
For a long time Saskatchewan had a bad reputation so far as climate is
concerned, and if any British immigrant comes to settle in the country
without understanding that the winters are very much colder than those
he has been accustomed to, he will probably be much disappointed and may
feel himself ill-used, though the chances are that he ought to have made
more particular inquiries before he came. The disadvantages of the
climate are a low winter temperature (for ten years the _average_
temperature of the coldest months, January and February, shows from 27
to 29 degrees of frost); an occasional severe snowstorm or “blizzard,”
and some dry windy weather at other seasons of the year, when the
blowing of the dust is very trying.
The advantages, often held by residents in Saskatchewan of more than two
or three years’ standing to outweigh the disadvantages, are the clear
exhilarating atmosphere, the light snowfall, the bright sunshine at all
seasons, the cool, pleasant nights of summer, and the infrequence of
rain or thaws during winter. Usually the cold weather does not reach its
greatest severity till after Christmas, and winter may be said to end
late in March. The sowing of the crops occasionally begins in March, but
generally not until April.
It used to be supposed that the climate of the province was too severe
to allow grain crops to come to perfection, but a few years ago the
experiment of growing wheat was made successfully a little east of
Regina, at Indian Head (where, by the way, are situated a Dominion
experimental farm and forest nursery), and in 1911, at the “Land
Exhibition” in New York, a prize of $1,000 (£205) in gold, offered by
Sir Thomas Shaughnessy for the best “one hundred pounds of milling wheat
grown in America,” was carried off by a sample of Marquis wheat, grown
on a farm near Rosthern, about forty miles north of Saskatoon. The
Marquis variety of wheat was originated by the “Dominion cerealist,” Dr.
Charles Saunders, on the Central Experimental Farm at Ottawa, and the
prize sample was grown by Mr. Seager Wheeler, an Englishman from the
Isle of Wight who had been farming in Saskatchewan for fifteen years.
The importance of Saskatchewan as a wheat-growing region is only of
recent development. When white men first settled in the country, a
generation ago, they began with cattle ranching; now it is the prime
wheat-growing province in the Dominion. In 1913 the crop amounted to
108,288,000 bushels; but though for years to come the actual yield of
this grain is likely to increase enormously, for the land at present
under crop does not, it is said, greatly exceed that set apart for
roads, there are signs that in the future other products of the farm
will dispute the almost exclusive sway of King Wheat. For example, at
the International Exhibition at Lethbridge, in 1912, Saskatchewan won
the first prize for the “best collection of farm products.” One argument
in favour of changing to a greater diversity of crops is that it tends
to simplify the labour problem, as the harvesting of different crops is
spread over a longer period than that of wheat alone.
At present about 80 per cent. of the population of the province belongs
to the farming class, but the opportunities in Saskatchewan are not
limited to the cultivation of the soil. The northern half of the
province, lacking railways, is not yet ready for ordinary settlers, but
in the great woods north of Prince Albert the lumber industry is
important. In fact, in 1911, between eight and nine thousand men found
employment in the lumber camps and mills. There is, by the way, a vast
demand in the West for railway ties or “sleepers,” and this is largely
supplied by the jack-pine of the northern woods.
Flouring mills, as might be expected, are amongst the chief of
Saskatchewan’s industrial establishments, and brick-making plants are
numerous. There is an excellent home market for bricks, and suitable
clay is found in every quarter, north, south, east and west. There are
already several companies making structural steel for bridges, and soon
large iron works will be established at Prince Albert, deposits of good
iron ore having been discovered in the northern wilderness.
Prince Albert (of which the first house is said to have been the
log-cabin of a Presbyterian missionary, put up in 1866) is rich in the
so-called “white coal,” and before long the city will be supplied with
hydro-electric power from the La Colle falls in the Saskatchewan river,
which flows past her very doors. The damming of the river to develop the
power will serve the purpose of improving its navigability, and it is
anticipated that soon there will be steamboat communication between Lake
Winnipeg and Edmonton. In the south, just within the borders of the
province, near Roche Percée, and away in a north-westerly direction
along the eastern escarpment of the “third prairie steppe,” lignite or
“brown coal” has been found in many different places, and in
Saskatchewan there were thirty mines in 1910, employing in all nearly
four hundred persons.
It is difficult to exaggerate the part played in Saskatchewan by the
railways. Lying almost midway between the Pacific and the communication
by means of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence with the Atlantic, this
region had no outlet for any of the products of its fertile soil till
the coming of the railways. In truth, there were no products, but only
possibilities, for the settlers came in after the Canadian Pacific
Railway—the pioneer line—which crossed the province on its way to the
far west; and since then branch lines and little new towns have grown up
together, till now this one great railway has over two thousand four
hundred miles of “steel” in Saskatchewan alone, and its single track of
1885 (which it was such a mighty feat to build through the lone prairies
and across the rugged western mountains) has become a complicated
network. But what this first line meant in binding the separated
provinces into a real union was shown in that very year, 1885, when for
the second time the half-breeds, led by Louis Riel, rose in revolt.
This time the storm centre was in the North-West Territories—from which
in 1905 the new provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta were carved
out—far west and north of the Red River, but though there were long
gaps in the railway, the troops sent from Eastern Canada reached the
scene of the disturbance in about a month, or less than half the time
which it had taken Wolseley’s force to reach the Red River fifteen years
earlier. During the last ten or twelve years a younger railway company,
the Canadian Northern, which in 1901 had not a mile of line in operation
in Saskatchewan, has been adding line to line, and branch to branch,
entering new districts, where farmers had gone in on the promise of its
coming, carrying into the country immigrants and “settlers’ effects” by
the car-load, and out of it train upon train of wheat. It also is
knotting together a network across southern Saskatchewan. Last year its
lines in the province had lengthened to 1,785 miles, and it is still
reaching forward in many directions, including that of Hudson Bay.
Lastly, the luxurious passenger trains of the Grand Trunk Pacific are
crossing Saskatchewan, with the promise of another easy ocean-to-ocean
route; and the promise also of additional means of transportation for
the annual millions of bushels of Saskatchewan’s wheat. But more quickly
even than the railway companies have been pushing the construction of
their new lines increases the product of the fields and farms; and every
new avenue of transportation, while improving the situation in certain
districts, also adds to the magnitude of the problem to be solved, for
there are always people, regardless of isolation and hardships, ready to
go in advance of the railways.
At present the authorities are giving no encouragement to immigrants to
settle in the northern part of Saskatchewan, for that district is
entirely without transportation facilities, and is better suited to the
wandering, adventurous lives of the hunter and trapper than of the
would-be maker of a new home. The former serve best, perhaps, as heroes
for boyish romances of the Ballantyne type; but the real interest of the
story of the Canadian West belongs to the home-makers—the
nation-builders—who are surging in to take possession of the land.
In 1901, the population of Saskatchewan was nearly 91,300; in 1911, it
was over 492,400, when, by the way, the male population exceeded the
female by 91,000. During 1911, 44,000 immigrants settled in
Saskatchewan. Of these 59 per cent. were Americans, whose experience of
farming under similar conditions makes them excellent settlers; whilst
the remaining number, which entered by ocean ports, represented no less
than forty-six nationalities. Amongst the homesteaders for the year,
besides Canadians from the east, and people from the British Isles and
from the United States, were French, Germans, Belgians and Hollanders,
Swiss, Italians, Roumanians, Syrians, Austro-Hungarians, Russians, Danes
and Icelanders, Swedes and Norwegians. The people from Northern Europe
make particularly good settlers, and though some of the foreigners
appear to be of an unpromising type as material for the building up of a
nation on British lines, they are often found, on closer acquaintance,
to have some special excellence to contribute to the general “melting
pot.” The assimilation of all these peoples is no small problem for the
young Dominion, however.
In Saskatchewan, as elsewhere, perhaps the greatest force for the
Canadianizing of the newcomers is the common school, which has an
influence extending into the home circles of the children who attend. It
is fortunate for the nation that a large proportion of the teachers
(chiefly young women) hold a high view of their calling, and therefore
are peculiarly well-suited to act as guides to the newcomers.
The different churches in the province are also toiling bravely amongst
the immigrants, but their task is complicated by differences of race,
language and traditions; and by the tendency of the population to
scatter itself in little groups—sometimes only a single family and
sometimes even one individual—far and wide, wherever fertile land is to
be had. Of late years immigrants have been coming in so fast, that the
churches, though adding constantly to their force of men and women,
clergymen and missionaries have great difficulty in overtaking the work;
in fact, they cannot do it.
In Saskatchewan the leading denomination is the Presbyterian; then
follow the Roman Catholics, the Methodists, the Anglicans, the
Lutherans, the Greek-Catholics, the Baptists and the Mennonites.
Despite all that is being done, many of the settlers are for years out
of reach of church services, and some of the groups of foreigners are
practically left to themselves in this respect, for want of people to
work amongst them. For enforcing law and order amongst the scattered
settlers and for many other services, Saskatchewan owes much to the
small body of North-West Mounted Police, who have inculcated respect for
British justice in the breasts of red and white men, newcomers and old
settlers.
[Illustration: NEW PARLIAMENT HOUSE, REGINA, SASKATCHEWAN.]
The Saskatchewan people themselves are wrestling valiantly with their
own problems, religious, educational, social. In this connection it is
interesting to note that a place in Saskatchewan—Sintaluta, near Indian
Head—was the birthplace of that powerful organization of farmers, the
“Grain-Growers’ Association,” and that its founder, Hon. W. R.
Motherwell, himself a farmer and a graduate of the Ontario Agricultural
College at Guelph, is now the provincial Minister of Agriculture. This
organization, with which is affiliated the “Grain-Growers’ Association
of Manitoba” and the “United Farmers” of Alberta, has led in the
struggle against the great corporations, which were too much for the
individual farmer, for better transportation and elevator facilities.
Later, an accessory association was established called the
“Grain-Growers’ Grain Company,” to enable the organized farmers to
market their grain on a basis of co-operation.
This principle is growing in favour in Saskatchewan, and it is hoped
that by its aid the conditions of life amongst the farming community may
be made so desirable as to check the trend of population to the towns.
Saskatchewan has now a co-operative elevator company, a co-operative
telephone system in the rural districts, connected with government-owned
trunk lines and city services—which is perhaps as great an advantage
from the social as from the business point of view—and co-operative
creameries, and insurance of crops against damage by hail, assisted by
government. Moreover, in the University of Saskatchewan, at Saskatoon,
scientific instruction in agriculture is given a first place, and great
efforts are made to extend the influence and usefulness of the
university to every class and locality in the province.
With regard to education, a rural school district may be established in
Saskatchewan where there are four persons resident who would be liable
to assessment, and at least twelve children between the ages of five and
sixteen years. No district may exceed twenty-five square miles in area,
but in practice districts are rarely so large. The schools are supported
in part by local rates, and in part by provincial grants. Teachers’
salaries in rural districts vary from $50 (£10) to $65 (£13) the month,
whilst board can usually be obtained at from $12 (£2 8_s._) to $15 (£3)
the month. During the five years ending with 1910, the number of school
districts more than doubled, no less than one thousand three hundred new
ones being organized. There are also high schools and collegiate
institutes, scattered through the province, where young people can
obtain more advanced instruction.
Though primarily an agricultural province, Saskatchewan is dotted with
enterprising little villages and growing towns, and has four small but
busy and fast-growing cities. First comes Regina, the capital, where
annually gather the members of the single chamber of the Provincial
Legislature; next comes Saskatoon, a railway centre and the seat of the
university; then the older cities of Moose Jaw and Prince Albert. The
population of the largest of these is somewhere in the neighbourhood of
thirty thousand; but in the Canadian West just at present figures become
ridiculously out-of-date even in a few months.
Still, Saskatchewan holds wide her doors for others to enter. She wants
men—and women—for her farms and her young towns. She has Dominion
lands to offer as homesteads (see Appendix, Note B, page 297), and wild
or improved lands which may be bought from the railways and other
companies at from $10 (£2 8_s._) the acre up to $30 (£6) or $40 (£8),
according to locality, etc. There are opportunities for business and
professional men, but the demand is greatest for workers on the farms.
If engaged by the year, average wages for a good man would be about $25
(£5) the month, with board; but if the engagement were only for eight
months, the average might be from $25 (£5) to $40 (£8) the month; while
for harvesting and threshing only, men receive from $35 (£7) to $50
(£10) the month, or $2 to $3 (8_s._ to 12_s._) the day; and every year
“Harvesters’ Excursions” are run from the east.
There is often a good demand in the cities and towns in summer for
unskilled labour; and in the lumber camps in the winter; and sometimes
newcomers of the artizan and mechanics’ class can readily obtain work at
their trades; but the demand fluctuates, and it is wise for such
immigrants to take care to procure _reliable and recent_ information
before going to any town.
Capable domestic servants are always in demand at wages of about $15
(£3) a month, and upwards. Anyone wishing for recent and particular
information concerning the rates of wages, and the demand for workers in
any special trade, could not do better, however, than write to the
Secretary of the Bureau of Labour, Regina, Saskatchewan.
[Illustration: 1. CUTTING WHEAT ON A 4,000 ACRE FARM, SASKATCHEWAN.
2. HASTINGS STREET, VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA.]
[Illustration: 1. JASPER AVENUE, EDMONTON, ALBERTA.
2. STOOKING WHEAT, BENITA, SASKATCHEWAN.]
XIII
ALBERTA: WHERE PRAIRIES AND MOUNTAINS MEET
ALBERTA is in the same latitude as its sister province of
Saskatchewan, is almost of the same size (being about three thousand
square miles larger), and “came of age,” as it were, or attained the
rights of a province, upon the same day, September 1, 1905. Its
situation, as an inland province very far from the eastern seaboard, and
shut in from the west by mighty chains of mountains, has delayed its
progress; but it has grown with the building of railways, and recently
its population has shown the most rapid increase of any of the
provinces. In the decade between the census years, 1901 and 1911, its
increase was 424 per cent., and last year its population was swelled by
about ninety thousand new arrivals, from the eastern provinces, the
United States, and countries beyond the seas, including a goodly number
of British.
It is a land of great natural wealth and wonderful variety of beauty,
for within it the last elevated “prairie steppe” gives way to mountains
with peaks that soar into the blue high above the snowline. The Rockies,
indeed, form the irregular boundary line of the south-west, which
divides Alberta from British Columbia; and there is many a noble
mountain within the province, though one is often misled, by the
inadequacies of the ordinary maps, into thinking of it almost wholly as
a prairie land.
In the south the country is of the rolling prairie type, though its
altitude is high; but further north it has the park-like character of
woodlands, interspersed with open prairie, and further north still,
though the park-like country still prevails in certain districts, the
land in general is a forest-covered wilderness, broken by lakes and
muskegs. The latter make summer journeys extremely difficult, and it is
easier for the Indians and traders and missionaries, who at present are
the sole inhabitants, to travel when winter has sealed up the lakes and
morasses with ice, thus making possible short-cuts between places which
in summer can be reached only by devious journeys up one stream and down
another, with laborious portages between.
Edmonton is still a centre of the fur-trade, and even now, in winter
time, picturesque dog-trains arrive from the north in the provincial
capital, whilst in the heart of Alberta traders, surveyors,
mail-carriers and missionaries are leading the kind of life described in
the “Wild West” books of our childhood. Still, on winter’s nights, in
the white Albertan wilderness, many a man, for one motive or another, is
sleeping out under the stars, defiant of the frost and loneliness; and
still, in the long days of the northern summer, canoes ply on the
rivers, which are the only roads in portions of Alberta.
Of the numerous lakes of the province, Athabasca, which Alberta shares
with Saskatchewan, has a surface of 2,850 square miles, but Lesser Slave
Lake, the largest entirely within the province, is only four hundred and
eighty square miles in extent. The rivers of Alberta are more important
than the lakes. The four principal are the North and the South
Saskatchewan; the Athabasca and the Peace river, which all rise in the
Rocky Mountains, flow in an easterly or north-easterly direction, and
have numerous tributaries, amongst which are some which might themselves
take rank as important rivers. Both lakes and rivers, by the way, abound
in fish, white fish being a staple food of the Indians and of the few
white men in the north, as well as of the dogs used as draught animals.
The climate resembles that of Saskatchewan in its cold winters, hot
summer days, and its dry, bright weather all the year round. Sometimes
the mercury sinks in winter far below zero; sometimes in summer it
registers as high as 90 degrees in the shade; but the nights are never
unbearably hot, and the weather is never of the “muggy” type which in
some places makes exertion so distasteful. There is little difference
between the mean summer temperature in various parts of the province,
owing, perhaps, to the fact that the general altitude is much greater in
the south than the north. As it approaches the mountains at the
boundary, the country is about four thousand feet above sea-level, but
it slopes gently downward towards the north and east, till in the far
north the altitude is less than one thousand feet. The Peace River
valley has as warm a summer as the valley of the Saskatchewan, three
hundred miles to the south, and everywhere there are long hours of
sunshine in the growing season.
The climate of parts of the province, even as far north as the Peace
River valley, is much modified by the “chinook,” winds which, tempered
by the warm Japanese current of the North Pacific, blow through the
passes of the Rocky Mountains, and sometimes even in mid-winter cause a
rise of temperature of fifty or sixty degrees in a few hours. One effect
of this is the melting of the snow with marvellous rapidity, and in an
ordinary season horses and cattle can live and thrive on the open ranges
all winter, though provident farmers keep a good supply of hay on hand
for emergencies. In most parts of the province there is a sufficient
rainfall for the needs of the crops, and the rain comes as a rule most
abundantly when most needed, but there are districts in the south where
irrigation is being practised with great success and advantage.
The natural resources of Alberta are varied and abundant. First and
foremost is the soil, of which a well-known English agriculturist and
chemist, Professor Farmer, wrote: “Although we have hitherto considered
the black earth of central Russia the richest in the world, that land
has now to yield its distinguished position to the rich, deep, black
soil of Western Canada.” Other experts bear almost equally strong
testimony to the value of the soil of these provinces, but in Alberta it
was estimated very recently that only about 3 per cent. of her hundred
million acres suitable for farming is as yet cultivated.
Farming there began in the wild, free, un-English form of cattle-raising
on ranches, so large that sixty to one hundred acres of pasturage was
allowed for each animal, in herds in some cases numbering thousands. The
natural conditions of food, water springs, and sufficient shelter were
so good that little attention was needed or given, and two men were
supposed to be able to manage fifteen hundred head of cattle. The
ranches were bought by large companies, or (more often) leased from
government, and every year thousands of beasts were sent to the markets
of the eastern provinces or to those of England. A few large ranches
remain still, chiefly in the neighbourhood of MacLeod.
But now the dashing, picturesque “cow-boys” are fast passing away. Their
place is being taken by farmers of a more plodding type, and every year
sees more railway lines cutting into the old-time ranches, and more
homesteaders arriving to build their little shacks and villages in the
lands which were once the pasture ground of innumerable buffaloes, and
then of cattle scarcely less wild.
There are, however, a multitude of farmers who continue on a small scale
the stock-raising industry, and in 1910 there were actually twice as
many head of cattle in Alberta as there were in 1901, though there were
still not quite as many as there had been in 1906. The fact is that
though grain-growing offers the line of least resistance for the
establishment of many a newcomer, who has not the means to purchase
stock, and is obliged to turn to something that will speedily bring a
return in ready money, the belief in “mixed” as opposed to exclusive
grain farming is gaining ground in Alberta, as elsewhere in Canada.
Besides its other advantages it prevents the farmer suffering so
severely in a bad year, when his risk is divided between different kinds
of agricultural products.
It required some experiment to discover the class of wheat best adapted
to Alberta’s soil and climate; but in 1902 seed was imported from Kansas
of the variety known as “Turkey Red,” and it so improved in the new
region that it soon won wider fame than before under the new name of
“Alberta Red.”
This is a winter wheat, and the plan is favoured in this province of
sowing both spring and winter wheat, as it spreads out the labour of
sowing and harvesting into two periods instead of one. Winter wheat
grows best in the southern district, but, though not quite so hard when
grown further north, where the rainfall is greater, “Alberta Red” still
proves an excellent crop in many parts of the province, and year by year
a large additional acreage is sown with it. Other grain crops usually
give a very satisfactory result, though, of course, the yield is much
affected by weather conditions.
Occasionally farmers lose heavily by severe hailstorms, at the time when
harvest is approaching, or very early frosts damage the grain, but crops
may be insured in government-aided co-operative associations against the
first disaster—which is usually very local when it occurs—and the
farmer may secure himself against the worst effects of the second by the
more general adoption of the combination of dairying or some other form
of “mixed farming” with wheat-growing.
By the way, the little town of Red Deer is noted in agricultural circles
from the fact that upon a farm near by was raised the “champion dairy
cow” of Canada, rejoicing in the name of “Rosalind of Old Basing,” which
“surpassed in a twenty-four months’ official test the previous highest
butter record in Canada, by giving the milk equivalent of fourteen
hundred and seventy-five pounds of butter.”
Dairying was “a state-supervised industry” in days before Alberta
attained provincial standing; now there is a provincial Dairy
Commissioner, who, aided by a number of experts, assists the industry in
a variety of ways; and there is at Calgary a government “dairy station,”
where butter is manufactured on the most approved lines from cream
collected at fourteen co-operative creameries. But the numerous private
creameries and cheese factories are by no means shut out from the
benefits of expert aid and instruction, while a scheme of travelling
dairies has been evolved to improve the output of butter made on the
farms.
The Association of United Farmers of Alberta, like the Grain-Growers’
Associations of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, is proving a power in
influencing the public men of this largely agricultural province in the
direction of reforms in the interests of farmers, with regard to the
marketing and transportation of farm produce, the reduction in the
prices of such articles of necessity to the farmer as binder twine, and
the establishment of “elementary short course schools in agriculture.”
Alberta has been the scene of interesting experiments (so far as Canada
is concerned) of the effects of irrigation on a large scale in improving
the fertility of the semi-arid districts in the south; and of the
introduction of the Canadian Pacific Railway’s system of “ready-made
farms.”
Irrigation on a small scale has long been carried on in Alberta, but
there are great areas which can be successfully irrigated by means of
large engineering works. To construct these, however, requires much
capital; accordingly, the provincial government has thought it “in the
general interest to dispose of extensive tracts of land to strong
companies, on condition of their constructing a due proportion of
irrigation works and supplying settlers with water on terms satisfactory
to the government.” The first corporation to irrigate on a large scale
was the Alberta Land and Irrigation Company, which has two hundred and
twenty miles of canals and dykes fed with water from the St. Mary’s
river, and upon its lands sugar-beets and alfalfa have been grown with
great success. Another of these companies is the Southern Alberta Land
Company, taking water from the Bow river, and the third, which has the
largest irrigation scheme in America, is the Canadian Pacific Railway,
and it is intended that its watercourses shall eventually supply about
one million acres from the Bow river.
In this district the great railway has inaugurated the system of
“ready-made farms” of from eighty to one hundred and sixty acres of
irrigable, and one hundred and sixty to three hundred and twenty acres
of non-irrigable land. The company erects a house and necessary
buildings, sinks a well; fences, breaks, and sows part of the land and
offers it to suitable settlers, requiring in payment only one-tenth of
the price during the first year—chiefly payable after harvest. The
remainder of the purchase money, with interest, is payable in
instalments, of which the last is not required till the eleventh year.
In allotting the farms, preference is given to men with families, and to
help the newcomers to make the best of things under the unfamiliar
conditions, the company has established “demonstration farms” in
different districts.
The new arrivals in these districts have an advantage in social life and
in the establishment of churches and schools over immigrants going
singly into sparsely-settled regions; and any man with £400 or £500 of
capital, who does not wish to “rough it,” would do well to make careful
inquiry about these farms. Some of the “ready-made farm” colonies have
bought machines, and have worked in other ways, on a plan of
co-operation, and there is great opportunity in these new communities
for the successful application of the principle which combines
“self-help” with very practical recognition of “one’s duty to one’s
neighbour.” Apart from this particular scheme, the man with capital may
purchase improved or unimproved lands in Alberta from $15 (£3) to $35
(£7) the acre.
To the man with no capital, but a pair of willing hands, Alberta has
free homesteads to offer (for conditions, see Appendix, Note B, page
297), and there is a good demand for labour, by which a thrifty newcomer
can acquire a little capital before taking up land. On the farms, the
monthly wages for a good single man (engaged by the year) range from $18
(£3 12_s._) to $30 (£6), with board. When the engagement is for eight
months they average from $25 (£5) to $40 (£8), whilst for harvesting and
threshing the rate is from $35 (£7) to $50 (£10) the month.