CANADA never knew a "Wild West." We are forced to turn elsewhere
for "penny thriller" and "dime novel" material, based on frontier
lawlessness and bloodshed.
Three agencies have been mainly responsible for the peaceful and
prosperous peopling of the West. Two of them, the R.N.W.M.P. and the
Hudson's Bay Company, have long ago received recognition for their
part in this marvel of empire-building. But there is another whose
achievement is but little known or lightly heralded.
It is WOMAN. Wives and daughters of the bearded pioneers who conquered
Canada's plains trekked west _with_ them; lived in lowly sod-houses;
shared all hardships; made instant Home wherever the oxen were unyoked.
These women helped tame a wilderness, and wherever they went was law
and order.
Elsewhere in Western America, the hotbloods, the blacksheep and fortune
hunters sloughed off from a rising civilization went into the West
without the good influence of womenfolks--and straight-way became "bad
men," "killers" and "road-agents."
Because nearly every early Canadian in the West had found _good women_
nearby, there was no "Wild West." And the influence of Canadian women
is still alive--on the farms, in the factories, the stores and in the
modern civic life of this oldtime buffalo kingdom of the Northwest.