GOLDEN WHEAT AND THE BIG RED APPLE
The most important product of the Dominion of Canada is wheat. Except
for a little hay and oats, the big prairie provinces of Manitoba,
Saskatchewan, and Alberta are especially noted for their production of
wheat, which they yield in truly enormous quantities. In point of
quality Canadian wheat ranks amongst the best in the world. But the
three big prairie provinces are not the only ones that produce wheat;
it is also grown in Ontario, as well as, in smaller quantity, in each
of the other provinces.
As soon as the snow disappears in spring, the prairie farmer gets out
his ploughs, and if he owns, as many of the prairie farmers do, large
tracts of land, his ploughs are worked by steam. In the North-West
there are no fields and no fences, except, it may be, round the home
paddock. In this case the ploughs set in and follow one another from
one end of the farm to the other; and when they reach the boundary of
the farm, they turn round and plough back again. Thus the furrow may
be a quarter of a mile, half a mile, or even a mile long. The
ploughing finished, the seed is sown. When harvest comes, the ripe
corn is cut down by the reaping-machines, following one another in the
same way as the ploughs. In many cases the wheat is threshed at the
same time that it is cut, and the grain put, not into sacks, but loose
straight into the waggons, which are built up like huge bins. The
wheat is then hauled to the nearest town where there is an elevator or
granary. Here it is graded, or separated into different sizes, by fine
riddles or sieves driven by machinery, and the farmer is paid so much a
bushel for his wheat, the price varying with the grade, or size and
hardness and quality of the grain. The straw is very often burned, as
the easiest way to get rid of it. If a North-West farmer has three
good years in succession, he can, it is sometimes asserted, retire from
business and live on a competency for the rest of his life.
After the harvest the railways of the prairie provinces are exceedingly
busy carrying the wheat to the shipping ports, where it can be loaded
into ships to be taken across the ocean. The greater part of this
wheat is consumed in England and Scotland, and a great deal of it is
put on board ship at Port Arthur and Fort William on the northern shore
of Lake Superior, whence it goes all the rest of the way by water. A
large portion of it is, however, ground into flour before ever it
leaves Canada, and the flour is sent to make bread for boys and girls,
not only in England and Scotland, but also in Australia, in China, and
Japan.
In Alberta, just east of the Rocky Mountains, where the climate is
milder than in the heart of the prairie provinces, a large number of
cattle are reared and fed, and there a good deal of hay is cut, and
sent over the mountains into British Columbia.
For many years the chief agency in opening up the North-West was the
cattle-rancher. The life of the cowboy, though not so romantic as it
is sometimes represented to be, has, nevertheless, its interesting side
to the man who loves the free life of the open air. "The business of
ranching has grown from a small beginning of the early days to be one
of the great industries of the West. It began when the Mounted Police
brought into Southern Alberta a couple of milch cows and a few yokes of
oxen for their own use." This was about the year 1873. Three years
later a member of the same force bought a small herd, but having no
other way of providing for the animals, he turned them loose on the
prairie to shift for themselves. There, although without shelter or
provision for food, they survived the winter, escaping the wolves,
predatory Indians, and prairie fires. Nowadays, cattle are generally
left cut of doors on the prairies all the winter in Alberta. Here the
winters are neither severe nor prolonged. "The days are bright and
cloudless, and the light snowfalls are neither frequent nor lasting.
They vanish before the warm Chinook winds, and are followed by days of
soft weather. There are cold snaps in January and the early part of
February, but the winter breaks up early in March, and before April the
prairies are spangled with flowers--false indigo, shooting stars, and
violets, with roses, lupines, and vetches, following after--until the
prairie is all aglow with wonderful colour."
In Alberta, as well as in the provinces of Eastern Canada, a good deal
of cheese and butter are made. The farmers do not make it in their own
dairies, but they take it to creameries and to cheese-factories, like
those which are run on the co-operative principle in Ireland, Denmark,
and other countries.
The principal town of the prairie provinces is Winnipeg, the capital of
Manitoba, which has a good deal of the appearance of a brand-new,
go-ahead American city. In 1881 its population was 6,000; twenty-five
years later it reached 100,000. It has a very large volume of trade.
In the provinces of Nova Scotia and Ontario large quantities of fruit
are grown and exported to England. In Nova Scotia apples are the fruit
most extensively raised; the valleys of Annapolis and Cornwallis in
that province are especially famous for their fine red apples. In
Ontario the fruit-growing region is the peninsula which projects
southwards between the great lakes. There apples are not the only
fruit produced in large quantity; grapes and peaches are also grown on
a large scale, grapes more especially in the neighbourhood of the
famous Niagara Falls. But in recent years the distant western province
of British Columbia has come rapidly to the front as a producer of
fruit, especially of apples, cherries, peaches, and strawberries.
These last, strawberries, as well as cherries, are sold principally in
the towns of the prairie provinces. The apples are rapidly taking rank
as amongst the best in the world. They are of magnificent colour, free
from every form of disease or blemish, and travel well for long
distances.
In December, 1907, an apple-show was held at New Westminster, at the
mouth of the Fraser River, in British Columbia, where prizes were given
(1) for the best display of apples, (2) for the five best packed boxes
of apples, and (3) for the single best packed box. Out of these three
events, British Columbia apples won two first prizes and one second,
although she had for competitors some of the most expert growers in the
United States. And again in December of the following year, at a great
apple-show held at Spokane, in the American State of Washington,
undoubtedly the biggest and most important apple-show ever held in any
part of the world, British Columbia covered herself with glory. The
prize-money amounted to no less than £7,000, and the separate prizes
amounted to as much as £100. In this great show, at which expert
fruit-growers from all over the United States, from Eastern Canada,
from British Columbia, from England, Germany, and Norway, were pitted
one against the other, British Columbia won several of the most
important of the prizes, and on the whole, considering the amount of
fruit she staged, won a long way more than her proper proportion of
prizes. The writer of this book was himself the proud winner of twelve
prizes for apples at this great show. Altogether it is estimated that
something like 400 tons of apples, all of them, of course, specially
picked fruit, were shown on the tables of the Spokane apple-show. What
a sight for a British schoolboy! The biggest apple in the show weighed
close upon 2 pounds in weight!
The apples of Ontario and Nova Scotia are packed into light wooden
barrels; those of British Columbia in oblong boxes holding 40 pounds.
No matter what the size or the variety of the apples, all have to be
packed in the one sized box. When well packed, with the apples all
level and even, and beautifully coloured, as they nearly always are, a
box of British Columbia apples is a perfectly lovely sight. And they
are as good as they look. But even more appetizing and attractive is a
box of Kootenay cherries, Kootenay being the name of the principal
cherry-growing district of British Columbia. The boxes into which the
cherries are packed are, of course, much smaller than the boxes into
which the apples are packed. A cherry box holds only 8 pounds of fruit.
One of the most beautiful of all the beautiful sights on a fruit-ranch
is the blossoming of the cherry-trees in May. The waxy white blossoms
not only cover--literally and truly cover--the branches from end to
end, but they also stick to the trunk and main limbs of the trees, much
as the feathers muffle the legs of certain kinds of pullets.
[Illustration: OTTAWA. PAGE 80. _T. Mower Martin, R.C.A._]
The fruit-ranches in Kootenay, and many of those in the even more
famous Valley of Okanagan, occupy some of the most beautiful situations
in the world, being strung along the feet of lofty rocky mountains,
with a lake washing their lower margin. And how magnificently
beautiful are these mountains and the deep, tranquil lakes which nestle
in their arms!