WINNIPEG AND EDMONTON
The traveller whose imagination had vaguely pictured Winnipeg as a
fur-trading station somewhere toward the North Pole would be aroused
from such reveries by the spectacle of this brilliant and
cosmopolitan centre, with its beautiful architecture, its broad
boulevards, the magnificent Fort Garry Hotel on the site of the
ancient fort, and the civic centre in the Free Exposition building,
where specimens of all the great products of the Canadian West are
displayed. Winnipeg, which in 1870 had a population of two hundred
and fifteen people, in 1917 records its quarter of a million. It
grows at such a rate that it is unsafe to prophesy to what degree
these figures may be increased in the immediate future. A
representative of Baedeker, who had been sent to the United States to
prepare a volume on its western regions, complained to a
fellow-voyager on the ocean steamer, when returning to his own
country, that it was mathematically impossible to cope with the Far
West with any accuracy. "Why, I prepare the exact population of a
town--Seattle, for instance--and before I can get my report into
print the population has doubled." This was naturally a tangible
grievance, and one which was {142} extremely difficult for the
statistician to meet. Possibly the same baffling problem of accuracy
confronts him who would record the population of Winnipeg.
From the tower of the Fort Garry Hotel there is revealed a scene
hardly to be compared with any other on the continent. The spectator
can see broad boulevards, many of which are a hundred and thirty-two
feet in width; an electric railway, operating hundreds of cars, whose
service is said to be the most perfect of that of any city in the
States or in Canada; streets paved with asphalt and macadam;
extensive parks, where equipages not less fine than those of Hyde
Park or the Bois de Boulogne, are seen rolling along the smooth,
winding roads; churches, numbering nearly two hundred; the University
of Manitoba; the art school; and the unexcelled beauty of miles of
residential regions, laid out in those graceful curves and crescents
so familiar in the West End of London--all these are indicated in
this great centre of commercial, industrial, and social life.
To those who had thought of Winnipeg as being remote, if not
inaccessible, it is rather surprising to find that this metropolis of
Western Canada is but twenty-seven hours from Chicago and but
forty-five hours from Washington. At the time of the Chicago
Exposition of 1893, one of the most popular routes between Boston and
that city was through the Hoosac tunnel, on which the passenger
boarded {143} his train in Boston at seven P.M., and arrived in
Chicago at seven the second morning after--a journey of thirty-six
hours, which no one at that time regarded as being too long. Nor
does it require the memory of that traditional being, the "oldest
inhabitant," to recall that when the Pennsylvania Railroad succeeded
in reducing the time between New York and Chicago to twenty-five
hours, it was then held to be much more of a marvel than is now the
eighteen-hours' journey of the Twentieth-Century Flyer. Winnipeg is
forty-eight hours from Montreal, fifty-three from Quebec, and only
forty-five from New York. No city on the western continent is more
splendidly equipped than Winnipeg for business enterprises, great
conventions, and large convocations of all orders. Besides the
spacious and superb Fort Garry Hotel, she has more than fifty other
guest-houses and one of the largest departmental stores on the
continent; she has parks covering more than five hundred acres; she
has more than twenty banks; and in a single year these banks did a
business of almost one billion seven hundred million dollars. All
the grain business of the Canadian West centres in Winnipeg. In the
magnificent Union Station of white marble, costing some two millions
of dollars, there are twenty-seven railway tracks, long distance and
local, all of which radiate from the city. The Winnipeg River offers
unmeasured facilities for power, a total of sixty thousand
horse-power being already developed, {144} which is sold to
manufacturers and other consumers at the cost of production. There
are over four hundred successful factory plants in operation,
employing twenty thousand factory workers. Thus told in bald
statistics alone, the story of Winnipeg is singularly impressive; but
these facts and figures are but the mere skeleton of the story of
Winnipeg. In this northern metropolis the polarity of life in
general is changed.
[Illustration: Union Station and Fort Garry Hotel, Winnipeg]
A signal aim in this city is the culture of beauty. In the laying
out of streets and avenues the question of vista and the composition,
so to speak, of the landscape has received unfailing consideration.
All the country about is finely wooded, and with its rolling
declivities offers cool and shaded nooks and spaces for summer
outings. Here and there are lofty elms, and occasional wooded areas
of many acres in extent. These are a surprise to the traveller whose
conceptions of this region have been those of a bare and more or less
desolate prairie land. The nature of the soil of the neighbourhood
is a factor of determining importance. The clay belt begins at
Cochrane, the junction of the Transcontinental line with the Ontario
Government Railway, and it extends for three hundred miles to the
west, affording a tract with plentiful water and with every
productive condition. The provision of population for this clay belt
is now a foremost question in Canada and engages the attention of
both the Province of Ontario and of the Transcontinental Railway.
The {145} generation that cleared the bush lands has almost passed
away, and the present settlers have different ideas of pioneer life.
One age does not repeat itself. The continual invention of machinery
that liberates human life has its dominating influence, and all signs
of the times point to new methods of entering on new settlements.
The British settlers who arrive are not accustomed to the clearing of
timber-lands, yet this clay belt has probably resources to sustain a
population of from one to two million people, and the climate is no
more severe than that of Quebec or of northern Maine. The
transformation of this region of wilderness into a well-populated
country would provide a much-needed link between Eastern and Western
Canada. The distances, as we have seen, between Winnipeg and other
of the great centres both in the Dominion and in the United States
are by no means appalling; and with the splendid railway facilities
now provided by the new Trans-continental route between Winnipeg,
Toronto, and Montreal, by way of Cochrane, Cobalt, and North Bay,
across New Ontario, and through the Highlands of the same Province, a
route that only opened on July 13, 1915, this region is abounding in
attractions for the new settler.
There are two sources of revenue which are of unmeasured value; one
is that of pulpwood which can be advantageously disposed of, and the
other that of employment in constructing government roads. Another
inducement will be that of the {146} "ready-made farm." This scheme
has been utilised to some extent in Alberta and in New Brunswick as
an inducement to colonists. Thousands of these farms, on which
buildings have been erected and a small area placed under
cultivation, with stock and farming implements furnished, have been
placed at the disposal of settlers, each for a small cash payment,
and with the conditions of subsequent payments made most liberal and
lenient. In Ontario the scheme has not yet been worked out in
detail; but the government of the Province is favourable toward
adopting a similar system, building a house and barn and clearing ten
acres on a farm of a hundred and sixty acres, as well as advancing a
limited sum of money for the purchase of stock. The Ontario
government also propose arrangements for assisting the farmer in
marketing his pulpwood.
All these conditions of the surrounding country are of vital
importance to the city of Winnipeg. The settlement of wild lands,
the development of industrial resources, centres of population
springing up in new sections--all these directly contribute to the
growth and importance of the metropolitan centre. The civilisation
of Canada has proceeded more rapidly in the transformation of the
wilderness into populated lands than did that of the western part of
the United States. Four years after the formation of the Dominion
(July 1, 1867) Canada had extended across the entire continent. By
the conditions of the time, both in applied inventions {147} and in
the degree of progress achieved by man, Canada has escaped the
disadvantage that the long efforts of pioneer life entail upon a
nation. The new towns and cities begin with well-paved streets,
electric lighting, and electric transit.
Winnipeg, since 1899, has owned and operated its own water system,
which is the hydro-electric power plant. The architecture is largely
of a permanent nature, the designs following the latest developments
of taste, skill, and efficient construction. Much of it compares
favourably with the best architecture of New York or Washington. The
blocks of handsome residences; the architectural taste of the public
buildings; and the constant series of lawns, with their flowers and
plants, leafy shrubs and luxuriant trees, make the city one of
exceeding beauty and attractiveness. Churches, schools (and they are
among the best in Canada), theatres, and lecture halls abound; the
libraries are particularly enlightened and helpful and their growth
and extension are only comparable with the library developments of
St. Paul and Minneapolis, of Los Angeles and other young cities of
the most advanced degrees of progress. "The world of books is still
the world," wrote Mrs. Browning; and the community that renews its
resources from the best that has been thought and said in the world,
as it is conserved in literature, will be that which is the more
efficient in all that makes for human advancement. Familiarity with
the best literature has the {148} most potent of influences for good
taste, good manners, high ideals of conduct, mutual courtesy, and
self-respect.
Canada cannot afford to ignore Matthew Arnold's wise warning not to
mistake material achievement for civilisation. In its true and full
significance, civilisation means "the humanisation of man in society;
his making progress there towards his true and full humanity. We
hear a nation called highly civilised," Mr. Arnold proceeds to say,
"by reason of its industry, commerce, and wealth, or by reason of its
liberty or equality, or by reason of its numerous churches, schools,
libraries, and newspapers. But there is something in human nature,
some instinct of growth, some law of perfection, which rebels against
this narrow account of the matter. Do not tell me, says human
nature, of the magnitude of your industry and commerce; of the
beneficence of your institutions, your freedom, your equality; of the
great and growing number of your churches and schools, libraries and
newspapers; tell me also if your civilisation--which is the grand
name you give to all this development--tell me if your civilisation
is interesting."
Carlyle, as Matthew Arnold reminds us, once wrote to a younger
brother who thought of emigrating to the United States: "Could you
banish yourself from all that is interesting to your mind, forget the
history, the glorious institutions, the noble {149} principles of old
Scotland--that you might eat a better dinner, perhaps?"
Mr. Arnold hastens to disclaim any sympathy with the idea that young
men should not emigrate; it was the term "interesting" that caught
his eye in Carlyle's counsel, and it is for that element that he
makes his eloquent plea. It is that element, moreover, which the
young and splendid city of Winnipeg may well reckon as one of its
fundamental characteristics. In the _Journal Intime_ of M. Amiel,
the reader finds him saying that "the human heart is, as it were,
haunted by confused reminiscences of an age of gold; or, rather, by
aspirations toward a harmony of things which every-day reality denies
to us." In all the appointments of wealth and luxury, M. Amiel made
an effort to realise or to approach this ideal, and thus finds in
this order of life one form of poetry. Society demands distinction
and beauty as a component part of human nature's daily food.
Obviously, a new country cannot offer archives of long centuries of
history, nor ruined castles, nor an assortment of myth and tradition.
These may and do have their part in that atmosphere of interest which
is the nurture of the intellectual powers; but the Future is no less
stimulating than the Past; prophecy is not less alluring than
history. The art of life itself is the finest of all the fine arts
and to the seeing eye may invest a city with as much fascination as
is to be derived from the galleries of the {150} Louvre or of the
Vatican. The spiritual life of all the ages is preserved in
libraries, and the youngest of cities may well be heir to the records
of this life. "No matter how poor I am," said William Ellery
Channing; "no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not
enter my obscure dwelling--if the sacred virtues will enter and take
up their abode under my roof; if Milton will sing of Paradise; and
Shakespeare open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of
the human heart; if Franklin will enrich me with his practical
wisdom--I shall not pine for intellectual companionship, and I may
become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best
society in the place where I live."
It is not only noble art and beautiful architecture combined with
historic and social traditions that appeal to all that is best in
life. What could more readily appeal to the imagination than that
visible expression of faith in the future of the Great Dominion, the
completion of a new great transcontinental line making possible
direct transit across Canada from ocean to ocean? What could more
appeal to the imagination than the marvellous invention of the
wireless control of moving trains as has been already described in a
previous chapter?
What can, indeed, be a feature of greater interest than the practical
creation of a new world; the power of man conquering and transforming
the domain of Nature? Do not Romance and Poetry {151} spring up here
anew? Science and the Muses have a subtle basis of understanding.
James Russell Lowell has interpreted this mutual comprehension in the
lines:
"He who first stretched his nerves of subtle wire
Over the land and through the sea-depths still,
Thought only of the flame-winged messenger
As a dull drudge that should encircle earth
With sordid messages of Trade, and tame
Blithe Ariel to a bagman. But the Muse
Not long will be defrauded. From her foe
Her misused wand she snatches; at a touch
The Age of Wonder is renewed again,
And to our disenchanted deity restores
The Shoes of Swiftness that gave odds to Thought;
The Cloak that makes invisible; and with these
I glide an airy fire from shore to shore."
Winnipeg has an interesting centre in the Industrial Bureau and
permanent Exposition and Public Service Building, located in the
leading business street and contributing in many ways to the swiftest
means of unfolding industrial opportunities and to the most liberal
development of the city. Both the Dominion and the Province of
Manitoba, beside all the railways centering in Winnipeg and thirty
western Boards of Trade, have installed attractive and extensive
exhibits of the natural resources, so extensive, indeed, as to be
practically complete in their revelation to the visitor of every
variety and quality of the country. The manufacturing interests of
the city are represented by eighty-five practical exhibits of
articles "made in Winnipeg." There is also a museum with a large
{152} collection of mounted birds and wild animals of Canada; and
there are historic relics and curios; as well as collections of
economic minerals and other exhibits of various interest. Winnipeg
has also, in this building, the first Civic Art Gallery in Canada,
and it is wisely made free to all. In connection with the Gallery is
an Art School where painting and drawing are taught. In this Public
Service centre is a Convention Hall that will seat four thousand
people and a smaller lecture or banquet hall seating about four
hundred. There are also other accommodations for meetings, large or
small gatherings, as may be, that are so numerous in business,
social, industrial, or educational activities. Over seven hundred
meetings were held in this building within the first ten months after
it was opened. Adjoining Convention Hall is the Central Farmers'
Market, where citizens conveniently find the produce of farm, market,
or garden. The Industrial Bureau, which has its quarters in this
building, is a thoroughly representative one, incorporated under
Provincial Government Charter, with a directorate elected from
appointed representatives of twenty-nine public bodies of the city,
grouping together the best talent, administrative, professional,
educational, and industrial, which could be brought together for the
work of public service. The Bureau organisation is non-partisan,
non-sectarian, and has no axe to grind other than that which concerns
the benefit of the whole community. It is the Civic Bureau of {153}
Information for citizens, visitors, and outside inquirers.
The Fort Garry Hotel is a social centre of Winnipeg. Its imposing
architectural effects render it a landmark in the panoramic view of
the city. Its walls, of buff sandstone, rise to a height of fourteen
stories, and the copper roof and lofty pinnacles are transformed to
molten gold when the sun shines on them. The majestic structure is
an adaptation from the period of François I., with something
reminiscent of the old chateau in Touraine and Normandy. In the
standards of elegance and beauty in all entertainments, these Grand
Trunk hostelries--the Château Laurier, the Fort Garry, the Macdonald
of Edmonton--all introduce standards of polite life that are of
incalculable benefit to the community and which have hardly before
been approached in the Dominion. In elegance and refinement, both of
appointments and of service, these hotels rival, if indeed they do
not almost excel, the choicest luxuriance and beauty of Paris and New
York. One block to the east of the Fort Garry is the magnificent
Union Station in which the Canadian Northern and Grand Trunk Pacific
centre, and which has every convenience and device up to date; and
between the station and the Fort Garry Hotel is a wide boulevard with
a double row of trees in the centre, and a little park, under the
very shadow of the house, has its picturesque approach through the
ivy-clad ruins of the old gateway to the fort; an historic reminder
{154} of the time when, a century ago, this entrance was built by the
Hudson's Bay Company in a turbulent period. The contrast between the
sense of peaceful though intense activity, under the brilliant
sunshine over the broad, beautiful streets, whose smooth pavement is
a joy to motorists, with that time when savage assaults must be
defended by the forces within Fort Garry, is a contrast to incite a
train of speculative reflection. There were "sceptred spirits" in
those days whose heroic deeds shine through all the years between
their time and our own. The history of the Hudson's Bay Company is,
in itself, one of the most thrilling chronicles of the Dominion.
From the windows and balconies of the Fort Garry Hotel the view is
magnificent--St. Boniface, with its splendid cathedral group,
Assiniboine Park, and the Legislative Buildings, with two rivers
winding away into the vast spaces of the prairie--all make up a
panorama never to be forgotten. The interior of this alluring house
is singularly charming to the eye. The furnishings are rich and yet
have that air of simplicity that appeals to the artistic sense--grey
marble floors with soft rugs and the main dining-room all in cream
and gold. The foyer and loggia connecting the banquet and ball rooms
suggest the ancient cloister with their vaulted ceilings and the
mediæval lanterns for electric lights. The café has marble
wainscoting, suggestive of some old baronial castle, while in the
grillroom there is oak panelling {155} that would delight old
England. There are three hundred rooms, two hundred and thirty-five
of which have private baths while the others have easy access to
bathrooms. What a contrast of living is thus revealed between the
fastidious and luxurious life of the twentieth century and that of
the primitive days of a hundred years ago when the old Fort Garry
occupied the site of this hotel!
For fully fifty miles west of Winnipeg extends a belt of land some
300 miles in width, provided with good water found at reasonable
depths, which is the marvel of the world for grain raising. This Red
River Valley is the great wheat-producing region of the continent,
and the journey of nearly eight hundred miles from Winnipeg to
Edmonton reveals vast fields of golden grain, while along the route
the colossal elevators loom up in the level expanse like some
colossal fortifications.
Winnipeg has been from the first a predestined centre of commerce.
It is the metropolis of the transcontinental lines and is the one
supreme gateway through which all travellers and all traffic from
ocean to ocean must pass. No other city on the western continent has
such an absolute monopoly of all transit from the east to the west,
or the reverse.
Edmonton, the capital of Alberta, most attractive in its beauty of
locality, stands on the bold bluffs of the Saskatchewan. The railway
bridge spanning this gulf is one of the finest on the continent, with
its imposing piers of hewn stone, over a hundred feet in {156}
height, with trusses of steel. Two bridges at the level of the river
provide for other traffic, with the novel arrangement that heavy
vehicles are lifted and lowered from the surface of the bluff to the
river by means of colossal elevators. The elevator is a municipal
institution, and municipal ownership is the general rule in Edmonton,
the city owning and operating the trolley lines, the electric light
plant, the water-works, and the telephone system. Edmonton would be
the earthly paradise of the disciples of Henry George, for it is a
single-tax town. The University of Alberta with its splendid campus
of three hundred and fifty acres, fronts the impressive capitol, of
cream-hued sandstone, which stands on the Edmonton side of the river.
The capitol is four stories in height, with classic portico and a
dome surmounted by a tall lantern, while the building is rendered
still more beautiful by its artistic approach; wide terraced steps,
with balustrades, ornamented with heavy bronze lamps, the effect of
which, when lighted at night, is not without reminiscences of Paris.
The Hotel Macdonald has a charming situation on the high bank of the
river, within a few minutes' walk of the centre of the town. The
traveller enters by the spacious court and covered loggia, passing
thence into the great rotunda, with its floor of pink Levantine
marble and its ceiling of solid oak. Adjoining this is a lounge,
opening on a terrace 50 feet wide, overlooking the river, and the
palm-room (octagonal in form, {157} with its dome decorated in
Wedgwood designs), as well as a beautiful dining-room, a café, and
other public rooms. As one walks through all this magnificence in
the place so recently occupied by Indians, hunters, and trappers of
the frontier trading posts, he begins to realise something of that
almost incredible rapidity of growth and development that
characterises the great North-West.
The Canadian Women's Press Club in Edmonton is an organisation that
delights the heart of the modern woman, to whom her clubs are the
very breath of being; and its President, Mrs. Arthur Murphy, is well
known to the world of letters under her _nom de plume_, "Janey
Canuck." Mrs. Murphy is one of the most famous of Canadian writers,
and has contributed much to the general knowledge of the Dominion.
Her work has received very high praise. "She has opened a new path
in Canadian literature," says an eminent critic, "and her _Open
Trails_ and _Seeds of Pine_ will inspire many other writers."
Mrs. Murphy is the wife of the Rev. Arthur Murphy, D.D., who at one
time was the chaplain to the Empress Frederick. Her work has
attracted much attention in England, and _The Bookman_ of London, in
a critical review of her books extending into several pages, said:
"The work of 'Janey Canuck' has the optimism of the true lyric; the
song of the open road. The refrain of the windswept spaces was never
set to a better tune.... It {158} is not style that matters in the
work of 'Janey Canuck' any more than it matters in the work of Walt
Whitman--a kindred philosopher. She comes scattering seeds of
gladness in our mist, and lo! our gloom is gone like a black cloud
that breaks before the April sun. She is the philosopher of gladness
and content and common sense, a philosophy as durable as Bergsonism."
Mrs. Murphy has been honoured by King George by the decoration that
entitles her to be known as a "Lady of Grace," an appropriate title,
indeed, for so gracious a lady.
Edmonton is the gateway to the Yellowhead Pass; and the beauty of its
location, the charming nature of its people, and the vastness of the
territory of which it is naturally the centre, all conspire to incite
dream and prophecy of the future of this young city of University
ideals and marked intellectual and literary quality.
{159}