THE CALL OF THE CANADIAN WEST
The call of the Canadian West is far less the call of the adventurer,
of the speculator, of the seeker of vast and sudden wealth than it is
the call to carry an enlightened civilisation into the vast new
region that beckons to humanity invested with all the alluring glory
of the Promised Land. It is nearly three hundred years ago that the
Pilgrim Fathers landed in New England to conquer the wilderness. But
the Pilgrims did not find that the railways had gone before and
prepared the way with luxurious trains of Pullman cars, or that
telegraph and telephone service, in all varieties, to say nothing of
Marconigrams, daily mails, motor cars, and various other amenities of
life, were awaiting them. The New England of to-day is more indebted
to the past half century for its advance than it is to the preceding
two and a half centuries. So it may be fairly claimed that the
Canadian West begins with the degree of progress, so far as
mechanical conveniences and resources go, to which older countries
have but just advanced. It is the heir of all the ages.
In normal times, before the War, there was an annual immigration into
Canada that approximated {290} to the number of four hundred thousand
people, of whom more than fifty thousand were from the United States.
There was said to be in round numbers from fifty to seventy thousand
who were neither from the States nor from the British Isles, while
the remainder were chiefly from England, Scotland, or Wales. The
Irish immigration is more attracted to the States, as more than
twelve millions of their race are already incorporated into the
population of that country.
Two leading factors produce this large immigration into the Dominion.
One is that Canada is a country whose richness of resources, climatic
conditions, and scenic beauty are incomparable; the other is that
there are wise and liberal provisions made by the government to offer
desirable and attractive conditions and judicious inducements to the
right sort of men to establish their homes in Canada. Thousands of
prosperous farmers already scattered over Western Canada began, not
many years ago, with inconsiderable capital, but their intelligence,
industry, and integrity have carried the way and developed conditions
of living that are eminently satisfactory.
The excellent character of the land in Western Canada is well
displayed in the great region opened up by the Grand Trunk Pacific.
Following for fifty miles the valley of the Assiniboine River, the
line of railway goes through the drainage basin of Qu'Appelle River,
and on into the great basin of the south {291} Saskatchewan River,
crossing it at Saskatoon, the width of this basin being some 200
miles. Then on through the western part of Saskatchewan and the
eastern part of Alberta, the railway makes a gradual ascent through
sandhills and ridges until crossing the third steppe it proceeds for
the remaining 130 miles, to Edmonton, over a level country. With the
exception, and that an inconsiderable one, of these sandhills and
ridges, there is no waste land between Winnipeg and Edmonton.
In the whole region now opened to civilisation by the Grand Trunk
Pacific, there extends a belt of rich farming land from 300 to 500
miles in width from north to south and some 1000 miles in length from
east to west. From Winnipeg to the west, the physical properties of
the land are found by trained experts to be exceptionally
advantageous for the growing of wheat, oats, barley, and flax; "in
fact," says Professor Clifford Willis (a recognised authority on soil
physics), "the yields of small grain of this type were the best that
I have seen anywhere in the best tilled fields of the United States."
Professor James H. Pettit, of Cornell University, who won his
doctor's degree from the University of Göttingen for work in soil
fertility and bacteriology, finds that this recently opened up region
possesses some of the richest soils, and that this is due to the
alluvial deposits of the large area once covered by the old glacial
Lake Agassiz. These deposits have left a soil of silt and clay that
is capable of producing {292} thirty-five or forty bushels of wheat,
and eighty or ninety bushels of oats to the acre.
To "mixed farming" as well as to the production of grain alone, or of
live stock, all this enormous region lends itself. Before the
country was opened and rendered accessible by the Grand Trunk
Pacific, the region was practically a wilderness. The land was
fertile, the numerous rivers and the lakes provided a sufficiency of
water and generally promising conditions, but until transit was
provided all these were unavailing. Prosperous towns have now sprung
up all along the line of the railway, and the settlement of the
country progresses with incredible swiftness. The settler arrives
with his twentieth-century equipment. The contrast between the
manner in which Canada is being gracefully and luxuriously settled,
and that of the mid-nineteenth-century settlement of the western part
of the United States, is something with which to reckon. The
Canadian pioneer arrives in his Pullman car instead of the "prairie
schooner" that slowly and wearily traversed the plains west of the
Mississippi. He starts a steam engine to plough the land, and if
trees or stumps come in his way he exterminates them with celerity by
machinery. When the harvesting time comes, wonderful mechanisms cut
the grain and bind it, while his trucks are perhaps equipped with
motor power and swiftly carry the grain direct from the
threshing-machines to the elevators, from which it is shipped to
market. {293} Wherefore, indeed, should he taste drudgery? Is he
not the heir to all the ages?
The marked liberality of the Canadian Government in its universal
provision for higher education is one of the features of the Dominion
that can never be too deeply emphasised. Winnipeg, Saskatoon, and
Edmonton are all seats of universities, whose privileges are open to
women on equal terms. At both Winnipeg and Saskatoon are also
agricultural colleges, offering practical instruction in scientific
farming, and the ways of wealth are at once made plain for the youth
of the region.
[Illustration: Mount Robson Glacier]
The telephone service is practically universal, welding into unity
all the labour on a great farm of hundreds of acres, and enabling the
farmhouse to be in touch with city and town. Appreciating the
importance of this, the government of each province lends substantial
aid in the instalment of telephone service, and the main telephone
lines in these three western provinces are owned and operated by the
government. Thus all agricultural communities are linked together in
close contact and communication.
Social conditions thereby establish themselves on a satisfactory
basis. The comfort of the rural home is assured. There is no
isolation to be encountered. Good roads, railway facilities of the
best order that the world can afford, telephones, and telegraphs make
possible a social life impossible under former pioneer conditions.
{294}
Churches spring up wherever there are people, for religion and
education go hand in hand in Canada.
The garden facilities are not the least of the attractions to
settlers. The abundance with which garden stuff of all
kinds--potatoes, peas, beans, onions, turnips, pumpkins, and squash,
as well as lettuce, radishes, rhubarb, and small fruits--grow in all
this region is something to see.
This agricultural empire is so great in its promise for the future,
so interesting and enchaining in its present development, that there
is hardly a limit to the imagination regarding its importance in a
not distant period.
The "great North-West" is a term which has been commonly employed to
designate the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and the
northern part of British Columbia. It is rather a vague term; yet it
indicates, if it does not exactly define, a region of unrivalled
scenic grandeur, and of such potential resources and favourable
conditions of climate as to virtually add a new continent to the
world. Such is the march of progress, however, that at the time of
writing the "North-West," strictly speaking, is that portion of the
land north of these provinces stretching eastward to Hudson Bay and
northward to the Arctic Ocean and including that part of the Yukon on
the Canadian side of the Alaskan border. This definition is
according to Watson Griffin's map of the Dominion of Canada in {295}
his accurate and authoritative work, _Canada of the Twentieth
Century_, which appeared in May, 1916, bringing all matter pertaining
to the country up to date with statistical accuracy. It is pointed
out by Mr. Griffin that in the older provinces, such as Quebec and
Ontario, the climate has been virtually transformed by the culture of
the soil. In southern Manitoba it is also on record that while the
early settlers lost their crops by summer frosts, no such disasters
are now experienced. The experiments in agriculture have proved that
the soil under cultivation stores up the heat received during the
long, bright days, and that the radiation of this heat at night
prevents the fatal frosts. Climatic conditions are not, therefore,
arbitrary and fixed beyond control, but are largely amenable to
civilisation. It is this fact that lends probability to the
expectation of creating prosperous conditions for living in the
region north of the sixtieth parallel. "In fact," says Mr. Watson
Griffin, "at some of the Hudson's Bay Company posts in these
territories the clearing, draining, and cultivation of the land has
already had a remarkable effect, and if this is true where very small
areas have been brought under cultivation, it is conceivable that the
cultivation of wide areas might have a very great influence in
preventing summer frosts." If well-cultivated soil does receive and
store the sun's heat it seems reasonable to suppose that in these
northern districts, where the summer days are so long, the general
opening of {296} the soil to the sun and air should have a marked
effect.
The most reliable experts unite in the conviction that the Mackenzie
Basin is capable of supporting an agricultural population. The soil
is rich; and in that part of the Basin alone, lying between Athabasca
Lake and the Arctic Ocean, there is a belt of land 940 miles long and
over 60 miles wide. Ninety miles south of latitude sixty-three ripe
strawberries are found. A little farther to the south currants and
other small fruits grow luxuriantly. There are already scanty
settlements, remote and apart, in this country, and an increasing
population of huntsmen, fur-traders, and tourists to whom sport is
the attraction; and the first consideration that would occur to the
traveller, or to any student of this almost unmapped region of
infinite space, would be as to the ways and means for safeguarding
human life and for the maintenance of law and order. For untold
centuries this region has been the home and haunt of the Indians and
of wild and ferocious animals. The Indian tribes possessed all this
district in which to roam at will. Their means of subsistence were
hunting and fishing, and their resources for clothing consisted in
the skins and furs of captured animals. Any adequate conception of
the wildness of this unbroken wilderness is almost impossible to
grasp. The primæval forests impenetrable with their dense growth of
underbrush, fallen trees, colossal rocks washed bare by the beating
storms of {297} centuries, with uncounted and fairly innumerable
leagues of lakes, rivers, swamps--how unconquerable this primitive
world of Nature! Yet the call of the North-West, even this remote
and unknown North-West, has sounded, and the ear of poet, prophet,
and priest is that which registers the cry unheard and unheeded by
others.
It is a significant commentary on human life, in its assertion of
that divinity which man feels within him, that the first white men to
fare forth to penetrate this wilderness were the French missionary
priests, and that the intense motive that drew them into hardships
and dangers incredible was that of the love of God and the longing to
make known to the untamed Red Man the help and comfort of the Divine
Power--to bring to these children of nature something of the message
of a diviner destiny. "To Pierre Radisson and his comrade, the Sieur
Groseillers, belong the credit of having first penetrated this vast
tract of undiscovered country," writes Mr. A. L. Haydon in his
remarkable book, _The Riders of the Plains_. No romance was ever
more enthralling than this volume, nor would it be possible to offer
any adequate interpretation of the great North-West that did not take
account of Mr. Haydon's work. With the thrilling adventures of these
French missionaries all students of history are acquainted; and it is
such a chapter in life and in literature that any transcription of
the experiences would of itself make a volume. In its fulness it can
only perhaps {298} be found in the pages of the Recording Angel.
"They plunged into the unknown," says Mr. Haydon; "took the daring
leap that all such pioneers are called upon to take; and along the
paths they blazed followed a host of others hardly less intrepid. He
who would read of the further discovery and exploitation of the
North-West of Canada must study the glowing life-stories of
Marquette, Joliet, La Salle, De la Verendrye, and others."
There were also temporal as well as spiritual leadings. The
adventurous fur-traders pushed further and further into the primæval
wilderness and established forts as centres of supplies and as
definite places for their barter with the Indians. Two separate and
important companies entered on this quest, the famous Hudson's Bay
Company and the North-West Fur Company. The outposts that each of
these energetic associations established were like lighted torches
into the darkness; even this untrodden wilderness began to respond to
the first conquest of humanity. Myths and traditions also led on.
There were rumours in the air, whisperings of voices on the wind,
that some vast and unknown sea lay between the western coast and
Japan. The Pacific Ocean was known, but these nebulous intimations
pointed to a body of water never yet discovered. In 1731 the Sieur
De la Verendrye, as gallant a gentleman as ever sought his fortune in
the new world, started gaily from Montreal upon the quest for this
great sea. With his company he took the route up the {299} Red River
to its junction with the Assiniboine, making camp at Fort Rouge, the
site of the present city of Winnipeg. Rumours still haunted the air
of "mighty waters beyond the mountains," and over the infinite and
trackless expanse of prairie they still further extended the march,
but the formidable foothills of the Rocky Mountains proved too great
a barrier, and it was due to the persistence, and probably, too, also
to the greater physical vigour of a young fur-trader, Alexander
Mackenzie, of the North-West Company, that the mysteries of the
mountain ranges were penetrated, the foothills crossed, and the river
traced that now bears his name.
These two fur-trading companies became important factors in the
development of the North-West. There was an intense rivalry between
them, yet the very intensity of the discord and ill feeling became an
added impetus in the rivalry of exploration. Many and diverse
qualities are brought into play in the conquering of a wilderness.
Evil and good are always sown together like the wheat and the tares,
and even the evil has its part to play and its work to do. Of this
fierce rivalry between the two was born that activity which created
so large a number of trading-posts, and the energy that founded
numerous settlements, many of which are now recognised as prosperous
centres.
In 1670, under the patronage of Prince Rupert, there was incorporated
the "Honourable Company {300} of Merchant-Adventurers Trading into
Hudson's Bay," which developed later into the Hudson's Bay Company.
Pierre Radisson and the Sieur Groseillers, both among the most daring
and heroic explorers the world has known, excited a wave of
enthusiasm in England by the reports of the wilderness they carried
back with them. For more than a century the Company under the
patronage of Prince Rupert continued to carry on a prosperous
business, and after this was merged into the Hudson's Bay Company,
and again after the two rival associations united, a splendid
business was developed. But while the rivalry had conduced to
enterprise and exploration, the monopoly was as naturally concerned
in not making too widely known the rich resources that might thus
serve to attract other competitors.
[Illustration: Farming in Shellbrook District, Saskatchewan]
Early in the nineteenth century a large Scotch settlement, under the
auspices of the Earl of Selkirk, was established in the Red River
region. They encountered almost every phase of hardship and trial.
Great floods devastated their land and ruined their attempts at
agriculture. The severe winters, with their enshrouding snow-drifts,
their icy blasts, the imprisoning character of the elements, the
remoteness from any vestige of human habitations or contact with
civilisation, went far towards annihilating even the most persistent
efforts to found a settlement that should withstand these conditions.
By the mid-nineteenth century, however, the {301} settlements of the
great North-West had become so numerous that there began to be
requirements for larger means of protection. The Hudson's Bay
Company, at this time, held territory to the extent of over two
million square miles. All this expanse was admitted into the
confederation, to the reassurance and great satisfaction of the
settlers scattered over this wide region; but to the alarm and
prevailing dissatisfaction of another order of the inhabitants, the
French half-breeds, who were themselves a force with which a
reckoning had to be made. Their alarm culminated in the Rebellion of
1869, an outbreak suppressed by Colonel (later Lord) Wolseley. Soon
after this outbreak was quelled there came the formation of the
Province of Manitoba, and from this event there dated a new epoch in
the history of this part of the country. The conditions grew worse
rather than better. The United States were also a contributing
factor to greater discord. The treatment of the Indians by the
government of the States had apparently left much to be desired (to
put it mildly) and the turbulent warfare that went on almost
continually in the western part of that country drove many of the
Indian tribes into frenzy. Many of these tribes now crossed the
border line into Canada to seek British protection. There were at
this time in Canada some seventy thousand Indians to whom the
Imperial government had promised protection, and the coming of these
fresh tribes from the States, largely, too, {302} in conditions of
revolt and resentment at what they felt to be unjust and cruel
treatment, could not but be regarded with grave apprehensions by the
white settlers. They were alarmed at the close proximity of these
unknown savage tribes as well as apprehensive of the effect they
might produce on the Canadian Indians.
In the summer of 1872 the Canadian Adjutant-General, Colonel
Robertson-Ross, was dispatched by the Government of the Dominion to
make a tour of inspection through the North-West. He found that a
party of lawless traders and smugglers from the States had
established a trading-post which they had named Fort Hamilton, about
sixty miles north of the border-line between the Dominion and the
United States; and that they were conducting a species of barter with
the Blackfeet Indians, supplying them with firearms and with ardent
spirits, in direct opposition to the laws of both countries. They
were paying no customs duty for the merchandise they were thus
introducing into Canada. Colonel Robertson-Ross found the
demoralisation that they were working to be very great and of great
injury, not only to the Indians, but to the entire country. "At Fort
Edmonton," said the Adjutant-General in his Report, "whisky was
openly sold to the Blackfeet and other Indians trading at the Fort by
smugglers from the United States, who derived large profits
therefrom, and whom, on being remonstrated with by the official in
charge of Hudson's Bay {303} Post, coolly replied that they very well
knew they were defying the laws, but as there was no force to prevent
them they would do as they pleased."
All this inciting to intemperance and brawling led to other offences
against law and order. The Indians took to horse-stealing, and the
entire population of the North-West was at their mercy. Neither
property nor life was safe. On dishonesty and robbery followed
murder as a not uncommon occurrence and other crimes of a serious
nature were not infrequent. Sir John Macdonald was at this time the
Premier of Canada. It was on his initiative that Colonel
Robertson-Ross had been sent on this reconnaissance to find out to
what extent the lawless marauders were demoralising the entire
country and the nature of the protection and safeguards that should
be instituted for the population. The Adjutant-General earnestly
recommended the establishment of a trained and disciplined military
body, to be subject to its own rules, and to be distinct from any
civil force, though acting as an addition to whatever civil force
might also be formed. "Whatever feeling may be entertained toward
policemen, animosity is rarely, if ever, felt toward disciplined
soldiers wearing her Majesty's uniform in any portion of the British
Empire," stated Colonel Robertson-Ross, and he added: "In the event
of serious disturbance a police force, acting alone and unsupported
by a disciplined military body, would probably be overpowered in a
{304} province of mixed races, where every man is armed, while to
maintain a military without any civil force is not desirable."
Colonel Robertson-Ross also urgently recommended that a chain of
military posts should be established from Manitoba to the Rocky
Mountains; that a stipendiary magistrate for the Saskatchewan should
be appointed, who should also act as an Indian Commissioner and who
should fix his residence in Edmonton. "The individual to fill this
post," he said, "should be one, if possible, already known to the
Indians, and one in whom they have confidence." He also pointed out
that this Indian Commissioner should always be accompanied by a
military force. "A large force is not necessary," he said; "but the
presence of a certain force will, I believe, be found indispensable
for the security of the country, to prevent bloodshed and preserve
peace."
This is the story of the way in which the Royal North-West Mounted
Police of Canada came into being. These "Riders of the Plains" stand
alone and unparalleled in the world in their organisation, their
peculiar field of work, and the nature of their control over the vast
region entrusted to their care. This Mounted Police Force comprises
about six hundred officers and men, whose territory is an area as
extensive as all Central Europe, or a region five times as large as
Great Britain; extending for two thousand miles from east to west,
and a thousand {305} miles from north to south. In this great area
are twelve divisional posts and one hundred and fifty detachments.
The organisation of this body was carried out in the autumn of 1873.
The first one hundred and fifty of the Mounted Police were stationed
at Lower Fort Garry in Manitoba. They were under the command of
Lieutenant-Colonel George A. French, an officer of the Royal
Artillery who had been the Inspector of Artillery at the School of
Gunnery in Kingston, Ontario. Colonel French at once, on arriving in
Manitoba, urged upon the Government the need of strengthening the
force by at least doubling the number of men. Two hundred more were
enlisted in Toronto, and the expedition to the Far West was fixed for
an early date in the spring.
The picturesque aspect of the Royal North-West Mounted Police is
notable. It was Sir John Macdonald's idea that the dominant note in
their uniform should be scarlet as "this colour conveys the strongest
impression to the mind of the Indian, through his respect for 'the
Queen's soldiers.'" To accentuate the military character of the
force and to distinguish them from the blue-coated soldiers of the
States was a point of real importance.
This first detachment of the Royal Mounted Police made an expedition
in the summer of 1874 into the very heart of the Blackfeet country,
and returned to Dufferin in November, having made an effective
campaign in the interests of law and order, {306} from which very
important and momentous results have ensued since that time. That
the small body of less than seven hundred men should exercise such
control, not only over so vast an area of almost unknown wilderness,
inhabited by such a diversity of human beings scattered widely apart,
is practically an isolated fact in all history. To this magnificent
Force is largely due, to-day, the conditions that invest the
North-West with such promise and prosperity.
"The Force may be said to have largely completed the work it
originally set out to do," writes Frank Yeigh[1]; "so far as the
frontier provinces are concerned, a work that is worth many times its
cost, as an object-lesson of the power and authority of government
existing behind all real civilisation."
[1] _Through the Heart of Canada_. T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1910.
Still, the task of the mounted patroller is by no means yet
completed. The present force costs the country nearly three-quarters
of a million dollars a year. Their outposts are being set farther
and farther afield. Thus, from the promontory of Cape Chidley, at
almost the most northerly point of Labrador, the barracks overlook
Hudson Straits; another guards Hudson Bay, while a third protects the
Arctic seaboard, and the most western post serves to protect the gold
land of the Yukon. It is a fact, and a striking one, that on the
three-hundred-mile road from White Horse to Dawson the traveller
{307} is as safe as in any part of Canada. Of the life of this Royal
Force Mr. Haydon says:
"The stories of the daily life of these rough-riders of the plains
are the very essence of romance, of high courage, of Herculean tasks
performed and great difficulties overcome. The Mounted Police kept
down lawlessness when the Canadian Pacific Railway was being built,
they fought bravely during the Riel Rebellion of 1885, they kept well
in hand the gold rush to the Klondyke in 1889-90, and not a few
served in South Africa during the Boer War. But the deeds of the
individual men call for high praise. Their qualities of fidelity,
devotion to duty, and their fearlessness are constantly being
exemplified. A thousand miles on the ice, 'mushing' by dog-team and
komatik, through unexplored haunts of bear and wolf, is a common
marching order for these splendid pioneers."
One individual instance among the many that might well be related to
add to the annals of human heroism is the remarkable journey made in
1906 by Constable Sellers, who, with an interpreter and an Eskimo,
drawn by a dog-team, left the west coast of Hudson Bay in February of
that year to discover the locality of a Scottish ship in the Arctic
waters, to collect the customs due, and to inspect the conditions of
this region. The trip lasted two months, and before his return in
April Constable Sellers had experienced all the hardships of an
Arctic winter. Many pages might be filled with the thrilling
accounts of the adventures and the noble and self-effacing sacrifices
of these brave defenders of the law, these magnificent protectors of
human life and property, the very guardians of all that makes for
civilisation and lends value and {308} significance to life. Mr.
Yeigh's description of the conditions of life of the force on
Herschell Island is extremely graphic. He says:
"The life of the Mounted Policeman on Herschell Island presents many
features of interest. Stranded in this far-off corner of the
Dominion in the Canadian 'Land of the Midnight Sun,' he lives as near
the North Pole as possible. It is a circumscribed island home,
moreover, with a shoreline of only twenty-three miles, and with
cliffs rising five hundred feet from the Arctic Sea. Though so far
north, in latitude 69°, Herschell Island is covered with a luxuriant
growth of grass and carpeted with innumerable wild flowers. The
island possesses the one safe harbour in all these northern waters--a
harbour in which fifty ships could safely winter."
This island is distinguished as the centre of the whaling grounds of
the Arctic regions.
No adequate interpretation of the conditions that prevail in the
Dominion could be possible that did not include some account of the
"Riders of the Plains." The service of these faithful guardians is
by no means exclusively limited to their official responsibility;
they add to this that of being the friends, the helpers, of the
settlers, under all the new unforeseen conditions that confront them
in the new country. All over the Canadian land the watchword "Safety
first" meets the eye. The watchword "Humanity first" seems to be
that of the Royal Mounted Police. Their careful and tender
ministrations are given to the invalid and the helpless; they risk
their lives to warn and save settlers when a raging fire is sweeping
over woodlands or prairie; they aid the new arrival to set up {309}
his camp the first night; they help him to repair vehicles or
mechanism that has given out; they assist him to build his first
primitive shelter, and even to cook his meals and to care for his
live stock. The safety of the incoming inhabitants, the essential
conditions that render possible their establishment of a home, have
depended so essentially on the protection and the safe-guarding
afforded by the "Riders of the Plains" that their splendid service is
not only a fundamental factor in Canadian life and history, but is a
shining page in the records not made with hands.
A touching incident has been narrated in the chronicles of the
Mounted Police Force. It was required some years ago to send
dispatches to a distant post during the severest rigour of winter
weather. A young constable, a University graduate, gently born and
bred, set out with these dispatches, but days passed into weeks, and
weeks into months, and no trace of him could be discovered. At last,
in the following spring, a storm-worn uniform and the bones of a
human body were discovered by a patrol in a secluded spot, and on the
order he was carrying was scrawled: "Lost--horse dead. Am trying to
push ahead. Have done my best." Who could read with eyes undimmed
by tears such a testimony as this to the young constable's high sense
of honour and utter sacrifice of anxiety for his own personal safety?
No soldier at the front ever more gallantly faced death in the
discharge of his duty. {310} Indeed, the stranger who comes to
Canada and enters with any degree of sympathy and understanding into
the national life is more impressed with the unwritten watchword of
"Duty first" than with the legend of "safety" that meets his eye. Is
it too much to say that the Dominion is the nation of heroes? It is
certainly no exaggeration to say that heroes abound in this country
where the unmeasured richness of the resources of Nature is yet far
exceeded by the nobility of man's mind.
The growth and expansion of Canada has proceeded very rapidly within
the first part of the twentieth century. The problems involved in
this swift expansion have increased in number and importance. They
assume a varied character, because the vast extent of the empire
inevitably raises such diverse questions of political, educational,
and social requirements, that of the bi-lingual problem being not
least in importance. Then there are the problems of immigration, of
transportation and communication, including matters of railway
highways, inland navigation, foreign commerce, and postal facilities.
Sir James Grant, speaking before the Empire Club of Toronto in the
December of 1915, reviewed the remarkable development of Canada since
about 1850, and said that, marvellous as was this record, it would be
exceeded by the tremendous developments of the immediate future. Of
the new territory in northern Ontario, opened on the clay belt, Sir
James predicted that it would be settled {311} by thousands of
people, and that it would become one of the most attractive parts of
the country. In this region the supply of wood and water is
practically inexhaustible, and the splendid transit facilities bring
it into easy communication with the markets. Apart from the
agricultural, there is the mining outlook.
Even the great and disastrous war that began in August, 1914, will
not be wholly disastrous, or even antagonistic, to the future of
Canada. Great trade facilities will be opened between Russia and
Canada. Vast numbers of British soldiers who have left their
industrial occupations for the front will have so accustomed and
acclimatised themselves to open air and exposure that they will look
for life in the open rather than to any return to shops or
manufactories. Canada confidently anticipates at least a million
settlers from among these ranks. They would be particularly
qualified for the order of life required for the hardy pioneer of
that North-West defined by Mr. Watson Griffin as lying north of
Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia, and stretching
eastward to Hudson Bay and northward to the Arctic Ocean. They would
be prepared to bring to this rigorous and exacting part of the
country a hardy vigour and invincible courage in the conquering of
nature in a degree quite in excess of that now demanded in the more
settled regions. The young and eminently enterprising western
Provinces have already made the establishment of {312} Winnipeg as
one of the greatest wheat markets in the world an accomplished fact.
"In 1904," asserts a New York financial journal, "they raised
fifty-eight million bushels of wheat in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and
Alberta; five years later the yield was one hundred and fifty million
bushels, and in 1913 the crop approximated to two hundred millions of
bushels of wheat. At this rate of progress," continued this journal,
"Canada must soon pass France and India, and stand third in the line
of wheat producers. Ultimately she will dispute with Russia and the
United States for the first position. Wheat has been the pioneer of
our development, and undoubtedly it will prove the same with
Canada.... No vivid imagination is needed to see what the future
development of Canada means to the people of the United States."
That the great problem of food for the people of Europe will largely
devolve on Canada and the States for many years after the end of the
war is quite evident.
The Minister of Public Works, the Honourable Robert Rogers, in an
interview with a press representative, said not long ago:
"The prairie country will do its share in saving Canada when the war
is over.... There will be a vast tide of immigration. Where will
the European emigrants go? Will they go to foreign lands, lands
where they will be lost forever to the Allies, or will they come to
Canada, where they will be under the British flag? That is the vital
question for Canada, for the Empire, for the Allies, for civilisation.
{313}
"We want to be able to go practically to the door of every European
who is thinking of a home elsewhere, and show him the Canadian
West--tall wheat, ample railway connections, growing cities and all.
"It will be the finest thing in the world for him and the
satisfaction of Canada. Moreover, it will be the solution of most of
the problems which now confront him, as, for instance, how to make
our transcontinental railways paying propositions; how to enable our
industries to find new tasks when the war orders stop; how to adjust
our mercantile system to the changed conditions; how to till our farm
lands and start again the late lamented boom....
"The West is empty. Its natural resources are inexhaustible. We
could take care of the entire British white population there. And
think what it would mean for the West, and so for all Canada, if we
got five million new people out there after the war? Winnipeg,
Brandon, Regina; Prince Albert, Calgary, Edmonton; Medicine Hat,
Portage la Prairie, Dauphin, Saskatoon, Lethbridge, Swift Current,
and many other centres would become great cities. The salubrious
British Columbia coast would seethe with new activity and new
populations; our railways would become great earners; industries
would spring up all over the West. The industries of the East would
find a new market within their own tariff fence. Banking would boom,
wholesale trade would flourish, young clerks in the East would become
prosperous proprietors in the West."
In the eager and many-sided activities that are springing up and
fairly treading upon each other's heels in Canada, Technical Schools
hold a distinctive place. The late Lord Strathcona was a zealous and
influential advocate of trade and technical schools as one of the
most effective means of bettering the condition and elevating the
life of the working-man. The great West is not behind in the
establishment of these.
[Illustration: Threshing Wheat, Manitoba]
Now as to the conditions that await the settlers in {314} western
Canada. The land is fertile; the climate, the water supply, and the
transit and traffic facilities are of the best. But favourable
conditions do not of themselves work miracles, and pioneer life has
its difficulties. Prosperity is not magically invoked by any
entreaty of the gods, nor does it fall down out of the blue sky upon
its votaries. But with health, integrity, and a reasonable amount of
capital, the achievement of prosperous and happy living is possible
within a comparatively short time. It is related that after the
annual harvest there are people who go on pleasure trips to New York
and San Francisco, and "think nothing of expending thousands of
dollars before their return." There are farms where the owner has
his motor car; his house, commodious and handsome, is steam-heated
and electric-lighted, as he generates electricity from his own plant.
There is a music room with a grand piano, and perchance a violin for
the music-gifted young son or daughter as well; there is a library
with a good and always growing collection of books, for it is
realised that reading is not a mere passive entertainment but a
creative activity as well. A good book sets the entire mental
mechanism in motion. It is as a motor force, a power, applied to the
mind. To give one's self to intervals of reading is not merely to be
borne through the realms of thought in a golden chariot, but is,
rather, the conquering of a region of new capabilities and powers,
applicable to the entire range of the problems {315} of life. "The
key to every man is his thought," says Emerson. Books are food for
the mental and spiritual life, and from all good reading there
results a certain transubstantiation into energy that refines and
exalts the quality of life. The broad piazzas, the shaded lawns, of
these prosperous farmhouses are a revelation to the traveller and
their own commentary on Canadian conditions.
Not longer ago than 1900 agriculturalists contended that wheat could
not be grown north of the fiftieth degree of latitude. The best
quality of the grain is now raised in the regions north of the
fifty-fifth degree. All the vast expanse of the Peace River country,
for some 700 miles or more north of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway,
offers rich and attractive soil that well repays cultivation. As has
been noted in preceding pages, regions that were formerly supposed to
be adapted only to the most primitive conditions of life--to hunting,
fishing, canoeing, or dog-sledging--are now found to be entirely
amenable to ordinary life and pursuits, with a climate even less
rigorous than is sometimes experienced in the winters of northern
Dakota or Minnesota. The Japanese chinook wind that blows in tempers
the air, and many of these northern lakes are now free from ice, for
the most part, during the winter. This change of the climate has
largely been brought about by the opening up of forests and dense
undergrowth, which so intercepted the sun's rays that ice would be
found at midsummer in the dense shades.
{316}
The valley of the Athabasca, stretching away from the portals of
Jasper and of Jasper Park, is an Alpine wonderland; it is enshrined
in legendary history; it is unrivalled in splendour of scenery and
richness of colour; and traversed as it is by the most modern of our
transcontinental lines, it becomes as easily accessible to tourists
as are the romantic mountain haunts of Colorado. No more beautiful
summer resort could be dreamed than that afforded by this valley. It
is destined to become one of the famous mountain haunts of the world.
Fine carriage roads are being constructed in Athabasca Valley that
will add to the famous drives of the world, and rank with that
never-to-be-forgotten drive from Sorrento to Amalfi, or that of the
Corniche road on the Riviera. The Athabasca Valley and Jasper Park
and Mount Robson Park will be developed into places of great
international resort, as are the Yellowstone Park, the Grand Canyon
in Arizona, and the Yosemite in the United States.
[Illustration: After the Bear Hunt--Moose River Forks]
In the _de luxe_ conditions of travel through all these regions
to-day, it is as difficult to realise the conditions that prevailed
there before the arrival of the railway line as it was for the little
lad at school to transport himself into the pre-historic days before
the telephone had established its universal sway. Reproved by his
instructor for not knowing the date on which Columbus discovered
America, he replied that he could not find it. "Not find it!" {317}
replied the irate master, "there it is, right before your eyes,
1492!" The lad looked at it. "Why, I thought that was his telephone
number," he rejoined. It is quite as difficult for the traveller
to-day to project himself backward, even into the environment of only
a past century. The world into which we are born seems to have
existed forever. It is a curious fact, but one that seems borne out
by experience, that any event which just preceded one's own
consciousness and memory is practically as remote as if it were many
centuries away. This truth regarding the phenomena of consciousness
might well enlist the scrutiny of that analyst of Time and Memory,
the brilliant Henri Bergson.
Is it amid all the transcendent beauty, all the scenic glory of the
great North-West that one shall listen for the call and watch for the
beckoning to the Promised Land? Its prairies and valleys provide
every resource for the support of life, its forests offer the most
incalculable yield in lumber, its lakes and rivers teem with fish,
its mountains are rich in mineral wealth, it has water power to be
utilised in manufactures, lighting, and traction to an extent that
defies prediction; there is every contributing cause for great cities
to arise, with universities, with their laboratories and
observatories for science, while, with such a port as that of Prince
Rupert, the commerce of the world will be brought to these shores;
nor does it require any undue effort {318} of imagination to see, as
in a vision, the libraries, the conservatories of music, the museums
of art that will arise, the splendour of cities "with room in their
streets for the soul." The Call of the North-West is to art, to
science, to poetry, to religion. It is the call to the great
spiritual realities of the spiritualised life, "the power of conduct,
the power of intellect and knowledge, the power of beauty, and the
power of social life and manners." The real task of man is that of
the discerner of spiritual truth. "The universe is the
externalisation of the soul." And in this eternal quest man shall
press forward "without haste, without rest," consoled by his
divination of spiritual ideals; a dweller in the atmosphere of
spiritual splendour expressed in those immortal lines:
"I will wait heaven's perfect hour
Through the innumerable years!"
{319}
INDEX
Agriculture, 293, 315
_Alaska, the Great Country_ (Ella Higginson), 204
Allandale, 117
Alpine Club of Canada, 170
Archives (Ottawa), 80
Arlette, George, 231
Art Gallery, civic (Winnipeg), 152
Aurora Borealis, 216
Bacon, James H., 192
Bancroft, George, 14
Banff, 127
Barrie, 117
Beaconsfield, Lord, 32
Bell Telephone Company, 227
Borden, Sir Robert L., 131, 188
Brett and Hall, Messrs., 190, 191, 192
Brown, George, 23, 28
Bulkley Gate, 176
Burpee, Lawrence J., F.R.G.S., 169
Button, Admiral Sir Thomas, 9
Cabot, John and Sebastian, 3, 7, 9, 47
Campers, the true, 110
Camps: Minnesing, 113; Minne Wawa, 116; Nominigan, 112, 113
Carling, Sir John, 28
Carlyle, Thomas, 148
Cartier, Sir George Etienne, 3, 30, 34, 265
Cartier, Jacques, 3, 8
Chamberlain, Edison J., 181
Champlain, 3, 8, 56, 266
Château Laurier, 79
Clairoscope, the (Heydon), 138
Climatic conditions, 295
Club, Canadian Women's Press, 157
Cochrane, 144
Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur, 113, 160
Connaught, Duke of, 81
Dawson, Sir William, 37
Degroseillers, Menart Chouart, 9
Deville, Dr. E., 168
Devonshire, Duke of, 81
Donald, Dr. W. J. A., 130
Doughty, Dr. Arthur, 80
Exposition, Canadian National, 96
Falls: Bala, 119; Emperor, 172; Karabeka, 122; Punch Bowl, 169;
Thousand, 172
Farm, Central Experimental, 62, 80; branches, 62
Farming land, 291, 314, 315
Field, Miss Kate, 212, 220
Fiddle Creek, 169
Flavell-Astoria, 225
Foxe (1631), 9
Fraser, 3
Galt, Sir Alexander, 34
Georgian Bay, 121
Geographic Board, 167
Glaciers: Borden, 177; Muir, 212, 213, 241; Taku, 206
Golden Gate, 226, 232, 233, 240
Gravenhurst, 117
Gregory, John, 15
Griffin, Watson, 294, 295
Guyart, Marie, 49
Halifax, 63
Haydon, A. L., 297, 298, 307
Hays, Charles Melville, President, 4, 36, 179
Hazleton, 175
Herschell Island, 308
Heydon, Asa Thurston, 138
Higginson, Ella (_Alaska, the Great Country_), 204
Hill, James H., 235
Hopkins, J. Castell, 60
Hotels: Bigwin Inn, 105; Bulkley Gate, 177; Château Laurier, 153;
Fort Garry, 141, 142, 153, 154, 155; Highland Inn, 108, 110;
Lake-of-Bays, 108; Macdonald, 153, 156; Minaki Lodge, 123; Royal
Muskoka, 118; Wawa, 101, 105, 106
Hudson's Bay Company, 9, 19, 23, 125, 126, 154, 300, 301
Hudson, Henry, 9
Huntsville, 102, 108
Hutchinson, Colonel William, 239
Immigration, 290
Indians, relations with, 301, 302, 303
Inside passage, 201, 203
Institutes (Toronto), 97, 98
James, 9
Jasper House (Hudson's Bay Company), 126
Jesuit missionaries, 13
Jobe, Miss Mary L., F.R.G.S., 174
Joliet, 8, 56
Juneau, 206, 208, 214
Kaien Island, 178, 190
Kelliher, J. B., 181
Kempenfeldt Bay, 117
Ketchikan, 205
Kinney, Rev. George, 171
Lakes: Athabasca, 16; Avenue, 193; Beauvert, 166; Berg, 172; Brulè,
126, 168, 170; Burns, 176; Cache, 114; Canadian, 118; Decker, 176;
Edith, 166; Fairy, 108; Fish, 126; Great, 84, 121; Great Slave, 16;
Helena, 172; Jasper, 126; Kathlyn, 176; Lake-of-Bays, 100, 101, 102,
103; Little Island, 114; Louise, 127; Maligne, 127, 165, 166; Mary,
108; Morse, 193; Muskoka, 117, 118, 119; Nipissing, 120, 122;
Ontario, 84; Patricia, 165; Peninsula, 108; Pyramid, 165; Rock, 114;
Timagami, 137; Two Rivers, 116; Wainwright, 193; White, 114
Lampman (see Poets), 100, 119
La Place Royale, 73
La Rose Mine, 173
La Salle, 3, 8, 56
Laurier, Sir Wilfrid, 42, 80, 239, 266
Laval-Montmorency, François de, 38, 266
Laval University, 59
Library of Parliament (Ottawa), 82, 83
Library (Toronto), 89, 93
Locke, George H., 89, 90, 91
Lodge, Sir Oliver, 21
Lowell, Dr. Percival, 94, 95
Lumber industry, 199
Macdonald, Sir John, 3, 25, 32, 239, 303
Macdonald, Sir William, 56
MacDougall, Governor, 24
Mackenzie, 3, 16
Mackenzie Basin, 296
Mance, Jeanne, 73
Marconi, 78
Marquette, 8, 56
McGill, James, 3, 36
McGill University, 76, 77
McLeod, Alexander, 15
M'Tavish, Simon, 15
Methodists, the, 42
Miette Hot Springs, 169
Mill, James, 5
Minaki, 123
Mines (chap. vi.), 129
Minnecoganashene, 121
Moore, President, 231, 243
Mortesen, A. M., 231
Mountains: Hudson Bay, 176; Juneau, 208; Laurentian, 119; Mount Edith
Cavell, 167; Mount Hays, 191; Pyramid, 165; Robson, 168, 169, 172;
Roche à Perdrix, 164; Roche Deboule, 177; Rocky, 163; Sir Robert
Mount, 177; White, 107
Murphy, Mrs. Arthur (Janey Canuck), 157
New Brunswick, 60
New Liskeard, 134
Niagara, 6, 95, 96
Nibigami, 123
North-West Company, 15, 16, 19
North-West Passage, 15
North-Western Fur Company, 126
Norway Point, 102, 104
Nova Scotia, 47
Olier, Jean Jacque, 73
O'Neil, Rev. A. Barry, 240
Orillia, 117
Parks: Algonquin, 85, 100, 108, 109, 112, 114, 115; Jasper, 124, 125,
164, 166, 168, 169, 316; Mount Hays, 193; Mount Robson, 164, 169, 316
Passes: Peace River, 182; Pine River, 182; Wapiti, 182; Yellowhead,
158, 160, 163, 182
Perry, George H., 231
Phillips, Donald, 171
Pioneers, 3-8, 297-299
Poets, Canadian: Blewett, 273; Butler, Ethel Huestis, 267; Campbell,
William W., 249, 250; Carman, Bliss, 249, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257;
Coleman, Helena, 274; Crawford, Isabella V., 250, 274; Drummond, Dr.
William Henry, 250; Frenchette, Louis, 270; Garvin, Mrs. John
(Katharine Hale), 264; Garvin, John W., 272; Gordon, Alfred, 272;
Heavyserge, Charles, 247; Huestis, Annie C., 267; Johnson, E.
Pauline, 272, 284; Lampman, A., 100, 119, 249, 252; Lighthall,
William Douw, 272, 274, 275; Logan, J. D., 265; Mair, Charles, 272;
McArthur, Peter, 276; McCollum, Alma Frances, 272; McLennan, William,
274; Machan, Agnes Maule, 278; Norwood, Robert, 272; O'Hagan, Thomas,
270; Pickthall, Marjorie, 273, 283; Roberts, Charles G. D., 247, 248,
249; Roberts, Lloyd, 278; Scott, Canon, 249, 258; Scott, Duncan C.,
83, 249, 263; Service, Robert, 172, 216, 286, 287, 288; Sheard,
Virna, 272; Stringer, Arthur, 280; Warman, Cy., 57; Watson, Albert
D., 272; Wetherald, Ethelyn, 272, 284
Porcupine Creek, 135
Porcupine Gold Camp, 136
Portland, 225
Prince George, 174
Prince Rupert, 174, 175
Puget Sound, 223
Pulpwood (industry), 145, 146
Queen Charlotte Sound, 204
Radisson, Pierre Esprit de, 9
Railways: Canadian Government, 123, 133, 137; Canadian Northern, 153;
Canadian Pacific, 34; Grand Trunk, 35, 86, 120, 132, 126, 128, 137,
153, 239; Northern Ontario, 136, 137; Ontario, 144; Temiskaning, 136;
White Pass and Yukon, 214
"Ready-made Farming," 146
Rebellion of 1869, 301
Redpath, Peter, 37
Rideau Canal, 65
Rideau Hall, 8
Riel, Louis, 24
Rivers: Assiniboine, 290, 299; Athabasca, 126, 163, 168; Bulkley,
175; Don, 89; Fairy, 108; Fraser, 174; French, 122; Grand Fork, 172;
Maligne, 126; Moon, 119; Peace, 16; Qu'appelle, 290; Red, 15, 18, 25,
155, 299, 300; Saskatchewan, 155, 291; Shadows, 119; Skeena, 175,
177, 196; St. Lawrence, 47; Telkwa, 176; Winnipeg, 143
Robertson, Colonel Ross, 92, 302
Rosedale Ravines, 89
Rose Point, 121
Royal Mounted Police, 304-309
Ryerson, Rev. D. Egerton, 42, 266
St. Anne de Beaupré, 50
Salvation Army, the, 185, 186, 187
Sans Souci, 121
Scidmore, Eliza Ruhamah, 210, 211, 212
Seattle, 195, 200, 201, 209, 225
Selkirk, Earl of, 17, 19
Sellers, Constable, 307
Seymour Narrows, 204
Sifton, Sir Clifford, 131
Silver Islet, 132
Simpson, Governor, 22
Skagway, 195, 200, 201, 214, 215
Social conditions, 293
Sowton, Mr. and Mrs., 186
Station, Doreen, 177
Steamship Co., Grand Trunk Pacific, 195, 201-218
Steam navigation, 74
Sterling, George, 231
Strachan, Bishop, 41
Straits of Georgia, 204
Strathcona and Mount Royal, Lord (Donald Smith), 3, 20, 21, 25, 37,
41, 76
Taché, Archbishop, 40
Taku Inlet, 206
Talbot, Frederick A., 181, 182, 183
Telephone, first experiments, 219, 220
Tilley, Sir Samuel L., 32
Timagami, 116, 117, 123
Tupper, Sir Charles, 3, 31
Universities: California, 242; Manitoba, 142; Toronto, 88
Universities and schools, 39
Ursuline Convent, Quebec, 49
Valleys: Athabasca, 126, 316; Nechako, 175; Thousand Falls, 172
Vanderhoof Gateway, 175
Van Horne, Sir William Cornelius, 4, 35
Varennes, Pierre Gaultier de, 15
Victoria Jubilee Bridge, 67-70
Warman, Cy., 57
Walterson, Colonel H., 24
White, Horace, 24
Whitman, Walt, 1, 158
Willson, Beckles, 21
Wilson, Woodrow, President U.S.A., 243
Wireless telegraphy, 78
Wise, Dr., 116
Women and their work, 75
Wrangell Narrows, 206
The Temple Press, Letchworth, England
End of Project Gutenberg's Canada the Spellbinder, by Lilian Whiting