[Illustration: Cover art]
[Frontispiece: LOOKING FROM LAKE AGNES DOWN ON LAKES MIRROR AND
LOUISE.]
THE FAIR DOMINION
A RECORD OF CANADIAN IMPRESSIONS
BY
R. E. VERNÈDE
AUTHOR OF
'THE PURSUIT OF MR. FAVIEL,' 'MERIEL OF THE MOORS,' ETC.
With 12 Illustrations in Colour
from Drawings by
CYRUS CUNEO
LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO., LTD.
DRYDEN HOUSE, GERRARD STREET, W.
1911
{v}
PREFACE
You know how long ago, in the earlier-than-Victorian days, the
country cousin, in order to see life, went up to the Metropolis. A
terrible journey it was, but well worth the labour and anxiety.
Accounts are still extant of how the bustle and noise of the streets
amazed him, of how endless the houses seemed, how startled he was by
the glittering, clattering folk, how innocent and countrified he felt
by comparison with them. Nowadays, though the London we know is to
that old London as a vast and sleepless city to a small somnolent
town, the country cousin is no longer carried off his feet by a visit
to it. It is not vast enough or noisy enough or new enough to
impress him. Perhaps no single city ever will be again.
But Canada! Some Winnipeg school teachers who came over recently to
see London, told a journalist that it seemed so quiet compared with
Canadian cities. 'In our cities,' {vi} they said, 'it is impossible
to escape from the noise of the streets.' ... Yet the streets and the
cities are not really the things that impress one most in Canada.
The amazing things are the forests and the fields, the prairies and
the lakes and the mountains: all the illimitable space and the
irrepressible men who are closing it in and giving it names for us to
know it by.
Clearly the English country cousin who wishes to be impressed should
go to Canada. It is as easy to reach as London was in the old days,
and there are no highwaymen. He will come back--if he comes
back--with many stories to tell his friends of the wonders he has
seen and of the still more incredible things that will soon be
visible. That is at least my position. I went out originally for
the _Bystander_, which wanted its Canadian news, like all its other
news, up-to-date and not too solemn, and I am indebted to the editor
of that journal for permission to make use in parts of the articles I
sent him for this book, in which, by the way, I have still
endeavoured to avoid solemnity. For some reason or other, many
writers upon Canada do fall into a solemn and portentous way of
describing the country--with the result {vii} that people who know
nothing of the facts say to themselves, 'This is indeed an important
Dominion, but dull.' As a matter of fact, of course, Canada is a
highly exciting country--from its grizzly bears to its political
problems--and having spent delightful months in various parts, some
well known, others, such as the French River, the Columbia Valley,
and the Selkirks, very little known; riding in trains or on mountain
ponies, sometimes trying to catch maskinongés (a tigerish kind of
pike), sometimes trying to catch prime ministers (who cannot be
described in such a general way)--I have tried to set down my
impressions as incompletely as I received them. Never, I hope, have
I fallen into the error of describing exactly how many salmon are
canned in the Dominion, or what Sir Wilfrid Laurier should do if he
really wishes to remain a great party leader. The errors I have
fallen into will be obvious, and I need not run through them here....
As for criticisms--if now and then I stop to make some--if I start
saying, 'Canada is a great country, nevertheless, we do some things
just as well or better at home,' no Canadian need mind. Country
cousins have said just {viii} that sort of thing from all time.
Every cousin--even the most countrified--makes some reservations in
favour of his own place; he would not be worth entertaining
otherwise. If the criticisms are pointless, Canadians may say, 'What
can you expect from a country cousin?' If there is something in
them, they will be entitled to remark, 'This English country cousin
shows some intelligence. But then he has been to Canada--the centre
of things.'
{ix}
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. THE START FROM LIVERPOOL
II. THE STEERAGE PASSAGE
III. LANDING IN CANADA
IV. A FAIRLY LONG DAY IN QUEBEC
V. THE ATTRACTION OF THE SAGUENAY
VI. STE. ANNE DE BEAUPRÉ AND A TRAVELLER'S VOW
VII. A HABITANT VILLAGE AND ITS NOTAIRE
VIII. GLIMPSES OF MONTREAL
IX. TORONTO, NIAGARA FALLS, AND A NEGRO PORTER
X. MASKINONGÉ FISHING ON THE FRENCH RIVER
XI. SOME SUPERFICIAL REFLECTIONS AT SUDBURY
XII. THROUGH THE HIGHLANDS OF ONTARIO
XIII. THE OLD TIMERS OF KILDONAN AND THE NEW TIMERS OF WINNIPEG
XIV. A PRAIRIE TOWN AND THE PRAIRIE POLICE
XV. IN CALGARY
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XVI. THE AMERICANISATION QUESTION
XVII. AMONG THE READY-MADE FARMS
XVIII. INTO THE ROCKIES WITH A DEFENDER OF THE FAITH
XIX. A HOT BATH IN BANFF
XX. CANADA AND WOMAN
XXI. THE LAKES AMONG THE CLOUDS
XXII. A SOLITARY RIDE INTO THE YOHO VALLEY
XXIII. THE FRUIT-LANDS OF LAKE WINDERMERE
XXIV. THE SELKIRKS--A GRIZZLY-BEAR COUNTRY
XXV. AN EIGHTY-MILE WALK THROUGH THE COLUMBIA VALLEY
XXVI. FROM GOLDEN TO THE COAST
XXVII. A LITTLE ABOUT VANCOUVER CITY
XXVIII. THE HAPPY FARMERS OF THE ISLAND
XXIX. A CHAT WITH THE PRIME MINISTER OF
BRITISH COLUMBIA AND A BIG FIRE AT VICTORIA
XXX. BACK THROUGH OTTAWA
INDEX
{xi}
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LOOKING FROM LAKE AGNES DOWN ON LAKES MIRROR AND LOUISE ...
Frontispiece
CHATEAU FRONTENAC FROM THE OLD RAMPARTS. DAY. QUEBEC
CHATEAU FRONTENAC AND DUFFERIN TERRACE. NIGHT. QUEBEC
MOUNT LEFROY. CANADIAN ROCKIES
A TRAIL IN THE ROCKIES
THE HALT. SADDLEBACK. LAGGAN
LAKE LOUISE. LAGGAN. ALBERTA
IN THE VALLEY OF THE TEN PEAKS. ROCKY MOUNTAINS
ON THE TRAIL, YOHO VALLEY
THE DEVIL'S FINGERS. ROCKY MOUNTAINS
A SENTINEL OF THE ROCKIES
IN THE SELKIRKS. THE RETURN FROM THE HUNT
{1}
THE FAIR DOMINION
CHAPTER I
THE START FROM LIVERPOOL
Canada and its wonders might lie before us, yet it was not all joy
there at the Liverpool docks, where we waited our opportunity to go
on board S.S. _Empress of Britain_. For one thing, the sun on that
August day of last year was so unusually warm that standing about
with a bag amongst crowds of people who were seeing other people off
was hard work; for another, I had left behind me in my Hertfordshire
home my bull-mastiff, forlorn ever since I had begun packing, and not
a bit deceived by the bone she had been supplied with at parting.
Even while she had gnawed it, she had whined. All those other people
already on the great ship, the people in the bows--the
emigrants--were leaving more even than a bull-mastiff: friends--for
who knew how long?--their parents in England perhaps for ever. Here
were thoughts to obscure the {2} pleasure of those who were making
for a new world, thoughts to sadden those who, whether by their own
choice or not, were staying behind. Less than my bull-mastiff could
they be either deceived or solaced. True, they might remember that
this is the way a great Empire is made. We talk of the Empire often
enough. But then we who talk of it are rarely those who make it or
suffer for it; and perhaps we are therefore more easily consoled by a
great idea than they.
Luckily going on board ship has to be a bustling business. My two
companions and I, who had been promised a four-berth third-class
cabin between us, had to bustle quite a lot--to different gangways
from which we were rapidly sent back and into various queues, which
turned out, after we had waited in them for some time, to be composed
of some other class of passenger. We were extremely heated before we
found ourselves in the end about to be passed up a gangway at which
the medical inspection of a group of Scandinavians was at the moment
going on. Scandinavian seems to be a roomy word which covers all
Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, Lapps; and no foreigners not coming under
this category are carried by the 'Empress' boats.
{3}
The theory seems to be in regard to them that they are the only right
and proper shipmates for English emigrants going to Canada. They
were being pretty carefully examined all the same, men and women
alike. The doctors' attention seemed to centre on their heads and
eyelids. Hats were pulled off as they came level with them, and
tow-coloured hair was grasped and peered into apparently with
satisfactory results, for only a couple of elderly people were held
back for a few minutes; and they I fancy had not passed the eye test,
and were therefore not free from suspicion of having trachoma--a not
uncommon North European disease supposed to cause total blindness,
which is least of all to be desired in a new country. The two
detained Scandinavians were re-examined and passed, after which our
turn came. I think we all three felt a little uneasy in the eyelids
as we advanced upon the doctor, but we need not have been anxious,
for after a swift glance at us he reassured us by grinning and
saying, 'There's nothing wrong with you, I should say,'--and so we
passed on board. For the next hour or two we were part of a whirl of
confused humanity. There is always a tendency among landsmen to
become sheepish at sea, and in the steerage there were nine {4}
hundred of us, most of whom had never been at sea before. So we
rushed together and got jammed down companionways and in passages
which even on so big a liner as this could not hold us all abreast,
and scrummed to find the numbers of our berths from the steward, and
flung ourselves in masses upon our baggage, and pressed pell-mell to
the sides of the ship to wave good-bye, and formed a solid tossing
square saloonwards when bells rang and we thought they might mean
meals.
Of course there must have been even then self-possessed passengers,
who knew what they were about and only seemed to be lost with the
crowd, and to be vaguely trying to muddle through. Canadians
returning to their own country were conspicuous later by reason of
their cool bearing and air of knowing their way about the world. And
the invisible discipline of the ship that was to turn us all later
into reasonable and orderly individuals was no doubt already at work.
But the impression any one looking down on us that first evening
would have received would have been the impression of a scurrying
crowd, fancifully and variously dressed for its Atlantic
voyage--clerks in pink shirts and high collars and bowler hats,
peasants in smocks, women in the {5} very latest flapping head-gear,
or bareheaded and shawled, infants either terribly smart or mere
bundles of old clothes.
Up on the first-class deck superior people were walking calmly about
with just the right clothes and manners for such a small event as
crossing the Atlantic must have been to most of them. Occasionally
one of these upper folk would come to the rails, lean over and
smilingly stare at us: wondering perhaps at our confusion. But then
all our fortunes were embarked on the ship, and only a little part of
theirs.
When I went to sleep that night on a clean straw mattress in a lower
berth, with a pleasant air blowing in through the port-hole in the
passage, we were, I suppose, out to sea, and the air was Atlantic
air, and no longer that of the old country.
{6}