A PRAIRIE TOWN AND THE PRAIRIE POLICE
Any one who knows the plains of Canada is aware that they rise in
three tiers, the rise having a westward trend, and that the scenery
of them varies as greatly as does the vegetation. Any one who has
only been through the Canadian plains in the train is under the
impression that, save for a bit of rolling country here and there in
the distance, they are as level as a billiard table; and that, except
that parts are cultivated and other parts are not, they look the same
almost from start to finish.
The moral is obvious. Do not suppose that from the train you can see
even the surface of the world.
This seemingly endless flat land, then, holds hills and gullies,
rivers and lakes--everything indeed but trees. But what am I saying?
There are heaps of trees in reality. Only they have a habit of
concealing themselves, and {126} those who want to see them in haste
should perhaps take a guide.
There is more monotony in the towns of the plains, I think, than in
the plains themselves. Not but what these towns must have
differences known to their inhabitants. A man who lived in Moosejaw
might conceivably deny that he could feel equally at home in Regina.
A citizen of Regina would not dream of admitting that he could find
his way blindfold about Moosejaw. Nevertheless all these little
towns are singularly alike in construction. It is reasonable that
they should be. They are all centres of a country engaged in a
single great industry--the raising of wheat. Other things are
raised, but in such small quantities, comparatively, that they do not
count. And the people engaged in this great industry of
wheat-raising are on a particular equality as regards the work they
do, the leisure they have, and the tastes that result from the
combination of that work and leisure. Some are richer, some poorer,
some are wise, some foolish, but mostly they are working together
pretty hard. The towns represent the places where they come after
their work to bargain and be amused. Moreover, as I suggested in a
previous chapter, the model for all other towns of the plains has
{127} always been Winnipeg, and Winnipeg is the embodiment of the
notion that a city may be a finer city than Chicago if it only tries
hard enough.
Architecturally, Winnipeg looks as though it always has allowed, and
always will allow, for its own expansion. Other great cities have
grown up anyhow, usually on lines that suggest that their greatness
was thrust upon them unexpectedly. Winnipeg too has grown
big--beyond all expectation one would have thought--yet it suggests
in its lines that it never felt, even in those far-off days when Main
Street was the Hudson Bay trail, that it would be anything but
tremendous. Very likely it is an accident that Winnipeg did possess
this power of expanding and Winnipegers did not deliberately foresee
and provide for its future vastness. Be this as it may, the towns of
the plains are not going to leave anything to chance. They are so
planned, that when the time comes they will be ready to outdo
Winnipeg. They rather expect to outdo Winnipeg. They even warn you
that they will. Here is an example. I got out at some little
station on the plains--let us call it Thebes. I don't think there is
a Thebes in existence, but if not, it will come along soon, {128} for
the classics as well as the Indian languages are being ransacked to
provide names for Canada's thousands of new-born towns. I prefer the
classical or Indian-named towns to those that bear hybrid titles like
Higgsville. I saw at once that Thebes consisted of about twenty
shacks and a store. It was all there, just outside the station, and
beyond was level prairie again, with one or two farmhouses on the
horizon--wooden boxes, like bathing-machines off their wheels to look
at.
I should not have been impressed by the greatness of Thebes, present
or future, had I not, just by the ticket office, come upon a great
placard, calling attention to a plan of the district marked off in
square blocks in red and black cross lines. Beneath were two
fanciful spheres, side by side, such as statisticians use--a large
one marked Winnipeg, a smaller one marked Thebes: also, the following
notification:--
'In 1870 Winnipeg had 240 inhabitants.
In 1910 Winnipeg has 180,000 inhabitants.
In 1910 Thebes has 74 inhabitants.
How many will Thebes have in 1925?
Buy a Thebes town lot.'
It may be that the method is an American one, recalling that by which
Martin Chuzzlewit {129} was persuaded to buy a lot in Eden city. An
old-fashioned Englishman, straight from the old country, might even
now be scared by it, and decide on the strength of it not to become a
citizen of Thebes. He need not be scared. He can dislike the
advertisement if he chooses, but he should bear in mind that by just
such advertisements men were attracted to prosperity in the States as
much as to adversity--even in the Dickens period--that real cities as
well as sham ones were built up by them, and that anyway most of the
Canadian land thus advertised is of an easily ascertainable value.
He should remember, too, that a man nowadays, certainly in the new
world, is not presumed to take every advertisement he sees as Bible
truth. A smart advertisement, such as the Thebes one, is to a
Canadian or American simply a proof that whoever it is wishes to sell
Thebes town lots is a go-ahead person who clearly wants to do
business, who probably knows how business ought to be done, who is
likely to come to the point of doing it more quickly and ably than a
man who won't even take the trouble to attract attention. No doubt
the purchase of town lots is bound to be a speculative business.
These little prairie villages may or may not become {130} Winnipegs.
Of the particular chances a man must satisfy himself. That there are
chances is a certainty; and the advertiser is only clothing that
certainty in what he considers an attractive garb.
I am very far from delighting in the 'plush of speech,' as Meredith
called the language of the advertisers. Apart altogether from the
fact that Canadians have not as yet learnt the art of understatement,
the plush of speech is far too common in Canada. I suppose it was to
be expected. Hard by lie the United States whose advertisers have,
in a very few years, done more to blazon all the horrors of which the
English tongue is capable than their great writers have done to point
out its beauties. Their example has spread. So that in Canada, too,
a barber's is announced as 'A Tonsorial Saloon'; a hat shop is 'A Bon
Ton Millinery Parlour.' There may be some magic attraction in the
words. The desire for a hat in the heart of a woman is not a
definitely economic want; perhaps to be able to get a hat from a
millinery parlour may strengthen that want. Only I know that
speaking for myself, I would not willingly have my hair shortened
oftener than was necessary, even if a tonsorial palace should be open
to me for the process.
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To go back to the prairie towns, their future is ever before them,
and their citizens talk of them in the same proud, fond spirit as
that in which a mother will discuss the career of the
creature-in-the-perambulator, which for the ordinary person is too
embryo to be distinguished as either a boy or a girl. Already, of
course, the prairie towns are of all sizes, though you must never
judge them by the size they are. Take Regina. It is a capital city,
but the usual definition of a line--only reversed--best describes it.
It has breadth without length. Its streets, which are called
avenues, are astonishingly wide, the more astonishingly, because as
soon as you start to walk along them they come to an end in prairie.
I thought a notice which caught my eye as I wandered through the town
rather characteristic. The notice was pasted outside a half-built
block. It ran:--
'These premises will be open by September 5.'
It was long past 5th September, and those premises were not going to
be open for some weeks to come. The roof was not on yet, and in fact
I think the fourth wall had to go up. Still, when they were opened,
they would be fine and solid. You could see that. It is the same
with many of these western towns {132} themselves. Some day they,
too, are going to be fine and solid, but they are not really open
yet, though a good deal of business is being done, with the roof
still, so to speak, off, and the fourth wall still to go up. On the
outskirts of Regina, for example, there are some 1911 Exhibition
buildings which look rather larger than Regina itself. That is
enterprise.
I stayed a whole day in Regina because I wanted to see the barracks
of the famous North-West Mounted Police. It was a very hot day, and
I was not sure where the barracks were, so I went into a hotel,
partly to find out, partly to have a drink. The hotel was cool and
pleasant, and after a little while a well-dressed gentleman came over
and began chatting. We talked of various things, and then he asked
me if I would not like to have my suit pressed for Sunday, as he
would do it for a dollar. I said I should like it very well, but I
had not time for it as I had to go out to the police barracks.
'You don't think of joining them, do you?' he inquired with much
disdain.
'Why?' I asked.
'You're a fool if you do,' he said; 'there's too much discipline
about them. You spend {133} your whole time saluting every one you
see if you're in the police. I know what it is. I was two years in
the American Navy.'
I did not inform the ex-naval clothes-presser that I'd rather belong
to the police than press clothes, nor, indeed, did I waste any
further time upon him, and I only mention him because he is one of
the less valuable American types that find their way into Canada, and
also because he was the only man I met who had a word to say against
the mounted police.
The sun can be very hot on the prairie, and it was very hot that
afternoon when I did at last set out for a two-miles' tramp to the
barracks. Nobody was walking that way except myself, and nobody was
even riding. There was a fine dust about, and I needed brushing as
well as pressing before I reached my destination. When I did get
there, the courteous welcome of the second-in-command caused me to
forget that the way had been long, or that anything greatly mattered
except to hear about the North-West Mounted Police from the officer
who was good enough to show me all round, from the horse-hospital to
the prison cells. The latter were the least inviting part of the
barracks, and I decided on the spot that if I committed a crime I
would {134} not select the North-West of Canada for the scene of it.
I doubt if Canada, or England, has anything to be prouder of than the
North-West Mounted Police. Some of their deeds have been told from
time to time--that of the mounted policeman, for example, who brought
a homicidally-disposed maniac down hundreds of miles from the frozen
country, saved his charge from frost-bite, and lost his own reason in
the process; that of the corporal who went into the camp where
Sitting Bull sat armed with all his braves about him, and gave him a
quarter of an hour to clear over the border. But under a hundred
less-known acts the same spirit has run--the spirit of the one
representative of justice triumphant over incredible odds.
'It's made possible,' said my guide, 'partly because we have men who
regard every capture they're told off to make as a matter of personal
honour, partly because people know that if a man commits a crime, we
get him in the end. We go on till we do. Sitting Bull knew that if
he killed our corporal we'd hang him and every man with him. So he
went.'
All kinds of men are represented in the mounted police, but this
officer told me that the recruit they liked best to get was 'the
{135} young man with blood in him,' from an English public school or
university, as much as from anywhere; fond of riding and shooting,
and not lost when he is acting alone hundreds of miles from
headquarters. The district patrolled, remember, by five hundred men
is not much smaller than Europe minus Russia. Wanting that kind of
man, the authorities see to it that, in barracks at all events, he is
comfortable, and very little in the way of the accommodation for
these police could be improved upon.
The most historic part of the barracks is that window through which
Louis Riel stepped out--to drop with the rope round his neck. I was
shown it hurriedly. It is the capture of their man, not his
execution, that is these policemen's pride. Their record shows that
almost always they take him alive, with no struggle--a strange thing,
and one more proof of the reputation the police have built up for
themselves. 'What is the use of struggling with these men?' seems to
be the natural thought in the mind of the pursued; and no doubt much
bloodshed is saved as a result of it. I learnt a lot of stray
Canadian facts that afternoon. I learnt that the immigrants known
under the somewhat vague heading of 'Galicians' are at present
considered the leading {136} toughs, owing to their habit of using
their knives at random. Galicians mean roughly all those who come
from central Europe, and would, of course, include Letts. So that it
is not, apparently, merely the climate of England that induces in
these particular aliens a homicidal mania. It would be interesting
to know the opinion of a North-West Mounted Policeman on 'the Battle
of London.' Another thing I learnt was that a hundred miles a day is
no unusual distance for one of these policemen to cover on horseback,
and that of all the districts patrolled by them that in the
neighbourhood of the North Pole is most sought after. They do not
believe in English stirrups and girths any more than they believe in
the British truncheon. They do believe in sobriety. The man with
the drinking habit cannot continue, so I was told, a mounted
policeman.
As I walked back into Regina, I remember seeing in one of the
principal streets a second notice which struck me as quaint. The
notice was:--
'Please do not spit on the side-walks.'
The quaintness of it consisted in the last three words. 'Please do
not spit' one could understand. I should like to see that notice up
almost anywhere in Canada, since the habit it {137} deprecates is
almost universal. It is worst, perhaps, in a smoking compartment,
where it is difficult to get one's legs away from the neighbourhood
of spittoons. I have sat for hours feeling all the emotions of the
son of William Tell while the apple was still balanced on his head,
and his father was in the act to shoot. But it is an uncivilised,
unhealthy, absolutely unnecessary habit anywhere. That is why, for a
public authority to suggest that it may be done, provided it is not
done on the side-walks, is quaint. It should either be ignored or
penalised. When one reads, as one does so often in the papers, of
the ravages made by tuberculosis in Canada, it almost looks as if
offenders should be penalised. Certainly they should not be politely
requested to spit a few inches more to the left or the right. And
why provide them with spittoons?
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