THE HAPPY FARMERS OF THE ISLAND
There are no lotus-lands attached to the Dominion, and will not be,
unless we make over to it at some date the West Indies. But because
Vancouver Island has a climate excelling that of any other part of
Canada, and a beauty of scenery not surpassed anywhere; because also
the men who have settled there have reckoned these possessions dearer
than other things, such as the fat soil of the prairie and the chance
of growing quickly rich, Canadians of the mainland are given at times
to lay a charge of lotus-eating against them. I think the charge is
an unfair one. Life may be less strenuous on the island, and there
are men there, no doubt, who take their work there over easily.
Against this has to be set the fact that the work that does go on in
Vancouver Island goes on all the year round, that the colonists are
men with an eye to the far future as well as to the immediate {267}
one (they have, that is to say, an English ideal of permanent
residence instead of the notion of getting what they can from the
place and decamping), and that in their hands, if the island is not
being developed as fast as it might be, it is at least safe from
spoliation and waste. Some day, when the mainland Canadians have
time to consider the amenities of a country life as well as the
necessities, they will find themselves going to the island for hints.
As one crosses from Vancouver, the beauty of the straits prepares one
a little for the beauty of the island which, so far as I saw it, has
no bare or ugly places. Its coast-line has the contour of the
Scandinavian fiords, but its charm is greater, owing to the luxuriant
growth of the tall and splendid trees. Right to the edge of these
rock-bound sea-water lakes the forest grows--Douglas firs, surely the
finest of all straight-growing trees, cedar and maple, jack-pine and
arbutus, and at their feet, flowers and mosses and saxifrages.
Arriving at Victoria, I went straight through to Duncans, and,
looking from the train, was reminded by the greenness of the land,
freshened by the delicate rain that was falling, of the mountainous
parts of Ceylon--which impression was strengthened by the fact of the
{268} smoking-compartment being crowded with Orientals of all sorts,
mostly Chinese, but Japanese too and some Indians, all seeming very
much at their ease among the white men. It was a harmonious sight;
but what, I wondered, would an Anglo-Indian say if he found himself
condemned to sit with his cheroot among this riff-raff of natives?
and what chance of any agreement on questions affecting our Indian
Empire between the officials of India and these Westerners who admit
the Oriental to an equality with themselves?
I was bound on a visit to friends who had a farm on Quamichan Lake,
and found a buggy waiting for me at Duncans station, driven by an
elderly man who had all the Canadian optimism, in spite of the fact
that he had, in 1882, sold for a song the whole of Edmonton, then in
his possession. Another of the missed millionaires of Canada. He
brought me in the dark to my friends' farm, and when I looked out of
my window next morning, I almost believed myself to be back in
England. A little lake lay two fields below--a fresh-water lake
still and reedy, with woods or orchards sloping to its edge, and in
the distance a ring of hills. It might be Grasmere transported to
some warmer county such as Devonshire; {269} but Devonshire never
grew such stately trees, nor has England anywhere mountains wooded
like these to their peaks. A heat-mist lay on the water, and the
apples in the orchard seemed the reddest I had ever seen. Only the
grass was not English grass, though it was greener than most of the
grass of the new world. All round the lake were farms, belonging
largely to Englishmen, dairy-farming or fruit-farming, making use of
science and co-operation, but not sacrificing beauty to utility.
Perhaps they could not spoil the island if they tried. The trees are
so dominant and stately that every piece of cleared land seems to
look at once like a part of an old English park.
It should have been called New England, this beautiful country which
has so many English people in it, which carries on so much of the
English tradition and sentiment, and which has even the English
pheasant. I saw thousands of pheasants during the days I spent
there. They were put down on the island not so very many years ago,
and they have increased enormously. The deer were already there, and
you may see them in the orchards, unless they are very high-fenced,
at almost any time in the early morning. And there are {270} grouse
and partridges in plenty too, and beasts that England no longer
possesses--the coon and the puma, and the bear and the wolverine. To
see the salmon leaping all across Cowichan Bay, on a bright October
morning, is a sight for sore eyes, if they happen to be an angler's.
To drive along the roads is to realise instantly that they are the
best roads in the Dominion. Duncans is particularly English, even
for Vancouver Island. I think it is vanity and a certain cause of
vexation to expect in the new world a conformity to the ways of the
old, which necessary differences of living--the indispensable growth
of new habits, some of them better than the old--render in time
impossible. Those who expect such a conformity are usually the first
to forget that the old country changes too, and that it is we, as
often as those across the sea, who have forgotten the ancient order
and taken on the new, generally without thought, and often without
reason. Though it is absurd to expect to find Canada a replica in
ideas and habits of the old world, it is nevertheless pleasant to
come upon a community there which, without holding itself too much
apart from its neighbours or standing out against what is
progressive, does represent some peculiarly {271} English qualities
at their best. That is, perhaps, why the island makes a particular
appeal to the man newly out from home. I certainly do not think its
inhabitants are to be charged with stiffness and unadaptability. Men
who have taken on the new life, and work in a spirit of optimism not
less than that shown elsewhere, are rather to be admired than
otherwise if they have retained, and even insist on, what is good in
the old. And a love of sport and beauty and sociability, and even of
leisure, is a good thing, especially when it is found among men who
do their own work as these men do, and more especially when found
among women who work as the women of the island do. The work is the
best of all, but all work and no play turns many people--and not a
few Canadians--not merely into dull folk, but into narrow-minded and
backward ones, who will some day have all the unpleasantness of being
rudely awakened to the fact.
No doubt there are some ne'er-do-weels on the island, but the great
majority of those I met seemed to me to be capable men, likely to do
well by what is the most beautiful, and will some day be, perhaps,
the most valuable part of the Empire.
{272}