WINNIPEG--WHERE THE PRAIRIES BEGIN
Stand with me on the top of the Union Bank Building, and take a look
at the city of Winnipeg. You had best pull your hat down over your
ears and button your fur coat up to your neck for the wind is blowing
a gale. The sky is bright, and the air is sharp and so full of ozone
that we seem to be breathing champagne. I venture you have never felt
so much alive. The city stretches out on all sides for miles. Office
buildings and stores are going up, new shingle roofs shine brightly
under the winter sun, and we can almost smell the paint of the suburban
additions. Within fifty years Winnipeg has jumped from a Hudson’s
Bay Company trading post of two hundred people to a city of more
than two hundred thousand, and it is still growing. The value of the
buildings erected last year amounted to more than half that of the new
construction in Montreal.
Now turn about and look up Portage Avenue. Twenty years ago that street
hardly existed. To-day it has millions of dollars’ worth of business
blocks, any of which would be a credit to a city the same size in the
States. That nine-story department store over there is the largest
in western Canada. Farther down Main Street are the Canadian Pacific
hotel and railway offices, and beyond them the great terminals of the
Canadian National Railways. “Yes, sir,” says the Winnipegger at my
side, “you can see how we have grown. It was about the beginning of
this century that we began to build for all time and eternity. Before
that most of our buildings were put up without cellars and had flimsy
foundations. We had not realized that Winnipeg was bound to be the
greatest city of Central Canada.
“Look at those wholesale houses,” he continues. “Did you ever see
anything like them? Most of them started as two- or three-story
structures, but their business has grown so that they have had to be
pushed up to six stories or more. Winnipeg is one of the chief markets
of western North America. If you had a pair of long-distance glasses
that would enable you to look from here to the Pacific you could find
no city in western Canada that can approach it, and your eyes would
travel as far as Toronto before any city of its size could be seen.
“If it were now summer,” the Winnipegger continues, “your telescope
would show you that you are at the eastern end of the greatest
grain-growing region on earth. To the west of us are six million acres
of land that will grow wheat and other foodstuffs with little more
labour than scratching the ground. Western Canada raised in one year
almost a half billion bushels of wheat and almost as much oats, to say
nothing of millions of bushels of barley, rye, and flax seed.”
“Don’t you think it is a bit cold here on the roof?” I rather timidly
manage to ask.
“Well, perhaps so,” is the reply, “but when I talk about Winnipeg I
grow so warm that I could stand stark naked on the North Pole and not
feel uncomfortable.”
Leaving the Union Bank Building, we go for a motor ride through the
city. Main Street, the chief business thoroughfare, was one of the old
Indian trails that followed the course of the Red River past the old
Hudson’s Bay Company fort. And it still contains some of the city’s
best commercial properties. Along it real estate has been rapidly
rising in price and is said to be now fully as high as in Minneapolis
or Toronto. Portage Avenue, which we saw from the roof, cuts Main
Street almost at right angles. It also is part of an old Indian trail
that extended from here a thousand miles westward to Edmonton, a city
now reached by three great railroad lines.
Notice the banks! Winnipeg is one of the financial centres of Canada,
with branches of the chief banks of the Dominion. Now we are going
toward the river, past the Hudson’s Bay Company stores. Turning to
the right, we pass the Manitoba Club, the University of Manitoba,
and the parliament buildings. Like Washington, Winnipeg is a city of
magnificent distances. The main streets are one hundred and thirty-two
feet wide, and they stretch on and on out into the country. In the
residential districts they wind this way and that along the Assiniboine
River. Boulevards have been laid out on both sides of the stream in
such a way that every residence has a back yard running down to the
water, and nearly all have gardens and trees. There are miles of fine
houses in this part of Winnipeg. The chief building materials are white
brick and a cream-coloured stone found near by. This is, in fact, a
white city, and it looks as neat as a pin under the bright sunshine.
The boosting Winnipeggers say the sun shines here for thirteen months
or more every year. It is true that of the three hundred and sixty-five
days of the year, three hundred and thirty are usually cloudless.
[Illustration: Winnipeg grew within fifty years from a Hudson’s Bay
post of two hundred people to the third largest city in the Dominion.
It is the greatest grain market in Canada, all eastward-bound wheat
being inspected and graded here.]
[Illustration: Corn is cut by machinery in southern Manitoba. The land
is worked in such large tracts that it pays to use the most modern
labour-saving devices.]
[Illustration: Wheat growers on a large scale usually have their own
threshing machines, but the small farmer must stack his grain and wait
for the arrival of one of the threshing outfits that travel from farm
to farm through the wheat belt.]
Leaving the boulevards, we ride through street after street of
cottages, the homes of the well-to-do and of the poorer classes. We
see but few signs of “To Let” or “For Sale.” Winnipeg has almost no
tenement buildings. Even the dwellings of the labourers stand in yards.
Notice the double windows used to keep out the intense cold.
Winnipeg lies on a plain about midway between the Atlantic and the
Pacific and sixty miles from the United States boundary. The city is
built on the banks of the Assiniboine and the Red River of the North,
which here come together. The confluence of the two rivers was the site
of numerous Indian camps and trading posts, and the scene of many of
the early struggles between the rival fur companies. Fort Garry was
finally established here in 1820 by the Hudson’s Bay Company, and a
settlement that sprang up a half mile away was called Winnipeg, after
the lake of the same name about fifty miles to the north. The word is a
contraction of the Cree Indian “Ouinipigon,” meaning “muddy waters.”
In 1870, at the time of the Red River Rebellion against the creation
of Manitoba as a province of the Dominion and its occupation by the
Dominion government, Winnipeg, including Fort Garry, had two hundred
and forty inhabitants. Ten years later its population was seven
thousand, and in another ten years, following the coming of the
Canadian Pacific Railway, it had about thirty thousand people. Since
then it has grown steadily, until it is now the third city in Canada,
outranked only by Montreal and Toronto. It is an important industrial
centre, manufacturing more than one hundred million dollars worth of
goods in one year.
Situated at the gateway of Western Canada, and the vast wheatfields of
Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, Winnipeg is the largest grain
market not only of the Dominion but of the whole British Empire. It is
the neck of the bottle, as it were, for practically the entire crop of
the prairie provinces. Every carload of wheat bound eastward for Fort
William or Port Arthur is opened here and sampled to determine its
grade, a report on which is sent on to the elevator as soon as the car
is reclosed and sealed. Hence, when the carload of wheat arrives at the
elevator it can be binned in its proper place without any delay.
Winnipeg is the distributing point for western Canada for immigrants
and settlers. There are people here of almost every nationality in
Christendom, and I am told that the Bible is circulated through a local
society in fifty different languages and dialects. Across the Red River
from the city is the town of St. Boniface, where live several thousand
French Canadians whose fathers came here years ago. For a long time
the settlement was typically and wholly French, but many new people
have come in, and not long since, for the first time in its history, an
English-speaking mayor was elected.
Some distance from the city, on the south shore of Lake Winnipeg,
is a colony of Icelanders. These people were among the first of the
immigrants to western Canada. They were brought in by commissioners
of the Dominion government when it was thought that none but those
accustomed to the cold of the arctic region could withstand the
climate. A colony of several thousand was settled along the shores
of the lake. For a time they made their living by fishing, much of
their catch in the winter being taken through holes in the ice. The
Icelanders intermarried with the Canadians, and they are now well
scattered over the province. Some of them are lawyers, others are
teachers, and many of the girls have gone into domestic service. The
largest Icelandic church in the world is in Winnipeg, and periodicals
are published here in the Icelandic language.
Winnipeg has many Mennonites and Russians. I saw a Russian church in
my drive about the city. The Catholic population is large, the French
Canadians belonging to that denomination. Outside the city are a
Trappist monastery and a Trappist nunnery. Almost every denomination of
Protestants has its meeting house, and the Jews have a synagogue.
I like the Winnipeggers. They are strenuous, enthusiastic, and happy.
They are “boosters,” claiming that their city has the best climate on
earth, and that they would not exchange the biting winter winds of the
prairie for the gentle zephyrs of Florida or California. Just now every
one who can afford it wears a fur overcoat, many of which are made of
coon skins. The fur of the coon is long and thick and the coat almost
doubles the size of the wearer. It makes him look at least a foot
broader. Some of the fur caps add six inches in height. Indeed, the
town seems peopled with furry giants, who just now are breathing out
steam, for the frost congeals the air from their nostrils so that it
rises like the vapour of an incipient volcano.
The women here also dress in furs. Their cheeks are red from Jack
Frost’s nipping cold, and the ozone in the air paints their eyes
bright. When they begin to talk one knows at once that they are the
wives and the daughters of the giants beside them, for they sing the
praises of Winnipeg as loud as the men.
Until 1912 Manitoba contained only half as much land as it does to-day.
It was almost a perfect square and was known as the “Postage Stamp”
province. Then a section of the Northwest Territories was added to it,
and now it is as large as North Dakota, South Dakota, Missouri, and
Indiana combined. From the Lake of the Woods and the Ontario boundary
it extends westward to Saskatchewan, while from the boundary of North
Dakota and Minnesota it stretches northward for a distance almost as
long as from New York to Chicago.
Although known as a prairie province, as a matter of fact, only five
per cent. of Manitoba is rightly included under this designation. This
is in the southern part, where the fertile Red River Valley grows some
of the finest wheat of all Canada. Three fourths of the province is
covered with forest, mostly second growth, which has sprung up since
the great forest fires in the past swept over the country. In the north
are also vast regions of barren land and muskeg, whose only value is in
their game and fish. Near The Pas, four hundred and eighty-three miles
north of Winnipeg, is a region of minerals, where deposits of copper,
gold, and silver are known to exist, but where the developments as yet
are of no great importance.
About five hundred miles north of Winnipeg is a belt of clay land
similar to that I have described in Ontario. This belt is level and
well adapted to mixed farming. The Winnipeggers tell me that the
railway built toward Hudson Bay has done much to open that part of
Manitoba to settlement. The climate is said to be warmer than that of
Winnipeg, owing to the absence of windswept plains and the proximity
of the waters of Hudson Bay, which have a temperature higher than
those of Lake Superior. Hardy grains and vegetables can be grown, and
strawberries have been raised at The Pas.
The first charter to build a railway to Hudson Bay was granted as far
back as 1880, and the project has been under discussion more or less
ever since. The various Canadian trunk lines at different times have
made plans for extensions to the Bay, and I am told that James J. Hill
once owned a concession to build such a line. The railway from Winnipeg
to The Pas on the Saskatchewan River was completed about 1906, and from
there it was planned to extend it on to Hudson Bay. Actual work was
held up a long time because of a controversy as to whether the northern
terminus should be at Port Nelson or farther north at Fort Churchill.
Port Nelson was finally decided upon in 1912 and work was resumed.
As there were no settlements along the route, and as the builders had
to carry with them all their supplies and food, the line was pushed
northward a short distance at a time, and progress was slow. The
plans included a harbour at Port Nelson and the erection there of
two four-million bushel wheat elevators. However, the ships loaded
with supplies for the new port met with disaster, and later it was
learned that the entire appropriation for the railway had been spent
leaving the line far from completion. The project was finally abandoned
in 1917, when three hundred and thirty-two of the four hundred and
twenty-four miles from The Pas to Port Nelson had been built. An
irregular service has been since maintained to Mile 214, mostly for the
accommodation of miners and hunters.
The Hudson Bay route would bring the wheat of the Northwest a thousand
miles nearer the ocean. Port Nelson is as near Liverpool as is
Montreal, and a carload of wheat from Regina in Saskatchewan could be
at the Hudson Bay port in the same time it would take to reach Fort
William. The distance from Winnipeg to Liverpool via Hudson Bay is
three thousand miles, whereas by Montreal it is 4228 miles. Passengers
to England from St. Paul and Minneapolis by using this route would
shorten their railroad journey by at least five or six hundred miles.
The chief objection to the completion of the Hudson Bay railway is the
difficulty of navigating, not the Bay itself, but Hudson Strait, which
leads into it. The strait opens out into the Atlantic a little below
Greenland. It is between four and five hundred miles long, and from
fifty to two hundred miles wide. From the middle of October until June
it is sure to be full of ice from the Arctic Ocean, and some parts of
it are usually blocked for a month longer. Moreover, it is not safe to
rely upon it being open later than the first week in October.