EDMONTON--THE GATEWAY TO THE NORTHWEST
Come with me to Edmonton, the capital and second largest city of
Alberta. It is built on high bluffs on both sides of the Saskatchewan
River, and we can see standing out against the landscape the great
steel girders of the Canadian Pacific “high level” bridge, which
joins the north and south sections of the city. Edmonton has between
sixty-five and seventy thousand people. It is noted for its factories
and wholesale houses and as a distributing point for the Northwest.
There are several meat packing houses here, and the city’s creameries
supply forty per cent. of the entire output of butter in the province.
It owns its own street railway, and its water, light, power, and
telephone systems. It is an important educational centre, and in the
University of Alberta has the farthest north college on the continent.
It has eight hundred acres of parks and golf links belonging to the
municipality.
The city is not far from the site of a Hudson’s Bay Company fort built
in 1795. Near by was a trading post of the Northwest Fur Company, its
one time rival. When, in 1821, the two companies were amalgamated, a
new fort was erected. This was called Edmonton, which was the name of
the birthplace of the Hudson’s Bay official in charge. You remember how
the English town figures in John Gilpin’s famous ride:
To-morrow is our wedding day,
And we will then repair
Unto the Bell at Edmonton
All in a chaise and pair.
My sister and my sister’s child,
Myself and children three
Will fill the chaise, so you must ride
On horseback after we.
For a half century afterward Edmonton was an important trading and
distributing point for all western Canada. Furs were sent from here
down the Saskatchewan to York Factory on Hudson Bay, and supplies were
packed overland to the Athabaska and taken by canoe to the head waters
of that stream. Some were floated down the river to Lake Athabaska,
thence into Great Slave Lake, and on into the Mackenzie, which carried
them to the trading posts near the Arctic. Big cargoes of goods are
still shipped by that route every year, and hundreds of thousands of
dollars’ worth of furs are brought back over it to Edmonton, to be sent
on to New York or London.
After the transfer of this northern territory from the Hudson’s Bay
Company to the Canadian government, the town grew steadily. Its first
real land boom occurred in 1882, when it was rumoured that the Canadian
Pacific would build through here on its way to the Yellowhead Pass over
the Rockies. The excitement caused by this rumour was short lived,
however, as the officials decided to cross the mountains by the Kicking
Horse Pass farther south. It was not until 1891, or almost ten years
later, that the Canadian Pacific built a branch line to Strathcona,
just across the river. A year later Edmonton was incorporated as
a town, and in 1898 its growth was greatly stimulated by its
importance as an outfitting post for the thousands of gold seekers who
made their way to the Klondike by the overland route.
[Illustration: Four fifths of the coal reserves in the Dominion are
in Alberta. In addition to the big producing mines, there are many
“country banks,” where the settlers can come and dig out the coal for
themselves.]
[Illustration: Throughout central Alberta are many dairies that supply
the creameries of Edmonton and other towns. Butter is sent from here to
the Northwest and Yukon territories, and is even shipped to England by
way of the Panama Canal.]
In 1904, when its population was ten thousand, Edmonton became a city
and the capital of Alberta. It was then a typical frontier town of the
New West. Its main thoroughfare was a crooked street laid out along
an old Indian trail, and its buildings were of all shapes, heights,
and materials. The older structures were wooden and of one story, the
newer ones of brick and stone and often four stories high. The town
was growing rapidly and the price of business property was soon out
of sight. A fifty-foot lot on Main Street sold for twenty thousand
dollars, and there was a demand for land in the business section at
four and five hundred dollars per front foot.
That year the Canadian Northern transcontinental line reached Edmonton,
and four years later the Grand Trunk Pacific was put through. In 1913
the Canadian Pacific completed the bridge uniting the northern part of
the city with its former terminus across the river at Strathcona, which
had been made a part of Edmonton the year before. In addition to these
three transcontinental lines, Edmonton now has railway connection with
every part of central and southern Alberta, as well as a road built
northwesterly along the Lesser Slave Lake to the Peace River district.
The trains run over that route twice a week; they are equipped with
sleeping cars and a diner for most of the way.
The location of Edmonton is much like that of St. Louis. The city is
on a large river in the midst of a farming region almost as rich as
the Mississippi Valley. It is in the northern part of the wheat belt,
and the surrounding country is adapted to mixed farming as well as
wheat growing. It produces enormous crops of oats, barley, and timothy.
I have seen wheat near here so tall that it almost tickled my chin,
and oats and timothy as high as my head. The land will raise from
seventy-five to a hundred and twenty-five bushels of oats to the acre,
and an average of forty bushels of winter wheat. The farmers are now
growing barley for hogs; they say that barley-fed pork is better than
corn-fed pork. They also feed wheat to cattle and sheep. Indeed, when
I was at Fort William I was told that thousands of sheep are fattened
there each winter on the elevator screenings.
I am surprised at the climate of Edmonton. For most of the winter it
is as mild as that of our central states. The weather is tempered by
the Japanese current, just as western Europe is affected by the Gulf
Stream. The warm winds that blow over the Rockies keep British Columbia
green the year round and take the edge off the cold at Edmonton and
Calgary.
Edmonton is an important coal centre, with thirty mines in its
vicinity. Indeed, Alberta’s coal deposits are estimated to contain
1,000,000,000,000 tons, which is one seventh of the total supply of the
world. It is eighty per cent. of Canada’s coal reserves. Coal is found
throughout about half of the province from the United States boundary
to the Peace River, and is mined at the rate of about five million tons
a year. Half of the product is lignite, about two per cent. anthracite,
and the remainder bituminous. Nova Scotia is a close second in the coal
production of the Dominion, and British Columbia ranks third.
Because of the long haul across the prairies, Alberta coal cannot
compete in eastern Canada with that from the United States. Even the
mines of Nova Scotia are farther from Canada’s industrial centres than
is our Appalachian coal region. Cape Breton is more than a thousand
miles from Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto, and about two thousand miles
from Winnipeg. Scranton, Pennsylvania, on the other hand, is only
four hundred miles from Toronto, and Pittsburgh but three hundred and
sixty-seven. Consequently, Alberta coal supplies little more than the
local demand.
Of the three hundred mines in operation, only about seventy are
important. Many of the others, some operated by only one man, are
known as “country banks.” In these the coal is dug out by the farmers,
who often drive thirty miles or more to one of the “banks.” At some
places bunk houses and stables have been erected to provide shelter for
settlers who cannot make the round trip in one day.
Alberta ranks next to Ontario in the production of natural gas, which
is found chiefly about Medicine Hat and in the Viking field, which
supplies Edmonton. Oil in small quantities is produced south of
Calgary, and new wells are being drilled in the southeastern part of
the province near the Saskatchewan border, and even north of Peace
River.
The Peace River Valley, the southernmost part of which is four hundred
miles above Montana, is the northern frontier of Alberta. It has
been opened up largely within the last ten years. Across the British
Columbia line, part of the valley has been set aside as the Peace River
Block, where the settlement is controlled by the Dominion government.
The basin of the Peace River consists of a vast region of level or
rolling land, much of which is thickly wooded with fir, spruce, pine,
tamarack, and birch. The forests are full of moose, deer, and bear,
and the beaver, lynx, marten, and muskrat are trapped for their furs.
There are vast stretches of rich black loam that produce annually about
a million bushels of wheat, three or four million bushels of oats,
and almost a million bushels of barley. Considering the latitude, the
winter climate is moderate, and in summer there is almost continual
daylight for the space of three months.
This district is dotted with settlements along the route of the
railway from Edmonton. It has telephone and telegraph connections with
southern Alberta, and a half dozen weekly newspapers are published in
its various towns. There are all together a hundred or more schools.
The largest settlement is Grande Prairie, near the British Columbia
border, but the oldest is the town of Peace River, which lies in a
thickly wooded region on the banks of the Peace. It is two hundred and
fifty miles northwest of Edmonton. The trip, which was formerly over
a wagon trail and took two or three weeks, can now be made by rail in
twenty-six hours.
Steamboats ply up and down Peace River for hundreds of miles, the route
downstream to Fort Smith being used by many trappers and prospectors
bound for the far Northwest. The trip takes one past the historic
old post of Fort Vermilion, two hundred and fifty miles beyond Peace
River town. To the northeast of Vermilion is said to be a herd of wood
buffalo, probably the last of their species roaming wild.
A shorter route from Edmonton to the Northwest, and one that has grown
in popularity since oil has been found along the Mackenzie, is down the
Athabaska River, through Great Slave Lake, and down the Mackenzie to
Fort Norman, the trading post for the oil region.
Let us imagine ourselves taking a trip over this route, which
penetrates to the very heart of the Northwest Territories. The train
leaves Edmonton only once a week. It usually starts Tuesday morning,
and we should reach “End of Steel,” on the bank of the Clearwater
River, the following day. Here we take one of the little motor boats
that push along the freight scows carrying supplies to the trading
posts during the open season, and chug down that stream for twenty
miles to its junction with the Athabaska at Fort McMurray.
At Fort McMurray we take a steamer and go down the Athabaska and across
the lake of that name. The river loses its identity when it empties
into the lake, the river that joins Lake Athabaska and Great Slave Lake
being known as the Slave. The latter stream at times flows through
land soaked in oil. This “tar sand,” as it is called, has been used as
paving material in Edmonton, and is said to have outlasted asphalt. It
is probable that when better transportation facilities are available it
will be commercially valuable.
Just before reaching Fort Smith, halfway between Lake Athabaska and
Great Slave Lake, we leave our boat and ride in wagons over a portage
of fifteen miles. Fort Smith is just across the Alberta boundary. It
is the capital of the Northwest Territories. Here the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police is all-powerful, and it must be satisfied that the
traveller going farther north has food and other essentials sufficient
for his trip. In this land, where supplies are brought in only once
a year, no chances are taken on allowing inexperienced prospectors to
become public burdens.
Two hundred miles north of Fort Smith we reach Great Slave Lake, the
fourth largest inland body of water on the North American continent. It
is almost three hundred miles long, and the delta that is being pushed
out at the mouth of the Slave River may some day divide the lake into
two parts. Great Slave Lake is drained by the mighty Mackenzie, down
which we float on the last lap of our journey. This river is as long as
the Missouri, and carries a much larger volume of water. It is like the
mighty waterways of Siberia.
We are several days going down the Mackenzie to Fort Norman. Fifty-four
miles north of here, and only sixty miles south of the arctic circle,
is the first producing oil well in the Northwest Territories. The well
was the cause of a miniature “oil rush” to this land that is frozen for
nine months of the year. At this time no one knows how much oil there
is here. The region may never be of any greater importance than it is
now, or it may be another mighty oil field such as those in Oklahoma
and Texas. But even if oil is found in paying quantities it will be
many years before its exploitation will be commercially profitable.
The nearest railway is twelve hundred miles away, and the river boats
are of such shallow draft that they cannot carry heavy freight. A pipe
line to Prince Rupert or Vancouver would mean an expenditure of almost
one hundred million dollars, and to make such a line pay it would be
necessary to produce thirty thousand barrels of oil daily.
In the meantime, prospectors have come in from at directions,
travelling overland as well as by river. One man made the
fifteen-hundred-mile trip from Edmonton with a dog team, and others
have mushed their way over the mountains from the Klondike. Two
aviators of the Imperial Oil Company attempted to fly to Fort Norman.
They were obliged to land several hundred miles to the south and both
planes were smashed. However, by using the undamaged parts of one
plane they were able to repair the other, except for a propeller. They
finally collected a pile of sled runners from a near-by trading post,
stuck them together with glue made by boiling down a moose hide, and
with a hunting knife carved out a pair of propellers that enabled them
to fly back the eight hundred miles to Peace River.
On every hand I hear stories of how the vast Canadian Northwest is
being opened up. Edmonton is at the gateway to the valleys of the
Peace, the Athabaska, and the Mackenzie rivers, and each year sees more
settlers penetrating the remote areas that once knew the white man only
through the traders of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Arthur Conan Doyle has
caught the spirit of this new Northwest in his “Athabaska Trail”:
I’ll dream again of fields of grain that stretch from sky to sky,
And the little prairie hamlets where the cars go roaring by,
Wooden hamlets as I saw them--noble cities still to be----
To girdle stately Canada with gems from sea to sea.
* * * * *
I shall hear the roar of waters where the rapids foam and tear;
I shall smell the virgin upland with its balsam-laden air,
And shall dream that I am riding down the winding woody vale,
With the packer and the pack horse on the Athabaska Trail.