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THROUGH THE HEART OF CANADA
THROUGH THE HEART OF CANADA
BY
FRANK YEIGH
AUTHOR OF ONTARIO S PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS ; A CENTURY OF
LEGISLATION," COMPILER OF " FIVE THOUSAND FACTS
ABOUT CANADA," ETC.
WITH THIRTY-EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS
lOl
TORONTO HENRY FROWDE
1910
X
THROUGH THE HEART OF CANADA
BY
FRANK YEIGH
AUTHOR OF " ONTARIO S PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS; A CENTURY OF
LEGISLATION," COMPILER OF ** FIVE THOUSAND FACTS
ABOUT CANADA," ETC.
WITH THIRTY-EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS
TORONTO
HENRY FROWDE
1910
-7 ^
!>^
O / ;
cop. 7.
(All rights reservea.)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I IDOWN NOVA SCOTIA WAY
PACK
9
CHAPTER n [NEW BRUNSWICK AND ITS NEIGHBOURS
. 29
CHAPTER III iMONG THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS
CHAPTER IV [QUEBEC: THE BRITTANY OF BRITAIN
47
. 65
CHAPTER V [QUEBEC: THE CITADEL CITY OF THE ST. LAWRENCE 83
CHAPTER VI [ONTREAL: CANADA'S COMMERCIAL METROPOLIS . lOI
CHAPTER VII ONTARIO: THE CENTRAL PROVINCE OF THE DOMINION II 5
CHAPTER VIII
fEW ONTARIO: ITS SCENERY AND RESOURCES
5
137
Contents
CHAPTER IX
PAGE
ACROSS CANADA'S THOUSAND-MILE FARM . .155
CHAPTER X THE FOREIGNER IN CANADA . . . .173
CHAPTER XI THE POLICE PATROL OF HALF A CONTINENT . 193
CHAPTER XII THE LAND OF THE RANCHER . . . . 213
CHAPTER XIII MOUNTAINS AND MOUNTAIN CLIMBING . .231
CHAPTER XIV SCENES IN THE SELKIRKS . . . .255
CHAPTER XV ALONG THE FRASER AND THE CARIBOO . . 2/3
CHAPTER XVI SOUTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA AND THE COASTAL
CITIES . . . . . .291
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
CANADIAN PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS, OTTAWA
THE CITY OF HALIFAX ....
SYDNEY, CAPE BRETON, AND ITS HARBOUR .
A NOVA SCOTIA APPLE ORCHARD AT BLOSSOM TIME
ST. JOHN, NEW BRUNSWICK
A TYPICAL NEW BRUNSWICK VALLEY AND SALMON RIVER ....
AMHERST ISLAND, MAGDALEN ISLANDS
TADOUSSAC, QUEBEC, AT THE JUNCTION OF THE ST. LAWRENCE AND SAGUENAY RIVERS
BUCKINGHAM FALLS, QUEBEC .
[IN OLD QUEBEC .
:SOUS-LE-CAP, LOWER TOWN, QUEBEC
LOWER CHAMPLAIN MARKET, QUEBEC
MCGILL UNIVERSITY, MONTREAL
:HE CHATEAU DE RAMEZAY, MONTREAL
ONTARIO PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS, TORONTO
CHAUDIERE FALLS AND MILLS, OTTAWA
CAMP LIFE IN ALGONQUIN PARK, NORTHERN ONTARIO
INTERIOR OF A COBALT SILVER MINE
MAIN STREET, WINNIPEG
PUNNICHY, SASKATCHEWAN, ONE OF WESTERN CANADA'S NEWEST TOWNS .
A SETTLER'S HOMESTEAD IN MANITOBA
7
Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
12
Illustrations
FACING PAGE
A HARVESTING SCENE IN SASKATCHEWAN . . 167
INDIAN HEAD, SASKATCHEWAN, AND ITS PRAIRIE
SURROUNDINGS . . . • . 17O
A WEDDING GROUP OF RUSSIAN GERMANS IN WESTERN
CANADA . . . . . -175
ROYAL NORTH-WEST MOUNTED POLICE SCOUTING
PARTY, WITH INDIAN GUIDES . . .195
HORSE RANCH IN ALBERTA . . . . 215
CATTLE ROUND-UP ON A SASKATCHEWAN RANCH . 221 VALLEY OF THE TEN PEAKS AND MORAINE LAKE,
CANADIAN ROCKIES .... 233
CAMP OF THE ALPINE CLUB OF CANADA, IN PARA- DISE VALLEY, ROCKY MOUNTAINS. . . 249 CLIMBING MOUNT ABERDEEN, ROCKY MOUNTAINS . 25 1 MOUNT SIR DONALD AND THE ILLECILLEWAET
GLACIER, CANADIAN SELKIRKS . . .257
INTERIOR OF THE COUGAR CAVES, CANADIAN
SELKIRKS . . . . . .265
A MOUNTAIN ROAD ON THE UPPER ERASER RIVER,
BRITISH COLUMBIA . . . . .275
YALE, B.C., AT ENTRANCE TO ERASER CA5^0N . 282
A BRITISH COLUMBIA SAW-MILL, AT COAL CREEK . 293
HARBOUR AND STATION AT VANCOUVER, BRITISH
COLUMBIA . . . . . . 300
VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA, WITH LEGISLATIVE
BUILDINGS TO THE LEFT . . . . 306
A TYPICAL FOREST SCENE, VANCOUVER ISLAND . 308
hrough the Heart of Canada
CHAPTER I
DOWN NOVA SCOTIA WAY
'O a native born, Canada is a name with which CO conjure.
Homeland it is to him, nation-land, empire-land [—a land rich in historic perspective, absorbing in its present life, alluring in a future bounded only fby the capacity and faith of its people.
Time is a relative term when applied to a
:ountry like the Dominion. England is old enough
measure her history by a millennium or more ;
Canada by centuries — four since the hardy French
Jailors made their way up the St. Lawrence when
their search for China they discovered Canada ;
three since Champlain founded in Quebec the first
irmanent settlement in North America.
Canada's life is covered by three outstanding
9
Through the Heart of Canada
periods — in the successive rule of Indian, French, and English, as its history falls into three divisions — the conquest of the country by England, the war of 1812-14, and the forming of Confederation in 1867, all epochal events.
Preceding Confederation there was no nine- province Dominion, no Greater Britain in the twentieth-century sense, no all-Canadian sentiment, no Empire spirit. The provinces by the Atlantic were looking askance at plans for federation. Upper and Lower Canada (as Ontario and Quebec were called) were antagonistic, Manitoba was not even a name, Saskatchewan and Alberta were in the womb of the future, and British Columbia was an isolated Pacific territory.
A vastly different country is the Canada of to- day. East and West are becoming one in national •:^./^ spirit and aims. The Rocky Mountains are no longer an impassable barrier between the plains of the prairie provinces and the plains of the Pacific coast. Halifax is interested in Victoria, Montreal in Vancouver, Toronto in Winnipeg. Confederation has done its work well ; it has made of its union of provinces a continent -wide land that is growing in wealth and influence jas it grows in years.
10
Down Nova Scotia Way
There are two Canadas in one within the
boundary-lines of the Dominion : the Golden West
and the Silver East— the Golden West, with its realth of grain lands and ranges of mineralised lountains, its forested valleys and fish-stocked
streams ; the Silver East — the ancient Canada — tde up of the provinces by the sea, whose silver
Chores are lapped by the Atlantic tides and whose liffs face the older world of Europe whence came le first pathfinders.
On this historic soil of Nova Scotia stepped le adventurous sons of Old France in their search ►r a new Erance beyond the waters, followed by le equally aggressive sons of Old England in leir .quest for the site of another Britain. And jcause Gaul and Saxon and Celt thus met on
pie shores of an unappropriated continent, the Ltter became a theatre of war for the titanic
rtruggle between old-world powers for supremacy a new land. Within the area of ancient Acadia lany a page of Canadian history has been written in the annals of Louisbourg, of Halifax, of innapolis, of Beausejour. The fight for Acadia ras an epitome of the larger contest for a
Continent .
The heart and nerve centre of this eastern end
II
Through the Heart of Canada
of Canada is Halifax : the City of the Citadel, and the successor of Louisbourg. Once again out of death came life. The levelling of the walls of Louisbourg fortress led to the founding of Halifax ; the once mighty stronghold of a French king on the western main of the Atlantic was destroyed in order that another fortress centre might rise at the word of an English king.
So Halifax was born, and Cornwallis was its father. On a June day of 1749 one of the first streams of English-speaking emigration landed in the Bay of Chebucto — the Pilgrim Fathers of a greater Britain to be. During the thrilling war year of 1758 the fleet and army that effected the first capture of Louisbourg foregathered in the harbour of the new town of Halifax, and in the more decisive war year of 1759 Wolfe's arma- ment filled its twin harbours both before and after the siege of Quebec.
Other stirring days came with the American Revolution and the war of 18 12-14, and, inci- dentally, through the American Civil War of 1860- 65. Thus for over a century Halifax has heard the martial strain, the defiant bugle -note, the reverberating cannon echo, the march of armed
men. It chanced, therefore, that of necessity
12
I
Down Nova Scotia Way
Halifax early had a citadel crowning the peninsula, the Cronstadt of Canada it might have been termed, and for long it filled the position of the chief British naval and military headquarters in America. For many a year Tommy Atkins of England stood guard over the citadel entrance. In 1906 the Canadian Government undertook the maintenance of the old stronghold, and now Tommy Atkins of Canada represents the soldiery of the Empire at
«ie ancient gateway. Along the water front of the harbours a marine anorama of rare interest is unfolded in the shipping from the four quarters of the globe, in the men-of-war sometimes anchored there, in the ocean-going craft that utilise this all -the -year- round port . In the outer harbour are the important defences on George's Island, whose guns face the sea entrance, the fire of which may be interlaced with that of Fort Clarence on the opposite shore, while the cannon mounted on Macnab*s Island and York Redoubt, combined with submarine mines and torpedoes, form an effectual bar to the mouth of the haven.
Little wonder that the men of Halifax pride themselves on their city. Not only for its unique history, its strategic situation, and commercial
13
Through the Heart of Canada
solidarity does it stand in the foremost rank among Canadian centres of population, but equally so for its wealth of natural beauty. A superb seaside park, intersected by picturesque driveways and a tangle of tree-arched avenues, is one of its glories. One of the best botanical gardens in the country, with a variety of sub -tropical growths indicative of the climatic possibilities of the land, vies in attractiveness with the North-West Arm, on the banks of which many handsome villas are situated.
In Halifax proper there is striking evidence on every hand of its solid prosperity and commercial importance. There is, moreover, equally impres- sive evidence, in stately churches and spacious collegiate halls, of the attention paid to the higher life of spirit and mind, for it has long been an accepted axiom in Canada that Nova Scotia and her neighbouring provinces are one of the chief sources of brain supply for the whole Dominion, and the honour roll of Canadian statesmen and leaders supports the assertion.
Halifax is the centre of one of the most interest- ing sections of Canada, especially in its historic, scenic, and agricultural aspects. To the east lies the ocean end of the Dominion in Cape Breton, thrusting its granite coast-line far into the Atlantic ;
Down Nova Scotia Way
to the west, Annapolis attracts with its ancient French fortress and fertile valley and penetrating sea arm, and to the north, Acadia — the land of Evangeline — lures the traveller. What a glamour ' is cast over the whole region by the fiction-created Acadian maiden ! Here is the site of the farm- stead ; there the old well, with its broad sweep of pole from which Evangeline supposedly drew the freshest of water. The gnarled French willows are in a state of decrepitude, scarce able to hold up their ageing branches. Hard by stood the smithy, the glow from whose forge lighted up the faces of Gabriel and his sweetheart as they watched the labouring bellows. Hereabouts the little church must have raised its humble spire, and over yonder, less than a stone's -throw away, the home of the good priest helped to fill in the picture. Indeed, much of Longfellow's descrip- tion of the long-ago village of Grand Pre applies equally well to-day. Perfect is his etching of this idyllic corner of Acadia. Nestling in the fruitful valley, bounded by the red-lipped shores of Minas, lies the village of Grand Pr6 — " distant, secluded, still " ; the perfumed meadows still stretch to the eastward as the dykes still border the sea — " dykes
(at the hands of the farmers had raised with
Through the Heart of Canada
labour incessant, shutting out the turbulent tides.'* Far away rises the mass of Blomidon Cape, on the summit of which sea-fogs continue to pitch their tents and to receive the baptism of the mists from the mighty Atlantic. In the dyked meadows wave the luxuriant grasses, and the quaint old hamlet, with its handful of houses, its orchards, its flocks, might easily be the old Grand Pre, so quiet and peaceful is it, so shut in from the turmoil of the world. The restless waves of Fundy continue to wash the beach, Evangeline's beach, and the refluent ocean has never ceased to cover the sands with waifs of the tide, with pungent kelp and slippery seaweed.
How curious it is that so many places are famous for events or incidents that never hap- pened ! How often it is that fiction is so much more real that fact ! How sad that of all who have lived and loved and died in the Gaspereau Valley, none are more fondly held in remembrance than the dream-child of a poet's brain. But though Longfellow's legend lends charm to the scene, it does not create it. It is in truth a fair country that lies outspread before one who gazes from the Blomidon bastion or from the brow of the hill of
Wolfville. Near by is the old French burial -
i6
Down Nova Scotia Way
ground. The Gaspereau River wanders placidly among fragrant meadows towards the obliterating sea, and on every hill -slope the ripening grain - fields and richly-laden orchards seem to smile I gratefully under the summer sun. Beyond, and I ever beyond, the blue waters of the Basin \ of Minas gleam, and the farther shore-line \ encloses the matchless view.
It is a delight to bowl over the smooth red roads, through the valley of the Cornwallis, among the sea ineadows where the sad-eyed oxen stand while the hayricks are laden. Muddy banks ever show themselves where the slow tide creeps up the sea arms, and sailboats lie tilted on their sides waiting for water to refloat them. Then there is the stiff climb up North Mountain, and the fine I view from the Look -off to distant New Brunswick across the Bay of Eundy, and to the far-stretching I Nova Scotian shore.
Annapolis, like Wolfville, is a peaceful village in a valley, an old and sleepy village in an old and sleepy valley. Its denizens claim it to be the garden of the province, but he would be a rash judge who would venture to render a verdict as
ttween the trio of vales — Cornwallis, Gaspereau, Annapolis. But the valley of the Annapolis —
Through the Heart of Canada
fifty miles in length — walled in by the north and south mountain ridges, as seen in early summer, can scarcely be overpraised for its exquisite setting and pastoral beauty. The squares of orchards out- lined on the hills, the succession of bright little towns, the beds of old streams converted into courses of clover, the willow groups by the winding creeks, all these enter into the composition of the rare nature picture, set in a framework of perfect fitness and taste.
Nova Scotia is especially rich in its connecting links with the past. As the oldest European settlement on the continent of America, north of Florida, Annapolis alone merits attention, but the ruins of its seventeenth-century fortress speak of the fierce Franco -British conflict for supremacy in Acadia. The remnants of the grassy ramparts and the stone barracks tell of French occupation when the spot was known as Port Royal, and of the visits of Champlain and De Monts at an even earlier day. For over a century it was a strong- hold for the possessors of New France. 17 lo saw a change of ownership, however, when a com- pany of New Englanders captured the fort, and! renamed it Annapolis in honour of Queen Anne. The last warlike scene — one of many during the
i8
Down Nova Scotia Way
long years of strife — was witnessed in 1781, when two American armies captured the fortress and plundered the little town.
The Port Royal of former days is beautiful for situation, fronting the Annapolis basin, which lies in its bed like a wide river, extending to Digby, sixteen miles to the west. The railway skirts the shore of the basin, bringing to view many a little creek or cove most inviting in its wild setting. One soon learns that he is in cherry-land. Cherry 1 festivals and cherry excursions from far-away points are widely advertised, and tempting baskets of the red-coated fruit are offered the traveller at every wayside station. Later in the season, Nova Scotia becomes apple-land, a million barrels being the yield in an average year, a goodly proportion thereof finding their way to the British piarket. ! And if Nova Scotia is a land of delight in cherry or wheat or apple time, even more so is it in the early blossom-time, when the earth is flecked with the delicately-coloured flowers of fruit, giving rich ' promise of an abundant yield.
But the ocean ever allures the traveller in this ^ maritime land. It is only within recent years that ' the south shore of the province has been !made ^ accessible by the railway, the journey from Halifax
19
Through the Heart of Canada
to Yarmouth revealing wonderful glimpses of the limitless Atlantic as bays and coves and seaward- rushing streams come into view, while the rolling breakers on the white -sanded shores further arouse the wander -lust of man.
There is much that is quaint and rustic ialong the way. On one side a fishing hamlet marks the head of an ocean inlet, with a fleet of boats waiting to be called into service. On the other hand are farms and fields ranging to the high northern hills. A single glance will include an old tarpaulined mariner, looking as if he had been forgotten by Father Time, and across the roadway a sturdy toiler who is hauling in his crops with the aid of a lumbering yoke of oxen.
To thfe right, inviting roads skirt the water- basins toward the outer sea ; to the left, other roads, just as erratic in their curves, lead to little rustic communities unknown to the wider world. Infinite variety, therefore, marks the way of this Nova Scotian ocean shore. Rounding St. Margaret's Bay the sea-coast scenery gives foretaste of the rich panorama Nature has in store. Mahone Bay, with its scattered island groups, wit! its iron-bound rocks facing the fury of the surf casts its spell over the wanderer, luring him U
20 ;:
\
Down Nova Scotia Way
its picturesque water channels and its wilder world of rock as the open ocean is reached. Chester exercises its spell too, the dear little town with its magnificent marine and landscape views, with its matchless pictures of the sun-rising and sun- setting and the after-shadows on the placid waters . Farther westward is Lunenburg — the town of homes — founded by German and Swiss settlers in 1750. It is a corner of the old Fatherland trans- ferred to Canadian shores, and all the qualities of thrift and diligence that mark the Germanic races are found in the people of this ancient town by the Atlantic. Bridgewater neighbours Lunenburg, the log-crowded stream that intersects the town adver- tising its basic lumbering interest. And as the Germans founded Lunenburg, so descendants of the Mayflower Pilgrim Fathers founded Liverpool ; the French predominate in the Pubnico country, and settlers of Scotch extraction give a distinctive I note to the Argyles, amid scenery reminiscent of the western Highlands. In old Shelbourne the scions of United Empire Loyalists predominate, while in Yarmouth is found a marine centre of unique interest. Once the stronghold of privateers, who were the terror of New England in the old
Ighting days, its inhabitants of to-day are repre- 1
Through the Heart of Canada
sentative of the many different types that are found in Eastern Canada.
Cape Breton is now an integral part of Nova Scotia, though it once upon a time had its own life as a separate State and its own capital city on the site of Sydney. The Cape narrowly escaped dismemberment when land and sea were made. Only a narrow neck of rock holds its parts together, and even that has been severed by man in the construction of St. Peter's Canal.
The all-day sail over the tideless sea-arms of the Great and Little Bras d'Or Lakes furnishes a delightful picture of well -tilled farms, of distant mist-veiled hills, and of restful hamlets unafflicted by the fever haste of the world. In miniature coves lobster -fishers are busy with creels and pots, along the northern and eastern coast coal-miners are digging the black diamonds from a rich earth, where the veins sometimes stretch a mile under the sea. The annual coal output of Nova Scotia is nearing the twenty million dollar mark. This industry makes Sydney one of the chief coaling, harbours of the Atlantic seaboard, as well as the centre of a great steel and iron plant, the product of which almost equals that of the coal-mines. A transatlantic Birmingham is Sydney.
22
\
'^^-■m'^^wj#!i^ •'
A NOVA SCOTIA APPLE ORCHARD AT BLOSSOM TIME.
SYDNEY, CAPE BRETON, AND ITS HARBOUR.
To face p. 22.
Down Nova Scotia Way
A few miles from Sydney a skeleton-like structure stands on the shore of Glace Bay, tell- ing of the twentieth-century miracle of wireless telegraphy. From the cliff -height Canada talks with the British Isles, and with the ships that pass between. The Canadian Government conducts twenty wireless telegraph-stations on her eastern seaboard and on the Pacific coast, constituting a benefit to navigation difficult to estimate.
Farther along shore and beyond Glace Bay lies Louisbourg. A thriving little town borders the deep-water harbour, and on the western outskirts lies all that is left of Louisbourg Fortress. It is not until one walks over the mile -and-a -half circuit of the ruined earthworks that one comprehends its original extent and strength. When it is remem- bered that the original structure cost France a million pounds, and that it took thirty years to build, it is not surprising that Louisbourg was looked upon as one of the most impregnable defences of its day, guarding the Gulf of St. Lawrence and serving as the key to the posses- sions of France in the New World.
The fortress occupied a remarkable position, facing the Atlantic on the south, the harbour on the east, and forests and marsh-lands on north and
23
Through the Heart of Canada
west. Mighty bastions reared their grim' headis from the walls, and between three and four hundred cannon frowned upon any foe that might dare to approach. Tried and tested soldiers formed a garrison of undoubted strength. Little wonder, therefore, that its commander regarded - Louisbourg as safe from attack, but history showed his mistake. Twice it underwent severe sieges at the hands of the British, and twice the white flag of surrender was unfurled.
To-day all that is left of the fortress are the long lines of earthworks and four casements of the King's Bastion, beneath which the women and children took refuge during the sieges. Within the spacious enclosure can be traced the founda- tions of the chapel, the governor's headquarters, j and the ofiicers' well, bricked down to a depth of twenty-five feet.
It was in the year 1745 that an army of four thousand farmers and fishermen was organised in Massachussetts . A small fleet was also raised in the same province, and together they dared to attack mighty Louisbourg, with its massive walls, heavy armaments, and trained soldiery. Eor forty-seven days the siege lasted, each day marked by furious fighting and severe loss of life ; but
Down Nova Scotia Way
on the forty-seventh day the garrison marched out and the keys were delivered to General Pepperill who commanded the army. Together with Com- modore Warren of the fleet, he held a great banquet in honour of the event. The news of the victory stirred all England, as it alarmed all France.
A few years later England gave Louisbourg back to France, in exchange for the Island of Madras, greatly to the indignation of the colonial men who had captured it against such great odds. Once again in the hands of the French, they made it stronger than ever, mounted additional cannon, and increased the garrison to four thousand men.
I' The scene changes to a day in 1758. Once ! again the sentries saw an ominous sight. Twenty- two vessels, carrying an army of twelve thousand men, and mounting no less than eighteen hundred guns, loomed up through the mist. Well might Drucour, the Governor, become alarmed at the prospect. Among the first to land, in a dangerous surf and under a galling fire, was James Wolfe, the point being still known as Wolfe's Cove, where the remnants of the earthworks then thrown up can be traced. He and his guard soon took a battery at the point of the bayonet, and erected
I another of their own at a more strategic point.
35
Through the Heart of Canada
Then followed a succession of terrific combats, in which the heroism on both sides was most marked. Soon the island battery of the French was silenced ; then followed a sudden attack by the English ships on the fourteen French men-of-war anchored within the harbour. One by one the French boats caught fire, burned to the water's edge, and sank in their grave beneath the waves. Weeks of assaults and repulses ensued, until Louis- bourg once more surrendered, and with the sinking of the last ship and the firing of the last shot at the battlements, French rule in Canada received its death-blow.
Now all is peaceful and quiet. In the place of the belching cannon and the burning ships of the eighteenth century is a pasture -land where the clover thrives on the deserted earthworks and the waves of ocean chant a requiem over the graves of the soldier dead on Black Point. Birds nest in the crumbling walls, sea-fowl sail o'erhead, while the ear catches sounds of life from the wharves and mills and from the homes of the sailors and! fishermen whose humble cottages line the road.
The population of Nova Scotia comprises, indeed,! a goodly proportion of seafaring folk. The fishery] products have a value of eight million dollars
26
Down Nova Scotia Way
annually, giving Nova Scotia the first place in this regard among the nine provinces of the Dominion. The shipbuilding industry of former years has, however, declined to a point where it is not a marked factor in the industrial life of the com- munity. Agriculturally, the province contributes over twenty million dollars of the total field-crop value of Canada, or, if the entire production of the province be taken, it will be found to reach the goodly total of 115 million dollars .
The population of Nova Scotia is made up of many varying types of peoples. Scattered through the land are a few settlements of Erench-speaking Acadians, survivors of the original band that peopled the Grand Pr6 district. Every part of the British Isles is represented. Halifax contains a large number of English, as Cape Breton does
|i of Scotch, whose settlements in the latter section are composed of inhabitants of Highland Scotch extraction, where the Gaelic tongue is still spoken and where, until recently, a newspaper was
[ published in that language.
No part of the broad Dominion is better fitted to sustain its population than Nova Scotia, no
^ section contains a more contented people, no
Irovince has a nobler past or a brighter future.
NEW BRUNSWICK AND ITS NEIGHBOURS
CHAPTER II
NEW BRUNSWICK AND ITS NEIGHBOURS
New Brunswick is another province-title with which to conjure in the realm of romance and history, in the rule and reign of red man and white, in the part it has played in the develop- ment of Canada. Any story of the Dominion must include the chapter contributed by this sea-bound area and its hardy population. With a square mileage two -thirds that of Great Britain, and with four hundred miles of coast. New Brunswick is of no mean dimensions, and within its irregular boundaries are to be found natural resources of incomputable value.
One of the routes from Nova Scotia to New Brunswick leads through the extensive salt sea- marshes of Tantramar, bordering the Cumberland Basin. It is not difficult to follow the gaze of the Canadian poet, Charles G. D. Roberts, when he pictures Tantramar as " wearing a cloak of
31
k
Through the Heart of Canada
mystery and awe under a storm-torn sky," or when under a sun-sky " the gossiping grass takes on its real garmenture of green." It is easy to inhale " the salty scent of the reedy margin," it is easy to sweep the tawny waters of the Bay of Eundy, the low blue hills of Coboquid. One wonders, however, at the place-name of Coboquid. And why Memramcook ? and Shepody ? and Ken- nebecasis ? and many another queer title. Perhaps the local historian can explain or the Indian tell. Nor is it difficult to recall the struggles between French and British near this very stretch of Tantramar meadows when, on a hilltop to the east, the eye catches a glimpse of the ruined Fort Beausejour, on the boundary-line between the two^ provinces — the spot where the fighting priest ol France, La Loutre, made his unavailing stan< against the English a century and a half ago. century and a half I How long^ it sounds t( man, whose whole span is half its length, but ho^ brief a pulse-beat to the restless tide of Fund] that has bored its resistless way up bay and rivei and cove for cycles of time ! Perhaps it is truef that we are the victims of the clocks we have made. The petrified forests along the ladjoining Joggins shore would affirm we are.
32
New Brunswick and its Neighbours
The commercial centre of New Brunswick is St. John, whose very name suggests the romantic history of its beginnings. Like Quebec, it owes its name to the indomitable Champlain and his fellow -explorer De Monts, who first visited the harbour on the day of St. John the Baptist, June 24, 1604— four years before Quebec was founded. Here the voyageurs found a settlement of Micmac Indians, whose descendants still inhabit parts of the maritime provinces. Over a quarter of a century then elapsed before La Tour appeared on the scene to enter upon his grant of Acadia, which included the site of St. John. Here the grantee carried on a lucrative fur trade with the red men until the battle royal began between him and Charnisay — rivals and enemies both. Many other stirring incidents occurred — the capture of the fort by a CromWellian force in 1654, and naval encounters between jErench and English or New Englanders. An even more thrilling scene was witnessed at a later date when, [ in 1783, a company of nearly ten thousand United E Empire Loyalists landed in the harbour and con- f stituted themselves the pioneers of a province and I city yet to be, founding and making St. John the oldest incorporated city in Canada.
33 c
Through the Heart of Canada
France left no permanent settlement on the shores of Fundy. True, she captured many an island and fort, but England recaptured and colonised. That the sturdy refugees from New England proved to be of good settling stock is seen in the New Brunswick and the St. John of to-day — in the successful agricultural, lumbering, and fishing industries of the province, and in the commercial importance of St. John, though the latter has suffered from a series of destructive fires that might well have blocked its advance had its citizens been less easily disheartened. These disasters culminated in the great fire of June 20, 1877, when one-third of the city was swept away, fifteen thousand people were rendered homeless, and property valued at nearly thirty million dollars went up in the flames.
The city is substantially built on ridgy hill- slopes, many of the roadways having been cut with infinite toil through the naked rock, great masses of which often lie beside the walls of masonry. At the top of these cliff -like ridges are perched rows of houses, accessible only by ladder - like steps. In the suburbs, where the wealthier citizens have their homes, these rocky outlines are rendered charming by being levelled off and
34
New Brunswick and its Neighbours
bordered with flower-boxes and beds, with igreen lawns sloping upward or rising in graceful terraces .
King's Square, with its unique fountain and monuments, its fine shade-trees and flower-gardens, is situated in the very heart of the town. Adjoin- ing, and forming part of it, is the old graveyard, now made into a little park, the moss-grown stones of older date telling their own story of the early inhabitants of this ancient city of the Loyalists.
Fort Howe Hill affords a splendid view-point. From this limestone mass, crowned by the remains of an old fort, may be seen the contour of the city, the busy suburb of Carleton, the salmon weirs, showing at low tide, the deep, spacious harbour which, like that of Halifax, is open during the entire year. Anchored within its area or tied up at the extensive system of wharves lie a wide range of craft, sea-going and coastal, and a glimpse of their cargoes strikingly reveals the varied nature of the trade and commerce of the province. Many a deck is loaded with the high- grade lumber of the northern woods, for the timber resources of New Brunswick are amongst its most valuable assets. Other cargoes of fishery products speak of the harvest of the sea, while the imtmense elevators indicate that St. John is an important
35
Through the Heart of Canada
grain -exporting centre. Passenger steamers also use the port for transatlantic and coastal traffic.
Not only is the situation of St. John a strategic and striking one, at the head of the Bay of Eundy, but its environs present many .points pf interest. The famous reversible falls of the St. John River, on the outskirts of the city, are best viewed from' the suspension bridge, seventy feet above high- water and covering the great stream by a span 640 feet long. It is a truly remarkable phenome non. The river winds its way to the sea through a narrow channel, hemmed in by precipitous lime- stone cliffs over a hundred feet high. At low tide the waters fall some fifteen feet into the harbour, but soon the never-decided battle is being again fought between the river current and the tide of the invincible Eundy, the rise of which to ai height of forty feet not only evens up, so to speak the fifteen-foot fall of the streams, but reverses i for a timfe. Then occurs the strange sight of th( outer waters forcing their way up-stream. A half -tide, when the waters are levelled, boats ma; pass under the bridge in safety.
A companion phenomenon in tidal action is th equally famous Moncton Bore, the inrush of th Petitcodiac River between the red banks of th
36
1
New Brunswick and its Neighbours
estuary in the fortn' of a: bore, or tidal wave, rang- ing from three to five feet in height. In few other places in the world is a similar exhibition of tidal power so graphically presented, only a few Chinese rivers affording the same spectacle.
St. John is the starting-point for many attrac- tive river and road trips into the interior. Of these, the steamer trip up the eighty-four miles of the St. John River to Eredericton, the quaint old provincial capital, is one of the most delight- ful. The journey commences above the reversible falls, the first mile or two of the boat's course being through a rocky gorge which opens into an island-studded and lakelike expansion. It in turn leads to a tortuous course, whose very windings constitute one of the elements of varied beauty. The frequent stops to disembark passengers into smaller boats have an interest of their own and a friendly neighbourliness as well, affording the onlooker many a glimpse into the quiet life of the riverside country.
Midway along the course the large fleet of the
,St. John Yacht Club is passed, and the procession
3f white sails rounding a distant promontory forms
,1 panorama of charming effect. Thus one pro-
Ksses until Eredericton is reached, another quiet, I
Through the Heart of Canada
nerve-soothing centre from which the demon of haste has been exorcised.
Well worthy of a visit is Eredericton, with its interesting river -front, its groups of stately elms, its well-kept park, and its exquisite Gothic cathe- dral hidden in an old-world close. The five main streets, running parallel with the river, were laid out in 1785, and named King, Queen, Brunswick, George, and Charlotte in honour of the then reigning family of Great Britain. The public buildings of the capital are in keeping with the richness of the province. On one side are the legislative buildings, while the University of New Brunswick, from whose halls have graduated many who have tnade their mark in Canadian life, crowns the wooded heights at the north of the city.
If the sojourner to the Canadian east would learn yet more of New Brunswick and feel more fully its charm and spell, let him wander farther afield than its cities. Eet him make his way to the trio of great salmon streams — the Metapedia, Restigouche, and Miramichi — that penetrate the northern wilds. One should add the Nipisiguit, and thus make a quartette of rivers. There h may live days of real life in the open along their cool banks, whipping the clear, rushing waters for|
38
New Brunswick and its Neighbours
the finny beauties that therein lurk or hunting in the far-stretching forests.
While Canada is pre-eminently a land for the hunter and fisherman, with big game to be found in every province, New Brunswick is specially rich in its wild life. Such a game preserve is the Restigouche country, cotnprising the river courses through the uplands of Quebec and New Brunswick. Fane moose grounds are found along its banks, while caribou, deer, and bear inhabit the remoter forests almost as thickly as the fish fill the waterways. So in the Nipisiguit district, where the hunter may follow the ancient trails of the Micmac Indians amid scenery suggestive of a mountain land. One of the great caribou districts of Canada is in this locality, east of Bathurst and Newcastle. One magnificent moose head secured here had a spread of antlers of S8| inches, with twenty-nine points, but the record moose of New Brunswick, killed in 1907, had a spread of 68^ inches. The valley of ,the Miramichi is another region where big game abounds, the extensive and almost unexplored areas of its northern portion being stocked (with lordly animals in abundance. Erom Miscou, on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, to the Miramichi, there
39
Through the Heart of Canada
is also some of the finest ,wild-fowl shooting to be found on the continent.
Historic is the Chaleur country of NeW' Brunswick, the northern part of which is in the province of Quebec. Handing upon the high cliff walls of Gaspe one summer day long ago, Jacques Cartier found it so hot, after the colder shores of Newfoundland, that he christened the inlet " La Baie de Chaleur."
Thus was Gaspe the first spot in the new land on which France erected the cross and unfurled the fleur-de-lis. Hot days are, as a matter of fact, rare during the summer along the shores of Chaleur, for the salt-scented breezes of the Atlantic moderate the sun's rays to a delightful average of temperature. Gaspe town is an ideal starting-point for a jaunt along the northern coast of the bay. Guarding the entrance to Gaspe Basin — one of the safest and fairest havens in all America — are Cape Gaspe and Point St. Peter, and along the sixteen miles of shore are many human types : Irish at Seal Cove, United Empire Loyalist stoc at Douglastown, Isle of Jersey people in the fisher houses, Erench Canadians everywhere, and Britis Canadians scattered here and there. During th drive one has glimpses of rivers, bays, and gul
40
New Brunswick and its Neighbours
of long sea-beaches and lonely marshes, of little farming Arcadias and .quaint fishing hamlets, of cliffs and hills and mountains and of island rocks, the haunts of myriad sea-birds.
From the moment the ferry crosses the outlets of the Dartmouth and York Rivers at Gaspe one scenic picture follows another. On one side of the road are fertile stretches of land, on the other Bie shimmering waters of the open sea. What ^drilling scenes these same waters have witnessed ! Away back in 1 7 1 1 a stately fleet sailed up the Basin in command of Sir Hovenden Walker pn his way to attempt the capture of Quebec, but destined never to reach the fortress town. A Erench merchant -ship is put to the flames, the houses of Gaspe are destroyed, and Sir Hovenden Walker sails away discomfited.
Nearly half a century later another fleet called at Gaspe, also on its way to Quebec, but this time to succeed and thereby to make history and change maps and flags, for James Wolfe paced the deck of one of the vessels I Journeying farther along shore towards Dalhousie and the head of the bay, the first part of the route leads up hill and down dale in bewildering fashion, through stretches of forest greenery and over tidal rivers on ferry-rafts,
41
Through the Heart of Canada
swinging their way acrt)ss with the current. Then ensues a many-mile course over a beach, where the sand means heavy travelling, but the nearness j of the waves makes delightful companionship The scenery increases in impressiveness at Perc6 Sheltering it on the north is the red limeston mass of Mount ;Ste Anne, 1,230 feet high, and facing it on the south, Ee Rocher Perce — the fame Pierced Rock, 300 feet high and 1,500 feet long*, deriving its name from the arch or tunnel, 50 feet high, by which it is pierced.
The best view of Perce Rock is from the nearest mainland cliff of Mount Joly, on the summit of which stands a great wooden cross — the symbol of Calvary facing leagues of sea. Partially hidden in the lank grass lies a small cannon of ancient mould. The cannon and the cross, symbols of war and peace, are thus in strange proximity on this far eastern point of Canada.
The bed of the sea is easily discernible through the opalescent waters. But a seeming stone's- throw away is the Pierced Rock itself, its prow- like edge defiantly facing the north, majestic in its granite bulk, inscrutable in its age-long mystery; of existence. Countless sea-fowl people its roof or perch on its narrow ledges. Birds below one,
42
New Brunswick and its Neighbours
birds above one, birds around one circle and shriek, and when a storm is brewing on land or sea the denizens of the rock set up such a warning cry as to give full notice to the mariners of Perce.
The face of the rock is marked with curious caves and fissures, in addition to the great arch cut through the stony mass by the ceaseless chiselling of the sea. There are portals of mosques, Gothic arches, Norman recesses, Saracen pillars, leaning towers, and giant cracks, making ready for other disintegrations, such as the Split Rock, at the farther end of the pile. Great must have been the crash when its connecting arch fell ; the titanic masses of rock, piled high at the base, still bear witness to this mighty dislocation.
It is a picture of unending interest to watch the cod or herring fleets run up their sails, and, as the tide serves, glide out in single file to the open sea until the curtain of night hides them from sight. It is an equally picturesque scene when the morning light reveals them sailing home again, after hours of strenuous labour if the catch chances to be a good one. Then the scene shifts to the beach and the fish-tables, and to the quick landing of the captured cod until it ends its career in the salting -vat or on the drying platform.
43
Through the Heart of Canada
Such is the round of life, the routine of the day and the night, of the Ferc6 fisherfolk during all the months when winter has not the world of Gaspe in its grip. Such is the charming little hamlet of Perce-by-the-Sea, ever watched by its giant sentinel rock.
New Brunswick's eastern neighbour is Prince Edward Island — Canada's smallest province, Canada's million -acre farm. Separated from New Brunswick by the Strait of Northumberland, " the Island," as it is affectionately called by its people, lies broadside to the sea, stretching out its arm as if to protect the mainland from the fury of the surge. Though wave -washed on every side. Prince Edward Island is a peaceful, placid land, with a rich soil that makes farming a pastime and a climate that begets health and long life. The scenery throughout the length and breadth of the island is reminiscent of rural Britain, and is varied by the sea arms and rivers that show their red-soil banks at low tide. In lieu of the century-old hedges of the motherland, the typical Canadian fence marks boundary-lines, and in place of the stone structures of England are the shingled houses and bams of a new land.
Charlottetown and Summerside are the two chieff
44
New Brunswick and its Neighbours
centres of population. In the former the fine public square is surrounded by a notable group of edifices in legislative buildings, court-house, post-ofifice, and market. The seaside park of the city is well worthy of the pride of its citizens, with its vista of the wide harbour, the little river, and the rolling land of the farther shore.
Summerside is also a thriving seaport, with an export trade in farm produce and the famous Malpeque oysters. With an agricultural and fishing production of ten million dollars a year, the island province of only 2,133 square miles proves its own claim as the garden of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. If and when the pccasional dif^fi- culties of winter navigation with the mainland are overcome by a tunnel, it is predicted that a new lease of life will be entered upon in this fertile corner of the great Dominion.
45
MONO THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS
CHAPTER III
AMONG THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS
One of the quaintest corners of Canada is the Magdalen Islands. The thirteen rocky isles, with their connecting sand-bars, lie stranded in the very centre of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, receiving the angry surf of the Atlantic from every side. Fifty miles to the west lies the island province of Prince Edward ; ninety miles to the east, the King's oldest colony of Newfoundland.
One is apt to forget the existence of the Magdalens, with their six thousand souls, in count- ing up the territorial assets of the Dominion ; indeed, it almost requires a magnifying -glass to discern the tiny spots that represent them on the map.
Their history is an interesting one, for they were involved in the various conflicts between England and France, and were frequently the subject of treaties and conventions between the two Powers.
49. i>
Through the Heart of Canada
After being bandied backward and forward, they were ceded to England, and, in 1763, annexed to Newfoundland. To this colony they re- mained attached until, under the Quebec Act, they were joined to Canada and to the Province of Quebec, and part of that province they still remain.
Previous to this cession to England the islands were, during the reign of L'ouis XV., set apart for the fishing trade of Erance, when they were in- habited only during the brief fishing season of the summer months. There was no permanent popula- tion, therefore, at the time of their passing into the hands of England.
A new chapter in the varied history of the islands was opened when, in 1798, they were given by George III., under letters patent granted by Lord Dorchester, to Sir Isaac Coffin, an admiral of the fleet, who had won the goodwill of his Sovereign by his bravery in defending the American coasts from invasion. It is reported that the old sea captain, in command of a man-of-war, carried Sir Guy Carleton (afterward Lord Dorchester) to Quebec, there to become the Governor of Canada Sailing by the scattered isles of the Magdale group, the captain hinted to his influential pas senger that they might well be granted to him i
Among the Magdalen Islands
recognition of his long services for King and country. Therefrom came the royal grant, with certain reservations, amongst others that they should be held in free and common socage as lands held by Great Britain, and that every English subject should be at liberty to fish in their waters. So it was that the Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin became the proprietor of the Magdalen Islands, creating a system of feudalism that sat ill on the sturdy and independent settlers who there made their home. The first permanent settlers were ten families of Acadians, who had made their way from Acadia, from which they had been exiled, in 1755. The ten families soon increased to one hundred, as others found their way to the shores of the islands, and as they regarded themselves as a sovereign people, with no laws to obey, and no means of enforcing them if they existed, they naturally grew restive under the efforts of the proprietor to collect his rents. Eor a century the old records are full of com,plaints of high rents for bits of beach used in fish-curing, of the exorbitant price of salt, of the absence of roads, of having to send their grain Erince Edward Island to be ground, and the like . A government report of fifty years ago says :
iormerly more or less of the people were so
Through the Heart of Canada
pure that no law or judicial institution was known or required. By the decision of the missionaries or a few of the older inhabitants every difficulty was settled and determined, but the increase of popula- tion makes us stand in need of a gaol as a means of securing due respect for justice and good order.*' Thus the crying need of a prison came with the growth of population, though it is pleasant to state that the gaol of Amherst is more frequently empty than occupied, and the hardy toilers by sea and land are, as a whole, a law-abiding, sober, and peaceful folk.
As the inhabitants arrived from the Nova Scotian mainland, they settled wherever they liked, despite the wishes of the proprietor, and it was only in 1830 that any of them consented to pass title deeds. Up to that time they paid what they pleased by way of rent, but their tenure remained undeter- mined. Two kinds of titles were offered : a ninety**^ nine year lease, and a concession, without any fixed term, at a perpetual and unredeemable ground rent, the rents averaging about twenty cents an' acre. Trial succeeded trial between the people and their overlord before the authority of the] latter was recognised. Because of the original squatting, the lands occupied to-day are of a)
52
Among the Magdalen Islands
possible shapes and sizes, and in many cases the holdings overlap. It is now reported that the Coffin Estate has sold or is about to sell its remaining) rights in the islands. They are attached to the County of Gaspe, Quebec Province, for judicial and other purposes, and a representative is sent by the islanders to the Quebec Legislature.
The Magdalen Islands will repay a visit. They are best reached by boat from Pictou, Nova Scotia, from which port a mail steamer plies twice a week during the summer. The red shores of Prince Edward Island are passed as the sun goes down, and by daylight the outlines of Entry Island are discerned through the mists. This is the doorway to the queer island world beyond, and a dangerous marine route it is. The Magdalens, like the Channel Islands, are guarded by nature with sunken reefs, dangerous sandbars, low and treacherous morasses, and untrammelled tidal forces. The uneasy sea dashes madly against the bases of great cliffs, or the (morning sunlight glints through the sheets of spray flying up the face of the rocks in all the fury of their storm-stirred spirit.
Entry Island, like most of its scattered neigh- bours, is harbour less. It is the loftiest bit of rock
53
Through the Heart of Canada
of them all, rising sheer from the sea to a height of six hundred feet. Grey and ghostly it suddenly looked as a filmy mist embraced it, and mysteriously large and ominously close, as the atmosphere played tricks with the distances. There it stood like a massive sentinel at the eastern entrance of Pleasant Bay. Huge as it is in bulk, geologists claim that it was once much larger than it is now, and that it may yet be pounded into oblivion.
It was well that the man at the wheel was keenly alert. With startling suddenness a fishing craft loomed up alarmingly near on the port side, the dark sail proclaiming it an alien, for had it not sailed from a Newfoundland cove? Earther afield the eye caught sight of a strange streak of white breakers, telling of the ominous Eearl Reef, only^ eight feet below the surface at low tide, and thus showing its teeth in the breakers that are born above its submerged base.
Due ahead lay Amherst Island, the first stop- ping-place. The island resembles a human foot, with its great heel stretching toward the west andj its long toes of sandhills lying to the north-east. Demoiselle Hill is the dominant physical feature, and from its summit a wonderful sea picture was
54
Among the Magdalen Islands
unfolded. Eleven miles east and west stretched the island, though but a few miles wide. On the south-west the cliffs rose abruptly from the sea. In the interior lay low marshes and shallow lakes, bordered by treacherous quicksands . Pleasant Bay was dotted with the little crafts of the fisher -folk, the low shelving beaches covered with nets drying in the sun. In the nearer distance a group of ^bmen were digging for clams, and a company of lads were romping with a mangy, wolf like dog. Around the village of whitewashed houses were the fish-curing flakes, from which many a pungent odour was wafted.
From Amherst and its grey old village, nest- ling in a cleft of the hills, runs a wonderful sea road, for the thirteen islands of the gulf group are connected at low tide by sandbars. These can be driven over if one chooses to charter a charette — a quaint wooden cart, without springs or paint, and drawn by a shaggy little beast who negotiates the hills at a trot. The journey is not altogether safe without a pilot, for dangerous quick- sands abound, and woe betide the traveller who is caught therein or who, wanders from the path in the night 1 Every receding tide changes the course of the way, and fresh sea-pools have to
55
Through the Heart of Canada
be avoided with each day's journeying. It is a unique drive nevertheless, for the surf beats along one side and wreaths of wild sea grasses are swept around the horse's feet. Delicate mosses and dainty shells strew the route, and the wonders of the ocean world are revealed at every mile.
But he who travels by steamer will the more quickly reach Grindstone Island. The dodging of the boat from isle to isle fairly upsets one's mental compass, until it seems as if the sun were careering madly around the heavens. It is only possible to I anchor some distance from the shore, for there are practically no wharves, or very few, among | the islands, and wha^t may be a safe anchorage with the wind in one direction is acutely dangerous with the wind from an opposite quarter. A strik- ing instance of this fact is proved by the famous i August gale of 1873 — as " the Lord's Day Gale " it will go down to history. The Gloucester fishing- fleet lay, as the men thought, safe in Pleasant Bay, sheltered from the north-east gale, but when the wind shifted to due east, forty-two of the craft were driven ashore at Amherst like so many chips. The old inhabitant will tell you that they lay so close on the beach that he walked over the decks of twelve of them, stepping from the one to the other g
56
Among the Magdalen Islands
without the need of a gang-plank. One vessel was landed high and dry in a field.
" On reef and bar our schooners drove
Before the wind, before the swell ; By the steep sand cliff their ribs were stove, —
Long, long their crews the tale shall tell ; Of the Gloucester fleet are wrecks threescore;
Of the Province sail two hundred more
Were stranded in that tempest fell."
Grindstone is shaped like a millstone. Its red cliffs, bold in their defiant height, are ever a menace to the luckless mariner, and worn into countless caverns and arches they present further evidences of the power of ocean in its work of disintegra- tion. The base of the high hills of the island shows masses of crumbling lava that have accumu- lated from the outlets of volcanic action. The town itself is relatively an important centre of trade, especially as a fishing port. There one finds Augustine Le Bourdais, the weather-observer and telegraph operator. This legless man will tell you as thrilling a tale of the sea as one could hear — an experience of the tragic North Beach. He was mate of the brig Wasp, of Quebec, which went to pieces among the islands in a blinding snow- storm in November of 1871. Le Bourdais was
57
Through the Heart of Canada
the only survivor of a crew of eleven, and having gained the shore as by a miracle, wandered help- lessly for five days, eating snow and finally taking shelter in an old hut, where he fell into a deep sleep until accidentally found by some fishermen. Both feet were so badly frozen that they came off at the ankles. There was no doctor on the islands at the time to amputate the limbs properly, but Le Bourdais had a strong constitution and lives to tell his story.
No less than thirty wrecks can be traced to the North Beach and East Cape alone during the memory of the present generation. It was at the latter point that, fifty years ago, the emigrant ship Miracle was wrecked, with a loss of 350 lives out of the 678 on board, and the bones of two hundred lie buried in the sands on which they were cast.
A weird tale is told of a wreck on North Beach in more recent years, or rather of a coming ashore of a derelict, the English brig Joseph. In broad daylight, with all sails set, the vessel ran straight on North Beach. The inhabitants went on board only to find five men lying dead in the cabin with their throats cut. The vessel's papers were miss- ing and the name had been scraped off in mosi
58
„ Among the Magdalen Islands
places. By a slight clue its identity was dis- covered. The mutineers had landed on Newfound- land and then cast adrift their boat with its grim freight .
There was plenty of material, therefore, for Stedman's poem and for his lines : —
"Woe, woe to those whom the Islands pen, In vain they shun the double capes;
I Cruel are the reefs of Magdalen; The Wolfs white fang what prey escapes ? The Grindstone grinds the bones of some, And Coffin Island is craped with foam; On Deadman's shores are fearful shapes." ther islands there are, each with its history. ,Wolf Island bears a grim name, but not more grim than the dreary waste of shifting sand deserves, for it has been the scene of many ship- wrecks. Coffin Island, with its steep rocks and menacing shores, is honoured by the name of the Admiral Proprietor. Alright Island is a deserted stretch of sand-dune and coarse grass — the grass on which the cattle and sheep of tha Islands largely subsist.
There, too, lies Deadman's Island, bearing its gruesome name from a fancied resemblance to a giant human corpse shrouded for burial. The
59
Through the Heart of Canada
imagination is assisted by three rocky protuber- ances that stand for the head, chest, and feet of the leviathan of rock half a mile long. Here again scores of cruel shipwrecks have been witnessed by the elements. Many a shipwrecked sailor has been cast up on the unfriendly shores of Deadman's Island, many a life has been battered away against its relentless walls. Tom Moore sailed past the isle one dark September night in 1804, and there- after penned his poem based on the sight of the lonely place, but he made a trifling geographical error in placing it near Labrador, for some two hundred miles intervene.
Deadman's Island was once a great resort for the walrus, which the fishermen would drive to the sand beaches and there capture and kill them. Jacques Cartier noted their presence when he dis-* covered the Magdalens in 1534. *' About these islands," he wrote, ** there are several large animals resembling an elephant, which live as well in the sea as on land." All traces of the walrus J however, have disappeared, as have practically thr seals. Whereas in former years twenty thousanc seals would be caught in a season, now but i few hundred are captured and correspondingly few
fishers are engaged in the industry.
60
Among the Magdalen Islands
Farther afield in the Gulf rises the bl^-ck and inhospitable cliffs of Byron Island. It received its name from Jacques Cartier in honour of an admiral of that name who sailed with him on his first voyage to America. Only half a score of families live on this lonely bit of rock, amid its wild waste of waters, with neighbours a score of miles away in the Bird Rocks. The Little Bird Rock is steadily disappearing, and the same end may come to the Great Bird, but as yet it stands a mighty mass three hundred feet high, encircled by wicked and erratic currents and swept by fierce autumnal and winter gales. The ten acres of its summit is a sky parlour for millions of sea-birds, chiefly gan- nets. Here, again, Cartier observed the feathered throng. To him '* the rocks were covered with more birds than a meadow with grass," and thirty years later Champlain, passing by their inacces- sible cliffs, recorded that " vessels sailing by the islands send their boats ashore in calm weather, and a great number of birds are killed with sticks. They are as large as geese. Their beaks are very dangerous. They are perfectly white, with the exception of the tip of the wings, which are black. They are very expert in catching fish, which they
carry on their wings to the top of the islands, where
6i
Through the Heart of Canada
they eat them/' So chronicled this observant explorer of three hundred years ago.
To-day the birds are apparently as numerous, though the Great Bird Rock has been occupied for thirty years past as a Canadian lighthouse station* Standing on the main thoroughfare between Canada and Europe, the rock was long a menace to the mariner, but with a light throwing its rays twenty-one miles, and equipped with fog- horns and explosives, it has no doubt saved many a craft from destruction by warning off the sailor who approached too close to its precipitous sides.
The Bird Rock is, too, a rock of tragedy, apart
from the wrecks it witnessed before the building^^
of the lighthouse. The most recent episode was
in March of 1897. Damion Cormier was in
charge of the light. With his two assistants,
Charles and Arsene Turbide, Cormier was left on
the ice to hunt seals, leaving Mrs. Cormier alone
on the rock. .When they were ready to return, a
sudden shift of the wind caused a break in the
ice floe, and their means of escape was thus cut
off. Suddenly a storm of snow and sleet aros
and the current miade it impossible to launch theii
boat. Thus they faced a terrible death. The next
morning Charles Turbide became exhausted anc
62
Among the Magdalen Islands
died, though he had fed on the warm blood of a captured seal. Damion Cormier succumbed the next day, and his body was afterwards found by a sealer on the ice between Bird Rock and Cape Breton. Arsene Turbide kept on the ice and drifted with it for days, until, almost dead, he was cast ashore near North Cape in Cape Breton, nearly a hundred miles away. Climbing, or rather crawling some miles to the nearest house, he was in a dying condition, and only survived a few days. In the meantime the almost distracted woman realised the worst. Days elapsed before help came to her from Bryon Island, but she kept the light going and proved herself a true heroine.
These are a few of the islands in the Magdalen Group. It is a kingdom of fish, and its inhabitants are naturally fisher-farmers. The cod forms the staple harvest of the sea, but the herring and mackerel are no less valuable, and the presence in many coves of lobster factories, and the piles of lobster traps along the shores, tell of their presence in large numbers. The skate and dog- fish come with the herring as their enemies, and the porpoise pursues them as well. The fisheries, as a whole, are relatively as sure and profitable as those of Newfoundland, but the scarcity of bait
63
I
Through the Heart of Canada
at times seriously hampers the industry. Some farming is done, though the soil is not of the best. While wheat is grown, the coarser grains and vegetables do better. Considerable numbers of cattle and sheep are pastured, but most of th^ staple food in the way of flour and pork is imported from the mainland.
A simple, honest, and temperate folk are the island fishermen, and content and happy as well, they will tell you when asked, though toiling hard for their livelihood during the summer days, and imprisoned in the heart of the stormy gulf during the long winter nights.
QUEBEC THE BRITTANY OF BRITAIN
I
CHAPTER IV QUEBEC : THE BRITTANY OF BRITAIN
The province of Quebec is a reproduction of old Brittany in the Britain of the New World. Many a habitant can trace his ancestry to the Erench of the Norman and Breton cantons, and many a custom and legend survives the centuries and connects the two lands.
The gateway of this wide -stretching portion of Canada (for jQuebec is nearly three times as large as the British Isles) is the kingly St. Lawrence. As the traveller sails over the thousand-mile stream he must wonder if the world contains its peer in noble breadth and leagues of length, or if any fairer scene can be found than the shimmer of its blue waters under a bright sky, the fertile slopes of its southern shore, the granite giants of the Laurentian range, and the little white habita- tions of its farmers and fisherfolk.
Viewed from the deck of an ocean liner, on
67
Through the Heart of Canada
its journey from the Gulf to its port, the river shore, with its fringe of settlements, looks like a town of a single street stretching for hundreds of miles from Little Metis to big Montreal. Almost every centre of population — Murray Bay, Les Eboulements, Cacouna, Riviere du IIoup — no matter how restricted numerically, has its individual civic life and its local interests and aims. Such a place is Bic — beautiful little Bic, huddled close to the river, shielded on either side by curiously rounded hills, and guarded in front by foliaged islands .
One of the latter is L' Islet au Massacre, which may be reached by boat at high tide, or on foot at low tide over a path picked out among the stranded clams and shells that are the pet relish of hungry crows. After a scramble over a wild tumble of boulders, the sea-carved grotto is entered — a cave in which history asserts two hundred Micmac redmen were massacred in the olden days of Indian warfare by the Iroquois — the tigers oi the forest. Building a fire at the mouth of ihi cavern, into which their victims had fled, th( pursuing enemy suffocated those that remained ii the enclosure and tomahawked such as attempted to escape. The account was later more evenl
68
' Quebec : The Brittany of Britain
balanced when other Micmacs in revenge ambushed \ a band of their foes, and thus exacted life for 1 life for the loss of their kindred.
At every point of village life and in every deep-
j set cove one feels the magnetism of the river.
i As at Rimouski and Bic, so at Cacouna, where
; the yonder shore line, though twenty-five miles
I distant, seems at times to draw wondrously near,
I only mysteriously to recede. When the world is
I immersed in a ghostly fog bank, cloud-mountains
are made ; while one gazes, the mists play curious
pranks with the earth and sky, or with a passing
steamer, now lifting her in the air, now cutting
off her masts, and then in a trice causing her
to float an infinite distance away like a phantom
ship on a phantom sea.
The tributaries of the St. Lawrence are dis- tinctive in their setting and surroundings. Such is the fjord-like Saguenay as it flows, deep and gloomy, between almost vertical cliffs, and under the frowning escarpments of the twin capes of Trinity and Eternity. For hour after hour the steamer glides through a silent world, and silence belongs to such an upheaved realm of rock and river bank. Then comes the emergence into the
St. Lawrence and to the historic town of Tadousac,
69
Through the Heart of Canada
bordering the confluent streams and giving its benediction to the matchless scene from the Httle Jesuit mission church of 1750, which still contains the original bell of an earlier edifice. Thus three and a half centuries of history have passed over Tadousac, from the time when Cartier landed on its untenanted beach. Memorable days they were, too, when " the Black Robes," as the Indians called the priests, served a parish whose boundaries reached to Hudson Bay. Basque, Norman, and Breton mariners also found their way to the spot, as did soldiers of Erance, whose garrison in 1661 met the fate of so many companion pioneers ati the hands of the Iroquois — red men of the blood lust. Succeeding the explorer and soldier, the adventurous traders of the Hudson Bay Company made of Tadousac one of their prosperous though remote trade centres. jj
It is but natural that legends abound in this legend-land of Quebec. One of the most charac- teristic is that of Tadousac and its old bell. Thus the story runs : —
One of the good priests of the church of th( Jesuit Mission was Rather Labrosse, who died a Tadousac in 1782. He had had a hard day*s work and at its close sat talking with his friends aroun*
70
Quebec : The Brittany of Britain
a blazing log fire. But when he said good-night, he bade them goodbye for ever. ** At midnight I shall be dead I *' was his startling announcement, " and the bell of the chapel will toll for my pass- ing soul at that hour I " Then he left full instruc- tions about his burial to the little company, who were too speechless to utter a word. They sat under a great fear until the midnight hour when, hearing the chapel bell begin to toll, they rushed to the church where, prostrate before the altar and alone, lay the dead body of R^re Eabrosse !
Then they remembered that the p^re while with them had also said that Messire Compain would be waiting for them the next day on Isle-aux- Coudres. Thereupon four of the men of the village, risking their lives in a raging storm, sailed for the isle in their canoes, where true enough they found Messire Compain who, unsurprised at their errand, told that he had been forev/arned of the priest's death. The night before the bell of his island church had been tolled by invisible hands at the same time as the Tadousac bell was rung by other invisible hands. In all the missions ministered to by E^re Labrosse, and they were many, all the bells, so it is declared, tolled for his passing soul that stormy night of long ago I
71
Through the Heart of Canada
For years afterward, continues the story, the Indians never sailed up the Saguenay without throwing themselves over Pere Labrosse's tomb, and, placing their mouths at an opening in the floor, talking to him as if he were alive, and as they were wont to converse with him. Then they would bend the ear and listen until they were sure he answered their questions and transmitted their prayers to God. At Chicoutimi, at the headwaters of the Saguenay, one may see Father Labrosse*s grave^ his body having been taken there some years ago.
It is in the realm of legend and lore, as has been said, that the link between French Canada and French Brittany is best shown. In the Christmas Eve celebration, on the night of Noel, there is the massive log, baptized before being put to the burning, and by its flaring light there is the carol -singing, the jovial feasting, the dancing, and the gift distribution from the Wonder Tree, the benefactor not being, the Santa Claus of England but le petit Jesu.
Then follows the story telling : of la chasse galerie, of the bad men who, refusing to pray to le bon Dieu, are in the grip of Satan, of the mysterious canoe, manned by reprobates, who are
compelled to paddle through the air like demons,
72
Quebec : The Brittany of Britain
with the devil himself steering the strange air craft . Or the tale of the loup garou, of other evil men who, turned into wolves, are condemned to rove at night in the skin and shape of that ravenous animal as a punishment for their sins. Only by receiving a bloody wound can they be released from their servitude to Satan.
No less than the Saguenay does the Richelieu River invite exploration as one of the historic tributaries of the main waterway — the majestic St. Lawrence. To sail up the sinuous length of the Richelieu from Sorel to Chambly, in the quiet of a summer evening, to see the herds pasturing on the rich uplands, to pass village after village, each with its dominating church spire, to view all this is to behold a rare scene of prosperity and con- tentment .
On either bank the busy housewife is drawing the weekly baking of bread from the curious open- air oven, with its domed plaster roof, while the old habitant, still clinging to his homespun, is per- forming the evening tasks around the thatched barn. Thrifty, industrious, well-living is the French-Canadian farmer.
Hour after hour the steamer winds its way up- stream until, under the spell' of the stillness, broken
73
Through the Heart of Canada
only by a distant church chime, the imagination may easily people the watery highway with its voyagers of former centuries — men red and men white, soldiers of the transatlantic kings, diplo- mats and spies, priest, peasant, warrior and hunter. Champlain made the Richelieu the route to the lake that bears his name . Indians canoed in secret up its length, gathering scalps of victims or seizing prisoners for later torture.
What a wealth of Canadian history is suggested at Chambly. The crumbling fortress ruin of to- day, itself two centuries old, is a reminder of the original fort of 1665, built by the French to protect the river against the Iroquois. In revolutionary times as well, Chambly echoed to the marching troops of Carleton and Burgoyne, and now in these twentieth-century days the footsteps of the wandering tourist are traceable on grass -clothed earthwork and areas enclosed by tottering walls.
Another great riverway is the Ottawa, whose brown flood retains its colour for many a mile after flowing into the St. Lawrence. Here, as elsewhere, in the picturesque old land of the habitant, the village centre is the parish church, often a sub- stantial structure with towering spire, glistening; roof of tin and an interior rich in white and gold,
74
Quebec : The Brittany of Britain
Every few miles along the country road is a way- side cross, or on the summit of a hill, a white - walled shrine attracts the eye of the passer-by, as on a certain day it will attract thousands of praying pilgrims.
If the wayfarer is landed at the village wharf of Oka on the Ottawa, and drives a few miles into the interior, he will reach one of the three Canadian settlements of the Trappist monks. This monastic body is a branch of the Cistercian Order, and is named from the village of Soligny-la-Trappe, in the Department of Orne, France, where the Abbey of La Trappe was founded in 1 140.
The rules of the Order are noted for their extreme austerity, with long fasts, hard manual labour, self-imposed silence, and an abstinence from many of the so-called good things of the world. In the Oka monastery the Trappists are clad in white robes that reach to the feet, with a rope girdle as a belt. On their feet are sandals, while their heads are clean shaven, except for a tonsure. The novices are garbed in brown, work- ing eight hours daily on the farm as against the four hours' field work of the monks.
The day begins at 2 a.m. Rising from his straw
Lttress, laid on the floor or on the plainest of
75
Through the Heart of Canada
pallets, the Trappist commences his round of duties and of worship long before the sun rises. Weird in the extreme is the sight of the monks gliding ghost-like in single file to their chapel, where for the first hours of the long day they engage in prayer. On the choir seats are found very fine specimens of books of service, splendidly bound and richly illuminated in colours. The chants sound peculiarly impressive in the still morn, the effect being accentuated when the monastery bells peal forth their rich notes.
But all the time of the Trappist is not given to prayer and meditation, although the major part of the day is devoted to spiritual exercises. He is a farmer as well as a priest, and the Oka farm of eight hundred acres is one of the best tilled in the district. All kinds of grain are grown, an excellent vegetable garden is maintained, and a large orchard! and vineyard add pictures queness to the rura scene. When the hour for farm work comes, the Trappist dons a working gown and marches to his labour. Some are allotted to the garden, where> again on their knees, they devote themselves to th< more secular occupation of weeding or hoeing the vegetables .
Another detachment of workers is assigned t^
76
Quebec : The Brittany of Britain
the large bam, for the brother -in -white is a stock grower as well as a farmer. Rarely will one see finer thoroughbred stock than their Percheron stallions or pure -bred cattle and sheep. Adjoining the bam is the dairy, where is manufactured a fancy cheese which has a high reputation in the market, as have the clarets and wines of the vine- yards .
The most exacting prohibition among the Trap- pists is that of speech. Silence is a stern law that is not broken except under necessity, although this rule applies to the full members of the Order rather than to the novices. Exception to the rule of silence is of course made during the religious ser- vices. The inevitableness of death is ever present in the minds of these ascetic recluses . Their motto is " Memento mori," and the presence of the burial- ground near the monastery and the sight of an ever- open grave is still another reminder to them and to the chance visitor of the mutability of all things earthly.
Though Quebec is the second largest province in the Dominion, its population of two millions is to be found within a comparatively limited area, and that along the water-courses. The old-world attachment of the habitant to his home makes him
77
I
Through the Heart of Canada
less inclined to push into the new country, vast tracts of which await settlement. Such a region is that of Lake St. John, lying some two hundred miles northerly from the city of Quebec. The line of railway has opened up a fine stretch of arable country as well as rich timber tracts and lakes and rivers well stocked with fish. Surrounding Lake St. John is an extensive area of farm lands under high cultivation.
Upon the completion of the new National Trans- continental Railway through Northern Quebec, it is confidently expected that other tracts of land suit- able for agriculture will be toade accessible to settlers who will not be slow to take advantage of these boundless new land opportunities. The pos- sible productivity, of Quebec, with increased popula- tion and enlarged areas under cultivation, bids fair to total an annual value far beyond the hundred million dollars that now represent the field and live stock products alone. A government estimate of the timber of the province places it at the large sum of four hundred and fifty million dollars . Eif ty thousand lumbermen are annually employed, and the provincial revenue from woods and forests exceeds a million dollars a year. The forest area
alone covers one hundred and twenty million acres,
78
o
« w
D Oi
< o
o
1
Quebec : The Brittany of Britain
while no less than seven million acres of crown lands are open for settlement.
The Eastern Townships, lying south of Montreal i and Quebec, are held to be the most fertile, the ' best cultivated, and the richest stock-raising por- tion of the province. Nestling in sheltered valleys are prosperous villages and towns, many of the latter being substantial manufacturing centres owing to the proximity of valuable water powers. The population of this section contains a larger percentage of English-speaking farmers than any other district of Quebec, but the percentage is gradually decreasing, as French Canadians acquire holdings in the fertile region. There is no fairer portion of the Dominion, none more worthy of calling forth the fervent love for and pardonable pride in his native province that is felt by the habitant of Quebec and his English-speaking neighbour.
One needs to meet the French Canadian indi- vidually to know him and to appreciate his qualities —to visit him in his village or hamlet and to be the recipient of his fine courtesy and generous hospitality. A native shrewdness is combined with a child-like simplicity as charming as his inbred politeness. He is, moreover, an optimist, whose
79
Through the Heart of Canada
gospel of contentment is well summed up in the sentence : ** When one is contented there is no more to be desired, and when there is no more to be desired, there's an end of it.*'
Dr. Drummond, the poet of the French Canadian, depicted the habitant to the life : —
" De fader of me, he was habitant farmer,
Ma grad' fader too, an' hees fader also, Dey don't mak' no monee, but dat isn't fonny
For it's not easy get ev'ryting, you mus' know — All de sam' dere is someting dey get ev'rybody
Dat's plaintee good healt', what de monee can't geev, So I'm workin' away dere, an' happy for stay dere.
On farm by de reever, so long as I was leev."
" On de farm by de reever " is the ideal situa- tion of the habitant farmer, with a ribbon of farm half a mile long, though but a few furlongs wide, sweeping up the swell of a hillside from the water's edge. Here is the modest little house, dwarfed as to size by the spacious bam and by the home- made windmill towering high above the roof. Simple in its furnishings is the home, with the largest apartment used as the living-room, the only place where the numerous members of the family can foregather around the big stove or the biggei table. The whitewashed exterior is matched b} the clean-scrubbed floor and furniture, and amic
80
Quebec : The Brittany of Britain
these humble surroundings the French Canadian, or the Canadien as he names himself, lives his ^ life of frugality and thrift, living beyond and above the world of financial hazard. The government savings bank having won his confidence, still holds it, and speculation tempts him in vain.
Sunday is the day of days in the calendar of the habitant, primarily because his is a deeply religious nature. The alien can with difficulty estimate the place of the church in a Quebec community. Mas- sive stone structures they are as a rule, built to serve m^ny generations of worshippers. No less difficult would it be to have a proper appreciation of the cure. As pastor, friend, counsellor, and arbitrator he is indispensable to the life of his parishioners. Church -going is not an abandoned practice in this Catholic land. Rarely are the spacious churches less than filled at the Sunday morning services, and after the religious duties are faithfully performed, the joys of social intercourse ; follow. Neighbourly visitation is the order of the day, when everything on wheels and every beast 1, capable of bearing harness are brought into ^ requisition ; when the highways are alive with the ^traffic of springless cart or stylish carriage, of ; quaint caleche or planquette. Nor is the speed limit
8i F
Through the Heart of Canada
too tightly drawn. If the Quebec peasant is fond of neighbourliness and given to hospitality, he has a greater weakness for a horse race, and a horse race if needs must be on a Sunday afternoon, with the turnpike as an improvised Derby course and rival swains perchance as the drivers.
A happy, hard-working, law-abiding citizen is the habitant of Quebec, temperate in habits, loyal as a citizen of his country and Empire, and bringing to the development and upbuilding of his land qualities that are essential if the structure is to be abiding.
62
QUEBEC THE CITADEL CITY OF THE ST. LAWRENCE
CHAPTER V
QUEBEC : THE CITADEL CITY OF THE ST. LAWRENCE
IThe Quebec of Cartier and Champlain is the portal «)f the Canada of a half -continent.
The ancient city on a rock still attracts as power- 'ully as ever Lurlei lured the mariner to her Rhine launt. It still works its spell: the spell of its listory written on grey wall and grassy moat and Irenerable houses, the spell of its Gallic life, the intithesis in many respects of that of the Saxon )r Celt, the spell of its streets that run from every- vhere to nowhere, rendering null and void the )oints of the compass.
Dear, dreamy, dignified Quebec, age -steeped and ime-softened, it is easy to fall a victim to its :harms, it is difficult to tear one's self away from ts ramparts and terraces and ancient byways in jfower and Upper Town.
As in Halifax, so in Quebec, the citadel crowns
85
Through the Heart of Canada
the highest height, affording from its walls the widest panorama of city, sea, and distant shores. What pyrotechnics have been witnessed by the old stronghold of the King's Bastion, dominating the street and stream far below, while the westerning sun rests a brief tnoment on the peak of a L'auren- tian hill, gilding steeple and dome in the town, and painting the Levis cliffs with a wealth of golden colour. What sights by night-light, when the eyes of the houses on the yonder height shine like stars, , when the firefly lamps on Little Champlain Street outline the sinuosities of that historic highway, once trodden by men now resting for aye in Mount Hermon or St. Patrick's populous cities of the J dead. The citadel commands, by day or night, such an expanse as Edinburgh exhibits from the Salis- bury Crags, or Florence from the San Miniato Hill.
What sounds, too, have been heard from the'^ same high vantage ground : the sullen mutterings of a north -bom storm, the vicious sweep of the October wind down channel, the roar of the shot and shell from the Levis batteries of Wolfe during the siege of 1759, the wild cheer from the thin red line that faced Montcalm's white-coated men on
the Plains of Abraham on the early morn of a
86
I
SOUS-LE-CAP, LOWER TOWN, QUEBEC.
To face p. 87,
Quebec : Citadel City of St. Lawrence
September day, the close of which saw a memorable exchange of flags on the citadel walls and an epochal change of maps and boundaries.
It is so easy to dream of the past in Quebec. It is so easy to re-live it, when standing by the age-crusted walls of the Church of Notre Dame des Victoires, telling in marble tablet and stained- glass window of successful deliverances in 1690 and 1 7 1 1 from the dreaded old-world enemies of France in the new continent. A solemn, homely little chapel it is, squeezed in a tight fit between warehouse and market-place and trolley-invaded street.
It is easy to dream of the dead days vividly recalled by the original wall of Intendant Bigot's Palace, or parts of it, but this dream is rudely shattered when further investigation reveals the fact that the remnants of the palace are now part of a brewery — most prosaic and uninteresting of all the buildings of men. But far from prosaic is near-by Sous4e-Cap, the narrowest, oddest, quaintest freak of a street to be seen in old world or new, where the tall houses nod together up toward the strip of sky-line as they have nodded for many a decade.
Emerging from this little lane of humanity,
87
Through the Heart of Canada
crowded against the black-faced cliff, one experi- ences a sudden awakening with the clang of a modern electric car. As it twists and curves to adapt itself to the erratic higjiway, as it zigzags in a bewildering manner, the impudence of the lightning-harnessed car strikes the mind. No spot is sacred from its tracks, the hum of its electrical energy is a laugh of derision at the awakening of echoes in quiet convent gardens, hidden behind high walls from the gaze of the passer-by, in incense -filled churches with their kneeling worship- pers, in cloister and corridor where the Silent Sisters dwell, in buildings overbent with age, and in dusty, scholastic halls . Does the noble Erangois de Montmorency Laval hear the distant rumbling, though so soundly asleep these two hundred years in his massive sarcophagus in the University that bears his name, and if he hears does he marvel at it all ? One wonders, too, if the defeated Mont- calm, resting in his grave, hollowed out by a shell that burst in the Ursuline Convent during the siege of 1759, hears the distant rumbling of the twentieth -century trolley. Perhaps not, for his skull, so poor and shrivelled a bit of human shell, has been separated from its bed of bones and grins pathetically from under a glass case.
88
Quebec : Citadel City of St. Lawrence
Thus in time, and brief time at that, the grey walls of the citadel are again reached by the cir- cuitous route of the city walls. What a fine thrill courses through the veins when crossing a mediaeval drawbridge over a real moat and entering a real old iron -plated door with rusty hinges and enormous bars, guarded by King George's defender's I Within the enclosure, to which admittance is not easily obtained, the un- adorned walls of the stone barracks are in solemn harmony with the ramparts and the old cannon. In the centre of the citadel area is mounted a minia- ture brass gun, nicknamed a " grasshopper " in the fighting days of 1812. As this rusty piece of armament once saw service at Bunker Hill, it could tell an interesting story of the famous Boston en- gagement. Other rusty old cannon, derelicts on the sea of war, share the space with the latest death- dealing guns in a strange juxtaposition of old and new.
Viewed once again from the ramparts, the houses
of Lower Town cling like barnacles to the steep
sides of Cape Diamond, not a few braced in
front to hold them in position against the rock
wall in the rear. Immediately below is the track
of the landslide of a few years ago, in which 30
89
Through the Heart of Canada
many met a horrible death. A caleche driver spent six hours pinned under the beams of a collapsed house, the six hours seeming six eternities to him before he was rescued. Even then an old dame kept on living contentedly in a humble home next to a demolished row of houses, though her own dwelling was injured in the catastrophe and is in the direct line of any succeeding avalanche of rock. The constant menace of the overhanging cliff has had the effect of lowering the values of the re- maining structures in the locality, and many a house, down at the heels and shabby of front, grieves its owner with its empty rooms and deserted dormer windows.
And what would Quebec be without its dormer windows? Such striking frames they make for la belle Canadienne, whose happy face smiles a welcome to the passer-by. On the family doorstep of a summer evening sit Frangois and Marie, old and happy, he smoking the best " tabac " in the world in his own pungent native -grown weed, she knitting coarse yarn footwear. The children, in bewildering confusion of numbers, are not confined to doorstep or window-sill. Their field is the street- way, a playground that is yielded to your pony at the last critical moment, on the very verge of an
Quebec : Citadel City of St. Lawrence
apparent catastrophe. While one is catching a quick breath with a tremor of fear, the little urchins scatter on either side with a ringing laugh that sings itself into the memory.
The same Pegasus that hauls one through the narrow thoroughfares of the old town will, for a corresponding fare, trot down Palace Hill, over the St. Charles Bridge, and thus on to the Beauport turnpike that stretches its long and narrow length up the hills that lead to Montmorency. The habi- tants, driving to or from market with their two- wheeled carts, are polite enough to return every passing salutation with Gallic interest. Milkmaids in poke bonnets, short skirts, and utility shoes, may spare a shy glance, and the children, as in the city, constitute themselves a committee of welcome. The very air is impregnated with good cheer and a fine spirit of camaraderie marks the worthy people of Beauport.
The road cuts through a landscape of rich beauty. Old manor houses stand in dignified retirement far back from the dusty highway ; big bams, flanked by little old-fashioned cottages, crowd closer to the street to miss nothing of the passing life ; other homes, a degree more pre- tentious, and occupying a middle social position
91
Through the Heart of Canada
between the two extremes, put on airs with freshly- painted blue window frames against a background of unpainted or whitewashed walls. If it be haying time, the full blossomed clover exhales its richest perfume, the bluebells cuddle in the fence corners, the birds sing their chansons, and all is as merry as a marriage. The only really sober element in the landscape is the smallest of chapels, perched on a make-believe hill, with but two windows to a side and an entrance in keeping with its diminutive size.
So the mile-posts are checked off as the journey proceeds. To the right the ever -beautiful St. Lawrence hastens to the sea, to the left the country slopes back from the narrow fringe of houses to where the dark woods form a boundary. Then comes the return trip down a succession of hills and between the tree -lined turnpike until a final curve brings a new vision of the city of Champ - lain, regally crowning the height like a great giant on a granite throne.
Caliche journeys in any one or all of three
directions from Quebec will yield rich results . One
of these jaunts will lead to the oldest house in
Canada — oldest in the sense of being continuously
occupied — hidden away in the little village of
Sillery. There is probably no other structure in
92
Quebec : Citadel City of St. Lawrence
the Dominion still existing that has had more famous folk within its thick fortress -like walls, or that witnessed more stirring events in the old days of New France than the Sillery Mansion. The mind needs to revert once more to the long ago, therefore, to 1636, to recall the early history of the old place. The father and founder of Sillery and its Mission was the Com.tnandeur de Sillery, a great Frenchman of his time, a favourite of the Court and an ambassador of his King. But a day came when he forsook the work of a diplo- matist and statesman and entered upon the religious life by taking holy orders.
Among his first acts of benevolence was the gift of twelve thousand livres from his wealth to Father Charles Lalemont, the renowned Jesuit missionary of the seventeenth century, with which to start a mission on the St. Lawrence. Thus Sillery was founded, being named after the man who made it possible by his generous gift. Associated with Father Lalemont was Father Le Jeune, the names of both of whom figure prominently in the annals of New France as martyrs of the faith they pro- claimed to the red man. These two priests superin- I tended the erection of the mission buildings, con- iBisting of a church, a convent, and a missionaries' ! 93
Through the Heart of Canada
house. It is this last -mentioned edifice that yet survives the passing centuries.
Owing to the repeated attacks of the Iroquois and the unsettled state of the new colony, the! mission was surrounded for protection by rude palisades and redoubts, and for many a long day and longer night a ceaseless watch had to be kept on the prowling red men who sought the scalps of its inmates . Many a sudden alarm did the little band undergo, and frequent attacks were thril- lingly and bravely repelled.
Other scenes Sillery witnessed, of dramatic and historic interest, in the grand councils of Indian, voyageur, priest, and official, constituting the primi- tive parliament of the time, when compacts were entered into, campaigns planned, or peace procla- mations issued. Not a few of the decisive episodes of Canadian history were enacted around the same Sillery camp-fires, amid uncouth and even bar- baric surroundings. The stone walls of the old house, the centre of all this pioneer life, are as perfect and massive as ever. The steep roof and pointed gables are a true index of the old French architecture. To-day the house, which is ap- parently good for many a decade to come, is used for commercial purposes, and where once the
94
Quebec : Citadel City of St. Lawrence
orisons of the black-robed Fathers were chanted, now the prosaic language of trade is heard.
Surrounding Sillery is other historic ground. Hard by are the remnants of the cribs recalling the day when the Cove was one of the great lumber-shipping depots in Canada. Following the shore -line eastward, the road leads to Wolfe's Cove and the path up which the British army made its way. Again, beyond, lie the Plains of Abraham, the field where Wolfe and Montcalm met in mortal conflict. He who visits the battlefield of the Plains, as a pilgrim finds his way to a shrine, will discover that the philistine has been there before him. Canada has heretofore been somewhat neglectful of this historic battle-ground. A con- siderable section of the Plains has been carved into streets, and is already covered with dwelling- houses. An inartistic gaol, and an unpicturesque observatory further impinge on the original area, while an ugly red-brick factory occupies a promi- . nent position, with an unsightly water -tank perched J on the top of an old martello tower 1 |K All that suggests to the eye the struggle there ■Witnessed a century and a half ago is embodied ^ in the modest shaft marking the spot where Wolfe g fell, with its eloquently simple inscription of ' Here
95
Through the Heart of Canada
died Wolfe victorious/' he who, in the language of Pitt, had with a handful of men added an empire to English rule. While a hero's fame does not rest on neglect or care of the spot where he made his final sacrifice, yet his memory deserves something of respect. No less proper is some commemoration of the brave part played by the vanquished soldier of Erance. It is peculiarly fitting, there- fore, that this theatre of one of the most important dramas enacted on the American continent is henceforth to be a national park, and thus to be saved from all further depredation.
The most famous suburb of Quebec is Ste. Anne de Beaupre, the village home of the greatest miracle church in North America. A million pilgrims have journeyed, during the last ten years, to the Shrine of " Our Lady of Perpetual Health," as the good Ste. Anne is called by her devotees.! Over a million pious Catholics have there kissedj the wonder-working relic of the saint, in the shapei of a fragment of her finger-bone, and they havej there knelt and prayed at the altar over whic her statue rises.
And the results.^ You are pointed to the grea pyramids of crutches, canes, and body supports] that tower high above your head inside the mai
96
Quebec : Citadel City of St. Lawrence
entrance. You are shown, too, the more recent accumulations of these articles at the altar itself, left there by the grateful beneficiaries of the good saint. You are taken, moreover, to a room in the rear of the great building, where case after case is filled with watches, rings, bracelets, and orna- ments of all kinds, donated to the church by other pilgrims .
It is a noted place, historically as well as
religiously. Eor nearly three hundred years
miracles have here been performed, so it is
claimed, through the intercession of this ** Mother
of Canada." In the long-ago days of the Erench
regime, the loyal subjects of the grand monarch
of France, as well as the dusky red men of the
North, made their way in annual pilgrimage to
the saintly shrine, and among the historic trophies
possessed by the church is a crucifix given by
d' Iberville three centuries ago— the d' Iberville
ivho conquered Hudson Bay on the north and
founded Louisiana on the south. Alongside of
' ;he crucifix is a mass vestment, given by Anne of
I Austria, the mother of Louis XIV.— a wonderful
^ Diece of work, of pure silk, gold, and silver, made
V>y Queen Anne^s own hands.
But the pilgrim of to-day is the one in whom
97 G
Through the Heart of Canada
we are most interested. The 26th of July in each year is the great day at Ste. Anne, and on that day train -loads of pilgrims flock into the little village on the banks of the St. Lawrence from all jparts of Canada and the United States. There they mingle with the equally large crowds of Erench-Canadian habitants, who have driven in from the surrounding country in their curious caliches or planquettes, as their primitive vehicles are called.
It is truly a wonderful sight, merely as a gather- ing of human beings. In the distance may be seen the towering cliff of old Quebec, and in front the fertile Isle of Orleans. But one has few eyes for these surroundings, for the interest centres in the great Basilica. Under its star-painted ceiling three thousand worshippers crowd into a space intended for a lesser number. The majority seem to be profoundly moved by the inspiring music of the great organ and the fine choir. Then a seemingly never-ending line makes its way to the beautiful marble altar rail to partake of the communion and to kiss a circular disk of glass behind whict is kept the precious and efficacious relic. Onl> at the continental pilgrimage -centres of Llourdes oi Auray is such a scene possible.
98
Quebec : Citadel City of St. Lawrence
Outside the church, and in connection with it, are other sights no less interesting. Ste. Anne de Beaupre is a village of but one street, and that as winding as the usual Quebec hamlet. Bewilder- ing lines of hotels and boarding-houses have been built for the accommodation of the pilgrim travellers. Large monasteries and convents also accommodate the public. Bordering the narrow sidewalks are long lines of booths, in which beads and candles and miniature statues are for sale.
Near by is the Sacred Fountain, with another statue of Ste. Anne surmounting it, the water pro- ceeding from a spring in the hillside. Nearly all the pilgrims visit the Holy Well, as it is called, for its waters have a high reputation for their curative qualities. A little farther along the road, and perched half-way up the steep hillside, stands the Holy Staircase, or Scala Sancta, of twenty- eight steps, in imitation of those in Rome, which are claimed to have been brought up from Jeru- salem. Here again there is a continuous procession ^! of pious folk, making their way up the sacred stairs on their knees.
In Ste. Anne de Beaupre, as in Sillery, as in jQuebec, the past intrudes itself at every turn ; it insists on being recalled, and rightly so, but not to
99
Through the Heart of Canada
the exclusion of the present. As there is an old Quebec, so there is a new one. The city of Cham- plain, after its three centuries of varied history, is entering upon a new era of prosperity and growth. As one views the ocean vessels and river craft lining the extensive new docks, or notes the elevators with their large grain-holding capacity, or traces the expansion of the residential and manufacturing parts of the city, the evidence is convincingly clear that Quebec is growing apace.
Upon the completion of the Quebec Bridge, and the entrance of the National Transcontinental Rail- way into the Lower Town, all the great railway systems of Canada will have tapped the trade of old Quebec. With the reascendancy of the city as an ocean port, its marine importance is increasingly established, and with the fine civic spirit existing in the people Quebec is coming to her own. It I is more than a cradle of national history, or the birthplace of Canada's oldest city. Quebec to- day ranks high among the commercial and in- dustrial centres of the Dominion.
100
MONTREAL CANADA'S COMMERCIAL METROPOLIS
I
CHAPTER VI MONTREAL: CANADA'S COMMERCIAL METROPOLIS
A CENTURY after Jacques Gartier had claimed Canada for the King of Erance, and thirty-four years after Champlain had built the first house in Quebec, another Erenchman, Maisonneuve, made his way up the St. L!awrence to the Isle of Ville-Marie. On May i8, 1642, surrounded by a little company of less than half a hundred, who were known as *' The Association of Montreal," Maisonneuve laid the foundations of a great city by felling with his own hands the first tree, building on the clearing the first altar, and offering up the first prayers of thanksgiving.
Strangely prophetic were the words of the priest at the forest service : " You are a grain of mustard- seed that shall rise and grow till its branches overshadow the earth. You are few, but your work is the work of God." And yet had he foreseen that the little colony of 1642 would grow in two Jiundred and fifty years to a city of half a million,
I
Through the Heart of Canada
even his faith might have not stood the test. Could he have seen in vision the transformation of the forest-lined shores into a great ocean port, could he have seen the mighty stream spanned by colossal (bridges, could he have viewed the harnessed wonders of steam and electricity — the old seventeenth-century padre would have wondered at it all.
Maisonneuve, like all his fellow-explorers, was warned of the dangers that would beset him, not the least being the presence of hostile red men, ** It is my duty to found a colony on this island of Ville -Marie," replied the adventurous coloniser, ** and I would go if every tree were an Iroquois." The intrepid leader soon had occasion to show his courage. Only a few months elapsed before the Indians laid an ambush for the little band of whites. Maisonneuve, though greatly outnumbered, led his force against the enemy, only to be left practically I alone to face a horde of savages. Walking | backwards as they pressed him hard, the plucky Frenchman kept them at bay, and thus saved his own life and the lives of his less courageous followers .
This stirring incident early in his career in New Erance is supposed to have taken place almost
104
Canada's Commercial Metropolis
on the spot where the parish church of Notre Dame stands, and near the site of the fine monument erected to the memory of the founder of Montreal, where the bronze figure gazes upon the throngs of a great centre of humanity.
One can readily understand the intense local loyalty of the Montrealer of to-day as he surveys his beautiful city from river, mount or tower. Where, in any country, or on any continent, will one see a duplicate of the panorama viewed from the hill-top of Mount Royal? On the slopes and levels to the south rests the grey old city, with ' its two nationalities and its sharply divided lines of streets and wards. There is more than the width of a ward between St. Denis Street on the east and University Street on the west ; the English Channel still separates them'.
What noble lines of tree -fronted homes come within the range of vision, what a notable group of educational buildings are included in the picture, with stately McGill standing back on her campus like an old-fashioned and aged parent, flanked by newer fashioned and stylish children.
What a magnificent waterway is the St.
Iwrence, bearing the commerce of millions, and )resenting millions in value I What a noble 105
Through the Heart of Canada
horizon line of mystic hill summits rise beyond the far shore of the wide river, veiled in an earth blue beneath the sky blue I Truly the centuries have effected a marvellous transformation since the far-off day when Cartier climbed the slopes and christened the royal mount. The thrill that Cartier and Champlain and Maisonneuve experienced as each viewed the scene must have been akin to the sensations of Father Hennepin when he first heard the distant bass of Niagara's note and first cam^ in sight of the twin cataracts. Since those early days of beginnings, Montreal
" Has grown in her strength like a northern queen, 'Neath her crown of light and her robe of snow, And stands in her beauty fair, between The royal mount and the river below."
Another period of the early life of Montreal is epitomised in the Chiteau de Ramezay, facing the City Hall, and bordering the Bonsecours Market and the Nelson Monument. Thanks to the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Montreal, the Chateau has been saved from threatened destruction by being converted into an historical museum. The history connected with the Chateau, during the two centuries of its existence, has been of the most varied character. Like many of it
io6
I
^ Canada's Commercial Metropolis
occupants it can boast of a checkered career. It was in 1703 that Claude de Ramezay, Sieur de Lagesse, having been transferred from the governorship of Three Rivers to that of Montreal, erected the Chateau as it stands to-day on a parcel of land, the deed of which dates from about the time when Ville-Marie was founded. For two decades the Governor and his family made their then palatial residence a social as well as an official centre.
From the de Ramezay family the old stone stronghold passed into the possession of the great French fur trading company — the Compagnie des Indes — thus becoming the entrepot of the fur trade of Canada. After the conquest of Canada, the Chateau was bought by the Baron de Longueuil and, in 1770, it was again made the official resi- dence of the Governors under British rule. Sir Guy Carleton was in occupation when the Conti- nental army captured Montreal, making the old building their headquarters for the winter. Franklin, Chase, and Carroll were the American Commissioners in charge, Franklin setting up a printing-press in the spacious cellar -kitchen where the power of the press was vainly used to woo the inhabitants to the invaders' cause.
107
Through the Heart of Canada
After Montgomery's defeat at Quebec, the British Governors— Haldimand, Metcalfe, Durham, and the Earl of Elgin— were in turn the official occupants of the Chateau. Erom 1 84 1 to 1 849 the old pile was the headquarters of the Government of Upper and Lower Canada under the Act of Union, the Cabinet meetings of those eventful days being held in the council-room of the Chateau. With the removal of the seat of government to Toronto and Quebec respectively, until the Con- federation of the Provinces in 1867, the glory of Montreal's Government House in large measure departed, the old palace being thereafter put to a succession of less important uses.
The Chateau now contains many valuable historic relics and treasures. The old bell that hung in Louisbourg Church shortly after the completion of the fortifications in 1720 has an honoured place. The inscription on the bell reads : ** Bazin m'a fait." A pair of scales of 1682, used by the Jesuits for weighing iron at the Three Rivers forges, speaks of the long established iron industry in the country. A hand-organ presented by George III. to the Indian chief Tecumseh recalls England's diplo- matic success in retaining the friendship of the red men during the revolutionary period.
108 ^
^mM
1
Canada's Commercial Metropolis
The walls of the Chateau are hung with the portraits of nearly one hundred of the early French -Canadian explorers, governors and missionaries, as well as the British commanders and governors, while the series of prints of early Canadian scenes are of inestimable value. No less than eight thousand books, pamphlets, and manu- scripts, hundreds of coins, and many ancient deeds and other legal documents, not a few bearing the signature of Napoleon, connect the present with the past.
The cellar, with the spacious fireplace and ovens, the cool wine-vaults, and the servants' quarters, shows the massive structure of the strong founda- tions and the stone partitions of castle-like thick- ness, so constructed that the establishment might be converted into a fortress, the windows still dis- closing the loopholes and double bars ready for a siege or attack.
Other historic spots in Montreal are marked by marble tablets — such as the walls of the seminary of St. Sulpice, a reminder of Dollard, the hero of the Battle of the Ottawa ; and the site of Forti- fication Lane, when the town huddled close to the river. Another marks the site of ancient
Kochelaga, the Indian village of Cartier's day.
Through the Heart of Canada
the museum of the Chateau containing a collection of Indian relics found on the same spot. Thus at every turn, in the modern Montreal, its historic and romantic past is brought to mind.
The Montreal of to-day has risen to the rank of a great cosmopolitan centre. The population, including the suburbs, is gradually reaching the half-million mark, with a corresponding increase in its trade and commerce, its shipping and its manufactures. The city of Maisonneuve ranks not only as Canada's largest centre of population, but as third in size among the cities of the sister Dominions, being exceeded only by Melbourne and Sydney.
Montreal is, moreover, an important banking centre, and the headquarters of the Bank of Montreal. It leads all its sister cities in the amount of its bank clearings, which in 1909 reached $1,866,649,000, placing it high among the clear- ing houses of America.
The extent of the manufacturing industry is chiefly responsible for the satisfactory monetary status of the city. According to the census of 1905, its manufactured products amounted to one hundred and eighteen million dollars, an increase
of 40 per cent, in five years, representing an
no
Canada's Commercial Metropolis
invested capital of one hundred and twelve millions. Busy hives of industry are found in many sections of the city, while other large manufacturing concerns have established them- selves in the outskirts, bringing into existence goodly sized towns peopled by their employees. The great railway corporations also have extended
Iborks, employing thousands of men. I Montreal's prosperity is still further accounted or by the fact that nearly one -third of the trade of the Dominion passes through its port. It out- rivals New York as a grain -exporting port, and is the chief centre of the export trade of the dairy products of the continent.
Now that a thirty-foot channel has been com- pleted, enabling the largest ocean vessels to reach the water front, Montreal's marine importance is being vastly enhanced. It is one of the great ocean ports of the Atlantic seaboard, though nearly a thousand miles from the ocean. Being 315 miles nearer Liverpool than New York, it has, moreover, a day's advantage on a sailing schedule, and with three transcontinental railroads at its back as feeders, and a canal and river system extending 1,400 miles inland and tapping the
Kde (Of the continent, it is prophesied that
Through the Heart of Canada
Montreal will yet become the foremost shipping centre of America.
An extensive system of harbour improvements is in process o^ construction, and, when finished, there will be fourteen ocean berths and as many double-decked steel concrete freight sheds, capable of accommodating a vast amount of traffic. The export shipments of 1909 included nearly thirty million bushels of grain, besides several hundred thousand head of live stock .
The city as a whole represents wealth of vast extent, though its tax exemptions reach the large sum of over sixty million dollars. But even more valuable than statistics of trade or the fortunes of its leading citizens, are the citizens themselves, Public spirited they are to a degree, as evidenced in their acceptance of public responsibilities. The great educational and philanthropic edifices of Montreal are monuments to their generosity and large -mindedness .
The peculiar charm of Montreal is further found in its environs. As the city has been described as a happy combination of New York, Paris, and St. Petersburg, with a dash of New Orleans giving spice and flavour, so the surrounding villages and country present features both English and Frenchj
112
Canada's Commercial Metropolis
in their nature. There is no other large city in America where a brief journey will include so many scenes of varied natural beauty, or places of historic interest, or where a shcH't railway trip will take one to more picturesque solitudes of mountain and forest, of placid lake and unfettered stream.
At the western gate of the city are the Lachine Rapids, the river road possessing many reminders, in old stone houses and windmills, of early French occupation, and of La Salle and many another worthy of the Old Regime. The steamer runs through the rapids, under the great Lachine and Victoria Bridges, and provides as thrilling an hour's experience as one could wish. Starting in Lake St. Louis, on which have taken place some pf America's greatest aquatic contests, the boat soon feels the focusing of the current toward the white- capped waters, and the keen-eyed Indian pilot steers the craft into and through the swirling stream, makes sharp turns to avoid dangerous reefs and rocks, and finally succeeds in navigating the difficult channel in perfect safety.
On the southern shore is passed the Indian village of Caughnawaga, where dwells the remnant of a once-powerful tribe, just as, on the outskirts of Quebec, the village of Indian Lorette is popu-
113 H
Through the Heart of Canada
lated by the few hundred Hurons whose forefathers once held sway over the vast northern region of the upper Ottawa River and Lake Huron.
South and north of Montreal lie other inviting regions. Southward, along the course of the Richelieu River, Beloeil Mountain comes into view, rising dome -like from a plain of surpassing fertility.
Northward lie the Laurentian Hills, holding in their recesses lakes beyond number, with scores of charming rural resorts, like Ste. Agathe des Monts, where the city dweller may live away the happy summer days. Montreal is, indeed, set in; a garden of beauty, where Nature exhibits all her charms.
114
ONTARIO
THE CENTRAL PROVINCE OF THE DOMINION
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CHAPTER VII
ONTARIO : THE CENTRAL PROVINCE OF THE DOMINION
As there are two Canadas in one, in East and West, so there are two Ontarios, Old and New. The Old relates to the settled parts along the frontiers and shores of the great inland lakes of Ontario, Erie, and Huron ; the New to the vast hinterland stretching to James Bay and the boundaries pf Manitoba.
Yet the age of Old Ontario is, as has already, been pointed out, relative only. Scarcely more than a century has elapsed since the first stream of settlers entered Upper Canada, as the pro- vince was first known, crossing the St. Lawrence and the Niagara Rivers on their way. Among the inflow were pathfinders from the British Isles, United Empire Loyalists from the seceding colonies of America, Dutch, and Germans from the heart lof Europe or the wilds of Pennsylvania, and many
another racial type.
117
Through the Heart of Canada
In course of time settlements were planted and cities born, highways were cut through the woods, and the forest itself felled for the use of man*. In course of further time the foundations of Ottawa and Kingston, of Toronto, Hamilton, London, and other centres of population were laid. The growth of the province during this span of a century may be measured by these thriving cities of to-day Toronto has long since emerged from its infancy stage as " Muddy York '* into the fine capital of a rich province. The comparative handful of four thousand who constituted its population at its in corporation as a city in 1834 have grown to three hundred and fifty thousand, while the industri expansion of the city has been in proportion. Wi bank clearings in 1909 of a million and a ha dollars, with an assessment roll of three hundrec and nine millions, with building operations aggre gating eighteen million dollars annually, and witl customs receipts of ten million dollars a yea; Toronto's commercial importance is beyon dispute.
It is, moreover, a city of fine schools ai
churches — 78 of the former and 254 of the latte
Eorty-one parks and public gardens comprise
total area of 1,640 acres, and 407 miles of stree
118
The Central Province of the Dominion
make a splendid system of thoroughfares, many of which are lined with handsome private resi- dences. Ontario's capital is emphatically a city of homes, a city of substantial prosperity.
The city ranks high industrially, with seven hundred manufactures possessing a capital of seventy-five million dollars. Seventy thousand operatives are employed, their annual wage bill thirty millions, according to the census of 1908.
Ottawa is correspondingly prosperous, while possessing the advantage of being the capital of Canada. The population has passed the eighty thousand mark, despite the reverses of a succession of disastrous fires that might well have seriously set back its development. As in its sister cities, a commendable civic pride marks the citizens of the federal capital. The formation of a govern- ment-aided Civic Improvement Commission since the last conflagration is producing excellent results in an improved system of streets, parks, and boule- vards which, aided by the fine natural advantages of the city, is making of it the Washington of the North.
The dominating architectural feature of Ottawa
is the Parliament Buildings, commandingly situated
on a high bluff overlooking the Ottawa River. The
119
Through the Heart of Canada
beautiful polygonal library, with a noble dome sup- ported by graceful flying buttresses, adds to the pictures queness of the group of edifices. Anthony Trollope's verdict that he " knew no site for such a set of buildings so happy as regards both beauty and grandeur " is one in which all will concur. No Dominion of the Empire has housed its Parlia- ment so sumptuously.
On the outskirts of the city is Rideau Hall, the official residence of the Governor -General of Canada. It is a large, rambling, but comfort- able edifice, surrounded by well-kept grounds and overlooking a superb stretch of the Lower Ottawa, with the Laurentian Hills to the north forming a striking background. An excellent trolley system connects the city and it? environs, many of which are charming summer resorts.
Several parks afford breathing spaces for the capital. The city is also the gateway for a wide area of attractive country on the Ottawa, Rideau, and Gatineau Rivers, rich in scenic beauty as well as soil productiveness and natural resources. From the northern woods come immense rafts of timber to feed the enormous mills that lie between Ottawa and Hull. Their annual production in lumber has reached the large total of two hundred and seventy-
120
The Central Province of the Dominion
five million feet, at a value of four million dollars. Another natural asset of incalculable value is found in the water powers, estimated at a million horse- power within a radius of fifty miles of the city, and of this only a small proportion is as yet utilised. There is, indeed, no reason to doubt the optimistic belief of the citizens of the capital in its still more prosperous future.
Kingston — Ottawa's nearest neighbour — is well- named the Limestone City, the grey white walls of its public buildings giving a pleasing air of solidity to the old historic centre. For historic Kingston is, with two outstanding dates in her local calendar — July 12th and August 27th — represent- ing two commanding events in Canadian history : the coming of the Frenchman in his territorial conquest, and the coming of the Englishman to supplant him as the ruler of North America. The one recalls the colonial empire dream of Old France, the other speaks of the colonial empire reality of Old England.
The July date takes one back to 1673, when the beginnings were made of a settlement that was later to take form as Fort Frontenac, and later still as Kingston. The first of many marine pro- cessions made its way, in that year of long ago,
121
Through the Heart of Canada
from Lachine towards the then almost unknown west. Threading the maze of a thousand isles, a fleet of one hundred and twenty canoes silently stole shoreward, led by two brilliantly decorated barges, bearing aloft a potent symbol of sovereignty in the fleur-de-lis of Erance. Prominent on the deck of the foremost craft stood Count de Eron- tenac, the representative of the French monarch, little less imposing in his grandeur and state than his most august sovereign.
Erom behind the forest sentinels on the shore eager eyes peered in wonder and alarm : Iroquois eyes, wonderfully keen of vision, though even they failed to see all the portent of the event. They witnessed the martial manoeuvres of the canoes formed in flanking lines and squadrons, with advance and rear guards. The Erench leader, with his miniature army, disembarked in a sheltered cove of the Cataraqui River. That night the sound of the lapping waves fell upon the ears of the Erench sentries as they walked their beats, and for over two hundred and thirty years after, with but two short interruptions, the tread of the guard answered back the sound of the waters, for the landing was the actual beginning of permanent settlement upon the site of Kingston.
122
The Central Province of the Dominion
Yet another historic scene was witnessed on the
night of Frontenac's arrival. La Salle had gathered
a party of two hundred chiefs of the Five Nations
— the warriors of the red race — who met in conclave
the Governor of New France, forming the first
rf innumerable camp-fires around which weighty
latters of war and peace were discussed. The
Indians met on the same spot at a later date, when
>enonville, one of Frontenac's successors, invited
le chiefs to a feast. But when their host
•eacherously made ninety of them prisoners,
ending them as such to Europe, vengeance was
jmanded by their tribes. It came two years
iter in the Lachine massacre, when the whites
rere taken completely by surprise by the Iroquois.
a spirit of well-calculated irony the raiding red
len, as they paddled away after the massacre, gave
dnety fiendish yells — one for each of the ninety
captives who were to be tortured and killed at
their pleasure. Thus the raid of Denonville was
matched man for man ; thus the massacre of
Eachine wiped out the old scores at Cataraqui.
The first chapter in the history of Kingston was
closed on August 27, 1758, when Bradstreet, the
New England militia officer, captured Eott Fron-
tenac from the French garrison. The wilderness
123
Through the Heart of Canada
again spread over the site of the destroyed fortress. But the records of the past on the Cataraqui were written too large to be thus obliterated, even by, Nature. In the language of a local historian, " Neither wilderness nor foe could obliterate the memory of a fortress that Frontenac had planned, that La Salle had built and owned, that Denonville had wrecked, that Montcalm had held, that Shirley had threatened, that Bradstreet had taken, destroy- ing at the same time the naval supremacy of the French on Lake Ontario."
We pass to a June day of 1784 when the van- guard of the United Empire Loyalists landed on the shores of Kingston, as the town was called after the British Conquest.
In 1792 John Graves Simcoe arrived at Kingston from England, charged with the organisation of a new government for Upper Canada, the first legislative council of which was convened in the Limestone City. The same city played an important part in the war of 18 12-14 as military and naval headquarters, with a dock- yard employing thousands of men, and a shipyard where a fleet of war vessels was built. The ruined walls of Fort 'Henry, the martello towers, and the
modern Tete du Pont barracks, as well as the Royal
124
The Central Province of the Dominion
ilitary College, combine to give a martial aspect Kingston in keeping with its romantic and rilling history.
The St. Lawrence River and its gateway city of ingston must share the honour of historic fame ith the Niagara, for along its banks the three - entury history of Canada is epitomised. The ree epochs of its national life are recalled in the uccessive reigns of the red man, the Frenchman, e Englishman.
The Niagara peninsula was the recognised erritory of the Neutral Indian, and on the site f Niagara town one stood the capital of the tawny rest folk who were condemned to be crushed tween the upper and nether millstones of roquois and Huron. These forgotten people f the early Niagara have disappeajred from the orld as absolutely as the Hittites of old from eir Syrian stronghold. Scarce a trace of the or Neutral is observable, beyond an occasional rave -mound. Another reminder of the red tribes of a later te than the Neutrals is seen in the site of the old council-house that long: stood on Niagara Common. The cellar is all that is left to suggest
fe stirring scenes there enacted in the former days 125
Through the Heart of Canada
when the dusky sons of the open air from thirty different tribes foregathered in parliament, and drove hard bargains with the representatives of France or England.
Following the Neutral came the Frenchmen, came La Salle and Hennepin, and many another distinguished bearer of the fleur-de-lis. Follow- ing the transitory tepee came the stockade of La Salle at the mouth of the river, and later, in 1757, the stone castle of Fort Niagara which to-day is the oldest surviving structure on either bank of the Niagara. The rule of the Frenchman is also brought to mind in the lines of hawthorns that fringe Niagara Common, the supposition being that they were planted by French officers during their eighty years' occupation of the district.
Echoes, too, of the American Revolution are heard along the Canadian Niagara. Standing solitary on the Common are the barracks and blockhouses of Butler's Rangers, tinaie -rusted, weather-painted. One or more of the deserted old wooden piles probably dates from revolutionary times. Farther afield, hidden under a clump of trees, is Butler's graveyard, with its tottering head- stones and decrepit palings— a lonely God's acre,
forgotten and neglected; and, on the walls of St.
126
The Central Province of the Dominion
Mark's Church, in Niagara, may be seen a tablet to the memory of John Butler, commemorating his services for England in the Revolution.
The struggle ended between mother and daughter, and separation of the Thirteen Colonies for good or ill effected in 1775, other scenes were then witnessed in and aroimd historic Niagara. Processions there were of United Empire Loyalists, who, for conscience sake, preferred to live under the protection of King George III. in his Canadian colony rather than under the paternal care of President Washington. The children of these early immigrants form to-day the sturdy yeomanry of the Niagara part of Canada.
English rule along the western shore of the Niagara has made the most definite impress upon the country. As the stormy days of 1775 drew near on the calendar of time. Sir William Johnson, on behalf of England, played the game of diplo- macy for the friendship of the red men at the Niagara council -fires as they parleyed for power and presents. Then it was that Butler and his band wrote the chapters of their guerilla warfare ; then it was that the Niagara shore became a great trade route.
In 1792 a fleet of sailing-vessels approached
127
■
Through the Heart of Canada
the quiet hamlet, landing John Graves Simcoe, the soldier -statesman sent out by a beneficent power across the Atlantic to start the machinery of a new province in Upper Canada. Incident thereto the first legislature of the new-bom state was con- vened. Niagara is, therefore, not only one of the mother-towns of Canada, but of Ontario as its first capital.
The inauiguration of the new order of things in 1792 was a memorable and a peaceful event, but, later, the harsh note of war was heard again, and again, and yet again.
The war alarln' was heard along the Niagara in the early morn of October 1 3, 1 8 1 3 . A cannon- shot was fired from a Lewiston fort ; an officer in j Niagara's Eort George, Sir Isaac Brock, hearing f its ominous echoes, galloped to the battlefield of Queenston Heights— galloped to his death. He is to the Canadians the hero of Queenston Heights, because he there faced an invading foe with ja handful of men, and because he there bravely gave his life for king and country in the first real testj of supremacy 'between the United States an< England since 1775. Two monuments have beei raised on the Queenston escarpment to the memor]
of Brock. The first stood from 1824 till 1840^
128
The Central Province of the Dominion
when a miscreant destroyed it by the use of gun- powder ; the second took its place and stands to-day in all its noble dignity, overlooking the fair scene of farm' and river and distant lake.
Other reminders of Brock mark the Niagara district : in the ruins of Fort George, and the stately sycamore -tree within the bastion near where his body lay from 1813 to 1824 ; in old St. Mark's Church ; in the old stone house at Queenston where j his body was hidden during the battle ; in the trenches of the dead half-way down the hill, and in the Brock Memorial Church, with its fine stained- glass windows, decorated with the armorial bear- ings of the Brock family.
\ From Queenston to Lundy's Lane is a natural step in our historic pilgrimage. The battle of Lundy's Lane marked the end of the conflict of 18 1 2-14. One may stand on the ridge where the full fury of the battle raged during the hours of a July night of 18 14, and where the English battery was captured and recaptured. All is quiet now— the quiet of a field full of dead men, and the names of some of them — friend and foe — may, yet be read on the tottering headstones. In the crypt of the monument erected by the Canadian
fGovernment are some scattered human bones
129 I
Through the Heart of Canada
found on the battlefield, and specimens of shot and shell as grim memorials of the unfortunate strife between Anglo-Sax^on brothers.
Journeying southward, traces of earthworks still exist near Chippewa, and at Fort Erie the crumbling walls of the stronghold of a century ago tell their own tale of the roar of battle and the duel of death.
The western bank of the international river is rich in its historic suggestiveness, covering all the outstanding periods of the dominion — the vanished day of the Indian, the end of the French regime, the British conquest — and later, the war of 1 8 1 2, the uprising of 1837, and the Fenian Raid of 1866. The story of each period is told in battlefield and fortress, in monument and cairn, and in decaying structures. Every mile of the Canadian Niagara is a mile of historic association, and in the heart of it the Falls of Niagara present to the world one of Nature's greatest marvels .
The entire Niagara district, reaching from the
river to the city of Hamilton on the west,
is one of the many gardens in a land of
gardens. It is not only a garden but a granary,
where wide acres of the finest lands produce the
130
The Central Province of the Dominion
best of grain, with miles of peach and apple orchards, and leagues of luxuriant vineyards.
The sight of a prosperous farm and a comfort- able homestead such as abound in the land invariably suggest the pioneer who, a hundred years ago, travelled in his canvas -covered wagon over primitive roads and through forest depths to found a home in ** the bush," as the untilled areas were called. Homespun in character as in clothes, the Canadian settler of 1800 was a man for a* that ; he who built the log-ribbed home, and blazed the forest trail, and graded the first highways ; he who, while building a home, built concurrently a church and a school. There were giants in those birth days of a province, the days when the sickle was used to lay low the grain, and the flail threshed it.
One goes to the graves of these path-finders of empire as a pilgrim to a shrine. Their names can with difficulty be made out on the moss- coated headstones, but their lives have produced results that endure ; they have left memories of high character and fidelity to duty worth more than marble -cut jepitaphs.
Thus they toiled ; here a furrow, there a furrow ; here a trail, a path, there a king's highway ; here
131
Through the Heart of Canada
a cabin, there a statelier home of later days ; here a hamlet, there a town, a city. What a tale could be written if all the details were to be filled in — of the hardships bravely endured, of the oft-time sufferings, of the patient endurance of these pilgrim fathers of Canada's early national life.
Let us take a peep in imagination into a typical backwoods cabin. Encircling it, and close at hand, is the silent forest — silent even though thickly populated with bird and animal life. The clear- ing opens on the winding road, miles remote from the nearest neighbour.
Inside the rude but warm and comfortable structure, is revealed a truly homely scene : the deep and spacious fireplace, piled high with logs that will burn for days, the broad fireplace shelf lined with old-fashioned heirlooms in crockery, or with the brass candlesticks shining mirror -like under the light of the tallow candles. The long- armed cranes, and the big pots and kettles made to swing there have their place in the rude interior.
In the evening time the fireplace circle makes
a picture of peace and contentment . All are busy ;
grandmother knitting, mother darning, the girls
spinning, father and the big boys whittling! out
132
The Central Province of the Dominion
some tool or household utensil ; for there were no idle hours in the pioneer days, else the men of to-day would not have entered into such a goodly heritage.
We have travelled a long distance since a cen- tury ago. The farmer of to-day, if within the range of a centre of population, has many of the modern comforts of life. A trolley line may pass by his door, connecting him with the outside world. The daily paper is delivered at his home, the latest implements and machinery make lighter the labour of the fields and the harvesting of the grain and the way of life is made correspondingly easier.
The smallest of settlements have developed into the most prosperous of cities. The little centre of population at the head of Lake Ontario has grown into the fine city of Hamilton — one of the thriving industrial and commercial cities of Canada, occupying a strategic position in a garden land and on the highway of traffic through Western Ontario and between Detroit and Buffalo as the gateway cities of the American west and east.
Where Brant's ford marked an Indian crossing on the Grand River, the city of Brantford is pic- turesquely situated on its banks. Within a few miles' distance, stands one of the oldest Protestant
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Through the Heart of Canada
churches erected in the province — the Mohawk Church, dating from 1785, containing a communion service presented by Queen Anne and a bell by King George III. Under the shadow of the church walls reposes the dust of the famous Indian chief Thayendenagai — Joseph Brant — who rendered such invaluable assistance to English occupation and conquest of America during the long struggle pre- ceding the American Revolution.
A fertile stretch of country borders the shores of Lake Erie. Midway along its banks lies the Talbot Settlement, comprising the tier of town- ships granted to Thomas Talbot, an Irishman of high birth, who emigrated to Canada nearly a century ago and who made for himself a name as an eccentric and arbitrary landowner. Ontario can show no finer farms than those founded by the Talbot pioneers . Contiguous thereto is the fc pretty city of St. Thomas, one of the most impor- tant railway centres of the country, and but a |i few miles away the larger city of London borders i the Thames, with many of the street and place names reminiscent of Old Uondon.
What may be termed the heart of Ontario in- cludes the rich counties of Wellington, Perth, Bruce, and Huron, where the rural conditions indi-
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The Central Province of the Dominion
cate a high degree of prosperity and where agriculture is pursued with scientific skill. It is true, indeed, of practically all of Old Ontario that it is a garden country, sustaining an educated, prosperous, and contented population, and repre- senting Canadian life and civilisation at its best.
IS*;
NEW ONTARIO ITS SCENERY AND RESOURCES
CHAPTER VIII
NEW ONTARIO : ITS SCENERY AND RESOURCES
Nature has been truly prodigal in her good gifts to Canada as a land of scenery and resources. The Dominion is one vast playground. From the picturesque coves of Cape Breton, from the sylvan valleys of Nova Scotia, from the game -haunted forests of northern New Brunswick and the sweep- ing wilds of Quebec, to the northland stretches of Ontario, the billowy plains of the West, and the snow-crowned peaks of British Columbia, each province of Canada is a land of scenic beauty, each has its own charm of sea or lake or clear -watered river, of hill or mountain, of rock-ribbed coast or smiling fertile valley.
Ontario is especially rich in her heritage of natural scenery. Between the island-fringed shores of Lake Huron and Lake Superior and the upper waters of the picturesque Ottawa River lies a vast area of territory that Rudyard Kipling has described
as " the land of little lakes." So extensive and
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Through the Heart of Canada
intricate is the network of waterways that probably no one man has ever more than touched a corner or penetrated a part of its trails. Even the roving Indian pf a former day — Algonquin or Huron — perchance knew little of the wonderland all about him except alongi the few watery pathways over which his bark canoe glided like a spirit of silence. To-day it is a land awaiting the invasion of the twentieth -century white man, awaiting him with health for his ills, with rest for his throbbing nerves, with youth for age. It is, in a word, a great open- air sanatorium, a paradise of lake and stream, of forest and island, where, far from the haunts of men, one may
" and in the heart of things And the woods are round him heaped and dim."
It is also a land of natural wealth whose store- houses of minerals are being tapped, whose timber is one of the rich assets of a rich province, and; where deep alluvial soil is ready to yield up its bounty for the feeding of men.
The entrance to this wonderland of Northern
or New Ontario leads to the Muskoka Lake region.
A hundred miles north of Toronto lie noble sheetJ
of water, chief of which is Lake Muskoka itself.
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New Ontario : its Scenery and Resources
[he transition on a hot summer day from the stifling city to the ozone-filled air of the North is more than worth all the toil of the journey. As the vessel winds in and out of a maze of islands and channels, seeming to involve a constant boxing of the compass, scenes of delight meet the view. The trio of lakes — Muskoka, Rosseau, and Joseph —the *' Three Graces " as they are called — alone constitute a summer route of over fifty miles of surpassing charm. Muskoka is connected with Rosseau by the dark and narrow Indian River, and all three lakes are lined Hvith the cottages of fortunate summer residents. Islands abound, from a tiny one-tree speck of earth or a bare cone of rock, to a thousand-acre isle stranded mid-lake in beautiful Rosseau. Each turn of steamer or canoe reveals a new vista ; no two views are alike, for the perspective changes with every dip of the paddle. The Muskoka Lake district is not, however, con- fined to the area described. The Highlands of Ontario comprise no less than eight hundred waterways, including lakes, rivers, and smaller streams, once forming the happy hunting-grounds of the ill-fated Huron Indians, who roamed through s| the primeval forests and over lands not even yet ajdeared and tilled. Hundreds of the islands retain IB 141
Through the Heart of Canada
their original wildness, and nature is undisturbed in many a corner of Muskoka-land where the deer follows the trail, where the varied bird-life finds a joyous home, and where the fish in the cool waters have never seen the spectre of a human angler. Many a tributary sweeps along in its solitude towards the larger river and the broader sea, the brown waters singing a song set to a tune beyond human capture. Or at times the stream appears to loiter on the way, resting under spreading branches, lapping the bases of granite banks, or resting so motionless as to reflect every twig and leaf.
The seeker for summer rest may enter this delectable land through the inner channel of Georgian Bay, where the Creator with lavish hand has scattered thirty thousand islands over its clear, deep waters. A series of apparently land- locked channels afford a course for the steamer to Parry Sound and the more northern shore of Lake Huron. This route will also lead to the unique Maganetewan River, its iron-impregnated waters winding in such tortuous fashion that the little craft is equipped with both propeller and paddle- wheels. The forest giants overarch the narrower
stretches, where one may sail under a roof of
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New Ontario : its Scenery and Resources
greenery and between banks so clothed with vegetation as to resemble a Florida everglade.
Due eastward lies another land of beauty in the Algonquin National Park, where an area of over a million acres of the Crown domain has been set apart in perpetuity as a forest, game, and fish preserve. Already it has proved a sanctuary for wild life, where moose, deer, and beaver are rapidly increasing under the protection of the Government. It is one of the most remarkable regions of lake and stream, of primeval forest and rolling hills to be found in Canada. Over one thousand lakes are included within its bounds, reminders of Lomond and Katrine, of Windermere and Killar- ney, in their setting of tree and rock and mossy bank. This extensive retreat is not only, main- taining the north-eastern areas of Ontario as a game preserve, but is conserving the great water sources of an extensive region to the southward. Temagami is one of the more recently discovered playgrounds of Ontario. He who reaches it by the Government railway from North Bay must needs utilise the North-East Arm as the gateway. The first glimpse of the Lake-of-a-thousand-isles is one that stirs the blood and sets the nerves a-tingling with the joy of life. After an hour's
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Through the Heart of Canada
sail, the sight of the main basin of Temagami provides another sensation — that of being in a, corner of the world with elbow-room to spare, True it is, for Temagami is a body of water with a shore -line of thousands of miles and with longi outstretched arms in every direction inviting ex- ploration .
Here one may see the deer-runs, where man)/ an antlered beauty has made its way to the Lake of Deep Waters (as the word ** Temagami " means) to dine off succulent water-lily roots. Ci the sound of oar or paddle may startle a beaver, busy with its dam-building, or a muskrat or othei waterside dweller, while a stray eagle may sail high overhead or a lonely loon may shriek its maniac cry. Eew signs of human life are as yet observ- able in Temagami's wilds, beyond the outstanding whiteness of a camper's tented home, sheltered in a cosy cove and backed by a line of protecting pines.
'He who is privileged to penetrate this great
northland of a province that is in itself as large
as many a European state, will not only revel
in its land- and water-scapes, but will realise its
inexhaustible riches of resource. Everywhere the
lumberman is at work. The timber industry of
Ontario represents millions in capital invested,
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New Ontario : its Scenery and Resources
giving employment to thousands. The rivers are so many highways for the transportation of the logs to the sawmills. Such a stream is the Ottawa. For half a century its bordering forests have un- stintedly yielded up their wealth and are still giving their stalwart giants of pine for the needs of man. The Ottawa may be taken as typical of a hundred other tree-lined streams in New Ontario, and a glimpse of the timber industry along its banks will be suggestive of all the others. There one meets the lumber-jack, as the hardy toiler among the trees is known. iBound together in rafts or cribs, the logs are sent on their millward journey. Many a time have rapids to be negotiated, when the strength of the raft is tested as well as the steer- ing abilities of the men at the oars. Such a journey is an experience long to be remembered. Tied to the steep river-bank is the crib, built of fifteen square timbers lashed together. Built thereon is a rude cabin, with its hard plank bunkers for the housing of the crew. Ahead lie the Long Sault Rapids of the Ottawa — seven tumbling masses of rock-churned waters, through which it would seem impossible to guide any man- built craft. The pilot shouts the command to cast off the ropes. Six brawny men are stationed at
Through the Heart of Canada
the six long sweep oars, three fore, three aft. Slowly at first the unwieldy mass clears the shore until it is caught by the current that swings it toward midstream and the first of the cascades. Sheer ahead are the teeth of the ridge of waters, gleaming wicked but beautiful in the sunlight. Farther recedes the shore, nearer come the foam- ing waves, faster sweep the tawny waters in their, impetuous rush. Every man of the crew is keenlyj alert with eyes a -glitter and muscles tense. Joe, the dark-skinned Erench Canadian, repeats thej orders of the boss. For a moment it seems as il crib and cabin were climbing up-hill, preparatory to the downward plunge. Huge waves dash against the stout timbers and surge up through the inter- stices, until the floor of the raft is deluged and the long rubber boots of the men prove their value. Although rudderless and keelless and without regu- lation bow or stern, the crib heaves in true marine fashion as it takes the plunge into a mad swirl of rock-torn cross currents. On the right is an ugly mass of rocks, piled high with stranded logs ; to the left is a dreaded eddy, making a veritable whirlpool in which hundreds of individual logs are spinning in circles before being shot down the
natural chute. One feels the thrill of the plunging
X46
New Ontario : its Scenery and Resources
log ship beneath him. There is the joy of swift movement, the nearness of the galloping waters eager to engulf, the pulsating heart of nature and the electric current of her power.
Then it is all over I Behind are the conquered rapids, ahead a restful bay, where the river catches [ its breath for another series of leaps in the voyage of the log from the forest to the mills that line the great timber stream within sight of the spires of Ottawa city.
If the echo of the axe and the ring of the saw are heard in this land of Ontario, so are the sounds of the miner's pick and drill. The two place-names that epitomise the stored mineral richness of the province are Cobalt and Sudbury. The former lies in the north-eastern part of the province, where, within a comparatively small area, there were discovered in 1903 the silver veins that show it to be one of the richest mineralised districts in the world. Already, in the few years that have elapsed, over thirty million dollars' worth of silver has been produced. Already the boundaries of the silver -bearing veins are being extended, and evidences are increasing that the riches of this newest camp in the world's mining realms are far beyond what was at first estimated.
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Through the Heart of Canada
Sudbury is to the nickel industry what Cobalt is to the silver industry, Sudbury, from whose nickel mines come 57 per cent, of the world's output, fifty million dollars' worth having been mined since its discovery in 1882. But Cobalt and Sudbury pnly speak for two districts. The total mineral production of the province reached in 1909 nearly thirty million dollars' worth of the eighty-seven millions constituting the value of the total mineral products of Canada.
Not only is the more unsettled portion of Ontario rich in timber, minerals, and fisheries, but its agri- cultural possibilities are assuming unexpected pro- portions. Rich areas of soil and extensive arable belts are to be found in every part of New Ontario In the north-eastern section, a sixteen -million acre clay belt is tapped by the Temiscaming and Northern Ontario Railway and the National Trans- continental Line, to which pioneer settlers arei already making their way. All through the great northern districts of Nipissing, Algoma, Thundei Bay and Rainy River large tracts of fertile lands are yet in the Crown. These are to be had atl prices averaging only fifty cents per acre, whilej the homesteading conditions are made easy foi
bona -fide settlers, based upon the clearing ol
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New Ontario : its Scenery and Resources
a limited acreage each year for five years, and
actual occupation during six months of each year.
Not a few of the successful settlers are English
farmers who have exchanged a small rented farm
in the Motherland for a hundred and sixty acre
lot in this Britain beyond the sea. When it
is recalled that Ontario produces nearly one -half
of all Canada's grain, one is impressed anew with
the agricultural importance of the province. The
gradual opening up of new townships in the more
remote parts will soon materially increase the total
yield.
A glimpse of a pioneer settlement will indicate
the process of homesteading that is going on all
through New Ontario. A typical north-country
stream is the Blanche, or White River, flowing
into Lake Temiscaming. Sailing over the
navigable portion of the stream in a little craft
of the tug family, one may view from its circum-
I scribed deck the evolution of the primeval country,
in its virgin state of nature, to its cultivation and
subjugation by man. Here a pioneer is making
his first clearing and felling the first score of trees .
Most of the timber is of a comparatively small
size, for forest fires have destroyed the larger trees,
thus facilitating the work of clearing. Yonder the
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Through the Heart of Canada
original clearing has given place to a ten-acre field, bearing every evidence of its fertility in the luxuriant growth of grass and vegetables. At one point the settler's home is primitive enough, while a sod-roofed cabin serves as bam and stable for horses or oxen. At another point a pioneer iof longer standing has built his family a pretentious two -storey frame structure, with pathetic hints at architectural frills in home-made gables and verandahs .
For many a stretch the second growth of soft woods make a modest riverside forest, unbroken by the present generation of settlers, save wher cordwood, pulpwood and ties have been cut, good local market existing for all such products Succeeding the bush comes a single straggling line of cedars or poplars, through which extends a farm of such relative size as to mark its owner as a man of wealth.
So one may steam through the yellow waters of the swift current, the frequent windings revealing charming vistas. Evidences of spring floods are observable at many points, having submerged or stranded trees that sometimes block the path of the steamer. The Government has a unique dredge at work extracting the obstructions from the river.
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i
New Ontario : its Scenery and Resources
A huge clay landslide down the eastern bank has thrust a tongue of grey-yellow earth half-way across the channel, forming yet another obstruction to navigation.
Canadian, English, and Irish settlers pre- dominate along the Blanche, with an occasional French Canadian. All the Government free- grant land thereabouts is taken up, and a goodly number of settlers are, in performing the necessary Government duties as to clearing, laying the foundation for their own prosperity. One such has a hundred and fifty acres so well cleared of stumps as to be able to use an up-to-date binder, while many utilise mowing and other machines.
The soil is clay, with a surface of black vegetable mould — rich in phosphoric acid and potash, and with a subsoil equally rich in nitrogen. Such a soil may be cropped for a succession of years before f its productivity will be materially lessened. The land is easily worked, being almost entirely free from rocks or stones. The river-banks sustain this character all the way to the village of Tomstown and beyond. Saw and grist mills line the shore
i convenient points, and numerous little settle - ents further indicate nation -making. Farther west lie other large areas. Travellers «5x
Through the Heart of Canada
by rail from eastern to western Canada find them- selves being rushed along the rugged and rocky north shore of Lake Superior for hundreds of miles, from Heron Bay to Port Arthur. At first glance one would think the stretch of country as destitute of natural resources as it is sparsely peopled. Wide areas reveal the sad picture of fire -destroyed timber, the charred trunks and life- less 'branches deepening the note of desolation ; other regions are marked by boulder-strewn land and gigantic outcroppings of granite, with charm- ing lakes and inlets giving a welcome note to the landscape. But when the coast -line of the great inland sea is reached — a sea wide enough to swallow up two Switzerlands and yet have rooni to spare — increasing evidences of human occupa- tion occur in the quaint little fishing-hamlets that nestle in their protected coves. Protected they need to be, as Superior has an evil reputation for storms. Year by year it exacts its human toll among the toilers of the deep.
Many of the fishery villages have their silver strand, with scores of boats beached thereon, if they are not tossing on the lake gathering in the sea harvest. Stretching aimlessly from the shore are the whitewashed cottages of the fisherfolk, for,
15^
New Ontario : its Scenery and Resources
like the French -Canadian habitant, they dearly love a fresh coat of paint on their unpretentious homes. More dignified are the fish warehouses, glorying in two stories and possibly a flagpole, and up and down the unpaved highway pass the worthy citizens who are helping to build up Canada's great fishery industry.
Virile and hardy are the fishermen of Superior. Many nationalities are represented among them, numerous French names appearing among those licensed by the Provincial Government to use nets. Poles, Finns, and other foreigners have also found their way to these Canadian fishing-grounds, making a cosmopolitan community in such a village as Jackfish. Jackfish is appropriately named, for the captured beauties of the deep lie in glittering heaps on the wharves, where they are dexterously dressed. Then, packed in ice, they are hurried to the wholesale dealers in American cities. Farther along the shore are the rude reels on which the nets are dried. Two kinds of nets are used
I -pound nets, for the inshore fishing, so called because they make a trap, or pound, into which he fish find it easy to enter, but from which iscape is impossible ; the gill nets are those used arther out to sea.
Through the Heart of Canada
Dangers frequently threaten these hard-working labourers. When a heavy surf is running along the coast, as it so often does, the seamanship of both sailors and boats is severely tested, and there are times when the risks run end in disaster, leaving widows and orphans to the mercy of the world. Exposure in all kinds of weather is also one of the handicaps imposed on those who gain a living from the deep, and when the suddenly-born squall strikes the fishing fleet, woe betide the little craft that fails to make its harbour 1 The grim, red rocks and mighty ramparts of shore are merciless, as is Superior itself when the storm king is abroad.
At the head of the lake are the two thriving centres of Port Arthur and Fort William. With three railways, and river and lake transportation, the carrying trade of the twin cities is assuming large proportions. North and west lie the great districts of Thunder Bay and Rainy River, rich to a degree in natural resources, and by the time the boundary of Ontario is reached, at the Mani- - toba line, the fact that a distance of a thousand miles intervenes between it and the boundary \ on the east, illustrates the princely area not j only of New Ontario, but of the province as | a whole.
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ACROSS CANADA'S THOUSAND-MILE
FARM
CHAPTER IX
ACROSS CANADA'S THOUSAND-MILE FARM
Canada's thousand-mile farm stretches from Winnipeg to Calgary, from the United States boundary line to the northern borders of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. Within this ample area is land enough, if tilled, to feed every mouth in Europe. Such is the prophecy of James J. Hill, the railway magnate of the American West. A conservative estimate of the grain -growing portion of the three prairie provinces is placed by Professor Saunders, the Director of the Government Experimental Farms, at one hundred and seventy- one million acres. As yet only one out of every twenty acres, or 5 per cent., is under cultivation, or only 3 per cent, in actual wheat tillage. The Canadian Government estimate of crop values for
1:909, covering the three provinces mentioned, eached the substantial total of one hundred and ixty-eight million dollars. If the cultivation of only 5 per cent, of the I
Through the Heart of Canada
fertile area of the West produces such satisfactory totals in yield and values, it is an easy problem to arrive at the corresponding yield and values of a I o or 20 per cent, tillage. Such fore- casts, based upon a ten -year wheat yield average of 18*95 bushels per acre, makes reasonably sure the prophecies of a two hundred million bushel wheat harvest alone, and of a relative degree of expansion in the general prosperity of the country. It tnakes equally sure and safe the claim that Canada is the paramount country of the world in the area of its unoccupied fertile soil.
Winnipeg is the portal of the prairie. The Fort Garry village of the ^seventies, with its two hundred souls clustered around a rude wooden fortress, has grown into a great urban centre with an estimated population in 19 10, based upon the assessment roll, of 140,000.
The rapid rise of this city of the plains is illus- trated, not only by the evidence of streets and avenues, of factories and stores, of churches, schools, and homes, but by the multiplication table. While it is easy to fall into extravagant speech concerning Winnipeg, the statistical data tell a presumably honest tale and one that is most im- pressive. The 1 9 10 assessment of the city at one
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I
I
Across Canada's Thousand-mile Farm
hundred and fifty-seven million dollars is almost as much as the crop values of the entire West for that year. Building permits increased from $1,708,557, spent on 796 buildings, in 1901, to $9,226,325 expended on 2,942 buildings in 1909. In the same period the bank clearings have risen from one hundred and six millions to seven hundred and seventy millions, and the annual customs revenue from nearly a million to $3,343,520.
In 1870 there were no banks in the embryo city, now forty-one branches serve the community. Then, the town was practically churchless and schoolless, and even newspaperless . To-day, one hundred and fifteen churches represent the religious life of the community, thirty-two schools accommodate twenty thousand pupils, and forty-five publications are issued in the variety of tongues that are spoken in the West.
The Hudson's Bay trading post of thirty-five years ^go now ranks fourth among Canada's industrial centres, with one hundred and fifty factories and shops (in 1905), having a capital of twenty millions, a number that has since grown to two hundred and forty-one.
Then, the prairie trails were the only highways,
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Through the Heart of Canada
and the springless Red River cart, made entirely of wood, was the chief and only vehicle of trans - poration. The former have been replaced, so far as Winnipeg is concerned, by four hundred miles of graded streets, and the latter by the aristocratic automobile and the democratic street car.
Then, the nearest railway was hundreds of miles to the south, now Winnipeg is on the main lines of three great Canadian railway systems . It possesses the largest railway yard in the world controlled by a single corporation, the Canadian Pacific Rail- way having one hundred and ten miles of sidings. At that time of beginnings, so comparatively near, the entire Canadian West did not have a single mile of railway, whereas in 1910, one -third of the thirty thousand miles of railway of the Dominion was north of Lake Superior.
Growth is indeed the dominant note of this new city of men. On its far-flung outskirts the tar- paper shack — a mere squatter on the prairie — is the forerunner of a neat frame house on a tree- lined avenue. Where to-day is a helter-skelter group of humble houses and sod cabins, to-morrow may see an orderly array of substantial homes. Thus the development of the West is being reflected
in its capital centre. But the chronicle of to-day
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Across Canada's Thousand-mile Farm
will be surpassed by the tale of to-morrow, and
the Winnipeg yet to be will as far outstrip the
city of to-day as the latter outstrips the village of
Fort Garry from which it sprang.
The real West lies west of Winnipeg, if that
city will permit the heresy. It takes us into
Saskatchewan, with its fine capital city, Regina,
and across Alberta to the foot-hills and the coast.
It is the land of the toiler and the tiller, a country
of beginnings, a part of the continent where the
foundation -laying process is still under way. In
traversing a new line of railway, such as the
Canadian Northern, from Winnipeg to Edmonton,
or the Grand Trunk Pacific between the same
terminals, every few miles will reveal a new centre
of population. It is on this wise: a switch, a
station, a settler, a store, a real-estate office, an
hotel — a town I The station may at first be but a
freight car on stilts, but ere many months shall
have passed by, a Main Street and rival hotels
will have appeared. The general store will have
its lean-to and its tie posts, to which the bronchos
are lassoed ; the land-agent's office will put on a
bold front literally, an enormous signboard hiding
a diminutive shack, and all the signs of a city
will be seen.
i6i L
Through the Heart of Canada
Ponies and caynses stir up as much dust in the new towns as the prairie schooners with their loads of land seekers. Fields full of agricultural implements, gaudy in fresh paint, seduce the buyer, and a branch bank awaits the deposits of the transaction. Almost invariably these miniature Winnipegs evince a spirit of life and growth, and a belief in their own corporate importance in amusing disproportion to their present size, but significantly prophetic of their ultimate destiny.
As the leagues are run off by the train, ever journeying westward and northward, new settle- ments by the score are passed, their place-names often proving a guide to the class of settlers surrounding them. Foreign titles denote foreign occupation. The Hungarians have remembered Esterhazy ; a band of United States settlers have affixed Roosevelt to their market town ; Marakoff, Kamsack, and Veregin have a Russian flavour. South Africa and its last war are recalled in Lady- smith and Kimberley, in Maf eking and Rhodes. Kitchener and Curzon have post-offices in their honour, as have Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Earl Grey, and Mr. Chamberlain, as have too Sullivan and Murphy, and even Tam O'Shanter I
The population of the West is scattered far
162
Across Canada's Thousand-mile Farm
more widely than the centres would indicate. The little clusters of homes and shops, huddled together for companionship on the great unfenced prairie, give place to the shack of the settler as it comes into distant view. A very small speck it is in a very large world. Richly suggestive is such an isolated farmstead in this vast empire space. It speaks of a migration of peoples, Anglo-Saxon and foreign -tongued, to this last great wheat -field of the continent ; it spells success for the man -who - will -work, it predicts a centre of civilisation where the task of helping to feed a world full of hungry people is under way.
The seas of waving grain at the harvest time are eloquent too of the rich soil that a beneficent Creator long ages ago prepared for man's use. So fertile is it in all its virginal power that western Canada shows a ten-year average of wheat per acre of i8'95 bushels as against 12 bushels of the wheat -growing states of the American West, such as Kansas or Dakota.
Of the 776,896 farms, of 160 acres each, sur- veyed in Western Canada, the census of 1906 showed the number of occupied farms to be only 122,398. There is, therefore, plenty of land
I waiting the settler, though the free-grant sections
Through the Heart of Canada
of the Government are of necessity becoming in- creasingly remote from the railways. Railway lands and those in the possession of corporations or private companies have doubled in value in seven years, or from an average of four dollars per acre to eight dollars, while some of the choicer sections bring as high as twenty dollars per acre.
According to the opinion of an eminent agricul- turist, the first foot of soil in the three provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta is its greatest natural heritage. It is worth more than all the mines in the mountains from Alaska to Mexico, and more than all the forests from the United States boundary to the Arctic Sea, vast as these are. And next in value to this heritage is the three feet of soil which lies underneath the first. The subsoil is only secondary in value to the soil, for without a good subsoil the value of a good surface soil is neutralised in proportion as the subsoil is inferior. The worth of a soil and subsoil cannot be measured in acres. The measure of its value is the amount of nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potash which it contains — in other words, its producing power. Viewed from this standpoint, these lands are a heritage of un- told value. One acre of average soil in the North-
164
Across Canada's Thousand-mile Farm
West is worth more than twenty acres of average soil along the Atlantic seaboard. The man who tills the former can grow twenty successive crops without much diminution in the yields, whereas the person who tills the latter must, in order to grow a single remunerative crop, pay the vendor of fertilisers half as much for materials to fertilise an acre as would buy the same in the Canadian North- West.
The immigration into Canada from the United Kingdom for the ten -year period ending March 31, 19 10, reached a million and a half. Most of these settlers found their way to the West, becoming as a rule successful homesteaders or ranchers. The prospective settler, having Canada m view, should possess a small capital. The selec- tion of his homestead is a matter of primary importance. If the choice be a quarter section of Government land, a location fee of ten dollars is paid upon the filing of the entry, when the claimant is free to commence operations, having six months in which to do so. During this time he may, as many have done, earn enough in other work to meet some of the preliminary expenses
t connection with his farm. The first shelter may be a sod one, if neces- 165
Through the Heart of Canada
sity so demands . For forty or fifty dollars a shack can be built which will house the pioneer for the first year. During the second year he may build a stable and outhouse, and, with a span of horses or yoke of oxen, start to break sod. By exchanging work a homesteader may arrange to have his land broken by a farmer neighbour or plan to have his first crop put in on shares. Or again, a modern disk machine may be hired, by means of which a large acreage can be turned in a minimum of time . Three years of occupation with residence during six months of each year and with the breaking of a few acres annually, will entitle the homesteader to his patent, and if his capital be limited, he is now in a position to borrow enough from a loan company to purchase an equipment for more ex- tensive operations. A settler can, in a compara- tively few years, establish his independence and lay the foundations for a comparatively prosperous career in this new land. On the one hand there may be toil and drudgery, set-backs and disap- pointments ; on the other, there is the incentive of freedom and independence, the recompense of a larger life in home and nation, and, in the end, material prosperity.
In the year 1883 a young mjan took up a home-
z66
A SETTLER S HOMESTEAD IN MANITOBA.
A HARVESTING SCENE IN SASKATCHEWAN.
To face p. 167.
\
I
Across Canada's Thousand-mile Farm
stead not far from the southern boundary of Manitoba. This was in the early days of the province, when opportunities were not so numerous as now, and wheat only brought forty cents a bushel, compared with nearly three times that amount to-day.
After locating his quarter section and paying the land fee, the settler in question had scarcely a cent left. By working for a neighbouring farmer, enough money was earned to build a shack and buy a supply of provisions. During the first year, five acres of land were broken, a neighbour's horses being borrowed for the task. The second year the would-be farmer was able to buy a yoke of oxen, working during the summer for the same farmer. By the third year, however, he put in all his time on his own homestead ; at the en,d of the year his patent was secured and he thus started on a career of independence. Now the settler is worth seventy-five thousand dollars, all made on his quarter section homestead that cost him originally but the ten dollar Government fee. Essential, however, to his success was a deter- mination to win, a pluck that overcame obstacles and a spirit that refused to be daunted by disap- pointments and discouragements. This type of
167
Through the Heart of Canada
settler will always win a competence in Western Canada.
In the early days of Manitoba, another young man settled in the Riding Mountain district, where the land is notably rich and productive, though the thick growth of scrub, as the bushes and shrubs are termed, made the clearing of the soil a difficult operation. Neighbours assisted in the erection of the little structures that did duty as house and barn for the first season, for the settler in this case was practically penniless, besides carrying the burden of a large and growing family. The successive years involved struggle and endurance, but happily in ever-lessening degree, until pros- perity had fully come, making him the owner of six hundred and forty acres of choice land, and a splendid brick house with suitable outbuildings, a property valued at twenty-five thousand dollars. One of the daughters has won honours in a Western college, which she entered from the little prairie public school. Before this particular homesteader came to Canada, he was a huckster in an English city, where he earned a most precarious living, with absolutely no prospects for an improved con- dition. But possessing the qualities of frugality,
industry, and perseverance, and with no capital
i68
Across Canada's Thousand-mile Farm
but health and strength and a determination to win out, he has proved what is within the range of possibility for others similarly situated.
These instances would indicate that, while a small capital has its obvious advantages, cutting short the time required to arrive at a competence, the success of the pioneer prairie farmer does not always depend upon his financial standing. Every- thing depends upon the type of man. He who is seized with a spirit of thrift, who is quickly adaptable to the changing conditions of a new country, who is not crushed by a crop failure or other set-back, is reasonably sure to succeed. This is not to say that the conditions will not sometimes be onerous, that changes of climate will not seriously interfere with the crops, that grain blockades will not tie up the wheat and embarrass the owners, but even allowing for such contin- gencies, the Western wheat -farm of Canada con- tinues to present unparalleled opportunities to the man who will unflinchingly face his task and adhere to it to the end. Where the prairie holds its thousands now, there is room for thousands more.
For it is a vast expanse — this Canadian prairie - land, the billowy, mysterious, lonely prairie, swal- lowing up the little habitations of men in its
169
Through the Heart of Canada
immensity. These plains of God, stretching from the distant sky-line to the far-off horizon, have their own allurement, though to some they may be dreary and depressing. Wonderfully carpeted with flower -life is its floor; rich in animal and bird-life are its great spaces. It is a sea of level where there are mysteries of atmosphere in the morning miracle of the sunrise, in the vividness of the noon -day sun, in the weird twilight hours that linger long into the night, in the night itself where the stars shine strangely bright and the moon has a great white world to itself; and when to the succession of ever-changing nature pictures there is added a display of the aurora borealis — the dancing spirits of the red men's fancy — the impress on mind and memory is one never to be effaced .
During the daylight there will be much to see for those who have eyes to see. In the farther distance may be discerned the circle of smoke- tipped tepees that tell of a peripatetic Indian village, here to-day, in a far-away valley to- morrow, changing position as silently as the moc- casined feet fall on the soft earth in this land of silence. The eye will also be riveted by the
stately approach of a summer storm — a cloud no
170
i
Across Canada's Thousand-mile Farm
larger than a man's hand swelling into magnificent proportions and darkening half of the sky. With incredible swiftness it travels over the plains, sud- denly submerging the world where one stands in a deluge of rain, and after the storm, what glorious sunshine bursts forth, what perfumes exhale from mother earth, how the trail-side wild-flowers brighten and all nature renews its life 1
Under a summer sky, the rolling billows of earth are brown with the tan of summer, or green with the growing of grass or grain. Then the carpet of the earth is many shaded. But with the winter comes the winter change of garb. The fields are then white not unto harvest, but with the cloak of the snow, when trails are for the time obliterated and the checker-boards of the homesteads lose their dividing-lines. And as the summer winds gallop unobstructed over the borderless spaces, so the winter winds race with wilder shriek and greater significance of danger. The spirit of the prairie winter storm whistles into the tented home of the Cree, where the blanketed occupants huddle closer to the central fire ; it shrieks at the corners of lonely cabins, or shakes windows and doors in an effort to break its way in. So the; storm hurries
to the south, and to its death.
171
Through the Heart of Canada
But with the spring all the life of the plains is renewed, the grass grows as it has for long ages, the flowers spring into their brief hour of life, the gopher reappears from his burrowed home, the wild-fowl fly northward to their feeding-grounds, and man, along with the revivifying of Nature, takes up his task of the toiler anew — he sows in the hope that he may reap, he partakes of the bounty of Nature and lives.
172
THE FOREIGNER IN CANADA
I
CHAPTER X
THE FOREIGNER IN CANADA
IBRD MiLNER tersely stated a truth when he escribed Canada as a nation growing up from seed gathered from all parts of the earth. De Tocqueville's axiom of a century ago, that popu- lation moves westward as if driven by the mighty hand of God, is also being demonstrated in the ^ Dominion. There was a time, previous to the last decade, when the Canadian people were mainly : composed of the two great racial families of t English and French speech, when the migratory ii streams came chiefly from the British Isles or '■ France. From 1897 to 19 10, of the 1,57 5,445 immigrants entering Canada, 600,411 came from the British Isles; 445,766 from the Continent of Europe, and 528,368 from the United States. No less than fifty-eight different nationalities and
iuntries are now annually represented in the total imigration into the Dominion. 175 :
Through the Heart of Canada
Canada has, therefore, a foreign element whose presence is markedly felt in the North-West, and which constitutes a serious problem of population and racial assimilation. Canada is becoming cos- mopolitan. Men have come and are coming from the ends of the earth attracted by the allurements of a land of freedom and free lands, of educational privileges and religious liberty, of civil rights and immunity from the burdens of war. Every continent and almost every country is contributing its quota to the human upbuilding of this new land of the West.
The Government tables are illuminating in this respect. They are like a map of the world. Immi- grants have come from every one of the British Dominions and colonies — from South Africa and Australia, from Bermuda and Jamaica and West Indies, from New Zealand and Australia and ancient India until Canada has become " one pf the melting-pots of the world."
Continental Europe is represented in many a
town and on many a homestead in the Western
provinces : Bohemian and Bukowinian, Croatian
and Dalmatian, Galician and Hungarian, Magyar
and Ruthenian, Slovak and Styrian — surely here is
a medley of peoples and tongues, relating the
176
Wk, The Foreigner in Canada
Dominion to monarchies and dynasties of ideals of government and life far different from her own. Alsatian, Bavarian, Prussian have a place in the ethnological roll-call, as well as Scandi- navian, Belgian, Dutch, Danish, and German. Spain sends a small yearly quota, and Italy con- tributes an increasingly large number. Turks and Armenians represent the storm-centre of the Black Sea and Asia Minor, Chinese and Japanese speak of the Orient and the yellow races, while the Hindoo represents the Asiatic.
Of this heterogeneous foreign inflow, the most numerous are the Austro-Hungarians, including the Galicians and their neighbours of the babel -land of Austria-Hungary, where there are seventeen countries in one. It is estimated that there are nearly one hundred thousand thus designated as Galicians, though they include many different nationalities, marked in their native lands by sharply defined distinctions that are not so easily traced in their new environment.
Galician communities are found in each of the three western provinces, all the way from the Red River of Manitoba to the western fringe of settle- ment in Alberta.
Who are these Galicians, or Ruthenians, who have
177 M
Through the Heart of Canada
flocked in such large numbers to a land thousands of miles distant from their own? They belong to the Slav family, found in the Austrian provinces of Galicia and Bukowinia, being closely allied to the " Little Russians " of Southern Russia. Illiterate and ignorant to a degree, these foreign elements, while constituting a serious problem in race assimilation, are contributing the rough, un- skilled labour so much in demand in a new country. They are, for the most part, the railway and con- tract workers for the country, labouring with a physical endurance the result of generations of peasant life and peasant hardships. But while thousands are thus engaged, other thousands have become actual settlers on the land, forming large and prosperous colonies scattered over the entire West. Over five thousand constitute a settlement in the Shoal Lake district of Manitoba. Saskatchewan has Galician communities at Ros- thern, Canora, and Beaver Hills. Alberta also has many such ^oups between Edmonton and Calgary, while a few hundreds have found their way into British Columbia.
A typical Galician village is to be found at Conor, Manitoba, opposite Upper Eort Garry on
the Red River, where the man of English speech
178
i The Foreigner in Canada
:: and manner of dress and life will find himself in f a world of different folk. As the black loam trails and farms are crossed, groups of bare-footed I peasant women are found at work in the potato- i fields . Clad in the plain linen garments spun in their \^ homeland, these toilers form a picturesque feature f of the open-air scene, producing earth's bounty \ on the fertile shores of a great Canadian river far removed from the Danube and the Black Sea — on a great Canadian stream where the Indian and the Hudson Bay factor once had the world to them- selves. If a pantomime invitation to inspect the interior of a modest home-made cabin be accepted, the household treasures will be brought to view from extraordinary hiding-places in rafters and under beds and tables, or from huge wooden trunks bearing the marks of steerage travel. Pathetically few are the household gods, but inestimably valuable in the eyes of their owners. The gorgeously lined sheepskin coats, once universally worn but now generally discarded, the elaborately woven blankets, and the neatly embroidered bodices are among the heirlooms and treasures -trove.
Children, too, will be discovered in large numbers, the bright lads and lassies speedily
^ picking up sufficient English to enable them to
179
Through the Heart of Canada
act as interpreters. And if the full confidence of these quiet people is won — and that is not done on the instant — the visitor to their village may be asked to partake of the dinner -table hospitality, when he will enjoy a unique meal, drinking very strong tea from a very strong tumbler, dipping up white squares of curds with generous squares of bread, and eating as many hard-boiled eggs as he dare. The swarms of fowl around the doorway point to an unlimited source of supply, as the fine herds of milch-cows ensure bountiful supplies of milk and milk products.
The house of the Galician peasant is simplicity itself, with its walls of roughly plastered logs, the hard-packed clay floor, the hand hewn chairs and benches, table and bed, and the rough rafters of the ceiling, from which is suspended a home-made canvas cradle holding the tiniest of little mortals. And the little interpreter lad succeeds in making the stranger understand that the baby was born on the ship that brought the parents to Canada, and that in commemoration of the fact one of its names is *' Canada.'*
\^Txat a far cry it must seem to these erstwhile subjects of Franz Joseph to find themselves trans- ferred from conditions of comparative oppression,
i8o
The Foreigner in Canada
of feudal servitude and burdensome taxation, to the fertile plains of the Canadian wheat-fields ; to be removed from the small tenant holdings of their former home to the rich prairies of their adopted country, where they are the proprietors instead of the tillers only, and where in lieu of a few poor acres, they possess a homestead of magnificent proportions.
Bordering the highways for miles are these Galician farmsteads. Hard-working are their owners. Rising before sunrise and labouring till dark, they shun not labour, and their labour brings its due reward in remunerative crops and valuable herds and flocks that roam at large on the wide roadways. Prominently situated in the centre of the community stands the little white Russian church of Conor, built by the settlers in a spirit of true communism, where the hand-made altar is as truly dignified by its environment as the marble marvel in great St. Peter's. Surmounting the quaintly gabled structure is a miniature dome, suggestive of the mosques of the East and the dominant religious system of Russia.
Not far afield is the schoolhouse, the contri- bution of the Covernment to the education and
uplift of the children of foreign speech ; and as
i8i
Through the Heart of Canada
one sees the children of Anglo-Saxon stock and those of Southern European parentage studying side by side, the problem of assimilation has a suggested solution. Erom an educational stand- point the Galician children are making satisfac- tory progress, while the parents are succeeding as agriculturists to a hopeful degree.
The ten thousand Doukhobors found in Canada present a totally different human problem. One of the most remarkable migratory movements of early or modern times was this transfer of practically an entire people or tribe from the steppes of Russia to the plains of Canada, involving a sea and land journey of over six thousand miles. It was during the winter of 1898-99 that the first shipload pf the ** Spirit Wrestlers *' landed at Saint John, New Brunswick, after their long voyage from the Black Sea, the event being celebrated by a prayer -meeting held on the wharf, when the strangely garbed com- munists chanted in monotone their psalms of thanksgiving. More than a decade has, therefore, passed since the Doukhobors settled in the West in a series of communes. They are to-day as peculiar a people as on their arrival, little less understood, and with but a slight impact made
upon them by English thought and civilisation.
182
is '^^^ Foreigner in Canada
IB The majority of their number are found in l^laskatchewan, in the colonies of Thunder Hill, Yorkton, and Rosthern. A majority continue to till the land in common, all living in the little villages, with their streets of earth-roofed houses. The efforts of the Government to bring about the holding of land in severalty has been only partially successful, but the recent throwing open of large areas hitherto held by the colonies as a whole will probably tend to disintegrate the communities. The entire community is practically under the control of Peter Veregin who, at the time of the Doukhobor migration, was an exile in Siberia. Since joining his people in Canada, he has become their virtual leader, exercising an extraordinary influence over them and ruling as an autocrat. Two or three times a year Veregin makes a state visit to the Doukhobor settlements, when he is received with the distinction of one in authority. Although the Doukhobors were in a prac- tically penniless condition when they made their reat trek, they now have many thousand acres nder cultivation and own thousands of horses, ttle and sheep. Living with the utmost fru- ality and having but few needs, it is an easy sk for them to amass comparative wealth. Their
183
Through the Heart of Canada
degree of success has not, however, militated against their simple pastoral life. They are still of the Quaker spirit, living a contented life in the narrow sphere of their faith and interests.
While their whole plan of life has its idealistic side, there is a darker phase to it. Their satis- faction with illiteracy is not reassuring. Attempts to educate some of their young people have signally failed and the charge is made that their leaders are averse to the enlightenment that educa- tion will bring. They are, moreover, discouraged from mixing with English-speaking people, and the ambitions of their aspiring youth for a wider knowledge of life seem to meet with disapproval.
They have no priests and no churches, and yet
through the whole warp and woof of their lives
religion is closely interwoven. Their tenacity of
faith cannot but be admired, for they have shown
that they possess the martyr spirit ; but along with
a faith of absolute trust and a dogged holding
to its tenets, loose ideas of social life and marriage
are said to prevail. The fact is plain that these
strange people, thus transplanted from a totally
different environment, are still as illiterate as when
they left their native steppes, still as steeped in
their ancient traditions, still foreign in the extreme.
184
The Foreigner in Canada
Some redeeming qualities are, however, observ- able— among them cleanliness and industry. With few exceptions they are willing and hard workers, a strong race physically, the reverse indeed of degenerates ; sober, thrifty, and religious . While the children of the Galicians are being Canadianised through the little red schoolhouse, the young spirit- wrestler of the plains is being kept in the darkness of ignorance.
A brighter chapter may be written concerning the Scandinavians in Canada. During the past few years there has been an increasingly large inflow of these hardy people of Northern Europe into the Dominion, some coming by way of the Western States. Hardly an immigrant train enters Winnipeg without its percentage of Norwegians and Swedes — big, broad-shouldered men, healthy, fair-haired wotnen, and children the duplicate in miniature of their parents in dress and manners. The large number of Finns included in the im- migration returns should also be counted among the Scandinavians ; they have proved themselves to be of the same self-reliant law-abiding peasantry. All these classes make good farmers, but the majority of the men are forced by circumstances to do some preliminary work on railways and roads
185
Through the Heart of Canada
or in lumbering and mining. Fifty thousand of this class of settlers are scattered throughout the Canadian West, constituting a valuable element in the population. Not a few of their leaders have risen to the highest positions in the Western Pro- vinces ; their children make the best of students in the schools, often carrying away the honours from those of British or Canadian birth ; while their farming settlements bear evidence of the prosperity that follows honest toil and clean-living. Winni- peg alone has a Swedish colony of over three thousand, with its own churches and newspapers. Quickly mastering English, and easily mingling with other races, these hardy folk make the best of settlers and in many cases the best of adopted Canadians. Those who have come in by way of Minnesota or other States of the Union have readily adapted themselves to Canadian institutions and ideals, and no more prosperous farmers are to be found within the boundaries of the three provinces] Nor must the twenty thousand Icelanders hi overlooked. The qualities attributed to the Norj wegian and Swede, the Pole and the Dane, ar( observable also in these sons of the North. The] too are in the legislative halls and municipal
chambers of the West. They too supply th<
i86
|K The Foreigner in Canada
country with professional men of all ranks and I conditions, and whether as farmers or business men, as merchants or editors, as teachers or preachers, the Icelanders have long been a nation-making factor in their new home.
The Germanic element in Canadian immigra- tion has always been an important one. Pros- perous German communities are found in many parts of the older settled provinces of the Dominion, while nearly one hundred thousand (in- cluding Mennonites ) have settled in the Western Provinces. The majority are farmers, and excellent farmers at that. On the main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway there are many German commu- nities, and while they do not form the solid colonies of the Galician or Doukhobor, yet they predomi- nate in the regions where they have located, where German societies and German papers accen- tuate their parent nationality, and where the German vote is a disturbing factor to the poli- ticians at election times. The German settler soon takes his part in the life of his locality, soon sees that churches and schools are erected, and soon adapts himself to Anglo-Saxon conditions, though there are evidences that he has sometimes suc- ceeded in Germanising his English-speaking
187
Through the Heart of Canada
neighbour. Like the Scandinavian, the German
is a good settler and a good citizen.
The twenty thousand Mennonites among their
number, while of the Germanic family, came
originally to Canada from Russia some thirty years
ago. Forced to render military service in Russia,
they withdrew, like the Doukhobors, rather than
submit, seeking their new homes in Kansas and
Southern Manitoba. The original Mennonite,
when he spied out the promised land in Canada,
wore the garb of a European peasant — but his
thirty years of residence under different conditions
have worked a radical change. To-day it is
difficult to distinguish his children from those of
the English race ; he has turned his Red River
allotments into a garden land, and substantial
prosperity has been his portion. And while the
pioneers adhere to their original farms, as they
do in part to their religious beliefs and social
practices, the younger generation are not only less
strict and less German, but are hiving off to the
lands of Saskatchewan and Alberta, there setting
up homes and communities for themselves.
The peoples thus far described as making up
the foreign population of Western Canada are not,
however, the only ones. The son of sunny Italy
i88
The Foreigner in Canada
has discovered Canada, though the majority have ; centred in the large cities from which numbers j make their way to the places where the contractors I have work for the navvy. In Canada, of all the j non -English immigrants, the Italians stand second, 1 with probably fifty thousand all told. With an I ever-increasing momentum of inflow, they come from the Neapolitan zone of the south, the Roman zone of classic ground, and the sturdier land of Lombardy on the north. The Italian of Canada is a labourer, and not a farmer or settler. He helps to form the pick-and-shovel army of the Dominion, and who shall say that his work is un- important or to be despised. But outside of assisting in the construction of the Western rail- ways, the man from Italy is not as yet a factor in the settlement of the West as is the immigrant from other countries of Europe.
Cousin to the Italian is the man of the Levant. Ten thousand have journeyed from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean to the eastern shores of Canada, constituting, in the opinion of students of immigration, one of the least desirable classes of immigrants. A comparatively few Greeks have seized upon certain lines of business in the cities,
hundreds of Turks form the guild of pedlars or
189
Through the Heart of Canada
small shopkeepers, while as many Armenians as there are Turks are glad to escape the bondage of their rulers in the East. But the Syrian out- numbers all his brothers of the Levantine races who help to make up the seven and a half millions of Canada's population. Pedlars too, they are, confining their attention for the most part chiefly to the cities. It is a suggestive fact that in Winnipeg there are enough of this race to form two rival political clubs. Then, too, a colony of Persians will be found in the far north of Saskatche- wan, led there by a missionary in order to escape religious persecution in their own land.
There remains the Oriental. A recent Cana- dian Government return states that British Columbia had 38,258 Orientals, viz., 16,000 each of Chinese and Japanese, and 5,131 Hindoos; 7,442 of this far-eastern population have become naturalised. In consequence of the Chinese head tax of five hundred dollars, immigration from that source has become an inconsiderable factor ; the Japanese inflow has likewise lessened owing to popular agitation against it, and the arrival of Hindoos from India has practically been ended. But in British Columbia, where one out of every
ten is an Oriental, the immigration problem has
190
I
The Foreigner in Canada
phase peculiarly its own. It seems certain that
i' the Oriental cannot be assimilated. He has his own virtues and vices, his own ineradicable beliefs and manners, his own set ppint of view. How far such a people will be a source of strength to a
■ land so alien to their own is a question not easily solved.
There remains the Frenchman in Western Canada — as distinct from the French-Canadian. A
' few thousand have drifted into the West from France and Belgium, forming compact communi-
, ties and holding to the Roman Catholic faith and ministered to through separate public schools, as are the people of Quebec, who, trekking westward from the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa, have settled in other small communities in Northern Ontario and the prairie provinces.
There is also a Jewish element among the foreigners in Canada. They, too, are increasing numerically, not only in the cities of Canada, but in the West, where there are one or more purely Jewish agricultural colonies working out an experi- ment that is in the nature of the case bound to be interesting and suggestive.
The foreigner in Canada — what a conglomeration
of tongues and races, of ideals and beliefs, of
191
Through the Heart of Canada
prejudices and superstitions he represents ! When the Bible Society finds it necessiary to have the Bible or parts thereof printed in eighty tongues and dialects for actual distribution and sale in the Dominion, an evidence of the curious mixture of humanity is strikingly afforded. The Canada of but two or three tongues of a former day is no more ; the foreigner has made it cosmopolitan . The Churches of Canada, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, are facing the religious and educational problems created by an inflow of im- migration representing one -fifth of the population. Large sums of money — millions in the aggregate —are being contributed toward the building of churches and missions, of colleges and schools, and for the support of hundreds of missionaries and teachers. The process of Canadianising such a mass of human beings will tax Governments and people to their fullest capacity, and in this national task the Churches of the Dominion are rising to the obligations and responsibilities thus cast upon them .
192
THE POLICE PATROL OF HALF A
CONTINENT
CHAPTER XI
THE POLICE PATROL OF HALF A CONTINENT
The most unique police force in the world is the Royal North-West Mounted Police of the Canadian West. It consists of 665 officers and men, who patrol an area five times the size of Great Britain, or as large as Central Europe, extending a thousand miles from south to north, and double that distance from east to west.
Twelve divisional posts and one hundred and fifty detachments are found throughout the northern end of the continent, from Hudson Bay to the Rockies, and from the international boun- dary to the Arctic Ocean and the Yukon. Rarely, in the history of national policing, has such a com- paratively small body of men exercised control over such a large area or over so many diversified peoples, and rarely have the results been so bene- ficial in the establishment of law and order, where lawless elements could easily control the situation.
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Through the Heart of Canada
It is thirty-seven years since the force was organised, as the instrument by which the " Pax Britannica " was to be carried into the great Canadian West, which was then an almost No- man's Land, known to few save the Hudson Bay factors and the red men. On July 8, 1874, two hundred and seventy-four men commenced their celebrated march toward the Rocky Mountains. The immediate effect of the arrival of these Govern- ment troops is well expressed in the words of an old Indian, who, addressing them at a council meet- ing of his tribe, said : " Before you came, the Indian crept along ; now he is not afraid to walk erect." For thirty-seven years, therefore, neither white or red man has been afraid to walk erect, whether across the great plains and the mountains, in the far Northland, or the Yukon.
So far is this true that upon the organisation of the new provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan the Commissioner was able to report that they] were, from a police point of view, in a satisfactor; condition, and that notwithstanding the influx oi foreign peoples they began their career as orderly and law-abiding as any in the Dominion.
The force may be said to have largely com- pleted the work it originally set out to do, so far
196
tThe Police Patrol of Half a Continent ,s the frontier provinces are concerned — a work hat has been worth many times its cost as an bject -lesson of the power and authority of govern- ment existing behind all real civilisation. But the task of the mounted patroUer is by ho means over, though it has been the policy of the Government to reduce the number gradually. The present force costs the country nearly three-quarters of a million dollars a year. Their outposts are being set farther afield. Thus from the promontory of Cape Chidley, at almost the most northerly point of Labrador, the barracks overlook Hudson Straits, another guards Hudson Bay, a third the Arctic seaboard from Herschell Island, while the most western one serves to protect the gold land of the Yukon. It is a fact that on the three-hundred- mile road from White Horse to Dawson, the traveller is as safe as in any part of Canada.
The stories of the daily life of these rough- riders of the plains are the very essence of romance, of high courage, of herculean tasks per- formed, and great difficulties overcome. The mounted police kept down lawlessness when the Canadian Pacific Railway was being built, they fought bravely during the Riel Rebellion of 1885,
they kept well in hand the gold rush to the
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Through the Heart of Canada
It is thirty -seven years since the force was organised, as the instrument by which the ** Pax Britannica " was to be carried into the great Canadian West, which was then an almost No- man's Land, known to few save the Hudson Bay factors and the red men. On July 8, 1874, two hundred and seventy-four men commenced their celebrated march toward the Rocky Mountains. The immediate effect of the arrival of these Govern- ment troops is well expressed in the words of an old Indian, who, addressing them at a council meet- ing of his tribe, said : " Before you came, the Indian crept along ; now he is not afraid to walk erect." For thirty-seven years, therefore, neither white or red man has been afraid to walk erect, whether across the great plains and the mountains, in the far Northland, or the Yukon.
So far is this true that upon the organisation of the new provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan the Commissioner was able to report that they were, from a police point of view, in a satisfactory condition, and that notwithstanding the influx of foreign peoples they began their career as orderly and law-abiding as any in the Dominion.
The force may be said to have largely com- pleted the work it originally set out to do, so far
196
tThe Police Patrol of Half a Continent ,s the frontier provinces are concerned — a work hat has been worth many times its cost as an •bject -lesson of the power and authority of govern- ment existing behind all real civilisation. But the task of the mounted patroUer is by ino means over, though it has been the policy of the Government to reduce the number gradually. The present force costs the country nearly three-quarters of a million dollars a year. Their outposts are being set farther afield. Thus from the promontory of Cape Chidley, at almost the most northerly point of Labrador, the barracks overlook Hudson Straits, another guards Hudson Bay, a third the Arctic seaboard from Herschell Island, while the most western one serves to protect the gold land of the Yukon. It is a fact that on the three -hundred- mile road from White Horse to Dawson, the traveller is as safe as in any part of Canada.
The stories of the daily life of these rough- riders of the plains are the very essence of romance, of high courage, of herculean tasks per- formed, and great difficulties overcome. The mounted police kept down lawlessness when the Canadian Pacific Railway was being built, they fought bravely during the Riel Rebellion of 1885, they kept well in hand the gold rush to the
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Klondyke in 1889-90, and not a few served in South Africa during the Boer War.
But the deeds of the individual men call for high praise. Their qualities of fidelity, devotion to duty, and fearlessness are constantly being exemplified. A thousand miles on the ice, " mushing *' by dog -team and komatik, through unexplored haunts of bear and wolf, is a common marching order for these splendid pioneers.
One such journey was made during the winter of 1906 by Constable Sellers, a trip of 995 miles, in company with an interpre,ter and an Eskimo, in order to trace a Scottish ship plying in the x\rctic waters, and to collect the customs duties. With his two companions and a dog-team. Sellers left the west coast of Hudson Bay in February, and returned on April 19th, having been exposed for two months to the full rigours of an Arctic winter. Blizzard after blizzard was encountered, the men taking shelter in the Eskimo igloos or ice huts, and feeding on wild deer. Even then the meat had very often to be eaten frozen, because the alcohol and wood gave out.
Sellers' diary, a typically modest report, only
hints at what lay behind the arduous journey :
" We have only fifty pounds of deer meat, two
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The Police Patrol of Half a Continent
pounds of pemmican, and six pounds of boiled meat for ourselves and the ten dogs, so we must find natives. Very cold day; I had both my feet badly frozen. My footgear is in a very bad state — wet and worn out. We were compelled to break up some barrels to cook food, as we had been subsisting on frozen meat for the last three days.'*
** Terrible snowstorm. Impossible to go out looking for natives. Our dogs are getting hungry, as they have had nothing for three days. We cannot possibly give them anything out of what small supply we have for ourselves. My feet are very sore, the result of frost burns."
*' Bad storm, but not nearly so bad as yesterday. I sent Ford and Tupealock out to look for natives. They returned at 5 p.m. bringing us information that cheered us quite a little. The ship, they learned, was at Melachuseetuck — the place where ghosts chase women. They brought some meat for the dogs, and said the natives, who belonged to the Nitulick tribe, would come in the morning with as much meat as they could spare."
** Still storming. Finished up all our meat for breakfast. About noon the natives came in, bringing about four hundred pounds of meat, which I purchased from them. It was nearly all
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Through the Heart of Canada
seal meat. We found it rather high all by itself, but hunger is a great sauce."
In due course the party reached the vessel for which they were searching, and received a hearty Scottish welcome from her commander, Captain Murray, who fitted them out with stores for the return journey.
Another remarkable journey was that made by Corporal Field, of the Fort Chipewyan Post. One day he received a summons to attend to a case of lunacy farther north. It only takes a few lines of type to chnonicle the fact, but it took Field six weeks of travel for a distance of thirteen hun- dred miles, through the snowy wastes of winter. On the way down country, the maniac became so violent that he had to be strapped to the sleigh, fighting his keeper, refusing food, and other- wise adding to the difficulties of the plucky corporal. Not an hour of the day or night was the keeper free from his charge, as he battled no less with unreason than with the angry elements. Yet the Government report merely states that the demented man was safely handed over to the asylum authorities. Field had done his duty — that was all.
Or, take the case of Inspector Generoux, of
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^The Police Patrol of Half a Continent
^fcrince Albert, who travelled seventeen hundred j^ftid fifty miles by canoe and dog-train through I the farther north to inquire into a case of alleged murder. He was absent one hundred and thirty- two days. At the inquest he, as coroner, found that the death was accidental ; but the trip is an illustration of what lies in the programme of these hardy men of the North, showing that supposed crime will be dealt with, no matter what the cost or how dangerous the case. One such murder case cost the country nearly one hundred thousand dollars .
On December 27, 1905, Corporal Mapley left Dawson City with a detachment of police destined for Fort McPherson, on the Peel River, five hundred miles distant, across mountain ranges totally unknown to the travellers. These plucky pathfinders were entrusted with his Majesty's mail, travelling by dog -team. The party arrived back on March 9th, having successfully covered a thousand miles of trailless territory. The corporal's modest report on this great journey well repre- sents the best traditions of the force.
Arriving at Fort McPherson, what did they find ? A police post in the land of the midnight sim, with a native population of Eskimos, and a handful
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Through the Heart of Canada
of Hudson Bay men. Two hundred miles farther north lies Herschell Island, occupied by the police since 1904, where toll is taken from the United States sealers and whalers, and where the British flag flies at its most northern point, within twelve hundred miles of the North Pole. These far-flung lines of police power strikingly illustrate the vast- ness of the domain under Canadian control.
The life of the mounted policeman on Herschell Island presents many features of interest. Stranded in this far-off corner of the Dominion, in the Canadian " Land of the midnight sun," he lives as near the North Pole as is possible. It is a circumscribed island home, moreover, with a shore -line of only twenty-three miles, and with cliffs rising five hundred feet from the 'Arctic Sea. Though so far north, in latitude 69, Herschell Island is covered with a luxuriant growth of grass, and carpeted with innumerable wild-flowers. The island possesses the one safe harbour in all these northern waters — a harbour in which fifty ships could safely winter.
The island is, furthermore, in the centre of the
whaling grounds of the Arctic country. The
reports of the mounted police are a surprise as to
the extent of the whaling industry. From 1891
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I The Police Patrol of Half a Continent h 1907 no less than 1,345 whales were caught in Canadian waters. Adding the value of the fur trade to that of the whaling industry, the total amount during the six years mentioned would reach the large total of $14,850,000.
The report of Inspector Jar vis for 1908 gives an interesting picture of the Arctic natives. On one of the islands there are fifty Eskimos, or " Kogmollicks," as they are called, while two hundred and fifty '* Nunatalmutes " are also found in the vicinity. The latter are represented as a clean, well-set-up tribe, much superior to the Indians along the Mackenzie River. The former tribe subsist chiefly on fish, seal, and white whale, while the latter are inshore natives, and live chiefly on the game killed in the mountains, such as mountain sheep and deer.
Inspector Jarvis further says of the Nunatal- mutes :—
** They are quite religious, holding service on
Sunday and doing no work on that day. There
is no missionary here. They carry their religion
into their every-day lives. They neither beg nor
steal, and slander is unknown among them. They
are as near ' God*s Chosen People ' as any I have
ever seen. After my experience of this world,
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Through the Heart of Canada
I could almost wish I had been born an Eskimo ! They are very fond of their children and take the greatest care of them. They never require to be chastised and are very obedient. One never sees any quarrelling or bickering amongst them. They show the true sport in their games of football and baseball, and play these games on the hard snow when the thermometer registers 25 degrees below zero. The other day I noticed a crowd of little tots, in their skin clothes, play- ing on the snow for several hours as though they were in a bed of roses. The thermometer was 1 8 degrees below, and it would have been the same had it registered 30 degrees below. ... It was with a sincere feeling of regret that I took leave of these * younger brothers of the race.' The shores of Britain's Seven Seas can show no more intelligent or gently-kind people than the Eskimos of Northern Canada, none that so readily respond to courtesy and goodwill. These Eskimos are Canadians and British subjects, and some official acknowledgment of the fact by the British or Canadian authorities would be seed cast on good ground."
The work of the police nearer the United States
boundary is certainly marked by variety. In the
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The Police Patrol of Half a Continent
ranching country, where prairie fires are a menace, the lonely soldier in khaki must needs act as fire warden. One October day, Constable Conradi was having his dinner at an Alberta ranch, when he noticed a terrific prairie fire sweeping across the country from the south-east. '* Are there any settlers in danger?" was his instant inquiry.
" Young has a wife and ten children, but I would not try to make his place, the fire is coming up at such a pace," replies the rancher.
Then Conradi knew his duty. Fighting the flames with the utmost heroism, for the wind was blowing a gale, and the fire was fierce in th^ extreme, at last Conradi actually ran through the wall of flames, emerging nearly suffocated, with his hair singed, and his coat on fire. Finding Young through the thick smoke, where he had taken refuge beside a slough, Conradi seized two of the youngest children, the others followed, and all were saved, though their brave rescuer was rather badly burned. ** My wife and family owe their lives to Mr. Conradi, and I feel, with them, we shall never be able to repay him for his brave conduct," writes the rescued man.
Horse and cattle thieves are sometimes found
near the boundary. A message came to the force
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Through the Heart of Canada
headquarters one New Year's Day that a band of horse thieves were operating the country beyond Saskatoon. It was a meagre clue, but three men set out in a raging snowstorm, and on the follow- ing day found the ringleader in a half-breed settlement sixty miles out. They were three against eight, some of whom showed fight, but the moral effect of the King's uniform helped to make the arrest. The prisoner's friends offered a bribe for his release, but a Mounted Policeman cannot be bought.
One journey led, however, to fatal results. In the middle of winter it was imperative to send a message to a distant post. A corporal volun- teered, and set forth in a blizzard, with the ther- mometer registering thirty degrees below zero. The despatch was never delivered ; the policeman never returned I After the snow had gone in the spring, an Indian found a skeleton clad in a faded red uniform. The fatal despatch was in the pocket, and on it were written the words : " Lost. Horse dead. Am trying to push on. Have done m'y best ! *' His dying hand had written a better epitaph than any that " storied urn or animated bust " could proclaim to his memory.
The Mounted Police are, moreover, of neces-
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^The Police Patrol of Half a Continent
^pty, great explorers and travellers. One detach - j^Bient has been at work opening up a pack trail I from Edmonton to the Yukon, a distance of nearly , a thousand miles. ** The men worked very hard under very trying circumstances," is the testimony of the officer in command of the work. Unfore- seen difficulties in the nature of unfordable streams, which had to be bridged, steep banks which had to be graded, and extensive windfalls, through which the trail had to be literally sawn, were encountered, as well as blizzards and storms many, and consequent exposure to the elements. Rest-houses are being built every thirty miles, and the distances are marked every two miles. The trail is being made so that it may later be widened into a wagon trail if necessary. A trail from the Peace River to the Yukon, several hun- dred miles in length, is also nearing construction, the work of a small detachment of twenty-nine police .
The obstacles encountered were such as are in- cidental to road-making in a mountainous country, steep ascents and descents, rivers and streams, muskegs and soft places, forests and fallen timber ; the difficulties were the shortness of the season, work being only possible for four months, the
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Through the Heart of Canada
forwarding of supplies, and the necessity of h'aste ; the discomforts were from flies, rain, and cold. Owing to the luxuriant growth being saturated with a heavy dew, the men were scarcely ever dry, even if the day were fine. However, there were few accidents, and little sickness. The horses suffered most because of the hard work and the scarcity of feed at times, but no fatalities ensued.
In their capacity as postmen, the policemen cover beats of unheard-of length. One is of a thousand - mile length, covering a mid-winter trip from the Yukon to Eort McPherson, on the Mackenzie River within the Arctic Circle, and through a no-man's mountain -land.
" For a third time/' reports the Commissioner,
" a patrol carrying mail was sent to Fort
McPherson, leaving Dawson in December, 1906,
and returning in February. I have in previous
reports called your attention to this very arduous
patrol of a thousand miles, which was again carried
out so successfully by Constable Forrest. It means
a great deal to our far-flung posts that they
should send and receive news from their people.
I might here observe that whether bringing relief
to isolated settlers in bitter cold and over the deep
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The Police Patrol of Half a Continent
snow of the open plains, carrying mail to distant 'Hudson Bay posts, to the Arctic Seas, or to de- tachments interned in Northern British Columbia, or hurrying to the relief of unfortunate persons in remote parts, our men do not fail us. They undertake the work with cheerfulness and carry it out indifferent to difficulties and hardships."
Another long Arctic mail route is a mid-winter one to Hudson Bay, where the service is described as '* lonely, monotonous, and dangerous." And these journeys are thus briefly disposed of in the official report : *' On December i ith Inspector Pelletier and Corporal Reeves left Mafeking, a station on the Canadian Northern Railway, for Eort Churchill with mail and despatches, and returned to that point on March 2nd, having made a most successful journey, with dogs, of fourteen hundred miles in mid-winter without mishap."
This officer made another journey by water during the succeeding summer. L'eaving Norway House on July 25th, with three canoes, he pro- ceeded by Split Lake, Little Churchill River, Deer River, and Churchill River to Eort Churchill, arriving there on August 20th. Returning, he left Fort Churchill on August 31st in a coast boat
for York Factory ; here leaving the coast boat, he
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Through the Heart of Canada
took canoes up the Nelson River, and arrived at Norway House on September 26th. He estimates that the round trip was twelve hundred and forty miles .
These mounted men of a vast area of the North-West have many duties to perform besides acting as policemen. They exercise an oversight over the Indian tribes — no small task in itself, and one calling for the best tact and patience. They are customs collectors in the more remote posts. They form a boundary patrol, with special refer- ence to the smuggling of animals across the border . They are expected to watch the timber, to relieve distress among the settlers, to act, in a word, in a paternal attitude toward the scattered dwellings of their patrol. And where in all Arctic America will you find " mushers," paddlers, or rough-riders like the North-West Mounted Police? They are men of many parts, who may to-day be officially registering a marriage or a death out in the lonely wastes, and to-morrow starting to hunt down a murderer, warn rebellious Indians, or visit a sick miner fallen by the way five hundred miles from anywhere. Two men, horses and guns ; two men, dog -team and guns ; two men, canoe and guns — such are the units of this unique police force.
I
The Police Patrol of Half a Continent
b them distance is literally no object, obstacles no bar, difficulties no deterrent.
The great point aimed at is to instil into the lawless the fact that life and property shall be respected in this far -stretching wilderness just as in any great city on the American continent, and, moreover, that the offender shall be secured and brought to justice at any cost whatever.
Truly, they have a half-continent for their parish, and truly, too, these public guardians are one of the best assets of the British Empire and of the Canadian people. The Royal North -West Mounted Police of Canada occupies an eminent position in the annals of national policing.
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I
THE LAND OF THE RANCHER
I
CHAPTER XII
THE LAND OF THE RANCHER
Alberta is the great ranching province of Canada, hugging the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and spreading itself over an area twice that of Great Britain and as large as that of Erance. It has been said by a facetious observer to be bounded on the west by the mountains, on the south by the United States, on the east by circumstances, and on the north by climate, but a boundary line more definite than that of circumstance or climate marks the limit of this great western comer of Canada. For seven hundred miles it reaches from the United States border to the heart of the Peace River country. Within this area are one hundred and sixty-two million acres, of which one hundred and twenty millions are claimed to be arable. And when it is remembered that of this one hundred and twenty million acre farm, only one million acres are under cultivation, the possibilities of
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Through the Heart of Canada
Alberta, from a farming and stock-raising point of view, are seen to be overwhelming in their im- mensity.
This newest province of the Dominion boasts of two thriving civic centres in Calgary and Edmonton, the commercial and legislative capitals respectively.
Calgary dates its beginnings from a com- paratively recent time . -Where once stood the cabin home of old Sam Livingstone, mountaineer, ex- plorer, and wanderer, a prosperous city now borders the shores of the Bow River, with no com- mercial rival within hundreds of miles. Drawing trade from a wide agricultural area, occupying a position in the heart of the ranching country and situated at the gateway of the Rockies, Calgary is assured of its future. Glimpses of the varied and picturesque life of the plains and foothills are afforded in this lively Western metropolis. Stray groups of Indians parade the streets, gay in blankets and gowns of the primary hues, the men proud of their long black braided hair, the women proud of the copper-tinted papooses strapped to their backs. But the white man predominates, as does his civilisation. Cosmopolitan are the throngs
that crowd the station platforms and the wide
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The Land of the Rancher
streets. Along with types of almost every racial family of Europe — Slavonic, Teutonic, Latin— are the men of English speech, many of whom have migrated across the borders from the United States, and the men of English speech are the rulers. In no Canadian centre may be seen a more virile representation of humanity, and in no other city of its size are finer churches and schools, shops, and homes. Calgary is essentially of the twentieth
Ipntury, seized of its spirit, impregnated with its ptimism, and marked by its bigness of plans, bt so much for the distant future as for to-morrow. Two hundred miles due north, toward the upper nd of the province, is Edmonton, perched on the edge of the high banks of the Saskatchewan. Ever since the first railway train rumbled into its borders a few years ago, Edmonton has felt its importance more surely and with every reason. It is no in- significant moment in the history of a town when the isolation of a generation is ended and it is linked with the outside world. It is interesting to hear an old timer (though he may be only a five years* resident) tell the story of Edmonton. The new timer is the one who arrived yesterday. The old timer will assert that Edmonton is the real
centre of the West, instead of its being the farthest
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Through the Heart of Canada
outpost ; that it is the half-way house between Winnipeg and the Mackenzie River, and the gateway to a thousand miles of Canada straight north. He will describe it as the Mecca towards which all the great transcontinental railways are hurrying their main lines as fast as the rails can be laid, and bridges flung across the Battle and the Saskatchewan — a part of the Dominion around which both winter and spring wheat and the best of every other kind of grain is grown, and the choicest of live stock raised. It is the entrepot of the north-western fur trade, the centre of a rich coal- bearing area, and an important station on the new Grand Trunk Pacific line through the Yellowhead Pass to the Pacific.
Changes are taking place in these western cities with startling rapidity. The earth trails of Edmonton that long knew only the tread of the horse and the creak of the Red River cart, now know the warning cry of the automobile and the clang of the electric car. What was not so long ago an outpost of empire is now an inpost of Canada. Handsome new legislative buildings of Alberta are being erected in Edmonton, and a state provincial university has been started in the neighbouring
town of Strathcona.
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The Land of the Rancher
Alberta is also the land where may be heard the song of the cowboy : —
*'I want free life, and I want fresh air, And I sigh for the canter after the cattle, The crack of the whips like shot in the air, The medley of horns, and hoofs and heads, That wars, and wrangles, and scatters and spreads; The green beneath and the blue above. The dash and danger, and life and love."
It is only thirty years since the first herd of twenty-five cattle made the initial round-up in Alberta ; to-day more than a million cattle, horses, and sheep are dining off the succulent grasses a bountiful Nature has there provided. To care for these, hundreds of men are required — a group of toilers who constitute a class by themselves. A wide domain is theirs, and a fairer land one could not find in all the broad Dominion, sweeping in rank after rank of ever-heightening foothills to the foundations of the mighty Rockies, whose snow- shrouded summits, outlined against a clear sky, can be seen seventy-five miles away. These swelling prairies form no pent-up country, but one within whose confines cowboy, cattle-raiser, and farmer will have elbow-room and to spare for many years to come.
The equable climate adds to the attractions of
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Through the Heart of Canada
the foothill country. The warm chinook winds from the Pacific temper the cold during the winter, preventing the snow from accumulating, with the result that the horses and cattle are, as a rule, able to forage for themselves ; although an occa- sional blizzard, of extra severity, may cause the suffering and death of many animals.
There comes a party of cowboys, away in the distance, looking as small as coyotes. Clouds of dust further locate the galloping group, making its way over the winding trail. Through the dust loom up the sturdy little ponies, whose riders are thoroughly at home in the saddle. Many a long mile will be covered in a day, especially through the half-yearly round-up, when all the cattle are gathered in corrals to be sorted out, branded anew, and either sent to the market, turned loose again on the prairies, or driven to the ranches of their respective owners.
The round-up is, in fact, the event of the season in the cow-country. Toward the end of May the ranchers collect, with their tents, ponies, and wagons, at a central point, from which to " work the range.'* The cowboys " cruise," or scout, the surrounding territory, gradually driving in the scat- tered heads to the corral, where a count is made,
220
i
k
V
'H
I
^
'M
The Land of the Rancher
the losses by death or straying ascertained, the necessary branding done, and the herds re-sorted.
An Alberta round-up forms a most interesting prairie picture. Dozens of ranching helpers are present, each booted and spurred, and wearing the inevitable slouch hat, and a serviceable suit of clothes, tanned by storm' and sun to the tawny complexion of the man himself. Indeed, so far as bronzed features are concerned, it would be difficult to distinguish between a typical cattle -tender and a Cree or Blackfeet Indian.
Eor the first few nights after the cattle are corralled, and especially after the calves are weaned, it is said that no one is able to sleep within a hundred miles of the spot, with both mothers and calves bellowing mightily and in- cessantly. The sorting out of the cattle, too, is often a lively experience, calling for the coolest of heads and the utmost vigilance to prevent accidents. The keen -eyed riders move among the restless herd. The special cow chosen is cleverly made to edge her way to the outer circle of the drove, where she is quickly lassoed, and stretched head and tail on her side. In this work the wise little cow -ponies are invaluable, as they hold the ropes taut while the beast receives the red-hot iron
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Through the Heart of Canada
that burns in the mark of the owner's brand — such as Seven U, Bar U, Anchor P, O. H., and similar letters and designs. Thirteen thousand different brands are registered in Alberta alone, giving some idea of the extent of the industry.
A horse corral is even more interesting than a cattle one, as the ponies, objecting to having their liberty curtailed, fill the air with squealing and kicking protests. The excitement is fully equal to that produced by a solid mass of frightened, bellowing cows. Such is the life of the Canadian cowboy — often an arduous one, involving hardship and exposure, and calling for pluck and grit. But to him it is an ideal employment ; he learns to love the sweeping hills and green -floored valleys, and to enjoy his cabin home and the welcome rest it affords.
The ranching industry is, however, undergoing a change of conditions. The big companies, holding thousands of acres, and carrying on their business in a wholesale way, are becoming fewer, and more and more the cowboys themselves are becoming their own employers, though in a more limited field. The farmer is making his appearance in the province, crowding the rancher farther afield — as far north, it may be, as the Peace River Valley,
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The Land of the Rancher
or the vast regions north of Saskatchewan, where excellent ranching conditions are said to exist. A readaptation of conflicting interests will no doubt be reached between the Alberta wheat producer and the cattle -grower. It may be found that there is room for both in this highly-favoured section of the Dominion.
The farmer is fast becoming an increasing factor in Alberta, over thirty thousand farms being shown in the census of 1906. With the discovery that winter wheat can be successfully grown in this region, once declared to be unfitted for grain cultivation of any kind, a new avenue of prosperity was opened up. The wheat yield increased forty- fold in three years, running as high as forty bushels per acre. The prospective market for this surplus winter wheat and flour is China and Japan, the Orientals, it is claimed, preferring the bread made from it to that made from the harder wheat pf Manitoba. The Mormon farmers of Southern Alberta are, in fact, already shipping winter wheat direct to the Far East.
This Mormon colony in Southern Alberta con- stitutes an unusual settlement in the population of Western Canada. The Mormon policy of ex- pansion led a small band of eight or ten families
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Through the Heart of Canada
to leave Utah twenty years ago, under the leader- ship of C . O . Card, an experienced pioneer . Some fifteen miles from the international boundary and near the foothills of the Rockies, this advance guard staked out their prairie homes in Canada — the first farmers to invade what had hitherto been regarded as only a stockman's paradise. These hardy, energetic westerners knew how to develop the virgin soil of their new home, as they had developed the resources of Utah and Idaho. Thus they prospered from the first, despite the fact that the changed conditions as to climate and soil made farming almost a new art to them.
It is estimated that there are now seven thousand adherents of Utah Mormonism in iWestern Canada, and many more are annually trekking northward, joining their brethren under the British flag. Four towns were started that have since become thriving centres ; farming, ranching, and the raising of beet sugar being carried on in their respective localities.
Lethbridge is the northern gateway of this Canadian Mormonland . Into what was long known as the arid belt of the western plains, there has thus been projected the agricultural interest, and where it was once foretold that grain could not
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The Land of the Rancher
be grown, now widespread fields of wheat may be seen. Raymond lies twenty miles south of Leth- bridge. It is one of the newest of the Mormon towns, dating from 1901. One year the tenantless plains, the next a group of pioneer farmhouses, a town in the making ; to-day a population of several hundred. A large beet-sugar factory, costing half a million dollars, has been built at this point, for the beet-sugar industry promises to become as relatively important as that of wheat -growing and stock-raising. Raymond has been incorporated, has numerous business houses, banks, a roller mill, an elevator, and a fine school and town hall.
Cardston is the creation of Joseph Card, a son- in-law of Brigham Young. Mr. Card is the ex- president of this Canadian State of Zion, and conducts a large co-operative store, for co- operation is effective throughout Mormondom in the purchase and communal use of steam threshers, and in the erection of grist mills and cheese and other factories. Surrounding Cardston are a number of smaller settlements.
A majority of the ** Saints " live in village com- nunities for the sake of the social life and the educational and religious privileges involved in iuch an arrangement, for the church and the school
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constitute an important part in the economy of the sect. A deep interest is taken in the schools. Excellent buildings are provided for the purpose, and fairly well-trained teachers are secured. Wisely, too, the trustees take a more than per- functory interest in the duty entrusted to them, by frequently visiting the schools and inspecting the work of the teachers .
In the matter of land tenures, the holdings are arranged so that the owners may live in a village or town. A small piece of ground is attached to each dwelling, in which garden produce is grown. Orchards, too, are being planted, with good prospects of reaching maturity. The main farm, averaging about eighty acres, lies in the territory around the settlements, and a drive in this direction will reveal what has already been accomplished by irrigation.
The Mormons who have settled in Canada gave a pledge to the Canadian Government that they would refrain from the practice of polygamy. Complaints were soon made that they were violating the compact, but investigation at the time proved the charges to be groundless. In 1890, however, to quiet the public unrest regarding the matter, an amendment to the Criminal Law of the
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The Land of the Rancher
Dominion " made any person guilty of a mis- demeanour who practised polygamy and liable to imprisonment for five years and a fine of five hundred dollars. This applies to any one who practises polygamy or spiritual marriage, or assists in any such ceremony."
" Will these Mormon immigrants be Canadians and British?" many a Canadian anxiously asks. Time is necessary in which to reply. Meanwhile, a good sign is observable in the Mormon cele- bration of Canada's national holiday, the first of July. Let us look in on a Mormon town on a Dominion Day, and take part in a ranching cele- bration. Horse -races, of course, take first place in a land where the broncho is man's best friend, except when he bucks, but the very characteristics of the animal supply another item on the programme in ** broncho-busting," a process during which the shaggy little quadruped humps its back, straightens its legs as a preliminary to a series of acrobatic bounds, with a view to throwing his rider. Or, tired of the bouncing, he may go on strike and refuse to move until the cowboy's whip leads to a change of mind.
Steer-roping follows. Again the mounted cow- boy, with a lariat coiled on the horn of the Mexican
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saddle, gallops dramatically into the arena, and starts in pursuit of a chosen steer, which has a start of fifty yards. A swing of the noose for thirty feet or more, and the rope is over the head or around the legs of the now frightened beast. Then something else happens, for the broncho comes to a sudden standstill, and so does the steer, which is thrown to the ground, and while the trained broncho keeps the lasso taut, the rider com- pletes the discomfiture of the stranded cow by tying it into an even more helpless condition. The man who captures and ties his steer in the shortest time is the winner.
Among the cheering crowd the Mormons, of course, predominate. Gentiles are as scarce as tenderfeet. Crowded in prairie schooners are the Saintly onlookers. Placid-faced matrons, each with a goodly quiver of children, composedly watch the sports until the last event is run off, and the race- course is soon abandoned to the coyotes for the night.
The extensive nature of the irrigation works inaugurated and carried out by the Mormon colony and private capitalists, is only a small part of the irrigation undertakings in the province. The scheme of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the
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Bow River Valley is the greatest enterprise of its kind now under way on the American continent . Millions of dollars will be spent in the five hundred mile plan in process of construction, affecting a tract of country almost as great in area as all the irrigated lands of Colorado or California, and twice as large as that of Utah. When the system is completed, three million acres, extending eastward from Calgary one hundred and fifty miles, will be made available for wheat -growing and ranching. One-third of the project is already finished.
The main canal, radiating from the Bow River near Calgary, is sixty feet wide and ten feet deep, and courses for many miles across country, while a sinuous line of secondary canals, with a lesser flow of water, will reach a wider radius of territory. Already settlers are occupying these irrigated lands, and are growing crops that prove the undoubted productivity of the soil when its thirst is assuaged.
An English company has also undertaken the irrigation of three himdred thousand acres on the Bow and Belly Rivers, lying between the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Crow's Nest Pass, west and south of Medicine Hat. A million and a half dollars are involved in the carrying out of this scheme. Irrigation is, therefore, closely bound up, with the future welfare of the Foothill Province.
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MOUNTAINS AND MOUNTAIN CLIMBING
I
CHAPTER XIII
MOUNTAINS AND MOUNTAIN CLIMBING
The transition from the rolling sea of fertile lands to the rolling sea of mountains — from God's plains to God's hills — is dramatic in the extreme. For hundreds of miles from north to south the vast Cordillerean range faces the plateau that stretches to Hudson Bay. A generation ago it might well have been regarded as an impassable barrier between the prairies and the Pacific coast, but even the mountains have to yield their supremacy to the railway engineer. As the rivers have cut a way for themselves through the intervening ranges, so the ocean to ocean railways on Canadian soil have utilised the river-beds and their valleys for the paths of the tracks of steel between Calgary and Vancouver, between Edmonton and Prince Rupert. Erom the foothills of the Rockies to the mouth of the Eraser Canon the expresses of the Canadian Pacific Railway twist and curve to the tune the
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streams have set — along the circuitous Bow, along the turbulent floods of the Kicking Horse, along and across the broad-breasted Columbia, along the glacial waters of the lUecillewaet, along the blue- green Thompson until its identity is lost in the yellow Eraser. For six hundred miles the river- banks and beds have provided free right of way for the path of the railway.
As the train thunders on its western course the vanguard of mountains slowly rise to meet the gaze. A storm may rest for a time on the rugged crests of the first range of peaks, and then majestically journey northward, exhibiting as it passes an electrical display of terrifying force. Defiantly the locomotive plunges into the Kananaskis Gap, and with the plunge the world of the plains is forgotten, the Switzerland of hills is entered in the Banff National Park.
High above tower the Three Sisters and Wind Mountains, a chaos of clouds playing hide and seek with their jagged peaks, or the massive Cascade become suffused in a saffron -coloured storm cloud, through which the setting sun vainly tries to break. Only the mystical outlines of the rugged old pile can be traced until the sun wins in its struggle for light, and fashions such a rainbow as only
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the mountains can show, with its intangible bases resting on two of the Banff giants.
Charles Lamb had no use for mountains. To him they were but dead nature. Give him one hour of the thrill of life on Fleet Street, and others might climb the hills for aught he cared. One can join with Elia in being fascinated with the throb of life in London town, with its human ebb and flow, its never-ceasing passing show, but he never knew the mountains ! He never stood at the base of a Selkirk pyramid of granite and there worshipped as at an altar ; he never achieved the summit of a king of the Rockies, and from the exalted plat- form let the eye sweep the wondrous world on every hand.
Dead nature? Why, there's life everywhere in and on and around the hills. Alpine flowers, sing- ing birds, game, little and large, from the marmot whistling at the door of his retreat among the rocks, to the mountain goat and the grizzly bear. There is abundant life in the green-white river, rushing to the ocean from the glacier that gave it birth. Even the glacier is a thing of life, for it is born of the snows of heaven, and it dies in melting away into moraines and streams.
No life among the hills? One would wish that
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Elia might come back from the shades long enough to stand on a ridge of rock overlooking Paradise Valley and the Valley of the Ten Peaks, there to view the life around the sublime palisades of Mount Temple — the life of the clouds as they swirl and sweep amid these towering pinnacles, now re- vealing them' for a rare moment of time, then with- drawing them from mortal vision. There is life of majestic movement, of chaotic winds, of torn masses of black clouds — noiseless life though it may be, and yet the echoing thunders bombarding the cliffs contribute awesome music. There is life in the aftermath of the rainbow. It is made before one's eyes : the first diaphanous framework, the filling in of the primary colours, the filling out of each to its maximum of glowing beauty. So it is displayed in all its transcendent art, resting on the floor of the valley and leaning against the northern precipices.
A wondrous hour is the twilight one in this realm of peaks. The shadows begin to blot out the shining streak of white in the Kicking Horse River far below, as the gathering darkness fills the canon to its brim. Slowly and laboriously the locomotive toils up the steep grade on the way to the Great
Divide, only to creep down the other slope to the
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|Hittle station at Field, nestling under the shadow of ^jVIount Stephen. A mile sheer above the track the shattered Cathedral Peak lifts its gendarmes of rock, the rails being laid over the debris of ancient landslides, and scattered along the way are giant boulders that have rolled down the declivity. Some remain poised on the brink of the canon ; others, in their cannon-ball journey, have leaped to the bottom of the yawning depths in the valley.
As the train draws away from the Cathedral a miracle seems to be performed. The great jagged time-creased peak is apparently born as one gazes. While rounding its flank the summit is obscured, but with the shrinking into distance of the foothills, the massive pyramid swings into the line of vision, above track and foothill and avalanche bed, above tumbling torrent and glacial stream, higher than the highest tree line. So the Cathedral ever enlarges as the intervening distance increases, until it stands revealed in all its majesty and might.
The roof of the Canadian Rockies is strikingly uneven. So one discovers when gazing skyward from the valley of the Bow or the Illecillewaet ; so one realises in ever-increasing degree when the buttressing foothills of the mountain giants are surmounted, and an ascent is made of the steep
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slopes that end in cloud-piercing pinnacles. As the world of the valley recedes, and lake and glacial stream and dark green forest shrink in size, the continental watershed gradually unfolds to the wondering eye, from Mount Assiniboine on the south to the Presidential range on the north.
So it proved to be in the climb from Laggan to the chalet of Lake Louise, and who will ever forget, with a sudden bend in the road, the first startling revelation of the hill -encased tarn, or of the white -robed ridge of Mount Victoria closing the matchless view on the side of the setting sun !
So it proved to be in greater degree when the ever -ascending journey, over the mossy trail, was taken to the sister lakes of queenly Louise — to higher Mirror Lake, sleeping a sleep of vast content in its deep granite bowl among the trees ; to highest Agnes, its waters imprisoned in a cleft of the hills, and forming a great natural reservoir, dammed back by a narrow wall of rock. From the border of the basin, the eye would fain sweep earth- ward and over the devious way traversed, and along the narrow, goat -like path cut from the pre- cipitous wall of the Beehive.
But the greater vision lay around and above
one ; the awe -aspiring masses of Whyte and
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Niblock and Pechee, rising to the north and west ; to the cliffs and crags of Fairview, seen on the yonder side of Lake Louise ; the mighty prow of Lefroy, cutting in from the south ; to the bold snow face of Victoria, sending its avalanches thundering to the glacier below ; the lofty summit of the Rockies, the ridge-pole of the Cor- dillerean range, the vertebrae of the American continent .
Standing high above the realm of men, and literally among the clouds, one can understand the excelsior spirit that spurs the mountain-climber to attack after attack upon the unsealed heights ; one feels the challenge to conquer the cliffs that yet confront him, and stand in triumph on the very topmost pinnacle of this upheaved world of rock and snow and ice.
The love of the kingly sport has been steadily spreading of recent years, and Alpinists from many lands have wielded the ice-axe and the alpenstock among the Canadian peaks. Many a conquest has been made, and early among them was the climbing of Mount Victoria, which was first ascended by Charles E . Fay, an American, in 1897. The view of Victoria from Lake Louise shows a seemingly impassable rock wall, capped
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Through the Heart of Canada
by snow deposits hundreds of feet deep. It had to be attacked, therefore, by Abbot Pass, between Lefroy and Victoria, and near the spot where young Abbot met his tragic death in 1896 by falling down a precipice. The approach to the summit of Victoria was, as may readily be imagined, most difficult and dangerous. In one place the actual crest was exceedingly narrow — in spots not <over a foot wide. " The snow under our right foot might one day be tossing in the waves of Hudson Bay : that under the left foot might soon be- come a part of the Columbia's sweep to the Pacific Ocean." Thus chronicles the intrepid mountaineer. At last the full glory of the scene burst upon Mr. Fay and his companions — a view ranging from the eastern line of the Rockies to the central peaks of the Selkirks on the west. At 11.45 a.m., after eight hours of strenuous effort, the white throne of Victoria was conquered by man for the first time. The summit they found to be scarcely large enough for the party of four. Unlike the neighbouring Lefroy, no rock pierced the virgin snow-field. To the north the mountain fell away suddenly into a gorge of appalling depth. Majestic and awesome they found the view to be in every direction from
this lofty platform, 1 1,400 feet above the sea-level,
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and the only near-by rival in height was the grand snow -crested pyramid of Mount Temple.
Mountain-climbing in Canada has received a decided impetus through the formation of the Alpine Club of Canada in the spring of 1906. In the following July the first camp gathering of the new organisation was held in the region of the Yoho, the camp site being an enchanted spot on the Saddle Back between Emerald Lake and the Yoho Valley, eleven miles north of Field. No- where is there a spot so rare for a tented home as an Alpine meadow, and, in the Yoho meadow, the picture was a perfect one. There were fifty tents, arranged in avenues and crescents, bordering the incomparably beautiful Summit Lake, the haunt of the mountain goat and bear — the Alpine realm in the heart of the Rockies, a realm^ of crags and canons, and of encircling and over-towering peaks.
Among the objects of the Club is the making known, not only to Canadians, but to the world, of this vast Canadian mountain region, comprising an area as large as twenty-five Switzerlands, and holding within its wide -flung boundaries an infinite variety of Alpine scenery of the grandest and wildest description. Mountain-climbing is there- fore the chief feature of camp life, the ascent of
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Through the Heart of Canada
a peak at least ten thousand feet above sea-level being the basis of active membership.
The Vice-President was chosen as the qualifying mountain — a fine four -peaked giant, slightly over ten thousand feet high, dominating Emerald Lake, the Yoho Valley, and the Vanhorne Range. A four o'clock call was preliminary to the twelve- hour tramp. An hour later the climbing party for the day lined up in military order, garbed, accord- ing to the regulations, in full climbing canonicals, and provided with ice-axes and alpenstocks. Edouard Eeuz, the young Swiss guide, led the single file procession that, after the roll-call, at once hit the trail and disappeared in the spruce and balsam forest near the camp.
Eor the first hour or more the path led through moss -carpeted woods and past meadow stretches of purple and white heather. This initial up-hill stretch soon put a strain on the amateur climbers, but over against fatigue and breathlessness, nature provided a compensating air, wonderfully exhilara- ting and bracing. Above the tree-line a long and wearisome way led at steep inclines over boulders and rocks and rotten shale, alternating with cliffs and ledges that were an earnest of what lay ahead.
Finally, the ascending path became so steep as to
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require the first roping together, with occasional bits of level rock floor serving most acceptably as resting-places. Peering over the edge of one, a sheer drop of a thousand feet or more to the Emerald Glacier, tested head-steadiness and cool nerves — a cliff " whose high and bending head looks fearfully in the confined deep." A group of campers climbing the glacier looked like little black specks amid the white sea.
In a north-westerly direction Eeuz guided his party across gravel moraines and over snow-fields to other and narrower ledges. Pinnacle after pinnacle was successfully mastered, each one loftier than the other, until the highest point of the moun- tain was reached, the event being celebrated by adding a quota of stones to the cairn and by singing the National Anthem.
There on the lofty platform a beatific vision was unfolded of two hundred miles of mountain peaks. For fifty miles in every direction, the eye took in the mighty sweep of the hills . Northward, the upper Yoho River raced to its destiny. Beyond and beyond, range upon range sloped to the sky, where the continental watershed feeds the sources of the Columbia, the Athabasca, the Saskatchewan, and many another life-giving stream.
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Eastward stretched the Yoho Valley, with its tumbling Niagaras and its canon depths ; south- ward, the overshadowing Cathedral Peak formed a boundary of granite ; while westward, the kingly crown of Sir Donald, in the Selkirks, proclaimed its majesty by its supreme height. Under the spell of the rare sight, the mind recalled the lines of Goldsmith : —
"Even now where Alpine's solitudes ascend, I sit me down a pensive hour to spend; And, placed on high above the storm's career,
Look downward where a hundred realms appear; Lakes, forests, cities, plains, extending wide.
The pomp of kings, the shepherds' humble pride."
The homeward journey was made in half the time taken in the ascent. Glissading down steep snow slopes the glacial sheet was reached, with its dangerous crevasses and treacherous snow bridges. It was the time and place to recall the president's directions to obey the guide implicitly, and this every one was ready to do as he carefully cut a series of ladder-like steps in the ice face and as carefully showed his followers how to creep doiwn hill safely.
At long last the tree -line was again reached,
just at supper time, when the proud mountain
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conquerors hallooed their return to camp, where the welcome accorded them by the stay-at-homes was no less appreciated than the joy of a safe return and the happy consciousness of having attained.
A two-days* trail trip up the Yoho Valley was one of the attractive features of this Alpine Club programme. The party of ten (with guides, cooks, ponies, and food supplies) took the path from camp that leads by the shore of Summit Lake . A corkscrew descent of nearly two thousand feet ensued, charming glimpses of the valley being revealed at many a turn of the road. At one of the open spaces, the first thrilling view was had of the famous Takkakaw Falls, though echoes from its tumbling waters had already been heard. The sight of this king of Canadian Niagaras, with its series of white flood leaps, is a never-to-be- forgotten one. Emerging from the caverns of the Daly ice-field, the Takkakaw makes an initial plunge of two hundred feet, to try itself, as it were, and after a moment's breath, gathers its waters for the great plunge of nearly a thousand feet to another platform of rock, whence it hastens on in an ever-broadening flood over the shelving rocks to the Wapta River, itself hastening through cleft and canon on its journey to the sea.
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Through the Heart of Canada
Unforgettable, too, were the glimpses of the other gigantic cascades in this wondrous temple of nature. The Laughing Falls leap in joyous abandon from a narrow -walled gorge into a wild freedom of space that ends in a wilder cauldron, e*er it speeds like a racehorse to the same river that swallows up all its sister streams. Farther north, the Twin Falls tumble from their rocky clefts over a precipice five hundred feet high, to a rock-encased flume. The bridge over this flood is often under water, and from it a trail pony had recently been swept by the irresistible tide. The body of the poor beast was found hundreds of feet below, and the saddle that went with it on its wild journey of death hangs in the little shelter shack by the upper trail.
Northward was the trend of the winding trail, through cathedral aisles of stately trees, up foot- hills that would have qualified as mountains else- where, and amid a riotous wealth of wild -flowers, heather and ferns. Nature does nothing by halves in her mountain gardens.
When the northern end of the fifteen-mile valley
was traversed, there came with it one of those
impressive revelations of nature that often reward
the mountain visitor. Emerging from the dense
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Mountains and Mountain Climbi
ng
forest, with its path alive with fat porcupines, the traveller suddenly beholds the entire front of the •Wapta Glacier, glittering in all its icy glory, thrust- ing its nose deep into the valley, and sending forth its frosted breath. Thousands of feet in depth, miles in width at its ridge, and sloping thirty miles northward, the Wapta is one of the great remnants of the Ice Age. What an inconceivable marvel it is that such a frozen mass should yet move — move with the leisurely slowness of eternity, for a thousand years in the life of a glacier is as a day in the life of brief -spanned man I And as it slowly slips valleyward it is shrinking to its death as well.
And now the trail leaves the valley, climbing up and up, and still up, far above the track of the valley floor, above the Yoho Canon, above forested benches and mountain tarns, along ladder- like paths cut in the black cliffs, leading to heights where, in the language of Stevenson, the open- air drunkenness grows upon one.
This upper trail of the Yoho had as many surprises as it had charms. Mountain meadows were hidden between forest stretches ; these were in turn succeeded by extensive boulder beds and glacial moraines, where rock slides could easily have
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Through the Heart of Canada
been started, and where countless torrents of melted snow from the over -hanging Emerald Glacier gave no little trouble in their crossings. Angry they were in their untrammelled sweep, too wide and deep to be trifled with. This new difliculty only served to reveal our guide in a new role, that of a bridge and dam builder, dexterously placing great stones in mid -stream, so as to provide safe passageways for man and beast, where a misstep might have led to a downhill slide of a quarter- mile.
The upper path is, moreover, marked by many look-out points. From one such spot was revealed the entire sweep of the Yoho Valley, as a vast cleft among the hills, with its green carpet of trees and roof of sky, with its widespread coatings of ice and its singing cascades, and with yet more distant mountain ranges walling in the scene. It was a replica of the Naerodal of Norway, of the Schlennan Gorge of Switzerland, of the Yosemite of the United States. Surely the wide world, with all its scenic marvels, has nothing more wonderful to feast the gaze of a mortal than Canada's mar- vellous Yoho ! Such a vast canvas it is on which the Mountain -maker has spread the scene ; such a
wondrous box of colours has been used in its
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Mountains and Mountain Climbing
painting, producing such a picture as only the Creator can portray.
The campers and climbers of 1906 thought there could not be found a more charming site than that by Summit Lake, under the wing of old Wapta and at the gateway of the Yoho. But when Paradise Valley was explored, during a week in July of 1907, it would have been difficult to decide between the two.
The trail from Laggan and Lake Louise led one around the base of Fairview and past the forbidding cliffs of Sheol to the portals of Para- dise Valley. The place -namer must have been a humourist to thus select Sheol to guard a valley of Paradise, and then to arrange for a Bishop's Mitre farther up the valley to look down upon the scene in benediction, and to face the opposite Mount Temple as a fitting neighbour.
Our entrance into camp on the opening* day was celebrated on the part of nature by a blind- ing blizzard and wintry winds that cruelly found us, clothed were we ever so warmly. Never did a cookery-tent look so welcome as when its Chinese masters gazed curiously at the new arrivals ; never did the glow of a camp-fire feel so grate- ful, even on a July day, as we hugged the blazing
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Through the Heart of Canada
logs to the scorching point ; and never did sleep- ing bags and thick blankets fit in with the scheme of things so perfectly as when we crawled into or under them in the endeavour to escape from a frosty world.
Another week of climbing experiences fell to our lot, for monster hills hemmed us in on every side, Mount Temple dominating his fellows at the lordly height of i i,6oo feet, Hungabee ("The Chieftain") enclosing the western end of the valley, Lefroy and Aberdeen and Pinnacle in between, and alluring glimpses of the Ten Peaks leaning against the farther -away southern sky. Peak after peak was conquered — all except Pinnacle, on whose summit of steeple rocks no^ human foot had ever stood. A quartette of our best mountaineers attacked the massive pile, but were compelled to beat a retreat, after scaling its gendarmes and cliffs to within a few hundred feet of the top and after adventures that were ominously near the danger point. But Temple, the moun- tain that turned Wilcox back on his first attempt and only opened up its way to him the following, year, was ascended by a score of the hardier alpinists. So was Aberdeen, an imposing peak
10,340 feet high, overlooking the camp on the
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i
CLIMBING MOUNT ABERDEEN, ROCKY MOUNTAINS.
To face p. 251.
Mountains and Mountain Climbing
north. It was a steep way of iascent up Aberdeen via cliff, couloir, and cornice, up until the valley shrunk to a mere streak of colour and the silver of its glacial stream turned into the narrowest of ribbons and then was swallowed up in the vast perspective.
Around us was the snow -world of the upper air, pure as the white-winged clouds or the deep- hearted lakes beneath. A vagrant storm swished past us on its way to the yonder side of the valley. Wind currents, seemingly direct from the Arctic cir<:le, effectually cooled us off whenever the sun overheated the blood. In single file the climbers, following the guide, negotiated cliff faces, skirted projecting buttresses, with the narrowest of ledges for a foothold and the loosest of rocks for a pre- carious hand-hold. The rope that made us one felt like a friend, steadying the nerve and giving heart to the timid. Human company is an appre- ciated factor in a bad spot on a high hill. Hour after hour the up -climb continued, with the summit seemingly leading us a fool's dance. Here the ridge, gained at so much cost of effort, overlooked the depth of a neighbouring valley, necessitating a wearisome detour; there a steep snow incline sent us back defeated, forcing the guide to find
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Through the Heart of Canada
a totally new path. Miniature canons succeeded overhanging cliffs, loose scree slipped under the feet toward a disconcerting precipice edge, and hard by a welcome circumscribed area, under the shelter of a rocky protuberance, provided a brief resting-place for disposing of a Spartan lunch.
But with the final effort and the conquest of the actual peak of the mountain, there came such a sense of victory, of achievement, as to repay for all the breathless exertions, for all the aching muscles and bones. The conquering spirit in man is supreme at such a moment ; he rejoices that he has overcome. His reward also comes with the panorama that Nature has spread out for his delectation. No mask of cloud shut out the marvel of the scene, no curtain of rain or sheet of storm enshrouded the companion peaks. One was in an elemental world, sombre, mysterious, sublime. One stood in Nature's mightiest workshop, where the sculpturing and chiselling effects of ages of time are revealed in the process of mountain- making and destroying. For the everlasting hills are dying hills, and the Rockies are being worn down from their infinite heights.
It seemed a long way from the man -stifled city, from the battlefields of human endeavour and
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Mountains and Mountain Climbing
warring strife. We thanked the God of the Hills for the wander-lust that He put in one's heart, for the gipsy hunger for the out-of-door world that brought one to this platform of earth from which hundreds of miles of peaks were seen. Standing on the crest of a continent, the onlooker felt a degree nearer the sky and the stars, he was even at times above the clouds and their discharg- ing elements, the earth the meanwhile submerged in a billowy world of vapour.
A brief half -hour on the summit served to chill us to the marrow and cause more unplanned dancing than had been indulged in for many a year, for it were dangerous to stand still and receive the icy breath of the upper air currents without a protest. Chill and cold were, however, soon forgotten on the downward journey. A toboggan slide, many hundred feet long, at an angle of sixty degrees, provided the pathway over which we glis- saded at a furious pace. What took hours of time in ascending was covered in as many minutes, descending on the snow -slope between Aberdeen and the Mitre. With shout and cheer each member of the climbing party set forth on the thrilling ride, with only an alpenstock or ice-axe to act as a restraining force or as a rudder, and even
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Through the Heart o Canada
these ofttimes failed of their purpose. In such a case nothing was left but to take the declivity with as much grace as possible and to prevent one's body from performing too many revolutions on the way. But the very ease and quickness of the snow trip made more difficult the less exciting portion of the journey through the endless avenues of the forest, through underbrush and over windfalls and across deep gullies. Tired to the limit of human strength, we returned to camp hungry as bears and happy as children. We had started out on the day's work, twelve hours before, mere novices as mountaineers, and had returned as full-fledged active members of the Alpine Club of Canada.
In succeeding summers this *' School of Moun- taineering " has held its camp sessions in the beautiful region of Roger's Pass (at the entrance to the Selkirks), and O'Hara Lake and Consolation Valley in the Rockies, where the surrounding peaks tested the endurance of old members and initiated many new ones. The Alpine Club of Canada, although one of the newest additions to the world's mountain organisations is, with its membership of six hundred, rapidly attaining an enviable position among them, and become a decided factor in the natural life of Canada.
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SCENES IN THE SELKIRKS
CHAPTER XIV
SCENES IN THE SELKIRKS
Some day a writer will appear who will do justice to the trails of Canada— the trails that wind through the wilds of New Brunswick, Quebec, and Ontario, up lonely waterways and over heights of land to other heights and streams, across the unpeopled areas of the far west and the farther north to the rim of the Arctic, and among the world full of hills within the bounds of British Columbia.
Of all the trails of this new land, the mountain ones are the most alluring, the most wonderful, the most fascinating. Who shall adequately sing of the joy, the freedom, the exhilaration of the journey over their sinuous length, where the breath of the mountain air is revivifying, where the scent of the wild -flowers perfumes the air, where the aroma of Nature in all her bewilderment of luxuriant growth sweetens the out-of-doors. Once again one discovers that the real life is the life of the open-
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air, whether the tent be struck on the valley bed, the sloping hillside, or the mountain summit.
Such a trail is to be found in the Selkirks— from Glacier to the Cougar Caves. Down by the Great Glacier and the Illecillewaet River, where a mountain hotel is situated in a cleft between the peaks, the pony train is packed securely with the aid of the diamond hitch, and saddled with the explorers. The lead horse starts the line, without other guidance or direction than his own knowledge of the route, bearing on his patient back a precious cargo of blankets, provisions, ice-axes, ropes and endless impedimenta. The destination is Deutschman*s cabin, away up the Cougar Valley to the north. Can there be such another ten- mile trail in Rockies or Selkirks, in Cascades or Coastal Range ? It is a way of charm and delight, of never-ending change, of ever-unfolding panorama .
The first few yards of the course follow the rail- way track, the ponies dodging Imperial Limiteds and Pacific Expresses and nameless freights as only bronchos can, for they are born dodgers. Then a plunge into the Selkirk forest, where the moun- tain sides are a mass of verdure, a tangle of leaf and bush and flower. The course is full of ups
258
Scenes in the Selkirks
I] and downs, crossed every few feet by a galloping
little rivulet fussing along on its way to the river
and the ultimate ocean. For a space the way
I leads over the old tote road of Canadian Pacific
, Railway construction days of over twenty years
I ago. For another space, remnants of snow sheds
in the shape of huge timbers strew the side, telling
i their story of avalanche or snow-slide power when
swept away by the on -rushing mass.
Down and down toward the ever -lowering Illecillewaet we drop, until Mount Sir Donald and all his satellites are lost to view. So does a cluster of trees in a dip of the valley hide a giant among hills, just as the foothill on our right blots out Mount Cheops.
Ferns, mosses, huge-leaved plants, webs of vegetable growths crowd all the areas between the forest monarchs, for monarchs they are, clean- limbed, erect as grenadier guards, seeking the sun with ne'er a distorted branch. Clean -hearted, too, judging by a recently -felled specimen, and not even cross-grained — excellent qualities in tree or man. On the left are the railway loops, hugging the base of Mount Abbott, nearing Bonney's ice-field, and ^11 but colliding with Ross Peak. Even the abiding hills must have marvelled at the audacity
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Through the Heart of Canada
of man in finding footholds for the tracks of steel over which crawl the snake-like trains.
And the life on the trail too — alarmed partridges lying to us as to the whereabouts of their young, gophers making faces at us, and marmots, perched on the boulders along the narrow path, whistling their challenge and alarm. There are birds, too — though none too many, but one cannot be an ornithologist when geology and botany demand attention, and when matchless scenery holds the eye in its thrall.
If you follow the Cougar trail long enough, the trees will be left huddled in the valley depths, the tallest specimens having shrunken to the dimen- sions of saplings. Alpine meadows will come into view, where mountain sheep find rich browsing, and where your strong-minded mount will fre- quently halt to dine unless persuaded to the con- trary. Patches of snow, remnants of the spring's snow-slides, run their white tongues between the meadows. The next turn leads to another cork- screw way, with surprisingly sharp corners and correspondingly narrow footholds . Waterfalls, too, are decorating the entire sides with their white ribbons, and some careful navigating through tumbling streams is made by the keen -eyed ponies.
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Scenes in the Selkirks
But ever the trail-hitting brings the higher peaks nearer. It makes the hitherto hidden ways reveal themselves, it penetrates natural Eldoradoes and lifts the climber, physically and spiritually, high above the valley bed. /
At last Deutschman's cabin is reached, the home of the discoverer of the Cougar caves. Deutsch- man is not at home when we cry a halt, but pre- suming on old acquaintance, an entrance is forced, a fire started, a dish of tea brewed, a rasher of bacon fried and a pot of jam opened. Then follows a feast of rare satisfaction, with a night's sleep of real soundness, despite the efforts of porcupines, gophers and mountain rats to gnaw their way in. Only the two latter succeed, and they kindly scamper over the old timers in the lower bunks.
Nature sings us to sleep with many voices — with the songs of the cascades high above us, that never stop for breath ; with the nearer song of the Cougar River right at our cabin door, and with the weirder muffle of the river that reaches us from the cave world directly below, with its inferno of pits and flumes and cafion depths steeped in the darkness of blackest night.
The early morning glimpse of the world reveals
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Through the Heart of Canada
a wonder corner of Canada, surrounded by V-shaped lines of peaks, with vast snow-fields crowded in between. Here we leave the ponies to the enjoyment of a pasture banquet, and hit another trail up the Cougar snow -slope, passing a line of trees cut off clean near their bases by an early spring snow-slide.
The river is roofed in by snow bridges, over which we carefully pick our devious way, noting many a fresh footprint of mountain animals. Where the snow roof had fallen into the stream through the watery undermining, miniature ice- bergs floating in narrow fjords, are marked by rarest colour effects.
Up and up the snow -slope we puff our way. On every hand we tread upon the strange red snow — an unsolved riddle to the scientist, though he has identified it as the algae of nature. To the red man the coloured spots represent billions of snow- fleas. Snow-spiders and snow-flies of unusual size and blackness dot the white surface. Later, a [mountain goat -run gives us the best of routes to the peaks above the summit of the pass.
The hours of up-grade toil in the mountains have their exceeding great reward. The first peep over the roof of the Cougar ridge is worth all
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Scenes in the Selkirks
the breath and strength spent in reaching it, for the eyes rest for the first time upon other valleys, other peaks are marshalled in military line, other glacial masses are wedged in between towering rock walls whose depths make the mind dizzy in an effort to measure them. Extensive snow areas give a note of white grandeur under the blue sky and above the blue mists of the valley beds.
•High above our heads, the six peaks of Cougar Mountain dare us to scale their boulder -strewn shoulders. The challenge is accepted, in a spirit of ascendancy that seizes upon the climber. Peak No. I is reached— No. 2, No. 3, No. 4 — each higher than its neighbour, and on those without cairns stone men are duly built and records of the ascent deposited. Along narrow ridges of rock we creep, now rounding a snow cornice of uncertain security, now encircling a buttress of rock that throws the upper part of the body over indefinite depths, now scaling a sky-aspiring wall.
'Hitting the trail is rare sport, but hitting the summit of a dignified and aristocratic old mountain, for the first time, is rarer sport still. It is some- thing to challenge effort, and to test nerve and wits and self-control.
Then the vision ! The fifty miles of the Ille-
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cille^waet Canon lie in full view, bordered on the west by Mount Begbie and the Columbia River ; Mount Sir Donald and his family loom up grander than ever; the Hermits stand forth in startling majesty; the world is full of mountains.
Already several hours have slipped by since the breakfast in the cabin, but before hunger can be satisfied there must be many an unsuccessful effort to find short cuts to camp down the almost perpendicular walls of Cougar No. 4, involving the descent of chimneys too long for the longest rope, the crossing of dangerous rock slides, and the test- ing of rotten rocks and slippery snow.
Back the way we came, traversing again the quartette of peaks, glissading down the snow-fields, until the arduous day's work ends with the sight of the hospitable cabin hidden in the forest, the blue spiral of its smoke guiding the tired and hungry wayfarers to its hearth and table, and, later, to its rustic bunks.
Canada heretofore has been able to boast of
almost everything in the realm of natural
phenomena except volcanoes, geysers and caves,
but now the last mentioned may be added to the
list of scenic assets. The discovery of the Selkirk
Caves was made in October of 1904, by Charles
264
INTERIOR OF THE COUGAR CAVES, CANADIAN SELKIRKS.
To face p. 265.
Scenes in the Selkirks
Deutschman, a typical prospector and mountaineer, whose intrepidity was clearly proved by his initial exploration of the caves alone and without any proper equipment for the dangerous task.
Under the guidance of this fearless mountaineer, the party set out on this underground journey. It seemed sacrilegious to leave the marvellous arena of snow-shrouded summits and ice-filled crevices, of deep-cut valleys looking up to blue-arched heavens, for the Stygian recesses below ; to lexchange, even for a few brief hours, the glory of the sunlit scene, with its Alpine meadows and deep -hearted forests, for sunless spaces unrelieved by any ray of moon or star.
The cave -making river is born of a glacier high up on the flanks of the Cougar range of peaks. In its steep and impetuous descent, the waters have encountered massive strata of limestone rocks, through which they have forced themselves with the infinite patience of Nature, forming the caves thus far discovered, and doubtless many another strange and weird abode of darkness where human foot has never intruded, and in which human voice has never broken the age-long silence.
Deutschman's discoveries have led to the open- ing up of three distinct cave sections, on three different levels. After the first wild plunge of the
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Through the Heart of Canada
river into the hillside, it emerges to the light lower down, preparatory to making another underground journey, marked by twists and turns of a bewilder- ing nature. A second time it seeks the light, at the bottom of a canon of unnerving depth, where it makes a final leap into the hidden haunts jof the hills, and no man knows its ultimate course beyond the eight or ten thousand feet of cave corridors thus far mapped out.
The rocks in which the caves occur are of hard crystalline limestone, whose thick beds are com- posed of alternate bands of white, mottled and grey marble, with other shades and colours in the lower levels. The caves have, no doubt, been made by water erosion . Evidences are had on every hand of the persistency of Nature's methods. There is no rock so dense that through it water will not pass ; no union of particles so closely related but the chemical processes of the world beneath can sever them. iWater is the world's greatest sculptor.
Cougar River is entirely made up of glacial and
snow-water. The fine grains of sharp sand
loosened from the lime rock and caught and
rushed forward in the racehorse current have given
the water an unusual erosive power, especially
where it has found a shrinkage crack. Thus the
mountain torrent has for an estimated period of
266
Scenes in the Selkirks
forty thousand years been ceaselessly at work, as it still is, carving out a labyrinth of extraordinary channels in the limestone and marble region it has encountered.
As the channel passages grew deeper and wider, huge masses of rock fell from the overhanging walls, and now constitute the obstructions that divide the current and force it at times into enormous pot-holes, with their deposits of sand particles whirling the rock away in the ceaseless grinding process. Straight and narrow ways are succeeded by crooked and narrower ways. Abysses lie below one where the sounding depths of rushing waters strike the ear with indescribable awe ; galleries radiate in every direction, natural bridges spring into and out of space, and the confusing twistings of the river's course make up what Deutschman aptly terms " the snake route."
The first descent is made into and along an old river channel via a series of perpendicular ladders. It does not take long for the last glint of sunlight to give way to such a degree of darkness as can be felt, if not seen. Even the flickering rays of the carbide lanterns could only force their way a few yards into the opaque walls of gloom that menacingly engulfed us on every hand. Their rays, hpwever, are sufficient to reveal the wonders of
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Through the Heart of Canada
the subterranean place. Under the fefet are uncertain paths sloping towards potholes of un- known depths, or trying to trick the intruder into bewildering byways ; overhead, titanic arches of rock, pierced with Gothic windows, appear in ghostly outline ; to right and left, overlapping walls of rock, like scenery shifts in a theatre, mark the strange way.
The sublimity of the place is beyond description . It is a realm where the centuries are as a day and millenniums as a year, where the processes of time are measured by countless decades, a region that mocks our estimate of time.
The flash of a Bengal light, or the burning of a magnesium wire, thrusts back, temporarily, the bands of blackness, unveiling the weird witchery of the cavern, showing up vividly the white marble streaks in the rock cracks, revealing the com- paratively few baby stalactites that will need a few more aeons before reaching a respectable length, and showing as well the uncanny imitations in limestone encrustations of human faces and animals, of birds and fish and flowers. A natural carving of a horse's head with an alligator's tail may be succeeded by strange serpentine forms or uncouth gargoyles. It is a stone -sculptured zoo.
But more impressive than even the rock wonders
268
Scenes in the Sclkirks
of this buried wonder-land is the imprisoned cry of the mad-rushing stream, for the Cougar is as strenuously at work in cave-making as in the long- lost ages when the worlds were young. The river drops a thousand feet in its meandering course. Thrilling is this deep-throated song of the stream, increasing in volume as the Auditorium is neared, where the foam of the tortured waters shows strangely white against their black enclosing barriers .
The bystander in ** the chamber of irrevocable dark " feels more assured when he actually sees the tumbling waters ; it is more fearsome when he can only hear the mysterious swish of the sub- terranean stream in some yet deeper abyss. It then becomes a positive relief to halt by a pool of limpid water, stranded in its rocky basin, and resting in soothing quietude in contrast to the turmoil of the river itself.
One of the three series of caves is, curiously enough, partially filled with ice, and this fact produces some striking effects. Instead of lime- stone stalactites, as in the Mammoth or Luray caverns of the United States, here there are stalactites of purest ice and of wondrous beauty, especially when illumined with the magnesium light. Ice deposits fill the crevices of the rocks,
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Through the Heart of Canada
making other strange animal and bird forms . One such ice -bank resembled a gigantic sea -lion vainly trying to scale the dark wall overhead. From a cavernous opening there hung suspended an ice Niagara — a fall transfixed in the grasp of the frost king, and a more beautiful object could not well be imagined in the thick darkness beneath or in the sunlit world above. One ice -filled gallery ended in a perfect fireplace, as if to mock the chill of the glacial interior. Nor was the walking of the best. Treacherous slopes of ice invited unpleasant plunges into potholes, filled to the brim and over- running, and the guide could probably tell a truthful tale of how at least one cave visitor hung nervously to his coat-tails as ticklish bits of pro- truding rocks were rounded where the ice floor was as slippery as glass. The utilitarian possi- bilities of the place were brought strikingly to mind when Deutschman filled a pail with the clearest of ice and carried it back to his tent for domestic use.
Then came the Inferno. It proved to be no more inviting as a pleasant parlour than the Judgment Hall or the water-filled turbines. To reach it one crawled and crept or backed up in order to go ahead, or walked very discreetly over
uncertain boulders. Glimpses overhead showed
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Scenes in the Selkirks
other mighty arches and natural bridges and eerie prongs of rock on which the devil might spit an enemy. Tiers of Gothic arches were placed as if by man's handiwork ; fan-shaped canopies and lace -like perforations in the limestone crust alternated with fluted columns and exquisite draperies. Nature's freakish arts were everywhere displayed in this great chamber of eternal night, and here again the sepulchral notes of far-away torrents reached the ear, and crystal drops on pro- jections of rock sent back glittering scintillations as they caught the light of the lanterns.
The entrance to the last series of cave apart- ments and to the pit was not easily gained. A canon with a sheer depth of nearly one hundred feet held the river in its bed before it dashed with wicked venom into the black world for the last time. With ropes tied around the waist and under the arms, the tenderfoot must have made a sight for the gods as he dangled on his way down the cliff wall, wildly clutching the while for a hand- hold that was never found. And it was with ruffled feelings, as well as clothes, that he found himself, breathless and nearly distraught, standing on a bit of snow bank that bordered the Cougar.
From that point the guide led the way by the only available path— in mid-stream — with the
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Through the Heart of Canada
impact of the water threatening at every step to s\veep one's feet from under one. The region next explored proved to be the most remark- able of all. Down a distance of nearly five hundred feet the stream tumbles in rapids and falls to fearsome depths. At one point of the decensas averni there is a weird view of an opening in the roof of the rock, through which the sky may be seen as if mocking the pit of darkness around. Down the Steeps of Time one may walk, a series of steps kindly cut by Nature, through vast high-roofed caves hundreds of feet long, through the Witches' Dancing Hall, and the Brocken and the Bridal Chamber, with its draperies of creamy- white, down and ever down, until the high water of the snow-swollen stream forbade further pro- gress unless an unwise risk were taken.
Thus far and no farther we went — but what lies beyond? Deutschman thinks a vast underground lake will be found. The unexplored region along the lower courses of the Cougar may easily reveal cavernous depths and nature wonders far more wonderful than what has already been discovered. But even as it is, with nearly ten thousand feet of cave corridors mapped out, the Caves of the Selkirks are fairly entitled to be regarded as among
Canada's scenic wonders.
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ALONG THE ERASER AND THE CARIBOO
CHAPTER XV
ALONG THE FRASER AND THE CARIBOO
The year 1906 marked the centenary of the discovery of the Eraser River, or rather of the fact that it was not the Columbia, as had been supposed.
One hundred years ago Simon Eraser started on his perilous voyage down the long and turbulent stream, and because he was the first white man to attempt the dangerous feat and come out alive, the river has ever since borne his name. He was one of the band of early fur -traders who were the real pioneers of the Ear West and North-West — men whom no obstacles thwarted, no difficulties overcame. Simon Eraser was born in 1776, at Bennington-on-the-Hudson, New York. His father was a United Empire Loyalist of Scottish stock, who died in prison after his capture by the revolutionary army at Burgoyne's surrender. The ^ad spent his early years near Cornwall, in Upper
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Through the Heart of Canada
Canada. At the age of sixteen he became a clerk in the North-West P\ir Trading Company, earning a partnership ten years later. Then it was that he entered upon his life in the Ear West at Grand Portage and Lake Athabasca. When his Company in its strenuous fight with the Hudson Bay Company resolved to occupy the country west of the Rockies, young Eraser was chosen as the leader, a position for which he had been preparing himself. In 1805 he set up on the Pack River the first permanent post built within the boundaries of what is now British Columbia, and from that point started on his journey towards the Eraser, or the Columbia, as it was thought to be, catching his first glimpse of the great six -hundred-mile artery in 1806.
Now, a century after Eraser's voyage, the traveller is carried in a luxurious train through the gloomiest and grandest part of the canon. And as he gazes down upon the swirling waters from the narrow parapet of rock which forms a pre- carious bed for the track, the wonder grows at the temerity of the man in daring their angry strength. The course of the Eraser is through one of the deepest of the tnountain canons of the west,
Suddenly contracted in its narrow bed, as it forces
276
Along the Fraser and the Cariboo
its way through the coast range, it is a seething rock-torn torrent. 'High above tower the mighty peaks ; far below the river rushes on its down- grade journey to the coastal plain and the sea. Long before Simon Eraser navigated the river, many a life had been lost in the attempt to run its dangerous rapids. It would seem as if the gods of the mountains resented human intrusion; indeed, the intrepid fur-trader has probably had few, if any, successors in what must have been a thrilling journey.
The narrowest channel is at Hell Gate, where an enormous rock has fallen from the upper cliflfs and all but blocked the way of the waters. At such a point as this the intrepidity of the explorer must have been put to its severest test, but this and all other tests were successfully met, and fame has rewarded him with an undying name.
The trip through the Eraser Canon comes as a climax to the scenic wonders of the C.E.R. route. Tunnels succeed each other in quick succession, trestles and bridges many are crossed, and all the while the twisting train closely borders the river- bank. Every mile of the coastward journey is crowded with interest ; apart from the scenic setting, the human note includes the lone Chinaman
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Through the Heart of Canada
or Indian fishing for salmon from some protruding platform or rock, or spreading the catch on the drying-frames. 'Here and there, too, are the deserted shacks of the navvies of twenty years ago or more when the C.P.R. was being built. Lone- some little graveyards are also seen, with an occasional mound where sleeps the nameless and forgotten dead. One such grave bears, however, an epitaph, that of the Headless Indian. It reads as follows : '* Here lies the remains of the Head- less Indian, discovered by Lou Milton and Dr. Cheadle, A.D. 1863. One hundred and fifty yards up the bank of the river was also found the skull which was sought for in vain by the above gentle- men. (Signed) T. Party, Canadian Pacific Survey. June 5, 1872." The imagination has fine scope in thinking out the possible details of the tragedy amid the solitary hills when the un- fortunate red man lost his head.
There are glimpses as well of the Cariboo tote, or mining road, built by the British Columbia Govern- ment ^early half a century ago. Gold was first found on the Upper Eraser in 1857, and in the succeeding years ensued one of the greatest and wildest of modern gold rushes to this remote and almost inaccessible region, four hundred miles from
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Along the Eraser and the Cariboo
the se^,. It is said that thirty thousand men left the United States alone for the gold-fields, few of whom succeeded in their search. It was to accommodate these gold-hunters of the 'fifties and 'sixties that the Cariboo trail was constructed at enormous cost. Its remains give a slight idea of the dangers of travel over such a route. Crossing the turbulent river or ricketty bridges, clinging pre- cariously to rocky ledges, now high above the water, then nearer the brink, involving dangerous grades, rounding sharp bends on rude cribbings — such was the highway over which hundreds of wagons and thousands of travellers journeyed. Many died on the way or in an attempt to escape from the perils of the interior, and thus the old Cariboo trail, now falling into decay and deserted for the railway, was in the olden days verily a trail of disappointment and death.
Of all highways within the boundaries of the Dominion, the Cariboo road is the most interesting in its picturesque past, its cosmopolitan life of to-day, its variety of scenery, and its romantic winding way, constituting the longest remaining stage line in America, operated by the famous " B.X.,'* as the British Columbia Express Company
is locally known.
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Through the Heart of Canada
The Cariboo country is one of the many spacious parishes of British Columbia, stretching from Ashcroft and Kamloops to Barkerville and Quesnelle and beyond on the north. For nearly seven hundred miles the stage route extends, making accessible an area as large as many a state in the American Union.
Ashcroft is the southern gateway for a cruise
over the Cariboo trail. The town possesses the
advantage of calling the west -bound traveller from
his train at an hour long preceding the break o'
day against the Bonaparte Hills, when the stars
give just enough light to guide the sleepy tourist
across the wide main street to the dimly lighted
inn. One is conscious only of a bit of a place
set in a hollow of hills, and of the unceasing roar
of the gteen-watered Thompson River as it rushes
to its effacement in the swirling current of the
Fraser. Daylight reveals a typical Western centre
of population, hemmed in between the river and
the railway. Anchored along its chief avenue of
business are lines of ponderous freight schooners,
with their canvas canopies and cavernous holes, in
which departmental stores of freight will be stowed
away for the long up-country haul.
Facing the freighters — the plebeians of the trail
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Along the Eraser and the Cariboo
—are the big stages, aristocratic in their coats of
paint and architectural adornments. In the
huge barns, where the hundreds of horses of the
company are stabled, the passenger-to-be is shown
a coach of special gaiety, in red attire, still enjoying
the fame that came to it for carrying Lord an.'d
Lady Dufferin over the road away back in the
'seventies. Hobnobbing with this dignified old
vehicle, but not presuming on an acquaintance of
equality, are ranged a row of *' jerkies " — an
eminently suitable name applied to carriages for
private parties.
A group of Ashcrofters, leaning against the
balcony posts of the hostelry, speed the departure
of the stage on its long ten-days* run, as the driver
cracks the whip, loosens the brakes, and heads his
four-in-hand team for the bridge that spans the
Thompson. The dip to the bridge level involves
an immediate climb through the canon made in
the grey hills by Bonaparte Creek, tumbling in
a foam of whitecaps so far below that its voice of
tumult is not heard. Cut out of the steep clay
slopes, the road winds in serpentine fashion
higher and higher, each turn bringing within the
sweep of vision distant ranges bathed in blue
mists .
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Through the Heart of Canada
The very place-names along the way illustrate its natural features. Rattlesnake Hill, an isolated rock mass, looms up in its loneliness as if an out- cast among its neighbours. There is Cache Creek, too, where many a store of food has no doubt been placed in older journeying days. And Boston Ditch, which, in the tabloid language of the West country, once upon a time " went bust '* — a phrase that fits into many another place along the Cariboo since the first gold-searchers trekked over it nearly half a century ago. Eor the trail has a history — history made up of the tragedies of unfulfilled dreams, of unrealised hopes, of the men who '* went bust I "
It was in 1857-58 that the Eraser River country first attracted the gold-seeker. In 1862 the rush to Cariboo was at its flow tide, arid it was then that Governor Douglas built the famous highway at a cost of two million dollars — a road that even to-day requires forty thousand dollars a year to keep in repair. Those were the good old days when, far up the trail, flour was fifty cents a pound ; bacon, eighty cents ; beans, eighty cents ; and meals, two dollars and a half each. Prices even now in some lines are not on a bargain -day basis, with hay $160 a ton at Barkerville, and oats ^ve
282
I
Along the Fraser and the Cariboo
cents a pound at One Hundred and Eifty Mile Station .
Every few miles a collection of primitive log huts, scattered promiscuously on either side of the road, bespeak a rancherie, or Indian village. Everywhere in the West the red man appeals to one's sympathy. He is so shorn of the dignity that legend says was once his ; he looks so dis- possessed and beaten in the cruel racial struggle for supremacy ; he falls so far short in real life of the ideal Indian usually pictured. And in the cabins of the Cariboo rancheries, where some live amid surroundings apparently inimical to a healthy existence, there is evidence of the dethrone- ment of the original American.
Pure -bred cayuses are tethered to the Indian tie-posts or are mounted by the chubby-faced boys of the reserve, while down the road and past the little church and its surrounding graves ambles a retinue of old folks, two to a pony, the women flaunting bright bits of red colour against the sky- line of grey and blue.
Succeeding the Indian hamlet, looking lonely and ,unkempt in a land of sage-bushes and sun- baked hills, come the irrigated oases. Blessed be water in a parched land I No wonder the Eastern
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Through the Heart of Canada
vendor cries out, as he sells the sweetened water, that it is the gift of Allah. And amid the barren desolation of the semi -arid region of the Lower Cariboo, the soil, with its germinating life seemingly burnt out, is ready to burst into a luxuri- ance of growth when its deep thirst is slaked.
Striking is the contrast : a circle of swelling hills, grey to their summits, with the dull garb of a parched vegetation, and in the bed of the valley a garden of trees and flowers and sweet-smelling fields of hay, through which runs a clear-hearted stream, lined with cottonwood-trees and rushes having the first drink thereof. Nothing fairer can be seen in all British Columbia than these water- won ranches, whether in the Okanagan and Kootenay valleys of the south, or the Kamloops and Cariboo areas of the north and west.
More water will mean more ranches, more farms
and orchards, more tillers of the soil, more wealth
and prosperity, just in proportion as capital is
applied to its transition from the reservoirs of the
mountains to the thirsty lands of the benches and
walls. To be told the actual annual yield value
from a single acre of an irrigated fruit ranch in
British Columbia is to tax an Easterner's credulity
to the straining-point.
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Along the Fraser and the Cariboo
The enclosing hills of the trail indicate their suggestions of untold wealth. Eor miles the eye may trace the copper tints in the slopes, as in the bed of Marble Eake— that wonderful trans- lucent pool of royal blue, sleeping the centuries away at the base of the equally wonderful Marble Canon. Farther to the north miners have been experimenting by hydraulic processes with the long unworked mines at Bullion, while along the flood- rent gorges of the Eraser the individual gold- seeker still washes out a living in pay-dirt ; and monster steam dredges are anchored to its banks, awaiting the order of their owners to resume operations. And as British Columbia has yielded up a hundred millions in gold in the past, so no doubt as many millions* worth more are awaiting their discovery and recovery.
Every twenty miles or so the character of the country changes. After a day's driving from Ashcroft, the belt of aridity is left behind and a different scene unfolds not unlike a bit of Scotland, with tree-covered hills guarding a chain of long, narrow lakes at their base . Herds of cattle and flocks of sheep give the pastoral note to the landscape ; comfortable homes come into view with greater frequency, and nature is fair to look upon all the
285
Through the Heart of Canada
way to Clinton and beyond. By the roadside is a bit of architecture that tells of the makeshifts of the pioneers. An old piano-box stands on end, and the rusty stove-pipe emerging therefrom advertises the fact that it had been the one -room home of an old-timer. The rude habitation is in the same class as the ruined cabins along the way, half cellar and half log and mud huts. One's curiosity is aroused, however, regarding the piano. What was its history? who was the millionaire who could afford to pay the freight upon it, and is it still doing duty as a dispenser of music ?
Incidents of the trail are as numerous as the mile posts. Always picturesque are the freight caravans slowly but surely creeping their way up hills and down grades, each drawn by several teams of horses. Perched high on the box-seat will be a grizzled survivor of the reckless days of the past, holding in his memory a rich store of yarns. Or the driver may be a solemn Indian or an equally immovable Chinaman, the latter trekking goods to his own merchant countrymen up the trail.
The journey from Clinton leads to and up and over and down Pavilion Mountain. There are many corkscrews on its heavy grades ; there are,
286
Along the Eraser and the Cariboo
moreover, numerous opportunities for mountain - climbing while the panting horses are making the ascent. But when the plateau is reached, a wondrous vision bursts upon the eye : far below, a pear-shaped lake, hidden away in a tangle of trees ; to the west, glimpses of the Eraser's northern course ; to the farther west, the snow- crowned peaks of the Cascades ; and immediately below, a fertile valley, dotted with farm-houses— a fair picture of peace and plenty.
The Fraser and its environing hills of many colours can be seen long before the first sight is had of the yellow stream itself, hundreds of feet below, and many a descent, of startling steepness, has to be warily made before coming to close quarters with the historic waterway. The place of meetings is at the Fountain, where the Fraser takes an acute turn, and where the scenery is of the wildest and grandest description.^ It is a vast amphitheatre, the lofty river-hills showing strange sculptures in clay amid the titanic clefts and gullies and buttes. All the colours of the rainbow are visible in the weird earth walls on every hand. Wine-coloured masses here, red blood-stained masses there, silver on the waters, gold on the
mountains and blue overhead.
287
Through the Heart of Canada
It is overwhelming I The mind can scarce find! a place for the lonely Shuswap grave, standing on a high bluff above the stormy stream ; or for the stray Indians, astride diminutive ponies, gazing im- passively into one's face as they pass by.
But it is the river and the river's mighty bed that fascinate the human onlookers. With iwhat infinity of patience nature carries the yellow soil of the northland to the making of a delta hundreds of imiles to the west, and to the shifting of the gravels to the rich gold bars farther down- stream .
One party of tourists has reason to remember the last stage of the day's journey from the Fountain to Lillooet. Darkness overtook them many a league from the only possible destination, and this on a road that clings sensationally to the forbidding defiles of the Eraser, now creeping around a promontory of rock, now hanging suspended over an unnerving depth.
The way to Lillooet was mostly downhill, and
it seemed the longest downhill road ever built.
Not for an instant dare the brakes be relaxed, nor
the watchful eye of the driver allowed off its guard .
It was a strange world, in which could be heard
the roar of the river, and it had a savage sound ;
288
Along the Eraser and the Cariboo
after nightfall the waters were traced by a ghostly light, the same that lingered on the overtopping peaks until a thunderstorm drove them away and filled the cafion with spirit mists. The route lay
"Where the mountain pass is narrow, And the torrent white and strong."
It was a course through a chaos of shades, but at last a bridge was reached; at long last the river came nearer, and beyond it, Lillooet, where in the midnight hours the tired and hungry, but thankful, wayfarers forgot the perils of the night ride in the joys of a dreamless sleep.
Continuing the journey northward, two hundred miles of additional travelling take the stage-coach passenger though a variety of country, alternating, as in the region near Ashcroft, from semi-arid areas to mountainous country, from dusty levels to forested heights and well-watered valleys. One Hundred and Fifty Mile House, Soda Creek, Quesnelle, are among the familiar stopping -places along the winding route, until Barkerville is reached. As the centre of the gold-mining excite- ment of the 'sixties, Barkerville has witnessed not a little of the life of a typical back-country mining
289 T
Through the Heart of Canada
region. Where thousands formed the transient population of over a quarter of a century ago, a more fixed population of hundreds is now engaged in farming and mining.
Still farther north are trail and water routes lead- ing into Northern British Columbia, intersecting the proposed transcontinental line of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. Over these routes during the past few years, immense quantities of freight and material for railway construction have been taken, and this great overland road and its extension trails may yet see a branch railway connecting the Grand Trunk Pacific and the Canadian Pacific Railways for the intervening five hundred miles — even though it must needs pass through a mountainous region.
290
SOUTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA AND THE COASTAL CITIES
CHARTER XVI
SOUTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA AND THE COASTAL
CITIES
The lake districts of Southern British Columbia
are incomparable in their beauty. Kootenay,
Arrows, Shuswap, Okanagan exhibit in turn
entrancing glimpses of blue-green waters, hemmed
in by billowy hills and lofty mountain peaks ; of
orchards and farms, ranches and mines ; of lonely
cabins and thriving towns. One is impressed with
the colossal scale on which Nature exhibits her
wonders in this westland province. Hundreds of
miles in the aggregate are traversed by fine
steamers on the four great stretches named, and
on sunshiny summer days, with banks of fleecy
clouds making friends with the snow-tipped
summits, with cool and soft winds coursing down
the deep valleys, the journeys are ideal ones.
Nelson is the water gateway of the Kootenay
Lakes. A bright, bustling centre it is, boasting of
daily papers, a street-car line, and municipal light-
293
Through the Heart of Canada
ing and waterworks plants, and possessing excellent schools and churches and handsome homes ; while its citizens wax eloquent over the mineral and timber wealth of the surrounding hills, and the fruit-growing possibilities of adjacent bench lands. Nelson's fruit took first prize at one of the Royal Horticultural Exhibitions in London. Thousands of crates of strawberries, apples, and other fruits are annually shipped from the district to the Canadian North-West, and the coast also. One Kootenay fruit-grower claims a net profit of a thousand dollars from five acres of strawberries. This is matched by a dweller in the Okanagan Valley, who is said to have made $150 from the product of a single cherry-tree. Nelson has a " 20,000 Club," whose business it is to advertise the present importance and the prospective great- ness of the '* Capital of the Kootenays."
The dramatic passage from the Narrows of the Kootenay River to the main lake on the sail from Nelson to Kaslo makes a striking scene, with the overlapping Selkirks narrowing in the northern distance until lost in a blue haze. The boat calls at smelters and mines, at prospectors' shacks, and embryo towns, at summer pleasure camps and houseboat anchorages. Wharves are not always
294
Southern British Columbia
an essential in this deep-water country, the crafts nosing their bows on beach or rocks as necessity requires. 'Hills to the right, hills to the left, hills encircling one, rise high above the lake — hills that are mineralised to a yet unknown degree. Corundum and nickel seem to be the only mineral products that are not found in this highly metalliferous region. The attractive ore exhibits, to be seen on boats and in hotels, are most suggestive of the mineral riches of the Kootenay country.
On the Arrow Lakes trip, a ten-hour panorama of rare beauty is unfolded. The waters of the Columbia, in their hastening rush to the sea, pour into the Lakes from the north, giving them a yellowish tint. On the lake benches, fertile areas are to be found where bachelor ranchers live in lonely cabins. The term " ranch " is applied in British Columbia to farms and orchards, no matter how small in area. A holding may be comprised of only a meadow and a small and newly-planted orchard, in striking contrast to the prairie idea of a ranch.
On the Arrow, as on the Kootenay Lakes, the scenery is of the finest description, ranging from giants of the north to the lesser peaks of the south.
295
i
Through the Heart of Canada
At times, when the mists cHng to the slopes and clouds form wreaths around the summits, the effect is most suggestive of the Scottish Highlands. It needs only a little village of stone cottages nestling in a nook of rock, or the sight of a flock of sheep herded by a tartaned shepherd, to make the resem- blance complete.
Southern British Columbia is a region of timber houses, some of them ready-to -put -up ones, made in Vancouver and shipped in sections. In the town of Arrowhead, frame hotels and stores are afloat on rafts, and the rest of the houses cling by their eyebrows to the mountain-sides. Near by are two of the many great sawmills of the country, and yet the munerous mills, scattered from Vancouver and the mainland to the Crow's Nest Pass, cannot meet the ever-increasing demands of British Columbia itself and the adjoining prairie provinces .
At the southern end of the Arrow Lakes, where
the waters again narrow to a river. Trail forms
a door to the Rossland and Boundary districts.
Trail itself, with an immense smelting plant and a
lead and silver refinery, is a busy little town, only
fourteen miles from Rossland, whose mines are
famous the world over, and whose permanency has
296
Southern British Columbia
been fully proved. Grand Forks, with its great Granby smelter — the largest and most complete plant of its kind in America — and Greenwood, are among the important commercial and mining cities of Southern British Columbia, as Fernie and Cranbrook are of the Crow's Nest Pass.
The Okanagan Lake District is yet another Arcadia in this Canadian Switzerland. The scenic surroundings are softer than among its eastern lake neighbours. On the way to Vernon from Sicamous, the valley looks like a bit of old Ontario in the Far West, with the fields of ripening grain, the comfortable farmsteads and the general air of long cultivation and settled prosperity. The richly laden orchards duplicate the Niagara peninsula, while the ranches in the connecting valleys are more on the prairie scale as to area and stock .
Along the beautiful sheet of water lie the new
fruit-growing centres of Kelowna, Peachland,
Summerland, and Eenticton — musical names all.
To be privileged to eat real apples from a British
Columbia orchard, and to pick real rosy-cheeked
peaches from a Eeachland tree, to see pear- and
plum-trees laden to their limit, and flourishing amid
their irrigation channels, is to be impressed with
297
Through the Heart of Canada
the fact that in this great timber and mining province of Canada fruit-growing is already an established industry, where you may pay up to $500 dollars an acre for choice orchard lands. It was only in 1903 that the first carload of British Columbia apples was shipped to Glasgow — three thousand miles by land, three thousand miles by sea — where they sold well and profitably. Another shipment carried safely to Australia, while a third won a gold medal in London. British Columbia need not, however, search for foreign markets for its fruits ; the men of the western plains stand ready to buy all that is grown for many a year to come.
The Pacific coast has as yet only one way of approach — that of the Canadian Pacific Railway, via the valleys of the Thompson and Eraser Rivers. Although lines are projected from the Boundary District westward by way of Penticton, Prince- town, ^nd the Nicola Valley, the main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway must still be used.
As the entrance into the mountain world from the prairie on the east is strikingly impressive, so is the exit from the depths of the Eraser Canon to the plain, reaching for two hundred miles to the
2^
Southern British Columbia
coast. The Fraser River, released from its prison walls of rock, and broadened by spacious room, flows more leisurely but none the less surely to its delta. The face of nature has taken on a kindlier look as fertile farms and gardens succeed each other. Attractive branching valleys lure to their fastnesses, as tributary streams invite explora- tion to their sources. At Agassiz is situated one of the Government experimental farms.
Long before Vancouver marks the end of the across -continent journey, the head of Burrard*s Inlet provides the first glimpse of salt water, and the first odour of the sea. The train halts for the briefest moment at a city that failed to materialise — at old Port Moody — the -Town -of - Might -Have -Been. Chosen in the early days of railway construction to be the western terminal, the rustic little settlement of shacks had visions of greatness and wealth. But with the later choice •of Vancouver, Port Moody relapsed into the obscurity from which it only momentarily emerged, leaving behind toredo -eaten piles, deserted and decaying wharves, and tenantless buildings.
Its successor furnishes a suggestive contrast, for
Vancouver is throbbing with life, and as hopeful
for its future as it is proud of its past. Though
299
Through the Heart of Canada
little less than a quarter of a century old, it is a commercial and marine metropolis, with a popu- lation over one hundred thousand. Its commerce may be measured by the fact that it ranks fourth among the cities of Canada, as tested by its bank clearings, which have increased loo per cent, in only three years.
Possessing one of the finest and roomiest land- locked harbours in the world, and being the distributing point for a wide range of coast country, it is but natural that the shipping interests of Van- couver are paramount. It is not only the home of several transpacific and coastal lines, but freighters from many parts of the world sail through the tidal narrows, bringing silks and teas from the Orient and taking away the lumber and fish of British Columbia and the wheat and flour of the western plains. The harbour often presents a scene of rare interest — ocean liners from China and Japan, Australia and Newi Zealand, vessels from Mexico and California on the south, and Alaska' on the north, a great variety of local craft plying in Euget Sound and the inner channel leading to Prince Rupert and Skagway, with an occasional British warship joining the floating company, pr a fleet of yachts or a flotilla of Indian canoes
300
Southern British Columbia
adding variety to the picture. A half-mile of vessels are not infrequently berthed closely together along the water front. Such a scene reveals the fact that the Empire is being bound together by cables of commerce as never before. Its steam- ships bridge every sea, and vessels from Orient and Occident are anchored in the harbour of Vancouver — one of the King's great ocean- gateways.
The crowning! glory of this fine western city of the Pacific is Stanley Park. In its primeval depths are to be found magnificent specimens of the giant cedars and Douglas firs of the coast, towering as straight as arrows to a maximum height of three hundred feet. Well-kept roads and endless paths intersect the sylvan woods, amid a dense under- growth of ferns and shrubs. At every turn the sea comes into view, and over it the watery pathway to Victoria and Vancouver Island.
Vancouver's life really began when, in May of 1887, the first train entered it from the East. Just a year before occurred the great fire which sweprt out of existence the little town of Granville, as Vancouver was then called. Only one house was left standing. It is interesting to recall the story of the conflagration as told by an eye-witness,
301
Through the Heart of Canada
Hon. D. W. Higgins, Ex-speaker of the British Columbia Legislature : —
'* While the struggle was going on between Vancouver and Port Moody," he says, '* for the terminus of the C.P.R., a terrible event happened. On June 1 1 , 1886, I *was playing with my brother in the road near where Cambie and Cordova Streets come together. Lots were being cleared, and bush fires were burningi. Suddenly a high wind sprang up, and smoke and flames were carried directly toward the lightly constructed buildings. The at- mosphere grew so hot that I could scarcely breathe, and a dense cloud of smoke swept along Water Street. Sotne one cried, * Fire I ' and there was a rush of people towards the spot where we boys were playing. Then I saw a great tongue of flame shoot out of the cloud of smoke and cast itself like a fiery monster upon a small wooden hotel that stood in its way. The guests fled, barely escaping •with their lives, leaving all their effects behind them. We were paralysed with fear, and stood looking at the fire as it swept towards us, until a man dragged us away. Then we began to cry. Men were shouting, and women wailing and shrieking. Some who lingered too long in their
houses were burned to death. The hungry flames
302
Southern British Columbia
swept on, the frenzied inhabitants fleeing before them, and in less than three hours the town site was swept almost clean. Thirteen bodies were found on the streets or among the dying embers. Three men who had sought refuge in a store were burnt to a crisp. A mother and her young son whose retreat was cut off, descended into a well, but they were suffocated. Such a calamity would have paralysed most communities. But not so here, for at four o'clock the next morning, while the ashes of their buildings were still glowing, Pat Carey and Duncan McPherson began to rebuild. Others followed their example. Relief was sent from all quarters, and the town soon recovered itself."
The spirit of enterprise that characterised Pat and Donald over twenty years ago, continues to be the spirit of this modern city of the West. One of its ancient landmarks — a dilapidated frame building on the comer of its two principal streets —was recently torn down to make way for a handsome stone bank structure, and this was but typical of the transformation that is taking place in every part of the city. While the fine business section is steadily improving and building up, the excellent street -car system is assisting in a
303
I
Through the Heart of Canada
rapid suburban expansion. The trolley line to Steveston, for instance, shows the battle that is being waged against forests and stumps by the makers of homes. On one lot will be seen a neat frame cottage, with a bit of lawn, a profusion of flowers, and a kitchen garden, while adjoining it is the once fire -swept forest awaiting a more complete subjugation at the hands of man. More room, more homes for more people is the cry of Vancouver, and the homes of the new city are models of architectural style, all embowered in a wealth of flowers and vines.
The line to Steveston affords, moreover, a most interesting hour's ride, as it carries one over the north arm of the Eraser River, and across the fertile fields of Lulu Island to the main channel of the great salmon river. There one is landed in as strange a town as all Canada can show. A down -at -the -heel Chinatown Street, with erratic sidewalks on rickety props, runs towards the river where, to right and left stretch the ugly rambling canneries, interspersed with masses of piling. Hauled high on shore, and above tide water, are the elaborately carved canoes of the Indians, dug out of a single log. Eor two months of the summer the red folk of the coast flock to the salmon
304
Southern British Columbia
; fisheries, the men helping in the fishing and their squaws serving in the canneries.
Long lines of rough huts and cabins shelter these
, children of the coast, and if the Mongolian tene- ments are unattractive, those of the Siwashes are
' even more so . When off duty the women busy themselves with baking bannock, splitting, curing and smoking salmon, or making baskets, the men being engaged in superintending the tasks.
In one of the Steveston canneries, the Scottish- Canadian, there is shown a wonderful invention by means of which three men are able to do the work of thirty ! With almost human ingenuity, the machine cuts off the head and tail of the salmon, cuts it open, cleans it, and finally slices it ready for packing!. Great pyramids of the canned pro- duct, awaiting shipment to the uttermost parts of the earth, tell of the importance and extent of the industry, which has reached an annual value of a million dollars. The sight of the salmon fleet with all sails set, scattered over the three river mouths, is a striking one as seen from the deck of the Vancouver-Victoria steamer on the sail across the Straits of Georgia to the most western limit of the continent -wide Dominion.
Victoria is the portal of the Pacific, the ocean
305 u
Through the Heart of Canada
gateway to the Orient, the half-way house on Britain's great world trade route between London and Hongkong, the most westerly link in Canada's chain of cities.
The Victorian is pardonably proud of his pro- vincial capital and of the isle that shelters it, and as the sojourner from the east approaches this city by the sea, through a picturesque channel of wooded islands, the thought ever thrills him that he is still in Canada. Though nearly four thousand miles from Halifax, the sister city of the Atlantic ; though nine provinces have been traversed in the westward journey, the traveller is within the bounds of the vast dominion, that stretch for many a league farther to the northern end of Vancouver Island and its smaller island satellites.
The charm of Victoria is easily understood, especially by an Englishman. With flowers and shrubs and trees to remind him of his motherland, with gardens of roses, with trees of holly, andj hedges of laurel, and bushes of sweet briar, little! vwonder that Victoria is the new home -centre of hundreds of English folk. A reminder of the British Isles in new Canada, it possesses a delightful climate, always equable and most invigorating, with an average daily sunshine of
306
•.#l^g
1
Southern British Columbia
seven hours for six months of the year, with a temperature rarely over 80 degrees in summer or below 40 degrees in winter, and with an air surcharged with the purest of sea ozone. So healthful are the climatic conditions that the visitor on hearing them recited, and truthfully so, is some- times led to suspect that the good citizens must find it necessary to leave the place, as is said of Ilfracombe, in order to die I
As Vancouver glories in Stanley Park, so Victoria is happy in the possession of Beacon Hill Park. Under its gnarled oaks, and on the moorland stretches bordered by the rocky coast -line, there is unfolded a matchless panorama. In front, to the right and to the left, is the sweep of the sea, the never resting sea, as blue -coloured as the blue sky overhead . Farther in front, resting against the sky- line, is the sixty-mile range of the snow-sheathed Olympic Mountains . Yet farther south-by-east, the great white throne -like peak of Mount Baker makes pigmy in height all the rest of the visible world.
urning northward, other mountains, tree -covered to their summits, invite the beholder to revel in
leir hidden scenic beauty. In the near distance, looking cityward, rise the
jautiful homes of its leading citizens— the stately
307
Through the Heart of Canada
Dunsmuir Castle, the picturesque Government House, and the residences of bankers, capitalists and commercial magnates.
The echoes of the tally-ho horn ring through the avenues of trees as party after party of tourists " do *' the town in that modem abbreviated time- table fashion. For Victoria has long since become one of the favourit,e tourist centres of the Pacific coast, and since California has indulged in ominous and disastrous ague fits, an increasing number of residents from that part of the United States are making Victoria their home.
The harbour scenes are full of interest, and they are as suggestive as they are interesting. There one may touch the alluring world beyond the Pacific. A stately Japanese liner, swarming with little brown Japs, sails in from Yokohama or Nagasaki ; a steam whaler, with modem harpooning machinery, comes in laden with the spoils of the huge crustacean in barrels of sperm oil and sacks of fertilising material, while a sealing craft is anchored over against the time when it will sail northward. Herring from Nanaimo and cured salmon from other coastal points help to form the freight of the long wharves, with ship- ments of lumber and coal telling of other rich resources of Vancouver Island.
308
A TYPICAL FOREST SCENE, VANCOUVER ISLAND.
ToaK»p.3<«.
Southern British Columbia
I
■ Not the least important part of British Columbia is Vancouver Island. From its commanding position on the Pacific coast, and its wealth of natural resources in coal, mining, lumbering and
(fisheries, the island is rich beyond estimate. But in this it is only typical of the entire province, in which the trade is the largest in the world per head of the population. Nearly every mineral is found within its boundaries, the mines having produced all told over three hundred million dollars' worth. The fisheries yield an annual average value of seven millions. The total lumber cut is nearing a billion feet from the greatest com- pact area of merchantable timber in North America.
With the gradual opening up of British Columbia by means of new railway lines, the undoubted resources of the mountain province will be in- creasingly developed along the lines predicted by its Einance Minister. The construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific across its northern end will open up an entirely new section, and the founding of the terminal of Prince Rupert may mean a second Vancouver, six hundred miles north of Burrard's Inlet. The projected building of inter- secting lines between the Grand Tnmk Pacific and
309
Through the Heart of Canada
southern and central British Columbia will open the way to further settlement, as will the con- templated extensions pf the Canadian Pacific Railway system and the Canadian Northern Railway. No part of Canada has a more hopeful outlook than its western state ; no part has richer possibilities or greater wealth hidden in its granite hills, its deep-hearted rivers, and its forested areas . An integral part of '* the heart of Canada " is its Alpine province.
The creation of a Dominion forty-three years ago gave birth to the thought of dominion, of self-reliance, of a deep-seated faith in home and native land : —
"They love their land because it is their own, And scorn to give aught other reason why."
And this love of land and coimtry is as marked
in British Columbia as in the maritime provinces,
in the far East by. the Atlantic as in the far West
by the Pacific, and the far North by the Arctic.
But what of the Canada of the future — a
Dominion swiftly passing] into an Empire?
Complex problems will continue to demand
solution, perils will arise as in the past to tax the
wisdom of the statesmen who hold the helm.
310
Southern British Columbia
Patience will still be needed, and with patience the knowledge that men cannot hurry history nor can the wisest of human laws solve every problem of State, or cure every ill by merely being placed on a statute-book.
The upbuilding of the Dominion, in every depart- ment of its national life, in the material as well as in the spiritual realms, will require faith, courage, and time — and the greatest of these is faith . More heartily and earnestly than ever, more truly than the men of former generations, can the Canadian sons of the Empire sing with '' Eidelis " :— -
" Four nations welded into one, with long historic past, Have found, in these our western wilds, one common life at
last; Through the young giant's mighty limbs, that stretch from sea
to sea There runs the throb of conscious life, of waking energy.
From Nova Scotia's misty coast to far Columbia's shore. She wakes, a band of scattered homes and colonies no more, But a young nation, with her life full beating in her breast, A noble future in her eyes, the Britain of the West ! "
I
311
INDEX
Agriculture... 27, 44, 64, 78, 130, 148, 157, 158, 163-65, 223
Alberta 164-66, 215-229
Algonquin National Park 143
Alpine Club of Canada 241, 254
Annapolis ... ... ... ... ... 17, 18
Arrow Lakes 295, 296
|
Banff National Park |
... |
... |
... 234 |
|
|
Banking |
... |
... |
... no, I] |
t8, 159) 300 |
|
Bic |
... |
... |
... |
... 68 |
|
Brant, Joseph |
... |
... |
... |
... 134 |
|
Brantford |
... |
... |
... |
. • 133 |
|
Bras d'Or Lakes |
••. |
... ... |
22 |
|
|
British Columbia |
... |
... |
... |
257-311 |
|
Brock, Sir Isaac • |
... |
... |
|
128, 129 |
|
Calgary |
216, 217 |
|||
|
Cariboo Road |
... |
... |
... |
278-290 |
|
Cartier, Jacques |
... |
... |
... |
... 60 |
|
Chaleur Bay |
... |
... |
... |
... 40 |
|
Chambly |
... |
... |
|
... 74 |
|
Champlain, Samuel |
de |
... |
... |
33. 61, 74 |
|
Charlottetown |
... |
313 |
... |
- 45 |
Index
|
I06--09 |
|
|
... |
21 |
|
50 |
, 51 |
|
258- |
-260 |
|
18 |
33 |
|
123, |
124 |
|
182- |
-185 |
|
... |
79 |
|
217, |
218 |
|
203, |
204 |
Chateau de Ramezay
Chester
Coffin, Sir Isaac Cougar Valley
De Monts, Sieur ... Denonville, Marquis de Doukhobors
Eastern Townships
Edmonton
Eskimos
Fisheries ... 26, 35, 43, 44, 63, 152-54, 305, 309
Foreigners 175-192
Fort Beausejour 32
Fort McPherson 201, 208
Fort William 154
Eraser, Simon 275, 276
Eraser Caiion 277
Eraser River 276, 287, 299
Eredericton ... 38
Erontenac, Count de 122
Fruit-growing 19, 131, 297, 298
Galicians 177-182
Gaspe 40, 41
Georgian Bay 142
Germans 187
Glaciers 247, 248, 258
Grand Pre 15
Greeks 189
314
Index
Habitant 79-82, 90, 91
Halifax 12-14
Hamilton
I
133
Herschell Island 197, 202
Hudson Bay 70, 97, 197, 209
Hunting 39
Icelanders 186
Immigration 165, 175
Indians —
Algonquins ... 140
Caughnawagas 113
Five Nations 123
Hurons 114, 140, 141,
Iroquois... 68, 70, 94, 104, 122, 123
Micmacs 33, 68
Mohawks 134
Neutrals 125
Siwashes 305
Irrigation 228, 229, 284
Italians 189
Jesuits 70
Kingston
Kootenay Lakes
Labrosse
Lachine Rapids
Lakes Among the Clouds
Lake Superior
Lalemont, Pere
La Loutre, Pere
La Salle, Sieur de
315
|
12 |
1-24 |
|
... |
294 |
|
7c |
, 72 |
|
... |
113 |
|
... |
238 |
|
152, |
153 |
|
... |
93 |
|
... |
32 |
|
123, |
126 |
Inde:
La Tour, Charles de Le Jeune, Pere
Levis
L' Islet au Massacre
London
Louisbourg
Lumbering
Lundy's Lane Lunenburg
33
93
86
68
134
12, 23-26
35, 78, 120, 144-147, 309
129
21
Magdalen Islands
Mahone Bay
Maisonneuve, Chomedey de
Manitoba
Manufacturing
Mennonites ...
Mining
Missions
Moncton Bore
Montcalm, Louise de
Montreal
Mormons
Mountain ranges —
Rockies
Selkirks
Coastal
Cascades
Mountain Peaks — Mount Aberdeen Mount Assiniboine
Mount Baker
Cathedral Peak Cougar Mountain Mount Sir Donald
316
22, 147, 148, 285,
49-64
20
103, 104
161-68
no, 119
... 188
295-97, 309 ... 192
... 36 88, 95
103-114 223-27
233-254 257-272
... 258
... 258
251-54
... 238
... 307 237, 244 262, 263
244, 359
Index
|
Mountain Peaks (continued) |
— - |
|
Mount Temple |
241,250 |
|
Mount Vice-President |
242-44 |
|
Mount Victoria |
239,240 |
|
Mounted Police |
195-211 |
|
Muskoka T/akes |
140-42 |
|
Nelson |
293 |
|
New Brunswick |
31-43 |
|
Newfoundland |
49 |
|
Niagara Falls |
130 |
|
Niagara Peninsula ... |
125-130 |
|
Niagara River |
125 |
|
Norwegians. See under Scandinavians |
|
|
Notre Dame des Victoires |
87 |
|
Nova Scotia |
9-27 |
|
Oka |
75 |
|
Okanagan Lakes |
297 |
|
Ontario — |
|
|
Old Ontario |
117-135 |
|
New Ontario ... |
139-154 |
|
Orientals |
190 |
|
Ottawa |
"9 |
|
Ottawa River |
74 |
|
Paradise Valley ... |
249 |
|
Perce Rock |
42,43 |
|
Pioneers |
131,132 |
|
Plains of Abraham ... |
95 |
|
Port Arthur |
154 |
|
Prairies |
169-172 |
|
Prince Edward Island |
44,45 |
|
Prince Rupert |
309 |
317
Index
Quebec City 85-100
Quebec Province 67-82
Queenston Heights 128
Ranching 219-222
Regina i6i
Richelieu River 73
Rocky Mountains. See under Mountain Ranges
Saguenay River 69
St. Anne de Beaupre 96-99
St. John 33-35
St. John River 36, 37
St. Lawrence River 67-69, 105
St. Thomas 134
Saskatchewan 164-66
Scandinavians 185, 186
Selkirk Caves 264-272
Selkirk Mountains. See under Mountain Ranges
Settlers 149-151, 165-69
Shipping 35, 100, 300, 308
Sillery 92-94
Simcoe, John Graves 1 124, 128
Sous-le-Cap 87
Steveston 304
Summerside «. ... 45
Swedes. See under Scandinavians
Tadousac 69, 70
Takkakaw Falls 245
Talbot Settlement 134
Temagami 143, 144
Toronto n8
Trappists 75-77
318
Index
United Empire Loyalists 21, 33, 40, 117, 124, 127
Vancouver ... Vancouver Island Victoria
Whaling Winnipeg Wolfe, James
Yarmouth ... Yoho Valley ... Yukon
299-303
306-09
305
202
158-160 25, 41, 86, 95
21
245-48 197
319
I
Ube Gresbam PtcsB,
UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, WOKHfG AND LONDON.
BINDING SECT. MAY 9 1973
PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET
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Yeigh, Frank
Through the heart of Canada
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