Part 7

Amongst the valuable minerals of the province are limestone, granite, gypsum and gold. The mining of the last-named metal has been carried on by rather primitive methods for nearly half a century. The yield for the record year was worth about $600,000 (£120,000), and at present three hundred men are employed at twenty-five different mines. There is one of these small mines in Guysborough County, on the edge of a vast stretch of “barrens”; but, despite its sounding name, “Goldenville” is a sorry little hamlet, of dingy, unpainted buildings, that seem to mock at the “prospector’s dazzling dreams.” But one does not usually go to an industrial place, large or small, in search of the picturesque. One may chance upon it there, however, as when at night the outpouring of molten slag from Sydney’s black giants of blast furnaces suddenly lights up the wide beautiful harbour with a ruddy glow.

Halifax, the capital, containing nearly a tenth of the population of the province, is undeniably picturesque, with its old Citadel and churches, its wharves and its vessels, its odd outdoor market, its “redcoats” (now Canadians) and its coloured folk. Though on the eve of a great development of its port, which will doubtless revolutionize its business life, till very recently it has been a quiet old-fashioned place, its dinginess relieved by lovely water-views from many a point of vantage, and its dignity secured by such fine old stone buildings as the abode of the British admiral, Government House and the Province Building, where still, as in one other case, an Upper as well as a Lower House deliberates on the affairs of the province.

The Assembly of Nova Scotia, by the way, is the oldest representative body in the Dominion, having been convened for the first time in 1758. There was a long fight for the boon of responsible government, won in 1848; and the name of Joseph Howe, the Reform leader, son of a Loyalist, is renowned throughout the Dominion. During the last half-dozen years several imposing new buildings, including the Anglican cathedral and the Memorial Tower (commemorating the calling together of the first Assembly) have been erected in Halifax. The city is the terminus of the Intercolonial and two provincial railways, and has a variety of manufactures.

I cannot give space, as I should like, to descriptions of any of the smaller towns; but, though someone described Nova Scotia as “the province that was passed by,” it is as truly a land of opportunity as any of the regions further west. The opportunity does not come in the shape of “free grants” of land, but a farmer who knows his business and has two or three hundred pounds of capital can soon own a good farm. There are farms of from fifty to three hundred acres of which the price is from $1,000 (£200) up. Some of these have been thrown on the market by the death or infirmity of their owners, some through the desire of a younger owner to go to the west or to take up work in a town. Amongst them are “run-down” farms, which can be obtained for little more than the cost of the buildings upon them, and a thoroughly capable farmer may sometimes find it pay to buy such a farm cheap and bring it back to good condition.

Within the broad realm of agriculture, to say nothing further of the other possible avenues to success in woods and mines and city and sea, there is variety of opportunity. Let a man decide to go into dairying, market-gardening, the raising of sheep, hogs or poultry, the culture of apples, or the growing of small fruits, and there is some part of Nova Scotia in which each one of these pursuits may be followed with special hope of success; moreover, the provincial government (which is frankly desirous of good immigrants of the right stamp) has made arrangements to help the new arrivals to find what they want. (For names of officials who will give information, see Appendix, Note A, page 295.)

With regard to the very profitable business of apple-growing, it is stated that not one-tenth of the land in the Annapolis valley and elsewhere suitable for orchards, has yet been planted.

As to the question of markets—the home market alone is an excellent one for practically all food supplies, for the constant influx of immigrants and the armies of non-producers engaged in mining and other industries create a demand in many lines of foodstuffs not easy for the farmer to overtake. Nova Scotia imports much that she might just as well grow. But aside from the home market, she has easy access to those of the other provinces, and to those of the United States and of Great Britain, for every one of her counties touches on the sea, which is the best possible highroad for freight. As to her internal means of communication, roads are improving and new railways are being added to the old.

With few exceptions, Nova Scotian farmers own the land they till, and to assist still more to do so, including newcomers, the provincial government makes arrangements with loan companies to lend as much as 80 per cent. of the appraised value of farm property on mortgage. The government is also authorized to buy “real estate in farming districts, subdivide this into suitable-sized farms or lots, erect buildings and fences thereon, prepare the land for crops and sell this improved real estate to newcomers on satisfactory terms.” This opportunity to obtain ready-made farms will no doubt prove attractive to many newcomers.

In the fruit districts of Nova Scotia, owing to the smaller holdings, people are settled comparatively near together, and this is a great advantage so far as church and social life and the education of the children is concerned.

The elementary and high schools, supported by government grants and local rates, are free. In isolated communities it is sometimes difficult to obtain teachers; but a hopeful movement is the introduction of “consolidated schools,” each of which, having several teachers, replaces the little “one-teacher schools” of a considerable district. There are now over twenty of these, to which the children are taken in vans.

Nova Scotia has several universities, supported by different religious bodies, in addition to the non-sectarian Dalhousie University at Halifax. The oldest of these institutions is King’s College, at Windsor, which dates from 1790. A comparatively new institution is the Agricultural College at Truro. Here instruction is given free of cost to farmers, farmers’ sons and new settlers intending to farm. Besides the full two years’ course, there are short practical courses of two weeks, including one for women on dairying and poultry keeping. In connection with the college is a fine Model Farm, where excellent stock is kept. The government also maintains experts to give instruction in various branches of agriculture, and endeavours in a variety of other ways to improve the methods and conditions of farming in Nova Scotia.

There is a demand always for good farm workers and capable domestic servants. Even inexperienced young people have little difficulty in getting work, if they are strong and willing to learn, but they must not expect high wages till they are competent. For competent farm men the wages offered are usually from $20 (£4) to $30 (£6) the month, with board and lodging for a single man, and with a rent-free house and certain allowances of milk and vegetables for a married man. In the latter case, the wife, if willing to assist the farmer’s wife, can often make a considerable addition to the family income. For day labour in the country a man might expect from $1 (4_s._) to $1.50 (6_s._), with board.

In the towns wages are higher, even for unskilled labour, but in Halifax at least rents are very high, and a man who is looking forward to getting a little land of his own would usually be wiser to settle from the first in a country district where living is cheap, and where the experience gained would be of definite value in farming operations. Moreover, if he is able to keep a few fowls, and a pig, and have a garden of his own, it very much lessens the cost of living. There are many prosperous farmers in Nova Scotia who landed a few years ago with scarcely a shilling in their pockets, but these have been hard workers.

The population of Nova Scotia is chiefly of British descent, though not a few of the early settlers came by way of New England in Loyalist and pre-Loyalist days. Scottish names are common in many parts of the province, especially in Cape Breton Island. The ancient Acadians are represented by something like fifty thousand French people, and the Nova Scotians of German descent are not much fewer.

Of religious bodies, the Roman Catholics are the strongest, but the Presbyterians make a good second, then come in order the Baptists, the Anglicans and the Methodists. In the country places there are a few union churches, but there is a good deal of “over-lapping,” which aggravates the difficulty of ministering adequately to communities so scattered, as they are, for instance, on the south coast.

VII NEW BRUNSWICK, THE LAND OF THE ST. JOHN

THE Province of New Brunswick is in shape almost a square, and in extent has an area of about 28,000 square miles. In other words, it is smaller than Scotland, but has a much larger proportion of land that can be cultivated than that rugged little country which has sent forth such masterly farmers to till larger and richer fields than those of their own stern land. It is bounded on the east and south by the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Bay of Fundy, which are separated by the narrow neck of land from which Nova Scotia thrusts itself like a great breakwater into the Atlantic surges. Northward it reaches to Chaleur bay and the Province of Quebec. Westward it is bounded by Maine, which (thanks to the efforts of a British diplomatist to settle at all costs a long-standing dispute) comes in like a wedge between New Brunswick and Quebec. In latitude New Brunswick lies almost entirely between the 45th and 48th parallels, which also, it may be noted, run across the central portion of France.

Upon the coast there is, as might be expected, a good deal of rain and mist and white sea fog; but the climate of the interior is more dry and clear; and there is no lack of sunshine. Compared with England, the winters are cold, and the farmer has a shorter period each year in which he can work upon his land; but in one of the government publications is given an interesting quotation bearing upon this point from a Report on New Brunswick, written in 1850, by a great English agricultural expert, Professor J. F. W. Johnston:—

“On the whole,” he says, “I think we must allow that though the period for out-door labour is shorter in New Brunswick—as it is in the Canadas, Maine, and the Northern States—than in England and in some parts of Scotland, yet that the action of winter upon the soil is such as to materially lessen the labour necessary to bring it into a proper state of tilth.”

Moreover, while in Great Britain the work of the farmer is often interfered with by rain, and his expenses “considerably increased by the precarious nature of the climate in which he lives,”

“In New Brunswick the climate is more steady and equable. Rains do not so constantly fall, and when they do descend, the soils in most parts of the province are so porous as readily to allow them to pass through. Thus the outdoor operations of the farmer are less impeded by rain, and the disposable time he possesses, compared with that of the British farmer, is not to be measured by the number of days at the disposal of each.”

The climate of New Brunswick, the professor concludes,

“does not prevent the soil from producing crops which, other things being equal, are not inferior in quantity or quality to those of average soils in England; while, as for its health, it is an exceedingly healthy climate. Every medical man I have met in the province, I believe without exception, and almost every other man I have conversed with, assures me of this, and the healthy looks and the numerous families of the natives of all classes confirm these assurances.”

To this day the people of New Brunswick certainly have a healthy appearance, and rosy cheeks and clear complexions are common, especially on the coasts.

The winter of the interior is often described by the inhabitants, even in moments when they cannot be suspected of any thought of advertising the province, as a “good steady one.” The fact is that most Canadians, either native-born or those who have lived long in the country dislike damp weather above any other kind. If the cold is only dry and clear, they do evidently from their behaviour feel it bracing, as they say; and it is the same with the summer heat, the days to be dreaded (if any?) are the days in which the atmosphere is humid as well as hot. The spring is late, and often almost before one realizes that winter is past one finds that summer is upon one.

New Brunswick is an amply-wooded land of pleasantly-diversified hill and valley, though its highest eminence, Sagamook or Bald Mountain, is only 2,604 feet above the sea. It is well watered by the Restigouche, the Miramichi and the St. John rivers, with their tributaries, and many smaller streams. The last-mentioned river is nearly five hundred miles in length from its sources in the wilds of Maine to its mouth. It is navigable for almost its whole length through the province, though in one place its course is broken by the “Grand Falls.” Large-sized steamers go up as far as Fredericton, eighty-five miles from St. John; but there a change is made to smaller boats. The river flows for many miles through a fertile and beautiful valley; but as it approaches the city of St. John its banks become higher and bolder, and the stream widens out to a fine broad basin.

The gateway to the sea lies through a narrow gorge of less than five hundred feet, and here the current of the river makes fierce and constant struggle with the force of the famous tides of the Bay of Fundy. At St. John the normal rise is twenty-seven feet, and the result is the curious, but not quite happily-named phenomenon—the “Reversing Falls.” At low tide the river tumbles and races in fierce haste down a sharp rugged slope to reach the bay; but the pressure of the incoming sea piles up the water of the harbour in the narrow channel to greater and greater heights, till, at the flood, the current of the St. John seems turned backward, and the tide water, as it comes plunging through the rock gateway, is at a distinctly higher level than the more peaceful surface of the river within. Happily at half-tide—four times in the twenty-four hours—there comes a brief truce in the everlasting struggle, and vessels can pass with safety to bear their freight of humankind and of all manner of merchandise up the grand natural highway of nature’s making deep into the heart of the country.

I do not propose here to dwell at any length on the history of New Brunswick; but I should like to say that, in common with every other province of the Dominion, it has a history—short in years, perhaps, but not devoid of human interest. If one were attempting to tell it, moreover, it would be impossible to do so without frequent references to the St. John. This river received its name three centuries ago because a little company of gallant French explorers, amongst whom was Samuel Champlain, afterwards founder of Quebec, discovered it upon St. John the Baptist’s day.

In those old days, the broad bosom of the river was often flecked with the canoes of Indians, bound on some hunting or fishing or fighting expedition; and in 1635 a picturesque French trader—such a one of gentle birth, gift of leadership, and bold, adventurous spirit, as Sir Walter Scott might have loved to portray—built a huge wooden castle, bastioned and palisaded, on the banks of the St. John. There was enacted a fierce, confused drama, in which Indians and priests and rival gentlemen-traders took part; nor did it want a heroine, and to this day the noble courage and tragic end of Lady La Tour—wife of the lord of the castle—fascinate the imagination of every student of the annals of old Acadia.

In La Tour’s lifetime an expedition sent out by Oliver Cromwell captured the fort on the St. John, and for some fifteen years the English held the river, restoring it to France by the Treaty of Breda. After that, great grants were made to French seigniors, but they contented themselves with trading with the Indians instead of improving the land, and the French settlements in what is now New Brunswick were of little account till after the expulsion of the Acadians from Nova Scotia in 1755.

To-day the descendants of French colonists of different periods number something over eighty thousand. About 1762 some families from New England settled at Maugerville, Sheffield, and Gagetown, and hither in the Revolutionary time came emissaries from the American “patriots,” only just failing in the attempt to bring the St. John country under the “Stars and Stripes.” But they did fail, and along the banks of the river there settled a few years later a host of the defeated, but not subdued, Americans, who held that true liberty was still possible within the circle of the British Empire.

These set to work with energy to tame the wilderness, and build the new British state of New Brunswick; and still all along the river and in many another district of the province are to be found their descendants, bearing the old names written a century and a quarter ago on the muster-rolls of the Loyalists. Hardships they had to endure in plenty, but they were happy at least in the fact that their country of refuge was a land richly blessed of nature. In fact, it has been calculated that New Brunswick could well support seventeen times her present population, which is about equal to that of the city of Bristol.

The three chief industries of the province are farming, fishing and lumbering. Masts were the first article of export, and for years the people almost lived by the timber trade. Even not very long ago this industry brought $10,000,000 (nearly £2,000,000) into the province yearly, of which one-third was paid out in wages; and upon its prosperity depends the well-being of many not directly engaged in it. Since the introduction of iron vessels, the dependent industry of shipbuilding has declined, but new uses are continually being discovered for wood, increasing the value of all sources of supply. These have been recklessly reduced by greed, blunders and largely preventible accidents, but New Brunswick still possesses noble forests, and, perhaps, since the new day of deliberate “conservation” has dawned, may continue to possess them indefinitely.

The provincial government owns over 10,000 square miles of forest; but the greater part of this has been rented upon certain conditions for the cutting of timber, and the rents and dues thus collected bring in a considerable revenue to the public coffers. In 1906 it amounted to $250,000 (£50,000). Originally almost the whole of the province was covered with magnificent trees. For long, white pine was the only wood valued for export, and now little pine remains; but since the manufacture of paper from pulpwood began, a new value has been put upon the once despised spruce which, it has been said, grows in New Brunswick “like a weed,” on lands where farmers would be predestined to failure. Nowadays, however, immigrants are not permitted to settle on such lands, for it is realized that their doing so will be of benefit neither to themselves nor to the province.

Spruce is exported as “deals” and boards, and is used for railway sleepers, fence posts, and building materials, as well as for pulpwood; but fir, tamarac, maple, elm, birch, ash, butternut, poplar and hemlock also abound, and serve many useful purposes.

One great advantage of New Brunswick as a lumbering region is that its rivers everywhere form excellent waterways, down which the logs can be “driven” to market. The St. John and its tributaries drain nearly one-half of the province, and the Miramichi has a “watershed embracing about five thousand square miles.” Most of the forest exports go to Great Britain.

The lumbermen work in gangs of fifty or more, living in log camps built in the forests. The work is heavy, the life is rough, and accidents are somewhat frequent. For instance, when the logs going down stream get caught at some point and form a “jam,” it is often a risky business to “break” it; but work in the woods is healthy, and the lumbermen are well fed. In fact, the cook in a lumber camp is a most important functionary.

Fishing is another old industry in New Brunswick, which has a sea-coast of about six hundred miles. Considerably over twenty thousand persons, including lobster canners, are employed. In 1909-10 the herring fishery proved most valuable of all. Next in order came the catches of lobsters, sardines (said to be equal to the Norwegian sardines), smelts (of which enormous numbers are caught in the Gulf of St. Lawrence), cod and salmon, which are exported fresh and frozen, smoked, salted or pickled. A variety of other fish are taken in smaller quantities.

Owing to ice the Gulf fisheries cease during the winter, but those of the Bay of Fundy are carried on all the year round. The old-time oyster fishery has suffered here, as in the neighbouring provinces; but steps are being taken to preserve and increase the productiveness of the fisheries, as of the forests, and to educate the fishermen. With the latter object, the Dominion government a few years ago brought to Canada “a Scottish expert,” in the curing of herrings, “with a steam trawler and crew complete,” and with a view to the former they established several hatcheries of young salmon and lobsters, from which 122,000,000 of the last-named were distributed in a single season.

In addition to these commercial fisheries, New Brunswick finds a source of profit, as well as pleasure, in her trout streams and salmon rivers, which attract hundreds of anglers and holiday-makers to the province, as the vast woods of the interior, stretching through a district eighty miles wide by a hundred long, bring in sportsmen in search of red deer, moose, caribou and wild fowl. This region, too, is the haunt of many valuable fur-bearing animals. The game laws aim at preserving the supply of game, and outsiders have to pay twenty-five times as much as residents for a hunter’s licence, though in both cases the number of animals that may be killed is strictly limited. The province annually reaps a considerable harvest from licence fees, whilst the settlers in the wild districts to which the hunters go find the profits of the tourist trade a very welcome addition to incomes which are usually somewhat meagre.

There is not much mining, and of manufactures many depend on wood as their raw material. There are consequently many saw mills, pulp and paper mills, furniture and carriage factories. But this province, by the sea, is in a position to obtain readily and cheaply raw materials from other lands, such as cotton from the Southern States and sugar from the West Indies, so she has several cotton mills and “candy factories.” Other manufactures that may be mentioned are those of boots and shoes, nails and other ironware, brass goods, soap and woollen cloths. Finally, in 1911, there were in operation twenty-four cheese factories and sixteen creameries, which bring us back all the way round the circle to agriculture, the most important industry of all.