CHAPTER XIII

THE CALL OF THE CANADIAN WEST

The call of the Canadian West is far less the call of the adventurer, of the speculator, of the seeker of vast and sudden wealth than it is the call to carry an enlightened civilisation into the vast new region that beckons to humanity invested with all the alluring glory of the Promised Land. It is nearly three hundred years ago that the Pilgrim Fathers landed in New England to conquer the wilderness. But the Pilgrims did not find that the railways had gone before and prepared the way with luxurious trains of Pullman cars, or that telegraph and telephone service, in all varieties, to say nothing of Marconigrams, daily mails, motor cars, and various other amenities of life, were awaiting them. The New England of to-day is more indebted to the past half century for its advance than it is to the preceding two and a half centuries. So it may be fairly claimed that the Canadian West begins with the degree of progress, so far as mechanical conveniences and resources go, to which older countries have but just advanced. It is the heir of all the ages.

In normal times, before the War, there was an annual immigration into Canada that approximated {290} to the number of four hundred thousand people, of whom more than fifty thousand were from the United States. There was said to be in round numbers from fifty to seventy thousand who were neither from the States nor from the British Isles, while the remainder were chiefly from England, Scotland, or Wales. The Irish immigration is more attracted to the States, as more than twelve millions of their race are already incorporated into the population of that country.

Two leading factors produce this large immigration into the Dominion. One is that Canada is a country whose richness of resources, climatic conditions, and scenic beauty are incomparable; the other is that there are wise and liberal provisions made by the government to offer desirable and attractive conditions and judicious inducements to the right sort of men to establish their homes in Canada. Thousands of prosperous farmers already scattered over Western Canada began, not many years ago, with inconsiderable capital, but their intelligence, industry, and integrity have carried the way and developed conditions of living that are eminently satisfactory.

The excellent character of the land in Western Canada is well displayed in the great region opened up by the Grand Trunk Pacific. Following for fifty miles the valley of the Assiniboine River, the line of railway goes through the drainage basin of Qu'Appelle River, and on into the great basin of the south {291} Saskatchewan River, crossing it at Saskatoon, the width of this basin being some 200 miles. Then on through the western part of Saskatchewan and the eastern part of Alberta, the railway makes a gradual ascent through sandhills and ridges until crossing the third steppe it proceeds for the remaining 130 miles, to Edmonton, over a level country. With the exception, and that an inconsiderable one, of these sandhills and ridges, there is no waste land between Winnipeg and Edmonton.

In the whole region now opened to civilisation by the Grand Trunk Pacific, there extends a belt of rich farming land from 300 to 500 miles in width from north to south and some 1000 miles in length from east to west. From Winnipeg to the west, the physical properties of the land are found by trained experts to be exceptionally advantageous for the growing of wheat, oats, barley, and flax; "in fact," says Professor Clifford Willis (a recognised authority on soil physics), "the yields of small grain of this type were the best that I have seen anywhere in the best tilled fields of the United States." Professor James H. Pettit, of Cornell University, who won his doctor's degree from the University of Göttingen for work in soil fertility and bacteriology, finds that this recently opened up region possesses some of the richest soils, and that this is due to the alluvial deposits of the large area once covered by the old glacial Lake Agassiz. These deposits have left a soil of silt and clay that is capable of producing {292} thirty-five or forty bushels of wheat, and eighty or ninety bushels of oats to the acre.

To "mixed farming" as well as to the production of grain alone, or of live stock, all this enormous region lends itself. Before the country was opened and rendered accessible by the Grand Trunk Pacific, the region was practically a wilderness. The land was fertile, the numerous rivers and the lakes provided a sufficiency of water and generally promising conditions, but until transit was provided all these were unavailing. Prosperous towns have now sprung up all along the line of the railway, and the settlement of the country progresses with incredible swiftness. The settler arrives with his twentieth-century equipment. The contrast between the manner in which Canada is being gracefully and luxuriously settled, and that of the mid-nineteenth-century settlement of the western part of the United States, is something with which to reckon. The Canadian pioneer arrives in his Pullman car instead of the "prairie schooner" that slowly and wearily traversed the plains west of the Mississippi. He starts a steam engine to plough the land, and if trees or stumps come in his way he exterminates them with celerity by machinery. When the harvesting time comes, wonderful mechanisms cut the grain and bind it, while his trucks are perhaps equipped with motor power and swiftly carry the grain direct from the threshing-machines to the elevators, from which it is shipped to market. {293} Wherefore, indeed, should he taste drudgery? Is he not the heir to all the ages?

The marked liberality of the Canadian Government in its universal provision for higher education is one of the features of the Dominion that can never be too deeply emphasised. Winnipeg, Saskatoon, and Edmonton are all seats of universities, whose privileges are open to women on equal terms. At both Winnipeg and Saskatoon are also agricultural colleges, offering practical instruction in scientific farming, and the ways of wealth are at once made plain for the youth of the region.

The telephone service is practically universal, welding into unity all the labour on a great farm of hundreds of acres, and enabling the farmhouse to be in touch with city and town. Appreciating the importance of this, the government of each province lends substantial aid in the instalment of telephone service, and the main telephone lines in these three western provinces are owned and operated by the government. Thus all agricultural communities are linked together in close contact and communication.

Social conditions thereby establish themselves on a satisfactory basis. The comfort of the rural home is assured. There is no isolation to be encountered. Good roads, railway facilities of the best order that the world can afford, telephones, and telegraphs make possible a social life impossible under former pioneer conditions.

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Churches spring up wherever there are people, for religion and education go hand in hand in Canada.

The garden facilities are not the least of the attractions to settlers. The abundance with which garden stuff of all kinds--potatoes, peas, beans, onions, turnips, pumpkins, and squash, as well as lettuce, radishes, rhubarb, and small fruits--grow in all this region is something to see.

This agricultural empire is so great in its promise for the future, so interesting and enchaining in its present development, that there is hardly a limit to the imagination regarding its importance in a not distant period.

The "great North-West" is a term which has been commonly employed to designate the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and the northern part of British Columbia. It is rather a vague term; yet it indicates, if it does not exactly define, a region of unrivalled scenic grandeur, and of such potential resources and favourable conditions of climate as to virtually add a new continent to the world. Such is the march of progress, however, that at the time of writing the "North-West," strictly speaking, is that portion of the land north of these provinces stretching eastward to Hudson Bay and northward to the Arctic Ocean and including that part of the Yukon on the Canadian side of the Alaskan border. This definition is according to Watson Griffin's map of the Dominion of Canada in {295} his accurate and authoritative work, _Canada of the Twentieth Century_, which appeared in May, 1916, bringing all matter pertaining to the country up to date with statistical accuracy. It is pointed out by Mr. Griffin that in the older provinces, such as Quebec and Ontario, the climate has been virtually transformed by the culture of the soil. In southern Manitoba it is also on record that while the early settlers lost their crops by summer frosts, no such disasters are now experienced. The experiments in agriculture have proved that the soil under cultivation stores up the heat received during the long, bright days, and that the radiation of this heat at night prevents the fatal frosts. Climatic conditions are not, therefore, arbitrary and fixed beyond control, but are largely amenable to civilisation. It is this fact that lends probability to the expectation of creating prosperous conditions for living in the region north of the sixtieth parallel. "In fact," says Mr. Watson Griffin, "at some of the Hudson's Bay Company posts in these territories the clearing, draining, and cultivation of the land has already had a remarkable effect, and if this is true where very small areas have been brought under cultivation, it is conceivable that the cultivation of wide areas might have a very great influence in preventing summer frosts." If well-cultivated soil does receive and store the sun's heat it seems reasonable to suppose that in these northern districts, where the summer days are so long, the general opening of {296} the soil to the sun and air should have a marked effect.

The most reliable experts unite in the conviction that the Mackenzie Basin is capable of supporting an agricultural population. The soil is rich; and in that part of the Basin alone, lying between Athabasca Lake and the Arctic Ocean, there is a belt of land 940 miles long and over 60 miles wide. Ninety miles south of latitude sixty-three ripe strawberries are found. A little farther to the south currants and other small fruits grow luxuriantly. There are already scanty settlements, remote and apart, in this country, and an increasing population of huntsmen, fur-traders, and tourists to whom sport is the attraction; and the first consideration that would occur to the traveller, or to any student of this almost unmapped region of infinite space, would be as to the ways and means for safeguarding human life and for the maintenance of law and order. For untold centuries this region has been the home and haunt of the Indians and of wild and ferocious animals. The Indian tribes possessed all this district in which to roam at will. Their means of subsistence were hunting and fishing, and their resources for clothing consisted in the skins and furs of captured animals. Any adequate conception of the wildness of this unbroken wilderness is almost impossible to grasp. The primæval forests impenetrable with their dense growth of underbrush, fallen trees, colossal rocks washed bare by the beating storms of {297} centuries, with uncounted and fairly innumerable leagues of lakes, rivers, swamps--how unconquerable this primitive world of Nature! Yet the call of the North-West, even this remote and unknown North-West, has sounded, and the ear of poet, prophet, and priest is that which registers the cry unheard and unheeded by others.

It is a significant commentary on human life, in its assertion of that divinity which man feels within him, that the first white men to fare forth to penetrate this wilderness were the French missionary priests, and that the intense motive that drew them into hardships and dangers incredible was that of the love of God and the longing to make known to the untamed Red Man the help and comfort of the Divine Power--to bring to these children of nature something of the message of a diviner destiny. "To Pierre Radisson and his comrade, the Sieur Groseillers, belong the credit of having first penetrated this vast tract of undiscovered country," writes Mr. A. L. Haydon in his remarkable book, _The Riders of the Plains_. No romance was ever more enthralling than this volume, nor would it be possible to offer any adequate interpretation of the great North-West that did not take account of Mr. Haydon's work. With the thrilling adventures of these French missionaries all students of history are acquainted; and it is such a chapter in life and in literature that any transcription of the experiences would of itself make a volume. In its fulness it can only perhaps {298} be found in the pages of the Recording Angel. "They plunged into the unknown," says Mr. Haydon; "took the daring leap that all such pioneers are called upon to take; and along the paths they blazed followed a host of others hardly less intrepid. He who would read of the further discovery and exploitation of the North-West of Canada must study the glowing life-stories of Marquette, Joliet, La Salle, De la Verendrye, and others."

There were also temporal as well as spiritual leadings. The adventurous fur-traders pushed further and further into the primæval wilderness and established forts as centres of supplies and as definite places for their barter with the Indians. Two separate and important companies entered on this quest, the famous Hudson's Bay Company and the North-West Fur Company. The outposts that each of these energetic associations established were like lighted torches into the darkness; even this untrodden wilderness began to respond to the first conquest of humanity. Myths and traditions also led on. There were rumours in the air, whisperings of voices on the wind, that some vast and unknown sea lay between the western coast and Japan. The Pacific Ocean was known, but these nebulous intimations pointed to a body of water never yet discovered. In 1731 the Sieur De la Verendrye, as gallant a gentleman as ever sought his fortune in the new world, started gaily from Montreal upon the quest for this great sea. With his company he took the route up the {299} Red River to its junction with the Assiniboine, making camp at Fort Rouge, the site of the present city of Winnipeg. Rumours still haunted the air of "mighty waters beyond the mountains," and over the infinite and trackless expanse of prairie they still further extended the march, but the formidable foothills of the Rocky Mountains proved too great a barrier, and it was due to the persistence, and probably, too, also to the greater physical vigour of a young fur-trader, Alexander Mackenzie, of the North-West Company, that the mysteries of the mountain ranges were penetrated, the foothills crossed, and the river traced that now bears his name.

These two fur-trading companies became important factors in the development of the North-West. There was an intense rivalry between them, yet the very intensity of the discord and ill feeling became an added impetus in the rivalry of exploration. Many and diverse qualities are brought into play in the conquering of a wilderness. Evil and good are always sown together like the wheat and the tares, and even the evil has its part to play and its work to do. Of this fierce rivalry between the two was born that activity which created so large a number of trading-posts, and the energy that founded numerous settlements, many of which are now recognised as prosperous centres.

In 1670, under the patronage of Prince Rupert, there was incorporated the "Honourable Company {300} of Merchant-Adventurers Trading into Hudson's Bay," which developed later into the Hudson's Bay Company.

Pierre Radisson and the Sieur Groseillers, both among the most daring and heroic explorers the world has known, excited a wave of enthusiasm in England by the reports of the wilderness they carried back with them. For more than a century the Company under the patronage of Prince Rupert continued to carry on a prosperous business, and after this was merged into the Hudson's Bay Company, and again after the two rival associations united, a splendid business was developed. But while the rivalry had conduced to enterprise and exploration, the monopoly was as naturally concerned in not making too widely known the rich resources that might thus serve to attract other competitors.

Early in the nineteenth century a large Scotch settlement, under the auspices of the Earl of Selkirk, was established in the Red River region. They encountered almost every phase of hardship and trial. Great floods devastated their land and ruined their attempts at agriculture. The severe winters, with their enshrouding snow-drifts, their icy blasts, the imprisoning character of the elements, the remoteness from any vestige of human habitations or contact with civilisation, went far towards annihilating even the most persistent efforts to found a settlement that should withstand these conditions.

By the mid-nineteenth century, however, the {301} settlements of the great North-West had become so numerous that there began to be requirements for larger means of protection. The Hudson's Bay Company, at this time, held territory to the extent of over two million square miles. All this expanse was admitted into the confederation, to the reassurance and great satisfaction of the settlers scattered over this wide region; but to the alarm and prevailing dissatisfaction of another order of the inhabitants, the French half-breeds, who were themselves a force with which a reckoning had to be made. Their alarm culminated in the Rebellion of 1869, an outbreak suppressed by Colonel (later Lord) Wolseley. Soon after this outbreak was quelled there came the formation of the Province of Manitoba, and from this event there dated a new epoch in the history of this part of the country. The conditions grew worse rather than better. The United States were also a contributing factor to greater discord. The treatment of the Indians by the government of the States had apparently left much to be desired (to put it mildly) and the turbulent warfare that went on almost continually in the western part of that country drove many of the Indian tribes into frenzy. Many of these tribes now crossed the border line into Canada to seek British protection. There were at this time in Canada some seventy thousand Indians to whom the Imperial government had promised protection, and the coming of these fresh tribes from the States, largely, too, {302} in conditions of revolt and resentment at what they felt to be unjust and cruel treatment, could not but be regarded with grave apprehensions by the white settlers. They were alarmed at the close proximity of these unknown savage tribes as well as apprehensive of the effect they might produce on the Canadian Indians.

In the summer of 1872 the Canadian Adjutant-General, Colonel Robertson-Ross, was dispatched by the Government of the Dominion to make a tour of inspection through the North-West. He found that a party of lawless traders and smugglers from the States had established a trading-post which they had named Fort Hamilton, about sixty miles north of the border-line between the Dominion and the United States; and that they were conducting a species of barter with the Blackfeet Indians, supplying them with firearms and with ardent spirits, in direct opposition to the laws of both countries. They were paying no customs duty for the merchandise they were thus introducing into Canada. Colonel Robertson-Ross found the demoralisation that they were working to be very great and of great injury, not only to the Indians, but to the entire country. "At Fort Edmonton," said the Adjutant-General in his Report, "whisky was openly sold to the Blackfeet and other Indians trading at the Fort by smugglers from the United States, who derived large profits therefrom, and whom, on being remonstrated with by the official in charge of Hudson's Bay {303} Post, coolly replied that they very well knew they were defying the laws, but as there was no force to prevent them they would do as they pleased."

All this inciting to intemperance and brawling led to other offences against law and order. The Indians took to horse-stealing, and the entire population of the North-West was at their mercy. Neither property nor life was safe. On dishonesty and robbery followed murder as a not uncommon occurrence and other crimes of a serious nature were not infrequent. Sir John Macdonald was at this time the Premier of Canada. It was on his initiative that Colonel Robertson-Ross had been sent on this reconnaissance to find out to what extent the lawless marauders were demoralising the entire country and the nature of the protection and safeguards that should be instituted for the population. The Adjutant-General earnestly recommended the establishment of a trained and disciplined military body, to be subject to its own rules, and to be distinct from any civil force, though acting as an addition to whatever civil force might also be formed. "Whatever feeling may be entertained toward policemen, animosity is rarely, if ever, felt toward disciplined soldiers wearing her Majesty's uniform in any portion of the British Empire," stated Colonel Robertson-Ross, and he added: "In the event of serious disturbance a police force, acting alone and unsupported by a disciplined military body, would probably be overpowered in a {304} province of mixed races, where every man is armed, while to maintain a military without any civil force is not desirable."

Colonel Robertson-Ross also urgently recommended that a chain of military posts should be established from Manitoba to the Rocky Mountains; that a stipendiary magistrate for the Saskatchewan should be appointed, who should also act as an Indian Commissioner and who should fix his residence in Edmonton. "The individual to fill this post," he said, "should be one, if possible, already known to the Indians, and one in whom they have confidence." He also pointed out that this Indian Commissioner should always be accompanied by a military force. "A large force is not necessary," he said; "but the presence of a certain force will, I believe, be found indispensable for the security of the country, to prevent bloodshed and preserve peace."

This is the story of the way in which the Royal North-West Mounted Police of Canada came into being. These "Riders of the Plains" stand alone and unparalleled in the world in their organisation, their peculiar field of work, and the nature of their control over the vast region entrusted to their care. This Mounted Police Force comprises about six hundred officers and men, whose territory is an area as extensive as all Central Europe, or a region five times as large as Great Britain; extending for two thousand miles from east to west, and a thousand {305} miles from north to south. In this great area are twelve divisional posts and one hundred and fifty detachments. The organisation of this body was carried out in the autumn of 1873. The first one hundred and fifty of the Mounted Police were stationed at Lower Fort Garry in Manitoba. They were under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel George A. French, an officer of the Royal Artillery who had been the Inspector of Artillery at the School of Gunnery in Kingston, Ontario. Colonel French at once, on arriving in Manitoba, urged upon the Government the need of strengthening the force by at least doubling the number of men. Two hundred more were enlisted in Toronto, and the expedition to the Far West was fixed for an early date in the spring.

The picturesque aspect of the Royal North-West Mounted Police is notable. It was Sir John Macdonald's idea that the dominant note in their uniform should be scarlet as "this colour conveys the strongest impression to the mind of the Indian, through his respect for 'the Queen's soldiers.'" To accentuate the military character of the force and to distinguish them from the blue-coated soldiers of the States was a point of real importance.

This first detachment of the Royal Mounted Police made an expedition in the summer of 1874 into the very heart of the Blackfeet country, and returned to Dufferin in November, having made an effective campaign in the interests of law and order, {306} from which very important and momentous results have ensued since that time. That the small body of less than seven hundred men should exercise such control, not only over so vast an area of almost unknown wilderness, inhabited by such a diversity of human beings scattered widely apart, is practically an isolated fact in all history. To this magnificent Force is largely due, to-day, the conditions that invest the North-West with such promise and prosperity.

"The Force may be said to have largely completed the work it originally set out to do," writes Frank Yeigh[1]; "so far as the frontier provinces are concerned, a work that is worth many times its cost, as an object-lesson of the power and authority of government existing behind all real civilisation."

[1] _Through the Heart of Canada_. T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1910.

Still, the task of the mounted patroller is by no means yet completed. The present force costs the country nearly three-quarters of a million dollars a year. Their outposts are being set farther and 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, while a third protects the Arctic seaboard, and the most western post serves to protect the gold land of the Yukon. It is a fact, and a striking one, that on the three-hundred-mile road from White Horse to Dawson the traveller {307} is as safe as in any part of Canada. Of the life of this Royal Force Mr. Haydon says:

"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 performed 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 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 their 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 individual instance among the many that might well be related to add to the annals of human heroism is the remarkable journey made in 1906 by Constable Sellers, who, with an interpreter and an Eskimo, drawn by a dog-team, left the west coast of Hudson Bay in February of that year to discover the locality of a Scottish ship in the Arctic waters, to collect the customs due, and to inspect the conditions of this region. The trip lasted two months, and before his return in April Constable Sellers had experienced all the hardships of an Arctic winter. Many pages might be filled with the thrilling accounts of the adventures and the noble and self-effacing sacrifices of these brave defenders of the law, these magnificent protectors of human life and property, the very guardians of all that makes for civilisation and lends value and {308} significance to life. Mr. Yeigh's description of the conditions of life of the force on Herschell Island is extremely graphic. He says:

"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 possible. It is a circumscribed island home, moreover, with a shoreline 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."

This island is distinguished as the centre of the whaling grounds of the Arctic regions.

No adequate interpretation of the conditions that prevail in the Dominion could be possible that did not include some account of the "Riders of the Plains." The service of these faithful guardians is by no means exclusively limited to their official responsibility; they add to this that of being the friends, the helpers, of the settlers, under all the new unforeseen conditions that confront them in the new country. All over the Canadian land the watchword "Safety first" meets the eye. The watchword "Humanity first" seems to be that of the Royal Mounted Police. Their careful and tender ministrations are given to the invalid and the helpless; they risk their lives to warn and save settlers when a raging fire is sweeping over woodlands or prairie; they aid the new arrival to set up {309} his camp the first night; they help him to repair vehicles or mechanism that has given out; they assist him to build his first primitive shelter, and even to cook his meals and to care for his live stock. The safety of the incoming inhabitants, the essential conditions that render possible their establishment of a home, have depended so essentially on the protection and the safe-guarding afforded by the "Riders of the Plains" that their splendid service is not only a fundamental factor in Canadian life and history, but is a shining page in the records not made with hands.

A touching incident has been narrated in the chronicles of the Mounted Police Force. It was required some years ago to send dispatches to a distant post during the severest rigour of winter weather. A young constable, a University graduate, gently born and bred, set out with these dispatches, but days passed into weeks, and weeks into months, and no trace of him could be discovered. At last, in the following spring, a storm-worn uniform and the bones of a human body were discovered by a patrol in a secluded spot, and on the order he was carrying was scrawled: "Lost--horse dead. Am trying to push ahead. Have done my best." Who could read with eyes undimmed by tears such a testimony as this to the young constable's high sense of honour and utter sacrifice of anxiety for his own personal safety? No soldier at the front ever more gallantly faced death in the discharge of his duty. {310} Indeed, the stranger who comes to Canada and enters with any degree of sympathy and understanding into the national life is more impressed with the unwritten watchword of "Duty first" than with the legend of "safety" that meets his eye. Is it too much to say that the Dominion is the nation of heroes? It is certainly no exaggeration to say that heroes abound in this country where the unmeasured richness of the resources of Nature is yet far exceeded by the nobility of man's mind.

The growth and expansion of Canada has proceeded very rapidly within the first part of the twentieth century. The problems involved in this swift expansion have increased in number and importance. They assume a varied character, because the vast extent of the empire inevitably raises such diverse questions of political, educational, and social requirements, that of the bi-lingual problem being not least in importance. Then there are the problems of immigration, of transportation and communication, including matters of railway highways, inland navigation, foreign commerce, and postal facilities. Sir James Grant, speaking before the Empire Club of Toronto in the December of 1915, reviewed the remarkable development of Canada since about 1850, and said that, marvellous as was this record, it would be exceeded by the tremendous developments of the immediate future. Of the new territory in northern Ontario, opened on the clay belt, Sir James predicted that it would be settled {311} by thousands of people, and that it would become one of the most attractive parts of the country. In this region the supply of wood and water is practically inexhaustible, and the splendid transit facilities bring it into easy communication with the markets. Apart from the agricultural, there is the mining outlook.

Even the great and disastrous war that began in August, 1914, will not be wholly disastrous, or even antagonistic, to the future of Canada. Great trade facilities will be opened between Russia and Canada. Vast numbers of British soldiers who have left their industrial occupations for the front will have so accustomed and acclimatised themselves to open air and exposure that they will look for life in the open rather than to any return to shops or manufactories. Canada confidently anticipates at least a million settlers from among these ranks. They would be particularly qualified for the order of life required for the hardy pioneer of that North-West defined by Mr. Watson Griffin as lying north of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia, and stretching eastward to Hudson Bay and northward to the Arctic Ocean. They would be prepared to bring to this rigorous and exacting part of the country a hardy vigour and invincible courage in the conquering of nature in a degree quite in excess of that now demanded in the more settled regions. The young and eminently enterprising western Provinces have already made the establishment of {312} Winnipeg as one of the greatest wheat markets in the world an accomplished fact. "In 1904," asserts a New York financial journal, "they raised fifty-eight million bushels of wheat in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta; five years later the yield was one hundred and fifty million bushels, and in 1913 the crop approximated to two hundred millions of bushels of wheat. At this rate of progress," continued this journal, "Canada must soon pass France and India, and stand third in the line of wheat producers. Ultimately she will dispute with Russia and the United States for the first position. Wheat has been the pioneer of our development, and undoubtedly it will prove the same with Canada.... No vivid imagination is needed to see what the future development of Canada means to the people of the United States."

That the great problem of food for the people of Europe will largely devolve on Canada and the States for many years after the end of the war is quite evident.

The Minister of Public Works, the Honourable Robert Rogers, in an interview with a press representative, said not long ago:

"The prairie country will do its share in saving Canada when the war is over.... There will be a vast tide of immigration. Where will the European emigrants go? Will they go to foreign lands, lands where they will be lost forever to the Allies, or will they come to Canada, where they will be under the British flag? That is the vital question for Canada, for the Empire, for the Allies, for civilisation.

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"We want to be able to go practically to the door of every European who is thinking of a home elsewhere, and show him the Canadian West--tall wheat, ample railway connections, growing cities and all.

"It will be the finest thing in the world for him and the satisfaction of Canada. Moreover, it will be the solution of most of the problems which now confront him, as, for instance, how to make our transcontinental railways paying propositions; how to enable our industries to find new tasks when the war orders stop; how to adjust our mercantile system to the changed conditions; how to till our farm lands and start again the late lamented boom....

"The West is empty. Its natural resources are inexhaustible. We could take care of the entire British white population there. And think what it would mean for the West, and so for all Canada, if we got five million new people out there after the war? Winnipeg, Brandon, Regina; Prince Albert, Calgary, Edmonton; Medicine Hat, Portage la Prairie, Dauphin, Saskatoon, Lethbridge, Swift Current, and many other centres would become great cities. The salubrious British Columbia coast would seethe with new activity and new populations; our railways would become great earners; industries would spring up all over the West. The industries of the East would find a new market within their own tariff fence. Banking would boom, wholesale trade would flourish, young clerks in the East would become prosperous proprietors in the West."

In the eager and many-sided activities that are springing up and fairly treading upon each other's heels in Canada, Technical Schools hold a distinctive place. The late Lord Strathcona was a zealous and influential advocate of trade and technical schools as one of the most effective means of bettering the condition and elevating the life of the working-man. The great West is not behind in the establishment of these.

Now as to the conditions that await the settlers in {314} western Canada. The land is fertile; the climate, the water supply, and the transit and traffic facilities are of the best. But favourable conditions do not of themselves work miracles, and pioneer life has its difficulties. Prosperity is not magically invoked by any entreaty of the gods, nor does it fall down out of the blue sky upon its votaries. But with health, integrity, and a reasonable amount of capital, the achievement of prosperous and happy living is possible within a comparatively short time. It is related that after the annual harvest there are people who go on pleasure trips to New York and San Francisco, and "think nothing of expending thousands of dollars before their return." There are farms where the owner has his motor car; his house, commodious and handsome, is steam-heated and electric-lighted, as he generates electricity from his own plant. There is a music room with a grand piano, and perchance a violin for the music-gifted young son or daughter as well; there is a library with a good and always growing collection of books, for it is realised that reading is not a mere passive entertainment but a creative activity as well. A good book sets the entire mental mechanism in motion. It is as a motor force, a power, applied to the mind. To give one's self to intervals of reading is not merely to be borne through the realms of thought in a golden chariot, but is, rather, the conquering of a region of new capabilities and powers, applicable to the entire range of the problems {315} of life. "The key to every man is his thought," says Emerson. Books are food for the mental and spiritual life, and from all good reading there results a certain transubstantiation into energy that refines and exalts the quality of life. The broad piazzas, the shaded lawns, of these prosperous farmhouses are a revelation to the traveller and their own commentary on Canadian conditions.

Not longer ago than 1900 agriculturalists contended that wheat could not be grown north of the fiftieth degree of latitude. The best quality of the grain is now raised in the regions north of the fifty-fifth degree. All the vast expanse of the Peace River country, for some 700 miles or more north of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, offers rich and attractive soil that well repays cultivation. As has been noted in preceding pages, regions that were formerly supposed to be adapted only to the most primitive conditions of life--to hunting, fishing, canoeing, or dog-sledging--are now found to be entirely amenable to ordinary life and pursuits, with a climate even less rigorous than is sometimes experienced in the winters of northern Dakota or Minnesota. The Japanese chinook wind that blows in tempers the air, and many of these northern lakes are now free from ice, for the most part, during the winter. This change of the climate has largely been brought about by the opening up of forests and dense undergrowth, which so intercepted the sun's rays that ice would be found at midsummer in the dense shades.

{316}

The valley of the Athabasca, stretching away from the portals of Jasper and of Jasper Park, is an Alpine wonderland; it is enshrined in legendary history; it is unrivalled in splendour of scenery and richness of colour; and traversed as it is by the most modern of our transcontinental lines, it becomes as easily accessible to tourists as are the romantic mountain haunts of Colorado. No more beautiful summer resort could be dreamed than that afforded by this valley. It is destined to become one of the famous mountain haunts of the world. Fine carriage roads are being constructed in Athabasca Valley that will add to the famous drives of the world, and rank with that never-to-be-forgotten drive from Sorrento to Amalfi, or that of the Corniche road on the Riviera. The Athabasca Valley and Jasper Park and Mount Robson Park will be developed into places of great international resort, as are the Yellowstone Park, the Grand Canyon in Arizona, and the Yosemite in the United States.

In the _de luxe_ conditions of travel through all these regions to-day, it is as difficult to realise the conditions that prevailed there before the arrival of the railway line as it was for the little lad at school to transport himself into the pre-historic days before the telephone had established its universal sway. Reproved by his instructor for not knowing the date on which Columbus discovered America, he replied that he could not find it. "Not find it!" {317} replied the irate master, "there it is, right before your eyes, 1492!" The lad looked at it. "Why, I thought that was his telephone number," he rejoined. It is quite as difficult for the traveller to-day to project himself backward, even into the environment of only a past century. The world into which we are born seems to have existed forever. It is a curious fact, but one that seems borne out by experience, that any event which just preceded one's own consciousness and memory is practically as remote as if it were many centuries away. This truth regarding the phenomena of consciousness might well enlist the scrutiny of that analyst of Time and Memory, the brilliant Henri Bergson.

Is it amid all the transcendent beauty, all the scenic glory of the great North-West that one shall listen for the call and watch for the beckoning to the Promised Land? Its prairies and valleys provide every resource for the support of life, its forests offer the most incalculable yield in lumber, its lakes and rivers teem with fish, its mountains are rich in mineral wealth, it has water power to be utilised in manufactures, lighting, and traction to an extent that defies prediction; there is every contributing cause for great cities to arise, with universities, with their laboratories and observatories for science, while, with such a port as that of Prince Rupert, the commerce of the world will be brought to these shores; nor does it require any undue effort {318} of imagination to see, as in a vision, the libraries, the conservatories of music, the museums of art that will arise, the splendour of cities "with room in their streets for the soul." The Call of the North-West is to art, to science, to poetry, to religion. It is the call to the great spiritual realities of the spiritualised life, "the power of conduct, the power of intellect and knowledge, the power of beauty, and the power of social life and manners." The real task of man is that of the discerner of spiritual truth. "The universe is the externalisation of the soul." And in this eternal quest man shall press forward "without haste, without rest," consoled by his divination of spiritual ideals; a dweller in the atmosphere of spiritual splendour expressed in those immortal lines:

"I will wait heaven's perfect hour Through the innumerable years!"

{319}

INDEX

Agriculture, 293, 315

_Alaska, the Great Country_ (Ella Higginson), 204

Allandale, 117

Alpine Club of Canada, 170

Archives (Ottawa), 80

Arlette, George, 231

Art Gallery, civic (Winnipeg), 152

Aurora Borealis, 216

Bacon, James H., 192

Bancroft, George, 14

Banff, 127

Barrie, 117

Beaconsfield, Lord, 32

Bell Telephone Company, 227

Borden, Sir Robert L., 131, 188

Brett and Hall, Messrs., 190, 191, 192

Brown, George, 23, 28

Bulkley Gate, 176

Burpee, Lawrence J., F.R.G.S., 169

Button, Admiral Sir Thomas, 9

Cabot, John and Sebastian, 3, 7, 9, 47

Campers, the true, 110

Camps: Minnesing, 113; Minne Wawa, 116; Nominigan, 112, 113

Carling, Sir John, 28

Carlyle, Thomas, 148

Cartier, Sir George Etienne, 3, 30, 34, 265

Cartier, Jacques, 3, 8

Chamberlain, Edison J., 181

Champlain, 3, 8, 56, 266

Château Laurier, 79

Clairoscope, the (Heydon), 138

Climatic conditions, 295

Club, Canadian Women's Press, 157

Cochrane, 144

Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur, 113, 160

Connaught, Duke of, 81

Dawson, Sir William, 37

Degroseillers, Menart Chouart, 9

Deville, Dr. E., 168

Devonshire, Duke of, 81

Donald, Dr. W. J. A., 130

Doughty, Dr. Arthur, 80

Exposition, Canadian National, 96

Falls: Bala, 119; Emperor, 172; Karabeka, 122; Punch Bowl, 169; Thousand, 172

Farm, Central Experimental, 62, 80; branches, 62

Farming land, 291, 314, 315

Field, Miss Kate, 212, 220

Fiddle Creek, 169

Flavell-Astoria, 225

Foxe (1631), 9

Fraser, 3

Galt, Sir Alexander, 34

Georgian Bay, 121

Geographic Board, 167

Glaciers: Borden, 177; Muir, 212, 213, 241; Taku, 206

Golden Gate, 226, 232, 233, 240

Gravenhurst, 117

Gregory, John, 15

Griffin, Watson, 294, 295

Guyart, Marie, 49

Halifax, 63

Haydon, A. L., 297, 298, 307

Hays, Charles Melville, President, 4, 36, 179

Hazleton, 175

Herschell Island, 308

Heydon, Asa Thurston, 138

Higginson, Ella (_Alaska, the Great Country_), 204

Hill, James H., 235

Hopkins, J. Castell, 60

Hotels: Bigwin Inn, 105; Bulkley Gate, 177; Château Laurier, 153; Fort Garry, 141, 142, 153, 154, 155; Highland Inn, 108, 110; Lake-of-Bays, 108; Macdonald, 153, 156; Minaki Lodge, 123; Royal Muskoka, 118; Wawa, 101, 105, 106

Hudson's Bay Company, 9, 19, 23, 125, 126, 154, 300, 301

Hudson, Henry, 9

Huntsville, 102, 108

Hutchinson, Colonel William, 239

Immigration, 290

Indians, relations with, 301, 302, 303

Inside passage, 201, 203

Institutes (Toronto), 97, 98

James, 9

Jasper House (Hudson's Bay Company), 126

Jesuit missionaries, 13

Jobe, Miss Mary L., F.R.G.S., 174

Joliet, 8, 56

Juneau, 206, 208, 214

Kaien Island, 178, 190

Kelliher, J. B., 181

Kempenfeldt Bay, 117

Ketchikan, 205

Kinney, Rev. George, 171

Lakes: Athabasca, 16; Avenue, 193; Beauvert, 166; Berg, 172; Brulè, 126, 168, 170; Burns, 176; Cache, 114; Canadian, 118; Decker, 176; Edith, 166; Fairy, 108; Fish, 126; Great, 84, 121; Great Slave, 16; Helena, 172; Jasper, 126; Kathlyn, 176; Lake-of-Bays, 100, 101, 102, 103; Little Island, 114; Louise, 127; Maligne, 127, 165, 166; Mary, 108; Morse, 193; Muskoka, 117, 118, 119; Nipissing, 120, 122; Ontario, 84; Patricia, 165; Peninsula, 108; Pyramid, 165; Rock, 114; Timagami, 137; Two Rivers, 116; Wainwright, 193; White, 114

Lampman (see Poets), 100, 119

La Place Royale, 73

La Rose Mine, 173

La Salle, 3, 8, 56

Laurier, Sir Wilfrid, 42, 80, 239, 266

Laval-Montmorency, François de, 38, 266

Laval University, 59

Library of Parliament (Ottawa), 82, 83

Library (Toronto), 89, 93

Locke, George H., 89, 90, 91

Lodge, Sir Oliver, 21

Lowell, Dr. Percival, 94, 95

Lumber industry, 199

Macdonald, Sir John, 3, 25, 32, 239, 303

Macdonald, Sir William, 56

MacDougall, Governor, 24

Mackenzie, 3, 16

Mackenzie Basin, 296

Mance, Jeanne, 73

Marconi, 78

Marquette, 8, 56

McGill, James, 3, 36

McGill University, 76, 77

McLeod, Alexander, 15

M'Tavish, Simon, 15

Methodists, the, 42

Miette Hot Springs, 169

Mill, James, 5

Minaki, 123

Mines (chap. vi.), 129

Minnecoganashene, 121

Moore, President, 231, 243

Mortesen, A. M., 231

Mountains: Hudson Bay, 176; Juneau, 208; Laurentian, 119; Mount Edith Cavell, 167; Mount Hays, 191; Pyramid, 165; Robson, 168, 169, 172; Roche à Perdrix, 164; Roche Deboule, 177; Rocky, 163; Sir Robert Mount, 177; White, 107

Murphy, Mrs. Arthur (Janey Canuck), 157

New Brunswick, 60

New Liskeard, 134

Niagara, 6, 95, 96

Nibigami, 123

North-West Company, 15, 16, 19

North-West Passage, 15

North-Western Fur Company, 126

Norway Point, 102, 104

Nova Scotia, 47

Olier, Jean Jacque, 73

O'Neil, Rev. A. Barry, 240

Orillia, 117

Parks: Algonquin, 85, 100, 108, 109, 112, 114, 115; Jasper, 124, 125, 164, 166, 168, 169, 316; Mount Hays, 193; Mount Robson, 164, 169, 316

Passes: Peace River, 182; Pine River, 182; Wapiti, 182; Yellowhead, 158, 160, 163, 182

Perry, George H., 231

Phillips, Donald, 171

Pioneers, 3-8, 297-299

Poets, Canadian: Blewett, 273; Butler, Ethel Huestis, 267; Campbell, William W., 249, 250; Carman, Bliss, 249, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257; Coleman, Helena, 274; Crawford, Isabella V., 250, 274; Drummond, Dr. William Henry, 250; Frenchette, Louis, 270; Garvin, Mrs. John (Katharine Hale), 264; Garvin, John W., 272; Gordon, Alfred, 272; Heavyserge, Charles, 247; Huestis, Annie C., 267; Johnson, E. Pauline, 272, 284; Lampman, A., 100, 119, 249, 252; Lighthall, William Douw, 272, 274, 275; Logan, J. D., 265; Mair, Charles, 272; McArthur, Peter, 276; McCollum, Alma Frances, 272; McLennan, William, 274; Machan, Agnes Maule, 278; Norwood, Robert, 272; O'Hagan, Thomas, 270; Pickthall, Marjorie, 273, 283; Roberts, Charles G. D., 247, 248, 249; Roberts, Lloyd, 278; Scott, Canon, 249, 258; Scott, Duncan C., 83, 249, 263; Service, Robert, 172, 216, 286, 287, 288; Sheard, Virna, 272; Stringer, Arthur, 280; Warman, Cy., 57; Watson, Albert D., 272; Wetherald, Ethelyn, 272, 284

Porcupine Creek, 135

Porcupine Gold Camp, 136

Portland, 225

Prince George, 174

Prince Rupert, 174, 175

Puget Sound, 223

Pulpwood (industry), 145, 146

Queen Charlotte Sound, 204

Radisson, Pierre Esprit de, 9

Railways: Canadian Government, 123, 133, 137; Canadian Northern, 153; Canadian Pacific, 34; Grand Trunk, 35, 86, 120, 132, 126, 128, 137, 153, 239; Northern Ontario, 136, 137; Ontario, 144; Temiskaning, 136; White Pass and Yukon, 214

"Ready-made Farming," 146

Rebellion of 1869, 301

Redpath, Peter, 37

Rideau Canal, 65

Rideau Hall, 8

Riel, Louis, 24

Rivers: Assiniboine, 290, 299; Athabasca, 126, 163, 168; Bulkley, 175; Don, 89; Fairy, 108; Fraser, 174; French, 122; Grand Fork, 172; Maligne, 126; Moon, 119; Peace, 16; Qu'appelle, 290; Red, 15, 18, 25, 155, 299, 300; Saskatchewan, 155, 291; Shadows, 119; Skeena, 175, 177, 196; St. Lawrence, 47; Telkwa, 176; Winnipeg, 143

Robertson, Colonel Ross, 92, 302

Rosedale Ravines, 89

Rose Point, 121

Royal Mounted Police, 304-309

Ryerson, Rev. D. Egerton, 42, 266

St. Anne de Beaupré, 50

Salvation Army, the, 185, 186, 187

Sans Souci, 121

Scidmore, Eliza Ruhamah, 210, 211, 212

Seattle, 195, 200, 201, 209, 225

Selkirk, Earl of, 17, 19

Sellers, Constable, 307

Seymour Narrows, 204

Sifton, Sir Clifford, 131

Silver Islet, 132

Simpson, Governor, 22

Skagway, 195, 200, 201, 214, 215

Social conditions, 293

Sowton, Mr. and Mrs., 186

Station, Doreen, 177

Steamship Co., Grand Trunk Pacific, 195, 201-218

Steam navigation, 74

Sterling, George, 231

Strachan, Bishop, 41

Straits of Georgia, 204

Strathcona and Mount Royal, Lord (Donald Smith), 3, 20, 21, 25, 37, 41, 76

Taché, Archbishop, 40

Taku Inlet, 206

Talbot, Frederick A., 181, 182, 183

Telephone, first experiments, 219, 220

Tilley, Sir Samuel L., 32

Timagami, 116, 117, 123

Tupper, Sir Charles, 3, 31

Universities: California, 242; Manitoba, 142; Toronto, 88

Universities and schools, 39

Ursuline Convent, Quebec, 49

Valleys: Athabasca, 126, 316; Nechako, 175; Thousand Falls, 172

Vanderhoof Gateway, 175

Van Horne, Sir William Cornelius, 4, 35

Varennes, Pierre Gaultier de, 15

Victoria Jubilee Bridge, 67-70

Warman, Cy., 57

Walterson, Colonel H., 24

White, Horace, 24

Whitman, Walt, 1, 158

Willson, Beckles, 21

Wilson, Woodrow, President U.S.A., 243

Wireless telegraphy, 78

Wise, Dr., 116

Women and their work, 75

Wrangell Narrows, 206

The Temple Press, Letchworth, England

End of Project Gutenberg's Canada the Spellbinder, by Lilian Whiting