CHAPTER XII

WINNIPEG AND THE CENTENARY

For over a century, as I have already pointed out, Western Canada formed part of a vast theatre in which the fur traders enacted their stirring, if somewhat squalid, drama. Of the several men who figured prominently in the history of that period, there was one whose memory should be revered by Canadians of To-day and To-morrow.

Philanthropy knows no higher work than to rescue capable and industrious men from a country where they cannot support their families, and emigrate them to a country where they can. In that work—which is so largely a modern development rendered possible by modern conditions—Lord Selkirk was a remarkable pioneer. He was a seer, born far ahead of his times. One hundred years ago he saw the possibility of settling Western Canada. In an age that knew nothing of steamships and railroads, he had a prevision of farming on the prairie. Had his aspirations remained an unrealised dream, we should have sufficient occasion to honour the memory of a prophet. But that kind-hearted and resolute Scotsman realised his dream. Encountering difficulty after difficulty, he overcame them. He found his time of day sadly out of tune with a scheme for putting the landless man on the manless land, but he achieved that desirable end. It is, indeed, to the everlasting credit of Lord Selkirk that he successfully tackled a twentieth-century job at the dawn of the nineteenth century. While the warlike traders were losing their tempers and their lives over the business of collecting pelts, the unselfish nobleman was putting in some quiet, steady work on behalf of humanity.

After the terrible Napoleonic wars, great destitution occurred among the humbler classes in Great Britain, and specially in the Highlands of Scotland. Lord Selkirk’s aim was to benefit his needy fellow-countrymen.

In June, 1811, three ships left the Thames to call at Stornoway, in the Hebrides, for the first party of settlers bound for Central Canada. The emigrants, as they went on board, were presented with a lying pamphlet describing their destination as a Polar region infested with hostile Indians. They were encouraged to return ashore for a good-bye spree on their native soil. A “customs officer” stepped aboard and played exasperating tricks with their baggage. Another bogus official came rowing alongside to ascertain whether every emigrant was leaving Scotland of his own free will. (Lord Selkirk’s protégés dealt with this point by dropping a nine-pound cannon-ball into the gentleman’s boat.)

Thus early and artfully did the fur-traders of the North-West Company seek to thwart colonising. But the emigrants sailed, and two months later they arrived on the shores of Hudson Bay, where they remained in huts during a long, wearisome winter and spring. In the first week of July they started in boats down Hayes River to Lake Winnipeg, and so to the Forks, on the Red River, where they arrived by the end of August. Wondering Indians came to gaze at the white strangers who had arrived on the prairie, not to collect furs and not to hunt, but—by all that was mysterious and incredible—to make things grow in the ground.

Meanwhile another party of Lord Selkirk’s colonists had left Scotland. Again there were unseen enemies at work. Mutiny was fomented on the voyage, but, after one man had had an arm cut off, the affair fizzled out. Of that second party to arrive at Hudson Bay, some eight or ten men pushed on in the same year to Red River. Three of them tarried by the way to do some fishing, and when they set out to accomplish the last stage of their journey, winter set in, they ran short of provisions, and their strength gave out. Two lay down on the windswept ice to die. “The third,” Agnes Laut tells us, “hurried desperately forward, hoping against hope, doggedly resolved, if he must perish, to die hard. Suddenly a tinkling of dog-bells broke the winter stillness, and the pack-trains of North-West hunters came galloping over the ice. In a twinkling the overjoyed colonist had signalled them and told his story, and in less time than it takes to relate, the Nor’-Westers were off to the rescue. The three starving men were cared for till they regained strength. Then they were given food enough to supply them for the rest of the way to the settlement.”

Yearly contingents went out, and it is recorded that the emigrants of 1813 included young girls going to make a home for aged parents, a patriarch and his wife who had been evicted from their Scottish home, Irish Catholics, staid Scotch Presbyterians, dandified Glasgow clerks, red-cheeked Orkneymen, younger sons of noble families, and shy and demure Moravian sisters and brethren. They had their trials. There was an outbreak of typhus on the voyage; on their subsequent trek across country, they cut their feet on ridge stones, and sometimes had to wade waist-deep through swamps; and once they ran short of food and were reduced to eating nettle leaves.

To pave the way for his colony, Lord Selkirk had bought a controlling interest in the Hudson’s Bay Company. But that company and the Nor’-Westers were still at deadly feud. The peaceful settlers found themselves in a hornets’ nest. They were terrified by the portents of a gathering storm. Half-breeds went about singing their war songs; musketry firing was heard at night. A section of the colonists suffered the Nor’-Westers to escort them to the security of Eastern Canada. The others remained to see the forts of the rival traders dealing out death and destruction. At one time the colony buildings were set on fire, the Selkirk settlers fled in terror to Lake Winnipeg, and nothing remained but their charred homes and trampled crops. Then came two hundred fighting men under the Hudson’s Bay flag, and as they brought word that Governor Semple was on his way to take command, bringing with him 160 additional colonists, and that Lord Selkirk himself would arrive in the following year, the agriculturists returned to Red River and started all over again.

Governor Semple had not been long at Red River before he and his staff, with a few other persons, were killed, whereupon the Hudson’s Bay stronghold (Fort Douglas) fell into the enemy’s hands. Poor colonists! they were tilling the soil in a very noisy neighbourhood. New excitement was provided in the following year, when Lord Selkirk (now a very warlike philanthropist) arrived with several hundred discharged soldiers and retook Fort Douglas. After that, the colonists experienced less troubled times; and when the two fur-trading companies coalesced in 1821 an era of peace dawned for the district. Meanwhile, harassed, weary and ill, the founder of the colony had gone to France, where on November 8th, 1820, a noble life drew to a pathetic close.

Fate lavished her favours on Thomas Douglas, fifth Earl of Selkirk and Baron Daer. He possessed youth, health, wealth, position and power. And he applied those blessings, not to selfish ends, but to the service of humanity. I like the simple words in which Lord Selkirk’s character was described by his contemporary and friend, Sir Walter Scott. The great novelist testified to his “generous and disinterested disposition,” and to his “talents and perseverance.”

Lord Selkirk is to have a memorial, and a memorial worthy of the man and his work. The Centenary of the foundation of the Selkirk settlement (from which Manitoba has sprung) is likely to be celebrated in 1914 by an exhibition at Winnipeg—an exhibition of a character and on a scale to arouse interest in, and attract visitors from, all quarters of the globe. Indeed, the Dominion has thoughts of celebrating the occasion by holding its first “World’s Fair,” after the pattern set by London forty-nine years ago, by Philadelphia twelve years later, by Paris in the opening year of this century, and by Chicago in 1893.

There are several reasons why a Winnipeg Exhibition justifies high hopes. On previous occasions, millions of people, travelling across oceans and continents, have visited a World’s Fair in order to see—a World’s Fair. People would be attracted to the Manitoba capital in 1914 to see that and something more. It would be an opportunity to witness a rare spectacle—the rising of a new nation that is destined to be big and powerful. For thousands of people it would be a chance to take a peep at the prairie—to see with their own eyes the Great North-West.

These International Expositions are occasions when one part of the world says to the rest of the world: “Come and see what _we_ are doing.” Visitors go with the intention of combining business with pleasure; and certainly no World’s Fair would ever have been held in a country that presents such opportunities for investment and enterprise. The Winnipeg Show would take its international public to the very border of probably the greatest area of rich, unoccupied land to be found in the world. It would reveal a territory that is producing sufficient wheat to supply the whole population of England with bread, and producing it from soil which, for the most part, was only recently brought under cultivation.

Moreover, the Winnipeg Exhibition would serve to celebrate an event of which I have endeavoured to measure the significance. The one hundredth anniversary of the Selkirk settlement will witness the opening of through communication, _via_ Hudson Bay, between Western Canada and Europe.

The Press of the Dominion took at once to the daring and delightful idea of a World’s Fair at Winnipeg; and the more enthusiastic editors exclaimed: “We must see to it that this is a record-breaking exhibition.” That is certainly the right spirit in which to tackle a great undertaking. The Paris Exhibition of 1900 holds, I believe, the record, with an attendance of 50,860,801 visitors. But of course Paris is situated in a more populous hemisphere than the one in which Winnipeg occurs; so it would be fairer to regard the Chicago Exhibition of 1893 (which attracted 27,539,521 visitors) as the achievement to be eclipsed. Though, indeed, having regard to relative population, Canada’s triumph would be sufficiently remarkable if her first World’s Fair compared favourably with the first World’s Fair of the United States. It was held at Philadelphia in 1876, and the attendance was 9,910,996, or over 3,000,000 more than the attendance at either of London’s great exhibitions.

Last year, when at Winnipeg, I called at the executive offices of “Canada’s International Exposition and Selkirk Centennial, 1914,” and there I learnt that preparations for the event were well advanced. The project was associated with £1,000,000. Half was expected from the Federal Government, most of the balance being provided by the following grants: £100,000 from the City of Winnipeg; £100,000 from the Canadian Pacific Railway; £100,000 from the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway; £50,000 from the Canadian Northern Railway; and £50,000 from the province of Manitoba. To complete the £1,000,000, the business men in Winnipeg were asked to take up stock to the extent of £100,000; which they promised to do. The directors undertook to lay out that million pounds to advantage; and it was estimated that buildings and exhibits provided by the various Canadian, British and Foreign Governments would represent a value equal to another million. So that persons who visit Winnipeg in the summer of 1914 are likely to have a good time and find plenty to see.

As a matter of fact, if they saw nothing but Winnipeg itself their time and money would be well spent. It is a marvellous and a magnificent city.