CHAPTER XVI

NORTHERN ALBERTA

That part of Saskatchewan (more than half the province) lying north of occupied, or at any rate surveyed, territory, I have been tempted to describe as “Unknown Saskatchewan”; and certainly the clues we possess to its character are slight, even though they carry a definite and comprehensive assurance of the country’s suitability for settlement.

Concerning the northern half of Alberta, the word “Unknown” would be comparatively inapplicable. In this case chance has, I find, provided us with a good deal of information. Nay, as will be seen, we have clues to agricultural possibilities in regions far to the north of the northern boundary of Alberta.

It is strange how persistently the public imagination goes astray concerning matters of latitude. Nine years ago I found Calgary shrugging its shoulders over a city called Edmonton, situated some two hundred miles to the north. Daring pioneers up there were understood to be making praiseworthy efforts in the direction of grain-growing; “but no, sir,” a farmer of the Calgary district solemnly assured me, “it isn’t reasonable to suppose crops’ll growth that far north.” It will, I think, be superfluous to mention that last year, on visiting Edmonton—healthy, handsome, and sunny Edmonton (which is between 53° and 54° latitude)—I found the district producing immense quantities of the best quality hard wheat that averaged over twenty, and sometimes reached forty, bushels to the acre. “You see,” as a local expert pointed out to me, “the Edmonton district is just right for growing things. Everything is in our favour. We’ve got much longer days than people have in the south. Why, at midsummer the sun is shining for eighteen hours a day, and that lets the crops go ahead fine. Then, too, we’re particularly lucky in having such wonderful, rich soil. Added to that, we can always count on enough rain—and not too much.”

Those complacent words applied to the district immediately north of Edmonton—in other words, to what is practically the limit of settled Alberta. I will now invite the reader to ascend a sort of ladder of latitude.

Our first short stride takes us to an old post on the Lesser Slave Lake, which is nearly two hundred miles to the north-west of Edmonton, the line of latitude (which is the special matter that concerns us at the moment) being something less than one hundred and fifty miles to the north. I find travellers and missionaries unanimous in testifying that wheat, oats, barley, potatoes and various kinds of vegetables are grown to perfection at Lesser Slave Lake.

We now mount to Dunvegan (lat. 55.9°), about fifty miles further north (and one hundred miles to the west), concerning which place we learn from the Rev. D. M. Gordon that, on going there in 1880, he found a great variety of vegetables growing, including cucumbers; while he was informed that wheat was raised at the post as far back as 1828.

Another northward step of about fifty miles brings us (far away in eastern Alberta) to Fort McMurray (lat. 56.7°), on the Athabasca River; and concerning Fort McMurray it is recorded that “Professor Macoun, on the 8th of September, 1875, saw tomatoes, cucumbers, wheat and barley under cultivation, together with all vegetables found in kitchen gardens of Ontario. He spent ten days there, and obtained specimens of wheat and barley which have astonished everyone to whom they were exhibited. Many of the ears contained one hundred grains, and the weight of both wheat and barley was nearly ten pounds above the ordinary weight per bushel. These grains had been raised on soil comparatively poor—very poor for the district—and lying only a few feet above the level of Lake Athabasca.”

So here we are over two hundred miles to the north of Edmonton, and reports of vegetation tend to become more, instead of less, satisfactory.

Next we jump an interval of about a hundred and fifty miles, and pause at Fort Chipewyan (lat. 58.7°), where, I learn, Professor Macoun obtained in 1875 fine samples of wheat and barley, the former weighing 68 lbs. to the bushel and the latter 58 lbs. He learnt that at a French Mission, two miles above the Fort, oats, wheat and barley were all cut by the 26th of August. But a still more remarkable fact has to be recorded. The Rev. D. M. Gordon was in a position to say that samples of wheat and barley raised at Fort Chipewyan were sent to the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, where they won a medal in open competition with the world.

Let us take a further stride, to a point some two hundred miles further north—to Fort Providence (lat. 61.4°). Here we are about one hundred miles north of the northern boundary of Alberta; and perhaps this is as good a place as another to mention that the province of Alberta is considerably larger than France or Germany. Please note how far we have travelled—Fort Providence is over seven hundred miles north of Calgary. And what do we find at Fort Providence—Polar bears and perpetual frost? Not a bit of it. Listen to this quotation from a report by Mr. Elihu Stewart, who, as superintendent of forestry for the Dominion of Canada, visited those northern lands in 1906: “On July 15th, the garden at Fort Providence contained peas fit for use, potatoes in flower, tomatoes, rhubarb, beets, cabbages and onions. Besides vegetables, there were cultivated flowers and fruit, such as red currants, gooseberries, strawberries, raspberries and saskatoons. But most surprising thing of all was a small field of wheat in the milk, the grain being fully formed. This was stated to have been sown on May 20th, and it was harvested before July 28th—slightly over two months from sowing.”

Oh, the marvellous potency of the long days of sunshine. What a rush there will be for the Great North Lands—that agricultural El Dorado—when the world understands their value.

No further evidence is, I think, needed; but, by way of completing the ascent of my “ladder,” I will invite the reader to move in imagination some thirty miles nearer the North Pole, to Fort Simpson (lat. 61.8°)—the most remote point from which I have been enabled to glean any gardening news. Mr. Hardisty, the late chief factor in charge of the Hudson Bay post, told Mr. Macoun that melons, if started under glass, ripened well there, frost seldom doing them harm. Barley, Mr. Hardisty added, always ripened at Fort Simpson. Another witness is accessible in the person of Mr. William Ogilvie, the explorer. “While at this post,” he reported, “we enjoyed the fine potatoes, carrots, parsnips, cabbage and peas grown in the Hudson Bay Company’s garden. They were as large and as fine flavoured as the best in any part of the country.”

The facts being as I have stated, no wonder some enterprising pioneers have “gone in advance of the railway,” and settled in that part of the Peace River district lying around Lesser Slave Lake and to the west of it.

News of the high farming value of the Great North Lands will, I think, come upon the public as a surprise. Yet, as has recently been pointed out by Mr. R. E. Young (Canada’s Superintendent of Railway Lands), the truth of the matter has for long been demonstrated inferentially by the experience of another quarter of the globe. On a map of Western Canada, Mr. Young has superimposed the highly productive Russian province of Tobolsk, in its accurate position as to latitude; and, behold! the main southern boundary of Tobolsk occurs (on the map of the Dominion) a good deal north of settled Southern Alberta, while northern Tobolsk extends right up the Canadian mainland, crosses Coronation Gulf, and spreads some way over Victoria Island. Recent statistics about the Russian province are not available to me; but in 1906 it was supporting a population of over a million and a half, in 1907 it was producing 30,770,000 bushels of wheat, rye, barley and oats, it raises many million head of livestock, and from one district alone (Kurgan) there was exported in 1902, largely to Great Britain, 19,711,446 lbs. of butter. I may add, on the authority of the British Blue Book from which the last-named figures are taken, that dairy-farming in Tobolsk promised, at the date of publication (1905), a marvellous development.

As I have already mentioned, certain enterprising and discerning mortals have gone into the productive North Lands ahead of the locomotive. Mr. Alfred Von Hamerstein, for instance, who was on his way to the Klondike in 1897, changed his mind, and opened a store at Athabasca Landing. He traded with the Indians, and it is interesting to learn that his customers were keen to buy different kinds of seeds; so he added flower-seeds to his stock, “and some lovely flowers were raised.”

Afterwards he made extensive explorations up and down the country, and took up with mining and with petroleum-boring.

Asked about the Peace River Valley, Mr. Von Hamerstein said it is “a good country for agricultural settlement—as good as any country in Alberta.” He described both the Athabasca and Peace River regions as “marvellous for the growth of small wild fruit,” adding: “At the end of July, or the first part of August, there are strawberries, followed by raspberries and blueberries. Then come the saskatoons, choke cherries, white plums and berries of every description. They are found all over the country and they all have a very nice flavour indeed.”

From this gentleman’s experiences I take the following interesting facts: He has seen trees in the neighbourhood of McMurray that would make 1,000 feet of timber. The missionaries and natives catch a quantity of fish, including a creature called the “inconnu”—the unknown—which weighs from 40 to 50 lbs. Sometimes on a walk of fifteen miles he has seen as many as twenty or thirty bears, which are quite harmless. The long list of Alberta quadrupeds includes the wolverine—a gigantic skunk with stripes on his back and known out West as “the devil.” Among the birds are several varieties of the eagle, a little wild canary, and the Canadian jay, commonly called “the whisky jack.” Along the northern boundary of Alberta, around Salt River, the cariboo, the moose and other game congregate to lick the salt, “and there are quite a few buffalo” to be seen. Ducks and geese assemble around Lake Athabasca in enormous numbers, “and when killed their stomachs are found full of cranberries.”

Mr. Von Hamerstein has done a good deal of gold-mining in the Athabasca and Peace River districts. “I took out gold,” he said, “at a little bar right opposite the mouth of the Lesser Slave River in the Athabasca. I worked it for part of two summers. I would take out enough to last me for the winter and then quit. It is hard work.” He mentioned that the Indians have “gold and diamonds on the brain,” and they have brought him “rocks containing very nice garnets, but they were very mysterious about them.” He explained that there is “very good gold-mining” on the Peace River, a little below Battle River. “But the gold is so very fine that for every dollar you save there, about four and a half go away.” He also referred to many good seams of coal, and mentioned that one season, at Fort McKay, he “took out about twenty tons right on the river bank.” It was a good quality of bituminous coal. At McMurray “150 feet of salt was found,” and the Hudson Bay people “come down and take it with shovels.”

With regard to natural gas, Mr. Von Hamerstein ventilated a grievance of the backwoods. It seems that an experimental bore-hole at Pelican Portage struck “a very large volume of gas, and the well has never been plugged.” He considered it an actual sin to leave it like that, as “the gas has now been escaping for eleven years.” It is robbing the whole district of gas that might be used in the future. It seems that the Government prospectors who made the well were boring for petroleum. The tremendous flow of natural gas interrupted their work. They left the gas alight, and returned to the spot in the following year, hoping the flow would by that time be exhausted. Instead, they found it still burning; so they went away, and never returned; and during the eleven years that have since elapsed it has continued to burn. Once when Mr. Von Hamerstein went there, the column of flame was 40 feet high; afterwards he found it had been reduced to 18 or 20 feet.

He mentioned that he has expended more than £12,000 in “punching holes through the ground.” There is no doubt in his mind that “petroleum will be found all through the country from Athabasca River to the Peace River.” It seems that, in connection with their prospecting, mining and boring operations, Mr. Von Hamerstein’s parties use a good deal of natural gas. “We light our camps with it,” he said, “and do our blacksmith’s work with it, and it comes in very handy.”

Mr. Von Hamerstein remarked: “As far as petroleum is concerned, I have all my money put into it, and there is other people’s money in it, and I have to be loyal. As to whether you can get petroleum in merchantable quantities, that is a matter about which I would not care to speak. I have been taking in machinery for about three years. Last year I placed about $50,000 worth of machinery in there. I have not brought it in for ornamental purposes, although it does look nice and homelike.”

He explained that there are sulphur beds and springs between McMurray and Lake Athabasca, and on the Clearwater River first-class medicinal springs. “It is a very nice, picturesque country,” this interesting witness added, “and the natives go up there and doctor themselves.”