Part 33

The railway follows down the river, between the splendid ranges of the Selkirks and the Rockies, to the mouth of the Beaver, and then ascends its narrow gorge. I am not sure but that the scenery of the Selkirks is finer than that of the Rockies. One is bewildered by the illimitable noble snow-peaks and great glaciers. At Glacier House is another excellent hotel. In savage grandeur, nobility of mountain-peaks, snow-ranges, and extent of glacier it rivals anything in Switzerland. The glacier, only one arm of which is seen from the road, is, I believe, larger than any in Switzerland. There are some thirteen miles of flowing ice; but the monster lies up in the mountains, like a great octopus, with many giant arms. The branch which we saw, overlooked by the striking snow-cone of Sir Donald, some two and a half miles from the hotel, is immense in thickness and breadth, and seems to pour out of the sky. Recent measurements show that it is moving at the rate of twenty inches in twenty-four hours—about the rate of progress of the Mer de Glace. In the midst of the main body, higher up, is an isolated mountain of pure ice three hundred feet high and nearly a quarter of a mile in length. These mountains are the home of the mountain sheep.

From this amphitheatre of giant peaks, snow, and glaciers we drop by marvellous loops—wonderful engineering, four apparently different tracks in sight at one time—down to the valley of the Illicilliweat, the lower part of which is fertile, and blooming with irrigated farms. We pass a cluster of four lovely-lakes, and coast around the great Shuswap Lake, which is fifty miles long. But the traveller is not out of excitement. The ride down the Thompson and Fraser canons is as amazing almost as anything on the line. At Spence’s Bridge we come to the old Government road to the Cariboo gold-mines, three hundred miles above. This region has been for a long time a scene of activity in mining and salmon-fishing. It may be said generally of the Coast or Gold range that its riches have yet to be developed. The villages all along these mountain slopes and valleys are waiting for this development.

The city of Vancouver, only two years old since the beginnings of a town were devoured by fire, is already an interesting place of seven to eight thousand inhabitants, fast building up, and with many substantial granite and brick buildings, and spreading over a large area. It lies upon a high point of land between Burrard Inlet on the north and the north arm of the Fraser River. The inner harbor is deep and spacious. Burrard Inlet entrance is narrow but deep, and opens into English Bay, which opens into Georgia Sound, that separates the island of Vancouver, three hundred miles long, from the main-land. The round headland south of the entrance is set apart for a public park, called now Stanley Park, and is being improved with excellent driving-roads, which give charming views. It is a tangled wilderness of nearly one thousand acres. So dense is the undergrowth, in this moist air, of vines, ferns, and small shrubs, that it looks like a tropical thicket. But in the midst of it are gigantic Douglas firs and a few noble cedars. One veteran cedar, partly decayed at the top, measured fifty-six feet in circumference, and another, in full vigor and of gigantic height, over thirty-nine feet. The hotel of the Canadian Pacific Company, a beautiful building in modern style, is, in point of comfort, elegance of appointment, abundant table, and service, not excelled by any in Canada, equalled by few anywhere.

Vancouver would be a very busy and promising city merely as the railway terminus and the shipping-point for Japan and China and the east generally. But it has other resources of growth. There is a very good country back of it, and south of it all the way into Washington Territory. New Westminster, twelve miles south, is a place of importance for fish and lumber. The immensely fertile alluvial bottoms of the Fraser, which now overflows its banks, will some day be diked, and become exceedingly valuable. Its relations to Washington Territory are already close. The very thriving city of Seattle, having a disagreement with the North Pacific and its rival, Tacoma, sends and receives most of its freight and passengers via Vancouver, and is already pushing forward a railway to that point. It is also building to Spokane Falls, expecting some time to be met by an extension of the St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba from the Great Falls of the Missouri. I found that many of the emigrants in the loaded trains that we travelled with or that passed us were bound to Washington Territory. It is an acknowledged fact that there is a constant “leakage” of emigrants, who had apparently promised to tarry in Canada, into United States territories. Some of them, disappointed of the easy wealth expected, no doubt return; but the name of “republic” seems to have an attraction for Old World people when they are once set adrift.

We took steamer one afternoon for a five hours sail to Victoria. A part of the way is among beautiful wooded islands. Once out in the open, we had a view of our “native land,” and prominent in it the dim, cloud-like, gigantic peak of Mount Baker. Before we passed the islands we were entertained by a rare show of right-whales. A school of them a couple of weeks before had come down through Behring Strait, and pursued a shoal of fish into this landlocked bay. There must have been as many as fifty of the monsters in sight, spouting up slender fountains, lifting their huge bulk out of water, and diving, with their bifurcated tails waving in the air. They played about like porpoises, apparently only for our entertainment.

Victoria, so long isolated, is the most English part of Canada. The town itself does not want solidity and wealth, but it is stationary, and, the Canadians elsewhere think, slow. It was the dry and dusty time of the year. The environs are broken with inlets, hilly and picturesque; there are many pretty cottages and country places in the suburbs; and one visits with interest the Eskimalt naval station, and the elevated Park, which has a coble coast view. The very mild climate is favorable for grapes and apples. The summer is delightful; the winter damp, and constantly rainy. And this may be said of all this coast. Of the thirteen thousand population six thousand are Chinese, and they form in the city a dense, insoluble, unassimilating mass. Victoria has one railway, that to the prosperous Nanaimo coal-mines. The island has abundance of coal, some copper, and timber. But Vancouver has taken away from Victoria all its importance as a port. The Government and Parliament buildings are detached, but pleasant and commodious edifices. There is a decorous British air about everything. Throughout British Columbia the judges and the lawyers wear the gown and band and the horse-hair wig. In an evening trial for murder which I attended in a dingy upper chamber of the Kamloops court-house, lighted only by kerosene lamps, the wigs and gowns of judge and attorneys lent, I confess, a dignity to the administration of justice which the kerosene lamps could not have given. In one of the Government buildings is a capital museum of natural history and geology. The educational department is vigorous and effective, and I find in the bulky report evidence of most intelligent management of the schools.

It is only by traversing the long distance to this coast, and seeing the activity here, that one can appreciate the importance to Canada and to the British Empire of the Canadian Pacific Railway as a bond of unity, a developer of resources, and a world’s highway. The out-going steamers were crowded with passengers and laden with freight. We met on the way two solid trains, of twenty cars each, full of tea. When the new swift steamers are put on, which are already heavily subsidized by both the English and the Canadian governments, the traffic in passengers and goods must increase. What effect the possession of such a certain line of communication with her Oriental domains will have upon the English willingness to surrender Canada either to complete independence or to a union with the United States, any political prophet can estimate.

It must be added that the Canadian Pacific Company are doing everything to make this highway popular as well as profitable. Construction and management show English regard for comfort and safety and order. It is one of the most agreeable lines to travel over I am acquainted with. Most of it is well built, and defects are being energetically removed. The “Colonist” cars are clean and convenient. The first class carriages are luxurious. The dining-room cars are uniformly well kept, the company hotels are exceptionally excellent; and from the railway servants one meets with civility and attention.

III.

I had been told that the Canadians are second-hand Englishmen. No estimate could convey a more erroneous impression. A portion of the people have strong English traditions and loyalties to institutions, but in manner and in expectations the Canadians are scarcely more English than the people of the United States; they have their own colonial development, and one can mark already with tolerable distinctness a Canadian type which is neither English nor American. This is noticeable especially in the women. The Canadian girl resembles the American in escape from a purely conventional restraint and in self-reliance, and she has, like the English, a well-modulated voice and distinct articulation. In the cities, also, she has taste in dress and a certain style which we think belongs to the New World. In features and action a certain modification has gone on, due partly to climate and partly to greater social independence. It is unnecessary to make comparisons, and I only note that there is a Canadian type of woman.

But there is great variety in Canada, and in fact a remarkable racial diversity. The man of Nova Scotia is not at all the man of British Columbia or Manitoba. The Scotch in old Canada have made a distinct impression in features and speech. And it may be said generally in eastern Canada that the Scotch element is a leading and conspicuous one in the vigor and push of enterprise and the accumulation of fortune. The Canadian men, as one sees them in official life, at the clubs, in business, are markedly a vigorous, stalwart race, well made, of good stature, and not seldom handsome. This physical prosperity needs to be remembered when we consider the rigorous climate and the long winters; these seem to have at least one advantage—that of breeding virile men. The Canadians generally are fond of out-door sports and athletic games, of fishing and hunting, and they give more time to such recreations than we do. They are a little less driven by the business goad. Abundant animal spirits tend to make men good-natured and little quarrelsome. The Canadians would make good soldiers. There was a time when the drinking habit pervaded very much in Canada, and there are still places where they do not put water enough in their grog, but temperance reform has taken as strong a hold there as it has in the United States.

The feeling about the English is illustrated by the statement that there is not more aping of English ways in Montreal and Toronto clubs and social life than in New York, and that the English superciliousness, or condescension as to colonists, the ultra-English manner, is ridiculed in Canada, and resented with even more warmth than in the United States. The amusing stories of English presumption upon hospitality are current in Canada as well as on this side. All this is not inconsistent with pride in the empire, loyalty to its traditions and institutions, and even a considerable willingness (for human nature is pretty much alike everywhere) to accept decorative titles. But the underlying fact is that there is a distinct feeling of nationality, and it is increasing.

There is not anywhere so great a contrast between neighboring cities as between Quebec, Montreal, and Toronto. Quebec is mediæval, Toronto is modern, Montreal is in a conflict between the two conditions. As the travelling world knows, they are all interesting cities, and have peculiar attractions. Quebec is French, more decidedly so than Toronto is English, and in Montreal the French have a large numerical majority and complete political control. In the Canadian cities generally municipal affairs are pretty much divorced from general party politics, greatly to the advantage of good city government.

Montreal has most wealth, and from its splendid geographical position it is the railway centre, and has the business and commercial primacy. It has grown rapidly from a population of 140,000 in 1881 to a population of over 200,000—estimated, with its suburbs, at 250,000. Were it part of my plan to describe these cities, I should need much space to devote to the finest public buildings and public institutions of Montreal, the handsome streets in the Protestant quarter, with their solid, tasteful, and often elegant residences, the many churches, and the almost unequalled possession of the Mountain as a park and resort, where one has the most striking and varied prospects in the world. Montreal, being a part of the province of Quebec, is not only under provincial control of the government at Quebec, but it is ruled by the same French party in the city, and there is the complaint always found where the poorer majority taxes the richer and more enterprising minority out of proportion to the benefits the latter receives. Various occasions have produced something like race conflicts in the city, and there are prophesies of more serious ones in the strife for ascendency. The seriousness of this to the minority lies in the fact that the French race is more prolific than any other in the province.

Perhaps nothing will surprise the visitor more than the persistence of the French type in Canada, and naturally its aggressiveness. Guaranteed their religion, laws, and language, the French have not only failed to assimilate, but have had hopes—maybe still have—of making Canada French. The French “national” party means simply a French consolidation, and has no relation to the “nationalism” of Sir John Macdonald. So far as the Church and the French politicians are concerned, the effort is to keep the French solid as a political force, and whether the French are Liberal or Conservative, this is the underlying thought. The province of Quebec is Liberal, but the liberalism is of a different hue from that of Ontario. The French recognize the truth that language is so integral a part of a people’s growth that the individuality of a people depends upon maintaining it. The French have escaped absorption in Canada mainly by loyalty to their native tongue, aided by the concession to them of their civil laws and their religious privileges. They owe this to William Pitt. I quote from a contributed essay in the Toronto Week about three years ago: “Up to 1791 the small French population of Canada was in a position to be converted into an English colony with traces of French sentiment and language, which would have slowly disappeared. But at that date William Pitt the younger brought into the House of Commons two Quebec Acts, which constituted two provinces—Lower Canada, with a full provision of French laws, language, and institutions; Upper Canada, with a reproduction of English laws and social system. During the debate Pitt declared on the floor of the House that his purpose was to create two colonies distinct from and jealous of each other, so as to guard against a repetition of the late unhappy rebellion which had separated the thirteen colonies from the empire.”

The French have always been loyal to the English connection under all temptations, for these guarantees have been continued, which could scarcely be expected from any other power, and certainly not in a legislative union of the Canadian provinces. In literature and sentiment the connection is with France; in religion, with Rome; in politics England has been the guarantee of both. There will be no prevailing sentiment in favor of annexation to the United States so long as the Church retains its authority, nor would it be favored by the accomplished politicians so long as they can use the solid French mass as a political force.

The relegation of the subject of education entirely to the provinces is an element in the persistence of the French type in the province of Quebec, in the same way that it strengthens the Protestant cause in Ontario. In the province of Quebec all the public schools are Roman Catholic, and the separate schools are of other sects. In the council of public instruction the Catholics, of course, have a large majority, but the public schools are managed by a Catholic committee and the others by a Protestant committee. In the academies, model and high schools, subsidized by the Government, those having Protestant teachers are insignificant in number, and there are very few Protestants in Catholic schools, and very few Catholics in Protestant schools; the same is true of the schools of this class not subsidized. The bulky report of the superintendent of public instruction of the province of Quebec (which is translated into English) shows a vigorous and intelligent attention to education. The general statistics give the number of pupils in the province as 219,403 Roman Catholics (the term always used in the report) and 37,484 Protestants. In the elementary schools there are 143,848 Roman Catholics and 30,401 Protestants. Of the ecclesiastical teachers, 808 are Roman Catholics and 8 Protestants; of the certificated lay teachers, 250 are Roman Catholic and 105 Protestant; the proportion of schools is four to one. It must be kept in mind that in the French schools it is French literature that is cultivated. In the Laval University, at Quebec, English literature is as purely an ornamental study as French literature would be in Yale. The Laval University, which has a branch in Montreal, is a strong institution, with departments of divinity, law, medicine, and the arts, 80 professors, and 575 students. The institution has a vast pile of buildings, one of the most conspicuous objects in a view of the city. Besides spacious lecture, assembly rooms, and laboratories, it has extensive collections in geology, mineralogy, botany, ethnology, zoology, coins, a library of 100,000 volumes, in which theology is well represented, but which contains a large collection of works on Canada, including valuable manuscripts, the original MS. of the Journal des Jésuites, and the most complete set of the Relation des Jésuites existing in America. It has also a gallery of paintings, chiefly valuable for its portraits.

Of the 62,000 population of Quebec City, by the census of 1881, not over 6000 were Protestants. By the same census Montreal had 140,747, of whom 78,684 were French, and 28,995 of Irish origin. The Roman Catholics numbered 103,579. I believe the proportion has not much changed with the considerable growth in seven years.

One is struck, in looking at the religious statistics of Canada, by the fact that the Church of England has not the primacy, and that the so-called independent sects have a position they have not in England. In the total population of 4,324,810, given by the census of 1881, the Protestants were put down at 2,436,554 and the Roman Catholics at 1,791,982. The larger of the Protestant denominations were, Methodists, 742,981; Presbyterians, 676,165; Church of England, 574,818; Baptists, 296,525. Taking as a specimen of the north-west the province of Manitoba, census of 1886, we get these statistics of the larger sects: Presbyterians, 28,406; Church of England, 23,206; Methodists, 18,648; Roman Catholics, 14,651; Mennonites, 9112; Baptists, 3296; Lutherans, 3131.

Some statistics of general education in the Dominion show the popular interest in the matter. In 1885 the total number of pupils in the Dominion, in public and private schools, was 908,193, and the average attendance was 555,404. The total expenditure of the year, not including school buildings, was $9,310,745, and the value of school lands, buildings, and furniture was $25,000,000. Yet in the province of Quebec, out of the total expenditure of $3,102,410, only $353,077 was granted by the provincial Legislature. And in Ontario, of the total of $3,904,797, only $267,084 was granted by the Legislature.

The McGill University at Montreal, Sir William Dawson principal, is a corporation organized under royal charter, which owes its original endowment of land and money (valued at $120,000) to James McGill. It receives small grants from the provincial and Dominion governments, but mainly depends upon its own funds, which in 1885 stood at $791,000. It has numerous endowed professorships and endowments for scholarships and prizes; among them is the Donalda Endowment for the Higher Education of Women (from Sir Donald A. Smith), by which a special course in separate classes, by University professors, is maintained in the University buildings for women. It has faculties of arts, applied sciences, law, and medicine—the latter with one of the most complete anatomical museums and one of the best selected libraries on the continent. It has several colleges affiliated with it for the purpose of conferring University degrees, a model school, and four theological colleges, a Congregational, a Presbyterian, an Episcopalian, and a Wesleyan, the students in which may supplement their own courses in the University. The professors and students wear the University cap and gown, and morning prayers are read to a voluntary attendance. The Redpath Museum, of geology, mineralogy, zoology, and ethnology, has a distinction among museums not only for the size of the collection, but for splendid arrangement and classification. The well-selected library numbers about 30,000 volumes. The whole University is a vigorous educational centre, and its well-planted grounds and fine buildings are an ornament to the city.