Chapter 20

the easily controlled gas that does the work with a tithe of the labour and at a mere fraction of the cost necessitated by ordinary baking kilns.

Maple Creek and Swift Current were stepping-off places, with all their populations packed in the square about the station to give the Prince a hearty greeting. At Maple Creek the pretty daughters of the township were very much in evidence, and held His Royal Highness up with autograph albums.

Moose Jaw, one of the few towns where a quaint name is traceable, for it is the creek where the white man mended the cart with a moose jaw-bone, which the Prince reached on the morning of October 4th, is a bigger town and proud of its position as a grain, food and machinery distributing centre for Southern Saskatchewan. In its station courtyard it had built up an admirable exhibit of its vegetables and fruit, its sides of bacon, its grain in ear, its porridge oats in packets, and its butter and cream in drums and churns; while chiefest of all it showed ramparts of some of the two million sacks of flour it handles annually. The whole of the exhibit was set in a moat of grain and potatoes.

The Prince went to the University Grounds, where a mighty crowd attended the welcoming ceremony, and where a wild and timeless waltz-quadrille of motors which straggled all-whither over the grounds, marked the attempts of people to locate and follow him when he drove away to the hospital and a big packing factory. At the packing plant he saw the whole process of handling meat, from the moment when cowboys in chaps drove the herd to the pens to the final jointing of the steer.

From Moose Jaw he went to Regina, which he reached that afternoon. Regina is the capital of Saskatchewan, but an accidental capital. Somewhere about 1880 it was decided to start itself in quite another place. Qu'Appelle, where there was a Hudson Bay Fort and the country was attractive, was the site chosen. And Qu'Appelle opened its mouth too wide--or, anyhow so the version of the story I was told goes. The land-owners there asked an outside number of million dollars, and the townplanners went to Pile o' Bones instead.

Pile o' Bones was a point near Wascana Lake where there had been a big slaughter of buffaloes. It was a point of no importance, but Canadians don't mind that sort of thing. When they make up their minds to build a city, a city arises. Regina arose, broad and bustling, a trifle chilly as becomes a city of the prairie, rather flat and not altogether attractive, yet purposeful.

It also gained another reason for regard by becoming the headquarters of the "Mounties," the Royal North-West Mounted Police, whose main barracks are here. We saw something of the discipline of that fine service in the way the big crowds were handled, for the Prince drove through the streets in the order and state of a London or New York pageant.

The Parliament Buildings are beautifully situated before a wide stretch of water. They are the semi-classical, domed, white stone buildings of the design of those at Edmonton and other cities--a sort of standardized parliament building in fact. Before them, on the terraces and lawn that shelved down to the water, the big throng made a scene of quick beauty. There were ranks of pretty nurses, rank upon rank of khaki veterans, battalions of boy scouts mainly divorced from hats which were perpetually aloft on upraised and enthusiastic poles, aisles of sitting wounded whom the Prince shook hands with, and thick, supporting masses of civilians. Lining this throng were unbending fillets of scarlet statues, the "Mounties" of the guard. And humanizing the whole were solid banks of school-children who sang and cheered at the right as well as the wrong moment.

The presentation of medals--one to a blinded doctor, who, led by a comrade, received the most poignant storm of cheers I have ever heard in my life--and a giant public reception finished that day's ceremonies. Sunday, October 5th, was a day of rest, and Monday was the day of the "Mounties."

The Prince showed a particular interest in his visit to the Headquarters of this splendid and romantic corps. The Royal North-West Mounted Police is a classic figure in the history of the Empire. The day is now past when the lonely red rider of the wilds stood for the only token of awe and authority among Indian tribes and "bad men" camps, but though that may be there are no more useful fellows than these smart and sturdy men, who, scarlet-coated, and with their Stetsons at a daring angle, add a dash of colour and bravery to the streets of Western Canada.

In his inspection the Prince saw the reason why the physique of the men should be so splendid and their nerve so sure. The training of the R.N.W.M.P. makes no appeal to the weakling of spirit or flesh. He saw their firm discipline. He saw them breaking in the bucking bronchos they had to ride. He saw them go through exhausting mounted tests. His congratulations on their wonderful show were expressed with great warmth.

III

From Regina the Prince took a holiday. He went up to the sporting country near Qu'Appelle for duck and game shooting, spending from Monday, October 6th, until Friday, October 10th, there. This district abounds in duck, and the Prince and his staff had very fair sport. During his stay the weather suddenly turned colder, the rivers froze over and snow fell. So sudden was the cold snap that one of those with the Prince was caught napping. He woke up to find that his false teeth were frozen into the solid block of ice that had been water the night before. He had to take the tooth glass to the kitchen of the house where he was staying, and thaw it before he could even articulate his emotions adequately.

Riding in a fast car from the scene of the sport to the station gave the Prince an indication of what winter would be like in the prairies, where the wind from the north sweeps down unresisted, and with such a force that it seems to go right through all coats, save the Canadian winter armour of "coon coat" or fur.

Brandon and Portage la Prairie, two determined little towns, gave the Prince a snow welcome. The weather kept neither grown-ups nor children away from the liveliest of greetings. They were attractive halts in a run that took the Prince to Winnipeg.

In Winnipeg we appreciated the virtues of central heating, for the wind made the whole universe extraordinarily cold. Up to this I had considered central heating a stuffy subject, and I am yet not fully converted, for though there are those who say it can be controlled quite easily, I have yet to meet the superman who can do it.

All the same, steam heating has its virtues. On those cold days in Winnipeg we lived in a world that knew not draughts. It was almost a solemn joy to sit in a bath, and to feel that though half of one was in hot water, the other half was also comfortable and not the prey of every devilish current of icy air such as sports itself in those damp refrigerators, the British bathrooms. Naturally, since we are staying in a Canadian hotel of the up-to-date kind, a bathroom was attached to our bedroom as a mere matter of course. But if we had had to wander Anglicanly along corridors in search of a bathroom we should still have been draught free, for central heating deals with corridors, and stairways, and halls and lounges with one universal gesture.

Not merely in so fine an hotel as the "Royal Alexandra," but in the private houses and the "apartments" (English--"flats"), central heat and good bathrooms are items of everyday--though many Canadians burn an open fire in their sitting-rooms for the comfortable look it gives.

These things are not merely for comfort, but they are, with the hardwood floors, the mail chutes in "apartment" houses and the rest, part of the great science of labour-saving, which the whole of America practises.

One realizes the need of labour-saving when one sees in a theatre vestibule the following notice:

"ALL CHILDREN NOT LEFT WITH THE MATRON MUST BE PAID FOR"

As nurses are rare, and servants are rare, the Americans have to organize themselves to simplify the task of housekeeping.

The "apartments" are compact and neat, arranged for easy handling. The rents are not cheap. One very pleasant little "apartment," "hired" by a newly-married couple, was made up of three rooms, a kitchen and a balcony. It was in the suburbs. The rent was thirty-five dollars a month, say eighty-four pounds a year, for a flat, which, under the same conditions (rates included) could be obtained for thirty-five pounds a year in England in pre-war days. For this, however, central heating and perpetual hot water are included. My friend told me that his electric light bill came to three dollars a month, and his gas bill (for cooking) to rather less than that. In Calgary a friend of mine had a pretty "apartment" even smaller in a suburban district, was paying about ninety-six pounds a year over all, _i.e._, rent, light and gas (central heating being included). Most of these "apartments" have an ice house (refrigerator) attached, blocks of ice being left on the doorstep every morning, just as the milk is left.

Winnipeg is an attractive town to live in. It has plenty of amusements, including several good theatres and music halls--fed, of course, mainly from American sources. Mrs. Walker, whose husband owns the Walker Theatre, told me that Laurence Irving and his wife acted on their stage just before sailing on the ill-fated _Empress of Ireland_. She went up to his dressing-room to say "Good-bye" to him, the night before he left, and in answer to her knock he suddenly appeared before her, dressed in black from head to foot, for the character he was playing that night. His appearance filled her with dread--it seemed to her, as she looked at him, that something terrible was to happen. Both Laurence Irving and his wife were, however, in excellent spirits. Canada treated them royally, and they were going back home full of optimism, confident that the play that Laurence Irving was then finishing--one dealing with Napoleon--was to prove the greatest success of their careers.

We met at Winnipeg, also, a number of the brilliant men and women journalists whose energy and brains are responsible for the many fine papers that focus in this city. We had met such companions of our own dispensation in other cities, in Ottawa, Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto and Quebec. They were not merely keen and accomplished craftsmen, but their hospitality to us was always of the most delightful generosity.

The Princess visit to Winnipeg was undertaken to give him the opportunity of saying _au revoir_ to the West. At the vivid luncheon he gave in the attractive Alexandra Hotel to all the leaders of the West, men and women, he insisted that it was _au revoir_, and that so well had the West treated him, so attractive was its atmosphere, that he meant not merely to return, but to become something of a rancher here in the "little place" he had bought in Alberta. He spoke of the splendid spirit of the West, and the magnificent future that was the West's for the grasping, and he left on all those who heard him an impression of genuine affection for the people and the land with which his journey had brought him in contact.

He himself left the West a "real scout." It is a mere truism to say that his personality had conquered the West, as it had won for him affection everywhere. His straightforward masculinity and his entire lack of side, his cheerfulness and his keenness, his freedom from "frills," as one man put it, had made him the friend of everybody. I heard practically the same expressions of real affection from all grades, from Chief Justice to car conductors. I heard, I think, but one man pooh-pooh, not so much this universal regard for the Prince, as a universal enthusiasm for something royal. A labour-leader, who happened to be present, administered correction:

"That chap's all right," he insisted, and his word carried weight. "I saw him in France, and there's not much that is wrong with him. If you're as democratic as he is, then you're all right."

The brightest of dances, a game of squash rackets, and the Prince left, undaunted by the snow, for week-end shooting. On Tuesday, October 14th, he was in the train again, travelling East, in the direction of the Cobalt mining country, buoyed up by the prophecy of the local weather-wise that the cold snap would not endure, but would be followed by the delightfully keen yet warm weather of the "Indian Summer." The local weather-wise were right, but it took time.