The Project Gutenberg EBook of Canada the Spellbinder, by Lilian Whiting
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Title: Canada the Spellbinder
Author: Lilian Whiting
Release Date: July 13, 2020 [EBook #62632]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CANADA THE SPELLBINDER ***
Produced by Al Haines
[Frontispiece: SALMON FISHING IN THE FAR WEST (MORICETOWN, BRITISH
COLUMBIA)]
CANADA
THE SPELLBINDER
BY
LILIAN WHITING
WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS
IN COLOUR AND MONOTONE
LONDON & TORONTO
J. M. DENT & SONS LTD.
MCMXVII
_All rights reserved_
TO
CHARLES MELVILLE HAYS
whose foresight and energy, whose courage and genius lifted Canada's
pioneer railway to a very high level of service and success; extended
its operations from the Atlantic to the Pacific; opened thousands of
miles of new scenic beauties and prepared a region which will ere
long become a vital centre of population and strength to the British
Empire; and whose passing to the larger and more significant
activities of "the life more abundant" (by the tragic wreck of the
s.s. _Titanic_, April 15, 1912) has left an unforgettable breach in
the official family of the Grand Trunk System, an irreparable loss to
his associates, to whom he was a beloved, constant, and forceful
inspiration--this effort to interpret something of the romantic charm
and richness of the resources of the Dominion is inscribed by
LILIAN WHITING.
"The shadow of his loss drew like eclipse
Darkening the world. We have lost him; he is gone;
We know him now; all narrow jealousies
Are silent; and we see him as he moved,
How modest, kindly, all-accomplished, wise,
With what sublime repression of himself."
TENNYSON.
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. The Creative Forces of Canada
II. Quebec and the Picturesque Maritime Region
III. Montreal and Ottawa
IV. Toronto the Beautiful
V. The Canadian Summer Resorts
VI. Cobalt and the Silver Mines
VII. Winnipeg and Edmonton
VIII. On the Grand Trunk Pacific
IX. Prince Rupert and Alaska
X. Prince Rupert to Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle, and the Golden Gate
XI. Canada in the Panama-Pacific Exposition
XII. Canadian Poets and Poetry
XIII. The Call of the Canadian West
Index
List Of Illustrations
Salmon Fishing in the Far West (Moricetown, British Columbia) ....
Coloured Frontispiece
Falls on Grand Forks River
Cape Santé (Quebec), St. Lawrence River
Sunset on Canyon Lake
A Canoeing Party, Ontario
Dufferin Terrace, Quebec, from the Citadel
Harbour of St. John, New Brunswick
Interior of Notre Dame, Montreal
Montreal City
Ottawa--Showing the Parliament Buildings and Château Laurier
The Bigwin Inn, Lake-of-Bays, Ontario
Sir Arthur and Lady Conan Doyle and Party
View in Jasper Park
Cobalt, Ontario
Union Station and Fort Garry Hotel, Winnipeg
Mount Edith Cavell and Cavell Lake
Charles Melville Hays
Hudson Bay Mountain and Lake Kathlyn, Bulkley Valley
Indian Totem Pole, Alaska
Junction of Skeena and Bulkley Rivers, British Columbia
Indians spearing Salmon in Bulkley Cañon
Prince Rupert, British Columbia
Pure Bred Jerseys, Western Canada
Mount Robson, British Columbia
Looking towards Mount Munn from the Valley of Flowers
Bulkley Gate (150 feet high), Bulkley River
Canoeing on the Fraser River
Breaking Camp
Mount Robson, at a Distance of Ten Miles
Mount Robson Glacier
Farming in Shellbrook District, Saskatchewan
Threshing Wheat, Manitoba
After the Bear Hunt--Moose River Forks
{1}
CANADA THE SPELLBINDER
CHAPTER I
THE CREATIVE FORCES OF CANADA
"All parts away for the progress of souls,
All religion, all solid things, arts, governments--all that was or
is apparent upon this globe or any globe, falls into niches
and corners before the procession of souls along the grand
roads of the universe.
Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand
roads of the universe, all other progress is the needed
emblem and sustenance."
WALT WHITMAN (_Song of the Open Road_).
"The flowering of civilisation is the finished man, the man of sense,
of grace, of accomplishment, of social power--the gentleman. What
hinders that he be born here? The new times need a new man, the
complemental man, whom plainly this country must furnish.... Of no
use are the men who study to do exactly as was done before, who can
never understand that to-day is a new day."--EMERSON.
Against a background of bewilderingly varied activities which
projects from the earliest years of the sixteenth well into the
twentieth century and reveals itself as a moving panorama of
explorers, pioneers, adventurers, traders, and missionaries, there
stands out a line of remarkable personalities whose latter-day
leadership has largely initiated as well as dominated the conditions
of their time and the bequest of century to century. {2} Among these
were men, lofty of soul and tenacious of high purpose, who saw the
potential Empire in a vast and infinitely varied region which seemed
compact of unrelated resources. They were kindled by the growing
achievements of the constructive genius that had already projected
the wonderful steel highways carrying civilisation into the trackless
wilderness. This constructive genius bridged the mighty rivers;
created extensive waterways by means of canals connecting lakes and
flowing streams; in still later years this genius commanded the
cataracts and rapids to transform their ceaseless motion into motor
power for traction, and lighting, and other service of industrial and
economic value.
Each successive civilisation of the world, indeed, has shown an
unbroken line of exceptional personalities in whom has been focussed
the power of their epoch. They are the centres through which this
power becomes manifest in applied purposes and special achievements.
Civilisation itself is but the evolutionary representation of
successive conditions of increasing enlightenment. With each
succeeding age does man recognise more and more clearly his relation
to the moral order of the universe. The guidance of unseen destiny
leads him on, and in the records of no country is this working out of
the invisible design more unmistakably shown than in those of the
Dominion of Canada. This golden thread discloses itself to
retrospective {3} scrutiny through a period of three centuries of
time. "Man imagines and arranges his plans," says Leblond de Brumath
in his biography of Bishop Laval; "but above these arrangements
hovers Providence whose foreseeing sets all in order for the
accomplishment of His impenetrable design.... Nor must man banish
God from history, for then would everything become incomprehensible
and inexplicable."
The creative forces of an Empire include various and varying
agencies. If to the courage and heroism of the original discoverers
of the land too great recognition can hardly be given, yet to those
who have made these discoveries of value by bringing the resources of
a continent into useful relations with humanity recognition is not
less due. John and Sebastian Cabot, Jacques Cartier, Champlain,
Mackenzie, Fraser, and La Salle, were great pathfinders. But the
very greatness of their achievements required such men as James
McGill, Donald Smith (Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal), Sir George
Etienne Cartier, the Right Honourable Sir John Alexander Macdonald,
Sir Charles Tupper, and others, to stamp the early life of the
pioneer with the seal of statesmanship and education. Here were vast
areas of land; enchanting rivers, noble lakes, majestic mountains;
untold wealth in minerals and in the boundless potentialities of
agriculture; a marvellous country that is not only a land of promise,
but a veritable Promised Land. Yet are {4} its possibilities like
those of the ether of space, until it is rendered accessible to
restless, struggling humanity by the indomitable power of great
spirits, of wise and forcible leaders of progress who are perhaps the
pioneers of the physical world in a degree similar to that of lofty
beings in the realms unseen. It is such as they who create the
conditions which render all these immeasurable resources of practical
value to humanity. Such men as Sir William Cornelius Van Horne and
Charles Melville Hays; men who have courage as well as vision; who
see beyond all barriers; men who dare do that which weaker souls fear
to attempt--such men are as truly among the creative forces of their
country as are its original discoverers.
[Illustration: Falls of the Grand Forks River]
Little reference to these earliest years of Canadian history could be
made, even in the mere outline which alone is possible in these
pages, without a vivid recognition of episode and adventure so
startling, so often brilliant and romantic, so often tragic in its
heroic endurance and ultimate fatality as to illuminate the horizon
of history with a flame not unlike the dazzling lights in Polar
skies. There were miracle hours that condensed experiences as
significant as those often diffused throughout an entire cycle of
time. Mingled with these were the long, slow periods of patient
labour. It is not with sudden leaps and bounds alone that life
progresses, but by the steady, normal advance of persistent
endeavour. Nor can demands for improved {5} conditions be always
unmingled with some measure of judicious compromise. James Mill,
referring to his experiences while in the London office, engaged with
the affairs of India, says: "I learnt how to obtain the best I could
when I could not obtain everything. Instead of being indignant or
dispirited because I could not entirely have my own way, to be
pleased and encouraged when I could have the smallest part of it; and
when that could not be, to bear with complete equanimity the being
over-ruled altogether." Something of this philosophy the makers of
Canada were compelled to accept. The incomers from France, the
incomers from Great Britain, represented two distinct, even if not
unfriendly nations. There were differences of race, of language, of
creed. There were differing convictions as to institutions and laws.
Until the Confederation the interests of the people were largely
local rather than united. The unifying of a country of such enormous
geographical extent and including such vital differences among its
widely scattered inhabitants, must always prefigure itself as one of
the signal feats in the statesmanship of the world.
The very magnitude of the resources and the infinite riches of Canada
presented themselves in the guise of difficulties and obstacles to be
conquered. Nature provided the vast systems of lakes and rivers; but
these required vast schemes of engineering construction to render
them of fullest service as continuous waterways. The broad rivers
{6} must be bridged. Triumphs of construction have arisen, such as
the Victoria Jubilee Bridge across the St. Lawrence at Montreal, a
marvellous feat of engineering, and the splendid steel arch bridge
over the Gorge of Niagara. Again, in the interests of
transcontinental transit, the mountain ranges, whose peaks seem to
pierce the sky, must be overcome. Unmapped tracts of almost
impenetrable forests; wastes of rocks, and swamps, and the
treacherous muskeg; or immense plains, still inhospitable to the
destined tide of settlers, must all be subdued in the interests of
the advancing civilisation and the development of a country bordering
upon three oceans with an extent of coast-line exceeding that of any
other country in the world. Then there were incalculable mining
possibilities, precious metals, copper, iron, coal; there were
unlimited resources of lumber, but the trees must be felled, and
there must be railways or waterways to transport the timber. Canada
offered water-power enough to turn the wheels of all the
manufactories of Europe, but this power was useless until harnessed
by the constructive genius of man. Another valuable asset was the
pulpwood, the vastness of which suggested this country as the very
centre of the pulp and paper manufacturing industry; but between the
thousands of acres covered with white spruce trees, and the lakes and
rivers contiguous ready to furnish the power, what marvels of
mechanism must be duly constructed to bring {7} the pulpwood and the
water-power into service of man. As an indication of the proportions
to which this industry has already grown it may be cited that for the
fiscal year ending on June 30, 1916, the Canadian pulp print
papermakers shipped to the United States alone seven hundred and
ninety-four and a half millions of pounds, an increase of one hundred
and eighty millions over the amount shipped to the States in the
preceding year.
Here, indeed, was a country rivalling any other in the world in the
largess of nature, but whose every aspect was a challenge to the
constructive enterprise of man. Nature, with unsurpassed lavishness,
presented the raw material; it rested with man to stamp it with
value. Thus the stimulus to industrial and commercial activities was
second to none other in the history of nations.
These were the conditions that confronted, as well as rewarded, the
early discoverers and pioneers. Did some prescience of all this
potential wealth awaiting the centuries to come drift across the
ocean spaces and touch minds sensitive to its impress?
"The Future works out great men's purposes."
John and Sebastian Cabot were impelled by a destiny as unrevealed to
them as was that of Columbus. Each bore a magic mirror turned
forward to reflect the promise of the future. In the hand of each
was carried the lighted torch. It was passed {8} from each explorer
to his successor. Cartier, who navigated the St. Lawrence to Quebec
and then on to Hochelaga (the name given to the primitive Indian
village on the site of which now stands the stately and splendid city
of Montreal), carried the lighted torch still farther, and passed it
on to Champlain who, three-quarters of a century later, came to found
a trading-post on the island of Montreal--"La Place Royale" it was
then called, the picturesque mountain that rises in the midst of the
modern city of to-day having been named by Cartier "Mont Royale,"
from which is derived the present Montreal. There followed La Salle,
Marquette, Joliet, and others. Sieur de Maisonneuve consecrated the
site of Montreal as the first act of his landing. It is little
wonder that the visitor to this entrancing city to-day feels some
unanalysed and mystic touch pervading the air, something that must
forever haunt and pervade his memories of stately, magnificent
Montreal. No other city on the continent has this indefinable
element of magic and of charm.
The seventeenth century was an almost unbroken period of bold and
daring adventure and of missionary activities. All over the world,
at this time, was there manifested the passion for exploration. It
prevailed over the entire continent of Europe. It recorded its
progress on the new continent of North America.
The discovery of Hudson Bay has been placed by {9} some statisticians
as early as 1498, when it is surmised that Cabot may have reached it;
but the absolute and authentic date still lingers somewhat in the
region of conjecture and mystery. It was in 1607 that Henry Hudson
is known to have first seen it as he sailed in search of the North
Pole. Intrepid adventurer! He found, not the goal of his quest,
but, instead, that "undiscovered country" we shall all one day see.
"Hudson's shallop went down in as utter silence and mystery as that
which surrounds the watery graves of those old sea Vikings who rode
out to meet death on the billow," says a Canadian historian. Hudson
Bay became a centre of intense interest to all the exploring
navigators. Admiral Sir Thomas Button sailed in search of Hudson, or
of some tidings of his fate. He returned without the knowledge he
sought for, but with much information regarding all the western
coast. Still later came Foxe and James. In 1631 Foxe discovered a
fallen cross which he judged had been erected by his predecessor, the
English Admiral, and he raised it and affixed an inscription and the
date.
An organisation that was pre-eminently one of the creative forces of
Canada was that of the Hudson's Bay Company, which traces its origin
to a voyage of adventure made by two Frenchmen, Pierre Esprit de
Radisson and Menart Chouart sieur Degroseillers, who were allured by
rumours of the "inexhaustible harvest of furs" that awaited
enterprising traders. Baffled for the time by {10} obstacles that
seemed insurmountable, they returned to England to ask the assistance
of King Charles II., and in 1666 was formed a company that included
Prince Rupert (a cousin of the king), the Duke of Albemarle, the Earl
of Craven, Sir George Carteret, and other noblemen and merchants, as
the incorporators, to whom, in 1670, the king granted a charter to
comprise "the whole trade of all the seas, bays, rivers, and sounds,
in whatever latitude, ... and territories of the coasts which are not
now actually possessed by any of our subjects, or by the subjects of
any other Christian prince or state." In the following year two
vessels were sent out within a short period and there sprang up a
group of trading posts. Radisson remained for life in the service of
the Company.
Against the living background of Canadian history in all its varied
activities, no one contributing factor stands out with such
prominence as that of this Hudson's Bay Company which, for two and a
half centuries, dominated the country and whose commercial importance
played so large a part in her development. Let no one mistake the
purpose of the Company, however, as one inspired by purely
philanthropic or patriotic ardour. The dominant aim was by no means
primarily that of the development of the new and almost unknown
country. The servants of the Company were not braving the terrors
and hardships of the wilderness on exclusively altruistic
inspirations. On the contrary, it was {11} their policy to conceal
the existence of the vast riches of the land and to represent it as
inaccessible to any one beyond Indians and hunters. Even as late as
the comparatively recent date of the decade of 1860-70, the pupils in
Canadian schools were taught that all the Hudson Bay region was
uninhabitable; that it was a desolate "No Man's Land," so to speak,
covered with ice and snow. No effort to change this impression was
made by those concerned with the administration of the Company, but,
rather, they were more or less untiring in assisting to confirm it.
They had their occult reasons for not being averse to the
representation of the entire North-West as being quite valueless for
the purposes of civilisation. The impression, if not the conviction,
was well authorised that the climate rendered the region quite
impossible for habitation; and the region in which now lies the most
wonderful wheat-growing belt of the world, and whose fertility under
cultivation renders it capable of supporting a population as large as
that of the entire United States at the present time (estimated at
one hundred millions), was assumed to be a region only capable of
sustaining wild animals, Indians, and the most hardy hunters and
traders. Now it is traversed by three transcontinental railways
which have opened an immense business of travel and traffic; and
beside dozens of prosperous young towns and villages it contains
Winnipeg with its quarter of a million people; Edmonton, Calgary,
Saskatoon, {12} Regina; the important new terminal seaport of Prince
Rupert, and the still older and more developed port of Vancouver; to
say nothing of the scenic grandeur through all the Mount Robson
locale, that has captured the enthusiasm of the world. The tradition
of the rigours of climate has become so popularised that even as late
as the summer of 1915 a New England tourist faring forth for a trip
through the great North-West of Canada was urged to provide himself
with furs and rugs enough to fit out an expedition to the Polar
regions. As a matter of fact the only embarrassment encountered as
to temperature was that of trying to discover sufficiently thin
clothing for Winnipeg in the opening September days, where the
sunshine poured down just then with a flood of radiance that fairly
rivalled that of a summer in the Capital city of the United States.
Yet, even in all this splendour of sunshine and discomfort of heat,
that wonderful quality of the Canadian air was not wanting--a
peculiar invigoration which one who has visited the Dominion misses
for a long time after leaving the country. Edmonton repeated the
same wonderful luxuriance with the same delicious coolness at night;
and the journey on through the magnificent mountain scenery to Prince
Rupert had the exquisite temperature of an Italian spring.
The Hudson's Bay Company, however, was not organised on the basis of
a bureau of publicity for {13} the general benefit of the country and
of posterity. Their aim was the gaining of wealth and it was one
signally successful. Immense quantities of valuable furs were
shipped homeward every year; the shares in the Company became more
and more valuable as magnificent dividends were continually declared.
They controlled a territory exceeding an area of two million square
miles. It was peopled only by the Indians. Yet all through the
seventeenth century run the records of that self-sacrificing and
heroic band, the Jesuit missionaries, whose devotion to the Christian
ideal led them on with a faith and fervour that consecrates their
memory.
[Illustration: Cape Santé (Quebec), St. Lawrence River]
The ambition of the Company to extend their trading posts still
farther and farther inland incited still more explorations into the
unknown North-West. They builded better than they knew, for while
their aim hardly went beyond that of increasing their own revenues,
the results were inevitable factors in the development of the
country. That this is true is not in any wise, as has already been
said, to be regarded as in the nature of philanthropic or patriotic
zeal. They regarded the country and its wealth in the light of a
personal perquisite for their exploiting and financial benefit. They
circulated the information that this was a "Great Lone Land," as
undesirable as it was inaccessible. From motives of self-interest,
if not entirely those of humanity, the Company had treated the
Indians with kindness and justice and had thus made the British flag
something {14} to be held in respect by the tribes. Thus they had
built up a strong reliance for themselves of friendliness on the part
of the dusky natives. One of the eminent historians, George
Bancroft, of Boston, U.S.A., calls attention to this attitude of the
Hudson's Bay Company, saying that both the officers and the servants
of the corporation "were as much gentlemen by instinct in their
treatment of the Indians as in their treatment of civilised men and
women." Thus, whenever they should wish to exclude, as enemies,
those who came among them representing any other enterprise, they had
strong supporters and coadjutors among the tribes. "No trespassers
allowed" was practically their motto. Explorations, or the extension
of trade, were alike vigilantly discouraged. "Notwithstanding the
efforts put forth by the Company," says one chronicle, "it was
realised that unless the active co-operation of the Indians could be
secured, white trespassers would inevitably make inroads into the
trade of the Territory. Steps were therefore taken to unite the
tribes against all whites not officially connected with the Company.
The means adopted were worthy of the object desired, but could only
have been the outcome of an extraordinary disregard of the ordinary
amenities of life. The Indians were told that these outsiders would
rob and cheat them in the barter of their furs." Still, the very
prominence of the Company was its own enormous and inevitable
advertisement, so to speak, of untold {15} resources connected with
the mysterious regions, and both trade and further exploration were
stimulated.
The first quarter of the eighteenth century had but just passed when
(in 1727) Pierre Gaultier de Varennes (Sieur de la Verendrye), who
was stationed on Lake Nipigon, became imbued with ardour regarding
the great question of the day, the North-West Passage; and in 1731
he, with his three sons and an armed force of about fifty men, left
Montreal for the West, reaching the shores of Lake Superior within
two months, and pushing on--trading and exploring meanwhile--through
the all but impenetrable wilderness until he sailed up the Red River,
and in the autumn of 1738 established a fort near the site now
occupied by the city of Winnipeg.
The great profits accruing to the Hudson's Bay Company inspired
rivalry, and in 1795 its keen competitor, the North-West Company, was
formed under the leadership of Simon M'Tavish, a Scottish Highlander,
of "enormous energy and decision of character." Still another
company came into being, organised by two merchants of Montreal, John
Gregory and Alexander Norman McLeod, which during its brief life was
known as the X Y Company, to whose purposes was attracted a young
Scotsman who was destined to be immortalised by his remarkable
explorations and his discovery of the great river which perpetuates
his name. This young man was Alexander Mackenzie, who came to Canada
in 1779, and immediately entered the fur trade. He became {16}
connected with the North-West Company and the X Y Company and left
for the west to take charge of the Churchill River district. Later,
owing to personal dissensions and conflicts of the Company with
another of its agents, Mackenzie was commissioned to the Athabasca
district, and it was there, apparently, that his project of
exploration to the Arctic Ocean took possession of him. From the
Indians he heard traditions of a mighty river like that of the
Saskatchewan, and in June 1789 he had crossed Athabasca Lake and
reached the Peace River which "displayed a succession of the most
beautiful scenery," as he recorded. He journeyed to Great Slave Lake
after encountering immense difficulties--rapids, long portages,
boiling caldrons, and treacherous eddies that threatened to engulf
his barque; but at the end of the month he found himself on the river
that now bears his name, and on the 12th of July he first sighted the
Arctic Ocean. Then there intervened a visit to England before his
second expedition in 1792. His memorable inscription on a rock, on
the coast near Vancouver: "Alexander Mackenzie from Canada by land,
22 July, 1793," tells its own story. It is not, however, with the
long-familiar details of his expeditions that we are here concerned,
but with the recognition of their result as one of the constructive
factors of the Dominion. The story of these undertakings, of the
adventurous journeys of the many explorers, inclusive of Hudson, La
Verendrye, Mackenzie, {17} Henry, Thompson, Fraser, Franklin, is a
part of the story of Canada. To trace out the contributing causes
and the influences investing each of these would be to throw a new
illumination on the inter-relations of the factors that have sprung
into activity over a long series of years as involved in the
evolution of a wonderful country whose great destiny impresses the
civilised world.
[Illustration: Sunset on Canyon Lake]
The opening years of the nineteenth century were marked by a noble
project that apparently ended in failure at the time and yet whose
significance is not lost. In every worthy purpose, cosmopolitan,
national, or individual in its scope, there is the germ of vitality,
and dying in one form it is resurrected in another. Truly of such
purposes may be said, in the sublime words of the apostle, that they
are "sown in weakness, but raised in power."
"The good, though only thought, has life and breath."
Such a project was that of the Earl of Selkirk to assist numbers of
his poorer countrymen by founding a colony for them in the Hudson Bay
Territory, where they should find homes and engage in pleasant and
profitable agricultural work. With Lord Selkirk it was not the
dazzling opportunities of the fur trade that impelled his journey,
when, in 1815, he with Lady Selkirk and their son and two daughters
landed in Montreal, having already sent out three parties of his
country people to the tract of land whose area was that of a hundred
and ten {18} thousand square miles which he had purchased in the Red
River Valley. His scheme for the betterment of these people included
free transportation and temporary support for the settler until he
could begin to make his own way, together with a free gift of the
land. It was in 1810 that Lord Selkirk had matured his scheme and
purchased the land; but on arriving with his family he found himself
assailed with charges of conspiracy, condemned to the payment of
fines that he contended were totally unjust, and confronted with a
strange network of alleged misrepresentation and accusation. It
would seem that his chief desire was that of generous and noble aid
to his countrymen. His experience is not without its parallel
pervading all history in the lives of men whose single-hearted aim
has been to make the world a better place. Who shall penetrate the
spiritual mystery in that he whose efforts are noble and unselfish
not infrequently confronts the same results as might properly belong
to him whose objects were quite the reverse of these? "And that all
this should have come to you who had meant to lead a higher life than
the common, and to find out better ways," exclaims George Eliot's
Dorothea to Lydgate, in the great novel of _Middlemarch_; and the
heroine adds: "There is no sorrow I have thought more about than
that--to love what is great and try to reach it and then fail."
Lord Selkirk took this experience greatly to heart. However much to
be regretted is the failure of {19} sufficient courage and faith to
enable one to stand strong, "and having done all, still to stand,"
before a flagrant injustice or the pain of misconception, it is yet
hardly to be wondered at that a sensitive spirit, conscious of its
own integrity and unmeasured good-will, falters and faints before so
unfortunate an experience. To the Scottish Earl it seems to have
been more than he could endure. In 1818 he returned to Scotland, and
soon after died, at the early age of forty-nine, in Pau, having gone
to southern France in search of renewed health. The Red River
settlement that he founded was in the neighbourhood of the present
city of Winnipeg.
Historians differ, however, as to the motives of Lord Selkirk, some
authorities taking a view quite opposite to the one cited here, and
gathered, too, from trustworthy sources. The truth may lie somewhere
between the two extremes. It is as unnecessary as it would be futile
to endeavour to invest every leader of a movement with a golden halo
like that of the mediæval saints of the Quattrocentisti. The world's
progress has always been carried forward by mixed forces and both
ideas and institutions owe their vitality to complex aims and to a
variety of conditions.
In the spring of 1821 the Hudson's Bay Company and the North-West
Companies united. This marked an epoch in Canadian progress; and in
1838 occurred another event, unnoted as of any significance at the
time, yet which proved to be the advent of one of the {20} greatest
of the creative forces of Canada. "Any one watching keenly the
stealthy convergence of human lots," says George Eliot, "sees a slow
preparation of effects from one life on another, which tells like a
calculated irony on the indifference or the frozen stare with which
we look at our unintroduced neighbour. Destiny stands by sarcastic
with our _dramatis personæ_ folded in her hand." Surely the arrival
at Montreal of a Scottish lad of seventeen years of age could hardly
be held as bearing any direct relation to the future development and
the cosmopolitan importance of Canada. Yet what a romance of history
lies between the unnoticed landing of Donald A. Smith, in 1838, and
the solemn grandeur of the scene in Westminster Abbey, in January of
1914, when representatives of the Crown, with the peers, the
statesmen, the scholars, the social leaders of London; with a great
concourse drawn from all ranks, met for the memorial service for
Donald Alexander Smith, first Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal. "The
memory of ten centuries of England's illustrious dead haunted the
scene."
Donald Smith crossed the Atlantic in a small supply craft belonging
to the Hudson's Bay Company and took up his duties as a clerk in one
of the most unimportant branches of the service. He made the 1200
miles' journey from Montreal to Labrador. He was stationed in a
place where only once a year could any tidings reach him from the
outside world. Was he lonely in this exile? He himself said that he
{21} never knew what the feeling of loneliness was. He had books; he
had thoughts. Such a psychologist as the late William James, who to
his profound grasp of psychology and philosophy added the unmapped
power of spiritual divination, would have found, in these long,
solitary years of meditation and thought, the key and clue to the
lad's future greatness. In the infinite and unmeasured force
generated by thought-vibrations lies power that may transcend a
universe. "Mind with will is intelligent energy," declares a recent
scientific writer, who adds: "intelligent energy is enough to supply
a cause for every known effect within the limits of the universe."
Sir Oliver Lodge has recently said that life is simply "utilised and
guided energy to produce results which otherwise would not have
happened." If the distinguished British scientist had been seeking a
phrase to define the life of Donald Alexander Smith he could hardly
have created one more felicitous. That the results that were called
into activity for a period of over fifty years, of momentous
importance to Canada, by the causes set up by the young Scotsman,
matters that would never have happened but for him, is evident to all
who study closely the modern history of the Dominion. Lord
Strathcona's biographer, Mr. Beckles Willson, introduces the reader
to a long record of interesting details of the early years of Donald
Smith, all of which contributed to the development and the {22}
nurture of the marvellous qualities which rendered him one of the
most determining of the forces that shaped the destiny of Canada.
The brilliant John Jay Chapman, writing of the remarkable man who may
be said to have initiated the abolition of slavery in the United
States, remarks of his subject: "Garrison plunged through the icy
atmosphere like a burning meteorite from another planet." Not thus,
however, did Donald Smith enter on his great career. Exiled in a far
and frozen region, his service in Labrador lasted for thirteen years
"with no companionship save a few employees and his own thoughts,
learning the secrets of the Company, how to manage the Indians, and
how to produce the best returns."[1] Thirty years had passed since
his landing in Canada when, in 1868, on the death of Governor
Simpson, of the Hudson's Bay Company, whose office was in Montreal,
Mr. Smith was appointed by the London office to succeed him. He was
then in his forty-ninth year. Born on August 6, 1820, he died on
January 21, 1914, in his ninety-fourth year. The forty-five years
which preceded his passing from the physical realm were the years in
which Canada entered on her great destiny, and of this momentous
period Lord Strathcona might well have said, "All of which I saw and
part of which I was." His devotion and loyalty to the Empire was as
intelligent and wise as it was ardent and powerful. The history {23}
of Canada and his personal biography during those years might almost
be interchangeable terms. The Hudson's Bay Company, although
organised and conducted on a financial basis, was the soul of loyalty
to the Empire. The splendid courage, endurance, and persistence that
characterised its entire tenure entered into the very structure of
the nation.
[1] _Lord Strathcona; The Story of His Life_. Beckles Willson.
Methuen and Company. London, 1902.
About the middle of the nineteenth century a man who has been termed
"an uncrowned king" by some of the more enthusiastic, if not more
discriminating of his followers; a man who was, at all events, an
influential political leader and who especially espoused the cause of
Upper Canada, opened a crusade for the acquisition on the part of the
government of all the territorial rights of the Hudson's Bay Company.
This man was George Brown, the founder and at that time the editor of
the Toronto _Globe_. He was a member of Parliament, and he was also
one of the band of great editors in which the journalism of that
period found its most potent expression. This order of editorial
influence was represented in the United States by Horace Greeley of
the New York _Tribune_; Charles A. Dana of the New York _Sun_; and
Samuel Bowles of the Springfield (Massachusetts) _Republican_, whose
spirit and influence continue to manifest themselves in the high
quality of that journal to-day. This dominant editorial influence
still survives in the States, in the {24} personality of the
brilliant and splendidly-endowed Colonel Henry Watterson, the
proprietor and editor of the Louisville (Kentucky) _Courier-Journal_,
and it was evident in the New York _Evening Post_, under the conduct
of Horace White, whose death (in September, 1916) was a signal loss
to the American press.
There is ample authority for the assertion that George Brown's
newspaper "had an influence on the populace such as no other had in
Canada." It was under his administration of the Toronto _Globe_ that
this journal issued its first bugle call regarding the desirability
that Canada should possess herself of all the wide sweep of the
Hudson Bay territory of the west. This demand aroused from the
Company a storm of emphatic declarations that the "Great Lone Land"
was not worth the acquisition of the state; that its climate and its
conditions rendered it forever useless to the interests of
civilisation. Through nearly two decades had this agitation
continued; but in 1869 the Government purchased the vast holdings of
the Company at the price of three hundred thousand pounds and the
further grant of one-twentieth of the fertile belt of land, and of
forty-five thousand acres in addition adjoining various
trading-posts. This transaction threw all the North-West into an
excited state and Governor MacDougall was sent out to Fort Garry to
still the commotion. Then came on the Rebellion incited and led by
Louis Riel, the story of which is so familiar {25} to all readers of
Canadian history. The conditions became disastrous and alarming, and
Governor MacDougall was not permitted to move on to his appointed
post. Under these circumstances Donald A. Smith decided to go
immediately to the Red River country. He was not the man to hesitate
when he heard the call of duty. He was at once invested with the
authority of Commissioner by the Dominion Government, and the story
of his success, and of the end of the first rebellion under Louis
Riel, is too well known to require extended allusion. Soon after
this Mr. Smith was elected to Parliament as the first representative
from Manitoba. It was to his astute knowledge, his skill as a
tactician, the great confidence that he inspired, and to his ability
as a Parliamentarian that the successful settlement of the affairs
between the Government and the Hudson's Bay Company was primarily
due. Meantime the problem of the consolidation of the Provinces
became more evident as one that focussed the interest of the time.
The epoch-making solution of this problem came in 1867 when the
Dominion was formed.
Canada was fortunate at this critical time in having a Premier of
remarkable qualities, who was the man for the hour. John Alexander
Macdonald (afterwards knighted and invested with the honour of a
Grand Cross of the Bath) was a Scotsman by birth whose family removed
to Canada in his early childhood. With the sturdy qualities of his
race he {26} thus united the influences of Canadian environment and
training, the family arriving in Canada in 1820, when the future
Prime Minister was but five years of age. In his earliest youth, as
a lad of fifteen, circumstances forced him into the world to earn his
living. Life itself became his university. He developed in his
first contact with the world that initiative, that instant perception
of the situation and the facility to meet it, which so signally
distinguished his statesmanship in after years. The family had
landed at Quebec and journeyed to Kingston where they settled and
lived until the death of the elder Macdonald in 1841, leaving the
household in straitened circumstances. The Ontario of those days was
very different from the smiling and prosperous Province of the
present time. All Upper Canada (as it was then known) was covered
with dense forests, and all means of transportation were primitive
and slow. "Railways, of course, were unknown," writes Sir Joseph
Pope, the authorised biographer of Sir John Alexander Macdonald, "and
macadamised roads, then looked upon as great luxuries, were few and
far between. The climate, too, was more severe than, owing to the
cultivation of the soil, it has since become." In 1842, at the age
of twenty-seven, Macdonald made his first visit to England, largely
for the purpose of purchasing his law library. Quoting a letter
written by him at this time to his mother, his biographer (Sir Joseph
Pope) adds:
{27}
"Forty-two years passed away and again John Alexander Macdonald stood
within the portals of Windsor Castle; but under what different
circumstances! No longer an unknown visitor, peeping with youthful
curiosity through half-open doors; but as the First Minister of a
mighty Dominion, he comes by the Queen's command to dine at her
table, and, in the presence of the Prime Minister and of one of the
great nobles of England, who alone have been summoned as witnesses of
the ceremony, to receive from the hand of his Sovereign that token
and pledge of her regard which, as such, he greatly prized--the
broad, red riband of the Bath."
An omnivorous reader and endowed with a winning and impressive
personality, Macdonald at once became a significant and an
influential figure in Canadian life. Among the creative forces of
his adopted and beloved country he holds a place never to be
forgotten. He first took his seat in the Assembly of 1844; the new
Parliament met in Montreal in the November of that year. Complex
problems confronted the sessions of that period, in that Canada felt
she had no potential voice in the administration of affairs. Every
measure of the Assembly must secure the approval of the Legislative
Council, the members of which were appointed for life by the
governor-general, and added to this the measure must then receive the
royal assent before it became operative. The conditions were also
aggravated by the large majority of Canadians of French descent,
sensitive and high-spirited, who rebelled against the invariable
English rule of an English governor-general. These questions and
other agitations made the political life on which {28} the young
member entered one of peculiar intricacy. The Canada of that day was
one of undeveloped resources and of internal dissensions. It
consisted only of those territories which we know as the Provinces of
Ontario and Quebec. Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward
Island were in the same position politically as Newfoundland is in
to-day, while the North-West provinces were a wilderness. With
Macdonald's rise to prominence in the political world the idea of
confederation began to engage the attention of all those who had at
heart the good of the country. The far-seeing leader of the
conservative party began a campaign for the confederation of Quebec
and Ontario with Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward
Island, believing that the best course was to bring about this
preliminary union, leaving it open to extension if time and
experience should prove it to be desirable. Owing to the closeness
of party divisions, successive governments vainly attempted to carry
on the work of the country. It was a critical period, and the manner
in which a solution for the national troubles was found will remain
one of the most striking episodes in the history of the times.
Sir John Carling was the means of bringing together the conflicting
elements. He was a power in the affairs of Ontario and an
enthusiastic supporter of Macdonald, while he also enjoyed the
friendship of the Honourable George Brown, who was recognised as the
Liberal leader of Upper {29} Canada, and who, for many years, had
been the opponent of Macdonald. But the veiled and shrouded figure
of Destiny hovered near. Did she bear a magic wand, concealed but
potent? At all events she ordained that Brown and Carling should
journey together from Toronto to Quebec on their way to attend a
meeting of the Legislative Council. In their discussion of public
affairs George Brown remarked: "Macdonald has the chance of his life
to do great things for his country and these can only be done by
carrying confederation." To this Sir John rejoined: "But you would
be the first to oppose him." To Carling's surprise Brown replied:
"No, I should uphold him as I feel that confederation is the only
thing for the country." What a significant moment was this in the
history of the future Dominion! Forces, determining but unseen, were
in the air. The finely-balanced mind of Sir John Carling instantly
grasped the importance of this psychological moment. "Would you mind
saying to John A. Macdonald what you have just told me?" eagerly
asked Sir John. "Certainly not," replied George Brown, and his
companion lost no time in bringing the two leaders together. The
result is well known to all; the coalition ministry was framed and
carried to a successful conclusion the great task with which it had
been entrusted.
From that time until his death on June 6, 1891, the energy, the
genius, the influence of John Alexander Macdonald were among the most
potent of {30} the creative forces of Canada, and for the proud
position that the Dominion holds to-day she is largely indebted to
this great leader. One of the most important of his powers for
national service lay in his ability to co-operate with strong men.
When the movement for confederation was initiated the situation was
extremely critical, and it was to the personal influence of the
eminent French-Canadian, George Etienne Cartier (who was born in St.
Antoine, Quebec, in 1814 and who died in 1873), that the support of a
reluctant Province was won for the unification of Canada. Cartier
was educated at the Seminary of St. Sulpice, Montreal; he was called
to the bar, and as a follower of Papineau he fought against the Crown
in 1837, and for some time after sought refuge in the United States.
On the restoration of peace he returned to Canada and resumed his
practice of law, attaining a high position, and subsequently he
became the attorney for the Grand Trunk Railway. He was elected to
Parliament in 1848 as the recognised leader of the French-Canadians
and when, in November of 1857, John Alexander Macdonald succeeded
Colonel Taché as Premier of the Province of Canada, Cartier was
invited to a place in his cabinet. Later he was created a baronet of
the British Empire. From 1858 to 1862 the Cartier-Macdonald ministry
held its onward course, though steering its way through quicksands
and tumult.
To Sir George Etienne Cartier is ascribed valuable {31} aid in the
construction of the Grand Trunk Railway and the Victoria Bridge,
important influence in the promotion of education, and signal service
in bettering the laws of Canada. When, in 1885, a statue to his
honour was unveiled in Ottawa, Sir John Macdonald in his address said
of him: "He served his country faithfully and well.... I believe no
public man has retained, during the whole of his life, in so eminent
a degree, the respect of both the parties into which this great
country is divided.... If he had done nothing else but give to
Quebec the most perfect code of law that exists in the entire world,
that was enough to make him immortal...." To Lord Lisgar the Premier
wrote of Cartier: "We have acted together since 1854 and never had a
serious difference. He was as bold as a lion, and but for him
confederation could not have been carried."
Another of the strong forces in constructive statesmanship was Sir
Charles Tupper, who, almost unaided, engaged in the great struggle to
overcome the opposition of Nova Scotia, his own Province, to the
scheme of confederation. In this famous group of colleagues, Sir
John Alexander Macdonald, Sir George Etienne Cartier, Sir Charles
Tupper, and the Honourable George Brown, conspicuous ability and
wonderful directive power were united with an optimistic courage, a
depth of conviction in the success of important measures for the
country, that rendered them practically invincible among the creative
forces of Canada. Nor could any mention {32} of this progress be
complete that did not include the name of Sir Samuel Leonard Tilley,
many years Minister of Finance, a worker for confederation, whose own
distinction of character and tenacity of purpose determined the
attitude taken by his Province of New Brunswick in her wavering and
tardy decision, only crystallised into adherence by the patriotic
zeal of Sir Leonard. "It is perhaps the highest of all tributes to
the genius of Macdonald," says George R. Parkin,[2] "that he was able
to draw to his support a group of men of the weight and worth of
Cartier, Tupper, and Tilley, and retain through a long series of
years their loyal devotion to him as a leader. Each in his own way a
commanding personality, they were of one accord in following
Macdonald with unswerving fidelity through all the vicissitudes of
his fortune. Along with him they grasped and held tenaciously the
idea of a great and united Canada forming an integral part of the
Empire, and to that end devoted the work of their lives."
[2] "Sir John A. Macdonald," _The Makers of Canada_. Morang and
Company, Limited, Toronto.
An interesting and graphic picture is preserved, in the literature of
the time, of the visit of Sir John Macdonald, in 1879, to Lord
Beaconsfield at Hughenden. He was received as Canada's most
illustrious citizen and leading statesman. After dinner Lord
Beaconsfield conducted his guest to the smoking-room at the top of
the house which was hung with {33} old portraits of former Premiers
of England. The host and his Canadian guest exchanged fragments of
personal reminiscences and experiences, and Lord Beaconsfield greatly
interested Sir John by his brilliant description of some of the
notable personalities whom, in former days, he had met at Lady
Blessington's, who had a matchless gift for drawing around her the
celebrities of her time. In bidding Sir John good-night, at the end
of a long and delightful evening, Lord Beaconsfield said: "You have
greatly interested me both in yourself and in Canada. Come back next
year and I will do anything you ask me." The next year duly came,
but Beaconsfield had passed away, and Gladstone was the Premier. It
was during this visit that the classics were discussed somewhat at
length between Beaconsfield and his guest, the Premier of England
dwelling, in the most fascinating manner, upon the poets,
philosophers, and orators of Greece and of Rome.
[Illustration: A Canoeing Party, Ontario]
For nearly fifty years the influence of Sir John Macdonald was a very
pillar of the Dominion. He represented a united Canada that forms so
important an integral part of the mighty British Empire. Lord Lorne
said of him that he was "the most successful statesman of one of the
most successful of the younger nations."
On his death Canada paid him her highest honours. Queen Victoria,
most gracious of Royal sovereigns, wrote a personal letter of
condolence to Lady Macdonald, and caused her to be elevated to the
peerage {34} with the title of Baroness Macdonald of Earnscliffe. An
impressive memorial service for the dead Premier was held in
Westminster Abbey, and later his bust was placed in St. Paul's and
unveiled by Lord Rosebery. Almost every large city in the Dominion
is adorned with a statue of Sir John Macdonald.
One of the most important services to Canada, on the part of the
Premier, had been his early recognition of the immeasurable
possibilities of the North-West. As early as in 1871 he saw that the
construction of a railway to the Pacific coast was a matter
absolutely essential to the Dominion for the development of this
portion of the country. In April of that year, while Sir John
Macdonald was absent in Washington (U.S.A.) attending the proceedings
of the Joint High Commission, Sir George Cartier moved a resolution
in Parliament for the construction of such a road. The resolution
was supported by Sir Alexander Galt and was carried. Sir Hugh Allan
and Donald Smith had long held commercial relations, and the
extensive and accurate knowledge of all this region that Mr. Smith
had acquired was of inestimable value to the project. Into this
intricate problem attending the decision and the subsequent
fulfilment of it in the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway
(completed on November 7, 1885) entered a group of important and
forceful men. The magnitude of the work offers material for many
chapters of Canadian history. Among this group {35} of dominant
personalities stands out that of William Cornelius Van Horne
(afterwards knighted) and who was particularly well characterised by
James Jerome Hill who said of him: "There was no one on the whole
continent who would have served our purpose so well as Mr. Van Horne.
He had brains, skill, experience, and energy, and was, besides, a
born leader of men." The completion of this great highway was
another of the events that closely linked the life of Canada's great
Premier with the forces that were creating her destiny. The first
through transcontinental train on this line left Montreal on June 26,
1886, for its journey of 2905 miles through what was then an almost
trackless wilderness. On the completion of the road Queen Victoria
had sent a telegram characterising the achievement as one "of great
importance to the British Empire."
The Grand Trunk was, however, Canada's pioneer railway and it was the
first railway in the British Empire outside the United Kingdom. One
of the leading factors in the varied group of the creative forces of
Canada, it is one of the monumental illustrations of her claim to
foresight and enterprise in thus early recognising that the art of
transportation goes before and points the way for advancing
enlightenment. The transportation service is, as one of the eminent
officials of this line has said, "the advance guard of education."
In 1914 the Grand Trunk System, led by the vision {36} and foresight
of Charles Melville Hays, completed its transcontinental lines.
President Hays had predicted that the Grand Trunk would be able to
handle the harvest of 1915, and his prediction was realised. His
forecast for the future included steamer lines from Prince Rupert to
Liverpool, by way of the Panama Canal, and further extension of lines
to Australia, Japan, China, and Alaska. In fact, the Canadian
prevision of unmapped possibilities of commerce that would be
afforded by means of the new canal that thus connected two oceans was
far more alert and engaging than that of the United States.
Beside the great enterprises involved in the conquering of nature,
there were others, not less important, that contribute to the
building up of human life. The claim of industry and economics is
not greater than the claim of intellectual development, of
scholarship, of that knowledge and refinement that leads to the
highest social culture of a nation.
When the Honourable James McGill of Montreal left at his death (in
1813) a large bequest to found the university that bears his name he
added another to the galaxy of Canada's benefactors and creators.
Mr. McGill had amassed large wealth in the fur industry, and the
college, after encountering some years of difficulty, entered in 1885
on an era of prosperity that has continually increased as the years
have gone by. This era of prosperity was largely due to the securing
as Principal a gifted and {37} remarkable young man, John William
Dawson, who is now so widely known to the world of science and
scholarship as Sir William Dawson. For thirty-eight years he served
as Principal of McGill. He found it a struggling college with less
than a hundred students. He left it with more than a thousand
students and with from eighty to ninety professors and lecturers.
Finding it with three faculties, he doubled that number, and as
within fifteen years he recognised the necessity of higher education
for women, there was opened (in 1883) the Donalda Department,
generously endowed by Lord Strathcona, which has since developed into
the Royal Victoria College. Lord Strathcona gave, first and last,
many millions of dollars to McGill; Sir William Macdonald gave to the
Engineering department one million, including with this the schools
of physics and chemistry, and he also equipped the Macdonald College
at Saint-Anne-de-Bellevue which is incorporated with McGill. Peter
Redpath, a public-spirited merchant of Montreal, presented the museum
that bears his name (now rich in collections) and he also gave the
Library building which houses, for McGill, the largest library in
Canada save that of Parliament. These liberal gifts of Mr. Redpath
were still further increased by Mrs. Redpath's generous
contributions. The unsurpassed opportunities at McGill place her
graduates on equality of scholarly prestige with those of Oxford and
of the other great universities of the world. No {38} consideration
of the creative forces of Canada could fail to include this
inestimable contribution that makes for nobler life offered by McGill
University.
To the intellectual development and liberal culture of the Dominion
the universities of Toronto and of Laval render priceless aid. The
former is noted somewhat at length in a subsequent chapter. Laval
University, founded in Quebec in 1852, by the Quebec seminary, dates
back, through that institution, to its founder, François de
Laval-Montmorency, the first Bishop of Quebec, who landed in Canada
in 1659, and founded the seminary in 1663. This great
French-Canadian university, fairly enshrined in sacred tradition and
archaic history, is an object of pilgrimage to all visitors in
Quebec. To its vast resources of scholarship it adds the
perpetuation of the name of one of the most remarkable prelates that
the world has known. A son of the crusaders, a true successor of the
apostles who shared the life of Jesus Christ, a man of boundless
charity, of intrepid heroism, of a life so consecrated to the Divine
Service that its passing from earth in the May of 1708 cannot efface
the vividness of his image nor dim the brightness of the atmosphere
which enshrines his memory, he was deeply concerned with the
education of his people. Monseigneur Laval specified that he desired
that his seminary should be "a perpetual school of virtue." The Abbé
de Saint-Vallier of France bequeathed to this Seminary in 1685 the
sum of forty-two thousand francs, and {39} Bishop Laval himself left
to its maintenance his entire estate. The museums, lecture halls,
and the library of Laval University are open to visitors. It is rich
in historic portraits and in many fine examples of French art. On
the visit of the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII.) to Canada in
1860, the heir to the British throne founded the Prince of Wales
Prize, which has remained one of the features of the university.
In the equalisation of educational opportunities to an unusual degree
Canada is especially strong. While the fiftieth anniversary of the
consolidation of the Dominion will not be celebrated until July 1, of
1917, and while as a nation she is not yet half a century old, her
educational privileges are recognised as among the best in the world.
Not a single province is without its fully equipped educational
system. Free public schools, high schools, colleges, and
universities abound. There are already twenty-one universities in
Canada. The standard of instruction is very high; the schools of
applied science, law, medicine, and technical instruction are among
the best in the world. They offer all late modern appliances for
chemical, metallurgical, and electrical experiment: civil, mining,
and electrical engineering are offered with unsurpassed opportunities
for practice and research. The Royal Military College at Kingston
presents a complete course in Engineering and in all branches of
military science. The Royal Naval College at Halifax offers {40}
equally complete opportunities for naval training.
Not even the most fragmentary survey of the creative forces of the
Dominion could fail to emphasise the notable and beneficent work of
Archbishop Taché, who, born in Quebec in 1823, became identified with
the Far West in 1845, where he remained, an heroic and impassioned
figure, until his death, in 1894. The Archbishop's mother was a
daughter of Joliet, the explorer; the same intrepid spirit that led
this pathfinder on through the wilderness characterised the great
prelate in a remarkable degree. At the age of twenty-two he had been
admitted to the priesthood; he received his training in Montreal and
was, from the first, "stirred to the soul by missionary zeal"; he
eagerly embraced the call to the hardships, the most insurmountable
difficulties, of the pioneer missionary. He traversed the country
for four hundred miles around from St. Boniface (across the river
from Winnipeg) where he was stationed; his journeys were by canoe and
dog sledges; he encountered physical hardships which seem incredible
for human endurance. When the slender financial support of his
mission threatened to fail he pleaded that just sufficient revenue be
continued to provide bread and wine for the sacrament, saying that
for himself he would "find food in the fish of the lakes, and
clothing from the skins of the wild animals." In his later years he
was made the Bishop of Manitoba and he was present, a venerable and
honoured figure, on the opening of the first Assembly {41} of that
Province in 1870-71. Archbishop Taché was one of the nearer friends
and associates of Lord Strathcona, also when the latter, as Donald A.
Smith, was so long the dominating personality in the North-West. The
life and work of this great Archbishop of the Catholic faith are
forever bound up with the history and development of Manitoba. There
are other notable Catholic prelates, a remarkable group: his Eminence
Cardinal Taschereau, the first Canadian prelate to become a Prince of
the Church; Archbishops Bourget and Fabre of Montreal; Archbishops
Lynch and Walsh of Toronto; Archbishop Cleary of Kingston; and Bishop
Demers of Vancouver are all among the great religious leaders whose
influence for the general advancement of the people, as well as for
the progress of religion, has been wide and invaluable.
Bishop Strachan of Toronto, a priest of the Church of England, whose
life fell between 1778-1867, was a strong force both in church and
state. No servant of God within the entire Dominion has left a
nobler record. When (in 1832) the scourge of Asiatic cholera swept
over Canada, it was he who inspired courage, administered the
sacraments to the dying, and sustained the survivors. His aid, both
legislative and otherwise, to the cause of education, and his
activity in promoting all progress in Ontario, are among the most
precious records of that province. One passage from his personal
counsel may well be held in memory:
{42}
"Cultivate, then, my young friends, all those virtues which dignify
the human character, and mark in your behaviour the respect you
entertain for everything venerable and holy. It is this conduct that
will raise you above the rivalship, the intrigues, and slanders by
which you will be surrounded. They will exalt you above this little
spot of earth, so full of malice, contention, disorder; and extend
your views, with joy and expectation, to that better country."
Nothing in all religious advancement is more impressive than the
great work of the Methodist denomination in Canada. Their vital and
fervent spirit has kindled the zeal of the people with the flame of
the living coal on the altar. One of the remarkable contributions to
the lofty order of creative forces was made by the Reverend Doctor
Egerton Ryerson, the celebrated Methodist leader, and the organiser
of the Public School System of Ontario. In 1841 Doctor Ryerson
became Principal of Victoria College; in 1844 ne was appointed
Superintendent of Public Schools in Upper Canada, and he brought to
bear upon educative work the enduring impress of his ideals. "By
education I mean not the mere acquisition of certain arts," he said,
"but that instruction and discipline which qualify men for their
appropriate duties in life, as Christians, as persons in business,
and as members of the civil community." Doctor Ryerson lived until
the year 1882, and he thus was enabled to see much of the fruit of
his wise and untiring endeavour.
Although the Right Honourable Sir Wilfrid Laurier is still, happily,
dwelling among his countrymen {43} and lending to many notable
occasions the rare distinction and the prestige of his presence, the
gratifying fact that he is a factor in the life of the hour cannot
constrain one to fail to express the recognition of Canada's
indebtedness to his splendid services during her more recent past. A
native of Quebec (born in 1841) his unqualified devotion has been
given to the Empire without regard to restriction of race or
language. His political career as a member of the House opened
before he was thirty years of age; six years later he was called to
the Cabinet; and in June, 1896, at the age of fifty-five, he became
the Premier of the Dominion. When the Diamond Jubilee of Queen
Victoria was celebrated, one special feature was the invitation
extended to all the Prime Ministers of the British Empire to honour
it by their presence. Among these Ministers Sir Wilfrid was singled
out for many special attentions. He was distinguished by being made
a member of the Imperial Privy Council; he was appointed a Knight of
the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George; he was
invested with honorary degrees by both Oxford and Cambridge; he was
made an honorary member of the Cobden Club which awarded to him a
gold medal "in recognition of exceptional and distinguished services
to the cause of international and free exchange." Sir Wilfrid
Laurier visited President Faure and the President of the French
Republic named him as a Grand Officier of the Legion d'Honneur. {44}
In 1902 Sir Wilfrid was invited to the Coronation of Edward VII. and
his presence at this imposing ceremonial reflected distinction of the
highest order on Canada by his brilliant and impressive addresses
made on Imperial interests and affairs. England could not but
realise that in the Parliament of the vast country over the sea there
were orators who would add new lustre to her national eloquence and
splendid traditions.
Well, indeed, has Canada been called the country of the Twentieth
Century. To no inconsiderable extent the appliances that introduce a
new order of life have been either invented or first experimentally
considered in the Dominion. Indeed, as if already under the spell of
Destiny, these great modern miracles of communication--the railways,
telegraphs, and telephones will be forever associated with the name
of Canada; the country that cradled James Jerome Hill and Samuel
Rogers Calloway; in which William Cornelius Van Horne and Charles
Melville Hays gave the best years of their lives to building and
improving transportation facilities; in which Alexander Graham Bell
initiated his experiments and where he still makes his summer home;
and in which Thomas Alva Edison worked as a telegraph operator on the
pioneer railway, where he printed and issued _The Grand Trunk
Herald_, the first newspaper ever printed on a railway train.
In the light of the eventful period that has passed since that
momentous date of August, 1914, it would {45} seem to be a curiously
prophetic glimpse that rose, like a mirage on the far horizon, before
Sir Wilfrid Laurier when, in response to a toast at the banquet given
on June 18, 1897, by the Imperial Institute in London in honour of
the Colonial premiers, he said:
"... England has proved at all times that she can fight her own
battles; but if a day were ever to come when England was in danger,
let the bugle sound, let the fires be lighted upon the hills, and in
all parts of the Colonial possessions whatever we can do shall be
done to help her.... I have been asked if the sentiments of the
French population of Canada were those of absolute loyalty towards
the British Empire. Let me say ... it was the privilege of the men
of our generation to see the banners of France and of England
entwined together victoriously on the banks of the Alma, on the
heights of Inkermann, and on the walls of Sebastopol."
Seventeen years had but passed--from 1897 to 1914--when again the
banners of France and England were intertwined; and since that
fateful midsummer's day what treasure and sacrifice has not Canada
poured out with a courage and unflinching heroism for which words
furnish no adequate interpretation. The future of the Canadian
Dominion is seen, in the words of the poet, as "along the grand roads
of the universe." Her citizens realise that "To-day is a new day" and
the hand of Destiny is leading her on to exemplify to the world a new
and a more glorious civilisation.
{46}
CHAPTER II
QUEBEC AND THE PICTURESQUE MARITIME REGION
The Maritime region of Canada embraces only, strictly speaking,
Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick; although Quebec
is sometimes thought of as being included in this historic portion of
the Dominion, because of its geographical situation. The city of
Quebec has always been a favourite point of pilgrimage, and when Mr.
Howells, in his early youth, enshrined it in a half-romantic
narrative, as the scene of _Their Wedding Journey_, its attractions
were heightened by his facile and charming pen. The old French city
dates back to 1608, and its history, for more than a century and a
half, is really the history of Canada as well. All the maritime
provinces of Canada take a prominent place in poetic legend and lore
as well as in historical associations. When, in 1845, the poet
Longfellow wrote his tender and touching, though historically
misleading poem, Evangeline, the poem focussed the general attention
on Acadia (the modern Nova Scotia and New Brunswick), and particular
attention on the little village of Grand-Pré, which,
"... distant, secluded still,"
lying in the fruitful valley, invited many excursions {47} of those
who delight in pilgrimages to poetic shrines. For
"Plant a poet's word but deep enough,"
and woodland or hill, mountain or shore, are thereby enchanted. The
Maritime region, still vocal with the dreams and discoveries of
adventurous spirits; where all pledge and prophecy still linger in
the air; where impassioned endeavour, long-patient endurance, faith
to break a pathway through to untrod regions with some Ulysses to
inspire a faith that it is never too late to seek a newer world--how
wonderful is the spell this province weaves around the wanderer!
The noble St. Lawrence is a river that fairly fulfils the purposes of
a sea, with its kaleidoscopic shore lines, now bold and forbidding,
now dreamy and undefined with their fleeting, ethereal beauty; and
all the maritime land is pervaded by memories and associations of the
brave Cabot who first sighted Nova Scotia on June 24, 1497, the date
of the special festa of his native Italy--this festival of San
Giovanni, when all Venice is on the Grand Canal in the fleets of
gondolas; all Florence illuminated at night, a resplendent spectacle
from her surrounding hills and her background of purple amethyst
mountains; and when Rome, at night, disports herself in a thousand
ways upon the Campagna Mystica. It was a fitting date for Cabot, the
Venetian, to discover the new land. Voices unheard by others had
called to him; hands, from starry {48} spaces, beckoned and led him
on. What was there in the air but
"Winged persuasions and veiled destinies,"
and all the past that came thronging to meet all the future? Cabot,
Venetian born, English by adoption, was followed by several other
intrepid explorers, and not to insist too much upon chronological
order, what a group of wonderful names are associated with all the
province of Quebec! Cartier, Champlain, Frontenac; Sir Humphrey
Gilbert of the Elizabethan period, whose brave expedition was
engulfed by winds and waves and went down in the great deep off
Campobello.
"Alas, the land-wind failed.
And ice-cold grew the night,
And never more on sea or shore,
Should Sir Humphrey see the light."
But the high ideals these heroes brought did not go down nor become
extinguished in the storm-tossed waters.
"Say not the struggle naught availeth!"
The struggle always avails, and leaves humanity better and farther on
than the effort finds it. Then, too, came a band of holy women, the
Ursuline nuns, and the sacred zeal of the novitiate lent its vital
power. What is there not of spiritual nobility, of sublimest
self-sacrifice, of thrilling ideals, of a truer life, associated with
the early history of Canada? This is all a part of her spellbinding
power; it has {49} left its significance on the air, its impress in
wave and tree and flower; its exaltation in every heart.
Quebec city is now becoming an attractive winter haunt as well for
those who love out-of-door sports in the snowy carnival and who find
themselves so comfortably domiciled in the Château Frontenac. The
esplanade of Dufferin Terrace commands delightful views across the
St. Lawrence as far as the Isle d'Orleans. The Citadel, the
Parliament Buildings, the Ursuline Convent, the Basilica, and the
palace of the Cardinal; together with the libraries, Laval
University, the drives to the old battle-grounds, and the excursion
of twenty-one miles to the shrine of Saint Anne de Beaupré, provide
the visitor with abundance of interest.
The Ursuline Convent covers seven acres of ground in almost the
centre of the city of Quebec. It is the largest convent on the
continent, and it dates back to the July of 1639, when Marie Guyart,
and three other sisters of the Ursuline order, under the protection
of the Archbishop of Toulouse, were led by Divine guidance to the new
country of Canada and entered on their work. Marie Guyart, the
foundress of the convent, was the daughter of a silk merchant of
Tours, France, and her childhood is invested with legends similar to
those that are associated with the name of Catherine of Sienna. She
married one Joseph Martin, but at the age of twenty-three she was
left a widow, and soon became a novitiate of the Ursulines, rising to
be the {50} Mother Superior of her convent. At the age of forty,
through the instrumentality of the Duchesse D'Aiguillion, a niece of
Cardinal Richelieu, she came to "New France," and as recently as the
August of 1911 this remarkable woman was canonised by the Sacred
College of Rome and named as a saint under the title of Marie de
l'Incarnation. For thirty-three years she pursued an exalted life in
the convent of her founding, and died at the age of seventy-two, in
the May of 1672.
A much-sought shrine is that of Saint Anne de Beaupré, easy access to
which is gained by the electric railway, and in the summer it is a
pleasant local sail down the St. Lawrence. The legend runs that a
group of Breton mariners, in the early years of the seventeenth
century, found themselves almost engulfed in the river in the sudden
violence of a storm, and that they called upon _la bonne Saint Anne_
for deliverance; earnestly declaring that if she would save them they
would erect to her a shrine at whatever point she should bring them
to land, and that this shrine should be sanctuary forever. The good
saint was merciful to their entreaties, and guided them safely to
land. According to their promise they at once built a small wooden
chapel, very near a spring whose waters are claimed to possess a
miraculous power for healing. Since that remote time three larger
churches on this site have successively replaced each other, the
latest of which dates only to 1878. The primitive little chapel is
{51} still preserved, even as at Assisi the Portiuncula of San
Francisco is preserved near the magnificent church of Santa Maria
degli Angeli.
That marvellous ministry of San Francisco (who is more familiarly
known to us as Saint Francis of Assisi), which was initiated in the
thirteenth century, love and sacrifice being the supreme ideals, is
recalled to mind by many of the legendary incidents relating to Saint
Anne de Beaupré. The mystic pilgrimage to Assisi, the "Seraphic
City," is to some extent paralleled by the latter-day pilgrimages to
the shrine of Saint Anne. "Any line of truth that leads us above
materialism," said Arch-deacon Wilberforce of Westminster Abbey,
whose passing on to the life more abundant at the date of this
writing is but the larger inflorescence of his beautiful and
consecrated life--"any line of truth that forces us to think and to
remember that we are enwrapped by the supernatural, is helpful and
stimulating. A human life lived only in the seen and felt, with no
sense of the invisible, is a fatally impoverished life; a poor,
blind, wingless life." Such is the deep, perpetual conviction of
mankind. "The things that are seen are temporal; the things that are
not seen are eternal." The mystic union of the soul with God is the
one underlying and all-determining truth of life.
"Oh, beauty of holiness!
Of self-forgetfulness, of lowliness."
The latest church erected here as the shrine of {52} Saint Anne was
not completed until 1889, and it was then proclaimed a Basilica by
Pio Nono. It is one of colossal space and splendour, a remarkable
triumph of the Corinthian architecture, and between the two towers of
the front a superb statue of Saint Anne rises above the façade. The
interior is rich in paintings, sculpture, and mosaics, and on a
column of onyx is another statue of the saint in whose name the
church is built. It has also a Scala Santa, as has the vast Basilica
of San Giovanni in Rome. Thousands of suppliants annually visit the
shrine of Saint Anne. The church has a superb chasuble, the gift of
Anne of Austria and Queen of France, the mother of Louis XIV. On
either side of the entrance are huge piles of canes and crutches and
other discarded appliances left as visible testimonials that the
efficacy of prayer at this shrine enabled their possessors to
dispense with adventitious aid.
[Illustration: Dufferin Terrace, Quebec, from the Citadel]
A little book that is for sale by the Redemptorist Fathers, who
occupy the monastery connected with this basilica, gives much curious
information regarding Saint Anne. She is represented as being of the
tribe of Judah and of the royal family of David. Her husband,
Joachim, was of the same family, and of the same tribe, and the
Blessed Virgin was their only child. This little record further
narrates that the body of Saint Anne was originally buried in
Bethlehem; but that it was brought to France by Lazarus, who, after
being raised from the dead by the Saviour, became the first Bishop of
Marseilles. {53} The body of Saint Anne was then committed in burial
in the village of Apt, and when Charlemagne came to celebrate the
Easter feast--so runs the story--a man who was blind, deaf, and dumb
came to the ceremonies, and was instantly restored. The first words
he uttered were: "This hollow contains the body of Saint Anne, Mother
of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God." With the clue given
in these words the hollow in the rocks was then opened and the body
disclosed. This took place in the year 792, and from that remote
date to the present time the church of Saint Anne at Apt has been a
notable place of worship and of pilgrimage.
In the Basilica of Saint Anne de Beaupré there are some rich and
massive reliquaries of gold, inlaid with jewels, in which the holy
relics of the Saint are enclosed. All the gold and the jewels are
votive offerings left by grateful pilgrims to this shrine who have
been restored to health. It is said that there are literally bushels
of watches, chains, bracelets, rings, and all manner of personal
adornments that have been given in gratitude for blessings received.
Large gifts of money are also among the never-ceasing stream of
accumulating wealth. Twelve large chalices of gold, valued at ten
thousand dollars each, have been constructed from the rings and
personal articles left by the devotees. The church is fairly lined
with the evidences of grateful appreciation and the tributes of
enthusiasm. Each chapel {54} is a memorial gift of personal
gratitude; the altar, organ, and the electric light plant are also
personal gifts, and to these there is a rather curious story attached.
Over a long period of years the newspapers of the United States
printed advertisements of a widely-known patent-medicine lady who
brewed her concoctions, and either by means of their intrinsic worth,
or by the credulity of her customers, accumulated a large fortune.
It is said that this lady made a journey to the church of Saint Anne
out of curiosity, alone, but was suddenly stricken with a severe
illness; that she was cured by faith, and that, through the direct
influence of Saint Anne, she then became a Catholic and was baptised
in the Basilica. She at once abandoned her pursuit and expressed her
desire to devote her fortune to good works, in honour of the Saint;
and it was she who presented the altar, the organ, and the electric
light plant as well as other rich and valuable gifts.
Around the shrine of Saint Anne de Beaupré has grown up a village of
some two thousand people, with hotels that accommodate hundreds of
guests. There are two convents, several schools, a hospital
(providing for the accommodation of the poor who come to be healed),
and the monastery already mentioned. The Sisters of the Rosary have
also established an academy for young women; the Sisters of Saint
Francis have built a convent for {55} their order, and the
Redemptorist nuns have their own convent, while there is also a
seminary for the education of priests that has about three hundred
students.
The sermons of the Fathers who conduct the services in the Basilica
are preached in both French and English. Sixteen priests hold
continual devotions from four in the morning until nine at night.
The number of annual visitors is estimated as being nearly two
hundred thousand, representative of almost every nationality and
language. An American publicist asked one of the Fathers whether
every one who came was cured. "By no means," replied the priest;
"although the miracles are many." When asked how he accounted for
the failures the Father replied that he was not able to account for
them; that a failure might be due to lack of faith, or to some other
reason not disclosed to them. Faith is always to be reckoned with as
a condition through which alone the Divine energy can flow.
In the vicinity of Saint Anne there is some beautiful
scenery--Montmorency Falls, and other points of interest; Quebec,
too, is almost as much frequented in winter as in summer, the bracing
air being to many the very elixir of life.
Quebec Province has always kept a distinctive atmosphere of its own,
due largely to the preponderance of the French-Canadian element and
to climatic and topographical conditions. Advantages and {56}
privileges are constantly increasing. Macdonald College, at Saint
Anne de Bellevue, founded by Sir William Macdonald, admits women on
equal terms with men, and beside the School of Agriculture, it has a
training institution in Domestic Science and a school for training
teachers. The Department of Domestic Science is free to all Canadian
girls, and students from outside of Canada pay a small tuition fee
and a modest fee of some three dollars and a half a week for
board-residence. On this great college Sir William Macdonald's
initial expenditure was five millions of dollars. Five hundred and
sixty acres were secured for the farm, of which nearly four hundred
are devoted to the live stock and grain department, while the
remainder is divided between vegetable, poultry, and bee culture,
with a liberal share allotted to horticulture.
It is to Quebec that the middle west of the United States must look
for the early history of its own great explorers, missionaries, and
pathfinders; for it was from here that Champlain, La Salle,
Marquette, Joliet, and others fared forth on their pioneer journeys
through the Mississippi basin. Champlain died in Quebec on the
Christmas Day of 1635; but his burial-place is still undetermined.
The Jesuit College in which Père Marquette was domiciled ante-dated
Harvard by one year, having been founded in 1635. Here Marquette
made his plans for tours along the Great Lakes and down the
Mississippi, with the object of converting the Indians. This {57}
Jesuit College bears the signal honour of being the first institution
for higher education on the North American continent.
Something of the unique and exceptional character of the great
Cardinal Richelieu, whose tomb in the Pantheon in Paris is an object
of continual pilgrimage by the visitors in the French capital, seems
to invest Quebec, the city of which he was the real founder. The
convent and hospital of the Hotel Dieu were due to the solicitude and
enterprise of his niece, the Duchesse d'Aiguillion, whose interest
centred in the promulgation of religion and charities, and these
institutions are still preserved as memorial monuments to her
fervour. Quebec is pre-eminently a city of churches and the old
French Cathedral dates back to 1647. The interior is enriched with
several paintings of especial value, among them Van Dyck's
"Crucifixion," which was painted in 1630, and which, in the
Revolution of 1793, was purchased in Paris by the Abbé des Jardins of
Quebec, and presented to the cathedral. In the sacristy are two
large vaults filled with sacred relics. The vestments belonging to
this cathedral are superb.
An interesting church is the Anglican Cathedral, standing in the
centre of the city, to which the late King Edward VII. presented an
exquisite Communion service.
For the celebration of the tercentenary of Quebec, Cy Warman, that
genial poet (who has set so much {58} of Canada to music), wrote an
ode in the dialect of the habitant, of which two stanzas run:
"How you kip yourself so young,
Ol' Quebec?
Dat's w'ats ax by all de tongue,
Ol' Quebec;
Many years ees pass away,
Plaintee hair been turn to gray,
You're more yo'gker ev'ry day,
Ol' Quebec.
Som' brav' men hees fight for you,
Ol' Quebec;
Dat's w'en Canada she's new,
Ol' Quebec;
De brav' Wolfe, de great Montcalm,
Bote was fight for you, Madame,
Now we're mak' de grande salaam,
Ol' Quebec."
The traveller with an impassioned devotion to what he fondly calls
"the quaint" may be signally gratified in Quebec. In the business
section there will be found one street only four feet in width, quite
rivalling the famous _via d'Aura_ in Genoa, the "Street of
jewellers," where one can stand in a shop on one side and almost
reach his hand into the shop opposite.
The Legislative Buildings are as delightful as those in the other
capitals of the Provinces of Canada; and on the brow of the high
bluffs are a group of notable buildings of architectural beauty--the
splendid Château Frontenac, with its view of thirty miles up and down
the St. Lawrence valley; flanked by monasteries, churches, and
public {59} structures. The citadel that crowns the height is
extremely picturesque to visitors who have all the enjoyment, while
the Canadian Government has the doubtful felicity of keeping in due
repair this enormous fortification. It was begun two hundred and
fifty years ago, and reconstructed in 1823, on plans approved by the
Duke of Wellington, at a cost of twenty-five million.
It is not so well known that the Duke of Kent, the father of Queen
Victoria, was in command of the garrison of Quebec for several years;
that the old-fashioned building in which he lived was restored by his
royal daughter, and that his grand-daughter, the Princess Louise,
Marchioness of Lorne (later the Duchess of Argyle), when living at
Rideau Hall, Ottawa, during the period of the Marquis of Lorne's
Governor-Generalship of Canada, laid the foundation stone of this
restoration. Moreover, the Princess herself, with that versatility
of gifts which characterised Her Royal Highness, devised the
architectural plans for the new structure. Nor must the ancient
gates of the old wall of Quebec be ignored in any tribute to her
picturesque attractions.
Laval University in Quebec is a resort of many students, on account
of the numerous manuscripts of historical value deposited there, many
of them containing graphic narratives of thrilling experiences
undergone in the pioneer days of the Dominion.
To turn from Quebec to the Maritime Provinces {60} proper, they are
not by any means all scenery, or historic and legendary atmosphere.
Nova Scotia has large lumber interests, with fisheries, mineral
wealth, and great iron and steel manufactures; and New Brunswick has
ever been the home of the great timber and now of pulpwood so
precious in these latter days. Prince Edward Island has a vast
amount of red sandstone, and in the regions adjacent to the Bay of
Fundy an enormous yield of hay is a feature of resource. The
position of the Maritime Provinces is particularly noted by Mr. J.
Castell Hopkins, in an extended account of these regions, and he
speaks of the climatic peculiarities as one of the things with which
the inhabitants must reckon. They have a great coast-line in
proportion to their area. The extensive bays and harbours suggest
future increase of ocean commerce and travel. "Prince Edward Island
is in reality all seacoast," writes Mr. Hopkins, "for no matter how
far into the interior one may get, an hour's drive in any given
direction will almost invariably discover salt water. There are bays
which deserve special mention, one, the beautiful Bay de Chaleur,
between New Brunswick and the Gaspé Peninsula, without rock, reef, or
shoal in its ninety miles of length and forty-five of breadth, is
unique in its safety to navigators, while the Bay of Fundy, between
Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, with its mouth wide open to the
south-west, has features which are peculiar only to this {61} bay.
Lying funnel-shaped toward the great tidal movement from east to west
it gathers from the incoming tide a great deal of water that does not
belong to it, and then gradually compressing it between narrowing
shores, piles it up in places sixty feet in height, and this gives
rise to many peculiarities. This rush of tide twice a day has formed
enormous areas of marsh land and the process is still going on. The
great rise and fall of water in this bay has also a climatic effect
in it that keeps the air continually moving, and in the regions about
its head there is probably a cooler summer climate than can be found
anywhere in the same latitude."
[Illustration: Harbour of St. John, New Brunswick]
This peculiarity unfits the climate for fruit-raising, but is
especially favourable for live stock. The production of hay is very
large. The water supply is inexhaustible, and water-power is always
at hand to grind grain or to transform trees into lumber. The spruce
and fir are found here in great abundance. The Maritime Provinces
have practically no mountains, although a few heights approaching two
thousand feet may be seen. Of late years the people of this region
have been urged to develop agriculture to a greater extent. It is
already demonstrated that wheat, barley, oats, buckwheat, and corn
can be cultivated with profit; potatoes and carrots also thrive. In
New Brunswick, apples, pears, grapes, and cherries do well; and every
one knows of the apple orchards of Nova Scotia. The dairy industry
is one of the greatest sources of {62} revenue. Factories for the
making of cheese and butter are numerous; and quite apart from the
home market, the facilities for export to Europe and to the markets
of the South are one special factor in the conditions for profit.
Agricultural schools, a feature of the Dominion, have a particularly
good representative at Truro, and the Federal Government has
established experimental farms and stations throughout the Dominion,
while the provincial authorities have also organised similar
enterprises under their own jurisdiction. The Provincial Government
of Ontario, in particular, has devoted large sums to the
encouragement of agriculture, having three experimental farms, one of
these being devoted to fruit.
The Central Experimental Farm of the Dominion Government is at Ottawa
and there are branch farms at Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island;
at Fredericton, New Brunswick; at Nappan and Kentville, Nova Scotia;
at Saint Anne de la Pocatière, Cap Rouge, and Lenoxville in Quebec;
at Brandon, Manitoba; at Indian Head, Rosthern, and Scott,
Saskatchewan; at Lethbridge and Lacombe in Alberta; and also at
Agassiz, Invermere, and Sidney in British Columbia. Sub-stations
have also been established at Fort Vermilion in the Peace River
District, at Grouard near Lesser Slave Lake, Grande Prairie, and
Forts Resolution and Providence--all these being in northern Alberta.
At the Central Experimental Farm (at Ottawa) {63} much attention has
been paid to tests, as to the growing of oats, barley, varieties of
grass, and turnips and mangels. Nor has the culture of ornamental
shrubs and trees been neglected; and orchards of various kinds of
fruit have been planted with watchful care. Potatoes, too, have
received special attention as one of the most profitable products of
this region.
The picturesque attractions of the Maritime Provinces, moreover, tend
to make them each year a summer resort for increasing numbers of
people from the United States and elsewhere. Mail routes are well
extended; the postal service is good; and the improvements in
navigation have included the erection of many lighthouses on the
prominent headlands and in the harbours, so that the scenic panorama
at night witnessed by those on or near the coast is often most
fascinating, and the presence of these aids to navigation is full of
practical reassurance to those who travel by water.
Halifax is important not only as the capital of Nova Scotia, but as
the leading seaport of Canada on the Atlantic coast. It has a
magnificent harbour whose even depth is a joy to the navigator; it is
curiously free from extremes of temperature, the coldest day of one
average year being but eight degrees below zero (in February), the
warmest day falling in early September when the mercury registered
eighty-seven degrees. The evenings are always cool. The city has
its citadel, its rocky areas, {64} and beside its university
(Dalhousie) there are colleges doing various special work,
institutions for the defective classes, and several libraries, that
of the Institute of Science and History being consolidated with the
Library of Parliament. In the magnitude of its exports Halifax
stands next to Montreal. In its imports it ranks third, Montreal and
Toronto alone taking precedence of the Nova Scotian capital.
{65}
CHAPTER III
MONTREAL AND OTTAWA
Montreal, the metropolis of Canada; Ottawa, the Capital; each a city
supreme in a certain individual type; within three hours of each
other by rail, are closely inter-related, as are New York and
Washington in the United States. In England, and in France, the
Capital and the metropolis are one; but there are certain advantages
to a country when its legislative centre may be kept apart from the
engulfing life of its commercial metropolis. It was one of the
felicitous inspirations of Queen Victoria when she chose the little
village that had been known as Bytown (in honour of Colonel By, the
builder of the Rideau Canal) to be the capital of the Dominion and to
be known as Ottawa. For many years the parliamentary sessions had
alternated between Montreal and Quebec. The foundation stone of the
new Parliament Building was laid by the Prince of Wales (later Edward
VII.) in 1860, when the youthful prince made his memorable tour of
the Dominion and the United States. Some seven years later the first
parliamentary session was held in the new capital. A most
significant session it was, as it marked the date of the complete
{66} federation of all the Canadian Provinces then existent and
ushered in the Dominion.
It is an anomaly that Montreal, a commercial metropolis of the most
prominent and pronounced type, should be the one Canadian city that
most lends herself to idealisation. One treads her thoroughfares as
if under the spell of some Merlin of old, and sees the moving
panorama of life as if in distance and in dream.
One is led on by invisible hands; he is haunted by voices that for
centuries have been silent on earth; beckoned by some inconceivable
sign and signal in the dreamy blue of the distant horizon, in whose
shades phantom forms are vanishing.
"Flitting, passing, seen, and gone,"
baffling all recognition, yet beckoning by mystic flash from the
ethereal realm. Was it one of these vanishers, questioned the
observer, as a gleam passes in the distance, or was it instead a
flash from some electric circuit, to be scientifically accounted for?
One is steeped in bewilderment, for who indeed may interpret this
legend-haunted air? The life of the dead centuries presses closely
upon the life of the throbbing hour.
The visitor to Montreal instantly feels that anything might be
possible in the strangely fascinating atmosphere of this old-world
city. One has more than crossed the border line between the Dominion
and the United States; one has crossed the border {67} line of
centuries. Is it 1535 or is it 1915? The twentieth century clasps
hands with some dim historic period. The result is bewildering. All
modern beauty of vista, of groups of sculpture, or the architectural
magnificence of stately and splendid public buildings, of magnificent
private residences, of cathedral and churches, of great institutions,
of all latter-day conveniences and luxuries of life--all these, as
one would find in New York or Paris; yet with them, as an intangible
and invisible scenic setting, an impalpable atmosphere lingers, that
haunting impress of the far-away past, of historic associations that
persist with singular vitality; of great personalities who trod these
regions where now stretch away the handsome modern streets; of
intense purposes borne on the air, purposes that struggled to
fulfilment, or went down to temporary defeat in darkness and
tragedy--all these seem to throng about the visitor who for the first
time finds himself in Montreal.
Montreal may be entered by many ways, by land or by sea; but she is
very conveniently entered from New England.
It is a picturesque trip, that between Boston and Montreal, and as
the sun journeys onward to the horizon line the purple valleys and
the rose and amber that tinge the summits of the Green Mountains
afford luxurious contrasts of colour. In the late evening the
brilliant illuminations of Montreal at the west side of the Victoria
Jubilee Bridge, {68} spanning the St. Lawrence River, come into view.
In all Canada, perhaps, there is no more beautiful view than that of
Montreal lying under the white moonlight with Mount Royal in the
shadowy background, as seen from the railway train crossing the
Victoria Jubilee Bridge. The broken reflections of the moon are seen
in a wide track in the rippling, dancing waters in the middle of the
river, while every lamp of the long rows that border each side of the
bridge is repeated in the river below. The water front of the city
is all aglow with brilliant lights; backward, in the soft, receding
shadows, gleam points of light from myriad homes, and the long lines
of street lamps make illuminated avenues of the thoroughfares. The
moon, like a silver globe, hangs over Mount Royal, while floating
clouds imprison the radiance for an instant and then, relenting, set
it free again.
[Illustration: Interior of Notre Dame, Montreal]
Nor is the view by daylight less to be remembered. The mighty river
sweeps under the massive and majestic structure, while hundreds of
steamers, sailing vessels, steam tugs, craft, indeed, of every
description, are plying the waters of the St. Lawrence opposite the
harbour, and the vast city of Montreal in its transcendently
beautiful location at the base of the mountain completes a picture
never to be forgotten. For miles the harbour is lined with imposing
stone structures, the city's warehouses; and the numerous
manufactories, with their tall chimneys {69} sending out great
volumes of smoke, stretch away on the shores of the St. Lawrence as
far as the eye can reach, with their story of the wonderful
commercial metropolis of the Canadian empire. The picture is one to
enchain the artist and the social statistician as well. It is of
itself a study in economics and commercial development.
From an engineering standpoint this bridge ranks with the foremost
structures of contemporary achievements. The Victoria Tubular Bridge
which it replaced was built in 1860, and was at that time considered
the eighth wonder of the world; but it became insufficient to meet
the increase of traffic, and in October of 1897 the work of building
the present stupendous structure was inaugurated. The chief engineer
was Mr. Joseph Hobson, whose ingenuity and skill contrived to utilise
the tube of the old bridge as a roadway, on which a temporary steel
span was moved out to the first pier, the new structure being then
erected outside the temporary span. Begun in 1897, it was completed
in 1899, and during its construction the enormous traffic of the
Grand Trunk System was delayed very little, a remarkable fact when it
is realised that while the old bridge weighed nine thousand and
forty-four tons, the new one weighs twenty-two thousand tons, and
while the width of the former was but sixteen feet, the width of the
new bridge is sixty-six feet, with a height of from forty to sixty
feet, while the one it replaced was but {70} eighteen feet high. The
old bridge was built for seven million dollars, while the new one
cost two million pounds. The latter carries trains in both
directions at the same time, trains with two consolidation engines
and tenders, coupled, whose average weight is five thousand two
hundred pounds to each foot of length, with a car-load of four
thousand pounds to the foot; and a moving load on each carriage way
of a thousand pounds a foot. Nor is there any limit prescribed for
the speed of either railway trains or carriage and motor car
crossings.
This magnificent structure is, indeed, a marvel of the age. There
was a pretty scene that lives in memory which marked the date of
October 16, 1901. On the very spot where the Prince of Wales (later
King Edward) stood when he drove the last rivet in the old Victoria
Tubular Bridge in 1860, stood their Royal Highnesses the Duke and
Duchess of Cornwall and York (now King George and Queen Mary), with a
group of the officials of the railway, thus linking into succession
notable events separated by more than forty years.
As one of the wonderful achievements of the opening year of the
twentieth century, this bridge draws thousands of sightseers, every
year, to study its beauty and marvellous efficiency.
The scenes that Cartier saw fade from the eye, and one sees the solid
and splendid business quarters of Montreal, the charming and enticing
residential sections. Yet again an anomaly--a mountain in the {71}
heart of a city! And it is ascended, not by climbing over
perpendicular rocks, but by an easy gliding car that makes its ascent
as much a part of a pleasure drive as might be the drive in Hyde Park
or in the Bois du Boulogne. Mount Royal suggests in some way the
Monreale of Palermo, save that it is crowned by no cathedral, but
from its height of a thousand feet it offers a panorama of city and
river and wood and mountain ranges that is indescribable. What must
be the influence on a city's life of having such a resort as this?
It is in itself a prospect of unique and unrivalled beauty; it is a
playground for all forms of recreation, _al fresco_; it is spiritual
sanctuary. Again, the mystic vanishers beset one's footsteps, and
signals beckon from the vast azure sea of the air. The sunset
splendours glow and deepen over Westmount, Montreal's most beautiful
suburb, which climbs up the mountain side, with such views, such
charm of outlook, as one might well travel many a league to find.
It is again in that realm where nothing is but what is not, that one
is led to that haunt of the student and the antiquary, the Château de
Ramezay, built more than two hundred years ago by Claude de Ramezay,
then governor of Montreal. And if the American Congressional
Commission, comprising Franklin, Chase, and Carroll, who sat there
for days and nights arguing, pleading, insisting that Canada should
unite with the thirteen states in their rebellion and defiance of
King George, had prevailed, {72} had the Canadians yielded, what
would the course of history have been? How would its trend of events
have contrasted with the present? It is an interesting and curious
speculation not without historical value of its own.
The Antiquarian and Numismatic Society of Montreal acquired the
Château de Ramezay in 1895, after the building had passed through
several vicissitudes of ownership, to make of it an Historical
Portrait Gallery and Museum. One finds here a copy of the old
painting in oils of the first Ursuline Monastery in Quebec, which was
built in 1640, and destroyed by fire a year later, the original work
being in the Ursuline Convent in Quebec. In the foreground of the
picture is the house that was occupied by Bishop Laval in 1699. A
large number of interesting old portraits are here, the gifts of the
descendants or adherents of the sitters themselves; and
coats-of-arms, antiquities, documents, and other matters of interest
make up a valuable historical museum.
Montreal is enshrined in legendary lore. The Ile de la Cité, in
Paris, is hardly more entangled in mystic story than is the
metropolis of the Dominion. The tale that has come down the ages
that the martyred preacher Saint-Denis walked from the heights of
Montmartre, near Paris, to the Ile de la Cité, carrying his severed
head in his hands, does not more challenge one's confidence in its
authenticity than do many of the legends that haunt the {73}
imagination of the visitor in Montreal. About the middle of the
seventeenth century a permanent settlement was founded in La Place
Royale, near where the old Customs House now stands. Upon a
warehouse in close proximity is placed a tablet with an inscription
to the effect that on this site stood the first manor-house of
Montreal, which from 1661 to 1712 was the seminary of St. Sulpice.
The story of the settlement of La Place Royale is one of the mystical
tales to be found in the Relations des Jésuites, and it tells that
Jean Jacque Olier, an Abbé of France, suddenly experienced a deep
religious re-awakening, and gave himself with ardour to devising and
carrying out new projects in connection with the education and
training of young priests in St. Sulpice, Paris. Hearing of the
settlement on the island of Montreal he conceived the idea of
founding a mission there. The Sieur de la Dauversiére, of Brittany,
had conceived a similar project, and the two men met, by chance, as
strangers at Meudon. Although they had never seen each other before,
they fell into each other's arms and related their plans; they
obtained the aid of Madame de Bullion and other influential leaders
at court, and formed a society known as the Compagnie de Notre Dame
de Montreal. It is further related that about this time a young nun,
Jeanne Mance, had a vision in which she was called to go to the same
place and found a convent. A French writer records that then a
miracle took place: "God, lifting {74} for her the veils of space,
showed her while yet in France the shores of the island and the site
for Ville Marie, at the foot of the mountain." The little company
landed from the St. Lawrence on May 18, 1642, and at the first
religious service held, Father Vimont said, "You are a grain of
mustard seed that shall rise and grow till its branches overshadow
the earth. You are few, but your work is the work of God. His smile
is upon you."
Thirty years later the first streets were laid out in Montreal.
Religion and education went hand in hand. In 1721 the population had
increased to three thousand; steam navigation was initiated in 1809
by the second steamboat built in America (the first being that of
Robert Fulton which plied on the Hudson in 1807) and the steam river
traffic between Montreal and Quebec was thus begun. Navigation
across the Atlantic from Canada opened in 1831; the first railroad
was successfully started in 1836; and Montreal was incorporated in
1832. The Lachine Canal had been completed in 1825. From the first,
Montreal has been prosperous, and the present metropolis, rapidly
nearing a population of three-quarters of a million, with its nine
miles of river front, its fifty public parks, its admirable municipal
improvements in all modern appliances, stands as a monument to the
faith and devotion of its early founders led to the wilderness as by
vision.
Montreal has an Art Gallery, of Greek Ionic {75} architecture, built
of Vermont marble, the entrance hall lined with Bottichino marble,
with handsome staircases, and numerous salons. The collection of
pictures and sculpture is already an interesting one, and an annual
Loan Exhibition is made possible by the generous enterprise of the
citizens, many of the private collections being very rich in artistic
treasures. Nor is music neglected in Montreal. The organ recitals
at Christ Church Cathedral are famous far beyond the city.
Women's work in Montreal is a very prominent and valuable feature of
the city's life; including much social service work and the promotion
of guilds of various orders. The Canadian woman, indeed, plays an
important part in the entire life and progress of the Dominion. The
churches of Montreal include many of great beauty, such as Notre
Dame, St. James' Cathedral, Christ Church Cathedral, and others. The
Grey Nunnery, covering an entire block, and the Royal Victoria
Hospital are impressive buildings; and the banks and office
structures of the city are in many cases very imposing and seem to
duplicate the stately and impressive architecture of London.
There is no Canadian industry that is without representation in
Montreal markets, and her manufactures have a world-wide repute.
Montreal is the greatest grain port of America, taking precedence of
New York in the quantity of grain handled at her port.
{76}
Situated on an island thirty-two miles long and from four to eight
miles wide, at the junction of the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers,
Montreal is a seaport, although a thousand miles from the sea; for
the construction of a thirty-foot channel enables the largest ocean
vessels to sail to her docks. The Canadian canals enable the
steamers of the Great Lakes to sail to the harbour of Montreal, where
they transfer their cargoes to the ocean steamers. Montreal has,
indeed, almost unrivalled facilities by both rail and water. Her
harbour is under the control of a Board of Commissioners appointed by
the Government of the Dominion, and twenty-seven millions of dollars
had been spent in providing the most approved modern facilities up to
the beginning of 1916, with nine millions more for the same purpose
already available. Both her export and import trade have been
increasing so rapidly that even these liberal endowments are taxed to
the utmost.
With this commercial supremacy, the City of the Royal Mountain offers
educational advantages and scientific culture of the highest order.
The great value of the McGill University is not only the distinction
of its intellectual position, or the high quality of its work, but
also its guarantees of equality of educational opportunity to all
whose career comes within the sphere of its influence. The princely
endowments of the late Lord Strathcona and of Sir William Macdonald
provided a {77} foundation whose far-reaching value can hardly be
estimated, and the university has been singularly fortunate in the
character and endowments that have graced her staff of professors.
While McGill offers special training of the most advanced type in
preparation for the various professions, and for the acquirement of
technical qualifications, she has never yielded to any purely
utilitarian standards. She has held to the ideal that Education is
primarily for the soul herself, and not, as said the Grecian
philosopher of old, "to be undertaken in the spirit of merchants and
traders, with a view to buying or selling." It is the glory of
McGill that she sends forth, not only culture and trained skill, but
men prepared for the duties of citizenship, and the obligations, the
privileges, the responsibilities that await them as members of
society.
[Illustration: Montreal City]
McGill celebrated in 1904 her seventy-sixth anniversary, and in the
lofty and glowing address made on that occasion by Principal and
Vice-Chancellor Peterson, we find him saying--
"Manners are formed and personality is built up in the school of
life,--even the student school. Honesty, purity, reverence,--all the
moral virtues, in fact,--are just as important for the youth of the
country as are learning and scholarships. We want to have a
hall-mark for McGill men by which they may be known and recognised
the world over. It lies with our students themselves to set the
standard. 'How truly it is in man,' as Mr. Gladstone said to the
students in Edinburgh, 'in man, and not in his circumstances, that
the secret of his destiny resides. For most of you that destiny will
take its final bent towards evil or {78} towards good, not from the
information you imbibe, but from the habits of mind, thought, and
life that you shall acquire during your academic career. In many
things it is wise to believe before experience; to believe until you
may know; and believe me when I tell you that the thrift of time will
repay you in after life with an usury of profit beyond your most
sanguine dreams, and that the waste of it will make you dwindle,
alike in intellectual and in moral stature, beneath your darkest
reckonings.'"
There was one little incident in the scientific history of McGill
that is not without its special interest to-day in the safe-guarding
of human life. This was the first application of wireless telegraphy
to the operation of moving trains. Many people now believe that in
the wireless control of moving trains lies in the future the most
effectual protection against railway accidents. It was in 1902, just
six years after Marconi made his successes in England, that the
experiment was first tried. Professor Ernest Rutherford, now of the
University of Manchester, and Professor Howard T. Barnes, both of the
Macdonald physical laboratory of McGill, were invited to accompany
the American Association of General Passenger and Ticket Agents, who
in that year held a convention in Portland. The Grand Trunk provided
a special train from Chicago to Portland, and on this train, when
moving at fifty miles an hour, signals were exchanged with a given
station, and with the comparatively simple apparatus installed it was
found possible to keep the train in communication with a station for
a distance of eight or ten miles.
{79}
Ottawa was obviously created to be the capital of the Dominion. Her
interesting history, initiated by the choice of Queen Victoria, the
glory of whose long reign is a priceless possession of the Dominion,
attracts careful study; and the first view over the charming city and
its equally charming environment, is one to linger for a lifetime.
The majestic beauty of her Parliament Buildings
"Set on the landscape like a crown;"
towers and bastions and buttresses clinging to the height on which
they are built above the river; and the exquisite outline of the
turrets and high-pointed tower of the magnificent Château Laurier all
silhouetted against the western sky--
"Dim in the sunset's misty fires,"
offer a pictorial enchantment to linger in the memory. This young
city, with hardly more than half a century's life behind it, has made
itself a distinctive point in the States as well as in the Dominion.
"Have you seen Ottawa? Have you stayed in Château Laurier?" are
interrogations not unusual among us in the States when Canada is
discussed. Is Ottawa, with its artistic Château Laurier, the
Carcasonne of the newer world? For surely no guest of the Château
Laurier quite dreams of classing it among ordinary hotels; in it he
tastes a flavour of something a little apart, of life in an
artistically appointed palace which he enters from his railway train
through a brilliantly lighted marble {80} corridor reminding him of
the entrance to Bertolini's on the terraced hills of Naples. The
Ottawa Grand Trunk Station itself, built of white marble with its
pillared façade, is like a Greek temple, and the richly decorated
corridors and salons of the Château are as reminiscent of Venice as
of France. This magnificent hotel was of course named after Canada's
great statesman, the Right Honourable Sir Wilfrid Laurier, G.C.M.G.,
whose bust in marble adorns the entrance corridor. The decorations
are of the François I. period; the building is absolutely fireproof,
and the luxurious furnishing suggests that of private palaces rather
than of an hotel.
One of the most interesting places in Ottawa is the Archives, a
handsome stone building completed in 1906. The extensive records of
Canadian history under the able and courteous administration of Dr.
Arthur Doughty, Keeper of the Archives, are made accessible to
scholars and research students; and this building has become one of
the haunts of the savant. Numerous glass cases are filled with
valuable manuscripts and documents; historic souvenirs abound; the
library contains over twenty thousand books; and there are many
beautiful paintings and engravings in the various rooms, illustrating
important epochs in the history of the Dominion and also including
many portraits of value and interest.
[Illustration: Ottawa--showing the Parliament Buildings and Château
Laurier]
The Experimental Farm, three miles out of Ottawa, covers nearly five
hundred acres of land, and it is one of the chief attractions,
offering, as it {81} does, so much efficient instruction in the
seeding, culture, and harvesting of agricultural products, and the
care of live stock. Not far from this Farm is the Royal Astronomical
Observatory, built in Romanesque style, with a central octagonal
tower under a revolving hemispherical dome, containing the telescope.
The Observatory comprises an astronomical library, photographic and
lecture rooms, and a reading-room.
Ottawa is a growing city and is one of the beautiful capitals of the
American continent with the population now approaching the one
hundred and fifty thousand mark. There is much of old-world ceremony
in the city.
Rideau Hall, the residence of the Governor-General (at the time of
writing, the Duke of Devonshire, who succeeded His Royal Highness the
Duke of Connaught and Strathearn), is a rambling grey stone
structure, with ample grounds, comprising some eighty-five acres.
The gracious character of all ceremonial courtesies and hospitalities
at Rideau Hall are deeply appreciated by the people of the Dominion.
The Duke of Devonshire is the head of one of the greatest of English
families, the Cavendishes, and his appointment was a popular one with
Canadians. The Duchess of Devonshire is the daughter of a former
Governor-General of Canada, the Marquis of Lansdowne, and is no
stranger to Canada.
In an address given by the Duke of Connaught {82} before the Canadian
Club, his Royal Highness thus alluded to the position of
Governor-General of the Dominion:--
"I do not know of a prouder position for any Englishman to hold than
that of his Majesty's representative as Governor-General of Canada.
When my late brother, King Edward the Seventh, asked me to accept
this high post, an offer which was renewed after his death by our
present gracious Sovereign, I felt great doubt as to whether I could
do justice to so high a position. I had no doubt that I should be a
friend of the Canadians to-day as I was forty-three years ago. Since
I have been in Canada the last year and a half, I have felt more and
more that I have been able to gain the keen sympathy and, I venture
to say, the affection of the whole Canadian people. I am sure you
will believe me when I say that I never spent a happier year and a
half. To Englishmen who have not been in Canada, I say the sooner
they go the better. It is moving with leaps and bounds."
The Parliament Buildings occupy a commanding site near the park in
which the Château Laurier is built, thus sharing the advantage of all
the lovely grounds. The Rideau Canal, with its locks, joins the
Ottawa River in this park, under the very shadow of Parliament,
offering a picturesque feature as it passes to the Rideau Lakes. The
extensive Library of Parliament is, happily, open to the people, and
its generous hospitalities and rich resources have been of themselves
a signal attraction to scholars and literary workers. Fortunately
the greater part of this library escaped destruction in the fire of
1916 that partially destroyed the Parliament Buildings, although as
they will be restored with increased {83} facilities, the calamity
was not wholly evil in its results.
The Library of Parliament is built upon the lines of some of the
famous old chapter-houses in England attached to a noble cathedral.
The interior is circular, with a dome of forty-two feet in height, a
vaulted roof and rich carvings. It is an interior rich in the
revelation of all that is best in the realm of thought, all that
touches human interests and makes for those nobler ideals which are
the real resources of life.
The beauty of the Parliament Buildings in the early dawn has been
celebrated by an Ottawa poet, Duncan Campbell Scott:
"Fair, in the South, fair as a shrine that makes
The wonder of a dream, imperious Towers
Pierce and possess the sky, guarding the halls
Where our young strength is welded strenuously;
While, in the East, the star of morning dowers
The land with a large tremulous light, that falls
A pledge and presage of our destiny."
{84}
CHAPTER IV
TORONTO THE BEAUTIFUL
Toronto, city of education, culture, religion; a city of homes with
all that makes for the beauty and the happiness of family life;
Toronto, with her noble University whose enrolment of students
exceeds in number that of Oxford, her conservatories of music, her
impressive cathedrals and churches, her splendid Parliament
Buildings, and her classic Public Library with its numerous
branches--the capital of the rich province of Ontario, this beautiful
and inspiring city of Canada provides, indeed, an ample basis for the
enthusiasm and devotion of her citizens. No city could be more
advantageously located, seeing that she commands the blue waters of
Lake Ontario. Toronto is the centre from which radiate several of
the most picturesque excursions into the western continent. The
world-wonder of Niagara Falls is in her near neighbourhood. From
Toronto all the summer "playgrounds" of Canada may be reached with
the utmost convenience and readiness; or the tourist may make that
picturesque sail down the St. Lawrence; or, again, would he be like
Wordsworth's _Stepping Westward_, he may take train and embark at
Sarnia for the tour of the Great Lakes, ending at the terminal of
Fort William, {85} whence again he may wander into all the scenic
glories of Canada.
At Toronto the holiday-maker may board the luxurious train for
Huntsville, where he takes the steamer for that idyllic cruise by the
chain of lakes that lands him at the fascinating Hotel Wawa; or gives
him access to any one of a myriad resorts in the unique Lake-of-Bays
region. Algonquin Park, the Muskoka Lakes, all these "Highlands of
Ontario" which are attracting throngs of summer wanderers, are within
easy reach of Toronto, to all of which, indeed, the city is the
gateway, and the distributing centre as well. The playgrounds of the
Dominion are much appreciated by the great nation lying on her
southern border. New England and the West have long been
increasingly familiar with the allurements of a Canadian summer; and
now the southern states, on and near the Gulf of Mexico, are sending
out for information of the facilities for vacation sojourns amid the
parks and lakes and shining rivers of Canada. Those far-famed
Canadian resorts, comprising not only the Lake of Bays, Algonquin
Park, and Muskoka, but Timagami, Kawartha Lakes, French River, Lake
Nipissing, and Georgian Bay, all lie north of Toronto, and these
resorts, some of them over eighteen hundred feet above sea-level,
with their invigorating, balsam-laden air, are a revelation to the
visitor from the heated South.
The Southerner finds himself especially enthralled by Canada's long
summer days and lingering {86} twilights, with their ethereal and
almost unearthly beauty of amber lights and evanescent shadows, a
beauty that has hitherto been rather exclusively associated with
Scandinavia, the land of the midnight sun. What an hour for a
twilight paddle across some crystal lake, in turning homeward after
an idyllic day. Canada has been fortunate in keeping her wilds
singularly unspoiled, for practically only one railway line extends
into all these romantic regions, that of the Grand Trunk System,
which has been the means of the multiplication of delightful summer
hotels and rustic camps. These Canadian resorts (whose range of
prices is so moderate as to amaze the people from the States) are as
socially delightful as they are in scenic charm. They are
characterised by the refinement of courtesy and generous hospitality
that is the hall-mark of the Dominion.
Toronto is one of the most accessible centres of the North American
continent, being only three hours from Buffalo, one night from New
York and Boston, and fourteen hours from Chicago.
Does all this enumeration of her charms only have to do with getting
away from them? The citizen of this beautiful city on the lake will
assert that there is another equally spellbinding range of charms to
be enjoyed without wandering far away from Toronto itself.
The harbour of Toronto is one of the most beautiful of any of the
water-front cities. It has a rather {87} curious configuration
formed by a picturesque island of more than two thousand acres that
forms a species of breakwater. In the summer the waters near the
island are alive with craft. Every kind of sailing boat, canoes, and
yachts, as well as motor and steam launches, may be seen riding the
waves. The island itself is utilised in much the same fashion as
Coney Island in the New York harbour, as a resort for popular
amusement. With this inland sea of Lake Ontario at its doors, with
its fine architecture, its development and culture of the arts,
professions, and industries; with such picturesque treasure as that
of the Rosedale ravines, the Humber valley, the Don River, and the
gentle hills, Toronto is well calculated to be one of the embodied
inspirations of the Dominion.
It is claimed that there are more homes, each with its green lawn and
its garden--homes owned by their occupants--within the thirty-six
square miles that comprise Toronto than in any other city on the
American continent. Toronto is truly a thing of life in its
expansion. The construction of streets and buildings is in constant
progress and the residential limits are being carried many miles into
the country. Within the past decade the city has crossed two rivers,
marched up a hill, and clambered over two ravines, all of which give
the residential region an aspect of romantic beauty. The
architectural charm of the city impresses the stranger; especially
the cathedrals of St. James and St. Michael {88} and the University
of Toronto, that great Norman pile, dignified and with its old-world
atmosphere. Surrounding it are the colleges--Victoria, with its
Gothic dining-hall and residences; St. Michael's, Knox, and
Wycliffe. Soon Trinity will join the ranks of college settlements.
McMaster, the Baptist University, is at the northern edge of the
campus, and not far away are the great medical schools, the School of
Science, the Conservatory of Music, the University Library, the
Dental College, and the many college residences. The University of
Toronto is perhaps the largest English-speaking University in the
British Empire, and the year 1916 found two thousand five hundred of
her sons fighting for the Empire. The Royal Ontario Museum, with its
Oriental and Indian collection, lies to the north of the campus, and
the great General Hospital as well as a special hospital for children
are adjacent. Many of the churches are of real beauty--St. Paul's
Anglican, a structure which cost one and a half million dollars; the
Eaton Memorial on the hill; the Metropolitan Methodist, owning ground
estimated as worth over two millions; and the parish church of St.
James, with its tower over three hundred feet in height. The
Margaret Eaton School of Literature and Expression is an institution
of great value, attracting students from all parts of the Dominion.
As a theatrical and a musical city, Toronto shares with New York,
Boston, and Montreal many of the most noted dramas and {89} musical
entertainments. As a musical centre herself, Toronto ranks fourth
among the large cities of the continent; and she has an annual
average of four thousand musical students. Her own Mendelssohn Choir
is not only conceded to be the finest in America, but one of the best
in the world.
Nor are the graphic arts neglected in Toronto. There are already two
leading organisations, the Ontario Society of Artists and the
Canadian Art Club. A College of Art was founded in 1912; there is a
Women's Art Association, an Arts and Letters Club, which has issued a
very creditable Year Book of Canadian Art, as well as a Heliconian
Club, composed of women engaged in artistic and literary work, and
who, presumably, quaff the living waters of Helicon to reinforce
their energies.
In her Public School System, with an enrolment of thirty-five
thousand pupils, Toronto employs many of the most advanced
educational methods of the day.
If the visitor in Toronto were to ask for what is perhaps the most
really significant factor in the city's life, and one which is likely
to be missed by the surface observer, the answer would be that this
factor would be found in the Public Library System, so splendidly
administered by the Chief Librarian, George H. Locke. A Canadian, a
native of Toronto, Mr. Locke was allured for a few years by Harvard
University and the University of Chicago; but fortunately for his own
city, he has {90} chosen to devote himself to her development and
culture through the medium of library work, in a manner whose
original genius for relating literature to the needs of the people,
and more especially to the youth and the children, is making itself
felt in the Dominion as well as in the city.
In many aspects of his manifold and remarkably adjustable system, Mr.
Locke creates his own precedents. In any survey of the processes in
many of the noted libraries of the past, the chief aim, if not
regarded as the chief duty, of the keeper of books has seemed to be
that of protecting them from popular contact. The books were to be
safeguarded from too familiar approach as are the works of art in the
great galleries and museums. In every case they did not, it is true,
imitate the methods of the Laurentian Library in Florence and chain
the books to the desks, but something of the spirit of the stern
custodian was in them all. Mr. Locke at once outlined his policy on
the basis of his conviction that books were made for the people, and
not the people for books, and that opportunities for more knowledge
and greater intelligence should be provided. More especially he held
that books had indispensable messages for the youth of a great city.
The adult readers were welcomed and accorded every possible
opportunity and privilege; but the children were not to be merely
welcomed, they were to be enticed by the very attractiveness of the
surroundings to come in from the highways and the {91} byways to the
feast of literature provided so lavishly for them.
Assisted by a staff of one hundred young women whose enthusiasm leapt
up to meet his own, young women with wit and initiative of their own
as well, all of which their chief especially encouraged on their
parts, the work went forward. "If you think you have a good plan,"
Mr. Locke says, in effect, to his staff, "try it. Don't come to me
about it. If it is successful, then let us talk it over. If it is
not, bury it quietly and don't put up any monument to it."
The Central Library, with its fourteen branches, works as a unit; yet
not as the unit of a machine, but in a unity of spirit and purpose
inclusive of many individual variations. One feature of the system
of the highest value is that of the open shelves. Nothing so
educates the child, in all that most essential development of what
Matthew Arnold so well terms the humanities, as the habit of browsing
at will among books. From the official report made by Mr. Locke for
the year 1915 the following extract is taken, as it illustrates
clearly one novel and invaluable feature of the work--
"The work with the children, which showed such a remarkable increase
last year, has shown even greater results, and we see new
possibilities for the coming year. This department is decidedly
aggressive in its methods, and no phase of public social service in
this city has awakened such wide interest. The Story Hour, already
popular, was given a decided help onwards by the series of lectures
{92} which the Children's Librarians arranged for during October and
November, when Miss Marie Shedlock, of London, England, spoke to five
delighted audiences on 'Story Telling.' That part of the Story Hour
which is devoted to Canadian historical characters is really a
National Movement, for it supplies to the children, many of whom are
of foreign parentage, a Canadian historical background, something
much needed in a new country with its great problems to be solved by
those who now are but children. This year there were 12,671 children
in the Story Hours and 249,260 books were circulated among boys and
girls."
The "Story Hour" is a semi-weekly feature of the library work, and
one which has developed unmeasured ardour on the part of the youthful
auditors.
Another signally refining and helpful influence is that of the
culture of flowers; a garden plot, or beds of flowers, being a
feature of the grounds surrounding each of the fourteen libraries.
The children are encouraged to aid in this care of flowers, and seats
placed in the gardens enable summer readers to pursue their work amid
this beauty, and in the invigorating air.
The "J. Ross Robertson Historical Collection," housed in the
Reference Library, is as a gallery of Canadiana of the utmost value
to the student of the history of the Dominion. The collection
numbers already three thousand two hundred and twenty-nine pictures,
and in the year of 1915 alone, it was visited by more than twelve
thousand people. These pictures tell the story of the development of
Canada from the forest, lake, and prairie, with {93} tribes of
wandering Red Men, into the land of fruit, grain, and manufactures.
Mr. Robertson has proved a real benefactor to the entire province as
well as the Dominion, for students come from all parts of the country
to study this collection.
Toronto is constructively much like London, in that a number of
separate communities are federated to form one city. In nearly every
one of these separate and component parts a branch of the Public
Library is established, taking the name of the specific centre, such
as Wychwood, Dovercourt, and Yorkville. The latest of these
branches, that at Wychwood, is a perfect architectural reproduction
of the Shakespearean period, thus celebrating the tercentenary in
1916 in a tangible manner, and its Elizabethan charm attracts
numerous appreciative visitors. One typical instance of the library
spirit is that of taking a primitive and discarded little church,
fitting it up with books, and with light and heat and flowers (for in
every library interior beautiful flowers are an unfailing ornament)
making of this a small branch in an undeveloped part of the city, and
forming it into a notable centre of joy, helpfulness, and inspiration.
In addition to the University of Toronto, and in close alliance with
it, is University College, a state institution, in which languages
and the liberal arts are taught; and this notable university system
in Toronto is inclusive of a number of other affiliated institutions,
in which the students may avail {94} themselves of the university
examinations and degrees, among which are the Toronto College of
Music and the Conservatory of Music. There are four university
museums, the Mineralogical and the Geological, the Archæological and
the Biological; and there is also a Gallery set apart for
Palæontology. A stately and impressive building, the School of
Domestic Science, presented by Mrs. Massey Treble, is the centre of
instruction as useful as it is important. No visitor in the Dominion
can fail to perceive how Canada is especially a home-building,
home-conserving country. If one were called upon to define the
Canadian nation in a phrase, it would be that of a home-building
people. That the home, in all the purity and sanctity of family
life, is the unit of civilisation is an article of faith in Canada.
The Royal Astronomical Society of Toronto is an association of much
importance in the scientific world. In May, 1916, it had the honour
of being addressed by an astronomer whom it is no exaggeration to
term the most brilliant figure of the age in interstellar physics.
This was Doctor Percival Lowell, whose brilliant and original
investigations have thrown great light upon the evolution of the
planets, and whose especial discoveries (as they may now be claimed)
of the conditions on Mars have arrested the attention of the entire
scientific world. It was on this theme, including aspects of Mars
developed in observations made as recently {95} as in January and
March of 1916, that Doctor Lowell addressed the Society.[1]
[1] Dr. Percival Lowell died November 13, 1916, at Flagstaff
Observatory, Arizona, U.S.A.
The population of Toronto is already over the half million mark, the
city directory for 1915 recording a population of 534,000, and the
number is said to increase on an average of thirty thousand a year.
It is a great manufacturing city, which has been able to harness a
waterfall, even the mighty cataract of Niagara, into its daily
service. Is it that the twentieth century calls from the fabled past
those genii and magicians who can command and control the forces of
Nature? The result would almost confirm that fascinating
speculation. Apparently the Torontian is more fortunate than one
individual who is said to have been enabled to send the broomstick to
fetch water, but forgetting the incantation necessary to stop it, he
was drowned. Toronto apparently knows the secret of controlling her
almost unrivalled water-power. There are in and about Toronto more
than nine hundred factories that number over sixty-five thousand
employees, with an annual pay-roll of twenty-nine millions,
representing a capital of seventy-five millions. The electric power
from Niagara Falls is supplied at moderate rates, and thus the
extension of manufacturing plant is encouraged to the advantage of
the city itself.
The illumination of the Toronto streets by night is {96} a feature of
no little interest. The use of hydro-electric power has permitted
the lighting by means of cluster lights, a system of unique beauty
and incomparable service, and of great decorative effect as well.
This power is supplied from the main station located at Niagara
Falls, on the Canadian side, which itself is supplied directly from
the cataract, with a high voltage of electrical energy.
The annual Canadian National Exposition held in Toronto during the
last week in August and the first in September is considered to be
almost a barometer of the progress of the world in general. Its
promoters point with pride to the fact that this Exposition was the
first to introduce the dawn of the Electrical Age to Canada; the
first to introduce to general knowledge Marconi's wireless
telegraphy; the first to demonstrate the uses of the telephone, and
the advantages of the electric car service, and has thus, for a long
series of years, made itself an important factor of contemporary
progress.
[Illustration: The Bigwin Inn, Lake-of-Bays, Ontario]
This Exposition is held in a natural park of some two hundred and
sixty acres, sloping from the blue and sparkling waters of Lake
Ontario, with a water front of nearly two miles in extent. The
grounds are made a very "garden-city," with wide, paved streets and
walks; with vistas of emerald turf enriched with shrubs and flowering
plants and trees, amid which the permanent State buildings, graceful
and rich in architectural detail, reveal themselves to great
advantage. This Exposition is justly held {97} throughout the
Dominion as an annual focussing of the latest inventions and
appliances, as a gauge of productive power in every direction, and it
draws over a million visitors to the city every season.
As the Capital and metropolis of the rich and important province of
Ontario, Toronto can hardly be adequately considered without some
outline of the activities of the Province as well. The Parliament
buildings occupy a prominent site in the city, and the Commissioners
who are lodged in their various departments represent every important
industry and interest in Ontario. Among these interests are the Good
Roads Association, the Vegetable Growers, the Game and Fisheries, and
the Women's Institute of Ontario, under the head of the Minister of
Agriculture. Ontario has its Agricultural College at Guelph with the
Macdonald Institute for girls in which homemaking as well as
housekeeping is taught and which is the inspiration centre of the
Women's Institutes of the province. The system of travelling
libraries is of unsurpassed aid in the disseminating of information.
The Women's Institute and the Farmers' Institute co-operate to the
mutual advantage of each. Among the topics discussed in the former
are "Discipline for Children," "Problem of the Farmer's Wife,"
"Furnishing a Living-room for Comfort," "Old-Fashioned Hospitality,"
and "The Value of Pleasing Manners." The activities of this
Institute radiate an influence and suggest {98} a series of standards
that is little less than invaluable in its effect on the general
rural life. The Institute has a membership of more than twenty-five
thousand women; they represent some eight hundred and fifty branches;
and their influence easily reaches twice the number of the
membership. Courses of lessons in Domestic Science are given in
stated centres; special instructors in cooking, dairying,
poultry-raising; and topics relating to household labour of all kinds
are assigned for discussion from time to time, the meetings always
drawing large and eager audiences. The entire instruction is
eminently practical, and in one Report made to the Minister of
Agriculture the programme of lessons offered as typical included
"Invalid Cookery," "Table Seating and Serving," "How to Spend the
Winter Evenings," and "Wholesome Reading for Boys and Girls." It
will readily be seen how extremely valuable is such a range of
discussion as this, in a comparatively new country, where each
household must so largely depend upon its own resources. "The
strength of the Empire is in the homes of her people," said one
lecturer, and the opinion is wide-spread. This Association further
urges that its prevailing spirit shall know no distinction of class
or creed; that it shall reach and include, with cordial, gracious
welcome, every woman who is inclined to come into it. The motto of
the Institute is, "If you know a good thing, pass it on." The
Ontario Vegetable Growers' Association is another {99} energetic
organisation, whose aim is to "plant and make things grow."
The importance of social welfare is very fully recognised in Canada.
"We are not here simply to make a living, to spend all our days in
work," states one leading member; "we are here to enjoy life, and I
believe that God intended that every one should enjoy a well-rounded
life, with time for recreation and for mental and spiritual
development."
In the prominence given to social service in the Dominion, a new and
distinctive profession is opened, and one especially fitted for
educated and cultivated young women. Various spheres of work are
open, as those of assistants to city pastors, and as nurses, park
attendants, health inspectors, police matrons, school inspectors, and
as officials in the many charitable and educational institutions.
Friendly visiting is not the least of these many channels for aid to
social betterment, and for the extension of sympathies and the
promotion of the higher life.
{100}
CHAPTER V
THE CANADIAN SUMMER RESORTS
Canada is Nature's pleasure-ground. The ineffable spell of beauty
enchants the entire Dominion. It is not difficult to recognise the
sources of her poets' inspirations. The wanderer in all this
bewildering loveliness can say with the singer:
"I bathe my spirit in blue skies
And taste the springs of life."
How Lampman has painted the very atmosphere in the lines:
"I lift mine eyes sometimes to gaze,
The burning skyline blinds my sight;
The woods far off are blue with haze;
The hills are drenched in light."
Never was there beauty of Nature that so transmuted itself into
vitality. The air is the very elixir of life. It is the infinite
reservoir from which untold measures of energy may be drawn and
stored up for the future. One does, indeed, "taste the springs of
life" in actual experience.
The colossal scale of the summer resorts of Canada suggests the
haunts of the Titans. The Maritime Provinces have long been a
recognised locality for vacation days; but the region of central
Canada, from Lake-of-Bays and Algonquin Park to Minaki, {101} on the
lakes east of Winnipeg, opens a new world to the summer visitor. It
invites the seeker after health, rest, sport, or artistic enjoyment;
it offers ideal conditions for the writer or the student, as well;
but all this terrestrial paradise requires a clearly-defined
geographical presentation in order to be at all adequately
comprehended. In a country stretching over three thousand seven
hundred miles from coast to coast; and in which the pleasure grounds
already opened to easy accessibility by rail or steamer are thousands
of miles in extent, a clear idea of their relative aspects in
geographical space is an initial requirement. Canada is a
Wonderland, but she is not an untraced wilderness.
Take, for example, Lake-of-Bays! Poetic, bewitching, star-crowned
Wawa! The instant devotion inspired by this fascinating fairyland
is, like beauty, its own excuse for being. As the visitor steps, in
the brilliant sunshine of a late afternoon, upon the beach at Norway
Point he finds himself within two hundred yards of the hotel. Here
is a splendid dock with shelter rooms and baggage rooms, and here are
porters from the Wawa, and his impedimenta having been handed over he
turns to look at the oncoming sunset over the lake and over wooded
islands, the colour-scheme changing in the flitting, opalescent
lights, the cloud-shadows drifting over the green of island trees and
vegetation, with a fringe of pine and balsam along the shores of the
lake offering their refreshing shade for the saunterers {102} and the
bathers. The dancing pavilion is not far away at one end of the long
piazza, and strains of music from the orchestra are floating out on
the wonderful air. On a plot of verdant grass a group of white-robed
children are dancing like a very fairy ring; and the western sky
which the Wawa fronts is aglow with the sunset splendours.
Or, perchance, one arrives in the morning (for there are three
steamers a day) in the pure, transparent light which plays such
optical tricks with distance. There may be illusions similar to
those that beset, and delight, the visitors to the Grand Canyon in
Arizona. One stands on the brink of that titanic chasm and seeing an
enticing point apparently close at hand he remarks that he will just
step over to it. "How far do you think it is?" questions the habitué
with secret delight; "that point is two miles away from us," he
continues with due enjoyment in his companion's discomfiture.
Something of the same illusions of the air beset one at Norway Point,
on which the Wawa stands. This point is a favourite with an
increasing number of summer colonists as the numerous cottages and
picturesque camps suggest.
Not the least of a summer's enjoyment here is the charm of the trip.
It is very easy, but it is also very picturesque. North from Toronto
at a distance of some hundred and forty-six miles is the pretty
little village of Huntsville, nestled among lakes and hills. Here
begins the Lake-of-Bays region. {103} The locality is one of the
loveliest in Ontario; the lakes are dotted with islands and connected
by winding rivers, with luxuriant growth of woodlands; the surface of
the water is covered with lilies, the hills are dark with their
sombre pines, and the entire landscape is fascinating. At this point
the traveller is transferred from the railway to the waiting steamer
on which he gaily steps for a sail on this unique series of lakes.
The steamer glides to the end of one and enters a river; and the
craft pushes on through it while branches of trees and tangled vines
sway so near, on either side, that they may be almost grasped by the
hand. What will happen next? one mentally questions. How will a
steamer ever thread this wildwood? For apparently there is but an
unmarked stretch of woodlands ahead, and even the steam launch of an
enchanted journey can hardly be expected to navigate forests. Like
most difficulties, however, this one comes to a satisfactory solution
when another lake that has concealed itself behind a grove is now
revealed and the steamer sails on.
But when she meets solid land how is she to negotiate the portage?
It is then that the genius of the lamp appears, which one has but to
rub in order to attain to the realisation of any of his earthly
desires, and the touch on the lamp, as Aladdin holds it up for the
passengers, produces, not the Amazon nor yet the Mississippi, but a
mile of railroad, the shortest railroad in the world, bridging the
portage {104} between the lakes. Into the cars throng the passengers
for the swift transit around the hills to the lake and the other
steamer waiting. "Lake-of-Bays," indeed! Lake of a myriad bays, for
the entire shores are indented with the inlets bordered by firs that
mirror themselves in the water. It is through all this shining
pathway that the tourist makes his triumphal progress and arrives at
length at Norway Point. When one realises that all this Wonderland
is, after all, only nine hours from Buffalo, one sees how easily
accessible from the States are Canada's most charming summer
districts. The romantic journey would almost be worth the taking
even if one remained but a single night. For the beautiful hours of
life are not over when they have passed; they linger in memory; they
pervade all the quality of life.
It is in the climate that the very concentration of vitality lies,
and a night's sleep at Norway Point seems to transform one's entire
being with a renewal of life. What a view it is at night from the
upper piazza when the powerful searchlight of the hotel is turned
over lakes and woods and clustered islands; and the evening steamer
coming in, gay with flags and pennons, with snatches of music and
light laughter borne on the evening air. The searchlight on the
hotel, the lights on the boat, flash their signals back and forth.
For a moment the visitor is again on the Swiss lakes where boats and
inns call to each other in signals of light. {105} For some years
past the custom, familiar to the sojourners in Geneva, Lucerne, and
Vevey, has been adopted as one of the novel and amusing features at
the Wawa. Of all the fair lands ever dreamed, is that which is
revealed (or is it half created?) under the swiftly moving wave of
light, that flashes its high illumination over the lakes, near and
far, that gleam like silver. The searchlight brings out the forests
in their dark and massive shadows, revealing, too, the numbers of
little boats and canoes, with their firefly lights, dotting the lake.
Behind the hotel there rises a densely wooded bluff, some two hundred
feet high, from whose summit alluring views attract the lingerer on
the hillside. On this height is the reservoir that supplies the
hotel, the altitude giving great momentum to the running water. The
grounds comprise some three hundred acres--everything is on a
generous scale in Canada--and over these grounds are scattered
pergolas and rustic seats that offer their enticing ease to the
strollers in the open air, who perhaps agree with Walt Whitman that
it is in open space in which "all heroic deeds are conceived, and all
great poems, also."
It is not surprising that hotels and cottages spring up around these
lakes, and that campers find here a favourite haunt. An immense new
hotel, the Bigwin Inn, has been completed on Bigwin Island, the
enterprise of one of the foremost citizens of Ontario. The Bigwin is
something novel in design, the dining-hall {106} occupying one
building (with entrancing piazzas and balconies towards the lake)
while other buildings house the private rooms for the guests, the
Social Hall, Office, and dancing pavilion, though all these are
connected by covered corridors. The Bigwin will be one of the
greatest summer hotels on the continent, and its establishment is one
of the evidences of the increasing popular recognition of the charm
and beauty of the Lake-of-Bays country. The hotel is picturesquely
situated on Bigwin Island, a tract of two-and-a-half miles in length,
densely wooded, and with easy approach. The swift communication
rendered possible between The Bigwin and The Wawa, by means of motor
boats and steam launches, will enhance the enjoyment of each. The
new hotel will be a temple of festivities and gaiety. The dancing
pavilion has every late luxury of device for the dancers, and for
those interludes of "sitting out" a dance for which the revel itself
is made. There are palm corners; there are balconies overhanging the
waters until one might well believe himself in Venice; and there are
supper rooms, card tables, and provision for necessary music as well
as for the onlookers.
The steamers of the Lake-of-Bays Navigation Company will make the
Bigwin one of their ports of call, thus assuring a triple service
every day, and rendering easy all arrivals and departures. The
steamer-landing is near the hotel, and the entire island furnishes
the grounds for the Inn. The pretty {107} Italian custom of building
the dining-rooms of the hotel so as to overhang the water is one of
the noteworthy features of the Bigwin. At Bertolini's, in Naples, a
similar effect is attained by the glass-enclosed terrace, in the air,
so much in use for afternoon teas and festive occasions. At the
Bigwin the _salle-a-manger_ actually projects by some feet above the
water, and its circular form and artistic architectural design render
it a unique spectacle from the decks of the steamers as they traverse
the lake. The Inn, which will open at the end of the War, will
accommodate six hundred guests.
The evolution of summer resorts would alone make up almost a social
history of the past three-quarters of a century. It is a far cry to
the days when, in the United States, Saratoga and Niagara Falls, with
a small contingent at Newport, held the exclusive fashionable
prestige for summer life. New England had its North Shore, to which
Boston largely transferred itself when the summer opened. The White
Mountains have always retained their clientele composed for the most
part of people to whom the seclusion and pure air ministered rather
to the carrying on of their studious pursuits than to the abandonment
of them. Newport came to have a formidable rival in Bar Harbour.
The opening of luxurious railway facilities to the Far West, and the
provision of beautiful hotels in Colorado, at the Grand Canyon, in
California, the Yellowstone Park, and other localities have made all
those regions {108} a land of summer. There are few, now, that are
not familiar to the travelling public, and so the unparalleled summer
resorts of Canada open a new range of attractions and experiences.
Apart from the two dominating hotels, the Wawa and the Bigwin, the
Lake-of-Bays offers numerous other centres for vacation days in
smaller hotels, cottages, and camps. Grunwald, perched on the west
shore of Lake Mary; Dwight Bay, Point Ideal, Bona Vista, Britannia,
and many other inviting nooks are discovered.
And when the season at enchanting Wawa is over? Then, again, the
sail through Peninsula Lake, through Fairy River and Fairy Lake, to
the wharf at Huntsville again, where the train awaits the traveller.
Alas! for the perfection of connections. One has no excuse for
lingering longer. Yet so early in the September days, to many
sojourners the best of the season is yet to come. North of the
Lake-of-Bays is Algonquin Park. This government reservation of
nearly two million acres, with the comfortable and commodious
Highland Inn perched on a high terrace looking out on another of the
great lakes over the islands and dense woodlands, is to many visitors
the most alluring place for out-of-door life in the whole of Canada.
The Highland Inn offers much that is not set down on the bills. To
find in this sportsman's paradise hotel accommodations that satisfy
the typical demands of twentieth-century civilisation; {109} to find
homelike rooms, with books and papers and magazines in plentiful
profusion; with a writing-desk well stocked with stationery near
one's elbow at every turn; spacious piazzas on which to dream; an
hotel under the same management as the palatial Château Laurier, the
magnificent Fort Garry in Winnipeg, and the hardly less imposing
Macdonald in Edmonton--to find these things is to be at once assured
of the perfection of every detail. The traveller, only too ready to
take the goods the gods provide, accepts this felicitous dispensation
as a part of the boundless benevolences of the universe. If he is a
sportsman, the world is indeed at his feet. He may secure his canoe
and his guide and fish all day in any one of the many lakes; as there
are two thousand in all, he may be said to have a range of choice.
In the life-giving air, two thousand feet above sea level, he may
enjoy indefinitely long tramps, studying, at close range, the wild
animals in the Park. For more than twenty years they have been
protected from harm by the law that forbids carrying firearms within
the reservation limits; and the mink, the beaver, an almost
innumerable variety of birds, with squirrels and the graceful and
friendly deer are found in abundance in Algonquin Park. The camp
sites are unsurpassed and the hospitalities of the campers are as
ready as they are ample. The gypsy kettle is always swung, the camp
fire is burning, and the lovely nymphs of the lake and woodland who
flit about in picturesque {110} garb are ready to offer the impromptu
guest almost any order of refreshment at a moment's notice.
The true camper, like the poet, is born and not made. It is an
instinct, a gift, a grace, to adapt oneself to the simple life of the
woodlands, which is, however, not without its creature comforts.
Lady campers may invite one, with traces of housewifely pride, to
glance at the interior of their spotless tents; an interior little
used save for sleep or for shelter in sudden storms. They take pride
in the beds of springy balsam well covered by blankets; and the
little tables with a few books and a chair or two. A bed of balsam
boughs; a breakfast of trout freshly caught in the lake, with coffee
made over the camp fire, combined with youth and health and keen
interest in the world in general, and what more could one ask? And
if one is not acclimated to the system of domestic life as ordered by
the livers in the open air, then he may enjoy in the Highland Inn all
the regulation viands and appointments of the highest civilisation,
with his breakfast of grape-fruit, cereals, delicious coffee not made
over a camp fire; trout, hot cakes, and the wonderful maple syrup of
the land of the Maple Leaf. With these he will have his matutinal
paper, with the latest news of the universe, that has come up from
Toronto at night, and for the day before him relays of attractions,
each more delightful than the other, beckon to him.
{111}
In the vast woodlands one may encounter many happy couples strolling,
not invariably side by side, for there is no surplus space beyond the
width required for the single pedestrian. As they fare forth in true
Indian file, He calls to Her, "Come on"; or occasionally, by way of
special conversational brilliancy, he exclaims in a friendly tone,
"Are you there?" They are possibly making their way over a portage.
The guide has the canoe, reversed, on his head. As they wind along
intricate paths, He goes in advance, and She faithfully follows.
There is all the charm of conversational entertainment when He looks
sideways over his shoulder and exclaims, "Getting on all right?" She
would be ashamed to confess she was not! When their canoe-trip was
projected that morning She, who did not know a canoe from a
constellation, was quite in rapture. As a tenderfoot, as yet
unprofited by the proximity of the wilderness, She descended from her
bower equipped with a parasol for the sun, an umbrella for possible
rain, a handbag duly supplied with pencil, notebook, violet water,
and various feminine conveniences; a volume of her favourite poet in
her hand that He may read aloud to her, and a novel for her own
private delectation, in case He should be oblivious of poetic
ecstasies and like a mere man prefer to smoke and ... dream. But He,
who has seen the wilderness before in the course of his august
career, and to whom canoeing is no mystery, regards Her with
unaccustomed {112} severities and austerities. "You can't take those
things," he laconically observes, with one finger designating her
numerous impedimenta; "upset the canoe." Poet and novelist, to say
nothing of lace-trimmed parasol, are banished; and She receives the
first intimation of an idea that there is some necessity of
equilibrium connected with canoeing.
Between the two extremes of the campers in the open and the guests of
the Highland Inn, Algonquin Park offers another mode of living that
has caught the fancy of the public. This is the provision made by
two log cabin camps which the Grand Trunk System has built in
picturesque places in the Park. Nominigan Camp ("camp amid the
balsams") is seven miles from the Highland Inn, and is reached either
by the stage, which makes the trip every day, or by the more romantic
way of canoeing over the lakes, and walking over the connecting
portages. The site of Nominigan Camp is one worth going far to see.
On the shore of one of the most beautiful lakes it was ever the
happiness of man to behold, with a vista of hills and woodlands, the
spot is wildly beautiful. And the camp itself; imagine a large
central log house with abundance of rooms, and great fireplaces in
which to burn logs and sit and wonder; with radiator heating also,
and electric light, and bathrooms with running water; with a large
dining-room and admirable food; with a great salon where every one
may {113} gather; and with several log cottages adjacent where
families or parties, or the single traveller, can have sleeping
rooms, coming to the central house for meals; the high standards of
comfortable and refined life maintained and yet offering this idyllic
freedom--could there be a more inviting combination? It is no wonder
that an eminent guest who had passed some time at Nominigan wrote:
"To put a camp of this kind deep in the heart of the wilderness, and
touch the wild life of the forest and lake with a most acceptable bit
of civilisation in the form of grate fires, running water, bath-tubs,
and inside toilet arrangements is decidedly a feat worthy to be
spoken of when summer resorts are mentioned. To likewise supply a
crowd of seventy-five guests with such an excellent table as we found
provided for us, and to serve it so acceptably as to make one for a
moment forget that he was beyond the bounds of civilisation, was
likewise a feat of which the management should be proud."
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Lady Conan Doyle were guests at Nominigan
in the summer of 1914, and the creator of "Sherlock Holmes" proved to
be as ingenious in entering into the diversions of the locality as he
is in the field of romance he has made so especially his own. Lady
Conan Doyle, who developed a genuine gift for fishing, caught an
eight pound salmon trout. Equal in beauty is Camp Minnesing ("Island
Camp") on the shore of Island Lake.
Between the Highland Inn and the Nominigan and Minnesing camps there
is daily stage connection, {114} and it is thus easy to unite both
the comfortable living in a well-ordered hotel, in touch with daily
papers and several daily mails, with constant excursions into the
wild territory, with canoeing, fishing, or walks and tramps through
the interminable forests. Of all the Canadian parks, Algonquin Park
is the most accessible from the United States and Eastern Canada. At
the Algonquin Park station one may take a train in the morning for
Rock Lake, a distance of twelve miles, where there is a famous
fishing region for black bass, and where boats and canoes and all
necessary outfit may be obtained. In Cache Lake the black bass also
abound. At White Lake are salmon trout, and a canoe trip over one or
two other of the smaller lakes brings the angler to Little Island
Lake, noted for its speckled trout. But there are some two thousand
lakes in the Park, so your choice of fishing grounds is unlimited.
Not the least among the interests of a sojourn in Algonquin Park is a
visit to the home of Mr. G. W. Bartlett, the Superintendent of the
Park, whose house is within a stone's throw of the Highland Inn.
Among his treasures is a remarkably fine collection of wild animals
and birds, prepared by the art of the taxidermist, and the government
of Ontario has also inaugurated a "Zoo," which has already a small
collection and which will be constantly increased.
The amateur photographer finds great interest {115} in this Park as
the animals, accustomed only to kindness, are easily approached, and
the "bits" of forest scenes, of silver-shining waters, of giant rocks
jutting out from the hillside, offer unlimited material for the
artist to compose. Landscapes for the asking surprise the eye; and
if Algonquin Park is the more obviously and more familiarly known as
the sportsman's paradise, it is none the less the happy
hunting-ground of the artist. The colour effects are something with
which to conjure. The scarlet glow of the sunsets suddenly make a
towering rock seem to leap into the air to a height undreamed of;
while over the still, solemn pine trees the sky turns to flame; rocks
and jutting hillsides take on the effect of colossal sculptures; the
clouds resolve themselves into spectral angels watching over the
world, and the forests take on a grace of line that holds the gazer
with its wonderful spell of beauty.
From June until into September the days are long in the Algonquin
Park country; they dawn in rose and wane in gold. The air is all
vitality with its filtering through millions of acres of pine and
balsam and spruce; the sunshine of the days is radiant; the moonlit
nights are cool. Wandering through Algonquin woodlands one seems to
hear borne on the air the poet's haunting lines:
"Along the sky, in wavy lines,
O'er isle and reach and bay.
Green-belted with eternal pines,
The mountains stretch away.
{116}
Below, the maple masses sleep
Where shore with waters blends,
While midway on the tranquil deep
The evening light descends."
This wonderful Park is very popular for its summer camps for girls
and for boys, located on the lakes in close contact with the hotels.
Here young people can be sent under the supervision of college men
and women, thus enjoying all the freedom and wild charm of the summer
life with every protection and safeguard thrown about them. Camp
Minne-Wawa is one of these; a summer camp for boys and young men
established in 1911 by Dr. Wise, of the Chair of English Language and
Literature at the Bordentown Military Institute, New Jersey, assisted
by a staff of notable educators. The aim of this culture is
described as that of "Right Thinking and Character Building." The
Minne-Wawa is on the Lake of Two Rivers in the southern portion of
the park. The trains make a special stop for this camp; and the
tents, all on raised platforms, with the natural life, the physical
and intellectual training, and the careful supervision of Doctor and
Mrs. Wise; with the provision, too, that the selection of applicants
is restricted to those whose conduct is that of gentlemen--all these
conditions render this a valuable and interesting feature of vacation
life in Algonquin.
The Timagami region is one of great scenic beauty and it is also of
special interest to the geologist. Through rail service from Buffalo
to the station of {117} Timagami renders the journey an easy one from
the States, while the district is also in still closer touch with
Toronto. The lakes and the surrounding hills are of the Laurentian
formation. There is very little disintegration, and therefore little
mud or sand. There is rock; there is water; and very little shading
between. The crystal clearness of the water is famous, and one can
gaze into it for a depth of from twenty-five to thirty-five feet.
The atmosphere is so clear and dry that conversations can be carried
on over a mile of distance. The echo phenomena all about these
islands rivals that of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, or as under the
dome of the Taj Mahal. "Anywhere between the islands you can get as
many as six distinct repetitions of the echo," writes an _habitué_,
and adds:
"Some August night when the moon is sailing through fleecy clouds and
the planets shine like points of light in the crystal depths below
your canoe, let a clear baritone voice roll out a flood of song among
Timagami's islands, and you might think the gods themselves had
awakened, and that every rock and islet was the home of some musical
spirit voicing the theme of the night in a thousand silvery,
reverberating melodies."
[Illustration: Sir Arthur and Lady Conan Doyle at Party]
Very engaging is all this country of the Highlands of Ontario made so
easy of access. Allandale (always associated with its alluring
lunch-room), Barrie, the pretty town on a crescent of Kempenfeldt
Bay, busy Orillia, with its numerous beautiful residences, on to
Gravenhurst at the foot of Lake Muskoka, the journey is one of
perpetual delight. Muskoka {118} wharf is but a mile from
Gravenhurst, and the trains run directly to the steamer.
The Canadian lakes are a marvel in themselves. The entire country is
literally and lavishly strewn with them. Their abundance modifies
the climate perceptibly. They range from lakes 300 miles long and
600 feet deep to the small lakelets hidden away in the trackless
forests. There are at least nine lakes more than 100 miles long, and
there are more than thirty-five over fifty miles long. Many of these
are still further elongated by the bays that indent their shores, and
they are so connected by rivers that almost continuous canoeing for
scores of miles is sometimes practicable, with only occasionally a
mile or two of portage. In connection with such a multitude of lakes
there are some very interesting geological facts.
In the Muskoka region there are more than one hundred hotels, from
the Royal Muskoka, accommodating three hundred guests, to those of
the simplest, yet entirely comfortable order that can receive only
fifteen or twenty guests with prices often as low as six dollars a
week. The month of September in the Muskoka Lakes is particularly
delightful. It is estimated that there is an annual transient summer
population of not less than thirty thousand every year of people from
both the States and the Dominion. Many of the romantic islands in
the lakes are owned by wealthy people who have built charming summer
villas upon them. There are {119} between four and five hundred of
these islands, the largest of which consists of over eleven hundred
acres, and on many of which any one is at liberty to build. The
generous attitude of the Ontario Government is always a fact with
which to reckon. There are very beautiful places in this Muskoka
district: the "River of Shadows" (apparently a subterranean forest,
so perfectly is every leaf and branch mirrored in the water), the
Moon River, and the Falls of Bala. It is of the strange, wild beauty
of Muskoka that Lampman wrote:
"When silent shadows darken from the shores,
And all thy swaying fairies over floors
Of luminous water lying strange and bright
Are spinning mists of silver in the moon;
When, out of magic bays,
The yells and demon laughter of the loon
Startle the hills and raise
The solitary echoes far away;
O Spirit of the sunset! in thine hand
This hollow of the forest brims with fire,
And piling high to westward builds a pyre
Of sombre spruces and black pines that stand,
Ragged, and grim, and eaten through with gold.
The arched east grows sweet
With rose and orange, and the night a-cold
Looms, and beneath her feet
Still waters green and purple in strange schemes,
Till twilight wakes the hoot-owl from his dreams."
All these Highlands of Ontario are a part of the vast Laurentian
range and they are characterised by a singular type of rugged and
stately beauty. They are densely wooded; and the luxuriant maples in
all their golden-green, that wonderfully vivid {120} emerald with a
hint of gold caught from the sunshine in the summer, and their
brilliant scarlet and amber in the early autumn; the fragrant
balsams; the giant hemlocks; the tall pines that almost lead one to
question George Eliot's assertion that "Care is taken that the trees
do not grow into the sky," for the Canadian pine seems almost to
pierce the sky--all this marvel of forest, with the shining lakes and
sunlit glades, renders the Highlands of Ontario one of the wonders of
the world. From Buffalo and Toronto to North Bay on Lake Nipissing,
this entire region is traversed by the Grand Trunk System carrying
summer wanderers through this enchanting scenery--hills, and lofty
peaks, and woods, variegated with the silver expanse of lakes and
flowing rivers; and if, perchance, one is travelling by night, it is
rather delightful to raise the heavy curtain of the large window of a
Pullman sleeper and watch the stars, and the sky, and the often weird
effects of chiaroscuro. They not unfrequently suggest artistic
creations. By night or by day it is all a spellbinding land, the
celestial heavens glittering by night, the sunshine flooding the
world with illumination by day; and silver mists, and ethereal
shadows lurk in the deep pinewoods. To the initiate there are magic
guides in all these haunts, unseen save of him who hath the
"spirit-gifted eyes." The light of all the constellations that have
ever looked down on earth since the morning-stars sang together is in
these Canadian skies. For always is it true that
{121}
"The Muse can knit
What is past, what is done,
With the web that's just begun."
Not only the romance of Canada, but the tangible realities of her
prosperity are disclosed to the eye of the traveller. Farms in a
high state of cultivation; comfortable, alluring farmhouses, with
their lawns, and gardens, and parterres of flowers, and a rustic seat
here and there are in continual evidence. The refinements of life,
from the neatness and grace of rural homes to the beautiful little
railway stations with their attractive architecture, their plots of
greenery, their brilliant beds of flowers, are impressive to the
onlooker, and do more to convey to travellers a true concept of the
character of the Canadian people than can be fully estimated. The
gratification of one's sense of beauty in these charming little way
stations along the route adds immeasurably to the enjoyment of the
journey.
Then, too, what can be said of that sail among the thirty thousand
islands in the Georgian Bay? In colour and idyllic charm this sail
rivals the famous cruise among the Ionian Islands:
"The Isles of Greece, the Isles of Greece,
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,"
and all the summer resorts of this region, Minnecoganashene, Sans
Souci, Rose Point, and various nooks of verdant charm are peopled by
their summer lovers.
The Great Lakes, shared alike by the Dominion {122} and the States,
offer a delightful cruise between Sarnia (Ontario) and Duluth
(Minnesota) with calls at Fort William and Port Arthur, and a further
excursion to the Falls of Kakabeka, a cascade higher than that of
Niagara, which are near Port Arthur.
Lake Nipissing and the French River are attractive grounds for the
camper and the canoeist; but they are not suited to the "tenderfoot."
It is amazing that a region which can be reached with ease is yet so
absolutely a place where the lover of Nature in her wild solitudes
can absolutely secure a vacation from relentless Time! In the Lake
Nipissing land he may elude the postman and the telephone. Doubtless
by 1920, some invading airship will drop a voluminous mail at his
feet when he is out in his canoe; but at the present time the
sojourner here is immune from cables, telegrams, Marconigrams,
long-distance telephones, special deliveries, messenger boys, and all
this incubus of what we call civilisation. If radiograms fall upon
him they must needs come from the solar system alone. Emerson, even
in the prehistoric period of the nineteenth century, declared
solitude a thing impossible to find.
"When I would spend a lonely day
Sun and moon are in my way,"
he complains. The lingerer camping out on the French River has no
green-shaded electric reading-lamp at his elbow; no electric bell
summons his {123} servitor. He "catches" his breakfast in the deep
waters of the lake; he concocts his matutinal coffee over a
camp-fire. No ingenious victrola enchants his evening with the lyric
melody of Melba or Caruso; but instead, the strange cry of the loon
echoes startlingly through the silences. And so it falls out that
the hardy devotees of the chase and the camp hail this region as
their El Dorado.
Unlike the Nipissing, Timagami, as before noted, may be considered to
be the earthly paradise of those to whom the necessities of life
consist in the modern luxuries; those who would quite sympathise with
John Lothrop Motley; who remarked that if he had the luxuries of life
he could get on very well without the necessities.
Nibigami, "country of lakes," is a new outing ground in Canada now
made accessible by the Canadian Government Railways; and all this
hitherto unknown wilderness is enlisting the devotion of thousands of
hunters, of fishermen, and hardly less of the artist and student.
Three hours east of Winnipeg is Minaki, the "Beautiful Country" of
the Indians, at which station passengers may disembark to step into a
steam launch for a sail of twenty minutes to Minaki Inn. This is a
large and charmingly appointed hotel, accommodating three hundred and
fifty guests, with its annex, Minaki Lodge, affording rooms for
seventy-five in addition, located in a natural park of fourteen
acres, every room having its own outlook {124} over lakes or
woodlands. With its spacious piazzas, its artistic furnishing, its
admirable management, it is little wonder that the Minaki Inn has
leapt into popular favour, not only for season guests, but also for
travellers en route for the Canadian Rockies, for Jasper and Mount
Robson Parks, or Prince Rupert, and for all those who find the Minaki
a restful place at which to break the journey. The hotel is woodland
embowered and lake mirrored. It is supremely comfortable.
Around the lakes on which the Inn is placed is a large and constantly
increasing number of cottages, very artistic in architectural detail,
built by wealthy people of Winnipeg and elsewhere for their summer
homes. They are by no means primitive in construction; the latest
devices in heating, lighting, and household conveniences as well as
luxurious furnishings are in evidence; and at night from the piazzas
and balconies of the hotel the circle of these friendly illuminations
around the lakes is fascinating to the gazer.
[Illustration: View in Jasper Park]
Jasper Park, lying west of Edmonton, in the foothills of the Rockies,
is another National reservation included among the Playgrounds of
Canada; and it has an area half as large as that of the kingdom of
Belgium, comprising some 4400 square miles. The Government will keep
this in its natural state for all future time, so that, as the
country becomes more settled, and the features peculiarly Canadian
become obliterated, Jasper Park may reveal to {125} coming
generations the nature of the primæval wilderness. Jasper Park is
invested with historic interest, as it was the scene of the fierce
commercial conflicts between the Hudson's Bay and the North-West
Trading Companies. It is also rich in Indian legend and tradition.
Jasper Park is, however, not filled with game as is Algonquin. It is
said that a century ago it teemed with bear, mink, beaver, elk, and
caribou--but since that time the resident Indians have devastated the
animal life; and when they learned that the Dominion was about to
take over the entire tract for a permanent reservation, they embarked
upon a wholesale slaughter of the animals. The Park is now made by
Government decree a safe and friendly region for the wild game, and
it is thus confidently hoped to gradually increase the animal life of
the preserve.
The flora of the Park is so varied and so unusual as to make it an
important locality to the botanist. Not only is there an infinite
variety of flowers, many of which are not found elsewhere on the
continent, the aquilegia, the mampanula, the moon-daisy, and endless
variations on the chrysanthemum; but also the strange grasses,
mosses, lichens, and curious shrubs, all combine to enlist and hold
the curiosity of the student of nature.
The steel highway has brought this Alpine region, on the western
border of Alberta, into easy and swift connection with the travelling
world. Already {126} the Grand Trunk Pacific is projecting hotels of
the same exceptional character as those with which Algonquin Park is
so well provided. At present there is the unique feature of a "tent
city," which renders a sojourn of any length one that is entirely
comfortable and provisioned with the amenities of life. It is one to
rather enhance, indeed, the ordinary experiences of travel. The
sleeping tents (as separate as rooms in an hotel) are all fitted with
board floors and are equipped with comfortable beds and every
convenience. There is a large central marquee for the dining-room,
and all this comfort, to say nothing of glories of scenery undreamed
of, is offered at the almost nominal rate of two and a half dollars a
day. The town site commands a magnificent view of Athabasca Valley.
The Athabasca river expands, at intervals, into lakes, of which Brule
Lake, Jasper Lake, and Fish Lake are notable. At the juncture of the
Athabasca and the Maligne rivers stood formerly the headquarters of
the North-Western Fur Company; while the old Jasper House, the
Hudson's Bay Company's post, now in ruins, was in close proximity.
The site is now defined only by a pile of stones and by several
graves, with mouldering crosses, that suggest the close of the drama
of earthly life for those who lived and toiled here, unconsciously
aiding to build up the future. The very atmosphere is pervaded by a
sense of heroic effort.
One of the delightful excursions for sylvan {127} wanderers is that
of the trail to Maligne Lake, a beautiful sheet of water some thirty
miles distant; and in Maligne Canyon, only eight miles from Jasper,
are two comfortable shelter-houses for the free use of all tourists;
each house divided into three parts, with one large room for ladies,
one for gentlemen, and a central hall fitted with a range and other
conveniences, where impromptu cooking may be conducted with
successful results. These shelter-houses provide one more
illustration of the way in which the tourist is safe-guarded all over
the Dominion, even in what would seem her most impenetrable
localities. So swiftly are modern conditions of comfort on their
winged way that the refinements of life fairly spring up in the
wilderness and almost every conceivable need or requirement of the
traveller is anticipated.
The Canadian summer resorts are destined to play an important part in
sociology. They attract sojourners from widely separated localities
and promote interchange of views, of valuable knowledge, of ideas, of
sympathies, that form an interchange of the utmost significance in
its influence and determining effect upon the general international
life. The summer allurements of the Dominion are to be increasingly
appreciated by the civilised world, as they open up new realms
teeming with new inspirations.
The beauty of Banff and Lake Louise is already known to the tourist,
but it is, rather especially, the {128} wonderful region opened to
travel by the extensions of the Grand Trunk System that is so
unusually spellbinding. The grandeur of these majestic
mountain-peaks; the valleys and plateaus amid the gleam of lake and
river; the brilliant foliage; the rich scheme of colour of purple and
vermilion cliffs; the glint of blue waters through overarching
trees--Ah! Land of the Maple Leaf, how fair is thy heritage!
{129}
CHAPTER VI
COBALT AND THE SILVER MINES
The famous Cobalt Silver Mines naturally focus the interest of the
capitalist and the financier in any tour across the great Dominion.
While British Columbia and the Yukon have been called the
"Wonderland" of Canada, not alone for their mineral possibilities,
but for a great wealth of other natural resources besides, and
because many millions of dollars have been extracted by placer miners
from rivers and streams, yet Ontario is found to exceed all other
provinces, so far as yet developed, in the volume of mineral
production. The Klondyke gold discoveries in the Canadian Yukon
became a romance which has fairly rivalled the Tale of the Golden
Fleece. Yet when in the year 1903 the copious and apparently
unmeasurable deposits of silver-cobalt ores containing an
extraordinarily high percentage of silver were discovered in the
district of Cobalt (not far to the west from Lake Temiskaming), this
event sent a thrill of sensation through the world of mining and
mineral interests that left little to exceed, in romantic ardour, in
the poetic legends of the Yukon:
"Steeped in eternal beauty, crystalline waters and woods."
[Illustration: Cobalt, Ontario]
Since the discovery of silver in 1903, Cobalt has {130} produced
$130,000,000 worth of the white metal. Dividends totalling over
$60,000,000 have been paid to shareholders of twenty-four mines. One
company alone has distributed among its shareholders in dividends
nearly $15,000,000.
In some of the Cobalt mines the ores that contained such phenomenal
quantities of silver have been depleted, and ores of lower grade are
now being worked, so that a much larger mass of ore, more machinery,
and a larger force of working-men are now required to produce the
same amount of silver.
The geological intervention of radioactivity is believed by
physicists to have a determining influence upon the development of
subterranean resources as well as upon the surface features of the
earth and the formation of mountain chains. Vitality is another
ever-increasing phenomenon, but the bewildering abundance of life
that confronts the student of nature is no more inciting to research
than the mystery of metals deposited far in the ground. The natural
resources of Canada are so vast that even yet, as Dr. W. J. A. Donald
asserts, "the greater part of three million six hundred thousand
square miles of the Dominion is still _terra incognita_ as regards
its mineral resources, or even its geological features."
During the present war all enterprises are, more or less, and,
indeed, largely, in abeyance in the Dominion; but the present is
always compact of the {131} future, nor can any strictly dividing
line be drawn. "Even in the midst of the greatest tragedies," said
Sir Clifford Sifton in his address before the Canadian Club of
Montreal on January 25, 1915, "while we are trying to do our duty in
the greatest crisis of life, we still must speak, act, think, and do
in reference to the ordinary affairs of life; and the better we think
and act and do in regard to these affairs, the better we shall act in
these crises and the better we shall discharge our duty." Canada
will never be numbered with those nations regarding whom the words
were said of old, "Where there is no vision the people perish."
There is no lack of vision in the Dominion. The splendid loyalty of
Canada, not only to the Empire, but to the cause of righteousness, is
beyond all estimate in words; as the Right Honourable Sir Robert L.
Borden has so finely expressed, there can be only one conclusion
regarding the present tragedy of conflict. "To overthrow the most
powerful and highly organised system of militarism that ever existed
must necessarily entail terrible war and perhaps a protracted
struggle. We have not glorified war or sought to depart from the
paths of peace; but our hearts are firm and united in an inflexible
determination that the cause for which we have drawn the sword shall
be maintained to an honourable and triumphant issue."
This is the spirit of the Dominion. But all conflicts must have an
end, and when the end of this struggle {132} comes there is a
marvellous future awaiting the Dominion. The future of a nation as
well as that of an individual is not merely, nor even mostly, to be
mechanically surveyed. It is not a definite geographical region with
boundaries that can be located and crossed with a clear knowledge of
the line of demarcation. The future is something that is created by
men's thoughts. It is made, not found; it is constructed, not
discovered. And thus, even while all internal industries are
somewhat in the grasp of an enforced pause, yet new plans and
projects for the future are in order. The mineral resources of
Canada are incalculable. But that they will form one of the most
remarkable factors in her future prosperity and importance is a
practicable certainty.
It was somewhere as early as 1846 that the veins of silver were
discovered in the region adjacent to Port Arthur on Lake Superior;
and twenty years later that ore was actively producing silver which
it continued to do until 1903. On a small island, near Thunder Cape
(known as the Silver Islet), was the most famous and the richest of
these mines, and the ore, interlined with veins of quartz and
carbonates, was found in a wide area. It traversed a large belt of
diabase, and only where the vein transversed the diabase was it
richly infused with silver. Otherwise, it bore galena alone. As
early as 1884 the mine had carried to a level of nearly two thousand
feet, and it was estimated that not less than three million two {133}
hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of silver had been extracted
from it.
When the Cobalt silver mines began to be worked, Canada took her
place as the third silver-producing country in the world; and this
distinction must be largely attributed to the richness and copious
output of these particular veins.
Cobalt is about 330 miles north of Toronto, on the Ontario Government
Railway, and four hours south of Cochrane. At Cobalt the mines are
clustered all around and beneath the town, a lake in the centre
having been drained to facilitate the search for ore. To the
south-east these mines are distributed over a distance of four miles.
While the Cobalt silver district proper is comprised within this
area, other mines, and productive ones too, have been found in the
farther outlying country. London is the chief silver market of the
world. Much of the bullion shipped from Cobalt is sent directly
there, and London is also the basing point of prices.
The vast mills of Cobalt, transforming the crude ore into bullion,
and the hydraulic plant on the top of a hill, where one man
manipulates power sufficient to wash down huge rocks and to uproot
and send down large trees and stumps, open out to the uninitiate a
new idea of the way in which man contrives to control Nature and
force her to do his bidding.
At Cobalt the "silver sidewalk" is not only an {134} actual and
visible spectacle, a solid surface on the level ground of shining
silver from one to three feet in extent, but it is an indication of
untold possibilities. Still, up to this time, the richness of the
veins has been found to be rather in their number than their depth.
These deposits are found in association with the pre-Cambrian rocks
which, according to the geologists, belong to the Huronian and the
Keewatin formations, through which a later diabase has been intruded
in the form of a sill. This is not held to be necessarily the source
of the ore deposits, but rather the means of opening the way for
their introduction from other sources. A large majority of the
productive veins, some eighty per cent., in fact, occur solely in the
Huronian formation. The remaining twenty per cent. is divided
between the Keewatin and the later diabase. As has been said above,
these deposits are not especially deep, most of them being found
below the sill within a depth of two hundred feet. The ores from all
the Cobalt region include white arsenic, cobalt oxide, and nickel
oxide, as well as the fine silver, and not infrequently a
semi-refined mixture of the cobalt and nickel oxides.
If silver were the magnet that first drew the attention of the miner,
the prospector, or the capitalist to Cobalt, it is not the only
encouragement to the settlement of all this beautiful region. A few
miles out from Cobalt is the pretty suburb of New Liskeard on a sheet
of the bluest water, sparkling in the sunshine and the transparent
air; {135} where numbers of artistically designed cottages have
sprung up; where the business street reveals a thriving trade; where
one or two newspapers are published; and where the seeker after the
occult may find his palmist and his mental healer as well as his
dentist and his physician. Electric cars connect this idyllic little
village with Cobalt, and motor cars dart about in a way which
suggests that this region is by no means outside of the cosmopolitan
luxuries of life. The country is one of great scientific interest.
The geologist may find new data; the botanist and ornithologist new
fields for observation.
Cobalt is recognised as a permanent silver camp, and as one of the
richest on the entire American continent. At first the stories told
of silver paths, brilliant and shining in the sunshine, were regarded
as part and parcel of the usual myths that spring up in mining camps.
But the "silver sidewalks" were there. They were the most palpable
of facts. A hundred miles to the north of the town of Cobalt, on
Porcupine Creek, the prospectors found gold. Specimens of the
alluring yellow ore may be seen in glass cases in the corridor of the
King Edward Hotel, Toronto. In that city many of the miners may be
met, for mining is now a scientific pursuit rather than merely an
industry, and whether the miner takes his ease in cosmopolitan
centres and gives his mines "absent treatment," after the convenient
fashion of Christian Scientists, or whether he is less remote {136}
from his interests, does not seem to affect the results in a vital
manner.
During the year 1915 thirteen mines in Northern Ontario produced
gold, and many of these are now making alterations and additions to
their plants which will enable them to largely increase their output.
The following table shows the steady advance of the Porcupine gold
camp since its discovery in 1910:--
Value of
Year Production
$
1910 35,539
1911 17,187
1912 1,730,628
1913 4,284,928
1914 5,203,229
1915 7,580,766
----------
Total 18,852,277
To find this possibly incalculable wealth in the densely wooded
wilderness is a continually increasing surprise. The Porcupine
district, as well as the Cobalt region, is reached by the Temiskaming
and Northern Ontario Railway, a line of two hundred miles in length,
built by the Province of Ontario, and furnishing connection between
the Transcontinental line from Quebec to Winnipeg, north of the
lakes, and the cities in the southern portion of the provinces of
Ontario and Quebec. The construction {137} of this connecting line
led to the discovery of Lake Timagami (one of the popular summer
resorts), and about thirty miles north of the lake the first
indication of silver was accidently found by a workman who hurled his
hammer at a scampering rabbit and hit a rock instead, chipping off a
layer that disclosed a vein of almost pure silver. This initiated
the famous La Rose mine, taking its name from the man who made this
fortunate throw of his hammer, and within the succeeding four years
this immediate region was capitalised at some five hundred millions.
While the Cobalt silver mines, then, owe their discovery to this
employee on the line, the engineers prospecting for the grade of the
Grand Trunk Pacific accidentally uncovered vast coal-fields in
Alberta.
This Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway connects the Grand
Trunk System at North Bay with the Canadian Government lines at
Cochrane. The opening up of all this country has not only resulted
in the exploiting of these famous mines, but has brought to knowledge
the existence of the largest tract of pulpwood in the world. The
belt of these forests extends from Ontario to Quebec and westward to
the prairies of Manitoba, a thousand miles of almost unbroken
woodland.
The hydraulic mechanism used in prospecting for ore is one of the
marvels of inventive genius. One man can operate the powerful lever
that turns on a torrent of water against trees, huge stumps, vast
rocks, and sends them rolling down the hillside. {138} All
obstruction, indeed, the very hill itself, is washed down. The
twentieth century will always stand out as a remarkable era for the
invention of mechanism to harness and utilise power hitherto undreamt
of for practical application. These inventions are securing the
increasing spiritual liberation of man. When he is enabled to
harness the powers of the ether; to send the lightning on his
errands; to bridle a force that no man ever saw or touched; when he
can cause the waves of the ether to serve his chariot wheels, he has
indeed transformed the world in which he finds himself.
There are rumours of a recent invention made by Mr. Asa Thurston
Heydon in the Yukon that may largely revolutionise the mining
industry. It was in the middle 'eighties that Mr. Heydon began
studying the primitive divining-rod, the use of which he was inclined
to believe was based upon some germs of scientific truth. He thought
it possible that some natural law lay hidden in the garments of
superstition. For thirty years he experimented and observed. This
research has led him to what he believes is a series of discoveries,
one of which is his invention called the clairoscope, which is the
diviner for substances that are in the earth. Fitted with one or
another substance attached, it turns to that which corresponds with
the given thing attached. He calls the instrument the clairoscope
and the result obtained the clairum. The clairum, Mr. Heydon
explains, is the counterpart {139} of the spectrum. The latter is
limited to the luminous, the former to the non-luminous, rays. The
spectrum exemplifies one pole of the spherical organisation of
energy, and the clairum exemplifies the opposite pole. Mr. Heydon's
researches are based on his conviction that everything, organic and
inorganic, from electrons to the mighty universe itself, is
surrounded by a sphere; that these spheres blend and combine "in
accordance with the laws of force-centres," but that in all
combinations "they retain their identity as do rays of light." This
interesting speculator holds that the non-luminous rays are constant,
changing only from attraction to repulsion, and that they are the
radii of the spheres. He believes that the distinctive energy that
operates the clairoscope is a higher dynamic energy; nothing less,
indeed, than that vital force which is characteristic of all life.
"A name must be found," he says, "for this vital force which is
rhythmically circulating throughout the universe, forming the pulse
of existence. The dream of the alchemist is founded in the nature of
things," continues Mr. Heydon, "and will be realised when mankind
shall have discovered the simple process of polarising and
depolarising electrons at will. This will induce the polarisation of
the correlated material sphere, and an electron of the desired
element will awaken from its slumbers."
To what degree Mr. Heydon's theories will bear the test of his future
investigations it is impossible {140} to conjecture; but it is
already true that the clairoscope is being used to some extent to
locate minerals and has proved useful.
To descend into a mine, down to a three hundred and fifty feet level,
and see the strange panorama of life that is before one's eyes, is a
novel experience. Into the cage steps the little party, and the
downward journey begins. All is dark save for the lamps of the
miners, affixed to their caps, and the lights that are swung give a
fitful and weird illumination. Through the narrow aisles on every
level push-carts are passing, and the visitor must pack himself into
as little space as possible as he stands against the wall to let the
traffic pass by. Everything is dripping; one walks in mud and water,
and sees the glisten of the wet walls. The air is cold and damp. It
seems inconceivable that men can work under such conditions, yet the
visitor is assured by some of the workmen themselves that they prefer
this labour to any of the employments open to them on the surface of
the earth. This subterranean world incites curiosity, interest, and
still the onlooker is not sorry when he finds himself again in the
air and sunlight above.
On the hills about Cobalt are perched attractive cottages and
bungalows, and the quiet, pleasantly social little town bears no
trace of the traditional atmosphere of the mining-camp of that
peculiar order that has been most vividly derived from the pictures
in the novels of Bret Harte.
{141}
CHAPTER VII
WINNIPEG AND EDMONTON
The traveller whose imagination had vaguely pictured Winnipeg as a
fur-trading station somewhere toward the North Pole would be aroused
from such reveries by the spectacle of this brilliant and
cosmopolitan centre, with its beautiful architecture, its broad
boulevards, the magnificent Fort Garry Hotel on the site of the
ancient fort, and the civic centre in the Free Exposition building,
where specimens of all the great products of the Canadian West are
displayed. Winnipeg, which in 1870 had a population of two hundred
and fifteen people, in 1917 records its quarter of a million. It
grows at such a rate that it is unsafe to prophesy to what degree
these figures may be increased in the immediate future. A
representative of Baedeker, who had been sent to the United States to
prepare a volume on its western regions, complained to a
fellow-voyager on the ocean steamer, when returning to his own
country, that it was mathematically impossible to cope with the Far
West with any accuracy. "Why, I prepare the exact population of a
town--Seattle, for instance--and before I can get my report into
print the population has doubled." This was naturally a tangible
grievance, and one which was {142} extremely difficult for the
statistician to meet. Possibly the same baffling problem of accuracy
confronts him who would record the population of Winnipeg.
From the tower of the Fort Garry Hotel there is revealed a scene
hardly to be compared with any other on the continent. The spectator
can see broad boulevards, many of which are a hundred and thirty-two
feet in width; an electric railway, operating hundreds of cars, whose
service is said to be the most perfect of that of any city in the
States or in Canada; streets paved with asphalt and macadam;
extensive parks, where equipages not less fine than those of Hyde
Park or the Bois de Boulogne, are seen rolling along the smooth,
winding roads; churches, numbering nearly two hundred; the University
of Manitoba; the art school; and the unexcelled beauty of miles of
residential regions, laid out in those graceful curves and crescents
so familiar in the West End of London--all these are indicated in
this great centre of commercial, industrial, and social life.
To those who had thought of Winnipeg as being remote, if not
inaccessible, it is rather surprising to find that this metropolis of
Western Canada is but twenty-seven hours from Chicago and but
forty-five hours from Washington. At the time of the Chicago
Exposition of 1893, one of the most popular routes between Boston and
that city was through the Hoosac tunnel, on which the passenger
boarded {143} his train in Boston at seven P.M., and arrived in
Chicago at seven the second morning after--a journey of thirty-six
hours, which no one at that time regarded as being too long. Nor
does it require the memory of that traditional being, the "oldest
inhabitant," to recall that when the Pennsylvania Railroad succeeded
in reducing the time between New York and Chicago to twenty-five
hours, it was then held to be much more of a marvel than is now the
eighteen-hours' journey of the Twentieth-Century Flyer. Winnipeg is
forty-eight hours from Montreal, fifty-three from Quebec, and only
forty-five from New York. No city on the western continent is more
splendidly equipped than Winnipeg for business enterprises, great
conventions, and large convocations of all orders. Besides the
spacious and superb Fort Garry Hotel, she has more than fifty other
guest-houses and one of the largest departmental stores on the
continent; she has parks covering more than five hundred acres; she
has more than twenty banks; and in a single year these banks did a
business of almost one billion seven hundred million dollars. All
the grain business of the Canadian West centres in Winnipeg. In the
magnificent Union Station of white marble, costing some two millions
of dollars, there are twenty-seven railway tracks, long distance and
local, all of which radiate from the city. The Winnipeg River offers
unmeasured facilities for power, a total of sixty thousand
horse-power being already developed, {144} which is sold to
manufacturers and other consumers at the cost of production. There
are over four hundred successful factory plants in operation,
employing twenty thousand factory workers. Thus told in bald
statistics alone, the story of Winnipeg is singularly impressive; but
these facts and figures are but the mere skeleton of the story of
Winnipeg. In this northern metropolis the polarity of life in
general is changed.
[Illustration: Union Station and Fort Garry Hotel, Winnipeg]
A signal aim in this city is the culture of beauty. In the laying
out of streets and avenues the question of vista and the composition,
so to speak, of the landscape has received unfailing consideration.
All the country about is finely wooded, and with its rolling
declivities offers cool and shaded nooks and spaces for summer
outings. Here and there are lofty elms, and occasional wooded areas
of many acres in extent. These are a surprise to the traveller whose
conceptions of this region have been those of a bare and more or less
desolate prairie land. The nature of the soil of the neighbourhood
is a factor of determining importance. The clay belt begins at
Cochrane, the junction of the Transcontinental line with the Ontario
Government Railway, and it extends for three hundred miles to the
west, affording a tract with plentiful water and with every
productive condition. The provision of population for this clay belt
is now a foremost question in Canada and engages the attention of
both the Province of Ontario and of the Transcontinental Railway.
The {145} generation that cleared the bush lands has almost passed
away, and the present settlers have different ideas of pioneer life.
One age does not repeat itself. The continual invention of machinery
that liberates human life has its dominating influence, and all signs
of the times point to new methods of entering on new settlements.
The British settlers who arrive are not accustomed to the clearing of
timber-lands, yet this clay belt has probably resources to sustain a
population of from one to two million people, and the climate is no
more severe than that of Quebec or of northern Maine. The
transformation of this region of wilderness into a well-populated
country would provide a much-needed link between Eastern and Western
Canada. The distances, as we have seen, between Winnipeg and other
of the great centres both in the Dominion and in the United States
are by no means appalling; and with the splendid railway facilities
now provided by the new Trans-continental route between Winnipeg,
Toronto, and Montreal, by way of Cochrane, Cobalt, and North Bay,
across New Ontario, and through the Highlands of the same Province, a
route that only opened on July 13, 1915, this region is abounding in
attractions for the new settler.
There are two sources of revenue which are of unmeasured value; one
is that of pulpwood which can be advantageously disposed of, and the
other that of employment in constructing government roads. Another
inducement will be that of the {146} "ready-made farm." This scheme
has been utilised to some extent in Alberta and in New Brunswick as
an inducement to colonists. Thousands of these farms, on which
buildings have been erected and a small area placed under
cultivation, with stock and farming implements furnished, have been
placed at the disposal of settlers, each for a small cash payment,
and with the conditions of subsequent payments made most liberal and
lenient. In Ontario the scheme has not yet been worked out in
detail; but the government of the Province is favourable toward
adopting a similar system, building a house and barn and clearing ten
acres on a farm of a hundred and sixty acres, as well as advancing a
limited sum of money for the purchase of stock. The Ontario
government also propose arrangements for assisting the farmer in
marketing his pulpwood.
All these conditions of the surrounding country are of vital
importance to the city of Winnipeg. The settlement of wild lands,
the development of industrial resources, centres of population
springing up in new sections--all these directly contribute to the
growth and importance of the metropolitan centre. The civilisation
of Canada has proceeded more rapidly in the transformation of the
wilderness into populated lands than did that of the western part of
the United States. Four years after the formation of the Dominion
(July 1, 1867) Canada had extended across the entire continent. By
the conditions of the time, both in applied inventions {147} and in
the degree of progress achieved by man, Canada has escaped the
disadvantage that the long efforts of pioneer life entail upon a
nation. The new towns and cities begin with well-paved streets,
electric lighting, and electric transit.
Winnipeg, since 1899, has owned and operated its own water system,
which is the hydro-electric power plant. The architecture is largely
of a permanent nature, the designs following the latest developments
of taste, skill, and efficient construction. Much of it compares
favourably with the best architecture of New York or Washington. The
blocks of handsome residences; the architectural taste of the public
buildings; and the constant series of lawns, with their flowers and
plants, leafy shrubs and luxuriant trees, make the city one of
exceeding beauty and attractiveness. Churches, schools (and they are
among the best in Canada), theatres, and lecture halls abound; the
libraries are particularly enlightened and helpful and their growth
and extension are only comparable with the library developments of
St. Paul and Minneapolis, of Los Angeles and other young cities of
the most advanced degrees of progress. "The world of books is still
the world," wrote Mrs. Browning; and the community that renews its
resources from the best that has been thought and said in the world,
as it is conserved in literature, will be that which is the more
efficient in all that makes for human advancement. Familiarity with
the best literature has the {148} most potent of influences for good
taste, good manners, high ideals of conduct, mutual courtesy, and
self-respect.
Canada cannot afford to ignore Matthew Arnold's wise warning not to
mistake material achievement for civilisation. In its true and full
significance, civilisation means "the humanisation of man in society;
his making progress there towards his true and full humanity. We
hear a nation called highly civilised," Mr. Arnold proceeds to say,
"by reason of its industry, commerce, and wealth, or by reason of its
liberty or equality, or by reason of its numerous churches, schools,
libraries, and newspapers. But there is something in human nature,
some instinct of growth, some law of perfection, which rebels against
this narrow account of the matter. Do not tell me, says human
nature, of the magnitude of your industry and commerce; of the
beneficence of your institutions, your freedom, your equality; of the
great and growing number of your churches and schools, libraries and
newspapers; tell me also if your civilisation--which is the grand
name you give to all this development--tell me if your civilisation
is interesting."
Carlyle, as Matthew Arnold reminds us, once wrote to a younger
brother who thought of emigrating to the United States: "Could you
banish yourself from all that is interesting to your mind, forget the
history, the glorious institutions, the noble {149} principles of old
Scotland--that you might eat a better dinner, perhaps?"
Mr. Arnold hastens to disclaim any sympathy with the idea that young
men should not emigrate; it was the term "interesting" that caught
his eye in Carlyle's counsel, and it is for that element that he
makes his eloquent plea. It is that element, moreover, which the
young and splendid city of Winnipeg may well reckon as one of its
fundamental characteristics. In the _Journal Intime_ of M. Amiel,
the reader finds him saying that "the human heart is, as it were,
haunted by confused reminiscences of an age of gold; or, rather, by
aspirations toward a harmony of things which every-day reality denies
to us." In all the appointments of wealth and luxury, M. Amiel made
an effort to realise or to approach this ideal, and thus finds in
this order of life one form of poetry. Society demands distinction
and beauty as a component part of human nature's daily food.
Obviously, a new country cannot offer archives of long centuries of
history, nor ruined castles, nor an assortment of myth and tradition.
These may and do have their part in that atmosphere of interest which
is the nurture of the intellectual powers; but the Future is no less
stimulating than the Past; prophecy is not less alluring than
history. The art of life itself is the finest of all the fine arts
and to the seeing eye may invest a city with as much fascination as
is to be derived from the galleries of the {150} Louvre or of the
Vatican. The spiritual life of all the ages is preserved in
libraries, and the youngest of cities may well be heir to the records
of this life. "No matter how poor I am," said William Ellery
Channing; "no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not
enter my obscure dwelling--if the sacred virtues will enter and take
up their abode under my roof; if Milton will sing of Paradise; and
Shakespeare open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of
the human heart; if Franklin will enrich me with his practical
wisdom--I shall not pine for intellectual companionship, and I may
become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best
society in the place where I live."
It is not only noble art and beautiful architecture combined with
historic and social traditions that appeal to all that is best in
life. What could more readily appeal to the imagination than that
visible expression of faith in the future of the Great Dominion, the
completion of a new great transcontinental line making possible
direct transit across Canada from ocean to ocean? What could more
appeal to the imagination than the marvellous invention of the
wireless control of moving trains as has been already described in a
previous chapter?
What can, indeed, be a feature of greater interest than the practical
creation of a new world; the power of man conquering and transforming
the domain of Nature? Do not Romance and Poetry {151} spring up here
anew? Science and the Muses have a subtle basis of understanding.
James Russell Lowell has interpreted this mutual comprehension in the
lines:
"He who first stretched his nerves of subtle wire
Over the land and through the sea-depths still,
Thought only of the flame-winged messenger
As a dull drudge that should encircle earth
With sordid messages of Trade, and tame
Blithe Ariel to a bagman. But the Muse
Not long will be defrauded. From her foe
Her misused wand she snatches; at a touch
The Age of Wonder is renewed again,
And to our disenchanted deity restores
The Shoes of Swiftness that gave odds to Thought;
The Cloak that makes invisible; and with these
I glide an airy fire from shore to shore."
Winnipeg has an interesting centre in the Industrial Bureau and
permanent Exposition and Public Service Building, located in the
leading business street and contributing in many ways to the swiftest
means of unfolding industrial opportunities and to the most liberal
development of the city. Both the Dominion and the Province of
Manitoba, beside all the railways centering in Winnipeg and thirty
western Boards of Trade, have installed attractive and extensive
exhibits of the natural resources, so extensive, indeed, as to be
practically complete in their revelation to the visitor of every
variety and quality of the country. The manufacturing interests of
the city are represented by eighty-five practical exhibits of
articles "made in Winnipeg." There is also a museum with a large
{152} collection of mounted birds and wild animals of Canada; and
there are historic relics and curios; as well as collections of
economic minerals and other exhibits of various interest. Winnipeg
has also, in this building, the first Civic Art Gallery in Canada,
and it is wisely made free to all. In connection with the Gallery is
an Art School where painting and drawing are taught. In this Public
Service centre is a Convention Hall that will seat four thousand
people and a smaller lecture or banquet hall seating about four
hundred. There are also other accommodations for meetings, large or
small gatherings, as may be, that are so numerous in business,
social, industrial, or educational activities. Over seven hundred
meetings were held in this building within the first ten months after
it was opened. Adjoining Convention Hall is the Central Farmers'
Market, where citizens conveniently find the produce of farm, market,
or garden. The Industrial Bureau, which has its quarters in this
building, is a thoroughly representative one, incorporated under
Provincial Government Charter, with a directorate elected from
appointed representatives of twenty-nine public bodies of the city,
grouping together the best talent, administrative, professional,
educational, and industrial, which could be brought together for the
work of public service. The Bureau organisation is non-partisan,
non-sectarian, and has no axe to grind other than that which concerns
the benefit of the whole community. It is the Civic Bureau of {153}
Information for citizens, visitors, and outside inquirers.
The Fort Garry Hotel is a social centre of Winnipeg. Its imposing
architectural effects render it a landmark in the panoramic view of
the city. Its walls, of buff sandstone, rise to a height of fourteen
stories, and the copper roof and lofty pinnacles are transformed to
molten gold when the sun shines on them. The majestic structure is
an adaptation from the period of François I., with something
reminiscent of the old chateau in Touraine and Normandy. In the
standards of elegance and beauty in all entertainments, these Grand
Trunk hostelries--the Château Laurier, the Fort Garry, the Macdonald
of Edmonton--all introduce standards of polite life that are of
incalculable benefit to the community and which have hardly before
been approached in the Dominion. In elegance and refinement, both of
appointments and of service, these hotels rival, if indeed they do
not almost excel, the choicest luxuriance and beauty of Paris and New
York. One block to the east of the Fort Garry is the magnificent
Union Station in which the Canadian Northern and Grand Trunk Pacific
centre, and which has every convenience and device up to date; and
between the station and the Fort Garry Hotel is a wide boulevard with
a double row of trees in the centre, and a little park, under the
very shadow of the house, has its picturesque approach through the
ivy-clad ruins of the old gateway to the fort; an historic reminder
{154} of the time when, a century ago, this entrance was built by the
Hudson's Bay Company in a turbulent period. The contrast between the
sense of peaceful though intense activity, under the brilliant
sunshine over the broad, beautiful streets, whose smooth pavement is
a joy to motorists, with that time when savage assaults must be
defended by the forces within Fort Garry, is a contrast to incite a
train of speculative reflection. There were "sceptred spirits" in
those days whose heroic deeds shine through all the years between
their time and our own. The history of the Hudson's Bay Company is,
in itself, one of the most thrilling chronicles of the Dominion.
From the windows and balconies of the Fort Garry Hotel the view is
magnificent--St. Boniface, with its splendid cathedral group,
Assiniboine Park, and the Legislative Buildings, with two rivers
winding away into the vast spaces of the prairie--all make up a
panorama never to be forgotten. The interior of this alluring house
is singularly charming to the eye. The furnishings are rich and yet
have that air of simplicity that appeals to the artistic sense--grey
marble floors with soft rugs and the main dining-room all in cream
and gold. The foyer and loggia connecting the banquet and ball rooms
suggest the ancient cloister with their vaulted ceilings and the
mediæval lanterns for electric lights. The café has marble
wainscoting, suggestive of some old baronial castle, while in the
grillroom there is oak panelling {155} that would delight old
England. There are three hundred rooms, two hundred and thirty-five
of which have private baths while the others have easy access to
bathrooms. What a contrast of living is thus revealed between the
fastidious and luxurious life of the twentieth century and that of
the primitive days of a hundred years ago when the old Fort Garry
occupied the site of this hotel!
For fully fifty miles west of Winnipeg extends a belt of land some
300 miles in width, provided with good water found at reasonable
depths, which is the marvel of the world for grain raising. This Red
River Valley is the great wheat-producing region of the continent,
and the journey of nearly eight hundred miles from Winnipeg to
Edmonton reveals vast fields of golden grain, while along the route
the colossal elevators loom up in the level expanse like some
colossal fortifications.
Winnipeg has been from the first a predestined centre of commerce.
It is the metropolis of the transcontinental lines and is the one
supreme gateway through which all travellers and all traffic from
ocean to ocean must pass. No other city on the western continent has
such an absolute monopoly of all transit from the east to the west,
or the reverse.
Edmonton, the capital of Alberta, most attractive in its beauty of
locality, stands on the bold bluffs of the Saskatchewan. The railway
bridge spanning this gulf is one of the finest on the continent, with
its imposing piers of hewn stone, over a hundred feet in {156}
height, with trusses of steel. Two bridges at the level of the river
provide for other traffic, with the novel arrangement that heavy
vehicles are lifted and lowered from the surface of the bluff to the
river by means of colossal elevators. The elevator is a municipal
institution, and municipal ownership is the general rule in Edmonton,
the city owning and operating the trolley lines, the electric light
plant, the water-works, and the telephone system. Edmonton would be
the earthly paradise of the disciples of Henry George, for it is a
single-tax town. The University of Alberta with its splendid campus
of three hundred and fifty acres, fronts the impressive capitol, of
cream-hued sandstone, which stands on the Edmonton side of the river.
The capitol is four stories in height, with classic portico and a
dome surmounted by a tall lantern, while the building is rendered
still more beautiful by its artistic approach; wide terraced steps,
with balustrades, ornamented with heavy bronze lamps, the effect of
which, when lighted at night, is not without reminiscences of Paris.
The Hotel Macdonald has a charming situation on the high bank of the
river, within a few minutes' walk of the centre of the town. The
traveller enters by the spacious court and covered loggia, passing
thence into the great rotunda, with its floor of pink Levantine
marble and its ceiling of solid oak. Adjoining this is a lounge,
opening on a terrace 50 feet wide, overlooking the river, and the
palm-room (octagonal in form, {157} with its dome decorated in
Wedgwood designs), as well as a beautiful dining-room, a café, and
other public rooms. As one walks through all this magnificence in
the place so recently occupied by Indians, hunters, and trappers of
the frontier trading posts, he begins to realise something of that
almost incredible rapidity of growth and development that
characterises the great North-West.
The Canadian Women's Press Club in Edmonton is an organisation that
delights the heart of the modern woman, to whom her clubs are the
very breath of being; and its President, Mrs. Arthur Murphy, is well
known to the world of letters under her _nom de plume_, "Janey
Canuck." Mrs. Murphy is one of the most famous of Canadian writers,
and has contributed much to the general knowledge of the Dominion.
Her work has received very high praise. "She has opened a new path
in Canadian literature," says an eminent critic, "and her _Open
Trails_ and _Seeds of Pine_ will inspire many other writers."
Mrs. Murphy is the wife of the Rev. Arthur Murphy, D.D., who at one
time was the chaplain to the Empress Frederick. Her work has
attracted much attention in England, and _The Bookman_ of London, in
a critical review of her books extending into several pages, said:
"The work of 'Janey Canuck' has the optimism of the true lyric; the
song of the open road. The refrain of the windswept spaces was never
set to a better tune.... It {158} is not style that matters in the
work of 'Janey Canuck' any more than it matters in the work of Walt
Whitman--a kindred philosopher. She comes scattering seeds of
gladness in our mist, and lo! our gloom is gone like a black cloud
that breaks before the April sun. She is the philosopher of gladness
and content and common sense, a philosophy as durable as Bergsonism."
Mrs. Murphy has been honoured by King George by the decoration that
entitles her to be known as a "Lady of Grace," an appropriate title,
indeed, for so gracious a lady.
Edmonton is the gateway to the Yellowhead Pass; and the beauty of its
location, the charming nature of its people, and the vastness of the
territory of which it is naturally the centre, all conspire to incite
dream and prophecy of the future of this young city of University
ideals and marked intellectual and literary quality.
{159}
CHAPTER VIII
ON THE GRAND TRUNK PACIFIC
One of the most enchanting pleasure trips that can be enjoyed on the
North American continent is that from Winnipeg to Prince Rupert
through regions of scenic glory
"Where all wonder tales come true";
where one journeys to the accompaniment of a bewildering series of
surprises that open vistas of new interests and enjoyments never
dreamed of before. It is one of the signal charms of a journey
through regions of majestic beauty and of scenic enchantment that it
is not over even when it is past. Such a trip is a treasure laid up
in life for future enjoyment without limit.
It is only some five hours from Edmonton before one begins to enter
on this wonderland of romance. It is so new that the world of travel
has not yet realised the marvel and glory of this trip. When it is
stated that even the first surveying for this transcontinental line
began only in 1910, it will be readily seen that in this region is
opened up an absolutely new part of the world to general travel. The
anomaly of traversing these primeval wilds in a train so luxuriously
appointed as are the limiteds {160} on the Grand Trunk Pacific
appeals to the comprehension of man's conquest over nature. To
travel in the comfort of these commodious coaches, equipped with a
richly-furnished drawing-room, an admirable dining-car, an
observation car with a spacious balcony platform at the rear and
fitted with writing-desks, stationery in abundance, books, magazines,
and newspapers, is to enjoy a journey on a flying hotel.
"Here is a train worth while!" wrote Sir Arthur Conan Doyle after the
conclusion of the extensive trip that he and Lady Conan Doyle enjoyed
over the Dominion: "it is the latest word in comfort, in luxury, in
safety, in speed. The dining-car is never taken off. The
observation car is a pleasant club. The road is as smooth as
polished marble, with heavy rails well ballasted, no smoke or
cinders.... It has the highest maintenance of track and rolling
stock.... It runs on a marvellous line, destined to a mighty future."
[Illustration: Mount Edith Cavell and Cavell Lake]
The entrance to the Wonderland begins, as was said, some five hours
from Edmonton. The best plan is to leave this thriving young capital
of Alberta by a late evening train, and waken in the morning to find
one's self in a region where the peaks to the south of the Yellowhead
Pass begin to appear on the horizon. He who understands the romance
of railroad travel will raise the heavy blind of the windows of his
lower berth or his drawing-room, so as not to miss the strange
panorama of the night. Indeed, if {161} we compare the romance of a
night on shipboard with that of a night on a flying railroad train,
the latter is incomparably the greater. The first requisite is an
added relay of pillows--all that one wants, and all that one does not
want, so to speak--pillows on which to prop one's self up to the
proper angle of altitude that he may lie at ease and watch that
marvellous moving panorama of forest and glade, of starlit sky, or of
the hills flooded with moonlight; with flitting gleams of shining
silver as the train glides past lakes, or along the course of a
winding river. It is the realm of fäery, where nothing is but what
is not. Is there a moon? There are a dozen moons! There is one in
the south, but a moment later it appears in the far east--no
well-regulated moon would career about in the heavens in so erratic a
manner, therefore there must be another; and when, at the next
glimpse, it again appears at some different point of the compass,
one's conviction that the earth must have as many moons as Jupiter is
reinforced. The vast forest solitudes are all strange; to waken
suddenly and find one's self flying through these unreal regions is
an experience never to be forgotten. It is an experience entirely
lost save to one who unveils his windows to the mystic scenes rather
than sleep in the darkness of drawn blinds. The elusive fascination
possible to the nights on a railway train is a chapter of life in
itself. It recalls to one the dictum of Socrates that all exact
inquiry into such matters as the movements and nature of {162} the
sun and the moon should be excluded from too close investigation!
From Winnipeg the traveller speeds over fields of emerald or fields
of gold, according to the season; the harvest time is a world of gold
and resplendence; and ere the grain ripens it forms an infinite
expanse of tender green. The economist would see in these
far-reaching fields of growing grain a theme for his statistics and
practical deductions as to their contribution to the world's wealth;
but the eye of the pleasure-traveller regards them solely in the
light of æsthetic effect. Wheat or oats, grass or anything else, it
is all one to him as long as the colour scheme enchants his eye. As
he approaches the mountain region the scene is etherealised. Away on
the horizon are illuminated points, but whether on earth, or in the
heavens, who can tell? One begins to enter into the atmosphere that
pervades mountain solitudes. It eludes all analysis, but it is the
most potent of impressions. The gateway to the mountains prefigures
itself as the portal to some trackless spaces not of earth. The
peaks shine with a celestial light. Snow-capped, catching the
morning sunshine in dazzling splendour, they rise as a very wall
beyond which mortal may not pass. Is the wall as impenetrable as it
seems? How can a railway train dash itself through the palisades of
bewildering mountain peaks, clustered in their shining splendour?
And what world lies beyond?
The grandeur grows more impressive. And as {163} among the problems
of life, so among mountains, there is usually a way out. In this
case it is the Yellowhead Pass. In the preliminary survey and
construction of the railroad this Pass was chosen by the skilled
engineers who at once recognised its striking characteristics, for it
permitted the railway to take its line across the Rocky Mountains at
the lowest altitude of any transcontinental line on the continent.
The swiftly flowing waters of the Athabasca River mirror the towering
peaks above. The Pass grows wider; again, there is a narrower curve
as it deftly penetrates its way between the vast heights. The
tourist has of course betaken himself to the outside platform of the
observation car. Here is a spacious balcony, with projecting roof to
shield from sun or wind; a space ample for some sixteen seats, which
offers a moving picture that reveals the handiwork of Nature as
distinct from that of Art. Here the traveller sits, with all the
majesty of the mountain contours about and above him.
This Yellowhead Pass had been, for some generations, the great
natural highway of the fur trade. The Hudson Bay post was
established here as early as in 1800, and the name of a yellow-haired
trader, known to the Indians as "Tête Jaunne" (otherwise Jasper
Hawes), led to the present name of this historic spot. One cannot
but dwell a little on the Yellowhead Pass itself, as one of the
special features of the trip; not merely a passage-way to traverse,
but as a region rich in novel points of beauty, never {164} twice the
same, but varying with every atmospheric change and from every new
angle of vision. Traverse the Yellowhead Pass by day in the
brilliant sunlight; or on one of the marvellous moonlit nights, when
every peak rises in silver sheens; when the stars look down as if
they were great globes of light near at hand, and the walls of sheer
rock are so softened under the mystic light as to be no more mere
rocky precipices, but the field of the weird dances of the Brocken.
Gnomes and sprites emerge from some unseen caverns; the cliffs tower
into the sky and bring the stars down to earth, so as to make them
seem as accessible as electric lights. There are projecting
balconies far above where perhaps the Spirits of the Solitudes
congregate.
The eastern approach to the Yellowhead Pass is guarded by the Boule
Roche and the Roche à Perdrix Mountains, these marking, also, the
entrance to Jasper Park. The fabled Valley of the Cashmere is hardly
less familiar to the great tide of summer travel than is this
Yellowhead region. In a preceding chapter (on the summer resorts of
Canada) the pleasure resources of Jasper Park were somewhat
suggested, and Mount Robson Park will doubtless also become one of
the great favourites of the world. The great natural reserve of
Jasper Park comprising 4400 square miles is one that for all time
will be preserved in its absolute integrity. No spoliation will be
permitted. It is not only a national but a continental
pleasure-ground for all time. Mountain-climbers {165} will find here
the fullest scope for their prowess. More and more will the
Mountaineering enthusiasts of Britain be allured to Canada instead of
to Switzerland--a part of the great Empire, calling with a thousand
voices to every trueborn Briton. To many visitors the best use they
have for a mountain peak is to look at it rather than to ascend it.
Why tramp about when the eye registers all its supreme splendour and
the tourist may luxuriate in the shaded portico outside his camp and
revel in the changeful panorama of colour and beauty? Or he may
stroll in fertile valleys, brilliant with flowers; he may ride, or
drive, along good trails with new enchantments meeting him at every
turn.
Two beautiful lakes, Pyramid and Patricia, are in the very shadow of
Pyramid Mountain, only four miles from Jasper station. At this
station are the Park superintendent and his staff, who are ever ready
with help and information and who effectually banish from the mind of
the tourist any fear of strangeness or solitude. While hunting is
not permitted in Jasper Park, the angler may, if he likes, fish all
day in the clear lakes. They are well stocked with trout. The
complete ban upon hunting or any use of firearms is a great safeguard
to the wanderer through woods and valleys, making accidents of this
nature impossible. Maligne Cañon and Maligne Lake have been already
discussed in the chapter already alluded to on summer resorts, but no
description could convey any idea of the spectacular {166} beauty of
the excursion leading past Lakes Edith and Beauvert, through dense
forests of spruce and cottonwood, with the walls of the cañon rising
300 feet in height on either side. Here is a trip of thirty-five
miles from the cañon to Maligne Lake, that sheet of pure, emerald
water--an excursion amid such magnificence of beauty as to defy
adequate description.
Jasper Park is now enriched by the presence of an imperishable
monument that will endure throughout the ages; one to which thousands
of travellers, in the years to come, will make their pilgrimage as to
a shrine. It is a memorial that not only lends its glory to the
Dominion, but to the entire continent as well; for not unaccompanied
by faithful hearts from her great sister nation across the border
shall Canadians seek this mystic altar to which every wind wafts
aromatic fire. For it is a shrine consecrate to all that is noblest
in womanhood, all that is most heroic and divine in our common
humanity. The Dominion, the States, are at one in their reverent
appreciation of the greatness of simple fidelity to duty. He who
keeps faith with his ideals is the true hero. It is he who enters
into the fellowship of the mystery. He may go down to death in
apparent darkness and defeat; he rises in eternal glory. For to be
spiritually-minded is life and peace, even the life eternal.
It is fitting that Edith Cavell, who gave her life for her country;
who died the death of the martyr {167} rather than betray her trust,
should be commemorated with a memorial whose monumental grandeur
exceeds that of any Egyptian king or Assyrian monarch of remote
antiquity.
A marvel of glory is this mountain peak now christened Mount Edith
Cavell. It rises in solitary majesty out of this morning-world,
lifting its head into the faint, transparent azure of ethereal
spaces, while its base is rooted amid the rocky fastnesses of the
great range. The naming of Mount Edith Cavell is the tribute of the
Dominion to one great-souled woman, and thus to all that makes for
the greatness of womanhood. On its precipitous slopes may be read by
all who have the inner vision the scroll of human fate.
The peak is calculated to enchain the eye by its towering height and
faultless symmetry. Did Nature herself design and fashion it for its
strange destiny? Was it indeed reserved for its present
consecration? Who may know? Life is a chain of sequences divinely
ordered. It lieth not with man to direct his steps.
"The shuttle of the Unseen powers
Works out a pattern not as ours."
In the matter of naming new places in Canada the Geographic Board is
the governing body. It was at their meeting in Ottawa in March 1916
that the decision was made that this peak should immortalise the name
of Edith Cavell. The suggestion had previously been made that the
name of {168} Mount Robson should be changed to that of Mount Cavell,
but this would have been so inevitably confusing all over the world
that it was thought wiser to select a peak hitherto unnamed. To Dr.
E. Deville, the Surveyor-General, the Geographic Board therefore
made this announcement much to the gratification of that well-known
official. Thus is a woman's life of simple faithfulness to duty
lifted into immortal resplendence. What a monitor suggesting
unfaltering devotion to great issues will Mount Edith Cavell remain
to the throngs of passengers on this Grand Trunk Pacific line, who
will watch for its appearance on the horizon, and gaze, with
steadfast view, until it fades in the far distance. For several
miles can it be seen, and what traveller will gaze on this height
without feeling it to be one of the spellbinders of the Dominion? or
without finding himself involuntarily recalling those wonderful lines
of Emerson?
"Inspirer, prophet evermore!
Pillar which God aloft hath set
So that men might it not forget;
It shall be life's ornament
And mix itself with each event.
By million changes skilled to tell
What in the Eternal standeth well!"
Brulè Lake, in Jasper Park, is an expansion of the Athabasca River,
and the railroad line follows the east bank of the lake. Canada
would be the paradise of Undine, the water sprite of La Motte
Fouqué's famous story, for rivers broaden into {169} lakes, and lakes
connect themselves by a chain of rivers, until the continuous
possibilities for inland navigation appeal to the geologist as a
problem of the ages to be solved. Many theories are evolved; even as
they are in Arizona, as to the origin of that apparently impenetrable
mystery, the petrified forest.
At the station of Miette Hot Springs another excursion may beckon to
some travellers in that up the valley of Fiddle Creek, which flows
into the Athabasca River. There are a number of basins encrusted
with yellow from the sulphur that abounds in the water, which has
strong medicinal properties, and which ranges from a hundred and
eleven to a hundred and twenty-seven degrees in temperature.
Then, too, there are the Punch Bowl Falls, reached by an attractive
trail from the station known as Pocahontas. Jasper Park extends to
the boundary line which marks the division between Alberta and
British Columbia; and crossing this boundary the traveller finds
himself in another of Canada's gigantic reserves, that of Mount
Robson Park, with Mount Robson itself as the centre dominating the
entire region. The train stops at Mount Robson station, and one
seems to enter a new world in this near approach to that king and
monarch of the Canadian Rockies, the peak of Mount Robson towering
upwards for 13,068 feet in the clear air. Of his first view of this
peak Lawrence J. Burpee, F.R.G.S., writes:
{170}
"... Almost without warning it came. We rounded the western end of
the Rainbow Mountains and looked up the valley of the Grand Fork.
'My God!' some one whispered. Rising at the head of the valley and
towering far above all the surrounding peaks we saw a vast cone, so
perfectly proportioned that one's first impression was rather one of
wonderful symmetry and beauty than of actual height. Then we began
to realise the stupendous majesty of the mountain...."
It is not only that Mount Robson is supreme in the range of the
Rockies in Canada, but it is one of the notable mountains of the
world. In its peculiar beauty of form and proportion it is hardly
surpassed by any known peak. It has many aspects and phases--it is
clearly seen in brilliant sunshine, it is dimly discerned when it
enwraps itself in clouds and ethereal mists, it is seen again by
resplendent moonlight--and one finds each phase has its own
enchantment. Its glistening crest is visible for twelve miles after
the train pulls out from the station. Its colossal glacier tumbles
masses of ice-fields down into Berg Lake at the foot, and these
masses of ice continue to drift on the surface of emerald water that
holds its colour in the same strange way as do the waters of the Gulf
of Corinth.
The Alpine Club of Canada has made excursions to these places, and of
one quest on Berg Lake a member writes:
"... I shall not soon forget that first day when we came up the trail
and, looking through as far as the eye could reach, saw countless
blossoms--brilliant crimson Indian paintbrush, pale pink columbines,
and mauve asters, their stems imbedded in the softest and greenest
{171} of foliage and moss; nor another day, when on the side of
Rearguard, we came upon a garden of blue forget-me-nots.... Whilst
we lingered amongst the flowers that first day, an avalanche crashed
into the lake and the big waves came rolling across until they
reached the shore above which we were standing, while broken ice
floated out as miniature icebergs upon the milky blue surface of the
lake. And Lake Adolphus, across the Pass--I could not find a word to
describe its indescribable blue. Seen from camp or through the trees
from the side of Mount Mumm, it was absolutely lovely. Then there
was the Robson Glacier, in plain view of camp and only a few minutes'
walk distant, a never-ending source of interest, with its ice cave
and its seracs and crevasses."
As the train sweeps on the tourist sees, from his comfortable seat on
the platform of the observation car, a myriad rocky pinnacles
silhouetted against the heavens. The peerless grandeur of these
peaks, snow-crowned and glistening with glaciers; of emerald lakes at
the foot mirroring overhanging crags; of unmeasured wastes of
windswept snow-fields; of ethereal solitudes and depths unfathomed,
in the wild gorges, where, for all the eternities, only the stars
have looked down; and the isolated grandeur of Mount Robson itself
lifting its glittering summit into the skies--all this amazing wonder
enters with new force and richness into life itself. Half a century
ago Milton and Cheadle christened it "a Giant among Giants,
Immeasurably Supreme." The first ascent of Mount Robson was made
only as recently as in 1909 by the Rev. George Kinney and Mr. Donald
Phillips, their final success being the outcome of a trial of twenty
days, during which {172} they were continually baffled and driven
back by adverse and seemingly impossible conditions. But the
difference between success and failure may be accurately defined as
persistence of energy. He who gives up, fails; he who does not give
up, succeeds. It is only a question of time and of tenacity of
purpose. Two unsuccessful attempts to ascend to the summit of Mount
Robson had been made in 1907-8. There is a trail leading to the
north side of Mount Robson, along the Grand Fork River, skirting the
shore of Lake Helena and up through the Valley of a Thousand Falls,
with the celebrated Emperor Falls within view, and thus on to Berg
Lake and to Robson Pass. The trip to Berg Lake can be made within
one day, and it is an excursion into regions of such marvellous
beauty that can never be translated into words. In all this
bewildering sublimity the spellbound gazer can only question, with
Robert Service:
"Have you seen God in His splendours? heard the text that
Nature renders?"
Such fantasies of combination, too, as meet the eye: castles, towers,
fortresses, that glow like opal and ruby and topaz; walls of sheer
glaciers rising in dazzling whiteness like a spectral caravan;
formless solitudes fit only for the abode of the gods! The spirit of
the mountains is abroad on her revels; ice peaks 10,000 feet in the
upper air are her toys; the winds are her Æolian harp; the Valley of
a Thousand Falls is her theatre for pastime. Neither the Swiss {173}
Alps, nor yet that mysterious chain of the Tyrol, haunted by drifting
cloudshapes and vocal with rushing waterfalls, can compare with the
colossal scale of this splendour of all the Mount Robson region. It
is the encountering of an entirely new range of experiences. It is
Service again who interprets one's emotional enthusiasms in the
stanzas:
"Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there's nothing else
to gaze on?
Set pieces and drop-curtain scenes galore,
Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the blinding sunsets
blazon,
Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar?
Have you swept the visioned valley with the green stream
streaking through it,
Searched the Vastness for a something you have lost?
Have you strung your soul to silence? Then for God's sake go
and do it;
Hear the challenge, learn the lesson, pay the cost.
"Have you known the Great White Silence, not a snow-gemmed
twig a-quiver?
(Eternal truths that shame our soothing lies),
Have you broken trail on snow-shoes? mushed your huskies up
the river,
Dared the unknown, led the way, and clutched the prize?"
Strangest of all, in these stern mountain solitudes, with their
glittering crevasses of ice, there are sheltered valleys all aglow
with myriads of flowers in brilliant and gorgeous hues; and here, at
sunset, peaks touched to gold and crimson are seen looming up in the
transparent air against a background of intensely blue sky, a
spectacle to inspire both painter and poet with its unearthly beauty.
To traverse such a region as this amid the luxury {174} of the
appointments of the Grand Trunk Pacific's transcontinental trains
seems at first an anomaly; nothing is primitive save the forests
primeval; nothing wild but the scenery. It is all a new universe,
somewhere between the once familiar earth and the dream of
Paradise--something by which to set the compass of life to a new
polarity.
An intrepid mountain climber, Miss Mary L. Jobe, F.R.G.S., made a
wonderful quest into these Canadian Rockies recently, and explored a
region 100 miles north-west of Mount Robson. Of one scene there Miss
Jobe writes:
"A massive white peak shot into the blue from a walled fortress of
rock. Two colossal rocky towers stood guard over a file of lesser
peaks; multi-coloured masses of granite, glacier-hung, glowed with
irridescent tints, while down a valley rushed a foaming river to meet
the cascades of colour pouring from the mountain...."
Between Mount Robson and Prince George (from which young city a
railway will soon be completed linking it with Vancouver) the route
on to Prince Rupert follows the Fraser River, the waters of which are
a chrysolite green, the furious current flecked with foam, while the
Fraser, at one point, transforms itself into a lake, seven miles
wide, with that easy power of compassing transformation scenes,
lightning changes, so to speak, of which the rivers of the Dominion
appear to hold the secret. When a Canadian river grows tired of
running, it immediately turns itself into a lake. When a Canadian
lake becomes tired of staying in the same place, {175} it at once
proceeds to become a river. Just what species of genii control the
wilds of Canada has not yet engaged the attention of her
statisticians. The great Fraser River has its headquarters in the
Yellowhead, and flowing through a broad valley, watering large
fertile tracts of land, it makes its progress to the Pacific 800
miles away. The view of this wonderful river from the railroad, as
the line passes high above the swirling waters, is a magnificent one.
The Fraser has a beautiful bend at Prince George, turning sharply to
the south, while the railway proceeds through another smiling valley,
the Nechako--a valley which is rich in plateau lands favourable for
agricultural uses, and along whose course are numberless sylvan
scenes that lend to it great beauty. Vanderhoof, the gateway to all
the region of lakes of British Columbia, is the capital of the
Nechako Valley. The railway again enters into the mountains, the
Coast Range, in the Bulkley Valley, and for a distance of 200 miles,
between Smithers and Prince Rupert, the view is diversified by
mountain peaks. The Nechako and Bulkley Rivers water fertile valleys
of more than 6,000,000 of acres, easily cultivated and offering a
scenic setting unparalleled in the world. Hazleton is a prosperous
and growing centre with an assured future. From this city the
railway route follows the Skeena River, which also has a trick of
widening at intervals. The splendid train glides on and on, and is
it on the air that one seems to hear echoed:
{176}
"There's a whisper on the night-wind, there's a star a-gleam to
guide us,
And the wild is calling, calling ... let us go!"?
The onward route is enthralling. There comes in sight La Riviere au
Shuswap, a tributary of the Fraser, with a vanishing view of three
peaks close together, far up the valley, as the train rushes past.
For it is not every mountain that can have a station to itself, as
has Mount Robson, thus giving the passenger time to see its wonders
with no little satisfaction. Before the junction of the Bulkley and
the Telkwa Rivers is reached, the railway passes Lakes Decker and
Burns; and at the junction of the rivers mineral deposits of copper,
silver, lead, and coal have been discovered that promise rich
leading. Hudson Bay Mountain is a prominent peak, 9000 feet in
height, and in this mountain also silver and silver lead, copper, and
anthracite coal are found; and the Hudson Bay Glacier lies only four
miles from the railway track, easily reached on horseback. The train
runs close to the shore of Lake Kathlyn, a lake filled with a
black-spotted trout, and Hudson Bay Mountain is repeated in the lake
as in a mirror.
[Illustration: Charles Melville Hays]
Bulkley Gate is something to see, if one may judge by the contagious
enthusiasm of the young train agent who proceeds to announce it, with
the pride of a showman displaying his wares. By just what necromancy
a railroad system magnetises every employé, from the most important
officials to the youthful recruit, with its own courtesy and {177}
unanalysable charm in all the relations of service, may not be
revealed; but the result is very much in evidence.
In all the hotels of this line, as well as upon railroad lines, the
duty, grace, and charm of courtesy of manner are constantly
inculcated. To make the service the best on the continent seems to
be the ideal of the staff through every grade and department.
Bulkley Gate proves itself quite worthy of its young champion--a
wonderful gate indeed, formed by a dyke that formerly crossed the
valley, and at last gave way before the power of the river. The
Skeena and the Bulkley Rivers unite near Hazleton, and in close
vicinity is the Rocher Deboule Mountain, which is known as the
Mountain of Minerals. It is extremely rich in copper ore, large
quantities of which have already been taken from it. All along the
picturesque and turbulent Skeena River are quaint Indian villages,
with the totem poles of their tribes. Here also mountain peaks are
much in evidence, and in the spring of 1916 one of these, 9000 feet
in height, was chosen to bear the name of Mount Sir Robert, in honour
of the Premier of the Dominion, Sir Robert Borden. A large glacier,
which seems to be at least a mile in width, has been named Borden
Glacier, and both the peak and the glacier can be seen from Doreen
station.
Thus is the entire route one of exceptional beauty and never-failing
interest. From the first to the last there is not a dull moment.
And in crossing the {178} wonderful bridge that connects Kaien Island
(on which Prince Rupert stands) with the mainland, the traveller
finds something to enlist his enthusiasm for science as well as that
enlisted for nature. This bridge is nearly a thousand feet in
length, and includes six spans, two of which are of two hundred and
fifty feet each. The engineers encountered great difficulty, because
of the furious racing of the water through the channel, so that at
times the divers could not descend. The conditions not unfrequently
reduced the working hours to little more than three out of the
twenty-four.
The construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific that extended the western
lines of the Grand Trunk System from Winnipeg to Prince Rupert was an
epic story of the Dominion. For it was really one of the determining
events of British Empire history, as well as an exceptionally potent
factor in the contemporary development of Canada. It has not only
changed the map of the country, but also takes its place in
international advancement. To open a new and vast territory whose
splendour of scenery, incalculably marvellous resources, and climatic
conditions are such as to invite and sustain immigration is an
achievement that brings to bear a signal influence upon the peoples
of the entire European continent and even upon the Orient. It was at
once the opening of a new realm for human life. Education and
culture are invited to enter. It is hardly possible for the mind to
grasp, or for {179} the imagination to picture, all the possibilities
of the future that are initiated by so great an enterprise. The
Indian trail, the packhorse, the canoe, gave way to the steel tracks,
the luxurious trains of vestibuled cars laden with civilisation
advancing into the wilderness. A great Canadian railway is not built
to meet the recognised demands of settlement. It has to act as
pioneer and create the conditions that make settlement possible. Its
construction is, literally, the manifestation of belief in the things
not seen. It is a creative power prospecting for paths of national
destiny.
The story of that reconnaissance through hundreds of miles of an
apparently impenetrable wilderness is one to haunt the imagination.
It is a story of hardships and of heroisms. Emerson declares that
"The hero is not fed on sweets."
The pathfinder shares the usual experience that invests heroism.
It is to Charles Melville Hays that the conception of thus extending
the Grand Trunk System is primarily due. Mr. Hays was endowed with
the "seeing eye." He was gifted with that penetrating order of
comprehension that swiftly discriminates between the possible and the
impossible, and sets the key of achievement accordingly. He was not
infelicitously called "the Cecil Rhodes of Canada." With that same
brilliant capacity to conceive new combinations that build up new
orders of life, {180} Mr. Hays had that tenacity of purpose which
alone renders such conceptions available, and he had an even larger
power than that of the Empire builder in Africa for relating his
dream to definite conditions.
It is recorded that there came a morning in Canada when the Dominion
awakened "to experience a thrill of excitement from the Atlantic to
the Pacific." For the newspapers had announced that a new
Transcontinental railway was to be undertaken, and that the Grand
Trunk System was the initiator of this stupendous scheme. It seems
that Mr. Hays himself had conveyed to the press merely this laconic
statement overnight, and it was the spark that incited a very
conflagration of discussion. There was an instantaneous public
clamour whose geographical limits were only defined from Halifax and
Vancouver, from Dawson to Hudson Bay. But when the morning dawned,
and the startlingly interesting news incited the pursuit of the
President of the Grand Trunk System for fuller information, that
distinguished official had already boarded his steamer and was fairly
off on the high seas for Europe. The man at the head of a railway
system that, by the addition of its new western lines, attains to no
less than 8115 miles in extent, with its inestimable potentialities
of service, may well be accorded rank among the notable figures whose
genius and courage have helped to shape the destiny of the Dominion.
In the work of constructing this great {181} trans-continental road,
Mr. Hays called as his lieutenant, in 1909, Mr. Edson Joseph
Chamberlain. Mr. Chamberlain was Vice-President and General Manager
of the Grand Trunk Pacific for three busy years, and after the
tragedy of the _Titanic_ in 1912, he was called to succeed Mr. Hays
as President of the Grand Trunk System.
The chief engineer in charge of the construction of the Grand Trunk
Pacific was Mr. J. B. Kelliher. With him went a party of gentlemen
to make the preliminary exploration after the surveyors had made
their pioneer report on the possibilities of the route. While they
had secured a general impression of the topography, the problems that
remained were intricate and manifold.
[Illustration: Hudson Bay Mountain and Lake Kathlyn, Bulkley Valley]
"In order to obtain a faint idea of the prospect that confronted
those entrusted with the reconnaissance," writes Frederick A.
Talbot,[1] "conceive a vast country rolling away in humps, towering
ridges, and wide-yawning valleys as far as the eye can see, and with
the knowledge that the horizon can be moved onward for hundreds of
miles without bringing any welcome break in the outlook. On every
hand is the interminable forest, a verdant sea, except where here and
there jagged splashes of black betoken that the fire fiend has been
at work. The trees swinging wave-like before the breeze conceal
dangers untold beneath their heavy, blanket-like branches.... Here
is a swamp whose treacherous {182} mass stretches for mile after
mile.... There is a litter of jagged rock ... here a maze of fallen
tree trunks, levelled by wind, water, and fire, piled up beneath the
trees to a height of ten, fifteen, and twenty feet in an inextricable
mass, over which one has to make one's way...." Mr. Talbot
graphically describes that silence of the trackless solitudes: "Not a
sound beyond the sighing of the wind through the trees, the
rifle-like crack of a dead, gaunt monarch as it crashes to the
ground, or the howl of a wolf." At night the party slept in
sleeping-bags; they had scant provisions, too, because to carry an
adequate supply would have been an impediment to progress; and after
the quicksands, the impenetrable forests, they would suddenly
encounter some mad river or vast lake; and at one cache where they
arrived, famished and weary, they found that wild animals had broken
in and destroyed the store of dried fruits, fish, and canned food
they had expected to find. What a story is this record of pioneer
work for the selection of the route and the discovery of the most
favourable Pass for the construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific!
There were many possible Passes investigated before the decision was
gradually arrived at, by the process of elimination, to choose that
of the Yellowhead. The number was first reduced to four; the Wapiti,
Pine River, Yellowhead, and Peace River, and then Mr. Hays decided on
that of the Yellowhead.
[1] _The Making of a Great Canadian Railway_. London: Seeley,
Service and Company, Limited.
"Our engineers have secured so easy a grade {183} through the
Yellowhead Pass," said the Chairman of the Board of Directors, "that
when the traveller takes the trip he will be no more conscious of
crossing a big mountain range, except for the magnificent scenery,
than he would be when he travels by the London and North-Western or
by the Great Eastern Railway."
One interesting fact in connection with the enormous enterprise of
constructing this road was the installation of temporary telephone
facilities, linking together the long line of construction camps that
trailed from Winnipeg to the coast.
Something of all this wonderful story comes fragmentarily to the
passenger whose interest is aroused by the splendid construction of
the road, on which no effort was spared to secure permanence and
safety. One feature that is always a noticeable one to the traveller
is that of the "milestones," so to speak; the tall signs clearly
inscribed with the figures registering the miles as they are so
rapidly passed over.
Not only flowers and glaciers, sunsets and tumbling cataracts, rocky
pinnacles and frowning ramparts, enchant a journey unrivalled on the
continent, but in the palace-train, whose cars are a series of
drawing-rooms in their luxurious appeal, there are varied
opportunities for studies of humanity, human interest, and sympathies
as well. For example, in one corner is an aged French Abbé, absorbed
in his breviary and in a richly bound volume which reveals {184}
itself as the meditations of Fénelon. The air of detachment and
scholarly isolation that he contrives to throw around himself forbids
even much speculation as to whence he came or whither he is going--as
if even one's mental questioning might be an intrusion.
At one little station, as the train stops, its resplendent comfort
contrasting strangely with the primitive life of the newly-fledged
village, there enter a man and woman who have been attended to the
very steps of the vestibule by a throng that apparently represents
the entire population of the town. They are all singing, and the man
and woman linger in the vestibule joining in the song. The man is in
the uniform of an officer of the Salvation Army; the woman,
sweet-faced and smiling, is also costumed in this order, with the
usual Salvation Army bonnet projecting over her serene and pleasant
face. The refrain of the song floats out on the air:
"Yes, we'll gather at the river,
That flows by the throne of God."
There is something in the time, the place, the isolation in the new
and just-opened country through which the train is passing, the
on-coming darkness, and the penetrating cadence of the trite and
familiar melody that touches every heart. Every one joins in the
melody; and as the train begins to move, the outer throng withdrawing
into safer distance, the man and the woman still leaning from the
door of the vestibule, there is a waving of hands, and a {185} chorus
of farewells from the vanishing group left behind, and the train
flies on to the benediction of song that still pursues it on the air:
"God be with you till we meet again!"
The man and the woman catch up the line; they are singing with
melodious voices, the magnetism enchains the passengers, and the
cadence echoes again through the railway car:
"God be with you till we meet again!"
It was one of the little episodes that transcend conventionalities
and make strangers into friends. The darkness is coming on; various
nationalities, various individualities--the elaborately outfitted
English tourist, the Reverend Abbé, the pioneer settlers, the stately
official on some mission of Government, the college Professor with
one eye on the landscape in scientific scrutiny--yet all meeting for
the moment in a sense of their common heritage as children of the
Divine Father.
Later it was learned that the Salvation Army officer and his sweet
Scotch wife were none other than Commissioner and Mrs. Charles
Sowton, who were on their way to open meetings in the little Indian
village of Metlakatla, near Prince Rupert, going on later to
Vancouver and Victoria. The Salvation Army is one of the features of
the great North-West. A new territory had been created, and
Commissioner Sowton was appointed to superintend all the activities
of the army in the {186} country west of Port Arthur. For more than
thirty years the Commissioner had been engaged in Salvation Army
work, during which period he and Mrs. Sowton had been stationed in
the British Isles, Norway, India, and the United States in turn. On
their arrival in Victoria on this trip, Commissioner and Mrs. Sowton
were given an official reception, the Mayor and the City Council
joining with the people of the City to welcome these faithful helpers
of humanity. In Vancouver, also, a large meeting was held in the
Pantages Theatre in their honour, Mayor Taylor presiding and many
representative citizens being present.
Nor did the passengers on that particular train fail to make friends
with the wounded Canadian soldier, a brave youth who had lost one arm
in service at the front, and thus crippled for life was returning to
his home at Prince Rupert. To one passenger who was deeply touched
by his courage, his youth, and his patriotism, he was moved to show a
little talisman that he carried in his pocket, an envelope containing
the prayer written by Lord Roberts for the soldiers at the time of
the South African war:
"... If it be Thy will, enable us to win victory for England, but,
above all, grant us a better victory over temptation and sin, over
life and death, that we may be more than conquerors through Him who
loved us, and laid down His life for us, Jesus, our Saviour, the
Captain of the army of God."
To his new friend the lad handed his signed card {187} of
"Self-control; The Sake of Others, and for Love of Christ and
Country," the promise to abstain from all intoxicating liquors, and
to do all in his power to promote good habits among his comrades.
And there was his little card of personal prayer:
"Almighty God, Grant me Thy power, and keep my heart in Thy peace,
help me to avoid evil, and be with me in life and death, for Jesus'
sake."
And the two, strangers but an hour before, were drawn near as sharers
of a common hope, a common faith in the Divine care and leading.
On the arrival at Prince Rupert the populace came out to meet the
young soldier. In him they honoured all Canadian soldiers who were
offering their lives that their Empire might live and that the
freedom of humanity from Prussian tyranny might be preserved. There
was more than one band of music at the station, and musicians,
soldiers, and people joined in the war song:
"When my King and Country call me and I'm wanted at the front,
Where the shrapnel shells are bursting in the air;
When the foe in fury charges and we're sent to bear the brunt.
And the roll is called for service,--I'll be there!
"When the Kaiser's lines are broken and his armies out of France,
When the Belgian desolation we repair;
When the final muster's ordered and the bugle sounds 'Advance'
May the God of Battles help me to be there!
"When for me 'Last Post' is sounded and I cross the silent ford,
I've a Pilot who of 'mine fields' will beware;
When 'Reveille' sounds in Heaven and the Armies of the Lord
Sing the Hallelujah chorus,--I'll be there!"
{188}
No literature relating to the terrible struggle could have brought
home such an intense realisation of the significance of the war, and
the indomitable courage and splendid loyalty of the Dominion, to the
passengers on that Grand Trunk Pacific train as did these personal
contacts and experiences. Canada is not a military nation. She
desires to follow the paths of peaceful progress and noble
development. She has no enmities toward any race, but she sees
clearly the utter demoralisation of the entire world if militarism
and armaments are not exterminated. "The people of the British
dominions are animated by a stern resolve that there shall be no such
outcome," said Premier Borden in an address before the New England
Society, "and they believe it possible to create a well-ordered world
whose harmony shall be based on a mutual respect for common rights."
[Illustration: Indian Totem Pole, Alaska]
The wonderful journey, whose majestic splendour so impressed itself
upon individual life that, in a sense, it could never be over, had
its termination at Prince Rupert. There, again, one may watch the
rose and flame of dawn and the glory of colour from terraced heights
over-looking sea and land; and in all the play of colour reflected
from a thousand waters he may almost find prefigured the twelve gates
of the Heavenly City that were all of pearl; and the foundations of
the wall which were garnished with precious stones--jasper and
sapphire, emerald and chrysolite, and last--an amethyst!
{189}
CHAPTER IX
PRINCE RUPERT AND ALASKA
Mrs. Carlyle declared that when Robert Browning's poem of _Sordello_
appeared she read it through twice with the deepest attention, but
that at the conclusion of the second reading she was utterly unable
to determine as to whether "Sordello" was a tree, an island, or a
man. Somewhat of the same bewilderment has beset many people of late
years in regard to any mention of Prince Rupert, the young seaport of
the great North-West. One citizen of the United States to whom a
rather unusual degree of cosmopolitan travel had been allotted by the
Fates that appointed his not undistinguished destiny, and who enjoyed
the well-earned admiration of a host of friends as being
pre-eminently entitled to speak with authority on many abstract
matters for which those less erudite cared little and, alas! knew
less, assured his votaries, on inquiry, that Prince Rupert was a town
somewhere in the "Dolomites" and that its title should be spelled
with a final "z"; while another cheerfully relegated Prince Rupert to
the maritime provinces of Canada. Still another, who was nothing if
not historical, connected the name only with that of the son of
Frederick, Count Palatine of the Rhine, who was created Duke of
Cumberland in 1644 and who so distinguished himself in scientific
pursuits that he {190} was rewarded with a tomb in Westminster Abbey
(somewhere about 1682). His portrait, painted by Sir Peter Lely, is
in the National Portrait Gallery at London. Not to prolong mere
pleasantries, however, the Prince Rupert whose citizens forecast for
it the future of the "Liverpool of America" is really the terminal of
that vast and splendid new transcontinental highway, the Grand Trunk
System.
Prince Rupert was really created in Boston (U.S.A.), for before the
dense forest covering the rocky island with an almost impenetrable
growth was felled, the town was laid out by Messrs. Brett and Hall,
one of the most distinguished firms of landscape architects in the
United States. As a result it is one of the most charmingly designed
cities of the entire northern continent. The scenic setting of
Prince Rupert is one of incomparable beauty, with its ineffable glory
of sea and sky, its hills and cliffs, with terrace above terrace, a
scenic setting that suggests, and even rivals, that of Algiers, or
Naples, or Genoa, in that unique order of picturesque loveliness
investing the cities that rise from terraces above blue seas, with
architectural splendours silhouetted against the sapphire sky.
Kaien Island, upon which the main part of the city will stand,
comprises some 28 square miles lying 550 miles north of Vancouver.
From the magnificent harbour the island rises imperiously, dominated
by its central peak, Mount Hays, which towers to some 2300 feet in
the clear air, with a {191} grandeur of outlook that the artistic
genius of Messrs. Brett and Hall admirably utilised in a way that
insures the young city so novel and delightful a background. From
Mount Hays the view over the harbour, the islands, and the far waters
of the Pacific, and over lakes, forests, and rivers on the mainlands,
is a view to be included among the noblest scenic delights of the
world. No more romantic panorama discloses itself from Amalfi, Hong
Kong, or from the Acropolis of Athens. Nor is Prince Rupert icebound
and stormbound in the winter, for the Japanese current that washes
the shores insures an open harbour all the year round. The entrance
to the bay is singularly commodious and is usually free from fog.
The harbour of Prince Rupert has every claim to be considered one of
the finest in the world.
The task on which Messrs. Brett and Hall entered was a novel one. It
was nothing less than the creation of a city seen in ideal vision.
On the actual site was a waste and wild of rocks and stones, of
tangled undergrowth and huge stumps of trees that had been felled.
The mountain, also, had to be reckoned with, and even if the Boston
landscape experts had possessed that traditional faith which is said
to be able to remove mountains, they did not wish to remove Mount
Hays. Like Mount Royal, in stately, splendid Montreal, the mountain
was the most picturesque of assets. Here and there some giant tree
had escaped the fate of its companions, and stood as if contemplating
their fate. The uncompromising debris, the {192} rocky sub-stratum,
the abounding mass of loose stone, all combined to present
difficulties. "Prince Rupert! A town hewn out of solid rock," has
since that day been the description of the new city, quoted with
appreciative interest.
How did Messrs. Hall and Brett attack the problem? It was a
complexity of topography that baffled, if it did not defy, solutions.
But Nature yields, perforce, to the necromancy of genius, and the
initial achievement was to create a series of planes, planes level,
planes inclined, and they then discovered that the trend of all these
was, naturally, from north-east to south-west. Nature smiled upon
them to the degree of establishing the means for all these planes to
be, approximately, parallel in direction. Doubtless these landscape
creators (being Bostonians) congratulated themselves in true
Emersonian phrase on the truth that:
"... the world is built in order
And the atoms march in tune."
This stupendous work was first entered upon by the architects in
January of 1908, the preliminary hydrographic and topographic surveys
having been made in the two previous years by a large engineering
force under the direction of James H. Bacon, the Harbour Engineer of
the Grand Trunk Pacific. The planes being appropriately parallel
allowed rectangular systems of blocks for building, thus offering the
best facilities for traffic; and the lie of the land permitted the
splendid, spacious avenues with {193} charm of vista and vast
perspective, in combination with curving streets of limited
crescents, so attractive for the residential part of the city.
Beside Mount Hays Park, other plaza reservations were made, squares
and playgrounds being especially considered. Along Hays Creek was a
wonderful natural park which was utilised, and there has perhaps
seldom been a combination of art and nature more artistically blended.
For the most beautiful residential section the eastern end of Kaien
Island was selected. Connecting this residential region with the
business section was a broad highway called Prince Rupert Boulevard,
which also formed a link in a circular drive of twenty miles,
extending around the island. There is a superb view obtained from
here over Lake Morse and Lake Wainwright, and in this transparent
air, under a glowing sky, this view alone would be a signal
inspiration to painter or poet. For Prince Rupert is one of the most
ideally enchanting places to be found on any shore; and one of the
notable drives of the world, hardly even excepting that picturesque
and romantic pilgrimage route between Sorrento and Amalfi, is found
in Prince Rupert Boulevard in its connection with Lake Avenue. These
shores of all the marvellous North-West are only comparable with
those of Italy in their ineffable charm.
It is not alone, however, for the romance of beauty that Prince
Rupert is notable. This brilliant young city is destined to be a
traffic centre of great {194} proportions and of cosmopolitan
importance. It will inevitably become the emporium of Alaska and of
all the great Northern region. The port is but thirty miles south of
the Alaskan boundary, and it is thus the natural starting-point for
Dawson, Nome, and other of the Alaskan and Yukon centres. From
Prince Rupert to New York or to Boston or to Chicago there is now
this direct line through Edmonton and Winnipeg, and thus it cannot
but become a great international port. Prince Rupert is four hundred
miles nearer to Yokohama than is Vancouver, and it is six hundred
miles less than by way of San Francisco. Since the completion of the
Grand Trunk Pacific this route has offered the shortest and most
direct route to the Yukon and to Alaska. The first train over the
new extension of the Grand Trunk from Winnipeg to Prince Rupert
arrived at this port on April 9, 1914, a date not unimportant in the
history of progress in Canada, as it initiated conditions which
inaugurate an entirely new era in its prosperous development.
This romantic young city has the distinction of having had more time
and money devoted to its design than has perhaps ever before been
bestowed upon a town seen only in vision. Henri Bergson might almost
point to it as an illustration of his creative evolution. Before the
opening of the town site, plank sidewalks and roadways, sewers and
water mains, and other municipal facilities for the sanitary welfare
and the comfort of ten thousand {195} people were constructed. At
the present time in this city, which only celebrated its ninth
birthday in January 1917, there are already seven thousand
inhabitants. There are three daily newspapers, the _News_,
_Journal_, and _Empire_. There are five banks, branches of the Bank
of Montreal, Canadian Bank of Commerce, Union Bank of Canada, the
Royal, and the Bank of British North America. Two clubs, the Prince
Rupert and the Pioneer, have each attractive houses of their own, and
include in their membership the leading professional and business men
of the city.
The harbour is equipped for the most modern and exacting
requirements. It might well be called the harbour for the ships from
the Seven Seas. The Grand Trunk Pacific Steamship Company have also
established a splendid service between Skagway, Prince Rupert, and
Seattle, the _Prince Rupert_ and the _Prince George_ providing all
the comforts of the best ocean liners, and offering scenery on the
voyage that is so resplendent a feature with its perpetual surprises.
Prince Rupert has an exceptionally high order of population, people
of education, refinement, energy, and enterprise. Churches abound;
the schools are the pride of the city; the social life is interesting
and especially distinctive in having so large a preponderance of
cultivated people.
The fishing industry at Prince Rupert is already one of the most
important and the cold storage plant is one of the largest on the
continent. There is {196} a vast cannery interest, for the salmon
pack of the Skeena River has established itself with the public as
being of a finer order than salmon caught farther south. Prince
Rupert is already the acknowledged centre of the Skeena salmon
fishery, there being twelve manufactories on the river, employing
twelve hundred boats in constant service and more than five thousand
labourers, women as well as men working in this industry. The
halibut landed at the port in the first nine months of 1916 amounted
to 11,667,300 lbs.
Prince Rupert has, also, another important commercial asset in its
pulpwood. Untold quantities of valuable timber are at its very
doors. Mining industries, too, are forecast, as it is believed that
there is much rich ore in the adjacent region, and a smelter is
already projected. All these, however, are held as subordinate in
any case to the commercial possibilities of the city which promise an
undoubted destiny. The Skeena River is one of the invaluable assets,
increasing all traffic conveniences for fruit-raising and
agricultural production, and offering a waterway delightful for
excursions and explorations. The completion of the Grand Trunk
Pacific has brought the eastern portion of the United States and
Alaska forty-eight hours nearer to each other through Chicago, and
has greatly enhanced the commercial interests between the two
countries. The climate of Prince Rupert has a remarkably even
temperature, averaging in summer {197} about seventy-seven degrees,
and the coldest record in any winter (this one being exceptional) was
that of eight degrees below zero. As a rule the winter temperature
does not reach so low a degree. The climate thus permits much
out-of-door life and is perhaps not an altogether negligible factor
in the easy grace of social intercourse. The town has the beginning
of a library, and more than one magazine and reading club. "To open
a door, to widen the horizon, this is human service of the highest
order." The creation of Prince Rupert is well calculated to rank
high in this service.
[Illustration: Junction of Skeena and Bulkley Rivers, British
Columbia]
One of the interesting features of this town, which is one full of
surprises lying in wait for the alert and expectant traveller, is the
great dry dock of the Grand Trunk Pacific and Ship Repair Company,
which has cost something like three million dollars, and was
completed in 1915. This ship-building and repair plant is virtually
three docks in one; and it can handle a ship of twenty thousand tons
displacement and a length of six hundred feet, drawing thirty feet of
water; moreover, it can deal with three ships at a time. It has
derricks that can lift out, for repair, boilers weighing sixty tons,
and after passing them through the shops replace them in the ship.
It also furnishes power, light, compressed air, with wharf and
storage space. The dock, in conjunction with the machine and the
repair shops, can handle any class of work, wood or steel, boilers or
any kind of mechanism. During its construction {198} over a hundred
and fifty men were employed, with a pay-roll that ran to some twelve
thousand dollars a month. The inestimable convenience of such a
plant for vessels in these waters in need of repair can hardly be
over-estimated.
In June 1915 the great enterprise was undertaken across the harbour
opposite Prince Rupert of clearing seven hundred acres for
residential use. Within three months one hundred acres of this was
prepared, but from causes connected with the war, and temporary
conditions of finance, the entire completion of the work is delayed
for a time. In Prince Rupert the site for the magnificent terminal
station is already cleared; and when the war shall be ended and
conditions in the Dominion resume their prosperity, these buildings
will be erected. The telegraph service of Prince Rupert is
admirable. There is a direct service establishing through
communication with the East, and the rates between Prince Rupert and
Vancouver have been reduced to one dollar for a ten-word message.
There is direct communication by telephone with Hazleton, Skeena
Crossing, and with the mine of the Montana Development Company at
Carnaby.
The civic affairs of Prince Rupert are well administered. The city
has adopted the single-tax plan. It owns its electric lighting and
power, its telephone and water systems. The fire department is
equipped with the most modern appliances. It has twenty-one miles of
planked roadways; it has five miles of {199} plank pavements for
pedestrians; and has already three miles of sewers. Five parks
aggregate nearly a hundred acres of reservation for the city's
recreation.
The lumber industry in British Columbia is one of the utmost
importance as the northern part of the province alone produces an
annual output of some twelve million feet. The southern portion of
the province also makes considerable shipments. The Forestry
Department of the Provincial Government of the Dominion report that
there is available, in Prince Rupert district, twenty-five million
acres averaging over fifteen thousand feet to the acre. In addition
there is a tract which will be available for commercial purposes,
within the next half century, of an area of seventeen million acres.
About half this timber is spruce, red cedar and hemlock come next in
order, and there is perhaps ten per cent. of balsam and yellow cedar.
The cannery repairs and boxes required for the salmon pack and for
the halibut trade make enormous demands on lumber. This branch of
commerce was completely transformed by the completion of the Grand
Trunk Pacific. It enabled Prince Rupert to compete on an equal basis
with many other points, for a direct railroad line running through
the centre of the Prairie Provinces to Winnipeg, and especially a
railroad that has a better grade and shorter haul than any other with
which it competes, places Prince Rupert on a fortunate basis with
regard to markets.
{200}
It is hardly possible to estimate the future that lies before Prince
Rupert. As tributary resources it has an ocean and an Empire. To
its port will come the ships from all countries. They will bring
products from the East, of the various far-off continents, and they
will sail away laden with lumber and the rich exports of the vast
North-West. Never was a city more skilfully planned. The Dominion
Government's Hydrographic Survey had made a complete survey of Prince
Rupert Harbour and its approaches, discovering that from the entrance
to the extreme end, a distance of fourteen miles, it was entirely
free from rocks or obstructions of any kind, and that the depth
afforded ample anchorage. The Provincial Government of British
Columbia appropriated two hundred thousand dollars for preliminary
improvements, in the construction of roads and pavements, of sewers
and water mains, before the town site was opened. While the
Provincial Government makes Prince Rupert its headquarters for the
northern part of the Province, with a court-house and buildings for
offices, the Dominion Government is erecting a permanent and handsome
post-office and customs house. Surrounded by a country whose
richness and variety of resources are beyond comparison, its rapid
growth is inevitable.
The easy proximity of Prince Rupert to Alaska is one of the most
important things in connection with this unique and brilliant young
seaport of the Pacific. Seattle and Skagway are 1000 miles apart,
{201} and thus the round trip between Seattle and Skagway is 2000
miles; but from Prince Rupert to Skagway is of course a sail of far
less distance. The trip is one of entrancing scenery, fiords, bays
all mountain-locked in supreme majesty and beauty, arms of the sea
extending into coast indentations with an unexcelled panorama of
glancing lights, play of colours, and moving-picture panoramas of
grandeur and picturesqueness. Between Seattle, Prince Rupert, and
Skagway the entire round trip occupies some eleven days. It is a
voyage unmatched on the entire globe. In the distance the towering
peaks clothed in snow of dazzling whiteness rise beyond the mountain
ranges in their royal purple with evanescent flitting gleams of gold
and rose from the brilliant sun; the green water of the bays is alive
with thousands of leaping salmon; and the shores are defined by the
dark pine forests, standing in an impenetrable tangle of ferns and
trailing undergrowth. Through this "Inside Passage," as it is
called, a fleet of steamers has been employed by the Grand Trunk
Pacific in a splendid coast service between Seattle and Skagway. "I
am in the writing-room on the upper deck of the _Prince George_
sailing amid such ineffable glory that I only write about one word to
every ten minutes," said an enthusiastic voyager in a personal letter
to a friend in the early September days of 1915; "only one word in
ten minutes will be allotted to you, for I must LOOK! It is the time
of my life, and I can write letters (at {202} all events to you, to
whom they write themselves) anywhere. But this voyage--it is the
dream of a lifetime! I have sailed the enchanted Mediterranean with
our rapturous callings at Algiers, rising on terraced hills in her
unspeakable beauty; at Naples, with all the Neapolitan coast a very
vision of the ethereal realms; I have sailed on to Genoa, with
Ischia, dream-haunted by Victoria Colonna, Italy's immortal
woman-poet, and made my pilgrimage to the island and over the ancient
Castel d'Ischia by local boats from Naples; I once sailed through the
Ionian Isles in the late afternoon of a May day that was all azure
and gold; I have sailed the Italian lakes and cruised about on the
Alpine lakes of Switzerland: but it still remained for this one
enchanted voyaging to give me that thrill of untranslatable ecstasy.
This combination of the sea and mountains in what they call the
'Inside Passage' is simply superb. And the _Prince George_ is
perfectly ideal in all conditions.
"I have a large, beautiful state-room alone--every state-room on
these steamers is an outside one; the entire steamer is richly
carpeted in soft moss-green; finished in the native woods, polished
till you could use the woodwork for a mirror (and if it reflected you
how decorative it would be!); beside that, there are mirrors galore,
of the regulation order, and a news-stand with all the world's
literature, so to speak; the most delightful bathrooms, but I don't
spend the entire time at sea in salt baths, as you unkindly {203}
assert; the table is excellent, being rather noted, I am told, for
its fine cuisine, and there is to me a very direct connection between
delicious coffee and various accompaniments, and feeling 'up' to
things for the day; anyway, everything is delicious, and the
splendid, spacious decks to enjoy a paradise of walking on;
writing-desks well stocked with stationery at every turn, on every
deck; and these steamers are 'twin-screw' if you know what that
means! I confess I don't! but apparently people who do know consider
a 'twin' screw as of far more importance in the universe than one
lone, lorn screw; and they are equipped with wireless telegraph (I do
know what that means) and with oil engines, and every modern device
of safety, and with fairly luxurious comfort; and, indeed, the whole
voyage is ideal and has only one fault--alas! alas! that it will
come to an end. If only it would never end! I count off the flying
hours as a miser counts his gold, I can hardly bear to sleep to miss
one hour of its glory and loveliness, yet sleep, too, is a joy in
this magical air, and, at all events, this voyage will not be ended
when it is over. I shall have it all the rest of my life ... to live
over again and again 'in the ethereal,' where all outer experiences
find their record. I am quite sure the Recording Angel sets this
down in illuminated pages."
From Puget Sound 500 miles of the voyage is through Canadian waters,
so vast is the Dominion. For one hundred and twenty miles the
steamer is {204} sailing through the Straits of Georgia, which
separates the main land of British Columbia from Vancouver Island,
with the range of the Olympic Mountains astern, from whence the gods
look down on mortals. Do they not, indeed, dwell on Olympian
heights? Passing into the Seymour Narrows from the Georgian Strait,
the Channel is hardly more than one third of a mile wide, and the
rocky walls with the lofty mountains just behind are so overgrown
with trees as to present an almost solid wall of emerald green,
tempting the passenger to reach out his hand and grasp the cedar
needles that seem so near. On sunny days the reflections in the
water are bewilderingly clear, and here and there pour down rushing
cataracts of foam-crested water from the melting snow of the
mountains.
[Illustration: Indians spearing Salmon in Bulkley Cañon]
"Queen Charlotte Sound," writes Ella Higginson,[1] "is a splendid
sweep of purple water.... The warm breath of the Kuro Siwo,
penetrating all these inland seas and passages, is converted by the
great white peaks of the horizon into pearl-like mist that drifts in
clouds and fragments upon the blue waters. Nowhere are these mists
more frequent, nor more elusive, than in Queen Charlotte Sound. At
sunrise they take on the delicate tones of the primrose or the
pinkish star-flower; at sunset, all the royal rose and purple
blendings; all the warm flushes of amber, orange, and gold. Through
a maze of pale yellow, whose fine, cool needles sting one's face and
set one's hair with seed pearls, one passes into a little open
water-world where a blue sky sparkles above a bluer sea, and the air
is like clear, washed gold. But a mile ahead a solid wall of
amethyst closes in this brilliant sea; shattering it into particles
that {205} set the hair with amethysts instead of pearls.... It is
this daily mist-shower that bequeaths to British Columbia and Alaska
their marvellous and luxuriant growth of vegetation, their spiced
sweetness of atmosphere, their fairness and freshness."
[1] _Alaska; the Great Country_, by Ella Higginson. New York: The
Macmillan Company.
Forty miles north of Prince Rupert is Dixon's Entrance, that marks
the international boundary between the Canadian and Alaskan waters.
Some haunting impress left upon the air by the great navigators who
made their pioneer voyages in these intricate waterways--Perez and
Valdez, Duncan, Vancouver, Meares, Caudra--their dauntless courage
and their perils fling spectra on the passing winds and waves. The
scenic effects grow more and more sublime as the steamer advances.
At a distance of about seventy-five miles north of Prince Rupert the
traveller comes in sight of a remarkable series of mountain terraces,
rising more than six thousand feet into the air, with sheer walls and
castellated summits.
The first call at port after Prince Rupert is at Ketchikan, seven
hundred miles from Seattle, with a population of some two thousand
people, the distributing point for the mines and fisheries of
Southern Alaska. On its crescent-shaped harbour and with its eternal
guard of mountains, with its lake and its falls and its wonderful
gorge, three miles distant into the woodlands, it is a picturesque
town, and with its electric lighting and steam heating it leaves
little to be desired for comfortable residence. Between Ketchikan
and Wrangell are {206} the Wrangell Narrows, a channel where ethereal
vapours, many-hued, like tropical flowers, are breeze-blown in the
air; and the long, green moss, on the trees on either side, sways
like drapery. Miss Scidmore, writing of Wrangell Narrows, thus
pictured it with her fascinating pen:
"It was an enchanting trip up that narrow channel of deep water,
rippling between bold island shores and parallel mountain walls.
Beside clear emerald tide, reflecting tree and rock, there was the
beauty of foaming cataracts leaping down the sides of snow-capped
mountains and the grandeur of great glaciers pushing down through
sharp ravines and dropping miniature icebergs into the sea. Touched
by the last light of the sun, Patterson Glacier was a frozen lake of
a wonderland, shining with silvery lights, and showing a pale
ethereal green and deep, pure blue in all the rifts and crevices of
its icy front."
From Wrangell on to Juneau the entrance to Taku Inlet is passed. The
far-famed Taku Glacier is differentiated by the extreme brilliancy of
its colouring from all other glaciers of the Alaskan regions. Taku
Inlet, with its forty-five ice streams, is a fitting approach to this
marvel of Nature. Every blast of the steamer's whistle is as the
call of a giant monster which is answered by masses of ice that,
detached by the vibration, plunge headlong into the sea with a noise
like thunder. "That day on the Taku Glacier will live forever as one
of the rarest and most perfect enjoyment," again writes Alaska's
vivid interpreter, Miss Scidmore: "The grandest objects in Nature
were before us, the primeval forces that mould the face of the earth
{207} were at work, and it was all so out of the every-day world that
we might have been walking a new planet, fresh fallen from the
Creator's hand." The Taku Glacier has a sheer, precipitous front
three hundred feet high, the colour making it seem one gigantic
sapphire, so intense is the blue. Yet again there are glints of
green and rose and gold that flash out as if a casket of jewels had
been flung over it, or an avalanche of star-dust, windswept, from the
far spaces of the universe. John Muir, the great naturalist, whose
vision was that of the artist and whose spirit was always open to the
message of the eternal world, was deeply impressed by Taku and by
Sundum fiords, and in one allusion he says of Taku:
"A hundred or more glaciers of the second and third class may be seen
along these walls, and as many snowy cataracts, which, with the
plunging bergs, keep all the fiord in a roar. The scenery is of the
wildest description, especially in their upper reaches, where the
granite walls, streaked with waterfalls, rise in sheer massive
precipices, like those of Yosemite Valley, to a height of three and
four thousand feet."
The poetic eye of John Burroughs keenly recognised the grandeur of
all this voyage and the especial splendour that lies between Prince
Rupert and Skagway; and of the gleaming brilliancy of the glacier
regions he said that it was as if "the solid earth became spiritual
and translucent."
This new route to Alaska, which is under the auspices of the Grand
Trunk Pacific, has greatly increased the tourist travel, as the
safety of the {208} "Inside Route," combined with the luxurious
conditions and the ineffable panorama of beauty, render the journey
as easy and feasible as it is delightful. There is a saving of three
days by journeying over the Grand Trunk Pacific to Prince Rupert and
there embarking for Alaska. In January of 1916, the well-known
traveller and writer, Mr. Frank G. Carpenter, made this trip of which
he wrote:
"... I despair of giving you any idea of the beauties of this voyage,
they are so many and so varied. Now you have the wonders of the
Swiss Lakes, now those of the Inland Sea of Japan, and now beauties
like those on the coasts of New Zealand. There are all sorts of
combinations of sea and sky, of evergreen slopes and snow-capped
mountains. The colour effects are beyond description and the sunsets
indescribable in their changes and beauties. The islands are of all
shapes and sizes and they float upon sapphire seas. Many of the
islands have snow-capped mountains that rise in green walls almost
straight up from the water, and their heads are often crested with
silver."
Juneau, the capital and principal metropolis of Alaska, is on
Gastineau Channel, which is eight miles in length and more than a
mile wide at the entrance, gradually growing less as it nears the
mainland, till it becomes like a narrow avenue of blue water through
which the sunset pours in the late afternoon with an almost unearthly
beauty. Mount Juneau, in the centre of the town, rises to a height
of 3000 feet, with sloping sides of a pale green down which rush
numberless cascades of silvery, sparkling water. Juneau is already
an important {209} business centre, with incalculably rich mining
properties tributary to the city, and with almost every branch of
business and the industries represented. It is the commercial supply
centre of all the camps; it is on the direct line of travel from
Seattle to the Upper Yukon, and has its banks, assay laboratories,
transportation facilities, and good schools, while it is the
residence of the Governor of Alaska and the seat of all the Federal
offices. There is a Chamber of Commerce, and there are women's clubs
and imported gowns. The hospitalities of Juneau are already famous,
and social life rises to a gaiety and whirl that leaves the Parisian
life, as it existed in its social tide before the war, quite in the
shade. The Parisienne is seldom reckless in her extravagance; a
certain well-adjusted economy is a part of French life, even among
the most fashionable and wealthy. But economy can hardly be said to
have achieved much for itself in Juneau. Is not Alaska stuffed with
gold? Not a few of its residents live as if that conviction were
their financial basis. The entertaining is on a lavish scale; the
women are dressed so smartly as to put a modest traveller quite to
rout; and money is apparently regarded as something to be put into
immediate circulation.
Life is at high tide. Juneau has a creditable library, it has
several cleverly edited newspapers, and the general vitality of the
social and commercial life is not unworthy of the sparkling
splendours of the scenic setting. As Juneau was founded in 1880, its
{210} initial mining camp developing towards a town, the period of
its existence that antedates the dawn of the twentieth century is
regarded by its up-to-date residents as ancient history. The Rome of
the fifth century is not more remote from the Rome of 1916 than is
the decade of the 'eighties from Juneau. The people are the true
"futurists" in every sense. No grass grows under their glancing
feet. They drive, and dress, and dine, and dance. They begin where
the older cities leave off, so to speak. If they are remote from the
great world centres, so much the worse for the same centres! Life is
perpetually _en fête_ in Juneau. The vital exhilaration, the
sparkling energy, the eye on the future, and the disregard of the
past, are characteristics of the general march of progress.
It is interesting to recall that the first book ever written on
Alaska was by Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore of Washington, the capital of
the United States, a book published by the Lothrop house in Boston
(U.S.A.) early in the decade of 1880-90. Miss Scidmore was the first
American woman to visit Alaska, sailing from San Francisco by a
freight steamer some time before any passenger service was
inaugurated for that wonderful voyage. An adventurous spirit, her
eager imagination always flitting before to penetrate some unknown
region, Miss Scidmore thus began, in her early girlhood, the
extensive and somewhat remarkable travels which have been continued
in her picturesque life. Since {211} those days of her first
youthful achievement her name has flown widely on the wings of fame
as that of one of the most brilliant and able women writers of her
country. Taking the Orient for her happy hunting-ground, Miss
Scidmore has made numerous voyages over the Pacific, with many
prolonged sojourns in China, Japan, and India; making a pilgrimage to
Java and writing of its old temples and mysterious customs in a
richly illustrated paper that appeared in the _Century Magazine_ and
which attracted wide attention. Among her books _A Winter in China_
and _Jinrikisha Days_ have come to be regarded as almost
indispensable handbooks for travellers as well as the enchanters of
the fireside or the summer piazza; and by means of many years'
residence in Tokio and Yokohama, Miss Scidmore has become an
acknowledged authority on Oriental art, a connoisseur whose judgment
has been sought by more than one of the great art collectors in the
States. With her keen intellectual grasp she has also entered into
the politics of the Far East; and to _The Outlook_, and other leading
reviews in both London and New York, Miss Scidmore has contributed
articles so able in their discernment as to be widely quoted and
discussed.
Miss Scidmore's initial trip to Alaska, interpreted in a book
offering a series of singularly vivid impressions, combined, too,
with a study of facts and prevailing conditions, and fascinating
pictorial descriptions of this "water-colour land" as she {212}
termed it, from the faint evanescent hues of sunshine on the
glaciers, perhaps contributed more than any other single cause to
stimulate the demand for passenger excursions to this country.
Miss Scidmore's description of Muir Glacier, an exquisite piece of
word-painting, has often been reproduced; and of her last, lingering
view of this spectacle she wrote:
"The whole brow was transfigured with the fires of sunset; the blue
and silvery pinnacles, the white and shining front dreamlike on a
roseate and amber sea, and the range and circle of dull violet
mountains lifting their glowing summits into a sky flecked with
crimson and gold."
Somewhere about 1889 another gifted American woman, Kate Field,
author, lecturer, and a charming figure in society, visited Alaska;
and to Miss Field belongs the honour of having delivered the first
lecture ever given in that country. It was in Juneau, in a primitive
and unfinished room, that Miss Field gave this lecture, utilising a
rough table as a platform. Her audience included miners in their
working garb, prospectors, many of the usual camp-followers, a few
Indians, and several of her fellow-passengers from the steamer. Her
theme was that of good citizenship, and one of her hearers afterwards
reported that she gave them wholesome truths with characteristic
vehemence and earnestness. Miss Field was rewarded by being
presented with the "freedom" of the town (then hardly more than a
mining-camp), with a pair of silver bracelets made by the Indians,
{213} a bottle of virgin gold, and a totem pole. These picturesque
tributes were highly valued by their witty and graceful recipient,
and she often displayed them with pride and pleasure to her friends
in Washington, New York, Paris, or London. Visiting the Muir Glacier
at this early period when its unequalled grandeur was at its
perfection (for of late years earthquakes and devastations have
changed its contour) Miss Field thus described it:
"Imagine a glacier three miles wide and three hundred feet high, and
you have a slight idea of Muir Glacier. Picture a background of
mountains fifteen thousand feet high, all snow-clad, and then imagine
a gorgeous sun lighting up crystals with rainbow colouring. The face
of the crystal takes on the hue of aquamarine--the hue of every bit
of floating ice that surrounds the steamer. This dazzling serpent
moves sixty-four feet a day, tumbling headlong into the sea,
startling the air with submarine thunder."
[Illustration: Prince Rupert, British Columbia]
Miss Field's experience in Juneau must have been, indeed, a contrast
to the scenic setting of her girlhood, when, in Florence, Italy, she
studied music and art; where Walter Savage Landor taught her Latin
and wrote classic verse to her; where Robert and Elizabeth Barrett
Browning welcomed her to their poets' home in Casa Guidi; and where
she met George Eliot, whose genius kindled her own. With her
literary talent stimulated and all aglow in this radiant atmosphere,
Miss Field wrote that exquisite series of monographs on Landor, Mrs.
Browning, Madame la Marchesa Ristori, and several of the Italian
poets, which were published in the _Atlantic {214} Monthly_ (then the
magazine which was the very arbiter of American literary destiny), a
series that has been often erroneously attributed to the eminent
sculptor and poet, William Wetmore Story, as in those days the
_Atlantic Monthly_ preserved the silence of the gods regarding the
identity of its contributors.
It is something to have passed one's early youth in Arcady; and
between those Florentine days, and her appearance as the first
lecturer in Alaska, there lay a series of richly varied years and
achievements. Kate Field seemed to be always winging her shining
way, and it was during an interlude in Hawaii, whose beauty steeped
her in gladness, that she fared forth, on a golden day in the Maytime
of 1896, on still another journey; a mystic journey into those realms
of the Life More Abundant, and entered on a new phase of experiences,
even those of the Adventure Beautiful.
From Juneau the Grand Trunk Pacific Line of steamers proceeds to
Skagway, through the Lynn Canal, considered, all in all, the most
beautiful of the fiords of Alaska. Skagway rejoices in the poetic
designation of "the flower City of Alaska" from the amazing
luxuriance and loveliness of the riotous floral growth in the gardens
of the town and also in the outlying country. Skagway is the gateway
to the Yukon, and the tourist who wishes to visit Canada's portion of
this great Northland embarks on the White Pass and Yukon Railway,
which affords easy access to Lake Atlin and down the Yukon to Dawson,
the capital of Yukon Territory.
{215}
The future importance of Skagway depends largely on the success of
the White Pass and Yukon Railway. Of this, however, there is
practically no question. Skagway has a population of more than two
thousand; and it is splendidly equipped with cable, telephone and
telegraph services; with electric lighting; with good schools and
churches; and with shops and stores furnishing an adequate assortment
for all needs of utility and of taste and beauty; it has a very
attractive resident region, and its gardens are already famous.
During the Klondike excitement of 1897-98, Skagway was the base of
operations for many thousands of prospectors who thronged this
region. It is especially attractive to the devotees of ethnological
science, as it is near some of the more interesting Indian villages,
and it has supreme attractions for the artist. The glaciers of
Davidson and Mendenhall are near, and nowhere are the enchantments of
a summer in the far northlands more alluring and spellbinding to the
lover of flowers and fragrances, of stars and sunsets, of the beauty
that flashes from solid mountain walls of opal pinnacles and
glittering palisades, in an atmosphere prismatic in colour--nowhere
are there more lovely "lands of summer beyond the sea" than in and
around Skagway.
It has been more or less generally supposed that the climate of
Alaska was inevitably severe and fairly arctic in its character. On
the contrary, the mean temperature of Juneau for July is fifty-seven
degrees and the thermometer often ranges from {216} seventy to even
ninety. Thus the mean temperature of Juneau for July is only one
degree less than that of San Francisco for August. The equability of
the temperature in Southern Alaska is a feature of importance. The
entire land, in summer, is covered with a dense vegetation.
One of the great marvels of nature in the Alaskan and Yukon regions
is that of the matchless spectacle of the Northern Lights. Not even
the glacier can rival Aurora Borealis. It is Robert Service who is
the bard of the mystic illuminations that are fairly before the eye
of the reader of that scintillating poem, the "Ballad of the Northern
Lights."
"And soft they danced from the Polar sky and swept in the
primrose haze;
And swift they pranced with their silver feet, and pierced with
a blinding blaze.
They danced a cotillion in the sky; they were rose and silver
shod;
It was not good for the eyes of man, 'twas a sight for the eyes
of God.
"And the skies of night were alive with light, with a throbbing,
thrilling flame
Amber, and rose, and violet, opal and gold it came.
Pennants of silver waved and streamed, lazy banners unfurled;
Sudden splendours of sabres gleamed, lightning javelins were
hurled;
There in our awe we crouched and saw with our wild, uplifted
eyes,
Charge and retire the hosts of fire in the battleground of the
skies."
Prince Rupert and Alaska! They offer the traveller the very glory of
the world and of all the heavenly spaces.
{217}
CHAPTER X
PRINCE RUPERT TO VANCOUVER, VICTORIA, SEATTLE,
AND THE GOLDEN GATE
The voyage from Prince Rupert to Alaska is unparalleled in its glory
of scenic enthralment; it is a trip unique and, indeed, quite
unrivalled by any that this terrestrial sphere has disclosed to the
wanderer over her spaces; yet hardly less interesting in a different
way is that lovely sail of two days and two nights from Prince Rupert
to Seattle, with calls at the ports of Vancouver and Victoria. The
one enchants the imagination; the other relates itself to the great
social order of human life. The latter reveals the vast resources of
British Columbia; the almost infinite possibilities for the
transcendent future of a new and still higher civilisation; the
regions of the homes, the development, the nobler and still nobler
culture of life in its evolutionary progress.
The comfort and beauty of these Grand Trunk Pacific steamers are, as
noted in the preceding chapter, responsible for much of the enjoyment
of the voyage. To be comfortable--even to have the senses gratified
with beauty in one's immediate environment--is by no means the chief
end or aim {218} of life, but it is assuredly a means to an end;
after that other things. He who is
"Alive to gentle influence
Of landscape and of sky,
And tender to the spirit-touch,"
can hardly escape the immediate sense of a reinforcement of energy by
the subtle charm of a pleasing environment. It is like the influence
of music, harmonising and co-ordinating all one's powers of
achievement.
The coast of British Columbia, stretching away to the southland, has
its own order of beauty, as has already been described in the
description of the voyage which begins at Seattle extending to
Skagway. The two days of return from Prince Rupert are only too
brief for the traveller with an eye for the singular beauty of
precipitous cliffs, forest-crowned, that rise, from the shores,
brilliantly diversified with the waterfalls, islands, and glimpses of
hanging glaciers, now and then seen under radiant skies.
For tourists who, arriving at Prince Rupert, are not able to make the
Alaskan voyage, this sail to Seattle will yet hold so much of majesty
and beauty that, while not fully compensating for the northern
cruise, is yet singularly satisfying in itself. Leaving Prince
Rupert at nine in the morning the steamer calls at Vancouver at four
in the afternoon of the next day; and hardly is she at her dock
before the enterprising municipal motor car company sends a
representative on board to announce a "one-dollar-an-hour-and-a-half"
{219} trip about the city in a number of spacious motor cars in
waiting, which offers to all who embrace the opportunity the interest
of seeing the famous Stanley Park, covering a thousand acres,
together with the Shaughnessy Heights, the marine drive, and all
points of interest, with the sightseers assured that they should be
delivered at their steamer in good time for its departure.
Vancouver's growth has been truly remarkable. It began thirty years
ago with a few log-cabins in a clearing overlooking Burrard Inlet.
In 1901 the population of the city was about 27,000; to-day, 200,000
people are citizens of Vancouver and suburbs. Its wharfs are crowded
with shipping, more than 18,000 vessels using the port in a single
year, while its customs revenue amounts to five millions of dollars
annually.
The business and residential sections of Vancouver are extremely
interesting and no tourist would willingly miss seeing something of
the largest Canadian city on the Pacific Coast. On the evening of
February 14, 1916, the first long-distance telephone conversation was
held between Vancouver and Montreal. Previous to this, telephonic
communication had been opened between New York and San Francisco, a
distance of 3400 miles; but on the occasion of the opening between
Montreal and Vancouver the human voice was heard at a distance of
4227 miles!
The marvellous progress made in telephone service {220} is
illustrated by some records dating back more than forty years. It
was in Boston in the spring of 1875 (March 10, 1875, to be exact),
that Professor Bell was first able to send an intelligible sentence
from one room to another in a building at No. 5, Exeter Place, in
that city. This message to the next room was to Thomas Augustus
Watson, and consisted of the words, "Mr. Watson, Mr. Watson, I want
you; come here." In the summer of 1915, Professor Bell sent the same
message from New York to Mr. Watson who was in San Francisco.
[Illustration: Pure Bred Jerseys, Western Canada]
Miss Kate Field, the brilliant American critic and lecturer, was
among those fascinated by Dr. Bell's initial experiments of 1875
demonstrating his new invention. Miss Field, while residing in
England, took an important part in bringing the telephone to public
notice. In the biography of Miss Field there appears a number of
extracts from her diary of this period, of which one, under the date
of January 14, 1878, runs as follows:
"Drove early to Osborne Cottage (Isle of Wight) where Sir Thomas
Biddulph invited me to come in the evening. Arrived there all fine
in my new gown at 8.30 P.M. Met Lady Biddulph, Sir Thomas, General
Ponsonby, Mrs. Ponsonby, and others. Very polite and very courteous
about telephone. I sang Kathleen Mavourneen to the Queen who was
delighted and thanked me telephonically. Sang Cuckoo Song, Comin'
Thro' the Rye, and recited Rosalind's epilogue. All delighted. Then
I went to Osborne House and met the Duke of Connaught. Experiments a
great success."
So comprehensive were Miss Field's convictions of {221} the wide
scope and resistless nature of scientific advance that she once
remarked to a friend, "I look to see science prove immortality." Her
faith in immortality was not wanting, but she believed it to be
within that order of truth which might actually be demonstrated by
science.
Victoria is only some six hours' sail from Vancouver--beautiful
Victoria, worthy of the greatest queen of the ages whose name the
city so proudly bears. Not only for its signal attractions, but as
the capital of British Columbia, Victoria has especial interest, and
the tourist who is wise will disembark and remain in this delightful
city until the next steamer arrives continuing the voyage to Seattle.
An English city dropped into the American continent is Victoria. It
is neither Canadian nor yet of the United States, but it is
practically an English city located on Vancouver Island. It is
already an important port, and the equable climate attracts residents
and visitors from the entire continent.
It is called, indeed, "the city of sunshine," and it has both wealth
and health in measure to impress the visitor, if it does not
transform him into at least a temporary resident. The aristocratic
residential district has entrancing views of the sea, islands, bays,
and mountains, and more than three miles of coast line. The beauty
of the architectural effects, the equable climate, the delightful
drives afforded by the wide asphalt-paved boulevards, and the variety
of amusements and entertainments--yachting, golf, {222} fishing,
country clubs with all manner of sports and games, together with its
good schools, numerous churches, and library, attract a population of
refinement and of a notable order of intellectuality.
To arrive at Seattle in the early dawn is to arrive at the
psychological moment.
"If them would'st view fair Melrose aright
Go visit it by pale moonlight,"
counsels Sir Walter; and to view Seattle at her most typical and
representative moment one should see her first in the golden glow of
a morning, that illuminates all her crescent harbour and reveals her
streets alive in the new energy of the day. Seattle is known as "the
Seaport of Success." She takes the opposite pole from the motto
Dante saw over the red city of Dis. Far from any abandonment of hope
by "those who enter here," the very spectacle of her eager, intense
life reinvigorates the newcomer. Has he not entered the Seaport of
Success? "If you want success--Succeed!" counsels Emerson. Of
course one will succeed in Seattle. That is what he is there for.
He is "born for the job." Seattle is the marvel of the day. One
quite sympathises with the citizen who met a press correspondent from
New York on a train and begged him to include Seattle in his glowing
interpretations. "But I was in Seattle last week," rejoined the
writer. "Oh, but you should see Seattle _now!_" replied the
up-to-date resident.
{223}
Seattle has a population of nearly three hundred and fifty thousand;
she has four transcontinental railways; and fifty-seven steamship
lines. Lake Washington, lying just outside the city, a sheet of
water twenty-five miles in length and averaging three miles in width,
offers one of the most ideal and poetic regions for suburban homes,
and one whose privileges are apparently appreciated. The beautiful
residences that adorn its shores render it a locality well worth
seeing. The lake extends to the foothills of the Cascade range,
whose peaks, perpetually covered with ice and snow, are from five
thousand to more than fourteen thousand feet in height. With this
majestic mountain range on one hand, and Puget Sound on the other,
Seattle has an environment that rivals, in natural beauty, any other
city of the world. The boulevards of Seattle are famous, and of
these ex-President Taft declared that they formed one of the most
magnificent combinations of modern city and mediæval forest. From
these boulevards of thirty miles in extent, connecting a chain of
thirty-eight parks, there are continual vistas of lake, and sea, and
snow-capped mountains, and the drive is often among arbours and
flowers and shrubs revealing rare skill and taste in gardening.
The State of Washington has wisely inaugurated a system of splendid
roadways, whose skilful engineering has rendered the broad
boulevards, the country highways, a veritable paradise of comfort to
motorists. More than fifty thousand miles of such {224} road
thoroughfares stretch in all directions from Seattle. Four of these
great highways, those of the Pacific, Sunset, Olympic, and National
Parks, were built and are maintained at the expense of the state.
One important feature of these is the Pacific Highway, a thoroughfare
of 2000 miles in length, connecting British Columbia with the
southern limit of California. It is the longest drive of the world
and has a picturesque beauty unsurpassed by that of any known region.
Nor are the ardent residents of Seattle in any way inclined to
reticence regarding her allurements. To one voyager on board, who
was a native of the States, but who had been so spellbound by her
first wonderful trip through Canada that she longed to "assume a
virtue, though she had it not" and pass herself off as a native of
the Dominion--to this tourist a Seattle lady rather importunately
insisted that she ought to remain at least a week in the "Seaport of
Success" and revel in its amazements. "You would see parks of
hundreds of acres," exclaimed the loyal resident of the capital city
of the State of Washington, among other enumerations of the glories
to be revealed. "Oh, is that all?" unkindly responded the voyager.
"Why, in Canada we are accustomed to parks of over four thousand
square miles." The devotee of Canadian landscapes endeavoured to say
this with the air of one born and bred in the Dominion, and she was
quite charmed with her evident success when the Seattle lady {225}
replied, "Oh, you are a Canadian? I thought you were one of our own
people." "Did you, indeed?" returned the masquerading Canadian,
non-committantly, with the most innocent and unconscious air that it
was possible to assume.
[Illustration: Mount Robson, British Columbia]
It is an interesting and picturesque trip by rail from Seattle to
Portland (some seven hours) and from Portland out to its port,
Flavell-Astoria, is another picturesque little journey, some two
hours by rail. Here awaits one of the Pacific steamers of the Great
Northern Company, with its top deck glass-enclosed, making the vast
sweep of ocean view possible in all weather; with four other
promenade decks, with its ballroom, its conveniences for games of all
sorts, and its enormous crowds of gay passengers. The sail from
Flavell-Astoria to San Francisco is only thirty-six hours; too brief
for a lover of beauty, yet a great deal of enjoyment can be crowded
into that time by those who surprise the secret.
It was not only the ideal way by which to approach the Panama-Pacific
Exposition of 1915, but it remains the ideal way in which to approach
San Francisco. The first instinctive thought of the tourist is that
he can only enjoy this approach if he arrives from Hawaii, or Japan,
or some port in the Orient. On the contrary, he can enjoy one of the
great and one of the most picturesque trips that the resources of
this world afford, by journeying to California, via Prince Rupert,
and on, by sea, by land, by sea again, through Vancouver and Seattle;
{226} thence by way of Portland, and Flavell-Astoria, to the
triumphant entrance by the Golden Gate. It was a marvellous tour for
the vanished Exposition summer of 1915, and it will remain marvellous
for all the summers to come, growing as the years pass more
beautiful, more feasible, and more familiar to the travelling public.
{227}
CHAPTER XI
CANADA IN THE PANAMA-PACIFIC EXPOSITION
The year of 1915 will forever remain illuminated in the history of
Canada and of the United States as that of the celebration of two
momentous events: the completion of the Panama-Pacific Canal, uniting
the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans; and the bridging the entire
continent, from Montreal to Vancouver, from New York to San
Francisco, by human speech. The achievement of the Panama Canal was
at a cost of three hundred and ten millions of dollars; the
achievement of "the voyage of the voice" across the continent, by the
Bell telephone system, cost that company twice the amount of the
expenditure demanded by the canal. During the next decade, the Bell
Company propose to expend an even greater sum in the perfecting of
all the future possibilities that may arise.
The completion of the Panama Canal is one of the signal events in the
world's history. It changes the great currents of commerce; it has
reduced the distance between the central points of the Atlantic and
the Pacific coasts from 13,000 to 5000 miles, and it will greatly
reduce the cost of coaling on voyages from coast to coast. From
Colon, on the Atlantic side of the Isthmus, to Balboa, on the Pacific
side, {228} was formerly, by the water route around Cape Horn, a
distance of 10,500 nautical miles; through the canal the distance is
44 miles. The time required between these two points formerly
approximated to 126 days; now the distance between is but one day.
These elementary statistics reveal to some degree the inestimable
value of the achievement to all the nations of the world.
It was fitting that such an achievement should be celebrated with an
exposition of the arts, the resources, the productions, and the
inventions of the civilised world. It was the vivid drama of
international achievement. There were more than eighty thousand
single exhibits, and groups of related exhibits, representing every
phase of the highest efforts of man in contemporary progress.
Industries and economics, inventions and discoveries, arts and
sciences, education and ethics, met under the striking architectural
beauty and in a scenic setting never before equalled in any land.
Against a background of the blue Pacific lying under a glowing
western sky, with a splendour of decoration hardly paralleled, the
scene was one worthy to be forever perpetuated in the world's
history. It struck the note of a new life. The contrast between
this illustration of the development of the arts of peace--the vision
of the spirit that united East and West in the common cause of all
that ennobles and exalts--and those awful scenes of carnage that were
raging in central Europe on the other side of {229} the globe, was a
contrast that might well employ the genius of Thucydides to depict,
with a pen lighted from the living coal on the altar. Yet, such is
the leading of divinely-guided destiny, each was doing its work in
the regeneration of the world. The seemingly irreparable calamity of
the war was sweeping away old conditions that the new life of
spiritualisation should enter in; it was the preparing the way of the
Lord and making His paths straight. Faith constantly discerned the
triumphant exhortation:
"Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting
doors; and the King of Glory shall come in!"
More than three hundred congresses met in these palaces under the
shadow of the Tower of Jewels; in the halls of music, of art, or in
the terraced pavilion of the Court of the Universe. All were
welcomed with that royal hospitality that has ever characterised the
generous heart of San Francisco. These congresses dealt for the most
part with the vital topics of the day. They concerned themselves
less with the life of literature and more with the life of nature;
less with the life that takes note of abstract and profound
intellectual problems and more with the practical applications of
ethical truth. The congresses thus discussed open-air life, foods,
clothing, motoring, the political enfranchisement of women, new
theories in education, hygiene, economics, charities. In the
building of Liberal {230} Arts there was one exhibit from the
Observatory on Mount Lowe, labelled by the director of that
institution, as the stuff of which the universe and man were made:
that of electrons and mentoids. The distinctively new note of the
twentieth century was everywhere in evidence. The Exposition planted
its standard in an approaching Future, not in a receding Past. By
this standard alone could it be truly judged. The salons of fine art
did not measurably offer, in any extent, the quality of art displayed
at Chicago in 1893, nor was it comparable with that transcendently
superb collection of paintings and sculpture that concentrated the
inspiration of the centuries in the Paris Exposition of 1900.
Naturally, there were physical barriers of space and the barriers of
war conditions that effectually determined this. It was easy for
Europe and the Orient to send to Paris their most adequate
representation. And France, alone, is so rich in her national
treasures of art, both of the past and of contemporary work, that her
own display alone would have made a profound impression. For San
Francisco, in 1915, conditions effectually debarred her from securing
much of the great art of the world. Very wisely, she did not dash
herself blindly and unavailingly against destiny, but wisely struck
the key of desire from a new centre. The result was in that the
Exposition suggested its own ideals with but slight reference to
traditions.
Singularly fortunate was it, indeed, in its administration. {231}
President Charles C. Moore seemed the man best fitted for the high
and responsible place that he so ably filled. Never was a great
world-exposition conducted with a more remarkable combination of
wisdom, courtesy, admirable judgment, and comprehensive treatment.
Not less fortunate was the great undertaking in its vice-presidents:
William H. Crocker, R. B. Hale, I. W. Hellman, jun., M. H. De Young,
Leon Sloss, and James Bolph, jun., while Dr. Frederick J. V. Skiff,
as Director-in-Chief; George Hough Perry, at the head of the
Publicity Department; and Mr. A. M. Mortesen, as Traffic Manager,
were all felicitously equipped for their special service.
"The Future is our kingdom,"
said George Sterling, the poet of the day, whose poem entitled _The
Builders_ was read by George Arlett, a member of the California State
Commission, at the closing ceremonies.
Mr. Sterling struck the keynote of the splendid enterprise in these
stanzas:
"We do but cross a threshold into day.
Beauty we leave behind
A deeper beauty on our path to find
And higher glories to illume the way.
The door we close behind us is the Past;
Our sons shall find a fairer door at last.
"A world reborn awaits us! Years to come
Shall know its grace and good,
When wars shall end in endless brotherhood
And birds shall build in cannon long since dumb.
Men shall have peace, though then no man may know
Who built this sunset city long ago."
{232}
Only nine years had passed since San Francisco had been practically
destroyed by a sudden and terrible calamity. But the spirit of the
Golden Gate laughs at calamity and with a magician's wand transmutes
it into success. Only two years after this devastation San Francisco
raised millions for the exposition she had planned. No earthquake
could entomb her spirit, nor could it be drowned by any tidal wave
that the Pacific is capable of providing. With that lofty poet,
William Vaughan Moody, who, alas, "died too soon" for the nation
which his lyre entranced, San Francisco might well declare:
"From wounds and sore defeat
I made my battle-stay;
Winged sandals for my feet
I wove of my delay."
The Panama-Pacific Exposition opened on February 15, 1915, and closed
on December 4 of the same year. It was participated in by the
Argentine Republic, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Costa
Rica, Cuba, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Equador, France, Guatemala,
Haiti, Holland, Honduras, Italy, Japan, Liberia, Mexico, Nicaragua,
New Zealand, Panama, Persia, Peru, Portugal, Salvador, Spain, Sweden,
Uruguay, and Venezuela.
This enumeration of the countries participating will of itself
suggest the somewhat new class of exhibits, as differing from those
of older countries in former world-displays. The Panama-Pacific was
thus its own precedent. Its claims to the novel and {233} the unique
were extremely well sustained. It was the second exposition held on
the Pacific coast, and it had the longest duration by four months of
any ever held before.
The grounds comprised over 600 acres, with a water-front of two and a
half miles, on San Francisco Bay, just east of the Golden Gate. On
the other three sides they were partly enclosed by hills, thus
forming a natural amphitheatre. There were eleven colossal palaces
with many lesser buildings. These palaces were grouped in a series
of rectangles connected by courts and arcades with an Andalusian
charm. The courts fascinated the eye by their colonnades, arches,
domes, and glittering minarets. They were adorned by mural paintings
of symbolic significance, by fountains, sunken gardens, and
sculptured art, with niches and restful seats. Festival Hall, with
its superb organ, where a concert was held every day, contained an
auditorium seating three thousand people, and there were also ten
smaller halls. The National Government staged its own special
exhibit on a ten-acre space, appropriating two million dollars for
this purpose, and this exhibit included a representation of the
building of the Panama Canal.
In all this imposing world-panorama of twentieth-century exhibits,
Canada led the procession. Whatever the enthralling nature of
spectacles offered by other nations, it was the Dominion that set the
pace. Canada, an entrancing, garlanded figure, {234} aglow with her
abounding enthusiasms; her resistless energy; her dreams of a future
that crystallise themselves in her all-conquering empire
building--Canada the Spellbinder assumed her place as if by divine
right, and certainly by common consent, as the very Winged Victory
flying on into a golden future. The Canadian Building, whose classic
beauty would have done no discredit to the Parthenon had it also
occupied a place on the "Holy Hill" that overlooks all Attica; this
structure, so simple yet so rich in architectural effect, her main
portal guarded by great lions sculptured on either side, was one of
the most impressive creations of the entire Exposition. With a
singular comprehensiveness of grouping, the exhibits in this building
represented the Dominion in her completeness. It was no one province
that engaged the attention to the exclusion of another; it was the
Dominion herself, in the unity of her vast empire, rather than any
merely tributary feature of the country. In the inscrutable magic
that wrought this effect lay the secret of its spellbinding quality.
It was a power that enthralled every visitor who crossed the
threshold, and brought him back to study it again.
How was this result achieved? The question was in the air. Every
one asked it. No one could exactly answer it, but every one shared
the wonder. The statistical data of the Dominion was impressive
enough for almost any commensurate influence; yet mere facts and
figures could give little clue to the {235} mysterious effect on the
throngs of visitors. One might read that the population of Canada
had increased from five millions to seven millions in ten years; and
that fifty-five per cent. of this population was engaged in
conquering Nature, and transmuting her plains into golden harvests as
a granary of the world; that her Government is expending ten millions
a year in agricultural instruction alone; that her root and fodder
crop each year is valued at almost two hundred millions of dollars,
representing an area of nine million acres, and that the value of her
field crops annually is five hundred and fifty millions of dollars.
One might read that her live stock, valued at a given time at seven
hundred millions, increased a hundred and fifty per cent. within one
decade only. This visitor might recall the shrewd assertion of James
J. Hill that "there is land enough in Canada, if thoroughly tilled,
to feed every person in Europe"; and that, while at present only
thirty-six million acres are under cultivation, there are four
hundred and forty millions, thirty per cent. of her entire area, that
are available for agricultural use. Yet not all these impressive
statistics can alone account for the innate magic, the indescribable
witchery, that Canada flings about all who come to look upon these
marvellous panoramas in her building. Statistical data have their
uses and inspire respect, while one cons them by heart and feels sure
he is thereby equipped to give a reason for the faith that is in him;
but in {236} his heart he knows that all the figures in the realm of
mathematics could not really account for his consciousness of the
fascinations of the Dominion. A leading journal of San Francisco,
advocating the desire that the Californian exhibit should be made a
permanent one, proceeded to point the moral and adorn the tale by
pointing to the Canadian exhibition. The editorial argument thus ran:
"Canada, with her complete exhibit, has won much praise from
Exposition sightseers and has set the precedent for a permanent
exhibit. One reason why our northern neighbour was able to make such
a splendid impression at the Jewel City from the first was because,
as its display was permanent, much of it had been installed in a
European exhibition and had come directly here from across the
Atlantic. The packing cases were ready to be opened and the best
arrangement for the resources of Canada had been determined by
experience.
"California needs to be an active participant in future expositions,
as active as the Dominion of Canada.
* * * * * * * * *
"With a permanent exhibit California will be ready at the first sound
of an exposition reveille to rush to the front, full panoplied in
luscious armour of golden butter, armed with 42-cm. cases of
preserved fruits and with glittering shields of virgin gold.
"Then bring on your Canada!"
The skill with which the Canadian exhibit was grouped impressed
itself first as a work of art, and only secondarily as a thing of
commercial value. This skill in presentation was not the least
element in its attractiveness. Here was Dawson, shooting out rays of
violet, vermilion, and orange, myriads of lights in all the colours
of the spectrum. A panoramic {237} view of a wheat belt that would
feed the world; Vancouver, with the great elevator at the water's
edge; and with that, was Vancouver's prophetic dream of 1923, when
three hundred millions of bushels of grain will be sent from Canada
to Europe by the way of the Panama Canal; again there were the homes
of farmers, attractive and realistic; an orchard scene introducing
real fruit, and where realism ended and art began it was difficult to
discover; the trees were laden with fruit; apples lay in heaps under
the shade of the trees; young men and maidens were gathering the rosy
and the golden fruit, tripping over the green turf so naturally that
one half wondered if they as well as the apples were not actual?
Here was a section out of British Columbia showing a sportsman's
happy hunting-ground; there were snow-capped mountains, but with real
water trickling down; an eagle, fierce, tempestuous, with widespread,
flapping wings, is hovering in the air in a manner that would do
credit to Heller, the wizard of necromancy on the stage. From
yawning crevices bears emerge, until the visitor instinctively
shrinks away, and the beaver is seen constructing his dam. Was it
Governor Frontenac who recommended to the King of France that the
beaver should be adopted as Canada's trade mark?
There are mounted duck, grouse, elk, buffalo, and sullen, scowling
carabou gazing at the surging throng. There are buffalo from the
Peace River region, a thousand miles north of the {238} border
between Canada and the States, where these hordes formerly ranged in
countless droves, and which to-day is one of the finest of
wheat-growing regions.
Nothing is more interesting to the curious visitor than are the views
of typical Canadian homes. Some that are shown are but the growth of
twelve years; from the time of the first turning of the plough in the
prairie soil to completion of the two-storied, balconied house, with
its broad piazza, set in the pretty grounds whose shady trees were
planted as seedlings, with gay parterres of flowers in and around the
curving walks and paths. The facilities for thus acquiring a home,
by taking up the usual allotment of a hundred and sixty acres of
land, which can be done on such favourable terms, turned the
attention of many visitors toward the Dominion.
Another exhibit of great interest was that of power plant models, for
every industrial centre in Canada has this abundance of power at very
low rates, owing to the enormous supply of water power in the
country. The canneries, too, form one of the most important
industries, and their extent is well illustrated in the display made
in the Canadian building.
There are cases upon cases of specimens of Canada's precious
minerals: gold from British Columbia, silver ore from Cobalt, gold
from the Yukon, and copper and various other minerals, with
representative specimens of coal deposits. Other glass cases {239}
again display much of the flora of Canada, in a profusion of flowers
whose rich and brilliant colouring attracts attention; and there are
curious grasses and rare plants and foliage.
In one corridor are a group of life-like portraits in oil of King
George and Queen Mary, of several of the Governors-General of the
Dominion, and of many of the Government officials, Sir John A.
Macdonald, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, and Premier Borden. In this
connection it is rather interesting to recall that the appellation of
the term Dominion to the country was due to a member of Parliament
who, after Sir John Macdonald had arranged for the confederation of
the nine provinces, and a name was being discussed, said that he had
that morning read in his Bible the words: "His Dominion shall be from
sea to sea," and the happy augury was seized and the term applied to
the vast and splendid country.
Colonel William Hutchinson's hospitable offices were a favourite
rendezvous for appreciative visitors. Here gathered Canadians and
Canada-lovers to discuss the latest news from the Dominion. So
largely, however, had Colonel Hutchinson's life been passed in the
noted national and international expositions of the world that for
fifteen years he has hardly been more than three months at a time in
his home in Ottawa.
The Grand Trunk building offered, daily, a moving picture exhibition
that attracted many onlookers, and so real were the effects that when
in {240} one a torrent of water came rushing over a cataract, the
visitor near involuntarily turned for a seat farther back. In this
building, as in the national one, the Dominion was laid under tribute
in representation that interpreted the essential life of Canada.
The superb collection of photographs of the scenic mountain route of
the Grand Trunk Pacific was a perennial attraction to visitors in the
exhibit made by this transcontinental railway. It revealed anew how
the completion of the Grand Trunk System is an achievement which in
its daring, its magnitude of interests, and the enterprise involved
was one of the great twentieth-century events, and one only to be
compared with the opening of the Panama-Pacific Canal itself.
[Illustration: Looking towards Mount Munn from the Valley of Flowers]
The Reverend Arthur Barry O'Neill, C.S.G., after visiting the
Exposition, wrote that he considered the Canadian and the Grand Trunk
buildings as instances of "artistic genius beyond all praise," and as
a "lasting honour and credit to the Canadian Government." In a
sonnet in which Mr. O'Neill celebrates the youth of Canada, the brave
lads who have gone to the front, and who
"... have writ a score
Of valour true, surpassing old romance.
And lent new pride to each Canadian's glance,"
the poet adds:
"And here, as well, where contests fair of Peace,
The nations wage along the Golden Gate,
Huge throngs acclaim the Maple Leaf, nor cease
The chorused praise that makes our hearts elate."
{241}
It is not the aim in this chapter to describe the whole of this
interesting and beautiful Exposition, but only the contribution made
by Canada; yet one can hardly refrain from noting the charm of the
Alaskan exhibit with its panoramic presentation of the Muir glacier;
nor that of the Santa Fe Railway in the "Zone," where the very
realistic and wonderful portrayal of the Grand Canyon in Arizona was
one of the great attractions of the entire grounds.
The Palace of Transportation was one of the extremely interesting
features of the Exposition. Here could be studied the latest
scientific methods of the day in many details not familiar to the
general public, as, for instance, the method of handling mails on
fast trains and the delivery at stations while the full speed of the
train is maintained; many types of marine transportation; and still
more of aircraft, the navigation of the air being one of the things
constantly demonstrated to throngs of people who were absorbingly
interested in the possibilities of aerial flight.
The experimental panorama of the Panama Canal itself was an
appropriate feature. At the Exposition in Paris in 1900 the journey
on the Trans-Siberian Railway was produced with extraordinary
realism. The traveller entered a luxurious train, a very real train
comprising drawing-room and dining cars, as well as a library car,
and the passing of the long panorama of the entire scenery of that
noted route gave a very vivid idea of what one {242} would see in the
actual journey. The California Exposition arranged a similar exhibit
of a journey through the Panama Canal. The voyager was invited to
the deck of a steamer, and ingenious illusions illustrated the
sailing from ocean to ocean.
San Francisco was a gala city through the entire summer. Not the
least of the enjoyments were the sails in the splendid local boats,
with glass-enclosed decks, across the Bay to Oakland and to Berkeley,
the latter city the seat of the University of California. There were
excursions for every day in the week for those who wished to vary the
scene, and the Exposition itself constantly presented new attractions
and new features with the great number of congresses, the numerous
lectures, and perpetual fêtes.
The close of the Panama-Pacific Exposition was a scene worthy to live
in historic pageantry. The day was one of June dropped into the
heart of December. The sun was burning against a cloudless sapphire
sky. Within the very radiance of the Tower of Jewels, on one of the
terraces of the Court of the Universe, was erected a stand on which
were assembled the Directors, the Commissioners of Foreign
Governments, the representatives of the Army and Navy of California,
and the representatives of the City of San Francisco. From the
arches of the Rising and the Setting Sun the sculptured figures
looked down. There was orchestral music, and the reading of Mr.
Sterling's poem from which lines have been quoted in preceding pages.
The {243} message of Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States,
was flashed around the world at the moment it was given to the
Exposition. President Wilson well expressed the significance of the
undertaking as one "eloquent of the new spirit which is to unite East
and West and make all the world partners in the common enterprises of
progress and humanity."
The guards marched away; the sailors fired a salute; the Exposition
banner descended. President Moore's pictorial words have
immortalised the scene:
"Night came on, and the world's wonder of lights; the Exposition
lights that would never shine again--a red glow on Kelham's towers,
rose flame in the porches of the Machinery Palace, dim reflections in
the Lagoon of the Palace of Fine Arts and the broad basin in the
Court of the Four Seasons, the splendour of the giant monstrances in
the Court of Abundance, the silver phosphorescence of the Adventurous
Bowman on his column and the Lord of the Isthmian Way on his
rack-o'-bones horse, the tremulous frosty shimmer of the hundred
thousand jewels of the great spire; and over all, the long bands,
like lambent metal, of bronze and crimson and green and blue, from
the forty-eight searchlights on the Yacht Harbour Mole, bands that
barred the heavens so far that they deceived the eye and in the
south-east appeared to converge beyond the hills of the city.
"Not abruptly, but slowly and gently, the lamps {244} grew dark, the
beams of the searchlights faded, and arches and courts and colonnades
and towers and sculptured forms of men and women and angels and great
beasts receded into the friendly night, lighted now by the glimmer of
the winter stars, Orion and Sirius, Aldebaran and the Hyades. And
through the starlight 'Taps' dropped in liquid notes from bugles high
on the Tower of Jewels."
[Illustration: Bulkley Gate (150 feet high), Bulkley River]
{245}
CHAPTER XII
CANADIAN POETS AND POETRY
"My guide is but the stir to song."
"But Love must kiss that mortal's eyes
Who hopes to see fair Arcady;
No gold can buy you entrance there,--
No wisdom won with weariness."
"''Tis strange you cannot sing,' quoth he,
'The folk all sing in Arcady.'"
Arcady, or Canada, are they one and the same? The pipes of Pan echo
throughout the entire Dominion. The Poet--
"Born and nourished in miracles,"
writes his scroll by every shining lake, in the deep, dim interior of
the forest, on every majestic mountain height. He renders constant
service to the inward law, and it is the poet who is the real
historian of his country. It is he who immortalises her heroic
deeds; who paints her landscapes in unfading colours; who
crystallises her greatness into song. One line of the poet's may
outweigh a volume of descriptive prose.
"His instant thought a Poet spoke
And filled the age his fame."
It would be a marvel if the Canadian colour and atmosphere did not
produce a choir of singers, if not, {246} indeed, a nation of poets.
Nor can national poetic feeling be measurably restricted to the
comparatively few greater poets in any land or literature; to the
supreme masters in the lyric art. The greatness of Wordsworth,
Landor, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, of the Brownings, Tennyson, and of
Swinburne, does not detract from, even though it overshadows, the
charm of a score of the lesser poets, each of whom has his individual
place. Had the lives of Browning and Tennyson been of the
comparatively brief duration of Stephen Phillips, how much of their
noblest work would have been unwritten? Had not Wilfrid and Alice
Meynell, with angelic goodness, rescued Francis Thompson from
destitution, what might not the world of poetic literature have
missed? It is not alone by the standard of Dante, Shakespeare,
Goethe, or Petrarca that the art of poetry should be estimated. To
no inconsiderable degree the number as well as the quality of the
poets of a nation are typical of the national inspiration.
The fact that Canada, as a country that looks back to hardly more
than a century and a half of organised life and whose literary
expression has been almost entirely within the past half century,
should have produced a body of poetry that has just claims to being
considered national literature is as impressive as it is interesting.
"Has Canada a voice of her own in literature distinct from that of
England?" questions Thomas Guthrie Marquis. "In Poetry, at least,"
he adds, {247} "the Canadian note is clear and distinct, and of
permanent value." There was little Canadian verse produced until
well within the nineteenth century; and the first poem of real claim
to distinction was the "Saul" of Charles Heavysege, published in
1857, a poem written "in the grand manner," the author presenting his
ideas "with a dignity, austerity, and epic grandeur that are found in
few poetic compositions." It was, however, with the decade of
1880-90 that the era of the modern and artistic poetic literature of
Canada really opened, its keynote sounded by a poet, then hardly
twenty years of age--Charles George Douglas Roberts--whose name has
come to be widely known as that of one whose lips have been touched
with the divine fire. His initial volume, _Orion and Other Poems_,
revealed something in the quality that established his right to
poetic rank. His very crudities, faults of construction inevitable
to youthful ardour and inexperience, were still more suggestive of
promise than higher technical excellence that might be recognised
among contemporary verse. The classical tendency and temperamental
assimilation were very obvious; the young man was evidently a devotee
of Shelley and Tennyson; but he might easily have had worse masters.
Six years later came his second volume of verse, _In Divers Tones_,
that at once laid special claim on lovers of poetry; and when, in
1893, his _Songs of the Common Day_ appeared, with its exquisite
_Ave_, commemorating the centenary of Shelley, many people felt that
{248} a new star had arisen to shine with permanent splendour in the
poetic firmament. There are lines and stanzas in the _Ave_ that are
worthy to hold their immortality so long as the art of poetry lives
to bless and ennoble and inspire life. Shelley--
"the breathless child of change,
Urged ever by the soul's divine unrest."
And again:
"But all about the tumult of his heart
Stretched the great calm of his celestial art."
And this stanza:
"Thyself the lark melodious in mid-heaven;
Thyself the Protean shape of chainless cloud.
Pregnant with elemental fire, and driven
Through deeps of quivering light, and darkness loud
With tempest, yet beneficent as prayer. "
And the breathing line:
"And speechless ecstasy of growing June,"
condensing in itself all the rapture of summer hours; or the
beautiful stanza:
"O heart of fire, that fire might not consume!
Forever glad the world because of thee;
Because of thee forever eyes illume
A more enchanted earth, a lovelier sea!
O poignant voice of the desire of life,
Piercing our lethargy, because thy call
Aroused our spirits to a nobler strife
Where base and sordid fall,
Forever past the conflict and the pain
More clearly beams the goal we shall attain!"
Perhaps the most perfect lyric of Charles G. D. Roberts, and one
that, while in no sense an imitation, {249} yet suggests the _Break,
Break, Break_ of Tennyson, is that entitled _Grey Rocks and Greyer
Sea_:
"Grey rocks, and greyer sea,
And surf along the shore--
And in my heart a name
My lips shall speak no more.
"The high and lonely hills
Endure the darkening year--
And in my heart endure
A memory and a tear.
"Across the tide a sail
That tosses, and is gone--
And in my heart the kiss
That longing dreams upon.
"Grey rocks, and greyer sea,
And surf along the shore--
And in my heart the face
That I shall see no more."
One of the stirring poems is that of _An Ode for the Canadian
Confederacy_, in which occur the lines:
"Awake, my country, the hour of dreams is done!
Doubt not, nor dread the greatness of thy fate."
The lyre of Charles G. D. Roberts is one of many strings, and the
temptation is rather irresistible to quote from him at still greater
length.
Within the opening years of the decade of 1860-70 were born Charles
G. D. Roberts, William Wilfred Campbell, Archibald Lampman, Bliss
Carman, George Frederick Scott (now Canon Scott), and another who,
though bearing the same name, is only related to the Reverend Canon
by the ties of poetic brotherhood, Duncan Campbell Scott. William
{250} Henry Drummond (known especially as "The Poet of the Habitant")
and Isabella Valancy Crawford belonged to the preceding decade, and
although ranked as Canadian poets, were born in Ireland, coming to
the Dominion at an early age.
William Wilfred Campbell is the poet both of Nature and of human
interests. No adequate view of an art so many-veined and so fine as
his can be presented within the limited space of these pages, but
from his noble poem on _England_ this stanza is taken:
"And if ever the smoke of an alien gun
Should threaten her iron repose,
Shoulder to shoulder against the world.
Face to face with her foes,
Scot and Celt and Saxon are one
Where the Glory of England goes."
And this from _The Hills and the Sea_:
"Give me the uplands of purple,
The sweep of the vast world's rim,
Where the sun dips down, or the dawnings
Over the earth's edge swim,
With the days that are dead and the old earth-tales,
Human, and haunting, and grim."
A discerning critic says of Mr. Campbell that his poems are
"something akin to the whisper of silence, the magic of moonlight,
the sadness of art." Yet perhaps more than all one finds the tender
human strain, as in _The Last Prayer_, of which these stanzas are
representative:
{251}
"Master of life, the day is done;
My sun of life is sinking low;
I watch the hours slip one by one
And hark the night-wind and the snow.
* * * * * *
"And must thou banish all the hope,
The large horizon's eagle-swim,
The splendour of the far-off slope
That ran about the world's great rim,
"That rose with morning's crimson rays
And grew to noonday's gloried dome,
Melting to even's purple haze
When all the hopes of earth went home?
* * * * * *
"Yea, thou mayst quench the latest spark
Of life's weird day's expectancy,
Roll down the thunders of the dark
And close the light of life for me.
"Melt all the splendid blue above
And let these magic wonders die,
If thou wilt only leave me, Love,
And Love's heart-brother, Memory."
His _Canadian Folk Song_ has become a popular favourite. The last
stanza runs:
"The firelight dances upon the wall,
Footsteps are heard in the outer hall,
And a kiss and a welcome that fill the room,
And the kettle sings in the glimmer and gloom--
Margery, Margery, make the tea,
Singeth the kettle merrily."
It is in the setting of Canada's wonderland to music that much of the
best work of Mr. Campbell lies; in his _Manitou_, _The Legend of
Restless River_, _Dawn in the Island Camp_, and the musical _Vapour
and Blue_. He has made himself the interpreter of Nature in all her
moods, as has also Archibald {252} Lampman, of whom William Dean
Howells said that his pure spirit was electrical in every line; and
that "the stir of wing, of leaf, of foot; the drifting odours of wood
and field," thrilled his readers in his verse.
[Illustration: Canoeing on the Fraser River]
In his _Passing of Autumn_ Mr. Lampman gives this delicate picture:
"The wizard has woven his ancient scheme--
A day and a star-lit night;
And the world is a shadowy-pencilled dream
Of colour, and haze, and light."
And who would not turn to his _April in the Hills_ to greet the
springtime?
"I break the spirit's cloudy bands,
A wanderer in enchanted lands,
I feel the sun upon my hands;
And far from care and strife
The broad earth bids me forth. I rise
With lifted brow and upward eyes.
I bathe my spirit in blue skies,
And taste the springs of life.
"I feel the tumult of new birth;
I waken with the wakening earth;
I match the bluebird in her mirth;
And wild with wind and sun,
A treasurer of immortal days,
I roam the glorious world with praise,
The hillsides and the woodland ways,
Till earth and I are one."
Mr. Lampman was a master of the sonnet and one of these entitled
_Outlook_ touches a high note, while another, _The Railway Station_,
so interprets the poetic side of common experiences as to be rather
distinctive among all his work and so claims reproduction here:
{253}
"The darkness brings no quiet here, the light
No waking; ever on my blinded brain
The flare of lights, the rush, the cry, and strain,
The engines' scream, the hiss and thunder smite:
I see the hurrying crowds, the clasp, the flight.
Faces that touch, eyes that are dim with pain:
I see the hoarse wheels turn, and the great train
Move labouring out into the bourneless night.
So many souls within its deep recesses,
So many bright, so many mournful eyes:
Mine eyes that watch grow fixed with dreams and guesses;
What threads of life, what hidden histories,
What sweet or passionate dreams and dark distresses,
What unknown thoughts, what various agonies!"
Bliss Carman has long been recognised by the critical lover of poetic
art as a poet of unusual distinction and grace. When, in the days of
his early youth, his poem _Low Tide on Grand-Pré_ appeared in the
_Atlantic Monthly_, all connoisseurs in poet-lore felt the magical
touch. Over all the barren reaches on which the sun had gone down
the poet saw the "unelusive glories":
"Was it a year or lives ago
We took the grasses in our hands.
And caught the summer flying low
Over the waving meadow lands,
And held it there between our hands?
* * * * * *
"And that we took into our hands--
Spirit of life, or subtler thing--
Breathed on us there, and loosed the bands
Of death, and taught us, whispering,
The secret of some wonder thing."
That the poem is faintly, vaguely reminiscent of Swinburne's _Félise_
is only an added charm. Like a refrain of music lingers the last
stanza:
{254}
"The night has fallen, and the tide ...
Now and again comes drifting home,
Across these aching barrens wide,
A sigh like driven wind or foam:
In grief the flood is bursting home!"
Mr. Carman has kept faith with the poetic dreams of his youth. Could
there be found in the songs of any land a lyric more subtle, more
delicately exquisite in expression, than this which he calls _The
Unreturning_?
"The old, eternal spring once more
Comes back the sad, eternal way;
With tender, rosy light, before
The going out of day.
"The great white moon across my door
A shadow in the twilight stirs;
But now, forever, comes no more
That wondrous look of Hers!"
Master of many and varied orders of song, Mr. Carman has the rare art
of the ballad; and his blank verse, as his lyrical, is enticing. A
series of the daintiest lyrics, _Songs of the Sea Children_, call up
a very fairyland in which to wander. One of these (the lyrics form a
sequence) thus portrays the mysteries of spring:
"In the blue mystery of the April woods,
Thy spirit now
Makes musical the rainbow's interludes,
And pink the peach-tree bough.
"In the new birth of all things bright and fair,
'Tis only thou
Art very April, glory, light, and air,
And joy and ardour now."
{255}
Bliss Carman is a word-painter as well as a poet in his lyrical work.
With what fairy-like magic he pictures the landscape, the colouring,
the very breath of the summer wind, the rustle of leaves, and the
swaying of the flower on its stem.
From a multitude of examples, here is one poem, entitled _The Dance
of the Sunbeam_:
"When morning is high o'er the hilltops.
On river and stream and lake.
Whenever a young breeze whispers,
The sun-clad dancers wake.
"One after one upspringing,
They flash from their dim retreat,
Merry as running laughter
Is the news of their twinkling feet.
"Over the floors of azure
Whenever the wind flaws run,
Sparkling, leaping, and racing,
Their antics scatter the sun.
"As long as water ripples
And weather is clear and glad,
Day after day they are dancing,
Never a moment sad.
"But when through the field of heaven,
The wings of storm take flight,
At a touch of the flying shadows
They falter and slip from sight.
"Until, at the grey day's ending,
As the squadrons of cloud retire,
They pass in the triumph of sunset
With banners of crimson fire."
Mr. Carman is pre-eminently the poet of nature, as how else could he
be when, in _The Breath of the Reed_, he makes this appeal?
{256}
"Make me thy priest, O mother.
And prophet of thy mood,
With all the forest wonder
Enraptured and imbued";
or when he thus expresses himself in _The Great Return_?
"When I have lifted up my heart to thee,
Then hast thou ever hearkened and drawn near,
And bowed thy shining face close over me,
Till I could hear thee as the hill-flowers hear.
"When I have cried to thee in lonely need,
Being but a child of thine bereft and wrung,
Then all the rivers in the hills gave heed
And the great hill winds in thy holy tongue--
"That ancient incommunicable speech
The April stars and Autumn sunsets know--
Soothed me and calmed me with solace beyond reach
Of human ken, mysterious and low."
Mr. Carman is, however, more than a writer of exquisite lyrics, more
even than a painter and hymner of nature in its various aspects and
moods. He is more deeply concerned with the mystery which we call
life than with anything else, and again and again seeks to understand
and express his sense of that mystery. His _Behind the
Arras_--described by a recent writer as the most distinctive book of
poems issued in English in the past quarter of a century-- is a
record of such attempts. We quote here the opening verse of _The
Players_:
"We are the players of a play
As old as earth,
Between the wings of night and day,
With tears and mirth."
{257}
And here the first verse of _In the Wings_:
"The play is life; and this round earth
The narrow stage whereon
We act before an audience
Of actors dead and gone."
And here are some lines from _Beyond the Gamut_, which for
philosophic insight are surely hard to equal in modern poetry:
"As all sight is but a finer hearing,
And all colour but a finer sound,
Beauty, but the reach of lyric freedom,
Caught and quivering past all music's bound;
"Life, that faint sigh whispered from oblivion,
Harks and wonders if we may not be
Five small wits to carry one great rhythmus,
The vast theme of God's new symphony.
"As fine sand spread on a disc of silver,
At some chord which bids the notes combine,
Heeding the hidden and reverberant impulse,
Shifts and dances into curve and line,
"The round earth, too, haply, like a dust-mote,
Was set whirling her assigned sure way,
Round this little orb of her ecliptic
To some harmony she must obey."
The temptation to go on quoting from Mr. Carman's work (which is more
varied and touches more chords than most persons--even among those
who endeavour to keep in touch with the poetry produced in our
day--are aware) has to be resisted, but space must be found for a
portion of a recent poem, _A Mountain Gateway_, in which, in beauty
and clarity {258} of thought and expression, the poet reaches perhaps
his highest point:
"I know a vale where I would go one day,
When June comes back and all the world once more
Is glad with summer. Deep with shade it lies,
A mighty cleft in the green bosoming hills,
A cool dim gateway to the mountains' heart.
"On either side the wooded slopes come down,
Hemlock and beech and chestnut. Here and there
Through the deep forest laurel spreads and gleams,
Pink-white as Daphne in her loveliness--
That still perfection from the world withdrawn,
As if the wood gods had arrested there
Immortal beauty in her breathless flight.
* * * * * *
"And where the road runs in the valley's foot,
Through the dark woods a mountain stream comes down,
Singing and dancing all its youth away
Among the boulders and the shallow runs,
Where sunbeams pierce and mossy tree trunks hang
Drenched all day long with murmuring sound and spray.
"There, light of heart and foot-free, I would go
Up to my home among the lasting hills,
* * * * * *
And in my cabin doorway sit me down.
Companioned in that leafy solitude
By the wood ghosts of twilight and of peace,
While evening passes to absolve the day
And leave the tranquil mountains to the stars.
"And in that sweet seclusion I should hear,
Among the cool-leafed beeches in the dusk,
The calm-voiced thrushes at their evening hymn,
So undistraught, so rapturous, so pure,
It well might be, in wisdom and in joy,
The seraphs singing at the birth of time
The unworn ritual of eternal things."
In the Reverend George Frederic Scott, D.C.L., F.R.S.C., Canon of the
Cathedral in Quebec since {259} 1894, Canada has a poet of high
poetic seriousness of especial distinction, and with just claims to
more than a national recognition. A long poem entitled _Evolution_,
written by Canon Scott in 1887, stands as something unique in
English-speaking poetry, in its presenting a great scientific truth
with poetic expression. Of this some stanzas follow:
"Life out of death, death out of life,
In endless cycles rolling on,
And fire-gleams flashing from the strife
Of what will come and what has gone.
* * * * *
"But what art thou and what am I?
What place is ours in all this scheme?
What is it to be born and die?
Are we but phases in a dream?
* * * * *
"And we are present, future, past--
Shall live again, have lived before.
Like billows on the beaches cast
Of tides that flow for evermore.
* * * * *
"That may be so; but to mine eyes
A being of wondrous make thou art--
The point at which infinities
Converge, touch, and forever part.
"Thou canst not unmake what has been,
Nor hold back that which is to come;
We dwell upon the waste between
In the small 'now' which is our home.
* * * * *
"But in the ages thou shalt be
A link from unknown to unknown,
A bridge across a darkling sea,
A light on the world's pathway thrown.
* * * * *
"And we must pass--we shall not die;
Changed and transformed, but still the same.
To grander heights of mystery,
To fairer realms than whence we came.
{260}
"God will not let His work be lost;
Too wondrous is the mind of man,
Too many ages has it cost
The huge fulfilment of His plan.
"But on we pass, for ever on,
Through death to other deaths and life;
To brighter lights when these are gone,
To broader thought, more glorious strife,
"To vistas opening out of these;
To wonders shining from afar.
Above the surging of the seas,
Above the course of moon and star;
"To higher powers of will and deed,
All bounds, all limits left behind;
To truths undreamt in any creed;
To deeper love, more God-like mind.
* * * * *
"Great God! we move into the vast;
All questions vain--the shadows come!
We hear no answer from the past;
The years before us all are dumb.
"We trust Thy purpose and Thy will;
We see afar the shining goal;
Forgive us, if there linger still
Some human fear within the soul!
* * * * *
"But lo! the dawn of fuller days;
Horizon-glories fringe the sky!
Our feet would climb the shining ways
To meet man's widest destiny.
"Come, then, all sorrow's recompense!
The kindling sky is flaked with gold;
Above the shattered screen of sense,
A voice like thunder cries, 'Behold!'"
In Canon Scott's _Requiescat_, in memory of General Gordon, is one of
the thrilling lyrics of memorial verse:
{261}
"O thou twice hero,--hero in thy life
And in thy death!--we have no power to crown
Thy nobleness; we weep thine arm in strife;
We weep, but glory in thy life laid down.
* * * * * *
"Saint! hero! through the clouds of doubt that loom
O'er darkling skies, thy life hath power to bless;
We thank thee thou hast shown us in the gloom
Once more Christ's power and childlike manliness."
A quatrain on Darwin's tomb in Westminster Abbey is worthy to be held
in memory:
"The Muse, when asked what words alone
Were worthy tribute to his fame,
Took up her pen, and on the stone
Inscribed his name."
Full of tender and beautiful feeling is this little lyric of Canon
Scott's that he entitles _Beyond_:
"My heart it lies beyond, dear,
In the land of the setting day,
Where the whispers are soft and fond, dear,
Of the voices that pass away;
And oft, when the night is falling,
And a calm is on the sea,
I fancy I hear them calling
From that far-off land for me.
"It is only idle dreaming
But the dream is full of rest.
And up where that glory is streaming
From the gates of the golden west,
I wander away in spirit,
With a mingled joy and pain,
Till I almost seem to inherit
The sweet dead past again.
* * * * *
"Yes, my heart it lies beyond, dear,
Where that sun is burning low,
And were you not so fond, dear,
I might perhaps--but no!
{262}
Are you weary already with walking?
And tears! What tears, dear, too!
How selfish of me to be talking,
My darling, in this way to you!"
One of the most widely known and frequently quoted of the poems of
Canon Scott is the _Van Elsen_:
"God spake three times and saved Van Elsen's soul:
He spake by illness first, and made him whole;
Van Elsen heard Him not,
Or soon forgot.
"God spake to him by wealth; the world outpoured
Its treasures at his feet, and called him lord;
Van Elsen's heart grew fat
And proud thereat.
"God spake the third time when the great world smiled,
And in the sunshine slew his little child;
Van Elsen like a tree
Fell hopelessly.
"Then in the darkness came a Voice which said:
'As thy heart bleedeth, so My heart hath bled;
As I have need of thee
Thou needest Me.'
"That night Van Elsen kissed the baby feet,
And kneeling by the narrow winding-sheet,
Praised Him with fervent breath
Who conquered death."
Canon Scott, who may well be recognised as the most spiritual of
Canadian poets, has published five volumes of poems, _The Soul's
Quest_, _My Lattice and Other Poems_, _The Unnamed Lake_, _Poems Old
and New_, and _In the Battle Silences, Poems Written at the Front_.
There is a depth of thought, an {263} appealing grace and tenderness
of feeling in his work that insures his poems a treasured place in
Canadian life.
Duncan Campbell Scott has the fascination of the spontaneous singer,
and how all the entrancement of the Dominion is caught into these
lines:
"Oh, Land of the dusky balsam,
And the darling maple-tree,
Where the cedar buds and berries,
And the pine grows strong and free!
My heart is weary and weary
For my own country."
Something in this song recalls, like remembered music, Katherine
Tynan's (Mrs. Hinkson) haunting poem, _Homesick_, of which two lines
run:
"But my heart flies back to an Abbey gray
Where the dead sleep sweet, and the living pray."
The professional critic could find many poems of Mr. Scott's with
intrinsically greater claim than this lovely little chanson, _To B.
W. B._ (now Mrs. Duncan Campbell Scott), but something in the
lilting cadence enchains the reader:
"The world is spinning for change
And life has rapid wings;
Oh, one needs a steady heart
Not to falter while he sings.
"But this is made for my Dear One
When we are far apart,
That she may have, wherever she goes
A song of mine in her heart.
"A song that will serve as an anchor,
Compass, and pilot, and chart,
A song that will bid her remember
That Love is the crown of Art.
* * * * *
{264}
"With a star from her open window
When the cuckoo wakes with a start:
Oh, can she ever forget me
With a song of mine in her heart?"
In _The Voice and the Dusk_ what a play of colour:
"The slender moon and one pale star,
A rose leaf and a silver bee
From some god's garden blown afar,
Go down the gold deep tranquilly.
"Within the south there rolls and grows
A mighty town with tower and spire,
From a cloud bastion masked with rose
The lightning flashes diamond fire."
A poet's _nom de plume_ is that of "Katherine Hale," so well known in
private life as Mrs. John W. Garvin, who to her own charm as a poet
must add still another as the wife of a poet and a critic of
distinction as well. The gods endowed "Katherine Hale" with a
resplendent lyre, and her poems have flown to many lands. Perhaps no
poem of the war has more closely touched the universal heart than has
"Katherine Hale's" poem, so intense in its restrained power, entitled
_Grey Knitting_, so widely known that from it only these three
stanzas will be given:
"All through the country, in the autumn stillness,
A web of grey spreads strangely, rim to rim;
And you may hear the sound of knitting needles.
Incessant, gentle--dim.
"A tiny click of little wooden needles,
Elfin amid the gianthood of war;
Whispers of women, tireless and patient,
Who weave the web afar.
* * * * * *
{265}
"I like to think that soldiers, gayly dying
For the white Christ on fields with shame sown deep,
May hear the fairy click of women's needles
As they fall fast asleep."
What a spell of potent witchery she weaves in her song _I used to
Wear a Gown of Green_:
"I used to wear a gown of green
And sing a song to May,
When apple blossoms starred the stream
And Spring came up the way.
"I used to run along with Love
By lanes the world forgets,
To find in an enchanted wood
The first frail violets.
"And ever 'mid the fairy blooms
And murmur of the stream,
We used to hear the pipes of Pan
Call softly through our dream.
"But now, in outcry vast, that tune
Fades like some little star
Lost in an anguished judgment day
And scarlet flames of war.
"What can it mean that Spring returns
And purple violets bloom,
Save that some gypsy flower may stray
Beside his nameless tomb!
"To pagan Earth her gown of green,
Her elfin song to May--
_With all my soul I must go on
Into the scarlet day._"
The poets have been the celebrants of many of the historic epochs of
Canada and the recorders of her great names; and in this especial
line John Daniel Logan has rendered an interesting service in his
_Songs of the Makers of Canada_. In these Dr. Logan has celebrated
Cartier as the "dauntless {266} discoverer," Champlain as the "first
Canadian," Laval as "the high-priest of knowledge," Wolfe as the
"illustrious victor," Brock the "valiant leader," Drummond the
"indomitable soldier," Ryerson the "renowned educator," Howe the
"champion of self-government," Macdonald the "great
confederationist," Laurier the "prophetic imperialist." Such a
collection, in its vigour and vividness of personal characterisation,
is the very intellectual panorama of Canada. Of Macdonald, the
"great confederationist," the First Premier of the Dominion (1867),
we find Dr. Logan saying:
"Macdonald, though thy soul hath passed away
From wonted wolds in our Canadian land,
Where thou wast chiefest of the fervid band
That sought to give the people fullest sway
O'er their own destiny, thy spirit goes
Triumphant in this Canada of ours
Resplendent now before the elder Pow'rs
Who mark how virile our young nation grows!
"Thy wisdom was the vision of a seer
Who knew the meaning of the pregnant days
Which gen'rous Time should father into ways
For unity...."
In the memorial lyric to William Henry Drummond, whom Dr. Logan
enshrines as "Sovereign of Joy and Prince of Tears," the poet touches
perhaps his most musical note in the lines:
"O Lost Canadian Singer of the winsome lays,
How farest thou along the Elysium ways,--
Art thou companionless as we
And sorrowing?
* * * * * *
{267}
"O gentle heart, we wonder if thou farest happily
With Homer and the Attic strain,
With Milton and the Tragic train."
Among the younger Canadian poets are two sisters, Annie Campbell
Huestis and Ethel Huestis Butler, who have each won distinction. One
little lyric of Mrs. Butler's, _On Life's Highway_, is singularly
poetic in its motive, contrasting the experiences of walking as
companioned with Grief, or with Joy, and is expressed with much
tenderness of feeling. The work of Miss Huestis suggests that she
makes her pilgrimages to the "holy hill," and brings away with her
all the fragrance of the thyme. A poem of hers entitled _Aldaran,
the Singer_, has somewhat of that sustained sweetness and music that
so signally characterised Mrs. Browning's _Catarina to Camoens_.
From Miss Huestis's _Aldaran_ are these extracts:
"Aldaran, who loved to sing,
Here lieth dead.
All the glory of the spring,
All its birds and blossoming,
Near his still bed
Cannot waken him again.
Cannot lure to hill and plain,
Aldaran, the Singer,
Who is dead.
"Aldaran, who loved to sing,
Here lieth low;
Not again his heart shall spring
At the time of blossoming,
Ah, who can know?
Still at dusk or break of day,
{268}
Some can hear him on his way,
Aldaran, the vanished one,
Walking, hidden, in the sun;
Moving, mist-like, by the streams
When the early twilight dreams;
Speeding on his quiet way,
Never seen by night or day,
"But in pity drawing near
To the help of those who fear.
To the beds of those who die,
Singing low their lullaby,
Singing still, when they are far
Where the mist and silence are,
Singing softly still that they
May not fear the hidden way.
So, to those whose day is sped,
In the hour lone and dread,
Cometh Aldaran, the Singer,
Who is dead!"
For her _Magdalen_, whose beauty of phrasing attracted attention when
published in a leading critical review of New York, and in which
there is a haunting reminiscence of Christina Rossetti, room must
here be made, as it represents Miss Huestis in what is perhaps her
most artistic mood:
"'Where are you going, weary feet.
Feet that have failed in storm and flood?
'I go to find a flower sweet
I left, fresh growing, near a wood.
The winds blow pure from many a hill,
And hush to tender stillness there.
Shall not this restless heart be still,
And grow more innocent and fair?'
'_Not so; for sin and bitter pain
Can never find Youth's flower again!_'
"'Where are you going, wistful face,
Face with the mark of shame and tears?'
{269}
'I go to find a quiet place
Where no one sees and no one hears.
The beauty and the silence there
Shall thrill me through and still my pain.
Shall touch my hardness into prayer,
And give me back my dreams again.'
'_Not so; for Sin has closed the door
On Youth's fair dreams forevermore._'"
"'Where are you going, heart of woe.
Pitiful heart of fear and shame?'
'A strange and lonely way I go,
Where none shall pity, none shall blame.
Far with my sin and misery
I creep on doubtful feet, alone;
No human heart can follow me
To mark my tears or hear my moan.'
'_Nay; but the never-ceasing sting,
The clearness of remembering!_'
"'What do you see, O changing face,
Alight with strange and tender gleams?'
'I near the hushed and holy place
Of One who gives me back my dreams.'
'Where are you daring, eager feet,
Feet that so wild a way have trod?'
'O bitter world, no scorn I meet.
Sinful and hurt, I go to God!
_On my dark sin, forevermore,
A sinless Hand has closed the door._'"
Miss Huestis dons her singing-robes too infrequently; but who may
venture on any prediction regarding the poetic production of one who
is still on the threshold of achievement? For the poet, himself,
least of all, may foresee his own future, nor is it given to those
who love his songs to discern his future in the magic glass. The
poet is ever a subject in a kingdom of untraced laws and unmapped
territory.
{270}
"For voices pursue him by day
And haunt him by night;
And he listens, and needs must obey
When the Angel says 'Write!'"
Forever does he await the Voice and the Vision.
Louis Frechette is the French-Canadian Laureate, who was crowned by
the French Academy, in 1881, for the striking merit of his tragedy,
_Papineau_. Doctor Frechette (born in 1841) has contributed greatly
to the fame of his country. In his _La Decouverte du Mississippi_,
and in _Le Drapeau Anglais_, _Saint-Malo_, and others, is his real
distinction felt. His poems are so long and so closely woven as
hardly to lend themselves to extracts.
Thomas O'Hagan is one of the favourite poets of the Dominion, and
aside from his own notable contribution to poetry, he has done and is
doing a wonderful work in his scholarly and critical lectures on
poets. His published lectures interpretative of Shakespeare, of
Dante, and of Browning, Tennyson, Longfellow, and others, are in
constant demand. In _A Gate of Flowers_, _An Idyll of the Farm_,
_The Bugle Call_, and the timely production _I Take Off my Hat to
Albert_, are poems that inspire the popular favour; and in a lyric
entitled _Ripened Fruit_ these stanzas are especially calculated to
awaken response:
"I know not what my heart hath lost;
I cannot strike the chords of old:
The breath that charmed my morning life
Hath chilled each leaf within the wold.
{271}
"The swallows twitter in the sky,
But bare the nest within the eaves;
The fledglings of my care are gone,
And left me but the rustling leaves.
"And yet, I know my life hath strength,
And firmer hope and sweeter prayer,
For leaves that murmur on the ground
Have now for me a double care.
"The glory of the summer sky
May change to tints of autumn hue;
But faith that sheds its amber light
Will lend our heaven a tender blue.
"O altar of eternal youth!
O faith that beckons from afar.
Give to our lives a blossomed fruit--
Give to our morns an evening star!"
Very distinctive is the work of Doctor William Henry Drummond, the
poet of the "habitant" life. _De Nice Leetle Canadienne_ and _Leetle
Bateese_ have become household songs. In the former one stanza runs:
"O she's quick, an' she's smart, an' got plaintee heart,
If you know correc' way go about;
An' if you don' know, she soon tole you so.
Den tak' de firs' chance an' get out;
But if she love you, I spik it for true,
She will mak' it more beautiful den,
An' sun on de sky can't shine lak' de eye
Of dat nice leetle Canadienne."
_Leetle Bateese_ is a favourite with reciters who master the dialect,
and who frequently delight their audiences by the mingled humour and
tenderness of the picture:
{272}
"Too sleepy for sayin' de prayer to-night?
Never min', I s'pose it'll be all right;
Say dem to-morrow--ah! dere he go!
Fas' asleep in a minute or so--
An' he'll stay lak dat till de rooster crow,
Leetle Bateese!
* * * * * *
"But, leetle Bateese! please don' forget
We rader you're stayin' de small boy yet,
So chase de chicken an' mak' dem scare,
An' do w'at you lak wit' your old gran'pere
For we'n you're beeg feller he won't be dere--
Leetle Bateese!"
John W. Garvin, who has manifested his devotion to the muses by
compiling a notable anthology of Canadian poets (recently published),
is also a poet of recognition, and one of his productions, entitled
_Majesty_, is especially original in conception. Mr. Garvin's
devotion to the poetic literature of his country has rendered great
service in the way of making the poets known to the general reading
public and bringing together, within convenient limits, much that is
best in poetic art.
The names come to mind of Alfred Gordon, a young and gifted English
poet now a resident of Montreal; of Ethelyn Wetherald, Robert
Norwood, E. Pauline Johnson, the daughter of Chief Johnson of the
Mohawks; of Virna Sheard, Alma Frances McCollum, Albert D. Watson,
William McLennan, and William Douw Lighthall (whose recognition
extends far beyond his native country); of Charles Mair, whose
_Tecumseh_ contains much that is excellent in poetic lore. Marjorie
L. C. Pickthall has already {273} established a claim to the wide
recognition that opens before her, and her poem _The Lamp of Poor
Souls_ must be especially remembered. Jean Blewett is one of the
most thoughtful and beautiful of the present choir of singers. Mrs.
Blewett is Canadian born, and something of the high seriousness of
life that characterises the Reverend Canon Scott seems reflected in
the poems of Mrs. Blewett; as in the following, entitled _Discontent_:
"My soul spoke low to Discontent:
Long hast thou lodged with me,
Now, ere the strength of me is spent,
I would be quit of thee.
"Thy presence means revolt, unrest,
Means labour, longing, pain;
Go, leave me, thou unwelcome guest,
Nor trouble me again.
"Then something strong and sweet and fair
Rose up and made reply:
Who gave you the desire to dare
And do the right? 'Twas I.
"The coward soul craves pleasant things,
Soft joys and dear delights--
I scourged you till you spread your wings
And soared to nobler heights.
"You know me but imperfectly--
My surname is Divine;
God's own right hand did prison me
Within this soul of thine,
"Lest thou, forgetting work and strife,
By human longings prest,
Shouldst miss the grandest things of life,
Its battles and unrest."
[Illustration: Breaking Camp]
Helena Coleman has much of that spiritualisation {274} of vision
which was so evident in Adelaide Proctor, and which was exalted to
the supremest poetic art by Mrs. Browning. From Miss Coleman's
_Love's Higher Way_ these stanzas are taken:
"Constrain me not! Dost thou not know
That if I turn from thee my face
'Tis but to hide the overflow
"Of love? We need a little space
And solitude in which to kneel
And thank our God for this high grace
"That He hath set His holy seal
Upon our lives. My heart doth burn
With consciousness of all I feel
"And own to thee, and if I turn
For one brief moment from thy gaze,
'Tis but that I may better learn
"To bear the unaccustomed blaze
Of that white light that like a flame
Thy love has set amidst my days."
Of Isabella Valancy Crawford, who flashed like a glancing star across
Canadian skies, and whose death in 1887 (at the age of thirty-six)
was a signal loss to her adopted country, Mr. Garvin, at once her
biographer and the editor of the complete edition of her poems, well
says: "A great poet dwelt among us and we scarce knew her." William
Douw Lighthall pronounces Isabella Valancy Crawford the most
impressive Canadian poet next to Roberts. "This wonderful girl,
living in the 'Empire' Province of Ontario, early saw the
possibilities of the new field around her, and had she lived longer
might have made a really matchless name. It was {275} only in 1884
that her modest volume came out. The sad story of unrecognised
genius and death was re-enacted."
This volume of Miss Crawford's was handicapped by an infelicitous
title. _Old Spookses' Pass; Malcolm's Katie, and other Poems_, was
hardly a description to invite further investigation. The book
passed almost unnoticed, and within three years its author died. "She
was a high-spirited, passionate girl," says Mr. Lighthall, "and there
is little doubt that the neglect of her book was the cause of her
death. Afterward her verse was seen to be phenomenal.... It was
packed with fine stuff."
_Malcolm's Katie_ is the story of a man and a maid, the man going
forth in the woodlands to hew a home with his axe, and the maid
remaining in faith and devotion in her home. It is a long poem in
blank verse, strewn with occasional lyrics, of which one runs:
"O Love builds on the azure sea,
And Love builds on the golden sand,
And Love builds on the rose-winged cloud,
And sometimes Love builds on the land!
"O if Love build on sparkling sea,
And if Love build on golden strand,
And if Love build on rosy cloud,
To Love these are the solid land!
"O Love will build his lily walls,
And Love his pearly roof will rear
On cloud, or land, or mist, or sea--
Love's solid land is everywhere!"
Mr. Lighthall is himself a poet of distinction and {276} one of the
best translators of French poetry. Among his finest work is a poem
on Homer, breathing the very spirit of classic ages. Another is
entitled _Canada Not Last_, a sonnet series to Venice, Florence, and
Rome, the concluding sonnet, which follows, relating to Canada:
"Rome, Florence, Venice--noble, fair, and quaint,
They reign in robes of magic round me here;
But fading blotted, dim, a picture faint,
With spell more silent only pleads a tear.
Plead not! Thou hast my heart, O picture dim!
I see the fields, I see the autumn hand
Of God upon the maples! Answer Him
With weird, translucent glories, ye that stand
Like spirits in scarlet and in amethyst!
I see the sun break over you; the mist
On hills that lift from iron bases grand
Their heads superb!--the dream, it is my native land!"
Another genuine poet is Peter McArthur, one time editor of New York
_Truth_ and now farming at his old home in Ontario. Mr. McArthur has
published but one volume of verse, but that volume is enough to place
him securely well up among the truly authentic voices in the Canadian
choir. Everything he writes has a markedly individual quality.
There is nothing in him, as one writer has said, of the mere æsthetic
or dilettante; he is alive to his finger tips. Mr. McArthur has a
keen eye and ear for the common things of the life about him, as
witness _A Thaw_:
"The farmhouse fire is dull and black,
The trailing smoke rolls white and low
Along the fields till by the wood
It banks and floats unshaken, slow;
{277}
The scattering sounds seem near and loud,
The rising sun is clear and white.
And in the air a mystery stirs
Of wintry hosts in coward flight.
"Anon the south wind breathes across
The frozen earth its bonds to break,
Till at the call of life returned
It softly stirs but half awake.
The cattle clamour in their stalls,
The house-dog barks, he knows not why.
The cock crows by the stable door,
The snow-birds, sombre-hued, go by.
"The busy housewife on the snow
To bleach lays out her linen store,
And scolds because with careless feet
The children track the spotless floor.
With nightfall comes the slow warm rain,
The purl of waters fills the air,
And save where roll the gleaming drifts
The fields lie sullen, black, and bare."
But Mr. McArthur does not write simply of the life around him; the
life within is of greater import to him. Here, as evidence of this,
is a fine sonnet of his, entitled _Summum Bonum_. Mr. McArthur, it
might be noted in passing, is a real master of the sonnet for all his
few accomplishments in that form of verse:
"How blest is he that can but love and do,
And has no skill of speech nor trick of art
Wherewith to tell what faith approveth true
And show for fame the treasures of his heart.
When wisely weak upon the path of duty
Divine accord has made his footing sure
With humble deeds he builds his life to beauty,
Strong to achieve and patient to endure.
But they that in the market-place we meet,
Each with his trumpet and his noisy faction,
{278}
Are leaky vessels, pouring on the street
The truth they know ere it hath known its action:
Yet which, think ye, in His benign regard,
Or words or deeds shall merit the reward?
Agnes Maule Machar is another of the group of patriotic poets whose
theme is often that of the Empire. She discerns the imperial
conditions, and she is intensely in sympathy with the richness and
beauty of the land. In Miss Machar's _A Prayer for Dominion Day_
these fine lines occur:
"O God of nations, who hast set her place
Between the rising and the setting day,
Her part in this world's changeful course to play,
Soothe the conflicting passions that we trace
In her unrestful eyes--grant her the grace
To know the one true, perfect love, that may
Give noble impulse to her onward way--
God's love, that doth all other love embrace!"
Lloyd Roberts, one of the young poets of the Dominion, the eldest
living son of Charles G. D. Roberts, is true to his poetic
birthright, and is the author of an impressive war poem, _Come
Quietly, England_, which opens as follows:
"Come quietly, England, all together, come!
It is time!
We have waited, weighed, and blundered, wondered
Who had blundered;
Stared askance at one another
As our brother slew our brother,
And went about our business,
Saying, 'It will be all right--some day.
Let the soldiers do the killing--
If they're willing--
Let the sailors do the manning,
Let the cabinets do the planning.
{279}
Let the bankers do the paying
And the clergy do the praying.
The Empire is a fixture,
Walled and welded by five oceans,
And a little blood won't move it,
Nor a flood-tide of emotions.'
Well, now we know the truth
And the facts of all this fighting;
How 'tis not for England's glory
But for all a wide world's righting.
* * * * *
"What Washington starved and strove for
In the long winter night;
Lincoln wept for, died for,--
Do we doubt if he were right?
* * * * *
"And who would fear to follow
When Nelson sets the course?
And who would turn his eyes away
From Wellington's white horse?
Not one, I warrant, now--
Not one at home to-day;
In England? In Scotland?
In the Green Isle cross the way?
No, nor far away to Westward
Beyond the leagues of foam--
They are coming, they are coming,
Their feet are turning home.
In Canada they're singing,
And love lies like a flame
About their throats this morning
Their sea-winds cannot tame.
Africa? Australia?
Aye a million throats proclaim
That their Motherland is Mother still
In something more than name!
"It is time! Come, all together, come!
Not to the fife's call, not to the drum;
Right needs you; Truth claims you--
That's a call indeed
One must heed!
{280}
Not for the weeping
(God knows there is weeping!)
Not for the horrors
That are blotting out the page;
Not for our comrades
(How many now are sleeping!)
Nor for the pity nor the rage,
But for the sake of simple goodness
And His laws
We shall sacrifice our all
For the Cause!"
One of the most brilliant of Canadian poets is Arthur Stringer,
though he is more widely known as a novelist, his _Silver Poppy_ and
_Wire Tappers_ having been the successes of their day. Mr.
Stringer's poetic work is striking for its variety and range. He has
written lyrics and sonnets of almost Keats-like quality, and with as
ready facility has written poems in the most modern form of _vers
libre_. Then he has turned to the literature of ancient Greece and
given us such things of pure beauty in blank verse as _Hephæstus_ and
_Sappho in Leucadia_, which do not shrink in comparison with any
other modern work of their kind; and again has presented us with such
pitilessly realistic and convincing pictures as _The Woman in the
Rain_. He has also written verse of the Celtic order, his volume of
_Irish Poems_ being a well of true Irish humour and feeling. And
yet, withal, Stringer is Canadian in every nerve and fibre of him.
Listen to his _Going Home_:
"I tread each mountain waste austere,
I pass dark pinelands, hill by hill;
Each tardy sunrise brings me near,
Each lonely sunset nearer still.
{281}
"Sing low, my heart, of other lands
And suns we may have loved, or known:
This silent North, it understands,
And asks but little of its own!
"So where the homeland twilight broods
Above the slopes of dusky pine,
Teach me your silence, solitudes;
Your reticence, grey hills, be mine!
"Whether all loveliness it lies,
Or but a lone waste scarred and torn,
How shall I know? For 'neath these skies
And in this valley I was born."
Here is a characteristic poem of Stringer's entitled _War_, written
years ago, and yet reading as if the ink in which it was written were
still wet:
"From hill to hill he harried me;
He stalked me day and night.
He neither knew nor hated me;
Not his nor mine the fight.
"He killed the man who stood by me,
For such they made his law.
Then foot by foot I fought to him,
Who neither knew nor saw.
"I aimed my rifle at his heart;
He leapt up in the air.
My screaming ball tore through his breast,
And lay embedded there.
"Lay but embedded there, and yet
Hissed home o'er hill and sea,
Straight to the aching heart of one
Who'd wronged not mine nor me."
As a specimen of Stringer's skill in handling of blank verse, here is
a portion of the farewell between Sappho and Phaon in _Sappho in
Leucadia_:
{282}
_Sappho_. But you,--
You will forget me, Phaon; there the sting.
The sorrow of the grave is not its green
And the salt tear upon its violet;
But the long years that bring the grey neglect,
When the glad grasses smooth the little mound,--
When leaf by leaf the tree of sorrow wanes
And on the urn unseen the tarnish comes,
And tears are not so bitter as they were,
Time sings so low to our bereavèd ears,--
So softly breathes, that, bud by falling bud,
The garden of fond Grief all empty lies
And unregretted dip the languid oars
Of Charon thro' the gloom, and then are gone.
_Phaon_. Red-lipped and breathing woman, made for love,
How can this clamouring heart of mine forget?
_Sappho_. You will forget, e'en though you would or no,
And the long years shall leave you free again;
And in some other Spring when other lips
Let fall my name, you will remember not.
_Phaon_. Enough,--but let me kiss the heavy rose
Of your red mouth.
_Sappho_. Not until Death has kissed
It white as these white garments, and has robed
This body for its groom.
Another characteristic poem of Stringer's, entitled _A Prayer in
Defeat_, will bear comparison with William Ernest Henley's famous
_Unafraid_:
"Still hurl me back, God, if Thou must!
Thy wrath, see, I shall bear--
I have been taught to know the dust
Of battle and despair.
"Bend not to me this hour, O God,
Where I defeated stand;
I have been schooled to bear thy rod,
And still wait, not unmanned!
"But should some white hour of success
Sweep me where, vine-like, lead
The widening roads, the clamouring press--
Then I thy lash shall need!
{283}
"Then, in that hour of triumph keen,
For then I ask thine aid;
God of the weak, on whom I lean,
Keep me then unafraid!"
Space cannot be found for it here, but following are a few verses
from another beautiful poem, _St. Ives' Poor_. The idea of this poem
is found in the old saying that in the giving of alms the Christ is
revealed:
"For O, my Lord, the house-dove knows her nest
Above my window builded from the rain;
In the brown mere the heron finds her rest,
But these shall seek in vain.
"And O, my Lord, the thrush may fold his wing,
The curlew seek the long lift of the seas,
The wild swan sleep amid his journeying;
There is no place for these.
"Thy dead are sheltered; housed and warmed they wait
Under the golden fern, the falling foam;
But these Thy living wander desolate,
And have not any home."
And here is an exquisite poem, _The Immortal_, which is full of Miss
Pickthall's own music:
"Beauty is still immortal in our eyes,
When sways no more the spirit-haunted reed,
When the wild grape shall build
No more her canopies,
When blows no more the moon-grey thistle seed,
When the last bell has lulled the white flocks home,
When the last eve has stilled
The wandering wing, and touched the dying foam,
When the last moon burns low, and, spark by spark,
The little worlds die out along the dark--
"Beauty that rosed the moth-wing, touched the land
With clover-horns and delicate faint flowers;
{284}
Beauty that bade the showers
Beat on the violet's face,
Shall hold the eternal heavens within their place,
And hear new stars come singing from God's hand."
We cannot resist, before leaving Miss Pickthall, quoting a lovely
little lyric of hers called simply _Serenade_:
"Dark is the Iris meadow,
Dark is the ivory tower,
And lightly the young moth's shadow
Sleeps on the passion flower.
"Gone are our day's red roses,
Lovely and lost and few,
But the first star uncloses
A silver bud in the blue.
"Night, and a flame in the embers
When the seal of the years was set;
When the almond bough remembers
How shall my heart forget?"
Passing mention has been made of the names of Ethelwyn Wetherald and
Pauline Johnson, but the work of these poets is too distinctive to
avoid some reference to it. Miss Wetherald has published some
half-dozen books of verse, all made up chiefly of short lyrics, and
all possessing an individual quality which may well be called unique.
Here is one of her strongest poems, entitled _Prodigal Yet_:
"Muck of the sty, reek of the trough,
Blackened my brow where all might see,
Yet while I was a great way off
My Father ran with compassion for me.
"He put on my hand a ring of gold
(There's no escape from a ring, they say);
He put on my neck a chain to hold
My passionate spirit from breaking away.
{285}
"He put on my feet the shoes that miss
No chance to tread in the narrow path;
He pressed on my lips the burning kiss
That scorches deeper than fires of wrath.
"He filled my body with meat and wine,
He flooded my heart with love's white light!
Yet deep in the mire, with sensuous swine,
I long--God help me!--to wallow to-night.
"Muck of the sty, reek of the trough,
Blacken my soul where none may see.
Father, I yet am a long way off--
Come quickly. Lord! Have compassion on me!"
It has been indicated that Pauline Johnson, whose death a few years
ago is still fresh in the memory of those who knew her and her work,
was Indian by birth and her poetry is marked by the vigour and
virility which such a fact would imply. _How Red Men Can Die_ and
_The Cry of an Indian Wife_ are perhaps her best-known poems, but
they are too long to quote here. Following, however, is a little
poem, _The Honey Bee_, which shows Miss Johnson's keen feeling for
colour, as well as her fine lyric quality:
"You are belted with gold, little brother of mine,
Yellow gold, like the sun
That spills in the west, as a chalice of wine
When feasting is done.
"You are gossamer-winged, little brother of mine,
Tissue winged, like the mist
That broods where the marshes melt into a line
Of vapour sun-kissed.
"You are laden with sweets, little brother of mine,
Flower sweets, like the touch
Of hands we have longed for, of arms that entwine,
Of lips that love much.
{286}
"You are better than I, little brother of mine,
Than I, human-souled,
For you bring from the blossoms and red summer shine,
For others, your gold."
The poet has no country save that of the kingdom of song, or rather,
all countries are his own, and while Canada cannot claim Robert W.
Service by birth, it is he who has so made himself the poet of her
scenic grandeur and her primitive human experiences in the deepest
emotions of life, love, death, sacrifice, revenge, that no sketch of
Canadian poetry could omit the name of one who has made the Dominion
known, in its grandeur and its mountain solitudes, the world over.
Mr. Service has inevitably been much quoted in these pages; no one
can travel in Canada, no one can write of Canada, without this
perpetual consciousness of the vivid way in which he has translated
her landscapes and her life. What a ring of the vitality that
conquers the wilderness is in his _Call of the Wild_!
"Have you suffered, starved, and triumphed, grovelled down,
yet grasped at glory,
Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole?
'Done things' just for the doing, letting babblers tell the story,
Seeing through the nice veneer the naked soul?
Have you seen God in His splendours, heard the text that
nature renders
(You'll never hear it in the family pew),
The simple things, the true things, the silent men who do
things?--
Then listen to the wild--it's calling you.
"They have cradled you in custom, they have primed you with
their preaching,
They have soaked you in convention through and through;
{287}
They have put you in a showcase; you're a credit to their
teaching--
But can't you hear the wild?--it's calling you.
Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us;
Let us journey to a lonely land I know.
There's a whisper on the night-wind, there's a star agleam to
guide us,
And the wild is calling, calling ... let us go."
In _The Law of the Yukon_ we find:
"This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain;
'Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and
your sane;
Strong for the red rage of battle; sane, for I harry them sore;
Send me men girt for the combat,--men who are grit to the core;
Send me the best of your breeding, lend me your chosen ones;
Them will I take to my bosom, them will I call my sons;
Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat;
But the others, the misfits, the failures,--I trample under my feet.
* * * * * * * *
"'I am the land that listens, I am the land that broods;
Steeped in eternal beauty, crystalline waters and woods.
Monstrous, moody, pathetic, the last of the lands and the first,
Visioning campfires at twilight, sad with a longing forlorn.'
* * * * * * * *
"This is the law of the Yukon, that only the Strong shall thrive;
That surely the Weak shall perish, and only the Fit survive;
Dissolute, damned, and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain,
This is the law of Will of the Yukon,--Lo, how she makes it plain!"
Robert Service has many moods, and in the tender little lyric
_Unforgotten_ he dramatises the way in which one's real life lies in
his consciousness rather than enchained with the bodily presence:
"I know a garden where the lilies gleam,
And one who lingers in the sunshine there;
She is than white-stoled lily far more fair.
And oh, her eyes are heaven-lit with dream.
{288}
"I know a garret, cold and dark and drear,
And one who toils and toils with tireless pen,
Until his brave, sad eyes grow weary--then
He seeks the stars, pale, silent as a seer.
"And ah, it's strange, for desolate and dim
Between these two there rolls an ocean wide;
Yet he is in the garden by her side
And she is in the garret there with him."
One of the wonderful poems of Mr. Service is that of _My Madonna_.
The artist "haled" him "a woman from the street" for his model; he
painted her:
"I painted her as she might have been
If the Worst had been the Best,"
and she "laughed at the picture and went away," but a connoisseur
came and exclaimed:
"'Tis Mary, the Mother of God."
"So I painted a halo round her hair,
And I sold her, and took my fee,
And she hangs in the church of Saint Hilaire,
Where you and all may see."
[Illustration: Mount Robson, at a Distance of Ten Miles]
No attempt to transcribe any impressions of Canada could attain to
success that did not include some reference, even one so slight and
imperfect as this, to her poets. Any adequate comment on her poetic
literature would fill more than one volume of itself. They who make
the songs of a people are traditionally held to be not less in
influence than are they who make her laws; and that the future will
be still more enriched with the enthusiasms and the strange and
thrilling elements of the life of the Dominion is a foregone
conclusion.
{289}
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.
[Illustration: Mount Robson Glacier]
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.
{294}
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.
[Illustration: Farming in Shellbrook District, Saskatchewan]
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.
{313}
"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.
[Illustration: Threshing Wheat, Manitoba]
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.
[Illustration: After the Bear Hunt--Moose River Forks]
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
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