Chapter III: Appendix (2)

Ottawa, with its suburbs, now has about one hundred and twenty-five thousand people and its chief interests are still lumber and legislation. A little army of its breadwinners finds employment, in some capacity or other, in connection with the business of government. Each of the departments of state has, of course, a large staff, from experts of various descriptions down to clerks and office boys.

The official residence of the Governor-General is Rideau Hall. This long, low, rambling erection is hardly picturesque, though it is decidedly old-fashioned. It stands in pleasant grounds, and its nucleus, “the Castle,” as it was called, was built in 1838, by a Scottish member of parliament, named McKay. The original house had a score of rooms, but the present-day Hall has over a hundred, which have been added from time to time to suit the convenience of its noble occupants. For instance, the great ballroom dates from Lord Dufferin’s time; while the racquet court was built by the Marquis of Lorne, a studio by the artistic Marchioness, and the chapel by the Earl of Aberdeen.

Other places at Ottawa of national interest, either for what they are or for what they may become, are its museums, its National Art Gallery, its Royal Mint and the Archives Building, which houses a collection of extremely valuable historical documents.

IV
LANDS AND THE PEOPLE

IN my last chapter I mentioned the ungranted public lands as amongst the assets of the Dominion. Apart from the vast area of land north of the limits of the provinces, the Crown, according to a recently published official estimate, still holds the title to many millions of acres of “ungranted, surveyed public lands in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta in addition to a vast quantity of good land yet unsurveyed.” The public lands in the Eastern Provinces are owned by the provinces, but in every section of Canada lands may be obtained by the _bonâ fide_ settler, either as free grants, or at a very small rate of payment. This matter will, however, be referred to again later.

Lands offered for settlement in the provinces of the middle west are laid out in blocks six miles square, called townships. Each of these townships is divided into thirty-six sections of one mile square. The sections are again divided into quarters; and the homesteads offered as free grants by the Dominion government on certain conditions as to residence upon and improvement of the land; each contain one-quarter section, or one hundred and sixty acres. (For the land regulations as to free grants and pre-emptions, see Appendix, Note B, p. 297.) Within a certain area two sections in each township have been allotted to the Hudson’s Bay Company, two are reserved for the support of schools, sixteen are held for sale or have been given as land grants in aid of colonization railways, and the remaining sixteen are, or have been, open to homesteaders.

During the fiscal year of 1911-12, over thirty-nine thousand heads of families, or single men, made homestead entries, taking up over six and a quarter millions of acres. In the same year the railway companies and the Hudson’s Bay Company sold between eighteen and nineteen million acres of land; and it is predicted that before another decade has gone by “Canada’s balance of population will be west of Lake Superior.” This may or may not be true, for there is no province in Canada that is not well able to support a much larger population than it has at present; and in every province new opportunities are offering themselves.

In connection with its ownership of the crown lands, the Dominion government assumed at Confederation the guardianship of the Indians, descendants of the ancient lords of the soil. In the drama of Canadian history, especially in its earlier scenes, the Indians play a part that is tragically interesting, whether regarded from the point of view of the settlers, or from that of the wild people themselves, as they were driven deeper into the wilderness, and sank gradually from the position of being reckoned with and feared into that of a comparatively feeble folk, bewildered by the necessity of adaptation to new conditions.

The Canadian Indians, though of many different tribes, have been placed by ethnologists in three or four chief groups. The largest group numerically, and the most widespread, was the Algonquin, to which belong the Micmacs of Nova Scotia, the Ottawas and Ojibways of Central Canada, the Crees of the Middle West, and many other tribes.

A second group—the Huron-Iroquois—was, in many respects, remarkable. The Iroquois tribes are notable for having entered into a confederation from which they were often called “The Five Nation Indians.” This alliance gave them a vast advantage over isolated tribes in their savage warfare; and made them for the best part of a century a menace and a terror to the French. They occupied a very advantageous position in what is now New York State, upon a “Height of Land” from which flowed streams in every direction, serving as waterways for their canoes and enabling them to descend with ease and rapidity into the enemy’s country. They were usually friendly to the English colonists; but again and again during the early days did their utmost to destroy the infant settlements of the French and to annihilate the latter’s Indian allies.

Many years later the famous Mohawk, Brant, and others of the Iroquois sided with the English in the Revolutionary War, and at its close were granted lands like other loyalists in Canada. The city of Brantford, on the Grand River, was named after the chief, and near to it is the “Mohawk Reserve,” comprising over forty-three thousand six hundred acres, where some four thousand Indians still dwell.

Akin in race and language to the Iroquois, but in a constant state of hostility to them, were the Hurons, living near the Georgian bay. Amongst them, in the seventeenth century, the Jesuit fathers from France established, at great sacrifice of ease and comfort, a flourishing mission, but in 1648-49 the mission villages were swept out of existence by hordes of Iroquois; many of the missionaries were martyred, and the Hurons, utterly broken, were driven to seek refuge near the French towns.

The Iroquois and Hurons were in some respects more advanced than the Algonquin tribes. They had the art of making strong palisades about their towns, of several concentric rows of tree trunks planted upright in the ground, and they used shields of skin and a curious armour of twigs interwoven with cords, which formed a great protection against arrows. They also cultivated the ground to some extent, grew maize and sunflowers, and kept hogs. The Algonquins, on the other hand, trusted for food entirely to hunting and fishing, and to what they could gather in the woods.

None of the Indians had a written language, but some practised picture-writing, that is, making rude drawings on bark or skins for the conveyance of information; and they used also to weave shell beads, called “wampum,” into collars and belts of curious devices, which represented certain ideas. These belts were used as mementoes and records of matters of importance, such as a treaty made with another tribe; and were given into the custody of old men who were expected to remember and explain their signification.

In this connection it is interesting to recall that about the middle of last century, a Methodist missionary, Evans, invented a method of writing the Indian languages, which can be learnt by an Indian of ordinary intelligence in a very few lessons. The signs represent syllables, not letters to be combined into syllables. This system of reducing the languages to writing has made possible a very large circulation of the Bible, or parts of it, amongst Indians, who would have had no opportunity of learning to read by such methods as our own. Liberal provision, however, has been made for the education of the Indians dwelling in the more settled regions.

A third great group of the aborigines of Canada comprises the Indians of the western mountains and the Pacific Coast and islands. These tribes were generally fierce and warlike; and were remarkable for their huge canoes, each made from the trunk of a single tree; for their enormous, grotesquely-carved totem poles; and for many singular customs.

Scattered along the thousands of miles of Canada’s northern coasts are the Eskimos—“eaters of raw flesh”—or Innuits—“the People” as they call themselves. From a consideration of some of the resemblances in their implements and ornaments, made of bone and antlers and teeth of animals, and decorated with spirited drawings of men and beasts—some scientists believe them to be akin to “the Cavemen,” of whom traces have been found in France and Great Britain. Their hovels (often half underground) of earth and turf resemble caves; but they have been known to turn bones to account for building material, and everyone knows of their habit of making a temporary shelter of snow built up in blocks into a curious beehive-like shape. They are a stout, sturdy people, who, living under conditions which the white races find almost unendurable, are remarkable for cheerfulness and good humour.

In 1871, when the first Dominion census was taken, it was estimated that the Eskimo and Indian population numbered a little over 102,000. In 1912, the number of Indians was returned at 104,956, an increase of nearly 1,300 since the census taken in the previous year. In some districts the Indian population is decreasing; in the older provinces, where the Indians are more civilized, there is an increase. That it is very difficult to form an exact estimate of the numbers of the wild people of the Dominion is shown by the very recent discovery of a hitherto unknown tribe of Eskimo, in the Coppermine River district, east of the mouth of the Mackenzie.

Upon the whole the early French settlers and rulers treated the Indians with more consideration and generosity than did the English colonists. In many instances, indeed, the French bushrangers and their leaders (though the latter were not infrequently of gentle birth and education) carried their complacency to the Indians so far as to adopt their manners and habits of life, sinking themselves almost to a state of savagery. The better aspect of the situation, however, appealed to the men who conquered Canada, and the British government of the country has, in the main, like its predecessor, treated the Indian with consideration and justice.

As the land has been required for white settlement, the government has entered “into treaty” with its Indian possessors, setting apart reserves for them and making allowances of money for their support and education. The Indians of the Dominions are in very different stages of civilization; in fact, a small minority are still pagans, practising polygamy, and various heathen rites. There are in different parts 325 Indian schools, having on their rolls the names of 11,300 pupils. A few of the more progressive Indians have taken advantage of provisions in the law by which they may obtain the electoral franchise; but many are still content to remain “the Wards of the Nation,” a position which some people think not wholly desirable for adults of any race.

From the consideration of the ancient people of the land, it is a natural transition to the newcomers. In the history of the Dominion there has been a recurrent high and low tide in the coming of settlers. But its flood has never before reached such proportions as within the last decade; and the most recent year for which the figures are attainable shows an immensely larger number of new arrivals than ever before. Of the total number of immigrants in the sixteen years ending March 31, 1912, nearly three-quarters were English-speaking people from the British Isles and the United States; but the remaining quarter represents an amazing number of nations, peoples and languages, the absorption of whom is one of the most difficult problems which Canada has to face. In the year of 1911-12, 82,406 foreigners came into the country.

In every large city it is coming to pass that there is a markedly foreign quarter; and many of the older people remain foreigners to all intents and purposes. The women especially, mixing less with their neighbours than the men, are usually slow to learn English; but the children pick it up quickly, and with it some at least of the ideas (good and bad) of the new land. Some of the foreigners come to Canada with the hope of making money and returning to their native countries; but many are anxious to remain. An alien, before making entry for a free grant of land, must declare his intention of becoming a British subject; and is obliged to be naturalized before he can receive a legal patent to the land upon which he has done homestead duties. But he must live three years in Canada before he can be naturalized.

The American immigrants are usually of a class which the Dominion particularly needs, many of them being farmers, who have had experience under somewhat similar agricultural and climatic conditions in the north-western States. They frequently bring not only experience, but a considerable amount of capital and stock; and altogether, being in a position to make the best of the country, they win success for themselves and demonstrate the capabilities of the land, in a fashion which the man from the “Old Country,” especially if he be town-bred, can rarely at once attain. Their methods have the advantage also of giving an object-lesson to other less experienced immigrants, which save the intelligent and those willing to learn from making blunders.

As to the political view of the matter, the coming of these farmers from across “the line” does not as a rule give much anxiety to Canadians with regard to its effect on the permanence of the British connection, for the newcomers generally are satisfied that they have as much liberty under the Canadian system of government as under the American; and the most restless of them are more keenly occupied with money-making than with politics. Sometimes, however, the galling of the protective tariff, which presses unequally on different classes, provokes loud protests from the agricultural populations, particularly in the West; and there are signs that these protests will grow more vigorous and insistent with time.

The city-bred British immigrant is distinctly at a disadvantage with regard to experience, but if he is willing to take measures to learn before embarking in farming or any other enterprise with the details of which he is unfamiliar there is no reason why he, too, should not succeed. If the British immigrant has the appearance of being likely to “make good,” no one is more gladly welcomed than he; but no immigrant of any nationality unlikely to succeed gets a welcome at all.

The question, “Are Canadians loyal?” with reference to such matters is sometimes much discussed. From long experience in the country, I should answer the question broadly in the affirmative. I should be even inclined to think that the Canadians value the British connection more highly to-day than twenty or thirty years ago; and that the strength of sentiment towards the British sovereign and “the Empire” has increased with the increase of the liberty granted by the Mother-land to the Dominion to work in her own way towards her ideal of nationhood. Whatever may have been the case in the past, at present I firmly believe that that ideal is one of a free nation within an Empire, bound together by those ties of kinship and similarity of ideal and sentiment (let us not blush to use the word) without which the coarser ties of common governmental institutions and commercial enactments become very brittle and often vexatious.

As a nation, Great Britain has long ceased the attempt, which ended so disastrously with her older American colonies, to exploit her “possessions” in the interests of her merchants and shipowners, and, of late years, she has adopted a very sympathetic attitude towards the natural desire of the free-born British peoples in the “overseas dominions” to be permitted to come of age nationally, and to have at least some control over their connections with the outside world. That this desire for control of their own affairs should involve responsibility for their own defence, Canadians are beginning to realize; but what direction the acceptance of this responsibility will take is yet undecided.

But to return to the immigrant. Strenuous efforts are made to bar the Dominion’s doors against undesirables, including the physically and mentally unfit, and those so poor as to be in danger of becoming a burden on the community. Some people feel that the immigration regulations are too stringent, and are sometimes applied to individuals in an over-drastic fashion. It may be that in the anxiety to avoid possible burdens, the doors are sometimes shut against those who, given a chance, would prove a source of benefit to the new land, whose vast, empty acres cry aloud for people.

But whether or not the existing regulations could be improved upon, while they are in force, no wise man intending to settle in Canada will neglect to find out before starting what they are, and whether he can satisfy the requirements.

Many Canadians view the rapid influx of immigrants with anxiety, lest the Dominion should fail to assimilate these streams of new arrivals pouring in annually; and in a measure the severe restrictions on immigration are due to this anxiety. It is true in every land that the mistakes or successes of one generation may profoundly affect the well-being of generations to come; but in a country like Canada the public-spirited feel that blunders of to-day, possibly only affecting a mere handful of people, may be bringing misery on populations multiplied a thousandfold to-morrow. Happily it is not only blunders that are subjected to the process of multiplication and magnification; and in quietness and patience (scarcely noticed amidst the buzz of advertising and boasting of the great things to be) some people are earnestly labouring to begin the building of the new nation well; and perhaps are actually building better than they know. In the social freedom of the new lands, men and women of strong character count for much in either good or evil.

Upon the whole, the people of the Dominion are law-abiding. Unlike the republic to the south, the punishment of criminals has been made a matter of Dominion (instead of provincial) concern. The criminal law is one for the whole country, and justice is administered with a steady hand. In the prairie provinces, the North-West Mounted Police force, organized in 1873, has proved its efficiency in maintaining law and order through leagues of wilderness, in the lumber camps, and in the mines which draw together the roving and adventurous from every part of the globe. In 1913 the force consisted of some 50 officers and 576 men, distributed in 73 detachments in Alberta, 83 in Saskatchewan, 8 in the Yukon and several in the North-West Territories.

Compared to many European nations, Canadians are a temperate people, and in many municipalities there is “prohibition.” Setting the present situation with regard to drunkenness against the state of things sixty or seventy years ago, the comparison is immensely in favour of the present day; for, in that early time, whiskey was manufactured in rude distilleries all over the country, and could be bought by the gallon for a few cents. Strong drink was expected by men working in the harvest fields or coming together in a threshing or raising “bee”; and many were the tragedies which resulted from this pernicious custom. Gentlemen counted drunkenness no disgrace, and it was a common fault of the officers of the garrison at Halifax and elsewhere.

In comparison, however, with conditions a few years ago, the showing is not satisfactory. In fact, it has been stated recently that “Canada’s drinking and criminal record is increasing faster than the population.” Some observers think that this is owing in part at least to the number of newcomers from less temperate countries, and “to the concentration of population in the large cities of the Dominion,” but, at the same time, “progress towards the general adoption of prohibition is certain and rapid.”

Taking Canada as a whole, excellent provision is made for education. The systems vary a little in the different provinces, but the common schools are everywhere free; and there are comparatively few native-born Canadians who cannot at least read and write.

In 1910-11 Canada had over 1,197,000 pupils in her schools, and a small army of thirty-four thousand teachers, a very large proportion of whom are women. The schools are the chief of all the forces for the Canadianizing, if not of this generation of adult foreign immigrants, at least of their children. The central government spends hundreds of thousands of dollars annually on the education of the Indians, and in each province a very considerable proportion of all money devoted to public uses is spent for education. In the prairie provinces millions of acres of land have been reserved by the Dominion government to be sold gradually for the support of schools. All schools below the grade of High Schools are free to children between the ages of five and fifteen; and High Schools in all the cities and large towns are free to resident pupils. The number of children for whom a school district can be organized in the western provinces varies from eight in Alberta to twenty in British Columbia.

With the exception of Prince Edward Island, which can take advantage of the universities in neighbouring provinces; and of British Columbia, which has colleges at Vancouver and Victoria affiliated with McGill University, and has recently set apart two million acres of public land for the endowment of a provincial university—each province has one or more universities. The University of McGill at Montreal is the richest of Canada’s universities; and that of Toronto, with over 4,100 students in 1913, is the largest.

An interesting fact in connection with all Canadian universities is that a large proportion of their students are drawn from classes by no means wealthy; and numbers of the undergraduates are “putting themselves through,” as it is sometimes called. Many of these, having been engaged as teachers or in some business, have saved a sum of money for the payment of the expenses of part of their course. To eke this out, they seek employment in the long summer vacation, which, happily for them, coincides with the busy season, when men are in demand for every form of work; and a resolute student usually finds something to do. If he is not of the physique to go into the harvest fields, he may find employment as a timekeeper over a gang of foreign labourers, a waiter in a summer hotel, or a teacher in some scattered settlement which can only aspire as yet to a summer school. Given reasonably good health, a determined man will usually find or make a way to earn something in the summer; and such are the men who make the most of what can be gained from their hard-won courses of instruction in the winter.

At intervals people lift up their voices in protest over the readiness with which poor men’s sons can rise into the professional classes, and imagine that it accounts, in part at least, for the continuous movement townward from the country districts; but there would surely be more loss than gain to Canadian life in general if any class of young people could be shut up by lack of wealth or other disability to the vocation of their fathers. Canada, though it has a growing wealthy class, and, alas, a growing submerged one, is a long way yet from the fixed “caste” idea.

The healthier recognition of a possible connection between the aspiration for college education amongst country-bred youths and the deserted farms in some of the older provinces, is the attempt made to lift agriculture to its true position amongst the great industries as a scientific profession. For long years agricultural societies have been working to stimulate the ambition of farmers in their own line of work. But this was not enough. It is possible for a dullard and an ignoramus to pick a meagre living from amongst the weeds of a neglected farm; but it takes not only brains, but cultivated brains, to farm well. No man is too good, whatever a “smart” lad may think, for the foundation industry of the world; and no farmer can have a too good educational equipment for this work. Perhaps the people of the Dominion, when reviewing what has been done in this country for education, have a reasonably good right to look with pleasure on the effort to bring well-trained minds to bear on agriculture. At sixteen different points in the Dominion, there are Government experimental farms, and the result of their work in testing seeds and methods suitable to various soils and conditions, finding out good stock and so forth, are at the free service of the farmers. Nor is this all. For nearly forty years Ontario has had in the Agricultural College at Guelph, a school, at once practical and scientific, for farmers; and this is only one of several agricultural colleges, while in the new University of Saskatchewan, one of the first departments to be organized was that of agriculture.

In connection with the colleges and universities are short courses—in England they would probably be called “University Extension” lectures—on agriculture and subjects related to the farm, especially designed for the benefit of dairymen, threshermen, housewives, beekeepers, etc., etc. The imparting of the special knowledge to make a scientific instead of a blundering amateur “thresherman” fits in oddly at first sight with one’s preconceived notions of a university; but why should the extension downward in such utilitarian directions—the striking deep of its roots into the common earth—prevent a great educational institution flowering freely in the higher realms of science and art and philosophy?

There is another aspect to the case. I was much interested, a few months ago, on a chance conversation in a train with an old western farmer of rugged aspect, by his remark that the institution of college and university courses in agriculture would tend to raise the young fellows of the farming classes in their own eyes and in those of other people, and would also enable them better to hold their proper place in the country. (I give the substance of his remarks, not his words.) Now, it is a fact that the Canadian farmer is, as a rule, a much less self-assertive and a more retiring being than his brother—the doctor, the merchant, the manufacturer, the lawyer or the politician, as the case may be; and sometimes his interests suffer on account of his modesty. Nevertheless, there are not a few men amongst the farmers who are of excellent intellectual capabilities. They are men who think, moreover, and some day, now that they are beginning to organize themselves, the result of their thinking will have considerably more effect on the public life of the Dominion than it has had hitherto.

In the various provinces there has been a widespread movement of late years in the direction of the formation of farmers and country-women’s clubs or institutes, which not only serve as a means for the dissemination of information, but give a much-needed stimulus to the social life of thinly settled districts, where hitherto (in the case of the women especially) the churches have been the chief social factor.

The churches will continue, both in town and country, to be of account in the social side of life, apart from their primary importance as definite religious agencies. According to the latest census there were in Canada over 2,833,000 adherents of the Roman Catholic church, which gains immense strength from its solidarity. The Protestants, on the other hand, though stronger numerically, are split up into numerous divisions, and in hundreds of little villages throughout the Dominion, there are three or four churches of different denominations, whilst numberless other places have no church at all. This over-lapping adds immensely to the toils, and perhaps detracts from the efficiency, of the country ministers and missionaries as a body. But projects of union are in the air, and there is hope that the several great Protestant churches may devise some plan of working together much more than has been done hitherto, even if they do not accomplish the corporate union which many of their adherents desire. In numerical strength the Protestant churches come in the following order:—Presbyterians, Methodists, Anglicans, Baptists, and a large number of smaller organizations. Apart from definite efforts by the churches themselves to arrive at some basis of union, there are numerous inter-denominational associations which are tending towards unity. One of the most notable of these is the organized effort, known as the “Laymen’s Missionary Movement,” to arouse the interest of business men in missions. This organization, first started in the United States, has resulted in largely increased giving for missionary purposes.

The immense immigration to Canada of foreigners and others necessitates constantly increasing effort on the part of the churches to keep abreast of their duties and opportunities; and amongst the numbers of newcomers there is much call to foreign missionary work within the borders of the Dominion, if it is to remain, in anything more than name, a Christian country. For instance, Montreal and Toronto each have thousands of Jewish citizens, many of them from Russia and other foreign lands. Galicians, adherents of the Greek Church, are numerous in the prairie provinces; and there are over fifteen thousand Mormons in Canada, chiefly in Alberta and Ontario. As farmers they are said to be excellent settlers; whether or not they will be equally successful in sowing the seeds of their distinctive tenets, so degrading to women and to the sanctity of home life, yet remains to be seen. It is, however, only fair to add that the Mormons in Canada do not, as in Utah, practise polygamy openly.

In British Columbia, and to a less extent throughout Canada, are to be found numbers of quiet, industrious Chinamen, working on the railways, in the hotels of the West, in the canning factories of the Pacific Coast, and in laundries from Victoria to Halifax. Despite the heavy head tax of $500 (£100) on each newcomer, no less than 6,083 Chinamen came to Canada in a recent year. Amongst them are very few women; but a number of young boys have recently been brought out by their relatives to attend the public schools, with a view to their learning English and the “Western learning” that goes with it.

The records of the British and Foreign Bible Society are suggestive in connection with the influx of foreigners into the Dominion. In 1912 sales were made of the Bible, or portions of it, in 44 languages in Toronto alone; and of 110 languages in all Canada. The earliest foreign version of the Scriptures issued by the Bible Society in its first year—1804—was, by the way, that intended for the Mohawk Indians in Canada. Many organizations, such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations and the Salvation Army are doing their useful work all over Canada. There is indeed great scope for such organizations, for the Dominion is full of young people and friendless strangers, who in their loneliness are in great need of a helping hand.

But constantly fresh districts open beyond the reach of the churches and philanthropic agencies, and here the need is for individuals whose Christianity is deep enough to stand the hard test of isolation. Many immigrants (so-called Christian), when deprived of church services and the influences of old days, seem to forget their faith. But to those who hold fast their religion under the new trials may come the reward of giving an uplift to, and stamping a Christian character upon, a whole community. Indeed, a neighbourhood often reflects for years the type of its earlier settlers.

V
INDUSTRIES AND TRANSPORT

THE most important industry of Canada is, of course, agriculture, which employs nearly twice as many people as any other class of industries, and has a greater annual product. With comparatively few exceptions, the farmers of Canada own their own land. Considered from the point of view of its returns, the greatest crop is wheat. Saskatchewan ranks first as a wheat-growing province; Manitoba and Alberta coming respectively second and third. In the older provinces the farmers are going in to a great extent for mixed farming, and for the raising of apples and other fruit. British Columbia is also giving much attention to the fruit industry. At present many of the prairie farms are devoted solely to the growing of grain; but already the leaders of the agricultural world of the Dominion are urging the extension of “mixed farming,” for the sake of saving the fertile soil from exhaustion and for the simplification of the labour problem, which is aggravated by the crowding of all the work of the farms into a few brief weeks of summer.

The second great industry of those depending directly on natural resources is lumbering. When the French settled on the St. Lawrence, they perceived at once the value of the forest wealth of the land, reporting to the home government that the colony would prove a rich source for the supply of masts and spars for the royal navy; and soon “stringent regulations were issued for the preservation of the standing oak.” The early British governors were also instructed to take measures for the preservation of lumber likely to be useful for the navy.

The export of Canada’s forest products began, it is said, in 1667, when the first shipload of lumber was sent to Europe. For years forest products came first in value on the list of exports. During the earlier part of the nineteenth century, Canada’s lumber went chiefly to Great Britain; but during the last forty years much has been exported to the United States. This has, however, been offset in part by considerable imports of American lumber into Canada.

In Canada there is, of course, an immense domestic demand for wood. Over half the people live in wooden houses, immense quantities of wood are still used as fuel, our thousands of miles of railway tracks are laid on wooden ties or “sleepers;” fleets of wooden ships and boats still ply on our coast and inland waters—in fact, it has been said that “our civilization is built on wood. From the cradle to the coffin in some shape or other it surrounds us as a convenience or necessity.” Our childhood’s toys, our furniture, the very paper on which the news of the day is printed, are forest products strangely transmuted. No sane person would dispute the value of the forests, and Canada is richly endowed in this respect; though, perhaps, hardly so richly as some estimates would lead us to believe.

In time past there has been most reckless waste of the Dominion’s forest wealth. In early pioneering days, perhaps it was unavoidable that the immigrants, far from markets, and hemmed in by great woods, should treat the trees as natural enemies, and clear them off the face of the earth as rapidly and as thoroughly as they could. So, in Ontario, were destroyed millions of magnificent trees; in many instances of kinds that would now be of immense value for the making of the better kinds of furniture; but black walnut trees were used to make fences of, and beeches and maples, too heavy to raft down the lakes to the seaports, as was done with the pine, were drawn together and burned in great heaps so that the settler could plant his first little crops of corn and vegetables amongst their stumps, and could turn an honest penny by selling the potash he made from their ashes.

Not only the pioneers, however, have been responsible for the destruction of trees. The Indians and hunters of game in the woods, the lumbermen, leaving their great heaps of dry brush and other inflammable refuse, only needing a chance spark from the lighting of a pipe, or a camp fire carelessly left burning, to turn it into kindling, ready laid for a great conflagration; the railways with the unguarded smoke stacks of their engines, have all had their share in the destruction of the forests; and it has been estimated that more timber has been destroyed in the Dominion by fire than by the axe. The nation is, however, awakening to the seriousness of the situation. For the last fourteen years the Canadian Forestry Association, with branches all over the Dominion, has been doing excellent work in disseminating information and rousing public interest concerning the preservation of the forests, and a new governmental policy has been inaugurated. Large areas of land have been set apart in Ontario and other provinces and by the Dominion government, where it has direct control, as “Forest Reserves.”

In 1909 there was established the non-partizan “Conservation Commission,” upon which each province is represented in the person of the cabinet minister most definitely connected with the administration of natural resources. Ontario’s representative, for instance, is the Minister of Lands and Mines. The several universities of Canada are also represented. The functions of the Commission are advisory and educational, and its members are carefully studying the various natural resources. But it is recognized that the people are the greatest asset the country possesses; and while the Commission endeavours to devise plans for avoiding wasteful methods in lumbering and mining, to prevent the depletion of the fish in the waters and the game in the woods, it is concerned above all to discover means of stopping the fearful waste of human life by industrial accidents, unhealthy conditions, preventable diseases, and the ignorant treatment of infants and young children, which last results in such appalling mortality in the first five years of life.

It must not, however, be inferred from this reference to infant mortality that the climate of Canada is by any means unhealthy. The experience of immigrants from the British Isles and from all European countries shows that it is well fitted for Europeans; and, as a general rule, the children especially enjoy the cold months, finding delight in the sports that winter brings. Often the snow is too firm and powdery for that favourite sport of British youngsters—snowballing! But little ones who have not long learned to toddle alone can find amusement with their small sleighs, and for bigger children and young boys and girls there are the endless delights of “coasting” and toboganning and skating and snow-shoeing and ski-ing.

Of course, here the country children have the best of it. But if one wants to realize the delights offered by a brisk winter’s day, he cannot do better than visit some open hilly spot within the limits of one of Canada’s cities—especially on a Saturday afternoon when the fathers have time to join in the fun. Then the white hillside is fairly alive with children in gay blanket-coats (often of scarlet) and knitted French-Canadian “tuques” ending in saucy bobs on the top, or long bag-like arrangements finished with dangling tassels; but it is the eagerness of the children and their quaint attitudes which give the picture its chief interest. A favourite way of making the descent is prone on the little sleighs, head foremost, legs stuck stiffly up from the knees, or trailing out behind, as an excellent rudder. Sometimes two “bob-sleighs,” connected by a long board, form a more ambitious vehicle for half a dozen boys and girls at once, and loud are the shrieks and the laughter, as the “bobs” jolt over some rough bit of the track or shoot their passengers off at last into some heap of snow. As a rule, the mothers see that the youngsters are warmly clad in woollen garments from head to heel, and then no one is hurt by a roll in the soft snow.

But all this is, I am afraid, a long digression from the serious subject of industries. Canada’s mineral products come next after those of the forest, and make a various list. It includes gold and silver, copper, nickel and lead; coal and iron; petroleum, natural gas, cement, clay products and building stones. These are widely distributed, and every day fresh discoveries are being made of deposits of useful minerals. In several instances the cutting of railways has led accidentally to such discoveries. This was the case with the copper ores at Sudbury and the silver at Cobalt; but scientists sent out by government and prospectors are always busily searching for new mineral fields. The central provinces of Canada import immense quantities of coal; though both in Nova Scotia to the east, and Alberta and British Columbia to the west, there are immense coal beds, which are being worked at the present time.

Government has made great efforts by the giving of bounties and by protective legislation to stimulate the manufacture of iron in this country. The result is that Canada, which in 1883 had only three or four small blast furnaces, had in 1913 eighteen furnaces, many of them large and of an up-to-date type, employing 1,778 men.

The fisheries of Canada are one of her greatest assets. In fact, it has been claimed that they are the most extensive in the world. But here, as with lumber, untold recklessness has reigned for generations, with the result that in some of the great lakes the fisheries are of much less value than they used to be. It is so with Lake Ontario, in which case the Americans must share the responsibility of depletion with the Canadians. Accounts of the catches of salmon and white fish made in the lake in the pioneer days read now like fables.

But the coast waters of the Maritime Provinces and British Columbia, and hundreds of the lakes in the interior, still abound with fish, and for a number of years “conservation” of the fisheries has been receiving careful attention. There are close seasons in fishing, regulated by act of parliament, to prevent reckless destruction, and there are now forty-one fish-breeding hatcheries.

Government has endeavoured to stimulate the fishing industry by a system of bounties; by establishing intelligence bureaux, with reporting stations along the coasts of the Maritime Provinces, which give “timely warning to the fishermen of a strike in of fish, of the weather and of other facts, early information about which is important to success.” Cold storage establishments at different places for the keeping of supplies of bait have also been helpful to the fishing industry.

In the year 1911-12 the value of the fish taken and of fish exported was greater than ever before, but the figures of the returns do not by any means represent the whole value, for fish is used extensively as food, wherever it is caught. In order of value, salmon, caught chiefly on the Pacific Coast, comes first on the list of Canadian food fishes, the worth of the catch last year amounting to $10,333,000 or about £2,067,000. Next in order come cod, lobsters (of which fifty millions were caught in the year), herring, halibut, and oysters. In addition to fish, 1,244 whales were taken in Canadian waters. Canada’s inland sea—Hudson Bay—is said to be one of “the richest whaling grounds in the world.” It is also believed to be richly supplied with valuable fish of many kinds, but its fisheries are yet inaccessible to markets and are undeveloped. The great northern lakes are full of valuable freshwater fish. Nearly a hundred thousand men, including those who work on shore, find employment in the fisheries.

From the fisheries the next step is naturally to the shipping interests. 1912 was a year of great expansion in the industry, and Canada moved from the tenth to the ninth place in the list of shipping nations; but she was fifth in the year 1874, at which period many ships were built in her yards. The reason for the falling off was the change from wooden to iron and steel ships. But the shipbuilding industry is beginning to revive, and at seven different points on the Atlantic, the Pacific, the St. Lawrence, and the Great Lakes, there are large dry docks for the construction and repair of vessels. In this connection it may be of interest to remark that the first vessel to cross the Atlantic under steam the whole way was the “Royal William,” built at Wolfe’s Cove, near Quebec, in the winter of 1830-31. Her historic voyage was made in 1833 from Pictou, in Nova Scotia, to London.

If the tonnage of vessels owned in Canada shows a decrease from the figures of forty years ago, it is hardly necessary to say that this is by no means the case with the tonnage of vessels required for the transportation of freight and Canadian passengers. In fact, little over one-tenth of Canada’s exports is carried in Canadian vessels. The shipping employed is divided (so far as statistics are concerned) into three branches, according to whether it is employed in the overseas carrying trade between Canada and other countries; the inland lakes and rivers transport service; and the coasting trade, which, oddly enough, includes the activities of vessels voyaging from a Canadian port on the Atlantic, round Cape Horn to another Canadian port on the Pacific. The opening of the Panama Canal will enable these “coasters” to shorten their journey from Montreal to Vancouver (for example) by 7,221 miles.

Perhaps no nation is more favoured than Canada in the possession of inland waterways—though to take advantage of them to the present extent (and great expansion is possible) has required the construction of numerous canals and locks, to overcome differences of level; and, in some instances, to connect natural systems of navigable water. There is one great inland waterway in Canada, from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the head of Lake Superior, by which large steamers can make a voyage equal to that from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to Liverpool. In this distance of two thousand two hundred miles there are only seventy-three miles of canals, with forty-eight locks overcoming five hundred and fifty-one feet of height.

Already, it is stated, the tonnage passing through the Sault Ste. Marie canals to avoid the rapids between Lake Superior and Huron is in amount three times that which passes through the Suez canal. By this route immense quantities of grain are brought to the ocean ports; and it is anticipated that within a short time when the deeper Welland canal is completed, ocean-going steamers will be able to carry their cargoes, without transhipment, all the way from the Lake Superior ports to those of Great Britain.

What this will mean to the Canadian West is evident, when one considers the cheapness of water-carriage compared with railway transport. The advantage of the former is indeed so great that, when time is not a primary consideration, freight from Liverpool for Vancouver or Victoria is carried all the way round by Cape Horn in preference to sending it by the more direct route to St. John or Montreal, and thence by rail across the continent to its destination. The first attempt to improve artificially the inland navigation was made in 1779, when canals were begun to overcome the rapids immediately above the Lachine rapids. But there are miles upon miles of navigable lakes and rivers in the Dominion which have needed no improvement.

Nevertheless, though the importance of the inland waterways can hardly be over-estimated, it is perhaps not too much to say that the Dominion of Canada has been made by her railways, for it was these which made possible a real union between the widely separated provinces of her earlier years; and the American description of “the Canadian Pacific Railway” as the “Dominion on wheels” expressed a most interesting fact. The building of railways began in 1836—with a sixteen-mile line (on which horses instead of locomotives were first used) between Laprairie, near Montreal, and St. John’s on the Richelieu. Three years later another short line of six miles was made in Nova Scotia, upon which a steam-engine was used to draw coal from the Albion mines to New Glasgow.

It was not till the fifties that railway building in Canada was begun in earnest; but before that decade had half gone by, there were five hundred and sixty-three miles of railway, and by 1867 this length was multiplied by four. Since Confederation Canada’s miles of railway have been multiplied almost by twelve, exclusive of sidings. Piling up figures, however, is a tiresome way to tell what is really a very interesting chapter in the history of Canada.

The railways linking Canada together have, indeed, cost the people and the Dominion and the provincial governments millions of money; and in early days, many municipalities, for the sake of having railways, seriously embarrassed themselves with debt. But the need seemed great. Lord Durham advised the building of the “Intercolonial Railway”—the line owned and operated by the Dominion government—to knit together the Maritime Provinces with the Canadas; but the difficulties and delays over this railway were endless, and it was not completed till 1876. For many years it was operated at a loss, but it has developed the country through which it passes and has greatly increased the trade between the several eastern provinces.

Before the era of railways, dwellers in New Brunswick who wished to go to Quebec used not infrequently to go on foot through the intervening wilderness in the winter time. So the first Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick once tramped through the snowy woods to visit his brother the Governor-General, Lord Dorchester; and so in 1813, when the war with the United States was raging, some companies of New Brunswick troops marched on snowshoes to the aid of their hard-pressed brethren in Canada. Much later, if a traveller wished to go from Nova Scotia to Toronto, it was the easiest way to take ship to Boston, and go thence through the “States” by rail to “Canada”—as the Nova Scotians continued to call the provinces touching on the St. Lawrence for long after the name was extended to the whole Dominion. This journey to “Canada” was quite an adventure to an untravelled person who had been born and brought up almost within sound of the sea. But the long-delayed construction of the “Intercolonial” gradually changed that condition of affairs.

The Grand Trunk is the pioneer of the several great company-owned railway systems, having absorbed many of the smaller railways begun in the fifties. For years it was not a profitable undertaking to its shareholders; but now its lines make a regular network in the older portions of Canada; and the Grand Trunk Pacific is being rapidly pushed to completion north of its older competitor in the West, the Canadian Pacific Railway. It is expected that when this “National Transcontinental Line” is finished it will shorten the trip round the globe by a week.

It is helping, moreover, to give Canada breadth from south to north. Already settlers are going into the so-called “Great Clay Belt” of good agricultural land in Northern Ontario. Already a string of little towns has sprung up along the Grand Trunk Pacific in the western provinces. Already its new seaport—“Prince Rupert”—five hundred and fifty miles north-west of Vancouver, and five hundred miles nearer to the east than any other Pacific Coast port, is an accomplished fact, where a population of four or five thousand is impatiently awaiting the uniting of the two portions of the railway which are being built westward and eastward, to meet in the mountains. Prince Rupert is close to some of the best fishing grounds in the world; and when the Grand Trunk Pacific line is completed it will put the fisheries of the North Pacific Coast in touch with a host of new markets.

It is difficult for people who have lived always in small well-settled countries to imagine what the opening of a great new railway means to the Dominion.

Over seventy years ago the people who see visions and dream dreams were prophesying a new trade route between east and west, by which the teas and silks of China and Japan would be brought by steam power along rivers, canals and railways across what is now the Dominion of Canada. In 1846 Sir Richard Bonnycastle, lieutenant-colonel of the Royal Engineers, predicted “We shall yet place an iron belt from the Atlantic to the Pacific—a railway from Halifax to Nootka Sound—and thus reach China in a pleasant voyage.” Three years later another officer of the Royal Engineers, Major Carmichael Smith, published a pamphlet urging the construction of an “Inter-oceanic railway from Halifax to the mouth of the Fraser river,” with a map upon which he traced a line almost identical with the routes ultimately adopted for the Intercolonial and Canadian Pacific Railways. But it was not until 1870, when British Columbia agreed to come into Confederation on condition that the inter-oceanic railway should be built, that any definite step was taken towards the construction of Canada’s first “transcontinental line.”