Chapter I: NOW propose to give some account of the nine provinces in (1)

succession, with regard to their extent, physical features, climate, natural resources, and the conditions and pursuits of the people. I shall also endeavour to give information as to the prospects in each province for immigrants from the British Isles. Of course, in the space at my disposal, I can touch but slightly on any of these points. I will begin with Nova Scotia, the province that lies nearest to England, though curiously enough it is little-known by English people compared to many of the more westerly regions. Except in winter, when the Canadian mail steamers cannot go to Quebec, and so land their mails and their cabin passengers at Halifax, Nova Scotia seems somewhat off the line of tourist and immigrant travel, which passes up the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the north of the little group of Canada’s three “Maritime Provinces.”

It is possible for anyone to live long in another part of Canada without getting much idea of the history, resources or characteristics of the “Provinces down by the Sea,” but it adds immensely to one’s interest and pride in the Dominion when one realizes that Quebec and Ontario—wealthy and important as they unquestionably are—are now only a part of Canada, and that for a comprehensive understanding of the country as a whole, there is needed at least some knowledge of the prairie provinces, and British Columbia to the west, and of the little old less restless Lower Provinces to the east.

The story of Nova Scotia is full of interest from the days early in the seventeenth century, when the first little company of French colonizers tried so gallantly to found Port Royal, down to the present time. The long struggle of the French and English for the possession of the land, the frightful deeds of their Indian allies, the coming of the Loyalists and other pioneers, the gallant fight for British liberty and “responsible government,” all furnish incidents not less worthy of the poet’s song than that pitiful deportation of the Acadians, which inspired Longfellow’s pathetic but rather misleading poem of “Evangeline.”

I can spare little space for history, but before I go on to tell what I can of Nova Scotia—and for seven years quaint old Halifax was my home—I should like to say that whatever else this smallest, save one, of the Dominion’s nine provinces fails to produce, she has been singularly successful in the producing of men. Upon the roll of her “notables” are the names of Haliburton—“the father of American humour”—Inglis, who defended Lucknow; Cunard, founder of the line of great Transatlantic steamships; Sir Provo Wallis, Admiral of the Fleet; Dawson, of geologic and educational fame; whilst other well-known names of men still at work might be added to the list.

The very name—Nova Scotia—forces comparison with old Scotland, but the former is not quite three-quarters the size of the latter, nor has it much more than one-tenth of the population. It is also far south of its namesake; in fact, there is almost eight degrees between the latitudes of the north of Nova Scotia and the south of Scotland, but the Arctic currents in the West Atlantic have their influence on the climate, making the Nova Scotian winter cold, and the spring late, though the extremes of heat and cold are not so severe as farther inland. During a recent year at Halifax, for instance, only once did the mercury fall to “zero,” and only once in the hottest month, July, did it travel up to 98 degrees Fahrenheit.

On the Atlantic coasts there is a good deal of rain, fog and “Scotch mist,” but summer and autumn are often delightful seasons of bright, clear, not too hot, weather. In the inland and western parts of the province the climate is drier and not quite so variable.

Like her namesake, Nova Scotia turns towards the ocean a deeply indented, forbidding coast; but the interior lacks “Old Scotia’s” grand mountains, though it has a backbone of sterile hills running through the province, beside the Cobequid Mountains, in Cumberland County, and many a high rugged cliff in Cape Breton Island. This new Scotland has also its stretches of wild moorland and its lakes, set amongst dark spruce firs. But between “the barrens” of the Atlantic Coast, there is here and there a fertile valley; and on the Bay of Fundy side, but sheltered from its cold mists and winds by the long ridge of the North Mountain, stretches the far-famed Annapolis valley, where in spring the whole landscape seems one vast white orchard, save for the pretty little houses, half hidden amongst the bloom.

That side, too, is the region of the salt marshes, formed by the action of those phenomenally high tides of the Bay of Fundy, which were amongst the few remarkable features of Canada thought worthy of mention in the “Geographies” put into the hands of British children a generation ago. In course of ages these mighty tides have left vast level deposits of marine mud—the salt marshes—liable to invasion of the waves at spring tides, but easily turned by a little labour into pastures and hay meadows and grain fields of almost inexhaustible fertility. All that is necessary is to build dykes or embankments of tree trunks and clay to keep back the highest tides; and this work was begun long ago by some of the early French immigrants, who had been accustomed to reclaiming land from the sea in their own country. If, at any time, the fields should show signs of exhaustion, the fertilizing waters may again be let in for a short season; indeed, farmers living near undyked marshes are accustomed to haul loads of the precious sea-mud to their upland fields. Of something the same character as the dyked lands are the “intervales” along the rivers, which are said to be “invariably rich and productive.”

The abundance of pasturage and hay makes good dairying, and Nova Scotia is emphatically a country of mixed farming. Almost all crops suited to a temperate climate can be grown in some part of the province. But, during a recent year, of all agricultural products, hay brought most money into the farmers’ pockets; then came live stock products, potatoes, apples, oats, “garden truck,” and so in a descending scale.

Not only the farming can be described as “mixed” in Nova Scotia. The occupations of her people (in number somewhat under half a million) are also mixed; and though agriculture takes first place, fishing, lumbering, mining and manufacturing are of importance, all the great industries setting “new records” last year.

In fishing, Nova Scotia was long the leading province of the Dominion, but in 1912, British Columbia, with her immense catch of salmon, stepped before her. In the Atlantic province, though the lobster fishery is valuable and is to the dwellers on the sterile southern coast the chief source of ready money, the cod fishery is worth most of all, a fact quaintly recognized by the habit of the shore people of referring to a cod as “a fish,” and to all others of the finny tribe by their specific names of haddock, halibut and so forth.

The fishing hamlets consist of little whitewashed cottages dotted at random about the weather-beaten rocks, beside the fine natural harbours or little coves where the boats run in for shelter, alongside ramshackle stages where the cod are dried in the open air, and by fish-houses, often emitting the peculiarly horrible odour of over-kept “bait.”

Despite all drawbacks, there is a fascination in the jumble of boats and nets and lobster traps, whilst the fisherfolk themselves, fresh-complexioned, clear-eyed, sturdy-limbed, simple, kindly and straightforward, are a good stock one would fancy to set against the threatening degeneration of the race by the unwholesome crowding into towns. Some 30,000 men find employment, on sea and shore, in connection with the fisheries. The fishermen are generally rather poor, but the more enterprizing members of the fraternity often pass from the sailing of a fishing boat to that of a coasting vessel.

In the coast villages tiny stores, with stock small in quantity, great in variety, are plentiful, and some of the fishermen attempt to add to their incomes by farming, often in a rather haphazard, amateurish fashion. Along the shore east of Halifax horses are scarce, and in the little hay-fields even a one-horse mowing machine is an unusual sight, and it is quite common to see two men, or it may be a man and a girl, carrying the cured hay to the barn on two stout poles. In those parts the fisherfolk take little pains even to improve their own fare by growing vegetables, but the soil is discouraging. In fact, one resident of a coast village near Halifax complained, “There ain’t no soil. There’s nothing but grits!”

Some of the fishermen prosecute their craft only “inshore,” using small boats, remaining out but a few hours and fishing with hand lines as well as with trawls from the dories. These men are very dependent on the weather; but gasoline motor boats are coming into use, enabling them to go out when it would be impossible with sailing boats. The “bank fisheries,” chiefly of cod, are carried on by schooners of about 100 tons, manned by twelve to twenty men, who go out, two by two, in dories, using trawls upon which are thousands of hooks. In the rivers, smelts, salmon, trout and eels are taken; and there are natural oyster beds, now yielding a few hundred barrels of oysters annually, which it is said, with improved management, may yield thousands. In fact, better methods may do much to make all the fisheries of Nova Scotia much more productive.

Of the forests of the province, something under one and a half million acres remain ungranted, and four or five times as much is owned by farmers and held or leased by lumber and pulp companies. As everywhere in the Dominion there has been untold loss from fires and wasteful methods, but the idea of “conservation” promises better things in future. Pine, of which there used to be large quantities, has become scarce; but spruce (of more recently discovered value) and birch, a good furniture wood, are extremely plentiful. The saw mills are generally situated on the rivers, near tide water; thus their product can be loaded directly into vessels, which carry it far and wide.

In several counties, a quantity of timber is used in the building of schooners and fishing boats, but the palmy days of shipbuilding in the province have passed. It may be, however, that there will be a revival, and that Nova Scotia will soon be sending forth iron (instead of wooden) ships to plough all seas, for she is richly endowed with mineral wealth. In fact, like Massachusetts, she seems to have every gift of nature—coal, iron, magnificent harbours, and not a little water power, all awaiting development—to make a great manufacturing region. Through her northern counties and Cape Breton Island stretches a rich and enormous coal field, and iron ores (scarcely touched as yet) are found in every county save one.

Nova Scotia ranks third of the provinces in manufactures, following the larger and much more populous provinces of Ontario and Quebec, but the value of her manufactured products (which include foods, textiles, chemicals, paper, vehicles, vessels and a variety of manufactures of iron and steel) has more than doubled in a single decade. Nova Scotia is said to have the “largest individual self-contained steel-making plant in the world,” but the growth of the iron and steel industry is due not only to natural advantages and to the genius of different “captains of industry,” but to the bounties and protective duties granted in its interests by successive governments of the Dominion.

Amongst the valuable minerals of the province are limestone, granite, gypsum and gold. The mining of the last-named metal has been carried on by rather primitive methods for nearly half a century. The yield for the record year was worth about $600,000 (£120,000), and at present three hundred men are employed at twenty-five different mines. There is one of these small mines in Guysborough County, on the edge of a vast stretch of “barrens”; but, despite its sounding name, “Goldenville” is a sorry little hamlet, of dingy, unpainted buildings, that seem to mock at the “prospector’s dazzling dreams.” But one does not usually go to an industrial place, large or small, in search of the picturesque. One may chance upon it there, however, as when at night the outpouring of molten slag from Sydney’s black giants of blast furnaces suddenly lights up the wide beautiful harbour with a ruddy glow.

Halifax, the capital, containing nearly a tenth of the population of the province, is undeniably picturesque, with its old Citadel and churches, its wharves and its vessels, its odd outdoor market, its “redcoats” (now Canadians) and its coloured folk. Though on the eve of a great development of its port, which will doubtless revolutionize its business life, till very recently it has been a quiet old-fashioned place, its dinginess relieved by lovely water-views from many a point of vantage, and its dignity secured by such fine old stone buildings as the abode of the British admiral, Government House and the Province Building, where still, as in one other case, an Upper as well as a Lower House deliberates on the affairs of the province.

The Assembly of Nova Scotia, by the way, is the oldest representative body in the Dominion, having been convened for the first time in 1758. There was a long fight for the boon of responsible government, won in 1848; and the name of Joseph Howe, the Reform leader, son of a Loyalist, is renowned throughout the Dominion. During the last half-dozen years several imposing new buildings, including the Anglican cathedral and the Memorial Tower (commemorating the calling together of the first Assembly) have been erected in Halifax. The city is the terminus of the Intercolonial and two provincial railways, and has a variety of manufactures.

I cannot give space, as I should like, to descriptions of any of the smaller towns; but, though someone described Nova Scotia as “the province that was passed by,” it is as truly a land of opportunity as any of the regions further west. The opportunity does not come in the shape of “free grants” of land, but a farmer who knows his business and has two or three hundred pounds of capital can soon own a good farm. There are farms of from fifty to three hundred acres of which the price is from $1,000 (£200) up. Some of these have been thrown on the market by the death or infirmity of their owners, some through the desire of a younger owner to go to the west or to take up work in a town. Amongst them are “run-down” farms, which can be obtained for little more than the cost of the buildings upon them, and a thoroughly capable farmer may sometimes find it pay to buy such a farm cheap and bring it back to good condition.

Within the broad realm of agriculture, to say nothing further of the other possible avenues to success in woods and mines and city and sea, there is variety of opportunity. Let a man decide to go into dairying, market-gardening, the raising of sheep, hogs or poultry, the culture of apples, or the growing of small fruits, and there is some part of Nova Scotia in which each one of these pursuits may be followed with special hope of success; moreover, the provincial government (which is frankly desirous of good immigrants of the right stamp) has made arrangements to help the new arrivals to find what they want. (For names of officials who will give information, see Appendix, Note A, page 295.)

With regard to the very profitable business of apple-growing, it is stated that not one-tenth of the land in the Annapolis valley and elsewhere suitable for orchards, has yet been planted.

As to the question of markets—the home market alone is an excellent one for practically all food supplies, for the constant influx of immigrants and the armies of non-producers engaged in mining and other industries create a demand in many lines of foodstuffs not easy for the farmer to overtake. Nova Scotia imports much that she might just as well grow. But aside from the home market, she has easy access to those of the other provinces, and to those of the United States and of Great Britain, for every one of her counties touches on the sea, which is the best possible highroad for freight. As to her internal means of communication, roads are improving and new railways are being added to the old.

With few exceptions, Nova Scotian farmers own the land they till, and to assist still more to do so, including newcomers, the provincial government makes arrangements with loan companies to lend as much as 80 per cent. of the appraised value of farm property on mortgage. The government is also authorized to buy “real estate in farming districts, subdivide this into suitable-sized farms or lots, erect buildings and fences thereon, prepare the land for crops and sell this improved real estate to newcomers on satisfactory terms.” This opportunity to obtain ready-made farms will no doubt prove attractive to many newcomers.

In the fruit districts of Nova Scotia, owing to the smaller holdings, people are settled comparatively near together, and this is a great advantage so far as church and social life and the education of the children is concerned.

The elementary and high schools, supported by government grants and local rates, are free. In isolated communities it is sometimes difficult to obtain teachers; but a hopeful movement is the introduction of “consolidated schools,” each of which, having several teachers, replaces the little “one-teacher schools” of a considerable district. There are now over twenty of these, to which the children are taken in vans.

Nova Scotia has several universities, supported by different religious bodies, in addition to the non-sectarian Dalhousie University at Halifax. The oldest of these institutions is King’s College, at Windsor, which dates from 1790. A comparatively new institution is the Agricultural College at Truro. Here instruction is given free of cost to farmers, farmers’ sons and new settlers intending to farm. Besides the full two years’ course, there are short practical courses of two weeks, including one for women on dairying and poultry keeping. In connection with the college is a fine Model Farm, where excellent stock is kept. The government also maintains experts to give instruction in various branches of agriculture, and endeavours in a variety of other ways to improve the methods and conditions of farming in Nova Scotia.

There is a demand always for good farm workers and capable domestic servants. Even inexperienced young people have little difficulty in getting work, if they are strong and willing to learn, but they must not expect high wages till they are competent. For competent farm men the wages offered are usually from $20 (£4) to $30 (£6) the month, with board and lodging for a single man, and with a rent-free house and certain allowances of milk and vegetables for a married man. In the latter case, the wife, if willing to assist the farmer’s wife, can often make a considerable addition to the family income. For day labour in the country a man might expect from $1 (4_s._) to $1.50 (6_s._), with board.

In the towns wages are higher, even for unskilled labour, but in Halifax at least rents are very high, and a man who is looking forward to getting a little land of his own would usually be wiser to settle from the first in a country district where living is cheap, and where the experience gained would be of definite value in farming operations. Moreover, if he is able to keep a few fowls, and a pig, and have a garden of his own, it very much lessens the cost of living. There are many prosperous farmers in Nova Scotia who landed a few years ago with scarcely a shilling in their pockets, but these have been hard workers.

The population of Nova Scotia is chiefly of British descent, though not a few of the early settlers came by way of New England in Loyalist and pre-Loyalist days. Scottish names are common in many parts of the province, especially in Cape Breton Island. The ancient Acadians are represented by something like fifty thousand French people, and the Nova Scotians of German descent are not much fewer.

Of religious bodies, the Roman Catholics are the strongest, but the Presbyterians make a good second, then come in order the Baptists, the Anglicans and the Methodists. In the country places there are a few union churches, but there is a good deal of “over-lapping,” which aggravates the difficulty of ministering adequately to communities so scattered, as they are, for instance, on the south coast.

VII
NEW BRUNSWICK, THE LAND OF THE ST. JOHN

THE Province of New Brunswick is in shape almost a square, and in extent has an area of about 28,000 square miles. In other words, it is smaller than Scotland, but has a much larger proportion of land that can be cultivated than that rugged little country which has sent forth such masterly farmers to till larger and richer fields than those of their own stern land. It is bounded on the east and south by the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Bay of Fundy, which are separated by the narrow neck of land from which Nova Scotia thrusts itself like a great breakwater into the Atlantic surges. Northward it reaches to Chaleur bay and the Province of Quebec. Westward it is bounded by Maine, which (thanks to the efforts of a British diplomatist to settle at all costs a long-standing dispute) comes in like a wedge between New Brunswick and Quebec. In latitude New Brunswick lies almost entirely between the 45th and 48th parallels, which also, it may be noted, run across the central portion of France.

Upon the coast there is, as might be expected, a good deal of rain and mist and white sea fog; but the climate of the interior is more dry and clear; and there is no lack of sunshine. Compared with England, the winters are cold, and the farmer has a shorter period each year in which he can work upon his land; but in one of the government publications is given an interesting quotation bearing upon this point from a Report on New Brunswick, written in 1850, by a great English agricultural expert, Professor J. F. W. Johnston:—

“On the whole,” he says, “I think we must allow that though the
period for out-door labour is shorter in New Brunswick—as it is
in the Canadas, Maine, and the Northern States—than in England
and in some parts of Scotland, yet that the action of winter
upon the soil is such as to materially lessen the labour
necessary to bring it into a proper state of tilth.”

Moreover, while in Great Britain the work of the farmer is often interfered with by rain, and his expenses “considerably increased by the precarious nature of the climate in which he lives,”

“In New Brunswick the climate is more steady and equable. Rains
do not so constantly fall, and when they do descend, the soils
in most parts of the province are so porous as readily to allow
them to pass through. Thus the outdoor operations of the farmer
are less impeded by rain, and the disposable time he possesses,
compared with that of the British farmer, is not to be measured
by the number of days at the disposal of each.”

The climate of New Brunswick, the professor concludes,

“does not prevent the soil from producing crops which, other
things being equal, are not inferior in quantity or quality to
those of average soils in England; while, as for its health, it
is an exceedingly healthy climate. Every medical man I have met
in the province, I believe without exception, and almost every
other man I have conversed with, assures me of this, and the
healthy looks and the numerous families of the natives of all
classes confirm these assurances.”

To this day the people of New Brunswick certainly have a healthy appearance, and rosy cheeks and clear complexions are common, especially on the coasts.

The winter of the interior is often described by the inhabitants, even in moments when they cannot be suspected of any thought of advertising the province, as a “good steady one.” The fact is that most Canadians, either native-born or those who have lived long in the country dislike damp weather above any other kind. If the cold is only dry and clear, they do evidently from their behaviour feel it bracing, as they say; and it is the same with the summer heat, the days to be dreaded (if any?) are the days in which the atmosphere is humid as well as hot. The spring is late, and often almost before one realizes that winter is past one finds that summer is upon one.

New Brunswick is an amply-wooded land of pleasantly-diversified hill and valley, though its highest eminence, Sagamook or Bald Mountain, is only 2,604 feet above the sea. It is well watered by the Restigouche, the Miramichi and the St. John rivers, with their tributaries, and many smaller streams. The last-mentioned river is nearly five hundred miles in length from its sources in the wilds of Maine to its mouth. It is navigable for almost its whole length through the province, though in one place its course is broken by the “Grand Falls.” Large-sized steamers go up as far as Fredericton, eighty-five miles from St. John; but there a change is made to smaller boats. The river flows for many miles through a fertile and beautiful valley; but as it approaches the city of St. John its banks become higher and bolder, and the stream widens out to a fine broad basin.

The gateway to the sea lies through a narrow gorge of less than five hundred feet, and here the current of the river makes fierce and constant struggle with the force of the famous tides of the Bay of Fundy. At St. John the normal rise is twenty-seven feet, and the result is the curious, but not quite happily-named phenomenon—the “Reversing Falls.” At low tide the river tumbles and races in fierce haste down a sharp rugged slope to reach the bay; but the pressure of the incoming sea piles up the water of the harbour in the narrow channel to greater and greater heights, till, at the flood, the current of the St. John seems turned backward, and the tide water, as it comes plunging through the rock gateway, is at a distinctly higher level than the more peaceful surface of the river within. Happily at half-tide—four times in the twenty-four hours—there comes a brief truce in the everlasting struggle, and vessels can pass with safety to bear their freight of humankind and of all manner of merchandise up the grand natural highway of nature’s making deep into the heart of the country.

I do not propose here to dwell at any length on the history of New Brunswick; but I should like to say that, in common with every other province of the Dominion, it has a history—short in years, perhaps, but not devoid of human interest. If one were attempting to tell it, moreover, it would be impossible to do so without frequent references to the St. John. This river received its name three centuries ago because a little company of gallant French explorers, amongst whom was Samuel Champlain, afterwards founder of Quebec, discovered it upon St. John the Baptist’s day.

In those old days, the broad bosom of the river was often flecked with the canoes of Indians, bound on some hunting or fishing or fighting expedition; and in 1635 a picturesque French trader—such a one of gentle birth, gift of leadership, and bold, adventurous spirit, as Sir Walter Scott might have loved to portray—built a huge wooden castle, bastioned and palisaded, on the banks of the St. John. There was enacted a fierce, confused drama, in which Indians and priests and rival gentlemen-traders took part; nor did it want a heroine, and to this day the noble courage and tragic end of Lady La Tour—wife of the lord of the castle—fascinate the imagination of every student of the annals of old Acadia.

In La Tour’s lifetime an expedition sent out by Oliver Cromwell captured the fort on the St. John, and for some fifteen years the English held the river, restoring it to France by the Treaty of Breda. After that, great grants were made to French seigniors, but they contented themselves with trading with the Indians instead of improving the land, and the French settlements in what is now New Brunswick were of little account till after the expulsion of the Acadians from Nova Scotia in 1755.

To-day the descendants of French colonists of different periods number something over eighty thousand. About 1762 some families from New England settled at Maugerville, Sheffield, and Gagetown, and hither in the Revolutionary time came emissaries from the American “patriots,” only just failing in the attempt to bring the St. John country under the “Stars and Stripes.” But they did fail, and along the banks of the river there settled a few years later a host of the defeated, but not subdued, Americans, who held that true liberty was still possible within the circle of the British Empire.

These set to work with energy to tame the wilderness, and build the new British state of New Brunswick; and still all along the river and in many another district of the province are to be found their descendants, bearing the old names written a century and a quarter ago on the muster-rolls of the Loyalists. Hardships they had to endure in plenty, but they were happy at least in the fact that their country of refuge was a land richly blessed of nature. In fact, it has been calculated that New Brunswick could well support seventeen times her present population, which is about equal to that of the city of Bristol.

The three chief industries of the province are farming, fishing and lumbering. Masts were the first article of export, and for years the people almost lived by the timber trade. Even not very long ago this industry brought $10,000,000 (nearly £2,000,000) into the province yearly, of which one-third was paid out in wages; and upon its prosperity depends the well-being of many not directly engaged in it. Since the introduction of iron vessels, the dependent industry of shipbuilding has declined, but new uses are continually being discovered for wood, increasing the value of all sources of supply. These have been recklessly reduced by greed, blunders and largely preventible accidents, but New Brunswick still possesses noble forests, and, perhaps, since the new day of deliberate “conservation” has dawned, may continue to possess them indefinitely.

The provincial government owns over 10,000 square miles of forest; but the greater part of this has been rented upon certain conditions for the cutting of timber, and the rents and dues thus collected bring in a considerable revenue to the public coffers. In 1906 it amounted to $250,000 (£50,000). Originally almost the whole of the province was covered with magnificent trees. For long, white pine was the only wood valued for export, and now little pine remains; but since the manufacture of paper from pulpwood began, a new value has been put upon the once despised spruce which, it has been said, grows in New Brunswick “like a weed,” on lands where farmers would be predestined to failure. Nowadays, however, immigrants are not permitted to settle on such lands, for it is realized that their doing so will be of benefit neither to themselves nor to the province.

Spruce is exported as “deals” and boards, and is used for railway sleepers, fence posts, and building materials, as well as for pulpwood; but fir, tamarac, maple, elm, birch, ash, butternut, poplar and hemlock also abound, and serve many useful purposes.

One great advantage of New Brunswick as a lumbering region is that its rivers everywhere form excellent waterways, down which the logs can be “driven” to market. The St. John and its tributaries drain nearly one-half of the province, and the Miramichi has a “watershed embracing about five thousand square miles.” Most of the forest exports go to Great Britain.

The lumbermen work in gangs of fifty or more, living in log camps built in the forests. The work is heavy, the life is rough, and accidents are somewhat frequent. For instance, when the logs going down stream get caught at some point and form a “jam,” it is often a risky business to “break” it; but work in the woods is healthy, and the lumbermen are well fed. In fact, the cook in a lumber camp is a most important functionary.

Fishing is another old industry in New Brunswick, which has a sea-coast of about six hundred miles. Considerably over twenty thousand persons, including lobster canners, are employed. In 1909-10 the herring fishery proved most valuable of all. Next in order came the catches of lobsters, sardines (said to be equal to the Norwegian sardines), smelts (of which enormous numbers are caught in the Gulf of St. Lawrence), cod and salmon, which are exported fresh and frozen, smoked, salted or pickled. A variety of other fish are taken in smaller quantities.

Owing to ice the Gulf fisheries cease during the winter, but those of the Bay of Fundy are carried on all the year round. The old-time oyster fishery has suffered here, as in the neighbouring provinces; but steps are being taken to preserve and increase the productiveness of the fisheries, as of the forests, and to educate the fishermen. With the latter object, the Dominion government a few years ago brought to Canada “a Scottish expert,” in the curing of herrings, “with a steam trawler and crew complete,” and with a view to the former they established several hatcheries of young salmon and lobsters, from which 122,000,000 of the last-named were distributed in a single season.

In addition to these commercial fisheries, New Brunswick finds a source of profit, as well as pleasure, in her trout streams and salmon rivers, which attract hundreds of anglers and holiday-makers to the province, as the vast woods of the interior, stretching through a district eighty miles wide by a hundred long, bring in sportsmen in search of red deer, moose, caribou and wild fowl. This region, too, is the haunt of many valuable fur-bearing animals. The game laws aim at preserving the supply of game, and outsiders have to pay twenty-five times as much as residents for a hunter’s licence, though in both cases the number of animals that may be killed is strictly limited. The province annually reaps a considerable harvest from licence fees, whilst the settlers in the wild districts to which the hunters go find the profits of the tourist trade a very welcome addition to incomes which are usually somewhat meagre.

There is not much mining, and of manufactures many depend on wood as their raw material. There are consequently many saw mills, pulp and paper mills, furniture and carriage factories. But this province, by the sea, is in a position to obtain readily and cheaply raw materials from other lands, such as cotton from the Southern States and sugar from the West Indies, so she has several cotton mills and “candy factories.” Other manufactures that may be mentioned are those of boots and shoes, nails and other ironware, brass goods, soap and woollen cloths. Finally, in 1911, there were in operation twenty-four cheese factories and sixteen creameries, which bring us back all the way round the circle to agriculture, the most important industry of all.

Throughout New Brunswick there is much excellent land, suited for different purposes. Like Nova Scotia, the province has its salt marshes and dyked lands on the Bay of Fundy, and its “intervales” along the rivers, both famous for their enormous crops of hay. It has, too, districts as well adapted, it is said, for the culture of apples, as the Annapolis valley itself. In fact it, also, is a mixed farming region, where grains of all kinds will grow; where one man pins his faith to dairying; another urges the profits to be made from sheep or poultry or pigs; and a third points triumphantly to his enormous and excellent crops of potatoes. The fact is that practically every branch of agriculture could be made far more productive with better methods and more labourers, even on the farms now being worked—to say nothing of the land that might be cultivated, and is not, at present, for want of population.

The consequence is that while New Brunswick has a ready welcome for good workers—especially those ready to labour with their hands, and having enough in their pockets to tide over the time of seeking for the right niches—the people she wants above all are people to till her fertile soil.

One vast advantage the modern settler on the land has over the old-time pioneer. He will find it easy to get good prices for his produce, either in the local markets or in the more distant but still (owing to railways and steamship lines) easily accessible ones of other provinces or countries.

In common with the other Maritime Provinces, New Brunswick appears to have been somewhat overlooked as a field for immigration from the British Isles, perhaps because, in spite of its possessing seaports of its own, the general line of travel has been by Montreal or New York, or possibly because these provinces have been slow to advertise themselves. “Why did we never hear anything about New Brunswick when we were making inquiries about coming to Canada?” asked a lady, whose settlement with her family in Ontario thirty years ago was due to the excellent report of that province made by a number of Scottish farmers. “If we had only known what a good country it is,” she added, “I daresay we might have stopped there, because it is so much nearer England.”

Nearness to the British Isles is one incontrovertible advantage for settlers leaving behind them friends in the old land; and I must say that the part of New Brunswick that I know best—that is the sunny valley of the St. John—has a pleasantly homelike look to eyes accustomed to England’s green hills and well-tilled fields. The sweeping lines of the low hills, the freshness of the mighty river, the great green woods massed here and there, the shady elms and willows of the little capital, the comfortable-looking farmhouses dotted along the slopes, all have a friendly familiar look of quiet content.

But I would not imply that this province is devoid of life and energy. The commercial capital, St. John (and there are many smaller towns like it), is much alive and “up-to-date,” with its good railway connections and its numerous steamships plying both to American and British ports, and it will be still more busy when its great dry docks and shipbuilding plant are finished. St. John is the Atlantic terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which takes a short cut to Montreal across a corner of the State of Maine, and of one of the two great branches into which the Intercolonial Railway divides. The new National Transcontinental Railway has its Atlantic terminus at Moncton; and altogether it is said that New Brunswick has more miles of railway in proportion to its population than any other country in the world. The province has about thirteen thousand miles of roads, but these generally stand in need of improvement. Of course the numerous rivers necessitate a large number of bridges; and there are nearly four thousand, ranging in type from the quaint old covered bridge, looking like a barn with its ends knocked out, to the great modern erection of steel. The capital, Fredericton, has a bridge about half a mile long, but a few miles higher upstream the St. John is crossed by a primitive-looking ferry.

In some districts population is much scattered. In others the people are “comfortably close together”; but everywhere there is ample room for more people. In fact, there is still land to be had, on certain conditions, for the asking, or “improved farms” may be bought at low prices. Many of these are very good farms; but a few years since the local markets were comparatively poor, work was scarce, and the young people went west or south or to the cities—it is the same story as in Nova Scotia—in search of better opportunities.

With regard to the “free grants,” ten thousand acres have been laid out, in Restigouche county, in hundred-acre lots, and to obtain a title to one of these, the applicant must pay a fee of $5 (about £1) for surveying, reside on the land for three years, clear four acres, build a small house, and do $30 (£6) worth of labour on the roads, or pay an additional $20 (£4) in cash. Besides these free grants, the government has opened to settlement the Blue Bell Tract in Victoria county, between the C.P.R. and the St. John river, on the one side, and the new Transcontinental Railway on the other. This district, watered by the Tobique river, is “a rolling upland, covered with a fine growth of trees, free from underbrush.” Here hundred-acre lots, on a colonization road, are offered for sale at $1 the acre, one-fourth of the money to be paid on taking possession, and the remainder in four equal instalments.

For settlers with a little more capital, the government of New Brunswick has another proposition. A year or two ago a “Farm Settlement Board” of three commissioners was established by Act of Parliament, for the purpose of buying and improving suitable lands, erecting houses and farm buildings upon them, and selling them again to _bonâ fide_ settlers upon easy terms, at cost price. The payment for these may be spread over ten years, and in special cases the Board is empowered to give two years’ further grace; but the title “remains in the Board” till all payments have been made. (For addresses of persons from whom information may be obtained, see Appendix, Note A, page 296.)

In the ordinary way, farms may be bought in New Brunswick from $10 (£2) to $25 (£5) the acre, according to their size, the character of the soil, the condition of the buildings, their nearness to church, school and markets, and the proportion of land under cultivation. Most farmers in the province own the lands they occupy.

Not every man who might do well on an improved farm is suited to the “roughing it” involved in clearing a free grant; but if a newcomer, with little or no capital, is content to work for a time on wages, he can often put by enough to enable him to start to buy a farm for himself. Wages for a good man run from $10 (£2) or $15 (£3) monthly in the winter months to $20 (£4) in the summer, with board and lodging for a single man and a free house for a married one. Sometimes the farmers hire men only for the busy season, but work may often be obtained by a strong man in the lumber camps, even though he may not have had experience of the work. Of course it means hard, long, patient work to obtain success by such means; but the opportunities in New Brunswick are sufficiently great to ensure that thrift and industry usually have their reward.

The right of every child to a good sound education is recognized in New Brunswick, though in some of the country districts the salaries offered are so small that it is difficult to obtain fully qualified teachers. In this province also, the consolidated school has been tried with success. There is provision for a grammar school in every county, and at Fredericton (which is also the seat of the Provincial University) there is a Normal Training and a Model School for teachers.

The newcomer to New Brunswick may obtain much useful information as to the classes of fruit and stock likely to do well in his particular district, and advice on kindred subjects, if he chooses to write to the Department of Agriculture at Ottawa. Or, if he wishes to obtain instructions from specialists in bee-keeping, poultry-raising or apple-growing, he may write to the provinicial government at Fredericton. In 1904, by the way, the latter began, through experts, the planting and direction of “illustration orchards” in different districts. These are managed on an interesting plan of co-operation, the government supplying the young trees and the expert knowledge, and the farmer supplying the labour and the land and reaping the fruit, on condition that for ten years “he will cultivate and care for the orchard in accordance with the directions of the Department of Agriculture.” The newcomer may also gain much help from his neighbours, especially if he joins the Agricultural Association of his district and shows willingness to make himself one with them generally.

These and other associations formed for serious purposes, as well as the churches, have a great social value in sparsely settled districts; but though the farmers and their families are generally industrious they do not believe in all work and no play, and in the winter especially they find some time for visiting and recreation.

At present by far the greater proportion of the people are natives of the province, chiefly of British stock. Of the remainder, some thousands were born in the British Isles, and several thousands more have come in from the United States. More than a quarter of the people are French; there are also a number of Germans, Dutch, Scandinavians and other foreigners.

In religion more than a third of the people are Roman Catholics; but this body is surpassed in number of church buildings both by the Baptists and the Methodists. Of Protestant denominations, the Baptists are strongest, then follow the Anglicans, Presbyterians and the Methodists. Of course there is no “established church” here, nor in any part of Canada; and the chaplain of the legislative assembly (New Brunswick has only a single chamber), who opens the proceedings with prayer, is chosen in rotation from the Baptists, Anglicans, Presbyterians and Methodists.

VIII
PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND

THIS, by far the smallest of the Canadian provinces, seems to exercise a peculiar charm on all who visit or dwell within it. “Abegweit”—“Rest on the Wave”—was the poetic name bestowed upon it by its Indian inhabitants; and rugged Jacques Cartier, the Breton explorer, described the country in glowing terms as “the most beautiful it is possible to see . . . full of beautiful trees and meadows . . . of pease, white and red gooseberries, strawberries, blackberries and wild grain like rye,” and having “the best temperature it is possible to see.”

In shape Prince Edward Island bears some resemblance to a crescent with the two horns turned northwards, and the outer curve lying from nine to fifteen miles away from the corresponding curve of the mainland shores of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Its greatest length is about one hundred and forty miles, and its greatest breadth thirty-four miles, but its shores are so deeply indented with bays and inlets that the distance between water and water is in places only two miles.

Its soil is peculiarly fertile; and compared with the other provinces—all of which have large stretches of wild land, either uncultivated or uncultivable—it may well claim the title of the “Garden of the Gulf,” for 86 per cent. of its surface is occupied by farms, and very little of the remaining 14 per cent. is actually worthless for agriculture.

It has no mountains or wild, rugged hills, no great forests, and of course no great rivers; but the land is pleasantly undulating, vegetation is usually richly green, contrasting with soil of a warm reddish hue, with glints of shining water, or with lines of snowy breakers, roaring on the sands. In general the character of the scenery is mild and gentle and smiling; with a glad wealth of colour when the orchards are breaking into bloom, or when the first touch of frost is kindling a magic glow amongst the maples and sumach trees. But the wildly-beating surf on the reefs of the north shore forbids that even here nature’s majesty and strength and terror should be forgotten.

The climate is milder than that of the mainland near by, neither so sharply cold in winter nor so fiercely hot in summer, though all writers have praise for the “Island’s” clear blue skies and plenitude of sunlight.

Prince Edward Island is reached by steamers from Point du Chêne in New Brunswick to Summerside; and from Pictou in Nova Scotia to Charlottetown; or from Pictou to Georgetown, when the strait is full of ice. Strongly-built ice-breaking steamers, however, usually manage to keep open communication with the capital of the little province; and in winter there is an “ice-boat service,” by which the adventurous can cross from Cape Tormentine to Cape Traverse. The ice-boat is contrived to travel either in water or on the ice by means of “twin keels,” which in case of necessity serve as “runners.”

The people, however, have for long demanded improved means of communication with the mainland, and at last a “car-ferry” steamer (powerful enough to force its way through the worst ice) is to be constructed to connect the railway on the island with the Intercolonial line on the mainland. Both are owned by the Dominion government. “The island railway is of a narrow gauge, but it is to be changed this year to the standard gauge (4 ft. 8½ ins.) of the Canadian and American lines.” When this is done, Prince Edward Island will be very happily situated in the matter of transportation service, for into her three counties, all with easy water-communication, is packed a well-branched railway line of two hundred and sixty miles.

Prince Edward Island was first called the Island of St. John, but historians are not agreed as to who bestowed this name upon “the right little, tight little island.” Some people think it was John Cabot; some Samuel Champlain; but, at any rate, it bore the name from the time its history began until 1799, when it was re-christened in honour of Queen Victoria’s father. In 1663 it was granted by the “Company of New France” to a French naval officer, Doublet, and a few fishing stations were established. As late as 1728 it had only three hundred inhabitants; but after the deportation of the Acadians from Nova Scotia in 1755, a good many of these hapless people took refuge in the peaceful island. It was annexed by the British the year before the capture of Quebec, and was amongst the territories formally ceded to England by the Treaty of Paris in 1763.

In 1767 the soil of nearly the whole island was disposed of in one day to officers and other gentlemen, who agreed to settle the country, and, by paying small “quit-rents” for their lands, to provide for the cost of government. Small reservations were made for the support of churches and schools; but the plan, it may be said, was an utter failure, saddling the island for many years with a class of absentee landlords, who did practically nothing for the country. For more than a century the cultivators of the soil remained in the position of tenants.

In 1873, when the province agreed to enter into Confederation, the Dominion government granted $800,000 (£160,000) to aid in buying out the land-owners; but many would not sell, till an Act was passed in 1875 obliging them to sell at a fair price to the Provincial government, which in turn sold to the tenants.

Many years earlier, in 1851, the Islanders had secured responsible government. At that time the Parliament consisted of a Governor and Legislative Council, appointed by the Crown, and an elective Assembly. Later, the Council also was elected by owners of leasehold and freehold property worth $325 (£65) and over. Finally, in 1893, the unusual arrangement was made of amalgamating the two branches of the Legislature; and now fifteen councilmen, chosen by the property-owners, and fifteen assembly men, elected by the men of the Province, on a property qualification so low that scarcely any man is excluded, sit and vote together.

The legislature of Prince Edward Island, which first met in 1773, is housed in a fine old, grey stone building in Charlottetown, fronting on Queen Square, about which are other public buildings, including the Law Courts, the General Post Office, the Custom House, and the market building, which every Tuesday and Friday, when the country people come in to dispose of their produce, presents a very animated scene.

But to return to the government. The expenditure on the salaries of the Lieutenant-Governor, the cabinet ministers and the members of the assembly; the administration of justice; the support of schools and public works and some other charges amount to $420,000 (about £84,000). Three-fourths of this is met by the subsidy from the Federal government, and the remaining quarter is raised by provincial taxes, which are very low. The province is represented in the Dominion parliament by four senators, and four members of the House of Commons.