The “habitants,” as the country folk call themselves, are a conservative people, following customs much the same as those of their ancestors who first settled in Canada. But the conditions under which they live are greatly changed. During the last years of the French régime, Canada was neglected by her mother-land, and amongst the officials sent out to govern the country were not a few bent on enriching themselves at any cost. The last Intendant of New France—an official charged with the administration of justice, and the management of the finances of the colony—was a clever scoundrel named Bigot, and his devices for diverting the public funds to his own pockets, and squeezing all manner of corrupt profits from the people, were endless and shameless. In those days there was no such thing as municipal government in Canada, and the affairs of the settlement were managed chiefly by the Intendant; and appeals to the king—three thousand miles away—were difficult and often ineffective.

The system of land tenure in New France has been described as “a mild form of feudalism.” The king gave large grants of land under certain conditions to a number of seigneurs, usually of good family, who in turn made grants to tenants or “censitaires,” who were expected to clear and farm the lands, paying to the seigneur a small rent, sometimes in money, oftener in kind. The seigneur might also demand a certain portion of the fish caught by his tenants, and require them to use, and pay for the use of, his mill and his oven. But if they fulfilled the stipulated conditions, they could not be dispossessed.

No steps were taken till the nineteenth century to relieve the habitants of the burdens of seigneurial tenure. In fact, the rents had become heavier; but, in 1854, an Act of Parliament was passed abolishing the feudal rights and duties, and granting compensation to the seigneurs. Not all the tenants took advantage of this measure, and in some instances the annual rent is still paid.

But the English conquest was the beginning of a new era of freedom for the French-Canadians. As one of the race, the well-known writer, Mr. Benjamin Sulte, says, it “abolished the paper money of the old régime, and substituted cash payments; enabled the habitants, who formed nine-tenths of the population at the time, to purchase where they pleased and what they pleased, instead of being obliged to go to the company’s or government store; gave greater freedom for trade and abolished unjust monopolies; and paved the way for those legislative measures which, at a subsequent date, conferred local self-government and schools upon the French subjects of Great Britain.”

At first, indeed, there was some confusion in the province as to whether the French or English system of law was in force, but by the Quebec Act, enacted in 1774, the French laws regarding property and civil rights were definitely restored to Canada, and the free exercise of their religion was secured to the adherents of the Roman Catholic church. A few years later, in 1792, it was determined that in the parliament of Lower Canada both the French and English languages might be used. This arrangement was naturally continued when the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada were united, and is still in force in the Dominion Parliament.

The Provincial Legislature of Quebec has two chambers: a Council of twenty-four members, appointed for life; and an elective Assembly of seventy-four members.

Taxes are light. The revenue of the province is derived chiefly from the subsidy paid by the Dominion; from the sales and leases of the crown lands; and from fees for licences of various kinds. Between March, 1905, and June, 1910, the provincial debt was reduced by over $9,000,000.

Quebec, with the recent addition of Ungava (of which the value cannot yet be estimated), now stretches on the north to Hudson Strait, and is the largest province of the Dominion, containing nearly 707,000 square miles, or five times the area of the United Kingdom. Even the older part of the province is still largely undeveloped, and will remain so till there are vast additions to the population.

The climate is healthy, though admittedly cold in winter. “During the four coldest months of the year,” I quote from an official publication, “the average temperature is 15 degrees Fahrenheit in December, 10 in January, 10 to 15 in February, and 20 to 25 in March. There are some days when the mercury drops as low as 20 to 30 degrees below zero, but the atmosphere is so dry that but little discomfort is experienced, even by those who indulge in winter sports in the coldest weather.”

There is no question that the dryness of the atmosphere makes an immense difference in the extent to which one feels the cold, and though I cannot speak from experience of a Quebec winter, I know that many people do prefer the crisp cold of the Dominion’s oldest province to a damper and milder climate.

Quebec has the advantage of having plenty of snow, which makes winter travelling easy and delightful. It also “protects the grass and autumn-sown grain from damage by frost, and, as in England, tulips and crocuses which have remained in the ground all winter, push their green shoots through the disappearing snow-banks in the early spring.”

Of course, however, one must dress suitably to the weather. Warm caps, coats, gloves and overshoes are necessary, especially for driving, in Lower Canada; the “habitants” wear blanket coats, girt round the waist with a coloured sash, and woollen caps which can be pulled down over the ears and neck—a costume which is at once so sensible and so picturesque, that a modification of it has been adopted nearly all over Canada for the little folk and by their elder brothers and sisters for snow-shoeing and ski-ing.

But Quebec is not only a land of ice-palaces and deep snow. It has its hot months as well as its cold ones, and often the latter follow the former so quickly that “the rapidity of vegetation is marvellous. Peas and beans ripen six weeks after being sown. The thermometer sometimes registers 70 degrees and over in the month of May; and in the early part of July, 1911, it stood at over 80 in the shade at Quebec for several days together.” When the writer first set foot in Montreal, it was the second week in September, and coming in from the sea, in a season when the icebergs had been adrift in large numbers, it would have seemed that summer still reigned, had it not been for such a wealth of fruit—pears, apples, peaches, grapes—everywhere in evidence, as only autumn can produce.

In population, Quebec comes second to Ontario. The census of 1911 showed a total of nearly two million three thousand persons, of whom the males outnumbered the females by almost twenty thousand; and the gain during the preceding decade was greater than in any other eastern province. Four-fifths of the people in Quebec are French-speaking, and of these 70 per cent. live in villages and rural districts.

Quebec is a beautiful province of mountain and valley, forest, lake and river. It was along the rivers and the coasts of the gulf that its settlement first began. In fact, it was the St. Lawrence that made New France; yet even to-day there is only a fringe of settlement on its northern shore, backed by the Laurentide mountains, and beyond those is the vast scarcely explored wilderness. But the villages continue up the east bank of the Ottawa; and, south of the St. Lawrence, as far east as Rimouski, there is a fairly well-peopled section of country.

The pioneer settlers, like the redmen, at first used the graceful bark canoes as their chief means of conveyance. These could be carried with ease over the “portages” necessitated by the numerous rapids, but when the settlers began to build larger boats, they were soon obliged to improve the navigation of the inland waterways by constructing canals, a work that has been going on for over a century, and is likely long to continue.

Large vessels could always go up to Quebec, and vessels of five hundred or six hundred tons could reach Montreal. But in 1844 the work of cutting a deeper channel was begun. Thirty shoals had to be cut through, and during the next sixty years nearly six million dollars, over a million pounds, was expended, with the result that there is now a “submerged canal, thirty feet deep and 500 feet wide,” up which, as it is well lighted, great ships can come by night as well as day. At Montreal, which is nearly a hundred miles above tidal influence, there arrived in 1850 two hundred and ten small vessels; but in 1912 there came seven hundred and thirty-six ocean liners, with a tonnage over fifty times as great as that of 1850.

Several of the tributaries of the St. Lawrence, including the Ottawa, the St. Maurice and the Saguenay, are navigable for great distances, and Quebec is a province of numerous and beautiful waterfalls, upon which the business man gazes, with calculations of the immense “power” available for the manufactures of to-day or to-morrow. In manufactures, Quebec comes next after Ontario. High up in the list of her industrial products come those of which the raw material is obtained from forest or farm, such as lumber and paper, butter and cheese, but it contains also iron goods, boots and shoes, fur garments, clothing, cottons, cigars, etc., etc.

Montreal, with a population of about half a million, is the largest city of the Dominion, and a great industrial centre. Something has been said already of its importance as a port for ocean steamers, but it has also connections by the inland waterways with Lake Superior. In addition, it is the greatest railway centre of Canada. Here both the Canadian Pacific and the Grand Trunk systems have their headquarters, whilst a number of smaller lines give connection with the United States.

In point of numbers, picturesque old Quebec comes a long way behind its slightly younger sister, Montreal, but the former also has a fine port. In the summer it is the point where immigrants, travelling third-class by the St. Lawrence route, disembark to go to their various destinations by rail. Its chief industries are connected with leather and wood. It has also several cotton factories. Other industrial centres are Hull, with wood-working establishments, ranging from saw mills to match factories; Sherbrooke, where the first cotton factory in Canada was opened in 1844; St. Hyacinthe, Three Rivers, Sorel and Valleyfield.

The forests are one of the chief assets of Quebec. Leaving out of account the recently-annexed northern regions, eighty million acres, estimated to be worth $450,000,000, are still the absolute property of the province; but forty-five million acres have been leased to lumbermen and six million acres are in private hands. Not very long ago a government “forestry service” was established for the protection of the existing forests and the replanting of “wild and denuded lands.” In 1905 the Laurentides National Park, designed especially for the preservation of fish and game, was Quebec’s only forest reserve. Now ten reserves, comprising 165,000 square miles, have been set apart to be held for the benefit of the whole population and of posterity. The immense value of such reserves may be guessed at from the fact that even under the old haphazard system, the timber limits brought into the provincial coffers during a period of about forty-five years a sum of nearly $29,000,000 (£5,800,000).

The lumber industry gives employment, during the winter months, when most other work is slack, to over twenty thousand men, in addition to the thousands of log-drivers required every spring to take the season’s cut down the rivers to market. Much of the government forests (chiefly of pulpwood) have been inaccessible, but the construction of the Transcontinental Railway, which passes through these forests, is adding immensely to their value, and, whenever they are opened to lumbering operations, numerous pulp and paper mills are likely to be erected. In 1912 the province already had twenty-eight of these mills.

Quebec possesses much mineral wealth, but it is little developed as yet, though as long ago as the first half of the eighteenth century a small blast furnace, for smelting bog iron ore with charcoal, was established at Three Rivers. Coal has not yet been discovered in Quebec, but the vast deposits of peat may, in a measure, supply its place. Copper and gold have been produced in a small way, and there are good building stones, slates and materials from which cement, brick, tiles and pottery can be made. But the mineral product of first value, reaching considerably over $3,000,000 (£600,000) in 1911, is asbestos. In that year four-fifths of the world’s whole product came from Quebec. The deposits, of immense extent, lie in the “Eastern Townships,” about seventy-five miles south of Quebec city, and were discovered in 1878, when the Quebec Central Railway was being constructed.

The fisheries of the province, both from the commercial and sportsman’s standpoint, are valuable. The former in 1909-10 gave employment with the canneries, to nearly twelve thousand persons and brought in nearly $2,000,000 (£400,000), cod, lobsters and bait yielding the largest contributions to this sum. An almost equal amount, it was estimated, was spent by sportsmen and anglers who came to the forests; and much of this money fortunately finds its way to the settlers (generally poor) of districts not well adapted to agriculture. In the regions north of the St. Lawrence and in the Canadian Labrador, bears, wolves, beavers and other wild animals abound to this day, and the fur trade, once the chief support of New France, still brings about $1,000,000 (£200,000) annually into the province.

Now agriculture holds the first place, and the farmers of Quebec, represented in 1617 by one solitary tiller of the soil, Louis Hébert, have become a great army. Enough has been said, I think, to show that Quebec has a variety of opportunities to offer to strong and capable and industrious immigrants; but perhaps the best of these are in agriculture. In different districts are millions of acres of good land still wild and uncultivated. Of these, six and a quarter millions have been surveyed and divided into farm lots of one hundred acres each, and these are almost given away to bonâ fide settlers, on condition of their clearing a few acres and erecting a small house, barn and stable within five years. The price charged is at the rate of from 20 cents (10d.) to 60 cents (2s. 6d.) an acre, payable in five instalments.

If the newcomer shrinks from the idea of taking up one of these uncleared farms, there are plenty of more or less “improved farms” to be bought at prices varying widely in different districts and under different circumstances.

To British farmers with a little capital or to farm labourers from the United Kingdom, the beautiful district south of the St. Lawrence, known as the “Eastern Townships,” has been warmly recommended as a region where conditions more nearly resemble those of the “Old Country” than most parts of this new land. It was first settled by Loyalists from the revolted American colonies, towards the close of the eighteenth century. These earliest comers had to endure many hardships, but now the whole district is peculiarly prosperous, possessing not only good farms, but a considerable number of manufacturing and industrial establishments, including the asbestos quarries already mentioned.

Most of the counties of Quebec are divided into “parishes,” but the Loyalists had been accustomed to “townships” in the land from which they came, hence “the Eastern Townships,” comprising an area of about four and a half million acres, and including the eleven counties of Brome, Compton, Drummond and Arthabaska, Megantic, Missisquoi, Richmond and Wolfe, Shefford, Sherbrooke and Stanstead. Of this district, Sherbrooke, which in 1911 had seventeen thousand inhabitants, may be counted the capital. It is one hundred and twenty-five miles south of Quebec, and being in a central situation is the distributing point for immigrants bound for the “Townships.”

The soil of this region is generally fertile, and the climate is by no means a bad one either for the human being or for the products of his fields. In latitude these counties correspond with the northern portion of Italy; but, though “Green Yules” are not unknown, someone has rather happily described the winter as “decided” in its character, and usually the snow comes about the beginning of December, to lie two or three feet deep and make good sleighing for several months. The summer is also a “decided” one; and many a fruit and vegetable which will not ripen in the open air in England here comes to perfection. The inhabitants of the country think the climate peculiarly healthy, and the census reports bear out the assertion so far as to show that an unusually large number of people live to be eighty or ninety.

It must not be supposed that in these long-settled counties there remains any public land to be disposed of; but there are plenty of good farms, of from one hundred and fifty to three hundred acres, for sale at prices ranging from $2,000 (£400) to $8,000 (£1,600), and a considerable portion of the purchase money may always be borrowed on mortgage. That there are so many of these farms for sale is due, as in other parts of Eastern Canada, to the attraction of the West, and of the cities and of other professions than farming; but it is asserted that farming in this region of easy accessibility to good markets has never before been so profitable as it is now. For many products there is an excellent local demand. Moreover, “the Townships” are in easy reach of Montreal and of some of the cities of the United States, and are served by the Canadian Pacific Railway, by the Grand Trunk and other lines—736 miles in all. Prices of produce are now high, and (unfortunately for the consumer) seem likely to remain so even if the supplies should be very largely increased. That the productivity of this district could be more than doubled if the population were doubled is no doubt true, for, though compared to the population of Canada, as a whole (which has less than two persons to the square mile), the Eastern Townships (with about thirty-four persons to the square mile) are well peopled, the density of population even here is only about one-tenth of that of the United Kingdom.

There is generally a scarcity of farm labourers in the district, and a year ago it was said that several thousand experienced workers could get work at wages ranging from $10 (£2) to $35 (£7) the month, in addition to board and lodging, or a rent-free house. As for “Old Country” girls, able and willing to do housework, they can readily obtain places in the towns and villages at wages of from $10 to $20 the month, that is, at from £24 to £48 the year.

Owing to the fact that there is a demand in winter for men to work in the lumber camps of Quebec, and that the farming carried on in this district (and the province generally) is of the “mixed” type, there is a fair demand for men in winter as well as summer—a most important consideration in comparing wages and opportunities in different places.

Here, too, it is said that experience of farming gained in England stands the newcomer in good stead to an especial degree; but, of course, there are some differences. For instance, after dairying and live-stock raising, the making of maple sugar is a large source of revenue to Eastern Township farmers. The sharp night frosts and warm days of early spring in this region are favourable to the flow of sap, and the average farm has from six hundred to one thousand maples, and some farms have three or four thousand. In a good year the yield of sugar may be as much as 3 lbs. to a tree. This sells at about 8 cents the pound. But if a farmer is an adept at making syrup, his profits may be increased.

The Townships have an agent at Quebec to meet incoming steamers and to help new arrivals on their way; and within the last few years some five thousand British immigrants have settled in the district. Some have found work in the shops and mills of the towns, but most have gone to the farms, and here and there amongst the prosperous farmers of the district is one who could tell an interesting story of his arrival at Quebec with scarcely a penny and of his gradual climb up the ladder to a position of comfort.

By the way, there are plenty of churches of different denominations and schools and other social advantages which make life pleasant in the Townships, and probably for English-speaking people, especially for those who are Protestants, this part of Quebec will prove more homelike than any of the counties where the population is almost entirely French-speaking and Roman Catholic.

To return to the province in general, though it has still too many illiterates, there has been progress during the last few years in educational matters, and within seven years the government grant for this purpose was much more than doubled. Owing to the marked religious differences, there are two classes of public schools—the regular public schools and the “separate” schools of the minority, which may be Protestant in one district and Roman Catholic in another. The Roman Catholic and Protestant schools are represented, in the department of education, by French and English secretaries or deputy-heads, under the general “Superintendent of Public Instruction.” In the different localities, school affairs are regulated by “commissioners” representing the religious majority, and “trustees” representing the minority. These are elected by the ratepayers, who pay school rates to the school board of their own religious faith.

Recently new technical schools have been opened in Quebec and Montreal, and the latter city now has a “School of Higher Commercial Studies.” There are also Provincial Forestry and Veterinary Schools. Finally, there is the great Roman Catholic University of Laval, with branches in Quebec and Montreal, which is the outgrowth of a seminary founded in the seventeenth century by the first bishop of Canada; and the non-sectarian McGill University, which owes its foundation in 1814 to the bequest of a wealthy merchant of Montreal, but has since been enriched by benefactions from Lord Strathcona and others. It is said, indeed, to be the wealthiest of Canadian universities. It has a large number of departments, and is well equipped for research work in medicine, physics, engineering, and so forth. Women are admitted to its courses on equal terms with men. This university, by the way, owes much to the famous Nova Scotian geologist, Sir William Dawson, who was its principal for thirty-eight years, and during that time saw the number of its undergraduates increase from eighty to over a thousand.

WE come now to Ontario, in extent the second, but in certain respects the first, of the Canadian provinces. Not so large as Quebec, it yet comprises an area three times that of the British Isles, with a little to spare. To be more exact, the figures are 407,262 square miles, having recently been increased immensely by the addition of the new district of Patricia, to the north of its former limits; and now the outline of Ontario upon the map bears a rude resemblance to a great hump-backed whale. At present it is only the tail of the monster that has much population, and it is that portion of Ontario—the peninsula outlined by the Ottawa River, the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes—with which the brief, interesting history of the portion of the Empire that began its existence as “Upper Canada” one hundred and twenty years since, has most to do.

Canadians, like their American cousins, are sometimes accused of worshipping mere bigness. This may or may not be true; but bigness is a factor of the situation in the Dominion from which one cannot get away. There is, I suppose, something fascinating to the imagination of the average mortal in the thought of leagues upon leagues of little-known, scarcely-explored wilderness, awaiting the coming of men, to be turned to unguessed uses in the service of humanity (sometimes unfortunately represented mainly by millionaires and the “big interests”).

Enough at least is known of these vast spaces to render it practically certain that, when their day comes, they will prove to be of much value to man. Obstructions in the waterways of the early “voyageurs” now stand for “power” and progress. Trees, once regarded as little better than noxious weeds, now furnish the paper for this news-reading generation. Rocks that cost the railway companies vast expense and toil in blasting have proved mines of precious metals. The chill waters of Hudson Bay may yet furnish the tables of half a continent with fish; and lands, supposed to be too far north for any useful growth, are so bathed in sunshine during the long days of the brief northern summer that roots and grains are forced to swift perfection, and the harvest seems to tread on the heels of the sowing. What will the next few decades show even in Ontario? Who can say? But bigness means difficulty and toil and struggle, as well as opportunity; and what every province of Canada needs is a people not only numerous enough, but big enough to make something of themselves and of the country.

Upon the whole, Upper Canada began well with the stock of sturdy Loyalists who had dared in the “Thirteen Colonies” to try to stem the tide of revolution, and were cast out by their native land in very fear of their strength and their constancy. Then came settlers from the Motherlands—English, Scotch and Irish (the latter arriving by the thousand during the first half of the nineteenth century at different times of sore distress in the Emerald Isle)—and though amongst these were wastrels and ne’er-do-wells and weaklings, the majority were men and women strong enough and true enough to “make good” in the terrible fight with the wilderness.

Nor was it only in that struggle to cut out their little homesteads from nature’s stern forests that they had to toil, but also at the shaping of a nation in the love and practice of liberty and in the fear of God. As to the latter, many little old churches, dotted through the land, bear witness to the zeal of the missionaries and the people of early days; and as to the former, the free schools through all the country, the colleges, the universities, the public libraries, the political system—with its merits and defects—are in large measure the result of the efforts of earlier generations.

Strange as it may appear, the most northern part of this vast province is no farther north than the central part of Scotland, and its most southerly point (the most southerly of the whole Dominion) is in about the latitude of Rome. It has no high mountains, though there is great diversity of surface, and the climate of the southerly and westerly portions of the peninsula of old Ontario is distinctly milder than that of Quebec or the prairie provinces. Of course there is great variety of temperature in different parts of this vast region. The lowlying districts bordering on the Great Lakes have, as might be expected, a more humid climate than places more inland and of greater altitude, but the winter of Ottawa resembles that of Montreal, and of course the cold is severe in the far north. It is, however, a fact that Canadians staying during the winter in England appear to feel the cold there more than English people do in the settled parts of Canada. Often, indeed, newly-arrived English people think that the dwellings of Canadians are kept too hot during the winter months; and perhaps they are. The practice of keeping the houses warm has some advantages, however. A somewhat severe “snap” of cold weather rarely works the havoc with the water-pipes in Canada that so frequently occurs during exceptionally cold weather in England; and people are able to use every room of their well-warmed habitations in a fashion which is of great advantage when the said houses are pretty fully occupied.

In a typical summer there is much sunshine and a good deal of hot weather; and then Canadians live much out of doors. Those of the dwellers in the cities who can afford to do so, often move early in the warm months to cottages beside some of the numerous lakes, and remain there throughout the summer. These cottages are generally more like wooden tents than houses, admitting the fresh air very freely. The country people also live much out of doors, but both men and women on the farms are too busy to take holidays during the hot season.

Besides her two boundary rivers, the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence, Ontario, which is a well-watered province, has many another fine stream; but perhaps the most striking of its natural features are its lakes, large and small. Passing up the St. Lawrence and skirting the provincial boundaries with one’s face turned towards the west, one comes first to Lake Ontario; then turning south along the Niagara River (perhaps its famous “Falls” are what most untravelled Britons would think of first of any place in Canada), one reaches Lake Erie, passes north through the St. Clair lake and river to Lake Huron, and from that by the wonderful locks at Sault Ste. Marie into Lake Superior, from the head of which inland sea it is only a few hours’ journey to Winnipeg. The interesting part of this imaginary voyage is that by the help of a few short canals it may be taken in reality. So every year millions of bushels of grain come from the wheat fields of the West to Montreal; and in a short time, thanks to improvements now under way, ocean-going steamers from Liverpool will be able to make an uninterrupted journey to Fort William, which is by rail almost a thousand miles from Montreal.

But if Ontario touched on none of the “Five Great Lakes” instead of upon four, which lie between her territories and those of the United States, she would still be a land of lakes, in right of Lake Simcoe and the Muskoka lakes, Lake Nipissing, Lake Abitibi, huge Lake Nipigon, the thousand-isled Lake of the Woods, and hundreds of others. Many of these contain great quantities of fish, though, so far as the “Great Lakes” are concerned, the “fish stories” of the pioneers read now like idle tales; but still the commercial fisheries of the province bring in over $2,333,000 (£480,000), and give employment to several thousand men. In 1909 the catches of trout and white fish were the most important.

Nevertheless, in this province the fisheries are a very small industry compared to mining, lumbering, manufactures and agriculture. Some twenty thousand men find employment in mines. The mineral taking first rank in Ontario as a revenue-producer is silver, of which the production in 1911 amounted to nearly $16,000,000 (£3,280,000). Pig iron, natural gas, nickel and copper came next on the list.

The discovery of the rich silver deposits at Long’s Lake, now Cobalt, was made by contractors engaged in building the Timiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway. About a month later—so the story goes—a blacksmith, La Rose, flung his hammer at an impudent fox. The missile struck a rock and made a bright metallic streak, which led to another great find. Not quite at once was the public persuaded of the value of these discoveries; then there was a mad rush to prospect for silver; and a town sprang up, looking, it is said, as if its makeshift houses had been “built between darkness and dawn.” An Indian is credited with the finding of gold-bearing quartz on the shores of Larder lake.

Years earlier, in 1884, the vast deposits of nickel a few miles west of Sudbury were cut into by the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, but there the mineral which first attracted attention was copper. This was sent to be smelted in New Jersey, and it was only when experts detected the presence of nickel in the slag that the true value of the Sudbury mines was recognized.

The forests of Ontario are of vast importance, and promise to remain so. It is satisfactory to add that the state owns the forests, to a large extent, in Ontario (as in Quebec), and the expenses of the provincial government are met by the revenues from the Crown lands and the Dominion subsidy without the need of laying a cent of taxation upon the people. Of course, whether they realize it or not, the indirect taxes, which are collected by the Dominion government, come out of their pockets, and there are municipal taxes, the weight of which varies very much in different municipalities, being naturally much heavier in the cities than in the country.

But to return to the forests. Including about one hundred thousand square miles of woodlands in the new district of Patricia, which is only partially explored, the total forest area of Ontario is estimated at 202,000 square miles. Of this about twenty thousand square miles is under licence, and in 1912 the revenue from the forests amounted to considerably over $2,000,000 (£410,000), whilst the revenue so collected since Confederation amounts to about $44,000,000 (£9,040,000). This has been derived from ground rents, timber dues, transfer fees, and bonuses (that is, sums offered over and above the fixed charges for the right to cut timber). In 1911 the value of the timber cut in Ontario was nearly equal to that of the “cut” in all the rest of the Dominion.

An Act passed in 1898 empowered the government to set apart “Forest Reserves, to be owned in perpetuity by the Crown and operated for timber crops,” and Ontario has now six forest reserves, which with Algonquin and Rondeau parks—chiefly intended for the preservation of game—amount in all to 20,000 square miles. The great northern forests consist largely of spruce, and there are half a dozen pulp and paper mills in operation in places easily accessible to these forests. Wood-pulp, by the way, is used in making car-wheels, coffins, pails, roofing materials and a long list of other articles. Ontario has still considerable forests of white and red pines, the trees, which were at one time counted by the lumbermen the only ones of value, being easily floated down to the sea, and being in great demand for masts and other uses. In Southern Ontario there used to be quantities of black walnut and other trees which would now be prized for making furniture, but in the days of the pioneers, owing to lack of transport facilities, vast piles of such woods were heaped together and burned.

In manufacturing, Ontario is the premier province, for though its capital comes in this respect second to Montreal, six Ontario cities are included amongst the first fourteen manufacturing centres of the Dominion. These are Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa, London, Brantford, and Berlin; and in addition there are many smaller industrial centres. The industrial establishments (taken at random) include lumber and flour mills, agricultural implement works, shipbuilding yards, iron and steel plants, foundries, railway shops, distilleries, canning factories, cheese factories, creameries, carriage and motor car works. A long list of others might be added, and these various industries offer a variety of opportunity to skilled workmen.

But after all, Ontario is still chiefly an agricultural country; and the value of her field crops is “more than that of any other two provinces.” In fact, the value of her whole agricultural products was estimated in 1911 at three hundred million dollars (about £60,000,000).

The province has a great variety of soils and climates, and its older parts are a region of “mixed farming”; where dairying, the raising of live stock; the growing of wheat, oats, and other grain; fruit culture, tobacco-growing, poultry-raising and bee-keeping are successfully carried on. Dairying, according to an official statement, “is the largest industry in the country”; and three-fourths of the dairy product of the whole Dominion is produced in Ontario.

The province produces also three-fourths of the fruit grown in Canada—chiefly in its southern counties bordering on the Great Lakes—and is almost equally famous for its apples and its peaches, its berries and its grapes. Hundreds of thousands of acres in Southern Ontario are planted with fruit trees and small fruit bushes; and immense areas of land equally suitable for fruit-culture remain to be planted—in the Niagara district, along the shores of Lakes Erie and Ontario, and in other districts.

From the point of view of opportunity for newcomers, the interesting feature of the situation is not what has been, but what may be done. The fact is, even in the older portions of the province, only the fringe of possible productivity has been touched, and here in Ontario we are still in the region where the country districts have suffered in the last few decades by the exodus of the young—at first largely to the United States, later to the West and to the cities. The result is that there are plenty of good farms for sale at prices ranging from $25 (£5) to $100 (£20) the acre—the latter price including the cost of buildings—and a list of these can be obtained from the “Director of Colonization” at Toronto.

The prices, by the way, of apple and peach orchards and of vineyards in good bearing go up far beyond the prices of ordinary farm lands. As much as from $400 (£80) to $1,200 (£240) an acre is asked in the Niagara district for peach orchards, according to age, while apple orchards may fetch from $300 (£60) to $500 (£100) an acre. Even unplanted lands good for fruit culture range high—$400 (£80) the acre being asked for land especially suitable for peach-growing.

There are many districts of Ontario where capable British farmers with some little capital would have every prospect of doing well, for markets for all produce are good. Conditions of life in the settled farming districts of this province are usually found pleasant by those who like a country life, and many things are working together to render these even better than they were a few years ago. I will, however, return to this matter a little later.

One of the great difficulties that Ontario farmers have to contend with is that of obtaining sufficiency of help in the busy seasons. The best remedy for this is to so manage the farm—by keeping a considerable number of live stock—that help can profitably be employed all the year round, and to have houses in which married men can live with their families.

This brings us naturally to the other side of the question—whether or not a good experienced farm man can get work. The wages given to a married man range from $250 (£50) to $350 (£70) the year, to which are added (as a rule) a rent-free cottage, and some extras such as milk and firewood. Often both the wife and children (as they grow out of early childhood) can also earn something. The wages for unmarried men of eighteen years of age and upwards, according to experience, or lack of it, range from $10 (£2) to $25 (£5) the month—in a few cases to $35 (£7)—with board, lodging and washing free. Board and lodging usually means living with the farmer’s family, and there is no question that a man of good physique, good intelligence, real willingness to work and some thrift can soon attain a position of independence. As one newcomer to an Ontario farm expressed it, here “the boss hunts for a man, not the man for a job.”

It is often wise for a newcomer to work for a while for someone else and to gain experience before attempting to acquire a farm for himself; but it must not be forgotten that, besides the numerous farms in well-settled districts that may be bought at prices which are often little more than yearly rents asked for land in England, there are Crown lands in Ontario, some of which are offered for sale at the nominal price of 50 cents (2s.) the acre—payable in four instalments with interest—and some which are given away free. But there are conditions attached to the sale or granting of Crown lands. In the first place, these lands can be acquired only by a male settler over eighteen, or the mother of a family who has residing with her at least one child under eighteen. The settler must live for three years on the homestead, and within this time must clear and cultivate about 10 per cent. of the land, and build a small habitable house. The size of the grant or farm lot is generally one hundred and sixty acres; and in the case of free grants there is usually a provision that an adjoining eighty to one hundred acres may be purchased at 50 cents per acre. Often, but not invariably, the Crown lands are sold subject to timber licences or to a reservation of minerals.

The public lands for sale are situated chiefly in Nipissing, Timiskaming, Sudbury, Algoma, and Rainy River districts; and those offered as free grants are in the districts of Nipissing, Timiskaming, Algoma, Kenora, Rainy River, and in the tract of land “lying between the Ottawa river and the Georgian bay, and comprising the northerly portions of the counties of Renfrew, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington, Hastings, Peterborough, Victoria and Simcoe; and the districts of Muskoka and Parry Sound.”

Across Northern Ontario stretches the great fertile (so-called) “Clay Belt” of sixteen million acres, discovered during the surveys for the making of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway; and this is within easy reach of the more settled parts of the province, viâ the town of North Bay, which is served by the Canadian Pacific Railway, the Grand Trunk, and the provincial government line, the Timiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway. The latter strikes in a north-westerly direction, two hundred and fifty miles, to Cochrane, where it joins the Grand Trunk Pacific, passing on the way through the Cobalt mining region. Altogether, Ontario has more than ten thousand miles of steam and electric railways, and this mileage is increasing very fast.

The Clay Belt is well wooded, but is not very difficult to clear, and the pioneers there, unlike their predecessors in old Ontario, find a ready sale for their wood. One man, after paying for the cutting of the timber on the sixteen acres of his purchase from government of one hundred and sixty acres, which he was bound to clear to obtain his title, sold the wood at a profit of $550 (£110), and this left him a balance of $90 (£18) after the cost of “stumping” and ploughing the land, which, as he put it, will “clear itself ready for crop.” The timber is not always so valuable as this, but usually some money may be made from it. A couple of years later this same man stated that he had made a profit on his farm of nearly $1,200 (£240).

There is also a chance for the settler to earn ready money by working on the roads which the government is making through the country, whilst the demands of the railway construction camps for farm produce insures a good market. It is only right to add, however, that the beginner has to face inevitable hardships, and though a strong, capable man may not only succeed, but enjoy the life, there are other men who might do well under different conditions, but prove failures as pioneers. At certain times of the year, black flies and mosquitoes are very troublesome, but this is a condition which will improve as the country becomes more settled.

In the study of ethnology, people are accustomed to speak of the stone age, the bronze age, and so forth; and in the study of social conditions in this province one might use the dwellings of the people as a criterion. But, while thousands of families are still in the “log-cabin” age, with all the concomitant disadvantages of roughness and loneliness, more have passed into the age of “frame houses”—which may be models of neatness and comfort, and are often the scenes of pleasant sociabilities—a smaller number are in the brick age—typical of urban conveniences and (ofttimes) conventionalities; and a very few have arrived even at the dignity of the “stone age,” which from this point of view stands for wealth and luxury.