To establish a great country and christen it after one of its districts—in other words, to take the name of a locality and make it apply over a region stretching away for thousands of miles—is to provide succeeding generations of schoolboys with an opportunity to form life-long misconceptions. If, when London was made into a county, it had been christened Pimlico, we should have a rough parallel to what happened in the case of British North America.

Knowing that Canada has existed for more than three centuries, people are apt (as I have previously pointed out) to scratch and shake their heads over the fact that, while the United States in the south have acquired a population of 92,000,000, Canada numbers only 8,000,000 inhabitants. It takes a lot of explanation to make them understand that historic Canada was a comparatively small area abutting on the St. Lawrence River; and that modern Canada—the huge country stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific—is only thirty-eight years old.

You have to hammer away at the fact that the word “union” is the key to the extraordinary contrast afforded by the population of Yankee North America and the population of British North America; that the reason why there was expansion in the south was because the States were united, and that the reason why, until recent years, there was no expansion in the north was because, until recent years, the provinces were ununited.

They were ununited politically (a common allegiance not involving concerted action) and they were ununited physically.

Political union came by stages. The four principal eastern provinces (Canada West, Canada East, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia), as we have seen, joined forces forty-four years ago; distant Manitoba threw in its lot with them three years later; remote British Columbia entered the combination during the following twelve months, on condition that its isolation should be remedied by a railroad; and in 1873—or just thirty-eight years ago—with the adhesion of the remaining eastern province (Prince Edward Island) there came into existence the vast Dominion of Canada, embracing not merely the regions named above, but the enormous intervening and adjoining areas known as the North-West Territories.

Political union was accomplished, but its permanence was contingent upon physical union also being accomplished, for British Columbia had stipulated for a railroad. Thus the newly-created Federal Government found themselves confronted by a task which for magnitude and difficulty would have been worthy the statesmanship of a Julius Cæsar. They had to furnish their geographical colossus with a steel backbone. They had to lay parallel rails round a wide arc of the earth’s circumference—traversing the untracked wilderness, skirting mountains and chasms, hewing a way through forests, blasting a way through rock, filling up bogs, lowering lakes and bridging rivers innumerable; they had to make a level roadway three thousand miles long, placing sleepers a foot apart along its entire length, and building stations at intervals of sixteen miles.

The gigantic enterprise was put in hand; but continuity of policy proved impossible with a national executive that was subject to party changes. At the end of several years only 700 miles of line had been laid, and the Government were anxious that someone else should go on with the job. Eight daring capitalists formed themselves into a syndicate, and undertook to have the line constructed by 1891 in consideration of receiving twenty-five million dollars and twenty-five million acres of prairie. They made splendid progress, but, presently running short of cash, they asked the Government to lend them £6,000,000—accommodation that was granted on the understanding that the line should be finished in 1886, or five years earlier than had been originally stipulated. It was finished in 1885, and a few months later trains were running across Canada from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Hence its name, The Canadian Pacific Railway—long ago colloquialised by universal usage into the “C.P.R.”

Federation rendered modern Canada possible. But modern Canada was created by a railway—by that railway—by the C.P.R. In 1881, before the line was commenced, the Dominion had 4,324,810 inhabitants, of whom 4,153,800 lived in the settled areas in the East—areas forming but a small fraction of the new country. The balance of population—171,000 persons, of whom nearly half were Red Indians—was distributed as follows: 66,000 in Manitoba, 49,000 in British Columbia, and 56,000 in the remaining far-stretching regions of Canada. To-day there are more than a million and a half people in those territories where, before the railway was made, there were only 171,000; and—with the tide of immigration gaining in momentum every year—the national affairs of this earth provide no anticipation more assured than that the present inhabitants of Central and Western Canada are but the vanguard of a population which, within the experience of persons now living, will be counted by tens of millions.

Most railways have come into existence merely to serve a nation’s needs. It was, as we have seen, the higher fate of the C.P.R. first to create the nation whose needs it was to serve. Out of that fact sprang traditions that have moulded the destiny and that conserve the character of one of the most gigantic, most powerful, most prosperous, and most public-spirited corporations in the world. It is sometimes said that a joint stock company has no soul to be saved and no hindquarters to be kicked. Irreverent remarks of that sort do not apply to the C.P.R. Those who have lived or travelled in Canada will not need to be told about that remarkable and unique institution. But the rest of the world are not in a position to know, and certainly could never guess, the rôle filled by that railway in a stirring national drama. To the Bourses of Europe the C.P.R. is only a triumphant corporation that makes a clear annual profit of over £5,000,000, that is constantly and successfully extending its enterprises, and that issues to its proprietors at par new stock that commands a high premium. But those facts merely reveal the C.P.R. in its public character. Its domestic character is the interesting study.

The C.P.R. is the servant, friend, partner (and, I had almost written, pal) of the settler in Central and Western Canada. No soul, indeed! Why, of the C.P.R.’s several titles to the world’s esteem, the first place must be given to what I can only call its psychological worth.

One of the growing community of prosperous grain-growers in Alberta was telling me the story of his early experiences—how he arrived with his large family on the land, and how he and his sons set to work and built their house. “Yes,” I said, “but where did you and your family live before the house was ready?” “Oh,” he replied, “the C.P.R. very kindly lent us a shack to be going on with.”

Another settler, also reviewing his initial efforts, explained that, being a muff at his new work, he failed to make timely arrangements for harvesting his first crop, which consequently was ruined. “Having counted on the grain to see me through,” he added, “I was fairly broke. But the good old C.P.R. came to my rescue. They gave me work near my place and paid me well, and next spring they lent me horses and fitted me out with seed—in fact, they helped a lame dog over the stile.” A third Canadian farmer had bought irrigated land from the C.P.R. on the usual basis of easy annual payments. “But,” he explained, “the minor canals had not been completed in our neighbourhood, and water did not reach my ditches until two months after I got there. Having to run up to Calgary, I called in at the C.P.R. and told them about it. They were most apologetic, and said they were very much to blame, as the land ought not to have been sold as irrigated land until the water was actually there; so, quite of their own accord, they gave me an extra year’s grace before my first payment became due.”

There is a conscientiousness about the C.P.R., a thoughtfulness, a something that is downright human, not to say kind-hearted. In travelling across the ocean and the land you see the big things of the C.P.R.—its magnificent liners, its palatial hotels, its superb feats of engineering—but somehow the real greatness of the company seems to lie in the little personal acts of which I have given three examples. It is difficult to find a definition that fits the C.P.R. To liken it to a philanthropic society is out of the question; one cannot associate the idea of philanthropy with an organisation which, with its stock ranging well above 200 “on Change,” distributes over £3,000,000 per annum in the form of a 10-per-cent. dividend. The C.P.R. leaves upon the mind an intangible impression of a paradoxical character. It suggests a sort of Socialist Government run by shareholders for profit.

Chatting with a puzzled C.P.R. officer, I tried to make him realise how deeply a visitor from England was impressed by the C.P.R. in its ethical—quite apart from its engineering and financial—aspect.

“But, don’t you see,” he argued, “that the C.P.R. is directly interested in the success of every settler, and that the greater his success the more grain and other freight will he send over our line? Besides, the more a man prospers out here, the more powerful is he as a human magnet to attract friends and relatives from the old country. Looked at from those points of view, every new arrival is an important asset, and we have to see to it that the asset matures. In other words, if through inexperience or want of cash the settler meets with difficulties at the outset of his career, we have a definite interest in helping him through those difficulties. As a matter of fact, in advancing money for seed, etc., we run no appreciable financial risk, since certain success awaits the Canadian farmer who sticks to his work, provided he possesses the necessary modicum of common sense. If he is any good at all, we know he will get on all right, even if he does not know that himself. Therefore I assure you the action of the C.P.R. has a strictly business, not to say selfish, basis.”

Yes, yes, I could see all that; but, still, the virtues of the C.P.R. had not been explained away to my satisfaction. Many transportation and other companies have an interest in serving the public, but they act within the limited sanction of prearranged routine, and their servants are held in leash by red tape. I had never before come across a capitalistic corporation which offered a helping hand to anyone in need of it, dealing with each case on its merits. I had never before encountered a capitalistic corporation which, through its thousand and one agents, acted in all matters with ungrudging and anxious zeal. All along the broad tract of country that it serves, the C.P.R. is a watchful, ministering, unseen, personal force. It is actuated by an almost paternal but wholly unobtrusive sense of responsibility towards the country it has created and the people that country contains. I might fill this chapter with different examples of how interest is shown and assistance rendered. I can even give an example that is of purely personal application to myself. Last autumn it became known to the C.P.R. that I, a visitor from England, was laid up with a temporary indisposition in a hotel at Gleichen, Alberta. The C.P.R. wrote to say it was sorry! You may smile, gentle reader, but such was the pleasant fact; nor am I prepared to deny that the process of convalescence was assisted by the knowledge that, in my short lapse from health, I had the brotherly sympathy of an institution that represented £80,000,000 of capital.

Common sense scouts the idea that the C.P.R., in the pains it takes to assist the farmers of the prairies and the fruit-growers of British Columbia, is actuated by a conscious desire for more freight (it already carries 113,000,000 bushels of grain per annum), or for more passengers (of whom its yearly total has grown to 11,000,000—a figure, by the by, which, since it is larger than the population of the Dominion, shows that many Canadians travel frequently). Nay, the country having now entered upon an era of rapid and automatic growth, the prosperity of the C.P.R. is bound to increase, irrespective of what may be called the fraternal side of its activities. What is more, it has been shown to the satisfaction of financial experts that even were the C.P.R. divorced from its railroad, and the revenue derived therefrom, it could continue to pay its 10 per cent. dividend.

No; I am convinced that to explain the personal services that the C.P.R. renders to the community, to understand why the C.P.R. is a kind of joint stock Government, we must hark back to the conditions that fixed its traditions.

In its early days the C.P.R. had to face powerful enemies, great difficulties, and the burden of anxiety that is inevitable where heavy capital outlay has to precede opportunity of remunerative revenue. Its critics said the line could never pay. Its promoters were supported only by their faith—their faith in a population that had not yet arrived. Nowadays it is difficult to realise that in 1885 men had still to be convinced of the fertility of the western prairie. For centuries it had yielded the world nothing but the furry coats of the animals roaming its unpopulated wilds. Even amid the strenuous work of constructing the line at high pressure—with gangs of engineers, navvies and station-builders forming a great graded army of men, accompanied by thousands of horses, which pressed forward in orderly sequence from section to section, each camp of toilers working in an organised relation to the base of supplies following them across the country—even at that initial stage of its vast enterprise did the C.P.R. begin studying the interests of the future settlers. Special agricultural gangs were put on the construction trains, and at intervals of about twenty miles they alighted and ploughed a few acres, which were afterwards seeded, with the result that, though the cultivation was of the roughest, and no measures were taken to keep marauding animals at bay, such heavy and excellent crops were produced that the high potentialities of soil and climate were triumphantly advertised. Thus early did the C.P.R. “show the way” and identify itself with the practical interests of settlers in the West. It had land to sell them, it was providing them with lines of communication, with means of transport. It followed that the new population would be largely dependent upon the railway. But the railway would be wholly dependent upon the new population. Its fortunes were contingent upon this one factor—whether people should come and prosper and be satisfied. That factor controlled the C.P.R.’s policy and established its principles. For its rescue from the sea of financial indebtedness could alone be effected by the settler.

To the extent of that indebtedness I have already given some clues. Let me give a few more.

The 200-miles section along the north shore of Lake Superior cost £2,400,000, a path having to be blasted through granite and flint, in which process £420,000 worth of dynamite was used. At Pic River stone piers had to be built to carry an iron truss bridge at an elevation of one hundred and ten feet above the water level. At Jackfish Bay three miles of winding track were necessary to accomplish half a mile of progress, the bridges, tunnels and galleries on that section costing £300,000. In 1882 four thousand men, having 3,400 horses and 1,700 four-wheeled wagons, were at work on the road, fixing rails, sleepers, spikes, fishplates and bolts. In fifteen months 677 miles of main track and 48 miles of sidings were constructed, ten million cubic yards of earth being moved in the process. Between Calgary and the Bow River Pass from two to three miles of bridges had to be made. Between Port Moody and Kamloops—213 miles—the engineers had to cut twenty tunnels, representing a total length of one mile and three-quarters, through granite and crystalline limestone. In the mountain district of the west the line had to reach a height of 5,321 feet above sea level. Kicking Horse Pass presented engineering problems which could only be successfully surmounted by protracted toil; but British Columbia was impatient for the railway, and so at that point a temporary section was constructed which sacrificed the easy gradient elsewhere secured, and for years afterwards several powerful locomotives were required to pull each train up the consequent “Big Hill.” That formidable incline has since been superseded by an alternative section, costing £300,000, and being seven miles of winding track, which embraces two spiral tunnels through the mountain, and two steel bridges (separated by only a few hundred yards) over the Kicking Horse River, which, by the way, is crossed nine times by the C.P.R., six of the bridges being within a distance of twelve miles. Another zig-zagging piece of work occurs in the Illecillewaet Valley, where the line turns south, crosses a high bridge and curves back almost to the starting-point, but at a lower level, then forms another great curve across a ravine, being 120 feet lower down on its return, afterwards doubling upon itself and crossing and recrossing the river; so that a spectator on one of the neighbouring heights can see a sinuous railway that reveals six tracks running almost parallel to one another, each on a different level and each supported largely by huge trestle bridges. Miles upon miles of the line, where precipitous mountains are skirted, had to be protected by timber corridors roofed at an angle to deflect avalanches.

The Red Indians, not yet fully subdued, caused some inconvenience to the constructors of the C.P.R. Many of the imported navvies went in dread of the painted braves, who were a little disposed to presume on the fears they excited. Fortunately, the North-West Mounted Police were in existence, and the historian of that force, Mr. A. L. Haydon, has told us what occurred.^[1] I give the following account of a typical incident:

“It was in the early days of the C.P.R.’s progress across the prairies that the Pie-a-Pot incident occurred. Readers of Mrs. Steel’s stories may remember one which tells how a Hindu fanatic squatted in the permanent way of a new railway line in India and resisted all efforts to dislodge him, until at length he was run over and killed. The fanatic in question had a religious motive for his defiant attitude. So much could hardly be said of Pie-a-Pot the Cree, who took it upon himself to play the same game. Pie-a-Pot and his band had been giving no little trouble to the police about this time. He and another chief named Long Lodge had left their reserve and were wandering about the country at large. This proceeding was contrary to the law, and particularly so as their followers were all armed, and had the reputation of being a turbulent crowd.

“What happened to bring Pie-a-Pot into sudden collision with the police was this. Fetching up with his band at last at a point some little distance ahead of the railway line, he encamped. His tepees were put up, the carts unloaded, the horses sent out on the prairie to feed, and there was every indication that the wanderers had found a choice spot from which they did not intend to move. By and by the railway track advanced closer towards them, and the contractors looked askance at the Indian settlement.

“Pie-a-Pot paid no attention to the oncoming army of white men. He was there first; it was his chosen location; let them shift him if they dared. The railway authorities sent emissaries demanding his evacuation of the spot; but Pie-a-Pot laughed at them, while his ‘bucks’ rode excitedly about on their ponies and fired off rifles at random, and shouted of what they would do to the whites if it came to a fight. Matters were at a deadlock. The railway men could not go on so long as the Indian camp blocked the way.

“Then the Lieutenant-Governor of the Territories was appealed to, and ere long there came a despatch from the North-West Mounted Police headquarters at Regina to the little post at Maple Creek, much to this effect: ‘Please settle trouble; move on Indians.’ On receipt of the message two men were at once detailed for the task. One was a sergeant, the other was a constable. With a written order to Chief Pie-a-Pot, an official notice to quit, they rode out quietly to the camp and made known their instructions.

“Their arrival was a signal for a fresh outburst on the part of the Indians. In their nomadic life the members of this band had not yet, to put it literally, run up against the law as personified by the North-West Mounted Police. They knew them by reputation to be firm, hard-dealing men whose hand was heavy upon the wrong-doer, but they had no practical experience from which to learn caution. So they surrounded the two guardians of law and order, jeering at them, backing their ponies into the police horses, and otherwise trying to discompose them. The sergeant and the constable, in their scarlet tunics, with the smart-looking pill-box forage caps set at an angle on their heads, meanwhile sat still, the former reading his order, which was that Pie-a-Pot must break camp and take the northward trail.

“To this command the chief insolently refused to listen. The sergeant pulled out his watch. ‘I will give you fifteen minutes,’ he said calmly. ‘If by the end of that time you haven’t begun to comply with the order, we shall make you.’ The quarter of an hour passed without any sign of a move being made. Pie-a-Pot sat in front of his tent and smoked. Round him and the policemen had gathered all the rest of the tribe, ‘bucks,’ squaws and children, most of them yelling abuse and urging on the bolder spirits among them to still further exhibitions of defiance. The firing of rifles almost in the faces of the red-coats was one form of sport indulged in, but it was of no avail.

“ ‘Time’s up!’ said the sergeant, replacing his watch in his pocket. Then that amazing man dismounted, threw the reins of his horse to his companion, and walked over to Pie-a-Pot’s tepee. One kick of his foot at the key-pole and the painted buffalo-skin covering collapsed. Ignoring the shrieks of the discomfited squaws thereunder, and the threats of the men, the sergeant proceeded through the camp, kicking out key-pole after key-pole until all the tents had been overthrown. ‘Now git!’ was what he said—or might have said, in the absence of any exact record of his utterances. And it is some tribute to his sagacity that Pie-a-Pot did so.”

There was not, it will be noted, any real fight left in the Indians; but this could not be said of the allied race, the Half-Breeds. They were at that time on the eve of their rebellion; and it is interesting to note that the C.P.R. was completed in time to be of service in that affair. On May 18, 1885, the last rail was laid in the line skirting Lake Superior, and the very next day the Montreal artillery militia passed over that line on their way to assist in suppressing the Riel rising.

And soon the procession of immigrants was moving across the country, to quicken Manitoba and British Columbia into vigorous growth and found the intermediate provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta. Then the C.P.R. saw that its faith would be justified. A beginning had been made in tapping the agricultural and mineral riches of Western Canada. The railway was the steel key that had unlocked a treasury of incalculable wealth—wealth that poured forth, and continues to pour forth, in a stream ever expanding with the growth of population. Solicitude for the well-being of new settlers became the bed-rock of C.P.R. policy. On that basis, the company won its way to a prosperity that was assisted by developments which, in their magnitude and the foresight that inspired them, were fitting sequels to the original enterprise. Early the C.P.R. provided three steel steamships to traverse the Great Lakes—craft since supplemented by magnificent Clyde-built vessels. Later it made a new water connection, with car ferries plying between Windsor, in Ontario, and Detroit, in Michigan. Afterwards the C.P.R. turned its attention to the lakes and rivers of British Columbia; and to-day on those waters it controls some twenty vessels, several of them of considerable size and appointed with superb quarters for travellers. Another fleet of twenty steamships carry passengers and merchandise between ports on the coast of British Columbia. But the C.P.R. has not been content merely to navigate Canadian waters. Early it established a trans-Pacific service connecting the Dominion with China and Japan, the pioneer vessels being replaced in 1891 by the famous Empress of India and her sister ships, which established a new standard of comfort in ocean travel. A later development was the trans-Atlantic service, also furnished with superb liners, and providing new means of communication between Canada and Liverpool, London, Bristol and Antwerp. Thus the C.P.R. has already extended its sphere of operations two-thirds round the world; all that is needed to complete the circle being a service of C.P.R. aeroplanes across Europe and Asia. The company’s combined fleets include sixty-seven steamships—a number about equal to all the battleships of the United States, Japan, France and Russia. The C.P.R. vessels, placed end to end, would form a line three and a half miles long. Between them they consume every day 2,903 tons of coal. Their crews and shore staffs form an army of 11,294 men. They annually cover a mileage equal to fifty-seven journeys round the earth.

Nor, on the land, has the C.P.R. been content with its three thousand miles of track stretching across the continent. To-day it controls over eleven thousand miles of railway, on which there are running 1,534 locomotives, 1,870 passenger cars and 48,850 freight and cattle cars.

Besides owning and working so many means of communication, this amazing railway company has endowed Canada with a chain of sixteen fine hotels, including the famous Château Frontenac at Quebec—a stately structure that cost £600,000 and has accommodation for a thousand guests; the Royal Alexandra, at Winnipeg, which, like the hotel at Vancouver, yields a yearly profit of £12,000; the Empress, at Victoria, which annually puts £14,000 into the coffers of the company; and the luxurious hotels, fitted with exquisite taste, at Lake Louise, Banff, and other health resorts in the mountains.

There is one thing that the C.P.R. does not do—it does not go in for farming. It might do so. It has enough land to carry on farming operations upon a scale commensurate with its other affairs, and to the tune of an annual profit that could not fall far short of £10,000,000. Providing and organising the necessary labour would constitute a difficulty (because, in a country where everybody can secure his own freehold, and grow prosperous in cultivating it, no one is content long to till the soil for an employer, let the wages be never so high). Still, the history of the C.P.R. affords abundant proof that it is not to be baulked by a difficulty; and therefore we must look in another direction for the reason why the C.P.R. does not farm, and probably has never so much as thought of doing so. Such action would be contrary to the purpose, policy and principles on which the fortunes of the C.P.R. have been founded. It is there to assist, not to compete with, the population. It sells its land. The quantity it sold last year was 975,030 acres, at an average price of £2 13s. 3d. per acre—an average price, by the way, that leaves out of account the irrigated land, of which 145,421 acres were sold, at £5 10s. 9½d. per acre.

Mention of the irrigated land prompts some reference to an undertaking which, while sufficiently interesting on its own merits, serves as an excellent illustration of the enterprising spirit in which the C.P.R. promotes the welfare of Western Canada and its people.

Part of the territory that came into the possession of the company was a stretch of land—between Calgary and a point some thirty miles west of Medicine Hat—which, while its capacity to produce bumper crops had been demonstrated, was liable in certain seasons to suffer from an inadequate rainfall. And since an occasional loss of crop is apt to have a demoralising effect, more particularly on new settlers who have not had time to accumulate a financial reserve, the C.P.R. decided that, before putting those 3,000,000 acres on the market, it would counteract the natural shortcoming, and ensure the agriculturist against loss, by carrying out a system of irrigation. For this purpose the area was divided into three sections—a Western Section, a Central Section and an Eastern Section. The Western Section was put in hand first, and, at an expenditure of over £1,000,000, the C.P.R. tapped the Bow River with a canal seventeen miles long, and of a width that varied from 60 feet at the bottom to 120 feet at the water level; it constructed a reservoir three miles long, half a mile wide and 40 feet deep; and it excavated 1,600 miles of primary and secondary canals (the former being 120 feet wide by 10 feet deep) and distributing ditches. These extensive works, involving the removal of more than 8,000,000 tons of earth, necessarily occupied some years; and thus, long before the canals and ditches had reached their limits, the artificial water supply had been tested for a season or so on parts of the area that were dealt with first. That early experience was conclusive; and the land was eagerly taken up. Now the C.P.R. have commenced to irrigate the Eastern Section—an area of 1,100,000 acres—and the work, which will occupy about three years, is estimated to cost £1,700,000. In this case heavier expenditure is necessitated by a greater difficulty in reaching the source of supply, and 3,500 miles of canals and ditches have to be constructed. Afterwards the Central Section will be put in hand.

On visiting a number of irrigated farms in the Western Section, I found their prosperous proprietors enthusiastic in praise of artificial watering, of which, indeed, the fruits were visible. Not that an abundant harvest is the only advantage yielded by the system. In the glorious Canadian sunshine, herbage is liable to become so dry that a chance spark will set it on fire; and farmers bore grateful testimony that, when this has befallen, the opening of an irrigation ditch proved an easy means of arresting the trouble. Again, food fishes are swept down the excavated waterways; and many an agriculturist, on discovering trout and pike flopping about in his furrows, has found himself with a strengthened faith in the wisdom of the C.P.R.

Nor must I omit to mention a new style of colonisation that has been devised and introduced by this inventive and indefatigable company. Hitherto, in the history of Canada and other new countries, the rule has been for a settler to arrive on empty land, and find himself compelled to build a habitation, dig a well, knock up outhouses and erect fencing before he can address himself to the crucial matter of cultivating the soil. In a flash of inspiration, it occurred to the C.P.R. that this awkward and irksome beginning of the new life is not inevitable; and that, before offering land for sale, they might just as well put the required buildings and appurtenances upon it, so that the new-comer who buys it shall be spared protracted initial labours for which, in all probability, he lacks the necessary training.

This novel idea grew and blossomed. The C.P.R. fenced off a number of holdings, and upon each built a neat little home, with a living-room, sleeping apartments, and a kitchen fitted with a large cooking stove. On each homestead it also built stabling and a barn, provided a source of drinking water, and set up fences. Nor did the C.P.R. stop there. In each case it ploughed forty acres of the land, and, in the following spring, seeded them. It thus prepared a group of “Ready-made Farms”—to quote the name bestowed upon these remarkable innovations in the domain of colonisation. They were offered on the C.P.R.’s usual terms of payment by instalments—the first of twelve annual instalments to be due after the first crop was harvested. It was merely stipulated that each family should possess at least £200, to carry them over the initial stage of their new existence.

The arriving stream of Canada’s immigrants—or, rather, the assembling army of Great Britain’s emigrants—provided many competitors for these new opportunities. I do not know whether the C.P.R. made a selection from among those competitors, or whether it accepted the earliest applicants. But, having visited last autumn the first group of Ready-made Farms to be occupied, I can testify that the hundred new neighbours, whether chosen by chance or discrimination, looked to be the sort of energetic and enthusiastic men who could be trusted to profit by the favours of fate. Those farmers (who, for the most part, followed other callings in the old country) had found their first crops in vigorous growth; and when I arrived they were largely occupied—with powerful machinery bought by the communal purse—in enlarging their areas of cultivation.

And in this connection I cannot forbear to mention a visit I paid, in that district, to one of the C.P.R. experimental farms. There I found an enthusiastic professor of agriculture, whose duty it was not only to test various grains and roots under local conditions of soil and climate, but to place his knowledge at the disposal of C.P.R. settlers who were in doubt or difficulty. During my brief stay several inquirers were attended to, their problems ranging from how potatoes should be stored to where a couple of good horses could promptly be purchased. Meanwhile, the professor’s buggy was waiting at the gate, and it seemed he was due to depart on a round of visits to farmers who, as I gathered, wanted to be shown how they could use their land to greatest advantage.

Thus this great corporation, originally and nominally a railway company, has brought nation-building to an art and a science.

Finally, I cannot refrain from mentioning two incidents that gave me personal peeps at the internal working of the C.P.R. Standing one Sunday afternoon on the crowded platform of Moose Jaw railway station, I witnessed the arrival of a train which, since no passengers were allowed to enter it, was easy to identify as a “special.” It held my attention for another reason. From an office on the permanent way there issued a squad of men clad in white overalls, immaculately clean, each with a bright little nosegay pinned to his breast. Some carried short ladders, others held pails, and each was armed with either a mop or a swab. Thus variously burdened, they ran with smiling faces to the train, and in a twinkling their many hands were busy on its exposed surfaces. Nor had two minutes passed before those dirty and travel-stained cars were aglow with polished panels, bright windows and shimmering brass. As the train moved out of the station I caught sight of a military looking figure standing in the gangway at the rear, his face alight with gratification. It was all a profound mystery to me until I sought explanations from one of the festive grooms, as he stood to recover breath after his late exertions.

“Oh,” he proudly panted, “that was Sir Thomas Shaughnessy, president of our road! I guess we sort of give him a surprise.”

A few months later I had occasion to visit the headquarters of the C.P.R. at Montreal; and, reaching an upper story of the great building, I found myself in the outer lobby of the directors’ department. It was, as luck would have it, a Saturday afternoon, and therefore I feared to find the place deserted even by such minor authority as could deal with my unimportant business.

“Everyone gone?” echoed the astonished office boy. “You bet your life they haven’t. The president’s in there”—indicating an office with his thumb. “There’s a vice-president in here”—again pointing—“and another vice-president over there”—directing my attention to yet a third door. “They’re mighty busy. Who d’you want to see?”

Having satisfied his curiosity on that point, I ventured to remark that they were working late.

“Late!” he protested. “It ain’t late. Why, they’ll be here till eight or nine to-night—Sir Thomas and the rest of ’em. And me, too! There’s always a lot to do on Saturdays.”

In a few words I told him of the week-end institution that had taken deep root in business circles on British soil.

“That wouldn’t suit us,” declared the C.P.R. office boy emphatically. “What! Go off pleasuring when there’s work to be done? Not likely!”

In the preceding chapter I showed how a huge stretch of Western Canada was opened up to civilisation and settlement by a railway. Another momentous development within the Dominion is about to occur. I refer to the project (now in hand) for constructing a railroad that will link Winnipeg with Port Nelson, on the western shore of Hudson Bay, and so give Central Canada a seaport—a seaport open seven months in the year.

The 397 miles of rails that remain to be laid will provide a shorter and cheaper route between the prairie provinces and Europe. In mere distance, the journey from the Manitoba capital to Liverpool will be reduced by about 900 miles. But that fact indicates the least part of the boon that is promised to commerce. The cost of carriage by land is considerably higher than the cost of carriage by water; and along the new route grain from Winnipeg will reach the steamship after a railway journey of 582 miles, instead of, as at present, a railway journey of either 1,422 or 1,904 miles.

Yet the new line is chiefly important for a reason apart from the reduction in freight and the revolution in trade which it is likely to effect. That line will unlock a new territorial treasury of natural resources, and open to the settler a region (known now as Keewatin) much larger than the Province of Manitoba. It will, moreover, be the first stage in the development of Northern Canada—those wonderful realms of long days which I am convinced are destined, by reason of their high agricultural potentialities, to strike the imagination of the world with the force of a great geographical revelation.

Here, then, and in certain subsequent chapters of this book, I definitely pass from one phase of my subject to the other. Yet, since forecasts are vain unless supported by facts, I shall make Canada of “To-day” throw light on Canada of “To-morrow.”

Things heard and things seen—just a stray fact or two—awakened my curiosity, and I went from end to end of the Dominion in a spirit of inquiry. Calling on all the provincial governments in the West, I pointed my finger to blank spaces on the map and asked: “What do you know about them?” This led to some significant experiences.

In British Columbia came the astonished reply: “Well, of course, there are people up in the Yukon—just here and there—mining. And gold, coal and copper mines are scattered about this province. More than that we know nothing, except that explorers have testified, concerning nearly every region they have visited, that the country is rich in fine timber and minerals. As for possessing any definite knowledge of central and northern British Columbia—why, sir, we still have only the most imperfect and superficial knowledge of this southern part. The other day I was over in Vancouver, and I went on the inaugural trip along a new railway running a few miles out of the city. Many of the leading citizens of Vancouver were in the cars, and there they were exclaiming in astonishment over a beautiful district that they had never dreamt was so near their doors!”

At Edmonton, the minister I interviewed jumped from his seat when he heard my inquiry, and, striding across his office, eagerly unrolled a huge map of his province. “Look!” he cried, as his hand swept over the bulk of the area. “That is all a sealed book to us. We know generally that it has a splendid climate, and that millions upon millions of acres are underlain with coal. But the whole of that country is unsurveyed, and practically the whole of it is unprospected and unexplored. You want to know about that land? Ah! and so do we. The Government wants very much to know about it. No doubt a lot of valuable data is in existence, if only it could be collected and collated. I mean the experiences of isolated missionaries, pioneer settlers and so on. People talk about Alberta as though it were a settled country! I have often seen Edmonton referred to as being in Northern Alberta! So no wonder you are surprised to find the Government with blank minds about half the territory under their authority. Look! The settlement north of Edmonton is still below the middle of the province. The whole of the northern part may be described as a practically unknown country.”

It was the same in Saskatchewan and Manitoba—the governments were eager to secure the very information I asked them to impart. But at the four capitals I received hints as to quarters in which reliable knowledge might be looked for. The result was that I interviewed several explorers, besides discovering, at Ottawa, a veritable mine of information about the great north lands. For the Federal Government and its chief geographer (Mr. R. E. Young) had preceded me in this search for obscure knowledge. A special committee, it seemed, had assembled, interviewed and cross-examined the handful of men who could speak from personal knowledge about the empty spaces on the map of Canada. Their evidence was placed at my disposal; and to that source I am largely indebted for the information in this chapter, and in those dealing with “New Saskatchewan” and “Northern Alberta.”

“Yes,” said Mr. J. Burr Tyrrell, the well-known mining engineer, who was in the Government Geological Service from 1883 to 1898, “I spent nine or ten years in the country to the west and south-west of Hudson Bay.”

“And you think well of agricultural possibilities there?” I asked.

“Undoubtedly,” said Mr. Tyrrell. “You may take Canada as a whole, and say that north of the present settled region there is a broad belt of several hundred miles that will be good for farming. It carries immense quantities of valuable timber. Beyond that belt is a great region which will yield valuable minerals.”

And now let me reproduce Mr. Tyrrell’s specific testimony concerning the region that will be opened up by the Hudson Bay Railway. He indicated a line running north-west from Churchill, and pointed out that the country north of that line is outside the farmer’s scope. South of the line there is a belt of from one to two hundred miles in width, which is sparsely wooded, having trees along the banks of streams and in sheltered positions. In this belt there are areas that would support a northern vegetation, but it is not, in his opinion, eminently suited for agriculture, there being but little decomposed soil there except in the valleys. South of that belt is a forest region, about two hundred miles wide, lying west of the Nelson River and extending along the Churchill River right away to the Mackenzie and Athabasca rivers. It is for the most part excellent agricultural land—as fine as can be found in the North-West.

“Everywhere,” said Mr. Tyrrell, “I found abundant evidence of rich vegetation, and wherever agriculture or horticulture had been attempted within the forest belt it had been eminently successful. I have seen growing in that country potatoes—and most excellent ones they were—carrots, turnips, cabbages, cauliflowers and all the ordinary garden produce that grows in Ontario. Indeed, the land there is similar to the Ontario land, and on it can be raised practically everything that can be raised in that province, if we leave the Niagara peninsula out of account. The summer is warm, and there is a good rainfall. The winter does not count, because things do not grow in the winter. A small part of the district is park country, half wooded. The belt is a continuation northward of the settled Saskatchewan country.”

In the specified area (through which the greater part of the new railway will pass) it appears that the Indians, when hunting in the spring, plant little patches of potatoes here and there, and return in the autumn to dig them for use in the winter. “On several occasions,” said Mr. Tyrrell, “I have gone out and dug a pail of beautiful potatoes from those little Indian gardens buried in the woods. They have received no hoeing, or any other sort of cultivation, from the time of planting to the time of digging.”

Mr. Tyrrell has no doubt that the country in question will support quite a thick population; and he mentioned that, south of the forest belt, and north of Lake Winnipeg (in other words, the region to be traversed by southern sections of the Hudson Bay Railway), “there is another magnificent area, from five to ten thousand square miles in extent, and as fine a country as is to be found in Manitoba or anywhere else. That area extends westward along the Churchill. These lands to the north of Lake Winnipeg are an extension of the same basin as the Manitoba clays.”

Let me now call another witness—Mr. A. P. Low, Deputy-Minister of Mines in the Federal Government, and, as an earlier chapter has borne witness, formerly a prominent member of the Geological Survey. In that capacity Mr. Low pursued some explorations in Keewatin, with the result that he is able to make the following contributions to our knowledge of this undeveloped region:

Between Norway House (which is north of Lake Winnipeg) and Hudson Bay the country is not very elevated, the highest points being probably about 1,000 feet above sea level. For about half the distance to the bay the traveller passes over a rolling plain, the rocks being ancient formations of the Laurentian and Huronian age, while farther on there is a deposit of limestone and sandstone. On the first half of the journey from Norway House to Churchill the country slopes very gently towards the bay, the grade being not more than eight or ten feet to the mile, if it be that. The north-eastern part of the country is practically a plain.

Mr. Low pointed out that considerable areas of swampy land exist. The rivers have thrown up banks, and there is only an occasional break in those banks to serve for drainage. In many places the river banks are from five to ten feet higher than the adjoining land, which consequently is more or less drowned for a distance often extending back as far as one can walk in a day.

He considers that probably half the country due east from Norway House—say for one hundred miles—would be fit for agriculture. There are, of course, very few settlements in there at present, and the only one Mr. Low visited was a Hudson Bay post at Trout Lake. There he found peas, potatoes and other garden crops growing and looking well. That no appreciable trouble occurred from summer frosts was shown by the condition of the green peas. Apparently, indeed, the climate is quite favourable for hardy crops. The soil areas fit for agriculture are fairly large, rocky hills occurring only at intervals; and he has no doubt that quite a large region will be available for future settlement.

With regard to the plain south-east of Nelson River, Mr. Low said it appears to be muskeg and spruce land rather than a hay area. He does not regard that low-lying country around Hudson Bay as of first-class agricultural value in its present form; but it shows a fair amount of vegetable growth, the subsoil is largely clay, and with some drainage, he thinks, a great deal of it will be good for farming.

Another influential witness is Mr. D. B. Dowling, of the Geological Survey. Speaking from personal knowledge of the region to be traversed by the railroad, Mr. Dowling threw light on the strips of raised land running beside the rivers. He said they represent a mile, or less than a mile, of well-made country covered by fine forests. “The centre portion between the streams,” he added, “is now exactly as it was when it first came from the sea, except that it has some vegetation on it which it had not at that time. All it needs is drainage. The soil and climate are good.”

On this crucial matter of farming prospects in the country to be opened up, the personal experience of two other members of the Geological Survey is available. I refer to Mr. Owen O’Sullivan and Mr. William McInnes. Mr. O’Sullivan, in 1904, was engaged in studying the west coast of James Bay, and in the summer of 1906 he started from Split Lake, on the Nelson, and went down the Little Churchill to the Big Churchill. The land about Big Lake, he said, is a good loamy soil, but from Big Lake to the Big Churchill the country is rocky and swampy, though with a good deal of rich clay loam in places. Mr. O’Sullivan was able to testify that very tasty potatoes are grown at Split Lake. In the month of June he ate some that had been grown during the previous year. He saw turnips, cabbage and lettuce growing, and they appeared to be very good. The potatoes were taken up on August 23rd and 25th. Some left in the ground had the tops touched pretty severely by frost in September. On being asked about the land near the head of Lake Winnipeg, Mr. O’Sullivan said he never tasted better potatoes than some that were grown at Cross Lake. Concerning a point far to the north of the terminus of the new line, this explorer had an interesting piece of information to impart. He saw lettuce and turnips growing at Churchill, and he is of opinion that potatoes, with proper attention, would mature there.

Special interest attaches to the experience of Mr. McInnes, because he zig-zagged across the actual ground to be crossed by the first half of the Hudson Bay Railway. The whole region from Split Lake to the Saskatchewan is, he said, a clay-covered country. In traversing that country he went by way of the Burntwood River and returned by way of the Grassy River, making a number of excursions between those two boundaries. After leaving Split Lake, he found the clay-covered country absolutely free from boulders and gravel. Even on the shores of the lakes, unless a height of about 800 feet were reached, no gravel bars were met with. “There is absolutely nothing to interfere with the cultivation of the soil,” testified Mr. McInnes. “The country has been repeatedly burnt over, and it is covered by a very open forest. Grasses grow fairly luxuriantly there, the blue joint grass and a wild rye being the prevailing species. I understand that these are a good meadow growth and make excellent fodder. While there in June, July and August I saw grass growing to a height of from eighteen inches to two feet.” Asked to indicate the extent of the country he was describing, Mr. McInnes computed it at about 10,000 square miles, adding that he did not mean to say the whole of that area was good agricultural land.

This explorer’s testimony will enable the reader, without consulting a map, to have a definite idea of the nature of the land along the new route. The Pas, on the Saskatchewan River, to the north-west of Lake Winnipegosis, may be taken as the starting-point of the line, since a railway to that place has for some time been constructed as part of the Canadian Northern system. Setting out from the Pas, and proceeding towards Nelson, Mr. McInnes passed through about 140 miles of country underlain by the flat limestone of northern Manitoba. He walked for miles over bare hills that carried hardly any soil. Then he entered the clay belt previously mentioned. The railway, he explained, would traverse about 170 miles of those clay lands before it reached Split Lake.

Mr. McInnes pointed out that on the Nelson River wheat has been grown successfully at Norway House and at Cross Lake. The Hudson Bay people do not raise wheat at their posts nowadays, but formerly they grew it and ground it in hand-mills. He saw potatoes that had been produced fifty miles north of the Pas, and they were great showy specimens such as one sees at exhibitions. On July 11th, when Mr. McInnes arrived at Nelson, potatoes planted by the Indians had tops eleven inches high and almost ready to flower. When he returned to the Pas, on September 6th, he found the Indian corn there was very well headed out, with large, fine ears quite ready for table use. He stayed at the Pas until September 29th, by which time the locality had not been visited by frost. “With eighteen hours of daylight, and no frost in the summer,” Mr. McInnes said, “vegetation is rapid; and in a country where you can grow Indian corn, you can grow practically anything.”

As the reader will probably have gathered, within the large territory to be traversed by the line there are four old posts at which missionaries and Hudson Bay people would be likely to have had instructive agricultural experience. I refer to Norway House, which, as already mentioned, lies to the north of Lake Winnipeg; Cross Lake post, which is north of Norway House; Cumberland House, which is north-west of the Pas; and Nelson House, which is east of the new line, at a point rather less than midway between the Pas and Port Nelson. Sir John Richardson bore witness in 1820 that wheat was successfully raised at Cumberland House. Speaking of Nelson House, the Rev. J. Semmens has said: “In my experience wheat is not a sure crop there. All depends upon the season. Oats and barley will do well any time.” The evidence of the Rev. Dr. John McDougall is also available. He said: “The district in which are situated Norway House, Cross Lake, Oxford House, Island Lake, Nelson House and Split Lake covers a wide area, and at each of these places garden vegetables and grain for personal requirements have been successfully grown for a number of years. Summer frosts are practically unknown, and the germination of vegetation, owing to the long hours of sunshine, is exceedingly rapid.”

That must conclude my summary of evidence tending to show that farming will flourish in the new region to be opened up. On other vital points I shall put some of the foregoing authorities again into the witness-box.

There is general agreement that the country possesses considerable timber wealth. Speaking of the region between Norway House and Hudson Bay, Mr. Low said the forests, as in so many parts of Canada, have been largely destroyed by fire, but around some of the large lakes, on their islands, and in other places a fine growth of timber is found, with white and black spruce pine, aspen poplar, and white birch running to eighteen inches in diameter. This is what Mr. Dowling said: “There is a strip all along the front of the bay which has no trees. Back in the interior there is timber. Along the river valleys the trees are always well grown.” Mr. O’Sullivan explained that the spruce and poplars in the valleys are sometimes twenty inches in diameter, and that the cottonwood grows to about fourteen inches in diameter. Speaking of the country generally, Mr. McInnes said there is a great deal of timber that would be fit for wood-pulp.

As to the country’s wealth of fish and game, the testimony is less qualified. Mr. Low mentioned that the inland waters of Keewatin would yield a tolerable abundance of whitefish, lake trout and other species, and he said that in Hudson Bay the Indians net a number of whitefish and ordinary river trout which have developed sea-going habits. From the same source we learn that along the east and north-west shores of Hudson Bay the excellent and beautifully coloured Arctic salmon is found. Mr. Low mentioned that black, silver and grey foxes are taken in the northern part of Keewatin, and they, with the beaver, the otter and the marten represent the principal furs of the country.

From Mr. Dowling we hear that the rivers of Keewatin abound with perch, dory and jackfish, while some of the larger streams contain sturgeon. He saw five bears, and testified that it is a great country for foxes, “which seem to be able to live on the sea-birds and mice.” Mr. O’Sullivan, after mentioning that sturgeon occur all through the Little Churchill River, and that some of them weigh forty pounds, added: “At Churchill you get the porpoise, which is quite an item when you have to keep dogs for the winter.”

Mr. McInnes found two companies turning to commercial account the fish of the lakes occurring within a convenient distance from the Saskatchewan. “Going out,” he said, “our party was short of pork and stopped to get supplies. In one night’s fishing the Indians caught so many sturgeon that we had enough to carry us for 150 miles, to the Hudson Bay post. One of the sturgeon was three feet long.” Ducks, he said, were fairly plentiful, and so were wild geese, “which live on all sorts of little shell-fish, water-beetles and crabs, besides the seeds of many water plants other than wild rice. I shot mallards in that country,” he went on to say, “and their crops were full of little bivalve shells about the size of my nail.” This was Mr. Tyrrell’s impressive testimony: “Some of the small, shallower lakes contain whitefish in enormous numbers. While paddling along in a canoe I have seen the fins of thousands sticking up out of the water. . . . There are all the fish the lakes will hold—they are as full as the water can supply food for them.” Mr. Tyrrell came across great herds of cariboo in the far north.

And now, through the eyes of those who have been there, we will glance at the mineral possibilities of the new country. Mr. Low pointed out that between Chesterfield and Fullerton there are several fairly good deposits of iron pyrites, and that some of these contain small deposits of gold, which, he mentioned, was also found by Dr. Wright somewhere in Whitcher Inlet. On the same authority we learn that “the general character of the southern part of Keewatin as regards mineral resources is good.” Mr. Dowling, however, inclined to the opinion that the country is not rich in minerals. But incidentally he observed: “There is iron ore, and the possibility of gold and silver ore, and also copper ores in the Grass River district. There is no asbestos. With reference to mica, it can be found all over the country, but in small pieces.” Mr. McInnes explained that, north of the Saskatchewan, he crossed forty miles of limestone that would be excellent for building purposes. On the Upper Winisk River he discovered a large area of so-called norite rock. That is the rock in which the nickel of Sudbury occurs. He examined samples under the microscope, and said the Keewatin formation is not to be distinguished from the Ontario formation. Mr. McInnes also found—this time at Cross Lake—an “area of Keewatin rocks, cut by intrusive granite, of the same character as the photogene of Western Ontario, which is almost always gold-bearing.” Mr. Tyrrell recognises great possibilities in the rocks of Keewatin, and he looks for “a large development at some time” in the copper industry between Chesterfield Inlet and the Copper Mine River. He said that “the Eskimos pick up native copper and make their implements from it.”

That, one would think, is a very valuable clue. Mr. Tyrrell showed me a large specimen of native copper that he had obtained from an Eskimo hunter. This eminent geologist saw gold and copper in rocks near Chesterfield Inlet, and he has “every confidence” that those rocks will produce workable ores.

And now I will finally recall the foregoing witnesses, in order that they may say what opinions they formed with reference to the climate of Keewatin. Mr. Low considered “the summer as equal to that of Saskatchewan.” “At Churchill,” said Mr. Dowling, “we had winds from the south-west practically all through the summer, and that made it very warm; but there were two days when the wind came from the north, and people wanted their overcoats at once.” From Mr. McInnes came the statement that “the country averages from four to five degrees in the summer months higher temperature than is found at the same latitude farther west.”

Speaking of the arable belt that is two hundred miles wide, Mr. Tyrrell said there is little or no summer frost there. At Nelson, gardening commences, he understood, at the end of May, and frost does not appear until about September 20th. He went on to make the following useful statement: “People must not suppose that vegetation is affected by the isothermal line, which merely connects points that have the same annual mean temperature. As things do not grow in the winter, the winter temperature has nothing to do with farming possibilities. The summer temperature is the only temperature that counts for growth in the northern country. As between two places in different latitudes, you have to take into consideration the length of the day and the amount of sunlight. Where the days have eighteen hours’ sun a plant will grow faster than where the days have only fourteen hours’ sun.” And again: “The large body of water in Hudson Bay and James Bay has an equalising effect on the winter temperature of the surrounding country, tending to make the summers cooler and the winters milder.”

And so, I think, the evidence is abundant that, when trains run between Winnipeg and Hudson Bay, one section of the Great North Lands, emerging from the mists of obscurity and misapprehension, will take its place among the most productive and habitable regions of the British Empire.