The names come to mind of Alfred Gordon, a young and gifted English poet now a resident of Montreal; of Ethelyn Wetherald, Robert Norwood, E. Pauline Johnson, the daughter of Chief Johnson of the Mohawks; of Virna Sheard, Alma Frances McCollum, Albert D. Watson, William McLennan, and William Douw Lighthall (whose recognition extends far beyond his native country); of Charles Mair, whose Tecumseh contains much that is excellent in poetic lore. Marjorie L. C. Pickthall has already established a claim to the wide recognition that opens before her, and her poem The Lamp of Poor Souls must be especially remembered. Jean Blewett is one of the most thoughtful and beautiful of the present choir of singers. Mrs. Blewett is Canadian born, and something of the high seriousness of life that characterises the Reverend Canon Scott seems reflected in the poems of Mrs. Blewett; as in the following, entitled Discontent:

"My soul spoke low to Discontent:
    Long hast thou lodged with me,
Now, ere the strength of me is spent,
    I would be quit of thee.

"Thy presence means revolt, unrest,
    Means labour, longing, pain;
Go, leave me, thou unwelcome guest,
    Nor trouble me again.

"Then something strong and sweet and fair
    Rose up and made reply:
Who gave you the desire to dare
    And do the right? 'Twas I.

"The coward soul craves pleasant things,
    Soft joys and dear delights—
I scourged you till you spread your wings
    And soared to nobler heights.

"You know me but imperfectly—
    My surname is Divine;
God's own right hand did prison me
    Within this soul of thine,

"Lest thou, forgetting work and strife,
    By human longings prest,
Shouldst miss the grandest things of life,
    Its battles and unrest."

Breaking Camp
Breaking Camp

Helena Coleman has much of that spiritualisation of vision which was so evident in Adelaide Proctor, and which was exalted to the supremest poetic art by Mrs. Browning. From Miss Coleman's Love's Higher Way these stanzas are taken:

"Constrain me not! Dost thou not know
That if I turn from thee my face
'Tis but to hide the overflow

"Of love? We need a little space
And solitude in which to kneel
And thank our God for this high grace

"That He hath set His holy seal
Upon our lives. My heart doth burn
With consciousness of all I feel

"And own to thee, and if I turn
For one brief moment from thy gaze,
'Tis but that I may better learn

"To bear the unaccustomed blaze
Of that white light that like a flame
Thy love has set amidst my days."

Of Isabella Valancy Crawford, who flashed like a glancing star across Canadian skies, and whose death in 1887 (at the age of thirty-six) was a signal loss to her adopted country, Mr. Garvin, at once her biographer and the editor of the complete edition of her poems, well says: "A great poet dwelt among us and we scarce knew her." William Douw Lighthall pronounces Isabella Valancy Crawford the most impressive Canadian poet next to Roberts. "This wonderful girl, living in the 'Empire' Province of Ontario, early saw the possibilities of the new field around her, and had she lived longer might have made a really matchless name. It was only in 1884 that her modest volume came out. The sad story of unrecognised genius and death was re-enacted."

This volume of Miss Crawford's was handicapped by an infelicitous title. Old Spookses' Pass; Malcolm's Katie, and other Poems, was hardly a description to invite further investigation. The book passed almost unnoticed, and within three years its author died. "She was a high-spirited, passionate girl," says Mr. Lighthall, "and there is little doubt that the neglect of her book was the cause of her death. Afterward her verse was seen to be phenomenal.... It was packed with fine stuff."

Malcolm's Katie is the story of a man and a maid, the man going forth in the woodlands to hew a home with his axe, and the maid remaining in faith and devotion in her home. It is a long poem in blank verse, strewn with occasional lyrics, of which one runs:

"O Love builds on the azure sea,
    And Love builds on the golden sand,
And Love builds on the rose-winged cloud,
    And sometimes Love builds on the land!

"O if Love build on sparkling sea,
    And if Love build on golden strand,
And if Love build on rosy cloud,
    To Love these are the solid land!

"O Love will build his lily walls,
    And Love his pearly roof will rear
On cloud, or land, or mist, or sea—
    Love's solid land is everywhere!"

Mr. Lighthall is himself a poet of distinction and one of the best translators of French poetry. Among his finest work is a poem on Homer, breathing the very spirit of classic ages. Another is entitled Canada Not Last, a sonnet series to Venice, Florence, and Rome, the concluding sonnet, which follows, relating to Canada:

"Rome, Florence, Venice—noble, fair, and quaint,
    They reign in robes of magic round me here;
But fading blotted, dim, a picture faint,
    With spell more silent only pleads a tear.
Plead not! Thou hast my heart, O picture dim!
    I see the fields, I see the autumn hand
Of God upon the maples! Answer Him
    With weird, translucent glories, ye that stand
Like spirits in scarlet and in amethyst!
I see the sun break over you; the mist
On hills that lift from iron bases grand
Their heads superb!—the dream, it is my native land!"

Another genuine poet is Peter McArthur, one time editor of New York Truth and now farming at his old home in Ontario. Mr. McArthur has published but one volume of verse, but that volume is enough to place him securely well up among the truly authentic voices in the Canadian choir. Everything he writes has a markedly individual quality. There is nothing in him, as one writer has said, of the mere æsthetic or dilettante; he is alive to his finger tips. Mr. McArthur has a keen eye and ear for the common things of the life about him, as witness A Thaw:

"The farmhouse fire is dull and black,
    The trailing smoke rolls white and low
Along the fields till by the wood
It banks and floats unshaken, slow;
The scattering sounds seem near and loud,
    The rising sun is clear and white.
And in the air a mystery stirs
    Of wintry hosts in coward flight.

"Anon the south wind breathes across
    The frozen earth its bonds to break,
Till at the call of life returned
    It softly stirs but half awake.
The cattle clamour in their stalls,
    The house-dog barks, he knows not why.
The cock crows by the stable door,
    The snow-birds, sombre-hued, go by.

"The busy housewife on the snow
    To bleach lays out her linen store,
And scolds because with careless feet
    The children track the spotless floor.
With nightfall comes the slow warm rain,
    The purl of waters fills the air,
And save where roll the gleaming drifts
    The fields lie sullen, black, and bare."

But Mr. McArthur does not write simply of the life around him; the life within is of greater import to him. Here, as evidence of this, is a fine sonnet of his, entitled Summum Bonum. Mr. McArthur, it might be noted in passing, is a real master of the sonnet for all his few accomplishments in that form of verse:

"How blest is he that can but love and do,
    And has no skill of speech nor trick of art
Wherewith to tell what faith approveth true
    And show for fame the treasures of his heart.
When wisely weak upon the path of duty
    Divine accord has made his footing sure
With humble deeds he builds his life to beauty,
    Strong to achieve and patient to endure.
But they that in the market-place we meet,
    Each with his trumpet and his noisy faction,
Are leaky vessels, pouring on the street
    The truth they know ere it hath known its action:
Yet which, think ye, in His benign regard,
Or words or deeds shall merit the reward?

Agnes Maule Machar is another of the group of patriotic poets whose theme is often that of the Empire. She discerns the imperial conditions, and she is intensely in sympathy with the richness and beauty of the land. In Miss Machar's A Prayer for Dominion Day these fine lines occur:

"O God of nations, who hast set her place
    Between the rising and the setting day,
    Her part in this world's changeful course to play,
Soothe the conflicting passions that we trace
In her unrestful eyes—grant her the grace
    To know the one true, perfect love, that may
    Give noble impulse to her onward way—
God's love, that doth all other love embrace!"

Lloyd Roberts, one of the young poets of the Dominion, the eldest living son of Charles G. D. Roberts, is true to his poetic birthright, and is the author of an impressive war poem, Come Quietly, England, which opens as follows:

"Come quietly, England, all together, come!
    It is time!
We have waited, weighed, and blundered, wondered
Who had blundered;
        Stared askance at one another
        As our brother slew our brother,
And went about our business,
Saying, 'It will be all right—some day.
    Let the soldiers do the killing—
    If they're willing—
        Let the sailors do the manning,
        Let the cabinets do the planning.

Let the bankers do the paying
And the clergy do the praying.
    The Empire is a fixture,
        Walled and welded by five oceans,
    And a little blood won't move it,
        Nor a flood-tide of emotions.'
Well, now we know the truth
    And the facts of all this fighting;
How 'tis not for England's glory
    But for all a wide world's righting.

* * * * *

        "What Washington starved and strove for
In the long winter night;
        Lincoln wept for, died for,—
Do we doubt if he were right?

* * * * *

        "And who would fear to follow
    When Nelson sets the course?
        And who would turn his eyes away
    From Wellington's white horse?
        Not one, I warrant, now—
    Not one at home to-day;
        In England? In Scotland?
    In the Green Isle cross the way?
No, nor far away to Westward
    Beyond the leagues of foam—
They are coming, they are coming,
    Their feet are turning home.
In Canada they're singing,
    And love lies like a flame
About their throats this morning
    Their sea-winds cannot tame.
Africa? Australia?
    Aye a million throats proclaim
That their Motherland is Mother still
    In something more than name!

"It is time! Come, all together, come!
Not to the fife's call, not to the drum;
        Right needs you; Truth claims you—
    That's a call indeed
    One must heed!

Not for the weeping
    (God knows there is weeping!)
Not for the horrors
    That are blotting out the page;
Not for our comrades
    (How many now are sleeping!)
        Nor for the pity nor the rage,
But for the sake of simple goodness
    And His laws
We shall sacrifice our all
    For the Cause!"

One of the most brilliant of Canadian poets is Arthur Stringer, though he is more widely known as a novelist, his Silver Poppy and Wire Tappers having been the successes of their day. Mr. Stringer's poetic work is striking for its variety and range. He has written lyrics and sonnets of almost Keats-like quality, and with as ready facility has written poems in the most modern form of vers libre. Then he has turned to the literature of ancient Greece and given us such things of pure beauty in blank verse as Hephæstus and Sappho in Leucadia, which do not shrink in comparison with any other modern work of their kind; and again has presented us with such pitilessly realistic and convincing pictures as The Woman in the Rain. He has also written verse of the Celtic order, his volume of Irish Poems being a well of true Irish humour and feeling. And yet, withal, Stringer is Canadian in every nerve and fibre of him. Listen to his Going Home:

"I tread each mountain waste austere,
    I pass dark pinelands, hill by hill;
Each tardy sunrise brings me near,
    Each lonely sunset nearer still.

"Sing low, my heart, of other lands
    And suns we may have loved, or known:
This silent North, it understands,
    And asks but little of its own!

"So where the homeland twilight broods
    Above the slopes of dusky pine,
Teach me your silence, solitudes;
    Your reticence, grey hills, be mine!

"Whether all loveliness it lies,
    Or but a lone waste scarred and torn,
How shall I know? For 'neath these skies
    And in this valley I was born."

Here is a characteristic poem of Stringer's entitled War, written years ago, and yet reading as if the ink in which it was written were still wet:

"From hill to hill he harried me;
    He stalked me day and night.
He neither knew nor hated me;
    Not his nor mine the fight.

"He killed the man who stood by me,
    For such they made his law.
Then foot by foot I fought to him,
    Who neither knew nor saw.

"I aimed my rifle at his heart;
    He leapt up in the air.
My screaming ball tore through his breast,
    And lay embedded there.

"Lay but embedded there, and yet
    Hissed home o'er hill and sea,
Straight to the aching heart of one
    Who'd wronged not mine nor me."

As a specimen of Stringer's skill in handling of blank verse, here is a portion of the farewell between Sappho and Phaon in Sappho in Leucadia:

    Sappho. But you,—
You will forget me, Phaon; there the sting.
The sorrow of the grave is not its green
And the salt tear upon its violet;
But the long years that bring the grey neglect,
When the glad grasses smooth the little mound,—
When leaf by leaf the tree of sorrow wanes
And on the urn unseen the tarnish comes,
And tears are not so bitter as they were,
Time sings so low to our bereavèd ears,—
So softly breathes, that, bud by falling bud,
The garden of fond Grief all empty lies
And unregretted dip the languid oars
Of Charon thro' the gloom, and then are gone.

    Phaon. Red-lipped and breathing woman, made for love,
How can this clamouring heart of mine forget?

    Sappho. You will forget, e'en though you would or no,
And the long years shall leave you free again;
And in some other Spring when other lips
Let fall my name, you will remember not.

    Phaon. Enough,—but let me kiss the heavy rose
Of your red mouth.

    Sappho. Not until Death has kissed
It white as these white garments, and has robed
This body for its groom.

Another characteristic poem of Stringer's, entitled A Prayer in Defeat, will bear comparison with William Ernest Henley's famous Unafraid:

"Still hurl me back, God, if Thou must!
    Thy wrath, see, I shall bear—
I have been taught to know the dust
    Of battle and despair.

"Bend not to me this hour, O God,
    Where I defeated stand;
I have been schooled to bear thy rod,
    And still wait, not unmanned!

"But should some white hour of success
    Sweep me where, vine-like, lead
The widening roads, the clamouring press—
    Then I thy lash shall need!

"Then, in that hour of triumph keen,
    For then I ask thine aid;
God of the weak, on whom I lean,
    Keep me then unafraid!"

Space cannot be found for it here, but following are a few verses from another beautiful poem, St. Ives' Poor. The idea of this poem is found in the old saying that in the giving of alms the Christ is revealed:

"For O, my Lord, the house-dove knows her nest
    Above my window builded from the rain;
In the brown mere the heron finds her rest,
    But these shall seek in vain.

"And O, my Lord, the thrush may fold his wing,
    The curlew seek the long lift of the seas,
The wild swan sleep amid his journeying;
    There is no place for these.

"Thy dead are sheltered; housed and warmed they wait
    Under the golden fern, the falling foam;
But these Thy living wander desolate,
    And have not any home."

And here is an exquisite poem, The Immortal, which is full of Miss Pickthall's own music:

"Beauty is still immortal in our eyes,
When sways no more the spirit-haunted reed,
When the wild grape shall build
No more her canopies,
When blows no more the moon-grey thistle seed,
When the last bell has lulled the white flocks home,
When the last eve has stilled
The wandering wing, and touched the dying foam,
When the last moon burns low, and, spark by spark,
The little worlds die out along the dark—

"Beauty that rosed the moth-wing, touched the land
With clover-horns and delicate faint flowers;
Beauty that bade the showers
Beat on the violet's face,
Shall hold the eternal heavens within their place,
And hear new stars come singing from God's hand."

We cannot resist, before leaving Miss Pickthall, quoting a lovely little lyric of hers called simply Serenade:

"Dark is the Iris meadow,
    Dark is the ivory tower,
And lightly the young moth's shadow
    Sleeps on the passion flower.

"Gone are our day's red roses,
    Lovely and lost and few,
But the first star uncloses
    A silver bud in the blue.

"Night, and a flame in the embers
    When the seal of the years was set;
When the almond bough remembers
    How shall my heart forget?"

Passing mention has been made of the names of Ethelwyn Wetherald and Pauline Johnson, but the work of these poets is too distinctive to avoid some reference to it. Miss Wetherald has published some half-dozen books of verse, all made up chiefly of short lyrics, and all possessing an individual quality which may well be called unique. Here is one of her strongest poems, entitled Prodigal Yet:

"Muck of the sty, reek of the trough,
    Blackened my brow where all might see,
Yet while I was a great way off
    My Father ran with compassion for me.

"He put on my hand a ring of gold
    (There's no escape from a ring, they say);
He put on my neck a chain to hold
    My passionate spirit from breaking away.

"He put on my feet the shoes that miss
    No chance to tread in the narrow path;
He pressed on my lips the burning kiss
    That scorches deeper than fires of wrath.

"He filled my body with meat and wine,
    He flooded my heart with love's white light!
Yet deep in the mire, with sensuous swine,
    I long—God help me!—to wallow to-night.

"Muck of the sty, reek of the trough,
    Blacken my soul where none may see.
Father, I yet am a long way off—
    Come quickly. Lord! Have compassion on me!"

It has been indicated that Pauline Johnson, whose death a few years ago is still fresh in the memory of those who knew her and her work, was Indian by birth and her poetry is marked by the vigour and virility which such a fact would imply. How Red Men Can Die and The Cry of an Indian Wife are perhaps her best-known poems, but they are too long to quote here. Following, however, is a little poem, The Honey Bee, which shows Miss Johnson's keen feeling for colour, as well as her fine lyric quality:

"You are belted with gold, little brother of mine,
    Yellow gold, like the sun
That spills in the west, as a chalice of wine
    When feasting is done.

"You are gossamer-winged, little brother of mine,
    Tissue winged, like the mist
That broods where the marshes melt into a line
    Of vapour sun-kissed.

"You are laden with sweets, little brother of mine,
    Flower sweets, like the touch
Of hands we have longed for, of arms that entwine,
    Of lips that love much.

"You are better than I, little brother of mine,
    Than I, human-souled,
For you bring from the blossoms and red summer shine,
    For others, your gold."

The poet has no country save that of the kingdom of song, or rather, all countries are his own, and while Canada cannot claim Robert W. Service by birth, it is he who has so made himself the poet of her scenic grandeur and her primitive human experiences in the deepest emotions of life, love, death, sacrifice, revenge, that no sketch of Canadian poetry could omit the name of one who has made the Dominion known, in its grandeur and its mountain solitudes, the world over. Mr. Service has inevitably been much quoted in these pages; no one can travel in Canada, no one can write of Canada, without this perpetual consciousness of the vivid way in which he has translated her landscapes and her life. What a ring of the vitality that conquers the wilderness is in his Call of the Wild!

"Have you suffered, starved, and triumphed, grovelled down,
        yet grasped at glory,
    Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole?
'Done things' just for the doing, letting babblers tell the story,
    Seeing through the nice veneer the naked soul?
Have you seen God in His splendours, heard the text that
        nature renders
    (You'll never hear it in the family pew),
The simple things, the true things, the silent men who do
        things?—
    Then listen to the wild—it's calling you.

"They have cradled you in custom, they have primed you with
        their preaching,
They have soaked you in convention through and through;
They have put you in a showcase; you're a credit to their
        teaching—
    But can't you hear the wild?—it's calling you.
Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us;
    Let us journey to a lonely land I know.
There's a whisper on the night-wind, there's a star agleam to
        guide us,
    And the wild is calling, calling ... let us go."

In The Law of the Yukon we find:

"This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain;
'Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and
        your sane;
Strong for the red rage of battle; sane, for I harry them sore;
Send me men girt for the combat,—men who are grit to the core;
Send me the best of your breeding, lend me your chosen ones;
Them will I take to my bosom, them will I call my sons;
Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat;
But the others, the misfits, the failures,—I trample under my feet.

* * * * * * * *

"'I am the land that listens, I am the land that broods;
Steeped in eternal beauty, crystalline waters and woods.
Monstrous, moody, pathetic, the last of the lands and the first,
Visioning campfires at twilight, sad with a longing forlorn.'

* * * * * * * *

"This is the law of the Yukon, that only the Strong shall thrive;
That surely the Weak shall perish, and only the Fit survive;
Dissolute, damned, and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain,
This is the law of Will of the Yukon,—Lo, how she makes it plain!"

Robert Service has many moods, and in the tender little lyric Unforgotten he dramatises the way in which one's real life lies in his consciousness rather than enchained with the bodily presence:

"I know a garden where the lilies gleam,
    And one who lingers in the sunshine there;
    She is than white-stoled lily far more fair.
And oh, her eyes are heaven-lit with dream.

"I know a garret, cold and dark and drear,
    And one who toils and toils with tireless pen,
    Until his brave, sad eyes grow weary—then
He seeks the stars, pale, silent as a seer.

"And ah, it's strange, for desolate and dim
    Between these two there rolls an ocean wide;
    Yet he is in the garden by her side
And she is in the garret there with him."

One of the wonderful poems of Mr. Service is that of My Madonna. The artist "haled" him "a woman from the street" for his model; he painted her:

"I painted her as she might have been
    If the Worst had been the Best,"

and she "laughed at the picture and went away," but a connoisseur came and exclaimed:

        "'Tis Mary, the Mother of God."

"So I painted a halo round her hair,
    And I sold her, and took my fee,
And she hangs in the church of Saint Hilaire,
    Where you and all may see."

Mount Robson, at a Distance of Ten Miles
Mount Robson, at a Distance of Ten Miles

CHAPTER XIII

THE CALL OF THE CANADIAN WEST

The call of the Canadian West is far less the call of the adventurer, of the speculator, of the seeker of vast and sudden wealth than it is the call to carry an enlightened civilisation into the vast new region that beckons to humanity invested with all the alluring glory of the Promised Land. It is nearly three hundred years ago that the Pilgrim Fathers landed in New England to conquer the wilderness. But the Pilgrims did not find that the railways had gone before and prepared the way with luxurious trains of Pullman cars, or that telegraph and telephone service, in all varieties, to say nothing of Marconigrams, daily mails, motor cars, and various other amenities of life, were awaiting them. The New England of to-day is more indebted to the past half century for its advance than it is to the preceding two and a half centuries. So it may be fairly claimed that the Canadian West begins with the degree of progress, so far as mechanical conveniences and resources go, to which older countries have but just advanced. It is the heir of all the ages.

In normal times, before the War, there was an annual immigration into Canada that approximated to the number of four hundred thousand people, of whom more than fifty thousand were from the United States. There was said to be in round numbers from fifty to seventy thousand who were neither from the States nor from the British Isles, while the remainder were chiefly from England, Scotland, or Wales. The Irish immigration is more attracted to the States, as more than twelve millions of their race are already incorporated into the population of that country.

Two leading factors produce this large immigration into the Dominion. One is that Canada is a country whose richness of resources, climatic conditions, and scenic beauty are incomparable; the other is that there are wise and liberal provisions made by the government to offer desirable and attractive conditions and judicious inducements to the right sort of men to establish their homes in Canada. Thousands of prosperous farmers already scattered over Western Canada began, not many years ago, with inconsiderable capital, but their intelligence, industry, and integrity have carried the way and developed conditions of living that are eminently satisfactory.

The excellent character of the land in Western Canada is well displayed in the great region opened up by the Grand Trunk Pacific. Following for fifty miles the valley of the Assiniboine River, the line of railway goes through the drainage basin of Qu'Appelle River, and on into the great basin of the south Saskatchewan River, crossing it at Saskatoon, the width of this basin being some 200 miles. Then on through the western part of Saskatchewan and the eastern part of Alberta, the railway makes a gradual ascent through sandhills and ridges until crossing the third steppe it proceeds for the remaining 130 miles, to Edmonton, over a level country. With the exception, and that an inconsiderable one, of these sandhills and ridges, there is no waste land between Winnipeg and Edmonton.

In the whole region now opened to civilisation by the Grand Trunk Pacific, there extends a belt of rich farming land from 300 to 500 miles in width from north to south and some 1000 miles in length from east to west. From Winnipeg to the west, the physical properties of the land are found by trained experts to be exceptionally advantageous for the growing of wheat, oats, barley, and flax; "in fact," says Professor Clifford Willis (a recognised authority on soil physics), "the yields of small grain of this type were the best that I have seen anywhere in the best tilled fields of the United States." Professor James H. Pettit, of Cornell University, who won his doctor's degree from the University of Göttingen for work in soil fertility and bacteriology, finds that this recently opened up region possesses some of the richest soils, and that this is due to the alluvial deposits of the large area once covered by the old glacial Lake Agassiz. These deposits have left a soil of silt and clay that is capable of producing thirty-five or forty bushels of wheat, and eighty or ninety bushels of oats to the acre.

To "mixed farming" as well as to the production of grain alone, or of live stock, all this enormous region lends itself. Before the country was opened and rendered accessible by the Grand Trunk Pacific, the region was practically a wilderness. The land was fertile, the numerous rivers and the lakes provided a sufficiency of water and generally promising conditions, but until transit was provided all these were unavailing. Prosperous towns have now sprung up all along the line of the railway, and the settlement of the country progresses with incredible swiftness. The settler arrives with his twentieth-century equipment. The contrast between the manner in which Canada is being gracefully and luxuriously settled, and that of the mid-nineteenth-century settlement of the western part of the United States, is something with which to reckon. The Canadian pioneer arrives in his Pullman car instead of the "prairie schooner" that slowly and wearily traversed the plains west of the Mississippi. He starts a steam engine to plough the land, and if trees or stumps come in his way he exterminates them with celerity by machinery. When the harvesting time comes, wonderful mechanisms cut the grain and bind it, while his trucks are perhaps equipped with motor power and swiftly carry the grain direct from the threshing-machines to the elevators, from which it is shipped to market. Wherefore, indeed, should he taste drudgery? Is he not the heir to all the ages?

The marked liberality of the Canadian Government in its universal provision for higher education is one of the features of the Dominion that can never be too deeply emphasised. Winnipeg, Saskatoon, and Edmonton are all seats of universities, whose privileges are open to women on equal terms. At both Winnipeg and Saskatoon are also agricultural colleges, offering practical instruction in scientific farming, and the ways of wealth are at once made plain for the youth of the region.

Mount Robson Glacier
Mount Robson Glacier

Churches spring up wherever there are people, for religion and education go hand in hand in Canada.

The garden facilities are not the least of the attractions to settlers. The abundance with which garden stuff of all kinds—potatoes, peas, beans, onions, turnips, pumpkins, and squash, as well as lettuce, radishes, rhubarb, and small fruits—grow in all this region is something to see.

This agricultural empire is so great in its promise for the future, so interesting and enchaining in its present development, that there is hardly a limit to the imagination regarding its importance in a not distant period.

The "great North-West" is a term which has been commonly employed to designate the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and the northern part of British Columbia. It is rather a vague term; yet it indicates, if it does not exactly define, a region of unrivalled scenic grandeur, and of such potential resources and favourable conditions of climate as to virtually add a new continent to the world. Such is the march of progress, however, that at the time of writing the "North-West," strictly speaking, is that portion of the land north of these provinces stretching eastward to Hudson Bay and northward to the Arctic Ocean and including that part of the Yukon on the Canadian side of the Alaskan border. This definition is according to Watson Griffin's map of the Dominion of Canada in his accurate and authoritative work, Canada of the Twentieth Century, which appeared in May, 1916, bringing all matter pertaining to the country up to date with statistical accuracy. It is pointed out by Mr. Griffin that in the older provinces, such as Quebec and Ontario, the climate has been virtually transformed by the culture of the soil. In southern Manitoba it is also on record that while the early settlers lost their crops by summer frosts, no such disasters are now experienced. The experiments in agriculture have proved that the soil under cultivation stores up the heat received during the long, bright days, and that the radiation of this heat at night prevents the fatal frosts. Climatic conditions are not, therefore, arbitrary and fixed beyond control, but are largely amenable to civilisation. It is this fact that lends probability to the expectation of creating prosperous conditions for living in the region north of the sixtieth parallel. "In fact," says Mr. Watson Griffin, "at some of the Hudson's Bay Company posts in these territories the clearing, draining, and cultivation of the land has already had a remarkable effect, and if this is true where very small areas have been brought under cultivation, it is conceivable that the cultivation of wide areas might have a very great influence in preventing summer frosts." If well-cultivated soil does receive and store the sun's heat it seems reasonable to suppose that in these northern districts, where the summer days are so long, the general opening of the soil to the sun and air should have a marked effect.

The most reliable experts unite in the conviction that the Mackenzie Basin is capable of supporting an agricultural population. The soil is rich; and in that part of the Basin alone, lying between Athabasca Lake and the Arctic Ocean, there is a belt of land 940 miles long and over 60 miles wide. Ninety miles south of latitude sixty-three ripe strawberries are found. A little farther to the south currants and other small fruits grow luxuriantly. There are already scanty settlements, remote and apart, in this country, and an increasing population of huntsmen, fur-traders, and tourists to whom sport is the attraction; and the first consideration that would occur to the traveller, or to any student of this almost unmapped region of infinite space, would be as to the ways and means for safeguarding human life and for the maintenance of law and order. For untold centuries this region has been the home and haunt of the Indians and of wild and ferocious animals. The Indian tribes possessed all this district in which to roam at will. Their means of subsistence were hunting and fishing, and their resources for clothing consisted in the skins and furs of captured animals. Any adequate conception of the wildness of this unbroken wilderness is almost impossible to grasp. The primæval forests impenetrable with their dense growth of underbrush, fallen trees, colossal rocks washed bare by the beating storms of centuries, with uncounted and fairly innumerable leagues of lakes, rivers, swamps—how unconquerable this primitive world of Nature! Yet the call of the North-West, even this remote and unknown North-West, has sounded, and the ear of poet, prophet, and priest is that which registers the cry unheard and unheeded by others.

It is a significant commentary on human life, in its assertion of that divinity which man feels within him, that the first white men to fare forth to penetrate this wilderness were the French missionary priests, and that the intense motive that drew them into hardships and dangers incredible was that of the love of God and the longing to make known to the untamed Red Man the help and comfort of the Divine Power—to bring to these children of nature something of the message of a diviner destiny. "To Pierre Radisson and his comrade, the Sieur Groseillers, belong the credit of having first penetrated this vast tract of undiscovered country," writes Mr. A. L. Haydon in his remarkable book, The Riders of the Plains. No romance was ever more enthralling than this volume, nor would it be possible to offer any adequate interpretation of the great North-West that did not take account of Mr. Haydon's work. With the thrilling adventures of these French missionaries all students of history are acquainted; and it is such a chapter in life and in literature that any transcription of the experiences would of itself make a volume. In its fulness it can only perhaps be found in the pages of the Recording Angel. "They plunged into the unknown," says Mr. Haydon; "took the daring leap that all such pioneers are called upon to take; and along the paths they blazed followed a host of others hardly less intrepid. He who would read of the further discovery and exploitation of the North-West of Canada must study the glowing life-stories of Marquette, Joliet, La Salle, De la Verendrye, and others."

There were also temporal as well as spiritual leadings. The adventurous fur-traders pushed further and further into the primæval wilderness and established forts as centres of supplies and as definite places for their barter with the Indians. Two separate and important companies entered on this quest, the famous Hudson's Bay Company and the North-West Fur Company. The outposts that each of these energetic associations established were like lighted torches into the darkness; even this untrodden wilderness began to respond to the first conquest of humanity. Myths and traditions also led on. There were rumours in the air, whisperings of voices on the wind, that some vast and unknown sea lay between the western coast and Japan. The Pacific Ocean was known, but these nebulous intimations pointed to a body of water never yet discovered. In 1731 the Sieur De la Verendrye, as gallant a gentleman as ever sought his fortune in the new world, started gaily from Montreal upon the quest for this great sea. With his company he took the route up the Red River to its junction with the Assiniboine, making camp at Fort Rouge, the site of the present city of Winnipeg. Rumours still haunted the air of "mighty waters beyond the mountains," and over the infinite and trackless expanse of prairie they still further extended the march, but the formidable foothills of the Rocky Mountains proved too great a barrier, and it was due to the persistence, and probably, too, also to the greater physical vigour of a young fur-trader, Alexander Mackenzie, of the North-West Company, that the mysteries of the mountain ranges were penetrated, the foothills crossed, and the river traced that now bears his name.

These two fur-trading companies became important factors in the development of the North-West. There was an intense rivalry between them, yet the very intensity of the discord and ill feeling became an added impetus in the rivalry of exploration. Many and diverse qualities are brought into play in the conquering of a wilderness. Evil and good are always sown together like the wheat and the tares, and even the evil has its part to play and its work to do. Of this fierce rivalry between the two was born that activity which created so large a number of trading-posts, and the energy that founded numerous settlements, many of which are now recognised as prosperous centres.

In 1670, under the patronage of Prince Rupert, there was incorporated the "Honourable Company of Merchant-Adventurers Trading into Hudson's Bay," which developed later into the Hudson's Bay Company.

Pierre Radisson and the Sieur Groseillers, both among the most daring and heroic explorers the world has known, excited a wave of enthusiasm in England by the reports of the wilderness they carried back with them. For more than a century the Company under the patronage of Prince Rupert continued to carry on a prosperous business, and after this was merged into the Hudson's Bay Company, and again after the two rival associations united, a splendid business was developed. But while the rivalry had conduced to enterprise and exploration, the monopoly was as naturally concerned in not making too widely known the rich resources that might thus serve to attract other competitors.

Farming in Shellbrook District, Saskatchewan
Farming in Shellbrook District, Saskatchewan

By the mid-nineteenth century, however, the settlements of the great North-West had become so numerous that there began to be requirements for larger means of protection. The Hudson's Bay Company, at this time, held territory to the extent of over two million square miles. All this expanse was admitted into the confederation, to the reassurance and great satisfaction of the settlers scattered over this wide region; but to the alarm and prevailing dissatisfaction of another order of the inhabitants, the French half-breeds, who were themselves a force with which a reckoning had to be made. Their alarm culminated in the Rebellion of 1869, an outbreak suppressed by Colonel (later Lord) Wolseley. Soon after this outbreak was quelled there came the formation of the Province of Manitoba, and from this event there dated a new epoch in the history of this part of the country. The conditions grew worse rather than better. The United States were also a contributing factor to greater discord. The treatment of the Indians by the government of the States had apparently left much to be desired (to put it mildly) and the turbulent warfare that went on almost continually in the western part of that country drove many of the Indian tribes into frenzy. Many of these tribes now crossed the border line into Canada to seek British protection. There were at this time in Canada some seventy thousand Indians to whom the Imperial government had promised protection, and the coming of these fresh tribes from the States, largely, too, in conditions of revolt and resentment at what they felt to be unjust and cruel treatment, could not but be regarded with grave apprehensions by the white settlers. They were alarmed at the close proximity of these unknown savage tribes as well as apprehensive of the effect they might produce on the Canadian Indians.

In the summer of 1872 the Canadian Adjutant-General, Colonel Robertson-Ross, was dispatched by the Government of the Dominion to make a tour of inspection through the North-West. He found that a party of lawless traders and smugglers from the States had established a trading-post which they had named Fort Hamilton, about sixty miles north of the border-line between the Dominion and the United States; and that they were conducting a species of barter with the Blackfeet Indians, supplying them with firearms and with ardent spirits, in direct opposition to the laws of both countries. They were paying no customs duty for the merchandise they were thus introducing into Canada. Colonel Robertson-Ross found the demoralisation that they were working to be very great and of great injury, not only to the Indians, but to the entire country. "At Fort Edmonton," said the Adjutant-General in his Report, "whisky was openly sold to the Blackfeet and other Indians trading at the Fort by smugglers from the United States, who derived large profits therefrom, and whom, on being remonstrated with by the official in charge of Hudson's Bay Post, coolly replied that they very well knew they were defying the laws, but as there was no force to prevent them they would do as they pleased."

All this inciting to intemperance and brawling led to other offences against law and order. The Indians took to horse-stealing, and the entire population of the North-West was at their mercy. Neither property nor life was safe. On dishonesty and robbery followed murder as a not uncommon occurrence and other crimes of a serious nature were not infrequent. Sir John Macdonald was at this time the Premier of Canada. It was on his initiative that Colonel Robertson-Ross had been sent on this reconnaissance to find out to what extent the lawless marauders were demoralising the entire country and the nature of the protection and safeguards that should be instituted for the population. The Adjutant-General earnestly recommended the establishment of a trained and disciplined military body, to be subject to its own rules, and to be distinct from any civil force, though acting as an addition to whatever civil force might also be formed. "Whatever feeling may be entertained toward policemen, animosity is rarely, if ever, felt toward disciplined soldiers wearing her Majesty's uniform in any portion of the British Empire," stated Colonel Robertson-Ross, and he added: "In the event of serious disturbance a police force, acting alone and unsupported by a disciplined military body, would probably be overpowered in a province of mixed races, where every man is armed, while to maintain a military without any civil force is not desirable."

Colonel Robertson-Ross also urgently recommended that a chain of military posts should be established from Manitoba to the Rocky Mountains; that a stipendiary magistrate for the Saskatchewan should be appointed, who should also act as an Indian Commissioner and who should fix his residence in Edmonton. "The individual to fill this post," he said, "should be one, if possible, already known to the Indians, and one in whom they have confidence." He also pointed out that this Indian Commissioner should always be accompanied by a military force. "A large force is not necessary," he said; "but the presence of a certain force will, I believe, be found indispensable for the security of the country, to prevent bloodshed and preserve peace."

This is the story of the way in which the Royal North-West Mounted Police of Canada came into being. These "Riders of the Plains" stand alone and unparalleled in the world in their organisation, their peculiar field of work, and the nature of their control over the vast region entrusted to their care. This Mounted Police Force comprises about six hundred officers and men, whose territory is an area as extensive as all Central Europe, or a region five times as large as Great Britain; extending for two thousand miles from east to west, and a thousand miles from north to south. In this great area are twelve divisional posts and one hundred and fifty detachments. The organisation of this body was carried out in the autumn of 1873. The first one hundred and fifty of the Mounted Police were stationed at Lower Fort Garry in Manitoba. They were under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel George A. French, an officer of the Royal Artillery who had been the Inspector of Artillery at the School of Gunnery in Kingston, Ontario. Colonel French at once, on arriving in Manitoba, urged upon the Government the need of strengthening the force by at least doubling the number of men. Two hundred more were enlisted in Toronto, and the expedition to the Far West was fixed for an early date in the spring.

The picturesque aspect of the Royal North-West Mounted Police is notable. It was Sir John Macdonald's idea that the dominant note in their uniform should be scarlet as "this colour conveys the strongest impression to the mind of the Indian, through his respect for 'the Queen's soldiers.'" To accentuate the military character of the force and to distinguish them from the blue-coated soldiers of the States was a point of real importance.

This first detachment of the Royal Mounted Police made an expedition in the summer of 1874 into the very heart of the Blackfeet country, and returned to Dufferin in November, having made an effective campaign in the interests of law and order, from which very important and momentous results have ensued since that time. That the small body of less than seven hundred men should exercise such control, not only over so vast an area of almost unknown wilderness, inhabited by such a diversity of human beings scattered widely apart, is practically an isolated fact in all history. To this magnificent Force is largely due, to-day, the conditions that invest the North-West with such promise and prosperity.

"The Force may be said to have largely completed the work it originally set out to do," writes Frank Yeigh[1]; "so far as the frontier provinces are concerned, a work that is worth many times its cost, as an object-lesson of the power and authority of government existing behind all real civilisation."

[1] Through the Heart of Canada. T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1910.

Still, the task of the mounted patroller is by no means yet completed. The present force costs the country nearly three-quarters of a million dollars a year. Their outposts are being set farther and farther afield. Thus, from the promontory of Cape Chidley, at almost the most northerly point of Labrador, the barracks overlook Hudson Straits; another guards Hudson Bay, while a third protects the Arctic seaboard, and the most western post serves to protect the gold land of the Yukon. It is a fact, and a striking one, that on the three-hundred-mile road from White Horse to Dawson the traveller is as safe as in any part of Canada. Of the life of this Royal Force Mr. Haydon says:

"The stories of the daily life of these rough-riders of the plains are the very essence of romance, of high courage, of Herculean tasks performed and great difficulties overcome. The Mounted Police kept down lawlessness when the Canadian Pacific Railway was being built, they fought bravely during the Riel Rebellion of 1885, they kept well in hand the gold rush to the Klondyke in 1889-90, and not a few served in South Africa during the Boer War. But the deeds of the individual men call for high praise. Their qualities of fidelity, devotion to duty, and their fearlessness are constantly being exemplified. A thousand miles on the ice, 'mushing' by dog-team and komatik, through unexplored haunts of bear and wolf, is a common marching order for these splendid pioneers."

One individual instance among the many that might well be related to add to the annals of human heroism is the remarkable journey made in 1906 by Constable Sellers, who, with an interpreter and an Eskimo, drawn by a dog-team, left the west coast of Hudson Bay in February of that year to discover the locality of a Scottish ship in the Arctic waters, to collect the customs due, and to inspect the conditions of this region. The trip lasted two months, and before his return in April Constable Sellers had experienced all the hardships of an Arctic winter. Many pages might be filled with the thrilling accounts of the adventures and the noble and self-effacing sacrifices of these brave defenders of the law, these magnificent protectors of human life and property, the very guardians of all that makes for civilisation and lends value and significance to life. Mr. Yeigh's description of the conditions of life of the force on Herschell Island is extremely graphic. He says:

"The life of the Mounted Policeman on Herschell Island presents many features of interest. Stranded in this far-off corner of the Dominion in the Canadian 'Land of the Midnight Sun,' he lives as near the North Pole as possible. It is a circumscribed island home, moreover, with a shoreline of only twenty-three miles, and with cliffs rising five hundred feet from the Arctic Sea. Though so far north, in latitude 69°, Herschell Island is covered with a luxuriant growth of grass and carpeted with innumerable wild flowers. The island possesses the one safe harbour in all these northern waters—a harbour in which fifty ships could safely winter."

This island is distinguished as the centre of the whaling grounds of the Arctic regions.

No adequate interpretation of the conditions that prevail in the Dominion could be possible that did not include some account of the "Riders of the Plains." The service of these faithful guardians is by no means exclusively limited to their official responsibility; they add to this that of being the friends, the helpers, of the settlers, under all the new unforeseen conditions that confront them in the new country. All over the Canadian land the watchword "Safety first" meets the eye. The watchword "Humanity first" seems to be that of the Royal Mounted Police. Their careful and tender ministrations are given to the invalid and the helpless; they risk their lives to warn and save settlers when a raging fire is sweeping over woodlands or prairie; they aid the new arrival to set up his camp the first night; they help him to repair vehicles or mechanism that has given out; they assist him to build his first primitive shelter, and even to cook his meals and to care for his live stock. The safety of the incoming inhabitants, the essential conditions that render possible their establishment of a home, have depended so essentially on the protection and the safe-guarding afforded by the "Riders of the Plains" that their splendid service is not only a fundamental factor in Canadian life and history, but is a shining page in the records not made with hands.

A touching incident has been narrated in the chronicles of the Mounted Police Force. It was required some years ago to send dispatches to a distant post during the severest rigour of winter weather. A young constable, a University graduate, gently born and bred, set out with these dispatches, but days passed into weeks, and weeks into months, and no trace of him could be discovered. At last, in the following spring, a storm-worn uniform and the bones of a human body were discovered by a patrol in a secluded spot, and on the order he was carrying was scrawled: "Lost—horse dead. Am trying to push ahead. Have done my best." Who could read with eyes undimmed by tears such a testimony as this to the young constable's high sense of honour and utter sacrifice of anxiety for his own personal safety? No soldier at the front ever more gallantly faced death in the discharge of his duty. Indeed, the stranger who comes to Canada and enters with any degree of sympathy and understanding into the national life is more impressed with the unwritten watchword of "Duty first" than with the legend of "safety" that meets his eye. Is it too much to say that the Dominion is the nation of heroes? It is certainly no exaggeration to say that heroes abound in this country where the unmeasured richness of the resources of Nature is yet far exceeded by the nobility of man's mind.

The growth and expansion of Canada has proceeded very rapidly within the first part of the twentieth century. The problems involved in this swift expansion have increased in number and importance. They assume a varied character, because the vast extent of the empire inevitably raises such diverse questions of political, educational, and social requirements, that of the bi-lingual problem being not least in importance. Then there are the problems of immigration, of transportation and communication, including matters of railway highways, inland navigation, foreign commerce, and postal facilities. Sir James Grant, speaking before the Empire Club of Toronto in the December of 1915, reviewed the remarkable development of Canada since about 1850, and said that, marvellous as was this record, it would be exceeded by the tremendous developments of the immediate future. Of the new territory in northern Ontario, opened on the clay belt, Sir James predicted that it would be settled by thousands of people, and that it would become one of the most attractive parts of the country. In this region the supply of wood and water is practically inexhaustible, and the splendid transit facilities bring it into easy communication with the markets. Apart from the agricultural, there is the mining outlook.

Even the great and disastrous war that began in August, 1914, will not be wholly disastrous, or even antagonistic, to the future of Canada. Great trade facilities will be opened between Russia and Canada. Vast numbers of British soldiers who have left their industrial occupations for the front will have so accustomed and acclimatised themselves to open air and exposure that they will look for life in the open rather than to any return to shops or manufactories. Canada confidently anticipates at least a million settlers from among these ranks. They would be particularly qualified for the order of life required for the hardy pioneer of that North-West defined by Mr. Watson Griffin as lying north of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia, and stretching eastward to Hudson Bay and northward to the Arctic Ocean. They would be prepared to bring to this rigorous and exacting part of the country a hardy vigour and invincible courage in the conquering of nature in a degree quite in excess of that now demanded in the more settled regions. The young and eminently enterprising western Provinces have already made the establishment of Winnipeg as one of the greatest wheat markets in the world an accomplished fact. "In 1904," asserts a New York financial journal, "they raised fifty-eight million bushels of wheat in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta; five years later the yield was one hundred and fifty million bushels, and in 1913 the crop approximated to two hundred millions of bushels of wheat. At this rate of progress," continued this journal, "Canada must soon pass France and India, and stand third in the line of wheat producers. Ultimately she will dispute with Russia and the United States for the first position. Wheat has been the pioneer of our development, and undoubtedly it will prove the same with Canada.... No vivid imagination is needed to see what the future development of Canada means to the people of the United States."

That the great problem of food for the people of Europe will largely devolve on Canada and the States for many years after the end of the war is quite evident.

The Minister of Public Works, the Honourable Robert Rogers, in an interview with a press representative, said not long ago:

"The prairie country will do its share in saving Canada when the war is over.... There will be a vast tide of immigration. Where will the European emigrants go? Will they go to foreign lands, lands where they will be lost forever to the Allies, or will they come to Canada, where they will be under the British flag? That is the vital question for Canada, for the Empire, for the Allies, for civilisation.

"We want to be able to go practically to the door of every European who is thinking of a home elsewhere, and show him the Canadian West—tall wheat, ample railway connections, growing cities and all.

"It will be the finest thing in the world for him and the satisfaction of Canada. Moreover, it will be the solution of most of the problems which now confront him, as, for instance, how to make our transcontinental railways paying propositions; how to enable our industries to find new tasks when the war orders stop; how to adjust our mercantile system to the changed conditions; how to till our farm lands and start again the late lamented boom....

"The West is empty. Its natural resources are inexhaustible. We could take care of the entire British white population there. And think what it would mean for the West, and so for all Canada, if we got five million new people out there after the war? Winnipeg, Brandon, Regina; Prince Albert, Calgary, Edmonton; Medicine Hat, Portage la Prairie, Dauphin, Saskatoon, Lethbridge, Swift Current, and many other centres would become great cities. The salubrious British Columbia coast would seethe with new activity and new populations; our railways would become great earners; industries would spring up all over the West. The industries of the East would find a new market within their own tariff fence. Banking would boom, wholesale trade would flourish, young clerks in the East would become prosperous proprietors in the West."

In the eager and many-sided activities that are springing up and fairly treading upon each other's heels in Canada, Technical Schools hold a distinctive place. The late Lord Strathcona was a zealous and influential advocate of trade and technical schools as one of the most effective means of bettering the condition and elevating the life of the working-man. The great West is not behind in the establishment of these.

Threshing Wheat, Manitoba
Threshing Wheat, Manitoba

Now as to the conditions that await the settlers in western Canada. The land is fertile; the climate, the water supply, and the transit and traffic facilities are of the best. But favourable conditions do not of themselves work miracles, and pioneer life has its difficulties. Prosperity is not magically invoked by any entreaty of the gods, nor does it fall down out of the blue sky upon its votaries. But with health, integrity, and a reasonable amount of capital, the achievement of prosperous and happy living is possible within a comparatively short time. It is related that after the annual harvest there are people who go on pleasure trips to New York and San Francisco, and "think nothing of expending thousands of dollars before their return." There are farms where the owner has his motor car; his house, commodious and handsome, is steam-heated and electric-lighted, as he generates electricity from his own plant. There is a music room with a grand piano, and perchance a violin for the music-gifted young son or daughter as well; there is a library with a good and always growing collection of books, for it is realised that reading is not a mere passive entertainment but a creative activity as well. A good book sets the entire mental mechanism in motion. It is as a motor force, a power, applied to the mind. To give one's self to intervals of reading is not merely to be borne through the realms of thought in a golden chariot, but is, rather, the conquering of a region of new capabilities and powers, applicable to the entire range of the problems of life. "The key to every man is his thought," says Emerson. Books are food for the mental and spiritual life, and from all good reading there results a certain transubstantiation into energy that refines and exalts the quality of life. The broad piazzas, the shaded lawns, of these prosperous farmhouses are a revelation to the traveller and their own commentary on Canadian conditions.