Ste. Anne de Beaupré is usually referred to as the Lourdes of Canada. When a metaphor of this sort is used it usually means that the spot referred to is in some way inferior to the original. In the case of Ste. Anne de Beaupré, the inferiority is not, I believe, in the matter of the number of miracles wrought there, but in the matter of general picturesqueness. Ste. Anne de Beaupré is not nearly so picturesque as Lourdes. If you wish to palliate this fact, you say, as one writer has said, that 'The beauty of modern architecture mingles at Beaupré with the remains of a hoary past.' If you do not wish to palliate it, you say, as I do, that Ste. Anne de Beaupré is not in the least picturesque. I did not particularly care for the modern architecture, and the hoary past is not particularly in evidence. Do not suppose me to say that Beaupré has not a hoary past. Red Indians, long before the days of railroads, travelled thither to pray at the feet of Ste. Anne. Breton seamen, who belong only to tradition, promised a shrine to Ste. Anne, if she would save them from shipwreck. They erected the first chapel. The second and larger chapel was built as far back as 1657, and miracles were quite frequent from then onwards. Nevertheless, the basilica is quite new, and so is the whole appearance of the place.
I visited it in company with a French-Canadian commercial traveller. He was a great big good-looking youth with curly hair and blue eyes, and he travelled in corsets or something of that sort for a Montreal firm. I could not help thinking that many ladies would buy corsets from him or anything else whether they wanted them or not, because of his charming boyish manner and his good looks. He asked me to go to Ste. Anne de Beaupré with him. He said that he supposed that I was not a Catholic, but that did not matter. He wished to go to the good Ste. Anne, and it would be a good thing to go. He had been several times before, but he had not been for several years. He could easily take the afternoon off, and first of all we would go by the electric train to the good Ste. Anne, and then on the way back we would step off at the Falls station, and see the Montmorency Falls, and also the Zoo that is there. It would be great fun to see the Zoo. He had not seen the Zoo for several years, and the animals would be very interesting.
So we took an afternoon electric train. There are electric trains for pilgrims, of whom a hundred thousand at least are said to visit the shrine yearly, and there are also electric trains for tourists. We took a tourist train, and having secured one of the little handbooks supplied by the electric company, had the gratification of knowing that even if the car was pretty full it was, so the company claimed, run at a greater rate of speed than any other electric service.
At times in Canada I found myself getting very slack in attempting descriptions of things simply because some company that had rights of transport over the particular district had, so to speak, thrust into my hand some pamphlet in which all the description was done for me. Thus it was in the case of the district line between Quebec and Ste. Anne de Beaupré. 'It is difficult,' I read in the electric company's handbook which we had secured, 'to describe in words the dainty beauty of the scenery along this route.'
'That is a nuisance,' I said to my companion, 'because words are the only things I could describe it in.'
'It is much better to smoke,' said he.
So we smoked; and now I tell you straight out of that illogical pamphlet, that 'The route from Quebec to Ste. Anne may be compared to a splendid panorama. There are shady woodlands and green pastures, undulating hills and sparkling rivers, whose banks are lined with pretty villages, the tinned spires of the parish churches rising above the rest of the houses, sparkling in the sun.' There, a little ungrammatically, you have the scene 'to which,' adds my pamphlet, 'the Falls of Montmorency river add a touch of grandeur.' Ste. Anne de Beaupré itself is twenty-one miles from Quebec. We went straight from the station into the church, where the first thing to catch the eye are the votive offerings and particularly the crutches, walking-sticks, and other appliances left there by pilgrims who, having been cured of their infirmities by miracle, had no further use for these material aids. It is difficult to arrange such things in any way that can be called artistic, and since the general effect is nothing but ugly it might be wise for the church officials also to dispense with such material aids to faith. Apart from these the most striking object is the miraculous statue. It stands on a pedestal ten feet high and twelve feet from the communion rails. The pedestal was the gift of a New York lady, the statue itself was presented by a Belgian family. At the foot of it many people were kneeling. A mass was being said and the church was very full, and every time a petitioner got up from his knees from the feet of the statue another moved down the aisle and took his or her place. I suppose we were in the church fully half an hour before my companion found an opportunity to go and kneel at the feet of the good Ste. Anne, and having watched him there, I got up from my place and went out into the village. It was rather a depressing village, full of small hotels and restaurants and shops stocked with miraculous souvenirs. I suppose more rubbish is sold in this line than in any other. After inspecting a variety of it, I bought a bottle of cider and a local cigar and sat on a fence smoking until my friend reappeared. He came out most subdued and grave—not in the least the boisterous person who had gone in—and said we would now go back. As we had to wait half an hour for a returning train, I suggested that we should go and have some more cider, but he said no, he would rather drink from the holy spring. 'Although this water,' said my pamphlet, 'has always been known to be there, it is only within the last thirty or thirty-five years that the pilgrims began to make a pious use of it. What particular occasion gave rise to this confidence, or when this practice first spread among the people, cannot be positively asserted. However it may be, it is undeniable that faith in the water from the fountain has become general, and the use of it, from motives of devotion, often produces effects of a marvellous nature.' Unfortunately, the fountain was not working, owing, I expect, to the water having got low in the dry weather, and my friend had to go without his drink. He said, however, that it did not matter, and remained in a grave, aloof state all the way back in the train as far as the Falls station, and indeed till we got to the Zoo in the Kent house grounds. There, the exertion of trying to get the beavers to cease working and come out and show themselves to me—an exertion finally crowned with success, for the fat, furry, silent creatures came out and sat on a log for us—livened him up a bit. But he fell into a muse again in front of the cage containing the timber wolf, and remained there so long that I was almost overcome by the smell of this ferocious animal. I got him away at last, and I do not think he spoke after that until we got to Quebec and were walking from the station to our inn.
'I have made a vow,' he then said suddenly.
'What sort of vow?' I inquired.
'I made it this afternoon,' he said, 'to the good Ste. Anne—never any more to drink whisky.'
'It's not a bad vow to have made,' I said.
'No,' he said seriously, 'whisky is very terrible stuff. I shall never drink it again. When I drink it it goes very quickly to my head. Soon I am tight. That will not do.'
'Much better not to drink it certainly,' I agreed.
'Yes,' he continued vehemently. 'I am married. You did not guess that perhaps? Also it is only recently that I have gone "on the road." If the company I work for hears that I go about and get tight, I shall at once be fired. So I shall not drink any more whisky. Never. That is why I made the vow to the good Ste. Anne.'
We walked in silence the rest of the way to the inn, and I reflected on the nature of vows. It seemed very possible that a vow like this might easily be a help to my companion. He was obviously not what is called a strong character. It is strange how often a charm of manner goes with a weakness of the will. And commercial travelling—particularly perhaps in Canada—lays a man open to the temptations of drink. If he went on drinking, it would probably mean the ruin of the young girl he had married. Only one has always the feeling that a vow is only a partial aid to keeping upright, just as a stick is to walking. A man may lean too heavily on either. Moreover, the making of a vow, while it may strengthen a man temporarily in one direction tends to leave him unbalanced in other directions. It makes him feel so strong perhaps in one part of him that he forgets other parts where he is weak. I rather think that the last part of these somewhat superficial reflections upon vows occurred to me later in the evening, and not as we were walking home. We had had supper by that time, and my companion had drunk a good deal of water during the meal—a beverage, by the way, which is not particularly safe either here or in any other Canadian town. At times he had been depressed by it, at times elevated. After we had smoked together and he had grown more and more restless, he jumped up and said:
'Let us go out for a walk.'
'Where to?' I asked.
'Oh, up on to the terrace,' he said. 'I tell you,' he went on excitedly, 'where I will take you. There is a special place up there that I know very well. It is where one meets the girls. We will go there to-night and meet the girls.'
Really, I could have given a very good exposition of the temptation offered by vows at that moment when he suggested this Sentimental Journey.
'Il trotte bien.'
The second time I made use of this simple compliment I was again being driven by a French Canadian, and again it was on an extraordinarily bad road. But the vehicle was a sulky, and the road was a country road—about halfway between Quebec and Montreal. I had been already two days in the Habitant country which the ordinary Englishman misses. Tourists in particular will go through French Canada too fast. Their first stop after Quebec is Montreal, and the guide-books help them to believe that they have lost nothing. It may be that they do lose nothing in the way of spectacular views or big hotels, but on the other hand they have undoubtedly lost the peaceful charm of many a Laurentian village, and they have seen nothing at all of the life of the French-Canadian farmer. That is a pity for the English tourist, because they too, the Habitants, belong to the Empire, and we ought to know them for what they are apart from their politics—courteous, solid, essentially prudent folk, often well to do, but with no disposition to make a show of themselves.
I had spent my two days at the villa of a most hospitable French lady, in one of the older villages on the St. Lawrence. It was not exactly a beautiful village—rather ramshackle in fact—but remarkably peaceful, and the great smooth river running by must give it a perennial charm, such as comes from having the sea near. I had missed my train going from that village, and had passed the time by taking lunch at a little inn near the station. It was Friday, and the landlord gave me pike and eggs for lunch. I had seen my pike and several others lying in a sandy ditch near, passing a sort of amphibious life in it, until Friday and a guest should make it necessary for one of them to go into the frying pan. The landlord came and chatted with me while I had lunch, and was grieved to find that I was not a Catholic. I was English, but not Catholic? I said that was so, and he shook his head sorrowfully. But there were Catholics in England, he asked a little later. I said, Oh yes, certainly. Many? I said that there must be a good many, but I could not tell him the exact numbers. Would a tenth of the English at least be Catholics, he next demanded? I said I thought at least that number, but I left him, I fear, a disappointed man. He had hoped more from England than that, and even my strenuous praise of the fried pike did not draw a smile from him.
My compliment about the horse drawing the sulky—to go back to that drive, obtained a better response. The driver replied in the French tongue: 'Monsieur, he trots very well, particularly in considering that he has the age of twenty-eight years.'
I said that this was wonderful, and the driver replied that it was, but that in French Canada such wonders did happen. He was intensely patriotic, and this made the drive more interesting. He was all for French-Canadian things, excepting, I think, the roads, which were indeed nothing but ruts, some of the ruts being less deep than the others, and being selected accordingly for the greater convenience of our ancient steed. I liked his patriotism. It was at once so genuine and so complete. For example, when I said that I had not seen any Jersey cows on the farms we had passed, the driver said: 'No. The cow of Jersey is a good cow and gives much milk. But the Canadian cow is a better cow and gives still more milk.' I was unable to make out what the prevailing milch-cow was in that part. Canada has, I believe, begun to swear by the Holstein, but this can hardly as yet be claimed as the Canadian cow. Still it passed the time very pleasantly to have my driver so enthusiastic, and of what should a man speak well, if not of his own country? He articulated his French very slowly and distinctly, so that I was able to understand him more easily than I should have understood a European Frenchman. I was surprised at this, because one is usually told that French Canadians talk so queerly that they are very hard to follow. Perhaps my obvious inferiority in the language caused those Habitants I met to adapt themselves to my necessity. I can only say that from a few days' experience of conversation with all sorts and conditions, I carried away the impression that French-Canadian was a very clear and easy language. As for the country, I should call it serene and spacious in aspect rather than fine. The farmhouses are pleasant enough and comfortable within, but their immediate surroundings are apt to be untidy. Very seldom of course does one see a flower garden, and vegetables do not make amends for the lack of flowers. On the other hand, the tobacco patch that is so frequently to be seen in the neighbourhood of the small farms is pleasant to look at, especially for one who thinks much of smoke. There is not much satisfaction to the eye in the small wired fields, nor would either the farming or the soil startle an English farmer. I think that the maple woods are the one thing that he would regard with real envy.
Nevertheless, no one would have denied that it was a really pretty village, to which my driver brought me at last in the sulky. It was built all round an old church in a sort of dell, behind which the land rose steeply to a wood of maples. I had been given an introduction to the curé, and we drove to his house by the church, only to be told by the sexton (I think it was the sexton) that Monsieur le Curé had, much to his regret, been called to Quebec, but had begged that I would go over to the notaire, who would be pleased to show me everything that was to be seen. We went to the notaire. I think he was the postmaster too—at any rate he lived in the post office, and a very kindly old gentleman he was. I do not know one I have liked more on so short an acquaintance, though he did start by giving me Canadian wine to drink. It was a sort of port or sherry—or both mixed—and was made, I think he said, in Montreal. It had the genuine oily taste, but also a smack of vinegar. That in itself would not have mattered so much, if the notaire had not said it was best drunk with a little water, and provided me with water from a saline spring which had its source in his backyard. These saline springs seem not uncommon in Canada, and must be considered as a distinct asset. But not mixed with port. Some local tobacco which was very good, as indeed much of the tobacco grown in Quebec province seems to be, took the taste away, and after that the notaire proposed that he should take me out to see one of the huts where they boil down the maple water in the early spring. He told me that my own horse and driver should rest, and that we should go on the carriage of Monsieur Blanc which was, it appeared, already in waiting, together with Monsieur Blanc himself. Monsieur Blanc was the local miller, and solely for the purpose of showing the village to a stranger from England he had put himself to all this trouble. After we had all bowed to one another and exchanged compliments, we started for the maple wood, and all the way the notaire explained to me the economy of the village. It appeared that the farms round averaged eighty acres of arable land, and a man and his son would work one of that size. Each farmer would also have rights of grazing on pasture land which was held in common—not to mention his piece of maple wood. All the farmers belonged to a co-operative farmers' society, which saved much when purchasing seeds, implements, and so forth. The notaire himself was secretary of this society. I believe he was also secretary of pretty well everything that mattered, and might be regarded as the business uncle of the parish in which the curé was spiritual father. As we drove along, avoiding roads as much as possible, because the fields were so much more level, he greeted everybody and everybody greeted him, stopping their field work for the purpose. Jules left hay-making to show us the shortest cut to the nearest hut; Antoine fetched the key. It was a tiny wooden shack, the one we inspected—standing in the middle of the trees—with just room in it for the heating apparatus and the boilers to boil the maple water in. The cups which are attached to the trees in the early spring, when the sap begins to run—the tapping is done high up—hung along the wooden walls. The notaire explained the whole process to me. In the spring, when all is sleet and slush and nothing can be done on the farm, the farmer and perhaps his wife come up into the wood, and tap the trees and boil the water up until the syrup is formed. It takes them days, very cold days, and they camp out in the hut, though it hardly seemed possible that there should be room for them. But it is all very healthy and pleasant, and they drink so much of the syrup, while they are working, that they usually go back to their farms very 'fat and salubrious.' So the notaire said, and he also assured me that seven years before another English visitor who spoke French very badly (he put it much more politely than that though) had come to the village in the spring, and slept in one of the huts for days, and helped make the sugar and enjoyed himself thoroughly. I told the notaire I could quite believe it and wished I had come in the spring too. I am not sure that I shall not go back in the spring some day, for the simplicity of the place was fascinating, even though the railway had come closer, and land had doubled in value, and the farmers were more scientific than they used to be and made more money, though even so—as the notaire earnestly declared—they would would never spend it on show. I remarked that the notaire, even while he was recounting these modern innovations, such as wealth, was not carried away by the glory of them as a Westerner would be. He took a simple pride in the fact that the village marched forward, but he was prouder still that it remained modest. And when we got back to the post office, he told me that what he liked best was the simplicity of it all. People used to ask him sometimes why he who spoke English and Latin and Greek, for he had been five years at college, qualifying to become a notaire, should be content to live in such a small out-of-the-way place, instead of setting up in Quebec or Montreal. They could not understand that to be one's own master, and not to be rushed hither and thither at the beck of clients, contented him, especially in a place where the farmers looked upon him as their friend, and he could play the organ in the village church. He made me understand it very well, even though his English was rusty (for I think the syrup-making Englishman had been the last he had talked with), and he had a scholarly dislike to using any but the right word, and he would sometimes bring up a dozen wrong ones and reject them, before our united efforts found the only one that conveyed his precise meaning.
I think I understood, and many times on the way back, seated behind the twenty-eight year-old horse, I said to myself, that altogether the notaire was a very fine old gentleman, and if there were many such to be found in the French Canadian villages, I hoped they would not change too soon. To make the money circulate—after the fashion of the Toronto drummer—is a virtue no doubt; but courtesy and simplicity and prudence are also virtues that not the greatest country that is yet to come will find itself able to dispense with.
Just as a man who knows mountains can in a little time describe the character of a mountain that is new to him, so a man who knows the country in general will soon find himself becoming acquainted with new country. It is not so with cities. Only a long residence in it will reveal the character of a city. I suppose that is because man is more subtle than nature. A clay land is always a clay land; it produces the same crops, the same weeds, the same men. But who will undertake to say what a city on a clay land produces? Only the man who has long been familiar with the particular city, and he probably will not even be aware that it stands on clay.
This is preparatory to saying that being a stranger to Montreal, I did not find out much about it in the few days I was there, and I will not pretend that I did. It is, I suppose, architecturally, far the most beautiful city in the Dominion, and indeed in the Western Hemisphere, and for that very reason appears less strange to European eyes than most other Canadian towns. I would not suggest that all European towns are architecturally beautiful, or that Montreal is anything but Canadian inwardly. Superficially it looks like some fine French town. It also smells French.
'But them thereon didst only breathe
And sentst it back to me,
Since when it blows and smells, I swear,
Not of itself but thee.'
Thus England might address France on the subject of Montreal, though indeed France did more than breathe on Montreal. I would not be taken to suggest that the smell is a malodorous one—merely French. You get just that smell in summer in any French town from Rouen to Marseilles, and it is probably due to nothing but the sun being at the right temperature to bring out the mingled scent of omelettes and road grit, cigarettes, apéritifs, and washing in sufficient strength to attract the sensitive British nose. As for Montreal's French appearance—the city is by all accounts strictly divided into a French East-end and an English West-end, St. Laurent being the dividing line. But when I passed west of St. Laurent, and hundreds of French men and French women and French children continued to file past me, and I asked my way many times in English and was not understood, I began to doubt the reality of that dividing line. It seems a pity that there should be one, but there is of course, and it runs through Canada as well as Montreal. Race and religion and language combine to keep that line marked out, and it only becomes faint in business quarters.
The time has gone by for great commercial undertakings to be conducted by means of gesticulations or by the aid of an interpreter. Master and man must speak the same language, at any rate outwardly. Therefore all clerks learn English, which is also American; and I take it that statistics, if they were kept, would show many more French Canadians speaking English every year—whatever they may be thinking.
So commerce, long the butt of moralists, takes its part among the moral influences of the world. Already writers like Mr. Angell have begun to assure us that it alone—by reason of its enormous and far-reaching interests—can keep international war at a distance: here is an example of how it increases peace within a nation. In the end, perhaps, Mammon himself may appear, purged of his grossness upon the canonical list—St. Mammon!
Montreal has, so I am told, sixty-four millionaires—real, not dollar millionaires; self-made, not descended millionaires; strenuous, not idle millionaires. Most of them live in Sherbrooke Street, or near it, on the way up to the Mountain. It is a fine wide road with an extraordinary variety of houses in it. You cannot point to any one house and say this is the sort of house a millionaire builds, for the next one is quite different, and so is the next and the next. It is natural that Canadians should be more original in their house-building than our millionaires. They are more original men altogether. They have made their money in a more original way, and when they have made it, they have to think out original methods of spending it—unlike ours, who find the etiquette of it all ready made for them, and a practised set of people who want nothing more than to be able to help millionaires scatter their money in the only correct and fashionable way. You have to think everything out for yourself in Canada, even to the spending of your money. That is, if you have the money in large quantities. For the ordinary person the inherent slipperiness of the dollar suffices, and he will find that it will circulate itself without his worrying. The diversity of house-building, such as may be found in Sherbrooke Street, should give encouragement to Canadian architects, but does, as a matter of fact, let in the American architects as well. I could not feel that they had altogether succeeded in this street—certainly not half so well as they have succeeded in some of the business buildings, especially the interior of the Bank of Montreal—but that is not surprising. Architects must have their motives, and the reasons that went to the building of some of the stately private houses of Europe have ceased to exist now. The most that a man can demand from his house—certainly in Canada—is that it shall be luxurious. Nobody is going to keep retainers there. The three hundred servants even that went to make up the household of an Elizabethan nobleman could not be had in Canada either for love or money. Those three hundred serve in the bank or the shops—not in the houses—and it is there that the big man works also. Slowly we come to the right proportions of things; nor am I suggesting that the private houses of the Canadian millionaires are in the least lacking in size. They are as large as they need be, if not larger; and where they did not altogether succeed was, I thought, in the attempt made with some of them to achieve importance by rococo effects. The road itself, curiously enough, was rather bad and rutty; I began to think, seeing it, that there is some strange influence at work in French Canada which prevents a road from ever being first-rate. It may be that since roads there are only needed in summer, for a half year instead of a whole one, the care and affection we lavish upon them is not necessary. The good snow comes and turns Sherbrooke Street into a sleigh-bearing thoroughfare only comparable with those of St. Petersburg. The ruts are drifted up and vanish—why bother about them? It is a good enough explanation. If another is needed, it may be that there is money to be made—by those in charge of the keeping up of the roads—by the simple method of not keeping them up.
Montreal has slums as well as Sherbrooke Street, which seems to show that sixty-four millionaires are no real guarantee of a city's perfectness. I heard about those slums from the editor of one of Montreal's leading newspapers. The subject arose out of a question I put him as to whether he could tell me the difference between Conservatives and Liberals in Canada. Some people maintain that the difference even in England is so slight as to be unreal. To a Canadian who is not much of a politician (but is, of course, either a Liberal or a Conservative), the question amounts to being a catch question. He has to think for a long time before he answers. This editor, who was a Liberal, took it quite coolly.
'Oh,' he said, 'Liberals here are very much like Liberals in the old country; we stand for Social Reform and the interests of the People.'
Then he told me about the slums in Montreal. But for these I should have felt doubtful about the parallel, even though it was drawn by so eminent an authority as the editor of a newspaper. For, naturally, at present in most parts of Canada there is no People (with our own English capital P) to stand for, just as there are no peers and no Constitution. Where there are slums, there may be a People to be represented. The more is the pity that there should be slums. Why does Montreal possess them? Largely, I suppose, for the reason that any very great city possesses them. There are landlords who can make money out of them, there are people so poor that they will live in them; and their poverty is accounted for by the fact that cities draw the destitute as the moon the tides. It seems against reason that Canada, capable of absorbing hundreds of thousands of immigrants, calling for them to be absorbed, so long as they are able men, should have any destitute to be drawn to the cities; but it has to be remembered that no immigration laws can really prevent a percentage of incapables arriving. They may not be incapables as such, but they are incapables on the land, which is indeed in Canada endlessly absorbent, but absorbent only of those who have in them in some way the land-spirit. To expect the land to take on hordes of the city-bred without ever failing is to dream. It would be easier for the sea to swallow men clothed in cork jackets. Some are bound to be rejected, and they turn to the cities. But the cities of a New World cannot absorb indefinite numbers of men; London or Glasgow cannot. The work is not there for them—not for all of them.
The Canadian winter also has to be remembered as a factor driving men to cities like Montreal. Even good men on the land cannot always during the winter obtain work on the farms; or think that the little they can make there is not worth while. So they, too, make for the cities, not always to their own improving. This problem of the Canadian winter is one that has still to be reckoned with, and no doubt the Canadians will solve it in due course—perhaps by some extension of the Russian methods whereby the peasant of the summer becomes the handicraftsman of the winter. It is not the winter itself that is at fault in Canada, as used to be thought; it is the method of dealing with it. The Canadian may not mind the hard, cold months—may even boast of them, but he cannot ignore them. And the solution of the winter problem seems to be that though Canada is marked out as an agricultural country, it must also equally become a manufacturing one, so that men—who cannot hibernate like dormice—may be able to work the year through. The whitest nation is that nation whose leisure is got by choice not by compulsion.
There must be local reasons, too, for Montreal slums, but these a visitor is not happy in describing. Municipal mismanagement is unfortunately not exclusive to Europe; and my editor gave me examples of it in Montreal which were impressive without being novel.
He also pointed out that there were forty thousand Jews in Montreal, as though that might have something to do with her slums. Others point out that the Catholic Church, which believes that the poor must be always with us, is supreme in Montreal; poverty and the faith, they say, go always together. I think it is truest to argue that, while all these things are in their degree contributory, it is not fair to fix on any one of them as the chief cause of the ill. One thing is certain. Montreal's slums are not typical of Canada, but of a great city. No great city has as yet found itself completely, and the greater it is, the less soluble are its problems of poverty. It may be that they can be resolved only by the great cities ceasing to exist in the form we know them.
Meanwhile it looks as though the welfare of employees is not being neglected by the leading directors of industry. Take, for example, the Angus Shops, which are larger than any other engineering shops in the world. Here are built these huge houses of cranks and pistons, the railway engines of the Canadian Pacific, that hustle one from end to end of the Dominion; here also are turned out all else that appertains to the biggest railway company in existence. In these shops a system has been introduced which might be called a Bourneville system, only Canadianised. The management refers to it as Welfare Work, and it consists mainly in certain methods whereby the men can obtain good food—while they are working—at low prices, apprentices are helped to an education, the cost of 'holiday homes' is defrayed, and so on. Very sensibly the management admits the system to be a part of a business plan, which it finds remunerative. The idea that beneficence plays a leading part in it is almost scouted; indeed it would not be easy to persuade Canadian working-men that their bosses were doing things from charity. I went over the shops, and found them built on a vast and airy scale. Not being an engineering sort of person, I usually feel, when I invade a machinery place, like some unfortunate beetle that has strayed into a beehive, and may at any moment be attacked by the busy and alarming creatures that are buzzing about there. As I watched the huge engines, swung like bags of feathers from the roof, some black demon would heave showers of sparks at me, and when I started back, another would come raiding out with red-hot tongs. I admired respectfully. But I am one of those who can enjoy my honey just as much without knowing just how it was made. Still, here was a big bit of Montreal, and what miles of French houses with green shutters one drove past to get to it!
It would be absurd to suggest that poverty or slums are conspicuous things in Montreal. The average tourist will see none of them, but only many beautiful things—from the Bank of Montreal to the Cathedral, from the Lachine Rapids to the Mountain. I will not describe shooting the Rapids, it has been so often done. I wish I could describe the view from the Mountain. It is the most beautiful view of a city that can be seen. Marseilles from her hill is beautiful, so is Paris from Champigny. From neither of these, nor from any hill that I know of, is there so complete a view of so fair a city. The Mountain is wooded, and through the arches of the trees you gain a score of changing outlooks; but from the edge you see all Montreal—houses and streets and spires, each roof and gate, each chimney and window—so it seems. And beyond, the great river, and beyond, and on every side—Canada. If there were a mountain above Oxford, something like this might be seen.
It was up this wooded steep to Fletcher's field, where an altar had been set up, that the great Eucharistic procession of 1910 wound its way. I was in Montreal just before this event, for which the Montrealers had spent months preparing, and I realised a little why Montreal hopes some day to be the New Rome. The whole city was in a fervour of enthusiasm. A society had been formed for the special purpose of growing flowers to line the way along which the Cardinal-legate would walk, and gifts of money for the same purpose had been received from every part of Canada. The papers, of course, were full of every detail about Church dignitaries arriving or about to arrive. Nor were the shops behindhand. 'Eucharistic Congress! House decoration at moderate prices' was everywhere placarded; and papal flags and papal arms were to be had cheap. There were Congress sales, too, and you could buy Congress 'creations' from the dressmakers, Congress hats from the milliners, Congress boots from the bootmakers.
On the day that Cardinal Vannutelli arrived, in a dismal and violent downpour of rain, all Montreal in macintoshes was to be seen dashing for the Bonsecours wharf to offer its respectful greetings to the papal legate.
Will the Montrealers' dream of providing the New Rome ever be achieved? Who can say? Rome, though Italians may become subversive of the faith, will perhaps stand for ever. If it ceased, as the centre of the Catholic faith, Montreal might certainly claim to take its place. It is already the centre of French-Canadian Catholicism; it might become the religious centre of Canada. There is no certainty that Catholicism will persist in Canada only among the French Canadians. It seems equally possible that Rome will prevail among non-French Canadians. Both in Canada and the States her strides forward have been enormous—comparable perhaps only to the steps taken in other directions by Free Thought in Europe. Is it that Catholicism makes peculiar appeal in a new country, or that in these new countries the propagation of the faith has been great and unceasing? These are debatable questions (though undebatable, I think, is the statement that in the New World Rome has a marvellous history of things attempted splendidly and achieved without reproach). I will not debate, then, but rather return to the Mountain and ask you to picture the great Eucharistic procession moving slowly up to it—up to the altar built there in the open, under the high and clear Canadian skies—all the inhabitants of a mighty city moving with it, till the city itself is left behind and all that is low and earthly left for the moment with it. Then you will have in your mind one picture of Montreal at least not unworthy of it. It will be a picture of Montreal at its best and highest—a city of the faithful—near to their Mountain.
From Montreal to Toronto is a pleasant run through a southern part of Canada. One passes orchards and woods and Smith's Falls, where bricks are made, and Peterborough, which has the largest hydraulic lift-lock in the world. The Union railway station at Toronto, when I got there, was a seething mass of people and baggage, with an occasional railway official hidden in the vortex. I spent an hour trying to put a bag into the parcel-room, and after that gave up trying. Canadians are singularly patient in matters of this kind. Laden with heavy bags, they will collect in crowds outside the small window of a parcel-room, and burdened thus will wait there for hours without a murmur, while the youth inside lounges about at his leisure. My temper has frequently been stretched to the limit in Germany when I have had to wait perhaps ten minutes for a penny stamp while the Prussian postal official behind the glass slit curled his moustaches in imitation of the Kaiser. I think the methods at that parcel-room in Toronto were even more trying. I will admit that it was Labour Day, and that Toronto was also in the throes of the World's Fair. But in a city of that size one would expect some preparation to be made for forthcoming throes. The truth seems to be that throughout Canada important events, attracting immense crowds, are brought off without any extra provision being made. Montreal managed to contain its Congress hordes pretty well, but Toronto during the World's Fair had a general air about it of sleeping six in a bed, if it slept at all. I kept coming across the same sort of thing at other places. Calgary, I remember, looked for the few days I was there like the Old Kent Road on a Saturday night, so crowded was it with people who had come in to witness the return to its native heath of a victorious football team. Regina was overrun with the Canadian bankers who, in massive formation, were touring the North-West. In one or two small places in the Rockies enormous trainloads of Canada's leading merchants, who were inspecting British Columbia with an eye to its future, were deposited for a day in passing, and caused as much confusion as the canoe-loads of savages must have done when they descended on Robinson Crusoe's island.
Labour Day is in the New World very different from what it is with us. In Canada, if you like, you may for three hundred and sixty-four days labour and do all that you have to do, but the three hundred and sixty-fifth is Labour Day, and no manner of work—except transportation—may be done that day. Transport work is necessary, because by way of observing Labour Day it is the thing to go somewhere in great multitudes, preferably by rail, and pursue the sort of pleasure that is only to be obtained by those who seek it multitudinously.
Toronto was on this occasion a chosen spot for people to rollick in. This, added to the fact that the World's Fair was also in progress, prevented me from being able to get a room for the night, though I applied at five different hotels. At the sixth, which was full of excited commercial travellers, I was granted a bed on a top landing. I did not mind so much because I was seeing Toronto in a lively state. Ordinarily, I imagine, Toronto is the least bit too decorous, not devoid of cheerfulness, but not joyous either. There is nothing Parisian about Toronto, you would say. This stands to reason, because if there is any Parisian air in Canada at all it belongs to Montreal, and Toronto would be the last place to imitate Montreal in any manner. The extraordinary rivalry that exists between the great East Canadian cities never leads to imitation. On the plains it is different. Winnipeg is the great model for all the little towns on the plains. But while Quebec resents the idea that Montreal is a much more important city than itself, and Montreal regrets that the seat of Government should be at so small a place as Ottawa, and Toronto considers Montreal ill-balanced in spite of its wealth, each of them would only consent to expand its own real superiority along its own particular lines and in its own particular manner.
Still on Labour Night Toronto was quite gay. It did not look like the Boston of Canada at all, though it has substantial grounds, I read somewhere, for making this claim. I could realise that it was entitled to make this claim if it wanted to. If one shut one's eyes to the crowds, one could feel an air of brisk sobriety permeating it; and everything that one reads about it goes to show that a brisk sobriety is what it aims at. It keeps the Sabbath, for example, most strictly, though it hustles or almost hustles the rest of the week. I should guess Toronto places briskness next to godliness, not a very bad second either. Its industries and its opulence are too well known to be worth detailing here. What struck me as most interesting about Toronto was that it seemed to represent more than any other place in Canada what we mean in England when we talk of Canadians. We do not mean the French Canadians of Quebec Province, nor the American Canadians and English public-school boys who are to be found in such numbers in Alberta and the plains. The sort of people we are thinking of are people who have been born in Canada, who have even spent generations there, but are, nevertheless, British by descent and British in tongue. There are people of this sort in other parts of Canada. The inhabitants of the Maritime Provinces are such, in spite of the fact that Mr. Bourassa has claimed that within fifteen years they will have become French in language and Roman Catholic in faith. Mr. Bourassa has made the same claim, to be sure, with regard to the inhabitants of Ontario. In the meantime, it would be truer to describe the inhabitants of Ontario as Canadians in the English sense. And Toronto is their capital. It is, of course, the home of the United Empire Loyalists who settled here when the States broke away from our rule. The temper that made any rule but England's and any liberty that was not English liberty unendurable still remains, and I think Mr. Bourassa will have his work cut out to Gallicise them. Still even the sternest traditions of loyalty do not prevent—nay, even encourage—a certain change in the character of a people.
It is probable that Ontarians are less English now than they were, just as Quebeckers are less French. Which have the right to be held more essentially Canadian may be questioned, but I repeat that when we in England talk of Canadians we have in mind a type of men to which the Ontarians correspond more than any others. It would be absurd, no doubt, to look for the English type in a metropolis like London, and perhaps it is absurd to look for the Ontarian type in a metropolis like Toronto. But it is less absurd, I think, and anyhow I did look for it there. What did I find? Well, I hope elsewhere to go cautiously and delicately into this matter of what a typical Canadian is like. Here I will only say that if you can imagine a Lowland Scot, cautious and self-possessed, outwardly resisting American exuberance and extravagance, but inwardly by slow degrees absorbing—and thereby moderating—that hustling spirit of which these things are manifestations, you have something not unlike the Canadian of Toronto. Remember that Toronto is the southern gateway of Canada. It fronts on the States. It deals with the States. Between it and the States there is constant intercourse. It pursues the same industries, following in many cases the same methods. Many American managers of men are to be found in Toronto. It is not unnatural that some of the American spirit should dwell there also, and even tend to breed there.
Now for the Fair. Fairing is a pretty old thing, and I have done a good deal of it, but fairing at Toronto struck me as being somehow new. I do not mean in the way of the exhibits one saw. They were nothing out of the way to any one who has seen the more famous exhibitions of the Old World, and the arrangements struck me as poor. The grounds by the lake are fairly extensive, but the buildings are second-rate. I thought when I saw the fruit exhibit in one of them that the whole display was little better than at a little English village flower show. But the keenness of the crowd visiting the ground! There was the novelty. They did not glimpse at things in our blasé European way, and then sink into seats to listen to the band. They did listen to the band, but that was because the band was part of the show; and they wanted to do the show, every inch of it. Whole families camped for the day on the grounds. They brought meals with them in paper bags and boxes to fortify themselves lest they should drop before they had seen everything. Not that there was any lack of smartness either. The ladies had on their best hats and frocks, and the Canadian best in these respects is very fine. But one did not suspect them, as one would have suspected ladies at the White City or the Brussels Exhibition, of being there merely to show themselves off. Their frocks were in honour of the Fair. The Fair was the thing. It was a scene of the greatest enthusiasm under a tolerably hot sun. I had been asked to note if any English firms had taken the trouble to exhibit, and I am bound to say that I saw very few. It seems a pity when one considers the sort of people who visit the Fair—not merely a crowd amusing itself for an hour or two with glancing at the exhibits, but a crowd trying to find out what there was to buy—a crowd with dollars in its pockets and plenty of dollars in its banks. I dare say there are difficulties in the way. There was not, for example, indefinite room for more exhibits, nor are Canadian manufacturers, with rumours of reduced tariffs going about, to be presumed eager to encourage competitors. Still, it seemed a pity.
I clove my way to bed that night on the top landing through a horde of keen commercial travellers joyfully discussing all the business the exhibition would bring them. Next day I went to Niagara, by steamer, across the great lake. Toronto owes at least half its greatness to the Falls, and there should be, but I do not think there is, a really big monument to their discoverer, Father Louis Hennepin. Very likely, though, the discovery of Niagara was its own reward, especially for so inquisitive a man as that friar. He has himself confessed how, in the old days, when he was only a begging friar, sent by the Superior of his Order to beg for alms at the seaport of Calais, he used, in his curiosity, to hide himself behind tavern doors and listen to the sailors within telling of their voyages, while their tobacco smoke was wafted out and made him 'very sick at the stomach.' In the end he was the first white man to see the Falls, in the winter of 1687....
They were framed in a most gorgeous sunset when I saw them on an August day. The green and white foam swooped from a mountain of clouds all grey and gold—clouds piled fantastically into the furthest sky. No one seeing them in such a light could be disappointed with them, but I would forbid any more writers to write about them. Every man should be his own poet where the greater sights of the world are concerned. On second thoughts it is permissible to read Mr. Howells on the subject, and even Dickens, provided one is never likely to see them with one's own eyes. I saw the Falls at sunset, by starlight, and in the sunrise, and I can commend them at all these times. The river that drowned Captain Webb and was crossed by Blondin on the tight-rope, though extraordinary in its way, seemed to me comparatively unbeautiful and uninteresting. Any big sea on the Atlantic or Pacific is a finer sight and grips a man harder. I like a river quiet myself. Moreover, the villas above Niagara River give the landscape a domestic air in which its mad swirl seems only like an attempt to show off malignantly.
One of my pleasantest recollections of Niagara is a conversation I had with the porter at the hotel where I stopped on the Canadian side. He was an American negro, extremely urbane and chatty. He told me that he guessed I was an Englishman. It was pretty easy, he said, to tell that. I did not feel sure whether to feel flattered or not, but I felt sure later, when he introduced me to the lift-boy—a typical little stunted anæmic street arab from one of our northern cities—with a wave of the hand and the remark, 'Thar's one of your fellow-countrymen.' Afterwards, in self-defence, I steered the conversation towards Canada, and the porter, who regarded himself as an American citizen only, told me that the Canadians were a slow, stupid people, who could not be trusted of themselves to do anything but cultivate a little land badly.
'Look at Toronto,' he said; 'do you think there'd be any hustle in that place if the Canadians had been left to themselves? No, sah. But we came along and lent them our brains and our enterprise, and I guess now it's a big fine city.'
A friend, acquainted with Canada, met me in Toronto, and I told him I was tired of cities and thought of going to the Muskoka Lakes.
'What do you expect to get there?' he asked.
'Scenery,' I said—'camping, fishing. A Fenimore Cooper existence in the backwoods. Isn't it to be had there?'
'The scenery's all right,' he said, 'and you can camp out of course, and there are some fish. But if you mean you want a quiet, unconventional life——'
'I do for a few days,' I said.
'You'd better go further than the Muskoka district, then,' he said. 'It's beginning to be rather a fashionable camping-ground—quite pleasant in its way. If you care to see charming American maidens in expensive frocks falling out of canoes just on purpose to be able to change into frocks still more expensive, the Muskoka country is the place for you. If not, you had better come with me and fish for maskinongés on the French River.'
I did not know where the French River was or what maskinongés were, or how you caught them; but I said 'Yes,' being very tired of cities, and we took the night train from Toronto, and at 4.30 A.M. dropped off it on to a bridge that spanned a deep, big river. The dawn was exceedingly cold and grey.
Literally we dropped off the train, for it did not stop but only slowed down, and after us the negro porter dropped our bags and tackle. A minute later the train had vanished, and we were left alone on the bridge, staring at the rocky, wooded cliffs that rose on either bank. Rock, wood, and water indeed met the eye wherever one looked. It seemed a country where Nature had once built mountains, savage and sparsely wooded mountains in the midst of a great inland sea, then in a cataclysmal mood had dashed them to pieces in every direction. And as the boulders and splinters of boulders flew, some fell in circles and made little lakes out of the great sea; some fell in heaped cliffs and banks, between which the sea was squeezed into winding, forking streams; some fell and sank and left the sea a shallow swamp above them; some fell and stood up out of the water and became islands of dry rock. Every splinter that flew bore in some crack of it a seed of spruce or fir or birch, which grew; so that all this barren rock and waste of water became crowned with trees. I dare say any geologist could explain exactly what did happen. I am merely explaining what appears to have happened, when you look at it the first time with eyes still full of sleep.
It was the French River at which we were gazing, and it looked at this point somewhat wider than the Thames at Hammersmith. It was flat and full with a good current; and my friend made some remark about never having been given to understand, when he was at school in England, that there was such a river at all—much less that it was finer than the Thames.
'I doubt if one would find it marked on an English school map even now,' he continued.
'I don't know, I'm sure,' I replied.
'Doesn't it show how disgracefully ignorant we are of Canada?' he demanded in the hollow tones of an Imperial enthusiast.
'Yes,' I agreed. I daresay I should have agreed anyhow. It was disgraceful that we neither of us had known anything about the French River. But the reason I agreed so quickly was that, if I had not done so, he was capable of proving to me that such gross ignorance, if persisted in, will some day prove fatal to the Empire. Whereas I merely wanted breakfast. Any one who has been dropped off a train at 4.30 on a misty morning in the sort of country I have described will sympathise with me.
Luckily the dawn soon became a little less grey, and presently we beheld a wooden shack standing on a crag some quarter of a mile up stream, with a dozen canoes moored below it. Presently also—and this was more to the point—some one in the shack became aware of us standing on the bridge, and put out in an old boat fitted with a motor to fetch us. An hour later we were enjoying breakfast inside the shack, which is really a hotel of sorts, and its proprietor, Mr. Fenton, was explaining to us all about the fishing to be had on the French River. For five dollars—or nine for two persons, he would supply us with a canoe, an Indian guide, a tent, provisions, and a hundred miles or so of first-class fishing.
Now for the benefit of all benighted Englishmen who do not know the French River or Mr. Fenton of Pickerel, but would like to make their acquaintance and that of the maskinongé, let me enlarge upon my existence for the next few days.
Let me begin with Bill. Bill was our Indian guide. He was an Ojibway. Youthful, well built, reserved in manner, he paddled us on the average eight hours, cooked three meals, and set up or took down our tent in an incredibly short time every day. When either of us caught a fish, Bill laughed; when we did not, he stared into space. He laughed pretty often, for we caught quite a number of fish. It seemed unavoidable on the French River. Occasionally, in answer to questions, Bill spoke. He spoke English. Once or twice he spoke on his own account. I remember his saying that he preferred eggs to fish. I do not know how much Bill thought. Accustomed to connect such outward reserve and dignity as Bill showed with a philosophic mind, I fancied for quite a long time that Bill must think a great deal. I doubt it now. Those who have studied the Red Indian in his native haunts have discovered, I believe, that though his mind works in mysterious ways, it does work; but not quickly, or with superhuman gravity or discernment. As for that look of reserve—it indicates no more brain-work or brain-power than the look of reserve on the face of an alligator. When I read hereafter that the hero of a book has a reserved face and an imperturbable manner (he so very often has in the novels of ladies) I shall think of Bill, and be delighted. Bill was so soothing. So was the French River. It is worth an Englishman's while to know of it—worth his private as well as his Imperial while. American sportsmen seem to know it well. They come fishing up it in fair numbers earlier in the year, and they come shooting later—deer and partridge and cariboo. The partridge shooting is said to be some of the finest in Canada.
The French explorers also knew the French River, for it was by this route that they first found their way to Lake Huron when, by reason of Bill's ancestors being out on the war-path, seeking scalps, they found Lake Ontario impossible of crossing. In width it varies considerably. Sometimes it narrows to rapids, at others it broadens to over a mile across, and is divided into channels by steep islands. The scenery of it is as changeful as its channel. Now the banks are built in sheer stone, a hundred feet high; again they rise terrace by terrace, smooth as if men had made them; a little later they are nothing but a chaos of strewn rock. Sometimes the firs predominate, sometimes the birches, pale green still these latter, or yellowing in the fall. Then a splash of cherry colour or crimson shows a maple on its way to winter. There are reedy backwaters where great pike lie; and natural weirs, below which the rock bass wait for their food; the deep pools hold pickerel or catfish. Everywhere the air exhilarates, and along the wider reaches we used to meet a wind like a sea-wind that put the river in waves and set them tippling into the bows of the canoe.
For the most part we trolled, six or seven miles upstream from Pickerel landing, using an artificial minnow or feathered double spoon, which latter seemed to attract pike, bass, and pickerel, though the last, like the cat-fish, preferred a worm. However, it is a dull fish, the pickerel, hardly worth catching. Not so the cat-fish. A six-pounder of this variety can be very strenuous indeed, and the only drawback to it is, as an American we met remarked, you would have to shut your eyes before you could eat it. Certainly it is one of the most grotesque and hideous of freshwater fish, having four slimy tendrils growing from the sides of its mouth, with pig's eyes between. The bass is a fine eater. We got bass up to four pounds, and if it is not mean to mention such a matter in connection with so sporting a fish, you know that when you have landed one you have landed a glorious supper. Those suppers over the camp fire, which Bill could set roaring within three minutes—so much timber and touchwood lies everywhere—what would one not give to enjoy the like in England? In an artificial sort of way you can do so. Here one is in the wilds as they were from the beginning—except that the Indian is cooking for the white man instead of cooking the white man for fun.
What a delight it was, too, to go to bed on a couch of fir boughs, with the wind rustling through the birches, to the soothing sound of Bill, stretched at the foot of the tent, spitting gently into the night. It was a soothing sound, until I awoke one night to find that Bill had drawn the flap of the tent tight, but was still spitting—I do not know whither.
We spent four days on the French River, and our catch averaged over twelve pounds a day. It would have been much more if we had fished for every sort of fish and taken no photographs. As it was we took a good many photographs, and spent most of our time trying to lure the maskinongé. It is the king-fish of these waters—a sort of pike—but with the leaping powers of a salmon and the heart of a tiger. Bill used to madden us with tales of how the last party he had guided had landed twenty maskinongés in three days. We fished and fished, and then I, trolling with a spoon, hooked one. We saw him almost instantly take a great white leap into the sun, thirty yards from the canoe. Then Bill paddled gently for the nearest shore at which one could land him, and I played him the while with such care ... Oh, my maskinongé, never to be mine! I got him to the bank—a flat piece of rock with a kindly slope to the water. Perhaps he was not more than fifteen pounds in weight. Perhaps he was. Bill said not. But then Bill had not hooked him; and in fact it was Bill who lost him. Anyway, fifteen pounds is fifteen pounds, even if they do run to forty. Yes, it was Bill that lost him. I stick to that—though I admit that we had all been stupid enough to come out without a gaff. So it came about that, though I drew him ever so gingerly to the rock, yet—yet as Bill made a lunge at him to get him up—my maskinongé leaped once more—and broke the line!
There for a second he lay, all dazed and silvery, in the shallow water—then woke up and vanished, spoon and all!...
Bill vowed that the line was too weak; but what line would have stood it?
No matter—though I did not say 'no matter' at the time. Some day perhaps I shall go back to the French River. For fifty pounds a man could get there from England, spend three weeks in fishing, and return again to the old country—a five-weeks trip in all—and know, maybe, the best August and September of his life. Yes, I hope to go back and catch maskinongé, and listen once more to the wind in the birches, and go to sleep again to the sound of Bill spitting—for choice into the night.
Coming away from the French River, we spent a night at Sudbury, which lies in the midst of 'rich deposits of nickeliferous pyrrhotite.' Had I a brain capable of appreciating nickeliferous pyrrhotite, I should have got more pleasure out of this prosperous mining town than I did. My chief recollections of it are that it was unattractive, that everybody looked prosperous in it, that trucks were shunted under my bedroom window all night long, and that the hotel proprietor forgot to wake us at the time we had requested, with the result that we got to the station breakfastless, about half an hour after the train was due to start. Luckily it was late. I do not care for missing trains at any time, but to have missed that train at Sudbury would have been singularly annoying. There was, in effect, nothing of interest in Sudbury if you were not interested in nickeliferous pyrrhotite. I know that I should not make such a remark. Humani nihil a me alienum should be every writer's motto. But it is one thing to possess a motto, another to act upon it after trucks have been shunted under one's window all night, and one stands breakfastless on a dull station very early in the morning, waiting for a train that will not come.
Let me recall what sort of humanity was about. There was a stout, middle-aged Indian guide, who told us the finest trout fishing in Canada was to be had a few miles from Sudbury. He was the most cheerful Indian I saw in Canada—really a cheerful man—creased with smiles. There were miners looking out for jobs or leaving them—mostly spitting. They were all young men. I only saw about four old men in the whole Dominion. I do not know if Canadians are shut up after a certain age, or do not grow to it, or retire like butterflies to end their days far from the ken of man. So that there was nothing surprising in there being only young men at the station. More surprising was the amount of nationalities that seemed to be represented among them. They seemed of every race and yet very alike. I suppose a miner is a miner, whatever his nationality, just as a mahout is a mahout. In the strange worlds both these kinds of experts live in, the one sort in the bowels of the earth, the other on the necks of elephants, our little international distinctions would tend to become of less importance. If a man is a miner, he may also be a Belgian or a German or a Yorkshireman—but his real country is subterranean: he is before all things a citizen of the underworld. I do not know if one would get to recognise a miner in Canada quite so easily as one gets to recognise a miner at home—for miners there shift about more than in England, and spend more time, therefore, in the upper world; which stamps men differently. Still, though tales of new finds in new countries, where wages will be almost incredibly high, constantly reach them, and tempt them forth, after all they emerge from one part of the dark earth only to plunge into another—passing the between-time above-ground magnificently; but less magnificently than their wives. The prices paid by miners' wives for their hats at some of the big stores would startle the more extravagant of our own smart set. I believe there were some lumbermen in the station too, taking their ease, but I had not then grown to know the look of a lumberjack as I did later. The chief thing about him is his magnificent complexion—enviable of women. Canada is not generous in the matter of complexions, and one usually hears that the dry winds of the winter time are accountable for making them poor, especially on the plains. The hot stoves of the shacks are a still more likely cause. Why then should the lumbermen have such incomparable skins? Partly because they are men in 'the pink of condition'—so long as they work (their condition out of it is best realised by a perusal of Woodsmen of the West, one of the few fine local studies of a real type of Canadian life that have yet been written); partly because their work is in the woods which are windless and not dry.
Tokens of the lumbering life—besides the complexion—are jollity, a freedom from care amounting to something even more delightful than irresponsibility, an air of equality with something of superiority in it—indeed, with a good deal of superiority in it—and a childlike loquaciousness or an equally childlike dislike of talk. These last two qualities are both, I fancy, Canadian in general. One is generally told that the Canadians are ready talkers, will always address a stranger in the train, will be inquisitive and self-revealing to an extent unimagined by the Englishman. Mr. Kipling remarked, I remember, in his Canadian letters that you will learn from an Englishman in two years less than you will learn from a Canadian in two minutes. Mr. Kipling is perhaps the best boaster Canada ever drew to herself. My own experience in the matter of Canadian conversation is that a lot depends upon the individual. Introductions are certainly not waited for, and on a journey one may chat with strangers to one's heart's content. But it must be borne in mind that the traveller par excellence in Canada is the commercial traveller whose business it is to talk. Off the line—and on it, where other travellers are concerned—one finds men with a gift of silence that can at times be disheartening. It is natural that this should be so. Men in remote places lose the use of their tongues. All men are not talkers, indeed I think the great majority of men in any country are not talkers. When Canadians do talk, it must be admitted that they excel us, or their working-men do. Their working-men are not only ready, but also, superficially at any rate, remarkably well-informed about things outside their own particular job. They know what is being talked of, the prices of things, the value of land, astonishingly well. All Canadians know something about land; and about what he knows, the Canadian is not deprecating. Precisely for this reason, perhaps, the more educated men among them are at times considerably less interesting than ours. It is not that their conversational topics are few, but that they are circumscribed. The personal and dogmatic element enters into them, with the result that the subject discussed seems incapable of extension, and tends to become circular. I have met quite young men who were bores, and bores not only in essence, but in manner, like the clergymen of our comic papers. I do not know why it is, but I do know that it is sad. It may be that there are not enough women in Canada to prevent it. Men are so patient they will stand anything—even a bore. But where women abound, a man may not be tiresome either in his clothes or his conversation....
I believe the train at Sudbury was almost an hour late, which is why I have gone on so long noting trifles at large. When it did come in, somewhere about 8 A.M., we discovered that it was full up, and people had been standing in the first-class carriages all night. They had mostly breakfasted since, and the first-class carriage we got into was littered from end to end with bun-bags and sandwich-papers and orange peel, and all the refuse that results from picnics in trains. Tired parents and sleepy children were piled above this flotsam in an atmosphere hard to endure. Yet everybody was cheerful, and though we both wished in our hearts that we could have got 'sleepers' entitling us to Pullman accommodation, we were both grateful—or ought to have been grateful—that we were privileged to witness the contented spirit with which these representatives of the great Dominion bore their trials. Not a grumble—oh, my brother Englishman, not a grumble! Think of it.