SALMON FISHING IN THE FAR WEST
(MORICETOWN, BRITISH COLUMBIA)
CANADA
THE SPELLBINDER
BY
LILIAN WHITING
WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS
IN COLOUR AND MONOTONE
LONDON & TORONTO
J. M. DENT & SONS LTD.
MCMXVII
All rights reserved
TO
CHARLES MELVILLE HAYS
whose foresight and energy, whose courage and genius lifted Canada's pioneer railway to a very high level of service and success; extended its operations from the Atlantic to the Pacific; opened thousands of miles of new scenic beauties and prepared a region which will ere long become a vital centre of population and strength to the British Empire; and whose passing to the larger and more significant activities of "the life more abundant" (by the tragic wreck of the s.s. Titanic, April 15, 1912) has left an unforgettable breach in the official family of the Grand Trunk System, an irreparable loss to his associates, to whom he was a beloved, constant, and forceful inspiration—this effort to interpret something of the romantic charm and richness of the resources of the Dominion is inscribed by
LILIAN WHITING.
"The shadow of his loss drew like eclipse
Darkening the world. We have lost him; he is gone;
We know him now; all narrow jealousies
Are silent; and we see him as he moved,
How modest, kindly, all-accomplished, wise,
With what sublime repression of himself."
TENNYSON.
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. [The Creative Forces of Canada]
II. [Quebec and the Picturesque Maritime Region]
V. [The Canadian Summer Resorts]
VI. [Cobalt and the Silver Mines]
VIII. [On the Grand Trunk Pacific]
IX. [Prince Rupert and Alaska]
X. [Prince Rupert to Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle, and the Golden Gate]
XI. [Canada in the Panama-Pacific Exposition]
XII. [Canadian Poets and Poetry]
XIII. [The Call of the Canadian West]
List Of Illustrations
[Salmon Fishing in the Far West (Moricetown, British Columbia)] .... Coloured Frontispiece
[Cape Santé (Quebec), St. Lawrence River]
[Dufferin Terrace, Quebec, from the Citadel]
[Harbour of St. John, New Brunswick]
[Interior of Notre Dame, Montreal]
[Ottawa—Showing the Parliament Buildings and Château Laurier]
[The Bigwin Inn, Lake-of-Bays, Ontario]
[Sir Arthur and Lady Conan Doyle and Party]
[Union Station and Fort Garry Hotel, Winnipeg]
[Mount Edith Cavell and Cavell Lake]
[Hudson Bay Mountain and Lake Kathlyn, Bulkley Valley]
[Junction of Skeena and Bulkley Rivers, British Columbia]
[Indians spearing Salmon in Bulkley Cañon]
[Prince Rupert, British Columbia]
[Pure Bred Jerseys, Western Canada]
[Mount Robson, British Columbia]
[Looking towards Mount Munn from the Valley of Flowers]
[Bulkley Gate (150 feet high), Bulkley River]
[Canoeing on the Fraser River]
[Mount Robson, at a Distance of Ten Miles]
[Farming in Shellbrook District, Saskatchewan]
[After the Bear Hunt—Moose River Forks]
CANADA THE SPELLBINDER
CHAPTER I
THE CREATIVE FORCES OF CANADA
"All parts away for the progress of souls,
All religion, all solid things, arts, governments—all that was or
is apparent upon this globe or any globe, falls into niches
and corners before the procession of souls along the grand
roads of the universe.
Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand
roads of the universe, all other progress is the needed
emblem and sustenance."
WALT WHITMAN (Song of the Open Road).
"The flowering of civilisation is the finished man, the man of sense, of grace, of accomplishment, of social power—the gentleman. What hinders that he be born here? The new times need a new man, the complemental man, whom plainly this country must furnish.... Of no use are the men who study to do exactly as was done before, who can never understand that to-day is a new day."—EMERSON.
Against a background of bewilderingly varied activities which projects from the earliest years of the sixteenth well into the twentieth century and reveals itself as a moving panorama of explorers, pioneers, adventurers, traders, and missionaries, there stands out a line of remarkable personalities whose latter-day leadership has largely initiated as well as dominated the conditions of their time and the bequest of century to century. Among these were men, lofty of soul and tenacious of high purpose, who saw the potential Empire in a vast and infinitely varied region which seemed compact of unrelated resources. They were kindled by the growing achievements of the constructive genius that had already projected the wonderful steel highways carrying civilisation into the trackless wilderness. This constructive genius bridged the mighty rivers; created extensive waterways by means of canals connecting lakes and flowing streams; in still later years this genius commanded the cataracts and rapids to transform their ceaseless motion into motor power for traction, and lighting, and other service of industrial and economic value.
Each successive civilisation of the world, indeed, has shown an unbroken line of exceptional personalities in whom has been focussed the power of their epoch. They are the centres through which this power becomes manifest in applied purposes and special achievements. Civilisation itself is but the evolutionary representation of successive conditions of increasing enlightenment. With each succeeding age does man recognise more and more clearly his relation to the moral order of the universe. The guidance of unseen destiny leads him on, and in the records of no country is this working out of the invisible design more unmistakably shown than in those of the Dominion of Canada. This golden thread discloses itself to retrospective scrutiny through a period of three centuries of time. "Man imagines and arranges his plans," says Leblond de Brumath in his biography of Bishop Laval; "but above these arrangements hovers Providence whose foreseeing sets all in order for the accomplishment of His impenetrable design.... Nor must man banish God from history, for then would everything become incomprehensible and inexplicable."
The creative forces of an Empire include various and varying agencies. If to the courage and heroism of the original discoverers of the land too great recognition can hardly be given, yet to those who have made these discoveries of value by bringing the resources of a continent into useful relations with humanity recognition is not less due. John and Sebastian Cabot, Jacques Cartier, Champlain, Mackenzie, Fraser, and La Salle, were great pathfinders. But the very greatness of their achievements required such men as James McGill, Donald Smith (Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal), Sir George Etienne Cartier, the Right Honourable Sir John Alexander Macdonald, Sir Charles Tupper, and others, to stamp the early life of the pioneer with the seal of statesmanship and education. Here were vast areas of land; enchanting rivers, noble lakes, majestic mountains; untold wealth in minerals and in the boundless potentialities of agriculture; a marvellous country that is not only a land of promise, but a veritable Promised Land. Yet are its possibilities like those of the ether of space, until it is rendered accessible to restless, struggling humanity by the indomitable power of great spirits, of wise and forcible leaders of progress who are perhaps the pioneers of the physical world in a degree similar to that of lofty beings in the realms unseen. It is such as they who create the conditions which render all these immeasurable resources of practical value to humanity. Such men as Sir William Cornelius Van Horne and Charles Melville Hays; men who have courage as well as vision; who see beyond all barriers; men who dare do that which weaker souls fear to attempt—such men are as truly among the creative forces of their country as are its original discoverers.
Falls of the Grand Forks River
Little reference to these earliest years of Canadian history could be made, even in the mere outline which alone is possible in these pages, without a vivid recognition of episode and adventure so startling, so often brilliant and romantic, so often tragic in its heroic endurance and ultimate fatality as to illuminate the horizon of history with a flame not unlike the dazzling lights in Polar skies. There were miracle hours that condensed experiences as significant as those often diffused throughout an entire cycle of time. Mingled with these were the long, slow periods of patient labour. It is not with sudden leaps and bounds alone that life progresses, but by the steady, normal advance of persistent endeavour. Nor can demands for improved conditions be always unmingled with some measure of judicious compromise. James Mill, referring to his experiences while in the London office, engaged with the affairs of India, says: "I learnt how to obtain the best I could when I could not obtain everything. Instead of being indignant or dispirited because I could not entirely have my own way, to be pleased and encouraged when I could have the smallest part of it; and when that could not be, to bear with complete equanimity the being over-ruled altogether." Something of this philosophy the makers of Canada were compelled to accept. The incomers from France, the incomers from Great Britain, represented two distinct, even if not unfriendly nations. There were differences of race, of language, of creed. There were differing convictions as to institutions and laws. Until the Confederation the interests of the people were largely local rather than united. The unifying of a country of such enormous geographical extent and including such vital differences among its widely scattered inhabitants, must always prefigure itself as one of the signal feats in the statesmanship of the world.
The very magnitude of the resources and the infinite riches of Canada presented themselves in the guise of difficulties and obstacles to be conquered. Nature provided the vast systems of lakes and rivers; but these required vast schemes of engineering construction to render them of fullest service as continuous waterways. The broad rivers must be bridged. Triumphs of construction have arisen, such as the Victoria Jubilee Bridge across the St. Lawrence at Montreal, a marvellous feat of engineering, and the splendid steel arch bridge over the Gorge of Niagara. Again, in the interests of transcontinental transit, the mountain ranges, whose peaks seem to pierce the sky, must be overcome. Unmapped tracts of almost impenetrable forests; wastes of rocks, and swamps, and the treacherous muskeg; or immense plains, still inhospitable to the destined tide of settlers, must all be subdued in the interests of the advancing civilisation and the development of a country bordering upon three oceans with an extent of coast-line exceeding that of any other country in the world. Then there were incalculable mining possibilities, precious metals, copper, iron, coal; there were unlimited resources of lumber, but the trees must be felled, and there must be railways or waterways to transport the timber. Canada offered water-power enough to turn the wheels of all the manufactories of Europe, but this power was useless until harnessed by the constructive genius of man. Another valuable asset was the pulpwood, the vastness of which suggested this country as the very centre of the pulp and paper manufacturing industry; but between the thousands of acres covered with white spruce trees, and the lakes and rivers contiguous ready to furnish the power, what marvels of mechanism must be duly constructed to bring the pulpwood and the water-power into service of man. As an indication of the proportions to which this industry has already grown it may be cited that for the fiscal year ending on June 30, 1916, the Canadian pulp print papermakers shipped to the United States alone seven hundred and ninety-four and a half millions of pounds, an increase of one hundred and eighty millions over the amount shipped to the States in the preceding year.
Here, indeed, was a country rivalling any other in the world in the largess of nature, but whose every aspect was a challenge to the constructive enterprise of man. Nature, with unsurpassed lavishness, presented the raw material; it rested with man to stamp it with value. Thus the stimulus to industrial and commercial activities was second to none other in the history of nations.
These were the conditions that confronted, as well as rewarded, the early discoverers and pioneers. Did some prescience of all this potential wealth awaiting the centuries to come drift across the ocean spaces and touch minds sensitive to its impress?
"The Future works out great men's purposes."
John and Sebastian Cabot were impelled by a destiny as unrevealed to them as was that of Columbus. Each bore a magic mirror turned forward to reflect the promise of the future. In the hand of each was carried the lighted torch. It was passed from each explorer to his successor. Cartier, who navigated the St. Lawrence to Quebec and then on to Hochelaga (the name given to the primitive Indian village on the site of which now stands the stately and splendid city of Montreal), carried the lighted torch still farther, and passed it on to Champlain who, three-quarters of a century later, came to found a trading-post on the island of Montreal—"La Place Royale" it was then called, the picturesque mountain that rises in the midst of the modern city of to-day having been named by Cartier "Mont Royale," from which is derived the present Montreal. There followed La Salle, Marquette, Joliet, and others. Sieur de Maisonneuve consecrated the site of Montreal as the first act of his landing. It is little wonder that the visitor to this entrancing city to-day feels some unanalysed and mystic touch pervading the air, something that must forever haunt and pervade his memories of stately, magnificent Montreal. No other city on the continent has this indefinable element of magic and of charm.
The seventeenth century was an almost unbroken period of bold and daring adventure and of missionary activities. All over the world, at this time, was there manifested the passion for exploration. It prevailed over the entire continent of Europe. It recorded its progress on the new continent of North America.
The discovery of Hudson Bay has been placed by some statisticians as early as 1498, when it is surmised that Cabot may have reached it; but the absolute and authentic date still lingers somewhat in the region of conjecture and mystery. It was in 1607 that Henry Hudson is known to have first seen it as he sailed in search of the North Pole. Intrepid adventurer! He found, not the goal of his quest, but, instead, that "undiscovered country" we shall all one day see. "Hudson's shallop went down in as utter silence and mystery as that which surrounds the watery graves of those old sea Vikings who rode out to meet death on the billow," says a Canadian historian. Hudson Bay became a centre of intense interest to all the exploring navigators. Admiral Sir Thomas Button sailed in search of Hudson, or of some tidings of his fate. He returned without the knowledge he sought for, but with much information regarding all the western coast. Still later came Foxe and James. In 1631 Foxe discovered a fallen cross which he judged had been erected by his predecessor, the English Admiral, and he raised it and affixed an inscription and the date.
An organisation that was pre-eminently one of the creative forces of Canada was that of the Hudson's Bay Company, which traces its origin to a voyage of adventure made by two Frenchmen, Pierre Esprit de Radisson and Menart Chouart sieur Degroseillers, who were allured by rumours of the "inexhaustible harvest of furs" that awaited enterprising traders. Baffled for the time by obstacles that seemed insurmountable, they returned to England to ask the assistance of King Charles II., and in 1666 was formed a company that included Prince Rupert (a cousin of the king), the Duke of Albemarle, the Earl of Craven, Sir George Carteret, and other noblemen and merchants, as the incorporators, to whom, in 1670, the king granted a charter to comprise "the whole trade of all the seas, bays, rivers, and sounds, in whatever latitude, ... and territories of the coasts which are not now actually possessed by any of our subjects, or by the subjects of any other Christian prince or state." In the following year two vessels were sent out within a short period and there sprang up a group of trading posts. Radisson remained for life in the service of the Company.
Against the living background of Canadian history in all its varied activities, no one contributing factor stands out with such prominence as that of this Hudson's Bay Company which, for two and a half centuries, dominated the country and whose commercial importance played so large a part in her development. Let no one mistake the purpose of the Company, however, as one inspired by purely philanthropic or patriotic ardour. The dominant aim was by no means primarily that of the development of the new and almost unknown country. The servants of the Company were not braving the terrors and hardships of the wilderness on exclusively altruistic inspirations. On the contrary, it was their policy to conceal the existence of the vast riches of the land and to represent it as inaccessible to any one beyond Indians and hunters. Even as late as the comparatively recent date of the decade of 1860-70, the pupils in Canadian schools were taught that all the Hudson Bay region was uninhabitable; that it was a desolate "No Man's Land," so to speak, covered with ice and snow. No effort to change this impression was made by those concerned with the administration of the Company, but, rather, they were more or less untiring in assisting to confirm it. They had their occult reasons for not being averse to the representation of the entire North-West as being quite valueless for the purposes of civilisation. The impression, if not the conviction, was well authorised that the climate rendered the region quite impossible for habitation; and the region in which now lies the most wonderful wheat-growing belt of the world, and whose fertility under cultivation renders it capable of supporting a population as large as that of the entire United States at the present time (estimated at one hundred millions), was assumed to be a region only capable of sustaining wild animals, Indians, and the most hardy hunters and traders. Now it is traversed by three transcontinental railways which have opened an immense business of travel and traffic; and beside dozens of prosperous young towns and villages it contains Winnipeg with its quarter of a million people; Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, Regina; the important new terminal seaport of Prince Rupert, and the still older and more developed port of Vancouver; to say nothing of the scenic grandeur through all the Mount Robson locale, that has captured the enthusiasm of the world. The tradition of the rigours of climate has become so popularised that even as late as the summer of 1915 a New England tourist faring forth for a trip through the great North-West of Canada was urged to provide himself with furs and rugs enough to fit out an expedition to the Polar regions. As a matter of fact the only embarrassment encountered as to temperature was that of trying to discover sufficiently thin clothing for Winnipeg in the opening September days, where the sunshine poured down just then with a flood of radiance that fairly rivalled that of a summer in the Capital city of the United States. Yet, even in all this splendour of sunshine and discomfort of heat, that wonderful quality of the Canadian air was not wanting—a peculiar invigoration which one who has visited the Dominion misses for a long time after leaving the country. Edmonton repeated the same wonderful luxuriance with the same delicious coolness at night; and the journey on through the magnificent mountain scenery to Prince Rupert had the exquisite temperature of an Italian spring.
The Hudson's Bay Company, however, was not organised on the basis of a bureau of publicity for the general benefit of the country and of posterity. Their aim was the gaining of wealth and it was one signally successful. Immense quantities of valuable furs were shipped homeward every year; the shares in the Company became more and more valuable as magnificent dividends were continually declared. They controlled a territory exceeding an area of two million square miles. It was peopled only by the Indians. Yet all through the seventeenth century run the records of that self-sacrificing and heroic band, the Jesuit missionaries, whose devotion to the Christian ideal led them on with a faith and fervour that consecrates their memory.
Cape Santé (Quebec), St. Lawrence River
The ambition of the Company to extend their trading posts still farther and farther inland incited still more explorations into the unknown North-West. They builded better than they knew, for while their aim hardly went beyond that of increasing their own revenues, the results were inevitable factors in the development of the country. That this is true is not in any wise, as has already been said, to be regarded as in the nature of philanthropic or patriotic zeal. They regarded the country and its wealth in the light of a personal perquisite for their exploiting and financial benefit. They circulated the information that this was a "Great Lone Land," as undesirable as it was inaccessible. From motives of self-interest, if not entirely those of humanity, the Company had treated the Indians with kindness and justice and had thus made the British flag something to be held in respect by the tribes. Thus they had built up a strong reliance for themselves of friendliness on the part of the dusky natives. One of the eminent historians, George Bancroft, of Boston, U.S.A., calls attention to this attitude of the Hudson's Bay Company, saying that both the officers and the servants of the corporation "were as much gentlemen by instinct in their treatment of the Indians as in their treatment of civilised men and women." Thus, whenever they should wish to exclude, as enemies, those who came among them representing any other enterprise, they had strong supporters and coadjutors among the tribes. "No trespassers allowed" was practically their motto. Explorations, or the extension of trade, were alike vigilantly discouraged. "Notwithstanding the efforts put forth by the Company," says one chronicle, "it was realised that unless the active co-operation of the Indians could be secured, white trespassers would inevitably make inroads into the trade of the Territory. Steps were therefore taken to unite the tribes against all whites not officially connected with the Company. The means adopted were worthy of the object desired, but could only have been the outcome of an extraordinary disregard of the ordinary amenities of life. The Indians were told that these outsiders would rob and cheat them in the barter of their furs." Still, the very prominence of the Company was its own enormous and inevitable advertisement, so to speak, of untold resources connected with the mysterious regions, and both trade and further exploration were stimulated.
The first quarter of the eighteenth century had but just passed when (in 1727) Pierre Gaultier de Varennes (Sieur de la Verendrye), who was stationed on Lake Nipigon, became imbued with ardour regarding the great question of the day, the North-West Passage; and in 1731 he, with his three sons and an armed force of about fifty men, left Montreal for the West, reaching the shores of Lake Superior within two months, and pushing on—trading and exploring meanwhile—through the all but impenetrable wilderness until he sailed up the Red River, and in the autumn of 1738 established a fort near the site now occupied by the city of Winnipeg.
The great profits accruing to the Hudson's Bay Company inspired rivalry, and in 1795 its keen competitor, the North-West Company, was formed under the leadership of Simon M'Tavish, a Scottish Highlander, of "enormous energy and decision of character." Still another company came into being, organised by two merchants of Montreal, John Gregory and Alexander Norman McLeod, which during its brief life was known as the X Y Company, to whose purposes was attracted a young Scotsman who was destined to be immortalised by his remarkable explorations and his discovery of the great river which perpetuates his name. This young man was Alexander Mackenzie, who came to Canada in 1779, and immediately entered the fur trade. He became connected with the North-West Company and the X Y Company and left for the west to take charge of the Churchill River district. Later, owing to personal dissensions and conflicts of the Company with another of its agents, Mackenzie was commissioned to the Athabasca district, and it was there, apparently, that his project of exploration to the Arctic Ocean took possession of him. From the Indians he heard traditions of a mighty river like that of the Saskatchewan, and in June 1789 he had crossed Athabasca Lake and reached the Peace River which "displayed a succession of the most beautiful scenery," as he recorded. He journeyed to Great Slave Lake after encountering immense difficulties—rapids, long portages, boiling caldrons, and treacherous eddies that threatened to engulf his barque; but at the end of the month he found himself on the river that now bears his name, and on the 12th of July he first sighted the Arctic Ocean. Then there intervened a visit to England before his second expedition in 1792. His memorable inscription on a rock, on the coast near Vancouver: "Alexander Mackenzie from Canada by land, 22 July, 1793," tells its own story. It is not, however, with the long-familiar details of his expeditions that we are here concerned, but with the recognition of their result as one of the constructive factors of the Dominion. The story of these undertakings, of the adventurous journeys of the many explorers, inclusive of Hudson, La Verendrye, Mackenzie, Henry, Thompson, Fraser, Franklin, is a part of the story of Canada. To trace out the contributing causes and the influences investing each of these would be to throw a new illumination on the inter-relations of the factors that have sprung into activity over a long series of years as involved in the evolution of a wonderful country whose great destiny impresses the civilised world.
Sunset on Canyon Lake
The opening years of the nineteenth century were marked by a noble project that apparently ended in failure at the time and yet whose significance is not lost. In every worthy purpose, cosmopolitan, national, or individual in its scope, there is the germ of vitality, and dying in one form it is resurrected in another. Truly of such purposes may be said, in the sublime words of the apostle, that they are "sown in weakness, but raised in power."
"The good, though only thought, has life and breath."
Such a project was that of the Earl of Selkirk to assist numbers of his poorer countrymen by founding a colony for them in the Hudson Bay Territory, where they should find homes and engage in pleasant and profitable agricultural work. With Lord Selkirk it was not the dazzling opportunities of the fur trade that impelled his journey, when, in 1815, he with Lady Selkirk and their son and two daughters landed in Montreal, having already sent out three parties of his country people to the tract of land whose area was that of a hundred and ten thousand square miles which he had purchased in the Red River Valley. His scheme for the betterment of these people included free transportation and temporary support for the settler until he could begin to make his own way, together with a free gift of the land. It was in 1810 that Lord Selkirk had matured his scheme and purchased the land; but on arriving with his family he found himself assailed with charges of conspiracy, condemned to the payment of fines that he contended were totally unjust, and confronted with a strange network of alleged misrepresentation and accusation. It would seem that his chief desire was that of generous and noble aid to his countrymen. His experience is not without its parallel pervading all history in the lives of men whose single-hearted aim has been to make the world a better place. Who shall penetrate the spiritual mystery in that he whose efforts are noble and unselfish not infrequently confronts the same results as might properly belong to him whose objects were quite the reverse of these? "And that all this should have come to you who had meant to lead a higher life than the common, and to find out better ways," exclaims George Eliot's Dorothea to Lydgate, in the great novel of Middlemarch; and the heroine adds: "There is no sorrow I have thought more about than that—to love what is great and try to reach it and then fail."
Lord Selkirk took this experience greatly to heart. However much to be regretted is the failure of sufficient courage and faith to enable one to stand strong, "and having done all, still to stand," before a flagrant injustice or the pain of misconception, it is yet hardly to be wondered at that a sensitive spirit, conscious of its own integrity and unmeasured good-will, falters and faints before so unfortunate an experience. To the Scottish Earl it seems to have been more than he could endure. In 1818 he returned to Scotland, and soon after died, at the early age of forty-nine, in Pau, having gone to southern France in search of renewed health. The Red River settlement that he founded was in the neighbourhood of the present city of Winnipeg.
Historians differ, however, as to the motives of Lord Selkirk, some authorities taking a view quite opposite to the one cited here, and gathered, too, from trustworthy sources. The truth may lie somewhere between the two extremes. It is as unnecessary as it would be futile to endeavour to invest every leader of a movement with a golden halo like that of the mediæval saints of the Quattrocentisti. The world's progress has always been carried forward by mixed forces and both ideas and institutions owe their vitality to complex aims and to a variety of conditions.
In the spring of 1821 the Hudson's Bay Company and the North-West Companies united. This marked an epoch in Canadian progress; and in 1838 occurred another event, unnoted as of any significance at the time, yet which proved to be the advent of one of the greatest of the creative forces of Canada. "Any one watching keenly the stealthy convergence of human lots," says George Eliot, "sees a slow preparation of effects from one life on another, which tells like a calculated irony on the indifference or the frozen stare with which we look at our unintroduced neighbour. Destiny stands by sarcastic with our dramatis personæ folded in her hand." Surely the arrival at Montreal of a Scottish lad of seventeen years of age could hardly be held as bearing any direct relation to the future development and the cosmopolitan importance of Canada. Yet what a romance of history lies between the unnoticed landing of Donald A. Smith, in 1838, and the solemn grandeur of the scene in Westminster Abbey, in January of 1914, when representatives of the Crown, with the peers, the statesmen, the scholars, the social leaders of London; with a great concourse drawn from all ranks, met for the memorial service for Donald Alexander Smith, first Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal. "The memory of ten centuries of England's illustrious dead haunted the scene."
Donald Smith crossed the Atlantic in a small supply craft belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company and took up his duties as a clerk in one of the most unimportant branches of the service. He made the 1200 miles' journey from Montreal to Labrador. He was stationed in a place where only once a year could any tidings reach him from the outside world. Was he lonely in this exile? He himself said that he never knew what the feeling of loneliness was. He had books; he had thoughts. Such a psychologist as the late William James, who to his profound grasp of psychology and philosophy added the unmapped power of spiritual divination, would have found, in these long, solitary years of meditation and thought, the key and clue to the lad's future greatness. In the infinite and unmeasured force generated by thought-vibrations lies power that may transcend a universe. "Mind with will is intelligent energy," declares a recent scientific writer, who adds: "intelligent energy is enough to supply a cause for every known effect within the limits of the universe."
Sir Oliver Lodge has recently said that life is simply "utilised and guided energy to produce results which otherwise would not have happened." If the distinguished British scientist had been seeking a phrase to define the life of Donald Alexander Smith he could hardly have created one more felicitous. That the results that were called into activity for a period of over fifty years, of momentous importance to Canada, by the causes set up by the young Scotsman, matters that would never have happened but for him, is evident to all who study closely the modern history of the Dominion. Lord Strathcona's biographer, Mr. Beckles Willson, introduces the reader to a long record of interesting details of the early years of Donald Smith, all of which contributed to the development and the nurture of the marvellous qualities which rendered him one of the most determining of the forces that shaped the destiny of Canada. The brilliant John Jay Chapman, writing of the remarkable man who may be said to have initiated the abolition of slavery in the United States, remarks of his subject: "Garrison plunged through the icy atmosphere like a burning meteorite from another planet." Not thus, however, did Donald Smith enter on his great career. Exiled in a far and frozen region, his service in Labrador lasted for thirteen years "with no companionship save a few employees and his own thoughts, learning the secrets of the Company, how to manage the Indians, and how to produce the best returns."[[1]] Thirty years had passed since his landing in Canada when, in 1868, on the death of Governor Simpson, of the Hudson's Bay Company, whose office was in Montreal, Mr. Smith was appointed by the London office to succeed him. He was then in his forty-ninth year. Born on August 6, 1820, he died on January 21, 1914, in his ninety-fourth year. The forty-five years which preceded his passing from the physical realm were the years in which Canada entered on her great destiny, and of this momentous period Lord Strathcona might well have said, "All of which I saw and part of which I was." His devotion and loyalty to the Empire was as intelligent and wise as it was ardent and powerful. The history of Canada and his personal biography during those years might almost be interchangeable terms. The Hudson's Bay Company, although organised and conducted on a financial basis, was the soul of loyalty to the Empire. The splendid courage, endurance, and persistence that characterised its entire tenure entered into the very structure of the nation.
[[1]] Lord Strathcona; The Story of His Life. Beckles Willson. Methuen and Company. London, 1902.
About the middle of the nineteenth century a man who has been termed "an uncrowned king" by some of the more enthusiastic, if not more discriminating of his followers; a man who was, at all events, an influential political leader and who especially espoused the cause of Upper Canada, opened a crusade for the acquisition on the part of the government of all the territorial rights of the Hudson's Bay Company. This man was George Brown, the founder and at that time the editor of the Toronto Globe. He was a member of Parliament, and he was also one of the band of great editors in which the journalism of that period found its most potent expression. This order of editorial influence was represented in the United States by Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune; Charles A. Dana of the New York Sun; and Samuel Bowles of the Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican, whose spirit and influence continue to manifest themselves in the high quality of that journal to-day. This dominant editorial influence still survives in the States, in the personality of the brilliant and splendidly-endowed Colonel Henry Watterson, the proprietor and editor of the Louisville (Kentucky) Courier-Journal, and it was evident in the New York Evening Post, under the conduct of Horace White, whose death (in September, 1916) was a signal loss to the American press.
There is ample authority for the assertion that George Brown's newspaper "had an influence on the populace such as no other had in Canada." It was under his administration of the Toronto Globe that this journal issued its first bugle call regarding the desirability that Canada should possess herself of all the wide sweep of the Hudson Bay territory of the west. This demand aroused from the Company a storm of emphatic declarations that the "Great Lone Land" was not worth the acquisition of the state; that its climate and its conditions rendered it forever useless to the interests of civilisation. Through nearly two decades had this agitation continued; but in 1869 the Government purchased the vast holdings of the Company at the price of three hundred thousand pounds and the further grant of one-twentieth of the fertile belt of land, and of forty-five thousand acres in addition adjoining various trading-posts. This transaction threw all the North-West into an excited state and Governor MacDougall was sent out to Fort Garry to still the commotion. Then came on the Rebellion incited and led by Louis Riel, the story of which is so familiar to all readers of Canadian history. The conditions became disastrous and alarming, and Governor MacDougall was not permitted to move on to his appointed post. Under these circumstances Donald A. Smith decided to go immediately to the Red River country. He was not the man to hesitate when he heard the call of duty. He was at once invested with the authority of Commissioner by the Dominion Government, and the story of his success, and of the end of the first rebellion under Louis Riel, is too well known to require extended allusion. Soon after this Mr. Smith was elected to Parliament as the first representative from Manitoba. It was to his astute knowledge, his skill as a tactician, the great confidence that he inspired, and to his ability as a Parliamentarian that the successful settlement of the affairs between the Government and the Hudson's Bay Company was primarily due. Meantime the problem of the consolidation of the Provinces became more evident as one that focussed the interest of the time. The epoch-making solution of this problem came in 1867 when the Dominion was formed.
Canada was fortunate at this critical time in having a Premier of remarkable qualities, who was the man for the hour. John Alexander Macdonald (afterwards knighted and invested with the honour of a Grand Cross of the Bath) was a Scotsman by birth whose family removed to Canada in his early childhood. With the sturdy qualities of his race he thus united the influences of Canadian environment and training, the family arriving in Canada in 1820, when the future Prime Minister was but five years of age. In his earliest youth, as a lad of fifteen, circumstances forced him into the world to earn his living. Life itself became his university. He developed in his first contact with the world that initiative, that instant perception of the situation and the facility to meet it, which so signally distinguished his statesmanship in after years. The family had landed at Quebec and journeyed to Kingston where they settled and lived until the death of the elder Macdonald in 1841, leaving the household in straitened circumstances. The Ontario of those days was very different from the smiling and prosperous Province of the present time. All Upper Canada (as it was then known) was covered with dense forests, and all means of transportation were primitive and slow. "Railways, of course, were unknown," writes Sir Joseph Pope, the authorised biographer of Sir John Alexander Macdonald, "and macadamised roads, then looked upon as great luxuries, were few and far between. The climate, too, was more severe than, owing to the cultivation of the soil, it has since become." In 1842, at the age of twenty-seven, Macdonald made his first visit to England, largely for the purpose of purchasing his law library. Quoting a letter written by him at this time to his mother, his biographer (Sir Joseph Pope) adds:
"Forty-two years passed away and again John Alexander Macdonald stood within the portals of Windsor Castle; but under what different circumstances! No longer an unknown visitor, peeping with youthful curiosity through half-open doors; but as the First Minister of a mighty Dominion, he comes by the Queen's command to dine at her table, and, in the presence of the Prime Minister and of one of the great nobles of England, who alone have been summoned as witnesses of the ceremony, to receive from the hand of his Sovereign that token and pledge of her regard which, as such, he greatly prized—the broad, red riband of the Bath."
An omnivorous reader and endowed with a winning and impressive personality, Macdonald at once became a significant and an influential figure in Canadian life. Among the creative forces of his adopted and beloved country he holds a place never to be forgotten. He first took his seat in the Assembly of 1844; the new Parliament met in Montreal in the November of that year. Complex problems confronted the sessions of that period, in that Canada felt she had no potential voice in the administration of affairs. Every measure of the Assembly must secure the approval of the Legislative Council, the members of which were appointed for life by the governor-general, and added to this the measure must then receive the royal assent before it became operative. The conditions were also aggravated by the large majority of Canadians of French descent, sensitive and high-spirited, who rebelled against the invariable English rule of an English governor-general. These questions and other agitations made the political life on which the young member entered one of peculiar intricacy. The Canada of that day was one of undeveloped resources and of internal dissensions. It consisted only of those territories which we know as the Provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island were in the same position politically as Newfoundland is in to-day, while the North-West provinces were a wilderness. With Macdonald's rise to prominence in the political world the idea of confederation began to engage the attention of all those who had at heart the good of the country. The far-seeing leader of the conservative party began a campaign for the confederation of Quebec and Ontario with Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, believing that the best course was to bring about this preliminary union, leaving it open to extension if time and experience should prove it to be desirable. Owing to the closeness of party divisions, successive governments vainly attempted to carry on the work of the country. It was a critical period, and the manner in which a solution for the national troubles was found will remain one of the most striking episodes in the history of the times.
Sir John Carling was the means of bringing together the conflicting elements. He was a power in the affairs of Ontario and an enthusiastic supporter of Macdonald, while he also enjoyed the friendship of the Honourable George Brown, who was recognised as the Liberal leader of Upper Canada, and who, for many years, had been the opponent of Macdonald. But the veiled and shrouded figure of Destiny hovered near. Did she bear a magic wand, concealed but potent? At all events she ordained that Brown and Carling should journey together from Toronto to Quebec on their way to attend a meeting of the Legislative Council. In their discussion of public affairs George Brown remarked: "Macdonald has the chance of his life to do great things for his country and these can only be done by carrying confederation." To this Sir John rejoined: "But you would be the first to oppose him." To Carling's surprise Brown replied: "No, I should uphold him as I feel that confederation is the only thing for the country." What a significant moment was this in the history of the future Dominion! Forces, determining but unseen, were in the air. The finely-balanced mind of Sir John Carling instantly grasped the importance of this psychological moment. "Would you mind saying to John A. Macdonald what you have just told me?" eagerly asked Sir John. "Certainly not," replied George Brown, and his companion lost no time in bringing the two leaders together. The result is well known to all; the coalition ministry was framed and carried to a successful conclusion the great task with which it had been entrusted.
From that time until his death on June 6, 1891, the energy, the genius, the influence of John Alexander Macdonald were among the most potent of the creative forces of Canada, and for the proud position that the Dominion holds to-day she is largely indebted to this great leader. One of the most important of his powers for national service lay in his ability to co-operate with strong men. When the movement for confederation was initiated the situation was extremely critical, and it was to the personal influence of the eminent French-Canadian, George Etienne Cartier (who was born in St. Antoine, Quebec, in 1814 and who died in 1873), that the support of a reluctant Province was won for the unification of Canada. Cartier was educated at the Seminary of St. Sulpice, Montreal; he was called to the bar, and as a follower of Papineau he fought against the Crown in 1837, and for some time after sought refuge in the United States. On the restoration of peace he returned to Canada and resumed his practice of law, attaining a high position, and subsequently he became the attorney for the Grand Trunk Railway. He was elected to Parliament in 1848 as the recognised leader of the French-Canadians and when, in November of 1857, John Alexander Macdonald succeeded Colonel Taché as Premier of the Province of Canada, Cartier was invited to a place in his cabinet. Later he was created a baronet of the British Empire. From 1858 to 1862 the Cartier-Macdonald ministry held its onward course, though steering its way through quicksands and tumult.
To Sir George Etienne Cartier is ascribed valuable aid in the construction of the Grand Trunk Railway and the Victoria Bridge, important influence in the promotion of education, and signal service in bettering the laws of Canada. When, in 1885, a statue to his honour was unveiled in Ottawa, Sir John Macdonald in his address said of him: "He served his country faithfully and well.... I believe no public man has retained, during the whole of his life, in so eminent a degree, the respect of both the parties into which this great country is divided.... If he had done nothing else but give to Quebec the most perfect code of law that exists in the entire world, that was enough to make him immortal...." To Lord Lisgar the Premier wrote of Cartier: "We have acted together since 1854 and never had a serious difference. He was as bold as a lion, and but for him confederation could not have been carried."
Another of the strong forces in constructive statesmanship was Sir Charles Tupper, who, almost unaided, engaged in the great struggle to overcome the opposition of Nova Scotia, his own Province, to the scheme of confederation. In this famous group of colleagues, Sir John Alexander Macdonald, Sir George Etienne Cartier, Sir Charles Tupper, and the Honourable George Brown, conspicuous ability and wonderful directive power were united with an optimistic courage, a depth of conviction in the success of important measures for the country, that rendered them practically invincible among the creative forces of Canada. Nor could any mention of this progress be complete that did not include the name of Sir Samuel Leonard Tilley, many years Minister of Finance, a worker for confederation, whose own distinction of character and tenacity of purpose determined the attitude taken by his Province of New Brunswick in her wavering and tardy decision, only crystallised into adherence by the patriotic zeal of Sir Leonard. "It is perhaps the highest of all tributes to the genius of Macdonald," says George R. Parkin,[[2]] "that he was able to draw to his support a group of men of the weight and worth of Cartier, Tupper, and Tilley, and retain through a long series of years their loyal devotion to him as a leader. Each in his own way a commanding personality, they were of one accord in following Macdonald with unswerving fidelity through all the vicissitudes of his fortune. Along with him they grasped and held tenaciously the idea of a great and united Canada forming an integral part of the Empire, and to that end devoted the work of their lives."
[[2]] "Sir John A. Macdonald," The Makers of Canada. Morang and Company, Limited, Toronto.
An interesting and graphic picture is preserved, in the literature of the time, of the visit of Sir John Macdonald, in 1879, to Lord Beaconsfield at Hughenden. He was received as Canada's most illustrious citizen and leading statesman. After dinner Lord Beaconsfield conducted his guest to the smoking-room at the top of the house which was hung with old portraits of former Premiers of England. The host and his Canadian guest exchanged fragments of personal reminiscences and experiences, and Lord Beaconsfield greatly interested Sir John by his brilliant description of some of the notable personalities whom, in former days, he had met at Lady Blessington's, who had a matchless gift for drawing around her the celebrities of her time. In bidding Sir John good-night, at the end of a long and delightful evening, Lord Beaconsfield said: "You have greatly interested me both in yourself and in Canada. Come back next year and I will do anything you ask me." The next year duly came, but Beaconsfield had passed away, and Gladstone was the Premier. It was during this visit that the classics were discussed somewhat at length between Beaconsfield and his guest, the Premier of England dwelling, in the most fascinating manner, upon the poets, philosophers, and orators of Greece and of Rome.
A Canoeing Party, Ontario
For nearly fifty years the influence of Sir John Macdonald was a very pillar of the Dominion. He represented a united Canada that forms so important an integral part of the mighty British Empire. Lord Lorne said of him that he was "the most successful statesman of one of the most successful of the younger nations."
On his death Canada paid him her highest honours. Queen Victoria, most gracious of Royal sovereigns, wrote a personal letter of condolence to Lady Macdonald, and caused her to be elevated to the peerage with the title of Baroness Macdonald of Earnscliffe. An impressive memorial service for the dead Premier was held in Westminster Abbey, and later his bust was placed in St. Paul's and unveiled by Lord Rosebery. Almost every large city in the Dominion is adorned with a statue of Sir John Macdonald.
One of the most important services to Canada, on the part of the Premier, had been his early recognition of the immeasurable possibilities of the North-West. As early as in 1871 he saw that the construction of a railway to the Pacific coast was a matter absolutely essential to the Dominion for the development of this portion of the country. In April of that year, while Sir John Macdonald was absent in Washington (U.S.A.) attending the proceedings of the Joint High Commission, Sir George Cartier moved a resolution in Parliament for the construction of such a road. The resolution was supported by Sir Alexander Galt and was carried. Sir Hugh Allan and Donald Smith had long held commercial relations, and the extensive and accurate knowledge of all this region that Mr. Smith had acquired was of inestimable value to the project. Into this intricate problem attending the decision and the subsequent fulfilment of it in the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway (completed on November 7, 1885) entered a group of important and forceful men. The magnitude of the work offers material for many chapters of Canadian history. Among this group of dominant personalities stands out that of William Cornelius Van Horne (afterwards knighted) and who was particularly well characterised by James Jerome Hill who said of him: "There was no one on the whole continent who would have served our purpose so well as Mr. Van Horne. He had brains, skill, experience, and energy, and was, besides, a born leader of men." The completion of this great highway was another of the events that closely linked the life of Canada's great Premier with the forces that were creating her destiny. The first through transcontinental train on this line left Montreal on June 26, 1886, for its journey of 2905 miles through what was then an almost trackless wilderness. On the completion of the road Queen Victoria had sent a telegram characterising the achievement as one "of great importance to the British Empire."
The Grand Trunk was, however, Canada's pioneer railway and it was the first railway in the British Empire outside the United Kingdom. One of the leading factors in the varied group of the creative forces of Canada, it is one of the monumental illustrations of her claim to foresight and enterprise in thus early recognising that the art of transportation goes before and points the way for advancing enlightenment. The transportation service is, as one of the eminent officials of this line has said, "the advance guard of education." In 1914 the Grand Trunk System, led by the vision and foresight of Charles Melville Hays, completed its transcontinental lines. President Hays had predicted that the Grand Trunk would be able to handle the harvest of 1915, and his prediction was realised. His forecast for the future included steamer lines from Prince Rupert to Liverpool, by way of the Panama Canal, and further extension of lines to Australia, Japan, China, and Alaska. In fact, the Canadian prevision of unmapped possibilities of commerce that would be afforded by means of the new canal that thus connected two oceans was far more alert and engaging than that of the United States.
Beside the great enterprises involved in the conquering of nature, there were others, not less important, that contribute to the building up of human life. The claim of industry and economics is not greater than the claim of intellectual development, of scholarship, of that knowledge and refinement that leads to the highest social culture of a nation.
When the Honourable James McGill of Montreal left at his death (in 1813) a large bequest to found the university that bears his name he added another to the galaxy of Canada's benefactors and creators. Mr. McGill had amassed large wealth in the fur industry, and the college, after encountering some years of difficulty, entered in 1885 on an era of prosperity that has continually increased as the years have gone by. This era of prosperity was largely due to the securing as Principal a gifted and remarkable young man, John William Dawson, who is now so widely known to the world of science and scholarship as Sir William Dawson. For thirty-eight years he served as Principal of McGill. He found it a struggling college with less than a hundred students. He left it with more than a thousand students and with from eighty to ninety professors and lecturers. Finding it with three faculties, he doubled that number, and as within fifteen years he recognised the necessity of higher education for women, there was opened (in 1883) the Donalda Department, generously endowed by Lord Strathcona, which has since developed into the Royal Victoria College. Lord Strathcona gave, first and last, many millions of dollars to McGill; Sir William Macdonald gave to the Engineering department one million, including with this the schools of physics and chemistry, and he also equipped the Macdonald College at Saint-Anne-de-Bellevue which is incorporated with McGill. Peter Redpath, a public-spirited merchant of Montreal, presented the museum that bears his name (now rich in collections) and he also gave the Library building which houses, for McGill, the largest library in Canada save that of Parliament. These liberal gifts of Mr. Redpath were still further increased by Mrs. Redpath's generous contributions. The unsurpassed opportunities at McGill place her graduates on equality of scholarly prestige with those of Oxford and of the other great universities of the world. No consideration of the creative forces of Canada could fail to include this inestimable contribution that makes for nobler life offered by McGill University.
To the intellectual development and liberal culture of the Dominion the universities of Toronto and of Laval render priceless aid. The former is noted somewhat at length in a subsequent chapter. Laval University, founded in Quebec in 1852, by the Quebec seminary, dates back, through that institution, to its founder, François de Laval-Montmorency, the first Bishop of Quebec, who landed in Canada in 1659, and founded the seminary in 1663. This great French-Canadian university, fairly enshrined in sacred tradition and archaic history, is an object of pilgrimage to all visitors in Quebec. To its vast resources of scholarship it adds the perpetuation of the name of one of the most remarkable prelates that the world has known. A son of the crusaders, a true successor of the apostles who shared the life of Jesus Christ, a man of boundless charity, of intrepid heroism, of a life so consecrated to the Divine Service that its passing from earth in the May of 1708 cannot efface the vividness of his image nor dim the brightness of the atmosphere which enshrines his memory, he was deeply concerned with the education of his people. Monseigneur Laval specified that he desired that his seminary should be "a perpetual school of virtue." The Abbé de Saint-Vallier of France bequeathed to this Seminary in 1685 the sum of forty-two thousand francs, and Bishop Laval himself left to its maintenance his entire estate. The museums, lecture halls, and the library of Laval University are open to visitors. It is rich in historic portraits and in many fine examples of French art. On the visit of the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII.) to Canada in 1860, the heir to the British throne founded the Prince of Wales Prize, which has remained one of the features of the university.
In the equalisation of educational opportunities to an unusual degree Canada is especially strong. While the fiftieth anniversary of the consolidation of the Dominion will not be celebrated until July 1, of 1917, and while as a nation she is not yet half a century old, her educational privileges are recognised as among the best in the world. Not a single province is without its fully equipped educational system. Free public schools, high schools, colleges, and universities abound. There are already twenty-one universities in Canada. The standard of instruction is very high; the schools of applied science, law, medicine, and technical instruction are among the best in the world. They offer all late modern appliances for chemical, metallurgical, and electrical experiment: civil, mining, and electrical engineering are offered with unsurpassed opportunities for practice and research. The Royal Military College at Kingston presents a complete course in Engineering and in all branches of military science. The Royal Naval College at Halifax offers equally complete opportunities for naval training.
Not even the most fragmentary survey of the creative forces of the Dominion could fail to emphasise the notable and beneficent work of Archbishop Taché, who, born in Quebec in 1823, became identified with the Far West in 1845, where he remained, an heroic and impassioned figure, until his death, in 1894. The Archbishop's mother was a daughter of Joliet, the explorer; the same intrepid spirit that led this pathfinder on through the wilderness characterised the great prelate in a remarkable degree. At the age of twenty-two he had been admitted to the priesthood; he received his training in Montreal and was, from the first, "stirred to the soul by missionary zeal"; he eagerly embraced the call to the hardships, the most insurmountable difficulties, of the pioneer missionary. He traversed the country for four hundred miles around from St. Boniface (across the river from Winnipeg) where he was stationed; his journeys were by canoe and dog sledges; he encountered physical hardships which seem incredible for human endurance. When the slender financial support of his mission threatened to fail he pleaded that just sufficient revenue be continued to provide bread and wine for the sacrament, saying that for himself he would "find food in the fish of the lakes, and clothing from the skins of the wild animals." In his later years he was made the Bishop of Manitoba and he was present, a venerable and honoured figure, on the opening of the first Assembly of that Province in 1870-71. Archbishop Taché was one of the nearer friends and associates of Lord Strathcona, also when the latter, as Donald A. Smith, was so long the dominating personality in the North-West. The life and work of this great Archbishop of the Catholic faith are forever bound up with the history and development of Manitoba. There are other notable Catholic prelates, a remarkable group: his Eminence Cardinal Taschereau, the first Canadian prelate to become a Prince of the Church; Archbishops Bourget and Fabre of Montreal; Archbishops Lynch and Walsh of Toronto; Archbishop Cleary of Kingston; and Bishop Demers of Vancouver are all among the great religious leaders whose influence for the general advancement of the people, as well as for the progress of religion, has been wide and invaluable.
Bishop Strachan of Toronto, a priest of the Church of England, whose life fell between 1778-1867, was a strong force both in church and state. No servant of God within the entire Dominion has left a nobler record. When (in 1832) the scourge of Asiatic cholera swept over Canada, it was he who inspired courage, administered the sacraments to the dying, and sustained the survivors. His aid, both legislative and otherwise, to the cause of education, and his activity in promoting all progress in Ontario, are among the most precious records of that province. One passage from his personal counsel may well be held in memory:
"Cultivate, then, my young friends, all those virtues which dignify the human character, and mark in your behaviour the respect you entertain for everything venerable and holy. It is this conduct that will raise you above the rivalship, the intrigues, and slanders by which you will be surrounded. They will exalt you above this little spot of earth, so full of malice, contention, disorder; and extend your views, with joy and expectation, to that better country."
Nothing in all religious advancement is more impressive than the great work of the Methodist denomination in Canada. Their vital and fervent spirit has kindled the zeal of the people with the flame of the living coal on the altar. One of the remarkable contributions to the lofty order of creative forces was made by the Reverend Doctor Egerton Ryerson, the celebrated Methodist leader, and the organiser of the Public School System of Ontario. In 1841 Doctor Ryerson became Principal of Victoria College; in 1844 ne was appointed Superintendent of Public Schools in Upper Canada, and he brought to bear upon educative work the enduring impress of his ideals. "By education I mean not the mere acquisition of certain arts," he said, "but that instruction and discipline which qualify men for their appropriate duties in life, as Christians, as persons in business, and as members of the civil community." Doctor Ryerson lived until the year 1882, and he thus was enabled to see much of the fruit of his wise and untiring endeavour.
Although the Right Honourable Sir Wilfrid Laurier is still, happily, dwelling among his countrymen and lending to many notable occasions the rare distinction and the prestige of his presence, the gratifying fact that he is a factor in the life of the hour cannot constrain one to fail to express the recognition of Canada's indebtedness to his splendid services during her more recent past. A native of Quebec (born in 1841) his unqualified devotion has been given to the Empire without regard to restriction of race or language. His political career as a member of the House opened before he was thirty years of age; six years later he was called to the Cabinet; and in June, 1896, at the age of fifty-five, he became the Premier of the Dominion. When the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria was celebrated, one special feature was the invitation extended to all the Prime Ministers of the British Empire to honour it by their presence. Among these Ministers Sir Wilfrid was singled out for many special attentions. He was distinguished by being made a member of the Imperial Privy Council; he was appointed a Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George; he was invested with honorary degrees by both Oxford and Cambridge; he was made an honorary member of the Cobden Club which awarded to him a gold medal "in recognition of exceptional and distinguished services to the cause of international and free exchange." Sir Wilfrid Laurier visited President Faure and the President of the French Republic named him as a Grand Officier of the Legion d'Honneur. In 1902 Sir Wilfrid was invited to the Coronation of Edward VII. and his presence at this imposing ceremonial reflected distinction of the highest order on Canada by his brilliant and impressive addresses made on Imperial interests and affairs. England could not but realise that in the Parliament of the vast country over the sea there were orators who would add new lustre to her national eloquence and splendid traditions.
Well, indeed, has Canada been called the country of the Twentieth Century. To no inconsiderable extent the appliances that introduce a new order of life have been either invented or first experimentally considered in the Dominion. Indeed, as if already under the spell of Destiny, these great modern miracles of communication—the railways, telegraphs, and telephones will be forever associated with the name of Canada; the country that cradled James Jerome Hill and Samuel Rogers Calloway; in which William Cornelius Van Horne and Charles Melville Hays gave the best years of their lives to building and improving transportation facilities; in which Alexander Graham Bell initiated his experiments and where he still makes his summer home; and in which Thomas Alva Edison worked as a telegraph operator on the pioneer railway, where he printed and issued The Grand Trunk Herald, the first newspaper ever printed on a railway train.
In the light of the eventful period that has passed since that momentous date of August, 1914, it would seem to be a curiously prophetic glimpse that rose, like a mirage on the far horizon, before Sir Wilfrid Laurier when, in response to a toast at the banquet given on June 18, 1897, by the Imperial Institute in London in honour of the Colonial premiers, he said:
"... England has proved at all times that she can fight her own battles; but if a day were ever to come when England was in danger, let the bugle sound, let the fires be lighted upon the hills, and in all parts of the Colonial possessions whatever we can do shall be done to help her.... I have been asked if the sentiments of the French population of Canada were those of absolute loyalty towards the British Empire. Let me say ... it was the privilege of the men of our generation to see the banners of France and of England entwined together victoriously on the banks of the Alma, on the heights of Inkermann, and on the walls of Sebastopol."
Seventeen years had but passed—from 1897 to 1914—when again the banners of France and England were intertwined; and since that fateful midsummer's day what treasure and sacrifice has not Canada poured out with a courage and unflinching heroism for which words furnish no adequate interpretation. The future of the Canadian Dominion is seen, in the words of the poet, as "along the grand roads of the universe." Her citizens realise that "To-day is a new day" and the hand of Destiny is leading her on to exemplify to the world a new and a more glorious civilisation.
CHAPTER II
QUEBEC AND THE PICTURESQUE MARITIME REGION
The Maritime region of Canada embraces only, strictly speaking, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick; although Quebec is sometimes thought of as being included in this historic portion of the Dominion, because of its geographical situation. The city of Quebec has always been a favourite point of pilgrimage, and when Mr. Howells, in his early youth, enshrined it in a half-romantic narrative, as the scene of Their Wedding Journey, its attractions were heightened by his facile and charming pen. The old French city dates back to 1608, and its history, for more than a century and a half, is really the history of Canada as well. All the maritime provinces of Canada take a prominent place in poetic legend and lore as well as in historical associations. When, in 1845, the poet Longfellow wrote his tender and touching, though historically misleading poem, Evangeline, the poem focussed the general attention on Acadia (the modern Nova Scotia and New Brunswick), and particular attention on the little village of Grand-Pré, which,
"... distant, secluded still,"
lying in the fruitful valley, invited many excursions of those who delight in pilgrimages to poetic shrines. For
"Plant a poet's word but deep enough,"
and woodland or hill, mountain or shore, are thereby enchanted. The Maritime region, still vocal with the dreams and discoveries of adventurous spirits; where all pledge and prophecy still linger in the air; where impassioned endeavour, long-patient endurance, faith to break a pathway through to untrod regions with some Ulysses to inspire a faith that it is never too late to seek a newer world—how wonderful is the spell this province weaves around the wanderer!
The noble St. Lawrence is a river that fairly fulfils the purposes of a sea, with its kaleidoscopic shore lines, now bold and forbidding, now dreamy and undefined with their fleeting, ethereal beauty; and all the maritime land is pervaded by memories and associations of the brave Cabot who first sighted Nova Scotia on June 24, 1497, the date of the special festa of his native Italy—this festival of San Giovanni, when all Venice is on the Grand Canal in the fleets of gondolas; all Florence illuminated at night, a resplendent spectacle from her surrounding hills and her background of purple amethyst mountains; and when Rome, at night, disports herself in a thousand ways upon the Campagna Mystica. It was a fitting date for Cabot, the Venetian, to discover the new land. Voices unheard by others had called to him; hands, from starry spaces, beckoned and led him on. What was there in the air but
"Winged persuasions and veiled destinies,"
and all the past that came thronging to meet all the future? Cabot, Venetian born, English by adoption, was followed by several other intrepid explorers, and not to insist too much upon chronological order, what a group of wonderful names are associated with all the province of Quebec! Cartier, Champlain, Frontenac; Sir Humphrey Gilbert of the Elizabethan period, whose brave expedition was engulfed by winds and waves and went down in the great deep off Campobello.
"Alas, the land-wind failed.
And ice-cold grew the night,
And never more on sea or shore,
Should Sir Humphrey see the light."
But the high ideals these heroes brought did not go down nor become extinguished in the storm-tossed waters.
"Say not the struggle naught availeth!"
The struggle always avails, and leaves humanity better and farther on than the effort finds it. Then, too, came a band of holy women, the Ursuline nuns, and the sacred zeal of the novitiate lent its vital power. What is there not of spiritual nobility, of sublimest self-sacrifice, of thrilling ideals, of a truer life, associated with the early history of Canada? This is all a part of her spellbinding power; it has left its significance on the air, its impress in wave and tree and flower; its exaltation in every heart.
Quebec city is now becoming an attractive winter haunt as well for those who love out-of-door sports in the snowy carnival and who find themselves so comfortably domiciled in the Château Frontenac. The esplanade of Dufferin Terrace commands delightful views across the St. Lawrence as far as the Isle d'Orleans. The Citadel, the Parliament Buildings, the Ursuline Convent, the Basilica, and the palace of the Cardinal; together with the libraries, Laval University, the drives to the old battle-grounds, and the excursion of twenty-one miles to the shrine of Saint Anne de Beaupré, provide the visitor with abundance of interest.
The Ursuline Convent covers seven acres of ground in almost the centre of the city of Quebec. It is the largest convent on the continent, and it dates back to the July of 1639, when Marie Guyart, and three other sisters of the Ursuline order, under the protection of the Archbishop of Toulouse, were led by Divine guidance to the new country of Canada and entered on their work. Marie Guyart, the foundress of the convent, was the daughter of a silk merchant of Tours, France, and her childhood is invested with legends similar to those that are associated with the name of Catherine of Sienna. She married one Joseph Martin, but at the age of twenty-three she was left a widow, and soon became a novitiate of the Ursulines, rising to be the Mother Superior of her convent. At the age of forty, through the instrumentality of the Duchesse D'Aiguillion, a niece of Cardinal Richelieu, she came to "New France," and as recently as the August of 1911 this remarkable woman was canonised by the Sacred College of Rome and named as a saint under the title of Marie de l'Incarnation. For thirty-three years she pursued an exalted life in the convent of her founding, and died at the age of seventy-two, in the May of 1672.
A much-sought shrine is that of Saint Anne de Beaupré, easy access to which is gained by the electric railway, and in the summer it is a pleasant local sail down the St. Lawrence. The legend runs that a group of Breton mariners, in the early years of the seventeenth century, found themselves almost engulfed in the river in the sudden violence of a storm, and that they called upon la bonne Saint Anne for deliverance; earnestly declaring that if she would save them they would erect to her a shrine at whatever point she should bring them to land, and that this shrine should be sanctuary forever. The good saint was merciful to their entreaties, and guided them safely to land. According to their promise they at once built a small wooden chapel, very near a spring whose waters are claimed to possess a miraculous power for healing. Since that remote time three larger churches on this site have successively replaced each other, the latest of which dates only to 1878. The primitive little chapel is still preserved, even as at Assisi the Portiuncula of San Francisco is preserved near the magnificent church of Santa Maria degli Angeli.
That marvellous ministry of San Francisco (who is more familiarly known to us as Saint Francis of Assisi), which was initiated in the thirteenth century, love and sacrifice being the supreme ideals, is recalled to mind by many of the legendary incidents relating to Saint Anne de Beaupré. The mystic pilgrimage to Assisi, the "Seraphic City," is to some extent paralleled by the latter-day pilgrimages to the shrine of Saint Anne. "Any line of truth that leads us above materialism," said Arch-deacon Wilberforce of Westminster Abbey, whose passing on to the life more abundant at the date of this writing is but the larger inflorescence of his beautiful and consecrated life—"any line of truth that forces us to think and to remember that we are enwrapped by the supernatural, is helpful and stimulating. A human life lived only in the seen and felt, with no sense of the invisible, is a fatally impoverished life; a poor, blind, wingless life." Such is the deep, perpetual conviction of mankind. "The things that are seen are temporal; the things that are not seen are eternal." The mystic union of the soul with God is the one underlying and all-determining truth of life.
"Oh, beauty of holiness!
Of self-forgetfulness, of lowliness."
The latest church erected here as the shrine of Saint Anne was not completed until 1889, and it was then proclaimed a Basilica by Pio Nono. It is one of colossal space and splendour, a remarkable triumph of the Corinthian architecture, and between the two towers of the front a superb statue of Saint Anne rises above the façade. The interior is rich in paintings, sculpture, and mosaics, and on a column of onyx is another statue of the saint in whose name the church is built. It has also a Scala Santa, as has the vast Basilica of San Giovanni in Rome. Thousands of suppliants annually visit the shrine of Saint Anne. The church has a superb chasuble, the gift of Anne of Austria and Queen of France, the mother of Louis XIV. On either side of the entrance are huge piles of canes and crutches and other discarded appliances left as visible testimonials that the efficacy of prayer at this shrine enabled their possessors to dispense with adventitious aid.
Dufferin Terrace, Quebec, from the Citadel
A little book that is for sale by the Redemptorist Fathers, who occupy the monastery connected with this basilica, gives much curious information regarding Saint Anne. She is represented as being of the tribe of Judah and of the royal family of David. Her husband, Joachim, was of the same family, and of the same tribe, and the Blessed Virgin was their only child. This little record further narrates that the body of Saint Anne was originally buried in Bethlehem; but that it was brought to France by Lazarus, who, after being raised from the dead by the Saviour, became the first Bishop of Marseilles. The body of Saint Anne was then committed in burial in the village of Apt, and when Charlemagne came to celebrate the Easter feast—so runs the story—a man who was blind, deaf, and dumb came to the ceremonies, and was instantly restored. The first words he uttered were: "This hollow contains the body of Saint Anne, Mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God." With the clue given in these words the hollow in the rocks was then opened and the body disclosed. This took place in the year 792, and from that remote date to the present time the church of Saint Anne at Apt has been a notable place of worship and of pilgrimage.
In the Basilica of Saint Anne de Beaupré there are some rich and massive reliquaries of gold, inlaid with jewels, in which the holy relics of the Saint are enclosed. All the gold and the jewels are votive offerings left by grateful pilgrims to this shrine who have been restored to health. It is said that there are literally bushels of watches, chains, bracelets, rings, and all manner of personal adornments that have been given in gratitude for blessings received. Large gifts of money are also among the never-ceasing stream of accumulating wealth. Twelve large chalices of gold, valued at ten thousand dollars each, have been constructed from the rings and personal articles left by the devotees. The church is fairly lined with the evidences of grateful appreciation and the tributes of enthusiasm. Each chapel is a memorial gift of personal gratitude; the altar, organ, and the electric light plant are also personal gifts, and to these there is a rather curious story attached.
Over a long period of years the newspapers of the United States printed advertisements of a widely-known patent-medicine lady who brewed her concoctions, and either by means of their intrinsic worth, or by the credulity of her customers, accumulated a large fortune. It is said that this lady made a journey to the church of Saint Anne out of curiosity, alone, but was suddenly stricken with a severe illness; that she was cured by faith, and that, through the direct influence of Saint Anne, she then became a Catholic and was baptised in the Basilica. She at once abandoned her pursuit and expressed her desire to devote her fortune to good works, in honour of the Saint; and it was she who presented the altar, the organ, and the electric light plant as well as other rich and valuable gifts.
Around the shrine of Saint Anne de Beaupré has grown up a village of some two thousand people, with hotels that accommodate hundreds of guests. There are two convents, several schools, a hospital (providing for the accommodation of the poor who come to be healed), and the monastery already mentioned. The Sisters of the Rosary have also established an academy for young women; the Sisters of Saint Francis have built a convent for their order, and the Redemptorist nuns have their own convent, while there is also a seminary for the education of priests that has about three hundred students.
The sermons of the Fathers who conduct the services in the Basilica are preached in both French and English. Sixteen priests hold continual devotions from four in the morning until nine at night. The number of annual visitors is estimated as being nearly two hundred thousand, representative of almost every nationality and language. An American publicist asked one of the Fathers whether every one who came was cured. "By no means," replied the priest; "although the miracles are many." When asked how he accounted for the failures the Father replied that he was not able to account for them; that a failure might be due to lack of faith, or to some other reason not disclosed to them. Faith is always to be reckoned with as a condition through which alone the Divine energy can flow.
In the vicinity of Saint Anne there is some beautiful scenery—Montmorency Falls, and other points of interest; Quebec, too, is almost as much frequented in winter as in summer, the bracing air being to many the very elixir of life.
Quebec Province has always kept a distinctive atmosphere of its own, due largely to the preponderance of the French-Canadian element and to climatic and topographical conditions. Advantages and privileges are constantly increasing. Macdonald College, at Saint Anne de Bellevue, founded by Sir William Macdonald, admits women on equal terms with men, and beside the School of Agriculture, it has a training institution in Domestic Science and a school for training teachers. The Department of Domestic Science is free to all Canadian girls, and students from outside of Canada pay a small tuition fee and a modest fee of some three dollars and a half a week for board-residence. On this great college Sir William Macdonald's initial expenditure was five millions of dollars. Five hundred and sixty acres were secured for the farm, of which nearly four hundred are devoted to the live stock and grain department, while the remainder is divided between vegetable, poultry, and bee culture, with a liberal share allotted to horticulture.
It is to Quebec that the middle west of the United States must look for the early history of its own great explorers, missionaries, and pathfinders; for it was from here that Champlain, La Salle, Marquette, Joliet, and others fared forth on their pioneer journeys through the Mississippi basin. Champlain died in Quebec on the Christmas Day of 1635; but his burial-place is still undetermined. The Jesuit College in which Père Marquette was domiciled ante-dated Harvard by one year, having been founded in 1635. Here Marquette made his plans for tours along the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi, with the object of converting the Indians. This Jesuit College bears the signal honour of being the first institution for higher education on the North American continent.
Something of the unique and exceptional character of the great Cardinal Richelieu, whose tomb in the Pantheon in Paris is an object of continual pilgrimage by the visitors in the French capital, seems to invest Quebec, the city of which he was the real founder. The convent and hospital of the Hotel Dieu were due to the solicitude and enterprise of his niece, the Duchesse d'Aiguillion, whose interest centred in the promulgation of religion and charities, and these institutions are still preserved as memorial monuments to her fervour. Quebec is pre-eminently a city of churches and the old French Cathedral dates back to 1647. The interior is enriched with several paintings of especial value, among them Van Dyck's "Crucifixion," which was painted in 1630, and which, in the Revolution of 1793, was purchased in Paris by the Abbé des Jardins of Quebec, and presented to the cathedral. In the sacristy are two large vaults filled with sacred relics. The vestments belonging to this cathedral are superb.
An interesting church is the Anglican Cathedral, standing in the centre of the city, to which the late King Edward VII. presented an exquisite Communion service.
For the celebration of the tercentenary of Quebec, Cy Warman, that genial poet (who has set so much of Canada to music), wrote an ode in the dialect of the habitant, of which two stanzas run:
"How you kip yourself so young,
Ol' Quebec?
Dat's w'ats ax by all de tongue,
Ol' Quebec;
Many years ees pass away,
Plaintee hair been turn to gray,
You're more yo'gker ev'ry day,
Ol' Quebec.
Som' brav' men hees fight for you,
Ol' Quebec;
Dat's w'en Canada she's new,
Ol' Quebec;
De brav' Wolfe, de great Montcalm,
Bote was fight for you, Madame,
Now we're mak' de grande salaam,
Ol' Quebec."
The traveller with an impassioned devotion to what he fondly calls "the quaint" may be signally gratified in Quebec. In the business section there will be found one street only four feet in width, quite rivalling the famous via d'Aura in Genoa, the "Street of jewellers," where one can stand in a shop on one side and almost reach his hand into the shop opposite.
The Legislative Buildings are as delightful as those in the other capitals of the Provinces of Canada; and on the brow of the high bluffs are a group of notable buildings of architectural beauty—the splendid Château Frontenac, with its view of thirty miles up and down the St. Lawrence valley; flanked by monasteries, churches, and public structures. The citadel that crowns the height is extremely picturesque to visitors who have all the enjoyment, while the Canadian Government has the doubtful felicity of keeping in due repair this enormous fortification. It was begun two hundred and fifty years ago, and reconstructed in 1823, on plans approved by the Duke of Wellington, at a cost of twenty-five million.
It is not so well known that the Duke of Kent, the father of Queen Victoria, was in command of the garrison of Quebec for several years; that the old-fashioned building in which he lived was restored by his royal daughter, and that his grand-daughter, the Princess Louise, Marchioness of Lorne (later the Duchess of Argyle), when living at Rideau Hall, Ottawa, during the period of the Marquis of Lorne's Governor-Generalship of Canada, laid the foundation stone of this restoration. Moreover, the Princess herself, with that versatility of gifts which characterised Her Royal Highness, devised the architectural plans for the new structure. Nor must the ancient gates of the old wall of Quebec be ignored in any tribute to her picturesque attractions.
Laval University in Quebec is a resort of many students, on account of the numerous manuscripts of historical value deposited there, many of them containing graphic narratives of thrilling experiences undergone in the pioneer days of the Dominion.
To turn from Quebec to the Maritime Provinces proper, they are not by any means all scenery, or historic and legendary atmosphere. Nova Scotia has large lumber interests, with fisheries, mineral wealth, and great iron and steel manufactures; and New Brunswick has ever been the home of the great timber and now of pulpwood so precious in these latter days. Prince Edward Island has a vast amount of red sandstone, and in the regions adjacent to the Bay of Fundy an enormous yield of hay is a feature of resource. The position of the Maritime Provinces is particularly noted by Mr. J. Castell Hopkins, in an extended account of these regions, and he speaks of the climatic peculiarities as one of the things with which the inhabitants must reckon. They have a great coast-line in proportion to their area. The extensive bays and harbours suggest future increase of ocean commerce and travel. "Prince Edward Island is in reality all seacoast," writes Mr. Hopkins, "for no matter how far into the interior one may get, an hour's drive in any given direction will almost invariably discover salt water. There are bays which deserve special mention, one, the beautiful Bay de Chaleur, between New Brunswick and the Gaspé Peninsula, without rock, reef, or shoal in its ninety miles of length and forty-five of breadth, is unique in its safety to navigators, while the Bay of Fundy, between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, with its mouth wide open to the south-west, has features which are peculiar only to this bay. Lying funnel-shaped toward the great tidal movement from east to west it gathers from the incoming tide a great deal of water that does not belong to it, and then gradually compressing it between narrowing shores, piles it up in places sixty feet in height, and this gives rise to many peculiarities. This rush of tide twice a day has formed enormous areas of marsh land and the process is still going on. The great rise and fall of water in this bay has also a climatic effect in it that keeps the air continually moving, and in the regions about its head there is probably a cooler summer climate than can be found anywhere in the same latitude."
Harbour of St. John, New Brunswick
This peculiarity unfits the climate for fruit-raising, but is especially favourable for live stock. The production of hay is very large. The water supply is inexhaustible, and water-power is always at hand to grind grain or to transform trees into lumber. The spruce and fir are found here in great abundance. The Maritime Provinces have practically no mountains, although a few heights approaching two thousand feet may be seen. Of late years the people of this region have been urged to develop agriculture to a greater extent. It is already demonstrated that wheat, barley, oats, buckwheat, and corn can be cultivated with profit; potatoes and carrots also thrive. In New Brunswick, apples, pears, grapes, and cherries do well; and every one knows of the apple orchards of Nova Scotia. The dairy industry is one of the greatest sources of revenue. Factories for the making of cheese and butter are numerous; and quite apart from the home market, the facilities for export to Europe and to the markets of the South are one special factor in the conditions for profit. Agricultural schools, a feature of the Dominion, have a particularly good representative at Truro, and the Federal Government has established experimental farms and stations throughout the Dominion, while the provincial authorities have also organised similar enterprises under their own jurisdiction. The Provincial Government of Ontario, in particular, has devoted large sums to the encouragement of agriculture, having three experimental farms, one of these being devoted to fruit.
The Central Experimental Farm of the Dominion Government is at Ottawa and there are branch farms at Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island; at Fredericton, New Brunswick; at Nappan and Kentville, Nova Scotia; at Saint Anne de la Pocatière, Cap Rouge, and Lenoxville in Quebec; at Brandon, Manitoba; at Indian Head, Rosthern, and Scott, Saskatchewan; at Lethbridge and Lacombe in Alberta; and also at Agassiz, Invermere, and Sidney in British Columbia. Sub-stations have also been established at Fort Vermilion in the Peace River District, at Grouard near Lesser Slave Lake, Grande Prairie, and Forts Resolution and Providence—all these being in northern Alberta. At the Central Experimental Farm (at Ottawa) much attention has been paid to tests, as to the growing of oats, barley, varieties of grass, and turnips and mangels. Nor has the culture of ornamental shrubs and trees been neglected; and orchards of various kinds of fruit have been planted with watchful care. Potatoes, too, have received special attention as one of the most profitable products of this region.
The picturesque attractions of the Maritime Provinces, moreover, tend to make them each year a summer resort for increasing numbers of people from the United States and elsewhere. Mail routes are well extended; the postal service is good; and the improvements in navigation have included the erection of many lighthouses on the prominent headlands and in the harbours, so that the scenic panorama at night witnessed by those on or near the coast is often most fascinating, and the presence of these aids to navigation is full of practical reassurance to those who travel by water.
Halifax is important not only as the capital of Nova Scotia, but as the leading seaport of Canada on the Atlantic coast. It has a magnificent harbour whose even depth is a joy to the navigator; it is curiously free from extremes of temperature, the coldest day of one average year being but eight degrees below zero (in February), the warmest day falling in early September when the mercury registered eighty-seven degrees. The evenings are always cool. The city has its citadel, its rocky areas, and beside its university (Dalhousie) there are colleges doing various special work, institutions for the defective classes, and several libraries, that of the Institute of Science and History being consolidated with the Library of Parliament. In the magnitude of its exports Halifax stands next to Montreal. In its imports it ranks third, Montreal and Toronto alone taking precedence of the Nova Scotian capital.
CHAPTER III
MONTREAL AND OTTAWA
Montreal, the metropolis of Canada; Ottawa, the Capital; each a city supreme in a certain individual type; within three hours of each other by rail, are closely inter-related, as are New York and Washington in the United States. In England, and in France, the Capital and the metropolis are one; but there are certain advantages to a country when its legislative centre may be kept apart from the engulfing life of its commercial metropolis. It was one of the felicitous inspirations of Queen Victoria when she chose the little village that had been known as Bytown (in honour of Colonel By, the builder of the Rideau Canal) to be the capital of the Dominion and to be known as Ottawa. For many years the parliamentary sessions had alternated between Montreal and Quebec. The foundation stone of the new Parliament Building was laid by the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII.) in 1860, when the youthful prince made his memorable tour of the Dominion and the United States. Some seven years later the first parliamentary session was held in the new capital. A most significant session it was, as it marked the date of the complete federation of all the Canadian Provinces then existent and ushered in the Dominion.
It is an anomaly that Montreal, a commercial metropolis of the most prominent and pronounced type, should be the one Canadian city that most lends herself to idealisation. One treads her thoroughfares as if under the spell of some Merlin of old, and sees the moving panorama of life as if in distance and in dream.
One is led on by invisible hands; he is haunted by voices that for centuries have been silent on earth; beckoned by some inconceivable sign and signal in the dreamy blue of the distant horizon, in whose shades phantom forms are vanishing.
"Flitting, passing, seen, and gone,"
baffling all recognition, yet beckoning by mystic flash from the ethereal realm. Was it one of these vanishers, questioned the observer, as a gleam passes in the distance, or was it instead a flash from some electric circuit, to be scientifically accounted for? One is steeped in bewilderment, for who indeed may interpret this legend-haunted air? The life of the dead centuries presses closely upon the life of the throbbing hour.
The visitor to Montreal instantly feels that anything might be possible in the strangely fascinating atmosphere of this old-world city. One has more than crossed the border line between the Dominion and the United States; one has crossed the border line of centuries. Is it 1535 or is it 1915? The twentieth century clasps hands with some dim historic period. The result is bewildering. All modern beauty of vista, of groups of sculpture, or the architectural magnificence of stately and splendid public buildings, of magnificent private residences, of cathedral and churches, of great institutions, of all latter-day conveniences and luxuries of life—all these, as one would find in New York or Paris; yet with them, as an intangible and invisible scenic setting, an impalpable atmosphere lingers, that haunting impress of the far-away past, of historic associations that persist with singular vitality; of great personalities who trod these regions where now stretch away the handsome modern streets; of intense purposes borne on the air, purposes that struggled to fulfilment, or went down to temporary defeat in darkness and tragedy—all these seem to throng about the visitor who for the first time finds himself in Montreal.
Montreal may be entered by many ways, by land or by sea; but she is very conveniently entered from New England.
It is a picturesque trip, that between Boston and Montreal, and as the sun journeys onward to the horizon line the purple valleys and the rose and amber that tinge the summits of the Green Mountains afford luxurious contrasts of colour. In the late evening the brilliant illuminations of Montreal at the west side of the Victoria Jubilee Bridge, spanning the St. Lawrence River, come into view.
In all Canada, perhaps, there is no more beautiful view than that of Montreal lying under the white moonlight with Mount Royal in the shadowy background, as seen from the railway train crossing the Victoria Jubilee Bridge. The broken reflections of the moon are seen in a wide track in the rippling, dancing waters in the middle of the river, while every lamp of the long rows that border each side of the bridge is repeated in the river below. The water front of the city is all aglow with brilliant lights; backward, in the soft, receding shadows, gleam points of light from myriad homes, and the long lines of street lamps make illuminated avenues of the thoroughfares. The moon, like a silver globe, hangs over Mount Royal, while floating clouds imprison the radiance for an instant and then, relenting, set it free again.
Interior of Notre Dame, Montreal
Nor is the view by daylight less to be remembered. The mighty river sweeps under the massive and majestic structure, while hundreds of steamers, sailing vessels, steam tugs, craft, indeed, of every description, are plying the waters of the St. Lawrence opposite the harbour, and the vast city of Montreal in its transcendently beautiful location at the base of the mountain completes a picture never to be forgotten. For miles the harbour is lined with imposing stone structures, the city's warehouses; and the numerous manufactories, with their tall chimneys sending out great volumes of smoke, stretch away on the shores of the St. Lawrence as far as the eye can reach, with their story of the wonderful commercial metropolis of the Canadian empire. The picture is one to enchain the artist and the social statistician as well. It is of itself a study in economics and commercial development.
From an engineering standpoint this bridge ranks with the foremost structures of contemporary achievements. The Victoria Tubular Bridge which it replaced was built in 1860, and was at that time considered the eighth wonder of the world; but it became insufficient to meet the increase of traffic, and in October of 1897 the work of building the present stupendous structure was inaugurated. The chief engineer was Mr. Joseph Hobson, whose ingenuity and skill contrived to utilise the tube of the old bridge as a roadway, on which a temporary steel span was moved out to the first pier, the new structure being then erected outside the temporary span. Begun in 1897, it was completed in 1899, and during its construction the enormous traffic of the Grand Trunk System was delayed very little, a remarkable fact when it is realised that while the old bridge weighed nine thousand and forty-four tons, the new one weighs twenty-two thousand tons, and while the width of the former was but sixteen feet, the width of the new bridge is sixty-six feet, with a height of from forty to sixty feet, while the one it replaced was but eighteen feet high. The old bridge was built for seven million dollars, while the new one cost two million pounds. The latter carries trains in both directions at the same time, trains with two consolidation engines and tenders, coupled, whose average weight is five thousand two hundred pounds to each foot of length, with a car-load of four thousand pounds to the foot; and a moving load on each carriage way of a thousand pounds a foot. Nor is there any limit prescribed for the speed of either railway trains or carriage and motor car crossings.
This magnificent structure is, indeed, a marvel of the age. There was a pretty scene that lives in memory which marked the date of October 16, 1901. On the very spot where the Prince of Wales (later King Edward) stood when he drove the last rivet in the old Victoria Tubular Bridge in 1860, stood their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York (now King George and Queen Mary), with a group of the officials of the railway, thus linking into succession notable events separated by more than forty years.
As one of the wonderful achievements of the opening year of the twentieth century, this bridge draws thousands of sightseers, every year, to study its beauty and marvellous efficiency.
The scenes that Cartier saw fade from the eye, and one sees the solid and splendid business quarters of Montreal, the charming and enticing residential sections. Yet again an anomaly—a mountain in the heart of a city! And it is ascended, not by climbing over perpendicular rocks, but by an easy gliding car that makes its ascent as much a part of a pleasure drive as might be the drive in Hyde Park or in the Bois du Boulogne. Mount Royal suggests in some way the Monreale of Palermo, save that it is crowned by no cathedral, but from its height of a thousand feet it offers a panorama of city and river and wood and mountain ranges that is indescribable. What must be the influence on a city's life of having such a resort as this? It is in itself a prospect of unique and unrivalled beauty; it is a playground for all forms of recreation, al fresco; it is spiritual sanctuary. Again, the mystic vanishers beset one's footsteps, and signals beckon from the vast azure sea of the air. The sunset splendours glow and deepen over Westmount, Montreal's most beautiful suburb, which climbs up the mountain side, with such views, such charm of outlook, as one might well travel many a league to find.
It is again in that realm where nothing is but what is not, that one is led to that haunt of the student and the antiquary, the Château de Ramezay, built more than two hundred years ago by Claude de Ramezay, then governor of Montreal. And if the American Congressional Commission, comprising Franklin, Chase, and Carroll, who sat there for days and nights arguing, pleading, insisting that Canada should unite with the thirteen states in their rebellion and defiance of King George, had prevailed, had the Canadians yielded, what would the course of history have been? How would its trend of events have contrasted with the present? It is an interesting and curious speculation not without historical value of its own.
The Antiquarian and Numismatic Society of Montreal acquired the Château de Ramezay in 1895, after the building had passed through several vicissitudes of ownership, to make of it an Historical Portrait Gallery and Museum. One finds here a copy of the old painting in oils of the first Ursuline Monastery in Quebec, which was built in 1640, and destroyed by fire a year later, the original work being in the Ursuline Convent in Quebec. In the foreground of the picture is the house that was occupied by Bishop Laval in 1699. A large number of interesting old portraits are here, the gifts of the descendants or adherents of the sitters themselves; and coats-of-arms, antiquities, documents, and other matters of interest make up a valuable historical museum.
Montreal is enshrined in legendary lore. The Ile de la Cité, in Paris, is hardly more entangled in mystic story than is the metropolis of the Dominion. The tale that has come down the ages that the martyred preacher Saint-Denis walked from the heights of Montmartre, near Paris, to the Ile de la Cité, carrying his severed head in his hands, does not more challenge one's confidence in its authenticity than do many of the legends that haunt the imagination of the visitor in Montreal. About the middle of the seventeenth century a permanent settlement was founded in La Place Royale, near where the old Customs House now stands. Upon a warehouse in close proximity is placed a tablet with an inscription to the effect that on this site stood the first manor-house of Montreal, which from 1661 to 1712 was the seminary of St. Sulpice.
The story of the settlement of La Place Royale is one of the mystical tales to be found in the Relations des Jésuites, and it tells that Jean Jacque Olier, an Abbé of France, suddenly experienced a deep religious re-awakening, and gave himself with ardour to devising and carrying out new projects in connection with the education and training of young priests in St. Sulpice, Paris. Hearing of the settlement on the island of Montreal he conceived the idea of founding a mission there. The Sieur de la Dauversiére, of Brittany, had conceived a similar project, and the two men met, by chance, as strangers at Meudon. Although they had never seen each other before, they fell into each other's arms and related their plans; they obtained the aid of Madame de Bullion and other influential leaders at court, and formed a society known as the Compagnie de Notre Dame de Montreal. It is further related that about this time a young nun, Jeanne Mance, had a vision in which she was called to go to the same place and found a convent. A French writer records that then a miracle took place: "God, lifting for her the veils of space, showed her while yet in France the shores of the island and the site for Ville Marie, at the foot of the mountain." The little company landed from the St. Lawrence on May 18, 1642, and at the first religious service held, Father Vimont said, "You are a grain of mustard seed that shall rise and grow till its branches overshadow the earth. You are few, but your work is the work of God. His smile is upon you."
Thirty years later the first streets were laid out in Montreal. Religion and education went hand in hand. In 1721 the population had increased to three thousand; steam navigation was initiated in 1809 by the second steamboat built in America (the first being that of Robert Fulton which plied on the Hudson in 1807) and the steam river traffic between Montreal and Quebec was thus begun. Navigation across the Atlantic from Canada opened in 1831; the first railroad was successfully started in 1836; and Montreal was incorporated in 1832. The Lachine Canal had been completed in 1825. From the first, Montreal has been prosperous, and the present metropolis, rapidly nearing a population of three-quarters of a million, with its nine miles of river front, its fifty public parks, its admirable municipal improvements in all modern appliances, stands as a monument to the faith and devotion of its early founders led to the wilderness as by vision.
Montreal has an Art Gallery, of Greek Ionic architecture, built of Vermont marble, the entrance hall lined with Bottichino marble, with handsome staircases, and numerous salons. The collection of pictures and sculpture is already an interesting one, and an annual Loan Exhibition is made possible by the generous enterprise of the citizens, many of the private collections being very rich in artistic treasures. Nor is music neglected in Montreal. The organ recitals at Christ Church Cathedral are famous far beyond the city.
Women's work in Montreal is a very prominent and valuable feature of the city's life; including much social service work and the promotion of guilds of various orders. The Canadian woman, indeed, plays an important part in the entire life and progress of the Dominion. The churches of Montreal include many of great beauty, such as Notre Dame, St. James' Cathedral, Christ Church Cathedral, and others. The Grey Nunnery, covering an entire block, and the Royal Victoria Hospital are impressive buildings; and the banks and office structures of the city are in many cases very imposing and seem to duplicate the stately and impressive architecture of London.
There is no Canadian industry that is without representation in Montreal markets, and her manufactures have a world-wide repute. Montreal is the greatest grain port of America, taking precedence of New York in the quantity of grain handled at her port.
Situated on an island thirty-two miles long and from four to eight miles wide, at the junction of the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers, Montreal is a seaport, although a thousand miles from the sea; for the construction of a thirty-foot channel enables the largest ocean vessels to sail to her docks. The Canadian canals enable the steamers of the Great Lakes to sail to the harbour of Montreal, where they transfer their cargoes to the ocean steamers. Montreal has, indeed, almost unrivalled facilities by both rail and water. Her harbour is under the control of a Board of Commissioners appointed by the Government of the Dominion, and twenty-seven millions of dollars had been spent in providing the most approved modern facilities up to the beginning of 1916, with nine millions more for the same purpose already available. Both her export and import trade have been increasing so rapidly that even these liberal endowments are taxed to the utmost.
With this commercial supremacy, the City of the Royal Mountain offers educational advantages and scientific culture of the highest order. The great value of the McGill University is not only the distinction of its intellectual position, or the high quality of its work, but also its guarantees of equality of educational opportunity to all whose career comes within the sphere of its influence. The princely endowments of the late Lord Strathcona and of Sir William Macdonald provided a foundation whose far-reaching value can hardly be estimated, and the university has been singularly fortunate in the character and endowments that have graced her staff of professors. While McGill offers special training of the most advanced type in preparation for the various professions, and for the acquirement of technical qualifications, she has never yielded to any purely utilitarian standards. She has held to the ideal that Education is primarily for the soul herself, and not, as said the Grecian philosopher of old, "to be undertaken in the spirit of merchants and traders, with a view to buying or selling." It is the glory of McGill that she sends forth, not only culture and trained skill, but men prepared for the duties of citizenship, and the obligations, the privileges, the responsibilities that await them as members of society.
Montreal City
McGill celebrated in 1904 her seventy-sixth anniversary, and in the lofty and glowing address made on that occasion by Principal and Vice-Chancellor Peterson, we find him saying—
"Manners are formed and personality is built up in the school of life,—even the student school. Honesty, purity, reverence,—all the moral virtues, in fact,—are just as important for the youth of the country as are learning and scholarships. We want to have a hall-mark for McGill men by which they may be known and recognised the world over. It lies with our students themselves to set the standard. 'How truly it is in man,' as Mr. Gladstone said to the students in Edinburgh, 'in man, and not in his circumstances, that the secret of his destiny resides. For most of you that destiny will take its final bent towards evil or towards good, not from the information you imbibe, but from the habits of mind, thought, and life that you shall acquire during your academic career. In many things it is wise to believe before experience; to believe until you may know; and believe me when I tell you that the thrift of time will repay you in after life with an usury of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams, and that the waste of it will make you dwindle, alike in intellectual and in moral stature, beneath your darkest reckonings.'"
There was one little incident in the scientific history of McGill that is not without its special interest to-day in the safe-guarding of human life. This was the first application of wireless telegraphy to the operation of moving trains. Many people now believe that in the wireless control of moving trains lies in the future the most effectual protection against railway accidents. It was in 1902, just six years after Marconi made his successes in England, that the experiment was first tried. Professor Ernest Rutherford, now of the University of Manchester, and Professor Howard T. Barnes, both of the Macdonald physical laboratory of McGill, were invited to accompany the American Association of General Passenger and Ticket Agents, who in that year held a convention in Portland. The Grand Trunk provided a special train from Chicago to Portland, and on this train, when moving at fifty miles an hour, signals were exchanged with a given station, and with the comparatively simple apparatus installed it was found possible to keep the train in communication with a station for a distance of eight or ten miles.
Ottawa was obviously created to be the capital of the Dominion. Her interesting history, initiated by the choice of Queen Victoria, the glory of whose long reign is a priceless possession of the Dominion, attracts careful study; and the first view over the charming city and its equally charming environment, is one to linger for a lifetime. The majestic beauty of her Parliament Buildings
"Set on the landscape like a crown;"
towers and bastions and buttresses clinging to the height on which they are built above the river; and the exquisite outline of the turrets and high-pointed tower of the magnificent Château Laurier all silhouetted against the western sky—
"Dim in the sunset's misty fires,"
offer a pictorial enchantment to linger in the memory. This young city, with hardly more than half a century's life behind it, has made itself a distinctive point in the States as well as in the Dominion.
"Have you seen Ottawa? Have you stayed in Château Laurier?" are interrogations not unusual among us in the States when Canada is discussed. Is Ottawa, with its artistic Château Laurier, the Carcasonne of the newer world? For surely no guest of the Château Laurier quite dreams of classing it among ordinary hotels; in it he tastes a flavour of something a little apart, of life in an artistically appointed palace which he enters from his railway train through a brilliantly lighted marble corridor reminding him of the entrance to Bertolini's on the terraced hills of Naples. The Ottawa Grand Trunk Station itself, built of white marble with its pillared façade, is like a Greek temple, and the richly decorated corridors and salons of the Château are as reminiscent of Venice as of France. This magnificent hotel was of course named after Canada's great statesman, the Right Honourable Sir Wilfrid Laurier, G.C.M.G., whose bust in marble adorns the entrance corridor. The decorations are of the François I. period; the building is absolutely fireproof, and the luxurious furnishing suggests that of private palaces rather than of an hotel.
One of the most interesting places in Ottawa is the Archives, a handsome stone building completed in 1906. The extensive records of Canadian history under the able and courteous administration of Dr. Arthur Doughty, Keeper of the Archives, are made accessible to scholars and research students; and this building has become one of the haunts of the savant. Numerous glass cases are filled with valuable manuscripts and documents; historic souvenirs abound; the library contains over twenty thousand books; and there are many beautiful paintings and engravings in the various rooms, illustrating important epochs in the history of the Dominion and also including many portraits of value and interest.
Ottawa—showing the Parliament Buildings and Château Laurier
The Experimental Farm, three miles out of Ottawa, covers nearly five hundred acres of land, and it is one of the chief attractions, offering, as it does, so much efficient instruction in the seeding, culture, and harvesting of agricultural products, and the care of live stock. Not far from this Farm is the Royal Astronomical Observatory, built in Romanesque style, with a central octagonal tower under a revolving hemispherical dome, containing the telescope. The Observatory comprises an astronomical library, photographic and lecture rooms, and a reading-room.
Ottawa is a growing city and is one of the beautiful capitals of the American continent with the population now approaching the one hundred and fifty thousand mark. There is much of old-world ceremony in the city.
Rideau Hall, the residence of the Governor-General (at the time of writing, the Duke of Devonshire, who succeeded His Royal Highness the Duke of Connaught and Strathearn), is a rambling grey stone structure, with ample grounds, comprising some eighty-five acres. The gracious character of all ceremonial courtesies and hospitalities at Rideau Hall are deeply appreciated by the people of the Dominion. The Duke of Devonshire is the head of one of the greatest of English families, the Cavendishes, and his appointment was a popular one with Canadians. The Duchess of Devonshire is the daughter of a former Governor-General of Canada, the Marquis of Lansdowne, and is no stranger to Canada.
In an address given by the Duke of Connaught before the Canadian Club, his Royal Highness thus alluded to the position of Governor-General of the Dominion:—
"I do not know of a prouder position for any Englishman to hold than that of his Majesty's representative as Governor-General of Canada. When my late brother, King Edward the Seventh, asked me to accept this high post, an offer which was renewed after his death by our present gracious Sovereign, I felt great doubt as to whether I could do justice to so high a position. I had no doubt that I should be a friend of the Canadians to-day as I was forty-three years ago. Since I have been in Canada the last year and a half, I have felt more and more that I have been able to gain the keen sympathy and, I venture to say, the affection of the whole Canadian people. I am sure you will believe me when I say that I never spent a happier year and a half. To Englishmen who have not been in Canada, I say the sooner they go the better. It is moving with leaps and bounds."
The Parliament Buildings occupy a commanding site near the park in which the Château Laurier is built, thus sharing the advantage of all the lovely grounds. The Rideau Canal, with its locks, joins the Ottawa River in this park, under the very shadow of Parliament, offering a picturesque feature as it passes to the Rideau Lakes. The extensive Library of Parliament is, happily, open to the people, and its generous hospitalities and rich resources have been of themselves a signal attraction to scholars and literary workers. Fortunately the greater part of this library escaped destruction in the fire of 1916 that partially destroyed the Parliament Buildings, although as they will be restored with increased facilities, the calamity was not wholly evil in its results.
The Library of Parliament is built upon the lines of some of the famous old chapter-houses in England attached to a noble cathedral. The interior is circular, with a dome of forty-two feet in height, a vaulted roof and rich carvings. It is an interior rich in the revelation of all that is best in the realm of thought, all that touches human interests and makes for those nobler ideals which are the real resources of life.
The beauty of the Parliament Buildings in the early dawn has been celebrated by an Ottawa poet, Duncan Campbell Scott:
"Fair, in the South, fair as a shrine that makes
The wonder of a dream, imperious Towers
Pierce and possess the sky, guarding the halls
Where our young strength is welded strenuously;
While, in the East, the star of morning dowers
The land with a large tremulous light, that falls
A pledge and presage of our destiny."
CHAPTER IV
TORONTO THE BEAUTIFUL
Toronto, city of education, culture, religion; a city of homes with all that makes for the beauty and the happiness of family life; Toronto, with her noble University whose enrolment of students exceeds in number that of Oxford, her conservatories of music, her impressive cathedrals and churches, her splendid Parliament Buildings, and her classic Public Library with its numerous branches—the capital of the rich province of Ontario, this beautiful and inspiring city of Canada provides, indeed, an ample basis for the enthusiasm and devotion of her citizens. No city could be more advantageously located, seeing that she commands the blue waters of Lake Ontario. Toronto is the centre from which radiate several of the most picturesque excursions into the western continent. The world-wonder of Niagara Falls is in her near neighbourhood. From Toronto all the summer "playgrounds" of Canada may be reached with the utmost convenience and readiness; or the tourist may make that picturesque sail down the St. Lawrence; or, again, would he be like Wordsworth's Stepping Westward, he may take train and embark at Sarnia for the tour of the Great Lakes, ending at the terminal of Fort William, whence again he may wander into all the scenic glories of Canada.
At Toronto the holiday-maker may board the luxurious train for Huntsville, where he takes the steamer for that idyllic cruise by the chain of lakes that lands him at the fascinating Hotel Wawa; or gives him access to any one of a myriad resorts in the unique Lake-of-Bays region. Algonquin Park, the Muskoka Lakes, all these "Highlands of Ontario" which are attracting throngs of summer wanderers, are within easy reach of Toronto, to all of which, indeed, the city is the gateway, and the distributing centre as well. The playgrounds of the Dominion are much appreciated by the great nation lying on her southern border. New England and the West have long been increasingly familiar with the allurements of a Canadian summer; and now the southern states, on and near the Gulf of Mexico, are sending out for information of the facilities for vacation sojourns amid the parks and lakes and shining rivers of Canada. Those far-famed Canadian resorts, comprising not only the Lake of Bays, Algonquin Park, and Muskoka, but Timagami, Kawartha Lakes, French River, Lake Nipissing, and Georgian Bay, all lie north of Toronto, and these resorts, some of them over eighteen hundred feet above sea-level, with their invigorating, balsam-laden air, are a revelation to the visitor from the heated South.
The Southerner finds himself especially enthralled by Canada's long summer days and lingering twilights, with their ethereal and almost unearthly beauty of amber lights and evanescent shadows, a beauty that has hitherto been rather exclusively associated with Scandinavia, the land of the midnight sun. What an hour for a twilight paddle across some crystal lake, in turning homeward after an idyllic day. Canada has been fortunate in keeping her wilds singularly unspoiled, for practically only one railway line extends into all these romantic regions, that of the Grand Trunk System, which has been the means of the multiplication of delightful summer hotels and rustic camps. These Canadian resorts (whose range of prices is so moderate as to amaze the people from the States) are as socially delightful as they are in scenic charm. They are characterised by the refinement of courtesy and generous hospitality that is the hall-mark of the Dominion.
Toronto is one of the most accessible centres of the North American continent, being only three hours from Buffalo, one night from New York and Boston, and fourteen hours from Chicago.
Does all this enumeration of her charms only have to do with getting away from them? The citizen of this beautiful city on the lake will assert that there is another equally spellbinding range of charms to be enjoyed without wandering far away from Toronto itself.
The harbour of Toronto is one of the most beautiful of any of the water-front cities. It has a rather curious configuration formed by a picturesque island of more than two thousand acres that forms a species of breakwater. In the summer the waters near the island are alive with craft. Every kind of sailing boat, canoes, and yachts, as well as motor and steam launches, may be seen riding the waves. The island itself is utilised in much the same fashion as Coney Island in the New York harbour, as a resort for popular amusement. With this inland sea of Lake Ontario at its doors, with its fine architecture, its development and culture of the arts, professions, and industries; with such picturesque treasure as that of the Rosedale ravines, the Humber valley, the Don River, and the gentle hills, Toronto is well calculated to be one of the embodied inspirations of the Dominion.
It is claimed that there are more homes, each with its green lawn and its garden—homes owned by their occupants—within the thirty-six square miles that comprise Toronto than in any other city on the American continent. Toronto is truly a thing of life in its expansion. The construction of streets and buildings is in constant progress and the residential limits are being carried many miles into the country. Within the past decade the city has crossed two rivers, marched up a hill, and clambered over two ravines, all of which give the residential region an aspect of romantic beauty. The architectural charm of the city impresses the stranger; especially the cathedrals of St. James and St. Michael and the University of Toronto, that great Norman pile, dignified and with its old-world atmosphere. Surrounding it are the colleges—Victoria, with its Gothic dining-hall and residences; St. Michael's, Knox, and Wycliffe. Soon Trinity will join the ranks of college settlements. McMaster, the Baptist University, is at the northern edge of the campus, and not far away are the great medical schools, the School of Science, the Conservatory of Music, the University Library, the Dental College, and the many college residences. The University of Toronto is perhaps the largest English-speaking University in the British Empire, and the year 1916 found two thousand five hundred of her sons fighting for the Empire. The Royal Ontario Museum, with its Oriental and Indian collection, lies to the north of the campus, and the great General Hospital as well as a special hospital for children are adjacent. Many of the churches are of real beauty—St. Paul's Anglican, a structure which cost one and a half million dollars; the Eaton Memorial on the hill; the Metropolitan Methodist, owning ground estimated as worth over two millions; and the parish church of St. James, with its tower over three hundred feet in height. The Margaret Eaton School of Literature and Expression is an institution of great value, attracting students from all parts of the Dominion. As a theatrical and a musical city, Toronto shares with New York, Boston, and Montreal many of the most noted dramas and musical entertainments. As a musical centre herself, Toronto ranks fourth among the large cities of the continent; and she has an annual average of four thousand musical students. Her own Mendelssohn Choir is not only conceded to be the finest in America, but one of the best in the world.
Nor are the graphic arts neglected in Toronto. There are already two leading organisations, the Ontario Society of Artists and the Canadian Art Club. A College of Art was founded in 1912; there is a Women's Art Association, an Arts and Letters Club, which has issued a very creditable Year Book of Canadian Art, as well as a Heliconian Club, composed of women engaged in artistic and literary work, and who, presumably, quaff the living waters of Helicon to reinforce their energies.
In her Public School System, with an enrolment of thirty-five thousand pupils, Toronto employs many of the most advanced educational methods of the day.
If the visitor in Toronto were to ask for what is perhaps the most really significant factor in the city's life, and one which is likely to be missed by the surface observer, the answer would be that this factor would be found in the Public Library System, so splendidly administered by the Chief Librarian, George H. Locke. A Canadian, a native of Toronto, Mr. Locke was allured for a few years by Harvard University and the University of Chicago; but fortunately for his own city, he has chosen to devote himself to her development and culture through the medium of library work, in a manner whose original genius for relating literature to the needs of the people, and more especially to the youth and the children, is making itself felt in the Dominion as well as in the city.
In many aspects of his manifold and remarkably adjustable system, Mr. Locke creates his own precedents. In any survey of the processes in many of the noted libraries of the past, the chief aim, if not regarded as the chief duty, of the keeper of books has seemed to be that of protecting them from popular contact. The books were to be safeguarded from too familiar approach as are the works of art in the great galleries and museums. In every case they did not, it is true, imitate the methods of the Laurentian Library in Florence and chain the books to the desks, but something of the spirit of the stern custodian was in them all. Mr. Locke at once outlined his policy on the basis of his conviction that books were made for the people, and not the people for books, and that opportunities for more knowledge and greater intelligence should be provided. More especially he held that books had indispensable messages for the youth of a great city. The adult readers were welcomed and accorded every possible opportunity and privilege; but the children were not to be merely welcomed, they were to be enticed by the very attractiveness of the surroundings to come in from the highways and the byways to the feast of literature provided so lavishly for them.
Assisted by a staff of one hundred young women whose enthusiasm leapt up to meet his own, young women with wit and initiative of their own as well, all of which their chief especially encouraged on their parts, the work went forward. "If you think you have a good plan," Mr. Locke says, in effect, to his staff, "try it. Don't come to me about it. If it is successful, then let us talk it over. If it is not, bury it quietly and don't put up any monument to it."
The Central Library, with its fourteen branches, works as a unit; yet not as the unit of a machine, but in a unity of spirit and purpose inclusive of many individual variations. One feature of the system of the highest value is that of the open shelves. Nothing so educates the child, in all that most essential development of what Matthew Arnold so well terms the humanities, as the habit of browsing at will among books. From the official report made by Mr. Locke for the year 1915 the following extract is taken, as it illustrates clearly one novel and invaluable feature of the work—
"The work with the children, which showed such a remarkable increase last year, has shown even greater results, and we see new possibilities for the coming year. This department is decidedly aggressive in its methods, and no phase of public social service in this city has awakened such wide interest. The Story Hour, already popular, was given a decided help onwards by the series of lectures which the Children's Librarians arranged for during October and November, when Miss Marie Shedlock, of London, England, spoke to five delighted audiences on 'Story Telling.' That part of the Story Hour which is devoted to Canadian historical characters is really a National Movement, for it supplies to the children, many of whom are of foreign parentage, a Canadian historical background, something much needed in a new country with its great problems to be solved by those who now are but children. This year there were 12,671 children in the Story Hours and 249,260 books were circulated among boys and girls."
The "Story Hour" is a semi-weekly feature of the library work, and one which has developed unmeasured ardour on the part of the youthful auditors.
Another signally refining and helpful influence is that of the culture of flowers; a garden plot, or beds of flowers, being a feature of the grounds surrounding each of the fourteen libraries. The children are encouraged to aid in this care of flowers, and seats placed in the gardens enable summer readers to pursue their work amid this beauty, and in the invigorating air.
The "J. Ross Robertson Historical Collection," housed in the Reference Library, is as a gallery of Canadiana of the utmost value to the student of the history of the Dominion. The collection numbers already three thousand two hundred and twenty-nine pictures, and in the year of 1915 alone, it was visited by more than twelve thousand people. These pictures tell the story of the development of Canada from the forest, lake, and prairie, with tribes of wandering Red Men, into the land of fruit, grain, and manufactures. Mr. Robertson has proved a real benefactor to the entire province as well as the Dominion, for students come from all parts of the country to study this collection.
Toronto is constructively much like London, in that a number of separate communities are federated to form one city. In nearly every one of these separate and component parts a branch of the Public Library is established, taking the name of the specific centre, such as Wychwood, Dovercourt, and Yorkville. The latest of these branches, that at Wychwood, is a perfect architectural reproduction of the Shakespearean period, thus celebrating the tercentenary in 1916 in a tangible manner, and its Elizabethan charm attracts numerous appreciative visitors. One typical instance of the library spirit is that of taking a primitive and discarded little church, fitting it up with books, and with light and heat and flowers (for in every library interior beautiful flowers are an unfailing ornament) making of this a small branch in an undeveloped part of the city, and forming it into a notable centre of joy, helpfulness, and inspiration.
In addition to the University of Toronto, and in close alliance with it, is University College, a state institution, in which languages and the liberal arts are taught; and this notable university system in Toronto is inclusive of a number of other affiliated institutions, in which the students may avail themselves of the university examinations and degrees, among which are the Toronto College of Music and the Conservatory of Music. There are four university museums, the Mineralogical and the Geological, the Archæological and the Biological; and there is also a Gallery set apart for Palæontology. A stately and impressive building, the School of Domestic Science, presented by Mrs. Massey Treble, is the centre of instruction as useful as it is important. No visitor in the Dominion can fail to perceive how Canada is especially a home-building, home-conserving country. If one were called upon to define the Canadian nation in a phrase, it would be that of a home-building people. That the home, in all the purity and sanctity of family life, is the unit of civilisation is an article of faith in Canada.
The Royal Astronomical Society of Toronto is an association of much importance in the scientific world. In May, 1916, it had the honour of being addressed by an astronomer whom it is no exaggeration to term the most brilliant figure of the age in interstellar physics. This was Doctor Percival Lowell, whose brilliant and original investigations have thrown great light upon the evolution of the planets, and whose especial discoveries (as they may now be claimed) of the conditions on Mars have arrested the attention of the entire scientific world. It was on this theme, including aspects of Mars developed in observations made as recently as in January and March of 1916, that Doctor Lowell addressed the Society.[[1]]
[[1]] Dr. Percival Lowell died November 13, 1916, at Flagstaff Observatory, Arizona, U.S.A.
The population of Toronto is already over the half million mark, the city directory for 1915 recording a population of 534,000, and the number is said to increase on an average of thirty thousand a year. It is a great manufacturing city, which has been able to harness a waterfall, even the mighty cataract of Niagara, into its daily service. Is it that the twentieth century calls from the fabled past those genii and magicians who can command and control the forces of Nature? The result would almost confirm that fascinating speculation. Apparently the Torontian is more fortunate than one individual who is said to have been enabled to send the broomstick to fetch water, but forgetting the incantation necessary to stop it, he was drowned. Toronto apparently knows the secret of controlling her almost unrivalled water-power. There are in and about Toronto more than nine hundred factories that number over sixty-five thousand employees, with an annual pay-roll of twenty-nine millions, representing a capital of seventy-five millions. The electric power from Niagara Falls is supplied at moderate rates, and thus the extension of manufacturing plant is encouraged to the advantage of the city itself.
The illumination of the Toronto streets by night is a feature of no little interest. The use of hydro-electric power has permitted the lighting by means of cluster lights, a system of unique beauty and incomparable service, and of great decorative effect as well. This power is supplied from the main station located at Niagara Falls, on the Canadian side, which itself is supplied directly from the cataract, with a high voltage of electrical energy.
The annual Canadian National Exposition held in Toronto during the last week in August and the first in September is considered to be almost a barometer of the progress of the world in general. Its promoters point with pride to the fact that this Exposition was the first to introduce the dawn of the Electrical Age to Canada; the first to introduce to general knowledge Marconi's wireless telegraphy; the first to demonstrate the uses of the telephone, and the advantages of the electric car service, and has thus, for a long series of years, made itself an important factor of contemporary progress.
The Bigwin Inn, Lake-of-Bays, Ontario
This Exposition is held in a natural park of some two hundred and sixty acres, sloping from the blue and sparkling waters of Lake Ontario, with a water front of nearly two miles in extent. The grounds are made a very "garden-city," with wide, paved streets and walks; with vistas of emerald turf enriched with shrubs and flowering plants and trees, amid which the permanent State buildings, graceful and rich in architectural detail, reveal themselves to great advantage. This Exposition is justly held throughout the Dominion as an annual focussing of the latest inventions and appliances, as a gauge of productive power in every direction, and it draws over a million visitors to the city every season.
As the Capital and metropolis of the rich and important province of Ontario, Toronto can hardly be adequately considered without some outline of the activities of the Province as well. The Parliament buildings occupy a prominent site in the city, and the Commissioners who are lodged in their various departments represent every important industry and interest in Ontario. Among these interests are the Good Roads Association, the Vegetable Growers, the Game and Fisheries, and the Women's Institute of Ontario, under the head of the Minister of Agriculture. Ontario has its Agricultural College at Guelph with the Macdonald Institute for girls in which homemaking as well as housekeeping is taught and which is the inspiration centre of the Women's Institutes of the province. The system of travelling libraries is of unsurpassed aid in the disseminating of information. The Women's Institute and the Farmers' Institute co-operate to the mutual advantage of each. Among the topics discussed in the former are "Discipline for Children," "Problem of the Farmer's Wife," "Furnishing a Living-room for Comfort," "Old-Fashioned Hospitality," and "The Value of Pleasing Manners." The activities of this Institute radiate an influence and suggest a series of standards that is little less than invaluable in its effect on the general rural life. The Institute has a membership of more than twenty-five thousand women; they represent some eight hundred and fifty branches; and their influence easily reaches twice the number of the membership. Courses of lessons in Domestic Science are given in stated centres; special instructors in cooking, dairying, poultry-raising; and topics relating to household labour of all kinds are assigned for discussion from time to time, the meetings always drawing large and eager audiences. The entire instruction is eminently practical, and in one Report made to the Minister of Agriculture the programme of lessons offered as typical included "Invalid Cookery," "Table Seating and Serving," "How to Spend the Winter Evenings," and "Wholesome Reading for Boys and Girls." It will readily be seen how extremely valuable is such a range of discussion as this, in a comparatively new country, where each household must so largely depend upon its own resources. "The strength of the Empire is in the homes of her people," said one lecturer, and the opinion is wide-spread. This Association further urges that its prevailing spirit shall know no distinction of class or creed; that it shall reach and include, with cordial, gracious welcome, every woman who is inclined to come into it. The motto of the Institute is, "If you know a good thing, pass it on." The Ontario Vegetable Growers' Association is another energetic organisation, whose aim is to "plant and make things grow."
The importance of social welfare is very fully recognised in Canada. "We are not here simply to make a living, to spend all our days in work," states one leading member; "we are here to enjoy life, and I believe that God intended that every one should enjoy a well-rounded life, with time for recreation and for mental and spiritual development."
In the prominence given to social service in the Dominion, a new and distinctive profession is opened, and one especially fitted for educated and cultivated young women. Various spheres of work are open, as those of assistants to city pastors, and as nurses, park attendants, health inspectors, police matrons, school inspectors, and as officials in the many charitable and educational institutions. Friendly visiting is not the least of these many channels for aid to social betterment, and for the extension of sympathies and the promotion of the higher life.
CHAPTER V
THE CANADIAN SUMMER RESORTS
Canada is Nature's pleasure-ground. The ineffable spell of beauty enchants the entire Dominion. It is not difficult to recognise the sources of her poets' inspirations. The wanderer in all this bewildering loveliness can say with the singer:
"I bathe my spirit in blue skies
And taste the springs of life."
How Lampman has painted the very atmosphere in the lines:
"I lift mine eyes sometimes to gaze,
The burning skyline blinds my sight;
The woods far off are blue with haze;
The hills are drenched in light."
Never was there beauty of Nature that so transmuted itself into vitality. The air is the very elixir of life. It is the infinite reservoir from which untold measures of energy may be drawn and stored up for the future. One does, indeed, "taste the springs of life" in actual experience.
The colossal scale of the summer resorts of Canada suggests the haunts of the Titans. The Maritime Provinces have long been a recognised locality for vacation days; but the region of central Canada, from Lake-of-Bays and Algonquin Park to Minaki, on the lakes east of Winnipeg, opens a new world to the summer visitor. It invites the seeker after health, rest, sport, or artistic enjoyment; it offers ideal conditions for the writer or the student, as well; but all this terrestrial paradise requires a clearly-defined geographical presentation in order to be at all adequately comprehended. In a country stretching over three thousand seven hundred miles from coast to coast; and in which the pleasure grounds already opened to easy accessibility by rail or steamer are thousands of miles in extent, a clear idea of their relative aspects in geographical space is an initial requirement. Canada is a Wonderland, but she is not an untraced wilderness.
Take, for example, Lake-of-Bays! Poetic, bewitching, star-crowned Wawa! The instant devotion inspired by this fascinating fairyland is, like beauty, its own excuse for being. As the visitor steps, in the brilliant sunshine of a late afternoon, upon the beach at Norway Point he finds himself within two hundred yards of the hotel. Here is a splendid dock with shelter rooms and baggage rooms, and here are porters from the Wawa, and his impedimenta having been handed over he turns to look at the oncoming sunset over the lake and over wooded islands, the colour-scheme changing in the flitting, opalescent lights, the cloud-shadows drifting over the green of island trees and vegetation, with a fringe of pine and balsam along the shores of the lake offering their refreshing shade for the saunterers and the bathers. The dancing pavilion is not far away at one end of the long piazza, and strains of music from the orchestra are floating out on the wonderful air. On a plot of verdant grass a group of white-robed children are dancing like a very fairy ring; and the western sky which the Wawa fronts is aglow with the sunset splendours.
Or, perchance, one arrives in the morning (for there are three steamers a day) in the pure, transparent light which plays such optical tricks with distance. There may be illusions similar to those that beset, and delight, the visitors to the Grand Canyon in Arizona. One stands on the brink of that titanic chasm and seeing an enticing point apparently close at hand he remarks that he will just step over to it. "How far do you think it is?" questions the habitué with secret delight; "that point is two miles away from us," he continues with due enjoyment in his companion's discomfiture. Something of the same illusions of the air beset one at Norway Point, on which the Wawa stands. This point is a favourite with an increasing number of summer colonists as the numerous cottages and picturesque camps suggest.
Not the least of a summer's enjoyment here is the charm of the trip. It is very easy, but it is also very picturesque. North from Toronto at a distance of some hundred and forty-six miles is the pretty little village of Huntsville, nestled among lakes and hills. Here begins the Lake-of-Bays region. The locality is one of the loveliest in Ontario; the lakes are dotted with islands and connected by winding rivers, with luxuriant growth of woodlands; the surface of the water is covered with lilies, the hills are dark with their sombre pines, and the entire landscape is fascinating. At this point the traveller is transferred from the railway to the waiting steamer on which he gaily steps for a sail on this unique series of lakes. The steamer glides to the end of one and enters a river; and the craft pushes on through it while branches of trees and tangled vines sway so near, on either side, that they may be almost grasped by the hand. What will happen next? one mentally questions. How will a steamer ever thread this wildwood? For apparently there is but an unmarked stretch of woodlands ahead, and even the steam launch of an enchanted journey can hardly be expected to navigate forests. Like most difficulties, however, this one comes to a satisfactory solution when another lake that has concealed itself behind a grove is now revealed and the steamer sails on.
But when she meets solid land how is she to negotiate the portage? It is then that the genius of the lamp appears, which one has but to rub in order to attain to the realisation of any of his earthly desires, and the touch on the lamp, as Aladdin holds it up for the passengers, produces, not the Amazon nor yet the Mississippi, but a mile of railroad, the shortest railroad in the world, bridging the portage between the lakes. Into the cars throng the passengers for the swift transit around the hills to the lake and the other steamer waiting. "Lake-of-Bays," indeed! Lake of a myriad bays, for the entire shores are indented with the inlets bordered by firs that mirror themselves in the water. It is through all this shining pathway that the tourist makes his triumphal progress and arrives at length at Norway Point. When one realises that all this Wonderland is, after all, only nine hours from Buffalo, one sees how easily accessible from the States are Canada's most charming summer districts. The romantic journey would almost be worth the taking even if one remained but a single night. For the beautiful hours of life are not over when they have passed; they linger in memory; they pervade all the quality of life.
It is in the climate that the very concentration of vitality lies, and a night's sleep at Norway Point seems to transform one's entire being with a renewal of life. What a view it is at night from the upper piazza when the powerful searchlight of the hotel is turned over lakes and woods and clustered islands; and the evening steamer coming in, gay with flags and pennons, with snatches of music and light laughter borne on the evening air. The searchlight on the hotel, the lights on the boat, flash their signals back and forth. For a moment the visitor is again on the Swiss lakes where boats and inns call to each other in signals of light. For some years past the custom, familiar to the sojourners in Geneva, Lucerne, and Vevey, has been adopted as one of the novel and amusing features at the Wawa. Of all the fair lands ever dreamed, is that which is revealed (or is it half created?) under the swiftly moving wave of light, that flashes its high illumination over the lakes, near and far, that gleam like silver. The searchlight brings out the forests in their dark and massive shadows, revealing, too, the numbers of little boats and canoes, with their firefly lights, dotting the lake.
Behind the hotel there rises a densely wooded bluff, some two hundred feet high, from whose summit alluring views attract the lingerer on the hillside. On this height is the reservoir that supplies the hotel, the altitude giving great momentum to the running water. The grounds comprise some three hundred acres—everything is on a generous scale in Canada—and over these grounds are scattered pergolas and rustic seats that offer their enticing ease to the strollers in the open air, who perhaps agree with Walt Whitman that it is in open space in which "all heroic deeds are conceived, and all great poems, also."
It is not surprising that hotels and cottages spring up around these lakes, and that campers find here a favourite haunt. An immense new hotel, the Bigwin Inn, has been completed on Bigwin Island, the enterprise of one of the foremost citizens of Ontario. The Bigwin is something novel in design, the dining-hall occupying one building (with entrancing piazzas and balconies towards the lake) while other buildings house the private rooms for the guests, the Social Hall, Office, and dancing pavilion, though all these are connected by covered corridors. The Bigwin will be one of the greatest summer hotels on the continent, and its establishment is one of the evidences of the increasing popular recognition of the charm and beauty of the Lake-of-Bays country. The hotel is picturesquely situated on Bigwin Island, a tract of two-and-a-half miles in length, densely wooded, and with easy approach. The swift communication rendered possible between The Bigwin and The Wawa, by means of motor boats and steam launches, will enhance the enjoyment of each. The new hotel will be a temple of festivities and gaiety. The dancing pavilion has every late luxury of device for the dancers, and for those interludes of "sitting out" a dance for which the revel itself is made. There are palm corners; there are balconies overhanging the waters until one might well believe himself in Venice; and there are supper rooms, card tables, and provision for necessary music as well as for the onlookers.
The steamers of the Lake-of-Bays Navigation Company will make the Bigwin one of their ports of call, thus assuring a triple service every day, and rendering easy all arrivals and departures. The steamer-landing is near the hotel, and the entire island furnishes the grounds for the Inn. The pretty Italian custom of building the dining-rooms of the hotel so as to overhang the water is one of the noteworthy features of the Bigwin. At Bertolini's, in Naples, a similar effect is attained by the glass-enclosed terrace, in the air, so much in use for afternoon teas and festive occasions. At the Bigwin the salle-a-manger actually projects by some feet above the water, and its circular form and artistic architectural design render it a unique spectacle from the decks of the steamers as they traverse the lake. The Inn, which will open at the end of the War, will accommodate six hundred guests.
The evolution of summer resorts would alone make up almost a social history of the past three-quarters of a century. It is a far cry to the days when, in the United States, Saratoga and Niagara Falls, with a small contingent at Newport, held the exclusive fashionable prestige for summer life. New England had its North Shore, to which Boston largely transferred itself when the summer opened. The White Mountains have always retained their clientele composed for the most part of people to whom the seclusion and pure air ministered rather to the carrying on of their studious pursuits than to the abandonment of them. Newport came to have a formidable rival in Bar Harbour. The opening of luxurious railway facilities to the Far West, and the provision of beautiful hotels in Colorado, at the Grand Canyon, in California, the Yellowstone Park, and other localities have made all those regions a land of summer. There are few, now, that are not familiar to the travelling public, and so the unparalleled summer resorts of Canada open a new range of attractions and experiences.
Apart from the two dominating hotels, the Wawa and the Bigwin, the Lake-of-Bays offers numerous other centres for vacation days in smaller hotels, cottages, and camps. Grunwald, perched on the west shore of Lake Mary; Dwight Bay, Point Ideal, Bona Vista, Britannia, and many other inviting nooks are discovered.
And when the season at enchanting Wawa is over? Then, again, the sail through Peninsula Lake, through Fairy River and Fairy Lake, to the wharf at Huntsville again, where the train awaits the traveller. Alas! for the perfection of connections. One has no excuse for lingering longer. Yet so early in the September days, to many sojourners the best of the season is yet to come. North of the Lake-of-Bays is Algonquin Park. This government reservation of nearly two million acres, with the comfortable and commodious Highland Inn perched on a high terrace looking out on another of the great lakes over the islands and dense woodlands, is to many visitors the most alluring place for out-of-door life in the whole of Canada. The Highland Inn offers much that is not set down on the bills. To find in this sportsman's paradise hotel accommodations that satisfy the typical demands of twentieth-century civilisation; to find homelike rooms, with books and papers and magazines in plentiful profusion; with a writing-desk well stocked with stationery near one's elbow at every turn; spacious piazzas on which to dream; an hotel under the same management as the palatial Château Laurier, the magnificent Fort Garry in Winnipeg, and the hardly less imposing Macdonald in Edmonton—to find these things is to be at once assured of the perfection of every detail. The traveller, only too ready to take the goods the gods provide, accepts this felicitous dispensation as a part of the boundless benevolences of the universe. If he is a sportsman, the world is indeed at his feet. He may secure his canoe and his guide and fish all day in any one of the many lakes; as there are two thousand in all, he may be said to have a range of choice. In the life-giving air, two thousand feet above sea level, he may enjoy indefinitely long tramps, studying, at close range, the wild animals in the Park. For more than twenty years they have been protected from harm by the law that forbids carrying firearms within the reservation limits; and the mink, the beaver, an almost innumerable variety of birds, with squirrels and the graceful and friendly deer are found in abundance in Algonquin Park. The camp sites are unsurpassed and the hospitalities of the campers are as ready as they are ample. The gypsy kettle is always swung, the camp fire is burning, and the lovely nymphs of the lake and woodland who flit about in picturesque garb are ready to offer the impromptu guest almost any order of refreshment at a moment's notice.
The true camper, like the poet, is born and not made. It is an instinct, a gift, a grace, to adapt oneself to the simple life of the woodlands, which is, however, not without its creature comforts. Lady campers may invite one, with traces of housewifely pride, to glance at the interior of their spotless tents; an interior little used save for sleep or for shelter in sudden storms. They take pride in the beds of springy balsam well covered by blankets; and the little tables with a few books and a chair or two. A bed of balsam boughs; a breakfast of trout freshly caught in the lake, with coffee made over the camp fire, combined with youth and health and keen interest in the world in general, and what more could one ask? And if one is not acclimated to the system of domestic life as ordered by the livers in the open air, then he may enjoy in the Highland Inn all the regulation viands and appointments of the highest civilisation, with his breakfast of grape-fruit, cereals, delicious coffee not made over a camp fire; trout, hot cakes, and the wonderful maple syrup of the land of the Maple Leaf. With these he will have his matutinal paper, with the latest news of the universe, that has come up from Toronto at night, and for the day before him relays of attractions, each more delightful than the other, beckon to him.