Canada and the British immigrant

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

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

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

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

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

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

The population of Ontario is chiefly of British origin. Within the province are two capital cities—Ottawa, seat of the Dominion government, and Toronto, of the Provincial government. The local House has but one chamber, elected, it is commonly said, “by the people,” but actually by the adult males of the population.

There is no state church, but all the leading denominations, and many smaller ones, are represented. The University of Toronto (which has more than four thousand undergraduates) is non-sectarian, but there are a number of other universities and colleges connected with the several churches. The education of children is free, and their attendance at school compulsory. The school system begins with the kindergarten, and leads up through the public school and the high school to the university. There are unsectarian public schools and Roman Catholic “separate” schools.

Amongst other valuable educational agencies in the province there were in 1912 four hundred and seventeen public and two hundred and forty-two travelling libraries, which reach many a remote village and lumber camp, and three hundred and seventy-five agricultural and eighty horticultural societies. In this connection it may be mentioned that the Ontario Agricultural College and Experimental Farm at Guelph enrolled, in 1911, no less than 1,500 students, whilst the Farmers’ Institutes and Women’s Institutes number their members by thousands. There are, of course, numerous associations and societies in the cities and towns for the furtherance of objects of a religious, philanthropic, or educational character, but the comparatively recent increase of associations of farmers and farmers’ wives and daughters is especially interesting, because the enriching and development of rural social life touches a problem of national importance. These associations may prove of much advantage to the newcomer willing to profit by them.

According to the last census, considerably over half the population of Ontario is urban, but in the settled districts at least such recent innovations as rural telephones and mail deliveries are making the country life easier and more attractive. Men, accustomed to farm labour in the “Old Country,” seem to be astonished at the number of labour-saving machines employed on the farms, and, in some localities, farmers share in the advantages of the “Hydro-Electric Power,” developed from Niagara under the management of a government commission.

But, after all, it is not only material good things for which the emigrant seeks when he leaves his home-land. I have said something of the schools already, I might have said more of the churches which everywhere—in the crowded cities, in the quiet country, and in the lonely wilderness, sometimes nobly, sometimes feebly—are doing work for the growing nation which only they can do. I might tell of the vigorous, and upon the whole, successful, struggle which men and women are making in the cause of temperance—in Ontario and in other provinces—and of other efforts, needed even in this new land of opportunities, to prevent the exploiting of helpless children and young girls by greedy money-makers, to stamp out tuberculosis, to guard infant life, to cleanse the land of evils, physical and spiritual.

Ontario—and the Dominion—is, indeed, a land of endeavour as well as of opportunity, but the people are not too busy to find time to be helpful, and amongst the abiding impressions left from the years spent by the writer as an inexperienced worker on an Ontario farm, is that of the kindness and friendliness of neighbours, some of whom remembered similar experiences. And the hard work of the life was lightened by the loveliness of a beautiful country, and by no little pleasant sociability.

XI

MANITOBA, OLD AND NEW

THOUGH it had an area larger than that of Ireland, Scotland and Wales combined, Manitoba for many years suffered under a sense of injustice with regard to its restricted size. People called it “the postage-stamp province,” but in 1912 that reproach was taken away by the addition to it of a “new Manitoba,” more than twice the size of the old. Now the enlarged province boasts itself as “the Maritime Prairie Province,” for it stretches away eastward to the shores of Hudson Bay, which was the old-time gateway of the seafaring British into the great West.

The Manitoba coast has two good natural harbours, Fort Churchill and Port Nelson, which, while they are by rail nine or ten hundred miles nearer to Winnipeg than is Montreal, are only about the same distance as the St. Lawrence port from Liverpool. What this may mean in the future to Manitoba can at present only be guessed at, but there seems little doubt that suitably-built steamships will be able to navigate Hudson Bay and Strait for a longer period annually than was the case with the little sailing vessels of the Hudson Bay Company, which were sometimes becalmed, as well as checked by quantities of ice.

But of more importance to prospective immigrants than the possibilities of the new-old waterway to Manitoba is the climate of the province itself. Now one must admit frankly that Manitoba has a cold winter, but it is not usually a very long one. Often the fine weather lasts late into the autumn, and seeding generally begins in April. Moreover, owing to the dryness of the atmosphere and the amount of sunshine, people do not suffer from the cold as the readings of the thermometer might lead the inexperienced to expect. It is a country where, both for health and comfort, it is necessary in winter to keep the houses warm and to wear good warm clothing out of doors, but ordinarily healthy people, who know how to take proper precautions, do not appear to dread the cold. It is, however, very hard on the poor, though more fortunate persons find the crisp cold exhilarating, and the climate is generally regarded as healthy. In summer the days are often hot, but the nights are usually cool and pleasant for sleeping, though there are seasons when flies and mosquitoes, at least in little-settled districts, are very troublesome.

The climate is unquestionably favourable for the growth of wheat and many other agricultural products. Despite the remarkable dryness and clearness of the atmosphere, Manitoba is not a dry and thirsty land where no water is, and in June there is usually ample rainfall after seeding to give the young crops every chance of growth. The frost coming out of the ground in spring, and the rains, have indeed a deplorable effect on the prairie trails. Not very long ago the streets of Winnipeg were sometimes almost impassable with mud, but Winnipeg—according to a table recently compiled by the meteorological department in Toronto—has a much greater annual rainfall than most other places in the province.

Manitoba has numerous and large lakes. Among those in the older part of the province are Winnipeg, Manitoba, Winnipegosis and Dauphin lakes, all very large according to old-world standards, and its chief rivers are the Red, Assiniboine, Winnipeg and Pembina, each with several tributaries. The waters of all these find their way ultimately into Hudson Bay.

Manitoba is popularly supposed to be “as flat as a pancake,” and the prairie about Winnipeg is extraordinarily level in appearance. But, as a matter of fact, the prairie country of the Canadian West consists of three distinct steppes. Of these, Manitoba contains the whole of the first, and a portion of the second steppe. The first slopes gently from the international boundary, where it is about fifty miles wide, towards the far-distant Arctic Ocean, and the site of Winnipeg is only about seven hundred feet above sea-level, but the average elevation of the second steppe, which begins in South-west Manitoba, is about sixteen hundred feet. The face of this second steppe forms the “Riding and Duck Mountains,” and the Porcupine hills, in which is the highest point in Manitoba, 2,500 feet. In the south there are two other elevations named, like many another natural feature of the prairie regions, after birds, fish or animals. These are the Turtle and the Tiger hills.

There are also acres of forest land in the north-west and extreme east of the old province, and here and there are small timbered districts, which supply the settlers with a certain amount of house timber and fuel, though not a little has to be imported. Much of new Manitoba is covered with forests, and is likely to supply immense quantities of pulpwood, and timber for other purposes. It is believed also to contain great stretches of good agricultural land; there are hopeful indications of mineral wealth; and its fisheries must be valuable. Finally, this wild north land certainly contains abundance of water power, which in time may make it an important manufacturing region. As yet the worth of its scarcely explored resources cannot be estimated, but quite enough is known to justify the Manitobans in congratulating themselves on the possession of this vast addition to the province.

But, leaving new Manitoba out of account, there is no lack of definite information concerning the older portion of this first-settled of the “Prairie Provinces.” If one goes back to explorers and fur traders, its history may be said to begin far back in the eighteenth century with the building of La Verendrye’s little trading post on the site of the modern city of Winnipeg. If we do not care to go behind the first attempt actually to colonize what is now Manitoba, the story stretches just over one hundred years.

It was in 1811 that Lord Selkirk obtained a large tract of land on the Red river from the Hudson Bay Company (of which he was a member), with the view of settling upon it an agricultural colony. The first party of British immigrants—drawn chiefly from Scotland—came in, it will be noted, by way of Hudson Bay, a route which it is prophesied may yet be preferred by British colonists as the shortest road to the great West. But no Hudson Bay Railroad was dreamed of when those first immigrants arrived, late in 1811, and it was not till the following summer that they reached their destination on the Red river.

There they received anything but a hospitable welcome. In fact, the Hudson Bay Company’s rivals in the fur trade deliberately set themselves to make the place too hot to hold them, for, not altogether unreasonably, they regarded farming and fur trading as mutually exclusive industries. But neither their ill-will, which at last culminated in bloodshed, nor other disasters of various descriptions, sufficed to destroy the colony. Through all, a few of Selkirk’s settlers succeeded in the end in making good their footing; and many modern Manitobans are proud to claim descent from these sturdy and steadfast folk who, with no better implements than hoes, broke up the ancient sod, and sowed and reaped the first of Manitoba’s famous wheat crops.

A few years later the rival trading companies amalgamated; but for the next half-century the growth of the colony—still under the rule of the Hudson Bay Company—was extraordinarily slow. Then it was affected by events in the eastern provinces.

Immediately after Confederation, resolutions were passed in the Canadian parliament asking the British Government to add to the Dominion these great regions in the north and west, and in 1869 the Hudson Bay Company consented to give up its trade monopoly and sovereign rights in consideration of a sum of £300,000 in money, and of about a twentieth part of the land yet to be surveyed south of the north branch of the Saskatchewan river and west of Lake Winnipeg.

In the Red River region there was at this time a population of about twelve thousand (chiefly half-breeds, and more of French than of English extraction). No one thought it necessary to consult them about the transfer, and when surveyors were sent into the country, the Red River farmers began to fear that their claims to their farms and their right to cut hay on the adjacent wild lands (a privilege of great value in their eyes) would be disregarded. Louis Riel, a young man who had been educated at Montreal, giving voice to their vague alarm, stirred them up to violent agitation, and soon the half-breeds were in open rebellion. They seized the Hudson Bay Company’s post of Fort Garry (where Winnipeg now is) and set up a “Provisional Government,” with Riel at its head. Some who dared to oppose his authority were imprisoned, and finally a young Irishman from Ontario—Thomas Scott—after a mock trial, was brutally murdered. This roused a storm of indignation throughout Canada, and a body of regular troops and militiamen, under the command of Colonel (afterwards Lord) Wolseley, was sent to put down the insurrection. The journey from the east was so toilsome and difficult that, though the troops left Toronto in June, 1870, they did not reach the Red river till August; but Riel fled on their approach, and many of the militiamen who spent the winter in Manitoba ultimately settled there.

In the same year the government of the country as a Canadian province was inaugurated. Manitoba followed Ontario in having only a single chamber in the Provincial Legislature; and it is represented in the Dominion parliament by four members in the Upper, and ten in the Lower, House. “The electoral franchise is practically based on residence and manhood suffrage.”

Between the taking of the first Dominion census affecting Manitoba in 1871, and the fourth (and last) the population of the province has been multiplied by eighteen, being set down in 1911 at 455,614; but, while the urban population showed an increase in the previous decade of nearly one hundred and thirty thousand, the rural population increased only by a little over seventy thousand five hundred.

The growth of Winnipeg during these forty years has been extraordinary. In 1871 it was a mere village of two hundred and thirteen inhabitants. In 1912, owing largely to immigration from other lands, it was a city of well over two hundred thousand people. Its situation at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers was “strategic” in the days when canoes and bateaux were the commonest means of transport, but it was the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway which gave the first strong impetus to its growth; and now it is a great knot in a network of railway lines radiating in about thirty different directions. It is a growing industrial centre, with water power available in large quantity, and it employs over fifteen thousand workers in its factories, which include plants turning out structural steel; making traction engines for farmers; and occupied with food products. But still to-day it is the railways (Manitoba, by the way, now has over four thousand miles of railways) which give its chief importance to Winnipeg. It is the western headquarters of the three greatest Canadian railway systems, the Canadian Pacific, the Canadian Northern, and the Grand Trunk Pacific. Through it pours annually the vast stream of wheat from the grain fields of the West, for it is “the greatest grain market of the world”; whilst another stream flows westward—of more interest and account than any merchandize—the stream of humanity bound to the land of new chances. But part of this human river, as everywhere, tends to drift into the eddies. Some newcomers (foreigners and British alike) never get beyond Winnipeg, and some, failing on the land, return thither, rendering its social problems inexpressibly difficult.

For the past five years the Winnipeg Industrial Bureau has been diligently endeavouring to increase the industrial importance of the city by advertising its opportunities, giving information to persons thinking of engaging in manufacturing, opening a permanent exhibition of articles manufactured in the city and district, and encouraging technical education. Moreover, and this will be of special interest to some immigrants, it has a department to assist in bringing out the wives and children of British workmen who settle in Winnipeg. In little more than two years 1,591 persons have been assisted. In 1912 “234 wives, 215 children over twelve years of age and 465 children under twelve years of age” were brought out, and “of the families reunited 79 came to Winnipeg from Scotland, 165 from England and 14 from Ireland.” A most satisfactory feature of the movement has been the way it has spread to other places; and within two years “Imperial Home Reunion Associations” were organized in Ottawa, in Montreal, Toronto, Edmonton, Halifax, and twenty other leading towns of the Dominion.

The people of Winnipeg believe in municipal ownership, and the city owns and operates waterworks, a street lighting system, a stone quarry, an asphalt plant and a hydro-electric light and power plant, which has reduced the cost of domestic lighting to less than one-third that formerly charged by a private company. Winnipeg is, moreover, a city of broad fine streets, and of numerous churches, schools and colleges. It is the seat of the University of Manitoba, which has six colleges, and of the Provincial Agricultural College, which was first opened in 1906. This college confers the degree of “Bachelor of Science in Agriculture” on those who successfully pass through its five winters’ course. There is also a course of Home Economics for women, and in both cases the cost is very low compared to the high rates of living and of wages in the West. In connection with the college, “demonstration and instruction trains,” with a special staff of lecturers and experts, are sent out over “practically every line in the province,” to carry some of its benefits to the numbers of men and women who cannot attend the college. Of other efforts to aid and improve agriculture I have no space to write.

As to the education of the children, Winnipeg is a city of schools, and in the remotest settlements a school district may be formed as soon as there are ten children of school age (that is, from five to fifteen) in a section, and the schools are supported by grants from the provincial government, and by taxes levied on the people by their municipal councils. In 1905 the experiment of consolidated schools was first tried in Manitoba, and now there are a number of such schools, the children being carried to and from them in well-covered vans.

The growth of Winnipeg and other towns is no doubt largely connected with the growth of manufactures, which, according to official figures, has been phenomenally rapid since the beginning of this century. During its first decade, in fact, the value of manufactures in Manitoba increased by over 315 per cent. At present little mining is carried on, and though in 1910-11 the fisheries of the province brought in about one and one-third million dollars (£260,000), this is considerably less than the amount received by the farmers for the article of butter alone, and agriculture is emphatically the outstanding industry of Manitoba.

“Manitoba No. 1 Hard” wheat is famous throughout the world. Manitoba farmers, however, are discovering many other avenues to comfort and success than the almost exclusive growth of this grain, with the advantage of much better prospects to their lands of continued productivity than by the repetition, year after year, of a single crop. Still the province raises immense quantities of wheat, but mixed farming has its advocates, who not only preach but practise their favourite agricultural doctrine.

Nor is this wonderful, in a community which lives chiefly by agriculture and yet cannot begin to supply its own cities (nay, its own farmhouses!) with eggs and meat and dairy products. Last year, says a recent government publication, no less than $102,000 (£20,400) worth of milk and sweet cream was imported from the State of Minnesota for consumption in Winnipeg. At the same time, Winnipeg bought from Eastern Canada 1,700,000 pounds of creamery butter, chiefly for local distribution, and, besides, far-away New Zealand supplied some butter for the tables of Manitoba folk. As for eggs, three hundred thousand dozen, or twenty-five car-loads, were imported from the United States for Winnipeg, and smaller centres also bring them in by the car-load. Nor was this all. Cheese and poultry, sheep by the thousand, and bacon, hams and lard by car-loads, come from east and west and south to feed the people of the prairies.