Canada and the British immigrant

It is a land of great natural wealth and wonderful variety of beauty, for within it the last elevated “prairie steppe” gives way to mountains with peaks that soar into the blue high above the snowline. The Rockies, indeed, form the irregular boundary line of the south-west, which divides Alberta from British Columbia; and there is many a noble mountain within the province, though one is often misled, by the inadequacies of the ordinary maps, into thinking of it almost wholly as a prairie land.

In the south the country is of the rolling prairie type, though its altitude is high; but further north it has the park-like character of woodlands, interspersed with open prairie, and further north still, though the park-like country still prevails in certain districts, the land in general is a forest-covered wilderness, broken by lakes and muskegs. The latter make summer journeys extremely difficult, and it is easier for the Indians and traders and missionaries, who at present are the sole inhabitants, to travel when winter has sealed up the lakes and morasses with ice, thus making possible short-cuts between places which in summer can be reached only by devious journeys up one stream and down another, with laborious portages between.

Edmonton is still a centre of the fur-trade, and even now, in winter time, picturesque dog-trains arrive from the north in the provincial capital, whilst in the heart of Alberta traders, surveyors, mail-carriers and missionaries are leading the kind of life described in the “Wild West” books of our childhood. Still, on winter’s nights, in the white Albertan wilderness, many a man, for one motive or another, is sleeping out under the stars, defiant of the frost and loneliness; and still, in the long days of the northern summer, canoes ply on the rivers, which are the only roads in portions of Alberta.

Of the numerous lakes of the province, Athabasca, which Alberta shares with Saskatchewan, has a surface of 2,850 square miles, but Lesser Slave Lake, the largest entirely within the province, is only four hundred and eighty square miles in extent. The rivers of Alberta are more important than the lakes. The four principal are the North and the South Saskatchewan; the Athabasca and the Peace river, which all rise in the Rocky Mountains, flow in an easterly or north-easterly direction, and have numerous tributaries, amongst which are some which might themselves take rank as important rivers. Both lakes and rivers, by the way, abound in fish, white fish being a staple food of the Indians and of the few white men in the north, as well as of the dogs used as draught animals.

The climate resembles that of Saskatchewan in its cold winters, hot summer days, and its dry, bright weather all the year round. Sometimes the mercury sinks in winter far below zero; sometimes in summer it registers as high as 90 degrees in the shade; but the nights are never unbearably hot, and the weather is never of the “muggy” type which in some places makes exertion so distasteful. There is little difference between the mean summer temperature in various parts of the province, owing, perhaps, to the fact that the general altitude is much greater in the south than the north. As it approaches the mountains at the boundary, the country is about four thousand feet above sea-level, but it slopes gently downward towards the north and east, till in the far north the altitude is less than one thousand feet. The Peace River valley has as warm a summer as the valley of the Saskatchewan, three hundred miles to the south, and everywhere there are long hours of sunshine in the growing season.

The climate of parts of the province, even as far north as the Peace River valley, is much modified by the “chinook,” winds which, tempered by the warm Japanese current of the North Pacific, blow through the passes of the Rocky Mountains, and sometimes even in mid-winter cause a rise of temperature of fifty or sixty degrees in a few hours. One effect of this is the melting of the snow with marvellous rapidity, and in an ordinary season horses and cattle can live and thrive on the open ranges all winter, though provident farmers keep a good supply of hay on hand for emergencies. In most parts of the province there is a sufficient rainfall for the needs of the crops, and the rain comes as a rule most abundantly when most needed, but there are districts in the south where irrigation is being practised with great success and advantage.

The natural resources of Alberta are varied and abundant. First and foremost is the soil, of which a well-known English agriculturist and chemist, Professor Farmer, wrote: “Although we have hitherto considered the black earth of central Russia the richest in the world, that land has now to yield its distinguished position to the rich, deep, black soil of Western Canada.” Other experts bear almost equally strong testimony to the value of the soil of these provinces, but in Alberta it was estimated very recently that only about 3 per cent. of her hundred million acres suitable for farming is as yet cultivated.

Farming there began in the wild, free, un-English form of cattle-raising on ranches, so large that sixty to one hundred acres of pasturage was allowed for each animal, in herds in some cases numbering thousands. The natural conditions of food, water springs, and sufficient shelter were so good that little attention was needed or given, and two men were supposed to be able to manage fifteen hundred head of cattle. The ranches were bought by large companies, or (more often) leased from government, and every year thousands of beasts were sent to the markets of the eastern provinces or to those of England. A few large ranches remain still, chiefly in the neighbourhood of MacLeod.

But now the dashing, picturesque “cow-boys” are fast passing away. Their place is being taken by farmers of a more plodding type, and every year sees more railway lines cutting into the old-time ranches, and more homesteaders arriving to build their little shacks and villages in the lands which were once the pasture ground of innumerable buffaloes, and then of cattle scarcely less wild.

There are, however, a multitude of farmers who continue on a small scale the stock-raising industry, and in 1910 there were actually twice as many head of cattle in Alberta as there were in 1901, though there were still not quite as many as there had been in 1906. The fact is that though grain-growing offers the line of least resistance for the establishment of many a newcomer, who has not the means to purchase stock, and is obliged to turn to something that will speedily bring a return in ready money, the belief in “mixed” as opposed to exclusive grain farming is gaining ground in Alberta, as elsewhere in Canada. Besides its other advantages it prevents the farmer suffering so severely in a bad year, when his risk is divided between different kinds of agricultural products.

It required some experiment to discover the class of wheat best adapted to Alberta’s soil and climate; but in 1902 seed was imported from Kansas of the variety known as “Turkey Red,” and it so improved in the new region that it soon won wider fame than before under the new name of “Alberta Red.”

This is a winter wheat, and the plan is favoured in this province of sowing both spring and winter wheat, as it spreads out the labour of sowing and harvesting into two periods instead of one. Winter wheat grows best in the southern district, but, though not quite so hard when grown further north, where the rainfall is greater, “Alberta Red” still proves an excellent crop in many parts of the province, and year by year a large additional acreage is sown with it. Other grain crops usually give a very satisfactory result, though, of course, the yield is much affected by weather conditions.

Occasionally farmers lose heavily by severe hailstorms, at the time when harvest is approaching, or very early frosts damage the grain, but crops may be insured in government-aided co-operative associations against the first disaster—which is usually very local when it occurs—and the farmer may secure himself against the worst effects of the second by the more general adoption of the combination of dairying or some other form of “mixed farming” with wheat-growing.

By the way, the little town of Red Deer is noted in agricultural circles from the fact that upon a farm near by was raised the “champion dairy cow” of Canada, rejoicing in the name of “Rosalind of Old Basing,” which “surpassed in a twenty-four months’ official test the previous highest butter record in Canada, by giving the milk equivalent of fourteen hundred and seventy-five pounds of butter.”

Dairying was “a state-supervised industry” in days before Alberta attained provincial standing; now there is a provincial Dairy Commissioner, who, aided by a number of experts, assists the industry in a variety of ways; and there is at Calgary a government “dairy station,” where butter is manufactured on the most approved lines from cream collected at fourteen co-operative creameries. But the numerous private creameries and cheese factories are by no means shut out from the benefits of expert aid and instruction, while a scheme of travelling dairies has been evolved to improve the output of butter made on the farms.

The Association of United Farmers of Alberta, like the Grain-Growers’ Associations of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, is proving a power in influencing the public men of this largely agricultural province in the direction of reforms in the interests of farmers, with regard to the marketing and transportation of farm produce, the reduction in the prices of such articles of necessity to the farmer as binder twine, and the establishment of “elementary short course schools in agriculture.”

Alberta has been the scene of interesting experiments (so far as Canada is concerned) of the effects of irrigation on a large scale in improving the fertility of the semi-arid districts in the south; and of the introduction of the Canadian Pacific Railway’s system of “ready-made farms.”

Irrigation on a small scale has long been carried on in Alberta, but there are great areas which can be successfully irrigated by means of large engineering works. To construct these, however, requires much capital; accordingly, the provincial government has thought it “in the general interest to dispose of extensive tracts of land to strong companies, on condition of their constructing a due proportion of irrigation works and supplying settlers with water on terms satisfactory to the government.” The first corporation to irrigate on a large scale was the Alberta Land and Irrigation Company, which has two hundred and twenty miles of canals and dykes fed with water from the St. Mary’s river, and upon its lands sugar-beets and alfalfa have been grown with great success. Another of these companies is the Southern Alberta Land Company, taking water from the Bow river, and the third, which has the largest irrigation scheme in America, is the Canadian Pacific Railway, and it is intended that its watercourses shall eventually supply about one million acres from the Bow river.

In this district the great railway has inaugurated the system of “ready-made farms” of from eighty to one hundred and sixty acres of irrigable, and one hundred and sixty to three hundred and twenty acres of non-irrigable land. The company erects a house and necessary buildings, sinks a well; fences, breaks, and sows part of the land and offers it to suitable settlers, requiring in payment only one-tenth of the price during the first year—chiefly payable after harvest. The remainder of the purchase money, with interest, is payable in instalments, of which the last is not required till the eleventh year. In allotting the farms, preference is given to men with families, and to help the newcomers to make the best of things under the unfamiliar conditions, the company has established “demonstration farms” in different districts.

The new arrivals in these districts have an advantage in social life and in the establishment of churches and schools over immigrants going singly into sparsely-settled regions; and any man with £400 or £500 of capital, who does not wish to “rough it,” would do well to make careful inquiry about these farms. Some of the “ready-made farm” colonies have bought machines, and have worked in other ways, on a plan of co-operation, and there is great opportunity in these new communities for the successful application of the principle which combines “self-help” with very practical recognition of “one’s duty to one’s neighbour.” Apart from this particular scheme, the man with capital may purchase improved or unimproved lands in Alberta from $15 (£3) to $35 (£7) the acre.

To the man with no capital, but a pair of willing hands, Alberta has free homesteads to offer (for conditions, see Appendix, Note B, page 297), and there is a good demand for labour, by which a thrifty newcomer can acquire a little capital before taking up land. On the farms, the monthly wages for a good single man (engaged by the year) range from $18 (£3 12s.) to $30 (£6), with board. When the engagement is for eight months they average from $25 (£5) to $40 (£8), whilst for harvesting and threshing the rate is from $35 (£7) to $50 (£10) the month.

At present, as in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, “hired men” sometimes find it difficult to obtain employment during the winter, and the farmers find it equally difficult (despite harvest excursions from the east) to get anything like the number of men they desire in the brief, hurried harvest. The more general adoption of intensive farming would greatly help to solve the labour problem. In the meantime the progressive farmer employs all the labour-saving machinery he can—in some cases, on the smaller farms, more than he can well afford.

About three-fifths of the self-supporting population of Alberta find employment in agriculture, leaving two-fifths to work in the factories, the mines, the shops, the transportation service, and in the several learned professions, and in all these lines of human energy there are opportunities awaiting the man who knows how to take advantage of them.

New lines are being built by each of the three great railway companies—the Canadian Pacific, the Canadian Northern, and the Grand Trunk Pacific—and the province, which thus will soon have two new gateways to the Western Ocean, is speculating eagerly on the probable effects of the opening of the Panama Canal.

Much labour is being expended (with excellent result on business and social conditions) on the provision of other means of transport and communication—roads and bridges, telegraphs and telephones. Many of the latter are rural, and are an especial boon to the women dwelling in the lonely little houses on the great farms. Some of these women, tied to their homes by the small children, whom they can neither leave nor take for long drives in cold weather, may not see another woman’s face for weeks together; and in such cases it is a great thing to hear a friendly voice, and to know that, in case of emergency, doctor or nurse or other aid is within call.

As for the schools and churches, conditions are much the same (except where the smaller “ready-made farms” give more chance of social life) as those in Saskatchewan; but in Alberta a school district may be formed for the benefit of eight instead of twelve children. Primary education is free and compulsory, but there is difficulty in obtaining a sufficient supply of teachers, and many of those now teaching have come from Eastern Canada, Great Britain, and the United States. The salaries paid are generally good, and the work of teaching a very small school is not arduous, unless, as sometimes happens, the children understand little or no English. Even in such a case, however, the children pick up the new language surprisingly quickly.

The University of Alberta, at Edmonton, has begun its work with the faculty of arts and applied science, but other departments will be added.

Alberta appears to be peculiarly rich in combustible materials beneath the soil. Coal of all grades, from lignite to anthracite, is found, and is mined at Bankhead and Canmore in the Rocky Mountains, at the Crow’s Nest Pass, at Lethbridge, at Medicine Hat and near Edmonton. In 1911, one hundred and twenty collieries, with an output of three million tons, were in operation, employing about seven thousand workers. Coal may be bought at a very cheap rate at the pit’s mouth, which is a great boon to settlers within reach of the mines. Natural gas and petroleum are also abundant in different parts of the province, from Medicine Hat to the Pelican river, far north of Edmonton. Once upon a time a “paying quantity” of gold used to be obtained from the Saskatchewan at Edmonton and other places, but, with the exception of coal, the chief mineral products at present being turned to account are its building stones and clay, which is being manufactured into brick at Calgary, Edmonton, and some smaller centres.

Calgary, with a population of considerably over sixty thousand, is the largest of Alberta’s five cities; but Edmonton, in a more central position, is the capital, and now comes a good second in population, having recently absorbed the town of Strathcona, on the opposite side of the Saskatchewan. Much might be written of the numerous smaller towns and villages, which are nothing if not “progressive,” but we must pass on, only stopping to remark that Alberta may also claim the epithet of “progressive”—especially from a political point of view—for the principles of co-operation, of public ownership of public utilities, and of taxing the land—not improvements—to prevent speculators holding it in idleness are in this province practised as well as preached.

XIV

BRITISH COLUMBIA, THE PACIFIC PROVINCE

THIS most westerly province of the Dominion makes a strong appeal to the imagination. Until the recent extension of Quebec and Ontario, British Columbia was the largest of the provinces, with its area of 395,000 square miles, or more than that of the British Isles, Italy, Denmark and Switzerland taken together. Of its sea of mountains, two hundred thousand square miles in extent, might be made twenty-four Switzerlands, but those who know the far-famed land of the European mountaineers are impressed with the fact that as yet man has gained no such hold upon the Rockies and the Selkirks and the Coast Ranges as upon the Alps. There are no picturesque châlets clinging to the sides of these Canadian mountains, and for the most part the snow-capped monarchs of the ranges lift up their heads from a land that seems almost as much outside the dominion of man as the blue heavens themselves.

On every hand “unconquered peaks” challenge the daring climber; and, hidden away amongst their recesses, lie lakes which seem the very acme of loneliness. The hunter, the scientist, the recluse, the seeker for adventure, can each strike out a trail for himself in British Columbia, or, if he so desires it, can shut himself up apart from other men in the wilderness of mountains; and sometimes stern necessity compels wild journeys through the unexplored maze of height and precipice and canyon.

Not long ago I heard of two men sent by a railway company across a mountain range to find—if they could—a possible pathway for the “iron horse” of civilization. For a hundred miles or more of unknown country their journey had to be performed on foot, with no hope of shelter or food save what they could carry with them. The former was represented by a frail tent of silk which could be thrust into a pocket, and the latter chiefly by beans sewn into narrow bags slung across their shoulders; for the food value of beans is high, and they dared not burden themselves with one ounce of superfluous comfort.

Romance is with us still, and, as Kipling suggests, may be found in “dock and deep and mine and mill”; nor does it need a poet to find it in the building of a railway, which here climbs by a corkscrew road up a forbidding mountain side, there plunges downward to the western ocean through a cut with which a tumultuous torrent has been busy for thousands of years.

It is just a hundred and twenty years since Alexander Mackenzie, one of the indomitable Scots who took up fur trading and exploring as their life-work, crossed the mountains from the east, and so with his party was the first to reach the Canadian Pacific coast overland. Others of his contemporaries and successors made memorable journeys down the furious rivers of the Pacific slope, and little by little gleaned some knowledge of the interior of the province, as, a few years earlier, Cook and Vancouver had begun to explore the inlets and the straits between the islands that for most of the way along the coast make a mighty breakwater against the ocean surges.

In natural beauty British Columbia is the most richly endowed of the provinces, for she possesses glorious forests and a picturesque sea-coast, in addition to the magnificent peaks and mountain lakes of gem-like colour and translucence, which she shares with her fair neighbour, Alberta. Her coast views are indeed the lovelier for the green heights springing from the water’s edge, and for many a ghostly white peak gleaming in the distance, whilst in this province much of the “forest primeval” consists of Douglas firs, some towering up three hundred feet, and giant red cedars, with a girth at the butt of twenty or thirty feet, or even more. It was of these cedars, by the way, that the coast Indians made their huge, strangely-carved war-canoes, or dug-outs.

The climate of British Columbia, though having considerable variety in different districts, may appeal to some intending immigrants who dread cold. “The Coast,” as Canadians of the prairie provinces often call it, gets the full benefit of the warm “Japanese current,” and there winter comes chiefly in the guise of additional rain, while snow, if it does fall, does not lie long on the ground. British Columbia is, as was suggested in an earlier chapter, a land where roses of the types cultivated in English gardens bloom for many months in the year. In the uncleared woods, the undergrowth is a luxuriant tangle of shrubs and ferns and wild flowers; and gardens, if but a little neglected, run riot too. It is a wonderful thing, when travelling westward after crossing the prairies, where Nature appears to be rather insisting on the one idea of broad simplicity, and after plunging through the mountains, where she seems to invite your special attention to the magnificence of her backgrounds (though she herself has energy to spare for details too), to come down to this paradise of growing things, ranging from trees that tower to heaven to blossoms that climb on the houses, peep over grey walls and swing from the porches, bent apparently on breaking all bounds.

All the way up the coast of British Columbia and its adjacent islands the climate is “mild and moist”; and as far north as the new Grand Trunk Pacific port of Prince Rupert, which is indeed only in about the same latitude as Liverpool, severe cold need not be expected. Victoria, the capital, situated on Vancouver island, has a drier climate than the city of Vancouver, its younger and busier and more commercial rival on the mainland. But not all of the mainland has a damp climate. Behind the shelter of the coast range, which intercepts the warm moisture-laden winds from the West, lies a “dry belt,” and between the coast mountains is many a pleasant sheltered valley rich in soil, mild, warm and prolific of fruit and other heat-loving crops.

During summer, in the Kootenay district, which lies in the south-east of the province, the temperature sometimes reaches eighty or ninety degrees in the shade, and in winter occasionally falls below zero, and the rainfall is usually sufficient to secure good crops of various descriptions; but much of the southern part of the interior of British Columbia consists of an elevated region, which, though deeply cut into by lakes and rivers, is described as a plateau, lying between mountain ranges on the east and west. It has an average altitude of three thousand five hundred feet, and here the rainfall is not superabundant. Indeed, in some districts irrigation is resorted to, with the result of great improvement in the crops. Altogether, however, there are many good farming and fruit districts in the valleys.

The Cariboo country, west and north of the Kootenay, has a more severe climate; but still further north lies the famous Peace River valley, partly in British Columbia and partly in Alberta, for which such great things are now being prophesied in agriculture. This region, though far north of Winnipeg, has a milder autumn and a shorter winter than Manitoba; and experts say that generally in the northern part of the province the clearing of the forests, which now prevent evaporation, will result in rendering milder the climate of this land of marsh and swamp and rigorous winter, which seems to resemble what the now progressive Germany was in the days of the Romans.