Canada and the British immigrant

The very name—Nova Scotia—forces comparison with old Scotland, but the former is not quite three-quarters the size of the latter, nor has it much more than one-tenth of the population. It is also far south of its namesake; in fact, there is almost eight degrees between the latitudes of the north of Nova Scotia and the south of Scotland, but the Arctic currents in the West Atlantic have their influence on the climate, making the Nova Scotian winter cold, and the spring late, though the extremes of heat and cold are not so severe as farther inland. During a recent year at Halifax, for instance, only once did the mercury fall to “zero,” and only once in the hottest month, July, did it travel up to 98 degrees Fahrenheit.

On the Atlantic coasts there is a good deal of rain, fog and “Scotch mist,” but summer and autumn are often delightful seasons of bright, clear, not too hot, weather. In the inland and western parts of the province the climate is drier and not quite so variable.

Like her namesake, Nova Scotia turns towards the ocean a deeply indented, forbidding coast; but the interior lacks “Old Scotia’s” grand mountains, though it has a backbone of sterile hills running through the province, beside the Cobequid Mountains, in Cumberland County, and many a high rugged cliff in Cape Breton Island. This new Scotland has also its stretches of wild moorland and its lakes, set amongst dark spruce firs. But between “the barrens” of the Atlantic Coast, there is here and there a fertile valley; and on the Bay of Fundy side, but sheltered from its cold mists and winds by the long ridge of the North Mountain, stretches the far-famed Annapolis valley, where in spring the whole landscape seems one vast white orchard, save for the pretty little houses, half hidden amongst the bloom.

That side, too, is the region of the salt marshes, formed by the action of those phenomenally high tides of the Bay of Fundy, which were amongst the few remarkable features of Canada thought worthy of mention in the “Geographies” put into the hands of British children a generation ago. In course of ages these mighty tides have left vast level deposits of marine mud—the salt marshes—liable to invasion of the waves at spring tides, but easily turned by a little labour into pastures and hay meadows and grain fields of almost inexhaustible fertility. All that is necessary is to build dykes or embankments of tree trunks and clay to keep back the highest tides; and this work was begun long ago by some of the early French immigrants, who had been accustomed to reclaiming land from the sea in their own country. If, at any time, the fields should show signs of exhaustion, the fertilizing waters may again be let in for a short season; indeed, farmers living near undyked marshes are accustomed to haul loads of the precious sea-mud to their upland fields. Of something the same character as the dyked lands are the “intervales” along the rivers, which are said to be “invariably rich and productive.”

The abundance of pasturage and hay makes good dairying, and Nova Scotia is emphatically a country of mixed farming. Almost all crops suited to a temperate climate can be grown in some part of the province. But, during a recent year, of all agricultural products, hay brought most money into the farmers’ pockets; then came live stock products, potatoes, apples, oats, “garden truck,” and so in a descending scale.

Not only the farming can be described as “mixed” in Nova Scotia. The occupations of her people (in number somewhat under half a million) are also mixed; and though agriculture takes first place, fishing, lumbering, mining and manufacturing are of importance, all the great industries setting “new records” last year.

In fishing, Nova Scotia was long the leading province of the Dominion, but in 1912, British Columbia, with her immense catch of salmon, stepped before her. In the Atlantic province, though the lobster fishery is valuable and is to the dwellers on the sterile southern coast the chief source of ready money, the cod fishery is worth most of all, a fact quaintly recognized by the habit of the shore people of referring to a cod as “a fish,” and to all others of the finny tribe by their specific names of haddock, halibut and so forth.

The fishing hamlets consist of little whitewashed cottages dotted at random about the weather-beaten rocks, beside the fine natural harbours or little coves where the boats run in for shelter, alongside ramshackle stages where the cod are dried in the open air, and by fish-houses, often emitting the peculiarly horrible odour of over-kept “bait.”

Despite all drawbacks, there is a fascination in the jumble of boats and nets and lobster traps, whilst the fisherfolk themselves, fresh-complexioned, clear-eyed, sturdy-limbed, simple, kindly and straightforward, are a good stock one would fancy to set against the threatening degeneration of the race by the unwholesome crowding into towns. Some 30,000 men find employment, on sea and shore, in connection with the fisheries. The fishermen are generally rather poor, but the more enterprizing members of the fraternity often pass from the sailing of a fishing boat to that of a coasting vessel.

In the coast villages tiny stores, with stock small in quantity, great in variety, are plentiful, and some of the fishermen attempt to add to their incomes by farming, often in a rather haphazard, amateurish fashion. Along the shore east of Halifax horses are scarce, and in the little hay-fields even a one-horse mowing machine is an unusual sight, and it is quite common to see two men, or it may be a man and a girl, carrying the cured hay to the barn on two stout poles. In those parts the fisherfolk take little pains even to improve their own fare by growing vegetables, but the soil is discouraging. In fact, one resident of a coast village near Halifax complained, “There ain’t no soil. There’s nothing but grits!”

Some of the fishermen prosecute their craft only “inshore,” using small boats, remaining out but a few hours and fishing with hand lines as well as with trawls from the dories. These men are very dependent on the weather; but gasoline motor boats are coming into use, enabling them to go out when it would be impossible with sailing boats. The “bank fisheries,” chiefly of cod, are carried on by schooners of about 100 tons, manned by twelve to twenty men, who go out, two by two, in dories, using trawls upon which are thousands of hooks. In the rivers, smelts, salmon, trout and eels are taken; and there are natural oyster beds, now yielding a few hundred barrels of oysters annually, which it is said, with improved management, may yield thousands. In fact, better methods may do much to make all the fisheries of Nova Scotia much more productive.

Of the forests of the province, something under one and a half million acres remain ungranted, and four or five times as much is owned by farmers and held or leased by lumber and pulp companies. As everywhere in the Dominion there has been untold loss from fires and wasteful methods, but the idea of “conservation” promises better things in future. Pine, of which there used to be large quantities, has become scarce; but spruce (of more recently discovered value) and birch, a good furniture wood, are extremely plentiful. The saw mills are generally situated on the rivers, near tide water; thus their product can be loaded directly into vessels, which carry it far and wide.

In several counties, a quantity of timber is used in the building of schooners and fishing boats, but the palmy days of shipbuilding in the province have passed. It may be, however, that there will be a revival, and that Nova Scotia will soon be sending forth iron (instead of wooden) ships to plough all seas, for she is richly endowed with mineral wealth. In fact, like Massachusetts, she seems to have every gift of nature—coal, iron, magnificent harbours, and not a little water power, all awaiting development—to make a great manufacturing region. Through her northern counties and Cape Breton Island stretches a rich and enormous coal field, and iron ores (scarcely touched as yet) are found in every county save one.

Nova Scotia ranks third of the provinces in manufactures, following the larger and much more populous provinces of Ontario and Quebec, but the value of her manufactured products (which include foods, textiles, chemicals, paper, vehicles, vessels and a variety of manufactures of iron and steel) has more than doubled in a single decade. Nova Scotia is said to have the “largest individual self-contained steel-making plant in the world,” but the growth of the iron and steel industry is due not only to natural advantages and to the genius of different “captains of industry,” but to the bounties and protective duties granted in its interests by successive governments of the Dominion.

Amongst the valuable minerals of the province are limestone, granite, gypsum and gold. The mining of the last-named metal has been carried on by rather primitive methods for nearly half a century. The yield for the record year was worth about $600,000 (£120,000), and at present three hundred men are employed at twenty-five different mines. There is one of these small mines in Guysborough County, on the edge of a vast stretch of “barrens”; but, despite its sounding name, “Goldenville” is a sorry little hamlet, of dingy, unpainted buildings, that seem to mock at the “prospector’s dazzling dreams.” But one does not usually go to an industrial place, large or small, in search of the picturesque. One may chance upon it there, however, as when at night the outpouring of molten slag from Sydney’s black giants of blast furnaces suddenly lights up the wide beautiful harbour with a ruddy glow.

Halifax, the capital, containing nearly a tenth of the population of the province, is undeniably picturesque, with its old Citadel and churches, its wharves and its vessels, its odd outdoor market, its “redcoats” (now Canadians) and its coloured folk. Though on the eve of a great development of its port, which will doubtless revolutionize its business life, till very recently it has been a quiet old-fashioned place, its dinginess relieved by lovely water-views from many a point of vantage, and its dignity secured by such fine old stone buildings as the abode of the British admiral, Government House and the Province Building, where still, as in one other case, an Upper as well as a Lower House deliberates on the affairs of the province.

The Assembly of Nova Scotia, by the way, is the oldest representative body in the Dominion, having been convened for the first time in 1758. There was a long fight for the boon of responsible government, won in 1848; and the name of Joseph Howe, the Reform leader, son of a Loyalist, is renowned throughout the Dominion. During the last half-dozen years several imposing new buildings, including the Anglican cathedral and the Memorial Tower (commemorating the calling together of the first Assembly) have been erected in Halifax. The city is the terminus of the Intercolonial and two provincial railways, and has a variety of manufactures.

I cannot give space, as I should like, to descriptions of any of the smaller towns; but, though someone described Nova Scotia as “the province that was passed by,” it is as truly a land of opportunity as any of the regions further west. The opportunity does not come in the shape of “free grants” of land, but a farmer who knows his business and has two or three hundred pounds of capital can soon own a good farm. There are farms of from fifty to three hundred acres of which the price is from $1,000 (£200) up. Some of these have been thrown on the market by the death or infirmity of their owners, some through the desire of a younger owner to go to the west or to take up work in a town. Amongst them are “run-down” farms, which can be obtained for little more than the cost of the buildings upon them, and a thoroughly capable farmer may sometimes find it pay to buy such a farm cheap and bring it back to good condition.

Within the broad realm of agriculture, to say nothing further of the other possible avenues to success in woods and mines and city and sea, there is variety of opportunity. Let a man decide to go into dairying, market-gardening, the raising of sheep, hogs or poultry, the culture of apples, or the growing of small fruits, and there is some part of Nova Scotia in which each one of these pursuits may be followed with special hope of success; moreover, the provincial government (which is frankly desirous of good immigrants of the right stamp) has made arrangements to help the new arrivals to find what they want. (For names of officials who will give information, see Appendix, Note A, page 295.)

With regard to the very profitable business of apple-growing, it is stated that not one-tenth of the land in the Annapolis valley and elsewhere suitable for orchards, has yet been planted.

As to the question of markets—the home market alone is an excellent one for practically all food supplies, for the constant influx of immigrants and the armies of non-producers engaged in mining and other industries create a demand in many lines of foodstuffs not easy for the farmer to overtake. Nova Scotia imports much that she might just as well grow. But aside from the home market, she has easy access to those of the other provinces, and to those of the United States and of Great Britain, for every one of her counties touches on the sea, which is the best possible highroad for freight. As to her internal means of communication, roads are improving and new railways are being added to the old.

With few exceptions, Nova Scotian farmers own the land they till, and to assist still more to do so, including newcomers, the provincial government makes arrangements with loan companies to lend as much as 80 per cent. of the appraised value of farm property on mortgage. The government is also authorized to buy “real estate in farming districts, subdivide this into suitable-sized farms or lots, erect buildings and fences thereon, prepare the land for crops and sell this improved real estate to newcomers on satisfactory terms.” This opportunity to obtain ready-made farms will no doubt prove attractive to many newcomers.

In the fruit districts of Nova Scotia, owing to the smaller holdings, people are settled comparatively near together, and this is a great advantage so far as church and social life and the education of the children is concerned.

The elementary and high schools, supported by government grants and local rates, are free. In isolated communities it is sometimes difficult to obtain teachers; but a hopeful movement is the introduction of “consolidated schools,” each of which, having several teachers, replaces the little “one-teacher schools” of a considerable district. There are now over twenty of these, to which the children are taken in vans.

Nova Scotia has several universities, supported by different religious bodies, in addition to the non-sectarian Dalhousie University at Halifax. The oldest of these institutions is King’s College, at Windsor, which dates from 1790. A comparatively new institution is the Agricultural College at Truro. Here instruction is given free of cost to farmers, farmers’ sons and new settlers intending to farm. Besides the full two years’ course, there are short practical courses of two weeks, including one for women on dairying and poultry keeping. In connection with the college is a fine Model Farm, where excellent stock is kept. The government also maintains experts to give instruction in various branches of agriculture, and endeavours in a variety of other ways to improve the methods and conditions of farming in Nova Scotia.

There is a demand always for good farm workers and capable domestic servants. Even inexperienced young people have little difficulty in getting work, if they are strong and willing to learn, but they must not expect high wages till they are competent. For competent farm men the wages offered are usually from $20 (£4) to $30 (£6) the month, with board and lodging for a single man, and with a rent-free house and certain allowances of milk and vegetables for a married man. In the latter case, the wife, if willing to assist the farmer’s wife, can often make a considerable addition to the family income. For day labour in the country a man might expect from $1 (4s.) to $1.50 (6s.), with board.

In the towns wages are higher, even for unskilled labour, but in Halifax at least rents are very high, and a man who is looking forward to getting a little land of his own would usually be wiser to settle from the first in a country district where living is cheap, and where the experience gained would be of definite value in farming operations. Moreover, if he is able to keep a few fowls, and a pig, and have a garden of his own, it very much lessens the cost of living. There are many prosperous farmers in Nova Scotia who landed a few years ago with scarcely a shilling in their pockets, but these have been hard workers.

The population of Nova Scotia is chiefly of British descent, though not a few of the early settlers came by way of New England in Loyalist and pre-Loyalist days. Scottish names are common in many parts of the province, especially in Cape Breton Island. The ancient Acadians are represented by something like fifty thousand French people, and the Nova Scotians of German descent are not much fewer.

Of religious bodies, the Roman Catholics are the strongest, but the Presbyterians make a good second, then come in order the Baptists, the Anglicans and the Methodists. In the country places there are a few union churches, but there is a good deal of “over-lapping,” which aggravates the difficulty of ministering adequately to communities so scattered, as they are, for instance, on the south coast.

VII

NEW BRUNSWICK, THE LAND OF THE ST. JOHN

THE Province of New Brunswick is in shape almost a square, and in extent has an area of about 28,000 square miles. In other words, it is smaller than Scotland, but has a much larger proportion of land that can be cultivated than that rugged little country which has sent forth such masterly farmers to till larger and richer fields than those of their own stern land. It is bounded on the east and south by the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Bay of Fundy, which are separated by the narrow neck of land from which Nova Scotia thrusts itself like a great breakwater into the Atlantic surges. Northward it reaches to Chaleur bay and the Province of Quebec. Westward it is bounded by Maine, which (thanks to the efforts of a British diplomatist to settle at all costs a long-standing dispute) comes in like a wedge between New Brunswick and Quebec. In latitude New Brunswick lies almost entirely between the 45th and 48th parallels, which also, it may be noted, run across the central portion of France.

Upon the coast there is, as might be expected, a good deal of rain and mist and white sea fog; but the climate of the interior is more dry and clear; and there is no lack of sunshine. Compared with England, the winters are cold, and the farmer has a shorter period each year in which he can work upon his land; but in one of the government publications is given an interesting quotation bearing upon this point from a Report on New Brunswick, written in 1850, by a great English agricultural expert, Professor J. F. W. Johnston:—

“On the whole,” he says, “I think we must allow that though the period for out-door labour is shorter in New Brunswick—as it is in the Canadas, Maine, and the Northern States—than in England and in some parts of Scotland, yet that the action of winter upon the soil is such as to materially lessen the labour necessary to bring it into a proper state of tilth.”

Moreover, while in Great Britain the work of the farmer is often interfered with by rain, and his expenses “considerably increased by the precarious nature of the climate in which he lives,”

“In New Brunswick the climate is more steady and equable. Rains do not so constantly fall, and when they do descend, the soils in most parts of the province are so porous as readily to allow them to pass through. Thus the outdoor operations of the farmer are less impeded by rain, and the disposable time he possesses, compared with that of the British farmer, is not to be measured by the number of days at the disposal of each.”

The climate of New Brunswick, the professor concludes,

“does not prevent the soil from producing crops which, other things being equal, are not inferior in quantity or quality to those of average soils in England; while, as for its health, it is an exceedingly healthy climate. Every medical man I have met in the province, I believe without exception, and almost every other man I have conversed with, assures me of this, and the healthy looks and the numerous families of the natives of all classes confirm these assurances.”

To this day the people of New Brunswick certainly have a healthy appearance, and rosy cheeks and clear complexions are common, especially on the coasts.

The winter of the interior is often described by the inhabitants, even in moments when they cannot be suspected of any thought of advertising the province, as a “good steady one.” The fact is that most Canadians, either native-born or those who have lived long in the country dislike damp weather above any other kind. If the cold is only dry and clear, they do evidently from their behaviour feel it bracing, as they say; and it is the same with the summer heat, the days to be dreaded (if any?) are the days in which the atmosphere is humid as well as hot. The spring is late, and often almost before one realizes that winter is past one finds that summer is upon one.

New Brunswick is an amply-wooded land of pleasantly-diversified hill and valley, though its highest eminence, Sagamook or Bald Mountain, is only 2,604 feet above the sea. It is well watered by the Restigouche, the Miramichi and the St. John rivers, with their tributaries, and many smaller streams. The last-mentioned river is nearly five hundred miles in length from its sources in the wilds of Maine to its mouth. It is navigable for almost its whole length through the province, though in one place its course is broken by the “Grand Falls.” Large-sized steamers go up as far as Fredericton, eighty-five miles from St. John; but there a change is made to smaller boats. The river flows for many miles through a fertile and beautiful valley; but as it approaches the city of St. John its banks become higher and bolder, and the stream widens out to a fine broad basin.

The gateway to the sea lies through a narrow gorge of less than five hundred feet, and here the current of the river makes fierce and constant struggle with the force of the famous tides of the Bay of Fundy. At St. John the normal rise is twenty-seven feet, and the result is the curious, but not quite happily-named phenomenon—the “Reversing Falls.” At low tide the river tumbles and races in fierce haste down a sharp rugged slope to reach the bay; but the pressure of the incoming sea piles up the water of the harbour in the narrow channel to greater and greater heights, till, at the flood, the current of the St. John seems turned backward, and the tide water, as it comes plunging through the rock gateway, is at a distinctly higher level than the more peaceful surface of the river within. Happily at half-tide—four times in the twenty-four hours—there comes a brief truce in the everlasting struggle, and vessels can pass with safety to bear their freight of humankind and of all manner of merchandise up the grand natural highway of nature’s making deep into the heart of the country.

I do not propose here to dwell at any length on the history of New Brunswick; but I should like to say that, in common with every other province of the Dominion, it has a history—short in years, perhaps, but not devoid of human interest. If one were attempting to tell it, moreover, it would be impossible to do so without frequent references to the St. John. This river received its name three centuries ago because a little company of gallant French explorers, amongst whom was Samuel Champlain, afterwards founder of Quebec, discovered it upon St. John the Baptist’s day.

In those old days, the broad bosom of the river was often flecked with the canoes of Indians, bound on some hunting or fishing or fighting expedition; and in 1635 a picturesque French trader—such a one of gentle birth, gift of leadership, and bold, adventurous spirit, as Sir Walter Scott might have loved to portray—built a huge wooden castle, bastioned and palisaded, on the banks of the St. John. There was enacted a fierce, confused drama, in which Indians and priests and rival gentlemen-traders took part; nor did it want a heroine, and to this day the noble courage and tragic end of Lady La Tour—wife of the lord of the castle—fascinate the imagination of every student of the annals of old Acadia.