XIMANITOBA, OLD AND NEW

THE MOON CHUTE, NEAR BALA, ONTARIO.

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 horticulturalsocieties. 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 thingsfor 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.

1. TORONTO UNIVERSITY.2. CANADIAN NORTHERN ELEVATOR AT PORT ARTHUR.3. SPADINA AVE. & QUEEN ST. TORONTO.

XIMANITOBA, 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 Bayand 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 thegrowth 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 slopesgently 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’srivals 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 branchof 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 reachthe 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 itwas 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 toincrease 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 ofnumerous 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 nodoubt 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 andsweet 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.

The point of all this is that these things might be supplied with profit to the farmer and advantage to the consumer from Manitoba’s own land. There is no question about the demand for dairy produce, poultry, meat, vegetables and fruit. Neither is there any question that people, who know how, can produce these things in quantities within the province; and here is where one excellent opportunity for immigrants who understand something of gardening, dairying and poultry-raising comes in. Manitoba has excellent markets, good land, but she wants gardeners and farmers—especially farmers who will give attention to something besides wheat.

As for the land, only about one-sixth of the cultivablearea in the older portion of the province is yet under cultivation; and the newcomer may either buy an improved farm (at prices ranging, according to soil, locality, etc., from $15 to $35, $40, or even $80 the acre (£3 to £16)), acquire school lands by purchase from the government (in which case there are no settlement conditions), or make entry for a homestead. In many municipalities—especially in the south of the province—all the homesteads have been taken up, but there still remain free homesteads available within one hundred and twenty-five miles of Winnipeg, with government and school lands at from $3 to $6 the acre (12s.to 24s.). (For conditions as to the homesteading or purchase of government lands, see Appendix, Note B, page297.)

AMONG THE WHEATFIELDS OF MANITOBA.

The Canadian Pacific Railway also has lands for sale in Manitoba.

The change which is gradually, but slowly, taking place from grain-growing exclusively to mixed farming is resulting in the breaking up of the very large farms, and this will greatly improve social conditions; enabling neighbours to be more neighbourly, strengthening the scattered congregations of the churches, and making life brighter for young and old alike.

Of the population, a considerable proportion are natives of Canada—some of these speakingFrench—or of the British Isles. There are, too, a number of people who have come from the United States. Nearly one-fifth are foreigners in origin; but the younger members of the alien races soon learn to speak English, and to adopt Canadian ways. By the way, the famous “No. 1 Hard” Manitoba wheat is said to have been grown first by a colony of Mennonites from Ontario, who settled south of Winnipeg. The word is not the name of a race, but of a religious sect, and, according to the latest census returns, of its forty-four or forty-five thousand representatives in Canada, Manitoba can claim over one-third.

The strongest of any religious denomination is the Presbyterian, with the Anglican second, the Roman Catholic third, and the Methodist fourth; but forty or fifty other “religions” are represented in the province (which is, indeed, not peculiar in this respect) by groups of adherents counting, like the Lutherans and the Greek-Catholics, by thousands, or like the Deists and Mohammedans, by twos and threes.

There is a great demand for workers in the busy season on the farms. Farm labourers, during the summer, may expect from $25 (£5) to $40 (£8) a month, and, during winter, from $5 (£1) to $20 (£4), in both cases with board. In harvest time skilled men may receive as much as $50 (£10) the month, or $2 to $3 (8s.to 12s.) the day,subject to deduction if bad weather prevents work. Ordinary labourers get $2 or $8 (8s.to 12s.) a day without board, and lumbermen in the camps $30 (£6) the month, with board and lodging.

Often there is also a good demand for skilled industrial workers, but this varies greatly from time to time; and it ismost importantthat before setting out the intending immigrant should obtainrecent informationconcerning the industrial conditions in the locality where he thinks of settling. For addresses of persons who will give information, see Appendix A, pp.295-297.

Carpenters in Winnipeg get 35 cents to 40 cents (1s.5d.to 1s.8d.) the hour. Bricklayers and masons receive about 67½ cents (2s.9d.) the hour, but cannot work at their trade for more than seven or eight months in the year. Tailors get $17 the week, and printers $18 to $20 the week. In considering these high wages (amounting to £3 or £4 the week), it must be remembered that house rent, food, and the cost of fuel are also very high; but, in spite of all such disadvantages, the fact remains that for the young, strong, thrifty worker, Manitoba has great opportunities.

LOOKING DOWN MAIN STREET, WINNIPEG.

XIISASKATCHEWAN, THE WHEAT PROVINCE

TO borrow a threadbare but expressive phrase, “Wheat is king,” in Saskatchewan. Go where one will, in the inhabited part of the province, one is never allowed to forget this. One travels through miles on miles of wheat fields, and the most conspicuous building at many a wayside station is a giant “elevator”—if there does not chance, indeed, to be a row of these. Every budding town seems to begin with an agricultural implement “depot”; and near the railway stations in the cities self-binders, gasoline engines, and threshing machines, gaudy with yellow and crimson paint, are drawn up, awaiting their purchasers, by the hundred.

Nor is this the only token of the empire of King Wheat! In train and city, as well as at the tables of the farmers, the talk is of weather—good or bad—for the sowing and the harvest, for in Saskatchewan every man, woman and child realizes that in the last analysis the dependence of the whole community is on the measure of success whichattends the cultivation of the soil. Wheat is king; and as in the old days every road led to Rome, so in writing of Saskatchewan—though this is true to a certain extent of most of the Canadian provinces—it is impossible to avoid coming back again and again to the farmer and his crops and his doings, his difficulties and his successes, and his way of meeting all kinds of problems. Here at least he is the hero of the drama—the central figure in the picture, and therefore I shall make no apology for seeming to travel in a circle.

Let us speak first of the kingdom of wheat.

Saskatchewan, in the south, has a breadth of three hundred and ninety miles, and a length of about seven hundred and fifty miles, or an area of somewhat over a quarter of a million square miles, including a water surface of about eight thousand three hundred miles, made up chiefly of lakes, large and small. It is larger than France, and over twice the size of the British Isles, with which it roughly corresponds in latitude. Edinburgh, by the way, is further north than any part of Saskatchewan yet settled, and the northern boundary of the province—the 60th parallel of north latitude—touches the two European capitals, Christiania of Norway and St. Petersburg of Russia.

It comprises the greater part of “the second prairie steppe,” which has an average elevation ofabout fifteen hundred feet above sea-level, but Lake Athabasca, thrusting itself into its extreme north-west, is less than seven hundred feet above the sea, and the highest summit of the Cypress hills is over four thousand two hundred feet. Thus this “prairie province” is by no means all a level plain. In fact, it possesses such differences of surface that it has been said that it may be divided into “four well-defined zones.” In the south (with the exception of some hilly districts) and extending to Saskatoon is the rolling prairie. Next comes a belt of mingled prairie and woodlands, dotted with small lakes, and often described as park-like. Then, about Prince Albert, begins the great northern forest of “spruce, tamarac, jack-pine, poplar and birch.” This timbered belt crosses the province, and is between three and four hundred miles wide. North of it is the fourth zone, only sparsely wooded.

The province is situated in the very heart of the Dominion, but it is watered by several great rivers, which have cut their way deep into the plains. One of these, the Saskatchewan or “Rushing Water,” as the Indians called it—has given its name to the province in which its two branches, the North and the South Saskatchewan, unite to flow together into Lake Winnipeg and thence to Hudson Bay. Farther north the mightiest river is the Churchill, one thousand miles long, which bymany a tumultuous rapid hurries to the same inland sea.

For a long time Saskatchewan had a bad reputation so far as climate is concerned, and if any British immigrant comes to settle in the country without understanding that the winters are very much colder than those he has been accustomed to, he will probably be much disappointed and may feel himself ill-used, though the chances are that he ought to have made more particular inquiries before he came. The disadvantages of the climate are a low winter temperature (for ten years theaveragetemperature of the coldest months, January and February, shows from 27 to 29 degrees of frost); an occasional severe snowstorm or “blizzard,” and some dry windy weather at other seasons of the year, when the blowing of the dust is very trying.

The advantages, often held by residents in Saskatchewan of more than two or three years’ standing to outweigh the disadvantages, are the clear exhilarating atmosphere, the light snowfall, the bright sunshine at all seasons, the cool, pleasant nights of summer, and the infrequence of rain or thaws during winter. Usually the cold weather does not reach its greatest severity till after Christmas, and winter may be said to end late in March. The sowing of the crops occasionally begins in March, but generally not until April.

It used to be supposed that the climate of the province was too severe to allow grain crops to come to perfection, but a few years ago the experiment of growing wheat was made successfully a little east of Regina, at Indian Head (where, by the way, are situated a Dominion experimental farm and forest nursery), and in 1911, at the “Land Exhibition” in New York, a prize of $1,000 (£205) in gold, offered by Sir Thomas Shaughnessy for the best “one hundred pounds of milling wheat grown in America,” was carried off by a sample of Marquis wheat, grown on a farm near Rosthern, about forty miles north of Saskatoon. The Marquis variety of wheat was originated by the “Dominion cerealist,” Dr. Charles Saunders, on the Central Experimental Farm at Ottawa, and the prize sample was grown by Mr. Seager Wheeler, an Englishman from the Isle of Wight who had been farming in Saskatchewan for fifteen years.

The importance of Saskatchewan as a wheat-growing region is only of recent development. When white men first settled in the country, a generation ago, they began with cattle ranching; now it is the prime wheat-growing province in the Dominion. In 1913 the crop amounted to 108,288,000 bushels; but though for years to come the actual yield of this grain is likely to increase enormously, for the land at present under crop does not, it is said, greatly exceed that setapart for roads, there are signs that in the future other products of the farm will dispute the almost exclusive sway of King Wheat. For example, at the International Exhibition at Lethbridge, in 1912, Saskatchewan won the first prize for the “best collection of farm products.” One argument in favour of changing to a greater diversity of crops is that it tends to simplify the labour problem, as the harvesting of different crops is spread over a longer period than that of wheat alone.

At present about 80 per cent. of the population of the province belongs to the farming class, but the opportunities in Saskatchewan are not limited to the cultivation of the soil. The northern half of the province, lacking railways, is not yet ready for ordinary settlers, but in the great woods north of Prince Albert the lumber industry is important. In fact, in 1911, between eight and nine thousand men found employment in the lumber camps and mills. There is, by the way, a vast demand in the West for railway ties or “sleepers,” and this is largely supplied by the jack-pine of the northern woods.

Flouring mills, as might be expected, are amongst the chief of Saskatchewan’s industrial establishments, and brick-making plants are numerous. There is an excellent home market for bricks, and suitable clay is found in everyquarter, north, south, east and west. There are already several companies making structural steel for bridges, and soon large iron works will be established at Prince Albert, deposits of good iron ore having been discovered in the northern wilderness.

Prince Albert (of which the first house is said to have been the log-cabin of a Presbyterian missionary, put up in 1866) is rich in the so-called “white coal,” and before long the city will be supplied with hydro-electric power from the La Colle falls in the Saskatchewan river, which flows past her very doors. The damming of the river to develop the power will serve the purpose of improving its navigability, and it is anticipated that soon there will be steamboat communication between Lake Winnipeg and Edmonton. In the south, just within the borders of the province, near Roche Percée, and away in a north-westerly direction along the eastern escarpment of the “third prairie steppe,” lignite or “brown coal” has been found in many different places, and in Saskatchewan there were thirty mines in 1910, employing in all nearly four hundred persons.

It is difficult to exaggerate the part played in Saskatchewan by the railways. Lying almost midway between the Pacific and the communication by means of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence with the Atlantic, this region had nooutlet for any of the products of its fertile soil till the coming of the railways. In truth, there were no products, but only possibilities, for the settlers came in after the Canadian Pacific Railway—the pioneer line—which crossed the province on its way to the far west; and since then branch lines and little new towns have grown up together, till now this one great railway has over two thousand four hundred miles of “steel” in Saskatchewan alone, and its single track of 1885 (which it was such a mighty feat to build through the lone prairies and across the rugged western mountains) has become a complicated network. But what this first line meant in binding the separated provinces into a real union was shown in that very year, 1885, when for the second time the half-breeds, led by Louis Riel, rose in revolt.

This time the storm centre was in the North-West Territories—from which in 1905 the new provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta were carved out—far west and north of the Red River, but though there were long gaps in the railway, the troops sent from Eastern Canada reached the scene of the disturbance in about a month, or less than half the time which it had taken Wolseley’s force to reach the Red River fifteen years earlier. During the last ten or twelve years a younger railway company, the Canadian Northern, which in 1901 had not a mile of line in operationin Saskatchewan, has been adding line to line, and branch to branch, entering new districts, where farmers had gone in on the promise of its coming, carrying into the country immigrants and “settlers’ effects” by the car-load, and out of it train upon train of wheat. It also is knotting together a network across southern Saskatchewan. Last year its lines in the province had lengthened to 1,785 miles, and it is still reaching forward in many directions, including that of Hudson Bay.

Lastly, the luxurious passenger trains of the Grand Trunk Pacific are crossing Saskatchewan, with the promise of another easy ocean-to-ocean route; and the promise also of additional means of transportation for the annual millions of bushels of Saskatchewan’s wheat. But more quickly even than the railway companies have been pushing the construction of their new lines increases the product of the fields and farms; and every new avenue of transportation, while improving the situation in certain districts, also adds to the magnitude of the problem to be solved, for there are always people, regardless of isolation and hardships, ready to go in advance of the railways.

At present the authorities are giving no encouragement to immigrants to settle in the northern part of Saskatchewan, for that district is entirely without transportation facilities, andis better suited to the wandering, adventurous lives of the hunter and trapper than of the would-be maker of a new home. The former serve best, perhaps, as heroes for boyish romances of the Ballantyne type; but the real interest of the story of the Canadian West belongs to the home-makers—the nation-builders—who are surging in to take possession of the land.

In 1901, the population of Saskatchewan was nearly 91,300; in 1911, it was over 492,400, when, by the way, the male population exceeded the female by 91,000. During 1911, 44,000 immigrants settled in Saskatchewan. Of these 59 per cent. were Americans, whose experience of farming under similar conditions makes them excellent settlers; whilst the remaining number, which entered by ocean ports, represented no less than forty-six nationalities. Amongst the homesteaders for the year, besides Canadians from the east, and people from the British Isles and from the United States, were French, Germans, Belgians and Hollanders, Swiss, Italians, Roumanians, Syrians, Austro-Hungarians, Russians, Danes and Icelanders, Swedes and Norwegians. The people from Northern Europe make particularly good settlers, and though some of the foreigners appear to be of an unpromising type as material for the building up of a nation on British lines, they are often found, on closeracquaintance, to have some special excellence to contribute to the general “melting pot.” The assimilation of all these peoples is no small problem for the young Dominion, however.

In Saskatchewan, as elsewhere, perhaps the greatest force for the Canadianizing of the newcomers is the common school, which has an influence extending into the home circles of the children who attend. It is fortunate for the nation that a large proportion of the teachers (chiefly young women) hold a high view of their calling, and therefore are peculiarly well-suited to act as guides to the newcomers.

The different churches in the province are also toiling bravely amongst the immigrants, but their task is complicated by differences of race, language and traditions; and by the tendency of the population to scatter itself in little groups—sometimes only a single family and sometimes even one individual—far and wide, wherever fertile land is to be had. Of late years immigrants have been coming in so fast, that the churches, though adding constantly to their force of men and women, clergymen and missionaries have great difficulty in overtaking the work; in fact, they cannot do it.

In Saskatchewan the leading denomination is the Presbyterian; then follow the Roman Catholics, the Methodists, the Anglicans, theLutherans, the Greek-Catholics, the Baptists and the Mennonites.

Despite all that is being done, many of the settlers are for years out of reach of church services, and some of the groups of foreigners are practically left to themselves in this respect, for want of people to work amongst them. For enforcing law and order amongst the scattered settlers and for many other services, Saskatchewan owes much to the small body of North-West Mounted Police, who have inculcated respect for British justice in the breasts of red and white men, newcomers and old settlers.

NEW PARLIAMENT HOUSE, REGINA, SASKATCHEWAN.

The Saskatchewan people themselves are wrestling valiantly with their own problems, religious, educational, social. In this connection it is interesting to note that a place in Saskatchewan—Sintaluta, near Indian Head—was the birthplace of that powerful organization of farmers, the “Grain-Growers’ Association,” and that its founder, Hon. W. R. Motherwell, himself a farmer and a graduate of the Ontario Agricultural College at Guelph, is now the provincial Minister of Agriculture. This organization, with which is affiliated the “Grain-Growers’ Association of Manitoba” and the “United Farmers” of Alberta, has led in the struggle against the great corporations, which were too much for the individual farmer, for better transportation and elevatorfacilities. Later, an accessory association was established called the “Grain-Growers’ Grain Company,” to enable the organized farmers to market their grain on a basis of co-operation.

This principle is growing in favour in Saskatchewan, and it is hoped that by its aid the conditions of life amongst the farming community may be made so desirable as to check the trend of population to the towns. Saskatchewan has now a co-operative elevator company, a co-operative telephone system in the rural districts, connected with government-owned trunk lines and city services—which is perhaps as great an advantage from the social as from the business point of view—and co-operative creameries, and insurance of crops against damage by hail, assisted by government. Moreover, in the University of Saskatchewan, at Saskatoon, scientific instruction in agriculture is given a first place, and great efforts are made to extend the influence and usefulness of the university to every class and locality in the province.

With regard to education, a rural school district may be established in Saskatchewan where there are four persons resident who would be liable to assessment, and at least twelve children between the ages of five and sixteen years. No district may exceed twenty-five square miles in area, but in practice districts are rarely so large. The schools are supported in part by local rates, andin part by provincial grants. Teachers’ salaries in rural districts vary from $50 (£10) to $65 (£13) the month, whilst board can usually be obtained at from $12 (£2 8s.) to $15 (£3) the month. During the five years ending with 1910, the number of school districts more than doubled, no less than one thousand three hundred new ones being organized. There are also high schools and collegiate institutes, scattered through the province, where young people can obtain more advanced instruction.

Though primarily an agricultural province, Saskatchewan is dotted with enterprising little villages and growing towns, and has four small but busy and fast-growing cities. First comes Regina, the capital, where annually gather the members of the single chamber of the Provincial Legislature; next comes Saskatoon, a railway centre and the seat of the university; then the older cities of Moose Jaw and Prince Albert. The population of the largest of these is somewhere in the neighbourhood of thirty thousand; but in the Canadian West just at present figures become ridiculously out-of-date even in a few months.

Still, Saskatchewan holds wide her doors for others to enter. She wants men—and women—for her farms and her young towns. She has Dominion lands to offer as homesteads (see Appendix, Note B, page 297), and wild orimproved lands which may be bought from the railways and other companies at from $10 (£2 8s.) the acre up to $30 (£6) or $40 (£8), according to locality, etc. There are opportunities for business and professional men, but the demand is greatest for workers on the farms. If engaged by the year, average wages for a good man would be about $25 (£5) the month, with board; but if the engagement were only for eight months, the average might be from $25 (£5) to $40 (£8) the month; while for harvesting and threshing only, men receive from $35 (£7) to $50 (£10) the month, or $2 to $3 (8s.to 12s.) the day; and every year “Harvesters’ Excursions” are run from the east.

There is often a good demand in the cities and towns in summer for unskilled labour; and in the lumber camps in the winter; and sometimes newcomers of the artizan and mechanics’ class can readily obtain work at their trades; but the demand fluctuates, and it is wise for such immigrants to take care to procurereliable and recentinformation before going to any town.

Capable domestic servants are always in demand at wages of about $15 (£3) a month, and upwards. Anyone wishing for recent and particular information concerning the rates of wages, and the demand for workers in any special trade, could not do better, however, than write to the Secretary of the Bureau of Labour, Regina, Saskatchewan.

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