CHAPTER XXV.ROMANCE CLINGS TO THE SKIRTS OF WINNIPEG.

“THE STOOKER,” AS THE PRAIRIE CALLS HIM.

An extended sojourn....

AN extended sojourn in Winnipeg is in the nature of a revelation. One goes to Winnipeg expecting and finding it as a city—the Colossus of the Plains—modern, business-like, a pattern-builder in wide streets, with everything else in keeping on a big scale, but just a little crude and bare along certain lines, as everynewcity, or even house, is bound to be. That is the picture one draws aforetime. But the fact is that a few weeks in Winnipeg reveal it—and the revelation is almost sharp enough to be a shock—as a centre of the Romantic—itself a personality, involving the life of the entire West and especially the Prairie—combining the east and the west, the great north and trailing south, the old and the new, the Indian, the French and the English—the great epic of fur and afterwards that of wheat. No city of the Dominion is more closely of the same Romantic blood as Quebec, than Winnipeg, and strangely enough, one conceives this western city of Canada, from the viewpoint of a sculptor, not as “a strong man” but asa woman, eternally feminine, with trailing garments, with the immediately surrounding country out and beyond as far to the north and west as Canada goes, extending the hands of Romance, to cling fast to her skirts; as the figure of a mother held in leash and hardly able to step for the many loving hands of clinging children.

Romance is a free spirit of the air. One cannot tell where she will alight, or what she sees that makes her choose some one spot and reject others. But when you recall the many characters of history who have written their sign manual across the Winnipeg page, these mellow and tone the sharp edges of big business until you regard it not as the growth of a day, but as the attainment, the reward, for which all the fine personalities stepping up to recognition out of the colourful pageant of the Past gave their best efforts and their lives. These towering buildings, these wide streets, are the fulfillment of the dreams of men who looked forward.

When Romance takes your hand in Winnipeg she leads you first to, and then out on her favorite trails, via the Fort Garry Gate. And there she conjures up vast companies, organizations and individuals, enough to fill a library and to cover every canvas in the largest gallery. Book on book has been written on theseold forts and their occupiers, and still there remains material galore—a store which will never suffer exhaustion. But the fact to be dwelt on in stepping here with Romance, is that they were touchstones drawing together men from enormous distances, obliterating distances and difficulties, creating Cartographers of Canada, soldiers who subdued the part to the whole; that in the gatherings around their hearth-fires, Hudson Bay, the Northwest, the region of the Mackenzie, the Saskatchewan, the names of the Fort-posts of the then almost unknown new North, tripped from men’s tongues as if they were out there just a little way beyond the Gate. It was the love of the Romantic, the love of adventure, and the love of action, in the hearts of the listener and the stay-at-home to which the story-teller, arriving from who-knows-where in the wilderness, appealed. It was the human interest that centred around Winnipeg and radiated thence, that, trickling back to the Old Country, determined new spirits to leave behind the old lands and step out boldly into the new country, though it were becurtained of hardship, cold, hunger and promise. One cannot very well hang back when Romance takes one’s hand. So you think, when some bright summer morning you motor down to Lower Fort Garry with your clubs, “Here is another old Fort given up to Golf.” And at once you recall the morning you tramped the Fort Mississauga links, fanned by the breezes of Lake Ontario. Strange, the eternal kinship of the Romantic in Canada!

It is a far cry from an Old Fort to truck farms. Yet Winnipeg changes from one to the other with the ease of a dancer of the minuet coping with the jazz of the moment. The big thousand acre wheat land represents the loaf, but the vitamine of the vegetable is as necessary as bread to the modern table, keen on the chemistry of foods. The truck farms encompassing Winnipeg and doubly upheld by her home-tables and her pickle factories, stage an army of picturesque foreign-folk—Galicians, Russians, Ruthenians, Mennonites, Dutch—who have the art of truck-farming at their finger tips. This is no mere figure of speech but a simple fact. And this knowledge they have employed to make Winnipeg one of the richest cities in the Dominion in this matter of fresh vegetables.

But the human interest centres in the picture made by these cauliflower, cucumber and rhubarb stretches. Especially since the laborers in these field-gardens are mostly women, one of the farms, if no more, being owned by a woman and personally operated by

AT THE WINDOW.

“... AND THERE IN THE CUCUMBER FIELD,IS OLD KITTY.”

herself, with the aid of skillful woman employees. These women in the beans make picturesque figures with heads in white kerchiefs, full skirts tucked in gracefully at the waist and the big bushel basket in hand. Chatting with a motherly soul, broad and short with blue eyes it is revealed that she is a Mennonite, straight from Holland. Talking with a tall, thin young woman she tells that she came from the borderland of Poland and Russia, and that she speaks seven languages, but that she has always worked on the farm. And she touches the beans with a sort of stroking tenderness, as if she loved all things that grew.

In the onion field seven or more women working together make the weeds fly. They, too, cling to the kerchief of the Old World rather than to the hat of the New, as a protection against sun and the weather in the fields.

Here are women with bundles of rhubarb in their arms, loaded up to and steadied by their chins. These are assisted in the bundling by a homemade wooden contrivance for holding the refractory stalks together, while the strong fingers of the women gather and jam into a slipless knot the coarse cord which enables the bundle of pie-plant to come invitingly to the Winnipeg market. And here are cabbages fit for kings, whose heads, though they look solid and heavy enough, are evidently touched with the wand of wanderlust, since the farm-superintendent explains while we stand looking at them, lost in amazement, that these same cabbages charter whole cars to themselves and go off some fine morning east and west and even over the border to points South, he knows not where.

And there, in the cucumber fields, is Old Kitty wearing her bag apron, her old face cobwebbed with the fine lines etched by a long life spent beneath the Manitoba sun that ripens the wheat. Kitty belongs indeed to old times. She must have been among the first of the women emigrants to these parts. She speaks little English. Schools were not for her. In her youth it was not “Kitty against a Textbook”, but “Kitty against the Wilderness”, and the prize was Existence. And Kitty won; so that her aged dumbness before you, is the most eloquent oratory. And her smile is like a benediction.

While you watch Kitty with her stick carefully turning aside the leaves to discover thereunder the cool-green cucumbers, and wait for the moment when she straightens her back to rest and give you that whimsical, sweet smile that bids you stay thoughno word is exchanged, the man who partly owns this farm, with his sister, comes up, and as you move away with him to watch the carts loading ready for the early morning start to market, you speak of Kitty and he amazes you with the intelligence that he and his sister called her “Mother”.

“Our own mother died when we were children and perhaps we would have died too if it had not been for that old woman. Those were hard times, and life was difficult enough for grown-ups on the Prairie in those days, let alone children. But she pulled us through. And she still orders me around and tells me what to do,” he added, laughingly.

So that was old Kitty’s “bit”—her contribution to the life-line of Prairie settlement! Yet if Kitty had to come over now she might be debarred on the score of illiteracy.

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At Selkirk, before you have forgotten the towering offices and the bustle of Winnipeg not an hour behind you by trolley, there is the same little scow ferry on a wire, by which to cross the Red River, as that by which you crossed the Saint Francis at Pierreville. It would seem, too, as if this calm water and its wet reflections of grass and trees, were a re-cast of the pastoral streams meandering to the Saint Lawrence. And, having hailed the ferry, turning toward the city again, following the road of the East bank, one comes upon Gonor, a village that follows the highway for several miles. This village, which might have been lifted up root and branch from somewhere in the Carpathians and set down here in the heart of the Canadian West is made up of row on row of little foreign houses with quaint, whitewashed sides and the steep hand-split shingle roofs, set about by little farm-buildings, with overhanging Swiss log-roofs and everywhere, farmyard chickens, ducks and tiny porkers! And here and there down the long street a little church peeps out, each with its own distinctive architecture, the straight, almost Puritanical lines of the Swedish, the breath of Asia in the minaret of the Russian, the voice of poverty and hard struggle in the low unpainted little Bukowinian.

Back from this village and the River stretches mile after mile of sparse settlement and pioneer farm, some well on the road to prosperity and others still rough-cast; and here and there the neat little cottages of the Manitoba Department of Education—the little cottages that are a part of the new scheme for having the teacher reside among the people, maintaining in these home-like, modernhouses an example of the kind of comfort to which the foreigner on the land can aspire. The school is a centre for drawing the parents as well as the children together. It is a very practical idea, but compared with notions only lately prevalent, there is certainly a touch of Romance in the determination of Manitoba to bring the school to the child rather than the child to the school.

Here on these roads and others in the vicinity of Winnipeg, and in fact everywhere throughout this Province, on the small farms just hacking their way out of the bush with rows of wheat—rows every year planting their feet to a longer stride—theScarecrowis a character not to be despised. In fact, he plays the important role of a Knight of the Fields, defending the defenceless wheat from the piratical incursions of crows and small birds. The Scarecrow is a substitute for a man. And wherever one defying the battle and the breeze is spied, it unfolds the story of some man who has planted his foot on a portion of land and is tenaciously hanging on by the aid of any invention or device which he can bring to his assistance.

It must feel less lonesome for the man, toiling alone in these fields out of sight of any neighbour, and sometimes of his own little cottage, to look up and see that “the other fellow” is still on the job and means to stick it. O, there is no doubt about it that even the Scarecrow has its psychology! Why else has it stood the test of Time, come up simultaneously from the fields of all lands, crossed the ocean and surmounted every difficulty in its path across the continent, arriving here to hold its own as “Knight of these Western Plains”? Oh no, you cannot take the scarecrow from these old-timers—these old flotsam and jetsam farms and gardens, East and West, without a distinct loss in Romance to all Canada. For this old man of the fields speaks a universal language which appeals to all hearts, young and old. In fact, he seems to be the very fountainhead of youth. For whenever one happens upon him unexpectedly, instantly, swift as light, there is an outburst of laughter—“The Scarecrow! The Scarecrow!”

In the early days of the Northwest, the days when the Garrys and sister forts were in their heyday, before the city was; in the days when dog teams and sleds furrowed their paths along the big trails north and south, when the patient ox-teams motored the would-be settlers from Auld Scotia and elsewhere, from Winnipeg to some land-grant along the Buffalo Trail; in the days when the farmer hauled his wheat in the creaking ox-cart back to Winnipeg to be ground into flour by the one gristmill that then served this now elevator-dotted land; in other words, in the days when red men and furs held revelry, and agriculture was yet hidden in the womb of Time, the wander-loving French-Canadian came here in the character of settler, trapper, canoeist, fur-dealer, boatman andcoureur de boisout of Old Quebec, much as he is now pushing out to settle his own Provincial north.

In such suburban towns as Saint Boniface and Saint Norbert, and in their citizens, present-day Winnipeg traces her French strain back to Quebec and through Quebec to Normandy and Brittany, whence came many of the customs and touches met with here, clinging so curiously to the skirts of the West.

These little French “Bluffs” loom on the landscape not only in the vicinity of Winnipeg, but are happened upon here and there throughout all the Province, especially in the North.

At Saint Norbert one steps down out of the car to be met by a colourful wayside sign of the Jefferson Highway, “From New Orleans to Winnipeg”, with “Palm to Pine” illustrations in colour. The Romance covered by this sign, cosmopolitan as any on the continent, lies in the complete metamorphosis suffered by Winnipeg and the middle west for which it stands, in the matter of distance. Distance with a big “D” has been wiped out. You are as near to the world, in touch with it as intimately in Winnipeg as anywhere else in Canada or over the American border.

This elimination of distance, owes its being to distance-created needs. In this, Winnipeg was a pathfinder, an urge. The things which she stood for in the North led Prince Rupert and navigation to conquer Hudson Bay. Raw trails were broken and river-boats built to reach her fur-preserves and fur-market. She shod the ox and designed the big wheels of the prairie-cart to recover the waste lands of the Prairie from the heel of the Buffalo. The Prairie and the Pacific called for the railroad that primarily grouped Canada into one whole, with a united morale. It was theremoteness, once for all definitely broken by the railroad, which hatched the modern passion for “close connections”. The voice of the West is passionate in its demand for great highways like this, bringing within hail the sunny seaports of the beautiful Gulf of Mexico on the one hand, and the equally individual climate-and-trade-romanticism of the New North, practical Hudson Bay ports with navigation and ships coming and going, piloted hither by the wraiths of the Elizabethan Galleons, pioneers in sea-adventure, on

A “KNIGHT OF THE FIELD”DEFENDING THE WHEAT.

FOOT BRIDGE TO TRAPPIST MONASTERY,SAINT NORBERT.

the other. Distance, for which this section of Canada once stood, sponsored the automobile, the airship, the telephone, the radio—the things that are drawing individuals and families together, co-relating separate businesses into one great co-ordinated momentum, called Trade, making every city suburban to all the others, and uniting, supporting and developing the National consciousness. Transportation, good roads! They introduce the man in Vancouver to his brother in Winnipeg and Halifax. Canada is a unit. There is psychology and powerful suggestion in linking up the fronded palm, fanning beside the Gulf, with the sturdy evergreen of the North.

At Saint Norbert there are touches of Quebec, in a little altar-chapel in the woods, to which small pilgrimages are made. There is the Church and Convent and a most picturesque group of Holy figures aboutLa Crucifiein the cemetery.

The French language commingles everywhere with the English. In the little shops here, as well as in the big shops of Winnipeg, two delicacies are offered for sale—Fromage de TrappeandMiel de Trappe—Trappist Cheese and Trappist Honey. And here, within a stone’s throw of Saint Norbert, is situated the Trappist Monastery whence these products hail. This Trappist Monastery is the only door we have ever found closed to us in Canada! But that makes it the more romantic. Nevertheless, we have ridden in their empty wheat-cart, driven by a Trappist brother in his flowing habit, the reins in one hand and huge rosary with individual beads, comparable in size with small crab-apples, in the other. We passed on this ride other brothers swinging down the beautiful tree-line approach to the Monastery, driving spans of horses with full cartloads of “No. 1 Northern”, and saying their Rosaries at the same time—a rare subject even in Canada’s immense gallery. Surely, Prairie wheat rides to the elevator in a variety of carts, and many languages urge the horses to their task. A little office at the gate was as far as our driver dared take us. The Brother in the office takes orders for the cheese and honey, and entertains us with a book of photographs showing the chief Trappist Monasteries of the world. We returned by a little foot-bridge over a stream, and by a woodland path edged with blueberry-bushes and other attractive undergrowth of the cool woods.

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Although the immediate vicinity of Winnipeg is able to show such a profusion and variety of colour, the entire Province of Manitoba, together with Saskatchewan and Alberta, produces a riotous line of romance equal to these nearer roads or any of the older Canadian Provincial gardens. The little Russian boy standing by a window blowing soap bubbles, through a wheat-straw, unconsciously presents a symbolic picture of the romantic dream both projected and fulfilled by the Prairie. To all those with vision, its Voice called. It called above all to the home-hungry children of the Old World to come and settle here. Called them to visualize their dreams, and, is still calling. But its call reached only those with initiative, for it offered on the surface only tasks and difficulties—put the wheat-straw in their fingers and said “Build your own dream-castle. Here is land without boundary. But the vision, the dream,—is yours.”

One morning in autumn....

CURING A PELT, WHICH, SOONER OR LATER, GRACESTHE SHOULDERS OF SOME LADY OF THE LAND.

ON THE GIRLS’ SIDE.

ONE morning in autumn we left Winnipeg by a C.P.R. train to Morden with the avowed intention of visiting the Mennonites of that section, getting acquainted with them and seeing their community life from the inside.

On arriving in Morden we were somewhat at a loss to find ourselves far away from the typical Mennonite village to which we had been recommended by a young teacher in a “new-Canadian” school in another part of the Province. When we had asked her about the Mennonites, their habits and customs, she had told us as much as she knew of their quaint ways and at the end added: “They have their faults no doubt, and many of their customs are strange, but I shall never forget how kind they were to us children when our mother died.”

I had treasured this in my memory because if these people were a people ready to be good to children, I had no doubt but they would show the same milk of human kindness toward—visitors.

In Morden, the mayor kindly lent us a time-yellowed chart of “The Old Mennonite Reserve”, and steering by this we left Morden in the early afternoon on a branch line of railroad running south. It was an obliging sort of coach-train and set us down some six miles out of town at a grain elevator. The boys “running” the elevator got out their Ford and drove us over to Ostervick, which was our destination. Thus the day, begun in Winnipeg, found us in the late afternoon driving down a tree-lined Mennonite village street, with the prairie-wind scattering golden, autumn leaves in the car and under our wheels.

The Mennonite village here is the most perfect bit of camouflage in the world. It is located in a wood and as no house is visible it differs in no respect from any of the bluffs in sight, until you come right upon it. Even in the wood the houses are all set back from the street and a little tree-lined lane leads into the yards. Nothing can surpass the privacy thus obtained for each family. We turned in at the lane leading to David de Fehr’s house and when we presented the teacher’s letter of introduction, David and his wife laughed at our venture, looked us over, looked at each other, and agreed to take us in. This, briefly, was the manner of our reception into a Mennonite home with the opportunity of seeing at close quarters the life in a Mennonite village on the “Old Reserve”.

I think the first surprise came to us, after the idyllic situation of the village, in the large, substantial houses. Most of them were painted, usually white, all having Dutch shutters painted a Delft-blue.

Most of the houses are long, one-storey affairs with shingled roofs and are not unlike “Cape Cod houses” of the early type. The de Fehr home was a new, two-storey cottage with the characteristic Dutch shutters at the downstairs windows. It joined the barn by a separate room where water is pumped up for the stock in the winter. We visited a number of houses, drove through other villages and were at Morden and Winkler, but I saw only one house that might be said to beinthe barn, after the manner of the old-time farm-houses in France, although more or less all appeared to be connectedwiththe barn so that you could step out of one into the other without going out-of-doors. At Mr. de Fehr’s a fair white door led into the barn from a room with pumpkin-yellow floors which looked as if they had just been painted—as they look down in Quebec. There were, by way of furniture in the room, which might be called the winter-kitchen, two lounges, a table, two or three chairs, and a rocker in which David de Fehr sat to read his mail, including the different newspapers to which he subscribes.

In addition to this room, on the first floor, were a large parlour, a smaller room used as an office, and the family bedroom. There were three bedrooms upstairs. In our room, in addition to the bed with its heavy homemade all-wool comforters, a large Russian chest with black, iron handles, occupied one side.

I speak of the room on the ground floor as a winter-kitchen because thesummer-kitchenis a dear little white cabin in the yard, under the Manitoba maples. A Mennonite custom which went at once to our hearts is this of outside-kitchens for summer use, we having seen so many in the West Indies and the South. The little summer-kitchen here was a house of magic from the cooking angle. There Mrs. de Fehr prepared all her long list of Mennonite dishes, and at her large stove with her kitchen apron about her, she was the typical housewife—an example to her sisters scattered far and wide all over Canada.

Every Mennonitegatehad its family group at night standing inside or sitting on the fence to watch the cows come home. Evidently it is an event of which, in all these years, they’ve never grown tired. And a little variety creeps into it every night in watching how the cows will carry their tails, for on this hangs the weather for the next twenty-four hours according to Mennonite lore. “If the cows run with their tails straight out behind them when they come home in the evening, it is a sign of rain, and if they come with their tails down it is a sign of fair weather.” The manner of their going in the morning apparently doesn’t count, probably because the cows are then too sleepy to know more than that their tails are behind them.

The Mennonites, though primarily grain-growers, are generally interested in stock. They keep horses, cows, pigs, chickens, geese. A few own automobiles, but these are not “old kirk” folk. The de Fehrs are Old Church people, and were to us even more interesting on that account, as we felt that our visit was with the real old-timers. The Old Church folk have little points of dress which aim at simplicity. Men of the Old Church do not wear a tie or a white collar, and the married women wear black caps. Otherwise the house-life seemed little different from any other prosperous farmer’s, believing in the simple, old-time rural life. One aim of Mennonite life, it seems, is to keep its people loyal to the soil. And this is a fundamental thing in these days of farm-need.

Madam de Fehr is a great spinner. Indeed, in the winter the spinning wheel fills in much of the time in every home. But in summer there’s the cooking and the horses and other live stock to attend to. The Mennonite women in all the villages lend a hand with the horses, grooming them and getting them harnessed, ready to go in the wagon or to draw plough or harvester. We had not noted this work so much among other foreign women. The women work very capably and easily with the horses and it doesn’t seem hard work to them. They are at their best, however, in the little kitchen, before the door of which the wind was strewing the golden leaves when we went for afternoon—no, not tea—coffee! It is a Mennonite custom to have coffee and bread-and-butter and perhaps jam, every afternoon at four o’clock. The men leave off ploughing and come in from the fields for their cup of this refreshing hot drink. Mr. de Fehr said the Mennonites think coffee very stimulating and good for a man that works. I fear that all our Canadian farmers are not so well looked after by their wives in the cold autumn afternoons at the ploughing! The coffee is ground freshin the little mill over the stove at every making—a pointer for any who wish to adopt this custom.

At dusk the cows come home—two hundred and twenty-two of them—in the village of Ostervick. Supper is at seven. And at night while we were at table the herdsman came to make his report to Mr. de Fehr, who this year holds the office of head overseer of all the herd. The holder of this office is elected for one year. He keeps the books, knows just how many cows each villager has, and pays the herdsman out of the several kinds of grain—so much of each—and the money that each owner pays per head. The arrival of the herdsman disclosed the fact that the cows are assembled each morning at the blowing of a horn after six o’clock. We were up betimes that first morning and every morning after to watch a scene of old-world life which we believe can be witnessed nowhere else in Canada.

The piper starts from one end of the village, blowing the horn or bugle, as he goes, down the whole length of the street—carpeted at that time with the golden autumn leaves! When he has passed the entire length he turns around, and the cows come out of the first gate, the second, the third, as fast as the rats followed the piper of Hamelin. Our gate happened to be near the centre of the village so we had a box-seat at this strange performance.

Of course before the cows come out of each picturesque lane it means that an army of milkmaids have been up betimes getting them milked and ready to come upon the stage at the psychological moment of the herder’s arrival at that point. It spoke well for the girls that few cows were late. Unless one has witnessed this strange foreign sight and heard the bugler coming on, with the bugle in one hand and cracking his heavy whip with the other, driving those two hundred beasts to pasture, one cannot imagine how dramatic an event it is. But I think perhaps that, except as the early morning is always the hour of charm and witchery, the manner of the herd’s arrival home in the evening, though different, is equally dramatic. For then the cows come in a hurry to be milked.

All the Mennonite women are good cooks. Some of them still hold to the out-of-door ovens as do the habitants of Quebec. For heating these ovens the women cleverly make use of the straw-pile, and many are the loaves of homemade bread and the pies that find their way in and out of these ovens!

Marking the progress of this people, in some of the yards, stand the log houses of the pioneers, mute witnesses of the wilderness life to which these people came nearly fifty years ago.

We noticed that Mr. de Fehr often looked with apparent affection upon the trees in his yard. So one day we commented on them, their sizes, etc. “They were planted?” we inquired.

“Yes,” he said, “my mother planted them. She brought them from the mountain in her apron. We boys went with her to get them. Each of my brothers had a bundle of them—I had a little bundle too.”

What a picture he conjured up! Can’t you see that old peasant-woman from Berdiansk with her saplings and her boys—saplings, too? And the mountain? We could just see the outline of it against the distant horizon. That will give you some idea of the journey she made and the distance she brought her load. As we looked at the arboreal beauty of Ostervick, to which she had contributed, we found it in our hearts to wish that every woman-settler in the West would direct some of her energy to tree-planting and tree-culture. And we wondered what this dead-and-gone mother could have given her son for remembrance one-half so precious?

Speaking of trees, the Mennonites are fond of flowers, too—hollyhocks being especially popular. But I did not notice that they kept bees in quantity as do the Doukhobors. The Mennonites are not vegetarians like the “Douks” but eat meat of all kinds, and fish. Macaroni, homemade, is a staple dish, also noodle soup. Butplemm-moase, a sort of pudding-soup made of stewed fruit, prunes, raisins, etc., thickened with flour, seems to be the national dish. And their cottage-cheese dumplings served with cream and melted butter, make a dish fit for a king. There were other good things to eat, chickens, eggs, fried crabapples, etc. The Mennonites may be a plainly dressed people, but they certainly live well as to food. They say “silent grace” before and after meals. Smoke-houses stand in many yards and we saw one Dutch windmill for grinding grain. At Winkler there is a fine flour mill.

In one house we saw a quaint old clock brought over from Russia. It had no case, merely a large face with sprays of pink roses, and long brass weights. In the same house the chairs were newly painted in art combinations of black and lemon yellow.

Among the Mennonites we were everywhere struck by their thrift. Indeed, in thinking of them, my memory flies back to thosesubstantial well-built, well-kept-up farm-houses. “Real Martha’s Vineyard and Cape Cod houses”—long, low, shingled, with sides painted white, against which the clean delft-blue shutters make a Dutch picture. Especially do I recall one freshly painted home which, in addition to white sides and blue shutters, boasted a terra-cotta band at the base of the sides, lemon-yellow balcony and steps, with apple-green railing above white bannisters with green centres. And this dignified, yet gay, little house with the real air of charm about it, sits well back in a wide lawn of its own, with a lane leading into the backyard and stable and out to the tree-lined highway, which passing straight through the length of the village, is this little rural settlement’s only street.

The day we left Ostervick it blew a slight prairie gale, but after lunch, the wind abating, Mr. de Fehr and his wife put the horses to and drove us nine miles to Winkler. The wind was still high, however, and the dust like smoke, so we were very thankful to accept the kerchiefs which Mrs. de Fehr lent us to tie over our heads, and in the picture of all in the wagon it is very difficult to distinguish between Mennonite hostess and the guests now thoroughly won over to the “plotok”.

Romantic Canada is....

KASLO AFTER RAIN.

MOUNTAIN GOATS,SNOWFLAKES AGAINST THE BLUE SKY.

ROMANTIC Canada is never halted by natural obstacles. Like the true diplomat, she wins over hindrances to become aids. High mountains, large rivers with swirling rapids and falls, immense lakes, inland seas, have thus become to Romance, mere stepping-stones. So the cold of the Great Northland, from being a barrier of conquest, has simply inspired Madame Romance to call for her heaviest and finest furs, her dog-team and sled, her snow-shoes, and a supply of good pemmican. Snow is to her but Nature’s cosmetic for rosy cheeks.

“Trade” long ago, claimed The Pas, in Manitoba, as “The Gateway to the Great Northland” and at once Madame proclaimed that “solemn-faced Business” was justified in this; but at the same time she herself reserved the right to spread her pelts for a mat, and sit in this Gate at all times. And Trade, which always walks hand-in-hand with Romance, was very glad to hear her fiat, knowing that the Romantic and business are so close interwoven as to be almost one and inseparable.

The Pas, as a town, is new; but its site was a Trading Post ages upon ages ago. Old in this particular, to the Indians before the advent of the Hudson’s Bay Company in these parts, it was an objective of the Crees, perhaps before Leif coasted from Greenland to Newfoundland. The Pas is still remarkable for the absence of ordinary roads. To get to and from the Pas of old there was only the broad bosom of the Saskatchewan inviting the canoe. But of late years advancing civilization has pushed northward the Hudson’s Bay Railroad. Pioneer wit and humour, with its gift for nomenclature, at once personified the trains for this romantic adventure in rails. The train from the South was christened the “Tamarack”. The sub-Arctic Explorer conquesting to the North they aptly called the “Muskeg”. These two names speak for themselves concerning the nature of the country.

Anyone, who has watched the indomitable “Muskeg” go forth from the Pas station in the thick of a driving snowstorm, knows, beyond doubt, that Canadian courage is a driving force practically at work to subdue to the service of the nation all that vast coastline of Hudson’s Bay which has hitherto been allowed to run to waste.

For all this great enterprise “The Pas” is the “Gate”. Nevertheless when one goes down to the bank of the Saskatchewan and looks up and down the silvery bosom of this ribbon of water, which makes its start somewhere out there in the Rockies, one knows that The Pas has a waterway which must always place it in the first ranks among the busy centres of the country. The river is to The Pas what the Grand Canal is to Venice. The gondola here is the canoe or the old stern-wheel passenger boat, tapping the neighbouring country.

There was a time when The Pas knew that romantic flotilla, the York Boats of the H.B.C., which periodically passed here with cargoes of pelts between York Factory and the Old Stone Fort or Lower Fort Garry. The York Boat has long ago “cleared” for her last long voyage and, with her passing, passed also that old Character of the Canadian Northland—usually come hither out of the Shetlands or the Orkneys—the H.B.C. boat-builder. No more are heard either, the chansons of the rowers. In the place of these old boats of the fur-trade there is now the flotilla of Ore-boats; for The Pas, the gate to the fur-country, is likewise the water gate for receiving the rich mineral wealth of northern Manitoba. Copper comes down the river and steps ashore here, destined for the smelter away off at Trail, B.C. This is indeed a long, long trail for ore to take; but it is an admirable illustration of the unity between widely separated parts of Canada. Today there is more inter-provincial business, and more universal assistance from one section of the same Province toward the development of some other section, than has hitherto existed. In this, Canada has caught the National stride with remarkable celerity. What helps one helps all. The Pas is the natural gateway to the opening-up of the mineral wealth of the New, Old North.

Sitting in this Gate a long caravan of prospectors files past, carrying in their packs “supplies” furnished by the local out-fitting stores. Strangely enough, Pas stores are among the finest in Canada. It is claimed that in them anything from a miner’s shovel to embroidery-silks is in stock. These things, though commonplace on Yonge or Saint Catherine’s Streets, become romantic, indeed, in this far Gateway to the Great Northland; the more so when the woman who goes to the H.B.C. or any of the other stores, for a hank of embroidery-silk or cerise or art-blue horse-hair, put up especially for her use, is a light-stepping Cree, whose habitat is across the river, but who roams the vast stretches of the hinterlands as other women walk in their gardens. The Crees are especially artistic. They take beads, embroidery silks and the horsehairs in hand as other women take pen or brush. But their embroidery is not wrought on cambric or linen, but on skin of moose or caribou shot by their family hunters and cured and tanned or “smoked” by their own hands.

The Factor will tell you that it is one of the interesting sights of the Christmas Season at this northern town to see the young braves turn out to the English Church, adorned in richly embroidered skin-gloves, edged perhaps with a border of plucked-beaver, the gift of their fiancees. Nevertheless, the Cree women still make their infants’ little beds of reindeer moss, carefully washed and picked clear of all grit, and on the road they still carry their babies in a tikanagan strapped to their backs. The “tikanagan board” is often decorated by the mother in stains of reds, blues and browns, and the reindeer-moss nest, on which the baby reclines, is held in place by facings of smoked moose-hide neatly thonged together. This cradle of the Cree-baby is always provided with a handle, so that the mother, unstrapping the contrivance from her back, can hang it up in some tree and be sure that the gentle swaying of the bough by the breeze will keep her baby asleep, while she herself fishes or cooks a meal for the rest of the family. This Cree mother and the Japanese woman in the salmon factories of British Columbia have never heard of one another, yet it is interesting to note that both strap their babies on their backs while at work.

The Hudson Bay Railway crosses the Saskatchewan on one of the finest steel bridges in Canada. It is some 850 feet in length and of ample width for vehicles and pedestrians, as well as for the railroad. It is a bridge of the most up-to-date type, yet the tikanagan sways from the trees on either bank where this Colossus plants its feet as it bestrides the river. And when the “Muskeg” thunders by, it is a signal for Eskimo dogs in the yards of the Big Eddy Reserve to set up a howl of protest against the invader of their transportation-copyright in the great Northland.

To the old-order-of-life represented by the tikanagan and the dog-team, belongs the canoe on the river. Come the “Muskeg”, come the “Tamarac”, come the automobile, the steamboat, the barge, ore-or grain-laden, the canoe holds its own on the river. Playing with the paddle is an inheritance. As has been said “A canoe represents not only Cree but Creed in this Northern-Gate.”

But the Pas has many sweet as well as strong touches. Surprise awaits the traveller in the beautiful flowers in the gardens of Pas homes. Flowers are always a surprise in the Northland, and when encountered they have an especial appeal created by their very rarity.

On a bluff of the river-bank stands the historic old Church of England, first church in these parts. Dropping in to matins here of a Sunday morning is to find one’s self surrounded by the “atmosphere” that is the Northland’s Own. Here, the old pews, pulpit and reading-desk were carved by men belonging to a Sir John Franklin Relief Expedition which wintered in these parts and at Cumberland House, while they waited for the ice to break up. Sitting in one of these old pews brings back to life all that long stirring period of the Nation’s history involved in Arctic Exploration. Sir John and Lady Franklin become personal to you sitting here in a pew fashioned by the hands of men who adventured their lives in noble effort to bring back news of England’s great Explorer.

The atmosphere of Arctic Exploration brought to life by the old pew, appears mysteriously amplified and fulfilled in the Ten Commandments in Cree on the right and left walls of the little Chancel. The Crees are the children of that Northland into which the pew-carver ventured. Old Chief Constant sits over there in the corner of one of these pews, the Assomption belt, a gay dash of colour, about his portly waist, attentively listening to the service, which is the tribal “Voice of ‘Mahneto’—The Great Spirit”.

In the wake of the church are the schools for the Crees. There is a boarding-school at the Big Eddy under the management of Archdeacon MacKay. The fine school building, with accommodation for eighty pupils, was erected by the Government and opened in October, 1914. The Woman’s Auxiliary of the Diocese of Ottawa furnished the parlor as a memorial to their one-time Corresponding Secretary, Helen Josephine Fitzgerald. This Body also built the pretty little stone church in the grounds; but the fine hospital was the gift of the Government.

Archdeacon MacKay, the principal of this Indian School, is a Canadian and an octogenarian, who has spent fifty-six years in Missionary work in this North. The Archdeacon paddled us the five miles down the Saskatchewan to The Pas in his canoe, with two of the Indian boys to assist, as nonchalantly as any young man of twenty. All through his long ministry, beginning betweenfifty and sixty years ago, he has been able with the canoe’s aid, to carry the double Message of the Gospel and Canada to a remote and savage people. He has lived to see The Pas become the centre of the Northward-urge of Canadian life and development, now so much a part of the national ambition.

On the North bank of the river, not more than halfway to the Big Eddy boarding-school, is a little, whitewashed schoolhouse, which is kept by a young Indian woman, a graduate of the Elkhorn School; and here all the little local youngsters pursue “the Three R’s.” The school garden is laid out in tiny beds; but the true atmosphere of the life is tellingly indicated in the small bows-and-arrows which each little boy carries in hand as he comes through the woods to the schoolhouse. The Cree is a born hunter. These bows and arrows of childhood are, after all, but stepping-stones like Readin’, ’Ritin’ and ’Rithmetic. It is as ahunterthe Cree must make a living.

The Cree, having trapped the wary fox, or other furred animal, brings the pelt to be smoked in the yard of the little homes that radiate in the woods from the schoolhouse. In the smoking and curing the women take the pelt in hand. A green and pliable branch is cut from a tree. The skin is then turned under side out and stretched tightly over the green and springy wood. The ears and legs are stuffed with hay. After the process of stretching the skin, it is laid over a frame of sticks like the ribs of a tepee, and a fire is made underneath and kept going with half green wood to make plenty of smoke. The Indian woman keeps turning the skin from time to time so that all parts are evenly cured, and, every once in a while, the man comes out and takes a look, fingering the skin, and then, when it is pretty well cured an old man or old woman, grandfather or grandmother, a living manual of pelts, comes out, and grunts a last opinion. Thus is cured the pelt, that, finding its way from Cree hands to the fur-markets of the world, sooner or later graces the shoulders of some lady of the land.

No greater contrast....

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