ROUTES OF TRAVEL

Donald D. Mann, Vice-president of the Canadian Northern RailwayDonald D. Mann, Vice-president of the Canadian Northern Railway

William Whyte, Second Vice-president of the Canadian Pacific RailwayWilliam Whyte, Second Vice-president of the Canadian Pacific Railway

When people enquired of the early Christians, "What do you call your new religion?" they answered, "We call itThe Road." If religion is the best work of a man made visible, as I think it is, then the Canadian Northern Road may well stand for the religious expression of the men who made it. It takes more than money, more than dreams, more than ambition, for two men in twelve years to build, own, and personally control five thousand miles of railway. As Riley says, it takes sweat. A mile a day for twelve years,â€”this is the construction-record of the Canadian Northern. It sounds like the story of Jonah's gourd. In 1896, nothing. In 1909, a railroad line with earnings of ten million dollars a year west of Port Arthur alone, and twelve thousand people on the regular pay-roll. Beginning in Manitoba and operating in the three prairie Provinces, the Canadian Northern is primarily a western railway, its remarkable growth being coincident with and closely related to the tide of immigration.

In the Wheat FieldsIn the Wheat Fields

As a case in point, on our way south from Edmonton we pass through the divisional point of Vermilion on the Canadian Northern, which is not to be confounded with our Far North Vermilion-on-the-Peace. Vermilion exemplifies wonderfully the Go-Fever and the Grow-Fever of the Prairies. Before it was three months old its citizens had organised a Board of Trade, had given it a Methodist Church, a newspaper, a bank, a public school, three lumber-yards, three hotels, three restaurants, four implement warehouses, two hardware stores, two butcher shops, four real estate offices, a furniture store, a drugstore, a jewellery store, a steam laundry, a flour and feed store, a shoe-shop, a bakery, and a bookshop. Three barbers had hung out their signs, and so had two doctors, a photographer, a lawyer, a dentist, and an auctioneer. There were two pool-rooms and a bowling-alley.

Farther south we reach the town of Vonda. The Canadian Northern reached this neighbourhood, and the town-site was surveyed in June, 1905. That year Vonda shipped over the line one hundred thousand bushels of wheat, and in 1906 her exports were five hundred thousand bushels. The Canadian farmer looks upon the railroad as his friend; you cannot expecthimto use the inclusive condemnation, "Corporations have no souls." The main line of the Canadian Northern runs from Port Arthur on Lake Superiorâ€”where, by the way, stands the world's largest grain elevatorâ€”to beyond Edmonton on the North Saskatchewan, operating in the heart of one gigantic wheat-farm. The method of construction has been unique. The owners commenced to build branch railways almost before they had a main line. Little spurs to small elevators grew into long branches flanked with bigger elevators, and the elevators evolved into villages, towns, and cities, until to-day the result of twelve years' growth shows a main line of thirteen hundred miles, with over three thousand miles of branch railways. An orchard tree is a good fruit-bearer when the thick clustering branches are more in evidence than the long thin trunk, and the same applies to railroads. But this main line will grow, too. Working out from its wheaten heart, its natural line of growth is east to Hudson Bay, north beyond Edmonton, and west to the Pacific. Surely the tentacles are pushing out. Already the Alberta Legislature has granted the Canadian Northern a charter to Athabasca Landing, and one hundred miles of steel will here tap all the lush land watered by the Peace and the Athabasca.

More interesting than the line which gridirons the wheat-lands we are passing through, are the men who made it. To try to write the history of Western Canada's development and not speak of Mr. Mackenzie and Mr. Mann would be as difficult as Mr. Dick's efforts to tell his story without mentioning the unfortunate Charles I. William Mackenzie is the Cecil Rhodes of Canadaâ€”gentle, kindly, almost retiring in his manner, and with a glance as inscrutable as the sea. Beginning as a school-teacher, he early threw aside the ferule and the chalk, to get into the world of action. In his time he has built shacks, kept a country store, and run a saw-mill. Three things come to him as priceless treasure out of the self-discipline of these experiences: a rare aptitude to see and to focus the central idea of any proposition, quick and unerring decision, and the power of ready calculation. "I am seldom wrong in a figure," is one of his few admissions about himself. The President of the Canadian Northern travels without a secretary, dictates letters sparingly, and works in an office as bare of adornment as a monk's cell.

And his working partner? Donald D. Mann is a man of deeds rather than words. James J. Hill has declared Mr. Mann to be the greatest railway builder in the world. Mr. Mann was born in Ontario not far from the sleepy town of Acton and just six miles east of Rockwood, the birthplace of James J. Hill. These two boys learned to swim in the same swimming-hole. One wonders from what roadside spring they quaffed the draught which sent them railroad-building. Mr. Mann thinks it a great advantage to be born a country boy, for he says it makes a lad frugal, strong, and resourceful. It worked out this way in his own case at least, for there is not a thing in railroad building that Mr. Mann cannot do with his own hands, from shoeing a mule to finding the best pass in the Rockies through which to slide his iron horse down to the sea. Direct, strong, simple, he knows how to control himself and manage others. D.D. Mann is a conspicuous example of what a Canadian boy has managed to accomplish by his own efforts. The beauty of this Western Canada is that it holds out opportunities to every plucky lad who has initiative and who is willing to work; nothing is stratified, the whole thing is formative.

While the steel kings are letting the light of day into this great granary, they are being helped by a government representative, as democratic and direct as any of the pathmakers whose visible work we have been noticing. The Hon. Frank Oliver, Canada's Minister of the Interior, is essentially a self-made man. Before the railroad men realised their vision splendid, young Mr. Oliver and his bride rode into Edmonton on an ox-cart, with a modest little printing-press tucked away among the wedding-gifts and household goods. Oliver was a practical printer and soon issued a hand-dodger called by courtesy a newspaper. The editing habit sticks. The Minister of the Interior owns and publishes the EdmontonBulletin. Mr. Mann says, "I like building railroads"; Mr. Oliver might parody him and say, "I like building newspapers."

Hon. Frank Oliver, Minister of the InteriorHon. Frank Oliver, Minister of the Interior

Arrived at Winnipeg, we look back across this great prairie we have twice traversed. The land stands ready to produce bread for the nations; Nature has done her part, now man must do his. The two greatest needs of Western Canada to-day are transportation and immigration. Of the one we have spoken; the other claims our interest even more compelling, for man is more vital than machinery. Canada is a country with a meagre past, a solid present, and an illimitable future.

She, moreover, is the last unstaked Empire under a white man's sky,â€”where wilderness and man are meeting. The flood of immigration hither is not the outcome of the temporary mood of mankind or of the immigration policy of a government. It is the natural sequence of the economic conditions of a continent seeking the outlet of least resistance to a more favourable situation. The people who are coming in are not dreamers but workers. "The world's greatest wheat-farm," says the economist. It is more than this: it is a human crucible, and we are witnessing here the birth-throes of an entirely new nation.

Threshing GrainThreshing Grain

While seventy-five per cent of Canada's wheat-farmers are either Canadian, American, or British-born, and of the class that preserves the homogeneity of the race, every country on the map pays tribute to the plains. Austrians are here and Galicians, Hungarians and Belgians, Dutch and French and Germans, Italians and Polish, the Russian Doukhobortsi, Finns and Danes and Icelanders, Swedes in thousands and stalwart Norwegians. South Africans and West Indians are coming in with Bermudians and Jamaicans and the bearded Spaniard. Far off on the Pacific Coast, strangers are knocking at the western gate,â€”Chinese, Japanese, and Hindoos.

Doukhobors Threshing FlaxDoukhobors Threshing Flax

There is no Established Church in Canada; it is the freest land in the world. On his one hundred and sixty government-given acres, the new arrival may worship his God in his own way. The Greek Church in Winnipeg has a Bishop who one day each year makes holy water of the Red River when the Czar is performing the same blessing on the Neva. Down in Southern Alberta refugee Mormons from Salt Lake grow sugar-beets, revere the memory of Brigham Young, and multiply after their kind. Until within two years ago the expatriated Russian Doukhobors maintained a commonwealth of ten thousand souls, eschewing liquors and flesh-meats, making the prairie blossom into bumper harvests, and holding all things in common.

Winnipeg has three thousand Icelanders who, every August, take a day off to celebrate the fact that the Danish King, in 1874, granted a constitution to Iceland. When you ask them why they came to America, they say, "Did not our Lief Ericcson discover this continent, why shouldn't we come?" The Icelanders boast two members in the Manitoba legislature. A Mennonite is a member of the Parliament of Alberta. The first graduate of Wesley College in Winnipeg to find a place on the staff of his Alma Mater is also a Mennonite. Winnipeg has several, Roman Catholic Polish lawyers. Statistics prove that the young Jewish people of Western Canada patronise the public libraries more than any other class or race. All the citizens-in-the-making are closely interested in politics. Recently there was chronicled the formation in Winnipeg of a Syrian Liberal Club and a Syrian Conservative Club. Up in Edmonton the Galicians (Ruthenians?) have just organised a corps of volunteer militia to serve the Canadian country of their adoption.

Sir William Van Horne, First President of the Canadian Pacific RailwaySir William Van Horne, First President of the Canadian Pacific Railway

The Americanisation of Canada? During the past seven years over three hundred and fifty thousand people have come to us from the United States. Is this American invasion to be feared politically? Western Canada has no more desirable citizens than those who come to us from the south. They are not failures, but are people who have made good, intent on making better. One generation at the most,â€”sometimes but a few years,â€”converts these into Canadian voters. The troubled English brother should remember that when "American" farmers in Canada pronounce on Canadian matters they do so constitutionally at the polls and as Canadian citizens. As Canadians we believe that our national institutions, though far from perfect, are in some respects superior to those of the United States. We believe they are at once more elastic, more responsive to the popular will, and more stable because more elastic. The west is gaining in political power as it gains in population and prosperity, and fortunately our government machinery has been well tested before it is called upon to feel the strain of our rapidly-increasing population. Canada may construct where older nations must reconstruct, and if we borrow an American institution or two, provided it be a good one, let no man hold up hands in holy horror. Japan has borrowed nationally whenever she saw, lying around loose, something she could use, and Japan is as Japanese at heart as she was in the days of the Tycoon and the two-sworded Samurai. Belgium to-day, after centuries of contiguity and intercourse, is not exactly France; and little Switzerland, surrounded by the Powers, will be Switzerland till the last curtain-fall.

"Is Canada loyal to England?" is a question that sometimes meets us. No, Canada is loyal to the British Empire of which she forms a part. Let England see to it that she, too, is loyal.

Canada has two hundred millions of arable acres south of the Saskatchewan. North of this river, in the pleasant valleys of the Peace, are one hundred million acres more. If Canada were as thickly populated as the British Isles it would have a billion people. The mind reels and the imagination staggers in thinking of the future of this rich land. God has intended this to be the cradle of a new race, a race born of the diverse entities now fusing in its crucible. Most of these people in time will intermarry,â€”Germans and Latins, Celts and Slavs, and with these the Semitic peoples, in varying proportions and combinations. Physically, what will be the result? Mentally and morally, what type will prevail? Drawn by the lure of the wheat, all pour themselves into the melting-pot. What of the new Canadian who will step out?

In the point of population, Canada begins the twentieth century where the United States began the nineteenth. The race is ours to run. Wise the nation, as is the individual, who can learn his lesson from a page torn out of his neighbour's book, learn what to follow and what to avoid. Our fore-elders who laid the foundations for us laid them four-square. As Canadians, we owe a debt to the Fathers of Confederation and their successors. In the West, our particular thanks are due to the Hudson's Bay Company, the R.N.W.M.P., and all those factors which established British law "in the beginning." Canada has never seen a lynching; we have had no Indian war; with but one weak-kneed exception there has been no attempt to hold up a train within our Western borders. This is the inheritance of the people of this generation, and on this foundation we must build. Our hope is in the children.

On the benches of one school-room in Edmonton I found children who had been born in Canada, the United States, England, Scotland, Russia, New Zealand, Poland, Switzerland, Australia, and Austro-Hungary. They were all singing "The Maple Leaf Forever." It is the lessons these children are to learn in that little red school-house which will determine the future of Western Canada, and not the yearly tale of forty-bushel wheat. In the past, nations out of their very fatness have decayed. Many signs are full of hope. Last winter Mrs. Ray travelled alone with dog-sled all the way from Hudson Bay to Winnipeg to place her children in school. Her husband is a fur-trader and could not leave his post. At all hazards the bairns must be educated, so the brave mother journeyed out with them!

May I close with a purely personal note? At the end of a summer which had showered us with kindness, I was to hear from the lips of a Roman priest in St. Boniface the most delightful tribute I have had in my life. We had gone across the river to see the holy relics and skulls, the result of the La Verendrye research carried on by this clergy in the Lake of the Woods country. I was anxious to get the story of the recovery of these historic remains and also to secure photographs. But the Father was obdurate, for he thought his Bishop might not approve. We turned to go downstairs from the third story of the seminary. Looking in at an open door, my eye was caught by the familiar wording of a blackboard problem. "If 16 men and 4 boys working 4 hours a day dig a trench 82 yards longâ€”â€”." And I halted, as the one-time circus-horse stops when he hears the drum of a passing band.

"You are interested?" queried the Father.

"Yes," I acknowledged, "I once taught school."

He, still in the trammels, looked the enquiry he did not utter.

"I taught school for twenty-five years," I admitted.

We walked on down the stairs to the next landing in silence, when he turned to me with, "And you taught schoolâ€”for twen-ty five years?"

I nodded my head, and we went on. At the next landing the remark was repeated. At the foot of the stairs he excused himself and came back with the photographs which he presented to me with an Old World courtesy and dignity. Grasping my hand in farewell, once more the man of God wondered, "And for twen-ty five years you taught school. And you remain soâ€”" He hesitated for the word, and I wondered what it would be. At last it came,â€”the tribute of one who expected to teach school all his life to one who had put in a quarter of a century at the work and still survived,â€”"You have taught school for twen-ty five years,and you remain so glad!"

And this is the keynote of what the summer has left with us. As Canadians, looking at this Western Canada which has arrived and thinking of the lands of Canada's fertile Northland far beyond, for the future we are full of optimism, and of the present we areglad.

[1]

For further particulars regarding dates and rates, application should be made to the Hudson's Bay Company, Winnipeg; J.K. Cornwall, M.P.P., of the Northern Transportation Co. at Edmonton; or to A.G. Harrison, Secretary Edmonton Board of Trade, Edmonton, Alberta.

[2]

ForÂ furtherÂ particularsÂ regardingÂ datesÂ andÂ rates,Â applicationÂ shouldÂ beÂ madeÂ toÂ theÂ Hudson'sÂ BayÂ Company,Â Winnipeg;Â J.K. Cornwall,Â M.P.P.,Â ofÂ theÂ NorthernÂ TransportationÂ Co.Â atÂ Edmonton;Â orÂ toÂ A.Â G.Â Harrison,Â SecretaryÂ BoardÂ ofÂ Trade,Â Edmonton, Alberta.

[3]

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