The social side of the visit followed.
The Prince went from the devastated area, and from his visit to some of the people who were already housed in their new homes, through the attractive residential streets of Halifax to the Waegwoltic Club.
This club is altogether charming, and one of the most perfect places of recreation I have seen. The club-house is a low, white rambling building set among trees and the most perfect of lawns. It has really beautiful suites of rooms, including a dancing hall and a dining-room. From its broad verandah a steep grass slope drops down to the sea water of one of the harbour arms. Many trees shade the slope and the idling paths on it, and through the trees shines the water, which has an astonishing blueness.
At the water's edge is a bathing place, with board rafts and a high skeleton diving platform. Here are boys and girls, looking as though they were posing for Harrison Fisher, diving, or lolling in the vivid sun on the plank rafts.
With its bright sea, on which are canoes and scarlet sailed yachts, the vivid green of its grass slopes under the superb trees, the Waegwoltic Club is idyllic. It is the dream of the perfect holiday place come true.
Quite close to it is another club of individuality. It is a club without club-house that has existed in that state for over sixty years.
This is the Studley Quoit Club, which the Prince visited after he had lunched at the Waegwoltic. Its premises are made up of a quoit field, a fence and some trees, and the good sportsmen, its members, as they showed His Royal Highness round, pointed solemnly to a fir to which a telephone was clamped, and said:
"That is our secretary's office."
A table under a spruce was the dining-room, a book of cuttings concerning the club on a desk was the library, while a bench against a fence was the smoking lounge. It is a club of humour and pride, that has held together with a genial and breezy continuity for generations. And it has two privileges, of which it is justly proud: one is the right to fly the British Navy ensign, gained through one of its first members, an admiral; the other is that its rum punch yet survives in a dry land.
The Prince's visit to such a gathering of sportsmen was, naturally, an affair of delightful informality. There was a certain swopping of reminiscences of the King, who had also visited the club, and a certain dry attitude of awe in the President, who, in speaking of the honours the Prince had accepted just before leaving England, said that though the members of the Studley Club felt competent to entertain His Royal Highness as a Colonel of the Guards, as the Grand Master of Freemasons, or even, at a pinch, as a King's Counsel, they felt while in their earthly flesh some trepidation in offering hospitality to a Brother of the Trinity—a celestial office which, the President understood, the Prince had accepted prior to his journey.
It was a happy little gathering, a relief, perhaps, from set functions, and the Prince entered fully into the spirit of the occasion. He drank the famous punch, and signed the Club roll, showing great amusement when some one asked him if he were signing the pledge.
On leaving this quaint club he came in for a cheery mobbing; men and women crowded round him, flappers stormed his car in the hope of shaking hands, while babies held up by elders won the handclasp without a struggle.
A crowded day was closed by a yet more crowded reception. It was an open reception of the kind which I believe I am right in saying the Prince himself was responsible for initiating on this trip. It was a reception not of privileged people bearing invitations, but of the whole city.
The whole city came.
Citizens of all ages and all occupations rolled up at Government House to meet His Royal Highness. They filled the broad lawn in front of the rather meek stone building, and overflowed into the street. They waited wedged tightly together in hot and sunny weather until they could take their turn in the endless file that was pushing into the house where the Prince was waiting to shake hands with them.
It was a gathering of every conceivable type of citizen. Silks and New York frocks had no advantage over gingham and "ready to wear." Judge's wife and general's took their turn with the girl clerk from the drug store and their char lady's daughter. Workers still in their overalls, boys in their shirtsleeves, soldiers and dockside workers and teamsters all joined in the crowd that passed for hours before the Prince.
At St. John he had shaken hands with some 2,000 people in such a reception as this, at Halifax the figure could not have been less, and it was probably more. He shook hands with all who came, and had a word with most, even with those admirable but embarrassing old ladies (one of whom at least appeared at each of these functions) who declared that, having lived long enough to see the children of two British rulers, they were anxious that he should lose no time in giving them the chance of seeing the children of a third.
It was an astonishing spectacle of affable democracy, and in effect it was perhaps the happiest idea in the tour. The popularity of these "open to all the town" meetings was astonishing. "The Everyday People" whom the Prince had expressed so eager a desire to see and meet came to these receptions in such overwhelming numbers that in large cities such as Toronto, Ottawa and the like it was manifestly impossible for him to meet even a fraction of the numbers.
Yet this fact did not mar the receptions. The people of Canada understood that he was making a real attempt at meeting as many of them as was humanly possible, and even those who did not get close enough to shake his hand were able to recognize that his desire was genuine as his happiness in meeting them was unaffected and friendly.
The public receptions were the result of an unstudied democratic impulse, and the Canadian people were of all people those able to appreciate that impulse most.
The Prince of Wales and his cruiser escort left Halifax on the night of Monday, August 18th, for Prince Edward Island, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, arriving at the capital of that province the next morning.
Owing to the difficulty of getting across country, the Press correspondents were unable to be present at this visit, and went direct by train to Quebec to await the Prince's arrival.
We were sorry not to visit this tiny, self-contained province of the Dominion, for we had heard much concerning its charm and individuality in character. It is a fertile little island, rich in agriculture, sport and fishing. It is an island of bright red beaches and green downs set in a clear sea, an Eden for bathers and holiday-makers.
It is also one of the last rallying-points of the silver fox, which is bred by the islanders for the fur market. This is a pocket industry unique in Canada. The animals are tended with the care given to prize fowls, each having its own kennel and wire run. Such domesticity renders them neither hardy nor prolific, and the breeding is an exacting pursuit.
At the capital, Charlottetown, His Royal Highness had a real Canadian welcome, tinged not a little with excitement. While he was on the racecourse one of the stands took fire, and there was the beginning of a panic, men and women starting to clamber wildly out of it and dropping from its sides. The Prince, however, kept his place and continued to watch the races. His presence on the stand quieted the nervous and checked what might have been an ugly rush, while the fire was very quickly got under.
Off Charlottetown the Prince transferred again to the battle-cruiserRenown, and finished the last section of his sea voyage up the great St. Lawrence on her.
Our disappointment at not seeing Prince Edward Island was mitigated by the glimpses we had from our train of the country of New Brunswick and the great area of the habitants that surrounds Quebec.
On the morning of August 19th we woke to the broken country of New Brunswick. The forests of spruce, pine, maple and poplar made walls on the very fringe of the single-line railway track for miles, giving way abruptly to broad and placid lakes, or to sharp narrow valleys, in which shallow streams pressed forward over beds of white stone and rock. At this time the streams were narrowed down to a slim channel, but the broad area of white shingle—frequently scored by many subsidiary thin channels of water—gave an idea of what these streams were like in flood.
There was a great deal of unfriendly black rock in the land pushing itself boldly up in hills, or cropping out from the thin covering soil. Here and there were the clearings of homesteaders, who lived sometimes in pretty plank houses, sometimes in the low shacks of rough logs that seemed to be put in the clearings—some of them not yet free of the high tree stumps—in order to give the land its authentic local colour.
On the streams that flow between the walls of trees there were always logs. Logs sometimes jamming the whole fairway with an indescribable jumble, logs collected into river bays with a neatness that made the surface of the water appear one great raft, and by these "log booms" there was, usually, the piles of squared timber, and the collection of rough wooden houses that formed the mill.
The mills have the air of being pit-head workings dealing with a cleaner material than coal. About them are lengthy conveyors, built up on high trestle timbers, that carry the logs from the water to the mill and from the mill to the dumps, that one instantly compares to the conveyors and winding gear of a coal mine. Beneath the conveyors are great ragged mounds of short logs cut into sections for the paper pulp trade, and jumbled heaps of shorter sections that are to serve as the winter firing for whole districts; these have the contours of coal dumps, while fed from chutes are hillocks of golden sawdust as big and as conspicuous as the ash and slag mounds of the mining areas.
In the mill yards are stacks and stacks of house planks that the great saws have sliced up with an uncanny ease and speed, stacks of square shingles for roofs and miles of squared beams.
We passed not a few but a multitude of these "booms" and mills, and our minds began to grasp the vastness of this natural and national industry. And yet it is not in the main a whole-time industry. For a large section of its workers it is a side line, an occupation for days that would otherwise be idle. It is the winter work of farmers, who, forced to cease their own labours owing to the deep snow and the frosts, turn to lumbering to keep them busy until the thaw sets in.
That fact helps the mind to realize the potentialities of Canada. Here is a business as big as coal mining that is largely the fruit of work in days when there is little else to do.
We saw this industry at a time when the streams were congested and the mills inactive. It was the summer season, but, more than that, the lack of transport, owing to the sinking, or the surrender by Canada for war purposes, of so much ship space, was having its effect on the lumber trade. The market, even as far as Britain, was in urgent need of timber, and the timber was ready for the market; but the exigencies, or, as some Canadians were inclined to argue, the muddle of shipping conditions, were holding up this, as well as many other of the Dominion industries.
In this sporting country there are many likely looking streams for fishermen, as there are likely looking forests for game. At New Castle we touched the Miramichi, which has the reputation of being the finest salmon-fishing river in New Brunswick; the Nepisiquit, the mouth of which we skirted at Bathurst, is also a great centre for fishermen, and, indeed, the whole of this country about the shores of the great Baie de Chaleur—that immense thrust made by the Gulf of St. Lawrence between the provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec—is a paradise for holiday-makers and sportsmen, who, besides their fishing, get excellent shooting at brant, geese, duck, and all kinds of game.
The Canadian of the cities has his country cottage in this splendidly beautiful area, which he comes to for his recreation, and at other times leaves in charge of a local farmer, who fills his wood shed with fire logs from the forest in the summer, and his ice house with ice from the rivers in winter.
In this district, and long before we reached the Quebec border, we came to the country of the habitant farmer. As we stopped at sections to water or change engines, we saw that this was a land where man must be master of two tongues if he is to make himself understood. It is a land where we read on a shop window the legend: "J. Art Levesque. Barbier. Agent du Lowdnes Co. Habits sur commande." Here the habitant does business at La Banque Nationale, and takes his pleasure at the Exposition Provinciale, where his skill can win him Prix Populaires.
On the stations we talked with men in British khaki trousers who told us in a language in which Canadian French and camp English was strangely mingled of the service they had seen on the British front.
It is the district where the clever and painstaking French agriculturist gets every grain out of the soil, a district where we could see the spire of a parish church every six miles, the land of a people, sturdy, devout, tenacious and law-abiding, the "true 'Canayen' themselves,"
"And in their veins the same red stream;The conquering blood of NormandieFlowed strong, and gave AmericaCoureurs de bois and voyageursWhose trail extends from sea to sea!"
as William Henry Drummond, a true poet who drew from them inspiration for his delightful dialect verse, describes them.
The railway passes for hundreds of miles between habitant farms. The land is beautifully cared for, every fragment of rock, from a boulder to a pebble, having been collected from the soil through generations, and piled in long, thin caches in the centres of the fields. The effect of passing for hundreds of miles between these precisely aligned cairns is strange; one cannot get away from the feeling that the rocky mounds are there for some barbaric tribal reason, and that presently one will see a war dance or a sacrifice taking place about one of them.
The farms themselves have a strange appearance. They have an abnormally narrow frontage. They are railed in strips of not much greater breadth than a London back garden, though they extend away from the railway to a depth of a mile and more. At first this grouping of the land appears accidental, but the endlessness of the strange design soon convinces that there is a purpose underlying it.
Two explanations are offered. One is that the land has been parcelled out in this way, and not on a broad square acreage, because in the old pioneer days it afforded the best means of grouping the homesteads together for defence against the Red Man. The other is that it is the result of the French-Canadian law which enforces the division of an estate among children in exact proportion, and thus the original big farms have been split up into equal strips among the descendants of the original owner. Either of these explanations, or the combination of them, can be accepted.
At Campbellton, a pretty, toy-like town, close up to La Baie de Chaleur, there is gathered a remnant of the Micmac Indians, whom the first settlers feared. They have a settlement of their own on a peak of the Baie, and one of their chiefs had travelled to Halifax to be among those who welcomed the son of the Great White Chief.
Campbellton let us into the lovely valley of the Matapedia, an enchanted spot where the river lolls on a broad bed through a grand country of grim hills and forests. Now and then, indeed, its channel is pinched into gorges where its water shines pallidly and angrily amid the crowded shadows of rock and tree; usually it is the nursemaid of rich, flat valleys and the friend of the little frame-house hamlets that are linked across its waters by a spidery bridge of wooden trestles. At times beneath the hills it is swift and combed by a thousand stony fingers, and at other times it is an idler in Arcadie, a dilettante stream that wanders in half a dozen feckless channels over a desert of white stones, with here and there the green humpback of an island inviting the camper.
Beyond Matapedia we got the thrill of the run, an abrupt glimpse of the St. Lawrence, steel-blue and apparently infinite, its thirty miles of breadth yielding not a glimpse of the farther side. A short distance on, beyond Mont Joli, a place that might have come out of a sample box of French villages, the railway keeps the immense river company for the rest of the journey.
The valley broadened out into an immense flat plain with but few traces of the wilder hills of New Brunswick. About the line is a belt of prosperity forty miles deep, all of it worked by the habitant owners of the narrow farms, all of it so rich that in the whole area from the border to the city of Quebec there is not a poor farmer.
Before reaching Riviere du Loup we saw the high peaks of the Laurentine Mountains on the far side of the St. Lawrence, and on our side of the stream passed a grim little islet called L'Islet au Massacre, where a party of Micmac Indians, fleeing from the Iroquois in the old days, were caught as they hid in a deep cave, and killed by a great fire that their enemies built at the mouth.
We saw a few seals on the rocks of the river, but not a hint of the numbers that gave Riviere du Loup its name. It is a cameo of a town with falls sliding down-hill over a chute of jumbled rocks into a logging pool beneath.
Riviere du Loup is in the last lap of the journey to Quebec. There are a score or so of little hamlets, the names of which—St. Alexandre, St. Andre, St. Pascal, St. Pacome, St. Valier and so on—sound like a reading from the Litany of the Saints. And, passing the last of them, we saw across the narrowed St. Lawrence a trail of lace against the darkness of the Laurentine hills, a mass of filigree that moved and writhed, so that we understood when some one said:
"The Montmorency Falls."
A moment later we saw across the stream the city of Quebec, a hanging town of fairyland, with pinnacle and spire, bastion and citadel delicate against the quick sky. A city of romance and charm, to which we hurried by the very humdrum route of the steam ferry that crosses to it from the Levis side.
Quebec is not merely historic: it suggests history. It has the grand manner. One feels in one's bones that it is a city of a splendid past. The first sight of Quebec piled up on its opposite bluff where the waters of the St. Charles swell the mighty volume of the St. Lawrence convinces one that this grave city is the cradle of civilization in the West, the overlord of the river road to the sea and the heart of history and romance for Canada.
One does not require prompting to recognize that history has to go back centuries to reach the day when Cartier first landed here; or that Champlain figured bravely in its story in a brave and romantic era of the world, and that it was he who saw its importance as a commanding point of the great waterway that struck deep into the heart of the rich dominion—though he did think that dominion was a fragment of the fabulous Indies with a door into the rich realms of China.
Instinct seems to tell one that on the lifting plain behind the bulldog Citadel, Montcalm lost and died, and Wolfe died and won.
One knows, too, that from this city thick with spires, streams of Christianity and civilization flowed west and north and south to quicken the whole barbaric continent; that it was the nucleus that concentrated all the energy of the vast New World.
From the decks of the three war vessels, theRenownand the escorting cruisers, Quebec must have seemed like a city of a dream hanging against the quiet sky of a glorious evening.
The piled-up mass of the city on its abrupt cape is romantic, and suggests the drama of a Rhine castle with a grace and a significance that is French. On that evening of August 21st, when the strings and blobs of colour from a multitude of flags picked out the clustering of houses that climbed Cape Diamond to the grey walls of the Citadel, the city from the St. Lawrence had an appearance glowing and fantastic.
From Quebec the three fine ships steaming in line up the blue waters of the river were a sight dramatic and beautiful, though from the heights and against the wall of cliffs on the Levis side, a mile across stream, the cruisers were strangely dwarfed, and evenRenownappeared a small but desirable toy.
In keeping with the general atmosphere of the town and toy-like ships, Quebec herself put a touch of the fantastic into the charm of her greeting.
As the cruisers dressed ship, and joined with the guns of the Citadel in the salute, there soared from the city itself scores of maroons. From the flash and smoke of their bursts there fluttered down many coloured things. Caught by the wind, these things opened out into parachutes, from which were suspended large silk flags. Soon the sky was flecked with the bright, tricoloured bubbles of parachutes, bearing Jacks and Navy Ensigns, Tricolours and Royal Standards down the wind.
The official landing at King's Wharf was full of characteristic colour also. It was in a wide, open space right under the grey rock upon which the Citadel is reared. In this square, tapestried with flags, and in a little canvas pavilion of bright red and white, the Prince met the leading sons of Quebec, the French-Canadian and the English-Canadian; the Bishop of the English cathedral in gaiters and apron, the Bishops of the Catholics in corded hats, scarlet gloves and long cassocks. Sailors and soldiers, women in bright and smart gowns gave the reception a glow and vivacity that had a quality true to Quebec.
From this short ceremony the Prince drove through the quaint streets to the Citadel. In the lower town under the rock his way led through a quarter that might well stage a Stanley Weyman romance. It is a quarter where, between high-shouldered, straight-faced houses, run the narrowest of streets, some of them, like Sous le Cap, so cramped that it is merely practical to use windows as the supports for clothes-lines, and to hang the alleys with banners of drying washing.
In these cramped streets named with the names of saints, are sudden little squares, streets that are mere staircases up to the cliff-top, and others that deserve the name of one of them, The Mountain. In these narrow canyons, through which the single-decked electric trams thunder like mammoths who have lost their way, are most of the commercial houses and nearly all the mud of the city.
At the end of this olden quarter, merging from the very air of antiquity in the streets, Quebec, with a characteristic Canadian gesture, adopts modernity. That is the vivid thing about the city. It is not merely historical: it is up-to-date. It is not merely the past, but it is the future also. At the end of the old, cramped streets stands Quebec's future—its docks.
These great dockyards at the very toe of the cape are the latest things of their kind. They have been built to take the traffic of tomorrow as well as today. Greater ships than those yet built can lie in safe water alongside the huge new concrete quays. Great ships can go into dry dock here, or across the water in the shipyards of Levis. They even build or put together ships of large tonnage, and while we were there, there were ships in half sections; by themselves too big to be floated down from the lakes through the locks, they had come down from the building slips in floatable halves to be riveted together in Quebec.
A web of railways serves these great harbour basins, and the latest mechanical loading gear can whip cargo out of ships or into them at record speed and with infinite ease. Huge elevators—one concrete monster that had been reared in a Canadian hustle of seven days—can stream grain by the million tons into holds, while troops, passengers and the whole mechanics of human transport can be handled with the greatest facility.
The Prince went up the steep cobbled street of The Mountain under the grey, solid old masonry of the Battery that hangs over the town in front of Laval University, that with the Archbishop's palace looks like a piece of old France translated bodily to Canada.
So he came to the big, green Place des Armes, not now a place of arms, and at that particular moment not green, but as thick as a gigantic flower-bed with the pretty dresses of pretty women—and there is all the French charm in the beauty of the women of Quebec—and with the khaki and commonplace of soldiers and civilians. A mighty and enthusiastic crowd that did not allow its French accent to hinder the shout of welcome it had caught up from the throng that lined the slopes of The Mountain.
From this point the route twisted to the right along the Grande Allée, going first between tall and upright houses, jalousied and severe faced, to where a strip of side road swung it left again, and up hill to the Citadel, where His Royal Highness lived during his stay.
From the Place des Armes the profile of the town pushes back along the heights to the peak on which is the Citadel, a squat and massive structure that seems to have grown rather than to have been built from the living rock upon which it is based.
Between the Citadel and the Place des Armes there is a long, grey stone wall above the green glacis of the cliff. It has the look of a military wall, and it is not a military wall. It supports merely a superb promenade, Dufferin Terrace, a great plank walk poised sheer above the river, the like of which would be hard to equal anywhere. On this the homely people of Quebec take the air in a manner more sumptuous than many of the most aristocratic resorts in Europe.
At the eastern end of this terrace, and forming the wing of the Place des Armes, is the medieval structure of the Château Frontenac, a building not really more antique than the area of hotelsde luxe, of which it is an extremely fine example, but so planned by its designers as to fit delightfully into the antique texture of the town.
Below and shelving away eastward again is the congested old town, through which the Prince had come, and behind Citadel and promenade, and stretching over the plateau of the cape, is a town of broad and comely streets, many trees and great parks as modern as anything in Canada.
That night the big Dufferin Terrace was thronged by people out to see the firework display from the Citadel, and to watch the illuminations of the city and of the ships down on the calm surface of the water. It was rather an unexpected crowd. There were the sexes by the thousands packed together on that big esplanade, listening to the band, looking at the fireworks and lights, the whole town was there in a holiday mood, and there was not the slightest hint of horseplay or disorder.
The crowd enjoyed itself calmly and gracefully; there were none of those syncopated sounds or movements which in an English crowd show that youth is being served with pleasure. The quiet enjoyment of this good-tempered and vivacious throng is the marked attitude of such Canadian gatherings. I saw in other towns big crowds gathered at the dances held in the street to celebrate the Prince's visit. Although thousands of people of all grades and tempers came together to dance or to watch the dancing, there was never the slightest sign of rowdyism or disorder.
On this and the next two nights Quebec added to its beauty. All the public buildings were outlined in electric light, so that it looked more than ever a fairy city hanging in the air. The cruisers in the stream were outlined, deck and spar and stack, in light, andRenownhad poised between her masts a bright set of the Prince of Wales's feathers, the lights of the whole group of ships being mirrored in the river. On FridayRenowngave a display of fireworks and searchlights, the beauty of which was doubled by the reflections in the water.
Friday and Saturday (August 22 and 23) were strenuous days for the Prince. He visited every notable spot in the brilliant and curious town where one spoke first in French, and English only as an afterthought; where even the blind beggar appeals to the charitable in two languages; where the citizens ride in up-to-date motor-cars and the visitors in the high-slung, swing-shaped horse calache; where the traffic takes the French side of the road; where the shovel hats and cassocks of priests are as commonplace as everyday; where the vivacity of France is fused into the homely good-fellowship of the Colonial in a manner quite irresistible.
He began Friday in a wonderful crimson room in the Provincial Parliament building, where he received addresses in French, and answered them in the same tongue.
It was a remarkable room, this glowing chamber set in the handsome Parliament house that looks down over a sweep of grass, the hipped roofs and the pinnacles of the town to the St. Lawrence. It was a great room with a floor of crimson and walls of crimson and white. Over the mellow oak that made a backing to the Prince's daïs was a striking picture of Champlain looking out from the deck of his tiny sloopThe Gift of Godto the shore upon which Quebec was to rise.
The people in that chamber were not less colourful than the room itself. Bright dresses, the antique robes of Les Membres du Conseil Exécutif, the violet and red of clerics, with the blue, red and khaki of fighting men were on the floor and in the mellow oak gallery.
Two addresses were read to His Royal Highness, twice, first in French and then in English, and each address in each language was prefaced by his list of titles—a long list, sonorous enough in French, but with an air of thirdly and lastly when oft repeated. One could imagine his relief when the fourth Earl of Carrick had been negotiated, and he was steering safely for the Lord of the Isles. A strain on any man, especially when one of the readers' pince-nez began to contract some of the deep feeling of its master, and to slide off at every comma, to be thrust back with his ever-deepening emotion.
The Prince answered in one language, and that French, and the surprise and delight of his hearers was profound. They felt that he had paid them the most graceful of compliments, and his fluency as well as his happiness of expression filled them with enthusiasm. He showed, too, that he recognized what French Canada had done in the war by his reference to the Vingtdeuxième Battalion, whose "conduite intrépide" he had witnessed in France. It was a touch of knowledge that was certainly well chosen, for the province of Quebec, which sent forty thousand men by direct enlistment to the war, has, thanks to the obscurantism of politics, received rather less than its due.
From the atmosphere of governance the Prince passed to the atmosphere of the seminary, driving down the broad Grand Allée to the University of Laval, called after the first Bishop of Quebec and Canada. It has been since its foundation not merely the fountain head of Christianity on the American continent, but the armoury of science, in which all the arts of forestry, agriculture, medicine and the like were put at the service of the settler in his fight against the primitive wilds.
In the bleached and severe corridors of this great building the Prince examined many historic pictures of Canada's past, including a set of photographs of his own father's visit to the city and university. He also went from Laval to the Archbishop's Palace, where the Cardinal, a humorous, wise, virile old prelate in scarlet, showed him pictures of Queen Victoria and others of his ancestors, and stood by his side in the Grand Saloon while he held a reception of many clerics, professors and visitors.
The afternoon was given to the battlefield, where he unfurled a Union Jack to inaugurate the beautiful park that extends over the whole area.
The beauty of this park is a very real thing. It hangs over the St. Lawrence with a sumptuous air of spaciousness. Leaning over the granite balustrade, one can look down on the tiny Wolfe's cove, where three thousand British crept up in the blackness of the night to disconcert the French commander.
It is not a very imposing slope, and a modern army might take it in its stride. Across the formal grass of the park itself the learned trace the lines of England and of France.
At the town end there is a slight hill above a dip. The British were in the dip, France was on the hill. That hill lost the battle. It placed the French between the British and the guns of the Citadel in days when there was neither aerial observation nor indirect fire.
A wind, as on the day of the battle, was blowing while the Prince was on the field. The British fired one volley, and the smoke from their black powder was blown into the faces of the French. Bewildered by the dense cloud, uncertain of what was in the heart of it, the French broke and fled. In twenty minutes Canada was won.
There is a plain monument to mark the exact spot where Wolfe fell; the Prince placed a wreath upon it, as he had placed wreaths on the monuments of Champlain and Montcalm earlier, and as he did later at the monument Aux Braves on the field of Foye, which commemorates the dead of both races who fell in the battle when Murray, a year after Wolfe's victory, endeavoured to loosen the grip the French besiegers were tightening round Quebec, and was defeated, though he held the city.
On the Plains of Abraham—it has no romantic significance, Abraham was merely a farmer who owned the land at the time of the battle—French and English were again gathered in force, but in a different manner.
It was a bright and friendly gathering of Canadians, who no longer permitted a difference of tongue to interfere with their amity. It was also a gathering of men and women and children (Quebec is the province of the quiverful), notably vigorous, well-dressed and prosperous.
The thing to remark here, as well as in all the gatherings of the people of this city, was the absence of dinginess and dowdiness that goes with poverty. In the great mass of stone houses, pretty brick and wood villas, and apartment "houses," the upper flats of which are reached by curving iron Jacob stairways, that make habitable Quebec there are patches of cramped wooden houses, each built under the architectural stimulus of the packing-case, though rococo little porches and scalloped roofs add a wedding-cake charm to the poverty of size and design. But though there are these small but not mean houses, there appear to be no poor people.
All those on the Plains had an independent and self-supporting air (as, indeed, every person has in Canada), and they gave the Prince a reception of a hearty and affable kind, as he declared this fine park the property of the city, and made the citizens free of its historic acreage for all time.
From the Plains His Royal Highness went by car to the huge new railway bridge that spans the St. Lawrence a few miles above the town. It was a long ride through comely lanes, by quiet farmsteads and small habitant villages. At all places where there was a nucleus of human life, men and women, but particularly the children, came out to their fences with flags to shout and wave a greeting.
At the bridge station were two open cars, and on to the raised platform of one of these the Prince mounted, while "movie" men stormed the other car, and a number of ordinary human beings joined them. This special train was then passed slowly under the giant steel girders and over the central span, which is longer than any span the Forth Bridge can boast. As the train travelled forward the Prince showed his eagerness for technical detail, and kept the engineers by his side busy with a stream of questions.
The bridge is not only a superb example of the art of the engineer, perhaps the greatest example the twentieth century can yet show, but it is a monument to the courage and tenacity of man. Twice the great central span was floated up-stream from the building yards, only to collapse and sink into the St. Lawrence at the moment it was being lifted into place. Though these failures caused loss of life, the designers persisted, and the third attempt brought success.
There was, one supposes, a ceremonial idea connected with this function. His Royal Highness certainly unveiled two tablets at either end of the bridge by jerking cords that released the covering Union Jack. But this ritual was second to the ceremonial of the "movies."
The "movies" went over the top in a grand attack. They put down a box barrage close up against the Prince's platform, and at a distance of two feet, not an inflection of his face, nor a movement of his head, escaped the unwinking and merciless eye of the camera.
The "movie" men declare that the Prince is the best "fil-lm" actor living, since he is absolutely unstudied in manner; but it would have taken a Douglas Fairbanks of a super-breed to remain unembarrassed in the face of that cold line of lenses thrust close up to his medal ribbons. And in the film he shows his feelings in characteristic movements of lips and hands.
The men who did not take movies, the men with plain cameras, the "still" men, were also active. Not to be outdone by their comrades with the machine-gun action, they sprang from the car at intervals, ran along the footway, and snapped the party as the train drew level with them.
It was a field day for cameras, but enthusiastic people also counted. Men and women had clambered up the hard, stratified rock of the cuttings that carry the line to the bridge, and they were also standing under the bridge on the slopes, and on the flats by the river. They were cheering, and—yes, they were busy with their cameras also—cameras cannot be evaded in Canada, even in the wilds.
One had the impression, from the difficult perches on which people were to be found, that wherever the Prince would go in Canada, to whatever lonely or difficult spot his travels would lead him, he would always find a Canadian man, and possibly a Canadian woman standing waiting or clinging to precarious holds, glad to be there, so long as he (or she) had breath to cheer and a free hand to wave a flag. And this impression was confirmed by the story of the next months.
Saturday, August 23, was supposed to give His Royal Highness the half-day holiday which is the due of any worker. That half day was peculiarly Canadian.
The business of the morning was one of singular charm. The Prince visited the Convent of the Ursulines, to which in the old days wounded Montcalm was taken, and in whose quiet chapel his body lies.
The nuns are cloistered and do not open their doors to visitors, but on this day they welcomed the Prince with an eagerness that was altogether delightful. They showed him through their serene yet bare reception rooms, and with pride placed before him the skull of Montcalm, which they keep in their recreation room, together with a host of historic documents dealing with the struggles of those distant days.
The party was taken through the nuns' chapel, and sent on with smiles to the public chapel to look on Montcalm's tomb, originally a hole in the chapel fabric torn by British shells. The nuns could not go into that chapel. "We are cloistered," they told us.
These child-like nuns, with their serene and smiling faces, were overjoyed to receive His Royal Highness and anxious to convey to him their good will.
"We cannot go to England—we cannot leave our house—but our hearts are always with you, and there are none more loyal than us, and none more earnest in teaching loyalty to all the girls who come to us to study. Yes, we teach it in French, but what does that matter? We can express the Canadian spirit just as well in that language." So said a very vivid and practical little nun to me, and she was anxious that England should realize how dear they felt the bond.
The Prince's afternoon "off" was spent out of Quebec at the beautiful village of St. Anne's Beaupré, where, set in lovely surroundings, there is a miraculous shrine to St. Anne. The Prince visited the beautiful basilica, and saw the forest of sticks and crutches left behind as tokens of their cure by generations of sufferers.
News of his visit had got abroad, and when he left the shrine in company of the clergy, he was surrounded by a big crowd who restricted all movement by their cheerful importunity. A local photographer, rising to the occasion, refused to let His Royal Highness escape until he had taken an historic snap. Not merely a snap of the Prince and the priests with him, but of as many of the citizens of Beaupré as he could get into a wide angle lense. This was a tremendous occasion, and he yelled at the top of his voice to the people to:
"Come and be photographed with the Prince. Come and be taken with your future King."
Taken with their future King, the people of Beaupré were entirely disinclined to let him go. They crowded round him so that it was only force that enabled his entourage to clear a tactful way to his car. Even in the car the driver found himself faced with all the opportunities of the chauffeur of the Juggernaut with none of his convictions. The car was hemmed in by the crowd, and the crowd would not give way.
It is possible that at this jolly crisis somebody mentioned the Prince's need for tea, and at the mention of this solemn and inexplicable British rite the crowd gave way, and the car got free.
On Sunday, August 24th, His Royal Highness came under the sway of that benevolent despot in the Kingdom of Efficiency, the Canadian Pacific Railway.
He motored out along a road that Quebec is proud of, because it has a reputable surface for automobiles in a world of natural earth tracks, through delightful country to a small station which [had?] a Gallic air, Three Rivers. Here he boarded the Royal Train.
It was a remarkable train. Not merely did its construction, length, tonnage and ultimate mileage set up new records, but in it the idealist's dream of perfection in travelling came true.
It might be truer to say the Royal Party did not take the train, it took them. As each member of the party mounted into his compartment, or Pullman car, he at once ceased to concern himself with his own well-being. To think of oneself was unnecessary. The C.P.R. had not only arranged to do the thinking, but had also arranged to do it better.
The external facts concerning the train were but a part of its wonder. And the minor part. It was the largest train of its kind to accomplish so great a single run—it weighed over a thousand tons, and travelled nearly ten thousand miles. It was a fifth of a mile in length. Its ten splendid cars were all steel. Some of them were ordinary sleepers, some were compartment and drawing-room cars. Those for the Prince and his Staff were sumptuous private cars with state-rooms, dining-rooms, kitchens, bathrooms, and cosy observation rooms and platforms, beautifully fitted and appointed.
The train was a modern hotel strayed accidentally on to wheels. It had its telephone system; its own electricity; its own individually controlled central heat. It had a laundry service for its passengers, and its valets always on the spot to renew the crease of youth in all trousers. It had its own newspaper, or, rather, bulletin, by which all on board learnt the news of the external world twice a day, no matter in what wild spot the train happened to be. It had its dark-room for photographers, its dispensary for the doctor and its untiring telegraph expert to handle all wired messages, including the correspondents' cables. It had its dining-rooms and kitchens and its staff of first-class chefs, who worked miracles of cuisine in the small space of their kitchen, giving over a hundred people three meals a day that no hotel in London could exceed in style, and no hotel in England could hope to equal in abundance. It carried baggage, and transferred it to Government Houses or hotels, and transferred it back to its cars and baggage vans in a manner so perfect that one came to look upon the matter almost as a process of nature, and not as a breathless phenomenon.
It was the trainde luxe, but it was really more than that. It was a train handled by experts from Mr. A. B. Calder, who represented the President of the Company, down to the cleaning boy, who swept up the cars, and they were experts of a curious quality of their own.
Whatever the Canadian Pacific Railway is (and it has its critics), there can be no doubt that, as an organization, it captures the loyalty, as it calls forth all the keenness and ability of its servants. It is something that quickens their imagination and stimulates their enthusiasm. There was something warm and invigorating about the way each man set up within himself a counsel of perfection—which he intended to exceed. Waiters, negro car porters, brakemen, secretaries—every man on that staff of sixty odd determined thathisdepartment was going to be a living example, not of what he could do, but of what the C.P.R. could do.
Theesprit de corpswas remarkable. Mr. Calder told us at the end of the trip that as far as the staff working of the train was concerned he need not have been in control. He had not issued a single order, nor a single reprimand in the three months. The men knew their work perfectly; they did it perfectly.
When one thinks of a great organization animated from the lowest worker to the President by so lively and extraordinarily human a spirit of loyalty that each worker finds delight in improving on instructions, one must admit that it has the elements of greatness in it.
My own impression after seeing it working and the work it has done, after seeing the difficulties it has conquered, the districts it has opened up, the towns it has brought into being, is that, as an organization, the Canadian Pacific Railway is great, not merely as a trading concern, but as an Empire-building factor. Its vision has been big beyond its own needs, and the Dominion today owes not a little to the great men of the C.P.R., who were big-minded enough to plan, not only for themselves, but also for all Canada.
And the big men are still alive. In Quebec we had the good fortune to meet Lord Shaughnessy, whose acute mind was the very soul of the C.P.R. until he retired from the Presidency a short time ago, and Mr. Edward W. Beatty, who has succeeded him.
Lord Shaughnessy may be a retired lion, but he is by no means a dead one. A quiet man of powerful silences, whose eyes can be ruthless, and his lips wise. A man who appears disembodied on first introduction, for one overlooks the rest of him under the domination of his head and eyes.
The best description of Mr. Beatty lies in the first question one wants to ask him, which is, "Are you any relation to the Admiral?"
The likeness is so remarkable that one is sure it cannot be accidental. It is accidental, and therefore more remarkable. It is the Admiral's face down to the least detail of feature, though it is a trifle younger. There is the same neat, jaunty air—there is even the same cock of the hat over the same eye. There is the same sense of compact power concealed by the same spirit of whimsical dare-devilry. There is the same capacity, the same nattiness, the same humanness. There is the same sense of abnormality that a man looking so young should command an organization so enormous, and the same recognition that he is just the man to do it.
Both these men are impressive. They are big men, but then so are all the men who have control in the C.P.R. They are more than that, they can inspire other men with their own big spirit. We met many heads of departments in the C.P.R., and we felt that in all was the same quality. Mr. Calder, as he began, "A. B." as he soon became, was the one we came in contact with most, and he was typical of his service.
"A. B." was not merely our good angel, but our good friend from the first. Not merely did he smooth the way for us, but he made it the jolliest and most cheery way in the world. He is a bundle of strange qualities, all good. He is Puck, with the brain of an administrator. The king of story tellers, with an unfaltering instinct for organization. A poet, and a mimic and a born comedian, plus a will that is never flurried, a diplomacy that never rasps, and a capacity for the routine of railway work that is—C.P.R. A man of big heart, big humanness, and big ability, whom we all loved and valued from the first meeting.
And, over all, he is a C.P.R. man, the type of man that organization finds service for, and is best served by them; an example that did most to impress us with a sense of the organization's greatness.