The long week-end, so strenuously begun, did, however, give the Prince his opportunity for rest and recreation. He had a quiet time in the home of the Governor-General at the beautiful Rideau Hall, the attractive and spacious grounds of which are part of the untrammelled expanses of the lovely Rockhill Park which hangs on a cliff and keeps company with the shining Ottawa river for miles to the east of the city. Apart from sightseeing, and golfing and dancing at the pretty County Club across the Ottawa on the Hull side, he attempted no program until Monday morning.
Ottawa is not so virile in atmosphere as other of the Canadian cities. Its artificial heart, the Parliament area, seems to absorb most of its vitality. Its architecture is massed very effectively on the hill whose steep cliffs in a spray of shrubs, rise at the knee of the two rivers, the Ottawa and the Rideau, but outside the radius of the Parliament buildings and the few, fine, brisk, lively streets that serve them, the town fades disappointingly eastward, westward and northward into spiritless streets of residences.
The shores of the river are its chiefest attraction. Below the Parliament bluff, there lies to the left a silver white spit in the blue of the stream, that humps itself into a green and habitual mass on which are a huddle of picturesque houses. These hide the spray of the Chaudière Falls, which stretch between this island and the Hull side. Below the Falls is the picturesque mass of a lumber "boom," that stretches down the river.
To the extreme right beyond the locks of Rideau Canal, is the dramatic lattice-work of a fine bridge, a bridge where railroad tracks, tram-roads, automobile and footways dive under and over each other at the entrances in order to find their different levels for crossing. Beyond the bridge, and close against it is the jutting cliff that makes the point of Major Hill Park.
Between these two extremes, right and left, one faces a broad plain, wooded and gemmed with painted houses, and ending in a smoke-blue rampart of distant hills—all of it luminant with the curiously clarified light of Canada.
From Major Hill Park the riverside avenue goes east over the Rideau, whose Falls are famous, but now obscured by a lumber mill; past Rideau Hall to Rockhill Park. Rockhill Park is a delight. It has all the joys of the primitive wilderness plus a service of street-cars. Its promenade under the fine and scattered trees follows the lip of the cliff along the Ottawa, and across the blue stream can be seen the fillet of gold beach of the far side, and on the stream are red-sailed boats, canoes, and natty gasolene launches. How far Rockhill Park keeps company with the Ottawa, I do not know. A stroll of nearly two hours brought me to a region of comely country houses, set in broad gardens—but there was still park, and it seemed to go on for ever.
There are two or three Golf Clubs (every town in Canada has a golf course, or two, and sometimes they are municipal) over the river on the Hull side—a side that was at the time of our visit a place of pilgrimage from Ottawa proper. For it is in Quebec, where the "dry" law is not implacable as that of Ottawa and Ontario. Hull is also noted for its match factory and other manufactures that make up a very good go-ahead industrial town, as well as for the fact that in matters of contributions to Victory Loans, and that sort of thing, it can hold its own with any city, though that city be five times its size.
The chief of the Ottawa clubs on the Hull side is the County Club, an idyllic place that has made the very best out of the rather rough plain, and stands looking through the trees to the rapids of the Ottawa river. It is a delightful club, built with the usual Western instinct for apposite design, and, as with most clubs on the American Continent, it is a revelation of comfort. Its dining-room is extraordinarily attractive, for it is actually the spacious verandah of the building, screened by trellis work into which is woven the leaves and flowers of climbers. The ceiling is a canopy of flowers and green leaves, and to dine here overlooking the lawns is to know an hour of the greatest charm.
The Prince was the guest here on several occasions, and dances were given in his honour. For this purpose the lawn in front of the verandah was squared off with a high arcadian trellis, and between the pillars of this trellis were hung flowers and flags and lights, and all the trees about had coloured bulbs amid their leaves, so that at night it was an impression of Arcady as a modern Watteau might see it, with the crispness and the beauty of the women and the vivid dresses of the women giving the scene a quality peculiarly and vivaciously Canadian.
The circumstances of Monday, September 1st, made it an unforgettable day.
The chief ceremonies on the Prince's program were the laying of the corner-stone of the new Parliament Buildings, and the inauguration of the Victory Loan. But something else happened which made it momentous. It happened to be Labour Day.
It was the day when the whole of Labour in Canada—and indeed in America—gave itself over to demonstrations. Labour held street parades, field sports, and, I daresay, made speeches. It was the day of days for the workers.
There were some who thought that the program of Labour would clash with the program of the Prince. That, to put it at its mildest, Labour on a holiday would ignore the Royal ceremonials and emasculate them as functions. The men who put forward these opinions were Canadians, but they did not know Canada. It was Labour Day, and Labour made the day for the Prince.
When the Prince had learnt that it was the People's day, and that there was to be a big sports meeting and gala in one of the Ottawa parks, he had specially added another item to his full list of events, and made it known that he would visit the park.
Labour promptly returned the courtesy, and of its own free will turned its parade into a guard of honour, which lined the fine Rideau and Wellington streets for his progress between Government House and Parliament Square.
As far as I could gather Labour decided upon and carried this out without consulting anybody. Streets were taken over without any warning, and certainly without any fuss. There seemed to be few police about, and there was no need for them. Labour took command of the show in the interest of its friend the Prince, and would not permit the slightest disorderliness.
It was a remarkable sight. Early in the morning the Labour Parade appeared along Rideau Street, mounting the hill to the Parliament House. The processionists, each group in the costume of its calling, walked in long, thin files on each side of the road, the line broken at intervals by the trade floats. Floats are an essential part of every American parade; they are what British people call "set-pieces," tableaux built up on wagons or on automobiles; all of them are ingenious and most of them are beautiful.
These floats represented the various trades, a boiler-maker's shop in full (and noisy) action; a stone-worker's bench in operation; the framework of a wooden house on an auto, to show Ottawa what its carpenters and joiners could do, and so on. With these marched the workers, distinctively clothed, as though the old guilds had never ceased.
When the head of the procession reached the entrance of Parliament Square it halted, and the line, turning left and right, walked towards the curb, pressing back the thousands of sightseers to the pavement in a most effective manner. They lined and kept the route in this fashion until the Prince had passed.
It was thus that the Prince drove, not between the ranks of an army of soldiers, but through the ranks of the army of labour. Not khaki, but the many uniforms of labour marked the route. There were firemen in peaked caps, with bright steel grappling-hooks at their waists; butchers in white blouses, white trousers, and white peaked caps; there were tram-conductors, and railway-men, hotel porters, teamsters in overalls, lumbermen in calf-high boots of tan, with their rough socks showing above them on their blue jumper trousers, barbers, drug-store clerks and men of all the trades.
Above this guard of workers were the banners of the Unions, some in English, some proclaiming in French that here was "La Fraternité Unie Charpentiers et Menuisiers," and so on.
It was a real demonstration of democracy. It was the spontaneous and affectionate action of the everyday people, determined to show how personal was its regard for a Prince who knew how to be one with the everyday people. As a demonstration it was immensely more significant than the most august item of a formal program.
As the Prince rode through those hearty and friendly ranks in a State carriage, and behind mounted troopers, the troopers and the trappings seemed to matter very little indeed. The crowd that cheered and waved flags—and sometimes spanners and kitchen pans—and the youth who waved his gloves back and forth with all their own freedom from ceremony, were the things that mattered.
When, at the laying of the corner-stone a few minutes later, Sir Robert Borden declared that, in repeating the act of his grandfather, who laid the original corner-stone of Canada's Parliament buildings, as Prince of Wales, in 1860, His Royal Highness was inaugurating a new era, the happenings of just now seemed to lend conviction that indeed a new phase of history had come into being. It was a phase in which throne and people had been woven into a strong and sane democracy, begot of the intimate personal sympathy, understanding and reliance the war had brought about between rulers and people.
The new buildings replace the old Parliament Houses burnt down in the beginning of the war. The fire was attended by sad loss of life, and one of those killed was a lady, who, having got out of the burning building in safety, was suddenly overcome by a feminine desire to save her furs. She re-entered the blazing building and was lost.
The new building follows the design of the old, rather rigid structure, though it has not the campanile. The porch where the stone was laid was draped in huge hangings descending in grave folds from a sheaf of flags; this with the façade of the grey stone building made a superb backing to the great stage of terrace upon which the ceremony was enacted. It had all the dignity, colour and braveness of a Durbar.
The Victory Loan was inaugurated by the unfurling of a flag by the Prince. He promised to give to each of the cities and villages (by the way, I don't think the villages are villages in Canada; they are all towns) who subscribed a certain percentage a replica of this special flag. There was keen competition throughout the Dominion for these flags, Canadians responding to the pictures on the hoardings with a good will, in order to win a "Prince of Wales' Flag."
Although the Prince was down to visit Hull at a specific time that afternoon, he set aside an hour in order to pay his promised visit to the Labour fête in Lansdowne Park. There was only time for him to drive through the park, but the warm reception given to him made it an action really worth while.
Hull, which is inclined to sprawl as a town, was transformed by sun, flags and people into a place of great attraction when the Prince arrived. And if there was not any high pomp about the visit, there was certainly prettiness. The pretty girls of Hull had transformed themselves into representatives of all the races of the Entente, and as the Prince stood on the scarlet steps of a daïs outside the Town Hall, each one of these came forward and made him a curtsy.
Following them were four tiny girls, each holding a large bouquet, each bouquet being linked to the others by broad red ribbons. They were the jolliest little girls, but nervous, and after negotiating the terrors of the scarlet stairs with discretion, the broad desert of the daïs undid them—or rather it didn't. At the moment of presentation, four little girls, as well as four bouquets, were linked together by broad red ribbons, until it was difficult to tell which was little girl and which was bouquet. There were many untanglers present, but the chief of them was the Prince of Wales himself.
The Hull ceremonials were certainly as happy as any could be. The little girls gave a homely touch, so did the people—match-factory girls, brown-habited Franciscan friars, and the rest—who joined in the public reception, but the crowning touch of this atmosphere was the review of the war veterans.
There were so many war veterans that Hull had no open space large enough to parade them. Hull, therefore, had the happy idea of reviewing them in the main street. Thus the everyday street was packed with everyday men who had fought for the very homes about them. That seemed to bring out the real purpose of the great war more than any effort in propaganda could.
It was in the main street, too, after receiving a loving cup from the Great War Veterans, that the Prince spoke to these comrades of the war. He stood up in his car and addressed them simply and directly, thanking them and wishing them good luck, and there was something infinitely suggestive in his standing up there so simply amid that pack of men, and women wedged tightly between the houses of that homely street.
Wedged is assuredly the right term, for it was with difficulty, and only by infinite care, that the car was driven through the crowd and away.
Montreal was not actually in the schedule. In the program of the Prince's tour it was put down as the last place he should visit. This, in a sense, was fitting. It was proper that the greatest city in Canada should wind up the visit in a befitting week.
All the same, as the Prince himself said, he could not possibly start for the West without making at least a call on Montreal, so he rounded off his travels among the big cities of the Canadian East by spending the inside of a day there.
I wonder whether there was ever an inside of a day so crowded? I was present when Manchester rushed President Wilson through a headlong morning of events, and the Manchester effort was pedestrian beside Montreal's. Even the Prince, who himself can put any amount of vigour into life, must have found nothing in his experience to equal a non-stop series of ceremonies carried on, at times, at a pace of forty-miles an hour.
That is what happened. Montreal was given about four hours of the Prince. Montreal is a progressive city; it has an up-to-date and "Do-It-Now" sense. Confronted at very short notice with those four hours, it promptly set itself to make the most of them. It packed about four days' program into them.
It managed this, of course, by using motor-cars. The whole of the American Continent, I have come to see, has a motor-car method of thinking out and accomplishing things. Montreal certainly has. Montreal met the Prince in an automobile mood, whipped him from the train and entertained him on the top gear for every moment of his stay.
He arrived at the handsome Windsor Station of the C.P.R. on the morning of Tuesday, September 2nd, and was at once taken to a big, grey motor. His guide, the Mayor of the city, then began to show him how time could be annihilated and days compressed into hours.
In those few hours he was shown not a section of the great commercial city, not merely the City Hall, and a street or two, and a place wherein to lunch. He was shown all Montreal. He was shown the city of Montreal and the suburbs of Montreal, and verily I believe he was shown every man, woman, and certainly every child of flag-wagging age, in Montreal.
And when he had seen the high, fine business blocks of Montreal, and the pretty residential districts, where the well-designed homes seem to stand on terrace over terrace of the smoothest, greenest grass, he was shown the country-side about Montreal, the comely little habitant parishes and holiday places that make outlying Montreal, and the convents and the colleges where Montreal educates itself, the Universities where that education is rounded off, and the long, wide, straight speedways over which Montreal citizens get the best out of their motor-car moments—and he was shown how it was done.
And after showing him the rivers that make the hilly country about Montreal beautiful, and the little pocket villages, he was swung back out of the green of the summer country and shown more business blocks, and just a hint of the great wharves and docks that fringe the St. Lawrence and give the city its great industrial power and fame. Then when they had shown him all the things that man usually sees only after weeks of tenacious exploration, they spun him up a corkscrew drive that goes first among charming houses, then among beautiful deep trees and grass, and sat him down in a glowing pavilion on the top of this hill, Mount Royal—the Montreal that gives the city its name—and gave him lunch.
There, as he ate, he looked down over one of the great views of the world. Below him was the splendid vista of a splendid city; the mass of tall offices, factories and the high fret of derricks and elevators along the quays that covered the site of the Indian lodges of Hochelaga that Jacques Cartier first found; the mass of spires from a thousand churches, the swelling domes and hipped roofs of basilica and college that had grown up from the old religious outpost, the nucleus of Christianity in the wilds that was to convert the wilds, the Ville Marie de Montreal that Maisonneuve had founded nearly three centuries ago.
And beyond this swinging breadth of city that was modernity, as well as history, the Prince saw the grey, misty bosom of the St. Lawrence, winding broad and significant beneath the distant hills.
Truly it had been a mighty day, worthy of a mighty city. And a day not merely big in achievement, but big in meaning also. In his drive the Prince had covered no less than thirty-six miles in and about the city, and on practically the whole of that great sweep there had been crowds, and at times big crowds, all friendly and with an enthusiasm that was French as well as Canadian.
There were naturally tracts of road in the country where people did not gather in force, but almost everywhere there were some. Sometimes it was a family gathered by a pretty house draped with flags. Sometimes it was a village, making up with the flags in their hands for the hanging flags short notice had prevented their sporting.
On an open stretch of road the Prince would come abreast of a convent in the fields. By the fence of the convent all the little girls would be ranked, dressed, sometimes, in national ribbons, and anyhow carrying flags, and with them would be the nuns. Or if the convent was not a teaching order, the nuns would be by themselves, forming a delightful picture of quiet respect on the porch or along the garden wall.
Boys' schools had the inmates gathered at the road-edge in jolly mobs, though some of these had a semi-military dignity, because of the quaint and kepi-ed uniform of the school, that made the boys look like cadets out of a picture by Detaille.
The seminaries had their flocks of black fledglings drawn up under the professor-priests, and the sober black of these embryo priests had not the slightest restriction on their enthusiasm.
There were crowds everywhere on that extraordinary ride, but it was in Montreal itself that the throngs reached immense proportions. From the first moment of arrival, when the Prince in mufti rode out from under the clangour of "God Bless the Prince of Wales" played on the bells of St. George's Church, that hob-nobs with the station, crowds were thick about the route. As he swung from Dominion Square (in which the station stands) into the Regent Street of Montreal, St. Catherine Street, crowds of employés crowded the windows of the big and fine stores, and added their welcome to the mass on the sidewalks.
Short notice had curtailed decoration, but the enthusiastic employés (mainly feminine) of one tall store strove to rectify the lack by arming themselves with flags and stationing themselves at every window. Balancing perilously, they waited until the Prince came level, and then set the whole face of the tall building fluttering with Union Jacks.
From these streets, impressive in their sense of vigour and industry, the procession of cars mounted through the residential quarter to Mount Royal Park. Here in the presence of a big crowd that surrounded him and got to close quarters at once, the Prince alighted and stayed a few minutes at the statue of Georges Etienne Cartier, the father of Canadian unity, whose centenary was then being celebrated, since the war forbade rejoicing on the real anniversary in 1914.
Cartier's daughter, Hortense Cartier, was present at this little ceremony, and she was, as it were, a personal link between her father and the Prince, who is himself helping to inaugurate a new phase of unity, that of the Empire.
From this point the Prince's route struck out into the country districts that I have described, but the crowds had accumulated rather than diminished when he returned to the streets of the city, about one o'clock, and he drove through lanes of people so dense that at times the pace of his car was retarded to a walk.
The crowd was a suggestive one. All ranks and conditions were in it—and conditions rather than ranks were apparent in the dock-side area, which is a dingy one for Canada. But in all the crowds the thing that struck me most was their proportion of children. Montreal seemed a veritable hive of children. There were thousands and thousands of them.
The streets were bursting with kiddies. And not merely were there multitudes of girls and boys of that thoroughly vociferous age of somewhere under twelve, but there were ranked battalions of boys and maids, all of an age obviously under twenty.
Quebec is the province of large families. Ten children to a marriage is a commonplace, and twenty is not a rarity. A man is not thought to be worth his salt unless he has his quiver full. And the result of this as I saw it in the streets gives food for thought.
That huge marshalling of the citizens of tomorrow gives one not merely a sense of Canada's potentiality, but of the potentiality of Quebec in the future of Canada. With a new race of such a healthy standard growing up, the future of Montreal has a look of greatness. Montreal is now the biggest and most vigorous city in Canada, it plays a large part in the life of Canada. What part will it play tomorrow?
A good as well as great part, surely. Discriminating Canadians tell you that the French-Canadian makes the best type of citizen. He is industrious, go-ahead, sane, practical; he is law-abiding and he is loyal. His history shows that he is loyal; indeed, Canada as it stands today owes not a little to French-Canadian loyalty and willingness to take up arms in support of British institutions.
French-Canada took up arms in the Great War to good purpose, sending 40,000 men to the Front, though its good work has been obscured by the political propaganda made out of the Anti-Conscription campaign. Sober politicians—by no means on the side of the French-Canadians—told me that there was rather more smoke in that matter than circumstances created, and in Britain particularly the business was over-exaggerated. There was a good deal of politics mixed up in the attitude of Quebec, "And in any case," said my informant, "Quebec was not the first to oppose conscription, nor yet the bitterest, though she was, perhaps, the most candid."
The language difficulty is a difficulty, yet that has been the subject of exaggeration, also. Those who find it a grave problem seem to be those who have never come in contact with it, but are anxious about it at a distance. Those who are in contact with the French-speaking races say that French and English-speaking peoples get on well on the whole, and have an esteem for each other that makes nothing of the language barrier.
Concerning the Roman Catholic Church, which is certainly in a very powerful position in Quebec, I have heard from non-Catholics quite as much said in favour of the good it does, as I have heard to the contrary, so I concluded that on its human side it is as human as any other concern, doing good and making mistakes in the ordinary human way. As far as its spiritual side is concerned there is no doubt at all that it holds its people. Its huge churches are packed with huge congregations at every service on Sunday.
On the whole, then, I fancy that that part of Canada's future which lies in the hands of the children of Montreal, and the Province of Quebec generally, will be for the good of the Dominion. Certainly the attitude of the people as shown in the packed and ecstatic streets of Montreal was a very good omen.
The welcome had had its usual effect on the Prince. The formal salute never had a chance, and from the outset of the ride he had stood up in his car and waved back in answer to the cheering of the crowd. When standing for so many miles tired him, he sat high up on the folded hood, with one of his suite to hold him, and he did not stop waving his hat. In this way he accomplished the thirty-six miles ride, only slipping down into his seat as the car mounted the stiff zig-zag that led up Mount Royal to the luncheon pavilion.
The slowness of this climb was, in a sense, his undoing. As his car neared the top of the hill, two Montreal flappers, whose extreme youth was only exceeded by their extreme daring, sprang on to the footboard and held him up with autograph books. He immediately produced a fountain pen, and sitting once more on the back of the car, wrote his name as the car went along, and the young ladies from Montreal clung on to it.
This delightful act was too much for one of the maidens, for, on getting her book back, she kissed the Prince impulsively, and then in a sudden attack of deferred modesty, sprang from the car and ran for her blushes' sake.
From the luncheon pavilion the Prince was whirled to the Royal train, and in that, after a recuperative round of golf at a course just outside Montreal, he set out for the comparative calm of the great West.
The run on the days following the packed moments of Montreal was one of luxurious indolence. The Royal train was heading for the almost fabled trout of Nipigon, where, among the beauties of lake and stream, the Prince was to take a long week-end fishing and preparing for more crowds and more strenuosity in the Canadian West.
Through those two days the train seemed to meander in a leisurely fashion through varied and attractive country, only stopping now and then as though it had to work off a ceremonial occasionally as an excuse for existing at all.
The route ran through pleasant, farmed land between Montreal and North Bay and Sudbury, and then switched downward through the bleak nickel and copper country to the beautiful coast of Lake Huron on its way to Sault Ste. Marie. From this town, which the whole Continent knows as "Soo," it plunged north through the magnificent scenery of the Algoma area to Oba, and, turning west again (and in the night), it ran on to Nipigon Lake.
It was a genial and attractive run. We sat, as it were, lapped in the serenity of the C.P.R., and studied the view. Wherever there were houses there were people, to wave something at the Prince's car. At one homestead a man and his wife stood alone near the split-rail fence, the woman curtsying, the man, who had obviously been a soldier, flag-wagging some message we could not catch, with a big red ensign; an infinitely touching sight, that couple getting their greeting to the Prince in spite of difficulties. On the stations the local school children were always drawn up in ranks, most of them holding flags, many having a broad red-white-and-blue ribbon across their front rank to show their patriotism.
At North Bay, a purposeful little town that lets the traveller either into the scenic and sporting delights of Lake Nipissing, or into the mining districts of the Timiskaming country, there was a bright little reception. North Bay is a characteristic Canadian town. It was born in a night, so to speak, and its growth outstrips editions of guide books. Outside the neat station there is a big grass oblong, and about this green the frame houses and the shops extend. Behind it is the town so keen on growing up about the big railway repair shops, that it has no time yet to give to road-making.
The ceremonial was in the green oblong, and all North Bay left their houses and shops to attend. The visit had more the air of a family party than aught else, for, after a mere pretence of keeping ranks, the people broke in upon the function, and Prince and Staff and people became inextricably mixed. When His Royal Highness took car to drive around the town, the crowd cut off the cars in the procession, and for half an hour North Bay was full of orderlies and committee-men automobiling about speculative streets in search of a missing Prince, plus one Mayor.
Sudbury, the same type of town, growing at a distracting pace because of its railway connection and its smelting plants, had the same sort of ceremony. From here we passed through a land of almost sinister bleakness. There were tracts livid and stark, entirely without vegetation, and with the livid white and naked surface cut into wild channels and gullies by rains that must have been as pitiless as the land. It was as though we had steamed out of a human land into the drear valleys of the moon, and one expected to catch glimpses of creatures as terrifying as any Mr. Wells has imagined. So cadaverous a realm could breed little else.
It was the country of nickel and copper. We saw occasionally the buildings and workings (scarce less grim than the land) through the agency of which came the grey slime that had rendered the country so bleak. They are particularly rich mines, and rank high among the nickel workings in the world. They were also, let it be said, of immense value to the Allies during the war.
Pushing south, the line soon redeems itself in the beauty of the lakes. It bends to skirt the shore of Lake Huron, a great blue sea, and yet but a link in the chain of great lakes that lead from Superior through it to Erie and Ontario lakes, and on to the St. Lawrence.
We arrived on a beautiful evening at Algoma, a spot as delightful as a Cornish village, on the beach of that inlet of Lake Huron called Georgian Bay. We walked in the astonishing quiet of the evening through the tiny place, and along the deep, sandy road that has not yet been won from the primitive forests, to where but a tiny fillet of beach stood between the spruce woods and the vast silence of the water. From that serene and quiet spot we looked through the still evening to the far and beautiful Islands.
In the wonderful clear air, and with all the soft colours of the sunset glowing in the still water, the beauty of the place was almost too poignant. We might have been the discoverers of an uninhabited bay in the Islands of the Blessed. I have never known any place so remote, so still and so beautiful. But it was far from being uninhabited. There were rustic picnic tables under the spruce trees, and there was a diving-board standing over the clear water. The inhabitants of Algoma knew the worth of this place, and we felt them to be among the luckiest people on the earth.
The islands we saw far away in the soft beauty of the sunset, and between which the enigmatic light of a lake steamer was moving, are said to be Hiawatha's Islands. In any case, it was here that the pageant of Hiawatha was held some years back, and across the still lake in that pageant, Hiawatha in his canoe went out to be lost in the glories of the sunset.
On the morning of Tuesday, September 4th, the train skirted Georgian Bay, passing many small villages given over to lumber and fishing, and all having, with their tiny jetties, motor launches and sailing boats, something of the perfection of scenes viewed in a clear mirror. By mid-morning the train reached Sault Ste. Marie.
"Soo" is a vivid place. It is a young city on the rise. A handful of years ago it was a French mission, beginning to turn its eyes languidly towards lumber. It is on the neck that joins the waters of Superior and Huron, but the only through traffic was that of the voyageurs, who made the portage round the stiff St. Mary's Rapids, that, with a drop of eighteen feet in their length, forbade any vessel but that of the canoe of the adventurer to pass their troubled waters.
Then America and Canada began to build canals and locks to link the great lakes, in spite of the Rapids, and "Soo" woke. It has been awake and living since that moment. It has been playing lock against lock with the Michigan men across the river, each planning cunningly to establish a system that will carry the long lake vessels not only in locks befitting their size, but in locks that can be handled more swiftly than those of the rival.
At the moment the prize is with Canada. It has a lock nine hundred feet long, and can do the business of lowering a great vessel from Superior to Huron with one action, where America uses four locks. The Americans have a larger lock than the Canadian, but the Canadians are quicker.
And this means something. The traffic on these lakes is greater than the traffic on many seas. Down this vast water highway come the narrow pencils of lake-boats carrying grain and ore and lumber in hulls that are all hold. They come and go incessantly. "Soo," indeed, handles about three times the tonnage of Suez yearly, and there is the American side to add to that.
With this brisk movement of commercial life within her, "Soo" has thrived like a cold. Where, in the old days, the local inhabitants could be reckoned on the fingers of two hands, there is now a city of about twenty thousand, and it is still growing. It is a city of graceful streets and neat houses climbing over the Laurentine Hills that make the site. It is breezy and self-assured, and draws its comfortable affluence from its shipping, its paper-mills, its steel works, as well as from lumber, agriculture and other industries.
It met the Prince as becomes a youth of promise. Crowds massed on the lawns before the red sandstone station, and in all the streets there were crowds. And crowds followed his every movement, however swift it was, for "Soo" has the automobile fever as badly as any other town in Canada, and car owners packed their families, even to the youngest in arms, into tonneaux and joined a procession a mile long, that followed the Prince about the town.
It is true that some of the crowd was America out to look at Royalty. Americans were not slow to make the most of the fact that they were to have a Prince across the river. From early morning the ferry that runs from Michigan to the British Empire was packed with Republican autos and Republicans on foot, all eager to be there when Royalty arrived. They gathered in the streets and joined in the procession. They gave the Prince the hearty greeting of good-fellows. They were as good friends of his as anybody there. They did, in fact, give us a foretaste of what we were to expect when the Prince went to the United States.
There were the usual functions. They took place high on a hill, from which the Prince could look down upon the blue waters of the linked lakes, the many factory chimneys, the smoke of which threw a quickening sense of human endeavour athwart the scene, and the great jack-knife girder bridge, that is the railway connection between Canada and America, but above the usual functions the visit to "Soo" had items that made it particularly interesting.
He went to the great lock that carries the interlake traffic. He crossed from one side of it to the other, and then stood out on the lock gate, while it was opened to allow the passage of several small vessels. From here he went to the Algoma Railway, at the head of the canal, and in a special car was taken to the rapids that tumble down in foam between the two countries.
The train was brought to a standstill at the international boundary, where two sentries, Canadian and American, face each other, and where there was another big crowd, this time all American, to give him a cheer.
He then spent some time visiting the paper mill that helps to make "Soo" rich. He went over it department by department, asking many questions and showing that the processes fascinated him intensely. In the same way he went through the steel works, and was again intrigued by the sight of "things doing." It was, as he said himself, one of the most interesting days he had spent in the Dominion.
"Soo" let us into a wonderful tract of country.
Still in the sumptuous C.P.R. train, we swung north over the Algoma Railway track into a land so wildly magnificent and yet so lonely, that one felt that the railway line must have been built by poets for poets—we could not imagine it thriving on anything else.
As a matter of fact, it does link up rich mining and other territory, and, in time, will open a land of equal value, but just now its chief asset is scenery.
The scenery is superb. Its hills are huge and battlemented. They leap up sheer above the train, menacing it; they drop down starkly, leaving the line clinging to a ledge above a white, angry stream on a white rock bed. They crowd the line into gorges, from which the sun is banished, and where the moveless firs look like lost souls chained in the gloom of Eblis. They expand abruptly, suddenly, into swinging valleys, on whose great flanks the spruce forests look like toy decorations hanging above floors of shining sapphire—lakes, of course, but one could not think that any lake could be so blue.
Lakes fretted into lagoons by thin white slivers of shingle; rivers full of tumbled and dishevelled logs; forests in green, in which the crimson maple leaf burns brightly; vast amphitheatres of cliff-like hills; mounds of the stark Laurentine rock pushing up through trees like bald heads through the sparse covering of departing hair; miles of blanched trees and black trees standing like skeletons or strewn all-whither, like billets of stick—acres of murdered stumps, where evil forest fires have swept along; and we had even an occasional glimpse of that scourge of Canada seen smoking sullenly in the distance—all this heaped together, piled together in a reckless luxuriance makes up the scenery of the Algoma country.
Only rarely does one see the hut of rough logs and clay that denotes the settler, only occasionally is there a station, or a mill or a logging camp in this womb of loneliness. Only occasionally does one cross one of those lengthy and rakish spider bridges that give a hint of man and his works.
On a long bridge, over the Montreal river, we made the most of man and his works. It is a lengthy, curving bridge, built giddily on stilts above the boulder-strewn bed of a wicked stream. We were admiring it as a desperate work of engineering, when the train stopped with a disconcerting bump. It stopped with violence. And when we had picked ourselves up we looked out of the train and saw nothing—only that particularly vicious river and those unpleasantly jagged rocks.
When one is on a Canadian bridge this is all one sees—the depth one is going to drop, and what one is going to drop on. The top of the bridge is wide enough for the rails only, and the sides of the carriages hang beyond the rails. And there are no parapets. One just looks plumb down. We looked down, and back and forward. The struts and girders of the bridge seemed made of pack-thread and spider's web. We wondered why we should have stopped in the middle of such a place of all places. And the train looked so enormous. We asked the superintendent if the bridge could hold it.
He said he thought so, but it had never been tested by such a weight before.
From the way he said "thought," we gathered he meant "hoped."
Somebody had wanted to show the Prince the view. It was a fine view, but we were not sorry it wasn't permanent. With the view, the Prince took in a little shooting at clay pigeons in view of the days he was to spend in sporting Nipigon.
We ran straight on to Nipigon, only stopping at Oba, and that in the night. But before the night came Canada and Algoma gave us an exquisite sunset. We saw the light of the sun on a vast stretch of hummocks and hills of bald rock. They had been clothed with forest before the fires had passed over them. As the sun set, an exquisite thin cherry light shone evenly on the hills and bluffs, and on the thin and naked trees that stood up like wands in this eerie and clarified light. In the distance there was a faint vermilion in the sky, and where the tree stumps fringed the bare hills, they gave the suggestion of a band of violet edging the land. And all this in an air as clear and shining as still water. It seemed to me that Canada was waiting there for a painter of a new vision to catch its wonder.
Even in the loneliness we were never far away from the human equation. During the afternoon we had a touch of it. It was discovered by the Prince that his train was being driven by a V.C., or, rather, one of the men on the engine, the fireman, was a V.C. This man, Staff-Sergeant Meryfield, had won the distinction at Cambrai, and had returned to his calling in the ordinary way. He came back from the engine cab through the train, a very modest fellow, to be presented to the Prince, who spent a few minutes chatting with him.
Early on the morning of Friday, September 5th, the train passed through the second tunnel it had encountered in Canada, and came to a small stopping-place amid trees.
It was a lady's pocket handkerchief of a station, made up of a tool shed, a few houses and a road leading away from it. Its significance lay in the road leading away from it. That road leads to Nipigon river and lake, one of the finest trout waters in Canada. Even at that it is only famous half the year, for it hibernates in winter like any other thing in Canada that finds snow and remoteness too much for it.
At this station—Nipigon Lodge—the Prince, in shooting knickers and a great anxiety to be off and away, left the train at 8.30, and walking along the road, came to the launch that was to take him down river to the fishing camp where he was to spend a week-end of sport.
Leaving this little waterside village of neglected fishermen's huts, for the season was late and the tourists that usually fill them had all gone, he went down the beautiful stream to the more than beautiful Virgin Falls. Here he met his outfit, thirty-eight Indian guides, all of them experts in camp life and cunning in the secrets of stream and wood.
In the care of these high priests of sport, he left civilization, in the shape of the launch, behind him, and in a canoe fished down stream until the lovely reaches of Split-rock were attained; here, on the banks of the stream, amid the thick ranks of spruce, the camp was pitched.
At first it had been the intention to push on after a day's sport to other camping-places, but the situation and the comfort of this camp was so satisfactory that the Prince decided to stay, and made it his headquarters during the week-end.
It was no camp of amateur sportsmen playing at the game. It was not, perhaps, "roughing" it as the woodsman knows it, for he lies hard in a floorless tent (if he has one), as well as lives laboriously, but it was certainly a rough and ready life, as near that of the woodsman as possible.
The Prince slept in a tent, rose early, bathed in the river and shaved in the open in exactly the same manner as every one else in the party. He took his place in the "grub queue," carrying his plate to the cook-house and demanding his particular choice in bacon and eggs, broiled trout, flapjacks, or the wonderful white flatbread, which the cook, an Indian, Jimmy Bouchard, celebrated for open-fire cooking, knew how to prepare.
Sometimes before breakfast the Prince indulged his passion for running; always after breakfast he set out on foot, or in canoe for the day's fishing, returning late at night hungry and tired with the healthy weariness of hard exertion to the camp meal. There were spells round the big camp fire burning vividly amid the trees, and then sleep in the tent.
The fishing was usually done from the bass canoe, two Indian guides being always the ship's company. And fishing was not the only attraction of the stream and lake. There is always the thrilling, placid beauty of the scenery, the deep forests, the lake valleys, and the austere, forest-clad hills that rise abruptly from the enigmatic pools. And there is the active beauty of the many rapids, those piled-up and rushing masses of angry water, tossing and foaming in pent-up force through rock gates and over rocks.
He tried the adventure of these rapids, shooting through the tortured waters that look so beautiful from the shore and so terrible from the frail structure of a canoe, until it seemed to him as though not even the skill of his guides could steer through safely. He got through safely, but only after an experience which he described as the most exciting in his life.
The fishing itself proved disappointing. The famous speckled trout of Nipigon did not rise to the occasion, and the sport was fair, but not extraordinary. The best day brought in twenty-seven fish, the largest being three and a half pounds, not a good specimen of the lake's trout, which go to six and eight pounds in the ordinary course of things.
And the disappointment had an irony of its own. The man who caught the most fish was the man who couldn't fish at all. The official photographer, who had gone solely to take snapshots, also took the maximum of fish out of the river. Indeed, he was so much of an amateur that the first fish he caught placed him in such a predicament that he did not play it, but landed it with so vigorous a jerk that it flew over his head and caught high in a fir. An Indian guide had to climb the tree to "land" it.
Nevertheless, he caught the most fish, and when he returned with his spoil, the Prince said to him:
"Look here, don't you realize I'm the one to do that? You're taking my place in the program."
The reason for the indifferent sport was probably the lateness of the season—it was practically finished when the Prince arrived—and the fact that Nipigon had had a record summer, with large parties of sportsmen working its reaches steadily all the time. The fish were certainly shy, particularly, it seemed, of fly, and the best catches were made with a small fish, a sort of bull-headed minnow called cocatoose, that creeps about close to the rocks.
Of course, trout, even if famous, are naturally temperamental. They will rise in dozens at unexpected times, just as they will refuse all temptations for weeks on end. An Englishman, and no mean fisherman, once went to Nipigon to show the local inhabitants how fishing should be done. A master in British waters, he considered the speckled monsters of the lakes fit victims for his rod and fly. He went out with his guides to catch fish, and after a few days among the big trout came back disgusted.
"Did you catch any trout?" he was asked by one of his party.
"Catch 'em," he snapped. "How can one catch 'em? The infernal things are anchored."
Walking and duck shooting was also in the program, and there were other excitements.
The weather, delightful during the first two days, broke on Sunday, and there were bad winds, rainstorms and occasional hailstorms, when stones as big as small pebbles drummed on the tents and bombarded the camp.
So fierce was the wind that the Royal Standard on a high flagstaff was carried away. A pine tree was also uprooted, and fell with a crash between the Prince's tent and that of one of his suite. A yard either way and the tent would have been crushed. Fortunately the Prince was not in the tent at that moment, but the happening gave the camp its sense of adventure.
During this rest, too, the Prince suffered a little from his eyes, an irritation caused by grains of steel that had blown into them while viewing the works at "Soo." His right hand was also painful from the heartiness of Toronto, and the knuckles swollen. To set these matters right, the doctor went up from the train, and by the Indian canoe that carried the mail and the daily news bulletin, reached the camp.
When he returned on Monday, September 8th, the Prince was looking undeniably fit. He marched up the railway from the lake in footer-shorts and golf jacket, with an air of one who had thoroughly enjoyed "roughing it."