The Fair Dominion: A Record of Canadian Impressions

LOOKING FROM LAKE AGNES DOWN ON LAKES MIRROR AND LOUISE.
A RECORD OF CANADIAN IMPRESSIONS
R. E. VERNÈDE
AUTHOR OF 'THE PURSUIT OF MR. FAVIEL,' 'MERIEL OF THE MOORS,' ETC.
With 12 Illustrations in Colour from Drawings by CYRUS CUNEO
LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO., LTD. DRYDEN HOUSE, GERRARD STREET, W. 1911

PREFACE
You know how long ago, in the earlier-than-Victorian days, the country cousin, in order to see life, went up to the Metropolis. A terrible journey it was, but well worth the labour and anxiety. Accounts are still extant of how the bustle and noise of the streets amazed him, of how endless the houses seemed, how startled he was by the glittering, clattering folk, how innocent and countrified he felt by comparison with them. Nowadays, though the London we know is to that old London as a vast and sleepless city to a small somnolent town, the country cousin is no longer carried off his feet by a visit to it. It is not vast enough or noisy enough or new enough to impress him. Perhaps no single city ever will be again.
But Canada! Some Winnipeg school teachers who came over recently to see London, told a journalist that it seemed so quiet compared with Canadian cities. 'In our cities,' they said, 'it is impossible to escape from the noise of the streets.' ... Yet the streets and the cities are not really the things that impress one most in Canada. The amazing things are the forests and the fields, the prairies and the lakes and the mountains: all the illimitable space and the irrepressible men who are closing it in and giving it names for us to know it by.