CHAPTER XV
CALGARY AND THE CATTLE RANCH
I
The Royal train arrived in Calgary, Alberta, on the morning of Sunday, September 14th, after some of the members of the train had spent an hour or so shooting gophers, a small field rat, part squirrel, and at all times a great pest in grain country.
Calgary was a town that charmed at once. It stands in brilliant sunlight—and that sunlight seems to have an eternal quality—in a nest of enfolding hills. Two rivers with the humorous names of Bow and Elbow run through it; they are blue with the astonishing blueness of glacial silt.
From the hills, or from the tops of such tall buildings as the beautiful Palliser Hotel, the high and austere dividing line of the Rockies can be seen across the rolling country. Snow-cowled, and almost impalpable above the ground mist, the great range of mountains looks like the curtain wall of a stronghold of mystics.
In the streets the city itself has an air of radiance. There is an invigoration in the atmosphere that seems to give all things a peculiar quality of zest. The sidewalks have a bustling and crisp virility, the public buildings are handsome, and the streets of homes particularly gracious.
The Sunday reception of the Prince was eloquent but quiet. There were the usual big crowds, but the day was deliberately without ceremonial. Divine Service at the Pro-Cathedral, where the Prince unveiled a handsome rood-screen to the memory of those fallen in the war, was the only item in a restful day, which was spent almost entirely in the country at the County Club.
But perhaps the visit to the County Club was not altogether quiet.
The drive out to this charming place in a pit of a valley, where one of the rivers winds through the rolling hills, began in the comely residential streets.
These residential districts of Canada and America certainly impress one. The well-proportioned and pretty houses, with their deep verandahs, the trees that group about them, the sparkling grass that comes down to the edge of the curb—all give one the sense of being the work of craftsmen who are masters in design. That sense seems to me to be evident, not only in domestic architecture, but in the design of public buildings. The feeling I had was that the people on this Continent certainly know how to build. And by building, I do not mean merely erecting a house of distinction, but also choosing sites of distinction.
Nearly all the newer public buildings are of excellent design, and all are placed in excellent positions. Some of these sites are actually brilliant; the Parliament Houses at Ottawa, as seen from the river, are intensely apposite, so are those at Edmonton and Regina, while the sites of such buildings as the Banff Springs Hotel, and, in a lesser sense, the Château at Lake Louise, seem to me to have been chosen with real genius.
In saying that the people on this Continent certainly know how to build, I am speaking of both the United States and Canada. This fine sense of architecture is even more apparent in the United States (I, of course, only speak of the few towns I visited) than in Canada, for there are more buildings and it is a richer country. The sense of architecture may spring from that country, or it may be that the whole Continent has the instinct. As I am not competent to judge, I accuse the whole of the Western hemisphere of that virtue.
The Prince passed through these pretty districts where are the beautiful houses of ranchers and packing kings, farmers and pig rearers whose energy and vision have made Calgary rich as well as good to look upon. Passing from this region of good houses and good roads, he came upon a highway that is prairie even less than unalloyed, for constant traffic has scored it with a myriad ruts and bumps.
Half-way up a hill, where a bridge of wood jumps across the stream that winds amid the pleasant gardens of the houses, the Prince's car was held up. A mob of militants rushed down upon it, and neither chauffeur, nor Chief of Staff, nor suite could resist.
It was an attack not by Bolshevists, but by Boy Scouts. They flung themselves across the road in a mass, and would take no nonsense from any one. They insisted that the engine should take a holiday, and that they should hitch themselves to the car. They won their point and hitched. The car, under some hundred boy-power, went up the long hill—and a gruelling hill it is—through the club gates, and down a longer hill, to where, in a deep cup, the house stands.
At the club the visit was entirely formal. The Prince became an ordinary member and chatted to other men and women members in a thoroughly club-like manner.
"He is so easy to get on with," said one lady. "I found it was I who was the more reserved for the first few minutes, and it was I who had to become more human.
"He is a young man who has something to say, and who has ears to listen to things worth while. He has no use for preliminaries or any other nonsense that wastes time in 'getting together.'"
He lunched at the club and drifted about among the people gathered on the lawns before going for a hard walk over the hills.
II
The real day of functions was on Monday, when the Prince drove through the streets, visiting many places, and, later, speaking impressively at a citizens' lunch in the Palliser Hotel.
His passage through the streets was cheered by big crowds, but crowds of a definite Western quality. Here the crowns of hats climbed high, sometimes reaching monstrous peaks that rise as samples of the Rockies from curly brims as monstrous. Under these still white felt altitudes are the vague eyes and lean, contemplative faces of the cattlemen from the stock country around. Here and there were other prairie types who linger while the tide of modernity rushes past them. They are the Indians, brown, lined and forward stooping, whose reticent eyes looking out from between their braided hair seem to be dwelling on their long yesterday.
At the citizens' lunch the Prince departed from his usual trend of speech-making to voice some of the impressions that this new land had brought to him. He once more spoke of the sense of spaciousness and possibility the vast prairies of the West had given him, but today he went further and dwelt upon the need of making those possibilities assured. The foundation that had made the future as well as the present possible, was the work of the great pioneers and railway men who had mastered the country in their stupendous labours, and made it fit for a great race to grow in.
The foundation built in so much travail was ready. Upon it Canada must build, and it must build right.
"The farther I travel through Canada," he said, "the more I am struck by the great diversities which it presents; its many and varied communities are not only separated by great distances, but also by divergent interests. You have much splendid alien human material to assimilate, and so much has already been done towards cementing all parts of the Dominion that I am sure you will ultimately succeed in accomplishing this great task, but it will need the co-operation of all parties, of all classes and all races, working together for the common cause of Canadian nationhood under the British flag.
"Serious difficulties and controversies must often arise, but I know nothing can set Canada back except the failure of the different classes and communities to look to the wider interests of the Dominion, as well as their own immediate needs. I realize that scattered communities, necessarily preoccupied with the absorbing task of making good, often find the wider view difficult to keep. Yet I feel sure that it will be kept steadily before the eyes of all the people of this great Western country, whose very success in making the country what it is proves their staying power and capacity."
Canada, he declared, had already won for herself a legitimate place in the fraternity of nations, and the character and resources within her Dominion must eventually place her influence equal to, if not greater than, the influence of any other part of the Empire. Much depended upon Canada's use of her power, and the greatness of her future was wrapped up in her using it wisely and well.
The great gathering was impressed by the statesman-like quality of the speech, the first of its kind he had made since his landing. He spoke with ease, making very little use of his notes and showing a greater freedom from nervousness. The sincerity of his manner carried conviction, and there was a great demonstration when he sat down.
III
In the afternoon he left Calgary by train for the small "cow town" of High River, from there going on by car over roads that were at times cart ruts in the fields, to the Bar U Ranch, where he was to be the guest of Mr. George Lane.
His host, "George Lane," as he is called everywhere, is known as far as the States and England as one of the cattle kings. He is a Westerner of the Westerners, and an individuality even among them. Tall and loose-built, with an authentic Bret Harte quality in action and speech, he can flash a glance of shrewdness or humour from the deep eyes under their shaggy, pent-house brows. He is one of the biggest ranch owners in the West (perhaps the biggest); his judgment on cattle or horses is law, and he has no frills.
His attractive ranch on the plains, where the rolling lands meet the foot-hills of the Rockies, has an air of splendid spaciousness. We did not go to Bar U, but a friend took us out on a switchback automobile run over what our driver called a "hellofer" road, to just such another ranch near Cockrane, and we could judge what these estates were like.
They are lonely but magnificent. They extend with lakes, close, tight patches of bush and small and occasional woods over undulating country to the sharp, bare wall of the snow-capped Rockies. The light is marvellous. Calgary is 3,500 feet up, and the level mounts steadily to the mountains. At this altitude the sunlight has an astonishing clarity, and everything is seen in a sharp and brilliant light.
In the rambling but comfortable house of the ranch the Prince was entertained with cattleman's fare, and on the Tuesday (after a ten-mile run before breakfast) he was introduced to the ardours of the cattleman's calling. He mounted a broncho and with his host joined the cowboys in rounding several thousand head of cattle, driving them in towards the branding corrals.
This is no task for an idler or a slacker. The bunch was made up mainly of cows with calves, or steers of less than a year old, who believed in the policy of self-determination, being still unbranded and still conspicuously independent. Most of them, in fact, had seen little or nothing of man in their life of lonely pasturage over the wide plains.
Riding continually at a gallop and in a whirlwind of movement and dust and horns, the Prince helped to bunch the mass into a compact circle, and then joined with the others in riding into the nervous herd, in order to separate the calves from the mothers, and the unbranded steers from those already marked with the sign of Bar U.
Calves and steers were roped and dragged to the corral, where they were flung and the brand seared on their flanks with long irons taken from a fire in the enclosure.
The Prince did not spare himself, and worked as hard as any cattleman in the business, and indeed he satisfied those exacting critics, the cowboys, who produced in his favour another Westernism, describing him as "a Bear. He's fur all over." Then, as though a strenuous morning in the saddle was not enough, he went off in the afternoon after partridges, spending the whole time on the tramp until he was due to start for Calgary.
His pleasure in his experience was summed up in the terse comment: "Some Ranch," that he set against his signature in Mr. Lane's visitors' book. It also had the practical result of turning him into a rancher himself, for it was at this time he saw the ranch which he ultimately bought. It is a very good little property, close to Mr. Lane's, so that in running it the Prince will have the advantage of that expert's advice. Part of the Prince's plan for handling it is to give an opportunity to soldiers who served with him in the war to take up positions on the ranch. Mr. Lane told me himself that the proposition is a practical one, and there should be profitable results.
Leaving Bar U, the Prince returned to High River at that Canadian pace of travelling which sets the timid European wondering whether his accident policy is fully paid up. In High River, where the old cow-puncher ideal of hitting up the dust in the wild and woolly manner has given way to the rule of jazz dances and bright frocks, he mounted the train and steamed off to Calgary.
In Calgary great things had been done to the Armoury where the ball was to be held. Handled in the big manner of the Dominion, the great hall had been re-floored with "hard wood" blocks, and a scheme of real beauty, extending to an artificial sky in the roof, had been evolved.
At this dance the whole of Calgary seemed in attendance, either on the floor, or outside watching the guests arrive. In Canada the scope of the invitations is universal. There are no distinctions. The pretty girl who serves you with shaving soap over the drug store counter asks if she will meet you at the Prince's ball, as a matter of course. She is going. So is the young man at the estate office. So is your taxi chauffeur (the taxi is an open touring car). So is—everybody. These dances are the most democratic affairs, and the most spirited. And as spirited and democratic as anybody was the Prince himself, who, in this case, in spite of his run before breakfast, a hard morning in the saddle, his long tramp in the afternoon, his automobile and railway travelling, danced with the rest into the small hours of the morning.
All the little boys in Calgary watched for his arrival. And after he had gone in there was a fierce argument as to who had come in closest contact with him. One little boy said that the Prince had looked straight at him and smiled.
Another capped it:
"He shoved me on the shoulder as he went by," he cried.
The inevitable last chimed in:
"You don't make it at all," he said. "He trod on my brother's toe."