Westward with the Prince of Wales

by W. Douglas Newton

CHAPTER XVIII

APPLE LAND: OKANAGAN AND KOOTENAY LAKES

I

On Monday, September 29th, the Prince of Wales returned to Vancouver and took car to New Westminster, the old capital of British Columbia before picturesque Victoria assumed the reins.

New Westminster was having its own festival that day, so the visit was well timed. The local exhibition was to begin, and the Prince was to perform the opening ceremony. Under many fine arches, one a tall torii, erected by Chinese and Japanese Canadians, the procession of cars passed through the town, on a broad avenue that runs alongside the great Fraser River. Drawn up at the curb were many floats that were to take part in the trades' procession through the town to the exhibition grounds. Most of them were ingenious and attractive. There were telegraph stations on wagons, corn dealers' shops, and the like, while on the bonnet of one car was a doll nurse, busy beside a doll bed. Another automobile had turned itself into an aeroplane, while another had obliterated itself under a giant bully beef can to advertise a special kind of tinned meat.

All cars were decorated with masses of spruce and maple leaf, now beautiful in autumn tints of crimson and gold. And Peace and Britannia, of course, were there with attendant angels and nations, comely girls whose celestial and symbolical garments did not seem to be the right fashion for a day with more than a touch of chill in the air.

Through this avenue of fantasy, colour and cheery humanity the Prince drove through the town, which seems to have the air of brooding over its past, to the exhibition ground, which he opened, and where he presented medals to many soldiers.

II

From New Westminster the Royal train struck upward through the Rocky Mountains by way of the Kettle Valley. It passed through a land of terrific and magnificent scenery. It equalled anything we had seen in the more famous beauty spots, but it was more savage. The valleys appeared closer knit and deeper, and the sharp and steep mountains pinched the railway and river gorges together until we seemed to be creeping along the floor of a mighty passage-way of the dark, aboriginal gods.

Again and again the train was hanging over the deep, misted cauldron of the valley, again and again it slipped delicately over the span of cobweb across the sky that is a Canadian bridge. In this land of steep gradients, sharp curves and lattice bridges, the train was divided into two sections, and each, with two engines to pull it, climbed through the mountain passes.

This tract of country has only within the last few years been tapped by a railway that seems even yet to have to fight its way forward against Nature, barbarous, splendid and untamed. It was built to the usual ideal of Canada, that vision which ignores the handicaps of today for the promise of tomorrow. Yet even today it taps the rich lake valleys where mining and general farming is carried on, and where there are miles of orchards already growing some of the finest apples and peaches in Canada.

On the morning of Tuesday, September 30th, the train climbed down from the higher and rougher levels to Penticton, a small, bright, growing town that stands as focus for the immense fruit-growing district about Okanagan Lake.

Here, after a short ceremony, the Prince boarded the steamer Sicamous, a lake boat of real Canadian brand; a long white vessel built up in an extraordinary number of tiers, so that it looked like an elaborate wedding-cake, but a useful craft whose humpy stern paddle-wheel can push her through a six-foot shallow or deep water with equal dispatch. And a delightfully comfortable boat into the bargain, with well-sheltered and spacious decks, cosy cabins and bath-rooms, and a big dining saloon, which, placed in the very centre of the ship with the various galleries of the decks rising around it, has an air of belonging to one of those attractive old Dickensian inns.

On this vessel the Prince was carried the whole length of Okanagan Lake, which winds like a blue fillet between mountains for seventy miles. On the ledges and in the tight valleys of these heights he saw the formal ranks of a multitude of orchards.

A short distance along the lake the Sicamous pulled in to the toy quay of Summerland, a town born of and existing for fruit, and linked up with the outer world by the C.P.R. Lake Service that owned our own vessel.

All the children of Summerland had collected on the quayside to sing to and to cheer the Prince, and, as he stood on the upper deck and waved his hat cheerfully at them, they cheered a good deal more. When he went ashore and was taken by the grown-up Olympians to examine the grading and packing sheds, where the fruits of all the orchards are handled and graded by mechanical means, prepared for the market, and sold on the co-operative plan, the kiddies exchanged sallies with those waiting on the vessel, flipped big apples up at them, and cheered or jeered as they were caught or missed.

The Sicamous went close inshore at Peachland, another daughter town of Mother Fruit, to salute the crowd of people who had come out from the pretty bungalow houses that nestle among the green trees on a low and pretty shore, and who stood on the quay in a mass to send a cheer to him.

At Okanagan Landing, at the end of the lake, he took car to Vernon, a purposeful and attractive town which is the commercial heart of the apple industry. Indeed, there was no need to ask the reason for Vernon's being. Even the decorations were wrought out of apples, and under an arch of bright, cherry-red apples the Prince passed on to the sports ground, and on to a platform the corner posts of which were crowned with pyramids of apples, and in the centre of which was a model apple large enough to suit the appetite of Gargantua.

In front of this platform was a grand stand crowded with children of all races from Scandinavian to Oriental, and these sang with the resistless heartiness of Canada. The Oriental is a pretty useful asset in British Columbia, for in addition to his gifts of industry he is an excellent agriculturist.

After the ceremonies the Prince had an orgy of orchards.

Fruit growing is done with a large gesture. The orchards are neat and young and huge. In a run of many miles the Prince passed between masses of precisely aligned trees, and every tree was thick with bright and gleaming red fruit. Thick, indeed, is a mild word. The short trees seemed practically all fruit, as though they had got into the habit of growing apples instead of leaves. Many of the branches bore so excessive a burden that they had been torn out by the weight of the fruit upon them.

It was a marvellous pageant of fruit in mass. And the apples themselves were of splendid quality, big and firm and glowing, each a perfect specimen of its school. We were able to judge because the land-girls, after tossing aprons full of specimens (not always accurately) into the Prince's car, had enough ammunition left over for the automobiles that followed.

Attractive land girls they were, too. Not garbed like British land-girls, but having all their dashing qualities. Being Canadians they carried the love of silk stockings on to the land, and it was strange to see this feminine extremity under the blue linen overall trousers or knickers. They were cheery, sun-tanned, laughing girls. They were ready for the Prince at every gate and every orchard fence, eager and ready to supplement their gay enthusiasm with this apple confetti.

The Prince stopped here and there to chat with fruit growers, and to congratulate them on their fine showing. Now he stopped to talk to a wounded officer, who had been so cruelly used in the war that he had to support himself on two sticks. Now he stopped to pass a "How d'y' do" to a mob of trousered land-girls who gathered brightly about his car, showing himself as laughing and as cheerful as they.

The cars left the land of growing apples and turned down the lake in a superb run of thirty-six miles to Kelowna. This road skirts fairyland. It winds high up on a shoulder above Long Lake, that makes a floor of living azure between the buttresses and slopes of the mountains. Only when it is tired of the heights does it drop to the lake level, and sweeping through a filigree of trees, speeds along a road that is but an inch or two above the still mirror of Wood Lake, on the polished surface of which there is a delicate fret of small, rocky islets. So, in magnificent fashion, he came to Kelowna, and the Sicamous, that carried him back to the train.

III

Through the night and during the next morning the train carried the Prince deeper in the mountains, skirting in amazing loops, when the train seemed almost to be biting its tail, steep rocky cliffs above white torrents, or the shining blue surfaces of lakes such as Arrow Lake, that formed the polished floor of valleys. Now and then we passed purposeful falls, and by them the power houses that won light and motive force for the valley towns from the falling water. There are those who fear the harnessing of water-power, because it may mean the spoiling of beautiful scenery. Such buildings as I saw in no way marred the view, but rather added to it a touch of human picturesqueness.

Creeping down the levels, with discretion at the curves, the train came in the rain to Nelson on Wednesday, October 1st. Rain spoilt the reception at Nelson, a town that thrives upon the agricultural and mining products of the hills about. There seemed to be a touch of mining grey in the air of the town, but, as in all towns of Canada, no sense of unhappiness, no sense of poverty—indeed, in the whole of Canada I saw five beggars and no more (though, of course, there may have been more). Of these one man was blind, and two were badly crippled soldiers.

There are no poor in Nelson, so I was told, and no unemployed.

"If a man's unemployed," said a Councillor with a twinkle in his eye, "he's due for the penitentiary. With labourers getting five dollars a day, and being able to demand it because of the scarcity of their kind, when a man who says he can't find work has something wrong with him ... as a matter of fact the penitentiary idea is only speculative. There's never been a test case of this kind."

I don't suppose there have been many test cases of that kind in the whole of Canada, for certainly "the everyday people" everywhere have a cheerful and self-dependent look.

At Nelson the Prince embarked on another lake boat, the Nasookin, after congratulating rival bands, one of brass, and one (mainly boys) of bagpipes, on their tenacity in tune in the rain. Nelson gave him a very jolly send-off. The people managed to invade the quay in great numbers, and those who were daring clambered to the top of the freight cars standing on the wharf, the better to give him a cheer.

As the boat steamed out into the Kootenay River scores of the nattiest little gasoline launches flying flags escorted him for the first mile or so, chugging along beside the Nasookin, or falling in our wake in a bright procession of boats. Encouraged by the "movie" men they waved vigorously, and many good "shoots" of them were filmed.

At Balfour, where the narrow river, after passing many homesteads of great charm nestling amid the greenery of the low shore that fringes the high mountains, turns into Kootenay Lake, the Prince went ashore. Here is a delightful chalet which was once an hotel, but is now a sanatorium for Canadian soldiers. Its position is idyllic. It stands above river and lake, with the fine mountains backing it, and across the river are high mountains.

Over these great slopes on this grey day clouds were gathered, crawling down the shoulders in billows, or blowing in odd and disconnected masses and streamers. These odd ragged scarves and billows look like strayed sheep from the cloud fold, lost in the deep valleys that sit between the blue-grey mountain sides.

The Prince spent some time visiting the sanatorium, and chatting with the inmates, and then played golf on the course here. The C.P.R. were, meanwhile, indulging themselves in one of their habitual feats. The lakes make a gap in the line between Nelson, or rather Balfour siding, and Kootenay Landing at the head of the water. Over this water-jump the whole train, solid steel and weighing a thousand tons, was bodily carried.

Two great barges were used. The long cars were backed on to these with delicate skill—for the slightest waywardness of a heavy, all-steel car on a floating barge is a matter of danger, and each loaded barge was then taken up the lake by a tug grappled alongside.

At Kootenay Landing the delicate process was reversed, and all was carried out without mishap though it was a dark night, and the railwaymen had to work with the aid of searchlights. Kootenay Landing is, in itself, something of a wonder. In the dark, as we waited for the train to be made up, it seemed as solid as good hard land can make it. But as the big Canadian engine came up with the first car we felt our "earth" sway slightly, and in the beam of the big headlight we saw the reason. Kootenay Landing is a station in the air. It is built up on piles.