Westward with the Prince of Wales

by W. Douglas Newton

CHAPTER XXI

NIAGARA AND THE TOWNS OF WESTERN ONTARIO

I

The best first impression of Niagara Falls is, I think, the one the Prince of Wales obtained.

Those who really wish to experience the thrills of grandeur and poetry of this marvel had better delay their visit until a night in summer, and make arrangements with the railway time-table to get there somewhere after dark. Upon arriving they must hire a car, and drive down to the splendid boulevard on the Canadian side. They will then see the great mass of water under the shine of lights, falling eternally, eternally presenting a picture of almost cruel beauty. They will then know an experience that transcends all other experiences as well as all attempts at description.

The curious feeling of disappointment which comes to many in daylight will have been guarded against, and, stimulated by that wondrous first vision, they will tide over that spiritually barren period which many know until the marvel of the Falls begins to "grow on them."

The Prince came from Hamilton to Niagara somewhere very close to midnight on Saturday, the 18th. He was carried through the dark town and country to the house of one of the Falls Commissioners. From here, through a filigree of trees and leaves, he could look across the smoking gorge to the Falls on the American side. Batteries of great arc lights, focused and hidden cunningly, shone upon the curtain of white and tumbling waters, and upon the strong, black mass of Goat Island, that is perched like a diver eternally hesitant on the very brink of the two-hundred-foot plunge.

The ghostly beauty of the falling water through the light, now a solid and tremendous curve, now broken into filaments and zigzag whorls, now veiled by the upward drift of the gossamer spray, held the Prince's gaze for some time. But even that beauty was transcended. He himself pressed an electric switch, and the grand curve of the Canadian Horseshoe blazed fully alight for the first time in their history, and though from this position this could not be fully seen, this new addition of light gave the whole mass before his eyes an additional loveliness.

From this point the Prince motored through the town to the splendid wide promenade that borders the Canadian side of the gorge, and spent half an hour watching the fascinating play of falling water and spray in the narrow cauldron of the Horseshoe.

He stood a foot away from the point where the water leaps in its magnificent and enigmatic curve into the tortured pool below. Green at the curve, the water is a mass of curdled white in the strong lights as it falls. Beneath, the face of the water is a passionate surface of whirlpools and eddies and tossing whiteness. From the tremendous impact of the drop a column of spray shoots and curls high up in the air. It towers quite six hundred feet above the surface of the water, and it is hard to believe that enduring mass of spray comes from the fall; in the distance one is convinced that it is steam arising from some big factory.

On the next day (Sunday) the Prince saw the Falls in their every phase. He walked up-stream above the Horseshoe to where the Niagara River jostles down over a series of ledges in the grand and angry Canadian Rapids, a sight as tumultuous and as thrilling in its own fashion as the Falls themselves. He visited the big, white stone power-house to examine with the greatest interest the machinery that traps the tremendous latent power of the plunging water, harnesses it, and so turns the wheels of a thousand industries, and lights hundreds of towns.

Partly walking, partly riding in a car of the scenic tramway, he followed the line of the Falls and river downward to where the Whirlpool Rapids curdle and eddy within the deep walls of the gorge. Over on the American side he saw the castles and keeps of modern industry: power-houses and factories, springing up from the very rock of the cliff, and almost forming part of it. On the Canadian side the people have not let their utilitarian sense run away with them to such an extent. Where America edges the gorge with commercial buildings, Canada has constructed her beautiful promenade, which continues the comeliness of the Falls Park through a pretty residential district. America has Prospect Park and the very beautiful Goat Island Park on its side, but these are not extended along the gorge.

Below the Whirlpool Rapids the Prince descended to the level of the river; later, he came to the top of the gorge again, and crossed, swinging two hundred feet above the water on the spidery ropes of the aerial railways, the great pool at the end of the river canyon, into which the pent-up water pushes swirling before turning at right angles towards Lake Ontario.

The Prince did not go over to the American side, but America came to him. The white number-plates of New York State seemed to be everywhere on automobiles, even outnumbering the yellow of Ontario. One had the impression that every American motor-owner within gasolene radius had decided that he would take his Sunday spin to Niagara Falls, and on to the Canadian side of the Falls to boot.

American cars were coming over the bridges all day, and American owners waited cheerfully along the route to get a glimpse of "The Boy," as the American papers called the Prince. They joined themselves to the very friendly crowd of Canadians who gathered everywhere along the route, and their cheering, mingling with Canadian cheering, showed that friendliness is not an affair that frontiers can manipulate.

As a matter of fact, the frontier at Niagara is the most imaginary of lines. Now that the war is over there is no difficulty in getting to either side. And there is no change in atmosphere either. People and conditions are much the same, only on the American side our dollars cost us more.

II

Western Ontario is, in the main, the most British part of Canada. Its towns have British names, and the streets of the towns have British names, while their atmosphere and design are almost of the Home Counties. The countryside (if one overlooks the absence of hedges—though rows of upturned tree-roots with plants growing among them sometimes have the look of hedges) is the suave, domesticated countryside of England. England is in the very air. And at the first of these curiously English towns the Prince became an Indian chief.

Brantford, though it reminds one of a comely British country town, preferably one with a Church influence in it, is really the capital of the Six Nation Indians. It actually owes its name to Joseph Brant, the Mohawk chief, who, having fought his Indians on the side of the British—as the braves of the fierce and powerful Six Nations had always fought on the side of the British—in the War of Independence, marched his tribes from their old camping-grounds in the Mohawk Valley to this place, so that they could remain under British rule.

The Indians of the Six Nations still live in and about Brantford, for, though they have ceded away their lands to settlers, they are among the few of the aboriginal races that have thrived and not decayed under civilization. The Prince's visit to Brantford on Monday, October 20th, was nearly all a visit to the Mohawks, the leaders of the ancient Indian federation of six tribes.

This is not to say that the welcome given him by Canadians was not a great one. As a matter of fact, it was astonishing, and it was difficult to imagine how a small town like this could pack its streets with so many people. But Brantford is industrial and scientific also, as well as being Indian. After a strenuous reception, for instance, the Prince went along to the statue that shrines the town's claim to a place in the history of science. This was the memorial to Dr. Bell, who lived in Brantford and who invented the first telephone in Brantford. They will even show you the trees from which the first line over which the first spoken message sent, was strung.

But the colourful ceremonies of Brantford were those connected with the Mohawks. The Prince was taken out to the small, old wooden chapel that George III. erected for his loyal Mohawk allies. It is the oldest Protestant chapel in the Dominion. On its walls are painted prayers in Mohawk, and it contains an old register that King Edward had signed in 1861. The Prince added his own signature to this before going into the churchyard to see the grave of Joseph Brant.

In the little enclosure before the church were the youngest descendants of the loyal Joseph Brant: ranks of Mohawk boys in khaki, and small Mohawk girls in red and grey. They sang to the Prince in their own language, a singular guttural tongue rendered with an almost abnormal stoicism. The children did not move a muscle of lips or face as they chanted; it might have been a song rendered by graven images.

In the main square of Brantford the Prince was elected chief of the Six Nations. This ceremony was carried out upon a raised and beflagged platform about which a vast throng of pale-faces gathered. Becoming a chief of the Six Nations is no light matter. It is a thing that must be discussed in full with all ceremonies and accurate minutes. The pow-wow on the platform was rather long. Chiefs rose up and debated at leisure in the Iroquois tongue, while the pale-faces in the square, at first quite patient, began to demand in loud voices:

"We want our Prince. We want our Prince."

And to be truthful, not merely the pale-faces found the ceremony lengthy. Gathered on the platform were a number of Mohawk girls, delicate and pretty maidens, with the warmth of their race's colour glowing through the soft texture of their cheeks. They were there because they had thrown flowers in the pathway of the Prince. At first they were interested in this olden ceremony of their old race. Then they began to talk of the wages they were drawing in extremely modern Canadian stores and factories. Then they looked at the ceremony again, at the clothes the Indians wore, at the romance and colour of it, and they said, one to another:

"Say, why have those guys dressed up like that? What's it all about, anyhow? What's the use of this funny old business?"

The romantic may find some food for thought in this attitude of the modern Mohawk maid.

In the end, after a debate on the fitness of several names, the Prince, as president of the pow-wow, gave his vote for "Dawn of Morning," and became chief with that title. But apparently he did not become fully fledged until he had danced a ritual measure. A brother chief in bright yellow and a fine gravity, came forward to guide the Prince's steps, and the Prince, immediately entering into the spirit of the ceremony, joined with him in shuffling and bowing to and fro across the platform. Only after the congratulations from fellow-Mohawks and palefaces, did he leave the daïs to fight—there is no other word—his way through the dense and cheerful mass that packed the square almost to danger-point.

It was a splendid crowd, good-humoured and ardent. It had cheered every moment, though, perhaps, it had cheered more strongly at one moment. This was when an old Indian woman ran up to the Prince, crying: "I met your father and your grandfather, and I'm British too." At her words the Prince had taken the rose from his buttonhole and had presented it to her. And that delighted the crowd.

III

The fine weather of Monday gave way to pitiless rain on the morning of Tuesday, October 21st. All the same, the rain did not prevent the reception at Guelph from being warm and intensely interesting.

Guelph is one of the many comely and thriving towns of West Ontario, but its chiefest feature is its great Agricultural College that trains the scientific farmer, not of Ontario and Canada alone, but for many countries in the Western World. This college gave the Prince a captivating welcome.

It has men students, but it has many attractive and bonny girl students, also, and these helped to distinguish the day, that is, with a little help from the "movie" men.

The "movie" men who travelled with the train had captured the spectacle of the Prince's arrival at the station, and had driven off to the college to be in readiness to "shoot" when His Royal Highness arrived. They had ten minutes to wait. Not merely that, they had ten minutes to wait in the company of a bunch of the prettiest and liveliest girl students in West Ontario. "Movie" men are not of the hesitant class. Somewhere in the first seventy-five seconds they became old friends of the students who were filling the college windows with so much attraction. In one minute and forty-five seconds they had the girls in training for the Prince's arrival. They had hummed over the melody of what they declared was the Prince's favourite opera selection; a girl at a piano had picked up the tune, while the others practised harder than diva ever did.

When the Prince arrived the training proved worth while. He was saluted from a hundred laughing heads at a score of windows with the song that had followed him all over Canada. He drove into the College, not to the stirring strains of "Oh, Canada," but to the syncopated lilt of "Johnny's in Town."

The Prince was not altogether out of the youthful gaiety of the scene, for after the lunch, where the students had scrambled for souvenirs, a piece of sugar from his coffee cup, a stick of celery from his plate, even a piece of his pie, he made all these dashing young women gather about him in the group that was to make the commemorative photo, and a very jolly, laughing group it was.

And when he was about to leave, and in answer to a massed feminine chorus, this time chanting:

"We—want—a—holiday."

He called out cheerfully:

"All right. I'll fix that holiday." And he did.

IV

The whole of these days were filled with flittings hither and thither on the Grand Trunk line (the passage of the Prince being smoothly manipulated by another of Canada's fine railway men, and a genius in good fellowship, Mr. H. R. Charlton), as the Prince called at the pretty and vigorous towns on the tongue of Ontario that stretches between Lake Huron and Lake Erie to the American border.

Stratford, with something of the comely grace of Shakespeare's town in its avenues of neat homes and fine trees, gave him as warm a reception as anywhere in Canada on the evening of October 21st. On Wednesday, October 22nd, the same hearty welcome was extended by those singularly English towns, Woodstock and Chatham.

On the afternoon of the same day London gave him a mass welcome mainly of children in its big central park. London, Ontario, is an echo of London, Thames. It has its Blackfriars and Regent Street, its Piccadilly and St. James'. It is industrial and crowded, as the English London is. Its public reception to the Prince was remarkable. It had managed it rather well. It had stated that all who wished to be present must apply for tickets of admission. Thousands did, and they passed before the Prince in a motley and genial crowd of top hats and gingham skirts, striped sweaters and satin charmeuse. But though they came in thousands, the numbers of ticket-holders were ultimately exhausted. When the last one had passed, the Prince looked at his wrist watch. There was half an hour to spare before the reception was due to close. He told those about him to open the doors of the building and let the unticketed public in.

From London the Grand Trunk carried us to Windsor on Thursday, October 23rd, where crowds were so dense about the station that they overflowed on to the engine until one could no longer see it for humanity and little boys. From the engine eager sightseers even scrambled along the tops of the great steel cars until they became veritable grandstands.

Crowds were in the virile streets, and they were not all Canadians either. A ferry plies from Windsor to the United States, and America, which at no time lost an opportunity of coming across the border to see the Prince, had come across in great numbers. Canadians there were in Windsor, thousands of them, but quite a fair volume of the cheering had a United States timbre.

A city with an electric fervour, Windsor. That comes not merely from the towering profile of Detroit's skyscrapers seen across the river, but from the spirit of Windsor itself. Detroit is America's "motoropolis," and from the air of it Windsor will be Canada's motoropolis of tomorrow. It is already thrusting its way up to the first line of industrial cities; it is already a centre for the manufacture of the ubiquitous Ford car and others, and it is learning and profiting a lot from its American brother.

The Canadian and American populations are, in a sense, interchangeable. The United States comes across to work in Windsor, and Windsor goes across to work in America. The ferry, not a very bustling ferry, not such a good ferry, for example, as that which crosses the English Thames at Woolwich, carries men and women and carts, and, inevitably, automobiles between the two cities.

Detroit took a great interest in the Prince. It sent a skirmishing line of newspapermen up the railway to meet him, and they travelled in the train with us, and failed, as all pressmen did, to get interviews with him. We certainly took an interest in Detroit. It was not merely the sense-capturing profile of Detroit, the sky-scrapers that give such a sense of soaring zest by day, and look like fairy castles hung in the air at night, but the quick, vivid spirit of the city that intrigued us.

We went across to visit it the next morning, and found it had the delight of a new sensation. It is a city with a sparkle. It is a city where the automobile is a commonplace, and the horse a thing for pause and comment. It contained a hundred points of novelty for us, from the whiteness of its buildings, the beauty of its domestic architecture, the up-to-date advertising of its churches, to its policemen on traffic duty who, on a rostrum and under an umbrella, commanded the traffic with a sign-board on which was written the laconic commands, "Go" and "Stop."

And, naturally, we visited the Ford Works. A place where I found the efficiency of effort almost frighteningly uncanny. One of these days those inhumanly human machines will bridge the faint gulf that separates them from actual life, then, like Frankenstein's monster, they will turn upon their creators.

Galt (Friday, October 24th) gave the Prince another great reception; then, passing through Toronto, he travelled to Kingston, which he reached on Saturday, October 25th.

Kingston, though it had its beginnings in the old stone fort that Frontenac built on the margin of Lake Ontario to hold in check the English settlers in New York and their Iroquois allies, is unmistakably British. With its solid stone buildings, its narrow fillet of blue lake, its stone fortifications on the foreshore, and its rambling streets, it reminded me of Southampton town, especially before Southampton's Western Shore was built over. Its air of being a British seaport arises from the fact that it is a British port, for it was actually the arsenal and yard for the naval forces on the Great Lakes during the war of 1812.

And it also gets its English tone from the Royal Military College which exists here. The bravest function of the Prince's visit was in this college, where he presented colours to the cadets and saw them drill. The discipline of these boys on parade is worthy of Sandhurst, Woolwich or West Point, and their physique is equal to, if not better, than any shown at those places. It is not exactly a military school, though the training is military, for though some of the cadets join Imperial or Canadian forces, and all serve for a time in the Canadian Militia, practically all the boys join professions or go into commerce after passing through.

The Prince's reception at the college was fine, but his reception in the town itself was remarkable. The Public Park was black with people at the ceremony of welcome, and though he was down to "kick off" in the first of the Association League football matches, his kick off was actually a toss-up. That was the only way to get the ball moving in the dense throng that surged between the goal posts.

Kingston, too, gave the Prince the degree of Doctor of Laws. It is a proud honour, for Kingston boasts of being one of the oldest universities in Canada. But though its tradition is old, its spirit is modern enough; for its Chancellor is Mr. E. W. Beatty, the President of the Canadian Pacific Railways. It was from the Railway President-Chancellor the Prince received his degree.