The New North

by Agnes Deans Cameron

With the Polar Ocean as ultimate goal, we cannot help thinking how during the last generation the Arctic Circle has been pushed steadily farther north. Forty years ago Minneapolis and St. Paul were struggling trading-posts, and all America north of them was the range of the buffalo and the Indian. Then Fort Garry (Winnipeg) became Farthest North. Before starting, I had dug out from the Public Library the record of a Convention of Wheat-Growers who, fifteen years ago in Chicago, deliberately came to the conclusion (and had the same engrossed on their minutes) that "Our Northern tier of States is too far north to successfully grow wheat." For years Winnipeg was considered the northern limit of wheat-growth, the Arctic Circle of endeavour. Then that line of limitation was pushed farther back until it is Edmonton-on-the-Saskatchewan that is declared "Farthest North." To-day we are embarking on a journey which is to reach two thousand miles due north of Edmonton!

In the train between Minneapolis and Winnipeg an old man with a be-gosh beard looks worth while. We tell him where we are going, and he is all interest. He remembers the time when Montreal merchants wishing to reach Fort Garry had to bend down by way of St. Paul to gain their goal. These were the days of Indian raids and bloody treachery. "But," the old chap says, "the Hudson's Bay people always played fa'r and squar' with the Injuns. Even in them days the Injun knowed that crossed flag and what it stood for. I mind one Englishman and his wife who had come from Montreal to St. Paul in an ox-cart. The whole plains was covered with sneakin' red cusses on the war-path. But that darned Britisher was stubborn-set on pullin' out that night for Fort Garry, with his wife and kid, and what did the cuss do but nail a blame little Union Jack on his cart, poke the goad in his ox, and hit the trail! My God, I kin still see the old ox with that bit of the British Empire, wiggling out of St. Paul at sundown. And the cuss got there all right, too, though we was all wearing crape beforehand for his sweet-faced wife." This incident was not unique. In the early '60's an English curate, afterwards to be known to the world as Bishop Bompas, passed north through St. Cloud on his way from England to the Arctic. When the Sioux were reported on the war-path, Mr. Bompas improvised a Union Jack with bits of coloured clothing and fastened it on the first ox-cart of his cavalcade. Seeing this, the hostile Sioux turned bridle and rode away; and, protected by the flag of the clustered crosses, the Gospel-cart passed on.

Earl Grey, Governor-General of Canada

What Cook & Son failed to supply, the Hudson's Bay Company in Winnipeg furnished. This concern has been foster-mother to Canada's Northland for two hundred and thirty-nine years. Its foundation reaches back to when the Second Charles ruled in England,—an age when men said not "How cheap?" but "How good?", not "How easy?" but "How well?" The Hudson's Bay Company is to-day the Cook's Tourist Company of the North, the Coutts' Banking concern, and the freshwater Lloyd's. No man or woman can travel with any degree of comfort throughout Northwest America except under the kindly aegis of the Old Company. They plan your journey for you, give you introductions to their factors at the different posts, and sell you an outfit guiltless of the earmarks of the tenderfoot. Moreover, they will furnish you with a letter of credit which can be transmuted into bacon and beans and blankets, sturgeon-head boats, guides' services, and succulent sow-belly, at any point between Fort Chimo on Ungava Bay and Hudson's Hope-on-the-Peace, between Winnipeg-on-the-Red and that point in the Arctic where the seagull whistles over the whaling-ships at Herschel.

For a railroad station, the wall-notices in the baggage room of the Canadian Northern at Winnipeg are unique. Evidently inspired for the benefit of employés, they give the incoming traveller a surprise. Here they are as we copied them down:

Let all things be done decently and in order.

1 Cor. xiv, 40.

Be punctual, be regular, be clean.