The sun was shining brightly as the train rushed along the edge of Burrard Inlet toward Vancouver. The lawns were a bright green, and the breeze blowing in the car-window was soft and balmy. Across the Inlet, that sparkled in the sunlight, were huge mountain-peaks, their tops covered with snow. The homecoming passengers were smiling happily, while a look of eager interest shone on the faces of those who were strangers to the Coast.
Donald paused for a moment on the corner of Granville Street while the cosmopolitan crowd flowed past him. Stolid-faced Klootchmen, dressed in flamboyant colours, with baskets of clams on their backs, rubbed shoulders with the haughty, turbanned Hindu. The little brown-faced Jap darted here and there amongst the crowd. A Chinaman came swiftly around the corner of an alley, moving with a peculiar trot, a pole across his shoulders, from each end of which dangled a basket filled with fish and vegetables. Another Chinaman, with a face of true Oriental impassiveness, riding a bicycle down the street, a clay pipe jutting from his mouth, was extremely incongruous. The wide, well-paved streets and the city’s general air of modernity were impressive. In common with many other Easterners, Donald had pictured Vancouver as a rough Western town.
Donald engaged an inexpensive room and at once began a search for employment. Many of the mining and logging camps were closed for the winter, and work was scarce. He applied to all the engineering firms in the city, but their answers were invariably the same: “Nothing doing until spring.”
Days passed, and as late winter merged into spring there was a stir throughout the city. Men who had spent the winter in idleness were “going out” again. Loggers in their characteristic blanket shirts hanging loose outside their trousers, could be seen on all sides saying good-bye to their friends.
One morning Donald counted his rapidly dwindling cash and found that he would have barely enough to tide him over the week-end.
With all his assets in the way of clothes and jewelry in a pawnshop, he could not stave off the inevitable, and there came a day when he had not even the price of a meal. Too proud to ask for a loan, he went without breakfast and lunch.
At the logger’s employment agency he was told the same old story: “Only men of experience wanted. But,” the agent added hopefully, “men are going to be scarce this summer, and they will be taking on everything before long.” Donald made the rounds of the engineering firms where he had applied for a position, but without success. Force of habit led him back to the employment agency, where he sank disconsolately to a bench.
A diminutive man with blond hair, bright blue eyes under shaggy brows, and his head set at a cocky angle, entered briskly and approached the wicket. “S’y, do you know where I can find an ’eavyweight that can box a bit?” he said to the agent.
“How about those two I sent you yesterday, Andy?”
The one addressed as Andy made a gesture of disgust. “Those two blighters were as ’eavy as cows. They didn’t know their right ’and from their left. I don’t want any ’uman punchin’ bags, I want a man that ’as a little speed. Blime me, if I was in Austrylia I could get a ’arf a dozen in ’arf a minute.”