Canada To-day and To-morrow

by Arthur E. Copping

There was not, it will be noted, any real fight left in the Indians; but this could not be said of the allied race, the Half-Breeds. They were at that time on the eve of their rebellion; and it is interesting to note that the C.P.R. was completed in time to be of service in that affair. On May 18, 1885, the last rail was laid in the line skirting Lake Superior, and the very next day the Montreal artillery militia passed over that line on their way to assist in suppressing the Riel rising.

And soon the procession of immigrants was moving across the country, to quicken Manitoba and British Columbia into vigorous growth and found the intermediate provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta. Then the C.P.R. saw that its faith would be justified. A beginning had been made in tapping the agricultural and mineral riches of Western Canada. The railway was the steel key that had unlocked a treasury of incalculable wealth—wealth that poured forth, and continues to pour forth, in a stream ever expanding with the growth of population. Solicitude for the well-being of new settlers became the bed-rock of C.P.R. policy. On that basis, the company won its way to a prosperity that was assisted by developments which, in their magnitude and the foresight that inspired them, were fitting sequels to the original enterprise. Early the C.P.R. provided three steel steamships to traverse the Great Lakes—craft since supplemented by magnificent Clyde-built vessels. Later it made a new water connection, with car ferries plying between Windsor, in Ontario, and Detroit, in Michigan. Afterwards the C.P.R. turned its attention to the lakes and rivers of British Columbia; and to-day on those waters it controls some twenty vessels, several of them of considerable size and appointed with superb quarters for travellers. Another fleet of twenty steamships carry passengers and merchandise between ports on the coast of British Columbia. But the C.P.R. has not been content merely to navigate Canadian waters. Early it established a trans-Pacific service connecting the Dominion with China and Japan, the pioneer vessels being replaced in 1891 by the famous Empress of India and her sister ships, which established a new standard of comfort in ocean travel. A later development was the trans-Atlantic service, also furnished with superb liners, and providing new means of communication between Canada and Liverpool, London, Bristol and Antwerp. Thus the C.P.R. has already extended its sphere of operations two-thirds round the world; all that is needed to complete the circle being a service of C.P.R. aeroplanes across Europe and Asia. The company’s combined fleets include sixty-seven steamships—a number about equal to all the battleships of the United States, Japan, France and Russia. The C.P.R. vessels, placed end to end, would form a line three and a half miles long. Between them they consume every day 2,903 tons of coal. Their crews and shore staffs form an army of 11,294 men. They annually cover a mileage equal to fifty-seven journeys round the earth.

Nor, on the land, has the C.P.R. been content with its three thousand miles of track stretching across the continent. To-day it controls over eleven thousand miles of railway, on which there are running 1,534 locomotives, 1,870 passenger cars and 48,850 freight and cattle cars.

Besides owning and working so many means of communication, this amazing railway company has endowed Canada with a chain of sixteen fine hotels, including the famous Château Frontenac at Quebec—a stately structure that cost £600,000 and has accommodation for a thousand guests; the Royal Alexandra, at Winnipeg, which, like the hotel at Vancouver, yields a yearly profit of £12,000; the Empress, at Victoria, which annually puts £14,000 into the coffers of the company; and the luxurious hotels, fitted with exquisite taste, at Lake Louise, Banff, and other health resorts in the mountains.

There is one thing that the C.P.R. does not do—it does not go in for farming. It might do so. It has enough land to carry on farming operations upon a scale commensurate with its other affairs, and to the tune of an annual profit that could not fall far short of £10,000,000. Providing and organising the necessary labour would constitute a difficulty (because, in a country where everybody can secure his own freehold, and grow prosperous in cultivating it, no one is content long to till the soil for an employer, let the wages be never so high). Still, the history of the C.P.R. affords abundant proof that it is not to be baulked by a difficulty; and therefore we must look in another direction for the reason why the C.P.R. does not farm, and probably has never so much as thought of doing so. Such action would be contrary to the purpose, policy and principles on which the fortunes of the C.P.R. have been founded. It is there to assist, not to compete with, the population. It sells its land. The quantity it sold last year was 975,030 acres, at an average price of £2 13s. 3d. per acre—an average price, by the way, that leaves out of account the irrigated land, of which 145,421 acres were sold, at £5 10s. 9½d. per acre.

Mention of the irrigated land prompts some reference to an undertaking which, while sufficiently interesting on its own merits, serves as an excellent illustration of the enterprising spirit in which the C.P.R. promotes the welfare of Western Canada and its people.

Part of the territory that came into the possession of the company was a stretch of land—between Calgary and a point some thirty miles west of Medicine Hat—which, while its capacity to produce bumper crops had been demonstrated, was liable in certain seasons to suffer from an inadequate rainfall. And since an occasional loss of crop is apt to have a demoralising effect, more particularly on new settlers who have not had time to accumulate a financial reserve, the C.P.R. decided that, before putting those 3,000,000 acres on the market, it would counteract the natural shortcoming, and ensure the agriculturist against loss, by carrying out a system of irrigation. For this purpose the area was divided into three sections—a Western Section, a Central Section and an Eastern Section. The Western Section was put in hand first, and, at an expenditure of over £1,000,000, the C.P.R. tapped the Bow River with a canal seventeen miles long, and of a width that varied from 60 feet at the bottom to 120 feet at the water level; it constructed a reservoir three miles long, half a mile wide and 40 feet deep; and it excavated 1,600 miles of primary and secondary canals (the former being 120 feet wide by 10 feet deep) and distributing ditches. These extensive works, involving the removal of more than 8,000,000 tons of earth, necessarily occupied some years; and thus, long before the canals and ditches had reached their limits, the artificial water supply had been tested for a season or so on parts of the area that were dealt with first. That early experience was conclusive; and the land was eagerly taken up. Now the C.P.R. have commenced to irrigate the Eastern Section—an area of 1,100,000 acres—and the work, which will occupy about three years, is estimated to cost £1,700,000. In this case heavier expenditure is necessitated by a greater difficulty in reaching the source of supply, and 3,500 miles of canals and ditches have to be constructed. Afterwards the Central Section will be put in hand.

On visiting a number of irrigated farms in the Western Section, I found their prosperous proprietors enthusiastic in praise of artificial watering, of which, indeed, the fruits were visible. Not that an abundant harvest is the only advantage yielded by the system. In the glorious Canadian sunshine, herbage is liable to become so dry that a chance spark will set it on fire; and farmers bore grateful testimony that, when this has befallen, the opening of an irrigation ditch proved an easy means of arresting the trouble. Again, food fishes are swept down the excavated waterways; and many an agriculturist, on discovering trout and pike flopping about in his furrows, has found himself with a strengthened faith in the wisdom of the C.P.R.

Nor must I omit to mention a new style of colonisation that has been devised and introduced by this inventive and indefatigable company. Hitherto, in the history of Canada and other new countries, the rule has been for a settler to arrive on empty land, and find himself compelled to build a habitation, dig a well, knock up outhouses and erect fencing before he can address himself to the crucial matter of cultivating the soil. In a flash of inspiration, it occurred to the C.P.R. that this awkward and irksome beginning of the new life is not inevitable; and that, before offering land for sale, they might just as well put the required buildings and appurtenances upon it, so that the new-comer who buys it shall be spared protracted initial labours for which, in all probability, he lacks the necessary training.

This novel idea grew and blossomed. The C.P.R. fenced off a number of holdings, and upon each built a neat little home, with a living-room, sleeping apartments, and a kitchen fitted with a large cooking stove. On each homestead it also built stabling and a barn, provided a source of drinking water, and set up fences. Nor did the C.P.R. stop there. In each case it ploughed forty acres of the land, and, in the following spring, seeded them. It thus prepared a group of “Ready-made Farms”—to quote the name bestowed upon these remarkable innovations in the domain of colonisation. They were offered on the C.P.R.’s usual terms of payment by instalments—the first of twelve annual instalments to be due after the first crop was harvested. It was merely stipulated that each family should possess at least £200, to carry them over the initial stage of their new existence.