The Press of the Dominion took at once to the daring and delightful idea of a World’s Fair at Winnipeg; and the more enthusiastic editors exclaimed: “We must see to it that this is a record-breaking exhibition.” That is certainly the right spirit in which to tackle a great undertaking. The Paris Exhibition of 1900 holds, I believe, the record, with an attendance of 50,860,801 visitors. But of course Paris is situated in a more populous hemisphere than the one in which Winnipeg occurs; so it would be fairer to regard the Chicago Exhibition of 1893 (which attracted 27,539,521 visitors) as the achievement to be eclipsed. Though, indeed, having regard to relative population, Canada’s triumph would be sufficiently remarkable if her first World’s Fair compared favourably with the first World’s Fair of the United States. It was held at Philadelphia in 1876, and the attendance was 9,910,996, or over 3,000,000 more than the attendance at either of London’s great exhibitions.
Last year, when at Winnipeg, I called at the executive offices of “Canada’s International Exposition and Selkirk Centennial, 1914,” and there I learnt that preparations for the event were well advanced. The project was associated with £1,000,000. Half was expected from the Federal Government, most of the balance being provided by the following grants: £100,000 from the City of Winnipeg; £100,000 from the Canadian Pacific Railway; £100,000 from the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway; £50,000 from the Canadian Northern Railway; and £50,000 from the province of Manitoba. To complete the £1,000,000, the business men in Winnipeg were asked to take up stock to the extent of £100,000; which they promised to do. The directors undertook to lay out that million pounds to advantage; and it was estimated that buildings and exhibits provided by the various Canadian, British and Foreign Governments would represent a value equal to another million. So that persons who visit Winnipeg in the summer of 1914 are likely to have a good time and find plenty to see.
As a matter of fact, if they saw nothing but Winnipeg itself their time and money would be well spent. It is a marvellous and a magnificent city.
WINNIPEG OF TO-DAY
CHAPTER XIII
KEY TO CANADA’S MINERAL WEALTH: A WARNING TO BRITISH CAPITALISTS
One department of the Federal Government of Canada presents the stirring spectacle of many scientists working at high pressure and in high spirits.
Savants in Great Britain are wont to act with a deliberation that might almost be called leisurely, the daily life of our learned societies being characterised by placidity rather than precipitancy. They have been investigating the minerals and the fauna and flora of their little country now for some centuries, and though there may be an insect or two still to be caught and classified, the matter is not pressing.
An extremely opposite state of things obtains in Canada. It was only the other day, so to speak, that it set up in business as a unity and a nation, and at that time next to nothing was known accurately about its natural features. Soil, rocks, climate, fish, trees, birds—none had been properly overhauled. The farmers, the miners, and the railway constructors called urgently for information that could not be supplied. In a word, there was a bewildering lack of all the precise knowledge on which every large community unconsciously rests.
And so the Federal Government, as one of their earliest concerns, set to work on a sort of scientific stock-taking—a process that is still in full blast. They got together all the good scientists they could lay their hands on—geologists, mineralogists, geographers, botanists, naturalists, chemists, meteorologists, ethnologists and the like—and hustled them off to find out all they could about Canada; and, since that sort of person is born rather than made, the Federal Government early found themselves confronting a shortage of human material—a kind of famine of scientists—which was the more regrettable since there was so much ground to be covered, such appalling arrears to overtake. However, recruits were imported, and educational facilities were provided for the rising generation of professors, and to-day there are in the Government service of Canada as fine and mobile an army of scientific men as, I imagine, could anywhere be found on this planet.