II.
We left Montreal, attached to the regular train, on the evening of September 22d. The company runs six through trains a week, omitting the despatch of a train on Sunday from each terminus. The time is six days and rive nights. We travelled in the private ear of Mr. T. G. Shaughnessy, the manager, who was on a tour of inspection, and took it leisurely, stopping at points of interest on the way. The weather was bad, rainy and cold, in eastern Canada, as it was all over New England, and as it continued to be through September and October. During our absence there was snow both in Montreal and Quebec. We passed out of the rain into lovely weather north of Lake Superior; encountered rain again at Winnipeg; but a hundred miles west of there, on the prairie, we were blessed with as delightful weather as the globe can furnish, which continued all through the remainder of the trip until our return to Montreal, October 12th. The climate just east of the Rocky Mountains was a little warmer than was needed for comfort (at the time Ontario and Quebec had snow), but the air was always pure and exhilarating; and all through the mountains we had the perfection of lovely days. On the Pacific it was still the dry season, though the autumn rains, which continue all winter, with scarcely any snow, were not far off. For mere physical pleasure of living and breathing, I know no atmosphere superior to that we encountered on the rolling lands east of the Rockies.
Between Ottawa and Winnipeg (from midnight of the 22d till the morning of the 25th) there is not much to interest the tourist, unless he is engaged in lumbering or mining. What we saw was mainly a monotonous wilderness of rocks and small poplars, though the country has agricultural capacities after leaving Rat Portage (north of Lake of the Woods), just before coming upon the Manitoba prairies. There were more new villages and greater crowds of people at the stations than I expected. From Sudbury the company runs a line to the Sault Sainte Marie to connect with lines it controls to Duluth and St. Paul. At Port Arthur and Fort William is evidence of great transportation activity, and all along the Lake Superior Division there are signs that the expectations of profitable business in lumber and minerals will be realized. At Port Arthur we strike the Western Division. On the Western, Mountain, and Pacific divisions the company has adopted the 24-hour system, by which a.m. and P.M. are abolished, and the hours from noon till midnight are counted as from 12 to 24 o’clock. For instance, the train reaches Eagle River at 24.55, Winnipeg at 9.30, and Brandon at 16.10.
At Winnipeg we come into the real North-west, and a condition of soil, climate, and political development as different from eastern Canada as Montana is from New England. This town, at the junction of the Red and Assiniboin rivers, in a valley which is one of the finest wheat-producing sections of the world, is a very important place. Railways, built and projected, radiate from it like spokes from a wheel hub. Its growth has been marvellous. Formerly known as Fort Garry, the chief post of the Hudson’s Bay Company, it had in 1871 a population of only one hundred. It is now the capital of the province of Manitoba, contains the chief workshops of the Canadian Pacific between Montreal and Vancouver, and has a population of 25,000. It is laid out on a grand scale, with very broad streets—Main Street is 200 feet wide—has many substantial public and business buildings, streetcars, and electric-lights, and abundant facilities for trade. At present it is in a condition of subsided “boom;” the whole province has not more than 120,000 people, and the city for that number is out of proportion. Winnipeg must wait a little for the development of the country. It seems to the people that the town would start up again if it had more railroads. Among the projects much discussed is a road northward between Lake Winnipeg and Lake Manitoba, turning eastward to York Factory on Hudson’s Bay. The idea is to reach a short water route to Europe. From all the testimony I have read as to ice in Hudson’s Bay harbors and in the straits, the short period the straits are open, and the uncertainty from year to year as to the months they will be open, this route seems chimerical. But it does not seem so to its advocates, and there is no doubt that a portion of the line between the lakes first named would develop a good country and pay. A more important line—indeed, of the first importance—is built for 200 miles north-west from Portage la Prairie, destined to go to Prince Albert, on the North Saskatchewan. This is the Manitoba and North-west, and it makes its connection from Portage la Prairie with Winnipeg over the Canadian Pacific. An antagonism has grown up ill Manitoba towards the Canadian Pacific. This arose from the monopoly privileges enjoyed by it as a Dominion road. The province could build no road with extra-territorial connections. This monopoly was surrendered in consideration of the guarantee spoken of from the Government. The people of Winnipeg also say that the company discriminated against them in the matter of rates, and that the province must have a competing outlet. The company says that it did not discriminate, but treated Winnipeg like other towns on the line, having an eye to the development of the whole prairie region, and that the trouble was that it refused to discriminate in favor of Winnipeg, so that it might become the distributing-point of the whole North-west. Whatever the truth may be, the province grew increasingly restless, and determined to build another road. The Canadian Pacific has two lines on either side of the Red River, connecting at Emerson and Gretna with the Red River branches of the St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba. It has also two branches running westward south of its main line, penetrating the fertile wheat-fields of Manitoba. The province graded a third road, paralleling the two to the border, and the river, southward from Winnipeg to the border connecting there with a branch of the Northern Pacific, which was eager to reach the rich wheat,-fields of the North-west. The provincial Red River Railway also proposed to cross the branches of the Canadian Pacific, and connect at Portage la Prairie with the Manitoba and North-west. The Canadian Pacific, which had offered to sell to the province its Emerson branch, saying that there was not business enough for three parallel routes, insisted upon its legal rights and resisted this crossing. Hence the provincial and railroad conflict of the fall of 1888. The province built the new road, but it was alleged that the Northern Pacific was the real party, and that Manitoba has so far put itself into the hands of that corporation. There can be no doubt that Manitoba will have its road and connect the Northern Pacific with the Saskatchewan country, and very likely will parallel the main line of the Canadian Pacific. But whether it will get from the Northern Pacific the relief it thought itself refused by the Canadian, many people in Winnipeg begin to doubt; for however eager rival railways may be for new territory, they are apt to come to an understanding in order to keep up profitable rates. They must live.
I went down on the southern branch of the Canadian Pacific, which runs west, not far from our border, as far as Boissevain. It is a magnificent wheat country, and already very well settled and sprinkled with villages. The whole prairie was covered with yellow wheat-stacks, and teams loaded with wheat were wending their way from all directions to the elevators on the line. There has been quite an emigration of Russian Mennonites to this region, said to be 9000 of them. We passed near two of their villages—a couple of rows of square unbeautiful houses facing each other, with a street of mud between, as we see them in pictures of Russian communes. These people are a peculiar and somewhat mystical sect, separate and unassimilated in habits, customs, and faith from their neighbors, but peaceful, industrious, and thrifty. I shall have occasion to speak of other peculiar immigration, encouraged by the governments and by private companies.
There can be no doubt of the fertility of all the prairie region of Manitoba and Assiniboin. Great heat is developed in the summers, but cereals are liable, as in Dakota, to be touched, as in 1888, by early frost. The great drawback from Winnipeg on westward is the intense cold of winter, regarded not as either agreeable or disagreeable, but as a matter of economy. The region, by reason of extra expense for fuel, clothing, and housing, must always be more expensive to live in than, say, Ontario.
The province of Manitoba is an interesting political and social study. It is very unlike Ontario or British Columbia. Its development has been, in freedom and self-help, very like one of our Western Territories, and it is like them in its free, independent spirit. It has a spirit to resist any imposed authority. We read of the conflicts between the Hudson’s Bay and the Northwestern Fur companies and the Selkirk settlers, who began to come in in 1812. Gradually the vast territory of the North-west had a large number of “freemen,” independent of any company, and of half-breed Frenchmen. Other free settlers sifted in. The territory was remote from the Government, and had no facilities of communication with the East, even after the union. The rebellion of 1870-71 was repeated in 1885, when Riel was called back from Montana to head the discontented. The settlers could not get patents for their lands, and they had many grievances, which they demanded should be redressed in a “bill of rights.” There were aspects of the insurrection, not connected with the race question, with which many well-disposed persons sympathized. But the discontent became a violent rebellion, and had to be suppressed. The execution of Riel, which some of the Conservatives thought ill-advised, raised a race storm throughout Canada; the French element was in a tumult, and some of the Liberals made opposition capital out of the event. In the province of Quebec it is still a deep grievance, for party purposes partly, as was shown in the recent election of a federal member of Parliament in Montreal.
Manitoba is Western in its spirit and its sympathies. Before the building of the Canadian Pacific its communication was with Minnesota. Its interests now largely lie with its southern neighbors. It has a feeling of irritation with too much federal dictation, and frets under the still somewhat undefined relations of power between the federal and the provincial governments, as was seen in the railway conflict. Besides, the natural exchange of products between south and north—between the lower Mississippi and the Red River of the North and the north-west prairies—is going to increase; the north and south railway lines will have, with the development of industries and exchange of various sorts, a growing importance compared with the great east and west lines. Nothing can stop this exchange and the need of it along our whole border west of Lake Superior. It is already active and growing, even on the Pacific, between Washington Territory and British Columbia.