Canada and the British immigrant

by Emily P. Weaver

With the exception of Prince Edward Island, which can take advantage of the universities in neighbouring provinces; and of British Columbia, which has colleges at Vancouver and Victoria affiliated with McGill University, and has recently set apart two million acres of public land for the endowment of a provincial university—each province has one or more universities. The University of McGill at Montreal is the richest of Canada’s universities; and that of Toronto, with over 4,100 students in 1913, is the largest.

An interesting fact in connection with all Canadian universities is that a large proportion of their students are drawn from classes by no means wealthy; and numbers of the undergraduates are “putting themselves through,” as it is sometimes called. Many of these, having been engaged as teachers or in some business, have saved a sum of money for the payment of the expenses of part of their course. To eke this out, they seek employment in the long summer vacation, which, happily for them, coincides with the busy season, when men are in demand for every form of work; and a resolute student usually finds something to do. If he is not of the physique to go into the harvest fields, he may find employment as a timekeeper over a gang of foreign labourers, a waiter in a summer hotel, or a teacher in some scattered settlement which can only aspire as yet to a summer school. Given reasonably good health, a determined man will usually find or make a way to earn something in the summer; and such are the men who make the most of what can be gained from their hard-won courses of instruction in the winter.

At intervals people lift up their voices in protest over the readiness with which poor men’s sons can rise into the professional classes, and imagine that it accounts, in part at least, for the continuous movement townward from the country districts; but there would surely be more loss than gain to Canadian life in general if any class of young people could be shut up by lack of wealth or other disability to the vocation of their fathers. Canada, though it has a growing wealthy class, and, alas, a growing submerged one, is a long way yet from the fixed “caste” idea.

The healthier recognition of a possible connection between the aspiration for college education amongst country-bred youths and the deserted farms in some of the older provinces, is the attempt made to lift agriculture to its true position amongst the great industries as a scientific profession. For long years agricultural societies have been working to stimulate the ambition of farmers in their own line of work. But this was not enough. It is possible for a dullard and an ignoramus to pick a meagre living from amongst the weeds of a neglected farm; but it takes not only brains, but cultivated brains, to farm well. No man is too good, whatever a “smart” lad may think, for the foundation industry of the world; and no farmer can have a too good educational equipment for this work. Perhaps the people of the Dominion, when reviewing what has been done in this country for education, have a reasonably good right to look with pleasure on the effort to bring well-trained minds to bear on agriculture. At sixteen different points in the Dominion, there are Government experimental farms, and the result of their work in testing seeds and methods suitable to various soils and conditions, finding out good stock and so forth, are at the free service of the farmers. Nor is this all. For nearly forty years Ontario has had in the Agricultural College at Guelph, a school, at once practical and scientific, for farmers; and this is only one of several agricultural colleges, while in the new University of Saskatchewan, one of the first departments to be organized was that of agriculture.

In connection with the colleges and universities are short courses—in England they would probably be called “University Extension” lectures—on agriculture and subjects related to the farm, especially designed for the benefit of dairymen, threshermen, housewives, beekeepers, etc., etc. The imparting of the special knowledge to make a scientific instead of a blundering amateur “thresherman” fits in oddly at first sight with one’s preconceived notions of a university; but why should the extension downward in such utilitarian directions—the striking deep of its roots into the common earth—prevent a great educational institution flowering freely in the higher realms of science and art and philosophy?

There is another aspect to the case. I was much interested, a few months ago, on a chance conversation in a train with an old western farmer of rugged aspect, by his remark that the institution of college and university courses in agriculture would tend to raise the young fellows of the farming classes in their own eyes and in those of other people, and would also enable them better to hold their proper place in the country. (I give the substance of his remarks, not his words.) Now, it is a fact that the Canadian farmer is, as a rule, a much less self-assertive and a more retiring being than his brother—the doctor, the merchant, the manufacturer, the lawyer or the politician, as the case may be; and sometimes his interests suffer on account of his modesty. Nevertheless, there are not a few men amongst the farmers who are of excellent intellectual capabilities. They are men who think, moreover, and some day, now that they are beginning to organize themselves, the result of their thinking will have considerably more effect on the public life of the Dominion than it has had hitherto.

In the various provinces there has been a widespread movement of late years in the direction of the formation of farmers and country-women’s clubs or institutes, which not only serve as a means for the dissemination of information, but give a much-needed stimulus to the social life of thinly settled districts, where hitherto (in the case of the women especially) the churches have been the chief social factor.

The churches will continue, both in town and country, to be of account in the social side of life, apart from their primary importance as definite religious agencies. According to the latest census there were in Canada over 2,833,000 adherents of the Roman Catholic church, which gains immense strength from its solidarity. The Protestants, on the other hand, though stronger numerically, are split up into numerous divisions, and in hundreds of little villages throughout the Dominion, there are three or four churches of different denominations, whilst numberless other places have no church at all. This over-lapping adds immensely to the toils, and perhaps detracts from the efficiency, of the country ministers and missionaries as a body. But projects of union are in the air, and there is hope that the several great Protestant churches may devise some plan of working together much more than has been done hitherto, even if they do not accomplish the corporate union which many of their adherents desire. In numerical strength the Protestant churches come in the following order:—Presbyterians, Methodists, Anglicans, Baptists, and a large number of smaller organizations. Apart from definite efforts by the churches themselves to arrive at some basis of union, there are numerous inter-denominational associations which are tending towards unity. One of the most notable of these is the organized effort, known as the “Laymen’s Missionary Movement,” to arouse the interest of business men in missions. This organization, first started in the United States, has resulted in largely increased giving for missionary purposes.

The immense immigration to Canada of foreigners and others necessitates constantly increasing effort on the part of the churches to keep abreast of their duties and opportunities; and amongst the numbers of newcomers there is much call to foreign missionary work within the borders of the Dominion, if it is to remain, in anything more than name, a Christian country. For instance, Montreal and Toronto each have thousands of Jewish citizens, many of them from Russia and other foreign lands. Galicians, adherents of the Greek Church, are numerous in the prairie provinces; and there are over fifteen thousand Mormons in Canada, chiefly in Alberta and Ontario. As farmers they are said to be excellent settlers; whether or not they will be equally successful in sowing the seeds of their distinctive tenets, so degrading to women and to the sanctity of home life, yet remains to be seen. It is, however, only fair to add that the Mormons in Canada do not, as in Utah, practise polygamy openly.

In British Columbia, and to a less extent throughout Canada, are to be found numbers of quiet, industrious Chinamen, working on the railways, in the hotels of the West, in the canning factories of the Pacific Coast, and in laundries from Victoria to Halifax. Despite the heavy head tax of $500 (£100) on each newcomer, no less than 6,083 Chinamen came to Canada in a recent year. Amongst them are very few women; but a number of young boys have recently been brought out by their relatives to attend the public schools, with a view to their learning English and the “Western learning” that goes with it.