Canada and the British immigrant

by Emily P. Weaver

The lumber industry gives employment, during the winter months, when most other work is slack, to over twenty thousand men, in addition to the thousands of log-drivers required every spring to take the season’s cut down the rivers to market. Much of the government forests (chiefly of pulpwood) have been inaccessible, but the construction of the Transcontinental Railway, which passes through these forests, is adding immensely to their value, and, whenever they are opened to lumbering operations, numerous pulp and paper mills are likely to be erected. In 1912 the province already had twenty-eight of these mills.

Quebec possesses much mineral wealth, but it is little developed as yet, though as long ago as the first half of the eighteenth century a small blast furnace, for smelting bog iron ore with charcoal, was established at Three Rivers. Coal has not yet been discovered in Quebec, but the vast deposits of peat may, in a measure, supply its place. Copper and gold have been produced in a small way, and there are good building stones, slates and materials from which cement, brick, tiles and pottery can be made. But the mineral product of first value, reaching considerably over $3,000,000 (£600,000) in 1911, is asbestos. In that year four-fifths of the world’s whole product came from Quebec. The deposits, of immense extent, lie in the “Eastern Townships,” about seventy-five miles south of Quebec city, and were discovered in 1878, when the Quebec Central Railway was being constructed.

The fisheries of the province, both from the commercial and sportsman’s standpoint, are valuable. The former in 1909-10 gave employment with the canneries, to nearly twelve thousand persons and brought in nearly $2,000,000 (£400,000), cod, lobsters and bait yielding the largest contributions to this sum. An almost equal amount, it was estimated, was spent by sportsmen and anglers who came to the forests; and much of this money fortunately finds its way to the settlers (generally poor) of districts not well adapted to agriculture. In the regions north of the St. Lawrence and in the Canadian Labrador, bears, wolves, beavers and other wild animals abound to this day, and the fur trade, once the chief support of New France, still brings about $1,000,000 (£200,000) annually into the province.

Now agriculture holds the first place, and the farmers of Quebec, represented in 1617 by one solitary tiller of the soil, Louis Hébert, have become a great army. Enough has been said, I think, to show that Quebec has a variety of opportunities to offer to strong and capable and industrious immigrants; but perhaps the best of these are in agriculture. In different districts are millions of acres of good land still wild and uncultivated. Of these, six and a quarter millions have been surveyed and divided into farm lots of one hundred acres each, and these are almost given away to bonâ fide settlers, on condition of their clearing a few acres and erecting a small house, barn and stable within five years. The price charged is at the rate of from 20 cents (10d.) to 60 cents (2s. 6d.) an acre, payable in five instalments.

If the newcomer shrinks from the idea of taking up one of these uncleared farms, there are plenty of more or less “improved farms” to be bought at prices varying widely in different districts and under different circumstances.

To British farmers with a little capital or to farm labourers from the United Kingdom, the beautiful district south of the St. Lawrence, known as the “Eastern Townships,” has been warmly recommended as a region where conditions more nearly resemble those of the “Old Country” than most parts of this new land. It was first settled by Loyalists from the revolted American colonies, towards the close of the eighteenth century. These earliest comers had to endure many hardships, but now the whole district is peculiarly prosperous, possessing not only good farms, but a considerable number of manufacturing and industrial establishments, including the asbestos quarries already mentioned.

Most of the counties of Quebec are divided into “parishes,” but the Loyalists had been accustomed to “townships” in the land from which they came, hence “the Eastern Townships,” comprising an area of about four and a half million acres, and including the eleven counties of Brome, Compton, Drummond and Arthabaska, Megantic, Missisquoi, Richmond and Wolfe, Shefford, Sherbrooke and Stanstead. Of this district, Sherbrooke, which in 1911 had seventeen thousand inhabitants, may be counted the capital. It is one hundred and twenty-five miles south of Quebec, and being in a central situation is the distributing point for immigrants bound for the “Townships.”

The soil of this region is generally fertile, and the climate is by no means a bad one either for the human being or for the products of his fields. In latitude these counties correspond with the northern portion of Italy; but, though “Green Yules” are not unknown, someone has rather happily described the winter as “decided” in its character, and usually the snow comes about the beginning of December, to lie two or three feet deep and make good sleighing for several months. The summer is also a “decided” one; and many a fruit and vegetable which will not ripen in the open air in England here comes to perfection. The inhabitants of the country think the climate peculiarly healthy, and the census reports bear out the assertion so far as to show that an unusually large number of people live to be eighty or ninety.

It must not be supposed that in these long-settled counties there remains any public land to be disposed of; but there are plenty of good farms, of from one hundred and fifty to three hundred acres, for sale at prices ranging from $2,000 (£400) to $8,000 (£1,600), and a considerable portion of the purchase money may always be borrowed on mortgage. That there are so many of these farms for sale is due, as in other parts of Eastern Canada, to the attraction of the West, and of the cities and of other professions than farming; but it is asserted that farming in this region of easy accessibility to good markets has never before been so profitable as it is now. For many products there is an excellent local demand. Moreover, “the Townships” are in easy reach of Montreal and of some of the cities of the United States, and are served by the Canadian Pacific Railway, by the Grand Trunk and other lines—736 miles in all. Prices of produce are now high, and (unfortunately for the consumer) seem likely to remain so even if the supplies should be very largely increased. That the productivity of this district could be more than doubled if the population were doubled is no doubt true, for, though compared to the population of Canada, as a whole (which has less than two persons to the square mile), the Eastern Townships (with about thirty-four persons to the square mile) are well peopled, the density of population even here is only about one-tenth of that of the United Kingdom.

There is generally a scarcity of farm labourers in the district, and a year ago it was said that several thousand experienced workers could get work at wages ranging from $10 (£2) to $35 (£7) the month, in addition to board and lodging, or a rent-free house. As for “Old Country” girls, able and willing to do housework, they can readily obtain places in the towns and villages at wages of from $10 to $20 the month, that is, at from £24 to £48 the year.