Owing to the fact that there is a demand in winter for men to work in the lumber camps of Quebec, and that the farming carried on in this district (and the province generally) is of the “mixed” type, there is a fair demand for men in winter as well as summer—a most important consideration in comparing wages and opportunities in different places.
Here, too, it is said that experience of farming gained in England stands the newcomer in good stead to an especial degree; but, of course, there are some differences. For instance, after dairying and live-stock raising, the making of maple sugar is a large source of revenue to Eastern Township farmers. The sharp night frosts and warm days of early spring in this region are favourable to the flow of sap, and the average farm has from six hundred to one thousand maples, and some farms have three or four thousand. In a good year the yield of sugar may be as much as 3 lbs. to a tree. This sells at about 8 cents the pound. But if a farmer is an adept at making syrup, his profits may be increased.
The Townships have an agent at Quebec to meet incoming steamers and to help new arrivals on their way; and within the last few years some five thousand British immigrants have settled in the district. Some have found work in the shops and mills of the towns, but most have gone to the farms, and here and there amongst the prosperous farmers of the district is one who could tell an interesting story of his arrival at Quebec with scarcely a penny and of his gradual climb up the ladder to a position of comfort.
By the way, there are plenty of churches of different denominations and schools and other social advantages which make life pleasant in the Townships, and probably for English-speaking people, especially for those who are Protestants, this part of Quebec will prove more homelike than any of the counties where the population is almost entirely French-speaking and Roman Catholic.
To return to the province in general, though it has still too many illiterates, there has been progress during the last few years in educational matters, and within seven years the government grant for this purpose was much more than doubled. Owing to the marked religious differences, there are two classes of public schools—the regular public schools and the “separate” schools of the minority, which may be Protestant in one district and Roman Catholic in another. The Roman Catholic and Protestant schools are represented, in the department of education, by French and English secretaries or deputy-heads, under the general “Superintendent of Public Instruction.” In the different localities, school affairs are regulated by “commissioners” representing the religious majority, and “trustees” representing the minority. These are elected by the ratepayers, who pay school rates to the school board of their own religious faith.
Recently new technical schools have been opened in Quebec and Montreal, and the latter city now has a “School of Higher Commercial Studies.” There are also Provincial Forestry and Veterinary Schools. Finally, there is the great Roman Catholic University of Laval, with branches in Quebec and Montreal, which is the outgrowth of a seminary founded in the seventeenth century by the first bishop of Canada; and the non-sectarian McGill University, which owes its foundation in 1814 to the bequest of a wealthy merchant of Montreal, but has since been enriched by benefactions from Lord Strathcona and others. It is said, indeed, to be the wealthiest of Canadian universities. It has a large number of departments, and is well equipped for research work in medicine, physics, engineering, and so forth. Women are admitted to its courses on equal terms with men. This university, by the way, owes much to the famous Nova Scotian geologist, Sir William Dawson, who was its principal for thirty-eight years, and during that time saw the number of its undergraduates increase from eighty to over a thousand.
MONTMORENCY FALLS, QUEBEC PROVINCE.