Canada and the British immigrant

by Emily P. Weaver

But to return to the forests. Including about one hundred thousand square miles of woodlands in the new district of Patricia, which is only partially explored, the total forest area of Ontario is estimated at 202,000 square miles. Of this about twenty thousand square miles is under licence, and in 1912 the revenue from the forests amounted to considerably over $2,000,000 (£410,000), whilst the revenue so collected since Confederation amounts to about $44,000,000 (£9,040,000). This has been derived from ground rents, timber dues, transfer fees, and bonuses (that is, sums offered over and above the fixed charges for the right to cut timber). In 1911 the value of the timber cut in Ontario was nearly equal to that of the “cut” in all the rest of the Dominion.

An Act passed in 1898 empowered the government to set apart “Forest Reserves, to be owned in perpetuity by the Crown and operated for timber crops,” and Ontario has now six forest reserves, which with Algonquin and Rondeau parks—chiefly intended for the preservation of game—amount in all to 20,000 square miles. The great northern forests consist largely of spruce, and there are half a dozen pulp and paper mills in operation in places easily accessible to these forests. Wood-pulp, by the way, is used in making car-wheels, coffins, pails, roofing materials and a long list of other articles. Ontario has still considerable forests of white and red pines, the trees, which were at one time counted by the lumbermen the only ones of value, being easily floated down to the sea, and being in great demand for masts and other uses. In Southern Ontario there used to be quantities of black walnut and other trees which would now be prized for making furniture, but in the days of the pioneers, owing to lack of transport facilities, vast piles of such woods were heaped together and burned.

In manufacturing, Ontario is the premier province, for though its capital comes in this respect second to Montreal, six Ontario cities are included amongst the first fourteen manufacturing centres of the Dominion. These are Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa, London, Brantford, and Berlin; and in addition there are many smaller industrial centres. The industrial establishments (taken at random) include lumber and flour mills, agricultural implement works, shipbuilding yards, iron and steel plants, foundries, railway shops, distilleries, canning factories, cheese factories, creameries, carriage and motor car works. A long list of others might be added, and these various industries offer a variety of opportunity to skilled workmen.

But after all, Ontario is still chiefly an agricultural country; and the value of her field crops is “more than that of any other two provinces.” In fact, the value of her whole agricultural products was estimated in 1911 at three hundred million dollars (about £60,000,000).

The province has a great variety of soils and climates, and its older parts are a region of “mixed farming”; where dairying, the raising of live stock; the growing of wheat, oats, and other grain; fruit culture, tobacco-growing, poultry-raising and bee-keeping are successfully carried on. Dairying, according to an official statement, “is the largest industry in the country”; and three-fourths of the dairy product of the whole Dominion is produced in Ontario.

The province produces also three-fourths of the fruit grown in Canada—chiefly in its southern counties bordering on the Great Lakes—and is almost equally famous for its apples and its peaches, its berries and its grapes. Hundreds of thousands of acres in Southern Ontario are planted with fruit trees and small fruit bushes; and immense areas of land equally suitable for fruit-culture remain to be planted—in the Niagara district, along the shores of Lakes Erie and Ontario, and in other districts.

From the point of view of opportunity for newcomers, the interesting feature of the situation is not what has been, but what may be done. The fact is, even in the older portions of the province, only the fringe of possible productivity has been touched, and here in Ontario we are still in the region where the country districts have suffered in the last few decades by the exodus of the young—at first largely to the United States, later to the West and to the cities. The result is that there are plenty of good farms for sale at prices ranging from $25 (£5) to $100 (£20) the acre—the latter price including the cost of buildings—and a list of these can be obtained from the “Director of Colonization” at Toronto.

The prices, by the way, of apple and peach orchards and of vineyards in good bearing go up far beyond the prices of ordinary farm lands. As much as from $400 (£80) to $1,200 (£240) an acre is asked in the Niagara district for peach orchards, according to age, while apple orchards may fetch from $300 (£60) to $500 (£100) an acre. Even unplanted lands good for fruit culture range high—$400 (£80) the acre being asked for land especially suitable for peach-growing.

There are many districts of Ontario where capable British farmers with some little capital would have every prospect of doing well, for markets for all produce are good. Conditions of life in the settled farming districts of this province are usually found pleasant by those who like a country life, and many things are working together to render these even better than they were a few years ago. I will, however, return to this matter a little later.

One of the great difficulties that Ontario farmers have to contend with is that of obtaining sufficiency of help in the busy seasons. The best remedy for this is to so manage the farm—by keeping a considerable number of live stock—that help can profitably be employed all the year round, and to have houses in which married men can live with their families.