Canada and the British immigrant

by Emily P. Weaver

THOUGH it had an area larger than that of Ireland, Scotland and Wales combined, Manitoba for many years suffered under a sense of injustice with regard to its restricted size. People called it “the postage-stamp province,” but in 1912 that reproach was taken away by the addition to it of a “new Manitoba,” more than twice the size of the old. Now the enlarged province boasts itself as “the Maritime Prairie Province,” for it stretches away eastward to the shores of Hudson Bay, which was the old-time gateway of the seafaring British into the great West.

The Manitoba coast has two good natural harbours, Fort Churchill and Port Nelson, which, while they are by rail nine or ten hundred miles nearer to Winnipeg than is Montreal, are only about the same distance as the St. Lawrence port from Liverpool. What this may mean in the future to Manitoba can at present only be guessed at, but there seems little doubt that suitably-built steamships will be able to navigate Hudson Bay and Strait for a longer period annually than was the case with the little sailing vessels of the Hudson Bay Company, which were sometimes becalmed, as well as checked by quantities of ice.

But of more importance to prospective immigrants than the possibilities of the new-old waterway to Manitoba is the climate of the province itself. Now one must admit frankly that Manitoba has a cold winter, but it is not usually a very long one. Often the fine weather lasts late into the autumn, and seeding generally begins in April. Moreover, owing to the dryness of the atmosphere and the amount of sunshine, people do not suffer from the cold as the readings of the thermometer might lead the inexperienced to expect. It is a country where, both for health and comfort, it is necessary in winter to keep the houses warm and to wear good warm clothing out of doors, but ordinarily healthy people, who know how to take proper precautions, do not appear to dread the cold. It is, however, very hard on the poor, though more fortunate persons find the crisp cold exhilarating, and the climate is generally regarded as healthy. In summer the days are often hot, but the nights are usually cool and pleasant for sleeping, though there are seasons when flies and mosquitoes, at least in little-settled districts, are very troublesome.

The climate is unquestionably favourable for the growth of wheat and many other agricultural products. Despite the remarkable dryness and clearness of the atmosphere, Manitoba is not a dry and thirsty land where no water is, and in June there is usually ample rainfall after seeding to give the young crops every chance of growth. The frost coming out of the ground in spring, and the rains, have indeed a deplorable effect on the prairie trails. Not very long ago the streets of Winnipeg were sometimes almost impassable with mud, but Winnipeg—according to a table recently compiled by the meteorological department in Toronto—has a much greater annual rainfall than most other places in the province.

Manitoba has numerous and large lakes. Among those in the older part of the province are Winnipeg, Manitoba, Winnipegosis and Dauphin lakes, all very large according to old-world standards, and its chief rivers are the Red, Assiniboine, Winnipeg and Pembina, each with several tributaries. The waters of all these find their way ultimately into Hudson Bay.

Manitoba is popularly supposed to be “as flat as a pancake,” and the prairie about Winnipeg is extraordinarily level in appearance. But, as a matter of fact, the prairie country of the Canadian West consists of three distinct steppes. Of these, Manitoba contains the whole of the first, and a portion of the second steppe. The first slopes gently from the international boundary, where it is about fifty miles wide, towards the far-distant Arctic Ocean, and the site of Winnipeg is only about seven hundred feet above sea-level, but the average elevation of the second steppe, which begins in South-west Manitoba, is about sixteen hundred feet. The face of this second steppe forms the “Riding and Duck Mountains,” and the Porcupine hills, in which is the highest point in Manitoba, 2,500 feet. In the south there are two other elevations named, like many another natural feature of the prairie regions, after birds, fish or animals. These are the Turtle and the Tiger hills.

There are also acres of forest land in the north-west and extreme east of the old province, and here and there are small timbered districts, which supply the settlers with a certain amount of house timber and fuel, though not a little has to be imported. Much of new Manitoba is covered with forests, and is likely to supply immense quantities of pulpwood, and timber for other purposes. It is believed also to contain great stretches of good agricultural land; there are hopeful indications of mineral wealth; and its fisheries must be valuable. Finally, this wild north land certainly contains abundance of water power, which in time may make it an important manufacturing region. As yet the worth of its scarcely explored resources cannot be estimated, but quite enough is known to justify the Manitobans in congratulating themselves on the possession of this vast addition to the province.

But, leaving new Manitoba out of account, there is no lack of definite information concerning the older portion of this first-settled of the “Prairie Provinces.” If one goes back to explorers and fur traders, its history may be said to begin far back in the eighteenth century with the building of La Verendrye’s little trading post on the site of the modern city of Winnipeg. If we do not care to go behind the first attempt actually to colonize what is now Manitoba, the story stretches just over one hundred years.

It was in 1811 that Lord Selkirk obtained a large tract of land on the Red river from the Hudson Bay Company (of which he was a member), with the view of settling upon it an agricultural colony. The first party of British immigrants—drawn chiefly from Scotland—came in, it will be noted, by way of Hudson Bay, a route which it is prophesied may yet be preferred by British colonists as the shortest road to the great West. But no Hudson Bay Railroad was dreamed of when those first immigrants arrived, late in 1811, and it was not till the following summer that they reached their destination on the Red river.

There they received anything but a hospitable welcome. In fact, the Hudson Bay Company’s rivals in the fur trade deliberately set themselves to make the place too hot to hold them, for, not altogether unreasonably, they regarded farming and fur trading as mutually exclusive industries. But neither their ill-will, which at last culminated in bloodshed, nor other disasters of various descriptions, sufficed to destroy the colony. Through all, a few of Selkirk’s settlers succeeded in the end in making good their footing; and many modern Manitobans are proud to claim descent from these sturdy and steadfast folk who, with no better implements than hoes, broke up the ancient sod, and sowed and reaped the first of Manitoba’s famous wheat crops.