Canada and the British immigrant

by Emily P. Weaver

A few years later the rival trading companies amalgamated; but for the next half-century the growth of the colony—still under the rule of the Hudson Bay Company—was extraordinarily slow. Then it was affected by events in the eastern provinces.

Immediately after Confederation, resolutions were passed in the Canadian parliament asking the British Government to add to the Dominion these great regions in the north and west, and in 1869 the Hudson Bay Company consented to give up its trade monopoly and sovereign rights in consideration of a sum of £300,000 in money, and of about a twentieth part of the land yet to be surveyed south of the north branch of the Saskatchewan river and west of Lake Winnipeg.

In the Red River region there was at this time a population of about twelve thousand (chiefly half-breeds, and more of French than of English extraction). No one thought it necessary to consult them about the transfer, and when surveyors were sent into the country, the Red River farmers began to fear that their claims to their farms and their right to cut hay on the adjacent wild lands (a privilege of great value in their eyes) would be disregarded. Louis Riel, a young man who had been educated at Montreal, giving voice to their vague alarm, stirred them up to violent agitation, and soon the half-breeds were in open rebellion. They seized the Hudson Bay Company’s post of Fort Garry (where Winnipeg now is) and set up a “Provisional Government,” with Riel at its head. Some who dared to oppose his authority were imprisoned, and finally a young Irishman from Ontario—Thomas Scott—after a mock trial, was brutally murdered. This roused a storm of indignation throughout Canada, and a body of regular troops and militiamen, under the command of Colonel (afterwards Lord) Wolseley, was sent to put down the insurrection. The journey from the east was so toilsome and difficult that, though the troops left Toronto in June, 1870, they did not reach the Red river till August; but Riel fled on their approach, and many of the militiamen who spent the winter in Manitoba ultimately settled there.

In the same year the government of the country as a Canadian province was inaugurated. Manitoba followed Ontario in having only a single chamber in the Provincial Legislature; and it is represented in the Dominion parliament by four members in the Upper, and ten in the Lower, House. “The electoral franchise is practically based on residence and manhood suffrage.”

Between the taking of the first Dominion census affecting Manitoba in 1871, and the fourth (and last) the population of the province has been multiplied by eighteen, being set down in 1911 at 455,614; but, while the urban population showed an increase in the previous decade of nearly one hundred and thirty thousand, the rural population increased only by a little over seventy thousand five hundred.

The growth of Winnipeg during these forty years has been extraordinary. In 1871 it was a mere village of two hundred and thirteen inhabitants. In 1912, owing largely to immigration from other lands, it was a city of well over two hundred thousand people. Its situation at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers was “strategic” in the days when canoes and bateaux were the commonest means of transport, but it was the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway which gave the first strong impetus to its growth; and now it is a great knot in a network of railway lines radiating in about thirty different directions. It is a growing industrial centre, with water power available in large quantity, and it employs over fifteen thousand workers in its factories, which include plants turning out structural steel; making traction engines for farmers; and occupied with food products. But still to-day it is the railways (Manitoba, by the way, now has over four thousand miles of railways) which give its chief importance to Winnipeg. It is the western headquarters of the three greatest Canadian railway systems, the Canadian Pacific, the Canadian Northern, and the Grand Trunk Pacific. Through it pours annually the vast stream of wheat from the grain fields of the West, for it is “the greatest grain market of the world”; whilst another stream flows westward—of more interest and account than any merchandize—the stream of humanity bound to the land of new chances. But part of this human river, as everywhere, tends to drift into the eddies. Some newcomers (foreigners and British alike) never get beyond Winnipeg, and some, failing on the land, return thither, rendering its social problems inexpressibly difficult.

For the past five years the Winnipeg Industrial Bureau has been diligently endeavouring to increase the industrial importance of the city by advertising its opportunities, giving information to persons thinking of engaging in manufacturing, opening a permanent exhibition of articles manufactured in the city and district, and encouraging technical education. Moreover, and this will be of special interest to some immigrants, it has a department to assist in bringing out the wives and children of British workmen who settle in Winnipeg. In little more than two years 1,591 persons have been assisted. In 1912 “234 wives, 215 children over twelve years of age and 465 children under twelve years of age” were brought out, and “of the families reunited 79 came to Winnipeg from Scotland, 165 from England and 14 from Ireland.” A most satisfactory feature of the movement has been the way it has spread to other places; and within two years “Imperial Home Reunion Associations” were organized in Ottawa, in Montreal, Toronto, Edmonton, Halifax, and twenty other leading towns of the Dominion.

The people of Winnipeg believe in municipal ownership, and the city owns and operates waterworks, a street lighting system, a stone quarry, an asphalt plant and a hydro-electric light and power plant, which has reduced the cost of domestic lighting to less than one-third that formerly charged by a private company. Winnipeg is, moreover, a city of broad fine streets, and of numerous churches, schools and colleges. It is the seat of the University of Manitoba, which has six colleges, and of the Provincial Agricultural College, which was first opened in 1906. This college confers the degree of “Bachelor of Science in Agriculture” on those who successfully pass through its five winters’ course. There is also a course of Home Economics for women, and in both cases the cost is very low compared to the high rates of living and of wages in the West. In connection with the college, “demonstration and instruction trains,” with a special staff of lecturers and experts, are sent out over “practically every line in the province,” to carry some of its benefits to the numbers of men and women who cannot attend the college. Of other efforts to aid and improve agriculture I have no space to write.

As to the education of the children, Winnipeg is a city of schools, and in the remotest settlements a school district may be formed as soon as there are ten children of school age (that is, from five to fifteen) in a section, and the schools are supported by grants from the provincial government, and by taxes levied on the people by their municipal councils. In 1905 the experiment of consolidated schools was first tried in Manitoba, and now there are a number of such schools, the children being carried to and from them in well-covered vans.

The growth of Winnipeg and other towns is no doubt largely connected with the growth of manufactures, which, according to official figures, has been phenomenally rapid since the beginning of this century. During its first decade, in fact, the value of manufactures in Manitoba increased by over 315 per cent. At present little mining is carried on, and though in 1910-11 the fisheries of the province brought in about one and one-third million dollars (£260,000), this is considerably less than the amount received by the farmers for the article of butter alone, and agriculture is emphatically the outstanding industry of Manitoba.