Canada and the British immigrant

by Emily P. Weaver

In natural beauty British Columbia is the most richly endowed of the provinces, for she possesses glorious forests and a picturesque sea-coast, in addition to the magnificent peaks and mountain lakes of gem-like colour and translucence, which she shares with her fair neighbour, Alberta. Her coast views are indeed the lovelier for the green heights springing from the water’s edge, and for many a ghostly white peak gleaming in the distance, whilst in this province much of the “forest primeval” consists of Douglas firs, some towering up three hundred feet, and giant red cedars, with a girth at the butt of twenty or thirty feet, or even more. It was of these cedars, by the way, that the coast Indians made their huge, strangely-carved war-canoes, or dug-outs.

The climate of British Columbia, though having considerable variety in different districts, may appeal to some intending immigrants who dread cold. “The Coast,” as Canadians of the prairie provinces often call it, gets the full benefit of the warm “Japanese current,” and there winter comes chiefly in the guise of additional rain, while snow, if it does fall, does not lie long on the ground. British Columbia is, as was suggested in an earlier chapter, a land where roses of the types cultivated in English gardens bloom for many months in the year. In the uncleared woods, the undergrowth is a luxuriant tangle of shrubs and ferns and wild flowers; and gardens, if but a little neglected, run riot too. It is a wonderful thing, when travelling westward after crossing the prairies, where Nature appears to be rather insisting on the one idea of broad simplicity, and after plunging through the mountains, where she seems to invite your special attention to the magnificence of her backgrounds (though she herself has energy to spare for details too), to come down to this paradise of growing things, ranging from trees that tower to heaven to blossoms that climb on the houses, peep over grey walls and swing from the porches, bent apparently on breaking all bounds.

All the way up the coast of British Columbia and its adjacent islands the climate is “mild and moist”; and as far north as the new Grand Trunk Pacific port of Prince Rupert, which is indeed only in about the same latitude as Liverpool, severe cold need not be expected. Victoria, the capital, situated on Vancouver island, has a drier climate than the city of Vancouver, its younger and busier and more commercial rival on the mainland. But not all of the mainland has a damp climate. Behind the shelter of the coast range, which intercepts the warm moisture-laden winds from the West, lies a “dry belt,” and between the coast mountains is many a pleasant sheltered valley rich in soil, mild, warm and prolific of fruit and other heat-loving crops.

During summer, in the Kootenay district, which lies in the south-east of the province, the temperature sometimes reaches eighty or ninety degrees in the shade, and in winter occasionally falls below zero, and the rainfall is usually sufficient to secure good crops of various descriptions; but much of the southern part of the interior of British Columbia consists of an elevated region, which, though deeply cut into by lakes and rivers, is described as a plateau, lying between mountain ranges on the east and west. It has an average altitude of three thousand five hundred feet, and here the rainfall is not superabundant. Indeed, in some districts irrigation is resorted to, with the result of great improvement in the crops. Altogether, however, there are many good farming and fruit districts in the valleys.

The Cariboo country, west and north of the Kootenay, has a more severe climate; but still further north lies the famous Peace River valley, partly in British Columbia and partly in Alberta, for which such great things are now being prophesied in agriculture. This region, though far north of Winnipeg, has a milder autumn and a shorter winter than Manitoba; and experts say that generally in the northern part of the province the clearing of the forests, which now prevent evaporation, will result in rendering milder the climate of this land of marsh and swamp and rigorous winter, which seems to resemble what the now progressive Germany was in the days of the Romans.

British Columbia has many rivers navigable in parts of their course, some of which, like the Columbia in the Kootenay, broaden into lakes, upon which ply quaint-looking, stern-paddle steamers drawing very little water. The Fraser, which rises in the Rocky Mountains and is navigable, though not uninterruptedly, for about six hundred miles, is the largest river, whose course is wholly within the province. It is a stream which every traveller on the Canadian Pacific Railway must remember, for the trains journey, for one hundred and thirty miles, with the rushing waters down the terrific, sharply-cut canyons, till, almost within sight of salt water, the river broadens into calm and the railway turns aside to reach Vancouver.

Far north, near Prince Rupert, the Skeena River, which is navigable for about seven months each year for two hundred miles from its mouth, enters the sea. It is the second in size of wholly British Columbian rivers, and is destined before long to become almost as well-known to travellers and tourists as the Fraser itself, for the Grand Trunk Pacific has taken advantage of the way it has cut through the mountains to gain the sea. Other notable rivers are the Thompson, the Naas and the Kootenay, within the province; and the Columbia, the Peace, the Stikine, and the Laird, which rise and flow within it for considerable distances, but pass beyond its boundaries before reaching the sea.

The rivers of British Columbia are swarming with fish, and so are the waters which wash the mainland coasts—some seven thousand miles in length, if the shores of inlets and bays are taken into account. In 1911-12 the value of the catch, amounting to over thirteen and a half million dollars, exceeded that of the preceding year by four and a half millions, and for the first time British Columbia was the leading province of the Dominion in the fisheries. She owes her supremacy in this respect to salmon, though vast numbers of halibut, herring, sturgeon and other varieties of fish are taken in her waters. Amongst these are the oolachan or candle fish, a small oily fish from which the Indians make a substitute for butter.

Much of British Columbia’s catch of herrings goes to China, and some of her sturgeon are sent, strange to say, to her great rival in the fisheries, Nova Scotia. As for her salmon, when canned it goes all over the world. Chinamen do much work in the salmon canneries and a machine recently introduced is known as “the Iron Chink,” from the fact that it does the work of many Chinamen in cleaning and cutting the fish. Lobsters are not found in British Columbian waters, but crabs and shrimps and prawns are plentiful. The Japanese do much fishing along the coasts, and from Vancouver many of their gasoline launches go out. A whaling company which uses fast steamers and machine guns has several stations on Vancouver Island; and parts of the monsters, taken chiefly for the sake of the whalebone and oil, are exported as food to Japan.

I have, however, begun to discuss the great groups of industries at the wrong end. Important and rapidly increasing as are the fisheries of this ocean-washed province, the value of their annual product is at present far surpassed by that of the mines, then of the forests, and thirdly, by that of the farms and orchards taken together.