Russian Provinces in the Same Latitude.
Reference has already been made in this chapter to an interesting comparison made by Wm. Ogilvie, D.L.S., between the Mackenzie country and Finland and Scandinavia.
In his examination before the Senate committee of 1888, Doctor G. M. Dawson instituted a comparison between parts of northwestern Canada and a province of northern European Russia as follows:—“I have a few notes here worth considering while we are dealing with the question of this northern country. I looked up the circumstances of the northern provinces of Russia and I found that the province of Russia which seemed to compare most nearly with that shown on this map, both in its relation in Russia to the Atlantic, corresponding to the relation of this country to the Pacific, and also in its latitude, is the province of Vologda. That province has a total area of one hundred and fifty-five thousand, two hundred and sixty-five square miles, and it is chiefly drained to the north like the country shown here. It lies between latitudes 58° and 65°. It is about seven hundred and fifty miles in greatest length and three hundred miles greatest width. It is drained by the Dwina river chiefly. Its products are carried by this river to Archangel and exported thence in vessels by White sea in the same way that we hope this northern country of ours may be served by the Mackenzie and Arctic sea. The mouth of the Dwina is in latitude 65°, only a little south of the latitude of the mouth of the Mackenzie. The climate of the two countries is very similar. The winters are severe and the summers warm. There is no very heavy rainfall, such as we find near the western coasts bordering on the Atlantic and on the Pacific. The exports from that province of Vologda are oats, rye, barley, hemp, flax and pulse. The mineral products are salt, copper, iron and marble. Horses and cattle are reared, while the skins of various wild animals, as well as pitch and turpentine, are exported. This province supports a population of one million, one hundred and sixty-one thousand inhabitants.[[19]]
“That province is not in Siberia but in Russia proper. Now, we have areas to the north which may make several provinces like Vologda, and for the purpose of illustrating this point I have made a very rough calculation here, which as it is founded largely on suppositions, is perhaps scarcely worthy of being presented to the committee, but may serve to give an idea. With reference to the agricultural area of Peace river, I confine myself to a tract roughly marked on the map as to which I have some personal knowledge. Without going over what I have already written in reply to that question and which is largely embodied in a report published some years ago, I may say that the area which is included in the upper portion of Peace river country, is about thirty-one thousand five hundred square miles. The proportion which I estimated as arable land is twenty-three thousand, five hundred square miles. That would give ninety-four thousand quarter-sections if it were subdivided. Reckoning a family of five persons on each, that area would be capable of supporting a population of four hundred and seventy thousand, or in round figures say five hundred thousand. I do not think it would be at all beyond the mark (though I am speaking now from the report of others, because I have not been farther down Peace river myself) to assume that there is another area at least equally great of arable land in Mackenzie valley to the north of this. That will give another population of say five hundred thousand. Now, if we take the headwaters of the Mackenzie and the Yukon west of the mountains, I think we shall be well within the limits of probability if we say that we have there thirty thousand square miles of that region which may be cultivated with advantage. This, on the same basis as before, would support a population of six hundred thousand persons, or a total of say one million, five hundred thousand persons in Mackenzie valley, and adjacent tracts, to the north altogether of the Saskatchewan watershed, and on the west of the mountains, north of British Columbia. I think we might, without exaggeration, by including miners, fur traders, hunters, lumbermen and those engaged in transport or trade, besides those in outlying fertile sections not included in this—double the total just arrived at. This will give us a population of three million people in that part of the Dominion alone. As I am not personally familiar with lower Mackenzie region east of the mountains, I may have underestimated its value.
A Siberian Province.
Along the same lines the late Robert E. Young, D.L.S., at that time Superintendent of Railway Lands and Chief Geographer, giving evidence before the select standing committee of the Canadian House of Commons on Agriculture and Colonization, March 11, 1908, instituted in a graphic manner a comparison between Mackenzie basin and the Siberian province of Tobolsk.
Mr. Young had prepared a map of the province of Tobolsk drawn to the same scale as a map of Canada hanging in the room, and attached the small map to the larger, overlying part of the valley of the Mackenzie, taking care that the lines of latitude corresponded exactly.
This demonstrated that rather more than half the province of Tobolsk is north of the 60th parallel, which is the southern limit of the country immediately under discussion, although the southern portion of the Russian province extends in a narrow point as far south as 52° 15′′, its general southern boundary is, in latitude, about ten miles north of Athabaska or one hundred miles north of Winnipeg.
Mr. Young proceeded to point out on the map of Tobolsk, the location of the chief cities of the Russian province:—Tobolsk, with a population of twenty thousand, four hundred and twenty-seven, situated at exactly the latitude of Fort Vermilion on Peace river; and Omsk, on the line of the great Siberian Railway, with a population of thirty-seven thousand, four hundred and seventy, situated at a spot corresponding with a point ten miles north of Athabaska, and about a hundred miles north of Edmonton. Mr. Young also pointed out the situation of the city of Tomsk, with fifty-two thousand and five population, a province adjoining Tobolsk, situated at about the same latitude as Chipewyan on Lake Athabaska, or a trifle farther north. Mr. Young went on to explain that in 1900 the population of the province of Tobolsk was one million five hundred thousand.[[20]]
A Large Town North of Wrigley’s Latitude.