and the area of rock surface is relatively small. Much of this land is covered with forests of poplar and spruce, while on account of the retentive, impervious nature of the clay soil much of it is also boggy and wet, but when it is cleared and drained it will form rich agricultural land. At Badthroat river, Mr. Wood, the local Inspector of Fisheries, had cleared a beautiful farm out of the midst of the poplar forest, and he informs me that he grows successfully all the crops ordinarily raised in Ontario. Mr. McKay, the Indian Agent at Berens river, has also a clearing situated on the south side of the river in the midst of what was a dense forest of small spruce. He has under cultivation a nice garden, and this year the potatoes were not cut down by frost till the middle of September.”
During his examination before the Senate committee of 1907, Mr. Tyrrell described the whole stretch of country extending from Lake Winnipeg and Split lake on the east to Churchill and Athabaska on the west[[14]] as a “country essentially suited for agricultural purposes.” He could not say what there was beyond the limits mentioned as he had not been there. This was a forest belt. The eastern side of this tract would be Nelson river. Not having been east of that river with the exception of twenty or thirty miles, he could not speak of the country beyond. Mr. Tyrrell declared:—“That belt of forest is for the most part excellent agricultural land.” As far as the observations of Mr. Tyrrell went, he believed that that country, while a little harder to settle up, and not so attractive to settlers who are going in and looking for farms ready made and cleared for them and ready to put the wheat in, would be as fine an agricultural tract of land as there is in the Northwest. Everywhere in travelling through it, the evidence of rich vegetation was abundant, and everywhere where gardens or any kind of agriculture or horticulture had been attempted in this forest belt, it had been eminently successful. It is a forest country, a spruce covered country, and lies southwest of Hudson bay, west of Nelson river, north of Saskatchewan river, and extends to Mackenzie and Athabaska rivers. It would be about two hundred miles wide from north to south. Witness did not remember the length of it. It is land similar to that of Ontario, and will grow practically everything that will grow in that province, except possibly down in the southern peninsula. The summer is warm. The winter does not count, because things do not grow in winter. There is a good rainfall. A small part of the district is park country, half wooded. It is a continuation northward of the Saskatchewan country.
Mr. Tyrrell said he had seen growing in that country all the garden products that they grow in Ontario—potatoes, carrots, turnips, cabbage, cauliflowers and all the ordinary garden produce. He saw excellent potatoes in the district around Nelson House. He could not say what time they were planted, because he was not there. The Indians constantly, when hunting, plant little patches of potatoes here and there in the spring and leave them all summer and dig them up when they go back to their hunting grounds in the fall, and use them for their winter supply. The witness had gone out and dug a pail of beautiful potatoes on several occasions out of these little Indian patches buried in the woods. They had never been hoed or cultivated in any way. They were not looked after from the time they were planted in the spring until they were dug in the fall. The potatoes seem to be able to grow sufficiently to keep down the weeds. As a protection against wild animals these potato patches are usually planted on islands. Witness had not actually seen wheat, barley nor oats grown in that country. He has fairly good evidence that they are grown there, but as far as he remembered he had not seen any himself. He had been told and believed that they grow there. There is no doubt whatever that the country described will support quite a large population. North of Lake Winnipeg there is another magnificent area of from five to ten thousand square miles of as fine country as there is in Manitoba or anywhere else. When Mr. Tyrrell came out of that district in 1896, after spending a summer there, and said there was
A Rich Agricultural Country North of Lake Winnipeg
the Hudson’s Bay Company’s men and the people in the southern country pooh-poohed the idea. They said they had been up at the head of the lake and knew there was not a foot of good land there. But Mr. Tyrrell emphatically declared that there is a magnificent stretch of country there, which extends westward along the Churchill. These lands north of Lake Winnipeg are clay lands, an extension of the same basin as the Manitoba clays.
Mr. J. B. Tyrrell, in his evidence, pointed out that “the effect of the large body of water in Hudson bay and James bay on the temperature, summer and winter, of the surrounding country, was the equalizing of it very much, making the summers colder and the winters milder. There is a foggy climate around the bay. It is without much sunlight, so that it has not a chance to dry. The mean temperature of the summer within one hundred miles of the bay will not be so hot as it is back of that. The thermometer does not fall very low in winter at Churchill. At the same time any person will find it terribly cold on that coast, although the thermometer does not fall very low. There are a great many different matters in connection with temperature and climate that have to be taken into consideration. There is the amount of moisture in the air; whether the barometer is standing low or high; there are a great many of those things that have to be taken into consideration in any question of frost or of climate that arises. You may have frost with a north wind, while if that north wind were blowing up over a wooded country, where all the leaves were giving out their vapour from the ground into the air, you would not have a sign of frost.”
As to the climate of the great belt of arable land, that he had described to the Senate committee of 1907, Mr. Tyrrell said that at Nelson House the snow leaves the ground in May. There is little or no summer frost in that wooded country. He understood gardening commences the end of May, and the frost does not appear in the fall until about September 20. He had never known the potato crop to be lost through summer frost.
Asked as to the isothermal line, Mr. Tyrrell remarked that the isothermal is a line connecting points that have the same mean temperature for the year round. It has nothing whatever to do with vegetation. Things do not grow in the winter time. People have got to put the winter temperature absolutely out of the question. The summer temperature is the only temperature that counts for growth in the northern country where there is frost. In dealing with that, you have to take into consideration as between two places in different latitudes, the length of the day and the amount of sunlight, in order to get at the summer temperatures. Of course the sunlight has a great effect on the growth, and where the days have eighteen hours’ sun a plant will grow faster than where the day has only fourteen hours.
Mr. Tyrrell submitted to the committee a memorandum from Mr. R. F. Stupart, Superintendent of the Dominion Meteorological Service, comparing the temperature conditions of the district between Lake Winnipeg and Split lake in the several months, May to September, with European countries, as follows: —
May—50°-40°, with north of Scotland and southern Norway.