Promise of Abundant Harvests.”
The Venerable Archdeacon J. McKay, one of the best known Church of England Missionaries of the Canadian west, was examined before the Senate committee of 1907. He stated that he was born on the eastern shore of James bay, near Rupert’s House. His father was a Hudson’s Bay Company’s officer. Witness had his education in Manitoba in the early days. He had been more in the old country than in eastern Canada. He lived at Moose Factory until he was eighteen.
Archdeacon McKay explained that he had been forty-five years in the west, in charge of missions of the Church of England, and was ten years at a place on Churchill river, a little north of Lac la Ronge. The nearest point to Lac la Ronge on the map is where the Anglican mission is situated, about ten miles north of Lac la Ronge, on Churchill river. This is about due north from Prince Albert, and in a straight line it would be considerably over two hundred miles from Prince Albert. He had been for some time superintendent of the Anglican missions. For the two years preceding his examination he had been at Lac la Ronge. He had been as far north in this country as Lake Cariboo. In fact he had been away to the north end of Reindeer lake. It is very poor country up there, and the trees are not very large. From the Churchill he had been down to Hudson bay, and he had been as far west as Ile à la Crosse lake and on to Methye lake, which is not many miles south of Clearwater river and in an east-southeasterly direction from McMurray.
The land between Lac la Ronge and Prince Albert in some places is very good. It is all forest practically until to about thirty miles from Prince Albert, or perhaps twenty or thirty. Then the open country begins where it is not heavily timbered. To the west of Lac la Ronge the country is very much the same. It is not rocky, some muskeg and some pretty good land, but all timbered—in some places heavy timber. There is spruce and poplar. The spruce is good enough for lumber, and of course it would do for pulpwood. The witness had travelled the country about Lac la Ronge pretty thoroughly, and if it were cleared of timber it would, in his opinion, be generally
Fair Agricultural Land.
The rocky country is north of that.
So far as agriculture at Lac la Ronge is concerned, Archdeacon McKay said he had raised good wheat at his former mission on Churchill river for seven years in succession without having it frosted. The climate is good. It is a rocky country, and there is not a great deal of good land; but so far as the climate is concerned it is all right for raising anything that can be raised in Saskatchewan generally. Potatoes grow splendidly.
Potatoes at Anglican Mission, Lac la Ronge.
He could not describe what the grasses are, but they are grasses that grow mostly in moist land, something like slough hay, grasses that grow on the margins of lakes, and along the rivers. There was not much stock there, but he had stock when he lived on the mission on Churchill river, fifteen head of cattle and two horses. That is a little north of Lac la Ronge, and is practically the same country. As to the Lake Ile à la Crosse country, he considered it fairly good. It is not rocky and there is plenty of timber and plenty of hay as a rule—some prairie hay and some swamp hay, and the soil is fairly good—better than Lac la Ronge. It gets better as you go west. It is certainly better about Ile à la Crosse than at Lac la Ronge, and there is no rock country about Ile à la Crosse. The hay is long. It is very much the same as the natural hay in Manitoba. The only whites in the country he had described north of the Saskatchewan were the Hudson’s Bay Company’s officials and traders. There is no agricultural settlement at Lac la Ronge. There are only Indians there, and they have not gone into anything in the direction of agriculture more than raising a few potatoes.