Canada and Newfoundland

by Frank G. Carpenter

The Parliament building stands a little beyond the entrance to the citadel. As we go on the architecture reflects the transition from French to British domination. The houses begin to move back from the sidewalk, and to take on front porches. I saw workmen putting in double windows, in preparation for winter, and noticed that the sides of many of the brick houses are clapboarded to keep the frost out of the mortar. Still farther out apartments appear, while a little beyond are all the marks of a suburban real estate boom. Most of the “for sale” signs are in both French and English.

Now come with me and look at another Quebec, of which you probably have never heard. The city is built, as you know, where the St. Charles River flows into the St. Lawrence. The valley of the St. Charles has become a great hive of industry, and contains the homes of thousands of French workers. Looking down upon it from the ancient Martello Tower on the heights of the Upper Town, we see a wilderness of factory walls, church spires, and the roofs of homes. Beyond them great fields slope upward, finally losing themselves in the wooded foothills of the Laurentian Mountains. Cotton goods, boots and shoes, tobacco, and clothing are manufactured here. It was from this valley that workers for the textile and shoe industries of New England were recruited by thousands. A few miles upstream is the village of Indian Lorette, where descendants of a Huron tribe, Christianized by the French centuries ago, make leather moccasins for lumberjacks and slippers for American souvenir buyers. A big fur company also has a fox farm near Indian Lorette.

Quebec was once the chief port of Canada, but when the river was dredged up to Montreal it fell far behind. All but the largest transatlantic liners can now sail for Europe from Montreal, though they make Quebec a port of call. Quebec is five hundred miles nearer Liverpool than is New York, and passengers using this route have two days less in the open sea. The navigation season is about eight months. The port has rail connections with all Canada and the United States. Above the city is the world’s longest cantilever bridge, on which trains cross the river. After two failures the great central span, six hundred and forty feet long, was raised from floating barges and put into place one hundred and fifty feet above the water.

In the English atmosphere of the Maritime Provinces I felt quite at home, but here I seem to be in a foreign land, and time has been pushed back a century or so. We think of Canada as British, and assume that English is the national language. But in Quebec, its largest province, containing about one fifth of the total area, nearly nine tenths of the people are French and speak the French language. They number almost one fourth of the population of the Dominion.

Quebec is larger than Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California combined; it is nearly as big as all our states east of the Mississippi River put together. Covering an area of seven hundred thousand square miles, it reaches from the northern borders of New York and New England to the Arctic Ocean; from the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Labrador westward to Hudson Bay and the Ottawa River. Most Americans see that part of Quebec along the St. Lawrence between the capital and Montreal, but only one fourteenth of the total area of the province lies south of the river. The St. Lawrence is more than nineteen hundred miles long, and Quebec extends along its north bank for almost the entire distance.

Jacques Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence in 1535 and claimed possession of the new land in the name of “Christ and France.” Later, French soldiers and priests pushed their way up the river, explored the Great Lakes, and went down the Mississippi. It was French fur traders, fishermen, and farmers who opened up and populated eastern Canada. With no immigration from France since British rule began, the population of the province of Quebec has had a natural increase from about sixty thousand to more than two millions. The average family numbers from six to eight persons, while families of twelve and fourteen children are common. Quebec maintains the highest birth rate of any province in Canada. It has also the highest death rate, but there is a large net gain every year.

Quebec is one of the chief reservoirs of Canada’s natural wealth. It leads all other provinces in its production of pulpwood, and contributes more than one half the Dominion’s output of pulp and paper. It is second only to British Columbia and Ontario in lumber production, while its northern reaches contain the last storehouse of natural furs left on our continent.

Canada is one of the world’s great sources of water-power. Nearly half of that already developed is in the province of Quebec, and her falling waters are now yielding more than a million horse-power. Tens of thousands of additional units are being put to work every year, while some five million horse-power are in reserve. It would take eight million tons of coal a year to supply as much power as Quebec now gets from water.

The ancient citadel on the heights of Quebec is now dwarfed by a giant castle-like hotel that helps make the American Gibraltar a tourist resort. Its windows command a magnificent view of the St. Lawrence.