Canada and Newfoundland

by Frank G. Carpenter

The St. Louis gate commemorates the days when Quebec was a walled city and always well garrisoned with troops. Just beyond is the building of the provincial parliament, where most of the speeches are in French.

At Three Rivers, about halfway between Montreal and Quebec, the St. Maurice River empties into the St. Lawrence. Twenty miles upstream are the Shawinigan Falls, the chief source of power of the Shawinigan Company, which, with its subsidiaries, is now producing in this district more than five hundred thousand horse-power. This is nearly half the total power development in the province. Around the power plant there have grown up electro-chemical industries that support a town of twelve thousand people, while at Three Rivers more paper is made than anywhere else in the world. Shawinigan power runs the lighting plants and factories of Montreal and Quebec, and also serves most of the towns south of the St. Lawrence. The current is carried over the river in a thick cable, nearly a mile long, suspended on high towers.

In the Thetford district of southern Quebec, power from Shawinigan operates the machinery of the asbestos mines. Fifty years ago, when these deposits were discovered, there was almost no market for asbestos at ten dollars a ton. Nowadays, with its use in theatre curtains, automobile brake linings, and coatings for furnaces and steam pipes, the best grades bring two thousand dollars a ton, and two hundred thousand tons are produced in a year. Quebec now furnishes eighty-eight per cent. of the world’s annual supply of this mineral.

The Quebec government controls all power sites, and leases them to private interests for ninety-nine year terms. The province has spent large sums in conserving its water-power resources. At the headquarters of the St. Maurice River, it built the Gouin reservoir, which floods an area of more than three hundred square miles, and stores more water than the great Aswan Dam on the Nile.

Quebec is the third province in value of agricultural production. What I have seen of its farms convinces me that the French Canadian on the land is a conspicuous success. For a half day I rode along the south shore of the St. Lawrence River through a country like one great farm. Nearly every foot of it is occupied by French farmers. Most of the time we were on high ground, overlooking the river, which, where we first saw it, was forty miles wide. It grew constantly narrower, until, where we crossed it on a ferry to Quebec, its width was less than a mile. All the way we had splendid views of the Laurentian Mountains, looming up on the north shore of the river. Geologists say the Laurentians are the oldest rock formation on our continent. They are not high, the peaks averaging about sixteen hundred feet elevation, but they are one of the great fish and game preserves of the world and are sprinkled with hunting and fishing clubs.

In accordance with French law the Quebec farms have been divided and sub-divided among so many succeeding generations that the land is cut into narrow ribbons. Contrary to the custom in France, however, every field is fenced in with rails. I am sure that the fences I saw, if joined together, would easily reach from Quebec to Washington and back. They did not zig-zag across the fields like ours, thereby wasting both rails and land, but extended in a straight line, up hill and down, sometimes for as much as a mile or more.

The standard French farm along the St. Lawrence used to be “three acres wide and thirty acres long,” with a wood lot at the farther end, and the house in the middle. As the river was the chief highway of the country, it was essential that every farmer have water frontage. With each division one or more new houses would be built, and always in the middle of the strip. The result is that every farmer has a near neighbour on each side of him, and the farmhouses form an almost continuous settlement along the highway, much like the homes on a suburban street. Each wood lot usually includes several hundred maple trees, and the annual production of maple sugar and syrup in Quebec is worth several hundred thousand dollars. The maple leaf is the national emblem of Canada.

The houses are large and well built. They have narrow porches, high above the ground, reached by steps from below. This construction enables the occupants to gain access to their living rooms in winter without so much snow shovelling as would otherwise be necessary. For the same reason, most of the barns are entered by inclines leading up to the second floor and some are connected with the houses by bridges. The older houses are of stone, coated with whitewashed cement. With their dormer windows and big, square chimneys they look comfortable.

I saw the signs of thrift everywhere. Firewood was piled up for the winter, and in many cases a few cords of pulpwood besides, sometimes in such a manner as to form fences for the vegetable gardens. This winter the pulpwood in these fences will be sold. The chief crops raised are hay, oats, beans, and peas. The latter, in the form of soup, is served almost daily in the Quebec farmer’s home.