Montreal is one of the great sport centres of Canada. In the warm months, the people play golf, baseball, football, and lacrosse. The latter is a most exciting game, borrowed from the Indians, with more thrills and rough play than our college football. It is a cross between hockey and basketball. A light ball is tossed from player to player by means of a little net on the end of a long curved stick, the object of each side being to get the ball into the opponents’ goal. In the game I saw, the players were often hit on the head and shoulders, and before the afternoon was over there had been a good deal of bloodshed from minor injuries. I was told, however, that this match was exceptionally rough.
In the winter, hockey is the great game of Canada. Every large city has its hockey rink, and, where there are many Scotch, curling rinks as well. In curling, great round soapstones are slid across a designated space on the ice toward the opponents, who stand guard with brooms. By sweeping the ice in front of the approaching stone, they try to veer it out of the course intended by the player who started it toward their goal.
As far as the masses of the people are concerned, skiing, snowshoeing, and coasting are the chief winter sports, and in them nearly everybody takes part. In Montreal, toboggan slides are built on the sides of Mount Royal, and its slopes are covered with young men and women on snowshoes and skis.
Montreal used to build an ice palace every winter. Then the business men feared the city was acquiring an antarctic reputation that would discourage visitors. Consequently, organized exploitation of winter sports fell off for a time, but this fall a fund of thirty thousand dollars is being subscribed to finance them on a large scale.
CHAPTER X
CANADA’S BIG BANKS
There are more than eight thousand national banks in the United States, but Canada has only sixteen. While new ones are organized in our country every month, the number in Canada tends constantly to grow less, and to-day is not half what it was twenty years ago. The banking system of the Dominion is patterned somewhat after the Scotch, and was worked out largely by men of that shrewd, hard-headed race. The people think it suits their conditions better than any other. Certainly it is true that while Canada has had its ups and downs, the people have suffered far less than we from bank failures and panics.
One might think that with all the banking business of Canada monopolized by only sixteen institutions, they might make fabulous profits. However, such is not the case. I have before me the current monthly statement which the government publishes regarding the condition and operation of each bank. This shows that all are making money, but their dividends range from six to sixteen per cent., and the Bank of Nova Scotia is the only one that paid the highest rate. Nine of the banks paid twelve per cent. on their capital stock last year, while the shareholders of five got less than ten per cent.
In the United States a handful of business men can start a bank on a few thousand dollars. Here it is not so easy a matter. Canadian law requires a minimum capital of five hundred thousand dollars, half of which must be paid in, before a bank can be chartered, and there are other conditions to be met that make the establishment of a new bank a big undertaking. The smallest bank in Canada, at Weyburn, Saskatchewan, is the only one with a capital of less than one million dollars, while the largest, the Bank of Montreal, has paid-up stock amounting to twenty-seven and one quarter millions. The total combined capital of all the banks is one hundred and twenty-three millions.
The great banks extend their service throughout the Dominion by means of branches. These now number nearly five thousand, and new ones are being constantly added. The branch plan is the most striking difference between Canada’s banking system and ours, which prohibits the establishment of branches except within a bank’s home city, and, under certain regulations, in foreign countries. The larger Canadian banks are represented by their own branches in every city, from coast to coast, while the Bank of Montreal alone has more than six hundred agencies. Nearly all the banks have their head offices in Eastern Canada. Six of them are located in the province of Quebec, seven in Ontario, and one each in Nova Scotia, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. Three of the banks in Quebec are controlled by the French Canadians. Their combined capital is just under nine million dollars, or not quite half that of the Royal Bank of Canada, the second largest in the Dominion.
An official of the Canadian Bankers’ Association has explained to me some of the advantages of this system. He said: