Canada and Newfoundland

by Frank G. Carpenter

I have been out to Queen’s Park to see the provincial government buildings. Here also is Toronto University, the largest in the British Empire, with several thousand students of both sexes. The park is approached by University Avenue, a broad street with rows of elm and chestnut trees on each side. There are many other schools and colleges, making Toronto the educational centre of Ontario.

It was at the University of Toronto that Dr. F. G. Banting discovered insulin, the new treatment for diabetes obtained from the pancreas of cattle. Doctor Banting and his associates have since received many honours. The Dominion government gave him seventy-five hundred dollars a year for life, so that he might continue his investigations, while the provincial government has established him in a chair of medical research at Toronto University paying ten thousand dollars a year. Instead of commercializing his discovery, the doctor had it patented in the name of the university, and the royalties are devoted to research.

Toronto is about equidistant from New York and Chicago, and nearly midway between Winnipeg and Halifax. It is only three hundred and thirty-four miles from Montreal, but between the two cities are the rapids of the upper St. Lawrence, which so far have prevented the lake port from becoming accessible to large ocean-going vessels. The present canals along the St. Lawrence can accommodate ships up to twenty-five hundred tons, but Toronto has a plan for bringing ten-thousand-ton steamers to her front door. She proposes to overcome the rapids and shallows with lakes and canals, and at the same time utilize the fall of water, which exceeds two hundred feet, to generate electricity.

The locks of the new and larger Welland Canal around Niagara Falls have been built thirty feet deep and eight hundred feet long. When this work is completed, the improvement of the St. Lawrence will be the only thing needed to make possible the passage of deep-water ships from the Atlantic to Lake Superior. The St. Lawrence project has the enthusiastic support of the people of middle Canada, who see their grain of the future going direct to Liverpool in steamers loaded at the lake ports. This will cut down the freight charges on every bushel and add millions to the farmers’ profits.

Our own middle western states also want this Lakes-to-the-Atlantic waterway, but New York and Buffalo, which have grown fat on handling freight from the Great Lakes, oppose it. So does Montreal, for fear that her port might suffer, just as Quebec did when the St. Lawrence was dredged out from that city to Montreal.

Since the St. Lawrence, for part of its course, borders the state of New York, the project requires the coöperation of the United States. The International Joint Commission, representing both Canada and the United States, after investigation, unanimously approved it. It recommended the construction of nine locks, thirty-three miles of canals, forty miles of lake channel, and one hundred miles of river channel improvements. It also recommended the construction of a hydro-electric power plant near Ogdensburg, New York, which, it is estimated, would produce sixteen hundred and forty thousand horse-power, to be divided between the United States and Canada. To do all this is comparable to the building of the Panama Canal. It is estimated that the job will take about eight years and will cost more than a quarter of a billion dollars.

Meanwhile, Toronto is so sure that the project will be carried out that she has already spent more than twenty million dollars in getting her harbour ready for the business she expects in the future. Her port to-day is like a newly built palace, awaiting the birth of an heir to the throne, with the king still a bachelor.

An island lying about a mile offshore from the city gives Toronto a natural harbour. The Harbour Commission has built breakwaters, channels, and anchorages, and erected piers and berthing spaces to accommodate fleets of large tonnage vessels. So far, however, these improvements are used mostly by passenger steamers handling the summer tourist travel to points on the lakes and along the St. Lawrence. In part the work of the Harbour Commission has already paid for itself. It has reclaimed a large tract of marshland along the eastern shore of the harbour and converted it into industrial sites, equipped with docks, railroad tracks, and other facilities. There are now more than eight million dollars’ worth of buildings and machinery in operation on this area.

The Harbour Commission has developed the lakeside not only for commercial purposes, but also for the use of the people. West of the city it has built Sunnyside beach, a half mile long, with accommodations of all kinds for seventy-five hundred bathers. Across the harbour is Island Park, another great playground.

Toronto was the first city in the world to establish a municipal athletic commission to promote sports and outdoor games. Though baseball is not native to Canada, six thousand Toronto boys played in regularly organized leagues last summer, and eight thousand soccer or association football players were listed with the commission. The city maintains two public golf courses, and there are country clubs, canoe clubs, and yacht clubs.