Canada and Newfoundland

by Frank G. Carpenter

Wheat growers on a large scale usually have their own threshing machines, but the small farmer must stack his grain and wait for the arrival of one of the threshing outfits that travel from farm to farm through the wheat belt.

Leaving the boulevards, we ride through street after street of cottages, the homes of the well-to-do and of the poorer classes. We see but few signs of “To Let” or “For Sale.” Winnipeg has almost no tenement buildings. Even the dwellings of the labourers stand in yards. Notice the double windows used to keep out the intense cold.

Winnipeg lies on a plain about midway between the Atlantic and the Pacific and sixty miles from the United States boundary. The city is built on the banks of the Assiniboine and the Red River of the North, which here come together. The confluence of the two rivers was the site of numerous Indian camps and trading posts, and the scene of many of the early struggles between the rival fur companies. Fort Garry was finally established here in 1820 by the Hudson’s Bay Company, and a settlement that sprang up a half mile away was called Winnipeg, after the lake of the same name about fifty miles to the north. The word is a contraction of the Cree Indian “Ouinipigon,” meaning “muddy waters.”

In 1870, at the time of the Red River Rebellion against the creation of Manitoba as a province of the Dominion and its occupation by the Dominion government, Winnipeg, including Fort Garry, had two hundred and forty inhabitants. Ten years later its population was seven thousand, and in another ten years, following the coming of the Canadian Pacific Railway, it had about thirty thousand people. Since then it has grown steadily, until it is now the third city in Canada, outranked only by Montreal and Toronto. It is an important industrial centre, manufacturing more than one hundred million dollars worth of goods in one year.

Situated at the gateway of Western Canada, and the vast wheatfields of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, Winnipeg is the largest grain market not only of the Dominion but of the whole British Empire. It is the neck of the bottle, as it were, for practically the entire crop of the prairie provinces. Every carload of wheat bound eastward for Fort William or Port Arthur is opened here and sampled to determine its grade, a report on which is sent on to the elevator as soon as the car is reclosed and sealed. Hence, when the carload of wheat arrives at the elevator it can be binned in its proper place without any delay.

Winnipeg is the distributing point for western Canada for immigrants and settlers. There are people here of almost every nationality in Christendom, and I am told that the Bible is circulated through a local society in fifty different languages and dialects. Across the Red River from the city is the town of St. Boniface, where live several thousand French Canadians whose fathers came here years ago. For a long time the settlement was typically and wholly French, but many new people have come in, and not long since, for the first time in its history, an English-speaking mayor was elected.

Some distance from the city, on the south shore of Lake Winnipeg, is a colony of Icelanders. These people were among the first of the immigrants to western Canada. They were brought in by commissioners of the Dominion government when it was thought that none but those accustomed to the cold of the arctic region could withstand the climate. A colony of several thousand was settled along the shores of the lake. For a time they made their living by fishing, much of their catch in the winter being taken through holes in the ice. The Icelanders intermarried with the Canadians, and they are now well scattered over the province. Some of them are lawyers, others are teachers, and many of the girls have gone into domestic service. The largest Icelandic church in the world is in Winnipeg, and periodicals are published here in the Icelandic language.

Winnipeg has many Mennonites and Russians. I saw a Russian church in my drive about the city. The Catholic population is large, the French Canadians belonging to that denomination. Outside the city are a Trappist monastery and a Trappist nunnery. Almost every denomination of Protestants has its meeting house, and the Jews have a synagogue.

I like the Winnipeggers. They are strenuous, enthusiastic, and happy. They are “boosters,” claiming that their city has the best climate on earth, and that they would not exchange the biting winter winds of the prairie for the gentle zephyrs of Florida or California. Just now every one who can afford it wears a fur overcoat, many of which are made of coon skins. The fur of the coon is long and thick and the coat almost doubles the size of the wearer. It makes him look at least a foot broader. Some of the fur caps add six inches in height. Indeed, the town seems peopled with furry giants, who just now are breathing out steam, for the frost congeals the air from their nostrils so that it rises like the vapour of an incipient volcano.