Canada and Newfoundland

by Frank G. Carpenter

Southern British Columbia is a land of winding rivers and lakes, towering mountains and sheltered valleys. Many of the little cities along the Columbia and the Kootenay have been settled largely by Britishers.

Apples from the irrigated orchards of the Pacific slope are sold in eastern Canada, three thousand miles away, in competition with the famous Nova Scotia fruit. British Columbia often ships a million boxes of apples a season.

Victoria, in its appearance, its climate, and its people, is like a section of the south of England transplanted to Vancouver Island. It is noted for the beauty of its location and for its handsome provincial parliament buildings.

The muskeg was one of the difficulties that had to be overcome in laying out and building the city. Another and still greater difficulty was blasting the hills. Every bit of the town is founded on bed rock, and many places have had to be levelled with dynamite for the business streets and foundations of buildings. The streets in the residential section are paved with three-inch planks. They look like continuous bridges, but they are substantial enough for heavy teams, motor trucks, and automobiles. In some places the planks are spiked to trestle-work from ten to fifteen feet high, and in others they lie on the rock. The steep hills that extend back to the wooded mountains behind Prince Rupert are so rough that to cut roads through them would bankrupt the city many times over.

It was in company with a member of the board of trade and the civil engineer who laid out Prince Rupert that I took an automobile ride through the town. The plank roads are so narrow that turning-out places have been built at the cross streets and curves, and the inclines are so steep that we had all the sensations of a giant roller-coaster as we dashed uphill and down. I expected a collision every time another car passed. Now we shot around a curve where a slight skidding might have hurled us into a ravine; and now climbed a hill where the trestle-work trembled beneath us. We rode for some distance through “Lovers’ Lane,” a part of the ninety acres of forest in the public park, and later climbed the steep slope of Acropolis Hill.

On top of Acropolis Hill we inspected the city’s waterworks. The supply is carried to a reservoir here from Lake Woodworth, five miles away. The reservoir, which has been dug out of the rock, contains a million gallons of water more than the regular needs of the city.

On another part of the hill are the municipal tennis courts and baseball park. The tennis courts are made by laying a level plank floor upon the uneven surface of the rocks, and erecting about it fences of wire netting so high that the balls cannot possibly fly over and roll down the steep slopes of the mountain. The ball park was blasted out of the rock. It is so situated that the hills about it form a natural grandstand, and consequently admission is free. The players are paid by passing the hat.

We have a good view of Prince Rupert from Acropolis Hill. In front of us is the harbour, sparkling in the sunlight and backed by mountainous islands of green. Behind us are forest-clad hills, lost in the clouds, and below is the city, connected with the mainland by a great bridge of steel. The business section is made up of two- and three-story frame buildings, painted in modest colours. Here and there the spire of a church rises above the other roofs; and should you take your spyglass you might pick out the signs of banks, stores, and real-estate offices.