Canada and Newfoundland

by Frank G. Carpenter

There are many comfortable one- and two-story wooden cottages rising out of the muskeg. The people have blasted out the stumps in making the foundations for their homes, and some have brought earth and stones and built up level yards with lawns as green and smooth as those of old England. All kinds of vegetation grow luxuriantly. There are many beautiful flowers, and the town is green from one end of the year to the other.

The climate here is milder than in Baltimore, Richmond, or St. Louis. The mean temperature in summer is about sixty degrees Fahrenheit, and in winter the thermometer seldom falls below eight or ten above zero. There is but little snow in the winter. The rainfall reminds me of that of southern Chile, where they say it rains thirteen months every year. Because of the dampness the frosts are heavy, and they sometimes cover the roads to a depth of three inches. Then the people have tobogganing parties on these roller-coaster highways.

Prince Rupert started with a boom. The town was planned and partially developed before a single lot was offered for sale. The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway decided upon the site, named it after the first governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, who was the nephew of Charles I, and sent its engineers to clear the land, level the hills, and lay out the city. The railway owned twenty-four thousand acres of land and the first sub-division covered one twelfth of that area. The future city was advertised, and auctions were held in Victoria and Vancouver. The first lots brought high prices, and the boom continued until the war halted its progress.

The inhabitants believe this city will become a great port and that it will some day have a population of one hundred thousand or more. With a view to the future, the city has built the largest floating dry dock on the Pacific coast. It has cost more than three million dollars and will accommodate ships up to six hundred feet in length and twenty thousand tons capacity. Nearly three thousand vessels enter the harbour in a year, and this number is on the increase.

Prince Rupert lies so far north on the globe that it is five hundred miles nearer Yokohama than are Vancouver and Seattle. Moreover, the journey from western Canada to Europe is shortened by the railroad route from here to the Atlantic. England is only about four days from Halifax. The Canadian National runs from there to this port in one continuous line across the continent. It crosses eastern Canada far north of the Great Lakes and from Winnipeg goes through the wheat belt to Edmonton. It climbs the Rockies by easier grades than any other road. It has short cuts by various connections to all the United States cities, and it promises to be the fast freight route for perishable products between Alaskan waters and the rest of the continent.

The city is two days nearer Alaska by steamer than are the Puget Sound ports, and travellers from the eastern parts of Canada and the United States can reach there that much sooner by coming here over the Canadian National.

The fisheries of British Columbia are the most valuable in the Dominion. Prince Rupert has become one of the fishing centres of the Pacific and the chief halibut port in the world. It has thirty-five canneries and seven large cold storage plants, and scores of steam vessels, sailing boats, and gasoline launches go back and forth between here and the fishing grounds. About fifty American vessels land their catches at this port every week, and every train that goes eastward over the railway carries carloads of fresh fish to the cities of the United States.

Halibut are caught for nine months of the year, twenty million pounds being landed here in a single season. The moment they are taken from the sea they are packed in ice for shipment or put into cold storage. I am told that the fish can be kept perfectly fresh for a month by the present method of packing. During the summer as many as a half dozen carloads are shipped in one day. More than a quarter of a million pounds were recently sent to New York and Boston in a single trainload.

Prince Rupert has miles of streets made of planks, upheld by trestle work, or resting on the rock underlying the city. Most of the streets and building sites were blasted by dynamite from the sides of the mountains.