Corps of Cadets and Boy Scouts flourish in scores of country centres, as well as in the larger towns. There are over 18,000 Boy Scouts in these four Provinces (that is more than the number in the East), besides 7,500 “Wolf Cubs,” or Junior Scouts. There are nearly 21,000 Cadets, in 340 companies, besides other [a]National Defence] organizations which likewise aim at helping each new generation to develop the health of mind and body Acquired for good citizenship. The Cadets are connected with our Department of National Defence; but they include in their programme lectures on citizenship, and organized games, as well as physical training, “first-aid” work, scouting and signalling.
“We love peace as much as any Quaker,” says a Western war veteran who is now an enthusiastic officer in the Canadian Militia, “and warmly sympathize with every movement, international conference, or anything else, towards the abolition of war. Peace is the chief interest and foundation principle of our Empire—pax Britannica. If we train ourselves to be ready for emergencies, in the present state of a world we can’t help belonging to, we look forward persistently to the growth of commonsense and good feeling which will make emergencies few and far between.”
As a matter of fact, we have no “standing army,” except a little force of 4,000 or so, for the whole of this vast Dominion. In the Western battalions of the ordinary “Non-permanent Militia” about 13,000 men are enrolled.
CHAPTER XVI
Up to the North and Home Again
THE MUSIC of a foaming torrent mingles with the softened hum of mowers and roar of heavy trains rushing wheat to the steamers at Fort William, as we plane up—not down—to the south-east corner of the Province. The crisp music is the voice of Winnipeg River, busy making electric light and power for the city and the towns beyond.
Right about turn. There is the very same water, spread out and sleeping in the shallow expanse of Lake Winnipeg. The shimmer of the surface breaks into flashing points of light as hundreds of Icelandic settlers pull out the fish.
Now for a long swift spin to the farthest North. Leaving Manitoba behind, we soon leave the woods behind too. Beneath us lies a treeless rolling plain.
Astonishing! We were brought up to believe Northern Canada a “frozen wilderness.” We find it contains great stretches of green pasture, gay with innumerable flowers, alive with birds and beasts and butterflies. Even the Arctic islands, which most people imagine covered with perpetual snow and ice, we find carrying much vegetation and fattening herds of musk ox and caribou. A large part of Alaska, and nearly all Greenland, are mountainous. These keep their mantle of ice the year round because of their height and snowfall; but they are not in Canada. For periods varying [a]Sunshine and Reindeer] from two to four or five months, as the explorer Stefansson tells us, most of our northern land is a picture of green prairie and flowering meadows; the flowering plants are much more conspicuous than the mosses and lichens which many people imagine are the only specimens of vegetable life to be seen.
The summer is short up here, if reckoned by months, but not if reckoned in hours of sunshine. Where the sun never sets, for weeks or months at a time, the summer warmth is continuous, unbroken by the cooling of night. In polar regions you may experience a temperature of 95 to 100 in the shade.
One day, as Stefansson predicts, this continent will draw a large part of its meat supply from vast herds of reindeer grazing on these northern prairies of Canada. The caribou is simply a variety of reindeer, and as easily tamed.