Pictures of Canadian Life: A Record of Actual Experiences

by J. Ewing Ritchie

‘Operations have been carried on very extensively this season at the Bell Farm, in the Canadian North-West, which is said to be the largest farm in the world. Though this is but the second year of cultivation, there are already 8,000 acres under crop, 5,000 to 6,000 of which are under wheat, and a portion of the remainder under flax. Last year 10,000 bushels were exported from the farm, and the excellence of the grain secured for it a good price in the market. The crop of this year is estimated to be 40 per cent. better. Experts from Montana who have recently visited this section of the Canadian North-West, state that they never saw any grain in the United States to equal that on and around the Bell Farm.’

CHAPTER VIII.

AMONGST THE COW-BOYS.

I am writing from Calgary, a little but growing collection of huts and wooden houses planted on a lovely plain with hills all around, a river at my feet, on the banks of which some poplars flourish, and I can almost fancy I am in Derbyshire itself. It is a gay place, this rising town, at the foot, as it were, of the Rockies, and just now is unusually gay, as the Queen’s birthday is being celebrated with athletic sports and a ball; and, besides, a new clergyman has made his appearance, the Rev. Parks Smith, from a Bermondsey parish, who is to preach in the new Assembly Hall, which is to be set apart as a church on Sundays. I am going to hear him, and already I feel somewhat of a Pharisee—I have on a clean collar, which I religiously preserved for the occasion, and have had my boots blackened. The sight is so novel that I have spent half an hour on the prairie contemplating the effect of that operation. Already I feel six inches higher.

I can’t say that I think quite so much of Calgary as do the people who live in it. In splendour, in wealth, in dignity, and importance, they evidently anticipate it will be a second Babylon. Well, a good deal has to be done first. The situation is pleasant, I admit. You incline to think well of Calgary after the dreary ride across the prairie, and you have quite a choice of hotels, and of shops, all well stocked; but then these shops are little better than huts, and the hotels certainly don’t throw the shops into the shade.

For instance, I am in the leading hotel. It is too far from the railway, but that is because the C.P.R. have moved their station a little further on, where the new town of Calgary is springing up. We have an open room, where I am writing—a dark dining-room on one side, and then, on the other, a little row of closets, which they dignify by the name of bedrooms. I am the proud possessor of one. It holds a bed, whereon, I own, I slept soundly; a row of pegs, on which to hang one’s clothes; and a little shelf, on which is placed a tiny wash-hand basin; while above that is a glass, in which it is impossible to get a good view of yourself—a matter of very small consequence, as the glass certainly reflects very poorly the looker’s personal charms, whatever they may be. I ought to have said there is a window; and as my bedroom is on the ground floor (upper rooms are rare in these wooden houses in the North-West), I am much exercised in my mind as to whether that window may not be opened in the course of the night, and the roll of dollars I have hidden under my pillow carried off. Then, just as I am getting into bed, I discover somebody else’s boots. That is awkward—very. It is with a sigh of relief I discover that they are not feminine. Suppose the owner of those boots comes into my bedroom and claims to be the rightful owner? Suppose he resorts to physical force? Suppose, in such a case, I got the worst of it?

Fortunately, before I can answer these questions satisfactorily to myself, I am asleep, and yet they are not so irrelevant as you fancy.

Last night, for instance, as I was sitting in the cool air, smoking one of the peculiarly bad cigars in which the brave men of Canada greatly rejoice, and for which they pay as heavily as if they were of the finest brands, a half-drunken man came up, abusing me in every possible way, threatening to smash every bone in my body, and altogether behaving himself in a way the reverse of polite. Perhaps you say, Why did you not knock him down? In novels heroes always do, and come clear off; but I am not writing fiction, and in real life I have always found discretion to be the better part of valour. The fact is, the fellow was a strapping Hercules, and I could see in a moment, if the appeal were to force, what the issue might be. Yet I had not done anything intentionally to offend him. He had come galloping up to the hotel, as they all do here—the horses are not trained to trot—and his horse had bucked him off. I believe I did say something to a friend of a mildly critical nature, but I question whether the rider heard it. The fact was, he was angry at having been thrown, and seeing that I was a stranger, he evidently thought he could pour the vials of his wrath on me. I must admit that in a little while he came up and apologized, and there was an end of the matter. But the worst part of it was that his friend remarked to me that this drunken insulting ruffian was one of the best fellows in the place. If so, Calgary has to be thankful for very small mercies indeed.

You ask, How could the fellow be drunk, seeing that there is a prohibitory liquor-law in existence? I have every reason to believe that Calgary is a very drunken place, nevertheless. I have already referred to one case of drunkenness. I may add that, in the afternoon of the same day, I had seen another in the shape of an old gentleman who was going to head a revolt which would cut off the North-West from the Dominion, and which would make her a Crown colony. He was very drunk as he stood on the bar opposite me declaiming all this bunkum. I remarked his state to the landlord, who seemed to feel how unfair it was that men could get drunk on the sly, and that a decent landlord, like himself, should be deprived of the privilege of selling them decent liquor. I own it is very hard on the publicans. At Moose Jaw one of them told me he would give five hundred pounds for a liquor license. ‘They call this a free country,’ said an indignant English settler to me, ‘and yet I can’t get a drop of good liquor. Pretty freedom, ain’t it?’ Unfortunately, the Government, while it prohibits the sale of liquor, does not exterminate the desire for it—perhaps only increases it—as we always cry for what we can’t get. Unfortunately, also, it is true that, as long as this demand exists, the supply will be found somehow.