Peeps at Many Lands: Canada

by J. T. Bealby

As soon as the snow disappears in spring, the prairie farmer gets out his ploughs, and if he owns, as many of the prairie farmers do, large tracts of land, his ploughs are worked by steam. In the North-West there are no fields and no fences, except, it may be, round the home paddock. In this case the ploughs set in and follow one another from one end of the farm to the other; and when they reach the boundary of the farm, they turn round and plough back again. Thus the furrow may be a quarter of a mile, half a mile, or even a mile long. The ploughing finished, the seed is sown. When harvest comes, the ripe corn is cut down by the reaping-machines, following one another in the same way as the ploughs. In many cases the wheat is threshed at the same time that it is cut, and the grain put, not into sacks, but loose straight into the waggons, which are built up like huge bins. The wheat is then hauled to the nearest town where there is an elevator or granary. Here it is graded, or separated into different sizes, by fine riddles or sieves driven by machinery, and the farmer is paid so much a bushel for his wheat, the price varying with the grade, or size and hardness and quality of the grain. The straw is very often burned, as the easiest way to get rid of it. If a North-West farmer has three good years in succession, he can, it is sometimes asserted, retire from business and live on a competency for the rest of his life.

After the harvest the railways of the prairie provinces are exceedingly busy carrying the wheat to the shipping ports, where it can be loaded into ships to be taken across the ocean. The greater part of this wheat is consumed in England and Scotland, and a great deal of it is put on board ship at Port Arthur and Fort William on the northern shore of Lake Superior, whence it goes all the rest of the way by water. A large portion of it is, however, ground into flour before ever it leaves Canada, and the flour is sent to make bread for boys and girls, not only in England and Scotland, but also in Australia, in China, and Japan.

In Alberta, just east of the Rocky Mountains, where the climate is milder than in the heart of the prairie provinces, a large number of cattle are reared and fed, and there a good deal of hay is cut, and sent over the mountains into British Columbia.

For many years the chief agency in opening up the North-West was the cattle-rancher. The life of the cowboy, though not so romantic as it is sometimes represented to be, has, nevertheless, its interesting side to the man who loves the free life of the open air. "The business of ranching has grown from a small beginning of the early days to be one of the great industries of the West. It began when the Mounted Police brought into Southern Alberta a couple of milch cows and a few yokes of oxen for their own use." This was about the year 1873. Three years later a member of the same force bought a small herd, but having no other way of providing for the animals, he turned them loose on the prairie to shift for themselves. There, although without shelter or provision for food, they survived the winter, escaping the wolves, predatory Indians, and prairie fires. Nowadays, cattle are generally left cut of doors on the prairies all the winter in Alberta. Here the winters are neither severe nor prolonged. "The days are bright and cloudless, and the light snowfalls are neither frequent nor lasting. They vanish before the warm Chinook winds, and are followed by days of soft weather. There are cold snaps in January and the early part of February, but the winter breaks up early in March, and before April the prairies are spangled with flowers—false indigo, shooting stars, and violets, with roses, lupines, and vetches, following after—until the prairie is all aglow with wonderful colour."

In Alberta, as well as in the provinces of Eastern Canada, a good deal of cheese and butter are made. The farmers do not make it in their own dairies, but they take it to creameries and to cheese-factories, like those which are run on the co-operative principle in Ireland, Denmark, and other countries.

The principal town of the prairie provinces is Winnipeg, the capital of Manitoba, which has a good deal of the appearance of a brand-new, go-ahead American city. In 1881 its population was 6,000; twenty-five years later it reached 100,000. It has a very large volume of trade.

In the provinces of Nova Scotia and Ontario large quantities of fruit are grown and exported to England. In Nova Scotia apples are the fruit most extensively raised; the valleys of Annapolis and Cornwallis in that province are especially famous for their fine red apples. In Ontario the fruit-growing region is the peninsula which projects southwards between the great lakes. There apples are not the only fruit produced in large quantity; grapes and peaches are also grown on a large scale, grapes more especially in the neighbourhood of the famous Niagara Falls. But in recent years the distant western province of British Columbia has come rapidly to the front as a producer of fruit, especially of apples, cherries, peaches, and strawberries. These last, strawberries, as well as cherries, are sold principally in the towns of the prairie provinces. The apples are rapidly taking rank as amongst the best in the world. They are of magnificent colour, free from every form of disease or blemish, and travel well for long distances.

In December, 1907, an apple-show was held at New Westminster, at the mouth of the Fraser River, in British Columbia, where prizes were given (1) for the best display of apples, (2) for the five best packed boxes of apples, and (3) for the single best packed box. Out of these three events, British Columbia apples won two first prizes and one second, although she had for competitors some of the most expert growers in the United States. And again in December of the following year, at a great apple-show held at Spokane, in the American State of Washington, undoubtedly the biggest and most important apple-show ever held in any part of the world, British Columbia covered herself with glory. The prize-money amounted to no less than £7,000, and the separate prizes amounted to as much as £100. In this great show, at which expert fruit-growers from all over the United States, from Eastern Canada, from British Columbia, from England, Germany, and Norway, were pitted one against the other, British Columbia won several of the most important of the prizes, and on the whole, considering the amount of fruit she staged, won a long way more than her proper proportion of prizes. The writer of this book was himself the proud winner of twelve prizes for apples at this great show. Altogether it is estimated that something like 400 tons of apples, all of them, of course, specially picked fruit, were shown on the tables of the Spokane apple-show. What a sight for a British schoolboy! The biggest apple in the show weighed close upon 2 pounds in weight!

The apples of Ontario and Nova Scotia are packed into light wooden barrels; those of British Columbia in oblong boxes holding 40 pounds. No matter what the size or the variety of the apples, all have to be packed in the one sized box. When well packed, with the apples all level and even, and beautifully coloured, as they nearly always are, a box of British Columbia apples is a perfectly lovely sight. And they are as good as they look. But even more appetizing and attractive is a box of Kootenay cherries, Kootenay being the name of the principal cherry-growing district of British Columbia. The boxes into which the cherries are packed are, of course, much smaller than the boxes into which the apples are packed. A cherry box holds only 8 pounds of fruit.

One of the most beautiful of all the beautiful sights on a fruit-ranch is the blossoming of the cherry-trees in May. The waxy white blossoms not only cover—literally and truly cover—the branches from end to end, but they also stick to the trunk and main limbs of the trees, much as the feathers muffle the legs of certain kinds of pullets.