After a breathless day in Winnipeg, very pleasantly spent, under the care of Mr. and Mrs. Sanford Evans, in endeavouring to overtake the engagements lost in the “sink-hole,” Mrs. Ward and her daughter resumed their journey across the vast prairie, over the Rockies and the Selkirks, and down into Vancouver. On her return she thus summed up her impressions of it in a letter to “Aunt Fan”:
‘Everybody was kindness itself, everywhere, and the wonderful journey across Canada and back was something never to forget. To see how a great railway can make and has made a country, to watch all the stages of the prairie towns, from the first wooden huts upwards to towns like Calgary and Regina, and the booming prosperity of Winnipeg—to be able to linger a little in the glorious Rockies, to rush down the Fraser Cañon, which Papa used to talk to us about and show us pictures of when we were children—I thought of him with tears and longing in the middle of it—and then to find ourselves at the end beside the ‘wide glimmering sea’ of the blue Pacific—all this was wonderful, a real enrichment of mind and imagination. At least it ought to be!”
In Vancouver they were under the chaperonage of Mr. F. C. Wade, now Agent-General for British Columbia, and of Mr. Mackenzie King, the future Prime Minister, whom they had already met at Ottawa, but with whom Mrs. Ward had a far more intimate link than that, since about five years before he had come to live as a Resident at the Passmore Edwards Settlement, and had made great friends with us all. He now acted as guide, not only to the marvellous beauties of Vancouver, but also to the recesses of the Chinese quarter, where he had many friends, owing to the fact that he happened to be engaged in dealing out Government compensation for the anti-Chinese riots of the year before. Mrs. Ward was immensely interested in all the problems of Vancouver—racial, financial and political—being especially impressed by the danger of its “Americanization” through the buying up of its real estate by American capital. She stayed long enough to lecture to the Canadian Club of Vancouver in aid of Lord Grey’s fund for the purchase of the Quebec battlefields as a national memorial to Wolfe, and then set her face definitely homewards. But she could not allow herself to hurry too swiftly through the Rockies, where the snow was beginning to melt and expeditions were becoming possible. From Field she drove to feast her eyes on the Emerald Lake; from Laggan she pushed on to Lake Louise.
To T. H. W.
“BANFF,
”June 4, 1908.
‘Since we left Vancouver we have had a delicious time, but yesterday was the cream! We started at 8.30 from the very nice Field Hotel, on a special train, just our car and an engine, and—the car being in front—were pushed up the famous Kicking Horse Pass, on a glorious morning. The Superintendent in charge of the Laggan division of the line came up with us and explained the construction of the new section of the line, which is to take the place of the present dangerous and costly track down the pass. At present there are no tunnels, nothing but a long hill, up and down which extraordinary precautions have to be taken. Now they are to have spiral tunnels, or rather one long one, on the St. Gotthard plan. One won’t see so much, but it will be safer, and far less expensive to work.
“The beauty of the snow peaks, the lateral valleys, the leaping streams, the forests!—and the friendliness of everybody adds to the charm. At Laggan we left the car and drove up—three miles—to Lake Louise—a perfectly beautiful place, which I tried to sketch—alack! It is, I think, more wonderful than any place of the kind in Switzerland, because of the colour of the rocks, which hold the gorgeous glacier and snow-peak. We spent the day there, looked after by a charming Scotchwoman—Miss Mollison—one of three sisters who run the C.P.R. hotels about here. About 6.30 we drove down again to find Snell and George delighted to welcome us back to the car. Then we came on to Banff, sitting on the platform of the car, and looking back at a beautiful sunset among the mountains. We shall part from the Rockies with a pang! Emerald Lake and Lake Louise would certainly conjure one back again, if they were any less than 6,000 miles from home! As it is, I suppose one’s physical eyes will never see them again, but it is something to have beheld them once.”
At Field Mrs. Ward had met the eminent explorer, Mrs. Schäffer, who was busy collecting guides and ponies for another expedition into the unknown tracts of the Rockies. She and Mrs. Ward made great friends, and some months later the latter was delighted to receive from her photographs of a wonderful lake which she had discovered, and to which she gave the name of Lake Maligne. Mrs. Ward could not resist weaving the virgin lake into the last chapter of her story, Canadian Born.
When at length the long journey was over and the faithful car landed her safely at Montreal, Mrs. Ward still had one pleasant duty to perform—the handing over of her earnings at Vancouver to Lord Grey, as a thank-offering for all the good things that had fallen to her lot since she had parted from him three weeks before. His reply delighted her, especially since she had just ended her Canadian experiences by an expedition up the Heights of Abraham, escorted by Col. Wood, the Canadian military historian.
June 12, 1908.