Canada, the Spellbinder

by Lilian Whiting

This island is distinguished as the centre of the whaling grounds of the Arctic regions.

No adequate interpretation of the conditions that prevail in the Dominion could be possible that did not include some account of the "Riders of the Plains." The service of these faithful guardians is by no means exclusively limited to their official responsibility; they add to this that of being the friends, the helpers, of the settlers, under all the new unforeseen conditions that confront them in the new country. All over the Canadian land the watchword "Safety first" meets the eye. The watchword "Humanity first" seems to be that of the Royal Mounted Police. Their careful and tender ministrations are given to the invalid and the helpless; they risk their lives to warn and save settlers when a raging fire is sweeping over woodlands or prairie; they aid the new arrival to set up his camp the first night; they help him to repair vehicles or mechanism that has given out; they assist him to build his first primitive shelter, and even to cook his meals and to care for his live stock. The safety of the incoming inhabitants, the essential conditions that render possible their establishment of a home, have depended so essentially on the protection and the safe-guarding afforded by the "Riders of the Plains" that their splendid service is not only a fundamental factor in Canadian life and history, but is a shining page in the records not made with hands.

A touching incident has been narrated in the chronicles of the Mounted Police Force. It was required some years ago to send dispatches to a distant post during the severest rigour of winter weather. A young constable, a University graduate, gently born and bred, set out with these dispatches, but days passed into weeks, and weeks into months, and no trace of him could be discovered. At last, in the following spring, a storm-worn uniform and the bones of a human body were discovered by a patrol in a secluded spot, and on the order he was carrying was scrawled: "Lost—horse dead. Am trying to push ahead. Have done my best." Who could read with eyes undimmed by tears such a testimony as this to the young constable's high sense of honour and utter sacrifice of anxiety for his own personal safety? No soldier at the front ever more gallantly faced death in the discharge of his duty. Indeed, the stranger who comes to Canada and enters with any degree of sympathy and understanding into the national life is more impressed with the unwritten watchword of "Duty first" than with the legend of "safety" that meets his eye. Is it too much to say that the Dominion is the nation of heroes? It is certainly no exaggeration to say that heroes abound in this country where the unmeasured richness of the resources of Nature is yet far exceeded by the nobility of man's mind.

The growth and expansion of Canada has proceeded very rapidly within the first part of the twentieth century. The problems involved in this swift expansion have increased in number and importance. They assume a varied character, because the vast extent of the empire inevitably raises such diverse questions of political, educational, and social requirements, that of the bi-lingual problem being not least in importance. Then there are the problems of immigration, of transportation and communication, including matters of railway highways, inland navigation, foreign commerce, and postal facilities. Sir James Grant, speaking before the Empire Club of Toronto in the December of 1915, reviewed the remarkable development of Canada since about 1850, and said that, marvellous as was this record, it would be exceeded by the tremendous developments of the immediate future. Of the new territory in northern Ontario, opened on the clay belt, Sir James predicted that it would be settled by thousands of people, and that it would become one of the most attractive parts of the country. In this region the supply of wood and water is practically inexhaustible, and the splendid transit facilities bring it into easy communication with the markets. Apart from the agricultural, there is the mining outlook.

Even the great and disastrous war that began in August, 1914, will not be wholly disastrous, or even antagonistic, to the future of Canada. Great trade facilities will be opened between Russia and Canada. Vast numbers of British soldiers who have left their industrial occupations for the front will have so accustomed and acclimatised themselves to open air and exposure that they will look for life in the open rather than to any return to shops or manufactories. Canada confidently anticipates at least a million settlers from among these ranks. They would be particularly qualified for the order of life required for the hardy pioneer of that North-West defined by Mr. Watson Griffin as lying north of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia, and stretching eastward to Hudson Bay and northward to the Arctic Ocean. They would be prepared to bring to this rigorous and exacting part of the country a hardy vigour and invincible courage in the conquering of nature in a degree quite in excess of that now demanded in the more settled regions. The young and eminently enterprising western Provinces have already made the establishment of Winnipeg as one of the greatest wheat markets in the world an accomplished fact. "In 1904," asserts a New York financial journal, "they raised fifty-eight million bushels of wheat in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta; five years later the yield was one hundred and fifty million bushels, and in 1913 the crop approximated to two hundred millions of bushels of wheat. At this rate of progress," continued this journal, "Canada must soon pass France and India, and stand third in the line of wheat producers. Ultimately she will dispute with Russia and the United States for the first position. Wheat has been the pioneer of our development, and undoubtedly it will prove the same with Canada.... No vivid imagination is needed to see what the future development of Canada means to the people of the United States."

That the great problem of food for the people of Europe will largely devolve on Canada and the States for many years after the end of the war is quite evident.

The Minister of Public Works, the Honourable Robert Rogers, in an interview with a press representative, said not long ago:

"The prairie country will do its share in saving Canada when the war is over.... There will be a vast tide of immigration. Where will the European emigrants go? Will they go to foreign lands, lands where they will be lost forever to the Allies, or will they come to Canada, where they will be under the British flag? That is the vital question for Canada, for the Empire, for the Allies, for civilisation.

"We want to be able to go practically to the door of every European who is thinking of a home elsewhere, and show him the Canadian West—tall wheat, ample railway connections, growing cities and all.