Only nine years had passed since San Francisco had been practically destroyed by a sudden and terrible calamity. But the spirit of the Golden Gate laughs at calamity and with a magician's wand transmutes it into success. Only two years after this devastation San Francisco raised millions for the exposition she had planned. No earthquake could entomb her spirit, nor could it be drowned by any tidal wave that the Pacific is capable of providing. With that lofty poet, William Vaughan Moody, who, alas, "died too soon" for the nation which his lyre entranced, San Francisco might well declare:
"From wounds and sore defeat
I made my battle-stay;
Winged sandals for my feet
I wove of my delay."
The Panama-Pacific Exposition opened on February 15, 1915, and closed on December 4 of the same year. It was participated in by the Argentine Republic, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Cuba, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Equador, France, Guatemala, Haiti, Holland, Honduras, Italy, Japan, Liberia, Mexico, Nicaragua, New Zealand, Panama, Persia, Peru, Portugal, Salvador, Spain, Sweden, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
This enumeration of the countries participating will of itself suggest the somewhat new class of exhibits, as differing from those of older countries in former world-displays. The Panama-Pacific was thus its own precedent. Its claims to the novel and the unique were extremely well sustained. It was the second exposition held on the Pacific coast, and it had the longest duration by four months of any ever held before.
The grounds comprised over 600 acres, with a water-front of two and a half miles, on San Francisco Bay, just east of the Golden Gate. On the other three sides they were partly enclosed by hills, thus forming a natural amphitheatre. There were eleven colossal palaces with many lesser buildings. These palaces were grouped in a series of rectangles connected by courts and arcades with an Andalusian charm. The courts fascinated the eye by their colonnades, arches, domes, and glittering minarets. They were adorned by mural paintings of symbolic significance, by fountains, sunken gardens, and sculptured art, with niches and restful seats. Festival Hall, with its superb organ, where a concert was held every day, contained an auditorium seating three thousand people, and there were also ten smaller halls. The National Government staged its own special exhibit on a ten-acre space, appropriating two million dollars for this purpose, and this exhibit included a representation of the building of the Panama Canal.
In all this imposing world-panorama of twentieth-century exhibits, Canada led the procession. Whatever the enthralling nature of spectacles offered by other nations, it was the Dominion that set the pace. Canada, an entrancing, garlanded figure, aglow with her abounding enthusiasms; her resistless energy; her dreams of a future that crystallise themselves in her all-conquering empire building—Canada the Spellbinder assumed her place as if by divine right, and certainly by common consent, as the very Winged Victory flying on into a golden future. The Canadian Building, whose classic beauty would have done no discredit to the Parthenon had it also occupied a place on the "Holy Hill" that overlooks all Attica; this structure, so simple yet so rich in architectural effect, her main portal guarded by great lions sculptured on either side, was one of the most impressive creations of the entire Exposition. With a singular comprehensiveness of grouping, the exhibits in this building represented the Dominion in her completeness. It was no one province that engaged the attention to the exclusion of another; it was the Dominion herself, in the unity of her vast empire, rather than any merely tributary feature of the country. In the inscrutable magic that wrought this effect lay the secret of its spellbinding quality. It was a power that enthralled every visitor who crossed the threshold, and brought him back to study it again.
How was this result achieved? The question was in the air. Every one asked it. No one could exactly answer it, but every one shared the wonder. The statistical data of the Dominion was impressive enough for almost any commensurate influence; yet mere facts and figures could give little clue to the mysterious effect on the throngs of visitors. One might read that the population of Canada had increased from five millions to seven millions in ten years; and that fifty-five per cent. of this population was engaged in conquering Nature, and transmuting her plains into golden harvests as a granary of the world; that her Government is expending ten millions a year in agricultural instruction alone; that her root and fodder crop each year is valued at almost two hundred millions of dollars, representing an area of nine million acres, and that the value of her field crops annually is five hundred and fifty millions of dollars. One might read that her live stock, valued at a given time at seven hundred millions, increased a hundred and fifty per cent. within one decade only. This visitor might recall the shrewd assertion of James J. Hill that "there is land enough in Canada, if thoroughly tilled, to feed every person in Europe"; and that, while at present only thirty-six million acres are under cultivation, there are four hundred and forty millions, thirty per cent. of her entire area, that are available for agricultural use. Yet not all these impressive statistics can alone account for the innate magic, the indescribable witchery, that Canada flings about all who come to look upon these marvellous panoramas in her building. Statistical data have their uses and inspire respect, while one cons them by heart and feels sure he is thereby equipped to give a reason for the faith that is in him; but in his heart he knows that all the figures in the realm of mathematics could not really account for his consciousness of the fascinations of the Dominion. A leading journal of San Francisco, advocating the desire that the Californian exhibit should be made a permanent one, proceeded to point the moral and adorn the tale by pointing to the Canadian exhibition. The editorial argument thus ran:
"Canada, with her complete exhibit, has won much praise from Exposition sightseers and has set the precedent for a permanent exhibit. One reason why our northern neighbour was able to make such a splendid impression at the Jewel City from the first was because, as its display was permanent, much of it had been installed in a European exhibition and had come directly here from across the Atlantic. The packing cases were ready to be opened and the best arrangement for the resources of Canada had been determined by experience.
"California needs to be an active participant in future expositions, as active as the Dominion of Canada.
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