The call of the Canadian West is far less the call of the adventurer, of the speculator, of the seeker of vast and sudden wealth than it is the call to carry an enlightened civilisation into the vast new region that beckons to humanity invested with all the alluring glory of the Promised Land. It is nearly three hundred years ago that the Pilgrim Fathers landed in New England to conquer the wilderness. But the Pilgrims did not find that the railways had gone before and prepared the way with luxurious trains of Pullman cars, or that telegraph and telephone service, in all varieties, to say nothing of Marconigrams, daily mails, motor cars, and various other amenities of life, were awaiting them. The New England of to-day is more indebted to the past half century for its advance than it is to the preceding two and a half centuries. So it may be fairly claimed that the Canadian West begins with the degree of progress, so far as mechanical conveniences and resources go, to which older countries have but just advanced. It is the heir of all the ages.
In normal times, before the War, there was an annual immigration into Canada that approximated to the number of four hundred thousand people, of whom more than fifty thousand were from the United States. There was said to be in round numbers from fifty to seventy thousand who were neither from the States nor from the British Isles, while the remainder were chiefly from England, Scotland, or Wales. The Irish immigration is more attracted to the States, as more than twelve millions of their race are already incorporated into the population of that country.
Two leading factors produce this large immigration into the Dominion. One is that Canada is a country whose richness of resources, climatic conditions, and scenic beauty are incomparable; the other is that there are wise and liberal provisions made by the government to offer desirable and attractive conditions and judicious inducements to the right sort of men to establish their homes in Canada. Thousands of prosperous farmers already scattered over Western Canada began, not many years ago, with inconsiderable capital, but their intelligence, industry, and integrity have carried the way and developed conditions of living that are eminently satisfactory.
The excellent character of the land in Western Canada is well displayed in the great region opened up by the Grand Trunk Pacific. Following for fifty miles the valley of the Assiniboine River, the line of railway goes through the drainage basin of Qu'Appelle River, and on into the great basin of the south Saskatchewan River, crossing it at Saskatoon, the width of this basin being some 200 miles. Then on through the western part of Saskatchewan and the eastern part of Alberta, the railway makes a gradual ascent through sandhills and ridges until crossing the third steppe it proceeds for the remaining 130 miles, to Edmonton, over a level country. With the exception, and that an inconsiderable one, of these sandhills and ridges, there is no waste land between Winnipeg and Edmonton.
In the whole region now opened to civilisation by the Grand Trunk Pacific, there extends a belt of rich farming land from 300 to 500 miles in width from north to south and some 1000 miles in length from east to west. From Winnipeg to the west, the physical properties of the land are found by trained experts to be exceptionally advantageous for the growing of wheat, oats, barley, and flax; "in fact," says Professor Clifford Willis (a recognised authority on soil physics), "the yields of small grain of this type were the best that I have seen anywhere in the best tilled fields of the United States." Professor James H. Pettit, of Cornell University, who won his doctor's degree from the University of Göttingen for work in soil fertility and bacteriology, finds that this recently opened up region possesses some of the richest soils, and that this is due to the alluvial deposits of the large area once covered by the old glacial Lake Agassiz. These deposits have left a soil of silt and clay that is capable of producing thirty-five or forty bushels of wheat, and eighty or ninety bushels of oats to the acre.
To "mixed farming" as well as to the production of grain alone, or of live stock, all this enormous region lends itself. Before the country was opened and rendered accessible by the Grand Trunk Pacific, the region was practically a wilderness. The land was fertile, the numerous rivers and the lakes provided a sufficiency of water and generally promising conditions, but until transit was provided all these were unavailing. Prosperous towns have now sprung up all along the line of the railway, and the settlement of the country progresses with incredible swiftness. The settler arrives with his twentieth-century equipment. The contrast between the manner in which Canada is being gracefully and luxuriously settled, and that of the mid-nineteenth-century settlement of the western part of the United States, is something with which to reckon. The Canadian pioneer arrives in his Pullman car instead of the "prairie schooner" that slowly and wearily traversed the plains west of the Mississippi. He starts a steam engine to plough the land, and if trees or stumps come in his way he exterminates them with celerity by machinery. When the harvesting time comes, wonderful mechanisms cut the grain and bind it, while his trucks are perhaps equipped with motor power and swiftly carry the grain direct from the threshing-machines to the elevators, from which it is shipped to market. Wherefore, indeed, should he taste drudgery? Is he not the heir to all the ages?
The marked liberality of the Canadian Government in its universal provision for higher education is one of the features of the Dominion that can never be too deeply emphasised. Winnipeg, Saskatoon, and Edmonton are all seats of universities, whose privileges are open to women on equal terms. At both Winnipeg and Saskatoon are also agricultural colleges, offering practical instruction in scientific farming, and the ways of wealth are at once made plain for the youth of the region.
Mount Robson Glacier