Certainly it is a mistake to have preconceptions of Canada. I found Winnipeg spacious instead of mean. I next found that instead of consisting of elevators and all the apparatus connected with the storage of wheat, it was all banks and cinematograph parlours. There were, it is true, shops and such things sandwiched in between. I recall a jeweller's shop containing the suitable and attractive placard in its window—'Marriage Licences for Sale Here.' It is true, too, that banks and cinematograph shows are not unconnected with wheat. In the banks you store the dollars you have made out of wheat; at the cinematograph shows you circulate them. But really there was an almost incredible number of these institutions.
Of the two kinds of business I felt that personally I would rather own a moving picture show. Winnipegers are, I feel sure, easy to amuse. And they look exceedingly prosperous. The air of prosperity struck me as more obvious in Winnipeg than in any other part of Canada. This may have been due in part to the ladies' hats. I saw some wonderful hats in Winnipeg. Of course there are some women who seem born to wear wonderful hats. Whatever they put on seems wonderful. But in Winnipeg this art of wearing wonders seemed almost universal. Ladies who might otherwise have passed for school teachers—so serene and even precise was their general bearing—were to be seen in hats that would be astounding either on Hampstead Heath or in Covent Garden opera. I was told the hats come direct either from London or Paris, and form an important part of the Steamship Companies' freights, since they are charged for not by weight but by their superficial area. I thought to myself, after I had seen a few samples of them, what sleepless nights the creators of these marvels must pass in the fear that they can never again rival, much less surpass, the last consignment to the Wheat City.
The men too have a prosperous appearance—always new hats, new coats, new cigars; and I was so much impressed by it that I began to study their faces to see if some new type—with the Croesus gift—had been developed in this western place. If they had all looked alike, or had not all looked prosperous, it would have been simpler. But they all looked different—more different than Londoners—as they would—for here all the nations of the earth are gathered, and over a score of languages are taught in the schools (just think of it!); and among these different faces one saw the old familiar aspects—the shrewd and the foolish, the strong-mouthed and the weak, the bluffer's and that of the man who counts. Clearly, they were not all amazing organisers, or men with the grit and the brains that must take them to the top. Not any more were so, I mean, than you would see in any big place. No, it was the economic conditions, not the men, which were changed.
Yet there is one thing noticeable in most of the faces one sees here. It is a general air of buoyancy—of greater expectation and, therewith, of greater self-satisfaction—in a good sense—than one sees at home. Just as the London clerk's face might be made to read!—'I am merely a city clerk on £50 a year—I shall never rise much higher, and I hope I may keep my place,' so the Winnipeg clerk's face might be taken to announce—'At present I'm helping along the Dominion Elevator Company. Luckily for them they're a go-ahead lot. I guess, though, they'll have to raise my salary soon, pretty good though it is now. If they don't, they'll have to look for another man. There are plenty of jobs waiting for me.'
If it is the truth, what could be better?
That there are more jobs than men in the West seems undeniable, though most of them of course are on the land. I had the pleasure of a talk with Mr. Bruce Walker, through whose hands all the immigrants to the West pass. Mr. Bruce Walker's office is in the station, which is one of the sights of the West, when an immigrant train arrives. For Winnipeg is their distributing centre, and in the station, when the train comes in, you may see more types of men and women than a year's travel in Europe would give you, and you may hear more different languages being spoken than went to the unmaking of the tower of Babel. To place all these people, men, women and children, in positions suited to their capacities, before the small sums of money with which they have arrived in the New World have given out, would seem to be a task which Napoleon might have shrunk from. But Mr. Bruce Walker appeared quite undismayed. Although in the first six months of 1910 the immigration from Great Britain alone had increased 98 per cent. over any other corresponding period, he had found no difficulty in dealing with it. He admitted that it meant increase of work for himself and his staff, but that was nothing, he said, so long as there were more jobs than men. 'And there are more jobs,' he said. 'It's amazing. But the extent to which Canada can absorb men seems endless.' He told me many excellent and amusing stories of the difficulties that arise in connection with the new-comers, but I have no space for them here.
The chief criticism to be directed against the Canadian Government's methods in dealing with immigrants is, I think, that it encourages on to the land men who are in some cases wasted there. It is natural that it should place immigrants on the land as far as possible. The land is there, apparently endlessly absorbent. It offers, superficially, work that any strong and able-bodied man should be capable of doing. Again, that Canadian theory that a man should be ready to turn his hand to anything, encourages the Canadian Government to believe that it is justified in turning the hands of immigrants to the work that most obviously wants doing. On the other side, it has to be remembered that while a man may be capable of turning his hand to anything, he is probably much more capable of turning his hand to the work he has been trained to; and not only that, but he is wasted to a large extent if he is not doing it. I am thinking particularly of the skilled workmen who emigrate to Canada from England. Turn them on to land and they may do fairly well; but turn them on to the work they are used to, and they will do much better. I do not say that the Canadian Government is bound to find for such men the work for which they are fitted; but in so far as they undertake to find work for immigrants, they should as far as possible find the right work. That jealousy which causes the United States to put obstacles in the way of the skilled immigrant who comes into the country, should not be encouraged in Canada. It is absurd to suppose that Canada is already stocked with skilled workmen, and I repeat it is waste to use men, who are skilled, in work to which they are wholly unaccustomed. Moreover, though these skilled artisans may in many cases only spend a certain time on the land (after which they find the job which they want and are accustomed to), yet in many other cases they may be so sickened by their time on the land, doing unaccustomed work badly, that they either become wastrels, or leave Canada altogether, believing it to be no country for workers like themselves, and saying so with all the bitterness of men who were capable of succeeding but did actually fail. Another point to which the immigration department might give all the attention it can spare, is that of making it as simple as possible for decent immigrants to be joined at the earliest opportunity by their wives and families. The lack of women in Canada is a curse which there is no disguising. For one thing, to have a country full only of able-bodied men without wives or families is to give it an air of prosperity which is unreal. For another, it is to leave it without any of the ambitions which cause the majority of men to save the money they make, and lay the foundations of a civilised nation. The other objections are obvious. A wise Government policy might go far towards making the period of separation between an immigrant and his wife shorter.
Later on, to get a contrast with Winnipeg, I went out to see Kildonan with a friend. It is the village where the Old-timers—the crofters from the highlands, whom Lord Selkirk brought out in 1812 to colonise the land—finally settled down. They had hard years enough; trouble with the Indians, great trouble with the rival fur company. The fur-traders could see in the farmers only men who would reduce the wild and spoil their own industry. Only after years were their disputes settled. Kildonan is three miles out from Winnipeg by electric-car—along a dusty road fenced with wire from the fat black land. The crofters must have rejoiced to see that loam. Nowadays it has mostly been turned to market-gardening for the supplying of Winnipeg, and the farmers have shifted further West. We turned down a country lane, shaded with maple woods and golden birches, and came presently to the banks of the Red River. Over on the other side, standing among light trees, stood Kildonan Church, the oldest church in Western Canada. We crossed by the ferry, and walked up into the churchyard. It is not large, but it is full, and everywhere you read the familiar Scottish names—Macleod—Black—Ferguson and the rest. The death among infants in those days seems to have been great—naturally enough—for Kildonan then was far from civilisation and doctor's help; and so, many small, unconscious settlers spent only a few days or weeks in the new land. But there were others that lived long. One of the most interesting gravestones commemorated the death of a settler who had come out from Kildonan, Sutherlandshire, at the age of nine. This in the year 1815—the year of Waterloo. He had lived to be past ninety. For his epitaph some one had chosen those noble words from the Epistle to the Hebrews: 'He looked for a city which hath foundations—whose maker and builder is God.'
I think it cannot matter now that the old man died before the great Canadian boom came, before Winnipeg had become the biggest wheat-centre of the world, before he could realise, who looked for a city which hath foundations, that even in his life he had attained to 'God's own country.'