There is but one train in the twenty-four hours from Port Arthur to Winnipeg. We were twelve hours too late for the train which had left and twelve hours too early for the one to leave. All that could be done was to accept the situation. Human nature, however, asserts its prerogative under a sense of injustice. My mind, in spite of myself, reverted to our useless journey to Meaford and Owen Sound, and to the waste of time at these places by which we lost so many hours at the Neebish. It was the old story of the nail in the horseshoe of the Cavalier. I think the experience of all travellers is that when a journey is marked by delay, little is done in the way of remedying it. Indifference succeeds the sense of misadventure or carelessness, and the chance of making up lost time becomes every hour less and less.
I had twelve hours before me, so I determined to make good use of them. I communicated by telegraph with the railway superintendent at Winnipeg and the engineer in charge of construction at Calgary, to enlist their co-operation in our advance over the mountains. I drove with my son from Port Arthur to the River Kaministiquia, a river which assumed some importance in the early days of the construction of the railway six years back. The terminus was established three miles from its mouth. The river is upwards of three hundred feet in width, deep enough to float the largest lake craft. A bar, easily removable, extends across the entrance. When this obstruction is removed the river will be in all respects accessible, and will extend greater capacity for shipping than the river at Chicago, which accommodates the enormous business of that city.
As it was my duty, I visited the Hudson Bay Company’s post near the mouth of the river. After an existence of two centuries as a fur-trading station under varied fortunes, it is soon to disappear, the fate of all such establishments on this continent as civilization overtakes them. As Bishop Berkeley wrote a century ago, “westward the star of empire takes its way.”
In my own recollection the “Far West” was on the eastern shores of Lakes Huron and Michigan, now far within the limits of civilization. Those whose fortunes were cast there looked on themselves as pioneers of an unexplored wilderness. Twenty years ago the upper waters of Lake Huron and Lake Superior were but just coming into notice, and Fort William was regarded as the chief eastern outpost of the Hudson’s Bay Company, beyond which few thought of passing. This celebrated company, which has played such a part in the history of the North-West of this continent, was formed under a charter of Charles II. in 1670. It was the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 which fully recognized the English title to the territory granted under the charter, and abandoned forever such French claims as had been preferred, for the Treaty of Ryswick with France in 1696 had left the question of sovereignty undecided.
As early as 1641 two Jesuits, Jogues and Raymbault, extended their missionary labours to the shores of Lake Superior. The main mission, La Pointe, now Bayfield, on the south shore, was established in 1670, and the Indians remained during French rule entirely under their influence. At the period of the conquest the trade of the French disappeared, for they had no longer the power to visit the country, and by degrees it fell into British hands. On the one side, the Hudson’s Bay Company, from the north, pushed onwards to control it, for a period with success; on the other, parties were started from Montreal to obtain a share of the great profits which were made, the value of which was fully known.
The French trade had been carried on under admirable regulations. Liquor, so ruinous to the Indian, was withheld from him. The enterprising Montreal trader introduced it, regardless of consequences: hence the orgies, the drunkenness and the quarrels which were a scandal even to the wilderness. To intensify this condition of affairs, some Montreal merchants entered into a partnership in 1787, and formed the celebrated North-West Trading Company. It then consisted of twenty-three partners, with a staff of agents, factors, clerks, guides, interpreters, voyageurs, amounting in all to two thousand persons. If the individual trader disappeared from the field, there were two powerful companies remaining, who had to operate in the same field side by side, and there sprang up the fiercest and most embittered rivalry. I shall hereafter refer more definitely to this contention. This state of things was leading to the common ruin of the two companies, when, in 1821, after forty-three years of competition, discord and disaster, the two formed one corporation under the title of the Hudson’s Bay Company.
As I looked upon the old fort on the site of its departed greatness, I thought of the many stirring scenes which it witnessed before and after the beginning of this century. The stone store houses, once so well filled with every requirement, erected around the sides of a square, are now empty, containing a few boxes of rusty flint muskets and bayonets, with chests of old papers, dating back, some of them, more than a hundred years.
The buildings will all soon be unroofed, to make way for a railway station. A year ago I saw two old cannon in the front of the courtyard. On that occasion I believe they fired their last salute. They are now removed. The old rickety flagstaff still remains, and so soon as it is known that a member of the Company of Adventurers is within the precincts the flag is run up as a salute, a service probably for the last time performed at Fort William. In a few months the whole scene will be changed. There is still an agent of the Hudson’s Bay Company in charge, Mr. Richardson, whose complexion of bronze tells of many years of exposure; and his attendant, an Indian, who has been attached to the fort for forty years.
On leaving Mr. Richardson we called on a retired Hudson’s Bay officer, Mr. John McIntyre, who lives in a comfortable house a little further up the river. He is an Argyleshire Highlander, who has the stalwartness of his race, and is as active as ever. At his suggestion we go to Point de Meuron, named after the soldiers of that regiment in Lord Selkirk’s service, camped here in the memorable days of 1817. There was nothing to be seen but the farm, so we returned to the town plot, and, as the hour suggested, took dinner at the Ontario House, a place of some local reputation. There were several vessels from Ohio discharging coal at the railway wharves adjoining, showing that even the narrow cut dredged some years ago across the bar at the mouth of the river was still sufficient to admit their passage; establishing, moreover, how easily a properly excavated channel can be maintained, and plainly showing that the completion of navigation at the entrance of the Kaministiquia will eventually have an important bearing on the commerce of the North-West.
I returned to Port Arthur to prepare for the train, when some of my friends kindly gave me an invitation to a ball to take place in the evening. I should have liked to have accepted it for several reasons, not the least of which was to see that phase of social life in this region; but it was impossible to lose the twenty-four hours, the price of my attendance.