The governments of the several provinces each have a department of agriculture. Among other provincial agencies for imparting information there are farmers’ institutes, travelling dairies, live-stock associations, farmers’, Agricultural organizations and education. dairymen’s, seed-growers’, and fruit-growers’ associations, and agricultural and horticultural societies. These are all maintained or assisted by the several provinces. Parts of the proceedings and many of the addresses and papers presented at the more important meetings of these associations are published by the provincial governments, and distributed free to farmers who desire to have them. There are also annual agricultural exhibitions of a highly important character, where improvements in connexion with agricultural and horticultural products, live-stock, implements, &c., are shown in competition. The Dominion government makes in turn to one of the chief local agricultural exhibition societies a grant of $50,000 for the purposes of the national representation of agriculture and live-stock. The exhibition receiving the grant loses its local character, and thus becomes the Dominion exhibition or fair for that year.
There are several important agricultural colleges for the practical education of young men in farming, foremost amongst them being the Ontario Agricultural College at Guelph. Agricultural colleges are also maintained at Truro, Nova Scotia, and Winnipeg, Manitoba. In most of the provinces are dairy schools where practical instruction and training are given. Since the beginning of the 20th century agricultural education and rural training in Canada have been greatly stimulated by the munificence of Sir William C. Macdonald of Montreal. A donation by him of $10,000, distributed to boys and girls on Canadian farms for prizes in a competition for the selection of seed grain, as recommended by Professor J.W. Robertson, led to the Macdonald-Robertson Seed Growers’ Association. This soon assumed national proportions in the Canadian Seed Growers’ Association, which, with the seed branch of the department of agriculture mentioned above, has done much to raise to a uniform standard of excellence the grain grown over large areas of the Canadian wheat-fields. The Macdonald Institute at Guelph, Ontario, the buildings and equipment of which Sir William provided at a cost of $182,500, and the Macdonald College at Ste Anne de Bellevue, 20 m. west of Montreal, have been established to promote the cause of rural education upon the lines of nature study, with school gardens, manual training domestic science, &c., which on both sides of the Atlantic are now being found so effective in the hands of properly trained and enthusiastic teachers. The property of the Macdonald College at Ste Anne de Bellevue comprises 561 acres, of which 74 acres are devoted to campus and field-research plots, 100 acres to a petite culture farm and 387 acres to a live-stock and grain farm. The college includes a school for teachers, a school of theoretical and practical agriculture and a school of household science for the training of young women. The land, buildings and equipment of the college, which cost over $2,500,000, were presented by Sir William Macdonald, who in addition has provided for the future maintenance of the work by a trust fund of over $2,000,000. In connexion with the public elementary schools throughout Canada, where the principles of agriculture are taught to some extent, manual training centres, provided out of funds supplied by the same public-spirited donor, are now maintained by local and provincial public school authorities.
(E. H. G.)
History
About a.d. 1000 Leif Ericsson, a Norseman, led an expedition from Greenland to the shores probably of what is now Canada, but the first effective contact of Europeans with Canada was not until the end of the 15th century. John Discovery. Cabot (q.v.), sailing from Bristol, reached the shores of Canada in 1497. Soon after fishermen from Europe began to go in considerable numbers to the Newfoundland banks, and in time to the coasts of the mainland of America. In 1534 a French expedition under Jacques Cartier, a seaman of St Malo, sent out by Francis I., entered the Gulf of St Lawrence. In the following year Cartier sailed up the river as far as the Lachine Rapids, to the spot where Montreal now stands. During the next sixty years the fisheries and the fur trade received some attention, but no colonization was undertaken.
At the beginning of the 17th century we find the first great name in Canadian history. Samuel de Champlain (q.v.), who had seen service under Henry IV. of France, was employed in the interests of successive fur-trading French colony. monopolies and sailed up the St Lawrence in 1603. In the next year he was on the Bay of Fundy and had a share in founding the first permanent French colony in North America—that of Port Royal, now Annapolis, Nova Scotia. In 1608 he began the settlement which was named Quebec. From 1608 to his death in 1635 Champlain worked unceasingly to develop Canada as a colony, to promote the fur trade and to explore the interior. He passed southward from the St Lawrence to the beautiful lake which still bears his name and also westward, up the St Lawrence and the Ottawa, in the dim hope of reaching the shores of China. He reached Lake Huron and Lake Ontario, but not the great lakes stretching still farther west.
The era was that of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48), and during that great upheaval England was sometimes fighting France. Already, in 1613, the English from Virginia had almost completely wiped out the French settlement at Port Royal, and when in 1629 a small English fleet appeared at Quebec, Champlain was forced to surrender. But in 1632 Canada was restored to France by the treaty of St Germain-en-Laye. Just at this time was formed under the aegis of Cardinal Richelieu the “Company of New France,” known popularly as “The Company of One Hundred Associates.” With 120 members it was granted the whole St Lawrence valley; for fifteen years from 1629 it was to have a complete monopoly of trade; and products from its territory were to enter France free of duty. In return the company was to take to New France 300 colonists a year; only French Catholics might go; and for each settlement the company was to provide three priests. Until 1663 this company controlled New France.
It was an era of missionary zeal in the Roman Catholic church, and Canada became the favourite mission. The Society of Jesus was only one of several orders—Franciscans (Recollets), Sulpicians, Ursulines, &c.—who worked in New France. The Jesuits have attracted chief attention, not merely on account of their superior zeal and numbers, but also because of the tragic fate of some of their missionaries in Canada. In the voluminous Relations of their doings the story has been preserved. Among the Huron Indians, whose settlements bordered on the lake of that name, they secured a great influence. But there was relentless war between the Hurons and the Iroquois occupying the southern shore of Lake Ontario, and when in 1649 the Iroquois ruined and almost completely destroyed the Hurons, the Jesuit missionaries also fell victims to the conquerors’ rage. Missionaries to the Iroquois themselves met with a similar fate and the missions failed. Commercial life also languished. The company planned by Richelieu was not a success. It did little to colonize New France, and in 1660, after more than thirty years of its monopoly, there were not more than 2000 French in the whole country. In 1663 the charter of the company was revoked. No longer was a trading company to discharge the duties of a sovereign. New France now became a royal province, with governor, intendant, &c., on the model of the provinces of France.
In 1664 a new “Company of the West Indies” (Compagnie des Indes Occidentales) was organized to control French trade and colonization not only in Canada but also in West Africa, South America and the West Indies. At first it promised well. In 1665 some 2000 emigrants were sent to Canada; the European population was soon doubled, and Louis XIV. began to take a personal interest in the colony. But once more, in contrast with English experience, the great trading company proved a failure in French hands as a colonizing agent, and in 1674 its charter was summarily revoked by Louis XIV. Henceforth in name, if not in fact, monopoly is ended in Canada.
By this time French explorers were pressing forward to unravel the mystery of the interior. By 1659 two Frenchmen, Radisson and Groseillers, had penetrated beyond the great lakes to the prairies of the far West; they were probably the first Europeans to see the Mississippi. By 1666 a French mission was established on the shores of Lake Superior, and in 1673 Joliet and Marquette, explorers from Canada, reached and for some distance descended the Mississippi. Five years later Cavelier de la Salle was making his toilsome way westward from Quebec to discover the true character of the great river and to perform the feat, perilous in view of the probable hostility of the natives, of descending it to the sea. In 1682 he accomplished his task, took possession of the valley of the Mississippi in the name of Louis XIV. and called it Louisiana. Thus from Canada as her basis was France reaching out to grasp a continent.