the other. Distance, for which this section of Canada once stood, sponsored the automobile, the airship, the telephone, the radio—the things that are drawing individuals and families together, co-relating separate businesses into one great co-ordinated momentum, called Trade, making every city suburban to all the others, and uniting, supporting and developing the National consciousness. Transportation, good roads! They introduce the man in Vancouver to his brother in Winnipeg and Halifax. Canada is a unit. There is psychology and powerful suggestion in linking up the fronded palm, fanning beside the Gulf, with the sturdy evergreen of the North.
At Saint Norbert there are touches of Quebec, in a little altar-chapel in the woods, to which small pilgrimages are made. There is the Church and Convent and a most picturesque group of Holy figures about La Crucifie in the cemetery.
The French language commingles everywhere with the English. In the little shops here, as well as in the big shops of Winnipeg, two delicacies are offered for sale—Fromage de Trappe and Miel de Trappe—Trappist Cheese and Trappist Honey. And here, within a stone’s throw of Saint Norbert, is situated the Trappist Monastery whence these products hail. This Trappist Monastery is the only door we have ever found closed to us in Canada! But that makes it the more romantic. Nevertheless, we have ridden in their empty wheat-cart, driven by a Trappist brother in his flowing habit, the reins in one hand and huge rosary with individual beads, comparable in size with small crab-apples, in the other. We passed on this ride other brothers swinging down the beautiful tree-line approach to the Monastery, driving spans of horses with full cartloads of “No. 1 Northern”, and saying their Rosaries at the same time—a rare subject even in Canada’s immense gallery. Surely, Prairie wheat rides to the elevator in a variety of carts, and many languages urge the horses to their task. A little office at the gate was as far as our driver dared take us. The Brother in the office takes orders for the cheese and honey, and entertains us with a book of photographs showing the chief Trappist Monasteries of the world. We returned by a little foot-bridge over a stream, and by a woodland path edged with blueberry-bushes and other attractive undergrowth of the cool woods.
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Although the immediate vicinity of Winnipeg is able to show such a profusion and variety of colour, the entire Province of Manitoba, together with Saskatchewan and Alberta, produces a riotous line of romance equal to these nearer roads or any of the older Canadian Provincial gardens. The little Russian boy standing by a window blowing soap bubbles, through a wheat-straw, unconsciously presents a symbolic picture of the romantic dream both projected and fulfilled by the Prairie. To all those with vision, its Voice called. It called above all to the home-hungry children of the Old World to come and settle here. Called them to visualize their dreams, and, is still calling. But its call reached only those with initiative, for it offered on the surface only tasks and difficulties—put the wheat-straw in their fingers and said “Build your own dream-castle. Here is land without boundary. But the vision, the dream,—is yours.”
CHAPTER XXVI.
MINE HOST—THE MENNONITE.
CURING A PELT, WHICH, SOONER OR LATER, GRACES
THE SHOULDERS OF SOME LADY OF THE LAND.
