KASLO AFTER RAIN.
MOUNTAIN GOATS,
SNOWFLAKES AGAINST THE BLUE SKY.
OMANTIC Canada is never halted by natural obstacles. Like the true diplomat, she wins over hindrances to become aids. High mountains, large rivers with swirling rapids and falls, immense lakes, inland seas, have thus become to Romance, mere stepping-stones. So the cold of the Great Northland, from being a barrier of conquest, has simply inspired Madame Romance to call for her heaviest and finest furs, her dog-team and sled, her snow-shoes, and a supply of good pemmican. Snow is to her but Nature’s cosmetic for rosy cheeks.
“Trade” long ago, claimed The Pas, in Manitoba, as “The Gateway to the Great Northland” and at once Madame proclaimed that “solemn-faced Business” was justified in this; but at the same time she herself reserved the right to spread her pelts for a mat, and sit in this Gate at all times. And Trade, which always walks hand-in-hand with Romance, was very glad to hear her fiat, knowing that the Romantic and business are so close interwoven as to be almost one and inseparable.
The Pas, as a town, is new; but its site was a Trading Post ages upon ages ago. Old in this particular, to the Indians before the advent of the Hudson’s Bay Company in these parts, it was an objective of the Crees, perhaps before Leif coasted from Greenland to Newfoundland. The Pas is still remarkable for the absence of ordinary roads. To get to and from the Pas of old there was only the broad bosom of the Saskatchewan inviting the canoe. But of late years advancing civilization has pushed northward the Hudson’s Bay Railroad. Pioneer wit and humour, with its gift for nomenclature, at once personified the trains for this romantic adventure in rails. The train from the South was christened the “Tamarack”. The sub-Arctic Explorer conquesting to the North they aptly called the “Muskeg”. These two names speak for themselves concerning the nature of the country.
Anyone, who has watched the indomitable “Muskeg” go forth from the Pas station in the thick of a driving snowstorm, knows, beyond doubt, that Canadian courage is a driving force practically at work to subdue to the service of the nation all that vast coastline of Hudson’s Bay which has hitherto been allowed to run to waste.
For all this great enterprise “The Pas” is the “Gate”. Nevertheless when one goes down to the bank of the Saskatchewan and looks up and down the silvery bosom of this ribbon of water, which makes its start somewhere out there in the Rockies, one knows that The Pas has a waterway which must always place it in the first ranks among the busy centres of the country. The river is to The Pas what the Grand Canal is to Venice. The gondola here is the canoe or the old stern-wheel passenger boat, tapping the neighbouring country.