Westward with the Prince of Wales

by W. Douglas Newton

All the children of Summerland had collected on the quayside to sing to and to cheer the Prince, and, as he stood on the upper deck and waved his hat cheerfully at them, they cheered a good deal more. When he went ashore and was taken by the grown-up Olympians to examine the grading and packing sheds, where the fruits of all the orchards are handled and graded by mechanical means, prepared for the market, and sold on the co-operative plan, the kiddies exchanged sallies with those waiting on the vessel, flipped big apples up at them, and cheered or jeered as they were caught or missed.

The Sicamous went close inshore at Peachland, another daughter town of Mother Fruit, to salute the crowd of people who had come out from the pretty bungalow houses that nestle among the green trees on a low and pretty shore, and who stood on the quay in a mass to send a cheer to him.

At Okanagan Landing, at the end of the lake, he took car to Vernon, a purposeful and attractive town which is the commercial heart of the apple industry. Indeed, there was no need to ask the reason for Vernon's being. Even the decorations were wrought out of apples, and under an arch of bright, cherry-red apples the Prince passed on to the sports ground, and on to a platform the corner posts of which were crowned with pyramids of apples, and in the centre of which was a model apple large enough to suit the appetite of Gargantua.

In front of this platform was a grand stand crowded with children of all races from Scandinavian to Oriental, and these sang with the resistless heartiness of Canada. The Oriental is a pretty useful asset in British Columbia, for in addition to his gifts of industry he is an excellent agriculturist.

After the ceremonies the Prince had an orgy of orchards.

Fruit growing is done with a large gesture. The orchards are neat and young and huge. In a run of many miles the Prince passed between masses of precisely aligned trees, and every tree was thick with bright and gleaming red fruit. Thick, indeed, is a mild word. The short trees seemed practically all fruit, as though they had got into the habit of growing apples instead of leaves. Many of the branches bore so excessive a burden that they had been torn out by the weight of the fruit upon them.

It was a marvellous pageant of fruit in mass. And the apples themselves were of splendid quality, big and firm and glowing, each a perfect specimen of its school. We were able to judge because the land-girls, after tossing aprons full of specimens (not always accurately) into the Prince's car, had enough ammunition left over for the automobiles that followed.

Attractive land girls they were, too. Not garbed like British land-girls, but having all their dashing qualities. Being Canadians they carried the love of silk stockings on to the land, and it was strange to see this feminine extremity under the blue linen overall trousers or knickers. They were cheery, sun-tanned, laughing girls. They were ready for the Prince at every gate and every orchard fence, eager and ready to supplement their gay enthusiasm with this apple confetti.

The Prince stopped here and there to chat with fruit growers, and to congratulate them on their fine showing. Now he stopped to talk to a wounded officer, who had been so cruelly used in the war that he had to support himself on two sticks. Now he stopped to pass a "How d'y' do" to a mob of trousered land-girls who gathered brightly about his car, showing himself as laughing and as cheerful as they.

The cars left the land of growing apples and turned down the lake in a superb run of thirty-six miles to Kelowna. This road skirts fairyland. It winds high up on a shoulder above Long Lake, that makes a floor of living azure between the buttresses and slopes of the mountains. Only when it is tired of the heights does it drop to the lake level, and sweeping through a filigree of trees, speeds along a road that is but an inch or two above the still mirror of Wood Lake, on the polished surface of which there is a delicate fret of small, rocky islets. So, in magnificent fashion, he came to Kelowna, and the Sicamous, that carried him back to the train.