Westward with the Prince of Wales

by W. Douglas Newton

The Prince spent some time visiting the sanatorium, and chatting with the inmates, and then played golf on the course here. The C.P.R. were, meanwhile, indulging themselves in one of their habitual feats. The lakes make a gap in the line between Nelson, or rather Balfour siding, and Kootenay Landing at the head of the water. Over this water-jump the whole train, solid steel and weighing a thousand tons, was bodily carried.

Two great barges were used. The long cars were backed on to these with delicate skill—for the slightest waywardness of a heavy, all-steel car on a floating barge is a matter of danger, and each loaded barge was then taken up the lake by a tug grappled alongside.

At Kootenay Landing the delicate process was reversed, and all was carried out without mishap though it was a dark night, and the railwaymen had to work with the aid of searchlights. Kootenay Landing is, in itself, something of a wonder. In the dark, as we waited for the train to be made up, it seemed as solid as good hard land can make it. But as the big Canadian engine came up with the first car we felt our "earth" sway slightly, and in the beam of the big headlight we saw the reason. Kootenay Landing is a station in the air. It is built up on piles.

CHAPTER XIX

THE PRAIRIES AGAIN

I

In cold weather and through a snowfall that had powdered the slopes and foothills of the Rocky Mountains the Prince, on Thursday, October 2nd, reached the prairies again. Now he was travelling well to the south of his former journey on a line that ran just above the American border.

In this bleak and rolling land he was to call in the next two days at a series of small towns whose very names—McLeod, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Maple Creek, Swift Current, Moose Jaw and Regina—had in them a savour of the old, brave days when the Red Man was still a power, and settlers chose their names off-hand from local things.

McLeod, on the Old Man River, just escapes the foothills. It is prairies, a few streets, a movie "joint," an hotel and a golf course. In McLeod we saw the dawn of the Mackinaw, or anyhow first saw the virtues of that strange coat which seems to have been adapted from the original of the Biblical Joseph by a Highland tailor. It is a thick, frieze garment, cut in Norfolk style. The colour is heroic red, or blue or mauve or cinnamon, over which black lines are laid in a plaid tracery.