Westward with the Prince of Wales

by W. Douglas Newton

In Timmins itself can be seen a Canadian town at birth. Its wooden shack houses and brick buildings are only now being brought to order along its streets. Its roads are still ankle-deep in mud; buckboards and other country rigs are, with motors, the means of transport—it only wanted Douglas Fairbanks in a Western get-up to complete it as a town projected into reality from the "movies." It is a one-man town, and bears the name of the pioneer who brought it into being, and who is still the driving force of the great gold mines that make it one of the richest places on the earth. He is a quiet man, whose force of character is concealed behind gold-rimmed spectacles and a rooted instinct against waste of words.

The Prince spent an interesting hour at his mines, which are among the largest, if they are not the largest, of their kind in the Empire; all the processes were explained to him, though he did not go into the workings as he did at Cobalt. He had, it goes without saying, a royal reception here, which, in the hands of the liveliest of mayors, had more than a tinge of humour in it.

Timmins was the Prince's last adventure in the wilds. Steaming south and west along the Grand Trunk Railway, he passed through the delightful holiday scenery of the Muskoka Lakes, and, in country becoming gradually more and more domestic and British, approached Hamilton and the thickly inhabited areas of Western Ontario.

II

In coming to Hamilton the Prince returned to the regions of big welcomes. It was not that the East was more loyal or warm than the West, but that, grouped in the vast area of Canada lying between the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, are the old and teeming industrial centres of the Dominion. In this area is about seventy per cent. of Canada's population, and men, women and children can pack themselves into the streets by the tens of thousands, be those streets ever so many or ever so long.

This was Hamilton's way. Hamilton is a "Get on or Get out" proposition. It is dubbed not merely "the Birmingham of Canada," but also "the Ambitious City." It is not the largest town in the Dominion, but it asks you to reserve judgment as to that, and meanwhile it lets you know that it is one of the richest.

From the abrupt heights that rise behind it, one looks down, not upon an historic panorama, as at Quebec, but a Brangwyn panel of "modern progress." Between the abrupt hills and the waters of Lake Ontario the city is packed tight on a rising strip of plain. The stacks of many industries, the rigid uplift of square, practical factories, the fret of derricks and patent loaders by the waterside, all seen under smudges and scarves of factory smoke, would give it an air of resolute drabness if it were not for its multitude of trees.

Trees there are in profusion, rising up between the stiff walls of commercial buildings, lining the long, straight avenues that look like bands of greyish water from the heights, and grouping about the comely houses that form the residential quarters on the slopes rising towards the onlooker on The Mountain. But, even in spite of the trees and the blue shine of the distant lake, there is an atmosphere of industrial greyness that differentiates it from other cities.

There was an air of industrialism about the packed welcome Hamilton gave the Prince. He had slipped into the city on the afternoon of Friday, October 17th, but not officially. He was merely to attend the invisible pleasures of golf and dancing. On Saturday he entered Hamilton ceremoniously, officially. He drove down in a car to a siding, entered the train, was backed into the station, and alighted from it and entered the car he had just left. The church bells rang "Oh, Canada," and he had "arrived."

The industrial atmosphere was created by the workers who thronged the narrow business streets in their overalls, having obviously come out from bench and ironworks and packing factories, as well as from the stores and offices, to see the Prince. I noticed among the crowd a great number of Jews, more than I had seen in other Canadian cities.