That outcrop of active discontent—which, by the way, was germinated in part by Englishmen—had a loud and ugly sound, and its clamour seemed ominous. People asked whether all the West, and indeed, all Canada, was going to be involved. Was Canada speaking in the accents of revolt?
Well, on September 9th, there arose another sound in Winnipeg, and it was but part of a wave of sound that had been travelling westward for more than a month. It was, I think, a most significant sound. It was the sound of majorities expressing themselves.
It was not a few shouting revolt. It was the many shouting its affection and loyalty for tried democratic ideals.
When minorities raise their voices our ears are dinned by the shouting and we imagine it is a whole people speaking. We forget those who sit silent at home, not joining in the storm. The silent mass of the majority is overlooked because it finds so few opportunities for self-expression. Only such a visit as this of the Prince gives them a chance.
It seemed to me that this display of affection had a human rather than a political significance. It impressed me not as an affair of parties, but as the fundamental, human desire of the great mass of ordinary workaday people to show their appreciation for stable and democratic ideals which the peculiarly democratic individuality of the Prince represents.
III
Winnipeg is a town with a vital spirit. It has a large air. There is something in its spaciousness that tells of the great grain plains at the threshold of which it stands. It is the "Chicago of Canada," and hub of a world of grain, Queen City in the Kingdom of Bakers' Flour. And it is mightily conscious of its high office.
It springs upward out of the flat and brooding prairies, where the Assiniboine and the strong Red River strike together—the old "Forks" of the pioneer days. It sits where the old trails of the pathfinder and the fur trader join, and its very streets grew up about those trails.
From the piles of pelts dumped by Indians and hunters outside the old Hudson Bay stockade at Fort Garry, and the sacks of raw grain that the old prairie schooners brought in, Winnipeg of today has grown up.
And it has grown up with the astonishing, swift maturity of the West. Fifty years ago there was not even a village. Forty years ago it was a mere spot on the world map, put there only to indicate the locality of Louis Kiel's Red River Rebellion, and Wolseley's march to Fort Garry, as its name was. In 1881 it became just Winnipeg, a townlet with less than 8,000 souls in it. Today it ranks with the greatest commercial cities in Canada, and its greatness can be felt in the tingling energy of its streets.