Winter and Summer Excursions in Canada

Front matter

WINTER AND SUMMER EXCURSIONS IN CANADA ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS. WINTER AND SUMMER EXCURSIONS IN CANADA BY C. L. JOHNSTONE AUTHOR OF "HISTORICAL FAMILIES OF DUMFRIESSHIRE," ETC. LONDON DIGBY, LONG, & CO., Publishers 18 BOUVERIE STREET, FLEET STREET, E.C. •©e&tcftfefc TO Colonel Sir JAMES JOHNSTONE, K. C.S.I., WHOSE ZEAL IN PROMOTING EDUCATION AND PEACEFUL PROSPERITY IN REMOTE DISTRICTS OF HER MAJESTY'S EASTERN EMPIRE MUST LEAD HIM TO TAKE AN INTEREST IN THE SETTLERS AND NATIVES OF THE FURTHEST QUARTERS OF HER MAJESTY'S WESTERN DOMINION. CONTENTS. PAGE Introduction xiii

Chapter I

The Canadian Pacific Railway — Winnipeg Station — Qu'Appelle — St. John's College — Brotherhood — College and School — Bishop Anson — Deserted Farms — Indians, ...... I

Chapter II

Young Farmers in the Qu'Appelle Valley — Fashionable Arrivals from London — Abernethy — Some Experiences of Gentlemen Settlers in Manitoba and the North-west — Icelanders — Want of Clergy — Church Statistics — English Church Workers — A Prairie Fire, ..... 19

Chapter VI

Indians and Half-breeds — Theories concerning the Origin of the Indian Tribes — Earl)* Discoverers of America before Columbus — Red River Settlement — lroquois Colonists in the Rockies — Discovery and Colonisation of Rupertsland — Jacques Cartier, and Eastern Canada or New France — Wars — Indians in British Columbia — Indian Honesty — St. John's College, 97

Chapter XI

Leaving the North-West for Manitoba — Minnedosa — Typhoid Fever — Winnipeg — The Memnonites — Ottawa — Red River District — Grand Forks — St. Paul and Minneapolis — Niagara — Through the Lakes, ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE St. Peter's Pro-Cathedral, Qu'Appelle Station — Chapter I., . . . . . . . . II The Self-binder— Chapter IV., 71 Winnipeg in 1871 — Chapter V., 81 A Manitoba Farm — Chapter VII., .... 128 Junction of St. Lawrence and Ottawa — Chapter VIII., 157 In the Rockies— Chapter X.,

Introduction

. "Of all gainful possessions, nothing is better, nothing more pleasing, nothing more delightful, nothing better be comes a well-bred man, than agriculture." — Cicero. I HAVE been assured that the British public do not care much about Canada, except as a refuge for the superfluous population. It is quite satisfied, say my informants, with the pamphlets on the subject distributed by the Canadian Pacific Railway Com pany and other emigration agents. This is doubtless true of a large class. The pamphlets in question record only the successes of the British settlers in Canada. It is no business of theirs to give the many heavy losses, their cause, and how to avoid them. A boy is backward at school — he cannot pass an examination for a profession ; why trouble, says a sanguine friend, to work up for a second attempt?

Why don't you go and make your fortune in Canada? How this fortune is to be made, or even how the small capital which the boy perhaps takes out with him is to be safely invested and kept from melting away, does not seem to occur to his adviser. So an inexperienced sanguine

INTRODUCTION.

. XIV youth sets forth from his home — credulous because he has lived among honest people, unacquainted with any species of labour except cricket and football, but confident in his own judgment— to fall an easy prey to those unscrupulous gentry who in every colony are prepared to welcome the novice and dispose of unprofitable land, unsaleable machinery, worn-out cattle, and anything else they want to get rid of — at his expense. This is the commonest way in which fortunes are made and lost in Canada. But the boy who goes out with little but a strong pair of hands and a knowledge of agricultural work attracts no sharpers and readily finds employment. He may not make a fortune ; but in time he may acquire a competence and live a happy life amid educated people in an exhilarating climate, and even aspire to become a member of the Canadian Parliament, or a provincial governor.

It is certainly most extraordinary, if the British people who trouble themselves a good deal about the social and political affairs of foreign countries in Europe, do care nothing about the colony to which so many of their sons and brothers annually migrate, and which will probably become our most valuable ally. We can hardly believe it, so we venture to offer the following experiences of a residence in the north-west. These experiences are not only those of summer tourists, but of a

INTRODUCTION.

. XV visitor and participator in the work of an establishment on the prairie during the dreary winter months, when even the sparrows had fled to warmer regions, and the wolf and the snowbird seemed to be the only wild creatures left. The bear is not found except where there is plenty of cover ; but he had also betaken himself to some snug hiding place, probably selected during his summer rambles, and with his paws covering the tip of his nose he was indulging in his long annual snooze. All nature shrinks from the icy blasts which periodically sweep over the north-west, and from the blizzards of snow which have buried many a fine young fellow, rash in his inexperience, long before the expected fortune or even competence has begun to be made. Yet we have heard men, who have started a son with £500 or £1000, speak as con fidently of a certain interest on that sum within a year or two, as if it had been invested in British consols.

If farming is hazardous and slow to bring a profit in England, it is far more hazardous and experimental in the most uncertain climate of the north-west ; but then many of us cannot afford to indulge in farming at all in England, and it can be enjoyed by every one for a comparative trifle in Canada, if a man farms on Canadian soil in the Canadian way. This may seem paradoxical, but the following pages are intended to explain it.

Chapter I

The Canadian Pacific Railway — The Winnipeg Station — Qu Appelle — SI*. John's College — The Brotherhood College and Schcol — Bishop Anson — Deserted Farms — Indians. WHEN the Canadian Pacific Railway was first completed from Quebec and Montreal to Vancouver, there were fatigues and inconveniences attending the journey across the Dominion which have lessened and are lessening every year. The com petition is keen with the Yankee 1'ies; and con sidering the large numbers conveyed across during the season, and the wild desolate country through which a great part of the Canadian Pacific Railway runs, the officials of the company certainly deserve the greatest credit for their civility and efficiency and the general good management for which it is indeed noted. Passengers must not expect to find much in the way of refreshments outside the train after leaving Quebec and Montreal.

Here and there biscuits, stale cakes, and tea of a very inferior description could be had at a station, which was little but a wooden shed, during the 1424 miles between Quebec, and Winnipeg ; but a quite disproportionate r>;nce was charged for even a piece of bread, and, as there are not refreshment cars attaches1! to every train (and the provisions are apt to fa.M short even in them), persons who, as emigrants generally do, go straight through from the port of landing to the railway station, would do wisely to supply themselves with comforts fov the land journey before they leave England, otherwise they are likely to suffer from real starvation. There are plenty of provisions sold at the Quebec station ; but, when 1300 passengers pounce upon them, those at the back of the crowd come badly off.

The first and second class passengers, only touring in Canada, who go on to Montreal in the Allan and Dominion steamers, and there take the regular express with its Pullman's sleeping and refreshment cars, are in a better position in this respect than the emigrant, loaded with luggage, and the steerage passenger who is conveyed no farther by steamer than to Quebec, and there mounts the " excursion train from the old country for the north-west," as the railway employe's call THE WINNIPEG STATION. 3 the special boat train from that port. Fir trees, splendid waterfalls, gigantic lakes, wood-cutters' huts, a region of granite, and the towers of Ottawa, vary the landscape till we reach Winnipeg, the Oueen of the Prairie, and a hundred miles from the lake. If Canada remains united for many more years this youngest of her chief cities will probably become her official capital.

It grows like a London suburb ; and as old Montreal with all its claims was rejected because it was too French, and upstart self-sufficient Toronto because it was too Yankee, Winnipeg is certain sooner or later to put in a claim for the dignity. In the fine hall which serves as a general waiting-room at the Winnipeg station something like an old-world statute fair was going on. Hotel-keepers and Government agents, householders and clergy, had come to inspect the new arrivals and to engage the likely ones for various occupations. Of course, the unattached of both sexes had the first chance. It was amusing to see a tall handsome girl, dressed in the last English fashion, which had not been seen before in Winnipeg, peering down through her eyeglasses on a tall elderly clergyman, who was, rather shyly it appeared, questioning her as to her qualifications for some educational post he had to offer her.

She, like many others of different social grades, had come out in the first ship of the season under the charge of a well-known clerical emigration agent, who seemed to have his hands full with the boys of eleven years old and over, whom he was settling with farmers or citizens as hired helps all the way we went along. Rather unwarily, he had given them the whole of the food which was to last for five days on leaving Quebec, and it was of course all eaten, if only to pass away the time, long before they reached their destination. A bread riot ensued, which was happily appeased by the appearance of a baker, who sold twopenny loaves at tenpence each, a short distance before we arrived at this chief or only resting-place on our way. At one end of the waiting-room forty-five China men were standing or sitting over their baggage, — refugees from the United States, waiting for the express to convey them to Vancouver.

I afterwards saw several more, standing, as if in an ecstasy, round a barrel of apples in front of a fruiterer's shop in Main Street, Winnipeg. Their costume, which was exactly alike, was a Yankee modification of the Chinese labourer's dress ; and they seemed well supplied with dollars. Canada will not have them, except in British Columbia, where they are admitted on a payment of about a head, so they are passed on, in bond as it were, from the United States, whence they have been expelled, simply QU'APPELLE. 5 because they are Asiatics. There are many reasons given for the law which prevents them from settling in the north-west of Canada : one, that they would mix with the Indians and soon fill up the country with an inferior race, probably hostile to European settlers or their descendants.

It seems that they are flocking into Siberia to an extent which gives the Europeans some alarm. But they would un doubtedly tend to lower the price of labour and manufactures, if they were allowed freely to settle in Canada ; and as so much of the revenue is raised by duties on manufactured goods from the United States and Europe in the present rudimentary con dition of mechanical arts in the Dominion, this probably has something to do with the prohibition. English labourers also cease to emigrate to those colonies where they are under-sold by Chinese. The train runs through the streets in Winnipeg much as it does in some towns in the United States. " All aboard ! " cry the conductors ; and we are again en route, with only the prairie and a series of villages before us, for another iooo miles.

Qu'Appelle station, our immediate destination, lies nearly 400 miles beyond Winnipeg, and the run was made in fourteen hours, the approach being rather pretty for this district, among bushes and groups of trees. We had seen ice thickly covering Lake Superior on our road, and here again we saw it when at 6 A.M. we dismounted from a much over-heated carriage into the chilly morning air. Being Sunday, there were absolutely no spectators. Generally speaking, Canadians collect to see the one train in the day pass through, as they do all the world over where the railway is still rather a novelty. The principal hotel seemed to be open, and we stepped into it with our handbags, leaving the heavier baggage on the platform, where we were assured it was quite safe. A porter was roused, and rooms were found for us, although in the brilliant sun of a May morning we felt disinclined for more sleep.

A bath seemed the greatest necessity : as for food, I subsequently discovered that this hotel was not singular in that none of our party succeeded in convincing the owners that we were exceedingly hungry, having had nothing to eat to speak of since the middle of the previous day, and should be glad of a meal, however simple, before the regular breakfast hour. But a little before eight the church bell began to ring ; and how pleasant was the sound after so much tossing about and shaking up, on ship and train. It proclaimed that we had arrived in a civilised and law-abiding community, where our national faith had not been left behind. In a town of wooden houses, and with wooden side walks, i.e., pavement, the church and its internal decorations did great credit to the inhabitants, or perhaps more to their QU'APPELLE. 7 friends and sympathisers in England.1 The chancel was a gift of a sister as a memorial of her brother, and the handsome cover to the font was also be stowed by an English friend.

The two large stoves and broad stove pipe all the length of the nave, not yet removed for the summer, showed the intense cold for which we must be prepared, and we did have a heavy snow-storm before the day was out. There are two hotels close to the railway at Qu'Appelle station, where people can board and lodge at a dollar and a half and two dollars a day. As in the United States, there is no distinction between plain breakfasts and breakfasts with meat or eggs, or dinners of two courses and more ; for the meals are all on the table d' hote system, only that each guest has his separate arrangement of little dishes, with porridge, potatoes, ham or bacon, butter, etc., before him ; and I am told that it is not usual to ask for a second cup of coffee or tea. However, they give it, if wanted.

At second-class hotels in the north-west the beds are only supplied with one sheet ; and as washing is very expensive, travellers would do wisely to take their own sheets and blankets. The diocese of Qu'Appelle is coterminous with 1 The diocese of Qu'Appelle lost two warm friends in January, 1894, — the Dean of Lincoln, and the Duchess of Argyll, sister-in-law to the first bishop. the province of Assiniboia, and is in the arch bishopric of Rupertsland. Its settlement was due to the Canadian Pacific Railway being marked out ; but after it had been boomed, as the Canadians call it, by land speculators, rather above its merits perhaps, the colony stagnated for a length of time, though some brick buildings put up in Qu'Appelle station this summer look as if another tide of pros perity were setting in.

St. John's College, which contains the diocesan library and the residence of the bishop, within two miles of Qu'Appelle station, is a great feature of the district. The trail, as they call roads here, winds across the prairie among bushes, and past ponds, through an open space dotted with Indian tents, and among the horses and cattle of the natives feeding on the long thick grass. Then we come in sight of a white gate and the college grounds with the three houses which comprise the establishment standing on a slight elevation, the chapel in the rear of the middle house inhabited by the bishop. There is a bell on the top of the largest building, which can be heard miles away. The prairie seems to stretch interminably on all sides ; and in very clear weather, Fort Qu'Appelle, twenty miles distant, has been seen.

The little town of Qu'Appelle station is a pretty object, with its metallic church spire, from the college front. ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 9 That Qu'Appelle was most fortunate in its first bishop x goes without saying, when we look at the churches and the vicarages which were built during the eight years of his ministry, and the high respect in which he is universally regarded there, both as a theologian, an organiser, and a kind and wise adviser and friend. His writings in various Canadian Church publications, and his sermons delivered in many parts of Canada, have, I am assured, done much to keep up a high standard among the clergy of the Episcopal Church through out the Dominion. The large sums he has expended in different schemes for the good of the diocese in connection with St. John's College should also be recorded.

It has been and is still a theological school, to train young men, free of expense to themselves, to take holy orders in the diocese. It is an agricultural college, where younr Englishmen who wish to settle in the north-west learn the kind of farming best suited to the country more efficiently than they can in England ; and the 1 The Hon. and Right Rev. A. J. R. Anson, youngest son of the first Earl of Lichfield, was consecrated in Lambeth Palace at the same time with the late Bishop Hannington in 1884. He retired in 1892, and his successor, the Right Rev. W. J. Burn, formerlyVicar of Conniscliff, diocese Durham, was con secrated at Westminster Abbey on Lady Day, 1893. We understand that the new bishop, like his predecessor, is extremely popular among the Church people of Qu'Appelle. payment, £60 a year, cannot leave much room for profit, as they enjoy in return a comfortable colonial home.

Besides this, the building, now standing empty, was once occupied by a school, where the sons of colonists able to pay £35 a year (if boarders, much less if day scholars) received a classical and commercial education on a foundation of Church principles. But though this sum, when it includes washing and every extra, sounds little enough to pay in England, it is a good deal in the north-west. Boys are useful at home, and their parents have to hire others to replace them if they go away to school. Then there are Government free schools giving a purely secular education all over the country, and children in remote places are boarded with friends in the towns, that they may attend them. To plant a Church school on the system of our public ones in the north-west, and to give the boys cricket and football in their leisure hours, instead of the useful occupations to which many of them are accustomed, to keep hired people to wait upon them, is introducing an old world institution into a new colony hardly yet ripe for it.

At least, so it appeared ; for the numbers were never large enough to make it self-supporting, and after having, it is said, provoked much jealousy in other centres, it was closed subsequent to the departure of Bishop Anson, who used to make up THE BROTHERHOOD. 11 the deficit. The Rev. W. Nicolls and the Rev. Thos. Greene, successively head-masters, will long be affectionately remembered by their pupils for their kindness and efficiency. The boys, a high spirited set of young fellows, used to form a choir for the church of St. Peter at Qu'Appelle ; and the school was certainly a great advantage to the St. Peter's Pro-Cathedral, Qu'Appelle Station. neighbourhood, where it formed a very lively element. When Bishop Anson first went out, this district could not have been much more advanced than the part of Scotland in the days of St. Columba where the Celtic apostle first settled with his brotherhood, who acted as missionaries, and maintained themselves by their labour at the same time.

Perhaps this was a precedent which suggested itself to the late Bishop of Qu'Appelle, when he established the Brotherhood of Labour at St. John's College. It was intended to work harmoniously — the brothers being fed and clothed gratis— with the young Eng lish agricultural students ; and for a time did so, although several who offered themselves did not seem to understand the labour part of the contract, and their work was hardly an equivalent for their maintenance. It was also hardly possible to keep up such an establishment with the simplicity and economy which might be maintained in a purely savage district. The accompaniments of civilisation follow fast in the wake of the colonists in Canada. Stores or shops are set up, where groceries, tinned provisions, jams, pickles, and fruits are sold, but at a very high price.

This is one cause of the expense of farm pupils in Canada. They expect to have the luxuries they were accustomed to have in Eng land, when they can be had ; no matter if a three pound pot of marmalade costs six shillings and fourpence ; and a fourpenny-halfpenny bottle of sauce costs two and a penny. The brothers also preferred to give the agricultural pupils the dis agreeable jobs to do about a farm, and keep the pleasant ones for themselves, — at least, so some of the pupils thought. Anyway, it was a complicated BISHOP ANSON. 13 establishment to work in union, being also a home for the clergy requiring a holiday or to consult the bishop, as well as when preparing for holy orders ; and as the brothers dispersed one by one to take up lay missionary work, a Government school, or to seek ordination in the Qu'Appelle, and other dioceses, the gaps were not filled up ; but they have done good work elsewhere, for they were all young men, and certainly prepared for their useful careers in St. John's College.

The brother superior, the last who remained, is now acting as lay missioner in the lonely settlement at Fort Pelly. He was organist in the college chapel as well as in St. Peter's Church, Qu'Appelle station ; and manager of the work on the college farm. In an appendix to his recently published pamphlet on the need of brotherhoods for the mission work of the Church, Bishop Anson points out that his colonial experi ment made clear that the primary want is " a home in England for the testing and training of men . . . before they are sent forth on an uncertainty to dis tant countries". Also, as the bishop explains in another place, to receive them when they have ceased to be really fit for their work, or are incapa citated through illness. The bishop's wooden residence at St. John's College is in appearance and size like one of the lodges which generally stand at the entrance of an English park, the buildings on each side of it being of larger dimensions.

The founder, Bishop Anson, visited Canada very soon after this district was first settled. He was then Rector of Woolwich ; and, perceiving the scarcity, if not entire absence, of clergy and churches among the new townships, which were being marked out along the line of the Canadian Pacific Railway, he offered himself as a missionary priest, temporarily, to fill a pressing need, and was, we believe, earnestly requested by the Arch bishop of Canterbury to allow himself to be conse crated its first bishop. He was able to take the office without a stipend, which, during his episcopate, he succeeded in raising for his successor, and he spent his private income on the diocese ; for an English curate of five-and-twenty could not have lived with less ostentation or with less of the comforts of life.

His friends and relations have also been very liberal in their donations to St. John's College and to the churches, so that this diocese seemed to be looked upon with a good deal of envy by English church men in some other parts of Canada. The chapel bell rings for prayers twice a day at St. John's College, whether the bishop is at home or not. He necessarily spends much time away from his residence, visiting the different parts of his diocese, which is nearly as large as Great Britain. Bishop Burn, like his predecessor, is a good pedes- BISHOP ANSON. 15 trian, and goes about in no comfortable carriage. The episcopal conveyance is what we should call a gig, with the high wheels necessary to prevent it from being overturned where there are no roads, and which just holds the bishop and his driver, usually a student, with a place for a bag behind.

The steed is a spirited horse or pony, bred on the place. The diocese is not entirely divided into parishes ; but the scattered churches are served by the bishop and the sixteen priests in the diocese, with the assistance of three deacons and two or three lay readers. A thirty-mile drive on a Sun day is not thought too much. In winter they have had many hazardous escapes, wandering about in blinding snow-storms throughout a night, unable to regain the track, or to find a habitation. The accommodation in the settlers' shanties, hospi tably as it is offered, is often extremely rough from the English point of view ; and, indeed, can hardly be otherwise. Sometimes they have camped out on long journeys, being unable to find any night shelter at all. It stands to reason that when the bishops and clergy in the north-west territory have no longer the vigour of youth, they have no course left but to retire, for certainly the bishop cannot rest himself out there.

Neither are comforts to be found for invalids in the north-west or on the long land journey home to the old country, as Great Britain is affectionately called throughout the new world. The full use of his limbs and faculties is, we should imagine, one of the most necessary qualifications for a successful emigrant ; yet, to judge from those often sent out, it seems to be a common belief in England that young fellows dis qualified from entering a profession at home, by want of sight, or health, or some accidental injury, are just the very men likely to make their fortunes in Canada. If they are supplied with a small income these may live comfortably ; but hardly without. The Canadians, like Thackeray's Lord Magnus Charters, can afford to be liberal in a non-political sense ; for there are few of the oldest or noblest families in England and France who are not represented more or less in the Dominion.

Quebec boasts that her cemeteries contain the bones of more Waterloo heroes than perhaps any other out of the neighbourhood of the battlefield. St. John's College at Qu'Appelle has sent out many brave young fellows educated at English public schools, and some of them from Oxford and Cambridge, who have taken up land, and are doing their best to prove if this country is capable of supporting a prosperous branch of the English race. A sad fact was elicited from a Government official in 1891, that he had passed between thirty and forty deserted settlers' huts within a space of about thirty-five DESERTED FARMS. 17 miles, and about the same distance to the north west of Qu'Appelle. Most of the owners are supposed to have migrated to British Columbia, hoping to gain a fortune rather more speedily in some other line of life.1 Two years of drought drove them away.

As in ancient Egypt, years of rain and plenty succeeded those dry summers, and the ponds and lakes are returning to the same condition in which they were found by the first settlers from Eastern Canada and Europe.2 The ruinous drought suggested to a few of the most conscientious of the settlers that the English were being punished for taking possession of the birthright of the Indian. This idea seems a very unnecessary source of disquiet ; and how well the Government fulfils its treaty with the Indians will be shown later on. The Indian in his savage state and without the protection of English law suffered frequently from famine, and from the unprovoked 1 In the Marquis of Lome's Canadian Pictures, he gives the opinion that there is abundant scope for gentle men's sons having modest fortunes, as £200 to £500 a year, for leading a life of comfort and enjoyment, riding, shooting, etc.

Also, that " a settler who has £500 on his arrival in Manitoba is an independent man, and cannot fail to succeed with ordinary care and energy. Many settlers on arrival have not a tenth part of that sum, and yet they succeed." 2 For "North-west Canadian Schools," see chap. x. Manitoba possesses a diocesan school at St. John's College, Winnipeg. attacks of hostile or starving tribes. He sometimes wandered hundreds of miles in one year in search of subsistence. Now he can obtain a sale for his wares, wages for his labour, medicine in sickness, and as he is gradually imbued with faith in a Heavenly Protector, he is relinquishing the fear of unseen horrors, evil eyes, witchcraft, and the like, which have been always the bane of un civilised and heathen people. Hunters from the United States and from Eastern Canada are chiefly responsible for driving away the buffalo and larger game ; and it really appears as if the European settlers had been sent to the north-west for his preservation.