Sunny Manitoba, its peoples and its industries ... With map and illustrations

Preface

. It is only necessary to say by way of preface that this volume is the outcome of personal observa tion, unbiased by the interests — real or supposed — of governments, railway companies, syndicates, or individuals. It has been frequently represented to me that a veracious narrative of the experiences of an entirely independent and impartial observer of life in Manitoba would be welcomed by a large number of English people, other than those who contemplate emigration. The writing of that narrative has been to me a source of much pleasure ; and, whilst it has been my first object to render it instructive and helpful to those who desire to find new homes in the Far West, it is my hope that a much larger class will discover in these pages something to interest as well as to inform their minds.

PREFACE.

. Official statistics have been used wherever they have been procurable. As regards purely agricultural matters, I am under the obligation to Tfie Nor' -West Farmer, an agricultural paper of a very high order. I have also been favoured with interviews by Ministers both of the Dominion and the Manitoban legislatures ; by members of both Parliaments, and officials of the Canadian Pacific Railway ; by all of whom, as well as by settlers of every class, both in the towns and on the prairie, valuable information has been willingly communicated. Where such information has been incorporated into my narra tive, every effort has been made to ascertain that it was entirely reliable ; and in almost every instance it has been endorsed by specialists, in whose judgment confidence could be placed. If I succeed in removing some of the prevailing misconceptions, and in conveying accurate in formation respecting a much calumniated Province of our great Dependency of the West, I shall not have written in vain.

But calumnies die hard. That, perhaps, is the best justification for a book, the sole purpose of which is, by stating facts as I found them, without partiality or exaggeration to throw some light upon an interesting province, of which most Englishmen are in practical ignorance. l'AGE 13 TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Chapter I

Indiscriminate eulogy and depreciation of Manitoba — The keystone of the sister provinces — Derivation of name — Earlyhistory — Lord Selkirk's colonists — The Governmentand the Hudson Bay Company — Manitoba becomes a province — Its area and population — Choice of Winnipeg as the capital — Growth and progress of the city — Salubrity of Canadian towns — Brandon the Wheat-city of the Dominion — Results of farming near Brandon — Portage la Prairie — The Census of 1891 — Statistical Fallacies — Climate of Manitoba — Range of temperature — Cricket on New Year's Day — The four seasons — Manitoba not the home of the blizzard- Summer frosts — The healthiest country of the globe

Chapter II

What is the prairie like ? — Three prairie steppes — A vast lake-basin — The Lake of the Woods — The flat, treeless prairie — The "rolling" prairie— Oak Lake — Virden — Elkhorn — The " bluffy " prairie — A prairie sunset — A prairie thunderstorm — The mirage — A morning walk — The flora of the prairie — Riverside farm — The Pipestone Creek — TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE 5' 91 123 Mosquitoes — Natural phenomena — Chain-lightning — Prairie fires — The fauna of Manitoba — Capturing a catamount — Gophers

Chapter III

The Red Indians of Manitoba — Influence of civilisation — Father Lacombe — Superficial ideas of Christianity — Results of missionary effort — Superstitions — Vagrant Indians — Treatment by the Government— Schools — The tribal system— Industrial Schools— "Red-Hot Shot "—Indian Homes at Elkhorn — Inherited instincts — Eccentricity of an Indian preacher — The Half-breeds — Their destiny — Mennonites — Icelanders — An Icelander's library

Chapter IV

Survey of Dominion lands — Conditions of free land grants — Value of land — Rapid absorption of homestead lands — Remarkable development of trade — Railway extension — The soil of Manitoba — Unscientific farming — Ignorance of settlers — A bachelor's shanty — Continuous wheat-growing — Grasshoppers — Objections to a rotatory crop system — A good farmer a public educator — " Mixed " farming — Can wheat be profitably grown ? — An anxious calling — Hog breeding — Sheep — Their adaptation to a cold climate — Essential to successful farming — Pliny on crop rotation — Root-crops — Phenomenal growths — A thousand bushels of turnips to the acre — Reports of one hundred farmers

Chapter V

Manitoba unsuited for ranching— Mixed farming — Unpleasant neighbours — The Canadian cattle export trade — Dairy-farming — Canadian and Danish butter exports — Com- TABLE OF CONTENTS. 9 PAGE missioner Robinson on dairy-farming — Manitoba Dairy Association —Public creameries — Quality of Manitoban milk — Free Trade needful to the development of the resources of the Dominion — Objects proposed in the establishment of experimental farms — The Brandon Ex perimental Farm — Experiments with native grasses — Cultivated grasses— Fodder corns — Farmers' institutes — Stubble ploughing — Winter work on the faim — The coal beds of Manitoba — The prairie in autumn . . • *59

Chapter VI

Winter aspect of the prairie — Grain elevators — Social life of the prairie — Native Canadians — A peasant millionaire — State of education — Winter amusements — "Whisky sprees " — Sport — The prairie chicken and other game birds — Moose-hunting — Fox-hunting — The Virden Agricultural Show — The return of spring — Seeding — Experiments in weed-killing — Methods of testing varieties of wheat — Introduction of the Red Fyfe wheat — Tests of cereals on the Brandon Experimental Farm — Importance of early seeding — Harvests of Great Britain and Manitoba (1890) compared — The Battle of the Grains — White Connel and Ladoga wheat — Expected results from cross fertilisation — Weeds — Not an unmixed evil — "Breaking" and " Backsetting " — Horses in Manitoba — Hay-cutting — The grass-grabber — Wheat harvest — Early frosts — Their effects may be minimised — Climatic drawbacks exaggerated — Mr. Moore on early frosts — Stacking and threshing — Ignorance and avarice of wheat buyers .... 190

Chapter VII

♦ The water supply of Manitoba — Alkali spots — Testimony of farmers to the supply of water — Experiences in well-digging TABLE OF CONTENTS. 10 PAGE 232 269 — Artesian wells in Dakota — The duty of the Government — Frivolous objections — What the settler may do for him self — His fertility of resource exemplified — Alkali water may be sweetened — Lot of Canadian immigrants in Dakota —Exodus to Manitoba — Yield of crops in Dakota and Manitoba — Scarcity of water due to absence of forest — Government encourage tree-planting — Cultivation of fruit trees — Beet-root sugar factories — An unwise Cabinet Minister— Mr. Foster's speech to West Indian planters — Loyalty of the Canadians — The newspaper press — Editorial amenities — Other characteristics

Chapter VIII

Manitoba as a field for emigration — Injudicious exaggerations — Testimony of practical farmers — Productive capacity of Manitoba — Comparative cost of wheat-growing in Great Britain and Manitoba — Who should emigrate ? — Farming an art to be patiently learned — Prospects for agricultural labourers — For mechanics and clerks — Opinions of old settlers — General contentment and hopefulness — Lord Stanley on the prospects of the North-West — A case of discontent — Lord Aberdeen's testimony — The highland crofters — Dakota contrasted — Experience of a farmer from Ontario — The qualities which ensure success — Hundreds have succeeded without capital — How to get on — Advantage of a small capital — Estimate of capital required under differing circumstances — Result of five years' work—" We live the lives of country gentlemen " ILLUSTRATIONS.

Parkfield, near Elkhorn Frontispiece Map of Manitoba Facingpage 13 View of Winnipeg ,, 25 Farm near Brandon ,, 36 Lake of the Woods „ 54 Breaking the Prairie „ 59 A Farmhouse, Manitoba .... ,, 74 A Bachelor's Shanty „ 137 Sportsman's Camp ,, 199 Stacking in Manitoba ,,

Chapter I

There is probably no country or province in our vast Colonial Empire which has suffered more than Manitoba from extravagant and indiscriminate eulogy on the one hand, or excessive depreciation on the other. It is not — no land can be — an El Dorado where the sun never ceases to shine, or the soil to produce phenomenal crops as the result of a minimum of labour on the part of men with out either aptitude or training for an honourable industry. " The Ohio and Illinois of Canada," as it is fondly called ; it is not a land flowing with milk and honey, in which one has only to scratch the soil to secure a laughing harvest, or which " yields several crops in one year." Still less is Manitoba a land of desolation, the home of the blizzard, where winter reigns for eight months of : 14 the year, and the fair promise of harvest is peren nially blighted by summer frosts.

These are the fictions of unscrupulous men, who would either entice the unwary to enter upon fields of enterprise for which they are totally unqualified, or, by even less scrupulous rainbow-hued state ments, persuade the British emigrant to prefer the sun-scorched and cyclone-swept Northern States of America to the magnificent climate and unde veloped riches of our Dominion of the West. The decree of Nature, which offers the great majority of the human race the alternative of industrious labour or starvation, is not suspended in Manitoba. My purpose in the following pages is, by a plain, straightforward account of the province in which I have spent many happy months, to enable those who have not the leisure for travel — and especially the agricultural class, whether farmers or farm labourers — to form an intelligent opinion of Mani toba as a field for emigration ; to show them that, in the words of Lord Aberdeen, " in these lands, given a fair amount of work, coupled with a certain amount of intelligence, and the results of application with it, the scope for that application is greater than in over-populated countries."

From its geographical position and its peculiar characteristics, Manitoba, in the memorable words of Lord Dufferin, " may be regarded as the keystone of that mighty arch of sister provinces which spans the entire country from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It was here that Canada, emerging from her woods and forests, first gazed upon her rolling prairies and unexplored North-West, and learned, as by an unexpected revelation, that her historical territories of the Canadas, were but the vestibule and the antechamber of that, till then undreamt-of Dominion, whose illimitable dimensions should confound the arithmetic of the surveyor and the verification of the explorer." Probably the majority of educated Englishmen have never realised the fact that the greater part of the continent of North America is included within the British possessions The marvellous resources and the exalted destinies of the Dominion are as little recognised as its vast extent.

Figures commonly produce a very vague impression upon the mind ; but the following words of Mr. Johnson, the accomplished head of the Statistical Department at Ottawa, are very sug gestive : " England, Wales, and Scotland together form an area of 88,000 square miles. You could cut forty such areas out of Canada. New South Wales contains 309,175 square miles, and is larger by 162 square miles than France, Continental Italy, and Sicily. Canada would make eleven countries the size of New South Wales. There are (in ex tent) three British Indias in Canada, and still SUNNY MANITOBA : enough lest over to make a Queensland and a Vic toria. The German Empire could be carved out of Canada and fifteen more countries of the same size." Mr. Johnson might have added that the area of Canada is very nearly one half that of the entire British Empire, and that it is 488,766 square miles larger than the United States without Alaska.

Philologists tell us of biographies in words. The names of Canada and Manitoba are notable illustrations. The Spaniards claim to have been the first discoverers of Canada. They searched, as Spaniards did all the world over, for the precious metals ; and their search being unrewarded they abandoned the country, calling it 77 Capo di Nada — a Cape of Nothing ; so at least runs the legend. According to another tradition, the Castilians had entered the Bay of Chaleur before Cartier, and finding no trace of mines they pronounced the two words Aca nada — " nothing here." These words, it is said, were repeated to Cartier, who understood and adopted them as the name of the country. A more natural derivation, however, is furnished in the Iroquois word Kannatha, which is pronounced Kannada, and signifies a village or collection of wigwams.

The derivation of the word Manitoba has been much debated ; but the patient investigation of Professor Max Miiller has now settled the vexed ■7 question. Manito, which has been translated in so many ways, means simply Beyond — a vague expression of the Infinite. The missionaries seized upon the words Kitchi-Manito as the equivalent of Supreme Spirit, and, when the Indians them selves were unable to explain its meaning, they very naturally applied it to the Supreme Being. Yet there is no doubt that they were mistaken. In Algonquin and Iroquois the word for Manito is Oki, having the same meaning — Beyond — the supernatural in its most general form. And further, the true form of Kitchi is Gitse. From the same root we get Gitsis — the Sun. Hence Gitse-Manito means the Spirit of the Sun. To any one familiar with the sun dance of the Iroquois and other tribes of Indians, it will be apparent that we have here preserved, fossilised as it were, in the name of Manitoba a record of the fact that the aborigines of that country were, if not sun-worshippers, at least, as we see them to-day, accustomed in their frenzied dances to do honour to the god of day.

A very few sentences will suffice to sketch in outline the history of Manitoba, and of the hardy pioneers who opened up the country which forms part of the vast domain granted in 1670 by Charles II. to the Hudson Bay Company. It was early in the present century, about the year 1805, that Lord Selkirk, a director of the Hudson Bay Company, : penetrated as far as the Red River. He was a kind-hearted Scotsman, a philanthropist — some thing of a visionary, it was said ; but that was by Englishmen, who cannot vie with the Scot in a happy combination of philanthropy and shrewd ness. It happened at the time of Lord Selkirk's visit to the beautiful and fertile valley of the Red River, that another Scottish noble, who was neither a visionary nor a philanthropist, was en gaged in clearing his estate of objectionable human beings, who occasioned him some trouble and no sport, and stocking it with a race to whom he looked for much sport and no trouble.

Surely a sublime conception — from his point of view. The noble " visionary " saw his opportunity, and with true Scottish resolution determined, in spite of obstacles which he clearly foresaw, to carry it into execution. Whilst it was a work of real philan thropy to transfer these miserable crofters to the fair fields of the Red River, it was also one which if successfully carried out must enormously benefit the Hudson Bay Company. Years passed in anxious negotiations with the Company, in which, owing to their laissez faire policy, the North-West Fur Company had acquired a paramount influence. The enterprise of this company was as remarkable as the supineness of their rivals. It was their policy to hold for themselves the rich trade in furs, upon which immense fortunes had been built up. Hence they not only opposed Lord Selkirk's scheme, but caused reports to be circulated that the country was unfit for human habitation.

Their enterprising agents ex plored and erected forts in remote parts for the extension of their trade ; while their chartered opponents confined themselves to their ancient territory. The Red River was the great depot of the North-West Company for making pemmican, the principal article of food used by their half breed canoe men ; and they foresaw that if the colony succeeded it would speedily exterminate the buffalo from which pemmican was derived. To frustrate their opposition Lord Selkirk purchased shares in the Hudson Bay Company, by means of which he transferred to himself a virtually con trolling power, and in 181 1 he secured by purchase an extensive territory on the banks of the Red River. Upon these lands, covering an area of 116,000 square miles, he designed to plant his proposed colony.

In the autumn of that year he arrived with a party of Highland peasants at York Factory, on Hudson's Bay. In the following summer they proceeded to Fort Douglas, at the junction of the Red River with the Assiniboine, and now the site of the city of Winnipeg. This little colony of hardy adventurers formed the neu- .- 20 cleus of the Province of Manitoba. Accustomed as they were to the rigours of a Highland winter, and quickened by reports of perils which proved unfounded or exaggerated, the resolute band lost no time in the erection of log-houses. But peril came from an unsuspected quarter. Their title to the land was disputed by the North-West Fur Company, whose agents, with the help of the French half-breeds in their employ, were strong enough to evict the Highlanders by rude force from the positions in which they had entrenched them selves.

The Indians were silent spectators. The settlers were compelled to retreat to Pembina, seventy miles south, and there to spend the winter in tents. Again and again, with indomitable courage, they returned and attempted to regain possession of their settlement. For three weary years the struggle was continued ; but negotiation, threats, force, were alike futile. The North-West Company contended, apparently with justice, that the claims of Lord Selkirk were illegal, as they had taken possession of the Red River half a century before the Hudson Bay Company had ventured into it. However that might be, they continued a determined struggle for supremacy ; much blood was shed ; Indians were bribed to harass the settlers ; and it is said that when they refused, desiring to preserve their neutrality, agents of the North-West Company disguised themselves as Indians for the purpose of perpetrating outrages.

The houses of the settlers were burned, their crops destroyed, their stores broken open and pillaged. Little wonder that despondency furrowed deep lines in the brows and paralysed the resolution of these brave men. Dissension followed, fomented by the cupidity of the agents of the North-West Company, who, after seizing Fort Douglas and brutally murdering the governor and twenty men, per suaded some to desertion, and to the purchase of lands their only title to which was that of force. Weakened in numbers, demoralised by division, exasperation, faction, in June, 1815, the remnant of the now incohesive band resolved to return to Scotland. Under the guidance of friendly Indians they started for Lake Winnipeg, meditating a vigorous protest against the neglect of the Hudson Bay Company, which had left them to contend single-handed with that corpora tion's unscrupulous competitors.

Their grievance was admitted ; and with an assurance of the company's special protection, and of the presence of Lord Selkirk himself with a fresh band of emigrants in the following spring, they were induced to return. Nor were they deceived. Lord Selkirk had been occupying himself at : 22 home in opposing the growing demand for reform which, had it been conceded, would have rendered it exceedingly difficult for him to have persuaded either English or Scotch men to have emigrated. On the very eve of his return, in 1816, he writes that he "trembles at the idea of constitutional changes," which are " not the way to any practical public benefit." In the autumn of that year, however, he arrived at Quebec, with the promised contingent of crofters, brought together by his glowing description of country and climate ; the promise of political rights, liberty of conscience, freedom from taxes, and, above all, from tithes.

The sanguine hopes and the old courage of the colonists revived. Their faith in their noble patron had never faltered, and it was more than justified. He seized Fort William, and having wintered there advanced to the Red River in the spring of 1817. The in spiration of his presence filled the most dejected with confidence ; faction was shamed into silence ; and the most aggressive of the agents of the North-West Company looked on with sullen submission, as the heroic band rebuilt their houses and tilled their fields. But the future safety of the colony demanded that an example should be made of these ruffians. Their ringleaders were arrested, and sent to Montreal for trial. The troubles of the colonists were not yet over. Probably their crops were put in late ; in any case they failed ; but the buffaloes which then roamed over the open prairie in hundreds of thousands, supplied them with abundance of food for the winter.

The jealousy of the North-West Company, who claimed an exclusive right to trade in furs, crippled them in many ways ; but in the spring of 1 81 8 a favourable season again inspired them with that hope which is supposed to spring eternal in the human breast. Alas that it so often heralds despair ! That year, so far as is known for the first time, the Red River district was visited with a plague of grasshoppers. The same thing occurred in 1819; in the following winter the long-tried settlers, seeing ruin staring them in the face, were compelled to send a party on foot a thousand miles for seed-grain. The story has been often told ; it will there fore suffice thus briefly to outline the vicissitudes of the hardy pioneers, who, at the beginning of this century, opened up for settlement the dis trict now known as the Province of Manitoba.

We cannot further follow their chequered career. The amalgamation of the North-West Fur and the Hudson Bay Companies ensured them peace and safety, and their affairs were further reduced to order by a treaty between the united : 24 companies and the Indians. In 1835 the Red River Settlement was organised under the name of the District of Assiniboia. The first govern ment was constituted at Fort Garry, and the territory placed under the rule of a council appointed by the Hudson Bay Company. The way for emigration was thus opened ; but the Government was unable to cope with the prevailing lawlessness, until, rising to the occasion, they purchased for the sum of £300,000 the territory, with the extensive trading and ad ministrative privileges, of the united companies. Having thus secured an undivided sovereignty over the North-West Territories, the Canadian Government proceeded to develop the country.

This movement, which commenced just thirty years ago, has been followed up with such energy that over 80,000,000 acres of land have now been completely surveyed. On the suppression of the rebellion of 1869, Manitoba became a province, and its first par liament met at Winnipeg in 1871. At this time the population, including the territory afterwards awarded to Ontario, was under 12,000, of whom 10,400 were half-breeds and Indians. In form the province presents the appearance of a nearly perfect parallelogram, measuring about 300 miles from east to west, and 120 from north to south. BIRD'S EYE VIEW OK WINNIPEG. Its western boundary is 1010 20' west longitude ; the eastern boundary, though not clearly defined, is about 950 10'. On the south, the International boundary line, the 49th degree of north latitude, separates it from the States of Dakota and Min nesota, and its northern boundary is the 53rd degree of north latitude.

Within these limits is comprised an area of 116,000 square miles, or 74,000,000 acres including the water area, which forms one-seventh of the whole. The greater part is included in the First Prairie Steppe of which we shall presently have to speak ; and its general character is that of a level plain, sloping gently to the north, and becoming swampy in the neigh bourhood of the lakes. Originally covering an area of 123,200 square miles, this — as we learn from the Statistical Year-book of Canada — has been reduced since the Census of 1881 by a re arrangement of boundaries, 7,000 square miles having been added to Ontario and the district of Keewatin. On this reduced area the population increased from 62,200 in 1881 to 154,400 in 1891 or more than 148 per cent. The progress of the province has been unsurpassed by that of any other new country.

In 1881 there were only 65 miles of railway in operation ; there are now more than 1,400 miles. In 1881 not a bushel of grain had been exported ; in 1891 the exports, so far as : can be ascertained, amounted to 14,000,000 bushels of wheat, whilst that of barley which had reached 3,000,000 bushels in 1888, was arrested by the operation of the McKinley Tariff Act. These figures are only approximate, the statistics of the Dominion Government crediting the export of wheat from the port of shipment. Hence Manitoban wheat going through Boston and New York is not even credited to Canada, nor that shipped at Montreal to Manitoba. The actual yield of crops has, however, been ascer tained with a near approximation to accuracy by the Department of Agriculture ; and whereas in 1 88 1 Manitoba imported both cereals and potatoes from the United States, the ascertained yield for the province in 1891 was: Wheat, 23,191,599 bushels ; barley, 3,197,876 bushels ; oats, 14,762,805 bushels ; potatoes, 2,286,900 bushels.

The progress indicated is very remarkable for a country, which, only twelve years ago, was so little known that a letter addressed "Winnipeg, Manitoba," went to France, and, after much travelling to and fro, was endorsed "Try Cal cutta. It went to India, and back again to Paris, where some official with a smattering of geographical knowledge added Nouvelle Amerique to the address, and so it reached its destination via New York. From its position, Manitoba is obviously well adapted to become a centre for the distribution of the agricultural products of the entire North- West ; and the marvellous growth of its town populations shows that such has been its history. At the time of its incorporation, in 1874, no more central position could have been selected for the distribution of supplies than Winnipeg, at the junction of the Assiniboine with the Red River ; the former navigable for 300 miles to vessels of medium draught, whilst away to the south, far into the United States, the latter provided a great international water-way for the exchange of the products of two countries.

A century ago this spot was the point of landing of the Indians and the traders of the North-West Fur Company, who there manufactured pemmican, and assorted and repacked their skins. Its commanding position ensured the selection of Winnipeg — or Fort Garry as it was then called — as the capital of the new province. It is perhaps unfortunate that the claims of Brandon to that honour were over looked. Whilst Brandon is in the heart and centre of the extensive and fertile grain-producing plains of Manitoba, Winnipeg is on the eastern margin of the great prairie country, which extends westward for 1,500 miles. But the days of railways were not yet ; and Winnipeg, which with its two : 28 navigable rivers was described as " the neck of a double funnel whose mouths gather the traffic of an empire and three oceans — the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the great lakes " — was selected.

Regarded as the capital of the Canadian West rather than as that of a province, its unrivalled position constituted it the natural emporium of trade — not in agricultural products only, but in timber, minerals, salt, fish, and all the varied natural productions of that vast area — and the choice of Winnipeg was not only inevitable, but has been justified by its history. Perhaps no better illustration of the progress of the Dominion of Canada could be given than the story of the rise of the city of Winnipeg. In 1870 it was a mere hamlet, a collection of log-houses and tepees, with a population of 2 1 5 souls, and was described by Captain Butler as " a miserable-looking village." It is now London in miniature, a place where — as, in common with many others, I myself experienced — one meets people from the common fatherland who seem to regard it almost as a matter of course that, after years of separation, friends should again grasp hands in the queenly city of the West.

At the time of its incorporation as a city in 1874, the population was a little under 3,000, and remained nearly stationary until 1878, European emigration having been diverted to the United States by exaggerated reports of the fertility of the country, which experience has not confirmed. The reputed new El Dorado in Dakota and Minnesota especially caused an exodus from Canada, whilst the high price of provisions in Winnipeg, owing to dependence on the United States, whence supplies were brought via the Red River, arrested its progress until, in 1879, the railway _from Winnipeg to Emerson, connecting with the railway system of the States, was opened for traffic. The Canadian Pacific Railway was also projected, and in part surveyed. A great influx of settlers and of capital followed. Town lots were eagerly pur chased, and rapidly rose in value.