My Canadian memories

Front matter

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Preface

Canada just before the Great War, and

was busily engaged upon writing her experiences in the new country, which had impressed her so much, when the cataclysm of the war burst upon Europe. She at once volunteered for service, though she was not young and was far from strong. With the heroic little band of English nurses at Antwerp, and in the battered corner of Belgium which continued to hold out against the Germans, she laboured devotedly till June, 1915, when she came home to lecture on the war to the munition workers. In October of that year she left for Russia with an ambulance party, her keen sympathy having been aroused by the news that the Russian wounded were getting no nurses. The little unit got as far as Persia, where Miss Macnaughtan was taken seriously ill. She struggled back, how no one ever really knew, all the long way from Teheran to her own home in Norfolk Street, where she lingered through some summer days, till she passed away on July 24, 1916. P°I had had the privilege of knowing Miss Macnaughtan intimately, and when the unfinished book was found among her MSS., I was asked to edit it, having previously written a short history of Canada and being interested in everything Canadian. The work is substantially as the author left it, for it was y

Me MACNAUGHTAN had visited ee thought better to leave things somewhat unfinished rather than spoil the atmosphere of the book. Miss Macnaughtan always put her own stamp upon her writing, investing it with her own personality in a very marked degree. She had evidently intended to have written other chapters, notably one on the emigrants, but the notes were too fragmentary to be used. It is hoped that this book, the outcome of a much-enjoyed visit to Canada, will stimulate the same enthusiastic love for one of Great Britain’s daughter nations, with which the author was inspired.

BEATRICE HOME.

LONDON, 1920.

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Contents

CHAPTER xiii.

PREFACE On Boarp THE C.P.R.

From ToRONTO TO MONTREAL CONCERNING QUEBEC

Chapter I On Board the C.P.R

HEN Lord Strathcona went to Canada in the year 1838 he sailed in a clipper ship of eight hundred tons, and the

voyage occupied fifty days. In 1913 he made the same voyage, spent three days in Canada, and returned to England, the whole expedition having occupied fifteen days.

We know the futility of gaping with astonishment at figures such as these, but it would not be difficult to show that our astonishment is largely due to the fact that we are hardly able to grasp intelligently and all at once the story of Canada’s progress and the rapidity of its development, and our amazement increases when we realise that this land of broad rivers and streams, with its latent wealth, its beautiful scenery and its rich soil, remained so long practically undiscovered.

The whole of the earliest history of the country might almost be described as that of animals with hairy covering being sought and killed by those who have none. Fur was the word round which all trades circled; fur was the coin of the country ; fur was the cause of many disputes. For the fur trade Indians fought, and for the fur trade and all that it meant men died. Fur came at last to have a

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EEE political meaning, and fur became another name for wealth. The herds of wild buffalo, meek-eyed and immense, the shy, wild animals that peeped from under the snow, and those who protect themselves by faultless mimicry of their surroundings, were hunted and tracked and speared by the early inhabitants of Canadian soil, and were ultimately exterminated by them. There existed a perpetual struggle between the fur covered population and the hunter who went in need of covering. Both hunter and hunted learnt something in those days, and the race was to the swift, the keen-eyed and the patient. No animal moved so stealthily but found that the Indian moved more stealthily still. Physical endurance was strong, and man, trained to hardihood, not only in the chase but by voluntarily endured torture, became fleet of foot, keen-eyed and ready.

When he’ began to exchange his skins for something else that he wanted it was necessary to develop a new sort of intelligence. The trader had come, with his gay-coloured cotton handkerchiefs and his beads, and the Indians wanted beads and handkerchiefs—wanted them badly, as did also his squaws, and he was willing to give all that he had for them— namely, his furs.

The barter thus begun has led by steps quite easy to trace to the complicated system of national economics which exists in Canada at the present day. Lives have been ungrudgingly spent in its development, battles have been fought for it, men have given their lives to the study of it.

And at the back of it all is the primary instinct, so often forgotten, of sheer love of sport. When the hunter tracks his game it is not for mere love of killing, but from an ineradicable instinct of competition. It is one man’s sight opposed to another’s ;

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sharp hearing pitted against sharp ears, and fleetness of foot measured relentlessly against another’s speed. In trading, the goal itself is often forgotten in the enjoyment of the exercise involved in “ getting there,”’ and in the keenness which develops in every living thing that enters on a race. This fact is often ignored by those who have dubbed the British a nation of shopkeepers, but it is one of the things that cannot be too strongly insisted upon when we come to study the lives of those who, in making a country, have made their own fortunes too. The men who have made the greatest success are often those who have but little regard for money, and very few personal tastes which they wish to gratify. And when it is urged, as is sometimes the case, that Canada is becoming Americanised, and wholly given to the acquirement of material advantages, it is well to remember that moneygetting does not always mean greed, and that there is often a very heroic element about its attainment. It has been said that money is the supreme test of a man’s character, and there is a good deal of truth in the statement. Gold is not all dross, but frequently has the king’s image very plainly stamped upon it.

But for trade, it would be very doubtful whether one half of the world would ever have been discovered by the other half, and there is much honour due to the men who, in the face of personal danger and personal sacrifices, pushed out far.

The story of commercial enterprise, with which these pages are mostly concerned, will show, we believe, not only the attainments which have been brought about by acumen and: intelligence, but that other side of it so often overlooked, which involves a character. It is notorious that it is the i men who have been able to touch money without soiling their hands who have made the most steady success in financial life. More than this, there are qualities which alone can make financial success possible, and, whatever a man may come to in after life, there are few amongst those who have succeeded who cannot look back upon a boyhood of strenuous industry, youthful intelligence, punctuality and resource. These qualities are worth having, whether the business does or does not succeed ; they will carry a man far, and we who believe that no force is wasted, have a comfortable sense of security that initiative, patience, courage and enterprise will find their goal some day, and that such qualities make good men, and sometimes successful men—which is a secondary consideration.

It is characteristic of Canada that she is producing men of this stamp, and endowed with these qualities. Possibly what some persons have forgotten is that the development of the country requires not only endurance but continuity of enterprise. As we have begun in Canada so we must go on. It is no use stopping half-way.

Nansen, when he sailed for the North, had only one purpose in view. To sail into the fog and freeze in. It was a waiting game, and we know what the results were. In Canada the simile would have to be altered, and a more suitable one, both to the country and to the people, might be found in the analogy of shooting the rapids. ‘Those who have seen canoes racing through brawling waters, through waves crested with foam, may have held their breath both at the rapidity of the transit and the splendid daring involved in it. There are only two things that an onlooker is quite sure of ; one is that there is no possibility of pausing or of turning

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back, and the other is that the craft will arrive safely.

It is absurd to talk of taking in sail—the boat has to go on.

No one who has not been in Canada can guess at its opportunities or have a just appreciation of its hardly touched wealth. No one who knows anything about this can have any doubts about the future of Canada. Its record in the past justifies that belief.

In 1903 the quantity of grain produced in the country was 293 million bushels. In 1914 the production of grain was no less than 672 millions. In 1903 the value of exports was 225 million dollars, while ten years later they had mounted to 425 million dollars. The mineral productions showed the same increase in figures, and will probably go on increasing very rapidly; their developments between the years 1go1 to 1912 show an increase of 68 million dollars. The machinery which has been bought at so great expense will only now be able to put forth its whole possible output.

The greatest machines in the world are its railways, and foremost in the list of stories of enterprise and resolve stands the great railway system of Canada.

Long ago it was said of this country that it was to be a country of railways, and the saying is as true to-day as it was then. We remember once standing in the office of a great business house in Toronto, and asking for permission to look at a map of Canada. To us was pointed out a large white sheet of paper with some irregular lines traced in red ink across it.

Somewhat bewildered, we ventured to suggest that what we required was a map of Canada, not merely a blank space with some lines running across it.

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To which the answer came: ‘‘ That’s Canada ! Just a blank space with some lines running across it.

These lines have grown in the very short period of twelve years from 19,000 miles to 36,000 miles. And in this period the total amount of capital spent upon new lines and upon improving old ones has reached the sum of £200,000,000 sterling. Their effect upon the development of the country has been extraordinary. The welfare of the country, almost its discovery, has centred in them, and in the case of one of them at least its history reads almost like a personal narrative. It is impossible to dissociate the name of the Canadian Pacific Railway from a sense of something vital in its existence. It is not merely a line of rails, but like some work of art it shows the handiwork of those who made it, so that, however many years have passed, there is always a sense of living in the thing created.

Even a traveller (whose comments upon any coun-

try, it is noteworthy to observe once more, are not of much consideration) may, as he stands on the platform of a railway station on some autumn morning, catch something of that sense of romance, almost of poetry, which is conjured up at sight of the great pioneer of Canada’s roadway from ocean to ocean. The song of engines and of steam, of roaring factories and the harnessing of Nature’s forces has hardly been breathed yet. But the rhythm of mechanical movement may yet prove to be full of music, and the glint of burnished steel in engine or machine may move us to admire not only its strength but its grace.

The air is cool and crisp on the autumn morning, and the maple trees are red. Overhead the sky is blue, and there is a sense abroad of something

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vigorous and strength-compelling in the air. Every field and every river suggests abundance, and one is reminded of those persons who, when they have discovered some attractive spot in the world, say in a whisper: “ Don’t tell anybody about it, or it will get spoiled.’’ In Canada, however, there is room for everybody. And the traveller, half moved to envy, is inclined to ascribe to atmosphere the vitality of a new nation, and to feel that, with clear skies overhead, and a touch of early morning frost melting in the bright sunshine, physical energy might be an easily acquired thing, and life itself prove to be not too strenuous.

Youthful Canada has grown up with the Canadian Pacific Railway and is accustomed to it. Only the stranger standing on the platform in the crisp early air of autumn dares to inflict his comments upon it.

Almost like a well-directed stage entrance the voice of a bell declares that the train is arriving and the engine comes round a great curve in the clearing of a forest, a brass bell like a toothless monster rollicking at its head. The train has travelled far since the great engines took in their first supply of water at Vancouver. The lake was misty and shrouded that morning, but the mountain had a gleam of sunlight on it like a crown. Black pine trees, the remnants of a once glorious army, stood erect at its base, or seemed like marching soldiers still to be climbing the mountain side. The army was cut down very ruthlessly once, or burned to make a clearing for a new town, and the black fir trees that remain stand regretfully at the mountain’s base.

But Canada has little time for regret, and none at all for resignation. “If a thing is wrong I am going to put it right,” it says, with the strong voice of youth: “ if a thing is done and it is wrong I am going to do it over again.” ak

There is plenty of time, plenty of opportunity. The country is a new one and it is a vigorous and a joyous thing.

The train leaves behind it white banners of farewell in a long cloud of silver steam as it swings out of the mist which wraps the lake and into the sunshine again, and through the large rich land that lies between Vancouver and the mountains. And ever as it journeys on the sleepless train is travelling through the land of romance. Dawn finds it amongst the snows, and where Rogers found his famous pass, and Donald Mann, riding into the virgin beauty of the heart of the mountains, exclaimed : “ Civilisation is murder,” it thunders on with the great brass bell at its head waking a thousand echoes.

“There is a path which no fowl knoweth and which the vulture’s eye hath not seen.” But here “in the Rocky Mountains we seem to be in the very secret of the fastnesses of the hills. The inaccessible peaks stand aloof from us, radiant as truth itself and almost as serene, and the thundering gorges seem to roar back defiance at the bending, circling disturber of their ancient peace. The train laughs at obstacles and shouts defiance at difficulties. The birch trees—delicate white ladies—shiver slightly as it thunders past them, while the slender pines, whose tops are in the skies, seem to regard it disdainfully. Perhaps at night-time, when the road is silent again, the mountain tops in solemn conclave may give their deep-voiced disapproval to the insolence of man; meanwhile the stoker heaps fresh fuel on his engine fires, and the train sings on its way a new song which those who have ears to

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hear may hear, and those who have not ears will never hear.

The train has left the echoing passes now, and has glided into a fertile valley where Indian braves and their squaws lounge peacefully at the railway station, and where the hills that stand sentinel round about bear upon them a tenderer and kinder aspect. Children, fearless of steam and power, come to the doorways of homely wooden shacks and wave their hands in greeting to the giant. Streams babbling under the bridges that span them accept its presence as merrily as the children do, and the worker in pleasant fields hardly turns his head as it passes.

‘Towns come out to meet it, throwing their welcome far and wide, flinging, like a visible token of their prosperity, high towers which send forth their tribute of golden grain, while the train passes through a new civilisation into the great clanging station of a western city.

It has been a fine run of throbbing engines and hot axles. The engine driver wipes his blackened hands with a wad of cotton waste, and eyes his boilers with a look such as a sailor gives his ship that has made a fast voyage.

The pause at the western township is made in a vast and echoing station, filled with hurrying troops of men and women, all carrying portable luggage and bags. Outside, the insistent tramway cars travel ceaselessly with a sharp ting of bells, there are sky signs, and great stores blocking the sky. Here also are busy streets with their Pentecostal crowd of English, Germans, Galicians, Russians, and amongst them a sprinkling of Indians, still-faced, and with high cheek bones and long narrow eyes. This is one of the places for which ee

Canadians have only one expression, ‘“‘ It has gone ahead in leaps and bounds,” and a drive round the town and its environments provokes such startling figures and advance in prices that it leaves, as it is meant to do, the humbled traveller open-mouthed !

This is where only ten years ago a little shack stood, owned by Andrew Maclean, or Jock Campbell, who came out from Scotland with a few pounds in their pockets, and now the new Bank buildings or the Post Office with their handsome stone fronts occupy the spot, and, moreover, had to pay four thousand dollars per foot frontage for it! This untidy piece of ground, productive only of waste tin cans and rank weeds, is the corner lot which old Brown is holding on to, meaning to get even a higher price than that; and this store, with its gleaming glass windows, its Paris fashions, its modern furniture and ‘‘ Beauty Parlours ” is the place where not so very long ago a store-keeper sold his goods in a tent and had a pallisade built round it to protect him from the Indians. This is where two soldiers, one of whom is still alive, sent out to survey the land, stuck their two sticks in the ground to mark the spot by a river’s bank to which they had come, and Colonel Irvine, turning to his old friend, Colonel Macleod, demanded what they should call the place.

‘We might call it Calgary,” he said, “ it is the Gaelic for clear running water.”

There are Real Estate offices in every street, and the cry still is “‘ Canada will boom in the long run.” If some reverses come no one knows better than she how pluckily to take them. “iGo on, the more you give her the more she is going to give you.” It is the shout triumphant of a people who have determined that their children shall be well fed and their

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men and women shall be housed in decency and in comfort, and that education shall go forward.

Even when the cry becomes vain-glorious it has a fine sound about it !

The western town is edged with a pretty fringe of white houses having balconies where women sit all day, and pleasant little unfenced gardens giving on to the road ; and there is generally some favourite residential quarter, built on a height (whose price per foot is quoted), and from whence successful merchants can survey the town which has given them wealth. Half the fabulous stories of quick fortunemaking belong to the inhabitants of these houses with their pleasant balconies. One man, we hear, bought a swamp for a few dollars and drained it, and now a street of houses stands there. Another bought an old race-course which no one wanted and turned it to good account, and young Smith, the fool of the family, who was sent out from England, happed upon a few fields which is now a town centre—and Smith, mind you, was a fellow who could not add two and two together. Fortunes, they would like you to believe, are forced upon people in Canada !

The sadder side of the stories takes the wail of “What might have been,”’ and is generally voiced in such words as, “‘ If I had had the capital in 18— I——” Sites once inglorious and now measured out by inches are pointed out, and it is not possible to escape the story of the man who was offered the land where the modern city of Chicago now stands for a pair of old boots. Sufficient pause is given for the traveller’s obvious rejoinder, and the story ends with the man’s reply, “‘ No, I did not buy it, for I had not a pair of old boots.”

The lack of the pair of old boots at a critical

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moment still rankles in the minds of many rich men, who, nevertheless, take pleasure in the thought of how much richer they might have been.

A millionaire once remarked in the presence of the traveller that he never liked keeping trains waiting. The traveller, being a humble individual for whom trains are not likely to wait, now proposes continuing his journey. There is a fresh engine, and the black porter is making up beds for the night in a long corridor, where behind green curtains travellers roast like St. Laurence on his grid, and the thick air echoes with snores. 'The romance of Western railway travelling does not lie in its corridor system combined with the exigencies of a common toilet, which once experienced, is not as a rule attempted a second time. ‘The traveller stepping over bare feet thrust into the passage way and hearing various noisy slumbers, is reminded of the story in which one. more than usually offensive passenger paused for a moment in his noisy sleep, and in the silence which followed a voice in thankful piety was heard to murmur, ‘“‘ Thank God, he’s dead.”’

Morning finds the train, like some racer, settling down into its stride over a long stretch of level plain. The beauty of yellow grain with the wind rippling across it and the blue sky overhead brings with it almost a sense of laughter so imminent is the joy of it. The boundlessness of the plains, with their ripening harvest, conveys a sense of plenty which not all the gold of the world can give. Fatuously the traveller asks, ‘“‘ Is it possible that everyone in the world has not enough to eat?” Rippling wheat in ever-widening circles from the train covers the land which lies like the sea with the sunshine full upon it. The beat of the railway engines with their tireless punctuation produces in the mind something

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trance-like and dreamy. The sense of pleasure is still abroad, but with it has come a strange sense of unreality. After hours of journeying the landscape is still the same, and after a night of sleep we are still travelling through wheat. The wind stirs their feathery heads gently, and from a shallow lagoon by the side of the railway a flight of duck gets up, showing like a long necklace of black dots against the sky. ‘That was before we went to lunch, and after lunch there is again a still pool by the side of the railway and a dotted line of duck across the sky, and miles of feathered wheat with the wind blowing gently across it.

This is the harvest field of Canada, and it is worth going far to see. No view of it seems to be big enough; one wants to “ drink all the sea,” and a glimpse from a railway carriage window of the yellow prairie, whose utmost edge meets the sky, is like dipping a cup into the ocean.

The observation car is full of babies, those invariable accompaniments of travelling in the West, where nurseries and nurses are but little known, but outside on the platform is a group of chairs, where men sit and smoke and quote very high figures. Here, too, is a little group who, upon a very slight introduction, have courteously made the traveller one of their own circle. ‘Their very names are unknown as yet, but we find that one of them, a man in a soft grey hat, who looks fifty years of age, but who had already confessed to being nearly eighty, is always addressed as “ Old Timer.” He never fails to get out at each station where the train stops, and is always known to at least half the men standing about on the platform, who invariably slap him on the back. He seems depressed about Canada. The second in the group is a lady of delightful manners, a_ well-bred Englishwoman, who allows us to know that she dresses for dinner every night, even in the wilds, and who (perhaps rightly) associates the practice with empire-making, and a Canadian gentleman, whom mentally we call “ Mr. P.,” never having got further than that with his name, while envying the talent, possessed to — a mysterious degree by Americans and Canadians, of picking up one’s name at once and being able to address one correctly at first sight.

Far away on the horizon, where blue sky and yellow grain meet, we see the roof of a little farmhouse, and wonder who lives there, and whether the woman finds the days very long. Mr. P. tells us that the loneliness of prairie farming is minimised since the installation of the telephone, and that the old tragedies of long ago, when women died untended, and there was no doctor for the children, are happily for the most part over.

_ “ Those were the good old days,” said the Old Timer, ‘‘ when men learnt to do without.”

‘* And when Canada,” said a Canadian lady, “* was not known as a place where there are all luxuries and no necessities.” .

““'There were men then,” said the Old Timer, ‘“‘ who struggled and failed, and they were followed by men who struggled and succeeded, and now there are the men who fail without a struggle.”

A waiter announces the first call to supper, and the young men, who quote large figures, now stopped smoking for the brief interval which they devote to eating. ‘They sway down the long corridors of the train to order for themselves “ individual domestic duck ” and other quaint items in the menu of the “ piebox.” Each one seems to know the Old Timer, and is unable to part with him without the

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salutation which by right seems to belong to him.

As they leave the car they pat him on the shoulder,

and some of them remind him that he is not dead et. ,

“ The girls are not equal to their mothers either,”’ the Old Timer goes on,

“They never are,” said Mr. P., laughing. “I guess the blood is the same, but the chances are not equal. They go to school, where they learn a lot of nonsense, and where they have far too much money to spend. And in the holidays there is nothing but spoiling and thinking about dress, where their mothers used to be thinking about cooking and washing.”

“They could cook and wash yet if they were put to it,’ said the Canadian gentleman.

“They have not the physique for it, poor bits of things,” said the Old Timer.

(‘‘ His daughters are the best educated women in Canada,”’ said the Canadian lady in an aside.)

“May I tell you the story of a young English girl I know personally ?” said the Englishwoman, “‘ and who, acting upon the sheer need of doing and being, left a very luxurious home in England, and came out to Canada as a farm help, where she learnt all the drudgery of quite menial tasks. She soon got what is called her chance, and became manageress of the Western Hotel. She began to save her money, and invested it to such good account in various schemes for the development of the country that she has a very comfortable income of her own now, and is married most happily.”

“ Now [ll tell you about a Canadian girl,” said the Old Timer, ‘‘ and the story is true.”

“‘ My story is also true,” murmured the Englishwoman.

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“ Thete was a neighbour of mine with whom everything had gone crooked for years, and the turn of his luck came with a girl. They were selling everything they could lay hands on at the farm then, and the girl used to take eggs and other bits of things into the nearest town and sell them for what she could get. It was a twelve mile walk, and the land was very much like this that we are passing through - now. You bet it was heavy work walking, and the basket was full of eggs. My friend’s girl, who had a quick eye as most people have on the prairies, noticed a flight of duck such as we might see to-day. Ya-as! I do think she was cute. She watched that flight of duck and got a track of their nests. I guess she was cute and it did not take her more than a li'l time to empty her own basket of eggs into the nests and to take every darned egg that she found there. Ya’as, sir, she went right on into that li’l town and sold the ducks’ eggs, and in course of time she made tracks again for the lagoon—a pretty