Guide books of travel, published both in America and Europe, for travel in Canada, send the tourist invariably from New York City up the Hudson by steamer to Albany; then by the New York Central Railway to Niagara Falls. They do admit that the Falls are worth seeing. Then they send the tourist by steamer to Toronto, and tell him to take the Richelieu steamers, down the St. Lawrence from there, and run the rapids to Montreal. From Montreal he is to take the night boat for Quebec and come back again to Montreal by the day boat, and then go south to Lake George, and this is all the tourist is to see of Canada. Thousands of American and British tourists form their opinions of us from what they see on this water tour through Canada. Of course, going down Lake Ontario they see next to nothing of us or our country, because the lake is too big to see much on the shore. Entering the St. Lawrence, they view shores studded with rocks, and have not the faintest idea of our fertile lands and rich farms, which give to Ontario its wealth. The wealth of Ontario is certainly in her comfortable homesteads and fertile fields. Of this the tourist knows nothing, and he goes down to Quebec city to see, as best he may in America to-day, the best example of a city in the eighteenth century style; and he passes out of our borders, having come almost wholly in contact with our French population, and goes away considering our land a land of stones peopled by Frenchmen.
The tourist travels too quickly to get proper impressions of a country, I think I hear many readers say. Granted, but still many impressions are got of countries by tourists by such rapid travelling, and we cannot help the fact. The only way we can help the matter appears to me to be for our railways to join and offer a general tourist ticket, taking the tourist all over our country at a reasonable rate, and allowing him to stop off when and where he will. Such tickets ought to be advertised in Great Britain and the United States, and be on sale there. If once bought they would be used. While using such tickets the tourist could scarcely fail to get considerable knowledge of us and of our country. Tourists, as a rule, are persons of means and of influence at home. Many of them might thus be induced to bring capital to our country and make it their home, to our and their advantage.