Side by side with this agricultural expansion there has been an era of discovery in the Dominion unequalled even by the golden age of '49. Alexander { 463} Macdonald, a Scotchman from New Brunswick, found a fortune in the great Klondike rush of 1894-8 and other Canadians did the same at Cobalt, Ontario, in 1903, where a member of a railway construction gang picked up a silver nugget by accident, thereby disclosing to an eager continent the famous Cobalt silver fields. Canada has, as a result, one of the greatest gold and silver-mining centres in the world.
As if to keep pace with this unexpected development, Dr. Charles E. Saunders, of the Department of Agriculture, Ottawa, announced his successful evolution of Marquis wheat. The Doctor had been experimenting with mid-European Red Fife and Red Calcutta ever since 1903. By successfully crossing the two, an early ripening, hard red spring wheat with excellent milling and baking qualities was evolved. Marquis wheat, as it was named, is now the dominant spring wheat throughout America. Over three hundred million bushels are produced annually, and it was largely owing to Canadian Marquis that the Allies were able to overcome the food crisis in 1918. The wealth of the world has thus been increased enormously by it.
In 1911 Sir Wilfrid, who had been attending the Imperial Conference in London during May and June of that year, returned home determined to place himself again in the hands of the electorate. Unfortunately he had either not profited by the lesson of 1891 or he now believed that the Dominion was ripe for reciprocity with the United States. The contest resulted in the overwhelming defeat of his ministry. For fifteen years he had enjoyed the same confidence of the people as was extended to { 464} Sir John A. Macdonald, and the story of his premiership was practically the political history of Canada for that period.
The Hon. Sir Robert Borden, who had led the Conservative party after Sir Charles Tupper had resigned in 1901, now succeeded, and a new era opened in Canadian politics. Throughout the ten years of his two terms of office he invariably viewed the questions and problems before him from a judicial standpoint. At the end of his term of office he carried into his semi-retirement the respect and honour of the Canadian people. If he lacked the personality and the fire of Sir John A. and Sir Wilfrid, on the hustings and in the House, he made up for it by a mind well balanced in statesmanship. Never was this seen to greater advantage than on those occasions when he participated in the Imperial Conferences and at the Peace negotiations ir Versailles.