Transcribed from the 1886 T. Fisher Unwin edition by David Price, email [email protected]
Sir Charles Tupper tells me that I was totally misinformed. I am sorry to have been led astray, and have pleasure in making the correction, which was received, unfortunately, after the chapter had been worked off.
[Picture: Dr. Barnardo’s Distributing Home for Children, Peterborough, Ontario]
AUTHOR OF ‘EAST ANGLIA,’ ‘BRITISH SENATORS,’ ‘ON THE TRACK OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS,’ ETC., ETC.
London T. FISHER UNWIN 26, PATERNOSTER SQUARE 1886.
CHAPTER PAGE I. Introductory.—Canadian Territory and 1 Population II. Off With The Emigrants—The Voyage Out—The 16 ‘Sarnia’—The Cod-Fishery III. Arrival at Quebec 33 IV. At Montreal, and on to Ottawa—Interviewing and 45 Interviewed V. Toronto—The Town—The People—Canadian 74 Authors—The Leader of the Opposition VI. Off to the North-West—Niagara—Lake 104 Superior—The Canadian Pacific Railway—At Winnipeg VII. Life on the Prairie 148 VIII. Amongst the Cow-Boys 174 IX. In the Rockies—Holt City—Life in the Camp—A 194 Rough Ride—The Kicking Horse Lake—British Columbia X. Dangers of the Rockies—Prairie Fires—The 225 Return—Port Arthur—Emigrants XI. Back to England—Canadian Hospitality—The 245 ‘Assyrian Monarch’—Home XII. Colonization in Canada 255
PAGE Dr. Barnardo’s Distributing Home for Children, _Frontispiece_ Peterborough, Ontario Falls of Montmorenci—Quebec—Junction of the River 48 Ottawa and St. Lawrence, Montreal King Street, Toronto 78 Second Year on a Prairie Farm, Canadian North-West 134 Calico Island, Saskatchewan River, Canadian 135 North-West Hunting Scene on the Souris River 145 Souris Valley, Manitoba 147 Pioneer Store at Brandon in 1882 162 Harvesting on the Bell Farm—Indian Head, N.W.T. 172 Mount Stephen in the Rocky Mountains, On the Line 197 of the Canadian Pacific Railway Thunder Bay, Lake Superior 242
INTRODUCTORY.—CANADIAN TERRITORY AND POPULATION.
Lunching one day in Toronto with one of the aldermen of that thriving city (I may as well frankly state that we had turtle-soup on the occasion), he remarked that he had been in London the previous summer, and that he was perfectly astonished at the idea Englishmen seemed to have about Canada. He was particularly indignant at the way in which it was coolly assumed that the Canadians were a barbarous people, planted in a wilderness, ignorant of civilization, deficient in manners and customs—a well-meaning people, of whom in the course of ages something might be made, but at present in a very nebulous and unsatisfactory state. It seems my worthy friend had gone to hear a popular Q.C.—a gentleman of Liberal proclivities, very anxious to write M.P. after his name—deliver a lecture to the young men of the Christian Association in Exeter Hall on Canada. Never was a man more mortified in all his life than was the alderman in question. All the time the lecture was being delivered, he said, he held down his head in shame. ‘I felt,’ said he, rising to a climax, ‘as if I must squirm!’ What ‘squirming’ implies the writer candidly admits that he has no idea. Of course, it means something very bad. All he can say is, that it is his hope and prayer that in the following pages he may set no Canadian squirming. He went out to see the nakedness, or the reverse, of the land, to ask the emigrants how they were getting on, to judge for himself whether it was worth any Englishman’s while to leave home and friends to cross the Atlantic and plant himself on the vast extent of prairie stretching between Winnipeg and the Rocky Mountains. What he heard and saw is contained in the following pages, originally published in the _Christian World_, and now reproduced as a small contribution to a question which rises in importance with the increase of population and the growing difficulty of getting a living at home.