After the harvest the railways of the prairie provinces are exceedingly busy carrying the wheat to the shipping ports, where it can be loaded into ships to be taken across the ocean. The greater part of this wheat is consumed in England and Scotland, and a great deal of it is put on board ship at Port Arthur and Fort William on the northern shore of Lake Superior, whence it goes all the rest of the way by water. A large portion of it is, however, ground into flour before ever it leaves Canada, and the flour is sent to make bread for boys and girls, not only in England and Scotland, but also in Australia, in China, and Japan.
In Alberta, just east of the Rocky Mountains, where the climate is milder than in the heart of the prairie provinces, a large number of cattle are reared and fed, and there a good deal of hay is cut, and sent over the mountains into British Columbia.
For many years the chief agency in opening up the North-West was the cattle-rancher. The life of the cowboy, though not so romantic as it is sometimes represented to be, has, nevertheless, its interesting side to the man who loves the free life of the open air. "The business of ranching has grown from a small beginning of the early days to be one of the great industries of the West. It began when the Mounted Police brought into Southern Alberta a couple of milch cows and a few yokes of oxen for their own use." This was about the year 1873. Three years later a member of the same force bought a small herd, but having no other way of providing for the animals, he turned them loose on the prairie to shift for themselves. There, although without shelter or provision for food, they survived the winter, escaping the wolves, predatory Indians, and prairie fires. Nowadays, cattle are generally left cut of doors on the prairies all the winter in Alberta. Here the winters are neither severe nor prolonged. "The days are bright and cloudless, and the light snowfalls are neither frequent nor lasting. They vanish before the warm Chinook winds, and are followed by days of soft weather. There are cold snaps in January and the early part of February, but the winter breaks up early in March, and before April the prairies are spangled with flowers--false indigo, shooting stars, and violets, with roses, lupines, and vetches, following after--until the prairie is all aglow with wonderful colour."