Emily Poynton Weaver
Canada and the British immigrant
The Association of United Farmers of Alberta, like the Grain-Growers’ Associations of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, is proving a power in influencing the public men of this largely agricultural province in the direction of reforms in the interests of farmers, with regard to the marketing and transportation of farm produce, the reduction in the prices of such articles of necessity to the farmer as binder twine, and the establishment of “elementary short course schools in agriculture.”
Alberta has been the scene of interesting experiments (so far as Canada is concerned) of the effects of irrigation on a large scale in improving the fertility of the semi-arid districts in the south; and of the introduction of the Canadian Pacific Railway’s system of “ready-made farms.”
Irrigation on a small scale has long been carried on in Alberta, but there are great areas which can be successfully irrigated by means of large engineering works. To construct these, however, requires much capital; accordingly, the provincial government has thought it “in the general interest to dispose of extensive tracts of land to strong companies, on condition of their constructing a due proportion of irrigation works and supplying settlers with water on terms satisfactory to the government.” The first corporation to irrigate on a large scale was the Alberta Land and Irrigation Company, which has two hundred and twenty miles of canals and dykes fed with water from the St. Mary’s river, and upon its lands sugar-beets and alfalfa have been grown with great success. Another of these companies is the Southern Alberta Land Company, taking water from the Bow river, and the third, which has the largest irrigation scheme in America, is the Canadian Pacific Railway, and it is intended that its watercourses shall eventually supply about one million acres from the Bow river.
In this district the great railway has inaugurated the system of “ready-made farms” of from eighty to one hundred and sixty acres of irrigable, and one hundred and sixty to three hundred and twenty acres of non-irrigable land. The company erects a house and necessary buildings, sinks a well; fences, breaks, and sows part of the land and offers it to suitable settlers, requiring in payment only one-tenth of the price during the first year—chiefly payable after harvest. The remainder of the purchase money, with interest, is payable in instalments, of which the last is not required till the eleventh year. In allotting the farms, preference is given to men with families, and to help the newcomers to make the best of things under the unfamiliar conditions, the company has established “demonstration farms” in different districts.
The new arrivals in these districts have an advantage in social life and in the establishment of churches and schools over immigrants going singly into sparsely-settled regions; and any man with £400 or £500 of capital, who does not wish to “rough it,” would do well to make careful inquiry about these farms. Some of the “ready-made farm” colonies have bought machines, and have worked in other ways, on a plan of co-operation, and there is great opportunity in these new communities for the successful application of the principle which combines “self-help” with very practical recognition of “one’s duty to one’s neighbour.” Apart from this particular scheme, the man with capital may purchase improved or unimproved lands in Alberta from $15 (£3) to $35 (£7) the acre.
To the man with no capital, but a pair of willing hands, Alberta has free homesteads to offer (for conditions, see Appendix, Note B, page 297), and there is a good demand for labour, by which a thrifty newcomer can acquire a little capital before taking up land. On the farms, the monthly wages for a good single man (engaged by the year) range from $18 (£3 12s.) to $30 (£6), with board. When the engagement is for eight months they average from $25 (£5) to $40 (£8), whilst for harvesting and threshing the rate is from $35 (£7) to $50 (£10) the month.
At present, as in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, “hired men” sometimes find it difficult to obtain employment during the winter, and the farmers find it equally difficult (despite harvest excursions from the east) to get anything like the number of men they desire in the brief, hurried harvest. The more general adoption of intensive farming would greatly help to solve the labour problem. In the meantime the progressive farmer employs all the labour-saving machinery he can—in some cases, on the smaller farms, more than he can well afford.
About three-fifths of the self-supporting population of Alberta find employment in agriculture, leaving two-fifths to work in the factories, the mines, the shops, the transportation service, and in the several learned professions, and in all these lines of human energy there are opportunities awaiting the man who knows how to take advantage of them.
New lines are being built by each of the three great railway companies—the Canadian Pacific, the Canadian Northern, and the Grand Trunk Pacific—and the province, which thus will soon have two new gateways to the Western Ocean, is speculating eagerly on the probable effects of the opening of the Panama Canal.
Much labour is being expended (with excellent result on business and social conditions) on the provision of other means of transport and communication—roads and bridges, telegraphs and telephones. Many of the latter are rural, and are an especial boon to the women dwelling in the lonely little houses on the great farms. Some of these women, tied to their homes by the small children, whom they can neither leave nor take for long drives in cold weather, may not see another woman’s face for weeks together; and in such cases it is a great thing to hear a friendly voice, and to know that, in case of emergency, doctor or nurse or other aid is within call.
As for the schools and churches, conditions are much the same (except where the smaller “ready-made farms” give more chance of social life) as those in Saskatchewan; but in Alberta a school district may be formed for the benefit of eight instead of twelve children. Primary education is free and compulsory, but there is difficulty in obtaining a sufficient supply of teachers, and many of those now teaching have come from Eastern Canada, Great Britain, and the United States. The salaries paid are generally good, and the work of teaching a very small school is not arduous, unless, as sometimes happens, the children understand little or no English. Even in such a case, however, the children pick up the new language surprisingly quickly.
The University of Alberta, at Edmonton, has begun its work with the faculty of arts and applied science, but other departments will be added.
Alberta appears to be peculiarly rich in combustible materials beneath the soil. Coal of all grades, from lignite to anthracite, is found, and is mined at Bankhead and Canmore in the Rocky Mountains, at the Crow’s Nest Pass, at Lethbridge, at Medicine Hat and near Edmonton. In 1911, one hundred and twenty collieries, with an output of three million tons, were in operation, employing about seven thousand workers. Coal may be bought at a very cheap rate at the pit’s mouth, which is a great boon to settlers within reach of the mines. Natural gas and petroleum are also abundant in different parts of the province, from Medicine Hat to the Pelican river, far north of Edmonton. Once upon a time a “paying quantity” of gold used to be obtained from the Saskatchewan at Edmonton and other places, but, with the exception of coal, the chief mineral products at present being turned to account are its building stones and clay, which is being manufactured into brick at Calgary, Edmonton, and some smaller centres.
Calgary, with a population of considerably over sixty thousand, is the largest of Alberta’s five cities; but Edmonton, in a more central position, is the capital, and now comes a good second in population, having recently absorbed the town of Strathcona, on the opposite side of the Saskatchewan. Much might be written of the numerous smaller towns and villages, which are nothing if not “progressive,” but we must pass on, only stopping to remark that Alberta may also claim the epithet of “progressive”—especially from a political point of view—for the principles of co-operation, of public ownership of public utilities, and of taxing the land—not improvements—to prevent speculators holding it in idleness are in this province practised as well as preached.
XIV
BRITISH COLUMBIA, THE PACIFIC PROVINCE
THIS most westerly province of the Dominion makes a strong appeal to the imagination. Until the recent extension of Quebec and Ontario, British Columbia was the largest of the provinces, with its area of 395,000 square miles, or more than that of the British Isles, Italy, Denmark and Switzerland taken together. Of its sea of mountains, two hundred thousand square miles in extent, might be made twenty-four Switzerlands, but those who know the far-famed land of the European mountaineers are impressed with the fact that as yet man has gained no such hold upon the Rockies and the Selkirks and the Coast Ranges as upon the Alps. There are no picturesque châlets clinging to the sides of these Canadian mountains, and for the most part the snow-capped monarchs of the ranges lift up their heads from a land that seems almost as much outside the dominion of man as the blue heavens themselves.
On every hand “unconquered peaks” challenge the daring climber; and, hidden away amongst their recesses, lie lakes which seem the very acme of loneliness. The hunter, the scientist, the recluse, the seeker for adventure, can each strike out a trail for himself in British Columbia, or, if he so desires it, can shut himself up apart from other men in the wilderness of mountains; and sometimes stern necessity compels wild journeys through the unexplored maze of height and precipice and canyon.
Not long ago I heard of two men sent by a railway company across a mountain range to find—if they could—a possible pathway for the “iron horse” of civilization. For a hundred miles or more of unknown country their journey had to be performed on foot, with no hope of shelter or food save what they could carry with them. The former was represented by a frail tent of silk which could be thrust into a pocket, and the latter chiefly by beans sewn into narrow bags slung across their shoulders; for the food value of beans is high, and they dared not burden themselves with one ounce of superfluous comfort.
Romance is with us still, and, as Kipling suggests, may be found in “dock and deep and mine and mill”; nor does it need a poet to find it in the building of a railway, which here climbs by a corkscrew road up a forbidding mountain side, there plunges downward to the western ocean through a cut with which a tumultuous torrent has been busy for thousands of years.
It is just a hundred and twenty years since Alexander Mackenzie, one of the indomitable Scots who took up fur trading and exploring as their life-work, crossed the mountains from the east, and so with his party was the first to reach the Canadian Pacific coast overland. Others of his contemporaries and successors made memorable journeys down the furious rivers of the Pacific slope, and little by little gleaned some knowledge of the interior of the province, as, a few years earlier, Cook and Vancouver had begun to explore the inlets and the straits between the islands that for most of the way along the coast make a mighty breakwater against the ocean surges.
In natural beauty British Columbia is the most richly endowed of the provinces, for she possesses glorious forests and a picturesque sea-coast, in addition to the magnificent peaks and mountain lakes of gem-like colour and translucence, which she shares with her fair neighbour, Alberta. Her coast views are indeed the lovelier for the green heights springing from the water’s edge, and for many a ghostly white peak gleaming in the distance, whilst in this province much of the “forest primeval” consists of Douglas firs, some towering up three hundred feet, and giant red cedars, with a girth at the butt of twenty or thirty feet, or even more. It was of these cedars, by the way, that the coast Indians made their huge, strangely-carved war-canoes, or dug-outs.
The climate of British Columbia, though having considerable variety in different districts, may appeal to some intending immigrants who dread cold. “The Coast,” as Canadians of the prairie provinces often call it, gets the full benefit of the warm “Japanese current,” and there winter comes chiefly in the guise of additional rain, while snow, if it does fall, does not lie long on the ground. British Columbia is, as was suggested in an earlier chapter, a land where roses of the types cultivated in English gardens bloom for many months in the year. In the uncleared woods, the undergrowth is a luxuriant tangle of shrubs and ferns and wild flowers; and gardens, if but a little neglected, run riot too. It is a wonderful thing, when travelling westward after crossing the prairies, where Nature appears to be rather insisting on the one idea of broad simplicity, and after plunging through the mountains, where she seems to invite your special attention to the magnificence of her backgrounds (though she herself has energy to spare for details too), to come down to this paradise of growing things, ranging from trees that tower to heaven to blossoms that climb on the houses, peep over grey walls and swing from the porches, bent apparently on breaking all bounds.
All the way up the coast of British Columbia and its adjacent islands the climate is “mild and moist”; and as far north as the new Grand Trunk Pacific port of Prince Rupert, which is indeed only in about the same latitude as Liverpool, severe cold need not be expected. Victoria, the capital, situated on Vancouver island, has a drier climate than the city of Vancouver, its younger and busier and more commercial rival on the mainland. But not all of the mainland has a damp climate. Behind the shelter of the coast range, which intercepts the warm moisture-laden winds from the West, lies a “dry belt,” and between the coast mountains is many a pleasant sheltered valley rich in soil, mild, warm and prolific of fruit and other heat-loving crops.
During summer, in the Kootenay district, which lies in the south-east of the province, the temperature sometimes reaches eighty or ninety degrees in the shade, and in winter occasionally falls below zero, and the rainfall is usually sufficient to secure good crops of various descriptions; but much of the southern part of the interior of British Columbia consists of an elevated region, which, though deeply cut into by lakes and rivers, is described as a plateau, lying between mountain ranges on the east and west. It has an average altitude of three thousand five hundred feet, and here the rainfall is not superabundant. Indeed, in some districts irrigation is resorted to, with the result of great improvement in the crops. Altogether, however, there are many good farming and fruit districts in the valleys.
The Cariboo country, west and north of the Kootenay, has a more severe climate; but still further north lies the famous Peace River valley, partly in British Columbia and partly in Alberta, for which such great things are now being prophesied in agriculture. This region, though far north of Winnipeg, has a milder autumn and a shorter winter than Manitoba; and experts say that generally in the northern part of the province the clearing of the forests, which now prevent evaporation, will result in rendering milder the climate of this land of marsh and swamp and rigorous winter, which seems to resemble what the now progressive Germany was in the days of the Romans.
British Columbia has many rivers navigable in parts of their course, some of which, like the Columbia in the Kootenay, broaden into lakes, upon which ply quaint-looking, stern-paddle steamers drawing very little water. The Fraser, which rises in the Rocky Mountains and is navigable, though not uninterruptedly, for about six hundred miles, is the largest river, whose course is wholly within the province. It is a stream which every traveller on the Canadian Pacific Railway must remember, for the trains journey, for one hundred and thirty miles, with the rushing waters down the terrific, sharply-cut canyons, till, almost within sight of salt water, the river broadens into calm and the railway turns aside to reach Vancouver.
Far north, near Prince Rupert, the Skeena River, which is navigable for about seven months each year for two hundred miles from its mouth, enters the sea. It is the second in size of wholly British Columbian rivers, and is destined before long to become almost as well-known to travellers and tourists as the Fraser itself, for the Grand Trunk Pacific has taken advantage of the way it has cut through the mountains to gain the sea. Other notable rivers are the Thompson, the Naas and the Kootenay, within the province; and the Columbia, the Peace, the Stikine, and the Laird, which rise and flow within it for considerable distances, but pass beyond its boundaries before reaching the sea.
The rivers of British Columbia are swarming with fish, and so are the waters which wash the mainland coasts—some seven thousand miles in length, if the shores of inlets and bays are taken into account. In 1911-12 the value of the catch, amounting to over thirteen and a half million dollars, exceeded that of the preceding year by four and a half millions, and for the first time British Columbia was the leading province of the Dominion in the fisheries. She owes her supremacy in this respect to salmon, though vast numbers of halibut, herring, sturgeon and other varieties of fish are taken in her waters. Amongst these are the oolachan or candle fish, a small oily fish from which the Indians make a substitute for butter.
Much of British Columbia’s catch of herrings goes to China, and some of her sturgeon are sent, strange to say, to her great rival in the fisheries, Nova Scotia. As for her salmon, when canned it goes all over the world. Chinamen do much work in the salmon canneries and a machine recently introduced is known as “the Iron Chink,” from the fact that it does the work of many Chinamen in cleaning and cutting the fish. Lobsters are not found in British Columbian waters, but crabs and shrimps and prawns are plentiful. The Japanese do much fishing along the coasts, and from Vancouver many of their gasoline launches go out. A whaling company which uses fast steamers and machine guns has several stations on Vancouver Island; and parts of the monsters, taken chiefly for the sake of the whalebone and oil, are exported as food to Japan.
I have, however, begun to discuss the great groups of industries at the wrong end. Important and rapidly increasing as are the fisheries of this ocean-washed province, the value of their annual product is at present far surpassed by that of the mines, then of the forests, and thirdly, by that of the farms and orchards taken together.
The discovery of gold played a great part in the making of the province. In the earlier decades of the nineteenth century British Columbia was occupied only by the Indians and by the traders of the Hudson Bay Company, with posts scattered at wide intervals through the wilderness. About 1839 a few Scotch and Canadian farmers were brought out to supply the traders with some of the necessaries that had hitherto been brought round by Cape Horn from England.
Meanwhile, the United States was casting envious eyes on the country; but after noisy demands on the part of some Americans for the whole coast as far north as the Alaskan boundary, it was agreed by the Treaty of Oregon in 1846 that the 49th parallel of north latitude should be the mainland boundary, and that the whole of the island of Vancouver should remain under the British flag.
In 1849 that great island was granted to the Hudson Bay Company, on condition that they should bring in settlers. The conditions were not fulfilled, and as late as 1854 there were scarcely five hundred white people on the island, including the traders; but in 1857 it became known that gold had been discovered along some of the rivers of the mainland (New Caledonia, as it was then called), and in the following spring thousands of prospectors arrived at Victoria. The little town was soon surrounded by an encampment of rude huts and tents, and the newcomers swarmed across to the new “Eldorado” in all kinds of craft, some paying for their temerity with their lives.
The rush of gold seekers caused the government to try to open roads to the mining country, and the traveller on the railway through the Thompson and Fraser valleys catches many a glimpse of the old “Cariboo road,” sometimes clinging to the cliff as much as a thousand feet above the water. This road has been practically abandoned since the opening of the railway; but now government is again occupied with the project of a highway from Alberta to the Pacific coast.
In the first decade, after the rush to the “diggings” began, about fifty million dollars’ worth of the precious metal was obtained in the Cariboo and Cassiar country, and still gold is being obtained there by more scientific methods of working. There are also valuable deposits of silver, lead, copper, zinc, coal, building stone and brick clay, all of which are worked more or less; and the different mining camps employ a large number of men. The value of the mining output for 1912 was about thirty-two and a half million dollars.
This was followed pretty closely by the value of the lumber of the year, which equalled $28,000,000 (£5,600,000). The forest area, including that covered by small trees, has been estimated at over one hundred and eighty-two million acres. Along the coast and up the river valleys of the mainland and on Vancouver island are many magnificent trees. The most valuable commercially are Douglas fir, cypress, red cedar, white spruce and western hemlock. On the coast the trees are larger than further inland; and it is said that the climate is so favourable to their growth that they increase in size very much more rapidly than in most other parts of America. British Columbia, like other provinces, has begun to realize the immense value of its forests, and is taking steps to preserve them, but about a third of the “cut” of the Dominion comes from this province, and thousands of men find employment in the woods and the saw mills.
Not many years ago the agricultural possibilities of this region were scarcely regarded seriously, but it has a splendid home market for all the products of the farm; and last year the value of the agricultural produce (including fruit, of which British Columbia is beginning to make a specialty) was equal to more than three-quarters of the lumber output. But this is only a beginning. A recent estimate gives the area of known cultivable land at twenty-four million acres, of which about ten millions is in the Peace River country, but hardly one-eighth of this land is at present in use, and much of the interior of the country is practically unexplored. There are districts in the Kootenay, about the Okanagan lake, in the neighbourhood of New Westminster, upon Vancouver island and in some other regions, which are fairly well settled, and in these is grown a vast quantity of beautiful apples and other fruit. In fact, fruit is the greatest agricultural product of British Columbia, and last year the yield of the orchards and fruit “ranches” was estimated at $14,000,000, or about equal to that of the fisheries. This is the only farm product which at present goes out of the province; but the estimated value of cereals, beef, dairy produce and all the other miscellaneous yield of the farms accounted only for another eight million dollars. Government is making efforts in various ways to stimulate agriculture. For instance, it aids the establishment of co-operative creameries; but millions of dollars are spent annually outside the province for meat, cheese, butter, poultry, eggs and articles of food, which might well be supplied from the prolific soil of British Columbia were there only more hands to work it.
At present, however, this province is in the somewhat peculiar and unsatisfactory position of having a mere fraction of its people (one-quarter) living on the land. The population was put down in the last census year as 392,480 (of whom the males were in excess of the females by nearly one hundred and eleven thousand), and of this number the two cities of Vancouver and Victoria accounted for over one hundred and fifty thousand. Now these cities, with their suburbs, are said to have a population of two hundred thousand, or nearly half the total for the province.
Both Vancouver and Victoria are already extremely important ports, and expect much additional ocean trade when the Panama Canal is opened. The northern port of Prince Rupert is also busy, although the railway, of which it is the terminal, is not yet completed. There are many other ports and inland towns; mining, railway construction, and lumbering camps all needing supplies; and the man who understands dairying or market-gardening or fruit growing has a choice of opportunities in British Columbia.
In the Peace River district is a block of Dominion lands which may be taken up by homesteaders on the same terms as the free grants in the other western provinces. (See Appendix, pg. 297, Note B.) A strip of land twenty miles wide on each side of the Canadian Pacific Railway main line belongs to the crown, and until December, 1911, was administered by the Minister of the Interior at Ottawa, but is now under the management of the provincial government.
Provincial crown lands are offered for sale at from $5 (£1) to $10 (£2) the acre, or for lease for cutting hay or other purposes. They may be pre-empted by settlers—in which case there are conditions of improvement and residence, in addition to the payment of $1 (4s. 2d.) per acre in four equal annual instalments. Pre-emptions are limited to one hundred and sixty acres of agricultural lands, and no one may hold more than one claim at a time; nor can an alien obtain title deeds for a pre-emption; but anyone desiring full and reliable information as to how to obtain provincial land should write to the Chief Commissioner of Lands, Victoria, British Columbia.
The Canadian Pacific Railway and other companies and private persons also offer unimproved or improved agricultural lands for sale at prices ranging from $5 (£1) the acre up to $500 (£100) for irrigated land in a good situation, while bearing orchards may cost as much as from $1,000 (£200) to $12,000 (£2,400) an acre.
By clauses recently added to the land regulations of British Columbia it is provided that any self-supporting woman over eighteen years of age (except a wife living with her husband) may pre-empt one hundred and sixty acres of agricultural land on the same conditions as men; and this provision is made applicable to deserted wives, and women whose husbands have not contributed to their support for two years, as well as to spinsters and widows.
It is most important, however, that it should be understood that the agricultural lands available for pre-emption or purchase direct from the government are situated almost entirely in districts difficult of access and ill-provided with roads and bridges, whilst a considerable amount of capital is necessary for the purchase of good land in well-settled districts.
The government of British Columbia reserves one-quarter of all town sites and of lands divided into small lots (of one acre or less), and these are usually sold by public auction.
It seems very natural that along the coast and amongst the mountains the population should be gathered into centres, larger or smaller, where they can enjoy some of the comforts of civilized life unattainable by isolated settlers, and the practice certainly has its advantages with regard to social and church life, and the education of the young. In British Columbia, by the way, free government schools are established where twenty children between the ages of six and sixteen can be brought together. In 1912 there were 538 schools in operation, including twenty-three high schools. At Vancouver there is a provincial Normal School; also a number of private schools and colleges; while the Vancouver and Victoria colleges are in affiliation with McGill University, Montreal, and provision has been made for the endowment of a university of British Columbia, by the setting apart of two million acres of public lands.
Men of small capital are strongly advised to go in for “intensive” culture of a small farm, rather than to attempt to take a large piece of land or to devote themselves solely to fruit culture, for orchards in bearing are expensive, and to wait for returns till a newly-planted orchard becomes productive is also costly; but quick returns can be obtained from the keeping of poultry and pigs, and the growing of early vegetables for a town or mining camp.
Small holdings simplify the labour problem, which is acute in British Columbia, and complicated by the difficulties attendant on Oriental labour. This is much employed, in spite of the feeling that, for the sake of Canada’s future, the unrestricted admission of Orientals would be a grave mistake. That is a question, however, which it does not belong to the purpose of this book to discuss.
