Arthur E. Copping

“ AMONG THE DUKHOBORS To watch the development of North America is to see Nature performing an endless conjuring trick with the human race. At New York, Quebec, and the other ocean ports there is that interminable procession of arriving liners, crowded in the steerage with persons who, in face, speech, clothes, ideas, and demeanour, are foreigners—foreigners obviously, and, as would seem, unalterably—yet when you travel about the country you make the bewildering discovery that they are not there. ”

“ There are several reasons why a Winnipeg Exhibition justifies high hopes. On previous occasions, millions of people, travelling across oceans and continents, have visited a World’s Fair in order to see—a World’s Fair. People would be attracted to the Manitoba capital in 1914 to see that and something more. It would be an opportunity to witness a rare spectacle—the rising of a new nation that is destined to be big and powerful. For thousands of people it would be a chance to take a peep at the prairie—to see with their own eyes the Great North-West. ”

“ For all those ships and men to have been fighting over the beaver and the silver fox, and the filling of that iron box in Fenchurch Street, gives the modern mind a good deal to think about. As one reads the story of fierce international hatred, of incursions and pillage and crafty ambuscades, of frequent battles on land and water, Hudson Bay figures to the imagination as a frozen inferno of bloodshed, famine, disease and human anguish unspeakable. ”

“ A power-house is a shining palace of repose and polished machinery. Each gallery of dynamos is a cloister of peace, where a poet might compose verses to his lady’s eyes. Huge turbines hum softly in the trim wheel-pit—so deep, so quiet. The giant generator slumbers in a death-like stillness only to be attained by machinery revolving at the pace of twenty-six miles a second. At Niagara one stands in the clean presence of a volume of power measurable by the united strength of a million men.
White coal gives forth no smoke, dirt, or smell—which reminds me of an instructive personal experience. ”

“ Having owned and tended a cow or two in my time, and having a fondness for those beasts, I found myself regarding the prairie herds with a keen interest, and an interest not wholly free from jealousy. Grain-growing with up-to-date machinery on ample new acres that harbour few weeds and need no manure, was a sufficiently tantalising contrast to the elaborate methods necessary in an old country where land is precious and in need of costly fertilisers. ”

“ The trees of Canada are apt to excite one’s sympathy. You pass acre upon acre of mountain side that has been swept by prairie fires. They are a pathetic sight—those black, leafless forests of carbon. Some of the abbreviated trunks remain erect, some lean at perilous angles, some are prostrate. The ground is strewn with ashes and sorrow. In those regions of blackness and death, I saw no moving thing, save only, on occasion, a yellow flying grasshopper—a creature that flutters forward slowly, makes a grating noise. ”

“ NEW TRANS-CONTINENTAL LINES Often the miner, and sometimes the farmer, enters a territory before trains have superseded the canoe and the ox-wagon; and in our chapter on Northern Alberta we have glanced at the romantic life of a pioneer who, if lacking modern means of access to his market, has a delightfully free hand to tap the overflowing natural resources of the landscape surrounding him. A finer career that, I think, for young and muscular manhood than the daily sitting on a stool in smoky London City. ”

“ Toronto’s two-pennyworth of history would go into a paragraph.
I admire Montreal. But I simply fell head over heels in love with Toronto. It has a population of 350,000 progressive optimists. The whole city is full of bustle, but of bustle without hustle. It is a hive of healthy and vivacious industry. Toronto lives at the brisk pace that keeps the blood in a healthy glow. The people have discovered the happy mean between the hurry that wrecks nerves and the sloth that impairs digestion. Everybody in Toronto seems to be busy for the sheer joy of the thing. ”

“ A while ago the Russian thistle filled farmers with fear, but stern measures were taken, and it has been exterminated. Many a flowery stretch of land owes part of its beauty to the wild oat, a frail, fluffy growth whose seed sails for miles at the impulse of the gentlest breeze.
I think Canada’s chief charm is her people, with their delightful freedom from snobbishness and their sense of the dignity of labour. Prime Ministers of Provinces give themselves no airs of superiority, and, so far as manner is concerned, there is nothing to distinguish a railway director from a railway porter. ”

“ In thinking of Canada the earnest and logical man in the street has been led inevitably into a gigantic misconception. As a matter of fact, without a sense of humour it is difficult to make head or tail of the history of North America. Every schoolboy has been taught that Canada existed before the United States were created. Yet the United States have grown to be a mighty and wealthy nation of 92,000,000 people; while Canada, with a slightly larger area, still has a population of only 8,000,000. ”

“ Life on the plains is delightful enough in all conscience. It is good to wander in the sunny prairie, looking at the flowers, birds, and insects. Swallows and blackbirds occur in clouds. Pairs of milk-white doves float amorously by. There are rooks far in excess of the farmers’ wishes. You will occasionally see a robin that is larger and lankier than the English kind, suggesting a tiny eagle. In Eastern Canada I saw many sparrows, and Professor George Bryce, of Winnipeg College, told me these adventurous little immigrants have spread across the continent within his memory. ”

“ Canada has vast tracts dense with majestic trees, which grow bolt upright to give one another room. In the island of Vancouver, that richly favoured region, I journeyed for hours, in the makeshift rolling stock of a mining railway, through an interminable paradise of lofty trees and lovely undergrowth. Sometimes we zig-zagged on a switchback track right up mountain sides; sometimes we crept cautiously along the edges of deep ravines. Away beyond the forest-wrapped island lay the Pacific Ocean—a broad stretch of soft blue.
Man looks a poor little thing in a forest. ”

“ By the one plan you must bring your factory to the waterfall; by the other plan you send the waterfall, along a metal cable, to the factory.
If the Chaudière cataract illustrates the latent resources of Canada, J. R. Booth illustrates the qualities that go to make good Canadians—those men with daring imaginations, industrious brains and educated hands. But he is not the type—he is a supreme example. It is as though Nature had prepared a store of business capacity sufficient for a townful of merchants, and then, on second thoughts, had bestowed it all on one man. ”

“ And soon the procession of immigrants was moving across the country, to quicken Manitoba and British Columbia into vigorous growth and found the intermediate provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta. Then the C.P.R. saw that its faith would be justified. A beginning had been made in tapping the agricultural and mineral riches of Western Canada. The railway was the steel key that had unlocked a treasury of incalculable wealth—wealth that poured forth, and continues to pour forth, in a stream ever expanding with the growth of population. ”

“ To-day there are more than a million and a half people in those territories where, before the railway was made, there were only 171,000; and—with the tide of immigration gaining in momentum every year—the national affairs of this earth provide no anticipation more assured than that the present inhabitants of Central and Western Canada are but the vanguard of a population which, within the experience of persons now living, will be counted by tens of millions.
Most railways have come into existence merely to serve a nation’s needs. ”

“ CLUES TO PRAIRIE FARMING Standing on high ground in Manitoba—and also, for the matter of that, in Saskatchewan and Alberta—you may gaze upon a vast encircling panorama of grey grass and gentle undulations, visible in the dry atmosphere and bright sunshine to a remote purple distance. ”

“ Here were some belated representatives of prehistoric man—human beings without culture or conscience, and who, but for a superior resourcefulness, seemed on a plane with the brutes of the field. By arms this wild people had easily been tamed. But from that moment they became a political and social problem with which, though it well might prove insoluble, obligations of humanity compelled the Government of Canada to grapple, without stint of effort, money or patience. ”

“ In the history of mankind no fact is more quaint, I think, than that the greatest achievements of civilisation should be dependent, almost entirely, upon the carboniferous strata in the crust of the earth. Coal, as a means of producing steam, has long been the vital, indispensable factor in human affairs. What would become of the world, people have anxiously asked, when our stock of the grimy mineral should be exhausted? ”

“ Vaguely I knew of the missionaries who labour among the Indians and Eskimos, their lives consecrated to the work which holds them, from year to year and decade to decade, outside the range of public knowledge and recognition. I sought through the mind of one of those missionaries to peer into the Red Indian heart, so that my readers might be able to judge, from definite testimony on crucial points of human character, whether Canada’s aborigines are fitted to survive. ”

“ I went into the question of live stock, beginning with the animal of chief importance in agriculture—the horse. The application of mechanical power in farming has gone much farther on the North American continent than in this country. In England or Scotland a man has to be content with tilling a farm; in Canada and the United States the ambitious grain-grower will often till a landscape, waxing exceedingly rich in the process. For the man who measures his land by square miles the seasons are no longer than for the man who measures his land by acres. ”

“ The untravelled English reader may find a difficulty in realising that it is not a natural law, by Providence ordained, which divides humanity into ladies and gentlemen on the one hand, and common people on the other. In this dear old country many excellent folk would be shocked at the idea of dining at the same table, or praying in the same pew, with a man who does useful manual work; but the people of Canada, while very much alive to the power of the dollar, are blind and deaf to the idea that personal wealth has anything to do with personal worth. ”

“ I have forgotten how many tons of J. R. Booth’s paper are now absorbed by England, what quantity goes to the States, and the proportion consumed in Canada; but I remember that thirty-nine rolls make a car-load, and that those destined for an ocean voyage are furnished with an extra wrapper and have their edges protected by burlap hessian.
To be talking with the Lumber King is to find yourself in the presence of a man unlike anyone you have ever met before, the reason being that J. R. Booth is content to be J. R. Booth. As a matter of fact, everybody is unlike everybody else ”

“ In travelling across the ocean and the land you see the big things of the C.P.R.—its magnificent liners, its palatial hotels, its superb feats of engineering—but somehow the real greatness of the company seems to lie in the little personal acts of which I have given three examples. It is difficult to find a definition that fits the C.P.R. To liken it to a philanthropic society is out of the question; one cannot associate the idea of philanthropy with an organisation which, with its stock ranging well above 200 “on Change,” distributes over £3,000,000 per annum in the form of a 10-per-cent. ”

“ But the old French capital commands admiration mainly for its age and its associations. Of all the fine Canadian cities it is the finest and the least Canadian. Quebec even possesses two slums—the only two slums, I verily believe, in the entire Dominion; and they are far too picturesque to be demolished.
It is surprising to find such an obvious piece of the Old World at the threshold of the New World; and Quebec’s antiquity is emphasised when, on travelling through the Dominion, one notes the modern aspect of the other cities. Clues to that contrast will be found in Canada’s lop-sided history. ”

“ Strangely enough, the extinction of French authority in Eastern Canada gave a great impetus to that French industry. Licences being no longer needed, an augmented army of daring spirits went forth in canoes to voyage into the unknown territories, and barter beads and brandy for the red man’s furry booty. Merchants at Montreal fitted out the dashing voyageurs, and waxed opulent from the sale of skins. A fierce rivalry grew among the enterprising Frenchmen, who strove to out-vie one another in hospitality to the much-sought-after Indians. ”

“ Bienville, Iberville’s brother, swung the infantrymen in line above decks, swords and pistols prepared for the hand-to-hand grapple. De la Potherie got the Canadians to the forecastle, knives and war hatchets out, bodies stripped, all ready to board when the ships knocked keels. . . . The Hampshire let fly two roaring cannonades that ploughed up the decks of the Pelican and stripped the French bare of masts to the hull. At the same instant, Grimmington’s Dering and Smithsend’s Hudson’s Bay circled to the left of the French and poured a stream of musketry fire across the Pelican’s stern. ”

“ It makes one almost giddy to think of all those Government geologists hurrying every year across the country—one to study the economic minerals of New Brunswick, another to visit the goldfields of British Columbia, a third to tabulate the copper-bearing rocks of Sherbrooke, a fourth to visit the mica mines of Hudson Strait, a fifth to scrutinise the surface geology of the Great Plains, a sixth to collect facts about tin-bearing strata in Nova Scotia, a seventh to explore the raised shore-lines of the Blue Mountain escarpment. ”

“ An extremely opposite state of things obtains in Canada. It was only the other day, so to speak, that it set up in business as a unity and a nation, and at that time next to nothing was known accurately about its natural features. Soil, rocks, climate, fish, trees, birds—none had been properly overhauled. The farmers, the miners, and the railway constructors called urgently for information that could not be supplied. In a word, there was a bewildering lack of all the precise knowledge on which every large community unconsciously rests. ”

“ Philanthropy knows no higher work than to rescue capable and industrious men from a country where they cannot support their families, and emigrate them to a country where they can. In that work—which is so largely a modern development rendered possible by modern conditions—Lord Selkirk was a remarkable pioneer. He was a seer, born far ahead of his times. One hundred years ago he saw the possibility of settling Western Canada. In an age that knew nothing of steamships and railroads, he had a prevision of farming on the prairie. ”