British Columbia

“ Each of these homes presents its own epic, each family tracing it to the chosen spot from somewhere in Eastern Canada—Nova Scotia, Quebec or Ontario—or coming here to this Alpine region of the Dominion from somewhere over-seas, the British Islands, France, and indeed, all other countries of Old Europe, even reaching a finger into Asia at India and Japan. Truly the human-interest element of British Columbia is as big as its outlook. ”

“ To the north the green forests of British Columbia stood crinkling under the almost direct rays of the August sun, to the east, almost over their heads, stood the backbone of the continent of North America, to the south stretched the broken land of Montana, while to the west lay the valleys and ridges of Idaho, Montana, and Washington beyond which pulsed the mighty swells of the Pacific. ”

“ Well joined, in truth, are the sublime River and the sublime mountains. One cannot fully understand the River unless he has seen its cradle and the cradle of its affluents beneath the shadows of the great peaks of British Columbia. ”

“ As a Figure, the Indian is a Synopsis.
The land embraced by British Columbia is elemental—big. Every form of it, rivers, peaks, lakes and valley, is grand in the sense of bigness. It is a land of big trees, big mines, big ranches, big outlook. And the big outlook not only glances Eastward across a Continent, but wings its way outward across the Pacific with its ships touching the shores of Asia and Australia. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The ordinary Englishman often appears to be under a strange delusion that British Columbia is situated in a part of the world which he vaguely alludes to as South America, and it is somewhat curious that the country is not better known, for it is a glorious land of great mountains, forests, streams, and rolling hill, in which game and fish are very plentiful, with a climate and conditions of life peculiarly suited to Englishmen, especially those who have the instinct of sport. ”

“ The province of British Columbia, which is separated from the rest of Canada by the great range of the Rocky Mountains, is itself a "sea" of tumbled mountains, which reach all the way from the Rockies to the Pacific Ocean, and, like the northern portion of the Dominion, is covered with forests. Here again there are several large rivers, such as the Fraser and the Columbia, and a great many lakes. British Columbia is an exceptionally highly favoured region. ”

“ The banks, the great insurance companies, and other financial concerns express their faith in the future of British Columbia by their willingness to advance millions for its agricultural and industrial development. The visitor to British Columbia soon discovers that the Province might well be named the Nova Scotia of the Pacific, for, as men of Scottish blood were among the pioneers, discoverers and settlers, so Scotsmen by the thousand, with their keen scent for places where money is to be made, have flocked, and are flocking, into British Columbia. ”

“ All Victoria breathes the atmosphere of a past and greater grandeur, and the citizens feelingly revert to the time when British Columbia was a separate colony by itself, and Victoria the seat of the miniature court of the Governor-General and commander-in-chief of its forces. There is no real joy in the celebration of “Dominion Day,” which reminds them of how British Columbia and the two provinces of Canada were made one under the specious promise of a connecting railway. ”

“ I am satisfied that every industry in British Columbia is only in its infancy. We have forests illimitable for lumber, land in millions of acres for agriculture, and the seven thousand miles of shore line are washed by seas teeming with fish. ”

“ The one enchants the imagination; the other relates itself to the great social order of human life. The latter reveals the vast resources of British Columbia; the almost infinite possibilities for the transcendent future of a new and still higher civilisation; the regions of the homes, the development, the nobler and still nobler culture of life in its evolutionary progress. ”

“ Alberta, of the thousand horses, looks down from her high-peaked saddle on all who walk on their feet; and British Columbia thanks God for an equable climate, and that she is not like Ottawa, full of politicians and frozen sludge. ”

“ Southern British Columbia is a land of winding rivers and lakes, towering mountains and sheltered valleys. Many of the little cities along the Columbia and the Kootenay have been settled largely by Britishers. ”

“ What hardships will not men face to fill their pockets with gold! Wherever gold is to be picked up, there thousands of adventurers soon gather, and if the country is suitable for a colony thousands of settlers remain. Thus British Columbia owes its position as a colony, in the first place, to the gold-nuggets sown in the sands of its river-beds. ”

“ Upon these vast plains where the volcanic dust has drifted for ages, now looking so dismal in their monotonous garb of sage-brush, the millions of the future will some time live in peace and plenty, each under his own vine and apple-tree. On the eastern boundary, all the way from Western Wyoming to Eastern British Columbia, stand cordons of stupendous mountains, the western outposts of the great Continental Divide. ”

“ As the railway descends to the lower slopes of the Rockies the country opens out. There are large and lovely lakes swarming with fish, a country abounding with valleys that rival Annapolis valley of Nova Scotia and the Niagara country of South Ontario in their fitness for fruit growing, while the humidity of the atmosphere, the soft Pacific breezes, the flood of summer sunshine, and the mildness of the winter give British Columbia enormous advantages over its eastern fruit-producing rivals. ”

“ VI In British Columbia one reaches the province of the greatest natural wealth, the greatest diversity in climate and the most feverish activity in Canada. East of the mountains is a climate high, cold and bracing as Russia or Switzerland. Between the ranges of the mountains are valleys mild as France. On the coast toward the south is a climate like Italy; toward the north, like Scotland. Of Canada's entire timber area—twice as great as Europe's standing timber—three-quarters lie in British Columbia. ”

“ We are now on the Columbia's waters. We are also in the heart of the Canadian Rockies, and in the midst of a perfect sea of mountains. It has been said that British Columbia is “fifty or sixty Switzerlands rolled into one.” Here are five distinct ridges, up and down, and through and around which, the Columbia and its affluents chase each other in a dizzy dance.
The descent of the west side of the Divide is appallingly steep. From Stephen to Field is a drop of one thousand two hundred and fifty-seven feet in ten miles. ”

“ British Columbia has a length of 800 miles, and averages 400 miles in width. To whoever crosses the country it seems the scene of a vast earth-disturbance, over which mountains are scattered without system. In fact, however, the Cordillera belt is there divided into four ranges, the Rockies forming the eastern boundary, then the Gold Range, then the Coast Range, and, last of all, that partially submerged chain whose upraised parts form Vancouver and the other mountainous islands near the main-land in the Pacific. ”

“ Take a map of the world, run your eye over the broad Atlantic, up the mighty St. Lawrence, across the great lakes of Canada, then along well-nigh a thousand miles of prairie, until the Rocky Mountains are reached, beyond which lies British Columbia, a region of lakes, rivers, and streams, of lofty, rugged, and precipitous heights, the further shores washed by the Pacific Ocean.
On the bank of one of the many affluents of its chief river—the Fraser—Uncle Donald had established a location, called Clearwater, far removed from the haunts of civilised man. ”

“ They cannot live in fresh water.
My thoughts leap to another fact with the lightning-like character that often marks the globe-trotter. It is not so many years ago since the dividing line between British and American territory was decided upon; and only for the stubbornness of an old English surveyor British Columbia might have embraced within her borders the whole State of Washington. Some time in the middle of the nineteenth century, disputes arose as to the proper boundary line between the United States and British Columbia. ”

“ British Columbia, including the New Caledonia, Kootenay Country, and Vancouver Island of the fur-traders, is a land of great resources. Its population has increased many times over. Its great salmon fisheries, trade in timber, coal mines, agricultural productiveness, and genial climate have long made it a favourite dwelling-place for English-speaking colonists. ”

“ Away up in the great northland, even further north than the northern boundary of British Columbia, there lives a race of people who form, and have formed, no part of the great human civilization of the world which has been, and is going on in the more moderately climatic regions of the earth. ”

“ Stretching from the Rockies to the sea and from the United States to the 60th parallel, British Columbia is the largest Province in the Dominion. It is big enough to enable one to place in it, side by side at the same time, two Englands, three Irelands, and four Scotlands. ”

“ WHEREAS, divers of Her Majesty's Subjects and others have, by the Licence and Consent of Her Majesty, resorted to and settled on certain wild and unoccupied Territories on the North-West Coast of North America, commonly known by the Designation of New Caledonia, and from and after the passing of this act to be named British Columbia, and the Islands adjacent, for Mining and other purposes; it is it is desirable to make some temporary Provision for the Civil Government of such Territories, until permanent Settlements shall be thereupon established, and the Number of Colonists increased ”

“ It may be said that the population of those parts of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, which are embraced in the watershed of the Columbia, is probably nearly a million and a quarter. The population of the area in British Columbia is scanty, but rapidly increasing. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Hector the 'Vermilion' Pass, all agree that each is perfectly practicable, if not easy, and that even better openings may probably yet be found as exploration progresses. Again, while British Columbia, on the Pacific, possesses a fine climate, an open country, and every natural advantage of soil and mineral, it has been also discovered that the doubtful region from the Rocky Mountains eastward up to the Lake of the Woods, contains, with here and there some exceptions, a 'continuous belt' of the finest land. ”

“ Although nowhere in Upper and Lower Canada (or in the maritime provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia) are the forests so splendid as in parts of British Columbia, yet nevertheless when this region was first discovered the magnificence of its woodlands greatly impressed even the explorers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who were not as much given to praise of landscape beauty as are we of later times. ”

“ Both sides of the continent have perplexities and heartaches for the well-wisher of mankind. But, however distressing may be the rash radicalism of British Columbia, I doubt if its position is not relatively better than that of the indifferent East. ”

“ British Columbia has about 25,000, most of whom are along the coast, though one of the important tribes, the Shuswaps, is in the interior. An almost equal number are found in the three prairie provinces. Those of Ontario, numbering about 20,000, are more civilized than those of the west, many of them being good farmers. ”

“ British Columbia, I firmly believe, will become the most wealthy of the provinces of Canada. The mineral wealth is incalculable. There is gold, silver and copper in short, everything that is required to make the country prosperous. ”

“ The position of the country on the map resembles that of Norway and Sweden in Europe, and the general resemblance is borne out by the features of both countries. Each possesses a deeply indented coast line and a wealth of pine forests, lakes, and rivers. But the climate of British Columbia is much milder; the valleys are richer in soil, the mountains in precious metals, and the waters are inhabited by different species of fish. And whereas the Scandinavian peninsula has some ten millions of people, British Columbia supports as yet but one hundred thousand of population, including Indians. ”

“ The parallel chains of the Rockies, the Selkirks, and the Coast Ranges are a rich dower. They furnish scenery unrivalled in its majesty; they are nurseries of great rivers which pour tribute into three oceans; and in their rocky embrace they hold a mineral wealth second to none.
British Columbia contains an aggregate of from 16 million to 20 million unoccupied arable acres. Sir William Dawson has estimated that in the British Columbia section of the Peace River Valley alone, the wheat-growing area will amount to 10 million acres. It is a country of big things. ”