Eastern Canada

“ The Call of the West! All Canada is eager to hear its message. Has not the merchant his ear to the ground, listening to the throbbing of the growing harvest on our Western prairies? He knows that in the furrows of that rich loam lie the wealth and prosperity of the country at large. The Eastern manufacturer anxiously scans the daily paper to be posted on crop conditions in the West. They regulate to a great extent the activities and output of his plant. And when college and university days are over, where does the young professional man turn his eyes? To the West. ”

“ The eastern provinces are Ontario and Quebec, which lie along the St. Lawrence River and its Great Lakes, and extend along Hudson Bay as shown on accompanying map. The central provinces are Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, which occupy the prairie area lying between the wooded region of eastern Canada and the Rocky Mountains. The western or Pacific province is British Columbia, which lies between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Coast. Northern Canada is the territory lying between the northern limits of the eastern, central and western provinces, already mentioned, and the Arctic Ocean. ”

“ What the change may bring of comfort or of grief to the Canadians themselves, will be for them to say; but, in the breast of this sentimental tourist of ours, it will produce little but regret. The foreign elements of eastern Canada, at least, are extremely interesting; and it is of good profit to us Americans to have near us, and of easy access, an ample something which is not our expansive selves. ”

“ Those, on the other hand, who were inclined to roam, were carried by the waters wheresoever they wished, with the backwoods at hand, should hiding-places be required. Thus Canada bred two distinct species of colonists, the habitans of the central St. Lawrence, and the voyageurs or coureurs de bois. As in their old home, so still more in their new, the French race comprised contradictory elements.
Climate counts for much in the formation of a people, and in determining its history. The climate of Eastern Canada inclines to extremes. It favours quickness but not continuity of action. ”

“ To be more specific, you could spread the surface of Italy and Spain and Turkey and Greece and Austria over eastern Canada, and you would still have an area uncovered in the east alone bigger than the German Empire. England spread flat on the surface of Eastern Canada would just serve to cover the Maritime Provinces nicely, leaving uncovered Quebec, which is a third bigger than Germany; Ontario, which is bigger than France ”

“ First were the Maritime Provinces, with western bounds touching the eastern bounds of Quebec, but in reality with the settlements of New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island separated from the settlements of Quebec by a thousand miles of untracked forest. Only the Ottawa River separated Quebec from Ontario, but one province was French, the other English, aliens to each other in religion, language, and customs. A thousand miles of rock-bound, winter-bound wastes lay between Ontario and the scattered settlement of Red River in Manitoba. ”

“ This affords the largest stretch of arable land in eastern Canada, including the southern parts of Ontario and Quebec with an area of some 38,000 sq. m. In Quebec the chief portion is south of the St Lawrence on the low plain extending from Montreal to the mountains of the “Eastern Townships,” while in Ontario it extends from the Archean on the north to the St Lawrence and Lakes Ontario, Erie and Huron. ”

“ The French Canadians remained where they were. Most of the new Anglo-Canadians settled in the Maritime Provinces or moved west into what is now Ontario. A few settled in rural Quebec on lands outside the line of seigneuries. The Eastern Townships, that part of the province lying east of the Richelieu and nearest the American frontier, absorbed many English, Irish, and Scots, as well as a good many Americans who were attracted by cheap land. Ontario, or Upper Canada, received still more Americans, who were to be a thorn in the side of the British during the War of 1812. ”

“ By 1871 the new Dominion has bought out the rights of the Hudson's Bay Company in the West and Manitoba joins the Eastern Provinces. By 1885 a railway links British Columbia with Nova Scotia. By 1905 the great hunting field of the Saskatchewan prairies has been divided into two new provinces, Saskatchewan and Alberta, each larger than France.
Such is barest outline of Canada's past. What of the future for this Empire of the North? That future is now in the making. It lies in the hands of the men and women who are living to-day. ”

“ We always speak of Canada as a new country. In one sense, of course, this is true. The settlement of Europeans on Canadian soil dates back only three hundred years. Civilization in Canada is but a thing of yesterday, and its written history, when placed beside the long millenniums of the recorded annals of European and Eastern peoples, seems but a little span.
But there is another sense in which the Dominion of Canada, or at least part of it, is perhaps the oldest country in the world. ”

“ BAY QUINTÉ CONTINUED—​ITS APPEARANCE. Perhaps there is no sheet of water in Upper Canada possessed of greater natural beauty than this arm of Lake Ontario. At the eastern extremity of Ontario, where it merges into the St. Lawrence, with its 1692 islands, on the northern shore, is found the entrance to the Bay Quinté. In the early days of the settlement the name was limited to the waters west of Indian Point, at the extremity of Prince Edward Peninsula. ”

“ The muscular arm of the sturdy pioneer had hewn its way into the primeval forest, and turned the gloomy wilderness into fruitful fields.
It is well known that the first settlers located along the shores of the River St. Lawrence, the Bay of Quinte, Lake Ontario, and Lake Erie, and that, at the time of which I speak, this coastline of a few hundred miles, extending back but a very short distance—a long narrow strip cut from the serried edge of the boundless woods—comprised the settlement of Canada West as it then existed. ”

“ The great English colony which stirs the pages of more than two centuries of history has for its capitals such proud and notable cities as Montreal, Quebec, Toronto, Halifax, and many others, to distinguish the progressive civilization of the region east of Lake Huron—the older provinces. But the Canada of the geographies of to-day is a land of greater area than the United States; it is, in fact, the "British America" of old. A great trans-Canadian railway has joined the ambitious province of the Pacific slope to the provinces of old Canada with stitches of steel across the Plains. ”

“ CHAPTER X — JACK FRENCH OF THE NIGHT HAWK RANCH
A map of Western Canada showing the physical features of the country lying between the mountains on the one side and the Bay and the Lakes on the other, presents the appearance of a vast rolling plain scarred and seamed and pitted like an ancient face. These scars and seams and pits are great lazy rivers, meandering streams, lakes, sleughs and marshes which form one vast system of waters that wind and curve through the rolls of the prairie and nestle in its sunlit hollows, laving, draining, blessing where they go and where they stay. ”

“ Lawrence, and the great lakes which receive the cold blasts of the mountainous region which constitutes the Arctic highlands, and from which the rivers running to the northward into Hudson's Bay, and to the southward into the great lakes and the St. Lawrence, take their rise. The icy breath of the distant north and northwest sweeps down such rivers as the Ottawa, the St. Maurice, and the Saguenay, to be gathered into one vast channel, extending throughout Canada's whole extent. And, clear the forest as we may, Canada will always be the same cold, healthy country that it now is. ”

“ Talking with the old-timers, the pioneers, the prairie schooner, the ox-cart, the buffalo herd, are still vividly within the memory of men now living beside the main highway of railway tracks with fast fliers from Halifax to Vancouver passing and re-passing several times a day.
Nowhere is the quick development of Canada so evident as here on the plains. Yet the steady voice of wheat is still calling; and to her voice are now added other important voices, and still others. Men and women with families are still coming and will come. The Prairie is big and generous and it gives. ”

“ If the plans for improving the communications which have been suggested should ever be developed, the valley of Red River would be reached without much difficulty, and land as good as that in the unsettled portions of Iowa and Minnesota would be opened to the British emigrant.
In the valleys of the Saskatchewan and Assiniboine, Canada possesses a vast north-west of her own, enjoying a mild climate, which contains, according to one of the witnesses whose opinion is cited by the Committee, 500,000 square miles of fertile land, capable of sustaining a population of nearly 30,000,000 of people. ”

“ Let us now inquire what are likely to be made the future prospects and produce of the Canadas as the population increases, and the resources of the country will be developed.
Lower Canada is a sterile country; not that the land is in itself bad, but from the severity and length of the winters. The climate of Lower Canada is precisely the same as that of Russia, and so might be its produce. The winters are tedious, but not unhealthy, as they are dry. The summers, like all the summers in the northern regions, although short, are excessively hot. ”

“ In so short a time, no country in the world's history has attracted to its borders so large a number of settlers prepared to go on the land, or so much wealth, as have the Canadian prairies. Never before has pioneering been accomplished under conditions so favourable as those in Western Canada to-day.
It is not only into the prairie provinces that these people go, but many continue westward to the great trees and mountains, and fertile valleys, the glory of British Columbia, where can be grown agricultural products of almost every kind, and where fruit is of great importance. ”

“ O call sounded by the pipes of this New Era is more insistent than that of the Canadian Sea-coast. One sometimes wonders if Canadians as a whole even yet realize the important gift bestowed, when Heaven gave to Canada so magnificent a coastline as that which the constant sword-play of land and sea traces from Saint John, New Brunswick, to the Newfoundland-Labrador Boundary? ”

“ There flows in Western Canada, by which I mean a region east of the Saskatchewan and west of the Thousand Islands, a singular and beautiful stream. It is beautiful because it is narrow, undulating and shallow, because it has graceful curves and rounded bends, because its banks are willow-clad and its bed boulder-strewn, because it flows along between happy farms and neat white villages, because at one spot, it boasts a picturesque and ruined mill and a moss-covered bridge and because—chiefly because—it is above all things—placid. ”

“ A victory won not a century ago gratified the animosities of the American colonies, and added to the countries ruled by the Sovereign of Great Britain a tract of territory thrice the size of his kingdom. From Labrador to the western limit of Lake Superior, a line drawn east and west within the boundaries of Canada, is 1600 miles long; but the breadth of the country from its Southern frontiers to the ill-defined boundary on the North, is but 225 miles. This vast region is divided into Upper and Lower Canada. ”

“ It has not been thought important to establish regular governments in all the provinces, so called. Such governments are established only in the Canadas, Nova Scotia and Cape Breton, New Brunswick, Prince Edward's Island, and Newfoundland. The Canadas consist of Upper and Lower, or Canada West and Canada East, and embrace the principal amount of the population and productive resources of that whole northern world. ”

“ That may apply to the frontiers of civilisation up North, but the prairie-towns have progressed beyond all that. A few of the old pioneers of the West survive to watch with startled eyes the wonderful fruits of the seed they sowed. Such are among the finest people in Canada, very different from the younger generation, with wider interests, good talkers, the best of company. From them, and from records, one can learn of the early settlers and the beginnings of the North-West Mounted Police. ”

“ The disparity between the population and the wealth of the two provinces is annually on the increase.
The progress of Upper Canada is something perfectly astonishing, and bids fair to rival, if not exceed, that of her gigantic neighbour. Her communication between the Lake district and the Atlantic is practically more economical, taking the whole of the year, and, as British emigration has tended chiefly to the Upper Province, the population is of a more homogeneous character than that of the States. The climate also is more favourable than that of Lower Canada. ”

“ The magnificent districts adjoining Lake Huron, the Georgian Bay, and Lake Simcoe, are only just being brought into notice; and of the fertile valley of the Ottawa, which it is estimated would support a population of nine millions, very little is known. Every circumstance that can be brought forward combines to show that Upper Canada is destined to become a great, a wealthy, and a prosperous country. ”