Regina, Saskatchewan

“ NEW PARLIAMENT HOUSE, REGINA, SASKATCHEWAN.
The Saskatchewan people themselves are wrestling valiantly with their own problems, religious, educational, social. In this connection it is interesting to note that a place in Saskatchewan—Sintaluta, near Indian Head—was the birthplace of that powerful organization of farmers, the “Grain-Growers’ Association,” and that its founder, Hon. W. R. Motherwell, himself a farmer and a graduate of the Ontario Agricultural College at Guelph, is now the provincial Minister of Agriculture. ”

“ Right pleasant is it to present the likely-looking lads of Regina and of the deep soiled plains of Saskatchewan. On the plains, the straight-blowing wind is scented from the grassed headlands dappled with flowers. On the plains, dwell strong, glad men in the joy of their youth. On the plains there lives some common mother of the common weal, who is the ancestress of our kings to be. ”

“ I have seen children playing out-of-doors when it was twenty-five degrees below zero. The summers are hot, and the long days of sunshine are just right for wheat growing.
After travelling fourteen or fifteen hours from Winnipeg, we are in Regina, the capital of Saskatchewan, on the main line of the Canadian Pacific, about midway between Winnipeg and the Rockies. I visited it first in 1905, when the province was less than a year old. Until that time all the land between Manitoba and British Columbia, from the United States to the Arctic Ocean, belonged to the Northwest Territories. ”

“ It had minor subdivisions, but the country as a whole was governed by territorial officials with headquarters at Regina. As the flood of immigrants began to spread over the West, the people of the wheat belt decided that they wanted more than a territorial government and so brought the matter before the Canadian parliament. As a result the great inland provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta were formed. They are the only provinces in the Dominion that do not border on the sea. ”

“ His father, who was a farmer, died when the subject of this sketch was twelve years old. His education was obtained in the Grenville Township Public School, and as a youth he removed to British Columbia, finally settling down in Regina, as a builder and contractor. He is now the owner of two blocks of apartments and of a business block in the capital of Saskatchewan, and is counted one of her most solid and progressive citizens. He has taken an active part in municipal affairs, was alderman in 1915-6-7 and Mayor in 1918 and 1919. ”

“ This enormous agricultural production means, of course, great and expanding demands for the products of manufacturing industries. In the early years of the Prairie Provinces’ development the needs were all supplied from the East, but the Prairie Provinces, like the Eastern Provinces, have their own industrial ambitions, and they are setting to work to become as far as possible manufacturing suppliers of their own necessities. Let me describe as illustrations what is taking place at Moose Jaw and Regina, the latter the capital of Saskatchewan Province. ”

“ To-day Regina is ten times as large as it was twenty years ago. It is a modern city with up-to-date hotels, ten banks, handsome parliament buildings, and twelve railway lines radiating in every direction. It is the largest manufacturing centre between Winnipeg and Calgary, and an important distributing point for farm implements and supplies. ”

“ The sun shone, the chinook blew, our ponies trotted over the trail gallantly. Kate and I sang, told stories, and laughed immoderately over everything. Even a poor joke seems to have a subtle flavour on the prairie. For the first time I began to think Saskatchewan beautiful, with those far-reaching parklike meadows dotted with the white-stemmed poplars, the distant bluffs bannered with the airiest of purple hazes, and the little blue lakes that sparkled and shimmered in the sunlight on every hand. ”

“ As to Regina, it is bound, as the capital city, to go ahead alike as a business, a manufacturing, and a social centre. It is the commercial centre—the Railway Junction City—of millions of acres of corn-growing prairie. At Regina I had an insight into the municipal life of a Western Canadian city. We are discussing at home town planning, the land question, the education question and all sorts of social reforms which to carry out make heavy demands on the rates and taxes. We are a very ancient country with a most complicated web of vested interests and an overcrowded population. ”

“ We look wistfully after the disappearing train, with the warm berths inside the car. Deceived by [57] the high-sounding designation of Capital of the North-West Provinces, we had broken our journey at Regina. There is a frontage to the line of some wooden houses and stores, which extends but a little way back, for the population of Regina is only as yet 2000. The prairie extends to the sky line on every side. It is a dreary prospect, and we are mutually depressed.
There being nothing else to do, I retire to bed for some hours—the Sheffield-born landlady giving us a true Sheffield welcome. ”

“ French forbore to press the matter further, but for both man and boy an attempt at a new habit of speech began that day.
Once clear of the Saskatchewan River, the trail led over rolling prairie, set out with numerous "bluffs" of western maple and poplar, and diversified with sleughs and lakes of varying size, a country as richly fertile and as fair to look upon as is given the eyes of man to behold anywhere in God's good world. ”

“ They are taking steps to Canadianise these people by means of schools, missions, and other educational and moralising forces. There is no reason why, within half a century, the present population of 50,000 to 60,000 of Regina should not swell to half a million. ”

“ No prairie doctor with a radius of fifty miles, none but a pioneer missionary like McDougall or Robertson, ever had so glorious a chance to study what the life of a new country was going to be, as this inspector toiling hundreds of miles over a land, where, if he stopped at three school-houses a week, he was doing a good average in bad weather.
Regina had no party politics then. All it had was the mounted police and a leg-boot legislature. Every man was then a trailsman. ”

“ The wide belt of territory north of the Saskatchewan as far northward as Churchill and Clearwater rivers, is pre-eminently a wooded country, its resources in the way of timber being very valuable, and its forest-clothed mounds, river valleys and lake basins imparting to it a beautiful park-like appearance in marked contrast to the more monotonous scenery of the great prairie country south of the Saskatchewan. ”

“ It has a climate not exceeding in severity that of many portions of Canada and the eastern States. It will, in all respects, compare favourably with some of the most densely peopled portions of the continent of Europe. In other words, it is admirably fitted to become the seat of a numerous, hardy, and prosperous community. It has an area equal to eight or ten first-class American States. Its great river, the Saskatchewan, carries a navigable water-line to the very base of the Rocky Mountains. ”

“ At the Grand Rapids, near the mouth of this river, they were obliged to make a portage of no less than three miles, but the magnificent view of these “Rapids” fully repaid them for the toil they underwent in passing them.
The Saskatchewan is one of the largest rivers in America, being full 1600 miles in length, from its source in the Rocky Mountains to its débouchure, under the name of the “Nelson River,” in Hudson’s Bay. For some distance above Lake Winnipeg, the country upon its banks is well wooded. ”

“ Nature was strong in Regina; she was its child. The cramped artifices of civilisation had not got hold of her and stifled out of her the breath of Nature. So after a time she abandoned all work, finding it impossible, and sat gazing out of the window, thinking.
At luncheon, Everest, having quite made up his mind as to his afternoon's programme, which was to include other items besides the Delamere call, took comparatively little notice of Regina, and talked chiefly to the Rector on model cottages, and their morning's inspection. ”

“ Where the Saskatchewan makes a great bend three hundred miles northeast of Prince Albert, it is no longer a river—it is a vast muskeg of countless still amber water channels not twice the width of your canoe and quaking silt islands of sand and goose grass—ideal, hidden and almost impenetrable for small game. ”

“ Regina’s manufacturing quarter is already a hive of most profitable industry. As at Hamilton, the workers are a very cosmopolitan company. There are something like 10,000 people from the Balkan States and other countries of Eastern Europe, while there is a large and prosperous German colony. The English and American elements of the Regina population are somewhat concerned over the growth of the non-Saxon element. ”

“ East of Devil's Point, the Saskatchewan breaks from its river bed and is lost for a hundred and fifty miles through a country of pure muskeg, quaking silt soft as sponge, overgrown with reed and goose grass. Here are not even low banks; there are no banks at all. Canoes are on a level with the land, and reeds sixteen feet high line the aisled water channels. ”

“ The summers of this vast region are by all reports most agreeable, warm days and refreshing nights, with a stimulating atmosphere; winters with little snow, and usually bright and pleasant, occasional falls of the thermometer for two or three days to arctic temperature, but as certain a recovery to mildness by the “Chinook” or Pacific winds. It is estimated that the plains of the Saskatchewan—500,000 square miles—are capable of sustaining a population of thirty millions. But nature there must call forth a good deal of human energy and endurance. ”

“ There is more monotony in the towns of the plains, I think, than in the plains themselves. Not but what these towns must have differences known to their inhabitants. A man who lived in Moosejaw might conceivably deny that he could feel equally at home in Regina. A citizen of Regina would not dream of admitting that he could find his way blindfold about Moosejaw. Nevertheless all these little towns are singularly alike in construction. It is reasonable that they should be. They are all centres of a country engaged in a single great industry—the raising of wheat. ”

“ On the 20th November I left Fort Pitt, having exchanged some tired horses for fresher ones, but still keeping the same steed for the saddle, as nothing, better could be procured from the band at the fort. The snow had now almost disappeared from the ground, and a Red River cart was once more taken into use for the baggage. Still keeping along the north shore of the Saskatchewan, we now held our way towards the station of Victoria, a small half-breed settlement situated at the most northerly bend which the Saskatchewan makes in its long course from the mountains to Lake Winnipeg. ”

“ A bare half of the people of Saskatchewan are of British origin.
Alberta has both a somewhat smaller European element and the largest American-born contingent of any of the provinces, amounting to one in six. Many English of a fine type have settled there.
In all the Prairie Provinces the French-Canadian [Pg 315] represents scarcely more than one in twenty of the population. ”

“ How it came to pass in the building of the world that to the north of that great region of sand and waste should spread out suddenly the fair country of the Saskatchewan, I must leave to the guess-work of other and more scientific writers; but the fact remains, that alone, from Texas to the sub-Arctic forest, the Saskatchewan Valley lays its fair length for 800 miles in mixed fertility. ”

“ He saw the broad Saskatchewan shimmering its way through the yellow plains, banked in by the foothills and the golden mists of morning dawn; he saw his home town clinging to its shore on one side and with its back against the purple wilderness on the other; he heard the rhythmic chug, chug, chug of the old gold dredge and the rattle of its chains as it devoured its tons of sand for a few grains of treasure; over him there were lacy clouds in a blue heaven again, he heard the sound of voices, the tread of feet, laughter—life. ”

“ It happened on the Saskatchewan whose lazily-rolling waters flow from the far-away Rockies, through the pine lands and plains of the Canadian Northwest and empty into murky Lake Winnipeg, from which they are carried to Hudson Bay, and for all I know mingle with those of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans. And it came about through that almost incomprehensible perversity or foolhardiness or obliging disposition which impels one to help a fellow out of a hole and causes a certain class of happy-go lucky people to rush in where white-winged spirits would not attempt to fly, let alone tread. ”

“ I shall never forget the first view we had into the valley of the Saskatchewan. Approaching a low ridge at the south side of the valley, suddenly there is revealed a magnificent panorama of glaciers, lakes, and mountains, unparalleled among the Canadian Rockies for its combination of grandeur and extent. To the south, one beholds the end of an immense glacier, at the termination of which there are two great arched caverns in the ice. From out these issue two roaring glacial streams, the source of the Saskatchewan River, or at least of its longest tributary called the Little Fork. ”

“ It is there he meets Regina, the mistress of the deceased, a wild and beautiful peasant girl, to the portraiture of whom the story owes its chief interest. Regina is a magnificent, unforgettable creature—one of [62] those rich chords that nature but rarely strikes upon the harp of being; she reverberates through one’s senses with a rough sweetness that represents a real experience. Her mould is Homeric; she is a creation of primal days and primal passions. To blame her is to quarrel with nature itself. ”