Canada and the British immigrant
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The fisheries of the province, both from the commercial and sportsman’s standpoint, are valuable. The former in 1909-10 gave employment with the canneries, to nearly twelve thousand persons and brought in nearly $2,000,000 (£400,000), cod, lobsters and bait yielding the largest contributions to this sum. An almost equal amount, it was estimated, was spent by sportsmen and anglers who came to the forests; and much of this money fortunately finds its way to the settlers (generally poor) of districts not well adapted to agriculture. In the regions north of the St. Lawrence and in the Canadian Labrador, bears, wolves, beavers and other wild animals abound to this day, and the fur trade, once the chief support of New France, still brings about $1,000,000 (£200,000) annually into the province.
Now agriculture holds the first place, and the farmers of Quebec, represented in 1617 by one solitary tiller of the soil, Louis Hébert, have become a great army. Enough has been said, I think, to show that Quebec has a variety of opportunities to offer to strong and capable and industrious immigrants; but perhaps the best of these are in agriculture. In different districts are millions of acres of good land still wild and uncultivated. Of these, six and a quarter millions have been surveyed and divided into farm lots of one hundred acres each, and these are almost given away to bonâ fide settlers, on condition of their clearing a few acres and erecting a small house, barn and stable within five years. The price charged is at the rate of from 20 cents (10d.) to 60 cents (2s. 6d.) an acre, payable in five instalments.
If the newcomer shrinks from the idea of taking up one of these uncleared farms, there are plenty of more or less “improved farms” to be bought at prices varying widely in different districts and under different circumstances.
To British farmers with a little capital or to farm labourers from the United Kingdom, the beautiful district south of the St. Lawrence, known as the “Eastern Townships,” has been warmly recommended as a region where conditions more nearly resemble those of the “Old Country” than most parts of this new land. It was first settled by Loyalists from the revolted American colonies, towards the close of the eighteenth century. These earliest comers had to endure many hardships, but now the whole district is peculiarly prosperous, possessing not only good farms, but a considerable number of manufacturing and industrial establishments, including the asbestos quarries already mentioned.
Most of the counties of Quebec are divided into “parishes,” but the Loyalists had been accustomed to “townships” in the land from which they came, hence “the Eastern Townships,” comprising an area of about four and a half million acres, and including the eleven counties of Brome, Compton, Drummond and Arthabaska, Megantic, Missisquoi, Richmond and Wolfe, Shefford, Sherbrooke and Stanstead. Of this district, Sherbrooke, which in 1911 had seventeen thousand inhabitants, may be counted the capital. It is one hundred and twenty-five miles south of Quebec, and being in a central situation is the distributing point for immigrants bound for the “Townships.”
The soil of this region is generally fertile, and the climate is by no means a bad one either for the human being or for the products of his fields. In latitude these counties correspond with the northern portion of Italy; but, though “Green Yules” are not unknown, someone has rather happily described the winter as “decided” in its character, and usually the snow comes about the beginning of December, to lie two or three feet deep and make good sleighing for several months. The summer is also a “decided” one; and many a fruit and vegetable which will not ripen in the open air in England here comes to perfection. The inhabitants of the country think the climate peculiarly healthy, and the census reports bear out the assertion so far as to show that an unusually large number of people live to be eighty or ninety.
It must not be supposed that in these long-settled counties there remains any public land to be disposed of; but there are plenty of good farms, of from one hundred and fifty to three hundred acres, for sale at prices ranging from $2,000 (£400) to $8,000 (£1,600), and a considerable portion of the purchase money may always be borrowed on mortgage. That there are so many of these farms for sale is due, as in other parts of Eastern Canada, to the attraction of the West, and of the cities and of other professions than farming; but it is asserted that farming in this region of easy accessibility to good markets has never before been so profitable as it is now. For many products there is an excellent local demand. Moreover, “the Townships” are in easy reach of Montreal and of some of the cities of the United States, and are served by the Canadian Pacific Railway, by the Grand Trunk and other lines—736 miles in all. Prices of produce are now high, and (unfortunately for the consumer) seem likely to remain so even if the supplies should be very largely increased. That the productivity of this district could be more than doubled if the population were doubled is no doubt true, for, though compared to the population of Canada, as a whole (which has less than two persons to the square mile), the Eastern Townships (with about thirty-four persons to the square mile) are well peopled, the density of population even here is only about one-tenth of that of the United Kingdom.
There is generally a scarcity of farm labourers in the district, and a year ago it was said that several thousand experienced workers could get work at wages ranging from $10 (£2) to $35 (£7) the month, in addition to board and lodging, or a rent-free house. As for “Old Country” girls, able and willing to do housework, they can readily obtain places in the towns and villages at wages of from $10 to $20 the month, that is, at from £24 to £48 the year.
Owing to the fact that there is a demand in winter for men to work in the lumber camps of Quebec, and that the farming carried on in this district (and the province generally) is of the “mixed” type, there is a fair demand for men in winter as well as summer—a most important consideration in comparing wages and opportunities in different places.
Here, too, it is said that experience of farming gained in England stands the newcomer in good stead to an especial degree; but, of course, there are some differences. For instance, after dairying and live-stock raising, the making of maple sugar is a large source of revenue to Eastern Township farmers. The sharp night frosts and warm days of early spring in this region are favourable to the flow of sap, and the average farm has from six hundred to one thousand maples, and some farms have three or four thousand. In a good year the yield of sugar may be as much as 3 lbs. to a tree. This sells at about 8 cents the pound. But if a farmer is an adept at making syrup, his profits may be increased.
The Townships have an agent at Quebec to meet incoming steamers and to help new arrivals on their way; and within the last few years some five thousand British immigrants have settled in the district. Some have found work in the shops and mills of the towns, but most have gone to the farms, and here and there amongst the prosperous farmers of the district is one who could tell an interesting story of his arrival at Quebec with scarcely a penny and of his gradual climb up the ladder to a position of comfort.
By the way, there are plenty of churches of different denominations and schools and other social advantages which make life pleasant in the Townships, and probably for English-speaking people, especially for those who are Protestants, this part of Quebec will prove more homelike than any of the counties where the population is almost entirely French-speaking and Roman Catholic.
To return to the province in general, though it has still too many illiterates, there has been progress during the last few years in educational matters, and within seven years the government grant for this purpose was much more than doubled. Owing to the marked religious differences, there are two classes of public schools—the regular public schools and the “separate” schools of the minority, which may be Protestant in one district and Roman Catholic in another. The Roman Catholic and Protestant schools are represented, in the department of education, by French and English secretaries or deputy-heads, under the general “Superintendent of Public Instruction.” In the different localities, school affairs are regulated by “commissioners” representing the religious majority, and “trustees” representing the minority. These are elected by the ratepayers, who pay school rates to the school board of their own religious faith.
Recently new technical schools have been opened in Quebec and Montreal, and the latter city now has a “School of Higher Commercial Studies.” There are also Provincial Forestry and Veterinary Schools. Finally, there is the great Roman Catholic University of Laval, with branches in Quebec and Montreal, which is the outgrowth of a seminary founded in the seventeenth century by the first bishop of Canada; and the non-sectarian McGill University, which owes its foundation in 1814 to the bequest of a wealthy merchant of Montreal, but has since been enriched by benefactions from Lord Strathcona and others. It is said, indeed, to be the wealthiest of Canadian universities. It has a large number of departments, and is well equipped for research work in medicine, physics, engineering, and so forth. Women are admitted to its courses on equal terms with men. This university, by the way, owes much to the famous Nova Scotian geologist, Sir William Dawson, who was its principal for thirty-eight years, and during that time saw the number of its undergraduates increase from eighty to over a thousand.
X
ONTARIO, ONCE “CANADA WEST”
WE come now to Ontario, in extent the second, but in certain respects the first, of the Canadian provinces. Not so large as Quebec, it yet comprises an area three times that of the British Isles, with a little to spare. To be more exact, the figures are 407,262 square miles, having recently been increased immensely by the addition of the new district of Patricia, to the north of its former limits; and now the outline of Ontario upon the map bears a rude resemblance to a great hump-backed whale. At present it is only the tail of the monster that has much population, and it is that portion of Ontario—the peninsula outlined by the Ottawa River, the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes—with which the brief, interesting history of the portion of the Empire that began its existence as “Upper Canada” one hundred and twenty years since, has most to do.
Canadians, like their American cousins, are sometimes accused of worshipping mere bigness. This may or may not be true; but bigness is a factor of the situation in the Dominion from which one cannot get away. There is, I suppose, something fascinating to the imagination of the average mortal in the thought of leagues upon leagues of little-known, scarcely-explored wilderness, awaiting the coming of men, to be turned to unguessed uses in the service of humanity (sometimes unfortunately represented mainly by millionaires and the “big interests”).
Enough at least is known of these vast spaces to render it practically certain that, when their day comes, they will prove to be of much value to man. Obstructions in the waterways of the early “voyageurs” now stand for “power” and progress. Trees, once regarded as little better than noxious weeds, now furnish the paper for this news-reading generation. Rocks that cost the railway companies vast expense and toil in blasting have proved mines of precious metals. The chill waters of Hudson Bay may yet furnish the tables of half a continent with fish; and lands, supposed to be too far north for any useful growth, are so bathed in sunshine during the long days of the brief northern summer that roots and grains are forced to swift perfection, and the harvest seems to tread on the heels of the sowing. What will the next few decades show even in Ontario? Who can say? But bigness means difficulty and toil and struggle, as well as opportunity; and what every province of Canada needs is a people not only numerous enough, but big enough to make something of themselves and of the country.
Upon the whole, Upper Canada began well with the stock of sturdy Loyalists who had dared in the “Thirteen Colonies” to try to stem the tide of revolution, and were cast out by their native land in very fear of their strength and their constancy. Then came settlers from the Motherlands—English, Scotch and Irish (the latter arriving by the thousand during the first half of the nineteenth century at different times of sore distress in the Emerald Isle)—and though amongst these were wastrels and ne’er-do-wells and weaklings, the majority were men and women strong enough and true enough to “make good” in the terrible fight with the wilderness.
Nor was it only in that struggle to cut out their little homesteads from nature’s stern forests that they had to toil, but also at the shaping of a nation in the love and practice of liberty and in the fear of God. As to the latter, many little old churches, dotted through the land, bear witness to the zeal of the missionaries and the people of early days; and as to the former, the free schools through all the country, the colleges, the universities, the public libraries, the political system—with its merits and defects—are in large measure the result of the efforts of earlier generations.
Strange as it may appear, the most northern part of this vast province is no farther north than the central part of Scotland, and its most southerly point (the most southerly of the whole Dominion) is in about the latitude of Rome. It has no high mountains, though there is great diversity of surface, and the climate of the southerly and westerly portions of the peninsula of old Ontario is distinctly milder than that of Quebec or the prairie provinces. Of course there is great variety of temperature in different parts of this vast region. The lowlying districts bordering on the Great Lakes have, as might be expected, a more humid climate than places more inland and of greater altitude, but the winter of Ottawa resembles that of Montreal, and of course the cold is severe in the far north. It is, however, a fact that Canadians staying during the winter in England appear to feel the cold there more than English people do in the settled parts of Canada. Often, indeed, newly-arrived English people think that the dwellings of Canadians are kept too hot during the winter months; and perhaps they are. The practice of keeping the houses warm has some advantages, however. A somewhat severe “snap” of cold weather rarely works the havoc with the water-pipes in Canada that so frequently occurs during exceptionally cold weather in England; and people are able to use every room of their well-warmed habitations in a fashion which is of great advantage when the said houses are pretty fully occupied.
In a typical summer there is much sunshine and a good deal of hot weather; and then Canadians live much out of doors. Those of the dwellers in the cities who can afford to do so, often move early in the warm months to cottages beside some of the numerous lakes, and remain there throughout the summer. These cottages are generally more like wooden tents than houses, admitting the fresh air very freely. The country people also live much out of doors, but both men and women on the farms are too busy to take holidays during the hot season.
Besides her two boundary rivers, the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence, Ontario, which is a well-watered province, has many another fine stream; but perhaps the most striking of its natural features are its lakes, large and small. Passing up the St. Lawrence and skirting the provincial boundaries with one’s face turned towards the west, one comes first to Lake Ontario; then turning south along the Niagara River (perhaps its famous “Falls” are what most untravelled Britons would think of first of any place in Canada), one reaches Lake Erie, passes north through the St. Clair lake and river to Lake Huron, and from that by the wonderful locks at Sault Ste. Marie into Lake Superior, from the head of which inland sea it is only a few hours’ journey to Winnipeg. The interesting part of this imaginary voyage is that by the help of a few short canals it may be taken in reality. So every year millions of bushels of grain come from the wheat fields of the West to Montreal; and in a short time, thanks to improvements now under way, ocean-going steamers from Liverpool will be able to make an uninterrupted journey to Fort William, which is by rail almost a thousand miles from Montreal.
But if Ontario touched on none of the “Five Great Lakes” instead of upon four, which lie between her territories and those of the United States, she would still be a land of lakes, in right of Lake Simcoe and the Muskoka lakes, Lake Nipissing, Lake Abitibi, huge Lake Nipigon, the thousand-isled Lake of the Woods, and hundreds of others. Many of these contain great quantities of fish, though, so far as the “Great Lakes” are concerned, the “fish stories” of the pioneers read now like idle tales; but still the commercial fisheries of the province bring in over $2,333,000 (£480,000), and give employment to several thousand men. In 1909 the catches of trout and white fish were the most important.
Nevertheless, in this province the fisheries are a very small industry compared to mining, lumbering, manufactures and agriculture. Some twenty thousand men find employment in mines. The mineral taking first rank in Ontario as a revenue-producer is silver, of which the production in 1911 amounted to nearly $16,000,000 (£3,280,000). Pig iron, natural gas, nickel and copper came next on the list.
The discovery of the rich silver deposits at Long’s Lake, now Cobalt, was made by contractors engaged in building the Timiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway. About a month later—so the story goes—a blacksmith, La Rose, flung his hammer at an impudent fox. The missile struck a rock and made a bright metallic streak, which led to another great find. Not quite at once was the public persuaded of the value of these discoveries; then there was a mad rush to prospect for silver; and a town sprang up, looking, it is said, as if its makeshift houses had been “built between darkness and dawn.” An Indian is credited with the finding of gold-bearing quartz on the shores of Larder lake.
Years earlier, in 1884, the vast deposits of nickel a few miles west of Sudbury were cut into by the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, but there the mineral which first attracted attention was copper. This was sent to be smelted in New Jersey, and it was only when experts detected the presence of nickel in the slag that the true value of the Sudbury mines was recognized.
The forests of Ontario are of vast importance, and promise to remain so. It is satisfactory to add that the state owns the forests, to a large extent, in Ontario (as in Quebec), and the expenses of the provincial government are met by the revenues from the Crown lands and the Dominion subsidy without the need of laying a cent of taxation upon the people. Of course, whether they realize it or not, the indirect taxes, which are collected by the Dominion government, come out of their pockets, and there are municipal taxes, the weight of which varies very much in different municipalities, being naturally much heavier in the cities than in the country.
But to return to the forests. Including about one hundred thousand square miles of woodlands in the new district of Patricia, which is only partially explored, the total forest area of Ontario is estimated at 202,000 square miles. Of this about twenty thousand square miles is under licence, and in 1912 the revenue from the forests amounted to considerably over $2,000,000 (£410,000), whilst the revenue so collected since Confederation amounts to about $44,000,000 (£9,040,000). This has been derived from ground rents, timber dues, transfer fees, and bonuses (that is, sums offered over and above the fixed charges for the right to cut timber). In 1911 the value of the timber cut in Ontario was nearly equal to that of the “cut” in all the rest of the Dominion.
An Act passed in 1898 empowered the government to set apart “Forest Reserves, to be owned in perpetuity by the Crown and operated for timber crops,” and Ontario has now six forest reserves, which with Algonquin and Rondeau parks—chiefly intended for the preservation of game—amount in all to 20,000 square miles. The great northern forests consist largely of spruce, and there are half a dozen pulp and paper mills in operation in places easily accessible to these forests. Wood-pulp, by the way, is used in making car-wheels, coffins, pails, roofing materials and a long list of other articles. Ontario has still considerable forests of white and red pines, the trees, which were at one time counted by the lumbermen the only ones of value, being easily floated down to the sea, and being in great demand for masts and other uses. In Southern Ontario there used to be quantities of black walnut and other trees which would now be prized for making furniture, but in the days of the pioneers, owing to lack of transport facilities, vast piles of such woods were heaped together and burned.
In manufacturing, Ontario is the premier province, for though its capital comes in this respect second to Montreal, six Ontario cities are included amongst the first fourteen manufacturing centres of the Dominion. These are Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa, London, Brantford, and Berlin; and in addition there are many smaller industrial centres. The industrial establishments (taken at random) include lumber and flour mills, agricultural implement works, shipbuilding yards, iron and steel plants, foundries, railway shops, distilleries, canning factories, cheese factories, creameries, carriage and motor car works. A long list of others might be added, and these various industries offer a variety of opportunity to skilled workmen.
But after all, Ontario is still chiefly an agricultural country; and the value of her field crops is “more than that of any other two provinces.” In fact, the value of her whole agricultural products was estimated in 1911 at three hundred million dollars (about £60,000,000).
The province has a great variety of soils and climates, and its older parts are a region of “mixed farming”; where dairying, the raising of live stock; the growing of wheat, oats, and other grain; fruit culture, tobacco-growing, poultry-raising and bee-keeping are successfully carried on. Dairying, according to an official statement, “is the largest industry in the country”; and three-fourths of the dairy product of the whole Dominion is produced in Ontario.
The province produces also three-fourths of the fruit grown in Canada—chiefly in its southern counties bordering on the Great Lakes—and is almost equally famous for its apples and its peaches, its berries and its grapes. Hundreds of thousands of acres in Southern Ontario are planted with fruit trees and small fruit bushes; and immense areas of land equally suitable for fruit-culture remain to be planted—in the Niagara district, along the shores of Lakes Erie and Ontario, and in other districts.
From the point of view of opportunity for newcomers, the interesting feature of the situation is not what has been, but what may be done. The fact is, even in the older portions of the province, only the fringe of possible productivity has been touched, and here in Ontario we are still in the region where the country districts have suffered in the last few decades by the exodus of the young—at first largely to the United States, later to the West and to the cities. The result is that there are plenty of good farms for sale at prices ranging from $25 (£5) to $100 (£20) the acre—the latter price including the cost of buildings—and a list of these can be obtained from the “Director of Colonization” at Toronto.
The prices, by the way, of apple and peach orchards and of vineyards in good bearing go up far beyond the prices of ordinary farm lands. As much as from $400 (£80) to $1,200 (£240) an acre is asked in the Niagara district for peach orchards, according to age, while apple orchards may fetch from $300 (£60) to $500 (£100) an acre. Even unplanted lands good for fruit culture range high—$400 (£80) the acre being asked for land especially suitable for peach-growing.