WIDESPREAD MOURNING

Auckland Star, Volume XLV, Issue 19, 22 January 1914, Page 5

WIDESPREAD MOURNING

FOB LORD STRATHCONA. FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN. (By Cable.—Press Association—Copyright) (Received 11 a-m.) OTTAWA, January 21. Flags everywhere were half-masted in memory of Lord Strathcona, formerly High Commissioner for Canada, who died to-day. Universal tributes of mourning throughout Canada, from the Atlantic to the Pr, le, were paid the deceased. The Hudson Bay stores were all closed as a sign of mourning, the news being conveyed to the company's far northern posts by wireless. When Parliament met, Mr Borden (the Premier) paid a tribute to Lord Strathcona as a great Imperial figure, who saw Canada transformed from a small people to the greatest Dominion under the British flag. Sir Wilfrid Laurier referred to Lord Strathcona's splendid ability, which led to the construction of the trans-conti-nental railway across Canada in the face of innumerable difficulties. Mr Borden, on behalf of the Canadian people, is sending a message to the relatives. Sir Charles Tupper will probably represent Canada at the funeral. The House then adjourned as a mark of respect. The man who deservedly had so many honours showered on him, and who, though never, keen after money, yet acquired an immense fortune, was not of the humble origin- which some historians have chosen for him. He has been described as beginning life as a herd laddie or a shop boy. As a matter of fact, his parents were in comfortable circumstances. They lived at Forres, at Elgin, where the future builder of Canada was born on August 6. IS2O. The boy—Donald Smith—had a good education, and was intended for the law. But when he was eightern years of age he received an offer through his uncle. John Stewart, who had gone to Canada and become a noted fur trader, of a clerkship in the great Hudson Bay Company. It was a hard life to which he went. For many years it was something like a succession of Arctic explorations. As a trader young Smith tramped the wastes of the north from end to end, bargaining and bartering. For month on month he travelled the ice desert where the great Mackenzie River tumbles across the Arctic circle. Always on foot, accompanied only by a few Indians, he travelled the dreary distances, the hundreds of miles which separate the posts of the company. After ten yeans of it he was promoted from the trader's vocation to he an agent of the company on the bleak coast of Labrador, perhaps the most dreadful place on all the continent. Thirty years in all Donald Smith spent in banishment in the frozen North. Almost a working lifetime. Yet when he left it his life's work was all before him. He had become a man of iron amid those granite, snowy wastes, ever climbing up the ladder of the company. Slowly making use of every opportunity, he advanced from trader to factor, to chief factor. Last of all, at forty-eight years of age, he emerged from the wilderness, and was appointed to the governorship of the company, with offices at Montreal. At this time his beard was black and wiry, and heavy black brows above his eyes gave him a -tern and uncompromising appearaince. The show tan — which is stronger than the tan of the sun —had made him dark as an Indian. Seven years later, in ISBS, at Craigellachie, British Columbia, a man whose hair was snowy white drove a golden spike into the cedar tie upon which the rails of the Canadian Pacific Railway, the great work he himself had conceived, met from east to west. It was the same man—Donald Smith —but in those years of constant struggle, of incessant labour and anxiety, the black-bearded, sturdy man had changed to be a whitehaired veteran. Though he had little taste for politics, he entered Parliament in order to further his darling scheme. English financiers turned a deaf ear to appeals for capital to build the railroad; it was impossible to carry it through as a Government project. So a company was formed, which was ultimately capitalised at £13,000,000 of stock and £5,000,000 of land grant bonds, and, after incredible struggles to find the money, the railroad was built. Lord Strathcona's subsequent career is too well known to require recapitulation.