"MAKING"A CITY

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 154, 27 December 1912, Page 2

"MAKING "A CITY

THE START OF PRINCE RUPERT OPTIMISM IN CANADA, "Organieed optimism" is the watchword of the Progress Club, Vancouver. It might be called the keynote of the whole Canadian West (writes H. Hamilton Fyfe, in the London Daily Mail). The "organisation/ I admit, is largely done by teal estate agents, whose interest lies in forcing up the price of land. But there is genuine optimism as well ; hopefulness which has no mercenary side to it j energy which aims at civic progress', jiot at individual gain. The newer the "city," the more ardent flame* the spirit 6$ its citizens. , Were this not so, their cities, would never be finished. The. obstacles they surmount are immensp. Faith • which can remote mountains ! The most- devout ChtisUafus are apt to stumble at that phrase. Yet he*© at Prince Rupertyoit can ccc the removal in progress. Hark to those dull sounds of explosion. Run to the .window and watch the hillside heave. They are blasting away the solid rock of the mountain—with dynamite and faith. "Making" a city seems, to those who i know drily Europe, a perverse enter- j prise. In. the older countries, cities have grown, as we say, naturally. Ihey began as village*. Gradually they expanded because they were convenient marketplaces, lay bh traffic routes, or offered advantage to the manufacturer. ' In Canada conditions are different. The country has to develop along its railways. Until the "steel" comes there is no need for cities. Those -who bring the steel can plump "them down where they will. Thus was bom Prince Rupert. AN UNLIKELY SPOT. Never did there exist i more. unlikely spot for a city to grow on., Northward, 500 miles aWay, lies Alaska, with its goldßeldß and glaciers.' To "the south, between Prince Jtupert andi Vahcouver, there stretch 550 allies of rock and water. Six years ago it was a waste of water and rock itself. Almost sheer up from a. wide arm of the Pacific ran the -side of a mountain, covered with tough trees. Into what soil there was the feet of men would have sunk, if men had ever trodden it, for" it was " muskeg "—wet ' and sour 'Yet this was the snot chosen by the Grand Trunk Pacific "to be its western terminal. There the new line, the national line, running 3600 miles east and west, reaches its goal, the P&cifle Ocean. Hence its liners ' will steam to the Orient and through the Panama Canal to- 'Europe. Upon this KupertiAhs found their belief that their city will, as a pcJrt, rival Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco even. They may be proved right in the future, ,'ln the meantime they are living, on faith. - Six years ago, let me repeat, this rock mountain side was just as it had been for 10,000 years— probably longer. Not Until, three years ago was there - any habitation, save tents. Now 6000 people live here. There are streets of shopß and rows Of pretty little houses* many with lawns and flower beds round them. There is a bank round every comer, with big office buildings on the corners themselves. Three newspapers* seven hotels, and two theatre's, add to the 2est of life. A cold-storage plant, the largest in Canada, is ready to begin on the fish which are caught here, chiefly halibut, as soon as the completed railway can Carry, them eastwards. A dry dock, costing half a million, is; begun. A £200,000 hotel will follow immediately. A strefet caf company has offered to lay rails at Ofloe«if-the>"city will grant -a forby years' license. But the city,\has cleolihecOUhis. It Hieans to provide the streetcars itself. " : - HIGH' PRICKS FOR LAND. * If fou could see the place you would at first be- staggered, no lees by the refusal than ty the idea that any com' 6any should dream of doing business here. There are as yet only two real roads. The rest are planked, and very bften raised on treaties, co as to bridge gullies or hollow^ filled with spongy soil. These planks are capital to walk on, even to drive on. Even to lay them down cost some £25,000. Without them, getting about would be incohceivable. But they have an oddly makeshift appearance, and the queer contrasts on every side add to the stranger's difficulty in understanding" why land is so grotesquely dear. 1 0n one plot is a neat Wooden villa, evidently lived in by people of taste and refinement. The next plot is covered with tree stumps and exuberant weeds. Almost overhanging one of the best buildings and flanked immediately by a board advertising a. cafe is an immense mass of rock. All through, the town site these are the present conditions. Only by the exercise of faith c,ah one imagine Prince Rupert emerging from its ragged chrysalis und' becoming really a town. Naturally you ask, "How has it managed to do bo much already?" "How do its inhabitants live?" Again the reply is, "Faith !" A great ban)? has so much faith in the future of Prince Rupert that it lent the municipality £200,000. Already that sum is. exhausted, and Very little of the mountain is removed. But no "one is discouraged. Paa-t of the loan provided a water supply. The city will proceed to borrow more money upon the security of that water supply.. A water electric-poWer plant which it is planning will also be mortgaged .as soon as it exiete. . These public Works, , added to private constructions, are what tho 6000 live on, in addition to what money they brought with .them and to the prices which are paid by outside buyers for plots of land. When the railway is finished fishing will be a most profitable industry. It is said that a population of 30,000 could live by this alone. But meanwhile it is Faith, translated into floods of dollars poured out by lenders and speculators, which kecpß Prince Rupert alive, FAITH AGAINST REASON. Gambling in futures has raised the price- of land to a ridiculous height. Here are a few examples. Centre sites are naturally most ' valuable, but what justification can there be for thinking that 50ft of frontage, with 100 ft of depth, are worth more than £12,000? That sum has actually been offered and refused. Corner .lots change hands— and real jingling coin is paid for them— at seven, eight, nine thousand pounds apiece. 1 asked a shopkeeper how much rent he paid , he told me £20 a month ! As 1 drove over the plankways I had pointed out to me patch after patch of bare rock and' morass for which thousands had been paid. There is more faith to the square inch in Canada than in any other country upon earth. But remember this also, that in Can* ada faith is often justified against all reason. Many men are rich now who were thought to be lunatics throwing their money away. Why, in Prince Rupert faith is even changing the climate. It used to be wet here, so they say, 364 days out of the 365. A tribe of Indians on the Skeena River were once tackled by a missionary. They listened to his Bible stories with interest, and believed them, until he came to the Flood. Then they rose and shook their heads. f "The world flooded after forty days' and forty nights' 'rain!'* they said scornfully, "why, it i often rains more than > that here !" Yet now the ftupertiane declare their rainfall to be far less than when the city was founded. I certainly had one fine day there. But that may have { been the three hundred and sixty ; '-fifth !