ARCTIC CIRCLE GARDENS

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXV, Issue LXV, 23 December 1913, Page 2

ARCTIC CIRCLE GARDENS

Q In the Fkr North-West of Canada the limit of cultivation steadily recedes. Mr H. A. Conroy, Inspector of Indian Agencies, who has returned to Ottawa from an inspection tour, tells of firstgrade wheat grown 800 miles north of and of f>rize vegetables raised within the Arctic Circle. The territory o^er which Mr Conroy exercises ' supervision is inhabited by about. 8000 I Indians. Once a year he visits the 18 agencies located there, and distributes to the. Indians .abput £7000 in money and several dollars worth of food, ammunition, fishing nets and other necessaries of" aboriginal life. "Our agent there last year/ T says the inspector," experimented with three varieties of wheat, the yields from which were taken down to Edmonton and found to be of No. 1 grade. He grew also 300 bushels of oats, a sample bag of which I took out with me. They weighed 381b to, the bushel. Rye and barley were aLso. successfully grown. 'This year when I was there, in July/ the grain crops and vegetables looked well, although the weather had been dry. At Fort Good Hope, within -the Arctic Circle, I saw the very best gardens on the whole route. In the Upper Mackenzie Valley there is a country as large as Manitoba, and every bit of it is fit for settlement "