Nelson Evening Mail FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 1914. THROUGH CANADA.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLVIII, Issue XLVIII, 6 March 1914, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 1914. THROUGH CANADA.

A DELIGHTFUL book of travel is entitled "A Motor Tour Through Canada," by Thomas W. Wilby. Mr. Wilby started his overland journey at Halifax, Nova Scotia, where "he backed his car into the edge of the Atlantic, and collected a flask of sea water that he emptied 52 days later into the Pacific at Victoria, 8.C., having traversed a distance of 4200 miles, as measured by the speedometer. The author is described by the reviewers as being thoughtful as well as observant. He sees below the surface, and describes the people and the places with insight and spirit. For instance, in describing the Maritime Provinces, he writes : —"The pioneer spirit had apparently long since fled or remained only as aromas linger" in an old linen chest. I was in a settled country, definitely established. There was every evidence of solid conditions, of home love, and that larger home love, patritism, which looks upon the boundary of its own grounds as upon a frontier, and has no longer any desire to jump it. There is no real sense of nationality until a plot of God's earth has been endowed with one's deep' and unchanging- love. Compared with these steady-going maritime farmers, the Westerner is a nomad, a great nation-builder, as yet lacking the foundations of nationality, since he sells his land on occasion as lightly as he swallows his dinner. Not a little of this conservatism of the Canadian East is due to the engrafting of a population of Tory, stock upon a contented French peasantry, followed by the discovery of, a new and remote West that drained the Maritime Provinces of their young blood." That helps, us to realise the. vastness of Canada, the variety of customs and "manners to be found there, and the fundamental difference between the people of the eastern and western seahoards. '•

Quebec and the great St. Lawrence, with its grandeur, majesty, and beauty of course, made a powerful appeal to this and he is full of admiration for the "habitants." "If anybody' deserves Canada," he writes, "surely it is this old-fashioned, English- i language-murdering, tobacco-growing, semi-illiterate, easy-going, badly-dresseS 'antique'—the French-Canadian! On to Ottawa,- which the author compares with Buda Pes'th. "The Canadian Houses of Parliament, which dominate Ottawa," he writes, "have that touch of the wild and barbaric m their architectural com-' position which lends a distinctive note to the Hungarian pile. In both buildings there is a suggestion of the bizarre, of a foundation upon rude beginnings by a race grown from childhood through strenuous ways to greatness." Toronto, which the citizens are accustomed to call the Boston of Canada, earns chastened arid discriminating eulogy for "its clubs audits cosmopolitan crowds" ; "its affable tolerance of genius, art, and architecture," "its glittering white skyscrapers," and "its fine self-armroval." Then on to Manitoba aud at Winnipeg, the new Canada, "that looks confidently to the future rather than to the present, and forgets the past." From Winnipeg to Moose Jaw, and then across the great prairies of Saskatchewan and Alberta to the Kootenay Lake, in British Columbia, sped the motorist, with many adventures and emergencies of a kind not unknown to motorists in other new countries, until the car drew up at Alberni, on the inlet of the Pacific, beside a post bearing the words, "Canadian Highway." A transCanadian highway is to be built to supplement the trans-Canadian railway, and then motorists from' all over the world will be able to perform with far less trouble the unique journey ' that this author accomplished.