EDEN WITHOUT EVE.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XIX, Issue 4736, 15 January 1914, Page 2

EDEN WITHOUT EVE.

THE WEST OF CANADA. WOMAN’S INFLUENCE LACKING. (By Chas. E. Sigo). East is East and West is West in Canada, and between them Nature has set a thousand miles of swamp and rocks. This geographical barrier, ’situated in North Ontaria , would of itself ensure differences in istics between the two parts of the Dominion, consequently when you have crossed it and step off the train at Fort William you are prepared to find things different. The notice board tells you that the next train leaves at 19.14 o’clock. This is the Western way of saying 7.14 p.m., and a rather good way when once you become accustomed to it. The hours are counted in the ordinary way np> to mid-day, but 1 p.m. becomes 13.2 p.m., 14, 3 p.m., 15 o’clock and so on to midnight, whch is 24 o’clock, after which the count reverts to one. Time in the West -is nevertheless uncertain ; it varies with the longitude, and when making apointments you have to specify time east or west of a certain town, oi', better still, find out the difference between your own and your friend’s watch, and fix a time by one of them, for nearly every farmer has his own time.

When you reach Winnipeg you know assuredly you are in the West. You have met the big brother of all the Prairie towns which will afterwards welcome you. The family characteristics are fine wide streets (Winnipeg’s main street is 132 feet wide, and the others are in proportion), vast parks, good lighting, plenty of banks, picture shows, restaurants and real estate offices, with some other businesses sandwiched in amongst them; plenty of space everywhere for expansion. Sometimes when tramping over the prairie you will light on a sign Josephine Avenue, and at right angles to it a sign Columbia Avenue, and then you know that somewhere within a mile or two is an ambitious village, and this land ,is for sale as town lots. But the most typical thing in the West is the talk. It is always in the first person plural and deals generally with the rise of towns and land values. Somehow Wellington has an idea that Auckland is self-obstrusive and blatant, but really Auckland is as shy as seventeen compared with Western Canadian town, and when it comes to “boosting” Auckland doesn’t know how to start. Some of the Western towns have well-paid publicity managers, whose duty it is to see that papers in all parts of the world are kept supplied with information about the town’s roseate present and golden future, and to capture all more or less distinguished visitors and fill them with enthusiasm. The town council usually supplies the nucleus of the publicity fund, striking a special rate for it, and business men subscribe freely. Whether or not there is a publicity manager, every Westerner is a live canavsser for his town. He gives you the latest population statistics taken from the sporting edition of the evening paper and lots of other figures besides. He may bore you, but you cannot hut realise that this intense local patriotism (parochialism, if you like) is. after the blessed prairie, Canada's biggest asset. After all, thero is some room for talk. Seven years is sufficient for the birth and growth of a Prairie city replete with all the latest devices of civilisation, and owning trams, telephones, water and sewage, and electric light and power systems. In 1903 there were only 113 persons at Saskatoon; by 1911 there were 51,145. Can one wonder at those 113 persons being in perpetual prostration before the shrine of Saskatoon, and the rest bending the knee with them. Medicine Hat, containing 0000 people inTDll, has practically doubled that population. Western towns have a delightful habit of taking short cuts to reforms which older communities reach much morp circuitously. Thus the people of Edmonton noticed that when men had been a month in gaol without exercise they came out ill ]x>or physical condition and unable to take to hard manual work immediately. Now, Edmonton had no craving for men who could not work hard, so a 420-acro farm just out of town was purchased, and on this land prisoners work out their sentences, even though their term is only a day or two. The consequence is they return to society in good physical condition, they have done something useful to atone for their shortcomings, and often they have received tillable lessons in farm work. It is impossible to understand the social conditions of Western Canada unless one remembers that there is a great disposition l>ef."eon the sexes. In the picture shows, theatres, meetings and churches of Western towns tho same phenomenon strikes one the exec s of in -n in the audience, and the phenomenon heoom's. increasingly remarkable "S one penetrates to the nut-Of-the-wny corn-rs of the North-West

Territories and British Columbia. It is well to remember this when one hears the West Canada rated for three cardinal sins of modern times —immorality, drink, and gambling. There is always danger in destroying the balance of Nature and when it is the balance of the sexes whfch is upset one must expect altogether abnormal results. At the same time there is little covert vice in the West; it is all open to the heavens, and perhaps if the secret vice of more settled communities were taken in the reckoning,

the West of Canada might come out of the comparison without disadvantage.

The West is full of men who are bachelors, not by choice, but of necessity; homeless men, some of them loveless, but others with big hearts and a hi gache. Whatever their differences, they have this in common, thpt their lives are extremely monotonous and laborious. In their periods of realisation they crave for excitement, and the only excitement offering is the saloon and the gambling house. The timbermen of British Columbia have in most cases known no home influence since they were callow youths and have came into contact with no women, except the waitresses at hotels. When they leave the bush it is to drift into towns where, they are unknown and unwanted except by the saloon keei> ers. What happens is precisely what one expects. Some able men go to their favourite saloon, and, handing over a wad of notes to the keeper, ask to be kept in drink till it is finished. Others though doling out their money, drink by drink, get through it almost as quickly. They are big, silent, resourceful men, with protruding jaws made larger by much chewing and silent contemplation. Life to them lias no prospects ,no opportunity, no solace but the saloon.

Practically every Western town has, or lias had, a vice area, a segregated district. Winnipeg had a notorious section, but has resolutely set itself to clear it away, and this will no doubt be done all over the West as soon as conditions are sufficiently settled. In British Columbia the social evil has at times taken another and even worse form. The Rev. E. L. Pidgeon, of Vancouver, told the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church at Toronto last year of a steamer leaving Vancouver and going north to the logging camps with a number of girls on board, and when they approached the various camps a red flag was flown, “and,” said the speaker, “if I were to tell you the number of women to the number of men you would understand the depths to which women had fallen.” In the East the tendency is towards zealousness in guarding public morals.

When you are in Quebec province you will be warned of the materialism of the West of Canada, when you reach Toronto you will remember the wording, but not till you are west of Winnipeg will you realise how it is possible for human beings to be seized by the lust of money to the exclusion of all other interests except spending it. The materialism of the West is so stifling that sometimes you feel you can hardly breathe even out on the prairies, where the hungry air gives you a magnificent sense of physical buoyancy, and the sky and the horizon are further off than you have ever seen them before. Not till you reach Victoria (Vancouver Island) with its old world rest fulness will you breathe freely again. It is easy to blame the West for its materialism, but here again an abnormal result follows abnormal causes, fully 90 per cent, of those who settlo in Canada go to make money. They know that the. Canadian climate is extreme, that life in the "West is hard and without the compensations of more settled communities. The only lure is the opportunity for making money. Under tlie.se circumstances it would be foolish to expect the West to be anything but materialistic. As home life develops the West will become less materialistic. When the vast majorrty of men in the West are, or hope to be, husbands, their passion for making and talking about money will bo replaced by gentler and more human interests.

So ultimately the whole problem of the West is that of Eden without Eve. The West will be reformed only by the touch of woman, and meantime thoso brawny, hard-drinking pioneers at whom the East is wont to scoff aro busy preparing the way. Canadian women do not appear over-anxious to go and humanise the West if their jests about the hardships of Prairie life are to bo taken seriously ,but it is better that they should refuse the lot of a farmer’s wfe in the West, knowing what it means, than that they should accept it in ingoraneo ns many girls from the British Isles do. All honour to the many heroic women of Canadian and British birth who know jyhat pioneer farming means, and still elect to go West. Once the noed for bringing woman’s influence to bear on the West of Canada is realised, the importance, of the work of. such an organisation as the Imperial Home Re-Union Association will receive greater recognition. This Association was founded at V innipeg in. 1911, with a fund of 20,000 dollars guaranteed by forty citizens to be loaned and reloaned to men who were proving good citizens to bring out wives, children,, mothers and other non-earning relatives. Til© Association now has branches in various parts of Canada, and many family ro-unions have taken place that would in the ordinary eour.-v- have been delayed for a year or more. Not only is the ro-uu-inn hastened, lint, the worker is saved the necessity of keeping two homes going while he is saving enough to pay the passages of his family.