IMMIGRANTS TO CANADA.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXXVI, Issue 13334, 24 March 1911, Page 2

IMMIGRANTS TO CANADA.

Press Association.—Telegraph .—Copyright. Received March 2-t, 1.1.0 p.ra. OTTAWA. March 23. For the ten months to January, 11)11, immigrants to Canada numbered 200,687. TRAGIC SIDE OF CANADA. The prospective brides who rushed the agencies in London, as stated in the cable messages the otherday, when it was announced that 50,000 brides were wanted, for Canadian farmers, had probably read the glowing literature published in such quantities about the iCominion ; but that there is a tragic side to the picture is shown bv a story related by Mr John Lemmone, of Sydney, who recently travelled throuoii the .country with Madame Melba’s concert party. At Brandon, in Manitoba, the visitors, driving out sight-seeing one day, were shown a handsome building which had failed of its original purpose; a boys’ college, since the farmers so urgently needed the labour of their sons on the land that they could not scud them to finish their education. The Government, taking over the college, devoted it to the purposes of a mental hospital ; “and now,” continued Mr Lemmone, “it is filled with patients—none other than farmers’ wives, who have become insane through the loneliness of the prairie life. While their husbands are away the poor women must remain at home ; the nearest neighbours arc miles away,, and for six months the place is a wilderness of snow —and nothing is more terrible in its desolation than the prairie under snow. No wonder they go out of their minds.” Such is the tragedy of life out west in Canada. Ear better for the immigrants to have come to New Zealand, even to take up domestic service!