“The Twentieth Century is Canada’s"

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 19, 9 November 1910, Page 33

“The Twentieth Century is Canada’s"

THE ROMANTIC STORY OF A PEOPLE JUST DISCOVERING THEIR OWN COUNTRY.

By

AGNES C LAUT.

THE twentieth century belongs to Canada.” Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s prediction seems destined for bigger fulfilment than he himself fully realises. To no one has the marvellous growth of the Dominion come as a greater surprise than to Canadians themselves. Ten years ago such a prophecy as the Premier’s would have been regarded as “bounce” —the

after-dinner effusion of a speecliifier fond of hearing his own rolling periods. While Canadian politicians were still con tending for the honour of playing secondI’ddle to Imperial plans, they suddenly awoke to find themselves a nation. They realised all at once that history—and big history, too —was in the making. Instead of the Dominion being dependent on the British Empire, the Empire’s most far-seeing statesmen were looking to Canada for the sinews of imperial strength. A few years ago public men in the Dominion seriously talked of Canadian representatives having seats in the British Parliament. To-day they would not take a seat at Westminster as a present. With an empire of their

own equal in size to the whole of Europe, and with wealth to be developed exceeding the combined national incomes of every country in Europe—Canadian public men realise that they have enough to do without going to vVestminster on parochial politics and deceased wife’s sister bills. When Sir William Van Horne used to predict that there would be a population of 100,000,000 in the Canadian North-west, he was openly twitted by the Press. The laugh is now on Sir William’s side. And long ago, when the shareholders of the Hudson Bay Fur Company were anxious to sell their enormous holdings of land at a dollar an acre, at fifty cents an acre, at a cent an acre, at any slaughter price they could realise; and when Lord Strathcona (then Donald Smith), their Land Com-

missioner, kept sending back word: “Wait! Wait! Don’t sell yet! Hold on! Wait a bit! That country has a future’’ —it was commonly thought among shareholders that Strathcona must have a long lease of eternity. But he has lived to see land sales that have sent the Company’s stock up 1,000 per cent. As the different Canadian provinces came into the confederation, they were like beads on a string a thousand miles apart. First were the maritime provinces, with western bounds touching the eastern boundary of Quebec, but in reality with the settlements of New Brunswick amf Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island separated from the settlements of Quebec by a thousand miles of untracked forest. Only the Ottawa River •separated Quebec from Ontario; but one province was French, the other English

—aliens to each other in religion. language. ami customs. A thousand miles of iron-capped, rock-bound. winterbound wastes lay between Ontario ami tlie little settlement of Red River in Manitoba not an interest in common between the little province of the west and her sinters to the east. Then came prairie land for a thousand miles, ami impassable or rather unpassed mountains for GOO miles ‘before reaching the Pacific province of British Columbia, more complete! v cut off from the other parts of Canada than Mexico or Panama. In fact, it would have been easier for British Columbia to communicate with Mexico or Panama than with flu* rest of Canada. To bind into a cohesive nation these isolated patches of settlement oases of life in a desert of wilds—seemed a herculean task. A nation can prosper only as it trades what it draws from the soil. Naturally. these isolated provinces looked just across an invisible boundary to the

United States for trade. It was argued as absurd and against the manifest design of nature that the far-distant provinces should trade with one another, much less with England, when the United States was within a day’s journey of each province. But the United States erected a tariff wall that Canada could not climb. The struggling Dominion was thrown solely on its own resources. The high tariff that built up American industries was what gave the first impetus to Canada’s nationality. It compelled just what confederation lacked — cohesiveness. 1 will not say that without that high tariff Canadian confederation would have gone to pieces

like a rope of sand, but it is safe to say that without it Canadian resources would have gone to build up American cities, American ports, and American railways. Instead of having three transcontinental railways running east and west, the Dominion would have had hundreds of lines running south, feeding the products of Canada’s forests and farms and mines into American cities. the American tariff was a good thing for Canada. Thrown on its own resources, the Do* minion set itself to the great task of linking the provinces together, building railways from Atlantic to Pacific and canals' from tide water to the Great Lakes Tn actual cash from the Dominion treasury, this cost Canada £BO 000.000; to be exact. £00.000.000 fol the railways and £22.000.000 for the canals, not counting land grants and private subscription for stock, which would bring up the total expenditure to £200,000,000. This was a tidy sum for a country with no more population than Greater New York. To put it mildly—it was a staggering burden, as big a burden as Japan and Russia assumed fol their war; and their population is respectively 42,000,000 and 120,000,000. Pluekv little Canada! 1 don’t wonder that the bond-holders of some of those railways made it hot for the railway men financing them, and that Canadian credit in its early years stood on very shaky legs. In the case of the Government railway, the Intercolonial from the Mari time Provinces, and the Canadian Pacific from ocean to ocean, the railways pre ceded population—in fact, preceded the possibility of earning running expenses. Indeed, if Canadian railway magnates would speak, some comical stories could be told—and I hope some day they will be told—of the desperate r.traits to finance these lines. Two railway magnates, whose success now runs to the hundreds .of millions in coin, could tell of times when less than twenty-four hours lav between them and ruin. If the Parliamentary vote had not gone right, or the funds had not been found, construction gangs would have left work, construction magnates would have gone to -South America, and construction rails —as one comic paper put it at the time —“would have rusted on the prairie, iron tonic for the cows.” Those were Canada’s pioneer days, when the risks were so big and the task so hard that men forget that there could be sueli a thing as future prosperity. It was a financial light for national existence—a time when many were disposed to throw up the sponge and shout annexation. That day is past. That was Canada's seed-time; this is its harvest And the difficulties of financing its railways were repeated in every walk of life —farming, mining, lumbering, manufacturing. Here was the stull! Could a market lie found or be created for it? It used to be a stock apology for hard times in Canada that a country with a big neighbour next door was bound to be dwarfed industrially. It never seemed to dawn on the apologists

—and 1 am sorry to say that half the papers that are now shouting in Canada were “calamity howlers” in the hard days—that the swift progress of the United States meant exhaustion of natural resources, and the moment that point was reached, the tide of development would turn to Canada. When one surveys Canada, the facts a're so big as to be bewildering. Tn the first place, the area of the Dominion is within a few thousand miles of the area of all Europe. Suppose a population in 'Eastern Canada equal to France—which is absurd, for Quebec alone would support France’s" population—and a population in Manitoba equal to the British Isles, and in Saskatchewan equal to France, and in Alberta equal to Germany, and in British Columbia equal to Germany! This is ignoring the Yukon, Mackenzie River. Keewatin, and Labrador. taking only the parts of Canada proved habitable, whose lands are surveyed and whose climate has been tested. You have a nossible population of 200.000 000. The figures are staggering. Lord Strathcona, canny and conservative as his Scotch ancestry—whose eightysix years have witnessed the growth of the United States population to 85,000,000. and whose colossal fortune is directly tlie result of his faith in Canada’s progress—forecasts the Dominion’s population within the next century at 80.000, 000. He bases his estimate on what has taken place in the States.

Just when the free lands of the United States are exhausted and the Federal Government is putting up bars to keep out the penniless immigrant, Canada is in a position to open her doors wide. Of 171,000.000 acres of free prairie I’and in the West, surveyed and climatically fit for wheat, only 5,000,000 are now occupied. One-sixth only of Manitoba is occupied, and less than a tenth of the other Western provinces. Of the Great Clay Belt in Northern Ontario and the Great Forest Belt in Northern Quebec, not one per cent is yet taken up. At 80,000,000. Strathcona places the population of Canada within a century ! But, it may be said, these facts are potential. What is being actually done? First, us to immigration. More than 200,000 people a year are entering Canada ; IS!),000 may be classed as immigrants, 20,000 comprises the floating population of well-to-do visitors—in a word, the Pullman ear passengers whom the immigration inspectors do not enumerate. Of the immigrants, 57,000 are from the Western States, not including those Americans who are gradually getting possession of the best mines and vast timber regions, bringing their crews with them. But yesterday Ministers of the Interior apologised to Winnipeg audiences for the lack of immigration by saying that they “could not take immigrants by the scruff of the neck und force them into the country.” No such apologies are heard to-day. Under’ the present Minister

of the Interior, immigration has increased at the rate of 50,000 a year. Next as to wheat. Only one-sixth of Manitoba’s wheat lands are cultivated. That one-sixth yielded 87,000,000 bushels of wheat in one year —one-tenth of the entire wheat production of the United States. When all Manitoba’s wheat lands are occupied, it will be producing half as much wheat as the whole United States; and Manitoba is the smallest of the wheat producing provinces—is, in fact, only one-third the size of Saskatchewan and Alberta. The mind fails to grasp the wealth which this means to farmer, and railway shareholder, and miller. Indirectly, the result is seen in the stocks of the railways and the milling companies and the land companies, which have doubled in the case of the railways, trebled in the case of the milling companies, and gone up 1001) per cent in ease of File land companies. If you get the figures on the wheat fields of Canada. or the wheat fields of the United States, you wili find that a single year’s yield of wheat at the low’est current price in the history of wheat brings more cash in by millions of pounds than the richest yield of the richest goldfields in the world.

Canada's mines are on the same bewilderingly big scale as her wheat lands. It is an odd coincidence that the Dominion mines have yielded just about what would repay its first cash outlay in railways and canals, namely,

£80,000,000 —£20,000,000 in gold from the Yukon within the last ten years; £50,000,000 in gold (plaeer and lode), silver, lead, copper, and coal from British Columbia; another £10,000,000 in gold and coal from the eastern provinces. Only one-tenth of Canada’s mineral regions have yet been explored. All Labrador, all Keewatin, all Mackenzie River, the most of the Peace River and Athabasca, nine-tenths of British Columbia and the Yukon are still a terra incognita for the prospector. What these unknown mineralised regions may yield may only be inferred from discoveries daily being made. Two cases will illustrate —the uncovering of nickel and cobalt beds in Northern Ontario. For years anybody who has travelled over the iron wastes between the Ottawa River and the Great Lakes, must have felt convinced that mines would some day be discovered under those leagues upon leages of weathered, min-eral-stained rocks east and west of Port Arthur. When the railway was cut through the rocks at Sudbury, ore beds were discovered. They were thought to be copper, and actually bonded over to American capitalists as such. What was the amazement of the different mining companies when returns came back from the first shipments to learn that the mines were not copper, but nickel—the largest ore-beds of that rare metal in the world. How the mines of these disappointed capitalists were first exploited and finally opened is a romance by itself. Only one other conn try has such a supply of the metal most needed in war for vessels and gun works —France, in the mines at New Caledonia. There was the usual long period of experiment and discouragement and outlay, and, if governmental returns be correct, only £1,800,000 worth of the nickel has been mined to the present time; but when the great gun works of Europe heard of the find, and that the deposit had been proved, they offered to buy over the entire output of the mines to all time. To the American public, interest in the discovery centres round the fact that America now has an inexhaustible supply of the metal alloy for armaments that is almost ball-proof. The discovery has revolutionised armourplating for the American navy.

The discovery of cobalt came in almost the same way. The Temiseamingue railway construction gangs at the headquarters of the Ottawa turned up ore. It was thought to be low-grade silver or copper. A specimen was sent to Toronto, 300 miles away, for analysis. Meanwhile, a long-headed young fellow.

who had been earning a pittance at school-teaching and surveying in the region, took himself off for a hurried course in mineralogy. The official report on the specimen was so fabulous that the people of Ontario would not believe it. Ontario had been terribly bitten in the two mining booms, first in

Kootenay, then in the Yukon. In both Kootenay and the Yukon Americans were on the spot first. They had proved the mines to be producers, and had skimmed the cream of the profits before conservative Canadians would invest. The consequences were that when the Canadian capitalist did invest, he found

many of the Kootenay and Yukon mines worked out. Instead of cream, he found skim-milk, and he at once proceeded to recoup himself by putting on a brave face. He boomed his workedout mine, floated the venture with an absurdly big capital, and sold enough cheap shares to pay himself to;- his own

loss, with the result that almost every servant girl in Ontario contributed hard-earned wages to these eharks. So when the official report stated that the specimen of ore was cobalt-silver that would run from £ 140 to £ IGO a ton, Eastern Canada turned a deaf ear. What with Kootenay and Yukon, it

had had enough of mines for some time. History repeated itself. Americans rushed in during the fall of 1905 at the rate of 1,100 a day. When actual ore ship ments were made to New York and New Jersey and actual cash sent back in cheques of £60,000 ami £BO,OOO for a load—the ore running £l4O and £l6O a

ton as the official report had stated— Canada woke up and went mildly wild. The mining camp became the town of Cobalt, with a mushroom population; and if history is still further to repeat itself, the next thing in order is a series of wild-cat promoter schemes at inflated paper capital to filch the servant girls’ wages. And sure enough, such advertisements are now going the rounds of the American Press! Meanwhile, the young man who took the hurried course in mineralogy and had staked out a claim before the rest of Canada had wakened up is estimated to be a millionaire. At least, a New York company offered him £3,000,000 for his claim. The sale of his interests to the Guggenheims was reported in October. The discovery of the vast nickel beds and of the cobalt-silver resulted from railways penetrating unexplored regions. As I said before, nine-tenths of Canada’s mineral regions are unexplored. Again and again when 1 was going over the daily journals at the Hudson Bay for hunters, who tracked all parts of the wilds for furs, I found reports of “minerals here.’’ But the company did not want minerals. They wanted furs. The report of minerals was ignored. If the old journals’ prediction of copper in Labrador and silver on the Coppermine and galena and gold from Mackenzie to the Rockies be likewise verified, Canada’s lethargy regarding its mines

Will receive some rude jolts in the near future. But it is from its coal-beds that Canada will draw greater wealth than from the precious metals. The coal mines of Vancouver Island, and Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, need not be described here. They have already produced coal of as much value as the gold placers of the Yukon—close on £20,000,600. But these are not the big coal mines of Canada. The big coal area is just east of the Rockies, above the boundary extending north with intermittent barren areas 500 miles, as far as Peace River. Only one part of this enormous field

has been sufficiently exploited to give any definite data as to its capacity. That is the field at the Crow’s Nest Pass just forty miles north of the boundary. These mines have been opened only a short time. Tlie yield of a million tons a year is purely an experiment. Nevertheless .'the results uncovered can hardly be grasped. I give the estimate of two different experts. Both were Government geologists. Neither owned one cent’s worth of stock in any mine. Both gave their estimate before the mines were taken over by a stock company. One

declares that there is enough coal in the Crow’s Nest Pass region alone io yield 4,000,000 tons a year for 5000 years. The other declares that there is enough coal to yield 10,000,000 tons a year for 7000 years. Value that coal at twjj sliillings a ton—which is absurd. Add that value to the national wealth of Canada in miners’ wages, shareholders’ returns, rail and ship freight; and one does not need to state the figures. And this is but one of its Western coal fields. There are etill unexplored seams along the Saskatchewan, on the Peace River, and down the Mackenzie. Nature seems to have made a provision that is almost providential-— that in those regions barren of fuel in forest, the earth should contain almost exhaustless resources of coal. New fields are now being exploited in the interior of Northern British Columbia. Canada’s hard times are past. As Laurier says—the twentieth century belongs to Canada, industrially, at least. The story of Canada’s timber wealth is the same. Two thousand miles long is its field of uncut timber today, comprising 1,500,000,000 acres divided into three great belts, which cannot be described here. To put it briefly—according to Dominion authorities—Canada’s timber area is four times greater than the timber area of the United States, three times greater than the timber area of Russia, twice as great as the timber area of all Europe. And this source of national wealth is practically untapped. In the west, not more than f 400,000 worth of lumber is exported a year. In the east—though no figures are obtainable—at a guess, as much again; in all, a yearly revenue from its forests about equal to the gold from the Yukon. But this seven or eight million is a mere bagatelle to the revenue that will accrue from Canadian forests when the enormous limits recently bought by American capitalists in British Columbia are worked. In thus enumerating the causes of Canada’s present wonderful prosperity, I have not memtinned its manufactures, which have increased in number from thirty at the time of confederation to 75,000 to-day; or its railways, which have grown from two short lines of 2000 miles to three transcontinental lines with numerous branches totalling 23,000 miles. Nor have I mentioned its fisheries and dairying and fruit growing. These industries are not peculiar to Canada. They are sources of wealth common to other nations, that grow ag the farms and the mines and ths forests develop; but in the wheat lands and mines and forests, Canada lias a •wealth peculiar to herself.

The greatest problem confronting Canada in the immediate future is the shortest route to Europe by Churchill, Hudson Bay. For twenty years this has been mooted, but now 100 miles of the railway to the Bay are actually laid. Five years, at the least, will see trains running from the grain-growipg areas of the west to Hudson Bay. What does tills mean? It means that Churchill Is nearer the shippers of the Western States as a route to Europe than New York is by 1500 miles. But the success of the route hinges on the navigability of the Straits —a distance of 450 miles. That is a point too controversial to be settled here. If the development of resources in the twentieth century brings the same national expansion as the development of the same resources has brought about in the United States in the nineteenth century, Canada’s future is that of a New Nation. And if it flies the British flag while American capital develops its resources, there may yet be that commercial compact of an Anglo-Saxon brotherhood of which idealists have dreamed.