A trader's post at Resolution, Great Slave Lake. These stations are headquarters for the steady barter maintained between the trappers and the company. In return for furs the hunters receive "credit," redeemable at the stores for provisions, merchandise, ammunition, and all other necessities of primitive life. Thousands of square miles are served by one of the "factories" Copyright, 1901, by Mathers, Lamonton The most northerly post of the Hudson's Bay Company ing. Here was the stuff! Could a market be found or be created for it? It used to be a stock apology for hard times in Canada that a country with a big neighbor next door was bound to be dwarfed industrially. It never seemed to dawn on the apologists-and I am sorry to say that half the papers that are now shouting in Canada were "calamityhowlers" 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. According to Mr. Hill, the point of exhaustion south of the boundary has already been approached. At all events, of the tide turning to Canada, 50 per cent. of the inpouring population and 80 per cent. of the inpouring capital are from the United States. The presence of the big neighbor is helping forward rather than dwarfing the Dominion. AREA AND POPULATION When one surveys Canada, the facts are so big as to be bewildering. In the first place, the area of the Dominion. It An important town of about 600 population in the province of Alberta, about 560 miles east from Vancouver. is the headquarters of the Canadian National Park and the whole town is the property of the Dominion Government and is under the control of the Park Superintendent. The Park has an area of 5,732 square miles and is situated on both sides of the Rocky Mountains. It contains the last large Canadian herd of buffalo is within a few thousand miles of the area of all of Europe. I prefer to give it comparatively, for figures mean nothing in the mass; and the statements can be verified by looking up the figures, which are taken from Canadian official publications. To be more specific-you could spread the surface of Italy and Spain and Turkey and Greece and Austria over Eastern Canada; and you would still have an area uncovered, in Eastern Canada alone, bigger than the German Empire. England, spread flat on the surface of Eastern Canada, would just serve to cover the Maritime Provinces nicely, leaving uncovered Quebec, which is a third bigger than Germany; Ontario, which is bigger than France; and Labrador (Ungava), which is about the size of Austria. So much for Eastern Canada. In the west you could spread the Louisiana Purchase on Western Canada; and you would still have a region uncovered as large as European Russia. You could spread the British Isles out; and you would barely cover the smallest of the western provinces-Manitoba and one corner of Keewatin. It would take one country the size of France to cover the new province of Saskatchewan, a country larger than Germany to cover the new province of Alberta, two countries the size of Germany to cover British Columbia and the Yukon; and there would still be left uncovered the northern half of the west-Mackenzie River and Athabasca. Suppose a population in Eastern Canada equal to France-which is absurd, for Quebec alone would support France's populationand 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 possible population of 200,000,000. The figures are staggering. Lord Strathcona, canny and conservative as his Scotch ancestry-whose eighty-six years have witnessed the growth of the United States to 85,000,000 and whose colossal fortune is directly the result of his faith in Canada's progress-forecasts the Dominion's population within the next century at 80,000,000. The basis of his estimate is what has taken place in the United States. America's population has been acquired against tremendous odds. There were practically no railroads when the movement to America began. Ocean-goers were sail-boats of slow passage and great discomfort. In Europe was profound ignorance regarding opportunities in America. To-day, all that is changed. Canada begins where the COKE OVENS OF THE UNION COLLIERIES CO., VANCOUVER ISLAND Experts have reported that if coal were taken from the Crow's Nest Pass region alone at the rate of from 4,000,000 to 10,000,000 tons a year, that field would not be exhausted in less than 5,000 years. Nature seems to have made a provision that is almost providential—that in those regions barren of fuel in forests, the earth should contain almost exhaustless resources of coal United States left off. Again the big neighbor helps instead of dwarfs. The whole world is now gridironed with railroads. The fast Atlantic liners offer greater comfort to the emigrant than he has known at home. Ignorance of America has given place to an almost romantic glamor. 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 land 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, as to immigration. More than 200,000 people a year are entering Canada; 189,000 may be classed as immigrants, 20,000 comprises the floating population of well-to-do visitors: in a word, the Pullman car passengers |