Canada: the Empire of the North - Agnes C. Laut

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two or three of the older women used to sit crying each night in despair till they disappeared in the crowded house, fourteen or twenty of them to a room. Within a week, the men were all at work sawing wood from door to door at a dollar and a half a cord the women out by the day washing at a dollar a day. Within a month they had earned enough to buy lumber and tar paper. Tar-papered shanties went up like mushrooms on the vacant lots. Before winter each family had bought a cow and chickens. I shall not betray confidence by telling where the cow and chickens slept. Those immigrants were not desirable neighbors. Other people moved hastily away from the region. Such a condition would not be tolerated now, when there are spacious immigration halls and sanitary inspectors to see that cows and people do not house under the same roof. What with work and peddling milk, by spring the people were able to move out on the free prairie farms. To-day those Icelanders own farms clear of debt, own stock that would be considered the possession of a capitalist in Iceland, and have money in the savings banks. Their sons and daughters have had university educations and have entered every avenue of life, farming, trading, practicing medicine, actually teaching English in English schools. Some are members of Parliament. It was a hard beginning, but it was a rebirth to a new life. They are now among the nation builders of the West.

      But it would be a mistake to conclude that Canada's nation builders consisted entirely of poor people. The race movement has not been a leaderless mob. Princes, nobles, adventurers, soldiers of fortune, were the pathfinders who blazed the trail to Canada. Glory, pure and simple, was the aim that lured the first comers across the trackless seas. Adventurous young aristocrats, members of the Old Order, led the first nation builders to America, and, all unconscious of destiny, laid the foundations of the New Order. The story of their adventures and work is the history of Canada.

      It is a new experience in the world's history, this race movement that has built up the United States and is now building up Canada. Other great race movements have been a tearing down of high places, the upward scramble of one class on the backs of the deposed class. Instead of leveling down, Canada's nation building is leveling up.

      This, then, is the empire—the size of all the nations in Europe, bigger than Napoleon's wildest dreams of conquest—to which Canada has awakened.[1]

       Table of Contents

      Canada . . 3,750,000 square miles Europe . . 3,797,410 square miles

      Maritime Provinces Square Miles Square Miles

       Nova Scotia. … . 20,600 England. … . 50,867

       Prince Edward Island 2,000 Germany. … . 208,830

       New Brunswick. … 28,200 France. … . 204,000

       ------ Italy … … 110,000

       50,800 Spain … … 197,000

      Quebec … . … . 347,350 Austria and Hungary 241,000

      Ontario … . … . 222,000 Russia in Europe 2,000,000

      Manitoba

      Saskatchewan 204,000

      Alberta … . … . 350,000

      British Columbia … 383,000

      Unorganized Territory of

       Keewatin … … 756,000

       Yukon … . … . 200,000

       MacKenzie River and

       Ungava … … 1,000,000

       AND THE UNITED STATES

       Table of Contents

United States Canada
In 1800 5,000,000 In 1881 4,300,000
" 1810 7,000,000 " 1891 5,000,000
" 1820 9,600,000 " 1901 5,500,000
" 1830 12,800,000 " 1906 6,500,000

      It will be noticed that for twenty years Canada's population becomes almost stagnant. The reason for this will be found as the story of Canada is related. If she keeps up the increase at the pace she has now set, or at the rate the United States' population went ahead during the same period of industrial development, the results can be forecast from the following table:

United States in 1840 17,000,000
" " " 1850 23,000,000
" " " 1860 31,000,000
" " " 1870 38,000,000
" " " 1880 50,000,000
" " " 1890 63,000,000
" " " 1900 85,000,000

       A few years ago, when talking to a leading editor of Canada, I chanced to say that I did not think Canadians had at that time awakened to their future. The editor answered that he was afraid I had contracted the American disease of "bounce" through living in the United States; to which I retorted that if Canadians could catch the same disease and accomplish as much by it in the twentieth century as Americans had in the nineteenth, it would be a good thing for the country. It is wonderful to have witnessed the complete face-about of Canadian public opinion in the short space of six years, this editor shouting as loud as any of his exuberant brethren. Still, as the outlook in Canadian affairs may be regarded as flamboyant, it is worth while quoting the comment of the most critical and conservative newspaper in the world—the London Times. The Times says: "Without doubt the expansion of Canada is the greatest political event in the British Empire to-day. The empire is face to face with development which makes it impossible for indefinite maintenance of the present constitutional arrangements."

      Regarding the Iceland immigrants, to whom reference is made, I recently met in London a famed traveler, who was in Iceland when the people were setting out for Canada, Mrs. Alec. Tweedie. She explains in her book how these people were absolutely poverty-stricken when they left Iceland. In fact, the sufferings endured the first year in Winnipeg were mild compared to their privations in Iceland before they sailed.

      The explanations of Canada's hard times from Confederation to 1898—say from 1871, when all the provinces had really gone into Confederation, to 1897, when the Yukon boom poured gold into the country—can be figured

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