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Chris Willmore

A barn near St. Adolphe, Manitoba (ca. 1920). Original photograph in the Anthologist’s collection.

Cover Image: Dixon, S. J. (ca. 1890). Untitled (Toronto) [Photograph]. Anthologist’s collection.

STORIES

FROM CANADA’S

Economic History

Collected From

CONTEMPORARY NEWSPAPERS

SECOND EDITION

“And let us, ciphers to this great accompt, / On your imaginary forces work.” Shakespeare, Henry V, Act 1, Prologue

CURATED, EDITED AND ANNOTATED BY

Christopher Willmore Victoria, B.C., 2019

All articles in this collection are in the public domain in Canada; they were re–typed from their sources by Christopher Willmore.

Edited Text and Annotations © Christopher Willmore 2019

ISBN 978–1–9992295–3–5

A Skeride Publication

ELISHEA

For Her Patience

MY PARENTS

For Their Support

A QUICK NOTE

This work is not intended as a comprehensive textbook, but as an invitation to explore. Don’t feel you have to read it cover–to–cover; feel free to flip through these pages and start reading whatever catches your interest. I find that part of the fun in reading from the past is seeing how language evolves. To that end, I’ve left spelling and punctuation mostly as it was in the original articles. Since these stories are drawn from newspapers, which were often printed on a tight deadline, there are more errors than usual in the source material. I have silently corrected obvious typos, and sometimes changed spelling to be internally consistent in each article. I have also added paragraph breaks for ease of reading, and broken up some run–on sentences with commas. All text in bold (save some article titles) is mine, as are all footnotes1 and [words in square brackets]. I’ve made use of the following standard devices to comment on the text: […] = “I’ve skipped some words here.” [sic.] = “I know this looks like a typo, but it was written that way in the original.” Ibid. = “Same source as the above.” It was common in the past for Canadian newspapers to use words that are now (and in many cases, were then) ethnic slurs, especially when writing about Indigenous people. I believe it is important to acknowledge that these hurtful terms were used, but I have no wish to either perpetuate them, or to introduce them to new audiences. I have therefore replaced such words with their first letters followed with several dashes, as in h––––– (referring to a person of mixed heritage), s––––– (an Indigenous woman) and s–––––h (an Indigenous man). That’s it! You’re all set – enjoy!

C. WILLMORE

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Table of Contents

A QUICK NOTE .................................................................................................................................... 6

I. Newfoundland .......................................................................................................................19

1. A Natural History of Newfoundland’s Fisheries (1859) ................................................................. 20

2. Among the Fishermen of Newfoundland (1884) ........................................................................... 27

The Bait Act and its Aftermath ......................................................................................................... 31 3. No More Bait (1887) ................................................................................................................................ 31 4. Concerns About the Bait Act (1889) ......................................................................................................... 33 5. Realities of Competition with the French (1890)....................................................................................... 34 6. Suspension of the Bait Act (1893) ............................................................................................................ 36 7. Waste of Herring Prior to the Bait Act (1896) ........................................................................................... 37 8. The Aftermath of the Bait Act (1896) ....................................................................................................... 38

Factors Influencing the Price of Cod ................................................................................................. 39 9. Song of the Fisherman (1889) .................................................................................................................. 39 10. Fishermen, Prepare for War! (1894) ....................................................................................................... 39 11. A Cod Cartel (1894) ................................................................................................................................ 41 12. The Codfish Cull (1894) .......................................................................................................................... 43 13. Abuses of the Truck System (1894) ........................................................................................................ 45 14. Smelly and Hard to Prepare (1903) ........................................................................................................ 47

The Crash of 1894 ............................................................................................................................. 48 15. No Calm Before the Storm (Early December, 1894) ................................................................................ 48 16. The Crash (December 10, 1894) ............................................................................................................. 50 17. The Aftermath (February, 1895) ............................................................................................................. 50 18. The Roots of All Trade (1894) ................................................................................................................. 51 19. A Run on Three Banks (May, 1895)......................................................................................................... 52 20. Signs of Recovery (November, 1895) ...................................................................................................... 53

Our Staple Product: The Letters of James Murray ............................................................................ 55 21. Relieving the Fish Market (July, 1897) .................................................................................................... 55 22. Mr. Anderson Replies (July, 1897) .......................................................................................................... 56 23. The Price of Fish (July, 1897) .................................................................................................................. 57 24. Our Staple Product (July, 1897) .............................................................................................................. 59 25. On the Subject of Dry Codfish (July, 1897) .............................................................................................. 61 26. The Staple Industry (July, 1897) ............................................................................................................. 63 27. The Chief Consumers of Dried Codfish (July, 1897) ................................................................................. 64 28. The Final Letter (August, 1897) .............................................................................................................. 66

29. The Man Who Owned Half of Newfoundland (1898) .................................................................. 68

30. The Reids and Labrador (1907) ................................................................................................... 71

II. Fur ........................................................................................................................................73

Beavers and their Fur ....................................................................................................................... 74 1. The Beaver (1887) ................................................................................................................................... 74 2. One of the Romances of the French Regime (1918) .................................................................................. 77 3. The Beaver Club (1910) ............................................................................................................................ 78 4. ‘Made Beaver’ as a Currency (1921) ......................................................................................................... 80

Fashion and the Beaver Hat .............................................................................................................. 83

5. “Many in Number and so Absolutely Unlike” (1909) ................................................................................. 85 6. “Becoming and Refined” (1911) ............................................................................................................... 86 7. Mrs. Quain’s First Reception (1914) ......................................................................................................... 93

Edmonton and the Fur Trade ............................................................................................................ 93 8. The Founding of Edmonton (1921) ........................................................................................................... 93 9. How the Trade is Handled (1899) ........................................................................................................... 104 10. Seasonal Shipments (1899) .................................................................................................................. 106 11. The Revillons (1906) ............................................................................................................................ 109 12. Further History of the Revillons (1918) ................................................................................................. 111 13. Competition and Indigenous Fur Traders (1922) ................................................................................... 112

14. How Fur was Sold in London (1894) .......................................................................................... 113

Fur Farming .................................................................................................................................... 117 15. Capacity and Quality Constraints to Trapping (1926) ............................................................................ 117 16. A Rapidly Developing Industry (1928) ................................................................................................... 118 17. A Russian Prince and Canadian Muskrat Rancher (1929) ...................................................................... 119 18. The Growth of Fur Farming (1935) ....................................................................................................... 120 19. A Demonstration of Dentistry (1934) ................................................................................................... 120 20. A Mink Factory (1949).......................................................................................................................... 121

Freight and Transportation ............................................................................................................. 124 21. By Canoe (1920) .................................................................................................................................. 124 22. By Dog Train (1897) ............................................................................................................................. 127 23. By Cayoose (1883) ............................................................................................................................... 131 24. By Steamboat (1921) ........................................................................................................................... 133

Traders and Trappers ...................................................................................................................... 136 25. Silhouette of the Northern Fur Trapper (1909) ..................................................................................... 136 26. Wending Home (1907) ......................................................................................................................... 138 27. A Companionable Tobacco Pipe (1909) ................................................................................................ 140 28. Jack Norris, Pioneer (1916) .................................................................................................................. 143 29. Pa–Ta of the Biigtigong Nishnaabeg (1923) .......................................................................................... 152 30. The Tales of Johnny Berens (1923) ....................................................................................................... 154 31. A Unique Family Gathering (1906) ....................................................................................................... 161 32. Number Sixteen (1894) ........................................................................................................................ 162

III. The Treaties, and After ...................................................................................................... 166

Starvation, the End of the Buffalo, and Sitting Bull......................................................................... 167 1. Conditions Near Battleford (1879) ......................................................................................................... 167 2. The Indians in Manitoba (1879) ............................................................................................................. 168 3. Starvation and Cattle Ranching in Alberta (1912) ................................................................................... 171 4. The Buffalo are Near Extinction (1882) ................................................................................................... 172

Land and the Treaties ..................................................................................................................... 174 5. An Early Treaty Talk (1849) .................................................................................................................... 174 6. Treaties and the Mounted Police (1885) ................................................................................................ 177 7. An Account of a Signing of Treaty 6 (1918) ............................................................................................. 179 8. A Treaty 6 Payment (1884) .................................................................................................................... 182 9. Indian Department Oxen and Treaty 6 (1884) ........................................................................................ 184 10. Denied Rations (1885) ......................................................................................................................... 186 11. Crowfoot’s Oration (1886) ................................................................................................................... 187 12. Hunger, Rations and Hayter Reed (1888).............................................................................................. 189 13. The Signing of Treaty 8 (1899) .............................................................................................................. 191

14. “Nothing to be gained by being Indians” (1882) ................................................................................... 197 15. Speculation in Scrip (1911) ................................................................................................................... 198 16. Conflict Over Urban Land (1882) .......................................................................................................... 204 17. Minor Chiefs Swear Not to Sell Lands (1913) ........................................................................................ 206

18. The Life of Peter Hourie (1920) ................................................................................................. 207

The Potlatch ................................................................................................................................... 214 19. A Songhees Potlatch (1874) ................................................................................................................. 214 20. ‘Evils’ of the Potlatch (1896) ................................................................................................................ 215 21. “The Potlatch is Our Bank” (1896) ........................................................................................................ 216 22. The Potlatch Economy (1898) .............................................................................................................. 218 23. A Fort Rupert Potlatch (1899) .............................................................................................................. 220 24. Albert Edward Edenshaw, Chief of the Haidas (1897) ........................................................................... 221 25. A Potlatch in Settlement of Debts (1900) ............................................................................................. 222 26. Collecting Debts for the Potlatch (1902) ............................................................................................... 223 27. “The Last Great Potlatch” of the Songhees (1910) ................................................................................ 225 28. The Indian Act’s Potlatch Ban (1913) .................................................................................................... 226 29. “The Last of its Kind” (1922) ................................................................................................................. 227

30. The Feast of the Bear (1900) ..................................................................................................... 229

31. Sacket of the Quatsino First Nation (1895) ............................................................................... 233

The Oolichan................................................................................................................................... 235 32. Food and Light (1883) .......................................................................................................................... 235 33. Use and Preparation of the Oolichan (1885) ......................................................................................... 235 34. Catching the Candle–Fish (1884) .......................................................................................................... 237

Settler Perceptions of Indigenous Women ..................................................................................... 238 35. L. M. Montgomery on Saskatchewan (1891)......................................................................................... 238 36. How a Woman Should Dress (1892) ..................................................................................................... 241 37. “Woman’s Position Among the Indians” (1887) .................................................................................... 241 38. “Infinite Patience” (1911) .................................................................................................................... 243 39. “The heavy end of the burden” (1911) ................................................................................................. 244

40. The Green Corn Dance of the Onondaga (1896) ........................................................................ 244

“Back and Forth from Time Immemorial” ....................................................................................... 248 41. Mrs. White–Feather and Mrs. Full–Moon (1925) .................................................................................. 248 42. “Two Women Turned Back” (1925) ...................................................................................................... 249 43. A Right, Interrupted (1925) .................................................................................................................. 250 44. “With Bag and Baggage Galore” (1908) ................................................................................................ 251 45. “Tribes thus United” (1908) ................................................................................................................. 252

IV. Chinese Immigration ......................................................................................................... 255

Changing Perspectives on a Chinese Head Tax ............................................................................... 256 1. Mr. Bunster’s Argument (1871).............................................................................................................. 256 2. A Motion for a Head Tax (1875) ............................................................................................................. 259

The Head Tax of 1878 ..................................................................................................................... 260 3. Difficulties Collecting the Tax (1878) ...................................................................................................... 260 4. ‘A Bathos of Meanness’ (1878) .............................................................................................................. 262 5. The Turning Point (1878) ....................................................................................................................... 263 6. The Strike (1878) ................................................................................................................................... 264 7. More ‘Inconvenience’ (1878) ................................................................................................................. 265

8. Chinese Cooks are not Easily Replaced (1878) ........................................................................................ 265 9. Collection of the Tax Resumes (1878) .................................................................................................... 265 10. Unconstitutional and Void (1878) ........................................................................................................ 265

11. An Anti–Chinese Meeting (1885) .............................................................................................. 266

12. A “Monster Public Meeting” (1886) .......................................................................................... 268

The Occupations ............................................................................................................................. 268 13. Statistics of Victoria’s Chinese Trade (1901) ......................................................................................... 269 14. Catching Fish (1861) ............................................................................................................................ 269 15. A Chinese Restaurant (1883) ................................................................................................................ 270 16. Hing, the Chinese Servant (1885) ......................................................................................................... 270 17. Hing Celebrates the Chinese New Year (1885) ...................................................................................... 272 18. Farmers and Sanitation Workers (1891) ............................................................................................... 273 19. Sanitary Issues with Chinese Laundries (1908)...................................................................................... 274 20. Improved Sanitation in Chinese Laundries (1908) ................................................................................. 275

The Fall of Kwong Lee ..................................................................................................................... 275 21. A Meeting in Chinatown (1884)............................................................................................................ 275 22. The Second Meeting (1884) ................................................................................................................. 276 23. An Auction of Goods (1885) ................................................................................................................. 276

Standard of Living and Way of Life ................................................................................................. 277 24. A Chattel Mortgage (1900) ................................................................................................................... 277 25. What’s in a Name? (1908) .................................................................................................................... 278 26. Edmonton’s Chinese Community (1908) .............................................................................................. 279 27. An Edmontonian Aviator (1923) ........................................................................................................... 282 28. A Walk Through Victoria’s Chinatown (1886) ....................................................................................... 283 29. A Prosperous Tailor’s Household (1902) ............................................................................................... 287 30. Chinese New Year in Victoria (1903)..................................................................................................... 290

Victoria: Opium Smuggling Central ................................................................................................. 295 31. A ‘Lucrative Trade’ (1865) .................................................................................................................... 295 32. “The Use of the Deadly Drug in Victoria” (1881) ................................................................................... 296 33. “Chinese and Opium Smuggling to the States” (1885) .......................................................................... 297 34. Canned Opium (1878) .......................................................................................................................... 298

The Business of Opium ................................................................................................................... 299 35. Dr. Helmcken’s License Fee (1865) ....................................................................................................... 299 36. Alcohol and Opium (1884) ................................................................................................................... 299 37. War and the Opium Trade (1894) ......................................................................................................... 300

The Beginning of the End for the Opium Industry........................................................................... 301 38. Low Prices from a Rival (1889) ............................................................................................................. 301 39. A Falling Chinese Population (1890) ..................................................................................................... 302 40. Lower Taxes are Bad for Smugglers (1894) ........................................................................................... 303 41. The Wilson Bill (1894) .......................................................................................................................... 304 42. A Celebration of the End (1894) ........................................................................................................... 305

Supply and Demand of Chinese Workers ........................................................................................ 306 43. “A Flood of Celestials” (1876)............................................................................................................... 306 44. Where do they Come From? (1884) ..................................................................................................... 306 45. From China to Alberta (1911) ............................................................................................................... 307 46. Across the Ocean to Red Deer (1925) ................................................................................................... 309 47. “We mean to stay.” (1884) .................................................................................................................. 311

48. After Working on the Railway (1885) ................................................................................................... 312 49. The Impact of Layoffs (1900) ................................................................................................................ 313

Chinese Participation in the Gold Rush ........................................................................................... 314 50. Early Arrivals (1860) ............................................................................................................................. 314 51. Old Fields, Fresh Eyes and Fortune (1862) ............................................................................................ 315 52. Claims in the Kootenays (1866) ............................................................................................................ 316 53. Later, in the Kootenays (1867) ............................................................................................................. 316 54. The Prettiest Nugget in British Columbia (1874) ................................................................................... 317

V. Gold .................................................................................................................................... 318

1. A Song of the Cariboo Gold Rush (1864) ..................................................................................... 319

The Gold Fields of British Columbia ................................................................................................ 320 2. Victoria and the Fraser River Gold Rush (1858) ...................................................................................... 320 3. Gearing Up for the Gold Rush (1860) ..................................................................................................... 323 4. The First Pioneer to East Kootenay (1902) .............................................................................................. 332 5. “We opened fire on them killing eleven” (1884) ..................................................................................... 334 6. From Hill’s Bar to Big Bend (1886) .......................................................................................................... 336 7. Hydraulic Mining in the Cassiar (1917) ................................................................................................... 345 8. Barkerville in Later Days (1912) .............................................................................................................. 348

The Rossland Mines ........................................................................................................................ 351 9. 480 Feet Under Ground (1896) .............................................................................................................. 351 10. A $60,000 Suit of Clothes (1910) .......................................................................................................... 354 11. The War Eagle Mine (1910) .................................................................................................................. 358 12. What is a Mine Worth? (1903) ............................................................................................................. 360

The Cariboo in ‘62 ........................................................................................................................... 363 13. When Cariboo Was in Flower (1908) .................................................................................................... 363 14. The town of Williams Creek (1862) ...................................................................................................... 366 15. Throwing Twenties Away (1861) .......................................................................................................... 366 16. “The Usurper Fantasy Dethroned” (1862) ............................................................................................ 367 17. “Such is Life in Cariboo” (1862) ............................................................................................................ 370 18. “I have seen so much gold that I am sick.” (1862) ................................................................................. 371 19. Abbott and the Mirror (1903) .............................................................................................................. 373

Eliza Ord, Cariboo Entrepreneur ..................................................................................................... 373 20. Mr. and Mrs. Brooks’s Saloon (1864).................................................................................................... 374 21. Isaac Brooks runs low on money (1865) ............................................................................................... 374 22. Tumultous Times (1866 – 1868) ........................................................................................................... 375 23. Courts and Contractors (June, 1872) .................................................................................................... 376 24. The Breach of Promise Trial (June, 1872) .............................................................................................. 377 25. Eliza Ord’s Reply (June, 1872) .............................................................................................................. 380 26. An Unfortunate Case (October, 1889) .................................................................................................. 381

Roads to Gold (or Lack Thereof) ..................................................................................................... 382 27. The Burden of a Road Tax (1860) ......................................................................................................... 382 28. The Road from Port Douglas (1860) ..................................................................................................... 384 29. Blazing the Dewdney Trail (1901) ......................................................................................................... 384 30. Unreasonable and Cranky Kickings (1890) ............................................................................................ 388

The Klondike Rush .......................................................................................................................... 389 31. “The Most Remarkable Gold Country” (1897) ...................................................................................... 389 32. Tips for the Tenderfoot (1897) ............................................................................................................. 395

33. How to Mine Gold in the Klondike (1897) ............................................................................................. 396 34. Home Life in Dawson City (1897) ......................................................................................................... 398 35. “It pays to be good looking” (1898) ...................................................................................................... 399

Gold on the Saskatchewan ............................................................................................................. 403 36. With Pick and Shovel and Grizzly (1922) ............................................................................................... 403 37. Gold Dredging on the Saskatchewan (1901) ......................................................................................... 404 38. From Fine Nothingness to Bright Nugget (1901) ................................................................................... 406 39. The Autobiography of Tom Clover (1917) ............................................................................................. 408

Nellie Cashman ............................................................................................................................... 417 30. Death of an Explorer (1925) ................................................................................................................. 417 41. Tea in the Snow (1875) ........................................................................................................................ 417 42. Miner, Leader and Entrepreneur (1889) ............................................................................................... 418 43. Cassiar and the Klondike (1898) ........................................................................................................... 419 44. A Bold Impersonator (1898) ................................................................................................................. 419 45. At the Home of Kate Ryan (1924) ......................................................................................................... 421

Kate Ryan ....................................................................................................................................... 422 46. “The far north is the only place to live” (1924) ..................................................................................... 422 47. Running for Office (1920) ..................................................................................................................... 423 48. A New Store (1921).............................................................................................................................. 423 49. “The Producers of the Real Money” (1921) .......................................................................................... 424 50. Death of a “Big Sister” (1932)............................................................................................................... 425

VI. Railways ............................................................................................................................ 426

1. Waiting for the Railroad (1910) .................................................................................................. 427

2. Ontario’s First Steam Railway (1914) .......................................................................................... 430

The Canadian Pacific Railway (C.P.R.) ............................................................................................. 433 3. “The Offspring of Two Great Ideas” (1886) ............................................................................................. 433 4. Tyrants of the Lunch Counter (1893) ...................................................................................................... 435 5. “Luxurious in Comparison” (1899).......................................................................................................... 436 6. Supplying Food for the Railway (1913) ................................................................................................... 437 7. How the Canadian Pacific Selects Cooks (1912) ...................................................................................... 439 8. “A Subtle Ingenuity in Advertising” (1914) ............................................................................................. 440 9. Adventures of a Dime Laundry Bill (1914) .............................................................................................. 441

Land Grants and the C.P.R. ............................................................................................................. 441 10. The Pacific Swindle (1880) ................................................................................................................... 441 11. Land Grants, Schools and Taxes (1913) ................................................................................................ 443 12. A Closer Look (1896) ............................................................................................................................ 444 13. The Owners of the Land (1884) ............................................................................................................ 448 14. Crowding by Colonization Companies? (1882) ...................................................................................... 450 15. “At Present Virtually Locked Up” (1882) ............................................................................................... 452

Sir John Lister–Kaye and the C.P.R. Lands ....................................................................................... 454 16. In the Beginning (December, 1886) ...................................................................................................... 454 17. An Incentive to Settlement (January, 1887) .......................................................................................... 454 18. A Great Canadian Farming Scheme (December, 1888) .......................................................................... 455 19. “Irrevocably Lost” (September, 1891) .................................................................................................. 457

Manitoba vs. the Canadian Pacific Railway .................................................................................... 460 20. Fighting a Monopoly (1887) ................................................................................................................. 461 21. A Manitoban Protest Song (1887) ........................................................................................................ 462

22. How Manitoba Won (1911).................................................................................................................. 464

The Canadian Northern Railway (C.N.R.) ........................................................................................ 465 23. “A Record of Progress” (1914).............................................................................................................. 465 24. Donald D. Mann of the C.N.R. (1909) ................................................................................................... 469 25. Financing the C.N.R. (1903) .................................................................................................................. 476 26. Land Grants and the Early C.N.R. (1914) ............................................................................................... 479 27. Building Ahead of Demand (1913) ........................................................................................................ 480 28. The Development of Vegreville (1913) ................................................................................................. 481 29. Education on Rails (1915)..................................................................................................................... 482 30. The C.N.R. is Taken Over (1917) ........................................................................................................... 484

VII. The American ‘Invasion’ ................................................................................................... 486

A Sudden, Massive Movement ....................................................................................................... 487 1. The Man Who Made the Valley (1910) ................................................................................................... 487 2. The Magnetic Northwest (1906) ............................................................................................................ 490 3. Canada’s New Settlers (1902) ................................................................................................................ 492

Personal Stories .............................................................................................................................. 497 4. Spurred by Faith and Hope (1910).......................................................................................................... 497 5. The Grousers Return (1901) ................................................................................................................... 502 6. Settlers of Saskatoon (1908) .................................................................................................................. 503

“What classes does Western Canada welcome?” ........................................................................... 509 7. The Speculator’s Point of View (1915) .................................................................................................... 509 8. “Detrimental to the Country” (1915) ...................................................................................................... 512 9. Wheat and Empire (1909) ...................................................................................................................... 514 10. “It has been good to me.” (1909) ......................................................................................................... 516 11. A Closer Look at Trego’s Farm (1909) ................................................................................................... 518

VIII. Wheat and Farming ........................................................................................................ 520

1. The First Grain in the West (1919) .............................................................................................. 521

Early Farming .................................................................................................................................. 522 2. An 18th–Century Wheat Farmer (1790) ................................................................................................. 522 3. Starting a Farm in 19th–Century Ontario (1911) ..................................................................................... 524 4. From New York to Ontario (1907) .......................................................................................................... 528 5. Wheat Farming in Edmonton in 1874 (1907) .......................................................................................... 533 6. Spring on an Alberta Farm (1929) .......................................................................................................... 536

Harvest Help ................................................................................................................................... 538 7. A Diminished Harvest Migration (1909).................................................................................................. 538 8. “The farmers will not give us work” (1923)............................................................................................. 541 9. A Portrait of the Harvest Hand (1927) .................................................................................................... 542 10. Threshing Wheat in the Northwest (1891) ........................................................................................... 545 11. When Threshing Was Threshing (1947) ................................................................................................ 548

Technology and Farming ................................................................................................................. 550 12. “A Wonderful Course of Improvement” (1892) .................................................................................... 550 13. A Brief History of the Massey–Harris Co. (1911) ................................................................................... 554 14. A Combined Harvester and Thresher (1925) ......................................................................................... 558 15. An Inspiring Sight (1928) ...................................................................................................................... 559 16. Combines and Prairie Wheat (1928) ..................................................................................................... 560

New Strains of Wheat ..................................................................................................................... 563

17. Red Fife and Marquis Wheat (1916) ..................................................................................................... 563 18. Alberta’s First Winter Wheat (1907) ..................................................................................................... 566 19. Alberta Red (1907)............................................................................................................................... 567

From Farm to Market ..................................................................................................................... 570 20. The Canada Grain Act (1915)................................................................................................................ 570 21. How Wheat was Inspected and Graded (1904) ..................................................................................... 571 22. The Transportation of Grain (1914) ...................................................................................................... 576 23. Marketing Canadian Wheat (1921) ...................................................................................................... 580 24. The World’s Wheat Markets (1910) ..................................................................................................... 583

The Wheat Board of 1919 ............................................................................................................... 589 25. Marketing the Post–War Harvest (August, 1919) .................................................................................. 589 26. Powers and their Limits (August, 1919) ................................................................................................ 590 27. Hauling Wheat Across the Border (November, 1919) ........................................................................... 590 28. Equity and Justice (December, 1919) ................................................................................................... 591 29. The Price of Bread (December, 1919) ................................................................................................... 593 30. “The Farmer has Unquestionably Benefited” (January, 1920) ............................................................... 593 31. Questioning the Benefit (January, 1920) .............................................................................................. 594 32. Whipsawing Producer and Consumer (January, 1920) .......................................................................... 596 33. What Was the Government Doing? (March, 1920) ............................................................................... 596 34. Free Trading in Wheat (July, 1920) ....................................................................................................... 598 35. A Return to Normal Methods (July, 1920) ............................................................................................ 600 36. Who Will Pay the Debt? (August, 1920)................................................................................................ 601 37. Price of Flour May Drop Soon (August, 1920) ....................................................................................... 604 38. Better than the Open Market (October, 1920) ..................................................................................... 604 39. Wheat Control (October, 1920) ............................................................................................................ 605 40. The Case of the Farmer (December, 1920) ........................................................................................... 605 41. A Second Opinion (January, 1921) ........................................................................................................ 608 42. The End of the Wheat Board (August, 1921)......................................................................................... 611

Women and their Farms ................................................................................................................. 611 43. Mrs. Foster’s Farm (1921) .................................................................................................................... 611 44. Ruth Hillman (1916) ............................................................................................................................. 612 45. Other Successful Farmers (1907) .......................................................................................................... 613 46. Georgina Binney–Clark (1909) .............................................................................................................. 614 47. Hazlett’s Homestead (1921) ................................................................................................................. 615

Ready–Made Farms and the Woman Farmer ................................................................................. 617 48. Felix’s Failure (1894) ............................................................................................................................ 617 49. The C.P.R.’s Ready–Made Farms in Western Canada (1915) ................................................................. 619 50. Why the Settlers are Content (1910) .................................................................................................... 619 51. “A profitable field for the business woman” (1912) .............................................................................. 623 52. “Jack” May’s Ready–Made Farm (1911) ............................................................................................... 624 53. A New Neighbor (1911) ....................................................................................................................... 624 54. “I love the freedom of the life” (1912).................................................................................................. 625 55. A Change in Policy (1915) ..................................................................................................................... 626

IX. The Status of Prairie Women, 1912 – 1916 ........................................................................ 627

The Country Homemakers .............................................................................................................. 628

Guardianship of Children ................................................................................................................ 628 1. The Law in British Columbia (1913) ........................................................................................................ 629 2. The Law in Manitoba (1913) .................................................................................................................. 630

Homesteads and Land .................................................................................................................... 631 3. “A Defective Law” (1916) ....................................................................................................................... 632 4. A Clarification of the Defective Law (1916) ............................................................................................. 632 5. Women and Homesteads (1916) ............................................................................................................ 633 6. “There are harder things than fighting” (1916) ....................................................................................... 634 7. “A Colony of Women Farmers” (1916) ................................................................................................... 635 8. A Woman Farmer with ‘No Occupation’ (1916) ...................................................................................... 636 9. First the Vote, Next the Land (1916)....................................................................................................... 636

Financial Dependence ..................................................................................................................... 638 10. The Poor Wives of the Well–to–Do (1912) ........................................................................................... 638 11. Equal Rights in the Bank Account (1912) .............................................................................................. 640 12. Queens of the Household? (1913) ........................................................................................................ 642 13. A Tight–Wad’s Wife (1912) .................................................................................................................. 644 14. A Declaration of Independence (1912) ................................................................................................. 645

X. Housework ......................................................................................................................... 647

1. A Woman’s Time (1911) .............................................................................................................. 648

The Nature of Rural Housework ..................................................................................................... 649 2. “Mysterious Providence” (1866) ............................................................................................................ 649 3. Scientific Housekeeping (1897) .............................................................................................................. 650 4. “You Must Still Smile” (1911) ................................................................................................................. 652 5. Woman’s Life Should Vary (1915) .......................................................................................................... 654 6. “A Host of Children to Eat her Bread” (1921) .......................................................................................... 654

Housework in Verse ........................................................................................................................ 656 7. For the Sake of Being Supported (1896) ................................................................................................. 656 8. Isn’t it enough? (1896) ........................................................................................................................... 657

Housework and the Canadian Male ................................................................................................ 658 9. What the Boy can do at Home (1911) .................................................................................................... 658 10. ‘Batching’ or, Life as a Bachelor (1898) ................................................................................................. 659 11. Bachelor Bread (1907) ......................................................................................................................... 663 12. “More Unhappy, More Unhealthy” (1893) ........................................................................................... 664 13. A Grass Widower’s Ranch Batching (1910) ........................................................................................... 665

Labour–Saving Innovations............................................................................................................. 667 14. Making Woman’s Work Easier (1918) .................................................................................................. 667 15. Five Valiant Servants Wanting Country Employ (1912) ......................................................................... 668 16. “Her fairies do the housework” (1911) ................................................................................................. 672 17. An Electrical Age (1930) ....................................................................................................................... 673

Canned Food for Unexpected Guests.............................................................................................. 678 18. “Absolutely Nothing” in the House (1897) ............................................................................................ 678 19. “I will be glad to have you any day” (1913) ........................................................................................... 680

The Changing Craft of Laundry........................................................................................................ 683 20. June and the Laundry Woman (1892) ................................................................................................... 683 21. “Blame it on the Soap Suds” (1909)...................................................................................................... 685 22. A Bachelor’s Laundry (1907) ................................................................................................................ 685 23. Winnipeg’s Options for Urban Laundry (1911)...................................................................................... 688

XI. Women and Paid Work ..................................................................................................... 697

On Women and Work ..................................................................................................................... 698

1. Woman’s Sphere (1887) ........................................................................................................................ 698 2. All Honor to the Girl Who Works (1909) ................................................................................................. 699 3. “The Bumps and Clicks of the Day’s Work” (1911) .................................................................................. 699 4. The Greatest Extravagance (1916) ......................................................................................................... 700

Conditions of Life and Work ........................................................................................................... 701 5. “Here is a Working Girl” (1906) .............................................................................................................. 701 6. “Button Holes for Sale” (1901) ............................................................................................................... 701 7. “Indifferent in the Matter of Food” (1912) ............................................................................................. 702 8. “The Girls do not Need to be Reformed” (1916) ..................................................................................... 703 9. An Excellent Plan (1911) ........................................................................................................................ 704 10. Women in Offices (1898) ..................................................................................................................... 705 11. Typists Declare “Movies” Have Libelled Them (1913) ........................................................................... 708

The Domestic Help Problem ........................................................................................................... 711 12. “There is a reason” (1915) ................................................................................................................... 711 13. “Labor Must Expect to Produce” (1920) ............................................................................................... 714 14. “No Future Before Her” (1913) ............................................................................................................ 715 15. The Mary Janes of Edmonton (1908) .................................................................................................... 715 16. “There’s millions in it.” (1901) .............................................................................................................. 719 17. “Partiality for the Chinese.” (1900)....................................................................................................... 719 18. If You Can’t Beat Them… (1897) ........................................................................................................... 720

19. “Women are a Decided Success” (1917) ................................................................................... 720

20. Women and Paid Farm Work (1916) ......................................................................................... 722

Egg and Butter Money .................................................................................................................... 724 21. A Complaint (1887) .............................................................................................................................. 724 22. “Far from Pleasant” Hawking (1887) .................................................................................................... 725 23. In Payment of Taxes (1889) .................................................................................................................. 727 24. “The Farmer’s Wife Still Comes to Town” (1915) .................................................................................. 727 25. Marketing Farm Produce (1917) .......................................................................................................... 729

How Some Women Earn Their Money ............................................................................................ 733 26. “Male and Alien Hands” (1892) ............................................................................................................ 733 27. The Staff of Life (1894) ......................................................................................................................... 734 28. Opportunities for Work (1913) ............................................................................................................. 735 29. “Profitable Fields of Undertaking” (1897) ............................................................................................. 736

A Living Wage for Women .............................................................................................................. 739 30. “How Much do you Pay your Girls?” (1900) .......................................................................................... 739 31. “Women Regard Business as a Makeshift” (1913) ................................................................................ 740 32. The Girl’s Side of the Question (1913) .................................................................................................. 742 33. “Do you Live at Home?” (1917) ............................................................................................................ 743 34. “There is another angle” (1921) ........................................................................................................... 744 35. “Why should she not have equal pay for equal work?” (1921) .............................................................. 746

British Columbia’s First Minimum Wage ......................................................................................... 747 36. Women Approve Minimum Wage (November, 1918) ........................................................................... 747 37. Laundry Workers to get Fair Wages (December, 1918) ......................................................................... 749 38. Minimum Wage for House Workers (May, 1919).................................................................................. 752 39. A Working Girl’s Complaint (1922) ....................................................................................................... 754 40. The Minimum Wage Act and Wages (July, 1924) .................................................................................. 755

XII. Money and Banking ......................................................................................................... 756

When Halifax Ran on Doubloons (1820) ......................................................................................... 757 1. Senex’s First Letter (September 13) ....................................................................................................... 757 2. Senex’s Second Letter (September 22) ................................................................................................... 759 3. A Replacement for Senex’s Third Letter (September 28) ......................................................................... 762 4. Senex’s Fourth Letter (October 6) .......................................................................................................... 765 5. Senex’s Fifth and Final Letter (October 12) ............................................................................................. 768 6. A More Practical Complaint (October 19) ............................................................................................... 771

7. A History of the Bank of Montreal (1917) ................................................................................... 773

Banks and the Farmer ..................................................................................................................... 778 8. Why Farmers Borrow Money (1915) ...................................................................................................... 778 9. Promissory Notes as the Farmer’s Collateral (1915) ............................................................................... 778 10. Who Will Finance the Farmers? (1921)................................................................................................. 780 11. Coupons for Money (1932) .................................................................................................................. 782 12. Creditors, Debtors and the Ability to Pay (1894) ................................................................................... 783 13. What Farmers Should Know About the Bank Act (1910) ....................................................................... 785 14. How Banks Provide Currency for Crop Movement (1906) ..................................................................... 792

Canada’s Banking System ............................................................................................................... 796 15. Branches and the Cost of Banking (1917) ............................................................................................. 796 16. “Grievances of Two or Three Classes” (1907) ....................................................................................... 798 17. The Powers and Business of Canadian Banks (1910) ............................................................................. 800

XIII. Appendix ......................................................................................................................... 810

The Annual Hops–Picking Migration ............................................................................................... 811 1. “Mostly done by Indians” (1884) ............................................................................................................ 811 2. “Sublime Effrontery” (1888)................................................................................................................... 811 3. “No More Prosperous Natives” (1889) ................................................................................................... 812 4. Of Horses and Custom Houses (1890) .................................................................................................... 813 5. “About 50 Canoes” (1891) ..................................................................................................................... 813 6. A Smallpox Scare (1892) ........................................................................................................................ 814 7. On Savary Island (1893) ......................................................................................................................... 815 8. The Destruction of Nootka (1894) .......................................................................................................... 815 9. “Color and General Picturesqueness” (1897) .......................................................................................... 816 10. “An Epidemic of Measles” (1898) ......................................................................................................... 816 11. New Metlakahtla (1899) ...................................................................................................................... 817 12. Trade at the Turn of the Century (1900) ............................................................................................... 817 13. “Indians Wanted” (1902) ..................................................................................................................... 819 14. Playing Ball (1903) ............................................................................................................................... 819 15. The Wreck of the Boscowitz (1904) ...................................................................................................... 819 16. The Nez Perce and ‘Poaching’ (1905) ................................................................................................... 820 17. The E. Clemens Horst Hop Co. Camp (1906) ......................................................................................... 821 18. “Interesting and Picturesque” (1907) ................................................................................................... 822 19. “A Poor Season” (1908) ....................................................................................................................... 823 20. “Labor is Scarce” (1909) ....................................................................................................................... 824 21. “An Interesting Sight” (1910) ............................................................................................................... 825 22. Experimenting with Machinery (1911) ................................................................................................. 825 23. A Strike (1912) ..................................................................................................................................... 826 24. How Hops Were Picked (1913) ............................................................................................................. 827 25. A Prelude to Wartime (1914) ............................................................................................................... 829 26. The Agassiz Hop Fields (1915) .............................................................................................................. 829 27. “A Boon to Local Merchants” (1916) .................................................................................................... 830

28. Reduced Operations (1917) ................................................................................................................. 831 29. Gatherings (1920) ................................................................................................................................ 831 30. Conditions are Bad (1921) .................................................................................................................... 831 31. “Wishes to Employ All White Labor” (1926) ......................................................................................... 832

Settlers and the Songhees Nation ................................................................................................... 833 32. The ‘Problem’ of the Songhees Reserve (1908) .................................................................................... 833 33. “After More than Fifty Years of Trying” (1910) ..................................................................................... 840

The Evolution of Chop Suey in Canada to 1949 ............................................................................... 844 34. A Rare Banquet (1907) ......................................................................................................................... 844 35. By Appointment to His Majesty the King (1936) ................................................................................... 847 36. A ‘traditional’ recipe (1910) ................................................................................................................. 848 37. “This recipe is splendid” (1910) ............................................................................................................ 848 38. An Edmontonian Chop Suey (1923) ...................................................................................................... 849 39. Calgary–style Chop Suey (1929) ........................................................................................................... 850 40. Canadian Chop Suey (1936) ................................................................................................................. 850 41. Name Brand Soda Wafers (1939) ......................................................................................................... 851 42. “Around a mound of Rice Krispies” (1940)............................................................................................ 851 43. Chop Suey Moderne (1945) ................................................................................................................. 852 44. The Study of China (1948) .................................................................................................................... 853 45. Menu Suggestions (1949) .................................................................................................................... 853

46. How Brennan Got A Cook (1910) .............................................................................................. 854

Mother’s Hens (1915) ..................................................................................................................... 859 47. CHAPTER I. .......................................................................................................................................... 859 48. CHAPTER II........................................................................................................................................... 863 49. CHAPTER III.......................................................................................................................................... 866 50. CHAPTER IV. ........................................................................................................................................ 869 51. CHAPTER V. ......................................................................................................................................... 871 52. CHAPTER VI. ........................................................................................................................................ 873 53. CHAPTER VII. ....................................................................................................................................... 876 54. CHAPTER VIII. ...................................................................................................................................... 878 55. CHAPTER IX.......................................................................................................................................... 880

Acknowledgments .................................................................................................................. 883

Index of Named and Pseudonymous Authors ......................................................................... 884

I. Newfoundland

1. A Natural History of Newfoundland’s Fisheries (1859)2

William Epps Cormack was a naturalist and early European explorer of the

interior of Newfoundland. In the following account he gives a useful

summary of the state of Newfoundland’s fisheries in the mid–nineteenth

century. Not only were codfish and seal exploited – there was also a brisk

trade in bait fish, such as capelin and squid. This would prove fateful after

the passing of the 1887 Bait Act.

Of the fishes of the British North American seas, the most abundant is, at the

same time, the most important to man. The cod (Gadus Morhua) here holds dominion over all the habitable parts of the ocean, – from the outer edges of the great banks of

Newfoundland, which are more than 300 miles from land, and more than 100

fathoms3 deep, to the verge of every creek and cove of the bounding coasts: it even

ascends into the fresh water.

To support such a mass of living things, the ocean sends her periodical masses

of other living beings; and these in the economy of nature, are next in importance,

and, of necessity, in abundance in these seas. Nature furnishes two successive tribes

of animals as food for one tribe; and for the three together, this busiest of the oceans

seems to exist.

THE COD

The cod is accompanied at one season by shoals of myriads of the capelin

(Salmo arcticus4) and at another by equal hosts of that molluscous animal the cuttle– fish (Sepia Loligo5), called in Newfoundland the Squid6. The three animals are

2 Originally published in five parts, in the British Colonist for July 20, 22, 25, 27 and 29, 1859. Written

by William Epps Cormack (1796 – 1868). 3 About 183 metres, or 600 feet. 4 This appears to be an error. The capelin’s Latin name is Mallotus villosus, while Salmo arcticus refers to the Arctic Grayling. The capelin and arctic grayling are very different fish. 5 An obsolete term, though the one originally adopted by Carolus Linnaeus in the 1750s. Today, the

Sepia (cuttle–fish) and Loligo (squid) are separate branches of the ten arm cephalopod (Decabrachia) family. 6 “The squid itself is one of the most curious inhabitants of the waters. It is a cephalopod, or that class

of molluscs whose heads are the organs of locomotion. The length of the soft cartilaginous body is seven

or eight inches. It has ten arms radiating from the central mass of the head, two of them being longer

than the other eight, and with discs or suckers. The mouth consists of a strong horny beak like that of

a parrot. The eyes are large, bright and staring. The arms serve for the capture of its prey, to which it

attaches itself by suckers. Another remarkable peculiarity of the squid is the ink bag for secreting a

fluid of intense blackness, which it can spout at will. This substance, frequently called “ink,” from the

use to which it was anciently applied, mixes freely with the water, diffusing an impenetrable obscurity

for some distance around, by which the animal often escapes from danger; thus, as Ray wittily

observed, “hiding itself like an obscure or prolix author, under its own ink.” It possesses the power of

swimming either backward or forward by means of a hydraulic apparatus by which it can eject the

water from a tube with considerable force and thus by the action of the surrounding medium, it can

dart back with amazing velocity. The tube can be turned in any direction so as to drive it either way,

and the fin–like expansion of its tail aids as rudder and propeller. A shoal of these squids is perceived

at a distance by the number of little drops of water, like rain drops, which each shoots into the air as

migratory; and man, who stations himself on the shores for their combined

destruction, conducts his movements according to their migrations. By art he

captures annually more than two hundred millions of the cod with the capelin, and

one hundred millions with the cuttle–fish. On the coast of Labrador, and in the north

part of Newfoundland, the cod is so abundant, that it is hauled on shore with seines7

in vast quantities. Thus, by these three means, and the use of herrings and shell–fish

for bait, along the southern shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, there are caught in

the British North American seas, upwards of four hundred millions of cod annually. There appear to be four varieties or kinds of the cod in these seas; but their

history has not been sufficiently attended, to determine their relations to each other

as species or variety. The first is the bank–cod, found on the great bank8, many miles

from land; the second is the shore–cod, caught in the bays around the shores, and in

the Gulf of St. Lawrence; the third is the red–cod (Gadus callarias9), resembling the rock–cod or red–ware codling of Scotland, caught near the shores; the fourth and most

remarkable, is what may be called the seal–headed cod10, from its head resembling

that of a seal or dog. The haddock (Gadus AEglefinus11), of a large size, is also met with among the proper cod. All the kinds approach towards one size, and are caught

and dried promiscuously by the fishermen. The bank–cod differs from the other

varieties in his place of resort, which is almost always on the banks, at a distance

from land; he is also larger and stronger, with large scales and spots; his body is of a

lighter color throughout, with the spots more generally diffused, and more distinctly

marked; his flesh, too, is firmer. The shore–cod resembles most the cod in a healthy

state on the coasts of Britain, and is that of which the greatest quantity is caught,

owing to its being most conveniently taken: the back is of a dusky–brown color; the

belly, silvery or yellowish, and the spots in general not remarkably distinct. The red–

cod is probably larger than our rock–cod, and is not numerous. The seal–headed cod

is of the same color and size as the shore–cod, and its head is, in like manner covered

with skin; and it is comparatively rare. The young cod, tom–cod, or podley, swarms

in summer in all harbors and shallow waters.

There are some other differences in the cod, which may partly arise from

difference of latitude and of coasts or grounds, where they are found. Thus, the farther

it darts backward, near the surface of the sea.” OUR NEWFOUNDLAND LETTER. (1882, October 4).

The Montreal Gazette, p. 2. 7 A seine is a fishing net placed in the water vertically. For stability, weights are attached to its bottom edge and buoys to its top edge. 8 The grand banks of Newfoundland are underwater plateaus. On these plateaus, the water is shallow

and rich in nutrients, making them very suitable for fishing. 9 This is the original name given to Baltic cod by Linnaeus. Today, it is called G. morhua callarias. This appears to be another error by Cormack, since Baltic cod is a very specific, low–salinity type of

cod found only in Europe and the Baltic sea. The red cod is not a true cod, and bears the Latin name

Pseudophycis bachus. 10 Harvard University lists ‘seal headed cod’ as an alternate name for Atlantic cod, gadus morhua. The distinct head shape appears to have been due to a rare mutation or deformity. 11 This is the haddock’s original designation. It is now no longer a Gadus, having been reclassified as Melanogrammus aeglefinus.

north, the less oil is obtained from them, their livers being smaller; and the bank–cod

yields the least oil of any.

The cod is sometimes caught six feet in length, but there are accounts of its

having been larger. All the kinds of cod obey the same general laws of migration. They

shift according to the changes of temperature in their element, arising from the

seasons, and with the supplies of food which invariably accompany these changes.

The bank–cod seems to be the most stationary.

As we advance northward from the gulf of St. Lawrence, the migrations of the

cod assume a more decided character, and it strikes in greater abundance. This holds

as far north as fishing–posts have yet been established on the coast of Labrador. The

same applies to the migrations and abundance of the other fishes inhabiting these

seas, more especially of those connected with the cod, and they arise together from

the same general causes. In the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Lat, 45o48o, particularly along

the shores of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Canada, and the adjacent Islands, where

shell–fish are more abundant than farther to the north, and where perhaps, in

consequence, more other fishes remain in the winter, the herring arrives in Spring

about the same time that it arrives on the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador, in

April and May, when the cod, in consequence becomes equally abundant at all places;

but afterwards, worlds of food arrive on the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador; at

first the capelin, over the shores of both these countries, and then again the cuttle–

fish12, around the shores of Newfoundland; they never failing to bring in with them

their hosts of cod, and to retain them at these shores during the summer. Neither the

capelin nor any equivalent, appears at the countries farther south, although the

cuttle–fish visits, and sometimes in considerable quantities, the coasts of Nova Scotia

and Cape Breton: Hence the pre–eminence of Newfoundland and Labrador as a fishing station, over every other part of the northern hemisphere.

At Labrador, and in the north part of Newfoundland, where the length of the

summer is not more than six weeks or two months, the hook and line are often laid

aside for the seine; for it is necessary that enough of cod should be taken within the

first two or three weeks otherwise the remainder of the warm weather would not be

sufficient to dry it. Hence the cod–fishery, according to the present mode of curing,

which is, with the exception of a very trifling proportion, by drying the fish in the sun,

cannot be carried on further north than a certain latitude.

The fisher of Newfoundland commences in June, as soon as the capelin appears

on the coast, and ends about the beginning of September, when the cuttle–fish begins

to move off the shores. The capelin is the bait used during the first month or six weeks

and after that the cuttle–fish.

When bait is scarce, considerable numbers of cod are caught by jigging; the jiggers being an artificial bait13, with hooks affixed.

12 At the time, cuttle–fish and squid were often lumped together. Here and below, Cormack probably

refers to the northern shortfin squid (Ilex ilecebrosus, or as it would have been called at the time, Loligo ilecebrosus), which is abundant in the waters around Newfoundland. Cod find them delicious, and according to the FAO, northern shortfin squid are still in high demand as bait in the cod fishery. 13 A jig typically consists of a lead sinker attached to one or more hooks.

The process of curing the cod requires about a month in favorable weather.

Of the four–hundred millions and upwards of cod that are taken annually out

of the British North American Seas, about one hundred millions, or sixty thousand

tons, are exported in a dried state by the British, to the warm countries of Europe

and America: Of the remainder, a part equal to double that of the British is taken

away by the Americans, – a part by the French, – and a part is consumed in the

countries themselves.

It is from the livers of the cod–fish, that the cod–oil of commerce is made. These

are exposed in casks, and sometimes in vats, to the sun, and the heat in all these

countries is sufficient to render them into oil. There is a falling off, some years, in the

average quantity of oil obtained from the cod throughout the British fisheries; but the

French having the exclusive right of fishing at those parts of the island where the

different kinds of fish abound most14, it is probable that the quantity of oil in

proportion to the quantity of fish caught, including all the fisheries, in any one year

may not vary very much.

As the sun withdraws from the north, the temperature of the surface water

decreases; its vivifying principle vanishes, and it is no longer inviting to the free

inhabitants of the deep. The cuttle–fish begins to retire, and with it man ends his

warfare with the cod. All feel the warning, and begin to retire to the strongholds in

their respective elements, leaving the field of their industry and summer rejoicing,

where air, earth, and water had met in harmony together, soon to become the

conflicting scene of an arctic winter.

THE CAPELIN

The value of this delicate and interesting little fish may be estimated, when it

is known to constitute the bait with which more than half the cod caught in these

seas are taken. The capelin arrives on the coasts of these countries to spawn about

the end of June, and departs about the end of July and the beginning of August. It

arrives at Labrador about a month later, and remains from two to four weeks. Its

numbers are often truly wonderful. Immediately on its arrival, it pushes its dense

shoals into the small bays and creeks, as if to shun the jaws of millions of its

devouring enemies, the cod, and many other fishes which had followed it from the

deep, and which remain arrayed at a distance, impatient for its destruction. These

massive clouds of capelin are sometimes more than fifty miles long, and many miles

broad. Their spawn is sometimes thrown up along the beaches, forming masses of

considerable thickness, most of which is carried back into the sea by a succeeding tide

or two.

The capelin is six or seven inches in length; although the males sometimes

occur nearly twice the ordinary size. It is caught for bait, in nets constructed of

different forms for the purpose. It possesses some peculiar quality, which unfits it to

be cured for domestic use like the herring, and is, therefore, merely dried in the sun.

Whether the migration of the capelin is to and from the north sea, or limited to the

adjacent deep waters, does not appear to be as yet well ascertained, notwithstanding

14 It’s worth remembering that the French also fished Newfoundland’s waters, as this would later lead

to the passing of the Bait Act.

that its appearance and disappearance at all parts of these coasts are watched, as

important events, by every fisherman. On the great scale, it is as regular and certain

in its appearance and disappearance, as the herring is on the coasts of Europe. It

generally appears some days earlier at the south–east parts of Newfoundland, than

at the neighboring parts of the island farther to the north; and form its leading in the

bank–cod to these places, as in 1825, it would seem to have come in from the Great

Bank. There is little doubt that it is on the banks at certain seasons, as is shown not

merely by the circumstance of its appearing to have led in the cod from thence

towards the shores, but by the fact that, very early in the spring, and some weeks

before it appears every where at the shores, the cod on the banks take it very readily

as a bait salted, when, at the same time, the cod on the shore will not take in that

state. It is well known that the cod will take readily, as a bait, on the great scale, that

only which is its common food at the time; and, in the present case, when the capelin

arrives at the shores, the bank–cod, which we infer to have followed it from the banks,

not only continue to take it salted, but the shore cod, which refused it before, now

take it fresh and salted promiscuously.

The capelin are salted the preceding year purposely, to fish for the cod on the

banks earlier in the ensuing spring than the cod nearer the shore can be caught; that

is before the capelin has struck in.

The capelin is also sometimes taken in the month of April, by the sailing

vessels, among the ice on the banks, more than 200 miles from the land; and then it

is also found in the stomachs of the seals; – no doubt on its migration at that time

from the deeps over the banks towards the coast.

THE CUTTLE FISH

About the beginning of August15, the throngs of capelin which had enlivened

the shores, give way to the throngs of cuttle–fish. This animal seems to succeed the

other, as if to supply immediately provision to the cod. It is of equal importance in

Newfoundland as the capelin, as it is the bait with which the other half of the cod

here is caught.

The cuttle–fish does not appear at Labrador in quantities the same as at

Newfoundland; – from which it might be inferred that it migrates only to and from

the deep waters.

The common size of this animal is from 6 to 10 inches in length; but it has been

met with of colossal size16. During violent gales of wind, hundreds of tons of them are

15 “Our fishermen are just now in the “squid school” – the little fish called squids being at this time the

bait on which they are taking cod. The squids are the successors of the caplin, and appear about the

12th of August, and remain for six or eight weeks. They arrive in immense shoals in the bays, harbours

and coves, and are captured by the fishermen mostly by their “jiggers,” but also by seines, at times.”

OUR NEWFOUNDLAND LETTER. (1882, October 4). The Montreal Gazette, p. 2. 16 “It is curious that the huge “Devil–fish” is simply a gigantic species of squid and resembles in every

particular of its structure the little squid, seven or eight inches in length. The Devil–fish, which I have

frequently described, has a body from ten to fifteen feet in length, its long arms being over thirty feet

long and its shorter nine or ten. It is only occasionally that a specimen of it has been flung ashore here,

as the big squids keep out in deep water. It is remarkable that no perfect specimen has been taken

except on the shores of this island.” Ibid.

often thrown up together in beds on the flat beaches, the decay of which spreads an

intolerable effluvium around. It begins to retire from the coast in September. It is

made no use of except for bait; and as it maintains itself in deeper water than the

capelin, instead of nets being used to take it, it is jigged; a jigger being a number of

hooks radiating from a fixed centre, made for the purpose17. The cod is in best

condition after having fed on it.

When shoals of the cuttle–fish and of the capelin come in contact, the latter

always retreat, and from the wounds they carry with them, are sufferers in the

attack: These animals dart backwards and forwards, with a quickness which the

capelin cannot escape.

The cuttle–fish is supposed to impart the crimson color, which the sea exhibits

in various parts here, during the latter part of the summer. The water of the harbor

of St. John’s, two miles in extent, sometimes exhibits the phenomenon.

It may be unnecessary to say that the migrations of the cod, of the capelin, and

of the cuttle–fish, are only once a year.

THE SEAL

Newfoundland, owing to its projecting into the Atlantic eastward from

Labrador, intercepts many of the immense fields and islands of ice, which, in the

spring, move south from the artic sea. These fields of ice in their original formation,

present, at their edges, a sufficient barrier against the inroads of the ocean; and they

are so extensive, that their interior parts, with the openings or lakes interspersed,

notwithstanding the rage of elements around, remain serene and unbroken. Here are

the chosen transitory abodes of millions of seals, – here these animals enjoy months

of peace and security, to bring forth and nurture their young. Such fields collect on

the coast of Newfoundland, and, as it were, offer to the inhabitants the treasure they

bring. The island is periodically surrounded by them for many leagues in all direction,

– the inhabitants within the dazzling bulwark being as impotent towards the rest of

the world, as the rest of the world is towards them.

The all–efficient sun, gradually returning, liberates the fields of ice from the

shores to which they had for a time become attached, and enables man to expose

himself with impunity in his own element.

In the month of March, upwards of 300 vessels, fitted out for the seal fishery,

are extricated from the icy harbors on the east coast of Newfoundland; – the fields

are now all in motion, and the vessels plunge directly into the edges of such as appear

to have seals on them; – the crews armed with heavy fire–lock and bludgeons, they

land, and, in the course of a few weeks, destroy more than 300,000 of these animals

17 “The “jigger” is simply a plummet of lead armed with hooks, and drawn quickly, by means of a line,

up and down in the water, attracting the squids by its motion, and sticking them as they swim around

it. The squid grasps the jigger with its arms, and attaches itself, by means of its sucking discs, and is

then quickly drawn out of the water into the fisherman’s boat. In detaching it from the jigger, the

fisherman often receives a discharge of the inky substance in his face or chest – a most unpleasant

salutation and one that he has carefully to guard against. In a calm evening it is an interesting sight

now to watch in one of the coves a number of boats, locked together in a semi–circle, “jigging for squids.”

A stranger is puzzled to make out what they are doing, the boats being united together to intercept

the shoal of squids, and the men standing up and plying their jiggers with all their might.” Ibid.

for their fat and skins. The skins, with the fat, which surrounds the body, are taken

off together, and the scalped carcasses left on the ice. When the vessels are loaded

with those carcasses, or otherwise, when the ice is scattered and dissolved by the

advancing spring, which it always is, except the islands, before the middle of May,

they return to their respective ports; the fat is then separated from the skins, and

exposed in vats to the heat of the sun, where, in from three to five weeks, it is rendered

into the seal–oil18 of commerce. The field–ice extends, with interruptions, more than

200 miles off the land, but the vessels in general have not to go so far to look for the

seals: the fields are even met with at sea continuous in a northerly and southerly

direction for that extent, at that distance from land.

As these fields of ice are not formed at Newfoundland, and only partially at

Labrador, the herds of seals which are found on them, when they appear at those

places, must have come from the sea farther north were the main body of the ice is

formed. viz., from the Greenland sea, and that in the vicinity of Davis’ straits19. The

Greenland winter, it would appear, is too severe for these animals, and when it sets

in, they accompany the field–ice, which winds and currents carry southward and

remain on it until it is scattered and dissolved in the ensuring spring, in about Lat.

43oN., or about 200 miles south of Newfoundland. Old and young of these animals

being then deserted in the ocean by their birth–place, nature points out to them the

course to their favorite icy haunts, and thither their herds hurry over the deep to pass

an artic summer. Winter returns, and with it commences again their annual

migration from latitude to latitude.

There are five different kinds of seals found on the field–ice at Newfoundland,

all known in the Greenland seas. The three best known of which are, 1st, the Harp

(Phoca Groenlandica,) the one and two year old of which is called the Bedlimmer; 2d, the Hood or Hooded Seal (Phoca leonina20) and, 3d, the Squarefipper21. The other two kinds are the Blue Seal22, so called from its color, which is as large as the Hooded

Seal; and the Jar Seal23, so named from its resembling that of a jar, thick at the

shoulders and tapering off suddenly towards the tail; head small, body 4 or 5 feet

long, the fur spotted, and it keeps more in the water than the other ice–seals. These

all differ from the shore or harbor–seal (Phoca vitulina) of these coasts. The ice–seals are alike migratory, and promiscuously gregarious; they differ much in size, and the

flesh of them all is very unapalateable, unless to an acquired taste, more particularly

that of the old ones, differing in this respect from the flesh of the shore–seal, some

parts of which are very good. It remains to be proved, that some of the alleged

differences in the ice–seals, do not arise from age. Although the ice–seals which are

sometimes met with in herds of many leagues in extent on the ice, seem to have no

ordinary means of subsistence, yet the hand of unerring Providence maintains both

18 Seal oil was used as cooking oil, a component in soap, lighting oil for use in lamps, and to treat

leather. 19 The Davis Strait is between Greenland and Nunavut. 20 Another error. Phoca leonine refers to the elephant seal. The hooded seal is Cystophora cristata. 21 The Bearded or square flipper seal (Erignathus barbatus). 22 Perhaps the Grey seal (Halichoerus grypus). 23 The Ringed seal (Phoca hispida).

old and young excessively fat. The seal–hunters often find fresh capelin and other animal substances in their stomachs.

Notwithstanding the apparently immense annual destruction by man among

the cod in these seas for more than two centuries, it does not appear that their

numbers are at all diminished, or that their migrations are in any way affected: Nor

is it likely that they ever will be, if we may judge from the migratory fishes of Europe

that have been persecuted for many more centuries, between the North Cape and the

South of England.

It is not so, however, with those animals which man can pursue in his own

element; – thus the walrus and the penguin, once abundant, may be said now to have

entirely disappeared from the gulf of St. Laurence.

As the persecution of the seals in the field–ice increases, which it has, every

year since it commenced, it will be interesting to observe, at some future day not far

distant, the effect on their numbers. It is not much more than thirty years since any

vessels ventured out among the ice at sea, purposely equipped and manned for their

destruction.

The cod, the capelin, and the cuttle–fish, in their natural connection, and the

seal, constitute the commercial value of Newfoundland and Labrador, and render

these otherwise desolate and inhospitable regions the scene of rivalry of British,

French, and American national enterprise and industry.* The day is not far distant

when vessels will be fitted out direct from Britain for the seal–fishery at

Newfoundland.

* The herring, mackerel, and whale, are in abundance at Newfoundland, and

comparatively allowed to pass unmolested. The herring varies in size from small to

several pounds weight. The whale is of three or four kinds24, and the fishery of it is

persecuted only by one enterprising English mercantile house at the south part of the

island; the whales have been taken upwards of 70 feet in length, yielding from six to

eight tons of oil25. The salmon abounds in all the rivers, and is taken in large

quantities. The dog–fish26 sometimes occurs with the cod in great numbers.

2. Among the Fishermen of Newfoundland (1884)27

The following article provides an in–depth look at the situation of the Newfoundland cod fishery in the mid–1880s, and ranges from the method by which the fish are caught and cured, to how they are paid for.

24 Humpback, Minke and Finback whales are found in Newfoundland, as is the orca, called the killer

whale despite not being a true whale. 25 Whale oil, like seal oil, was used for lighting before the introduction of kerosene. 26 The dogfish (Squalus acanthias) is still found in areas where cod was formerly plentiful, and is gradually making its way onto restaurant menus and into supermarkets. 27 From THE LAND OF THE CODFISH. (1884, September 8). The Montreal Daily Witness, p. 1.

There is something very philosophic in the countenance of a full–grown codfish,

as he lies before you, having ceased to struggle against the tide of ill fortune that has

swept him out of his native element to supply the boundless commodity that a good

cook can make palatable with white sauce. As he lies before you with his mouth

drawn down and his eyes turned up, he seems to say, “Well, do your worst, I am

ready!” there is an injured expression that touches your sympathies until you begin

to think how well he would bake or boil, as, poking his ribs, you find him plump and

solid, and judging by his bright red gills, fresh as a daisy, so without any

commiseration you sentence him to the oven or pot. It is, however, one thing for a

stranger to see fresh cod fish and another to eat it.

Reader, would you believe it, but if not it is nevertheless true, you will get more

fresh fish in Montreal than you will in St. John’s, Newfoundland, or the scores of

country villages into whose bosom the finny treasures of its bays are emptied. This

arises from two causes: 1st Fish is a commercial article that the Newfoundlander

regards as salable, it is his scaly cash with which he buys his flour, pork and potatoes,

and very little of the latter in many places.

On the shores of the Bay, one thing is evident that it is so arranged that the

people live to fish and fish to live. The credit system is the great commercial blight,

the merchant has great risks to run, and when he gives his pork and flour out, it is

for fish that are as yet uncaught, and if they fail to respond to the wiles of the

fisherman, the merchantman has to look for his pay. It is a bad way of doing business

this, taking pay in truck28, but it seems unavoidable.

The country people are a very bright, contented peasantry, but there is

underneath it all a volcanic spirit that will upset the calculations and schemes of

many. They are beginning to realize the advantages of education, and the leaders of

various sections are already writhing under the frauds and injustice heaped upon

their children who have no chance to learn in many instances, but in all

A CHANCE TO FISH.

Just how they fish may be of interest, the more as it is now done by traps and

seines. The “cod fish trap29” is just like a large box house with walls of net instead of

board, the roof, as it were, is trimmed with blocks of cork which float it. A line from

the shore holds the net in place and prevents it drifting out to sea. From the centre

of the front of the net runs a long strip of net called the leader, and thus a fence runs

up, as it were, between the double house and divides an open doorway in two. From

the outer sides of the doorway runs two long strips of net, that with the leader make

up the sides of what is called the pound.

After the net has been submerged for a certain time, it is raised and drawn in

when the fishy prisoners are found and transferred to the boat. There are besides

this the long codfish seines that stretching out for one thousand feet have the upper

28 Under the truck system, workers are paid in goods, or credit that can only be used at ‘company

stores’. In Newfoundland, the merchant advanced supplies at the start of the season, to be paid with

the sale of the catch at the end of the season. This gave a lot of power to the merchant, who could set

both the price paid for the fish and the price charged for the merchandise. 29 Invented in 1871 by William Henry Whitely (1834 – 1903), a Newfoundland merchant and politician.

edge sustained by floats, while the lower rests upon the bottom of the sea, and when

all are ready, rowers in boats, having anchored one end to the shore, drag the other

end round to meet it, thus capturing all within, as they cannot get away owing to the

net being weighted at the bottom.

It will doubtless be asked, why cannot the codfish escape from the trap by the

doors they came in on? So they could, but like many foolish people that get led into

bad places, they get flurried and do not know enough to get out before they are caught.

Did the codfish swim right round the sides of the trap net and keep his weather eye

open he would come to the door and could turn out to sea, but he swims at an angle

from side to side, avoiding corners, and thus fails to escape – the silly cod.

Once captured he is hurried on shore, when, flung out on a board, the body is

ripped open by one, the intestines taken out by another, the liver separated by a third,

the head cut off by a fourth, and then the fish washed free from blood and gurry30, is

ready for the salting process, which performed, the poor flattened out cod is spread

out to dry on a great stage called a flake, covered over with branches of the fir tree.

After a certain period of exposure the fish are piled up one on top of another, which

pile Is called a Fagot, in which condition the curing process goes rapidly forward.

Carefully guarded from rain, it is soon ready for the stomachs of those who like it,

but it is nothing like the fresh fish just out of the briny deep. Where it all goes to

when packed is a mystery. The Spaniards and Italians get the most of the small fish.

IS HARD TO GET CUSTOMERS

for them elsewhere although Brazil gets its share. We in Canada are taken by size

but the sweetest fish are the “mediums.”

This fishery business is of course the great industry on the Island everywhere.

In Newfoundland there are thousands of miles of shore line on which the sea surf

breaks, and all along its innumerable bays the fishermen have built their little

homes, here in dull monotony they spend their days if engaged in what is called “shore

fishing.” Tuesday like Monday, and so on, until weather beaten like a stranded hulk,

they rest until the spring tide of death lifts them off life’s beach and takes them out

upon the ocean of eternity.

For the young active fisherman that goes out upon the coast of Labrador, there

is excitement enough. For two months labor he comes back with often £40 and while

it lasts he is king. When working cheerily upon the northern shore, he dreams of the

return to home, and maybe as he whistles merrily at his work the visions of bright

eyes are haunting him and like his foolish father before him he falls in love, and,

doomed to everlasting poverty, settles down, and is soon surrounded by a lot of little

fishermen, and after a life of this character he goes the way of all flesh, and his foolish

widow moves heaven and earth to get her mourning, and has the haunting debt to

add to her real sorrow.

30 An old–fashioned term for ‘fish guts’.

The Bait Act and its Aftermath

By the late 1880s, Newfoundland’s cod fishery found itself in competition with the French, who fished nearby waters. France paid a ‘bounty’, or subsidy, on cod brought back to Europe. Many in Newfoundland saw this as unfair. Controlling France’s access to fresh bait (capelin and squid) was seen as a way to even the scales. The Bait Act of 1887 prohibited the sale of bait to the French. Enforcing it proved costly and difficult, impoverished former bait fishers and encouraged smuggling. It was finally suspended in 1893.

3. No More Bait (1887)31 This article, written just before the Bait Act went into effect, explains the reasoning behind the act and what it was hoped it would accomplish.

The British Government have given notice to the French ambassador that the

Bait act, passed by our Legislature last session, will be enforced next season; so that

after the beginning of 1888 the supply of bait to the French fishermen at St. Pierre32

will be cut off. Information received from that quarter represents that the French feel

very sore on the subject and that much uneasiness is felt in regard to the results on

the early part of their fishing operations, from the want of their customary supplies

of fresh bait from Fortune and Placentia bays. Their only resource will be to use salted

bait which is not nearly so good as the fresh, as they cannot obtain what they require

from St. George’s bay in time for the early spring fishery, as that bay is usually closed

with ice at that time; and besides is at a great distance from St. Pierre. The result

will be a considerable curtailment of their catch, so that they will not have such a

surplus, as during the last few years, to send to foreign markets and drive down the

price of our fish below the cost of production, to the ruin of our fisheries. Our Bait act

is founded on the principle of self preservation. Hitherto we have been aiding them,

by supplies of fresh bait, to supplant us in foreign markets, which they were enabled

to do, because sustained by enormous bounties. We have now withdrawn that

assistance to their unfair competition, and if ever there was a justifiable act this was

such. In fact, to us it was

A MATTER OF LIFE OR DEATH.

We have no desire to injure the French, but we decline any longer to aid them

in ruining ourselves. We have this year a proof of what will be the result to us when

the French bank fishery is curtailed. Their catch this year was less by a third or half

than that of the previous year, so that they have no surplus, after supplying French

markets, to send to other countries to compete with our fishery products. The

consequence is that the price of our fish has risen from thirty to fifty per cent. over

31 From NO MORE BAIT. (1887, November 25). The Montreal Gazette, p. 2. 32 St. Pierre is a small island to the southwest of Newfoundland. It remains under French control to

the present day.

that of last year. Labrador fish was last year a drag in the markets at 10s and 12s; it

is now in brisk demand at 20s, or four dollars per quintal33, and shore and bank fish

sell at four dollars and eighty cents per quintal. At the same time, French fishermen

will not be seriously injured, as all their catch will be sold in France at a good price,

and all will be required there. We have no objection to their success in Bank fishery

provided their fishery products go to France and do not, by means of their bounties,

unfairly compete with us in European markets, and unduly lower the price of fish to

our undoing. The instance referred to is a proof of the wisdom of those who pressed

for the Imperial sanction of our Bait act. It will curtail French operations; French

capital will not be so freely invested in the Bank fishery as formerly, and there will

be a greatly lessened surplus in future for exportation after French markets are

supplied. The French have no right whatever to feel sore over our Bait act or to regard

it as unfriendly.

ENFORCEMENT OF THE ACT

Our Government are preparing to enforce the act vigorously next year. Not to

do so would be an act of imbecility. Steamers will be placed on the coast to prevent

smuggling of bait, and there will be strict regulations in the Customs. It is not

anticipated that there will be any difficulty in enforcing it. There will be, of course,

no interference with the exportation of frozen herring to the United States in

February, as these are not for bait, but for commercial purposes. There is a large

traffic in these frozen herring, but their exportation does not infringe the bait act,

which simply forbids the exportation or sale of fishes intended to be used as bait.

Hitherto the bait has been mainly supplied from Fortune bay. Vessels carried it to St.

Pierre, where it was sold. It frequently happened that the market was over–stocked,

prices fell, and there being no sale vast quantities of such a perishable article as fresh

bait were thrown overboard. This wasteful draft on our valuable bait fishes will now

be ended. The intelligent and respectable portion of the inhabitants of Fortune bay

are heartily glad that the catching and carrying of bait to the French is to be stopped.

While a number of persons earned a precarious and insufficient livelihood by it, and

a few vessel owners made money by it, the trade was injurious and demoralizing,

leading to an extensive system of smuggling spirits, wines, tobacco, sugar, tea, etc.,

from St. Pierre, injuring the morals of the people and interfering with the honest

trader, while the revenue suffered. Further, there is no bay so advantageously

situated as Fortune bay for the prosecution of the Bank fishery, but, owing to the

employment of the bulk of the people in bait exporting to the French, little was done

in Bank fishing. When the bait traffic is ended a great expression of the honest and

far more profitable occupation of Bank fishing will follow, and what will be an

immediate loss to some will be ultimately a great gain to the whole people of the bay.

Of course those who are engaged in bait exporting are indignant at this interference

with their gains.

33 One quintal is 112 pounds, or about 50.8 kilograms. Newfoundland used the quintal until 1956.

4. Concerns About the Bait Act (1889)34 Since the Newfoundland fishery competed not only with France, but also Norway, Canada and the United States, it soon became clear the Bait Act would not be able to achieve its goal of substantially reducing competition. The incentive for smuggling and large expanse of water to cover also meant enforcing the Act would be challenging and costly.

No consideration at all appears to have been given by the authors of the Bait

Act to the fact that the price of other articles of food is principally liable for the price

of fish. People will not buy fish, except to a limited extent, if it is beyond its value.

The avowed object of the Bait Act is to raise the price of fish; even if this were

accomplished to the full extent claimed by its advocates, it would not prove an

unalloyed benefit. Every advance, be it ever so small, tends to diminish consumption

and restrict trade. Merchants on Water Street admit that fish at 18s.35 to 20s. means

good times for Newfoundland. The country is never better off than when reasonable

prices prevail. Fish over 20s. means diminished consumption in proportion to the

advance in price. This year a merchant on Water Street is reported to have carried

over 20,000 quintals of old fish into the new season, all of which might have gone into

consumption with more moderate prices. The advanced prices turn a popular article

of food into a luxury; hence the loss to our merchants.

It is well to frankly recognize the fact that, while the Norwegians and Nova

Scotians are such large catchers of fish, it is absurd to try to regulate the price or

supply by any such nonsense as the Bait Act directed against the French.

The Mercury36 now proclaims that the Bait Act will be enforced against all outsiders. Can its advocates thus prevent the competition of Norway? No. Can they appreciably decrease the catch of Nova Scotia? No. Can they prevent Frenchmen,

Canadians or Yankees37 from bringing salt bait? They cannot. But this they can do,

namely: create a spirit of retaliation and animosity in the United States and Canada,

and thus be at a variance not only with the French, but every one else. More than

that, the French, Canadians and Yankees will form a brotherhood of sympathy, and

each one’s successful efforts to overcome the shortage of bait, will speedily become

the property of all three. I do not say that either of these objections is, of itself,

necessarily fatal to the proposed amended Bait Act of the Thorburn38 Government;

34 From Baccalieu. (1889, October 7). THE BAIT ACT. The Evening Telegram, p. 4. 35 ‘s.’ is the abbreviation for ‘shillings’. There were twenty shillings in an English pound. 36 Newspapers in Newfoundland were at this time strongly partisan. The Evening Mercury, published

from 1882 to 1890, was a Conservative newspaper. The Evening Telegram, from which this and other

articles are reproduced, was Liberal–leaning (and widely considered an ‘organ’ of the Whiteway

government). 37 A slang term for citizens of the United States. 38 Sir Robert Thorburn was Premier of Newfoundland from 1885 to 1889. His Reform party was anti–

railroad and pro–fishery, leading to its derisive nickname, the ‘fish–flake party’. (Cod were dried on

large wooden platforms called ‘flakes’.) This party’s concern for the fishery as an industry sometimes seemed at odds with its disregard for fishery workers as individuals.

but I do say that they are worthy of our careful and anxious consideration, before

committing ourselves to steps which we may never be able to revoke. Such a Bait Act can never be enforced. A dozen vessels like the Fiona39 could not prevent the half– starved fishermen of the bait districts from getting away with loads of bait. Men with starving families and empty stomachs know no law but that of necessity. All efforts to enforce the law against the French alone, have thus far failed to prevent them

getting a supply of bait, a fair evidence of the utter uselessness of trying to force a

prohibitive act against the wishes of the people, and which will be rendered thrice

more difficult by including the Canadians and Yankees with the French. Half a

million dollars a year would not cover the cost of carrying out such an act, if indeed

it were possible to do so at all.

When we consider the large sums spent on this service, the deprivation

resulting to our fishermen, the loss of trade with the Canadians, French and Yankees,

and the ill–feeling and friction engendered, it seems doubtful if even the full amount

claimed by the advocates of the Bait Bill is nearly sufficient to counter–balance the

loss under these heads.

5. Realities of Competition with the French (1890)40

The competition of the French fishermen, and the injury which their system of

bounties inflicts upon us, are indubitable facts. On this point we are all agreed. But

there is much difference among the people as to the means by which that competition

may be neutralised. The merchants appear to attach little or no importance to the

cure of fish; and according to the Hon. M. Monroe41, it is the merchants who are to

blame for the imperfect cure of our fish at the present day.

Another means proposed is to exclude the French altogether from our supply

of bait fishes. This would, no doubt, be an excellent method, (1) if it were practicable,

and (2) if it were accompanied by some measure making compensation for those who

were deprived of means of living, or perhaps better still, fostering some new industry

for them.

However, it really seems that exclusion of the French from our bait fishes is

almost impossible, and could not be accomplished by any means in our power.

(1) The French are not altogether dependent upon our bait fishes. They may obtain bait from the Magdalen Islands, from the “French” Shore42, on the coasts of St.

Pierre and Miquelon, and on the Grand Banks.

39 The Fiona was an expensive steamship bought by the Newfoundland government for the purpose of

enforcing the Act.. 40 From THE BAIT QUESTION. (1890, May 20). The Evening Telegram, p. 4. 41 Moses Munroe (1842 – 1895) was municipal councilor of St. John’s from 1888 to 1892. 42 The Treaty of Versailles (1783) that formally ended the US revolutionary war also gave the French

the right to fish on the northwest shore of Newfoundland, from Cape St. John to Cape Ray. This

privilege was given up in 1904 as part of the ‘Entente Cordiale’, a formal attempt to improve relations

between Britain and France. (An earlier French Shore was established as part of the Treaty of Utrecht

(1713), and ran along the northeast coast of Newfoundland, from Cape Bonavista to Point Riche.)

(2) It must be remembered that bait has been exported to St. Pierre, not only

from Fortune Bay, Burin and Placentia Bays, but from St. Mary’s and Trepassey

Bays, from the “Southern Shore,” from Holyrood, and perhaps even from places

farther north. It is clear, therefore, that our whole coast, all around the island, would need to be guarded; and could we possibly do that? When the Thorburn Party held

power, they, and their organ43, scouted the idea that bait could be exported to St.

Pierre. We have now a more efficient service than ever; the coast is more carefully

watched; justice has been strictly enforced, and yet the Thorburn Party fill their

organ daily with tales of vast quantities of bait smuggled into St. Pierre. If these tales

are true, what do they prove, but that which the TELEGRAM44 always asserted, that

it was impossible to prevent the smuggling of bait to St. Pierre?

(3) Much bait used to be exported to St. Pierre by American vessels, who

purchased it ostensibly for their own use. How can we shut the Americans out? The

country would lose much which they expend for bait and ice; but apart from that, could we do it? We found three years ago, when negotiating a Treaty at Washington, that the attempt to exclude them from all fishing privileges in British North

American waters brought us within measurable distance of war. […]

(4) The present Government have endeavored to select a path where all paths

are encumbered with difficulties. There is no doubt a small section of the population

wishes to export bait to St. Pierre and smuggle goods in return. Smuggling, of course,

could not be tolerated by any Government, because the people who have to pay taxes will not tolerate that a few individuals in one quarter of the country should escape

without paying any taxes. Of course it is only fair to say that smuggling is carried on,

not only in Fortune Bay, but in St. John’s; and not only by poor fishermen, but by

wealthy and titled merchants. But, in all cases, it must be put down. However, apart

from those who wish to export bait to St. Pierre and to smuggle back spirits, sugar

&c., there is a large section of the population who wish that the French should come

into our harbors to buy bait and ice, as the Americans do. This section consists of the

people who have not large vessels or boats; who live partly by farming, and who find

that they can manage to live comfortably by attending to their farms or their punt–

fishery, when their little resources are eked out by money earned in supplying

American bankers with bait. If the French came into our harbors like the Americans,

these people would earn much more money. It is, therefore, their interest to force the French to come in, and for this reason to watch all those who would export bait to St.

Pierre. Indeed, the man who carries bait to St. Pierre is taking the bread out of the mouth of the poor man who can only sell bait to those who come into our harbors, and deserves no consideration.

If we hold out sternly, we shall ultimately force the French to come in and buy

bait. For this purpose three things are necessary; (1) our people who sternly refuse to

export the bait to St. Pierre, should insist on the French coming into our ports to

purchase it; (2) those poor people who can only sell bait in the harbors where they

dwell should regard rich men, who export bait to St. Pierre, as their enemies, who are

43 The Evening Mercury, which changed its name to The Evening Herald in 1890. 44 The Evening Telegram, the Liberal newspaper, as opposed to an actual telegram.

taking the bread out of their mouth. Next, all American or Canadian vessels that bring bait to St. Pierre, must be ruthlessly punished. Under the Thorburn

Government these got off scot–free.

What is really wanted to carry out the protection of the bait, the coast–guard,

and Custom House system is a number of vessels cruising around St. Pierre, and

watching both entrances. It would be well if these were armed with electric light, such as men–of–war now carry; such streams of light, flashed out wherever a smuggler

was suspected, would deprive them of the cover of darkness and fog, which is their

chief opportunity.

6. Suspension of the Bait Act (1893)45

In March of 1893, the Bait Act was suspended. It would stay on the books, but it

would no longer be enforced. The idea behind keeping the Act was that the

thread of un–suspending it would prove a valuable bargaining chip when

Newfoundland negotiated with its competitors. Notably, the same legislative

session that suspended the Bait Act also re–introduced a tax on foreign fishing

ships.

Whereas, – The International and Intercolonial fishery questions, still pending and unsettled between this colony and France and the United States, and between

this colony and the neighbouring colony of the Dominion of Canada, respectively,

render it expedient that the Bait Act (52 Vic. Cap. 6) should be retained on the Statute

Book, for effectual aid, that the powers of the said Act may give this colony in

negotiation for the settlement of the said out–standing fishery questions, between

this colony and the said foreign countries, and between the colony and the

neighbouring Dominion;

And Whereas, It is not desirable in the interests of this colony that the provisions of the said Bait Act should now be enforced;

Resolved, – That an Address be presented to His Excellency the Governor respectfully requesting that he will be pleased to suspend, by Proclamation, the operation of the said Act in relation to all the Districts of this colony, and the coasts thereof. Resolved – That the Act 55 Vic., Cap X, entitled “An Act respecting foreign fishing vessels,” be forthwith re enacted by this House, imposing a tonnage duty, not

exceeding $1 50 per ton, on all foreign fishing vessels coming into this colony and its

waters for the fishery purposes indicated in the said Act (not including the winter

herring fishery of Fortune, Placentia and St. Mary’s Bays, or any other Bays or

Harbors in the colony to which such vessels may resort during the winter season for

the purpose of purchasing winter herring).

45 From Legislative Assembly of Nova Scotia, quoted in ABOLITION OF THE BAIT ACT. (1893, March

23). The Evening Telegram, p. 4.

7. Waste of Herring Prior to the Bait Act (1896)46

DEAR SIR, – I cannot agree with your remarks in Saturday’s issue of your

paper on the herring fishery in Fortune Bay. You attribute the present scarcity of

herring to the Bait Act47. Nothing can be more unreasonable. Whatever may have

been the hardships on the fishermen under the act – and I know there were many –

it did not increase the wanton destruction of herrings, but, on the contrary, helped to

lessen such. Referring to the evidence taken on the operation of

THE WASHINGTON TREATY48,

it was given in sworn evidence of respectable planters49 and fishermen that one

thousand barrels were sometimes kept enclosed in large seines for from three to six

weeks, waiting purchasers and for an opportunity to sell at St. Pierre, the result being

that large proportions of the herrings perished. It was also stated that heaps of these

dried herrings had been measured by sinking a pole and were ascertained to

MEASURE FIFTEEN FEET.

The experienced men in Fortune Bay, at the same time referred to, gave it as their

opinion that such practices could not fail to drive the herrings from the bay. The

system complained about had not been pursued to anything like the same extent in

Placentia Bay, but no doubt will be adopted there and with the same results, if not

prevented by prompt action of the Legislature. You also state that previous to the

passing of the Bait Act French Fishermen went to Fortune Bay and purchased their

bait there. They did not need to do so, for our people stocked the market with a triple

supply of bait, every year

THROWING OVERBOARD MANY CARGOES

they could not sell. The average returns to the fishermen of Fortune Bay from the St.

Pierre bait–trade did not yield 10 cents a day per man; but it was attractive in its

speculative character, there being a few prizes to be drawn, and thus it enticed the

many away from their legitimate avocation – codfishing. Eventually, all the

appliances for the prosecution of this latter fishery were neglected, so that when the

Bait Act came into force comparatively few were equipped for the codfishery – the

very method of which many of them had forgotten, and thus the herring fishery was

ruined, which if properly worked, would assume a value closely approaching, if not

fully equal, to the codfishery.

46 From Observer. (1896, February 11). THE HERRING FISHERY. The Evening Telegram, p. 4. 47 “A THIRD correspondent thinks both fish and herring have been scared out of the Bay by “the

frolicsome conduct of the Fiona.” What with chasing the bait carriers about while the said Act was in force, and hunting for smugglers more recently, she has terrorized the finny tribes and frightened

them away from their natural habitats.” EDITORIAL NOTES. (1896, February 8). The Evening Telegram, p. 4. 48 The Treaty of Washington was signed in 1871. In exchange for a one–time payment of $5.5 million

and free access to the US market for Canadian fish, the US was allowed to make use of Canada’s

inshore fishery for 12 years. 49 A year–long resident of Newfoundland, as opposed to a migratory fisher. Planters often owned small

boats and hired fishing crews, if they did not fish themselves.

8. The Aftermath of the Bait Act (1896)50 By early 1896, French cod was already threatening to compete with Newfoundland’s product in Europe. Of special concern was that the Portuguese (Oporto) market was threatened. For over a century, Newfoundland engaged in a profitable triangular trade brining goods from Britain to Newfoundland, dried cod from Newfoundland to Portugal, and wine and dried cod from Portugal to Britain.

DEAR SIR, – I am pleased to note your correspondent’s (“Observer”) letter on

the Fortune Bay question, and your moderate editorial notes thereon. It certainly

looks as though the destructive method pursued in that bay had brought its inevitable

and, I had almost said, deserved result. Another matter is, however, touched on which

suggests these few observations. The French of Saint Pierre had

A GREAT BLOW DEALT THEM

by the Bait Act. There can hardly be a question about that. We have heard little of

their competition since that Act was put in force until very recently. They had a good

year in Saint Pierre in 1895. They have very largely added to their banking fleet, and

next Spring will show

A GREATLY INCREASED OUTFIT.

Their experience has shown that the bait preserved over the winter is of little value.

They believe that the Bait Act will not be enforced in 1896. They are relying

absolutely on Newfoundlanders for their first baiting. There is no preserved bait at

all now in St. Pierre. We have in our power the means of dealing them a great blow;

and forbearance on our part will but

WORK OUR OWN DESTRUCTION.

Letters from fish agents in Europe and London again begin ominously to mention

French fish. We hear that next Spring, with the aid of the drying process recently put

in operation in Saint Pierre, they are going to make an attempt to wrest the Oporto

market from us – a market in which we have never before had much competition from

them. We shall unquestionably meet their fish once more in Spain and Italy

WITH RUINOUS RESULTS.

What effect this sort of thing is likely to have on the value of Newfoundland

produce is not difficult to foresee. Nor is it difficult to judge of the effect that another

small cut in values is going to have on this colony. What a year would 1895 have been

for Newfoundland had fish been worth only another shilling. The colony cannot

complain of it, as it was, but one can only sigh when one thinks what it might have

been. The above are hard facts. The question is: What are we going to do about it?

50 From H. (1896, February 13). OUR GREAT STAPLE. The Evening Telegram, p. 4.

Factors Influencing the Price of Cod Newfoundland’s dry cod was a differentiated, seasonal good. Newfoundland fish merchants formed cartels (‘combines’), and fishers were often paid in advance, and at least partly in kind (‘truck’).

9. Song of the Fisherman (1889)51

I’m one of the thousands who’re yearly fleeced

By bloated tyrannical knaves;

No more we’ll be goaded and used as the beast,

And crushed into premature graves.

We’re up in our manhood, resolved and alert,

The ballot to use for the true–

The Workingman’s Party its right to assert

And get the poor fisher his due.

Yes, get the poor fisher his due;

No more upon knees he will sue

At th’altar of greed,

For his children’s feed;

For, get will the fishers their due.

10. Fishermen, Prepare for War! (1894)52 In April of 1893, the Liberal government of William V. Whiteway stepped down due to accusations of corruption. Fifteen Liberal Members of the House were put on trial – including Whiteway, who was found guilty. The Governor of Newfoundland requested that Augustus F. Goodridge, leader of the Tories (Conservatives), form a minority government. This would not last long. In December of 1894, a financial panic and subsequent bank run led to the permanent closure of two of Newfoundland’s three banks. Goodridge’s government resigned on December 12th, 1894, as a result of the bank failures of December 10th. The following article is notable for listing the different varieties of cod, and their cost.

LIES and sophistries will not win. We put hard, plain facts before you. You

know the truth of what we write. Rise men, or be forever slaves. We give you the

prices paid for fish in 1893 and in 1894. The prices paid under the Whiteway

Government and the prices paid under the Goodridge or mercantile Tory

Government. This is no Herald lie. This is no Daily News lie. Those are September prices in 1893 and 1894 :–

51 From SONG OF THE FISHERMAN. (1889, October 18). The Evening Telegram, p. 4. 52 From FISHERMEN, PREPARE FOR WAR! (1894, September 26). The Evening Telegram, p. 4.

Whiteway – 1893:

Labrador53 $ 2.80

Large Merchantable54 4.50

Large Madeira55 4.00

Large West Indies56 3.50

Small Merchantable 3.60

Small Madeira 3.20

Small West Indies 2.80

Cod Oil (the tun57) 76.00

Goodridge – 1894:

Labrador $ 2.50

Large Merchantable 4.00

Large Madeira 3.60

Large West Indies 3.20

Small Merchantable 3.40

Small Madeira 2.50

Small West Indies 2.60

Cod Oil (the tun) 68.00

We have given you the figures paid by the shippers to you for your local produce

in 1893 and 1894. Can any fisherman deny those figures? Are they not the prices paid

you last fall, and the prices paid you this year? […]

Fishermen are you aware that a “solid ring” has been entered into by the twelve

merchants who ship off every quintal caught in the colony? Are you aware that the

smaller fry of merchants, such as Monroe58 and Ayre59, who never ship a quintal

themselves, are into this “ring?” Are you aware that Monroe and Ayre and all the

53 Cod caught off the coast of Labrador (as opposed to Newfoundland) was considered of low quality. 54 ‘Merchantable’ cod, also known as ‘Bacalao Marcante’, was high–quality dried cod suitable for sale

in Spain or France. 55 Madeira cod was meant for the Portuguese market. Its name is a possible reference to the wine that

it was traded for in the BritainNewfoundlandPortugalBritain triangular trade. 56 Newfoundland cod was used to feed slaves and indentured servants on plantations in the West

Indies. This cod was often damaged, or in pieces. Even today, West Indian and Brazilian cod recipes

are mostly for croquettes (such as Brazil’s bolinhas de bacalao), which hide the poor state of the cod. By contrast, European dry cod recipes such as bacalao a la Vizcaina showcase the appearance of the reconstituted cod. 57 A tun is equal to about 980 litres, or six standard barrels. 58 Probably Moses Monroe (1842 – 1895). Starting in 1873, Monroe ran a dry goods and fishery supply

business. He had shares in many other Newfoundland companies, including lobster factories, and

would occasionally hire ships and their crews for the cod fishery. His Ropewalk twine and net factory

was a major employer. 59 Possibly John B. Ayre (1850 – 1915), merchant and politician. Ayre & Sons, the business founded by

his father, was mostly a chain of department stores.

smaller fry of the “ring” can get on an average, fifty cents or two shillings and sixpence

a qtl. More from the twelve shipping merchants, for the fish that you sell them, than

you can? We have indubitable testimony of two planters, who have been credited on

their accounts, with 20 cents a quintal more than the current price. The “ring” by its

own cupidity has been broken. They undertook too much and they failed. In secret

among their own planters, they are outbidding each other, and the shrewd planter

laughs in his sleeve at them and gets his “advance price or rise.”

Fishermen! there was never a time in the colony when fish stood as high in

foreign markets. We know of a cargo of fish shipped from Labrador at $2.50 a quintal,

sold for 22s. 6d. stg.60 In England, or, in other figures, $3.40. This happened quite

recently, too. Do you notice how eager they are this year to buy your fish? They say:

“It is only worth $3.40 talqual61; if you can get a better price, why, get it; but if not,

come back, and I’ll buy.” Monroe may say this to you. Take the fish off your cart or

out of your boat, walk down the street, sell it to Walter B. Grieve, the shipper, for $4.

This is what it is to be in the “ring.”

Fishermen! have we not placed facts before you in the above statements? You

will unhesitatingly answer, yes.

Do not the merchants control the Savings’ Bank, the Commercial Bank, the

Union Bank62, the produce and shipping of the colony, the price for fish, and the price

for labor? You answer, they do. Then will you, as freemen, place the making of the

laws of the land in their hands? Will you bow down in abject and complete slavery

before them; or will you, as freemen, through the secret ballot box, tell them that

tyrants shall not remain? We have given you facts plainly and bluntly. We cannot do

everything; you must take a hand in the fight yourselves. Each man must feel, in this

fight, that Newfoundland expects him to do his duty.

11. A Cod Cartel (1894)63

Perhaps no greater evidence of the selfishness and greed of the few Tory

merchants who are trying to govern this country with the lash can be given than the

manner in which they have combined in this and former years to keep down the price

of fish on those who toil to catch the staple produce. It is now a notorious fact that

every season about the month of July these Tory taskmasters meet

60 That is, 22 shillings, 6 pence. (The ‘d.’ is for ‘denarius’, the Roman penny.) There were 20 shillings

in a pound sterling, and 12 pence in a shilling. Today, we would write 22s. 6d. as £1.125, or

approximately £1.13. 61 From the Spanish ‘tal qual’ or ‘such as it is’. This means a price independent of quality. Part of the reason Labrador fish was of poor quality was that it was priced talqual, so there was no incentive for

an individual fisher to cure the fish properly. 62 On the Savings Bank would survive the bank panics of December 10. As it was run by the

government, the Savings Bank had priority on all funds. Minutes after the bank runs started, the

Savings bank cashed a very large cheque at the Union bank. This allowed it to meet its obligations,

but put the Union Bank in a difficult position. The Commercial Bank and Union Bank closed within

hours of each other, never to re–open. 63 From “COMBINE” AMONGST MERCHANTS. (1894, October 15). The Evening Telegram, p. 4.

IN THE COMMERCIAL ROOMS

and agree amongst themselves what price they will pay the fisherman for his fish.

This agreement is usually reduced to writing, each merchant agreeing with the others

not to pay more than the price agreed upon. This is what is known in commercial

circles as a “combine.” No matter what the price of fish is in foreign markets – no

matter what the Halifax or other Canadian merchants pay for fish, our “local

Shylocks64”

COMBINE WITH EACH OTHER

not to pay their planters and fishermen anything more than the Commercial Room

Combine65 allows. This year the cruelty and oppression of this “combine” have been

felt more than usual. The demand for codfish in the foreign markets was never

brisker than at present. In the report of

THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

just issued, signed by Mr. Edgar Bowring66, as President of the Society, we find the

following:–“It is worthy of note, that whilst most articles of food, the exports of other countries and the colonies, are abnormally low in price, the staple article of Newfoundland has not appreciably declined in value.”

THE PRICE OF LABRADOR FISH

This is the language of those very gentlemen who met in July last, and settled the

price of Labrador and Shore fish in the Commercial Rooms. It must be remembered,

too, that the Labrador catch has never been so small for the past twenty–five years

as this year, and that in Bonavista Bay, Green Bay and Trinity Bay the catch of shore

fish is much below that of former years. Now, it is a notorious fact that when an

article of food is scarce the value of that article

INCREASES IN PRICE.

How, then, is it that, in the face of the short catch of both Labrador and shore and the

face that “the staple article of Newfoundland has not appreciably declined in value,” the price of Labrador fish is this year

ONLY $2.50 A QUINTAL,

And large shore only $4.00 a quintal? The answer is plain. The merchants of Newfoundland have “combined” amongst themselves not to pay the full value for

“staple article of Newfoundland.” Why is it that a better price for fish can be had in

Halifax than in St. John’s? The answer is, the “Mercantile Combine.” Who are those

men who have so ruthlessly and cruelly “combined” to

WRING FROM THE HARDY TOILERS

of the sea – the only tilers in this colony who produce the “staple article of

Newfoundland” – the result of their toil and sweat. Who compose this dishonest

“combine?” Listen, men, fishermen of Newfoundland, while we write with shame the

names of your Tory merchants who thus filch from you

YOUR HARD–EARNED WAGES

64 An anti–Semitic reference to Shylock, the merchant in Shakespeare’s ‘Merchant of Venice’. 65 An old–fashioned term for a cartel. 66 Sir Edgar Rennie Bowring (1858 – 1943) founded the Bowring Brothers chain of retail stores, which

exist to this day. He had a successful career in politics and was knighted in 1915.

–who send you back to your loved ones in your northern or southern homes with

nothing for your summer’s hard work! Listen! Their names are:–

GOODRIDGE, JOB, MUNN, GRIEVE, MONROE, BOWRING, AYRE, DUDER,

GOODFELLOW, BAIRD67.

These are the men who ask the electors of Burin, Placentia, Green Bay and

Trinity Bay to forget all this, to bare their back to the lash, and to lick the hand that

SO CRUELLY SMITES THEM.

These are the men who impudently ask the fishermen to forget the wrongs of

themselves and their fathers – to forget that even they are human beings with

feelings and sensations – and vote for the Merchants of Newfoundland. Oh, God!

“That bread should be so dear, and flesh and blood so cheap.” How long, oh Lord, how

long will this species of serfdom remain! How long will the Grieves and the

Goodridges68 and the Jobs and the Monroes pile up riches on the

ILL–PAID EARNINGS OF THE HONEST TOILING MEN!

How long will men work and women weep and children go hungry, that the

Goodridges, the Jobs, the Grieves, the Bowrings, the Monroes, and others of the

“combine” may live in mansions, drive fashionable horses and carriages, fare

sumptuously, be clothed in purple and fine linen, and send

THEIR ILL–GOTTEN FORTUNES

to their relatives and partners in Liverpool, Glasgow, Belfast or Grenock; and in the

letters containing their remittances, no doubt, they write these same partners and

relatives:–“Although we grind those fishermen until they have hardly enough to live

upon, and wring from them, by means of the “Combine” which Goodridge, Grieve,

Monroe and the rest of us make to keep down the price of fish, half the fruits of their

earnings, yet these poor devils, like the far–famed Newfoundland dog, lick our hands,

AND ACTUALLY VOTE TO PUT US IN THE HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY, so that we may use the little savings which a few of them have, by sleepless nights and weary days on the ever–tossing wave, laid up in the Savings’ Bank against the future years when they shall become too old to slave nay more for the Newfoundland Supplying Merchant.” FISHERMEN OF NEWFOUNDLAND! WILL YOU VOTE FOR GOODRIDGE, GRIEVE AND MONROE? WILL YOU VOTE FOR THE ST. JOHN’S

FISH “COMBINE?”

12. The Codfish Cull (1894)69 Cartels, like monopolists, raise prices by restricting output. It is possible the merchant ‘Combine’ described in the previous article tried to use the traditional cull for this purpose. When salt cod is ‘culled’, some of it is thrown away and will not be bought by any fish merchant. This is understandable if the cod is of

67 Probably Augustus F. Goodridge, Walter B. Grieve, Moses Monroe, Edward Rennie Bowring,

Charles R. Ayre, Edwin Duder, James Goodfellow, James Baird. I’ve been unable to identify ‘Job’. 68 In addition to his political duties, Goodridge was a prominent fish merchant. 69 From THE CULLING OF CODFISH IN ST. JOHN’S. (1894, October 15). Evening Telegram, p. 4.

unacceptable quality, but the author of this article argues that high–quality cod was also culled.

YEAR after year the complaint about the monstrously unjust manner in which

fish is culled on the merchants’ wharves in St. John’s has so increased that it is now

recognized as one of the greatest disgraces that a free British colony

HAS EVER PERMITTED TO EXIST.

In no other country in the world could such a system remain in existence for a year,

and the time has arrived when the matter should and will receive the attention of the

Legislature. In olden times this culling of fish used to be carried on with something

like fair play to the fishermen; but the greed and

SELFISHNESS OF THE TORY MERCHANT.

In St. John’s has “grown with his growth,” and to–day the system of culling in St.

John’s is nothing short of WHOLESALE ROBBERY. From every craft that arrives

the complaint comes that they are ruined and robbed by the disgraceful way in which

the merchant compels the culler to cull the fish. Men from Trinity and Placentia bay

this year have brought on cargoes of

WELL–CURED MERCHANTABLE70 FISH,

And out of 300 qtls. not fifteen quintals of merchantable fish has been left. The evil

has grown to such dimensions that it must be regulated, and we authoritatively

pronounce that Sir William Whiteway must make this question of the

FAIR AND REASONABLE CULL

of fish one of the principal planks in his platform of reform. No longer can the

fishermen of this country submit to the iniquitous manner in which they are daily

robbed at the merchants’ wharves by the system of culling, and the only remedy lies

in the enactment of such a wise law as will

COMPEL THE MERCHANT TO ACT FAIRLY

with those who risk their lives and by the sweat of their bodies reap the harvest of

the seas. The only hope of the fishermen in this direction is the return of Sir William

Whiteway to power, and we have no doubt that he and his patriotic lieutenant, Robert

Bond71, will see to the enacting of a measure that will meet

THE WISHES OF THE FISHERMEN

on this subject. The merchants now control the Banks – they dictate the price of

goods, they combine to make the price of fish, but some law must be found that will

control the present

DISHONEST CULLING OF THE FISHERMAN’S “STAPLE.”

Vote for Monroe, Grieve, Job, Bowring and the others of the combine and good–bye to any hope in this direction. VOTE FOR THE PEOPLE’S LEADER, AND HE IS THE ONLY MAN IN THE COLONY WHO CAN AND WILL REMEDY THE EVILS OF

THE PRESENT CULLING SYSTEM.

70 Of high enough quality to be sold. This may or may not refer specifically to the high–quality ‘bacalao marcante’, which would make its way to tables in France and Spain. 71 Robert Bond (1857 – 1927) was the last Premier of Newfoundland before the colony achieved

Dominion status in 1907.

13. Abuses of the Truck System (1894)72

DEAR SIR, – Having copper–fastened the fact that the fishermen of this

country are defrauded to the extent of 66 cents on every quintal of Labrador fish they

sell in this market, and having driven the editor of the Herald to abandon the discussion and descend to low, vulgar abuse, I now propose to show how the

fishermen, especially the Labrador fishermen, are

DEFRAUDED IN THE MATTER OF CHARGES.

I have obtained from a good, respectable planter, an account of goods taken up from

one of the Tory supplying merchants, St. John’s, for the past summer’s voyage on the

Labrador. Not to make this article too lengthy, I will only select a few of the items on

the account and compare the prices charged there with the ruling cash prices in St.

John’s in May last, the time

THE SUPPLIES WERE ISSUED.

Cash Price. Price Charged.

Flour, per barrel $ 3.50 $ 5.25

Oleo73 per lb 0.12 0.16

Molasses per gallon 0.38 0.50

Pork per barrel 16.00 24.00

Salt per hhd74 1.30 2.20

Codseine75 Twine per lb 0.21 0.35

Cod Netting per fathom76 0.42 0.70

Thread per lb 0.45 0.80

Calico77, per yard 0.06 0.14

3/4 Boots per pair 1.80 3.00

Beef per barrel 11.00 15.00

Tobacco per lb 0.35 0.50

Brown Sugar per lb 0.07 0.10

$ 35.66 $ 52.70

THE REAL CASH VALUE OF THESE GOODS.

The cash value of the above lot of goods is $35.66 and are charged $52.70 or nearly 50 per cent above the price these articles could be obtained for cash in the month of May last. Now then, take the 20 per cent. difference between the price given

72 From Truth. (1894, October 30). Tory Cupidity and Fraud. The Daily Telegram, p. 4. 73 Oil. 74 ‘Hogshead’. A measure of volume equal to about 240 litres. 75 ‘Cod seine twine’, that is, ‘rope to make cod fishing nets with’. 76 A fathom is a measure of length equal to six feet, or about 1.8 metres. It’s mostly used to measure

the depth of water. Here, it is used for netting since cod nets go vertically into the water. 77 A cheap cotton cloth, often printed with patterns. England was a famous manufacturer of calico.

for fish in Halifax and the price given in St. John’s and add it to the overcharge of 50 per cent. on the supplies, and it makes 70 per cent. of a loss to the fishermen, or in other words, the fisherman gets only 30 cts. for every dollar he earned this summer, the balance of 70 cents going into

THE POCKETS OF THE SUPPLYING MERCHANT.

Men! open your eyes!! Was Mr. M. Fenelon far out when he valued a man’s day’s work

at 30 cents? Is it not the commercial valuation as well as the government valuation?

DID NOT WHITEWAY GIVE THE WORKINGMEN ONE DOLLAR PER DAY

CASH? Does not the merchant, by cutting the price of fish 20 per cent and charging

the fishermen 40 per cent. over the ordinary cash price of the goods, cut down the fisherman’s hard earned dollar to 30 cents? Mind you, the merchant makes a profit of from 20 to 40 per cent on the cash prices of his goods, in addition to the

OVERCHARGE OF 50 PER CENT.

In other countries there exists a usury law which prevents money lenders and others

from taking advantage of the necessities of the people and charging exorbitant prices

for their advances78. Some such law will have to be made for this Island, to prevent

our supplying merchants from taking advantage of the

NECESSITIES OF THE PEOPLE,

and charging exorbitant prices for their advances. And who is to get that law made?

Is it the merchants, think you? Are you foolish enough to believe the merchants will

make no laws in their own interests? Not much! Sir W. V. Whiteway and his party

are

THE MEN WHO WILL DO THIS

for us. They are the only men who will stand between the working classes and this

unholy combination, and wring from them a fair and honest valuation of a man’s

labour and a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. And this selfsame

UNHOLY MERCANTILE COMBINATION

is before us to–day asking us to give them a further lease of power, and, with canting,

sniveling hypocrisy, they tell us: “We won’t reduce the price of labour; we won’t stop

the railway.” They tell us all they won’t do, and then we are told if we return them

they will give us “clean government,” or some such rot. Clean government, indeed! In

the first portion of this letter you have

A SAMPLE OF THEIR POWERS

of administration: 70 cents taken from every dollar earned by the fishermen this

summer and pocketed by the men who will give us “clean government!” A clean sweep of the funds, would be more like what we would get if they are returned to power. If

the present Government get a firmer grip on the funds of this colony, good–bye to the

dollar–a–day. Fenelon’s 30–cent valuation of a man’s day’s work will be nearer the

mark.

78 Under the ‘truck’ system, fish merchants would advance the supplies that fisherfolk needed at the

start of the fishing season, to be paid from the sale of their catch. This gave a lot of power to the

merchant, who could set both the price paid for the fish, and the price charged for the goods. Many

fishing families were perpetually in debt.

14. Smelly and Hard to Prepare (1903)79 Salt cod was smelly and required careful preparation. This limited its appeal outside of Catholic regions with no access to fresh fish during Lent.

DEAR SIR, – Those who work conscientiously and strenuously for the public

welfare are sure sometimes to make mistakes, but the good they will do will

eventually more than ten–fold compensate the public for what it may have to pay for

their mistakes. The effort made by Sir Robert Bond80 and the Hon. E. P. Morris for a

number of years to obtain a larger and more profitable market for our staple industry

is worthy of all praise. The Mackinson method of preparing salt cod for cooking is not

altogether unknown to quite a number of outport housekeepers; they have on

occasions for years past used a method

SOMEWHAT SIMILAR THERETO.

Mr. Henry LeMessurier Sr.81, has pointed to the real difficulty which lies in

the way of people in Great Britain ever becoming much greater consumers of our salt

cod than they are at present, when he alludes to the offensive smell that comes from

the raw article itself while in store or before watering, and says truly it ought to be kept in an outhouse. Only the tolerably well to do and the wealthy people in Britain

can provide such a storeroom. Salt cod is by its strong smell shut out from the

ordinary storeroom, cellar, or pantry in private dwellings. Where there is no salt cod

where does the Mackinson process come in. Expedition in preparation is the principal

and most valuable feature in the Mackinson82 process. The expedition will

recommend it to our Yankee cousins who are fish eaters, while Englishmen, Irishmen

and Scotchmen are not. Indeed except at or near a few of the principal seaports, but

VERY LITTLE SALTED MEAT,

except what is canned, ever finds an entrance into three–fourths of British

households. Therefore they don’t understand the first thing about watering salt beef

or pork, not to speak of salt cod. No expeditious method of preparing cod for cooking

can in the result produced compare for excellence with the old plan properly carried

out. The old plan properly carried out, with of course well cured fish, produces no

more ill savour than that which comes while cod is undergoing the Mackinson

treatment. Carelessness on the part of the cook in not changing the water on the fish

often enough is responsible for the ill smell. To water fish properly it should be placed

in a covered vessel and well under water. The water should be strained off and fresh supplied every eight hours and oftener in hot weather – you can’t change the water

too often. Under no circumstances should the fish, even in cold weather, remain

79 From Smith, W. R (1903, February 28). AN INTERESTING LETTER. The Evening Telegram, p. 3. Reverend Walter Redfern Smith (1845 – 1921) is buried in Portugal Cove. 80 The same Robert Bond mentioned earlier in association with Sir William V. Whiteway. At this time

(1903) he was Premier of Newfoundland. 81 Henry William LeMessurier, his son, was a Newfoundland politician who is most famous in the

present day for having composed the folk song ‘The Ryans and the Pittmans’ (a.k.a. ‘We’ll Rant and

We’ll Roar’). 82 I’ve been unable to find anything about Mackinson (Makinson?), or his process.

longer than twelve hours in water. Say what you like about it, hot water tends to harden the fibre of salt cod while cold softens it. The best watered salt cod I ever ate

was when a boy I ate in the houses of

THE OLD PLANTERS

who had watered it by placing it well secured at the mouth of a brook. The next best

I ever ate had been placed in netting and towed in the wake of a schooner under sail.

Perfectly sound, well cured and properly watered salt cod, boiled in skim milk, then

toasted and buttered, is a dish fit to set before the gods. The skimmed milk should be

fresh and sweet. Our naval reserve men must have both fresh and salt cod, if they

are to preserve their present character for intelligence. Even salted cod contains more

brain food by far than beef. Purveyors of provisions for our large lumber camps and

mining centres ought to pay more attention than they appear to do towards providing

our fishermen who have turned miners and lumbermen with, in season, both fresh

and salted cod, or the next generation will be mental and physical weaklings.

The Crash of 1894 In December of 1894, two of Newfoundland’s three banks suddenly closed their doors.

15. No Calm Before the Storm (Early December, 1894)83 Newfoundland’s economy was in rough shape even before the banking crisis.

Newfoundland has always been a curious study, writes a correspondent. It

occupies, so to speak, a little eddy in the world’s commercial trade. There has been

much enterprise in its one or two important trading centres, and a good deal of wealth

accumulated. Once it bade fair to wrest the whaling trade away from the sailors of

the southern fishing ports. At another time the seals “came down,” as the expression

is, and fortune again seemed promising. Both these hopes ultimately vanished, and

the single codfishing industry was left.

The island is believed to abound in mineral wealth. […] Towards the west –

the unlucky “French coast,” which figures as an afterthought in half a dozen

European treaties – there are some fine fields of asbestos and strata of marble. But

the asbestos and marble cannot be mined, because the French treaty gives no harbor

privilege to the English and no interior privileges to the French. Newfoundland has

no manufactures, and could not mine and export its coal at a profit.

AS A LAST RESORT,

some years ago, homestead laws were passed, a railroad built, and every effort made

to attract agricultural settlers to the interior, where there is a really fertile soil. But

the settlers accepted their opportunity very charily – the session is too short for the

majority of grains – and there are not enough even of vegetable market–gardens in

83 From NEWFOUNDLAND AS IT IS. (1894, December 14). Moose Jaw Herald Times, p. 6.

the neighborhood of St. John’s to make possible the supplying of the city’s food

without heavy importations. In short, the whole community seems doomed to depend

upon a single industry. The coal, the marble, the asbestos – even the disputed lobster

fisheries of the French coast – are the good things of Tantalus. They are in full sight,

but Newfoundland cannot see them.

Two years ago last June St. John’s was almost destroyed by fire84. It was the

end of an exceptionally dry month, a violent south–west gale was blowing, half the

city’s buildings were wooden, and the fire having started in the western section, fully

three–fourths of the business part of the city was by morning reduced to ashes. This

disaster came after two seasons of poor luck at the fisheries, and at a time too when

emigration to Canada85 and the United States had become considerable; it seemed,

therefore, almost a finishing stroke. But the event was quite otherwise.

Newfoundland recovered quickly from the business destruction. The people are used

to poverty; what they have to sell is not dependent on buildings, machinery, or store–

houses; and as a matter of fact the first year or two after the fire was marked by a

seeming return of prosperity. A thousand persons, perhaps, out of St. John’s 25,000

inhabitants lived through an autumn and a winter in temporary huts in a public park,

and suffered much from the storms and cold. But when spring came, building

operations began perforce again; as the people say, “the insurance money was being

spent.” Employment for the poor was plentiful, and the season’s catch of cod was once

more abundant.

THIS FALLACIOUS PROSPERITY

has not even yet wholly vanished. It is fallacious, because the real losses to

investments in Newfoundland were heavy, and the blow to the permanent employing

84 The Great Fire of 1892, as it is now known, began on July 8th of that year. 85 “Mr. C. C. Carlyle, an immigration agent of this department [Canada’s Department of the Interior],

working in Newfoundland for the past six months, has furnished this department with a list of about

500 persons, some of whom will accompany him to the Canadian Northwest at an early date, and the

remainder intend emigrating to Canada as soon as possible. On this list appear the names of about

400 married men, who wish to obtain employment as farm laborers. These men, in every instance,

furnish trustworthy references of their good character, and they have all subscribed to the following

statement: “We, the undersigned, being desirous of emigrating to the Canadian Northwest, and being

unwilling to take the risk of looking for employment on our arrival, and being desirous of obtaining

work for at least the space of three years to enable us to obtain each a farm of our own, are desirous of

making a contract with some responsible farmer or tradesman for the said three years on the terms

hereunto appended in the form attached, and I will sign such contract on presentation.” The proposed

contract is in the following words: “This agreement […] witnesseth that the said _____ of

Newfoundland, agrees to go with all possible speed to the residence of _____ of Canada, and here serve

three years with him as a farmer’s apprentice, and faithfully discharge all duties encumbent on him.

Ten hours will be a day’s work, except in seed time and harvest, when 12 hours will be a day’s work.

And the said _____ of Canada, agrees to furnish the said _____ of Ne[w]foundland, a ticket to his

nearest railway station, and pay him, if between the ages of 16 and 20 years, the sum of $10 a month,

and if between the ages of 20 and 25 years, the sum of $12 dollars a month, with board and lodging.

One third of the same to be paid to the Canadian Railway on account of the said _____ of

Newfoundland, and the balance to be paid to him each month.” MIGRATION FROM

NEWFOUNDLAND. (1894, May 18). The Prince Albert Times, p. 1.

class more severe than people here seem to imagine. How little the situation is

understood may be judged from the action of the landlords. The water front – the

really valuable St. John’s property – is largely owned by absentee proprietors, and

the leases were generally voided by the fire. No sooner had this happened than the

land–holders, on the first application for rent renewals, raised their demands by all

sorts of gradations; adding in some cases, it is said, as much as 50 per cent. These

older leaseholders dated back, it is true, twenty–five years or more. But twenty–five

years ago was a time of far greater prosperity in Newfoundland than to–day. The

result of this unreasonable movement was curious, but quite logical. Some business

houses were forced to accept their landlords’ terms and rebuild. Many others were

not. As a result sites as to rent no agreement could be reached were left untouched.

Not even the ruined walls of the old buildings were removed. It is now two years and

two months since the fire; yet I counted the other day, within five blocks on the main

business street of St. John, no less than twenty–two ruined buildings, the ragged and

blackened walls of which were still left standing – often thirty or forty feet in height

– exactly as though the disaster were but of a week ago.

16. The Crash (December 10, 1894)86 The Commercial and Union banks would close their doors forever.

The Commercial bank suspended payment, liabilities unknown. A run on the

Union bank is now in progress. There is a financial panic here [St. John’s,

Newfoundland]. The Commercial bank has suspended payment temporarily and the

Union bank is paying out gold to satisfy the run. The calamity was caused by a change

in the firm of Browse, Hall & Morris, of England, who transact business for many

Newfoundland merchants. The change involved an immediate call on local men at a

season when assets are not realizable.

17. The Aftermath (February, 1895)87 One notable result of the crisis was a loss of faith in paper money.

A letter received […] from St. John’s, the very centre of the present sore

trouble, shows a very woeful state of affairs indeed.

“I got paid on Saturday evening, and the Commercial Bank never opened after

that, and so my money (bills) was a waste paper, and the bill that was worth five

dollars, is now only worth $1, or 20 cents on the dollar.”

When a man takes a V88 into a store he has to be content with trading the

depreciated value of it out, as the storekeeper will not give change, for the government

will not guarantee the 20 cent rate beyond two years. Indeed some storekeepers

86 From FINANCIAL PANIC. (1894, December 11). The Daily Colonist, p. 1. 87 From A Cry from Newfoundland. (1895, February 21). The Brandon Mail, p. 4. 88 This appears to be slang for a $5 note (‘V’ is ‘5’ in Roman numerals).

refuse to take them at that rate. He says the streets are traversed by poor hungry

emaciated beings, who have no means and no prospects of supplying sustenance to

the physical man.

Silver has been brought in very rapidly; one man was actually seen to pay a

$10 bill for a fifty cent piece of silver.

18. The Roots of All Trade (1894)89

This article was published two days after the start of the banking crisis.

It was a matter of comment yesterday why it was gold and silver – silver

especially – had become so scarce as a circulating medium compared with Bank notes.

In the early days of the Union Bank, in 1864 and succeeding years, before the

Commercial Bank was instituted, the sovereign and half–sovereign, the Mexican

dollar, the British crown and the

UNITED STATES HALF DOLLAR,

formed much the highest value in a deposit of cash in which the Bank’s one pound

and five pound notes were commingled. It was subsequent to that year that the

Colony’s own gold and silver currency took the place of the foreign coinage, the British

excepted. But, the last twenty years, hard money has been growing more and more

scarce, and the bulk of silver currency was

STILL FURTHER ENCROACHED UPON

five or six years ago by the issue of the two–dollar denomination of bank notes. This

initiative was taken by the Commercial Bank. Now, sire, there is no safer or more

convenient circulating medium for the working classes than the silver currency. Take

two representatives of that class: the outport fisherman who has made a good voyage,

and the St. John’s laborer – both, men of family. The former having paid for

ALL HIS WINTER SUPPLIES

of provisions, raiment, &c., and deposited his surplus in the Savings’ Bank, retains a

little reserve of cash, say ten pounds or forty dollars, to meet emergencies at home

during the winter. What more convenient all–round medium for the purpose than the

Newfoundland half–dollar? It does not make a bulky package, and if it does, can be

reduced with a few gold pieces and a few bank notes – the latter to maintenance of

that faith and trust in banking institutions, which is a characteristic of enterprising

business people everywhere, because faith and credit

ARE AT THE ROOTS OF ALL TRADE,

the development of countries and the advancement of their populations. The other

representative of the working classes – the St. John’s laborer – can have every

requirement of his life supplied most advantageously from the beginning of that life

to its close, through a silver currency; for his earnings yield him, as a rule, from three

to eight dollars, weekly, and a welcome wage to him

89 BI–METALLIST. (1894, December 12). SCARCITY OF GOLD AND SILVER. The Evening Telegram, p. 4.

EVERY SATURDAY NIGHT

would be six dollars in silver coins. These two men form a class which may fairly be

said to comprise three–fourths of the colony’s population; and if their interests were

safeguarded by a silver currency their business transactions would be conducted on

a safe and fixed basis of value, with buoyant confidence and hope, year in and year

out. As to the liability of silver to depreciate by reason of the increased output of some

SILVER–MINING REGIONS,

we must remember the demand of the modern world, for articles of refinement, tends

to keep the value of silver up; that a decrease in the output enhances its value; and

that, at the worst, the possession of a silver dollar is more substantial fact to the

holder than a paper dollar when its inscription of a “promise to pay” assumes the

shape of a legend. Why, sir, how did our grandfathers and grandmothers manage to

conduct their business affairs

WHEN THERE WERE NO BANKS?

It does look indeed as if much of the Spartan virtue of those times were lost to the

“Boy of To–day,” as well as to the “Girl of To–day.” How often have we not heard them

recall their business experiences of the dim past, when the old trunks or flour–barrel

held its store of Mexican dollars, by means of which they conducted their barter and

sale! Then, if a business–house failed, though it produced loss to its dealers,

mechanics and laborers, by the termination of their industrial relations to each other,

and loss to those who left balances in its keep, yet it involved in its fall

NO MONETARY INSTITUTION

with widespread certificates of indebtedness, and involved no correspondingly

widespread loss. The reserve of silver which they held at home was ample to meet the

passing stringency, if any such arose; and the suspension of payments by a mercantile

firm was delimited in its disastrous consequences to those having direct dealings with

it – to the few not the many.

19. A Run on Three Banks (May, 1895)90 By spring of 1895, Canadian banks had set up shop in Newfoundland. The possibility of joining Canada in Confederation was fiercely debated topic. Anti– Confederation activists tried to bolster their argument by sabotaging the Dominion’s financial institutions.

Some malicious person or persons started the report in St. John’s, Nfld., the

other evening that the Bank of Montreal, the Merchants Bank of Halifax and the

Bank of Nova Scotia were in a shaky condition. The origin of the report cannot be

traced. The following morning there was considerable run on the banks, but it was

not panicky. The bank managers are considerable annoyed, but smile at the absurdity

of the report and are paying out gold to all who ask for it. Many believe that some

over zealous anti confederates have started it in order to damage Canadian

institutions and raise a feeling against confederation.

90 From A RUN ON THREE BANKS. (1895, May 16). Qu’Appelle Progress, p. 3.

Another banking scare occurred at the same place on the same day. A story

was circulated that the Bank of Montreal had suspended. The rumor was traced to a

number of anti–confederate fanatics, who are constantly starting damaging reports.

But the public were so badly bitten in the late banking disasters that the rumor was

easily swallowed, and there was a run on every bank in the city, causing great

excitement. Crowds of people surrounded each banking institution, where the

officials were paying out large reserves of gold, as owing to the unsettled condition of

affairs during the past three months most of the people refuse to handle notes, but

convert them into gold immediately they are obtained. There is no apprehension of

danger to any of the banks. The managers all say that they have an abundance of

gold to meet any possible call, and it is expected that the panic will have soon

subsided.

The run was heaviest on the Government Savings Bank, which is supported by

the Bank of Montreal, though there was also a run on the Bank of Nova Scotia and

Merchants’ Bank. Each bank stood by the others, not hesitating to redeem the others’

notes, and by their air of confidence and liberal displays of heaps of gold coin, the

panic was allayed, so there was no crush about the teller’s windows when the banks

closed for the day. Business people took no part in the run; it was confined to the

poorer classes, who were most credulous.

20. Signs of Recovery (November, 1895)91

All the news that came from Newfoundland not long ago was of a discouraging

sort, dealing as it did with financial reverses of the Government banks and private

individuals and the prostration of the province’s trade. Now there is to be chronicled

another item of a very different nature, the unbounded success of the cod and lobster

hatchery in Trinity Bay, and with it a catch that promises to be a remarkably good

one.

Four years ago this hatchery was started at the instance of a merchant of St.

John’s, and carried on for a while at his own expense. Then the Government took it

up and made it a province affair, placing it on a most liberal basis and sparing no

expense in stocking the sea with fish.

Trinity Bay was chosen as the location of the hatchery on account of its

sheltered position and its many little inlets and shallow bays. As the fry are sent out

to shift for themselves a few weeks after they are hatched, shallow waters and

sheltered shores are by far the best places for them to thrive in (so the hatchery

managers argued), for there they run little risk of being devoured by larger fish, or of

being swept out into very dep water, and there also they have much less difficulty in

obtaining their daily supply of food.

ON DILDO ISLAND

the hatchery was placed and was put under the management of a Norwegian named

Nelson. The Government provided a yearly appropriation of some $16,000, and this

91 From LOBSTERS AND COD GALORE. (1895, November 29). Moose Jaw Herald Times, p. 6.

proved ample for every purpose. So well did Nelson manage the affairs of the hatchery

that when the scientists and men of affairs interested in fisheries met at the World’s

Fair in a sort of small convention, the hatchery at Newfoundland, it was greed by all,

had proved itself one of the best in the world. In lobsters actually hatched and sent

out the records showed that the most remarkable achievements in artificial hatching

anywhere in the world’s history had been performed; while in cod hardly less had

been accomplished.

In the four years since the establishment of the hatchery 2,500,000,000 young

lobsters have been hatched out and 65,000,000 young cod. The main result

accomplished has been to more than entirely nullify the reckless slaughter of cod with

spawn during recent years. This destruction was not wanton, but the fishermen were

driven to it through competition.

Last year just about this time, several months before the disclosure of financial

weakness, the Newfoundland Legislative Assembly then sitting had a hot debate over

the hatchery question, the point disputed being the annual appropriation. It had

resolved itself into a strictly political matter, the parties of the island being divided

upon the question strictly on party lines.

THE APPROPRIATION

was in doubt, when reports began to come in from Trinity Bay. It should be premised

that cod must be three years old to be worth the catching, and it was then just three

years from the time of the establishment of the hatchery.

The Trinity Bay reports were most favorable. In their detail they astounded

every member of the then sitting house, for they showed that the catch, in proportion

to that of former years in this bay, was of unprecedented size. The hatchery had

proved itself an unqualified success. Party lines were at once broken, and in a burst

of enthusiasm the appropriation bill for the further continuance of the hatchery was

carried.

This year there seems no doubt that the catch will be fully up to last year’s.

The lobster catch is particularly good, too, though the hatchery people have

experienced much difficulty in increasing the supply of them in the waters of

Newfoundland as fast as the number they have hatched would seem to warrant. For

the young lobsters are not only subject to all the dangers of the deep, but for a few

weeks after they are hatched fight villainously and kill each other by the hundreds

and devour one another cannibalistically at a great rate.

The fishermen are a very prosperous set of men. The fishing season for cod

begins in June and ends in October. All sorts of methods are practised in catching the

fish. Traps, nets and seines are used and there is also more or less hand–line fishing.

The fashion varies, and the fishermen constantly change their ways of securing their

game. Several years ago traps – set and baited very much as are lobster traps, and

similar in construction – were used. Now traps in most districts are considered a trifle

out of date and

NETS AND SEINES

are more in favor. Many of the nets are “set.” There is comparatively little fishing

nowadays by hand–line, except in the small boats manned by three or four men that

go out only a little distance from the shore.

Enormous are the catches made in a single day and by a single boat. Some of

the larger craft have no trouble at all in securing 200 quintals of fish for a single day’s

work. That is 20,000 pounds or 5,000 to 6,000 cod. One man often finds it possible to

pull in 400 to 500 cod a day.

Few fish are as prolific as the cod. A single female is said to contain 9,000,000

eggs. Comparatively few of these are ever hatched, of course, and the fry that actually

do appear are still further reduced in numbers by all sorts of contingencies. Very few

of them in proportion actually live to be three–year–old fish. Like the young lobsters,

the fry frequently eat each other, and besides they are, even in shallow waters,

constantly at the mercy of larger fish. Trinity Bay should be within a few years the

finest codfishing point on the northern coast.

The real idea of the hatchery, as it has been well put, is “to conserve rather

than to preserve.” That is, the project is to secure definitely for the Newfoundland

fisheries now and for all time a constantly increasing supply of cod and lobsters, for

it is almost solely upon these two things that the propensity of the island rests.

Our Staple Product: The Letters of James Murray James Murray was a Newfoundland merchant who lost his business in the aftermath of the Crisis of 1894. Three years later he would write a series of letters to the Evening Telegram that shed light into the nature of the cod fishery in the aftermath of the bank failures.

21. Relieving the Fish Market (July, 1897)92

DEAR SIR, – I attended a public meeting last evening convened for the

laudable purpose of endeavoring to “relieve the present congested condition of the

local fish market,”93 and the worthy promoter of this movement, Mr. John Anderson94,

told us this was to be done by means of a Joint Stock Company which would buy fish

92 From Murray, J (1897, July 3). Relieving the Fish Market. The Evening Telegram, p. 4. Written by James Murray (1843 – 1900). 93 “To relieve the present congested condition of the export trade, particularly to the staple article, dry codfish, the trade which has been for the most part, since the crash in December, 1894, conducted by four or five firms in St. John’s, whose operations have frequently been confined to their own immediate

dealers or connections; thus leaving no local market for the disposal of a large portion of the staple product of the country in the hands of independent fishermen and others who are unable or unwilling

to export it themselves, and are thus placed at a serious disadvantage in Disposing of Their Produce.”

Fish Exporting Company. (1897, July 3). The Evening Telegram, p. 4. 94 A Newfoundland dry goods merchant and politician best known today for helping pass the Daylight

Savings Act in 1917.

for cash in this market95. Such a movement and such a proposed mode of

accomplishing it are worthy of all praise and of every encouragement from the public

at large. There was one statement made by Mr. Anderson that needs some

explanation, and my object in writing this is to obtain the same. Mr. A. (if I heard

him rightly) said it was not the intention of the proposed company to raise the price

of fish, or words to that effect. Now, if it is not the intention of this company to raise

the price of fish, in what way can it help or benefit the producer or seller of fish in the

local market? At present the price of dry codfish is down to the ruinously low point of

from $2.00 to $2.60 in this market, and that, too, for new winter and spring–caught fish – a price never before heard of in this country within the memory of man. I should imagine that the first, prime and PRINCIPAL object of this company would be to try

and raise that price, anyhow; for, if such cannot be done, it will be a black lookout for

the fishermen this fall, and the simple result will be that thousands of our people will be cast upon the care of the Government for their support during the coming winter. I have no doubt Mr. Anderson is prepared to rectify or amend his statement to the

above effect, and as my ardent wish is for the prosperity and success of the proposed

company, or any movement that will help the great natural business of this country

(for which at no time in its history was there a greater need than at present) I write

these few lines for the purpose of assisting him to do so.

Yours, &c., JAMES MURRAY.

St. John’s, July 3rd, 1897.

P.S. – Let me add for general information that the present price of fish for the

local market means a loss of ONE MILLION DOLLARS on this year’s catch, as

compared with last year. This is equal to a deduction of FIFTEEN PER CENT from

the earnings of every man, woman and child in Newfoundland. J. M.

22. Mr. Anderson Replies (July, 1897)96

DEAR SIR, – A letter from Mr. James Murray in reference to the proposed Fish

Exporting Company in your issue of Saturday, calls for a reply and a word of

explanation. I am glad of this opportunity of referring to a matter which has been

somewhat overlooked in the press notices regarding this proposed company, and that

is, the great advantages the fishermen themselves will gain by it. The “first, prime

and principal” object would be to compel the fishermen and curers to produce a perfectly–cured, clean and marketable fish, and for that, and that alone, the company

95 “With John Munn & Co. out of business, and a large portion of the mercantile premises of St. John’s unoccupied, it is evident the increased volume of trade diverted to St. John’s cannot be conducted in a satisfactory manner Under Present Conditions, and the consequence is that fishermen, shopkeepers, tradesmen, and, indeed, the whole community, are suffering more or less by the condition of affairs above referred to. The presence of a well–conducted export company would tend to relieve the congested state of trade, without any detriment to those already in the business, and more likely to

their advantage, and undoubtedly to the manifest advantage of all who depend on a healthy circulation

of money, at the present time so badly wanted.” Ibid. 96 From Anderson, J. (1897, July 6). Letter from Mr. Anderson. The Evening Telegram, p. 4. Written by John Anderson (1855 – 1930).

would pay the highest market price in cash here in St. John’s. The company will have no object to gain in keeping the price of fish down, but rather in raising it. And it

would be the best possible thing if every fisherman could hold, at least, one share in

the concern. Mr. Murray misunderstands my meaning if he inferred that the proposed

company was to be a money–making concern at the expense of the fishermen or

labour–producing classes, other than in expecting a fair return for invested capital.

In our opinion, a great factor in the difficulty of selling our fish in foreign

markets for a good price has been the careless and insufficient way in which the fish

has been cured. This has largely been the cause of bringing the fish down to the

ruinously low price of which Mr. Murray speaks. Our exporting merchants cannot

sell bad fish at a good price, and sometimes cannot sell it at any price. To put the matter concisely (and I hope that all fishermen and those interested in any way in

this our staple article of exportation and that is nearly the whole of our population,

will read this), matters have come to such a pass now, that some effort must be made

to save the country from financial ruin. By working unitedly, fishermen and merchant

together, we may set the wheels of commerce in motion once more, and so secure the

welfare of the whole colony. By starting a Fish Exporting Company, in which the

fishermen as well as the merchant would have an interest, by being themselves

shareholders, the fisherman to do his part by perfectly curing the fish, the Company

theirs by paying a good price in cash for a well–cured article, and that only; by

securing good markets abroad through their own travelers instead of by agents, and

by uniting together for the welfare of the country at large, and not for personal

interests alone, the colony may regain its lost prestige in the commercial world; and

much of the old, pernicious credit system may be done away with. All classes of the

community will be benefited directly or indirectly, and the fisherman’s best friend is

the one who helps him to do his work conscientiously and well; so that in the end he

may reap the benefit. “United we stand, divided we fall,” and the crisis in our colonial

history, as far as commerce is concerned (and with that almost every other interest)

calls for immediate, unselfish, and united effort. The importance of the subject must be my excuse, Mr. Editor, for trespassing so largely on your valuable space. We would

invite more able men than ourselves to give us the benefit of their wisdom and

experience through the public press, as this matter cannot be too widely ventilated.

Yours faithfully,

JOHN ANDERSON.

St. John’s, July 5th, 1897.

23. The Price of Fish (July, 1897)97

DEAR SIR, – I have to thank Mr. Anderson for his prompt and copious reply

to my enquiry respecting the intention of the proposed Fish Exporting Company with

regard to the price of fish. From it I gather that the Company will buy good fish at

the current market rates, but will not originate a price for fish – this being the

97 From Murray, J (1897, July 8). The Price of Fish, &c. The Evening Telegram, p. 4. Written by James Murray (1843 – 1900).

conclusion I arrived at from hearing Mr. Anderson’s remarks before the meeting on

last Friday evening. Mr. Anderson’s letter is mainly occupied with observations about

the cure of fish, a subject I may have a word or two to say about later on. At present the point of enquiry with me is the current price or prices for dry codfish, which I

maintain are inordinately low. Last year our fish exporting merchants were paying

$4 to $4.20 per quintal talqual at this time for new fish, and so eager were they to get it that they actually sent special agents and messengers all round the coast to buy up the fish at those prices. This year the prices for the same fish range from $2 to $2 80 per quintal, and nobody wants to buy it, even when it is exposed to the strict and

unmerciful “cull” for which St. John’s enjoys such an unenviable notoriety – a “cull”

which divides the fish into ten or twelve different qualities, and that is made under

the ex parte98 authority, without appeal, of the purchaser. Moreover, I am told, on what appears to be good authority, that even at these low prices, and under these

hard and unjust conditions, the unfortunate seller, contrary to the statute made and

provided, is actually compelled to take up half the payment of the fish in goods or “truck.” Now, Mr. Editor, why I asked Mr. Anderson whether it was the intention of

the new company to undertake an initiative of this matter of the price (and “cull,” for

the latter is part of the former) was and is because I was and am aware of this unjust

“Combine” on the part of a few fish–exporting merchants to depreciate the whole

fishery product of this country, and I wished (and still wish) Mr. Anderson and his new friends, to repudiate all connection with it, if they can truthfully do so, as I assume they can. Never before in the history of this colony, so far as I know, was such

a NEFARIOUS attempt made to confiscate – yes, I repeat the word, CONFISCATE –

the industries of a whole people – to cause them to relinquish their labors for a mere

song! I call upon all your readers to witness that in writing this letter and the former

one I have indulged in no claptrap language, and I wish here to add that I have no

political or class motive whatever for discussing this matter. I assume that we are all

animated now by a harmonious and bona fide desire to grapple with this fish question, to try and find a solution of it. Many sharp corners we have been called

upon to turn, and heavy difficulties have all had to face, during the last few years.

But I deliberately say that not one of them singly, or all of them combined, is

comparable for a single moment with the gravity of the present situation. What! Dry

codfish TWO DOLLARS per quintal, payable half in truck!!! Heaven help us, that we

should have sunk to so low a depth of degradation as that! Yours truly,

JAMES MURRAY.

St. John’s, July 8th, 1897.

P.S. – I am still in hopes of hearing from Mr. Anderson on the subject of my

text. Come, Mr. A., let us hear you speak out in trumpet tones along these lines. What

is life without liberty?

98 A legal term meaning ‘on behalf of’. Its use here implies a one–sided offer.

24. Our Staple Product (July, 1897)99

DEAR SIR, – In the absence of any further reply from Mr. Anderson I am

reduced to the necessity of continuing my observations on the present state of the

local fish market without that advantage. In my last two letters I stated that the price

of new dried codfish had been reduced to the low average valuation of TWO

DOLLARS per quintal in the local market; that a “combine” exists to maintain this

low valuation; and that this combine has gone to the extreme limit of compelling the

seller, wherever he can do so, to take payment for his fish in whole or in part, in goods

or “truck.” None of these statements have been denied or confirmed for the simple

reason that they are facts, and cannot be disputed, and any attempt to dispute them

would only throw up the facts into greater prominence.

As a positive illustration of the truth of these statements I am able to cite a

case which came under my observation since this correspondence began. A planter

named Mr. Thomas Garland, of Pushthrough, Hermitage Bay, brought on part of his

collection of winter and spring caught fish for sale in the Saint John’s market last

week, the cargo consisting of about 650 quintals. To prove that the fish was good fish it need only be said that after having been subjected to the severe “cull” already

referred to by me as the unenviably notorious St. John’s “cull,” there were less than

thirty qtls. thrown out of the parcel as West India. After going around town seeking

for a purchaser for his fish at reasonable prices, during which time Mr. Garland was

quoted the same prices by each fish exporting firm, he was obliged to sell his fish on the terms offered to him, and when the account was made up, as interpreted by the

cull, he found that his fish realized exactly TWO DOLLARS and two cents per quintal.

This same class of fish is now being delivered on the Western Shore at $3.15 per

quintal, talqual; so that Garland loses one dollar and thirteen cents by bringing it on

to St. John’s for sale, and of course, under the terms of this ruinous loss he will take

the rest of his fish to Halifax, thus depriving this port of all it might otherwise gain

by having that amount of trade brought here. No doubt the purchaser of this fish

acted within his strict legal rights – to get it as cheaply as he could – but, without

reflecting upon anyone in particular, I cannot help thinking that, in the sight of God

and man, it was and is a SHAMEFUL SACRIFICE. If such a policy continues may

we not reasonably expect to find that St. John’s will soon be what it is rapidly

becoming already – a waste howling wilderness?

In my last letter I stated that this time last year the price of new winter and

spring fish on the West Coast was $4.20 to 4.30, talqual. Some people maintain that

this price was inordinately high, though I remember several years ago when 29s. 6d.

was given for Merchantable fish, 27s. for Madeira, and 23s. for West India; and

merchants whose solvency could not be questioned were fighting to get it. But suppose

last year’s prices were too high, who made these prices? I should like to know. Was it not these same present fish–exporting merchants, in the exercise of “their sole

discretion,” and without either outside or inside pressure from anyone? If their

99 From Murray, J (1897, July 15). OUR STAPLE PRODUCT. The Evening Telegram, p. 4. Written by James Murray (1843 – 1900).

argument is good that $4 per quintal was too high for fish, why did they make that price? What was the consequence of their having made it? This – that every local outport planter and collector of fish throughout Newfoundland had to give that price

and base his operations upon it. Then, when these poor angashores100 subsequently

came on to St. John’s to market their fish, they had to face a ruinous loss of over a

dollar per quintal on their entire collection! This year, on the other hand, we rush to

the opposite extreme, and with equally fatal results to all the interests concerned, not

even excepting those of the would–be monopolists themselves. That is to say, if FOUR

DOLLAR fish was too high (a theorem that has yet to be proved), then “Two Dollar”

Fish is, and must be, as much too low. Why? Because, if it were not, what necessity is there of a combine to keep it down to that rate?

Now, what is the consequence of this last stupid proceeding? Just this, that our

foreign purchasers and fish–dealers, being apprised by their local agents here, as they

always promptly are, of the prices being paid in this market, base their prices and offers on this local valuation. In other words, they say, We will take your Newfoundland dry codfish at your own valuation. You say two dollar fish :– We say two dollar fish. If two dollars is good enough for your fishermen, two dollars is good

enough for you. If Newfoundland were a country of multiplied industries, the wide–

spread effects of this wholesale depreciation of the colony’s main resource might be

looked upon by the political economist with comparative equanimity. Men – even fish

merchants – might be allowed to play “ducks and drakes” with their own interests,

or even with those of the special classes which might be, unfortunately, dependent

upon them. But a man or class of men might as well debase the currency of a country

as unduly depress and depreciate the value of its natural industry, for that is, to all intents and purposes, the currency of a country, and every man, however humble his

position in life, has some share in it. Here we have a class of men, according to their

own showing, with the whole control of a strictly–preserved monopoly in their own

hands (also according to their own showing) because they gave a dollar per quintal

too much for fish in 1896, much to the loss and grief of many people, therefore – I say,

therefore – they must now reduce the price of the same article to $1 per quintal below its market value, to make up for their losses! It is said that the Newfoundland trade

lost $300,000 on their fish realisations last year, and if this be so I am very sorry for it. No honest man likes to hear of another’s losses; and if the Newfoundland merchant

loses money in the first instance, the Newfoundland fisherman and all others may be

weakened by his losses later on. At the same time, it is possible that these losses may

be due to the maintenance of unjust and unwholesome MONOPOLIES, which, in working out their bainful effects, stop not to ask what individuals they injure or how widely their devastations extend. Yes, it may be so, commercially as well as socially,

that a community may become such a congenital conglomeration as to die of blood– poisoning! Yours, etc.,

JAMES MURRAY.

St. John’s, July 12, 1897.

100 People who like to complain. From the Gaelic ainniseoir.

25. On the Subject of Dry Codfish (July, 1897)101

DEAR SIR, – The subject of dry codfish is not an imposing one, and it is only

as it touches deeper and broader issues that it can be made of interest to the general

public. It is said that Charles Lamb could pleasingly discourse about “roast pig.” 102

But I am not a Lamb, nor am I gifted with that seductive smile which “Plays round the head, but comes not to the heart”103 of my friend, Mr. George Hayward, when he talks so captivatingly about the beauties of Mess Pork. One of the speakers at the

meeting on Thursday week hit the right nail on the head when he said that most of

our disasters in the

NEWFOUNDLAND FISH TRADE

Proceeded from ourselves, from our own internal divisions, from our want of cohesion

and unity of purpose. Like a house divided against itself, we fail because we are all

pulling in opposite directions. The ‘dealer’ believes that the supplying merchant is

taking an unfair advantage of him and the merchant mistrusts the ‘dealer.’ The large

merchant pulls against the trader and planter and the middle–class or intermediaries

protect themselves against the wholesale merchant the best they can. Instead of

there being co–operation and a unified interest, there is discord and division.

“DIVIDED WE FALL.”

The same fact holds good when we come to the work of distributing the fish in

the foreign markets. Every shipper wants to supplant his neighbor – to participate,

to over–reach him. If a new exporter appears there is a temporary unity of purpose,

but as it is directed entirely to ‘wolf’ him, its effect is necessarily not to improve the foreign markets or the general interest. Everything of common value or general

interest is sacrificed to feed our internal disputes and jealousies, and it is hard even

to expect that any more prosperous result crown our efforts. Year after year we see

that the number of fish exporting houses becomes less: the trade falls into fewer

hands, and the more contracted it becomes the lower

FALLS THE PRICE OF FISH.

There is not one atom of consolation in this declining state of affairs for anyone.

Usually in the case where a fall in the value of merchandise involves loss to one party it means a proportionate gain to some other party. But such is not the fact in regard to the losses of our Newfoundland fish trade. The latter do not benefit anyone, while

they tend to impoverish this colony and every man, woman and child in it. Let us see

HOW THIS OPERATES.

101 Murray, J (1897, July 19). Subject of Dry Codfish. The Evening Telegram, p. 4. Written by Written by James Murray (1843 – 1900). 102 Charles Lamb (1775 – 1833), an English writer, famously wrote ‘A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig’.

The essay is filled with intentionally purple prose such as “I speak not of your grown porkers—things

between pig and pork—those hobbydehoys—but a young and tender suckling—under a moon old—

guiltless as yet of the sty—with no original speck of the amor immunditiæ, the hereditary failing of the first parent, yet manifest—his voice as yet not broken, but something between a childish treble

and a grumble—the mild forerunner, or præludium, of a grunt.” 103 A quotation from Chapter 5, Epistle IV of Alexander Pope’s ‘An Essay on Man’.

A foreign fish dealer or middleman, say in Oporto, contemplates buying a cargo of

Newfoundland codfish, or a part of it, for the supply of his retail or consuming

customers: he does so. We will say that this man is animated by a fair desire to give

a reasonable price for the fish. Before he has time to distribute his purchase, along

comes another large cargo of codfish, or perhaps two or three which are tumbled into

the market all at once and sold at whatever price they may fetch to the highest bidder.

The ‘middleman’ in Oporto who has already bought to supply the legitimate wants of

his trade is ‘wolfed’ and

SUFFERS A HEAVY LOSS.

Next time he looks askance at Newfoundland codfish, and so does every other body on whom we have to depend in Oporto to keep up the price of our fish. The warfare proceeds from this end of the line, and we have nothing to blame it on except our

narrow, petty, local rivalries, in connection with an uneven and unsystematic mode

of foreign distribution. It is either a feast or a famine. The famine feeds upon the

feast, and then the feast

FEEDS UPON THE FAMINE.

Now it is to be sadly observed that with all the fluctuations that have affected

the fish trade here at home in Newfoundland we have not improved one iota as

regards this matter of foreign distribution. The same fatal policy that would sooner

cut the throat of a rival than share in common profit, and the same ‘happy go lucky’

mode collectively, of trusting to chance for a bare market or a ‘glutted’ one, afflicts us

still. How can we hope to prosper while

THIS STATE OF THING CONTINUES.

So far in its history this country is not like an ordinary country in this

particular, that it has an ordinary or well–assorted population. The great mass of

the population are dependent upon a few, and these few undertake (as their

mercantile rulers) to manage their foreign affairs for them as regards the handling of

their fish. The time has no most obviously come, however, when some other authority

must intervene, and come to our help, or else the whole industrial structure on which

this colony depends must cease to be. With fish down to $2 per quntal and constantly

tending downwards, it is obvious that ruin stares us in the face. Our merchants say

THEY CANNOT HELP US,

that they are losing money and cannot give more for the fish. Very well, then, let it

be so. Is it because of this unfortunate fact that a whole industry must perish, and a

whole population – once thriving, happy and prosperous – must die? Must we not try,

by wise counsels and mutual assistance, to rescue the perishing, ere it be too late?

and WHAT TIME WAS URGENCY MORE CLEARLY INDICATED IN THE MOST

SOLEMN TONES THAN IT IS AT PRESENT? Yours truly,

JAMES MURRAY.

St. John’s, July 15th, 1897.

26. The Staple Industry (July, 1897)104

DEAR SIR, – I am of the opinion that the fisheries of Newfoundland will always

be conducted by means of the supplying or limited credit system, as they are at

present. Some persons are under the impression that that mode of conducting the

fisheries has been altered since the Bank crash of 1894, but such is not the case. The

supplying system conducts the fisheries of Newfoundland to–day as it always did,

and it is safe to say that, whilever these fisheries exist, they will be conducted in the

same way, and no other. Our fisheries and our supply system are interchangeable

terms – when the one goes the other will not long survive.

The proof of this is found in the very nature of the case. No man remains an

operative fisherman after he becomes independent, or can gain a living by any other

avocation. Were we to emancipate the entire body of fishermen to–morrow, the fish

would cease to be caught. Suppose we take any operative fisherman, and place him

in possession of $500, what will he do? He may supply some other man to go fishing for him – in which case he becomes a “supplier” – but I am certain he will not continue

to catch fish himself. How necessary it is, therefore, that the condition of the

fishermen should be made as tenable and comfortable as possible! If this country

depends upon its fishermen and their industrial products – if the merchants, the

mechanic, the parson, the doctor, the politician and the lawyer, – all subsist upon the

fisherman, how necessary it is that we should all study his comfort, as a class, and

make the foundation on which his existence rests the subject of our most anxious

solicitude.

Now, what do we find in this Diamond Jubilee105 year of Her Majesty’s long

and glorious reign (God bless her!) that we have all been just so loyally celebrating?

Why, if my statements are correct, we find this, that in the evolution of Newfoundland

dry codfish, the staple, and beyond all comparison, the most important natural

production of this colony, we have developed from a $4 per quintal to a $2 per quintal

article, payable in truck, as the local commercial valuation of that article, and we have consequently developed the average Newfoundland fisherman from a FOUR

dollar fisherman (which he was) to a TWO dollar fisherman, which he is at present. Whether the rest of us in this colony who are not fishermen – whether the 150,000 of us who are at present trying to live upon the fifty thousand fishermen who farm the

seas – whether we, as a colony, can continue to subsist as well upon a TWO DOLLAR

fisherman as upon a FOUR DOLLAR fisherman, I leave it for wiser heads than mine

to determine; but if, in the light of our past experience, we can do so, then certainly,

the four dollar fisherman must have lived in vain. With regard to the valuation of Newfoundland dried codfish as compared with, or as affected by, other articles of

human food, I am also of the opinion that its valuation is not materially affected by

the value, or by the fluctuations in value, of any article of human food except itself.

In that fact resides the incomparable value of the fisheries of this country, as

104 From Murray, J. (1897, July 23). THE STAPLE INDUSTRY. The Evening Telegram, p. 4. Written by James Murray (1843 – 1900). 105 60th anniversary.

contrasted with all other fisheries and all other industries. Nature has placed in our hands the exclusive possession of an article of human food, the value of which we have tried in vain, for at least fifty years, to destroy, with greater ingenuity than if

we had directed our BRAINS to that special object, and with almost as much success as if we had any brains to direct.

The one thing we seem to have been unchallengeably proficient in (as was aptly

observed by a certain speaker at the public meeting of Thursday week) is in ruining

the fishermen, ruining the fish markets, and ruining one another. And the practical

product is incontestably seen to–day in the evolution of a two dollar fisherman,

payable in truck. Then take the matter of cure – the patent panacea for all fishery ills whenever we are at a loss to account for them otherwise. I haven’t one word to

say in extenuation of badly–cured fish when such is deliberately brought about by the

action of the fishermen themselves. But have we not the remedy for that evil in our

own hands? Does any one really believe that operative fishermen deliberately set to

work to “cure” their fish badly? And if they do, in any instance, bring bad fish to

market, has not every fish exporting merchant the power to refuse taking it? Could not badly–cured fish be legislated out of existence within two fishery seasons, at the

outside, if the exporting merchants refused to buy it? Some do refuse to buy it, and these men can consistently warn their fishermen and dealers against “making” – that

is, bringing to market – bad or insufficiently cured codfish, and they have done so,

and I have nothing to say against such an act. But it is almost enough to make a horse

laugh (and some horses do laugh at it) to hear people who send down their vessels to the Labrador, and lift their fish on board them in baskets, because it is too limp and wet to be handled in any other way, pull long faces on themselves, and account for

Labrador fish being down to $1.50 per quintal, because it has been badly cured in the past!

Yours, &c.,

JAMES MURRAY.

St. John’s, July 17th, 1897.

27. The Chief Consumers of Dried Codfish (July, 1897)106

DEAR SIR, – The chief consumers of our dried codfish at present are the

countries of South America, of Southern Europe and of the West Indies. It is rather a

singular circumstance that a fish that is the exclusive product of cold and northern

waters should be so extensively used as an article of diet in tropical countries. This is

not entirely due to the fact that these countries are Catholic countries, where the

habits of the people and the religious usages require them to consume a fish–diet on

certain days, although this is responsible for a very large consumption. Besides that,

there is a natural craving for some sort of salt or salted food in warm climates, and

normal food does not fulfil that craving. Animal food, in warm climates, is heating

and nauseating. Salt fish, on the other hand, supplies a condiment as well as a

106 From Murray, J. (1897, July 31). ANOTHER LETTER. The Evening Telegram, p. 3. Written by James Murray (1843 – 1900).

nutriment, excites appetite, and, in combination with other articles of food, provides

just such an alternative, in the matter of diet, as the system in a sub–tropical climate

instinctively desires. Moreover it is a fact that our Newfoundland codfish enjoys a

position, as compared with other products of that kind, that puts all rivals at defiance.

It has a distinctive flavor that neither Norway codfish nor French–cured Newfoundland codfish can supply; and hence, although in certain cases the latter

may be accepted as substitutes for the Newfoundland article, they can never supercede or take its place. I anticipate that the time will come when this feature of

our staple production, namely, its superior flavor, will assume a position of much

more marked prominence than it occupies at the present time, and when not only the

flavor of Newfoundland codfish, but even that of codfish cured in different parts or

bays of this island, will be sought after in a distinctive way. I believe that the time

will come when we shall look back upon the crude and brutal modes of putting our

fish upon the foreign markets now universally present as the characteristics of a rude

and barbarous age – when men were ignorant and knew nothing – not even the fact

that they knew nothing. In the matter of the treatment of our fish, in preparing it for

the consuming markets, as well as in the matter of depreciating its value in our own

local markets, we are, and have proved ourselves to be a community of conspicuous

donkeys.

It is to be sadly noted that nearly all the foreign countries that consume our

fish are, at the present time, in a state of commercial depression. Italy, Greece, Spain,

Portugal, Brazil and the West Indies, are almost without an exception crippled and

empoverished. Their people are broken down, either by bad government, by internal

dissentions, by exhausted treasuries or by excessive taxation. Consequence is they

can no longer afford themselves those luxuries of diet they could indulge in in happier

days. And when I say “luxury” it must be remembered that when our dried codfish

gets into the heat of Italy or Greece and the heavy import duty in addition to freight

and other charges is paid upon it, the price of that article to the retail consumer is

something like TEN CENTS a pound! So that, although the poor Newfoundland

fisherman who produces is paid, perhaps, only TWO CENTS per lb. or less for his fish

here, the equally poor foreign laborer or artisan in Greece or Italy, who eats his fish,

has to pay about $10 per quintal for it! Now, while we hear a good deal of “highfalutin”

rubbish in these days about Imperial Federation and such like gammon, would it not

be better for us Newfoundlanders – living as we do in a practically FREE TRADE

country – would it not be better for us, I say, to keep our hands free so that we could

make an advantageous or reciprocal agreement with any or all of these foreign

countries, should we at any time have an opportunity to do so. Fortunately, we have

not now to do with a narrow–minded TUPPER107, at the head of Canadian affairs;

but with a large–hearted and statesmanlike LAURIER108 – a man, God bless him! And one who won’t “cut off his nose to spite his face,” or keep down into the dirt a

poor little struggling colony like Newfoundland. At present the poor countries I have

107 Sir Charles Tupper (1821 – 1915), Prime Minister of Canada from May to July of 1896. 108 Sir Henri Charles Wilfrid Laurier (1841 – 1919), Prime Minister of Canada from July 1896 to

October 1911.

named buy from us nearly all our codfish, and pay us in cash, we taking from them

little or nothing in return. Why not we trade with them, and help them to live as well

as ourselves? Why not we buy their sugar, their fruit, and even many of their articles

of food and manufacture, if it suits us to do so, bringing back the same as return cargo

in the lines of steamers referred to in my last letter? That will be one of the NEW

METHODS of getting our dried codfish – our bread and butter – into increased

consumption, and God will bless us if we try to help our assisting neighbours. As for

such rose–colored chimeras as Imperial Federation; but those peoples dream such

dreams as are wealthy and able to “bestow estates.” WE ARE FIGHTING FOR OUR

LIFE NOW, and have no pocket money. Yours, etc.,

JAMES MURRAY.

St. John’s, July 29th, 1897.

28. The Final Letter (August, 1897)109

DEAR SIR, – Some persons affect to believe that my object in writing these

letters is that they may be used for political purposes, or to set class against class, or

for some other sinister and hidden motive of that description. I beg to assure such

persons that they are entirely mistaken. I shall never use the facts and arguments

hereinbefore set forth for any purpose of personal, or party, or political advancement.

This discussion relates to the domain of political economy, and has to do with our

common inheritance, which must and will remain, no matter how political parties

may fluctuate or fade. I am opposed, and have always been opposed, to making

political capital out of such subjects, believing as I do that such a practice is the

evidence of a narrow mind and an unprincipled disposition. As for setting class

against class, my sincere desire is to break down all causes of difference between

merchant and fisherman from a conviction that such differences and discord lie at

the root of three–fourths of all our losses in the fish trade. But this is not to be

accomplished by keeping our mouths shut like dumb dogs and letting things drift

along from bad to worse until we find ourselves within the inner whirl of a maelstrom.

If any man has a word to say in the present crisis it is his duty to speak out like a man, for we are just on the verge of another crisis, that, if not averted, will be far

more wide–reaching in its calamitous effects than any we have yet passed through.

There are men in our leading outports at the present moment who look forward

with dread to the possibilities of the coming winter, knowing, as they do, from bitter experience, what it means to have shore fish down to $2 per quintal and Labrador

fish down to $1.50 per qtl. According to present indications we shall have an over–

flowing fishery this year, larger than that of either of the last two years, 1895–6.

What is to be done with this fish? We made our brags in the years named, that this

trade (the Newfoundland trade) could take care of all the fish that came into this

market. We are now within three months of the time when the great bulk of the

109 From Murray, J. (1897, August 7). ANOTHER LETTER. The Evening Telegram, p. 3. Written by James Murray (1843 – 1900)

annual crop will be thrown upon this market by an automatical movement that

cannot be averted. What prospects can the local trade hold out for dealing with this

demand upon it? Our merchants cannot even guarantee the miserably low prices they now offer for dried codfish! They cannot undertake to buy any specified quantity of the article after it comes to hand. The only satisfaction they can give to anxious

enquiries on this most vital of all subjects is that “the price of fish must be according

to the markets.” This being the reason given for their having reduced the price to its

present basis, what assurance have we that the price will not go still lower – in fact,

go out of sight altogether? The dealers in the foreign article know that they cannot compete with Newfoundland codfish at even prices in the European markets, and

hence they undersell us all the time.

Hearing the other day that we had cut our local prices down as near to the

vanishing point as possible, what did they? Why, they god alarmed – they got so

alarmed that they or their agents rushed into the ordinary markets in Southern

Europe and offered to contract for the supply of their wretched foreign fish at very

low prices right up to the end of December, a thing they had never done before within the memory of man. And why did they do this? To my mind they were impelled to do

this wholly and solely by our stupid, suicidal policy of putting down our prices into the dirt. Now WHERE IS THIS THING GOING TO END? If the inexorable law of supply and demand – that is the law of telegraphic up–to–date competition – is going

to be untemperedly applied to our local fish trade, it must be evident to every man

who has an eye in his head or a sane brain behind it, that it is going to end in nothing

more nor less than UNIVERSAL BANKRUPTCY. And why? Because no man has or

will have any security or protection for his property, or for his labor, when these

consist of, or are applied to, the national industry of the country. All sorts and

conditions of men are protected here except the fisherman and his industry. In other

words, that base on which the whole superstructure of our industrial existence is not

only not strengthened but is ‘wolfed’ and weakened all the time. Every man has a pick at it. Every class of us shrives and shears it. And yet when the man who toils for

all, and comes in with his crop in the autumn, hoping to receive a fair price for it,

what do we say to him? “Go sell it where you can, or give it to us on our own price and terms, and with the dead certainty that, if you don’t, it will be worthless to–morrow!!!” Now, in all earnestness and good faith, I would humbly suggest, whether, in the

common interest – in the interest of our fish merchants themselves – it would not be

better to keep up the tone of the local market by giving such reasonable prices for the fish, and by holding out to the fishermen such reasonable expectations as to future

prices, as will give them a motive for honest and persevering exertion. We have to look at this thing in the light of more than one year’s trade. Some of us have made a

profitable living out of in the past – to put it on no higher level than that. Hundreds

of us must expect to deal with these fishermen and profit by their trials in future

years. Let us be a little sympathetic and considerate with them now, in their time of trouble and straits. Let us show that sympathy; and when Peter says, as, poor fellow! He cannot help saying, “I go a–fishing,” let us say, in spirit and truth, “We also go

with thee.”

Yours etc.,

JAMES MURRAY.

St. John’s, August 2nd, 1897.

29. The Man Who Owned Half of Newfoundland (1898)110

Standing sheer at the mouth of the River St. Lawrence, is an island which in

other respects, besides its bulk, is one of the most remarkable in the world. Though

for centuries neglected, ignored and uninhabited, it yet enclosed within its territory

countless lakes swarming with finny tribes, upon whose banks grazed innumerable

deer, its hills and valleys beneath their forests teemed with mineral wealth, and yet

in all this expanse one single human being – a hermit farmer – subsisted.

Newfoundland only yesterday was a coast line. Its interior was deserted: it was

invested with fable, men fled at the mention of its name. He would not be too bold

who should prophesy that in a few years’ time the fate of this strange island will be

preferred by children to the tales of Aladdin and his Arabian compeers; how from a

mighty wilderness were resolved, like magic, busy towns and cities, how factories and

schools and mansions sprang up, how children who had never in their lives seen a

railway, a brick house or a lamp–post, suddenly found themselves, without moving a

mile, in the midst of theatres, of libraries, of churches and street railways.

And the curiously fascinating part of all would be that one man had done it all.

This man began, a poor Scotch boy, without money or influence; to–day he is

the greatest private land–owner on earth; and yet not one reader in ten thousand has

ever heard the name of Robert Gillespie Reid111.

Mr. Reid was a Montreal railway contractor. In his office in the Canadian

metropolis he had been seated one day with a map of North America hung before him

on the wall. Already he had amassed a large fortune and could look back upon a

protracted and adventurous career. A penniless lad, he had departed from his native

heath and gone to better himself in Australia. There his native ability and

shrewdness pushed him along, and prosperity came to him wherever he went. After

a time he migrated to Canada, and in the capacity of contractor built large portions

of the Canadian Pacific Railway, whose ever–moving shuttle of trains weaves the

commercial fabric which binds the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Although wealthy, and by no means young, he was not content to rest, and

already sought for new fields of endeavor. As he contemplated the map on this

occasion, he was suddenly struck by the geographical situation of Newfoundland. It

was a thousand miles nearer Europe than New York; why had it been so long

neglected? Was it barren? Was it useless? Was it empty? He recalled vague reports

he had heard of the presence of minerals in the island, and he ended a brown study

by rising and marking an X in blue pencil on the map.

“That,” he remarked quietly to his son, “will be a great country some day.”

110 From B.W. (1898, November 19). The Largest Land–Owner on Earth. The Metropolitan, p. 3. 111 Sir Robert Gillespie Reid (1842 – 1908).

The X on that map still remains to mark the birth of one of the most splendid

conceptions of modern times. Newfoundland is a sixth bigger than Ireland – Robert

Gillespie Reid owns half of it in fee simple; and yet that is only the beginning and

basis of his power and influence. Two hundred thousand souls regard him with the

same feelings as the commonality regarded a feudal baron – they call him “Czar” Reid

– they look to him to exploit their country before the world.

The successive governments of Newfoundland had long been agitating for a

railway, and at last, in 1893, they advertised for tenders. In the tender he despatched

to the government Mr. Reid offered to build a road for them at a charge of $15,000 a

mile. The offer was accepted and before the honest fisherman quite realized the

situation, the enterprising contractor got to work. He decided that it would be quite

practicable for the fishermen to build their own railway. Whereupon several

hundreds of the rough, uncouth, but honest and kind–hearted Newfoundlanders, who

had never done anything in their lives but catch codfish, were marshalled together to

work, digging, cutting timber for sleepers, laying rails, erecting telegraph poles and

in fact performing all the various labors incidental to the railway construction.

Thus was the great Newfoundland railway built. But a railway is a useless

concern if it be unoperated, if no cars run over it, if there are no engines or rolling–

stock, no station buildings or equipments. And as the government was just then in

financial difficulty, it could not easily operate the new road. Mr. Reid offered, then,

to operate the new railway. The cost he estimated at $100,000 a year, so the

government of Newfoundland agreed to grant “in fee simple to the contractor 5,000

acres of land for each one mile of main line or branch railway throughout the entire

length of line to be operated,” for a period of ten years. In addition, there was to be a

payment of $60,000 annually as mail subsidy.

Most Newfoundlanders doubted very much if the contractor would accept these

terms. Land seemed to them so useless and valueless a commodity that they could

not understand any man in his senses wanting to possess it. Land was going for 30

cents an acre in Newfoundland. Mr. Reid soon had two and a half million acres112 of

it.

Some of the better class believed that the contractor had been swindled, and

he was for a short time the recipient of numerous condolences. To these Mr. Reid

responded by an inscrutable smile; he is still smiling. Broken in health, a confirmed

invalid, and advancing in years, that inscrutable smile still steals over his features

whenever a visitor speculates on the ultimate results of his speculation.

From the moment the first sod was cut, the Reids, father and sons, became

Newfoundlanders. They did not delegate their work to others, but went at it, with

112 “Under the 1898 arrangement Mr. Reid became entitled to 3,135,000 acres of land, and he had not

then completed his selections under the 1893 contract. On March 5, 1900, just before they went out of

power, the late Winter Government issued to Mr. Reid grants in fee simple for 3,317,241 acres of land.

These grants included whole settlements in some instances, and confiscated the holdings of settlers or

squatters without legal titles. Some 50,756 acres of homestead lands were thus deeded away, and the

settlers subject to eviction at Mr. Reid’s pleasure. […] These grants gave Mr. Reid 494 miles of coast–

line, while he had applications in for 635 more.” THE END. (1901, September 11). The Evening Telegram, p. 3.

their own hands, toiling with the men, sharing their hardships and even their risks.

A disfigured eye stands testimony to the intrepidity of Mr. William Reid113, the eldest

son. A blasting charge had failed to explode; a sufficient time was allowed to elapse;

it became necessary for someone to enter the mine to discover the cause. Young Reid

went himself, although there were a dozen men at hand. A moment later a detonation

rent the air and Reid staggered out with his face terribly torn and bleeding. What he

had then done his father had done before him. They came of sturdy, rugged stock –

the Reids.

But Mr. Reid was not content – he sought new concessions. He offered to

operate the road free, at the expiration of the ten years, if at the end of forty additional

years the road should be his114. He also stipulated for further grants of land, for the

railway and telegraph monopolies of the island. The government agreed to the terms

– and then a great outcry arose. The people said the island was being handed over to

Reid. The Legislature was petitioned! The Governor refused his assent to the new

contract; for a time the whole colony was in a ferment of excitement over what was

known as the Reid contract. But wiser counsels prevailed; it was seen that the

opposition had been sedulously fostered by politicians out of office. Mr. Chamberlain,

the Secretary for the Colonies, brought his influence to bear upon the Governor. The

eyes of the people became opened to the advantages of having a millionaire so vitally

interested in the fortunes of the island, and the contract became law115.

Perhaps a hard–headed Scotsman like Mr. Reid does not dream of the

possibility of his unique position. When the late Mr. Harden Hickey became owner of

the small island of Trinidad he immediately announced himself in public and on his

cards as Roi de Trinidad. Afterwards he toned it down to baron. Probably the idea of

erecting a baronial castle on his estate and inviting over heatherland potentates to a

house–party has never entered the head of the largest private land–owner on earth.

While his surveyors are at present laying off the iron, coal, oil and copper

territory, his prospectors and mining experts are busily employed developing it.

Several mines are in operation – together with two pulp mills, each of which is

producing two hundred tons of wood pulp weekly.

113 William Duff Reid (1867 – 1924). 114 This right was later rescinded. In 1901, Reid signed “a new contract to work the railway for 50 years

from August 1, 1901, the colony entering into possession on the expiry of that period. […] The recovery

of the right of ownership in the railway was the issue upon which the people most vigorously insisted,

and it has been recovered by repaying the contractor his purchase money with interest.” THE END.

(1901, September 11). The Evening Telegram, p. 3. 115 Not without controversy. “As to the Legislative Council: […] The chief work of the session was THE

SALE OF THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE TO R. G. REID, for which he regaled them at the close

on Wednesday night with champagne to such an extent that The Orgies Were Prolonged until after

midnight. THE COUNTRY IS GONE. The people are degraded, and there was no discussion. No man thought it worth his while to analyze one of the most INFAMOUS CONTRACTS THAT EVER

DISGRACED THE RECORDS OF A COUNTRY. Loose in all its details – not one safeguard. The whole

handed over to a man and his sons of whom we know nothing, but that he possesses wealth; that he is

always ready to Throw a Sprat to Catch a Whale. He has […] succeeded in grasping Newfoundland

and its people.” DESPAIR. (1898, April 1). DEGRADATION. The Evening Telegram, p. 1.

Before long towns and villages will spring up in the wilderness, built by the

Reids and owned by them as absolutely as Mr. Pullman owned his town of Pullman,

Illinois.

No man – no Czar even – ever held the destiny of a country more closely in his

fingers than Mr. Reid does with his island. Seven thousand square miles are his. Over

this vast territory the once penniless Scotch boy is absolute lord and master. What

will he do with it?116

30. The Reids and Labrador (1907)117

With the pangs of starvation to stare them in the face, because, unlike the

Klondike, there is one company holding monopoly of passenger steamship–service to

that coast, and that company with but one boat for the service, with the dangers of

an unknown country, the trouble with the insects that infest the bogs in–shore and

the fact that transportation will have to be made with the voracious Eskimo dogs –

they have been stealthily opening up another Klondike, far up in the frozen north, on

the Labrador. Of course the Reids were behind it. Stronger than the government of

Newfoundland, which governs Labrador, the Reids, who have taken possession of the

island, sent their engineer up the coast this summer to look for gold. When he

came back, it was to board the steamer from a little sailboat on the open ocean, so

that no one knew just where he had gone “in” and what he had done. Suffice it,

however, that he brought aboard two heavy sacks of ore.

The story of the gold on the Labrador, as yet, is one filled with romance. Indians

come down to barter furs or bring the salmon to the lone Hudson Bay posts, had

particles of gold in their possession. Where they got it they would not tell, but wily

spies traced the r—skins up beyond the granite formation. There, then, strangely

enough, too, in a latitude not so very out of the way of that of the Klondike – the rock

formation is much the same as in the Alaskan Eldorado. That, however, is one side

of the story.

If the gold rush comes to Labrador, there will be a repetition of the horrors of

the Chilkoot Pass – only a thousand times worse, for Alaska is far more accessible

than is the Labrador. The nearest Canadian city of any importance for the voyager

will be North Sydney. North Sydney is a sleepy little town on the shore, not much of

an outfitting place, surely. Thence, the quickest route is across Cabot Strait, ninety

miles to Newfoundland.

Only one boat makes this passage regularly, and what its service is may be

surmised when it is stated that you go aboard her at seven at night, and are not

landed on the island before season for late breakfast. Again, then, there is a

116 Reid sold much of his land back to the government as a condition of the renegotiated contract of

1901. “The Government felt that, no matter what the cost, they could not permit this coast–line to be

in the possession of a private individual. They, therefore, undertook to buy back at a cost of $850,000,

or 27 ¼ c. an acre, the total of 3,135,000 acres which passed to Mr. Reid under the 1858 contract.” Ibid. 117 From TERRORS OF ANOTHER KLONDIKE. (1907, December 8). The Gazette Times Illustrated Sunday Magazine, p. 17.

wearisome interruption. Small as Newfoundland appears on the map, there is a long

railway ride across it. All that day, that night, the next morning, you travel – you are

not in St. John’s until dinner–time. On that “overland route” there is no stop for

meals, one must eat on the cars, and pay at whatever rate they pleased. All manner

of extortions are practised on this railway. Bread and butter, for example, are charged

for whether one order or no. The climate is notoriously cold and damp, yet the cars

are not heated. The construction is bad, the rolling stock poor, and trains will often

have to go back many a mile to gain impetus enough to carry them up the slightest

elevation.

Come to St. John’s, again there is trouble ahead for the gold–seeker. St. John’s

boasts but one hotel worth the name, and its condition may be hinted at when it is

stated that there are not even keys in the doors. Again and again some man will walk

into one’s chamber in the wee small hours under pretense of error, and if he come in

the time when the men’s pockets are loaded with gold–dust, it is quite probable that

he will be coming with a six–shooter in hand and a hold–up on the brain.

St. John’s, however, will doubtless be the great point of departure for the

Labrador gold fields. Having influenced the Parliament, we are told, it was the easiest

thing in the world for the transportation company to have given it an absolute

monopoly of passenger steamship travel to the Labrador. So they run one boat, a

sealer for passengers. The larger part of these commuters are fishermen, afflicted,

one and all, with consumption. People are huddled, four to eight in a narrow cabin,

and owing to the cold, it is impossible to leave portholes open. Blankets are necessary

and these when furnished by the steamer, seem not to have been washed from year’s

end to year’s end. Again and again a consumptive sleeps over you, under you,

hawking, spitting all the night, and if you complain they will tell you, you can get off

and walk. In fact, on that steamship line indignities are permitted that we have not

come across even in the heart of the Ottoman Empire.

The company sells you tickets to a given point, assures you that the boat goes

there. Then, once they have you aboard and put to sea, they blandly let you know

they have no intention of making that port.

Sue? There is not an attorney in all the British possession of Newfoundland

probably but will tell you it is useless to sue. The courts stand too greatly in awe of

the defendant. These, then, are a few of the troubles that await the gold–seeker on

the Labrador.

II. Fur

Beavers and their Fur Canada’s fur trade was originally built on beaver pelts. Stiff, wide–brimmed felt hats were fashionable in Europe, and beaver fur was one of the few materials from which such felt could be made. Eventually, processes such as ‘carroting’ and silk napping allowed cheaper materials to substitute for beaver fur, and the once unique material had to join the rest of Canada’s animal furs in the ‘fancy fur’ market (where furs are used to make coats and other garments).

1. The Beaver (1887)118

Ever since Canada was Canada its trade in beaver skins has been an important

part of its commerce. The country form west to east was the natural home of the

animal which has for centuries supplied the world with the most useful and one of

the most beautiful and expensive furs. Beaver was valuable and was traded in

immense quantities when most of the other furs which today find favor would not pay

to pack out of the country. The supply for ages seemed inexhaustible even in the face

of an insatiable and ever increasing demand. […]

The beaver is a quick breeding, long lived animal, not subject to disease,

scarcity of food or to destruction by any animal except man. It feeds chiefly on the

bark of poplar and birch, and sometimes on the roots of plants which grow on the

bottoms of lakes. It builds a comfortable house, so substantial as to be difficult for

any wild animal to break into in the summer time and impossible in the winter, with

an only entrance under deep water so that in case the house is attacked by land the

beaver finds refuge in the water if retreat is necessary, while its size, strength and

fighting ability protect it amply from all the amphibious animals. During the winter

part of the year it is perfectly safe from intrusion by any of the lower animals and

lives in peace, ease and plenty. Its food is always abundant and its industry and

sagacity cause it to make ample provision for contingencies. The young appear in the

spring just before the ice goes, from two to five in a litter, are full grown at four years,

and live from fifteen to twenty years. They always live in villages, and when the

increase of population becomes too great for the resources of the locality to support

conveniently the younger adults are sent out to found a new village.

Many of the fur bearing animals increase or decrease from causes mainly or

altogether beyond human control. The beaver’s only danger is from human agency.

Were there other sources of destruction, or were it not very prolific, from the ardor

with which it has been hunted it would have become extinct long ago. Having only

the one danger it has retired very slowly before civilization. Although timid, if not

molested, mere settlement does not frighten it away, and it is even capable of being

domesticated. Of late years causes have been at work in this part of the country and

the vast region to the north – as well no doubt as elsewhere throughout Canada –

which bid fair to clean the beaver out as completely as the buffalo have been and with

118 From THE BEAVER. (1887, July 23). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 3.

greater loss to the country. For although the beaver trade is not as valuable as that

of the buffalo in its best days, the buffalo country can be turned to other and more

valuable account, while a great part of the country which now yields hundreds of

thousands of dollars’ worth of beaver annually would if that product were exhausted

yield next to nothing.

The immediate vicinity of Edmonton was many years ago a famous beaver

country, but of course settlement and frequent hunting killed them off here long ago.

There are still many in the surrounding districts, while the Athabasca, Peace and

Liard river regions to the north, empires in extent, have always been above all else

beaver countries. During the past ten years a competent authority estimates that the

supply of beaver in the Upper Saskatchewan, already greatly reduced, has been still

further reduced one half, and in the northern districts mentioned where the fur was

very plentiful ten years ago by fully three fourths. At the same time the continual

rise in price, from four dollars per skin then to ten dollars now has kept the total

value of the trade the same. The value of the beaver trade annually in the district

which includes the Upper Saskatchewan and Mackenzie river basins is estimated at

half a million dollars, and fully 60 per cent. of the total fur trade. At the present rate

of decrease, no matter how high the price may rise, in ten years this trade will be

extinct – indeed the inevitable rise in price will in all probability produce its more

speedy extinction by causing the hunt to be prosecuted with ever increasing eagerness

and in localities at present inaccessible.

The two main causes of the present rapid decrease are, 1st, the high and rising

price of fur which through trading competition is felt strongly on the upper

Saskatchewan, Upper Athabasca and the Peace, less so on lake Athabasca and still

less on the Liard and Mackenzie rivers and, 2nd, the increasing scarcity of deer

throughout the country, causing the Indians to kill beaver for the meat even when

the skin is not prime. A large beaver will yield forty or fifty pounds of good meat, a

very important item to a hungry Indian family, and the skin although unprimed,

unlike other fur, is worth about half as much as when in prime condition. An

unprimed skin is worth as much now as a prime one was ten years ago, while its

purchasing power in trader’s goods, as far north as Great Slave lake, is vastly greater.

The natural consequence is that not only near civilization but in the remote interior,

the beaver is hunted ruthlessly as it never was before. The very source of supply is

being killed out.

In the old days when the Indians were hostile to each other, and every band

kept its own country, when prices were low and there was little or no trading

competition the Indians were careful of the beaver, never killing them in the summer

when the fur was worthless, never killing the young ones, seldom breaking into their

houses, or if they did always leaving enough adults to start a new village, depending

chiefly on the trap and gun, and using the latter as seldom as possible to avoid

frightening them. Now the Indians are at peace, and members of one tribe go freely

into the country of the other. These have no interest in preserving the beaver. Their

only interest is to kill as many as possible. If the skin is not worth ten dollars it may

be worth five, or two, or one as the case may be. Only the summer kills are of no value

and even their skins are brought in and offered to trade, the meat of all sizes being

considered choice food.

Now the favorite method of killing is to break into the houses and kill young

and old. Besides the houses the beavers have holes, or washes as they are called,

scooped in the bank of the stream or dam. These are first located. Then the house is

broken and such of the animals as escape the first assault take refuge in the washes.

The outlets of these are closed by stakes driven in the ground, and the beaver dug out

from the land side and killed. Under these circumstances very few escape. The house

breaking is generally done during the months of October, November and December,

and the season for building dams or collecting food having then gone by, what beavers

do escape the hunters generally perish during the winter. So that when a house is

broken a clean sweep is made. In spring they are generally shot while swimming

about gathering food or searching out new locations for houses. Traps are used in the

neighborhood of the dams. A break is made in the dam, or a hole made in the ice and

the trap set. The beaver comes to repair the damage or see what is the matter and is

caught. So that even without breaking the houses the animal is not hard to get.

The fur is prime from October 1st to May 15th, giving a sufficiently long season

in which to carry on a legitimate hunt. The plea of need for the meat as food is not

good. During the summer months in the beaver country there is always an ample

supply of fowl and fish, and deer in the fall. During the starving season from New

Year until spring opens the beaver is safe from anything but dynamite, which has not

yet been introduced in beaver hunting. The fact is the Indian has a natural craving

for a strong meat diet. If he cannot get deer or bear, beaver is the next best thing.

Fowl or fish are not rich enough for his blood. The beaver is a table luxury. If he

preserves it, it will only be for another hunter of another tribe. If he kills it he will

have meat for the present and a good trade when he reaches the store, therefore he

kills all he can, in season and out of season.

The history of the disappearance of the buffalo is being repeated. The rising

price induced determined indiscriminate slaughter. Improved means of destruction

and new hunting grounds kept up the supply of robes, until the trade worth millions

a year, disappeared as suddenly as if by magic and as completely as if it had never

been. To prevent a like result in the case of the beaver some effort is necessary and

should be made. It is desirable if possible to prevent the killing of beaver in the

summer season and also the breaking up of the houses. If this were done the beaver

would increase instead of decreasing and a vast extent of otherwise, at present,

useless country would yield a valuable and profitable trade.

The difficulties in the way of enforcing any measures looking to the protection

of the beaver are very great if not insurmountable. The immense area of the far north

country, its inaccessibility, its widely scattered population, and the fact that they are

unused to any legal control, would in all probability make any regulation to prevent

the breaking of beaver houses either of non effect or an instrument of tyranny or

spite. The only way in which the matter can be dealt with – and perhaps not even

that way – is through the trader. If adequate means were taken to secure the

detection and punishment of every trader who accepted unprimed beaver on any

consideration, one great inducement to their unseasonable slaughter by the Indians

would be destroyed, and as the Indian – unlike the white sportsman – does not kill

for the mere sake of killing, the inducement being withdrawn the number killed

would be materially lessened. Of course if such a regulation were made it would have

to be enforced thoroughly and impartially to be a benefit. If that cannot be done it is

better to leave the matter severely alone, and let the beaver and the beaver trade,

follow the buffalo and the buffalo trade quietly out of existence.

2. One of the Romances of the French Regime (1918)119

A unique addition to the food supplies of the country will be the flesh of 600

beavers, which the provincial authorities will slaughter in Algonquin Park. The

protection afforded them in this forest reserve has arrested their rapid extinction,

caused by the destruction of beaver dams by lumbering operations and the opening

up of the north country. The killing of beavers primarily for their flesh instead of their

fur will be a novelty. The fact that this distinctively Canadian rodent – Castor Canadensis – has become plentiful again, at least in one district of the country, recalls the great part which it played in early Canadian history. The story is one of the

romances of the French regime. In the absence of coin, beaver skins served as

currency; in fact, the economic life of the struggling colony depended upon the beaver

from the beginning of French rule. In the middle of the seventeenth century, Iroquois

raids paralyzed the country by a stoppage of the fur trade. Parkman120, who devotes

many pages of his glowing narrative to this traffic, so rich in picturesque qualities,

thus describes the relief of the colonists when peace was declared in 1653:

“The fur trade was restored again, with promise of plenty; for the beaver,

profiting by the quarrels of their human foes, had of late greatly multiplied. It was a

change from death to life; for Canada lived on the beaver, and robbed of this, her only

sustenance, had been dying slowly since the strife began.”

It was the practice of the king of France to give a monopoly of the fur trade to

the farmers of the Canadian revenue. In 1674 it was in the hands of one Oudiette and

his associates, to whom merchants were required to sell all their furs. Oudiette was

seen burdened with such a mass of beaver skins that the market was completely

glutted and he found himself bankrupt, as the French hatters would only take a part.

Another company which took over the business was compelled by Royal edict to pay

a fixed price for all the skins offered. “All Canada,” says Parkman, “thinking itself

sure of its price, rushed into the beaver trade, and the accumulation of unsalable furs

became suffocating.” The principal merchants of the colony, under pressures from the

king, then organized to handle the traffic, and acquired from their predecessors at

half price 600,000 beaver skins, of which they burned three–quarters, after vainly

imploring the king to order French hatters to put three ounces of beaver fur into every

119 From EDMONTON FUR MARKET. (1918, March 23). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 5. 120 Probably Francis Parkman Jr. (1823 – 1893), author of the popular and monumental France and England in North America.

hat they made. Despite these periodical calamities, the beaver trade continued to be

the chief enterprise of the country. Of a later era Parkman wrote:

“In the eighteenth century Canada exported a moderate quantity of timber,

wheat, the herb called ginseng, and a few other commodities, but from first to last

she lived on beaver skins.”

“Beaver skins,” he adds, “had produced an effect akin to that of gold in our own

day.” It was a huge evil, baneful to the growth and morals of Canada. Many of the

most active and vigorous men in the colony took to the woods to follow the trade

illicitly. These lawless adventurers, known as coureurs de bois, became scarcely distinguishable from the natives in their modes of life, and were the plague of the

Crown and the sorrow of the church; but they were the inevitable result of the system

which sought to monopolize the riches of the country for the king and his favorites.

The romance of the beaver trade has gone forever, like the romance of the ages

in which it played so great a role, but every Canadian who has read the history of his

country must have a sentimental interest in the beaver, and will rejoice that it is

again finding a habitat in which it can increase and multiply.

3. The Beaver Club (1910)121

A wealth of romances and historical association is clustered around the first

Social Club of Canada, for it was founded by the pioneers of the fur trade in 1785 at

Montreal, the headquarters of the Northwest Fur Co. It was called the Beaver Club.

Just where this club was situated is hard to say, although searched for diligently.

Many of the writers on the history of the Northwest Fur Co. mention the club, but all

omit to say where it was.

The club was practically the outcome of the newly organized Northwest Fur

Co., which had been started in 1783, for after the Conquest the fur trade fell into the

hands of British subjects, and many small companies, as well as private enterprises,

were formed. This, of course, led to a number of abuses. To remedy these, several of

the principal merchants of Montreal formed themselves into a joint–stock company

under the name of the Northwest Fur Co., and entered the field against a formidable

foe, the Hudson Bay Co., which had obtained its charter in the year 1670 from King

Charles.

The partners of this new company felt the need during the long winter months

of having a club where they could meet each other and talk over their experiences in

the north, and so the Beaver Club was inaugurated by them. It opened with nineteen

members, all belonging to the Northwest Fur Co., which had been organized two

years previous. The motto of the club was “Fortitude in Difficulties.” What better!

Had they not passed through perils of rushing rapids? Had they not often in a

blinding snowstorm lost their way and all but perished? Famine they had known,

battles with Indians or some rival company, and in summer had often fled from forest

fires.

121 From CANADA’S FIRST CLUB. (1910, August 3). The Cayley Hustler, p. 3.

At the grand annual meeting of the partners at Grand Portage, they arranged

the number of wintering partners to go to Montreal, but the number was never to

exceed five. Those who spent the winter in the woods were known as the “winterers,”

while those who only made the trip from Montreal to the outlying depots and return

were called “pork eaters,” because their pampered appetites demanded peas and

pork, rather than hulled corn and tallow.

The rules of the club were such as to keep it exclusive, for no one was admitted

as a member of this unique club who had not made a journey to the Northwest, and

passed a winter there; nor was this in itself sufficient: the would–be members must

also have the unanimous vote of the members belonging to the club. Later, new

members were only admitted if they had passed through the various positions in the

company, such as apprentice–clerk, clerk, winter partner, and a certain number were

admitted as honorary members. One of the rules was that the members who were in

town must be present at the inaugural dinner, which was held on the first Wednesday

in December. The members met fortnightly until April, and every member was

obliged to be present, unless ill, at each meeting, and no entertainments were

permitted at any of their houses on club nights. There were five club toasts which

were compulsory; after these were drunk members were at liberty to leave if they

wished to.

Seldom did the members meet without entertaining some of the many

distinguished travelers who at this time were coming to Canada. Probably it was the

first time these guests were offered such entertainment. Their feasts, for the table

was literally laden with such good things as haunches of venison and bear, beaver’s

tails, pemmican, buffalo’s tongues, imitated as far as possible the fashion of their

annual great gatherings at Fort William on Lake Superior. After dinner, the

calumet122 was passed, and then began the evening’s merriment.

One of the members, who had previously been appointed, spoke of some of the

many incidents which had happened to them in the far north. Then, as the evening

grew, the songs of the Voyageurs, those gay lilting French songs, would ring out,

“Malbrouk s’en va–t–en guerre,”123 or “A la Claire Fontaine”.124 Remember, five toasts – and others – had been drunk when they were prepared

to make “the grand voyage”. This “grand voyage” was to remind them of their former

experience, and to show the guest how it was accomplished. “Partners, factors and

traders, in the sight of all the servants or voyageurs who happened to gain

admittance, engaged in the ‘grand voyage,’ which consisted in all seating themselves

in a row, on the plush carpet, each armed with tongs, poker, sword, or walking stick

to serve as a paddle,” which they used vigorously to the accompaniment of a voyageur

song.

122 An Indigenous ceremonial tobacco pipe. 123 A French folk song about the rumored death of John Churchill (1650 – 1722), Duke of Marlborough

(‘Malbrouk’). One version opens: “Marlborough s’en va–t–en guerre, / mironton, mironton, mirontaine / Marlborough s’en va–t en guerre, / Ne sait quand reviendra.” The song was at the peak of its popularity in the late 1700s. 124 A French folk song. It opens: “À la claire fontaine m'en allant promener / J'ai trouvé l'eau si belle que je m'y suis baignée. / Il y a longtemps que je t'aime, jamais je ne t'oublierai”.

4. ‘Made Beaver’ as a Currency (1921)125

Currency was unknown in the fur districts of the far north until within the

past twenty years. From earliest times the principal medium of exchange in Canada

has been the “made–beaver” system introduced by the Hudson’s Bay Company, soon

after commencing its trading operations in the North American wilds.

For the purpose of bartering furs and the purchase of all supplies, the Indians

became accustomed to the unit of value known as “1 made–beaver” or “1 skin”, and

these were synonymous. The system of measuring values by “skins” was a natural

substitute for the currency of civilized countries. The company instituted the “skin”

as a monetary unit because of its simplicity and fairness, and because it provided the

only basis upon which intelligent trading might be carried on with the natives126.

The general public is not aware of the true significance of the terms “made–

beaver” or “skins”. Misconceptions have been fostered concerning the value of these

units and in regard to the media of exchange employed during the early history of the

fur trade.

For example, one great canard which has gained general circulation from time

to time, and which is generally related as a fact, relates to the story of the long

barrelled rifle and the pile of furs.

It has been represented that the old time “trade gun” (which came to be a

primary item in an Indian trapper’s equipment) was stood on end at the fur post while

the native piled up pelts to reach the muzzle of the rifle, whereupon the Indian took

the gun and the company retained the furs.

FURS PILED UP TO RIFLE MUZZLE A FABLE

Regarding this story, I have diligently made enquiries over a period of five

years among men who served for fifty years before me at York Factory, in Labrador,

125 Harding, C. (1921, June 20). Monetary System of the Far Fur Country Was First Established By

Hudson’s Bay Company. The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 5. Written by Christy Harding (1872 – 1943). Harding was born in London, England, and served the Hudson’s’ Bay Company at various posts and

positions from 1896 until his retirement in 1931. At the time this article was published, he was District

Manager for York Factory. 126 “Skin currency, or made beaver currency, which was the Hudson’s Bay Co. term, was invented by

the Company for the convenience of trading with the Indians. A prime beaver was the standard, and

rated as a skin. Then ten muskrats were one skin, a red fox one skin, a cross fox from two to five skins

or more, a bear from five to ten skins and so on. Then all articles in the trading store were priced in

skins, always bearing in mind one of the strict rules of the Company, that essential articles such as

blankets, ammunition, clothing, etc., etc., were moderate in price, while beads, fancy shawls and belts,

colored silks, were high in price. Generally when an unsophisticated Indian came in with some furs,

these were counted and valued by the clerk. We will say they came to forty skins, then forty goose–

quills were handed the Indian. He would think some time, then divide them up, such as five quills

(representing five skins) for a blanket, four for ammunition, and so on. If you hurried him probably

the whole business would have to be gone over again, as some important items would have been

forgotten. So much for the skin way of trading, very dear to the heart of the older Indians, for it was

an invariable rule, that both before and after trading a small gratuity, generally of tea and tobacco,

was handed to him. With the introduction of the present currency system, or money way as it is styled

in the north, all gratuities were cut out and the Indians resented this extremely.” Beatty, R. (1921,

February 3). A Winter’s Trapping. Blairmore Enterprise, p. 3.

and in the Athabasca–Mackenzie. I have enquired of many H.B.C. fur trade officers

and of the older men among the natives of all the Indian countries from the Arctic

circle to Winnipeg, and there is not even a legend in support of this story.

A search of the ancient records and post accounts of the Company at Hudson’s

Bay House, London, does not reveal that any such system was ever used by the

company in trading127. The only explanation seems to be that competitors of the

company originated and disseminated this and other fabrications as a vent for malice.

Divers tokens were in use at different times and in various districts, each token

representing a “skin” or a fraction of a multiple thereof. Objects such as ivory discs,

quills, smooth round pegs or sticks, lead shot and brass coins represented “made–

beavers” or “skins”. In some districts the company issued coinage in brass with

denominations of 1–8, 1–4, 1–2 and 1 “Made–beaver”, and such coins were in general

use on the east coast of the Hudson’s Bay and in British Columbia until within the

past ten years.

During the nineteenth century the company circulated a paper currency in the

shape of 1 shilling, 5 shilling, 15 shilling, and 1 pound notes128 which were quite

generally used in the more southerly departments of the fur trade amongst the

traders, but not with the Indians.

BEAVER SKIN WAS FIRST “COINAGE”

When the vanguard of the “Adventurers” came to Hudson’s Bay in 1670 the

first returns of trade consisted almost exclusively of beaver pelts. The earliest

measure of value became “one large beaver skin, prime”; so it was natural that when

other kinds of fur came into demand they should be valued in terms of “beavers.” But

there was a variation in size and condition; there was also the necessity of providing

“small change” in the form of tokens or values in fractions of the actual worth of a

standard beaver skin.

Thus it was established to “make a beaver” or establish a small unit and call it

a beaver. The “made beaver” monetary system, therefore, was a natural outgrowth of

the conditions of the time and the region in which it developed.

According to a former H.B.C. district manager in the Mackenzie river, one scale

of prices paid by the company during the closing years of the last century were:

127 One account is as follows: “An old gentleman (one of the most celebrated, historically, of all the

heroes of the fur trade, now deceased) told me that, when he established Fort Dunvegan on Peace

River, near the Rocky Mountains, the regular price of a trade musket was Rocky Mountain sables piled

up on each side of it until they were level with the muzzle. The sables were worth in England at least

£3 apiece, and the musket cost in all not over £1. The price of a six–shilling blanket was, in like

manner, thirteen beavers of the best qualities and twenty of a less excellent description. At that time

beaver was worth 32s. per lb. and a good beaver would weigh from 1 lb to 1 ¾ lb. Gradually the Indians

began to know better the price of a musket and of their furs, and to object most decidedly to the one

being piled along the sides of the other, which report saith was lengthened every year by two inches

until the barrel reached dimensions.” Brown, R. (1877, May 2). The Profits of the Hudson Bay

Company. Daily British Colonist, p. 1. I suspect the story is apocryphal. Clues in this passage imply the old gentleman is Archibald Norman McLeod, who founded the first trading post at Dunvegan for

the North West Company in 1805. This is unlikely, however, as McLeod was dead by 1845, and Robert

Brown was born in 1842. 128 Under the traditional British system, there were 20 shillings to a pound, and 12 pence to a shilling.

"Made–beaver"

tokens

Beaver … … … 12

Bear … … … 20

Ermine … … … ½

Fisher … … … 30

Fox (red) … … … 10

Fox (silver) … … … 150

Lynx … … … 10

Marten … … … 10

Mink … … … 5

Musquash Rat … … … ¼

Otter … … … 25

It will be seen that a beaver skin itself was valued at 12 “skins” or “made–

beaver”; the company gave the Indian 12 tokens called “skins” or “made–beaver” for

his one large beaver skin. The native then turned to the dry goods counter and, for

example, exchanged his 12 “made–beaver” tokens for three yards of white duffle129 –

which was priced in the H.B.C. post store at 4 “skins” or “made–beavers” a yard. At

the “book–value” of fifty cents per “skin” or “made–beaver” token, the value of the

goods purchased was $2.00 a yard or $6.00 total. A four–point H.B.C. blanket was

held at 10 skins in those days. A heavy wool shawl cost 20 “made–beaver”. A tweed

suit (that smacks of Scotland) brought 30 skins.

FANCY GOODS CAME HIGH

All staple goods – necessities of the north – were sold by the H.B.C. at “cost

landed” or at a price very close to the actual cost of the merchandise, including

transport. Variations in the number of skins asked for staple articles of merchandise

were therefore in accordance with the location of the district and the difficulties of

the freighting. Fancy lines such as jewelry and silk handkerchiefs were sold by the

company at 50 per cent above the “cost landed.”

In general the H.B.C. system of trading with the Indians by means of the crude

currency of the hinterland was most rigidly straightforward and fair, to all connected

with the transactions. The Indian got his gun or his tobacco which had been brought

to him at great labor and expense over thousands of miles of wilderness. The Indian

was satisfied and happy to hand over his furs (for which he had no other market), but

the H.B.C. was under the necessity of transporting those furs across a continent and

over an ocean before the capital invested in the particular transaction and in the

posts, men and equipment was “turned over” and a profit realized. Two or three years

passed before that gun or tobacco realized its small markup.

129 Also known as duffel, this thick woolen fabric is named after the Belgian town in which it was first

made.

It has been represented in some quarters that the value of “1 made–beaver”

was more or less an imaginary value and that individual traders were permitted to

manipulate the value of the tokens or coins to suit their profit opportunities.

Sufficient refutation of this claim is found in the facts that for two hundred years the

value of “1 made–beaver” was from 30 to 50 cents and that from the very outset of

the fur trade in North America, the H.B.C. issued “purchasing tariffs” at London,

copies of which were sent to every officer and trader, giving them a regular schedule

of rates of exchange between the furs and the staple commodities. One of the first

purchasing tariffs issued by the company instructed traders to give the following

exchange:

Beaver–skins

1 Gun … … … 12

1 pound Powder … … … 2

4 pounds Shot … … … 1

1 Hatchet … … … 1/2

1 Knife … … … 1–8

1 Red Coat … … … 5

1 pound Tobacco … … … 1

INDIANS UNDERSTOOD VALUES

It must be remembered that the money value of one “skin” (approximately 50

cents) was for book–keeping purposes only. The Indian had no ideas of money values

as we know it. But the Indian possessed a very accurate knowledge of the value of a

“skin.” This unit was just as intelligible to him as 50 cents to us. The Indian knew

that, for example, the value of a skin was equal to the value of half a pound of powder.

For “1 skin” token he expected to get a pound of tea or two small hatchets, or a kettle,

or eight small knives. The Indians have always trusted implicitly the fairness of the

H.B.C. trading tariffs. They became very keen bargainers when dealing in “made–

beaver” currency and very intelligent in judging the value of their own catch of fur on

the basis of that medium of exchange.

Fashion and the Beaver Hat The introduction of carroting, which allowed the production of high–quality felt from rabbit fur, was the beginning of the end for the beaver felt hat. For a while, beaver fur was still used as a finishing touch130 in the shiny outermost layer, or

130 “Hats with a nap composed of the fur of the beaver are now but little worn; as the silk hat, although

of the same objectionable shape, and exerting even greater pressure on the forehead, is cheaper and

far neater in appearance. The body of the beaver hat is formed of lamb’s–wool and rabbit’s fur, that

are first bowed or mixed together, and then felted by damping the material and working them together

with the hands. […] To form the glossy nap of the hat, a little beaver fur, which has been shorn from

the skin by a machine, is partially felted together and spread over the surface of the body, the two

‘napping’131, of the hat. The development of silk napping sealed the fate of beaver felt, but as late as 1856 the Encyclopedia Britannica could write that the “beaver hat, with the body of rabbit’s fur and a beaver nap, may be regarded as the highest achievement of the hatter”132. The impact of silk napping on the demand for beaver fur was such that by 1914 a renowned naturalist believed that “had it not been for the fortunate invention of a silk nap suitable for making men’s hats, and the consequent going out of fashion of the beaver hat of fifty years ago, it is doubtful whether any of the animals would

have survived to be protected.” 133

Other factors that affected demand for beaver fur included changing fashions, a preference for hats and gowns of matching materials, the introduction of fashionable substitutes such as velvet, and the ability to mix materials without lowering an item’s aesthetic appeal.

Beaver Hats at an Early 20th Century Wedding (ca. 1914)134

substances being united by the felting process, which causes the ends of the beaver fur to enter and

adhere to the foundation of fur and lamb’s–wool. Some beaver fur is also felted round the edge of the

interior of the cone, in order to form the under part of the brim. Hat Manufacture. (1870). In Beeton’s Dictionary of Universal Information. London: Wyman and Sons. 131 The nap is the raised, fuzzy, shiny surface seen on velvet, moleskin or beaver felt. 132 From Hat–making. (1865). In The Encyclopaedia Britannica (8th ed.). Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black. 133 From Ingersoll, E. (1914, January 25). The Beaver and Its Ways. The Daily Colonist, p. 25. Ernest Ingersoll (1852 – 1946) was an American naturalist and explorer best known for his work on shellfish. 134 From a photograph in the anthologist’s collection.

5. “Many in Number and so Absolutely Unlike” (1909)135

A great deal is said and written of the responsibilities, the cares and

perplexities which the rich man of today has to contend with, but it may be questioned

if he has any more nerve racking, puzzling problems to face than the rich woman of

today, who realizes to the uttermost how essential it is to be smartly gowned after

fashion’s latest edict. One reason for the strain being so wearying, so incessant, is the

constant changing of the styles and the consequent terrible uncertainty as to whether

the expensive hat purchased on Monday is in fashion the following Saturday, with

such lightning rapidity do all fashions change at present, especially the fashions in

millinery. Enormous picture hats are replaced in favor by the most minute close

fitting toques, turbans, and let it be said with bated breath, by bonnets, for every sign

and indication is pointing the way to the return of the loose fitting bonnet.

Wide brims that stand out at the back, mushroom shapes, both tabooed months

ago, are now triumphantly displayed as among the newest models. Crowns vary from

the exaggerated large, soft ones to the hard, stiff, comparatively small, and are

entirely lost to view under the shaped fold of whatever material the hat may be

composed. And the materials are so many in number and so absolutely unlike. Satin,

hatters’ plush, velvet, plain or mirror beaver and felt all are in fashion, and often one

or two of these fabrics are combined. […] Tulle and maline net136 are not materials

generally associated with winter, but tulle combined with velvet or fur is immensely

smart at this moment, and so are velvet and beaver, satin and beaver, and so on

indefinitely through a series of combinations never before attempted. […]

Prettiest and most becoming of all the many and varied styles this season are

the fascinatingly becoming fur hats which are of so many different models. Made

entirely of fur, of velvet or beaver with fur, in soft turban shape or in stiff three

cornered style, there is an endless and most attractive variety to choose from. Much

depends upon the furs with which is worn the hat, for this season everything must

match. Two kinds of fur may be combined in the hat, but hat, stole or coat and muff

must be the same. The woman who can afford to wear chinchilla – and this means

that it must be becoming – can have a most fascinating turban or toque with crown

of gray, cerise or blue velvet and brim of chinchilla. If the gray of the fur is becoming

the velvet crown of the same color is the smartest, but if the touch of contrast is best,

then it should be chosen instead. The band of skunk around the crown of a smooth

beaver hat in the three corner shape is effective, and two stiff feathers of cerise or

bright scarlet make the model most becoming. A dull gold ornament and a tuft of

marabou137 feathers in a colored velvet turban, trimmed with a band of sable, is

another popular fashion; but the plainer, more severe styles still win the greatest

amount of approval. As a rule, the fur hats are small, but there are one or two styles

135 From DAME FASHION’S DECREES. (1909, December 31). The Crossfield Chronicle, p. 5. 136 A stiff hexagonal net used in dress–making. 137 An African stork.

that are quite large and are made in sealskin or baby lamb, trimmed with a band of

skunk, lynx or fox.

The large Cossack shape turban, with a broad band of fur around the brim and

the entire crown made of roses or orchids, is another of this season’s models that is

decidedly new. Although at first glance it may seem like the same old turban lines

that have been known for so many, many years, it is quite different, larger in head

size, so that it comes more over the face and with higher inside crown; and while it

looks as if it were round, it is shaped larger in front and back than at the sides. The

short haired furs, sealskin and baby lamb, are not so effective in this style of hat and

are oftener used in the crown with the brim of chinchilla, skunk or sable, but there

are one or two models that are charming, made of the shorter furs, so soft and pliable

that they are treated as if they were velvet or beaver felt. These are best in a rather

different shaped turban, higher in the crown and most effective with a high cockade

of tulle or net bows.

6. “Becoming and Refined” (1911)138

Rough beaver hats of all kinds are extremely smart this season, and the useful

soft black beaver is very popular. Worn as a knockabout, useful piece of headgear it

is most satisfactory. Trimmed with anything, even a black or white cockade or

fantasy, it is smart. There is another shape, something the same in effect, but not so

soft and shapeless. This can be trimmed effectively with colored stiff feathers; one

style has the feathers placed toward the back; another has the feathers, either two

stiff ones or three soft ostrich tips, at the left side. Then there are the beaver hats

trimmed with only a velvet bow across the front or at one side; the velvet, put through

a piece of the material, is in two loops, with no ends, and lies flat against the hat. The

beaver has quite a long nap and is becoming in any shade. There are more effective

shapes in white with a black velvet bow, but the white is not so practical as color, and

is most suitable for the girl who does not have to count the pennies she spends on her

clothes and consequently can buy any number of hats. There are shades of light tan

in this shape that are more practical and look well with fur coats. A bit of fur is

sometimes substituted for the velvet bow, but it is not so smart, for the great charm

of this model is its simplicity.

Conservative minded women are rejoicing in the return of the always becoming

and refined style of hat, velvet or beaver felt, of medium size, with brim turned up at

the left side, and trimmed with a feather around the crown – one long, beautiful

ostrich plume. If height be needed, two or three small ostrich tips arranged like a

pompom or an aigrette pompom at the left side of the crown are all that is necessary.

Nothing original, it is true, but there is a charm and elegance about such a hat that

is easily recognizable, and when the color is the same as the costume it is most

attractive.

138 From FASHIONS AND FANCIES. (1911, February 9). Enderby Press and Walker’s Weekly, p. 3. and FASHIONS AND FANCIES. (1911, April 14). The Raymond Rustler, p. 3. Image from MODE BEAVER HAT. (1906, November 15). The San Jose Evening News, p. 2. :

Wide Brims and Mushroom Shapes (c. 1909)139

139 From an anonymous photograph in the anthologist’s collection.

Wide Brims, Stiff Crowns and Decorative Ribbons140

140 From a photograph in the anthologist’s collection. Early 20th century.

“Conservative Minded Women are Rejoicing”141

141 From a photograph in the anthologist’s collection. Early 20th century.

“The Materials are so Many in Number” (ca. 1910)142

142 From a photograph in the anthologist’s collection.

Fur Fashion in 1913143

143 Rhea + Friend. Detroit [Photograph]. (1913) From the Anthologist’s collection.

Fur Fashion in 1921144

144 Meugens, A. L. (1921). Dear Peggy Louce [Photograph]. Anthologist’s collection. The image is of

Peggy Lewis (or Louce), an entertainer who performed at Vancouver Island’s Gorge Park in 1921:

“Miss Peggy Lewis, the popular leader of this clever troupe of pierrots, is making a special feature of

her performance this week for the children.” PEGGY’S PIERROTS ARE STILL AT THE GORGE.

(1921, June 28). The British Colonist, p. 13.

7. Mrs. Quain’s First Reception (1914)145

This short social notice shows the context in which beaver hats would have been worn shortly before the Great War.

Mrs. Maurice Quain146 received on Thursday afternoon for the first time since

her marriage. She charmingly received her callers in a shell pink satin with an

overdress of cream shadow lace. Mrs. J. H. King, who helped her receive, was

becomingly gowned in dove grey satin, with a black hat trimmed with rose plumes.

Mrs. A. C. Bowness poured tea. She wore light grey satin with a vest of small

pink and shadow lace and a large pink beaver hat trimmed with plumes. Mrs. G. R.

Leask poured coffee and looked quite charming in a delf blue satin and velvet dress

with large black hat trimmed with plumes.

Miss Mae Whitehead and Miss Jessie Murgatroyd assisted in serving. Both

young ladies looked quite fetching. Miss Whitehead in pale blue mull trimmed

shadow lace, black lace hat, tiny pink roses and streamers of black velvet. Miss

Murgatroyd in cream satin trimmed with shadow lace and overdress of tan ninon147,

black beaver hat trimmed with clusters of yellow flowers.

Lady Ethel Atchinson attended the door and looked quite sweet dressed all in

white with under dress of pink.

The parlor was nicely decorated with red carnations and smilax, while the

dining room decorations were chiefly pink carnations, smilax and pink tulle, with a

large table centre of pink and white hyacinths.

In future, Mrs. Quain will receive every second Thursday.

Edmonton and the Fur Trade

8. The Founding of Edmonton (1921)148

Edmonton was named in 1795 when the first Hudson’s Bay Co.’s post was

established on the site now occupied by the city power plant. But that was not by any

means the beginning of what is now the City of Edmonton as a point of trade and

influence. Before the Hudson’s Bay Co. had reached Edmonton from London, by way

of York Factory on Hudson’s Bay, the Nor’–West Company trading from Montreal by

way of Ft. William and Lake Winnipeg had already in 1778 established Fort des Prairies at a point on the river bank just west of the westerly limit of what is now the Victoria golf links. The cellar excavations could still be traced in the 80’s, but may

now be obliterated.

145 From Mrs. Quain’s First Reception. (1914, March 5). Cranbrook Herald, p. 5. 146 Ella Gladys Cocker married Maurice Quain, an electrician, on June 25, 1913, in Victoria, British

Columbia. Maurice worked as an electrician for the Vancouver Harbour Board and died in January of

1960. 147 A delicate sheer fabric that was at this time made of silk. 148 From The Founding of Edmonton. (1921, September 17). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 6.

There is a tradition that the X. Y. Company, a Montreal rival of the Nor’–West

Company also had a post at this point. But the X. Y. Company was absorbed by the

Nor’–West just as in 1821 the Nor’–West was absorbed by or amalgamated with the

Hudson’s Bay. When the several amalgamations took place, the records of the

companies absorbed naturally were lost sight of, so that there is very little authentic

information available regarding them.

The Nor’–West and X. Y. companies followed in the footsteps of the traders of

the French regime. When Canada was ceded to Britain about 1763, the great western

fur trade that had been carried on from France through Montreal, automatically

ceased. But it was a very profitable trade; and British enterprise lost no time in taking

up what French enterprise had, under the fortunes of war, been compelled to lay

down. Individual initiative soon took corporate form as the Nor’–West Company.

Many of the great family fortunes of Montreal had their rise in the operations of that

enterprising organization. The active spirits of the company were chiefly Scotchmen.

Their working force of voyageurs was almost entirely French Canadians.

IN THE BEGINNING

La Verandrye149 is reputed to have been the first white man to sight the Rocky

Mountains in what is now Canada. There is no doubt that his route of travel was by

way of the North Saskatchewan river and therefore of Edmonton. The fur trade was

at the time the reason for the existence of Canada as a dependency of France. Of all

the furs produced by Canada the beaver was most in demand. La Verandrye’s

explorations beyond doubt had for their chief object the extension of the fur trade,

which meant the trade in beaver skins. In the course of his long and tedious canoe

trip up the Saskatchewan no doubt to the junction of the Clearwater, where Rocky

Mountain House150 was afterwards established, it could not have escaped his

attention that beaver were particularly abundant in the region of which the City of

Edmonton is the immediate centre. The low wooded hills lying to the east of the river

were called the Beaver Hills by the Indians, because of the abundance of beaver found

in them, while the country both north and south of the river was a net work of beaver

dams; many of which remain, though in damaged condition to this day. To the

eastward, the Saskatchewan flowed through prairies where buffalo were plentiful but

beaver were scarce. To the southwestward, the river came from a heavily timbered

region where conditions were not especially favorable for beaver. But in the level park

region extending in all directions from what is now Edmonton, every condition suited

to beaver life and activity prevailed, in larger proportion than anywhere else in the

149 Probably Louis–Joseph Gaultier de La Vérendrye (1717 – 1761) and one of his brothers. They are

believed to have reached the Big Horn Mountains in 1742, but details of their voyage are scant. 150 “North West Co. post on North Saskatchewan river, 1 ¼ miles above mouth of Clearwater river.

[…] It stood on high bank, well adapted for defense as block–houses commanded the fort. Of

exceptional strength being in territory of Blackfeet Indians. Hence it was sometimes called “Blackfeet

Post”. Built by John McDonald of Garth in 1802, although the first structure was erected in 1799. […]

After union of the two companies it was occupied by the Hudson’s Bay Co. for many years and finally

discontinued in 1875.” Voorhis, E. (1930). Historic Forts and Trading Posts of the French Regime and of the English Fur Trading Companies. Ottawa: Department of the Interior. Written by Ernest Voorhis (1859 – 1933).

west. Beyond doubt the French traders did not overlook these conditions; and

although there is no record to show what the French traders actually did, it may be

taken for granted that when the Nor’–West Company entered the field and

established a post here, they took advantage of the previous occupation by the French.

Edmonton, therefore, did not begin in 1795. The establishment of the Hudson’s Bay

post was merely an incident, although an important incident, in its development.

AN ANCIENT TRADE CENTRE

No doubt the beaver in the immediate vicinity were soon killed off; but other

reasons developed which gave Edmonton an important strategic position in relation

to the early trade of the country. It was a point at which three mutually unfriendly

nations of Indians found it convenient to trade. It was situated in the territory of the

Crees. Those who occupied the country on both sides of the river, form the Beaver

Hills westward, and all the country north of the river were called Wood Crees151. They

were fur hunters and fishers, making occasional excursions to the plains for buffalo

meat.

THE PLAIN CREES

The Plain Crees152 occupied the country eastward from the Beaver Hills and

south from the Saskatchewan river to the Battle. Beyond the Battle the country on

both sides of the Red Deer was common hunting and fighting ground between Plain

Crees and Blackfeet153. The Plain Crees lived chiefly on the buffalo. As they killed the

buffalo in the summer they dried the meat and made quantities of pemmican. In the

winter they usually withdrew from the plains to comfortable winter quarters, only

making occasional excursions to the plains for fresh meat with which to vary their

diet and for robes to trade. The Wood Crees and Plain Crees only differed in their

method of living. Both agreed amicably with the whites and both were hostile to the

Blackfeet, but the occasion for hostility was much greater in the case of the Plain

than of the Wood Crees, owing to continual friction of the Plain Crees with the

Blackfeet in regard to their respective hunting grounds. Owing to their different ways

of life, the trade of the two branches of the Cree nation differed, and Edmonton was

a point of trade common to both.

THE BLACKFEET

South of the Red Deer was the country of the Blackfeet nation. They disputed

the sovereignty of the region between the Red Deer and Battle with the Plain Crees.

Sometimes they came north of the Battle. They were almost always at war with the

Crees. When they wished to trade at Edmonton they came north in strong force. They

crossed the Battle near its most northerly bend at Duhamel, and came in by the Hay

Lakes Trail, now the route of the C.N.R.154 between Edmonton and Camrose. When

in strong force they felt themselves safe on the plains which extended north almost

to Hay Lakes. From Hay Lakes they had only 35 miles to make through the woods

151 Cree (Néhinaw) who speak the Woods Cree dialect of the Cree language. 152 Members of the Iron Confederacy (Nēhiyaw–Pwat, or ᓀᓀᓀᓀᓀ ᓀᓀᓀ) and speakers of their own

dialect of Cree, also called Plains Cree (nēhiyawēwin, or ᓀᓀᓀᓀᓀᓀᓀ). 153 Members of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Niitsitapi , or ᓀᓀᓀᓀᓀᓀ). 154 Canadian Northern Railway.

(the enemy’s country) to Edmonton. Being buffalo hunters the Blackfeet always

travelled in large bands. They were generally able to get through their trade at

Edmonton before the Crees could rally a sufficient force to seriously interfere with

them on their homeward journey to the Battle River. Sometimes there were

“regrettable incidents” connected with these trading visits; and sometimes, during a

truce, or because the Crees were busy elsewhere, they passed off quietly. The fact

that Edmonton and the trail to Hay Lakes were in the territory of the Wood rather

than of the Plain Crees was a feature of the case very favorable to the Blackfeet. Of

course the Hudson’s Bay Company always used their influence for peace, but not

always with effective result.

THE MOUNTAIN STONEYS

The third Indian nation that traded at Edmonton was the Mountain

Stoneys155. They are a branch of the great Sioux nation, speaking a dialect of the

Sioux language. They inhabited the foothill country of the Rocky Mountains. Where

or under what circumstances they became segregated from the great Sioux nation of

the Dakotas, no one knows. But they have occupied the foothills from the Bow River

to the Athabasca, as long as there are any records. They were always friendly to the

whites and to the Crees, but hostile to the Blackfeet. They were recognized as dead

shots and good fighters and were always ready to take part in the festivities if they

happened to be on hand when any Cree–Blackfeet scrap started in the neighborhood

of the Fort. They were small in numbers but their trade was chiefly in fine furs and

was therefore especially valuable. When they came to trade at Edmonton they usually

camped in the piece of open country which lies some miles west of the city and which

from that circumstance was called “The Stoney Plain” not because there are stones

on the plain – for there are none – but because it was camping ground of the Stoney

Indians.

RAILWAYS FOLLOW INDIAN TRAILS

The trade of these three Indian nations centering at Edmonton constituted it

an important post. The Blackfeet brought buffalo robes, the Plain Crees, robes, fresh

meat, dried meat and pemmican, the Wood Crees and Stoneys brought beaver,

muskrate, and all the other fine furs of the country. The trails made by these Indian

tribes are now the routes of railways. The G.T.P.156 and C.N.R. follow the trails of the

Mountain Stoneys from Edmonton to and through the Jasper Pass; the C.N.R. to

Calgary follows the Blackfeet trail, from the Great Plains to Edmonton; the C.P.R.157

Winnipeg line, and the G.T.P. and C.N.R. main lines to Winnipeg, traverse the

country of the Plain Crees; while the St. Paul branch of the C.N., the Waterways line

to Lac la Biche; the C.N. to Athabasca, the Dunvegan to Peace River and Grande

Prairie, and the Whitecourt branch of the C.N. traverse the country of the Wood

Crees, and in large amount follow their trails to Edmonton. The railways which

centre in Edmonton in 1921 are only following the lines of traffic laid down by traders

and Indians more than 150 years ago.

155 Members of the Stoney Nakoda First Nation (Iyarhe Nakoda), also called Assiniboine. 156 Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. 157 Canadian Pacific Railway.

“A Chief of the Stoney Tribe” (1929)158

158 Folkard Company of Canada Limited. (1929). CANADIAN INDIAN [Postcard]. Montreal.

A STRANGE MIGRATION

In addition to the Indian nations already mentioned as occupying the territory

from which Edmonton now draws trade, there is another, small in numbers and yet

because of special circumstances well worthy of note, namely the Iroquois159 of Jasper

House160. The Iroquois originally inhabited New York state. Although generally at

bitter war with the French, by some strange chance settlements of Iroquois friendly

to the French were established at Caughnawaga, at Lachine and at Oka, all near

Montreal. These Iroquois were recognized as the most expert of canoe men. They were

also most expert fur hunters. It was one of the enterprises of the enterprising Nor’–

West Company to bring a colony of Iroquois to Edmonton to be employed as voyageurs

and fur hunters in this district, where canoe work and the trapping of fine fur were

not a specialty of the native Indians. Details of the Iroquois immigration or its date,

are lost, but the fact remains that for at least a century there has been a band of

Indians known as Iroquois, making their headquarters in the mountains in the

vicinity of Jasper. At this date they have become largely inter–married with Crees,

h–––––s161 and whites; but a considerable number of families still hold themselves to

be Iroquois and therefore a separate people. Although their advent was due to the

Big Business of that day, they have been inclined to live more to themselves, at least

in recent years, than the members of the native Indian races.

THE FIRST TRANSCONTINENTAL TRADE ROUTE

What gave Edmonton its greatest importance in its earlier days was the fact

that it was the breaking point on a route of transcontinental traffic, established

during the early part of the last century. The trade route was established by the Nor’–

West Company and was maintained by the Hudson’s Bay Co. until its value was

destroyed by the establishment of trade with the West Coast “around the Horn.”

Goods were conveyed up the Saskatchewan from Montreal or York Factory by canoe

or boat to Edmonton. Pack horses took them from Edmonton across the mountains to

Boat Encampment at the Big Bend of the Columbia; and canoes took them down the

Columbia to Ft. Vancouver162, in what is now the State of Washington and not far

from the present city of Portland. The return route was by canoe up the Columbia to

159 Members of the Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee). 160 “Jasper House is a neat white building, surrounded by a low palisade, standing in a perfect garden

of wild flowers, which form a rich sheet of varied and brilliant colours, backed by dark green pines

which clustered thickly round the base of the hills.” Milton, W. F. & Cheadle, W. B. (1901). The North– West Passage By Land (9th edition). London: Cassell and Company, Limited. 161 An offensive term for people of mixed heritage. 162 “Built in 1824–25. […] Occupied as being on British Territory until the treaty of 1846. The fort was

maintained by the Company for several years after the treaty, until dispossessed by U.S. military

authority in 1860. […] The fort was of large size, enclosed by a stockade 750 x 600 feet and had attached

a 1500 acre farm. The enclosure contained the fort with dwelling houses, store–houses, servants’

quarters, shops, barns & c. On the appertaining land were barns, stables and farm buildings near the

main fort. Cultivated fields, pasturage, extended along the Columbia river bank for 25 miles and 10

miles back from the river.” Voorhis, E. (1930). Historic Forts and Trading Posts of the French Regime and of the English Fur Trading Companies. Ottawa: Department of the Interior.

Boat Encampment and by pack horses to Henry House163 on the Athabasca, a few

miles below the present Jasper. From Henry House the packs of fur were sometimes

taken down the Athabasca by boat or raft to Ft. Assiniboine, while the horses

travelled light through the difficult country between the Mountains and Edmonton.

From Ft. Assiniboine the furs were packed by horses to Edmonton.

The boats that transported the goods from York Factory to Edmonton were

built at Edmonton. The horses that packed across the mountains and to and from Ft.

Assiniboine were wintered at Edmonton. This necessitated keeping a large force of

men here. It made Edmonton capable of defence and made necessary that it should

be defended. Food conditions were favorable for the support of a large force because

the buffalo were plentiful on the plains and fish were plentiful in the lakes to the

west, north and northwest. A farm which grew potatoes and barley was carried on,

on the flat south and west of the Fort. Later on land was farmed about where the

C.N.R. tracks and yards now are. Cattle, pigs and fowls were kept and garden

vegetables were raised.

AN OUTPOST OF CIVILIZATION AND STRONGHOLD OF EMPIRE

To meet the conditions Ft. Edmonton during the years from 1830 to 1870 was

to all intent and purposes a walled city. The fort, which had been removed from the

first site about 1830, occupied the bench just below that on which the Legislative

buildings now stand. It was enclosed by palisades eighteen feet high, with four

blockhouses on the corners. A narrow platform ran around the palisade on the inside

at about 12 feet from the ground. The main gate fronted towards the steep bank of

the river about 60 feet from the break of the bank. There was a small wicket gate in

the palisade not far from the main gate; which led to the Indian trading house. When

the Blackfeet arrived in force, or if trouble impended, all gates were closed and trade

was carried on over the top of the palisade. On other occasions of course, the gates

were open during the day. Within the fort was, of course, the trading store and

warehouses, but there was also a flour mill operated by horse power. Carpenter, boat

building, blacksmith and harness shops. The buildings were much crowded there

being only narrow alleyways between.

The armament comprised two small brass cannon, with muskets and

blunderbusses. It will be understood that when the fort was built, modern weapons

had not been invented, and when new arms of destruction were invented, the need of

them had already passed so far as the Hudson’s Bay Company’s fort was concerned.

When trading vessels began to come “around the Horn” to the West Coast, that

killed the transcontinental trade route of the Hudson Bay Co. and the glory of

Edmonton departed for a time. American traders pushing up the Missouri by steamer

to Benton drew away the Blackfeet trade; and the Plain Crees traded their robes at

Carlton or Winnipeg, so that the importance of Edmonton had seriously declined at

the time of the transfer of Rupert’s Land to Canada in 1870, from what it had been

during the period from say 1810 to 1860.

THE NEW NATIVE POPULATION

163 Built in 1812, it “was used as an outpost of Jasper House and was deserted about 1861.” Ibid.

100

The continuous residence at Edmonton during such a long period of such a

large number of white men inevitably resulted in many marriages between employees

of the Trading Companies and native women. And there grew up a comparatively

large h–––––population. The establishment of the first Nor’–West Company’s post at

Edmonton in 1778 and the continued expansion and the importance of the place

under that company until it was merged with the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1821,

over 40 years, caused the maintenance at Edmonton of a large number of Nor’–West

Company employees during that time. As already stated, the Nor’–West Company

drew most of its voyageurs and other employees from the French Canadian

population resident in the vicinity of Montreal. These employees were encouraged to

marry and remain in the country. On the other hand the Hudson’s Bay Company

drew the bulk of their men from the Orkneys, the Shetlands and the Hebrides. They

were under contract to return them to their homes at the expiration of their term of

service. Until the merging of the companies, the interests of the Nor’–West at

Edmonton, were much more important than those of the Hudson’s Bay. Even after

the merging of the companies and during the period of transcontinental trade, it was

the policy of the Hudson’s Bay Co. to retain, with as little changes as possible, the

staff and employees they had acquired from the Nor’–West Co. at this point. Until

sometime in the 40’s the language of the Fort was French, as it had been under the

Nor’–West Company; with an ex–Nor’–West officer, Chief Factor Rowand164 in

charge. Under the circumstances the h––––– population that grew up around

Edmonton largely claimed French descent on the father’s side. These men were expert

in the ways of the country. Some took regular employment with the Hudson’s Bay

Co., many more worked intermittently for the company at freighting, voyaging,

trading, or whatever other form of employment might be available. While the buffalo

remained they hunted the buffalo, or caught fish or trapped fur, or sometimes traded

and sometimes farmed in a small way. They constituted the permanent population of

the country. They were in close touch with both Indians and whites and able to take

part in the work of either or both. Although racially alike, they were a very different

people from those of the Red River Settlement; the result of different conditions and

environment.

EARLY SETTLEMENT

Settlements were established at Lac Ste. Anne and Lac la Biche; partly because

of abundance of white fish being available at these lakes. Partly also because being

in the woods they were safe from Blackfeet raids, while near enough the plains to

permit of excursions being made in both winter and summer after buffalo meat. As

the h––––– population increased the St. Albert Settlement was established. It lacked

the fish of St. Anne, but it had beautiful farming land on which potatoes and barley

could be easily grown. It was much nearer and more convenient to the plains and the

buffalo than St. Anne. The settlers were numerous enough to defy the Blackfeet. In

the late 70’s the St. Albert Settlement had grown to be the largest in the

Saskatchewan country and numbered 800 people.

164 John Rowand Jr. (1812 – 1865). Apart from a brief diversion to Cumberland in 1843, he was the

clerk or Chief Trader in charge of Fort Pitt from 1842 to 1855.

101

At the Blackfeet trade turned southward to Benton instead of northward to

Edmonton, there was less and less danger of clashes with the Blackfeet in the

territory north of the Red Deer. The transfer to Canada in 1870 had a further quieting

effect which was clenched by the advent of the Mounted Police in 1874. As the great

plains became safe, the buffalo were still plentiful and robes were a good price, there

was a general tendency on the part of the Edmonton h–––––s to take advantage of

the new conditions. Many of them struck out from the safety and shelter of Ste. Anne,

St. Albert and Lac la Biche to seek their fortunes in the wider fields of the south.

They had busy and prosperous years while the buffalo lasted. Since then they have

scattered everywhere. The foregoing are the reasons why the h––––– population of

Edmonton country is now not larger than it is. But a census of the prairie west would

show that a very large proportion of the total h––––– population date their ancestry

from Edmonton and vicinity.

THE SMALLPOX EPIDEMIC

One of the most tragic chapters in the early history of Edmonton was the

smallpox epidemic of the winter of 69–70. The disease entered the country by way of

Montana. The Blackfeet were attacked in the fall and early winter and died by

thousands. The Crees caught the disease from the Blackfeet and passed it on to the

h–––––s of Edmonton and surrounding settlements. It is estimated that the visitation

cut the Indian and h––––– population of what is now Alberta in half during the

winter. The whites did not suffer so seriously, but there were some deaths. The

horrors of the visitation were such that for years the native population dated

everything from the year of the smallpox.

GOLD ON THE SASKATCHEWAN

The discovery of gold in the Saskatchewan in the early 60’s was the beginning

of modern conditions in Edmonton. A party of Canadians had gone to Cariboo by way

of Edmonton in the days of the first rush there. It is believed that some members of

the party panned gold from the Saskatchewan. They did not find the return attractive

enough to hinder them from going on to Cariboo. But after the cream had been

skimmed from Cariboo, the news of gold on the Saskatchewan was confirmed – no

doubt much exaggerated – and there was quite a rush of gold miners from across the

mountains. The first man to mine gold on the river was named Tom Clover165. He

worked on the bar in the river near where the G.T.P. bridge crosses. The bar was

called “Clover’s Bar” and gave its name to the splendid farming settlement which lies

in the south side of the river in rear of the bear. It is said that at one time 50 miners

were working on the river. While at first the yield was good, the season of working

was too short to make gold mining profitable. The bars were only workable during

low water in spring and fall. Most of the miners who drifted in drifted out again, as

the bars were worked out; but others who had had their fill of rainbow chasing were

attracted by the agricultural possibilities of the district and decided to remain. Some

became farmers, others took up other lines of activity. Whatever they did they were

strong men and good citizens, looking to the up–building of the country. Of these men

165 Thomas H. Clover (1829 – 1920).

102

James Gibbons166 is probably the only one still living. He was hale and hearty at last

accounts.

THE SETTLEMENT OF EDMONTON CITY

From time to time minor officers and employees of the Hudson’s Bay Co. left

the service and settled in the country. They added to the permanently resident

population and mostly took up land as farmers. The settlement of Edmonton was

comprised almost entirely of this class of people. It is not too much to say that the

establishment of Edmonton, aside from the Hudson’s Bay Company was due to the

foresight and energy of the Rev. Geo. McDougall167. Mr. McDougall was in charge of

the Methodist mission of Pakan (then Victoria) when Rupert’s Land was transferred

to Canada. He saw that the Victoria Mission was not in line to benefit by future

development. In 1871 he came to Edmonton and established a Methodist mission on

the site of the present McDougall Methodist church. He claimed land for the mission

including land for a parsonage that would have been a credit to any community of

that date. […] Following his example, claims were taken easterly along the river. […]

EDMONTON SOUTH

It should not be forgotten that between 1871 and 1874 a water mill was

established on what is now Gallagher Flats on the South Side. The name of the miller

was William Bird. The mill was a perfectly good mill for the country at the time. Its

only drawback was that there was seldom water enough to make it run. […]

ADVENT OF THE MOUNTED POLICE

Although Canada assumed jurisdiction over the Hudson’s Bay territories,

known more specifically as Rupert’s Land, in 1870, the arrival of the Mounted Police

in 1874 was the first visible and definite assertion of Canadian authority. It marked

the division between the old and the new. While the change was not made without

friction in the Red River country in 69–70, in the region of the Saskatchewan in 1874,

the new order of things was welcomed by all sections of the community, Indian, h––

––– and white. Edmonton was to be a police headquarters. A division of 50 men

arrived from Macleod in the fall of 1874, under command of Col. Jarvis168, and

wintered in the Hudson’s Bay Company’s fort. Col. Jarvis was given authority to

locate a permanent post; necessarily with wide discretion, as conditions were

unknown by the authorities at Ottawa. The limitations were that the police post must

be located on the south side of the river and within twenty miles of Edmonton. Col.

Jarvis selected the site of Ft. Saskatchewan, just within the twenty–mile limit. There

were traditions that the location of Ft. Saskatchewan at such a distance from

Edmonton was a manifestation of personal pique against the officers of the Hudson’s

Bay Co. on the part of Col. Jarvis. But it is made rather with a view to future railway

development. The Beaver Hills lie squarely across the direct route of any railway from

166 James Gibbons (1837 – 1933), prospector and fur trader known for his invention of the ‘grizzly’, a

device used by gold prospectors working in the clay–rich soil of the Saskatchewan. 167 George Millward McDougall (1821 – 1876), a Methodist missionary known for his involvement in

Treaty negotiations. 168 William Dummer Jarvis (1834 – 1914), a veteran of the Kaffir War in South Africa, and the first

person to be appointed an inspector in the North–West Mounted Police.

103

Winnipeg to Edmonton. To avoid the hills – then thought to be impassable for railway

construction – the main line of C.P.R. through the Jasper Pass was projected by the

Canadian government to run south of the Beaver Hills. When the survey was made

the line passed through what is now Leduc, twenty miles south of Edmonton. Col.

Jarvis saw that a slight detour would carry a railway coming from Winnipeg and

heading for Jasper around the north end of the Beaver Hills to the point at which he

located Fort Saskatchewan and where all conditions were most favorable for a

railway crossing of the river. At that time all signs pointed to early railway

construction through the fertile belt, as the country between Edmonton and Winnipeg

was known at that date. But every condition seemed unfavorable to Edmonton being

on the main line of the railway. The construction of the C. N. R. justified Col. Jarvis’s

judgment, but it meant waiting for thirty years.

FT. SASKATCHEWAN SETTLEMENT

On the north side of the Saskatchewan river, opposite Ft. Saskatchewan is a

beautiful and fertile flat, which had attracted the attention of settlers about the time

of the advent of the Mounted Police. […] During the boom times of 81–82 P. Heiminck,

now of Edmonton, acquired the Halpenny property169, laid it out as a townsite and

sold some of the lots, in the expectation of the early construction of the Northern West

Central railway then projected. But the collapse of the boom and the diversion of the

C.P.R. from the Jasper to the Kicking Horse Pass left the Edmonton country in a state

of stagnation that lasted until the Klondike rush of 1898.

FIRST EDMONTON TOWN LOT PURCHASED IN 1878

From the transfer to Canada in 1870, with the advent of the police in 1874 and

the C.P.R. surveys carried on during the period from 1874 to 1878, conditions were

progressive and the outlook hopeful for the Edmonton district until the culmination

of the boom of 1881–1882. In 1878 the first purchase of a town lot in Edmonton was

made by the writer of this article170. It was purchased from Colin Fraser, original

owner of River Lot Ten. The property was that now occupied by the Bulletin office.

The building erected in 1878 was at first used as a store. In October 1880 the first

issue of the Bulletin was printed. From October 1881 until the present date The

Bulletin has been printed on the original property purchased in 1878 for the sum of

$25.

WAITING FOR THE RAILWAY

The collapse of the boom in the spring of 1882, followed by the decision to

change the route of the C.P.R. from the Jasper to the Kicking Horse Pass, put the

Edmonton country, not on the side track, but 200 miles from the track of progress,

until the C. & E. railway was constructed nine years later in 1891. These were years

169 Not without trouble. “There is a dispute between J. Halpenny and P. Heiminck about the ownership

of the claim at Ft. Saskatchewan, purchased some time ago by Heiminck from Halpenny. It seems that

Heiminck agreed to make the full payment for the place on the first of April. This he failed to do, so

Mr. Halpenny proposes to retain possession, although Heiminck now offers to make the payment.”

LOCAL. (1882, April 15). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 1. About a week later, Halpenny accepted payment and renounced the claim. 170 Despite inquiries to the Edmonton Archives and the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, I have been

unable to identify the writer from this clue.

104

of weary waiting. While the people of Edmonton firmly believed that “everything

comes to him who waits,” they also believed just as firmly that it comes much more

quickly to him who “hustles while he waits.” It was during these years that the Great

North, the Mackenzie River Basin, was annexed to the trade territory of Edmonton.

The former trade route to the Mackenzie was by way of Ft. Carlton171 on the

Saskatchewan, north of Saskatoon. The h––––– and Indian rebellion of 1885 broke

the monotony of waiting in rather startling manner. But the rebellion which broke

out at Batoche, south of Prince Albert, did not spread to Edmonton in its acute form.

The nearest killing was the massacre at Frog Lake, 150 miles down the river. There

was some pillaging of outlying stores at nearer points. A great many people were

frightened though few were hurt in this vicinity. But at best it was an experience that

few would care to repeat.

The construction of the C. & E. railway in 1891 did not relieve the condition of

stagnation, which at the time extended to all parts of Canada. Indeed the rivalry

between the new railway town south of the river and the old trading town on the

north side tended to destroy the good results that should have followed railway

construction.

DREAMS OF THE PIONEERS REALIZED AT LAST

In 1902 the river had been bridged and railway connection was made with the

town on the north side. In 1905 the dreams of the pioneers of Edmonton were realized

by the arrival of a train direct from Winnipeg at the 101st street station over C.N.R.

rails all the way; and by the establishment of Edmonton as the capital of the newly

established Province of Alberta.

THE NEW ERA BEGINS

The occurrence at the same time of these two events seems to mark the

beginning of the modern era for Edmonton. Up to that point the struggle was that of

the pioneers to establish the position of the city. Since 1905 the vocation of the pioneer

has given place to that of kings, captains and princes of modern finance, industry and

trade, of whose army of peace the commercial travelers are at once the scouts,

intelligence service and advance guard.

9. How the Trade is Handled (1899)172

The fur trade has always been an important part of the business of Edmonton

and instead of decreasing as other trade increases, which might be expected, it has

171 “Hudson’s Bay Co. fort on North Saskatchewan river. […] It was considered half–way to Edmonton.

Built 1787 on south side river. It was a substantial fort, surrounded by high palisades with a gallery

and armed with wall pieces surrounding the whole square and having square towers at each corner.

[…] During the rebellion of 1885 it was raided and apparently was discontinued soon after. It was

principally a provision station supplying 300 bags of pemmican per annum. It was an important

transportation centre in the days of the Red River cart. Goods for the north were brought here from

Winnipeg and forwarded to Green lake and thence by water route north and west.” Voorhis, E. (1930).

Historic Forts and Trading Posts of the French Regime and of the English Fur Trading Companies. Ottawa: Department of the Interior. 172 FUR TRADE. (1899, August 28). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 6.

105

shown a steady growth. This has resulted from the fact that as the general business

of the place increased the fur trade at Edmonton became the centre of an ever

widening circle. All the furs traded on the waters of the Peace river east of the

Mountains and on the waters of the Athabasca as far north as Fort Rae173 on Great

Slave lake, (except those handled by the Hudson’s Bay Company), are bought and

sold at Edmonton, and as well the supplies for which they are traded. The furs traded

by the Hudson’s Bay Co. on all the waters of the Athabasca and Mackenzie down to

the Arctic sea, and the goods for which they are traded are also handled at Edmonton.

Northeasterly Edmonton’s fur trade extends to Isle la Crosse, and to the south

Edmonton fur buyers compete for furs all along the line of the Calgary & Edmonton

railway and the main line of the C. P. R. westward to Kamloops.

The trade is handled in several different ways: The H. B. Co., which of course

have the most widespread organization, supply their own goods to their own posts

and sell their own furs at their own great London sales. The profit to the town and

district in their trade lies in their large employment of freighters and boatmen and

the general business which this creates. The H. B. Co. employ two steamers of their

own on the waters of the Mackenzie, one above and one below the rapids at Fort

Smith, and have another for use on the Athabasca between the mouth of Lesser Slave

river and Grand rapids. Their line of steam navigation reaches from Athabasca

Landing to the Arctic ocean. Other firms competing in somewhat the same way are:

McDougall & Secord174, Ross Bros., and Larue & Picard, all of whom have an interest

in certain outposts in the north. The first mentioned firm have recently purchased

the steamer Sparrow, which they will run from the rapids at Smith to Great Slave

lake and down the Mackenzie to the Arctic ocean. A very large part of the trade,

however, is carried on by independent traders, who having more or less capital

purchase their goods at wholesale prices from the merchants here, transport them at

their own cost to their trading posts, and on their return sell the furs that they bring

back in open competition for cash. This is the branch of the trade that is of most

general public interest. Under this system the trader gets the last cent of value that

is in his fur, and having the cash is able to purchase his fresh supply of goods at the

closest margin. It is the keen competition in supplying the goods that makes the

Edmonton market so attractive to outside traders and that draws them here from

greater distances each year. […]

The principal furs traded at Edmonton are marten, bear, lynx, beaver, red fox,

mink, wolf, musk rat and skunk.

173 A Hudson’s Bay Company fort located on an island in Marian lake. 174 “J. A. McDougall, mayor elect of Edmonton for 1897, has been one of the most prominent figures in

the commercial and social life of this place since his first arrival in the fall of 1876. […] About 1890 he

formed a business connection with R. Secord who had begun to push trade down the Athabasca, and

this business has since expanded to such an extent that for the past two years, McDougall & Secord,

who since that time have been partners, have handled over $200,000 a year in fur and goods. Their

trading connections now cover a great part of the Mackenzie basin. […] Besides outfitting traders

throught the north, this firm also buys fur for cash in Edmonton, for shipment to the London sales of

Lampson & Co., and are probably the largest purchasers at Edmonton.” MAYOR McDOUGALL. (1896,

December 14). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 4.

106

There is a run on marten, now, principally for ladies neck wear. This is the

cause of the high price. Marten varies in color from pale brown to black. The darker

the color the more valuable the skin. Black marten is better known as sable.

Bear, if the fur is short, is used principally for robes, and if the fur is long for

military purposes. The rich soft fur of cubs is used chiefly for trimmings.

Lynx is seldom used in its natural color except for trimmings. Formerly it was

dyed and made into an imitation of seal skin.

Red fox skins go chiefly to China and Japan. Silver and cross foxes go to Russia.

Fisher goes chiefly to Germany, where it is used in trimmings and capes.

Otter is used for caps, muffs, etc.

Mink is used chiefly for coat linings.

Wolf is used principally for robes.

Musk rat is used chiefly for coat linings.

Skunk is used for trimmings in imitation of sable. The white stripe of the fur

has no value.

10. Seasonal Shipments (1899)175

That there is no other town in British North America, where so large an

amount of raw furs, direct from first hands, finds a market as in Edmonton, has been

an acknowledged fact for some years past. That this fur does find its market here, is

because there is no other place where the trader, white trapper or Indian can dispose

of this trade or hunt to better advantage. No place where he can find stores so well

equipped with just the articles he requires, or merchants who understand so well the

trade he is engaged in. It is not, however, only the traders and trappers of the north

who have found Edmonton a good market for their furs. Dealers in furs along the

lines of the C. P. railway through the Rockies and at many points in British Columbia

have found it to their advantage to ship their furs to Edmonton. Buyers from

Edmonton also visit these points and ship their purchases here.

All fur traded in the Peace, Athabasca and Mackenzie districts must of

necessity come to Edmonton for sale or shipment east. At Lac la Biche, 160 miles

northeast of Edmonton are several traders, who have outposts at Portage la Loche

and draw in considerable fur from that section of country, which is all sold in

Edmonton. The past season a conservative estimate of the fur sales of Edmonton

would not be less than $200,000. Besides all the furs traded by the H. B. Co. at their

posts in Edmonton district, as well as all from their posts in the Peace, Athabasca

and Mackenzie river districts are brought here for shipment to London.

Large as is the present amount of fur brought in from all parts of the country,

it is quite possible and probable that it will be exceeded in the future. At present the

Indians are obliged to hunt where they can kill moose, cariboo or fish. With improved

and cheaper transport to the north, flour and bacon will be cheaper, and enable an

Indian to be more independent of the game and fish than at present, and to hunt

175 From EDMONTON’S FUR TRADE. (1899, December 11). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 5.

107

parts of the country where at present no one hunts. White trappers who can live on a

small stock of provisions, (as compared with an Indian with a large family and a big

band of dogs), will establish themselves throughout the country, and as some few are

doing at present, earn good wages by killing fur. The north country is not by any

means over trapped as yet, it is a big country with very few people in it. The Indians

of the north do not at present kill half the fur they might do if they devoted all their

time to it. The greater part of the winter they are busy hunting for something to eat,

in the coldest weather they keep in camp if they can, and it is only towards spring

that they give their attention in earnest to the killing of fur. Where traders are

numerous and competition keen, the Indian hunts more, goods are brought to his

camp all through the winter and he is induced to work harder, than those Indians

who only come into a trading post twice a year.

Until the past two years the northern posts of the Hudson’s Bay Co., on the

Mackenzie, have not been tapped by the traders, but now that Messrs. Nagle &

Hislop, traders at Great Slave lake, have a good steamer on the Mackenzie, and Wm.

Connor another, we may expect a much larger output of fur from that part of the

country, as the Indians seeing more goods will kill fur to buy them. Up to the present

date the supply of goods was scarcely sufficient to pay for the fur they did kill.

Beaver can be killed out of a country in a short time, as has been done in Peace

River, but with other fur it is different. If fires are kept down and not allowed to run

the north will furnish furs for many a year to come. One fire will destroy more fur–

bearing animals in the country than a good sized tribe of Indians would kill in years.

The furs brought into Edmonton are badger, black, brown, and grizzley bear,

beaver, and castoreum, ermine, fisher cross, red, silver, black, white and kitt foxes,

lynx, marten, muskrat, otter, skunk, wolverine, timber, barren ground, brush and

prairie wolf, weenusks176 and musk ox. The last named come principally from Fort

Resolution on Great Slave lake. Messrs. McDougall & Secord, who handle all that

come to Edmonton have generally a nice assortment of these robes on hand.

The fur season opens the fifteenth October when muskrat and skunk begin to

come in, but furs in general are not killed before 1st November. Traders from outside

points come in about Xmas and New Years, and from then all through the winter

there is fur coming in. The real fur season, the time when the town is given up to the

fur traders and their men, when every one in town from the ferryman, who crosses

you on the scow on your way over from the station, to the girl who brings you your

porridge at the breakfast table the next morning at the hotel, talks of furs and of the

fur traders. When the man who does not know an ermine skin from a China goat will

buttonhole you and ask you whether in your opinion a certain black fox brought in by

some trader is not a little doggy on the back. This season opens about the 1st of June,

and lasts pretty well all through August. During that time there are but few days

when some lot of fur is not put up for sale.

A trader when he gets in with his packs of fur secures some wareroom where

he can open them and calls in all the fur buyers in town to examine his furs. Each

buyer makes his assortment and values the lot. When all have looked over the lot

176 Cree for “ground hog”.

108

they meet together, each buyer makes out his bid on a piece of paper and hands it to

the owner of the fur who opens the bids, calling out the name of each buyer and the

amount of his bid, and the fur goes to the highest offer. The lucky man smiles and

hunts for a drayman, while the disappointed ones retire trying to look cheerful, and

console themselves by making calculations as to the amount of money the man who

bought the fur stands to lose. Lots run from a few dollars to as high as $20,000, and

as a rule the bids are very close, sometimes a tie occurs, when a quarter is tossed to

decide the matter.

As soon as a trader gets the buyers at work he proceeds to pay off his men, who

after a trip are badly in want of a new rigout, and this they get as soon as possible

before taking in the sights of the town. First and foremost and absolutely

indispensable article in their outfit is a cowboy hat. No cheap imitation, but a genuine

Stetson costing from $6 to $8. Next will come a white shirt and a fancy tie, a black

cloth coat and vest and a pair of shepherd’s plaid trousers. A white pocket

handkerchief and a pair of boots, completes the outfit, if the boots squeak loudly the

northern Indian tripman is quite happy. An old resident has only to catch sight of one

of these men in his new clothes to know that the traders have arrived.

There is probably no harder way by which to earn a living, no more killing

heart–rending work, than tracking a heavily laden boat up a swift river. Yet these

northern tripmen, h–––––s, Indians and some white men accustomed to the work

arrive from a long trip looking the picture of health, and forgetting the hardships they

have gone through to earn it proceed to get rid of their money, as quickly as they can,

and have a jolly time while it lasts. It is to the credit of these men that amongst

themselves they rarely quarrel, either on the trip or after they are paid off.

Many people have an idea that Indians part with their furs principally for

trinkets and beads. A visit to some of the stores in Edmonton when the northern

traders outfits are being packed up would soon dispel that idea as far as the Indians

of the north are concerned. A string of beads and a red umbrella may satisfy the

longings of a Zulu or a South Sea Islander, but our northern Indians want something

better than that. The very best white wool blankets, 12 lbs. to the pair, fine striped

wool rugs, black broadcloth coats, French merinos, heavy tartan wool shawls, heavy

flannels & c., are what they want. In the fall of the year an Indian will not as a rule

buy light fancy goods, he dreads the cold and protects himself as well as he is able

against it. In the spring when he comes in with his winter hunt he will indulge himself

in finery, and will then buy fancy handkerchiefs, &c., but there are very few cheap

trinkets sold in the north.

The season of 1899–1900 does not promise to be a very good one for furs at

least in the immediate vicinity of Edmonton. Indians require snow to pitch off into

the woods, as a flat sleigh can pass pretty well anywhere. Many h–––––s expecting

scrip to be issued to them will not pitch off and hunt as usual, and besides all these

reasons it would seem as though it were going to be one of those off years which occur

now and again when no kind of fur is very plentiful. The lynx have migrated out of

the country and it will be about three years before we may expect them to be

numerous again.

109

Foxes are seemingly scarce and so are wolves. What the catch may be in the

north it is hard to say. The issue of scrip and payment of treaty money to Indians and

h–––––s of Lesser Slave lake, Peace River and Athabasca will have considerable effect

on the fur trade, many will be pretty well equipped for the first part of the winter and

may not care to exert themselves hunting before necessity obliges them to make a

move. On the other hand more goods than ever before have been sent north and there

will be a greater extent of country covered, so that perhaps when the end of the season

comes the total amount of fur marketed at Edmonton will not be found much below

the average of recent years.

11. The Revillons (1906)177

The Revillons are fit competitors of the Hudson’s Bay company. They have been

engaged in wholesale and retail fur trading for 175 years, and they are now carrying

on their business with a capital of 70,000,000 francs, or about $14,000,000. They have

already established posts all over the Northwest and they are gradually building up

a line of stations throughout the lands which the Hudson’s Bay people have always

considered their own. They have a central station at Edmonton, another at Prince

Albert and a third at Labrador, with two or three hundred branch posts in active

operation. They are buying fur all along the Mackenzie river, up and down the shores

of the Arctic ocean, along Hudson bay and in different parts of Labrador; and they

are, I am told, getting a fair share of the best skins of the continent.

In addition to this they have, with the opening up of the wheat belt, established

a wholesale and retail department store here and are doing business with the new

settlers.

The head of the fur establishment and the department store is a young

Frenchman, Mr. Revillon. He is only about 26 years of age, but he has already built

up this business and has the sole charge of it. It was while dining with him the other

night that we talked about the fur trade and the wonderful growth going on here.

During our conversation I asked Mr. Revillon to tell me how fur trading is

carried on in this part of the world. He replied:

“Nearly all the furs sold are brought in by the Indians, and we buy or trade

direct with them. We know the goods they most prize and ship them in wagons to

Athabasca Landing where they go by different waterways to our various posts. The

Indians bring the skins to the posts and exchange them for the goods. It is all a matter

of barter. No money passes and each fur is valued at so many skins. The standard of

value used to be a beaver, every fur being worth so many beavers. This value was

created by the Hudson’s Bay Company, and it is said that they sometimes got

extravagant prices for their goods through the ignorance of the Indians. That kind of

trading has all passed away, and the Indians now get a fair value for their furs. The

skin which now forms the unit is worth from 35 to 50 cents, according to the distance

of the trading posts from Edmonton, the rate increasing on account of the freight.”

177 From Carpenter, F. G. (1906, May 21). The Fur Trade of the North. The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 5. Written by Frank G. Carpenter (1855 – 1924).

110

“But does the s–––––h understand the value of his furs?”

“Yes, indeed, and he understands how to get it. He is not an easy man to deal

with, and he must be handled in his own peculiar way. Some of our traders visit the

Indian camps carrying boxes of goods with them. At such times they never mention

trading upon their arrival. The white trader tells his Indian friends that he has come

out to make a friendly call. He asks after the health of the tribe and of each man’s

wife and family. He smokes with them and talks about the weather and other things

for hours and hours. Indeed a night often passes before any business is mentioned.

The next day the trader may ask one of the Indians if his luck has been good, and if

he says yes, it is the sign that he has furs and is willing to trade. If he says no, the

white man goes on smoking. After a time the Indian may thaw out and pull a mink

skin from inside his coat and ask the trader what he will give for it. If the price is

right, he will sell it, but if not, he will bring forth no more skins and the business

dealings are ended for that visit. If he is satisfied he may pull out another mink

gradually giving up all he has for sale. He has to be treated diplomatically; he is

sensitive and suspicious and it takes skill to handle him.

“Do the Indians make much money in that way?”

“Yes; I have known braves who made two or three thousand dollars a year. The

average Indian does well, however, if he nets three or four hundred. But much or

little, it is all the same. These Indians do not know how to keep money. They never

consider the future. They barter their furs for goods as soon as they have them, and

eat up their supplies as fast as they can. They buy the most extravagant things. I

know an Indian for instance, who received $1,900 for some furs. The first thing he

did was to send to Quebec for a piano, which cost him all told, a thousand dollars

before it was delivered. He did not know how to play it, and after a few days he tore

it apart to see how it worked.“

“What are the most expensive furs caught here?”

“I should say the silver foxes. The black ones are worth most, and a fine skin

may bring twelve hundred dollars or more.”

In talking with Mr. Secord of the important fur buying company of McDougall

and Secord I was told that the fur business is now as good as it has ever been and

that it will be a long time before men will freeze for lack of fur coats and women

become pillars of ice because they have not fur sacques. The skins may continue costly, but there are plenty of animals left, and it will be long before the supply gives

out.

Mr. Secord tells me that furs are largely affected by fashion, and also by the

supply. In some years the Indians bring in many more of certain kinds of furs than

in other years, and, strange to say the supply of some species rises and falls with the

rabbit crop. Some varieties of fur bearing animals live largely on rabbits, which breed

so rapidly that the animals cannot keep them down. At intervals of every four or five

years a disease breaks out which kills the rabbits off by the thousand, and following

such years come the lean fur years.

111

12. Further History of the Revillons (1918)178

The Revillons, whose name in connection with the fur trade is known and

famous all over the world, is one of the great institutions of the Northland and a rival

over a century of the great Hudson’s Bay company in the fur business. The original

Revillon Freres was a French company, whose interests were first confined to Europe.

About 1814 they established themselves in Canada, with headquarters in Montreal,

and proceeded to dispute with the Hudson’s Bay company its hitherto unrivalled pre–

eminence in this line in the great Northern lands.

POST AT EDMONTON

Posts were established at strategic points throughout the century, one at

Edmonton which eventually developed into the most important of them all. There

was keen rivalry between the two great companies for the acquisition of the valuable

furs caught by the Indians and white trappers, and many bitter clashes took place

between them.

The Revillons found it to be a profitable business. Indeed, they made it

profitable by their methods. Their practice has always been to sell their furs directly

to the customer, thus establishing a close personal relationship and enabling them to

do away with the middleman and to make sure that furs of the best quality reached

the purchaser. The Hudson’s Bay company sells its furs at auction in London, at

stated intervals, after which the company, of course, ceases to have any further

responsibility. Revillons, on the contrary, disposes of its goods direct to the ultimate

purchaser so that the chain of responsibility is complete.

Trading post after trading post was established throughout the Northwest

until the whole country is dotted with them. There are hundreds of stores and

outworks of business scattered far and wide under the Arctic circle.

At a later date the firm established its trading business in other articles than

furs, and the stores where clothing and supplies were sold followed the posts where

the fur trader was the pioneer. It is Revillon Freres who are exclusively identified

with the fur dealing end of the business. It is Revillon Wholesale which takes care of

the trading and runs the scores of stores, big and little, which are found in all the

large centres and many of the small ones of the Northwest.

DISTRIBUTING CENTRE

Paris, London, New York and Edmonton are bracketed in the firm’s

advertising, and it is recognized that this city has become the principal distributing

centre of the enormous business which has been built up in Northwestern Canada.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of food, clothing, tools, weapons, traps,

furniture, boots and shoes, tents, fishing tackle, supplies of every kind, go through

here, and by steamer and railway, by canoe and pack train, are distributed to the

distant stores, far on the edge of the retreating frontier, for the settlers and the

Indians.

178 From Revillon Company Has Operated for Over a Century Now in the Canadian Northwest. (1918,

September 9). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 1.

112

13. Competition and Indigenous Fur Traders (1922)179 This article contains valuable information, but was written from a prejudiced point of view. It is important to keep its negative bias in mind when reading the account.

Conditions for the Chipewyan180 Indians have greatly changed within the past

few weeks, say travellers from the north; up to quite recently the Indian was

accustomed to do what he was told by the white overlords, but now he sits in his tee–

pee, masticates juicy beefsteaks, and is waited on by the superior race. It is an

entirely novel situation for the native son, and he is said to be deriving considerable

pleasure from the process.

All this is due to the rivalry of the fur traders who make their headquarters at

Fort Chipewyan, on Lake Athabasca; formerly there were three firms dealing in

peltries with the Indians, and now there are twenty–eight. From time immemorial it

has been the custom of the natives to bring their furs to the post for barter. Now, due

to the keen trading, the merchants do not wait for this, but hitching up their dog

teams follow the Indians on their hunting trails, and with their dog sleighs loaded

with trade goods, barter with the native sons in their lodges in the woods and on the

Barren Lands. […]

Each of the twenty–eight firms at Chipewyan have a number of dog teams and

visitors from the north state that on every trail mushers are to be met, with the result

that the Indian sits back, demands a higher price for his furs than the market

warrants, and gets it. Due to the poor communication between the Athabasca lake

posts and the “outside,” the traders in the north are not aware of the trend of the fur

market; prices have been dropping, but up north the fur men have been paying more

and more, and as a result of this competition it is likely that a number will shortly be

declared officially “broke.”

The Indians have plenty of money as a consequence of the present condition of

affairs, and instead of a steady diet of rabbit this season are luxuriating in beefsteaks

– something entirely new to the north. Prior to the freeze–up two parties freighted

down scow loads of cattle to the Athabasca delta; one man has twenty steers and the

other sixteen. These are being slaughtered daily and are retailing at fifty cents per

pound, the Indians travelling from all over the northern hinterland to become

possessed of the new delicacy.

Last season at Jackfish lake (mouth of the Athabasca river), there was one lone

trader, while this year there are eight, and between Fort Mackay and the mouth of

the river there are ten new and independent merchants, all anxious to do business

with the Indians. Some of these men serve meals to travelers on the river ice, while

the dog mushers can now put up in some cabin along the river every night, and do

not require to camp under a spruce tree, which is a decided novelty and heralds the

advance of civilization.

179 From Lo! The Poor Indian Squats in His Teepee Waited on by Whites. (1922, December 21). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 5. 180 Also known as the Ojibwe.

113

Trappers are also far more numerous than in years past, there are now forty

between Fort McMurray and Fort Chipewyan, and some of those men are causing the

police considerable anxiety as the Indians state they are infringing on their right and

something in nature of a small war is looked for before the ice goes out of the rivers

again. Ryan Brothers have completed arrangements for the operation of a horse–

sleigh service between Fort McMurray and Fitzgerald, and now have caches of horse

feed placed at intervals along the route. Each horse is to pull a flat sleigh (similar to

the dog sleighs), while a train of six will travel together. This mode of transportation

is new to the north, as hitherto nothing but dogs have been used, but the Ryans have

the reputation of “getting there” and are expected to make the new venture a success.

“COALS TO NEWCASTLE”

Another innovation in the north is the shipping in of frozen fish from the

“outside.” There is a great shortage of fish for dog feed at Chipewyan, and two tons

have been shipped in from Conklin, on the A. & G. W.181 railway via Waterways and

the Athabasca river. At the present time any kind of a fish is worth from 25c to 30c

each at Chipewyan. At McMurray a northman named McIver has put up a fish

market for supplying the dogs of the trappers and traders with food, this enterprise

being stated to supply a long felt want, being especially agreeable to the Indians who

dislike fishing or any other form of toil.

14. How Fur was Sold in London (1894)182

More than three millions of the skins of fur–bearing animals were last week

sold in four days by public auction from the stores of Sir Charles Lampson183, at

College Hill, in the city of London. English, German, Russians, Austrians, Poles,

Canadians, and Americans were there to buy, and the skins were sold, paid for, and

on their way to half the countries and capitals of Europe before the week was ended.

1,528,000 skins of the musquash184 were sold on Friday between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.,

and the day’s work concluded with a competition for “sundries,” comprising hides of

tigers, lions, lynxes, and many of the rarest creatures to be seen at the Zoological

Gardens’ menagerie.

At the risk of swamping the sense of proportion by figures, we give the names

and numbers of some of the skins, which, through all changes of fashion, have been

prized since man first turned hunter, and are now on their way to the furriers from

this one gigantic store :–6,550 bears’ skins, black, brown and grizzly; 20 Polar bears’;

1,460 beavers’ skins; 2,647 Russian sables of the most costly kind; half–a–million

181 The Alberta and Great Waterways Railway. In 1910, it was the focus of a scandal involving the

granting of generous public loan guarantees to private individuals. 182 From GREAT FUR SALES. (1894, March 6). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 7. 183 Possibly a relation (but not a known son) of Curtis Lampson. This venue was world–famous. From

1899: “[I]t is to London that the greater part of the catch in North America, Alaska, Siberia, and

Australia is brought and dispersed over every country in the world in the sales of Sir Charles Lampson

and the Hudson Bay Company.” LI HUNG CHANG’S FURS. (1899, January 20). The Sydney Morning Herald, p. 3. 184 A more delicate name for the muskrat.

114

Australian and 120,000 American opossum–skins, and twice that number of skunks’

and raccoons’; 36,000 marten or American sables; 150,000 minks’; 3,000 wolf–skins,

and some 20,000 coats of red, white, Asiatic, and even of the tiny “Kitt” foxes185, does

not exhaust the list. Wallaby186, kangaroo, chinchilla, hair–seal, monkey, lamb, and

wolf skins swell the total in tens of thousands.

The Hudson’s Bay Company hold a rival of equal calibre; and in March, the

winter catch, of greater quantity and finer quality, will be gathered and dispersed in

the city with the same rapidity, and with more eager competition by the fur–loving

Russians and Poles. Viewed only as an example of commercial organization, these

seals are a credit to the city. Those who have spent a lifetime in their purchase and

preparation, find an endless interest in the furs themselves. You can smell them a

street off – an odour of camphor loaded with a faint, heavy savour – like the fat of a

sacrifice; for the lofty warehouse is packed on every story, from floor to ceiling, with

the undressed skins. The myriad hides of the smaller animals, the musks and

musquash, beavers and sables, opossums and martens, are simply stripped from the

body of the animal and turned inside out, – drawn off like a glove, and so lie flat,

except the sables, which are fastened in bundles by a strip of raw reindeer hide passed

through the muzzles. Stacked in iron racks from floor to ceiling, and divided by

partitions, each “lot” is numbered and scheduled in the sale–catalogue according to

its quality and condition, and sample bundles, duly marked, hang in rows at a

convenient height for the inspection of the buyers. In the catalogue of sale, a volume

of narrow folio of two hundred pages, the quality of each “lot” is marked with

scrupulous care, with notes, where needed, stating that the skins are damaged by

shot, unusually large or small, dark or pale, woolly or rough, or “cubs,” in the case of

bears, dyed or stained, choice, poor, middling, or specimen skins. It is the fairest sale

in the world, a model of lucid order. It seems at first that no one looks at the skins at

all except the porters, who are packing and pressing them into bales.

Men come staggering down the stairs under shaggy piles of wolf–skins, with

the grinning beads clustered around their ears, or stamp on piles of bear hides

between upright columns of steel; but no one scans the shelves where the furs lie

double–stacked, like books in a warehoused library. Then, of all incongruous jumbles

of thought, the mind travels back to Lord’s Cricket ground187. Figures in long white

linen coats, and tall silk hats, the traditional costume of the umpire, are standing at

tables piled with furs, but instead of the batsman’s “blazer” under their arms are

tucked bundles of sable, marten, and beaver. They are buyers and merchants,

inspecting samples, and guarding their broadcloth in white smocks. Judgment is

passed, not only by the quality of the fur, to which the catalogue is almost a sufficient

guide, but by the soundness and texture of the skin itself; and the dry, yet still oily

skins, hide outwards, are fingered, scanned, and criticized with the deftness and

certainty born of long experience. These raw skins often bear curious marks from the

185 Kit foxes are native to North America. They weigh less than 3 kg and are about half a meter long. 186 An Australian animal similar to a kangaroo. 187 A famous Cricket venue built in 1814, and still in use today. Cricket is an English sport that

requires white outfits, bats, balls and a perfectly flat lawn.

115

hands that first stripped from the mink or musquash in the fur countries. Laconic188

Indian letters are found scratched or painted on the skins, sometimes in picture–

writing, like the Indian letter transcribed by Marryat189 in his “Settlers in Canada;”

more often the Indian message is written in Roman characters; and occasionally

words of Old French, the legacy of the days of Montcalm190, are recognized among the

greetings sent by the Indian hunter to the trader or the tribe.

The bundles of sables are examined skin by skin. But these are worth £5 to £40

apiece, and can hardly be judged by sample. The very finest and choicest sables have

a natural bloom and lustre incomparable among furs, and need neither pressing nor

art to enhance their beauty. At the rooms of the International fur stores in Regent

street, £500 is asked for a bundle of ten incomparable sable skins, which are neither

tanned nor dressed, but merely strapped together by the reindeer thong, as they left

the hands of the merchant at Nijni Novgorod191. Seal, beaver, and musquash skins in

the rough state are very different from the finished fur. All that is visible is the raw

hide flattened, and an inner lining of fur at the extremities; even this is not like the

glossy lining or trimming of a coat or jacket, but covered with long dull hair, which

must be plucked off by the furrier. Opossum, fox, and raccoon skins need little but

the currier’s192 process to be fit for wearing. The half–million of opossum–skins in the

stores showed only a glimpse of the grey soft fur within; they are mere dry hides with

an almost invisible fur lining. From the picturesque point of view, the fox–skins are

pre–eminent in the warehouses. Whole groves of the soft and deep furs of the red fox

– not the English brown–red reynard, but a beautiful warm–tinted mass – hang from

the ceilings of the passages. Myriads of white and grey fox–skins with blackish tips

are piled around the walls, and thousands of pendent “brushes,” in diminishing

perspective, are seen down the vista of the galleries. Bear–skins, except the rare and

much coveted pelts of the great Polar species, are a purely commercial article.

Yet the sight of rooms full of the skins of brown and black bears, dry, dusty,

and dishevelled, need not suggest contempt for a fur which, properly dressed and

taken in good condition, makes the warmest wrapping known, except the malodorous

sheepskin. Among the few dressed furs on sale were half–a–dozen exquisite coats of

188 Using as few words as possible. 189 “The Settlers in Canada” is a children’s novel by Frederick Marryat, published in 1844. It tells the

story of a pioneer family settling near Lake Ontario in the 1790s. 190 Probably Louis–Joseph de Montcalm–Gozon (1712 – 1759), commander of the French forces during

the French and Indian War of 1754 – 1763. 191 A city in Russia, famous as the birthplace of novelist Maxim Gorky. 192 A currier is a specialist in leather processing. A later article in this chapter goes into more detail

about the currier’s process.

116

the skin of the Thibetan lamb193, dressed in China194, pure silky–white without, soft

within as chamois leather, and white as parchment. The Chinese tiger must be a far

commoner and much larger animal than is generally supposed. Fourteen of these

skins hung in an upper room, splendid in color, and of the deepest and richest fur.

One of the finest skins of the Northern tiger ever seen in this country now hangs in

the International fur stores in Regent street. In its present condition, stretched and

dressed, it measures fourteen feet from the nose to the tip of the tail, and the coat is

almost as woolly as a bear’s. In the March sales of last year, 250 tiger skins were sold.

Lions’ skins are scarce. It is said that the Chicago exhibition195 caused a “boom” in

lion hides, and sent them up to fancy prices. Among the uncatalogued curiosities were

a pair of splendid python skins, and several species of an unnamed, but beautiful,

grey fur, with a rich patch of chestnut in the centre, which a visit to the Zoo identifies

as those of the rare Diana monkey.

Not a fur finds its way into the saleroom. The semicircle of buyers who throng

the desks, with the bulky catalogues before them, might be listening to a scientific

lecture, or assisting at some religious function, conducted in musical monotony by the

auctioneer. The bids are made by nods, or waves of the pen, and two pairs of practised

eyes, on either side of the seller, ceaselessly scan their allotted section of the benches,

and repeat the bids, which are caught and mechanically reproduced by the broker.

The business is too rapid and too serious to allow of talk. But much exchange of news,

views and furs takes place later; and the chat after the January and March sales in

London will find an echo in the lodges of the Indians and Esquimaux from Vancouver

to Hudson’s Bay, and among the Tartar youarts196 and reindeer sledges from the Ural

to Kamchatka. “The mystery of the fur trade,” writes the manager of the great Regent

street firm, in his admirable pamphlet on the uses of furs, “has disappeared before

the development of commerce. The trappers and hunters are no longer ignorant

193 The so–called Tibetan lamb (actually native to China) is famous for its white fur. Its natural

waviness makes it popular for use as doll hair. From 1899: “Thibetan lamb–skin, after it has passed

through the hands of Chinese curriers, becomes a thing of beauty and intrinsic excellence hardly

exceeded by the rarer furs. The leather is soft as kid and white as milk, and the fleece attached to it

takes the texture and gloss of white floss–silk.” LI HUNG CHANG’S FURS. (1899, January 20). The Sydney Morning Herald, p. 3. 194 China was a new exporter at this time. From 1899: “It has long been known that the Chinese

furriers were the best in the world; and that except in the dyeing of sealskins, their treatment of the

fur itself, especially in improving its tint and lustre, was unrivaled. […] It remains to be seen whether

the attraction of London will not draw from Pekin at least a share of its immense [fur] stock. It is

believed that this will take place, and that the furs will be exported in the finished state, and present

to the West a luxury almost as new as the original export of Chinese silks or Chinese porcelains. There

is almost as much difference between the finished furs from Pekin, more beautiful than Nature made

them, and the “raw furs” in the Hudson’s Bay sales, in the same condition as they were stripped from

the dead animal, as there is between spun silk and the same substance in the cocoon.” Ibid. 195 The 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago. I’ve found no mention of living lions being

exhibited, but artist Edward Kerneys sculpted a pair of lions to flank the entrances of two pavilions at

the exposition. These lions remain outside the Art Institute of Chicago and are an iconic feature of

that city. 196 Possibly a mis–spelling of ‘yurts’. Yurts are round, portable tents used traditionally by nomads in

Central Asia.

117

savages, ready to sell the skins, which they have obtained with toil and peril, for

beads or blankets or tobacco, at only a fraction of the true value. They no longer barter

on the principle that a musket is worth as many skins as will, when piled close, be

the height of the weapon from stock to muzzle; and the days are past when

enormously long–barreled pieces were therefore manufactured expressly for the

North American market.”

Fur Farming

15. Capacity and Quality Constraints to Trapping (1926)197

Despite the fact that trappers and traders have taken freely of the fur

resources of Canada, our fur trade now employs198 more capital, engages a larger

number of employees, and serves a greater number of people, than at any previous

time. The world demand for furs has increased so greatly that the fur industry is

confronted with new problems, among the most important of which is an assured

supply of good raw quality product such as Canada is able to furnish.

The limited supply of high quality furs in comparison to the demand, has forced

the industry to use pelts formerly considered of little value, many of which are

imported from foreign countries. The public is deceived as to the extent of this practice

by a variety of trade names as applied to certain furs among which the fur of the

rabbit is perhaps outstanding.

This form of selling has received considerable condemnation from an

influential body of the fur retailers and certain principles in this regard have been

agreed upon. The fur industry will undoubtedly not be content with the continued

substitution of these low grade pelts and other means of increasing the supply of

better grade furs will be eagerly welcomed.

Fox farming has already become a well established industry and the farming

of wild fur–bearers on privately owned lands and the utilization of waste lands and

water areas is advanced as a suggestion which may provide a solution at least in part

of an adequate fur supply. Already a number of experiments in Canada along these

lines have met with considerable success. “Dry farming” or the raising of such fur–

bearers as the muckrat, in pens apart from their natural habitat, is also an important

departure of intense interest which is being developed. If successful, this practice will

materially add to the supply of raw pelts of high grade.

197 From Utilization of Waste Lands for Development of Fur Farming to Meet The Demand For Pelts.

(1926, November 18). Mirror Mail, p. 3. 198 According to a statement by the Natural Resources Intelligence Service of the Department of the

Interior at Ottawa.

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16. A Rapidly Developing Industry (1928)199

Many branches of fur farming have become established in Western Canada to

the extent they have got past the stage of foundation, and are exporting live animals

abroad. One of the branches which has received relatively little attention, but which

is promised a meteoric development, is that of muskrat and beaver farming, in

particular the former. From a position of virtual insignificance in the fur trade this

little animal has attained a place of outstanding importance by reason of his pelt’s

multiplicity of uses. The security of the future of the muskrat industry is held to be

the readiness with which the pelt of this little animal can be adapted to imitate the

rarer and more valuable peltry. His position is secure as far as can be seen into the

future. And while this industry is established in other parts of the Dominion it

promises to be one which Western Canada is going to make peculiarly its own.

According to all reports a veritable army of men in the Prairie provinces has

been awaiting the completion of arrangements for the transfer of the marshlands and

other suitable tracts from the Federal Government to the provinces. There are stated

to be 800 applicants waiting in Alberta and hundreds in Saskatchewan and

Manitoba. According to announcements these lands are to be leased for fur–farming

purposes at 25 cents per acre for three years and $1 per acre for each successive year.

There is every indication of wholesale establishment to take place as soon as filing is

open.

British Columbia is not lagging behind her prairie sisters, having long since

securely established this industry, which is thriving in several suitable sections, and

in which is to be found the world’s largest establishment of this nature. The

Columbia–Kootenay Valley has come particularly to the fore in this regard and many

individuals from adjoining States of the Union have in the past few years moved up

to follow the pursuit there. A further addition to such ranches was recently made

when a group of Kelowna businessmen secured a large holding of bottom land from

the Columbia Valley Ranches Limited, on the Kootenay Central Branch of the

Canadian Pacific Railway, for the purpose of entering upon beaver and muskrat

ranching on a large scale. This follows upon three similar fur–farming enterprises to

establish in this section.

The industry is one which appeals from many points of view. The land so

utilized is largely waste, and unproductive. Operation is economical and to achieve

success does not necessitate any great experience or amount of technical knowledge.

The increasing demand for muskrat has elevated prices considerably. These are now

fairly stabilized, in the opinion of authorities, who are confident of the industry’s

ability to produce in the future. The average value of all muskrat sold in Canada at

the time of the Government’s last fur return was $1.54, while at recent Montreal sales

as high as $2.70 per pelt has been secured. Ranch–bred pelts naturally bring higher

prices, and since large–scale operation is the essence of the muskrat industry it is not

difficult to realize the profit which can be made.

199 From Fur Farming Very Soon To Be A Recognized And Established Western Canadian Industry.

(1928, August 15). Oyen News, p. 5.

119

Muskrat farming is to become an additional source of revenue in Western

Canada from its pursuit as a sole occupation or as a phase of mixed farming. The

acquisition of furs in Western Canada has always proved a welcome and convenient

means of adding to the year’s profits, and this continues even in long settled and

established districts, since certain valued fur–bearers tend to increase with

settlement. A new industry conferring a double benefit came into existence in

Western Canada when it was found that owing to newly discovered tanning processes

the native rabbit, which exists there in thousands, could be profitably disposed of. In

the past winter one Winnipeg firm alone handled more than 1,500,000 wild rabbit

skins, paying for them an average of 10 cents apiece. Fur taken in Western Canada

today have an annual value of between $6,000,000 and $7,000,000 and the attention

being paid to fur farming should have the effect of augmenting this figure.

17. A Russian Prince and Canadian Muskrat Rancher (1929)200

Alberta has added one more to her list of titled ranchers. This time it is a

Russian prince, remotely related to the defunct royal family through an alliance in

the days of Peter the Great201, but of recent years more or less a wanderer on the face

of the earth in a search for a happy home where Bolsheviks cease from troubling and

princelings are at rest.

Prince Leo Galitzine202, twenty–five years old and married just about a year,

is this latest royal rancher. He has bought over 400 acres of land on the McLeod River,

five miles south of Edson, right in the heart of the big game country, and there he is

going to raise – muskrats!

On the land there is a lake which covers 150 acres, and this is to be the habitat

of the colony of muskrats the prince plans to develop. There are already a few hundred

furry rodents on the place, but a much larger number will have to be introduced to

make the ranch a paying proposition. The lake is to be enclosed with three miles of

wire fencing at a cost of $2,000.

Much of the farm work is to be done by the prince himself, though he will have

a manager and a few helpers. He has studied fur farming intensively and has a

number of theories that he intends to put to the test of practice, these having been

endorsed by the professors of agriculture of Louvain University203 where he studied

for some years. It is not expected, however, that the rat ranch will pay dividends until

about 1932.

200 From Another Titled Rancher. (1929, October 9). Oyen News, p. 5. 201 Tsar of Russia from 1682 to 1725. 202 Leo Galitzine gave a lecture on “Interpetative Dancing and Gesture” at Edmonton’s Little Theatre

on February 5, 1934. 203 The Catholic University of Leuven, a Belgian university founded in 1425.

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18. The Growth of Fur Farming (1935)204

Not all furs which Canadian fur companies turn into wearing apparel come

from animals which roam the northwoods of the Dominion. Many205 of the animals

which carry the most valuable fur coats have never seen the northwoods. Neither

they nor their parents and in many cases their grandparents have ever seen or known

of the freedom of the bush. They were born and raised on farms devoted entirely to

the raising of a fur crop. Government figures show that there are at least 6,473 fur

farms in Canada and that their annual “output” of furs is valued at $3,712,443.

The idea of fur farming came from the habit of trappers to capture alive young

foxes and keep them near their cabin till the animals’ fur coats were in their prime.

So fur farms were started and fox became the main fur–bearing animal kept on these

farms. Silver fox was the animal most sought by the fur farmers and so valuable did

their pelts become in the early days of fur farming that a pair of silver foxes for

breeding purposes cost as high as $35,000. To–day 93 per cent. of the crop of the fur

farms is silver fox. […]

While foxes are the main animals on the farms, other fur–bearers are also

being raised, including mink, raccoon, fisher and fitch. The mink in particular is

easily domesticated and there are now 577 mink farms in Canada. Muskrat farms

are rapidly multiplying and during the last three years more muskrat skins were

cured than any other kind. But the silver foxes still bring in the money, with $867 as

the high price last year for one silver fox skin.

19. A Demonstration of Dentistry (1934)206

While we were conversing with Mr. Frood207 at the hotel he invited us over to

his farm, where, he said, he had 1,300 mink and 57 foxes, adding that he would give

us a lesson in dentistry. Just what connection there was between mink, foxes and

dentistry we could not well make out. However, we accepted the kind invitation and

soon found out that dentistry plays a large part in successful fur farming.

The mink, kept in cages, were caught in a net attached to a handle.

When Mr. Frood had caught the first mink he observed: “Now you will see that

the mink knows just as much about this as I do. You will observe that it cooperates

beautifully.” A slight pressure on the hand was applied and the mink opened its

204 From Fur Farming In Canada Grows In Recent Years to Considerable Proportions. (1935, August

29). The Stony Plain Sun, p. 3. 205 From an article written three years later: “Fur farming now plays an important part in the fur

trade of Canada, supplying approximately forty per cent. of the total raw fur production of the

Dominion.” Canada’s Modern Fur Industry. (1938, May 5). The Crossfield Chronicle, p. 2. 206 From Tate, G. & Anonymous. (1934, August 30). Resented Undue Familiarity of a Pet Mink. Grande Prairie Northern Tribune, p. 8. Written by George Tate (1877 – 1940), buried at Grande Prairie. 207 “N. A. Frood, owner of the Slave Lake Fur Farm, […] started his fur farm nine years ago this fall

with one pair of mink and has gradually worked up until today he has the largest fur farm in the

province and one of the largest in the Dominion.” Owner of Fur Farm at Slave Lake to Write For

Tribune. (1934, July 26). Grande Prairie Northern Tribune, p. 1.

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mouth. The four small tusks were clipped off with a clipper resembling the

instrument used by medical men for clipping off pieces of bone. The whole operation

was done with such rapidity that it was all over before we really knew what it was

all about. As each operation was completed the mink was put into a box and the whole

lot later released in one of the large outdoor pens.

The reason for removing the tusks is to prevent the mink from tearing one

another, for they are vicious fighters. The mink to be pelted when their fur is prime

are kept in a separate yard.

I had the pleasure and interesting experience of helping to feed the mink, the

meal being fish. While these little animals are by nature timid, they lose all sense of

fear when the grub appears. They swarmed around us and we had to be careful less

we trampled on them.

After the meal was served I sat down on a log and tried to study the actions of

the little animals. One mink crawled up my leg and finally perched on one of my

shoulders and began nibbling on my ear. “He won’t bite you,” the owner said,

reassuringly. But I was taking no chances and pushed the mink off on the ground.

To tell the truth, I resented the undue familiarity.

I had counted the foxes and found the number 57 correct. “You say there are

thirteen hundred mink on the farm?” I remarked. “Yes,” replied Mr. Frood. “If you

don’t believe them, count them.” Right there I was buffaloed, for they were running

about like so many ferrets.

As I studied the animals I discovered they have a language and in the lot were

some expert crooners that would make Rudy Vallee208 sick with envy.

We were shown through the refrigeration plant, which is highly necessary, as

a surplus of food is always needed.

The visit was one of the most interesting experiences of my life. I have seen a

lot of fur in my time, and I want to say right here that Mr. Frood has some of the

finest mink and foxes I have ever seen.

20. A Mink Factory (1949)209

Fur farming has achieved a place of importance among the industries of the

West. The industry runs into millions of dollars. It is now common to see dotted across

the prairies ranches containing the finest herd of mink and fox, because it has been

the motto of owners and managers to improve the stock and conditions from year to

year. The motto of the Prairie Pride Mink Ranch located at Rouleau, Sask., can be

said to be “Push–Button Efficiency”. An efficient routine has been worked out by the

owner, Omar Crabb, and Wilfred Cook, who up till recently was manager, so that one

man is able to take care of 1,400 mink and keep the ranch an example of shining

cleanliness and sound production.

208 Hubert Prior Vallée (1901 – 1986) was an early teen pop idol. He is best known today for ‘As Time

Goes By’, a song used in the movie Casablanca (1942). 209 From Efficient Routine Enables One Man To Take Care of 1400 Mink. (1949, February 17). The Chronicle, p. 5.

122

The Prairie Pride Mink Ranch had its beginning in 1941, farther south in

Saskatchewan. Then Mr. Crabb located at Rouleau in 1943, and has been building up

steadily since that time.

The ranch is composed of four town lots, each 150x50 feet, separated from each

other by solid wooden guard fences. Across the road two more lots serve as space for

the swiss chard, spinach and lettuce grown for the mink menu.

A tall white fence with scarlet trim encloses the four lots, with the ranch name

in tall red letters, painted by Mrs. Crabb in a three–day session with the paint brush.

Lot 1 contains the breeder unit in eight long corridor sheds. Each numbered house

contains 50 pens. Lot 2 has another eight sheds, this time for the pelters. Cindered

paths lead down the centre of each house – limed weekly throughout the summer.

Cinders also form the floor of each compound. Floodlights are set up on a pole to shine

down into each of the four lots as a protection against thieves or pranksters.

Lot 3 is a sea of 800 small cottage roofs, each peaked over a single furring pen,

keeping off the sun and wind. As the wind sweeps through the area, a small tinkling

sound is made by the metal tags which give the genealogical history of the occupant

of each pen.

One of the labour–saving devices is the number of water outlets in every part

of the ranch. The furring pens have a tap and hose between every two rows. That

means at least 52 outlets on the ranch itself, to say nothing of the hot and cold water

inside the feed house. Waterpower washes out the drinking cups and refills them with

a minimum of effort. Water is supplied from the town of Rouleau, as is the electricity.

Feed goes onto little slanted metal racks in most cases, but in the newest pens

is placed on wire through a hole cut into the roof. It means less work and swifter

motions. Another time and labour saving device is the feed board. Instead of lifting

and carrying tubs or buckets of feed, they are merely shoved along ahead on these

wooden feed boards. Yep, boss’ idea!

Lot 4 is devoted to the feed house and wide lawns and flower beds. The

appearance of the place – lawns, flower beds and paint jobs – is looked after by the

owner and his wife.

Bar none, the feed house was the neatest I’ve ever stepped into. The mixer was

as shining as the china on your Sunday dinner table. The metal surfaced tables and

shelves gleamed. A little office occupies one end of the first room, and the mixer and

grinder the other. The latter part was covered with sawdust, clean and thick. Then

into the engine room where a machine roars, chilling the Frigidaire210 with its 100

tons of mink food.

Countless trips into a Frigidaire are not only chilling to the workman, but raise

the temperature of the room, thus wasting electricity. The frozen meat is shoved

through a hatch opening onto the metal surfaced sloping shelves. The frozen food

thaws out on the sloping shelves, the blood draining away into buckets. No food is

ever allowed to sit in its own blood, for fear of spoilage. Five large shelves were piled

with horseflesh on our visit. Scales stood ready to hand.

210 A refrigerator manufacturer. The word was often used to refer to refrigerators in general, much like

Kleenex is used today to refer to facial tissues.

123

The walls throughout the ranch building are of glossy white, so that they can

be washed down as often as necessary. One item that seemed a stray from an old–

fashioned grocery store was a counter with many glass–fronted bins. This was put to

excellent use for small quantities of cereals and other materials.

Of the more than 1,400 mink on the ranch, most strains are represented.

Platinums (formerly Silverblus), Siler Sables (Blufrosts), Black Cross (Koh–i–nurs)

and Marten Mink (Pastels) were there, as well as standards of Gothier and Kokuk

strains, these being extra dark mink. Glacierblus and Imperial Platinums were also

there, and Aleuthian Blu were to be brought in last fall.

Plenty of bright ideas have been worked out around the ranch. For instance,

everything is removable and interchangeable. One shortcut is the detachable bottom

which goes underneath the nest boxes. According to these ranchers, it’s far ahead of

the “box–within–a–box” arrangement. Not only is the nest box attached by gate

hooks, but so is the bottom. To clean it off, you merely release one side and it swings

away by itself. These are left dangling during the summer when the nest boxes are

not in use. The detachable nest boxes also serve as viewing or catching boxes. […]

Feeding them well early in the game is the best way to get the big bouncing

animals. The way to get size is to have the feed for them at the right time. In order

to make food available to the young, save spilling and wasting, shallow cans are set

into a mould of concrete, which is impossible to tip. These are low enough for the kits

to reach easily.

The tops of the nest boxes are sloped so that it is easy to see into them, and

also easier for stuffing with hay, or cleaning out. The holes are larger than usual to

insure no chafing or rubbing. In between the pens are set “blinds” of wooden boards,

which prevents any mother mink from eyeing the neighbour’s children or getting into

a tizzy over them.

We noticed numbers marked on the feed boards alongside the breeder pens.

The numbers read 6, 7, 3, 8, 6,4, 6, and so forth.

“Oh those,” said Omar Crabb, “those are the number of kits in each litter. We

had good luck with this shed, all right. Had 1,061 kits from 224 females – litter

average of 4.9. The ranch average of course was lower, about 3.8, and I think that’s a

good ranch average – being entirely honest about the matter, I mean.”

But Mr. Crabb realizes that litter average, or ribbons won at shows, important

though they are, are not the last word. “The proof of the quality of a mink in the final

analysis is the pelt price” – a matter on which most ranchers agree.

Not that the Prairie Pride Mink ranch hasn’t lived up to its name. Ribbons

there were in plenty, climaxing into the Grand Championship of the 1946 Alberta

show, where a standard female kit topped the 1,068 entries.

124

Freight and Transportation

21. By Canoe (1920)211 Reginald Beatty worked as a clerk for the Hudson’s Bay Company in the 1870s. This autobiographical tale is based on entries from his diary.

After a hard winter at Sturgeon River, an outpost from Cumberland House, I

at last shipped the winter’s fur by York Boat to headquarters; and now for my holiday

as I had planned, a hunting trip up the Sturgeon. The party was to consist of an

Indian and his family in one large bark canoe and myself in a small bark just large

enough for one man and his outfit.

At last we were off, and I looked back at the log shacks we had wintered in

with delight at the thought of never seeing them again; for, gentle reader, it had been

a hard winter, the chief diet being fish for both men and dogs. We tracked or killed

no venison. One amusing incident helped to break the monotony. About the month of

February, if my memory is correct, a dog–train with two weather beaten travellers

arrived. One of these (Owen B. Hughes) was the first Sheriff of Prince Albert in later

days and his companion, a native named Kennedy. At that time Mr. Hughes was in

the employ of Stobart, Eden & Co., fur traders, and was travelling from Norway

House to Duck Lake. Their snowshoes were worn out and needed re–netting, so the

men’s wives were set to work at this and Mr. Hughes became my guest. That first

evening we had suckers, dried and smoked, nothing else but black tea with plenty of

sugar, and I am sure he polished off at least half a dozen. For breakfast appeared a

fine dish of plain boiled suckers, taken out of the nets that morning, for we kept five

nets under the ice all winter, catching, however, nothing but large red suckers, until

spring when sturgeon came in shoals. I could see Hughes casting hungry glances

round the table, but he was too well–bred a man to say anything. For dinner a huge

platter (of the old China Willow pattern) with at least twenty sucker heads on it,

these, by the way, being much the best part of that fish. Hughes glared at me, shoved

his chair back, used some strong western epithets as to the way the Hon. Co. fed their

clerks, then yelled, “John!” in stentorian tones. John duly appeared. “Go to our sleigh

and bring such and such articles of food.” My, but we did feast, and then I explained

the situation. Flour being short that winter, I was limited to a clerk’s allowance of

two hundred pounds. This I would not eat alone, so I just used bread on Sundays, my

two men and their families sharing it with me. In after years, meeting Hughes in

Prince Albert, we had many a good laugh over this experience.

Our commissariat for the trip was very limited; a small stock of maple syrup

which we had obtained by tapping the ash–maple trees in the vicinity, a bale of dried

fish, four pounds of tea, a little salt and sugar, with a few pounds of flour for making

211 From Beatty, R. (1920, November 10). From the Diary of A Hudson’s Bay Clerk in the Seventies.

Western Globe, p. 7. and Beatty, R. (1920, November 18). From the Diary of A Hudson’s Bay Clerk in the Seventies. The Champion Chronicle, p. 3. Written by Reginald B. Beatty (1858 – 1928).

125

soup. But our hearts were high and full and full of hope over the prospect of game,

beaver especially, for no one had been up the river for years.

We camped the first night about ten miles out, having started late in the day.

Fine paddling, smooth stretches of water with scarcely any current, then a small

rapid, generally shoal, up which my small canoe would shoot like a jackfish, while

Patrick often had to wade and lighten his heavily laden craft. Fish soup with a little

syrup for supper, and then to kill something edible next day.

We were up again at 2.30 and called all hands; a hasty snack and by noon we

had made twenty miles. Here we were lucky in capturing a large sturgeon who was

trying to ascend a very shallow rapid. Pushing my canoe I threw myself on the fish

and after an exciting struggle, landed him. Results – boiled sturgeon, very good for

dinner. Another hard paddle and we camped at a rapid where bears had been fishing

with much success, judging by the remains laying scattered about. The next day,

about 4 p.m., we passed the mouth of three small creeks and here Patrick found

beaver signs and our mouths watered at the prospect of fresh meat. Going about a

mile up the main river we pitched our tepee among some large birch trees, there being

no under–brush. This was a beautiful camping ground.

After helping to set the tent we returned to the little creeks to watch for beaver,

both going in the large canoe; and watch we did until too dark to see to shoot. Having

no luck we made for camp. A wireless system had been arranged between us – when

game was sighted the gunwale of the canoe was shaken. Presently I felt the canoe

shiver, and on looking closely at the bank which here somewhat overhung the water,

I could see the dim outline of an animal, so quickly fired. An amazing splash followed

and we were deluged with water. Hauling the bag on board, it turned out to be a large

black timber wolf, valuable for his pelt, but alas, not edible.

We here crossed the river and this time it was my occasion to give the signal,

as being in the bow gave me a better lookout. This time a strong wake was visible

going ahead of us, and I at once fired where I guessed the head was. A tremendous

splash followed and under the impression I had killed a beaver (who will never bite

unless you put your hand in his mouth), I grabbed the soft fur and with some effort

threw it into the canoe behind me. And then arose a battle din, for behold, it was a

large buck otter. It was only stunned by the bullet which glanced on his skull, and it

immediately attacked Patrick, who was in the stern. It was too close for him to shoot

it, and then he might have got me. After a combat lasting some minutes, he managed

to stun it with a large maul that we fortunately had in the canoe for landing sturgeon.

Pat was very mad and abused me in his best Cree, and it took us some time to soothe

his injured feelings. Finally, on reaching camp, we all had a hearty laugh over it. But

the good wife was by no means pleased, as hearing the two shots she had visions of a

nice beaver supper and here was only a wolf, which was bad eating, and otter which

was worse. Fortunately she or Job (the son) had snared a partridge and a rabbit, and

on these we fared frugally and then to bed with a deep vow that we would have

something better on the morrow.

Making an early start next morning and taking along Pat’s traps, we again

made for the creeks. We left our canoe at the mouth and struck up stream. An hour’s

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steady tramping brought us to a beaver dam, only roughly constructed; a little further

up another dam slightly better made, and above these a splendid dam backing up

quite a lake of water. Evidently the first two dams were only intended to relieve the

pressure of high water on the principal one. At the far end of the lake were three large

beaver lodges, with hard beaten trails on all sides and trees fallen in every direction,

many of these being cut up in short lengths. There were piles of chips and every

evidence of busy industry. Patrick’s face was a sight, as he estimated there were from

forty to fifty or even more beavers resident, and as he had a big debt with the H. B.

Company, here was the means to pay it and also the choicest of food for the wife and

little ones.

Walking round the lake very quietly, we selected two good stands for watching

that evening, as beaver seldom come out before dusk. Then, after a hasty lunch we

went further up the stream setting traps in the most likely places. Returning to the

beaver village about sundown we very noiselessly took our places, and then followed

a long wait. We were both armed alike, double barreled guns of the usual H. B. style,

28 bore muzzle loaders with percussion locks, the barrels being extra heavy, making

them suitable for either ball or shot, and loaded at the present time with 3 1–2

drachms of powder, 1–2 oz. of shot, a tight fitting wad and a round bullet on top of

all. This combination was a very deadly one at close quarters. At last I noticed the

water heave close in front of my stand, and some ripples followed, again, and once

again. Then up burst the head of a large beaver, which I immediately shot behind the

ear and it at once sunk in some twelve feet of water. Stripping off my clothes and

standing like Don Cupid on the bank, I was about to dive after my game, when Patrick

appeared, smiling to see my unusual costume. On describing the facts, he told me to

dress, and cutting a long dry pole, screwed a gun–worm on the end of it (twisted wire

which we all carried for extracting wads), and after some prodding began to turn it

and then hauled in. Joy, here was a large fine beaver, and I commenced to dance with

delight as it was my first one. It was now quite dusk and we started for camp on the

jog, and hearty was the welcome we received on reaching here, and before long we

were enjoying a delicate dish from the choicest parts of the beaver, which, and I speak

from experience, is very excellent food indeed, something between young pork and

lamb.

Next day we were to visit the traps and repeat the watching in the evening.

The first trap was not disturbed, but in the second was a beaver, which we soon

despatched. This trap was set in a tiny affluent of the creek which was very shallow

with a stony bed, cut banks about four feet high, lovely soft moss on the bank, with

scattered spruce and birch. As Pat specially looked after the traps, they being his own

property, I lit my pipe and snuggled down in the moss for a quiet smoke, while he

arranged everything in order and re–set the big double spring No. 4 beaver trap (no

small task I can tell you). Nothing more to do now but destroy the traces of human

scent; so finally he filled his mouth with water to spurt on the willows by which he

was pulling himself up out of the creek. As he had a very hooked nose and round owl–

like eyes, the sight of this apparition ascending from the creek, with his cheeks

extended at their widest, was too much for my gravity, and I simply yelled with

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laughter. This so startled Pat that he left to go the willows and dropped into his own

trap in the creek. Great was the splashing, and what sounded like Indian oaths filled

the air. Rendered too weak by laughter to be of much assistance, I crawled to the edge

of the bank and surveyed the scene. The chain to the trap allowed about two feet or

more play and the Indian was caught fairly by his bare haunch, his costume at the

time being breech–clout and leggings. He was in a most furious rage, and, finally

giving up all struggles, he sat in the water with a most sulky countenance. After a

number of ineffectual attempts, I at last succeeded in releasing him. His dignity was

badly hurt, and though two more beaver rewarded our efforts, he sulked all day.

When the story was repeated and acted in the lodge that night, his merry wife and

boy howled with laughter, while Patrick sat and smoked with a most injured air, and

for some days afterwards sat down very gingerly.

After spending several more successful and pleasant days, and securing

sixteen beaver for my share of the hunt, it became time for me to return to duty. The

hunting being still very good and pat doing so well with his traps, I decided to go

alone. So one fine morning, after loading my small craft with the fur we had killed,

also two beaver untouched for the Chief at Cumberland, I shook hands heartily with

my late companions who looked sad at the parting. Then stepping cautiously into the

canoe, away I went. On reaching the Saskatchewan I had to be extremely careful in

navigation as my canoe was loaded to a few inches of the water, also the mighty river

was full of drift–wood. I camped that night for the last time beside the mighty “Kisse–

setche–wan–Se–pe,” the big, swift flowing river, corrupted by the white man to

Saskatchewan.

22. By Dog Train (1897)212

Sir: Having received several inquiries from different parts of the country re dog

driving and winter travel in our Canadian North West, I desire through your columns

to give a description of such means of transport in order that any part or parties

contemplating a winter trip by dog train may have some idea of what they are about

to undertake. I do this because I know I am an expert in this matter, having been all

my life in touch with the frontier and all the various means of transport used therein.

Moreover, from 1860 to 1873 I was with the first snow of winter and until the ice

melted in the spring almost constantly on the trip with dog train, covering every

winter during those years several thousands of miles under all the conditions and

experiences of such work in a sparsely populated and entirely new country. During

this period I bred and trained dozens of dogs for the sled; therefore my readers must

conceive that I know what I am writing about.

212 From McDougall, J. (1897, October 7). BY DOG TRAIN. The Calgary Weekly Herald, p. 1. Written by Rev. John Chantler McDougall (1842 – 1917), known for his missionary work with the Stoney tribe.

The Reverend favored run–on sentences, but I believe the first–hand information contained in this

letter is well worth the trouble of deciphering it. I have silently split the worst offenders into two

sentences and added a few commas and paragraph breaks for ease of reading.

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Suppose that myself and three others intend to start for the north land, say,

on the 1st of December next. We each secure four strong, well trained dogs from three

to four years old and harness for these. We also secure four toboggans or sleds – these

should be made of oak boards, good and clean timber – these boards to be 12 feet long,

eight inches wide and three–quarters of an inch thick; when the sled is made, the

head or turn will take about three and a half feet, leaving eight and a half feet for

load; the front of the sleigh should be the full width of the two boards, 16 inches, and

this width taper to about 12 inches at the rear end; four neat, strong bars should bind

and hold these bars together, and these should be fastened on with good rawhide

string, no screws or nails being allowed in the make up of these sleds; then all around

the edge of the sleds there should be strong loops of rawhide fastened to make what

is called the ground lashing.

Then each sled would want a wrapper of strong yet pliable canvass. (In early

days we used dressed and well smoked leather skins for this purpose). These canvas

wrappers should be 12 feet long and six feet wide. Then each sled will require two

evenly cut and strong, well tanned leather lines, say 30 feet long; these are for the

purpose of binding the load to the sled. We have now dogs, harness, sleds and the

necessary equipment for the sleds.

Let us now proceed to outfit ourselves with travelling costumes fitting for this

work. We want for each man two changes of light, soft, but warm underclothing, two

flannel shirts, also combining warmth with lightness, two pairs of pants made of

either well dressed and well smoked buckskin or good soft mole skin, four pairs of

socks, two pairs of duffles, six pairs of moccasins, one H. B. Co. blanket or cloth “capot

cloak,” and one broad long worsted belt. We do not want nor indeed can carry such

luxuries as suspenders, vests, or heavy fur or cloth coats – the only fur might be a

light fur cape. Then, as to bedding, each man should have a light, unlined robe and

one blanket, (failing the robe, then two blankets will have to be got): these should be

4–point, white H. B. blankets. We also want for the party of four two axes, two kettles,

(one smaller than the other), one frying pan, four tin cups, and four butcher knives,

(the latter to be carried in the belts); in addition each man would need a pair of well

made snowshoes.

We come now to the provisions for the party. For men I would provide

pemmican, flour, tea, sugar and some dried fruit. Good pemmican can be made from

beef, and in this way you get the essence of the meat, in smaller bulk. To give an idea,

in the olden days we made 100 lbs. of pemmican and 75 lbs. of dried meat from the

flesh and fat of two well conditioned buffalo cows. These cows would each dress at

least 800 lbs., so it was a case of making ten into one. The regular ration in the H. B.

Co.’s post per day to the man was four lbs. of pemmican or three lbs. of dried meat or

eight lbs. of fresh meat. I think that with some bread, and now and then some dried

fruit, and half a pound of pemmican per day a man would stand hard work for a long

time.

For the dogs, I would make a sort of hard–tack. This to consist of equal parts

of coarse flour, oatmeal and tallow. I think a pound of such cake per day with an

occasional feed of fish at a H. B. post or Indian camp, en route, would keep the dogs

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in good trim. These dogs are fed but once in the 24 hours, and that is at night after

camping. Though I very often did give my dogs just the least bit at the noon camp,

and they did as good work as the best.

I have started on a six and eight days’ trip with a load lashed under the

wrapper of between 400 and 500 lbs., then on the top of this I had pemmican and the

dogs’ provisions and my store of camping utensils, either an axe, frying pan or kettle,

as also bedding and kit, and as we are off for a long journey we may venture to start

with say 600 lbs. on each sled. We will not allow any valises or trunks, but put our

change of clothes and extra moccasins, etc., into seamless sacks.

Over and above all this our party will want some dressed leather, an awl and

square needles, and either sinew or strong thread, wherewith to mend moccasins, and

some rawhide string with which to mend sleds.

Now then for the road, and to give the inexperienced an idea, I will describe

two days’ journey under different conditions.

The first day we have a track and the footing is good for both men and dogs.

We want to make 60 miles if possible, and accordingly we are stirring at two a.m.,

and while the forest trees are cracking all around us with intense frost, our big fire is

also cracking in front of us and the snow is melted and kettle boiled, breakfast

swallowed, dogs caught and harnessed and bedding and camp outfit and snowshoes

are securely made fast on to our loads and we are away by three a.m.

A quick walk up a hill, then off on a steady trot for both men and dogs for miles.

A side hill and we run to the lower side and keep our sled from upsetting, or if it does

upset we lift and strain and having turned it on to its bottom once more, start the

dogs and watch it across the uneven spot (and there are many such in the course of a

day’s run in this western land) then on we run; if we are ahead we must clear the

track; there is no riding, if we are behind we must keep up and there is no riding for

us. Then the monotonous trot is broken by a hill to descend, and we fling ourselves

astride of the load and, using both feet as breaks, we urge on the dogs to full speed,

and hold and guide the sled on down the narrow track. Sometimes, notwithstanding

all our skill and effort, the sled runs to the wrong side of a tree or stump, and some

of the harness is broken, and the dogs thrown into more than one kind of a snarl, but

if the others are ahead there is not even time to swear and we work back into the

road as quick as we can and on down to the level.

Now pushing, now holding and pulling the load, on we go and about 6.30 a.m.

stop beside some dry timber and while the axes are being worked vigorously by two

of the party, the other two kick away the snow and, breaking down willows or brush,

hastily floor the rough camp and start a fire which soon (for the axemen are now

bringing in the wood) is ablaze, and the kettle and frying pan are to the front, and

our 2nd breakfast is ready. When this is eaten and axes and kettle sand grub tied on

again it is now eight a.m. and colder than ever. The dogs have lain in their harness

just as they dropped when you said “whoa,” and are now chilled and shivering, but at

the word “Marse” we are away once more, and the experiences of the morning are repeated except that now we have daylight coming apace.

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Sometimes, dogs must be punished, and the muscle of your arm as well as that

of a leg is brought into play. But all this time, your lungs are hard at work, for you

are moving quick; it is either a very fast walk or a constant run and by noon the

second 20 miles or more are covered, and now when you stop you unharness your dogs

and give them a chance to move around while you make a dinner camp and prepare

and eat your meal. If all do as I have done and would do again, we give our dogs a

small bite of food, say an ounce apiece, just as Josiah Allen’s wife says, to “chirk” them

up.

The only time you sit is while you eat and drink, then harness up once more

and tie kit, etc., and we are off again for the last 20 miles, more or less, before night,

and in these northern latitudes night comes quick. But at last we are at our objective

point for the day, and having picked the spot for a camp, we unharness the dogs and

every man goes to work as if he had not done anything before that day, and making

camp, cutting and packing in wood, are rushed for the next hour. To carry great

lengths of logs on your shoulder through snow from a foot to three feet deep, or to

attempt to do the same on snow shoes when the snow is crusted or drifted are very

difficult, yet necessary, items on such a trip. But by and bye the cold, cheerless,

wilderness spot is radiant with the glare of the large camp fire and is ringing with

the laughter, joke and fun of a small party of thoroughly optimistic and sanguine

men, for none other should be in such conditions, and indeed seldom are they.

The second day is in stormy weather, and there is no sign of a road, the clouds

are thick, the snow is deep and growing momentarily more so, it is very dark and

when you have shaken yourself from the snow and wriggled into your coat, which is

still damp from yesterday’s run and the consequent perspiration and frost, and when

you have made up a fire, how narrow the range of its glimmer. Not even a dog to be

seen; a huge blotter has been let down and the cheer of last evening with camp and

men and dogs all seem to be wiped out, but the hardy pioneer full of his healthy

optimism shouts in cheerful tones, “Hurrah, boys, it’s time to start,” and breakfast is

over, and dogs are resurrected from their white sepulchers and harnessed, and all the

kit tied on except the snow shoes. Now it is three a.m. and we are ready, and the best

guide putting on his snow shoes steps out ahead, and another doing likewise

alternating his step to that of the guide, thus both packing all the snow to the depth

of their weight and step and the other two teams and two loads to look after and also

with snow shoes on follow.

There is no merry sound of bells this time, the step and fast falling snow forbid

that, and in silence and in snow and in profound darkness the travelers wend their

way. In the course of three hours or so they have made from 10 to 12 miles; the work

has been heavy on both dogs and men, but there is no laying off for a day, time and

grub forbid that, and the evening is with them and they have done well if 50 miles

are now between them and last night’s camp. Now our party must, if the storm is

continuing, in addition to last night’s work make a “lean to” with poles, either using

part of the bedding or unloading two of the sleds for the canvas wrappers, thus

making a shelter from the blast. Still, if these men are true pioneers and real dog

drivers, their spirits are strong, some higher in this camp than in the former; there

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is no dampening of the feelings of such men. But I cannot describe the hardship and

difficulty, yet these must be felt to be known, and yet for two hundred years men for

the sake of pelf and pelts and men and grace have willingly undergone all this; and

now if the right kind of men want to go to the Clondike by dog train, they can do it.

23. By Cayoose (1883)213

Of late it has been fashionable, especially by many of his recent acquaintances,

to ridicule the cayoose214 – to poke fun at his pot belly, and otherwise to make

disparaging remarks about his personal appearance and his fitness for a useful life.

As has been hinted, it is usually those who know least about him who talk in this

way, and it only requires his side of the case to be stated to secure for him not only

the profuse apologies of his detractors, but the lasting gratitude of a country that he

has laid under weighty obligations. And to begin with an argument that is sure to

strike unexpected terror into the camp of his enemies–

The cayoose is descended from an honorable lineage. His family came over with

the conqueror. It is true that both in figure and carriage he is a good deal different

from the high stepping Spanish charger from which he claims descent. The family

portraits show his ancestor of the conqueror’s day to have had a grandly arched neck

which he owed to the bearing rein, and a finely carried tail which he owed to the

nicking knife. The descendant carries both his head and his tail in a more common

sense way, but none the less is he able to trace his descent by direct lineage to the

chargers of the Spanish invaders. His name, too, is fragrant with honor. The tribe of

Cayoose Indians, on the Columbia river, in Washington territory, was celebrated for

its fine horses, and although in this regard the connection between their horses and

their namesakes of to–day may not be apparent to the naked eye, it is none the less

beyond the shadow of a doubt that our ponies derive their name from this tribe of

Indians who were conspicuous both for the quantity and the quality of the horses they

owned.

But the strongest argument on behalf of the cayoose is not to be found in any

accidental circumstances like his name or his lineage, but in his actual usefulness. In

going over the requisites for a means of conveyance to carry both passengers and

freight over the plains of the North–West, it is found that he, and he alone, fills the

bill. The York boats on the river were all very well for going down stream, but it was

both tedious and man–killing to come up again with them. Steamboats have never

been a brilliant success, and at the best they are useful for only about four months in

the year. Dog trains were well enough in the winter when there was plenty of fish or

buffalo meat, but they were useless in the summer. Oxen would do for freight in the

summer, but they were of no account in the winter. Ordinary horses were not of

sufficient powers of endurance, and they required some kind of grain feed in order to

produce satisfactory results in the way of work, but the cayoose left nothing to be

desired. All the outfit he required was a shaganappi harness and a Red River cart for

213 From THE CAYOOSE. (1883, September 15). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 2. 214 A type of horse.

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the summer, or the simplest kind of a sled for the winter. The hide of one of his

brothers furnished the first, a neighboring bluff supplied the others. Thus equipped,

he proved himself able to draw a load of 800 or 900 pounds from Winnipeg to the

Rocky mountains. He was, moreover, so tractable and obedient that only one man

was required for the management of every four or five carts. When a river too deep to

be forded was encountered, the wheels with the cart cover underneath them were

improvised into a raft215 and he swam the stream with this load tied to his tail. In

return he asked for nothing. Some neighboring pond or creek would give him a drink;

the tall prairie grass with its vine and vetches was his fodder; and instead of

dreaming about a stable as a luxury it was a thing of no meaning to him, and when

one was at hand it was with difficulty that he could be induced to take advantage of

it.

In winter, the case was but little different. Nature provided him with a thicker

and rougher coat that made him independent of the blanket that his imported cousins

thought a necessity. It is true that he relied on his master to cut a hole in the ice to

let him get at the water, but for food he depended on himself; scraping away the snow

with a hoof that had never been weighted with a shoe, he made a meal for himself of

the naturally cured prairie hay and was ready for his next day’s work, and if, as

sometimes happened, he had to travel over bare plains where storms and thaw and

frost had hardened the surface of the snow into a crust that bore his weight and was

impossible to break to let him reach his hay, it seemed to make but little difference

to him – he did his next day’s work all the same, and never complained.

The story of the freighters who came in from Red Deer forks last February

shows how much these hardy little animals can endure. For several days at a time

the horses had next to nothing to eat, and when turned loose at night in the pitiless

storm, instead of going off to search for fodder they would huddle together in shelter

of the tents and behind one another, and shiver the whole night through. But the

worst came when the great plains were passed, and in the broken country that was

next encountered, the crust on the snow was not sufficiently strong to bear their

weight but still strong enough to tear the skin off their legs with its ragged edges as

they broke through. Then the raw bleeding surfaces froze, and in spite of the care

215 “It might be worth while to explain here how a boat is made out of such simple materials as four or

two cart wheels and a wagon cover, or four beef hides sewed together. To make a two wheel boat, which

is the size ordinarily used, a pair of wooden Red River cart wheels are taken off and laid close together

with the hubs on the ground and the rims dishing upwards. The greater the dish the better. Five poles

as straight as possible are then procured. Two of these are tied to the rims of the wheels, one on each

side, so as to keep the wheels together and form the sides of the boat. Two shorter poles are then tied

on to the rim of each wheel, the ends crossing and being tied to the ends of the pair of poles first put

on, the four poles thus making the four sides of a square or rather a parallelogram and forming the

gunwales of the boat. The wheels are then turned over, the dish side down and the fifth pole is tied

lengthwise on the two hubs and this forms the keel. The wagon cover, if there is one good enough, is

then laid over the boat as it lies bottom upwards. The boat is turned over and the sides of the wagon

cover are drawn over the sides and ends of the boat and securely fastened. It then receives a good coat

of tallow to make it waterproof, a few willows or some boards are laid on the spokes of the wheels

which form the bottom of the boat, to keep any part of the cargo from touching the cover, and all is

ready for business.” THE FREIGHTERS. (1882, November 25). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 3.

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that was taken in wrapping their legs with bandages, several of the horses had to be

abandoned to die.

If instead of being engaged in freighting, it was passenger service on which he

was engaged, he adapted himself just as readily to the altered conditions. He was

required to draw a less load but must move at a greater rate of speed; so with a few

extra of horses to give him a rest now and then, he covered his fifty miles a day and

kept it up for weeks. If the traveller became tired of riding in the buckboard and

wished to ride on horseback, he was ready for that, too. His untiring “lope” was the

easiest gait for riding in the world, and the horse seemed to enjoy it as much as the

man. With a heavy load, hard driving and ill usage, his flanks would indeed get

thinner before the journey was over, but it was hard treatment indeed that forced

him to give up, and even then if turned out on the prairie to forage for himself, two

or three weeks sufficed to regain his flesh and spirits and get him ready for another

trip. If when his summer’s work was done, he was not needed for the winter, he was

let loose at once to care for himself. Perhaps he was not seen all winter long, but when

after a day or two’s search he was found in the spring, he appeared in better condition

than in the previous fall and started off with a free gait and a light heart on his 1,000

mile trip to Winnipeg.

The cayoose has deserved well of the country. His wants were few, and his

services many and various. If speed, sure–footedness and courage were required, he

filled the bill as a buffalo hunter; if strength and endurance were required, he was

the freighter’s stand–by. But the days of buffalo hunting are past, and the days of any

serious kind of freighting bid fair to follow them. Far be it from us to express any

regret at the change, but let us not forget the friend of our need. A few years ago, it

was at a good deal of risk that a Canadian horse was brought over the plains even

without a load. Now, however, thanks to the rapid and easy means of communication

with other places, they are becoming numerous. They are bigger and carry their

heads higher. Let us even go a step further and say they are prettier than the horses

we had before. But let it be remembered to the everlasting credit of our friend of

former days that “Handsome is as handsome does.”

24. By Steamboat (1921)216

The Hudson’s Bay Company had with much energy and considerable

expenditure placed two steamers on Lake Winnipeg and several boats on the river

above the Grand Rapids, and as this system was fairly successful for transportation

of freight, it gradually replaced the Red River cart transport. Occasionally one of the

river boats would reach Edmonton; twice I think in one season was the record of the

Nor–West, which, by the way, was the most successful craft of them all, carrying two

hundred tons on an exceedingly light draft of water.

216 From Beatty, R. (1921, September 1). Steamboating on Saskatchewan River in the Late Seventies.

Chinook Advance, p. 3 and Beatty, R. (1921, September 9). Steamboating on Saskatchewan River in the Late Seventies. Bow Island Review, p. 3. Written by Reginald B. Beatty (1858 – 1928).

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American captains and mates from the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers were

employed exclusively, but our own natives speedily took to piloting and some of them

became experts. The crews were all Indians, chiefly drawn from The Pas and Grand

Rapids, but a few plain Indians from above Prince Albert would occasionally engage

for a trip or two.

I was receiving and shipping freight in the summer of 1877 at Grand Rapids

(Mr. Alex Matheson, transport manager), and when loading the Nor–West on one

occasion I noted the big fat Yankee mate who was standing on the deck at the

gangway singing a rough chantee217 song to the Indians passing him heavily loaded;

from one to two hundred pounds a man being the general load. Occasionally, to hurry

matters, he would kick an Indian in the posterior while passing, and break forth into

“Come along! Come along! You sons of –––––. Come a running,” and so on. Amongst

the Indians was a wild–looking big chap who hailed from Fort Pitt, with a long plait

of jet black hair hanging to his waist, wearing a broad belt of parchment buffalo hide

studded with brass tacks, and a big scalping knife, the sheath of which was decorated

in the same way. His whole costume consisted of a cotton shirt, a pair of cloth leggings

and a breechclout. I saw this Indian’s eyes flash as the mate was doing his kicking

stunt, and though he looked dangerous, so walking down the gangway, I tapped Mr.

Mate on the shoulder and warned him that this was not a crew of southern n––––– 218, but r–– Indians, and dangerous men to monkey with. His reply was a stream of

profanity. Let me attend to the freight checking and he would hustle the ––––– and

so on. I returned to the warehouse and kept my eye on the mate. The big Pitt Indian

had a heavy load placed on his shoulders, and down the gangway he went with his

shirt fluttering in the breeze. He received a tremendous kick behind, and in an

instant Mr. Mate was on his back and the Indian furiously stabbing him. Several of

us rushed to the rescue, and it took us all our time to hold the savage, who was in a

mad fury, yelling that he had never been insulted before and only death would wipe

out the stain. We noted some blood on the knife and thought it was all up with the

mate, but fortunately he had managed to twist his body and dodge the knife and was

only bleeding from scratches. Never was a man so changed. He was too scared to go

back to his duty, as he felt certain either his opponent or the other Indians would

scalp him, and we finally had to ship him into Fort Garry by the lake boat. Gradually

the Yankee mates were done away with and our steady Scotchmen replaced htem.

These, though slower, had the faculty of getting on well with the native crews.

Indians dislike profanity, and the Crees, whose language is generally

understood throughout the north, have no swear words in their vocabulary. The

captain of the Northcote that summer was an artist in many and strange oaths, and

when these failed him in moments of emergency, down went his hat on the deck and

on it he jumped with both feet. His desperate language had made trouble on several

occasions, and he was warned to guard his speech. We had just loaded the Northcote

with 160 tons of freight for Prince Albert, working day and night; as usual at the

depot, especially as the water was steadily falling in the Upper River, and away she

217 Also called a ‘shanty’. From the French chantée, ‘sung’. 218 An offensive term for black people.

135

went. On the evening of next day arrived a canoe with a letter from the captain

stating he was tied up with a strike and all his crew on shore. The chief asked me to

go up at once and try and settle the difference (as I had managed to do on other

occasions), so within half an hour I was on my way up the river with an Indian and a

bark canoe, and a heavy paddle ahead of us. The scene of the strike was at

Chemahawin at the west end of Cedar Lake, and fortunately it being calm, we were

able to make the long traverse safely and finally reached the steamer.

Captain ––––– could hardly articulate for rage and every word was an oath.

The poor beggar did not seem able to help it. I noted the men all sitting and smoking

on the bank and grinning at the boss’s discomfiture. I coaxed him into the cabin and

told him the situation was a serious one and he was liable to lose his job if he did not

cool down. Well, he was helpless, so asked what I would advise and I gave him this

ultimatum.

He was to go into his cabin and remain there, [and] hand the boat over to me,

with authority. Failing him doing this, I would return and report. He at once marched

me round to the mate and steward and gave orders to this effect and disappeared. I

walked on shore very leisurely and busied myself shaking hands with the

malcontents. I told them the latest news and generally had a good gossip. Finally I

say: “Boys, it is dry talking, and I want a lunch.” So I yelled, “Steward,” at the top of

my voice. Then to him I said: “You see my friends here, we are hungry, get your

waiters busy and serve us up a first–class lunch, and do it quick!” This was done at

once and a merry scene followed. Jokes were made against the Big Knives (Yankees),

and broad witticisms of all kinds flew from mouth to mouth. One huge Indian called

“Sha–ke–mace” (Mosquito) was the strongest man on board, and evidently a

ringleader in the strike. We had all lit our pipes, when I issued a challenge to Sha–

ke–mace. We would divide the men, tossing up for first choice, and I bet him two

sacks of flour to one that my gang could outwork him in a given space of time. The

challenge was accepted, and though night had come, it made no difference, as there

were plenty of flares. Never was freight unloaded and the boat wooded in quicker

time. As all the dialogue had been carried on in Cree it was quite a mystery to the

officers of the steamer, but I passed the buck to the chief engineer to start at once. I

then visited the old man in the cabin and advised him to keep out of the way as much

as possible until the men’s anger had cooled down. So away they went, I returning to

the Rapids at a much more leisurely gait than when we came up.

Poor old Captain W–––––, an able steamboat man, but when trouble of any

kind arose he became wild with excitement and his language was unwritable. The

Northcote made the Forks of the Saskatchewan all right, but there was not water

enough to ascent the Cole’s Falls, so the freight was unloaded there and hauled up to

Prince Albert, a distance of about 50 miles. […]

Like the cart transport, steamboating on the Saskatchewan had its day, and

was gradually replaced by rail, the Canadian Pacific railway traversing the prairies

and the Qu’Appelle and Long Lake running up to Prince Albert.

136

The Hudson’s Bay Company, with their far–seeing vision, had sold out part of

their interests in 1883 to a transportation company, retaining, however, the right of

first shipments over all comers.

Traders and Trappers

25. Silhouette of the Northern Fur Trapper (1909)219

To the student who would read first hand the Story of Fur, more interesting

than sea–otters, Russian sables, or silver fox, one form silhouettes on the white

canvas of the North – it is the figure of the trapper. He may be a white man, generally

he is an Indian or a h––––– or the mixed progeny of Gois Brules or h–––––s and the

logical outcome of the 239 years’ rule of “The Company.”

All through the Canadian north, the Yukon rush of ten years ago has left an

aftermath of derelicts, human boulder–drift from the world’s four corners, who,

sailing to find a fortune in gold, now thread the silent places seeking a bare living

from the trade in peltries. The Indian hunters belong to many tribes, Crees,

Chipewyans, Dog–Ribs220, Yellow–Knives221, Slaves222, Beavers223 and Loucheux224.

They all trap and trade.

In the ranks of the trappers one comes across strange workers. On the shores

of the Lesser Slave you stumble upon a London University graduate who finds the

search for fur more fascinating than the integral calculus or conic sections.

It is becoming usual among hunters and trappers to specialize, as doctors do,

and so one hunter, bear–wise, bends all his energies toward securing bearskins;

another studies foxes to their downfall; a third hunts moose alone, that big–nosed

Hebrew of the woods. Here as elsewhere the man who mixes brains with his bait and

makes a scientific art of a rude craft is the man who succeeds. His trapping is the

highest product of nemoral science and not the cometary career of luck of the old rule–

of–thumb trapper. It is a contrast of wits worthy the cleverest. The fur–bearers, as

the years pass, become more rather than less wary, and the days of the magenta

string tying a chunk of fat to a nice new shiny trap are long past. The man who used

to “make fur” in that way is, like Fenimore Cooper’s Indian, the extinct product of a

past race that never existed.

The Canadian trapper eats or dries every ounce of flesh he traps, from the

scant flesh–covering of the skull to the feet and the entrails. As soon as the skins of

219 From Cameron, A. D. (1909, August 27). SILHOUETTE OF THE NORTHERN TRAPPER. The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 3. Written by Agnes Deans Cameron (1863 – 1912). 220 The Indigenous Tłı̨chǫ people of the Northwest Territories. 221 The T'atsaot'ine people, now part of the Akaitcho First Nations. 222 The Indigenous Dene people. They were called ‘Slave’ by the Cree, who in the past would capture

and enslave their members. 223 The Indigenous Dane–zaa people. 224 Members of the Gwich’in First Nation.

137

beaver and musquash are removed, the bodies, like so many skinned cats, are

impaled on a stick of jack pine and set sizzling before the fire.

In the furland when the leaves fall, the beaver, giving over his daub–work and

wattles, sets the family to work storing up the winter groceries. There is the challenge

of frost in the air and the southward flight of birds. Some old primal instinct stirs the

blood of the trapper; he hears the North callin’, it is time to go. The Factor of the

Hudson’s Bay fort gaily farewells him glad to have him go; the priest, the old men of

the lodges and the blind “old wives,” little kiddies and lean, snapping dogs come out

to bid his Godspeed. The leaves will be budding on the birches when he returns. The

curtain of silence cuts him off from the fellowship of the fort for many moons, once he

lifts the curtain of that ghostly woodland. It is paddle and portage for days and weary

weeks, inland and ever inland, then the frost crisps into silence the running water

and the lake lip. The grind of forming ice warns our trapper it is time to change

birchbark for moccasin and snowshoe. The canoe is beached and the trail strikes into

the banksian pine and birch woods.

The door of the forest is lonely and eerie. It no longer seems incongruous that,

although Pierre wears a scapular on his burnt–umber breast and carries with him on

his journey the blessing f the good Father, he also murmurs the hunting incantation

of the Chipewyans and hangs the finest furs of his traps flapping in the tops of the

pines – a superstitious sop to the Cerberus of the woodland Wentigo.

If the trapper is married – and most of them are much–married – his spouse

and dusky brood accompany him into the wilds; and frozen winter sees nomad

families, each little group a vignette in the heart of the wilder panorama, flitting over

lake surfaces to their individual fur–preserves. In the woods, in tepee, tent, or rough

shack the family fires are lighted, and from this centre the trapper radiates. The

hunter traps for miles and days alone, and an accident on the woods means a death

as lonely and as agonizing as that of the animal he snares. Sometimes he goes insane

and then the Royal Northwest Mounted Policeman, another sentinel of silence,

handcuffs him, saves him from himself and takes him “outside.” Possibly the trapper

places 150 snares, and his line of traps may extend for 30 or 40 miles. Ere first snow

flies he has all his traps ready waiting for the tell–tale tracks in the snow which shall

point out to him each coign of vantage for the placing of a cunning lure.

With blanket, bait, and bacon, on a handsled, silently he trudges forward. The

northern lights come down o’ nights, and it is cold, but cold makes finer fur. Down far

trails in gloomy forests, across the breasts of silenced streams, he trudges from trap

to trap. If he finds $50 worth of fur along the whole line of traps he is content. It is

not this lonely man who gets the high price, madame, for your opera cloak of ermine.

When Pierre is not “making fur” or making love, he is eating. On the trail he

may go hungry for two days with no word of complaint, just a tightening of the lips

and the L’Assumption belt225 and a firm set to the jaw, but while the moose lasts, life

is one long supper.

225 These were typically between 4 to 6 inches wide and 8 to 10 feet long, and were commonly traded

to Indigenous peoples by fur traders. The style was named after L’Assomption, Quebec, where the best

of these belts were made. “I also speedily adopted the native dress which is infinitely the best for the

138

A jolly priest whispers of this confession from a son of the Church, a recent

brand from the burning:– “O, Father, I know that Christianity is true, the great, the

strong religion. When I was a heathen Dog–Rib and trapped with my mother’s tribe,

I ate ten rabbits a day. But now I am a Christian, a good Catholic, seven rabbits are

enough for me – I will not eat any more!”

Meat (pronounced throughout the north “mit”) is the great staple in the rich

land of fur. On the trail one finds one’s self assimilating astonishing helpings of “deer

mit,” and greedily gulping chunks of fat; the rations of the trapper would be the

despair of Dickens’ Miss Todgers, who could never bring the supply of gravy up to the

demand. In the old days the H. B. Company allowed its men en voyage, five pounds

of meat a day, while the kiddies were entitled to three pounds each from the

community larder. In British Columbia and the Yukon the allowance was one salmon;

on the Athabasca, one wild goose or three big whitefish; and up on the Arctic

foreshore, two fish and three pounds of reindeer meat. This was the scheduled fare,

but the grimness of the joke appears in the fact that the man had to run his breakfast

to earth before he had it.

26. Wending Home (1907)226

One by one, always one by one, the worn out trappers are trudging back to

civilization after their winter labors, tugging at their rude sleds, piled high with the

pelts for milady’s furs and milord’s coats. Every spring, when the thinning coats of

the fur bearing animals give the unmistakable signal that it is high time to get away,

that same dreary procession begins.

The collecting of valuable furs from the woods is a hazardous business, such as

nobody but men of tried courage and perfect constitution can well undertake. But as

the reward is seldom large; and oftener meager, those who follow the business are, as

a rule, ether past the prime of life or are maimed in a way to unfit them for earning

good wages at other occupations. Of the two or three score of men who went into the

woods last fall, with scanty provisions and all the traps they could haul, seventy–five

per cent. were past fifty years of age and more than fifty per cent. of mixed French

and Indian blood, the Indian element furnishing the woodcraft and the French giving

the necessary physical vigor and tenacity of purpose.

The one indispensable article in the trapper’s outfit is the long and high posted

frame sled, or “snow yacht,” as it is called. It is a light and loose jointed construction

of hard wood, having broad and thin runners of polished sapling beech. The sleds are

north. A dark blue 3 ½ ell blanket capot, unlined, which came about halfway to the knee, and strange

to say they were made without buttons but fastened with buckskin thongs and gartering. Then stroud

leggings coming halfway up the thigh, made loosely and always with a fringe on the outside seam,

white for every day and blue for festive occasions. These were always gartered firmly below the knee.

Then best of all, a full–sized la assomption belt of many colors which was girded above the hips and

formed a great support and also made the costume much warmer. A huge pair of fur or moose skin

mittens were always carried as a spare. These were fastened together by a thong long enough to go

over the belt.” Beatty, R. (1921, July 15). My First Dog Driving. Bow Island Review, p. 3. 226 From TRAPPERS WEND HOME. (1907, May 15). Red Deer News, p. 5.

139

wide enough to hold up a load of 600 pounds on soft snow, and can coast steep and

bushy hillsides with the speed of steel shod toboggans.

Going in, this sled is laden with Indian meal, prepared flour, molasses, black

tea, fat salt pork, a blanket, an extra pair of woolen socks and all the new traps that

a strong man can haul. Packed under the bag of meal and away from the wet is a

single shot rifle with a short barrel, and on top of the load and ready for use at short

notice is a light axe, with a short handle. A paper of salt, a box of matches, a strong

clasp knife, a small file for sharpening the axe and knife and a bountiful supply of

tobacco complete the outfit for a stay of four or five months.

Traps for mink are placed near shallow and muddy ponds, where the number

of conical houses made from flags and dead grasses indicates that muskrats abound.

Mink feed upon muskrats and the presence of the muskrat homes means good

trapping.

The stouter otter traps are set near open holes in the ice and close under sunny

clay banks, where the otters take winter exercise in sliding. For the taking of the

valuable fisher cats the traps are set among hummocks and seams in the ice, close

inshore, and are baited with fish on the trencher and lines of frozen minnows or

shiners strewn from open holes in the ice in the direction of the traps, to lead the wily

beasts to destruction.

A trapper must start early and work very hard to set out a fresh line of traps

for twenty miles along a stream in a day. At night he seeks out a thick clump of fir or

spruce on the southern slope of a steep hill, and, having shoveled away the snow with

his snowshoes and grubbed out the stumps, surrounds himself with three thick walls

and a roof of evergreen boughs. Filling the inside deeply with hemlock or fir brush for

a bed, he kindles a big fire in front of the southern opening or “door” and sleeps

soundly until the crimson bars above the eastern hills mark the coming day. Then,

putting his tin dipper over the coals to draw a strong brew of tea, and eating some

cold roasted muskrat from the pocket of his hunting coat, he takes his remaining

traps on the sled, crosses the divide to the parallel stream and returns to the home

camp, setting his traps on the way and reaching the starting point at nightfall.

The concentrated essence of joy in the trapper’s life is when, with traps oiled

and hidden away, with sled loaded with furs and belt buckled up tightly, he finds

himself facing south and east and feels the tug of the sled rope pulling from behind.

At times he travels more than one hundred miles over melting banks of snow that

clog his snowshoes and cause him to ache in every joint. Though the going may get so

bad that, except for a few hours after midnight, he can make no progress at all, he is

never depressed, for he knows that somewhere “away over there,” out and beyond the

interminable woods, outside the clustered mountains and hills that fence him in, is a

fur buyer who will pay him money for what he has earned so hardly, and after the

money come the bathroom, the barber shop, the clothing store and then – ah, then! a

warm and cosey seat in front of some bar, where the fluids he likes come to him at

the wave of his hand.

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27. A Companionable Tobacco Pipe (1909)227

The parting words of the Wise Person as we say good–bye to Edmonton, that

sturdy young city already so big and so proud of itself, are: “Verify things. Don’t

believe all that people tell you in the farthest west; verify things.”

It is excellent advice, but in a land so lone, wonderful, mysterious, one finds it

hard to act upon. The history of the place is in the legends told you. The story of the

opening up of the district, the blazing of trails, the establishing of posts, has the full

flavor of romance, and yet it is history. The story of how it came about that the

steamer “Midnight Sun” was built and put upon the Athabasca; the “Northland

Light” on Slave Lake; the “Peace River” on that beautiful stream for which it is

named, sounds like romance, and is romance, when the guide, a French h–––––228,

with gestures eloquent enough to make up for his broken English, tells it round the

camp fire.

It seems that years ago a lad called Cornall, “beeg, strong, good for see, walks

hundred miles wit–out sleep, and scare of not’ing under de sun,” started doing

business with the Indians. He bought their furs, he taught them something of the

value of labor, grew into their confidence and favor, became, as it were, adopted chief

of all the tribes, talked their different languages, learned their different ways. He

took of their strongest and trustiest enough to form a transportation company for the

carrying down of furs and the carrying up of the necessaries of life. It was canoe and

portage all the way from Athabasca Landing to the port farthest north. All went well.

The natives ceased to live, or starve, through the winter on frozen fish, they had

bannocks and bacon. But someone, “a h–––––, I t’inks, he is more mischief, knows

‘bout more t’ings dan injun maybe,” says the guide, with a shrug of his shoulder, “put

dem up dat dey not used right, dat too much white man gotting to de valley maybe,

or dey not getting de pay enough, somet’ing; anyway dey call de beeg meeting, and

dey go w’at you call on de strike, see?

“It was excite. Dey talk w’at dey won’t do and will do … an’ de young bucks

look fight, and put hands on de huntin’ knives maybe. Den de w’ite brother stan’ up

and tell t’ing or two ‘bout how he is made de market for de furs, brought de blankets

dat keep de cold out, de flour, and de ammunition. He is reason wit’ dem, but dey

won’t listen. Den he stan’ up like de beeg w’ite chief he was, not scare one bit, but

mad all t’rough, and he say if dey fail him now ‘en he needs dem most he will build

de boats dat go by steam, a’ de canoes can rot, de Injuns go back and live on frozen

fish as dey did before. Dey mak’ de mock den, dey laugh at de word steam, dey stay

w’at you call on de strike,” he pauses so long that someone asks with eagerness, “What

happened next?” The guide waves an arm toward a cloud of smoke showing above the

trees which fringe the river. “De botes happen next,” he says, with the smile of a man

who has told a story to his own satisfaction.

227 From Blewett, J. (1909, August 28). HOW STEAMERS CAME TO THE NORTH COUNTRY. The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 5. Written by Jean Blewett (1862 – 1934), Canadian poet, novelist and journalist. 228 An offensive term for people of mixed heritage.

141

These must be comparatively recent happenings, for this same man still

looking a “beeg, fair lad, and scare of not’ings at all,” is “brother” to every Indian in

the Peace River district – which incidentally he represents229 in the provincial

parliament – knows where the crooked trails lead to and from, the names and

dimensions of every valley, stream and lake in this farthest west of ours. It is said of

the member for Peace River that he has a full knowledge of the lure and the lore of

the wild. He knows nature as few white men of today know her.

You sit with MacLennan230, of the H.B.C., in the doorway of his post, and he

gives you history, and when he has done you feel just as you did on reading

surreptitiously – in the far–off days – your first story of wild west adventure, only

more so.

I say “in the doorway” advisedly, for there you are at a meeting of the ways, so

to speak. On one hand the interior of the post, always dusky, always cool, with

merchandize of every sort spread about. The shelves are full, the counters have

overflown, and the floor is stacked high. Turn your head a little way and you see bear–

claw and beaver tooth, a jumble of primal colors, calicoes in red and blue, Gordon

plaids, blankets barried231 with rainbow hues. The skin of a black fox, soft and shiny,

swings from a peg in the rafter. Between the door and the wall are the furs, a big pile

of muskrat, a smaller one of beaver, a still smaller one of lynx, and spread out, in all

their beauty, a round dozen silver foxes. There is a smell of smoke, camp–fire smoke,

mingled with that of the pelts. The hunters brought it in when they brought their

packs, and left it in, and though you choke a little, you draw long breaths of it, for it

savors of the mystery of the north, of great spaces and heavy silences, of hunter’s

lodge and Indian’s tepee, of river, forest, valley, which up till now meant only the

queer Indian names you spelled out on the tattered map in the red school house in

the days which lie behind.

Now turn back to the warmth and light. Outside is wonderful, for the season

of golden glory is here. An ordinary August day, they tell you, but you know better, it

is the Golden Glory. It is heat, and the breath of grasses drying, and berries ripening,

cooking in the sun. The earth palpitates with it, the forest swelters in it, sweats out

rare balms and balsams, the biggest valley in the big new world is filled to the brim

with it. By–and–bye the grey days, long twilights, and longer nights, but now the

strip of shadow lying between midnight and three in the morning is not worth calling

a night. In the winter it is good to sleep much and forget the cold and dark, but this

is the time of golden glory, when to be alive is joy past telling.

229 This implies the guide is James Kennedy Cornwall (1869 – 1955), also called ‘Peace River Jim’, who

served on the Legislative Assembly of Alberta as a member of the Peace River district from 1909 to

1913. “Mr. Cornwall is one of the most romantic and interesting figures of the West, beginning business

life as a newsboy in Buffalo, N.Y., and later earning the title of “Apostle of the North” by engaging in

every occupation the wild Northwest life of a few years ago provided.” LIEUTENANT–COLONEL

JAMES KENNEDY CORNWALL. (1916, June 7). Red Deer News, p. 1. 230 Possibly a pseudonym. There is no MacLennan listed in the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives’s

biographical sheets, and the only MacLennans listed in the H.B.C.’s servant contracts were not

employed at the time of this article’s publication. 231 Slang for ‘needlessly altered’.

142

“It is not good for man to dwell alone, so he takes a pipe into partnership,”

MacLennan says, as he proceeds to fill a briar root from a tobacco pipe, which is a bit

of finery in itself, being dotted here and there with beads as red as carbuncles. “A

little wedding gift,” he adds with a chuckle. “When a man’s been married a pipe for

fifty year he should no’ let the occasion pass ove’ oot some little token o’ appreciation,

I’m thinking.” He brushes the bowl with fingers which seem to caress it. “I call her

beauty,” in answer to your look of admiration, “but she’s touchy, touchy; she’s got old

and full o’ whims; betimes she’ll sulk on me. I’m aye humoring her.”

He put the pouch back in his pocket and takes a match. “Does she gie ye the

whustles?” he inquires, solicitously, as the smoke curls in rings about his grey head.

“No; I’m glad o’ that. I’ve had one or two folks that didn’t take kindly to er; thought

her a trifle wiuld in her flavor. Now a queer thing, I didn’t feel o’er friendly with them.

I thought it showed poor manners to turn their nose up at the only mate I had. ‘A

poor thing, but mine own,’ to quote from the immortal Wullie.”

It is worth while to sit and watch MacLennan smoke. The way he has of

covering “Beauty” quite from sight with one broad palm, as though emphasizing the

fact that she is his very own, of forgetting her for awhile as his talk grows more and

more interesting both to himself and listeners, then turning back to her in an access

of devotion which seems to say: “I didn’t mean it; come, come, Beauty, what do I care

for these strangers of a day! It is you and I for the long stretch; come along!” And

Beauty comes along as though she understood. Through the smoke MacLennan’s

white beard looms up like a cloud on a blue sky. He is telling about the day the trader

came through on his way to Lesser Slave Lake to meet the boat.

“His sweetheart was coming out to share the loneliness and hardship, and he

was as much a fool as though he’d been a lad instead o’ a man well on to forty. ‘Are

ye no afraid she’ll live o’it?’ I asked. ‘Mac,’ he says, with a great quiver in his voice.

‘I’m afraid o’ nothing this day.’ For a minute I was that envious of him I wanted to

hurt him. Gosh! What it would mean to have a slip of a woman with white skin and

nice, finicky ways going in and out of a man’s home, putting up a curtain to the

window, a cloth on the table, spreading out her pictures, nick nacks, a sewing basket,

and thimble, maybe! But the envy didn’t last. I’m an old man now – there, she’s in

the sulks!” breaking off to give his undivided attention to his pipe, “choked up with

temper. I’ll have to coax her back to good humor.” There is patting and poking and

drawing. “Oh, ye won’t go, will ye? Tantrums! Tantrums!” His blue eyes have a flash

of temper in them. “I’ll try ye once more, an if ye go on sulking I’ll not put match to

ye again today.” No result for a moment, then a blue line which marks Beauty’s

relenting, and by–and–bye she is working overtime in an excess of contrition over the

tantrums. MacLennan leans back against the door frame. “A pipe means more to the

man without kith and kin than it does to the other fellow,” he says; “it’s company

when he’s lonesome, comfort when he’s miserable; it clears out tangles and keeps him

mellowed up and human. I’d be down and out sometimes if I couldn’t get a smoke. I

am an old man now,” going back to where he was before the interruption, “and I can

tell you I’m glad I’ve lived the loneliness out by myself. A score of years ago this was

no land for a woman, it isn’t yet for the matter o’ that.

143

“It’s too big and empty. I remember the reply one of our chaps made when I

flung the word s–––––232 man at him. ‘Better a contented s––––– than a homesick

white woman,’ said he. No woman would come if she knew what it meant, and I’m too

decent to get one here under false pretensions.’ Different people have different ideas

of honor. Lots of men would allow some big–hearted girl to come out to them or with

them, and yet would draw the line at marrying a native woman. Oh, yes, they marry

them hard and fast. ‘The ancient and honorable Companie trading in Hudson’s Bay’

is a stern censor of morals. The s––––– man turns Injun nearly always, learns to

squat on the floor and eat out of his hands. I wouldn’t like to say there aren’t times

when he is sick of himself, his wife, and the whole thing. But for all that, he takes so

much pleasure out of his home, poor as it is, and his youngsters, that I only know one

case of desertion hereabouts.”

“The thing which puzzles me,” says the Wise Person, “is why men like yourself

deliberately choose to live your lives out in the wilds. The love of adventure, the desire

to make money, these bring men out, but why stay always?”

Beauty is showing her good–will in slow, deliberate puffs. MacLennan throws

up his grey beard, and makes answer in tones which carry conviction:

“Because it grows on him, because the bigness and solitude get a grip on ye in

time. They say give a woman youth and comeliness and she can make a man forget

the mother that bore him. It’s the same with the land, the freshness o’ her, the beauty

o’ her, the bigness o’ her, all fasten on him till he’d rather have her silences than the

gossiping tongues o’ his native town. It isn’t that he loves her, there is something

about her he almost hates betimes – it’s just another grip o’her, the freshness and

strength of her. He’s at home with her, and nowhere else in all God’s world is he at

home.”

Why stay? you ask – look yonder and get your answer.

What you see is the tree–crested valley with the blue smoke circling it, level

stretches, hills climbing skyward in wide, green terraces, a broad blue river singling

its way to the Arctic Sea through solitudes which ever seem to listen and wait for the

creak of the settler’s waggon, and the song of the woodman’s axe; and valley, forest,

river are soft with sunshine, warm with welcome.

You look at the man smoking in the door–way of the Post, and not

understandingly. “The freshness o’ her, the bigness o’ her get a grip on ye in time.”

28. Jack Norris, Pioneer (1916)233

In the elemental days of yore all travel and transport were performed in the

mode of primitive man, in moccasins and on snowshoes on land, and propelled by

strong arms on water. Horse and dog helped him in carrying burdens, or drawing

them by travois, sled or cart. He lived, from meal to meal, off the game of the country,

232 An offensive term for an Indigenous woman. 233 From Cowie, I. (1916, April 15). JACK NORRIS – An Edmonton Pioneer. The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 13. Written by Isaac Cowie (1848 – 1917), a clerk and fur trader who served the Hudson’s Bay

Company from 1867 to 1890.

144

obtained by snare, net or gun. And in the estimation of that early community no one

who could not take his full part in every one of these activities was counted or entitled

to call himself “a man” – the highest title or honor in the wilds.

One who bore that proud distinction amongst the heroes of the Great Lone

Land prior to the middle of the last century has just been laid at rest in his last

campground. In fewer seconds than in the early days it took months for news to reach

Fort Garry from Edmonton House, the wire announced at Winnipeg that Jack Norris,

a pioneer of Rupert’s Land, had died at his residence on the St. Albert road, near

Edmonton, Alta., in the morning of March 15. The press dispatch briefly intimated

that his age was 87, and that he came from Scotland in the Hudson’s Bay service to

Edmonton 67 years ago, and has had his domicile there ever since. […]

JOHN NORRIS

John Norris234 was born near John O’ Groat’s House, the northern land’s end

of Britain. After, in early years, roaming with his g–––––235 relatives in the north of

Scotland, and acquiring their arts and crafts, his family found their way north to

Lerwick, in the Shetland Islands. There Jack shipped on whalers and made two

voyages to “Greenland’s icy mountains” before enlisting in the Hudson’s Bay

Company’s service, for five years at £20 a year, to serve them as a laborer “in North

America,’ and there defend their possessions “with courage and fidelity.” Probably

the call of the hunting wilderness appealed more to his g––––– blood than adventure

on the pathless deep, to which native Shetlanders are wedded.

In August, 1848, Norris landed at York Factory, where there were inland boats

belonging to the Saskatchewan District waiting, in which “the recruits from Europe,”

intended for service in that district and in the New Caledonia and Columbia

departments, across the Rocky Mountains, were to work their passage as far as

Edmonton that fall. Besides the boats, an experienced steersman and a bowman for

each craft were supplied by Saskatchewan. The boats took the annual mail coming

by the ship, a few packages of articles ordered by employees from Britain, and other

freight for Saskatchewan and New Caledonia.

TRIALS OF ‘PRENTICE HANDS

Old hands and veterans all the world over are wont to regard with contempt

the trials of ‘prentice hands. The native boatmen in charge of each end of the craft

were no exception to this common failing of mankind, but in their case it was

intensified by racial pride and prejudice most galling to any white man bearing

similar sentiments towards foreigners and men of color. While all Indians, of that day

and generation considered themselves as “the people,” they did not assert their inborn

sense of superiority over the “Moonyass” (green236 white man) in the offensive and

vain–glorious manner of the Metis.

MAN–KILLING SWEEPS

234 John Norris served the H.B.C. in Saskatchewan from 1849 to 1866. He was a labourer, transporter,

tinsmith and hunter. 235 A derogatory term for the Romani people. 236 Inexperienced.

145

It was under such “superior officers” that Norris and his mates commenced

their career as galley slaves in the Saskatchewan brigade. The inland or “York” boat

is admirably modelled for the different services it performs: but the infernal

instruments of torture and of least driving force for the greatest muscular exertion

euphemistically called “oars” are outrages on common sense and humanity. They are

immensely clumsy, heavy “sweeps,” not oars, and the unchangeable fashion of

handling them native fashion is a parody on rowing, requiring the greatest amount

of useless muscular exertion and producing the minimum of propulsion which the

perverted ingenuity of man could devise. The effect of this back–breaking circular

motion was that the blade entered the water obliquely, instead of perpendicularly,

and came out horizontally, with a boil and a sinking pressure on the gunwale. And

this description is necessary to show the stress and strain put on good oarsmen not

accustomed to “rowing” according to the fixed fashion of the country at the time.

The fashion also produced the greatest of all the great miseries the boatmen

underwent, in that the brutal oar soon produced blistered hands. It was considered

unmanly to quit for such a trifle, so the blisters broke and the rower went on with

raw bleeding palms till inflammation of the whole arm set in, and the galley slave

was only exempted honorably from duty when no longer fit to move. To anticipate,

only once in all his 15 subsequent voyages between Edmonton and York Factory was

Norris so rendered hors de combat237. BLOODTHIRSTY FEMALE OF SPECIES

Although the height of the mosquitoe season, during which the boat route

between York Factory and Lake Winnipeg maintained a sanguinary fame second to

none in the vast wilderness, where she reigns forever the queen of torments, was on

the wane, there still remained swarms, as soon as the chill of night and early morn

had passed, to add their venomous stings to the other unwanted hardships which the

un–innoculated freshmen from Britain had to endure on the voyage upstream. Much

as these ubiquitous pests of the wilderness teased the habituated and immunized

natives, their sufferings were as nothing compared with the torments and

inflammations inflicted on the specially marked victims – the newly arrived

Europeans. Years of exposure and suffering on their part has to be undergone ere

they acquired anything like the comparative immunity which was the good fortune

of the native Indians. From the time the Hudson’s Bay men started all over the

country on their almost continuous travels throughout the summer season till the

cold weather in autumn, their bloodthirsty midget foes followed them and enveloped

them in buzzing swarms. They made hell of a land otherwise a paradise in summer,

and made men rejoice when winter blew his first blast and scattered those enemies.

Rude Boreas and Arctic cold came as welcome allies against the hated pests of the

summer time. After a long, toilsome day on snowshoes, in the open by the

smouldering camp fire, the voyageur enjoyed peaceful sleep, uninterrupted by the

irritating war song and the poisonous attack of the omnipresent hosts of these

enemies. They were the bane and blight of existence of every traveller in the wilds.

People, especially those enjoying the almost complete immunity of large towns, and

237 French for ‘out of the fight’.

146

even those where the drainage and cultivation in the country have destroyed the

breeding places of the pests, can form no conception of the misery and suffering

entailed on man and beast by these pets during the early pioneering stages of the

Great Mosquitoe Land.

“TRACKING” UPSTREAM

Now, let us turn from these hated pests to the initiation of Jack Norris as a

voyageur. The boats, if the wind was not far enough aft to permit of the use of the

single square sails, proceeded under their heavy sweeps till they reached the

“tracking ground.” Then half the crew landed with a line, attached abaft238 the bow,

and harnessing themselves at intervals thereto by their portage straps, commenced

to march along the beach, or in the water inshore if there were none, and draw the

boat along, while the steersman, occasionally assisted by the bowsman, on board

guided her course. The watch off duty immediately wound themselves in their

blankets (head and all, to keep off the flies) and coiled down on the cargo for a nap.

On a good beach the men went easily along at a fast walk – much faster than

one going “light,” usually. Where the beach ended and the water was anything from

ankle to waist deep, the trackers merrily plunged in and carried on. Then it often

occurred that the water was too deep and they had to tear their way up the bank

through brush and forest, which, catching the line often required the last man to

unharness himself and clear it. At other places the clay banks were high and steep

from deep water, and there the toilers had to plough through soft wet clay, and not

only plod ahead but also bend inwards and cling by hand to the yielding clay or chance

stone or tuft to prevent themselves from being dragged downhill and plunged into the

swirling stream. Even it was occasionally necessary for them to go short distances

breast high in the water; but such spots were generally avoided by either rowing past

them or crossing the stream to better going on the other side.

In spite of their objection to the abominable oars and their mode of use, already

recorded, the recruits were well able to hold their own with the natives in that

exercise; but in tracking it was different. The whole thing was a new exercise and

European boots were an impediment in it. The men had to wear moccasins of Indian

make or clumsy imitations of tanned leather called “beef leather shoes,” to which their

feet were unaccustomed and in which they got hurt.

PORTAGING

Before reaching the first portage, to be broken to harness with the pump–line,

the boats had to be pushed by poles up swift, shallow water, where neither oar nor

tow–line could be used. There was nothing out of the way in this, and the experienced

men at the bow and stern directed their efforts. And, after the crews of all the boats

doubling up on a whale line to warp each craft separately up a heavy fall, the brigade

reached the real testing ground of the green hands on the portages.

Many Canadian rivermen and sportsmen are well up in the mysteries of the

portage sling, and how to hang their packs from the broad band across the forehead,

Indian fashion, and then jog nimbly along laden at a trot. In the Old Country style, a

burden bearer carries a band round the shoulders and breast and plods along at a

238 Near the stern of the ship.

147

walk; so men, and women, too, in the north and fishing places of Scotland, bear great

burdens of fish and fuel in creels. But most of these apprentice voyageurs literally

“got it in the neck” before they mastered the knack of portaging according to the

custom of the country. A giant Orkneyman, new to the work, and of double the

strength of a skinny little native, might be seen plodding, with the gait of a clodhopper

over a portage path, under two heavy pieces slung on his back by a strap round the

shoulders; while a little native, equally laden, would be lightly tripping past him at a

jog trot. While one of the obstinate kind of Scotch–Orkneyman would refuse to learn

this foreign way of carrying, the adaptable kind of Scot from the Highlands, or

Norsemen from the Shetlands, would be eager to acquire the new and seemingly easy

art practiced by the natives. And Jack Norris, if anything, was adaptable, besides

being as strong, active and athletic as the best, and with a quick native intelligence,

unspoilt by the schoolroom which teaches children to see through the eyes of others

instead of using their own. So by the time the boats had made the 400 mile voyage

upstream and over portages to Norway House, he had the honor of being

recommended by the native guide to the commander there as one of the few green

hands, who, on their first voyage, wrung from those severe critics, the native

boatmen, the highest praise they could express in the words – “He is a good man, just

like a h–––––239, not like a Moonyass at all.”

PRESTIGE UPHELD BY FIST

The compliment was, however, not entirely intended to give Jack his due only;

but perhaps also by way of apology for a couple of black eyes which adorned the visage

of one of the biggest bowsmen, who was by habit and repute one of the noted bullies

of the Saskatchewan brigade, who had tried to impose on Jack, and met more than

his match in the young Moonyass. Jack was a genial fellow, not at all aggressive, but,

though only a medium–sized man, he never would stand bullying or insult from the

biggest bully on the plains, until finally, after many a rough and tumble fight and

wrestling match with native opponents, he established a reputation which later saved

him further trouble in that line.

In describing this phase of a newcomer’s experiences in the old territories of

the company, it is well worthy of remark that, apart from any superstitious fear which

the old–time natives entertained of the “medicine” and arts of the white man, they

did not generally make reprisals as a community on the company’s men for a

thrashing administered with the naked fist, to which these latter were strictly limited

by the policy and custom of the service. The employees, except in case of dire necessity

for self–protection, were absolutely forbidden to resort to other weapons, in the use

of which the natives, though inferior in boxing, were at least as expert as themselves;

and the consequence of which would have aroused a whole tribe to declare war. For

the purpose of administering corporal punishment when needed in the case of

individual Indians offending, as well as contumacious employees, a bourgeois often

had a special constable, called a “bullyar” in his fort or brigade, in the absence of

whom either the interpreter or others of the staff, or sometimes the boss himself,

239 An offensive term for someone of mixed heritage.

148

performed the duty of maintaining the prestige of the whites with the primitive fist,

or other blunt handy weapon. The company had no use for “gun–men.”

BLACKFEET AND BUFFALO BAR RIVER

After passing the portage over the Grand Rapids and other rapids near Lake

Winnipeg, the Saskatchewan was free from such interruption to Edmonton. The

lower river was ascended under oars, unless a favorable wind lent its aid to

navigation. As soon as high and dry banks and beaches were reached above The Pas,

the crews went out on the line ahead, with little break, to Edmonton.

While the difficulties of navigation, except when exceptionally high water

covered the “tracking grounds,” decreased above Carlton, the danger from frequent

war parties of Blackfeet increased until nearing Edmonton, where at their own post

of Rocky Mountain House only they were at peace with the company. Many an

attempt to capture the boats was made and avoided by the boats shoving off shore

just in time.

Another impediment, but of a nature to cause rejoicing, was the obstruction

offered by innumerable buffalo crossing the river, sometimes for days and affording

feasts of fat things ample to satisfy the ravenous appetite of the voyageurs, and to

gratify the craving of stomachs long accustomed to the dry provisions supplied as

rations for the voyage.

THE AXE AND SNOWSHOE

The next course in his education as a Hudson’s Bay man was in the handling

of the axe, an implement few but carpenters and foresters are accustomed to in the

Old Country. After mastering this without chopping off any toes, he was sent out with

carts of the fort hunters for the fall supply of buffalo meat, the staple food of more

than a hundred mouths of all sizes in the fort for the winter.

Then came the snow, and dog driving and showshoeing were the order of the

day in trips to the Indian camps for furs and buffalo robes. While the snow is not deep

snowshoes are not used, and men travel treading exactly in the footsteps of the one

ahead. As the gait is generally a jog trot and the stride of the native longer than the

European at first, and in–toed, too, it is not easy for a novice to gain the advantage of

using the footprints ahead. The trot, too, continued for miles, is a gait one requires

practise to attain in the perfection necessary to hold his own.

BLISTERS AND MAL DE RACQUETTE

Snow–shoeing is comparatively easy, but the tenderfoot is liable to blister, and,

there being no let–up, the blisters break and leave the raw bleeding parts to be

frightfully irritated by the continued operation of the first cause. If this were not

enough and to spare, le mal de racquette, snowshoe ache, attacks the muscles and tendons of limbs unaccustomed to or too long subject to the peculiar stresses and

strains of walking on snowshoes, especially in deep snow and at a rapid rate. Under

the circumstances of a voyage limited in time by the slender stock of food carried for

man and dog, no stop for rest or repair, except at night is possible, and in spite of

excruciating agony at each step the victim must march or lay down and die. No

traveller, however hardened, ever becomes exempt from the complaint, when

circumstances favor its development.

149

SNOW BLINDNESS

Another of the hardships incident to travel in the snow is the dreadful

blindness to which all are liable when the sun gets strong towards spring. Although

provident men never start without tinted glass or wire eye–protectors at that time,

they are liable to be lost, but more frequently lent to another already afflicted to save

him from further suffering the effects of his improvidence or bravado. Misfortunes

never come alone, and many a poor traveller has had to keep on moving while

suffering the threefold agonies incident to such voyaging.

At last, sometimes, when human endurance could stand no more the victims

might be compelled to halt, camp and endure the pangs of starvation at rest rather

than the agonies of every motion. Possibly one of the party might be in better

condition and of higher courage than his fellows; and he would set out for the nearest

fort or camp to bring succor. In such a case Jack would have been the man after

becoming an experienced traveller.

SPRING WORK

In the last days of the spring, cordwood cutting was the task set the company’s

laborers and voyageurs. A cord a day was a short, easy task for all but the greenest of greenhands, and the rest of the day was free. Then the business of the year was

completed by beating the dust from furs and buffalo robes and packing them into

convenient packages for transport, all in the open square of the fort.

BOAT BRIGADE FOR YORK

The new business year – “new outfit” in fur trade parlance – was commenced

on the departure of the Saskatchewan brigade of boats in early June for York factory.

Besides the ten boats intended to bring back the supplies for the year, ten other new

boats, built at Rocky Mountain House and Edmonton for other districts started, all

laden with buffalo provisions, pemmican, dried meat, cured tongues, tallow and

marrowfat, as well as leather, shaganappi240, rawhide cords, leather lodges and

unprimed robes for use in the country. The twenty boats went down with the crews;

ten boats and most of the buffalo products were left at Norway House for distribution,

and the ten other boats with full crews went on to York Factory with the fur trade

returns of the season.

Norris accompanied this annual boat brigade fifteen times to York Factory,

first as middleman, then as bowman and finally as steersman in charge of a boat.

HUNTING AND TRADING ON THE PLAINS

When the boats returned the servants were employed at cutting hay with the

scythe, curing it and hauling it to the fort farm. The grain and potato crops were then

harvested, and plastering the dwellings with clay, outside and in, for the winter

occupied those about the fort, while others were sent off to their outposts and to make

fall fisheries.

Besides the permanent outposts every fall parties were sent out, equipped to

trade and hunt, to build wintering shanties at some point in the woods near where

the buffalo and Indians were expected to be numerous during the winter. Nearly all

the men sent in charge of these parties were natives, speaking the languages; but

240 Cree for “thin cord”. Often refers to rawhide cords, which are next on this list.

150

frequently they were accompanied by one of the European servants as assistants,

upon whose steadiness and fidelity the company could rely. Norris was early engaged

in such expeditions, and proved a capable man, acquiring soon a working knowledge

of the Cree language, and displaying that business tact and judgment which he later

used in the big business of Norris and Carey241, the leading pioneer merchants of the

early town of Edmonton.

In the later years of his service with the company, Norris used to be sent out

to the buffalo plains in charge of such hunting and trading parties himself. On one of

these occasions the Blackfeet made a foray on hem, drove off their ponies and scared

away his native companions, who escaped to Fort Pitt, leaving Jack alone. He stayed

with the outfit and stood off the raiders for several days until relieved by a wandering

war party of Crees.

In those days horse–trading was a great feature, and no one knew a horse

better than Jack, or how to negotiate a trade. The Indians, especially when in liquor

supplied by opposition traders, were often troublesome and threatening, requiring

both tact and courage in handling them. As he possessed both, his services on these

occasions were valuable to the company. Nevertheless they were not appreciated

equivalently, and after fifteen years such service he quit their service and struck out

for himself.

HE ”GOES FREE”

By that time, 1863, the cream had been skimmed off the gold–bearing bars of

the river near Edmonton, but the plains still abounded with buffalo, and hunting

them was the main business and sport of the country. By this time Norris had taken

to wife Marie Peltier242, a Metis, and acquired a portion of the wealth and currency

of the plains in the shape of a band of hunting and hauling ponies. By these means

he secured ample provisions for sale and his own use, and in the intervals began to

freight for the company.

A GREAT FREIGHTER

More and more he undertook freighting contracts, summer and winter, until

one hundred of his carts were plying between Edmonton and Fort Garry every

summer. The old trail, principally in order to avoid the raiding grounds of the

241 An early ad reads: “Norris & Carey, General Merchants, have now on hand and will keep in stock

a complete assortment of dry goods, groceries, boots and shoes. Hardware to arrive shortly. Having

traded in this country for many years, the firm feels confident that they can supply the goods the

people want, and will do so at the lowest, living profits. Horses and cattle bought, sold and exchanged.”

Norris & Carey. (1882, September 30). NORRIS & CAREY [Advertisement]. The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 4. 242 Marie Norris was mentioned briefly in the Edmonton Bulletin when her daughter went missing: “Mr. John Norris, of Athabasca Landing, who was in town yesterday received a telegram from Mrs.

Norris, informing him that their sixteen year old daughter had been missing since Sunday afternoon.

Mr. Norris accompanied by his son at once left for home on horseback, but when about halfway to the

Landing found the missing girl on the trail. She was completely lost and while coming toward town

declared that she she was going home. It appears she had lost her way late on Sunday while hunting

some cattle and had wandered until met by her father and brother on Tuesday evening. During the

time she had no food and travelled about 65 miles.” LOST TWO DAYS. (1906, June 6). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 8.

151

Blackfeet on the south of the river, ran along the north side of the Saskatchewan,

crossing at Carlton and the South branch about eighteen miles from that post.

As the end of the steel moved westwards, while the distance decreased the

demand for transportation increased, through the new needs created by the different

departments of the Dominion government and the change of the H.B. freight route to

the great north land from that by Portage la Loche to Athabasca Landing. These were

the prosperous days of the freighting community of the Edmonton district, before

their occupation went when the railway came.

A GENERAL PIONEER MERCHANT

Early in his career as a freighter Norris started a general store in connection,

which ultimately, under the firm of Norris and Carey, became a close rival to the

Hudson’s Bay establishment, and far surpassed the latter as a profitable business.

While this business was managed by his clever and respected partner, the late E. F.

Carey, and their popular manager, Tom Hourston243, Mr. Norris delighting in the

outdoor life, devoted most of his time to his horse and cattle ranches.

Naturally in the course of the class of business done with the natives and old

timers, much land was acquired by the firm and its individual members at low prices

when it was a drag on the market. Without estimating the value of such real property

in 1899, when the firm retired from business, both members were known to be the

wealthiest men in Edmonton. And after the rise in values which took place later their

previous wealth must have quadrupled. The sailor lad of twenty who came to the

Edmonton country sixty–seven years ago by industry and intelligence had made a

competence before the freaks of fortune and real estate promoters added thereto

values running into a fortune.

In the period of two–thirds of a century, during his residence Edmonton had

passed through all the stages of a fortified fur–trading post, occasionally surrounded

by towns of the moving tents of the Crees, from whose bastions were witnessed many

a fight between them and the Blackfeet; next a Methodist mission and a few general

stores and hotel outside the fort, and the terminus of the overland caravans freighting

from Fort Garry; followed by the transient stage of steamboating on the

Saskatchewan; and finally the railways which have confirmed its position as a central

city, destined to still greater prosperity.

Throughout all these changes and as wealth, that he did not know what to do

with, rolled in upon him, Norris remained the genial, kindly, charitable and

unaffected man, in fact the neighborly old timer, with native good manners and never

losing a musical trace of the Scottish accent of his youth. He leaves a big gap in the

society of the real old timers wont to foregather at Henry Fraser’s daily. The longest

living link with Edmonton’s past has been broken by his death.

243 Thomas Hourston (1855 – 1905). “Tom Hourston was one of the old–time settlers who was fortunate

enough in locating a homesteadclose in by the old Hudson Bay Fort. Twenty–five years ago, he located

a homestead and scripped more land to the extent of an entire section in all, just west of what are now

the western limits of the city. […] Besides owning his big farm, he clerked at first in one of the old–

time stores in the village, then he became a fur trader, and for some years carried on that business for

Ullman and Co., of St. Paul and Chicago. Then he retired to his farm.” EARLY SETTLER’S

HOMESTEAD IS NOW A RESIDENCE SUBURB. (1911, January 23). The Edmonton Capital, p. 1.

152

29. Pa–Ta of the Biigtigong Nishnaabeg (1923)244

When my party reached “The Pic”245 in February, 1879, on its way to the

district headquarters at Michipicoten, it was augmented by the clerk in charge of

that post and an Indian who was to be his personal attendant.

This Indian was Pa–ta. I objected to him from a general, a superficial, survey

of his person. He did not appear to me to be a man fit to follow a party on a two–

hundred–mile trip and keep up with the procession.

But his appearances are deceiving, and the saying is true that “a person cannot

sometimes always tell.” In stature the Indian was short, with a body abnormally long,

and legs not only short but bowed as well. To me his legs did not look capable of

“taking the stride.” But I was mistaken, for not only could he step into the track of

the man before him, but he could do it with ease and keep it up day after day.

His face, however, was the most comical part of his person. One could hardly

look at him and retain one’s gravity. The corner of his mouth was drawn up on the

left side to within an inch or so of his ear, and his right eye was a veritable cock–eye.

This eye, with its fixed upward expression, conveyed the impression that it was

always estimating the blue expanse above the tree tops. He had four strong incisors

half way up his mouth that would have been a credit to a beaver. Owing to the upward

trend of his lips, two of these teeth were always visible, adding much to his grotesque

approach.

Ironside246, the clerk, settled the objection I advanced by saying he knew the

man and his usefulness and capabilities on a trip. “I’m taking him and will be

responsible for him. I’ll see that he doesn’t keep the party back,” he promised.

That settled the matter and Pa–ta went. And a better man on a snowshoe

tramp I could not ask, nor would it be possible to find. Good qualities? Well, I should

say so! Besides carrying a pack all day as well as the best of us, he was indispensable

about camp for all those little niceties that go towards comfort. I never have had such

soft beds as we had on that down trip. There was no stint of brushwood and he had

the knack of planting each branch so nearly on end that the whole was as good as a

soft mattress.

Pa–ta had a hooked stick for lifting kettles from the fire, a wooden poker to

arrange the hot coals, and an abundance of birch bark and dry splints in case we

required a fire suddenly during the night. By mutual consent the other men left the

work of camp to Pa–ta, getting water, starting the fire, etc. And he did it well.

Like all deformed or peculiar people, he was the butt of the jokes of the other

men, but he took all they said in good sport. My own two men, who had accompanied

244 From MARTEN HUNTER. (1923, March 24). LEGENDS OF THE FUR COUNTRY. The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 21. 245 Traditional territory of the Biigtigong Nishnaabeg, also known as the Pic River First Nation. 246 James Symington Ironside (1835 – 1917) was born in what is now Essex County, Ontario. His son,

James Symington Wilcox Ironside, died while fighting in Belgium during World War I.

153

me down from the interior, were French h–––––s, particularly smart, bright fellows,

quick at repartee, with a flow of Ojibway or French on tap a la demande. While crossing some expanse of ice I several times dropped back abreast of Pa–

ta to see how he took the step of the man before him. He would poise for an instant

on one foot, then the other leg would shoot out from his hip joint in a marvellous way,

and his snowshoe plant itself right in the track of the man ahead.

My fellows were not only perpetually cracking jokes on poor Pa–ta, but after

we had been out two or three days they began to impose on his good nature. Especially

did I notice this during the long cold nights when the fire in front of our lean–to began

to die down. I would hear one of the men from under his blanket say, “Pa–ta, put on

some wood!”

However, when this became apparent to me, I rounded up on my gentlemen. I

told them pretty plainly that they must all take turns and not leave it all to Pa–ta.

That settled the matter, and from then until the end of the trip they treated the poor

Indian with more fairness.

One of the accomplishments which Ironside claimed belonged to Pa–ta was a

stock of hunting stories and Indian folklore that he had hidden away in that funny

head of his. We found indeed that he was a born contour de contes. The first night in camp, my men called on Pa–ta to “let himself out,” “cut loose,” “move his chin,” and

in several other ways expressed their desire to have a story.

Ironside, who had heard most of Pa–ta’s stories on previous trips, asked me if

I ever heard the Ojibway legends of Ne–na–bo–jo, who according to Indian tradition

was the first man created by the Great Spirit and who thus corresponded with our

Adam. I said I had never heard it. The outline of a man forming the top of Thunder

Cape, had been pointed out to me, and my Indian canoeman had said it was Ne–na–

bo–jo, who had offended the Great Manitou and had been stricken dead on the high

cape.

“Pa–ta,” said Ironside, “can tell stories of the great Ne–na–bo–jo indefinitely. I

have listened to him night after night on a long journey and the supply seemed

inexhaustible.” So it was decided that Ne–na–bo–jo would be the theme. Extra big

logs were thrown on the fire. The five of us, with the story teller in the place of honor,

squatted down in front of the cheerful blaze, ready to hear the opening instalment of

the legends at our first camp out from the Pic.

We camped eight nights on that two–hundred–mile trip, and each night Pa–ta

gave us an instalment. At the last noonday fire, the poor fellow accidentally cut his

leg while splitting some kindling. We had to leave him there with one of my men

while the others of the party went into headquarters and sent back men from the fort

with a flat sled to draw him in. When our stay at Michipicoten ended and the back

track had to be negotiated, our Indian entertainer had to be left behind. I never made

another trip with him. Having splintered a piece of shinbone, his leg was long in

healing, and it was only at the opening of navigation that he was able to return to his

own reserve at the Pic.

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30. The Tales of Johnny Berens (1923)247

In all the far–flung north – from Fort McMurray to the Frozen Sea – the native

inhabitants possess a strong belief in the mystic power of Wisakedjak, the Spirit of

the North; his influence pervades every teepee in the wilderness and though he is

connected with this area by legends only, the present day residents of the fur country

have a very profound regard for his capacity for good or evil. Every incident in their

drab lives is influenced by Wisakedjak; his appearance is necessary for their birth

and when the r–––––248 men are ready to pass on to the Happy Hunting Grounds249

he convoys them there. In teepee, canoe and on the hunting trail Wisakedjak is

always present, and despite the doctrines of the missionaries, the Spirit of the North

is, and probably always be one of the prime deciding factors in the lives of the natives.

Legends galore surround the mystic personality of the spirit; the following

stories being detailed to the writer by John Berens, of Fort Smith, who has lived in

the north all his days, and has a thorough insight into the minds of the simple natives.

Since the year 1887 John Robert Berens, of Fort Smith, N.W.T., has been a

riverman on the streams which flow to the Arctic. As a trader for the Hudson’s Bay

company and a steamer pilot for the Northern Trading company he made countless

voyages and travelled many leagues. His is the vision of the native son; an outlook on

life novel to most, and a span of years crowded with many hikes to many strange

places, some of the incidents connected with his career being set down here and told

in the same simple manner as when detailed to the writer, on the steep bank of the

mighty Slave River, where boiling Rapids of the Drowned forever fill the river valley

with their clamor.

“MARTIN’S FEATHER”

Martin’s Feather was a mighty hunter who lived some years since in his tepee

on the banks of the beautiful Liard river at that point where the Nahanni bursts from

the mountains and joining its waters with that of the larger stream, unites with the

mighty Mackenzie. When Mr. Berens knew Martin’s Feather the latter was over sixty

years of age, but spry as a boy of sixteen, and of such toughness that even the stoical

Indians wondered at it. Added to his rightful name his native friends had bestowed

on him the added title of “The Crazy Man,” this referring largely to his mode of living,

but though perhaps a little off normal he was yet wise enough to insist that his s–––

247 From Weesakajack and Wendigo: Spirits of the Far Northland (Part One.) (1923, February 10). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 17. and Weesakajack and Wendigo: Spirits of the Far Northland (Part Two). (1923, February 17). John ‘Johnny’ Berens (1871 – 1954) joined the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1885–

1886 as a carpenter’s helper, then cook, in the Mackenzie River District. From 1900 to 1947 he worked

as a Sternwheeler pilot on the Wrigley 2 in the Mackenzie River. Wisakedjak’s name was spelled in

numerous phonetic ways in the article, all different from modern standard spellings. For ease of

reading, I have replaced these with the commonly used form ‘Wisakedjak’, derived from the Algonquin

name. 248 A derogatory adjective applied to Indigenous people. 249 An afterlife, very roughly analogous to the Christian Heaven, that formed part of the spiritual

beliefs of some of the Indigenous peoples of the Plains.

155

––250 did all the trading at the fur posts, and the twain, though oddly assorted, were

ideal partners.

When traveling, Martin’s Feather’s mode of retiring for the night was

simplicity itself, and no matter how far the mercury was below the zero line, after

supper and a smoke, he divested himself of his entire wardrobe, wrapped himself in

a single blanket, and then cast himself on a bed of spruce boughs under the nearest

tree. Thus bedded he claimed he was as comfortable as could be, and in the morning

he would arise, thaw out his shirt at the camp fire and promptly don this garment.

He died as a good hunter should on the trail; and was firm in the conviction that

Wisakedjak, the spirit of the north, would provide for each hunter a certain amount

of fur until the time came to head for the Happy Hunting Grounds.

H. B. MEAT HUNTERS

Many wonderful tales are told of the prowess of the Indians who supplied the

factors of the H. B. C. with moose and deer meat in the north some thirty years ago.

Three celebrated meat hunters resided at Fort Simpson, and one evening around the

big heater in the trade room the abilities of the various hunters were discussed. Each

after the Indian custom, boasted his own prowess, and as a test it was finally decided

that the hunter who could leave the fort, track a moose and while the animal slept,

make a mark on his hoofs with his hunting knife, was to be recognized as the peer of

hunters. Shortly after, the three, old Sincelle, old Pierre, and Athetze, accompanied

by a numerous retinue of tribesmen anxious to see the test, hitched their huskies,

and headed back to the moose country across the Mackenzie river.

After breaking camp in the morning Athetze tracked his moose to where he

was sleeping on a warm hillside in the noonday sun, and with the other natives

carefully observing from the shelter of the trees he crept up on the sleeping animal

and was seen to bend over his doubled–up legs, knife in hand. Shortly after he

retreated a dozen yards or more, and with the report of his muzzle loader, the moose

rose to its knees, made a frantic endeavor to rise, then fell back dead. “I have marked

and killed,” said Athetze, as the band from the timber line rushed up; and clearly

defined on the hoof of the dead animal could be seen a distinct cross.

Within several days Sincelle and Pierre each marked and killed their moose in

the same manner, but the other natives found that the three were gifted beyond their

powers, for as soon as they got almost within reach of the sleeping animal, it

blundered to its feet, and was soon lost in the undergrowth. “These three men are

mighty hunters – they are aided by Wisakedjak, the Spirit of the North,” said the

tribesmen as they returned empty handed to the fort.

Such was the skill of these three hunters, says Mr. Berens, that when

departing on a hunting expedition they would leave word at the fort that dog teams

were to meet them at a certain place at a certain time when loads of moose meat

would be ready, and the meat was always there. For killing a bull moose the hunters

were given $5 worth of trade goods, $2.50 for a cow and $1 for a yearling.

EARLY NAVIGATORS

250 An offensive term for an Indigenous woman.

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The steamer “Wrigley” built at Fort Smith, N. W. T., in 1886, was the first

powered vessel to navigate the mighty Mackenzie, and on this boat John Berens was

a cook for twelve years. The cook’s job did not call for any great proficiency in the

culinary art, says the northman, as the food supplies were practically limited to what

the country produced, and in the main consisted of dried meat, fish and caribou

tongues. Very little flour or bacon was to be had in those days; canned goods were

absolutely unknown and one small bun per day was each man’s flour allotment.

Matches were also unknown and the flint and tinder were the universal means of

obtaining fire.

There was a king’s ransom in fur brought out each season by the lonely vessel

plying to the Arctic; each post supplied its quota of thirty or forty bales and by the

time the vessel reached Fort Smith, where the cargo had to be taken over the Slave

river portage to smooth water on the other side, the little vessel was literally loaded

down with the richest peltries of the fur country.

Fur was cheap to purchase. Here are some of the prices which prevailed at the

time mentioned: Marten, $1; large beaver, $1.50; small beaver, $1; silver fox, $7.50,

red fox, 50c; bear, $2; cross fox, $3. Muskrat and mink the natives would not deign to

trap, one being that the “trade price” for muskrats was sixteen for fifty cents.

In contrast, a muzzle loading trade gun was retailed at $12.50, and Mr. Berens

states that there are men still alive who will testify that they have seen a gun stood

upright and the skins piled to the muzzle before it became the property of the

“fortunate” Indian251. Scalping knives were in great demand for which the native

traded three marten, while the same equivalent purchased a pound of tea. This latter

was served from chests with a pint pot, and Mr. Berens records that the trader’s

thumb invariably occupied a considerable space in the said pot.

Beyond simple hunting instruments, flour and tea, very little in the way of

other goods were taken into the country with the exception of shirts and trousers of

good quality, which retailed for $2.50 and $6.00 respectively. Long after the era when

the first steamer arrived the Indians clung to their extremely suitable buckskin

clothing, the men wearing a shirt and trousers of dressed skins, while the women

substituted the lower garment for a deerskin skirt gaily ornamented with beads.

INDIAN BATTLEGROUNDS

Though never hostile to the whites, Mr. Berens states that in the early days

the Indians fought much amongst themselves, some of the tribes travelling vast

distances to engage in battle with other nations, and the writer’s informant has dug

up many stone axes, stone knives, arrow head and spear points from the shores of

Lake Beuvet, on the Liard river.

Of all the tribes the Chipewyans and the Nahannis were the most warlike and

fought one another for many years after the coming of the white men. The Slave

nation situated on the shores of the Great Slave lake, between these two warlike

peoples were peaceable; they were conquered by the Chipewyans (hence their name)

and were thereafter not molested by either of the other nations passing through their

territory while en route to slay one another.

251 This is a myth. See the article on ‘Made Beaver as a Currency’ earlier in this chapter.

157

It was no un–common thing for the Chipewyans from the delta of the

Athabasca country to spend an entire year travelling in their birch bark canoes to the

country of the Nahanni, on the upper waters of the Liard, for the purpose of an

edifying scrap, while the Nahanni also were wont to sally down out of their mountain

fastnesses for the same purpose. Deadman’s Island, close to Fort Resolution, on the

Great Slave Lake is so named from one combat between the two tribes who happened

to meet here when both parties were on a voyage to the other’s country.

When they discovered each other’s proximity a pitched battle ensued which

resulted in many casualties on both sides. At this period, there were between 7,000

and 10,000 Indians resident in the Mackenzie river country, but they have been

steadily losing ground since the introduction of houses modelled after the pattern of

the whiteman. Due to the desire for warmth large numbers of the natives huddle

together in hermetically sealed log cabins, absolutely without ventilation, with the

result that consumption yearly takes a terrible toll from the aborigines of the far

north country.

RIVAL FUR TRADERS

After the original Lords of the North – the Hudson’s Bay Company – the first

free traders to enter into competition with the ancient firm in the Mackenzie river

country was Elmore & Armstrong who sent a York boat load of goods to Fort Good

Hope in the year 1886, while a venturesome man also opened up a post at Fort Rae,

on the east arm of the Great Slave lake at the same period. News of the arrival of the

free traders spread from tribe to tribe like wildfire, the consensus of opinion being

that these men had no right to penetrate the reserves of the H. B. Co., and that the

latter would speedily eject them.

Nothing happened, however to the great wonderment of the natives, and in

1898 yet more traders commenced to arrive in the persons of Hislop & Nagle who sent

down one scow load of trade goods to Fort Resolution and another to Fort Rae. The

following years saw this firm installed at Fort Norman and in 1899 G. Slater opened

at Good Hope, Boniface Lafferty252 commencing business at Fort Nelson in 1891.

Eleven years ago the Northern Trading company purchased Hislop & Nagle’s

interests, since which time this firm has branched out with posts all over the Lone

Land; the company’s flag is to be seen on river craft all through the north, while the

familiar bale markings of “N.T.C.” are to be found in tee–pee and canoe wherever the

native son adjourns.

With the firmly entrenched Hudson Bay company to compete with the free

traders’ lot was by no means a bed of roses in those early days and the credibility of

the Indians was freely used by the factors of the ancient company to impress the

Indians with the worthlessness of the free traders. The natives always addressed the

H.B. Co. men as “Master,” and generally what “Master” said went, and the Indians

were very curious to know what the free traders meant to do in the territory of the

Lords of the North. The news of the strange white men speedily spread; a fleet of

canoes shortly appeared off Fort Resolution and when the Indians landed the free

252 Mrs. Boniface Lafferty, a Métis woman, is known for having introduced the hair tufting technique

for decorating hand–made gloves around 1915.

158

traders promptly started out to impress them. The tobacco sold by the H. B. C. was

the usual black twist, but the new arrivals had brought in a better quality, of a lighter

color, samples of which were handed out all around to the great satisfaction of the

natives, who were then regaled to a feed of bannock and tea, following which the chief

made an impassioned speech in which the virtues of the new comers were extolled,

and when the canoes departed the natives were firm friends of the free traders.

After the advent of the steamer “Wrigley” the first boat brought in to ply on

the northern rivers was the small steamer “Eva.” She was built at Athabasca Landing

by some of the men en route to the Klondyke, wrecked in the Grand Rapids of the

Athabasca in 1898, rebuilt and run through the white water by Louis Sholl and finally

put into commission by Hislop & Nagle to serve their north posts from Fort Smith.

BEAVER COMBUSTION

Close to Fort Norman, a seam of coal reaches down to the river; it has been

burning since the time Mackenzie’s canoe first cleaved the northland waters, and will

possibly burn for centuries still. It is quite visible from the decks of the river steamers,

and day and night a thin wisp of smoke curls upward; white traders of the hinterland

say that this seam extends right to the Arctic coast from the Mackenzie river, and

that further signs of the smouldering coal may be seen on the Great Slave lake. Who

first lit this underground conflagration with his tinder stick no one knows, but the

native stoutly affirms that Wisakedjak was responsible. Here is the story:

Two beavers, one large and one small were travelling down the Mackenzie

river, followed by Wisakedjak, who was extremely hungry. At what is now known as

Fort Norman the spirit put on a sprint, caught up with the smaller beaver and

prepared for a meal. He then made a fire on the bank of the river and held the beaver

over the blaze to roast. The beaver was of a great fatness: the grease from the animal

caught fire and the whole was consumed. Much chagrinned at losing his meal

Wisakedjak with suitable incantations pronounced “This fire shall burn until the end

of the world.” It is burning, and the Indians claim that it will continue to do so, Who

knows?

BEAVER ROCK

On the Carcajou river, below Fort Norman a large rock stands out from the

surrounding scenery, its shape much resembles that of a beaver. This was also due to

Wisakedjak’s agency, who having despatched the first beaver, followed the larger

animal down the river, only to discover that his quarry was himself hunting along

the Carcajou. Seeing Wisakedjak approaching, the beaver being alarmed clambered

up the rock at the mouth of the river, but the spirit disliking the climb formulated a

plan to “fix” Mr. Beaver without trouble to himself, so at long distance he addressed

the quarry saying, “You stay there until the end of the world” – and there he is still.

Then tiring of his efforts Wisakedjak went down stream a few hundred miles

and reaching the rock wall of the Ramparts, through which the mighty Mackenzie

rushes, he casually placed his head on one wall of rock and his feet on the other,

across the river, the marks of his couch still being plainly visible according to the

Indians. Next Wisakedjak took a trip to the Arctic coast, presumably to see how the

Eskimos were getting on, following which he returned north and proceeded up the

159

Liard river, where he indulged in another beaver hunt on the south Nahanni river,

tearing open the Nahanni Butte mountain, in order to get at his quarry, which had

buried itself in the bowels of the hill. From here he disappeared in the flesh, but the

Indians well know that he is still with them, and in many a tee–pee the conversation

at times is hushed as the wise men scent an impending visit of the spirit and the

awe–struck natives listen for his sleigh bells which though they never come are

stoutly believed in.

SUPERSTITIONS VARIOUS

Some years ago when trading for the H. B. Co. at Fort Liard, Mr. Berens was

standing at the post door watching the dog teams of the first arrivals coming down

the river, who once they had performed the usual hand shaking ceremony asked if

the trader had seen the people who arrived before them. Assured that they were the

first to come in for the season, the Indians stated that they had heard the sound of

many sleigh bells, and not being satisfied a thorough search was made of the

neighboring country which revealed no sign of other travellers but themselves. Round

the camp fires that night the matter was thoroughly discussed, it being finally settled

to their satisfaction by the tribal medicine man who announced “The traveller was

Wisakedjak; he must go through the country to let the people know he is in the world.”

GOOD MEDICINE

The Indians of the north were, and are still strong believers in “medicine;” an

insane person ca be cured by it, while “bad medicine” directed at a hunter will decide

the fate of his fur catch, and even in this enlightened age, if a native trapper is of the

opinion that someone has put “bad medicine” on him he would promptly give up his

trapping operations and wait for the end. The Cree Indians of the prairies are

supposed to be “very strong men,” and any of the northern natives fortunate to

possess Cree “medicine” are regarded in the light of supermen. What the “medicine”

consists of no one knows; it comes in the shape of colorless liquids in small bottles, in

addition to fragments of colored rags, herbs and leaves, and is guaranteed by the

manufacturers to be efficacious for all the ills of the flesh. In the old days the fur

brigades from the Mackenzie and the Athabasca met the other brigades from the

Hudson’s bay at La Loche portage, from which point both again turned back to their

respective countries, but before parting the simple natives of the far north had traded

all their earthly possessions to the Crees from the south country for useless geegak,

which though absolutely worthless, transformed the lucky owners into “very strong

men” once they had reached their home tee–pees on the Mackenzie.

COLD WATER CURE

Stomach ache is a prevalent trouble amongst the Indians, the reason being

that after a period of semi–starvation, the killing of a moose or caribou is a signal for

a feast which ceases only when the meat has disappeared. This is easily cured,

however, the method being to have the tribe foregather around the sufferer, who then

proceed to sing the evil of the stomach away. Should this method prove unavailing,

the medicine man takes a hand, and holding a cup of water he proceeds to make a

long speech, finally blowing on the water, with the comforting assurance that “Little

Brother the Great Spirit will make you well again in a few days.”

160

In the same manner evil is blown from a wound, while it is recorded that during

the measles epidemic at Fort Simpson, “Old Jock” the medicine man, was busy for

over two weeks going from camp to camp, curing the natives by singing for them. For

the period mentioned the old man was busy day and night, most of the patients

passing out of this vale of tears, but no statistics are available as to whether the

measles or the singing were responsible. Those who did recover are still firm in the

belief, however that this was accomplished through the agency of the old man’s

“medicine.”

“OLD JOCK’S” DEMISE

Strange though it may seem even medicine men themselves must die, and one

day the call came to “Old Jock” at Fort Simpson. Unable to help himself the old man

recognized that he was passing on, and the priest was sent for to administer the last

rites of the church, lifting the blankets off the old man’s face he asked “Do you know

me?” to which there was no reply. “He has joined his fathers” said the cleric, replacing

the blanket over the dead man’s face and departing.

Old Jock’s camp consisted of nothing more than a fire and the canopy of heaven

for a covering; the month was September and the weather was chilly. The old man’s

place of residence was close to the building occupied by Mr. Berens and his wife and

during the night they were not much surprised to hear faint singing from the

direction of the “corpse.” “He will be dead soon” said the trader, who at the break of

day went through the heavy ground frost to the old man’s habitation to find the corpse

sitting up and calmly puffing at his pipe, despite the fact that he had not touched food

for a week, had been without water three days and was more or less in a condition of

coma. “You have come to life again?” said the trader. “Yes,” replied the old man simply

“my father was dead for three days and revived again. I feel fine and should like some

fish;” This was provided, and having tucked away three pounds of raw trout the old

man announced that he would go hunting, and the next thing Mr. Berens saw was

the ancient one, calmly paddling his birchbark up against the current of the

Mackenzie. It was learned later that the old rogue had deliberately staged this

display for the edification of the natives, who ever after regarded his medicine as

belonging to an “XXX” species and as a consequence the whole settlement went in

fear of him, and for the remainder of his days he lived comfortably on the “presents”

of the tribe.

THE MAP MAKER

“Old Jock’s” father was a member of the Slave tribe who migrated to the Liard

river in the early days. In common with most of the Indians he could neither read nor

write, which adds point to the following story. It was the custom of the mountain

Indians at that time to care for their dead by placing them on platforms built in the

trees, and following the old man’s demise he was put on a rookery of this description,

but created a considerable commotion in the camp by later coming to life after a lapse

of three days.

Returning to earth he entered his tee–pee to the no small astonishment of the

family circle, but vouching no information save that he had come to life, demanded a

mooseskin parchment from one of the women and thereafter disappeared into the

161

bush daily where by the use of black and red pigments gleaned from the rocks, he

constructed an elaborate map of the roads to the Indian Heaven and hell – the picture

emphasizing the fact that the majority were taking the broad trail.

With his tribe gathered around wonderingly he explained that by use of the

map he had got to “Gold’s place,” but that the Deity had said “Your time is not yet –

go back.” Having imparted this information He stated that the mapmaker would

remain on the globe a few years and that his purpose should be to teach his people to

be good.

At this time the map drawer was a young man, he lived to a ripe old age, and

was naturally regarded by some of the natives as being a close associate of

Wisakedjak. The strange part of the whole thing is that prior to his “death” he was

totally uneducated, while the pictures on the map were beautifully drawn. It is still

kept in the archives of one of the Mackenzie river posts, but the story of its origin is

known to few but the Indians, who still talk over the tee–pee fires of “Old Jock” and

his father, quite expecting that they may once again take it into their heads to visit

the country of their birth from the realms beyond.

31. A Unique Family Gathering (1906)253

A year or so ago there appeared an advertisement in an Inverness newspaper

and an Edinburgh journal calling upon the heirs of a certain Donald Mc–––––254 of a

special parish in the Highlands to communicate with a firm of solicitors in Scotland

and they would hear something to their advantage.

As much by accident as by anything else a Winnipeg business man who was,

as was his father for two generations, a native of Manitoba, saw this advertisement,

and knowing almost all the native white families of the Red River, called somewhat

in the spirit of jest the attention of a fellow business man in Winnipeg to it.

“I believe that was the parish my great grandfather255 did come from,” was the

somewhat surprising answer. “I shall go down to the old homestead some of these

days and look up the old family papers.”

He did, and after over a year’s correspondence, advertisement and

investigation the affair culminated in one of the most unique family gatherings that

has ever been reported. […]

The reports of the inheritance, in the way of human nature, had been greatly

exaggerated, so inquiry as to possible heirs was facilitated and with Celtic and Indian

persistency, mental record of kindship extending over the years had been loosely

preserved.

253 From Shaw, C. L. (1909, January 16). A Unique Family Gathering. The Saturday News, p. 6. Written by Charles Lewis Shaw (1863 – 1911). 254 A stain in my source covers most of this name. It may be legible in other copies. 255 A “wayward young son, who in the recklessness of youth had taken service of the Hudson’s Bay

Company nearly a century ago, and at middle age had settled down in one of the river parishes of the

Red River.” –C.L. Shaw

162

When the gathering for the final settlement took place, among the heirs was a

white–faced, frock–coated Presbyterian minister, a long–haired Sioux Indian from a

Dakota reserve, a swampy Indian h–––––, a decorous clerkly looking Winnipeg

business man, a Prince Albert fur trader, an Edmonton rancher, a French h–––––

(the son of one of Riel’s lieutenants in the Red River rebellion), a doctor of medicine

from an Eastern city, a Western real estate dealer, two Indians of St. Peter’s Reserve,

a Hudson’s Bay packet runner, several ladies who might be called society leaders,

and others. Some were pure white, without the slightest drop of Indian blood in their

veins, while others were almost entirely of Indian blood.

The assets of the estate when divided, amounted to a comparative trifle to each

individual, and there were indications pending the settlement that questions might

be asked regarding the validity of Indian marriages, etc., until it was remarked by

the Winnipeg lawyer that a collateral branch of the family in Scotland, an hereditary

enemy of the clan, would in case of dispute among the heirs in this country, press its

claims vigorously and – a friendly settlement followed. The parson returned to his

manse, the doctor to his laboratory, the rancher to his farm, the Indians to the trails

of the yet lone land of the north to tell, it may be, of the young scapegrace Highlander

that enlisted in the Hudson’s Bay Company nearly a hundred years ago.

32. Number Sixteen (1894)256

A few evenings ago the writer and several friends were cozily nestled around

the fire. One of the company was a medical man who had spent twelve years or so in

the Canadian Northwest territories. Outside, the atmosphere was chilly, and the

indications favored colder weather.

“If you could be transported from St. John to the prairies on such a day as we

had to–day,” remarked the doctor, “and were ignorant of the changes that a few hours

bring in that climate, two surprises would greet you. To–day you would observe dotted

in countless numbers over the vast stretches of prairie sluices or small ponds, whose

placid waters would remind you of so many mirrors set in rustic frames.

“To–morrow morning, as you again looked over the prairies, the whole face of

the country would seem to be changed. Protruding from every sluice you would see

cones made of grass, &c. These are the winter houses of the muskrat – reared,

finished, and occupied in a single night; as if these fragrant little creatures possessed

the power of the Wizard Pancrates.

“That night the sluices would be sure to freeze, and the muskrats would live in

peace until the spring, when the Indians make their rounds, plunge a spear down

through the cones and thus capture numbers of the occupants. The rats are in prime

order in the spring after their long rest. The flesh is eaten and the skins are taken

care of by the s–––––s.

“Those skins, as well as all others, are a kind of legal tender, and it’s a common

occurrence for the Indian to visit a store, make his purchase, take a bundle of rat–

skins from under his arm, and count them out as five–cent pieces.

256 From NUMBER SIXTEEN. (1894, February 22). Qu’Appelle Progress, p. 2.

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“The Indian Department displays much energy to suppress small–pox, which

often creates great havoc among the natives of the plains. Doctors are sent out

regularly to vaccinate the Indians. The Doctor makes his rounds with the agent who

pays the bounties. A large tent is pitched, and the tribe is requested to appear. The

stipulation is that all must be vaccinated before receiving the money.

“The Indians are distinguished by numbers as well as names, and, as they are

paid so much per head, every member of a family must be produced and pass through

the agent’s tent. Before being paid, those requiring it are vaccinated.

“One day,” said the doctor, “I was vaccinating a tribe of Crees, when a woman

approached with a couple of children. She had a rich, melodious voice, with a Scotch

accent. When she spoke, I stopped for a moment and told her to go into the next tent,

and I would attend to her in a few moments. I saw she was not a s–––––, and thought

she was the wife of a Hudson’s Bay Company employee who wanted to get vaccinated

at the expense of the Government.

“While I was speaking, the clerk shouted out: ‘No. 16.’ And the woman said in

a low voice: ‘I am No. 16.’ She bared her arm, and both she and the children were

attended to. She passed on, received her bounty, and then out among the herd of

Indians.

“The face and voice of that woman haunted me the rest of the day while I kept

scratching the arms of braves, s–––––s, and papooses.

“At last the day’s work was over and instruments laid aside. After supper, I set

about to satisfy my curiosity as to the history of No. 16. A few inquiries enabled me

to locate the shack where she put up, and thither I bent my way.

“The shack, I may say, is a small hut, built of clay or mud. A fire can be made

in the shack. The place is so constructed that the s––––– stands the sticks of wood on

their ends so that the fire is fed as if from a self–feeder. No. 16 related to me how and

why she occupied the shack. It was rather a romantic story, but yet one full of sadness

from beginning to end.

“’My father,’ said No. 16, in a voice full of pathos, ‘is a Scotchman257, and is

factor of Fort Pelley, belonging to the Hudson’s Bay Company. Before the Northwest

territories were taken over he ruled the country for hundreds of miles around. He was

a magistrate, too, and of course administered the law.

“When No. 16 reached a certain age she was sent to Scotland in one of the

company’s ships, which leave for Fort Nelson a couple of times each year. This was

no easy trip in those days. For hundreds of miles she had to cross prairies and then

by canoe and other conveyances the great rivers were traversed until Hudson’s Bay

was reached, where embarkation took place. It took some months to do this.

“When Scotland was reached she entered a university and remained there

until she graduated. These were pleasant days for the young Western girl. She

became acquainted with an intelligent Scotchman, and the attachment became so

strong on both sides that before she left the land of heather for the wilds of Canada,

they had plighted vows.

257 Probably Robert Campbell (1808 – 1859), the Scottish–born Chief Factor for the Swan River district

from 1867 to 1870. He made his base at Fort Pelly.

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“One of the company’s ships bore her away from her pleasant associations in

Scotland to the higher latitudes of Davis Straits and the Hudson’s Bay, where the

iceberg familiar in August, there again to rough it over fords and stretches of swamps,

up vast water courses, and along bewildering trails, in company with the trappers

and porters of the company for months, until Fort Pelley was again reached.

“The journey was made in safety. Of course it was understood that her young

Scotch lover would leave the land of cakes and follow her to the Northwest, where she

pictured to herself the kind reception he would receive from her parents, and where

the battle of life would be commenced in the married state. But this dream was never

to be realized. Aye, the golden wish was to be shattered before it was nearly

completed.

“After due time the father was informed of her attachment to the young man

in Scotland, to her intention to marry him, and how he was coming out for that

purpose. The father became angry and would not consent. He already had a husband

chosen for her. The person was an employee of the company, and was stationed at

Fort Garry.

“Here was an obstacle that she did not count upon. She debated the subject

with her father, and finally asserted her prerogative of accepting as her husband the

man she had chosen, while the father was just as determined that she should marry

the man he had chosen.

“Thus matters stood for a long time. It was impossible for her to let the young

man in Scotland know how matters were. In the mean time, however, he had

determined to reach the Northwest.

“He came out to Chicago, and from there made his way to Fort Garry, where

he joined a party who were going to Fort Pelley. The journey between the two forts –

some 300 or 400 miles – was made, but his reception at Fort Pelley was a cold one.

The father would not allow him to see his daughter. He was ordered to leave the

country at once. This order was supreme, and had to be obeyed.

“He could not reside in the country an hour without the factor’s knowledge.

Even if he could, there was no means for a young man like him to gain a livelihood.

The forts held all the necessaries of life, and none could be purchased elsewhere.

Then, again, there was the danger of being killed by straggling bands of Indians.

“With reluctance, he turned his back to Fort Pelley and all it contained that

was dear to him. He retraced his steps as best he could and reached the border of the

United States, where all trace of him was lost forever, so far as No. 16 was concerned.

“By some means she learned that her trans atlantic lover had been in the

country, the reception he had received, and how he had been banished by her father.

This, of course, caused her a good deal of grief, and consequently widened the breech

between herself and father.

“At this time Fort Pelley contained a large number of employees belonging to

the Hudson’s Bay Company, and the factor lived like a baron of feudal times. Meals

were served in a large hall, while butlers attended to the ordinary duties.

“One morning, after the factor and his retinue had taken their places at the

breakfast table, it was noticed that the daughter’s chair was vacant. The mother was

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asked the reason, and she replied that the girl was ill and she was unable to leave

her room.

“The father, suspecting that she had heard of his actions toward the young

Scotchman, and that she was feigning sickness, determined to show her he was not

to be trifled with. The mother was requested to tell her to come down, and the

daughter obeyed the summons.

“When she entered the hall it was quite evident that she had recently been

weeping. The father, letting his passion get the better of decorum, up braided his

daughter before the employees, using the most harsh language toward the young

Scotchman.

“For a time the daughter listened to him meekly, but the climax was reached

where patience ceased to be a virtue. She arose, and, tossing back her loose hair, stood

before him in defiance. Looking straight at her father, she said with much bitterness

and determination: ‘Before forty–eight hours I will disgrace you.’ With that she

rushed from the dining hall. The meal proceeded, and afterward the employees went

about their usual vocations.

“The father thought the affair of the morning would soon quiet down as far as

his daughter was concerned, and eventually she would come around to his way of

thinking. But he was mistaken.

“The young woman left the fort. It was no use for her to try to leave the country,

for she was too far away from civilization, and she also knew that none of the

employees dare assist her. She therefore made her way to a tribe of Cree Indians. It

did not take her long to make up her mind what to do. It was a terrible sacrifice, but

she was determined to thwart her father’s plans, and in order to do this she became

the ‘pale–faced s–––––’ of a full–blooded Cree.

“Although, with her husband, she often encamped near the fort, her father

never noticed her afterward. Her mother used to send her articles from the fort, but

that was the only intercourse she had with her parents. In order to distinguish her

husband and family she had them assume the name of McLeod.

“The woman’s story affected me very much,” said the speaker, “and I was glad

when my work was over, but the sacrifice No. 16 made has never left my memory.”

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III. The Treaties, and After

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Starvation, the End of the Buffalo, and Sitting Bull Sitting Bull was a Lakota Sioux Chief who led a resistance against the United States government and its system of Indian reservations. In 1876, this culminated in the battle of Little Big Horn. General Custer, leading the U.S. 7th Cavalry Division against Sitting Bull’s Cheyenne and Lakota allies, died. Additional soldiers were sent, and Sitting Bull and his followers were forced to cross the border into Canada in 1877. They would stay in the Dominion for four years, until hunger forced them

back into the United States. Sitting Bull’s forces surrendered in 1881258.

1. Conditions Near Battleford (1879)259

The Black Feet260 and Sacs261, who it was supposed had gone home, have

returned to Battleford262, being unable to cross the Saskatchewan, owing to high

water. The condition of these Indians is terrible in the extreme; the rations of tea and

flour is but one remove from starvation, accustomed as they are to animal food. The

Indians are quite willing to work, and a farm has been opened up, on which a number

has been engaged. The Indians are living partially on wild turnips263 and wild

rhubarb264, without which their sufferings would be intensified. Meat is not to be had,

nor is any ordered by telegraph, the lines being down. About 1,000 Indians are at

Battleford, and while everything is pacific now, the Herald thinks serious

258 In broad outline, the resistance of Chief Mistahimaskwa (Big Bear) of the Plains Cree is very

similar. The Dominion negotiated and signed Treaty 6 in 1876, near Mistahimaskwa’s home, while he

was away. On his return, Big Bear refused to sign the treaty and began a resistance against the

Canadian government’s reserve policies. In 1879 he and his allies crossed the border into Montana,

where they stayed for three years until hunger forced them back into Canada. Mistahimaskwa signed

Treaty 6 in December of 1882. An additional clause was added to the treaty making his surrender

explicit, total and permanent: “NOW THIS INSTRUMENT WITNESSETH, that the said "Big Bear,"

for himself and on behalf of the Band which he represents, does transfer, surrender and relinquish to

Her Majesty the Queen, Her heirs and successors, to and for the use of Her Government of the

Dominion of Canada, all his right, title and interest whatsoever, which he has held or enjoyed, of, in

and to the territory described and fully set out in the said treaty; also all his right, title and interest

whatsoever to all other lands wherever situated, whether within the limits of any other treaty

heretofore made or hereafter to be made with Indians, or elsewhere in Her Majesty's territories. To

have and to hold the same unto and for the use of Her Majesty the Queen, Her heirs and successors

forever.” Duhamel, R. (1964). Copy of Treaty No. 6 between Her Majesty the Queen and the Plain and

Wood Cree Indians and other Tribes of Indians at Fort Carlton, Fort Pitt and Battle River with

Adhesions. Ottawa: Queen’s Printer and Controller of Stationary. 259 From SUFFERING INDIANS. (1879, July 24). The Montreal Daily Witness, p. 2 260 The Blackfoot Confederacy (Niitsitapi) is a group of four Indigenous bands: the Siksika, Kainai,

Apa’tosee and Amskapi Piikani. 261 The French name for the oθaakiiwaki (‘yellow earth’), an Algonquin–speaking Indigenous nation

from the shores of Lake Michigan. 262 Battleford, Saskatchewan, was the capital of the Northwest Territories from 1877 to 1883. Its

importance waned and never recovered when the Canadian Pacific Railway passed it by. 263 Not the turnip found in supermarkets. This is the prairie turnip (Psoralea esculenta). 264 Not the rhubarb commonly used in pies. This is probably Tanner’s Dock (Rumex hymenosepalus), so called because of its use as a source of tannin for leather tanning.

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complications may ensue, owing to the rumors of Sitting Bull’s intentions on the

boundary.

2. The Indians in Manitoba (1879)265

Great anxiety is everywhere felt regarding the Indians. It was reported some

time ago that vast herds of buffalo were moving north, but this was a mistake. The

buffalo was never so scarce. The best hunters have not thought it worth while to go

on the chase this season, and the Indians are suffering terribly, with the prospect of

utter starvation during the winter. Pemmican266, formerly sold at the Hudson Bay

posts for five cents a pound, is now quoted at twenty–five cents. At the Hudson Bay

stores at Fort Carleton267 where in years past pemmican was often thrown away,

being unsalable, not a single pound has been brought in this season, and even what

is known as berry pemmican cannot be procured. Pure pemmican is made of dried

buffalo meat pounded fine and boiled with the fat of the animal, the marrow from the

bones being used to flavor it. Berry pemmican is the pounded meat mixed with wild

cherries or blueberries, and in old times was regarded as food only fit for s––––s268

and children. Mr. Dewdney269, Chief Indian Commissioner of the North–West, has

ordered vast quantities of provisions from the Hudson Bay posts and private traders,

but the Indians, when impeded by bulky provision trains, cannot keep up with the

buffalo herds and insist on being supplied with pemmican.

The Canadian tribes, while suffering quite as severely as Sitting Bull’s people,

have thus far behaved well and are trying to kill enough cabri270 and other small

game to enable them to tide over the winter. The missionaries say that the distress

prevails throughout the territories as far west as the Rocky Mountains and

northward to the Athabasca district. The buffalo are all south of the boundary–line

and the Indians from the Canadian side have been prohibited from crossing in

pursuit. At Fort Carleton, Vital Cayotte271, a h–––––272 hunter of great note, reported

to Colonel Smith’s party that in August one hundred tents of h––––– hunters and

fifty tents of Sitting Bull’s Sioux crossed the line at the Wood Mountain in chase of a

herd which they overtook one hundred miles south of the boundary. There they were

265 From THE INDIANS IN MANITOBA. (1879, November 11). 266 Pemmican fueled the expansion of the fur trade and has an important history in Manitoba. At the

height of the fur trade, Métis hunters near Red River became famous for hunting buffalo on horseback

and selling the resulting pemmican to the North West Company. 267 A trading post about halfway between Saskatoon and Prince Albert. It was built in 1795 and burned

down in 1885 during a conflict between the Mounted Police and Métis forces. 268 The dashes mask an extremely offensive, racist and misogynist term for Indigenous women. 269 Edgar Dewdney (1835 – 1916). He was also Lieutenant–Governor of British Columbia from 1892 to

1897. 270 French for ‘young goat’. 271 Possibly the Cayotte mentioned in the following report from 1884: “At the leanings of Battle River,

"Cayotte," Bobtail's son, has a good field of barley and potatoes.” Dominion of Canada. (1885).

Dominion of Canada Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the Year Ended 31st December, 1884. Ottawa: MacLean, Roger & Co. 272 An offensive term for people of mixed heritage, such as the Métis.

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met by a large body of American troops and Crow273 Indians, taken prisoners and

escorted back across the line. Hitherto it has been the custom of the Canadian and

American hunters to hunt on both sides of the boundary indiscriminately, but owing

to the scarcity of buffalo the Americans, so Cayotte says, are no longer willing to allow

Canadians into their range.

Sitting Bull’s people are moving northward in large numbers, levying

blackmail on the Hudson Bay posts and white settlers on the line of march. They are

making for Prince Albert, where there is a settlement of the Minnesota Sioux. On the

10th October Colonel Smith’s party counted seventy tepis274 of American Sioux

between Stobart and Prince Albert, and scores of warriors were coming up on the

same trail.

At a public meeting to consider the means of defence, held at Prince Albert on

October 5, Bishop McLean275, the Anglican Bishop of the Saskatchewan Diocese, said

he feared that there would be bad work before the winter was over, and urged the

settlers to be prepared for the worst. Another speaker said he had reason to believe

that at least 1,500 of the American Sioux were on the march for the settlement. They

are well horsed and armed with Winchester rifles276. On Friday, the 3rd of October,

late in the afternoon, seventy of them, armed to the teeth and with their war paint

on, rode into Prince Albert and hailed opposite Charles Mair’s277 store, where they

dismounted and performed the begging dance278. The leader then entered the store

and demanded tobacco and provisions, which Mair handed over. They told him they

would not make another levy on him until they had raided the Hudson Bay stores in

the neighborhood. The settlers in the outlying districts are alarmed, many of them

having been plundered of their last mouthful by these wandering bands. The

Canadian Indians around Prince Albert279 are chiefly engaged in agriculture, and are

remarkably quiet and well–behaved, but they declare they will fight if Sitting Bull’s

273 The Apsáalooke (Crow) Nation’s modern territory is in Montana. Earlier, they were located in Ohio

south of Lake Winnipeg. They migrated west as a result of pressure from Cree and Assiniboine

migrations in the later years of the fur trade. 274 From the Lakota Sioux word thípi (dwelling place). A cone–shaped tent typical of Indigenous people

of the Plains. 275 John McLean (1828 – 1886) was the first Anglican Bishop of Saskatchewan. 276 The 1873 Winchester rifle, an early American repeating rifle, was very popular and is still known

in the United States as ‘The Gun that Won the West’. 277 Charles Mair (1838 – 1927). Poet, journalist and vocal opponent of Louis Riel. His best–known work

is Tecumseh, a drama in verse about the War of 1812. 278 “One of the most curious of all Indian dances, is called the “begging dance.” It is also least common,

for it requires the active participation of two tribes, which have become friendly after a period of

hostility. […] It is emphatically a dance of reconciliation. […] Every [one] embraced by a dancer is

required by Indian custom to make him a present […] A “begging dance” is almost as grave a calamity

to an Indian tribe as the raid of a hostile band. No one is killed or wounded, it is true, but the amount

of plunder carried off is such as to incommode, if not impoverish, the unfortunates subject to it.” Dodge,

Richard I. (1883). Our Wild Indians: Thirty–Three Years’ Personal Experience Among the R–– men of the Great West. Hartford, Conn: A.D. Worthington and Company. 279 Today, the third–largest city in Saskatchewan. At the time it was written, it would have qualified

as a village or settlement at best. Prince Albert was designated a town in 1885, and incorporated as a

city in 1904.

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men attempt to rob them. Captain Young280, formerly of the Fiftieth Regiment of the

line, and an officer who distinguished himself greatly during the Maori war281 in New

Zealand, has been placed in charge of the volunteer companies at Prince Albert, and

recruiting is going on with great spirit, his object being to form a strong battalion,

half infantry and half mounted rifles in that district. Beardy282, chief of the Cree

Indians in the Saskatchewan region, has been giving the authorities trouble, even

going so far as to defy Lieutenant Governor Laird283 and insult the Commissioners

sent to treat with him. He is friendly to the American Sioux, and has promised to help

them if they come into conflict with the white settlers. He is at the head of nearly one

thousand warriors and is reputed to be a brave and skillful fighter. While Colonel

Smith’s party was at Fort Carleton Beardy stole a horse from the Hudson Bay post.

The factor lodged an information against him, and Stipendiary Magistrate284

Richardson285 issued a warrant for his arrest, and a squad of mounted police had gone

out in search of him. Cases of cannibalism among Canadian tribes have been reported

at Qu’Appelle, Edmonton and the Touchwood Hills. To the north, in the Athabasca

country, the distress is said to be frightful in the extreme. Several Hudson Bay posts

have been raided, but on their wants being supplied the savages apologized saying

that nothing but hunger and the desire to save their s––––s and children from dying

of starvation could induce them to break the law.

In the Saskatchewan district the instructors in agriculture appointed by the

Dominion Government had arrived286, but it was too late in the season for them to

begin operations. The Indians have taken the seed wheat and seed potatoes supplied

by the Department of the Interior, as well as the oxen. Flour at $10 per 100 pounds

280 Captain George Holmes Young (1851 – 1935). Not to be confused with his father, Rev. George

Young, who in 1897 published the now–famous Manitoba Memories: Leaves from my Life in the Prairies Province. 1868 – 1884. 281 Now called the New Zealand wars, these were a series of conflicts between the British Empire and

the Māori Indigenous people that lasted from 1845 to 1872. It ended with the defeat of the Māori, the

New Zealand Settlement Act (1863) and the confiscation of millions of acres of Māori land. 282 Kamiscowesit, Chief of the Willow Cree until his death in 1889. 283 David Laird (1833 – 1914), Lieutenand Governor of the North–West Territories from 1876 to 1881. 284 A British lawyer who is paid a salary by the government (as opposed to being paid by his clients). 285 Hugh Richardson (1826 – 1913) 286 This was a new program. Though recommended by Indian Agent M. G. Dickieson as early as 1975,

it was not until the famines of 1878–79 that the Dominion Government was willing to spend money

on instructor salaries. “Unfortunately many of those assigned to the formidable task were ill suited

and unprepared. […] They were unfamiliar with conditions of life in the West and knew nothing of the

Indians, their languages, customs, or recent history. […] A rationale forwarded for not choosing local

people, familiar with the Indians and their territory, was that “strangers” were likely to carry out their

duties better than local people, as they would not have their favourites and would treat all fairly and

alike.” Carter, S. (1990). Lost Harvests: Prairie Indian Reserve Farmers and Government Policy. Canada: McGill–Queen’s University Press.

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and salted cabri meat fetches thirty cents a pound. The s––––s and papooses287 are

subsisting almost entirely on wild cherries288, blue berries and sweet roots289.

3. Starvation and Cattle Ranching in Alberta (1912)290

In 1874 the Northwest Mounted Police arrived in this country. On arriving at

the Cypress Hills, and from thence west, they were continually passing large herds

of buffalo. So numerous were these animals that they had much difficulty, especially

in the vicinity of water, to obtain grass for horses. To the inexperienced eye this grass

did not appear to possess much value, but on viewing the condition of the buffalo they

killed for food they had to alter their opinion.

While the bulk of the buffalo migrated south in the fall and early winter, many

remained and their condition in the spring proved that the grass was able to retain

its nutriment during the winter. This led them to believe that cattle might succeed

under the same circumstances, a belief that was strengthened by the fact that in

Montana, a similar country, ranching had made some progress, consequently some of

the first time–expired men of the police who had the means purchased small herds of

cattle in Montana and drove them into this country.

POLICE WERE PIONEER RANCHMEN

Their success for the first couple of years proved that this was an excellent

stock country, but they quickly learned that though cattle could winter on the prairie

grass, it did not pay for several reasons to depend entirely on it. They found the cattle,

if not occasionally fed during the winter, would wander off, and it paid to have the

cows close at home especially in the spring, during the calving time, so that they could

be placed under rough shelter during the spring storms. Neglect of this might mean

some years the loss of over fifty per cent of the calve drop, as well as a serious loss in

the cows also.

With this end in view, the early ranchers fenced and plowed the land they

required to grow feed, almost entirely oats. Some threshed and disposed of the grain

to the police and freighters, finding that straw alone was sufficient to winter stock.

The early rancher was essentially a mixed farmer, and those engaged in that

business, no matter how small their start, quickly achieved success and were looking

forward to become prosperous. Most of the police were saving their pay, intending to

engage in the business when their time expired. Some young men were induced to

come out from Ireland. They were more than pleased with their success. Some of them

visited that country and spread the good news, as they had perfect faith in the future

of this country.

INDIANS FACE STARVATION

287 Indigenous children. From the Algonquian word ‘papoos’, which means ‘child’. 288 Possibly the chokecherry (Prunus virginiana), a bitter edible berry that grows wild on the Plains. 289 These probably included Bugleweed (Lycopus spp.), two varieties of which grow wild in Saskatchewan. Its edible roots are sweet and can be steamed, boiled or dried. 290 From A Brief History of Ranching in Southern Alberta. (1912, November 21). The Gleichen Call, p. 1.

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The first setback came in 1879. Up to that period, there were sufficient buffalo

to provide the Indians with what meat they required, but there had been such

immense slaughtering of buffalo a few years previous for their hides in that year,

buffalo may be said to have disappeared from Canada. This meant absolute

starvation for the Indians. During the summer of that year they tried to exist on

gophers and badgers and such roots and berries as they could find, and for a time did

not molest the white man’s cattle, being buoyed by the hope held out to them by Mr.

Dewdney291, the Indian commissioner, that the government was taking steps to

provide food for them. They were also no doubt influenced by fear of the police, for

whom they had the greatest respect. But hunger at last drove them to killing cattle –

few at first. Complaints would be made to the police but they were helpless. They had

no means of detecting the culprits, and even if they had, it might have been unwise

to have taken any action, as there were several thousand Indians in the country, well

armed, and if driven to desperation the result might have been disastrous.

INDIANS SLAUGHTER CATTLE

As the Indians found they could kill cattle with impunity, their awe of the

police began to decrease and their depredations correspondingly increased. This

naturally alarmed the settlers, and a number of them interviewed Mr. Dewdney and

requested him to purchase sufficient of their cattle to feed the Indians until the

promised supplies arrived. This he refused to do, and his refusal probably changed

the history of Southern Alberta. The ranchers collected what cattle they had left, and

those who found they had sufficient to justify starting in another country drove them

to Montana and all, with the exception of Mr. Monsell, became permanent residents

of that country. On counting the cattle it was found that the Indians had killed over

fifty per cent in six weeks. This ended the first attempt to settle Southern Alberta,

and for at least two years no further effort was made.

4. The Buffalo are Near Extinction (1882)292

At the present time a few scattered bands in the neighborhood of Wood

mountains are all that remain of the vast herds of these wild cattle which once

covered the prairies from the Saskatchewan to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Red

and Mississippi rivers to the Rocky mountains. It is as hard to realize now that the

buffalo were once so plentiful as it would have been twenty years ago to believe that

in such a comparatively short space of time they would be almost extinct. Of course,

they were not equally numerous over the whole of this great territory. They seemed

to go on in vast herds, so that while millions of them might be in one particular

district, none would be found in others. As the herds were so large they were obliged

to keep moving continually, for if they stayed any length of time in one place the

ground would be stripped as bare as if a fire had run over it. In both summer and

winter the great, bare plains were their home. It is true that a few were sometimes

291 Edgar Dewdney (1835 – 1916), English–born surveyor and politician. He served as both

Lieutenant–Governor and Indian Commissioner for the North–West Territories in the 1880s. 292 From BUFFALO. (1882, March 18). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 4.

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found in the woods bordering on the plains, but the main herds never left the open

country.

They were especially adapted for enduring the cold and storms of winter. While

the horse, the ox and all other animals turn their heads from the storm, the buffalo

faces it. His head and fore quarters, which form the largest part of him, are protected

by a heavy growth of shaggy hair or coarse wool, which, when turned towards the

wind, shields the rest and more lightly covered portions of his body. Although unable

to paw away the snow like the horse, the buffalo never fails to pick his own living in

the winter, for the snow is never very deep on the plains, and the crust is seldom so

hard that he cannot break it with his nose. Like the horse, but unlike other horned

cattle, he does not require water in winter, and even that of a poor quality, answers

his requirements in summer. It is a remarkable fact that on the plains, where alkali

lakes abound, in which the water is bad enough to poison an ordinary ox, more old

buffalo trails are found leading down to them than to adjacent fresh water ones.

That the buffalo is a valuable animal, the fact of its rapid extinction clearly

proves. The race has not perished from any lack of producing powers, or because their

pasture grounds were brought under cultivation, or from any disease, but simply

because they were so valuable and so easily slaughtered. The animal is as large as an

ordinary ox while the meat is superior to beef, and in the form of pemmican gives a

condensed food superior to any other article of condensed food known. The hide,

whether as robe or leather, also finds a ready market. The slaughtering outfit consists

merely of a smart saddle horse and a gun, an old fashioned double barreled flint lock

being nearly as useful as the latest improved 16–shooter.

As buffalo hunting was an occupation requiring very little capital to start in,

and one that combined sport and profit in a greater degree than perhaps any other,

each year more and more people engaged in it, and as cow beef was more valuable

than that of bulls, it was chiefly the cows that were slaughtered, and besides as the

cows could run the fastest it was considered more glory to kill them. The consequence

was that not only were the herds gradually lessened in numbers, but the reproductive

power was reduced in a much greater ratio. At the time the law was passed by the

North–West Council for the protection of the buffalo, too much damage in this way

had already been done even could the law have been enforced.

What the total yearly value of the trade in robes and pemmican was cannot

now be told, but those who have seen the army of traders camped near Winnipeg and

the train after train of carts that came there every summer loaded down with robes,

will have some idea of its vast proportions. In all probability the total trade in robes,

leather, pemmican and fresh meat in the North–West alone amounted to nearly

$2,000,000 annually, while now, although the country is still unoccupied, the trade is

simply nothing, and besides the Indians who caused the trade to be done and

supported themselves in the product of it are reduced to a condition of abject poverty

and have to be fed and clothed at the expense of the Government.

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Land and the Treaties

5. An Early Treaty Talk (1849)293

Near a month ago, without any warning or notice given to the Indians, for the

purpose of collecting them, as is usual upon such occasions, two Commissioners

arrived at Sault Ste. Marie. Notice was given that upon the following day a Council

would be held at an Indian Village, some eight or ten miles distance; but upon the

next day, the Commissioners postponed it, and declared their intention of proceeding

up the Lake to Fort William, and thence to coast it down, holding Councils with the

different bands. They were told that it was too late in the season to meet bodies of

Indians, they having gone inland to their hunting. Nevertheless, the Commissioners

started, and it occurred just as had been anticipated, they met but very few Indians

along the coast. At Fort William they saw a few whom they collected at a moment’s

warning and proposed to them to sell their lands. But no treaty was made, in fact it

was not such a Council as could conclude a treaty. At another locality they met on

Indian family, at another two, and at another five or six Indians, and without waiting

to send word to Indians in the neighborhood, or endeavour to collect any, they pushed

on until they again arrived at the Sault Ste. Marie, upon the 16th day of October.

Within the vicinity of this place a number of Chiefs were anxiously expecting them,

and notice was given that upon the following day, a Council would be held at the

Hudson’s Bay Company’s Fort. Accordingly about noon the Indian Chiefs and Indians

met at the place appointed, and Mr. Commissioner Vidal294, instead of opening the

Council by explaining to the Indians the object of his errand and for what purpose

the Council had been requested, as is usual upon all such occasions, he commenced

his proceedings by asking a series of most absurd and childish questions, to which

the Chiefs replied with a great deal of humour and much patience, at every question

expecting that the following one would tend to enlighten them as to what was the

actual object of the gentleman’s mission. At length came some two or three questions

which might be said to have some reference to their errand. One was, “did you ever

lease or lend to the Hudson’s Bay Company, any lands at this place.” The reply was,

“we did, and we will hold it good now; the Company shall have it.” Another was, “have

you leased or lent to Mr. MacDonell295, any lands upon the island of Michipicotton296.”

“We have done so, and that we will hold good also, he shall have it to work for us.”

Again, “have you leased or lent to the Rev. Mr. Anderson297, any land at your Village,

at Garden River.” “We have done so, and hold that good, we give it for a mission, he

293 From The Indians on Lakes Huron and Superior. (1849, November 16). The Halifax British Colonist, p. 3. 294 Alexander Vidal (1819 – 1906). At the time, he was Deputy Provincial Surveyor, and had been in

charge of surveying the town plot of Sault Ste. Marie. 295 Allan Macdonell (1808 – 1888). 296 Now called Michipicoten Island. 297 Probably Gustavus Anderson, Anglican missionary at Garden River and son of the former

Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Thomas Gummersall Anderson (1779 – 1875).

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is a missionary among us.” To these replies Mr. Vidal responded, I am instructed by

the Government to inform you that it will not sanction such acts. Then came the

questions, “Will you sell your lands.” “Upon what terms.” MR. VIDAL, “Will you sell your lands, yes or no.”

SHINGWAKONCE298. – We can not settle the question here whether we will

sell or not, we will take the rest of the day to consult among ourselves, on to–morrow

we will give you an answer at this place at ten o’clock. We are not unwilling to sell

some of our lands.” […]

The following day at the hour appointed, the Chiefs having taken their seats,

Mr. Vidal asked them their reply to the question of yesterday, namely, if they would

sell their lands &c. Shingwakonce then rose and said this is a question of vast

importance to ourselves and to our children’s children; four years have passed since

the miners first came among us, seizing our lands and possessing themselves of the

mineral which has been placed there for our use; when the time shall have arrived

that it would become necessary for our subsistence, that time has now arrived, we

have the example of our brethren upon the other side of the lake, to guide us in our

transactions, they have sold all their lands, and now they can only behold, but not

share in the wealth which their lands produce, they have either been unfortunate or

unwise. We do not wish to sell all our lands, we must keep some. When I saw our lands occupied, without our consent, when I twice travelled to see our Great Father

at Montreal, and asked in vain for justice. We sought assistance from several whom

we hoped might aid us in our difficulties, at last we turned to one who had been among

the first to come upon our lands, but who always said “you must be paid for your

lands;” he became our friend, on him we place our reliance, and we can trust entirely

to him, he knows our wants and our wishes, and he has full power and authority from

us to act, and to conclude a bargain with you; our whole affairs are now in his hands,

he is a white man like yourselves, you can understand one another, you are sent by

the Government, he is sent by us; turning to Mr. Macdonell, he said my friend it is

for you to settle with them, I have done. To this all the Indians present signified their

approbation.

Mr. Macdonell then rose, when Mr. Vidal informed him that the

Commissioners were sent to treat with the Indians, and demanded of them if they

had more confidence in Mr. Macdonell than in the Government. All unanimously

replied, yes, we have more confidence in Mr. Macdonell than in the Government, he

alone shall act for us. Mr. Macdonell then addressed the Commissioners, saying that

he insisted upon the right of appearing there as an agent of these people, whose

determination had been expressed to him Mr. Vidal, by themselves; he said I am the

servant of those people, free to choose whom they may employ to negociate with you,

the servants of a party bidding, for their lands. Mr. Vidal in a most flurried and

nervous manner, interrupted Mr. Macdonell, saying that if he persisted, that the

Council should be broken up, and that there should be no treaty; – To which Mr.

298 Shingwaukonse, ‘Little Pine’ (1773 – 1884) was an Anishnaabe chief and founder of the Garden

River First Nation (Ketegaunseebe). Chief Shingwaukonse was a signatory to the Robinson Huron

Treaty of 1850.

176

Macdonell replied, I will maintain the position in which these people have placed me;

it would be base and dishonourable in me to desert it now, and as their agent I tell

you, then be the Council dissolved, and let there be no treaty, but upon your head rest

the blame.

Mr. Vidal then hastily gathered up his papers and rushed from the room. Mr.

Anderson remained, while Mr. Macdonell addressed the Indians through an

interpreter who repeated to the Indians sentence by sentence as Mr. Macdonell spoke

it; he said, my friends the course pursued by these Commissioners is of so

extraordinary a nature, that I cannot avoid making some observations relative to the

position which they have attempted to assume. If this assumption of power is in

accordance with their instructions, then any remarks which I make cannot be

applicable to them personally, but to the Government whose servants they are, and I

request that they may remain in this room in order that they may hear what I say.

Upon an occasion less important than this or on a matter of less grave consequences

to you, the power which they have attempted to assume might be treated as ridiculous

or contemptable, but in the present instance and under all the circumstances

attending it, I must view it in another light; I can only look upon it as a most arbitrary

and unjust attempt to compel a simple and unsuspecting people to accede their views,

to force you to accept such pittance for the surrender of your lands, which they may

think proper to dole out to you from the large sums which they have received for the

sale of those lands. To make such a treaty as shall suit their views, alike regardless

of your present welfare or your future fate. The Government has committed such

faults and errors, which renders it so necessary that it shall obtain your lands, that

it would rob you of them; else why the attempt to prevent one who has your

confidence, one who has been expressly employed by you to attend here and negociate

a treaty for you. These men, the servants of the Government, are sent here to ask you

if you will sell your lands. By what right, by what authority can they presume to

dictate to you whom you shall or shall not employ upon your part.

You all know that I come here authorized by you, to offer such a treaty as would

have been advantageous to the Government, whilst it would be beneficial to you. I

was prepared to offer to surrender to Government, from the Grand Buttline upwards,

a tract of land whereon is included the Bruce Mine, the Copper Bay &c. &c., also the

lands at the land laid out as a township, stipulating however, that you should make

a reservation from below Garden River to Point au Perdiex upon the St. Mary River,

and also that the Hudson’s Bay Company should be secured in the property formerly

assigned to them by your people, as well as every individual on such lands, as has

been heretofore held with your consent, some of whom have held and farmed them

for 40 years, and upwards, besides being of your own blood; and all this is but simple

justice, in consideration of which I only ask them to pay over to you the money in

their hands arising from the sale of your own lands, and pay the first instalment only

of but a very small portion of the lands, which would thus be ceded; besides an

annuity of £1250 per annum. The act of these men has this day refused our intended

offer, they made none themselves.

177

They talked of a treaty, have they any where attempted to make one, they have

not; and I here tell them to their face (Mr. Anderson is present), that they were not

authorised to offer one shilling of your lands, let them contradict me if I say that

which is not true. They have questioned much about our arrangements relative to the

island of Michipicatton. The land is yours, and the rightful title can only come from

you, when you shall have transferred that titled to the Government, then let them

talk of what they will sanction, or what they will not sanction. As it is, you can sell it,

you can keep it, or you can farm it in what manner you think proper. You have come

to the determination to reserve it for yourselves, and who shall say that you shall not.

You have thought proper to enter into arrangements with me, whereby I become your

servant, to farm or work it for you; and who dare say that you shall not employ me?

Will they tell you that you shall not employ a white man to plant or dig your potatoes?

They will not say so. Then how can they declare that you shall not employ me to farm

that which you know is far more valuable. Do not feel uneasy at the result of this day,

all these lands are still your own, and be yet assured that every justice must yet be

done you, if you be but true to yourselves. And it is fortunate for you that this

occurrence has happened, you can now perceive what was their object in seeking to

treat with parties here and there. You must combine from one end of the lake to the

other, be firm, be united, and you will be strong. Let all the Chiefs meet at a general

council, and there only receive proposals for a treaty. I will say no more at present,

because I shall have many opportunities more suitable than this. Mr. Macdonell then

left the room, followed by all the Chiefs and Indians present. And thus ended this

mockery of a treaty upon the part of the Government.

6. Treaties and the Mounted Police (1885)299

My first knowledge of the Northwest Indians was in 1874, the commencement

of the administration of the N. W. M. P. in the Territories. At that time none of the

Indians west of Manitoba had been treated with, and the whole territory properly

belonged to them. In their wild state and out of reach of the whiskey trade, a more

happy contented people could not be found. Most of them lived entirely by buffalo

hunting. The buffalo in those days roamed from the North Saskatchewan to the

Boundary Line, and from about the longitude of Regina to the Rocky mountains. The

Indians lived with them summer and winter. When the buffalo moved the Indians

moved also. When the Indians wanted luxuries such as tea, sugar and tobacco they

traded buffalo robes, pemican or horses for them. Their lives were a continual round

of hunting, horse racing, gambling, dancing and feasting, and their wants were few,

although even in those days they had times of starvation. The buffalo for some

unknown reason would leave our territory for a time, when the Indians were in want

and would eat their horses &c. Many of them were fed by the H. B. Company and

other traders, and numbers of them died of actual starvation on the plains.

TREATIES WERE MADE

299 From Walker, J. (1885, April 30). Our Indians. The Calgary Weekly Herald, p. 4. Written by James Walker (1848 – 1936).

178

with all the Indians in the northwest in 1874 – 1877. When they were made the

buffalo, although rapidly diminishing in numbers, were still sufficient for the wants

of the Indians. In consequence they were more easily treated with than they would

have been a few years later. The treaty commissioners explained to the Indians that

the treaty would not interfere with their old ways of living. They could go where they

pleased over the territories and hunt, and when they wanted reserves, one mile

square would be given to each family of five. They were also to receive oxen, cows,

implements and an annual payment of money and ammunition. The Indians, in

return, were to give up all the rights they had to the lands outside the reserves. This

treaty, although a good one for the Indians at the time, was, if strictly adhered to by

the government, simply

STARVATION

to them when the buffalo disappeared, as they were not accustomed to tilling soil,

and it will be a work of many years to teach them to make sufficient by farming to

render them self supporting.

The advent of the fugitive Sioux in 1878 forever put an end to the buffalo in

these territories. The main herd of buffalo was south of the Boundary when the Sioux

crossed. These Indians had to live, so they scattered along the line, and wherever the

buffalo came close enough they would ride out and kill them by hundreds. They

herded them so closely, that very few got through, and the larger herds returned to

the valleys of the Missouri and Yellowstone where they were slaughtered wholesale

for their robes, by Indians and whites. The few buffalo that came north after 1878

were so scattered that they did our Indians little good. This was a revelation of hunger

and misery to the Indians.

I remember meeting about 600 of the Carlton and Duck Lake Indians

returning from an unsuccessful hunt. They had found very few buffalo, and had eaten

all the spare horses and dogs they had. When I met them they were scattered over

miles of country digging up a sort of wild turnip which had been their sole food for

days. They were reduced to living skeletons. Indians I had known well, I could

scarcely recognize. I gave them all the provisions I had, and made a few of them

happy.

There is a clause300 in the treaty with the

NORTH SASKATCHEWAN CREES

to the effect that in case of actual famine in the land, the Indians were to be fed by

the government. Some of the Indians of the Beardy stamp thought it was actual

famine when the buffalo disappeared, and all they had to do was to sit down on the

reserves and they would be fed for all time to come. Others however showed a

disposition to keep themselves. This important clause in the treaty has been the

300 “That in the event hereafter of the Indians comprised within this treaty being overtaken by any

pestilence, or by a general famine, the Queen, on being satisfied and certified thereof by her Indian

Agent or Agents, will grant to the Indians such assistance of such character and to such extent as Her

Chief Superintendent of Indian Affairs shall deem necessary and sufficient to relieve the Indians from

the calamity that shall have befallen them.” Government of Canada. (1964) Copy of Treaty No. 6 between Her Majesty the Queen and the Plain and Wood Cree Indians and other Tribes of Indians at Fort Carlton, Fort Pitt and Battle River with Adhesions. Ottawa: Queen’s Printer.

179

means of a great deal of trouble between the Indians and the Indian Department

agents. The government set about teaching the Indians to support themselves by

farming, and it is to be regretted that farm instructors were chosen on account of the

political influence they possessed at Ottawa and not from any special capacity they

had for teaching Indians. Many of them were utterly unfitted for the work and have

been the means of creating hostility in the Indians towards the government and the

whites that never would have existed had the government put practical men on the

reserves. This evil, however, has now remedied itself, as there will not be so many

political adventurers hankering after appointments as farm instructors after the

experience of poor Payne and others.

Another source of trouble is dilatoriness on the part of the government in

carrying out promises to the Indians. When an Indian is promised anything, he wants

it at the appointed time, even if he has no use for it, and if disappointed, will never

forget it. To illustrate this, I will give an experience of my own while acting as Indian

agent up north. The Indians were all called to Carlton at a certain day to receive their

annual presents and money. I met them on the day appointed, but neither provisions

nor presents or money had arrived, nor could I hear anything of them. The Indians

had come expecting a feast and were hungry. From their actions I foresaw trouble at

once unless they were fed. To keep them quiet I bought provisions for them from the

H. B. store, and, before the government stores had arrived, I had run up a bill of over

$10,000, but I satisfied the Indians, and Lt. Governor Laird301, who was the Indian

Commissioner, and who was most particular to carry out every promise made to

Indians, approved of what I had done. I believe Lt. Governor Dewdney, Mr.

Vankoughnet302 and other Indian officials are sincere in their efforts to do the best

they can for the Indians but with political appointments forced on them, it is

impossible for them to have their wishes carried out.

7. An Account of a Signing of Treaty 6 (1918)303 Treaty 6 was signed by different Indigenous peoples at various times and places from 1876 to 1879, and later in 1944 and 1950. This account, by a non–Indigenous Albertan politician, is of the signing at Sound Lake in 1879.

In 1873, the North West Mounted Police force was organized for the purpose

of maintaining law and order throughout all this western country, and as far south

301 David Laird (1833 – 1914) served as Lieutenant Governor of the North–West Territories from 1876

to 1881. 302 Probably Lawrence Vankoughnet, an Indian agent who was in frequent conflict with Dewdney over

budget cuts. Vankoughnet wanted to cut staff and funding from the Department of Indian Affairs,

believing it to be corrupt. Dewdney objected to the cuts. 303 From McDougall, J. A. (1918, February 2). John A. McDougall Tells Story Of the Early History of

Edmonton Came Here in Late Summer of 1876. The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 6. Written by John Alexander McDougall (1854 – 1928), Albertan politician and business owner. He was mayor of

Edmonton twice, MLA for Edmonton from 1909 to 1913, and co–founder (in 1896) of the general

merchant firm McDougall & Secord.

180

as the American boundary. One detachment of the force came here in 1874, but

definitely established themselves some miles down the river where they built a fort

known as Fort Saskatchewan.

Up to this time no settlement had been made with the Indians west of

Manitoba, and they strongly objected to the surveys that were being made and the

work that was being done, and to the white man coming in and taking possession of

their country. The justice of their claims was recognized by the Dominion

government, and treaties were made with all the different Indian tribes in what was

then known as the North West Territories.

AN INDIAN TREATY.

A short description of one of the largest of these Indian treaties might be

interesting. This was made at Sounding Lake in 1879. The Indians were notified by

messengers to assemble at this place on a certain date in the month of August. There

were 4,000 of them under a great many chiefs who did so. Big Bear, a noted Indian

chief of those days, was there with his band of Indians. Lieut.–Gov. Laird was sent

by the government to make the treaty. He was escorted by a detachment of Mounted

Police and they had about $250,000 or more which would be paid to the Indians if

they took treaty. Traders used to follow up all those treaties, and at this one there

must have been twenty different traders including several new ones from Winnipeg

and many of the western traders who were returning from Winnipeg with their fall

and winter outfits, also took it in. I. G. Baker & Company304, large traders from Fort

Benton in Montana, and of course the Hudson Bay Company, were there. Each of

those traders had a string of from 15 to 40 Red River carts, except I. G. Baker &

Company, who had their goods loaded into huge double wagons, one behind the other

and drawn by four or six teams of horses. It was a busy camp and a most picturesque

one with the hundreds of Indian teepees pitched around the many canvas tents of the

police and the government party; the hundreds of Indian ponies, the traders’ cart

horses and oxen, and the government horses, scattered over the hills in all directions,

quietly feeding as they were being guarded by the boys. The different traders had

their carts backed around as closely together as possible in a half circle. The making

of the treaty took up about ten days with one or two parleys each day. The traders

could do no business unless the treaty was made, but they expected it would be and

they all opened up and displayed their goods to the best advantage possible under the

circumstances.

The Indians and particularly the Indian women and children made it a point

to see everything that was exposed for sale, and their surprise and admiration as they

caught sight of many wonderful and fascinating things that met their gaze, was given

expression to by putting one hand over their mouths and uttering an exclamation of

Wah! Wah! as their eyes sparkled with pleasure. The traders were only too pleased

to show their goods, and they all tried to stand in well with the chiefs of various tribes

by making them presents, so that they would get their good will and custom when

business started after the treaty was made and when they received their money.

304 Founded in 1873. They opened Calgary’s first store in 1875.

181

Nights were made hideous by the uproar, dogs howling, children crying and the noise

of the countless tom–toms which could be heard in every direction.

INDIAN HOSPITALITY.

Every night there was an Indian dance and the traders often used to be invited

to those dances in return for and as a mark of gratitude for the presents which they

had received from them. There was always something to drink and smoke, and often

something to eat as well. Those dances were always in the chief’s tent, which was

larger than the ordinary ones. At the far end three or four big Indians would be

squatting on some buffalo robes with their tom–toms on their knees ready for the

dance. They had allowed their blankets to drop down, and they had nothing left on

but their breech cloths, leggings and moccasins. In the centre of the tent was a camp

fire over which was hanging and simmering a huge kettle of black tea in which was

put some […] tobacco, to add to the flavor and give it strength. This was sizzling away

over the fire as the smoke went up around it and out through the top where the tent

poles stuck out. The trader was given the seat of honor on a robe near the orchestra.

One side of the fire was a row of Indians and on the other side was a row of s–––––

s305. First of all, before the dance commenced the host dipped a cup of his tea and

passed it around. Everyone drank of it and when it was empty it was filled again, and

when it came to the guest, he had to drink too or pretend, as it would mortally offend

the chief and mean a loss of business if he refused to drink. After this the tom–toms

commenced their noise, and the dance began and was enlivened from time to time by

the Hi! Hi’s! of the drummers. This was kept up till a late hour; during the dance the

pipe of peace, friendship and good will would be passed around, and all were expected

to take a few draws from it. Those dances in the crowded tent lighted only by the dim

light of the camp fire sufficiently only to give an outline of the wild figures within,

were certainly weird and gruesome.

A PICTURESQUE INDIAN.

Big Bear was in an ugly mood and refused to take treaty or permit his tribe to

do so. He was to be seen every day riding around the camp on an Indian pony,

haughty, and defiant, his face and body adorned with eagle feathers, while he carried

a gaudy colored parasol on his head. He was the typical […] Indian in all his savage

glory, and was a striking figure with his big brown body well tanned by the sun,

exposed to view, as the weather was warm and he had allowed the blanket which was

always carried to fall down behind him on the horse. Buffalo were then plentiful, and

fresh buffalo meat was brought into camp every day.

The Treaty was finally made with all the Indians except Big Bear, and his

band. Then the money was paid out and business began. Everyone had money and

they would come to the traders and hand over five, ten or twenty dollars and pick out

what they wanted, and told the trader to let them know when they had enough. This

kept up for about a week. In the meantime the Governor and his escort of Mounted

Police had gone, and the traders were left alone with the Indians. There was no

whiskey, or rowdyism, no quarreling [and] no stealing during all this time. The

305 An offensive term for Indigenous women.

182

traders finally packed up what was left of their stock, and started across the plains

for their winter quarters.

8. A Treaty 6 Payment (1884)306

On the 6th of October Indian Agent Anderson unfurled the Union Jack in the

largest Indian camp ever assembled at Bears’ Hill, and unfolding his pay sheets

began the work of distributing annuities to some 700 Indians. It was indeed a

promiscuous crowd. There were the three head chiefs of the Bears’ Hill reserves with

their respective bands marshalled in groups. There was a small band of the “Plain

Crees,” principally belonging to Big Bear, under the triple tutelage of Woodpecker,

Going through the Ice, and Big Bear’s son307 and heir, which three pretenders to

authority are naturally jealous of one another. There were stragglers from Calgary

who had been absent for two, three, and four years. There was a small band of

Salteaux all the way from Qu’Appelle under the chieftainship of Thunder. There were

h–––––s from all directions, and there were twelve stores opened for the

accommodation of the Indians, by different parties whom the great magnetic power,

the almighty dollar, drew to the scene.

The payments were made with the best order and satisfaction, and in a couple

of days the Indians, before so ragged, had sacrificed their shabby garments to the

winds and donned apparel variegated by every shade of the rainbow, with which the

willing merchants had furnished them in exchange for the “somyaw”308. During the

performance, the greatest hilarity prevailed, and the “bands”, having put in such

large numbers with their stomachs comforted and their limbs protected, enjoyed

themselves in many ways after the “old style” reminiscences of bygone days. The new

comers, just fresh from their nomadic tour south, contributed not a little to revive old

habits momentarily amongst their more civilized and domestic brethren, such as

besmearing their faces with paint, gambling, tea dancing, and even stealing, etc. Such

is the influence of bad company even amongst Indians. During this important treaty

payment about 700 Indians received annuities, amounting to some $5,400.

But the great event which held this large camp together for several days after

the payments was the expected arrival of His Honor Lieut.–Governor Dewdney in his

306 From C.S. (1884, November 8). BEARS’ HILL. The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 3. 307 Little Bear (d. 1921), also known as Macquettoquet and Ayimâsis. “Little Bear is a son of the late lamented Chief Big Bear […] who with a large number of Crees […] betook themselves to the United

States as a measure of personal precaution after the [1885] rebellion had been quelled. […] While in

Montana Little Bear was elected their chief. […] [T]hey were gathered up and deported to Canada.

[…] An amnesty had been granted in 1886. […] Little Bear went to Ottawa, and […] [i]t was settled

that these Indians numbering about 200 should be recognized as a band under the Chieftanship of

Little Bear, and should be given the reserve at one time occupied by Chief Bob Tail’s band on Battle

river, that band having given up their treaty rights and taken scrip. They are to be given a start with

stock and rations and to be treated in all respects as other Indians. The treaty money they would have

received had they been in Canada is forfeited by their absence.” LITTLE BEAR. (1897, March 16). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 2. 308 Cree for ‘silver’.

183

capacity of Indian Commissioner. Reports were rife amongst the Indians that he

would visit them and settle all their difficulties this fall. Whatever doubt remained

on this point was dissipated on the arrival of assistant commissioner Reed309 in camp,

who assured the Indians that his honor was already on his way from Regina for

Edmonton. Finally, on the 11th, the long looked for “Big Chief” rolled into camp, to

the great delight of all the Indians, young and old.

The 13th was the most important day for them since the conclusion of the

treaty in 1876. At an early hour the whole camp was astir, awakened by a fusillade

from several lodges of each band announcing the importance of the occasion. A shelter

had been erected by the Indians for the meeting. At 9 o’clock a.m. the chiefs

marshalled their “hundreds” in the centre of the camp, all dressed in their finest

regalia, with banners flying, painted faces, drums beating the “common time” of

thirds, fifths and octaves of the Indian “plain chant,” whilst with measured and

ostentatious step they wended their way to where His Honor was enthroned on a

buffalo robe, awaiting their pleasure. In this display, contrary to Indian customs, the

gun was left out, they having no ammunition to throw away.

Chief Samson310 opened the proceedings by an eloquent speech, recapitulating

the transactions of the first treaty; what the Indians had expected from that

important bargain between themselves and the government, and how they had been

disappointed. Each chief, minor chief, and other good speaker followed suit, each one

having something different to say, some fresh grievance to detail. The whole ground

of their situation, both collectively and individually, was gone over – nothing was

forgotten. Their letter to Ottawa was touched on, their difficulties with the agents

were freely discussed. Their hopes, their desires, their privations, everything

pertaining to their situation was lucidly exposed to the consideration of the one man

who could now heal all their old sores.

During all this talk, which lasted until 11 o’clock p.m., his honor took notes

and answered questions. It may be said that never in this part of the North West was

there such an important, and at the same time satisfactory meeting. The Indians

themselves were astonished by the patience and benignity with which the governor

listened to their importunities, and the more than generous way in which he met

their demands. His honor has left amongst those people an impression which it is to

be hoped nothing shall ever contribute to efface. He has given them now the means

of becoming in a short time self supporting, and it is certain that many of them will

take advantage of this.

One very important measure is that his honor has divided the agency into

three. Mr. Lucas is now agent at Bears’ Hill, independent of Edmonton, and, indeed,

according to the testimony of the Indians, he is worthy of the position. Another

309 Hayter Reed (1849 – 1936). As Deputy Superintendent General of Indian affairs, he would set back

Indigenous agriculture and commerce through his implementations of the Peasant Farming Policy and

the Pass system. For more on these under–reported aspects of Canadian history, see Carter, S. (1993).

Lost Harvests: Prairie Indian Reserve Farmers and Government Policy. Canada: McGill–Queen’s University Press. 310 First Chief of the Samson Cree Nation.

184

division of the agency Is to be at Victoria, whilst the third division is Edmonton and

vicinity.

Some of the principal things accorded to the Indians of the Bears’ Hill reserve

by the lieutenant–governor are: To each of the three chiefs, Bob Tail311, Samson and

Ermineskin312, one pair of work oxen with harness, plow and harrow for his own

special use, as a reward for having remained steadily at work on the reserve. A few

pairs of work oxen to be given to the most worthy and best workers. Twenty head of

work oxen for general use, some cows, plows and harrows, etc. Also his honor returned

money retained from the Indians in 1883 for supplies received from the H. B. Co. All

these things, with an increase of the provision supply for the needy, more

ammunition, net twine, fish hooks, snaring wire, etc., have made the Indians feel

happy and grateful.

9. Indian Department Oxen and Treaty 6 (1884)313

The action of the Indian Department in purchasing such a large number of

cattle in this vicinity for use by the Indians of the agency, cannot be too highly

commended. Although not compelled by treaty to make this purchase, the making of

it is none the less politic. One great, or indeed chief, object of the department in

dealing with the Indians should be and is to induce them to become self–supporting.

That they can never become so without adequate means is apparent, and not less so,

that if they are ever to have those means they must be provided with them by the

government. An intelligent and energetic white man placed in their circumstances

would find it almost or altogether impossible to rise in life by his own exertions. How

then can the Indians, knowing nothing of the art of work, and sadly lacking in the

necessary energy, be expected to do so, especially when the number of mouths to be

filled are out of all proportion to the number of hands whose exertions should fill

them? Crop cannot be raised unless the land is broken, and the land cannot be broken

without oxen or other animals.

Under the former system, with only one or two yoke of cattle to each band of

200 souls or over, enough breaking could not be done to make it interesting or worth

311 Chief Bob Tail’s band is notable for having “given up their treaty rights and taken scrip” by 1886.

LITTLE BEAR. (1897, March 16). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 2. They occasionally engaged in freighting: “A FEW of the Bear’s Hill Indians have been keeping body and soul together by hauling

freight required at that place. The Government officials held forth every inducement to them to do all

they could at freighting. Whether the government is sick of the thing, or thinks the Indian was doing

too well – it is hard to say, but Chief Bob Tail’s son who came in here some time ago with seven sleds,

managed to get loads for about four, burned up the rest, and went home disgusted with the whole

affair.” LOCAL. (1881, February 14). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 2. 312 First Chief of the Ermineskin Cree Nation. He died in 1921. “When the Riel rebellion broke out, it

was Chief Ermineskin who used his great power to prevent other strong tribes from entering the

conflict with the Canadian forces. When the act providing for the paying of treaty monies to the Indian

tribes came into force, Erminskin [sic.] was made the chief of the Cree tribe on the Hobbema reserve.

He continued to act as chief until his death.” “ERMINESKIN.” VETERAN INDIAN CHIEF, IS DEAD.

(1921, May 5). The Wetawiskin Times, p. 1. 313 From I. D. OXEN. (1884, December 13). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 2.

185

the while of Indians to stay away from their hunt. It must be remembered that even

Indians desire and require to eat and be clothed, in order to live, and even should the

government issue rations regularly, those rations, at best, are never more than

sufficient for a bare subsistence. Therefore there was always a tendency among the

better and more energetic class, who would make the best farm workers, to take to

the woods when opportunity offered, to the neglect of their farms, hoping to improve

their condition temporarily, at least, by making a good hunt. The case stood

somewhat in this wise: if they worked hard and the crop turned out well they would

not have nearly enough to live on, and would be hungry accordingly, and if it did not

turn out well they would only be hungry any way. Certainly the amount of

encouragement contained in this prospect was not dazzling. It is true that now the

opportunity is offered them to better their condition they may not improve it; but this,

experiment alone will tell. Giving them the opportunity, they may improve, while

without it they certainly could not and would not.

Besides the large increase in the number of the cattle, a portion of them at

least, are to be given outright to individual members of the band. Formerly the cattle

were only loaned and might be taken back by the department or transferred from one

band to another. It can be easily seen that this condition would furnish a first–class

excuse to any one who did not desire to take any trouble with the cattle, for not taking

care of them, and that the cattle would suffer in consequence, which, as a matter of

fact, they did. In the care of the band merely, and not belonging to it, what was every

body’s business nobody attended to. Now, if any ambition is left in the Indians at all,

the absolute ownership of the cattle will be an inducement to attend carefully to them.

Under the former method of purchasing it was too often the case that oxen

were sent the bands which they could do nothing with. This purchase, being made

with a man conversant both with cattle and Indians, and who will in all probability

have to initiate some of the Indians into the management of some of these particular

oxen, is a guarantee that at least this difficulty will not arise in the present case.

A feature not of the least importance is that, contrary also to former custom,

instead of the cattle being brought in from distant points, at heavy expense,

unacclimated and at risk of loss, they have all been purchased in the immediate

neighborhood of where they are required, are thoroughly acclimated and can be held

safely and at trifling expense until required for actual use, while the cash thus

expended goes to benefit the settlers of the country and the country itself, instead of

going to outsiders, who have no interest in it except to make money out of it. It is to

be hoped that the policy of purchasing oxen in the country will be followed out by the

purchase of all other supplies required, such as flour, beef and pork, that the district

affords, thereby materially benefitting the pioneers and doing no injustice to either

the department or the Indians.

186

10. Denied Rations (1885)314 Members of the Stoney Nakoda Nation were signatories to Treaties 6 and 7 in 1877.

F. S. Stimson315, manager for the Northwest Cattle Co., and Capt. Stewart316,

manager for the Stewart Ranche Co., both expressed to us the other night the regret

they felt that the government still saw fit to withhold rations from the tribe of Stony

Indians.

“The other day,” said Mr. Stimson, “twelve Stonies came to the ranche on High

River, and I tell you I never saw such a sight in my life. There were three b––––s317,

three s–––––s, and half a dozen children, and the whole of them were actually gaunt

with famine. One of the young b––––s, naturally a strong, hearty lad, had an arm no

thicker than my wrist. They told me they had not had anything to eat for five days,

with the exception of a little fish. If the poor devils depend on fish at this season for

food they have very little to depend on, for you know as well as I do there is no fish to

be got right now.

“Well, I gave them something to eat, not roasts especially, because they might

get too fat, but parts that white men don’t usually eat, and the Indians just warmed

the meat by the fire and bolted it whole. If Mr. Vankoughnet or Mr. Walsworth had

seen that night, I think the Stonies would get rations before long.”

Capt. Stewart told a similar story. “Down at Pincher Creek the other day,” he

said, “Col. MacLeod must have given very nearly a hundred dollars’ worth of food and

stuff to a small band of starving Stonies who were wandering down the creek in

search of fish or game. The fact is there is no game in their country now. Along the

base of the Rockies there used to be mountain sheep and goats, a few fool hens and

beaver, but there are none now.

“The search for food has been so intense that there is not even a beaver to be

found between Morley and Pincher Creek. The few deer have all been killed off, the

Indians having killed off the does last spring because there was nothing else to eat.

The Stonies are now eating coyotes wherever they can get them, and I tell you when

an Indian eats a coyote he is pretty hard up.”

“I don’t [approve of] their killing cattle,” said Mr. Stimson, “but I wouldn’t

blame them if they did. They happen to be the best Indians in the territories, or

ranchers would have no end of trouble with them. A year or two ago there used to be

plenty of deer in the district for them, but all this season I have not seen a single deer

314 From R–– Suffering. (1885, February 12). The Calgary Weekly Herald, p. 4. 315 Frederick Smith Stimson (1842 – 1912). He co–founded the North–West Cattle Company in 1881,

after retiring from the North–West Mounted Police. 316 “The history of cattle raising in the Canadian North West, on an extensive scale, dates back only to

the summer of 1881. The pioneers in the business were […] The North West Cattle Co’y, […] and a few

other smaller ranches. […] The mild winter of 1881–82 enabled them to carry on their stock with

almost no loss, and gave a stimulus to cattle ranching resulting in a number of others, Capt. Stewart,

[…], &c., establishing ranches, and placing herds of several thousands.” RANCHMAN. (1883, August

31). The Calgary Weekly Herald, p. 2. 317 An offensive term for young Indigenous males.

187

track south of High River. There were a dozen or fifteen antelope in Pine Tree coulee

a short time ago, but the h–––––s killed them off before the Stonies got at them. If

the Stonies were in a country where they could raise corn or wheat there might be

some policy in the government’s treatment of them, but better agriculturalists than

Indians would find it hard to raise crops on the Stony reserve, and I see nothing for

it but absolute starvation for the whole of the tribe.”

It is certain that the withholding of rations can only result in one of two things:

either serious trouble with the ranchers whose cattle graze upon the mountains, or

the total extinction of a tribe of Indians who have shown more docility and disposition

to pick up the ways of civilization than any in the Northwest. Either alternative is

unpleasant enough. The one on account of its possible consequences, and of the

crippling effect it would have on ranching enterprise; the other because it would be

an outrage. One can say that the tribe can always emigrate, but there is little sense

in sending them to another district to kill out the game because they have killed all

the game in this, and it is a doubtful civilization which contents itself with supposing

that a harmless and inferior people “can always emigrate,” and does not consider the

amount of suffering which generally precedes the “emigration” of any people, civilized

or savage.

11. Crowfoot’s Oration (1886)318

By eight o’clock from all points of the horizon Indians on ponies were seen

gathering to meet the Premier. Shortly after Crowfoot319 and Old Sun320 came into

the car and welcomed Sir John. Crowfoot, who is in mourning for Poundmaker321, was

clothed in his worst garments, which were considerably the worse for wear. After a

short interview Crowfoot went off to the prairie and ordered the crier of his camp to

announce that all were to assemble at the station to have a pow–wow with the Great

Chief. […] Everything being arranged, Bill Gladstone, an interpreter, was told by

Governor Dewdney to tell Crowfoot that Sir John was a great chief especially charged

with the interests of the Indians; that he had come to see them, also to see the

Canadian Pacific railway and to travel form salt water to salt water. While going

through he was anxious to see Crowfoot and the chiefs, whose great friend he was. If

they had anything to say, any complaints to make, he would be glad to hear them. At

this point Crowfoot took off his hat and took out his cigar and told the chiefs to pay

great attention so that they should remember all said, and also told the interpreter

to be sure and tell the truth, straight out from the shoulder.

CROWFOOT’S ORATION.

318 From THE POW–WOW AT GLEICHEN. (1886, August 5). The Brandon Mail, p. 2. 319 Issapóómahksika (1830 – 1890), Chief of the Siksika First Nation. 320 Natos–Api (1819 – 1897), medicine man and Blackfoot chief. 321 Pitikwahanapiwiyin (1842 – 1886), Cree chief and Crowfoot’s adopted son. Against his wishes, some

of his warriors joined Riel’s 1885 rebellion. This led Poundmaker to be tried for treason in 1885. He

died while visiting his adopted father at the Siksika Reserve, shortly after the conclusion of the trial.

188

Crowfoot then began his oration. He complained that the C. P. R. had caused

prairie fires on his reserve, and that they had paid no attention to his complaints. If

the white man down east had his grass burned by the fire wagon he could make a row

about it, and so he Crowfoot thought he ought to do the same. Some bad people spread

the report that the Blackfeet were going to give trouble, but he knew better, and he

was grieved to the inner heart to hear of these reports. He never believed bad reports

about white men, and thought the white men ought to be equally confiding. He

desired to be friends with the white man, and called upon his chiefs to express their

assent. This they did by calling out, “are kew,” that is “good.” He then told the chiefs

that Sir John was the biggest man they had among them for a long time. (Loud

applause.) turning to Sir John he said he and his chiefs feared for their children, that

food would not be given them, and he would like Sir John to help to banish these

fears. He said they could not work and could not contradict all what [journalists] said

in the newspapers about them and their wives and children, hence they got a bad

name they did not deserve. There was no truth in the statements referred to.

SIR JOHN’S REPLY.

Sir John said he for one never believed the bad reports about them. The

Governor General and himself had received good messages from Crowfoot and had

believed them, and found he was a man with a big heart, true to the Great Mother

and to treaties. He had [learned] with regret how the prairie fires had burned their

grass and injured them, and would do his best to have the grievance removed. He

advised the Indians to cultivate the land and [raise] stock and become like white men.

This being interpreted, Crowfoot said all very well, but when they raised more

potatoes than they wanted and tried to sell them they only got a little bit of money

the size of a finger nail for the whole sack. If they depended on the money from the

sale they would starve. He (Crowfoot) thought it took a long time for an answer to

come back from Ottawa to their complaints and he desired a change in this respect.

He wanted more rations. If Sir John had a large number of people with him and they

were not fed, Crowfoot would at once spring to his help, and he hoped Sir John would

take him for example.

Sir John replied he always knew Crowfoot had a big heart. Crowfoot would be

given rations, but it must be weighed out as to the police; that was the fairest way.

Crowfoot referred to his being in mourning for Poundmaker, which accounted

for the fact that he was not dressed well, and that no disrespect was meant.

Sir John was sorry to hear of his trouble and had brought him a consoler in the

shape of proper clothing for mourning, a present from himself which he hoped he

would wear. If there was anything else he hoped it would be told Governor Dewdney.

He himself was obliged to go further west and would return in three weeks, meantime

all complaints should be told Governor Dewdney.

Old Sun here held up two fingers to indicate he had two words to say. He

produced the first treaty made by Gov. Laird and wanted everything done according

to that. The interpreter was frequently interrupted while telling what Sir John said

[by calls of] “that is good.”

189

12. Hunger, Rations and Hayter Reed (1888)322

A public interview between the assistant Indian commissioner and the chiefs

Alexandre323 and Michel324, with their councilors, was held at the police barracks,

Edmonton, on Thursday afternoon. Major de Balinhard325, Indian agent, […] Rev.

Pere Blanchet, […] and others were present. John Rowland of St. Albert interpreted

for the Indians and Mr. Reed employed his own interpreter.

Mr. Reed said he had come in pursuance of his promise of the day before to

hear what the Indians had to say. Alexandre said he spoke as it might be for God and

for the government on behalf of the poor people who could not speak for themselves.

Alexandre – I don’t depend on what you are doing here – both of you (Messrs

Reed and de Balinhard). Everything has been going badly since you two came here.

We consider that you have acted against the law. It is you who have caused the

government cattle to be killed. You knew last fall that game and fish had failed in

this country. You have come from far and you have seen no track of anything to kill

and eat. You see how miserable the Indians are here, and when you go back you will

tell them all is well.

Mr. Reed – You told me all this when I saw you before, and I gave you answer

then. The government is pretty well aware of the facts of the case. My business here

is to report the facts to the government, which I will do.

Alexandre – What I say is truth, as everyone who is here knows. Because it is

true I sent the telegram to Sir John. I have waited for an answer, but have got none.

I am not as wise as you. I look like a dog before you, but I have a mind to think of

these things. I follow the track of the law and am not ashamed. White men would do

as we have done. We killed our cattle from hunger. Hunger might make us kill each

other. It is as you were pushing us to do evil. That we have eaten our horses and the

cattle that the government gave us should be blamed on you. What the poor people

are saying every day rings in my ears. We do not depend on you.

Mr. Reed – Does he mean that the promises I made him yesterday won’t be

kept?

Alexandre – I am talking not of what is ahead but of what is behind, since last

fall. It is since then we have eaten the cattle.

Michel – When we were forced with hunger we went to the agent here. He

spoke well to us but that did not fill us. When matters did not improve we said, ‘Let

us see how it is further away.’ We got no answer from the telegram we sent. We see

that nothing is going right from Regina. You knew that it was a hard year with us. If

you wanted to save us, why did you not send the food while the roads were good? The

322 From HUNGRY INDIANS. (1888, March 10). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 4. 323 The Alexander First Nation are signatories to Treaty 6. 324 The Michel Band signed Treaty 6 in 1876. 325 “The northern agency of Treaty 7 has been divided into two portions, Mr. Magnus Begg taking the

Blackfeet, and Major De Balinhard, late farm instructor on the Sarcee reserve, the Sarcees and

Stonies.” LOCAL. (1885, September 2). The Calgary Weekly Herald, p. 4.

190

Indians had asked for 500 sacks of flour this winter. He heard that only 300 sacks

had been sent. Perhaps Sir John does not know we are starving.

Replying to Mr. Reed, Michel said that before sending the telegram they had

gone to the agent and asked for food. They knew that next day was ration day, but

they did not wait to see what would be given them on that day.

Mr. Reed said that the total number of sacks of flour were 500, but the

department were using their judgment about the time for delivery.

Mr. de Balinhard said that was the trouble: 200 were not to be delivered till

June.

Mr. Reed – The object of the government in not sending the flour sooner was

to assist the farmers of the country by buying as much as possible from them. It was

not until late in the fall that the department found they could not get enough flour

here. It had to be brought all the way from Winnipeg. The contractor met with many

accidents and did not get in when agreed. The government would have delivered the

flour sooner if they could.

Replying to Mr. Reed, Michel said that he had two cattle of his own and had

five pigs, but they had starved to death. He had earned money by freighting but had

not yet received it. His son had earned some and had received it.

Rev. Father Blanchet, at Michel’s request, conversed with Mr. Reed in French.

Ma–me–na–wa–ta326, of Stoney Plain, said, “I have been called a coward for

not killing cattle. It is true. I am a coward and have killed none. I am glad to see you

here, and I am surprised that you have come now when everything is scarce. This one

and that one is naked. The wives are freezing for lack of clothing. Why is the clothing

now lying in the store on the reserve not distributed? When you go, those you leave

behind will not do as you promise. They seem to be above you. If your promises are

not carried out, after you leave I will kill cattle as others do. The only way to get

anything from the agent you sent us is to flatter him. I have always wanted you to

look favorably on me. You put an egg – the law – into my hand. I did not break it and

neither have these others. We are trying to gain what the Queen promised us. What

we gain we would like to have in our hands. We want these promises fulfilled now.”

Alexandre blamed the Regina officials and accused them of misusing the

money placed in their hands for the benefit of the Indians. He said, “You do not

expend as much this year as before. When we could help ourselves you helped us

more, this year we cannot help ourselves and you bring us less. Do you promise to

give us three meals a day until the ice is gone, or is this increase in food to be only for

one day? When we see that you will help us, we will thank you.”

Mr. Red – I am here on behalf of the government to see whether the Indians

are able to provide for themselves or not. After making enquiries I find that they

require more rations. Consequently I increased them, and will allow them a

reasonable quantity until such time as those who are able go off to hunt. The

government does not wish any one to suffer from lack of food. But though the

government aids the Indians, and in most cases very liberally, the Indians are

326 Probably Mahminahwatah (d. 1883), also known as Chief Tommy Lapotac, of the Enoch Cree

Nation.

191

expected to aid themselves by every means in their power. Some Indians receive a

great deal of provisions, others only a little and others none at all, according to

circumstances. As I told you, my promises are being kept, and both flour and meat

are being sent out to you so that you will not want. A few Indians are out hunting,

and are doing remarkably well. Alexandre himself has killed thirty deer this winter

and two others whom I met have killed 90. I know it is hard to get out and hunt, the

snow is so deep, but some can help themselves. Michel said a day or two ago on his

reserve, “If these promises are fulfilled we are happy.” They are being fulfilled.

Alexandre said he had killed thirty deer, but he was the best hunter in this

part of the country. Others could not do as he had done. There were not more than

twenty deer left in the vicinity. “You know it is deep snow and a hard season. You

knew these things before. If you had opened your eyes before, things would not be as

they are. But you did not want to see; you want to do nothing but gather money. Your

name is neither good with Indians or whites – neither of you.”

Mr. Reed – We know many things, but we did not know whether or not there

was going to be fish or game.

A young man said he had lost his wife and two children by hunger, and as he

was now alone he could manage to support himself.

Mr. Reed said if the government thought he could earn a living it would not

help him at all.

Alexander said he understood that the government said, if you help yourselves

we will help you; not, if you help yourselves we will leave you off.

Another councilor said, I am a coward, but when I hear my children cry from

hunger, I kill cattle. I think of you as the cold; you want to kill all on the reserves.

Alexandre – You were sent word last spring about sickness on the reserves. On

my own reserve many have died of sickness and hunger. Medicine is no use without

food. Thirty have died on my own reserve, and fifteen besides. Five of my own children

have died, most of them grown up. I sent word every day but you would do nothing

for me. You think what I say of the sickness is not true. I tell you in your ears you lie

when you say you take the part of the sick children.

Mr. Jim had been used to working for the whites. This winter he could get no

work. There was no game and no fish, and he had nearly starved to death depending

on the Indian department. He did not go to the whites to sell his country. They came

to him to buy it, and now they would not pay the price.

Mr. Reed ordered dinner to be provided for the Indians, and assured them that

they would receive the increase of rations promised.

13. The Signing of Treaty 8 (1899)327

On the following day the first meeting took place when nearly 500 Indians

responded to the appeal. Following is a verbatim report of Hon. Mr. Laird’s speech

before the chiefs, headmen and different bands of Indians:

327 From Treaty With the Indians. (1899, August 3). The Calgary Weekly Herald, p. 1.

192

“As we all come to a peaceful meeting, we will give to each one a piece of

tobacco, to have a friendly smoke. We have Mr. Tate as our interpreter, but in order

to satisfy you, we have engaged Mr. Cunningham, whom you all know well, to act as

your interpreter, so that one interpreter can watch the other. R–– brothers, we have

come here today, sent by the great mother to treat with you, and this is the paper she

has given to us, signed with the seal to show that we have the authority to treat with

you. The other commissioners, who are associated with me and who are sitting here,

are Mr. McKenna and Hon. Mr. Ross, and the Reverend Father Lacombe328, who is

with us to act as councillor and advisor. I have to say on behalf of the Queen and the

government of Canada that we have come to make you an offer. We have made

treaties in former years with all the Indians of the prairies and from there to Lake

Superior. As white people are coming into your country we have thought it well to tell

you what is required of you.

“The Queen wants all the whites, H–––––s and Indians to be at peace with one

another, and to shake hands when they meet. The Queen’s laws must be obeyed all

over the country, both by the whites and Indians. It is not alone that we wish to

prevent Indians from hunting or molesting the whites, it is also to prevent whites

from molesting or doing harm to the Indians. The Queen’s soldiers are just as much

for the protection of the Indians as the white man. The commissioners made an

appointment to meet you at a certain time, but on account of bad weather on the river

and lake we are late, which we are sorry for, but are glad to meet so many of you here

today.

“We understand stories have been told you that if you made a treaty with us,

you would become servants and slaves, but we wish you to understand that such is

not the case, but that you will be just as free after signing a treaty as you are now.

The treaty is a free offer; take it or not just as you please. If you refuse it, there is no

harm done. We will not be bad friends on that account. One thing the Indians must

understand, that if they do make a treaty they must obey the laws of the land, that

will be just the same whether you make a treaty or whether you do not, the laws must

be obeyed. The Queen’s government wish to give the Indians here just the same terms

as they have given the Indians all over the country from the prairies to Lake Superior.

Indians in other places who took treaty many years ago are now better off than they

were before. They grow grain and raise cattle. Like the white people their children

have learned to read and write.

“Now I will give you an outline of the terms we offer you. If you agree to take

treaty, everyone this year gets a present of $12. A family of five, man, wife and three

children, will get $60. A family of eight $96. After this year and for every year

afterwards, $5 for each person for ever. To such chiefs as you may select, and that the

government approves of, we will give $35 each year. The chiefs also get a silver medal,

and a flag such as you now see at our tents, right now as the treaty is signed. Next

year, as soon as we know how many chiefs there are and every three years thereafter,

each chief will get a new suit of clothes, and every councilor a suit, only not quite so

good as the chief’s. Then, as the white men are coming in and settling up the country,

328 Albert Lacombe (1872 – 1916)

193

and as the Queen wishes the Indians to have lands of their own, we will give one

square mile, or 640 acres, to each family of five, but there will be no compulsion to

force Indians to go into a reserve. Those not wishing to go into a band, can get 160

acres of land for himself, and some for each member of his family. These reserves or

holdings you can select when you please, subject to the approval of the government;

that is, you might select lands that might interfere with rights or lands of settlers.

The government must be sure the land you select is in the right place. Then again, as

some of you may want to sow grain or potatoes the government will give you ploughs

and harrows, hoes, etc., to enable you to do so, and every spring will furnish you with

provisions to enable you to work and put in your crop. Again, if you do not wish to

sow grain, or raise cattle, the government will furnish you with some ammunition to

hunt, and twine to catch fish. The government will also provide schools to teach your

children to read and write, and do other things like white men and their children.

Schools will be established when there is a sufficient number of children. The

government will give the chiefs axes and tools to make houses to live in and be

comfortable.

“Indians have been told that if they make a treaty they will not be allowed to

hunt or fish the same as they do now. This is not true. Indians who take treaty will

be just as free to hunt and fish all over as they now are, but they must not molest

settlers in so doing. In return for this the government expects that the Indians will

not interfere with or molest the miner, traveller or settler; we expect you to be good

friends with everyone and shake hands with all you meet. If any whites molest you

in any way, shoot your dogs or horses or do you any harm, you have only to report the

matter to the police and they will see that justice be done to you.

“There may be some things we have not mentioned, but these can be mentioned

later on. Two commissioners, Major Walker and J. A. Cote, are here for H–––––s and

their children and find out if they are entitled to scrip. The reason the government

does this is, the H–––––s have Indian blood and have claims on that account. The

government does not make treaty with them, as they live more as white men do, so

they give them scrip to settle their claims at once and forever. H–––––s living like

Indians have the chance to take treaty if they want to do so. They have their choice,

but only after treaty is signed. If there is no treaty made, neither can scrip be given.

After the treaty is signed the commissioners will take up H––––– claims. The first

thing they will do is: H––––– settlers living on land will be given 160 acres of land,

that is if there is room to do so. If several are settled closely together the land will be

divided between them as fairly as possible. All, whether settled or not, will be given

scrip for land to the value of $240, that is all born up to date of signing of treaty who

have not previously had scrip granted. They can sell that scrip, that is, all of age can

do so. They can take if they like instead of this, scrip for 240 acres of land to be taken

where they like. After they have located the land and got their title, they can live on

it or sell part or whole of it as they please, but cannot sell the scrip. They must locate

the land and get their title before selling. These are the principal points in the offer

we have to make you. The Queen owns the country, but is willing to acknowledge the

Indians’ claim, and offers these terms as an offset to all of them.

194

“We will be glad to answer any questions and make clear any points not

understood. We will meet you again tomorrow, after you have considered our offer,

say about 2 o’clock or later if you wish. We have other Indians to meet with at other

places, but do not wish to hurry you. After this meeting you can go to the Hudson’s

Bay fort, where our provisions are stored, and rations will be issued to you of flour,

bacon; also some tea and tobacco, so that you can have a good meal and a good time.

This is a free gift, given with good will and given to you whether you make a treaty

or not. It is a present the Queen is glad to make to you. I am now done and will be

glad to hear what anyone has to say.”

THE CHIEF SPEAKS

Keenooshayoo, “The Fish” was the first chief to reply. He said: “You say we are

brothers. I cannot understand how we are. I live differently than you. I can only

understand that Indians will benefit in a very small degree from your offer. You have

told us you come in the Queen’s name. We surely have also a right to say a little as

far as that goes. I do not understand what you mean about every third year.”

Mr. McKenna: “It was mentioned that the third year was only mentioned in

regard to supply of clothing.”

Keenooshayoo, “The Fish”: “Do you not allow the Indian to make his own

conditions, so that he can benefit as much as possible? Why I say this is that we today

make arrangements that are to last as long as the sun shines and water runs. Up to

the present I have earned my own living, and working in my own way for the Queen.

It is good. The Indian likes his way of living and free life. When I understand you

thoroughly, I will know better what I will do. Up to the present I have never seen the

time when I could not work for the Queen and make my own living. I will consider

carefully what you have said.”

Moostoos329, “The Bull,” brother of Keenooshayoo: “Often before now I have

said I would consider carefully what you might say. You have called us brothers. True,

I am the younger brother, you are the older brother. Being the younger, if the younger

asks the older for something, he will be able to grant his request, same as our mother

the Queen. I am glad to hear what you have to say. Our country is getting broken up.

I see the white man coming in, and I want to be friendly. I see what he does; it is just;

we should be friends. I will not speak any more; there are too many people here who

may wish to speak.”

Wappeehayo, “White Partridge:” “I stand behind this man’s back

(Keenooshayoo). I want to tell the commissioners there are two ways, the long and

the short. I want to take the way that will last longest.”

Chas. Neesmiasis, “The Twin:” “I follow those two brothers, Moostoos and

Keenooshayoo. When I understand better I will be able to say more.”

Felix Giroux spoke to the same effect as previous speakers.

Mr. Laird: “We should be glad to hear from some of the Sturgeon Lake people.”

“The Captain:” “I accept what you offer. I am old and miserable now. I have not

my family with me here, but I accept your offer.”

329 Mostos (1850 – 1918), also known as Louis Willier.

195

Mr. Laird: “You will get the money for all your children under age and not

married, just the same as if they were here.”

“The Captain:” “I speak for all those in my part of the country.”

Mr. Laird: “I am sorry the rest of your people are not here, but if here next

year, their claims will not be overlooked.”

“The Captain:” “I am old now. It is indirectly through the Queen we have lived.

She in a manner has supplied the sale shops through which we have lived. Others

may think I am foolish for speaking as I do. Let them think as they like. I accept.

When I was young I was an able man and made my living independently of any one,

but now I am old and feeble, and not able to do much.”

EXPLANATIONS BY MR. ROSS

Hon. Jas. Ross: “I will just answer a few questions that have been put.

Keenooshayoo has said he cannot see how it will benefit you to take treaty. As all the

rights you now have will not be interfered with, therefore everything you get in

addition must be a clear gain. The white man is bound to come in and open up the

country, and we came before him to explain the relations that must exist between you

and thus prevent any trouble arising. You say you have heard what the

commissioners have said and how you wish to live. We believe that men who have

lived without help heretofore, can do better when the country is opened up. Any fur

they catch is worth more, that comes about by competition. You will notice it takes

more boats to bring in goods to buy your furs than it did formerly. We think that as

the rivers and lakes of this country will be the principal highways, good boatmen like

yourselves cannot fail to make a good living and profit from the increased traffic. We

are much pleased to see you have some cattle. It will be the duty of the commissioners

to recommend the government through the superintendent general of Indian affairs

to give you cattle of a better breed. You say you have a right to say something about

the terms we offer you. We offer you certain terms, but you are not forced to take

them. You ask if Indians are not allowed to make a bargain. We are glad you

understand the treaty is for ever. If the Indians do as they are asked we shall

certainly keep all our promises. We shall be glad to know you have got on without

anyone’s help, but you must know times are harder, furs scarcer than they used to

be. Indians are proud of a free life and we do not wish to interfere with it. When

reserves are offered you, there is no intention to make you live on them if you do not

want to, but in years to come you may change and want these lands to live on. The

H–––––s of Athabasca are being more liberally dealt with than in any other part of

Canada. We hope you will discuss our offer and arrive at a decision as soon as

possible. We have delayed you, others are now waiting for our arrival, and you by

deciding quickly will assist us to get to them.”

Keenooshayoo: “Have you all heard. Do you accept. All who wish to accept

stand up.”

Wendige: “I have heard and accept with a glad heart all I have heard.”

Keenooshayoo: “Are the terms good forever, as long as the sun shines on us,

because there are orphans we must consider, so that there will be nothing thrown up

to us afterwards? We want a written treaty, one copy to be given us, so we can know

196

what we sign for. Are you willing to give means to instruct children as long as sun

shines and water flows, so that children will grow up in ever increasing knowledge?”

Moostoos: “I understand Keenooshayoo to accept, so do I. About schools, are

you or the Indians to choose instructors?”

Mr. Laird: “The government will choose teachers according to religion of the

band. If the band are pagans the government will appoint teachers who, if not

acceptable, will be replaced by others. About treaties lasting for ever, I will just say

that some Indians have got to live so like the whites that they have sold their lands

and divided the money, but this only happens when the Indians ask for it. Treaties

last for ever as signed, unless the Indians vote to make a change. I understand you

all agree to the terms of the treaty. Am I right? If so I will have treaty drawn up and

tomorrow we will sign it. Speak to all those who do not agree. Moostoos, Sacpee,

Keenooshayoo, my children, all who agree stand up.”

FATHER LACOMBE

Rev. Father Lacombe then spoke as follows: “My friends, I am very happy to

meet you here today, as you know I am an old friend of this country. The old people

remember yet that 30 years ago I came here as a missionary to baptize a great many

of you and teach you how to serve god. Today, being pretty old, I am coming again to

fulfill another duty. I come as a member of the royal commission to make treaty with

you. The government has been thinking that knowing you so well, your manners and

fashions and your way of living, also speaking your own language, I would be of some

use to their representatives amongst you. Therefore I was officially attached to the

commission to be their advisor, as the governor has just stated. My dear friends, today

is a great day for you – a day of long remembrance for those living now and the

surviving generations. Today a memorable event is taking place with you all. From

your lips the new ones will learn from the lips of their father what is taking place

today. Do not be astonished if I thought it was good for me and for you that I consented

to come and work in this way, because I thought it was a good thing for you to take

the treaty. If I had suspected that it would not have been in your interests I would

never have consented to take any part in such an affair. Long ago I have been

acquainted with the way the government was making treaties with the Indians.

When the government made treaties some years ago with the Saulteaux, of Manitoba,

with the Crees, of the Saskatchewan; with the Blackfoot, Bloods and the Peagans of

the plains I was there and advising these different tribes to accept the conditions of

the government. I do not think I ever gave you any advice to your disadvantage,

therefore today I take upon my own responsibility to advise and urge you to accept

the words of the big chief, who comes here in the name of the Queen. This gentleman

I have known for many years, and I can assure you that he is just, right and sincere

in the statements he has made to you today. Besides he is vested with all the

authority to deal with you. Your ways of living in the forests, on the lakes or the rivers

will not be changed by the treaty, besides the annuities which are to be granted to

you every year as long as the sun is shining upon you and the earth standing.

Therefore I finish my speaking in saying accept.”

197

The chiefs and councillors stood and requested all the Indians present to stand

up as a mark of acceptance of the government’s conditions to make a treaty. They

were glad to hear the remarks made by the Rev. Father Lacombe and thanked him

for having come so far away, although he is very old, to visit them and speak to them.

On the following day, the 21st instant, treaty No. 8, with the Cree, Beaver,

Chippewayas and other Indians, inhabitants of this district, was duly signed.

14. “Nothing to be gained by being Indians” (1882)330

So far, when a treaty was made with any band of Indians in the Saskatchewan,

many of the lower class of h–––––s in the vicinity, for the sake of the treaty money,

caused themselves to be enrolled as Indians, the Government allowing this to be done

as being an easy way of settling any claims these people might otherwise have put

forward as h–––––s. As a present expedient the plan was very good, but it seems

likely to cause a great deal of trouble now, with a prospect of more in the future. These

people, although they may live with the Indians and take the treaty money, and,

although they are not whites, have not the same nature as the true Indian, and join

the bands not because they do not know and cannot do any better, but because they

think they can live easier in that way than by working honestly for their livings as

they had always been obliged to do before.

To give these men treaty money is simply putting a premium on laziness. They

have, to a great extent, the grasping nature of a white man coupled with the indolence

of the Indian, and these two qualities combined generally produce, if not a thief at

least a dishonest man. To allow such men to join the bands gives them a chance to

exercise an influence over the real Indians which must of necessity be anything but

good. Instead of their superior intelligence being used to instruct and improve the

Indians – to make them more industrious and independent – it is used to make them

more dependent on the Government and more generally useless. These men are the

lawyers of the bands and put the rest up to new dodges by which to get greater

concessions from the Government. They joined the band to get out of working and

soon determined that neither they nor any of the others shall work if they can help

it. It is up hill work to instruct, improve and civilize pure Indians, who have neither

education nor religion, but it is far harder to deal with men who have both to a limited

extent, but do not wish to exercise either.

Of this class, principally, are the Edmonton and Lac Ste. Anne bands of alleged

Crees. Most members of the Edmonton band speak English and French as well as

Cree and previous to the treaty considered themselves h–––––s, and worked for their

living like other people, but when the treaty was made and they saw an opportunity

of getting a nice grant of valuable land and an annuity of $5 apiece, they took the

chance and since then have been a nuisance to both the Government officials and

settlers in the neighborhood.

330 From INDIANS? (1882, April 15). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 4.

198

At first they promised to take their reserve about ten miles away from the Fort

on the White Mud, which was a very good place, but soon changed their minds and

finding that all they had to do was to ask and they would receive, they concluded to

demand it on the south side of the river directly opposite the Fort, although the claims

along the river had been taken by other people for years. This was a little too much,

however, and they altered the demand to a line within three miles of the river. Even

inside of those limits some claims were taken, and the Indians ordered the people off.

A survey of the reserve in this location was finally commenced, but they did not think

it was going to be large enough and stopped the work. Since then, the land has been

idle, neither they nor any one else being in possession. Besides all this, they have

drawn Government rations on all occasions when they could get them.

The Lac Ste. Anne band, also mostly h–––––s, before the treaty were doing

pretty well, cultivating considerable patches of land near the lake and working when

they could get an opportunity, but since then they have quit farming and working

and gone into the business of starving and dunning the Government for grub,

occasionally making threats of violence, one of which they carried out lately by

shooting the farm instructor’s cow331.

It is high time this sort of work was put an end to. It is foolish to try to civilize

a man who makes himself a savage in order to receive the benefit of this attempt at

civilization. The fact of his doing so is proof positive that his intelligence is quite up

to the standard, but that his moral nature is too far down to ever be reached by any

argument short of main force. Let these people understand that there is nothing to

be gained by being Indians, and they will soon cease to claim to be such. Instead of

allowing them all they ask, so that they will not stir up ill feeling among the real

Indians, as has been the practice heretofore, a sharp distinction should be drawn

between those who don’t know how to work and can’t, and those who do know how to

work but won’t, and when they proceed to violence, as in this cow shooting case, they

should be made to feel, to its full extent, the heavy hand of the law, and when their

wishes are contrary to the public benefit, as in the case of the Edmonton reserve,

there is no reason why their rights as Indians – which they are not – should not be

overridden by the rights of other h–––––s or whites.

15. Speculation in Scrip (1911)332

331 “On Tuesday last sub–constables […] arrested John Felix Cellihou, who shot W. J. O’Donnell’s cow

about two weeks ago, at his home near the Indian Farm, Riviere Qu’Barre. The preliminary

examination was held at Edmonton. […] Two witnesses were brought in, Jean Baptiste and Michael

Cellihou, who had heard him threaten to shoot the first government animal he sawa, as he was hungry

and the agent had refused to give him any relief. They had not seen him do the shooting, but he had

brought part of the meat to Michael’s house to have it cooked. They would not allow it to be cooked

there, but had helped to eat it after he cooked it at his own house. [John Felix Cellihou] is about 26

years of age, and from his appearance and dress would pass rather for a white man than an Indian.

He speaks English, French and Cree.” LOCAL. (1882, April 15). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 3. 332 From Stead, H. (1911, January 20). The Story of H––––– Scrip. Raymond Rustler, p. 11. Written by Hay Strafford Stead (1871 – 1924).

199

“Now, Sandy, listen to me. You know you promised me that scrip–“

“Promised nothing! You make me tired! You know, Sandy, that that promise

isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. It’s money that’s talking now.”

“But, Sandy, don’t listen to him for a minute. Last spring that scrip was worth

two hundred dollars only; you know a lot of them sold at that. But this year they’re

worth more, and although you promised to let us have it for two hundred, we’re not

holding you to that – we’re giving you four hundred–“

“He’s lying, Sandy. The truth isn’t in him. You know as well as I do that if I

wasn’t here bidding against him, you’d have got just two hundred and not a cent more.

He came up here last year and made himself out a big man and said he was going to

see that you got your scrip and that his influence would fix it for you and you couldn’t

get it without him. I tell you he hadn’t anything more to do with getting your scrip

for you than I had; and if you sell it to him for any less than I’ll give you for it, you’re

a fool and he’s a scoundrel. If he wants your scrip, let him bid for it, same as I’m doing;

and let the highest bidder take it. Come on, now. He says four hundred. I’ll give you

four–fifty to start it. Now, Mister, if you want his scrip, raise me.”

For nearly a couple of hours the altercation went on. One would have thought

Sandy had no say in the matter at all, he was so seldom consulted as to his wishes.

And yet Sandy had in his own right, and by right of being head of his family, the

disposal of three h––––– scrip certificates – his own, his wife’s, and his sister’s. Each

certificate entitled the owner to locate and file on two hundred and forty acres of the

best land they could find in the homestead and pre–emption area of Western Canada,

to become the owners of it by virtue of a Crown grant, absolutely free and without

price or penalty and without any settlement duties to perform. Such land sells, every

day in the week, over the counters of the land companies and in the land departments

of the railways, for as high as twelve and fifteen dollars an acre.

Sandy’s was a typical case. He had applied for scrip the year before. The buyer

who had been on the spot at the time had assisted him in the matter of obtaining

birth certificates and other red tape details necessary for establishing his claim to the

satisfaction of the department of the government which has such matters in hand.

Sandy, grateful for the assistance so generously rendered, had without hesitation

promised to turn over to his friend in need at the then current price, $250. Two

hundred and fifty dollars looked like a big sum to Sandy. He had probably never seen

so much money at once in his life. Besides, his friend was willing to advance him a

few dollars to help him through the winter, and Sandy was not blessed with overmuch

of this world’s goods; indeed, he was probably on the books of “The Company” for

goods already advanced, and his line of credit would thus be naturally somewhat

impaired.

So Sandy had promised; he had even gone so far as to put that promise in

writing, although, Sandy being an honest man, that was quite unnecessary.

Everything had occurred according to schedule. He had received one hundred dollars

or so from the buyer, on the strengths of his prospects. He had passed the winter in

comfort, and was correspondingly grateful. The commissioner had that day handed

him his scrip, and to his wife and sister also one certificate each.

200

And then the trouble had begun. Another buyer was on the scene, telling him

how little the first man had really done for him, and how he was being cheated out of

much wealth in carrying out his bargain to sell for such a small sum. The new buyer

was prepared to pay more – much more; how much Sandy could not exactly tell, but

certainly there was to be much more money for Sandy if he sold to the new man.

Sandy, in his dilemma, did as all his forbears had done before him – he went

to The Company. He gathered the two buyers together and marched them into the

Hudson’s Bay Company’s office at the Fort, and laid the matter before the factor. So

did the scrip buyers. They argued it pro and con, and the argument got warmer and

warmer as it proceeded. It finally resolved itself into an auction duel, and the price of

scrip that evening went up three hundred per cent. At nine hundred and fifty dollars

the bidding lagged somewhat, and the factor said:

“I was just t’ink, me,” Sandy replied, “de oder feller – mabbe she give me some

more money.”

He did. Sandy and his family went to bed that night with the satisfied feeling

natural to any h––––– that has just seen three thousand dollars in bankbills paid

over to the Hudson’s Bay Company to be placed to the credit of his account, and locked

up in the Company’s safe in the office before his eyes.

The issuing of h––––– scrip is a comparatively recent development. In 1870,

when the country now comprised of the three prairie provinces was taken over by the

Government of Canada from the Hudson’s Bay Company, it became necessary to

make some arrangements to purchase the rights of the Indians resident in the

country. This was done by means of a series of treaties, with the various bands which

occupied the territory covered by each session.

But at that time there was a considerable proportion of h––––– population.

Some of these lived like white men, engaged in business, or in farming. Others, on

the conclusion of the treaty with their relatives, chose to do as they had always done,

and live with the Indians as Indians, accepting treaty and residing on the reserve.

But there was a large section of h–––––s, who, while not allying themselves

completely with their darker brethren, still lived by hunting and trapping, and did

not adopt the white man’s life. These had just as much at stake in the country as the

Indians themselves, and considered that they should have been dealt with just as

generously by the Government. But no provision for them was made by treaty or in

any other way; and the dissatisfaction of the h–––––s at the neglect of the

Government to deal with their claims in this regard led directly to the h–––––

rebellion of 1885.

After the rebellion was quelled, the question of allaying in some manner the

discontent rife among the h–––––s was taken up by the Government. It was

impossible to deal with them as the Indians had been dealt with. Unlike the Indians

– whose cohesion in comparatively large bands made negotiations easy, and whose

mode of living invited terms totally unsuited to the h–––––s – the latter were

scattered all over the country, each for himself, and owning no master but their own

sweet wills.

201

It was finally decided that a grant of land to each individual h––––– would

meet the case, and the grant was fixed at the generous allowance of two hundred and

forty acres; which was considered a sufficiently large farm to support a man and his

family in comfort.

To each h–––––, then, who applied and proved his right to participate in the

issue, a certificate was given entitling him to two hundred and forty acres of land,

which he was allowed to select from all the available homestead land in the possession

of the Dominion Government, and for which a deed would be issued to him on

presenting his certificate, or scrip, at the office of the Dominion Lands for the district

in which his selected land was situated.

Few of the h–––––s took advantage of the opportunity afforded them to become

farmers. Farming was the last thing to which the average h––––– would turn his

thoughts. They were hunters and trappers, rovers by nature; and their scrip

certificates were to them merely an asset, to be disposed of for what they would fetch.

Land was cheap. Hundreds of thousands of acres could be purchased by anyone who

had a mind for that kind of foolishness for a dollar an acre and less. No h––––– with

any sense would take the trouble to locate and take a deed for unsaleable land which

he couldn’t farm (and wouldn’t if he could), when he could get cash, or some equally

desirable article, for his piece of paper with the writing on it, without any trouble or

difficulty.

Thus the h–––––s fell into the hands of the speculators. Scrip was sold for ten

dollars, five dollars, for a blanket, a bottle of whisky or a keg of beer; for any old thing,

in fact, which the speculators had come to offer and which the h–––––, for the

moment, wanted – or thought he wanted. Fortunes have been made, time without

number, by the purchase of h––––– scrip. There are to–day in Winnipeg, and

elsewhere in the West, men who are in the millionaire and near–millionaire classes,

who laid the foundations of their fortunes, and made the bulk of them, by their

dealings in scrip.

And by no means would all of these transactions bear close scrutiny. Measured

under the standard of commercial integrity, it would be found that wholesale fraud

was practiced, and that large numbers of h–––––s were cheated out of what even they

considered their due – and little enough it was. One method, easily accomplished, and

adopted only too frequently on account of its ease of accomplishment, was to ply the

h––––– with liquor until he was in a sufficiently besotted state to transfer his scrip

for a mere trifle – usually another bottle. That method ran its course, and died out as

the h–––––s grew wiser as to the value of their holding. Another favorite method of

the scrip dealer was to look up the record of a h–––––, secretly; and on obtaining the

necessary evidence that he was entitled to scrip, to take him aside, and whisper

gently to him that his benefactor was in a position to get him a certain sum of money.

All the h––––– had to do was to sign certain papers, and the machinery would be put

in motion. The h––––– argued that he had nothing to lose, and there was a chance of

gain. He usually signed – and when it was all over, he got his money, and the dealer

got his scrip.

202

In all these fraudulent dealings, there was one danger to the dealer on which

he had to take a chance, which he had no scruples in doing. In locating h––––– scrip,

it is necessary for the h––––– whose name is on the certificate to appear at the land

office for the district where the land is located, and to file his claim in person. But in

the old days this was rarely done. It was an expensive matter to transport whole

families of h–––––s to distant points to hand in their certificates, even if the

circumstances under which those certificates were obtained from them were such as

to make them willing to perform such a service. So here again fraud was introduced.

One h––––– would impersonate scores of men whom he had probably never heard of

before, swearing to a different name in each office he visited. It would probably be not

far from the truth to say that less than 50 per cent. of the h––––– claims for which

deeds have been granted in Western Canada have been located in person, as the law

demands, by the h–––––s to whom the scrip was issued.

Even to this day it would seem that this species of fraud is being practiced.

Only last year the charge was openly made by one dealer, that another had been

guilty of this very practice. With this exception, however, the days of open fraud in

scrip purchase are past for ever. To–day, the h––––– has a much better knowledge of

the value of his certificate, and a much wider appreciation of the ability of the law to

protect him in his business transactions.

Yet, even now, the h––––– does not by any means get the full value of his scrip.

Within the past two years, scrip has been purchased at the point of issue for from two

hundred to four hundred dollars, while worth at the time in Winnipeg from eighteen

hundred to two thousand dollars – the value of a certificate for two hundred and forty

acres at $7.50 to $8.50 per acre. The price asked in Winnipeg for scrip to–day is $9.50

per acre.

There are three kinds of scrip issued by the Dominion Government. The first

is comparatively rare, and unimportant. It is an undertaking on the part of the

Government to accept at its face value the certificate, which is given out, for services

rendered, by Government surveyors and other employees of the Dominion in remote

places where [illegible] cash scrip, and is issued in varying amounts to suit the service

for which it is remuneration.

The second, and by far the most desirable of all scrip, is that which is called

“red–back.” This is a land scrip, similar to the ordinary h––––– scrip, for two hundred

and forty acres; but it differs from the other and most prevalent form in that it does

not require personal application on the part of the person to whom the scrip is issued.

The possession of this kind of scrip thus does away with the trouble and expense of

transporting the original owner to the spot where the entry for the land is to be made.

Red–back scrip is the scrip which was issued to the h–––––s who were proved to be

entitled to its issue, but who had left the country – usually for the United States –

and for whom it would have entailed some hardship to have been compelled to make

the long journey back to Western Canada to enter in person for their land.

The third kind of scrip, in which there is most traffic, is that issued to h–––––

s resident in the country, with the condition that personal entry must be made when

the land is located.

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The h–––––s who are entitled to scrip are not yet all settled with by any means.

Every new treaty made by the Dominion Government with the Indians of a hitherto

unceded portion of the Dominion, finds some few h–––––s resident in that particular

territory, with whom settlement must be made on the same terms as those granted

their brethren in the older portions of the West. These treaties are being made

annually; and every summer Inspector Semmens, who as the senior officer of the

Indian Department in the West holds the appointment of Commissioner to conclude

treaty with the Indians, adds a hundred thousand or so square miles to the area in

which the Indians have been brought by treaty under the care of the Indian

department.

H–––––s born in the ceded territory, and h–––––s resident therein who have

not previously been settled with, make their applications before the Commissioner.

Their parentage is traced back, the record of their residence in the country since birth

to the present time is recorded, birth certificates or baptismal certificates are

obtained, and the application, with its evidence of the h–––––’s claim on the face of

it, is forwarded to Ottawa. There the evidence is carefully scrutinized, and the

statements of the applicant are compared with the records in the department. If the

application is found to be satisfactory, a certificate is forwarded to Winnipeg in due

course, and delivered to the applicant in person by the Commissioner.

Frequently the applicant has only the vaguest notion of the information upon

which the form of application insists. An applicant will tell his age promptly, and

without any hesitation. When the question arises as to where he has lived since his

birth, he begins to flounder. By the time he has summed up the term of his residence

at various points, it will frequently appear that he has overlapped somewhere – that

the addition of these various terms makes him several years older – or younger – than

the age he has already given. Then the Commissioner, the applicant, the applicant’s

relatives, and any other Indians or h–––––s who happen to be handy (there is always

an interested audience at these sessions) dig in and endeavor to create order out of

the chaos of years and events. If the applicant is, or has been, an employee of the

Hudson’s Bay Company, it is a simple matter to obtain the necessary evidence; for

the company keeps a full and complete record of the service of all its employees, with

dates and place of residence, nature of employment, age, and character.

Another snag is the requirement of a baptismal certificate. Just what value is

to be derived by the department from the production of a baptismal certificate is

difficult to tell. In many cases, particularly among the old h–––––s, no baptism has

ever been performed. In many other cases, although baptized, no record of the fact is

to be found in the registers; which at the remoter places in the north, have often been

grossly neglected by the native missionaries in charge, themselves often able to read

little and write less. Again, baptism may have taken place at birth, or it may have

been performed at any age from birth to second childhood. In many of the older

registers, the age is absent from the record; or the applicant for admission to the

church has been labelled “infant” or “adult.” But whatever the value to the

department, this is one of the conditions of application; and it forms the most frequent

stumbling block to the seeker after scrip.

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It sometimes happens that a man of undoubted and well authenticated h––––

– lineage will refuse to take scrip, and will insist on taking treaty with the band he

lives with. He is absolutely ignorant of the value of scrip, and totally indifferent to

the arguments of the scrip buyers who endeavor to show him the error of his ways.

One such h––––– refused scrip last year, and took treaty with the rest of the Indians.

This man had a family of four children. His record was well–known, and his claim

was perfect. It was put to him by the scrip buyers that by taking scrip he would come

into possession of a large sum of money. He got up at treaty time and made a little

speech in which he said that he had lived all his life with the Indians. They were his

people. If he took scrip, he and his children would have to live like the white man,

away from the [illegible] live and die with his people.

That man could have had for the asking five scrip certificates. These at the

current prices in the north, were worth a thousand dollars each. They could have been

sold in Winnipeg for ten thousand dollars for the five. The income of that at six per

cent. would have brought him in fifty dollars a month in perpetuity. He had probably

never earned a hundred dollars a year at any time in his life. Yet he put fortune aside

with a wave of the hand and sat back, content with five dollars per annum for himself

and each of his children, rather than leave the life he had been brought up to.

With childlike simplicity like that the lot of the scrip buyer must be a happy

one – providing he is unhampered by competition. To detach scrip certificates from

such specimens of unsophisticated guilelessness must be like taking candy from a

baby. And if the h––––– himself takes no thought for the morrow, such is far from

being the case with the scrip buyer.

This year treaty has been concluded at York Factory and Churchill. All last

winter, scrip buyers were on the ground, searching out likely applicants, and

persuading the backward ones to apply; making advances in cash or supplies where

they would do the most good; hunting up evidence that would probably have been

available anyway; and generally making themselves officiously useful – and in spite

of the fact that any sale of scrip before it is delivered to the owner is absolutely illegal,

doubtless wheedling out of the expectant beneficiaries a promise to deliver up the

scrip, when it is obtained, to the good Samaritan who has taken all the trouble and

been so kind and helpful.

16. Conflict Over Urban Land (1882)333

To the Editor of the Edmonton BULLETIN.

In your last issue, and even in several former numbers of the BULLETIN, you

strongly opposed the idea of having an Indian reserve on the south side of the

Saskatchewan, only three miles from Edmonton334. These Indians, you say, occupy

333 From CHRISTIAN. (1882, April 29). INDIAN RESERVES AGAIN. The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 3. 334 On example: “The band of Indians under chief Papastayow, which make Edmonton their

headquarters, wish to take their reserve on the south side of the Saskatchewan, the northern limit

being within three miles of Edmonton. […] It contains a large amount of fine farming land, and its

nearness to the town and river makes it especially valuable. There is no doubt that in the near future

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some of the best lands in the neighborhood and cannot fail to be an obstacle to

colonization around Edmonton. Also that it will be necessary for the Government to

remove this obstacle sooner or later. We hope the settlers of the south side of

Edmonton will be more successful than those of St. Albert. Here, also, our colony is

improving and increasing very fast, and we were gladly contemplating the happy

event of a large immigration of friends and relations of ours coming to settle with us

and in our vicinity west of the mission. But two Indian bands have had their reserves

granted them and surveyed in such a way that some claims already occupied by our

people were taken from them without any compensation for their improvements, and

they were obliged to look elsewhere for homesteads. Some others were settlers just

on the limit of an Indian reserve. Their homesteads were already too far improved to

allow them to remove, and now, instead of getting friends or relations in their

neighborhood, they get a band of starving Indians.

Those Indians were formerly settled on the shores of Lake St. Anne and Lake

la Nonne. They had houses and fields, and succeeded pretty well. We are at a loss to

understand why they were allowed or induced by the government to abandon these

lakes, where they could find abundant fishing, that they might take reserves against

their wills – at least the Stonies – at Riviere Qui’Barre. Had our government or Indian

agents wished to oppose colonization and wrong the Indians, they could not have done

it otherwise so effectually. We opposed such a state of affairs and begged His

Lordship, the R. C. Bishop of St. Albert, to write on our behalf, and so he did, but

neither complaints nor petitions have been heard. We had no local newspaper at that

time to make known our grievances, or certainly we would have done it.

To please the agents, a great many Indians have abandoned their homes, their

small fields and their land, to settle on the west end of our colony. They received, they

say, good promise of help and assistance, and so they commenced again to build new

shanties and break new patches of land. The crops failed, and being severed from the

abundant fishery they used to have at Lake Ste. Anne and Lake la Nonne, they have

been, they are, and they will be starving.

We cannot approve, of course, of the killing of the Indian farmer’s cow by Jean

Felix Cellihou, but we can see there to how many troubles are exposed the settlers of

St. Albert West, on account of the vicinity of Indian reserves. Had those Indians

remained on their former places they would not have been a drawback to colonization

around here, they would not have been so much exposed to famine and starvation,

and they would have enjoyed the benefit of missions founded for them and at their

request, by the Bishop of St. Albert, who was himself very dissatisfied at being obliged

to build new churches and houses on account of this removal of the Indians, and that

at least of the Stonies – against their own will, desire and inclinations.

CHRISTIAN.

St. Albert, April 17th, 1882.

it will be found necessary to remove this reserve to another locality. […] It is well known that an Indian

reserve located near a town is a cause of trouble and general demoralization to both whites and

Indians.” INDIAN RESERVES. (1882, April 8). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 4.

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17. Minor Chiefs Swear Not to Sell Lands (1913)335

Minor chiefs of the Blood336 tribe, consisting of 1,200 members, ranged at the

deathbed of Chief Crop–Eared Wolf337, a brave of territorial days, raised their hands

in solemn pledge not to permit the sale of any Indian land on the reserve, in the

southern part of Alberta, until the rivers and lakes run dry and the grass and other

vegetation of the prairies shrivels and dies. This pledge was also given when the aged

chieftain’s body was lowered in the grave at the Stand–Off Mission cemetery near

Cardston338.

Crop–Eared Wolf, an adherent of the Roman Catholic Church, was ministered

by Father Bauax, a close friend of the chieftain. He died with a prayer on his lips and,

though he suffered untold pain during the last five months as the result of cancer of

the jaw, the end was peaceful. During his last conscious moments he announced to

his people that he was prepared to cross the Great Divide; they had made the passing

easy by again promising not to sell their rich lands to speculators or colonizers but

would cultivate it themselves.

The burial services in the little cemetery adjoining Stand–Off Mission were

simple. The priest chanted the services for the dead and spoke of the good qualities

of the chieftain, bringing out the fact that he was an advocate of peace, and while

stern with his own people he was kind to the white settlers so long as nothing was

said or done to interfere with the Indians or his rights. A band, consisting of fifteen

Indian boys, played “Nearer My God to Thee” over the grave and the services came

to an end. The chieftain’s shroud was a uniform of blue serge with brass buttons, such

as is supplied by the Indian Department to the heads of tribes.

Chief Wolf was a zealous guardian of the Indians’ rights. Years ago, when an

agitation was started among members of the tribe to sell a portion of the reserve at a

price that would make every Indian independent for life, he called his headmen

together in council and announced an edict that the land would not be sold to the

white men, insisting that the tribal treaty gave the Indians absolute possession of the

land as long as water flowed and grass grew, and from that position he could not be

moved by offers of money or promises. He was consistent to the end.

He was proud of the gold medal presented to him by H.R.H. the Duke of

Connaught339, Governor–General of Canada, who visited the reservation some time

ago, and wore it on all occasions. He also donned the modern uniform of a chief,

having discarded the blanket and feathered headgear years ago. He ruled his people

with a firm hand and assisted the government in bringing lawbreakers to book and

335 From MINOR CHIEFS SWEAR NOT TO SELL LANDS. (1913, May 8). The Daily Colonist, p. 17. 336 The Káínawa First Nation, or Blood Tribe, has a reserve in the Treaty 7 lands of southern Alberta.

Their name translates to ‘The people of many Chiefs’. Their language belongs to the Algonquin group. 337 Makoyi–Opistoki (c. 1845 – 1913). His parents died when he was a child, and he was adopted by his

sister’s husband – the famous Red Crow (Mékaisto). 338 Cardston, Alberta, was founded by Mormons in 1887. 339 Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn (1850 – 1942), seventh child of Queen Victoria

and Prince Albert. He served as Governor–General from 1911 to 1916.

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forbade his braves from engaging in the sun dance340, a pagan festival popular with

Bloods. Through his assistance, James Wilson, then Indian Agent stationed at

Macleod, was enabled to capture Charcoal341, a renegade Indian who paid the penalty

with his life for a series of atrocious murders.

Crop–Eared Wolf, who proved his bravery by every test known to his tribe

before being elected to the head of the tribe, had a greater sense of the fineness of

things than is usually found in an Indian. A missionary from one of the stations near

the reserve took an interpreter with him and called on the old chief for the purpose

of taking his picture. Wolf was indignant. He explained through the interpreter that

it would have been proper if he had invited the camera man to visit him for the

purpose set forth, but it was a violation of good taste for him to come unsolicited. The

photographer, the same as others before him, returned to his home without a single

snapshot.

WELL–FURNISHED HOME

Crop–Eared Wolf’s abode on the reserve was as well furnished as the average

home in most towns or cities. Carpets covered the floors. The wigwam with its open

fireplace was replaced with the kitchen with its modern range. Instead of sleeping on

a blanket on the ground, this Indian and his s––––s had comfortable quarters with

modern furniture. Lamps illuminated the house, blinds covered the windows, paint

kept the exterior from becoming weather–beaten, cooking utensils were in their

places and a table was set that was good enough for the Indian Agent, farm instructor

or anyone else.

While Crop–Eared Wolf was averse to selling any part of the Indian lands, he

was not in favor of allowing it to lie idle. When the Indian Department under R. N.

Wilson342, inaugurated a plan by which the Indians would work a portion of the land

the old chief was one of the first to fall heartily in line and work for the

accomplishment of the purpose. As a result of his efforts large tracts were broken in

different localities of the reserve and Indians are today cultivating the land and

producing profitable crops.

18. The Life of Peter Hourie (1920)343

Who was Peter Hourie? Many of your readers may know; but to many Peter

Hourie will be but a name. Let Peter Hourie speak for himself. In the summer of 1901

340 Very roughly, an important community–wide ceremony in which healing and renewal is sought

through overcoming pain. Widely considered the most important ceremony of the Indigenous peoples

of the Plains. 341 Si’K–Okskitsis, or ‘Black Wood Ashes’ (c. 1856 – 1897). In 1883, he spent a year in a North–West

Mounted Police jail for killing a rancher’s steer. In 1896, he discovered his wife was having an affair,

and killed her lover. After a chase lasting more than a month and involving over a hundred Mounted

Police and Indigenous scouts, Charcoal was tried and convicted in November 1896. He was hanged on

March 16th, 1897. 342 Indian Agent for the Blood Indian Agency from 1905 to 1911. 343 From J.H. (1920, December 22). The Personal Side. Didsbury Pioneer, p. 4. and J.H. (1921, January 5). The Personal Side. Didsbury Pioneer, p. 2.

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the great h––––– had been reduced to the rank of farm instructor on the Crooked

Lakes (Broadview) Reserve, a victim to the determination of Clifford Sifton to reduce

the expenses of the Indian Department at pretty nearly any cost. And he wrote to the

Hon. Edgar Dewdney, the old Superintendent of Indian Affairs, the subjoined letter.

It has never been published for the simple reason that the proud old man could not

bring himself to stoop to send it. Peter Hourie handed me the letter, and now thirty–

one years afterwards, when Peter and the man to whom it was written, have been for

some years in their graves, I give it to the public. It will be seen that Peter’s language

does not conform very well to the English standard, but I give the letter as he wrote

it, for it is better so.

Lake May Reserve, July 31, 1901

Dear Honourable Sir:–

I beg to you most humbly to ask of which you know I have I think some more

faithfully in all my undertakings as a faithful servant to the country, and the bringing

of peace and friendship with the white and r–– or Indian in peace and harmony with

each other.

My long service with the governing of the Indians of the country, I beg to ask

of your most kindness to intercede for me now in my time of life in serving the

government since 1880, besides years others before me in 1877 and ’78 up to the

present day. Has any one done for the government more than I have done. You know

that when any trouble was expected I was always ordered to the place and as good

luck would be have kept everyone in good faith towards the white. You know the year

the Marquis of Lorne passed through the country I was with the party, when the

Indian Commissioner sent me back with so many thousands (of dollar…) to

Qu’Appelle which I delivered344 to the Indian Agent, Colonel McDonald, and then was

sent to Fort Walsh to induce the Indians, who were belonging to several parts of the

country to return to their birthplaces. All this you know I accomplished in the years

of 1882 and 1883 as you may say with my life in my hand. All this I remind; they (the

Government) may have overlooked, as at the present time I should think the

Government would look into this, as now I am getting old being now in my 73rd year

of my age, and being troubled with rheumatism and other ailments! must say my

services are not as I would like to serve.

You know in the year of 1880 you could not get the Indian Chiefs to choose out

their reserves, and I was called upon from Prince Albert, Sask., to talk to these

Indians and got all of them to take up their reserves, and they are being living on

them ever since. Now after all my services for the good of the country is the

Government going to overlook all my good service and not allow me any recompense

344 “Mr. Dewdney had in his possession a box containing $110,000, which he desired taken from

Battlefort to Fort Qu’Appelle. With hardly any discussion the box was handed to Hourie, who for three

days travelled the dangerous trails to his destination, riding in an old buckboard and taking more than

ordinary precaution with his valuable trust. At night he slept in his tent and by day he journeyed on,

having with him no escort and thus disarming the suspicion of r—s and whites scattered over the

prairie.” DEATH OF VETERAN OF REBELLION. (1910, November 3). The Edmonton Capital, p. 5.

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for my past service. I must say the Government is giving me $40 a month as farm

instructor. I have acted as interpreter as well. This is a very small figure I think for

the good I have done for the country. I think that the Honourable Government could

give me more to live on and retire for the remainder of my days. Many men never has

done for the country as I have gets thousands for pension for life. I would like to serve

faithfully to the end. Hoping that you honourable gentleman will use your influence

and do some good for me.

I remain,

Your obedient servant,

PETER HOURIE.

HIS CLOSING YEARS

Let me tell you what I know of the closing years of the great h––––– peace

maker. I think it was in 1909 that I was Peter’s guest for three days on the Crooked

Lakes Reserve, where he ranked as farm instructor. He had lived for a while on the

high land where he could look out upon the prairie, but now he was located in the old

disused Indian grist mill, which was in an embayed hollow by the lake side and from

which there was no view. He was badly wanting to get back to the open where he

could look out. Peter was at this time over 80, and I found him suffering from

rheumatism. I state, for what it is worth, that when we got fairly down to talk I heard

no more complaints of rheumatism.

Mrs. Hourie was away visiting her children in Regina, and a grand–daughter,

about fourteen years of age, was keeping house. For three days Peter and I and the

little girl held the fort alone. An odd Indian dropped in, and an occasional h–––––,

but during the time I was there, no white visitor came. I have wondered since what

the little girl thought of me and her grandfather, for I don’t think two old men ever

roared and laughed so much since Adam.

Peter was certainly not without dignity, but he also had humour. The way of it

was that I would get Peter talking of his life and experiences, and when I thought he

had done enough I would take hold and trot him through London and other places

with the life of which he was not familiar. And so the talk oscillated between the old

and the new, between ultra–civilized things and things very close to nature indeed.

And I glimpsed a great soul; a great exemplar of all that was best in two great races

– in r–– and white. I was the better enabled to do this, because all Peter’s Indian

reserve melted away in those three days, and I think I saw him as he was. And truly,

he had nothing to conceal, for a more honourable man than Peter Hourie it has never

been my lot to meet.

THE HOURIE HOUSE IN REGINA

When Peter was chief interpreter to the Indian Department, which then had

its western headquarters in Regina, he bought a frame house on the west corner of

Albert and Dewdney, just a lot or wo back. It has been swept away for several years.

In the Klondike rush and excitement, the Indian department wanted pemmican made

for the Mounted Police and others on duty in the Yukon, and, as usual, turned to

Peter. Mrs. Hourie was a grand old princess of a woman, as noble in her way as Peter

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was in his. With the assistance of a s–––––, she made big store of pemmican at the

old Hourie house. It, of course, was made of beef, but the beef was treated in exactly

the same way as the Indians used to treat the buffalo, and the pemmican was of the

very best. When Peter could no longer do any kind of duty, he left the Crooked Lakes

Reserve and went up to his old home in Regina, to spend his last years; and it was

there he died.

A LAST MEETING WITH PETER

Peter had once lived for a considerable time in the Prince Albert country. I was

going into that district, and so I called on Peter to see if I could do anything for him

there. I found him lying on the outside of the bed, dressed, and apparently not

suffering. We had a great talk, and I promised him that I would call on my return,

and report progress from Prince Albert.

While away I visited Mrs. Kennedy’s farm, a few miles from Prince Albert. Mrs.

Kennedy was a leading woman of the mixed race, and a cousin, I think, of the Rev.

Canon Flett, who was at one time well–known in the Territories as a school inspector.

I found the Canon had taken up his residence there, and it was a great pleasure to

meet him, as I knew him extremely well – better than most. On the place was a log

building, and this was pointed out to me by the Canon, as the building in which Peter

Hourie had kept store for trading with the Indians and h–––––s, many long years

before. The building was in excellent preservation. This was in the summer.

On my return to Regina I started one evening to go up to Peter’s to report as

per promise. On my way I sat down to smoke and rest, on the wing of the Albert Street

subway, and when I got through it was dark, and I thought I would not make so late

a call after all. And in a day or so Peter Hourie was dead, and to my lasting regret, I

never made that report after all. Mr. Hourie was a Freemason and an Anglican. The

funeral service was from St. Paul’s Church. I was there. I remember that among those

present to pay a last tribute to the grand old man, was Jimmy Brown, who has since

passed away.

HIS FATHER’S SWORD

We have dealt with Mr. Hourie’s closing years first. We will now re–commence,

as it were, at the right end of life’s chapter.

Peter was born in 1827 in the Stone Fort country in the Selkirk settlement.

His father was a native of the Orkney Islands, a tall, big man who had been a soldier

in the British Army and who had fought as a cavalryman at the battle of Waterloo.

His father had the sword he used in that famous battle, and Peter told me that as a

boy he had often played with it. In the rebellion of 1869–70, his father lent the sword

to some loyal h–––––s and he never got it back. Peter remarked that he thought the

rebels must have got it somehow; and further told me that he had seen a scar on his

father’s side made by a sword.

Speaking of his family stock, Peter said, “The Hourie family, my father’s

family, came from Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands. The graves of the Houries are in

the Kirkwall churchyard. A man who had been there told me they were all awful

lengths and that my ancestors must have been a race of giants. My father used to be

in charge of the fort at the forks of the Red Deer River and the Saskatchewan. He

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was then in the service of the Hudson’s Bay. He retired from the service, and had a

farm at Park’s Creek. The creek was named after a carpenter named Park, who came

from the old country. The farm was half way between two forts – Fort Garry and the

Stone Fort or Fort Selkirk.”

Peter’s mother was a Snake Indian. I asked him if she was a full–blooded

Indian, and he said she was, but she had been brought up by Chief Factor Bird, and

had white ways. Of this union there were seven sons, and no daughters. Mrs. Hourie

had been previously married to a settler named Corrigan, and by him she had one

son, James, who was eventually drowned in the Red River, near the old Hourie

homestead.

RELIGION: PRAYS IN THE OPEN

Peter’s life as a boy did not differ much, if any, from that of any other son of a

Selkirk settler. He was brought up as a member of the Anglican Church and during

the whole of his life he remained in communion with that church, and as we have

already seen, the last words said over his body was the Anglican ritual for the burial

of the dead. Although he made no pharisaical professions of piety, his religion was a

reality to him, and he was not ashamed of it.

An old timer in the north country named Miller, told me that he came across

Peter Hourie once, and they made camp together. Before they went to sleep, he said,

Peter knelt down and “put up a real fine prayer, right in the open.” Miller seemed to

think there was something remarkable about Peter doing it “in the open,” as if he

would have expected him to slink behind a tree or something of the sort. But that was

not Peter’s way.

WITH THE HUDSON’S BAY CO. […]

At 18 years of age Peter Hourie joined the Hudson’s Bay service. Lord

Strathcona, when 90 years of age, told use in the Regina City Hall, that he was never

happier than when in the Hudson’s Bay service, getting twenty pounds a year. Well,

twenty pounds a year, or say eight dollars a month, was what the stalwart young

settler started on with the Hudson’s Bay Company. He was with the Hudson’s Bay

for many long years before a railroad to this country was ever dreamed of, but he also

did some free trading.

Here is an extract from Peter’s conversation as I noted it:

“For 24 winters I had nothing over me, only the canopy of the blue sky. No

wonder I am crippled up with rheumatism. I was with the Company, but I also did

some free trading. I was at the crossing of the Pile o’ Bones. Formerly the Indians

used to run buffalo at the crossing of the Pile o’ Bones. They would make big corrals

and the walls of the enclosure would be perhaps four feet wide and ten high, so that

when the buffalo were driven into the enclosure they could not jump over or break

out. I took part in all that. I have stood on Pilot Butte and seen the prairie black with

buffalo. I was eight or nine years free trading. I was also farming in the Prince Albert

district.”

FIRST FLOUR MILL BUILT IN SASKATCHEWAN IN 1875

Peter said: “Myself and another man put up the first flour mill that was built

in Saskatchewan. The other man’s name was Beeds. It was a wind mill and it was

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put up on posts. The stones for grinding the flour were brought up from Winnipeg by

one George McKay. They were brought up in wagons, not Red River carts. That was

the first year wagons were brought into use. That was 1875. It was Geo. McKay’s

mill, but Beeds and I put it up.

FIRST MISSIONARY

“Mr. Nesbitt was the first white missionary that was there. He was there a

year or two before me. He had a school there for the Indians. He was a Presbyterian.

Then came Bishop McLean from Winnipeg. The settlers all drew together and built

the log church.

INDIAN SECRET SOCIETIES AND MEDICINES

“It was wonderful how the Indians got along in those early times. They had

secret societies something like Freemasons. To belong to one of those secret societies

and Indian had to have a good, strong mind, and be able to keep a secret. Then if you

wanted medicine, or anything else, you would get whatever you wanted. Nothing was

kept from you. If these Indian medicines were known they would be very valuable.”

BORN IN A BUCKBOARD

IN the course of conversation Mr. Hourie said, “One of my children was born

in a buckboard. That was in 1881. My wife was coming home from Fort Ellice to

Prince Albert. One of the boys was with her. She thought she would have time to get

home before it happened, but two miles and a half from home she was taken sick. She

told the boy to go into the bush, and she had a baby in the buckboard, and then went

on home. When she drove up one of the girls saw there was something strange, so she

said, “Mother, what’s the matter?” My wife said, “Oh, nothing,” and got out of the

buckboard and walked into the house with the baby. That was Harry.”

INDIAN PROPHESIES: STARVING INDIANS RELIEVED

Peter said: “The white people professed to have no faith in the prophesies of

the Indians, but they went by them all the same – by the prophecies of the medicine

man. The Indians believe in a bad herb, and a good herb. The Indians believe there

is an herb for every ill in the human body – that is for every ill, there is an herb that

will cure it. The medicine men are told sometimes by dreams what to use.”

Peter, in answer to a question whether he believed in Indian prophesies

himself, said he had to from his own experience. For instance, he said, “On one

occasion there was no buffalo or anything. The medicine man came to my tent. I had

one of those travelling tents. He said to me, “My brother, we are going to have some

meat today. I have seen our road. It is very clear for us. We shall go through, and get

to a hill and when we get over this hill our young men will kill a buffalo bull. That is

the first meat we shall have.”

“And,” said Hourie, “by George did it take place. We were going out to the

Elbow of the Saskatchewan. We travelled on, and every night he would do the same.”

THE LAST INDIAN SCALP

In March, 1898, Mr. Hayter Reed, ex–Indian Commissioner, wrote to Peter

from Eastern Canada and said a friend of his was very anxious to obtain a scalp if he

could possibly get one. He asked Peter to do the best he could.

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Peter said to me, “I got a scalp. It was the last one taken in this country. It was

taken on the banks of the South Saskatchewan close to the Vermillion Hills. The

Crees killed quite a number of Blackfeet at times.”

HOURIE’S OPINION OF PIAPOT

I asked Peter what he thought of Piapot, the noted and turbulent Indian chief.

Peter replied, “Piapot was certainly the bravest Indian that ever travelled these

plains. He proved it by his deeds, going to war and killing, and never running away

from it. All the Indians said he was as brave as a lion. There may be men who have

taken scalps, but not one who has been on the war path to go into the enemies’ country

and tackle the lion in his den the same as Piapot did.”

A BLACKFOOT RAID […]

We have seen that Mr. Hourie claimed that a certain medicine man prophesied

correctly concerning the finding of a buffalo bull. This was in the neighborhood of the

Elbow of the Saskatchewan. Continuing his story of the trip and of this same medicine

man, […] Mr. Hourie’s own words were something as follows:

“Speaking of the Blackfeet, the medicine man said, “Our namesakes, the

Blackfeet, have been coming into the Elbow. Our young men who are now out on scout

will bring us news that they have seen the Blackfeet coming.”

“And,” said Mr. Hourie, “sure enough it was as he said. When the scouts had

brought in the news the medicine man said, “Now, we shall have to take care of

ourselves. If we don’t keep quiet, and don’t look out for ourselves, we will either get

some of our horses stolen or be killed. From here we will go in such a direction, and

we are going to meet some more Indians – Qu’Appelle Indians. We shall not meet

them today, but tomorrow they will come to a camp and bring word of lots of buffalo.

The enemy will see us coming along. They will be afraid of us. Keep close together

and we shall get plenty of buffalo.”

“We met the Qu’Appelle Indians as the medicine man said we would, and next

morning we had a run of buffalo. “But,” said the Medicine Man, “our enemies are all

around, and even watching us very keenly from the sand hills.” That night, we

gathered our horses all in and tied them to the cart wheels. Through the night one of

our men said, “Do you hear that?” We were camped close to a spring. There was a

splash. “Of course,” he said, “there must be a wolf around.” They call their enemies

wolves. We got up in the morning. There had been no trouble in the night, but on

going to the spring there were the marks of a man’s bare feet. We kept watch again

all that day, but nothing bothered us. We went right on to the Touchwood Hills and

got back all safe.

“The Hudson’s Bay Factor wanted me to go back again. They wanted meat both

at the head depots at Fort Pelly and Fort Ellice, and other places, and I had to keep

busy after the buffalo. The next three days I spelled the horses; then I started off

again to get more buffalo meat. I was told when I started where the Indians would

be. The Indians were going to have a Sun Dance at a certain bluff; so I went and

camped there to meet their Sun Dance lodge. This was in the Swift Current country.

The second night of the Sun Dance lodge the Crees’ enemies, the Blackfeet, came

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upon them. In the fight the Crees got hold of one Blackfoot. They made short work of

him, and it was all through this Medicine Man’s prophesy.” […]

I have only touched the fringe of Mr. Hourie’s real career, but this will have to

suffice for the present, at any rate.

The Potlatch The Potlatch is a gift–giving feast, traditionally of great importance to the social and economic life of the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest. It was formally banned under clause 149 of the Indian Act from 1885 to 1951. Participating in a potlatch was punishable by two to six months’ imprisonment. The official reasons for this ban were paternalistic: the government did not trust Indigenous peoples, who were their wards, from acting in their own best interest. They had to be protected from themselves, and from wasting time that was better spent at residential schools or in paid employment. The following articles are intended as an introduction to the meaning of the potlatch, and the view taken by the Canadian government.

19. A Songhees Potlatch (1874)345

Our neighbours at the Songish village are having a hyas346 potlach. (Anglice347, a great gift.) Tribes are gathered from all parts348 and nights are made hideous by

the orgies349. Amongst the ancient usages still observed by the natives of this coast is

that of gifts, which are made when building a new house, (sometimes thousands of

blankets are given away to those who assisted to raise it by the owner of the house

and his relations,) and when the chief or chiefs of a tribe acquire a certain amount of

property, all of which is given away to the neighbouring tribes, who are present by

invitation. Of the latter sort is the one now on hand. It commenced last Sunday and

will last all this week. An invitation has been sent to every tribe from Cape Beale to

Comox, on this island; in Washington Territory, from Cape Flattery up Puget Sound

as far as Nisqually; from Port Townsend, northwards by Semihamoo, up the Fraser

to New Westminster, thence along the coast by Burrard Inlet to Sheechell. The

number present exceeds 2,000. The supply of provisions will cost over $1,000.

345 From The Indian Potlatch. (1874, April 23). Daily British Colonist, p. 3. 346 Chinook for ‘great’ or ‘large’. Chinook was a popular trade language built from bits and pieces of

many Indigenous languages. 347 ‘In English’. 348 From a potlatch five years earlier: “The number of strangers already gathered in is about 700,

representing thirteen tribes, viz: the Cowichan, Tsauso, Saanich, Discovery Island, Nanaimo, Sooke,

Chemainus, Quamichan, Penalakites, Skadget, Nittinet, Clallm and Celemenalts. About 200 canoes

are hauled up on the beach, and a great many presents, such as blankets, guns and iktas, are stored in the different lodges.” THE SONGISH VILLAGE. (1869, April 21). The British Colonist, p. 3. 349 In this case, ‘wild parties’, as opposed to the modern meaning.

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Already, as a bill of fare, there are, our informant tells us, four barrels of salt black

bear, an enormous quantity of fat porpoises, seals, halibut, fresh and dried; a great

many strings of dried clams; also hundreds of baskets full of mussels, oysters, clams,

sea snails, and skimmock350 (the last a sort of fish resembling tripe); any quantity of

crabs, salt and fresh salmon; also gallons of molasses, several sacks of potatoes and

flour, with loaf bread in the bargain; a large quantity of tea, four barrels of sugar, and

a great many other articles. Several parties are out trying to get deer meat. In order

to quench their thirst and for cooking purposes they are about to engage a water cart

to supply them. There will be given away one thousand blankets351 in the following

order: Three bales352 of white, three bales of fancy and a few bales of green, and so on

with the other sorts; in all, 20 bales. There will also be a gift of nine canoes, one of

which is worth $100. The bales will be opened on the roof of one of the lodges and the

blankets thrown down to the people below. The canoes will be given to the chiefs of

the various tribes present at the feast. While assembled the grievance of the

Cowichans will be discussed. The position of the Puget Sound Indians will also be

discussed, how they like the mode of treatment on their several reservations from the

United States Government, etc. It is to be hoped that the affair will go off quietly. It

would be advisable for Capt. Molit to see the chief and get him to tell the dissatisfied

ones that we wish to do justice to them, and as Dr. Powell353 will soon return with a

clearly defined policy, it is to be hoped that all troubles will be settled forever.

20. ‘Evils’ of the Potlatch (1896)354 The following letter, written by a missionary, summarizes religious and government reasoning behind the potlatch ban. It took time away from wage work and the ‘civilizing’ influence of residential schools, and it was a gateway to ‘retrogression’ to traditional Indigenous cultural practices.

The efforts of the Indian department to educate the Indians are beyond all

praise. It is school versus potlach; both cannot flourish. Our hope is that the school

will undermine its opponent and that it will topple over. In this district there are two

schools and the Indians from these two villages have been absent to–day ten weeks

potlaching in two other villages. There are no signs of their speedy return and the

350 I’ve been unable to identify this fish. 351 The final count was higher: “Two thousand pairs of blankets, two crates of crockery, 100 full suits

of clothing, calico shirts, pieces of calico, specimens of beadwork, 100 boxes biscutis, several barrels

molasses and a washtubful of fifty–cent pieces were distributed by Chief Jim and his aides.” The

Potlatch. (1874, April 28). Daily British Colonist, p. 3. 352 Bundles. 353 Probably Dr. Israel Wood Powell (1836 – 1915). He was a Freemason, surgeon and superintendent

of Indian affairs (until 1889). In the latter position, it was his influence that led to the ban on potlatches

being included in an 1884 amendment of the Indian Act. In 1886 he was elected the first president of

the Medical Council of British Columbia, and in 1890 he became the first chancellor of the University

of British Columbia. 354 From Rev. Alfred J. Hall. (1896, March 15). EVILS OF THE POTLACH. Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 7. Reverend Alfred James Hall (1853 – 1918) published a grammar of the Kwagiutl language in 1889.

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deserted schools for a while, at least, are second best. So much for morals under the

potlatch. Now, how does this system affect the industry of the province in general and

the merchants of Victoria in particular.

There are, as I have stated, assembled to–day in two villages, 800 Indians

potlatching. There they have been nearly three months and may remain five. This is

the season to procure furs and oil. Have they (Say 200 able men among them) earned

or produced $2 per day, i.e. 1 cent per man during this stay? I believe not. Now there

are many tribes on the coast who have given up the potlatch, and from them I will

mention three totaling also about 800 – the Bella Bellas355, the Kitkalas356 and the

Kinoliths. Will anyone dare to say these non–potlatchers will not produce this season

ten times the value of furs produced by the 800 now potlatching? Probably fifty times

more would be nearer the truth. […]

It is in the interests of this province that we keep our Indians alive; they are

worth preserving. What they generally produce is in addition to what our settlers

produce. They occupy land the white man does not require. They love the white man,

and their ultimate future must be absorption and assimilation to the whites. […]

No one who really knows what the potlach is, and what it tends to, can wish to

uphold it, and at the same time love the Indians. Selfishness may and does uphold it,

but love, never.

ALFRED J. HALL.

Alert Bay, March 11, 1896.

21. “The Potlatch is Our Bank” (1896)357 We are fortunate that this explanation of the potlatch by a renowned Indigenous leader has survived. It is presented in its entirety.

TO THE EDITOR :–My name is Maquinna! I am the chief of the Nootkas and

other tribes. My great grandfather was also called Maquinna358. He was the first chief

in the country who saw white men. That is more than one hundred years ago. He was

kind to the white men and gave them land to build and live on359. By and bye more

white men came and ill treated our people and kidnapped them and carried them

away on their vessels, and then the Nootkas became bad and retaliated and killed

some white people. But that is a long time ago. I have always been kind to white men.

355 The Heiltsuk people of Bella Bella Island. 356 The Gitxaala band of the Tsimshian First Nation of British Columbia. Their traditional territory is

Dolphin island. 357 Originally published as Maquinna. (1896, April 1). THE NOOTKA CHIEF SPEAKS. Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 6. Written by Maquinna (d. 1901). 358 “The name continued for two centuries at Nootka, the Maquinna who died in 1901 being the last to

hold authority among the Indians of the locality.” NAMED AFTER COAST PRINCESS. (1912,

September 4). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 15. 359 “It was from Maquinna that capt. John Meares, of the Felice, purchased in 1788 the little lot of land

in Friendly Cove, Nootka Sound, on which the British claim to a portion of the North Pacific against

the Spanish claim to the whole coast of Northwest America was founded.” Ibid.

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Dr. Powell knows it and Mr. Vowell and all the white men who come to my country.

And now I hear that the white chiefs want to persecute us and put us in jail and we

do not know why.

They say it is because we give feasts which the Chinook people call “Potlatch.”

That is not bad! That which we give away is our own! Dr. Powell, the Indian agent,

one day also made a potlatch to all the Indian chiefs, and gave them a coat, and

tobacco, and other things, and thereby we all knew that he was a chief; and so when

I give a potlatch, they all learn that I am a chief. To put in prison people who steal

and sell whiskey and cards to our young men; that is right. But do not put us in jail

as long as we have not stolen the things which we give away to our Indian friends.

Once I was in Victoria, and I saw a very large house; they told me it was a bank and

that the whitemen place their money there to take care of, and that by–and–by they

get it back, with interest. We are Indians, and we have no such bank; but when we

have plenty of money or blankets, we give them away to other chiefs and people, and

by–and–by they return them, with interest, and our heart feels good. Our potlatch is

our bank.

I have given many times a potlatch, and I have more than two thousand dollars

in the hands of Indian friends. They all will return it some time, and I will thus have

the means to live when I cannot work any more. My uncle is blind and cannot work,

and that is the way he now lives, and he buys food for his family when the Indians

make a potlatch. I feel alarmed! I must give up the potlatch or else be put in jail. Is

the Indian agent going to take care of me when I can no longer work? No, I know he

will not. He does not support the old and poor now. He gets plenty of money to support

his own family, but, although it is all our money, he gives nothing to our old people,

and so it will be with me when I get old and infirm. They say it is the will of the

Queen. That is not true. The Queen knows nothing about our potlatch feasts. She

must have been put up to make a law by people who know us. Why do they not kill

me? I would rather be killed now than starve to death when I am an old man. Very

well, Indian agents, collect the two thousand dollars I am out and I will save them

till I am old and give no more potlatch!

They say that sometimes we cover our hair with feathers and wear masks when

we dance. Yes, but a white man told me one day that the white people have also

sometimes masquerade balls and white women have feathers on their bonnets and

the white chiefs give prizes for those who imitate best, birds or animals. And this is

all good when white men do it but very bad when Indians do the same thing. The

white chiefs should leave us alone as long as we leave the white men alone, they have

their games and we have ours.

I am sorry to hear the news about the potlatch and that my friends of the North

were put in jail. I sympathise with them; and I asked a white man to write this in

order to ask all white men not to interfere with our customs as long as there is no sin

or crime in them. The potlatch is not a pagan rite; the first Christians used to have

their goods in common and as a consequence must have given “potlatches” and now I

am astonished that Christians persecute us and put us in jail for doing as the first

Christians.

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MAQUINNA, X (his mark)

Chief of Nootka.

22. The Potlatch Economy (1898)360

Mrs. Harlan I. Smith361, a New York bride, who spent her honeymoon among

the British Columbia Indians thus relates her experiences: […]

As we were nearly six months in the Northwest, visiting a number of places, I

shall attempt to mention only a few of the most striking incidents that I witnessed at

Fort Rupert, where I spent the month of June. […]

The native homes are made very large, some of them being 70 feet wide and

120 feet long. They consist of a single room that is occupied by several related

families, in a communal sort of way. They squat around on the dirt floor, in the

respective corners which they have chosen, cooking over an open fire, the smoke from

which escapes through the cracks on the roof. Around the three sides of the house is

a platform, about four feet wide, and raised a short distance from the ground. Upon

these platforms they sleep, sometimes boxing in their beds like the berths on a

sleeping car. These are most important places, for when one of the Indians gets angry

it is to this place he retires until recovered. He sometimes takes to his bed when

feeling very sad over the death of a friend.

THE QUEER HOUSES.

The walls of the houses are built of plank, as is also the roof, but the planks of

the latter are hollowed out and laid like the Swiss tile roof. These planks are split out

of immense cedar trees by means of a wooden wedge driven with stone hammers.

They are often smoothed with adzes362, the blades of which were formerly made of

stone. Since the coming of the Hudson’s Bay company they have been able to get old

files and other bits of iron from which to make the blades, so that now stone is not

used.

In one of the houses I saw piled thousands of woolen blankets and several shied

[sic.] pieces of copper. I learned the blankets were being collected in order that the

owner could give a potlatch, which means that he would loan them out at interest.363

360 From Mrs. H. I. Smith. (1898, October 26). WITH COAST INDIANS. Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 8. 361 Helena Elizabeth Oakes Smith (1872 – 1947), wife of Harlan Ingersoll Smith (1872 – 1940), a noted

archaeologist. Harlan I. Smith is most famous for his work on the Jesup North Pacific expedition,

conducted in British Columbia and Washington State between 1897 and 1899. 362 A tool like a curved axe that is used in wood–working. 363 A second source disagrees: “The potlatch and the lending of property at interest are two entirely

distinct proceedings. Property distributed in a potlatch is freely given, bears no interest, cannot be

collected on demand, and need not be repaid at all if the one who received it does not for any reason

with to requite the gift. When the recipient holds a potlatch he may return an equal amount, or a

slightly larger amount, or a smaller amount with perhaps the promise to give more at a future time.

The feeling at the bottom of the potlatch is one of pride, rather than greed. Occasionally men have

tried to accumulate wealth by means of the potlatch and by lending at interest, but the peculiar

economic system has always engulfed them, simply because a man can never draw out all his credits

and keep the property thus acquired.” Curtis, E.S. (1915). The North American Indian, Volume Ten. US: Edward S. Curtis.

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Part of the blankets were his property, having been secured by selling his other

possessions. A large proportion, however, were received from others through the

potlatch system and not a few of them came from his relatives and dependents. Each

small single blanket is valued at half a dollar of our money, and is kept stored away

for this one purpose, not being used as other blankets.

THEIR BANKING SYSTEM.

The coppers are of no particular value from our standpoint, but represent, as

nearly as I can explain it, the same thing as do our gilt edge promissory notes upon

which interest has long accrued. When a copper is first made it is not of much value,

and is sold for a small number of blankets. When it is sold the second time its value

is increased, and the owner receives a much larger number of blankets.

So it is sold and resold, each purchaser paying for it, until at last thousands of

blankets364 are given for one of these coppers, which to use is worth only a few cents

for the metal in it. Of course, it is a great honor for one of these Indians to be able to

buy such a copper, and to do it he is willing to sell all his possessions365, scrimp his

necessities and borrow blankets of his relatives and friends that he may gain this

honor, and accompany the buying with due feastings and ceremony.

The man who sells the copper comes into possession of many blankets, which

he usually potlatches. To potlatch is another great honor, and they accumulate

blankets in every possible way for this purpose. When a big potlatch is to be given the

people gather from all the surrounding tribes. They come many miles in their fine

large canoes, always singing, and I have often watched them miles out at sea paddling

to the rhythm of their songs, which are truly fascinating.

After all the expected guests have arrived they are assembled in the main place

of the village, an open space near the water, around which logs are placed to form a

square. The people sit on the ground inside this square, using the logs as the back of

a chair. The blankets to be potlatched are placed in the centre. Then the speaker of

the village, who is always a good orator and well paid for his services, takes up his

364 “Probably the greatest price ever paid for a copper was twenty thousand blankets, which amount,

in the form of blankets, canoes, sloops, and cheaper coppers, was paid in the spring of 1909 for the

copper Ma’mu’quli’la (“taking property out of the house”). The canoes, sloops, coppers and coin were

worth nine thousand blankets, and of the eleven thousand actual blankets which should have been in

evidence there were only two thousand, the remaining nine thousand being represented by the transfer

of debts”. Ibid. 365 “A “copper” is a piece of metal some eighteen inches long and twelve inches wide, roughly fashioned

in something the shape of a human head and neck, with mouth, nose and eyes marked upon it. There

are only three original “coppers,” and they are very ancient, their origin going far back beyond the

Indian recollections; consequently they are of immense value in Indian eyes, and to possess one of

them an Indian would give anything he owns. One peculiar thing is that one owner must sell if he is

offered sufficient price for the “copper” he owns, the value apparently rising so many blankets each

time one changes hands. One of these “coppers” is now worth some 5,000 blankets – a pretty

considerable sum. There are also imitation “coppers” – that is, quite newly made – but they are not

very valuable.” WEIRD INDIAN CUSTOMS. (1894, April 18). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 8.

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position beside the blankets, and in the name of the owner makes long and vigorous

speeches366.

HIGH RATES OF INTEREST367.

Afterwards the blankets are distributed or loaned out, usually to be returned

at the end of a year with 100 per cent. interest. So that one who borrows ten blankets

in a year’s time gives back twenty. For shorter time a smaller percentage is charged.

A young boy, starting out in life, is an exception. He will borrow 100 blankets, thus

incurring a debt of 200 blankets at the end of the year. As soon as he receives 100

blankets he potlatches them to his friends, who return the loan within a few months.

Now he will have 200 blankets, which he immediately reloans, so at the end of the

year he may collect 400 blankets, leaving himself the possessor of 200 blankets after

paying his original debt. […]

When I first came among these Indians I was surprised to find them so

independent and with so much time to waste sitting around or laying wrapped in

their blankets in the public squares. But I soon learned the reasons. First, their

clothing costs them very little, as the women weave the blankets, mats, baskets, hats,

etc., and second, their food practically costs them nothing.

Every morning when the tide is far down the women of the village start out,

some walking with their baskets on their backs, some in the small canoes, to gather

clams, crabs, sea urchins and mussels, and in a short time they have secured more

than one day’s food.

23. A Fort Rupert Potlatch (1899)368

The Indians of Fort Rupert are going to spend the coming spring and summer

in one grand round of merriment. So says a resident of the historical Indian

366 “Dr. Boaz spoke of the Indians’ economic system, based on certain standards of value. Lacking any

system of writing, these business operations had to be transmitted in public in order that everyone

should know what everyone owed. So the whole family or the whole tribe was called together to witness

the transaction. This gave rise to the potlatch. “The Dominion law which prohibits potlatch means the

cancellation of all debts,” said the lecturer, deploring the popular misconception of the object of the

potlatch, and the legislative evil to which it had given rise. The objection on the part of the ignorant

to an Indian custom which was instituted for the purpose of liquidating debts was regrettable.” SAYS

POTLATCH IS NOT EVIL. (1922, August 30). The Daily Colonist, p. 5. 367 “There are several rates of interest. Five pairs of blankets lent for about six months are repaid with

six pairs, and this is called tlikyoyu (“lend with”). Tita is interest at one hundred percent on any amount from one pair to twenty, to be repaid in not less than one year, and perhaps – as when the

debt is to be discharged at the time the lender must give a marriage dowry – not before the expiration

of four or five years. Tahsitsunt (“take hold of the food”), or kahqahot (“sell a slave”), is interest at two hundred per cent on a loan for an indefinite period of four or five years. […] There is constant borrowing

at these exorbitant rates of interest. The explanation of the fact that the mass of people have never

found themselves bankrupt and the wealth of the tribe accumulated in the hands of a few men is that

no one can compel payment of a debt without first showing good cause for the demand, and such cause

can be found only in the expressed determination to perform some kind of public ceremony at which

the property will be redistributed. Thus any property paid as principal and interest will revert quickly

to the people”. Curtis, E.S. (1915). The North American Indian, Volume Ten. US: Edward S. Curtis. 368 From INDIANS TO CELEBRATE. (1899, February 15). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 3

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settlement in a letter to the Colonist. Last year their potlatch was disturbed by the

fishing season, the agents of the canners inducing the Indians to abandon their

festivities for the more civilized method of earning a living. This year the natives say

they will allow nothing to interfere with them, for their experience of last year showed

them that they can do better by potlatching than by fishing.

The fun will commence with the biggest potlatch that has been held on the

Coast. Chief Wannuck will be the big tyee369 of the event and he has invited all the

Northern tribes to be present and partake of his hospitality, which will be of a

princely character. He will distribute among the members of his tribe and his guests

12,600 “blankets’ worth” of goods, as follows: 8,000 blankets, 2,000 blankets’ worth of

buttons and bracelets, 1,200 blankets’ worth of food, 200 blankets’ worth of food [sic.],

700 blankets’ worth of basins and pails and 500 blankets’ worth of head dresses. If

this does not raise the enthusiasm of the most stoic s–––––370, then nothing will. It is

safe to say that there will be a hiyu371 time in old Fort Rupert for many a night, for

although the distribution of goods only takes place during the day time there will be

dances to while away the evenings.

24. Albert Edward Edenshaw, Chief of the Haidas (1897)372

Until he became chief he bore the name Gwai–gu–un–lthin, or “The man who

rests his head on an island.” […] He was born at a village called Althins Kwun, which

stood on the promontory now known as Cape Ball, on the eastern coast of the Queen

Charlotte Islands, not far from Skidegate. The date of his birth is uncertain, but may

probably be placed somewhere between 1810 and 1815. His youth was passed in

stirring times, for the Haidas were then a very warlike race and terrorized the entire

coast from Sitka to Vancouver Island. In the slave–capturing raids they were in the

habit of making, the Skidegate and Clue Haidas, under a warrior named Shkug–ga,

took a prominent part, and young Edenshaw and his two brothers are said to have

distinguished themselves by their energy and daring in many a fierce encounter. As

early as 1842, when the ship Canada, of New Bedford, visited Skidegate, her first

officer considered Edenshaw of sufficient importance to write for him a

commendatory certificate.

About this time Edenshaw removed to North Island, at the northwest corner

of the Queen Charlotte group. Here his uncle, bearing the hereditary name of

Edenshaw, was already established as a powerful chief. According to Haida custom

the chieftainship descends, not to the chief’s son, but to his sister’s son, who is

supposed to marry the chief’s daughter. In the present case the chief had no daughter,

and young Edenshaw, who was his uncle’s legal heir, married the daughter of an

Alaskan Haida. On his uncle’s death, Edenshaw succeeded him, inherited all his

property, and took his name. The property included six slaves, and as his wife brought

369 Chinook for ‘chief’. 370 The dashes replace a Chinook word for ‘Indigenous person’ which is in modern times a racist slur. 371 In this context, Chinook for ‘grand’. 372 From WORTHY HAIDA CHIEF. (1897, June 26). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 6.

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with her a dowry of ten salves, young Edenshaw’s domestic establishment was

liberally supplied with attendants.

Being now his own master, he had full scope for the energy and capacity he

possessed, and soon added considerably to the prestige he had inherited. Knowing

that the man who could make the most potlatches – i.e., the largest distributions of

property – was unanimously accorded the supremacy, he set himself to acquire

wealth, which in those days consisted chiefly of slaves, blankets, furs and coppers.

The “coppers” were flat sheets of metal about 2 by 1½ feet in size, on which a device

was etched. In olden times they acquired a fictitious value, one copper being

considered worth ten slaves. Edenshaw’s friends say he never captured slaves

himself, though he constantly bought and sold them. He obtained them chiefly from

Skidegate and often went as far as Sitka to sell them. He used to travel in state in a

dug–out canoe twelve fathoms long, elaborately painted at both ends, manned by a

large number of slaves and dependents. By means of constant trading he accumulated

a large quantity of property, and in the course of his life made no less than seven

large potlaches.

He had not long been chief when he had a narrow escape of his life in an

encounter with some Tsimshians on the river Naas. He had gone over with a large

party of Haidas to sell a slave and a large copper. The Naas people recognized the

slave as one of themselves and claimed him. This led to an angry dispute during

which Edenshaw and a Tsimshian chief engaged in a hand–to–hand struggle. A

bystander raised his gun to shoot Edenshaw, who adroitly swung his opponent round

and made him receive the charge, which instantly killed him. Edenshaw then rushed

towards his canoe. On the way several shots were fired after him and two bullets

struck him, but he managed to reach his canoe and escape, though he carried the

bullets, embedded in his flesh, all his life.

25. A Potlatch in Settlement of Debts (1900)373

There was a potlatch on the Indian reservation during the early hours

yesterday morning.

Willie, sub–chief of the Songhees, then paid some long–standing debts to his

fellow–tribesmen and their dark–hued relations from Cowichan and other nearby

ranchereies. From the position of a well–to–do s–––––h374 – owner of a buggy, a

sailboat, a war canoe and many, many blankets, to say nothing of a long list of “other

equally valuable and desirable effects,” which were the envy of his neighbors, Willie

suddenly dropped to that of the average resident of the reservation. Affluence became

sufficiency.

In all, over two hundred persons attended the potlatch. […] So the hours

passed, with little intervals of feasting, until daylight – the hour of Willie’s sacrifice

of his property.

373 From Potlatch on the Reserve. (1900, May 22). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 5. 374 An offensive term for an Indigenous man.

223

Then, mounting on the roof of the square home of many families, Willie made

his “Wa–wa.” He told of how glad he was to pay back his debts; of how great he was;

and of innumerable other things which the translator dropped in the translation. His

speech finished, the blankets were brought to him, together with shot–guns, silver

dollars, carved planks and many other things on which the waiting s––––s looked

with longing eyes. The klootchmen375 had retired to the background, and, waiting

beneath the rostrum of the giver of the potlatch, the b––––s stood like a crowd of

schoolboys below a window where another was scrambling apples.

At last the signal was given, and Willie began to throw. A blanket was swung

into the air, and as the wind caught it some hundreds of hands were stretched as high

as the stature of the owners would permit. Down came the blanket, and it was in an

instant clutched at by at least a hundred. Then the Indians swayed to and fro in a

heap, the weaker ones being swept aside and the woolen covering wrested from them.

Still crowds clung on, and then one man near the corner drew a knife and cut as big

a piece as he held. Others cut out pieces held by them, and soon the blanket was

divided in small bits which would hardly have made a doll’s covering.

Thus it was for some time. Blanket after blanket was struggled for. Some – but not a

great proportion – being retained whole, those holding the larger areas bought out

those with the lesser handfuls.

At length the blankets were exhausted. Then shot–guns were thrown from the

roof and struggled for, […] until at last all competitors having been either bought off,

or wrenched free, the guns passed into the possession of a more fortunate one. Silver

dollars were scrambled and other desirable effects made the bone of contention of the

struggling horde. Carved boards, totems bearing some yet unwritten s––––h story,

fancifully decorated paddles, hats, etc. – all were scrambled for and the holdings

auctioned off as in the matter of the blankets.

Then came the potlatch of Willie’s buggy. This up–to–date vehicle was standing

on the road as the throne of an alligator–like totem, the mark of the family from which

the sub–chief claimed inheritance. After due obeisance and proper observance of the

totem had been made, it was lifted out, and, at a given signal, the s–––––hes raced to

the buggy. It was yanked about and pulled up and down at the risk of tearing it apart

until, like the other potlatched articles, the one who tugged for it more than his

fellows bought out the others. The same procedure was carried on in the potlatching

of a war canoe, then of a sailboat. The clientele of some prominent Indians fought,

struggled and hauled the canoe and boat about, but there was always one or more of

the stronger ones who could not be ousted, and until the price was paid, the struggle

for possession continued.

So it went on. Article after article went, until when the workmen were hurrying

to work soon after the breakfast hour yesterday, the greater proportion of Willie’s

goods had been potlatched – his debt was paid.

26. Collecting Debts for the Potlatch (1902)376

375 Chinook trade jargon for “women”. 376 From The Potlatch at Quamichan. (1902, June 17). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 8.

224

At the village of the Quamichans on the grass–covered banks of the Cowichan

river a great potlatch is in progress. Over a thousand Indians of various tribes from

the Euclataws of Fort Rupert to the Songhees of Victoria are gathered in the great

lodges, some of which hold from 40 to 50 families, domiciled on the double row of

beaches which run along each wall. In front are the flotillas of canoes moored behind

a breakwater made of a derelict log. Now and again the village front is crowded with

the different tribes, while the dancers, masked and fantastically garbed, go through

the ceremonial dances, or an Indian with a “klosh tum–tum”377 is making a “cultus

potlatch”378 of a hundred or so blankets which he throws from a platform built at the

lodge–front into the waiting crowd. The sight attendant to the throwing of those

blankets is an unique one, for if the blanket be one of the native woven kind, a number

of hands are laid upon it, and each man cuts off as much of the blanket as his hands

or arms can cover. The Hudson’s Bay blankets are never cut. The dances, now being

carried on, are both weird and fantastical, and the clanging of the skin–drums and

skirl of the rattles adds to the weirdness.

This potlatch and accompanying feast, which is causing so much excitement

among the gathered Indians, is the gift of old Bill Whulatesailok – a hyas tyee379,

although no chief – of the Quamichans. He is the head man of the potlatch. Associated

with him are Metalatza, Johnny Seeahpult, John Seeamertun and Newall. It began

two months ago, when Whulatesailok started to collect this outstanding debts. He

wrote the Euclataws, sent messages to the Tsartlip, and notified all debtors that it

was time to cash in. When the festive s––––h wandered the Cowichan banks before

the King George Man came there were no banks, and the man who amassed much

goods stood in danger of being killed by an envious one. The potlatch began then for

safety’s sake. When a man had more than he needed he called his poorer neighbor

and gave him a canoe, or a horse, or other article. No time is set for the repayment.

The debtor pays when he can.

Bill Whulatesailok is collecting his debts. Men have brought him canoes,

Columbia river boats, shot guns, rifles, blankets in bales of hundreds, skins, and other

articles which to the Indians are as money. Bill’s debtors are coming up well, and the

harvest is good. Therefore he has a “klosh tum–tum,” and will give a big potlatch. His

friends are gathered in his big lodge, and nightly they feast from pilot bread, from

salt fish, or other viands supplied by the feast–giver.

On Friday last he felt good and because of this klosh tum–tum he mounted the

platform fronting the lodge, and said he would give $20 to those assembled,

whereupon those gathered shouted, “Haiya, Good.” His speaker told in eloquent

manner of the stories of bill, and then from the platform a long stick came hurtling

into the crowd. This was to represent the scrambled money. Many grasped it, and

they surged up and down clamoring the while. Suddenly one chanted that he would

377 Chinook trade jargon for “good intention”. 378 Chinook trade jargon for “free gift”. “Cultus” means ‘worthless’, and it is here used to mean ‘having

no price,’ or ‘with no return expected’. 379 Chinook trade jargon for “big chief”.

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give ten cents to each man to let go. Another bid 15, and all let go. The bidder was a

little ahead, and by this means the 20 was more or less equally distributed. And so it

will be with the canoes when they are potlatched. Bill will say, “I give to all my canoe,”

and there will be a rush to the beach, and the bidding will take place, and each man

who has taken a place in the canoe will get something to get out, and sacrifice his

right. And so with horses, guns, etc. – thus does the Indian make sure his gifts do not

go only to the strong.

Arrangements are being made for dances of many kinds, masked dances and

time–honored festivals – each tribe dancing accordingly to their specialty. On

Saturday blankets, money, etc. was collected and sports were held – canoe races, foot

races, poling races, tug–of–war, etc., and to both victorious and vanquished went the

prizes. The great event was the ball game. On Saturday and Sunday games were held,

and here on the diamond – a mile from the village – the vernacular is dropped. When

the umpire says “play ball,” the Indian forgets his native tongue and shows a

familiarity with ball teams which is surprising. […]

Yesterday several minor dances were held and today Bill is finishing up the

collection of his debts, and by Wednesday or Thursday it is expected that all his

accounts will be straight, and then the great potlatch will begin. Nightly big feasts

are held, and the lodges are filled with the dancers, but the great event is yet to come,

and this is the giving away of the store of Bill Whulates–ailok, who will gain merit by

his distribution, and the accompanying dances and ceremonials.

Among the tribes gathered at the big potlatch at Quamichan are the home

tribe, the Quamichans, and other tribes of the Cowichan valley, the Songhees of

Victoria, Saanich, with their four sub–tribes of Tsartlip, Panquechin, Tseyhum,

Tsowont; the Penelaquet of Kuper Island, with their sub tribes; Lyacksumf of Valdes

Island; Chemainus Indians, or Chemainus; Nanaimos, Hellelt from Chemeainus

river; Comox and Euclataws, all with their sub–tribes and families. The Nitinat of

the West Coast were invited by telegraph, but they have not arrived.

27. “The Last Great Potlatch” of the Songhees (1910)380

A grand potlatch is at present taking place on the Songhees reserve and to it

there have gathered four hundred Indians, representatives of the coast tribes. That

the present will be the last great potlatch ever to be held is the statement of Willie

Jack and Alex Peter of the Saanich tribe who are leaders in the affair. The

government frowns upon the practice, with the Indians themselves it is not as popular

as it once was and the spirit which prompts it is dying out. But the present one

promises to assume grand proportions. For four years it has been brewing and latterly

for the past few weeks, the Indians have been busy buying blankets, pots and kettles

in readiness for it.

380 From GRAND POTLACH ON THE RESERVE. (1910, May 5). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 3.

226

A large number of blankets were potlatched yesterday afternoon and one chief

from Saanich “went the altogether” by distributing a considerable sum of money,

chiefly in dollar bills.

The last big potlatch here took place eighteen years ago and as in the present

case, Indians from the four tribes of Saanich, those of Beecher Bay, Chemainus river,

Nanaimo, Sooke, Valdez, Kuiper island and elsewhere are represented.

28. The Indian Act’s Potlatch Ban (1913)381

If the policy of the Department of Indian Affairs, as disclosed in instructions

received from Ottawa by the superintendent of Indian Agencies in British Columbia,

is successfully enforced, the “potlatch,” which is the most treasured of natives’

traditional feasts, will be a thing of the past before long. Orders have been issued that

these gatherings, that is, the functions the principal feature of which is the giving

and receiving of presents, must be discontinued forthwith. Already the first step in

this direction has been taken and the matter, it is expected, will be ventilated in the

courts of Vancouver at an early date382.

Having been notified of the department’s wishes, Indian Agent Halliday383, of

Alert Bay, in whose district are the Kaawkewith384 Indians, took the necessary steps

to apprize his wards of the situation. They were told, it is authoritatively reported,

that the “potlatch” must be abandoned. However, the season for such affairs was at

hand, and the Indians could not resist the temptation. The usual arrangements were

made, and soon the tribe was engaged in one of their long drawn out celebrations, at

which the presentation of gifts by one or more of their number was an outstanding

feature. As a result, Indian Agent Halliday swore out informations, under section 149

of the Indian Act, which specifically makes participation in such an event an

indictable offence, and two of the leaders were placed under arrest. Their prosecution

is to take place in Vancouver, to which city they have removed. It is understood that

several of their tribesmen have followed and that their purpose is to engage counsel

and fight the charge. Probably the ground taken will be based on the plea that what

is being done is an unwarranted interference with the rights of the subject.

In Indians’ Interests

Mr. W.E. Ditchburn, inspector of the Indian agencies, explains that the

department’s policy with respect to the time–honored potlatch is in the best interests

of the Indians of British Columbia for a number of important reasons. In the first

381 From INDIANS DEBARRED HOLDING POTLATCHES. (1913, November 28). The Daily Colonist, p. 3. 382 “They were convicted but allowed to go under suspended sentence, as the [Indian] department did

not then wish to go further, and thought that the conviction would serve as notice to the rest of the

tribes that the old practice must cease.” INDIANS PROTEST AT DEPARTMENT’S ACTION. (1914,

June 17). The Daily Colonist, p. 7. 383 William May Halliday, Indian agent for the Kwakewlth Agency from 1906 to 1932. In 1935, he

published his memoirs under the ironic title of Potlatch and Totem and the Recollections of an Indian Agent. He died in 1957. 384 The Kwakwaka'wakw, or ‘Kwak’wala–speaking peoples’.

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place, he declares, the form the celebration takes, namely, the giving away of goods

and chattels, inspiring in one man a feverish desire to outdo the other in generosity,

results in impoverishing many. Men who have been working all Summer and saving

their money return in the Winter and, instead of spending their earnings to good

purpose in obtaining necessaries and comforts for their families, squander every

thing at a potlatch. He mentions also the time lost. Some of the festivals last months,

and throughout them there is little if any work done. Besides, it tends to bring in

large numbers together in windowless houses, where they remain for days, which is

insanitary, as well as harmful in other respects. […]

In recent years, Mr. Ditchburn explains, the special schools for Indians, which

have been established at all centres and are largely attended by the younger

generations, have turned out young men and women of a different turn of mind from

their parents – men and women whose minds have been cultured and who would

prefer to cast behind them the objectionable elements of the festivals that have

become a part of the life of their progenitors. But when they leave school they go back

to their homes and immediately are swept off their feet by the traditional customs

that have grown out of years. The result is that a great part of the effect of the work

of the institutions referred to is lost.

For these reasons, and especially for the latter, Mr. Ditchburn is convinced

that, hard as it may be considered by the Indians at the outset, it is for their ultimate

welfare that it now is proposed to enforce the particular section of the Indian Act in

question.

AN INDICTABLE OFFENCE

The section of this law under which it is the intention to take action, follows:

Section 149 – Every Indian or other person who engages in or assists in

celebrating or encourages either directly or indirectly another to celebrate any Indian

festival, dance or other ceremony of which the giving away or paying or giving back

of money, goods or articles of any sort, forms a part or is a feature, whether such gift

of money, goods or articles takes place at, or after the celebration of the same, or who

engages or assists in any celebration or dance of which the wounding or mutilation of

the dead or living body of any human being or animal forms a part or is a feature, is

guilty of an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding

six months and not less than two months; provided, that nothing in this section shall

be construed to prevent the holding of any agricultural show or exhibition or the

giving of prizes for exhibits thereat.

29. “The Last of its Kind” (1922)385

Chief Dan Cramer, head of a tribe of Indians near Alert Bay, gave away at a

potlatch a few weeks ago at Village Island about ten thousand dollars in cash and

385 From GREAT POTLATCH MAY BE LAST OF ITS KIND. (1922, March 14). The Daily Colonist, p. 4.

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goods. The goods presented to his fellow Indians consisted of gasoline boats, sewing

machines, blankets, gramophones, canoes and numerous other useful and fancy

articles, besides sums of money amounting in all to three thousand dollars. This was

the biggest potlatch held in this part of the coast for many moons, and representatives

from all the tribes, including the Campbell River, Cape Mudge, Nimpkish,

Churchhouse, and those of the islands to the north, made their way through the

whirling waters of the Seymour Narrows, the Hole in the Wall, the Yuculta Rapids,

Okishollow Channel and the many passages that lead to the grand rallying point at

Village Island.

It is just possible that the Indians had a “hunch” that this was to be their last

potlatch, for they brought to Village Island all their gaily–decorated costumes and a

host of odd–looking instruments which have been used for a hundred years or more

in the weird ceremonial that constitutes one phase of this great Indian festival. On

this occasion all their ancient and honored usages were impressively carried out, and

Chief Cranmer’s name will likely go down in history as “the last of the potlatchers,”

and the story thereof artistically emblazoned on a great totem pole erected probably

at Alert Bay, where hundreds of these poles are to be seen, and if possible to

understand them would give us many legends of the aborigines and an insight into

their ancient customs. […]

Drastic measures have now been taken by the authorities at Alert Bay to put

an end to these ceremonials, and at the conclusion of the meeting at Village Island,

thirty Indians, both men and women, were arrested and brought before Mr. Halliday

J. P., and ordered to hand over to the police all their regalia, masks and other

paraphernalia used at these meetings. All these things must be handed in by March

31, or sentences ranging from two to six months’ imprisonment will be passed on the

guilty ones. This interference in their yearly gatherings is deeply resented by the

older Indians, who have held several indignation meetings at Cape Mudge and other

reservations. The younger generation seem to be resigned to giving up the potlatches

and will willingly hand over to the authorities all those things held sacred for many

decades and used in their annual festivals at various points along the coast.

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30. The Feast of the Bear (1900)386

Few men have been fortunate enough to “drop in” upon a whole tribe just about

to sit down to a sumptuous, if somewhat highly flavored banquet, the first solid food

the tribe had enjoyed for months. This was the luck of Mr. Gerald H. Cross, a courier

in the service of the Dominion government a few weeks ago. Mr. Cross has just

returned to the haunts of civilization, and recounts his strange experience with great

gusto. He has seen many potlatches amongst the British Columbia Indians, but this

one was the queerest of them all. While away on this trip to the extreme north of

Vancouver Island, he made the interesting discovery that the potlatch is not all it has

been alleged to be. It is not according to Mr. Cross, the generous, open–handed,

reckless redistribution of goods that is popularly believed. The person giving the

potlatch has invariably a keen eye to the main chance. If he gives away one blanket

he expects two in return at the potlatch which may be given by the recipient at some

future time. On the occasion in question the potlatch did not take the usual form of a

blanket distribution, but was a free offering of the spoil of the chase by the young

chief of the tribe, the Koskimos387, who dwell north of Seymour Narrows, along the

eastern side of Vancouver Island.

The whole tribe has been suffering severely from want of food for some time

back, on account of the fishing having turned out badly, and no provision having been

made to meet such a contingency. Just before Mr. Cross and his party arrived at the

camp of the Koskimos, the young chief (Charlie is his “white” name), had been lucky

enough to bring down a huge bear in the woods near camp. To the people who had

been living practically on roots and herbs, with an occasional old moccasin in the pot

au feu to lend it something the consistency of soup, the news of this fortunate bag came as tidings from Heaven itself. The whole tribe went wild with glee – but the

bear was Charlie’s to do with as he pleased. Would he “act ugly” and skin the animal

and let the carcase rot as some sulky members of those tribes will do when they have

a sullen fit; or would he potlatch it?

Charlie was one of the right sort and magnanimously invited everybody in the

camp, and the strangers who had just entered the gates, to

COME AND MAKE MERRY

over the monster of the forest. He was a giant indeed. When dressed he tipped the

beam at seven hundred pounds, and showed plump and juicy–looking, so that the

Koskimos’ mouths watered even before the steam of the flesh pots mounted to their

grateful nostrils. Every operation connected with the dressing, cutting up and cooking

the carcase was shared by every man, woman and child in the tribe, amid continuous

merry laughter and noise. The news of Charlie’s luck had spread like a smallpox

scare, and all occupation was dropped to aid in the preparation of the feast. Charlie

386 From Grahame, T. L. (1900, December 30). THE FEAST OF THE BEAR. Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 9. T.L. Grahame died before 1909. “Mrs. Graham, widow of the late T. L. Graham, of the London

Daily Mail and formerly in newspaper work in this city, is enroute to Victoria, having left the Old

Country on the 3rd.” SOCIAL AND PERSONAL. (1908, April 9). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 8. 387 The Gusgimukw tribe of the Quatsino First Nation.

230

was, of course, the most popular man in the whole country, and his every appearance

was hailed with immense demonstrations of joy. The first thing to do was to

dismember the animal; this was done early in the morning, and the various portions

were put into big kettles, with the exception of the heart, liver, lights, kidneys, brains

and other portions of the interior economy, which were carefully placed in a pot

themselves. This pot was put on to simmer gently on a separate fire, while the

monster kettles were kept bubbling all day. Toward evening the Indians, who had

been

DRIVEN NEARLY INSANE

sniffing the odors from the steaming caldrons, began to gather round rubbing their

stomachs and chattering with great animation on the prospect of a glorious gorge. In

the lodge where the feast was to be held, for even the Indians draw the line at open

air banquets when the rain is coming down steadily, fires were kindled, one of them

at the farther end in a huge blazing Yuletide affair, that at the end nearest the door

being smaller. The big pots with the plain meat throwing off an appetizing steam

were deposited near the large fire, whilst the smaller pot with the tit–bits was placed

near the lesser fire.

The white men were accommodated with chairs (where on earth they got them

from is a mystery, for those Indians do not use this article of furniture) and they were

invited to sit down and enjoy themselves. They were seated at the lower end of the

lodge facing the old chief, who squatted in the centre of the floor. In a semi–circle

near him sat the older chieftains of the tribe, on their haunches; the klootchmen sat

outside this half–circle, and behind them the b––––s and lads. The oldest Indians and

their klootches occupied what were the places of honor. Clustering thickly around the

door were the small fry, noisy and mischievous as their white prototypes. They were

eagerly waiting for the scraps. Behind them, again crowded the dogs of the camp, a

motley throng, snapping and fighting and waiting for bones. All the Indian adults

were arrayed in their best festival attire. The klootchmen in particular were

resplendent in gowns of every imaginable form, size and color, the undoubted belle of

the assembly was a lady who was addressed by the others as queen. She was

fantastically rigged out in a crimson satin gown, evidently an old ball dress; it was

trimmed with what had originally been yellow lace, but now was a deep chocolate

shade; she wore on her

SURPRISINGLY SHAPED FEET,

–little, narrow high–arched, curving feet, a pair of brand new kid boots, buttoned well

up the calf; over her head was thrown a multi–colored shawl, the ends of which were

brought bewitchingly under the chin and knotted. To cap the climax she carried a

little lap–dog, a black–and–tan with a solid silver collar. The girl had evidently seen

something of so–called high–life, for her attempts to assume the languishing airs of

the grand dames and at the same time repress her natural desire to join in the

boisterous merriment of the other klootches, was so ludicrous, that the visitors had

the hardest kind of work to suppress their inclination to go off into roars of mirth.

She occasionally favored them with a tired smile and ravishing glance of the eyes,

from behind the folds of the shawl, and every time this happened Mr. Cross and his

231

friends had to have a fit of uncontrollable coughing. The lady’s fingers were simply

crusted with rings, some of them tawdry enough, but others of considerable value.

They were chiefly of wrought silver, with here and there a copper one richly engraved.

She also wore a silver necklace of massive design and solid gold bracelets. Those

bracelets were made out of twenty dollar gold pieces, and showed the workmanship

of a famous Hydah goldsmith who lives at Fort Rupert, and who does nearly the whole

of this sort of work required by the richer Indians up and down the coast. His chasing

is exceedingly beautiful, and it is to be doubted if any white gold or silversmith could

surpass the craftsmanship so displayed on those bracelets. The pieces of twenty are

beaten out flat and engraved with the

WONDERFUL HYDAH FILIGREE WORK.

The young Indian queen was perfectly conscious of the havoc she was making

amongst the b––––s, and took every opportunity to show off her finery. Her

adaptations from the latest fashions were faithfully copied by the other women,

sometimes with the most comical results.

As each Indian arrived on the scene he was heartily greeted and welcomed by

the old chief, and bidden to his place in the circle. This he took generally with a grunt.

The extreme, indeed the affectionate care the Indians took of their old chief was noted

by the visitors with much pleasure. He was not allowed to walk a step or stand alone,

two stalwart b––––s supported him on either side. When all had arrived he was

tenderly seated in his place by the two attendants. The pots were then carried to their

places, each caldron requiring four of the strongest men to lift it. The little pots with

the intestine and other portions of the inner bear, was set before the old chief, along

with one of the big pots; the other big pots were placed amongst the Indians at the

lower end of the lodge.

Men provided with immense forks made out of wood, and resembling hay forks,

then took their stations beside the pots, waiting while the old chief pronounced some

sort of incantation over the meat and, as it seemed, the assemblage in the lodge. The

meat was then lifted from the pots amidst very audible drawing in of the breath and

licking of lips, and was thrown into long wooden troughs, somewhat like those used

in feeding hogs. At a given signal the Indians began their meal, falling to like hungry

wolves. A curious thing was here observed by the visitors. Several of the Indians

helped themselves to the food with the aid of chopsticks, very similar in appearance

to those used by the Chinese. Upon enquiry it was found that this custom had

prevailed amongst those Indians from time immemorial. Some of the other practices

of the Koskimos reminded the strangers strongly of the Orientals. Such, for example

as the salaam when entering a house. This is the same low obeisance as the Japanese

and Chinese make on such occasions.

Rows of matting had been laid down in front of the Indians previous to the

meat being taken out of the pots. This matting was

DIRTY BEYOND DESCRIPTION.

When the Indians encountered a particularly tough piece of the late bruin he would

lay the hunk of meat or bone on the mat, put his foot on one end of it and pull with

all his might to sever the fibres. The servitors who dispensed the meat to all, carried

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it round in broad wooden platters, giving to each guest a share so exactly equal as to

preclude the possibility of cavil; it was a marvel of measurement. After the pots had

been emptied there was absolute silence. The Indians munched and gnawed away as

before, but the conversation had completely stopped. One tall Indian had got

possession of a section of the contents of the small pot, by special favor of the old chief,

and he was busy stowing this way in his capacious mouth. Some four feet of the

delicacy hung down from his champing jams and a smile of utmost content suffused

his big, round, red, greasy face. He offered Mr. Cross a couple of feet of the dainty,

but Mr. Cross was only too happy to decline. The old chief placidly gnawed a bone

and glanced solemnly from time to time over the company. The white guests had

noticed the absence of the young chief, to whose sure aim the whole tribe were

indebted for the meal. Just as they were about to make enquiry regarding this strange

circumstance, two shots, as from a shot gun, were fired close to the entrance of the

lodge, an in quick succession. Immediately afterwards the door was

THROWN VIOLENTLY BACK

on its hinges of raw hide, and in strode the young chief, accompanied by one

attendant, and both dressed in bearskins. The majestic bearing of the young fellow,

and his prideful stride forward to the large fire won the admiration of all. In his hand

was the smoking gun. This was the nimrod of the tribe, Charlie, and the companion

who had been with him at the time the lucky shot sped that fetched down the monster

bear. They had smeared their faces thickly with grease, and then scattered the

contents of a feather pillow over their heads; the effect being most grotesque.

“Breaking” his gun at the breach, and taking his place inside the fire, with his

comrade alongside, Charlie then called out in a loud voice the name of every member

of the tribe, who was then present, repeating each name three times, and receiving a

response each time. Now and then he would call the name of some dead member of

the tribe, at which there would be perfect silence, the Indians reverently bowing their

heads. This portion of the ceremony over, Charlie then made a speech, during which

he wrought himself up into a tremendous passion, using both arms and his body in

his violent gestulations. He jumped from side to side like a man possessed, fell down

on his face, leaped up with extraordinary agility and ran the length of the lodge, and

back again, the very eyes of the Indians starting from their heads with excitement as

they watched him. He was completely exhausted when he finished his harangue.

His companion then took up the thread of the discourse with a glowing

panegyric upon Charlie’s

PROWESS AS A HUNTER,

and provider for his people, and predicted that he would be a father unto his own

people. This was applauded by the Indians in many grunts. In this speech he referred

to the honor of the presence of the white brothers. The young chief then went over to

the small pot and with his own hands gave each person present a portion of the choice

meat. Knowing that the white visitors did not care for bear meat, the young chief

procured three raw carrots and pressed them upon Mr. Cross and his companions in

a manner so earnest that refusal was impossible. Soon the white men were munching

the carrots with the best grace they could summon.

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Mr. Cross asked the fat Indian sitting at his left if he were enjoying the huge

portion of meat which he was endeavoring to tear to pieces with his teeth and hands,

and was astonished when the Indian paused in his operations on the meat, grinned,

and answered: “You bet.”

The great bones of the deceased and succulent plantigrade were broken and

every scrap of marrow sucked out. At the close of the feat there was not a fragment

of the bear left, the only memento, except the broken bones being the fine skin. Mr.

Cross then addressed the Indians through an interpreter, and thanked them for their

kind invitation, and told them how much he had enjoyed the very excellent carrots

which their generosity, or rather, that of their esteemed chief, had provided for the

white men. He hoped Charlie would be as lucky every time he went into the woods,

and that the tribe’s shadow would never grow less than it was at that present

moment. This did not provoke a smile, but a heavy grunt of satisfaction.

The potlatch of the bear wound up with songs and dances round the fires, those

festivities being kept up far into the night.

The Koskimos have one specialty in which they excel, and that is in the

BEAUTIFUL BASKET WORK.

The specimens displayed by them to the white party were the finest any of them had

ever seen. It is made out of the cedar bark, which is operated upon by a curious

looking instrument. This is a piece of whalebone with ridges on it. The bark is rubbed

between the ridges till it is as soft as a silk handkerchief, great care being taken to

see it does not break or tangle. When finished the product is as strong as rope. Mr.

Cross received as a present from the chief a curious stone, which he was assured had

been used in the wars of the tribe in the early part of the present century. He was

also persuaded to accept as a gift a crown which had belonged to one of the chiefs. It

is made of birch bark wound round with string which makes a perfect pattern. At the

front and back are bows made of cedar bark, looking just like cloth. It is lined with a

piece of ordinary white and red print.

31. Sacket of the Quatsino First Nation (1895)388 Had she lived in the twenty–first century, Sacket would probably be considered a transgender woman. She was identified male at birth, and initially self–identified as a boy. One night, a powerful spirit appeared to her in a dream and told her that from that moment on, she was a woman. Sacket self–identified as a woman after that dream, and her tribe accepted her as such. Victoria’s legal authorities had more difficulty understanding the situation.

388 From PRIESTESS IS A MAN. (1895, May 31). The Pontiac Gazette Supplement, p. 1. The original article inconsistently mis–gendered Sacket. I have corrected this error.

234

The strange and romantic career of “Sacket the woman priestess of the

Quatsinos,” has been brought to a sensational close by Supt. Hussey389, of the

provincial police, and Sacket now awaits the sailing of the first coasting steamer in

order to return to the tribe, says a Victoria, B. C., telegram. For years this person has

been held as little short of a tribal deity along the west coast, has rendered great

assistance to missionaries, and has held the unique distinction of being the “only

woman ever admitted to the councils of tribe.” It now turns out that Sacket is not a

woman, although passing as one among both whites and Indians for a quarter of a

century. Sacket was among the witnesses brought down from Quatsino Sound to give

evidence against a party of whisky pirates390 convicted here yesterday. Dressed in a

blue–figured white dress, with bright–colored shawl over her shoulders, and her long

hair dangling down her back in two neatly braided “pigtails,” Sacket was, from

towseled head to pigeontoed brown feet, an ordinary–looking woman of apparently

thirty odd years of age. The bogus woman was, during the necessary detention prior

to the trial, given a room in the Provincial police station, and it was there that the

detection of her sex came, because “she” had no opportunity to shave, and in the

course of two days a stubby beard made its appearance. Sacket, when accused of

masquerading in false attire, at first protested indignantly in shrill soprano voice,

and then burst into truly feminine tears.

Afterward she explained that, though a man, she had always lived as a woman,

and been accepted as such, assuming her role of religious guide and mentor partly

because the “Saghalie Tyhee” (God) had commanded, and because it facilitated the

masquerade by permitting her to separate herself from the tribe, as she otherwise

could not have done. She is a good–looking S–––––391, an orphan of the Quatsino tribe,

and tells the following remarkable story in explanation of her life–long masquerade:

“Many years ago,” she relates, “when I was a very little boy, I fell into sleep by

the side of the great water, and to me, as I slept, there came a mighty voice which

instantly awoke me. It was not of the wind, nor of the sea, nor of the thunder. I looked

and was afraid, for before me appeared the Saghalie Tyhee. ‘Sacket,’ said the mighty

voice, ‘from this night thou art a woman and my priestess, to do my service and mine

alone. Never shall thou appear but in a woman’s dress and with thy hair uncut, after

the fashion of woman.’ Then I promised the Saghalie Tyhee that I would obey and hid

my face in the sand. And I slept, and when I awoke once more I was alone. From that

day I have been a woman and the ‘good worker’ of the Quatsinos.”

Sacket, though apparently sane, seems to thoroughly believe that the Saghalie

Tyhee did appear to her and that his392 wish had been carried out. On this point all

389 Frederick S. Hussey, born in 1852. As of the 1901 census, he lived in Victoria with his wife Eleanor

(b. 1875) and ‘Ah Chin’ (b. 1881), a Chinese cook. Superintendent Hussey reported income of $1,800 in

1900. Ah Chin earned $260 in the same year. 390 When the steamer Mischief reached port yesterday she brought as deck cargo a fine new sloop,

seized with its Japanese crew for peddling whiskey to the Indians in Quatsino sound.” THEIR SLOOP

SEIZED. (1895, March 22). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 5. 391 An offensive term for an Indigenous person. 392 The Saghalie Tyhee’s

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arguments were useless and an examination as to [her] sanity will in consequence be

made.

In the meantime the police have overruled the great spirit command and cut

the “priestess’” hair, besides insisting on [her] donning man’s attire. She has

submitted to the change, but says she will surely die of shame if compelled to go out

among men in such garments.”

The Oolichan

32. Food and Light (1883)393

A fish frequently seen in the district around Vancouver is the candle fish.

Technically the name is Thaleichthys Pacifiens, a remarkable species of the family Salmonidae, strictly a sea fish approaching the coast to spawn, but never entering rivers. […] The specimens measure a foot in length, and have somewhat the

appearance of an eel, except the head, which is pointed and conical. It has a large

mouth. The color is greenish on the back, passing into silvery white on the sides and

belly, which is sparsely spotted with dirty yellow.

The Indians of Vancouver Island and vicinity use the fish both for food and

light. It is the fattest or most oleaginous of all fishes and, it is said, of all animals. It

is impossible to either boil or fry it, for the moment it is subjected to heat it turns to

oil.

The Indians who use the fish for food, take them, and, without cleaning them,

run a skewer through the eyes and suspend them in the thick smoke that arises from

wood fires. The fish acquires the flavor of the wood, and the smoke helps to preserve

it. When the Indians want to make a meal of the fish, they heat them, reduce them

to oil and drink the oil.

When they want a light, they take a dried fish, draw through it a piece of rush

pitch or a strip from the upper bark of the cypress tree, a species of arbor vitae, as a wick, a needle of hard wood being used for the purpose. The fish is then lighted at one

end and burns steadily until consumed.

33. Use and Preparation of the Oolichan (1885)394

There is found on the coasts of British Columbia, Russian America and

Vancouver Island, a little fish not larger than a smelt, clad in glittering armor, which

is fat almost beyond conception. It is popularly known as the candle–fish, but its

scientific name is Salmo Pacificus. Mr. Lord has carefully studied the habits and manners of this fish, and the uses to which it might be applied. Living with the

Indians, he joined their excursions after the candle–fish which, sporting in the

393 From Cheap Candle Light. (1893, March 9) The Brandon Mail, p. 2. 394 From THE OOLACHAN – A MARINE CANDLE. (1885, October 5). The British Colonist, p. 3.

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moonlight of the surface gave to the waters the resemblance of a vast sheet of pearly

waves. To catch them the Indians use a monster comb or rake, six or eight feet long,

composed of a piece of pine wood with teeth made of bone, if sharp–pointed nails are

not to be procured. The canoe being paddled by one Indian close to the shoal, the other

sweeps the surface with usually one and sometimes three or four fish impaled on each

tooth. By the repetition of this process many canoes are soon filled.

The cargoes being landed, the further charge devolves upon the s–––––s, who

have to do the curing, drying and oil–making. They do not in any way clean the fish,

but simply pass long smooth sticks through their eyes, skewering as many on each

stick as it will hold, and then lashing another piece transversely at the ends to

prevent them from slipping off the skewer. The fish are then dried and smoked by

being suspended in the thick atmosphere at the top of the sheds, and this smoke is

sufficient to preserve them fresh without salting – a process which the Indians never

apply to fish. When dry they are packed in cases of bark or rushes, and are stowed

away out of the reach of children or dogs till the winter.

“I have never,” says Mr. Lord, “seen any fish half so fat and as good for Arctic

winter food as these little candle–fish. It is next to impossible to broil or fry them, for

they melt completely into oil.” They are so marvelously fat that the natives use them

as lamps for lighting their lodges. For this purpose the dry fish is perforated from

head to tail by a piece of rush plith, by means of a long needle made of hard wood.

The wick is then lighted and the fish burns steadily with a sufficiently good light to

read by. The candlestick is a bit of wood split at one end, with the fish inverted in the

cleft.

When by heat and pressure these little fishes are transformed into a liquid oil,

and the Indian drinks them instead of burning them, he supplies his body with a

highly carbonaceous fuel, which is burned slowly in his lungs and keeps up his animal

heat. Without a full supply of some such food, he would perish in the cold of a long

northern winter.

When a sufficient supply of fish has been dried and put up for the winter’s food,

the remainder is piled in heaps till the fishes are partly decomposed, for the purpose

of being converted into oil. The method of extracting the oil is very primitive. Five or

six large fires are made, and in each fire are a number of large round pebbles, to be

made very hot. By each fire are four large square boxes made of the wood of the pine.

A s––––– piles in each box a layer of fish, covers them with cold water, and adds five

or six of the heated stones. When the steam has cleared away, small pieces of wood

are laid on the stones; then more fish, more water, more stones, and more layers of

wood, and so on till the box is filled. The oil–maker now takes all the liquid from this

box, using the oily liquid for the second box instead of water. From the surface of the

contents of this box, the floating oil is skimmed off.

One very small tribe often makes as much as seven hundred weight of oil. Not

only is an abundance of oil supplied by nature, but the bottles to store it away are

actually provided. The great seawrack grows to an enormous size in these northern

seas, and has a hollow stalk, expanded at the root end into a complete flask. These

hollow stalks are cut at a length about three feet from the terminal bulb, and are kept

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wet and flexible till required. The oil as it is obtained is stored away in the natural

bottles, which hold from a quarter to three pints.

It is to be regretted that our steamers are causing the candle–fish to disappear

from the Columbia river and other parts where they formerly abounded. They are

now seldom found south of latitude 50 deg. N.

34. Catching the Candle–Fish (1884)395

“Turn out the gas,” said a naturalist, “and I will show you the latest thing in

light; that is,” he added, “the latest thing in that line in British Columbia.”

As the gas went out the speaker unrolled several objects that had an “ancient

and fish–like smell,” and striking a match touched one. A moment later a clear, yellow

light appeared, issuing from what looked like the mouth of a fish, the caudal end of

which was thrust into a large bronze candlestick.

“Yes,” said the naturalist, “it is a fish, and nothing else, no tube or oil within,

only the fish just as it came from the water. Take this paper and read a line, and

become one of the very few who can boast that they have read by the light of a dead

herring.”

The light was found equal to that of a candle, and reading by fish light was an

easy matter.

“It is curious,” resumed the student of nature, “but I have got so that if I should

see a man use himself as a candle I shouldn’t be much surprised. The use of a fish as

a candle I first observed when in the North of British Columbia. I made a trip all

through the country for the purpose of obtaining a skeleton of

THE RARE RHYTINA,

that was killed off about 100 years ago, and I ran across some other curious things

well worth knowing. I had lived in an Indian village nearly a week before I heard

anything about the candle–fish, and one beautiful moonlight night I was standing on

the beach when I saw something that appeared exactly like the reflection of the moon,

only it was in the wrong direction. I called the attention of a native to it and it seemed

to throw him into the greatest excitement. He cried out ‘Eulachon!’ as hard as he could, and in a few minutes fifteen men were on the shore launching their canoes.

There was so much confusion that I couldn’t learn what was the matter; so I jumped

into one of the boats and off we went. There were two men in each of the canoes but

ours. One sat in the stern and paddled, while the other stood in the bow with a curious

looking instrument in his hand that I had not seen before. It looked like an enormous

rake or comb, made of a piece of pine at least eight feet long, with a hole for a hand

grip at the top, the lower part thinning off to an edge, into which were driven sharp

iron or bone teeth from three to four inches apart. The use was evident; it was an

arrangement for fishing. The ripple I had noticed on the water was an enormous

school of fish, called by the natives

‘EULACHON,’

395 From NATURAL CURIOSITIES OF THE PACIFIC PROVINCE. (1884, December 6). The Daily Colonist, p. 3.

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and to surround them now seemed to be the chief object. The canoes were quickly

paddled out – until they were all upon the outside of the fish – and then they rushed

at them full speed, each man wielding his comb like a scoop; dashing it into the

sparkling mass of fish that gleamed like silver, and at every stroke, so thick were

they, that the teeth of the comb came up covered in impaled fishes. These were

quickly jerked into the boats and another dash made, and so on, until finally the

school was driven in shore, and the excited natives into the water and fairly scooping

them into their canoes, where their vivid phosphorescence made them look like

molten silver. The fish seemed so terrified and demoralized that they hugged the

shore, and if the men had had a net instead of those outlandish combs, they could

have captured millions where they only took thousands. The boats were rapidly filled,

however, and in an hour the excitement was over, and the catch was handed over to

the s–––––s, who took the entire matter of curing in hand. The natives call them in

our tongue candle fish, as they not only eat them but use them to burn, as I have

shown you. The little fish seems fairly bubbling with oil; so much so that I tried to fry

one, and turning away for a few moments I returned to find the back and other bones

jumping around in a lot of fat; the flesh had melted. The oil is

USED AS A MEDICINE,

it keeps them warm as fuel, gives them light, and the flesh is rich food in its dried

state.

Settler Perceptions of Indigenous Women

35. L. M. Montgomery on Saskatchewan (1891)396

Before I reached the banks of the Saskatchewan I had only very dim, vague,

misty opinions concerning Indians, and the perusal of “The Last of the Mohicans”397

and similar works had led me to half expect that I would here meet the heroes of their

pages in real life. Would they, I wondered, be clad in all the historic garb of their

ancestors– moccasins, deer–skin leggings, blanket, war–paint and feathers, together

with the indispensable accessories of tomahawk and scalping–knife? And would they,

like Cooper’s braves, talk mysteriously of “palefaces” and “setting suns” and “many

moons”398 and “happy hunting grounds,” and look with disdainful hatred upon the

usurping white man? Alas for my illusions! They were soon destroyed.

Doubtless, in past ages, arrayed in the before–mentioned costume, and

stalking under the boughs of his native forest, the “noble r–– man” was a very

romantic and fear–inspiring object; but as we look at the poor Indian now, clad in

ragged garments fashioned after those of his conqueror, with a dirty blanket flung

over his shoulder, as he shuffles through the busy streets of another race, glancing

396 From Montgomery, L.M. (1891, June 17). A WESTERN EDEN. The Prince Albert Times, p. 4. Written by Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874 – 1942), author of Anne of Green Gables. 397 The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 is a popular novel published in 1826 by the American writer James Fenimore Cooper (1789 – 1851). 398 The expression “many moons” does not appear in The Last of the Mohicans.

239

upward with cowed submission in his dark eyes, or engaged in chopping wood and

other menial tasks for the white man, the last atom of romance vanishes, leaving only

pity and compassion behind.

But, even decayed as they are, the Indians are interesting still, and

considerable amusement may be extracted from a study of their speech and habits. A

fondness for exceedingly gay attire characterizes the Indian ladies (please, oh

scornful masculine readers, do not exclaim that it is a failing common to the whole

sex, white or r––) and the dresses of the dusky belles would make Joseph’s coat dull

and shabby by contrast. Many of the young s–––––s are comely – before age and hard

work have coarsened the graceful litheness of their figures and roughened the round

outlines of their features, while in their soft eyes, dark as shadowed lakes, they

possess a beauty unowned by any paleface maiden.

The s–––––s are great talkers (I suppose the men will grow sarcastic here

again) and it is a pleasure to listen to their soft musical language as they laugh and

chatter among themselves. They are industrious too – far more so than their worse

halves (here’s a chance for the ladies to indulge in a spice of irony now) in whose

appearance and habits there is little to excite interest.

In a few decades at most the r–– Indians will become extinct, and the dusky

children of a race, whose origin and history are shrouded in impenetrable mystery,

will have forever vanished from the land over whose plains and rivers they once held

supreme control. As we thus glance over this beautiful district – a province doubtless,

in the not very distant future – we feel that it is indeed a country to be proud of, and

a country well worth waiting and working for. It is a country where prosperity and

freedom are awaiting thousands, a country where all may be happy and equal, a

country where

“A man is a man

If he’s willing to toil

And the humblest may gather

The fruit of the soil”399

and a country fit to breed a race of heroes physically and intellectually for, in the

crisp, invigorating air of its wind swept prairies, and in the earnest toil that will be

so abundantly rewarded, there is little to encourage sickly sentimentality or brainless

indolence. Hurrah for Saskatchewan!

399 From To the West! To the West!, by the American poet Charles Mackay (1814 – 1889). The poem’s opening stanza reads, “To the West! To the West! to the land of the free, / Where mighty Missouri rolls

down to the sea, / Where a man is a man, if he’s willing to toil, / And the humblest may gather the

fruits of the soil. / Where children are blessings, and he who hath most, / Hath aid for fortune and

riches to boast; / Where the young may exult, and the aged may rest, / Away, far away, to the Land of

the West!”

240

Mrs. Armour took both the girls’ hands in hers.400

400 Cuneo, C. (c. 1893). Mrs. Armour took both the girls’ hands in hers [Illustration]. In Parker, G.

(n.d.) The Translation of a Savage. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons. Illustration by Cyrus Cuneo (d. 1916). The novel for which this serves as a frontispiece was turned into a movie at least thrice, in 1913,

1920 and 1934, and tells the story of an English aristocrat who takes an Indigenous Canadian bride.

241

36. How a Woman Should Dress (1892)401

“Talk about wimmin’s close,” he was bleating discordantly in a know–it–all

voice, “of I hed my way I’d hev them lookin’ sensible, and not all kerflummuxed up

with gewgaws. I’d jest like to dress ‘em ‘cordin’ tew my notion.”

“You wouldn’t let them wear trains to their dresses,” suggested one of his

auditors.

“Not muchee I wouldn’t.”

“No corsets, eh?”

“No sir; nor stiff–boned waists, eyether.”

“Suppose you tell us just how you would have them rig themselves out.”

“Suttenly, suttenly. I’d have ‘em wear a broadcloth skirt and a loose jacket for

comfort. Ain’t that all right?”

“Go on.”

“Short skirts to be tidy – jist comin’ to the tops of their shoes.”

“Yes, what kind of shoes?”

“Soft leather shoes shaped like a human foot, sir, and flexible like a glove.”

“All right – and their hats.”

“Somethin’ like a veil or a mantilly, but no sich styles as they wear now, you

bet. And I’d have the hair hangin’ down their back in a nice shiny braid.”

“There’s women that dress like that now,” said one of his listeners.

“Show one to me and I’ll marry her termorrow.”

“I saw one just the other day and that was her style to a dot.”

“What was she doin’?”

“Selling blankets and Indian moccasins on the dock. She had a blanket over

her head.”

But the crank who knew how a woman should dress had suddenly disappeared.

37. “Woman’s Position Among the Indians” (1887)402

Woman’s position among the Indians is one that is supposed to be very

degraded in all the tribes, and yet some native confederacies have given to her a

position of equality, while she has become sole arbiter in those things belonging to

her own sex and family.

Notably among the native races, in their treatment of women, is that of the

Huron–Iroquois. There existed among the Indians a natural division of labor,

different from that of the white races, owing to the fact that the r–– men were in

general a hunting and stock raising people, while the white people were devoted to

agriculture. The men of the camps erected their homes, built their canoes and

procured the food for the family, while the women attended to their domestic duties,

performed the light farm work that was done, hauled the wood and brought in the

401 From How a Woman Should Dress. (1892, September 15). Qu’Appelle Progress, p. 3. 402 From Robin Rustler. (1887, May 13). INDIAN WOMEN. The Calgary Weekly Herald, p. 8. Written by John McLean (1851 – 1928), author of numerous books on Canada’s Indigenous people.

242

water. The civilizing influences of the Gospel have wrought a change among some

tribes, so that some now occupy and exalted position and enjoy the fruits of piece.

Some, however, have not thus been favored. Although their lords and masters no

longer pursue the labors of the house, and dwell at ease in their changed mode of life,

the women labor on in their former routine duties which have become degraded by

comparison. Such is woman’s position to–day among the Crees, Blackfoot, Sarcees,

Sioux, and all other tribes who have not accepted the civilization resulting from the

gospel of the Nazarene. Among these tribes are to be found maidens with comely

appearance, neat in their dress and active in all their movements. Having crossed the

threshold of womanhood, the maiden’s hand is eagerly sought by means of courtship

on the part of the young men, or by a speedy marriage without her consent to some

old man, and she is taken to share his lodges with several other wives.

Amongst the Blackfeet, marriage is simply a bargain between the suitor and

the young woman’s father, for a certain number of horses. If she is beautiful, a greater

number of horses must be paid for the intended bride. From two to twenty horses

have been paid for a wife by young men. In the good old days when the buffalo were

abundant, the more wives a man possessed, the richer he became, as the greater

number of robes dressed by them soon proved. When the husband became angry with

his wife, he beat her with impunity, when he wished her no longer, he sold her, and

when she was found guilty of adultery, her nose was cut off. A life of suffering is that

experienced by women who dwell among the tribes degraded by the civilization of the

paleface. It is sad to be compelled to say that the settlement of the country in the

vicinity of Indian Reserves by white men is injurious mentally and spiritually to the

members of the red race.

The heavy active life of Indian women when game was abundant has given

place to one of idleness, filth and pain. The joyous hours are now filled with sorrow,

as they see their homes becoming desolate by the ravages of disease. The primitive

virtue of Indian womanhood has been destroyed, and immorality prevails amongst

young and old. The respect and gallantry manifested by some tribes for the female

sex, has long since departed from the Indians of the plains, if indeed these ever

existed. Life on a Reserve is very much different from the nomadic habits of former

years. The house, the food, the methods of cooking, the arrangements of the home,

and the new customs have all been influenced by the civilization of the white man

and what has first been learned has been of the very lowest type. The stealing of

women by the male members of the camps constitutes one of the chief causes of

excitement and trouble. A young man will elope with the young wife of an aged Indian

and then there is either pursuit or capture, or reparation demanded by the injured

party. When death enters the family it is the women who suffer most. They are the

chief mourners, as may be seen by the mutilated limbs, short hair and bloody hands.

The aged medicine women are feared by the people, because of the power supposed

to be possessed by them. The hard lot of the Indian mothers soon brings on premature

old age, and the ruddy glow that lights up the countenance of the young wife or

maiden, is soon replaced by the saddened look and disproportioned form. The songs

243

of the maidens are the benisons of God, that dwell among the lodges, cheering the

sick and lonely in their hours of pain and grief.

An Indigenous Woman and Child on the Plains403

38. “Infinite Patience” (1911)404

The Indian woman will stick to a drink–sodden husband till he drops dead, or

she does. The Government is fighting the whisky evil on the reservations with every

weapon it possesses, but the Indian brave will drink when he wants it and can get it

just as the white man does. A s––––– knows nothing of divorce; she would not listen

to you if you told her about it. There is but one method to help the Indian woman:

that is to educate her from childhood along industrial lines. Until a few years ago

there was absolutely no future for the Indian girl except to marry. That was the first

thing, provided she could find a decent, energetic, ambitious husband; only – there

are so many of the other sort.

Hospitals which have trained Indian girls are making one constant effort to

enlist others of the race. She has infinite patience, forbearance, generally a

magnificent physique and no trace of the “nerves” which so often cause breakdown

among over–civilized races. An Indian girl can go through the most trying surgical

case with a stoical calm that is extraordinary. She never gets flurried, anxious or

worried and she obeys the physician as a soldier does his commander. In caring for

403 From an undated, unsigned print in the Anthologist’s collection. Believed to be late 1800s. 404 From Virtues of the S–––––. (1911, June 1). Claresholm Review, p. 6.

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cases of severe illness she seems to live on some strange reserve force and is a tender

as well as a painstaking nurse.

39. “The heavy end of the burden” (1911)405

Guiltless of Kindergarten, Mothers’ Meetings, or Women’s Clubs, with no

household column in the daily press, or “Votes for Women” in the market–place,

without having heard a single sermon on the “duty of the homemaker,” the Indian

woman of the Canadian West and North is a faithful wife and ideal mother. Her

children are taught to reverence and respect their parents, to be kindly to one

another, to earn their own living by the work of their hands. They worship a Great

Spirit, and look forward to a future state, sharing the belief with the rest of us that

“there the good shall be happy.”

In the adjustment of white burdens to r–– backs, the respective duties of man

and wife are clearly defined, to the woman falling the heavy end of the burden. A man

claims his wife when he can prove himself a mighty hunter, with skill of gun and trap

sufficient to provide food for two. This is his part of the bargain, and he resolutely

does no more. When he has succeeded in bringing down a bear, a moose, or a caribou,

indicating the scene of the kill with broken twigs or a blazed tree, the man grandly

walks back to camp empty handed. Burdened as she may be with two or three

children clinging to her skirt, as well as by the papoose upon her back, it is the duty

of the woman to set out from camp, find the spoil and drag the quarry back to the

tepee. Arrived at camp, it is she who skins the animals and dresses the flesh for food.

Hers, too, is the task to scrape the skin, cure it, tan it, and work it up into garments

for her household.

Solomon’s eulogy of Mrs. Owl–plucked–out–his–eye or Mrs. Red–sky–of–the–

morning, adjusted to the latitude of 70 degrees North would read, “She seeketh fish

and the flesh of moose and worketh diligently with her hands; she riseth also while

it is yet night and scrapeth the skins for garments.”

40. The Green Corn Dance of the Onondaga (1896)406

They are one of the most conservative peoples of the world, these old Six

Nations who inhabit the great tract of land in southern Ontario, known as the Grand

River reserve. Their councils, their customs, their laws are identical with those

formulated by Hiawatha four centuries ago, in his famous Iroquois League. Five of

these Indian nations are to–day practically civilized and educated, albeit a remnant

405 From Cameron, A. D. (1911, February 16). THE INDIAN MOTHER. The Gleichen Call, p. 6. Written by Agnes Deans Cameron (1863 – 1912), Canadian teacher and explorer.

406 From Johnson, E. P. (1896, June 18). GREEN CORN DANCE. The Brandon Mail, p. 7. Written by Emily Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) (1861 – 1913). Tekahionwake (‘Double Wampum’) was born

on the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario to a Mohawk/European father and a British mother. Her father,

George H.M. Johnson, would in time be both Chief of and Crown Interpreter for the Six Nations.

245

of the Senecas and Cayugas still cling to their old–time faith and fashions; but the

great Onondaga tribe that boasts Hiawatha blood, and a lineage outrivaling many a

noble born in England and France, has never adopted the innovations of the white

people or embraced the faith which the ever present missionaries have labored to

promote among them. They are the aristocrats, the wise heads, the Spartans of the

first peoples of America.

The Onandagas of the Grand River area are a distinct type of the time–honored

“honest Indian.” Their integrity is proverbial, their uprightness indisputable. Their

simple lives are spent industriously on their little farms. They are law–abiding,

peace–loving citizens, but averse to education, and their loyalty to the faith of their

fathers cannot but command the respect if not the sympathy of every Christian

denomination that attempts to do evangelical work in the reserve. At various periods

of the year they feast, dance, and burn sacrifices to the God of their Fathers, the Great

Spirit who dwells in the Happy Hunting grounds. The sweet sincerity of these

festivals have been vividly commented upon by every white guest who has ever

entered the “Long House,” the name given to the place of worship. Just at this season

of the year one of their most interesting rites is celebrated, inasmuch as it concerns.

That all important factor for the native’s well being, the planting and harvesting of

Indian corn, which is the staple food both summer and winter.

One great peculiarity about the Pagan worship is that only once a year to they

ever supplicate: all other festivals are Thanksgiving Dances, and at corn planting

time alone, do they ask a favor of the deity – a blessing on the seed, a generous yield,

and a rapid harvest. There is a tradition that in ages gone, the warriors returning

from victorious battles would bring home the heads of the slain enemy, and if he died

bravely, the blood would be squeezed upon the earth hillocks above the sprouting

corn, thereby saturating the future food with nutriment that would engender great

courage, and a capacity for valor and warlike deeds in the breast of the consumer. For

this reason do the Iroquois claim their finest sweetest corn is purple, not yellow. The

blood of erstwhile conquests has left both its stain and its virtues forever in the heart

of this richest grain.

Naturally in olden days, when the Iroquois brave was continually on the

warpath, much of the labor of corn planting fell upon the women. To them, therefore,

is accorded the highest places of honor in the dance, the men apparently believing

that the laborer should reap his or her own reward.

On Friday, May 11, was celebrated the short dance, always executed while the

ground is being prepared for seeding. The Onandaga “Long House” stands some two

miles inland from the Grand River, in the southern extremity of the county of Brant,

Ont., and here gathered one of the strangest, most primitive aggregations of

humanity to be found in the civilized portions of the continent. Old pagan women clad

in the native outfit consisting of a short loincloth petticoat, a shorter overskirt and

waist of figured calico, a gay bandana kerchief tied smoothly about the head, and the

old time Iroquois decoration of myriad coin silver brooches, patterned in the fashion

known to Indian art. Many of these brooches are so ancient that one can readily detect

the “Rex” coin indistinctly outlined on the front, and even the tracing of French and

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Spanish coin identifies this jewelry with the early historical events of the country; for

expert as the native silversmith surely is, his rude skill has apparently been

inadequate at attempts to efface the mint stamps on the coins the various nations

with which they traded in centuries gone.

Next to the pagan mothers with their wealth of historically decorated gowns,

perhaps there will be young girls clad much as the average farmer’s daughters, and

little children gowned like miniatures of their mothers. Then stalwart braves, some

of whom lend a dash of color to their costume by a silver brooch on their hatband, or

a small gay feather tucked away behind it. Then, too, an older man may appear with

earrings, or a scarlet sash to lend color to an otherwise somber and shabby homespun

suit of clothes. The blanket and moccasin are rarely seen now, though twenty years

ago few of the older people were without them.

The preparatory dance of May 11 had but little ceremony and comparatively

no ritual. The worshippers assembled at 8 o’clock in the morning, and in orderly

silence took their respective places on the various benches that are assigned to the

different “clans” in the tribe. The head chief then arose and made a graceful speech

in the dulcet Onondaga tongue, wherein he thanked the Great Spirit for the unusual

weather and condition of the earth for the corn planting, concluding his really

brilliant little bit of oratory by asking for a blessing on the national grain about to be

sown. As her resumed his seat two old warriors carried a short bench into the center

of the room, seated themselves thereon astride, facing each other, while a lad took

from the walls two of the famous turtle shell rattles, placed them on the bench

between the “beaters,” and in another moment the music began; first a strange, low–

toned song, with a half sad, wholly wild minor strain lifting through every note, that

far away forest incantation that only Indian throats can voice; then the soft

insinuating “chuck–chuck,” “chuck–chuck” of the turtle rattles that blend in strong

harmony with the weird hollowness of the pagan song. The very sound of it electrifies

the atmosphere, despite yourself, your feet fall into the slow, shuffling movement as

the dancers leave the benches and form a long curving row, that presently begins to

circle about the bench. The worshippers take up the song, the “beaters” fall into faster

time, recruits swell the procession, and the grotesque but impressive ceremony is in

full swing. Round and round the human circle slips in most perfect time to the beating

rattles, and the wild melancholy of that pagan chant. The many feet are almost

noiseless, for the step requires lifting of neither toe nor heel. The women dance

sideways a neat little shuffling movement, graceful as a fawn, dignified as an

empress; the men with slightly more action, but with a more “forward and back”

swing from the ankle.

Presently a young woman nods towards a corner of the room from which issues

a wrinkled and bent old beldame carrying an infant which she places in the dancer’s

arms. The latter adjusts the wee devotee in her “broadcloth” and swings on with the

circle while the child’s black eyes stare out at the proceedings in mute wonderment,

but absolute complacency. Then a little boy joins the ranks of the men, his hand

clasped in that of his father, his tiny feet faltering and stumbling into the movement,

his little brown face grave and reverent as his sire’s.

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In a half hour the dance ceases and the head chief again invokes the Great

Spirit for blessings on the coming seed time. The rattle beats again, the song, the

shuffle follow, and so on until the morning melts away and at noontide the entire

company disperses, after partaking of some excellent corn soup which some r––

Marthas have meantime been preparing, and then until the twenty–fifth of May

thrifty pagans are planting corn, after which another brief and similar dance takes

place, with much expressed gratitude to the Great Spirit for the means and aids

accorded his children in the seeding of the nation’s food.

But in the latter days of August, when the great ripening ears come bursting

through their husks, when the tassels crisp in the scorching sun and proclaim by their

shrunken black tresses that the sweet succulent food is fit for hungry lips and ready

hands, one of the greatest festivals of the years is solemnized – the “Thanksgiving

corn dance,” in which the entire tribe participates for four days and four nights. Never

for a moment during that period does the sound of dance and rattle cease. Far up the

concession roads that cut through the pagan settlement, the traveler hears the far,

low sound of the half uncanny ceremonials, the rattles, the Indian drums, the minor

notes penetrate the “bush” for miles. Nightly lurid fires glare beyond the trees that

separate the Long House from this highway, for the worshippers frequently abandon

the building for the cooler atmosphere outside, and circle about a huge fire the long

night through, their gaunt shadows and fantastic figures forming a picture never to

be forgotten by the spectators. Above hangs the black of a midnight sky, towards

which the red flames leap, flinging up their sparks with the curling smoke that

perfumes the woods far and near. The twigs crackle and snap an accompaniment to

the hollow rattles, the wild voices arise, drowning all lesser sounds; the lurking

shadows and fitful lights play upon the old log building, and transform the faithful

dancers into half–human things, strange elfin figures in their picturesque costumes,

their dark faces witch–like and unreal in the firelight. You might be in Arabia, in

Persia at some impressive old eastern rite, but you can hardly believe that this

extraordinary half–savage scene is being enacted almost within earshot of Buffalo,

and stone–throwing distance from Brantford.

At the August festival most beautiful figures are danced by the women,

intricate, sinuous, serpent–like figures that charm the eye, and appeal to every

artistic sense. Their feet seem to swim into visible rhythm with a movement that

would have driven Delsarte to envious despair; their arms, supple and relaxed,

respond to every hint of motion from the shoulder, their hips, firm and small set

(albeit innocent of any tight habiliments), swing in harmony with their soft, velvet–

like steps that glide evenly, harmoniously into the exquisite fancies that outrival any

shawl dance, German or quadrille devised by the most fastidious follower of

Terpsichore. And then, as the dancers weary, great kettles of steaming green corn

soup are carried in, a steer has been killed on the first day of the festival, and with

this added beef the broth is most delicious. All those that can be spared from the

ceremonies gather about, each with little can or bowl, and two hosts serve out the

refreshment in as orderly a fashion as would be a state dinner.

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Day after day, night after night the same routine is followed, and when the

great ceremony is concluded, the various clans betake themselves to their simple log

fashioned homes, later in the year to harvest the corn, and prepare it for use during

the long winter months that must follow. The housewives are unsparing in their

industry, where the practical uses of the corn harvest are concerned. At husking time,

in October, theirs is the task to braid the ears into long strings, by means of the back–

turned husk, and every well provided pagan lodge has many of these golden strings

hanging from the rafters long ere November frosts are seasonable, and as the winter

advances, and the ears are “pulled” from the husk, the plaited “string” is coiled into

very serviceable mats that find a ready sale in the markets of adjacent towns.

The preparation that the dried corn must undergo before it is fit for bread–

making is very tedious. After being shelled from the cob it is boiled in a solution of

lye until the thin outer skin peels away from the kernel, which is then washed and

drained through many waters until it finally becomes a soft, skinless grain, which is

then pounded to a pulp in an Indian mortar fashioned from solid oak. This is formed

into a flat cake, through which a handful of beans is usually scattered. This cake is

bound up in the inner husks of the corncob, which serve the identical purpose of an

ordinary pudding cloth, and the whole boiled for many hours. When stripped of the

husks, cut into slices, buttered and salted, it is one of the most delectable edibles the

writer has ever tasted.

“Back and Forth from Time Immemorial” A migratory life remained the norm for many of the Indigenous peoples of Canada long after the signing of the numbered Treaties. Summer was a time for seasonal work and visiting relations, sometimes across national boundaries drawn by settlers.

41. Mrs. White–Feather and Mrs. Full–Moon (1925)407

Every year one of the women of the Esquimalt Indian Reserve is visited by her

cousins from Nitinat408, on the West Coast. They are two old sisters, wrinkled as

withered apples, their brown hands and faces creased by the passage of seventy years

or so.

They have baskets to sell, but unless you understand Chinook409 they have no

means of expounding to you the virtues of their wares. Indeed, if Mrs. White–Feather

hadn’t got her sister with her, she would have no means of conveying her thoughts to

you at all, for she speaks no language but in the old tribal tongue.

407 From From Bennett, D. (1925, August 23). Two Old Timers. The Daily Colonist, p. 9. Written by Dylis Bennet Laing (1906 – 1960), who would later gain fame as an American poet. 408 Home of the Ditidaht First Nation for over 5,000 years. 409 A trade jargon commonly used by Indigenous and non–Indigenous people during British Columbia’s

gold rush era.

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She is one of the very few Indian women living who are quite so primeval as

that.

SELLING BASKETS

However, as long as she is accompanied by her sister, Mrs. Full–Moon, she is

entirely happy. Every year they take their baskets to a well–known curio and old

book store on Government Street, and there they squat on their feet, on the floor,

while Mrs. Full–Moon launches upon an interesting conversation with the proprietor.

It is like this:

“Mescka Kloosh tum–tum ogook sun?” (“How are you both today?”) “Nawhitka

Kloosh tum–tum! Mesika delaite Kla–howya – niki taki basket, Kloosh basket

nawhitka. Halo all same!” (“Very well! We are hard up; will you buy our baskets?

Good baskets, yes, not like these.”)

The latter remark is made while pointing, with a fine showing of superior

knowledge and skill, at some other Indian woman’s work.

Meanwhile the other sister is squatting comfortably beside the loquacious one,

smiling, but uncomprehending. As no word of English or Chinook can reach her

understanding through the placid fog of her ignorance, Mrs. Full–Moon lightens her

darkness with an occasional phrase in native dialect, which is acknowledged by a

long–drawn “Ah–ha!” variously and expressively inflected.

MAKING DEPARTURES

As soon as a bargain is struck, Mrs. Full–Moon exclaims “Tank you, tank you!”

and an Indian Summer smile brightens both brown faces.

Then, with a mutual “Klahowya!” they rise and waddle out to join their

tillicums410 and shew them the old magazines which the shopkeeper has added as a

“cultus Potlach” (gift for nothing).

They are interesting old souls, Mrs. Full–Moon and Mrs. White–Feather,

withered brown leaves of the tribal tree whose roots no longer grip with firmness on

the soil of its ancient heritage, whose limbs no longer lift so serenely to the skies of

its old beliefs as they did before the white man came and carved his name on its trunk.

42. “Two Women Turned Back” (1925)411 The same week that Mrs. White–Feather and Mrs. Full–Moon were visiting their cousin in Victoria, two other Indigenous basket sellers were denied a similar opportunity in Ontario.

The situation arose at Malone, N. Y., recently, when two Indian women from a

nearby reservation wished to proceed into New York State in order to pursue their

avocation of basket sellers. The agent there took up the matter with the result that

they were not allowed to be admitted. They are to appear before a special board in

Montreal, but it is not believed the decision of the United States department will be

changed.

410 Chinook trade jargon for ‘people’ or ‘relations’, but often used to mean ‘friends’. 411 From INDIAN BASKET SELLERS HALTED. (1925, June 12). The Daily Colonist, p. 14.

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It seems that no persons not eligible to become citizens of the United States

can be admitted to that country, and as the law will not allow an Indian to take out

citizenship papers and ultimately exercise the franchise, the Secretary of Labor has

banned Canadian Indians except under certain classifications, such as a merchant.

It is expected that the decision will have a far–reaching effect, for there are a number

of large reservations in Canada close to the international boundary.

43. A Right, Interrupted (1925)412

The result of this ruling is that the right exercised from immemorial days413 of

Indians crossing the border freely has been suspended. Owing to the close relation,

in many cases through intermarriage, of the Indians of British Columbia and

Washington State, they have been accustomed to travel freely to one another’s

reserves, to meet socially, and to permit the seasonal migration which is associated

with the fruit–picking, fishing, and hop picking industries of this Coast.

Now is the season of the year when this movement commences, when the

opportunities of employment are large, and not only do B.C. Indians go South, but

many American Indians come to B.C. to work, particularly in the Summer fisheries,

and fruit picking in the Okanagan. It will be noted that the objection is taken not on

the ground of breach of the alien regulations, but on the issue of racial ineligibility.

APPEAL TO OTTAWA

Immediately after the matter came before Indian Commissioner W. E.

Ditchburn414, he wired to Ottawa, and pointed out how serious the embargo would be

to the Indians on the Coast reservations. He asked for the matter to be taken up at

Ottawa, and representations made to Washington.

Explaining the situation to The Colonist415, Mr. Ditchburn said that since the

United States has tightened the regulations governing admission into that country,

it has been the practice to issue a certificate to the Indian, stating his identification

by name and reserve, and indicating how long he intended to stay in Washington

State. While this certificate had no legal status, Indian agents had no reports that it

had been refused recognition by any American immigration officials.

CAME AS A SURPRISE

A leading transportation man here said his company was amazed at the

announcement, coming at a time when the Indians were making their annual trek,

armed with the implements of their culinary needs and always with the assurance

that they would come back. He pointed out that the loss was threefold, that the

412 From DECLARE INDIANS INELIGIBLE RACE. (1925, June 5). The Daily Colonist, p. 1. 413 “Andy Paul, secretary of the Allied Tribes, declared today that the Indians recognized no boundary

line. They had gone back and forth from time immemorial and the blood relationships between the

Indians on each side of the border rendered it imperative that they continue, unrestricted, to go back

and forth.” OTTAWA HAS NOT HEARD OF BAN. (1925, June 6). The Daily Colonist, p. 2. 414 William Ernest Ditchburn (1863 – 1932). He retired as Indian Commissioner only four months

before his death. 415 Mr. Ditchburn once worked for the Colonist, which might explain his willingness to grant an exclusive interview.

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transportation company lost its business as a carrier, the merchants lost the ready

money earned by the aborigines in Summer occupations, and that it left an

unpleasant relation in the dealings of white men with the descendants of the original

owners of the country, in grouping them with Asiatic migrants416 as racially unfit to

free entry into a friendly state.

44. “With Bag and Baggage Galore” (1908)417 The visit by Mrs. White–Feather and Mrs. Full–Moon is a representative part of a larger history. The connections between the Ditidaht First Nation and the Lekwungen–speaking peoples are long–standing, as is the tradition of annual visits and seasonal work. As early as 1908, Ditidaht women were renowned for their baskets, which they sold on seasonal expeditions that also included hop–picking and visiting other First Nations.

With bag and baggage galore, including tents, cooking utensils, blankets, and

the one hundred and one simple necessities that go to make up Indian comfort,

upwards of a hundred Indians from the Songhees reservation left on the steamer

Chippewa418 yesterday afternoon for the hop–fields near Tacoma, Wash. The

Nitinat419 looks forward to the annual hop–picking as the white man waits in

expectancy for his yearly summer holiday. As a result the aggregation that boarded

the Chippewa yesterday was a merry one, tickled by the prospect of big times coming.

All afternoon the big canoes plied between the reservation and the steamer’s

wharf, loaded with supplies and merchandise. There was much of the latter, for the

fruits of the hop–picking will not represent the full reward of this trip. All summer,

when the men of the tribe have been fishing, the klootchmen420 have been busy

making baskets and beaded work, all of which is marketable across the line at good

prices. So there were endless boxes, and bags, and rolls and things of that kind to be

carried down the freight gangway of the Chippewa and deposited in the particular

corner of the deck allotted to the families of the respective owners.

The hop–picking contingent is, like those of other years, composed of all sexes,

ages, sizes and shapes of Indians. The Nitinat does not close up his home temporarily

when he makes a little trip, but he carries it with him. So there were aged s––––s421

who looked as if they had seen half a hundred hop–pickings before, old men who

might have been here when the first white men came to the island, middle–aged

416 The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1923 virtually banned Chinese immigration into Canada until 1947. 417 From HOP–PICKING INDIANS LEAVE FOR TACOMA. (1908, September 3). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 7. 418 The steamship Chippewa ran the Victoria–Seattle route for the Puget Sound Navigation Company

from 1907 to 1911. After substantial refurbishment, the steamer would gain fame as the flagship of

the Company from 1932 to 1935. 419 A member of the Ditidaht First Nation. 420 Chinook trade jargon for “women”. 421 An offensive term for Indigenous women.

252

matrons and men, young girls, children, and papooses422 in the arms of their mothers.

One of these papooses travelled in state. He was in a fairly presentable perambulator,

and his mother, who supplied the motive power, seemed highly conscious of the

dignity. But most of the youngsters were gathered up in shawls and carried about

with as little ceremony as if they had been bales of bedding.

Nitinat modes of clothing are strange and original. By some remarkable freak

they go in strongly for Scotch plaids. All the principal clans of the Highlands, and not

a few septs.423 were represented in that gathering of hop–pickers. The tartans of most

brilliant hue, were, however, the favorites. However new and gaudy the blanket,

there was never a shoe to be found beneath it, in the case of the women. Bare feet

were the rule, except in the case of a few of the younger girls, who evidently have

gone farther than their parents on the road to civilization.

The Indians welcome the hop–picking season this year more warmly than

usual, for the reason that the fishing has been very bad. Of the crowd that left

yesterday, some had been fishing on the Fraser, where they drew a veritable Indian

“lemon”, and the rest had been fishing at Rivers Inlet, where the luck was not a great

deal better. This information was imparted by one of the younger braves, and it was

readily believed, inasmuch as fish was the prevailing odor. The hop–pickers

themselves and all their belongings reeked of stale fish with a mighty reek.

Most of the older women were smoking, not cigarettes, but good, strong

briers424 and clay “cutties”425. It was an innocent enough amusement, considering the

atmosphere. As the steamer made ready to cast off, the leisurely gait of those packing

their effects down the gangway became a run, the Indian’s proverbial antipathy to

haste giving way before the inexorable schedule. Finally they were all aboard,

crowded with their chattels in their narrow caravanserai, and it was Ho for White

Valley426 and the Hops.

Going and coming, the Indians spend a day or two at Tacoma, in order to

dispose of their baskets, mats and curios. In fact this is one of the features of their

trip, and their camp at Tacoma is always the Mecca for hundreds of tourists and

Tacoma people.

45. “Tribes thus United” (1908)427 A potlatch held the night before illustrates the depth of the traditional relationships between the Ditidaht Nation and the Lekwungen–speaking peoples.

422 An English word meaning “children”, most often applied to Indigenous children. The word was

borrowed from the Narrangasett Indian Tribe of Rhode Island in the mid–1600s. 423 In this context, a sept. is a Scottish family that follows the chief of another family. 424 A tobacco pipe with a bowl made of briar wood, which is resistant to fire and moisture. 425 A reference to the ‘Cutty’ pipe shape, which is part of the Dublin family of tobacco pipe shapes. 426 Probably the White River Valley. The White River flows through Tacoma, Washington. 427 From IN MEMORY OF HIS DECEASED DAUGHTER. (1908, September 2). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 7.

253

An eagle with spread wings, its outlines depicted in all the colors of the

rainbow; a whale, its generous proportions most accurately pictured and spouting

volumes of what would appear to be gore; wolves, possessed of ferocious expressions

truly alarming and dogs, much more formidable than those of meek demeanor which

are found on the streets of Victoria, are some of the features of an artistic display

which has been painstakingly drawn on the rude white washed boarding of one of the

Songhees Indian reserve huts. It is the work of a member of the Nitinat tribe428, a

native people of the West Coast. The reason for its appearance at this particular

season, when Indians from all sections are congregated in Victoria and why such

masterpieces should be exposed to the gaze of an unappreciative but curious public

are questions the answers to which a reporter sought yesterday afternoon. It was

found that the wonderful medley of awe inspiring inhabitants of the briny and

primeval forest had not originated through a desire to profitably spend a few idle

moments, but, in their interpretation, exposed a tale which, in the telling, gives a

remarkable insight into the character and customs of the Indian.

PAINTINGS UNVEILED

He who ordered this work, it was learned, was none other than Jacob Chipps,

a prominent member of the Nitinat tribe and it had been done, on his instructions,

preparatory to his giving a potlatch in memory of his deceased daughter and the

latter’s child. Each character, it was laboriously explained by one of the natives,

represented a different family connected with the tribe to which Chipps belonged and

who were the guests of honor at the “fete,” if it may so be termed. The painting was

started, secretly, weeks ago. When it was finished it was veiled with a piece of canvas

which, while by no means immaculately laundered, served the purpose of preventing

the prying curiosity of either strange Indians or “whites” being satisfied. And so it

remained until late on Saturday night, when the potlatch was at its height, the cloth

was removed and the wonders exposed to the admiration of the hundreds of Indians,

representatives of many tribes, who had gathered together.

TALE OF HEROISM

The inauguration of the celebration by Chipps recalls a tale of heroism with which

Victorians are familiar. The event occurred about a year ago and its scene was the

lower Fraser river. Chipps, who is a stalwart native British Columbian, was bringing

his family home in a fishing boat after having spent the summer months netting the

sockeye. His craft was caught in a squall and upset. With him was his daughter and

his daughter’s child. With remarkable presence of mind he grasped the two, got them

on his shoulders, and, leaving the boat, which contained all his household belongings,

struck out for shore. The task he had undertaken was too great a test for the

endurance of the klootchman429. After a few hours of exposure she slipped into the

water and sank. Later the child met a similar fate, and after being in the water over

428 The Ditidaht First Nation. 429 Chinook for ‘woman’.

254

seven hours under particularly trying circumstances, Chipps crawled ashore

thoroughly exhausted and slept until daylight before he told of the catastrophe430.

Learning of the Indian’s behavior he was recommended as deserving of the

Royal Humane Society’s medal, which was presented to him at the A. O. U. W.431 hall,

Victoria.

To perpetuate the memory of his daughter and her offspring and to show

according to Indian methods, the depth of his regard for them has since been Chipps’

endeavor. Immediately after their death he gave away or burned most of his

belongings and, afterwards, departed for Seattle to obtain employment.

THE POTLATCH

The potlatch, which he gave to the Indians of his tribe, and to selected members

of the Songhees, Saanich and other Island bands last week was an evidence of his

industry since leaving for the Sound and of his determination that the memory of the

deceased should be lasting among all his brethren. He brought with him several

hundred dollars, accumulated pains–takingly, and, by the sale of some property, was

able to dispense upwards of $1,000, of which $700 was in cash432 and the remainder

in goods. The Cowichan representatives received $4 each, the Saanich, $3; the

Songhees, $3, and the Nitinat, who got the bulk, were given presents the value of

which was regulated in accordance with the caste of their respective families.

But the distribution of money and the unveiling of the aforementioned tribal

symbols were not the only features of the celebration. Some fourteen “dancers” had

been brought here to entertain and they did so with a vengeance. Their almost

gruesome “hoo, hoo, hoo,” which exclamation signalized the start, could be heard a

long way off but when they really got warmed up, and gave vent to their yells the

noise was audible for miles.

Advantage was taken of the occasion to marry a young klootchman433 of the

Clayoquot Indians434. The ceremony was performed in the accepted native fashion,

the bride being gorgeously attired and given away amid much shouting and

considerable speech–making, in sonorous tones, by the elderly male representatives

of the two tribes thus united.

430 Jacob Chipp’s death in 1937 was reminiscent of this tragedy: “Chief H.W.V. Pecknold and Constable

Gilbert Stancombe, of the Esquimalt police, assisted by Constable Menzies, of the Provincial Police,

conducted extensive dragging operations in Esquimalt harbor yesterday in a search for remains of

Jacob Chipps, West Coast Indian, believed drowned from his canoe on Tuesday evening en route to

the Indian Reservation. They found no trace.” Find No Trace. (1937, May 14). The Daily Colonist, p. 6. There is a monument to Jacob Chipps is in Ross Bay Cemetery, Victoria. It is unclear if he is buried

there, or if it is only a memorial. 431 The Ancient Order of United Workmen, a mutual aid society formed after the U.S. Civil War that

lasted until 1952. 432 About $20,000 in 2019, adjusting for U.S. inflation. 433 Chinook trade jargon for ‘woman’. 434 The Tla–o–qui–aht First Nation of Clayoquot Sound, north of Tofino on Vancouver Island’s west

coast.

255

IV. Chinese Immigration

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Changing Perspectives on a Chinese Head Tax

In 1885, the federal government passed the Chinese Immigration Act, which charged Chinese immigrants $50 per person in an attempt to discourage immigration. This Canada–wide law was the culmination of an anti–Chinese movement that had started in British Columbia, and whose nature had changed over the years.

1. Mr. Bunster’s Argument (1871)435

In 1871, Arthur Bunster proposed a $50 poll tax on Chinese workers to the Legislative Council of British Columbia. He was turned down.

Mr. Bunster436 moved an address to His Excellency the Governor437 asking that

a Bill be sent down to the House imposing a Poll Tax of $50 per head per annum on

all Chinamen engaged in any occupation in this colony (a laugh.)

Mr. Bunster – Hon. gentlemen may laugh, but if they only knew what a general

desire there is for this bill –

Mr. Alston438 – No, no.

Mr. Bunster – The hon. gentlemen who say ‘no, no,’ show they don’t know

anything about the outside pressure that’s going on on this very question. It’s going

to be a test question at the next election – see if it ain’t.

Mr. Alston – Trust ‘em.

Mr. Bunster – Yes, trust the electors. Laws similar to this are in force in

Australia and the Continent of America439. I want to see the Chinaman kept to

himself and foul diseases kept away from the white people. Why, it’s only two years

ago that the smallpox was brought in by them440 and killed many white people. I want

435 From Legislative Council. (1871, January 27). The British Colonist, p. 3. 436 Arthur Bunster (1827 – 1891) founded Victoria’s Colonial Brewery in 1859. After going bankrupt

in 1868, he served on Victoria’s city council in 1869 and was a representative for Nanaimo in the

Provincial Legislature as of 1871. He is remembered for his short temper, which saw him in court for

assault in 1863, and involved in a fist fight on the floor of the House of Commons in 1878. 437 Anthony Musgrave (1828 – 1888) was Governor of the United Colonies of Vancouver Island and

British Columbia from June of 1869 to July of 1871. 438 Edward Graham Alston (1832 – 1872) was a member of the Legislative Council of British Columbia

from 1868 to 1871. When British Columbia joined Confederation in July 1871 (a few months after this

debate), he requested and received a transfer to Sierra Leone, which he believed had better prospects

for advancement. He died of fever a few months after his arrival. 439 The Legislature of the Colony of New South Wales (later part of Australia) would pass an “Influx

of Chinese Restriction Act” in 1881, and the United States would pass a “Chinese Exclusion Act” in

1882. 440 While there were cases of smallpox in Victoria from 1868 to 1870, I could find no mention of Chinese

immigrants being blamed for or even affected by the disease. Most infection occurred via steamship

passengers from San Francisco, and those affected were listed as Indigenous or white. A typical report:

“There are at the present time four white cases of small–pox at the hospital, and four cases amongst

the natives at the place provided for them. It is estimated that no less than one hundred Indian bodies

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to see inspectors appointed to go in amongst them and regulate them. Talk about the

Indians being dirty! Why when I drive in my wagon along the Esquimalt road past

the hovels the stench is enough to knock me off my seat. Now, part of this tax may go

to keep them clean and the balance to educate them.

Hon. Dr. Helmcken441 – Keep them out and educate them afterwards, eh?

Mr. Bunster – The hon. gentleman doesn’t understand this question.

Everybody knows the Chinaman don’t pay any taxes if he can help it. Only forty–two

have paid the school tax442 and there is no getting at them either. You go to one of

‘em for taxes and see what he’ll tell you. He’ll say – ‘Me no got no money. Me work for

Kwong Lee!’ Nine–tenths of the Chinamen work for Kwong Lee443 and the balance

work for Sing Sing or some other Sing444. There must be some other way to get at

them. We have to pay taxes, why don’t you make them pay? And besides they come

along like a fore–and–after with two baskets sticking out of them from a long pole445.

If you are going along the streets with your wife you meet one of them and what does

he say? ‘Gettee out, John, gettee out, John!’ and they shove you and your wife into

the gutter and there ain’t any law to prevent them. (Roars of laughter.) As for the

baskets – well, I won’t say anything about the stench that comes out of them or what

they carry in them. (Renewed merriment.) Who are the perpetrators of most of the

crimes here? Chinamen.

Dr. Helmcken – No, no.

Mr. Bunster – Yes, yes! I have been informing myself on the Chinese question

for the past two or three days –

have been buried and taken away to the bush. But five or six cases proved fatal to our white population

– one man died yesterday at the hospital.” THE SMALL–POX. (1868, October 23). The British Colonist, p. 3. On transmission: “Edward Jenkins, customs house boatman and watchman, died on Thursday

night at the Hospital of small–pox of the confluent type. Deceased was set to watch the steamship

Continental when that vessel was in quarantine at Esquimalt, and is thought to have contracted the

disease while in the performance of his duty.” DEATH OF A CUSTOM HOUSE BOATMAN. (1869,

January 9). The British Colonist, p. 3. 441 Dr. John Sebastian Helmcken (1824 – 1920), politician and first president of the B.C. Medical

Association. He retired from politics when British Columbia joined Confederation, a few months after

this debate. 442 The school tax was payable by all residents. The Colonist, a major Victoria newspaper, only reports four Chinese residents as evading the school tax from its inception to 1871. All cases went to court. In

September, 1820, Ah Ching was fined $4 and $1.50 costs for delinquency of the road and school taxes,

Chong Mann was charged $2 and 75 cents costs for delinquency of the school tax, and Cam Toy was

found exempt for reason of being under age. In October of 1871, a “Chinaman refusing to pay the school

tax, the Court ordered the amount with costs to be collected by distress, or committal for seven days.”

MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE. (1870, October 29). The British Colonist, p. 3. 443 Kwong Lee was an important Chinese company in early Victoria. See later readings for more

details. 444 Possibly a reference to Sing Hee Chan, who had an import business on Store Street. 445 Chinese vegetable peddlers in Victoria would continue using this method of carrying their wares

well after the turn of the century: “With five coats piled one on top of the other and an overcoat outside

all, and with several waistcoats padding him also, Ah Wah, a Chinese vegetable peddlar came into the

police court yesterday morning to answer to the charge of obstructing the sidewalk. Ah Wah carried

two large baskets dangling from either end of a bamboo pole on Government street. He was dismissed

with a warning.” Peddlar in Court. (1911, June 6). The Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 6.

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Dr. Helmcken – Only two or three days?

Mr. Bunster – Well, I have made them a study for some time. I hope this bill

will be passed as it is in the interests of the Chinese I ask it. All the money will be

spent upon them.

Hon. Attorney General446 suggested that the motion should go further – that

every fair–haired man should be taxed. (a laugh.)

Mr. Bunster – I forgot to say that the Chinese would also have a doctor

appointed and paid for out of the tax.

Dr. Helmcken – Do you mean me? If you do, that’s bribery and corruption.

Mr. Nathan – And a barrister?

Mr. Bunster – And a merchant.

Hon. Dr. Helmcken – It don’t specify what class of Chinese. He would move to

substitute all Orientals. (Laughter.)

Mr. Humphreys447 asked to have the motion withdrawn. The House would not

pass it. It was quite true that Chinamen avoided paying taxes, but they were

industrious and frugal and in some respects valuable.

Mr. DeCosmos448 said the Chinese gardeners interfered very materially with

whites and almost monopolized the vegetable trade449, and he did not think that the

benefit they conferred upon the country was commensurate with the monopoly they

enjoyed.

Mr. Nelson looked very unfavorable upon the influx of Chinamen to the

Continent of America and he believed the result would be bad. The motion, however,

was premature as our population was too small to warrant the driving away of any

class.

Mr. Bunster rose to withdraw the motion.

Mr. Alston objected as he wanted to record an emphatic “no.” It was impolitic

and unwise. As a class Chinese were useful, truthful and honest (Mr. Humphreys –

No) and filled domestic places that women could not be obtained to fill. He did not

find them dirty – the better class were eminently clean, and if the hon. mover and his

wife were crowded into the gutter, would a $50 tax prevent it? He knew a Chinese

boy at New Westminster school who was as bright as any white boy there. He should

oppose the bill as unjust, impolitic and impossible.

Hon. Attorney General said that Governor was forbidden by his instructions to

sanction any bill that provided for the special taxation of any class, and it would be

perfectly useless to send forward the address.

446 Sir George Phillippo (1833 – 1914), who would later gain fame as Chief Justice of Hong Kong. 447 Thomas Basil Humphreys (1840 – 1890), member of the Legislative Assembly for Lillooet. 448 Amor De Cosmost (1825 – 1897), founder of the Colonist newspaper and second premier of British Columbia. At this time he was a member of the Legislative Council for Victoria, along with Dr.

Helmcken. 449 This would remain a common complaint for decades. From a letter written in 1901 by a self–

identified white farmer: “I tried early in the nineties to sell vegetables grown by myself, and though I

took in supplies time after time I could get very few to buy, and in most cases the vegetables lay in a

store until they rotted, as the Chinese peddled from door to door, and a storekeeper could not sell

them.” FARMER. (1901, January 22). VEGETABLES. Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 6.

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Mr. Bunster, after the remarks that had fallen from the hon. Attorney General,

would ask leave to withdraw the motion, which was granted.

2. A Motion for a Head Tax (1875)450

By 1875, the Legislature has changed its mind on the matter of a head tax, while recognizing its dubious legality.

Mr. Smith451 moved that whereas by the second sub–section of the B. N. A.

Act452 this House had power to raise direct taxation within the Province in order to

raise a revenue; therefore, be it resolved, that this Committee is of opinion that it is

expedient to impose a tax of $25 per annum on every male over 18 years of age

residing in this Province and wearing a plaited tail or queue453 attached to his head.

[…]

Mr. Fisher454 said the question was simply whether the resolution desired to

raise revenue or keep the Chinamen out of the country. If the tax aimed at the latter

object the matter was to ascertain what was the amount of tax to put on a tail,

whether pigtail, swallow–tail, plaited–tail or queue. If $25 would not keep the

Chinamen out, make it $50; if $50 was not enough raise it to $100. But he feared it

would be a very difficult matter to impose a tax sufficiently high.

Hon. Mr. Humphreys455 said that the question appeared to be reaching an

absurd climax. Outside the principle of taxation it was highly important that in the

interests of every class of labor Chinese immigration should be stopped, for

competition with the Mongolian race was not only injurious and impoverishing to the

white man but it was thoroughly demoralizing, and so flooded was the country

becoming with Chinese labor that few parents desired or were able to find occupations

for their sons and daughters. All positions which they might fill were filled either by

young or full–grown Chinamen. Notwithstanding this fact he was satisfied that the

present resolution if passed would simply stultify the House. […] The present

discussion was really a waste of time, for it must be borne in mind that the Imperial

treaty guaranteed the same rights to a Chinese as to any other nation. […] He had a

sincere desire to protect the laboring class and whilst he could, if he wished to gain a

little cheap popularity, vote for the resolution, [...] the House must have good cause

backed–up [by] statistics to show why a special tax of this nature should be imposed,

why the Chinamen should be excluded from our shores. Otherwise the measure would

be vetoed. (Hear, hear.)

450 SECOND PROVINCIAL LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY. (1875, May 9). Daily British Colonist, p. 3. 451 Robert Smith, member of British Columbia’s Legislative Assembly for Yale. 452 The British North America Act of 1867 established the Dominion of Canada. 453 At this time, China’s Imperial government required that all male citizens wear their hear in a

braided tail, or queue. 454 William Fisher (1811 – 1891) 455 Thomas Basil Humphreys (1840 – 1890)

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Hon. Mr. Elliott456 said they were all agreed that the evil was a very great one,

but the greater the evil as a rule the greater the difficulty of removing it. Whilst they

were all unanimous on that point he feared that any tax of the special nature

proposed would be disallowed in Ottawa. It would be, however, well for the House to

investigate the question thoroughly and strengthen the hands of the Government in

the matter.

The Head Tax of 1878 In 1878, the Province of British Columbia authorized a tax of $40 per year, payable at the rate of $10 every three months, on most Chinese residents. It would be collected by a photographer–turned–city councilor–turned–tax–collector, Noah Shakespeare. In exchange, he would keep a portion of the tax. The tax proved unpopular and difficult to collect. In a fateful move, the city began to confiscate property in lieu of tax payments. This confiscation led to a general strike by the Chinese population of Victoria, and a court case by one of the merchants whose goods had been taken. The Supreme Court of British Columbia eventually ruled the tax unconstitutional. Unfortunately, this was not because the tax was discriminatory, but because neither the city nor provincial government had the authority to pass a tax that affected immigration. That power was reserved to the federal government, which some years later passed its own Chinese Head Tax.

3. Difficulties Collecting the Tax (1878)457

Mr. Shakespeare’s458 trials and tribulations are manifold. He has been

hampered and annoyed by the unanimity with which the inhabitants of Chinatown

resist his seductive overtures to pay the tax imposed by Act of local Parliament. He

has visited all the washhouses459, cigar manufacturers, merchants, etc., and in his

456 Andrew Charles Elliott (1829 – 1889). He would later become the fourth Premier of British

Columbia. 457 From The Chinese Tax. (1878, September 11). Daily Colonist, p. 3. 458 Noah Shakespeare (1839 – 1921). He was elected Mayor of Victoria in 1882, but served only until

1883, when he was elected a Member of Parliament. It was in this role that he introduced a motion in

the House of Commons that eventually became the federal Chinese Immigration Act of 1885. This law

imposed a tax of $50 on every Chinese immigrant arriving in Canada. Shakespeare’s anti–Chinese

views proved very popular. He was re–elected to Parliament in 1887, but decided not to take his seat,

so he could instead become postmaster for Victoria. This low–responsibility, high–pay job was a reward

given by Prime Minister John A. McDonald for loyalty to the Conservative party while in Parliament.

Shakespeare served as postmaster until his retirement in 1914. In his obituary, the Daily Colonist called Shakespeare’s “life marked by varied and illustrious services in the public weal” and “always

active in the interests of the people”. DEATH CLAIMS NOTED CITIZEN. (1921, May 14). The Daily Colonist, p. 1. The Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned nearly all Chinese immigration until 1947, would be passed two years later. 459 Laundries.

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blandest tones has requested payment, and the Johns460 either prefer to “no sabee”

461, or insolently refuse to meet his demand. One Chinaman is said to have conducted

the collector to the door of his shop and pointing him to fair Luna462, which was visible

in the heavens, asked him if he saw the man in the moon? The collector replied that

he did. “Well,” said the wily Celestial463, in very fair English, “You go after him, and

when you catchee464 that man, you come and catchee my tax.” Another celestial had

the unparalleled impudence to point to the Belmont Factory465 and tell the collector

that when he made Mr. Wilson466, the M.P.P.467, pay the tax on his fifty Chinamen,

he (the cheeky Celestial) would pay his tax too – not before. The collector is said to

have almost fainted at the depth of John’s knowledge and audacity. The next house

he entered, the instance his errand was announced there arose a stench so horrid and

overpowering from a machine in the corner, that he was glad to beat a hasty retreat.

In the fourth house the inmates all pretended to be deaf, and insisted that the

collector had entered to pay them money for “washee” instead of coming to collect a

tax. A Chinese grocer on Cormorant street handed the collector his business card,

declined to discuss the matter, and coolly referred him to his solicitor. Another, a

fisherman, was wrapping up his crabs in a copy of the Standard468, (the Chinese organ469) and offered to pay the tax if the collector would take it out in “feesh.” As the

collector is paid by commission, he has not as yet realized the shoe–leather he has

worn out in tramping through the Chinese quarter. But brighter days are in store for

him, for it is rumored that accompanied by a policeman and a dray, he will make

forced levies470 on stocks of goods in Chinatown to–day.

460 A racist term. Chinese men were commonly referred to as ‘John Chinaman’ by non–Chinese. 461 A racist approximation of the Pidgin English that stereotypical Chinese were said to speak. It

means, “I don’t know.” Racism was common in newspaper articles dealing with Chinese people at the

time. Any simple words with ‘–ee’ attached to them are a racist caricature, by non–Chinese writers,

of how Chinese people allegedly sounded when speaking English. 462 The moon. From the Latin (and Spanish). 463 Chinese people were often called Celestials, after a commonly used term for China: Tiāncháo dìguó,

天朝帝國, the Celestial (Heavenly) Empire. 464 Note the use of racist ‘dialect’ even here, when the journalist has just admitted that the Chinese

person in question spoke “very fair English”. 465 Probably the Belmont Tanning, and Boot & Shoe Manufacturing Co., located on Government Street

between Yates and Johnson. Their boots and proprietary tanned leather won first prize at the British

Columbia Provincial Exhibition of 1876. (Belmont Tanning & Boot & Shoe Co. [Advertisement]. (1876,

November 15). Daily British Colonist, p. 4.) 466 William Wilson (1838 – 1922). Though involved with the Belmont Factory, he did not own it

outright. His own company was a clothing retailer, W & J Wilson Ltd. Wilson was a Member of the

Provincial (BC) Parliament from 1878 to 1882. 467 Member of the Provincial Parliament of British Columbia. 468 The Victoria Daily Standard, a newspaper. 469 In politics, an organ is an official means of communication. The writer implies that the Standard presented the views of the Chinese population. The Colonist, where this article was published, was often very anti–Chinese. 470 To charge taxes or fines.

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4. ‘A Bathos of Meanness’ (1878)471

A proceeding has been brought to our notice in which the Government

contrived to inaugurate the imposition of the Chinese tax by combining a gross

swindle with a bathos of meanness beyond the comprehension of even a Chinaman.

The facts are these: Some three years ago the Walken–Beaven government472

employed a Chinese cook for the Lunatic Asylum473. Their lately assumed anti–

Chinese zeal impelled them, before Parliament met, to dismiss him suddenly, without

warning, at the end of last July, owing him a month’s pay. He applied to Mr. Beaven

for his money ($30). He was refused. In vain he urged, day after day, his desire to

leave for China. The Government detained him for his pay until the House met and

the tax on Chinese was passed. He was then paid and ten dollars was deducted from his salary. His name was Ah474 Hoy. He has since left the country. Thus this so–called white man’s government mulcted475 a Chinaman, through malice aforethought, in

order to swell their grand Provincial purse by $10 by means of the illegal proceeding

of making a retrospective application of an Act against one who had been by their

own deed prevented from leaving the Province. We don’t think Mr. Shakespeare

ought to stand this. His percentage476 is in danger at the hands of his own employers.

There used, at any rate, to be a saying, “Honor among, etc.”477

471 From The Chinese Tax. (1878, September 12). Daily Colonist, p. 3. ‘Bathos’ refers to something that changes very quickly from being serious to being silly. 472 British Columbia (BC) became a province of Canada in 1871. The first Legislative Assembly of the

Province, sitting from 1871, was led by George A. Walkem (1834 – 1908), whose chief commissioner of

land and works was Robert Beaven (1836 – 1920). Ottawa’s failure to start construction on the trans–

pacific railroad it had promised BC cost Walkem the 1875 election. In 1878, he won a second

government on a strongly anti–Chinese platform. Walkem left electoral politics, in 1882, served on

the BC Supreme Court from 1882 until his retirement in 1904. 473 The asylum operated from 1872 until 1878 (the year of this article) and was on the Songhees

Reserve. It can be seen as Item 25 in the famous map of Victoria in 1878 that is often sold as a print

or poster in tourist shops. (Glover, E.S. (1878). Bird’s–eye–view of Victoria, Vancouver Island, B.C.

1878. Victoria: M.W. Waitt & Co.) 474 Though commonly reported as a Chinese ‘name’, this is in fact an honorific. In Cantonese, the sound

‘Ah’ (阿) is added in front of a one–syllable name in order to express familiarity, and make the

pronunciation less awkward. ‘Ah Hoy’was presumably a Cantonese speaker with the first name ‘Hoy’.

The census (and press) whould have interpreted ‘Ah Hoy’ as meaning, ‘first name Ah, family name

Hoy’. 475 To mulct is to charge a mandatory fee. 476 Mr. Shakespeare was paid on commission. He kept a percentage of the taxes collected. 477 The full saying is “There is honor among thieves.” The origin of this saying is possibly the world–

famous 17th century Spanish novel, Don Quixote de la Mancha. In its second part, a character says,

“La justicia es tan buena, que es necesario usar de ella aun entre los mismos ladrones.” In English,

“Justice is so good, that it’s necessary to make use of it even among thieves.”

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5. The Turning Point (1878)478

Chinatown was in a state of commotion yesterday occasioned by the seizure of

goods for non–payment of the head–tax imposed by the local Government. The

seizures were made under the direction of Mr. Maguire, a recent arrival from

Canada479. The stores of Sam Gee480 on Yates street, On Hing481 on Johnson street,

Tai Yune482 on Cormorant street were amongst those visited, and in nearly all the

premises on the latter street the Chinamen put up their shutters and suspended

business. No disturbances occurred, the Chinamen submitting to the removal of their

goods with complaisance. After the drays483 had been laden they were driven to the

police barracks and there the chests of tea, bales484 of cloth, packages of opium and

other effects were deposited to await public sale. The attention of the City police force

was almost entirely directed to the seizures. One policeman was observed on a dray,

another accompanied the bailiff and another kept “the gang clear” as the goods were

conveyed from the various stores to the wagons. It is understood that a raid will be

made to–day on the Belmont Boot & Shoe Factory, in the management of which

establishment Mr. W. Wilson485, M.P.P., is largely concerned. Some thirty Chinamen

are employed on the premises and consequently, unless the head tax be previously

paid by the proprietors the stock in trade of the Company will be materially

diminished. It is somewhat remarkable that although councilor Shakespeare denies

the report that he has been superseded by Mr. Maguire he took no part in the seizures

yesterday. It is said that there will be a general “strike”486 to–day of the Chinese

hands at the boot and shoe factories, the Chinese cooks at the hotels, the laundry

men, etc.

478 From Putting on the Screws – Mr. Wallkem Visits Chinatown. (1878, September 17). Daily Colonist, p. 2. 479 An error, probably born out of habit, by the journalist. British Columbia had been a province of the

Dominion of Canada since 1871. 480 Probably Sam Kee, a prominent tailor with offices on Yates Street. 481 A clothier (someone who sells cloth and/or clothes). 482 The 1877–78 Guide to the Province of BC lists them as importers and wholesale merchants, with

offices at the corner of Cormorant and Government streets. By the 1890s, Tai Yune would be B.C.’s

most important opium manufacturing company. 483 Trucks or carts used for delivering heavy loads. 484 Bundles. 485 William Wilson. 486 Chinese workers would occasionally strike in protest of unfair pay or working conditions.

Journalists were often surprised when this happened, since the stereotype was that Chinese laborers

were willing to work, without complaint, for very low wages and in very poor conditions. Consider this

extract from 1867: “Just imagine a John Chinaman who, when at home, works five cents per diem and

finds his one “licee,” striking for an increase in wages! At Nanaimo, on Monday, the celestial gentlemen

who load the cars with coal at the mouth of the pit, actually struck for a dollar and a–half a day instead

of one dollar, their former rate of wages. John has caught the “striking fever” from the white colliers,

and as he cannot well be replaced even at the advanced rate, it is probable that his demands will be

complied with, although we are of the opinion that white labor at $2 a day is more profitable than

Chinese labor at $1 50. In consequence of the “strike” the Emily Harris, which was loading for this

place, was detained for some hours.” Just imagine. (1867, July 24). The British Colonist, p. 3

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6. The Strike (1878)487

A total suspension of business amongst every class of Chinese in the city

commenced yesterday. The stores throughout Chinatown were closed, the merchants

refusing to sell goods to any white person, and laundrymen relinquishing their daily

occupation; the wagons of vegetable peddlers488 ceased to run and cooks deserted the

posts hitherto filled by them in restaurants and private dwelling–houses. The

employes489 of the Belmont Boot and Shoe Factory and those of other establishments declined to go to work, an in consequence of the strike orders for manufactures remain

unfilled. The saw of the wood cutter was allowed to repose on its nail, and the hum of

the tailors’ sewing machines was heard no more. In one instance, a Chinaman who

for many years had been employed by a well known citizen, recommended his

quondam490 master to apply to “Mistel Walkem491 to sweep out his house, Jim Lummond492 to black his boots and Mistel Bleaven493 to scrub the floor, polish the

stove and clean the fish for dinner.” The reply given by the trio was couched in the most courteous language. Instructions have been forwarded by the leading Chinese

firms in this city to their countrymen on the Mainland requesting them to abstain

from working in any capacity whatsoever for white persons. The trials of the house–

wife commenced yesterday as she was compelled by the desertion of her Chinese help

to perform the manifold duties hitherto devolving on John, the household factotum494. It is stated on good authority that the Chinese have clubbed together and engaged

Messrs. Drake & Jackson495 and A. R. Robertson496, Esq.497, Q.C.498, to commence an

action for trespass against the collector or bailiff499. It is also asserted that an

injunction500 has been served on that officer restraining him from further levying on

Chinese goods or disposing of those already seized.

487 From On Strike. (1878, September 18). Daily Colonist, p. 3. 488 These horse–drawn wagons were common as late as the 1920s: “Lit Wah, a Chinese vegetable

peddler, was fined $14 and $2.50 costs in the Saanich Police Court by Magistrate Jay for driving a

lame horse.” CITY NEWS IN BRIEF. (1921, June 6). The Daily Colonist, p. 7. 489 Not a typo. The Italics indicate a foreign word. At the time, ‘employé’ was a French word. 490 Former. From the Latin word for ‘at one time’. 491 Probably George A. Walkem, Member of the Provincial Parliament. 492 Probably James Smith Drummond, Member of the Provincial Parliament. 493 Probably Robert Beaven, though at this time he was no longer a member of Parliament. 494 A worker who does all kinds of work. From the Latin ‘fac + totum’ = ‘do + everything’. 495 A law firm with offices at the corner of Langley and Bastion. Its partners were M.W.Tyrwhitt Drake

and Robert Edwin Jackson. 496 A. Roche Robertson, a lawyer and notary with his offices on Langley street. Just a few years later,

in the 1881 census, he would be listed as a Judge of British Columbia. 497 Esquire. A courtesy title, often used out of respect, with no real rights or responsibilities. 498 Queen’s Council. A high–ranking British lawyer. 499 In Britain (and Canada at this time), a bailiff was a government official who took the property of

debtors. 500 An official court warning or order.

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7. More ‘Inconvenience’ (1878)501

The inconvenience resulting from the Chinese strike continues great. The shoe

factories are closed; the hotels are conducted with a reduced force of servants, napkins

are scarce and cooking is attended with much difficulty. In some households the

ladies are sadly put about for a want of servants. A few have been fortunate enough

to secure white servants, but as a general rule the inconvenience is severely taxing

the patience of house and hotelkeepers.

8. Chinese Cooks are not Easily Replaced (1878)502

Owing to the recent strike amongst the Chinese a number of white female

cooks have arrived in this city seeking employment. As yet they do not seem to have

met with that encouragement to which they are entitled, notwithstanding the fact

that they are willing to work for the same wages hitherto paid Chinese cooks and will

perform the same nature of labor.

9. Collection of the Tax Resumes (1878)503

Collector Shakespeare has recommenced his pilgrimage in search of the

Chinese tax. He visited many places of business yesterday, and in some places was

paid. Receipts are given for $10, being the amount of a quarter’s504 license.

10. Unconstitutional and Void (1878)505

Mr. Justice GRAY506 gave a very elaborate decision yesterday in the Supreme

Court declaring the Chinese Tax Bill, passed by the local legislature last session, to

be unconstitutional and void. The decision arose out of an application made by TAI

SOONG507, a Chinese merchant doing business in this city, for an injunction to

restrain J. MAGUIRE, collector of the Chinese tax, from selling certain goods seized

for non–payment of the tax. The learned judge very carefully reviewed the

circumstances leading up to the case, and alluded at some length to the experience of

California in connection with Chinese immigration. Having dilated on the effect of

the operation of the Act he decided it to be unconstitutional, because it interferes with

501 From THE LABOR STRIKE. (1878, September 21). Daily Colonist, p. 3. 502 From COOKS. (1878, September 25). Daily Colonist, p. 3. 503 From CHINESE TAX. (1878, September 25). Daily Colonist, p. 3 504 Three months; a quarter of a year. 505 From UNCONSTITUTIONAL AND VOID. (1878, September 28). Daily Colonist, p. 2. 506 John Hamilton Gray (1814 – 1889). This case is TAI SING v. MAGUIRE; the full text of the decision

can be found in The British Columbia Reports for 1936/1937, starting on p. 101. 507 Tai Soong owned an import business with offices at 33 Cormorant Street.

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the authority reserved to the Dominion Government508 as to the regulation of trade

and commerce, the rights of aliens509 and the treaties of the empire, and because it

interferes with the foreign as well as the internal trade of the country. This being the

case, the Act is entirely beyond the powers of the local legislature.

11. An Anti–Chinese Meeting (1885)510 Politicians explain their anti–Chinese reasoning and recent measures. This meeting took place as the Canadian Pacific Railway reached completion. The C.P.R. was built using large amounts of Chinese labour.

Mr. T. Davie511 said that true to his pledges he had done his best to prevent

Chinese usurping the labor field of the province. The public here had done all they

could, constitutionally, in the matter; but the ray of hope held out a short time ago

that the Dominion would assent to Chinese restriction had faded away; and he

thought it a remarkable anomaly that the public should instruct its members to

support a government (the Dominion) which defied the well–known and oft–

expressed wishes of the province. […]

Hon. Mr. Robson512 said that he was pained to see the contrast between the

numbers of the meeting to–night with those of Thursday night513. Both were for

defence against a common enemy, the only difference being that the Russians were a

probable enemy, while the Chinese were an enemy among them. In this hall a few

nights ago one man got up and said there was only one individual in this community

that was sincere in his opposition to Chinese labor514. Now, what a statement that

was to send abroad as a remark from a public man. Such a statement was not truth

508 The predecessor of Canada’s federal government. At Confederation in 1867, Canada was a

Dominion. 509 Foreigners. 510 From ANTI–CHINESE MEETING. (1885, May 3). Daily Colonist, p. 3. 511 Theodore Davie (1852 – 1898), lawyer and politician. He would later serve as the tenth Premier of

British Columbia. 512 John Robson (1824 – 1892), who would serve as the ninth Premier of British Columbia. In 1885 he

was a Member of the Legislative Assembly for New Westminster. 513 The purpose of the meeting was to consider options for the defence of Vancouver Island in case of a

Russian attack. “The public meeting called for last evening at eight o’clock in the City Hall was a most

enthusiastic one, long before the hour of commencement the hall being filled to overflowing. […] [I]n

the opinion of this meeting it is desirable that protection be assured for the purpose of defending

Victoria, Vancouver Island and the Nanaimo coal fields. […] Victoria and the Nanaimo coal fields

offered a rich prize to the Russians in case of war, and it wa necessary that they take some measures

for defence.” FOR QUEEN AND COUNTRY. (1885, May 1). Daily Colonist, p. 3. 514 The meeting took place in City Hall. In a session of the Municipal Council a few days earlier, “Coun.

Grant, after a vote of the council had been taken, as to whether he should again speak, said that there

was a great deal of insincerity about these Chinese agitators. Men who speak against the Chinese and

assisted the passage of bills through the house, on the outside employed Chinese to do their work. He

believed the only consistent man in the province in reference to the Chinese was Robert Beaven, who

would not eat a vegetable grown by Chinese, or employ them in any way.” Municipal Council. (1885,

April 30). The Daily Colonist, p. 3.

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for there was not one in twenty but who were in favor of Chinese restriction. The

Chinese regulation act passed by the government in 1884515 was not disallowed, and

he was now preparing in his department the machinery to put it in operation. This

imposed a tax of $10 on each Chinaman in the province; it also imposed a fine of $40

on all Chinese found in the country not in possession of such license, and in case of

an employer of Chinese not giving correct returns he was subject to a fine of $100.

Employers could not employ Chinese who did not hold such a license, and in case of

an infraction they were subject to a fine of $50. The Chinese miner had to pay a license

of $15, and any such miner found without a mining license would be subject to pay

the sum of $30. No dead bodies of Chinese were allowed to be exhumed without

permission516, and the use of opium was prohibited in any way unless an order of a

properly certified physician, and any person found in possession of opium except for

medicinal or surgical purposes were subject to a fine of $100. Any person who let or

occupied a room, except of certain stated proportions517, were subject to a penalty of

$50. […] It would be useless for the speaker to tell them anything to convince them

that the Chinese were a nuisance; but it could be readily seen that the provincial

government were doing their utmost to prevent the Chinese remaining in the country,

and that they were thoroughly sincere in the matter. And now they were earnestly

setting the act in motion, let the people back the government up in their effort to

crush out the great evil of Chinese labor from among them. (Loud cheers.) […]

John C. Doherty, one of the audience, came forward and said – Probably you

don’t know me, gentlemen, but I am a hod–carrier518. (Cheers.) I travel five miles a

day to work for $2 per day and have to feed out of that eight mouths. (Applause.) Now,

gentlemen, what do you think of that for a position, $2 a day to feed eight and then

work only for six months in the year – virtually 12½ cents per day each to feed eight.

(Applause.) If the men in authority do not stamp the Chinese from the country they

are traitors and should be treated as such. (Cheers.) Let the judicial heads place

themselves in his position or consider his case, and they would get on the highest

electric light mast and demand that the Chinese curse be abated. (Loud cheers.) The

515 An Act to Regulate the Chinese population of British Columbia, 1883–4. 516 Chinese spiritual tradition held that the dead could not rest until their bones were returned to their

home villages. This was a service provided by the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, which

would ship Chinese bones to Hong Kong and from there to various points on the mainland of China.

This was also a legal duty of Chinese companies importing workers into British Columbia. In 1871,

the steamer Enterprise brought the remains of 98 Chinese persons to Victoria. The Colonist wrote: “These remains were gathered from all parts of the colony at Yale, where the bones were scraped,

cleansed and packed each in a separate coffin. By the Chinese law every company doing business

abroad is made responsible for the return, dead or alive, of every man they engage.” NINETY–EIGHT

DEAD CHINAMEN. (1871, December 13). The Daily Colonist, p. 3. 517 Victoria’s Dwellings By–Law, 1879, was known colloquially as the “Cubic Air Law” and requires

that dwellings in which someone passes the night or part of a night “must contain at all times not less

than 500 cubic feet of space for each occupant; each room must have an external window made to open

in a manner approved by the Board of Health or Health Officer of the City; there must be appurtenant

to such room the use of a W. C., earth–closet or privy, furnished with proper doors and coverings.” “The

Dwellings By–Law, 1879”. (1879, November 15). The Daily Colonist, p. 3. 518 Someone who carries supplies to brick–layers.

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speaker was dressed in coat, with overalls in top boots, covered with lime, and made

a most earnest and energetic appeal, and as a representative of the class most affected

by Chinese labor, was entitled to a better hearing than was accorded him.

12. A “Monster Public Meeting” (1886)519 Theodore Davie presents his views on the Chinese Question. He who would serve as Premier of British Columbia from 1892 to 1895.

Mr. T. Davie, who was received with applause, said it was with pleasure and

confidence that he approached them that night. […] He would refer to a letter in the

Times asking how he, who received more retainers from the Chinese than any other

lawyer could be expected to assist legislation against them. If they paid him he didn’t

object, but there was this difference, that whereas employers of Chinese fed them he

on the other hand despoiled them. (Roars of laughter.) As regarded their being good

pay, they had deteriorated from what they were a few years back. They now generally

offered an order on some store or other doubtful collateral security, to accept which

was against his religion. (Renewed laughter.) He could say this, that he had refused

a large fee as a retainer to contest the Chinese regulation act. (Applause.) He alluded

to the efforts of the house to restrict Chinese immigration, two of which had been

disallowed. Still they, the Chinese, were not on altogether equal terms with the

whites here; they were subject to a cubic air bylaw520, forbidden removal of their dead,

increase of mining licenses, inability to take up land, etc. Owing to these and other

circumstances during the past nine months no less than 1300 Chinese had left the

province. (Applause.) […] Not a Chinaman was employed on the building he had

erected. He saw a Chinaman digging on the foundation for his building, and although

it was not stipulated in the contract, he insisted on the man’s discharge, which

accordingly was done. (Applause.)

The Occupations Chinese workers in Victoria were famous for their fishing, cooking, farming, laundries and garbage collection, among other jobs. The following articles give you a taste of these occupations. Since Chinese businesses were a normal part of everyday life, they seldom made headlines unless they came into conflict with the

519 From MONSTER PUBLIC MEETING. (1886, February 11). Daily British Colonist, p. 3. 520 Although the Dwellings By–Law of 1879 did not specifically mention Chinese persons, there was

little doubt as to its intended targets: “We invite the attention of householders and house–owners to

this By–law, an enforcement of which ought to produce a gratifying change in the sanitary condition

of Chinatown.” THE DWELLINGS BY–LAW. (1879, November 22). The Daily Colonist, p. 3. “A ship load of Chinese intended for Portland are perambulating the streets and herding in Cormorant and

Store street dens. […] Chinese cabins and dens everywhere are packed full, apparently with barely

enough space to lie down in. Sanitary officers will have enough to do to enforce the cubic air by–law

under such circumstances.” THE RECENT MONGOLIAN INVASION. (1882, June 23). The Daily Colonist, p. 3.

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authorities. This means the entries below will paint a more negative image of Chinese businesses than would have been held by the general public at the time.

13. Statistics of Victoria’s Chinese Trade (1901)521 Provided by Victoria’s Chinese community in response to a Royal Commission

Inquiry into Chinese and Japanese Immigration522.

Occupation No. of Chinese

Merchants 388

Wives of merchants and laborers 92

Male native born children 63

Female native born children 82

Domestic cooks and servants employed by whites 530

Market gardeners 198

Sewing machine operators and tailors 84

Sawmill hands 48

Cannery men 886

Laundrymen (employed in 40 wash–houses) 197

Miscellaneous laborers employed 638

Miscellaneous laborers unemployed 173

Females, no occupation whatever 4

Total 3,272523

14. Catching Fish (1861)524

Several Chinese fishermen have been engaged for some time back in drawing

a large seine525 through James Bay, for the purpose of catching fish. The yield is

enormous. The fish are all small, however, and mostly of the species known as tom–

cod526, salmon–trout527 and smelt. These fish are dried and salted at Rock Bay and

afterwards packed for Celestial consumption in the mines528. They are esteemed a

521 From Statistics of Chinese Trade. (1901, March 22). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 8. 522 The Royal Commission on Chinese and Japanese Immigration, 1902. 523 From the values given, this should be 3,383. It is possible that some wives and children are also

counted among the employed. 524 From CATCHING FISH. (1861, June 11). The British Colonist, p. 3. 525 Fishing net. 526 Probably winter cod (Microgadus tomcod). 527 Not a typo. Salmon trout is also called steelhead trout, and is a type of rainbow trout. 528 At this early stage, this is probably a reference to Chinese participation in the gold rush: “The

Chinese miners are reported as doing very well from Cayoosh Flat to Chilcoaten, making from $3 to

$4 per day to the hand, which is good pay for Chinamen. They were supplied with provisions by pack–

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great luxury by the Chinamen, and are retailed in British Columbia at 40 and 50

cents per pound.

15. A Chinese Restaurant (1883)529

A Chinese restaurant will shortly be opened on Store street near Johnson

street. No exclusive spirit will be fostered in this establishment, but its doors will be

open to all who have the money. Its position will make it convenient for the white

working–man, who, when the dinner bell rings, will be able to rush over and appease

his ravenous appetite with such filling edibles as tea–leaf soup530, rice, spoilt birds–

nests531, rice, strips of boiled pork, […] and – rice. Meals like these will be cheap for

15 cents, but boarders must not let the food get away with them. One wants to be

educated up to this kind of thing and the Chinese mean to do it.

16. Hing, the Chinese Servant (1885)532 British Columbians were known for valuing Chinese servants. This story is a rare, detailed look at one such individual. Hing worked for a family in Victoria.

Twenty dollars a month are the average wages given to a good Chinaman who

can cook fairly well and undertake washing. First–rate cooks get as much as 30 and

35 dollars a month; while boys can be had from five dollars a month upwards,

according to their age and experience. They are usually very neat and clean in their

persons and attach a good deal of importance to their appearance. Before Hing goes

outside the house to clean the windows a fresh apron has to be tied on, and his hat is

carefully brushed and pulled into as good a shape as possible. Hing had a little outfit

provided for him by the “cousin” who brought him from China; and by and by he is to

repay the money advanced for this, as well as for the journey from Hongkong. His

working costume consisted of blue cotton trousers, which, after every washing, grew

a shade lighter in colour, and soon became perfectly white at the knees, a blue and

white check shirt, and a short Holland apron or bib. As winter approached Hing began

to talk of the “insides” he was going to buy for himself. He had several times asked

for my husband’s “insides” to wash; so I understood it was the purchase of some

flannel underwear he was contemplating. One day he appeared in his winter coat,

which was made of a dark blue cotton cloth, but had several layers of cotton wool

trains from Cayoosh.” Arrival of the Caledonia. (1861, May 1). The Daily Colonist, p. 3. Chinese miners would later play an important part in the history of coal mining on Vancouver Island. 529 From CHINESE RESTAURANT. (1883, August 3). Daily Colonist, p. 3. 530 Possibly a reference to Lei Cha (擂茶),a traditional southern Chinese soup or thin porridge made

using crushed or ground oolong tea leaves.

531 The edible nest of the swallow (yànwō, 燕窝), made from the birds’ saliva. These are usually very

expensive; ‘spoiled’ probably meand that these are imperfect or damaged nests, making them suitable

for a cheap(er) meal. 532 From Victoria in English Eyes. (1885, June 17). Daily Colonist, p. 4.

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between it and the glazed lining. This quilted blouse stood out from his figure all

round, and made him look very much like an animated tea cosy. He told me his

mother had made it, and pointed out with pride the gilt buttons and the pockets, out

of which rolled the usual boy’s collection of worthless odds and ends.

Hing comes from Southern China, and when the first snow of the season began

to fall in early December, he ran into the dining room in great excitement to ask,

“What do you call him?” Ice, too, was a great wonder to him. The water had frozen in

a washing tub, in which some clothes had been put to steep, and Hing attacked this

ice with a knife as intrepidly as Don Quixote rode at the windmills. Afterwards, he

amused himself with making a set of crystal dishes by freezing water in plates and

saucers. By this time he had made such rapid strides in knowledge that he placed the

plates, etc., for one minute on the stove before turning the ice moulds on to the kitchen

table.

Nothing in the house interested Hing so much as a travelling clock that stood

on our dining–room mantlepiece. Whenever he was in the room his eyes would

wander from the work he was doing and fix themselves on the clock, and “What time?”

was his constant inquiry until he had learnt to answer the question for himself. One

night we forgot to wind up this clock, and the next morning Hing came to us in great

dismay to say that the clock did not “savvy533 talk.”

The Victoria ladies are in the habit of giving frequent lunch parties among

themselves, but Hing expressed his unqualified disapproval of such entertainments

the first time I told him I had invited some ladies to “eat at my house,” and his

opinion has never altered. “Too much woman talk, no good,” is his verdict. On the

other hand he is delighted if men come to dinner, and the younger, and taller, and

smoother–faced they are the greater is his admiration for them. But since “imitation

is the sincerest form of flattery,” he must also admire one or two of the girls who visit

at our house. One day I went into the kitchen and found him standing with his left

hand placed flat on the table, while with a brush in his right hand he was scrubbing

it with tremendous energy. “I no savvy what for,” he said when I went in. “My hand

clean. I rub and scrub ten minutes, and it no more white; no more all the same Miss

–––––‘s hand. I no savvy what for?”

John is the name given to a Chinaman until his real name is known. These

names are sometimes very odd. I have known a Wing and a Boo; and a friend of mine

had first a Wy and then a Not. When she was engaging the third boy, and asked his

name, he referred her to the friend that had accompanied and introduced him. “He

knows.” “His name is Snoozer,” said the interpreter. “Oh!” said my friend, “but I

cannot call him by such a name as that. What is your real name?” “Taw,” said the

boy, “but me like Snoozer.”

Such servants as these introduce a novel element into housekeeping and home

life. The widest difference of opinion exists as to their merits, and one hears the most

contradictory statements about them. Their collective appearance is certainly not

prepossessing; and after walking through the Chinese quarter of the town, and

533 From the French savoir, ‘to know’. This word was often used by non–Chinese writers of the time when setting down stereotyped English as spoken by Chinese people.

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inhaling the various odours peculiar to that district, the thought that we should be

obliged to take one of them into our house was very repugnant to us. Individually

they are not so repellant; and I must admit that the dozen China men with whom I

have had business to do contrast favorably with white men of the same class. Towards

a boy more kindly feeling is impossible, and daily intercourse for nine or ten months

has caused a real attachment to spring up between Hing and us.

There are ten merchants in Victoria who pay $500 (£100) a year for a license

to import opium. A boy like Hing, however, only indulges in a mild cigar now and

then, when he has grouse534 to pluck or work to do which offends his nostrils.

The Chinese merchants are not the only ones who are taxed. Travellers from

the eastern cities, Quebec, Montreal and Toronto, have to pay a heavy tax for liberty

to sell here, the theory being that, having no warehouses, they compete with those

who have large establishments in the city to keep up. This tax is not peculiar to

Victoria. It is exacted in most American towns. We first heard of it in Savannah.

Society in Victoria is thoroughly English in tone, although, owing to the early

settlement of the country by the Hudson Bay Company, the Scotch element is very

strong. But at a dinner party or ball in a Victoria house one is only recalled to the

remembrance that one is far away from England by the presence of the white robed

and calm, impassive Celestials. On dress occasions the blue working shirt is

exchanged for a white, well–starched blouse, with wide hanging sleeves. At

Government House alone is it possible to mistake the butler for a guest.

17. Hing Celebrates the Chinese New Year (1885)535 For the next few days all Victoria will be servantless536 – if there is such a word. Hing went off about 10 o’clock this morning, turning back at the gate to give

my husband his last directions about the winding up of the kitchen clock and the

‘little wood’ which had to be cut for to–morrow’s fires. The Chinese are all busy

celebrating their New Year, and the festivities extend over several days, during which

534 “In the autumn great quantities of game are brought into Victoria by the Indians, principally grouse

and snipe and wild ducks and geese.” VICTORIA AS SEEN BY A VISITOR. (1885, June 12). Daily British Colonist, p. 1. 535 From AN INSIDE VIEW. (1885, March 18). Daily Colonist, p. 3. 536 “The majority of the stores are closed, and BUSINESS SUSPENDED for at least two or three days.

Business men are too busy making their New Year calls to attend to the call of the occasional customer.

Every Chinese gentleman is supposed to call on New Year’s Day.” “KUNG HAE FAT TSOI.” (1885,

February 14). Daily Colonist, p. 3.

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time they entertain their friends537, give presents all round, and fire off crackers538

whenever they are allowed.

Yesterday morning, to our intense astonishment, Hing presented Mr. –––––

and me with large crimson silk handkerchiefs and with a dish of Chinese sweetmeats.

He blushed all over with shyness and embarrassment as he placed the parcels beside

our plates. It was a curious state of things, to be receiving instead of giving presents to a servant. He does in words recognize me as his “boss,” but his footing is that of an

independent power and our communications resemble those which might pass

between two sovereigns. The handkerchiefs cost a dollar a piece. Mr. –––––‘s is a plain

silk, but mine has embossed flowers on it, because, as Hing explained, I am a woman!

Of course we are sorry that the little fellow should have spent so much of his money

upon us, and it was very difficult to know how to make it up to him, for a gift of money

would have insulted him – he is a proud monkey! However, an idea occurred to me,

and to–day I told him that, as he was not going to “eat” at our house for three days,

it was only fair that I should pay for his meals elsewhere. After a little hesitation he

acquiesced in this arrangement.

It is the custom here to speak of the Chinese as if they were the scum and

refuse of the earth. But the dozen Chinamen with whom I have had any dealings

compare very favorably with white men of the same class. I do not know whether

Hing is an exceptional boy or not, but he is a thoroughly good boy – full of fun and

humor, and very provoking at times, but honest and truthful, and as sharp as a

needle. A little while ago he made me a serious offer of two dollars a month if I would

teach him for an hour every evening.

18. Farmers and Sanitation Workers (1891)539

Residents along Queen’s avenue, and the streets leading into that thoroughfare

and the Cedar Hill road and other streets and lanes in Spring Ridge, […] protest

strongly at the […] methods pursued by the Chinese gardeners, in the cultivation of

their truck farms540. Of the latter there are probably not less than twenty in that

section of the city, varying from an acre to twenty acres each in area. […]

537 “As soon as he enters he is received, not by the ladies, but by the young men of the house, and

immediately commences a series of ceremonies. […] After these ceremonies and wishes are over, the

caller is politely asked to be seated, […] and then sweet–meats and melon seeds […] are served,

accompanied by DAINTY LITTLE CUPS OF TEA of the most delicious flavor. […] Then follows a short

conversation which must be on the most lucky topics of the day, at the end of which the caller takes

his leave with a polite bow and a “tsing, tsing” – “good–bye, good–bye,” to repeat the ceremonies next

door.” Ibid. 538 “Another very strong circumstance showing that something extraordinary is happening in

Chinatown is the fact that the BURNING OF FIRE CRACKERS is most freely indulged in. The

Chinese have an idea that the sending off of a string of fire crackers has the sure effect of driving away

all evil spirits and influences, and at the same time of preparing the place for the good spirits.” Ibid. 539 From CHINESE GARDENS. (1891, July 17). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 6. 540 Truck farms are farms that grow vegetables for the market.

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The filth of the city of Victoria, garbage, slops, and the excrement deposits of

outhouses gathered by the scavengers after night–fall, is daily carted out to these

Chinese vegetable gardens and employed to fertilize the land and grow from the

garden delicacies that are peddled from door to door. The […] filth is dumped in

ditches, dug for its reception, and, by the aid of water, is manufactured into a liquid

guano541, which is copiously spread over the entire surface of a garden. […]

So vigorous have the complaints of the public become that the sanitary officials

have notified the Chinese that they must cease to employ the filth for fertilizing

purposes, and have instructed the city scavengers to find other methods of disposing

of the unclean accumulations of the city. The result is that the scavengers have no

place to dump the stuff, and the city is confronted with a sanitary condition that will

require prompt action. The scavengers say that they can do nothing toward keeping

the city clean until some place is provided where it can be disposed of.

19. Sanitary Issues with Chinese Laundries (1908)542

There are, to my knowledge, twenty–six laundries in operation in this city543,

of which twenty–one are operated by the Chinese, while the balance are operated by

white people, four of the latter being commonly known as steam laundries.

Of the Chinese laundries the major portion are situated within the fire limits,

one being in the heart of Chinatown544, and with one exception are light frame

structures of a very poor type, and as a last resort have been rented to Chinese for

use as laundries, being generally of such low type that they could not be used for any

other purpose. […]

From the information obtained, I found that some of these laundries have as

many as 120 customers. […]

Each of these laundries has a separate drying–room for use in the winter

season. This room is heated by a box–stove approximately 18 inches square and 3 feet

long. From this stove is carried an extended pipe, which is used as a superheater, and

in some cases is 30 or 40 feet long. These are generally in a very shaky condition,

being in some cases hung up with light wires and in others supported on bricks. This

apparatus suggests danger from fire in every instance, and is no doubt the cause of

the increase of 30 per cent. on insurance rates on all property adjacent to Chinese

laundries.

541 A fertilizer made from animal excrement (usually that of bats). 542 From a report written by Plumbing Inspector Herbert Francis Shade (1875 – 1953), quoted in

REGULATIONS HAVE BEEN DEAD LETTER. (1908, January 7). 543 The Victoria City directory for 1908, which includes the suburbs, only lists 19 laundries. The rest

were probably too small to make it into the directory. 544 Probably the Sue Chung laundry at 1817 Store Street (near the corner with Herald Street).

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20. Improved Sanitation in Chinese Laundries (1908)545

While the city health department was prepared to give the owners of Chinese

laundries some latitude in the matter of fixing up their premises to conform with the

new Wash House Bylaw which came into effect on June 1, and while it was expected

that to complete the changes so as to make the premises conform with the measure

would probably take a month or two, it appears that the Celestial laundrymen have

lost no time in coming with–to the law or so far thereto as possible. Of the twenty–

four Chinese laundries which have been forced to make needed improvements only

three are now in such condition that they cannot comply with the bylaw and these, it

appears form the report of the sanitary inspector, cannot be made to come anywhere

within reasonable distance of the bylaw and will be closed.

In all the other cases cement floors have been put in, the walls lined with

galvanized iron, and necessary sewer connections made so that all waste water can

be delivered into the sewers. Other necessary improvements have also been made,

the proprietors of the laundries in nearly every case showing a ready disposition to

do all that was required by law. To make them strictly comply with the new measure

would mean that all would cease business but what improvements have been made

render the premises practically as sanitary as possible and this is all that the health

department desires for the time being at least.

The Fall of Kwong Lee The Kwong Lee merchant company was one of the earliest and most important firms in Victoria. During the gold rush, it had branches throughout the Cariboo. In 1884, the company collapsed as a result of a disagreement between brothers. The company’s real estate holdings and stock in trade were sold at auction.

21. A Meeting in Chinatown (1884)546

On Sunday evening a large meeting of the most influential Chinese merchants

was held in the room of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Society to consider the

points at variance between Lou Chuck Fan, of Kwong Lee & Co., and Lou Choo Fan,

his brother, of San Francisco. A messenger despatched for Lou Chuck Fan returned

saying that he refused to attend. Lou Choo Fan then addressed the assemblage,

stating that in 1865 he entered into copartnership with Lou Chuck Fan; that the

latter now denied there was any partnership, and further denied that he had ever

signed the deed. Legal proceedings had been begun, but the speaker had called a

meeting of his countrymen to explain to them how he had been wronged, in the hope

that a plan might be devised for an amicable settlement. The address was listened to

545 From CHINESE LAUNDRIES IN MORE SANITARY STATE. (1908, June 20). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 7. 546 From CHINATOWN. (1884, November 11). Daily Colonist, p. 2.

276

with marked interest, and the sympathy of the meeting seemed to be with Lou Choo

Fan. During the delivery of the speech Lou Choo Fan was affected to tears and cried

bitterly.

A representative of The Colonist visited Chinatown yesterday and conversed with several of the principal merchants. They were all cautious in expressing

themselves, but more than one did not hesitate to say that if the case is as Lou Choo

Fan’s speech leads them to suppose he is a deeply wronged man. The sum involved is

many thousands of dollars, comprising, besides book accounts, an immense amount

of real property here and on the mainland. The firm is the oldest Chinese house in

the province, having been established in 1858, and has weathered every storm since

that period. Another meeting of Chinese merchants to consider the matter was held

last night.

22. The Second Meeting (1884)547

Loo Chuck Fan, the senior member of the Kwong Lee Co., attended the meeting

of Chinese merchants on Tuesday evening. He made a long statement denying that

Loo Choo Fan is his partner, denying that he ever signed a deed of co–partnership,

and denying that Loo Choo Fan has the slightest interest in the concern. He added

that, as his brother had appealed to the law, so let it go. He would abide by a decision

of the court. It is proposed by the merchants to send to China for the mother of the

contending brothers, and refer the whole matter to her for decision, such being the

Chinese custom in case of disputes between brothers.

23. An Auction of Goods (1885)548 The company’s remaining goods were put up for auction in 1885. The auction listing gives us a good idea of their stock in trade. Liquidating Kwong Lee’s assets was a time–consuming process. An auction of the company’s property in the Quesnelle, Yale, New Westminster and Victoria would take place in 1887.

I HAVE BEEN INSTRUCTED BY J. C. Prevost, Esq., Receiver549 of the Kwong

Lee Estate, to sell by Auction550 at the Company’s Store, Cormorant street, The Whole

of the Stock–in–Trade of the Firm, CONSISTING OF:

547 From The Kwong Lee & Co. Troubles. (1884, November 12). Daily Colonist, p. 3. 548 From Byrnes, G. (1885, August 22). AUCTION!! [Advertisement]. Daily Colonist, p. 3. Written by George Byrnes (1840 – 1899). 549 A Receiver is someone appointed by law to temporarily take responsibility for someone else’s

property, especially in cases of bankruptcy, where that property needs to be sold to pay debts. 550 Most of the European goods went for a good price at this auction. A second auction was held for the

remaining stock, mostly Chinese and professional goods: “Mr. Geo. Byrnes held a highly successful

sale of the balance of the Kwong Lee estate yesterday. Remarkably high prices were obtained for the

goods from the Chinese, who thought it good to bid the articles offered up to beyond their full value.

277

27 chest assorted TEAS, 1080 teals551 and 52 balls of PREPARED AND

CRUDE OPIUM, 276 mats Rice in bond and 40 mats in Store, 9 boxes Nui Kway Wine

in jars, 15 boxes Eg Karpi Wine, 13 boxes Rice Wine, 2000 lbs. Chinese Starch552,

1200 lbs. Rice Flour, 104,000 Crackers, a large quantity of valuable Chinese

Medicines, Sour Orange, Ginger, Red Ginger553, Onion Plumes, 30 cases Chinese

Crockery, Chow Chow554, Chop Sticks, Chinese Jars, English Fire Tiles555 14x14,

large and small Brass Opium Pans and Brass Ladles, Opium Jars and Buckets,

Opium Lamps, a large assortment of Dried Fish, Shrimps, Beans, Fruit, Vegetables,

Oysters and Dates, Candle Wicks, Josh Sticks556, Chinese Clothing, Shoes, an

assortment of imitation Meerschaum Pipes557, Silk in Hanks558 and Silk

Handkerchiefs, Chinese Books of Literature and Blank Books and paper, Manilla

Cigars, Safe, Scales, 18 cases of Ladies and Children’s EUROPEAN BOOTS AND

SHOES, and a large assortment of other goods too numerous to mention.

Terms of Sale Cash.

G. BYRNES559,

Auctioneer.

Standard of Living and Way of Life

24. A Chattel Mortgage (1900)560

Woo Gun, a grocery man and Chinese merchant, who keeps a store in Nanaimo,

a week ago adopted a strange way to endeavor to make a number of his countrymen

pay his just debts. To tell the story from the beginning, Woo Gun went into debt to

the tune of about two hundred dollars, and he gave his creditor, a Nanaimo man, a

Everything was sold out and over $1,000 more than was anticipated realized. Creditors will probably

be paid 100 cents in the dollar.” KWONG LEE SALE. (1885, September 5). Daily Colonist, p. 3. 551 Probably a mis–spelling of tael (leung, 兩)a Chinese unit of weight equal to about 37.8 grams.1080

taels would have been about 40.8 kg. From the weight measure used, and the mention of balls, this is

probably raw Hong Kong opium. Victoria’s opium factories boiled the raw opium to turn it into finished,

smokable opium, which they would can and smuggle into the States. 552 Possibly Sago (simi, 西米), a palm starch used in Cantonese cooking and laundry. 553 The red ginger plant (Alpinia purpurata) is not edible, so this is probably Japanese pickled ginger (Benishōga, 紅生姜), which is sometimes called red ginger. 554 A pickled relish. 555 Heat–resistant ceramic tiles. 556 Incense sticks. 557 A tobacco smoking pipe made out of sepiolite, a mineral that was found to lead to a pleasant smoking

experience. They were popular around the world in the 1800s. 558 A hank is a unit of measurement in the textile industry equal to (for silk) 840 yards, or 768 meters.

Since it’s unlikely Kwong Lee had kilometers of silk on hand, this probably refers to the colloquial use

of the word to mean ‘bundles of cloth for sale’. Today, this is most commonly seen when buying yarn

at retail, which is often twisted into hanks. 559 George Byrnes (1840 – 1899), buried in Ross Bay Cemetery. 560 From A CHATTEL MORTGAGE. (1900, June 11). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 3.

278

chattel mortgage561 on his effects. This mortgage was made early this spring and a

few weeks ago the Nanaimo man noticed that the Chinese were to go from the coal

mines and their places were to be taken by white men. As Woo Gun had many

accounts out among the Chinese miners for supplies received, and with the loss of the

employment those accounts would be probably additions to the book of bad debts, the

Nanaimo man foreclosed and put a bailiff into the grocery shop. That bailiff kept near

the door – the air was freer there. For three days the bailiff lived on a bench near the

door, and then, the Chinaman not meeting his indebtedness, the removal of the goods

began.

As the cases of goods were carried out into the wagon, and the furniture, chairs,

etc., were piled up, the Chinese looked on indifferently. All had been piled upon the

wagon, but an insignificant–looking picture. It looked a paltry thing, but as was

afterwards proven this was one of the most, if not the most valuable thing in the

place.

When the expressman began to take this down there was a yell, a shriek from

an old woman, sobs from another, and a jabber from the assembled Chinese. The front

of the door began to look black with Chinamen coming from everywhere. There was

a loud chorus of jabbering562.

“What’s up?” asked the expressman. “What for?” said the bailiff. “Him joss563,”

said one of the Chinese. “Allo luck go ‘way now!” And the jabbering, and jabbering

went on.

This picture, a truly Oriental chromo564 of a man with two little sprays of

whiskers and long finger nails, as it was soon afterwards found, was the god of at

least a score of Chinamen. No less than a score had subscribed to a fund to bring it

out from China, and it was valued at over three hundred dollars, although a high

estimate from one who had not a queue565 would be about two bits.

Woo Gun looked back, but he let the picture go. In this picture he sees a

probable settlement of his debt, for, according to one of the actors in the affair now

here, a fund is to be raised to pay off the mortgage and buy the goods back, especially

the picture – and thus Woo Gun hopes to get his fellow countrymen to meet his

indebtedness.

25. What’s in a Name? (1908)566 There were at least two main obstacles for Chinese residents of British Columbia who wanted to make their names known in the early 1900s. First, using the western

561 A mortgage on movable property (furniture, books, paintings, etc.) as opposed to a house, which is

usually fixed in place. If the mortgage isn’t paid back, the creditor can take the movable property. 562 Talking quickly in a way that is difficult to understand. 563 A Chinese religious image or idol. 564 A chromolithograph – a printed image given color through a chemical process that was popular in

the 1800s. 565 Biànzi (辮子), or braid, a mandatory hairstyle for Chinese men during the Qing dynasty. It looks a

shaved head in the front with a long, thin braided ponytail in the back. 566 From “LEE” SUCCESSFUL IN HIS REVENUE TAX CASE. (1908, December 12). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 2

279

alphabet to spell it meant that many different names were written the same way. Second, non–Chinese people would often refuse to remember them, using standard, caricature names instead. All Chinese men were ‘John’, all Chinese tailors were part of the ‘Lee’ family, and so on. In 1908, one Chinese tax payer turned this to his advantage.

Collector Carter567 was up against difficulty yesterday when he invoked the

aid of the police court in collecting the revenue tax from one Lee, alias Wong Wing.

Lee produced a receipt in the name of Wong Wing and said that it was his, and that

his name was not really Lee at all. Apparently he allowed himself to be styled Lee as

a concession to popular prejudice.

The case had been adjourned from the day before to enable the collector to

make some enquiries. Yesterday he stated to the magistrate that the receipt in

question had been given to an employee of a Chinese tailor shop which was no longer

in existence. His information was that the proprietor and employees had all gone over

to the mainland to live, but he was not in a position to prove this. He remarked on

the fact that Lee could talk English when he was not in court, and also said that when

the summons was served on him he had denied that he was Lee, and that he had been

obliged to make a special trip with the officer in order to point the man out.

Lee stolidly held to the position that his real name was Wong Wing, although

he was sometimes called Lee, and that he had paid the tax and had received the

receipt produced when he made the payment.

Magistrate Jay said that in view of the Chinaman’s producing a receipt, which

he said was his, and in the absence of any proof that he was not telling the truth, he

had no option but to dismiss the case. Thus Lee went away in triumph, though no one

felt satisfied except the Celestial.

26. Edmonton’s Chinese Community (1908)568

It is estimated by the police and by the Chinese themselves, who have

investigated the local conditions of their own people that there are between two

hundred and fifty and two hundred and seventy–five Chinamen resident in

Edmonton. These have a variety of occupations. There are restaurant keepers; there

are laundrymen, domestics, gamblers and there is one lonely cobbler who does work

567 Robert Carter was a provincial tax collector with the assessor’s office. In 1908, he lived at 2714 Rock

Bay Avenue. 568 From EDMONTON’S CHINESE COLONY. (1908, May 23). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 8.

280

for the Celestials in the shoemaking line. They are divided into three main divisions,

the leaders of which are Wong Fook569, Mah Jim570 and Sam Sing571.

THE CHINESE QUARTERS

The Chinese of the city are located principally in block 2, R, I, 10, better known

as the section of the city east of Fraser avenue and between Jasper avenue, and Rice

street, that is the block in which the Alberta hotel is located. There are of course

others on First street and Jasper avenue as well as in the various hotels and

restaurants of the city. Many of the joints are most interesting and a Bulletin reporter

who visited a number and conversed with the Chinamen last night, saw and learned

much which is hidden to the ordinary citizen. Several of the stores hold every kind of

Chinese merchandise, with restaurants, and underground dives, where the

Chinamen spend their leisure time. In the back room behind the stores the indolent

ones roll and recline on chairs and tables, smoking cigarettes and talking to one

another in their chop–stick sort of language. Here are also tables where it is supposed

the game of fan–tan is played at night by those who indulge in the pastime of

gambling. Squatting on a high table a number of the y–––––572 citizens were seen

playing cards, which they slipped rapidly out of sight when the white visitor came in.

Sweaty laundrymen grinned at one another and kept stoically at work while

the proprietor for the shop did his best to be polite and still get the caller out of the

way as soon as possible. He supplied cigars of villainous odor and intimated in his

broken English how shocked he was that the China boys should play cards.

In the Chinese stores queer wares were on sale; the long, strange pipes of the

Celestials, strange looking masses of Chinese foods, lacquer work, ivory carvings, silk

clothing and other curious and unknown articles. Down in the basement of the

building every foot is utilized and the entire under part of the building is connected

from end to end with mysterious doors and passages.

The basement is fitted with bunks and beds. These sleeping places are lined

on each side of the walls as thickly as possible and articles of clothing and Chinese

musical instruments hang over bunks. These bunks are nothing but inch boards,

nailed together and put on short legs, the only covering or bedding being a couple of

blankets of the kind that are in vogue in the lumber camp and in the shack of the

homesteader.

THE OPIUM DEN

569 A restaurant keeper who made the news for the illegal sale of liquor: “Wong Fook, who was keeper

of the Royal restaurant, was […] fined $50 on the selling charge, and there is another charge of having

liquor in his possession.” CHINAMAN FINED. (1906, June 6). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 8. The Royal restaurant was at 504 Jasper E. 570 Mah Jim, the owner of a restaurant near Edmonton’s packing plants, led a colorful life that saw

him often in the courts. He was shot at in 1905 and had two chickens stolen from him in 1908. In 1909,

he was found guilty of running a brothel, married a white woman (Lulu Crosby) and was fined for

firing on a vandal who broke his store’s windows. In 1910 he was in court for assault, and in later

years he was fined for gambling and smoking opium. 571 Sam Sing was a Mason, and notorious with the Edmonton police for running a popular gambling

and opium den from 1907 to 1913, when it was successfully raided. The front for the den was a grocery

store at 433 Rice street. 572 An offensive term for people of Asian descent.

281

In one room a half dozen Chinamen lay in various stages of bliss induced by

the smoking of opium, the acrid fumes of which hung heavy in the air. One much–

withered and shrunken specimen of Chinese manhood lay like dead with his flat chest

barely moving. He was in the supreme power of the powerful drug and was dreaming

poppy dreams of Chinese joy. Another was just recovering and his languid and stupid

actions bore testimony of the after results of his debauch. Others were just about to

smoke or had just drawn the deep inhalation which leads to Elysium573. One man sat

up when the reporter entered. He cast a lack lustre eye at the intruder and then

proceeded with his deliberate preparations for the sleep producing smoke. He held

the long pipe in one hand while he worked over the flame of the spirit lamp with the

gummy opium. Finally he lit it to his satisfaction, then put it to the bowl, drew the

deep breath of dope–laden smoke and lay back with closed eyes. This one “jolt” was

not sufficient. In a moment he raised himself languidly and with apparent reluctance

to his elbow and commenced the preparation of another “pill.”

It is said that not only the Chinese are victims in some cities of this pernicious

habit, but white men in Vancouver, Victoria and Seattle are said to be slaves to the

drug and to surreptitiously sneak in the dives now and then for short half–hours of

bliss and forgetfulness. But it is pretty hard for a white man to gain the confidence of

the Chinaman to the extent of being allowed in the sacred holy of holies, better known

as the opium joint. To succeed in gaining admittance one must have the backing of

the best of the C–––––s574 in command and then he is watched pretty closely until he

has demonstrated without doubt that he is really on a par with the yellow slaves of

the poppy product. Then he is given free access and is allowed to wallow in life and

ambition destroying smoke with the Chinese victims of the drug.

THE CHINESE MISSION

For some years past excellent mission work has been done among the

Edmonton Chinamen by some of the teachers and pupils of Alberta college. There is

a regular attendance of ten or more and reading, spelling, writing, etc., is taught as

well as Bible study and New Testament scriptural teachings. The students appear to

be deeply interested in the Bible study and hold no skepticism with regard to the

Saviour, His death or crucifixion Volunteer teachers do the work of instructing the

knowledge seekers from the Flowery Kingdom. The idea of the mission is to educate,

civilize and ultimately Christianize the Chinaman. It cannot be expected that they

can be Christianized until they have been educated. The class who attend the school

are mostly the domestics and restaurant men. The domestics are usually a superior

class to the laundrymen, have more self–respect and try to live up to the standard set

by the teachers of the mission. Several Chinamen now running restaurants in the

city have been converted, others have left the city and are still trying to live up to the

teachings of the mission and one Chinaman who received his preliminary education

in this school is now studying to be a missionary in his own country.

MAJORITY NOT DEEPLY INTERESTED

573 The classical Greek equivalent of Heaven. 574 An offensive term for Chinese people.

282

The great majority of Chinamen in the city do not pay much attention to the

mission. A number of the domestics do but the great mass of the people from the land

of the dragon think only of piling up enough hard cash to enable them to return to

their own country and live there for the remainder of their days in comfort and luxury.

In the meantime when not engaged in work they pass the time away with such light

amusements as cards, fan–tan, cigarettes and opium. They are a very quiet and

inoffensive class and cause no trouble to anyone except the annoyance experienced

by the white people who live in close proximity to the Chinese quarters. Most of the

Chinamen have come either from Canton, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Pekin. They are

not of the c–––––575 class, but appear to be a few notches higher than these. Many of

the colony here have decided never to return to the old land, but to remain here until

they die. They are the most successful of the merchants and restaurant keepers as

they take more interest in developing a permanent business. The oldest in the city

ranges from sixty to seventy–five years of age, and they run down as far as twenty,

the youngest having come to Edmonton only a short while ago.

27. An Edmontonian Aviator (1923)576 Edmonton had a vibrant Chinese community in the early 20th century. Among its members was Annie Lee, restauranteur, aviator, wife and mother. She was the proprietor of the Depot Café at 10864 Jasper Avenue, and made the news when she offered the City of Edmonton $1,000 for a one–season lease of an airplane.

Near the Canadian Pacific Railway station, on Edmonton’s main street, is an

unpretending little restaurant. If you step within there may come for your order a

quiet little Chinese woman, who will serve you deftly, if mechanically, then disappear

into the unknown realms behind the waiting doors. Unless you have been told

beforehand, you will never guess that your sedate little waitress is Edmonton’s one

and only woman aviator, Mrs. Annie Lee.

While in Saskatoon a couple of years ago, a Chinese aviator friend Lim On,

suggested that Mrs. Lee should take a flight with him.

“I not afraid then,” she will tell you in her pretty broken English. “Before, when

I see airplanes up over my house I nervous, scared” – and the slender hands clasped

against her breast tremble in illustration of the extent of her fears – “but then I not

afraid. Even that day, when there was accident, and blood all about aerodrome it not

frighten me. I go up, and when I come down I say, ‘I go up again.’ Then after I go up

three – four times I say, ‘I must learn to fly myself.’”

Mrs. Lee took her training in Edmonton, and “now can do stunts, spin, loop

loop, all that.” She went into partnership with Mr. Lim On, and they bought a

machine, but alas, one day while Mr. Lim was doing some stunts he had an accident;

his knee was hurt and the plane broken. So now she has no machine.

575 An offensive term for an unskilled Asian worker. 576 From Canada’s Only Chinese Woman Aviator Even Does Stunts – Loop–Loop and All That. (1923,

February 3). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 10.

283

Her plan, however, for the coming season is to purchase a plane, engage an

instructor – if possible her own, in whom she had such confidence – and herself act

as assistant instructor and interpreter to those compatriots of her own who wish to

learn aviation577.

Mrs. Lee is a woman of many accomplishments. She helps her husband, Mr.

Fung Lee, with his restaurant, she sews, knits, crochets, embroiders, and she is a

clever amateur actress, having taken part this season in several Chinese plays, the

only lady in the cast578.

She is Canadian, born in Vancouver579, and very proud of her three children,

the eldest a girl, and two boys of fifteen and thirteen, the former in high school.

The love of flying has taken keen hold on her, and her face lights up, her eyes

sparkle as she tells you, “auto–car go bump–bump–bump – but airplane, oh, like a

bird. If I get plane I, oh – I fly all over Alberta, yes, fly Vancouver.” However, if you

ask her if her husband and children fly she will answer: “My boys, oh, want fly.

Sometime if strong I let them. Take him doctor, he say all right, then they fly. But

my husband, I not want him fly. He his mother’s only boy. She worry.”

28. A Walk Through Victoria’s Chinatown (1886)580

Yesterday afternoon a reporter of The Colonist, under the guidance of Sanitary Officer Flewin581, made a tour of the streets and slums of Chinatown. The first thing

that attracted attention was the

NUMBER OF SHIVERING CHINAMEN

who were huddled in groups against the front of the stores of their more fortunate

countrymen on Cormorant street, or gathered around some itinerant peddler of

unreliable provisions. One of these had, exposed for sale, several dozen of crabs and

a quantity of small fish, caught from the wharves. Curious to ascertain the price at

577 “Mrs. Lee desires a machine to fly and she has offered the city $1,000 for the use of the aeroplane

“City of Edmonton” during the season.” CHINESE WOMAN WANTS TO LEASE CITY AEROPLANE.

(1922, June 9). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 12. 578 “The play […] was called ‘The Rebel,’ […] and was a reproduction of the revolution in Canton of

June of this year. […] The story was complete with all the detail even of the assassination of the

governor of Canton. […] Another unusual feature in the presentation of a Chinese play is to have a

Chinese woman take a part, and Mrs. Lee, well known locally as an aviator, took one of the principal

female parts.” CHINESE DRAMA EDMONTON CAST AND COMPOSER. (1922, November 27). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 2. As for the revolution in question, “Sun Yat–sen formed a government in Canton on 6 September 1917. […] In June 1922 the Kwangtung warlord Chen Kiu–ming brought about

a coup in Canton and Sun Yat–sen was again forced to leave for Shanghai.” Sladkovskii, M. I. (1966).

History of Economic Relations Between Russia and China. London: Transaction Publishers. 579According to the 1926 census of the Prairie Provinces census, Annie Lee was born in China in 1885.

She emigrated to Canada in 1905, and became a citizen in 1918. Her two children were born in British

Columbia; her daughter Nellie was born in 1907, and her son Thomas was born in 1908. In 1926, the

two children and their parents lived together with a lodger above the Depot Café. 580 From CHINATOWN. (1886, January 20). Daily Colonist, p. 3. 581 Three Flewins lived in Victoria at this time, none of which are listed as sanitary officers. Charles

Flewin worked in sales, John Flewin was a police sergeant and Thomas Flewin ran a saloon.

284

which he was vending his wares, he was asked what he charged for the shell fish.

John, evidently thinking there was a

CHANCE FOR A HAUL ON A SMALL SCALE,

immediately replied: “One bittee582 each,” and in almost the same breath parted with

five of them for the same sum to a countryman. The longing looks cast upon the

purchase by those who did not possess the same means wherewith to buy would have

excited pity in the hearts of those most bitterly opposed to this people’s immigration.

Down a back slum leading from Store street to the old broken–down wharf in the

rear, went the visitors. In these passages which led to rooms occupied by the poorest

class of Chinese, the strong odor, which must be overpowering in the summer, was

present to the olfactory nerves despite the subduing effect of the cold weather.

Opening the door of one of the rooms the usual articles of Chinese domestic furniture,

though rather scarce in number and unpretentious in quality, were observable. Strips

of matting spread upon bunks formed the couches, and for covering a few rags,

including one or two blankets, had to answer the purpose. Several of the Chinese who

were trying to

KEEP WARM BY STAYING IN BED,

looked up as the visitors entered and gazed steadily at them, but without the

appearance of any active curiosity. Two others were crouched in front of a small stove

which apparently refused to keep alight; and were alternately blowing the few flames

into greater ardor, or endeavoring to catch what little heat the fire was emitting. The

passage itself was a sheet of ice, and also gave unmistakeable evidence that lodgers

thereabout could go farther with more decency and respect for sanitary conditions.

Each room was a more or less faithful counterpart of the other, what few distinctions

there were existing in the number of occupants and their facilities for warmth and

the visible quantity and nature of their food. Sometimes upon opening a door a

querulous

“WHAT YOU WANT?”

would be uttered by one or more of the inmates, – an enquiry that was generally

ignored, and which either from policy or apathy was seldom repeated. As the number

of tenements visited increased, it became perceptible that the inmates, as a rule,

shared alike amongst themselves. For instance in one cabin five Chinamen, whose

fire was a decided failure from lack of supply, sat around it looking as disconsolate as

if they were perishing somewhere near the North Pole, and certainly they looked as

cold as one might imagine persons exposed in that region would be. Upon opening the

door of the next cabin, however, comfort that was great in comparison, prevailed.

THE DENSE SMOKE

at first prevented a clear view; but as the eyes became accustomed to the darkness of

the interior, aided by the draught coming through the open door (which was not

welcome to those inside) the occupants, to the number of nine adults and a lad, could

582 Probably a reference to ‘one bit’, or 12 ½ cents. The Spanish dollar, or piece of eight, was once a

popular currency in the United States. It was divided into eight ‘bits’ of equal worth, and the term

has survived.

285

be seen variously engaged and disengaged. Hot water in half a coal oil583 can was

boiling on the stove, and near by one of the men was being shaven by a companion.

Another was smoking a pipe, several were lying covered up on the matting, and two

were actually laughing when their privacy was first intruded upon. One of these, a

good tempered and rather intelligent looking fellow said pleasantly, “How you do?”

and nodded equally pleasantly in recognition of the response. Down to an old

tumbledown shanty (at the foot of the Johnson street ravine) and at whose entrance,

in place of a door, was hung some matting, next went the tourists. On the earthen

floor in the first apartment were two Chinese wrapped up about the heads and ears

as though they were in the open air – which they might nearly as well have been.

Their chief care, also, seemed to be the fire, which in their case was being coaxed in

a coal oil tin lying on its side and with a hole cut in the upper side on which an old

pot was partly placed, while the smoke had to do the best or worst it could. Their

culinary operations were confined to the boiling of two crabs which they exhibited

with something akin to triumph, having caught them that morning. Lifting an

impromptu curtain, the forms of seven more Chinese revealed themselves. One of these explained that they had

“NO MORE [FOOD],”

while another, whose general dropsical appearance had extended to his head until it

was as swollen as the condition of the cranium of a man who has been “keeping it up”

all night, dragged himself round from the vantage position in front of the stove, and

looked mournfully on. This poor wretch, one of the Chinamen who caught the crabs

explained, has been “fat–sick” for three months past, cannot eat (which his comrades

at present find convenient) and cannot live very long.

A LARGE BLOCK OF TENEMENTS

between Cormorant and Fisgard, and leased and sub–leased until it would be difficult

to find a responsible landlord in connection with any breach of sanitation, was next

made the point of observation. On each door was stenciled the information “licensed

to hold four persons,” but necessity which knows no law evidenced their capacity of

holding in many cases three times that number. Among these, though there were

signs of poverty, there was no indication of absolute destitution; but one could not fail

to be struck with the petty, the “picayune”584 nature – if the expression is allowed –

of their operations. As examples: A Chinaman, outside his door, was chopping wood,

in quantity about enough to keep an ordinary fire liberally going for a quarter of an

hour; yet he apparently

TREASURED EVERY CHIP

as carefully as he would a stick of the wood under les straitened circumstances. Over

a small fire inside a room a Chinaman was frying seven small fish, each about two

inches long, while eight Chinamen were surveying the process with an interest that

was incited by appetite. A room close by contained more striking signs of affluence in

the presence of a sack of flour and half a mat of rice. Eleven Chinese were scattered

around, and some, who at a table were playing dominoes, showed that as they were

583 A shale oil, similar to kerosene, used in oil lamps for illumination. 584 Petty, worth little.

286

somewhat easy in mind they also probably were in their interior economy. Passing

four rooms severally rented and nightly slept in by four

CHINESE COOKS IN WHITE FAMILIES,

the door of the next room or compartment was thrown open by the officer, and

disclosed the inside of an opium den, presided over by a Chinaman, and who at that

moment was enjoying the company of four white men, three of whom were smoking

the drug which once partaken of will contend successfully with the strongest

resolution to discontinue its use. The fourth white man was making a cigarette, while

the Celestial was frying a quantity of fish that looked small enough to be whitebait.

Disturbed at their avocation, two of the men, reclining, half arose.

ONE OF THEM

putting on his hat and as he moved outside, addressing the officer in a deprecatory

manner, said: “I am sorry you should have caught me here, sir!” “Then why do you

come, Howard, and run the chances?” enquired the prosaic individual addressed.

“Well,” was the evasive answer, “if you ever catch me again, take a club to me.” In

reply to this the officer briefly remarking that he would at that rate be engaged all

the time, moved off, adding to the reporter, “He didn’t recognize you, and was giving

that deal for your benefit, so that you might imagine it was the first or nearly the

first time he has been to a den.” The reporter replied that in several rounds of the

dens he had made with the police he had seen the same man similarly engaged, and

knew him to be a confirmed opium smoker. The other three men are equally well

known to all the reporters and police of this city, though in this instance their names

are not published. It would be well for them to apply for a license to smoke the drug585

or else discontinue their visits.

OTHER PLACES VISITED

showed the existence of a greater degree of want – the most extreme instance being

in one shanty where, on the table, three light–colored lately caught rats were laid out

for skinning and cooking; the Mongol who was officiating explaining that they were

“welly good.” Sooner than ascertain by practical experience, the visitors were willing

to take the informant’s word for it, and presuming that he had been in France, left

him to his “ruminations.” In yet another shanty eight Chinese were huddled and

looked in a very angry manner at the intruders, whose query as to their condition

was sulkily answered. Upon another question being put one of them got up and

ATTEMPTED TO SHUT THE DOOR

in the faces of the guests who immediately kicked it back and entered. Seeing they

were expected to answer, one replied they had little or no food, and allowanced themselves to such an extent that upon concluding a repast they were “hungry all

samee as before.” Their good temper was in some measure accounted for by the cold

draught which swept around the apartment in a way that must be remarkably

refreshing in summer, and also from the fact that upon returning lately from a week’s

wood–cutting they had found that one of their number whom from sickness, they had

been compelled to leave behind,

585 Victoria’s 1881 “By–Law for Raising a Municipal Revenue on Real and Personal Property’ included

a $5 tax on opium smokers, charged every six months.

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WAS DEAD – STARVED TO DEATH!

Another similar case occurred last month. The number of Chinese crowded

together in these shanties and rooms is in defiance of the cubic air bylaw, but while

the cold weather lasts such offers no particular opportunity to an epidemic, and it is

the only means by which some of the unfortunates have of retaining a modicum of

bodily warmth. They live for the most part on small fish and crabs, which some catch

and others are able to buy, and upon rice when they can get it. Their cost of living at

present is not more than four or five dollars per month, and those who have regularly

dealt at certain Chinese stores are, and have been, able to get credit for various small

amounts. Their credit of course has a limit, and those who have exhausted it find

themselves in a hopeless predicament. A moderate estimate of those Chinese in the

city who now every morning wake up hungry, fixes them at the round number of one

thousand.

29. A Prosperous Tailor’s Household (1902)586 Though a crime story, the unusual level of detail in this report gives us a rare look inside the household of a turn–of–the–20th–century Chinese tailor.

Look Den, a Chinese tailor and lessee587 of the Chinese theatre, lies at the point

of death at his place of business and residence at 33 Store street, as a result of a

murderous attack made upon him as he slept about 4 o’clock yesterday morning, and

somewhere in that labyrinth of alleys in Chinatown a would–be murderer hides from

the police. The weapon used by the assailant was presumably a small hatchet, which

cut three deep gashes on the left side of Look Den’s head, and an oblong–shaped

wound in his face just below the eye, the wounds causing concussion of the brain, and

as the victim has always been an invalid, suffering from paralysis for some months,

his chances of recovery are slim. The weapon has not been found, nor is there any

clue to the assailant, unless a pair of dirty–looking Chinese slippers which were left

near the rear door of the residence, which leading to a gallery and to the rear mazes

of Chinatown – the maze which might successfully hide a hundred men – can be called

a clue. They offer a slim clue, and it would seem one not to be considered, for although

rain fell heavily for hours prior to the attack, the shoes were quite dry. The detectives

are confronted with a problem, for everything is hidden behind a wall of “no sabee,”

and the occupants of the house seem to be holding back something. The victim

himself, who is very weak, is evidently unwilling to tell what he knows. The evidence

– what little there is – seems to point to the fact that the assailant, if not one of the

household itself – and quite a number sleep in the building – is one well acquainted

with the place, and possibly is in collusion with some one in the place, for, after

slashing the head of the sleeping Look Den, as he lay beside his wife, or rather one of

his wives – the assailant went to a tin box hidden beneath a corner of a bed in the

large common room at the front of the building where many come and go, and stole

586 From Tragic Affair in Chinatown. (1902, November 18). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 5. 587 Tenant.

288

$70, and also stole $30 in greenbacks from Look Den’s coat, which was hanging in the

bedroom, although a small sum of silver was left untouched. On the surface it would

seem that robbery was the object of the attempted murder, but from all appearances

there are other features connected with the crime, which point to the fact that it was

not robbery solely that formed the motive.

There are many strange circumstances connected with the crime. Perhaps

Look Den knows all, but he will not tell. He lies on a low blood–stained bed, half

hidden by a dirty white canopy and curtain at one end of an 8x14 room, partitioned

by a thin and incomplete wall of matchboarding588, with apertures for doors, from the

remainder of the room, with both wives carrying tea to him as he moans in pain,

while, in the larger room – the common meeting place of many Chinese, with its two

beds, one holding the opium lay–out in readiness for the smokers – the crowd of

Chinese attracted by the tragic affair, talks loudly. On a chair near the bedside the

bloodsoaked sheeting is piled up, and scattered about the dirty place are the chairs

and piles of clothing and miscellaneous possessions of the many occupants of the little

room, which contains three beds. Each of these beds were occupied. The victim slept

with one wife, his first, at one end of the room, while at the other end his second wife

slept with some of the five children of the family, while others slept on a bed by the

wall. All say they were asleep when the attack was made, and were awakened by the

moans of the victim. It was then about 4:45, and Look Den, blood streaming from his

wounds went out on to the street in front of the store. He looked up and down, but

saw no constables and went back to his bed. It was not until 7:30 a. m. that the police

were notified of the occurrence, and then Constables Monro589 and Clayards590 went

to the scene, and later Sergt. Walker591 arrived. Detective Palmer592 was also notified

and was soon on the scene. Dr. Robertson593 was also called, and he bound the victim’s

wounds.

The women told the constables that they thought the assailant had come in by

the rear door, having prized the lock, and the Chinese pointed to marks on the door

to indicate that it had been burst open, and showed the slippers left inside, which

they believed had been left by the assailant – at all events they were strange slippers,

588 A matchboard has a channel on one end and a tongue along the other end. The tongue of one

matchboard fits into the groove of the one beside it, linking them together. This technique was briefly

popular during the late 1800s. 589 This is probably John Munro (b. 1856), who is listed as a policeman in the 1901 census. The same

census tells us he was born in Scotland, came to Canada in 1870, and made about $750 a year. In 1901,

he lived alone at 132 ¼ Quadra Street. 590 William Clayards (b. 1866) is listed as a constable in the 1901 census. He was born in England,

came to Canada in 1889, had a wife (Jane, b. 1869) and a daughter (Gladys, b. 1899). In 1901, he made

about $760 a year and lived at 106 ½ Dallas Road. 591 Robert H. Walker (b. 1860) is listed a Sergeant of Police in the 1901 census. He lived with his wife,

two sons, mother–in–law and two brothers–in–law. He reported earning $960 a year. 592 Thomas Palmer (b. 1864) is listed as a Detective in the 1901 census. He lived with his wife and five

children, and reported making $840 a year. 593 Probably Hermann Melchior Robertson, listed as a physician and surgeon in the 1901 BC directory.

His offices were at 35 ½ Douglas St, and he lived at 35 Gorge Road. He was born in 1846, lived with

his mother and siblings, and reported a yearly income of $2,000 in the 1901 census.

289

and presumably had been kicked off to allow the assailant to walk noiselessly. It is

not likely though that he came in the back, where there is a gallery leading to the

lane going to Fisguard street and to Chinatown’s maze, for, not only do the dryness

of the shoes point to the fact that the robber came from within, but the spring lock

and socket also intact, showing that the door had not been prized and the window on

the gallery had evidently not been raised, as some half–burned joss–sticks – relics of

a recent feast day – were held by the frame, and would have fallen had the window

been opened. The evidence will probably come later that the attack was made from

one of those housed with this victim.

Many sleep in the building. The front part of the ground floor with its several

machines, counter and stock is used as a tailor’s store. In the rear at the side of the

stairway leading from the rear, are two little bedrooms, and half way up the stairs is

the entrance to another floor, a large gallery–like arrangement, on which there are

several beds, and more machines. Five or six, if not more, sleep on this floor. Upstairs

the front part of the place is used as a common room, to which many have the entree,

and there are two beds, one holding an opium lay–out, and besides the stove and pile

of wood, there are Chinese chairs and various things, including guinea pigs, which

run freely about the floor. Partitioned from the corner is a room, where Look Den’s

daughter sleeps, and divided from the hall, leading to the back door, is the room of

Look Den, his wives and family.

It is to one of those housed in this hive of the Chinese that the crime seems to

point, but which – that is the problem which faces the police. It is undoubtedly

someone who is very familiar with Look Den’s financial arrangements, for the $70

stolen from the tin box, is rent for the Chinese theatre, and was placed beneath the

corner of the bed the night prior to the assault. The robber not only stole the money

from there, but also several sticks of cinnamon, which the Chinese use as medicine

for colds, from a shelf just above the bed. Then money was placed in the pocket of the

victim just before retiring, which fact must also have been familiar to the assailant.

Look Den is a member of one of the Chinese secret societies, but it is not

thought that the crime is due to any society matter, for having been an invalid for so

long, Look Den has not been prominently connected with the matters of the secret

society594. Neither does it seem on the surface that his domestic arrangements have

any bearing on the crime, for although he had two wives, they seem contented with

594 Events proved this to be not entirely true. The Secret Society judged the case before the courts did:

“Fuong [Pong] Wong, the Chinese gambler of 37 Store street, has been charged with attempted murder

and robbery of Look Den, who still lies in a precarious state at his residence on Store street, next door

to that of the alleged assailant, who Look Den says he saw bending over him with something that

looked like a knife in his hand, after the first blow had awakened her from sleep. Di See, the older wife

of Look Den, is also held by the police, for she is alleged to have been implicated in the attack, in fact

the Gee Hop Tong, the Chinese free–mason society, has tried both her and Fuong Wong and found

them guilty of the crime. The council of the society met at the residence of the victim, who was

questioned and told of seeing his assailant bending over and striking him, more than once, and Fuong

Wong, the gambler, and Di See, the wife, were adjudged guilty by the Chinese society. It would seem

that the motive for the crime was the robbery of the $100, which Di See had evidently told her friend

Fuong Wong, was secreted in the house, but it appears as if hatred and jealousy also figure in the

tragic case.” From Chinese Charged with Crime. (1902, November 19). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 5.

290

their lot, and are on good terms with each other. Jung See, the younger, was married

in China, coming thence to be the bride of Look Den according to the Chinese custom,

while Ah Ti, the elder woman, was married in San Francisco. Chinatown says she

was a common woman of the Bay City, but Chinatown also says she “heep smart,”

while Jung See “not sabee much.”

And thus the matter stands. The police endeavored to get a statement from the

victim yesterday, but all that he would say was: “I don’t see anybody. I’ll tell when I

get better.”595 In the meantime the police are endeavoring to solve the mystery, and

the matter is a difficult one, for as stated above, the clues are slim, and Chinatown

hides all its crime – as much as it can – behind a wall of “no sabee.”

30. Chinese New Year in Victoria (1903)596 Being cut off from home and family heightened the importance of traditions to Victoria’s Chinese community.

Last night at midnight there was a fusillade597 of firecrackers, long strings

being lowered from many galleries of Little China – the alien city within a city.

Chinatown started the celebration, which lasts as long as prosperity warrants, of the

4,654th new year. Chinatown, and its alleys and by–ways, are now as picturesque as

they are malodorous. The stores are closed, and from the jutting porches and

balconies above hang great bamboo framed lanterns, globular, hexagonal, paper, silk

and gauze, bright red or parti–colored, or a soft medley of delicate shades. When these

are lighted after nightfall, Chinatown is a picture that pleases the eye, and with the

din of the firecrackers, and the quaint sounds which ever fall on the ear, when the

metallic and screechy orchestras clang their cymbals, beat their tom–toms and

skirl598 their reed pipes, or the drinking chorus is shouted by feasting Chinese in the

rooms above the illustrated street, the West is lost, and it is the Orient and of the

Orient. The light is not strong enough to reveal the squalor and the pungent joss

stick599 overcomes the other odors, and with the quaint smells and warm and subdued

lights, there is a certain air of enchantment about this Chinatown, which although

the picture may be rudely destroyed by an after look, certainly has an inviting effect.

595 This would be a factor in the case’s eventual dismissal. Look Den lived until 1920, but the case was

never officially solved: “Pong [Fuong] Wong, the Chinaman accused of having attempted to murder

Look Den, the Chinese tailor and lessee of the Chinese theatre by stabbing him, and incidentally

robbing him, was dismissed yesterday by Magistrate Hall in the Police court. The Magistrate said the

case was one of the worst brought before him, and he inferred that the charge was a trumped up one

against the accused, who, as will be remembered, was accused by Look Den, after he had previously

stated that he did not know who assaulted him.” From Pong Wong Was Dismissed. (1902, December

17). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 2. 596 From The Chinese New Years. (1903, January 28). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 8. 597 Many shots (or fireworks) fired at the same time, or at nearly the same time. 598 To make a high–pitched wailing sound. 599 A joss stick is a stick of incense.

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“Kong He Fa Choy!”600 The little Chinese babes who strut the streets in their

rainbow–hued holiday garb, the long gowned merchant tyee601, the domestic servant

of other days in his bright green coat and purple [trousers] – or the cleaned–up

coolie602 – each and everyone is bowing to each other and saying again and again this

Chinese equivalent to our “Happy New Year!” while the replies are given as quickly

as the “Same to you!” of some four weeks ago. The colors of these holiday–making

Chinese would make a color–loving s–––––h pine for them. On the streets or in the

alleys there is color galore, and to stand in one of these dark, dirty lanes today and

see a dingy door burst open and a little Chinese fire–fly dart forth as though just

released from a chrysalis gorgeous as peacocks and unashamed of their finery young

China is abroad today.

In the doorways, with his big red visiting cards in his hands, may be the wood–

cutter of other days stands smoking a cigar which might be a good one if his pleased

countenance was to be considered. He wears an upper garment of deep, heavy garnet

silk, richly embossed, and his trousers are as green as only a Chinaman’s trousers or

the open sea have any right to be. Nearby through the open door can be seen the big

stand on which nuts, candies, cigars, wines, etc., are spread for the New Year visitors,

who are not all of the Mongolian603 race, for often the lounger of the slums takes

advantage of the Chinaman’s hospitality to get a cigar, or the curious sight–seer

gingerly bites the proffered candy. Further down the street one with long fingers is

poking the red visiting cards – ten times the size of those of the upper city – through

the cracks of the closed doors. Nearby a little group are standing bowing and

congratulating each other.

“Goon Hay!”604 (congratulations) says one. “Fat Choy!”605 (good luck) says the

other, and then each shakes hands with himself – not with each other – and the

groups fade away.

China lilies in great profusion scent the air with their delicate perfume,

mingling with the more pungent odor of burning sandalwood. Red camellias blooming

in pots and little gold–fish swimming in glass bowls appeal to the love of the beautiful,

while the sweet–toothed are tempted with the display of candied fruits and preserves

unknown to the Caucasian palate. Here are candied limes with a flavor delicate and

seductive, the lichee nut, best known of all the sweet palm tree fruits; the bamboo

shoot, the melon rind and seeds, the betel nut606, the sliced cocoanut, the preserved

ginger root and a dozen other varieties of tropical fruits unknown in American and

European markets.

600 The Cantonese pronunciation of 恭喜发财, a traditional New Year’s greeting meaning, roughly,

“May you have a prosperous new year!” 601 Chinook trade jargon for ‘chief’. 602 An offensive term for an unskilled Asian worker. 603 In early 1900s B.C., this word was commonly used to refer to Chinese and Japanese immigrants. It

was not a polite term. 604 The Cantonese pronunciation of 恭喜. 605 The Cantonese pronunciation of 發財. 606 Areca nuts. Wrapped in betel leaves, they are commonly chewed in many places around the world

as a mild stimulant.

292

The Joss607 temples have been treated to new coats of red and green paint and

gilding, and the awnings of stores, dwellings and gambling houses are brilliant with

paper lanterns blushing a crimson welcome upon the heads of the crowds on the

sidewalk below them.

Today “Kong He Fa Choy!” will be the watchword of welcome and good cheer,

and the kowtow608 will bob up serenely with a queue609 at one end of it every few

steps. Ducks, geese, chickens and pigs are being slaughtered, for this is a festival

which brings bad luck to the parsimonious610 and the choicest blessings upon the

liberal.

The Chinese New Year is always regulated by the moon – according to the

Chinese calendar. The months of this calendar are so rotated that each corresponds

with the moon, containing 29 or 30 days – none shorter and or longer. Each new

moon’s first day is the feast day of the month.

This calculation is made by a board of learned astronomers in Pekin for a

period of three years. Every third year is leap year, and contains 13 months; the

others contain 12 months each, the different reckoning in time making the odd

months. The month is not divided into weeks, and there are no Sundays. The Joss

house, or temple of worship611, is open every day in the year.

These official calendars are sent to the leaders of the Chinese colonies

throughout the world, and by them distributed to the most prominent local leaders612.

The calendar is about eight inches in length, and the pages, of which there are about

200, are some three inches in width. The reading matter is on historical and

astronomical subjects, mainly; but there is much additional matter of a statistical

607 ‘Joss’ is a word used to refer to traditional Chinese religion. (This article was written before the

Chinese Communist Revolution.) 608 A kneeling bow so low that the forehead touches the ground. Considered a sign of deep respect. The

name comes from the Cantonese pronunciation of 叩頭. 609 In this case, a braid. Chinese men were required by Imperial law to shave their heads except for

one long braid, the 辫子 (Biànzi). 610 Not willing to spend money. 611 In 1876, Victoria’s Chinese community came together to inaugurate a new temple. This was one of

many examples of cooperation between the city’s Chinese residents, that would find formal expression

in the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association a decade later. “A Chinese Joss house or temple

of worship has been erected on Government just beyond Cormorant street, and was dedicated Friday

night and yesterday. Joss means god or idol, and the over–devout children of the Celestial Kingdom

have set up two gods and a goddess in the new establishment. […] In a sort of cabinet, and raised

about five feet above the floor, sat the three deities. The central figure wore a black beard and

moustache and the face was profusely covered with red ochre. On the head sat a gilt crown, and the

figure itself was habited in robes of gorgeous hue. The figure on the left hand represented a pretty

woman, crowned and dressed like the male figure. On the right hand side a venerable looking

personage with grey beard and moustache and highly dressed but without a crown on his head, looked

down on the scene with an expression of placid self–satisfaction. Beyond the cabinet were burning

colored wax candles, rushes, etc., and in front of the gods were arranged dishes filled with fruits of

various kinds”. From CHINESE TEMPLE OF WORSHIP. (1876, January 23). Daily British Colonist, p. 3. 612 It is common for Chinese businesses in Canada to send calendars to their clients around the New

Year. Perhaps this is a survival of the old custom of the Imperial calendar?

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and useful nature, similar to that found in our “annuals.” The present reigning

monarch comes in for a good share of “personal mention,” and the “son of the moon”

is made to appear – at least to Celestial eyes – even greater than the moon. Time is

dated corresponding to the years the present monarch has reigned, and when he is

succeeded by a new monarch time begins anew, and the calendar is dated the year 1.

The book is read from what we style the end to the beginning, and the columns or

characters are in vertical lines, and are read downwards and from right to left.

The Chinese New Year card is of blood red, about five inches in length and

three inches wide. A visitor marks his name upon the upper left–hand quarter, so

that when the ticket is folded lengthwise, and doubled sidewise, the name will stand

out in bold relief. Calling begins about daylight. The caller presents his card to the

host, when each shakes his own hands and wishes to the other the customary

salutation. The first in order is a cup of tea, which the host always has in readiness.

It is served in tiny porcelain cups, and drank while almost boiling hot, gulped down

in two swallows, and without wincing. Sweetmeats613 of all kinds, spread upon tables

are then sampled by the guests, and each caller is given a small package. Short opium

smokes614 follow, when the raiders retire to be followed by others. Many presents are

given, but always these exchanges are of equal value. They have not learned the

bunco615 game of giving a 75–cent handkerchief in exchange for a $20 gift. The New

Year card is pasted in a book, for future reference. The poorer class paste the cards

upon the walls. The women call upon each other in the afternoon. Men do not call

upon women, even on New Year’s day. That would be scandalous.

This is Chinatown at the New Year time, which began last night with salvos616

of firecrackers, and which will continue several days at least. Two days are invariably

celebrated, for Chinatown, whether yesterday or today, is the 29th birthday of Kwong

Su617, Emperor of China. The problem is as widely discussed as the still mooted query

of “When did the century begin?” As is known, a day is dropped from the reckoning

by the Pacific liners on which they of Chinatown come here, and while some have

adopted this as proper, there are dissenters, and ergo, Chinatown celebrates two

days.

Since the fatal runaway accident in Chinatown a few years ago618, the

firecracker is not used in such a wholesale fashion as in years gone by. Their use is

forbidden, but permission is given in such festive occasions as this, and Chinatown

celebrates in the time–honored way to the consternation of the lurking devils who are

613 Small pieces of sweet food, such as candied fruit or bonbons. 614 Opium was legal in Canada at the time this article was written. 615 A trick or cheat. 616 Many shots (or fireworks) fired together.

617 The Guangxu Emperor, 光绪帝, who (technically) ruled China from 1875 to 1908. During the last

ten years of his reign, he was under house arrest, and the Dowager Empress, 聖母皇太后, acted as

regent. 618 In February of 1897, firecrackers lit for a Chinese New Year’s celebration led to the accidental death

of a young boy named Albert Auld. For more, see A THING OF THE PAST. (1897, February 6). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 7.

294

– the Chinaman believes – routed by the firecracker bombardments, which are such

recognized features of Chinese celebrations.

This year the alleys re–echoed as of old with the sounds of the firecrackers, and

the evil spirits who infest these alleys will awake this morning with that proverbial

tired feeling, a dark brown taste, and the conclusion of having passed a bad night, for

not only were the firecrackers crackling and spluttering, but punks burned on every

window sill, and even watermelon rinds were pressed into service to hold the

smoldering sticks, whose smoke is perfume to the nostrils of the Chinese, but death

to the devil.

Another feature of this annual Chinese celebration is the blooming of the lilies

on the sills of Chinatown’s windows in their little dishes, and with their bulbs nestling

among the pebbles the lilies bloom, white and gold, with their petals like frosted satin

– and woe to him whose lilies have not flowered before this New Year time began. He

is unlucky, of fate accursed, and fortune will forsake him during the year. So runs the

Chinese superstition.

There is a story of a rivalry in China of many years ago where the rivals who

fought for the possession of a Chinese maiden, used the lilies, the like of which now

adorn every Chinese house in a novel and thoroughly Oriental manner to decide

which should die. He whose lily bloomed first was to have life, the other death. Their

friends were informed, and on a small table before their family joss the two small

bowls with the lily bulbs were placed. Carefully each combatant tended the lily,

eagerly they watched the sprouting leaves day after day, and with but two days before

the New Year neither flower had bloomed. Then a day later as with staring eyes they

watched their several plants for the expectant flower, a bloom came on one, and an

hour later, the defeated rival was hanging from a rope in a back room of an opium

den in one of Chinatown’s alleys. He had taken his life, and kept his word, and, as

the story runs, his lily never bloomed.

Another feature in connection with the celebration is that the New Year sees

a settlement of all accounts, and if Chinese firms are on the verge of collapse, the New

Year will bring them bankruptcy, for to the credit of the Chinaman be it said that he

realizes that his bargains are binding, and that the New Year must see him free from

debt, if possible. To be in debt at New Year time is to “lose face,” and the sacrifices

which a Chinaman will make on the approach of the New Year to enable him to avoid

being posted as insolvent are as extraordinary as they are admirable.

At home in China countless millions are keeping the month of holiday,

worshipping their ancestors assiduously in the temples. And this ancestor worship,

by the way, is exceedingly interesting. The worship of their family is the Chinese

ideal. The very government of China is conducted on the principle of parental

authority. Each one of the 400,000,000 inhabitants stands in the same relation to the

Emperor, who considers himself, and is considered, the father of his people, that he

does to his parents, and the head of a household is an absolute ruler over his own

family.

He receives the greatest respect and obedience from his children. Instances are

on record of dutiful sons or daughters cutting flesh from their own limbs and serving

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broth made from it to their sick parents, believing it to be a most efficient way of

hastening their recovery. Neither is it uncommon, when the life of a parent is

despaired of, for one of the children to present several years of life to the sufferer,

expecting to shorten his own term of existence by as many years as he has given away.

One of the most solemn sacrifices at the home occurs on the last night of the

old year, which was last night. The house is then put in perfect order, and decorated

with the narcissus, which the Chinese arrange to have in full blossom at that time.

The absent members of the family return, if possible, and the dead and the living

feast together. A table is set with fish, poultry and pork, rice and vegetables, and

samshu619, a liquor distilled from rice, which, after satisfying the hunger of the dead,

is eaten by the living. A little food is placed near the door in order to feed any

wandering stranger spirits without annoying the family ancestors. Then, after

burning incense and paper money, the descendants bow before the shrine and pray

for the protection and blessings of the ancestral spirits during the coming year, for

every Chinese, from the Son of Heaven620 to the poorest coolie, believes that upon the

favor of these guardians depend happiness and success, and that dire misfortune and

trouble follow upon their displeasure.

Victoria: Opium Smuggling Central

Opium was legal in Canada until 1908, and for many years, this industry was important to Victoria. Canada had a very low tax on imported opium. The United States had a very high tax. Chinese businesses would import raw opium from Hong Kong, boil (or ‘cook’) it into finished, smokable opium, then can the result. Some of the canned opium would be sold domestically, but most of it was smuggled into the States. Smuggling was risky, but avoided the high US tax. This gave Victoria’s opium a cost advantage over the higher–quality Hong Kong opium, which was imported legally via San Francisco and had to pay the full tax.

31. A ‘Lucrative Trade’ (1865)621

The large, lightly defended border between B.C. and the northwestern U.S. was perfect for smuggling.

A large force of Chinamen now at work on the Columbia, near Colville, are

supplied with opium smuggled overland from the adjacent British provinces. This

lucrative trade is encouraged by the absence of any force in the section of the country

where the trails from British Columbia cross the boundary. There are also

circumstances which give rise to the belief that illicit traffic between British

619 Possibly 烧酒, a rice wine famous in the Tang dynasty. 620 天子, a sacred formal title of the Chinese Emperor. 621 From OPIUM SMUGGLING. (1865, November 8). The British Colonist, p. 3.

296

Columbia and other parts of the upper country is carried on; the articles being

jewelry, laces and the like. The commercial relations of the people of the two nations

along the boundary line affords a fine field of official inspection. Whenever it is

undertaken, the developments will startle the Treasury Department.

32. “The Use of the Deadly Drug in Victoria” (1881)622

The use of opium is steadily increasing throughout the Empire623. Since 1867

the importations of opium have doubled and the habit has extended to districts

previously free from the drug. We have not the statistics at hand; but the statement

has been frequently made, and never contradicted, that the consumption of opium is

rapidly increasing in civilized countries – particularly in the United States. The

readers of “Edwin Drood”624 will call to mind Dickens; description of an opium den in

London. There is reason to believe that similar establishments exist in nearly all the

large European cities, and that their frequenters are not confined to Chinese or East

Indians. In California and Oregon, where the Chinese population is large, the dens

are much visited by whites of both sexes. Young as well as old abandon themselves

to the pleasures of opium–smoking, and the evil has become so great that legislation

has been found necessary. The police frequently raid the dens and scoop up a

miscellaneous assortment of opium eaters of all colours, ages and conditions, whom

they find lying on the floors in a blissful state of unconsciousness – reveling in the

joys of an opium Elysium.

“Are there any opium dens in Victoria?” we asked an intelligent Chinaman on

Saturday.

“Yes,” he replied, “six or seven. A good deal of opium is smoked here; but people

are so quiet when under its influence that no one hears a sound. Very different from

the effects of liquor. Suppose a man drunk with opium, he sleeps, sleeps, sleeps, and

dreams, dreams, dreams. But suppose a man drunk with liquor, he shouts, sings,

makes a noise, kicks up the devil and beats his wife or gets put in goal.”

“Are Chinese the only people who smoke opium in this city?”

622 From OPIUM. (1881, February 15). The Daily Colonist, p. 3. 623 The British Empire, which included the Dominion of Canada. 624 The Mystery of Edwin Drood, the last novel written by Charles Dickens. It was unfinished at the time of his death in 1870, but was published anyway. Drood’s uncle, the main character, is an opium

addict. The novel opens with his waking up in an opium den. From the first chapter: “Shaking from

head to foot, the man whose scattered consciousness has thus fantastically pieced itself together, at

length rises, supports his trembling frame upon his arms, and looks around. He is in the meanest and

closest of small rooms. Through the ragged window–curtain, the light of early day steals in from a

miserable court. He lies, dressed, across a large unseemly bed, upon a bedstead that has indeed given

way under the weight upon it. Lying, also dressed and also across the bed, not longwise, are a

Chinaman, a Lascar, and a haggard woman. The two first are in a sleep or stupor; the last is blowing

at a kind of pipe, to kindle it. And as she blows, and shading it with her lean hand, concentrates its

red spark of light, it serves in the dim morning as a lamp to show him what he sees of her.” Dickens,

C. (1870). The Mystery of Edwin Drood. London: Chapman and Hall.

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“No; plenty white people come. Two years ago seven white men and two white

women used to come and smoke. Now fourteen or fifteen come regular – three or four

of them women and two or three young boys.”

“What do they pay for a pipeful?”

“Two bits625 or four bits. Sometimes they have no money and then they beg a

smoke just as if it was bread. Oh! yes! They get crazy for opium, sometimes, and give

away clothes if they have no money.”

“What does an opium smoker look like?”

Beckoning us to the front door the Celestial gazed up and down Cormorant

street626 for a few minutes and then pointed to the shrinking, shivering figure of a

Chinaman crossing the street.

“That man likes opium.”

The advancing figure was clad in the dress peculiar to his countrymen. His

head rested on his breast. His shoulders were drawn up on a level with his ears; his

chest was sunken; his hands were pushed into the sleeves of his silk jacket; and as

he scuffled along his appearance was that of a shivering wretch who had been fished

out of the harbor on a cold day and was hurrying home to change his clothes. As he

passed the group at the door he surveyed it with a pair of glassy, dead–fish like eyes.

“There is no speculation in those eyes,” we quoted as the man turned into a small,

dark alleyway and was lost to sight.

“Whenever,” concluded the Chinaman, “you see a Chinaman or white man

walking like that man you may be sure he likes opium.”

33. “Chinese and Opium Smuggling to the States” (1885)627

The Chinese question was being discussed in a prominent restaurant the other

evening when a tall, stout, broad–shouldered sea–faring man said that about two

years ago he came to this port with a large sloop628. He anchored in the inner harbor,

and one day while repairing part of the rigging a Chinaman came to him and asked

if he would contract to take 36 Celestials629 to the American side for $600. Willing to

make an honest living he consented, and one evening started from the harbor with

the three dozen

CELESTIAL PASSENGERS.

They brought nothing to eat with them. The weather was very calm and it was three

days before a favorable spot was found to land. “The Chinese by this time,” the old

625 A ‘bit’ is an eighth of a dollar, so two bits would be 25 cents, and four bits would be 50 cents. This

comes from the days when Spanish gold dollars were used as a trade currency. Spanish dollars were

called ‘pieces of eight’ because they could easily be divided into eight equal pieces. Each of these pieces

was called a ‘bit’, and the name stuck. 626 Now Pandora Avenue. 627 From RUNNING THE BLOCKADE. (1885, December 5). The Daily Colonist, p. 3. 628 A sailing boat with one mast and one head–sail. 629 Chinese people were often called Celestials, after a commonly used term for China: Tiāncháo dìguó,

天朝帝國, the Celestial (Heavenly) Empire.

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sailor said, complained that they were hungry, “and after having a good supper before

they started, too.”

Finding the business profitable it was continued, and many a cargo was

successfully landed on the much sought shore. Three Chinese women formed the

cargo one trip, a Chinaman going along to look after them, the desired haven being

Tacoma. Port Townsend was passed and Tacoma reached at three o’clock one

morning. The women were landed all right, having to wade waist deep in water to the

shore. An hour after an officer captured them, but the same potent influence that

brought them to Tacoma also quietened the officer’s ardor, and they were allowed to

regain their liberty.

OPIUM WAS ALSO SMUGGLED

over in large quantities, on one occasion a small revenue boat giving chase. A large

craft was also engaged in the same profitable trade, so the sloop sailed alongside it,

the customs boat also making for it. Seeing no chance of escape, and not wishing to

sink the opium, the sloop’s bow was turned directly for Port Townsend, sailing to the

wharf and then around and mixing with the fishing boats, anchoring alongside the

revenue cutter630 Wolcott. Preparations had been made to drop the opium overboard

if they were searched, but no notice was taken of the audacious move, and the smaller

cutter outside thinking, of course, that the Wolcott had looked after the smugglers,

did not sail in. The opium was landed, and an honest dollar again successfully made.

For a year this smuggling of

CHINESE AND OPIUM

was successfully followed, when business got slack, and the sloop and good will in the

business was sold out, a large profit having been made of the year’s operations.

When asked if the business was not extensively followed now–a–days, the old

sea dog said that, not being connected with it, he knew nothing about it. However, it

is well known that operations are still successfully continued, in spite of the increased

vigilance of the American customs.

34. Canned Opium (1878)631

Cantonese–speaking Chinese farmers dominated Victoria’s early vegetable industry. Among other activities, they canned the vegetables they grew and exported them to the United States. Processed opium from Victoria’s factories was also shipped in cans. This presented a smuggling opportunity.

A Chinaman who keeps a small fruit store on Washington street, Seattle,

received from Victoria on the North Pacific last Tuesday night a large number of cans

containing what appeared to be a lot of potatoes and other vegetables, among which

was secreted a large quantity of opium. Constable Lyta and Deputy Inspector Howe

630 A cutter is a sailboat, like a sloop, but with an additional head–sail. 631 From OPIUM SEIZURE. (1878, April 9). The Daily British Colonist, p. 2.

299

have made a raid on the establishment, and succeeded in capturing a dozen half–

pound cans of opium, which they immediately confiscated.

The Business of Opium Opium was legal, profitable and taxed. The following stories illustrate this status.

35. Dr. Helmcken’s License Fee (1865)632

Dr. John Sebastian Helmcken founded the B.C. Medical Association, and helped to make British Columbia part of Canada. He also proposed a license fee to be paid by opium sellers, except those who sold opium as a prescription medication.

Dr. Helmcken introduced his motion for a license of $100 to be levied on all

parties selling opium. This drug was used as a luxury by certain classes just as liquor

by others, and as dealers in the latter were heavily taxed he did not see why opium

sellers should not also pay. Besides, by this measure we would reach a class who did

not now contribute anything to the revenue. We were now receiving large accessions

to our Chinese brethren633 (a laugh), and they would thus be made to pay their share

of taxes. He would not advocate too large a tax as it would only lead to evasion. In

reply to a question the hon. gentleman said he had not the remotest idea what amount

of revenue would be raised from the license. He did not understand Chinese, nor did

the Chinese understand him, and if they were brought together he would not be able

to gain any information. (Laughter).

Mr. DeCosmos asked if it was proposed to tax druggists; he thought an

exemption should be made allowing the drug to be given in prescriptions.

Dr. Dickens said there were three or four druggists in Victoria who did very

little business, and a tax of $100 would come very heavily on them.

Dr. Helmcken would except opium used in prescriptions, etc., from the tax.

The motion was carried.

36. Alcohol and Opium (1884)634 In the 1880s, opium was seen by many to be similar to alcohol: a potentially harmful, but legal, recreational drug. What set opium apart was its connection to Chinese trade and culture. These perspectives are displayed in the following snippet from a debate in the B.C. Legislative Assembly.

632 From HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY. (1865, March 4). The British Colonist, p. 3. 633 Brothers. 634 From Fourth Provincial Legislative Assembly. (1884, February 7). The Daily Colonist, p. 3.

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Mr. T. Davie in moving the second reading of a bill entitled ‘An Act to Prevent

the Use of Opium Except in Certain Cases,’ said the habit of opium consumption was

a vice that was rapidly growing upon many white youths of the town, and apart from

its connection with Chinese, the drug was far more pernicious in its effects than

intoxicating liquors. The revenue derived from the sale of opium amounted to

$2500635 annually. The principle of the bill was to prevent the use of this subtle drug

except for medicinal and surgical purposes.

Mr. Dunsmuir had no objection to support the bill if the use of whiskey, beer

and tobacco was likewise prohibited. (Laughter.) People who used these articles,

knew what they were about, and the consequences were on their own heads.

Hon. Mr. Drake was afraid that the question of constitutionality might arise.

Opium was recognized in the Dominion tariff as a merchantable636 drug, but this act

proposed to punish all in whose possession opium should be found. He did not think

the bill would be found to work unless it was materially altered.

Mr. T. Davie said that upon consideration it would not perhaps be wise to pass

the bill this session, as several constitutional points had been lost sight of when

framing it, which would require to be remedied. He would therefore, with the leave

of the house, withdraw the bill.

37. War and the Opium Trade (1894)637

The Seattle Telegraph says: “The owners of the opium factories or cookeries in

British Columbia, according to the local customs officers, are rejoicing over the fact

that China and Japan are just now engaged in cruel war638. They have a good reason

for rejoicing. When war was declared between the two great nations China forbade

any exports leaving the country. As a consequence opium from the China factories

cannot be obtained and the British Columbia factories have a grand opportunity to

dispose of about fifteen tons of opium, which is awaiting shipment in the warehouses

and which, by the passage of the Wilson tariff bill639, would not find a ready market.

“A government officer who has been spending several days in British Columbia

was in Seattle yesterday. He said that persons who were in a position to speak

intelligently on the subject had informed him that the opium manufacturers in that

country have already opened negotiations to dispose of the greater portion of the dope

which they now have on hand. It will be disposed of at a very small price, the

manufacturers being only too glad to get a small profit on it instead of losing

everything. It is an open secret that the British Columbia manufacturers have to

635 About $56,000 in 2018 Canadian dollars. 636 One that may be sold and traded. 637 From THE WAR AND OPIUM. (1894, August 9). The Daily Colonist, p. 3. 638 This is now called the First Sino–Japanese War, and lasted from July 1894 to April 1895. China

and Japan were fighting for control over Korea. China lost the war and signed the Treaty of

Shimonosekei, which recognized Korea’s independence and gave Taiwan, along with several other

islands, to Japan. 639 More on this bill below.

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depend solely upon the smugglers in order to find a market for their product. The

stuff is usually given to the smugglers on commission. When it became known some

months ago that the Wilson bill provided for the reduction of the duty on opium from

$12 to $6 per pound the British Columbian manufacturers became scared, for they

well knew that with the duty so low they would find it impossible to compete with the

China manufacturers. Hence they raised a big purse and at present have

representatives in Washington city at work endeavoring to have congress continue

the $12 duty on dope. It is hardly likely that they will succeed in keeping the duty.

The manufacturers realize this and until the Chinese government ordered that no

goods be exported from that country they thought that they would not only lose future

profits, but fail to sell the stock already on hand. Chinese will not buy British

Columbia opium except when they can’t get the stuff which comes from China

factories. The British Columbia opium is much inferior to that made in the Orient. In

China good opium can be bought for $1.75 per five–tael640 can, while an inferior

quality in British Columbia costs $3641. Then, too, the British Columbia factories have

a much greater expense. They pay their cooks $40 a month each, while in China a

good cook can be secured for $10 a month.

“When the duty on opium is reduced the stuff can be lawfully brought into the

United States and sold much cheaper than can smuggled opium from the British

Columbia factories. In Seattle’s Chinatown considerable opium is used and the men

who purchase it invariably insist on the China production. Just at present, however,

they are in need of a supply, and as it can’t be brought from China the customs officers

say the local Chinese will willingly purchase the British Columbia stuff, as they can

get it at a low figure.”

The Beginning of the End for the Opium Industry Four things happened to end Victoria’ opium trade. First, competitors from Hong Kong engaged in predatory pricing to try to drive Victoria out of business. Second, the Chinese population of Victoria fell after the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1885 – 1886. Third, in 1894 the United States cut its import tax on opium in half, meaning that smuggling was no longer profitable. Finally, the Opium Act of 1908 made opium illegal. The following articles are about the first three reasons.

38. Low Prices from a Rival (1889)642

The fact that several opium cooking firms have stated their intention of

discontinuing the manufacture of the drug is significant. It proves that the

manufacture and “export” of the seductive drug have become unprofitable. This is not

640 The tael (leung, 兩) is a Chinese unit of weight equal to about 37.8 grams. Five taels is about 189

grams, or about 40% of a pound. 641 About $75 in 2018 Canadian dollars. 642 From OPIUM “EXPORT”. (1889, June 21). The Daily Colonist, p. 1.

302

the case because of a decreased consumption. There are many – whites and Chinese

– who are still ready and willing to carry on the “export”643 of the article, for they have

been successful in evading the customs officers and in making large profits.

The sole reason for the decrease is competition. The large amount of opium

manufactured in Victoria and smuggled to the States in the past has had a serious

effect upon the opium trade in Hong Kong where a high price has always been paid

the government for exclusive control of the trade. The firm having this control about

a year ago opened out a branch here – Sing Wo Chang644. This company made and

sold the opium at a rate in which there was no profit – in fact an actual loss. However,

they opened out with the intention of killing off all competitors, having some $100,000

to sink before giving up the attempt. What they lost in Victoria they hoped to make

up by increased exportation from Hong Kong. The closing up of several factories here

is an evidence that Sing Wo Chang Co. are succeeding.

At the present time opium is sold here at less than cost by all firms, and there

are several companies who are determined to make the Hong Kong company lose as

much money as possible in the competition before they acknowledge their defeat. The

few seizures by customs officers of late shows that there is a great falling off in the

‘export’ trade, once so profitable all round. In former years fully 90,000 pounds of

opium were put up in Victoria. Now there is not half that amount, and it looks as

though the business was about to be killed off altogether. The government is a heavy

loser in the shape of duties and licenses – that for an opium factory being $500. Until

lately there were fourteen factories.

39. A Falling Chinese Population (1890)645

Kwong On Tai646, one of the largest opium dealers in the city, has closed his

store on account of the dullness of business which is attributed to the large decrease

during the last few years of the Chinese population, and also to the fact that not so

much of the drug is being smuggled into the States. The firms of Sing Wo Chang and

Lung Chung647 are also contemplating going out of the business on the same account.

These three firms are about the largest, with the exception of Tai Yune648, in Victoria,

and have all invested large sums of money in their trade.

In conversation with the COLONIST reporter, Tai Yune, the largest dealer in

the province, said that during the last four years the Chinese population of Victoria

had dwindled down from 7,000 to less than 3,000. He also said that the large dealers

643 Smuggling. 644 Located at 5 Cormorant Street. 645 From THE OPIUM TRADE. (1890, March 21). The Daily Colonist, p. 1 646 Kwong On Tai & Co. also imported other Chinese goods. Their store was at 24 Cormorant Street. 647 Lun Chung & Co. was also an importer/exporter of general Chinese merchandise. Their offices were

at 26 Cormorant Street (next door to Kwong On Tai). 648 Despite their dominance of the opium trade, Tai Yune & Co. still considered themselves general

merchants. Their store was at 135 Government Street.

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would sooner pay the $500 license than $100, as, if the latter sum was instituted for

the $500 tax, a large number of small firms would spring up.

Several other dealers were called upon and they all complained of the slackness

of business, which had been diminishing for the last few years on account of the

lessened Chinese population. Some also thought that the action of the bricklayers’

union in refusing to work on buildings with Chinamen would force many more

Chinamen to leave town.

40. Lower Taxes are Bad for Smugglers (1894)649

A Chinaman entered the American Consulate yesterday morning in a great

state of excitement, under the impression that after all the Wilson bill650 now before

Congress was going to leave the opium duty651 at $12 a pound as at present. He was

considerably disappointed when informed that such is not likely to be the case. It

seems that he had misunderstood a Washington dispatch652 in the COLONIST

yesterday in regard to the tariff bill. This incident shows that the Chinese of Victoria

are closely watching the tariff legislation, so far as it concerns their interests, and a

talk with any of the more prominent Chinamen makes it plain that they are

wonderfully well posted in regard to the situation. The approaching disaster to the

opium manufacturing industry here, has in fact been the chief topic in Chinatown for

some time.

One leading Chinese merchant yesterday stated the case from an opium

manufacturer’s point of view. There is no question, he said, that if the duty on opium

going into the States is lowered, the business of making it in Victoria will be ruined,

as it would then be impossible to compete with the Hongkong article; and then,

instead of there being some twelve firms extensively manufacturing opium in this

city as at present, there will remain but the sorry remnants of the business called for

in supplying local demands. At present about 160,000 pounds of crude opium are

imported into this province for manufacturing into the finished article, and at $1 a

pound (the duty) the Dominion will lose the greater part of $160,000 a year. The city,

if it does not grieve for the Chinese who will have to leave when their means of

livelihood is taken away, will be affected to the extent of about $5,000 paid in licenses.

There have been nearly 300 Chinamen, he said, employed in this connection, mainly

in making charcoal for the fuel used in the manufacture of the opium.

649 From CHINATOWN AGITATED. (1894, March 22). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 8 650 The Wilson–Gorman Tariff Act, passed by the United States Congress in 1894, lowered tariffs on

many goods, including opium, and implemented a temporary income tax. The income tax was supposed

to pay for the money lost by the government because of the lower tariffs. 651 Tax. 652 “The tariff bill, as modified by the Senate committee on finance, was reported in the Senate to–day

and was ordered to be printed and placed on the calendar. Mr. Voorhees, (Democrat, Ind) who made

the report, gave notice that he would ask the Senate to begin the consideration of the bill on Monday,

April 2, and said that he would then be prepared to make a statement in relation to it.” U.S. Tariff

Bill. (1894, March 21). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 8

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Tai Yune, the head of the largest opium firm in town, was quite communicative

on the subject. Crude opium is procured chiefly from India, he explained in discussing

the subject. In Hongkong, Victoria’s great competitor in the business, the crude

material is admitted free, whereas $1 a pound has to be paid here. Opium can be sold

in Hongkong for $3, while in Victoria $6.80 is charged for the best. This is the finest

or Li Yune brand. Only when smuggled into the States could Victoria opium be sold

there in competition with the Hongkong “dope” while the duty stood at $12. Let the

United States cut this duty down to $6, however, and it would be impossible for opium

under any circumstances to be taken in from Canada on a paying basis. In Hongkong

the opium trade is in the hands of what is practically a monopoly, who pay a good

round sum for their privilege. The reason given by Tai Yune for the Hongkong

finished opium being considered the best in the market is that the hot climate of that

part of the world is more favorable for keeping opium in good condition after it is

manufactured.

According to a Chinaman holding an eminent position among his countrymen

here, the Hongkong opium monopoly must have tampered with the author of the

Wilson bill, and thus induced him to so fix the opium duty as to secure the American

market for their product. The Celestials cannot believe that Mr. Wilson has thus

interrupted the course of their business from disinterested motives.

41. The Wilson Bill (1894)653

The passage yesterday of the new amended American tariff bill had its

immediate effect in this city of closing down all the large opium factories which for

years have done business here, employing between fifty and sixty men and

contributing in the neighborhood of $200,000 annually to the revenue. The firms

referred to are those of Tai Yune, Quong On Lung, Chong Yuen Tai, Quong Man Fung,

Hip Ling654, Lai Hop655, Tai Ling, Ying Ching Lung656 and Sing Kee657.

The proposition in the United States Congress to lower the duty on opium to

$6 per pound had put all the firms on their guard, and the closing of the factories was

not altogether unanticipated. Opium smuggling from this city to the republic over the

straits is now at an end, and Chinese exportation is also practically extinct as a

branch of business since which a few months ago many a dollar was to be nimbly

turned.

For some months past the C. P. R.658 and N. P. R.659 liners have brought fewer

and fewer Chinese to the country, and these few for the most part returning

653 From OPIUM FACTORIES CLOSED. (1894, August 15). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 5 654 Probably Hip Lung & Co., dealers in Chinese merchandise (and opium), 22 Cormorant Street. 655 Not all of the businesses on this list were officially opium dealers. According to Henderson’s Victoria

Directory for 1890, Lai Hop was a provisioner located at 37 Fisguard Street. 656 Probably Ying Chong Lung, a grocer with a store at 37 Cormorant Street. 657 Sing Kee was a vegetable dealer with a business at 67 Cormorant Street. 658 Canadian Pacific Railway. 659 The Northern Pacific Railway, a transcontinental U.S. railway. “The first of the transcontinental

railroads to reach the Pacific Northwest was the Northern Pacific, which built to Portland in 1883,

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merchants who have their homes and “stake” in British Columbia, and who therefore

have no desire to go across the border. The prevalence of Black Plague in Hongkong

in May, June and July660 accounted for the light steerage lists; now the Chinese who

might care to come over cannot, as the war with Japan661 has induced the government

of their country to issue very strict orders in regard to leaving the fatherland where

every man may possibly be required for military service.

The raw opium carried in stock here by the Victoria factories is said to have all

been held in bond awaiting the turn of affairs at Washington; it will now be sent back

to Hongkong, and the factories of this city will become things of the past, only to

remain as memories of what were once features of a very profitable industry, as well

as “sights” which no curious visitor to British Columbia’s capital could afford to miss.

42. A Celebration of the End (1894)662

Chinese New Year opened at midnight on Sunday with somewhat more

impressive ceremonies than usual from the Oriental point of view, though to the ears

of the white population, who were roused from their beauty sleep by the din of

exploding firecrackers, it had the same old accustomed sound. It seems that owing to

the Wilson bill reducing the duty on opium to what practically amounts to a

minimum, the big manufacturing concerns here have decided to go out of the

business, and they are choosing the New Year as a fitting occasion to make a big final

“blow out,” each firm vieing with the other in the extent of their display of hospitality

and fireworks. To Tai Yune & Co. belongs the honor of firing the longest continuous

volley of firecrackers that ever saluted the ears of Victorians. They had it on a string

that ran from the roof of the store to the sidewalk. A street parade of the actors of the

Chinese theatrical company, in costume, took place through Chinatown, and the

usual feasting and merrymaking started in with the crackers. The festive John663

hangs up the washboard and the tub, and for the next few days will devote himself to

exercising on the sundry instruments that captivate the Celestial musical critic. The

quantity of New Year’s greetings that are passing through the mails is even greater

than sent during our own holiday season this winter.

three years before the completion of the Canadian Pacific. […] [The] Northern Pacific Steamship

Company […] began service in July, 1892, with chartered British steamers. This line from Tacoma to

the Orient continued until 1901.” Kemble, J. H. (1949). The Transpacific Railroads, 1869 – 1915.

Pacific Historical Review, 18(3), 331–343. 660 “The black plague at Canton, Hongkong and elsewhere has spread with great rapidity, and native

and foreign colonies are in a state bordering on a panic. The ravages of the pestilence have been

aggravated by drought extending over eight months. The epidemic has assumed a virulent form. In

six hours thirty–three deaths were reported in Hongkong.” Black Plague in China. (1894, June 8).

Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 3. 661 The first Sino–Japanese War was fought from 1894 to 1895. 662 From THE CITY. (1894, February 6). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 5 663 ‘John Chinaman’ was a common, racist term for any Chinese male.

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Supply and Demand of Chinese Workers

43. “A Flood of Celestials” (1876)664

A swarm of Chinamen numbering 330, all told, landed at Messrs. Rhodes &

Co.’s wharf665 last evening, having been transferred from the ship Annie Grey just

arrived from Hongkong to the steamer Beaver666, which brought them alongside.

Their arrival excited the curiosity but certainly not the pleasure of a large number of

citizens who flocked to the wharf to witness the landing of the motley crowd. No

sooner had the steamer touched the wharf than a scene of confusion and a deafening

chatter commenced, shortly followed by a general exodus from the steamer and

conveyance of packages of clothing and food to convenient places on shore. The

packages were of the most indescribable nature. There were packages with lids,

packages without lids, sacks of rice and mats of rice, sugar canes and bamboos, tin

pots and tin cans, bundles of blankets and walking sticks, bundles of dried grass and

a mixture of other paraphernalia “too numerous to mention” – the whole redolent of

opium and inferior tobacco smoke. The excitement among the Celestials was amusing

– first running here, then there, now muttering am inward anathema, now creating

a hubbub of confused sentences rapidly ejected. At last their goods and chattels were

all ashore and the teamsters commenced to pile them on their drays – nolens volens667 – and to hurry them off to the aristocratic vicinity of Cormorant street. Thither, in

fear of losing sight of their “little all,” the Chinamen quickly followed, and in that

neighborhood, either in bed or out of bed they passed the night. Kwong Lee & Co., the

firm who chartered the Annie Grey and the Forward, state that once landed their

connection with the living freight ceases; that most of the arrivals landed last night

come from the agricultural districts of China and have been engaged raising rice,

sweet potatoes, &c., and that they have sought the hospitable shores of British

Columbia under the impression that a fortune can easily be made here.

44. Where do they Come From? (1884)668

As there is no particular demand for Chinese labor at the present time, it is a

cause of wonderment where the large consignments of Celestials that are constantly

664 From A Flood of Celestials. (1876, June 23). Daily British Colonist, p. 3. 665 Henry Rhodes & Co. were agents for a number of steamships operating between San Francisco,

Hong Kong and Victoria. 666 The Beaver was built in England in 1835, and became the first steamship to serve the Pacific

Northwest. The served the Hudson’s Bay Company as a trading ship from 1835 to 1864, and as a hired

government survey ship from 1864 to 1874, when she was sold to the British Columbia Transportation

and Towing Company. She was wrecked by a drunken crew in 1888. 667 Latin for (roughly) ‘like it or not’. 668 From THE CHINESE. (1884, July 1). Daily Colonist, p. 2

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arriving go to. Three hundred more have arrived by the barque669 F. P. Litchfield670,

now lying in Victoria harbor. The most that is seen of them is while they are passing

through the city with their odd baggage to Chinatown, where they disappear, and are

never more distinguishable from those that are already there. An inquiry made

among some of the Chinese yesterday elicited the opinion that more than enough

were in the country six months ago, and that it was only by misrepresentation on the

part of the rich merchants who bring them, that they come. Promises are put forward

to the poorer Chinese at home, and they are induced to bind themselves over to a

certain wage, and to pay for their passage from that gradually. As their salary will

amount to from fifty cents to seventy–five cents per day, and out of this the board Is

deducted, it takes from four to ten years for them to pay off their agreement. Some

do not mind this, as their life has been previously nothing better than slavery, and

the continued serfdom does not gall them. Others, though, have much fault to find;

but as they can do nothing to better their condition, they are forced to submit. One

prominent Chinaman expressed the belief that something ought to be done to restrain

the influx; that the amount be limited to a certain number annually, as under the

present system he saw nothing but starvation for not only those who came, but also

for the Chinese already here. There is no doubt but that a number find their way by

crooked means and ways that are dark to the other side of the line, but the proportion

is small – not more than one in a hundred. Hence the query, What is to be done with

the ever arriving Chinese? The question is one that will soon have to be dealt with in

a practical way by the Dominion authorities, and the quicker they become impressed

with the urgency of the matter the better. During the past three months over one

thousand celestials have come to our shores, and there is already more than a

sufficiency in the country. How, then, are the new–comers to exist!

45. From China to Alberta (1911)671

From Canton, China, to Grande Prairie, Alberta, is a far cry, but information

relative to the advantages and opportunities offered in the last, best west to those

who are willing to work spread that far and beyond. Far off in the Celestial Empire

there lived a Chinaman and his wife who until a few years ago were content with the

meagre wage which they both were able to earn, but after a time the prospects of

simply existing excited in Wong Hong Chai, the husband, a determination to better

his station in life. But how to do so was a problem.

There was a small chance of becoming moderately wealthy if he continued in

his work, so after much deliberation and repeated prayers to his particular god, Wong

bade his wife goodbye and hied himself to Canton. There he was directed to the offices

of a company who make a specialty of sending out individuals who desire to improve

their station, and some who do not. After much conversation, Wong signed a ream of

669 A French word meaning ‘boat’. 670 A United States ship with a home port of New York and a cargo capacity of 1,082.73 tons. 671 LEAVES FLOWERY KINGDOM FOR LAST GREAT WEST TO RUN A RESTAURANT. (1911,

May 9). The Edmonton Capital, p. 3.

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papers and was told to present himself at the offices on a certain day, when he would

be provided with a steamship ticket, steerage, enough money to pay the head tax

required of all Celestials who enter Canada, and enough money to meet his expenses

until he was delivered to the company’s agent in this country.

Wong was on time and finally found himself on the ocean, and ultimately in

Vancouver where he was shipped through to Montreal. Here he went to work in a

laundry owned by his company, and there started to work at six cents per day to pay

back the money which he had borrowed. The hours were long and the work hard, but

Wong never grumbled, but he continually kept his eyes open and finally discovered

that he could get forty dollars a month and board if he wanted to enter a hotel as

cook, so he jumped his job despite the protestations of the boss laundryman.

Wong worked for three years and hoarded his savings and all the time he was

raking and scraping together the shekels, his wife in far off China was doing the

same. Finally the debt was paid, as well as the exorbitant rate of interest charged,

and Wong found himself the possessor of a few hundred dollars in real money. He

found upon writing home that Mrs. Wong was willing and anxious to migrate to

Canada, so some four weeks ago Wong journeyed to Vancouver to meet her, and from

there they came to Edmonton. They arrived here last Tuesday, and two days later

Wong was the proud possessor of a team of oxen, a more or less disreputable set of

harness and a wagon. Having heard of the vast free north, Wong decided to emulate

the pioneers of the Anglo–Saxon race. He purchased a tent and then spent the

remainder of his money for supplies needed in the conducting of a first class

restaurant.

Yesterday afternoon Mr. and Mrs. Wong and a little Wong loaded their effects

into their wagon, piled themselves in among the tinware, glassware, canned goods

and other paraphernalia, and with another Chinaman with an unpronounceable

name, set sail for the Peace River country, where Wong will open a restaurant.

Speaking to a Capital reporter who hailed him as he was driving down

McDougall avenue yesterday afternoon, Wong expressed childish delight at being

able to get into the far north. “Very nice country up there,” said672 he, “very nice place

start restaurant. Pay all same seventy–five cents meal all time, get rich quick.” “What

do you do when you make a barrel or two of money?” queried the reporter. “Go on trip

back China,” was the reply. “Suppose you go back to stay there,” said the reporter,

but Wong shook his head emphatically and declared that he was going to spend the

rest of his days in Canada.

So perched on his ancient wagon, holding a dilapidated shotgun between his

knees, with which he declared that he would slaughter many ducks, and with Mrs.

Wong and Wong Junior seated on a tarpaulin in the centre of the load, with the

Celestial who has a string of consonants for a cognomen and who will be the chief

cook and bottle washer of the “Grande Prairie Restaurant,” this unique party drove

up McDougall avenue headed for Edson, from which point they will take the shortest

trail to their destination.

672 This passage was originally written in stereotypical and offensive phonetic dialect, e.g. “Velly” for

“Very”. I have standardized the spelling, but kept the words in the interview the same.

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46. Across the Ocean to Red Deer (1925)673

I was born 17 years ago at Paksar, a small village ten miles or so inland from

the great city of Canton, which is in the south of China. My father has not lived in

China except for short intervals for a very long time now, for he has been in Canada

for about 30 years. He came home to China sometimes but did not stay long and I was

therefore brought up by my mother. Paksar is only a little village about the size of

Red Deer. The people in it are mainly farmers, who own small farms on which they

grow mostly vegetables and rice. […]

There are many people from Canton and my part of the country in Canada,

and they come back from Canada and tell those at home about it, or they write to

their friends. Most of them say that Canada is a good country, but that the winter is

very cold and that people have to work very hard here, much harder than in China.

It was when I was 12 years old that my father sent word to me that I was to

come to Canada. My mother has never come to Canada because she is afraid of the

great cold in the Winter. When my father sent this message, I did not want to leave

my home nor did my mother want me to go, but in China anyone who does not obey

his father is no longer held in honour, so my mother said to me that I must go, and I

did not think of disobeying. A cousin of mine who was 14 years old went with me. As

I had never been more than a very little way away from home before, it was a great

thing for me to have to go away over the sea when I was so young.

There is a railway passes my village and by the train we went to Kong Moon674,

another town. It took us 12 hours about in the train from Paksar to Kong Moon. That

was the longest journey I had been till then. At Kong Moon we got into a river steamer

and sailed to Hong Kong, which is a British harbor and town. At Hong Kong we got

onto the steamer called the “Empress of Asia.” I had never been on a ship anything

like as large as that one. There were 700 Chinese on board. Some of them were going

to Canada, but some of them were going to the United States and some of them to

Cuba and some to Mexico. We sailed first to Japan, but we had to stop at various

places on the way there, such as Shanghai. It took us eleven days to go from Hong

Kong to Yokohama in Japan. I was very anxious to see all these new places and to

watch what was done in them, but immediately the ship got onto the sea, a great

sickness took possession of me and I lay as one about to die in my berth on the ship.

I could not eat anything at all, and I did not feel that I wished to eat anything, nor

did I feel that I could get up and look at the sea or at any of the great harbours that

we came to. There were others of the Chinese on the ship who were also very ill

because of the sea. Before I started on my journey I had been afraid that some evil

might happen to me on the way, for in China on the rivers and the sea close to land,

673 From From Canton to Red Deer. (1925, July 15). Red Deer News, p. 6. The account is based on the life of ‘Mah Hung Too’, listed as ‘Charley Mah Jim’ in the 1921 census, but easily identifiable by his

age, place of residence and year of immigration. Charley earned $600 in 1920–21, working as a laborer

at a café.

674 The city of 江門 (Jiangmen), in China’s 广东 (Guangdong) province.

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there are many pirates675 who attack the ships and rob those on board, and I thought

that something like that might happen to me on the “Empress of Asia,” but so ill was

I that I did not care how many pirates came to attack the ship or what they would do

to me if they did come.

It was Winter when I made this journey. Therefore it was very cold on the sea.

If it had been warm I could have lain on the deck in the sunshine, but it was far too

cold for that, especially for those who had come as I did from a warm part of the

country like Paksar.

My cousin and I had not much clothes with us nor had we more than a very

little money. In Paksar there used to be no paper money but only silver and copper

money, nor were there any banks. If Chinese men in Canada wished to send money

home to Paksar or other places like that, they used to have to send it to Hong Kong

and ask some honest man whom they knew in Hong Kong to change the bank’s paper

money into silver and copper and take it to Paksar when he went. Therefore my

cousin and I did not know much about money other than the silver and copper of our

own country. All the same, although we were so ill, we spent all that we had of money

on the ship in buying small toys and such things as we thought perhaps that we

should not be able to eat, which were not offered to us at the regular meals of the

ship. These we bought at the little shop on the steamer, so that when we came at

length to Victoria in British Columbia we had no money left. Neither of us knew any

words of English nor did we know any Chinese in Victoria to whom we could talk.

When we got to Victoria we had to deal with the Customs and Immigration

officers. We were not allowed simply to leave the ship and go ashore but we were kept

in the Customs Hall or place where immigrants are kept till they are allowed to go.

We had to sleep there, but we were given food by the government. When the time for

food came, I was sent with others to the kitchen of the Hall to bring up the bread for

all the Chinese in the Hall. When we got to the kitchen, the man in the kitchen, who

was also a Chinese, said to us: “Is there anyone here of the tribe of Mah?” I said that

I was of that tribe. Then he told me that he also was of the tribe and that he came

from the same part of the country as I did and he knew some of my friends. He was

very kind to me and helped me greatly and brought me candy and such things to eat.

I felt much less alone when I knew that there was some one of my own tribe to whom

I could speak in this strange land.

Next day my father and my second cousin came to the Hall to see me. My father

had come from Red Deer to meet me. I was not allowed to go away with him at once

but had to wait for ten days in the Hall until the Canadian Government men had

asked all the questions they wished about me and my family. However, I was well

treated in the Hall and did not greatly mind staying there, especially because of my

friend in the kitchen who was kind to me.

675 From around the time that the narrator would have traveled: “More than 20 Chinese pirate junks

have been captured and hundreds of crew members executed by the British patrol boats in the Far

Eastern waters during the past two years. […] The pirates have been especially active for two years

past.” GUNBOATS DO FOR CHINESE PIRATES. (1919, June 15). The Daily Colonist, p. 25.

311

At length I was allowed to go with my father, and went in the boat with him to

Vancouver and from there to Red Deer, where we arrived on Christmas Day five years

ago. I was greatly surprised by the cold and the snow, which I had no experience of

at home. Since I have been here, I have always written regularly to China to my

mother, and I hope next year to return to China for a holiday, but I shall come back

to Canada, for it is a good country to live in, even though it is sometimes cold and

even if we have to work hard here.

47. “We mean to stay.” (1884)676

In the Chinese quarter ten brick buildings are already in progress or will

shortly be commenced. Carlo Bossi677 has three, Kwong Lee & Co. four, Wang Foong

& Co., three. All will be very substantial. Those on the south side of Cormorant street

will have heavy stone basements, advantage being taken of the depression caused by

the washing of the water, which for ages coursed through the ravine, to secure fine,

well drained cellars. In conversation with a Chinese merchant a reporter of The Colonist asked: “Why are you putting up such fine buildings? Do you anticipate a large increase in business or a large increase in the Chinese population?

In tolerable English the merchant made answer–

“We mean to stay. The Chinamen in this country will settle; not many more

will come because there’ll be a law to keep ‘em out soon. But there’s a good many

Chinamen who never want to go back home. Then there’s the mines – lots of Chinese

making $2 and $10 every day. What they make keeps the merchants here up. All men

in Chinatown have solid business and pay high rents. Now they want to get good

houses for themselves and pay no rent.

Reporter – Are you looking forward to supply the labor on the Island

railway678?

Merchant – Yes, some of it; but we hear Mr. Dunsmuir679 wants to get as many

good, strong white men as he can.

Reporter – Suppose that all the labor employed on the Island railway should

be white – would you be sorry?

Merchant – Yes, some.

Reporter – Are you making your investments on the strength of the Island

railway being built?

Merchant – Of course – yes; but if Mr. Dunsmuir don’t have any Chinamen

that’s all right, too; there’s always got to be a place where the Chinaman can get a

676 From CHINATOWN. (1884, May 22). Daily Colonist, p. 3. 677 An 1884 directory lists Charles Bossi as a ‘capitalist’ living on the corner of Cormorant Street and

Blanchard Avenue. He appears in the 1881 census as ‘Carlos Bossi’, a 54–year–old Italian Roman

Catholic with no specified occupation, living with his Italian–American wife, 29–year–old Rhonda

Bossi. 678 The Esquimault & Nanaimo railway. Related readings can be found in the chapter on Railways. 679 Robert Dunsmuir (1825 – 1889), coal tycoon and member of the B.C. Legislature for Nanaimo from

1882 until his death.

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supply of his country’s goods. The Hong Kong house I represent and the houses that

all the other men (with a wave of the hand towards the opposite side of the street)

represent have decided that Victoria shall be that place.

Reporter – Then you think Victoria will always be the chief Chinese market for

the North Pacific?

Merchant – Yes, always. Chinamen don’t like Seattle and Portland is too far

up the river for coast trade.

Reporter – And do you expect to control the Chinese trade with Canada from

this point?

Merchant – The dealers in Chinese merchandise in this country will always be

Chinamen. It’s so now. The English haven’t had a show with us. And if we’re here the

merchants of Canada must come to us to buy.

Reporter – But the Canadian merchants – will not they outbid you for Chinese

trade?

Merchant – No; our plans are all made. Canadians can’t take away our trade

when the English couldn’t. We’ll sell them all the goods they want cheaper than they

can buy them in China.

And the merchant turned away to confer with his architect who had just

entered the office with the plans for a new brick block in his hand.

48. After Working on the Railway (1885)680 Thousands of Chinese immigrants worked on the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. When it was finished, in 1885 – 1886, they found themselves in need of new work.

Several Chinese merchants of Victoria who were spoken to on the subject seem

to be of the opinion that there will be no more noticeable distress among the poorer

class of their countrymen this winter than usual, notwithstanding the fact that

railway construction on the mainland is finished. In support of this opinion it was

advanced that the passenger rate to China lately offered by sailing vessels had been

so low (from $15 to $20) as to present no obstacle to the departure of almost as many

Chinese as wished to leave for their native country. Since the last of September about

1000 Chinese have left here for China, some direct and others by way of San

Francisco. Of these only 682 – about two–thirds of them – took return certificates,

showing they did not all of them contemplate making another visit. Since these went

away 95 Chinese have legitimately entered the province. Of course during the

progress of railway work Chinese engaged thereon came and went, spreading over

the populated part of the country and entering other employment, but when the work

was in full blast there must have been considerably over 8000 of them on the

Onderdonk681 contracts of the Canadian Pacific line. During the five years and over

680 From SURPLUS CHINESE LABOR. (1885, November 14). Daily Colonist, p. 3 681 Andrew Onderdonk (1849 – 1905) was in charge of building the section of the Canadian Pacific

Railway that crossed the Fraser Canyon. With permission from the Canadian government, he

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which this division took in construction it is estimated that nearly 1500 of its Chinese

hands sickened and died; the wet, and especially the cold weather being against those

who have been accustomed to the warm, dry, climate of the principal portion of China.

The discharge of the colonies, also, has been gradual, and while there is undoubtedly

on the mainland a number of them scattered in camps of their own with the intention

of wintering as cheaply as possible, still a great many have gently and beautifully

glided over the line, while more still have gone to the mines. Their rigorous economy

and their exact knowledge of the most inferior quality, and the smallest quantity of

food calculated to keep them alive, will enable those who have decided to wait here

for “something to turn up” to ward off the Grim Conqueror longer, perhaps, than the

same number of white men would have been able to do. One thing appears certain,

that the last of those who intended leaving for China are going in the vessel Southern

Chief682, which is about to sail for Hongkong. Many of those who can go but will not,

may yet find that spring will bring with it the necessity to seek a livelihood elsewhere.

Their only alternative is the States. It is a great country, and one way or another will

most likely be in the future as it has been in the past, greatly indebted to British

Columbia for an increase of immigration, even though that immigration be only

Chinese.

49. The Impact of Layoffs (1900)683

Chinatown Affected. – The casual observer would not think that the dismissal

of the Chinese employees of the Alexandra mine684 would affect the Chinese quarter

of this city to any extent, but such is the case. There is a panicky feeling among the

merchants who have dealings with the Chinese groceries and stores of Nanaimo and

nearby towns, and it is expected that if several failures are reported along the Chinese

stores up the line, some of the merchants will come that near to assigning that it will

not be pleasant. It seems that the up–the–line stores have many big outstanding

accounts among the Asiatic miners, and with the dismissal of the y––––685 mine

employees they fear that these accounts will go on the list of bad debts, hence the

imported thousands of Chinese laborers to finish his section of the railway. This was in part a cost–

cutting measure: due to racism, geography and language barriers, Chinese workers could be paid less

than other workers. 682 Not a high quality ship – it normally carried lumber, and had been shipwrecked in 1883! “A quartet

of shipwrecks occurred at Royal Roads in 1883 during a high gale. The […] American ships Gettysburg and Southern Chief were driven ashore. […] The Southern Chief, 1,283 tons, […] was purchased by Lieutenant Lee […] for $600. He afterward sold her to San Francisco parties for $1,500, and she was

subsequently repaired and placed in service, running in the lumber trade until 1894, when she went

to pieces off Cape Flattery.” From Wright, E. W. (ed.). (1895). Lewis & Dryden’s Marine History of the Pacific Northwest. Oregon: The Lewis & Dryden Printing Company. 683 From LOCAL NEWS. (1900, July 2). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 7 684 Nanaimo’s Alexandra coal mine, owned by James Dunsmuir, was abandoned in 1901. He was in

favor of Chinese labor, which he found cheap and efficient, but was forced to fire his Chinese coal

miners due to political pressure. He won a seat in the Provincial Parliament in 1898, and In 1900 he

became the 4th premier of British Columbia. 685 The dashes replace a racist slur in the original.

314

panicky feeling in the Chinese quarter which supplies the middlemen who have the

trade of the ex–mine employees with the queues.

Not Agin686 It. – The recently made law imposing a head tax of $100, instead of $50

as heretofore, on incoming Chinese, is not opposed by the majority of the Chinese

here, if their expressions on the matter form any criterion. With the exception, as can

be readily understood, of the labor contractors, who make a revenue out of the

incoming coolies687 and others who have a pecuniary688 interest in the coming of more

of their countrymen, the majority say that they are glad the tax has been raised, as

“too much man here just now.” The impression seems to be that there are already

more than enough of the laboring class of Chinese here to supply any existing

demand. Not so many have been employed at the canneries this year, many of the

canners employing Japs689 instead, and the demand in general for their labor is lower

than it has been. For this reason alone the Chinese express themselves in favor of the

raising of the poll–tax690.

Chinese Participation in the Gold Rush Chinese workers were a common sight in British Columbia during the Gold Rush(es) – not just as miners, but as business owners, road builders, provisioners and more.

50. Early Arrivals (1860)691

Our streets are crowded with Celestials bound for the British Columbia mines.

From China and from California, they continue to pour in at the rate of 500 weekly,

and lose no time in making arrangements for transportation to the gold regions.

Large numbers are said to be still on the way. From all along the river we hear

accounts of the Chinese having paid large sums of money for bars692 already worked

over by white miners, and in some instances settling down upon new ground. The

sale of hardware and big boots to these newcomers is immense; but with other articles

they are generally very well supplied. Taken all in all, the Chinese have really been

of great benefit to the mercantile classes generally in this season. Whether mining

interests will receive a corresponding benefit, remains to be seen.

686 Against. Written as it would have been pronounced in casual conversation. 687 An offensive term for Asian unskilled workers. 688 Having to do with money. From the Latin word for ‘money’, pecunia. 689 On offensive term for Japanese people. 690 The head tax. 691 From CHINAMEN. (1860, July 10). The British Colonist, p. 2 692 Gravel bars in the Fraser River. Over the centuries, as the river flowed, gold would become trapped

between the gravel particles and small stones. Gold from the bars could be extracted via placer mining, often with as little capital as a pan to swirl gravelly river water in. The gold particles, being heavier

than anything else, would sink to the bottom of the pan and could be easily extracted.

315

51. Old Fields, Fresh Eyes and Fortune (1862)693

It strikes us as a very strange circumstance indeed, that we should find men

returning from Cariboo ignoring the very existence of other gold–fields, making no

effort to prospect them; nor attempt to make wages on even new discoveries in their

neighborhood. It might be inferred that our old mining districts have been completely

sifted, thoroughly worked out – nothing but tailings694 left to mark the localities from

which gold was once obtained. It is difficult to form any other conclusion from the fact

that large numbers of able–bodied men, many of them miners, have returned to

Victoria from Cariboo. But such a conclusion would be based on false premises; of

that there can be no doubt. The old diggings are still paying diggings; still employ

about 1200 miners, not white men, but Chinamen695. The latter are scattered from

Cariboo to Rock Creek, and everywhere are doing well. We have taken the pains to

find out how many Chinamen there are in British Columbia, and what they are doing,

with the view of proving that the old diggings will still pay; and might pay the more

enterprising white miners much better, if their skill and attention were directed to

them. Our informant, a prominent Chinese merchant, states that there are in both

Provinces between 2100 and 2400 Chinamen. Of this number about 100 – more or

less – are on this Island. The balance are scattered throughout the mines.

This estimate is only an approximation; but it is near enough for our purposes.

It is as follows: From the mouth of Harrison River to Yale, 300; from Yale to Lytton,

200; from Lytton to Kamloops, 100; from Lytton to Lillooet, 100; from Lillooet to

Cottonwood, and in Cariboo and on Quesnelle River, 400 or 500, of which about 100

are on Bridge River; on the Similkameen and Rock Creek, 100; in all 1200 or 1300

Chinese engaged in mining. Besides there are 500 or 600 engaged as laborers on the

new roads696 between Yale and Lytton; and about 100 on the roads697 above Lillooet.

The balance not accounted for are either supposed to be engaged in trade, or are

scattered throughout the mines. We have, however, the data in this statement to

disprove entirely any false conclusion that may have obtained in reference to what

693 From Where Gold came from before the Discovery of the Cariboo. (1862, August 30). The British Colonist, p. 2 694 Ore residue (basically, leftovers). 695 “Chinamen are gradually getting possession by purchase of good claims, whilst many more are

being employed from $3 to $4 per day. En passant, there has been “much cry and little wool” about these same Chinamen (in Victoria), but the merchants of British Columbia are content to have many

thousands added to the present Celestial population.” ‘Jonah’.(1860, June 17). YALE

CORRESPONDENCE. The British Colonist, p. 3 696 “Trutch and Spence, the contractors on the Yale and Lytton route, for want of men, are compelled

to hire Chinamen. The wages they pay is $50 per month and board. 300 or 400 able bodied men can

find immediate employment and wages paid monthly.” LABORERS WANTED. (1862, June 14). The British Colonist, p. 3 697 “G. B. Wright & Co. had about 10 miles of their new road completed, and expected to have the whole

10 miles from the mouth of Quesnelle to Cottonwood river finished by the 16th of this month. They

have 520 men at work, viz.: 220 whitemen and 300 Chinamen. The axe–men are getting $75 per month

and found, graders $60, Chinamen $45.” Later from Cariboo. (1864, September 5).

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may be called “our old mining localities.” We are aware that Chinamen are more

patient, are content with smaller wages than white men, but that does not prove that

they are only making small wages698. When we take into consideration the cost of

transporting provisions to Rock Creek, Similkameen, Kamloops, and up and down

the Fraser River, there is abundant evidence that the Chinese must, as a general

thing, be making very fair wage699; and, as a matter of course, the diggings, though

not yielding a sudden fortune to the miner, would, if worked by the skill and

enterprise of the Caucasian, pay better wages than can be had in surface diggings in

California.

52. Claims in the Kootenays (1866)700

Parties from Kootenay inform us that the Chinese have taken almost entire

possession of that mining camp. When they first presented themselves to the diggings

and proposed to purchase claims701, the miners were informed by the Commissioner

that so long as they refused to sell out to Chinamen he would stand by them; but

should any sell to the Chinese he would feel himself bound to extend all the rights

and privileges to them which the law conferred upon free miners. The Celestials,

however, bid high for claims, and one after another sold out to them, many receiving

as high as $1000 for claims, which white men would not have paid one–half that sum

for. Thus a large proportion of the claims soon changed hands, and a Chinese

population rapidly took the place of Europeans; and we are told that next season will

scarcely find a white man there, as the Chinese are not only monopolizing the mines,

but trade and commerce also. A short time ago they paid down $6000 for a drove702 of

cattle703, and they are buying out merchants, butchers, bakers, &c.

53. Later, in the Kootenays (1867)704

We learn from Mr. Milby, who left Wild Horse Creek in November that he

considers that the best mining camp in the country. There were about 73 white men

698 “The Chinamen had a claim in the bed of the creek [Rock Creek], in which they said they were doing

well. Mr. Harrison estimates they were making from $5 to $6 per day.” From Kamloops to Rock Creek

and Similkameen. (1862, October 20). The British Colonist, p. 1 699 “The British Columbian has had a conversation with Captain Burgess, late of the schooner Endeavor, who reports 300 or 400 Chinamen at work on the North Fork of the Quesnelle, making $3

or $4 a day to the man; flour at the Forks has declined to 50c. per lb.” Later from Cariboo. (1862, June

26). The British Colonist, p. 3. I’ve left the price of flour in the quotation to give a rough idea of the real value of these wages. 700 From KOOTENAY. (1866, November 15). The British Colonist, p. 3 701 A claim gave a gold prospector sole right to look for gold in an area. 702 A group of animals that are being moved together (driven). 703 “There is a store, restaurant and saloon here [Dixon Creek], and the Chinamen supply the camp

with beef at 25c. per pound; flour sells at 25 and 26 cents; provisions are plentiful at present.” Mining

Intelligence. (1867, July 22). The British Colonist, p. 3 704 From FROM THE KOOTENAY MINES. (1867, January 28). The British Colonist, p. 2

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and 275 Chinamen wintering on the Creek, and all doing well. Every man had money

and business was brisk. The Chinamen live in style and are better off than their

countrymen in any other part of the Colony; they dress well and emulate the manners

and habits of the white man.

54. The Prettiest Nugget in British Columbia (1874)705

A Chinaman returning from his summer labor on Canon Creek, has among his

products a piece of gold weighing 25 oz., said by good judges to be the prettiest and

best and largest706 specimen found in British Columbia.

“The Old Cornish Pump at Quesnel, B. C.” (1940)707

705 From Up–Country. (1874, October 22). Daily British Colonist, p. 3 706 There was at least one larger: “Prettiest it may be; but for best and largest give us the Cassiar

beauty weighing 46 ¼ ozs.” YET ANOTHER. (1874, October 22). Daily British Colonist, p. 3 707 Union Oil Co. of Canada. (1940). No. 17 [Postcard]. UNION OIL COMPANY OF CANADA’S Color Photographic Scenes of B. C. Interior. The description on the back of the postcard reads: “The Old

Cornish Pump at Quesnel, B. C. is but one of the historic relics of the gold rush days featured at the

local museum which is rich in old Indian Curios. Quesnel is in the heart of the placer mining section

of the Cariboo.”

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V. Gold

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1. A Song of the Cariboo Gold Rush (1864)708

We’ve met, my friends, in Cariboo709, from countries far and wide,

In hopes to catch the glorious breeze that wafts to fortune’s tide;

That breeze around these mountain peaks, each eagerly pursues it,

The lucky few may find it fair, but most are sure to lose it. Here human nature may be seen, without a rag to cover it,

And “honesty,” like “splendid pay,” ‘tis seldom we discover it;

Here Jews and Gentiles710, Spaniards, French, and canny Scots unite

To constitute a motley throng, yet most attractive sight;

Here “Unionist” and “Federate” in amity combine711,

To sink a mighty contest in the deep and shining mine;

Here may be seen John Chinaman712, far from the rising sun,

And Chinamen from Canada, men that can hold their own; Here languages, the first and last, as sure’s a book’s a book,

Give forth their sweet angelic strains – the Gaelic713 and Chinook714 ;–

For did not Adam, when he met fond Eve’s ensnaring view,

Salute her with the famous words of “Camer–ha–shan–dhu?”715 With her sweet rosy lips, reply a charming, “Haah–kah–mah!”716 And what is the renowned Chinook, in history, I say?–

Although as pure as any “Klootch,”717 ‘twas born but yesterday;

Yet from its “tum–tum hyas klosh,”718 in inference I draw, That progress is the miner’s lot – they come, they “Klatawa!”719

In many ways they reach the mines, in many off they sail,

On horseback, foot, the “slow express,” and by the “lantern” trail.

Though many now are losing faith in Cariboo’s resources,

And on their lucky, with hearty will, pour brand new patent curses,

Still may they ne’er depart for Sooke720, lest they should be forsaken. And find their faith in Cariboo too soon, alas! was shaken.

708 From INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. (1864, November 28). The British Colonist, p. 2. 709 The Cariboo gold rush was at its height from 1860 to 1863. We’ll be reading a lot about it in the

articles below. 710 Non–Jewish people. 711 This poem was written toward the end of the United States’s Civil War (1861 – 1865). ‘Unionist’

and ‘Federate’ refer to the two sides of that conflict. 712 ‘John Chinaman’ is a racist term for any Chinese male. 713 Scotland’s Celtic language. 714 A trade language used widely in the Pacific Northwest. It was made from bits and pieces of various

Indigenous languages combined with European loan words. 715 An unidentified Chinook phrase. 716 Unidentified Chinook phrase. 717 Chinook. Short for ‘Klootchman’, ‘Woman’. 718 Chinook. ‘tumtum + hyas + kloshe’ = ‘heart + very + good’. 719 A Chinook word meaning ‘to go or walk’. 720 Gold was discovered on Sooke River in July of 1864, four months before this poem was published.

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Alas! upon the miner’s track misfortune follows close,

And lodges many worthy ones up in the “skokum house,”721

While scheming knaves roam all at large to fortunes make and mar–

We know them by their shining plumes, and by their choice cigar.

Deep in the bosom of the earth we search for shining gold;

One lucky fellow makes a raise, while ninety–nine are sold– The god of Fortune reigns supreme upon these lofty peaks,

And rolls his ball mysteriously along these winding creeks.

The honest miner toils away with shovel, pick, and rocker,

To find the “bed rock722 pitching” him – to “Davy Jones’s locker;”723

While, ten to one, the greatest “gut” that ever spoiled a crust

Comes in for all the splendid things that cling around the dust.

Then ladies fair, and gentlemen, presides the Miner’s God

Who wields at once a Wand of Gold and heavy Iron rod.

The Gold Fields of British Columbia Throughout the second half of the 19th century, as one British Columbian gold rush ended another one would start nearby. The following articles describe some of the major gold finds and what took place there.

2. Victoria and the Fraser River Gold Rush (1858)724 The first gold rush in B.C. was the Fraser Canyon gold rush, which started in late 1857. As the nearest settlement, the Hudson’s Bay Company trading post of Fort Victoria was a natural port of arrival for miners. In a matter of months, Victoria went from having a population of about 300 to one of several thousand. A reporter arriving in late 1858 felt they had missed the excitement.

Affairs in Victoria, I am obliged to say, have been growing from bad to worse

for the last five weeks. Everything has been flattened out – subsided – wilted. We

have a town of stores, filled with goods, and few to buy. Once in a while a boat starts

out with a few newly arrived adventurers for the mines. The purchases of these men

creates a temporary stir, which subsides, however, with their departure.

The greatest number of sea–going vessels at anchor, at one time, in this harbor

was twenty–eight (of all sizes not including boats); the number is much less now.

There are now in Victoria and environs about 3000 persons. Some estimate

them at 5000, but perhaps 3000 is not far from the correct number. The trading and

bartering population of San Francisco would be a fair sample of the class here, with

721 A slang term for jail. From the Chinook word ‘skookum’, meaning ‘strong’. 722 Bedrock is the solid rock beneath the soil. 723 Slang for the bottom of the sea. Often used in reference to drowned sailors and sunken ships. 724 From The Fraser River Gold Fields. (1858, November 8). The Sydney Morning Herald, p. 3.

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a large mixture of miners and adventurers generally, most of whom (of the latter

class) have an indefinite idea of going up somewhere to some undefined mining

locality in the interior, but are not sure as to the when or where. Many are prevented

by the conflicting accounts of the mines, and the dangers to be encountered in

reaching them, but the greater part are deterred by that lameness which besets many

a well laid plan – want of money. As for “distress, starvation,” & c., & c., which the

San Francisco papers have dilated upon in glowing colors, of late, nothing of the kind

exists, though, in the first days of this extraordinary excitement, such was the case

to some extent, owing to the exorbitant prices charged for provisions. At present

everything is low enough to allow the poorest to go well filled. The first favourable

news which reaches us from the mining districts will clear the place out of perhaps a

thousand, which will render Victoria even duller than now. By the word “dull” is here

meant a general stagnation in business. Nothing is done but in sacrificial auctions,

eating and drinking, at the houses of public entertainment, and the unnatural

excitement witnessed in the billiard and liquor saloons. On a recent arrival form the

Fraser River, with rather more favourable news from the mines, the panic was stayed

and the thermometer rose somewhat.

Governor Douglas725 left Victoria on the 30th ult.726, in the little steamer

Enterprise727, for Fort Hope. He intends visiting For Yale, and endeavours to arrange

some sort of treaty between the miners and Indians. The naval vessels at Esquimault

saluted him as he left. He is regularly saluted on leaving and arriving at this port, by

the ships of war in the former case, by the fort in the latter.

A considerable number of cattle have arrived here from the American ports

along the Sound. Quite a trade has sprung up between these localities.

Wells, Fargo, and Co.728 are receiving small amounts of gold–dust, but not

enough to warrant their establishing a branch of their own at any place on Fraser

River. At present Kent and Smith729 connect with them from Victoria, to all points

above.

725 Sir James Douglas (1803 – 1877). Originally a clerk for the North West Company, he continued to

work for the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) after the merger in 1821, and rose through the ranks to

become Chief Factor in 1839. He founded Fort Victoria in 1843, and in 1849 the HBC was given control

of Vancouver Island on condition that it establish a colony there. Though Richard Blanshard was the

first governor of Vancouver Island, he did not last long in the post, and was replaced by Douglas in

1851. In 1858, James Douglas was promoted to Governor of British Columbia and Vancouver Island

on condition that he relinquish his ties with the HBC. He served in this post until 1864. 726 Short for ‘ultimo’, Latin for ‘the last’. It’s an old–fashioned way of saying ‘of the previous month’. 727 The Enterprise was a United States steamship built in 1855. In 1858, it was sold to Thomas A. Wright, who wanted to profit from carrying people and cargo from Victoria to the mainland, where the

gold was. The Enterprise was taken apart in 1862 in response to a decline in business. 728 Wells, Fargo & Co. provided financial and express shipment services. The company still exists

today. 729 J. Horace Kent and H. F. Smith were the first Wells Fargo agents on the mainland of B.C. They

delivered packages, letters and gold between Victoria and the Fraser River gold mines. From their

office in Victoria, Wells Fargo could then send them to San Francisco, and from there to almost

anywhere in the world.

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Renewed restrictions upon trade are announced officially by the H. B. Co.730

Oppressive and almost prohibitory duties are levied upon all goods going into the

mines731, and the naval vessel stationed in Fraser River, will rigidly enforce the “law.”

Merchants look blank at each other and wish – deponent sayeth not what. By the last

published regulations, boats leaving Whatcom must first touch at Victoria, to obtain

permits to pass up the river, and those not seeing this publication, after having

struggled up to the station of the Recovery, must start back and procure the required

papers.

The weather has been cool and variable during the past week. Rain has fallen

on three days. The thermometer ranging between 52 and 68 degrees732 from morning

until sundown. Vegetation presents a singular contrast to the appearance of nature

in California. Green grass and foliage are everywhere seen, owing, doubtless, to the

considerable rains which have fallen this summer.

For the last ten days, expeditions have been on foot, in search of gold, about

twelve miles out of town, near a small lake. The thing is a veritable humbug733, got

up by some speculators, who had bought lands in that vicinity. Several hundred

people wandered out there, stayed a few days, and returned disgusted, and half–

disposed to lynch the originators of the deception. The report was first circulated by

some men who pretended to have dust for sale from the local Ophir734. One man

greatly increased the excitement by buying p (or pretending to) all the picks, pans,

and shovels in town. This procedure could not long remain concealed in such an

excitable community, and the road out to “Dead Man’s Creek” was thronged. A few

days after, they came straggling back hugely disgusted and vowing vengeance on the

authors of the humbug. The panic proved quite a harvest for the owners of wagons

and mules.

The steamer Maria has at last started for the Harrison River trail with thirty

mules. Those are to pack provisions for the workmen.

Specimens of beautiful coarse gold, in pieces varying about three dollars, are

shown me as I write. These are said to be from some locality on the Harrison River

route; and some Canadians are reported to be taking out fabulous sums there in dry

diggings. Nobody can trace the story to its source, and the circumstance shows that

in reality we know little more here of the actual state of affairs in the interior than

you do in California.

730 The Hudson’s Bay Company. 731 Still considered to be true a few years later. “By Governor Douglas’s proclamation of the 22nd of

December, all goods entering British Columbia by Rock Creek are subject to one shilling fine for every

fifty pounds, or twelve shillings per ton in addition to the duties provided for by the proclamation of

June, 1859, and the 20th of August, 1860. Besides these fines, three per cent. is levied on the assessed

value of all goods, merchandise and animals entering by that route – valued at Rock Creek prices. As

soon as roads can be completed up Fraser to the Rock Creek mines, no goods will be admitted except

they pass the Custom–house at New Westminster. This unjust law will either burden the Oregon

produce trade heavily, or drive miners south into the American gold mines on the Wenatchee and in

the Nez Perce territory.” BRITISH COLUMBIA. (1861, May 31). The Sydney Morning Herald, p. 8. 732 Fahrenheit. 52 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit = 11 to 20 degrees Celsius. 733 Fraud. 734 A town mentioned in the Christian Bible’s Books of Chronicles, famous for its wealth.

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The Vancouver Island Gazette735 has ceased operations for the present. The material shipped from California by Mr. Mariott736, still lies in the office of Wells,

Fargo, and Col, freight not paid.

An expedition to Queen Charlotte’s Island737, in search of rich gold mines said

to exist there, has been talked of, but nothing came of it.

Thirty miles to the north eastward of Victoria, are two agricultural districts,

known as the Corvetelicon and Sanitch Valleys. They are said to be fertile and

extensive, and well watered. Perhaps their resources are over–rated from

comparisons with the barren or densely forested lands hereabouts. The Company738

(who have the right from the government to dispose of lands to settlers on the island)

are having them surveyed, and nearly all the unoccupied lands have been bought up,

principally by speculators. The route thither leads through dismal forests, and over

rugged and lofty hills. My informant encountered a severe hail storm a fortnight since

in going there. The intermediate country is unsettled, and as wild and primitive as

at the creation. These are the only accessible farming lands of any extent in this part

of the island. Far to the northward the country is inhabited by savage tribes of

Indians.

Meantime it is safe to advise a cessation in all shipments here at present. Lo’s

[sic.] and goods are changing hands daily for less and less, and money is the scarcest

article in the market.

3. Gearing Up for the Gold Rush (1860)739

John Murray740 (ca. 1833 – 1905) was one of the Royal Engineers recruited to build roads to the gold fields in 1859. Once his tour of duty was over, he decided to stay and head to the gold fields. This was no simple task, as the following chronicle makes clear.

One cold, bleak morning about the end of February, 1860, James Sivewright741

and myself stood on the wharf at Victoria, all ready for a plunge into the great

735 A short–lived newspaper published for a few months in 1858. 736 Frederick Marriot (1805 – 1884). Famous for allegedly coining the word ‘airplane’ (or ‘aeroplane’). 737 Haida Gwaii. 738 The Hudson’s Bay Company. 739 Murray, J. (1895, March 22). IN FIFTY–NINE. Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 7. Written by John Murray (ca. 1833 – 1905). 740 “John Murray, an old–timer of the Lower Mainland, died at his residence at Port Moody on

Thursday evening. Deceased was 72 years of age, and was a corporal in the detachment of Royal

Engineers which came to New Westminster in 1859. At the expiration of his period of service, in lieu

of a pension, he took a grant of land on the site of what was afterwards known as the townsite of Port

Moody, which was owned by himself and Capt. Clarke.” OBITUARY. (1905, April 18). The Daily Colonist, p. 8. 741 “It was in 18[5]2 when Mr. Sivewright was but twenty–one years old that he bade his Scotland

home farewell and took passage on a ship bound for New York, where for several years he followed the

trade of mechanic. He soon tired of the cut–and–dried routine and decided to strike out west. In 1859

he crossed the Isthmus of Panama and up the coast to San Francisco, which was then a trading post.

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unknown ahead of us, that unknown which for the last three months – away in our

cabin in the woods beyond Elk lake – we had been talking and dreaming about, with

its auriferous bars and benches out of which we hoped to take a share of the wealth

hidden there. At our feet were lying two good sized packs, perhaps over sixty pounds

each, well roped, with a pair of leather slings or shoulder straps to each. One of the

packs contained fifty pounds of oatmeal, a small tin of butter, a small sack of salt,

and a little tea and sugar; the other contained our blankets, a change of

underclothing, a small bottle of quicksilver, a rocker iron, a copper plate, a frying–

pan and coffee pot, a tin kettle and a couple of tin plates. There were also tied to this

pack a shovel, a pick and a small axe. We each had a sheath knife and a good big tin

cup slung to our belts, and I was the proud possessor of one of those pepperbox

revolvers742 that were so common in those days. We two were just like a score of others

that were waiting with us, rigged out in duck overalls, grey woolen shirts and blue

reefing jackets. Jamie had a cloth cap on his head and I a Glengarry bonnet743. And

if we, like the rest of those who were waiting on the wharf that dreary February

morning, seemed, just what we were, cold and chilly, yet our hearts were glowing

with hope as we looked beyond the present, beyond the cold and drizzling rain that

had begun to fall, beyond the hardships that were ahead of us, and beyond to the

Fraser where, if our dreams were to come true, golden fortunes were waiting us in its

sands.

Lying at the wharf was the steamboat that was to take us over to the Mainland,

the Otter744, with her perpendicular green–painted sides and high bulwarks, so high

that a good–sized man could hardly look over them from her deck, built for rough

seas, stormy weather and Indian trading. She had weathered many a storm and

sailed summer after summer on the Northern coast, bartering and trading with the

natives; and there had been times when hundreds of painted and feathered warriors,

in great canoes, came paddling round her, looking for a chance to steal, or even worse.

Indeed a close watch had then to be kept, and with our crew under arms and boarding

nettings out, only one or two of them were allowed aboard at a time to trade.

Although no such rush was going up to the mines now as had been during the

last two years – 1860 being just between the California rush of 1858 and the almost

as great Canadian rush that came two years later in 1862 – still there were quite a

number like ourselves, waiting until the freight had been taken on and the gangway

clear to go on board; most of us were going up to the mines for the first time; a few

California did not appeal to him and he embarked on a vessel for Victoria, arriving there in the month

of September. He wintered there and that season engaged in many waits on the mainland and the

island and some hunting was done on the very ground where now stands Vancouver. In February,

with a party of miners he followed the Fraser river up to Lytton, and for two years engaged in mining

between that place and Lillooet. He then went to Cariboo and for forty–five years followed mining in

that section with varied success.” OLD MAN SEES RAILWAY TRAIN FOR FIRST TIME. (1907,

November 26). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 14. 742 The first repeating revolver, named for the resemblance of its multiple barrels to a pepper mill. 743 A traditional Scottish woolen cap. 744 The second steamship to serve the Pacific Northwest. She was built in 1852 for the Hudson’s Bay

Company, and scrapped in 1890.

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were returning to their claims after spending the winter and their money in Victoria,

and to the new–comers like Jamie and I they seemed to be great fellows as they spoke

to us in a patronizing way, or discoursed among themselves about pay streaks in the

benches, colors to the shovel, cents to the pan, and diggings on the bars.

As soon as we got on board we stowed our packs under shelter and went on

deck to watch our boat working her way out past the Beaver rock745 – that at that

time was a dangerous object in the middle of the harbor – one to where the white caps

were racing and chasing one another up the Straits of Fuca from the Pacific.

It was a dismal, dreary day, and as we rounded Trial island we were pitching

and rolling in a choppy sea, so that only those who had their sea legs could stand on

deck. As we turned our backs to the Straits and the Sound, and headed up the coast

under the lee of Vancouver Island, it was only now and then through the mist and

drizzle that we could see the faint outlines of the shores to the right and to the left,

and we missed what in fine weather would have been a delightful sail between the

wooded bays of Vancouver on the one side and San Juan and adjacent islands on the

other. We passed out from the shelter of the islands we had been sailing amongst,

through Plumper’s Pass into the Gulf of Georgia, in the teeth of a fresh gale, our boat

plunging and pitching along for hours through rain and spray, until the ghost–like

outlines of a few scattering trees at the mouth of the Fraser began to loom out through

the mist, looking like so many sentinels keeping watch and ward over the treasures

that were beyond.

With our entry into the river the rolling and pitching ceased, but the rain still

came pelting down and for the whole of the 15 to 16 miles from the mouth to

Queensboro746 not a sign or sound of any living thing was to be seen or heard, not a

settler’s cabin, not an Indian camp, not a canoe or boat on the water did we see, not

even the whirr of a duck hastening out of our way or the splash of a salmon leaping

in the river; only the constant drip, drip of rain everywhere. But everything has an

end and so had that cheerless day’s sail and we were both glad when Queensboro, on

the high north bank just where the river widens, suddenly appeared out of the mist

and fog ahead of us, a jumble of white tents, black burnt stumps and wooden houses

with an occasional great fir or pine standing far away above all.

745 The removal of Beaver rock was plagued with delays and misfortune. Thomas Spence was first

charged with removing the rock in April of 1875. Two years later, work was still in progress when “the

barge and engine house of Mr. Spence […] took fire and were consumed. The enging was badly

damaged. The loss was about $1,000. The watchman was on the rock at the time and cannot account

for the fire.” FIRES. (1877, April 24). Daily British Colonist, p.3. The rock was still a hazard to navigation in March of 1881 when work was suspended for financial reasons. Mr. Spence fell down a

flight of stairs to his death in June of the same year, but work continued and in late July stone from

Beaver rock was used to create a bulkhead across from the Marine Hospital. The 1880–81 report on

Dominion public works in British Columbia confirmed removal was still ongoing, and as late as 1913

the government would pay to “remove the already crushed material at Beaver Rock, which for many

years has been a menace to navigation in Victoria Harbor.” ORANGE PEEL DREDGE FOR INNER

HARBOR. (1913, September 18). The Daily Colonist, p. 17. 746 The original name of New Westminster. More details are found below.

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There was no lack of life as the Otter hauled up the wharf. Whites, Indians and

h–––––s747, with a sprinkling of uniformed soldiers, made a fair show of animated

nature. Queensboro, the capital of British Columbia, soon to be named by Her

Majesty Queen Victoria “New Westminster,” was only now in its infant struggles. The

capital in 1858 was located by the Hudson Bay Company near Langley, on the south

side of the river, and called by them “Derby.” There was a town laid out, lots sold and

houses erected, but on the arrival from England of Colonel Moody748, with a

detachment of Royal Engineers – for strategic reasons – the site was changed to the

north bank of the Fraser, just where the two entrances or arms of the river converge

into the main stream. A town site was laid out on the face of the sloping bank and

named Queensboro. Here Jamie left me with our packs under a shed on the wharf,

and went to see what the chances were for getting a boat to take us up the river.

Whilst waiting for his return, I met two old friends, who about eighteen months before

came up from Panama to San Francisco with me on the steamship John L.

Stephens749 – Sergeant McColl750 and Jim Ellard751 – both of them belonging to the

Royal Engineers. They said they were living at what they called the Camp, about a

mile and a half up the river, and they also told me that a party of engineers were

going up soon to build a road from the head of river navigation at Yale through to the

mines.

Jamie on his return brought back the good news that the new river steamer

Henrietta was going to make her first trip the next day as far as the Harrison River,

and that we could sleep on board. We were not long in transferring our packs from

the damp wharf to the dry cabin, and not much longer before our blankets were

spread in a quiet corner and we had turned in.

Next morning was a transformation indeed from the day before. The rain had

ceased and only a few fleecy clouds floated overhead. The sun had not yet risen, but

the thermometer had gone down to freezing point, and the black logs and stumps of

yesterday, that covered most of the cleared part of the town site, were now white and

glistening with frost, changing the whole aspect of the hillside and brightening with

a silver lustre the picture before us. At the wharf below were lying the two crack

pioneer river boats, Moody and Douglas, owned and sailed by two experienced river

747 An offensive term for people of mixed heritage. 748 Richard Clement Moody (1813 – 1887), Royal Engineer and first Lieutenant–Governor of British

Columbia. 749 A Pacific Mail Steam Ship Company steamship, built in 1852. From 1853 to 1860, she mostly served

the San Francisco – Panama route. 750 William McColl arrived in Victoria with other members of the Royal Engineers in October of 1858.

In February of 1860, when this story takes place, he petitioned the government to be allowed to bring

his wife and four children over from England. At the time of his death in June 1865, he was a toll

collector for the Alexandra Bridge of the Cariboo Road. 751 James Ellard arrived with William McColl in October 1858. In later life, he would run a billiard

saloon and a grocery store.

327

steamboat men, Captains Irving752 and Murray753. Those steamboats were just like

the ones we see on the river to day, built to draw very little water, with wheels at

their stern in place of at their sides, in order to navigate shoal water and narrow

channels. They were fitted with fine spacious and well furnished cabins and

staterooms. In those days it was a real luxury to travel in them. At this time of the

year the river was too low to be navigated by steamers of this class, and even the little

Henrietta, on account of the shallow waters above, could then only go to Harrison

river, half way to Yale, the head of steamboat navigation.

Captain Murray, part owner of the two steamers mentioned above, soon after

this sold out his interest in them to his partner Captain Irving, and sailed for

Australia, where he introduced the stern wheelers and built and owned several

himself, navigating them successfully on the Murray and other rivers there. We did

not seek to go on shore, as our little boat was showing signs of life, her wheel

beginning slowly and spasmodically to revolved, and her engines to pant and throb.

So with the last long toot of her whistle the lines were cast off, and she baked slowly

astern, and then went out from the wharf up the stream, we had a good view of the

town that was in those days nicknamed Stump town, and we at once recognized the

correctness of Colonel Moody’s judgment in selecting this commanding position as the

site for the capital of British Columbia.

We had a good view of the shore as we steamed up stream; dozens of big

Northern canoes lying along the beach above the town were being repaired or

transformed into rowboats, and many of the miners who had passed the summer

before successfully in the mines, and who had spent the past winter in Victoria and

Queensboro, were here fitting up or repairing their boats and canoes and getting

ready to take in their year’s stock of provisions, preparatory to starting back to their

claims. So all along the water front the sound of hammer, axe and saw was to be

heard, and the beach nearly all the way to the camp was dotted with tents and

shanties, and men were hard at work. Meanwhile, as we steamed into the wide reach

of the river above the town, we passed on our left the deep bay or bight, on the slope

up from which was laid out the camps of the Royal Engineers, consisting of wooden

houses, with a sprinkling of tents, and a small wharf in front, all enclosed by a dense

forest, on the borders of which men were busy in the midst of little clearings chopping

and burning.

752 William Irving (1816 – 1872). “Capt. Irving was a native of Scotland and […] came to Oregon in

early times, when he was engaged in the steamboat business on the Columbia River and was a member

of the original Oregon Steam Navigation Company. He came to British Columbia about [1860], and

has ever since been actively engaged in steamboating between New Westminster and Yale. An intrepid

navigator, possessed of more than ordinary pluck and push, he had an open hand and a warm heart

for the needy.” Death of Capt. Irving. (1872, August 29). Daily British Colonist, p. 2. 753 Murray Thain (1834 – 1908). “In 1849, like many another, he and his three brothers were lured to

California by the discovery of gold there and after a long voyage around the Horn they reached San

Francisco. At the age of twenty–six he became master of the brigantine “Colonist” owned by Price &

Company, and sailed between Puget Sound, Fraser river and San Francisco. When the gold excitement

broke out in Cariboo he joined in the rush to that section but was unsuccessful in making his fortune.”

OBITUARY NOTICES. (1908, September 11). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 6. In later years he ran a stevedoring business, was appointed harbor master of Vancouver and worked for the post office.

328

Here, as in Queensboro, black logs and stumps were amongst the strong

features of the picture; yet the picture is not complete, for near the centre of the

picture was flying “the old flag,”

The flag that braved a thousand years,

The battle and the breeze,754

reminding us of the brave men who had fought and conquered, or fought and died

under its folds. Now the river view opened out to us an avenue of dark green with

Douglas island barring our way at the far end, whilst away beyond in the distance to

the northeast the white, snowclad coast range blended with the floating cumuli clouds

that came sailing down from the northwest. We steamed on past, still on our left, the

brown Brunette, that came stealing, silently and stealthily, from where the thick

bushes overhung its deep, dark, trout–haunted pools, out into the waters of the

Fraser, past the Coquitlam that for many a mile came brawling, rumbling and

foaming over its rocky bed, down from the deep lake that lay clear and blue in the

bosom of the mountains, past the calm Pitt, almost as still and calm as the lake from

which it flowed. Now we are skirting along the north side of Douglas island with its

thick woods; now we are passing Kaitzie on our left, its long rancheria built of upright

timbers with smoke from the family fires within finding its way through the roof in

twenty different places, painted and carved totem posts at each end, and in front a

row of blanketed Indians755 sitting motionless in the sun watching us puffing past.

Dreamily I watched the rippling water as our little boat headed across the river for

the Langley bank, and as I inhaled the spicy odor that the wind bore down from the

swaying pines I forgot the present and my mind went back to other days, and again

the scented breeze was

Stirring the leaves and stirring my heart

With a fragrance of long ago.

Till the past once more, its banished days,

With hills of blue and broomy braes,

And bosky glens and breezy bays,

Came back in the noontide glow.

And I saw my boyhood’s home again

With its garden fresh and green,

Its rowan trees, its hawthorn hedge,

The shady walk by the river’s edge,

The bowery set on the mossy ledge.756

754 From the ballad ‘Ye Mariners of England’, written by Thomas Campbell (1777 – 1844). The first

verse reads “Ye mariners of England! / Who guard our native seas / Whose flag has braved, a thousand

years, / The battle and the breeze! / Your glorious standard launch again, / To match another foe! / And

sweep through the deep, / While the stormy tempests blow; / While the battle rages loud and long, /

And the stormy tempests blow.” 755 Probably members of the q̓íc̓əy̓ (Katzie) First Nation. 756 I’m unable to identify this poem.

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“Hullo Murray; yer there, are ye!” startled me from my dreaming, and I turned

to see the speaker standing beside my partner. He was I should think well over his

fortieth year, tall, nearly six feet in height with shoulders slightly stooping, squarely

though loosely built, giving one the idea that his legs and arms were not well fastened

to his body. His hair and his complexion were dark, and he had black, dyspeptic

looking eyes, with dark circles around them, and a large, firm chin, covered with a

short, black stubble of hair. He was dressed in a suit of well worn gray. On his head

was a bonnet that had once been blue and that evidently had seen better days. He

was indeed a Celt of the Black Roderick type, you would have said, even had you not

heard my partner say “Here’s Cam’ell.”

Yes, it was Campbell; better known in later years as “British Siberia.” We had

met him at the house of Cameron the blacksmith757, in Victoria, the winter before, so

we were not strangers. He was a pessimist of the most melancholy order. With him

the past and present was all wrong and the future, as he saw it, a hopeless muddle.

His first start in business, a failure, seemed to have changed his nature to a doubter

of all things and all men, leaving him only able to see the deep black clouds and none

of the sunshine of life. He vehemently denounced British Columbia and its people;

yet he clung to it and them with all the force of his Scotch nature. Once he traveled

to California, “no’ to come back,” he said, and for a year he ranged over and through

her mountains and glens, but just as surely as the magnet turns to the north so he

turned to British Siberia, as he called British Columbia, just to denounce her as

bitterly as ever. Again, later on, about the end of the seventies, he became, as he said,

so disgusted with British Siberia758, declaring that it was not fit for a white man to

live in – that he started off for Australia and New Zealand. This time he was emphatic

in saying “Ye’ll never see me again, an’ I’ll be glad when the day comes that I can

shake the dust o’ British Siberia off my feet for ever.” So one morning, he sailed out

of Burrard’s Inlet in a lumber–laden ship. Some who knew him and who saw him sail

away prophesied that he would be back inside of a year; and so he was. How he came

I don’t know, but inside the year he appeared, unchanged in every way, back to the

old wandering life, now in the mountains, and now on the Coast doing a little work

here and a little work there, always independent, making money and spending it

almost as soon as made, back to live and wait for the coming of the day which came

at last, when he laid down his old tired and worn–out body not amongst strangers,

but amongst those who knew him and, I believe, after all under the sod of the land

he loved.

757 The First Victoria Directory of 1860 lists T. Cameron as a farrier and blacksmith on Cormorant

Street. 758 Given his trademark phrase, Campbell may be the anonymous Miner who wrote a frustrated letter

to the Colonist in 1876: “Two millions of dollars came out of the Cassiar gold mines last year. One

thousand men were left in the wilds of British Siberia, away from all pleasant surroundings, getting

gold, and that, too, without a thought; none to represent them or get a law passed for their benefit –

nothing done, in fact, either for the comforts of their bodies or souls. Thousands of this money are spent

by the miners wintering here and yet it seems to me (in many instances) they are hardly tolerated,

and considered not respectable enough for its society.” A MINER. (1876, January 16). Neglect of

Cassiar. Daily British Colonist, p. 2.

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But here we are at Langley, with its Hudson’s Bay Company’s fort and

stereotyped wharf, group of Indians, h–––––s and Hudson Bay men, as the employes

of that company were then called. This was to be the last place of call until we reached

the end of our day’s journey at Harrison river; and as we steamed on up the stream,

James, myself and Campbell stood watching the river between its banks, twisting

with many sinuosities through narrow channels and over shallow bars, some of them

so shallow that we could hear the grating of the stones and gravel on the steamer’s

bottom. Away to the south rose up over ten thousand feet high from what looked to

be an almost level plain, the great white pyramid of Mount Baker in Washington

territory, glistening in the winter’s sun, and all along the river now, Indians in their

canoes became plentiful. Some anchored near deep pools were busy fishing, some

were gliding silently down the stream with hardly an effort, and others heading up

were putting in their best licks with both paddle and pole. During all this time James

and I had been busy pumping Campbell about the country, its mines and its people,

and he, nothing loath, had been giving us his ideas from his standpoint on all three.

They were not very cheering I must say, for when we asked him about the country,

“Well,” he said, in his slow way, “it isn’t good for much.” And the pith of his story was

that the low lands were only uncultivatable swamps or morasses; the high lands

gravel beds covered with great trees growing so closely together that one could hardly

walk between them, or it would take a lifetime to clear a lot of ten acres, and even if

the lot could be cleared nothing would grow on it. In fact, according to him, the

country was not fit for a white man, hardly even fit for an Indian to live in. Well, we

thought, he surely can’t have anything to say against the mines; at any rate they are

good; but he soon undeceived us, and we had to look at them through his colored and

distorted glasses, as he declared that the stories about their great richness were all

lies – the few good claims that had been discovered never paid as much as was

reported, and further that they were about worked out. He allowed that there were a

few more claims that paid grub or even a little more, but they were scarce and hard

to find. The very gold, he said, taken out of the diggings was not as much value as

Australian or California gold. To cap it all he asserted that in another year the mines

would be deserted. When we asked him about the people, it was the same story,

traducing them one and all; they were worthless adventurers, the scum of the Pacific

Coast, even those of them who professed to be practical miners knew little or nothing

about it. Above all, he warned us to look out for ourselves, as nine out of every ten of

those we would meet would try to rob us, or if we escaped them the Indians would

murder us as they had done many already.

Well, all this did make us open our eyes and wonder if all we had heard of the

country and its mines before had only been a lot of lies, or if Campbell himself was

not one of Job’s renowned comforters.

However, we had made the plunge and we could not go back even if we had

wished to do so, for all our capital, except five or six dollars apiece, was lying invested

in the packs at our feet. So we said where others had gone we could go, and we were

going to get there somehow, in spite of all the lions that Campbell had been trying to

place in our way.

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But our journey on the little boat was now nearly over, and the sun was sinking

behind a bank of dark clouds down in the west, as the Henrietta slowing up, entered

the mouth of the Harrison. A long gang–way was shoved out to meet another that

was laid over the mud flat where a number of canoes and boats were lying. Jamie and

I shouldered our packs and walked the plank down, and then up to the top of the

bank. On our left there were a number of Indian houses half–hidden amongst thick

bushes and shrubs and overlooked by one or two tall firs. In front of us standing out

by itself was a good sized square–built log house called “the hotel,” while patches of

deciduous trees and bushes – whose swelling buds were beginning to show a shimmer

of green after the extraordinary mild winter that was just hen passing away, were

growing along the banks of both the Harrison and the Fraser. More than a score of

Indians old and young, and a few white men were standing or sitting watching our

arrival, and an Indian in a not over clean white apron was pounding away on a

battered brass gong at the door of the hotel as we entered. Although four lighted

candles were standing in a row on a long narrow table at one side it took us a little

while before we could place things in the dim light. Six half windows did not give

much light in the daytime, and still less now, for only a dim glimmer from without

showed where they were. On the walls were five or six shelves, held up by stout

wooden pins driven into augur holes in the logs. The ends of the pins stood out from

the shelves, making hooks to hang hats, caps and clothes on, a couple of dozen wooden

stools and boxes for guests like ourselves to site on, were scattered around. At one

end of the room was the door through which we entered from the river, at the other

end another door being the entrance from the kitchen. A round dingy looking brass

clock was fastened on the wall above, that with a shaky quavering sound struck the

hours as they went by. At one side of the room was a large open fire place, where a

fire was smouldering against a big black log giving a promise of comfort and warmth

later on. On the other side of the room was the long narrow table we have spoken

about before lit up by its four candles and on which the Chinese cook was busy setting

out the dishes for our supper. The table had no white cloth to cover it but the boards

on top were clean and bright and there was no danger of any breakage to the crockery

ware, for it was all tin or iron, plates, cups, spoons, knives and forks and even the

dishes on which the supper was served were of the same material.

We were glad when our portly hose made the announcement that supper was

ready for this was our first square meal since we left Victoria almost two days before

and we had been living on the stock of bread and cheese that we had taken in there,

the last of which had disappeared this morning. So […] we carried our stools to the

table and with fifteen or sixteen others took our places there. We gave the big dishes

of pork and beans759 which were the substantial part of the supper, a hearty welcome,

and not only to this substantial part, but to the boiled rice and stewed dried apples

that followed, did we do ample justice, and with Dutch oven bread, white and sweet,

759 “The travelling expenses of the Gold Commissioner down there and back twice last season would

have paid to cut a trail, which can be done in 70 miles so that animals can get there and give the

miners fresh meat; but perhaps, as usual, it is thought beans and bacon are good enough for A

MINER.” Ibid.

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washed down with strong, black Congou, called then Hudson Bay tea, we made a

supper fit for Epicurus himself had he fasted since morning.

As soon as the Chinaman removed from the table the dishes and the remains

of the feast some of the guests pulled their stools up to it, and to pass the time away

engaged in cribbage, euchre and forty–fives, whilst others of us drew our seats round

the fireplace, with its cheerful glow and warmth, and listened until bedtime to many

a stirring tale and humorous story of California or British Columbia and their mining

camps. When we lay down to rest, we did so, under a roof perhaps the last time for

many days, to dream of some of the stirring times we had just been hearing about.

4. The First Pioneer to East Kootenay (1902)760

Robert Lake Dore was the first pioneer to East Kootenay and the discoverer of

the fabulous richness of the placer diggings on Wild Horse Creek. He has been

engaged in mining business during the greater portion of his lifetime. When

comparatively young he was attracted by the spirit of adventure to California and

came to that country in June 1850. Along with a cousin, he engaged in mining in that

country until May 1858, when he first came to British Columbia. He started from San

Francisco to Victoria and went up the Fraser River in a small boat. He mined on

Emery’s bar, and in the autumn went back to California. He left California in 1862

for Idaho, where diggings had been discovered, and in the fall of 1863 he started out

with a prospecting party of seven to go to the head waters of the Columbia River. He

had received a letter from Montana telling him that gold had been got in a creek at

its head waters by a h––––– Indian called Findlay. This creek is now known as

Findlay Creek, and although close to the head waters of the Columbia, it empties into

the Kootenay.

Winter came on and they were unable to get in, so they returned to the Walla

Walla valley, where the party spent the winter. On 17th March 1865, they left for the

Kootenay country. There were no trails, and they had no guide. Dore, however, made

the acquaintance of an Indian chief called Spokane Garry761, who drew him a good

map of the country, and by that map they travelled and after a journey of about 400

miles struck the Kootenay River about 4 miles north of the St. Mary’s River. They

saw not a white man in the whole course of that long travel. The rivers were crossed

on rafts and the horses were made to swim over. They had 25 horses for pack and

saddle uses. They had lots of grub when they started, but it was going out by the time

the Kootenay was reached. This river was crossed, and the first camp was pitched on

Bummer’s Flat. This was about the beginning of April, 1864. The Kootenay Indians

760 From THE PIONEER PROSPECTOR. (1902, January 9). The Outcrop, p. 1. 761 Chief Slough–Keetcha (1811 – 1892) of the Middle Spokane tribe. In his youth, he was chosen by

the Hudson’s Bay Company to attend an Anglican school in Manitoba. The school gave him the name

Spokane Garry, as it was their policy to re–name their Indian pupils after their tribe and a respected

non–Indigenous person. Garry returned to the Spokane after his father’s death in 1828, and set up

his own religious school. There, he preached an idiosyncratic form of Christianity that led to conflict

with local missionaries.

333

they found very friendly. They remained some little time on Bummer’s Flat, and from

there three of the boys went to Findlay Creek, but finding nothing they came back,

but by this time gold had been struck rich on Wild Horse Creek. The creek had no

name, but on their arrival they saw a stud horse near its mouth. He was alone, and

so they named the creek Lone Horse Creek, but the name was afterwards changed

into Wild Horse Creek. Mr. Dore went up this creek to prospect. After prospecting for

several days nothing was found, but after moving further up the creek, about 4 miles,

a creek claim was struck, then bar diggings were found. Mr. Dore found the first gold

right in the bottom of the creek.

When encamped at Bummer’s Flat, a party of ten came in from Montana led

by Jack Fisher. They were also bound for Findlay Creek. They went there, but came

back discouraged. In the meantime, Mr. Dore had moved his party up the creek and

were busy prospecting. […] Mr. Dore himself put in his first sluice boxes and the

gravel was so rich that they had to wash up about three times a day. The largest lean

out in one day was 250 ozs., about $4500. With the aid of a bowie knife and an axe,

Mr. Dore made a wheelbarrow which assisted operations so extensively that four men

working together with the aid of the wheelbarrow would average about $7,500 per

week. A ditch was also put in, the water in which could readily have sold at $1 per

inch per day. Mr. Dore afterwards constructed a larger ditch called the Victoria ditch

and which still exists at this day. This ditch held 2500 inches of water, and was sold

for four bits, 50 cents, an inch per day. The cost of its construction was $45,000 and

it took two seasons to finish it. By the time it was finished there was a great change

in the camp. There would be about 3000 men in camp and all doing well. Wages were

$7 per day, but Mr. Dore has paid as high as $8 per day.

The cause of this great influx was that the moment Mr. Dore struck it rich, he

sent back to Walla Walla for pack trains to come in with provisions, and also sent out

news as to the richness of the country. People soon came flocking in. Provisions were

very scarce until the pack trains got in. Mr. Dore’s party lived for one month on flour

and coffee without sugar. Four hundred pounds of flour was all they had to serve

them. Provisions had to be freighted from a long distance, and the cost of freight from

Walla Walla was from 75c. to $1 per lb., bacon was the same price. There were lots of

drinking saloons, but there was comparatively very little drunkenness. The first

Chinaman came in 1865. He kept a lodging house.

The first Government officials came in about three months after the camp was

formed. By that time there were 3000 miners at work on the creek. The first Gold

Commissioner was Mr. Haines. Mr. Dore speaks highly of Mr. Haines. He says, “He

was a perfect gentleman and a very fine man.” Law and order were maintained by a

committee of about fifty, of which Bob Dore was President. The members of the

committee were selected by him. The only serious offence was prior to the advent of

the Gold Commissioner, and was a murder committed by Yeast Porter Bill, a

desperado from Montana, who shot a man called Tom Walker. Yeast Porter Bill

succeeded in escaping from the camp, but as soon as the President of the Law and

Order Committee heard of the occurrence, he followed in pursuit, and overtook him

near Brewery Creek. He was rolled up in his blankets and asleep. He was waked up

334

and with the aid of Mr. Dore’s shooting iron was persuaded to holdup his hands, allow

his pistols to be removed and walk back to camp. He was given a fair trial. A judge,

sheriff and jury were selected who tried him, but he was acquitted. The committee

were not satisfied, so he was told to clear out within half an hour, and he did so.

Intimation was also made throughout the camp that if any person drew a pistol or

knife in camp, short work would be made of him. This had a most tranquilising effect

and the camp was one of the most peaceful camps in the north. Shortly after this

event, the Commissioner came in. His arrival was not expected so early, or else the

prisoner would not have so been tried, but retained for the Commissioner’s disposal

of him.

The Commissioner had only a recorder with him, and a constable was

appointed. The claims were all properly surveyed and laid out, and there were no

disagreements. Everything remained orderly in the camp. The extent of a claim was

100 feet, but original locators were entitled to 150 feet.

The diggings continued good for four years, then a new excitement broke out

down south in Coeur d’Alene, which took away a great number. Mr. Dore sold out

about this time and went north to Peace River. This would be in 1870. He afterwards

with a large party explored the east side of the Rockies opposite Wild Horse Creek,

for traces of gold going through the mountains, but they were unsuccessful. Eight of

them crossed over the mountains and came back into Wild Horse Creek where they

sunk a big shaft. They went down a depth of 80 feet and had to stop, as they had no

machinery to pump out the water. This shaft is about 3 miles above the ground owned

by the Invicta Placer Company. This shaft is now owned by another company who

has done some more work on it. It is an attempt to discover the old channel of the

Wild Horse Creek.

Mr. Dore’s next resting place was up in the Cassiar, where he abode one winter,

then he wandered on to Alaska. This being the north limits, he returned south and

got as far as Old Mexico. Prospecting through Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado

occupied some few years of his life time. […] Mr. Dore is now living in Fort Steele.

5. “We opened fire on them killing eleven” (1884)762

A Herald reporter met Mr. Wesley the other day at the Grand Central Hotel,

when the following conversation took place:

“I understand, Mr. Wesley, you are an old miner?”

“Well, yes, I have been mining for 21 years.”

“Will you please give us a little of your life as a miner?”

“I commenced mining in California on Blakes’s Bar on the Feather River, about

fifteen miles from Marysville – it was placer mining; we did very well, our claims

averaged us 2½ ozs. of gold a day, per man, which would equal $45; we made lots of

money and spent lots of it – California was lively in those days. I remained there for

three years ‘til ’62, then the stampede for Eureka commenced; I went there but was

762 From A Miner’s Experiences. (1884, July 8). The Calgary Weekly Herald, p. 2.

335

one of those unlucky coons that got a claim on the Greenhorn’s Gulch and it didn’t

pan out when we got to bed rock worth a cent.

“There was great excitement then about the Fraser River, so we started up to

The Bells, at the foot of the Cascades and the last portage on the Columbia River, and

fitted out there for the Fraser; I guess the biggest mining outfit the world ever saw

started out on that expedition – there were about 800 of us; we took with us for a

guide David McLaughlin, a h––––– son of Gov. McLaughlin, of the Hudson’s Bay Co.

who resided in Oregon City, ruled over the Pacific Coast and was the most noted man

they ever had. David was a graduate of Oxford, finely educated and spoke Latin better

than any priest we ever met on the Coast, but with all his training he was a perfect

Indian, in fact he could out–Indian any Indian I ever saw.

“When we got opposite Colville in the Okanogan Canyon we were met by

Indians demanding tribute for passing through their country; they demanded our

horses and supplies; we parlied with them for a long time; Dave was the only man

who could talk to them and they told him if he didn’t leave us they would kill him for

bringing white men into the country; Dave tried to leave us but we got him and tied

him up and refused to give them anything or go back; they then came during the night

to steal our horses and we opened fire on them killing eleven and wounding one; next

day we had another parley when they agreed to take half of what they had demanded

the day before, but we still refused and they said they would fight us, after that there

was no more parley, when we saw an Indian we fired and they did the same; we fought

there for about two weeks when Angus McDonald, Chief Factor of the H. B. Co., came

out and stopped the fighting, and that act I believe lost him his position – the

Hudson’s Bay Company were just as much averse to the whites entering the country

as were the Indians; we had sixty–two men killed and wounded; the war being over

we made a feast and the Indians and whites sat down together and shook hands over

it and we went on taking Daniel, one of McDonald’s sons, with us for a guide.

“In due time we struck the Fraser River near what is now Fort Yale, there we

mined up and down the river on the bars – the Fraser is all bar mining; we couldn’t

make any money on it. Forty–two of us then formed a party and went down to the

head of Peace River; we worked there one year and got plenty of gold, but could not

get supplies; we had to live on the country like the Indians, digging roots, hunting,

etc., we soon got tired of it and came down the range on this side.

“That fall Florence in Idaho was struck and we made a stampede for it; that

was the poor man’s mine; we struck gold from the grass roots to bedrock, which we

found at a depth of three feet, the gold was not of very fine quality, it only averaged

$12 per oz., but there was a world of it; on the average, while I remained there, four

months, we made $50 per day, but I was looking for something bigger and struck out

for Alder Gulch, Montana, and worked there two years; it was the finest camp we

ever did strike, any man that would go down and work – we were too rich to work

much – could make $100 a day; but the whiskey brought from Salt Lake City, called

Valley Tan, together with the dance houses played havoc with us.

“Kootenay in the meantime was struck and we pulled out for it late in the fall;

we got as far as the Tobacco plains on the boundary line when a big snow came on

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and we camped there for the winter. When the snow got hard, some of us went over

to Kootenay on snow–shoes, but didn’t stay. It was not rich enough for us, though

there were many thought it rich enough to remain there.

“We then went up the Hell’s Gate River to Immigrant Gulch; that is where a

tenderfoot struck it rich. He was a pure immigrant, hence it was given the name of

Immigrant Gulch. His claim was rich, but there was not much outside of his claim.

The original party had been breaking up, from time to time, until I was the only one

left; from here I went over to Cedar Creek, about fifty miles from the present

Cordelaine mining camp and struck a very rich thing; I remained there one year and

cleared $15,000 over all expenses. I then made for Alaska, on the Stikeen River, and

found good gold, but it cost so much to get it out that no man could make it pay at

that time.

“I made my way back to California and engaged with the California and South

America Mining Co. to put up a quartz mill for them in Peru, South America. While

I was waiting for things to be got ready to go to Peru, I paid a visit to the Comstock

Lode, Virginia City, Nevada; it was the best mine and I believe more money was taken

out of it than any silver mine in the world; the lode really consisted of fifteen claims.

Comstock was the original discoverer, but the majority of the claims were bought up

by the Bonanza Kings Flood, O’Brien, Mackey and Fair. Mackey is the richest man

in the world. He was a prospector and was ‘grub–staked’ by Flood and O’Brien, two

whiskey traders, to prospect a claim for them which he called the Consolidated

Virginia. […]

“I only worked in this mine for a short time, then went to Peru. It is the finest

mining country in the world for diamonds, gold and silver, but the government is very

bad. After getting my machinery up and working, I was made superintendent of the

mine, which I held until the war broke out, when the liberal party burned down our

buildings and blew up our machinery. They gave us fifteen days to leave the country,

and we returned to San Francisco. There I heard of the prospecting that had been

done in this region, the discovery of the Healy Mine, etc., and knowing the Mountains

pretty well I thought I would come out and try my luck. I am fitting out an expedition

now, and expect to start out during the next two or three weeks.”

6. From Hill’s Bar to Big Bend (1886)763

The first actual discovery of gold by white men in British Columbia is wrapped

in obscurity, and all that can be stated in regard to it is that its presence or “color”

was known to the early Hudson’s Bay men, on the bars of the Fraser river. The first

published account of the discovery, late in 1857, of the precious metal, was made by

two men named Adams & Macdonald, who found diggings on a bar of Thompson river

and brought a large prospect to Steilacoom, W. T.764

HILL’S BAR

763 From THE GOLD DISCOVERIES OF BRITISH COLUMBIA. (1886, January 1). The Daily Colonist, p. 2. 764 Washington Territory.

337

In 1858 a man named Hill discovered the metal in paying quantities on the

Fraser river on a bar caused by a big bend in the course of the stream some miles

below Yale. Though in those days proper appliances for the complete extraction of

gold dust from the sand could not be procured, yet, as before said, it was taken out in

sufficient quantities to make it pay. This discovery formed the first excitement and

brought hundreds of men from California and other parts to try their luck in the new

find. In six months over half a million dollars were taken out. From Hill’s bar, mining

proceeded away up the Fraser to the Quesnelle, and from the headwaters of the

Quesnelle to Keithley creek, which empties into Cariboo lake.

CARIBOO

Quesnelle river, though previously known to the Hudson’s Bay company, was

discovered to contain gold during the summer of ’59, when a party of miners ascended

it and worked with fair success during the early part of the fall. At the same time

some very flattering prospects were obtained by a party of miners in Horse Fly river,

a branch of the south fork of the Quesnelle, but owing to the lack of an elevation to

give water, sufficient fall for fluming purposes, and more particularly to the

discoveries in other and more accessible places, these diggings were abandoned. In

1860 a party ascended to the north fork of the Quesnelle river to a lake where they

encamped. One of the party who had started in a game saw on the margin of the lake

a Cariboo, and hence the name of the Cariboo country. At this time Keithley, formerly

a lawyer of Sacramento city, started up the river and prospected the stream now

known as Keithley’s creek. George Harvey and party discovered the creek which bears

his name. Goose creek, Snowshoe and Swamp river were discovered soon after. In

September 1860, a party consisting of Capt. Bowen, John rose and Bery McDonald

crossed the mountain northward and prospected the creek known as Antler, so

designated from a magnificent pair of antlers found on its bank. Owing to the lateness

of the season they thought it advisable to keep their discovery a secret until the

following spring, but still later during the fall of the same year, George Weaver, whilst

traveling upon snowshoes, prospected and took up the same claims for himself and

his friends, as original discoveries. Out of this, during the month of March the

following year, grew a grand dispute as to the rights of the respective claimants. The

miners who had wintered on the Quesnelle river and vicinity were all interested on

one side or the other; and whilst the claims in dispute were still covered with snow to

the depth of seven feet they (the claimants) met, all determined to hold their claims,

or have a fight for them. Indians were engaged to supply them with provisions for the

packing of which they were paid at the rate of $10 per day, while the price of

snowshoes advanced from $10 to $30 per pair. The difficulty was finally adjusted by

the gold commissioner.

THIS EXCITEMENT AND CONSEQUENT RUSH

caused new discoveries to be made, and whilst some went to work with the primitive

rocker others prepared for more extensive summer operations, and the musical clang

of the whipsaw was heard from early morn till late at night, despite the drizzling

mists and drenching rains. Mesrs. Armstrong & Co. built

THE FIRST SAWMILL

338

and by the middle of July no less than two miles of the creek had been flumed.

Meantime Weaver & Co. had completed a ditch at an expense of nearly $20,000. A

town had sprung up containing besides the habitations of the miners, a dozen stores

and as many saloons and hotels which were called Antler city. In May, 1861, Grouse

creek was prospected; also Williams’ creek, but until August the men had only been

working on the top dirt down to the blue clay, and were making from $25 to $50 per

day.

In August, Abbott & Co. concluded to prospect their claims more thoroughly,

and to this end sink a hole four by seven feet in width and about seven feet in depth,

the result proving a perfect success of the experiment, was

FIFTY–SEVEN OUNCES OF GOLD.

Other companies for a mile above and below tried it with similar

success. In August, 1861,

LIGHTNING CREEK WAS DISCOVERED.

In this year there were from twelve to fifteen hundred miners in Cariboo, and the

ruling rate of wages was from seven to ten dollars per diem, while the expenses of

living was from two to four dollars.

These gulches and creeks where now the water rushes in its headlong career

were not always worn courses. Once the mountains were smooth and unbroken,

perhaps from the gathering of a few dewdrops the mighty and impetuous Fraser owes

its primitive source. The trickling drop by drop which formed a pool no longer than

one’s hand, gaining strength until its prison walls broke through and the tiny

trickling stream which, with a finger, might have guided in its wayward course, now

turned to the right by a pebble – now to the left by the delicate sprouting of an acorn,

which nourished, until passing over space and ages, accumulating volume and

strength it joins its rushing with the rustling melody of the now mighty oak, to seek

its level and co–mingle with the sea. These gulches and creeks are but as a track or

index to the mountains, the water for ages unmolested having washed away the

lighter surface dross and left the gold, which with heavier debris forms the bed,

exposed. These mountains must and will be tunneled and present a legitimate field

for enterprising and experienced capitalists. These Rocky mountains with their crest

brows eternally crowned with snow, unconvulsed by rumblings from internal fires or

quakings of their foundations are the primitive source of the wealth found as well in

the creeks as indeed we are forced to attribute to the same fountain head the gold

found in the Fraser and its tributaries; but here as in all other auriferous sections the

deposits are unequal and the manner is as often led astray by seemingly infallible

indications of precious secretions. When

THE FEVER OF ‘58

first took its hold in California those only who had all to gain and little, excepting

their time, to lose, who, Micawber765 like, had been waiting for something to turn up

were first affected by its premonitory symptoms; but soon the fever assumed a more

virulent form and the contagion possessed all classes and conditions of society. The

765 An extremely optimistic clerk in Charles Dickens’s novel, David Copperfield.

339

most alarming sales were made; homesteads766, which, when located, were never to

be abandoned, not even to ruthless conditions – were sold at sacrificial prices.

Farmers abandoned their purchased and pre–empted767 farms, selling the still

sprouting and ungarnered crops in the field. Merchants hurried their debtors and

worried their creditors, Speculators abandoned prospective investments preparatory

to embarking in speculation in the new field where less capital would be counter–

balanced by the possibilities of greater return. All classes of hired help gave notice or

left without giving their employers any notice at all – and all with one grand idea –

that of making a mighty fortune in an insignificant space of time. Experience is a

hard but useful school, for though its charges are extravagant and its lessons often

taught too late, the impression they make is far more lasting than any other.

The cost of transportation was governed by supply and demand. The average

in ’61 was: freight from Victoria to Fort Yale, by steamers, $20 a ton; from Yale to

Lytton, by canoe, $100; from Yale to Lytton, by pack trains, 7 cents per pound; from

Lytton to Forks of Quesnelle, 20 cents per pound; from Forks Quesnelle to Antler

creek, 18 to 25 cents per pound. The terms were cash on delivery, or the goods were

sold for the freight. The expense of traveling was in like proportion. Meals on the road

varied from 50 cents to $2 – and this sometimes for only bread, beans, bacon and tea,

which the travelers were often glad to get even at that price. Speaking generally the

average price of all goods was about $1.25 per pound, although when arrival of

expected pack trains was delayed, flour has been known to go up to $100 per sack of

50 pounds. In the fall of 1862 candles were sold at $100 per box of 20 pounds.

CURIOUS NICKNAMES

As in all mining camps, many of the men found themselves dubbed with

nicknames often more expressive than elegant or complimentary, and having their

origin in some prevailing characteristic or particular circumstance with the persons

receiving them. Among the more peculiar are the following who, as such, will be

instantly recognized by those who were at the Cariboo mines in the early days:

Square–toed Billy, Coyote Joe, Jackass Morgan, Live Yankee, Old Shakes, Frank the

Mule, Goodness Gracious, Fritz from Lillooet, Dirty–faced Pete, Black Bill, Red–

headed Davis, Slapjack Johnny, Twelve–foot Davis, Kelly the pirate, Salt–salmon

Jack, Wake–up Jake, Jack of Clubs, Swamp Angel, Big Larry and a host of others.

The vicissitudes768 which attend every calling are more than ever present in

that of mining, and the number of disappointments is great – bitterly great, if such

an expression be allowed. Some there are who are barely able to literally “scratch” a

living while the claims on either side of their own are paying largely; others find

enough only to lure them to an outlay whose failure to render a return, again brings

poverty to them. Skilled miners bringing all their experience to bear in selection of

766 Free land given by a government to a settler in exchange for ‘improving’ the land. 767 Land available in addition to a homestead, under similar conditions, but with a required payment.

In general, ‘pre–emption’ is the right to buy something before others are allowed to, or with priority

over others. In Canada during the railway era, a settler could claim a 160–acre homestead from the

Crown and pre–empt an additional 160 acres by paying a small price per acre. 768 Changes of fortune.

340

claims and methods of working, often fail to get more than a color, while a greenhorn,

locating hap–hazard, has been known to take out a fortune. It is better to be born

lucky than rich goes the old and true adage, and as an exemplification of luck may be

mentioned the following well authenticated cases of Cariboo good fortune:

LUCKY STRIKES.

Conspicuous as a success in the early mining history of British Columbia stood

Isaiah Diller, a native of Hanover county, Pennsylvania, whose death occurred in

July, 1878. “Big” Diller, as he was familiarly called by the pioneers, was one of the

most successful miners on Williams creek, Cariboo, owning one–third of the then

famous Diller claim. His partners were Hard Curry and Jim Loring, both of whom

died impecunious769, as has been the fate of nearly all who, in those days, were

suddenly raised from comparative poverty to affluence, Diller’s being a noble and

exceptional case. In the winter of 1862 the lead was struck in the Diller claim, and in

one week the company took out five pounds short of Diller’s weight in gold, – which

at that time was 250 pounds. Before the strike his “jawbone” (i.e. credit) would

scarcely have passed for another sack of flour. The next yield of the claim was

$240,000, which amount of gold was taken from a space of ninety feet square. With

his share, $80,000, he returned to his native place, after an absence of fifteen years,

during which time he had never written a line to his friends and had been given up

by his parents. Under an assumed name he registered himself at the Hanover hotel,

but was recognized by his equally portly sister and father and taken to the Diller

domicile. His aged mother wept with joy at seeing her son restored to her. “I hoped

against hope,” she said, “that you would return, and used to think to myself that when

you did you would be able to lift the mortgage from the old homestead, but now I

suppose that will never be.” “Look, mother,” said Isaiah, as he emptied the contents

of a large buckskin purse full of Cariboo nuggets into her lap. The joyful shock was

so sudden that the old lady swooned and the nuggets rolled from her lap. The surprise

of the family at seeing the floor of the room literally strewn with gold can be better

imagined than described. After purchasing a farm for his brother, releasing the

mortgage from the homestead besides giving his sister a wedding portion of $5,000,

he invested the balance in real estate which rapidly increased in value, and at the

time of his demise he was ranked as one of the wealthy men of Pennsylvania.

Another lucky striker was a man named Dawson, who, at the time of the

excitement was following the trade of a shoemaker on Johnson street, Victoria. He

one day arose from his “last” for the last time with a pair of boots which he had made

for himself and solemnly announced that he would fill one of them with gold before

he returned. Though knowing nothing about gold mining the first year he made over

$30,000, and a similar amount the following year, when he sold out and left the

country, going to Brooklyn, New York. Here, with his gold, he bought greenbacks

when that currency was selling for 40 cents on the dollar. After the war the bills were

redeemed at their face value, and again was the disciple of St. Crispin indebted for a

second fortune to his mining venture at Cariboo.

769 Without money.

341

H. F. Beatty, who lately visited British Columbia in the interests of the

Canadian Pacific railway company, located or purchased a claim at Cariboo in the

year 1862 or 1863, which was originally known as the “Beatty” or “Tinker” claim. The

company to which he belonged took out in the latter part of 1863, $70,000 within a

space of 70 feet – mining feet, embracing the width of the channel which in this case

was nearly 60 feet. Mr. Beatty’s share in this splendid result was the nucleus of the

ample fortune which he now possesses.

Another well–known miner, since dead, left the mines in 1863 with a mule

loaded with gold, and returned in the following spring “dead broke.” An estimate of

the wealth he squandered in that short time places the amount at between $75,000

and $80,000.

QUARTZ MINING.

In early days when such enormous “strikes” were being made in placer

diggings, many of the successful miners invested capital in machinery for quartz

crushing and mining. The results did not realize their expectations, nor has capital

to any extent been directed to the development of this source of wealth in this country.

The best gold–bearing quartz now known is about fifty miles above Quesnelle at what

is called Hixon creek, and also one on Lightning creek. Generally speaking they have

not been a success. The total yield of the Cariboo mines for 1884 was $398,855.

LEECH RIVER.

In 1864, Mr. P. J. Leech, C. E., (now city surveyor), was deputed by the

government to proceed from Victoria with a party and prospect the island for gold.

On a creek, tributary to the Sooke river, some 11 miles beyond Goldstream and 21

miles from Victoria, gold was discovered. The result was, of course, a rush to the spot,

and a summer of that year witnessed some thousands of miners at work with pan,

rocker and flume in what was called (after the discoverer) Leech river. For two years

the find continued a success and at the end of that period there could not have been

less than $100,000 taken out. Then the creek gave indubitable evidence of being

“played out,” and from the 2,000 or 3,000 men who were there the first season the

number gradually dwindled, until at the present time there are possibly not more

than half a dozen men “fossicking” around and getting thereby perhaps $2 per day.

In this connection it may be remarked that though the “color” may be found in many

of its creeks, it is not supposed that gold is present on the island in quantities that

would pay to work it. What may transpire with the spread of population is another

matter, but at present the assumption appears well founded.

CASSIAR.

The discovery of gold in this district was made on the Stickeen river in 1862

but did not amount to anything. In 1873, two men named McCullough and Thibert

who had come from the DeLoire up Dease creek to Dease lake found gold in the first

place they prospected – a creek emptying into the lower end of Dease lake and

afterwards known as Thibert – the name of one of the discoverers. The men at this

time did not know where they were, but later on met some Indians who gave them to

understand that by going over a portage of 80 miles they would come to where white

men were prospecting on the Stickeen river. It was many months since either had

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seen a white man other than his companion, and being nearly out of provisions they

determined to strike out in the direction indicated. They reached their destination,

when the news of their discovery and the specimens they possessed took wings and

caused crowds of men to flock to the new discovery. On Dease creek the gold is worth

$15.40 per ounce, and that taken from Thibert creek, $15. They have been worked

continuously since the time of their discovery, and the estimated yield of both in 1884

was $10,000 and $30,000 respectively. In 1876 Walker creek was struck and the gold

taken therefrom was worth $19 per ounce, but it has since been worked out. Thus

even little tributaries of a creek differed in the value of their gold from that of the

creek itself; gold found on the high benches would differ from that found in the bed of

the stream. Telegraph creek, at the head of navigation on the Stickeen river, was one

which paid many a miner in its time, but the yield of this great district has now

deteriorated to about $100,000, annually.

OMINECA.

In 1869 the residents of Quesnellemouth, the farmers of Soda creek and others

in that neighborhood, furnished with necessary supplies a party of prospectors to

search for gold in the Omineca country, a district in the interior lying to the north of

the 55th parallel. The party, whose cost of outfit had been shared by the government,

started from Quesnelle in boats for the Omineca country, and discovered Vitalle creek

in the fall of the year, finding good prospects. They returned with the news before

winter set in, and with the following spring commenced the rush. The result was the

discovery of Jamieson, Manson and Lost creeks (the latter discovered by James

Carson.) The second season was the best that has been known since the discovery of

the mines which, however, have been worked ever since with more or less success.

The best strike was made in 1870, where for the season’s work one claim paid $8,000

to the hand. There are good diggings yet in that country, but the chief drawback to

them is the difficulty of access. There are two ways to reach the mines – one from

Quesnellemouth by trail, and the other proceeding up the coast and by way of the

Skeena river, and then taking the trail leading from the forks. During the season of

1884, thirty whites and twenty Indians were engaged in the mines, which for that

year yielded $12,000.

KOOTENAY

In Wild Horse creek, in 1863, the first gold to amount to anything was found.

In the following year an impost of fifty cents an ounce was levied on all gold leaving

the country. This the miners determined to resist, and agreeing upon a certain day

at the close of the season wrapped up their dust in their packs, shouldered their

blankets, and to the number of some eighty, marched past the residence of the

customs’ officer and took boat down the Columbia river. The duty proved a failure,

and the following session saw the repeal of the act. Large sums were taken out by

placer mining in 1864 – 1865, the years when the number of miners was greatest,

who were men principally from the mines of Montana and Idaho. At the present day

there are thirty–eight creek, bench and hill claims, and nearly 200 quartz claims,

their total yield for 1884 having been $60,826. If capital were invested to develop the

wealth of gold quartz, which undoubtedly exists in Kootenay, and one day there will

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be, there is little doubt, of most gratifying results, the richness of its ledges being well

known to those who, having the experience, only lack the means to avail themselves

of their knowledge.

LORNE CREEK

The statement of a few facts will comprise all that can be said of Lorne Creek.

It is a tributary of the Skeena, into which river it empties a few miles above Port

Essington. The year 1884 was the first season following discovery of gold upon it, and

the number of miners then at work was as nearly as can be estimated 35. No large

finds occurred, or if they occurred were not reported, and apart from discussion of the

possibilities attaching to a new find, there was little excitement in regard to it. This

year authentic reports show that the yield for this, the second year, has been less

than the first. The value of the gold taken out of this creek is $17 per ounce.

BIG BEND

In that part of the country to the north of Farwell, and embraced in the

immense curve which the Columbia River takes, and known as the Big Bend country,

gold was first discovered in the fall of 1865 by a party of Frenchmen from Colville

who came by way of the Columbia River, and located claims on what is now called

French Creek. About six weeks later Mr. W. McCulloch (now Government Assayer)

had started from Kamloops in the interests of the Provincial Government, for a

possible route for the Canadian Pacific Railway. From the claim which he then

located there was afterwards taken out the sum of $1600 in a space of two feet by six

feet. In the season of 1866 there must have been 2000 men at the mines, and the

excitement was at its height, more so than was warranted by circumstances, for, by

a strange freak, the claims that paid the best were the first that were struck, although

the creek generally proved fairly rich, but the amount of the actual yield is only

conjectural, many of the miners, as is always the case, proving either extremely

reticent, or playing broke when packing away a season’s good work. Rich specimens

of quartz were found, but capital was chary of taking advantage of the known location

of evidently rich–bearing ledges. The government maintained an express to the mines

until the end of the season of ’68 or ’69. The mines were difficult to work, and

provisions were high, and they were practically abandoned in the fall of ’67. In the

fall of 1883 a private party of prospectors, among whom were the discoverers of

McCulloch creek, cut a trail into these mines from near the Kicking Horse Pass to the

mouth of Gold creek, probably a distance of 50 miles, a work that occupied them two

months. Their idea was to develop the quartz lodes, which contain free–milling gold.

The efforts of one of them at least (James Greer) were not misdirected, for he has

since sold half of a claim he then located for the sum of $7,000. There is a large stretch

of creek that has never been tested, and drifts are being run in this winter for that

purpose. Between Laporte and Farwell there is a creek called Carne’s creek, which

empties into the Columbia, and paid well in early days. It was worked in the fall of

’65 and the summer of ’66 to some extent at its mouth. Also on the old route up

Shuswap lake there is a creek called Scotch creek, slightly worked in the past and on

which operations have been resumed with good indications. There is here, in addition,

a good silver–bearing galena lode.

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THE ROAD TO THE MINES

In the old days the direction taken was up the Shuswap lake to Seymour, and

then across the mountains by trail to French creek. Now they go by trail from Farwell,

the nearest station on the C. P. R., where all kinds of miners’ supplies can be had at

reasonable rates. From Farwell to La Porte the distance is 45 miles, which can be

traveled by boat up the Columbia river or by the trail which goes along the bank of

the river. From La Porte to Gold creek or the mouth of McCulloch creek is 18 miles.

There were about 40 prospectors in the mines in the early part of the season. Towards

fall their number increased to about 150, and at present there are about 80 wintering

there. Some who made an early start and got underground before the cold weather

set in are delving away on their claims and will have them in working order at the

commencement of spring. Others are getting out timber, whip–sawing lumber,

making shakes, etc., all busy getting ready for next season’s work.

CLAIMS

The gold taken out of the claims is coarse and worth about $19 per ounce; the

average depth of gravel in which it is contained is 40 feet, while the general surface

of the beds of the creeks is rough and covered with heavy boulders. The Lyons party

expect to open up their gravel claim on an extensive scale next spring. Barrett & Co.

are running a bedrock drain, and are in about 70 feet. Besides the large number of

gravel claims located there have been a great many quartz claims taken up, and

recent assays from some of the ledges go up into the thousands. Several tons have

been sent out for mill tests, but the result is not as yet known. Agents of companies

in the east have located about sixty quartz ledges.

It may be interesting to packers to know that just at the north of and near the

mouth of French creek and near McCulloch creek there are some large meadows

which will furnish hay for the pack animals. One man has put up some twenty tons

of hay, so that those who get in with their animals before the grass comes up will

know they can rely upon obtaining this quantity.

PAST AND PRESENT.

An advantage which miners of the present day possess over those of years ago

is the accessibility of the new gold fields. Those traveling from Victoria to the Big

Bend mines can go by rail as far as Farwell, whence they can journey the remaining

short distance as described. The other new field, Semilkameen, is likewise so situated

as to be remarkably easy of access. To these last mines we have made but little

allusion in this article, the official report concerning them being published in another

column; but they have been well described as a poor man’s country. In the benches

and bars of the Semilkameen and Tulameen rivers a little mining was done in ’60 or

’61, but the breaking out of the Cariboo excitement distracted attention from the

Semilkameen country and caused those who were there to turn their hurried steps

and fevered minds to golden Cariboo. To miners who have grown old and grey, and

rich and poor again, advice avails nothing; for they know, better than they can be

told, to what they go; and though a few many make what are really fortunes yet it is,

after all, in spite of their experience, as mere lottery; and the very fact of its being so

buoys them up in the hope that they will strike it “this” time, or that they “will try it

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once more.” Those who go without experience are certain to find it, even if they don’t

find gold. These remarks are made not with a view to discourage, but rather to remind

those who go that they should be prepared for disappointment in any event, and that

even if they are unfortunate it by no means follows that others will be, or that the

gold is not there. After all that has been said there is reasonable ground for believing

that the yield from the Big Bend and Semilkameen gold fields during next season will

exceed the annual gold output of the province for many years back. As to the

probability of a return of the luck of “early days” we leave it to the result to reveal.

Suffice to say that hope, energy, enterprise and capital are as alive today as they were

of yore.

7. Hydraulic Mining in the Cassiar (1917)770

In 1899 Mr. Alexander Hamfield, general manager of the Cassiar Central

Railway Company, made a tour of inspection through the district. He seems to have

been satisfied with the outlook, for the following year the railway company, through

a subsidiary called the Thibert Creek Mining Company, also under Mr. Hamfield’s

management, took over the four hydraulic leases on Thibert Creek, acquired three

additional leases adjoining, and seven water records beside771. This ground had been

thoroughly explored during the past three years, and it had proved up well. The

company brought in hydraulic equipment and a sawmill. It built a mile and a quarter

of flume to the upper end of the property from a small lake a short distance up Berry

Creek. Everything was gotten in readiness for a profitable run during the season of

1901.

But the first season’s run was disappointing. The start was late and the water

was low. The flume which had been built early that Spring upon frozen ground began

to settle as the ground thawed out. In spite of the bringing in and installation of

additional equipment, the second season’s run was not much better; for slides

occurred which at one time completely filled the workings. While the third season’s

run was a profitable one, and gold valued at $21,000 was taken, it cannot be said that

the three years’ campaign had been unsuccessful. The water supply had proved

inadequate. Money was needed to extend the system, and it was decided to

discontinue operations until additional capital could be raised. […]

770 From Jacobs, E. (1917, June 10). Mining in British Columbia. The Daily Colonist, p. 17. Written by Edwin Jacobs (1854 – 1920), editor of the Mining Record. 771 “Cassiar entered the later period with the discoveries in the Klondike in 1896. Deep diggings and

tunnel claims had already paved the way to hydraulic mining. In Kootenay and in Cariboo hydraulic

companies had been sluicing for several seasons past. Two companies had applied for hydraulic leases

on Thibert Creek. One of them had even started on a ditch, but nothing came of their activities. In

that year Mr. James Porter, the Gold Commissioner, noted the appearance of new faces, for many

miners en route for the Yukon remained to prospect in Cassiar. The following year four hydraulic

leases were taken on Thibert Creek, and Mr. Warburton Pike arrived from Victoria with news of the

incorporation in that city of the Cassiar Central Railway Company, an enterprise the purpose of which

was to supply transportation facilities and develop the mining resources of the district.” From Jacobs,

E. (1917, June 3). Mining in British Columbia. The Daily Colonist, p. 14.

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During the three seasons the company operated it employed upward of twenty

men while piping. Two pits were opened during 1901 and two more in 1902, while a

fifth was started. It is said the first season’s sluicing showed recoveries of from 12c to

25c a cubic yard.

BERRY CREEK MINING CO.

Mr. Hamfield’s attempts to raise more money resulted in the formation of the

Berry Creek Mining Company, and this concern took over the Thibert Creek property

in 1904. The new company acquired three additional leases along the pay streek, but

to the west of Berry Creek. It moved the sawmill to the mouth of Thibert Creek

opposite Porter’s Landing, bought and installed additional machinery and equipment

and at once set about extending the water supply. Up to this time, although the

company has recorded water on other streams it had drawn from Berry Creek alone.

[…]

We do not find the property in full swing again until 1906, for the new water

system was not fully completed until the Summer of that year. Some gold was won in

1905: “enough to pay the expenses of piping,” we are told, but the progress of

operations was impeded by slides as usual, and there was a shortage of water, of

course, since the new water supply was in process of construction. The season 1906

seems to have passed without accident, and in that year production nearly reached

$22,000 – a record for the Thibert Creek hydraulic workings. The following season,

in the midst of what promised to be another record run, the workings were completely

submerged by slides, bad ones, and most of the men had to be sent home. Absolutely

nothing was done in 1908 with the exception of a short run, made for the purpose of

exhibiting the workings to prospective investors, who visited the camp that year. […]

Now comes a hiatus of two years, and we do not hear of activity on the Thibert

Creek leases again until 1911; the year that Mr. J. Cartmel succeeded Mr. Porter as

Gold Commissioner. In this year the Boulder Creek Mining Company, an English

concern under the management of Mr. Warburton Pike, leased the Thibert Creek

property for a term of four years with option of purchase. The new company

determined to abandon the old workings near Berry Creek, and, following the

recommendation of Mr. Irvine772, open new ground just east of Boulder Creek,

extending the flume for the purpose. At this point the banks are lower and better

defended, the floor of the old river channel stands 100 feet above Thibert Creek, and

there is more room for tailing dump. Accordingly, work was commenced forthwith

upon the extension of the flume, the machinery and equipment were moved to the

new ground and a new cam was established at the mouth of Boulder Creek. This work

was all started during the season 1911, and completed late in July of the following

year, when the new concern started sluicing.

It was hoped that the new ground would be free from slides, but,

notwithstanding expectations, the management met with repeated disaster from this

source. Slides prevented the clean up at the end of the first season, but this gold was

ultimately recovered during the second. The only record available tells us that the

772 Mr. Hamfield was succeeded as manager by Mr. D. R. Irvine, of Victoria, in 1906.

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second season was “more satisfactory on the whole” than the first, but we have no

means of knowing what amount of gold was won. […]

With the outbreak of the great world war the Dease Creek Syndicate of Victoria

took over and operated the property under the management of Mr. F. M. Fenton, an

experienced hydraulic miner. As a matter of fact Mr. Fenton was in charge when the

syndicate took hold, and he seems to have completely solved the slide difficulty, for

the run during 1914 was accomplished apparently without a hitch, although he fell

heir to ground that had been badly muddled by slides during the past two seasons’

operations. […] The cost of operation has been lower; lower in fact than at any

previous time. No expenditures have been made for new plant by the syndicate, the

policy being to operate the property to the best advantage with the means at hand,

and keep the present equipment in good repair. […]

The company’s equipment comprises about three miles each of flume and

ditches; nearly a mile of riveted steel pipe; six hydraulic monitors, and all the other

appliances necessary for conducting sluicing operations in a far country. These

include sluice boxes, valves and under–currents; a retort, furnace and scales. The

company owns and operates a sawmill of from 6,000 to 7,000 board feet daily capacity.

There are buildings and tents at the camp, as well as live stock, wagons, and stores,

and the company maintains its own trails, roads and bridges. […]

ACTIVITIES OF OTHERS.

Such is the record of events on Thibert Creek since hydraulic mining was

commenced. There have been other activities on other creeks during this period, but

one and all have suffered from lack of capital, and from inadequate transportation

facilities, though some of them have failed for want of courage on the part of their

promoters.

The Rosella Hydraulic Mining & Development Company, under the

management of Mr. J. W. Haskins, undertook to develop leases on Rosella Creek, a

tributary of McDame. They brought hydraulic equipment in over the trail, installed

it on their own property, and dug a ditch from another tributary of McDame to their

workings. They were all ready to work the ground in 1908, when Mr. Haskins died

suddenly at Atlin, and the company’s activities were discontinued.

In 1911 Mr. John Hyland spent $3,500 sinking a shaft and exploring ground

on the White Horse claim at the mouth of Dease Creek. The following year he brought

in a drill expert with an Empire drill rig and had his ground explored.

Mr. Hyland has since attempted to promote a dredging company to work the

Dease Creek ground, and perhaps other ground of the kind in the district, but thus

far his efforts have not been crowned with success.

There have been others beside, some of whom have even brought in machinery

of a sort, but the most persistent of all of them have been Mitchell Bros. These two

men conducted operations on a strip of ground along Little Deloire Creek, a tributary

of Thibert Creek, which joins the latter from the south, about three miles above its

outlet. They have repeatedly attempted to “bottom” their ground only to lose the

shaft, and in 1911 they moved 20,000 cubic yards of gravel without reaching pay. The

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death of one of the brothers in Seattle a short time ago had the effect of closing down

the Mitchell claims.

8. Barkerville in Later Days (1912)773

There is something tense in the air in the central interior of British Columbia,

something expectant. You feel that the whole country is standing on tip–toe waiting

for the great revolution. Mysteries hidden for ages are about to be explained. The

magic of the railroad is about to discover and publish abroad the secrets of aeons.

Nowhere is this air of expectancy more apparent than in Barkerville – tumble–

down old Barkerville, its wooden stilts knee–deep in the tailings of Williams Creek.

It is not in the people you find the mysterious suggestion – many of them are old–

timers, who live in the past; half of them are Chinese, and all Chinese are come–

what–may fatalists. You get the impression from the place itself, from its battered

old buildings cowering in a creek bottom under the frowning visage of old Bald

Mountain. You glean it from snowy old Bald himself, looming up big and broad and

formidable, like a gigantic bully. When Bald Mountain tells what he knows, the world

will sit up, for from his pockets has come the gold that made Williams Creek in its

day the richest the world has ever seen. Men have spent their lives in quest of the

mother lode in Bald Mountain. When they find it – but no more of this; even to talk

of such matters is to invite an attack of the fatal gold fever.

It was this gold fever that sent men stampeding up the Fraser in ‘fifty–eight,

“rocking” the sand on the river bars higher and higher up until they reached the

Quesnelle River, followed it up to Keithley Creek in 1861, and thence progressed, first

to Antler Creek, and then in ’62 to Williams Creek. Barkerville came into being

suddenly and two other towns sprung up on the same creek as populous and

prosperous as Barkerville. These two are now buried under many feet of pebbles.

Williams Creek produced forty million dollars in gold, the record for a creek of

its length, a mile and a half, or thereabouts. There were 10,000 people in Barkerville

in ’62, making it by long odds the largest city in British Columbia at that time. Now

there are 300 or so, half of these are Chinese. This does not mean, however, that all

the gold has been taken away, for Barkerville has been producing steadily for years

since ’62, and the end is not yet. The way to Barkerville is by wagon road from

Quesnel, a long, up–hill 60 miles. In the first thirteen miles out of Quesnel you ascend

1,300 feet. With this auspicious beginning you continue to ascend until at Barkerville

itself you are about 4,500 feet above sea–level.

Along the road as you near Barkerville you will see a country devastated by

hydraulicing. Every hillside has been washed in quest of gold, and here and there you

will see all that remains of once important mines, for a great deal of money has been

taken into the Cariboo, as well as taken out.

It is needless to dwell here upon the history of mining in the Cariboo. At least

one hundred and twenty million dollars’ worth of gold has come from the Barkerville

773 From THE FAMOUS OLD CITY OF BARKERVILLE. (1912, January 6). The Islander, p. 2.

349

mines. What has been sunk in them is also a fabulously large sum, because mining

here is expensive, more expensive than in the Yukon. Then again, the gold, always

capricious, has been even more capricious here. The most wonderful finds have

petered out suddenly, expensive shafts have been sunk on golden prospects, only to

reveal the fact that there was no rich pay at bed–rock. So the Cariboo can tell many

a tale of loss and disaster. What we were particularly interested in were the actual

operations to–day in the district and the prospects for more rapid development with

the advent of the railways. However, it would be impossible to pass to this commercial

feature of the case without some mention of old Barkerville itself.

It is the most amazing town in the world. Fifty years ago or so, the men who

washed the sands in Williams Creek built their shacks beside their work for

convenience. The people who follow mining camps774 built their saloons and dance

halls close to the miners’ shacks, also for convenience. The site chosen was in a creek

bottom under a mountain, but that did not matter much to these town builders.

Every spring since, the town has been flooded from the creek and another foot

or so of tailings added to the street. There was a simple remedy for this. Each

householder of Barkerville set his house up on stilts to escape the water. When the

tailings filled in still more deeply, the houses had to be raised again, and so it

continued, until to–day the buildings at Barkerville, still on stilts, are about 30 feet

above their original level. The continual jacking up they have received has been bad

for them, and some of them are now tied together with wire rope. In our hotel the

strand of wire rope passed through the bedrooms we occupied. It is a one–street town,

bounded on the creek side by a large timber break–water, which must be repaired

each year to save the life of the town. The Lowhee and Stout’s Gulch mines, operated

by Mr. John Hopp, are up the creek from Barkerville, and it is the tailings from these

two claims that cause the trouble to–day.

The word has gone forth that Barkerville must move. Government engineers

took a look at the situation and condemned the historic old town. It costs too much to

build and repair breakwaters, so the old city must shift to a city location. How or

when the move will be made has not been announced, but Barkerville is doomed.

Before the fatal step is taken the Government must send somebody up to save the

historic records for its archives.

The principal method of mining at Barkerville has always been placer, for the

reason that it is the cheapest. In the earlier days men went in and “rocked” the gravel

in the creek bottoms, making rich hauls thereby. Later came the big hydraulic plants,

working a monitor, the great hose that sweeps away the sides of a hill as one would

blow them down from a thistle top. Hydraulic mining is to–day the mainstay of the

Cariboo, but there are also drifting propositions of great importance. The drifting is

774 These included sex workers. “The prostitutes on the creek – nine in number – put on great airs.

They dress in male attire and swagger through the saloons and mining camps with cigars or huge

quids of tobacco in their mouths, cursing and swearing, and look like anything but the angels in

petticoats heaven intended they should be. Each has a revolver or a bowie–knife attached to her waist,

and it is quite a common occurrence to see one or more women dressed in male attire playing poker in

the saloons, or drinking whisky in the bars.” News from Williams Creek. (1862, September 10). The British Colonist, p. 3.

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done by sinking a shaft to bedrock, and from the bottom of this shaft running a tunnel

through the gold–bearing sand above bed–rock. The sand is brought to the surface

and washed for gold. Very rich quartz has been found in the district, but the quartz

industry must remain in abeyance until the coming of the railroad. […]

For the cost of mining is excessive in the Cariboo. Perhaps there is no other

gold camp, even the Klondike, where conditions have been so adverse to the miner.

There is no possible way to get to Barkerville other than the long and hilly Cariboo

Road, almost 300 miles long. Every ounce of mining machinery assumes the value of

semi–precious metal ere it reaches Barkerville. Then, too, living expenses are

extremely high, and this naturally enough boosts the price of labor. Seven cents a

pound is the ordinary freight rate Barkerville to Ashcroft, but on heavy machinery

special rates are charged, amounting in some cases to 25 cents a pound. The miners

draw high wages, and, even at that, complain that they cannot live properly. On the

same stage with us from Barkerville to Quesnel were two young miners, who had

been through the Klondike in their time.

“Thank God,” said one of them, “we have got these store–keepers paid up at

last. We have been working for them for two seasons, and as soon as we got even with

board we quit.”

There are many people in Barkerville to–day who are working for the

storekeepers. During the long winter months, and Barkerville on the mountain top

has a very long and dreary winter, there is no mining. During this period, however,

a man must continue to eat. The store–keepers carry the people through the winter,

relying on the wages of next summer for their remuneration; thus the miner works

for the store–keeper, and by–and–bye he gets tired of it. The conception of Heaven,

as described to me by a Barkerville man, was a country with a long placer mining

season, cheap grub, and some way to get in and out. […] A year or so ago, when the

first automobile passed up the road to Barkerville, the old residenters heard of its

coming and positively refused to believe that such a vehicle could exist. As the

gasoline monster neared the town the entire population walked out to meet it. To–

day there are men in Barkerville who have never seen a train or a street car. When

the first string of cars hauls in over the line of the Willow River Railroad there should

be some wonderment, as well as rejoicing in Barkerville.

Hydraulic mining, the one great industry of this district, is a very simple

method of extracting gold from the earth. The requisites for it are a large hose, a head

of water, and a place to put the gravel and pebbles after they have been washed. A

big monitor, which is a sort of gigantic garden hose with enough power behind it to

knock a house down, is turned on to a wall of gravel. As the yards and yards of

material are washed down, they pass through a long flume, the bottom of which is

protected by blocks of wood from being cut to pieces by the rocks and gravel that pass

over it. Here and there along this flume are placed riffles, which are merely strips of

wood, placed between the rows of wood blocks. As the material is flushed through this

flume the gold, being heavier than the sand, drops in the riffles and is thus saved.

When the season’s hydraulicing is over, which is usually when the water gets too low

to supply power, the flume is cleaned up and the gold is carried away.

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Mr. John Hopp, the leading hydraulic miner of the Cariboo, is a familiar figure

about Barkerville. At clean–up time Mr. Hopp is usually accompanied on his walks

by a large metal bucket, in which is gathered the gold from his sluice boxes. Mr. Hopp

showed us, as a great favor, a bucket full of gold dust and nuggets, which had just

been taken from the Lowhee claim. It is a remarkable fact that each gold–producing

creek has its own kind of gold. In one case the gold will be very light in color; in

another very dark. There are as many different kinds of gold as there are creeks.

At the little Valley mine, which is managed by Mr. E. E. Bonner, secretary of

the Western Canadian Deep Lead Company, is to be seen the best example of a

drifting mine in the Cariboo. While we were there the tunnel that is being sunk had

reached about twelve feet from bed–rocks, and it was expected that the mine would

be producing very shortly. In the shaft house two great Cornish pumps were pounding

away pumping the water from the shaft. Water is the curse of the man who has a

shifting proposition, but we were told by Mr. Bonner that he expected to be relieved

of this difficulty very soon. When bed–rock is reached tunnels are driven through the

gold–bearing sand, the material being brought to the surface and washed there. What

is known as a set is made by pushing forward the timbers of the tunnel about three

feet. The gravel from each set is sent up separately and the production of the mine is

based on the amount of gold found in each set.

The Rossland Mines

9. 480 Feet Under Ground (1896)775

An imposing trio are the three big mines that perch on the hill skirting the

base of the Red Mountain. Le Roi, that king of Rossland mines, overhanging the very

edge of the hill; the War Eagle farther along, whose ores speak loudly and more

eloquently than ever eagle screamed; and the Centre Star on the breast of the hill,

overlooking the ravine and throwing into the galley mineral wealth that dazzles the

imagination – these, with many other smaller, but promising mines, nestling on the

hill, shore, below and roundabout the big three, proclaim the fame of Kootenay mines

to the wide world.

The story of Le Roi reads like the glittering invention of Oriental lore. Winding

up the mountain path from the town of Rossland to the mine, one comes on a great

bank of rough gold ore, 4,000 tons in each of the two great piles, about fifteen feet in

depth, and each ton at an average estimate is expected to yield $40. It is not every

day nor in every country, one sees $320,000 worth of gold ore on a hillside. Though

under contract to ship 37,500 tons of ore to the Trail smelter, 1,000 tons going to

Puget Sound and 500 a month destined for Tacoma, though the railway is using every

available means to carry away ore, and teams are taking by the old stage route all

they can haul from the big ore dump, the big pile lies undiminished; the shaft pouring

out ore faster than railway and teams can take it away. Beginning operations in the

775 From READS LIKE ROMANCE. (1896, September 10). Qu’Appelle Progress, p. 3.

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humblest way, Le Roi now employs more than 110 workers, including day and night

shifts. Arrangements are being made to place the best of modern mining machinery

to the value of $50,000 in the mines. The company now have an electric plant to

operate the diamond drills, a seven drill compressor, a large Ingersoll hoisting engine,

a small hoist, a rock crusher, in fact, all the machinery needed for the thorough

equipment of the mine. Builders are working on a new shaft, which is to be ten feet

by twelve feet clear.

It is one thing to be told that the slanting shaft goes down 480 feet and another

to go down the shaft to the 480 foot depth. Your correspondent had both experiences.

Through the courtesy of Mr. Wm. Harris, a director and shareholder in Le Roi, the

Free Press correspondent had the novel and certainly not unpleasant experience of

spending part of an afternoon 480 feet under ground. One cannot very well explore

an underground mine in evening attire, nor in street costume for that matter. There

was nothing for it but to don miner’s riggings, from the slouch hat that dropped

disconsolately below one’s ears to a pair of superannuated boots, that wobbled

woefully and revolved around the pivot of one’s heels. The costume included the

miner’s blue suit besmirched with dripping tallow candle. To be sure the effect was

neither graceful nor pretty; but it was novel, and there are neither posers nor street

corner critics in an underground mine. Enveloped in a long mackintosh, with candle

in hand and trusting to the shades of the “dim religious light” below, with Foreman

Ferguson as cicerone, and Mr. Harris and Mr. Coner as forerunners, your

correspondent clambered into the big iron basket at the top of the shaft. The gong

signaled “all ready,” and with a dip that felt like a pour–out – but it wasn’t – the black

bucket went bumping and sliding down the dark shaft past glimmering electric lights

at long intervals. The sensation was much the same as a trunk might feel at the

tender mercies of gentle railway porters. First the bucket shot down toboggan style,

on a steep incline; then it took a tumble vertically; struck an incline again, coasted

down its narrow path, and bumped almost upright.

We were at our journey’s end. The shadowy forms of begrimed miners hoisting

shapeless masses of ore ready for the bucket, were first visible in the gloomy lights of

the candles stuck in the hat bands or fastened in iron catches to the solid rock. The

miners talked of ledges and levels and drills and slopes. Though explained, those

terms would convey as vague an impression to the layman reader as they did at first

to your correspondent. To those whose vocation is above ground and perhaps many

miles from mines, the inside view of the Le Roi would be one of broad corridors, tier

above tier of corridors, walled […] with jutting masses of ore [bearing] rock. At the

low levels there was extraordinary width, where miners were working in fifteen feet

of pure, solid ore, which is said to assay $100 a ton. This is only one of the many

instances that might be cited to show the nature of the Le Roi’s vein. From the bottom

level we clambered between pillars of timber up narrow ladders to the next levels. On

these, diamond drills were penetrating the walls of rock, and bringing out cores of

ore, that make such a rich showing, and satisfaction reigned on the faces of the Le

Roi men. Le Roi mining is practically all done by machinery, which is one way of

stating that only finished miners, skilled workmen should look for employment in

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these mines. The lower levels of the Le Roi are filled with the noise of the machinery

and the activity of the miners. The mine is equipped with electric light in the shaft

and in places of the different levels. The levels extend both sides of the shaft, at the

different depts 50, 150, 200, 300 and 400 feet, the ore body broadening and the grade

of ore improving after the 250 foot level.

A story is told which illustrates the character of the Le Roi vein. While the

average yield may be placed at about $40 a ton, not including the returns from copper,

the ore veins of the Trail Creek mines are exceedingly valuable in their yield; and

even in the Le Roi, barren or comparatively barren drifts are passed. At the 300 foot

level it became apparent there was a particular rich find. Predictions were made that

the assay would give high results. One sanguine prophet was challenged to wager a

box of cigars on the yield he expected. The assay gave returns of $1,100 per ton. The

losers thought this a hoax and insisted on a second test of the rich find. The second

test gave $1,264 per ton. The surface yield of the Le Roi gave at its highest $300 per

ton, going less than $2 in places.

Now, in the hey–day of its prosperity, people forget the difficulties that

threatened the very life of the Le Roi. Founded in 1890 by two prospectors, John

Bourgeois and Joseph Moris, who came to the base of Red Mountain, and staked off

the ledge into Centre Star, Le Roi, War Eagle, Idaho and Virginia, and given to Mr.

Topping for the payment of recording fees at Nelson, the great mine failed to

commend itself to investors. The ore was so hard to treat. The assays were so variable,

running from $3.75 to $500, and unreliable, experts would not recommend the

property. The interest at that time was centred in Nelson and Ainsworth. There were

no prospects of good roadways or railways at Trail Creek. Meeting with many

discouragements, Mr. Topping carried a precious burden of samples to Calville, Wn.,

where Col. Wm. Redpath and Hon. Geo. L. Foster were attending court. They

recommended that the ore should be taken to Mr. Durant, of Durant & Tarbett,

Spokane. Mr. Durant, by inspiration, or by gift of recognizing good ore at a glance, at

once said, “This is a smelting ore, just the same as a abse for smelting purposes, it is

a sulphide carrying copper and iron.” Time has verified that prompt opinion. Just

here, it is worth nothing, that Mr. Durant considers the detection of good ore as much

a gift as the result of experience.

The mine was bonded – sixteen–thirteenth of it – an agreement being made

that $3,000 worth of work should be done in six months. Of the 500,000 shares,

100,000 were donated to the treasury for development. Treasury stock was put on the

market at 25 cents. It may be stated here that Le Roi stock is now quoted at $5, and

it is doubtful if any could be obtained at twice that figure. When the proceeds of the

treasury stock were being exhausted, the promoters were forced to consider whether

to raise the price to 50 cents or to subscribe personally, buying back treasury stock.

As stock at that time was not worth 50 cents to the public, the latter course was

adopted. The majority of the directors were crippled financially by the collapse of the

land boom in Spokane, and it was a brave thing to put their hands down their own

pockets in order to bolster up the uncertain Le Roi. This was a critical period for Le

Roi, but Mr. Durant’s advice, “Let all the real estate go; but keep that mine,” was

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taken. […] With a faith in Le Roi’s possibilities that could not be shaken, Mr. Durant

of the firm Durant & Tarbett, cut away from business connections in Spokane, and

in his own words left for the mine, went into his shell, there to stay till his faith was

justified. A record of famous dividends and enormous output has scarcely justified

the confidence of the early incorporators. Such in brief, is an outline of Le Roi’s

history. As winter closed in, the early work on Le Roi gave employment to the

penniless prospectors driven from the mountains by cold weather, and the wages of

that winter’s work laid the foundation of more than one Trail Creek fortune.

10. A $60,000 Suit of Clothes (1910)776

In 1892 Maurice Yenzel, a merchant of Moscow, Idaho, sold a suit of clothes for

$60,000. […] Of course, there is a story in that transaction, and a wonderful story it

is; nothing less than the romance of Rossland and its mines. Yenzel didn’t get his

$60,000 down on the nail. It was five years before he received the final payment on

that suit of “hand–me–downs.”

Truth to tell, Yenzel did not expect to get a cent for the clothes. One day an

acquaintance he had known in various mining camps of the West wandered into his

store in Moscow, dressed in his best and his worst. In other words, the man’s clothes

were much the worse for wear, but they were all he had.

“Just came down from Rossland, broke,” he explained to his friend the

merchant. “I’ve got nothing except these 2,000 shares of Le Roi gold mine. Give me a

suit of clothes and stake me to a meal and they are yours.”

Yenzel did so, and threw the certificate for the mining stock into the back of

his safe. He was out a suit of clothes and “four–bits”; that was the way he figured.

By 1897 he had received in dividends and from the sale of the stock the sum of

$60,000. The great Le Roi mine, after nearly breaking the hearts of those who stood

so splendidly by it in the days of adversity, had first developed into the most

promising property in British Columbia, and then had been bought by the British

company headed by the late Whitaker Wright, of somewhat painful memory.

When the Americans who held the mine disposed of it to Wright for about

$4,000,000, Yenzel cashed in for that suit of clothes.

British Columbis is so full of romance that it won’t do to say that the story of

Le Roi and Rossland is unique. But it certainly is remarkable, even for so picturesque

a portion of Canada as the Pacific province.

Le Roi was discovered twice. In other words, the people who did the first work

on it did not name it, nor did they trouble to locate their claim. After a short time,

they abandoned it. The story goes that they found the mine because they followed the

advice of a clairvoyant. This woman lived at Colville, Wash. A party of four, headed

by her husband and son, decided to go on a prospecting trip. Wishing to know where

to go, they induced the woman to go into a trance and give them instructions.

776 From Sands, H. (1910, May 12). Romance of Le Roi and War Eagle Mines. Wainwright Star, p. 7. Written by Harold Sands (1873 – 1935).

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On emerging from the trance, the clairvoyant made a chart. On it she showed

the trail to the Columbia River; thence as far as the mouth of Trail cree, and finally

to Red Mountain.

“There,” she said, “is a mountain of gold.”

Time has proved her to be correct, but the party she advised did not benefit by

her trance. True, they followed her instructions, reached Red mountain and dug into

many croppings, but they found nothing to reward their efforts. Ore had to be rich in

those days to pay for the cost of getting it out, shipping it and treatment. The party

persevered for five or six weeks, then, finding no free gold, went away in disgust, not

even taking with them samples of ore for assay.

That was in 1884. The report of that disgusted party of prospectors gave the

old lady of Colville a setback as a clairvoyant. And yet, since her day, over $40,000,000

has been taken out of her “mountain of gold.”

No further work was done on Red mountain till 1888, and it was not till 1890

that famous old Joe Bourgeois set the first stake on Le Roi, and E. S. Topping, deputy

mining recorder at Nelson, located it. Bourgeois wasn’t particularly looking for a mine

when he came across the patches of red rock which led to the naming of Rossland’s

famous mountain. The French–Canadian was out hunting for marten and

prospecting “on the side.” He didn’t think very much of Le Roi, anyhow.

Perhaps the old workings made by the clairvoyant’s husband made him think

it was no good. In any case, he staked claims alongside, but he didn’t bother with Le

Roi, which he styled the Louise, except to put up what is called the initial post. So

many erroneous stories have been given to the world about the actual location of the

great property, that I will quote the statement of the man above all others who knows

the facts. This is Mr. E. S. Topping, called “Colonel” by everybody in the mountains.

Here is his statement:

“I was in the game at the opening of the first jackpot, and was the recorder of

the district for several years, and perhaps am in a better position than anybody to

give the facts.

“The first location in the country (it was called the Trail Creek District then)

was made by Newlin Hoover and Olive Bordeau in 1888. They staked the Lily May.

The second was a claim called the Annie, located by Newlin for me, at the east end of

the Lily May and staked that year.

“In June, 1890, Olive Bordeau and Joe Morris went from Nelson, where the

mining recorder’s office was, to the Lily May, to perform the annual assessment work

required by the British Columbia mining laws. With them was Joe Bourgeois, whose

object was to look up the chances for marten trapping and incidentally to prospect.

“I don’t think that Bourgeois ever did a day’s work for wages in his life. He was

a remarkable character. He put in the earlier part of his life as a fur trapper and

knew every trading post from Quebec to the Fraser River. Soon after he came to

British Columbia, about 1865, he commenced placer mining and followed that

occupation with varying success till 1890.

“While Morris and Bourdeau worked at the Lily May, Bourgeois tramped

around the country, and by accident he found the large croppings on Red mountain,

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at what is now Rossland. He induced Morris to go over, and they located four claims,

the War Eagle, the Centre Star, the Idaho and the Virginia. At that time there was

no limit to the number of claims one might locate.”

Colonel Topping mentions the interesting fact that though the French

Canadian discovered Le Roi, he did not locate it. He says:

“Bourgeois and Morris put one stake on a claim to the west of the Centre Star

– an initial post – and called it Louise. Bourgeois proposed to me that if I would pay

for recording the claims they had located, he and Morris would allow me to stake the

other. I, of course, accepted, and paid to Mr. Giffin, the recorder at that time, the

required sum of $10. A few days later I visited the new camp and named the claim Le

Roi, and even then considered I had the best claim in the camp.”

It often happens in the West that the real discoverer of a mine is the man who

makes the least out of the property. It is worth stating, therefore, that Bourgeois

cleaned up from his Rossland and East Kootenay properties about $35,000, which

was no mean sum for a man who had never driven a stake on a lode claim until he

went to Trail creek. Joe went to the Canadian Northwest, and, besides taking up a

large section of land, married a young wife and acquired a team of fast horses. Joe

was fond of excitement.

The famous Le Roi, therefore, although discovered by the fur trapper, was

located by the deputy recorder, whose initial expenditure was $10. From that moment

Topping decided to cast in his fortunes with the new camp. He would sink or swim

with it. He went to Nelson, sold out his interests there, and moved to the mouth of

Trail creek, where he located 343 acres, now the City of Trail.

His next move was to secure capital to develop Le Roi. He didn’t stop to

consider whether that capital should be Canadian or American. He simply reasoned

that Spokane, in the adjoining state of Washington, was the nearest city where men

of some means could be induced to back him.

Americans in Spokane take great credit to themselves for assisting the

development of Rossland. While one does not desire to refuse them credit, and can

not in fairness do so, it must be stated that British Columbia has returned to them

far more than they ever put into it. There have been large losses in British Columbia

mining. Canadians and Englishmen have suffered these; the “velvet” has gone across

the border. We have no reason to feel unduly beholden to United States capital.

Let it be said, however, for the Spokane people who took over Le Roi from Mr.

Topping, that they stuck to the mine during a most discouraging time. They knew

they had a good thing, and they “glued” to it. They forced distrustful bankers to lend

them money, and they did not throw up the sponge when they found themselves in

debt, with no money in the treasury and with no credit. They encountered many

difficulties and embarrassments in making Le Roi a mine. Several times they were

near the limit of their endurance, and they fully deserve the prosperity which came

to them. Colonel Topping sold them the mine for $30,000. They developed it and

transferred it to the Whitaker Wright syndicate for $4,000,000.

Connected with the acquirement of the property by Whitaker Wright and his

friends is almost as great a romance as the actual discovery itself. When Whitaker

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Wright burst into the financial world of London, he introduced American methods.

Although an Englishman, he had spent a good many years on this side of the water

and was “next” to all the wrinkles of company promoting. After he had been in London

some time, the Klondike cast the glamor of its gold all over the world. Wright formed

the British American corporation. One of his main ideas was to operate largely in the

Yukon, but in order to get the large capital he required, he had to have something

more than mere Klondike prospects to serve as a bait in London.

Therefore, he determined to secure Le Roi. He offered a big price for it. Most of

the Spokane stockholders of the old corporation were eager to sell out at this figure,

but an active minority was opposed to the deal. The latter placed all sorts of obstacles

in the way of the transfer of the property. It secured possession of the seal of the

company, without which Le Roi could not be legally made over to the British

American corporation. But Whitaker Wright had good men working for him, brainy

men, men with ideas. Mr. C. H. Mackintosh, formerly an Ottawa newspaper man, ex–

lieutenant governor of the Northwest territories, and general all–round good sort,

was one of them. While the late Earl of Dufferin, once governor–general, was the

figurehead chairman of the British American corporation, Mackintosh was the

resident director at Rossland.

Mackintosh got that seal of Le Roi. It required smart work at Spokane, it

necessitated the hiring of a special train to rush the seal from Spokane over the

Nelson and Fort Sheppard railway to Rossland. But Mackintosh managed it. The seal

was quickly affixed, the minority was brought to time, and the legal transfer was

made.

Even with the great prestige of the British American corporation behind it, Le

Roi did not find it all smooth sailing. The famous eight–hour law strike in the

Kootenays set Rossland back, and later came the prosecution of Whitaker Wright on

charges connected with the accounts of one of his mining companies. He was found

guilty and committed suicide in the London law courts, almost at the feet of the judge

who was ready to pronounce his sentence.

Now Le Roi is in the hands of a London company, of which Mr. A. J. McMillan,

former agent in England for the Manitoba government, is managing director. Mr.

McMillan returned to Rossland from London recently, and announced that he had

made financial arrangements to carry on a big plan of exploration and development

in the mine. It is hoped that the result of this comprehensive scheme will be the

restoration of the famous mine to its old–time position of prominence. […]

Although Rossland and its mines have passed through much storm and stress,

that is the usual experience of Western camps, and it may truthfully be said that the

city about Red mountain is now on a sound, substantial and permanent basis. The

mines around it produce annually not less than three million dollars, and the

prospects for deep mining have never before been so favorable as they are at the

present. The next few years will probably see a wide expansion, and Rossland will

entirely justify the faith of those who have stuck to it through thick and thin.

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11. The War Eagle Mine (1910)777

Second only in interest to the history of Le Roi is that of the War Eagle, or the

“War–r Aigle,” as “Patsy” Clark’s Irish miners used to call it. This property and the

Centre Star are owned by a company whose shares are held mostly in eastern

Canada. In addition to the properties named, the Consolidated Mining and Smelting

Company of Canada, Limited – for such is its unwieldy title – owns the Iron Mask,

Idaho, Enterprise and a number of fractional mineral claims adjoining these, together

with the Saint Eugene, an extensively developed silver–lead property situated at

Moyle, British Columbia; the smelter at Trail, three miles from Rossland, originally

erected by Mr. F. A. Heinze for the treatment of Le Roi ore, and the Rossland Power

company.

The War Eagle and the Centre Star were two of the claims that Joe Bourgeois

and Joe Morris located. They were worked with varying success until, in 1894, “Patsy”

Clark of Spokane bonded the War Eagle for $17,000.

“The luck of Patsy Clark” is a saying in the west. Clark had not driven far into

the hill before he struck the War Eagle’s great upper chute, and in three months he

declared a dividend equal to the exact amount subscribed for the company he formed.

His success electrified the West. To the Canadian Butte, as they now dubbed

Rossland, a remarkable rush took place. The year before, the country had been

languishing. The effect of “Patsy” Clark’s operations was picturesquely summed up

by D. B. Bogle, a former Rossland newspaper man. He said:

“Men who in 1894 were threatening suicide, in 1895 were regaling themselves

on lobster and champagne.”

But cold bottles and fancy fish were not all. BY a logical train of circumstances,

as Mr. Bogle adds, “the building of smelters, the extension of copper mining to the

boundary district, now possessed of one of the great copper mines of the world, the

construction of the Crow’s Nest Pass railway, and the development of the Fernie coal

mines, all followed the discovery of the War Eagle ore shoot. Those things would have

come about in time, but they would not have come about then, nor perhaps be in

existence now as productive enterprises. It was Patsy Clark who set the train in

motion.

The fame of Rossland penetrated beyond the Rockies to Toronto and Montreal.

The fever for speculation in British Columbia mines entered into the blood of the

generally cool farmers and merchants of Ontario. The passion possessed even the

financial princes.

In 1896 George Gooderham and his son–in–law, T. G. Blackstock, decided to

go to British Columbia and get into the thick of it. The miners took kindly to

Gooderham, for his name was on the labels of an article which was considered as

much a necessity, if not more so, as bread. They did not, however, hold the same

mellow opinion of the mining engineer he brought with him. That gentleman, a

graduate of eastern Canadian colleges, they unkindly dubbed a “copper–bottomed,

777 From Sands, H. (1910, May 12). Romance of Le Roi and War Eagle Mines. Wainwright Star, p. 7. Written by Harold Sands (1873 – 1935).

359

all–fired, eighteen–karat expert.” And they proceeded to show that gentleman at

Gooderham’s expense, that what he did not know about mining would fill several

large books. One of the tricks practised on Mr. Gooderham and his expert is thus

described by Mr. Bogle:

“Early in 1895 the south belt of Trail Creek camp had been located, and its

banner property was the Crown Point. The chief owner was originally keeper of a

cigar stand at Kaslo, now reported as a millionaire. This property was bonded by a

Duluth man at $75,000. He sunk a shaft on it through a magnificent mass of ore.

Unfortunately, the ore gave out, and the last 50 feet of the shaft was in country rock

of the most barren description. A cross–cut tunnel from the bottom of the shaft, 125

feet long, was equally resultless. The Duluth man returned the property to the owners

with kind wishes.

“At the time the Gooderham–Blackstock delegation visited Rossland, a few

men were at work prospecting on the Crown Point. The foreman was a hard–rock

miner of deep sagacity and wide experience. He told the owner that he could never

sell the mine as it looked. He had better dress it up by flooring the shaft near the

bottom of the ore and blow down a few tons as if he were starting a drift westward.

“The expert came and inspected the mine, and Gooderham bought it, without

knowing fo the exploration underneath. How could such things be? Very easily. In

mining camps the strict rule is caveat emptor, and anyone who goes out of his way to ‘eavett’ an ‘emport’ is called a ‘knocker’; and mining camps have a way of dealing with

“knockers” that are not in accordance with the Golden Rule.”

Now reappears Patsy Clark. Blackstock opened negotiations with the Spokane

man for the purchase of the War Eagle. He offered him $700,000. Clark closed the

deal. He thought he was getting more for the mine than it was worth. He was face to

face with the necessity of getting large capital if the War Eagle was to be mined and

developed properly. As a matter of fact, Blackstock got a bargain. Fine new bodies of

ore were opened up and the outlook for the mine was splendid.

But too much water brought disaster – not water in the mine, but watered

stock. Mr. Bogle, who was in the thick of the excitement, vividly records what

happened:

“All might have been well, but this favorable combination of circumstances,

together with the more sentimental consideration that here was the banner mine of

the country wrested from American control about to pour its wealth into the lap of

Canada, sent the Eastern investor off his head. He quickly raised a nominal valuation

of over six million dollars. Not only that, but he poured his money with lavish hand

into a horde of wildcat schemes that clustered around the War Eagle like jackals

around a lion. Then, of course, came the inevitable crash. All suffered loss, and some

were ruined. Many harsh things were said of Gooderhman and Blackstock. But a

calmer judgment at a safe distance must reverse the verdict.

“During a great excitement of popular feeling, the mine owner is in a peculiar

position. If he runs down his property, then he is seeking to get other property cheap

and depress shares so he can buy them in. If he cries it up, then he is looking for a

chance to unload. So it goes. The public have the bit between their teeth.

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“Again, it must be remembered that the inflation which was forced on the

market by the promoters of the Le Roi was forced upon the promoters of the War

Eagle by the market. In any case, both Mr. Gooderham and Mr. Blackstock are dead.

The last days of both were embittered, and those of the latter were shortened by the

worry and trouble of their mining venture. The good rule of nil nisi bonum well applies. They were in the clutch of the tide that they could not control.”

Since the death of Gooderham and Blackstock the War Eagle, as already

stated, has gone out of existence as a separate mining company. The Consolidated

company which now operates it and other large properties has a board of directors of

Montreal and Toronto capitalists and is doing well. The average number of men

employed by the company is four hundred and fifty.

12. What is a Mine Worth? (1903)778

A trained mining engineer is, of course, familiar with the subject in hand. The

practical miner, whose forte is operating mines, has not the opportunity of acquiring

the knowledge which is an indispensable part of the expert’s training. The mistake

made in placing values on mining properties are, to the business man, often ludicrous,

and account largely for the indisposition of experienced mining men to investigate

mining propositions, unless the same are presented by engineers of established

reputation.

The capitalist who is a capitalist only because he is prudent and calculating

estimates a mine as he would a stock of goods. He informs himself regarding the

quality, quantity, cost, expense of working or selling it, and the profits to be realised.

The comparison will be evident a little further on.

The expert is not, as many imagine, a man of occult knowledge; he simply

applies the result of long practical experience to the case in hand, and in the

hypothetical case here given, are shown the general rules of his procedure.

Arrived on the scene of his operations, the ledge is the matter of primary

importance, as the ledge is the mine. The pump, mill and other surface improvements

are a secondary matter.

The superintendent accompanies him underground and he gets an idea of the

workings. He returns to the surface and, alone with his trusted assistant who is

supplied with hammer, gad and bags, goes below again. They cut out samples from

different parts of the ledge and, going above, pan out the rock. If many of the samples

“prospect,” the mine is worthy of a systematic sampling.

Going below again in the first drift 10 feet from the shaft (supposing that all

the workings are in the pay shoot) the width of the ledge is measured and noted in a

memorandum book. If all the ore is presumed to be pay, the assistant enters a shallow

regular trench across the ledge, the cuttings falling on a piece of canvas from which

they are at once transferred to the bag, tied, sealed and marked No. 1. (In case he is

not limited for time, the expert will probably put in a few holes and cut samples only

778 From A Mining Expert. (1903, April 16). PROSPECTOR STUDY THIS. The Outcrop, p. 1.

361

from the fresh exposures made by the shots. But this is merely a precaution against

fraud.)

If the pay seems to constitute a portion only of the ledge, the paystreak is cut

across and marked 1A; the balance of the ledge at the ledge at this point, if possible

pay, being cut and marked 1B; and in the book are entered the places from which the

samples come, as well as the widths of the ledge at the respective points. At 20 feet

from the shaft, the operation is repeated, and so on through all the stopes.

The samples are sealed, sent above and shipped to the assay office. While

awaiting assay returns, a mill is often made to determine the metallurgical character

of the ore as to what percentage of the metal can be saved in the batteries, on the

plates, the concentrators and on the slimes plant. In case the ore should carry much

arsenic, antimony or other base metals, the assay alone would prove very misleading

as to the true value of the rock.

A thorough geological examination is now made. The expertly carefully looks

for evidence of faults, dykes, slips, contacts. And he samples the croppings wherever

they are exposed and pans the surface along the presumed course of the ledge, as

there may be one or more pay shoots besides the one being developed. By locating the

end lines of the claim with reference to the shaft, he calculates the probability of the

shoot pitching under adjoining ground.

He next looks over the hoists, pumps, mill, and other surface improvements

with a view to their utility for further exploration and exploitation. If he is not

familiar with the locality, he gathers together all the available data regarding the

cost of wood, timber, power, length of working season, transportation rates, etc. He

looks over the books for past yield, and must be a good accountant so as not to be

misled by figures on development and operation.

His work at the mine is now completed. He next makes a map of the

underground works and marks each point at which samples were taken, and the size

of the ledge at those points, together with their assay values. If any assays are very

high, he discards it and substitutes the average value of the two adjacent points. He

now reduces his measurements to tonnage and finds from the different widths and

values just what portions of the ore in sight can be profitably mined. He then makes

calculations779 something like this:

779 Approximations and minor mistakes in the table below have been silently corrected. The cost of

extracting ore in sight is $450,000 x (1 + 6%)5 + $99,264. The 32.12% cited is $144,534/$450,000 – 1,

and the 5.73% per year is (1 + 32.12%)1/5 – 1. A modern Net Present Value calculation would obtain

different results. The value of ore in sight, and milling and mining, appear to be in present value

(‘money today’) terms already. Using the cost of borrowing, 6%, as the minimum acceptable rate of

return (MARR), the present value of the capital costs is $450,000. In sum, NPV = $846,000 – $99,264

– $450,000 = $296,500. It’s possible that the value of ore and mining and milling costs given are yearly

estimates, multiplied by 5. In that case, the NPV equation becomes NPV = ($846,000–$99,264)/5 x

(P/A,6%,5) –– $450,000 = $149,347.20 x (P/A,6%,5) –– $450,000 = $629,104.74 – $450,000 =

$179,104.74. This investment, the equivalent of paying $450,000 today for income of $149,347 a year

for five years, has an internal rate of return of about 20%. This is comfortably above the MARR of 6%,

and so the investment is recommended for reasonable amounts of risk.

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Ore in sight, tons $18,800

Mill value per ton $45

Value of ore in sight $846,000

Price of mine $400,000

Cost of necessary improvements $50,000

Mining and milling, $5.28 per ton $99,264

Interest on $450,000 @ 6 per cent compounded for 5 years $152,202

Cost of extracting ore in sight $701,466

Profit on $144,534

Or 32.12 per cent profit on investment, or 5.73% per year

(The expert determined that it would require five years to mine and mill the

reserves in the most economic manner.)

He will now report in one of the three ways dependent on the character of the

investment his principals are seeking. If they desire simply what the English call an

annuity, he will certainly report against the property, and with good reason, as 5.73%

leaves no margin for contingencies which may take the form of litigation, breakage of

machinery, labor strikes, etc.

We now see how the “want–two–dollars–for–one” men can actually lose money

by paying $400,000 for $846,000 of ore that is actually in sight.

If the principals are nervy men and the mine should warrant, the expert may

report favorably. He will show that the mine has all the indications of being a

permanent deposit, and that it will justify extensive developments. Proceeding on

this theory, the purchase price represents a property to all intents and purposes of

permanent value, and the reserves will make it pay its way during development.

A third, or compromise policy, may be adopted. The purchasers pay a bonus for

a working bond, arranging with the owners as to percentage of mill returns. The price

will undoubtedly be higher than in the first instance, but experienced purchasers will

calculate how many feet of shaft can be sunk and drifts run during the life of the

bond, and will, by aid of reserves already opened up, figure on the probability of

exploiting new reserves sufficient to justify the final payment required.

In these times it is about useless for an owner to ask a high price for an

undeveloped property. His price must be very reasonable in order to command a five

per cent cash payment. He has no cause for complaint if the best he can do is to get

someone to take a working bond and to show him whether he has, or has not, a mine.

If dealing with experienced men, he cannot bond for an arbitrary figure, even if it is

for a long time. Supposing the bond to run for a year, the holders will calculate what

their chances are for finding pay, and in what quantities. They will figure on the

development that can be made in a year and draw pretty quick conclusions as to

whether the price is “stiff” or not.

“Investments in mere prospects are unwise, except they be regarded as

attempts to ascertain if there be a mine,” says an eminent authority, and the truth of

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this is abundantly attested by the array of long–faced people who have been “bitten”

in gold mining investments.

A word regarding “Ore in Sight.” A wide line of croppings does not come under

this head, as you may have a slide or a blowout. A shaft is not “Ore in Sight,” it is

simply a shaft. A string of gopher holes or open cuts is not “Ore in Sight.” Neither is

stripping the vein. Expose three sides of a block of the true ledge. Two sides show

only “Probable Ore.” The mine owner may be able to see underground, but the

investor cannot. He thinks of faults, pitches, horses and barren streaks as a few of

the uncertainties of mine exploration. And it is the selling price and not the asking

price that they value on a mine as on a commodity.

It is these calculations that make mining a “legitimate” pursuit, and all who

fail to regard it as such must necessarily be classed as the most reckless of

speculators.

The Cariboo in ‘62

13. When Cariboo Was in Flower (1908)780

The fall of 1861 and the spring and summer of 1862 were periods of wild

excitement in British Columbia, California, Canada and, I may add, on the Pacific

Coast generally. Gold had been discovered in far distant Cariboo in 1861 by a band

of resolute prospectors who, disappointed by the failure of the mines on the lower

Fraser river bars, had pressed valiantly on toward the headwaters of that stream.

The country that is now bisected by roads and trails at that time was traversed only

by a few narrow Indian paths and the brigade mule trail (as it was called) of the

Hudson’s Bay Co., which led only to their posts in the interior. In the absence of roads,

the prospector was seriously hampered. He was forced to travel on foot and carry on

his back his blankets, prospecting tools and food. When he turned aside from the

primitive trails he plunged into a pathless forest, and the chance that he would find

his way out again was often remote. The country was a solemn wilderness. The

waving of the tall trees in the wind, the occasional growl of a wild animal, the snarl

of the timber wolf, the call of the chipmunk, the song of the wild birds, and the

cracking of branches beneath the feet of a lordly cariboo, were the only sounds that

broke the awful stillness and relieved the solitude. The underwood, the dense forests

and the steep hills presented obstacles that would have terrified the hearts of men

less accustomed to hardships than the determined miners who expended time and

energy, and often lost their lives, in opening up the treasures of the new fields that

were destined to play an important part in the settlement of the country.

It was in the fall of 1860 that the first news of the Cariboo gold discoveries

reached the coast, and nearly all the loose men who then hung about Victoria and the

mining camps were attracted to the spot. Antler creek was the first locality that

780 From Higgins, D. W. (1908, April 5). WHEN CARIBOO WAS IN FLOWER. Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 11. Written by David Williams Higgins (1834 – 1917).

364

showed signs of richness, some big nuggets being found on its banks. It was called

Antler by the miners because they found a pair of cast–off cariboo horns on its banks.

The whole district was named Cariboo, because of large bands of that species of elk

which the prospectors saw there. The diggings on Antler, though rich, were shallow,

and, as it turned out, were only the stepping stones, so to speak, that led to other and

richer deposits further afield.

Early in the summer of 1861 there strayed into the Antler creek camp a hungry

and tattered Germna sailor named William Dietz. He was a short, stocky man, of

retiring manners; but he was full of the kind of grit that builds up a country and

contributes to the wealth of nations. Dietz reported that he had found a creek a few

miles distant across the divide that prospected largely. In support of his story he

showed a number of good–sized nuggets which, he declared, he had picked up on the

surface. He said that he had named the creek William and that he had staked a claim

for himself and another for a friend, and had come in for food. The excitement in the

Antler camp was great, and the miners went over to the new creek en masse. The

first men in found nothing, and after changing the name from William to Humbug,

returned to Antler creek, threatening to hang Dietz up for the crows to peck at for

having misled them with his lies. But a few men who remained on the new creek were

rewarded for their faith, and in a day or two they had found many handsome nuggets

and secured claims. Other miners rushed in and soon the creek was staked from

source to mouth, and primitive rockers were worked on the bars with flattering

results.

The season’s work in 1861 proved inspiring. The ground on William creek was

shown to be heavily impregnated with coarse gold almost from end to end and from

top to bedrock. In the fall of the year, men who had gone into the diggings

impoverished began to dribble out to the coast with heavy swags of the precious stuff,

and gold dust became plentiful in every channel of trade as the only medium of

exchange and barter.

William creek, and its golden sands, were on everybody’s tongue. The truth

was good enough; but the stories grew in wealth as they were repeated. In the spring

of 1861, a man named Abbott, a poor fisherman who worked at Frasermouth for a

fishing company, had left his employment and with scarcely sufficient money to carry

him to Cariboo, proceeded to the new gold fields. He and his companions walked every

foot of the way from Yale to William creek, packing food, blankets and tools on their

backs. The trip consumed five weeks, and when they reached the creek they were sick

and sore and hungry and depressed in spirits.

“Part of the way,” said Abbott, “we walked without shoes, suffering much until

our feet became hardened. Our boots were worn out and we had no means with which

to get others. Indeed, there were no boots to be had if we had offered $100 for a pair,

and our bloody footprints were left behind us as we hobbled on.”

The Abbott company staked claims and when they lifted the first pan of earth

and washed it the result startled them. Abbott rushed up to a rude hut of boughs a

company had hastily constructed and excitedly exclaimed:

“Boys, see here! See what I’ve got! There’s twenty dollars here if there’s a cent.”

365

The boys crowded around the excited man. The bottom of the pan showed

several nuggets of goodly size and they opened wide their eyes when scales were

brought and the prospect weighed $23.75.

Twenty–three dollars and seventy–five cents to a single pan of earth! If so

grand a result could be obtained from a pan of dirt, what might be got from a yard?

The men first on the ground had not been idle. Rich deposits had been opened and

were being worked with rude appliances. The yield was heavy. The Diller Co., of three

men, took out $500 a day to the hand for many days. On some days the yield was as

high as $5,000 to the hand. From behind a boulder, which had been smoothed by

glacial action, they took $6,500 in a few minutes. The nuggets had been deposited by

the swift currents and had reposed there through all the centuries undisturbed.

The Never Sweat Co. divided $40,000 each for the first season’s work. This was

the claim into which George Hunter Cary, the gifted first attorney–general of the

colony, afterward invested his own and his friends’ money on the strength of a large

prospect which had been purposedly fixed to attract him. Cary Castle was built with

money borrowed on the faith that Mr. Cary reposed in the Never Sweat prospect, and

her retired to England to die of disappointment.

The news continued to spread. From the coast it reached Canada and the

Eastern States. It crossed the ocean to the United Kingdom and the reports from the

gold fields grew in size and value, as the intelligence was passed from mouth to

mouth.

Soon, hundreds of people began to arrive from every quarter of the globe. The

Canadian, Australian, American and English immigration was enormous. The

steamers that plied between San Francisco and Esquimalt could not accommodate

the passengers that offered, and Victoria grew rapidly in wealth, population and

importance. Those who could not find houses here pitched tents or built huts of

boughs and branches on convenient lots.

The winter of 1861 and 1862 was a season of unexampled severity. There had

been nothing like it in the recollection of the Hudson’s Bay Co.’s officials, and since

1862 there have been no winters as severe. The only way by which the diggings could

be reached was by trail from Yale, and these were blocked with snow for many weeks.

No wheels of any kind could pass over the trails. A few pack trains carrying food and

other necessaries traversed the trail to the mines. Nearly all the miners walked.

Many women and a few children managed to struggle into Barkerville, a town that

sprang up on William creek, and not a few were laid away on the journey or at the

termination of the trip.

At the mines all was bustle and excitement; goods rose to fabulous rates. Food

was scarce and many miners unable to pay one dollar a pound for flour and beans

and $2 a pound for bacon, and $2.50 for fresh meat, often tightened their body belts

and went to sleep to forget their hunger. For a pair of stout boots $50 was paid, and

blankets and clothing were not to be had at any price. The daily wage of a miner was

$16, but said one of the workers naively, “It costs us nearly all that to live, for drinks

were a dollar a go.” […]

366

With all its wealth, the camp was filled with needy men. Some were able–

bodied and willing to work, but could find none. Others were delicate, and their

appearance showed that they were in a state of keen distress, and still others had

come to plunder and not to work. The truth gradually forced itself upon the minds of

those who had rushed pell mell to the diggings that the mines were rich, so far as

they went, but they did not go far enough to satisfy the needs of a large population.

Before the season was over there was as great a rush from Cariboo as there had been

to it. The roads were lined with returning miners, mostly stone–broke and starving.

The scenes witnessed on the wagon road, which by this time was completed, were

melancholy in the extreme. As the struggling, starving, ragged crowds passed along

the road, seaward bound, holdups, robberies and even murders were resorted to fill

the pockets and stomachs of some of the unlucky ones. The perpetrators were seldom

apprehended, and if caught, escaped punishment because of the lack of evidence.

14. The town of Williams Creek (1862)781

Williams Creek presents a picture of as motley a group of houses, sheds and

log cabins as could well be thrown together. Several two story log houses, costing no

less than three or four thousand dollars each, are nearly completed. Two saloons are

open and in full blast – whilst a pole wrapped in red flannel in front of a shake house

indicates the presence already of a tonsorial operator. Still further up the street, or

rather up the muddy lane, “washing and ironing” is done at short notice, which sign

receive no mean proof of ability from the ebony proprietor himself in front of the

tenement up to his elbows in soap suds and grey flannel. Two blacksmith and one

butcher shop complete the present occupied portion of the town; but one can easily

see in the piles of unsymmetrical logs which in a zigzag manner serpentize the creek,

the embryo of hotels de France, stores, saloons, bakeries, etc., ad infinitum, whilst a little greater stretch of the imagination might people some of the side hill cabins with

presiding deities whose presence should gladden the heart and lighten the bread of

the miner’s home.

15. Throwing Twenties Away (1861)782

A Caribooite while under the influence of liquor entered a restaurant on

Government street, on Saturday night last, and insisted upon treating every man

there to a “square meal,” as he called it. The treat was declined, and after much

persuasion, the liberal–minded man was induced to leave the building by the

proprietor; but on reaching the sidewalk, he thrust his hand into his pocket and

pulling out a number of twenty–dollar pieces, threw them into the street, exclaiming,

“D––––n it, if you won’t let me spend my money, I’ll throw it away!” His friends picked

up the chicamua and carried the foolish man to a place of safety. He is said to have

781 From Letter from Williams Creek. (1862, July 10). The British Colonist, p. 3. 782 From THROWING “TWENTIES” AWAY. (1861, October 21). The British Colonist, p. 3.

367

made $12,000 at the mines in six weeks. The next time he feels like throwing twenties

away, we hope he will toss a few into our office window.

16. “The Usurper Fantasy Dethroned” (1862)783

According to promise I suppose I must write you a letter, although I scarcely

know how to begin it. I find that I, in common with most of the people who came here

this spring for the first time, have been disappointed – not in the reputed wealth of

the opened diggings, but in the chances of getting any paying claims. How many of

us whilst sleeping either on board the steamer or under the blue canopy of Heaven,

dreamt of this modern Ophir as only waiting our coming to be deprived of its hidden

treasures; how different now to apply the test of reason, in these our waking senses

– and the usurper fancy dethroned – truly the present realization is startling; men

with limited means and provisions at enormous prices, cannot afford to dig and delve in these creeks and hill–sides, and they look at each other and ask, what is to be done?

Pride says don’t go back – but necessity staring them in the face, puts pride to shame,

and sets aside as naught the “what will people say?”

You may suggest that I am looking too serious at the whole matter, and this

you say or think as you sit in the “Colonial,” or “Hotel de France,” buttering your

morning toast, or sipping your evening tea, but let me Asmodeus–like bring you from

the balmy atmosphere of Beacon Hill to the enervating air on the summit of Snow–

Shoe Mountain, or here on the slimy banks of one of our richest creeks. There by your

camp fire you see men cooking their last mess of beans. They have no flour, no bacon,

and the spring trickling by the side of their weather–beaten tent supplies their

beverage; there they cluster around that scanty fire for the rain, rain, rain, is never–

failing, and nearly overcomes their united efforts to keep a fire burning. Let us

suppose the scanty meal finished, and in charity pass their dreams of home,

happiness, and plenty, whilst we accompany them to diggings. Here they find (and

we cheerfully add our mite of testimony) that the reputed wealth of opened claims

and their fortunate owners has not been exaggerated. We look at “Steele’s,”

“Abbott’s,” “Cunningham’s” and a dozen others, and as our wistful eyes encounter

those of the contented owners of the claims we feel a slight twinge of envy – but boldly

stepping up to ask for work are told that friends have too great a claim on their favors.

Disheartened, but not yet discouraged, applications are made again and again, but

with like ill–success. There then remains only one thing, and that is to prospect for a

remunerative claim. But here we must stop and leave our miners as, alas, too many

are now left penny– and bread–less in a new country. If you think I have been

overdrawing the picture – ask some of the returned, and if you ask why provisions

are so high, look at the nature of the first invoices, which invariably follow

civilization, and the predominant article will be whisky. Ask again and look at the

mean policy of the government which imposes such enormous duties upon the

783 From Cariboo Correspondence. (1862, July 17). The British Colonist, p. 3.

368

necessaries of life. But I am growing tedious and will leave the subject and return to

the all–absorbing one, the diggings of the Cariboo.

I have noticed that a great many even of the new comers have struck good

claims, and some could sell out and return with plethoric purses. Many have found

friends who either gave them employment or an interest in a paying claim – others,

again, fortunate enough to be possessed of ready money or credit have bought into

claims and are already commencing to realize handsomely. And lastly, I have found

that the richest class, and they are not mean in character nor number, are of a stamp

not inaptly termed noble men – they are the true nobility of this country, generous,

hardy and adventuresome; they have suffered long and endured much in prospecting

this almost impenetrable country, but they have, by long patience and severe toil,

amassed wealth sufficient, with proper economy, to live and enjoy the comforts of life

under the shade of their own vine and fig tree.

If there is one thing more than another that could keep a man in this country

until he is quite ready to leave it for good, it is the awful beastly (but invectives fail

me) state of the road – not that portion over which a toll road (instead of a free

government road with a tax, and wealth to build and support it) is being built; but

after leaving that, see men with from fifty to one hundred pounds on their backs, thus

virtually making pack–animals of themselves, without the advantages of pack–

saddles – trudging through bog and mire, snow and slush, climbing over rocks and

fallen trees, or walking over precarious bridges which span some of the mountain

gulches, where a slip or misstep would endanger life and limb. Why it seems as

though nature, jealous of her wealth, has rendered the path to her secret repository

as intricate and dangerous as possible, and also as disagreeable as incessant showers

of rain, accompanied with gusts of thunder and lightning, can possibly make it.

The amount of gold that will be taken out of the Cariboo mines this season –

notwithstanding the detrimental combinations heretofore alluded to – will surprise

the world. Only yesterday one claim on Williams Creek – “Cunningham’s” – washed

up from one day’s work, seventeen and a half pounds of gold dust; but bear in mind

they have been for weeks past engaged in ground–sluicing, laying in flume and sluice;

and their claim is one of the richest on the creek – shares could not be bought to–day

for less than thirty–five or forty thousand dollars for one hundred feet. Abbott’s claim

will also give a good report of itself in a few days; whilst Steel’s company are getting

in sluices preparatory to working two groups of men – one night and one day. There

are many others on this and on Antler, besides these on the adjacent creeks, which

will turn out large amounts of the glittering ore this summer, and give employment

to a great many. Besides which we daily hear of individual instances of success, and

take it all in all, there is a good time coming; only wait a little longer.

369

A novel of the Cariboo (1894)784

784 From the cover for Wolley, C. P. (n.d.). Gold, Gold in Cariboo! London: Blackie & Son, Ltd. Novel first published in 1894. Illustration by Warwick Reynolds (1880 – 1926).

370

17. “Such is Life in Cariboo” (1862)785

The evening before last, a man was seen running up and down the creek, trying

to borrow $640 to enable him to buy a claim for $1,000, in the old Hunt & Co. claims,

in which the people in general had but little faith. He was successful in his search,

and yesterday afternoon he paid the $1,000 and took possession. In a few hours

afterwards he was so elated that he ran about on another errand – to shake hands

with all his acquaintances – he had “struck rich pay” in the sand above the bed–rock,

which is a thing unprecedented on this creek. After his partners and himself had

thrown dirt into the sluice–boxes for about two hours they “cleaned up,” and got 24

ounces and $12 ($396) for their labor. The good luck of these men set the whole creek

into an excitement, and hundreds of men hurried up the creek to see the greatest

wonder of the day. New claims were immediately staked, several neglected ones were

jumped, and trees were blazed until late in the evening. The most sorrowful looking

man on the creek, it is said, was the man who sold at noon for $1,000. Another partner

in the claim, named Wilson, had been sued in the morning for a debt of $130, and had

to borrow flour for his dinner yesterday. In the evening $25,000 (twenty–five

thousand) was offered for an interest in their claim! Such is life in Cariboo. Yesterday

morning these poor fellows were among the obscure of the world, and yesterday

evening they were envied and lionized by all.

In connection with the above, I wish to say a word or two to those who may

read this letter and are subject to gold fever. Let them first think of the difficulties

they have to contend with in coming to this country; walking four or five hundred

miles up and down steep, narrow and most dangerous hills, through rapid streams,

across logs, and through snarling bushes, mire and snow, with a heavy burden on

their back, is no fun. Then, when this country is reached, the greatest difficulties

commence with those who have but little means – hire–work is difficult to obtain, on

account of the great number of people who are here already, and prospecting cannot

be done without a little capital, on account of the high price of provisions, gum boots,

mining tools, etc. Thousands have already come up to this country to be disappointed,

and have gone back disgusted with it. Many of those, however, came expecting to find

an abundance of gold without the instrumentality of labor or capital. They had never

worked in their lives – their friends were rich at home; there they had plenty, and servants to wait upon them, and horses to ride upon; but here they had but little of

the necessaries of life; had to wait upon themselves, and had to make mules of

themselves! “Oh, what a falling off was there!” By the way, Mr. Editor, there is no

need of those fancy, hard refined people here, unless they have means. Persevering, hard working men are the goods for this market. I had not “worked” at anything

laborious for 13 years myself until I came to this country, but when I came here, I

found it was necessary to work, and took to it as natural as a hungry man will to his

meal.

785 From CUHELYN. (1862, July 30). Letter from Williams Creek. The British Colonist, p. 3.

371

It is true that hundreds of those who have returned come here with a good will

to work, but finding that difficult to obtain and having no means to prospect with,

they had to sell whatever they had left, and make their way homewards with heavy

hearts. But all this, sir, does not prove Cariboo to be a “humbug.” The country,

undoubtedly, is heavily laden with gold, and many are the men who will be enriched

by it. […]

Before I conclude this letter allow me to tell you a good prospecting story:

Messrs S–m–l Cr–n, and R–c–rd W–l–ghb– went out prospecting together in the

spring of ’61, and were successful in getting good pay on a creek which they named

the Lowhee. After being satisfied with the place they started for Antler, and resolved

on the way to “keep dark” their success until they had informed their friends of it, so

that they might have the first chance. But Mr. W––––– partook too freely at Antler

of the Gough–forbidden beverage, and let the cat out of the bag. When Mr. C. saw

this, he started that night with their friends to the newly found creek, and left W–––

–– enjoying himself at quaffs and loose talk in the temple of Bacchus. In the morning,

W. was still laboring under the inspiring effects of a continual application to tangle–

leg tumblers, but felt inclined to start for the new creek, and so he went accompanied

by about 200 anxious claim–seekers. The company increased momentarily, poor

fellows had been awaiting him in the woods – brigand–like – from the time he

commenced wawaing until he started. He soon had a company of about 400 men, who were anxiously enquiring about the richness of the creek, when Mr. W. took to a

stump, and putting his two hands on his sides, began, Demosthenes786–like, to deliver

himself of a burden of oratory:–

“Gentlemen,” said he, “here I am! Look at me! I am only a common man like

you fellows, but” (a growl from the audience, and the speaker took a long breath)

“yesterday I was like you fellows, a poor, common man, but” (another growl from the “common” audience) “to–day I am rich! I have struck the great Lowhee Creek, and there is ground enough for all of you poor fellows.” (The orator was prevented from

proceeding by cries from the audience of – “Pull him down, shoot him, hang him,

boys.”). And so terminated R. W.’s first attempt at public oratory.

If any good fellow, who may be coming up this way, will take the trouble of

bringing me a cat of the masculine gender, I will pay him liberally for his trouble, for

as I intend wintering here, I fear I shall be eaten up with mice, unless I can get a

family of cats.

CUHELYN.

18. “I have seen so much gold that I am sick.” (1862)787

“Here we are,” as the clown said when he entered the ring, but how the devil

we are to get out, unless the merchants send up provision, is to me a mystery. I have

delayed writing, that I may be enabled to inform you of the “doings” at this place,

Williams Creek, Lowhee, and Lightning from which I have just returned. Imprimis,

786 A Greek orator known for his eloquent speeches. 787 From Letter from Antler Creek. (1862, July 30). The British Colonist, p. 3.

372

as we lower limbs of the law say, the roads are so bad from the Forks of Quesnelle

here that animals cannot make more than two trips per month, and even then packers

are rare owing to the difficulties experienced in obtaining grass for the animals, as

well as the almost certain chance of losing them either at Sawmill Flat (a very

appropriate name) or on Snow–Shoe mountain, a place which when I passed over it

put me in mind of the Pacific Ocean in a fog. […]

This “Town” is all life and bustle, and I think is in reality, for a general mining

town, the best I have seen. Every one appears to get some money, and appears happy

and contented until some new excitement springs up, when faces speak the mind, and

the dazzling sight of nuggets, flake gold and coarse, almost leads the senses captive,

making it difficult to decide whether to put up with the “ills we have or fly to those

we know not of.” Flumes are in (as well as whiskey). Beef in abundance at 50 cents,

and yesterday at the same rate splendid mutton, but of other articles they are

bespoken to arrive. There are two restaurants here, the best of which is Mrs.

Webster’s. She gives a dinner at $2.50 that would make your mouth water to look at

in this light atmospheric region. It is true at times there is here, as in all places, a

want of sugar, but then could you see the manner in which the attendants minister

to your every want, you would pass over any such little freaks of Providence, and

bless your lucky stars that you were indoors instead of sleeping on Cariboo feathers.

Gold has been taken out here in large quantities, but I do not believe any

correct information can be given, such as I should think myself warranted in stating,

but I do know as much as thirty–one or thirty–two pounds were taken out by one fortunate company in one day. Coin here is very scarce, but gold is plentiful if I am to

judge from the leather bags which are occasionally deposited with some favorite

banker here, who issues his checks redeemable on demand, a very polite and

gentlemanly way of taking care of your cash, and which I think preferable to paying

the British North American Bank a percentage for, as some highly intelligent and

appreciative miners did last year, and which I think this year the new banking system

will do away with. […]

We are now at Williams Creek, a town filled with new houses, the largest of

which costs $7000 and is intended for a restaurant and winter residence – two stories

high. Having paid my respect to the townies, with many inquiries, such as “what

news,” “have you the COLONIST,” which for some reason or other is difficult to get

even at $1 50, “what news from the seat of war,” “any pack–trains coming,” and lastly

some such question from an unknown man, “stranger, did you pass my brother with

a whip–saw on his back?” I go to Steele’s, Cunninghman’s and Abbott’s claims (the

latter poor fellow is sick in body but rich in pocket) and O, ye gods and little fishes!

the gold is marvellous. No falsification, but for days together, 400, 500 and 600 ounces

are taken out in the day and night from Cunnignham’s claim. Steele’s is immense

and Abbott’s also. […] I have seen so much gold that I am sick.

373

19. Abbott and the Mirror (1903)788

The fall of 1862 witnessed the return from Cariboo of a large number of miners

with heavy swags of gold dust, and Victoria was the theatre of many uproarious

gatherings and routs. The owners of the Abbott, Point, Diller, Steele, Barker, Adams,

Cameron and many other of the very rich claims on Williams Creek congregated here

and seemd to find difficulty in getting rid of their money fast enough. There is a story

told of Abbott, chief owner of the Abbott claim, from which gold was washed by the

bucketful for many weeks. Abbott had fished for a living at Frasermouth before he

went to Cariboo and was a very poor man indeed when he settled on the piece of

mining ground which afterwards bore his name. He was an easy mark for the

gamblers who infested the mining section and played high and lost with unvarying

good nature. He was known to have wagered $5,000 on a single poker hand, and

having lost appeared the following night with another big sum which he sent hurtling

down the table in search of that which had gone before – sending good money after

bad, as the saying is. Abbott with a number of friends entered the St. James’ bar one

evening and called for drinks for the crowd. Having been served he asked what the

mirror behind the bar was worth.

“Forty dollars,” replied the barkeeper.

Taking a number of nuggets from his pocket, Abbott discharged them full at

the glass, breaking it into many pieces.

“Take its value out of that and keep the change,” he said as he left the place.

The nuggets were sold at the express office for a figure rising $100.

The next day nearly all the bars in town were equipped with large mirrors in

the hope that Abbott or some other suddenly made rich fool would break and pay for

them as had been done with the glass at St. James’. But Abbott had gone out of the

looking–glass business, for he broke no more, and none of his friends followed his

example.

Eliza Ord, Cariboo Entrepreneur Eliza Ord, also known as ‘Mrs. Brooks’, was an independent woman who practiced numerous trades in California and the Cariboo during the gold rush era. In a time period when women were expected to be dependent, it was difficult for Mrs. Brooks to establish herself as an entrepreneur, and she frequently ran into difficulties on account of her gender.

Mrs. Brooks was rumored to have been known as ‘Mrs. Christian’ in California during the gold rush of 1849. At some point in the early 1860s, she arrived in British Columbia as the pretended wife of Isaac F. Brooks. Using Eliza’s funds, Isaac Brooks ordered the construction of a house in MacArthur’s Gulch in 1863.

788 From D. W. H. (1903, November 22). The St. James’ Club. Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 9. Written by David Williams Higgins (1834 – 1917).

374

20. Mr. and Mrs. Brooks’s Saloon (1864)789

The 22nd February was the anniversary of Washington’s birthday; on account

of the dearth in the money market it went off peaceably; the fact is few men have

money to get drunk upon. Mr. and Mrs. Brooks of Cameron Town790 gave a ball on

the occasion in their new saloon. The room was handsomely decorated with the Union

Jack and Stars and Stripes; they kept dancing until about five o’clock in the morning;

everything went off with the greatest good feeling.

21. Isaac Brooks runs low on money (1865)791 By early 1865, Isaac Brooks was taken to court for non–payment of a debt of under £40.

Alex. McWha vs. Isaac Brooks. – This was a judgment summons for £38 6s. 3d.

The Judge asked defendant why he did not pay: The latter stated that he was unable

to do so at present.

The plaintiff, addressing the Court, said it was very hard that after giving

defendant credit for two hundred dollars he could not get a cent of it. The defendant

had a house in Cameronton and every time that he (plaintiff) passed he seemed to be

doing well. The defendant had purchased 3 bbls. of beef for his dogs, and was guilty

of this extravagance, whilst he (plaintiff), who had $10,000 due him on the creek, was

often going about half starving and could not get a cent. The greatest loafer around

will always pay something but the defendant would not pay anything.

Judge Cox: Mr. Brooks has the reputation of paying his debts when he has the

money, but there is little money here at present.

The defendant said it was only spoiled beef he had purchased, for which he

paid but $3.

Judge Cox: Was it since judgment was granted that the beef was purchased?

Plaintiff: No, sir, before that.

Judge Cox: The law abolishing arrest for debt gives power to the Judge to

imprison in any case where there is extravagance which is held as contempt on the

part of a creditor.

Judge Cox inquired of defendant whether he would pay by monthly

instalments of $20?

The latter replied he would pay as fast as he could, but he could not promise

any time at present. He also denied owning the house in Cameronton to which the

plaintiff referred.

Judge Cox: The case must stand for the present.

789 From CARIBOO LETTER. (1864, March 10). The British Colonist, p. 3. 790 Also called Camerontown or Cameronton. Interestingly, this article dates to before the formal

christening of Camerontown in August 1864; it was named after a claim established in August of 1862

by John Angus Cameron and associates. 791 From CARIBOO COUNTY COURT. (1865, January 12). The Cariboo Sentinel, p. 5.

375

22. Tumultous Times (1866 – 1868) The timeline of Mrs. Brooks’s life becomes a bit confused at this point. It’s clear that Isaac wished to leave the Cariboo. The house in MacArthur’s gulch had been built with Eliza’s money, but was in his name. At some point in 1864 or 1865, Isaac

formally ‘sold’ the house to Eliza792. In February of 1866, Eliza granted Isaac Power of Attorney. A few months later, she urged all those who owed her (as ‘Mrs. E. Brooks’) money to settle their accounts793. By November of the same year, she had moved from Camerontown to Barkerville and publicly revoked Isaac’s power of attorney794, just in time to begin construction of her new solely–owned business, the Cariboo Exchange Hotel. She signed her notices ‘Eliza Ord’, but the alias of ‘Mrs. Brooks’ would stay with her until her death. By 1867, Isaac had left the Cariboo, never to return. A rumor started that Ord’s claim to the Cariboo Exchange was imperfect. Eliza denied the claim in an advertisement795 published two months before the Exchange’s grand opening796 on July 1st, 1867. This proved ill–timed. Just over a year after the launch of the Cariboo Exchange Hotel, Barkerville burned to the ground. Most businesses were lost, including Eliza’s. Despite losing an

estimated $10,000797, Ord was not destitute. She had a portfolio of mining shares, some of which she went to court to claim798.

792 “[T]he house had been built for her in 1863 by Mr. Brooks, she supplying the money. […] Mr.

Barnston proved having drawn a bill of sale from Brooks to plaintiff in ’64 or ’65 for some property;

[…] he was almost certain that the house at McArthur’s gulch was included.” MINING COURT. (1871,

July 22). The Cariboo Sentinel, p. 3. 793 “MRS. E. BROOKS begs to request those who are indebted to her to CALL AND SETTLE THEIR

ACCOUNTS AT ONCE to prevent any further trouble and expense.” Brooks, E. (1866, June 25).

NOTICE. The Cariboo Sentinel, p. 2. 794 “I HEREBY GIVE NOTICE that I have this day revoked a certain Power of Attorney drawn by me

in favor of ISAAC F. BROOKS, and dated the day of February, 1866, and that the said I. F. BROOKS

has no longer any authority to act for me. ELIZA ORD.” Ord, E. (1866, November 15). NOTICE. The Cariboo Sentinel, p. 2. 795 “CERTAIN MALICIOUS PERSONS HAVING circulated reports to the effect that some flaw existed

in my title to the property known as the CARIBOO EXCHANGE situated in Barkerville, Williams

Creek, I wish by this means to give a most empathetic denial to any such statements, and to warn the

public against being misled on the subject.” Ord, E. (1867, July 10). A CARD. The Cariboo Sentinel, p. 2. 796 “THE CARIBOO EXCHANGE HOTEL, IS NOW OPEN FOR THE ACCOMMODATION OF the

mining community, and the public generally. No expense has been spared to render the house all that

could be desired, for comfort and convenience. The Bar is supplied with a complete stock of WINES,

LIQUORS and CIGARS. WELL AIRED BEDS may be had at a moderate charge. E. ORD,

Proprietress” Ord, E. (1867, July 1). THE CARIBOO EXCHANGE HOTEL [Advertisement]. The Cariboo Sentinel, p. 2. 797 BURNING OF BARKERVILLE. (1868, September 22). The Cariboo Sentinel, p. 2. 798 “Eliza Ord vs. M Carruthers. – This was an action brought to obtain possession of an interest in a

mining claim on Lowhee Creek which was sold to plaintiff for $1000 on a note for 12 months.” Cariboo

News. (1868, October 26). The British Colonist, p. 3.

376

23. Courts and Contractors (June, 1872)799 Eliza found a replacement for Isaac in the form of Robert Drinkall, a wealthy miner who in 1870 signed a legal contract promising that he would marry her upon demand. In early 1872, Robert Drinkall found himself unwilling or unable to pay a contractor for work on the home he shared with Eliza Ord, and was taken to court. The jury took ten minutes to decide that the contractor’s agreement was with Mrs. Brooks, and not with Mr. Drinkall.

Action for $547 for work and labor and goods supplied.

The plaintiff’s case was opened by Mr. Park, who stated briefly the points the

plaintiff could prove.

Thomas Simpson, the plaintiff, stated he performed 60 days’ work on the house

occupied by Mrs. Brooks; that Robert Drinkall promised to pay him for it, and

constantly inspected the work; that plaintiff frequently asked defendant for his bill

and defendant never denied it, and offered to give an order for $20 worth of goods on

Hudson Bay Co.

The plaintiff was subjected to a strict and searching cross–examination by Mr.

Barnston, in the course of which he produced a time–book in which the items for the

work were charged against Robert Drinkall. He admitted also that Robert Drinkall’s

name was inserted in such book some time after the commencement of the work,

when he (plaintiff) discovered that a bill of sale had been made to Drinkall of the

house. It was also elicited from the plaintiff that he had rendered an account to Mrs.

Brooks for the greater portion of the work, for which he now sued the plaintiff.

Mrs. Brooks was called, and stated that she spoke to Drinkall about the work

before its commencement, and he promised to see Simpson paid. She produced a bill

of sale of her own to Drinkall of the house. On cross–examination, she denied that

such bill of sale was made to place her property out of reach of her creditors; and

when called upon to produce the bill rendered to her by Simpson, she said it was lost,

and that the plaintiff, on cross–examination, had been bullied into admitting that it

contained items now sued for and was in full of all demands.

Mr. Davie opened the case for the defence, denying that the defendant had ever

sanctioned the work done by the plaintiff; that the contract was made with Mrs.

Brooks, to whom plaintiff had rendered a bill of the work and had settled it with Mrs.

Brooks, receiving money and settling the account in full of all demands; that the case

was governed by the Statute of Frauds. The counsel then referred to the pre–

production of this bill and receipt, which ought to be in the possession of the plaintiff’s

witness, as showing the action was an attempt to force a liability on defendant never

contracted nor contemplated by him.

Robert Drinkall was called, and deposed that he never authorised or promised

to pay for the work of Simpson; that he never admitted the account but invariably

denied it; that he had seen a bill of plaintiff’s made out against Mrs. Brooks for the

799 From THOMAS SIMPSON VS. ROBERT DRINKALL. (1872, June 8). The Cariboo Sentinel, p. 3.

377

work now sued for, in which credit was given for whiskey, board and cash, and which

was receipted by plaintiff in full of all demands.

George Montgomery deposed that he had a conversation with the plaintiff in

which the latter stated he could not get his money from Mrs. Brooks, and that he was

going after Mr. Drinkall to see if he (plaintiff) could get anything from him.

Mr. Barnston summed up the case for the defendant, and adverted to the

shallowness of the plaintiff’s case, pointing to the absence of any contract on the part

of the defendant; that the case at the best was governed by the Statute of Frauds, and

in any event had been settled by the plaintiff with Mrs. Brooks.

His Lordship in summing up told the jury that if the defendant in the first

instance employed the plaintiff to perform the work, and the plaintiff upon the faith

of such engagement trusted for pay to the defendant, and that the plaintiff had not

been paid, he was entitled to a verdict; but that if the defendant had merely promised

to pay a debt contracted by Mrs. Brooks, such promise was within the Statute of

Frauds, and must be in writing ;– that the jury in arriving at a conclusion on the first

point must consider the acts and conduct of the parties, and pointed out the particular

points in the evidence bearing upon the case. The plaintiff also should have produced

the receipt, as it would have thrown great light on the case.

The Jury retired, and in about ten minutes returned with a verdict for the

defendant.

24. The Breach of Promise Trial (June, 1872)800 Soon after the matter of the contractor landed in court, Eliza Ord decided to cash in on her promise of marriage. Robert refused, so she sued him for breach of promise801.

Mr. Bishop opened the case for the plaintiff, and stated that on the 9th day of

Nov. 1870, the defendant entered into a positive agreement in writing with the

plaintiff to marry her whenever she was ready to do so. That on the 29th and 30th

April last, notwithstanding such a contract, he had committed a breach of the same

and had refused to marry plaintiff. That the defendant was a man of means and

comparative wealth. That it would be shown that during the engagement the plaintiff

and defendant had conducted themselves like engaged people – had gone to church

and other public places together, and the defendant had even paid out large sums of

money for repairs to house, provisions and other necessaries. Under these

circumstances he would ask the Jury to give his client substantial damages.

The following witnesses – Marcus Wolfe, Edward Pearson, R. Skinner, and Mr.

Weldon (one of the Jury) – were called and proved that the defendant had paid

800 From BREACH OF PROMISE OF MARRIAGE. (1872, June 15). The Cariboo Sentinel, p. 3. 801 “A widow, “fat fair and forty,” sues a wealthy Cariboo miner at Barkerville to recover $25,000

damages done to her heart. Mrs. Brooks is the plaintiff, and Mr. Drinkall of the Forest Rose claim, is

the defendant.” BREACH OF PROMISE. (1872, June 7). The British Colonist, p. 3.

378

considerable sums of money for the plaintiff, and admitted on cross examination that

her general reputation was that of being an unchaste woman.

Thomas Simpson proved that he had worked on defendant’s house, where

plaintiff lived, and the familiar and endearing terms on which they lived, but on

cross–examination made the same admission as previous witnesses.

Wm. Dodd, John Lumley, and Capt. Trevaillot proved that the plaintiff and

defendant had been seen together on familiar terms, at Mass, at a funeral, and other

occasions, but all admitted, with the exception of Mr. Trevaillot, on cross–

examination, that her general reputation was that of being an unchaste woman. The

latter witness said that as far as he knew the plaintiff’s reputation was that of being

a chaste woman, and if he had known or heard anything to the contrary he would not

have gone near her house.

Joseph Park, sworn – I am a Barrister–at–Law; I have known the plaintiff

since ’64, have drawn many documents for them; I recollect on the 29th April plaintiff

and defendant being on excellent terms with each other; in consequence of

instructions I received I went to the Forest Rose claim to see him; I went again in the

evening and met him; I told him that Mrs. Ord had said he had broken his

engagement; he said yes; this was on 30th of April; he said he was determined to have

the matter at an end at once, and get off as cheaply as possible; he said I ought to let

him off easily; on the 5th of June he admitted he had engaged to marry her; they both

admitted.

Cross–examined – She never said to me that she would not marry the plaintiff;

as far as I know she has the reputation of being a chaste woman; she is a woman

whose public character on the creek is chaste; with the exception of the time she was

living with Mr. Brooks, I am not aware by rumor that she has cohabited with any

one.

Thomas Briggs. – I am Secretary of the Forest Rose co.; the defendant for two

years owned a quarter of the whole claim; last fall he sold a fifth; for 1870 he received

$2,535; for 1871, $11,770; for 1872, $1,332.

Mr. Davie opened the case for the defendant. He stated that the action

originated in fraud, and was supported by effrontery and falsehood. The agreement,

although made out by the defendant, was never made by the plaintiff, and was

altogether one–sided, inasmuch as it only bound the defendant to marry on request,

and there was no obligation on the part of Mrs. Brooks to marry Drinkall. Supposing

that the agreement was good, there was no breach. The defendant, on the 29th day

of April, the day before the action was brought, was on terms of apparent friendship

with plaintiff, sawing wood, giving his money, and buying provisions, and it was only

because he would not give her more money that the action was commenced. The only

evidence of breach was that of the plaintiff’s own counsel, and which breach,

according to his own statement, must have occurred at the time he served the writ.

In fact, it was the plaintiff herself who had put an end to the contract by bringing the

action. Her sole end and ambition was money, and the defendant had been her dupe.

Should the jury find a contract and a breach, she would be entitled to damages. Her

general character was so bad as to justify any sane man in breaking such a contract,

379

and it could not be supposed for one moment that her maiden feelings had ever been

injured. As for losing the society of Drinkall, it was evident she never cared for it. Mr.

Davie then called

Daniel Nordenburg – I am a fisherman, and have been on the creek about two

years; have known Mrs. Brooks during that time; about three months ago I was in

her house; she showed me Drinkall’s contact of marriage, and said she had got him

under her thumb; “but do you think,” she said, “that I would marry that old son of a

b––––“; I was in her house on the 29th April last; Drinkall was there sawing wood; I

had grouse and fish; she got $3 from Drinkall to pay for it, and made me stand treat;

she told me she had got $800 from Drinkall to send to San Francisco; she is a woman

of bad character, and is commonly called a bilk.

James McMillan – Am a miner; have known Mrs. Brooks for the past fifteen

years; I knew her in California; she has the character of being a bilk and a privateer;

by privateer I mean a woman sailing under false colors; in California she was known

by the name of Mrs. Christian.

Cross–examined by Mr. Bishop – I am pretty certain she is the same woman I

knew in California, but will not positively swear it.

Counsel – Apart from public character, do you know anything against her

personally?

Witness – Well I saw her go through a carpenter’s shop in about 15 minutes.

John Knott, carpenter – Have known the plaintiff for 15 years; she has always

had the reputation of being an unchaste woman and a bilk.

Mr. Barnston summed up the case for the defence. He drew attention to the

contract being one–sided, and of the plaintiff’s intention not to marry. The evidence

of Nordenburg was that of a disinterested witness, and reliance must be placed on it.

As to any breach, it was denied on the part of the defendant – and who, above all

others, had attempted to prove it but the plaintiff’s counsel! He (Mr. Barnston) would

be unwilling to cast imputations upon any one’s veracity, but when plaintiff’s counsel

tenders himself as a witness, and swears he has been on the creek since 1863 and

that public rumor does not assign Mrs. Brooks a bad character – contrary to the

admissions of his own witnesses – he must expect that little reliance will be placed

upon statements made by him, denied by the defence, and without which the

plaintiff’s case must be thrown out of court. As for damages, they could not be given.

A woman whose public reputation was that of being unchaste and a bilk was not

entitled to recover much in an action of this kind, and the Jury would no doubt

consider that the defendant, like a fool, had paid enough for his folly. It is left with

the Jury to consider whether the plaintiff ever intended to marry the defendant, and

whether her object throughout has not been to fleece him out of as much as she could

get.

Mr. Bishop briefly replied. He said a contract of marriage had been clearly

proved, and a breach of it by the defendant. It may be true that the plaintiff did not

bear the best of characters, but the defendant was aware of all this, and if with such

knowledge he chose to make such a contract he could not turn round and break it

without being responsible for damages. The plaintiff had lost considerably by not

380

being married to a man who was well off, and the Jury should give her commensurate

damages.

The Chief Justice – There are three points raised by the pleadings necessary

for the Jury to consider. 1st – Did the plaintiff really intend to marry the defendant?

2d – If so, did the plaintiff ever offer to marry the defendant? 3d – If so, did the

defendant refuse? – If all these points are found in the affirmative the plaintiff is

entitled to a verdict. If any one of them is found in the negative, the defendant is

entitled to a verdict.

The Jury retired, and after a lapse of three hours and a half returned with a

verdict for the defendant.

25. Eliza Ord’s Reply (June, 1872)802 Mrs. Brooks was unhappy with the result of the trial, and made her displeasure known through an advertisement in a Victoria newspaper. This ‘card to the public’

included an alleged transcription of the promise of marriage contract.

EDITOR BRITISH COLONIST:– As I am about to apply for another trial803 of

the cause of Eliza Ord vs Robert Drinkall, I wish to set myself right in the eye of the

public by saying that the report of the trial in the Sentinel is garbled and the result of ill–feeling on the part of the proprietor of that paper towards me, from whom I

recovered a sum of money before Mr. Ball not long ago. The suit was based upon the

following agreement, which, I think, ought to be sufficient to convince any fairminded

person of my claims:

This agreement made the seventh day of November, A.D. 1870, between Robert

Drinkall of Cameronton, in the District of Cariboo, British Columbia, free miner, and

Eliza Ord of Barkerville, in the same District, formerly hotel–keeper, but now out of

business, witnesseth, that the said Robert Drinkall hereby covenants and agrees to

and with the said Eliza Ord that at any time hereafter when she may or shall request

him to be united to her in the bonds of matrimony he will forthwith unite himself to

her in legal marriage according to the laws of British Columbia aforesaid, hereby

binding himself solemnly and irrevocably to the due performance of the above

covenant and agreement. In witness thereof the said Robert Drinkall hath hereunto

set his hand at Barkerville aforesaid the day and year first above written.

(Signed)

ROBERT DRINKALL,

ELIZA ORD.

Signed in the presence of J. S. Thompson.

802 From Ord, E. (1872, June 23). A Card to the Public. The British Colonist, p. 2. Written by Eliza Ord (1831 – 1893). 803 Mrs. Brooks was denied a re–trial. According to Richard Thomas Wright, historian of Barkerville,

this failure drove her to leave the Cariboo and return to California, where she stayed for a decade.

381

From the above it will be seen that I have asked nothing but justice. I would

add that the defendant tried in Court to disprove his own and Mr. Thompson’s

signatures, but failed most effectually; and Mr. Davie’s statement that I was guilty

of “fraud” was disproved by his own witnesses. If I had been a bad character, how did

it happen that Mr. Drinkall (who has been my neighbor seven years) consented to

give me the document which I produce above. With respect to the assertion that I was

in a hurry to sue Drinkall, the document is two years old, which fact shows that I was

more anxious that he should fulfill his agreement than to recover money from him.

ELIZA ORD.

VICTORIA, June 22, 1872.

26. An Unfortunate Case (October, 1889)804 Eliza is thought to have temporarily left the Cariboo for California after this incident, returning to the area years after the breach of promise case, “to re–establish her

share in a claim” 805. Mrs. Brooks, as she was still known, found work as a midwife and chicken–keeper. An unfortunate public quarrel on the streets of Richfield had her sent to distant New Westminster on suspicion of insanity. She was declared sane by the legal and medical authorities, but found her home plundered when she returned. Eliza retired to Vancouver, where she lived alone in Oppenheimer alley and worked for a few years as a sick nurse and hairdresser. Eliza Ord died of emphysema in New Westminster, in 1893.

A woman named Eliza Ord was brought to the city yesterday from Cariboo, by

Srgt.–Major Lindsay, government constable. She was committed as insane by John

Stone and Jon Stephenson, justices of the peace at Richfield, and a certificate of

insanity was furnished by Dr. Watts, of Cariboo. The woman is also known by the

name of Mrs. Brooks, but the former is her correct name. Her arrest arose out of a

quarrel which she had with another woman on the street in Richfield. The

magistrates examined her and decided she was insane, which decision was

corroborated by Dr. Watts, who did not make a professional examination, but based

his opinion on her actions and conversation in court. On her arrival in Westminster

yesterday, Mr. Warwick, government agent, appointed Dr. Cooper and Dr. I. M.

McLean a board of medical examiners to enquire into her sanity. After spending the

greater part of the afternoon, and subjecting her to a very thorough examination, they

could not find sufficient evidence on which to base a commitment for insanity, and

reported accordingly. In accordance with the report of the board, Mrs. Brooks has

been dismissed from custody, and will be sent home to Cariboo.

The affair is rather unfortunate, as it has placed Mrs. Brooks in a very

awkward position, and the magistrates who committed her on such slight grounds

are much to blame for not going into the case very thoroughly before sending her all

the way to Westminster on a mere suspicion. Mrs. Brooks practices as a midwife in

804 An Unfortunate Case. (1889, October 24). Daily British Columbian, p. 4. 805 Wright, R. T. (2013). Barkerville and the Cariboo Goldfields. Canada: Heritage House.

382

Cariboo, and she fears that the action of the magistrate will cause her patrons to

cease giving her employment. She has also 120 chickens at home which are at the

mercy of thieving Chinamen, and she expects to find very few of them left on her

return. On the whole, the proceedings of the Cariboo magistrates seem to have been

ill–advised, and the unfortunate woman is deserving of some recompense for the

trouble to which she has been subjected.

Roads to Gold (or Lack Thereof) When they were first found, most gold fields were not easily reached from existing settlements. Transportation of people, gold and supplies was a serious – sometimes deadly – problem faced by participants in the gold rush. What roads were built were often in poor condition and had to be paid for through unpopular taxes.

27. The Burden of a Road Tax (1860)806

Our usually quiet little town [Lillooet] has been thrown into quite a state of

excitement lately, by the new taxes threatened to be inflicted upon us; not only by the

proclamation of the new tax of half a cent per pound as a toll over a bad road, but the

supreme dignitary of British Columbia – who we must suppose gets his instructions

from His Excellency the Governor – has been pleased to inform our worthy judge that

he must make every man that works at any regular employment pay a traders’ license

of five dollars per quarter; in a word, that our tailor, carpenter, blacksmith and

painter (we had a cobbler once, but he left for want of a job) shall not be allowed to

turn another honest penny at their trades till they pay their license. […]

In the first place, the road never has been in the condition that a toll could be

justly demanded on it. It was unfinished even when the sappers left, and they did not

even finish what they promised. The sappers may talk of it with triumph, as it is the

only thing they have done in the colony; but it is no credit to the makers; and the way

the fall rain is exposing the flimsy workmanship of its embankments, makes it rather

a reproach to their skill. The most that can be said of it is, that wagons have passed

over it with light loads, and even they could not have continued to travel till this time

if the carriers, at their own expense, had not constantly kept men at work repairing

it. But since the first announcement of the new tax, private individuals have resolved

to do no more to the road; consequently, heavy rains have made it a question of doubt

whether it can be travelled upon any more this season. But our rulers, not considering

the state of the road, and looking only at the question of how much revenue will the

tax produce, have unjustly imposed this tax just at time when it will be most

burthensome to the people and least productive; they have laid it on too heavily, and,

like the dog and the shadow, are likely to lose the substance; for, however they may

think, it is intolerable to be borne. This country is already taxed with a heavy tariff

806 From LILLOOET. (1860, November 21). The Road Tax. The British Colonist, p. 2.

383

and tonnage dues upon goods before they arrive here, and then before they leave they

must pay a half cent per pound; and all this the resident of the upper country (though

incapable of earning anything, on account of the cold winter) is compelled to pay upon

whatever he eats, drinks or wears; for let it be understood that this is a country that

comparatively produces nothing, or at least a mere fraction of what is required by

either man or beast, consequently both man and beast pay a heavy tax to government.

Notwithstanding all this, the merciless, grasping office–holders, who seem to care for

nothing else but the increase of the revenue, so that they can have their ill–earned

salaries increased, have imposed a tax not only on freight going through the river,

but upon every pound of feed that an animal eats after leaving Douglas. Surely, if in

ancient times there was a cure on the man who muzzled the ox that treaded out the

corn, so surely will there be a double curse on the covetous persons who impose such

a heavy tax on the feed of the poor pack animal.

To understand the full imposition of this tax, you must know that this portage

of 28 miles is the only place where an attempt has yet been made to make a wagon

road, or that the government has done the first thing whereby they can claim any

recompense; though after the portage there are three large lakes, one portage of 24

miles, and two other smaller ones, all made passable by private enterprise; and on

these upper portages freight has to be carried on mules’ backs, requiring a large

number of them to be kept and fed upon barley, which has to pay the duty of half a

cent per pound through Douglas. In the winter season, nearly half of the freight

leaving Douglas consists of feed for the other portages; so that instead of the tax

making only the difference of half a cent per pound on freight to Fraser River; it

makes a difference of fully one cent, if not more.

The tax being imposed just at this time, makes it particularly hard upon all

parties, as business above is now nearly at a stand still, and most of what is now

being packed up will not realize anything till the spring; and therefore merchants

will not be apt to pack so much as usual when they have to pay ten dollars per ton in

the outset in hard cash, and wait till spring for their returns. Already some of the

principal packers are preparing to quit on account of the tax; and many more will do

the same if the tax is persisted in, and the result will be that parties above will have

to pay big prices again in the spring, or leave the country as many have done before.

On the morning of the tenth, the day on which the tax commenced, our worthy

judge had some notices posted up informing the inhabitants that he had been

appointed collector of the tax, and that he would be ready to give permits each day

between the hours of 10 a. m. and 2 p. m. This gave our citizens a new idea of business,

for they had not been used to waiting for official hours, but always put out their

cargoes early in the morning to enable the trains to make the first stopping place by

daylight. However, the convenience of the public by officials is not to be thought of for

a moment; but according to the notice a person has to wait upon his honor the judge

and get a permit in office hours if he only wants to send a sack of potatoes on an

Indian’s back to the first house on the trail; so you may judge that the new tax, to say

the least of it, is a disgraceful piece of official bungling.

384

28. The Road from Port Douglas (1860)807

The trail is almost impassable for wagons now. On the 9th inst., five loaded

wagons left here with less than the mules drawing them could have packed on their

backs. On the first day they got two–and–a–half miles from this place, having been

mired, and being compelled to place as many as 18 mules to one wagon in some places,

to draw it through the mud, which was over the hubs. In doing so, one mule was

crippled and ruined. The next day two wagons left here with 2100 pounds and six

mules each. They made four miles the first day. The second night one of the wagons

returned to town, it having been broken, on account of part of the road being washed

away, where it had been left in an unfinished state on the first ten miles. The next

night, two of the five wagons mentioned first, returned – they having broken down on

account of the bad state of the road. On the seventh day, the balance of the wagons

reached the Twenty–Mile House, having had to unload and double teams several

times before getting there – it being, in some places, as much as 16 or 18 mules could

do often to take the empty wagons through.

This, Mr. Editor, is the beautiful road made by the Royal Engineers808 last

summer, and on which we are told we will have to pay a tax of half a cent per pound

on everything taken over it. And why are we required to pay it? Because some

designing person, or some consummate ass, has told the Governor that the price of

packing has been reduced greatly by the Royal Engineer “improvements.” Put the

half–a–cent tax on the goods, and we will be paying 41 per cent. on every other article

that is ate, drank or worn by men above here; and it is expected that the trade will

go through its natural channel of this Colony and Vancouver Island, and pay those

duties, tonnage dues and taxes, and compete with men who pay but one–fourth of

those duties, and bring their goods from the Dallas and smuggle them in. We are told

that next year the government will have men to collect duties from these Oregon

traders. Six hundred miles of the frontier is not easily watched; and if all the officials

(Governor Douglas included) were to turn out to collect duties, they would not get half

of them.

29. Blazing the Dewdney Trail (1901)809

Forty–two years ago there arrived at Yale, then the principal town on the

Fraser river, a young Englishman by the name of Edgar Dewdney, who was destined

to become an important factor in the upbuilding of Canada’s most western province.

At the time the mainland of British Columbia was an independent crown colony,

governed by Mr. (afterwards Sir) James Douglas, who was also chief factor of the

Hudson’s Bay Company. Little was known of this wonderful country, except that for

years previous it contributed largely to the commerce of the Old World in the shape

of raw furs. It was inhabited by roaming bands of warlike Indians, with here and

807 From P.S. (1860, November 29). The New Road Tax Again. The British Colonist, p. 3. 808 An engineering Corps. of the British Army. 809 From A CHAT WITH DEWDNEY. (1901, September 28). The Nelson Tribune, p. 1.

385

there a solitary trading post, in charge of a factor, and adventurers who knew no law

except that administered, when necessity arose, by the representative of the trading

company.

Then, as if by magic, the news spread far and wide that gold had been found,

and in a few months a steady stream of humanity came pouring into the new El

Dorado. The fall of ’59 saw hundreds of prospectors cradling the sands of the

Similkameen and Tilameen rivers. The necessity at once arose for means of

communications between the numerous camps on these rich streams and Yale and

Victoria, the supply points. Between stood the frowning and at that time nearly

impoassable Hope range. A trail had to be made and governor Douglas in the spring

of 1860 let a contract to young Dewdney for the construction of 65 miles of a four–foot

trail from Hope across the mountains to Vermilion Forks – the junction of the

Similkameen and Tulameen rivers – now the site of the thriving town of Princeton.

For over forty years this trail has in continuous use, until now the growth and

development of the southern portion of the province warrants the building of a direct

line of railway connecting the towns of the Kootenays, Boundary and Similkameen,

with the cities of the coast. The first step with this end in view was inaugurated by

the government placing in the field this summer a party of engineers to locate a

feasible pass for such a road across the Hope mountains. The man to take charge and

conduct of this highly important, though arduous undertaking, was found in the

pioneer surveyor and trail–blazer Edgar Dewdney. The ex–governor – for his sterling

worth and ambition has made him the recipient of many high offices in the gift of the

crown – though now in his 67th year, is still as active and fit for duty as when he

undertook his initial contract of trail building in the early history of the colony.

Camped down at the old Allison homestead yesterday evening, I found the

governor after coming in from a hard day’s work in the hills. He had just finished his

frugal evening repast, and leaving the pots and pans to be cleaned by his packer, he

invited me into his tent. “Well, I declare you newspapermen are always hunting for

news,” was his genial opening remark, after I had introduced myself and stated my

errand. “But,” and he hesitated for a minute, “you must remember I am in the employ

of the government, so cannot consistently tell you about the survey.” I felt rather

discouraged, but ventured to ask him for a story of his pioneer days, the days of the

60’s, in fact something, anything to make copy. “Ah, that is something I can tell you

about!” and his kindly eyes twinkled amusingly as his thoughts carried him back

again to the period I was most anxious to learn of. Fixing himself comfortably on a

large buffalo robe, the governor told the following narrative.

“The winter of ’60–’61 was one of the hardest the old timers had experienced,

and those of us living on the coast entertained fears that the miners along the

Similkameen would suffer for lack of provisions. The impression was so strongly

founded that early in February ’61 I was dispatched to investigate the situation. I

mad the lonely trip across the mountains on snow–shoes, only to find that those

wintering on the river had no cause to complaint. This I reported to governor Douglas,

who thanked me for the information. At the same time, it originated in his mind the

idea of constructing a wagon road across the Hope mountains to facilitate the

386

shipment of supplies to the camps, so that the possibility of a famine in future years

might be avoided. That spring witnessed the rush of over two thousand miners to the

placer diggings at Rock creek. The needs of a wagon road at once became evident if

the trade was not to be lost to Victoria merchants, who were then clamoring for easy

access to that camp and the Similkameen. Backed by the popular demand, governor

Douglas set about to build the wagon road. I secured a contract for the first nine miles,

starting up the western slope from Hope. The royal engineer corps, under colonel

Moody, surveyed and built the next sixteen miles. In all, twenty–five miles of a

splendid road were constructed when the placer mines at Rock Creek worked out, and

in their place Cariboo was struck. To this day, not a wagon has been over the road.

“Three years later, in ’64, Wild Horse creek, in East Kootenay was discovered.

The reports of enormously rich dirt soon reached the coast and a veritable stampede

set in. Goods and supplies for the diggings were taken in principally from Lewiston

and Fort Colville, at that time an old Hudson’s Bay trading post. Our own people,

disgusted at not being able to secure the trade except by sending supplies through

American territory, and either resorting to blockade running with its attendant

liability of seizure and confiscation, or by paying an official $4 per day and grub to

convoy the pack trains through, urged upon governor Frederick Seymour the

importance of building a direct trail on British soil.

“In March, 1864, governor Seymour instructed me to go to New Westminster.

I had just finished the inspection of the old Spence’s bridge, across the Fraser, and

hastened to comply with his request. The audience, I remember, was a decidedly brief

one. He explained what was wanted, and asked me if I would undertake to build such

a trail. I agreed to, on condition that I should choose my own assistants and be left

with a free hand. This he readily consented, and with letters of credit in my pocket I

hurriedly set off for Fort Hope. There, I picked up several old time–expired Royal

Engineers, one of whom, George Turner, is now in the office of the Dominion public

works at the Royal City. With the assistance of 18 Indians to pack our supplies, we

started across the Hope range and in a few days struck this same camping ground.

At that time the only white settler in the Similkameen valley was J. F. Allison. With

him I arranged for saddle and pack horses, and the actual work of blazing for a trail

was started.

“Down the valley as far as Richter’s pass we followed a well worn Indian trail,

necessitating little work. En route below the townsite of Keremoos we passed a

Hudson’s Bay trading post. Crossing the divide we came out on Osoyoos lake, where

judge Hanes made his headquarters in administering justice and collecting her

majesty’s customs dues. The nature of the country as far east as Eholt’s ranch – now

Midway – on the Kettle river, was mostly rolling hills and valleys heavily covered

with tall bunch grass. Many Indians made that section their hunting ground, for deer

and other game was plentiful. Rock Creek was already a deserted camp, except for a

few Chinamen.

“East from Eholt’s ranch the trail followed the meanderings of Boundary creek,

crossing over to the north fork of the Kettle river. On reaching this creek I decided to

explore due east and came out at the Arrow lakes. I found this route to be out of the

387

way, being too far north, so returned and continued down the stream to the Kettle

river – where the amalgamated cities of Grand Forks and Columbia now stand. The

Kettle river was followed to Christina lake; thence eastward across Norway mountain

to the head of Sheep creek, down the valley below the wonderful city of Rossland to

the Columbia river. Between Christina lake and the Columbia was one of the most

difficult sections, on account of the dense undergrowth and fallen timber. To clear

this out for the passage of the pack train required many hard days’ labor. Arriving at

the Columbia – there being no ferry – we all swam across.

“At Fort Sheppard, an important trading post of the Hudson’s Bay Company,

in charge of an eccentric old gentleman by the name of Hardisty, we re–outfitted and

divided the force. Taking a canoe manned by Colville Indians, I decided to explore the

great lakes. The other party continued on eastward blazing a trail via the Pend

d’Oreille and Salmon rivers across the range down to Kootenay lake, crossing at Goat

river. Here I afterwards met them.

“Meanwhile I went up the Columbia river to the mouth of the Kootenay river,

which was followed up by making 14 portages to Kootenay lake. I crossed the lake to

its east shore, landing at what is now called Pilot Bay. The Indians named it

Chicamoon mountain, meaning money mountain, from which they obtained lead for

bullets. I thought at first that a steam ferry service could be established, but on

account of the distance to bring in material and machinery from the Coast to build

the same, the idea was abandoned. When coming down the west side of the lake after

examining the north end, at a point where Ainsworth camp is, we were surprised to

find a white man. He was standing on the shore industriously showing a crowd of

Indian children how to shoot with a bow and arrow. I turned the canoe towards shore

and hailed him. He told me his name was Dick Fry, the first prospector to find gold

on the Pend d’Oreille river. He was practically living in exile, having fled with his

Indian wife from the vengeance of a tribe of Indians, who had a few months previous,

massacred a small party of miners, but through the agency of his s––––– – a woman

of their tribe – had spared his life. In after years Fry, with the Hall boys, discovered

the Hall mine, above Nelson. Before leaving he showed me over the hot springs and

exhibited several specimens of rich galena float.

“Continuing my canoe journey south, I struck Goat creek and the balance of

the party. The march was again taken up, heading northeast for Moyie lake and

across St. Joseph’s prairie, now Cranbrook, to Wild Horse creek, our destination.

“The diggings proved to be rich, over a million at that time having been taken

out, and a typical Bret Harte mining camp had sprung up at the mouth of the creek.

Some years later, the place was named Fort Steele, after colonel Steele, now in South

Africa, who had come into the country in charge of a company of the Northwest

Mounted police to quell an incipient Indian uprising.

“The arrival of the party was entirely unexpected and elicited the hearty

approval of the Britishers, for you must remember it was the most remote and

inaccessible portion of the colony. Law and order was maintained by a vigilance

committee, who were responsible for the protection of life and property and the

settlement of numerous disputes.

388

“Having blazed the route of the proposed trail I at once set about to build it. In

camp I had no difficulty in securing 65 men under the able leadership of William

Fernie, years after the discoverer of the famous Crow’s Nest coal measures. I had

made up my mind on leaving Osoyos lake that the easiest and most convenient route

lay near the international boundary line, and accordingly had followed this idea out

wherever practicable. Fernie took charge of the construction westward to Kootenay

lake. Other parties I placed at work at different points, so that by September, or seven

months from the time the survey started from Hope, the trail was completed and the

merchants of the coast were sending in supplies by long pack trains, through British

territory, a distance of some 500 miles. That trail cost the colony $74,000 in gold dust,

but it opened up to civilization and development the richest heritage in the possession

of the British empire,” he concluded.

When I arose to bid him good night, the camp fire had burnt low and it was dark

outside the tent. I wended my way back to Princeton wondering that after all the

hardships he had endured pioneering in what was literally “a sea of mountains,” that

the governor was so hale and hearty. Yet he assured me on parting that he was hale

and fit and long ere sun–up, he would be journeying across the Hope range to inspect

the work of his engineers on the Coquihalla river.

30. Unreasonable and Cranky Kickings (1890)810

Now that the exodus for the winter months has begun, it is not out of place to

make a few remarks regarding the ways and means of getting into and out of the

Kootenay Lake mining camps. The trip is not a hard one, no matter which route is

selected. Of course, much is heard about the rough road between Kootenay station,

on the Northern Pacific, and the head of river navigation, at Bonner’s Ferry; and

expressive are the oaths used by the average pilgrim who has walked or rode over the

pack–trail between Sproat’s Landing, on the Columbia, and the head of lake

navigation, at Nelson. Adverse criticism, or fault–finding, is alone heard when our

present steamboats and their accommodations are the subjects of discussion. The

fault–findings of the average tenderfoot expert and eastern pilgrim do not count; and

the critical oaths must be swallowed with a grain of salt if uttered by men who, in

early days, thought nothing of crossing the plains in one of Ben Holliday’s mud–

wagons, with even chances that his scalp would be lifted en route. Has the luxurious upholstery of the modern Pullman or Wagner 16–wheel

sleeper wrought so wonderful a change in the average old–timer that the only way he

can now be recognized is by the size and frequency of his drinks, or by the simple

bluntness with which he utters expressive, homely cuss words? Or, are all old–time

mining men slowly and gradually changing from the ruggedness of the glacial period

to the stout effeminacy of this golden age?

Twenty years ago a 300–mile stage trip was considered a picnic; now a 30–mile

ride is looked on as a hardship. Thirty years ago men trudged hundreds of miles to

810 From UNREASONABLE AND CRANKY KICKINGS. (1890, October 25). The Miner, p. 2.

389

the placers of Cariboo; today a walk to the diggings on 49 creek – only 10 miles away

– is a wonderful feat. The Argonauts of the fall of ’49 and spring of ’50, who sailed

round “the Horn” in search of the golden fleece, looked upon their trip, although made

in old and leaky ships, as an adventure. Today the mining sharp, in search of low–

grade galena, kicks at the slowness with which our stanch and modern steamboats

round Kootenay lake’s “cape Horn,” or turns up his nose at the fare on the stately

Lytton, while hurrying down the swift–rolling Columbia and across lakes made

famous by Indian legendary. Men who have camped out night after night on the

cheerless deserts of Arizona, with nothing but a Tucson blanket for a covering, the

sharp yelp of the coyote lulling them to sleep, find fault with the size of the bedrooms

at Mike Driscoll’s Palace hotel at the boundary line, or cannot sleep because of the

muffled rattle of the poker chips in an all–night game at Sproat’s only first–class

family hotel.

Notwithstanding all these kickings, the Kootenay Lake country is neither hard

to get into nor hard to get out of. The little steamer Galena is manned by as courteous

and as obliging a crew, from captain to cook, as ever ran a steamboat. The meals

served are better than at many first–class eastern hotels; and the time made is not

slow. The stage ride from Bonner’s ferry to Kootenay station is over a road just rough

enough to give a healthy man a good appetite, the distance being made in 6 to 7 hours.

By the other route, the 14–mile trail can be covered in less than 4 hours on a saddle

animal, or in half a day on foot. At the end of the 14 miles is the track of the Columbia

& Kootenay railway, with a construction train running the 14 miles to Sproat’s

Landing. From there the steamer Lytton, fitted up with comfortable state–rooms, a

steward from the hotel Vancouver, and a brand–new captain from Portland, Oregon,

conveys passengers to either Revelstoke, on the Canadian Pacific, or Little Dalles, on

the Spokane–Northern.

Yet, while the above is literally true as regards the routes of travel and the

modes of conveyance, people who are in here will be better fixed in the spring if they

remain here; and those thinking of coming in will do well to not fully make up their

minds until the gentle zephyrs of balmy spring dry up the mud–holes on the road

between Mud slough and Dick Fry’s rancheree811.

The Klondike Rush

31. “The Most Remarkable Gold Country” (1897)812

Just before boarding the train at Revelstoke station the other day, a Herald

representative was fortunate enough to meet Sergeant Engel, one of the Yukon

detachment of North West Mounted Police who went to the far away gold fields two

811 Fry sold his ranch the following year: “An important real estate deal took place at Bonner’s Ferry

on Saturday. A wealthy syndicate of Washington bankers has purchased the Dick Fry ranch and

propose to boom a townsite. The […] syndicate paid not less than $20,000 for the ranch, and […] Mr.

Fry retains a large interest.” Dick Fry’s Ranch Reported Sold. (1891, October 3). The Miner, p. 7. 812 From CLONDIKE. (1897, July 29). The Calgary Weekly Herald, p. 1.

390

years ago under Capt. Constantine. The Sergeant, who is a well informed

Englishman, has been acting as chief clerk for Capt. Constantine, in which capacity,

and as recorder of mining claims, he had unusual opportunities of observation. He

left the Clondike district on June 20th and was fortunate enough to make connections

so as to complete the trip inside of a month.

FABULOUS STORIES

Sergt. Engel was at one time stationed at Calgary, and having heard little news

during his two years’ exile was eager to hear what had been going on. He then gave

the Herald representative a long and extremely absorbing account of his experiences

in the most remarkable gold country yet discovered on this planet, and whose almost

miraculous strikes have set the whole continent in a fever of excitement.

“How were the diggings first discovered?” asked The Herald.

“It was in August of last year that the first big strike was made,” said Mr.

Engel. A man named Cormack, locally known as ‘S–––––h George,’ owing to his

having married an Indian woman, was working with Indians near Forty Mile, and

they told him of a creek out of which they had long been accustomed to taking out

gold. He got them to guide him over, and the first pan he washed contained twenty–

five cents. He jumped. Five cents a pan is good digging; ten cents

IS A FORTUNE.

“He went on and soon got $2 to the pan, then $8.20. He then staked a claim

and made the two Indians stake one on each side of him, and after taking out a

considerable quantity of dust and nuggets went back to get supplies. He told other

miners of his find, but they only laughed, as S–––––h George was noted for having a

gold excitement once a month. However, the next time he returned and showed his

gold, the stampede commenced and in a short time Bonanza creek was staked from

end to end.

“Before winter set in, as high as $60 to the pan was being taken out, and in

one place a bucketful of gravel yielded

$12 PER SHOVEL.

“What was the biggest nugget taken out?”

“The biggest I saw was worth about $300, but it was reported that a $400

nugget was found.”

“What about other discoveries?”

“Well, Eldorado creek was located soon afterwards, and big finds were also

made on Indian river, Bear creek and other streams. Bonanza and El Dorado are

tributaries of the Clondike river, which flows into the Yukon river, and the diggings

are well within Canadian territory.”

“How many claims are located?”

“About 700.”

“Is it correct that the police boys brought out $200,000?”

“No: we all did well813, but nothing like that sum was brought out. There were

only six of us came back, Insp. Strickland, Staff Sergt. Hayne, Corp. Newbrook, Const.

813 “W. R. Gowler […] secured claim No. 52 on Bonanza Creek, and an interest in claim No. 34, on El

Dorado creek. These claims will undoubtedly make him wealthy, as they are showing rich and will be

391

H. Jenkins, Const. Telfort and myself. Const. S.W. Jenkins, who went from Macleod,

made $40,000 without turning a shovel. He went over from the post one Sunday,

staked a claim and got back in time for duty on Monday morning. He then gave half

the claim to a working partner and shortly afterwards sold out for $40,000 cash. He

is staying up there to wind up his affairs, and will then, like the rest of us, purchase

his discharge and pull out.”

“How is Dr. Wills doing?”

“Ah, yes; Dr. Wills is an old Calgary man. He owns four or five claims on the

best creeks and will certainly pull out with a big fortune. One of his claims has a

paystreak 400 feet wide and ten feet deep.”

“What about the stories of great fortunes being made by miners in a few

months, Sergeant?”

“Well, some are probably exaggerated, for the men who strike it rich are

usually reticent. One man, Alec McDonald, had a thousand dollars, and by buying

up, working and dealing in claims, made $350,000 in three years, which is a long time

up there. Many of the men made all the way from $50,000 to half a million in less

than a year. You see, the returns come all at once. In winter, which lasts from

September 15 to May 15, the gravel is frozen solid and has to be thawed out by

burning. The pay dirt is piled on the dump until spring, and as soon as water is

obtainable, the clean–up takes place and the gold is taken out. Two of the lucky men

who came down with us on the Portland were Sloan and Wilkinson, of Nanaimo, B.C.

The rest are mostly Americans with a few French Canadians.

“Surveyor Ogilvie, who is now surveying claims, estimates that between

$40,000,000 and $60,000,000 will be taken out of the claims already located. Some of

them are deep and will last fifteen years.”

“What is the size of a claim?”

“500 feet long and extending from bank to bank of the stream. The Government

imposes no miner’s license. Anybody is allowed to take up a claim, and the fee for

recording it is $15 for the first year, and $100 the second year. Miners’ wages are $15

a day.”

“What are the principal camps in the district?”

“Fort Cudahy, Forty Mile and Dawson City. The first was our original post, but

the police have been moved to Dawson, which is three miles from the mouth of the

Bonanza creek. The police have been doing all the Government work so far. Capt.

worked extensively next spring. Other members of the Mounted Police have also done well. L. Jenkins

took out $15,000 last winter from claim No. 30, Bonanza Creek, and owns half an interest in another

claim. A. Ward cleaned up $18,000 on No. 38, on Bonanza Creek, and owns an interest in claim No.

50. Fred. Webster staked No. 51, and bought in on No. 24, and is all right for a good pile. A. Pinkerton

and D. Sinclair have also got good claims. J. Barthose located No. 38 and took out $2,000 for the little

work he did upon it, and calculated he would take out about $30,000 this winter. A. McKellar staked

a good claim on Bonanza Creek which he sold last winter, and afterwards worked on “lay” on El Dorado

and made a good clean up. J. Thirton staked a claim on Adams creek and bought an interest in one on

Bonanza creek. He found $5 to the pan on his property and will work it this winter. R. Churchill staked

No. 52 on Bonanza creek and has prospects of having something good.” MOUNTED POLICE AS

MINERS. (1897, September 16). The Calgary Weekly Herald (Special Edition), p. 2.

392

Constantine, our chief, was practically government agent. We did the land business,

customs work, mine recording and kept order, though this last was not a hard job.

We had only

ONE CRIMINAL CASE

of a serious nature. It was a case of stabbing during a drunken row. We arrested the

man and had him committed for trial, but that was as far as we could go. There is no

judge and as we were getting short of rations we let him go on heavy bail.

“There is remarkably little stealing. The fact is that gold is so plentiful that it

is not worth while stealing it. A saloon keeper at Dawson kept his gold lying in a heap

on the floor of the shack – half a million dollars’ worth – and though there was no

lock on the door, it was quite safe. Harry Ash, a saloon keeper at the mouth of the

Clondike, showed me where he was taking in $1,000 a night. Drinks and cigars are

50 cents each. There being no regular office, we had to do the recording of claims on

the saloons.”

THE ROUTE

“Now, about the best way to get in, Sergeant?”

“Well, in the first place, I would strongly warn people against going unless they

have at least $600. If they go in now, they should have not less than $2,000. It is

absolutely necessary for a man to take in about a year’s provisions and to buy them

before starting from Seattle. The rush there is now so great that the two trading

companies will not be able to provision the population through the winter, and there

is almost sure to be starvation. The spring route is by far the cheapest. Starting, say,

in March, a man leaves Seattle or Victoria with a year’s supplies, weighing about a

ton. The steamer takes him up the coast to Juneau, a ten days trip. From Juneau, a

small steamer takes him to Dyea, which, although only 100 miles, occupies 36 hours.

At Dyea he must walk and hire Indians to pack his stuff over the summit to Lake

Lindeman.

“The lake gives you a ride of five or six miles, and then follows another long

journey overland to the headwaters of Lake Bennett, which is 28 miles long. On foot

you go again for several miles, and then the cariboo crossing of the river furnishes

transportation for four miles to Tagish Lake, where another twenty–one mile boat

ride may be had. For the Lake trip it is necessary for you to build your own boat.

“This is followed by a weary stretch of mountainous country, and then Marsh

or Mud Lake is reached. You get another boat ride of twenty–four miles, and then go

down the creek for twenty–seven miles to Miles Canyon and to White Horse Rapids.

“This is one of the most dangerous places on the entire route, and should be

avoided by all strangers. The stream is full of sunken rocks and runs with the speed

of a mill race. Passing White Horse Rapids, the journey is down the river for thirty

miles to Lake Labargo, where thirty–one miles of navigable water is found. Another

short portage and Louis river is reached, where you have a 200 mile journey which

brings you to Fort Selkirk.

“At this point Pelly and Louis rivers come together, forming the Yukon. From

that point it is practically smooth sailing down to Dawson City, Cudahy and Forty

Mile.”

393

394

GOLD COMMISSIONER

Before leaving, Sergt. Engel turned over the mining business to Thos. Fawcett

of Ottawa, the newly appointed Gold Commissioner, who arrived at Dawson about

June 18th. Dawson has about 4,000 people. Circle City, further north, had about

2,500 people last year and is now almost deserted. It has been branded “Silent City.”

There are, however, good diggings there and people will go back to them. The only

trading companies in the country are the North American Trading and Navigation

Co. and the Alaska Commercial Co., both Yankee concerns. They have a practical

monopoly of the trade of the whole country and make their own prices. Flour is $12 a

hundred pounds, bacon 40c. a pound, condensed milk 75c. a can, fresh meat (when

they can get it) $1.40 a pound and as tough as leather.

A GRIEVANCE

Sergt. Engel says the feeling was very strong over the Canadian Government’s

neglect in regard to mail matters. The police did not receive a single mail all last

winter. Our Government offered only $500 per trip to take in the mail, while the

American Government paid $1200.

The Mounted Police have evidently done good work. Not only have they paid

all the expense of going in and maintenance, but have collected a large surplus

besides, and have turned a large portion of the trade of the district to Canada.

Sergt. Engel will spend a week or so settling up his affairs in the Territories

before visiting England and on his return, he said, if he goes into any more mining

he will take Kootenay as the scene of his investments, as he believes the average man

has better and safer chances there than in far away Clondike with its incredible

privations and dangers to health and life itself.

INSPECTOR STRICKLAND SPEAKS

In the course of a short interview Inspector Strickland, who returned at the

head of the party, said if the country fills in as rapidly as it is going, the two trading

companies will not be sufficient to supply the food, and there is plenty of room for

other companies in this line. Provisions are not so dear as one might expect. Flour is

$12 a hundred, bacon 40 cents a pound, canned meats 75 cents and a dollar, and

cariboo and moose flesh is sold by the Indians at 50 cents a pound. Inspector

Strickland strongly recommends that no person should go out to the Yukon district

without taking with him a year’s food814, as well as some dollars, because paying

claims are not always found immediately and there is the long and hard work of

building a home. There are no enjoyments. It is all hard work. Wood is scarce and

requires a good deal of labour in cutting, etc. The climate is healthy and there is very

little sickness. The chief complaints are scurvy, kidney troubles and rheumatism.

Though the winter is eight months long it is only three weeks that the sun is not seen.

814 One contemporary source recommended the following as a year’s provisions: “Bread, 100 lbs., Dried

beans and peas, 25 lbs., Meat soup, stock, etc., 20 lbs. Neck of beef boneless, 80 lbs. Fresh vegetables.

100 lbs., Sugar, 50 lbs., […] ordinary can’d milk, 40 lbs., Coffee, 10 lbs., Tea, 4 lbs., Ordinary olive, 20

lbs., Lemons and juice in bottles, 50 lbs., Ordinary nut meats, 10 lbs., Celery, 15 lbs., Canned fruits,

25 lbs.” Converted from a table in THE FOOD PROBLEM. (1897, September 16). The Calgary Weekly Herald, p. 3. Substituting condensed tablets for this ‘ordinary food’, where possible, could bring the total weight down to 69 ½ lbs.

395

Miners’ wages are $15 a day, but this rate will fall soon if the present rush continues

from the Pacific Coast.

32. Tips for the Tenderfoot (1897)815

Here are a few hints for the tenderfoot who does not know dolomite from a

mule track, and who may go prospecting in the Yukon. This practical advice will be

valuable to some an interesting to many:

The great majority of the men rushing to the Klondike area are tenderfeet.

They have never seen a gold mine, and their comprehension of what is a gold mine is

derived from a perusal of the flotsam and jetsam of the daily press. […] Few of them

go prepared to buy claims already opened, and must locate and prospect claims for

themselves. Brain–laden with absurd ideas as to the origin of the gold, and ignorant

of the natural laws of its distribution, confronted in the country with the severest

physical conditions under which gold mining is followed anywhere, it is impossible

but that there should be many disappointments before a sufficient number of

successes shall have come to accumulate the needed experience.

On the ground, and presuming all of the possible ground of the Klondike

placers already appropriated, the attention of the miner should be first given to

unproven possible ground in the valleys of streams adjacent to those in which gold

has already been found and to the valleys of streams which head in the same hills or

mountains as do these known gold bearing streams. It is possible for the lode system

which has enriched one stream to have been cut by the drainage basin of another, so

that it has enriched them as well.

In the Yukon, as elsewhere, the mountain uplifts have resulted in forming

fissured and fractured zones in the rocks which have filled with gold ores. These, if

one side of a mountain, are apt to be duplicated on the other, and, though neither can

be seen, both can be inferred from the discovery of gold on one side of the drainage.

It is justified to look for gold on the other side as well.

As an additional guide, the gravel rock fragments in the gold–bearing stream

should be compared with that being prospected. If the two contain identical rocks,

and particularly if they both contain quartz, diorite, diabase or porphyry pebbles, it

is worth the chance to extend the prospecting, even if the first efforts disclose no gold.

When gold is found in several claims in the same valley, the direction of the line of

deposit should be noted and the first prospecting should be done in that line as being

the most probable one for the placer.

The gold produced by the several claims going up stream should be compared

both in total quantity and size of grains. With the data of this comparison it is possible

to reason out the locus of the richest ground, and also to know when the lode source

of the gold is being approached. Coarse gold, gold with attached quartz fragments and

rough gold, all indicate that the source is comparatively close at hand – that a point

is being reached beyond which there will be no placer. The Russians, in their mining

815 From FOR THE TENDERFOOT. (1897, August 26). The Ledge, p. 2.

396

of the Siberian placers, failed generally to recognize the lode sources of the gold, and

in many instances carried their prospecting for placers miles up stream beyond the

lodes from which the gold came. There is no reason for Canadian miners making the

same mistake.

Another indication of nearness to the lodes is the presence of rough fragments

of pyrite, chalcopyrite or galena. Even if these last do not lead to gold–bearing lodes,

they may lead to valuable lodes of copper or lead. Generally, anything heavy that is

found in the mining should be determined. Silver, quicksilver, tin and nickel ores and

platinum are all worth considering, even in the Yukon. The possibility of their

occurrence should not be lost sight of, the more particularly as the discovery is only

to be made by following up the stream indications.

The covering of snow over the surface for seven months of the year, the covering

of moss for the other five months, precludes the possibility of prospecting by the

ordinary surface methods. Where it is necessary to prospect without the guide of

discoveries already made adjacent, almost total dependence must be placed on the

character of the pebbles in the gravels uncovered in prospecting. If much quartz be

found, even though no gold at first, it is advisable to cover the possible ground for a

placer pretty thoroughly before abandoning it finally.

As a general proposition it will prove very advantageous for a dozen or more

miners to co–operate in making a systematic exploration of unknown ground. Work

can be done cheaper, faster and surer than by the same men acting independently.

Co–operation admits of increasing the tool outfit by a blacksmith shop and drill outfit.

Powder can be used and the prospect holes sunk through the frozen ground much

faster than by fire. Prospecting can be spread over a much larger area by co–operation

than by the same men acting each for himself. Co–operating, once the gold lead is

found, the whole company are in a position to intelligently secure a valuable claim

for each member and to get the claims so connected that they can be economically

exploited as one property.

It must be remembered that the present cumbersome method of exploitation

will soon be replaced by quicker and better ones, admitting of the profitable working

of the ground now left unworked, and distinctly advantageous to large claims,

compared with little ones.

33. How to Mine Gold in the Klondike (1897)816

To only a comparatively small number of the emigrants flocking to the

Klondyke are the methods of mining in vogue there known, and if they were to be told

it was the placer system many of them would by no means be enlightened. That is

just the plan, however, the placer system is the only one generally advisable where

the hand of old winter has so firm a grasp as in the Klondyke region.

By placer mining is meant that system which involves the separation of the

virgin gold from the earth by means of water. In other words, it is washed out. It is

816 From METHODS OF GOLD MINING. (1897, October 15). Moose Jaw Herald Times, p. 2.

397

really panning for gold on a huge scale. The other system of gold mining is known as

quartz mining. In this latter case the gold is found imbedded in quartz, and is taken

from the mines to stamp mills, where the quartz is stamped or crushed, and thus put

into such a condition that the gold and quartz can be separated by a process which is

so technical that to be thoroughly understood it needs to be seen.

When a Klondyke prospector has staked out his claim, which must be as near

water as possible, and generally about 500 feet in length, he makes an experimental

panning as a test of the claim. This may show very little at first, but when it is

considered that five–cent dirt – that is, ground that washes of pans out five cents’

worth of gold to the pan – is paying property, it may be seen that the miner’s standard

is not so very high. Many a case has lately been reported from the Klondyke where

the dirt has washed out

$50 TO THE PAN.

With a claim of five–cent dirt the miner, if he is industrious, may be reasonably

sure of $50 a day. With fifty–dollar dirt he is a millionaire, if his claim is of any

considerable extent.

The testing of a claim is, however, only the beginning. After it has been proved

to be working, it is necessary to prepare for more extensive operations. The first thing

is to make the sluice boxes. In the Klondyke, lumber is a scarce and very expensive

article, provided it is purchased all ready for sluice purposes. If the miner is

industrious, he will fell enough trees from the thousands that cover the rugged lands

about him to make all the sluice–box lumber that he will need. It is much more

economical for him to put in the time and labor necessary to do this than to buy the

lumber ready made.

When the lumber is ready it is converted into sluice–boxes of whatever length

the miner may deem advisable. These boxes are then placed in position, and all is in

readiness for the washing process. Now comes the necessity for getting the dirt into

the boxes. It is always the case that pay dirt containing gold lies next to rock. This

being the case, it is necessary to clear away the gravel that lies between the surface

and the pay dirt. It is a laborious task in any event, but when one has to face Klondyke

seasons it is still more difficult.

Sometimes it happens that as much as 25 feet of gravel must be removed before

PAY DIRT IS REACHED

and when the most of this has to be done within 60 days, besides washing out the pay

dirt, the necessity for hard work is apparent. As a rule, the depth of the surface gravel

is about eight feet, and at this depth it is possible for a miner to get his pay dirt and

wash a good bit of it in one season. Many of those who are on their way to the

Klondyke to–day cherish the belief that all miners do when they pan out gold is to

dig out of surface lode and make all the money they want to. On the contrary, it is

often necessary for a miner to spend an entire season clearing away the surface gravel

from the pay dirt of his claim.

The statements often made that it is impossible to do any work in the winter

season are erroneous. Nearly all of the tunneling is accomplished at that time of year.

Fire is the agent, by means of which the tunneling is done. There is plenty of wood to

398

be obtained, and so the miner builds a roaring fire next to the gravel through which

he wishes to tunnel. Naturally this melts the frost out of the gravel, which is then

shoveled out. This method does not prove successful with surface gravel.

Occasionally it happens that a claim is too far from the water, and in such

cases several fortunes have been rocked out – that is, rockers have been used. The

rocker is just what its name indicates. The dirt is placed within it, and it is rocked

until dirt and gold have been

THOROUGHLY SHAKEN APART.

This system is used only on rare occasions, for, as a rule, water is sufficiently

plentiful to make the ordinary methods of placer mining available.

34. Home Life in Dawson City (1897)817

A Seattle woman, who left last March for the Yukon gold fields in company

with her husband and son, has written frequently to her daughter in Seattle since

here departure. Extracts from her letters give a glimpse of Dawson City life from a

woman’s point of view. One of them, dated at Dawson City on July 17, is as follows:

“We are all well. We have our house nearly completed; it will take about three

days more to finish it. Won’t I be glad to move in! We have lived in a tent or on a boat

ever since we left home last March, and I am thoroughly tired of gypsy life. Our house

is sixteen by twenty–three feet in size. It is larger than most of the houses here; but,

as we have two stoves, I think we will manage to keep it warm and comfortable during

the winter. I will tell you all about the house in my next letter. As to furnishing it –

well, I don’t know.

“The weather has been very warm lately, and every afternoon we have rain

and thunder and lightning. I have not started a bakery as I intended, for the reason

that we could not get a lot downtown. We have a rather pretty front lot on the river.

It cost us only $250. We sold one–fourth of it to a man for $75 – the back part – and

are going to sell the other half for $175. It is a corner lot and it lies well. The man

who bought one–fourth of it has a wife and a little girl 6 years old. His wife is not

companionable nor congenial. She is very peculiar. They are Russian Finns. They are

clever and good, respectable people, but

NO COMPANY FOR ME.

“I expect to go up to the mines this fall. The men have not been out prospecting

yet. Papa will go out as soon as our house is finished. I have already earned $75 in

gold dust taking care of two children. One of them is 10 years old and the other is 6.

They are regular little terrors. I wash them both six times a day and bathe them all

over in a tub of water twice a week, and then they are always smutty. They are both

girls and as ugly as sin. Their mother is a woman from Juneau.

“Robert says: ‘Why don’t you whale them?’ He says I am altogether too easy

with them. I have not whipped them yet, and I won’t. I don’t expect to have them

long. They are Catholics. There is a Catholic church, a school and a hospital building

817 From HOME LIFE IN DAWSON CITY. (1897, December 31). Moose Jaw Herald Times, p. 3.

399

just below where we are living, and when they are completed I expect the little ones

will stay with the sisters. The sisters are expected here on the next boat from St.

Michael, which, if there is water enough for it to get up the river, will be here in about

a month. The girls say they don’t want to live with the sisters; that they want to live

with me and go to school here. They lived with the sisters in Juneau, and they say

the sisters are not so good to them as I am; that they make them work and that they

whip them. The little ones appear to like me very much. They call me auntie and

father, papa.

“Robert is working in Healy’s store, while Harry is helping papa in the house.

Night before last Harry worked all night and made $3 at operating the boat.

“Well, to–day is Saturday, and I have been baking bread. I have just lovely

bread. Baked seven loaves, four pies and a batch of ginger snaps. We have been

having a lot of the most delicious fish – king salmon. There are two fishermen who

live on the river bank just below where we do, and I guess they must have taken a

fancy to me, as they send us fish every day. They sell their fish for

50 CENTS A POUND

but they don’t charge me anything for them. Yesterday they gave me ten or twelve

pounds, $5 or $6 worth, and to–day they gave me another large piece. I give them a

loaf of bread and a pie once in a while. To–day I took them a loaf of bread, a pie, and

a lot of ginger–snaps. My, but they appeared so grateful! I love to give to them, for

they appear to grateful for such trifles. There are two of them – a father and a son.

They have a lot of dogs, eight large ones and seven small ones. There are more dogs

to the square yard here, I guess, than in any place on earth. We have dog concerts

every night. Such lugubrious howls as these native dogs give utterance to; and the

exotics soon strike the key and become irritated. It is something fearful.

“I am starving for vegetables and fruit. This is a terrible place to live in. It is

hot as blazes in summer and as cold as Greenland in winter. And the mosquitoes –

oh! they are terrible. They make life a burden. […]

“P.S. – I get $100 a month for taking care of the children. Their mother

furnishes their bedding and a tent for them to sleep in. I think that is pretty good

pay. Well, I must close, as it is nearly time for the boat to go.”

35. “It pays to be good looking” (1898)818

“They made a wild kick,” said Miss La More, “but they couldn’t keep me. I was

tired of beans.”

Miss La More does not look like a person who would love beans for little or for

long. She is distinctly suggestive of large bottles and small birds.

But, then, she does not look like a person who would get herself cheerfully into

bloomers and gum boots and a sweater and a mackinaw shirt – whatever that is –

818 From Rix, A. (1898, February 17). MINERS AS JOHNNIES. Qu’Appelle Progress, p. 6. Written by Alice Rix (d. 1930). “She died over there in England the other day. Our own Alice Rix.” Laurie, Annie.

(1930, March 3). Alice Rix, Bubbling With Life and Wit, is Stilled by Death. The San Francisco Examiner, p. 6.

400

and tramp the Chilkat pass to sing and dance in a tent theater at Dawson City for

six weeks of her young life.

“I was singing at the opera house in Juneau,” pursued Miss La More, “when

they got up the company to go in to Dawson. There were 17 of us, with the manager

– eight girls, seven fellows and a comedian. I thought it would be fun, you know, and

a sort of change. I’m awfully fond of change.”

She smiled on me like a candy angel when she said this, and flashed a brace of

big diamonds around her finger significantly, says Alice Rix819 in the San Francisco

Examiner.

“Get your diary, Gussie,” said her sister.

“They were crazy about her inside.”

“Inside where?”

“Why, Dawson. They wanted to marry her.”

“All of them?”

“Well, of course,” said sister, “some of them were married already. You get her

to tell you about Swiftwater Bill and the prince. What was the prince’s name, Gus?”

“Antone,” said Gussie. “He was Violet’s. I didn’t care for him,” she explained,

producing her diary. It was a costly little affair in morocco and silver, and she read

exactly two lines out of it while I observed the elaborate loveliness off the covers.

“’Left Dyea at 9 in the morning. Walked ten miles to Sheep Camp.’ That’s

where we slept,” she said, dropping the diary. “I mean we tried to sleep – the whole

gang in one room bunked on the floor with a piece of canvas strung up to keep out the

saloon; but that was nothing. After that we’d have been glad of a floor. We had just a

tarpaulin stretched on the snow when we slept at the foot of the summit and a canvas

over us and the rain slopping down and the wind blowing all night like a trombone.

Of course we slept in our clothes, but we got soaked just the same. The wind’s the

worst of it, you know. It burns you crisp, and then you peel. Some of the girls blacked

up the way the s–––––s do. They rub on a make up of soot and some kind of grease,

and they say it keeps you from burning, but it doesn’t. The girls that did it peeled just

the same.”

“Did you peel?” I inquired, looking at her peachy cheeks and her little straight

white nose.

“Mercy, yes,” replied Miss La More, “three or four times! I thought I’d get down

to bones after a while. We had to camp three weeks on the lake while our boats were

being build, for we took in a lot of stuff with us, and that’s where we got the worst of

it. Of course we didn’t have any chance to fix up, and we were sights when we got to

Dawson. The whole town turned out to guy the girls. Our clothes were half rags and

our boots gone, and we had on those big cowboy hats, and with our hair straight back

– oh, gee! We didn’t care, though. We gave them the laugh back that night.”

819 “She was one of the brightest woman writers that ever belonged to the Examiner staff,” but left for

Europe, where “she spent most of her money in an effort to finance a theatrical production” in the

belief that she “could make distinct success as a writer of plays. She only accumulated a mountain of

debts, and was compelled to leave Paris to avoid her creditors.” Situation of Alice Rix. (1911, April 22).

The Wasp, p. 9.

401

“You were a great hit, though, weren’t you, Gussie?” said sister.

“Well,” said Gussie modestly, “they liked me. I do c–––820 songs and banjo, and

I took up the latest ones, and of course the boys hadn’t heard them, and they went

wild. The tent was packed every night and the boys were scrambling all over town to

get twenties to throw on the stage, and we got all their nuggets the first night. Their

wives,” added Miss La More pensively, “were wild.”

“You were the belle, weren’t you, Gussie?” said sister, winding her up again.

“Well,” said Miss La More again, “that’s what they said.”

“She had a house built for her,” began sister, “and furnished, and it cost – how

much did it cost, Gussie?”

“About ten thou,” said Gussie. “It wasn’t much of a house. You can’t get much

of a house for that in Dawson.”

“It was the best in the town, though, wasn’t it, Gussie?”

“Yes, it was. Oh, it was a pretty good cabin – two rooms and a kitchen. Then

they got us a carpet that cost $5 a yard – one of the kind you can get here for about

50 cents – and we had sheets at $15 a pair and pillow cases at $10 apiece. We were

dined out every night. A beans and bacon dinner costs $1.50 up there, and when

anything extra comes in you pay from $10 to $15 for a dinner. And extra never means

anything but moose or goose.”

“It wouldn’t have made much difference to you, Gussie, what it cost,” said

sister.

“Did you make much money?” I asked.

“I got $100 a week – we all did – and $4 commission on every pint bottle we

sold, and then the money that was thrown on the stage made about $50 more apiece

for us – about $175 to $200 a week – and, of course, the nuggets. They slung nuggets

at us by the handful. I’ve given most of mine away, but I’ve a few left.”

“Oh, Gussie,” said sister, “get them!”

And Gussie got them. She brought them in a little leather bag and scattered

them out over the table and turned them idly with her white, dimpled, bediamonded,

pink nailed fingers. There were 52 of them, solid chunks of the rich, rough, yellow

metal that men are struggling and starving for in the Alaskan snowfields.

“They treated us well,” said Miss La More, fingering the nuggets. “I’m going in

again in the spring.”

“They’ll never let you out again,” said sister. “Tell about Swiftwater Bill,

Gussie.”

Gussie laughed. “What shall I tell?” she asked. “Just that he wanted to marry

me? They all want wives in there, but they all want good looking ones. They’re pretty

particular, considering that they haven’t got much choice. All the girls could have

married, and I guess they’ll have to if they stay in there all winter. It’s all well enough

for the comedian to stay – he writes his own songs – but the girls can’t do that. They

can’t learn any new turns or get any new clothes in there.” Miss La More shook her

head compassionately. “There’ll be nothing else for them to do. They’ll have to marry.”

“Is Mr. Swiftwater Bill agreeable?” I inquired at this point.

820 An offensive term for a genre of music popular in minstrel shows.

402

Miss La More considered the question.

“He’s as stupid as an owl,” she replied finally, “and as rich as – anything. He

used to shoot the White Horse rapids – that’s where he got his name – and he got a

lay from a fellow up in the El Dorado, and it ought to be worth a million. He’ll know,”

she continued thoughtfully, “by spring.”

“And then?”

“Oh, I don’t know – maybe!” said Miss La More, laughing.

“A million’s a good deal of money,” observed sister sagely.

“I know,” replied the girl who can have it by spring, “but independence is a

good deal too. If I could take the million off to one end of the world, and have the man

at the other” –

“Couldn’t you?” I asked innocently.

“No,” said Miss La More. “Swiftwater Bill isn’t so stupid as all that. It would

mean Dawson” – she gave a little shiver – “and beans.”

“And champagne,” added sister. “You always had champagne.”

“Whenever it came in,” said Miss La More, “the boys always bought it up for

us. It sells in there for $17 a pint, $30 for a quart.”

“Did you always play to big houses?”

“Packed every time,” said Miss La More. “And a nice crowd too. We taught the

boys all the choruses, and they sang with us and it sounded fine. We gave three

performances a week, that was all, and then there were dances on the off nights. We

didn’t have to go unless we wanted to. They had regular dance hall girls, and the boys

came down from the gulch and danced all night and way until 9 and 10 o’clock into

the next day, until the sun was shining down on the canvas and the girls were

dropping on the floor. But the boys paid them good money for their work – especially

the good looking ones. It pays,” added Miss La More, looking down at her pretty

hands, “to be good looking. I’m going to take the kids in next spring.”

“The kids?” I asked.

“The twins,” replied Miss La More. “Haven’t you heard of the La More twins,

Nell and Bell? They’re in the business too. They’re my sisters. I’ll learn a turn with

the kids – something new. I’m going east next week to pick up some new business

and a new wardrobe, and we’ll go in early before the lakes break up and sled in. We’ll

get there ahead of everything and take the town.”

“And Swiftwater Bill,” suggested sister, who seemed to incline to the safe side

of things. But Miss La More laughed.

“If I had my choice of making a fortune, I’d rather be a weigher than an actress

or a rich man’s wife or anything else I know of. You just stand by the blower and

weigh the dust when the boys hand over their sacks, and if you’re pretty and they like

you they’re willing to let you spill a little every time just for luck. All you have to do

is spill all day and pan your carpet at night. That’s the way to get rich in Dawson.”

403

Gold on the Saskatchewan

36. With Pick and Shovel and Grizzly (1922)821

Everybody who knows the Saskatchewan river in its courses, above and below

Edmonton, knows that that the scarce and elusive gold located in the gravel bars is

recovered by means of pick and shovel and “grizzly.” The latter is an apparatus not

nearly as fearsome as its name. It differs from the “rocker” commonly used in placer

mining in that it is better adapted to the sand, gravel and small boulders amongst

which the gold of the Saskatchewan is found than is the “rocker,” which is better

adapted to conditions in which clay forms a part. The motion of the “rocker” is

necessary to disintegrate the material in which gold is generally found. Not so on the

Saskatchewan. The action of water is all that is necessary. The idea which finds shape

in the “grizzly” is that a maximum amount of gravel and sand can be efficiently

worked over with a minimum amount of labor.

The gold saving apparatus is in three parts: dump box, grizzly and sluice box.

The dump box has a bottom and three sides. It is set up three or four feet from the

ground with the open side over the grizzly and the bottom sloped in that direction.

The sluice box, having a bottom and two sides, lies with one end under the open side

of the dump box and having a gentle slope to the other end so that water and sand

can escape freely after having passed lengthwise along it. The grizzly is made of two

end boards of triangular shape connected by iron rods along two sides so that a

grating is formed on two of the sides of the triangle. The open base of the triangle is

set crosswise of the sluice box at its upper end so that gravel shovelled into the dump

box will fall on the apex of the grating mentioned. Water poured on the gravel in the

dump box will wash it out of the box, and cause it to fall on the apex or side slopes of

the grating into the sluice box, and carries with it the sand and small pebbles, while

larger gravel and small boulders slide down the sloping sides of the grating and fall

to the ground on either side of the sluice box without further handling.

This contrivance by which the waste gravel clears itself is like many other

valuable inventions, simplicity itself. But it is not less valuable on that account. There

is no doubt that many thousands of dollars in gold were taken from the bars of the

Saskatchewan in the years from 1864 to 1890 by the use of the grizzly that would

never have been secured had the miners been dependent on the “rocker.” It was an

invention adapted to the special circumstances of a special case. […] It is worthy of

note that in later years, many attempts have been made to recover Saskatchewan

gold by high powered and costly machinery. A number of gold dredges operated by

steam have been placed on the river, but none of them were able to secure equal

results from the same river bar as the individual miner equipped only with pick,

shovel and grizzly.

821 From The Inventor of the “Grizzly”. (1922, May 27). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 7.

404

As gold is always a subject of interest, it may not be out of place to sketch

roughly the further processes necessary to the recovery of the float gold of the

Saskatchewan, and getting it into condition, so that it can be marketed.

A blanket is placed on the bottom of the sluice box. As the water carries the

sand along the sluice box the black sand with which the fine gold of the Saskatchewan

is always associated, is caught by the blanket, while gray sand and gravel pass out of

the sluice box at its lower end. When the blanket has caught so much black sand that

there is danger of some of it going over and escaping, the blanket is taken up and the

sand washed out of it. The tub in which the blanket was washed now contains the

black sand and gold. As the black sand is very heavy and the flakey shape of the

specks of Saskatchewan gold gives them the effect of being light in water, the

separation of the gold from the black sand is a difficult process and requires the expert

use of the gold pan.

The gold pan is a shallow iron pan with flaring sides. A small amount of black

sand is placed in the pan with a proper amount of water. The miner then taking the

edges of the pan in both hands gives the water a circular motion. The principle is the

same as that of a cream separator. The motion of the water and the level of the pan

are so adjusted that the major part of the black sand is flooded over the edge of the

pan, leaving the gold and a minimum amount of black sand in the pan. The process

of panning is of course delicate to the last degree; it is also tedious. Any one but an

expert might very easily lose a large part of the day’s or week’s work. The test of value

of a claim or of a man’s work is how it “pans out.”

To make the final separation of the gold from the black sand, quicksilver is

used. A small amount of quicksilver is placed in the pan. It picks up the gold and

rejects the black sand. The result is a pasty mass exactly such as dentists use in filling

teeth. The quicksilver is driven off by heat, leaving the gold in a firm and pure but

porous condition. This latter is the result of the escape of the quicksilver. Gold in that

condition used to be worth $18 an ounce.

37. Gold Dredging on the Saskatchewan (1901)822

A most marked advance has been made in recent years in the placer gold

mining industry on the North Saskatchewan – an improvement more marked as to

the means and machinery employed, than in the results obtained. The transition from

the crude and primitive “grizzley” of the individual miner in the industry’s early days

to the massive and expensive steam gold dredge of the mining operations of to–day,

has been most marked. The one home–made, a few rough boards and a half dozen

bars of iron bought at the local hardware store, with a cast–off blanket to catch the

dust; the other built by skilled workmen after months of hard labor and infinite care

fitted with costly machinery brought from the machine shops of England, and costing

what would be a fortune for a modest man. Yet it is an undisputed fact that, taking

into account the amount of capital, labor and time employed, the early grizzley of the

822 From GOLD DREDGING ON THE SASKATCHEWAN. (1901, May 10). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 6.

405

early days paid far and away better than any of its more extensive and expensive

successors. This was not because the grizzley was a better machine, but simply that

the conditions were different then. The virgin bars were strangers to the pick and

shovel and in many “pockets” along the river where for years the current had drifted

the fine flake gold, miners struck good dirt and panned as high as $20 a day a piece

with the help of their primitive grizzleys.

After the grizzley, or in fact along with it, was introduced the first stamples of

gold savers built on the dredge principle. Hitherto, the miner had been forced to

content himself with working along the water’s edge or on the bars which protruded

above the river. In a machine which could go on the water and work the river bottom

under it, disciples of gold dredging saw a project that promised pure success. The

dredges were built and, while they were not the success that had been hoped, credit

is none the less due to those pioneer gold miners to whose enterprise their

construction is due. The principle of the dredge was good, but in application lay the

difficulty. The trouble was, first, to get a suitable apparatus for lifting the gravel, and

secondly, to solve the problem of saving the fine flour–gold in the process of

separating it from the gravel.

The history of gold dredging here shows that there have been some thirteen or

fifteen dredges placed on the river at different times during the last fifteen years. One

of the first was a propeller dredge and concurrently with it was operated on the

suction principle. Both were failures, owing to the unsuitability of the gold saving

principles employed. Next was an elevator bucket dredge built by A. D. Osborne.

Owing to the difficulty of procuring proper iron buckets, the carriers were made of

sheet iron. The dredge, being built on the only principle that has since proven

successful, was a success until it inadvertently ran into a submerged dam at Miner’s

Flat and wrecked its machinery. Jenner Bros., and a man named Brindley, then

placed dredges on the river. Both were built on the dipper principle and neither was

successful.

The difference between the bucket and ladder and the dipper principle is

simply that in the former, a continuous string of iron buckets on an enormous iron

ladder is bringing up steadily bucket after bucket of the gold bearing gravel from the

river bed, while with the dipper principle only one dipper full at a time can be brought

up, as the dipper is a large iron scoop fastened to the end of a movable arm. One

dipper is brought up at a time and delay ensues while the arm is manipulated and

another brought up, the first bucketful being panned in the meantime.

Potter & Braithwaite then operated a hand scoop, or dipper, and it paid fairly

well until the firm dissolved partnership. During its operation the dredge took out

$900 or $1,000. Then an American company known as “The Loveland Company” put

on a dipper dredge. This was the best paying one that had ever been put on the river

up to that time, and the dredge is still here and the company yet doing business. They

have a claim some miles up the river.

A prospective miner named Wright, from Winnipeg, put on a suction dredge,

the gravel being drawn up through a pipe from the river bed by suction from the

engines. The suction lifted the gravel all right, but the gravel cut the pipes out in the

406

course of a few days, and this idea was given up as not feasible. Another dredge, built

on somewhat the same principle, was built and operated by two Americans, Laynon

& Pichal. The dredge has never been operated to any extent. It now lies inactive just

above the bridge.

Of all the dredges, probably the most successful was that of the Star mining

Co., composed of a number of business men of Strathcona, who built and operated a

dredge some miles above the town. The dredge ran for only a short time when it was

struck by the high water of 1899 and broken up, portions of it being carried down

stream on the flood. For the short time it was running, the dredge paid 10 per cent to

the shareholders. It took out $50 a day when running. No steps have since been taken

to re–organize the company, as many of the best paying reaches of the river have now

been leased by other companies.

Of all the dredges above enumerated, the successful ones were those on the

bucket and ladder principle. The suction plan was a pronounced failure, as the gravel

inevitably cut the piping out. Mr. Osborne’s dredge, while it was working, took out

$1000.

Dr. Kelly’s and Evans & Hoover’s dredges were next on the list. The latter one

was worked on a scraper principle, similar to a road scraper, the scraper being drawn

towards the dredge by the engines and filled with gravel as it came. This, also, was

not a success.

At this stage the gold dredging industry which had been worked by almost all

manner of appliances took a jump forward by the introduction of a large amount of

English capital represented by the Saskatchewan Gold and Platinum Proprietory,

which company built and operated the splendid dredge, the “Otter.” The previous

experimental dredges which had been placed on the river at different times during

the previous years, while not all successful themselves, had been successful in

establishing the fact that gold existed and that the success of the industry depended

on the introduction of suitable machinery to enable the gold to be gathered and saved.

[…] Changes were made in the machinery of the Otter, fitting her with the appliances

so generally used and found so successful in New Zealand, where the conditions and

nature of the gold are largely similar to those on the Saskatchewan.

The trouble here has always been to save the gold, it being found in such fine

particles that it has received its apt name of “flour gold.” The gold is there and in

paying quantities, and the only question is to save and separate it from the gravel

without losing much of the gold in the process.

38. From Fine Nothingness to Bright Nugget (1901)823

Day and night there is borne up from the river bed here the whirring,

wheezing, grinding of the big gold dredges of the Saskatchewan river Gold &

Platinum Proprietory at their work of scooping up, with their big automatic buckets,

the gold bearing gravel from river bottom, bench and bar. The dredges are working

823 From DREDGING FOR GOLD ON THE SASKATCHEWAN. (1901, August 19). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 3.

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night and day, taking advantage of the magnificent weather that has favored the

district of late and endeavoring to get out as much gold as possible before the frosts

of winter come to convert the river into an ice field, and the gravel beds into

adamantine masses.

The two dredges of this company, the Otter and the Minto, are working one

above and one just below Walter & Humberstone’s mill, almost opposite the town. In

the still night the plaintive and pathetic sighing of the Minto may be easily heard all

over town, and a closer acquaintance imparts the knowledge that the shrieking,

which was softened by distance, is an indescribable, unbearable, ear–splitting roar

when close at hand, likened only to a yard full of locomotives telling their troubles to

each other.

The Otter lies above the mill, her nose pressed against the north bank from

which her endless chain of buckets is taking out the gold–bearing sand and gravel at

the rate of three cubic feet to a bucketful and sixteen buckets to the minute. When

the big nose with its revolving chain of buckets has eaten away the gravel from within

its reach, the steam winches are turned on and the dredge moved forward till more

gravel is in reach, travelling all this time in a placid pool which she has dredged out

for herself and leaving ever behind her a great field of refuse gravel and sand, called

in the parlance of the gold dredger “tailings.” The process by which the gravel

is dug and washed for gold is comparatively simple; the wonder of it is the

massiveness of everything which the work entails.

The first step of the machinery is to dig the gravel and carry it up to the

“grizzley.” This is done by the endless chain of buckets, and one of the links which

hold these buckets together would be as much as an ordinary man could lift. This

endless chain carries the gravel up and dumps it in the grizzley, which is a great,

hollow, revolving drum, without ends, and whose sides are heavy steel perforated

with holes somewhat larger than a lead pencil. The gravel is dumped within and the

drum revolves. From a large pipe running through the drum from end to end and held

immovable inside, above the gravel, water is thrown and sprayed in great quantities

upon the mass beneath. This grizzley is on a slant sufficient to carry the gravel

through to the other end, where it falls on a large inclined trough and a heavy,

continuous stream of water is poured on it, carrying it down and out to the tailings

dump. But this is refuse; the gold is what the dredge men are after, and it has gone

another route.

As mentioned, this big revolving drum or grizzley was perforated. The idea of

these perforations is simply to let the fine gold bearing sand and gravel through, and

at the same time remove the cumbersome and useless larger stones which the buckets

bring up. The sand and fine gravel falls through the perforations, washed through by

the water which falls upon it, and together with this water it is caught in a large,

oblong, funnel–shaped contrivance fastened beneath the grizzley. Down the mouth of

this funnel it passes to the distributing troughs, from which in turn it is thrown on

the blankets spread on the sloping tables on each side. The water trickles gently down

and over, washing down the gold as it goes, but as the water passes over the blankets,

the gold remains caught in the fibre of the cloth. Three times a day these blankets

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are taken up and washed by a man who is kept constantly employed for that purpose.

The place of washing is a large tank. The blankets are put in and soused around until

every particle of the fine flour gold is or should be removed. From this tank, the

“concentrate,” for such it has now become, is carried to a large cleaning pan which

holds 100 lbs. of the concentrate as it comes from the washing tank. In this cleaning

pan, a large “dasher” is revolved by steam. With the concentrate, in the pan is put

the chemicals which are used in this final stage of separation of the gold from the

gravel and sand.

After this final separation there is but one step more; that is to the assay office,

where the precious metal thus secured is amalgamated in specially constructed

ovens. It is then ready for the bank. Thus it has been transformed from fine

nothingness in particles, hidden in a muddy bank, to a large bright nugget of

amalgam gold, worth many hundreds of dollars.

39. The Autobiography of Tom Clover (1917)824

Amongst the first miners who were attracted from the Fraser River and

Caribou goldfields to the gold–bearing bars of the Saskatchewan, near Edmonton,

discovered by Dr. Hector, of the British Exploring Expedition, under Captain Palliser,

in 1858–9, were three partners named Love, McLaren and Thomas H. Clover. None

of these and the others who became Saskatchewan gold miners, have had their names

in that connection perpetuated by local place names, except Clover, from whose

diggings on the river bar known as “Clover Bar” have been derived the official names

of the school district, the post office, the Grand Trunk Pacific railway station and the

bridge across the river in that locality.

Consequently people in the Edmonton country in particular, as well as others

interested in the origin of place names, may be pleased to learn some particulars of

the career of Tom Clover.

Clover’s autobiography, written by an amanuensis in pencil, has been kindly

handed to me by him to condense for publication. Thomas Clover was born of Irish

and German parents at Hillsboro, Jefferson county, Missouri, 11th May, 1829. He is

now passing the evening of his days, at the age of 89, in Leroy, North Dakota.

The manuscript describes an early overland journey with his father to

California, and a second journey thereto later. Incidentally it states how by a heavy

fall on the ice he fractured his skull, and tells of the agonies he endured for years

thereafter by pieces of the fractured bones working their way to the surface through

the nose, taking all the bridge of the nose out, and sometimes affecting the brain.

Clover with a party, provided with pack mules, left California for the Fraser

River gold fields in 1858, going by way of Shasta, Eureka, to the Falls, of the Columbia

824 From Clover, T., Cowie, I. & Hargrave, J. J. (1917, May 19). HOW TOM CLOVER, CALIFORNIA

FORTY–NINER, CAME TO EDMONTON, GIVING NAME TO CLOVER BAR. The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 15. Written by Thomas H. Clover (1829 – 1920), Isaac Cowie (1848 – 1917) and Joseph James Hargrave (1841 – 1894).

409

River, where they formed a bigger party, in case of trouble with the Indians. At Fort

Simcoe they found U.S. troops and a number of Indians, with whom one of the miners

commenced to cultivate good relations by wantonly killing an Indian. At the

“Yackmau” river on their further way an Indian came up and finding the murderer

at once slew him and then quietly disappeared.

INDIANS RETALIATE

The party proceeded to Okanagan lake and travelled along the shore for two

days, while they were watched by Indians on the other side, who after the miners

broke camp came across and examined them. “So some of the boys hid behind the

bushes at a recent camp, and when the Indians came again they fired their revolvers

and killed several of them.” In retaliation for this, one of the miners who had gone on

in advance was found cut to pieces and scalped by the Indians. “So we buried him.”

Shortly after, an Indian “not on the warpath,” a Shuswap, belonging to Fort

Thompson (Kamloops) met them and travelled with them to that post. From

Kamloops they went on to La Fontaine on the Fraser river, where Clover assisted a

cripple who dealt in groceries and whiskey to dispose of them to the gold miners

already there. Returning to Kamloops, they disposed of the last remnant of the stock

to Capt. Robertson. Clover then set out alone, with a stock of boots, to return to Fraser

river. The Indians were catching salmon at La Fontaine, but distracted by watching

the miners, they neglected to provide the requisite supply for winter use, and many

perished of starvation later in consequence – “hundreds and hundreds,” says Clover.

Having disposed of his boots and shoes, Clover found employment as a cook for a

Hudson’s Bay Company camp, assisting the French–Canadian in charge of it with his

accounts. As a cook he was able to relieve some of the starving Indians, by adding

flour to the water in which meat had been cooked, “and the Indians were awful glad

to get it.” […]

In the spring two other miners induced Clover to start for Quesnelle. He made

an unsuccessful prospecting trip to Caribou lake, with an Indian guide, and returned

to Quesnelle. Thence on his way to Fort George he met four miners who tried to

persuade him to return to Caribou. “I said, ‘To hell with the Caribou.’” […]

“After this I took a notion to come across the Rocky Mountains to

Saskatchewan, five of us coming together – Love, McLaren, two others, called

Mountaineer and Tennessee – he came form that state – and myself. I passed the

winter in a shanty by Lake Lilooet.”

In the spring they started up the Fraser in a small boat and canoe,

experiencing many hazards and happy escapes, and arrived at Dut John Cache (Tete

Jaune Cache), head of navigation on the Fraser river. They ascended as far as shallow

water would permit, and then landed on a sand bar, without any provisions but some

biscuits and coffee.

“As I was walking on the sand bar I saw an Indian track. I said, ‘Oh boys, there

are Indians.’ So Love and I started out for the Indians. They were Shuswaps from

Fort Thompson. They asked who we were and we told them we were ‘no lords.’ I asked

one in his own tongue if they had anything to eat. He said ‘Sure; here is some meat.’

I told him we were pretty near hunger. Then he asked where we were going and what

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we were looking for. There were other Indians off hunting moose. He brought us lots

of meat.

DOWN THE ATHABASCA RIVER

“There we sat on the sand, and the Indian drew us a map on it, which I copied

on paper. Next morning we ate as much meat as we could, and carried some on our

backs to Jasper House, at the head water of the Athabasca river on the east side of

the Rocky Mountains. We looked at our map and got there safe.” They found Iroquois

Indians there with plenty of provisions. “When I was leaving Fraser river, the leader

of the Hudson’s Bay Company gave me a box of (brass) earrings and I exchanged them

with the Iroquois for two pairs of pants and two undershirts and all the dried meat

we could carry.” The Iroquois were waiting for the trader, Mr. Moberley, from

Edmonton, and went with several horses to meet him, Love, Mountaineer and

Tennessee accompanying them. “McLaren and I bought a small canoe and started

down the Athabasca river for Fort Assiniboine. We had no idea of how far it was, and

the many dangers of the river. When we got near the Fort, we heard a gun fired. A

French–Canadian, Mr. Bellerose, had charge of it and he took us in and treated us to

the best he had. Then he asked us what we wanted and where we were going. I told

him we wanted three horses to go to Edmonton. When we got there we returned the

horses to Chief Factor W. J. Christie and Mr. James Flett, who were in charge there.

It took us six days from the Athabasca river to Fort Edmonton.”

Love, Mountaineer and Tennessee returned with the Iroquois to Jasper House

and wintered there. Tennessee went out hunting one day but never returned;

Mountaineer went on to British Columbia.

PARTNERS REUNITED

In the winter of 1859–60, it appears from the narrative (which is confused at

this point), that the three remaining partners, Love, McLaren and Clover, became

reunited. The story continues: “Now during the Christmas holidays, Mr. Brazeau

came with us to Edmonton and then started with us to the Rocky Mountain House,

with four trains of dogs and a cariole, the date being 2nd February, 1860. Next

morning, there was a foot of snow on the track, so I started out ahead without

snowshoes to beat a road for the dogs. When we camped that night, I had such a great

pain in my legs that I thought I had sprained them. There was an old Indian chief

who had followed us with his pony. He told me I was a good man to have walked such

a long way, and he lent me his horse to drive till the day before we got to Rocky

Mountain House. I thanked him the best I could, but I had nothing to give him but

gold dust, and that he did not want. We met three dog trains coming from the fort on

their way to a fishing lake, as there was nothing to eat in the fort. I got the best they

had to eat that night, and next morning they killed a dog, but I did not care to eat

very much of it. The day following, Mr. Brazeau decided on returning to Edmonton

(260 miles). He got all the starving families together and then started off. They gave

us a big leather lodge in which to camp for the winter, about five miles from the fort.

The head boat builder, Gladstone, had his wife there, and she did the cooking when

there was any to do. We passed the winter here and had a good time, doing what we

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pleased until some men came from Edmonton to finish five new boats.” (Edmonton

supplied annually a number of boats for other districts for the York Factory route.)

SEARCHING FOR GOLD

“They left me, as I was going up the river to prospect, after William Borwick,

the Edmonton blacksmith, had sold me a bag of pemmican, which I was very glad to

get, and they left me tools and lumber to build a skiff. A little Indian dog remained

behind with me, and we started along the river. I shot a rabbit now and then for the

dog, which lay at my feet every night.

“For seven days I travelled, looking for gold, but finding nothing to amount to

anything, turned back discouraged to Rocky Mountain post. There was no one there.

Indians had visited it during my absence, but had done no damage. Then I started to

build my boat, and although my little dog was of no use at that, he kept watch and

when he scented anything would let me know. I could always tell when he was

hungry, for he would look at me and then at the bush as if to say, ‘Take your gun and

go and kill a rabbit for me.’ He was a great companion. I finished the skiff in four

days’ time. Then I said, ‘My little dog, let’s get in the boat and we will go to Edmonton.’

But he would not get in and swam after me. The skiff was cranky and I was afraid if

I made him get in he might jump out and tip it over, and I would have lost all my

pemmican. At last I saw him ashore coming towards me with his head up. I followed

him a short way when I saw a mountain lion in the woods. The lion caught my little

dog in his mouth, and I could hear his bones cracking between the lion’s teeth. So I

thought I had better get away as the lion would not have enough and might get after

me.

“So I got in the boat, and floating downstream about two miles saw a flock of

young ducks, of which I killed seven. A little farther on I put ashore for dinner,

plucked two of the ducks, roasted and ate them.” (Probably at Goose Encampment.)

“I went on downstream, prospecting for gold, and found colors. Camped that

night alone, no dog there for a guard. Cleaned the rest of the ducks for supper and

breakfast. I rolled into my blankets and laid down to sleep, till I was aroused by an

old owl sitting on the limb of a tree nearby, calling ‘Who? Who? Who?’ over and over

again. I said, ‘I’ll let you know who I am,’ so I got my gun and shot him down. ‘Now,’

I said, ‘you know who I am,’ but he did not answer me.

SEARCHING THE SANDS

“Next morning I came to the mouth of a small river falling into the

Saskatchewan from the north. (Probably White Mud.) I went up it, prospecting, and

found five specks of gold to the pan. Then I continued my way to Edmonton. I made

a rocker there to wash out gold, and then went down stream. I worked there all day

and made four dollars. Thinking to find a better place, I went up the river about three

miles, set up my rocker and at night I had about seven dollars in gold dust. The other

people were all working for the Hudson’s Bay company.

“Love and McLaren had started for Fort Garry with the Hudson’s Bay

company’s people. They were going to buy oxen and carts and bring back supplies

from St. Paul, Minn., in the spring. At Red River McLaren went out shooting ducks

and was found dead lying on his face in a pool of shallow water. Then there was only

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Love left to go to St. Paul, but he found it too late that fall, and spent the winter (at

his friend, Robbie Tait’s) near Fort Garry. Love started out next spring with oxen and

carts for St. Paul, got the supplies we needed and started back. When he got back as

far as Pembina he found the United States cavalry there good company and they

offered him good wages if he would work for them. So he stayed there for the winter,

during which for want of food, their animals all died.

MARRIED AN INDIAN GIRL

“As soon in the spring as the grass was good, Love started for Fort Garry and

on to Edmonton with a h––––– named Sam Ballanden. When they got to Edmonton,

I was waiting for them on the bank of the river with a boat to take them across. We

had a big dinner. I had not tasted flour since the fall before. At Edmonton there was

a h––––– girl, daughter of the famous Paulet Paul of the Saskatchewan brigade, who

had been killed by an Indian, and I thought she would make me a pretty good

companion, so I married her. All this happened during Love’s absence, and when I

told her to make some bread and she opened the sack of flour and started, he looked

at her and asked, ‘Who is that girl?’ I answered, ‘This is Mrs. Clover.’ She got up a

dinner for us all, except the coffee, which I had to make as she had never seen coffee.

We went up above the Fort to Bun Hole and made a camp.”

Shortly after, they started off to get meat, and coming to an Indian camp

obtained a supply. The old chief and some of his men accompanied them on their way

back. One of these men took offense, and it was reported to the chief that he had

retired sulking to a small hill nearby. When the old chief got to him, he had already

torn his blanket into strips and demanded a new blanket for each strip. He was at

length pacified by the gift of one blanket, some shirts and tobacco.

LOVE TAKES DEPARTURE

“Near Edmonton we started to mine, but only got about $3 a day, and that

would not pay a miner. Next spring, when the grass began to grow and there was

plenty of feed, Love said, ‘Tom, I am going back across the mountains,’ and trading

his oxen and cart for ponies, he started off and that was the last I saw of Timoleon

Love.”

From Hargrave’s “Red River,”825 page 61:

“Morgan and I826 were initiated into a variety of curious matters by Mr.

Timoleon Love, a person whose acquaintance we made that morning. Mr. Love was

by profession a gold miner, and had practised his business in the fields of California

and Cariboo. His reasons for leaving those thriving localities he certainly did not

make very clear to my comprehension; but he assured us that gold in paying

quantities would certainly soon turn up in the fertile valley of the Saskatchewan, that

an enormous influx of miners would thereupon take that place, and that the Red

825 Hargrave, J. J. (1871) Red River. Montreal: John Lovell. 826 In June, 1861, on the steamer “Anthony Northrup,” from Georgetown to Fort Garry, Mr. Hargrave

had for travelling companion Mr. Lewis H. Morgan, a lawyer of Rochester, N.Y., who was on a scientific

mission to Red River settlement. –Cowie.

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River settlement, lying right in the line of traffic, would suddenly become “quite a

place.” He said he proposed passing the winter at Red River, but in spring he would

go west and commence gold digging. He had already crossed the mountains, having

come from Cariboo by the Saskatchewan, and after paying a hurried visit to St. Paul,

with the object of providing himself with the necessary “rockers” and other

instruments of his craft, was then on his way back. The contemplation of the airy

castles built by this gentleman served to beguile part of our first morning on board.”

Page 220:

“Reports of gold–finding in the Saskatchewan Valley were current in 1862. Mr.

Timoleon Love, already mentioned […] as having travelled from Georgetown in the

same steamer with myself, remained in Red River during the winter, and stated his

belief that, from the indications he and another miner, named Clover, had observed,

the Saskatchewan would prove an auriferous country. These two men never had been

successful in finding any rich deposit; but they had found what in technical mining

language are called “colours,” which led them to believe the country about the sources

of the Saskatchewan and Peace Rivers would yield large quantities of gold.”

BECOMES MAIL CARRIER

For four consecutive seasons during the cold winter months at Edmonton,

Clover worked for the Hudson’s Bay company or Father Lacombe, at Big Lake

mission, and in the spring returned to his mining along the river. From Edmonton he

started for Fort Garry with 48 ox carts. On this trip he had the misfortune to have

his leg broken by the falling of an ox on the slippery ground after heavy rain. The

winter was spent at White Mud river, and the following spring he reached Fort Garry.

“In talking with Dr. Schultz, the Doctor said to me, ‘Mr. Clover, there is a

chance for you to go to the plains again. Charlie Ruffley is in charge of the mail from

Duluth to Helena, Montana.’ I said ‘All right, I think I will go.’

“So now, I had a wife, two children, two ponies and carts, so I asked her where

she wanted to go, she said ‘Back to White Horse plains,’ 20 miles from Fort Garry,

and I took them there that evening to her uncle’s, and came back next day to be mail

carrier. Bought a lot of horses and carts, and hired some h–––––s and Indians to help

carry the mail, and started out next day for Devil’s Lake.

RESPECT UNION JACK

“In a couple of days we started on the mail line, putting in our stations about

50 miles apart, two men staying at each station. I was going to stop at a certain

station and Charlie Grant came and asked me if I could make him a Union Jack. I

said ‘Yes, if you can get me the stuff to make it.’ ‘We are going on tomorrow and need

the Union Jacks.’ So they started and took my Union Jack along with them. Where

they camped at noon they saw a band of Indians near. The Indians were just ready

to make a raid on the camps when the Union Jack was raised and they at once came

peacefully.”

Meeting a party at Devil’s Lake going to Fort Garry, Clover joined them,

intending to return shortly. Dr. Schultz, in charge of the mail route, told him to go on

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to his family at White Horse plains, but neglected to send word to him when the carts

were ready for the return trip, and he was left behind.

“I said to Dr. Schultz, ‘What am I going to do now?’ He said, ‘You remain here

and work for me and bring your family down, and I will give you good wages.’ I drew

good wages, but I had loaned $5 to one of his head clerks and I never got it back. Dr.

Schultz said that I would get all my money from the mail route.

DR. SCHULTZ ARRESTED

“I was laying on a second floor one day when I saw old Henry McKenney and a

constable come in. They came to arrest Dr. Schultz, and had a hard time to arrest

him. He went with them, but called on his men to help him, but no men came. He

never called on me, in fact he did not know I was up there. The sheriff took him to

Fort Garry and put him in jail. That night a crowd broke open the jail and set Dr.

Schultz free. In the morning he sent for me and said, ‘Clover, I don’t need you any

more. You never helped to take me out of jail.’ I said, ‘I’ll settle up with you here,’ but

he would not. In that way I lost all my spring and summer wages, and was left there

alone without anything.

“In the spring I got work from Henry McKenney, making a schooner.

McKenney wanted to start a sawmill near Lake Winnipeg and had a camp made for

summer and winter.”

AT WORK IN FORT GARRY

Returning again to Fort Garry, Clover worked for McDermot. […] In the spring,

Mr. Snow arrived. “Went with him to Oak Point, near old man Ducharme’s. He

couldn’t get anybody to cook and asked me if I could cook for them a few days. I said

I would do the best I could. We had two cooks, clerks, and a large crew of men. I

appeared to please them. Butter was very scarce in those days, and I was ordered

only to give butter once a day. One day a man named Scott got up earlier in the back

tent and got some butter. I told him that I had orders to give them butter only once a

day, and he said ‘all right.’” […]

RIEL IN REBELLION

“At this time Riel’s rebellion broke out and the men were all called in and sent

down to Fort Garry, so I went with them. When we stopped at noon they all went

ahead and Ducharme and I came behind with blankets and other goods. We found all

the men at Dr. Schultz’s house. They commenced to take their blankets out of the

sleigh and one man took hold of my blankets. I said, ‘Hold on there, these are my

blanket.’ I was bound not to go in there. I said that I was an American citizen and

had no business with Riel’s rebellion.

“I took my blankets and went down to John Linen’s saloon. I sat there a few

minutes when a few of Riel’s soldiers came and told me Riel wanted me up at the fort.

I said, ‘All right, we will go.’ So we went along up to Riel’s office. I said, ‘Riel, what do

you want?’ He said, ‘What are you going to do won town?’ I said that I was going to

get drunk, but wanted to see some of the boys. He said, ‘We have all kinds of good

whiskey here; you can have all you want.’ I said, ‘Mr. Riel, I’m much obliged to you,

but I have to see some of the boys down town.’ He said, ‘All right, you may go down

town if you are back in one hour.’ I said, ‘What do you want me to do when I come

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back?’ He said, ‘We have a lot of cannons in the shed that want fixing up.’ I said, ‘I’ll

have nothing to do with them.’ He said, ‘I want you to put them in firing order. You

will have nothing to do yourself. I’ll give you plenty of men, and you will give orders.’

I went to work cleaning cannons and worked all night. In the morning we had six

cannons ready for firing.

SHOOTING OF SCOTT

“Riel came and said to me that he thought they were going to be attacked by

over 100 men from Portage la Prairie. Scott was the head of the party (the same man

that took the butter when I was cooking). I said, ‘Riel, I think there is not much

danger. We must be ready for them.’ While we were talking, we saw them coming

towards the Fort. Riel sent 50 men on horseback to meet them. When they saw the

men coming they changed their course. The horsemen went ahead of them and drove

them all into the Fort as prisoners.

“During the time that Scott was a prisoner he was quite giddy. When the cook

would take him anything to eat, he was liable to kick him when he was going away.

They gave Mr. Scott a trial and he was sentenced to be shot. At the time he was to be

shot there were four men with double shotguns. So Scott marched out in front of the

Fort to the gate. He passed right by me and said, ‘Good–bye, Tom.’ He had his hands

tied behind him with a rope and I could see his hands were nearly frozen. The men

were ordered to fire, and as Scott fell to the ground, he said, ‘Oh, Lord.’ One man that

fired was Jim Let. He said, ‘Bring me another gun and I’ll finish him.’ Before they got

there with the gun, he was gone. Scott was carried into the company’s workhouse and

laid there. That was the last I saw of Mr. Scott, and I never knew what became of the

body.

“A couple of days after I said, ‘I better leave this country,’ and old Mike Melon

said, ‘Where are you going? By gee, I will go, too.’ So we started to Pembina, family

and all. That was towards spring in 1870. The first person we met at Pembina was a

boy who wanted to sell us some fish, but all I had was $5 and I would not spend that

for fish.

BACK ON THE MAIL ROUTE

“During the day I saw a party of men and went over to find out who they were.

It turned out to be Charles Ruffley, the mail carrier, and he asked if I would go back

to the mail route. I said, ‘Yes, if you will give enough.’ He offered to furnish a horse,

saddle, bridle and rifle and $65 a month. After arranging a tent for my wife and two

children, I went back to Fort Garry with him and he got all the men he wanted and

we started for Walhalla, Devil’s Lake and Helena, Mont., leaving two men at each

station, 50 miles apart as we went along.

“From my station I went out hunting and shot a buffalo cow, but she went back

to the herd and the buffalo started after me. They came so close to me that I hit some

of them on the head with the end of my gun. They kept following me for about ten

miles, but I got the cow and all the meat I wanted.

“I was to take the mail to Devil’s Lake and then to Pembina. I saw no sign of

any Indians about till I suddenly came upon a camp of about 300 tents. I put spurs to

my horse and rode down the hill. An Indian came out and told me to stop. That was

416

Chief Spotted Tail. He gave me something to eat and while I slept the Indians cared

for my horse.

“I opened the mail to show it to him. All the Indians looked at the letters one

by one as though they could read and gave them back to me. In the morning they gave

me for breakfast buffalo meat, dried tongue and coffee, and ten of the Indians

accompanied me part of the way. I arrived at Fort Totten all right. […] They gave me

a white man’s supper that night and […] asked me to take the mail on to Pembina.

The Pembina mail started before I left Fort Totten. I went back to Clover camp but

found nobody there, so I followed tracks till I came to the big bend of Mouse river,

where I overtook the whole party. We went again to Fort Totten and were there told

to return to Pembina, and that ended our mail carrying on that route. […]

SOLD RED RIVER HOLDINGS

“In the spring I […] remained in Pembina. I went to work for the garrison,

putting up buildings and worked all summer. Had my house on the bank of the Red

river and 80 acres of land. Capt. Brady asked me if I would sell the place to him and

I did so, and moved to the Tongue river, taking a homestead two miles from where

Cavalier now stands. I built a house and when snow fell, about October 15, I went to

Pembina and brought my family. Albert Peterson was our nearest neighbor, and there

were five families at Cavalier, all good neighbors. We lived there three or four years,

then sold out to H. L. Norton and Bill Reynolds, of Hamilton, and bought a half section

of land on Rose Lake. Built a house and barn and cleared and broke land for

cultivation. Raised a good crop of wheat and oats the first year. All the boys were

away except Charlie, and he went off threshing. Then the old woman left, and I sent

the two girls to the Indian schools, so I was left there alone and could not even chop

a stick of wood.

LOST HIS HOME

G. E. Beamer came from Bathgate and said to me: ‘Tom, you better let me have

that place and I will give you good rent for it. There is a mortgage of $600 on it and

I will keep the interest paid up and pay off the principal when it becomes due.’ So he

moved into the house. One day, I happened to look at a paper and saw that the

mortgage was foreclosed and that Mrs. Beamer had bought it in at the sale. When

Mr. Beamer came home I showed him the paper and he said he would make it all

right. I said, ‘It looks to me as if I was going to lose that land.’ He said, ‘Oh, no, don’t

be uneasy about that.’” Clover found that Beamer had obtained money from Mrs.

Major and that his property was all gone.

“I am going, I am going, and I don’t know where to go, for I have not the money

to pay the men who are near kicking up a row. I wish that huge scoundrel was in that

place which the Scripture says is never very cold.

“Now, reader, you have read this whole life through but you have not heard

half of it. Now just look back and see how many times I had a fortune at the end of

my fingers and even walking over it with my feet. What is the reason that I did not

keep it? I would say because I did not know enough, but you can put it as you please.

417

“Now I am a total wreck, half blind, scarcely able to walk and have been a

county charge for a number of years. Still I never pray for death, for life is awfully

sweet as long as there is a spark left.”

Nellie Cashman

30. Death of an Explorer (1925)827

Miss Nellie Cashman, miner, nurse, dog–musher and most famous pioneer

woman of the north, will travel no more trails through the land she loved. She died

in Victoria Jan. 4 and was buried there on the 7th, many Northerners attending the

obsequies.

In the early 70s Nellie mushed into the Cassiar district of Northern B. C.,

where an epidemic of scurvey had laid many of the miners low. In her capacity of

nurse, and by feeding the boys civilized grub, she was the ministering angel of the

camps. The year 1877 found her in Arizona, where she followed the mining game with

more or less success, grub–staking prospectors as well as herself roaming the hills.

At the time of the Klondike excitement she was one of the first to join the great

stampede, and since then has spent most of her time in the north. At the time of her

death she owned valuable placer claims near Wiseman, within the Arctic Circle. On

this she had organized the “Midnight Sun Mining Co.” (no offices and no officers) and

came outside in the winter of 1923–24 to raise money by sale of stock for development

purposes. In this she was successful, and was on the long hike from Fairbanks into

the diggings, when stricken with rheumatism which forced her to back track and

come outside for treatment.

Last spring Nellie visited Stewart for a week, the guest of Miss Kate Ryan, a

kindred spirit and a noted frontierswoman. While here she renewed many old

acquaintances and made many new friends.

Her passing removes one of the most outstanding characters of the north and

will be mentioned with regret whenever old–timers foregather.

41. Tea in the Snow (1875)828

Frequent allusion has been made in these columns to this indomitable female,

who has started upon the ice of Stickeen River in company with two men for Dease

Creek. She is a native of Limerick, Ireland, aged about 22; is a light blonde, rather

pretty and possesses all the vivacity as well as the push and energy inherent to her

race. She was one of the few white women who reached Cassiar last year, where she

opened a boarding house on Dease Creek and realized a comfortable “pile.” Her

extraordinary freak of attempting to reach the diggings in midwinter and in the face

of dangers and obstacles which appalled even the stout–hearted Fannin and thrice

827 From NOTED PIONEER WOMAN PASSES. (1925, January 16). Portland Canal News, p. 1. 828 From “MISS CASHMAN.” (1875, February 5). The British Colonist, p. 3.

418

drove him back to Wrangel for shelter is attributed by her friends to insanity. So

impressed with this idea was the Commander at Fort Wrangel that he sent out a

guard of soldiers to bring her back. The guard found her encamped on the ice of

Stickeen cooking her evening meal by the heat of a wood fire and humming a lively

air. So happy, contented and comfortable did she appear that the “boys in blue” sat

down and took tea at her invitation, and returned without her. It is feared that she

has perished from the intense cold that prevailed during the latter part of January

along the entire coast.

42. Miner, Leader and Entrepreneur (1889)829

“Arizona has the only girl mining expert in the world,” said Col. John Hull of

Tucson to an Examiner representative last night at the Baldwin. “For years she has

followed up all the new camps and passed judgment on mines, and usually engaged

in some kind of business in them, as well as staked out and developed claims for

herself. Her name is known throughout all the mining towns of Arizona. Just now

she is making a pull for the Harqua Hala mines. She has just been here and bought

a restaurant outfit for the new camp, and while her employees set out bacon and

beans to the flannel shirted miners for a dollar apiece she will make her locations and

begin mining as usual.

“She is a wonderfully plucky girl. It is about nine years now since she first

came from Tucson. She was from Dodge City, Kan., and could not have been more

than 17 years old. She got to examining the ore as it came out of the Tucson mines,

and was soon as good a judge of its value as her brother Jim, who worked in one of

them. The boys pretty soon began betting on her judgment, more in fun than anything

else, but what was their surprise to find that she was a wonderfully good guesser and

hit it close about every time. Her fame spread, and miners, always superstitious, got

an idea that to have her around and get her good opinion in some way brought luck.

She knew where to dig for ore, too, and some of the ore in the Contention was found

by following her advice in running a drift.

“Over in Graham county she made a hit one day on copper, and when she went

to Tombstone afterwards she passed her judgment on some mines there. Bill Wiggins

sold the Excelsior and Grand View mines on her advice, and the only dividend they

ever yielded was the $15,000 he got for them. Other mines were bought after she had

examined and reported favorably on them. They are good paying properties now. In

Tucson, Bisbee, Tombstone and other camps, Miss Cashman has conducted general

stores and big lodging houses for the miners. She was also in business at Castle Dome.

She is as adventurous in pushing forward to a new region as any nomadic miner. No

sooner does she hear of a new camp than she starts for it. She has had so much

experience that she almost invariably turns it to good account, getting town lots,

placer sites and lode claims for next to nothing and unloading at a big profit. “At first,

she did not get out of the camps soon enough. Consequently, she has been many times

829 From A GIRL MINING EXPERT. (1889, May 4). Nanaimo Courier, p. 1.

419

rich and poor. She has an indomitable pluck, though, and if she goes broke in one

place she soon makes a turn and gets up again. It is phenomenal how nonchalantly

she takes a reverse. She is just as level headed, self contained and serene as if she

had made a fortune.

“It makes no difference, so far as appearances go. Miss Cashman is a rather tall, dark

eyed girl. She is somewhat angular in appearance and has brown hair. Going about

among the mines, or climbing the hills for outcroppings, she wears heavy shoes and

strong clothes, usually covered with a cloak, worn negligée. She is a rapid walker and a quick, incisive talker. Her language is good. She is considerable of a reader, and on

most all subjects is very well informed. She will be the first woman in the new camp

of Harqua Hala, where there are probably now fifteen hundred men.”

43. Cassiar and the Klondike (1898)830

The first white woman to penetrate the Cassiar country, and who 21 years ago

visited Alaska in search of gold, arrived in the city last night from San Francisco,

says the Victoria Colonist. She is Miss Nellie Cashman, and in addition to having

spent several years in the frozen north, she has prosecuted her search for gold with

varying success in almost every mining region of the United States. She is now out

for a big stake nothing more or less than the mother lode of the far–famed Klondyke

region. She says if her experience in quartz mining will stand her in good need and

her proverbial luck in mining matters stays with her, she will have a chance at least

to stake out a few claims in the mountain of gold which is thought to enrich all the

north.

Miss Cashman went to the Cassiar district with 200 miners from the

Comstock, Nevada, in 1879, at the time of the gold excitement, being the only woman

in the party. At that time she was only 16, but as subsequent events proved, full of

courage and strength. For a number of years she remained in the country, mining

and conducting a mercantile business, and then came out to Victoria with a stake

which put many of her hardier companions to the blush. Since then she has been

engaged in mining in California, Utah, Colorado, Nevada and Mexico and at the

present time holds claims in most of those states.

44. A Bold Impersonator (1898)831

Thomas B. Cunningham, of Seattle, came to Victoria last Monday expecting to

be accepted as the nephew of Miss Nellie Cashman, the pioneer woman miner, now

staying at the Burnes house. It was a bold attempt at impersonation, but the would–

be imposter did not count on the intelligence of his selected victim, and his plans were

easily frustrated, but not until after he had secured a small amount of cash through

his misrepresentation.

830 From SHE WAS IN CASSIAR. (1898, March 12). The Mining Review, p. 1. 831 From A BOLD IMPERSONATOR. (1898, March 9). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 7.

420

There was no great depth to Cunningham’s plot and the details as far as they

went were clumsily worked out. He had been living in Seattle for some time past, and

was, according to his own story, battling hard against starvation. Such straits drove

him to desperation and having been, through a coincidence in name, put in the way

of the information that Miss Cashman was anxiously enquiring for a nephew he

decided to attempt the impersonation.

Miss Cashman has been spending some days in Victoria preparatory to leaving

for Klondike, where she intends with a small company of men to go prospecting. One

of the company is a nephew, whom she has corresponded with a good deal, but has

not seen for a long time. He left Anaconda over a week ago to join the company here,

but has not yet arrived, nor can any information of his whereabouts be obtained. Miss

Cashman heard that her nephew was in Seattle stranded there and wrote to him. Not

receiving a reply in due time, she wrote to a merchant in Seattle with whom she was

acquainted and asked him to learn, if he could, if the letter addressed to her nephew,

whose name was Thos. B. Cunningham, had been called for. The merchant found out

that it had, and left word at the post office to have the young man sent to him the

next time he called. This resulted in Cunningham the imposter visiting the merchant

the next day and learning that he would have a small sum of money if he needed it.

Cunningham saw the mistake, but concluded that as it was all profit to him there

would be nothing but folly in making explanations. Accordingly he got possession of

$10 in cash and a ticket to Victoria. He had also obtained ideas enough from the letter

which he had received by mistake on which to determine that his imposition could be

carried further and be made much more profitable.

On Monday morning, Miss Cashman was informed by the bell–boy of the Burns

hotel that a young man giving his name as Thomas B. Cunningham was downstairs

inquiring for her. She went down to meet him, but was somewhat taken aback when

she saw the young man.

“You are Miss Cashman; I am your nephew,” said the caller.

“You don’t look like my nephew,” said Miss Cashman, after surveying the

stranger for a moment.

“My name is Thomas B. Cunningham, and I have your letter,” was the reply

made by the stranger; but it was made in a faltering tone. The speaker had become

perceptibly nervous under the scrutiny to which he was justly subjected. On being

requested, he produced the letter and with it several others bearing the same address

in varied handwritings.

“Your name is all right,” said Miss Cashman, “but you don’t look like my

nephew ought to.”

The impostor had not nerve enough to carry his attempt much further and

broke down, confessing his case. He pleaded that it was purely by accident and

through no design of his that he got possession of the letter in the first place. He then

gave Miss Cashman a pathetic recitation of his hard luck in Seattle, punctuating the

story with sobs and moistening it with a few tears.

The mining woman has a heart as tender as her nerve is strong, and instead

of becoming highly indignant and revengeful on the man who defrauded and

421

attempted to deceive her, she gave him her sympathy and proffered him some good

advice. Cunningham had $1 left out of the $10 which he had received and this he

offered to return but was allowed to keep.

“I could not think of sending him to jail,” said Miss Cashman to a COLONIST

reporter yesterday, “though you may think he deserved it.”

It was suggested to Miss Cashman that her nephew might have been a victim

of foul play in Seattle or elsewhere, and that the attempted impersonation was a

continuation of such a plot, but she would not believe it. She thinks he must have

gone aboard an Alaska boat in Seattle which did not touch at Victoria, and that by

this time he is in Wrangel awaiting the arrival there of the rest of the company.

Miss Cashman and her company leave by the Centennial to–night for Wrangel,

and will go into the gold fields by the Stikine route, that is if war between Spain and

the United States is not declared before they get started inland.

“In that case,” said Miss Cashman, “I will return to the United States, and

every man of the company will return with me. I do not value all the gold in the

Klondike as much as I would a chance to fight those treacherous Spaniards.”

“Would you want to go to war yourself?” asked the reporter.

“I couldn’t be kept out of it,” was the reply, “and I would not only go myself, but

I would organize a company of women in the state of Nevada who would all go, and

who would be of some effect in a battle.”

Miss Cashman’s enthusiasm over prospects of war became intense, and there

was no doubt in the reporter’s mind when he got through listening to some of the

frontier experiences which she has already gone through, but that she meant every

word she said.

45. At the Home of Kate Ryan (1924)832

Nellie Cashman, Alaska’s most famous woman, sourdough of sourdoughs and

pioneer of the Cassiar district of British Columbia, arrived in Stewart yesterday on

the Prince George.

Miss Cashman left her mining operations in the Koyukuk district, away up

near the Arctic Circle, last fall and has put in the winter traveling, incidentally selling

stock in a company which she organized to enable her to prosecute her placer mining

on a larger scale and with more modern methods. To look over the stubs of her stock

books is to read the names of many prominent men and women of the north, as well

as notables of the effete States.

And there are contrasts. For instance, one notices the names of Judge Elmer

E. Ritchie of Valdez, and Judge James Wickersham of Juneau, in the same book. That

is as close as being a friendly relation between these two worthies as can be conceived.

While in Washington City Miss Cashman called on President Coolidge, but his

name does not appear in her stock books. Perhaps Teapot Dome Oil was rankling in

his bosom at the time of her visit.

832 From FAMOUS PIONEER WOMAN VISITING. (1924, April 25). Portland Canal News, p. 1.

422

Miss Cashman went into the Dease lake country at the time of the Cassiar

excitement in 1875 and has since been identified with the north, though spending

most of her time in Alaska.

She was found last night at the home of Kate Ryan, and needless to say there

was no chance for a formal interview.

Kate Ryan

46. “The far north is the only place to live” (1924)833

Miss Kate Ryan, who looks thirty and confesses to over fifty, a real charter

member of the band of adventurers who made the Klondyke famous, was in

Vancouver enroute to the north, after her first visit to the east in eighteen years.

In the early days of the far north boom, when the lure of gold attracted men

from the far corners of the earth, it was Miss Ryan who was the big sister to them all.

She nursed them when they were sick, lectured them when necessary, darned their

socks and sewed their buttons on.

The far north is the only place to live, she believes, and she is going back to

spend the remainder of her days.

Miss Ryan has the distinction of being the only woman who was ever attached

to the old North West Mounted Police. During the boom, when travel was heavy

across the Alaska–Yukon border, she was stationed at Whitehorse, Y.T., in charge of

the women who were constantly passing back and forth, and a part of her duties was

to search them for smuggled gold dust.

She now makes her home at Stewart, B.C., the thriving mining camp at the

head of the Portland Canal, where she owns mining property. Her first business

venture was a junk store in a tent. By dint of thrift and hard work, she now owns a

modern building and other property. In addition to looking after her business affairs,

she finds time to act as a nurse in emergencies834, and when Stewart was without a

medical man her skill in case of accident or sickness was a godsend to the camp835.

For a quarter of a century, Miss Ryan has been a picturesque and romantic

figure in the written and unwritten history of the Far North, and literally laughed836

her way through the many hardships, discomforts and privations.

833 From Likes Living in Far North. (1924, May 22). The Ledge, p. 5. 834 “A sudden illness of a serious nature forced Dr. Davis to take his wife out on the Prince Albert last

Monday night. Kate Ryan is looking after the patients in the hospital until his return.” STEWART

LOCAL NOTES. (1920, December 18). Portland Canal News, p. 1. 835 “Miss Kate Ryan, known throughout the north for her many works of kindness, has recently taken

over, temporarily, the Stewart general hospital, and is busy getting things in shape to hand over to

whoever takes permanent charge of the institution. She does not expect to have to remain longer than

a month.” STEWART LOCAL NEWS. (1922, June 9). Portland Canal News, p. 1. 836 “The parade was unique, and funnier than that. Headed by Miss Kate Ryan, garbed as a Red Cross

nurse and representing the Hospital organizations, the Moose Legionnaires, including large

delegations from Ketchikan and Prince Rupert, put on a show that sent the spectators into spasms of

laughter, while at the same time engendering respect for the Lodge who would give their whole–

423

47. Running for Office (1920)837

Miss Katherine Ryan, of Stewart, B.C., is likely to be a candidate for the seat

left vacant by the death of the late Frank Mobley, the member for Atlin. More than

the usual interest centers in this announcement, for Miss Ryan is unique among

women, in that she may lay claim to the title of “sourdough” and the story of her

adventures might well be culled from the ballads of Robert Service or the novels of

Rex Beach. In addition, she has the unique distinction of having held office for the

past sixteen years as gold inspector, in the Yukon, and as far as is known, is the only

woman in the world to hold such an office.

Miss Ryan has been in the Yukon territory for the past twenty–four years and

is well–known in every corner of that vast hinterland. The vicissitudes of fortune

found her stranded in British Columbia early in 1898. The stories of the Eldorado in

the Yukon kindled her imagination and roused her fighting spirit, and she

determined to try her luck in the goldfields. She was the first woman to join the

famous rush of ’98 alone, and the fact that she succeeded in reaching her goal is

eloquent tribute to her Spartan courage, grit and determination.

48. A New Store (1921)838

The announcement this week that Miss Kate Ryan had completed

arrangements for the opening up of a store and stopping place at the mouth of the

Marmot river comes possibly as a surprise to a great many. According to announced

plans and prospective ones, still to be put into effect, it is safe to say that the Marmot

section will, this year, see tremendous mining activity. Considerable development

work will be done on a number of properties, and at least one, and possibly two or

three, will this year ship ore. While there is not as yet an established mine in this

section, there is every reason to believe that one will be developed in the very near

future. And this year sufficient work will be done to justify the establishment of a

business such as Miss Ryan proposes, and which will doubtless form the nucleus of

another town at the head of Portland Canal. If such a town comes into being this year,

it will be greatly to the advantage of the whole of this mining district, for it will mean

more people, and therefore greater recognition of our requirements by the

government. Not only that, but such a development will materially help the town of

Stewart, which will always remain the hub of the wheel – the headquarters for all

the development of the enormous mineral resources of this Portland Canal section.

hearted help toward the support of a worthy cause.” CELEBRATION ON LABOR DAY. (1926,

September 10). Portland Canal News, p. 1. 837 From LEGISLATURE MAY HAVE ANOTHER LADY MEMBER. (1920, September 29). The Daily Colonist, p. 2. 838 ANOTHER TOWN. (1921, June 3). Portland Canal News, p. 2.

424

49. “The Producers of the Real Money” (1921)839

“I’m not a bit excited over mining camps and prospects, for I have spent a

lifetime at that game, but I want to say that no mine will be equal to the Premier

Mine840, near Stewart, which will shortly become the greatest mining centre in the

world,” said Miss Kate Ryan, famous prospector and well known throughout the

entire north for her interest and experience in mining affairs, to the Colonist last

night, when asked for her opinion of the Stewart mining possibilities.

Miss Ryan, who is registered at the Westholme, is down on the coast for a

holiday trip, but she declares there’s only one section on the map that can claim her,

and that’s the great Northland, concerning which, she points out, most persons’

knowledge is so limited. Miss Ryan went over the Yukon trail in the great rush of ’98,

and during her life in the North she has been at no less than seven mining camps, in

fact, she says she travels with the mines.

“The Stewart Camp is my eighth sojourn, but I’m not done for yet,” she said.

“This northern settlement now possesses about 500 inhabitants, but I am confident

that inside of another twelve months the place will contain three times as many

citizens. The chief difficulty now is that the accommodation is limited, but as more

houses are built, more men and their families will proceed there, for they are assured

of plenty of work.”

The speaker was most reluctant to speak of her own part in the development

of the north country, where she occupied the position of lady jail inspector of the North

West Mounted Police for fifteen years, having her headquarters in White Horse. She

has traveled the entire Northland, and everyone there knows “Kate Ryan.”

AMPLE CAPITAL NOW

“What has kept back the work at the mines has been the lack of financial

backing, but now there is plenty of capital, and it has been demonstrated successfully

that rich ore is there,” Miss Ryan stated. “An encouraging feature is the fact that the

Government is now proceeding with their roadwork, which will enable the miners to

ship the ore to the boats at Stewart, from where it will be taken to the smelters. Not

only that,” the speaker went on, “but there has been built a tram from Stewart into

the mines, which will make it possible for the ore to be shipped at great saving in

cost.

“Folks down here seldom think, I believe, how much the North really means to

them, after all. It should be pointed out that a great amount of exporting necessary

goods takes place from here, and that in exchange for what she imports the North

gives in exchange rich minerals which supply people here with many more comforts.

We are the producers of the real money, but you all in turn get your share, perhaps

indirectly in all cases, but the money brought here is in circulation, and everyone gets

the benefit of it,” said Miss Ryan.

839 From NORTH HAS GREAT FUTURE, SHE SAYS. (1921, September 13). The Daily Colonist, p. 7. 840 A relative of Ryan’s worked at this mine: “Miss Ryan brought her cousin, B. Hillman, of Minneapolis

with her. On arrival he proceeded to the Premier mine, where he is now employed.” Kate Ryan

Returns. (1921, April 8). Portland Canal News, p. 1.

425

Miss Ryan intends leaving Victoria this afternoon for the Mainland, where she

contemplates remaining for several weeks.

50. Death of a “Big Sister” (1932)841

Kate Ryan, “Big Sister” of the Klondike gold camps and one of the most colorful

figures in the Yukon stampede of ’98, died at her home in Vancouver a few days ago.

For some time she was employed in the North by the Canadian Government to

“frisk” women suspected of illegal concealment of gold dust who were on their way

south.

In the early days, Miss Ryan was known throughout the Yukon as “Big Sister.”

She never hesitated to travel miles over the frozen wastes to attend the wants of a

sick miner. Many are the deeds of kindness ascribed to the kindness and goodwill

ascribed to her. During recent years she had resided at Stewart. She was born in

Johnsville, N.B.

In 1898 the deceased answered the call of adventure and went to Atlin and

later to White Horse. She was for a time employed by the Royal Canadian Mounted

Police in an inspection service maintained to prevent smuggling of gold out of the

Yukon without payment of royalty. She was known as “Sergeant Kate.”

When Miss Ryan went into the North she traveled over the Stikine route with

another young woman, Minnie Lamereux842. No other woman except Nelle Cashman

became so well known and loved in the Yukon. Miss Cashman, like Kate Ryan,

remained single and was “Mother of the North” twenty–five years before Kate Ryan

was there.

In 1923 the deceased passed through Vancouver on her way to New Brunswick

to visit her old home, which she had not seen for seventeen years. She heard that

Nellie Cashman, who was then 72, was on her way to New York, and the two famous

women of the North traveled together.

841 From NOTED PIONEER OF NORTH DEAD. (1932, February 21). The Daily Colonist, p. 6. and Big Sister of Klondike Colorful Figure in ’98. (1932, March 27). The Daily Colonist, p. 6. Both articles are very similar, with many identical passages. I’ve woven them together to include the few details unique

to each account. 842 “Misses Ryan and Lamoreux have rented their recently completed restaurant – the Irving Café –

for the winter and will take up their residence in Atlin.” AROUND PINE. (1899, October 7). The Atlin Claim, p. 3.

426

VI. Railways

427

1. Waiting for the Railroad (1910)843

In the west there are always a goodly number of people waiting for the railroad.

There is the speculator who is holding land for the rise in value which will follow the

laying of the shafts of steel. There is the business man who is looking for a location,

and who realizes the benefits to be derived from getting in on the ground floor in a

new town. There is the settler, who is weary of hauling his grain forty or fifty miles

to a railroad, and who watches the nearest local paper week by week for news of

proposed construction.

The railroad is the backbone of the West. It has made it what it is; it will yet

make it what it has to be. The Hon. Richard McBride, premier of British Columbia,

said recently that it seemed to be impossible to build up a settlement or a community

away from good transportation facilities. He was right. The time was when such was

not the case. In the years back in the past settlers were willing to locate a long way

from civilization, and would hew out a home in the wilderness; but that day has

passed. The great cities offer too many allurements. The railroad is today a necessity.

The settler is the man who does the waiting. He waits right on the ground; the

others, like Peter, wait afar off. It is not necessary for a business man to go into a new

district until a few days before the iron horse pulls in. The speculator may rest at

ease in his far off home, while the railroad is coming, but not so – the settler. If he is

ever to have a homestead close to good transportation facilities he must locate years

before the coming of the railroad. A crowd of anxious land hunters waited forty–two

hours outside the Edmonton land office for their turn to file on land in the Saddle

Lake country, the choicest sections of which were forty–two miles from a railroad.

They knew that the land they were filing on was good; with the good land would come

good crops; and with the good crops would come the railroad to carry them. The

railroad man is always watching for more business – for a greater tonnage and larger

passenger receipts.

A close student of western affairs remarked a short time ago that he would

sooner have a homestead within forty miles of a railroad than one within twenty miles

of a modern locomotive. His reason was a simple one. He contended that with a

homestead forty miles from transportation there was a chance that someday the

plough horses might be alarmed at the approach of a swift express, but that in the

case of the one twenty miles away there was little likelihood of a railroad near for a

long period of years. The country would have to be very thickly settled and the per

acre production very high before a railroad company would thus attempt to gridiron

the country with roads. There were too many new districts without railroads at all

for this to be possible.

The average man takes his turn at guessing where the next new line will be

built. He keeps his ear to the ground, smiles blandly at all the politicians supposed

843 From Dynes, E. W. (1910, May 16). WAITING FOR THE RAILROAD. The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 5. Written by Edgar William Dynes (1886 – 1957).

428

to be in the know, gets all the tips he can, and then sifting out the information thus

gathered he draws his own conclusions, makes his guess, and plants his stakes.

Very often, he makes a rather shrewd guess, but there are a number of

instances where the locators were several hundred miles astray. At the time the main

line of the Canadian Pacific was built, there were a number of very poor guessers.

Before it was definitely decided that the road would be through the Kicking Horse

pass, there were many who thought the route would be through the Yellow Head pass,

much farther north. They made their calculations accordingly. In one instance a

number of ambitious prospectors and land seekers located land and minerals in the

path of the proposed route. As soon as they found how wide of the mark their guess

had been they trekked out in disgust. Perhaps some homesteader along the line of

the Grand Trunk Pacific or the Canadian Northern may find the ruins of the cabins

they erected.

Others occupied themselves with guesses as to where the coast terminal would

be. Some said Vancouver, but there were not a few who pinned their faith to Port

Moody. One eastern capitalist looking for an investment came out and after looking

over the situation went strong on Port Moody. He bought all he could. When the

announcement was made that Vancouver would be the terminal he was a much

disappointed man. He never fully recovered from the shock and – all because he was

a poor guesser.

If all the proposed railway lines for which charters have been securing had

been constructed the map of Western Canada would look not unlike a spider’s web.

The prairie country would now be linked with Hudson’s Bay. The Dawson miner, who

has made a stake would be able to board the southbound express and take a berth for

Edmonton. A conductor on the northbound train would be able to step on the platform

at Winnipeg and holler, “All aboard for Edmonton and Fort McMurray!” The resident

at Kootenay who might desire to spend a few days in a city of metropolitan aspirations

would have long since been taking in the best things supplied by Vancouver, instead

of helping to make profit for Spokane. The men who have the charters haven’t the

money. The men who have the money, and who turn to Western Canada as the scene

of their operations in the railroad world very often find their projected are covered by

some charter secured years before.

Almost ten years ago a number of “go ahead” westerners with more enterprise

and ambition in their make–up than money in their jeans, secured a charter to build

a road from Midway to Vernon. It was afterwards bonused by the Federal and

Provincial governments to the extent of eleven thousand four hundred dollars a mile.

After five years of hard work the promoters made an arrangement with a New York

company to finance the project. Construction was commenced and the prospectors

and homesteaders in a rich mining and fruit growing territory felt that the railroad

which would give them the long–looked–for start was coming at last.

But trouble came soon. The original charter, which carried with it the bonus

from the Provincial government, had run out. It had been extended as far as

construction was concerned, but the members of the B. C. government were in doubt

as to whether under the extension of time agreement they were liable for the amount

429

of the bonus. Almost ten miles of grading had been done and the time was drawing

near when the payment of the bonus on this portion would be due.

In some mysterious way, through a careless remark, it is presumed, a

gentleman high up in banking circles received the information that the government

proposed to refuse to pay the bonus unless forced to do so by the judgment of the

courts. Unfortunately this information reached the intelligence office of the New York

concern, who were financing the road. They backed down and construction was

stopped immediately. The wages of the railroad gangs had not been paid. Merchants

who had supplied contractors with provisions and other equipment had to jot down

some pretty stiff figures on their books. That was in the fall of 1905, and neither men

nor merchants have been paid yet.

When the matter of whether or not the government was liable for the amount

of the bonus came up in the courts some weeks later, a decision was handed down in

favor of the holders of the charter. This decision, however, came too late to be of any

assistance to the project as construction had ceased some months previous. […]

All over the west there are men living in mansions, who have made fortunes

in real estate, the enhanced values in city and town property being the direct result

of the coming of the railroad. In Edmonton there are said to be over one hundred men

who have each made from fifty thousand and upwards since the Alberta express first

pulled in. Numerous other cities – Winnipeg, Calgary, Vancouver, Spokane, Seattle,

Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles and many others have been profitable fields of

operation for the man with long nerve, who bought early or who staked his last dollar

in covering options.

When the Calgary and Edmonton line was first built it stopped at Strathcona.

William Mackenzie, whose contracting firm had built the road, went over to

Edmonton and tried to persuade his friend, John McDougall of fur trade fame, that

staying with Edmonton was a forlorn hope. In vain he attempted to prove to him that

it was almost useless to expect that any railroad would ever build across the river.

The far–seeing fur trader thanked his friend, but intimated his intention of

remaining in the place where for so many years he had made his home. Strangely

enough, the railroad did come fourteen years later, and stranger still, it was built by

the man who said a railroad would never be likely to build to Edmonton. The coming

of the Canadian Northern lifted John McDougall into influence. He now lives in an

imposing brick mansion on a beautiful height of land overlooking the windings of the

broad Saskatchewan. […]

Over ten years ago it was announced that a railroad would be built from Golden

down through the Windermere country and connecting with the Crow’s Nest branch

of the Canadian Pacific. Immediately the “waiting–for–the–railroad–people” began to

get busy. The little town of Fort Steele opened up in a few months. It is expected to

be on the new line. The line was not built then, nor is it built yet. The latest report is

that it will be built next year. Who knows? But disquieting news has come to the

residents of Fort Steele. It is rumored that it may be side–tracked a few miles when

the line is built. If this be so – what luck? Ten years waiting and given the “meitten”

in the end.

430

At Fairmount Springs, a short distance south of Windermere, an energetic

rancher has had fruit trees bearing for over a dozen years. He located in the early

days, when a railroad up the valley was first suggested. Perhaps he won’t smile a

little, when some day on in the future the whistle of the locomotive will bid him look

up as he picks the big red apple. But what a weary job it is – waiting for the railroad!

[…]

There are not a few evidences that the waiting days are passing. The time was

when the railroad man hesitated because he feared a new branch line would not pay.

But heavy tonnage and increased earnings have given a new impetus to construction.

Several American railroad kings have their eyes on the railroad opportunities of the

west. Four big systems are heading for the coal region of the Crow’s Nest in order

that they may be in touch with an abundant fuel supply. And so they are coming. But

in the meantime, there are here a few and there a few waiting; speculator, settler,

business man – all waiting; some patiently, more impatiently – but all with their eyes

ready to soften at the appearance of “the final location survey party” – the forerunner

of the iron horse.

2. Ontario’s First Steam Railway (1914)844

The first railway in Ontario on which locomotives were used, was the line from

Toronto to Bradford, the company that built it being first known as the Toronto and

Simcoe, then as the Ontario, Simcoe and Huron, and later as the Northern Railway

Company.

The first promoter of that earliest of Ontario railways was Frederick Charles

Capreol, a prominent business man of Toronto of that time. His name was really

Caprioll, the name of a noble Italian family of great prominence several generations

ago. One branch of the family removed to France, and the descendants are living

there to this day. A second branch went to England, where the name was Anglicized

to Capreol.

Frederick Charles Capreol, the pioneer railway promoter of Ontario, was born

in England in 1803, his second name, Chase, being the name of his mother’s family.

She was a niece of Sir Thomas Chase, and a relative of the Marquis of Salisbury. In

1828, when twenty–eight years of age, young Capreol was sent out to Canada, to

assist in settling up the affairs of the Northwest Fur Company, which was being

amalgamated with the Hudson’s Bay Company.

To Mr. Capreol is due the honor of having planned and promoted the first

steam railway in the upper province. His plan was to connect Lake Ontario at Toronto

with Lake Huron, by means of a railway, and at the same time open up the country

north of Toronto, and especially the district around Lake Simcoe.

It was a gigantic undertaking for the time, and the first obstacle that had to be

overcome was lack of the necessary funds. Mr. Capreol’s first plan was ingenious, if

844 From A PIONEER RAILRAOD. (1914, January 21). The Melfort Moon, p. 2.

431

not particularly sound. It was a lottery. His scheme was to raise the necessary funds

in this highly speculative matter, the proceeds from the sale of the lottery tickets to

be used in purchasing 100,000 acres of land along the line of the projected railway,

the idea being that the profits to be derived from the sale of the land would be

sufficient to pay for the whole construction of the road. By some, the plan was viewed

with distrust, and by others it was condemned as being a gambling scheme and,

therefore, immoral. As a consequence of this distrust and opposition it fell through.

Defeated in his first attempt, Mr. Capreol did not give in to despair. He simply

changed his course, and adopted the plan that has been followed by almost every

railway promoter since. He set to work and organized a company. In 1849 this

company was incorporated and granted a charter by the Legislature of United

Canada, but the Earl of Elgin, the Governor–General of that time, reserved the bill

for the Queen’s assent. It, therefore, had to be sent to London, England, a proceeding

that required considerable time in those days of slow ships.

When this new and apparently serious difficulty was thrown in his way, people

began to call the promoter of the company “Mad Capreol.” But neither the difficulties

of the situation nor the jeers of his neighbors daunted the enterprising and energetic

man. He decided to go to London also, and plead in person the cause of his railway

charter. His efforts were crowned with success. The royal assent was given to the bill

on August 28, 1849, and within seven weeks after settling out from Toronto, Capreol

was back with his railway charter in his pocket.

Upon his return from England, Mr. Capreol was appointed general manager of

the company, and now that all was ready for a start he made preparations for the

turning of the first sod.

And then, like a bolt from the blue, disaster fell upon Mr. Capreol. The

directors of the company, animated by jealousy, dismissed him from his office of

manager, but a few days before the first sod was turned.

The first sod was turned on October 15, 1851, and the first passenger train was

run over the line on May 16, 1856. The train consisted of the locomotive, “The Lady

Elgin,” a box–car, and one passenger car. At that time there stood opposite the

Queen’s Hotel in Toronto, a little wooden shed. This was the railway station; and

there on that May morning, a little more than fifty–eight years ago, that earliest of

Upper Canadian trains set out on its first trip. There were plenty of passengers, and

they were given a hearty send–off by a crowd that filled the station, and the vacant

space adjacent to the terminal. There was no ticket office in the station, and no tickets

were sold on board the train by the conductor, John Harvie, in later years an

alderman of Toronto. At every station along the line crowds had gathered to see the

novel sight and cheer the success that had attended “Mad Capreol’s” scheme. Two

hours after leaving Toronto, the train was at Aurora, twenty–nine and a half miles

from the starting point.

432

Meeting the Train (1911)845

A C.P.R. train at Goderich, Ontario (1912)846

845 Pastor Russell [Photograph]. (1911). From the Anthologist’s collection. 846 Goderich – 1912 [Photograph]. (1912). From the Anthologist’s collection.

433

The Canadian Pacific Railway (C.P.R.) At Confederation in 1867, British Columbia was not part of Canada. It joined Canada in 1871 through an agreement that had two major conditions: a loan from the Dominion government, and a railway connecting the Pacific coast to the populated markets of Quebec and Ontario. That railway was finally completed in 1886, as the Canadian Pacific Railway.

3. “The Offspring of Two Great Ideas” (1886)847

The Canadian Pacific railway has been appropriately called the offspring of

two great ideas – firstly, the necessity of uniting into one empire the British colonies

of North America; secondly, the importance of throwing open for settlement vast

areas of fertile country, and of finding for the commerce of Europe and America the

shortest and best route to the great and promising markets of Eastern Asia.

The first practical proposal for the construction of the Canadian Pacific railway

emanated from British Columbia, where a Mr. Waddington848, an English settler,

prior to confederation succeeded in demonstrating the feasibility of the project on

economic grounds. In 1868 the Pacific province, which had desired so soon as the

union of the provinces was agitated to join the Dominion, despatched delegates to the

Federal Government for the purpose of negotiating the terms of its adhesion, the most

important of which were the construction of a wagon road from the valley of the

Fraser River across to Lake Superior, and the expenditure of one million dollars

annually on the construction of an interoceanic line. In a fit of liberality the Dominion

Government offered to begin the construction of the railway at once, and to complete

it by 1881. British Columbia immediately accepted, and the Dominion thus stood

committed to the herculean task which is now a fait accompli. It would be tedious to follow in detail all that took place during this interval.

Suffice it to say that the railway became in politics the greatest question of the day,

and over the policies adopted in its construction bitter political conflicts have taken

place. The expediency of construction by government was tried, but with

unsatisfactory results. A fatal error was undoubtedly made in the principle laid down

in the earlier Acts passed on the subject that the line should be constructed without

increasing the taxation of the country, and in the assumption that huge land grants

alone would induce private enterprise to carry out the work. In spite of party

differences it became evident that the progress made on the prescribed lines was quite

out of proportion to the cost incurred, and that the construction of the railway would

probably consume the greater part of a century than the stipulated ten years.

847 From THE CANADIAN PACIFIC. (1886, January 1). The Daily Colonist, p. 9. 848 Alfred Penderell Waddington (1801 – 1872) was born in London. In 1858 he became the author of

the first book published on Vancouver Island, a defense of the gold rush titled The Fraser mines vindicated, or the history of four months. In the late 1860s he wrote a series of pamphlets promoting the idea of a transcontinental railway through Canada.

434

Matters were precipitated by the revelation towards the close of 1878 that only

a total of 138 miles of railway had been laid and 189 graded. A radical change of policy

was called for, and in 1881, when the present Government came into power, a

company was induced to undertake the work, aided by a cash subsidy of $25,000,000,

a liberal land grant of 25,000,000 acres, and the completion, at the cost of the

government, of the two sections already commenced, viz., Port Arthur to Winnipeg

428 miles, and Port Moody to Burrard Inlet, westwards to Savona Ferry, Lake

Kamloops, 213 miles, valued at $30,000,000, thus leaving the company to build the

two sections from Callander to Port Arthur, 657 miles, and from Winnipeg to Savona

Ferry, 1,252 miles.

The company set to work with determination and vigor. During the season of

1882 rails were laid at an average of three miles a day. By the end of the season 450

miles were ready for trains, and 610 miles graded. In June (1882) the section from

Port Arthur to Winnipeg was opened, and by the end of the summer there was a

continuous line of steel from Lake Superior to a point 450 miles west of Winnipeg.

With a view of securing an independent eastern terminus for their system, the

company now bought a controlling interest in existing lines, giving it connection with

Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec. In 1883, on the difficult section north of Lake

Superior, 200 miles of track were laid, and westwards, the summit of the Rocky

Mountains, 962 miles west of Winnipeg, was reached in November. By the end of the

year the company had 2,963 miles of the road under its control. The strain of this

tremendous energy began at last to have an effect on the company’s financial

resources, and the situation was intensified by the organized hostility of its rivals,

who repudiated its stock until it became unsaleable except at an immense sacrifice.

Under these circumstances the Canadian Government came temporarily to the

assistance of the company. The section north of Lake Superior and in British

Columbia – the latter presenting great difficulties in crossing the Rocky Mountains

and the Selkirk and Gold ranges – were both complete in the course of the present

summer. The Canadian Pacific railway was thus finished six years before the limits

of the company’s contract, and it only needs the formal opening ceremony before

starting on a career full of great promise.

The advantages that are claimed for the railway are certainly of a substantial

nature, and are such as should exercise an important influence on its immediate

future. The system of the Canadian Pacific railway is more compact, its route is

shorter by 450 miles than that of any other of the transcontinental lines; its

equipment is most complete, and suited to modern exigencies of traffic. Possessing

uncontrolled its termini on the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans – an advantage not

possessed by any of its competitors – it will not be forced to divide, like them, with

rival lines the earnings of the remunerative traffic that will pass over its system. It

already draws a large and steadily–increasing revenue from its local traffic, and its

debt charges are so much smaller than those of any of the other similar lines in a

flourishing condition, that low and yet remunerative rates will be possible, a sine qua

non for attracting transit traffic. […]

435

That trade follows the flat is now a well recognized truism. It is, however, one

of the chief reasons why the Canadian Pacific Railway should become the great

Asiatic route to and from Europe, inasmuch as the shipping of the world is owned and

operated by British merchants, who will carry trade through channels of their own

choice. […] Over its road will come the tea, coffee, rice, spices, indigo, sandal and

other woods, silks and textile fabrics, the products of the countries of Eastern Asia,

where everything points to a great commercial development in the immediate future.

[…]

Lastly, we have not spoken of the revolution which the line will cause locally,

and above all in British Columbia and the Northwest Territories, by reason of the

new outlets for their staple products afforded to both east and west. This will bring

rapidly in its train the settlement of the lands along the prairie section of its line, and

the development of the mineral resources and fisheries of the “Pacific Province.” It is

sufficient to say that the progress the country will make in the immediate future will

amply justify the sacrifices that have been made by Canadians generally for the

establishment of the road, and the patience and foresight of those who have pinned

their faith to it.

4. Tyrants of the Lunch Counter (1893)849

There are one or two things along the line of the C.P.R. – things that an

emigrant or a visitor encounters coming into the country that strike him in anything

but a favorable light, and are in fact abuses that need reform. Chief among these is

the outrageous price charged for the most ordinary articles of food, and the monopoly

these autocrats of the lunch counter enjoy.

Recently we made a trip from Montreal to Winnipeg and had opportunity to

observe the modus operandi of the occupants of the tourist cars. In many instances

the settler who is moving West with his family, supplies himself with a basket of

necessities sufficient to last him through to the jumping off point, and he is to be

congratulated on his good sense and good fortune. But not a few there are, in fact

they represent the greater majority, who depend on getting food at the eating houses

along the line, and they are indeed to be pitied for their unluckiness, and to be

congratulated if they get through to their journey’s end, without suffering the

excruciating torments of starvation.

Sandwiches at 10 cents each, tea ditto per cup. Have you ever stopped to

consider how many such sandwiches, a man can eat at a meal, and how many cups of

tea a thirsty man or woman or even child can drink? Half a dollar’s worth per head

is nowhere – especially when you are four hours late or longer, and have your appetite

whetted up to that pitch when it is not safe for anyone to sit along side of you. Of

course when the trains are behind they stop the time they are scheduled to, so that

the hungry may eat? Oh, no! not a bit of it. Please do not labor under that mistake. If

the train is not on time you are the loser, and given five – possibly ten minutes if the

849 From INTOLERANT PRICES. (1893, August 21). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 2.

436

conductor himself is going to the lunch counter – to swallow a scalding hot cup of

coffee and bolt a ham sandwich in, a sandwich which is invariably three–fourths fat,

and which is to last you for 8 mortal hours or more. To be sure there are points along

the line at which a dining car is put on, and with this attached, the man with money

in his pocket can get his stomach full when eating time comes round, but the ordinary

individual – the individual usually to be found in the colonists’ section, cannot afford

to lay out 75 cents a meal, $2.25 a day, and is dependent on the counters for his grub.

[…]

Such charges as these are impositions and should not be allowed by the C.P.R.,

who are losers by it in the long run to no small degree. Courteous and fair is the

average official to be met with on the through cars – better in this respect than the

average on the great roads in the United States – but when it comes to the

restaurants along the line, the prices in the States are more moderate, and the food

supplied is better.

Along the C.P.R., the owner of a lunch counter is a little God, and a God with

a good deal of tongue about him at times. He is as independent as the ferryman is

when you are on the wrong side of the river and want to get across. It is, “if you don’t

like my price, get out!” He is noted for two things – his slowness in serving you – and

his slowness in handing you back your change. Decidedly the system of mealing in

vogue on the Canadian Pacific Railway is an unpopular one, and on all sides we hear

complaints about it.

5. “Luxurious in Comparison” (1899)850

It is a somewhat curious fact that abuse of the Canadian Pacific – and railroads

in general – comes from people who never travel. Equally curious it is that in

proportion to the distance travelled, particularly if some of the American railroads

are touched, a man’s good opinion of the Canadian Pacific increases. People who are

disappointed about not finding palace car accommodation on the Calgary and

Edmonton branch should travel south from Rossland or Nelson, or on some of the

branch lines in Western Oregon. The Edmonton trip is luxurious in comparison. It

was a common subject for comment during the Western Canada press excursion that

none of us required to be reminded when, where and how we left the Canadian

railway. The American lines we struck were characterized by dirt, lack of all kinds of

accommodation and even want of attention from employees. The cars are not clean to

start with, and it is apparently no part of the trainmens’ duty to occasionally sweep

out. Some of the smoking cars become as filthy as hog pens. Eating accommodation

on the American branch lines is wretched, and on the main lines you are taxed a

dollar for not as good a meal as the Canadian Pacific serves for 75 cents.

The C. P. R. does things better. Most of their cars are new, and all are

scrupulously clean. Their first–class cars and sleepers are elegantly luxurious. It is

850 From THE EDITORIAL JAUNT. (1899, August 17). The Calgary Weekly Herald, p. 4. Presumably written by an editor of the Weekly Herald, but the article is unsigned and the newspaper does not identify its editor.

437

part of the brakesmens’ duty to keep the first and third class coaches swept and

garnished. The porters on the sleeping and tourist cars are models of cleanliness,

taking a pride in the spotless conditions of their cars. Arrangements for meals are

excellence itself. A tenderloin steak with mushrooms on a C. P. R. dining car is a

delicacy rarely encountered in such perfection elsewhere. The C. P. R. chefs are

veritable masters of their art.

And then there is the admirable courtesy of the Canadian railway official. It is

a revelation to the American and to the British traveller, both a delight and a

surprise, because the ubiquitous tip to which he is accustomed is not looked for on

the Canadian Pacific, except by sleeping car porters – and they give good value for it.

Another little attention the tourist gets on the Western divisions of the

Canadian Pacific is a daily service of telegraphic news. Coming on the train in the

middle of the prairie, or on the mountains, far from any daily paper or other means

of ascertaining the world’s news, this little feature is doubly welcome.

When one sees the tremendous difficulties of railroading in the mountains and

the enormous expense involved in providing not only for the comfort, but the safety

of passengers, the wonder is, not that freight and passenger rates are high, but that

they are not higher. Take the numerous snowsheds in the Selkirks. No train is

allowed to pass through one of them until a man has walked immediately before. This

particular work requires a man for every three or four miles of road, in addition to

the regular hands. There is a flag man at every dangerous spot, and a man with his

hand on the lever of each safety switch as the train approaches, ready to turn a

possible runaway train up hill. All these things cost money, and are the fruits of

careful and conservative management.

6. Supplying Food for the Railway (1913)851

Certainly the most colossal task that presents itself to the C. P. R. is that of

provisioning its dining cars to feed the hungry multitudes who cross their thresholds

each meal hour. […]

The first problem that presented itself was to have secure a really assured and

permanent source of supply. To attain this and, incidentally, to show farmers in

various districts the possibilities of their lands when scientifically worked,

demonstration farms were started throughout the Dominion. These supply absolutely

fresh provisions to the chain of commissary stores stretching across the continent,

and give the Canadian Pacific Railway the assurance of a permanent supply at cost

prices. In this case an absolutely radical departure was made in that the C. P. R.

actually owns and operates the farms which supply it with provisions.

The advantage of this is not so far to seek. Fresh milk and cream will soon be

secured in whatever quantities are desired. A sufficiently large number of poultry can

be kept to supply all requirements for table fowl and eggs. To insure freshness in the

eggs used on dining cars, the product is gathered from the nest (all eggs are non–

851 From HOW THE CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY CARES FOR THE PUBLIC & FOR THE MEN

WHO WAIT ON THE PUBLIC. (1913, August 6). The Didsbury Pioneer, p. 7.

438

fertile, by the way) stamped with the date, and then packed in cartons and sealed for

delivery to commissary stores. Milk and cream are not handled in bulk. After being

thoroughly pasteurized, the products are placed in sealed kettles, and these are

opened in the presence of the passenger with the day and date of milking right on the

bottle. Similar care is taken to insure absolute cleanliness in all other demonstration

farm products.

Fruits and vegetables form a large item on dining car menus. The Canadian

Pacific Railway imports these from all parts of the world, and offers them on its tables

before they are available elsewhere, and then, when the Canadian products are ready,

the preference is given them. In fact, the company specializes in the famous fruits

and vegetables of British Columbia, and contracts for these products for the entire

requirements, especially apples and potatoes, for this service for all western lines one

year in advance. The quality of these fruits, such as apples, plums, cherries, pears,

and vegetables, such as celery and potatoes, now stands highest in the continent.

AN OBSTINATE PROBLEM

One really obstinate problem has confronted the Canadian Pacific, and that

has been the supplying of fresh bread and pastry to its patrons – bread and pastry of

such a quality that the shield and beaver trademark would be its guarantee. Many

experiments have been tried, but that degree of success desired by the company is

only now being attained. Final upon all plans comes the announcement on this year’s

appropriation list to the effect that the company will install a chain of modern

bakeshops at such terminal points between Halifax and Vancouver as would insure

a complete re–stocking of dining cars with fresh bread, cakes and pastry every fifteen

hours. Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Moose Jaw, Calgary and Vancouver are to have

such railroad bakeshops, as will several other points not yet definitely decided upon.

The care of meats, milks, vegetables and perishable goods for the twenty

thousand people who must be fed daily by this one railway requires most elaborate

refrigerator plants. All refrigeration is done artificially, and the scientifically perfect

degree of coldness is maintained to preserve the goods and so to maintain highest

quality.

A MODERN SCIENCE

Modern medical science, both preventive and curative, has reduced itself to

practically one only science – bacteriology – with the allied art of preventing disease

bugs from finding lodgment in any place that comes in contact with human beings,

more particularly to keep all human food free from exposure to these germs.

Recognizing this, the Canadian Pacific Railway has worked out an elaborate

system of individual service, reducing the handling of food to a minimum. All bread,

cakes, pastry, pie, pudding, etc., are prepared in individual orders; in fact, this system

is extended to cover all possible service; even ice cream852, which is made under most

852 “The ice cream parlor plays such an important part in the life of the people that […] the Canadian

Pacific dining car service, has decided to incorporate it into railway travel, and has initiated what may

be called the Ice Cream Parlor Car on the chief trains between Montreal and Ottawa, that is to say,

on the trains which carry a Buffet–Library–Observation–Parlor Car. It is now possible on such cars to

obtain soft drinks, ice cream and sundaes, and, though the service has been in existence only a few

439

sanitary conditions, is prepared in individual portions, each portion wrapped in a

special case to prevent handling.

7. How the Canadian Pacific Selects Cooks (1912)853

It is quite possible that a man may be the best cook in the world, and yet not

be suitable to cook on a C. P. R. dining car. As a matter of fact, he wouldn’t be.

As the French chef would say: “La raison est toute naturelle.” He would not be familiar with the system. And right there is the keynote of the success of the dining

and sleeping car system of the C. P. R.

Those of us who have travelled considerably know that it is a success.

MADE COOKS TO ORDER

Some cooks, like some poets, are born, not made, but most of the cooks in the

employ of the C. P. R. are made to cook according to a well defined and thorough

system. Every cook in a car must cook the C. P. R. way, and every waiter that brings

you what you order is taught to wait on you according to the C. P. R. fashion.

The man aspiring to cook for passengers on the C. P. R. may have baked

crullers for King George, curried chicken for the High Priest of Mandazan, and made

candies for the ladies in the Kaiser’s court, yet if he would cook on a C. P. R. train he

must submit to filling out an application blank which asks a lot of personal questions.

Then, providing his application is approved, he is invited to the school car at the yards

in the city in which he made application., There, the test of his ability is made under

the watchful eye of experts in the culinary art. […]

EAT TRIAL MEALS

At the school dining car, the cooks prepare meals under competent instructors

with as much care as if they were catering to first class passengers. The men who are

learning to be waiters are shown how to give the acme of service in the quickest way.

Every day a number of meals are prepared in the school car, then sold to employees

in the yard where the car is located at nominal price, which pays for the cost of the

goods used.

Before a conductor or porter is put on a sleeping car, he must graduate from

the school car. Everything about the car is explained, from the wheels to the lamp on

the tail end. The student is taught how to act when everything is running smoothly

and also how to act in a case of emergency.

All the primary details about the steam heat system, the water arrangements,

the elementaries about electric lights, etc., are lucidly explained. By the aid of plans

and illustrations he is made cognizant with everything about a sleeping car. When he

thinks he has grasped all that is graspable, he is given a small printed volume of

questions, and asked to answer them all in writing. […]

days, its popularity has been so pronounced that it will no doubt be extended to other services in the

near future.” ICE CREAM PARLOR CARS. (1916, September 27). The Oyen News, p. 7. 853 From HOW THE CANADIAN PACIFIC SELECTS COOKS. (1912, September 28). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 1.

440

Passengers, as a result of the training of employees, get the most efficient

service possible. […] The most wonderful hotel service in the world is given on C. P.

R. dining and sleeping cars.

8. “A Subtle Ingenuity in Advertising” (1914)854

The C.P.R. has disclosed a subtle ingenuity in advertising; nor did this suffer

impairment in a comparatively recent instance. The company wanted, to be exact,

670 cooks and waiters for its dining–car service last spring. It has tried the American

cooks and waiters by the painful hundred and found them unreliable. It determined

to advertise in the “Big Smoke.” London is unthinkably cosmopolite. Every race under

heaven has its representatives in the world’s metropolis. In a delicate way the

company announced that it wanted a certain number of fair–haired people and an

equal number of dark “complexioned” individuals. The papers began to write about

the “red–haired dining car,” and “black–haired dining car” to such an extent as to

cause nothing short of a “thrill” in the general breast. And the requisite number

responded – to be exact, indeed, there were at least 2,000 persons, at one time or

another, who applied. There was a severe weeding process, with the result that the

requisite number were employed and shipped out – fair and dark–complexioned men

– to harmonize with the setting of the particular car to which the shade of color should

be confined. And it is the fact that the C.P.R. desires, in its aesthetic way, to produce

in each dining car what might be called a synthesis as to the color and height and

general appearance of the men – the idea being in decorations and general ensemble

to present a harmonious whole for the delectation of the passengers. The point of

interest is this – that whereas the American cooks and waiters who had aforetime

been employed by the company were for the most part unreliable, leaving after two

or three months’ employment, the men found in London remained the whole season;

and at this moment of the entire number 500 are still in the employment of the

company. Some left to better themselves; a few went back but the greater bulk are at

work quite contented, as the commissioner sent out recently “Answers” and who

talked with the men, avouches. These men are Swiss, Scandinavians, Germans to

some slight degree, and British. The Swiss speak at least three languages, and are

most adaptive. This matter of help on the dining cars is one of the serious problems

to be faced by W. A. Cooper, the manager of the sleeping and dining car service – the

difficulty of getting and then retaining the right men; but the experiment of going to

London and advertising for them has proved an unqualified success. It seems

unthinkably remote to consider the big posters of the early days which announced,

rather riotously, the advantage of the C.P.R. in the matter of gastronic enjoyment.

The delicate aestheticism which the company now provides marks the apogee of

advance and elaboration.

854 From A MATTER OF COLOR. (1914, April 1). The Melfort Moon, p. 2.

441

9. Adventures of a Dime Laundry Bill (1914)855

The west is the place to make money, and it is generally supposed that

everybody “soaks” everybody else, and that the man or firm which pays money for

goods or services sometimes doesn’t get the worth of his money, and that the person

or firm getting the money makes an exorbitant profit.

This, however, was not the case this morning, when a representative of a south

side laundry received payment from the Canadian Pacific for some laundry work done

some time ago. After the work was done, a bill for the ruinously exorbitant sum of 12

cents was rendered to the sleeping and dining car department here, which thereupon

sent the bill to Winnipeg. In due time a voucher came back for 12 cents, and the

laundry was notified by C. S. Fyfe, city ticket agent, that the amount was waiting in

his office.

This morning a collector from the south side came over with a grip to bring

back the money. He paid five cents for his car ride over. As coppers are not yet used

in Edmonton, he received only 10 cents for the amount of the bill, which he collected

and then paid another nickel for a ride back to Strathcona, so that he was out exactly

the time it took him to come over, collect the money and go back.

Big corporations like the C. P. R. are just as particular about a little thing like

12 cents as for thousands of dollars, one being just as common as the other, said Mr.

Fyfe this morning.

Land Grants and the C.P.R.

10. The Pacific Swindle (1880)856

At last arrangements have been made with a company, by which the C. P. R.

is to be built from Red River to the Rocky Mountains in three years, and from

Montreal to the Pacific Ocean in ten without costing the country one cent. Glory

Hallelujah! Government corruption and patronage in connection with the road is at

an end, and money shall flow into Canada in rivers from the great hoards of the

wealthy of Europe. Amen, and Amen! No longer shall the North–West be called a

hyperborean region – the dwelling place of the buffalo and coyote, for the great

company will establish colonization agencies in every corner of Europe, and publish

to the universe the advantages and beauties of the country. Soon shall we see it

demonstrated beyond the peradventure of a doubt that the equator runs direct

through Battleford, and that the north pole is in the heart of Dakota. Glory, and

Amen! What shall we say of the towering genius, the transcendent ability, the

gigantic intellect that could, in a few short weeks, produce before the world such a

grand panorama of advancement and prosperity out of the chaos of the years before?

855 From ADVENTURES OF A DIME LAUNDRY BILL. (1914, March 2). The Edmonton Capital, p. 4. 856 From THE PACIFIC SWINDLE. (1880, December 27). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 4.

442

Truly a greater than – than – Beaconsfield857, – or Jim Fisk858 – or Lord Gordon859 is

here.

But as this noble band of philanthropists are, out of the largeness of their

hearts, going to do so much for this poor helpless Canada of ours, of course we are in

ordinary politeness, bound to make some slight return, not as compensation, but

merely as an acknowledgment of the great services they are rendering us, and this is

what a large majority of the Canadian Parliament says it is to be:– For every mile of

road they build between Red River and the mountains (estimated by the Government

to cost about $12,000,) they get $1,000 in cash and 12,500 acres of picked land,

averaging at the present price of the Government railroad land about $2 an acre, in

all the nominal consideration of $26,000. They get a bonus of $25,000,000 in cash,

and 25,000,000 acres of land in the fertile belt, worth $2 per acre, for building the

whole road, estimated to cost about $75,000,000, and the ownership of the road for

ever. Their property is to be free from taxation, their material is to be free of duty,

they can locate the line wherever they please, except the terminii – in short, they are

to have the road, with the country thrown in.

If it were possible to have the railroad built on any other terms it would be

dear at the money. It would be a hard bargain for the country to pay for the road and

the company to own it, but when the case of the Manitoba & South–Western and

Souris River & Rocky Mountain railroad companies is considered, the utter

monstrosity of the bargain appears. To these companies, who intend to run a line

from Winnipeg to the Rocky Mountains along the Boundary, through a country

incomparably less fertile than along the line of the C. P. R., the Government gives a

bonus of 3,860 acres a mile on the COMPANY PAYING THE GOVERNMENT $1 an

acre for the land. In the Province of Manitoba on the first 100 miles of their line, the

Manitoba and South–Western gets no Government aid, and yet their bonds have been

sold in London at 85 cents on the dollar, they have 400 men at work, a contract for

250,000 ties let, and will have the road completed to rock Lake, 100 miles, within a

year. If it is possible to get railroads through the Southern part of the North–West

Territory by giving a back handed land bonus such as this – why is it not possible to

have the line built through the central and more fertile part on the same terms,

especially as it will ultimately be a part of a through line, which the other will not?

If the Government considered it necessary, in order to get the difficult and

unprofitable part of the road built, to give larger bonuses in proportion for the

building of the part which would be profitable – reverse proportions would seem more

natural – they have made a very loose agreement with the company. After they finish

the line through the fertile belt and get the land and money bonus for it, if they think

it would be unprofitable to construct the Lake Superior and British Columbia

857 Benjamin Disraeli (1804 – 1881), Prime Minister of England from 1874 to 1880 and first Earl of

Beaconsfield. 858 James Fisk, Jr. (1835 – 1872), American financier and railroad tycoon. 859 Lord Gordon–Gordon (true name unknown) was one of many aliases used by a con man who

operated in Britain, the United States and Canada. A con involving $1 million and the Erie Railroad

saw him flee to Canada.

443

sections, the company can break the contract by the forfeiture of $1,000,000, which

would still leave them a handsome profit out of the Government bonus over and above

the cost of the road, besides being only saddled with the running of that part of it

which would undoubtedly pay well.

Even were the bargain fair and square, were the bonus given not too much, the

injustice of making the North–West Territories alone recoup the company for their

outlay on the whole line must be apparent. If the work is a national one, if it is

necessary to cement the Dominion together, if it is to build up the great

manufacturing and commercial interests, and provide an outlet for the agricultural

population of the older Provinces, why should they not shoulder their share of the

burden? Iniquitous as the bargain in regard to the prairie section itself is, it would

not be unbearable, but if the older Provinces, in their greed and parsimony, saddle

the prairies of the North–West with this mountainous load, of which at least, they

should take their own share, a monopoly will be created in land, in carrying trade, in

everything the country possesses in comparison with which the Hudson’s Bay

Company will be insignificant – the like of which has not been seen outside the East

Indies.

But it is the fact of the Territories having to pay for the whole road that gives

this most outrageous bargain such a large majority in the Canadian Parliament.

Anything that will save the pockets of the members, and their constituents, no matter

what the consequences. Men who set pocket above party and party above country –

who know no more about the geography of their native land than they do of Patagonia

– who think that the sun rises in Halifax, shines all day straight over Montreal and

Ottawa and sets in Toronto – whose hymn book is the praises of England and whose

Bible is the example of the United States; what wonder is it that for a consideration

in hand they will vote away their empire to a railroad company – the heritage of their

children to strangers?

11. Land Grants, Schools and Taxes (1913)860 The CPR held a lot of town land, tax free. Less taxable property and high fixed school costs mean the CPR’s land grants led to higher taxes on other land owners.

Certain Eastern newspapers and politicians are very fond of talking about the

debt which the West owes to the East for its self–sacrifice in bearing the whole cost

of building the C.P.R. into this country. As a matter of fact, anyone who knows

anything about Western conditions knows that the West is every day paying very

dearly for the C.P.R. and for the bad bargain which Eastern politicians made to secure

the construction of that road. The 25,000,000 acres of land which the C.P.R. got in

the original contract were all Western lands, and many a Western farmer will have

to hand over half the proceeds of his crop this fall as an instalment on the purchase

of some of the land that was thus given away by the government. Everybody knows,

860 From C.P.R. and School Taxes. (1913, September 24). The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 6.

444

of course, that the government has always allowed the C.P.R. to charge the people of

the West from 66 to 100 per cent. higher rates for the carriage of freight and express

parcels than it charges in the East for the same service. What we want to call special

attention to just now, however, is the heavy burden which is placed upon the people

of the West by the clause in the C.P.R. contract which exempts the lands granted to

the C.P.R. from taxation. This exemption was supposed to extend for 20 years, but

through the carelessness of the people’s representatives and the cleverness of C.P.R.

lawyers, it is still effective though the contract was made 32 years ago. The result is

that in many rural municipalities and school districts there is very little land which

can be assessed for taxes. The lack of schools and roads in such districts can be easily

understood. In such districts either the few farmers whose land is assessable must be

excessively taxed, or schools and roads must be done without. This condition is seen

at its worst in the C.P.R. irrigation district, in Alberta, where the railway company

secured both odd and even numbered sections. Lands owned by the C.P.R. or held by

others under agreement of sale are not liable for taxes. Those which have been

patented to purchasers are liable, but there is such a small area taxable that in the

school districts of Irricana, Crowfoot and Goderich it has been found impossible to

support the schools. Goderich and Crowfoot schools have consequently been closed,

while at Irricana the school is being maintained by private subscriptions. The C.P.R.

in the year ending on June 30 last, made a profit of over $46,000,000. Nevertheless,

the children of farmers living on the prairies of Saskatchewan and Alberta are

deprived of even a common school education because the C.P.R. through a legal

quibble has escaped the obligation of paying taxes. It certainly is not justice that

districts like those mentioned should be made to suffer through a mistake made by

Parliament years ago, and it is now the duty of the government either to pass an

amending act, requiring the C.P.R. to pay taxes on their land the same as other people

do, or to make a grant from the Dominion treasury compensating municipalities and

school districts for their loss of revenue.

12. A Closer Look (1896)861

One of the greatest difficulties here in the way of establishing schools, building

roads, operating creameries, supporting churches and carrying on any of the affairs

of rural life which must be taken part in by a number of people to be successful, is the

sparse settlement resulting from the large amount of land held as railroad, Hudson’s

Bay company and school reserves. This being acknowledged as a difficulty and

disadvantage it is desirable and necessary that it should as far as possible be

removed. There are 36 square miles or sections in each township, of which sections 8

and 26 are held by the Hudson’s Bay Company, 11 and 29 as school lands, and the

remainder of the odd numbered sections as aid to railways actual or prospective.

Twenty sections reserved and 16 open for homesteading. Take out of these 16 the

ordinary proportion of timbered, swamp or broken land, and it will be seen what a

861 From RESERVED LANDS. (1896, July 27). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 2.

445

load the actual settlers have to carry as compared with what they would have to if

every section were settled on.

Each settler has not only to bear a double burden but he has to bear it at a

great disadvantage. In the matter of creameries for instance: the advantage that the

establishment of this industry in the West would be is the subject of never ending

calculations. But in practice creameries have been anything but profitable owing to

just one cause, the impossibility of getting enough milk within a radius that would

admit of its being hauled at a profit, owing to the scattered settlement and the

financial inability of the farmers at the present stage of the country’s advancement

to keep a large number of cows each. The cost of hauling the milk has frequently been

greater than the profits on the making of the butter. As the case stands regarding

creameries, so it stands regarding schools: not only is there the heavy cost on a few

settlers of supporting a school, but there is also the difficulty of getting enough

children to attend to constitute a school. In statute labor districts twenty or thirty or

perhaps in exceptional cases fifty settlers are making roads throughout a township

in which over a hundred men should be doing road work. Where gophers, noxious

weeds or prairie fires have to be fought, or the natural climate requires to be

ameliorated by general cultivation, the disproportionate amount of land reserved

from homestead settlement places the actual settler in many cases at an

insurmountable disadvantage.

31 32 33 34 35 36

CPR

30 29 28 27 26 25

HBC

19 20 21 22 23 24

School

18 17 16 15 14 13

7 8 9 10 11 12

6 5 4 3 2 1

Arrangement of Land in a Township862

862 Illustration by the anthologist, based on government diagrams.

446

This is a living question, it is a pressing question and has an important bearing

on immigration by reason of its bearing on the welfare of those who are already here.

Make the conditions of the present settlers satisfactory and others will soon join

them. As long as present settlers are at a disadvantage, so long new settlers need not

be expected to come in large numbers.

Admitting the disadvantage of the present situation, how is it to be improved?

As to the Hudson’s Bay Company’s land, nothing can be done, and indeed the

Hudson’s Bay reserves are the least objectionable. They have no section reserves

north of the Saskatchewan river, their lands are all taxable and are all for sale. So

that whenever a school district is established these lands pay a share of the taxes,

and whenever the agricultural value of any certain district is established it becomes

likely that they will be purchased possibly by actual settlers. The disadvantage

regarding them is that they usually remain unoccupied for years after settlement in

a township has commenced and are a drag upon the progress and welfare of the

settlement at the time when it is least able to stand any such drag. It is only after the

settlement becomes firmly established and is therefore independent to a great extent

of the occupancy of these lands that they become occupied, and begin to take their

place in aiding the general advancement. The disadvantage which the reservation of

these Hudson’s Bay sections are, is further aggravated by the fact that being even

sections surrounded by odd sections, which are also reserved, they build a solid block

of five sections of reserved land near the southwest and northeast corners of every

township.

The railroad reserves are of three classes: reserves for the C. P. R.; reserves for

other railways; and land reserved for railway aid but not granted. The C. P. R. lands,

which embrace the accepted odd sections north of Red Deer and east nearly to

Battleford are specially exempted from taxation until 1900. After that time they will

become taxable, provided the exemption is not extended. In the meantime nothing

can be done with them as long as they remain in the hands of the C. P. R. But a

question has arisen as to the taxation of such lands after they have passed out of the

hands of the C. P. R. into those of private individuals.

The C. P. R. deny the right of school or statute labor districts to enforce the

collection of taxes on such lands until the lands have been fully paid for by the

purchasers. As the lands are sold on terms of payment extending over ten years this

contention places school and statute labor districts in a very awkward position. They

are not financially able to enter into a law suit with the C. P. R. to decide the matter,

and in the meantime purchasers may be occupying those lands and deriving the

benefits of school and statute labor organizations without contributing their fair

share towards their support. As this is a matter affecting organizations brought into

existence by the Territorial legislature, it would seem that the Territorial government

should take upon itself the burden of securing a decision on the matter. Otherwise

these organizations and the settlers whom they represent must continue to suffer,

possibly unnecessarily, and certainly unjustly.

447

The land grants to the Calgary & Edmonton, the Regina, Qu’Appelle and Long

lake, the Manitoba Northwestern and the Northwest Central are not exempt from

taxation by law as are the lands of the C. P. R., but they are exempt by practice, in

this way. The land granted to the railway company, although agreed upon, is not

actually transferred to the company, but rests with the government until a purchaser

for a part of it appears. When he has selected his land, the government gives the

necessary deed or transfer, and he becomes liable for taxation as the owner; but the

remainder of the grant, not being registered in the name of the company, is not

taxable against the company, and by reason of collusion or secret understanding

between the government between the government and the company is practically

exempt. This is simply a swindle upon the settlers affected, perpetrated by the

government which was supposed to make the interests of those settlers its first care,

and is a condition of affairs that cannot be remedied too quickly by the new

government for its own credit and the welfare of the Northwest.

Besides land reserved for railroads actually built, which in some cases are

hundreds of miles from the nearest railroad, all the rest of the odd sections are held

reserved from sale or settlement by the government to be granted to railroads that

may possibly be projected in the more or less distant future. These lands are of course

not taxable, and cannot be occupied. They are doing no one any good at the present

time and are hindering settlement wherever they exist and there is any settlement

to hinder. The argument that it is necessary to grant the odd sections in order to

secure the building of a railway, is surely as strong in favor of allowing the settlement

of the odd sections when there is no present prospect of a railway, if there is to be any

such settlement and it is to be prosperous.

Those who look for a reason for the slow settlement of the Northwest can find

one great reason in this general reserve of the odd sections, whereby a double burden

was laid upon the settler, and he was rendered far less able to bear it. It was a

repetition of the old case of doubling the tale of bricks and cutting off the supply of

straw. Even where the C. P. R. in the selection of their lands have rejected certain

sections as unsuitable for their purposes these sections are still held reserved. They

might be suitable for homesteading although not suitable for sale. Surely the

government does not expect to sell them when the railroad company did not expect

to. Then why not open them for homesteading and let whoever wants them have

them? The railroad company have had their choice of the country, to be taken when

they pleased, they have been exempted from taxation by either law or practice. In all

cases the interests of the settler have had to take a second place. It is high time this

policy was changed. Let the bargain made with the railroad companies be carried out.

But let them be compelled to locate their lands and to pay their proper taxes on them,

and let all lands not already earned and granted be open for homesteading. How can

we expect the country to settle when over half the land is held closed from settlement?

Important as this question of reserved land is throughout the agricultural

regions of the Territories, it is still more important in the agricultural districts of

Southern Alberta. There the reserved alternate sections are practically a bar to any

large irrigation scheme, and must be provided against in some way before irrigation

448

on any but a small scale can become a financial success, if indeed it is practicable at

all.

The reservation of two sections in every township under the name of school

lands may have been with a good intent in the beginning, and had these been the only

reserved lands there would have been no great hardship resulting. But when the

reservation is only nominally in aid of schools and is actually a speculation863 – quite

as much as in the case of the Hudson’s Bay lands; not less, but more objectionable

because handled by the government, the lands therefore being non–taxable until sold;

and when they represent the overbalance of reserved as compared with homestead

land, the advantage and disadvantage of their existence becomes an important

question. As to their advantage in the establishment and conduct of schools there is

none. The government aid to schools is paid out of the general funds of the country as

it should and must be, and the proceeds from the sale of school lands practically goes

into those funds. The individual school district has no interest whatever in the

reserved school lands within its limits, nor have the Territories any interest in those

lands. The proceeds from their sale would not pay a fraction of the government grants

in aid of schools in Manitoba and the Territories, nor in the nature of things could

they when the schools are as needy and land as cheap as at present.

13. The Owners of the Land (1884)864

In this country, at the present time, there are no less than six classes of

agencies through which land can readily be secured – each one having terms of sale

and payments of its own, but all most favorable. The magnitude of the area to be

settled, on the Dominion’s taking possession under a royal proclamation in 1870,

equalling in extent the whole of the United States, and the desirability of settling the

country as speedily as possible led to the devising of several schemes. […]

In the first place, the right of settlers in the country at the time of

Confederation were fully acknowledged, and those who were settled on properties

were fully confirmed in their holdings. This latter naturally included the claims of

the h––––– settlers as well as the resident whites, and to the former about 1,400,000

acres were given at once, in fee simple, and a further grant made at a later date, to

fully extinguish the native title in every reasonable particular. In addition to the

£300,000 sterling given to the Hudson’s Bay Company, to extinguish their title, which

was a lease of all the territory drained into Hudson’s Bay, a block of almost unlimited

extent, and, as will be seen at a glance at the map, which virtually included a portion

of the United States already ceded to the American Union by treaties, from Charles

863 “A sale of school lands will be held in the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta in the

early part of June. The […] present would be an opportune time to place some of these lands on sale

at public auction, in view of the phenomenal crop of the last season, the good prices now prevailing,

and the strong demand existing for the lands. […] No general sales of school lands have been held for

the past three years.” To Sell School Lands in Western Province. (1916, March 29). The Melfort Moon, p. 3. 864 From THE LAND OWNERS. (1884, July 24). Brandon Weekly Mail, p. 4.

449

II of England, the company obtained a grant, also in fee simple, of 2,400,000 acres,

comprising two sections in every township of thirty–six sections of the fertile belt, or

one–eighteenth of the territory.

To the Canadian Pacific Railway Company 25,000,000 acres of arable land, in

alternate sections for a depth of 24 miles on either side of their main line, with

additional grants for branch lines, were assigned, to be deeded over as the road

progressed, as part payment for construction, equipment and operation for ever. To

the five or six other railway companies, including the Hudson’s Bay Company,

additional grants have been made, mostly on a cost of $1.00 per acre. The Government

have reserved the other sections: those alternating with the grants to the C.P.R., with

the residue of the territory, after deducting all of which we make mention, for free

homesteading, pre–empting (that is, selling to the homesteaders alongside of their

homesteads, to give those who desire it, 320 acres in one block at $2 per acre). To a

large number of incorporations known as colonization companies, the Government

have given large grants on an average price of $1 per acre, on the express condition

that the companies locate stated numbers of bona fide settlers upon these grants

annually. The other sources of supply are leases of western tracts to cattle breeders

for ranches, and opportunities to purchase in various stages of improvement and

cultivation from private individuals, as is prevalent in all portions of the world, where

land is held by parties in fee simple. A late Act of Parliament permitting second

homestead entries, that is, allowing those who have completed their terms of

homestead entered into with the government three years before, to sell and

homestead new properties again, has thrown a greater area of partially improved

land upon the market.

It will be seen by the careful observer that every proprietory interest is of a

character to cultivate sales, and treat most liberally with the actual settlers. The

object of the railway companies is rather to make money out of settlers, through

traffic on their lines, than to hoard up their lands awaiting advances in price. In short,

settlement and development of the country become, for selfish reasons, the most

powerful of all reasons, their main aim; and on that account they are offering the best

of terms to actual settlers. The Canadian Pacific and the Manitoba and

Northwestern, the only railway companies that have as yet placed their lands on the

market, are offering them at from $2 to $10 per acre, according to locality, quality of

soil &c., and are offering rebates at from one–half to a greater percentage of the cost,

to those who make specified improvements, which are no more than any enterprising

settler who wants to make the best use of his time would naturally make, year in and

year out.

As colonization companies, by the terms of their contracts with the

government, are forced to make a large percentage of settlements annually or forfeit

the payments they have made to the Government, and as they receive rebates for

settlements as they make them, self interest also prompts them to make the best

terms with settlers. In some instances they have established villages in their colonies,

erected mills and other industries for the convenience of their settlers; handle

machinery and other goods in wholesale quantities to give their people the benefit of

450

low rates, and even advance money, too, in some cases, to assist in the erection of

buildings and other improvements. As the companies who do the best for the

immigrants, effect settlements the most satisfactorily, and get the greatest

consideration from the Government, it will be readily understood, it is to the interest

of all to treat their purchasers most liberally.

As we have said, the ranch properties are simply leased for a term of years,

and by virtue of their being used for pasturage exclusively, will be enriched thereby,

and the better fitted for the production of crops, years hence, when they revert to the

Government, and become offered for sale to private individuals.

It is with the Hudson’s Bay Company as it is with the Railway and Colonization

companies, personal interest to see the country settled rather than hold their

properties for advancing prices. This Company, though under no obligation to the

Government, as are the other companies, as to sale and settlement, have stores, with

an immense wholesale house in Winnipeg, and real estate dotting the prairie from

over one end of the country to the other. They expect to make money out of the sale

of their goods, and for that reason, it is to their interest to see the country settled.

Besides, as they sell one portion of their land the other grows in value, and so on to

the last transaction. Their lands are all classified according to the field notes of the

surveyors, and sold at prices ranging from $3 to $10 per acre, according to the quality

and location. […]

As we have also remarked, there are in every section of the country lands, in

various states of cultivation, and possessing improvements differing in degree, that

can be purchased or rented from one month to a term of years, from the private

owners. There is, then, every form of opening for the industrious farmer in this

country. Those who are poor, so long as they have the means with what they can earn

from their neighbors, to carry themselves a twelvemonth, can readily make bargains

they will never have occasion to regret, with either the Government, railway or

colonization companies. Those who visit to test the country for themselves before

purchasing lands can readily lease lands already under cultivation; and those who

have plenty of capital, and wish to farm on a large scale can buy from private

individuals, railway, or other local companies, or from the Hudson’s Bay Company.

In short, necessities, means, tastes, wishes or ambition can readily be met in this

country, and a certain satisfactory reward awaits the exercise of energy in the

immigrant in any circumstance in life, which is a story that cannot be told by any

other country known to civilization.

14. Crowding by Colonization Companies? (1882)865

A correspondent of The Field, of the 7th October instant, writes to that paper to complain that the representations made in the pamphlets issued by the Canadian

Government are not realized by settlers going into the Northwest. These

representations, as stated by the correspondent, are that “every settler, on payment

865 From NORTHWEST SETTLEMENT. (1882, October 24). The Montreal Gazette, p. 4.

451

of $10, can take up 160 acres of land, and have the option of purchase of 160 acres

more at a very low price, to be paid over an extended period of time, also that the

Northwestern Pacific Railway was possessed of land on each side of the track, which

could be purchased at prices varying from $5 to $10 per acre, and that the

Government had, by the terms of their grants to the Company, limited their power of

disposal of their lands in such a manner that they could not sell to any person or

persons more than 1,000 acres for occupation, or 12,000 for the purpose of making a

settlement.”

The actual experience of The Field’s correspondent, who, induced by these representations, emigrated to Manitoba, were given by way of contrast. We are told

that “they found thousands of acres uncultivated and unenclosed, but when they went

to the land office they could not get a grant of one acre near the railway or anywhere

else within two hundred miles of Winnipeg.” This, we are told, is explained by the

purchase from the Canadian Pacific Railway of five millions of acres of land by the

Company until recently under the presidency of the Duke of Manchester by the

companies “floated on a similar basis for the purpose of taking up the Hudson’s Bay

Company’s land wheresoever it is adjacent to the railways or rivers,” leaving to the

poor settler only land thirty or forty miles from the railway, “where his products have

no market, and where he will have to support himself by his gun and rod, and live on

tinned meat and bacon the greater part of the year, and be no better off in pocket

than a day laborer at home.”

This is certainly a very gloomy picture and if it was true to life, it might well

cause serious misgivings. It has one unfortunate fault, that it is not so drawn. It

ignores altogether the actual conditions of the land regulations. Under those

regulations, throughout the entire territory, near the railways and remote from them,

the Government have retained for homestead and pre–emption every alternate

section, or square mile of land. No lands within the railway belts have been given to

colonization companies, and the Duke of Manchester’s company has only obtained the

sections belonging to the railway company, leaving within the area of its operations

the Government sections, which are open to settlement on the easy terms stated in

the regulations. There has thus been no locking up of the land from settlement, as is

pretended by this correspondent.

The regulations, as our readers are aware, divide the whole territory into four

classes. The first, Class A, comprises the lands within twenty–four miles of the main

line, or any branch line of the Canadian Pacific Railway, on either side thereof; class

B comprises lands within twelve miles on either side of any projected railway, other

than the Canadian Pacific Railway; class C comprises lands south of the main line of

the Canadian Pacific Railway, and not included in A and B; and class D comprises

the rest of the territories. It will thus be seen that the first three classes include what

are undoubtedly the most desirable portions of the country, and the Government have

expressly declared that colonization companies shall not be granted land within

them. Whatever, therefore, be the merits of the plans for enlisting the aid of

Colonization Companies in the settlement of the country, their operations do not

cover precisely those parts of the territory to which the correspondent of The Field

452

refers as most desirable. The policy with reference to those most desirable portions

near the railways is thus stated in the second clause of the regulations:–

2. The even numbered sections in all the foregoing cases ARE TO BE HELD

EXCLUSIVELY FOR HOMESTEADS AND PRE–EMPTIONS:–

a. Except in Class D, where they may be affected by colonization agreements

as hereinafter provided.

b. Except where it may be necessary out of them to provide wood lots for

settlers;

Except when the Minister of the Interior, under the provisions of the Dominion

Lands Acts, may deem it expedient to withdraw certain lands and sell them at public

auction, or otherwise deal with them as the Governor–in–Council may instruct.

So that it will be seen that, the operations of colonization companies being

restricted to class D, every alternate section in the other three classes is open to free

grant or pre–emption. The Government have, it is true, withdrawn one mile on either

side of the railways, that is the sections immediately adjoining the track, but that

certainly cannot be held to justify the statement made by the correspondent of The Field. Those sections have been withdrawn only because of the tendency to speculation which they provoked in the hope of hitting upon the vicinity of a railway

station, and the possible site of a new city, and the withdrawal of which has met the

approval of all parties in Canada. […]

There may sometimes be difficulty in settlers obtaining at once a lot upon

which to settle precisely where they would wish to go. But that difficulty does not

arise from the presence of speculating companies within classes A, B and C, the most

desirable lands, but from the number of settlers who are going into the country. The

settlers who have gone into the country this year, numbering from ten to fifteen

thousand families, and the overwhelming majority of whom are now settled on these

lands, is the best proof that the work of the land officials has been fairly well

performed. We have no doubt that the testimony of the settlers, who have located on

these homesteads, will be to the effect that they have been abundantly repaid for any

trouble – incident to pioneer life – to which they have been put.

15. “At Present Virtually Locked Up” (1882)866

Sir, – In your article of the 24th instant, on the subject of the settlement of the

Northwest, the real cause of the dissatisfaction which, it is useless to deny, exists is,

I think, overlooked. This is that a very large proportion of the settlers who went in

last spring, intending to take land within the railroad belt, did so with the intention

of buying more or less land from the Canadian Pacific Railway. They were all men of

considerable means, largely Ontario farmers or their sons. They had all seen the

Canadian Pacific Railway advertisements, offering their lands at $3.50, with a rebate

of $1.25 on that broken within four years. Many, if not all, had been told at the

Canadian Pacific Railway land office that no money could be taken until the lands

866 From A RECENT VISITOR TO THE NORTHWEST. (1882, November 3). THE NORTHWEST. The Montreal Gazette, p. 5.

453

were handed over to them by the Government, but to go and pick out what they

wanted, and that the first applicant would always have the preference as soon as the

books were open. With this in view they started, and the anathemas, loud and deep,

which were hurled at the hydra–head of the Canadian Pacific Railway when, after

weeks of misery, they returned to Winnipeg, and were told that all the lands as far

West as Moose Jaw Creek were sold, may be imagined.

It is true that these men could at that time find unoccupied Government

sections, 320 acres of which they might ultimately hope to get if they resolutely held

possession, but although 320 acres may appear a large farm in the Province of

Quebec, it is too small to be worked to the best advantage in a prairie country. If that

country is to be developed quickly, it must be done by men with some capital. It

therefore appears a suicidal policy which obstructs practical farmers with means at

their command from obtaining more than 320 acres without great expense and

trouble.

That the country is one of immense agricultural possibilities, everyone

conversant with the subject agrees. But, as hardly one half section west of Brandon

can be found which does not include some waste, or at any rate, not immediately

arable parts, settlers with capital will not make that country their home should they

find that acquiring more than that amount will necessitate their falling into the

hands of some one, or perhaps more, set of speculators. But above all, will they be

deterred should such instances as I have mentioned recur of what cannot but be called

bad faith. Let whoever does own the land deal truthfully. Let the maps which are to

be published show the sections belonging to each company, and let the circulars,

which are doubtless to be spread broadcast this winter, as those of the Canadian

Pacific Railway were last, state truly what are the terms of each. That honesty is the

best policy ought to be a reason why even responsible corporations should practice it.

Of course large as are these tracts of the most accessible lands at present

virtually locked up, they are as nothing to those still in the hands of the Government,

which will be gradually opened up as other railroads are built. Let us hope that better

control will be kept over their disposal. As you say in another place, people in the

West are apt to be aggressive. Let the Government see that they have as little cause

as possible for being so.

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Sir John Lister–Kaye and the C.P.R. Lands

16. In the Beginning (December, 1886)867

Sir John Lister–Kaye868, promoter of Alberta and Assiniboine land stock and

coal company869, has arranged to purchase from the Canadian Pacific Railway

Company immense farms in the Northwest, and other large tracts from the Dominion

government on which will be located 2,000 head of cattle, including Polled Angus

herds, brood mares, Clydesdale and thoroughbred stallions; 50,000 head of sheep are

to be improved by Cheviot and Leicester rams, and a large number of pigs are to be

improved with Yorkshire boars. The company contemplate establishing villages and

farms and bringing settlers from England. They have a capital of $5,000,000.

Operations will begin immediately.

17. An Incentive to Settlement (January, 1887)870

Sir John Kaye may or may not get the land he is after, as the negotiations are

by no means concluded, but one or two facts must not be overlooked. The C. P. R.

experimental farms871 have been established for three years, and the land about them

has always been open for entry, but not a single settler has yet located an acre in

their neighbourhood except at Gleichen and Sir John Kaye does not propose to buy

there. The reason is that at those stations the land is a bare, uninviting prairie, and

there are so many more inviting places to be had. If, however, capitalists can be

induced to thoroughly test the capabilities of these points, and should their efforts

prove encouraging, these will become centers of well–settled districts.

The average settler has not capital sufficient to make experiments, but should

Sir John Kaye’s scheme prove successful, the poorer settlers would then be in a

position to undertake similar work, having data as to what the result would be. The

land is dry, and it will cost a lot of money to get water for stock. There is no fuel and

no timber for building material, and owing to the small amount of rainfall it will be

only by the most thorough cultivation that grain growing will become successful. This

the ordinary settler is not prepared to undertake. Sir John Kaye’s scheme, however,

867 From CANADIAN NEWS. (1886, December 19). The Daily Colonist, p. 3. 868 “Sir John is now [in 1912] 59 years old, the third baronet of his name, son of the daughter of the

earl of Cottenham. He has his country seat in Yorkshire, where he is deputy lieutenant for the county;

and he has his town house in Manchester square, where he has been host on many notable occasions.

A distinguished man of affairs is Sir John, peculiarly secured in his wealth and his social influence by

his marriage, contracted some thirty years ago, five years after the sister of his bride had become

Viscountess Mandeville.” The Power of the Pulpit in London. (1912, December 7). The Prospector, p. 3. 869 The company was later re–formed as the Canadian Agricultural, Coal & Colonization Company. In

1889, it had £430,000 in capital. 870 From NORTHWEST MODEL FARMS. (1887, January 20). Qu’Appelle Progress, p. 1. 871 There were sold to Sir John Lister–Kaye in October of 1888.

455

contemplates settlement to the full capacity of the lands, and includes bringing out

and settling on these farms a large number of English farm laborers872. […] Sir John

Kaye may come to terms with the Government873, but there are certainly some good

points about his scheme for the Canadian people as well as himself.

18. A Great Canadian Farming Scheme (December, 1888)874

Ever since railway construction was commenced in the Northwest the country

has been laboring under the disadvantage, that although vast amounts of capital had

been invested in the Territories much the larger part of the whole had been sunk in

speculations of a non–productive nature, the profits on which depended on the

improvement of the country by the speculators themselves. Of course every dollar

invested in this way was a hindrance instead of a help to progress. Even when the

enterprises entered upon were properly of a productive nature, such as the Bell

farm875 and the large cattle ranchers, the element of land speculation entered into

them so largely as to materially take from their value to the country. Sir John Lister–

Kaye’s gigantic farming scheme which is now being developed is of a totally different

nature and the benefits certain to result to the whole country should it be financially

successful can scarcely be overestimated.

Although the C. P. R. has been in operation across the plains ever since ’83,

the vast stretch from Moose Jaw in the east to Calgary in the west along the line is

to day almost as destitute of all agricultural improvement as it was the year the road

872 Sir John Lister–Kaye’s “company will settle seventy Aberdeenshire, Dumfriesshire and Yorkshire

farmers with their families. Every farmer who comes into its plans receives from the company two

hundred and forty–six pounds, provided he is able to place two hundred pounds alongside that sum.

The total four hundred and forty–six pounds is expended on buildings, implements and improvements.

The farmers in the scheme will go out to Canada and find their shedding, their piggery and their

stabling already up. In the stables and sheds they will, moreover, discover their brood mares, their

sheep and their pigs, and they will further learn that on each farm of three hundred and twenty acres,

twenty acres are already ploughed and ready for seed. All this becomes the property of the farmer at

the end of twenty years, after he has paid eighty–nine pounds fifteen per annum for a short period,

and a less sum for the remainder of the term.” SIR JOHN LISTER–KAYE. (1889, April 24). The Calgary Weekly Herald, p. 4. 873 He did. “Sir John Lister–Kaye has organized a company of English and Scotch capitalists, who have

subscribed $6,500,000 as capital to invest in the Northwest Territories. He has completed negotiations

with the Federal Government and Canadian Pacific Railway directors for twenty blocks of land of an

area of 20,000 acres each along the line of the railway commencing at Rush Lake, 400 miles from

Winnipeg, and stretching to the eastern slope of the Rockies. Next spring he will commence importing

horses and mares, cattle and other live stock to begin farming and breeding cavalry horses for the

British army. A deposit of $50,000 has been made with the Government as security for carrying out

the contract. English and Scottish farmers will be brought out and homesteads and stock will be

provided for them, if required.” TERRITORIAL NEWS. (1887, March 25). The Prince Albert Times, p. 4. 874 From A GREAT CANADIAN FARMING SCHEME. (1888, December 22). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 2. 875 A 60,000 acre farm started in 1882 at Indian Head, Saskatchewan by William Robert Bell (1845 –

1913).

456

was first built. That this stretch of 400 miles of plain has remained unsettled for so

many years is taken by travelers as evidence that it is unfitted for the settlement and

also that it must be as well suited for settlement as any other part of the Northwest

or else the C. P. R. would not have built the line through it. The consequence is that

in its unimproved condition it creates in the minds of the thousands of travelers over

the C. P. R. line the impression that by far the greater part of the North west is totally

unfitted for settlement.

The fact that this stretch of country has remained unsettled is not due to

infertility of the soil. The soil is almost uniformly good, but the total lack of wood for

purposes of building, fencing, firing or shelter, and the scarcity of good water on the

surface as well as of hay not only gives the region an uninviting appearance but really

places great difficulties in the way of settlement by any people without abundant

means. Few settlers of the ordinary sort are able to pay out cash for every

improvement required on their places for the first one or two years with no prospect

of a good return until the second and perhaps the third or fourth year; or if able they

still prefer to locate where by turning the natural advantages of the district to account

they can make their own labor stand as good as cash to them in making

improvements. To the capitalist, however, who must pay out cash for every part of

every improvement that he makes it is of more importance that he shall have the

advantage of easy access to the railway by means of which everything that he requires

can be brought to him at the cheapest rate than that he should be immediately

surrounded with the natural advantages so necessary to the poorer settler.

Looking at the matter in this light Sir John Kaye’s company has located ten

farms of 10,000 acres each at intervals of 30 to 50 miles between Moose Jaw and

Calgary, close to the various railroad stations. On each of these farms large buildings

have been erected this fall, breaking has been done and material is on hand for

fencing; horses, cattle and sheep876 have been imported and distributed, and

everything is ready for the commencement of farming and stock raising operations

on an immense scale early in the spring877. The mere fact that one company has

shown such unbounded faith in this supposed to be desert part of the country has

876 “Probably the largest importation of stock ever made into Canada at one time and by one company

has just been effected here. Eighteen thousand sheep have been brought into Maple Creek for

shipment from this place. They came from Oregon, through Washington, Idaho and Montana, into

Assiniboia. […] They are to be shipped to Sir Lister–Kaye’s various farms, east and west of here. It is

a novel sight and one not often witnessed in Canada, to see tens of thousands of sheep, one might

almost say, spread over a quarter section of land or huddled together within the compass of from five

to ten acres. There are many in all parts of Canada who will watch with interest the result of so great

an enterprise. The Kaye Company evidently recognizes the adaptability of the country for stock, and

especially for sheep raising.” MAPLE CREEK. (1889, September 27). Qu’Appelle Progress, p. 5. 877 “The syndicate of which Sir John Lister–Kaye’s name appears as the head […] is reported to own

11 farms of 10,000 acres each. On each there is (or is to be) a central farm–house, stabling for 55

horses, sheds for 500 breeding heifers and 5,000 sheep, and a piggery for 300 pigs. These buildings, it

is said, are to cost about $15,000 on each farm. $150,000 is to be provided at once. The first farm,

Balgonie, is already tolerably well equipped. It is evident that enterprises on such a scale must give a

lively impetus to settlement.” Sir John Lister–Kaye’s Scheme. (1888, September 19). The Daily British Columbian, p. 4.

457

already done a great deal to destroy the bad impression formerly held regarding it878,

and will do so much more when work is started in full blast next spring. The railroad

line between the farms is so short and the operations are on such a large scale that

the attention of all classes of travelers will be drawn strongly to the work and its

results.

If these results are as good as they deserve to be, and there is every reasonable

probability that with good management they will be, not only will the region along

the railroad line be relieved from the ill repute now attached to it, but travelers will

take for granted that if what they see is so good what they do not see may certainly

be as good and probably better; instead of as at present that what they see from the

train is no good and what they do not see must be if possible still more worthless. It

is to be hoped, and may reasonably be expected, that at no very distant day the

northern part of the Territories will have equal railroad advantages with the

southern part, but in view of the immense through travel over the C. P. R. line it will

always be important to the whole country that the region along that line shall present

the best possible appearance. Sir Lister–Kaye’s enterprise will go a long way towards

changing present appearances for the better and it is to be hoped in the interests of

every one that the venture will prove such a financial success that hereafter capital

will seek investment in productive enterprises for which the Northwest offers such a

wide field, instead of in locking up the land from settlement and acting as the greatest

barrier to the development of the country.

19. “Irrevocably Lost” (September, 1891)879

Some conspicuous illustrations of the folly of going into a business one does not

understand are scattered along 300 miles of Canadian Pacific Railroad, on the plains

of the Northwest territories. Nearly all day the express trains passing through this

region are in sight of the Lister–Kaye farms, ten in number, containing 10,000 acres

of land each, which stretch along at intervals of thirty miles from Rush Lake to

Calgary, within sight of the Rocky Mountains. These farms always occasion a deal of

talk among the passengers, who are certain to observe that when a man invests his

money in a game he does not understand he is very likely to lose all his cash and to

reap nothing but bitter experience.

Sir John Lister–Kaye made a good deal of money in California. When he went

home to England people there had the impression that he knew everything that was

878 Sir John’s charisma may have played a part: “There is quite a sprinkling of wealthy Englishmen in

Calgary. Among these is Sir John Lister–Kaye, who has his temporary office in a car where he also

resides, on a C. P. R. siding. He has also an office in Calgary, and owns land on Stephen avenue, on

which he proposes to erect a building to cost not less than $75,000, and for which plans and

specifications are out. Mr. L. having had occasion to call on Sir John on business matters, found him

courteous and gentlemanly in the extreme. Calgary ought to feel proud of having a man of Sir John’s

position and influence in its midst, and may feel assured that his exertions will not be lacking to

advance the claims of the town and tributary country in England.” CALGARY IS DELIGHTFUL.

(1889, July 24). The Calgary Weekly Herald, p. 7. 879 From THE LISTER–KAYE FARMS. (1891, September 10). Qu’Appelle Progress, p. 3.

458

worth knowing about America. He took home with him a big project for the

consideration of British capitalists. It was soon after the completion of the Canadian

Pacific Railroad and the world was talking about the great resources of the hitherto

almost unknown regions through which it passes. Sir John’s plan was to buy an

enormous quantity of land, send out large parties of colonists from Yorkshire, and go

into wheat raising on a prodigious scale. To be sure, he knew little or nothing about

wheat raising, neither did the people whom he proposed to take with him to carry out

his great idea. But the newspapers were full of the wonderful possibilities of wheat

culture in the Northwest, and Sir John had no trouble in convincing his wealthy

friends in England that a big bonanza awaited them.

A million dollars were raised and placed in Sir John’s hands. Out to the

Northwest he posted with a lot of colonists880 who had very vague ideas about the sort

of life they would have to lead on those treeless prairies. At the very outset, Sir John

made a fatal blunder. He intended to raise hundreds of thousands of bushels of wheat,

but, unlucky for himself, he pushed far past the best wheat bearing regions and

located his 100,000 acres of land in western Assiniboia and eastern Alberta. No one

has ever asserted that this region is well adapted for wheat culture. It is splendidly

adapted to grazing and stock raising, but the farmer who depends on cereals there

will pick up a somewhat poor living.

But Sir John never stopped to ascertain these facts881. On each of his ten farms

of 10,000 acres apiece, he built handsome farmhouses, big red–painted barns, and

put up scores of miles of barbed wire fencing. A Lister–Kaye farm can be recognized

all along the route by its handsome red farm buildings, its windmill, and the wire

fence invariably surmounted by a rail. The Yorkshire colonists began to break the soil

and sow wheat882. Sir John bought hundreds of horses and scores of yokes of oxen,

and organized his business on a military plan. For so many head of stock he had a

superintendent, and for so many acres of land ploughed for wheat an overseer. He

imported thousands of dollars’ worth of machinery, some of it from England, and a

880 “The government has decided to accept Sir John Lister–Kaye’s offer to place seventy families in

each of twenty settlements, provided he be allowed to purchase 160 acres contiguous to each

homestead for $1 per acre, and 640 acres in the centre of each settlement to form a village.” GENERAL.

(1889, July 20). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 4. 881 Livestock were intended to be a crucial part of the enterprise from the start: “It is proposed that

the stock on each farm will include 300 draught mares, 10 Clydesdale stallions, and 10 thoroughbred

mares for stock purposes. Of the total number of 300 mares, a considerable proportion will be light

draught. These latter will be bred to imported thoroughbred stallions with the object of producing

hunters, cavalry remounts and hacks. Each farm will also be stocked with 300 heifers. The herd will

be supplemented by ten polled Angus bulls, ten polled Angus heifers for stock purposes, 1,000 sheep

with pure bred Cheviot rams and ewes, 1,000 pigs with thoroughbred stock. Kaye has already

completed arrangements for the purchase of over 70,000 head of cattle. […] The plans have been

prepared already, and many of the proposed structures devoted to the feeding and fattening of stock

will cost large amounts.” AN IMMENSE RANCH. (1887, February 26). The Daily British Columbian, p. 3. 882 They also planted flax: “It is said 400 acres of flax will be grown on Sir J. L. Kaye’s farm at Balgonie,

near Regina, this season. The flax will be sent to Belfast, Ireland, for manufacture. This may be the

commencement of a flourishing industry in the West. The adaptability of this country to flax culture

is well known.” Flax Growing at Regina. (1888, June 13). The Calgary Weekly Herald, p. 2.

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good deal of it was found to be not at all adapted to the needs even of wheat raising.

He went to the Pacific coast to buy timber for the houses of his colonists, and told a

dealer at Vancouver he wanted cedar, which is a very expensive wood in that region.

When the dealer expressed his surprise, Sir John said he had heard that vermin

would not live in cedar houses, so he proposed to provide his colonists with homes of

cedar. The lumber merchant told him he had seen many Indian villages, in which not

a stick of anything but cedar was used to make the huts, and vermin fairly swarmed

in them. Sir John thereupon decided that common pine lumber would answer his

purpose.

After putting some thousands of acres into wheat, Sir John was surprised to

find that it did not thrive well. The soil was too light and the moisture was

inadequate, so he imported an immense quantity of fertilizers to enrich his lands, and

in order to supply sufficient moisture he had a large number of water carts made in

Montreal883. He proposed to sprinkle his fields on the principle of the street water

cart. These carts were dumped by the dozen at his various farms. But the brilliant

idea wouldn’t work. Meanwhile everybody was wondering at Sir John’s doings.

Practical farmers and ranchmen laughed at him and his colonists884, and said they

never had seen anything so foolish in their lives. The poor Yorkshire men became

greatly discouraged. They could not raise wheat, and they found life entirely different

from that which they were accustomed to in rural England. They began to desert Sir

John and his wonderful farms. Some of them went to Manitoba885, where they secured

employment in that splendid wheat growing region. Others became ranchmen and

883 “A novel experiment […] is about to be tried by Sir John Lister–Kaye on his farm. When in Winnipeg

he noticed the big sprinkling carts, and when the drought threatened the crops he conceived the idea

of putting a large number in service for the purpose of supplying the want of rain. Accordingly he

ordered from Ryan & MacArthur, blacksmiths and waggon–makers, on Jemima St., 44 tanks. This is

four for each farm. He only ordered the tanks and sprinklers, intending to place them on waggons

belonging to the farms. […] They are made of pine boards, with oak cross–pieces, and are watertight.

They are 11 feet 4 inches by 3 feet 27 inches, and are two feet high. They will hold about twelve barrels

of water each.” A Novel Experiment. (1889, July 24). The British Columbian, p. 7. 884 “Canadians […] are not sanguine of [Sir John Lister–Kaye’s] success. They say that the building

and plant are on an extravagant scale, which will never be repaid; they are also doubtful about the

plan of working the farms by agricultural laborers imported from England, of whom a number have

already arrived. The colonists, both comparatively newcomers in Manitoba and old settlers from the

East, declare that this part of the scheme is doomed to failure, as no laborers in a new country will be

content to remain laborers when all around them others who arrived from Europe in the same

condition as themselves are farming their own soil.” TERRITORIAL. (1888, December 26). The Calgary Weekly Herald, p. 4. 885 At least one contingent of former Lister–Kaye laborers moved to Alberta: “The German colony from

Dunmore commenced to arrive on Sunday last when two wagons reached Edmonton and the last of

the party crossed the river on Wednesday. They number 53 families, between 225 and 250 people in

all. […] Although their farming for two years that they have lived near Dunmore was a failure they

did very well by working out on the Kaye farms and in handling coal at Dunmore and Lethbridge and

have thus managed to hold their own financially. Besides, the experience of the country and the

knowledge of English which most of them have acquired gives them an advantage that they did not

possess on their arrival from Galicia, Austria, two years ago. […] There are about 25 German families

still remaining near Dunmore, who will probably come to Edmonton later in the season.” THE

GERMANS. (1891, May 2). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 4.

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are now doing well886. Others returned to England, where they gave Sir John the

reputation of being a modern Don Quixote. This thing went on for three or four years

and by that time stockholders in the company had become very much dissatisfied.

They had failed to see any dividends. Everything was going out, at a prodigious rate,

but nothing was coming in. He went to England with a long face and longer story. He

had sunk $500,000 of the company’s money, and it seemed to be irrevocably lost. For

the other $500,000 of capital he had to show the farmers, the buildings, the fences,

and a good deal of stock. He was deposed from the management, and the company

began business on a new basis.

Instead of trying to grow wheat on soil which was never intended for wheat

raising, they have now gone into stock raising. They have begun the new enterprise

on a fair more modest scale than the work which Sir John took in hand, and propose

to feel their way as they go. There is no reason to doubt that they will be abundantly

successful887, for the country is productive enough if one tries to get from it what it is

fitted to produce. The handsome farm buildings are at once the most attractive

feature of that part of the great plains and the monuments of Sir John Lister–Kaye’s

folly: and it will be long before the people cease talking of the wonderful scheme by

which a British company came near losing a million dollars in the effort to make land

do that for which nature had never adapted it888.

Manitoba vs. the Canadian Pacific Railway The CPR’s charter protected it from competition for a period of 20 years. No other company (or as it turns out, government) could build a railway within 15 miles of

886 One former employee met an untimely end: “Wm. Spaulding, of Dundee, Scotland, aged 30, who

was manager of Sir Lister–Kaye’s farm in the Northwest, and who has been looking over the country

with a view to purchasing land, opened the cellar door of the Kalemalka hotel [in Vernon, B.C.] by

mistake, last night, and fell in head first. He must have struck the bottom with fearful force, being a

heavy man. When found ten minutes later he was dead, concussion of the brain being the cause. An

inquest will be held to–day. Deceased was a general favorite.” THE DOMINION. (1893, September

16). The Pacific Canadian, p. 2. 887 At least some of Lister–Kaye’s losses were due to a poor market for live stock: “Arrivals of American

and Canadian live stock [in England] have been fairly liberal. Among the latter, both to London and

Liverpool, there are a large number of ranch cattle, the bulk of which are consigned from Sir John

Lister–Kaye’s lands. […] At date of writing none of them have been disposed of, and the tone of the

market is so weak that probably no effort will be made to sell them for a few days. […] We are informed

that the decline is more attributable to the congested state of the Metropolitan Meat Markets and the

heavy supplies at Deptford of Continental stock.” Our Cattle in England. (1888, November 7). The Calgary Weekly Herald, p. 5. 888 Some of the former Lister–Kaye farms would later prove successful: “Threshing of barley and

cutting of spring wheat on the same day was a sight that last week greeted visitors to the 10,000 acre

farm of Morris Adler of Namaka, Bow river valley. Barley was hauled from the separators to the cars

and shipped direct to Calgary brewers. This farm was formerly owned by Sir Lister–Kaye and has

been cropped for the past 20 years, last year returning the owner a large crop of winter wheat, 1000

acres of which went 42 bushels to the acre. […] Mr. Adler, who is the head of a large contracting firm

in Alabama, purchased the farm as a permanent investment.” Value of Irrigation. (1909, September

17). The Keremeos Chronicle, p. 5.

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the US–Canada border. This caused trouble for the agricultural province of Manitoba. It needed rail connections between the farms scattered across the province and their markets in the United States and across the oceans, but the CPR was uninterested in building the necessary branch lines. When Manitoba (repeatedly) took matters into its own hands, the Dominion government was forced to disallow the rail lines the province had authorized. Finally, in 1887, the government of Canada bought back the monopoly rights from the CPR in order to allow Manitoba to build its rail connections.

20. Fighting a Monopoly (1887)889

When the Canadian Pacific railway contract was confirmed by parliament, a

clause was inserted at the instance of the company providing that for twenty years

authority should not be granted for the construction of a road west of the Red river

from the main line of the Pacific railway to the international boundary. This is known

as the monopoly clause and was intended to prevent rival lines entering the Canadian

Northwest from the United States. There was a slight protest from the people of

Manitoba at the time, but the business and real estate “boom” was so great that it

was soon forgotten. The Canadian Pacific railway has been constructed and put in

operation these twelve months, but long before it was completed the people began to

suffer from the monopoly and to complain. It was held that the monopoly clause did

not apply to the province of Manitoba, as that was well organized prior to the granting

of the Pacific charter, and it would seem that this view was accepted by the federal

government, for in 1882, when the boundaries of the province were enlarged, it was

provided in the extension act that the monopoly clause of the Pacific railway contract

should apply to the added territory.

The fight over the question between the Manitoba and Dominion governments

commenced in 1881, when the legislature of that province granted a franchise for the

construction of a line to the international boundary. It was promptly disallowed by

the federal government. In the following year another was passed, and in like manner

disallowed before the work of construction could be commenced under it. This fight

by way of legislative enactments and disallowments has been of yearly occurrence

since 1880, but two years ago the legislature passed the public works act which

provides that any works commenced by contractors for the government, and are for

any reason abandoned, may be assumed and completed by the public works

department for the province, and the local government shall have power in such cases

to draw money from the provincial treasury therefor. In June last the legislation

passed an act authorizing the construction of the Red River Valley road890, to run

from Winnipeg to the boundary at West Lynn. The entire line is but sixty–five miles

in length, and is located on the west side of the Red river. This act was disallowed on

889 From FIGHTING A MONOPOLY. (1887, August 23). The Daily Argus News, p. 1. 890 As detailed below, this railway was finally authorized in 1887. In 1888, the Red River Valley

Railway changed its name to the Northern Pacific and Manitoba Railway Company, reflecting its

status as a subsidiary of the United States’s Northern Pacific Railway. It opened for business in 1889.

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July 6, but previous to that the contractors had purchased the right of way and

commenced the work of construction; hence the public works department of the

government has assumed the work and is pushing ahead. Already the grading is

nearly completed, and it is expected that the rails, which are on hand, will be placed

before the end of September.

Since the provincial authorities assumed charge of the work the federal

government has not interfered, but the Canadian Pacific company has run from one

of its branch lines a spur track across the line of the new road, and applied to the

court of the Queen’s Bench for an injunction to restrain the local government from

crossing the track so laid. A temporary injunction has been granted, and the

provincial authorities are called upon to show cause why it should not be made

permanent. Meanwhile, in open contempt of court, the work is proceeding, and a

conflict is expected. The sheriff, if called upon to enforce the orders of the court, will,

it is said, resign his position, rather than do so. In any event his force will not be

sufficient and the militia will be called upon. There are several detachments already

in the province, confessedly to watch the Indians, but presumably for this very

emergency. The three regiments of local militia have signified a readiness to turn out

in defiance of federal authority whenever requested by the local authorities to do so.

This is in the face of the fact that a provincial government in Canada has no authority

whatever over the militia. There is no provincial militia allowed, and the federal

minister of militia has absolute control over all military organizations in the country.

An injunction was granted the Canadian Pacific Saturday restraining the new

railway from crossing certain lots of ground about forty miles from Winnipeg. When

the document was handed to the contractor he had a large force of men at work

grading the line across these lots, having been informed what the Canadian Pacific

was up to by the Manitoba authorities. He contemptuously crumpled the notice and

threw it away saying he guessed it could wait, and went on with his work. This action

was reported in Winnipeg and the people went wild with joy.

21. A Manitoban Protest Song (1887) 891

We now rise to claim our birthright

From oppressive powers that be;

And we mean it when we say it.

Manitoba must be free.

Then hurrah for Manitoba

For we’ll break the tyrant’s rod,

And emblazon on our banner

The Red River Valley Road.

891 From THE MANITOBAN’S SONG. (1887, November 4). Montreal Daily Witness, p. 7.

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We’ll stand to–day united

Thus to let the despots know,

We’re determined in our purpose

And “Monopoly must go.”

We’re the loyal sons of Britain

Not the slaves of party rings,

And we spurn as British freemen

The rude chains of railway kings.

Here all party shall be silenced

And all factions stop their fights

As we stand a solid phalanx

To secure “Provincial Rights.”

Wheat now moulding892 in the storehouse,

Commerce struggling to be free,

Here demand, in common justice,

A new outlet to the sea.

Honest John893, now seems in earnest,

And D. Harrison894 stands firm;

Gentle Hamilton’s895 determined,

And Doc. Wilson896 does not squirm.

Now, Sir John897 must stop the veto;

Yankee Van898 must quit his tricks,

892 A perhaps intentional mis–spelling of ‘moldering’, meaning ‘decaying because of neglect’. 893 There were a number of members of the Manitoba Legislature named ‘John’ at this time, but from

context this is probably a reference to John Norquay (1841 – 1889), Premier of Manitoba from 1878 to

1887. The ‘honest’ may have been ironic, since two months earlier his government had been accused

of using money reserved for Métis children, to pay for general expenditures. Premier Norquay resigned

the month after this song was written. 894 David Howard Harrison (1843 – 1905), member of the Manitoba Legislature from 1883 to 188. 895 Charles Edward Hamilton (1844 – 1818) was Mayor of Winnipeg from 1885 to 1886, and a member

of the Manitoba Legislature from 1885 to 1888. Hamilton Avenue in Winnipeg is named after him. 896 Dr. David Henry Wilson (1855 – 1926) was a member of the Manitoba Legislature from 1881 to

1888. After his retirement from politics, he returned to medicine and became the first president of the

Vancouver Medical Association. 897 Probably a reference to Sir John A. MacDonald (1815 – 1891), Prime Minister of Canada from 1878

to 1891. 898 Probably William Cornelius Van Horne (1843 – 1915), who would become the second president of

the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1888. He was born in the state of Illinois and had a profitable career

as a railway promoter. As president of the CPR, he would launch its sea transport and luxury hotel

divisions, making him indirectly responsible for the creation of Victoria’s iconic Empress hotel. As an

amateur architect, he was also directly involved in the design of Quebec’s Château Frontenac, which

at its opening was a CPR hotel.

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And Sir George899 must cease to threaten

Or, by George, they’ll get their licks.

Should old Norquay900 prove deceiver

And his henchmen stand in doubt:

We must brand them all as traitors,

And then turn them out.

Then, hurrah for Manitoba!

For we’ll break the tyrant’s rod,

And emblazon on our banner

The Red River Valley Road.

22. How Manitoba Won (1911)901

When the C. P. R. was created in 1881 it was with the avowed policy of creating

a channel of communication between east and west. The policy was to keep so far as

legislation could do it Canadian trade in Canadian channels. In the contract with the

C. P. R. company precautions had been taken to keep the trade flowing east and west.

In that contract with the C. P. R. company the following clause was inserted as clause

15: “For twenty years from the date hereafter no line of railway shall be authorized

by the Dominion parliament to be constructed south of the C. P. R. from any point at

or near the C. P. R. except such line shall run southwest or to be west or southwest,

or to within fifteen miles of latitude 49.”

How long did this agreement last? Did it last twenty years? It lasted just six

years, and at last after six years the Canadian government had to recall that

legislation. And how did it occur? This is one of the most dramatic pages in the history

of our country. There was a restriction put upon the energy, upon the enterprise of

the people of the west, and of the province of Manitoba in particular. The people of

Manitoba wanted power to trade north and south; they wanted to trade with their

neighbors, the American people; they wanted to have railway communication with

them. But there was a statute, there was an act of parliament, there was the

authority of the Canadian government, which prevented them from trading with their

neighbors to the south, and the Canadian government attempted for six years to keep

that legislation in force. The legislature of Manitoba passed acts chartering the

railways, allowing them to cross that zone of territory which the government was

attempting to reserve from civilization and the benefits thereof.

899 George Stephen (1829 – 1921), first Baron Mount Stephen and president of the Canadian Pacific

Railway from 1881 to 1888. He received his barony in 1891, and with it the style ‘Right Honorable the

Lord Mount Stephen’. Between receiving his knighthood in 1886 and his barony in 1891, he was Sir

George Stephen. 900 John Norquay, Premier of Manitoba (for one more month, when this song was written). 901 From Laurier, H. C. W. (1911, May 9). HOW MANITOBA WON AFTER HARD BATTLE. Dawson Daily News, p. 3. This article was written by Sir Henri Charles Wilfrid Laurier (1841 – 1919) in the last year of his term as Prime Minister (1886 – 1911).

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The legislature of Manitoba wanted railways to communicate north and south;

they chartered railways to that effect, and these charters were disallowed one after

the other, disallowed in 1881, disallowed in 1882, disallowed in 1883, disallowed in

1886. The legislature of Manitoba petitioned the Dominion government, petitioned

parliament to do away with this restriction, and year after year that prayer was

denied. At last, in 1887, notwithstanding all the restrictions put upon their energy,

the government of Manitoba, with the assent of the people of Manitoba, passed

another act chartering a company to run from Winnipeg to the boundary line, where

it could reach the American system of railways, and this act was disallowed. The

province passed beyond that disallowance and proceeded to build the railway, though

there was no legislation empowering them to do so. It was practically an act of

rebellion.

On a certain day in the month of October, 1887, when the Canadian Pacific

Railway company attempted to challenge the right of the province to cross their line

toward the south, 200 citizens from the city of Winnipeg, members from the

government, members of the legislature, financial men, professional men, merchants,

bankers, went in a body to the point of the crossing and repelled force by force to allow

the crossing of the Canadian Pacific railway by the provincial line. Then the

Canadian government came down and at the following session the privilege was

repealed, a privilege that had to be purchased by the Canadian government from the

Canadian Pacific railway. Now what became then of those investors who had put

their money into the Canadian Pacific railway upon the faith of the Canadian

government? Were they ruined by it? No, the result was that their stock, which was

worth at that time 30, has now reached 225.

The Canadian Northern Railway (C.N.R.) Manitoba eventually found its champion in the form of the Canadian Northern Railway.

23. “A Record of Progress” (1914)902

When the Canadian Northern railway goes into operation across the dominion

it will be the first transcontinental in the history of railroading on this continent to

enter the larger phase of service having its own feeding lines to collect goods from

local districts in all parts of Canada, and bring them to the through cross–continent

line for transport to either ocean. The fact is noteworthy. It clearly shows the

brushing aside of the temptation to rush a single line across the continent, and the

adoption of the sound policy of constructing local lines and opening new territory

before extending the main road along the route chosen for it long, long before. Great

care always preceded the building of any of those branch lines, and so excellent was

902 From RAILWAY ALREADY HAS FEEDERS FOR TRANSCONTINENTAL. (1914, May 19). The Edmonton Capital, p. 5.

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the judgment that today all sections of the Canadian Northern exhibit signs of

healthy growth and still brighter prospects for the years to come. It has also

constructed – well, rapidly and economically – a transcontinental line with termini

at Atlantic and Pacific tidewater, and with the easiest gradients of any road of similar

size in the world.

GRADUAL GROWTH

In its beginning the Canadian Northern was a provincial road, contained in

the limits of old Manitoba. Then it became inter–provincial, then national, and lastly

an imperial project, with a line of steamers from Great Britain to Canada, a line

nearly completed across the continent, and the prospect of a fleet on the Pacific to

complete the chains of communication from the old land to Asia and the possessions

lying under the Southern Cross. For all time to come, when its builders are forgotten,

it will go on with the appointed task of transporting the agricultural products of the

west to both oceans and on to a hungry, waiting world; the products of the industrial

east to the vast market of the west; the wealth of mine, forest rivers and lakes to

concentrator, mill and market.

There are three big aspects of the Canadian Northern to be considered and

weighed carefully before any decision can be reached as to its beneficent relations

with the people of Canada. These are: its work as a pioneer and blazer of new trails;

its method of populating or assisting to populate the areas it opened up; its policy of

development of the natural resources its lines brought within reach of the general

public. The first of these is in close communion with life and prosperity of all new

countries in which classification Canada still remains; the second and third hold the

key to the expansion of the areas served, in addition to determining in a large sense

the future of the railway which performs the service.

DUBBED AS VISIONARIES

The C.N.R., speaking literally, is best known west of Port Arthur. Its lines in

western Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta total today approximately

5,000 miles. From those far flung sections of the Dominion we should look for opinions

as to the pioneering character of the Canadian Northern or otherwise, not only at the

time of its inception, but right on down to the present. Any honest–minded man who

was in the west in 1896 will confirm the statement that, when construction was

commenced upon the first 100 miles of the C.N.R. – from the village of Gladstone to

the site of Dauphin, in Manitoba – in that year, the folks were not few who dubbed

the builders as visionaries, and classified the road as one that would not pay because

the areas it opened up were not populated. No other company would build the line.

Yet it paid the first year and when members of the legislature of the province of

Manitoba went up to Dauphin by special train in October, 1897, they were fired with

enthusiasm over the enterprising town which had been a field of golden grain a short

year before. The people of Dauphin drew the attention of the lawmakers to a rumor

of splendid fertility as applied to the country in the valley of the Swan river. The

legislators believed. The Canadian Northern railway opened it up to settlement.

There is no need surely to go on reciting instances which are history in the west. A

glance at any map of the Dominion showing railway lines will convince any observer

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of the determination to pioneer evidenced by the builders of the C. N. R. Theirs are

the northern lines. They traverse the rich valley of the Saskatchewan to Edmonton;

go north from Winnipeg almost to the upper end of Lake Winnipegosis, and then turn

west to Prince Albert, opening to settlement all that rich belt of diversified land,

which one day will be the agricultural backbone of this dominion; another line swings

west from the Manitoba capital through the prairie section, touching Brandon,

Regina, Saskatoon and finds its present terminals at Prince Albert. There are the so

called main lines. They have been connected up by so many branches that the effect

is a veritable network both in the open prairie districts and northern mixed farming

lands.

IMMIGRATION WORK

By reason of its construction into areas where no roads before existed the

Canadian Northern, in the west alone, has opened lands for settlement to tens of

thousands and has given the blessing of new environment to other tens of thousands

of aliens who have sought Canada’s shores in search of a new home, and a better

home than was ever theirs before. No railway company has done more to place the

illiterate immigrant in a position to make a home for himself and family. From its

inception the C.N.R. has always aimed to give employment to settlers coming into the

country. Thousands of Galicians903, for instance, have been engaged. They would first

locate a homestead and then go to work on the road, sending the money earned home

for the maintenance of the family. Millions in wages have been paid out by the C.N.R.

to Galicians alone and the result may be seen today in the settlements in the Valley

River, Sifton and Ethelbert districts and in the Saskatchewan valley. The same is

true of the Doukhobors904 and other nationalities as apart from the English speaking

homesteaders for the policy, “No English Need Apply,” has found no place in the

building of the Canadian Northern railway.

SIX HUNDRED NEW TOWNS

Referring still to the western provinces, the C.N.R. has added to the map of the

dominion some 600 new towns west of the city of Port Arthur, which place was

transferred from a stagnant municipality into an enterprising town by the entrance

of the railway after the C.P.R. had departed to allow it to die of neglect. It is not too

much to say that Winnipeg owes one–third of her modern growth to the Canadian

Northern, while the cities of Saskatoon, North Battleford and Edmonton are very

frankly results of the advent of C.N.R. lines. Edmonton was a fur–trading center

without a railway until the Canadian Northern extended in, and the arrival of the

steel horse changed the place from an interesting town of 2,500 into a bustling city of

10,000. Saskatoon languished until galvanized into activity by C.N.R. lines, and

North Battleford was but a site on bald prairies when that company laid its steel

through. There is not space to tell of the rise of the hundreds of other towns who owe

their existence to the extension of the C.N.R. lines and their continued prosperity to

the operation of the road. In the evolution of the country, many of these centers will

903 Ukrainian–speaking emigrants from Galicia, then a crown land of Austria–Hungary Empire. 904 Russian Christian pacifists who left the Russian Empire for the prairies around the turn of the 20th

century.

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rise to the eminence of cities and they may even come to forget the enterprise that

called them into existence and fostered the early struggling days.

OPENED SASKATCHEWAN VALLEY

It will be remembered that the Canadian Northern opened the vast

Saskatchewan valley to settlement. Nature had provided the fertility. The Canadian

Northern demonstrated its existence by making the country accessible, and by

placing on the land settlers, who, by actual crop production, proved the falsity of

charges scattered broadcast of unfitness of climate and soil for permanent

agriculture. But that is only a portion of what the road has done toward the settling

of the western country and the creation of an everwidening market for the industries

of the east. The Canadian Northern has spent during the last 15 years, more than

three million dollars in the furtherance of immigration work, supplementing the

efforts of the Dominion government in securing the right kind of immigrant for the

greater development of the country. Its extensive organization seeks out the

ambitious [person] who desires to build a home on land to be their own in Canada,

the domestic, and the artisans that are called for by the industrial concerns. Its

officers are well informed and its advice is sane.

DEVELOPED RESOURCES

There remains the last of the three aspects set out for consideration – the policy

of development of natural resources and its relation to the life of the nation, and of

the railway. To state that the Canadian Northern has made development of natural

resources by new lines, wherever possible, a plank in its construction policy is not to

make the claim that it was done out of charity. Far from it. Exploitation of resources

means added tonnage to the railway and that is what is sought in the last analysis.

Modern railway building has become a tremendous scientific task. In addition to the

battle of grades, there must be considered the ability of the districts served to produce

steady revenue in the shape of loads for box, flat and passenger cars. That is why the

C.N.R. extended into the rich new northern areas of the western provinces, where the

right kind of settlement policy has resulted in steady returns in goods for shipments;

to the lands where timber abounded, and to areas where the economic ores awaited

the boon of transportation. No one will deny the vital relation of this class of

development work to the general prosperity of the country, and the wisdom of the

C.N.R. policy will show up to better advantage in the years that are ahead. It has

given the country the rich lands of the Saskatchewan River valley, and the splendid

rolling lands to the north of the provinces, Manitoba, opened up the great timber

riches of the north and brings out the products of mills which are among the largest

in the world. […]

SUBSIDIARY SYSTEMS

In Quebec the Canadian Northern has the Canadian Northern Quebec and the

Quebec and Lake St. John railways, affording service between Ottawa, Montreal,

Quebec and also the tremendous pulp wood resources and finished products of the

northern portion of the province. In the island of Cape Breton there is the Inverness

railway to provide transportation facilities for the coal mined there, and in Nova

Scotia the Halifax and South Western railway serves the Atlantic coast line from

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Halifax to Yarmouth, marketing the fish brought in at so many points along that

stretch of coast line.

Some day there will be a book written upon the great transportation systems

of this dominion – for population considered or not they are great systems – and in

that publication the Canadian Northern will have a proud place. That is not alone

because of mere size, because size, in itself constitutes no great advantage, but

because of the splendid grades it will have across the continent, because of the

opening of vast natural resources, and because of its achievement in transforming

bald prairie and rolling land into cultivated fields where in early autumn time [grows]

golden grain of service to a hungry world; where the homes of successful farmers

stand as monuments of success in a new land; and where fat kine low in contentment

on the hillside. The Canadian Northern in its march of progress established a new

town every few miles, making it possible for the farmer to market his product and for

the manufacturer of the east to better distribute his goods. New industries have been

fostered and great trading centres built up. There has been development everywhere

it has gone. That statement cannot be exaggerated in the light of the simple fact that

in 1896, its first year, the C. N. R. handled but 395,060 bushels of grain of all kinds.

This year, of the crop of the western provinces alone, the Canadian Northern has

already moved more than 70,000,000 bushels. What a record of progress is contained

in these figures!

24. Donald D. Mann of the C.N.R. (1909)905

Some men are great because they are geniuses; some because they have

worked hard. William Mackenzie is a genius. Donald D. Mann, the vice–president of

the Canadian Northern Railway Company, is merely a terrible worker. Big,

inscrutable, Dan Mann is never sparkling, never anything but a deadly quiet

somebody who says nothing and looks nothing, but who is blasting, digging, bridging,

and spiking a transcontinental railroad behind his broad back. He is the other horse

in that heavy team, Mackenzie and Mann. Mackenzie and Mann are building the

Canadian Northern Railway. Bill gets the money and Dan gets the work done.

Thirteen years ago or thereabout he lumbered down out of a certain mining

country in British Columbia into the western plains. He was looking for something to

do. It happened that he found the Lake Manitoba Railway and Canal Company, that

had set out to connect a certain rich Manitoba wheat country with the transportation

system of the plains, but that had fallen by the way for want of funds and was for

sale. He bought it. He made a partnership with Mackenzie and began the work that

occupies him yet.

905 From Cooke, B. B. (1909, March 29). DONALD D. MANN OF THE C.N.R. The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 2. Written by Britton Bertrand Cooke (1890 – 1923). The details of Mann’s early life in this article

bear striking similarities to those found in an earlier biographical sketch by Augustus Bridle (1868 –

1952): Bridle, A. (1906, February 2). D. D. Mann, Railway Builder. The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 3. It is unclear whether Cooke read Bridle’s article while preparing his own story, or whether the two

journalists had a third source in common.

470

Solemn and sullen, with huge hands and huge feet, with shoulders like a prize

Clydesdale and limbs to match, with neat round chin covered with an iron–gray beard

set on heavy jaws above a short neck, he sits at his desk today. His eyes are steady

and unreadable. He says less than he can help and listens to more than you are

saying. From a misunderstood country boy to river–driver, to railroad navy and

construction boss, he has seen men from different angles, and he remembers what he

has learned.

He was born on a fifty–acre farm in a log house, the fifth in a family of ten

children. That was in 1853, and the log house in the township of Esquesing, in which

again is the town of Acton. He was christened Donald and called Dan, because Dan

suited him better. His father had come to Canada with Dan’s grandfather and three

brothers. The grandfather took up three hundred acres of land, and when he died two

of Dan’s uncles received one hundred acres each, and the other two, including Hugh,

father to Dan, were left with fifty acres each. It was on that fifty acres that the vice–

president of the Canadian Northern was born, and in that log house that he first

learned to talk. In course of time Hugh sold the fifty acres and bought two hundred

close to Acton, where Dan went to school.

Presently he began to show what was not in him. He hated everything about

school except perhaps the lessons in history and geography. He hated farming. He

was passive at church and Sunday school, whither he was sent with solemn

regularity. He loved nothing except those games in which he could use his muscles,

or books that narrated adventure. In the two–roomed schoolhouse at Acton the

master felt that about the best thing he could apply to Dan Mann was the Blue Beech.

Dan took a tanning with as much stolidity as was in him, which was a great deal, and

when the process was over, looking neither better nor worse, he forgot about it. He

tells today, with a gleam scarcely perceptible in his eyes, that he used to make all his

pocket money from the prizes won for shot–putting, hammer–throwing, and other

sports in going the round of the many Highland gatherings in the country during the

year. Nevertheless he had to help on the farm. Like or dislike made no difference to

his Highland–bred father. The boy hated the work just the same, and the more he

had to do the worse.

Donald came to his father one day and in his economically worded way,

explained that he wanted to leave the farm. Hugh listened and then very carefully

brought forward the matter of the ministry. He explained his plans very carefully. He

hinted at the great work that might be done, the glory, the honor, the nobleness of

“the Manse,” but the young man shook his head. The father urged the matter

carefully. Dan’s jaws bulged. A few hours later he tramped across the fields to the

Grand Trunk Railway station and bought a ticket for Port Huron. He was gone form

Acton that night, carrying with him a few clothes and a Bible from his father. It is

possible that today there are people who might recall seeing a big country boy

carrying a box of dunnage, speaking to few, and regarding every one with suspicion,

go aboard one of the old lake steamers tied up in the river at Port Huron that night;

who was sick, as the lake was rough, and stayed off in a corner by himself; and who

at length went ashore at Alpena, where the air of Michigan is sweet with the smell of

471

fresh–cut trees. There may be those who remember seeing him tackle the “boss” of

the lumber camp for something to do and tell him of the little experience he had had

on the small limit of white pine that his father had owned back in Halton County in

Ontario. Dan remembers, but he never tells, how he secured his first work, river–

driving; how he made his place among the men of the camp; how, when they would

have bullied him, his fists and wrestling feats taught them better; and how, when

they would have sought his confidence, he held them off with them on wild larks. In

time he tired even of that, and took to running a saw in a shingle mill near Alpena.

The saw made a fine rippling noise, but the work was too tame for Dan after river–

driving. He went back to Ontario, and took up that exciting line of work again in

Peterborough Country, and from there drifted up to Parry Sound, and was given

charge of whole camps and drives.

One day he turned up in Acton. He wasn’t satisfied with his experience in the

outer world. He brought home with him a little roll of bills and a few of the virile ways

of the lumber–men, and was regarded by the younger generation in Acton as a hero

who wouldn’t talk. One of his brothers came to him with an idea that they two should

lease a certain well–timbered farm not far from the town, work it together, and cut

the timber still standing on it for sale for the Grand Trunk Railway’s locomotives.

Dan agreed. It was his first experience as a capitalist, and it was a bad one.

THE HISTORIC MEETING OF BILL AND DAN.

At the end of three years the Mann brothers were able to pay only a margin on

their debts. Dan patched matters up as best he could and then cleared for the West.

He concluded that he had not been mistaken in his original dislike for farming. He

hated the sight of a snake fence or a plowed field.

When he came to the West he was a full–grown, self–reliant man. He arrived

there by way of Duluth and Winnipeg, and he found the Canadian Pacific Railway

Company making the empty country seem very busy. Every railroad [had] work and

Dan soon got [a] contract, taking out logs and trimming them into ties for the first

section of the road east of Winnipeg. He completed that contract on Christmas Eve,

1871, and it was he that cut the special sixteen–foot ties that were laid across the ice

of the Red River to carry the rails over which the first engine, the “John Taggart,”

crossed to the young Manitoba city.

So it was that the Acton youth began railroading. He came near quitting it that

winter. His great physique, his ability to make men work who reverenced nothing

short of someone who could knock them over with one blow, his love of hard work,

made him afraid of nothing – until he came near dying that season. He had been out

in the snow and he caught a cold. With contempt for anything so trivial, he neglected

it, and one night he discovered that he could not take the long, full breaths he was

used to drawing, and, when he coughed, the feeling in his great chest made him want

to tie himself up in knots. There was no doctor nearer than Winnipeg.

The doctor there swore roundly when he saw his patient and when he found

that there was no room in the hospital. Dan engaged a room in a private boarding

place and went to bed. The doctor came and the doctor went. Sometimes he smiled

and sometimes he shook his head. Dan didn’t know because he was doing all kinds of

472

work conjured up by the delirium of pneumonia. He was thin and very weak. His big

voice sounded like a girl’s and he had learned to be afraid of at least one thing.

Four years after that he met William Mackenzie. Sub–contracts for ties and

contracts for the actual construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway had followed his

recovery from pneumonia, and he was working on a section of rock in the mountains

near the town of Kicking Horse Lake. It was there, as William Mackenzie told the

writer and as Mr. Mann affirmed, that the two had their first conversation.

Mackenzie had been erecting sawmills for the Canadian Pacific when, on this

certain spring morning in 1884, he was standing near where the newly laid steel of

the railway ran through the town and disappeared round a curve into a rock cutting.

Suddenly he saw, swinging round the bend and down the ties, the black–haired Dan

Mann. He guessed it to be Mann because every now and then he had heard great

stories of the big construction boss who could get more work “out’n a d–––––906, ‘r a

Swede, ‘r a lazy white” than anybody else had ever dreamed was possible, and

Mackenzie was naturally interested in any one of that description.

Dan loomed up closer in the spring sunshine, and Bill Mackenzie squinted

cautiously.

“Morning!” said one. Nobody knows which.

“Morning!” returned the other.

Dan slowed down a trifle.

“Going t’ town?” queried Bill easily, nodding his head in the direction of the

storekeeper’s.

“Yes,” said Dan. “Grub’s low.”

Bill asked about Dan’s work on the rock grading and Dan asked Bill about his

sawmills. They agreed that the weather had been bad but showing signs of

improvement. That was the first conversation between the two men.

BACK TO RAILROADING.

No partnership was made until many years after that, but in 1887 they took

sections end to end in the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway short line through

Maine and worked the two sections jointly. Following the completion of that work,

Dan, in December, 1888, took steamer from New York for Chile, where he was to

build a government railroad under MR. H. S. Holt of Montreal. But in the spring of

1889 he was back again. He had learned many new things, including the new

varieties of human cussedness displayed in the Chilean navy. That same year he

visited China with a view to learning the railroad situation there. He remained for a

few months, and on his return, in 1889, associated with Mr. Holt, James Ross of

Montreal, and with Mackenzie, built the Regina and long Lake road for the Canadian

Pacific railway, 250 miles from Regina to Prince Albert. By 1892 the same group of

men had constructed lines from Calgary to Edmonton and Calgary to Macleod. They

then stopped railroad building. For the time being the west had enough of railroads.

Mackenzie was already interested in electric street cars and he went back east.

Dan went mining in British Columbia. He had been a prospector at odd times

in his earlier experiences, so that he was not entirely a novice at the game. He

906 An offensive term for an Italian person.

473

remained three years in the mountains, but despite the fact that in that time he

pioneered such successful properties as the North Star and Dominion Copper

Company groups, including the Idaho, Stemwinder and Rawhide mines, mining did

not appeal to him as did railroad work. So in 1895 it was he came down out of the

hills and found the Canadian Northern.

He had learned many things about the west in his goings up and down, and

among them was a knowledge of the Dauphin section of Manitoba and its possibilities

as a wheat country. He knew, and Bill Mackenzie knew too, that settlers were

beginning to dot the whole of that country. He had watched them going into it over

the long prairie trails and had seen them hauling their grain a hundred miles by

wagon to Gladstone on the Canadian Pacific Railway. Then he had noted how the

Lake Manitoba Railway and Canal Company aimed to secure the carrying of that

grain by building a line up into Dauphin. He had even mentioned to Bill Mackenzie

what a big opportunity that road was getting, and the twain had talked the matter

over between them. But this day in 1895 Dan found that the Lake Manitoba Railway

and Canal company was in financial difficulties and that he could buy an option on

its charter. He took the option and went to Montreal, where Bill was and they talked

over the details of a partnership. That done they went to a lawyer and had the papers

drawn up. The charter of the Lake Manitoba Railway and Canal company included a

projected line from Portage la Prairie to Dauphin and Lake Winnipegosis. The

partnership, after securing an arrangement with the Manitoba government whereby

it accepted bonds to the extent of $8,000 per mile, a thing at that time unheard of in

the history of railroads in Canada, except where the road was owned by a large

corporation proceeded to build, not from Portage la Prairie, but from Gladstone, from

which point they secured running rights over the Canadian Pacific railway into

Winnipeg.

Curious people have wondered why the Canadian Pacific railway did not rise

in its might and sit on Mackenzie and Mann, with their little scrap of railroad, but

Mr. Z. A. Lash, third vice–president of the road, accounts for the oversight by pointing

out that the quiet methods of Dan and Bill beguiled the big corporation into a gentle

slumber in which it dreamed that it would wait till this little road was running nicely

and turning in quite a neat bit of business to its almighty self, and then – it would

awake and gobble down the tender morsel. Mr. Lash once declared that Mackenzie

and Mann had planned from the first that they would build a transcontinental.

Whether the story be exactly true or not, the owners of the Lake Manitoba Railway

and Canal company made so little noise that they were too big to kill when the other

railroads did wake up, and on December 19, 1896, the twain saw their own first train

run over their own first 125 miles of railroad track. It is said that the Acton

heavyweight looked across at the Kirkfield storekeeper the first time they were alone

together and that the impulse came upon him to grin and shake hands with his

partner. But he swallowed the smile and rattled some nickels in his pocket instead of

shaking hands.

Dan’s great power is the power to appraise a thing at a surface glance. The

thing may be a piece of land, a section of track, or a plain man. He is particularly

474

clever when it comes to a mere man, and that is perhaps part of the reason why this

glorified navy, this river–driver with brains, is so clever a lobbyist. Outside of

lobbying, his great instrument is silence. He has just four answers from which he

draws after a man has submitted a proposition to him.

“Do it!” is the first.

“Don’t do it!” is the second.

“Hell with it!” is the third.

And the fourth refers to the future abode that Dan would recommend to that

man.

A SWIFT TALKER WHEN HE TALKS.

Sometimes there is an exception to Dan’s rule. He has been known to say so

much so quickly as to stagger some men. One day the head of one of his important

departments came to consult with him about the appointment of a man to a certain

position. He named four men, and the chief considered them carefully.

Suddenly he began to talk. He kept it up for fully half a minute and then

stopped, while the department manager was slowly waking to the fact that he had

heard a quicker kind of real character sketches, based on four different kinds of men,

than he had ever dreamed of. The chief had seen these men occasionally in and about

the Canadian Northern offices where they were employed. He had read them as a

man reads a sign outside the window of a flying train.

When you secure the right to see Dan you will be shown to a heavy oak door at

the end of a little dark hallway that leads from the secretary’s offices, and out of which

divers other oak doors lead into divers other places, including William Mackenzie’s

sanctum. Open this particular door and you will find yourself in the very corner of a

big, soft–carpeted room, two–thirds of the length of which away from you sits the man

you are looking for.

It was so that the writer found him.

“What do you want to know,” demanded Dan. He had motioned the newspaper

man to a seat.

The questions were ready, but the replies were very slow in coming. You could

no more lead Dan’s thoughts than you could take an elephant to water on a cobweb.

You could no more tell when he was finished thinking of one question and ready for

the next, or whether he wouldn’t answer it or was still trying to formulate an answer,

than you could tell which way a grasshopper calculates to jump when somebody is

after him for bait.

“Do you remember the first time you met Mr. Mackenzie?”

Mr. Mann chewed his cigar to a rag. Discovering the fact with no apparent

surprise, he threw it away and reached down for another. He surveyed the new one

with mild interest. The seconds flew. He stuck the cigar between his lips unlighted.

He grew uncomfortable in his chair, and, raising himself, bent one knee under him

so that he could sit on one of his feet. “No!” he emitted.

The interviewer then narrated what Mr. Mackenzie had told him of that first

meeting. After at time Mr. Mann remembered that it was so. He seemed, however, to

475

be thinking of the question with slightly renewed interest. The man in the chair

beside the desk waited. The silence grew longer and longer.

Dan seemed to be going over a pleasant reminiscence, and he was chewing the

cigar with the faintest reflection of a smile in his eye.

“I’d like,” he growled in a very low voice, almost as though he were talking to

himself – “I’d like like hell t’tell where I first see M’Kinzie–“

There was an unusually long silence after that. But he wouldn’t.

“When did you first have charge of men?” asked the writer.

“When I was fifteen. Father gave me charge of the hop–pickers, ‘bout a hundred

men, women, and children.”

“How often was that?”

“Once a year.”

“What was your ambition when you were a boy?”

He had the cigar in his back teeth. “Know what I’d ‘a been if I’d ‘a had the

price?”

“What was that, sir?”

“Soldier.”

There was another long, reminiscent silence.

“What did you think of China when you were there?”

“Build a road in this country quicker’n it’d take to sign the contract there.”

At the end of the interview a gray shadow glided into the room. It was William

Mackenzie. Mr. Mann rose from his chair and the two were in consultation for a

moment. It was the brains of the transcontinental that stood there in that corner for

a moment.

Lobbying would scarcely seem to be a companion art with the art of saying

little. Neither would one expect to find such an artist much of a social man. But Mr.

Mann combines them all. He belongs to most of the clubs that are worth belonging to,

and although William Mackenzie smiles to himself over one or two little things he

has piloted through Private Bills Committees, Mann is the master of the game.

DISFIGURING THE MAP

Bill has a bad habit of taking a blueprint map and marking it with soft pencil

to indicate where he thinks a line of rails might well be built907. Sometimes just to

illustrate his point he will take a ruler and draw a line between two points on the

map, which said line will probably run through a few misguided lakes, over the tops

of a dozen misplaced mountains, and down the middle of a big river. The working out

of such small details he leaves to the engineers. But one day he proposed a line

through very innocent level country and the engineers built it. Presently they found

that a certain piece of land over which the rails were already laid had been reserved

by a certain powerful body of men for a very special purpose. When Mr. Mackenzie

907 As demonstrated in an earlier instance: “Mr. William Mackenzie […] sat facing a table covered with

paper; while on the opposite wall a heavy black line wriggled across a map of western Canada. A little

closer inspection showed that there were breaks in the black line, and that it represented the Canadian

Northern railway, as completed, up–to–date.” MAGNATES MACKENZIE & MANN. (1901, April 12).

The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 3.

476

heard about it he was very upset and said a great number of forceful things in a short

time. Dan was mad, too, but he said nothing. The powerful body told Bill he would

have to move the track. Bill grew warmer and warmer, gave instructions that the

tracks were not to be moved and then went back into his office to sulk. So there was

a deadlock in the land.

After a time Bill cooled a little and told Dan some things he wouldn’t have told

when he was mad. When he was finished, Dan went away and was gone a long time.

Nobody knows just what he did, but when he returned the whole matter was properly

settled. The track remained where it was and two stone walls were built on either

side of it. It was Dan the artist who had arranged that.

He has many sides, has this big, silent railroad contractor. Once or twice in a

year he goes away on a tour of inspection of the road. The office may not know where

he is, and his private car may be standing on some siding while the former

construction boss is walking over the ties, sometimes thirty–five miles in a day,

inspecting new work that he wishes to be sure of. He knows how the spikes are driven,

and he knows just how the construction boss that mumbles beside him feels bossing

his navies that pause a moment from digging–in the ballast between the ties or

trimming the edges to gaze curiously after him. Even another side he showed when

he returned to sleepy Acton one day when fortune first began to smile upon him, and

paid up all that his and his brothers’ unfortunate enterprise with the rented farm so

many years before had left unpaid. Even another side it was when he bought a farm

for his father close by the Grand Trunk station at Acton and built a siding so that his

private car may be run in there when he comes to visit.

He is called by many names. Some hate him and say he is a bully. Some are

afraid of him and call him a brute. Some grumble and call him slave–driver. A few

prize him as an excellent friend with whom to take lunch at the club. He hates dudes,

but he admires a man, and there are those men who worship him, in a dry sort of

fashion, and work longer hours at twice the work because it is Dan’s work and the big

boss, the graven image, may be watching them or may be not.

25. Financing the C.N.R. (1903)908

The bill providing for the extension of the Canadian Northern railway to

Edmonton was in committee of the whole last night. This bill is one of the most

important that has come before parliament this session, and is by far the most

important to the Northwest. Under it provision is made for the extension of the

Canadian Northern railway system throughout the Saskatchewan Valley, with

Edmonton and Prince Albert as terminal points. This action rectifies the mistake of

twenty years ago which permitted the main line of the C. P. R. to be carried far south

of the fertile belt and justifies the policy of the Liberal government of the early

seventies, who surveyed the original Canadian Pacific line over very much the same

route as that now to be followed by the Canadian Northern. It would be impossible to

908 From The Canadian Northern Bargain. (1903, July 10). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 3.

477

exaggerate the evil results of the mistake that was made in locating the present C. P.

R. line, or the national advantages certain to result from the opening up of a six

hundred mile stretch of unbrokenly fertile country having every advantage of climate

and situation suitable for agriculture. It has been a long wait to the early settlers of

the Saskatchewan Valley; so long that many of them will never see, and still others

never realize, the legitimate results of their early enterprise. But at any rate they, or

their successors, have the satisfaction of seeing their judgment amply justified.

While it is of the very first importance that the construction of a railway

throughout the Saskatchewan Valley should be secured, the terms upon which it has

been secured are not of less importance. The natural conditions were most favorable,

but the artificial conditions were as unfavorable as the ingenuity of clever men having

a free hand could devise. Under the bargain with the Canadian Pacific railway it

became possible for that company to select their land grant elsewhere than along the

railway line. They exercised that right by making their chief selection in the

Saskatchewan Valley, so that they held the monopoly of traffic in the south with their

constructed railway line and in the north with their earth covering land grants. Not

only was a railway company wishing to build through the Saskatchewan Valley

debarred from receiving any land grant, all the odd numbered sections being already

in the hands of the C. P. R., but the building of the road and the development resulting

would enhance the value of the property of what would necessarily be a rival

enterprise. The lands of the C. P. R. were of no serious value until a road was built

through them. Therefore, any other company than the C. P. R. building a railway

through them was benefiting the C. P. R. by the expenditure of its money to a vastly

greater degree than it was benefiting itself. That was not a direct reason against

another railway company building through the region in question, but it was a very

strong indirect reason, which, as expected by the C. P. R., tended to prevent

capitalists from entering upon such a railway enterprise. It was not to be expected

that the Saskatchewan Valley would be developed by a railway system other than

that of the C. P. R. except it received substantial encouragement from the

government of the country. As long as the government remained under the control of

the Conservative party there was no possibility of such encouragement being given,

but with the change of government came a change of policy, and now the Northwest

is assured of development in its most valuable portion by a competing railway system,

owing directly to the change of policy on the railway question in the Northwest

resulting from the change of government which took place in 1896.

It has been the avowed policy of the present government not to make any

further land grants to railways in the Northwest. The circumstances being as they

were it was impossible to give the Canadian Northern a land grant along its line, but

it was still possible to do as was done in the case of the Manitoba Southwestern

railway for instance, which although built entirely within the province of Manitoba,

received its land grant in the district of Alberta, some six hundred miles away from

the railway line. There is still land ungranted to railways in the Northwest, although

at a considerable distance from any part now in process of railway development, but

the government, adhering to its policy of placing the northwest on the same footing

478

as all other parts of Canada in regard to railway aid, decided that the aid to the

Canadian Northern should depend on the Dominion treasury and not come from any

portion of the Northwest lands, which ultimately would mean, directly from the

pockets of the settlers of the Northwest.

A further change has been made in the method of granting aid in the case of

the Canadian Northern, which is quite as striking as the dropping of the land grant

policy. Hitherto Dominion aid to railways other than land grants, has been in the

form of cash subsidies. The Dominion treasury was drawn up on for so much cash per

mile. The railway company received a present of this amount, and the country ever

after had to pay interest upon it. The present arrangement with the Canadian

Northern does not necessarily involve any actual expenditure. The aid is given in the

form of a guarantee of interest on bonds of sufficient amount presumably to build

and equip the road. That is to say, the Dominion has lent the company its credit to

enable it to raise the necessary funds in the money market at the lowest possible rate

of interest. If the road, when completed, is a financial success, which no one doubts,

the Dominion treasury will not be called upon to pay a cent because of this railway.

Even under the most adverse circumstances that can reasonably be supposed, any

shortage that might occur as between the earnings of the company and the interest

on the bonds, which would have to be paid by the Dominion, is not likely to amount

to anything like what the interest on the ordinary cash subsidy, continuing forever

would be. It is only under bad management that there could be a possibility of the

interest not being made out of the earnings of the company, and in that case the

government not only holds a first mortgage upon the lines aided, but a second

mortgage upon the whole of the company’s existing system; which mortgage can be

foreclosed, and the road taken possession of by the government, if the interest on the

bonds is not paid. There could not be more ample security, not only for the actual

money advanced, but for careful management on the part of the railway company.

A reason why the government’s guarantee of the company’s bonds was

necessary in order to enable the money for the construction of the road to be raised,

was that with the Canadian Pacific entrenched as it is in the money market of

England and owning all the odd numbered sections of land along the proposed

railway, that company was in a position to influence the money market of England

against the Canadian Northern scheme so that the funds could not have been raised

upon the security of the road alone, no matter how meritorious the scheme was. But

with the guarantee of the Canadian government behind it, and Canadian credit

standing so high as it does, even the C. P. R. would not be able, if it dared, to attempt

to adversely affect the money market.

Although the security taken by the country is ample for the guarantee given

and the country does not stand to pay a cent under the transaction, the government

guarantee is still of vast benefit to the company, which benefit the people are entitled

to share in the matter of rates. Provision is made in the bill that the rates on the

company’s lines shall be such as shall be fixed from time to time by the railway

commission. There is no reservation whatever in regard to this power, so that if the

interests of the public are not protected the railway commission and the government

479

which appoints it are responsible. This control of rates does not in any way affect the

security held by the government or increase its financial responsibility; and herein

the arrangement between the Dominion government and the Canadian Northern

differs very materially from that between the Manitoba government and the same

railway company. By the Manitoba agreement, while the province has the right to

reduce the rates, it also and thereby becomes responsible for any shortage that there

may be in the company’s ability to meet the interest on its bonds, without recourse

against the company until the end of a term of thirty years. In the Dominion bargain

the government’s security is absolute and immediate.

The great object in government control of rates is of course to secure the cost

of haul, as distinguished from independent control by the railway company which

naturally bases its rates upon all the traffic will bear. In view of the fact that the

railway commission is not yet appointed nor its powers definitely settled, it has been

thought well to establish the principle in connection with this Canadian Northern

bargain, that government assistance means not only government control in the

matter of adjustment, but also actual reduction of rates, thereby in some degree

recognizing the measure of aid given. To this end it was provided by an amendment

introduced yesterday that maximum rates on certain articles should be fixed in the

mortgage between the company and the government, which rates could not be

exceeded by the railway commission. It is not intended that these maximum rates on

specific articles shall in any way relieve the company from submitting to such rates

on other articles as the commission may see fit to fix, or even lower rates on the same

articles. They are intended rather to indicate the proportion of reduction from present

rates which the commission will be justified in fixing. The articles specified are; grain,

flour, mill stuffs, lumber and coal.

26. Land Grants and the Early C.N.R. (1914)909

Briefly, the land grants were made between 1882 and 1890 to three companies:

The Lake Manitoba Railway & Canal Co., the Winnipeg & Hudson Bay Railway Co.,

and the Manitoba & Southeastern Railway Co., for the construction of certain defined

lines in Manitoba and the then Northwest Territories. The lands at that time had

little value, as by reason of inadequate transportation facilities there was no

eagerness to take up farming in Western Canada, and under the homestead

regulations the few settlers coming into the country obtained all the land they

required for the discharge of homestead duties. The promoters, who had more

confidence than finance, were anxious for Western development, and hawked the

charters from one end of Canada to the other, seeking, in vain, support from the

financial interests. The promoters of the Winnipeg & Hudson Bay Railway Co. visited

New York, London and Paris in a fruitless endeavor to arouse an interest in the

undertaking.

909 From Mackenzie, W. (1914, March 4). Sir Wm. Mackenzie Explains. The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 7. Statement by Sir William Mackenzie (1849 – 1923), president of the C.N.R.

480

Years after the land grants had been authorized by parliament, Messrs.

Mackenzie and Mann bought the charters carrying the land grants and built the

railway. They did what the financiers of Canada, of the United States, of England

and of the continent, after careful scrutiny, repeatedly refused to do. After the

railways had been constructed and the statutory provisions for the grants discharged,

Mackenzie and Mann owned the land exactly in the same way as the man on the

street owns his watch. If they had retired from railway building, and had retained

the lands, they would be in an enviable position in today’s world of finance. One would

not need to go far back in Canadian history to find examples of men who have done

this very thing. However, this was not the course of action. The lands were turned

over to the Canadian Northern Railway Co. and used for issuing land grant bonds.

Lands were sold from time to time at market values, and their proceeds applied in

redemption of these bonds. […]

It will not be denied that the Canadian Northern Railway has shared in the

work of the development of Western Canada in the days when it was needed, when

Western Canada had been for years practically stagnant. The railways in existence

at the advent of the Canadian Northern were located in the southern portion of

Manitoba and the then Territories. The Canadian Northern Railway plunged into the

comparatively unknown and unsettled country in the north, making for the

Saskatchewan River, and subsequently traversed the Saskatchewan Valley from Le

Pas mission to the Rocky Mountains, crossing the river eight times in a distance of

1,000 miles. The company brought into the territory tributary to its railway settlers

from the United Kingdom, the United States and Europe, and placed them on this

land. By reason of the fertility of the soil, which was questioned at that date, it

succeeded in building up a territory which was ultimately known in the expressive

nomenclature of the company’s emigration literature, as ‘The Bread Basket of the

Empire.’

27. Building Ahead of Demand (1913)910

“Since the first of the year,” [said Sir William Mackenzie for the C.N.R.,]

“thousands of homesteaders have been taken up along the lines of the Canadian

Northern railway, or in the territory that is tributary to it. This again will entail the

building of new lines, because, of course, the crying needs of these settlers will be

transportation911. Branches of that sort always have to be built before there is

sufficient revenue to pay for their operation and become a charge upon the rest of the

system. Later on they will all no doubt be lucrative because of the excellence of the

910 From FOUR MILLIONS A MONTH SPENT BY C. N. RAILWAY. (1913, October 22). The Edmonton Capital, p. 3. 911 “During his recent trip through Saskatchewan settlers waited on Mr. Mackenzie, and to encourage

the building of branch lines made him a free gift of right–of–way through their holdings for a distance

of over fifty miles, and they asked for no written agreement, being content with Mr. Mackenzie’s

promise that he would build according to their wishes. As meat and drink are necessary to man, so are

lines of communication to the settler on the western plains.” THE C. N. R. IS A FACTOR IN

WESTERN DEVELOPMENT. (1907, September 12). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 8.

481

territory selected, but the obligation to build is on our shoulders. If other lines of this

kind had not been built, and if these are not, the older settled cities and towns suffer,

for it is the farmers in this country that make the wheels of our industries turn and

keep the commercial institutions in a flourishing condition.” […]

A railway starts to construct a branch into a territory hitherto lacking the

blessing of transportation and all that it entails. Likely enough a considerable

amount of settlers have gone in ahead, anticipating the following of the steel. What

happens as the line progresses? Every five miles or so a station and its sidings are

built. Around that station the nucleus of a new town rises as if by magic. The hotel,

the general store, the post office, the bank, the houses that go to make up a new

trading centre are constructed. The settler has a new and convenient place to buy his

supplies and market his products. Settlement increases. Soon the little spot on the

map has its duplicate stores, its hotels and its elevators, and, mayhap, its banks, and

becomes known to a wider radius. The passenger train stops and the drummer and

visitor alight. And – but what’s the use of continuing? Everybody knows the story of

the growth of new towns. […] Put a sufficient number of farmers in one locality and

a trading centre can live; that trading centre swells the business of the manufacturer

and the wholesaler; eliminate the settlement, or in other words, leave the railway out

of it, and there will be no settlement, no trading centre, no increase in business, and

no addition to prosperity.

28. The Development of Vegreville (1913)912

In the year 1906, just seven short years ago, the Canadian Northern purchased

from Barney Huyke, a settler of the Vegreville district, 100 acres of the present town

of Vegreville. Mr. Huyke was, and is, a shrewd business man. And when the railway

company approached him offering $12 an acre for his quarter–section – which, by the

way, he had purchased form the Canadian Pacific at a much smaller figure – he did

not attempt to “hold up” the road at all. He realized that the railway company could

put that station just where it pleased and a quarter section or two would make no

difference. So he just persuaded the Canadian Northern officials that 100 acres was

quite sufficient for the company to subdivide and sell off, and retained the remaining

60 acres for a little individual melon cutting of his own. Subsequently he sold the 60

acres for one hundred good dollars for each acre. And on the whole, Mr. Huyke made

some money while the Canadian Northern got theirs as a matter of course.

THE STAMPEDE

When it became known for a certainty where the railway station was to be

located there was a little stampede on the part of business men for choice locations.

When the engineer came to survey the townsite he found the merchants and business

men of the community waiting for him. Wm. Clements had taken time by the forelock

and had moved some building material to a point he thought would be the chief

business corner of the future town. He drove the first stake for the railroad engineer

912 From Development of Vegreville Has Been Steady and Rapid. (1913, September 13). The Edmonton Capital, p. 13.

482

and when the corner of First avenue and Main street had been established, he began

erecting a shack which was the beginning of his new store in the new town. The two

banks which had come to the community with a tent, a strong box and a gun to take

care of the currency of the community, were represented upon this particular October

morning by their respective managers, and they staked a lot each on that street

intersection, while Mr. A. M. Thompson grabbed the fourth corner for an implement

store.

Before the engineer had finished running street and alley lines for the new

town of Vegreville, a three–story hotel was in course of construction, a whole building

had been moved from the old town to the new by George Robinson, and a town had

taken shape. By spring the population numbered no less than 500 and many new

buildings for business and residence purposes had been erected. Among the business

blocks was a second hotel – the Alberta – which was a two–story wooden structure

and which was subsequently burned. It has been replaced by a three–story brick

building.

BEGAN DOING THINGS

It was at this time that the citizens went out and turned all roads and trails to

Vegreville, graded Vegreville streets, built sidewalks, bored a well and got underway

as a municipality. And in the spring of that next year they incorporated as a village

and by fall had outgrown their village skirts and were raised to the dignity of a town.

The establishment of a post office, immigration hall, sub agency for the

Dominion Lands Office and various other requirements followed one after the other.

The building of schools and churches was rapid. The citizens were wide awake and

live men who believed in doing things and doing them at once while the other fellow

was thinking it. And it is this spirit that has put Vegreville on the map and is keeping

it there.

29. Education on Rails (1915)913

The better farming trains operated over the lines of the railways in the prairie

provinces, appear to be meeting with a considerable measure of success and

provincial agricultural authorities are convinced that the work so carried on will

result in the spread of better agricultural practices throughout the country.

When such a lecture train completed its itinerary over the lines of the

Canadian Northern in Saskatchewan recently, a compilation of statistics showed

that, in all, 10,464 persons had boarded the cars at the various stopping places,

thirty–four in number, and that of this total, apparently forty–five hundred were

men, thirty–five hundred women and the remainder children. The weather was

unfavorable most of the time. At some of the points when lectures were given rain fell

continually and a great many people were unable to attend on account of the

conditions of the roads. The Saskatchewan government representatives expressed

913 From The Better Farming Trains. (1915, September 29). The Melfort Moon, p. 3.

483

themselves as greatly pleased with the attention given the train under the

circumstances.

The Canadian Northern Railway train was made up of standard sleeping and

dining cars, a nursing car, household science cars, model farm car, crop production

car, boys’ and girls’ car, colonist car, refrigerator car and a water car. Designation

streamers were attached to the outside of the car with lettering in letters large

enough to be easily read, and when the train stopped at a station there was no

confusion among the people. The children gravitated naturally to the boys’ and girls’

car, where lantern slides and various birds and insects were thrown on the screen

and their good and bad traits explained. The older people, bent on more serious

matters, were accordingly enabled to give close attention to the lectures in the other

cars.

The “Crop Production Car” contained samples, mounted, of flax, oats, alfalfa,

western rye grass, wheat, millet, peas, barley, brouse grass and clover. There were

also illustrations of alfalfa in rows, of alfalfa seed cutting; alfalfa for seed; classes of

barley; sample of corn, classes of wheat. There also were descriptive charts

illustrative of experiments of cropping fallowed land during a dry year as against

plowing fallow when land is free from grass and other perennial plants; early as

against late fall cultivation; effect of harrowing on yield of wheat; wheat yields on

stubble land; alfalfa for forage and seed; influence of tillage on 1914 wheat yields;

rate of seeding concerning heavy and light seeding in wet and dry seasons; effect of

packing for second crop of wheat; effect of harrowing on fall cultivated land, and

charts showing relative increase in production under different soil cultivation.

The model farm car, contained sections of barn showing method of bracing;

sheep barn; cow stall; pig pen; split log drag; fence; home–made cattle stanchion;

photos of all kinds of stock and mountings of sold products. This car also contained

the poultry section, showing model of portable poultry house; photographs of the

different kinds of fowls; Saskatchewan trap nest; fattening crate; feed hopper for use

on range; oats sprouter; hen coop; […] experiments showing the effect of water glass

and lime water on egg presentation; complete surgical outfit for operating on fowls

and sample of proper food for fowls. In addition, the literature was in this car, and

printed matter pertaining to agriculture was freely distributed.

The nursery car was equipped with sand boxes, toys and made–up beds. This

car was also a valuable addition to the train; mothers were able to leave their children

in car and attend lectures without the usual annoyance. […]

The lectures usually required three hours in each town, and longer in some

cases, owing to the late arrival of some of the visitors. The usual procedure was to

keep the car closed for a few minutes after arrival and until the people had gathered,

when the cars would be opened and the audience distributed. Mr. Reed914 was

generally the first speaker and lectured on the crop production and other points of

field husbandry, followed by Prof. Bracken915, who dealt with soil cultivation. Mr.

914 F. H. Reed, ex–representative Dominion seed branch, Regina. 915 Professor John Bracken, charge field husbandry, Agricultural College, Saskatoon, Sask.

484

Mooney lectured on the eradication of obnoxious weeds. The Hon. Mr. Motherwell916

dealt with general farming conditions. Mr. Stewart917 spoke on stock raising and

dairy raising and at several points gave demonstrations of milk testing. Mr. A.

Fawcett looked after the model farm car, and answered questions regarding building

matters. Mr. Phillips lectured on poultry raising and egg preservation and at the

principal points gave demonstrations of the killing, plucking and preparing of

chickens for market. Mrs. Archibald918 lectured on household science and gave

demonstrations in cooking.

30. The C.N.R. is Taken Over (1917)919

The government proposes to take over this transcontinental system and

operate it as a public utility as recommended in the Drayton–Acworth report920.

In view of the financial position921 of the Canadian Northern and the large

interests the people of Canada have already in it as a result of the several large public

loans made to its management, it is difficult to see what else the government could

have done. There was but one other course open – to continue lending public funds to

the private owners with which they might meet their recurring interest obligations.

Otherwise the system would pass into the hands of the receivers which would have

been bad for the credit of the country.

916 The Hon. W. R. Motherwell, minister of agriculture, Regina. 917 P. Stewart, district representative, Ontario department of Agriculture, Kenora, Ont. 918 Mrs. Jean Archibald, professor household science, Saskatoon. 919 From GOVERNMENT TAKES OVER CANADIAN NORTHERN RAILWAY. (1917, August 8).

Western Globe, p. 8. 920 “We recommend that the control of the three companies, Grand Trunk, Grand Trunk Pacific and

the Canadian Northern be assumed by the people of Canada.” Commission to Inquire into Railways

and Transportation in Canada. (1917). Report of the Royal Commission to Inquire into Railways and Transportation in Canada. Ottawa: J. de L. Tache. 921 “As for the Canadian Northern railway, its revenues were such that after paying all fixed charges

they had a surplus. The question might be asked why did they require aid? The answer was simple;

any railway system requires continual expenditure for extensions and betterments. The situation in

regard to the Canadian Northern was that any surplus was required for betterments. The Company

was short of cash to meet interest upon its outstanding securities. In peace times, securities could be

floated for such purposes, but this was impossible at the present time. In addition, there were short–

term liabilities of about 100,000,000 dollars. It was not possible for the company, by the issue of

permanent securities to refund that debt. The trouble was that the Canadian Northern railway had

continually to ask for aid.” Government Acquires 9,513 Miles of Lines In Taking Over C.N.R. (1917,

August 8). Red Deer News, p. 3.

485

On the train near Niagara Falls (1912)922

922 Bridge over River – Niagara Falls [Photograph]. (1912). From an anonymous photograph in the

Anthologist’s collection.

486

VII. The American ‘Invasion’

487

A Sudden, Massive Movement

1. The Man Who Made the Valley (1910)923

It is impossible to over–estimate the value and far–reaching importance of the

gift Colonel Andrew D. Davidson924 has conferred upon Canada, but he stands in this

unusual attitude towards it: that while remote posterity will continue to enjoy its

benefits and shall be better able to estimate it through the perspective of time, he has

full credit for it among the people of the present. Yet, like all men who build for the

unborn generations, he has done the work for its own sake, unheeding the present

praise or blame of other men. With total unconsciousness of saying a fine thing

simply, he stated this, himself, at a banquet given in his honor at Winnipeg: “After

an absence of twenty–five years,” said he, “I have come back among my fellow

countrymen to devote the rest of my life in assisting to settle and develop my native

country, and if in the end it can be said Canada is better off because I have lived, then

my mission shall have been fulfilled.” […]

There is no need for going into that story now. It is well enough known, and so

is the other fact, that when he had established the truth about Saskatchewan and

the western plains, in the face of clamor to the contrary, he set about at once to utilize

it by covering the land with farmers. It was an undertaking too immense for any but

the largest and broadest kind of method – the country was so big. He had lived among

the farmers of the middle western states, and he knew the desire that was growing

up among them for more land. It really was a daring conception that lay at the back

of his invasion of those states in search of settlers, for it squarely confronted a

widespread sentiment against changing flags, and a total misunderstanding of

Canada, both as to climate and fertility. But he went at it with understanding, and

in no small way. He created the first, and one of the greatest, of the land–selling

organizations that have canvassed the United States, and began to draw people

across the boundary by hundreds and then by thousands925. It was the nearest and

best area of supply, and all his immigrants took with them both money and skill. At

one time he had no less than three thousand agents at work spreading the news about

Canada and selling Canadian lands. His won first purchase amounted to a million

and a quarter acres, sold in seven months – a time record in retail sales that stands

as yet unbroken.

The way this was done makes a story in itself. Davidson had closed his

purchase and was on his way from Toronto to Chicago, trying to think out a method

of operation that would commend itself to Yankee farmers with sufficient force to get

them into Saskatchewan at once, and in numbers.

923 From The Man Who Made the Valley. (1910, April 28). The Wainwright Star, p. 2. 924 Andrew Duncan Davidson (1853 – 1916). 925 In 1902, Davidson and his partners bought 1,250,000 acres of railway land grants, and half a million

acres of homestead land from the Canadian government. A condition of the purchase was the settling

of a certain proportion of each township by 1907.

488

To begin with, he had every confidence in the country and his own proposition,

and knew full well the right kind of men would make good for themselves, if only he

could reach that kind on a scale broad enough to create a real movement.

That was early in June, 1902. While a few hundred Yankee farmers had

betaken themselves to Canada in the five years preceding, beginning with forty–

seven in 1897, there was no organized system, either of attracting or handling definite

migration; and he deliberately placed himself in a position where such a thing was

necessary. Just how it should be gone about was the question to be answered at once.

The answer presented itself the next day, in Chicago, at a luncheon in the

Union League Club, where he sat at table with a half dozen friends, all of them

bankers. Someone spoke of his having bought a big tract of land “up north,” and then

another asked why he didn’t let them in on some of these good things. He said he had

no objection, but he was not drumming for partners. Then the first man suggested

their going up north with him and looking around.

“All right, come along,” said Davidson. “Come as my guests, if you like.”

“When are you going?”

He had not thought of that, nor of any such thing as a party, but he answered

at once, “On the fifteenth. I’ve a private car, with room enough in it.”

They all said it would be a great trip, and joked each other about going; then

the talk turned to other topics.

While they chattered, a project was rapidly forming itself in Colonel Davidson’s

head. He said no more then, but after luncheon he walked with his first questioner

over to the bank, and going in with him, remarked:

“It seemed like a joke to those men, that trip to Canada. Did you mean it when

you said you would like to go?”

“He hadn’t meant it, really, but inside five minutes he concluded it really would

not be such a bad idea. Colonel Davidson had the car, and nothing would suit him

better than to take the party with him.

“At my expense, both ways,” he put in.

His friend concluded to go.

“There’s your ‘phone,” said the Colonel. “Call up the others, and tell them it’s

an invitation.”

Within an hour all had accepted – and a few more. One car would not be

enough. Davidson arranged with the Pullman people for another, and then went back

to the bank and told his friend he would be glad to have him extend the invitation to

his correspondents in the country. His friend rose to that, and got busy offering his

country bankers the time of their lives. The country bankers accepted to a man. All

the other Chicago bankers were similarly told to ask their correspondents, with a like

response. The one car had expanded to eleven by the time the returns were all in, and

the party, all bankers save for a few newspaper men, left Chicago on the fifteen as

promised, in a special train of their own.

The idea was growing.

At St. Paul they were joined by a few local bankers. But the Western Bankers’

Association happened to be in an annual meeting just then, at Crookston, and

489

Davidson got in touch with the bankers and the Chamber of Commerce at Winnipeg,

with the result that the association as a body was invited to go up there with the

Colonel and be entertained. They accepted, and filled so many cars that the train had

to run from St. Paul to Winnipeg in sections. The upshot was that about five hundred

bankers, from all over the middle western states, were given a day or two of

Winnipeg’s hospitality, and then went west, still in that special train of three sections,

to the place where the lands were, in the Saskatchewan Valley.

Not a word was said to any of them about buying land. They were Colonel

Davidson’s guests, out for enjoyment, and none of the people who helped him

entertain them was permitted to talk business for a moment.

A. D. McRae926, the Colonel’s partner, who, like him, was a Glencoe boy and

who, younger than the Colonel, has also attained to a prominent place in Canadian

offices, was much disturbed about what might happen to them in case nothing should

come of it. Colonel Davidson told him not to worry, but to make the party happy. They

spread out over the prairie and began to make discoveries for themselves. Those

country bankers knew land when they saw it. A correspondent of the London Times was there with a camera. He began to be enthusiastic and take pictures. The Yankee

newspapermen warmed up to the possibilities. The city bankers promptly arrived at

a belief that here was a great big opening. Within two or three days that excursion

party without the slightest solicitation had bought 180,000 acres. “The American

Invasion” had taken tangible form.

The development and carrying out of the idea that originated in a chance

remark at the Union League Club luncheon had cost the partners $100,000. But by

the first month of the next year, it had sold 1,250,000 acres of Canadian land to people

from south of the line, and the following summer saw thousands of settlers moving in

and breaking for their first crop in the north.

For the bankers from the smaller cities of Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the

Dakotas, who had gone in with the party, became active and sincere propagandists

as soon as they got back to their homes, and did not hesitate to commend to their

friends and customers a purchase that had been good enough for their own money.

The rest was comparatively easy work, in the details of organizing a system of

agencies and sales. All America and most of Europe knows what followed.

That first memorable bunch of Yankee capitalists created an action that is

“Like a circle in the water / Which never ceaseth to increase itself.”927 The number of

farmers passing from the States to the western plains has risen with every year that

has followed. In 1909 they counted up to more than 90,000. It is fairly sure that this

year 125,000 will come; possibly 150,000. So that in less than eight years that which

began with good–natured chaffing across a luncheon table has solidified into the

growth of a new nation.

926 Alexander Duncan McRae. 927 “Glory is like a circle in the water, / Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself / Till by broad spreading

it disperse to naught.” –Joan La Pucelle in Shakespeare’s The First Part of King Henry the Sixth, Act 1, Scene 2.

490

“Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth!”928 To promote a nation is to touch

the apogee of business invention. And see how it happened: A casual remark found

lodgment in the mind of a man alert enough to catch it, and strong enough to carry

out, by instant means, the purpose it gave rise to; and so, a new nation is growing up,

in power and prosperity.

2. The Magnetic Northwest (1906)929

“I hear the tread of pioneers,

Of nations yet to be;

The first low wash of waves where soon

Shall roll a human sea.”930

It is now four years since an American magazine writer wrote an article for the

New York Review of Reviews, under the heading, “Why do they trek?”931 That was

the first news of the Empire to cause the press and the people of the Republic to sit

up and take notice. It came as a mild shock to Americans, this fact that hundreds of

farmers in the middle west were selling the old farms, upon which many of them had

been reared, and buying new homes or homesteading in the houseless prairies of the

Canadian Northwest.

It was something new and novel to see men moving out of the states, into which

the tide of immigration was flowing in a ceaseless and ever–flowing stream. If this

troubled and often unsanitary stream had flowed on across the continent and emptied

into the Dominion, it would have mattered little, but it did not. It spread out and

drained into cities, as the water off a new irrigating canal seeks the swales, was

swallowed and became part of the Republic.

And while this annual army of European immigrants was being put through

the crucible, melted, moulded, and made into American citizens, the best blood of the

native–born agriculturalists, was passing over the boundary to the British

possessions.

America, as the republic is, and should be called, was taking the raw material

– the crude ore from the mine of humanity, and giving Canada the finished product.

928 From the Book of James in the King James version of the Bible. 929 From Warman, C. (1906, March 28). The Magnetic North West. The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 5. Written by Cy Warman (1855 – 1914), the ‘Poet of the Rockies’. 930 From On Receiving an Eagle’s Quill from Lake Superior, by the American poet John Greenleaf Whitter (1807 – 1892). 931 “Why do they “trek”? This is a question which many of my fellow–countrymen in the United States

are now asking with regard to the stream of emigrants from the republic to the Dominion of Canada.

But yesterday the stream flowed the other way, and the people of Canada trooped over to the United

States, thousands of them, every year. They settled on our vacant lands, they entered our workshops,

they competed with native–born citizens of the United States for positions of trust in store and

warehouse, and they took places of eminence in the professions, notably law and medicine. Now the

trek is to the north; the “balance of trade” is with the Canadians.” Warman, C. (1902). MIGRATION

TO THE CANADIAN NORTHWEST. The American Review of Reviews, XXVI(3), p. 293.

491

The Press comments upon the article referred to caused other magazines to

send men and see for themselves, and to write of the “American Invasion” of Canada.

They came and saw and confirmed the stay of the trek. They saw the crude houses of

the homesteader dotting the prairie, as the first scattered drops that precede an April

pour–down dimple the dust in a country lane.

Many American newspapers openly deplored the movement that threatened to

depopulate the Western States, but the more they deplored, the more men marveled

that it should be so, and the more they came to see for themselves. And as often as a

man came, he became convinced of the richness of the soil, the productiveness of the

prairies, and the fair prospect of the future held for this new land. Every satisfied

settler became a land–boomer, almost always unconsciously, but always effectively.

He wrote home of the abundant harvest, the cheapness of the land, and the peace and

quiet of the community.

As the years passed, the stream of immigration swelled, until half a hundred

thousand of the best farmers in America are crossing the line annually. They bring

their teams, utensils, and in almost every instance a goodly wallet. They usually come

up in the early spring, stake their claim, return to the States, harvest and thresh the

crop, and then move north.

When harvest time comes they reap the new fields, and so have transferred

their families and effects from the States to Canada, without missing a harvest, and

almost without realizing the fact that they have passed from the shelter of the Stars

and Stripes to the equally substantial shelter of the Union Jack.

In the wake of the Yankee homesteader comes the Yankee investor, making

another stream of settlers, as necessary to the development of the Dominion as are

the tillers of the soil. If American capital has flowed more freely into Canada than

British capital, it is because the former is less timid than the latter. The average

American investor will take chances that seem unwarrantable to the eye of the

conservative capitalist of the old world. Sometimes this is to the Yankee’s advantage,

often it is his undoing. If the claim pans out, well, he waxes wealthy. If it pinches, he

perishes, but not utterly, from the earth. He goes down, to be sure, takes the benefit

of the court, but never suffers himself to be crowded out.

In a country like Canada, in the growing time, where there is peace and plenty

and prosperity, and a promise of at least a decade of unbroken boom, men make

serious slips, and find their footing again almost without disturbing their bank

accounts.

So far, for the past five or six years, it has been next to impossible for one to

lose on land, or even town lots, bought with intelligence, so steady have been the

upward climb of values. How long this condition will hold out, it is difficult to say.

[…]

Of one thing the American Republic is convinced, and that is that the Canadian

Northwest has passed the experimental stage. It is a fact, and will henceforth be a

potent factor in the feeding of the world. The railways and large land companies

interested in the south–western states are “viewing with alarm,” as they say on

492

political platforms, the trek to the north. […] It has taken some time for these

interests to realize the change that has come.

By the cradles of men who are moving out of the Republic their mothers sang,

fifty years ago, that old, old jingle which the early settlers used to jolly the in–coming

immigrants:

“Come along, come along,

Don’t be alarmed;

For Uncle Sam is rich enough

To give us all a farm.”932

They sing that song no more in America. The States are filling up, and so far

as free lands go, the story has been told. Uncle Sam is on his uppers. “Canada” must

be substituted for “Uncle Sam” in that old song.

I do not mean to say that the Republic’s day is gone, but to state the undeniable

fact that Canada’s day is just now dawning. […] I see no reason why it should be

otherwise, for only a garden spot has been broken in the boundless fields of the

Northwest. Only a handful of settlers have settled so far, when one comes to consider

the resources and to measure the immensity of that long–neglected land of promise.

But this last west will fill rapidly, now that the world is coming to know about it. It

is the end of the Rainbow, the last stop of the Star of Empire in its westward march,

for it is the end of the west.

3. Canada’s New Settlers (1902)933

About the reality and the large proportions of the American movement into the

Canadian West, there can be no doubt. Perhaps better than mere official figures, a

few surface indications will help to give readers at a distance an idea of this influx.

The office buildings of Winnipeg are thronged with American colonization companies.

The other day, within half a block on one side of Main street, my eye caught the names

of the following: Settlers’ Colonization Company, Northwest Colonization Company,

Haslam Land Company, International Land Company, Manitoba Land and

Investment Company, Iowa and Manitoba Land Company. Everywhere one goes over

in the prairie today, the hotel registers swarm with the names of Americans. The

well–known Western American type of face and the equally familiar Western

American accent are everywhere in evidence. I have been in railroad coaches lately

where from one–half to two–thirds of the passengers were Americans. Taking dinner

at Red Deer, Alberta, I was interested to hear the man next to me say, “I’ll bother you

932 Adapted from Uncle Sam’s Farm, a song and poem by Jesse Hutchinson, Jr. (1813 – 1853). The full chorus reads: “Then come along, come along, make no delay; / Come from every nation, come from

every way. / Our lands, they are broad enough – don’t be alarmed, / For Uncle Sam is rich enough to

give us all a farm.” 933 From Osborne, W.F. (1902, October 22). CANADA’S NEW SETTLERS. Boston Evening Transcript, p. 24. Written by William Frederick Osborne (1873 – 1950).

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for the salt.” That “bother” stamped him absolutely as an American. Looking around

I suddenly realized that every man at the table save myself was from south of the

line. That same day, when I came out of the dining–room I handed the proprietor,

who stood at the door, a $5 bill. He gave me back four “cart–wheels” and a 50–cent

piece. The country is flooded as it never has been before with American silver. These

are little surface ripples that it seems to me ought to be effective in conveying a notion

of how the land is being invaded.

The outsider may quite naturally ask, “Is this a boom manipulated by

speculators, or is it a case of actual settlement by individual farmers? Are colonists

really crossing the border with their families and effects, or is the land of the

Canadian Northwest simply being tied up in blocks by investors who intend to hold

for higher and even for fancy prices?” Upon the answer to this question will hinge our

decision as to whether the movement in question is in the interest of the country or

not. Out of hand, it may be said that there seems to be a general agreement that the

large speculator, so far as he has come in, is a menace. The fact is, a hard and fast

answer cannot be given to the question. Both statements are true of the territory as

a whole. One thing is true of one part of the area; the other, of another. The official

figures of the people who have come in from the United States to date would probably

be disappointing and might not seem to justify the largeness of the terms used in

regard to the immigration. Twenty thousand for last year, with a likelihood of double

that number this, will seem small to those acquainted with the history of the Western

States of the Union. But the fact of the matter is, the seed has barely been sown; the

trail has barely been blazed out. The movement is not fairly under way yet. A large

number of delegates have visited the country and have delivered favorable reports,

but their real following has not yet crossed the line.

The 20,000 and 40,000 are the mere advance guard. Few of these large

colonization companies have put many people on the ground yet. Many of them have

bought during the past summer, and their clients have not had time to get here; and

they must put the people on the land or lose heavily. I have no doubt that in

connection with the unloading of these lands on individual settlers there will be some

misrepresentation and some bitterness of heart. We can only hope that this standing

feature of land speculation will be kept at a minimum. As I have said, there is in

general a somewhat skittish feeling in regard to the speculator; and the resident of

the country who is warmly interested in its development inclines much more too pin

faith to the prospective immigrant who comes and looks over the land for himself and

to the delegate who represents himself and a group of friends. I should not be

surprised if it proved true that to date there has been more speculation in Manitoba

and Saskatchewan, and more actual settlement in Assiniboia and Alberta. I don’t

think there has been very extensive settling on the land in Manitoba yet. There has

beyond question been some, and that by probably richer individual farmers than have

located in any of the three other divisions. The foregoing does not mean that the land

is poorer in Manitoba, that there has been misrepresentation with respect to its lands,

or that the settlement there will be ultimately smaller. The truth probably is that the

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proximity of the flourishing city of Winnipeg has lent wings to the speculator–

investment idea in the case of Manitoba.

The history of what have been known as the “vacant lands” about Winnipeg

confirms this view. The territory for about twenty miles on each side of the Red River,

extending say forty miles south and twenty miles north of the city, was originally

granted to the h–––––s. These shiftless and impecunious people got rid of it at once

to speculators at trifling prices. Then, when the first influx came from the East, these

lands, held at somewhat high figures, found themselves passed over in favor of

holdings in other parts of the province. Thus they lost the chance of being taken by

the first rush. By degrees prejudice developed in regard to them. Why should lands

in the vicinity of the best town in the country remain unoccupied, unless there was

something wrong with them? This was a natural view, although, so far as I know,

nothing in the character of the soil justifies it. It may be, if anything, over–heavy, but

it is very rich and will yield great crops for an indefinite period. The interesting thing

is that the Americans have virtually pounced on this block, prices all over it have

climbed by leaps and bounds. Land thirty miles from Winnipeg that could have been

bought two years ago for $2 an acre now runs as high as $15 and even more.

For actual settlement in connection with the present migration the section of

the West one is most disposed to talk of is Alberta. Americans are simply pouring in

there – Americans not from Washington and Nevada and Far Western States, but

from Iowa, Wisconsin, Kansas and the rest. These are Western people to begin with,

and the idea of going a long way West doesn’t bother them. In most instances, owing

to the policy of sending avant coureurs in the shape of delegates, they have their exact objective definitely settled before they start. This explains why it does not make them

nervous to pass by large areas of untaken and fertile land before they get to the

district of their choice. They are well informed. They go deliberately. […]

The ranching country par excellence of Alberta lies in what goes by the name

of the Chinook Belt. The climate in the territory stretching from about forty miles

north of Calgary to the boundary – a distance of say 100 miles – is controlled by the

Chinook winds. Before these, a foot of snow fades in an incredibly short time. They

clear the side hills specially fast, and this gives stock a good chance. The Mormon

colony from Utah stands well within this belt, in the Lethbridge district, about their

town of Cardston. This sect now numbers about 4000, and its members are extremely

prosperous. Some of the Americans are going into ranching. We have been told of

occasional large herds being driven into Canada from as far South as Texas, within

the last twelve months; but these cases are rare. A letter from an intending American

settler in which the writer said he was bringing twenty–five head of cattle and

eighteen horses, represents much the commoner case. In point of fact, the Albertans

are not clamoring of the large rancher. He ranges his cattle on the public domain,

and, ten chances to one, takes his money out of the country. The ordinary farmer with

a small herd is the better acquisition. […] Alberta and British Columbia occupy a

very interesting relation to each other. The British Columbia mining camps and

towns offer a good market for the dairy products of northern Alberta; while valleys

like the Okanagan and the Chilliwhack will provide, and are actually providing, the

495

fruit and the fancy vegetables that Alberta cannot produce. This and the climate

make strong drawing cards that lead the incomers to pass without chafing the

hundreds and hundreds of miles between Portal, where most of them enter, and

Calgary.

The Calgary & Edmonton line – hitherto, by the way, a wretched apology for a

road, though there seems to be good promise of improvement now – runs north and

south with those two towns, two hundred miles apart, as its termini. So far as towns

along this branch are concerned, those around which the Americans have settled most

notably are Ponoka, Lacombe and Wetawiskin. But these are simply the most

notorious names. Americans abound along the whole line. I am informed that from

forty to fifty miles east of Ponoka, and for twenty miles west of it, nine–tenths of the

settlers in a well–settled district are Americans. […]

Going north to Edmonton about two weeks ago, I found practically all the

travelers in my car, Americans. I was specially interested in a couple of young

American speculators who had been met at Calgary by men who were to drive them

from the town of Olds out over the surrounding district. I was struck in this case – as

I have been in a number of others – with the youth of the men who had come across

the line to make large deals. I recall meeting two regular lads, on a two weeks’

furlough from Armour’s packing houses at Chicago, who talked in figures that made

me stare, and who showed astonishing business instinct, knowledge of soils, and so

on. Until now at any rate – whatever, thanks to American influence, be true of the

future – native Canadians of corresponding age couldn’t do business of that kind in

this country. For a beardless boy to engineer a large party of hard–headed farmers

into a new country with intent to settle them on land he himself had bargained for in

large quantities, would be unheard of in this country. Although the Canadian West

is more disposed than the Canadian East, and infinitely more disposed than the

mother country, to give young men a chance, we have still been more conservative in

this regard than our neighbors to the south. I look for considerable advance toward

the American view in this matter.

To come back for an instant, though, to the first pair of young Southerners I

spoke of: The train for Edmonton was to leave at 8.45 A. M.; but they were on foot

hours before that. We took a long walk before breakfast, and I was amazed at their

inquisitiveness, their enterprise, their knowledge. Here were striplings, the

prospective buyers of large blocks of Canadian land, and the precursors of large

parties. Wherever there was an excavation, they examined the soil; they took note of

the variety of trees; they were delighted to find Kentucky blue grass, or something

very like it, in the lawns of the houses, in the grass plots of the barracks of the

mounted police. One of them, as we passed a garden, leaped over the fence and laid

bare part of a hill of potatoes to form an idea of the yield. Both plucked sweet–peas,

a few other flowers, and grasses, which they said they would mail wrapped in Calgary

papers to their friends at home. This is the kind of immigration literature that has

been flooding the Western States during the last couple of years. Everywhere along

the line after we started north, they conjectured the rainfall, scanned the growth of

willows, the facilities for drainage; and the like. […]

496

Among all the Americans I have met recently, I have been much impressed

with the positive unanimity of their admiration for the way law is administered and

justice meted out on this side of the line. And this expression you do not have to elicit;

they volunteer it. Early in June of this summer, going south on the Canadian Pacific

Railway boat that plies on Lake O’Kanagan in British Columbia, I met a man who

said he had mined in Nevada for the last thirteen years. He had come north, he

volunteered, to settle under the British flag, because life and property are not

adequately protected in the Western States. It is a fact that our far western

territories, our Yukon and British Columbia mining camps have been almost

absolutely without the shooting and stabbing episodes that, we think, have been so

marked a feature in the ranching and claim–jumping life of the Western States. […]

These new people are, almost to a man, going to become naturalized Canadians. This

is not a general judgment, the wish making itself father to the thought. I have made

it subject of special inquiry. Few of the Southerners coming in are violently pro–

American. Many of them are foreigners – Scandinavian and other – who had not yet

become thoroughly incorporate in American life. A very large number are repatriated

Canadians. Many are touched with the Populist discontent that has had its home in

the Western States. All are in it for No. 1, care nothing for sentiment, and little for

the flag under which their competence is acquired. Before they have been here many

weeks even, they realize that for practical purposes with us in Canada, monarchy,

aristocracy and the like are only names, that at least as much liberty is to be enjoyed

under British rule as under Republican institutions. Governmentally then and

sentimentally, I cannot see but that these newcomers will, long before they acquire

the franchise, have sunk quietly into the bosom of our people, and that when they

come to the polls they will proceed to move along distinctively Canadian lines –

lending us, as I observed before, as a result of their past experience, signal assistance

in the solution of our problems. […]

I cannot close without saying how largely significant in an international and

even racial sense the movement seems to me to be. It occurs to me that if one could

assume a lofty coign of vantage, could blend detail into the general drift, and get a

total view, the migration before us would appear to well–nigh equal the most notable

excursions of history. One million people knocking at the eastern gates of the United

States this year; scores of thousands of well–equipped, skilled tillers of the soil being,

partly thereby, forced out and over her northwestern frontier – the whole movement

due in part to specific causes, but in part also to the instinctive reaching forth of our

masterful race for room to burgeon out, for dominion and conquest.

497

Personal Stories

4. Spurred by Faith and Hope (1910)934

The story of the migration of the American settlers to the Canadian west is one

of real human interest. It is a story of a quest for homes, a change in the tide of

colonization, a story of the lure of the land; and it is delightfully interesting to greet

individuals of that legion of immigrants on the threshold of the new, strange land of

their adoption – the cradle of an empire and a new race – a race born of the diverse

entities now ‘fusing’ into a vigorous young nation in which is wrapped up their hopes

and their aspiration. They have cut adrift from the past and its association, and to

them belongs the future; for their desire for land has led them along the path of the

pioneers under a foreign flag. Sanguine and expectant, they are crossing the border

seeking only the recompense of the pioneer, which may be described as a home

unfettered and true freedom. To some – the unfortunate, we shall say – it may mean

disappointment, but to the majority it means a fortune and independence. Every one

of them is imbued with the hope that springs eternal, born of confidence in

themselves, and seemingly assured of being realized in the land of promise to which

they are coming.

In that throng there are men of many nationalities and many callings or

professions, all answering to the slogan of “back to the land.” There are doctors,

lawyers, merchants, agents, bankers and farmers, though of course the latter class is

vastly in the majority, rubbing shoulders in the rush to the virgin prairies. All have

the same story to tell of succumbing to the irresistible attractions of the opportunities

to acquire a fortune comparatively easily from the fertile soil of Western Canada.

A GOOD SAMPLE OF SETTLER

W. C. Searles, formerly of Biscowbell, Wis., is a good sample of the progressive

farmer and business man who is classed as an immigrant in this throng. Mr. Searles

was formerly in the employ of the International Harvester Company in Wisconsin,

but gave up a responsible position and a salary of $2,500 per annum to undertake

farming on a large scale in the Canadian West. He has located at Suffield, Alberta,

where he has purchased a considerable acreage. Mr. Searles, in leaving Portal,

remarked: “I had to give that train crew $2 to put me in the train, but it is worth the

price, I guess. You have got one of the greatest countries that the sun shines on.”

The amount of wealth they are bringing with them is almost amazing, for

nearly all of them are more than ordinarily well off financially; not one of them is a

pauper; and there is scarcely one of them who will not become a valuable and law–

abiding citizen, desirous and capable of taking his part in the development of the

country, and a keen, intelligent interest in its affairs. I formed that opinion from

casually meeting many of them, and discussing with them their intentions and their

hopes, which if realized by the truly sanguine, will mean a new era for the west.

934 From NEW SETTLERS FROM SOUTH SPURRED BY FAITH AND HOPE. (1910, May 26). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 8.

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TRAVEL IN PULLMANS

The ladies and younger members of the families travel up in the Pullman935

and first–class cars. To them it is more of an excursion than a hardship, as a removal

to a new country is often regarded. Many of the heads of families also are preferring

to travel thus in style to accompanying their effects in a box car, and leave the latter

to a “hired man.” They can afford it, and why should they not?

The contents of some of the cars of effects passing through here are almost

amusing when you think of the open prairie to which many of them are consigned.

There is everything from a dog to a mule in the shape of animals; everything from

kitchen utensils to an upright rosewood piano in household furniture; everything

from a steam plowing outfit to a hoe in farming equipment, and everything from

ducks and geese to a parrot in those side–door Pullmans. “Just taking them along,

you know, to remind me of old times, because I could not part with my pots,” one will

remark, while another will ascribe the touch of sentiment to his “kids.” But in nearly

every case the equipment indicates prosperity in the old home in the south.

WILL BE GOOD CANADIANS

Many of them come with the fixed determination to assimilate with the

Canadian neighbors as rapidly as possible, and to adapt themselves to the changed

conditions. Every day you hear that expressed in the conversation, though, of course,

there are always rabid Republicans who profess an undying love for Uncle Sam and

his institutions.

“This is the first time I have ever looked on that flag and given a darn for it,”

said one grizzled old native of Michigan, en route to his future home at Burdette, Alta., by way of introduction, as he gazed up at the Union Jack which floated lazily

in the breeze over the Canadian customs house. “Now, however, that my effects are

under it, I am going to try and be a good citizen and worthy of the traditions which I

know it represents, even if I am an American. I know that if a man does right under

that old flag he will get a square deal, and I hear that a poor man has just as good a

chance as another. That isn’t so down home – for I must still look back to the old state

where I was born and where I have lived nearly fifty years as my ‘home,’ just as my

old mother cherished her remembrance of her girlhood days in old Quebec.”

The speaker is a shoemaker by trade, but is also a practical prairie farmer, and

associated with him is a partner who is also a veteran of the soil. They had two cars

of effects with them, and a steam breaking outfit, together with a bunch of other

valuable equipment, was following them to Burdette.

REASON FOR CHANGE

Asked as to his reasons why he sought to change his home and allegiance at

this late period of life, the old man replied sprightly: “I’ll show you what a ‘young’ old

man can do. I realize that you have a great country here with corresponding

opportunities, and I am no stranger to the pioneering or the frontier. We helped to

settle Dakota, and my parents also knew something of the troublous times in

Minnesota when pioneering did not mean travelling in a Pullman car to your location,

nor settling down with the comforts of civilization around you.”

935 A railroad sleeping car. Named after the Pullman Company that manufactured them.

499

That is the kind of man who will be a good settler and a good Canadian. He

has the necessary capital to make a success of farming from the very inception of his

operation.

The lure of the free land was responsible for bringing another loyal Yankee to

the home of the maple. “I am after a homestead and pre–emption. That’s what brings

me to the realm of King George,” he said to me. “I want you to understand that I took

some bringing, too, for I had my doubts about his royal nibs. Many of my neighbors

down in Iowa urged me not to come, not to leave the United States; but I came and

here I am. I don’t’ see much difference, either, between this country and that over

there where you see the Stars and Stripes flying,” he said, pointing to Old Glory above

the U.S. customs house beyond the border. “If you have not got any of those grafters

like we have in politics, from the ground up, down home, then this is good enough for

me. I want to get away from those fellows and away from the trusts. They are making

it hard for the poor and honest man to get a living at all now, for between them and

the tariff, which they make to suit themselves, they get us both going and coming –

take a little off everything we grow and everything we buy. I understand that you

pride yourselves up here that you have neither in an offensive or injurious degree,

and if that is true it certainly sounds good to me. I want land and a home, and I can

get both of them in Canada by hard work, and I am full of it,” he said, with a

significant look as he turned into his car.

PLUCK AND PATHOS

It is a far call from such light–hearted confidence as this to a sorrowing young

widow, shrouded in black, with her little family en route to a claim in far–off Alberta.

It was a tale pathetic in the extreme and told almost through tears, but one which

revealed indomitable pluck, genuine heroism, and the devotion of her sex in the face

of distracting grief and discouraging circumstances which would have made strong

men waver. It was a case where a frail woman had risen to a situation. The homestead

to which she was going had been located by her husband last fall, after which he had

returned and spent the winter at their former home, and completed arrangements for

their removal this spring. Only a few weeks ago he kissed her and their little ones

good–bye and left for the west with a carload of stock and effects, full of life and cheery

hope, with an assurance of their comfort and success in a home which was to be really

their own – just as soon as he could complete the arrangements and erect the little

house that was to be their temporary home.

He was in full health and strength, and little they thought that that was a last

farewell, or that the future so apparently bright, together with their happiness, was

soon to be blasted. On the way up he had the misfortune to run a splinter from the

car door into this thumb, and from this, blood poisoning developed. The doctor did not

immediately recognize the real cause of his illness, and within an alarmingly short

space of time he was beyond medical and surgical skill. The first shocking intimation

his poor widow received of his illness was a telegram calling her to his death–bed. It

was a long way there from their Indiana home, and before she could reach him he

had succumbed.

500

“Oh, the bitter sorrow of that moment, the utter helplessness as it seemed, and

the black future with blighted hopes and prospects which I faced among strangers, I

hope no other woman may have to experience, though I know thousands will!” she

exclaimed tearfully. “Then I realized that I must live for our children, and try to make

a home for them as he had intended to do. There was no time to repine. I accompanied

his body back home, and it is now peacefully resting in the little cemetery near where

we lived. Then I had to consider the problem of the future and the future of our little

boys. It was unavailing to sit down and sorrow. We had planned together to make our

home in Alberta: I know he wanted to go there, and that he was enthusiastic over

what we might accomplish there, and so I decided to make an effort to fulfil those

plans we had laid together, and at the same time fulfil what was his wish. I am going

up there to complete our homestead duties936, and our boys will be able to help me,

and then when we are through, there will be a future for them. I expect it will be

lonely – oh, so lonely – where we might have been so happy,” she said wistfully,

bespeaking of a broken heart, “but where could I go now, that it would not be lonely?

It will be better, maybe, for I shall have something new to think about, something

real to do, with strange associations and surroundings. At any rate, I am going to try

to fulfill his work,” she said determinedly, as she lovingly looked at her little family.

There is many a genuine heroine as well as hero whose name is not blazoned on

marble or bronze.

RETURNS TO HIS NATIVE LAND

In the throng, there are a few Canadians who are returning to their native land

to be repatriated, and among the number whom I met here was a really interesting

personality – a man who had known the Canadian west more than thirty years ago

and who had been a resident of Winnipeg when it was emerging from the trading post

to the village stage. He was G. Popham, a brother of a photographer in West Selkirk,

who is also one of the real pioneers of the west and a veteran of the Wolseley

expedition. “I am indeed glad to get back to Canada,” said Mr. Popham, “and under

the old Union Jack, for I love it just as dearly as I did when I served under it in the

Fenian raid, 45 years ago. I am coming back to Canada after an absence of thirty

years, but I am coming back a Canadian and a British citizen still, for throughout all

those years in the United States I have prized my citizenship too highly to renounce

it or to swear allegiance to another than the king.” […]

Mr. Popham had his back broken when a young man, and for over 20 years he

was an invalid, or almost a cripple. This necessitated his removal to the south for the

sake of his health, and for the past thirty years, he has been a resident of Missouri.

He is now a hale and vigorous old gentleman, showing but little of the effects or traces

of hi slong period of incapacity, and as he remarked, is coming to the Canadian west

and its opportunities to “make up for lost time.” He has located near Gull Lake Sask.

[…]

TIRED OF DAKOTA

936 Most women were forbidden from claiming Canadian homesteads. There was an exception for

widows with young children, as in the present case.

501

George E. Palmer, formerly of Lemdon, N.D., has come to Canada because he

found in southern Alberta the climate he has been looking for. He has located near

Medicine Hat, where he has secured what he considers “as fine a bunch of land” as

amny man ever put a steam plow into. “I am sick and tired and disgusted with the

wind and sand down there in Dakota. I have been there for 35 years and I think I

have become entitled to a change, to some of the comforts of climate and

surroundings. I have not seen anything which suited me quite so well as the place I

am going to. The weather there is equable and moderate all the year round, while

down in Dakota it was either so hot, or cold or windy that there was no comfort in

being alive. I have coal close to my claim and pre–emption, so there is ample fuel

guaranteed, and I can use the steam plow which I am bringing up to break almost

the entire block.”

Mr. Palmer was one of those who had his stock properly inspected before

leaving home, and he had the satisfaction of travelling up in a Pullman car while his

animals were brought along and passed through the inspection by an employee

absolutely without delay. Speaking of this phase of the immigration, Mr. Palmer said:

“The immigrants are alone to blame. They should comply with the law, and have their

inspection done properly before leaving. They know, or ought to know before they

leave, what they have to face, and it would be incomparably better to have it done

before any of the stock is loaded. There is no use trying to disguise the fact that many

of them have diseased animals, and it is only fair to all of us that we should be fully

protected against loss from that source. Yet they are the ones who are most ready to

spread false impressions very frequently. I know of a man who brought several horses

and shipped them direct to Canada, without any inspection whatever. He was held

up here and had one of his horses shot for glanders. The animal had not been diseased

when he got it, and probably would have caused him to lose every hoof if he had been

permitted to pass unchallenged.”

PRAISE FOR THE MOUNTED POLICE.

“I have often heard of the watchful care manifested for its citizens by the

British Empire, but I thought at one time that the stories of sending an army or a

fleet to release one man were largely fairy tales, until I spent a few months up here

in Canada some years ago. […] I watched the operation of those red coasts (Mounted

police) and say, I never thought any government would take such an interest in us,

or that any such body of men existed who did their duties so conscientiously well.

Why, they used to make a round among the isolated settlers and even enquire if they

had food and fuel enough, though it must have been a trying task for them to make

that round in the cold. They did not think of that though, apparently. Then they would

ask how the neighbors were, if there was anything requiring attention in the vicinity,

or anyone who was annoying it. Why, it was better than the precincts of many of our

cities, and to think that such policing was enforced out on the frontier was a

revelation to me, at any rate. I made up my mind that any government and any people

who took such a kindly interest in the welfare of isolated settlers, foreign residents, I

may say, were good enough for me. I take my hat off to those red coats every time.”

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5. The Grousers Return (1901)937

Car loads of American settlers have commenced to pour into the Northern part

of Alberta, says the Innisfall Free Lance. On Friday a car full from Idaho passed through the town leaving its quota at the several points along the line. Letters are

received daily from our Yankee cousins enquiring about these parts. The expressed

intention of the whole American colonies is to crop their lands in the Northern States,

as they cannot sell it, and then pull for Alberta and make preparations for

immigrating. The enterprising Yankee can see from the distance that Alberta is the

“land of promise,” and will sell out in his own land his little all, and seek better times

in a new country, where the times are bright and the outlook prosperous. They do not

find land sharks here ready to receive them with open arms, and then dupe them into

buying unprofitable stakes, but are left entirely to their own discretion; if they don’t

like the lay of the land, they can go back from whence they came.

In the past, many from across the border struck these parts and, not finding

“The Golden Eldorado” of their dreams where wealth was of no consideration to the

natives and could be had for the taking, left in disgust to follow their old life of hard

work and burdensome taxation. The following poem which we got from an American

(if not original, he says it is his own production) is most appropriate in describing

those grousers who leave these parts and swear it is unfit for a white man to live in;

are gone about a year and then slide in again persuaded that it is “as good as is goin’

anywhere.”

Going Away From Alberta They are going away from Alberta

They are going on the cars

They have hitched their little wagons,

To the smoothest set of stars

They have left their little homesteads

In this cold and snowy north

They are going away from Alberta

To the dry and sunny south

And their pockets now are bulging

For they’ve sold off all their goods,

And they’ll spend their little fortune

In the dry and dismal woods

Where the swamps are full of serpents

And the mosquitos full of tunes,

The climate full of ague,

And the people full of prunes.

Coming Back to Alberta They’ll be coming back to Alberta

When a year or two has flown

We shall know when they’re approaching

When we hear them weep and moan

They’ll be coming back to Alberta

And they’ll be speckled with the flies,

They’ll be coming on the bug train,

They’ll be coming on the ties.

They’ll be coming sore and needy,

Full of oaths and woe and bile,

And they won’t look like the farmers

That went away in style

And the fatted calf won’t perish

To return their sores and bumps,

For the beast was not intended

To relieve a race of chumps

937 From THE GROUSERS RETURN. (1901, March 21). The Calgary Weekly Herald, p. 8.

503

6. Settlers of Saskatoon (1908)938

One hears a great deal in Canada about the American invasion of the

Northwest. The Canadians regard the invasion with complacency, the railroads and

the land companies with joy and enthusiasm, but many conservative English persons

look upon it with suspicion and mistrust.

He was riding in the smoking compartment of a drawing–room car of the

Canadian Northern railroad, pulling hard on a briar pipe. He was unmistakably

English. I didn’t blame him for that, but the side whiskers were his own fault. He

glared at me sternly for a long time, until I tried to remember how much I owed him,

and whether he was the landlord of the flat or the tailor. Finally, he exploded with a

dull, sickening sound.

“You’re a Yankee, I suppose,” he said, “coming to Canada to invest your money,

and take it all back again?”

“I have inherited a little money since I’ve been in Canada,” I admitted.

“You Yankees are fearfully lucky,” said the English person. “I suppose you

closed out at a big figure, what?”

“No,” I was forced to say, “my investment was unfortunate.”

“What,” roared the Englishman, “a Yankee lose? What was the matter? Did you lose

your nerve?”

“No,” I had to say. “I lost simply because the three kings and a pair of trays are

considered better than a nice pat flush.”

“I’m not speaking of pokah,” said the English person. “I supposed you one of

the horde of Yankees pouring into Canada to get rich and take the money home and

spend it.”

“Not at all,” I protested, “I don’t sympathize with the Yankee peril. I’m an

Australian myself, and studying this subject just as you are.”

TERRIBLE YANKEE PERIL

This calmed the Englishman. I went on to say that I thought the immigration

of the Yankees should be checked. This caused applause.

“Right ho,” said he with the side whiskers.

Then we settled down to discuss the Yankee peril. Sidewhiskers said it should

be stopped at once. I was for going further. I thought they ought to be rounded up and

deported. I pointed out that the Yankees hung on to their peculiar customs and

traditions, and would not shave off their chin whiskers. Also, they smuggled in

chewing tobacco and taught the young Canadians the awful practice.

“What they’re after,” said Sidewhiskers, “is to fill the blooming country full of

blooming Yankees and then jolly well annex the whole blasted country.”

“Hear, hear,” I said. “The Yankee must go. A treaty must be made with the

United States against the importation of Yankee labor, and htose now in the country

must give up their objectionable customs, chief among which is the firing of cannon

938 From Little, R.H. (1908, September 9). THE MEN WHO ARE MAKING THE WEST. The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 3. Written by Richard H. Little (1869 – 1946).

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crackers and the beating of tom–toms during the American new year, the fourth of

July.”

“Hear, hear,” said Sidewhiskers. “And if the beggars won’t stop the influx of

Yankee labor we’ll jolly well give them a whipping.”

“Right ho,” I said with great enthusiasm.

A TROOPER OF THE KING

“There’s the King’s troopers,” said the English gentleman, proudly, pointing to

a Northwest Mounted Police, who strutted past in his bright red coat, rattling his

spurs. We went out to talk to the King’s trooper.

“Are there many Yankees coming into this part of the country?” asked

Sidewhiskers.

“Sure;” said His Majesty’s trooper, ”the woods are full of ‘em. Say, one of you

gents got any chewin’ tobacco? I can’t eat it now, but when I’m patrolling away out in

the country I’ve got a fine chance.”

“You associate too much with the Yankees,” said Sidewhiskers, “you are

adopting their customs.”

“Well,” said the royal trooper, “I’m from Nebraska myself. Say, is Bill Bryan

going to pull through this time? I haven’t seen a paper for two days. I’m a Democrat,

myself, but Bryan makes me tired if he is from Nebraska.”

“D’ye see,” said the English person, “that’s the Yankee cunning; they’re even

wearing the King’s uniform. These are parlous times.”

MAYOR IS NOT ALARMED

As we progressed, the confusion of the English gentleman increased. We met

the mayor of a big town, who said he didn’t believe that Canada was in any danger

from the Yankee invasion.

“It’s hard to say which are the best class of people that come into Western

Canada,” he said, “the Canadian from the eastern provinces, or the farmers from the

United States.”

“And you call yourself an Englishman,” said Sidewhiskers, sternly.

“I never called myself an Englishman,” said the mayor. “I call myself a

Canadian.”

“You are a disgrace to your English ancestors,” declared Sidewhiskers, with

great heat.

“My English ancestors,” said the mayor, proudly, “were Pennsylvania Dutch,

and my fatherland is Iowa. But I’m a Canadian now, and a good Canadian, too.”

Sidewhiskers beat a retreat, but I remained to talk to the mayor.

“That feller’s full of prunes,” said the mayor, dropping into the dialect of the

old country. “Why, the people that come in here from the States make as good

Canadians as are born anywhere in the Dominion. You see, it’s no great change for

an American to become a Canadian. The institutions here are the same as in the

United States, but possibly a little better in some respects.”

IMPROVE ON AMERICAN EXAMPLE

“The United States was the first nation to try the experiment of a federal

constitution, Canada the second. We think our Canadian constitution is better than

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that of the United States, because it came later, and we had the American experiment

as a guide. We think we are even freer in Canada than we were when citizens of the

United States. There is more inbred respect for law and order here than in the United

States, such a thing as a mob is unknown, our taxes are light, the opportunities for

getting rich are big, and altogether Northwest Canada is one of the best places to live

in the world, and of course I think it the best.”

“Do all Americans that come in here make good Canadians?” I wanted to know.

“Sure not,” said the mayor. “We’ve got all kinds of people over in the States,

you know. Some of them get over here. There’s a mutt out here in the country who

says he won’t get naturalized because he don’t propose to pay taxes to the King of

England. He’s got an idea that the King sits up nights framing up schemes to get his

money away from him. He’ll get wise some day and become a good Canadian.” […]

From Winnipeg we went northwest to Saskatoon over the Canadian Northern

Railroad. […] The Canadian who drove us in his motor car around Saskatoon said it

wasn’t very cold in winter time in Northwest Canada.

“Sometimes it gets down to 30 below, but it’s dry and it’s never windy when it’s

that cold, and, besides, it never stays that way more than two or three days at a time.

I came to this country, in fact, to get into a milder climate.”

“What part of Greenland did you use to live in?” we asked him.

“Oh, North Dakota was my home,” said the citizen of Saskatoon. “I couldn’t

stand the climate, so I came up here. Wasn’t hardly a thing here when I came. I’m

one of the oldest inhabitants.”

“You don’t look very old,” I said. “How many years have you been here?”

“Five years,” said the ‘Fernando Jones’ of Saskatoon, proudly. “The town’s just

about that old.”

“Did you better yourself financially coming up?” I wanted to know.

“Well, yes,” said the Saskatoon citizen, “and by the way, my name is Wentz –

Charlie Wentz939. I didn’t have enough money to buy a souvenir postal card to send

to the loved ones at home when I landed here, but I’m doing all right. That’s my

lumber yard over there, and I’ve got branches in all the little towns around here.”

HAS THE AUTO FEVER NOW

“Whose automobile is this?” I asked. I had my suspicions, but it was hard to

believe. I know lots of people that could have bought several dozen souvenir postal

cards five years ago, and who still have no automobile.

“This is my car,” said the enterprising Mr. Wentz, “but I just use it to run

around the country on business. I’m going to buy a big touring car next year.”

“Well of course,” I said, “a man that can own an automobile and a lumber yard

in five years ought to be satisfied with the climate.”

“Oh, the climate doesn’t bother me,” said young Mr. Wentz. “A bunch of us here

in Saskatoon usually run down to California during the coldest weather, anyhow.”

939 At the time of this interview, Charles Henry Wentz was manager of the Wentz–Birkeland Lumber

Co., and lived at the corner of 5th Avenue and 24th Street. By 1913, he would own the C. H. Wentz

Lumber Co., with headquarters at the corner of 1st Avenue and Duke Street. of Charlie Wentz died in

1949.

506

“Did you have the California habit when you resided in North Dakota?” I asked

him.

“Well, no,’ said young Mr. Wentz. “I didn’t do much travelling when I lived in

North Dakota. If I could save enough money to take my girl to the circus and buy her

red lemonade, I thought I was doing pretty well. I went to the Philippines once, but

that was as a guest of my old Uncle Sam when he had that trouble out there. I

belonged to the First North Dakotas. I saved enough money out of my pay for being

a hero to bring me up here. And that’s all it did, too. When I landed at that station

over there I was busted.”

SECRET OF HIS SUCCESS.

“But how did you buy this car, and when did you get that lumber yard, and

how do you manage to go to California every winter? That’s what we want to know,”

I insisted.

“Oh,” said young Mr. Wentz, “I worked in a lumber yard for a while and learned

the game. Then I commenced buying lumber and selling it myself. I made a few little

investments in city lots and farm property, and got a fellow with lots of money to put

his money against my experience and residence and acquaintance here. You see, I

had been here a long time then, almost two years, and so I got on and established

branch yards and bought the automobile and fixed things so I wouldn’t have to

worry.”

“You did pretty well, Mr. Wentz,” I volunteered.

“Well, yes,” said Mr. Wentz modestly, “I didn’t do so rotten, but I haven’t done

near as well as lots of others. There’s Mr. Cairns940, driving that car ahead. He was a

school teacher in the east somewhere. He came out back here three years ago. When

he gets back to town I’ll show you his store that covers almost a block, and when we

get out of Asquith, a little town 25 miles out in the country, you’ll see another store

he owns. Of course he had a little when he came here, about $400 or $500 I reckon.

And then there’s my brother–in–law. Say, that fellow has got John Pierpont Morgan

skinned. He’s been here about as long as I have, had about as much to start with, too,

I guess, and he’s got so much money he can’t count it.”

“So everybody that comes up here makes big money, do they?” somebody asked.

AND SOME WENT BROKE

“No,” said young Mr. Wentz, “not everybody. A man can be just as many kinds

of a d—n fool here as he can anywhere else. The fact is,” said young Mr. Wentz, and

he turned round and spoke impressively, “I’ve known people to come up here and not

do any good for themselves at all.”

This was incredible and was received with a murmur of dissent.

“’Sfact,” said Mr. Wentz. “There’s nobody standing around here on the corners

to hand you money.”

This was very disappointing. We had commenced to watch the corners.

940 James Frederick Cairns (1870 – 1928), listed in a 1908 directory as ‘General Merchant and

Departmental Store’. His store was at 204–222 2nd Avenue, but he lived at 642 Spadina Crescent E,

the current (2019) location of the Remai Arts Centre.

507

“But there’s one thing sure,” went on young Mr. Wentz, “this is a big, fertile,

pleasant country. It’s new. It’s the last west there is on this continent today. And the

opportunity is here. A man has got fifty times a bigger show here than he has in an

old work–out community. Anyhow, that’s what I think,” and young Mr. Wentz looked

lovingly down at his motor car.

“Are you naturalized?” I asked.

“Am I?” said young Mr. Wentz. “You bet your life. You have to be naturalized

before you can own homestead land. Americans get naturalized just as quick as they

can hop into politics. Americans just naturally take to politics. There’s lots of them in

the provincial parliaments and holding government offices. I’m a Liberal, myself. We

had the hottest election out here you ever saw not long ago, and we just cleaned the

Conservatives up. People in Toronto and in the eastern part of Canada generally are

shocked out of their boots at the way we whoop it up at election time out here in

Saskatchewan and Alberta provinces. You know what does it? It’s the American

influence. You know we don’t get regular elections every four years like we used to in

the States. Only once in a while, when the government goes out. So when we do get a

chance at an election, we sure do go in and stir ‘em up. We know how, you see. We

didn’t live in the United States for nothing.”

“How about the fourth of July?” I asked.

“Say,” said young Mr. Wentz, earnestly, “you ought to come up here some time

in July. The First of July is the Canadian national holiday, and we celebrate that,

and then three days later it’s the Fourth, and we celebrate that just as much as we

ever did down in the state, and all the other Canadians, born and naturalized, turn

in and help us. It seems funny to see British subjects marching around, cheering over

the declaration of independence, but it’s all right at that. Out of the declaration of

independence came the federal constitution, and out of that experiment came the

second great free government, founded on just about the same lines – Canada.”

We arrived at the city of Asquith, which is one of the older cities of the

neighborhood around Saskatoon, having arrived at the mature age of one year. It now

has 500 people, several banks and a newspaper, the Asquith Empire.

The editor, Mr. MacLachland, presented himself and I promptly insulted him

by supposing that his paper was printed on a hand press.

“A hand press? No, no!” said the indignant editor. “We have a gasoline engine.”

Suitable apologies were presented and we walked around Asquith for two

hours and watched it grow. We met numerous citizens who had landed there the year

before with sums varying from 10 cents to $5 in confederate currency. They showed

us their stores and banks and homes. We liked everything, but deplored there were

no trees.”

“Give us time,” said the editor. “We can build hotels and banks and homes and

things, but we can’t build trees. That’s about the only thing around here that takes

time to grow.”

THE MAN FROM MISSOURI

We went back to Saskatoon and on the way we passed an ox cart and stopped

to talk to the driver. He was a sturdy looking young man.

508

“I thought everybody that came up here owned an automobile inside of five

years,” I complained to young Mr. Wentz, “and that man is driving an ox team.”

“Well,” said young Mr. Wentz, “he hasn’t been here five years. Ask him.”

“Have you been in this country five years?” I asked the driver of the ox team.

“No sah,” said the driver politely. “I have been up in this country a little over

a yeah.”

“Do you want to buy an automobile?” I asked, trying to look like I owned young

Mr. Wentz’s machine.

“My oxen are all right,” said the stranger. “They’re kinder slow, but they

certainly git there. What kind of a ottermobile is it?”

“What part of Missouri do you come from?” I asked.

“I’m from Old Pike,” said the stranger proudly. “I got a nice piece of land out

here about fifty miles. My wheat’s goin’ to run about forty bushels to the acre, and I’ll

be driving horses next year. Come out in about three years, mister, and I’ll certainly

buy an ottermobile, all right.”

“Don’t you freeze to death in winter?” asked one of our party.

“I hain’t yit,” said the man from Missouri.

“Wouldn’t you like to be back in Old Pike?” I asked him.

“Nope,” said the stranger. “This country looks pretty good to me. Especially

when I go out and take a squint at that wheat field of mine. That’s the purtiest thing

I ever saw.”

We left the oxen driver after promising to come out to the flourishing city of

Pikeville, which he is going to start in one corner of his farm.

“Make it three years,” he said, as he waved good–bye. “I’ll meet you at the

station with my ottermobile.”

HAVE A REGULAR CLUB

We drove back to Saskatoon, and young Mr. Wentz spoke proudly of its 7,000

population and fine new hotels, and took us over to the clubs. It was a regular club,

with three billiard tables and a bar, and a library, and a reading–room with every

known magazine on the tables.

“We haven’t got a club building of our own,” said young Mr. Wentz, “but come

back next year and we’ll have one.”

We rode that afternoon through the Saskatchewan Valley, and men on the

train pointed out steam harvesters at work and told us what fields would run thirty

bushels to the acre and which ones probably would make over forty bushels.

We arrived at Edmonton, the farthest north town in America that can be

reached by rail, with great pomp and ceremony. Hackmen were shouting at the depot

the names of half a dozen hotels, and newsboys and newsgirls were calling the

morning papers. There has been a fort at this point for over 100 years, but modern

Edmonton is only ten years old. Towns seem to grow in this northwestern country as

readily as wheat. A long line of automobiles were waiting at the depot, but their

owners, who escorted us around, hardly needed to tell us their stories. We knew.

Their machines were of a more expensive kind than they had in Saskatoon, and they

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went to Europe every year instead of California. But Edmonton is ten years old and

Saskatoon only five. So, naturally.

“What classes does Western Canada welcome?”

7. The Speculator’s Point of View (1915)941

Editor, Guide:– I am a subscriber to your paper, which you represent as being

the “Only paper in Canada owned and published by organized farmers.” I own land

in Southern Alberta. I do not live on my Alberta land, nor do I cultivate it, nor lease

it, so I suppose I am what you term a “Land Speculator.” My character, as you put it,

is such that you associate me (see cartoon G. G. G. Dec. 16) with booze dealers, stock

gamblers, usurers, monopolists, grafters and every other class of questionable

individuals which you may happen to call to mind.

LIGHTENING THE SHIP (1914)942

I bought land on my first trip to Alberta seven years ago. The laws then seemed

just and reasonable and the climate was healthy. The people whom I met were very

941 From NORTH DAKOTA. (1915, May 5). THE SURTAX CONDEMNED. The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 8. 942 From Dale, A. (1914, December 6). Lightening the Ship [Cartoon]. The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 6. Illustrated by Archibald Dale (1882 – 1962).

510

enthusiastic in their efforts to induce me to buy land in Sunny Southern Alberta. The

C.P.R., to help draw me into temptation, charged me only one cent per mile for car

fare. I was told wonderful tales of wonderful crops. Since I acquired this land I have

made several trips to it and have observed conditions closely. It is similar to early

days in North Dakota.

The farmers of Alberta have had my sympathy, and they still have it. They are

fighting battles in defense of their own welfare, with odds hard against them. It is

the correct thing for them to do. It will be a fight of long duration. They must be just

toward all to succeed. Are the organized farmers fair toward the non–resident vacant

land owner? The Guide, which is the voice of the organized farmers, has used some

very unkind, yes, even vicious expressions about the vacant land owners in nearly

every recent issue of the paper, which fact has called forth this letter.

Some conditions in Western Canada have not proved to be ideal to the farmers

of that region, and while looking about for a cause of his troubles, someone seemingly

whispered in his ear, “It is all due to the non–resident vacant land owner, otherwise

known to you as the Land Speculator. He is making enormous profits and paying no

taxes. He is the one great evil to your welfare and an all around bad man. He must

be driven from among you before you can have good times in Canada. You are here

and he is not. Your votes control the provincial government. Graft the vacant land

owners’ property. Pass a few laws so as to legalize the graft. It is easy money.”

Only twelve years ago, what is now known as Western Canada, was a great

stock country, if it was anything. It was crossed by the C.P.R., which was then the

only railroad. There were just as many acres of land then as there are today, and the

soil just as fertile. The C.P.R. and the H.B. Co. owned many acres as grants from the

government, and the remaining acres of the vast fertile expanse of unoccupied land

was open to homesteaders. The H.B. Co. had been out there for a hundred years. The

C.P.R. for twenty years. It was known that the names, Alberta and Saskatchewan,

appeared on the map, and that was about all we did know about these provinces of

Canada. Why did not the farmers go in and occupy and cultivate the land? Land was

then extremely low in price. There was no one doing any “boosting,” the “Land

Speculator” was not there.

I remember well when the first tract of land, 150,000 acres, was contracted for

from the C.P.R., just north of Portal, by two American “Land Speculators” and

advertised for settlement. It was bought up readily by men of small means for

investment and settlement. Other speculators then appeared and the Canadian

government and the C.P.R. were induced to help, and so was begun the greatest

emigration movement ever known in the history of the North American continent,

and it continued unabated for six years. That whole vast district lying between

Edmonton and Prince Albert to the North, and to the U.S. border to the South, was

in so short a time transformed into the great agricultural tract that it is today.

The point I wish to make is this, namely, the “Speculator” is a very valuable

factor in the opening of new lands for settlement. He may make large profits, but he

is worth the price. He did more for the Western Provinces of Canada, for he bought

the lands of the C.P.R. and H.B. Co. and so removed such lands from a position

511

wherein they could not be taxed into a position wherein they could be taxed. Vacant

land owners have since paid taxes in all provinces, equal to the same amount paid by

resident farmers adjoining them. Such vacant lands have remained as free range,

taxes paid by the owner, the grass absolutely free to the nearby farmer. A farmer

cannot succeed by growing grain crops alone. He must diversify, and grow both grain

and stock. This free grass range stands today as one of the best solutions to a farmer’s

thin pocket book in Western Canada.

For all the “Speculator” has done for the Dominion government to induce

settlement, and for the provinces by bringing land into position to be taxed, and for

the resident farmer by placing at his very door free pasturage, what return is he given

for it all? We are told that we are a “curse” and a “parasite” and a “privileged” class.

What are we doing for the farmer in the way of hail insurance? Three–quarters of the

amount paid into the hail insurance fund of Alberta in 1914 came from vacant land

owners. Not being satisfied with this, the honorable (?) farmers have placed a surtax

on non–resident vacant land amounting to 1% of its valuation. Yes, it is easy money,

but it is a most cowardly blow aimed at such innocent men. Will Canada support such

unrighteous legislation? The Guide has suggested that non–resident vacant land be

taxed to give idle men work, for municipal hospitals, for free medical attendance, for

free nurses, for free legal service, etc., in fact, when ever anything is needed, it is said

by the organized farmers, thru the columns of The Guide, “Why not raise it from

vacant lands?” Can it be that property in Canada is subject to such graft? Is there not

a court of justice in Canada to see to it that an innocent man’s property is protected

from being damaged and confiscated by unjust laws?

It is said that we are holding lands for large profits. This expression is

absolutely false. The apex of prices was in June, 1910, nearly five years ago, and there

has been a continuous decline since, until today it is just impossible to move land at

any price. The organized farmers say to non–residents, “Leave your jobs in the States

and move onto your farms in Canada or we will damage your property by our system

of taxation until you will lose all.” I was not talked to like this seven years ago.

We have all lost out in Canada the last five years. The stock of the C.P.R. has

declined from 294 to 153; the city lot owner is a very heavy loser. Let us be reasonable.

Would it not be much better for all to “pull” together for a new prosperity?

The organized farmers claim to be opposed to special privilege of every kind

and nature. Is it not a special privilege to reside in Canada and pay no taxes upon

personal property? In this special privilege class we find the railroads, the bankers,

the stock men, etc., who wield a tremendous influence in the politics of Canada. The

Henry George land values tax places upon the farmers nearly the entire load of the

financial support of the government. Can the farmer carry such a heavy tax load?

Henry George was never able to humbug the U. S. – the land of his birth and the

home of his life. What the organized farmers see in this system of taxation favorable

to them is beyond comprehension.

I have before me a newspaper from a nearby town and I find in it a letter from

a North Dakotan, who is now living in Canada, and taxes are mentioned as follows:

“You talk about taxes. Why, you do not know the meaning of the word. Just come over

512

here and you will deny that you ever paid taxes in North Dakota.” Will such a tax

policy win emigration for Western Canada? No, it will not. There are many hundreds

of non–resident Canadian land owners in the States. A very large majority are men

of small means who have been using every spare dollar to pay out on a land

investment. While taxes were reasonable, these men were “boosters” for Canada. The

surtax has done its work. Yes. It is easy money, seemingly, to frame up a law to “graft”

the non–resident vacant land owner, but I will ask the organized farmers of Western

Canada to note the amount of emigration from the States in the future.

8. “Detrimental to the Country” (1915)943

At present, in the rural parts of the West, the speculator, or holder of vacant

land, pays the same municipal and school taxes as the farmer. In Saskatchewan and

Alberta he also pays equally with the farmer 1 cent an acre to the provincial

supplementary revenue fund, from which grants are made to rural and high schools

and the universities.

The speculator, however, does not contribute, as an owner of vacant land, one

single cent towards the expense of the federal government, the cost of maintaining

harbors and canals, the aid which is given to railroads, the construction of provincial

roads and bridges, and all the other public services which are a charge upon the

federal and provincial treasuries. The owner of vacant land, however, benefits by

these expenditures. The building of railways, the work of experimental farms, the

preservation of law and order thru police protection and the administration of justice,

and everything that is done by the federal and provincial governments for the benefit

of the people, increases the value of the speculators’ land, and it would be only just

that he should pay taxes to the federal and provincial government. At present,

however, these services are paid for by taxes upon the necessaries of life and the tools

of industry – chiefly by import duties upon manufactured goods such as agricultural

implements, clothing, food, lumber, etc., etc. The speculator pays none of these taxes,

yet he benefits equally with the owner of improved land by the expenditures.

The Western Provinces have not the power to remove this inequality by

abolishing the customs tariff, that being a matter for the Dominion to deal with, and

consequently they have taken the course of compelling the speculator to pay a surtax,

this extra tax going to the municipality in Saskatchewan and to the Province in

Alberta. This, we submit, is a complete justification of the surtax as long as the

customs tariff is in existence, but the surtax in neither province is anything like large

enough to make up for the present inequality.

Our correspondent’s claim that the land speculator has brought in settlement

is absurd. Everybody knows that the speculator, by holding land for a rise, is

preventing its being brought under cultivation. The moment the speculator sells his

land to a settler he will cease to pay the surtax and all other taxes. It was free land

and cheap land that brought the big rush of settlers into the West a few years ago,

943 From Chipman, G.F. (1915, May 5). THE REPLY. The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 17. Written by George Fisher Chipman (1882 – 1935), editor of The Grain Grower’s Guide.

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and it is because the speculators, seeking to profit by the labor of others, have bought

up a great deal of land and are holding it at exorbitant prices that immigration has

declined.

It is true that the speculators’ land is free range for the farmers’ cattle. But the

farmer would be far better off if that free range was occupied by other farmers,

instead of being a breeding ground for gophers as well as pasture for cattle. If it is

free range the farmer wants, he should go as far as possible from civilization, where

his cattle can roam over whole townships, but most farmers seem to prefer a well

settled district where there is less free range and more railways, schools, churches

and towns, as well as neighbors.

“North Dakota” objects to the suggestion made by The Guide and subsequently

approved unanimously by the Saskatchewan Grain Growers’ convention at Regina,

that the vacant land belonging to non–residents should be taxed to provide free

medical attendance and nurses for the outlying districts of the West. We know of no

class, however, who can more justly be called upon to provide funds for this purpose

than the land speculators. If speculators were not holding large areas of land idle, the

settlers would all be able to live near town, and they would then be able to get medical

attention when they needed it without having to bring a doctor 40 or 50 miles at a

charge of a dollar a mile. The speculator, too, benefits by the industry of the pioneer

and the hardships he undergoes, and it would be only justice that he should help to

lessen those hardships as far as possible.

Our friend in North Dakota is apparently quite hurt because the land

speculator is associated in cartoons with booze dealers, stock gamblers, usurers,

monopolists, grafters and so forth, but we really do not see that the has any cause to

complain. The men referred to are, apart from their occupations, often very

respectable and indeed estimable men. The Guide believes, however, that their

method of making a living is contrary to the best interests of the country. We also

believe that the land speculators’ method of making money is detrimental to the

country, and that he is rightly classed with other undesirables and parasites.

It is unquestionably true, as “North Dakota,” says, that the Canadian people

are suffering under burdensome taxation. That is why we say that taxes should be

removed from industry and placed on land values. Abolish the tariff and put all taxes

on land values, and you will reduce the cost of living and the cost of production of

every industry in Canada, and enable our farmers and our manufacturers to compete

with the world. You will also make the holding of land idle for speculative purposes

unprofitable, and force the speculator to sell to someone who wants land to use. This

is something we are working for and hope to get in the future. In the meantime a

surtax, by penalizing the vacant land owner and favoring the settler, is a ready

method of accomplishing a small part of the ultimate object.

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9. Wheat and Empire (1909)944

What an illuminating thing a map is! When one of Britain’s colonials looks at

a map of the world with our possessions colored red, he is glad that manifest destiny

has broken up this “Greater Empire than Has Been” and distributed its parts around

the shores of the Seven Seas. As a nation we are broader–minded, less insular, and

more progressive and acceptive than if all our acres had been crowded into one

continent. As it is, Britons the world over, like children who play Tom Tiddler’s

Ground, can step from one little patch of red to another with facility and air of

assuredness, for is it not all ours?

The British Empire as a whole is a house, our maternal mansion; the corner of

it in which we are born is our particular nursery, but every room of that house is

equally ours to enter and occupy; and when we travel across seas to a new apartment

of the mother lodge, it is to find there the Old Flag, the “tongue that Shakespeare

spoke,” and a brother’s welcome. Is not the British empire merely an aggregation of

Old Boys’ associations from Vagabondia? If we find the room of the Old House that

we were born in a bit narrow, if the brothers and sisters crowd us too closely, if,

perchance, the Mother–Hubbard cupboard of that particular room be bare, we

naturally look around for another corner of the Old House with a full pantry.

A particularly plummy British empire pantry just now is Western Canada, and

for the purposes of this short article we will include in that term just the three prairie

provinces, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, a great bread–yielding plain lying

between the Great Lakes and the Rockies, and extending from the United States to

the parallel of 60 degrees north. […] If Canada’s wheat crop of 1908 had been shipped

in cars, each holding fifteen tons, the cars would make up a continuous train 1,365

miles long. But the rich things of this Last West are just beginning to be nibbled at.

Western Canada has over 150,000,000 fecund acres capable of growing wheat, and

less than one acre out of every twenty of this is under crop. Canada ranked first in

wheat displays at the St. Louis fair in 1904. One hundred and fifty varieties of wheat

and other grains were there shown from Canada, and we bear in mind that “Canadian

No. 1 hard” is the sterling mark for wheat, the highest valued grain in the world.

The wheat production of the United States has not kept pace with the growth

of population. It is interesting to note that the United States export of wheat and

flour to Great Britain is fast declining, while in Canada the surplus for export over

home consumption increases by leaps and bounds from year to year. Eighteen years

ago the United States produced eighteen bushels of wheat to Canada’s one; the

United States now produces only six to our one.

Not only is the soil of Western Canada the most fertile in the world, but here

in these millions of prairie acres waiting for the plough is the world’s last west, the

last unoccupied frontier under a white man’s sky. Small wonder is it that into this fat

mesa the peoples of all the world are crowding. The past ten years show that 325,000

people from the Mother Country have become Canadian farmers; 300,000 Americans

944 From Laut, A. C. (1909, June 6). Where Wheat Wins. The Western Globe, p. 6. Written by Agnes Christina Laut (1871 – 1936), a Canadian historian.

515

in that time passed north and took up land in Canada while 260,000 immigrants

came from the rest of the world. […] Surely we have found the true melting pot of the

nations. And if those would–be wheat farmers are made of the right stuff, it matters

not an iota the national or family history that lies behind them, their religious belief,

or inherited tendencies; they can “make good” in Britain’s bread basket, the rolling

plains of Western Canada. There is room for all, and the Canadian government gives

to every man who will till it, without money and without price, a fertile farm of 160

acres.

Toward this wheat plain is moving the greatest economic trek this world has

ever seen; the historian of tomorrow will rank it with the world migrations. Here in

prairie Canada today is taking place the fusing of faiths, a unifying of interests, an

amalgamation of races, unique in history. We see in Western Canada a land of wheat

and kine. Western Canada is every man’s and woman’s opportunity, if as we have

said, he or she is the right kind of man or woman.

What classes does Western Canada welcome? The man who has lived on a

farm, is not afraid to work, and knows something of agriculture; the arm that is

willing to undertake domestic service. These the West receives with open arms. But

the man who has lived all his life in a town, who doesn’t know a potato from a

pomegranate, who thinks a horse looks well harnessed between the handles of a

plough, and who makes an attempt to milk a cow with a patent clothes peg, isn’t going

to make a startling success of things if you drop him down in the middle of a prairie

farm. Making a living from the soil, even when that soil is the most fertile on earth,

is a trade which has to be learned, and the knowledge of how to do it doesn’t bubble

up out of the soil, nor does a special messenger drop it from the blue of heaven. This

would be a miracle, and the day of miracles is past, even in a land so specially favored

by God as is Western Canada.

Last year and old Indian chief of the Sioux tribe was taken up to the top of

Chicago’s highest building, Montgomery Ward’s tower, and invited to look down upon

the crowded thousands of people moving like ants in the street below. “Have they any

farms?” asked the old warrior. “No,” was the reply. “What do they do?” said he. “Oh,

they buy from each other and sell,” said the white man. “All cheat,” was the laconic

summing up of the situation by the old Sioux. His idea was that in the analysis of

economics any man who charged for a commodity more than it cost him exploited his

fellow, and that only he who created new wealth was worthy of the tribe. And is not

your true creator, your nation builder, the man who makes two bushels of wheat, two

acres of sugar beets, grow where one or none grew before? For this kind of man or

woman Canada hungers. She has the land. But uncultivated land is a dead asset; the

land, plus the intelligent man, is yearly appreciating national wealth.

The story of colonization in the Canadian west differs in many essentials from

the story of colonization elsewhere. This is the only frontier that has been conquered

without bloodshed. In other lands the pioneer has gone first, and, with an axe in one

hand and a gun in the other, in the face of hostile tribes has occupied the silent places.

After he and his sons had created the wealth, the grandson might hope to have his

produce of the soil taken out by rail. In the wheat lands of Western Canada, the ––

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railways go first, the homesteader travels out on a palace car and carries his

household goods with him, the train deposits him within reachable distance of his

labors, and within a few years at the most he may expect to see a railroad practically

at the edge of his acres.

During two centuries three great agencies have been making the land morally

fit for him to live on: the Hudson’s Bay Company, the church missions and in recent

years the Royal North West Mounted Police. The man who takes up land today on

Canada’s far–flung provinces finds British law established, waiting for him; he finds

life and property safer here than they are in many crowded cities of the Old World;

he finds churches and schools and roads and bridges. He leaves nothing behind in the

Old World that the New is not able to supply. […]

It is the men of the railways who have been the Dominion’s truest pioneers,

for, in working for their several companies and adventuring into new territories, they

have been the means of discovering and developing opportunities which would

otherwise have lain dormant for years to come.

Whether the prompting motive has been the benefitting of their shareholders

or not, it has been with an eye to future rather than to present profit that they have

planned and thought and toiled, and the whole problem has been bound up in the one

hope – that of bringing the right sort of people to cultivate the land. And the stream

has already begun to flow in goodly force; it is gathering volume all the time, and

promises to spread the gladness of prosperity throughout the whole of the western

country. One day monuments will be erected to these railway pioneers; and others

will arise to lay down new tracks in lands that are now waste, and “the course of

empire” will “westward run” for ages yet.

10. “It has been good to me.” (1909)945

The Canadian west is absorbing more and more of the best American citizens.

Every years, they flock there in increasing numbers. Why? Well! That’s what I tried

to find out.

“An honest tale speeds best, being plainly told,” as the wise king said. Nothing

has a more direct appeal or a more lively interest than a straight–forward, personal

story. I have talked with many people who may be described as pioneers, but with

few, if any, who understand themselves better than W. D. Trego946, of Gleichen,

Alberta.

Mr. Trego operates a fairly large farm near Gleichen, in the 3,000,000 acre

irrigation block just east of Calgary. He is as clean–cut a type of American as you

would find anywhere at home. This struck me so forcibly that I asked him why he

had left the United States.

“I don’t look like a man who came for my health, do I?” came the quick counter

question. “Well, I didn’t. I came here because it was good business. That’s why all

these Americans come.”

945 From WHY THE AMERICAN INVASION. (1909, May 13). The Gleichen Call, p. 1. 946 Willett Dudley Trego (1866 – 1951).

517

He waved his hand toward a dozen or more farmers who were moving about

near us, and making a scene like Illinois.

“Tell me,” quoth I. And he imparted the story of his life about thus:

“I was born on a farm in central Iowa, and lived there until I was 19 years of

age. I then moved to southeastern Idaho947, where for the next 22 years I was engaged

in farming.

While crops were usually good and farming operations were generally

successful, I saw the value of the land change from $1.25 and $5 per acre to $100 per

acre, and in many instances even higher. I found it much easier to make a fair

percentage of profit on lower valuations, and as land was a good price, I began to cast

about for some place where I could secure a larger acreage and at the same time

where crops were good and the climate satisfactory.

Two years ago I came to Alberta, and was at once taken with the country – so

much that I did not even wait until I had sold my Idaho place, but purchased the east

one–half of section 27–22–22, and began development at once.

I have now 275 acres broken, and have just harvested a crop which is

altogether satisfactory to me, and which is netting me good big percentage on my

investment. To give you an idea of what I realized, I will give you the exact figures.

Of wheat I had 53 acres that yielded 34 bushels per acre, which came close to

grading No. 1 hard. Of barley I had 59 acres which averaged 43 bushels to the acre of

good brewing. Oats, 110 acres, averaged 94 bushels to the acre, and weighed by actual

test struck 44½ pounds. I shipped most of my grain and got outside market prices.

The balance of my land is now alfalfa. I found, only too late, that it is not wise

to plant alfalfa until the land has been fairly subdued, and would advise anyone who

contemplates growing alfalfa not to go after it too soon after the land is broken. Better

wait until, say, two crops of grain have been taken off first. Mind you, I believe alfalfa

will be one of our most successful crops when it is properly planted and cared for.

It is my opinion from what I have seen in other sections that the increase in

the value of the property (that is, the land in the irrigation belt) will be realized

quicker than in any other place I have yet seen. It stands to reason that where

hundreds of thousands of acres of land are put under crop almost instantaneously in

a given district, it tends to develop it much more rapidly than would be the case if it

were farmed in isolated tracts.

I see every reason to expect an average return of profit of not less than 10 per

cent. on a valuation of $100 per acre.

As to climate and general conditions, I am well pleased with it, and believe it

compares favorably with either Idaho or Iowa.

It is quite apparent that good crops are now grown on non–irrigable lands, but

it was my judgment when purchasing my farm that better results could be obtained

by the use of water, and the fact that all my land is irrigable proves my faith in

947 It was here, in 1897, that Willett Trego married Minerva Alice Howard (1877 – 1933). The couple

had four daughters and a son, as of the 1911 census. The three eldest daughters were born in the

United States, and the two youngest children in Alberta.

518

irrigation. The small difference of $10 in the per acre price is not material when the

amount of the products is more than enough to pay interest several times that

amount. Besides, there is the security one feels in not being dependent upon rains

coming at any particular time, in order to mature one’s crops. The greatest opposition

is from those who have not been accustomed to use water, and who therefore look

upon it as a very difficult and expensive operation to apply it.”

“May I say you said all this?” asked I.

“you may if you like,” said he. “I’m always ready to speak for this country. It

has been good to me.”

11. A Closer Look at Trego’s Farm (1909)948

When the reporter for this paper left Gleichen to look over the agricultural

resources of the district, he drove north for a distance of two miles and passed a

number of fine farms with fine buildings and good fields of grain on every side.

We then turned east and saw a number of good fields, but when we had gone

three miles east we came to a 100 acre field of grain which was as good if not the best

we have ever seen. On the next quarter section we saw a shack with a fine large

garden near at hand where we found the proprietor of the place working. This, we

learned, was our friend, W. D. Trego, who had come here in the spring of 1907 and

begun farming on a half section of irrigated land which he had purchased from the

C.P.I.C. Co. He informed us that that field of grain which we had just passed was

some of his planting, on breaking which was done during the middle of July last year,

and seeded to oats during the middle and last of April this year.

He invited us in to see his garden, which consisted of more than an acre. First

he showed us rows and rows of carrots and parsnips, and next were table beets. Next

came early peas, and next were raddishes, planted between rows of sweet corn. He

explained that the raddishes were being used now and would soon be out of the way

before the corn became large enough to shade the ground and require deep

cultivation. Next were rows of head lettuce, and next rows and rows of beans and

summer peas, with a few rows of summer turnips and early potatoes for table use.

We noticed that his entire place was fenced with a heavy woven wire fence, and

just back of the garden was an alfalfa pasture where there was confined a number of

brood sows and a band of early spring pigs. Mr. Trego advised us that these sows had

lived all fall and nearly all winter on his stubble fields, and that the only ones that

were getting any grain now were the shoats949 to keep them growing, and that the

sows were keeping in nice conditions on the green feed.

He then led the way to a field where he showed us about an acre of fine looking

cabbage and three acres of yellow turnips which were planted in rows. Here we found

one man with a garden cultivator, which he was pushing ahead of him, cutting out

all weeds along the rows and loosening up the ground. We were told that the next

948 From WHAT OUR AMERICAN SETTLERS ARE DOING. (1909, July 29). The Gleichen Call, p. 1. 949 Young pigs.

519

operation would be to thin them to about one foot apart in the rows and by thorough

cultivation and irrigation that he expected to harvest from 15 to 20 tons per acre, and

that they would bring about $15 per ton on the Calgary market, sacked.

We were then shown a field of about 30 acres of potatoes, where we found one

man and team cultivating and two more with hoes cutting out all weeds which the

cultivator had missed. After them came another man and team with a disc cultivator

for ridging them up and leaving a furrow between the rows. This was to cover the

potatoes well with earth to prevent their being sunburned and to protect them from

frost should we get any heavy freezes before they were all dug in the fall, and to get

them in shape for irrigation.

He next took us to a field of spring wheat which looked fine, but we noticed a

dividing line in the field where one portion was extra heavy and thick, and of a much

darker color than the other. We were informed that this was land that had grown a

crop of potatoes the previous year, and the other land had been in wheat the year

before.

A field of seven acres of field peas, were grown more to fertilize the land

preparatory to planting potatoes on it the following year than for the profit in the pea

crop. Yet Mr. Trego claimed it was a very profitable crop.

When we inquired as to the profit in growing potatoes, he stated that it was

his intention to market most of his in August for early potatoes, and that they would

likely net him from $40 to $60 per acre.

He stated that he had 290 acres in oats this season, and that last year’s oat

crop had paid him a net profit of $30 per acre, having made an average yield of 94 bu.

And he sold them at 40c and 50c per bu.

Then we crossed over on the adjoining section, where he showed us five six–

horse teams turning over the sod preparatory to planting fall wheat and oats next

spring. He stated he expected to have about 450 acres broken here by the end of the

week, and half of it would be planted to fall wheat, and 40 acres, being under

irrigation, would be planted to potatoes and the remainder to oats the following

spring.

On another half–section, a half mile further east, we saw three more horse

breaking outfits and a twenty–five–horse steam plowing outfit turning sod. We were

informed that 250 acres of it would soon be turned and that half of it would be planted

to fall wheat and the remainder to oats next spring.

In general conversation Mr. Trego said that he had owned a farm of only 60

acres in Idaho and had sold but half of this tract to date, but on account of the low

prices and easy terms on which land has been selling here, he had been able to secure

a larger amount and then he was putting all his money into development work with

the view of making the land pay for itself and pay for better improvements, which he

hoped to be able to make after securing one or two more crops.

This shows what is being done by the American settlers in the Gleichen

District.

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VIII. Wheat and Farming

521

1. The First Grain in the West (1919)950

In the autumn of 1812, four or five men of the first band of Selkirk settlers

sowed with winter wheat a little plot of land in what is now Point Douglas in the city

of Winnipeg. The story of grain growing in the west from humble effort – a failure, by

the way – to the triumphs of Red Fife, Marquis and Red Bobs951, would be as

fascinating a tale of agricultural development as it would be possible to find; but the

wheat of the Red River settlement was not the first cereal food harvested by man in

the great west.

Nowhere in the temperate zone, perhaps had the hand of nature provided more

bounteously a supply of staple food for the wants of man. Upon the plains were

innumerable herds of buffalo; old Sheriff Ross in that classic of pioneer days “The Red

River Settlement,” describes the slaughter of 2,500 of them in a single hunt. The

“titameg” or whitefish swarmed in the waters of the Red river and Lake Winnipeg.

No fewer than 14,000 whitefish were taken by the settlers upon the retreat to Jack

river after the disastrous affray of Seven Oaks, in 1816. And in the sedgy marshes of

lake and stream grew the wild rice – an occasional ingredient of that famous

concoction known as “pemmican,” and a staple article of food for more than one

adventurous party in the precarious fur trade. Rice lake and Rice river suggest the

sub–tropical fields of the far east. Their names, as a matter of fact, are derived from

the most characteristic indigenous cereal in the great west.

The making of pemmican, we are told, has become a lost art; though the Lord

Selkirk Association952 at their annual banquets still include in their menu the

Scottish bannock and buffalo pemmican prepared in strict concordance with the

traditions of the early days. Next to the mysteries of the chase and the fur trade, at

any rate, the gathering of the wild rice by the Indians of the Winnipeg river forms

one of the most curious reminders of the days when the mazes of the western

waterways were stirred only by the silent paddle of the red man and the voyageur.

The rice fields are to be found in shallow lakes of moving water or in marshy

recesses of the river where the water is neither stagnant nor swift. The rice grows

best in water from two to four feet in depth where the bed of the lake or stream is free

from the extreme of spring flood and summer drought. Rooted in the mud, it rises

from the water in slender green stalks which are almost indistinguishable to the

untrained eye from the prolific reeds and grasses that line the shallow reaches of our

waterways. The grain reaches maturity as a rule about the second week of September,

and when detached from the rice plant resemble somewhat in appearance the kernel

of unripened oats.

Into this waving field the Indian drives his canoe by means of a pole provided

with a blunt prong in the shape of an inverted “Y,” in order to avoid too deep a thrust

into the oozy bottom of the river bed. The rice plants are then bent over the gunwales

and sharp blows from a stout stick some 12 or 18 inches in length serve to shake the

950 From The First Grain in the West. (1919, April 25). Bow Island Review, p. 3. 951 The histories of Red Fife, Marquis and Red wheats are discussed elsewhere in this chapter. 952 An association of the descendants of Selkirk’s Red River settlers. Founded in 1910.

522

wild rice in little showers into the bottom of the canoe, until it is heaped to the

gunwales and the occupants half buried in the green grain. The lazy din of the paddle

as the canoe turns homeward to the encampment affords a curious contrast to the

whirring harvesters of “No. 1 hard.”

The rice is stored for a time in bins carefully protected from rain or moisture.

The “elevator” process, in this case, comes before the threshing, for the gathering of

the rice is usually the work of the men while the rest of the process devolves upon the

s–––––953.

The “threshing” is perhaps the most curious process of all. A slow fire is built

of parallel logs, on both sides of which large pans – tin “wash boilers,” in fact – are

placed upon the hot coals. In each of these a half bushel or less of the unthreshed rice

is stirred incessantly by s–––––s scattered before the fire “Indian fashion.” The steam

rises in little clouds, and the encampment is frequently filled with the aroma of the

fragrant half–parched rice. When quite dry and just beginning to “brown” the grain

is removed from the pan for the third stage of the process.

This consists of “threshing” and winnowing by a very curious method. A cavity

in the ground, perhaps 18 inches deep and slightly less in diameter, is lined with hard

clay, which becomes in process of use almost as hard as pottery. The edge of the hole

is neatly lined with woven grass in order to prevent sand or earth from falling in. A

peck or so of the browned rice is placed in the cavity, and one of the men – donning,

it is to be hoped, a pair of clean moccasins for the purpose – treads out the rice while

the s–––––s winnow the chaff away with fans of birch bark.

Early Farming

2. An 18th–Century Wheat Farmer (1790)954

I profess myself to be an honest farmer, for I can say that no man could ever

charge me with a dishonest action. I see, with great grief, that all the country is

afflicted, as well as myself. Every one is complaining, and telling his grievances, but

I find they do not tell how their troubles came on them. I know it is common for people

to throw the blame of their own misdeeds upon others, or at least, to excuse

themselves of the charge. I am in great tribulation, but, to keep up the above

character of an honest man, I cannot in conscience say, that any one has brought up

my troubles on me but myself. ‘Hard times ––– and no money’ says every one. A short

story of myself will shew how it came ‘hard times ––– and no money’ with me, at the

age of sixty–five, who have lived well these forty years.

My parents were poor; and they put me at 12 years of age to a farmer, with

whom I lived till the age of twenty–one. My master fitted me off with two stout suits

of homespun, four pair of stockings, four woolen shirts, and two pairs of shoes. At

953 An offensive term for an Indigenous woman. 954 A FARMER. (1790, December 6). CAUSE OF, AND CURE FOR HARD TIMES. The Quebec Herald, p. 4.

523

twenty–two, I married me a wife, and a very good working young woman she was.

We took a farm of forty acres on rent. By industry we gained a head fast. I paid my

rent punctually, and laid by money. In ten years I was able to buy me a farm of sixty

acres, on which I became my own tenant. I then in a manner, grew rich; and soon

added another sixty acres, with which I was content. My estate now encreased beyond

all account. I bought several acres of outland for my children, who amounted to seven,

when I was forty–five years old. About this time, I married my eldest daughter to a

clever lad, to whom I gave one hundred acres of my outland. This daughter had been

a dutiful working girl; and therefore I fitted her out well, and to her mind; for I told

her to take the best of my wool and flax, and spin herself gowns, coats, stockings, and

shifts; nay, I suffered her to buy some cotton, and make into sheets, as I was

determined to do well by her.

At this time my farm, gave me and my whole family a good living on the

produce of it; and left me, one year with another, one hundred and fifty silver dollars:

for I never spent more than ten dollars a year, which was for salt, nails and the like.

Nothing to wear, eat, or drink, was purchased, as my farm provided all. With this

saving, I put my money to interest, bought cattle, fatted, and sold them, and made

great profit.

In two years after, my second daughter was courted. My wife says, ‘come, you

are now rich – you know Molly had nothing but what she spun ––– and no other

clothing has ever come into our home for any of us. Sarah must be fitted out a little.

She ought to fare as well as neighbor N–––‘s Betty, I must have some money, and go

to town.’ ‘Well, wife, it shall be as you think best. I have never been stingy, : but it

seems to me that what we spin at home would do.’ However, wife goes to town, and

returns, in a few days with a calico gown, a calimanco955 petticoat, a set of stone tea

cups, half a dozen pewter tea spoons, and a tea kettle ––– things that had never been

seen in my house before. They cost but little – I did not feel it – and I confess I was

pleased to see them. – Sarah was as well fitted off as any girl in the parish.

In three years more, my third daughter had a spark – wedding being concluded

upon, wife comes again for the purse: but when she returned what did I see : a silken

gown, silk for a cloak, a looking glass, china tea–gear, and a hundred other things,

with the empty purse. But this is not the worst of it. Some time before the marriage

of this my last daughter and ever since, this charge increased in my family, besides

all sorts of household furniture unknown to use before. Cloathing of every sort is

bought ––– and the wheel goes only for the purpose of exchanging our substantial

cloth of flax and wool, for gauze, ribbands, silk, tea, sugar, &c. My butter, which used

to go to market, and brought money, is now expended at the tea–table. Breakfast,

which used to take ten minutes, when we were satisfied with milk, or pottage made

of it, now takes my whole family an hour at tea or coffee. My lambs which used also

to bring cash, are now eaten at home – or if sent to market, are brought back in things

of no use – so that instead of laying up one hundred and fifty dollars every year, I find

all my loose money is gone – my best debts called in, and expended – and, being

955 A wool yarn fabric with a glazed surface. Also called ‘calamanco’ or ‘kalamink’.

524

straightened, I cannot carry on my farm to so good advantage as formerly, so that it

brings me not near so much, and further, what it costs to live, (though a less family

than heretofore, and all able to work), is fifty or sixty dollars a year more than my

farm brings me in.

Now this has gone on a good many years, and has brought hard times into my

family: and if I can’t reform it, ruin must follow – my land must go. I am not alone,

thirty in our parish have gone hand in hand with me: and they all say ‘hard times.’

Now Mr. Printer, I don’t know how you live – may be you are more frugal than we

are, as all of us used to be, but I am still master of my own head. I am determined to

alter my way of living to what it was twenty years ago, when I had up one hundred

and fifty dollars a year. I know I can do it, for I have got all my land yet. With good

management it will yield me as much as ever. I will increase my sheep, my flax

ground, and my orcharding. My produce brings, (fearce as money is) as much as it

used to do. No one thing to eat, drink, or wear, shall come into my house, which is not

raised on my farm, or in the parish, or in the country, except salt and iron–work, for

repairing my buildings and tools, no tea, sugar, coffee or rum. The tea–kettle shall be

sold. I shall then, Mr. Printer, live and die with a good conscience. My taxes, both

state, and continental, which appear now intolerable, will then be easy. My younger

children, and my grand children will see a good example before them: and I shall feel

happy in seeing a reform of abuses, which have been growing on me more than twenty

years.

If you will tell my story, it may work some good, and you shall have my lasting

thanks.

A FARMER.

3. Starting a Farm in 19th–Century Ontario (1911)956

In the year 1828 John Weldrich957 was born in Yorkshire, England, and at the

age of twenty–three was married to Rachel E. Shipley958. Having spent a week with

their friends, they set sail for America, and, after a rough voyage of six weeks and

three days on the ocean, landed at New York, then came to muddy little York, now

the city of Toronto. Soon after (says Mr. Weldrich’s daughter, Mrs. Alex. McGowan959,

in telling the story, in the Farmer’s Advocate), they applied to the magistrate for

work, a kindhearted Scotchman came and took them to Scarborough, where they

lived for two years.

956 From McGowan, M. E. & Anonymous. (1911, March 6). M. TRUE STORY OF AN ONTARIO

PIONEER. Written by Mary E. McGowan (1862 – 1954). 957 Slight errors in both the name and year of birth. John Weldrick (1827 – 1904) is buried in Bethel

Cemetery, Feversham, Ontario. 958 Rachel E. Shipley (nee Weldrick) (1834 – 1910). She died in Osprey, Ontario, and is buried in the

same graveyard as her husband. 959 Mary E. McGowan (nee Weldrick) (1862 – 1954). She was a Methodist and lived in Collingwood,

Ontario, about 18 km from her parents’ former home in Osprey. Alexander McGowan (1857 – 1943),

was Presbyterian and as of the 1921 census owned the farm he lived on with Mary. May and Alex. are

buried in Collingwood’s Thornbury–Clarksburg Union Cemetery.

525

Hearing of free land in Osprey township, Simcoe County, my father and

another man went by the stage to Barrie, taking with them an axe, a pair of blankets,

half bag of food, a flint and some steel, and a lead pencil; as they had to walk about

fifty miles, this was all they could carry. When the sun began to set low in the west,

they would start to gather wood for the night, and make shelter, then gather up dry

leaves and strike the flint and steel to start their fire, one keeping watch while the

other slept. More than once they saw the eyes of some wild animal staring at them,

and heard the sticks breaking as it walked away. As soon as the sun was up to guide

them, they would press on farther into the forest. At last they came to a concession

blaze and a creek, and being tired and hungry, they decided to go no farther. While

the other man was building a fire, as it was father’s axe, he started to build his

shanty. It was made ten feet by twelve, for they had to lift the logs. He cut hemlock

the right length, split and peeled them for the roof. He split up cedar, and, with

leatherwood bark, bound it and hung it on for a door. He then carried stones for a

fireplace and clay from the creek with a piece of bark. Thus three days were spent,

and, as their provisions were getting low, he went around three hundred acres,

chopped the bark from the trees at intervals, and wrote his name with the pencil.

Then they gathered up their traps, and started back. It was near midnight when they

got to Stayner, and two days later, footsore and hungry, they landed home.

The next winter father bought a yoke of oxen, one cow, a sleigh, a 1–inch and

2–inch auger, two axes, and what household goods the oxen could draw. With my

mother and a baby girl, they started again for the wilderness. The journey took three

days. They stayed at Barrie and Stayner. From the latter point there was only the

blaze to go by, and the sleigh upset six times, throwing them into the snow. Mother

often told us how thankful she was when father said: “Yonder is the shanty!” He soon

made a roaring fire, carried in their two boxes for a table, and the ox yoke for a seat.

Thus the first white woman as far as we know, ate her first supper in Osprey.

Father then cut down some browse for the cattle, tied them to the sleigh at the

door, and started to make a bedstead by boring holes in the logs, using a crotch stick

for the third post, sharpening the other end and driving it down into the mud floor.

Cedar branches formed the mattress; on these were put their blankets, and they were

soon fast asleep. But when they awoke in the morning the baby was sick, and with

all that distance between them and a doctor! Mother had only a bottle of castor oil,

one of goose oil960, and water. For three days she sat up wringing out flannels and

laying them around the baby’s neck and breast, or bathing her feet in hot water,

anxiously asking God to spare her child. Thus she gained her first experience in

nursing.

After two months, father had to go back to Barrie for flour and provisions;

butter was then ten cents a pound, and sugar fifteen. As the snow was deep, he was

four days away, and mother’s heart leaped with joy when the woods resonated with

his singing away in the distance. Father had to chop every day to get a field ready for

seeding, and mother had to take baby and go away out of the cabin, for fear a tree

may fall on the shanty. Father would draw the fallen trees into heaps and set fire to

960 Goose grease was traditionally used as a decongestant.

526

them, and often they had to stay up all night to keep the fire from spreading into the

bush. Father made a plough, all of wood, and as he had not time to make a harrow,

he used the top of a small elm tree for a drag the first year. Later he made a drag by

boring two–inch holes through a crotch stick, and making elm pegs and driving them

in for harrow teeth. He took bent saplings for runners, and made a “jumper” for

drawing in the grain, which was all cut with the sickle. He sharpened the end of a

small pole, put on a cross–piece about two feet long; drove pegs in, and mother raked

with it, and bound the grain. They made a stack and covered it with beaver meadow

hay961, and in the winter he made a flail with two sticks tied together with

leatherwood bark, and every evening would thresh out some of the wheat on the

shanty floor by the light of the fireplace.

My mother was a year and two months without seeing a white woman, but one

day in the summer two Indian women, carrying a papoose, stole cautiously near to

the shanty. Mother was so pleased to see them, she opened the door, when they

turned to fly, but stopped as she held up her baby, smiled and beckoned to them. They

came part way back. She got a piece of bread, held it out to them, but they would not

let their baby eat it until she fed a piece of it to her own child. They came again and

brought some baskets with them. They would hold them out to mother, point at their

mouths, and make a mournful sound to tell her they wanted bread, for which they

gave her a basket. They picked up some cow–cabbage962 and ate it; the youngest ran

down to the creek, got some watercress, came back, and gave some to the papoose,

and ate some herself. Then they came another day, and brought two men carrying

guns; but when mother and father went out they lifted them off their shoulders, and

laid them across their feet, which meant peace. The old woman carried their baby to

mother. She took it in her arms and gave it a kiss, and that seemed to please them

greatly, for, throwing up their arms up, they all laughed. They all peeped in at the

door for mother’s baby, and when she brought it, they gave it a basket, beautifully

made and painted, about the size of a bowl. And mother taught them to say “white

baby.” They showed her the elm mushroom963, which are good food, and often only for

these our family would not have had enough to eat, for the frost was so bad that they

could scarcely grow potatoes, and the wheat was often frozen.

Several families moved in the next year. The wolves were dreadfully bad then.

Our cow was eaten up by them, and in two years more a large pack came. The cattle

were bawling; father lit a torch and ran out; they gathered around him; he go upon a

stump so they could not trample him; they had the three–year–old heifer down, and

the hind quarters nearly stripped bare; but they were afraid of fire, and ran away

howling. The heifer bawled when father got to her, and died. They were worse after

that.

961 Beaver dams create wetlands called beaver meadows. The grass that grows in these meadows is

called beaver meadow grass, which can be made into hay. 962 Possibly Liquorice (Glycyrrhiza glabra). The root of the plant is traditionally used as a cough medicine. 963 The elm oyster mushroom (Hypsizygus ulmarius).

527

The snow had piled up at the back of the shanty, and one night they got on the

roof. Father and mother sprang out of bed to stir the fire to keep them from coming

down the chimney. One day in the spring, father had been over two miles away,

helping a man to log a fallow. When he got about half way home, he heard a “whe–e–

ett,” and soon another voice, coming nearer. He mounted Lamb – one of the oxen –

and as they were afraid, they started to run, and then to gallop, as the wolves came

nearer. He hung on tight by the yoke, but they had a long hill to climb, and were very

tired. There was a large pack, about twenty or more, howling and gaining on him; he

unhooked the logging–chain, unwound it from the yoke, so that it trailed and kept

the wolves from biting the oxen’s heels. He yelled, and mother, having heard them,

lit two torches, and ran to meet father, waving the torches. Lamb and Lion had turned

around to fight, but when they saw mother they ran to her. She could hardly keep out

of their way, and when she opened the shanty door, they ran in and nearly broke it.

Father took off the yoke and let them stay in all night. My parents thought, by the

sound of the wolves in the night, that they were trying to break into the log stable

where the cow and calf were. The first sheep that our people got were torn to pieces

by the wolves.

After eight years there was a school built, and they used it on Sunday for a

meeting–house for religious service. Then a store was built, about nine miles away.

Mother and two other women walked and carried their butter, and their goods home

again.

These are some of the hardships the first settlers had to go through to make

good homes for us. My parents have both gone to a better home. Father died five years

ago, and mother last spring.

Ploughing a Field near St. Adolphe, Manitoba (ca. 1920)964

964 St. Adolphe [Photograph]. (n.d.). From the anthologist’s collection.

528

4. From New York to Ontario (1907)965

I was born near Caledonia, New York, in 1829. […] My parents were of Scotch

and Northumberland stock. I went to Canada West, now Ontario, with my father,

April, 1849, when I was twenty years old. With him were my three brothers and five

sisters.

When my little brothers and myself parted from the rest of the family at

Buffalo and struck out alone, we anticipated a tremendous journey. We had one span

of horses and a single horse, with a lumber wagon and a buggy. We crossed the

Niagara on the ferry–boat at Black Rock. Major Kirby was then the Canadian officer

of customs at Fort Erie, and I had heard many stories of his strictness and severity.

In my load I had a barrel of sugar, a quantity of tea and some other groceries, and I

was in doubt as to how I might get along with the Major. He was very courteous and

kind, however, and in reply to my full statement of what the load contained, he

informed me that all goods destined for the family use of immigrants were free of

duty. An hour and a half was taken to make the entry and explain how the rest of the

family and goods had gone up by lake steamer to Dunnville, and then up the Grand

River to Brantford. After this, with kind wishes for our welfare, he sent us on our

way.

From Fort Erie we went along the mountain through Smithville and Ancaster

to Brantford, and from there on to Ayr, where we arrived in four days. We stopped

for dinner and to feed our horses at Dolman’s Hotel, Ayr. The barroom was filled by

a crowd of excited Scotchmen, who were discussing the attempt to close a road

between Ayr and Jedburgh by falling trees into it, and were filling in the pauses in

heated argument by taking drams of whiskey. I could understand very little of what

was said, and had serious misgivings that our Scotch neighbors, though sound

Presbyterians, would not form very congenial acquaintances, a misgiving which

happily was without foundation, as the sequel proved.

After dinner at Dolman’s, we drove around by Nithvale to our new home, which

lay one mile south of Ayr. The farm upon which we were to move contained two

hundred acres, to which another one hundred acres was added within a month. After

storing our load of household goods in the house, which was vacant and ready for our

occupation, we drove to our father’s uncle, William Scott, one mile farther south,

where we stayed overnight. Leaving my brothers there, I returned next day to

Cainsville Landing, three miles below Brantford, for a load of our goods which had

been left there by the steamer Dover.

IN THE NEW HOME

We were soon settled in our new home, and I was at work ploughing with the

team I had brought from New York. Andrew Muir became our hired man, and a very

efficient and industrious man he was. In a short time we had sowed a fair amount of

oats and peas, and had planted potatoes. I had been used to working in New York,

and understood the business very well. I found that the work agreed with me, and I

965 From Charlton, J. (1907, April 16). ONTARIO 50 YEARS AGO. The Red Deer News, p. 2. Written by John Charlton (1829 – 1910), Member of Parliament for Norfolk North, Ontario, from 1871 to 1904.

529

soon became tough and seasoned, and could perform all the kinds of work that I had

to do with ease. The soil, it was easy to see, was an excellent one, and the prospect

for an adequate return was so much better than it had been in Cattaraugus that I

was highly pleased with the country, and as I had nothing to do but stay at home and

work, I determined to be contented whether I liked the people very well or not.

Fortunately, we were not long in discovering that the neighbors around us were

pleasant, intelligent folk with the virtues of honesty and industry fully developed. I

found no difficulty in being satisfied with my surroundings, and we all made up our

minds to decide that the move to Canada was a good one.

My father and mother, almost immediately after our arrival, connected

themselves with the congregation of the United Presbyterian Church at Ayr, of which

Alexander Ritchie was pastor, which naturally increased the disposition of our Scotch

neighbors to treat us in a friendly manner. I soon learned to use the Scotch dialect

with considerable facility when I desired to do so, and made acquaintances as rapidly

as I wished to do.

A THRIVING DISTRICT

Ayr at this time was a thriving, and not by any means an unattractive, country

village of perhaps five hundred inhabitants surrounded by a productive and a well–

cultivated country. The Scotch farmers understood their business and gave diligent

attention to it, and our neighbors with scarcely an exception were thrifty, frugal

people, who were year by year reducing the debts upon their farms and adding to

their stores of worldly substance.

Canada West, or Ontario as it has been called since confederation, was at this

time increasing at a reasonable rate in wealth and population. Men were hopeful of

the future and had faith in the country. The immigration was considerable, and the

emigration to the United States comparatively light. […]

The English Corn Laws had been repealed but a few years, having been in force

up to 1846966. Under their operation the country had enjoyed great prosperity, for the

Canadian as well as the British farmer was protected in the British market, and the

price of wheat was considerably higher in Canada than at corresponding points in the

United States. Now, with the removal of the exceptional advantages conferred by the

Corn Laws, a period of depression had set in, and the future of the country seemed

slightly clouded.

WORK ON A PIONEER FARM

After the spring crops were put in, we turned our attention to ploughing the

fallows for wheat. By the time this was done, and the Swedish turnips sown and

potatoes dressed out, harvesting commenced. Ours was done in the old–fashioned

way. The grass was cut with the scythe, and the hay raked up by hand. Mowing

966 The Corn Laws were a system of tariffs and trade restrictions designed to protect British grain

farmers from foreign competition. They were in place from 1815 to 1846, and applied to all grain (at

the time, ‘corn’ meant ‘grain’ in British English). Until 1843, when the Canada Corn Act was passed,

Canadian grain was subject to significant taxes and import restrictions. These were, however, lower

than those applied to grain grown outside the British Empire (such as U.S. wheat), which gave

Canadian farmers an advantage in the British market.

530

machines, horse rakes and patent forks were then unknown, and I mowed, raked and

pitched hay till our heavy crop of over fifty tons was all secured in good order. Very

soon after haying, the harvest came out. The beautiful fields of red chaff wheat were

a sight that the mountains of Cattaraugus967 could not furnish. All of the crop was

cut with the cradle968 and bound into sheaves by hand. I was accustomed to the use

of the cradle, and could easily lay down three acres a day. With a very moderate

amount of assistance, we put our crop of sixty acres of wheat into the barn. Then came

the pea harvest, and soon after the oat harvest. Both of these crops we cared for with

our own help. At the proper time, the summer fallows were thoroughly harrowed to

keep the soil free from weeds; as soon as possible after harvest they were cross–

ploughed, this work not being completed till after the oats were cut. Late in August

we commenced on the third ploughing, called the “seed furrowing,” which left the land

as mellow as a garden. Between September 10 and 20 the wheat was sown, a half a

day’s thrashing having previously been done for seed. Then came the cutting of clover

seed, the digging of potatoes, the fall ploughing, and the pulling and storing of turnips

and various odd jobs.

As soon as convenient after the fall work was done, our wheat was thrashed

with an open cylinder machine, as separators were not then in use. The straw had to

be raked from the floor in front of the machine, and the grain separated from the chaff

with the hand fanning mill. When our wheat crop was thrashed we found that the

yield averaged a little over twenty–six bushels to the acre, notwithstanding that most

of the land was quite stumpy. Unfortunately, the price was low, and the greater part

of the wheat we had to spare, after saving bread and feed, was sold at about 56 cents

per bushel. At this time, Dundas and Brantford were the chief points for the shipment

of grain or flour from Brant, Waterloo, Oxford and parts of other counties adjacent to

them. All grain for shipment had to be teamed to these places. After the Great

Western Railway was built in 1854, Paris became our principal market town, though

we still went to Brantford at times.

Life on the farm was a pleasant and an active one. I was not troubled with a

desire for dress, jewellery or ornaments. There was always work to do, and I found

great pleasure in doing it. In the winter I allowed the others to do the work about the

barn, but I did most of the work that required the use of the axe, which relieved me

from doing chores and gave me more time for reading and study at night. The second

winter after we came to Canada, I did most of the work in cutting our own wood, and

967 A county in the state of New York. The mountains mentioned are the Adirondacks. 968 “Late in the eighteenth century came an improvement which produced the first combine among

agricultural implements. This was the cradle, an invention of European Quakers. It was taken by

them to the United States around 1800, where, like the scythe, it later reached perfection. The cradle

had a cutting blade somewhat shorter than the scythe, but attached to the handle was a cunning

arrangement of hardwood fingers which extended to the blade and in such a way that they caught and

held the stalks as they were cut. Using the cradle with a swinging motion that brought into play the

arms, shoulders and torso, a man could reap, gather and deposit the cut grain in gavels (loose bunches)

on the stubble where it waited for the bandster to bind it into sheaves. […] With it one man and a

helper could reap and bind from three to five acres of grain between sun–up and sun–down of a long

summer day.” Denison, M. (1949). Harvest Triumphant. London: The Falcon Press Limited.

531

Pioneer Farming in Ontario969

969 Anonymous ill. from Denison, M. (1949). Harvest Triumphant. London: The Falcon Press Ltd.

532

cutting enough more to pay for an open cylinder thrashing machine bought of John

Watson of Ayr. This wood my brother George teamed to Ayr. In one of my years on

the farm I lost but one day, and that was spent in fishing for trout in Cedar Creek,

where my father and brothers frequently, or at least occasionally, went. I had very

good sport and caught a good string of fish, but it was not pleasant working through

the dense cedar swamp where the stream ran, and I concluded that work on the farm

would pay better and was more enjoyable.

NO SELF–BINDERS THEN

In 1851 we had a very heavy harvest to take off. We had put in eighty acres of

wheat the previous fall; sixty acres of it was on sod. The land was all summer

fallowed, being ploughed three times, thoroughly cultivated and put in the best

possible shape for the seed. The wheat grew rank and luxuriant and when it came

into head the growth of straw was heavy enough for forty bushels to the acre. When

the grain was in the milk, a couple of heavy thunder and rain storms beat the stalks

down badly, and more than half the crop was either lodged or twisted by circular

gusts of wind into “swirls.” When the grain was ripening, a few misty, muggy days

prevented going into harvest, and when the weather cleared up so that work could

commence, all the wheat in the country was dead ripe. The result was a sharp demand

for harvest laborers, and as we were off the main line of travel from the Queen’s Bush

north of us, where most of our harvest help came from, we could not get a man, and

there was nothing for it but to go on with our own harvest with our own help. We had

two hired men and could run two cradles with the necessary help to take after them

and shock up the grain. Andrew Muir and I did the cradling; Peter Bawtinhamer and

my brothers George and Thomas bound after the cradles. Bawtinhamer was as active

as a cat, and could take up after one cradle and help my brothers with the other. My

father and younger brother shocked up the sheaves and brought water and lunch.

With a determination to do our best, we set to work: we were in the field in the

morning as soon as the dew would permit work to commence. At mid–forenoon a light

lunch was brought to us in the field, and then we kept on until dark. The work was

very heavy and we averaged three acres per day to each cradle in the swirled and

lodged wheat, which was fully equal to four and a half acres per day in an ordinary

crop of wheat that stood up nicely. It is needless to say that this was all that muscle

and will power could do. Before we could get any help, about fifty acres of our wheat

was cut and in stock. The waste from shelling was less than we expected, and we got

through with the herculean task with more comfort than we anticipated. After our

own wheat was cut, I turned in and helped some of our neighbors. I cradled eighteen

days in wheat harvest that year, and was obliged to lie up a couple of days with a

lame side when the battle was over.

The farmer of to–day with his binders delivering the sheaves ready to be put

into shock knows little of our sensations in facing a harvest of eighty acres of heavily

lodged wheat, with two cradles and the number of men and boys necessary to keep

up to them. Hard work and severe muscular exertion were the order of the day on

Canadian farms fifty years ago. The condition of things existing then was not without

533

its advantages, however, for when hardships are endured, hardly, self–reliant men

are produced.

THE NORTHERN CLEARINGS

At this time, the work of the pioneer was nearly completed in the section where

my father settled, but in many of the surrounding sections the work of clearing away

the primeval forest was still in progress. North and northwest of us, in the region

embraced in the counties of Huron and Bruce and a portion of the counties of

Wellington and Grey, was a new country, which was just being settled and which

received the name of the Queen’s Bush, to which I have previously referred. It is now

a well–settled and highly–cultivated country. At the time of which I write, many of

the settlers were in the habit of coming south through haying and wheat and oat

harvest in Brant, Oxford and older settled counties. Some only came for the wheat

harvest, as wages were the best then. The small sum of money earned would often

suffice to pay the settler’s taxes and buy a much–needed supply of meat and flour

while he was waiting for his modest crop. The wages in haying and oat harvest were

usually 75 cents per day and board, and in wheat harvest $1. On rare occasions the

wheat harvest rate would be $1.25 or $1.50. Many men who afterwards were the

owners of large and valuable farms, well stocked and with good buildings, were glad

in this way to earn a few dollars with which to meet the most pressing needs while

bravely struggling with the backwoodsman’s difficulties, and with patient toil laying

the foundation of future competence and independence. The pioneer in his own way

was a hero, and we hardly realize now how much the State owes to these hardy,

courageous men who with patient toil subdued the wilderness and fought a brave and

winning battle with privation and poverty, emerging from the ordeal at last

substantial and well–to–do citizens.

5. Wheat Farming in Edmonton in 1874 (1907)970

It was in the fall of 1874 that I first undertook farming. I had been mining in

the River Saskatchewan for the two previous summers and had made up my mind to

quit it and go east, as all the best paying bars on the river had been worked out and

minimum wage or earning for a day’s work of five dollars was pretty hard to find.

When I say that I intended to go further east, it must be understood that I

struck Edmonton from the west by way of Peace River, having sailed through the

Rocky Mountains on the river from the Omineca mines.

When I arrived at Edmonton, the Hudson’s Bay Co. were the only farmers. The

company cultivated about ninety–five acres in three different sections. (Of course the

St. Albert Roman Catholic mission was farming too, but that was nine miles away).

In the H. B. Co.’s cultivated lands, were, first, a block of about 36 acres on the

flat, on which are now the exhibition grounds. Next, there were about 15 acres

surrounding the big house built in 1872 and in 1873. This is the ground that has now

970 From Ross, D. (1907, January 12). Farming in Edmonton 30 Year Ago. The Saturday News, p. 5. Written by Donald Ross (1840 – 1915).

534

been selected for the site of the Capitol buildings. The next was a 50 acre field, of

which 46 acres was cultivated. This was situated between Jasper Avenue and the

railroad track of the C. N. R., and for a long time was used as a favorite place for all

kind of sports.

The Company had evidently not made a financial success of farming and was

going to give it up. A couple of years before this the chief factor, after attending a

council meeting of the company, extended his absence in a brief holiday, leaving Mr.

Mc–––––, a factor, in charge. On his return, in reviewing the situation, he said:

“How did it come, Mac, that you let the barley get frozen?” Mac was equal to

the occasion and had his defence ready. His reply was: “It was not my fault, sir. I told

Groat971 that he should put a stove in the granary, and he did not do it.”

My knowledge of farming was confined to making hay and binding grain in

California. However, my mining partner, a farmer’s son, was chock full of day’s work,

and he had a fair idea of how to hold a plow. We negotiated a lease from the company

for three years, acquiring the farm and taking over the stock and implements to be

paid for in one year.

We plowed the lower field (36 acres) that fall, built our house and rather got it

far enough along to get into by Christmas. To plow that field we had a Scotch plow972,

turning an eight–inch furrow, and an American plow turning a fourteen–inch furrow.

My partner had the Scotch plow and a pair of horses that were not too slow; I had a

pair of oxen, not too fast, and the American plow turning 14 inches and the wonder

in my partner’s mind every night was as to how I came to have as big a patch to show

as he had.

When the springtime came we prepared our wheat for seed. It was a fine

sample of Club wheat973, and came from Lake St. Anne. It was plentifully mixed with

smut and wild oats. However, with the aid of salt, at 25 cents per pound, used in the

shape of a bath, we floated off these useless articles and succeeded in getting a pretty

good sample of clean wheat. As there was no bluestone available to continue the

proper remedy for the prevention of smut, we applied slaked lime to the moist grain,

which was supposed to have the same effect.

We got our crop sowed, and as most of it was barley, it was in the ground in

fair time too. In the two lower fields the grain came up in a manner that was

surprising, and we thought that we were in a fair way to make a success of farming,

at least so far as these two fields went. The big field, however, was very discouraging.

971 Probably Malcolm Alexander Groat (1836 – 1912) of Halkirk, Scotland. He would homestead on

River Lot 1, a mile west of Fort Edmonton, and will what is now Groat Ravine Park to the city of

Edmonton. He left the company’s service in 1875, shortly after this episode. 972 “Its several parts consisted of a head, a beam, a sheath, a wrest, a mould–board, two handles or

stilts, which were connected by two sticks or pieces of wood, called rungs; all these were of wood, but the sock and coulter, with two shoes on the sole and side of the wrest, were of iron. […] The head and

sock opened the land below, the coulter cut the surface, the wrest and mould–board raised the earth,

and turned it over, the beam fixed the draught, and kept the several parts together, and by the handles

the plough was managed and directed. The sock, or share, was of a spiked form”. Brown, R. (1830).

Agriculture. In The Edinburgh Encyclopedia, Vol. 1, p. 253. 973 Triticum compactum, a low–gluten soft white wheat that grows well in humid areas.

535

There was a very wet time after the seed was sown, and, although it came up alright,

yet as the rain came day after day, it had the very undesirable effect of flooding most

of the field, which, with a subsoil of clay not far beneath the loam, was not hard to do.

As a consequence, more than one–third of this crop was destroyed, and quite a good

deal more was of a very sickly growth.

As to our two other fields, upon which we had fixed our hopes of success,

everything went along swimmingly until the grain commenced to ear; then we were

astonished. We did not remember sowing any oats; yet there were the oats, in some

places thicker than the grain we had sown! On account of the rain that we had during

the summer, the straw was very profuse, and between the mixture in the seed sown

and a very prolific volunteer crop of wild oats, the plants were too thick upon the

ground, and, as though tired of growing, they lay down. As a result, the crop had to

be cut with a scythe, although we had a combined reaper and mower in our

agricultural plant, with which to cut the general crop.

We commenced cutting the grain on the ninth of August that year, and kept

pegging away until threshing commenced.

Now, this threshing outfit I had seen at work before, when Bill Bird974 assured

me that the peas that he had sown, had been cut, and that they were threshing them

for oats. This same threshing machine was a hummer. Its motive power was produced

by a pair of horses confined in a frame and continually walking up an incline, yet

never getting to the top. By some connection or other, this power was conveyed to a

revolving cylinder that worked in unison with a concave endowed with the usual

contoglements of a modern threshing machine, only on a more diminutive scale. The

efforts of this machine were distributed in two sections, the straw, as something of a

tangible nature, was projected over the end, but that part of the output that was in

the shape of chaff, etc., being left below, was carried by manual labor to the fanning

mill, a home–built affair of two man power. With all these vast and varied features,

and my own personal experience, this thresher never exceeded a maximum of 112

bushels per day.

A Mechanical Thresher (1883)975.

974 William Bird, a native of Red River, served the H.B.C. as a carpenter and farmer from 1861 to 1882. 975 Detail from W. Johnston. (1883, January 13). W. JOHNSTON [Advertisement]. The Brandon Daily Mail, p. 2. Image edited by C. Willmore.

536

But a day of settlement came on apace. Inspector Chief Factor Hamilton976, of

the Hudson’s Bay Co., on his rounds, found that we were altogether too much on the

company’s books and made a compromise by taking back the stock and implements

at the original price, and the products at the market price. This indebtedness

amounted to $3,900, but in turning over our effects – 1,400 bushels of barley at $2.00

per bushel; 100 seamless grain bags at $1.00 each; and other things in proportion –

we found ourselves very much better off than when we went into the enterprise.

Now, regarding the wheat; there is quite an interesting bit of history attached

to that part of the crop. From the thresher we had from 15 acres a return of 245

bushels of a mixture that, as wheat, was not very satisfactory. A new fanning

separator had arrived in the country and we got its use. By several repeated uses of

the machine the pile was reduced to 125 bushels of very good, clean wheat, which we

sold for four and five dollars per bushel. We did not lose anything on the wild oats

extracted, as we sold them at a discount to the hunters on the plains at a dollar a

bushel.

6. Spring on an Alberta Farm (1929)977

Spring in western Canada is sudden and short. One day you are feeling dull

and stupid and apathetic from the effects of the long winter that seems as if it is never

going to come to an end; the next day you wake to the sound of birds and singing, to

blue skies and really warm sunshine. You find that all the snow has at last

disappeared, the frost has gone out of the ground, and the thermometer has jumped

almost over night to fifty or more above zero.

For months, perhaps, you have been eating a little too heavily, sleeping a little

too long, taking things a little too easily. Even the animals seem to suffer from this

wintry feeling. The horses hang around the barn all day and follow you about for food.

Then, all at once, one day somebody comes in with a few crocuses.

In twenty–four hours a complete transformation takes place. Everything and

everybody seem to be bursting with a new feeling, a kind of spring fever. And

instantly, on the farm, one’s thoughts turn to seeding.

An undercurrent of feverish activity seems to sweep over the whole place.

There is no longer any talk of “tomorrow will do.” Everything must be done now.

Overnight, the order goes forth: “Breakfast at six tomorrow morning. All hands up at

4:30!”

And seeding, and the year’s work, has started.

976 Robert Hamilton (1826 – 1891) was Inspector Chief Factor of Red River and Lac La Pluie from 1872

to 1875. In 1876, he retired to the ‘Auburn’ farm in Peterborough, Ontario. 977 From Strange, K. R. (1929, June 6). SPRING ON AN ALBERTA FARM. The Wetawiskin Times, p. 2. Written by Kathleen Redman Strange (1896 – 1968). Kathleen and Harry Strange had a successful

seed farm in Fenn, Alberta, from 1920 to 1930. A sample of their wheat won the World Grand

Championship for hard red spring wheat at the Chicago International Show of 1923. From 1924,

Kathleen became a successful journalist and author, winning a prize for her 1937 memoirs of farm life,

With the West in Her Eyes. Harry Strange was well known and frequently consulted as a specialist on seed grain.

537

No longer do we indulge in unhurried and often pointless conversations. No

longer do we bury our heads for hours at a time in a book. Talking is short and crisp

and limited to orders and inquiries about work. The men work from daybreak, and

after supper at night they go out again and prepare the seed for tomorrow’s seeding.

Even the horses frisk their tails. Those who have been following you around all winter

are now hard to catch, and many an exasperating hour is spent in trying to herd them

up and bring them in for work.

Experience and observation have taught the Alberta farmer that there are but

very few golden hours ahead of him in which to put in his crop. Starting from the

hour he gets on to the land, nature seems to have afforded him only a limited number

of days in which to perform the necessary seeding work that is the foundation of the

whole year’s income and prosperity.

The skies are anxiously scanned at all hours of the day for possible and

probable changes in the weather.

Preparations that have not already been made for spring work must now be

left undone, and all thoughts, efforts and energies are concentrated on the vital task

of getting the seed into the ground.

Unlike most industries, which are able to suit their work and output according

to probable demand and price, the farmer is quite unable to do anything of this kind.

His farm consists in the west of so many acres to be seeded, so many acres to be

summer–fallowed. And whether the prospect ahead is for a good year or a bad year,

for ample moisture or no moisture, for a high price or a low price, for a scarcity of crop

or for an over–production of crop, the farmer in general is utterly unable to take any

precautions to fit his work according to possible future prospects. He can but go

through all the motions and seed in due and proper season the land which is available

on his farm for that purpose.

So, feverishly and actively, he goes about his job, and the stock and the

animals, the home and the womenfolk and children, all have to conduct themselves

so as to fit in with that which will best permit, without let or hindrance, this vital

business of seeding.

Day by day necessary jobs accumulate, not only in the farmer’s work on the

land in his machinery and equipment, and around his farm buildings, but also in the

work he should do for his womenfolk. There are supplies to be hauled from town, a

yard that should be cleaned, fencing that should be repaired around the house now

that the ground has thawed out and the garden stuff must go in; perhaps a building

to be moved or repainted, and so on and so forth.

Every year on this farm we have been promised a day’s respite from seeding

between the putting in of the wheat and oats and another day between the putting in

of oats and barley. Never, however, have these days matured to do these odd jobs.

Always, when the wheat is finished and the services of the men are demanded on this

odd day, the good man replies:

“Good heavens! Don’t you realize we are already two days behind in our

seeding, and cannot possibly spare an hour?!”

538

Then, all at once, a sudden calm descends upon the whole farm. Normal

conversations become general once more. People take time to joke, to read and to rest.

The men start pitching horseshoes at night and go off to visit their best girls. The odd

jobs begin to be cleaned up. Seeding is over, and a brief respite from feverish activity

can be enjoyed until harvesting starts the ball rolling once more.

Author’s inscription in a copy of With The West in Her Eyes (1937).

Harvest Help

7. A Diminished Harvest Migration (1909)978 Land was plentiful on the prairies. Labour was not. For decades, thousands of hands would make their way West for temporary employment at harvest–time.979

As many men as last season will not likely be attracted this summer to the

western harvest fields. The chief reason for this is that it will cost more to go from

Nova Scotia. The railway fare is about one–third higher than the figures of last

season.

978 From EAST WILL NOT SEND MANY HARVESTERS. (1909, August 10). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 3. 979 “The prairie wheat belt seems to be confronted with a very serious problem in the scarcity of labor

for the harvest. […] With the large increase in the crop area and the enormous bulk of straw to be

handled, the harvesting of our grain crops will entail an immense amount of labor among the farmers.

It is one of the features of our mode of farming in the west, that a large number of extra men are

required during harvest. Where wheat or grain is almost the sole interest of a large number of the

farmers, the year’s work is crowded into a short period. A farmer who may require half a dozen men

during harvest, can get along with one man during a considerable part of the year.” HARVEST HELP

PROBLEM. (1901, August 12). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 4.

539

The Intercolonial and Dominion Atlantic railways made a big kick about the

depopulation of the east a year ago through the harvest excursions. Now they decline

to “pro rate,” that is, to reduce their rates along with the C.P.R. to make a low through

rate. The C.P.R. rate on its own line from St. John is also two dollars higher than last

year. If the west is to take so many young men, some shall pay for it, is what the

eastern railways are saying.

Except for this the labor market in Nova Scotia is favorable for a big exodus to

the wheat fields. The coal miner’s strike in Cape Breton should make it easy for a

great number to go west. At the collieries, a couple of thousand men are idle. The

difficulty with these men is that they have not the cash to pay transportation charges.

Take it all in all, the indications are that there will be less men this year for

the western market excursions, but this is not because of a scarcity of unemployed,

or a lack of men who would be willing to go. The reason is first, because of the

increased railway charge and the shortness of cash. Another cause that might be

given is that last year, men went out who in all cases were not able, at least not

without a good deal of delay, to obtain employment. […]

On August 14 the vanguard of the army of harvest hands from Eastern Canada

to help the western farmer in the 1909 crop is expected to arrive in Winnipeg980. The

first excursion train, as usual, comes from the Maritime provinces, and will leave

laden with blue noses from the farm, the mines and sea. […] Following the blue noses

will be the contingent from Quebec, while the last and largest excursions will be from

old Ontario. […]

PREPARATIONS FOR CROP

For weeks, preparations have been made by the C.P.R. to handle the big

excursions. By advertisements, through articles in the newspapers and by means of

the local agents, the news is spread of the number wanted. Up and down the branch

lines of the Maritime provinces, the laborers are collected. Every little hamlet will

contribute its share. There are those who take an annual trip to the west on the

excursion; there are those who avail themselves of the cheap rates to get west to see

relatives and incidentally make enough to more than pay expenses; there are those

who have the western fever, who are anxious to settle in the prairie provinces; there

are a thousand and one reasons that help swell the army for the west.

PREVENT ROWDYISM

Special arrangements are being made by the C.P.R. to prevent repetitions of

the rowdyism which disgraced the excursions last year. Constables will be placed on

every train and precautions will be taken to keep order. It is not expected, though,

that there will be any difficulty this year. The severity with which a number of the

980 Details from 1912: “The excursions will commence from the maritime provinces on August 12, the

second leaves August 16, and will be for the benefit for prospective harvesters in the province of Quebec

and eastern Ontario as far as Kingston and Renfrew. The third will leave August 20 and will be run

from Toronto and west to Sarnia and south of there, while a fourth will start August 23 from northwest

Ontario and the district between Toronto and Kingston and Sharbot Lake. The [C.P.R.] has also

arranged for additional excursions to be run from Toronto and all points east in Ontario, Quebec and

the Maritime provinces August 28, and from Toronto and all points west August 30.” HARVEST

EXCURSIONS. (1912, August 8). The Carlstadt News, p. 7.

540

offenders were dealt with last year by the magistrates, it is believed, will have a

salutary effect.

Every effort also will be made to prevent, as far as possible, the congestion of

help in certain towns. This was so serious last year that in Moose Jaw, Brandon,

Regina and other towns, the municipal authorities had to come to the assistance of

the stranded men.

“Congestion is almost impossible though,” said a C.P.R. official. “When the men

ask for tickets for certain points, they cannot be refused. Unless we said we will sell

only so many tickets for this place, and so many for the next, etc., and refused point

blank to issue any more, there is bound to be more or less congestion. We will do

everything possible, though, to prevent it this season. Moose Jaw is the worst place

of all. Hundreds of those who come out have the coast as their ultimate destination.

They naturally want to get as far as they can on the cheap rate, that is Moose Jaw.

Others want to get the most for their money981, and despite every effort to persuade

them that there is no work to be secured, they insist on a ticket to Moose Jaw.”

DISTRIBUTION AT WINNIPEG

The distribution of the laborers is an enormous problem and it is only by

stupendous efforts and a splendid system the men are despatched to the harvest

fields as fast as they are. Reports are secured from the Manitoba, Saskatchewan and

Alberta governments as to how many men are wanted at every station. This list is

given to the ticket agents with the number required at each point, and they endeavor

as best as they can to send out the help accordingly. When men inquire where is the

best place to go, at what point help is needed, they consult their list. To points where

sufficient help has already been sent, the men are discouraged from going.

“Talk about your strenuous jobs,” said one of the C.P.R. ticket agents who has

helped to handle the harvest hands for the past four years, “but there is nothing to

equal this job when the rush is at its height. […] Imagine a train of twenty–four

coaches arriving laden with two thousand shrieking Indians all wanting to be ticketed

at the same time and at once. They crowd around the window, a score talking at once,

firing questions at every angle and on every topic as if we were walking editions of

the latest encyclopedia. They don’t even know where they want to go. But that is not

the worst. You encounter in the space of five minutes the breaths of every variety of

whiskey which can be secured from Halifax to Winnipeg. It is enough to drive a strong

man insane and a teetotaler to drink.

“You probably won’t believe it, but the ignorance of those who come on the

harvest excursions as to the west is simply astonishing. Talk about the ignorance of

the English immigrant in regard to Canadian geography, but he is a college graduate

compared with some of these harvest hands. They come to the wicket and say they

want a ticket for Manitoba. You can’t get it into their heads that they are already in

981 A change in policy in 1912 would alter the incentives: “In the past $10 would carry a harvester from

Toronto to Winnipeg and then, after his arrival here, he was supplied with free transportation west to

Moose Jaw or Saskatoon. This year the railroads will charge a rate of half a cent per mile from

Winnipeg west to any point between here and the Rocky Mountains.” NEED 57,000 HARVESTERS.

(1912, August 7). The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 9.

541

Manitoba and that Saskatchewan and Alberta are not wayside towns. Strange to say,

the Ontario men are often the most ignorant.

“Last year we handled in one day 5,000 men, ticketed them and sent them out

in special trains. That is going some, I can tell you.”

POSITION OF BANKS

“The banks were never in a better position to handle the grain crops,” said a

prominent bank manager. “If everything does not run smoothly, if the farmers don’t

quickly get their money, it will not be our fault. Preparations have been completed

now and we are simply waiting for the harvest.

“For some time, the western banks,” he continued, “have been shipping money

from the east to Winnipeg in preparation for handling the crop. We are waiting for

the movement.”

“How much will be required?” was asked. He pointed out that it was impossible

to estimate. Many of the banks ship their money to the western headquarters and

thence it is redistributed through the west. Other banks ship to their western banks

direct from the east.

When the grain season is at its height, these big grain banks of the west have

staffs which do nothing but attend to this feature of the business. For instance, the

Bank of Commerce has four men whose duty it is to see about shipping money to

western branches.

8. “The farmers will not give us work” (1923)982 Harvest hands with no farm experience had trouble finding work.

“A great many of the British harvesters are stranded here with not enough

money to take them to the farms where they are to work,” stated Captain W.

Vaughan, Dominion secretary of the Imperial Veterans in Canada. […] Captain

Vaughan ascribes this to the fact that the harvest workers were told they would need

only £1 or £2 after paying their passage money, and he foresees a serious position for

the men who were brought from the British Isles to help in the western provinces.

[…] Because they have had no experience in farm work, British harvesters have been

refused employment by western Canada farmers, and many of the men who left here

last week are now on route to Winnipeg, making their way as best they can, and badly

in need of assistance. […] The men […] said advertisements had been posted in the

old country asking for 50,000 harvest hands, and that it was clearly stated that “no

experience” was required. Now they charge they were brought to Canada under false

pretences.

FALSE PRETENCES

“We have been induced under false pretences to come to Canada, and many of

us gave up good jobs in the old country to come to this country,” declared David

Hendry, of Jamestown, Dumbarton, Scotland, who acted as spokesman for the party

982 From MANY BRITISH HARVESTERS STRANDED. (1923, August 22). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 1.

542

of Britishers who returned today from Carnduff, Sask. “The contract we signed to get

the benefit of the special fare stipulates that we must do 30 days’ work on farms in

order to be entitled to the special rate back to England. We are here willing to work,

but we cannot fulfill the contract because the farmers will not give us work.”

Hendry declared the farmers in Carnduff refused to hire them. The town clerk,

after failing to get them positions, telephoned to the employment bureau at Regina

and, according to Hendry’s story, an official there said: “The C.P.R. brought them out

here and let the C.P.R. feed them.” Others in the party corroborated the story. One

man got a position near Portage La Prairie, but was dismissed after working a day

and a half. […] The men […] could not be placed and have been sleeping in the railway

depots. One or two have been sent out to farms, but after a few hours have been

dismissed as they knew absolutely nothing about farm work. One Scotsman stated

this afternoon that he never saw a real farm until he came here, there being no such

large farms where he came from.

9. A Portrait of the Harvest Hand (1927)983

Almost any day now you can see them, each man burdened with his bulky roll,

slipping off the train at some little prairie town centre. On dull days the sidewalks in

the small towns are alive with them – little groups of men of all ages and walks in

life, standing about waiting for some farmer to come along looking for a man. Then

follows the prospect of regular hours of work day after day (so long as the benignant

sun deigns to shine upon the fields) till the last kernel of grain has been garnered

into the waiting bins and the season is at an end.

Men are swarming to the prairies at this time of year from the east and from

the west; each train bears its quota. They represent almost every trade and profession

– lawyers, doctors, clerks, writers, builders, carpenters, mechanics, the professional

“bums,” the out–of–works, the drifters, the experience–seekers, the men who own

farms of their own but who have suffered some misfortune such as hail or drought –

all of them seeking work in the prairie grain fields.

The stories behind these men range all the way from pathos to bathos.

They are the Toms and Dicks, the Johns and Jacks, the Bills and Charlies –

generally you never learn their proper names until it comes time to pay them off –

the young men, the old men, the tall men, the short men, the lean men, the fat men,

the workers, the shirkers, each and every man with his eye upon the harvest.

Every man, on our own farm, our regular staff is supplement by several extra

hands at harvest time. During the past seven years at least a hundred men have

passed through our farm, and many indeed have been the experiences, amusing,

interesting, pathetic, and sometimes even tragic984, that have been connected with

them.

983 From Strange, K.R. (1927, November 3). THE HARVESTER. The Wetawiskin Times, p. 7. Written by Kathleen Redman Strange (1896 – 1968). 984 “Ferris was a harvester, who came up to the Northwest, and afterwards hired out to a farmer. He

caught cold, which he was unable to shake off, and finally became too ill to work. The man tramped

543

Harvest is imminent. You ring up your nearest town and say you need a man,

two men, three men. And usually, on the next train, down they come. Some fellows

always go around in pairs – often the most incongruous couples – a very tall man and

a little short stumpy man; a grizzled, white–haired oldtimer and a pert, sprightly

youngster. Heaven knows where they first mate up together. You never have the

slightest idea what kind of men you are going to get. Of course, there is no such thing

as a reference in this kind of work. You just have to take your chance. Usually we

stipulated that the men must be clean and decent–looking, because they have to live

with us.

Some of the harvesters come back to one’s place year after year. There is one

fellow, a highly entertaining little French–Canadian, who comes back to us every fall

as soon as the harvest is at hand. Lorenz is a kind of institution with us. He is a

splendid worker, highly efficient, indefatigable. He is always good–natured,

invariably cracking jokes, unfailingly popular with the other men. At night time he

keeps the bunkhouse in roars of laughter. He has endless tales to tell of the north

woods, of moose and cariboo, of bear and buffalo, of logging camp and timber mill. He

talks incessantly in his fascinating broken English, sing–song, sing–song, and the

boys fall asleep to the echo of his laughter.

There are some men who come around in harvest time, not with the intention

of doing a good honest day’s work, but with the sole idea of getting the most money

with the least effort so that they may spend a workless winter. These are the self–

styled “professional bums.” We had some experiences with them last year. One

arrived early in the morning, having got a lift over from the railroad depot, and was

sent up the fields to join the others. He remarked, before leaving for the fields, that

he liked to work alone; then he could see what he had done.

One of our neighbors, whose house overlooks the field upon which the men

were working that day, happened to come over during the morning. She said: “That

new man of yours seems to be ill. He set up one stook, then laid down, and he’s been

there ever since.”

When the fellows came down for dinner, we asked this man how much he had

done. He was quite frank about it. He said:

“Nothing.”

“Well, you’re fired,” said my husband. “Get!”

“Give me my half day’s pay,” demanded the man.

“Nothing doing,” said the boss. “You’ve done no work. You get out of here.”

The man was quite good–natured about it.

through the country doing odd jobs, sleeping in all sorts of places and getting worse all the time. Finally

he was sent down with hard labor as a vagrant. […] At last his term expired, and as he was suffering

from tuberculosis the police gave him transportation to Medicine Hat, where they thought he might

enter the hospital. The authorities, however, refused him admission on account of the nature of his

disease. […] Friendless, despairing, treated as a leper and an outcast, and hardly able to crawl, he

dragged himself back to Maple Creek, with his tale of woe. Shelter and food were given him, and,

stretched out on a camp bed, he breathed his last.” A Harvester’s Sad Fate. (1906, March 3). The Saturday News, p. 5.

544

“All right,” he said. “But you’d be surprised, mister, how often it works. Most

farmers pay me for half a day without a word. Sometimes I get by with a day and

more. I’ve made quite a bit of money this way. Never done a tap of work this year.”

He told us that he had ridden the rods all over the country from east to west

and from north clear down into the States. The first railroad fare he had ever paid,

and he hadn’t paid that out of his own pocket, was for his trip down from Stettler to

Fenn. That had been advanced to him by someone in Stettler!

Another of these so–called “bums” was a fellow who stayed with us a week

apparently working all right. At any rate, the other fellows never told on him! Came

a day when the outfit moved down to the oatfields which lie directly in front of our

house. This particular harvester, that morning, went to the dining–room window and

looked out upon the fields.

“We work down there, eh, boss?”

“Yes,” said my husband, standing beside him at the window and curious as to

what was coming.

“You got a pretty good view from here,” the man remarked thoughtfully. “Kind

of able to see all that’s going on, eh?”

“Why, yes.”

“Well, I think you’d better give me my time,” said the man. “I guess maybe

you’ll see too much.”

And away he went. We found out later that he had been drawing his five dollars

a day for sleeping at least six hours out of ten behind a stook. It worked all right so

long as he couldn’t be seen. When he found out that he was to work in a field upon

which the boss could keep his eye, things didn’t look quite so cheerful.

The quiet men are most always the best workers. Last year we had one big,

blustering fellow who could do everything and who knew everything. The little

French–Canadian dubbed him “Fat,” and as “Fat” he was known until the day he hied

himself off, much to everyone’s relief. Oh, he was a marvelous stoker, an expert hand

with horses, he’d been everywhere, seen everything. So he said. We pretty soon found

out that all his splendid attributes were imaginary, and when it really came to doing

the job, he just wasn’t there. Needless to say, he didn’t last the season.

Harvesting isn’t a bad experience for a fellow who wants to get a real first–

hand light on prairie life and living. The hours are long, the work is hard, but almost

always the food is good and the pay is excellent. A common idea seems to be abroad,

however, that any green hand, willing to work, can hold his own at harvesting. Never

was there a more mistaken idea.

The professional harvester is a thorough artisan. He knows his job. He works

with an apparently effortless precision, hour after hour, day after day. To watch him,

you would say: “How simple, how easy! Anyone could do that!” But what a difference

when it comes to the green man. His movements are jerky; he is tuckered out before

the day is nearly done; you can tell that his muscles are simply screaming in rebellion

at the unfamiliar strain. Our experience is that it takes at least three seasons to make

a man a real harvester, worthy of the high wages that they are usually paid.

545

Threshing Wheat near Regina (1923)985

10. Threshing Wheat in the Northwest (1891)986 In addition to hiring outside help, farmers would co–operate during harvest time with ‘threshing bees’.

The harvest of 1891 in Northwest Canada was the largest Canada has ever

had, and it was at the same time the most disappointing. The frost and the smut

combined have made a good yield and promising–looking crop almost profitless to the

settler. It has also been the crop we have worked the hardest to save. The harvest

was late and labour scarce; a couple of men did the cutting, setting–up and stacking

on most farms in this district. Of course, this without self binders would have been

impossible; very often each man of such a couple would be the owner of sixty or

seventy acres of wheat; and they would join together to put up the harvest of both

farms. In some cases, some isolated bachelor was farmer, labourer, cook, and

housemaid all in one; he, if any one, could appreciate that song where some individual

introduces himself as being the “boatswain bold and crew of the captain’s gig,” besides

covering a lot of other persons in his one skin. In this part of Assiniboia the stacking

was not finished till the beginning of November and then

THE SNOW CAME

and covered the shocks of several belated ones. After the snow the threshing–

machines came; and from then till the beginning of march they kept steadily at their

work, and still there are stacks left, till seeding is finished, whose owners could not

get a threshing outfit who had time to come to them. The way in which threshing is

carried on in this as in most places round here is on the “bee” system, but which is

likely soon to be replaced by each machine taking a gang of men with it.

985 Our Threshing Outfit at our farm yard [Photograph]. (1923). From the Anthologist’s collection.

Pictured are a J. I. Case 40 Engine and a J. I. Case Separator. 986 From WHEAT THRESHING IN THE NORTHWEST. (1892, October 13). Qu’Appelle Progress, p. 2.

546

Threshing in the Northwest987 (1889)

But at present when an engine and machine comes on to a farm, the settlers

for six miles round who have grain to be threshed meet there, bringing their

pitchforks with them. The married men, who have cows and pigs, &c., at home to be

attended to, come with their teams and wagons, and go home at night. The bachelor

turns all his live–stock adrift to forage for themselves, mounts his pony taking his

fork and toilet apparatus – which last is represented by a pipe and plug of tobacco in

most cases – with him, and possibly an ox–hide blanket. He camps in every house he

threshes at, if the house belongs to a fellow–bachelor. A corner – the farthest from

the door for choice – is bedded down with an armful of straw; on this, covered with

blanket and hide, he sleeps as soundly as he does in the bed which the farmer’s wife

provides for him when the threshing reaches that kind of a farm.

A shanty twelve by fourteen feet is large enough to accommodate six men at

night and to cook for and feed twice that number during the day. With the

thermometer down in the zeros, there is no complaint about stuffiness. A knot–hole

in the wall not big enough to shove your finger through is amply sufficient to keep

the air of the house thoroughly pure, and to allow a few cubic feet of snow to trickle

through on to the floor or the sleepers below.

As soon as the engine has got up steam – a difficult matter on a cold day – and

enough hands have arrived, a start is made. The machine sites between two stacks,

which are threshed together; three men get on to each stack, or, as a general thing,

the whole crowd get on each, and pretend to ignore the fact that the straw–carriers

or grain–spout require human attention whatever. This little oversight is pointed out

to them by the machine–men; and after all have claimed to have mounted the grain–

stack before any one else, some of the most good–natured sorrowfully climb down, to

SUBMIT TO A MARTYRDOM

on the straw, for which they look only for the public’s anathema if they fail to keep

the straw away and let the carriers “bung.” As for any reward for hard work in the

way of praise, they know too well that it is the peculiar attribute of that part of the

987 From Toronto Eng. Co. (1889, March 15). Threshing Scene in the Northwest [Illustration].

Qu’Appelle Progress, p. 1. Image edited by C. Willmore.

547

machine that, although hard work and all the dirt come that way, the men on the

straw need not look for praise.

With three men on each grain–stack, two more men standing one on each side

of the leader, to cut the bands on the sheaves and pass them to him along the feed–

table; and three men on the straw, who stand in line one behind the other, passing

the straw from man to man, piling it up anyhow as long as they can keep the mouth

of the carriers free; and when the grain–spout runs into a large bin, one hundred

bushels an hour is only an ordinary average when the grain is good. But when, as in

this last threshing, there are only two on the grain, and that only on one side, and

two on the straw, the above average might be divided by five.

The most unpleasant part about the machine is the part of the men on the

straw; this is especially so when the grain is smutty; then they are wrapped in an

ink–black cloud, which clogs up all the passages to the lungs, all the more distressing

from the soft deep footing of the newly–threshed straw, which helps to rob them of

their breath, by keeping them continually climbing to avoid being buried, and so

forcing them to inhale the smut in large quantities. These men come off at dinner–

time from the straw with a crust of black as thick as a dollar over their faces, their

eyes streaming and bloodshot, an itching smarting skin, and a feeling as of a

tremendous cold in the head. But in spite of all, every one seems to keep his appetite;

and the food at a threshing is always splendid; “as good as threshing–grub” is a well–

known saying to describe anything in the line of good victuals.

Dinner is generally beefsteak, as often as you like to reach for it, with turnips

and potatoes; beside which, cakes of various and curious kinds; and pies of apple and

apricot wander from hand to hand about the table. The teacups are kept full, and you

catch the milk and sugar for yourself, and fix your tea as you think it should be fixed.

Towards the end, a large plate of plum–duff is given to each man; and as soon as that

is finished, there is a general dive into trouser–pockets and the pipes fished up and

filled; and all leave the table cautiously, and avoiding all

CHANCE OF A COLLISION,

or anything that might jar the system; then, on the chairs and floor farthest from the

table the crowd sit down to smoke and debate over many things amongst each other.

A subject is usually chosen in which all are comfortably out of their depth, and then

while the women–folk wash the dishes, and we wait for the engine’s whistle, the

subject is argued over in all its bearings, some of which probably were never

suspected before to have any relation whatever to the question in hand; and it is not

at all uncommon for an argument that started in politics to be hunted all through

religion, and only escape death in astronomy by the whistle sending all the keen

hunters into their overcoats, fur caps, and mittens, and hurrying them out to their

places round the machine.

Many days of this last winter, threshing was carried on though the

thermometer marked thirty below zero, and the day was not the beginning and end

of work; for often, as it grew dark, a man would be told off to keep a straw bonfire

going, and then work would be carried on by its light three hours after dark. It is a

curious sight for any one, after a long tramp across the still prairie in the darkness,

548

to come suddenly to the bank of a creek or valley edge and see a threshing outfit in

full blast at the bottom, as once I did after about an hour’s walk. The night was dark

and thick with a haze of frost; even the snow hardly showed bright underfoot. I had

felt the absolute silence and loneliness of the prairie all the more from being uncertain

whether I was walking in the direction of home, or only just wandering around, and

I suspected myself of the latter. There were no stars or wind to guide me; suddenly a

faint hum of a threshing–machine caught my ear. I followed it; and after some twenty

minutes I came to the brink of the steep bank of a creek, and there in the bottom, in

a blaze of red and yellow light, was a threshing outfit hard at work. It looked

LIKE A LIVING PICTURE

let into an eternity of darkness and silence, as though it was one little spot where all

the life that remained in the world had met, and made a small kingdom of light in

the middle of an eternity of darkness and space The haze was so thick that the snow,

one hundred paces from the straw fire did not reflect the light; but the snow round

the stacks shone brilliantly, and lit up the smoke that curled in heavy billows and

columns above the men’s heads with a bright yellow glare; while the red–hot heart of

the fire itself, and the raked–out ashes of the engine that was spluttering away in the

half–light of the background, coloured the smoke and steam above them a deep red,

which gave a warm look to the whole – a look only, for many were complaining of

freezing fingers. I was not sorry I had lost my way. I was in time for supper, and

supper is much on the same lines as dinner at a threshing.

11. When Threshing Was Threshing (1947)988

Everything changes – even threshing on the farm.

We were driving through the country the other day and saw a threshing

machine being run by a farm tractor. They tell us the old fashioned threshing engine

has definitely passed away. Everybody uses tractors these days.

Our first recollection of a threshing engine was one that stood up on its hind

legs and was pulled around by horses. It was followed by a horizontal type that

travelled around under its own power.

Long before threshing day the farmer gathered together a pile of old fence rails.

The engine was equipped with a saw which reduced the rails to the length of the

firebox.

It took one man to attend the engine. He was usually a philosophical good–

natured man who liked kids. It was our earliest and greatest thrill to sit up on the

tender of the engine, twist the steering wheel around and blow the whistle at quitting

time, while the engineer kept a watchful eye over us to keep us away from the belt.

We saw him annoyed only once. We struck one end of a heavy crowbar through

the spokes of the engine wheel and left the other end on the ground. The engineer fell

over it. As he held his barked shins we heard the most wonderful repertoire of

988 From Henry, T. R. (1947, October 31). DAYS WHEN THRESHING WAS THRESHING. The Crossfield Chronicle, p. 4. Written by Thomas R. Henry (1886 – 1952).

549

picturesque language ever presented to the public. For the rest of the afternoon we

watched some other part of the threshing operation.

MEN NEEDED

In those days there was a goodly gathering on threshing day, numbering up to

ten or a dozen men. To begin with there would be the threshing crew of four and then

a half dozen farmers would help each other with the work. Three or four would work

in the mow pitching the grain down to the separator. These were the preferred jobs.

A couple of men would carry the grain away in bushel measures which was hot and

heavy work.

The threshing crew would cut the bands and feed the grain into the machine

while men outside would build the stack.

Straw was at first carried to the stack by carriers. The carriers were succeeded

by a blower. Later grain was carried from the machine to the bins mechanically, and

a mechanical band cutter and feeder came along.

Before the days of the band cutter it used to be a popular sport to pile the grain

up on the man feeding the machine.

Once a gentleman in clerical garb came out to the threshing and stood quietly

watching proceedings. During a lull in operations caused by the belt slipping off, one

of the threshing crew turned to the minister and asked him if he thought he could

feed the machine.

The minister said he would like to try.

The thresher climbed down and the minister climbed up.

Soon the machine was going again, with the minister skillfully upending each

sheaf into the separator with as smooth a motion as the thresher who had stepped

down.

The thresher watched with amazement while the farmers in the mow grinned

at each other.

The minister was a neighborhood boy, “Who had gone to college and studied to

be a minister.”

But he had been a thresher before he went to college.

FOOD FOR THRESHERS

Providing food for a dozen threshers was no small job. The night before the

farmer went to the village butcher and the farmer’s wife baked bread and apple pies.

The way food would vanish was a miracle.

“The way they eat must be very bad for their health,” commented a city visitor

watching devastation being spread through piled up dishes of victuals.

The farmer looked at the brawny crew thoughtfully.

“They don’t seem to be suffering much yet,” he commented.

One season there was an epidemic of lamb.

Instead of buying beef, each farmer would kill a lamb.

Early in the afternoon, a threshing outfit pulled into one farm and one of the

threshers slipped around the barn.

Sure enough, there was the inevitable, solitary lamb, penned up waiting to be

sacrificed.

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The thresher lifted the lamb over the fence and put it down outside the pen.

It scampered back the lane to the flock of sheep.

A little later the thresher heard the farmer tell his son that “the darn lamb”

had got out some way, and he would have to hitch up the horse and hurry to the

butchers for beef for the meals the next day.

FINISHING THE JOB

Along about ten in the morning or three in the afternoon the farmers would

start wondering just how soon the job would be done.

If they were through soon enough the next meal would be at the next farm.

Many a farmer’s wife has been told at nine o’clock, “They’ll be out of here before ten”

and then found the machine had perversely broken down and she was stuck for

another meal for a dozen men for which she was unprepared.

Now comes the combines. Fewer men do the threshing these days but

threshing days seem to have lost their hearty quality.

There seemed to be more fun in bees, barn raisings and threshings in earlier

days when the towns and cities were farther away from the farms.

Threshing Wheat in Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan989 (1889)

Technology and Farming

12. “A Wonderful Course of Improvement” (1892)990

As compared with other industries in regard to the amazing developments of

the last few years, agriculture has no occasion to “take a back seat.” For while it is

the first of industries in importance, it has been helped and aided by the brain and

hand work of all the others, and the mechanic, the inventor, the chemist, in fact every

man whose hand or mind is engaged in work of any kind, is either directly or

indirectly a contributor to the farmer.

989 From Toronto Eng. Co. (1889, March 15). Qu’Appelle Farmer Threshing No. 1 Hard Wheat.

[Illustration]. Qu’Appelle Progress, p. 1. Image edited by C. Willmore. 990 From FARM MACHINERY. (1892, September 15). Qu’Appelle Progress, p. 2.

551

Fifty years ago, when it may be said that the present era of amazing

mechanical development began, the farmer had a poor plow, made chiefly of wood,

the hoe, and the scythe only for his tools, and very little else was needed, after the ax,

to run a farm. Then the farmer was everything for himself, and was much as a

packhorse might be compared to the flying railroad train or the great steamship of

to–day. But about that time the inventor and the mechanic began to put in their work,

and improved plows led the van of

A WONDERFUL COURSE

of improvement. Then came the seed drill, the corn planter, and other like machines

for sowing and planting the seed in the better–prepared soil.

The increased crops call for something better than the scythe, the sickle, and

the grain cradle, and these were quickly displaced by the mowing machine, the horse

rake, and later by the hay loader and the hay elevator, by which the crop is now put

up in the barn without the touch of a hand. The harvester, improved year by year,

has led to the self–binder, a machine as intricate and effective as the woman’s sewing

machine, and which goes through the great wheat fields with its wide swath, cuts the

grain, gathers it, and binds it into sheaves, as nimbly and knots the twine as tightly

as the strongest human fingers can do, and then tosses the sheaf aside, taking twenty

acres for its day’s work, and thus doing the work of twenty men. And thus with the

gang plow, the modern harrow, the seed drill, and the self–binding harvester, the

wheat is grown for 13 cents a bushel, or one–eighth the cost of the former method of

work, the whole cost of the grain being now reduced to that of the plowing alone under

the methods of fifty years ago.

Farming is not now clodhopping. The workman rides and merely guides his

machine, holding the reins, as the engineer the lever, in his hands; and he may, if he

will, hitch the locomotive to the plows and cover twenty–five acres a day. The

PERFECTION OF MACHINERY

is now almost complete for machines are in use on which the driver does nothing but

guide it while a boy feeds it with plants, and a big finger takes these and sets them

in the ground, and others press down the soil while something else spills a quart of

water on the plant, and a hundred plants are thus set while the story of it is read. Or

another takes the whole potatoes and cuts them, and drops and covers the cuttings

and a quantity of fertilizer all ready for the young plants. Thus the tobacco, the

cabbage, and the potato crop are planted, or may be, at less than one–tenth of the

former cost, and ten times the rapidity.

And the harvested crop is taken in hand, so to speak, by machinery, is

separated from the straw, cleaned, drawn into spouts, stored in elevators run into

cars, carried 2,000 miles in the time it formerly occupied in carriage for a hundred,

and is in a constant stream like a river pours itself out over the breadth of a continent.

And it is never touched by the hand of man, except that the engineer who controls

the whole work touches a magic wand, which sets in motion all the various machinery

by which the work is done. And it is for this that the railroads have been built,

reaching out gigantic arms embracing the whole world, and gathering in all this

wealth of field and farm. The powerful steamships, by which the ocean is transformed

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into a mere way for other railroads, are but different vehicles for all the commerce

set in motion by the new agriculture, as different from the old as the reasoning animal

of the present is from the original germ from which by gradual evolution he has grown

to the ability to originate and conduct these vast enterprises which make up the work

of making of the present day.

But as the soil is brought under culture and the wealth of it is drawn upon; it

itself has to be fed, and these drafts repaid. And the chemist, and even the miner, and

the smelter of iron, and the men who dig into the bowels of the earth for salt and

other minerals are busy contributing to these

NEEDS OF THE SOIL.

The use of artificial fertilizers and the manufacture of them are by no means of small

account in this category. Millions of tons of phosphates from various sources are

gathered, and not a small part of them is procured from the slag of the iron furnaces,

and farmers owe that much, at least, to the skillful inventors of new and improved

methods of making iron and steel, by which the injurious phosphoric acid is taken

from the iron and saved for the use of the farmers in growing increased crops.

And the potash, which is needed to replace the thousands of tons of it removed

from the land each year in the form of wheat and other food crops, is now almost

wholly supplied by the salt mines, of which it is a refuse and a waste otherwise. In

fact there is not an industry which has any refuse or waste that does not supply

something for the use of the farmer. He feeds the world, but the world is contributing

its share of work and materials to enable him to do this. This mutual dependence of

man upon man, and interest upon interest, is not by any means to be ignored in this

connection, for as each becomes more highly developed it is perceived how each one

is called upon to assist the other, and the more intricate the new methods are, the

more it is that mutual aid becomes an absolute necessity.

In a thousand ways, the intelligent work of brain and hand helps the farmer

and enables him to supply food and clothing to the world all the more cheaply for this

help. The garden is cultivated by a variety of labor–saving tools, the dairy is

completely remodeled by new inventions of the most surprising kind. Among these

the cream separator and the butter extractor are

THE MOST STARTLING

in their novelty. A rapidly–rotating drum, spinning around and humming with 8,000

revolutions every minute, by the mere slight difference in the specific gravity of the

milk and cream, causes these to separate, and the cream falling into the other drum

is quickly gathered into butter. Thus the many previous operations between the milk

and its final product are done away with and in an hour from the cow the milk yields

up the golden butter.

Scientific and mechanical ingenuity have thus revolutionized this department

of farming, while the cow has been increased in its productive value almost incredibly.

It is due to the persistence of persevering men that a cow has been brought to yield

more than a thousand pounds of butter in a year, which is only a small fraction less

than three pounds every day for 365 days.

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And while mechanical ingenuity has been lightening the labors of the farmer

and making them at the same time more productive, scientific students in the

laboratory and the experimental fields have made the most valuable and interesting

discoveries. The nature of the soil, of plants, of the vital functions of all the living

things, have been discovered, and the new knowledge has opened a vast book in which

the tiller of the soil, the breeder of animals, the dairyman, the fruit grower, and all

the industrious workers in the broad field of agriculture may read the secret processes

by which the soil and the covering atmosphere furnish all the needs of organic life

and make the earth a fitting habitation for the human race.

And all these improvements lead on from the first and simplest to an

equivalent progress in intelligence and mental culture. The man who uses a machine

cannot be a mere machine himself; he must be a thinker; and while the hand work is

lightened and made more efficient, the head work, the brain – the mind of the man –

is developed and made more active, with the result that in every other part of life and

work our race is raised in the scale of intelligence and the great end and purpose of

our existence are satisfied more nearly than ever before.

Driving a Seed Drill in Saskatchewan (1927)991

991 Willis Studio. (1927, May 30). East [Photograph]. From the Anthologist’s collection.

554

Driving a Sulky Gang Plough992

13. A Brief History of the Massey–Harris Co. (1911)993

The story of the Massey–Harris Company, like that of most of the large

industrial concerns of the world, is one of small beginnings, of steady, aggressive

development, of absorption of competitors, and of expansion through the discovery

and exploitation of markets hitherto unsupplied.

The Massey–Harris Company was formed in 1891, but for the beginnings of

what is now the largest industry of its kind under the British flag, one must go back

to the year 1847, when Hart A. Massey began to manufacture agricultural

implements in his blacksmith’s shop at the village of Newcastle, Ont. The A. Harris

Son & Co. was established at Beamsville, Ont., in 1857, and the other companies

which went into the amalgamation and helped to form the Massey–Harris Co., were

the Patterson Bros. Co., established at Patterson, near Richmond Hill, Ont., in 1853,

and the J. O. Wisner Son & Co., which started business in Brantford, Ont., in 1857.

FALLACY OF PROTECTION

In the early days of the business all these companies were chiefly engaged in

experimental work and many and wondrous were the inventions which the pioneers

992 Undated, unattributed photograph from the Anthologist’s collection. Early 20th century. 993 From An “Infant” Industry. (1911, May 17). The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 4.

555

of the industry figured out while burning the midnight oil. Most of these were found

to be impracticable, but by the early 80s, when the land boom struck the West, a

serviceable line of mowers and reapers was being produced. So rapid was the

development of the West that for a few years the demand for agricultural implements

of all kinds was greater than the Canadian factories could supply. A duty of 35 per

cent., which was imposed by the national policy tariff of 1878 and remained in force

until 1894, practically shut out American machinery, and the business became so

profitable that a large number of factories were started, and in 1886 there were 23

agricultural implement firms in Eastern Canada, every one of which was building a

different style of binder. When the boom died most of these companies went out of the

business either by liquidation or by taking up some other line of manufacture, and

beside the Massey–Harris Co., there are now only two of the firms then in business

that are still manufacturing binders, namely, the Noxom Manufacturing Co. and the

Frost & Wood Co.

The Massey and Harris companies, which were at that time still separate and

rival concerns, finding the Western market had for the time failed them, both began,

in 1887, to look for customers in other parts of the world. Europe and Australia

afforded the first opportunities for the enterprising Canadian manufacturers to

engage in the export trade, and the two concerns each opened offices in England, the

Massey Co. in London, and the Harris Co. in Liverpool, Lloyd Harris, a grandson of

the original Alanson Harris, and now M.P. for Battleford, taking charge of the

European end of the latter company’s business in 1889.

MEETING TRADE CONDITIONS

The different conditions of agriculture in the European and other countries

made the Canadian style of implements unsuitable without some modification, and

the first thing that was necessary in the development of the export trade was to find

out what changes had to be made to adapt the machines to the needs of the several

countries. In Europe, for instance, straw is so valuable that the farmers cannot afford

to waste an inch, and a binder was constructed which would cut close to the ground,

while the length of straw made the open end binder necessary. A mower to which a

dropper can be attached and the machine used as a reaper for grain crops is also

manufactured for countries where farms are small.

ELIMINATING COMPETITION

It was while engaged in developing the export trade that the Massey and

Harris companies decided upon amalgamation, and the merger, in which the

Patterson and Wisner companies also joined, not only enabled the centralization of

the manufacturing processes, but also permitted one selling force to handle the

output of the whole of the factories, thus effecting a saving of expense, and at the

same time eliminating any possibility of competition in prices.

The Massey–Harris Co. was capitalized in the first place at $5,000,000, the

works of the four companies forming the merger being valued at approximately

$2,500,000 and the other half of the capitalization being represented by working

capital. Some of the works belonging to the different companies had by this time been

removed from the places at which they were established, the Massey company having

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moved from Newcastle to Toronto, the Harris company from Beamsville to Brantford,

and the Patterson company from Patterson to Woodstock. At the Toronto works all

kinds of agricultural implements are manufactured with the exception of plows,

which are made in the Verity Plow works at Brantford. The old Harris factory at

Brantfod is now used almost exclusively for the manufacture of mowers and binders,

and wagons and sleighs are built for the company by the Bain Wagon Co., at

Woodstock.

PROTECTION FAVORS EXPORTS

The progress of the company since the formation of the combine in 1891 has

been phenomenal. The whole of the wheat growing world has been invaded by the

selling agents of the Canadian company, and while the development of Western

Canada has itself provided a very large market for the products of the factories, the

export trade has grown even more rapidly until now it is equal in volume to the

Canadian sales. Massey–Harris implements are used in Great Britain, South Africa,

Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Argentina, Russia and several other

countries. The demand throughout the world for the kind of agricultural implements

manufactured by the Massey–Harris Co. is so great that the chief difficulty of the

company is to fill the orders received rather than to make sales; in fact it has been

stated by the management that the whole output of the works in mowers and binders

could be disposed of outside of Canada. In the effort to keep pace with the demand,

the works have been extended again and again, additional capital being subscribed

for the purpose, and at the present time the company is employing 8,500 persons, and

has a fully subscribed capital of $15,000,000 represented by plant and real estate that

is claimed to be of equal value. In 1891, the year in which the amalgamation took

place, the Massey and Harris companies, which were the largest firms in the business

in Canada, each manufactured about 2,000 binders, and the total output of the four

amalgamating companies was worth about $4,000,000. The exact amount of the

output of the Massey–Harris Co. at the present time is not revealed by the company,

but it is said that $15,000,000 worth of agricultural implements were manufactured

and sold by the company last year.

SECURED MORE WORK

Shortly after the formation of the merger, the Massey–Harris Co. secured

control of the Bain Wagon Co., of Woodstock, by the purchase of the majority of its

stock, and a large interest in the Verity Plow Co. was also acquired, the Massey–

Harris Co. at the same time arranging to dispose of the whole output of both

companies, again effecting a saving in selling expense, which is a very important

item, and giving the concern a great advantage in dealing with agents and customers.

A few months ago the company further extended its producing capacity by the

purchase for $3,000,000 of the works of the Johnson Harvester Co., at Batavia, New

York, the output of which will be chiefly disposed of abroad.

The Massey–Harris Co. is a close corporation, and the new issues of stock have

always been taken up either by the old shareholders or by the more responsible

employees. The balance sheets of the company are carefully kept from the eyes of

outsiders, but it is known that the dividends paid in recent years have been at the

557

rate of eight per cent., while large sums have been annually written off and placed in

a fund for the replacement and improvement of the plant.

A “REVENUE TARIFF”

The proprietors of the Massey–Harris Co. of course believe in what they call a

“revenue tariff,” and while the company is able to compete successfully with United

States rivals in every other part of the world, as demonstrated by the large export

trade, its officials, and notably its president and general manager, Senator L. Melvin

Jones, have declared that it could not do so in Canada, and that were the Canadian

duty removed from agricultural implements, or appreciably reduced, they would be

compelled to go over to the United States to do a large part of their manufacturing.

Protective duties levied by the Canadian government do not, of course, benefit

Canadian manufactures exported to other countries, in fact they must make

manufacturing more expensive (though this effect is partially eliminated by raw

materials being practically free of duty), and it is evidently necessary to look at things

from the peculiar viewpoint enjoyed by members of the Canadian Manufacturers’

Association to see how a business, one–half of which gets no advantage from

protection, though it has to put up with its disadvantages, would be ruined and driven

from the country by a reduction of the duties or by free trade.

That the Massey–Harris Company’s belief in protection is confined in its

application to the goods they have for sale in Canada, is shown by the fact that when

it comes to purchasing they go to the cheapest markets available. Seventy–five per

cent. of the material which goes into Massey–Harris implements is imported from the

United States, and practically the whole of this comes in a partly manufactured state,

so that even Canadian–made goods have had a large amount of labor expended upon

them by the lumbermen, miners, mill workers and iron workers of the United States.

GET STEEL IN STATES

The United States Steel Corporation and other American companies supply

the company with iron and steel, and the company has a timber limit in Arkansas

from which it gets hickory and oak, while bass wood, maple and soft woods used for

packing cases are obtained in Canada. The Massey–Harris Co. has for some years

manufactured malleable iron for use in the Canadian works, at Batavia, N.Y., the

plant being operated in connection with the works of the Johnston Harvester Co.,

which the Massey–Harris Co. has recently acquired. The bulk of this material,

however, comes in either duty free or practically so by reason of the drawbacks which

are received by implement manufacturers on exports.

The implement manufacturer is thus saved as far as possible form the evil

effects of protection, but the iron and steel industries of this country are at the same

time deprived of the benefits which they would derive if the implement men were

forced by high duties on iron and steel to patronize Canadian industries and pay big

prices for the output of their mills and foundries. Hence the iron and steel bounties;

but that is another story.

558

14. A Combined Harvester and Thresher (1925)994

Since I have been farming in Alberta, I have wondered if ever there would be

a possibility of using a combined machine here, and if so, what type of machine would

be adapted to the requirements under our very different from California conditions.

That such a machine was necessary to cheapen the costs of harvesting, to make it

possible to compete with the costs of such harvesting in Kansas, and other states

where grain is a big factor it seemed perfectly necessary that something along the

lines should be brought out, and I have waited patiently for such a one, and up to now

I have waited in vain.

However, a few days ago I was informed that a “Combined Harvester and

Thresher” had been brought into the Pincher Creek district, and that it was being

operated on the large farm of E. G. Cook995, M.L.A., and my curiosity was such that I

could not pass such an opportunity of making investigation as to its workings, and so

last week I took a trip down there and spent a day following it about, and noting its

workings.

I will admit I was not prepared to find it doing such perfect work as I saw done

there. It was so far ahead of my wildest expectations, that I concluded to give my

impressions to the press, as I have no doubt many would like to know of such a

machine, if same can be shown to be practical.

Now, this combined machine is put out by the Massey–Harris company, and

fully guaranteed to do the work, as such a guarantee was necessary to induce anyone

here to undertake the purchase and operation of it.

Mr. Cook is a first class farmer, handling the largest acreage in the Pincher

Creek district, and a man who wants everything right up–to–date, and after having

harvested several hundred acres, he voluntarily gave me the following information,

which he is willing to back at any time he may be required to do so..

First, the machine is propelled by eight horses, which is quite a–plenty. It has

a 25 h.p. motor, which operates almost automatically. It requires only two men to

handle the machine, one to drive the eight horses, and the other to watch the

separator and motor, to see that the belts are all in place, and in every way to look

after it as a separator tender usually does. It cuts a 15 foot swath, cuts from the right

side, and carries to the separator the same way as grain is carried on a binder. It cuts

only the tops of the grain. It leaves the straw thinly spread behind the separator. It

has an elevator which carries the threshed grain high enough to run by gravity into

a tank wagon, which has to follow the machine.

This is very little side draft, and up to the time I was there he had not had to

stop only a few times to make any adjustments. The grain when threshed and

cleaned, was equally as well done as any machine I have seen operate. He cuts, under

994 From New Harvester Thresher Cuts and Threshes Wheat At the One Operation. (1925, September

3). The Wetawiskin Times, p. 5. The article is unsigned, but in an omitted passage the Wetawiskin Times notes that it was written by “one of the most experienced farmers in the south”. 995 Earle Goodwin Cook (1881 – 1966), member of the Alberta legislature for Pincher Creek from 1921

to 1930.

559

ordinary conditions, about 35 to 40 acres a day. It handles all sizes of grain with equal

facility, and never chokes, as the straw is so short that is cut off, there is no chance

of choking, and also in passing over the sieves there is not too much straw to interfere

with the proper separation of the grain from the chaff. Grain, he says, can with all

safety be left till it is sufficiently ripe to thresh, and at once put into any elevator.

Now, the most important thing of all, he says, is the great saving over the

ordinary binder and thresher methods. He saves the twine. He saves the stooking.

He saves the loss of the grain occasioned by the many handlings required in handling

it in the old way. He operates with but few men, and he stands back of this statement,

that as carefully as he has been able to figure, the saving as against the usual way is

not less than 15 cents a bushel of threshed grain, which of itself, is a fine profit.

I asked him what was his opinion as to the size of a farm necessary to operate

such a machine, and his reply was 400 acres in crop and over, but this could be well

overcome by the usual cooperation between neighbors, as such a plan would make it

possible in any grain growing section. The cost of the machine, he told me, was laid

down at Pincher Creek, with all charges paid, $2,125, and he believed with proper

handling, as one would be required to do with an ordinary separator, the life of the

machine would be more than ten years, all depending upon how it was handled.

15. An Inspiring Sight (1928)996

. The writer has just completed a motor trip through hundreds of miles of grain

fields. And what a sight! […] Speeding along almost perfect roads, albeit only well

graded dirt roads, whether over prairie as level as a billiard table, or with the feeling

of a bird rising and dipping as the car speeds over more rolling country, dropping into

a valley here and winding up through the hills, only one sight reaches the eye, and

that panorama extends unchanged as far as the eye can reach – a seemingly limitless

expanse of yellow golden grain. The whole country is golden yellow.

And no great industrial city in the world can show a scene of greater activity.

On all sides can be heard the click and clatter of the binders as they cut down the

ripened grain and with automatic carelessness toss the bound sheaves to one side,

ready for the stookers. With amazing frequency the sight is witnessed of the newer

combines – reaper and thresher – some using the swather attachment, others

threshing the grain as the big machines move onward with the irresistibility of a tank

in modern warfare. In some fields the harvest hands are busy in groups, gathering

the sheaves into stooks; across the road a threshing gang is at work, horses hauling

great racks or stook–loading machines, pitchers, engineers, firemen, drivers, all

covered with dust and working at high pressure to accomplish a maximum of work

before daylight fails.

And as one speeds along the road it becomes a necessity to slow down and turn

out every few minutes as we pass, or allow to pass, a box wagon or motor truck loaded

to capacity with the wheat being hurried to the elevators, those far from artistic but

996 From An Inspiring Sight. (1928, September 26). Oyen News, p. 2.

560

essentially modern and practical adjuncts to twentieth century grain raising and

marketing. Every road is alive with them, great wagons drawn by teams, double

teams, horses three abreast, countless new motor trucks, strings of wagons hauled by

a tractor, driven by old men and young, boys hardly in their teens, women and girls,

all headed to the nearest railway station.

And these small prairie towns and villages through which we pass every eight

or ten miles all present the same scene of tireless activity. The loaded grain wagons

and trucks are lined up awaiting their turn to reach the elevators, while the “putt,

putt” of the engines testify to the energy with which the elevator operator is striving

to keep up with the golden stream pouring in upon him. At the same time is heard

the “hiss” of the grain as it is emptied through the elevator chutes into the waiting

freight cars. All night long the elevators struggle with the gigantic task before them,

and through the night the long trains plunge through the darkness, hurrying the

proceeds of the farmer’s toil to the hungry markets of the world.

And where are those tens of thousands of harvesters from Eastern Canada,

British Columbia, and the miner–harvesters from over the sea, which only a few days

ago thronged our cities and larger town distributing centres? Scattered singly or in

groups they have been swallowed up in the grain fields of Canada’s prairie provinces.

They have been merged into and become a part of the Epic of the West. They are

working hard, but they are, too, catching a glimpse of a new life, and it is

inconceivable that they will fail to become imbued with some of the courage, the

optimism, the vision of this great new land.

16. Combines and Prairie Wheat (1928)997

Much has been heard this autumn of the “combine,” the agricultural

implement which by cutting and threshing the grain in one operation has expedited

the harvesting of Canada’s great wheat crop, but the fact has not been brought out

that the use of this machine in certain parts of the Prairie Provinces has been made

possible not only by mechanical improvements but also by the development of wheats

which ripen earlier than those once universally grown. The combine is not suited to

all prairie districts, nor to all farming conditions even in districts where it is generally

useful. This is recognized by all interested in prairie agriculture, but notwithstanding

this the increase in the number used in harvesting the crop of 1928, as compared with

the crop in 1927, has been very great. It is stated that in 1927 the number of combines

in the prairies was less than 500, whereas in 1928, estimates place the total at ten

times that number. Exact figures cannot be given because many of the machines were

delivered only a few days before the opening of harvest.

The combine gets its name from the combination of the functions of reaping

and threshing. One part of the implement cuts the grain, high up, so as to take little

more than the heads. The cut portion is then passed to the threshing–machine section

and threshed out. The grain is delivered into a tank on the upper part of the machine

997 From Use of Combines Helped to Expedite the Harvesting of Canada’s Greatest Wheat Crop. (1928,

November 22). The Chinook Advance, p. 3.

561

and thence flows into the box of a wagon or truck which, while it is being filled, keeps

pace with the combine. As each wagon is filled it is replaced by another and the full

wagon is driven to the granary, or to the elevator on the railway line if the distance

is not too great. At the elevator the wagon is placed on a grated, moveable platform

and emptied in a minute or less by being titled backward, so that the grain pours out

into a hopper underneath the platform, from which it is raised by an endless chain of

buckets into the bins of the elevator.

One of the subsidiary reasons for the sudden increase in the use of this

implement is the new “swather” or windrow harvester. The swather is a wide reaper

which cuts the grain in a strip from twelve to sixteen feet across and lays it, unbound,

in swaths or windrows to be later picked up and threshed by the combine. Since these

swaths are kept from touching the ground by the “shelf” of tall stubble on which they

lie, the air circulates freely all around the heads, permitting them to ripen perfectly,

if somewhat green, and allowing them to dry out in case of rain. The saving in time,

labour and cash is obvious since the grain is not bound into sheaves, then stooked on

the ground, and later drawn to a central point and threshed, as is otherwise

necessary.

The combine is not new in principle. It was used in the southwestern parts of

the United States and in Australia thirty years ago, and specimens have been

exhibited and demonstrated in the Prairie Provinces many times previous to the last

decade. Individual machines were owned in Saskatchewan as early as 1908.

Generally speaking, however, farmers, even those who had as many as eight or ten

binders on their farms, looked at the machine in those days but refused to buy. The

chief objection was that in the Prairie Provinces the wheat then sown ripened so late

in the season that part of the crop had to be cut while still “on the green side” and

allowed to ripen in the stook. This difficulty has been overcome by the use of the

swather and by the development at Canada’s experimental farms of Marquis, Garnet,

and other varieties of wheat which ripen from two to three weeks earlier than the old

Red Fife variety almost exclusively sown previous to the introduction of Marquis.

The year 1922 may be considered as marking the advent into the Prairie

Provinces of the improved combine under present–day conditions. In that year a 12–

foot motor–driven machine was put into active service on the Dominion Experimental

Station at Swift Current, Saskatchewan, thence onward the advance in its use was

gradual until the great upswing of this year.

Thus by the research work of the wheat specialists of the Department of

Agriculture, coupled with that of inventors and mechanics, not only has the northern

limit of the wheat belt been pushed poleward many score miles, but the introduction

of labour–saving machinery, enabling the cutting and threshing of wheat to go on

simultaneously, has also been rendered possible, and this in turn has speeded up the

transportation of the crop to the markets of the world.

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Early Massey–Harris Combines998

998 Anonymous illustrations from Denison, M. (1949). Harvest Triumphant. London: The Falcon Press, Ltd. A No. 5 thresher was loaned to the Dominion Experimental Farm at Swift Current in 1922, jump–

starting Western Canadian interest in combine harvesters.

563

New Strains of Wheat

17. Red Fife and Marquis Wheat (1916)999

In October, 18601000, a Wisconsin farmer, J. W. Clarke, wrote a letter to The

Country Gentleman and Cultivator calling attention to the high qualities of Red Fife

wheat, and the success he had in growing it. In that year his crop averaged 36 bushels

to the acre, and he recommended it to replace winter wheat1001. He referred to its

originator, David Fife, of Otonabee, Canada West. The Canadian Agriculturalist

reproduced Mr. Clarke’s letter, and added an account of the origin of the Red Fife

wheat written by George Esson1002, a neighbor of Mr. Fife. The Fifes and the Essons

came from Kincardine, parish of Tullyallen, Scotland, and settled in Otonabee,

Peterboro County, Ontario, about 1821. Here is Mr. Esson’s letter which may be found

in The Canadian Agriculturalist for March, 1861, (p. 167).

“About the year 1842, David Fife1003, of the township of Otonabee, Canada

West (now Ontario), procured thru a friend in Glasgow, Scotland, a quantity of wheat

which had been obtained from a cargo direct from Dantzig. As it came to hand just

before spring seed time, and not knowing whether it was a fall or spring variety, Mr.

Fife concluded to sow part of it that spring and wait for the result. It proved to be a

fall wheat, as it never ripened, except three ears, which grew apparently from a single

grain. These were preserved, and although sown the next year under very

unfavorable circumstances, being quite late and in a shady place, it proved at harvest

to be entirely free from rust, when all the wheat in the neighborhood was badly

rusted. The produce of this was carefully preserved, and from it sprang the variety of

wheat known over Canada and the Northern States by the different names of Fife,

Scotch and Glasgow. As the facts occurred in my immediate neighborhood, and being

intimately acquainted, not only with the introducer, but with the circumstances, I

999 From James. C.C. (1916, June 7). Canadian Wheat History. The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 36. Written by Charles Canniff James (1863 – 1916). 1000 The Country Gentleman and Cultivator were at this time separate periodicals. There is a letter

about Red Fife wheat in the 1860 issue of The Cultivator, but it reads as follows: “Tell J. B. W., who inquires for Fife wheat, samples of which […] I enclose you, that Walder Buck of Polo, Ogle co., Ill.,

has a field of 300 acres in Fife wheat this year, and there is another man at Shusong, who has 1600

acres in wheat, mostly Fife. It is extensively raised in this country, and is a good wheat, only it is late

in ripening. It should be remembered that it is a spring wheat.” J.B. (1860). FIFE WHEAT. The Cultivator, VIII(10), 319. The letter referred to in this article is in fact found on page 370 of the December issue of The Cultivator. 1001 “On the whole, Fife wheat […] comes so near in hardiness, productiveness, and other economical

qualities to winter wheat, that in localities where the latter is precarious or uncertain, in any

considerable degree, I should prefer to replace it with spring Fife; the difference in value of produce

being much less, in such circumstances, than the anxieties and losses incident to a precarious crop.

Last Year the Fife with me yielded 26 bushels per acre; this year thirty–six.” Clarke, J. W. (1860)

Characteristics of “Fife” Spring Wheat. The Cultivator, VIII(12), 370. 1002 Likely either George Esson (1776 – 1851) or his grandson and namesake, George Esson (1835 –

1868). Both are buried at Fife Cemetery. 1003 David Alexander Fife (1805 – 1877).

564

can vouch for the correctness of the statement, and if necessary produce incontestable

proof.”

FROM AN ONTARIO FARM

There are some traditions in connection with David Fife’s wheat that differ

from the above. One is that having by experiment found that the Scotch Danzig wheat

was a spring and not a fall variety, the sack in which the wheat had been contained

was looked up and a handful of grain was found in it, and this was sown in the

succeeding year. Mr. Esson’s account is probably the more accurate. Another story is

that Mrs. Fife is entitled to share in her husband’s honor, for, discovering the family

cow contentedly making a meal off the growing clump of grain, she was in time to

rescue a portion of it before it was too late. It is worth recording in Canadian history

that the millions of bushels annually produced on the Canadian prairies are the

descendants of one or more grains that a pioneer farmer in Ontario was fortunate

enough to sow over seventy years ago. In 1862, Walter Riddell, of Northumberland

County, in one of his communications to The Canadian Agriculturalist called

attention to the fact that no public recognition had been paid to Mr. Fife by the

farmers of Upper Canada. “It does not reflect much credit on our farmers that they

have not ere this bestowed some public testimonial on the gentleman who was the

means of introducing it into the province.” (July 16, 1862, p. 442). It is too late now

to make the personal recognition, but we can at least inform our people of this story

and suggest a proper place in the historical records of our country.

EUROPEAN ORIGIN ESTABLISHED

But the story is not yet complete. In 1905, Dr. Chas. E. Saunders1004, Dominion

Cerealist, in his evidence before the Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture and

Colonization, referred to Mr. Esson’s letter, and then added the following:–

“This account has given rise to the idea that Red Fife is a Canadian wheat,

that it originated with Mr. Fife in some wholly unaccountable manner, or as a sport

from some European variety. It always seemed to me probable that the kernel which

Mr. Fife obtained was merely a seed of some common European variety which had

found its way into this wheat from Danzig. Last season, among our newly–imported

European varieties, was one under the name of ‘Galician’ obtained from a seedsman

in Germany. Now, Galicia lies about 300 miles inland from Dantzig. This imported

Galician wheat struck me at once as being very much like Red Fife, and I therefore

sowed it last spring alongside of Red Fife, and watched them both very carefully

throughout the season. They proved to be identical at all stages of their growth as

well as when the grain was harvested. A larger plot of Galician wheat furnished grain

for milling purposes. This was ground, analyzed and baked. Red Fife from a plot in

the same field was similarly treated. The two samples of flour were found to be alike

in all respects, and thus the absolute identity of the two wheats was established. The

firm from which the seed of the Galician wheat was obtained informed me that the

variety was procured by them many years ago from a farmer in Galicia. It seems,

therefore, quite clear that the kernel of wheat which came into the hands of Mr. Fife

1004 Sir Charles Edward Saunders (1867 – 1937) was knighted in 1934 for his role in the development

of Marquis wheat, and other contributions to agriculture.

565

was a kernel of this Galician spring wheat, accidentally present in the cargo of winter

wheat from Dantzig, of which he obtained a portion. It is interesting to be able to

throw this light on the subject of the origin of Red Fife, which has hitherto seemed

very dark. There is no doubt that this variety is still grown in Europe, and so far as

our tests have gone, it seems to be the same quality there as it is here.”

AS TO MARQUIS WHEAT

And what of Marquis wheat? It is an offspring of Red Fife, having this old and

trusty variety as its father and Hard Red Calcutta as its mother. Its story was told in

the annual report of the Canadian Experimental Farms for 1913, pp. 118, 119.

“All the details in regard to the origin of the Marquis are not available, but it

is one of the descendants of a cross between an early ripening Indian wheat, Hard

Red Calcutta (as female), and Red Fife (as male). The cross (as appears from

unpublished notes), was made by Dr. A. P. Saunders1005, probably at the

Experimental Farm at Agassiz, in the year 1892. The cross–bred seeds, or their

progeny, were transferred to Ottawa, and the writer of this report1006 as appointed in

1903 to take charge of the work of cereal breeding. He made a series of selections from

the progeny of all the cross–bred wheats which had been produced in Ottawa up to

that time. Some of these had been named and others were under numbers. Tho they

had all been subjected to a certain amount of selection, each of them consisted of a

mixture of related types. In some cases, all the types present were similar. In other

instances, striking differences were observed. The grain which had descended from

the cross referred to above was found by careful study of individual plants – especially

by applying the chewing test to ascertain the gluten strength and probable bread–

making value – to be a mixture of similar–looking varieties which differed radically

in regard to gluten quality. One of the varieties isolated from this mixture was

subsequently named Marquis. Its high bread–making strength and color of flour were

demonstrated in the tests made at Ottawa in the early months of 1907, and all the

surplus seed was at once sent to the Indian Head Experimental Farm for

propagation.”

It will be clearly seen from the above account that the question, “When was

Marquis wheat originated?” can never be answered. It came into existence probably

at Ottawa between the years 1895 and 1902. It remained, however, mixed with other

related sorts until discovered by the writer in 1903. It was first sown in a pure state

in 1904, when a few seeds were sown in a sheltered garden on the Central

Experimental Farm. Even then, however, its fine qualities were only partly known,

and it was not until the cerealist’s baking tests of 1907 were completed that he

decided to send out this wheat for trial to Saskatchewan. Its success in the prairie

country was phenomenal.

1005 Arthur Percy Saunders (1869 – 1953), also known for his work on peony hybridization. His father

was the director of Ottawa’s Central Experimental Farm. 1006 Sir Charles Edward Saunders, who was appointed to Ottawa’s Central Experimental Farm (by his

father, the director) in 1903 and would be promoted to Cerealist in 1905.

566

And so we trace back the millions of acres of Canadian Western wheat by way

of Wisconsin and Illinois to a little settlement in the back woods of Ontario, thence

back thru Glasgow and Dantzig to Galicia.

18. Alberta’s First Winter Wheat (1907)1007

A good deal has been said from first to last as to who was the first man to start

growing winter wheat in Alberta, but the first winter wheat grown in the Cardston

district was grown just outside the present town limits of Cardston by Robert

Daines1008, who had made a visit to Utah in 1888 and brought back with him two

bushels of Odessa winter wheat in a bag. Mr. C. O. Card, founder of the colony, had

two acres of breaking at the East end of town and allowed Robert Daines to put the

wheat in there. The implements we had in those days were simple, so the first bushel

was harrowed in with the old drag harrow, the sort we made ourselves with teeth

made by the blacksmith and then inserted in a triangle made of logs. Robert worked

his first bushel of winter wheat into the ground in November, but, having a

predilection for a young lady in town who sent word out to the field that she wanted

to go for a ride, Mr. Daines, forgetting that delays are dangerous in most cases,

dropped his work and went for the ride, leaving the harrowing of the other bushel till

the next day. But, and there is often a ‘but’ in Alberta as to weather changes, the

weather changed in the night, and Robert, who probably had a streak in him such as

we all have, which beat time to the old ballad1009 of:

“Stolen sweets are always sweeter,

Stolen kisses much completer,

Stolen looks are nice in chapels,

Stolen, stolen be your apples,”

had to put off the sowing of the other bushel till a fine spell came in February. The

first bushel made a good crop of 42 bushels on its own acre, but the second or the

delayed seed, though it came up and covered the ground thickly, simply stayed green

and ran over the surface during the summer of 1889, but wintered over the next

winter and made a good crop in 1890. And the lady married another; they usually do.

This was long before the days of Alberta Red which came in later when it was

necessary to fit the wheat to Winnipeg market conditions. Odessa winter wheat has

been grown at Cardston ever since 1888 and is still popular as it yields heavy crops

and does not smut. Forty bushels to the acre is a common yield of this wheat per acre

and it often goes very much higher.

1007 From Barker, E.N. (1907, September 7). SOME MORE SPUTTERINGS. The Saturday News, p. 1. Written by Edward Neale Barker (1859 – 1942). 1008 Robert Daines was the Bishop of Hyde Park, Utah. He arrived in Cardston in spring of 1887. 1009 Song of Fairies Robbing an Orchard (1830), by the English poet James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784 –

1859).

567

19. Alberta Red (1907)1010

The earliest winter wheat in Alberta of which we have been able to learn, was

grown by Chas. Kettles1011 at Pincher Creek in the year 1891. Mr. Kettles brought a

small quantity of this wheat up with him from the East, and planted it in a small

patch of ground which he had broken. It was one of the soft varieties and it did well,

producing an abundant crop. No particular notice was taken of it except as a curiosity.

The country was a cattle country, and such an idea as putting it to any other use was

never entertained. However, a small quantity has been grown in Pincher Creek

district from year to year ever since. No great development was made in winter wheat

growing in that district until the general development all over the province in the last

few years. But the honor of first growing this popular cereal seems to belong to

Pincher Creek.

In the latter part of the ‘90’s the district around Cardston was settled by

farmers from Utah. Some of these men brought winter wheat north with them. The

“Odessa” seems to have been the favorite variety. The quantity produced was not very

great. Nor was there any incentive to increase production.

The crops produced were satisfactory, but there was no demand. So far the

winter wheat grown was all of the soft varieties, and the demand which has since

sprung up for that grade did not then exist. There were no biscuit factories; there was

no connection with the Oriental market. Consequently winter wheat growing

languished.

In the summer of 1901 the first car–load of hard wheat1012 arrived in Alberta.

Walter H. Brown1013 and Ezra Thompson, both of Spring Coulee, were the men who

were the means of bringing it in. Mr. Brown had sent two samples of wheat, one of

spring wheat and one of “Odessa” to Fort William for inspection. In his letter he asked

for the opinion of the inspector as to the best variety of winter wheat to grow for

milling purposes. With the report of the inspection came back the advice to try the

“Turkey Red.” As the inspection report on his “Odessa” was not very satisfactory, Mr.

Brown decided to try this new kind, but did not know where to get it. He went to his

neighbor Mr. Thompson, who had come from Nebraska and knew the variety and its

good qualities, immediately fell in with the scheme, and together they sent for a car–

load. It arrived on the 15th day of September, 1901, and was sown during the

remainder of that month. Mr. Thompson was a land agent as well as a farmer, and

had the land agent’s ability to make things known. So the fame of that wheat went

far and wide, and the whole of the produce of that first car load was sold as seed in

1902, and was distributed all over Southern Alberta. In the following year the C.P.R.,

1010 From McKillican, W.C. (1907, July 20). THE WINTER WHEAT OF ALBERTA. The Saturday News, p. 6. Written by William Christie McKillican (1884 – 1964). 1011 Charles Kettles (1852 – 1923) was born in Ottawa. In addition to being a farmer, he served in the

N.W.M.P. from 1870 to 1873, and was Indian Agent for Peigan Reserve for four years. The Peigan

reserve is home to members of the Piikani First Nation. 1012 Hard wheat has a high protein (gluten) content. 1013 Walter Henry Brown (1858 – 1931), a Mormon pioneer.

568

seeing that the “Turkey Red” was a success, brought in a large amount for seed and

sold it in every part of Southern Alberta and Central Alberta. Since then it has

extended all over the province as far north as Edmonton. It has become such a

characteristic crop of the province of Alberta, and has improved so much since being

introduced into Alberta, that we are quite justified in giving it the name of “Alberta

Red.”

The “Turkey Red,” “Kansas Red” or “Alberta Red” variety of wheat had

accomplished great things for the Central Western States before being introduced

into Canada.

Kansas, which had long been regarded as too dry for profitable agriculture, has

become the largest wheat producing state in the union, largely through this variety.

Nebraska has been equally benefited.

While sufficient time has not elapse to bring equal benefits in Alberta, time is

all that is necessary to bring them about. And furthermore, it is already true that in

Alberta the highest perfection of quality yet attained has been reached. The wheat

brought from Nebraska by Mr. Thompson in 1901 weighed 56 lbs to the bushel, the

crop produced from it weighed 64, and during the past winter the writer has weighed

samples that went as high as 67 lbs to the bushel. The wheat brought in had a lean–

looking berry of only moderate size. Such has been the development in size and

plumpness that samples taken back to Kansas by visitors to that country, have been

emphatically pronounced to be a different kind by life–long growers of the same

variety. Indeed it is doubtful if there is anywhere in the world a hard wheat grown of

such size and plumpness. Nor has the milling quality depreciated. Actual tests by

Calgary millers show it to be quite the equal of Red Fyfe for bread–making, both in

quality and strength.

Just what the introduction of “Alberta Red” into Alberta has done for the

province cannot be accurately estimated. To anyone who has travelled over the

country from Calgary to Macleod before its introduction and who again makes the

journey in the year 1907, the change is quite evident, and is indeed marvelous. The

towns of Okotoks and High River were barely in existence and the other places on the

line were only stations or watering tanks. Now we see prosperous towns every few

miles, and elevators at every station, and at some several of them and all unable to

handle the crops. The introduction of hard winter wheat has not done it all. But it

certainly must be given a greater share of credit, and probably a greater share than

any other single factor.

The growing of soft wheat1014 has also taken a boom in recent years. The

greater part of the settlement around Didsbury is composed of farmers from Waterloo

County, Ont., who had grown winter wheat there. When they heard of the success of

winter wheat in the South they brought up some of their old favorite variety,

“Dawson’s Golden Chaff” from Ontario. Large quantities of this and similar varieties

are grown in the district around Olds and Didsbury. It does not bring such good prices

as the hard wheat, but is rather better in point of yield. The demand also has

1014 Soft wheat is high–yield and low in protein (gluten).

569

improved, owing to the establishment of a large biscuit factory in Calgary and

improved conditions westward, where the Oriental demand is for a low grade flour.

The “Alberta Red” is, however, the wheat for Alberta and will continue to hold

the first place. The soft wheats can be grown any place and are produced in large

quantities on the Pacific Coast and in other countries not adapted to hard wheat.

Hard winter wheat of the quality of “Alberta Red” can only be produced in a few

favorite countries. It is, therefore, an article that will always be in demand at top

price; whereas the poorer grades are more subject to over–production and glutted

market. It is a wheat that is worth more than its actual milling value, as on account

of its great strength it is used to grade up weaker flours.

There is a great need for such wheat in the Oriental market, as the wheat

produced on the Pacific Coast and in Manchuria is so starchy as to be almost useless

for bread making. Then too the Oriental demand which is now for low grade flour,

will become more exacting as the years go by. The Orientals are only now being

educated to like flour; they will gradually demand a better product. A people can be

educated from a lower to a higher product, but never the reverse.

It may be of interest to recount some of the advantages of winter wheat to a

wheat growing country. In the first place the average yield of winter wheat is greater

than spring. This is probably due to the longer period in which it has to grow, and

partly perhaps to better preparation of the soil previous to sowing. In any case the

average in Alberta has been considerably greater for the autumn sown crop. There is

less danger of winter wheat being damaged by frost. It matures much earlier and in

a country that approaches the northern limit of cereal production that is of great

importance. The growing of both winter and spring wheat distributes the farm work

better over the season. Greater areas of land can be cultivated with the same amount

of horse power, where both are grown. Half the sowing is done in the fall; this leaves

only half of the spring rush so dreaded by the grower of spring grains alone. Harvest

time is extended and there is a better chance of harvesting all the crop at just the

proper time. On account of the decreased amount of work in the spring, all the spring

crop can be put in more promptly, thus the danger from fall frosts is lessened. In case

of a failure from winter wheat the result is not very serious.

Practically all that is lost is the seed. Land that was in proper condition for

winter wheat in the preceding fall is in good condition for spring grains. Consequently

if a crop is lost in an unusually unfavorable winter there is as good a chance for a

spring sown crop as though the autumn crop had never been sown.

Since the introduction of winter wheat there has been only one failure and it

not a complete one by any means. This occurred in the winter of 1905–06. There was

practically no rain from August until May and as a consequence the more carelessly

sown grain was killed. That one year was a blessing in disguise.

The idea had become prevalent that any kind of seed might be thrown in any

kind of soil, in any way, at any depth, at any time, with reasonable hopes of a crop.

That bad year was a lesson. One thing it taught was that sowing on late shallow

breaking was a delusion.

570

To have a sure crop on breaking it should be early and deep, and the land well

worked up. The seed itself should be put in moderately deep; the fields that lived

through that dry winter were almost invariably sown three inches deep. The time of

sowing also makes a great difference. The best farmers are now in favor of sowing

between the last of July and the middle of September. Later than that may succeed

but one is taking long chances. The amount of seed to be sown is a debated question.

The “Alberta Red” is noted for its tillering, and less seed is needed on account of that.

In the dryer districts a bushel per acre seems to be sufficient, but the amount varies

with the district and can best be decided by experience. The past winter 1906–07 has

been the severest in the history of the west. Yet the winter wheat never looked better

than it does now. This is perhaps due to better methods of farming learned from

lessons of the preceding years. But in any case it is extremely encouraging to find

after a winter of unprecedented severity that prospects are of the brightest.

From Farm to Market

20. The Canada Grain Act (1915)1015

The farmer who has been in Western Canada only during the last ten years

and who ships his grain surrounded by all the protection of the Canada Grain Act,

can hardly appreciate the situation that prevailed here only fifteen years ago. Prior

to the year 1900 there was no Manitoba Grain Act and no government regulation of

the grain trade. The railway companies and the elevator owners regulated the grain

trade themselves, and naturally this power was abused, as is the case with every

monopoly.

When wheat began to be produced on the Canadian prairies in sufficient

quantities for export, it was necessary to make provisions for handling the crop, as

there were no elevators, either country or terminal, and no grain dealers in the

country. The Canadian Pacific Railway was here, and no other railways. The railway

company induced the grain dealers to erect elevators in the wheat districts and leased

the sites alongside the railway for that purpose, the railway stipulating that no grain

would be accepted for shipment from farmers except that which passed thru the

elevators. This gave the elevator owners and operators at each point a complete

monopoly of the grain trade and enabled them to quote prices and to set grade and

dockage absolutely at their own discretion.

THE INVESTIGATION

This was the situation which prevailed all over the West before the year 1900.

The farmers in the country complained loudly against the elevator companies and

demanded relief from the control of the elevator monopoly. Their complaints became

so vigorous that in 1899 the Dominion government appointed a royal commission1016.

[…] Their report was presented to parliament in 1900, and that report recommended

1015 From Marketing Your Grain. (1915, June 16). The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 7. 1016 The Royal Commission on the Shipment and Transportation of Grain.

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that the elevator monopoly be broken by the compulsory erection of loading platforms

wherever the farmers required them, and that the railway companies be compelled

to supply cars to farmers upon order. The Manitoba Grain Act was passed in the same

year providing for such loading platforms and appointed a warehouse commissioner

to have charge of the administration of the act.

For some years the railway companies paid little attention to the new act and

refused to furnish cars to farmers when they were ordered. The Grain Growers’

Associations in Saskatchewan and Manitoba developed in the years 1901–02,

followed shortly afterwards by the United Farmers of Alberta, and thru legal action

in the courts forced the railway companies to provide cars to farmers as ordered. A

little later the organized farmers secured an amendment to the Grain Act by which

the car order book was installed at each shipping point, and individual farmers and

operators took their turn in the distribution of cars. Other improvements have been

made from time to time, largely at the request of the organized farmers. In 1912 the

Manitoba Grain Act was replaced by the Canada Grain Act. The office of the

warehouse commissioner was abolished and the board of grain commissioners was

created, into whose hands was placed the administration of the entire Grain Act.

21. How Wheat was Inspected and Graded (1904)1017

In the performance of my duties as chief grain inspector, I have a large staff,

because the work has to be done promptly and systematically. We must be on hand

at every train whenever it comes in, as we must not in any way delay the railways.

I employ a staff at Winnipeg of from twenty to thirty, according to the season

of the year. Six of these are duly–examined deputy inspectors, holding certificates.

Trains arrive at all times, so that we have to be on hand at all hours, night and day,

Sundays and all public holidays. As soon as a train pulls in and the conductor hands

in his waybills1018, my men are allowed to make a list from them. With this list they

go out to the track, and open the cars as they come to them by this list. They usually

go in gangs of three; that is, two samplers in charge of a deputy or foreman of

experience. When the sampler gets into the car, he first spreads a cloth or sheet in

front of the car door, and proceeds to stab the car in from seven to ten or a dozen

places, according to an understood formula. He laps each draw alongside the others

on his cloth so that it is seen how evenly and regularly the load samples. The foreman

gets up on the car at the door before the sampling is finished, views it on the sheet,

and satisfies himself that it is a fair average, himself mixes the whole lot together,

fills up a sample bag of some two pounds, marks the ticket with the number of the

car, marking on this ticket, when the light will permit, his idea of the grade and if it

shows any unusual feature. This ticket must always be written from the number on

1017 From Horn, D. (1904, October 9). How Wheat is Inspected. Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 11. David Horn (1849 – 1933) fought on the government’s side in the 1885 North West Rebellion. The following

year, he was appointed as Winnipeg’s first grain inspector. Horn was promoted to chief grain inspector

in 1899. 1018 A waybill is a list of passengers and cargo on a vehicle.

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the car, and never from the list he has of the cars on the train. This is important, and

is the best safeguard against mistakes in car numbers, as on waybills numbers are

often transposed, and if the ticket was written from this list this transposition might

escape notice. From this precaution a mistake in car numbers is almost unheard of

in car work. So much is this so that the C.P.R.1019 themselves, in cases of question,

will take our record of the car number before their own. A careful lookout is always

kept for cars leaking or in bad order, and all cases detected are recorded, together

with the seal numbers on the car, and the railway is at the same time notified so that

the car can be stopped and repaired. Should the car have leaked any we note on our

records our estimate for the amount leaked, and also advise Fort Williams all these

particulars. When the sample has been filled up and ticketed with the car number,

the date, his grade, if dirty, and so on, he hangs the bag on the side of the car, and

gets to another car before it is finished being sampled, and so till they finish.

The sample bags are then collected from off the train, counted over to see that

no car has been missed, and that the number agrees with the number on the list, and

carried into an office at the yards, where we have a good window facing north, a north

light being the most regular and steady all day; and experience has proved that it is

the only light you can rely on for uniform work. In front of this window we have a

long table built for the purpose. At this office the cars are again listed on a working

sheet. The deputies examine the samples, one by one, on this table at this window,

and mark their grading of the car on this sheet, so that the deputy inspector will have

the least possible distraction from the actual work of inspection. They have assistants

to put the samples in order for them, and to take them away from them when through

with, and to test them for the dockage when they require to be cleaned, or weigh any

that is required to weigh.

The docking1020 is arrived at by taking a pound of the uncleaned grain and

putting it through the No. 10 sieve. On weighing afterwards a graduated scale on the

beam shows the percentage cleaned out. It ought to be an understanding that this

No. 10 sieve can take should be [sic.] out of all wheat.

Sometimes we get cars loaded to try and get ahead of the inspector, “plugged,”

as we term it. In every case of this kind, we take two samples – a sample of the inferior

wheat which it was tried to pass off, and estimating as nearly as possible its amount,

and a sample of what the car will average when it comes to unloaded. In any case in

which we are quite satisfied it is a deliberate attempt to defraud, we grade the car

according to the “plug.” In most cases of this kind, the shipper takes the guilt to

himself, and we seldom hear a word of protest, the shipper apparently contenting

himself with the determination to either do it better next time or leave it alone. The

most reprehensible practice, and the one which is most difficult to suppress, is the

slight mixing of damp among good wheat; and yet there is not a shipper but thinks it

1019 Canadian Pacific Railway. 1020 A bushel of wheat straight from the farm will not be completely clean – there will be bits of soil,

weeds and other waste material in it. ‘Dockage’ (or here, ‘docking’) is an estimate of how much of the

weight of a bushel of wheat is waste material, instead of wheat. The idea is that the buyer should only

have to pay for the wheat, not the waste.

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is quite legitimate to do this. In any season in which we have a quantity of damp

wheat, even the good wheat contains moisture in excess of the normal, so that the

getting of a car of this even slightly moist wheat into a bin means endangering the

keeping virtue of the whole bin. In any such damp season you can better picture the

consequences to the trade than I can tell you, were it to happen that even one bin of

graded wheat at the terminal had gone wrong.

Simultaneously with the inspecting of the samples from the cars, the writing

in of the grades and the dockage on the working sheets, the certificates are being

written out, and another copy of these sheets being made for Fort William. One

deputy inspector, T. N. Horn, is responsible for the inspecting of all cars coming from

Southern Manitoba and the branches, and another, Jas. Massie, for all cars coming

in on the C.N.R. for Port Arthur. By half past two, when the lists for Fort William

have been sent off to the east train, everything that has come in for the previous

twenty–four hours has been finished up and sheets and samples are ready to come

over to the grain exchange.

These working sheets we put into a self–binder, and page and index, making

them our book of original and only record of everything connected with the cars.

Should any of the deputy inspectors have a car about which he is in any kind of doubt

or perplexity, or about which he would like my advice, or to which he specially wishes

to draw my attention, he specially tags the sample and certificate so that it comes

before me, when I go over it, and confer with him respecting it. The most of the

samples of each day are brought over to the Grain Exchange1021 office and properly

filed away so that they can be referred to easily and promptly. What are not likely to

be enquired for or questioned, such as No. 1 hard cars, are filed away in the same way

at the yard office, where they can be telephoned for at any time when wanted.

Samples are preserved as long as our room will permit – at least one month.

Every car is again examined at the terminals before it gets into the elevator,

and if any decided discrepancy is discovered the car is held out, and a sample is sent

to me for facts, the car being held on track meanwhile, until the matter is settled.

Instances of this are few, and are usually cars that are questionable for condition, or

dirty cars which it is considered are impossible to clean to straight grade on account

of smut, or have been fixed or “plugged” or in some way dishonestly loaded.

The time that the car is in transit between Winnipeg and Fort William is the

opportunity for protest, re–inspection or survey, and this opportunity is in not in any

way neglected. Our samples are continually at the service of the shippers who are

disappointed in their grades, and when they deem they have had unfair treatment, I

review the inspection given, and if they are still aggrieved they have time to bring

the car before the Board of Survey. This Board is not made use of as often as it should

be.

Now that the cost has been reduced to three dollars a car, and its machinery is

so simple for prompt and immediate action, it would be fairer to the inspector to have

its services in more frequent use. If any way can be devised by which this Board can

be made more available, more accessible or more effective, its adoption cannot be too

1021 The Winnipeg Grain Exchange, a central market for wheat.

574

strongly advocated. Besides considering protests by the shippers or sellers of the

wheat, the Board is also available for the adjustment of the protests of the consignees

or buyers. It is a matter for complaint that the eastern end of the trade have never

evinced enough faith in our Survey Board to trust them with the consideration or

adjustment or investigation of any of their supposed cases, of unfair or unjust

treatment, preferring, apparently, to impeach the inspection to the Department at

Ottawa, and to try to get such satisfaction as they can from any agitation they effect

in that quarter. It surely speaks for the uniformity and thoroughness of the inspection

that never since the new act, has any consignee, apparently, had a complaint of

weight enough to warrant his bringing it before the Board, which Board surely, at

least, merits the fairness of a test before its character for impartial judgment in such

cases is impugned.

When the wheat comes to be shipped out of Fort William, it is sampled as it is

being weighed. Care is also taken to see that the right grade is loaded, and that the

wheat has been properly cleaned. Although the inspection specifies just how much

they can clean out in going in, it is the policy of the elevator to clean as little as they

can in going out, so long as the inspector will pass it, their great object being to make

the elevator hold out. On this point there is continual divergence, as you can well

understand, between the elevator and the inspection, both on cars going in, that they

have not been allowed dockage enough, and on cargoes going out, that it is as clean

as it could be made on the dockage allowed. When the unloading of a cargo is

completed, a sample of some three pounds is labeled with particulars of vessel, gram–

shipper and consignee, and is sent to me at Winnipeg, where, after examination, it is

filed away and preserved for the rest of the season for my own protection in case of

protest or for referenced at any time. A sample from every cargo of the crop of 1903

is now on file in my office.

As the samples of the cars are being inspected and whilst the sample is on the

table before him, the deputy–inspector throws a handful from each car into a pail

marked the same grade as the car inspected. This keeps before us a continuous

average of each grade. At the end of each month the average for that month is

retained separately. By the month of November these averages are sent out as the

standard samples to the different exchanges in the east, the Department at Ottawa,

the grain inspectors at Montreal, Toronto and Kingston, the office of the Lord High

Commissioner in London, to the exchanges at Liverpool, London, Glasgow, Leith,

Bristol and Dublin, and besides to every party or interest making request for them.

These classifications or grades resolve themselves into such well–defined lines that

the grade of one year represents the grade of another so closely as it is possible for

the crop of one year to duplicate that of another.

The lower or commercial grades have caused us much trouble this year, and

the omission to call together the Grain Standards Board has been severely

condemned. But during the month of September three million barrels were inspected,

with not one car lower than No. 3 Northern, and by the time in November when five

million bushels had been inspected, only about a hundred thousand went as No. 4,

and then some five thousand feed had appeared. The classification, as we had it then,

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appeared so fair and reasonable, that I concluded that it would carry off the crop as

satisfactorily as it had done the previous year, and allowed the sample standard

samples for these grades to go out to all the exchanges with the rest.

This classification appeared to be most fair and reasonable; the 3 Northern

taking in all the good wheat barred out of the higher grades of wheat through showing

too much frost damage and sprout and weather damage. The No. 4 took in everything

that could be called milling wheat. The Feed1022 took in all the plump, heavily frosted

of good berry, while the Feed No. 2 is but feed pure and simple. It is my conviction

that had the Standards Board met at the time these Standard samples were sent out,

they would have unhesitatingly adopted them as the very best course possible. No

one could have foreseen the spread that has since developed. The inherent intrinsic

value of the grade does not, as many suppose govern the spread between grade and

grade. It is hardly feasible to set any standard sample that will rule at any arbitrary

spread. The matter of quality available controls irresistibly to say nothing of the

question of demand. In some twenty–five million bushels inspected to the end of

January last, the No. 4 had been but eight per cent., […] and the […] feed five per

cent. Although in theory, it may appear beneficial to have multiplicity of grades, in

practice it impedes trading.

At all times a trying and difficult position, the inspector’s has been doubly so

this season, mostly through the wideness of the spreads. His position is peculiar in

comparison with other positions of trust, in that he never expects to give satisfaction.

On the contrary, he expects his decisions to be challenged and criticized from both

ends continually. No inspector, no system of inspection will ever suit everyone, or suit

all interests. Almost every shipper of a car believes he can show where a mistake was

made with his car, and that such a mistake has occurred in his case is the daily

burden of many a letter and telegram. The outstanding characteristics of each

different grade is pronounced enough to leave shippers little excuse for not knowing

whether their car is safe for the grade or not. My contention is that we should have

an inspection bureau of recognized and assured ability, honesty and thoroughness a

staff for which honor and probity and carefulness we can always vouch – a condition

of things to make the shippers recognize what they are up against, and to govern

their shipping and buying to meet these conditions, instead of, as so many try, to buy

and ship in a hap–hazard style, and then clamor to have the inspection bent or

modified to meet conditions they have themselves weakly blundered into. A rigid

inspection is the best for all interests. It begets the confidence of the importer so that

he is justified in paying the last cent for our wheat, knowing he will get exactly what

he buys. This reacts right back to the farmer’s wagon. Selling on grade is simply

selling on sample with the added guarantee of a disinterested responsible tribunal

and that the shipment is equal to sample.

1022 Feed grain is meant to be eaten by farm animals, not humans.

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22. The Transportation of Grain (1914)1023

The marketing of grain at a country elevator is a common scene in

Saskatchewan. Here you see farmers marketing their grain in the most common of

all methods. You even see a team of oxen. The grain is weighed on a platform, which

has a special arrangement for dumping the grain into the pit, from which it is

elevated to the top of the elevator. Later on when it is desired to load the grain into

cars, it is again let into a pit and then elevated and loaded into the cars direct from

the top of the elevator.

A more up to date method of hauling grain up to the elevator, is by means of

the gasoline tractor, and big grain tanks, each of which holds 120 bushels of grain.

This grain is elevated to the top of the elevator and let run down directly into the

cars. In the background it is possible to see a string of empty tanks being drawn away.

When a grain blockade occurs, it is customary to see temporary bins erected by

farmers alongside the railway track. Luckily no blockades occurred during 1913, and

it was unnecessary to adopt such methods.

The next step is where the carload has been loaded, the railway company has

taken charge, and the grain has been taken to Winnipeg. When the grain arrives

here, it is ready for the Dominion government inspection department. First a man

comes along and unseals the car. He also leaves a bag at the bottom of the door.

Number two comes along, and he has in his hand a “stabber,” and also a cloth. He

climbs right into the car. The stabber is a hollow brass tube with another tube inside.

Each tube has a number of rows of perpendicular holes. It is deep pointed at the

bottom to allow being thrust through the grain. It is possible to turn one tube inside

the other. The man drives the stabber (closed so as not to admit the grain) to the

bottom of the car. He then turns the tubes to permit the grain to enter, and by this

mean draws out what might be termed a sectional view of the grain in the car. He is

supposed to stab the car in seven different places. Having drawn the stabber out each

time, it is here the cloth comes into play. He draws the inside of the stabber out and

empties the contents on the cloth. He can then be considered to have fair sample of

the grain in the car. The samples so secured are too large for inspection so he

thoroughly mixes this large sample and puts a fair five pound sample in his bag The

sealer again comes along and re–seals the car. The samples which are taken are

hauled on a dray to the grain exchange where the actual inspection takes place.

“Six men are the final arbiters on all the grain which passes through Winnipeg.

All three railways have large yards there. When it is stated that over 1500 cars of

grain pass through Winnipeg daily, during the grain season, you can readily

understand the work the inspection staff have to do.

1023 From Dunning, C. A. & Anonymous. (1914, March 25). The Transportation of Grain. The Melfort Moon, p. 2 and Dunning, C. A. (1914, April 1). The Transportation of Grain. The Melfort Moon, p. 6. Written by Charles Avery Dunning (1885 – 1958), 3rd premier of Saskatchewan (1922 – 1926).

577

On the whole I think the inspection staff is to be congratulated, although the

farmers do complain sometimes. It is a big strain on these men to be the constant

arbiter of the grade of the grain.

Next the grain is taken to the terminal elevators, at Fort William or Port

Arthur, and the cars are shunted on to what is called the “hump.” It is made by

elevating the railway track six or eight feet. The cars are then shunted by gravity on

to the switch to which they are intended to go.

A splendid type of the high class terminal elevator is the concrete structure

owned and operated by the Canadian Pacific Railway, known as elevator “D.” There

are four sets of track. It holds the record for unloading, 185 cars having been unloaded

in one day. The grain is elevated into the work house and passes along endless belts

into the storage tanks, according to grade, and remains there until required to be

loaded into the lake boats. It is let out of the bottom of the tank on to another endless

belt which takes it back to the work house where it is re–elevated and run down the

spout into the boat.

Another type of elevator is the old wooden type, covered with iron sheeting.

This class is rapidly passing out of use, owing to the higher cost of operation, the

insurance rate being especially high on wooden elevators.

In contrast with this old type elevator, the new Dominion Government elevator

is of concrete construction throughout, and is of the best type of construction, the

insurance rate being the lowest.

Up to now we have been considering the course of the large proportion of the

grain which goes through the terminals into boats. The other method is the loading

of the car for all rail shipments. This year on account of the crop being early most of

it has been shipped by boat. When conditions are not so good it is sometimes

necessary to ship considerable quantities of grain all rail during that period of the

year when the lakes are frozen.

Fortunate is the milling company which has its mill located beside a terminal

elevator, as it can get the very best of the wheat without difficulty.

From Fort William some of the grain goes by the lakes to Goderich, is again

transferred to cars, and carried by rail to Montreal. Another route is by way of

Buffalo, the Erie canal or rail to New York, while still another is that by way of Port

Colbourne, the Welland canal and the St. Lawrence River.

Going one step further along the path of the grain – I am taking the case of

grain shipped via Port Colbourne, the Welland Canal and the St. Laurence to

Montreal. The Dominion Government owns a transfer elevator at Port Colbourne. A

large leg reaches out from the side of the elevator next the lake boat like an arm. The

grain is taken up by this leg and can be run from the top of the elevator into smaller

boats. This is one of the expenses rendered necessary, owing to the fact that the large

lake boat cannot pass through the canal system at the present time and illustrates

the necessity of a deeper waterway.

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Windmill Point Elevator1024, Montreal (1914)

Leaving Port Colbourne the grain passes through Lake Ontario and the St.

Lawrence to Montreal, where it is elevated to the ocean vessel. This elevator floats

on a barge, which gets between the two vessels. There is still another method of

elevating the grain into the large ocean going vessels for the first method, generally

speaking, is not practical. Usually the grain is elevated into the immense transfer

houses, owned by the Montreal Harbor Commission, is carried along a long alleyway

leading to all the docks, and by means of spouts is let into these large ocean boats.

We should be proud of the splendid facilities for handling grain, at Montreal.

It is to be regretted that so little a proportion of Canadian grain goes by way of

Montreal, but this is largely by reason of the fact that the canals are not deep enough

to allow the big boats to take the grain the entire route. The deepening of the Welland

canal would help to enable the port at Montreal to take care of all Canadian grain.

Taking a hurried trip across the Atlantic, we find a new method of taking the

grain out of the heart of the ocean vessel – the pneumatic ocean vessel – the

pneumatic elevator. Here the grain is sucked up into the elevator, and run through a

spout into a barge. It is interesting to note that there is very little grain that goes

from Canada ever gets on land again until it gets to the doors of the mills. To unload

1024 From WINDMILL POINT ELEVATOR, MONTREAL [Photograph]. (1914, March 20). Mirror Journal, p. 6. Image edited by C. Willmore. The extended caption reads in part: “While the Grand Trunk [Railway] has been looking well into the matter of elevator construction in Western Canada to

provide storage capacity for the ever–increasing grain crop, provision has also been made for shipping

facilities at Montreal. In the spring of 1906 what is known as the Windmill point Elevator, located in

the busy harbor of Montreal, was completed and put into operation. Its capacity was 1,080,000 bushels.

Its situation is so well planned that it is easily accessible to both lake or ocean vessels with railway

breaks alongside. To provide additional accommodation a large annex has just been completed, with a

capacity of 1,070,000 bushels, making a net capacity of 2,150,000 bushels.”

579

the ocean vessels on to the docks involves an expense and the thrifty English dealer

avoids every possible unnecessary expense, so you see we have much to learn in

reference to economical handling methods.

The tramp steamer does not figure to any great extent in the Canadian Grain

trade. Usually the boats carry other cargoes in addition to grain. In case the grain

goes into store at Liverpool barges carry the grain from the elevator where it is

elevated up into the storage bins. The English elevators are of a different type to those

in Canada. They are solidly built and are also more artistic. Another method of

unloading the ocean steamer is the lowering of the leg into the bowels of the vessel,

the grain is elevated and placed in the barges, and then is carried through the canals

to the point of destination. There is hardly any grain carried by rail. Economy is

recognized as a necessity. I have yet to see a carload of grain on rail in Europe. Of

course in this connection, the argument in this country is that the season is too short.

In the northern countries of Europe, where the season is about as short as ours even

there the grain is not shipped by rail. I believe it is time that the possible development

of a system of waterways for Western Canada should be investigated. If practicable

great economy in transportation can be without doubt, affected.

The Vernon mill in London, England is a splendid type of English mill. The

ocean vessels can come right up alongside and discharge their cargoes. I have seen

the class of grain used for milling in this mill. There was Australian, Argentine,

Canadian and Karachi, all mixed up just so as to give the particular blend desired.

Australian wheat brings a higher price in the British market than Canadian, because

there is a larger quantity of the hard glutenous Canadian type of wheat available.

Australian wheat is a starchy grain. If the time should come when there is less hard

glutenous wheat than of the starchy variety then our wheat can be characterized as

the best wheat. The best wheat is that which realises the best price.

A vessel can come right from Buenos Aires, and sail right up to Vernon’s mill.

No producer in the world pays so much to get his wheat to market as the Western

Canadian farmer. In the case of the Argentine, one of our great competitors, the rail

haul is never more than 200 or 300 miles to the ocean port. In Australia, wheat

growing is only carried on for short distances from water. It is true that there is a

long water haul from Australia, but that is cheaper than our system which involves

an expensive combination of rail, lake and ocean transport.

Of continent ports probably Rotterdam is the greatest importer of Canadian

grain. There is a battery here of 22 pneumatic unloaders. Their boast here is that

they can have a vessel clear within 24 hours. At Antwerp the system is the same as

others, except that instead of storage tanks the grain is stored on floors. The

atmosphere is too humid for tanks so this other system is used.

Mannheim, Germany, is one of the greatest milling centres in the world.

Mannheim is situated on the Rhine. It is interesting to note what the Germans have

done with this turbulent river of theirs. They have developed at Mannheim, a milling

centre, second only to Minneapolis. How is it possible? It is possible by reason of the

cheap water haulage. At Antwerp a great many barges can be seen. The owner, with

his wife and family lives on board. They are engaged by the millers to take the grain

580

to the mills, or will leave the barge tied up to the dock, with the grain in storage. This

method is cheaper than any other storage known, because the miller can give

instructions to bring the grain to the mill, and there is no cost of transfer.

The Grain Market at Brandon, Manitoba (1888)1025

23. Marketing Canadian Wheat (1921)1026

One of the effects of declining grain prices in this and in other countries has

been opposition to the present method of marketing the crops, and criticism of the

speculative element said to be inherent in it. The criticism, however, has never been

constructive in nature, and no proposal has yet been made which would provide for a

practical system more economical than the one now in force for collecting the myriad

small units of our annual crop, and selling them to the grain–importing countries of

the world. Wheat is, of course, the most important grain we produce; the method of

bringing it to a point where it is readily available for sale to Eastern millers and

European importers can be briefly described. A small proportion – probably thirty

percent – of the farmers’ wheat is loaded direct into railroad cars over the loading

platform. But the great bulk of the crop goes into the country elevators, of which there

are some 3,600 scattered through the wheat–raising districts of the West. Each

elevator is supplied with scales for weighing the grain, and with machinery by which

1025 From an unsigned print in the anthologist’s collection. 1026 From MARKETING CANADIAN WHEAT. (1921, June 22). Red Deer News, p. 2.

581

it is elevated to the top of the building and permitted to flow into bins or cars as

required. This bulk handling, by which are utilized the flowing propensities of grain

under the influence of gravity, is an important feature of the marketing organization,

and contributes greatly to the speedy and economical handling of the crop.

Apart from a small amount of wheat which goes to local mills, or west to the

Pacific coast, and a larger amount which goes south to the United States, practically

all the grain loaded into railroad cars is bound for the terminal elevators at Port

Arthur or Fort William. It is covered originally by railroad bills of lading, is graded

en route – probably at Winnipeg – by Dominion Government Inspectors who issue a

certificate of grade and finally, on entering a terminal elevator at the head of the

Lakes, is further covered by a certificate of weight. The certificate of weight, the

railroad bill of lading, and the certificate of grade issued in Winnipeg, are eventually

exchanged for a terminal elevator warehouse receipt; and this is the document which

passes from seller to buyer when cash trade takes place on the Winnipeg Grain

Exchange.

Of equal importance with the facilities for the physical handling and

transportation of the crop is the machinery by which the grain is marketed and

exchanged for money or its equivalent. The organization through which this is

accomplished, almost exclusively, is the Winnipeg Grain Exchange. The Exchange

does not buy or sell grain, and is merely an organization of dealers formed with the

object of providing a suitable meeting–place, and of establishing and maintaining

proper regulations for the making and performing of contracts. It is on the floor of the

Exchange that the various elements interested in the buying and selling of the crop

assemble. There, the representatives of the Elevator Companies, track buyers and

commission houses, acting for themselves or as agents for the producers, offer for sale

wheat or other grain to the agents of the millers, exporters and other interests who

buy for ultimate disposal to consumers.

FUTURES

The actual buying and selling of wheat would be comparatively simple if all

trades were for spot cash or immediate delivery, when the exchange of Terminal

Warehouse Receipts for payment would complete the transaction. The introduction

of “futures” makes the business more intricate, and necessitates more elaborate

machinery. A future sale consists in entering into a contract to deliver, in some future

month, a specified quantity of grain at a specified price. The day of the month on

which the grain shall be delivered is decided upon by the seller; the buyer must be

prepared to take delivery at any time during the month in question. In dealing wheat

futures in Canada, only contract grades, Nos. 1, 2 and 3 Northern are recognized. The

system of trading in grain for future delivery arises from simple commercial

necessities. At a certain time of each year, the volume of grain offered for sale is

greatly in excess of immediate requirements. If the producer is to have freedom to

market the bulk of his crop soon after harvest, interests possessing extensive

purchasing power must be found that are prepared to carry the grain during the

period when supply is out of balance with demand. The price of grain being subject to

rapid fluctuations, this purchasing power will not be available unless there is

582

reasonable security against the risk of loss. The necessary protection is supplied by

future trading, which enables purchases for immediate delivery to be offset by sales

for future delivery. Apart from the period of seasonal surplus, some time must elapse

between the purchase of grain in the country and its arrival where it can be sold on

the Exchange. The elevator company or track buyer trading on a narrow margin

cannot afford, with safety, to take the risk of carrying the grain during this period, as

a small decline in price in the interval would involve the elimination of profit and

probably a substantial loss. It is, therefore, customary to report purchases from day

to day to the home office in Winnipeg, which at once sells an equal amount on the

future market for different deliveries, to coincide with the probable date of arrival at

the terminal elevators of the wheat purchased in the country. This procedure is

termed “hedging,” and it makes fluctuations in price of no concern to the elevator

company or track buyer in question. If cash prices have declined in the interval

between purchase at country point and sale of the same grain as cash wheat in

Winnipeg, that half of the transactions represents a loss. But the loss is offset by an

equal profit, because the company or buyer, having sold futures at a certain fixed

price, can make the purchases necessary to cover these futures, at a lower price; for

if cash grain prices have declined, the prices of futures will have gone down also.

Elevator companies and other buyers of wheat are not the only ones who make

use of these future trading facilities. The milling companies find it necessary to make

contracts with their customers in advance for the delivery of flour at future dates,

and they are only able to protect themselves against future price fluctuations, and at

the same time conserve capital and storage space, by buying the grain to fill those

sales on terms of future delivery and payment. Their relation to the future market is

complimentary to that of the country elevator companies, and the underlying

principal is the same.

Hedging is, therefore, not speculation; it is the avoidance of speculation. It is a

form of insurance, and is the foundation on which rests the extreme liquidity of grain

as a commodity. The lessening of risks which it results in is reflected in lower trade

tolls, benefitting alike producers and consumers, yet hedging is the feature which

comes in for criticism. True, hedging facilities can be made use of by speculators who

may buy or sell grain which they do not, and never expect to, actually possess; such

operations are hard to defend, but it should be remembered that speculations cannot

cause great swings of prices. The dealer who depresses wheat by selling short, at once

becomes a potential buyer, whose influence, when he finally comes into the market,

will be towards raising prices. Unless his judgment of the situation has been correct,

and world prices of wheat are tending downwards when he sold, he can make no

profit. Wheat is a standard commodity of universal use, the price of which is fixed by

the demand and supply of the world; and in this price the speculators of any market

cannot make a permanent change. The drastic amendments to the present system of

trading in grain which were first freely proposed have by now been considerably

modified. There is probably a more general recognition of the fact that any legislative

interference with a delicately organized market is dangerous, and that even measures

583

designed to do away with the possibilities for speculation pure and simple, might not

bring only the beneficial results desired.

24. The World’s Wheat Markets (1910)1027

All countries that raise wheat eat bread. Some of them raise more than their

requirements, others not quite enough. In this way the distribution of the world’s

wheat becomes an almost incalculable importance to the great systems of commerce.

Perhaps more general interest attaches to wheat during its course of evolution from

the raw material on the farm to the manufactured article when it is consumed as

bread on the table, than to any other product of earth. This is only partly due to the

magnitude of the crops and to its general use. The crop, whether good or bad, is an

essential factor in all commercial movements. It is watched with the greatest interest

by the jobbers and manufacturers, the crop movement is looked forward to with

apprehension in the money centres because of its effect on the supply of currency. All

railway companies, steamship lines on the interior waters and steamship lines from

all the exporting countries in the world are concerned in the moving of the crop of the

market as the size of the crop largely determines the dividends they will earn.

EUROPE THE GREAT MARKET

The world is divided into exporting and importing countries as follows:

EXPORTING. – United States, Canada, Russia, Balkan States, India,

Argentina, Australia, Austria–Hungary.

IMPORTING. – United Kingdom, Germany, France, Belgium, Holland, Italy,

Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Greece.

It is to be noticed that all the importing countries are in Europe. There are a

few countries outside Europe, such as South Africa, Mexico and the West Indies which

import wheat and flour, but the quantities they use are insignificant in comparison

to the requirements of the importing countries of Europe. The great importers are the

United Kingdom, Germany, Holland, Belgium and Italy. Of the exporting countries

the United States is becoming a somewhat uncertain factor, due largely to the rapid

increase of its domestic requirements. Canada, however, by its increased output is

destined to supply deficiencies in the exports of the United States, caused by its rapid

increase in population. Russia comes next in importance in the international wheat

trade. India becomes important because of two reasons. The crop is harvested in April

and because of the uncertainty of its climate it may have an export surplus of

80,000,000 or none at all. The Argentine and Australia are a source of regular supply.

Furthermore, the crop is ready for export by February 1st, just as supplies from other

countries are falling off. […]

CENTRAL INFORMATION BUREAU

1027 From The World’s Wheat Markets. (1910, September 7). The Grain Grower’s Guide, pp. 7–8 and The World’s Wheat Markets. (1910, September 14). The Grain Grower’s Guide, pp. 10,30.

584

The United Kingdom, owing to its great population and small crop, is to the

wheat world of commerce what the Bank of England is to the financial world. London

and Liverpool are the centres of information from all parts of the world regarding

wheat crops and supplies. These markets are in constant communication by cable

with all the exporting countries. All crop information, from whatever part of the

world, is directed towards these centres. A dealer in London or Liverpool learns each

day at what prices the Chicago or Winnipeg markets opened, the condition of the

weather in the western States, Canada, the Argentine or Australia; how many cars

of wheat were received in Minneapolis, Duluth, Winnipeg; the crop conditions in

Argentine, whether it is raining or the sun shining, whether wheat is being freely

marketed or held back; from Russia comes the information as to the development of

a strike on the docks at Odessa (a very common occurrence) the amount of wheat in

stock at Black Sea ports; from India he gets daily news of the latest drought, while

the cable tells him of Australian crop conditions. So that the British importer of wheat

who does business on the “Baltic” of London or the “Corn Exchange” of Liverpool,

every business day of the year, has the centre of all information of wheat crops and

everything pertaining to them and this information radiates to the importing houses

throughout the United Kingdom, as well as to Antwerp, Amsterdam, Hamburg and

Berlin and other important ports on the continent.

SUPPLY AND DEMAND

The latter part of July each year, when the winter wheat crop of both America

and Europe are partly threshed, and the spring wheat is approaching harvest, the

food statisticians of London and Liverpool make a preliminary estimate of the

prospective supply from the exporting countries and the probable requirements of the

importing countries. They have of course kept in close touch with the crop conditions

throughout the world from the commencement of the season. Many of them have their

own agents and correspondents in the principal grain growing countries. […]

FOLLOWING GRAIN MOVEMENT

But to know approximately the amount of the prospective supply and

requirement and the probable size of the European crop is only a part of the

commercial game. Knowing that there is sufficient wheat to feed the important

countries is not feeding them. They must have their weekly allowance and they must

know as to whether this weekly allowance is coming forward from the export

countries in a constant enough stream to meet their daily wants. This is as important

commercially as the knowledge that the supply exists. The great importing houses of

London, Antwerp, Liverpool, Amsterdam and Hamburg must know the movements

of cargoes of grain in every quarter of the world. This information reaches Liverpool

daily and is gathered and compiled by Mr. Broomhall, publisher of the Corn Trade

News. There is a continual stream of wheat coming over the oceans from every wheat

growing country that has a surplus towards western Europe. Steamers and sailers

are being unloaded every day at the great ports of Europe while other steamers are

being loaded at the same time at many Argentine, Australian, Russian and American

ports. Yet, by a perfect system of obtaining information, Liverpool and London, and

through them the rest of the world, knows how much wheat is afloat throughout the

585

world. The amount of grain cleared from each port, no matter how distant from

England, is daily cabled to Mr. Broomhall, who also receives accounts of the amounts

unloaded at the ports of Europe each day. The amount of the world’s shipment is

added to the amount on ocean passage while that which is unloaded is deducted. This

is done every day in each week and goes to the world on Monday so that the amount

on passage becomes a matter of decided importance in every market of the world. If

the amount on passage decreases below the normal, it has a marked effect, for

speculators in Liverpool and London, who have sold short may become alarmed lest

they cannot readily buy to deliver on sales. They, therefore, bid for wheat to get it

and the price advances.

VISIBLE WHEAT SUPPLY

The amount of wheat on passage is divided into that for the United Kingdom

and that for the continent, although some may be billed “For Orders,” and may be

diverted to continental ports. Still another item in the world’s statistics is the world’s

“visible supply,” or the stock in store at central points. The amount in store, or the

“visible supply” in America and Canada is compiled in the United States and is

published weekly. The world’s increase or decrease is estimated and published weekly

while the world’s supply in detail is published monthly. The world’s supply contains

the following items: The amount of wheat and flour estimated as wheat afloat in the

United Kingdom; afloat for the continent; or afloat “for orders”; amount in store in

the United Kingdom, in France, in Belgium, Holland, Germany, in Russia, in other

countries of Europe, in Argentine, and in Australia. These amounts added to the

“visible supply” are the world’s “visible.”

THE LIVERPOOL GRAIN MARKET

A remarkable feature of the grain trade when one considers how the welfare of

the human race is involved is how in both exporting and importing countries the trade

centres at a few ports and groups of comparatively small numbers of individuals.

While there may be many more or less interested in the accumulation of grain at

interior terminals and the exporting sea ports, comparatively few men have the

handling of the export trade of America. The same is true of the large export business

of wheat in Russia, and Argentine, while it is stated on good authority that the export

grain business of India is in the hands of eight or ten men. The same is also true of

the European import business. On the continent Antwerp, Hamburg and Amsterdam

receive practically all wheat intended for Germany, Belgium and Holland, while

Liverpool and London practically control and direct the importing of grain into the

United Kingdom. It is of especial interest to note how this immense grain business is

handled and how the prices of wheat are fixed. Liverpool, buying wheat from all

quarters of the globe, exerts an influence in prices on all exporting countries. It has

an individuality possessed by no other in being the central market of the world. As

three quarters of the trading in futures for the United Kingdom is done in this

market, it is bound to have great influence in final price making.

LIVERPOOL EXCHANGE

Mr. Roland E. Smith in his book, “Wheat Fields and Markets of the World,”

has this to say of the Liverpool Grain Exchange:

586

“A peculiarity of this great market, the Liverpool Corn Trade Association, as

the Exchange is called, is the seemingly ordinary business like appearance and lack

of all rush and excitement, strain and nervous tension, such as is always in evidence

on the Chicago board of trade. There is no “pit” in the Liverpool exchange, and no

noisy trading or demonstration of any kind. The room in which the future trading is

done is very small as compared with American exchanges, and the members or

representatives sit round in conversational groups, during a time of no special

activity.

“The hours of the Exchange are from 10.30 to 4.15, but from 1 to 3 the room

will often be deserted for luncheon. There can be, in fact, no better illustration of the

difference between this market and the American exchanges in “speculative

atmosphere” than this. Here the sessions are long and lacking in excitement and

intense interest. In America they are short and few traders think of going to luncheon

until the gong rings at 1.15. In Liverpool there may be thousands at stake in the

market, but it is as if it were in real estate – the terms of the market are slow. In

America the market is watched like a throw of the dice.

“One is much impressed with the absence of everything connected with a grain

exchange in America. There are no brokers’ offices about with rooms for customers,

blackboard, quotations and gossip, tickers and private wires, neither in the exchange

room is there anything to indicate that this is a great market. Two or three small

blackboards display the many Liverpool quotations, while Paris and Berlin

quotations are posted on sheets of paper. Chicago quotations at twenty minutes after

the opening in Chicago are received about four o’clock. Their appearance excites some

interest, to the extent, at least, that every one wants to see them.

“During a good season or a period of healthy activity, an average day’s trading

on the Liverpool exchange will amount to 1,500,000 bushels. At such times a quarter

of a million may be traded in without affecting prices. The Liverpool market is

growing. But perhaps more towards legitimate business than purely speculative. It

is generally believed around American exchanges that the big traders in America will,

when trying to bull or bear the price, send orders here to first influence the market.

When asked if this were true, several members of the Liverpool exchange said that it

is. At times of manipulation in America big orders will be received here, 400,000 to

500,000 bushels. These will give the desired tendency to Liverpool with the hope that

American markets will be influenced.”

CASH WHEAT MARKET

The above has reference to the cargoes and parcels market. The Liverpool spot

or cash wheat market is a thing by itself. The room is crowded with small tables or

stands on which the samples are displayed. The market is held only twice a week,

Tuesdays and Fridays, and millers from all over England come to buy wheat and

other grain. There is a large speculative business in the Liverpool market. As a

matter of fact the grain import business is largely speculative. Cargoes are bought by

the grain importers in Austria, Argentine, America, Russia and India. The grain will

be from one to four months on the ocean. It will be impossible for the importer to turn

around and sell his cargo at a profit the instant he has completed his purchase. It is

587

therefore a speculation although the business is absolutely legitimate but the risk is

greater than the speculators in the pit, as we have it in Winnipeg, would care to take.

Short selling is also a feature of the market. Having made a sale a dealer will, in due

time, set about to buy the wheat from someone who wishes to sell a cargo before it

arrives. The purchase is either at a profit or loss but in due time the man who sold

short will deliver the actual wheat unless he himself has passed the transaction along

to still another speculator. But eventually some bonafide purchaser receives the

actual wheat.

THE LONDON GRAIN MARKET

There are two distinct branches of the grain trade in London. The Mark Lane

Corn Exchange is the market for “spot stuff.” That is grain or flour on the spot. The

transactions are all of a jobbing nature in parcels. The other market is the Baltic.

That is the Baltic Mercantile and Shipping Exchange. Its members buy grain and

other products in the market of the world for shipment to London in cargo lots. There

is no future market in London similar to the pit of the Chicago Board of Trade and

other American Exchanges. Mark Lane, as the Grain and Flour Exchange is

frequently called, is known around the world [as] where the grain is sold for export.

It is in fact a “Court of last resort” in the matter of prices. Mark Lane is an open

market. That is, anyone may come there to buy grain without being a member or

having to pay commission or brokerage. Among the grain markets of the world

London is unique. It is a great consuming market and one whose influence is almost

always downward. Importers both in London and Liverpool are all “bears” on the

market and always prepared to accept the lowest price at which grain is offered them.

London buyers of cargoes can be classed among the shrewdest buyers in the world.

They have go to be so to continue in business for they buy months before the stuff can

arrive and do not “hedge” their purchases as is the custom in America. This means

that they buy at the very lowest figure they can get and with every possible change

of variation of grade or condition in their favor. The influence which it exerts on the

grain markets of the world is unquestionably “bearish.” Russian wheat which is

shipped in bulk is bought on sample. There can be no well defined grade owing to the

lack of terminal elevator facilities in Russia and to the primitive way of gathering

enough wheat together to make a cargo. London buys wheat from India on “standard”

and the wheat is shipped in bags. The importer buys his wheat of whatever variety it

may be, “F. A. Q.” which means “Fair Average Quality.” The Standard which is set

for its basis is made up by the London “Corn Trade Association.” Argentine wheat is

also bought “F. A. Q.” terms of agreement, but furthermore it is bought by sample

and to be a certain natural weight. The adjustment in this case is also made by the

“Corn Trade Association.” United States wheat is bought on certificate of inspection

of the exchanges, Duluth, Chicago, New York. Canadian wheat is bought on

government inspection.

THE GERMAN MARKET

Germany produces from 120 to 150 million bushels of wheat each year and

imports around 80,000,000 bushels and is the only country in Europe doing a large

wheat trade which has passed a law prohibiting gambling in options and futures in

588

agricultural products. At one time traders of Russia, England and France as well as

Germany traded on the market in Berlin giving a broad active “future market.” Some

trade in wheat futures is still going on, but all contracts or trades must be for actual

delivery. It is said that notwithstanding the ban traders manage to do some option

dealing without the actual delivery but the difference between what the future

market of Berlin is now and what it was previously to the passing of the law of 1896

goes to show how gambling in grain can be regulated by the law. The anti–option bill

was passed at the instigation of the agrarians or representatives of the agricultural

interests who had a majority in the Reichstag. The law in effect places grain

speculators in the same class with common gamblers and makes accounts

uncollectable by law the same as gambling debts. Margias, or money advanced on

such accounts can never be recovered. In this connection it is interesting to notice

that the Berlin Produce Exchange followed the same course as did the Winnipeg

exchange when the legislature passed a restrictive act amending their charter. The

Berlin exchange was dissolved by its members as a result of certain demands made

by the Prussian minister of commerce under the Exchange Law. They formed

themselves into what was termed a “Free Exchange,” on lines somewhat similar to

the present Winnipeg Exchange. This was closed by the police whereas our exchange

on Winnipeg goes on regardless of restrictive measures. Opinions differ widely as to

its effects. The commercial interests are very desirous of bringing about a revision

while the agricultural interests are satisfied and want a continuance, indicating that

the change is in the interest of the grower. What is bought for future delivery like any

other merchandise. The official hours of the Grain Exchange are from 12 until 2 but

there is an unofficial session from 10.30 until 12, and from 2 until 2.30 when grain is

bought and sold. A feature of this market is that the official quotations of the three

different grades is given out three times a day; at the opening and close and one

intermediate quotation. These quotations are settled upon by what is called “sworn

brokers” who are really the representatives of the agrarians, there being no pit or

open trading. Trade may be made at many different prices. The cash market of the

exchange is very important and corresponds to the cash grain market in our American

exchanges and the “spot” markets of Liverpool and London. This cash market divides

itself into two branches, one for the native crop and one for the imported grains.

Dealers who handle the native crop buy form the country and distribute throughout

the empire to millers and other buyers.

The only grain market in Europe that has any resemblance to our American

Grain Exchange is the one in Budapest. There the price of grain fluctuates as in

Winnipeg, the trading being done in the pit under similar conditions.

The following is an account of a phenomenal advance in Budapest wheat

during the early spring of 1907. It was written by a member of the Budapest Grain

Exchange, and might have been written of conditions in Chicago or Winnipeg.

“Concerning the movement of our exchange I will give a description and

explanation also of the cause (winter killing of the crop and unfavorable spring

weather). Now every one began to buy, and bought the more willingly the higher

prices mounted. Some speculators whose accounts at first made but a poor business

589

for the broker, became first class customers on account of their previous gain. The

broker bought for their account more and more. The sellers were not any more

speculators a la baisse but those who wanted to secure their share not doubting that

wheat might go higher still, seeing that prices still advanced the first buyers, who

had a realized profit in their pockets, began buying again, and so on. The behavior of

this excited crowd was something worth looking at. It took physical strength for the

broker to do his business and some people who were not strong enough to push and

shove did not get to fulfill their orders. There were moments when one called out the

price 10 hellers (½ cent) cheaper on one side than one wanted to buy on the other; but

there was no possibility to get to each other. But who cared for such a trifle of a

difference!”

ANTWERP GRAIN MARKET

The Antwerp grain market is unique when compared to the American markets

in that there is no trade organization, no gran exchange with a membership fee. It is

an open and free market. Neither are there any official quotations or prices for there

is no one to say what shall be official, nor is there any “future” term or “Option

market.” It is a cash market trading in the actual grain by men who have it to sell or

want it to sell, or have it to grind. The only feature resembling an organization is an

arbitration committee. Asked as to what constituted the basis of prices on the

Antwerp market, a large importer said, “Offers of wheat from the Danubian country,

and the Argentine; offers from millers’ stocks, the amount afloat, the movement in

America and Canada, and crop conditions the world over; these form the picture of

our market. Of course,” he continued, “the Berlin and Liverpool market have an

influence and New York and Chicago are closely watched, during years of normal

crop, in the United States, but American prices are not regarded as an expression of

trade opinion. There is too much manipulation in these markets.” Antwerp is the

largest importer of wheat in Europe yet there is no speculation in the trade there

more than there is in the nature of a commercial chance that every merchant is bound

to take. Of course when a merchant buys a cargo of wheat in Argentina or any other

country, it is after a manner a speculation for he does not know when he will sell it,

to whom, nor at what price. Yet the same might be said of the merchant who buys a

bill of goods.

The Wheat Board of 1919

25. Marketing the Post–War Harvest (August, 1919)1028

The sale of the wheat crop of 1919, will be made by the Canada Wheat board

and the price will be determined by the world market. The government has arranged

that the seller of the wheat, that is, the farmer, shall receive an initial payment not

yet decided upon. It is to be recommended by the wheat board, on which the producers

1028 From Foster, G. E. (1919, August 20). Clear Statement of the Wheat Marketing Plan. The Western Globe, p. 4. Written by Sir George Eulas Foster (1847 – 1931), then–minister of Trade.

590

are fully represented. The board will decide in the light of market condition what is

the highest advance payment that safely can be made. The amount of this advance

payment will be announced in a few days.

The wheat is then, as I have previously stated, to be marketed at the world

rate and the balance received therefrom, after costs and charges are deducted is to be

divided among the sellers of the wheat, so that each farmer will receive in addition to

the initial payment his fair share of the surplus received, over and above that price,

and will receive it in accordance with the quantity of wheat he has sold. If it so

happens that the world market prices are less than the initial payment made to the

farmer, the government will stand the loss.

26. Powers and their Limits (August, 1919)1029

The powers conferred upon the new wheat board seem to be about as

comprehensive as it was conveniently possible to make them. Just where the

authority of the board begins and ends is pretty much guess work. From the

summarized terms of the order–in–council it appears to be empowered to take over

the whole wheat crop and do with it as it pleases; also to assume control of the milling

business, dictate alike the quantity and price of flour available to the home consumer,

and allow the millers such profit as it may see fit. The Government, in fact, seems to

have made a general clearance of its authority into the hands of the commission –

with intent, no doubt, to unload the responsibility also onto the board.

If under this arrangement the farmer gets world prices for his wheat and the

consumer is able to buy flours at prices in keeping with the cost of production, the

credit will of course belong to the body in whose hands the control of the wheat and

flour crop is thus placed. But if the farmer does not get prices fixed by the world

demand, it does not follow that the blame will rest in the same quarter.

The prices the board can get for wheat are determined by the market that has

already been secured overseas for Canadian wheat. The overseas demand for

Canadian wheat depends upon what arrangements our Government has made for

supplying a share of European demand. The Allied Governments have complete

control of the importation of wheat into Europe, and power to apportion among

themselves the business of supplying the demand in that continent. If our

Government has secured for Canadian wheat a fair share of the available market, the

Canadian farmer may get world prices. If it has failed to do so he will not get world

prices, whatever the wheat board may do or try to do.

27. Hauling Wheat Across the Border (November, 1919)1030 The price of wheat in the United States was higher than the up–front price offered by the Wheat Board. Some farmers crossed the border to sell their wheat.

1029 From The New Wheat Board. (1919, August 4). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 9. 1030 From WHEAT REGULATION DISCUSSED. (1919, November 6). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 9.

591

Another peculiar situation has arisen in the wheat trade along the United

States boundary line. The comparative shortage of hard wheat in the north–western

states has caused wheat prices to go up as high as $2.60 a bushel at the local

elevators. The wheat price in the United States is fixed as $2.26 as a minimum, but

there is no maximum. The wheat market is open, and the law of supply and demand

takes its course. A considerable number of Canadian farmers near to the United

States are selling their wheat across to the American elevators and getting around

60 cents a bushel more for it than they can get at the Canadian elevators near them.

At the present time, there is no duty on wheat going into the United States, and

Canadian farmers along the American boundary are securing a big advantage by

having the American market, thus open to them. A further advantage is found in the

fact that the checks which they receive in payment of their wheat at the American

elevator are worth about four per cent. premium when they bring them back to be

cashed at the Canadian bank.

It seems that the farmers on the Canadian side are able to secure from the

Canadian Wheat Board a permit allowing them to haul their wheat by the wagon

load across to the American elevators. No permits are issued by the United States for

shipments in car lots. As near as can be ascertained, the attitude of the wheat board

is that they are not supposed to interfere with wheat going south, as no participation

certificates are issued. Furthermore, it is understood that the Canadian millers are

making no objection, for the reason that this Canadian wheat which goes across to

the American elevator and brings $2.60 per bushel will make American flour that

much more expensive. The Canadian miller is only paying $2.30 a bushel for wheat,

and he feels that he will, therefore, have an advantage in his export trade against

flour ground on the American side from wheat costing $2.60 a bushel.

28. Equity and Justice (December, 1919)1031

We now have the statement of the wheat board that only fifty million bushels

will find its way to the Great Lakes before the close of navigation; which means that

the balance of the crop, whether it goes to the miller or goes to fill the contracts made

by the government previously to the appointment of the wheat board, or contracts

made by the wheat board since their appointment, if it is in storage, will cost the

farmers, under the present pool arrangement, two cents a bushel per month for

carrying charges – such as interest, insurance and storage – which, at the opening of

navigation will represent a deduction from the farmers’ pool account of 10 cents a

bushel on the fifty or more millions of bushels that may be stored in elevators during

the winter months1032. In other words, the farmer that was diligent and able to get

1031 From Rogers, R. (1919, December 2). Asserts Government Gambled In Its Sale of Western Wheat.

The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 13. Written by Robert Rogers (1864 – 1936). At the time this article was written, he was a member of Parliament for Winnipeg. 1032 Some weeks prior to this article, the Wheat Board announced that it would pay some carrying

charges. “The Canadian Wheat Board today ordered that out of the funds of the board there shall be

paid upon wheat held in store by or for the flour mills of Canada, carrying charges, effective from

592

his wheat to market before the close of navigation will have taken from him and given

to his neighbor, who was not so diligent, or, for other reasons, was unable to get his

wheat to market before the close of navigation, a share of the two cents a bushel per

month that it will cost for carrying charges on his neighbor’s wheat. Where, under

our constitution which has ever stood for equity and justice, either government or

wheat board find the power to take from one farmer and give to another is something

that has yet to be explained.

The price of wheat in Canada, as fixed by the government and the wheat board,

is $2.15 per bushel1033, Fort William, plus participation certificate1034, which may be

worth something or nothing at the end of the year1035. When a farmer sells his wheat

to a Canadian elevator he receives $2.15, minus freight charges, also minus five cents

a bushel generously allowed by the government and the wheat board to the elevator

company for handling his wheat. […] This all means that a Canadian farmer who has

five thousand bushels of wheat to sell, and takes it to a Canadian elevator – if it

grades one northern, and if the freight rate is 10 cents a bushel to Fort William –

receives $2.15 minus five cents for freight, and minus five cents for the elevator

charge. In other words, $2.00 a bushel, or ten thousand dollars in cash and the

participation certificate.

Across the line, in the United States, an American farmer who has 5,000

bushels of wheat for sale and it grades equal to our one northern, would receive today

at least $2.80 a bushel. If the freight rate to Minneapolis is 10 cents, then he will

receive $2.70, a cash difference in favor of the American farmer of 70 cents a bushel,

or $3,500 on his 5,000 bushels of wheat.

December 15, 1919, inclusive, as follows: In public terminal elevators at Fort William and Port Arthur

at the rate of one–fifteenth of one cent a bushel per day; provided that if the public terminal elevator

in which said wheat is stored is used as a flour mill elevator, the carrying charges shall be paid only

on all wheat held in store, excepting such portion of wheat as is ordinarily required by the mill for a

week’s grinding. In interior government elevators at Moose Jaw, Saskatoon, Calgary and Vancouver,

at the rate of one–eighteenth of one cent a bushel per day. In bins of flour mills and elevators, […]

one–twentieth of one cent a bushel per day. Such carrying charges shall be paid until such wheat is

actually taken out of store, but in no case shall carrying charges be allowed after April 30, 1920.”

WHEAT BOARD PAYS CARRYING CHARGES. (19219, November 20). The Daily Colonist, p. 3. 1033 “[T]he reader is apt to assume that the farmer gets $2.15 for his wheat. He does not. That is the

maximum price that the wheat board will pay for No. 1 Northern at Fort William. Grades below 1

Northern must take at the local elevator such less price as will allow for lower grade, costs of handling,

storage, dealers’ profits and freight to Fort William. At Edmonton farmers have been getting recently

$1.92 for No. 1; $1.89 for No. 2; $1.84 for No. 3 and so on down to $1.45 for feed.” Wheat and Flour.

(1920, January 12). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 4. 1034 “The Participation certificate is a form which is filled out when a person brings grain to the elevator

and sell it. The certificate states that so many bushels of grain has been delivered, of a stated grade

and a stated price. […] Every Participation Certificate shall be negotiable.” THE CANADIAN WHEAT

BOARD. (1919, October 1). The Wainwright Star, p. 3. 1035 Some farmers, expecting the latter, sold their certificates: “[A] considerable amount of them

[farmers] had disposed of their certificates at a figure as low as five and in some cases two cents a

bushel. Letters from the less reputable grain companies in which they urged their agents throughout

the west to purchase all the certificates obtainable at low prices were brought to light.” WESTERN

FARMERS MAY MARKET THEIR OWN WHEAT. (1920, July 21). The Macleod Times, p. 8.

593

Is it, therefore, to be wondered at that our Canadian farmer are hauling their

wheat 60 and 70 miles across the boundary to American elevators, where they are

daily receiving large premium prices over that which they can obtain at home?

29. The Price of Bread (December, 1919)1036

Commenting upon the increase in the price of wheat flour another 50 cents a

bushel1037, which was authorized Saturday by the Canadian Wheat Board, Mr. A. H.

Amphlett, secretary of the Victoria Bread and Cake Manufacturer’s Association,

stated last evening to The Colonist that the bakers had heard nothing definite about it, and only knew what they read in the papers. “I am not surprised, however, and

much as we regret it, the cost of bread to the consumer is bound to increase in the

very near future. During the past two years material increases in the cost of

production have taken place. Wages, and the cost of every ingredient that goes into

the making of bread, has increased. Bakers, however, have felt that their position

was one of grave duty to the public, and have endeavored to hold bread down to its

old price. During the past twelve months, profit on bread has reached a vanishing

point.” […]

The possibility of flour from the United States being imported, to relieve the

situation has been suggested by some, but local millers and bakers point out that

wheat grown in the United States is a soft wheat and good only for pastry flour. “Of

course,” said Mr. Amphlett, when asked about this, “every barrel of wheat brought

from across the line, even if used for pastry instead of our No. 1 hard, will leave that

much more bread flour to the country and must help relieve the situation.”

30. “The Farmer has Unquestionably Benefited” (January, 1920)1038 The following article was written by J. L. Rutledge, editor of the Canadian Grocer, and originally published in Toronto’s Financial Post. It gives the flour industry’s view of the Wheat Board’s actions.

The fact that the Wheat Board has seen fit to raise the price, while at the same

time requiring licenses for export by waggon load that up to recent time was free from

this restriction, will unquestionably have the effect of retaining much wheat in

Canada that would otherwise have drifted across the border to take advantage of the

better prices prevailing there. This is a fortunate thing for the milling industry, as

1036 From PRICE OF FLOUR SOARS SKY HIGH. (1919, December 30). The Daily Colonist, p. 14. 1037 “Two eighty is the price the millers pay for western hard wheat after December 27th. The added

fifty cents a bushel will go into the pool of undistributed returns, and after deducting all charges, will

be distributed after Aug. 1, amongst all farmers selling wheat, either hard or soft.” Wheat and Flour.

(1920, January 12). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 4. 1038 Anonymous & Rutledge, J.L. (1920, January 15). The Why and Wherefore. The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 4. This segment written by Joseph Lister Rutledge (1883 – 1957), editor of the Canadian Grocer.

594

otherwise the country might have been bled of stocks urgently needed to maintain

the standard of flour made in part from lighter quality Ontario wheat.

FLOUR PRICES ADVANCE

As a result of this change in wheat price, the price of Government standard

Spring wheat flour has increased from $10.00 to $13.15 a barrel. This considerable

increase in cost show no added profit to the mills, as the higher price of wheat eats

up the difference. The mills are merely operating on a higher priced product with no

advantage to themselves, and with the disadvantages always entailed by a larger

outlay for raw materials.

The mills benefit from the change only in a certain freedom from the fear of

the possible results of any larger movement of Western wheat across the line. As

matters now stand there is less inducement for this movement, and the producer has

grown used to the safe and satisfactory method of milling through the Canada Wheat

Board, and is not likely to be greatly tempted by outside offers.

On the other hand, the consumer will have to pay more for flour and for bread,

appreciably more, for the $2.25 [sic.] increase per barrel will entail an added charge

of about two cents a loaf, which will probably become operative in most sections very

shortly, for the bakers have been restricted in their stocks of flour of recent date, and

therefore will have very shortly to be operating on new price flour.

LOTS OF CHEAP FLOUR

The suggestion of James Stewart, chairman of the Canadian Wheat Board,

that permits would be issued to allow the import of the cheaper American flours,

cannot be taken too seriously. Canada is not short of weak flour. In most sections of

the country, indeed, it is not in very great demand, and the weaker American flour

could be purchased at a lower figure than that prevailing on the Canadian market. It

is generally agreed also that this would not be a factor in relieving the situation

created by the probable increase in bread prices, for this flour could hardly be used

for bread purposes.

The farmer has unquestionably benefited by the increased price, a benefit that

must eventually be paid for by the consumer, for the mills have already been limited

to a minimum of profit, and may find that this minimum many be automatically fixed

at a lower figure by the new set price of flour working in conjunction with the

increased wheat price. It is probable, however, that no other course was advisable, as

considering the comparatively limited stocks of Western wheat remaining in the

country, a heavy export movement could only have occurred at the serious expense of

the milling industry.

31. Questioning the Benefit (January, 1920)1039

The Financial Post is, or aspires to be, the mouthpiece of Big Business in Canada. The foregoing sets out how the recent action of the Wheat Board looks to the

clients of the Post. There are a few points that stand out very clearly.

1039 From Anonymous & Rutledge, J.L. (1920, January 15). The Why and Wherefore. The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 4.

595

First the hauling of Canadian wheat across the line by team, to enable the

farmer to get the full United States price, is to be “licensed” hereafter; which being

interpreted means “stopped.” […] The Canadian farmer who lives within hauling

distance of a United States elevator will no longer be permitted to get equal to a basic

price of $3.70. He will have to take what he can get on a basic price of $2.80. He will

lose the difference of 90 cents a bushel because the Canadian miller needs his wheat

to mix with Ontario wheat. And because the Canadian government, acting in the

interests of the Canadian miller through the Canadian Wheat board, says he must.

It will be observed (on the authority of Mr. Rutledge and the Financial Post) that although the eastern miller only needs western wheat to mix with Ontario wheat

– which has not been increased in price – the full amount of the 50 cents increase on

the price of western wheat is charged to the consumer on flour. Say that five bushels

of wheat make a barrel of flour. And that three bushels of Ontario and two bushels of

Western are used. The eastern miller pays one dollar increased price on his two

bushels of western wheat, but charges an increase of 42.25 to the consumer of the

flour. First he gets the whole of the 50 cents a bushel advance on all the wheat and

flour that he has in store on the 27th of December. And next after getting back the

dollar of increased price that he really does pay, he gets an additional dollar and

twenty–five cents in the increased price of flour.

Possibly Mr. Rutledge is right when he says: “The producer has grown used to

the safe and satisfactory method of selling through the Canada Wheat Board, and is

not likely to be tempted by outside offers.” But the fact that hundreds if not thousands

of Canadian farmers were hauling their wheat for distances of up to fifty miles to the

United States elevators during October, November and December, instead of

accepting the “safe and satisfactory” method of selling through the Canada Wheat

Board, does not support Mr. Rutledge’s view. Neither does the fact that even after the

Canadian Wheat Board has raised the Canadian price it still finds it necessary –

according to Mr. Rutledge – to prohibit by the camouflage of license, further outflow

of Canadian grain to United States elevators. […]

It is, to say the least, strange that flour made for sale, and therefore for use in

the United States “could hardly be used for bread purposes” here in Canada. At any

rate it was flour, and could be used or it would not have been made. Europe is

supposed to be starving and bankrupt; therefore it is to be presumed that European

countries needing cheap bread would have been willing to take this “weaker”

American wheat or flour if they could have got it. It was not sent to them, presumably,

because it was needed at home. Canada shipped fifty million bushels of hard wheat

to Europe and received for it a price that the Canadian government has not yet

disclosed; but far below what the United States millers would have paid for it to mix

with the soft wheat which feeds their hundred million people. If the fifty million

bushels of Canadian high grade wheat had gone to the United States at the United

States high grade price, the Canadian farmer would have had the benefit, the rate of

exchange against Canada would have been reduced, and the European consumer

would have had an equal amount of cheaper bread made from cheaper United States

wheat.

596

If at the same time thirty–five million bushels out of the fifty million bushels

sold to the Canadian millers had been held at the price at first fixed for Canadian

consumption – as should have been done – both the Canadian producer and consumer

would have enjoyed a fair measure of real “protection.” But the results would not have

figured in the profit sheets of the big milling companies and therefore it was not done.

32. Whipsawing Producer and Consumer (January, 1920)1040

The facts are that while the United States miller is paying a price equal to

$3.70 for wheat, of equal quality with Canadian, the Canadian farmer who grew the

wheat is only getting $2.80 for it because that is all the Canadian Wheat Board will

take for it. […]

Regarding the consumer. In the course of business and manufacture it takes

some little time for wheat to be transferred from the farmer’s wagon to the consumer’s

breakfast table. It will be weeks before the flour ground by Canadian mills under the

new price will be for sale as bread. But the price of bread is already up. In the

meantime the consumer will be eating flour from wheat bought at $2.30, but paying

for it at the $2.80 rate. How much wheat had passed out of the farmers’ hands at

$2.30 that will afterwards appear as $2.80 bread to the consumer, the Wheat Board

and the Board of Commerce do not inform the public – that is, the consumer. But it

is safe to say that it amounts to millions of bushels, which will mean millions of

dollars profit to the milling companies. […] Look for bigger dividends than ever by

the big milling companies as a result of the boost. The producer does not get the

money, but the consumer has to pay.

33. What Was the Government Doing? (March, 1920)1041

Sir:– There are certain matters, that owing to the very peculiar circumstances

surrounding them, appear to demand an explanation from some one. I refer to the

stand taken by the Grain Growers and the government re set price for wheat one year

ago; the appointment and workings of the wheat board and the resolutions that have

just been passed by the three G. G. conventions and by the shareholders of two

elevator companies.

Now that these meetings are all over and we are safe home again, after having

been persuaded to support sundry resolutions that we did not want to support and

were influenced to withdraw resolutions that we did want to pass, we should now be

able to think these things out quietly for ourselves without taking our opinions ready

made.

Thirteen months ago everyone expected to see a big drop in the price of wheat

during 1919. Numerous estimates were made and the prevailing opinion appeared to

be that last year’s crop would sell around $1.25 per bushel on the open market.

1040 From Whipsawing Producer and Consumer. (1920, January 15). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 4. 1041 From Stockton, G. W. (1920, March 18). FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND PRICES OF WHEAT.

The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 15. Written by George White Stockton (1872 – 1947) of Carlyle, SK.

597

Considering the fact that for two years the price had been arbitrarily set at

much less than the market value1042 – thus forcing the farmer to contribute millions

of dollars to the consumers of both Canada and Europe – the farmers were practically

unanimous that the government should set a minimum price at about what wheat

had sold for the two previous years, and they were quite prepared to pass resolutions

asking for this very reasonable concession.

But let us see what happened. The Manitoba convention came first and a

handful of men persuaded the delegates to declare for an open market. Alberta came

next with a similar result. Saskatchewan came last and positively refused to endorse

such a policy.

Then the people of Manitoba and Alberta began to think they were firm in their

former conviction that they did want a guaranteed price. Meetings were held all over

the country and in unmistakable terms they said that they had been misled and they

passed resolutions accordingly.

In the meantime, what was the government doing? Why, they were stating on

every possible occasion individually and collectively that they could not and would

not consider such a proposition. They said that they could not possibly take a chance

on having to pay out millions to make up a probable deficit, and the farmer would

have to pocket the loss if the market dropped.

This continued to be their attitude up to the very moment that the market was

thrown open. Then the unexpected happened and prices began to soar. The farmers

were naturally jubilant that a good price was now assured without any assistance

from anyone. But what about the government that had positively refused to interfere

when they thought the price would be low? Without offering any excuse for their

action, they jumped in, seized our wheat crop, appointed a wheat board which set the

price to the miller 15 cents per bushel less than it was worth on the open market they

day the market was closed.

Since then, they have given us no information as to what they are doing, what

price they are getting or what balance, if any, the farmer is likely to get one year

hence. In view of all these facts, did the government do this to give us more or less

money for our wheat? Of course there is only one answer – they did it to give us less.

[…]

The writer has personally interviewed scores of men who hauled their wheat

from 20 to 50 miles into North Dakota and got 70 cents to a $1 per bushel more for it

than they could have obtained in Canada. […]

Let us hear what Mr. Wilson1043, an M.P.P. for Manitoba, who lives near the

border and has his information first hand, has to say. I quote from a recent speech in

the Manitoba legislature. He says: “When the wheat board fixed the price of $2.15,

Fort William, they made Canadian wheat nearly one dollar cheaper than American

wheat.”

1042 Through wartime price controls. 1043 Probably William Wilber Wilfred Wilson (1885 – 1964), who was serving in the Legislative

Assembly of Manitoba at the time this article was written.

598

Continuing, he said, “I know a man well, who owns a section of land, has four

hundred acres under cultivation, the rest in pasture, etc. This year he had only 1250

bushels of wheat to sell, which he did sell to the wheat board at $2.00 per bushel. His

participation certificates are said to be worth something next August – how much?

Say 10 cents, or a total of $125.00. That means that the dominion government has

taken a forced loan from that man of $125.00 for one year without interest.”

Had he taken his wheat to the American side as most of his neighbors did, he

would have received at least $1250 more for it than he did receive. That means again

that the government has made a forced levy of this man’s capital of $1250, and out

of the meagre returns left him by drought and grasshoppers, the government saw to

it that he contributed that amount as a bonus so that other classes in Canada and

Europe got cheaper bread. […]

Two months ago the western farmers were a unit in condemning this high

handed action of the government, and were prepared to go on record to that effect and

declare for an open market, but at each convention in the three provinces the same

interests that advised them to ask for an open market when the price was low, this

year advised them to ask for a [closed] market when the price is high. In consequence,

resolutions were pushed through and in one instance led to asking for a board

“similar” to the present one.

I think, Mr. Editor, that you will agree with me that these things require some

explaining, and I would like to know what the bona fide farmers think of the whole

transaction. I trust that others will take this matter up with a view to forcing some

light on the subject.

34. Free Trading in Wheat (July, 1920)1044

Sir. – In one of your leading articles in today’s Colonist, under the heading: “U.

S. Wheat Free,” there are some statements which are at least open to challenge.

You say1045: “Wheat control in Canada is costing the country large sums of

money, which every consumer is helping to pay.”

When, in 1919, the Canadian Wheat Board set the price of wheat at $2.15 per

bushel, the United States Government set the price to their farmers at $2.25 per

bushel, as the minimum price, with no limit to the maximum they might sell it for.

1044 From Taylor, W. M. (1920, July 22). Free Trading in Wheat. The Daily Colonist, p. 13. Written by William M. Taylor (1857 – 1944), a Presbyterian Scottish farmer who emigrated to Canada in 1880.

His farm was in Marquette, Manitoba, about 50 km. from Winnipeg. 1045 “Today the wheat product of the United States is again in competition on the open market for

Government control of the past few years has been removed. […] Wheat control in Canada is costing

the country large sums of money which every consumer is helping to pay. It was the same when control

was exercised in the United States and the people of the entire continent have had no redress. The law

of supply and demand ceased to operate by Government intervention. It will again, to a great extent,

resume its sway, except as far as Canada is concerned, for the Government of this country as

represented by the Wheat Board will continue to afford protection to the wheat growing farmers, and,

so far as it can, insure them the same or greater profits than they have been making in the past.” U.

S. WHEAT FREE. (1920, July 15). The Daily Colonist, p. 4.

599

The consequence was that wheat from the 1919 crop, until Spring of the present year

was selling at from 50 cents up per bushel higher in the United States than in

Canada, a condition that many of the farmers on the Canadian prairies, living near

the international boundary, took advantage of, and hauled their wheat across the line

and sold it there, making a handsome profit by doing so. The Canadian Wheat

Board sold the bulk of the Canadian wheat under contract to the British and other

European Governments at a price those Governments were able and willing to pay,

which price, no doubt, was governed by the law of supply and demand, which law you

champion as being the right one to govern the price of commodities.

There is a prevailing belief amongst farmers, and I agree with them, that had

wheat prices not been controlled the past few years, prices would have gone much

higher than they have yet attained to. As a matter of fact, just before the Government

did take over the control of prices they were higher than the controlled price, so that

the Government’s object in setting prices was more in the interest of the Allies to keep

wheat prices within reasonable bounds than to fill the farmer’s pockets, although it

also heled the object in view of encouraging production by guaranteeing to farmers a

price that would give them fair remuneration for the increase in cost of production

that has more than doubled in the past four years. I have not figures as to the relative

prices of flours, “say” in Victoria and Seattle, but I venture to say they have been

higher in the latter than the former named city during the past year, and will go

further and hazard a guess that wheat prices will be higher in the United States

under free wheat conditions than under Government control in Canada in the coming

year.

I have no interest now as a wheat grower, but had almost forty years’

experience in mixed farming on the prairie, and have yet to meet a single instance of

anyone that made a large fortune growing grain, but there are hundreds in the United

States and Canada who have become wealthy, beyond the most extravagant dreams

of most farmers by speculating in wheat and manipulating the market by bearing it

down until they got the bulk of it out of the farmers’ hands, which they easily knew

by statistics, after which they bulled the market up to whatever price suited them,

again taking it out of the consumer. Fortunate was the farmer who was in a position

financially to hold his wheat over until the Summer following the year he had grown

it, as he was pretty safe to make as much as his profit on growing it had he sold it at

threshing time. One year I knew of prices being from 70 to 80 cents a bushel higher

in Summer than they had been at the end of harvest the previous year.

Unfortunately, until very recent years very few farmers were in a position to hold

their grain over, so that they could get the price for their grain the world’s markets

would warrant them, but had to sell as soon as their grain was threshed to meet their

liabilities, and the great majority of them have still to do so, and at least those who

have to them Government control is a great boon, as they can get the same price as

the man who is able to hold for higher prices, and as much as the markets of the world

will warrant, but no more, as the Wheat Board does not control the world’s markets,

but only takes advantage of them and eliminates the middlemen and speculators,

600

who when they got most of the grain into their hands did manipulate the markets to

fill their own pockets, and thereby enhancing the price of bread to the consumer.

My object in writing this letter is not so much with a spirit of criticism but

rather to help foster a better understanding between the urban and farming

communities of our country, as I believe much of the conflict of ideas is lack of better

knowledge of each other’s conditions. The success and happiness of both is, to a great

extent, dependent on each other’s prosperity, and I believe that our Government,

elected by the people, by whatever party stripe it may be known, will do the best, so

far as any human government can, to do justice to all the people, whether producers

or consumers.

Perhaps it would be better for all if, as well as wheat, some of the some of the

other necessaries of life were Government controlled, so that the cost of any article

would not be what any clique or corporation might set as its price, nor even its value

as set by the law of supply and demand, but rather its true value, fixed by the amount

of labor it requires to produce it.

WM. M. TAYLOR

48 Logan Avenue, Victoria, B. C.

July 15, 1920.

35. A Return to Normal Methods (July, 1920)1046

The preference of the government has been for a return to normal methods of

grain marketing as soon as such appeared to be warranted by conditions abroad. The

three principal factors which last year decided the government to establish the wheat

board were these:

1. The fact that in Europe all buying of wheat was controlled by the various

governments either separately or in concert and that the buying by our principal

customers, Great Britain, France and Italy was carried on in concert. There was

accordingly virtually one purchaser, resulting the practical elimination of

competition. There was reluctance to enter upon purchase negotiation with the

consequent danger to the early movement of wheat during the navigation season.

2. Financial conditions which necessitated advances and credits by foreign

governments and which could only be adequately met by government agencies in

Canada in order to ensure prompt and continued movement of wheat from the

commencement of harvest.

3. The control by the United States of the purchase and sale of wheat and the

fixation of prices thereof together with an embargo on imports of both wheat and

flour.

These factors either do not exist or are not in force to the same extent at the

present time. From the best information available it would now appear that while as

far as can be ascertained, European buying will be in a greater or lesser degree

controlled by the governments of practically all countries in Europe dependent upon

1046 From Foster, G. E. (1920, July 21). Wheat Board Will Not Handle The New Crop. The Western Globe, p. 7. Written by Sir George Eulas Foster (1847 – 1931), then Minister of Trade and Commerce.

601

imports of wheat, there does not seem to be at the present time reason to believe that

the purchase by the various governments or governmental agencies will not be made

independent of each other, both as to transport and purchase, thus constituting

conditions of competition that should result in a fair market value being obtained for

the Canadian crop.

The United States has controlled the market in grains and flour, and the

exchanges there are now open for trading in December and later options1047, and there

is no longer any embargo upon imports of wheat or flour. All the indications,

therefore, are that the marketing of grain and its products in the U.S. will resume to

normal methods. […]

Under the circumstances above set forth, the Canadian government has

decided to take no steps at present to proclaim the enabling act, which means that

the present wheat board will not function insofar as the crop of 1920 is concerned,

and that the marketing of this crop will revert to the usual and normal methods of

pre–war times.

36. Who Will Pay the Debt? (August, 1920)1048

While the war was on, the Government practically commandeered the farmer’s

wheat at a fixed price, far below what it was then actually worth. No word of

complaint came from the farmers because of that action. It was a war measure,

excused if not actually warranted by war conditions. The armistice was signed on

November 11th, 1918. There has been no fighting between Germany and the Allies

since. The war measure fixing the price of wheat expired about August 1st, 1919, with

the final marketing of the 1918 crop. The 1919 crop was due to come on the market

about September 1st, nearly ten months after the armistice had been signed, after all

fighting with Germany had ceased and when the peace treaty was about to be signed.

The farmers who had been compelled to sell their wheat below its value during the

war, had every right to the full market value now that the war was over.

Ostensibly admitting this principle, the Government appointed the wheat

board to sell the farmer’s wheat, paying him a fixed price on delivery of the wheat,

and the balance of whatever the market permitted at a later and indefinite date. On

delivery of his wheat the farmer received with the cash to which he was entitled, a

participation certificate which entitled him to any balance that the wheat board

finally decided was coming to him out of the price received by the board, and as

adjusted by them. The claim was made by and on behalf of the board and its

operations that it was and would be able to secure for the farmer a better price for

his wheat than could be secured by marketing it through the ordinary channels of the

trade. It was expected that “national marketing” would result in greater returns and

larger profits to the farmer than ever before.

The wheat board took control about August 1st, 1919, well in advance of the

1919 crop coming on the market. Their jurisdiction was absolute. And it lasted for a

1047 Wheat futures. 1048 From Who Will Pay the Debt? (1920, August 9). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 7.

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full year. If the 1919 crop was not marketed by the date when the wheat board’s

authority expired, it certainly should have been, for the presence of any part of the

1919 crop on this side of the Atlantic on August 1st, in any year tends to depress the

value of the crop ripening in August that comes on the market in September of that

year. It is a fact that there is an undue and unusual amount of the 1919 wheat crop

of Canada still on this side of the Atlantic at this date. This is one of the factors which

is depressing the value of the 1920 crop, and for which the Wheat Board must take

full responsibility.

The one possible valid reason for holding wheat in Canada in July is that the

market would not take it sooner at a fair price. The crop of 1919 was short. The

prospects for 1920 are much better. The war is a year further away. There was no

possible reason for believing that wheat would be higher in 1920 than in 1919.

Therefore the business of the Wheat Board – if its business was to market wheat to

the advantage of the farmer – was to get the surplus wheat of the 1919 crop out of

the country well in advance of the coming of the 1920 crop.

The Wheat Board proposes to pay the farmer for his 1919 crop, a total price

based on $2.55 per bushel for No. 1 Northern at Fort William. Was $2.55 the best

price that the world’s market offered for the Canadian wheat crop of 1919? […]

Minneapolis is the great milling and trading centre of the North Western

States. It is practically the same distance from Winnipeg that Fort William is. The

wheat immediately tributary to it is similar in quality to that of the Canadian West.

Whatever a certain quality of wheat is worth in Minneapolis, it should be worth at

Fort William, because to get to Fort William it must pass through Winnipeg, and from

Winnipeg can be hauled to Minneapolis as cheaply as to Fort William. There is no

duty on the importation of wheat into the United States. It is true that up to

December 15th, 1919, the importation of wheat into the United States by rail was not

permitted. But after that date wheat was as free to go to Minneapolis as to Fort

William.

The United States exports more wheat each year than Canada does. The export

price regulates the home price there as it does in Canada. The Minneapolis prices are

a fair index of world prices. During the period when the wheat board could not ship

to the United States, it could ship to the same European markets as fixed the price

in the United States and should therefore have been able to command the same prices

for Canadian wheat of the same quality as Minneapolis. If they were not able to do

so, they fell short of the avowed purpose of their appointment.

The Wheat Board fixed the basic price of Canadian wheat on No. 1 Northern

grade. Canadian No. 1 Northern is equal to United States No. 1 Dark Northern.

United States No. 1 Northern is a grade lower than Canadian No. 1 Northern. When,

during the war time, the Canadian board of grain supervisors fixed the price of

Canadian wheat, they fixed the price for Canadian No. 1 Northern at the same figure

as the United States had fixed for No. 1 Dark Northern. Whatever No. 1 Dark

Northern was worth in Minneapolis, No. 1 Canadian Northern was worth at Fort

William.

603

The Bulletin is able to place before its readers the weekly range of official cash

prices at Minneapolis for No. 1 Dark Northern spring wheat for the eleven months

from September, 1919, to July, 1920, both inclusive. The figures show in cents the

highest and lowest price paid for No. 1 Dark Northern spring wheat actually delivered

during the week ending on the date given1049.

It will be noted that only in the first two weeks of the eleven months was the

lowest quotation below the gross basic price on which the wheat board pays the

Canadian farmer. […] Taking $2.92½ as the average price No. 1 dark northern in

Minneapolis during the eleven months for which prices are quoted, it would appear

that on a crop of 150 million bushels the Canadian farmer has been short changed by

the wheat board 37½ cents a bushel, or 56 million dollars1050.

The farmer should have had this amount in hand with which to finance his

operations of this year. Not having it, these operations are necessarily restricted to

that extent, and the country at large suffers loss from lack of increased production

that could and would have occurred, had the farmer received the market value of his

wheat.

1049 The original article presents this data as a list. I have turned the list into a line graph for ease of

interpretation. 1050 The average of mid–points between the High and Low values is $2.976, 42.6 cents below the Wheat

Board price of $2.55 per bushel. Multiplying this by 150 million bushels gives $63,875,000.

250

260

270

280

290

300

310

320

330

340

350

C e n

ts /B

u sh

e l

September 1919 – July 1920

Minneapolis Price of U.S. No. 1 Dark Northern Wheat

Low High Canadian No. 1 Northern (Fort William)

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37. Price of Flour May Drop Soon (August, 1920)1051

There is a distinct possibility that within the next month or so, following the

big wheat crop in the West and the resumption of competitive dealing by the millers,

the price of flour will decrease and be followed by a drop in the price of bread. Already,

it is said by representatives of the leading milling interests, there had been a drop in

the market price of No. 1 Northern, which is the standard wheat for flour purposes.

When the Wheat Board goes out of existence it is expected that the big millers

will return to their old competitive systems of buying and selling, and the expectation

is that in the course of time this will result in a reduction in the cost of flour and

bread to the ultimate consumer.

As to just when this will take place, the millers were not inclined to predict,

since they are confronted with the problem of buying wheat and selling its products,

but it was intimated that within a short time there might be developments that would

ease the situation for the breadwinner and eater.

It was stated by a leading milling expert who has just returned from a tour of

the West that present costs of bread depended, largely on the stocks of flour in the

hands of the millers and bakers. This flour had all been bought on the basis of $3.15

a bushel for No. 1 Northern at Fort William as fixed by the Wheat Board, which the

millers said had practically controlled prices both for the buying of wheat and the

selling of its products. The Wheat Board, it was stated, would go out of existence on

August 31, and then the business will return to its normal conditions, as in pre–war

times, the big milling firms buying in competition and selling in the same way, with

no fixed prices beyond market quotations.

38. Better than the Open Market (October, 1920)1052

H. W. Wood, president of the United Farmers of Alberta, was quoted as saying

that Canadian wheat could have been handled very much better through the Canada

Wheat Board than in the open market, and that the price had declined a dollar a

bushel since the board had ceased to handle it. Sir George Foster1053, Minister of

Trade and Commerce, spoke as follows:

“The fact that the price of wheat in Canada has declined $1 is no proof that it

would not have been under the control of the Wheat Board. It has declined equally,

or more, in the United States. This decline is not due to the fact that a board is not

handling the wheat, but is a result of the supply of wheat in Canada at present

exceeding the demand. It is not sound reasoning to say that it has declined because

the Wheat Board is not handling it.”

1051 From PRICE OF FLOUR MAY DROP SOON. (1920, August 28). The Daily Colonist, p. 3. 1052 From PRAIRIE FARMERS ASK WHEAT BOARD. (1920, October 10). The Daily Colonist, p. 9. 1053 Sir George Eulas Foster (1847 – 1931).

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39. Wheat Control (October, 1920)1054

In this part of the Dominion, where the people do not believe in a controlled

price for wheat and the consequently high cost of living conditions, it will be learned

with interest that Dr. S. F. Tolmie1055 does not consider that the Wheat Board could

operate to advantage at this time. He points out, in an interview at Regina, that

European countries now have their own crops to depend upon, and are not buying the

Canadian produce in large quantities. On the other hand, the Western farmers are

throwing their wheat on the market, and the supply greatly exceeds the demand. The

lowering of prices on this account is inevitable. Dr. Tolmie expresses the opinion that

the Wheat Board, if it had still operated, could not maintain prices by taking over the

control of the entire crop and marketing it in Europe over a long period in accordance

with the demand.

40. The Case of the Farmer (December, 1920)1056

Sir, – Having seen and read the article in your issue of Nov. 23rd that Farmers

East of Edmonton are up in Arms, against the treatment they are receiving form their

government1057, first of all let me say Amen to the Cause, and wish them God’s

blessing in their effort, and let us hope that all other Districts will follow in their

footsteps. I am in a District just as bad, and, perhaps a little bit worse; we are shut

in as it were in a tea kettle, with only a very small spout for an outlet, that’s a branch

of our National Railroad from Camrose to Alliance. I would like to make this not only

a protest against our federal government, but also towards making better laws to

govern local elevators.

I want to state how things exist along this line, particularly at Alliance. The

big gun or the big farmer, most of them own threshing machines, and naturally

threshed most of their own grain first, and then of course the other fellow’s big job,

most of their grain was drawn from the machine to the elevators, and so monopolise

every bin therein, consequently the small farmer when his threshing was done, was

left out in the cold, his bills to meet, but could neither sell or store his grain. As I have

said, the big farmers had all the bins, let it be 1,500– or 4,000–bushel bins, when a

car load of it shipped out, he then hauls in again and fills it up.

I am not a chronic kicker, but I say that something ought to be done to help the

small farmer. My banker some time ago told me that quarter section farmers were

1054 From WHEAT CONTROL. (1920, October 19). The Daily Colonist, p. 4. 1055 Simon Fraser Tolmie (1867 – 1937), 21st Premier of British Columbia (and veterinarian). 1056 From Thomas, W. D. (1920, December 27). THE CASE OF THE FARMER. The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 7. Written by William D. Thomas (1867 – 1945). 1057 “Farmers along the main line of the Canadian National railway east, thoroughly incensed over the

government’s withdrawal of the wheat board, the shortage of cars for the removal of grain, the

exorbitant freight and express rates, have reached such a degree of indignation that they threaten an

agrarian strike which will affect the four western provinces and Ontario, if redress and relief are not

speedily incurred.” FARMERS EAST OF EDMONTON ARE UP IN ARMS. (1920, November 23). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 7.

606

better for the country than big farmers. Then why not protect the small farmer? There

would be no use sending a protest to the head office of any of the elevator companies,

because most of them belong to the big interests class, and, like the hen, they are all

scratching for the big worm; so I don’t know of a better way, then, that such conditions

of affairs should be brought to the attention of our minister of agriculture. He is

supposed to be looking after our interests and our welfare.

At time of threshing, most all the small farmers would have been satisfied to

take two dollars a bushel for his wheat so he could pay his bills; but, like the clucking

hen that would neither lay an egg nor get off the nest, the big farmers would not sell

their grain, but held it for the big price that did not come. What we want is a law

forbidding any man having a bin for more than one carload at a time. If a bin holds

two carloads, and two men have grain of the same grade, why not divide it between

the two? It is known here of some men having ten or twelve cars gone and then bins

of from 1,500 to 4,000 bushels full, when others could not get a bushel in.

But to come to the farmer’s position generally. They are surely getting it in the

neck. What has our precious government been preaching to us? More production,

depending on what they need the most. If it’s beef, they will try and make us believe

it’s not a good grain country, but the best in the world to produce beef; therefore most

farmers will drift, as it were, with the tide, and raise cattle, to their own ruin. Of

course, at such times the price is very high, and the farmer will have to pay the very

top price for a few head to start, and in three or four years, after a very good increase,

it would take the whole bunch to bring him the amount he paid for his first few, and

during the great war, the people of the world had to be fed, of course; so they needed

wheat.

I think every farmer did his best to produce that wheat, and many of us had to

pay around $300, besides big interest, for a binder; all the way from $175 to $250 for

a drill, and in such proportion for all other farm machinery; but the government took

control of the wheat, and made sure that the farmer didn’t get the five or six dollars,

or more, a bushel for it which no doubt they would have got if they had kept their

hands off. Now they have nobody to whip, they therefore let the farmer fight his own

battles, although they told us that the board was still in existence and that they would

keep their eye on things. No doubt they did, but somebody must have thrown sand in

their eyes, or at least they seem blind to the extreme condition they have brought the

farmer to.

I am beginning to see the viewpoint of the Socialist, that what we need is a

revolution. But, dear readers, don’t take it by that that I mean to shed blood, or to

shoot the capitalist down on the street. The interpretation I get from revolution is,

when I look into the dictionary, I see it means, the act of revolving; change or

alteration of system; to turn away in disgust, overturn, and many other things. So,

first of all, we turn away in disgust at the system and the way we farmers have been

trampled under foot; overturn, we sure need to overturn the system, and instead of

shooting down the big interests overturn him, right about face, and put in his place

someone that is representative of the people. I don’t want an ignorant farmer to

represent me. I don’t mean that farmers are ignoramuses; but they are usually like

607

the school boys playing marbles, if they can grab all, the better they like it. Therefore,

let us have a good leader that is in sympathy and understands our general conditions.

In another column, running parallel with the above article in the same paper,

is an article by Mr. John Blue of the welfare work. Mr. Blue goes on to say that the

Dominion Labor Bureau has complied statistics of over twenty–two industries. He

names seven, only one of which makes an average yearly wage of $1,000, and that, of

course, factory and machine products, which the farmers must have1058.

I am not going into debate with Mr. Blue, and I admit that that is very

inadequate to meet the exorbitant cost of all things we have to buy, but I would like

to compare the average farmer with those workers of industry. First of all, the latter

has nothing invested. He works perhaps eight hours a day. He enjoys his evenings

taking in the sights, and very often he is seen at the theatre or some moving picture

show. A visit at most any of these will tell the tale, and when the year is up he has

earned his $1,000. The quarter–section farmer, farming from 80 to 130 acres, has

from $5,000 to $7,000 invested.

I will quote this year, the most bountiful perhaps that Canada has ever seen,

with horses that cost two years ago $600 a team, today, perhaps worth from $50 to

$150 apiece, depending on the fancy of a bidder for a particular horse. Last spring he

paid for seed oats $1.25 a bushel; wheat, $2.50 a bushel. Today oats are worth about

20c, 15c for the threshing of them; wheat today, $1.20, 20c for threshing, and besides,

the farmer doesn’t sit at night watching pictures. He either sits on his milking stool

or sits around his stove to brood over his lonely condition. We may not need the reds’

theory of revolution, but we sure need some revoluting, some turning around, and

that very quickly. It will be too late when we have been forced to sell our wheat at the

present price, or in such case, if the moratorium is not continued, I am afraid that

many of us will be sold out, and we will have to leave our life’s earnings and walk to

the city and be fed by charity.

Very likely, when our grain is out of our hands, the price will go up, and the

speculator will reap the benefit, or, perhaps, when it is too late, our government will

decide that they had better handle it. I would say that in such case, every one that

was compelled to sell should be compensated. I don’t think it would do much good for

1058 “I wonder how many of us know how easy it is for a family to fall into straitened and unfavorable

circumstances. I wonder how many of us are aware of the dark menace that hovers over hundreds of

homes in every city of the continent, through illness, unemployment, inadequate wages, premature

and what is more lamentable, the preventable death of the bread–winner of the family. It is a

statistical fact that the great majority of the families in Canada earn little more than will keep them

in decency and comfort during normal times. The Dominion Labor Bureau has compiled the statistics

of over twenty–two industries in the Dominion of Canada. In seven of these, e.g. flour milling,

automobiles, agricultural implements, pulp and paper, meat foundry and machine shop products,

lumber – there is only one of the seven which shows an average yearly wage of $1,000.00 per year. If

we take the best paid one of these industries, viz. foundry and machine products, we will find the

following analysis instructive: 28 per cent. are paid over $35.00 per week. 25 per cent. are paid over

$20.00 – $25.00 per week. 23 per cent. are paid $15.00 – $20.00 per week. 13 per cent. are paid $10.00

– $15.00 per week. 8 1–2 per cent. are paid under $10.00 per week.” Blue, J. & Anonymous. (1920,

November 23). JOHN BLUE PUTS WELFARE WORK IN PLAIN TERMS. The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 7. Written by John Blue (1873 – 1945).

608

our Canadian government to control the wheat, without the United States doing the

same. When I go to the store for a 20 pound sack of sugar, it matters not whether

they ask one dollar or seven for it; if I want the sugar I must pay it, and our two

governments would say: “We have the wheat, and if you want any, you must pay our

price.” I am a very small figure in this big country, but if I could get every farmer to

think as I do, I would do like the miners. I would lay down tools until we got what we

wanted. In vision I look across the ocean and see the beautiful pictures our

commissioners show to the prospective immigrants, to the wonderful lands of

opportunities, the land where the hen lays the golden egg, but how few at the time

realized that the egg is infertile, and after years of incubation it still remains only an

egg?

In union there is strength, and when the farmers are organized, only then will

they get their rights. I would be very grateful to you, Mr. Editor, if you will print this

letter, and before I close, I have one appeal to make to Mr. Meighen and Mr. Wilson,

that if they can’t do anything for us, to get down from their thrones, take off their

crowns, and let one that is a worthy representative of the people take their places.

W. D. Thomas

Alliance, Alberta.

41. A Second Opinion (January, 1921)1059

Sir, – In your issue of Dec. 27, in a letter under the heading of “The Case of the

Farmer,” Mr. Thomas, of Alliance, Alberta, states some simple, but stern facts. He

puts his case in a graphic, not to say “meaty” way which must carry conviction to

reasonable minds in all classes.

But what of that? The inevitable deflation slide is on, and will not be arrested

until its two principal objects have been attained; that is: 1. Until the adverse

exchange with the United States has been wiped out; and, 2. Until wages have been

run down hill again in preparation for another climb.

The former of these movements is necessary, in order to protect the interests

– many of them no doubt public – which borrowed from Uncle Sam when exchange

was level or easy, and are now having to pay back heaped measure because the

Canadian dollar is at a discount relatively to the American.

Both movements are necessary in order to protect the dividend–hunters from

loss in the face of the fact that the prices of Canadian products have been boosted to

the export peak.

That many hard working and honest farmers are being brought at least to the

verge of ruin, and that much hardship to the workers in other classes is entailed in

these movements, is of no account to the people who are engineering them, and who

are accustomed to refer to them as demanded by “economic necessity.”

Whether the “economic necessity” referred to is one which affects the whole

community, or merely a local or class interest, is not at present divulged; and in the

1059 From Wallace, W. (1921, January 17). “THE CASE OF THE FARMER”. The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 5. Written by William Wallace (1862 – 1942), one of the black pioneer farmers of Campsie, Alberta.

609

absence of authoritative explanations, many thinking people will be sure to classify

it as one more of the results of the futility of our present financial system.

But my main purpose in writing at present is to take up a statement which Mr.

Thomas makes near the end of his letter. He says: “If I could get every farmer too

think as I do, I would do like the miners: I would lay down tools until we got what we

wanted.”

Now, it is possible that many farmers think like Mr. Thomas in this matter. I

have discussed it with some of them, and have found that his way of looking at the

situation is more a matter of feeling than of thinking – the kind of feeling that comes

over a man when he reaches the desperate conclusion that he is up against an

immovable object which nothing will shift but an irresistible force!

But this is a dangerous kind of feeling to let loose on; and it is absolutely

necessary to stop and think, and not be carried away by the apparent inevitableness

of such a policy. Here are some of the arguments I have used in this connection:

1. Mr. Thomas proposes following the miners’ example. Now, when the miners

have by striking obtained what they wanted, they can go back to work next day and

commence making good the coal shortage resulting from the strike. But if the farmers

were to strike by laying down tools, at the only time when such a course would be

more than a bluff, viz., at seed–time, the season would probably be lost before an

agreement could be arrived at, and nothing could be done to make good the shortage.

2. The foregoing argument is in a way putting the cart before the horse. For,

while the miners could proceed at once to bargain collectively with the coal operators,

it is by no means so clear with what authority the farmer could, under present

conditions, proceed to bargain, either collectively or otherwise. And if, in the

meantime, the season were lost, the bargaining would be apt to fall rather flat, seeing

there was no crop in sight to bargain about.

3. The effect of striking in this way would be to biff the wrong man. We all

know who it is that pinches the farmer’s pay. We may not be able to hand out evidence

in support of our charges such as Sir Henry Drayton would accept; but that is because

Sir Henry Drayton, and the rest, persistently protect the accounts of the culprits from

violation by the public auditor; so that they can tell a credulous public just what they

choose. (Vide various assertions by packing plants as to their profits per pound.)

Nevertheless, we know who are the farmers’ enemies, and we are getting to

understand their tactics.

If, then, the farmers laid down tools by way of taking a biff at these enemies,

is there any doubt that the blow would be turned, as usual, on to the innocent

consumer? Would you farmers, by shortening production, confer on the co–operating

middlemen serious discomfort in comparison with the tortures of hunger and

starvation you would inflict on the feeble and defenceless poor? What would be the

use of biffing Peter to beat Paul – unless it were to make an enemy of Peter also?

4. A great deal of righteous indignation was fomented against the Germans

during the war in the matter of their “frightfulness” policy. Because they shot down,

or blew up defenceless women and children and old men in cold blood, in order to

610

impress them with the horrors of war, and perhaps scare them into advocating

submission, as they were cursed as bloodthirsty barbarians.

Tell me, Mr. Thomas, and those others who think with him, would it not be

still more cruel and barbarous, to subject these men and women and children and old

men to the slow and prolonged torture of hunger and starvation? And, if you, by your

strike policy, created a shortage of food, what else could happen? Would not the rich

and strong, as usual, take what they wanted, so that the poor and helpless would at

best have to go on short rations?

The Germans used “frightfulness” in order to win a big world war and secure

the world domination that implied, but you farmers, who agree with Mr. Thomas, are

advocating a worse form of frightfulness to win a slightly bigger price for your

produce! And I don’t think you would get what you want that way, any more than

Germany did!

5. One other point. Suppose we go the whole hog on the strike argument, and

imagine for a moment that all the farmers in Canada lay down tools next spring, as

an organized protest against market conditions. Some crisis, you will say! The rest of

the nation will be apt to call it a hold–up, and treat it accordingly.

Now, in a democratic country, it is taken for granted that the will of the

majority goes; and the minority is expected to play the game like good sports. History

and local experience both show that when a minority tries to buck the community, it

generally bucks itself out of the community.

What would that mean in this case? I can only see one interpretation. The

government, acting on behalf of the community – or at least, the majority – in such

an impossible crisis, would issue an ultimatum calling upon the farmers to go back

to their work and get a crop in at once; and if they refused, and persisted in playing

dog–in–the–manger with their privileges, the government, it appears to me, would

have no alternative but to forthwith cancel all land titles and substitute some sort of

scheme of limited tenure, instead. Dangerous disorders demand drastic remedies;

and, anyway, there are lots of thinking people who, following Henry George, think all

private property in land wrong. Probably the labor class would support such a move

bodily. And that’s about all the farmers would get out of their strike!

There is much more wisdom and insight in the wheat pool proposition, which

strikes at the root of the trouble. The real cause of the farmers’ failure to bargain

collectively for their produce is the fact that they have at present to dicker

individually against a highly organized co–operative buyer. There is really no dicker

at all. The buyers names his price, and the seller can take it or leave it.

W. WALLACE

Campsie, Alta., January 6, 1921.

611

42. The End of the Wheat Board (August, 1921)1060

On the second anniversary of the foundation of the Canadian Wheat Board, a

meeting of members this afternoon terminated the board’s activities. […] The Board

came into existence August 11, 1919, and was formed for the purpose of assisting the

farmers to market their grain under protective measure.

Women and their Farms

43. Mrs. Foster’s Farm (1921)1061

At Lillooet, about thirty miles west of Ashcroft and north of Lytton, right in

the middle of the dry belt in British Columbia where irrigation is the magic want that

turns the desert into a fertile garden, there is a little 32–acre farm owned and solely

managed by a woman.

It catches the eye by its appearance of orderly prosperity, its shady orchard,

well–hoed gardens, the sleekness of the milk–cows grazing in the higher paddocks

and the vivid green of its alfalfa fields stands out in strong relief against the vast

brown barren slopes of the surrounding country, sun–baked, covered with sage–brush

and little else.

Weary as she is with a life–time’s work of fifty–three years behind her, Mrs.

Foster still carries on – as faithfully and as thoroughly as she did twenty years ago.

With the help of an Indian who comes in to do the ploughing and give a hand with

the haying and harvesting, she and a niece, who sometimes stays with her, manage

the whole work of the farm alone.

Mrs. Foster gets more out of her acreage than any other farmer in the province.

Every inch of ground is turned to account on a methodical and scientific system; the

vegetable and animal growth are made to react to each other’s mutual benefit and

both to the good of their owner and the country.

Her five milk–cows pasture on the farm and she sells all her dairy produce to

an hotel; besides these there are a couple of work–horses, pigs and chickens. Every

scrap of feed used for the stock is produced on the ranch itself.

Mrs. Foster has worked down to a fine point just exactly how much space it is

necessary to devote to alfalfa, grain and hay in order to do this and nothing is bought

in the way of feed except perhaps clamshell for the chickens. The crop and the animals

balance each other and no overweight is allowed on either side.

This farmer is also a first class gardener, both in theory and in practice, and

has sweet corn earlier and over a longer period than anyone else in British Columbia.

She devotes about a quarter of an acre of well adapted land to her early spring garden,

1060 From WHEAT BOARD PASSES OUT OF EXISTENCE. (1921, August 12). The Daily Colonist, p. 1. 1061 From H.G.–W. (1921, September 15). A Successful Woman Farmer in British Columbia. The Cranbrook Herald, p. 5.

612

and another piece with a colder aspect to her late summer planting; so by a carefully

planned system of sowing in succession she has a plentiful supply of fresh vegetables

to sell to the hotels and also to ship to other points.

Lillooet is never troubled by late frosts, so her tomatoes are early and these

she sells by the bucketful , and last year shipped 100 boxes to the coast. The orchard

contains every sort of tree–fruit, including Italian prunes, peaches and apricots, of

which latter Mrs. Foster has two big trees (now in bearing) grown from seed sown

since she came to the place nine years ago. Last year she shipped away 700 boxes of

fall and winter apples.

There are some healthy looking hedges of grape vines, which bear profusedly,

and plenty of raspberries and other small fruits, but her specialty is melons, for which

she is famous. There are rows and rows of these, canteloupes, musk and water melons

for all of which she finds a ready market. Her four bee–hives are partly the reason

why her fruit is so successful.

And so we take off our hats to this woman who is “carrying on” so wisely and

so well to our country’s benefit.

44. Ruth Hillman (1916)1062

It’s the woman behind the plow this time, though one might not scarcely

believe it, contemplating the slim little person with the dainty hands, at least not

until one had met the level gaze of her eyes. Then anything that bespoke energy of

purpose, intelligence, and enterprise became possible. Her name is Miss Ruth

Hillman, and she is this week a guest at the Royal Alexandra, having come to the city

on business concerning some forty thousand bushels of No. 1 hard wheat, not to

mention a trifle like 18,000 bushels of oats which she has grown this season on her

farm out from Moose Jaw. She had 1,900 acres under crop of various kinds. In

addition, she is a seed wheat specialist of growing reputation.

“I do not do the actual manual labor,” explained Miss Hillman. “I direct my

staff. You see, I believe farming is just like any other big business, and business

systems should be introduced into it. I study for all I am worth, reading up what

others have done, noting my mistakes, and finding out why they are mistakes, and

not by any means forgetting to take council with sourdoughs in the districts. Then

when my foreman comes for consultation I know what I want done. I make a specialty

of breeding Percheron horses as well as growing wheat, and we have one set of men

working the fields and another looking after the horse ranch.”

Miss Hillman didn’t tell all this “off the bat.” Indeed, she seemed to think that

her work could scarcely hold special interest. “It is no credit to me,” she explained. “I

come of Danish descent, and so inherit a love of the land. Coming up here from the

United States nine years ago with my mother and young brother, I started in, tackling

each problem as it came.” In further conversation it came out that Miss Hillman,

doubtless to escape ennui, had taken up as a side line the trying out of special kinds

1062 From Woman Runs a Big Farm Successfully. (1916, April 19). The Melfort Moon, p. 3.

613

of wheat. “I make a specialty of Marquis wheat,” she stated, and added, with the shy

triumph of a debutante who had mastered a new fox trot, “Indeed, I first introduced

it into the United States. Isn’t this tie–up the limit?” she added. “Here I am with four

big orders for wheat seed that I dare not promise to fill.”

This year she tried out Durum wheat, the first time it had been tried in

Canada. It had yielded from 60–90 bushels to the acre. Miss Hillman explained that

it was extensively used in the manufacture of macaroni. “My system,” she said, “is to

try the seed out, say, on one acre the first year and then on a bigger area, until I know

its peculiarities and what soil culture it must have. That’s the whole secret,” she went

on, enthusiastically. “Loyalty to the land, studying its possibilities, and the special

treatment needed, not seeing how much one can grab out of it without any thought of

exhaustion. I do not think this was a special year. I think this wonderful crop is

merely due to the increased cultivation put on the land. Land will respond all the

time if you give it half a chance.”

Asked as to her ideas of farming as an occupation for women, Miss Hillman

became thoughtful. “Women can be successful at it if they will make up their minds

to work, work, and then work,” she said finally. “I can see where they would do

splendidly near a big market, but as to away out on a prairie, they must be sure of

their physical, moral and mental strength before they attempt it. It is a big test. And

also, women farmers are like men farmers – they are born, not made.”

45. Other Successful Farmers (1907)1063

Miss Marie Gilroy, of Saskatchewan, is one of the most famous women settlers

of the west. She put her last shilling into a prairie farm and spent seven years in a

hand–to–hand tussle with fortune, sitting on her own binder, cutting her grain,

handling the plough in the furrow, and doing stable duty. In 1906 her holding excited

the admiration of a young Englishman, and Miss Gilroy was induced to hand over

her lock, stock and barrel to him for the round sum of $15,000. Today Miss Gilroy is

touring Europe on the proceeds of her original $2,000.

Mrs. Gilbray, who came to the Canadian west 20 years ago with six small

children, is another prominent woman farmer of Saskatchewan. Beginning almost

penniless, her 160 acres of homestead have now grown to an 800–acre estate, and her

children are settled around her in comfort and affluence.

Salome Wertman came with her husband and little family from Russia, and

soon she, too, was a widow. She still kept on “trying to earn bread,” as she says, and

16 years after her absolutely penniless start she stands as one of the successful land–

owners of Saskatchewan.

Mrs. Ferrie is known as the “woman farmer of the Portage Plains”. Left with a

family of young children, she has managed her farm most successfully since the death

of her husband. She comes from Belfast, Ireland, and when she arrived in Canada 32

years ago, they had no capital at all. She now has an estate of 700 acres, and her two

1063 From WOMEN HOMESTEADERS. (1907, August 7). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 3.

614

sons are settled near at hand, each the owner of a section and a half of land – about

500 acres.

Mrs. Grant has a beautiful farm on the banks of the Canadian Killarney, in

southern Manitoba. Three years ago she went there from Scotland with her son, a

young man just out of college, and her daughter. A year ago, just as they were

preparing for spring seeding, the son was stricken down with appendicitis, and in 24

hours was dead. Filled with hatred for the place, she decided to leave it, but the

morning after the son’s funeral, when she was packing up, her daughter called to her,

“Mother, come here, quick!” She looked and saw that men, teams and ploughs quietly

and without a word of explanation were beginning work on the farm. The neighbors

had decided to put in the season’s crop for the two bereaved women. They actually

ploughed, furrowed, seeded and reaped the entire crop. After that Mrs. Grant talked

no more of going “home.” Her farm by the shores of the Canadian Killarney was home

to her.

46. Georgina Binney–Clark (1909)1064

Miss Binney Clark1065 of Fort Qu’Appelle, a noted newspaper writer and

popular authoress, […] came to Canada three years ago and since then has

maintained a quarter section of land near Qu’Appelle almost alone. […] During the

first months after arriving in Canada, Miss Clark and her sister lived in a tent on

their brother’s farm, but as the harvest was approaching she had an opportunity to

buy a farm at some distance from her brother’s, where a crop had been put in, but

where the owner had fallen ill and was obliged to leave. She invested $5,000 in the

farm, which contained 320 acres of land with some buildings thereon, and

immediately took up the active life of a farmer. Her only previous farm experience

had been as a girl on her father’s farm in Dorsetshire, England, where thorough–bred

horses were bred and reared. She knew horses, well, but nothing about grain or cattle.

The crop she bought on the land was a good one and she cleaned up quite a little

money, but the crop of 1906 was not a good one. It will be remembered that, though

the crop generally was good that year, there were a number of cases of almost total

failure, and Miss Clark was among the unfortunate. She faced the prospect of seeing

her capital diminishing and at once set to work to remedy the difficulty.

DID ALL HER OWN WORK

She discharged all her help and during that most severe winter of 1906–7 lived

entirely alone on her farm, looking after her cattle and horses herself and cutting her

own wood. The wood–cutting she does not recommend for women as a rule, as it is

apt to be exhausting unless a woman is very strong; but it is much less fatiguing to

do any outside work on a farm, saw with plow or drill or harrow, than it is to work in

the house. She got through the winter without mishap of any kind. She did not suffer

from loneliness and she managed to save money.

CARRYING OUT A THEORY

1064 From British Women on Canadian Homesteads. (1909, April 22). The Taber Free Press, p. 1. 1065 Georgina Binnie–Clark (1871 – 1947), author of an article found elsewhere in this chapter.

615

Of course, like so many of her neighbors her crop of 1907 was affected by frost,

but, as she herself said, even then she made her farm carry out her theory that a farm

should support itself with the returns from stock, dairy and poultry, and coarse grains

fed to the cattle and horses, and that the wheat crop, after deducting the cost of twine

and threshing, should always be a cash asset. This year her crop, though somewhat

lighter than she had expected, was a good one of excellent quality and brought great

prices.

Miss Clark is strong on farmers shipping their own grain instead of selling it

on the street, and in passing spoke of the satisfaction she had had in shipping direct

to a Winnipeg firm, who had handled her grain for her, whereby she had realized 5c.

to 6c. per bushel more than she had been offered on the street at Fort Qu’Appelle.

She has had excellent results from her cows, one of her milch cows yielding her

in one year exactly the price paid for her ($35) in butter, besides a fine calf. Miss

Clark is also trying her hand at breeding horses. Having bought good native mares

with considerable standard–bred blood, she is crossing them with such well–known

sires as Kelston, owned by the Dales of Qu’Appelle, and last year took two first prizes

for colts.

47. Hazlett’s Homestead (1921)1066 Unless they were widows with young children, women in Canada were not allowed to claim homesteads until the 1930s1067. May Hazlett worked around this restriction by inheriting her fallen brother’s homestead as a ready–made farm.

Another name added to the list of women who are successfully operating farms

in Western Canada is that of May V. Hazlett, an English girl who for four years has

lived alone on a homestead in the Touchwood Hills, and made it pay. Her brother,

who homesteaded the land, was killed in the Canadian forces at Vimy Ridge, and

Miss Hazlett, who was working as a stenographer, and tired of the eternal pounding,

determined to go contrary to the advice to sell the farm, and though she had never

lived in the country, decided to operate it herself. Success has attended her efforts

and she now owns several head of horses, a fine bunch of cattle, and has more than

one hundred acres under cultivation. She is again reversing the order of things as,

having built a Western home, she is returning to England to marry her fiancé and

bring him out to the Saskatchewan farm. She is an ardent advocate of homesteads

for women.

1066 From A Woman Homesteader. (1921, September 1). Blairmore Enterprise, p. 8. 1067 “Alberta women are steadily taking advantage of the new provincial ruling that women may now

file on homesteads. A report issued by the Lands Department recently showed that in October out of

a total of 368 homesteads filed upon in Alberta, 174 applications for these free lands were made by

women.” Women Granted Homesteads. (1932, February 4). Blairmore Enterprise, p. 6.

616

A Canadian Woman Farmer (ca. 1910)1068

1068 Doris [Photograph]. (ca. 1910). From an anonymous photograph in the Anthologist’s collection.

Other inscriptions in the same album suggest this was taken at a farm in Springfield, Manitoba.

617

Ready–Made Farms and the Woman Farmer

48. Felix’s Failure (1894)1069 Ready–made farms were sometimes considered a liability.

In most of the failures by persons who come to the North West it will be found

that the fault lay not with the country, but with the man. I will give an instance. It

is a real case but I will suppress the man’s name. I will call him Felix, which was his

Christian name. He had been a literary man in the old country, and had saved £300.

He longed for the free life of the prairie; he had read books about the simple and

innocent life we all lead, or may lead, and ought to lead. He thought it must be

charming to be away from the hum and shock of men, and from the struggle to live

amid the crowds in the old world. Felix was willing to purchase this happiness

notwithstanding he would have to buck wood, drive oxen and water cattle when the

snow was around, and the thermometer could not make up its mind to fall to fifty

below, or rise to forty below. Felix, therefore, wrote many letters, made many

enquiries, and at last decided to settle at Cotham.

He and his wife left England a few years ago, and duly arrived on this side.

They broke their journey at Brandon to present a letter of introduction, and this may

be called their first blunder. Here Felix was assured that the Northwest was a

mistake, little better than a desert; that nearly all persons who went to the Northwest

failed, and were only too glad to leave the country and find a congenial resting place

in the great wheat province. It was impressed upon him that £300 was too small to

homestead with; that it would be all gone before he could get well on his legs, and

that, in short, he was simply on the road to ruin. Much better, he was told, buy an

improved farm on easy terms, so he could begin farming at once, and enjoy

immediately considerable return for his outlay. It so happened that the party to whom

he had the introduction (one of Brandon’s most prominent citizens) had just such a

farm for sale. It was a half section with seventy acres ready for cropping. The bargain

was struck. I forget the price of the farm, but it was to be paid for in five equal annual

installments. The vendor found the seed for the first year, and was to have half the

crop if there was one, but would not require payment for the seed if the crop failed.

Felix thought the terms not only fair but generous, and entered upon farming a happy

man, with house, building, stock and implements.

At first all went merry as a marriage bell. The newness of everything diverted

him. The farm was on the open prairie, near Virden. There was not a bluff in sight.

Never mind, thought Felix, if there is not variety there is extent. Then plowing, if it

is monotonous when you are used to it, it is pleasant when you are learning it, and

even oxen are not stupid in the eye of those who are being taught to drive them. Thus

it was that as he was “getting his hand in” all the different operations of farming, he

found the life jolly, and entered on his new career with zest and gusto.

1069 From LESSONS FROM FAILURES. (1894, August 10). The Moose Jaw Herald Times, p. 6.

618

At length, however, those occupations began to pall upon him. The open prairie

did not come up to his idea of “lovely country;” forking manure was not “pastoral life”

according to his poetic fancy, for I ought to have said Felix was a poet. With

Valentine1070 he had said–

This shadowy desert, unfrequented woods

I better brook than flourishing peopled towns

Here I can sit alone, unseen of any

And to the nightingale’s complaining notes

Tune my distresses and record my woes.

Such a life would be pleasant enough without doubt, if one had nothing else to

do; but such a life is not consistent with breaking an acre a day, felling logs or cleaning

out stables. Felix soon began to think that the man who was born to fill a page with

poetry was out of place filling a trough with pig swill; tree felling might be good

enough for Mr. Gladstone, but chopping firewood was not so jolly as grinding out jokes

for “Fun,” to which periodical Felix was a principal contributor. Pork and potatoes

were good enough in their way, but were not appetizing when the only variety was

potatoes and pork, with perhaps a slight change by the omission of either the one or

the other. In other words, Felix thought he was coming to Arcadia, whereas he was

only coming to Canada; he was longing to be Strephon, and hoping his wife would be

a Phylllis1071, whereas he found himself a Manitoba farmer and his wife, to use his

own contemptuous phrase, “a prairie woman.”

Then to make matters worse, it was not a very good year. It was three years

ago. The harvest was a scanty one, and prices ruled low. Not only this, but there was

a blizzard, only for one day it is true, but that was enough for Felix. He began to

reckon up things. He found that he had lost money and owed for the farm; so he

realized what he could and went back to England a poorer, a sadder and perhaps a

wiser man. He is one of those who are now running down the country, although all

he has seen of it is the prairie round Virden. He says it is a desert in the summer, a

wilderness in the winter, that the farmers all owe for their farms (he is generalizing

his own experience); that none of them earn their living at farming, but supplement

it by going about working at other trades; that prairie life is only fit for savages; that

in short the country is the worst place on the face of the earth, and the people who

live in it the biggest fools in existence.

Had Felix gone through to Cotham without stopping at Brandon, he might

have fared better. To begin with he would not have started by plunging into debt. He

would have homesteaded, got gradually accustomed to work, gradually have built up

a farm, gradually have seen what was meant by “settling.” Instead of that he

preferred to become a hot–house plant, forced into a 70–acre farmer in two months

1070 The quote is from Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act 5, Scene 4. 1071 Strephon and Phyllis are character’s in the comic operetta Iolanthe (1882), by Gilbert and Sullivan. Strephon is a shepherd from the pastoral land of Arcadia. He wants to marry Phyllis, a minor under

the guardianship of an English court (a ‘ward of Chancery’).

619

by the protecting, I mean withering shade of a Brandon land speculator. The result

was natural as with all plants that are over forced, he withered at the first frost.

The moral of this is that such men are bound to fail if they come to this country.

The Northwest is not fitted for them, nor are they fitted for the Northwest. The man

who comes out here should be “King of two hands”1072 at any rate, and if he will only

use them he will find the richest partner in the whole wide world in Nature herself,

a partner, too, that requires no share of the profit she yields; one, however, that is

very exacting and grants no favors except in response to work. What is wanted out

here is a man who can build a fence, not a man to sit on one and compose to the eye–

brows of his lady–love. Felix would have done much better had he stayed at home. He

may be amiable, willing, clever, but he is not for here; and it is to be regretted that

he, and such as he run down the country and keep away men to whom the prairie

would perhaps mean prosperity; instead of having the clear–headedness to see and

the courage to declare that it was he and not the country that was the cause of this

failure.

49. The C.P.R.’s Ready–Made Farms in Western Canada (1915)1073

A “Ready–Made” Farm is a farm which is developed previous to occupation by

the erection of a house and barn, the drilling of a well and installation of a pump, the

fencing, cultivation, and, in most cases, the seeding of a certain area. The purchaser

is, therefore, able to move into occupation at once, and is in possession of a crop the

first year, besides being saved many of the inconveniences incidental to life in a new

country. […]

The average size of a ready–made farm is 160 acres. The area seeded is usually

seeded to wheat, oats and barley in the proportion of 50, 30 and 20 per cent.

respectively.

In the selection of ready–made farms it has always been the Company’s policy

to select the best land possible. The farms were at first mainly in the Company’s

Irrigation Block, but “colonies” have also been established in other lands owned by

the company outside of the Irrigation block.

50. Why the Settlers are Content (1910)1074 Georgina Binney–Clark describes her visit to the C.P.R.’s ready–made farms.

1072 A reference to The Heritage, a work by the American poet James Russell Lowell (1819 – 1891). It reads in part: “What doth the poor man’s son inherit? / Stout muscles and a sinewy heart, / A hardy

frame, a hardier spirit; King of two hands, he does his part / In every useful toil and art; / A heritage,

it seems to me, / A king might wish to hold in fee.” 1073 Ready–Made Farms in Western Canada. (1915, May 26). Red Deer News, p. 1. 1074 From Binnie–Clark, G. (1910, October 22). WHY THE SETTLERS ARE CONTENT. The Strathmore Standard, p. 5 and Binnie–Clark, G. (1910, October 29). WHY THE SETTLERS ARE CONTENT. The Strathmore Standard, p. 5. Written by Georgina Binnie–Clark (1871 – 1947), farmer, lecturer, journalist and author of Wheat and Woman (1914).

620

The car darted out from Strathmore and away towards the distance. Two miles

out we met Professor Elliott1075 returning home in his buggy and team, but at the

word of my errand he was beside me.

“You could not have come at a better time,” he said, as I explained how the

work of my own farm had delayed my visit, “and you are, at any rate, the first to come

and inspect us.”

As we sped across the prairie, I caught here and there at a fact from his flow

of information, which a wild wind of the West did its best to intercept. As he explained

it the theory of the “ready–made farms” scheme seemed perfect. Neither expense nor

personal trouble had been spared in giving the colony a fair start. The colonists,

moreover, were proving themselves Britons of that type which cannot be beaten

throughout the length and breadth of the universe, and the most inspiring pupils who

had yet foregathered within the realm of the professor’s sound practical knowledge

and enthusiasm. But, alas! The grain harvest was “below the average.”

“Below!” I exclaimed.

“The drought,” explained the professor.

“But surely irrigation defies drought,” I reasoned.

Then he explained the unavoidable delay that had occurred in the early spring

in connection with the special equipment of the farms. For the president of the

Canadian Pacific Railway had demanded a miracle of labor from his officers in order

that his great colonization scheme might make an immediate start. They had almost

brought it off. But the water channels were not quite fixed “on time,” and the first

crops of the ready–made farms of the irrigated region had been sown on unirrigated

soil.

A BLESSING IN DISGUISE

“But you will see that it will turn out for the best,” added the professor. “We

have not had such a dry season for fourteen years. Had everything gone smoothly,

the irrigated land would have probably yielded forty bushels to the acre. Some 2000

bushels of grain would have been gathered from the fifty acres that were broken and

sowed for the emigrants at their coming. What would have been the result? Wheat

fever! And the only chance for farms and farmers over the long distance is a rotation

of crops and stock–raising. As things are, the colony crops are far above the local

average. I expect the yield to average 13 bushels to the acre. That is not so bad in a

year when many a farmer has made hay of his growing grain.”

“If a comparative failure in crops throws them on to a fair start in stock–

raising, I agree with you it should prove profitable,” I answered. “Only I was hoping

to find them with oat crops like that splendid sample acre you have at the

Demonstration Farm.”

“Isn’t it great? I got the seed from Montana – Selected Swedish. These three

bushels of seed were taken from a crop that yielded 126 bushels to the acre. I hand–

picked every bit of it, and it is as clean as it is full. I hope to get enough from that

acre next year to give all the colonists a start in the same seed. Clean seed, rotation

of crops, and stock raising; three crops of alfalfa, followed in turn by wheat, oats, peas,

1075 Professor J. W. Elliott, who helped with the Demonstration Farm serving the Ready–Made Farms.

621

and barley, that will keep out all the mischief that the wheat gamble has worked in

the States.”

A ROUGH ROAD

“The road is a little rough,” observed the professor as with a jerk and a splash

we drove through a ditch, “but we shall soon be there. Do you see those tents in the

valley? When this colonization scheme was being talked over in the old country last

spring, no definite promise was given concerning railroads. But those tents belong to

the gang who are laying the track of the new branch of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

The station will be practically at the gate of the colony, and the Northern Pacific have

graded their new branch across the further end.”

“Then, practically speaking, those first comers are located on eighty–acre town

sites,” I said.

“Yes, that is so,” he answered. “And with two railway gangs in the valley, the

hay crop has almost the value of a wheat crop. The moment I saw how things were

going, I said to the emigrants, ‘Boys, get on to your hay. Hay is seven dollars a ton

today, and going up all the time. Get right on to it, lads, and you’ll come out on top.’

And they did put their shoulders right into the business. There were two brothers

who had up a hundred ton of hay before I got round to them again. If they need cash

to see them through the winter, they can sell it for cash right here to the railway men.

But my advice to them is to take the offer of the Canadian Pacific Railway and make

a fair start with stock–raising. Every settler has now the chance to obtain two milch

cows with their calves at market price, the payments to be distributed over a term of

ten years on the same terms as his land and buildings. In this way the hay crop

indirectly provides them with milk, butter, and cheese through the winter.”

“Milk and a sufficient butter to trade for other necessaries,” I agreed, “but very

few persons know about cheese–making.”

“I shall come over myself and instruct them in the processes of two kinds of

cheese–making. The secretary of the Co–operative Society will select the house at

which the demonstrations will take place, and the different members of the colony

will come and learn. Their system of co–operation is really fine, but of that they must

tell you themselves. I am taking you to the farm of the chairman – there is the street.”

SHAUGHNESS

On either side of the broad road allowance, neat–looking red and white shacks,

with attendant barns to the rear, were placed at regular intervals, and occasionally

side by side. The first glimpse gave an impression which was in striking contrast to

one’s recollection of the state of affairs in a brand new settlement on the prairie.

“Here are the best set of men that ever landed in Canada from Britain,” said

Professor Elliott.

The professor crossed the narrow plank without disaster, and I followed him

over the border into Shaughness, the town of the Irricana Colony, named in honour

of its founder by the first detachment of British settlers who went over to the ready–

made farms in April 1910 to “make good” the colonization idea of Sir Thomas

Shaughnessy.

“Here’s your first settler,” said the professor, and introduced me to Mr. Bryant.

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Mr. Bryant looked a well–groomed, determined British sportsman, carrying

about him that air of healthy British pluck which can pull chestnuts out of the fire –

cheerfully.

As we drew up at the gate, the wife and child came down the garden path. She

was the kind of woman one rarely meets on or off the prairie, and the child was dainty

and charming, too. I eagerly accepted her invitation to look at “the home.”

THE SETTLER’S HOME

The shack was 28ft., by 12ft., and they had wisely decided to divide it into two

instead of the proposed three rooms. English sporting pictures and dainty feminine

belongings were here and there; nor did they or the deep armchair look one white out

of place beside the shining cooking–stove in that neat and comfortable apartment.

The possible fault one might find with the simple building was that the windows were

rather small. The bedroom also bore the hall–mark of owners strong in the fine art of

making the best of things. The garden was trim as a five–year–old garden: neat rows

of cabbages, beetroot, lettuce, onions, carrots, etc., flourished within the boundary of

a potato–plot which had been seeded in advance by the company. The stable in the

rear was equally finished in appearance, 20ft. by 14ft. in dimensions: and between

stable and shack was an emerald–green pump set in a well. This evoked my warmest

congratulation. “On my first arrival in Canada,” said Mrs. Bryant, “we used slough–

water until we became quite attached to everything but the difficulty of dipping it

out, and although most of my neighbors are provided with excellent wells, those who

own a pump are few and far between.” It was with great regret one had to hurry away,

but I was eager to hear details of the system of co–operation. Mr. Carlingford and his

neighbor Mr. Dale had lately returned from hay–gathering, and were now in the

parlor.

“Hasn’t the professor told you of our plan of co–operation?” he answered. “We

own a threshing outfit of our own, and reckon we shall pay for it in three years out of

the saving on our threshing bill. We also own a gasolene engine of 20–horse power,

so that we can soon turn over our stubble.”

THE PLAN OF CO–OPERATION

“There are always people who won’t believe in putting their capital into

implements,” said Mr. Carringford; “there are others who occasionally return the loan

of a man and team with the loan of a wagon. For the benefit of both borrower and

lender we have prepared a list of the actual value of time and implements used in

farm labor, from a man and team down to a store–boat. The list does not oblige us to

lend ourselves or our implements, but if we lend it is on a definite understanding that

we receive the fixed value in money or kind, and it leaves no corner for Soapy Sponge.

For instance, Dale and Marwood and I agreed to put up hay together. On the first day

I took out self, wagon and rack, and team, Marwood contributed self and team, Dale

self and wagon and rack. We gathered five tons on the first day, and in making out

the division of the first day’s earnings, we first credited each man with the value of

his particular contribution to the labor and then divided the value of the balance into

three equal parts.”

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“Professor,” I said, as we drove off, “I know that as emigrants we British have

the reputation of being discontented, hard to please, and exacting until we settle

down to make the best of things – or return to the comfort of Britain. I think your

ready–made homes ARE homes, and the form and order of the whole are excellent,

and excellent value for money for those who would never come out to the primitive

conditions of the ordinary settler. But I must know if Mr. Bryant is – CONTENT.”

“Mr. Bryant,” said the professor, “are you content?”

“No, professor,” he answered. “I shall not be content until my crops are as good

as your samples at the Demonstration Farm.”

“Quite right!” I answered. “Good luck and good–bye.”

51. “A profitable field for the business woman” (1912)1076

“Women investors in England are watching the development of Canada with

very keen interest, and with eager anticipation of opportunities by which they may

receive greater dividends for their capital than they can obtain in the old country.

You would be surprised to know the amount of money invested by women in Canadian

interests and financial concerns today. I was surprised, myself, until I had occasion

to look into the subject on my present trip, and the result of my investigation has

quite opened my eyes.”

So said Miss G. Binnie–Clark, of London, England, and the Qu’Appelle valley,

Saskatchewan, who is in Victoria on a mission confided to her by Sir Thomas Skinner,

the editor–proprietor of the Canadian Gazette of London, “to investigate and report

upon the conditions of Canadian development and to learn the basis of present

prosperity.”

IS A WOMAN FARMER

Miss Binnie–Clark is well qualified for the mission, having farmed in the

Qu’Appelle valley for eight years past with wonderful success. She was the pioneer

woman farmer in Saskatchewan, but during her experience has learned much, and

although herself pre–eminently a grain grower, she is also an advocate of mixed

farming, not only for women but for men as well.

“Farming is a profitable field for the business woman, though to be successful

she should know every implement and how to use it. And she must be content to have

at least two years’ hard work before she obtains results. She must be prepared for

disappointments, but if she can overcome them, she will win out in the end. I had two

crops frozen out, but I kept on, and now I am rewarded with a comfortable and

prosperous farm and a goodly number of horses. Had I known as much as I do now

when I began, I would have gone in for mixed farming, but I did not, and I am now

giving the benefit of my advice to my sisters who are contemplating coming to Canada

to farm. I am free to confess that I shall tell them that they will have very much better

chances of success in British Columbia and the maritime provinces than on the

prairies, but I am not going to disparage the chances of success on the prairies to

1076 From AGENT HERE FOR WOMEN INVESTORS. (1912, August 15). Victoria British Colonist, p. 18.

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women of grit and courage and the ability to stick to it. Personally, I could not go in

for intensive farming, but all women are not like me, and I intend to present both

sides of the shield.”

52. “Jack” May’s Ready–Made Farm (1911)1077

News comes from Canada that Miss “Jack” May […] is now getting in her first

harvest on her own farm at Sedgewick, near Calgary, in Alberta. Miss May has

adopted male clothing, or at any rate a compromise approaching male dress. A cloth

“jumper” over a blouse, a short cloth skirt reaching to her knees, and long brown

leather leggings, supplemented by a man’s long overcoat, is her usual costume on her

farm.

Before taking up a farm in Western Canada, Miss May, who was a nurse in the

Boer war, always followed a business–like outdoor life. She attended the Swanley

Horticultural College for some time, but her ambition was farming. In 1906 she took

service with a farmer in Kent and there did mowing, reaping, ploughing, and every

kind of farm work. In 1907 Miss May worked a large flower and vegetable garden of

several acres in Norfolk. Here, finding it impossible to work among plants and flowers

in skirts, she adopted trousers and leggings.

Last winter Miss May, convinced that a woman farmer could be successful in

Western Canada, applied to the Canadian Pacific Railway Company for one of their

“ready–made” farms in Alberta, stating that she had done every kind of farm work,

from that of an ordinary farm hand to bailiff or manager. Her application was

successful and she was allotted a farm. Miss May is known in the district around

Calgary as “The woman who never looks back.”

53. A New Neighbor (1911)1078

Miss Jack May, the young English woman farmer, who recently settled near

Sedgewick, is to have a rival in her fascinating occupation in Alberta. Miss Helena

Hill, a young girl from Seattle, has purchased a section of land from the C. P. R. near

Sedgewick and is at present supervising the breaking and sowing of 100 acres to flax.

Miss Hill intends to go into farming on a large scale. Next year she will build

a house and buy stock and implements, and will bring the remainder of the 640 acres

under cultivation. Her friend, Mrs. Hilliard, also of Seattle, will supervise her house

and Miss Hill the “farm.”

1077 From MRS. “JACK” MAY IN ALBERTA. (1911, September 23). Saturday News, p. 8. 1078 From ANOTHER WOMAN FARMER. (1911, June 8). Claresholm Review, p. 7.

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54. “I love the freedom of the life” (1912)1079

“The happiest girl in all the world!” That is the distinction claimed by Miss

Jack May, a slender bit of femininity, who owns and operates a farm in the wilds of

Canada. Not many years ago Miss May, who is the daughter of Admiral May, of the

British navy, was a frilly, frothy society belle, to whom the theatre, balls and card

parties represented all that was worth living for. When the Boer war broke out and,

along with scores of other aristocratic young English women, she went to the front as

nurse, her eyes were opened to the smallness of the butterfly existence she had been

leading. Upon her return home she at once entered the Swanley Agricultural College

at Kent, and at the conclusion of her course amazed her former fashionable friends

by becoming manager of a dairy farm. After a time she became working manager of

another farm in Kent, where she took active charge of all the work, grain growing,

vegetable gardening, and live stock. She went direct from that farm to the Canadian

west, to a ranch of 320 acres near the Canadian Pacific Railway, and now all English

society is interested in watching her career. Not a man is employed on Miss May’s

entire farm. Her only companion and helper is a Canadian girl of 18.

“Go back to society again? Not for worlds,” declares this former London

favorite. “I would rather plow than go to the opera. I would rather plant corn than

attend a pink tea, and I much prefer currying my horses to arraying myself in an

evening gown. What’s a butterfly social life in damp and foggy England compared to

real life in bright sunshine and bracing cold?” Miss May’s success had made her views

on agriculture much sought after, especially among the English immigrants.

Although this little English woman has sacrificed conventional feminine garb

and has given up social life completely, she has lost none of the charm that made her

a leader in British society circles. Her everyday costume consists of stout leather

boots and leather puttees, riding breeches of heavy blue serge, a man’s shirt, and a

short khaki coat. When she desires to really “dress up” for special occasions, she wears

a soft collar and tie, and a peasant smock of navy blue denim, which comes to her

knees and is loosely belted around her waist. She is delightfully picturesque and her

happy carefree laugh is a sure cure for the blues.

“I love the freedom of the life and the bigness of things here on the western

prairies,” she said, recently. “In England one is bound by conventions, as one’s fields

are girt with hedges. Here I can do as I choose. I would not go back to stay under any

consideration.”

1079 From WORLD’S HAPPIEST GIRL. (1912, December 13). Redcliff Review, p. 4.

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55. A Change in Policy (1915)1080

Ready–made farms are sold on 20–year terms, one–tenth of the total price of

land and improvements being paid at the time of application, payment of the balance

being required within twenty years with interest at 6 per cent. per annum. The settler

must be a married man of agricultural experience, must have equipment necessary

to work his farm, and sufficient cash to make his first payment and provide for

himself and family during the first year’s occupation.

An early 20th century farm in British Columbia1081

1080 From Ready–Made Farms in Western Canada. (1915, May 26). Red Deer News, p. 1. 1081 From an unsigned, undated photograph in the anthologist’s collection. Clues from other

photographs in the same lot suggest this was taken near Kootenay in the 1920s. An inscription on the

back of the photograph reads: “View taken from the roof of the pig pen[.] Silo in the background

(containing food for the cattle over winter – (chopped up sun – flowers + greed [?] food (oats)). On the

right my hired man unloading a load of hay in the barn loft and a few young heifers talking a mouthful!

[sic.]”

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IX. The Status of Prairie Women,

1912 – 1916

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The Country Homemakers Francis Marion Beynon (1884 – 1951) was an early Canadian feminist and an editor of The Grain Grower’s Guide from 1912 to 1917. The following articles are drawn from her page, The Country Homemakers, where she discussed issues of importance to prairie women and shared letters from her readers.

Reading Tea Leaves on the Prairies (c. 1910)1082

Guardianship of Children With very few exceptions, men had sole custody of legitimate children. Illegitimate children were the responsibility of the mother. If a legitimate child died without a will, all their property went to the father. If an illegitimate child died without a will, all their property went to the government.

1082 Lang, E. T. (c. 1910). Wolseley, Saskatchewan, 1910? [Photograph]. From the Anthologist’s

personal collection. Pictured on the left and right are members of the Hurlburt family of Wolseley and

Moose Jaw.

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1. The Law in British Columbia (1913)1083

I have had the pleasure lately of listening to two speakers from the progressive

colony of New Zealand and they both expressed the same sentiment – surprise, that

we women of Canada put up with our disabilities as calmly as we do.

Miss Anderson Hughes1084, speaking in the Y.W.C.A.1085 to a meeting of the

Political Equality League1086, cited the case of the woman in Vancouver who had

borne four children, each of which had been given away by the father without the

consent of the poor heart–broken mother. When Miss Hughes was in Vancouver, a

few weeks ago, the youngest child was only a few weeks old and the father even then

had an advertisement in the paper of a child for adoption.

In British Columbia the mother who has all the suffering to bear in bringing

the child into the world, is not recognized as having any legal claim on her offspring.

It belongs absolutely to the father, so much so that while it is still unborn, should the

father die, he can will it to the care of someone other than the mother. In some cases

where the child is in need, she may appeal to the courts and be allowed to take care

of her little one until it is seven years of age, after which it passes out of her care

forever.

Another instance of our bad government, at which Miss Hughes stood aghast,

was this: A man deserted his wife and son when the boy was still quite small. His

wife bravely took in boarders and brought up her son well. When he reached manhood

he came West and succeeded in acquiring some little property. Then he fell sick and

being very devoted to her sent for his mother. He was ill for several months, but at

great financial loss the mother, who did not count the cost where her boy was

concerned, stayed and nursed him. Finally, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, he died

and left no will.

The father, who for all these years had been living the lowest kind of life, now

stepped in and claimed the property and as he was the only parent the boy had legally

– though he was the only one he did not have morally – the law handed over every

penny of it to him. The poor mother’s expenses to and from the East had to be paid

out of her own slender purse. This actually happened in the Province of Manitoba,

and yet there are those who don’t see why the women of this country should ask for

the franchise.

Now, as far as responsibility for the care of it is concerned, an illegitimate child

has only one parent – the poor girl who is responsible for its existence. The father, if

1083 From Beynon, F. M. (1913, April 9). AS THE NEW ZEALANDER SEES US. The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 9. Written by Francis Marion Beynon (1884 – 1951). 1084 Probably Anderson Hughes–Drew, a missionary for the Women’s Christian Temperance Union

(WCTU). 1085 The Young Women’s Christian Association. 1086 Manitoba’s Political Equality League, which lasted from 1912 to 1916, successfully lobbied for

women’s suffrage (the right of women to vote). Manitoban women would be able to vote and run for

provincial office from January 1916 on – the first women in Canada to be able to do so. Suffrage at the

federal level would have to wait until 1918, with admission to the House of Commons and Senate being

won in 1919 and 1929, respectively.

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he can be proven and found, can be compelled to contribute to the care of the mother

at confinement and help support the child until it is fifteen years of age1087, but the

mother – because there is only dishonor associated with it, is the child’s only legal

guardian. But here is the infamous part of it. If this illegitimate child dies without a

will, his property goes, to whom? To the poor unfortunate who has to bear a life–long

shame for owning her parenthood? Dear me, no – it goes to the state.

Verily this looks to me like a too literal application of the biblical command,

“To him that hath shall be given and from him that hath not shall be taken away

even that which he hath.”1088

2. The Law in Manitoba (1913)1089

Laws have been made by men and for men and leave an inviting door wide

open for bad men to abuse them. They are based on the ignoble assumption that the

wife is the husband’s property and that the children are his absolutely.

I told you last week about British Columbia law which allowed a man to give

away the children without the consent of the wife. We have something very like it in

Manitoba, for if your own husband were so inclined he could give that little darling

of yours away in spite of your tears and protests.

You might, if you knew the law – which you very likely would not do – go to

the courts and ask them to restore your child but, of course, your case would be tried

before a man who has been steeped in the idea that a man is the head of the family

and that the children are not theirs but his. It is probable that he would be a decent

man with a sense of fair play and would restore the child at once to its mother’s arms,

but he might be like a certain magistrate who held court not a thousand miles from

here, and when a woman had her husband brought up before him for beating her, he

told her that he had no doubt she was a nagger and deserved all she got.

At any rate, if a woman has been so unfortunate as to have married a man too

lazy to support his own family and who prefers to have them adopted by strangers

she has to go to court and prove her fitness to have control of her own children.

Again, suppose that you come out here a bride and settle on a homestead with

John. You have almost nothing at the outset but by working and saving you acquire

three–quarters of a section1090 of land, a good many head of stock, splendid barns, and

1087 An example from Saskatchewan in 1914: “Nearly two years ago Carfortain was adjudged to be the

father of an illegitimate child born to Marie Blondin, of St. Brieux, and it was ordered by the court to

pay a certain sum each month towards the support of the offspring. It appears the young man neglected

to keep up the payments and Marie lodged a complaint. When Carfortain was summoned to show

cause for not helping to support the child, he ignored the command of the court, and the result was

[…] three months imprisonment at hard labor”. THREE MONTHS FOR DISOBEYING COURT

MANDATE. (1914, April 1). The Melfort Moon, p. 1. 1088 A Biblical quotation (Mark 4:25). 1089 From Beynon, F. M. (1913, April 16). OUR MANITOBA LAWS. The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 9. Written by Francis Marion Beynon (1884 – 1951). 1090 The Dominion Lands Act of 1872 divided prairie land into townships. Each township had 36 square

miles, with the land being divided in a checkerboard pattern. Each section of the checkerboard was

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very likely, a poor and inconvenient house. Let us suppose that your new neighbor on

the next farm has a daughter with more beauty than principle, with whom your

husband becomes infatuated. He can sell every acre of land, every head of stock, and

every stick of furniture over your head and leave the country with your neighbor’s

daughter and you can’t do a thing. If he stayed in this province you could compel him

to help contribute to your support but if he got over the boundary line he could go scot

free.

Again, a man who is utterly depraved has brought an immoral woman into the

home to live there, and when the wife protested told her that she could quit at any

time she liked, but the property and the children were his – and so they are as our

law stands today. I know, of course, that a woman can leave her husband and if she

can prove cruelty before the court it may decide to give her the custody of her children

and to compel the husband to contribute to their support. This sounds better than it

really is. It means a lengthy process of law and in the meantime the woman has to

live and perhaps has to leave her children in the custody of a brutal father. Also it

gives him sufficient time to get away.

Now, how many women among you have the means to keep you for any length

of time if you left your husbands and how many have any training by which you could

earn a living except by going into domestic service? So you see how these other women

are placed.

If very many men had been as bad as these laws permit them to be the women

in this country would long ago have risen up in rebellion. A few have been and as

their wives are generally poor women who were accustomed to hard knocks their case

has not been heard but don’t you think that it is time that you and I put in a plea for

these poor sisters of ours?

Homesteads and Land Men were given free prairie land in the form of homesteads. Women only qualified for the same if they were widows with dependent children. The usual reason given was that women were incapable of running a farm on their own and had to be protected. The existence of successful women farmers proved this assumption wrong, but their experiences were downplayed or dismissed – sometimes formally, as in the case of a woman farmer who had her occupation listed as ‘none’ in a 1916 census.

one square mile. All odd–numbered sections except for 11 and 29, the designated school lands, were

reserved for railway land grants. All even–numbered sections except for 8 and 26, which belonged

mostly to the Hudson’s Bay Company, were reserved for homesteads. Each homestead section was in

turn divided into quarter–sections of 160 acres. Adult (21 and over) males could apply for a free

quarter–section as a homestead, conditional on paying a nominal $10 fee, agreeing to cultivate at least

40 acres, and building a ‘permanent dwelling’ within three years. Additional land could be claimed via

‘pre–emption’, which was a similar process but involved a heavier cash payment. As the following

articles make clear, women were only allowed to claim homesteads in exceptional circumstances.

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3. “A Defective Law” (1916)1091 Married women only had (limited) rights to the land they were currently living on.

A woman in Saskatchewan writes that the dower law1092 in that province is

defective, for woman’s right to the homestead is gone if she moves away from it even

temporarily, and if she is not actually residing on it at the time of sale. In her case

she was living on another place, that her husband bought without any capital to pay

for it, but because she was living on that place he was able to sell the homestead

without her consent. She says she put up a big fight to keep the home place for her

children, but was unable to do so.

Just last week a lawyer from Saskatchewan said that the dower law in that

province, which provides that the homestead cannot be sold without the consent of

the wife, is protecting many women. It, of course, makes a lot of trouble, but as this

man said, everything that interferes with the will of the people makes trouble, but

the trouble is necessary if the women are to have a square deal. The fact of the

limitations of the law were not mentioned. The women of the Grain Growers’

organization would doubtless be glad to know how this law is working out for others.

If those who have found it defective give their experience, as the correspondent today

has, it will be a help to those who have in charge the matter of “laws for women” to

be brought up at the next session of the legislature.

4. A Clarification of the Defective Law (1916)1093

Dear Miss Beynon :– I was reading in this week’s Guide a piece about “A

defective law.” Is the dower law in force in Saskatchewan and what does it consist of?

If I noticed it before, I have forgotten about it. It would oblige me very much if you

could give me an outline of it in your headings. According to this piece, as long as the

wife stays on the homestead the husband cannot sell it without her consent. Is that

correct?

A SUBSCRIBER.

Subscriber :– The act in Saskatchewan provides that no man can sell the

homestead without the consent of his wife. The act defines the “homestead” as the

place on which the family are living.

In the case mentioned, the man had bought a place, on which he had paid very

little, and moved his family onto it. Then he sold the other place and the law allowed

him to do it without his wife’s consent because she was not living on it. The wife has

a claim only on the place where she is living.

1091 From Beynon, F.M. (1916, April 9). A DEFECTIVE LAW. The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 9. Written by Francis Marion Beynon (1884 – 1951). 1092 Dower law is law that protects a wife’s interests in the event of her husband’s death. 1093 From Benyon, F. M. & A SUBSCRIBER. (1916, August 30). SASKATCHEWAN DOWER LAW.

The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 9. Reply written by Francis Marion Beynon (1884 – 1951).

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5. Women and Homesteads (1916)1094

Dear Miss Beynon :– Before attending the recent convention of the United

Farm Women of Alberta1095 held in Calgary, I was requested to try to bring to the

attention of the convention the subject of homesteads for women, on an equal footing

with men. Time was short, many questions and problems had to be considered, and

this matter was crowded out, but I feel it is only fair to the many women interested

to bring it to the notice of the public, thru the medium of your columns. One of the

speakers at the convention reminded us of the fact that the Dominion Government

had sunk millions of the country’s money dusting around the dirty corners of Europe,

trying to scratch together a population for our Western provinces, and they have

succeeded. Thousands of Turks, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Austrians, etc., have been

dumped on our prairies, knowing nothing of our language, laws and institutions, and

caring as little1096. The best of our farming lands are eagerly offered to them, and

more money is poured out in the attempt to educate and Canadianize them; and now

that the war is on, the public treasury is again called into requisition to keep them

under guard, so that they may not blow up our railway bridges, elevators, etc. But a

Canadian or British–born woman, no matter how highly educated and capable she

may be, nor how loyal and patriotic she is, unless she is a widow with one or more

minor children, cannot acquire one foot of Canadian land without paying down the

cash for it. Many of the arguments used so effectively in the cause of woman suffrage

could be used as truthfully in this matter and need not be repeated.

Women, as well as men, are taxed for the support of the government, and if the

government has any natural resources to put at the disposal of its citizens, why

should at least the half of those citizens be discriminated against, especially when

property rights under or above the soil, such as minerals, or timber, may be acquired

by women as well as men? By permitting a widow with minor children to homestead,

and also by the sale of South African scrip1097 to both married and single women, the

ability of women is admitted.

1094 From Thompson, J.E. (1916, February 23). WOMEN AND HOMESTEADS. The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 10. Written by Jean E. Thompson Stevenson (1862 – 1939). 1095 The long–lived UFWA was active from 1915 to 1970, when it merged with the Alberta Federation

of Agriculture. The organization was a lobbyist and advocate on a wealth of subjects ranging from

reproductive rights to the marketing of farm goods. 1096 “Turks, Bulgarians, Hungarians, [and] Austrians” were considered minorities, and not part of the

dominant British and Canadian ethnic group. 1097 One way for women to side–step the homestead laws was through the purchase of ‘scrip’ issued at

various times by the Canadian government. These scrips were transferrable (and therefore

marketable) vouchers that were redeemable for the same land offered to homesteaders, often without

many of the conditions attached to homesteading proper. Scrip was used to reward veterans of the

Boer war, which was fought in South Africa from 1899 to 1902. It is presumably to this ‘South African

scrip’ that the article refers.

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Why should a spinster or a widow without children not be allowed a home on

the prairie, and why should a married woman not have a little property in her own

name, if they are willing to work and struggle for it?

One shrewd woman, the mother of a returned soldier, suggests that if the

mother, wife or sweetheart were allowed to take up land while the soldier was gone

it would, in part, solve the problem of providing for the disabled soldiers at the end of

the war1098.

I have heard politicians discussing this matter say, “Women out in the West

are too precious to be allowed to kill themselves roughing it on a homestead; women

are made to be protected and cherished.” Now I think the days are past when such

platitudes will cut any ice. What of the thousands of capable women who have no one

to protect and cherish them, but have to depend entirely upon their own resources for

a living? Let me say, that the married woman who goes forth on the prairie to

homestead with her husband has to rough it and endure the same privations as he

and often to work even longer hours. This country needs homes, and it needs loyal,

patriotic citizens. Why then should its daughters not be allowed to take up homes, on

an equal footing with men?

JEAN STEVENSON,

Craigmyle, Alta.

6. “There are harder things than fighting” (1916)1099

Dear Miss Beynon :– There seems to be a great deal of farm help required.

Now, as there is such a scarcity, why should not women take it up? I can assure you

that the outdoor work is not so hard as indoor washing and bread making, besides

being healthier, except the handling of grain. I have helped build sod houses and

barns, plow, disc1100, harrow1101, cut grain with binder, stook1102 and hay, and claim

there is no hard work in it, the stooking being the worst. And oh, it is good to come in

to a dinner all ready cooked to eat, enjoy, and out again. The horses soon learn to love

you and you them. Take the new settlers coming, especially from England and

Scotland. How they work indoors and out, but a mother with children cannot burn

the candle at both ends, and for her children’s sake should not. The single and

childless woman can do as the women in England and France today. There are harder

things than fighting – suspense is one – and so perhaps while we are waiting let us

do our bit by farming. I should like to see this discussed.

TOPSY.

1098 This letter was written during World War I. 1099 From TOPSY. (1916, July 12). WOMEN FOR FARM WORK. The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 10. 1100 Possibly a reference to the disc seed drill. This drill allowed seeds to be planted individually in

neat rows as opposed to the more chaotic pattern obtained by ‘broadcasting’ seeds by hand. 1101 Harrowing the ground is very much like brushing tangled hair, and is meant to break down and

remove clumps of soil, roots and other imperfections. 1102 A stook is a sheaf of grain bound with twine near the top so that it may stand on its own in a rough

pyramidal shape.

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Stooks along the railroad tracks near Kerrobert, Saskatchewan (1932)1103

7. “A Colony of Women Farmers” (1916)1104

Dear Miss Beynon :– Re Topsy’s views on farm help. Like her, I have worked

on a farm, and I’d rather have the outdoor work than be shut up in a heated shack

from morning till night making meals out of nothing and no thanks. I can handle an

outfit from a plow to a binder, and stook or make hay, to running the mower, to

stacking. I have had experience with rearing young stock and love the work, and have

had good luck in that line, too. I am going onto a farm again as soon as suited and

can find one suitable for mixed farming. I think you’ll find there are quite a number

of women capable of doing most kinds of work there is to do in these western farms

and do it right and also keep their womanhood. Still be able to put up a dainty meal

or make a dress, or a shirt for the man, and the one hundred and other things that a

woman is supposed to do. Like Topsy, I’d like to hear from other women, too. Why not

form a colony of women farmers and give those that care to be housekeepers the

chance to keep house.

TRIXEY.

1103 This is a field of wheat Stooks north West of Kerrobert [Photograph]. (1932). From the anthologist’s

personal collection. 1104 From TRIXEY. (1916, August 16). A COLONY OF FARM WOMEN. The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 10.

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8. A Woman Farmer with ‘No Occupation’ (1916)1105

Dear Miss Beynon :– Since women farmers seem to be coming to the fore,

according to Topsy and Trixey, perhaps you would be interested to hear of another

one’s efforts to “keep the home fire burning” until her own particular boy comes home.

My husband, when he enlisted last spring, left me the half–section farm to do as I

would with, making no restrictions whatever. As his battalion went overseas almost

at once, I have been doing things on my own since early April. I might have hired

help, rather a luxury in this season of idle, rainy weather, but I don’t care to

encourage slackers. I hired a neighbor to clean seed grain and to clear off some stone.

Everything else I have done and shall continue to do. This is not only handling the

four–horse outfit on drill, harrow, plow and so on, but means caring for these same

four horses entirely, as well as a bunch of young ones in pasture, cows to milk and

cream to ship. I have forty acres summer–fallow, ten of which I hired plowed. Will

start the binder before you get this in fifty–four acres of good crop that will yield as

high as the average of the district. I have men for stooking, as any heavy work like

that I’ll let someone else enjoy. I do not mean this for bragging, only we are not

supposed to deserve homesteads. “They are not able to work them,” we are told. “Have

not the strength or ability.” Well, I won’t have to call on some experienced neighbor

when my twine breaks, as I’ve known some farmers (?) to do. The census taker took

down his report as my team stood at the end of the land. Yet I went down as having

no occupation and my husband, who is at the other side of the world, was described

as “owner and manager” of our farm.

As to the hard work, I do not overwork, am old enough to know better, and let

me tell you, a day at the wash tub is much more exhausting than a day on the drill

or binder. As for understanding machinery, a sewing machine is just as complicated

as a binder. But let me assure you this farming alone isn’t to be compared with

keeping house and home for one’s own farmer.

HERBERTA1106.

9. First the Vote, Next the Land (1916)1107

Dear Miss Beynon :– Now that we women have the franchise1108 one cannot

help wondering what would be the best use to make of it. The woman’s vote should

be used to the advancement and for the benefit of woman in general, and, may I be

permitted to say, the prairie woman in particular.

1105 From HERBERTA. (1916, September 6). SUCCESSFUL WOMAN FARMER. The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 9. 1106 This is almost certainly a pseudonym, as opposed to the author’s first name. There is no Herberta

listed in the 1916 Census of the Prairie Provinces. 1107 From Shepherd, F. E. (1916, April 12). HOMESTEADS FOR WOMEN. The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 10. Written by Fannie Elizabeth Shepherd (1864 – 1937). 1108 Manitoba’s women won the right to vote in January of 1916.

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This Canada of ours would never have made the enormous strides it has if it

had not been for the women who came with their men–folk and cheerfully shared the

privations and hardships unavoidable during pioneer life. Those grey–haired, hard–

featured, insignificant looking women. It is to them, quite as much as to their

husbands and sons, that Canada owes a debt she can never fully repay. Forty miles

from town was common enough in those days, often nothing but a yoke of oxen to get

around with.

Generally, after the little seeding was done, the husband and older boys would

hire out, leaving the mother and younger children alone all summer, the nearest

neighbor several miles away, and very little to live on, except the produce of a cow or

two (if they were fortunate enough to own them), the eggs from a few hungry fowls,

and what vegetables they could raise on the newly broken, wind–swept prairie. Small

wonder so many pioneer mothers fill our lunatic asylums.

And now we are on the eve of better things, our land almost all in crop, the

mortgage lifted, machinery paid for, the nearest town only six or eight miles away,

even a horse to be spared if we want to visit a neighbor, what do we women actually

own in return for our years of labor? Nothing, I believe, except the clothes we stand

upright in. Now, I ask you, is that fair?

We worked so willingly, so cheerfully, training the little ones as well as we

could; school was almost an impossibility in many cases, as was also the doctor when

the new little stranger arrived. All we had in those days was the friendly whisper

over the tea–cups, “Yes, you come and help me in January and I’ll be sure to come to

your place and help you in March,” and the loyally kept promise.

Then there was the ever present struggle to keep the store bill straight, with

the pitifully few pounds of butter, and thru it all the loving determination that John,

dear old John, must have his tobacco anyway, even while we tried to make ourselves

believe we liked our coffee without sugar.

And now, you men, the struggle is over, we have stood shoulder to shoulder

with you and helped you in every possible way and we want you to give us something

for our very own, and what we want is one hundred and sixty acres of government

land, just like yours was before we helped you to get it into the high state of

cultivation it is now.

Wow, hear the howl go up. “What? Want more land? Isn’t one hundred and

sixty or three hundred and forty (or whatever acreage the farm consists of) enough

for you? Isn’t–“

No, my friend, what we want is the pleasure of owning one hundred and sixty

acres of land right now, instead of a tiny plot six by three1109 which you will have to

provide us with presently whether you will or no. No, we would not have to suffer one

tithe1110 of the hardships we had to endure while proving up your land, and we would

have the joy of possession to give us a new interest in life and the pleasure of knowing

we were helping develop the country that has already done so much for us.

1109 The dimensions of a grave. 1110 Possibly a typo for ‘tenth’.

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What do you say? No good homesteads left? Well, sometimes you men make

me tired. When neighbor’s sons grow up and want homesteads they just nose around

and find one, or cancel, or something like that. You never hear that cry when a man

wants a homestead, and we can read too and happen to know just how little land

there is, comparatively speaking, under cultivation in Saskatchewan.

And now, women Grain Growers, it is up to you. You know the old saying, “If

you want a thing done, do it yourself.” And now that we have the franchise, let this

be one of the first things we use our vote for. Let us choose the best woman we have

amongst us for our leader, one who understands the subject well and will carry the

matter thru. Our hands were tied before. We could do nothing. They are free now.

Only, let it be done quickly.

F. E. SHEPHERD.

Stalwart, Sask.

Financial Dependence Married prairie women worked long hours on the farm and in the home, but much of this work was informal and unpaid. Because their husbands often earned the bulk of the family’s money income, it was widely assumed that men would control household spending.

10. The Poor Wives of the Well–to–Do (1912)1111

A wealthy man once said to my brother, “My wife is always begging me to give

her an allowance but I won’t do it as I don’t want her to be tied down to a limited

amount. She is welcome to all the money she cares to spend.” My brother was duly

impressed and came, with great elation, to tell me about his friend’s admirable

generosity. I am afraid I threw rather a wet blanket on his ardor. “In order to make

a good fellow of himself,” I said, “he is subjecting his wife to the life–long humiliation

of having to ask for every cent of money she spends.” You may depend on it that she

wouldn’t keep asking for an allowance if she didn’t want it. This man is a very fair

type of a very unpleasant class of really generous men, who, for the gratification of

their own vanity, will subject their wives to petty humiliations.

I don’t like the idea that the man gives his wife money at all. I protest that the

wife who rises at four–thirty in the morning, in the summer, and at six in the winter,

and works from nine to twelve hours a day has produced a certain amount of wealth,

otherwise she must be in the wrong place in the industrial world. The manager of a

business does not feel that he is performing an act of charity when he pays his

employees at the end of the week. The salary is theirs by right and he would be

dishonest if he withheld it.

1111 From Beynon, F. M. (1912, October 9). THE POOR WIVES OF THE WELL–TO–DO. The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 9. Written by Francis Marion Beynon (1884 – 1951).

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Now to my notion, the position of the wife on the farm shouldn’t even be that

of an employee. She should be a partner. I fancy I hear many of the farmers agreeing

to this eagerly. They say, “She has a share in all this land, and these buildings and

that stock and if she was not consulted about buying them it was because women

don’t understand about these things” which, of course is all rubbish. Women do know

that they have to slave early and late to pay for this land, that they have to go without

becoming clothes, and are denied all the comforts and conveniences that would help

to make the slavery of the average farmer’s wife more endurable. The farmer himself,

who has every modern convenience for doing the outside work does not realize that

his wife is paying for his land and his barns and his stock with good, red blood. I have

seen it hundreds of times. The woman slaves early and late for fifteen or twenty years

while John tacks on another quarter section on the east and an extra half on the west

and builds a new barn on the home place and at last, just as they are about to move

into the new house about which she has been dreaming all these years, she dies. The

doctor may assign her death to one of a hundred causes but I should call it “Landitis,”

a complaint peculiar to western farmers’ wives.

So when one of our readers asked me to write an article on a dress allowance

for farmers’ wives I said a cheerful, amen. There isn’t any reason why farmers’ wives

shouldn’t have pretty clothes, and thousands of them do but there are quite a number,

who, as this writer says, would rather go shabby than ask for money and they haven’t

a cent they can call their own.

Our friend complains that farmers’ wives are the most poorly dressed of any

class of women and while I am not prepared to say that I agree with her, still, there

is no question that the wives of some very prosperous farmers are not nearly so well

dressed as women in town whose husbands are correspondingly well off.

But I want to say right here that the trouble does not all rest with the lack of

money. More than good clothes are needed to make a well dressed woman. Very many

farmers’ wives are too busy, or think they are, to dress their hair becomingly and to

take care of their complexions.

I suppose most of our readers would hoot at the idea of tying a thick chiffon1112

veil over their faces whenever they go out to work in the yard and yet it is the only

really effective means I know of to keep the face from tanning.

When they are going to town they have to hustle around and get the eggs and

butter ready to take, and dress the children and by that time the husband is waiting

impatiently, so they twist the hair up into a grim little knot on the top of the head

and perch above it a hat that was designed to be worn with a fluffy pompadour.

Naturally the result is ridiculous.

I can’t suggest a remedy unless the farmer’s wife is willing to leave the beds

unmade or the dishes unwashed while she steals a little time to make herself look

pretty, to fluff her hair and polish her shoes, to see that her waist and skirt come to

terms all around and to hunt up a pair of gloves that match her suit. All these things

require time but I fancy many women would find themselves well repaid in the added

1112 A gauze–like see–through fabric.

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pleasure their husbands would take in their appearance if they would make a point

of doing it.

Let me remind you again that, being born of the same flesh as ourselves, men

are no more likely to be stingy and selfish than women, but some of them are

thoughtless. So it behooves women, instead of sitting down and feeling sorry for

themselves to explain to their husbands just how it feels to have to ask for every bit

of money they spend and I am satisfied that the majority of men, when they come to

realize the indignity of such a wifehood will hasten to remedy it.

For the next two or three weeks I will throw this page open for a discussion of

this question and invite our readers one and all to express their opinion freely.

FRANCIS MARION BEYNON.

11. Equal Rights in the Bank Account (1912)1113

Dear Miss Beynon :– As you have thrown open the page of the Country

Homemakers for a discussion of the “poor wives of the well–to–do” I am going to give

testimony, so to speak. My experience of the money question is not unpleasant, and

it is managed thusly. Our account at the bank is in the name of “John Smith and Mrs.

Mary Smith,” and I can draw cheques – and do so – with just as much freedom as my

husband, and he thinks I have a perfect right to do so too. Of course, I keep watch on

the balance, and I can make a five dollar cheque do almost twice the work that he

does, but the beauty of this is that I do not have to ask for it, and it seems to me that

this plan is the only just fulfilment of the vow “with all my worldly goods I thee

endow.” It is a better plan than an allowance, which, of course, is far ahead of ask,

ask, ask. Some women act as if scared of writing out a cheque, but that is a fear that

would most quickly disappear. If I want to spend a dollar, or fifty cents, or a quarter

remembering some friend’s birthday, there is no questioning. Our bank balance has

never yet run into four figures, it is frequently down to two figures, and whiles [sic.]

to one, but it is just as much mine as anyone else’s.

Now, another point. I do not think smoking is of benefit to anyone, and ninety–

five per cent. of the Western women will agree with me that it is injurious, but the

whole of us know that it is rank foolishness to tell any man that it is injurious. This

is a matter of education, and every man is “from Missouri”1114 on the question –

everyone that does smoke – and it should be conclusively shown, and demonstrated,

and taught in our schools that tobacco in any form, stunts physical growth, impairs

mental powers, and has a slovenly effect morally, but do you ever think of just what

it costs? Take the average man’s smokes and they cost ten cents a day the year round

1113 From AN IRISHWOMAN. (1912, October 30). HAS EQUAL RIGHTS IN BANK ACCOUNT. The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 10. 1114 An idiom meaning ‘I need proof’, as in ‘Show me, I’m from Missouri’. It originated in 1899 with a

quote by then–congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver (1854 – 1932): “I come from a state that raises

corn and cotton, cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me.

I'm from Missouri, and you have got to show me.”

641

– $36.50. What woman couldn’t joyfully spend $36.50 on a good new dress, a pretty

lace collar and cuff set, really good shoes once a year at least, a silk underskirt, and

innumerable other trifling things that would add 100 per cent. to her appearance and

attractiveness. She could spend half of it and feel happy. But all she gets is a stale

smell in her window curtains, and the mournful satisfaction – let us hope she never

takes thought of it – that John has “smoked” up all these things, or perhaps a new

washing machine, or a clothes wringer, or a carpet sweeper, or new oilcloth in the

kitchen and pantry! Thoughts like this make me “rise all up.” Have you ever known

women who actually hunger for a string of French pearl beads, costing fifty cents, and

they feel they can’t afford them, or at least can’t bring themselves to ask for the money

for such a satisfying trifle, and John brings home two sacks of tobacco in his overcoat

every week! Don’t think I am hard on the Johns, but do you see the point I am trying

to make that some husbands unknowingly are more selfish with the one they really

like best of all in the world.

I might as well give you some “kicks for women” not “kicks against women.” I

wonder if the “wives of the well–to–do” ever realize how many of them do not even

have a kitchen sink. I have gone quite a bit to and for in the West, among poor folk

and poorer, and not one in one hundred has a kitchen sink, costing not five dollars in

the highest priced hardware store in the West! Many of these farms are equipped

with most of the latest inventions in labor–saving machinery for outdoor farm labor,

but in the kitchen the wife or daughter is struggling away with old–fashioned

utensils. Two days’ work will dig and prepare a cesspool and two more will dig a

connecting trench and lay sufficient piping and connections for any farm kitchen’s

requirements; labor and all costing not more than $25.00, and the farmer’s wife would

have a convenience that would last for years, and add at least a year to her time on

earth.

A neighbor of mine this summer bought a two–burner flame oil stove and oven

costing $9.00. On this she cooked all the bread, meats, and other cooking for a family

of four men. The cost of fuel – coal oil – was actually less than coal. Her kitchen was

cooler, there was no dust or dirt. She could at practically a moment’s notice have a

flame that had almost as much heat as natural gas. The oven baked perfectly eight

loaves, or four pies, at one time. All this for $9.00! She also heated large boilerfuls of

water on wash days. If I had my way there would be such a demand for this $9.00 oil

stove in the West that the factory would run overtime keeping up the supply.

Now, you must realize that I would not give you all this stuff if I didn’t feel you

a “familiar spirit,” so to speak. The Guide is a guide indeed in many ways, and here

is more power to its elbow, and may an increasing number of Western farmers find

enlightenment in its pages.

AN IRISHWOMAN.

642

12. Queens of the Household? (1913)1115

Perhaps when you read this editorial some of you will say, “There’s a woman

so contrary she can’t even agree with herself.” You see I did not hold with our friend

from Russia who said that the hearts of all wives were cold to their husbands, and I

do not quite agree with Mr. Robson’s statement that among the Anglo–Saxon people

the woman is queen in her own home1116.

It is true that her husband does hold the carriage door open for her and he does

carry her suit case to the street car, but this is the way he makes laws for her.

He makes himself the only guardian of the children, giving her no more legal

authority over them than the next door neighbor. Suppose he should decide that the

child should be taken out of school at fourteen years of age and put to work in a

factory, even though he was financially well able to pay for the child’s education. The

child might cry his eyes out and the mother might cry her eyes out, but it would be of

no avail. After having suffered all that a mother must suffer to bring a little one into

the world, she is no better than an unpaid nurse in the eyes of our law.

Now suppose that this child dies without a will, every penny of his property

goes to the father (naturally, you see, because the mother has no legal claim on the

child whatever). It still goes to the father even if he has deserted mother and child

and left her to raise him as best she can by her own hard labor.

Now here is the most cruel part of the law. Suppose a man deceives a young

girl and persuades her that marriage is of the spirit, regardless of form. The

illegitimate child thus brought into the world belongs wholly to the girl. Where there

is dishonor and shame associated with a child, men have not chosen to assume the

guardianship, so they have handed it over to women.

You might think, then, that when this illegitimate child died without a will,

his property would go to the woman who had had the guardianship of him thrust

upon her and who, in consequence, had borne shame and remorse and social

ostracism. But no. His property goes to the state. Someway they always manage to

get women going and coming.

It was only the other day that a law was passed in one of the Southern States

giving a married woman the control of her own wages and the right to make business

contracts independent of her husband some of the states have not even reached this

degree of freedom yet.

In England, if a husband dies without a will, only one–third of his property

goes to his widow, but if a wife dies without a will, all her property goes to the

husband.

The husband may, by will, disinherit both wife and children, but the law, which

up to this time has refused to admit that the wife had any claim on the children, now

suddenly rises up and demands that she support them.

1115 From Beynon, F. M. (1913, September 3). ARE MANITOBA WOMEN QUEENS? The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 9. Written by Francis Marion Beynon (1884 – 1951). 1116 A married woman was called ‘The Queen of the Household’ as early as 1899, when Mrs. M. W.

Ellsworth published a popular housekeeping guide with that title.

643

Worst of all there still exists on the statue books of England what is called the

law of coverture, which suspends the civil and legal existence of the woman during

marriage and puts her under the guardianship of her husband. He is entitled to

prevent her from indiscriminate intercourse with the world and to punish her when

she has displeased him.

In view of all these facts, being a fairly able–bodied woman, I would prefer to

open the carriage door for myself and be given a square deal in the laws of my country

and the right to vote for such changes in those laws as I happen to see fit.

As conditions are today, women are not queens in their own homes. They are

dependent upon the good–will and generosity of men and it is a degrading position

for anyone to hold.

The woman who keeps a man’s home and raises her children; I beg your

pardon, his children, well, does add to the wealth of the nation, but she is not legally

or sentimentally recognized as an earner.

Perhaps someone will protest that most of these laws do not touch the average

woman. Granted, but what about her financial position in the home? A man and

woman stopped before the suffrage tent the other day. The man was opposed and the

wife in favor of the movement. I showed them some brooches which cost twenty–five

cents. The woman looked at her husband and seeing there refusal murmured that

she wouldn’t have one. Then I brought out some at five cents and he said grandly,

“You can have one of those,” and when she hesitated, to make sure that he really

meant it, he continued, “Go on, take one,” and handed me the nickel with a most

lordly air. Said a successful business man to me the other day, “When my wife wants

anything and I think she should have it, I get it for her.” Again, take the words of a certain professional man. “When we build again I

am going to have the house laid out this way,” illustrating with a few strokes of the

pencil. “My wife wants it this way, but that would be a silly plan.” Another

professional man told me of a dispute between himself and his wife, of whom he is

really fond, about the purchase of some furniture. It resulted in their buying what he

wanted, though she had to live with it all day and every day and he spent most of his

life in the office. “You see,” he explained guilelessly, “it is my money and I have a

right to say how it will be spent.”

If you think that I have chosen a few exceptional cases to illustrate the

financial dependence of women, watch the faces of an audience of women some day

when a suggestion is made that they undertake some enterprise that will involve a

considerable expenditure of money. Have you ever seen the shadow of uneasiness and

discomfort that passes over the room? I have, scores of times, and yet I never get used

to it and have always the same deep sense of hurt and indignation.

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13. A Tight–Wad’s Wife (1912)1117

Dear Miss Beynon :–

Why should a wife have to ask for money? Has she not as good a right to it as

her husband? When a woman marries a man who has always been very generous

before marriage and buys her all kinds of bon bons and presents, she little dreams of

what is in store for her. He often soon forgets to bring her a treat when he goes to town, he never forgets to treat the boys or himself. He forgets the little woman who

is raising his children, working not only ten hours a day, but oftener eighteen hours

out of twenty–four to try and keep his home neat and clean and the children clothed

and fed, working so hard and hungering for a word or look that will show he

appreciates all her efforts to do all the work without hired help, and trying to do it all

without any conveniences at all. She makes butter to sell and he takes it to town

when he goes (for she can’t take time for that); he’ll sell the butter and eggs, treat the

fellows he meets, get his tobacco, and if money is scarce pays for his keep in town. If

there is any left he puts it in his pocket, and if she asks him for the price of her butter

he only laughs at her and asks her what she wants money for, she never goes

anywhere to spend it? He forgets maybe she has not fit clothes to go anywhere, and

has pride enough to stay at home if she can’t go out looking as well dressed as the

majority of women. When she asks for money to get some little wants for herself he’ll

grumble about spending so much money; it takes so much to keep the things running,

when at the same time she has not had a new hat in eight years or a new coat. Now,

don’t laugh, reader, for I just know cases as bad as this. Men that spend more money

in tobacco in the year than it takes to clothe their wives, and they never get too hard up to do without that, but they can’t spare their wives one dollar to spend as they

like.

I myself have driven seventeen miles to town, shopped all day and maybe with

a baby nursing and done without my dinner to have the extra quarter to buy some

thing I needed for the children, when I knew my husband to go down town and spend

a couple of dollars with the boys, but never say to me, come and have some dinner,

nor would he give me the money to pay for it, but what I’d buy in the store I could

buy and sit and wait till he’d come around with the pocketbook to pay for it. My! but

a woman would not need to have much pride when tied to a man like that. Still he is

a good fellow; thinks I’m safe to be let buy it and him pay for it. As, of course, he

makes all the money because he has the handling of it, he thinks it is all his hard

earning. When a woman raises a family of children, does all the sewing, knitting,

washing, ironing, baking, churning, scrubbing, sweeping, making beds, cleaning

dishes, dusting, cleaning stoves, making quilts, putting up fruits and pickles, put in

a garden, raise chickens, weed a garden, and take care of the vegetables in the fall,

pack butter in the winter and have a couple of hundred dollars’ worth to sell, don’t

you think she is earning her board and a couple of print dresses in a year? He has got

so used to her not asking for anything for herself that he thinks she does not want

1117 From A NORTHWEST WOMAN. (1912, November 13). A TIGHT–WAD’S WIFE. The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 10.

645

anything, when at the same time she loves nice clothes and would take care of them

if she had them. Oh! it makes my heart ache when I think of so many sacrifices a

woman makes and then is told he is the only one who is making a dollar when he has

sons working on the farm, so that he has not had to hire a man for years, and when

the boys ask for a few dollars he cusses and asks what they want with the money. At

the same time he’ll go to town and stay for a couple of days with his team in the livery

barn and paying for his board in the hotel, but he thinks if his sons go to town they

should go without any expense.

Now, I have asked for money when I did not get it. Maybe, if I asked a couple

of times he’d pull out a little change and give it so grudgingly that my pride rose in

my throat so that I could not speak, and I would rather do without it than ask it of

him. I feel I have a perfect right to a share; I at least might have a hired girl’s wages,

for I know I work too hard to save every penny I can, and we are not poor. We own

six quarters1118 of land, and have good crops and plenty of stock and machinery, good

buggies and covered cutters, but they are not for me to use, as I have too much work

to do to take time to visit. If I want to go anywhere or for a drive, I’m told they are

tired driving, they would rather lie on the couch and smoke and sleep, while I do my

work. Now, thank God, every man is not like this. Maybe it is my fault, for I always

felt I should be used like a helpmate in place of a slave.

Hope I have not written too much. I am a subscriber for the Grain Growers’

Guide, but I have never had time to write any for it, but would often like to when I

read what others have to say. I should be patching the week’s washing now in place

of writing this, but please forgive me for forgetting myself and letting my thoughts

run back over the past, which is not a pleasant thing to do sometimes, and I try and

do my duty so that I will not be found wanting when I am weighted in the balance at

that great day. It is by His grace that I have been able to put a smiling front on to the

world and only God knows the heart aches and pains I have endured for my dear

children’s sake, and would do it over again if need be. “Bless His holy name.”

A NORTHWEST WOMAN.

14. A Declaration of Independence (1912)1119

Miss Beynon :–

This is my first attempt to write in any paper, but if you will think my few lines

worth reading or printing good and well. With regard to more right for the women,

here is one that heartily joins in the circle. I have long read and studied and seen by

experience and different ways that a woman is a slave. She has to obey, so the man

says. If the man chooses to sell his place and home she must up and go and leave

everything that’s dear. Oh the folly of it all. More spunk, sisters! Show them you are

no plaything. I am a farmer’s wife. I have my children to look after. I must get the

three meals, milk seven and eight cows, feed ten calves, raise some over 200 chickens,

1118 960 acres. 1119 From MA. (1912, September 18). A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 9.

646

separate the milk, churn the butter, print it, take it to town, buy all that is used for

living, such as clothes, groceries, and what is left over do you think John should have

a right to tell me that was his? Aber nit1120, if he did, I should simply tell him all right,

I shall be wife only and I should never milk another cow. One woman told me she was

not allowed to sell a dozen of eggs so she could buy herself anything unless it had to

be bought by the husband. I told her: “Don’t you raise another chicken; you have

enough with your housework and children.” No use to worry, make the best of

everything. I am jolly as can be. I have friends wherever I go. My children think the

world of me, and do everything to help me. Sometimes I think perhaps it is because I

am independent. I can see to the little things that are dear to them, as I don’t have to

ask hubby for a little money to stretch one mile long. Whenever I have too much to

be used for the house I put the balance away or in the bank. There was a time when

I was a young and bashful wife. I’d go to my husband and say: “Baby has such shabby

shoes and that same old dress. She ought to have a new one.” Well, perhaps I’d get it,

but first I must go through a catechism1121 if it was really necessary. We must save

the money and so on. Well, I would cry by myself a little and feel hurt. Couldn’t he

see, too, what I needed? I don’t do it any more and no more tears either.

Closing with my best wishes for Homemakers, I’ll sign myself

MA.

1120 Probably a corruption of ‘Aber nicht,’ German for ‘But no’. 1121 A recitation of Catholic doctrine.

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X. Housework

648

1. A Woman’s Time (1911)1122

At a recent meeting held at one of the Ontario Women’s Institutes, Miss Ethel

Rupert contributed the following paper on the timely subject, “Is a woman’s time

worth anything?” In these days when one of our best selling publications1123 is “How

to live on twenty–four hours a day,” we may well reflect on the value of a woman’s

time. A decision made in the general sessions court in New York city has raised the

question, “Are wives supported by their husbands?”

An American political economist disposes of the matter thus: “A general rule

is that the man has the wife and family. The former is undoubtedly lending him aid

by cooking his food, mending his clothes, but there is no need of considering her as a

separate agent of production.” At a glance we see that she is producing articles of

commerce, food, clothing, comfort, service, all coming quite within the scope of

economic production. As a buyer for the family and administrator of the family funds,

she is performing services as distinctly related to the production of wealth as any

similar work done by men in business houses.

It is the law in many countries that the amount of time a woman shall work

for wages is sixty hours a week. In the home, the wife, because she works for nothing

(or shall we say for love?), may be forced to toil day after day, month after month,

year after year, far into the night and all night, if the convenience and comfort of the

family require it. The burden of her task may be greater in the home than if she

worked for wages, and her contribution to wealth is worth money, but because the

home is a “sanctified spot,” the wife’s labor is not recognized on principle. No record

is made of the profit and loss of her production, and even if the life of the wife goes to

balance the account, the assumption is that it is right and proper. It is a fine instance

of the beautiful spirit of devotion to duty (?) which makes women toiling in the home

so eminently fitted to die and go to Heaven. Heaven may wait to welcome her into

glory, when as a wife and mother she has worked herself to death. But the education

she has received and the ideals she has been taught to revere compel her, while

working in the hope of Heaven, to have some hope of life, liberty, happiness and fair

wages to recompense her here below.

The work done by women in the home is the last determining factor of the

problem of the cost of living, and is also the first determining factor of the cost of all

production. The question demanding investigation is not, “Are wives supported by

their husbands?” but “How far are husbands – men in general – supported by the

work of their wives?”

1122 From Isobel & Rupert, E. (1911, July 18). A Woman’s Time. The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 17. Written by Isabel Beaton Graham (d. 1950) and Ethel Maude Gibson Rupert (1891 – 1912). 1123 How to Live on 24 Hours a Day (1908), a humorous self–help book by the British playwright and novelist Enoch Arnold Bennett (1867 – 1931). The work does not discuss housework, and assumes the

reader has (female) servants. From a prefatory passage on the feasibility of rising early: “Instruct the

fellow creature, whoever she may be, at night. Tell her to put a tray in a suitable position over night.

On that tray two biscuits, a cup and saucer, a box of matches and a spirit–lamp; on the lamp, the

saucepan; on the saucepan, the lid—but turned the wrong way up; on the reversed lid, the small teapot,

containing a minute quantity of tea leaves.”

649

The Nature of Rural Housework

2. “Mysterious Providence” (1866)1124

“What a mysterious Providence,” say the farmers, as they come together to look

for the last time on one of their number, and they glance pityingly on the bereaved

husband; and the large family of children varying in size from the tall youth, or the

blooming maiden, down to the little child. Truly it is a mystery, that she should be

taken away in the prime of life, when her children need her watchful care and counsel

more than before. But let us examine into the life led by most farmers’ wives, and see

if they can give a clue to the mysterious providence, which so often leaves the family

circle desolate.

A young farmer marries, and for a year or two his wife can do very well without

help; by–and–by his work is too much for him alone, and he must have a hired hand,

and one by one little children increase the family, and the burden is much heavier

than when she took it up, but the farmer is just getting a start, and they must

economise if they want to get rich, as every body does, so she gets along somehow

without help. She rises early, milks the cows, and gets the breakfast, sometimes for

several men, dresses the children, washes dishes, skims the milk, churns, sweeps the

rooms, makes the beds, prepares the dinner, clears up, milks again, puts the children

to bed, and after they and her husband are asleep, sits up to sew until midnight, that

she may save paying a seamstress. In addition to this daily routine, she does all the

washing, ironing, and scrubbing; it would cost so much to hire help; so yearly she toils

and drudges, and not allowing herself the least opportunity to improve her mind, so

that she may be a better guide and councilor for her children. And very soon her fair

face is faded and careworn, her temper sour and fretful, and herself prostated every

now and then by severe illness, only to resume her unwearied labours as her

returning strength permits. And thus she becomes yearly less able to bear the burden

of her increased household duties. If the husband is a kind, considerate man, who has

been taught to assist his mother in his boyhood, he makes her work lighter, by

carrying wood and water, nursing the baby while in the house, and by doing

numberless little things which may be trifling in themselves, but which are of great

importance in the aggregate; but too many men leave their wives to draw water, and

if the wood gets cut half the time, she thinks herself fortunate; and for the baby, why

he thinks it’s woman’s place to be nurse, and so it frets and cries, and mother must

work with it on her arm, while he reads the paper or talks to the hired man.

Well, the farm increases in value and fertility, and his labour in producing for

his family becomes lighter, as he is able to hire more work done; but it is an old thing

both for himself and wife, for her to do all the housework with what little help the

elder children, if they are girls, can give her, if they are boys, they can’t think of

making them work in the house, it is not customary; and so she toils in the same old

fashion.

1124 From The Duties of Canadian Farmers Wives. (1866, July 13). The Sarnia Observer, p. 1.

650

And when the comfortable new house is built and furnished, and her older

children are getting to be a real help to her the pale, weak mother lies down to die.

Truly her sun goes down at noon day. She has saved by ceaseless toil, hundreds of

dollars for her husband; and he has lost the companion of his youth, the one who has

walked beside him along life’s most thorny paths. And friends say it is a mysterious

Providence! Just as if God had ordained that the mother should be taken from her

children, just when they are most exposed to temptation and danger! Instead of laying

it on Providence let us look at the days spent in toil, when the weak, exhausted frame

was suffering from disease, induced perhaps from continued over exertion, to the

hours stolen from needed slumber, and devoted to labor; to the number of household

duties performed with a fretful infant under her arm; to the immense time spent in

cooking over a hot fire, and the many sleepless nights spent in anxious wearysome

watching over sick children. Viewed in this light is it so very mysterious that so many

women die just when they should be enjoying life with the keenest relish?

3. Scientific Housekeeping (1897)1125

The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw a push towards putting housework on a scientific basis. Courses and degrees in Home Economics were at the vanguard of this movement, emphasizing the importance of standardization, efficiency and technological assistance in the performance of household tasks. That this was initially an urban development can be seen by the manner in which the realities of rural life were neglected by early ‘home scientists,’ as explained in the article below.

An authority upon home science states that housekeeping may be made easy

by reducing it to a science. We are all alert to know what are the first steps to be

taken in this most momentous matter. We look around our kitchen, we who are of the

constituency of the masses, who have incomes of between six and eighteen hundred

dollars a year. We do well if we live where we can have a range with water back and

good sewerage. Most of us cannot boast of anything better than an ordinary cooking

stove, maybe with a tank at the back. Perhaps we have to carry every drop of water

some distance, and then pour it out of doors or pour it down a very badly constructed

drain. We pause in the midst of this eternal and never–ceasing pilgrimage, and

wonder how we can apply science to our immediate situation.

To be sure we can use all the approved disinfectants and cleansers that science

has so ably pointed out to us; but thus using means more work, and we know of no

easy way to do it. It takes time and pains to keep scientifically constructed sinks and

drains in order, much less those that are literally thrown together, and are at best

only sorry makeshifts.

Whether every drop of water must be drawn from a well, carried to the house

and put in the kettle to heat, or whether you can simply turn a faucet to get all the

hot water you want, makes a great deal of difference in the steps one is called upon

1125 From SCIENTIFIC HOUSEKEEPING. (1897, April 2). Moose Jaw Herald Times, p. 3.

651

to take during a single day. To be so situated that science is applicable, is the first

thing to be thought of when scientific methods are suggested.

Will somebody please tell us how and where science comes in when on wash–

day the tubs must be brought from the cellar, the water drawn from the well or cistern

and carried in bucketfuls to be heated, then after using all of it must be carried out

again and thrown away? Muscle and nerve are the first requisites, and these must be

of tolerably good quality in order to stand the strain. It is idle to say that we should

have conveniences. Of course we know all that, and the want is a crying one, but all

the same we go on year after year without them1126 and know that we are likely to

keep on doing so for an indefinite period.

And very many of us feel the need of care as to the use of fuel. We have to count

the cost of coal and wood, and must so arrange that we can bake our bread, pies, cakes

and other things by a half–day’s fire and at the same time have a boiled dinner on

the stove or anything that tends to utilize the fire.

Preaching science to a woman without conveniences is like preaching the

gospel to the starving. It is much better to feed first and preach afterward.

The woman who dons a white apron and in a dainty costume steps into her

kitchen and turns on a gas jet, tries the hot water, and finds everything all right, is

in an excellent position to tackle scientific problems. The waste water vanishes; the

garbage–can is at hand; the patent cabinet opens wide its doors with every labor–

saving device at hand, and with thermometer, scales and measures of all sorts within

reach, the labor is lightened, and the results are infinitely more accurate and

satisfactory.

But we must know how to apply our science, and that is a task that must cover

a long period of time; and some women can never learn it. They can make pie pastry

that will melt in your mouth, biscuits that would delight the heart of a cooking–school

teacher, and cake that is a comfort to the soul. Their bread is faultless, and their

regular meals are reliable to a degree that cannot fail to please. In fact they are

pattern cooks and housekeepers. But these good women couldn’t explain the simplest

problem in science, and the sight of a chemical sign would upset them for an entire

day. Science is a fine thing in its place, but one must have the wherewithal to answer

its demands.

1126 “The same house, the same inconveniences that were in use 50 or more years ago, are in many

cases, in use today, and because they were good enough for mother, or grandmother, they are “good

enough for my wife today.” […] A wife is a necessity on a farm, but unless she is spared much of the

hard drudgery and unnecessary labor she will soon give out.” The Farmer’s Wife. (1915, November

10). The Melfort Moon, p. 6.

652

4. “You Must Still Smile” (1911)1127

Canadian farm life is an occupation which is coming rapidly to the front; much

seems to be written about it from the man’s point of view, but very little from the

woman’s. Many men go out with the idea that they will live as bachelors. I should

like them to know that they will prosper much better if they take the right sort of

woman with them to share their fortunes – one who is very strong, has an immense

sense of humor, and is prepared to live the most strenuous life she can possibly live

anywhere. In most cases the woman makes or mars the success of a farm.

The main theme of this woman’s life on a Canadian farm is work, and a never–

ending feeling of weariness. On my farm, we have two pairs of hands and are in clover,

but as a rule one pair of hands has to wrestle alone with the washing, ironing, baking,

churning, daily housework and cooking, and the care of the family. It is quite useless

to expect to get help; it simply cannot be got in the country places, and is worse than

useless when you chance to get it. An ideal farmer’s wife near me used to give out as

her rule of life, “Don’t hurry – don’t worry.” No doubt an excellent maxim, but then

her mother–in–law lived with her and she had no children, so life was comparatively

simple to her. It is undoubtedly the children who make the work, but farm life bereft

of children would be too tedious and monotonous for words.

The work, of course, is hard, but there is always a sunny side to it and plenty

of fun can be got out of it. You must be able to think it funny when your washtub

warps during the week and the water flows out over your floor as fast as you put it

in. And in the winter when your wash freezes in the basket before you can put it on

the line, and when there, rattles like so many dead bones; when the snow drifts in

everywhere, and mountains of it are between you and the pump or barn; when you

creep down by moonlight , with the thermometer 20 deg. below zero, to light the fire

and put everything you want for breakfast on the stove to thaw out; or when you have

a quarter of beef frozen solid in your larder and have to saw off a piece when needed.

When cooking you must laugh if you forget you have a batch of pies in the oven and

come back to find them blackened cinders, or if you do not know that suet dumplings

swell and drop them into pea soup and find when you want to dish it that there is a

vast amount of dumpling and no soup. If you do not want to laugh do not put the

bacon to fry in a pan full of holes, as I did; or try to make gravy for beef–steak while

the meat is still cooking; do not leave a pot of marmalade boiling while you go to

answer the telephone and return to find a glorious golden stream flowing over stove

and floor.

You must still smile if, when you have just washed your floors, children, dogs,

or farm hands at once come in and leave a track of snow or mud across them; also

think it funny when you really have not time to make your beds, but just pull the

clothes back in the morning and up again in the night – you will sleep every bit as

well.

1127 From Luard, G. (1911, February 3). THE HUMOR OF MY CANADIAN HOME. Raymond Rustler, p. 3. Written by Gertrude Luard (1869 – 1957).

653

In hot weather do not be annoyed if your butter is far too moist to make up.

When gathering potatoes in the field, forget that your back aches, that the pails are

heavy and the sun is hot, and get all the fun out of it that you can. When a dozen men

suddenly appear, as they do two or three times a year, to thresh, or saw your wood,

be very cheerful with them and make them think the one thing in the world you want

to do is feed them. They are really very little trouble. They just dash in to a meal and

out again, never speak, use one plate and knife for everything, and are perfectly

content if you give them quantities of pickles, pie and tea.

And life for a woman on the Canadian farm is not all work. Far from it. There

are very many forms of amusement, music taking a prominent part. There was the

band, for instance, of which I was promoted to be the accompanist. It really was the

funniest thing in the world. I had always heard that to succeed in a place you must

get into harmony with your surroundings – a maxim I had endeavoured to put into

practice in Canada – but to get into harmony with that band I could not! It was one

big discord; every man played for himself and considered himself the band. At one

social tea we tried to conclude with “God Save the King!” always a difficult thing to

play on the spur of the moment without music. Our conductor gave out that we would

start with the note “B.” I believe that this note is different on different instruments.

We all started on different notes, staggered halfway through in the most awful

discord, and just finally collapsed, amid shouts and jeers from ourselves and the

audience.

Dancing is another great resource. The first dance I went to was for young

people only. The girls all arrived first and sat in a row along the wall, and at a given

signal the young men burst into the room, marched past the girls, and shook hands

with each, with the remark, “Pleased to see you.” We then began to dance, solemnly

and slowly, no romping or hop waltzes at those dances. Most of the men wore boots,

none had gloves, and only one had a dress suit. The costumes of the girls were varied,

but all very short, tweed suits being apparently considered suitable. I was the only

one in low dress. I soon saw the wisdom of the short skirt; the floor was thick in dust,

and my long skirt swept it up like a motor car. Halfway through the dance the girls

once more resumed their seats and the young men vanished, reappearing with stacks

of huge plates and massive cups, baskets packed with huge sandwiches with the

crusts on, and a varied assortment of cake. A plate and a cup were deposited on your

lap, and you took as much sandwich, cake, and coffee as you were likely to consume.

There were also card parties innumerable during the winter evenings, when one sits

and plays euchre for hours in boiling hot rooms (eighty degrees is considered a

pleasant temperature for houses, but I know many of them up to one hundred

degrees). I wore my thinnest summer garments the whole winter, and was often too

warm then.

Do not be too insular to conform to custom. Never start eating at table until

everybody is helped; always put on your best clothes if you want to go out to post a

letter or to get a pound of tea; wear your rubbers on every possible occasion; drink tea

with your dinner, learn the proper way to eat Indian corn, and do not brag about the

Old Country.

654

In fact, keeping humor paramount, learn to combine the many excellent points

of Canadian life with the refinement and homeliness of England, then Englishwomen

will make a great mark in Canada, and will cease to be looked upon, as they too often

are nowadays, as so many curiosities.

5. Woman’s Life Should Vary (1915)1128

Nowadays a great deal is heard on all sides of the discontent of the housewife.

Work that used to be important to our sex of the preceding generation in many cases

holds little or no charm to the modern wife. Women have begun to realize that

something more than the actual scrubbing of odors, dusting and general work

necessary for the maintained cleanliness of the house, is required to make life

interesting and useful.

And the state of affairs is peculiar to girls who have given up an arduous office

life for the hearth. They find their brains, which have been quickened and kept in

good working order for many years, have little occupation in the homely tasks that

fall to the lot of the wife, and they feel they are “dropping out of things” and losing

much that made life so interesting.

Keeping a house clean for the sake of cleanliness is a duty, but cleaning a house

for the effect it will have on the inhabitants is a pleasure.

And that is where most of us lose our grip. We go through our work because it

has to be done and generally are of the opinion that the sooner finished the better.

We do not trouble to make a variation in any of the little things pertaining to our

daily duties. We stick to the ideas and methods that have been handed down to us

and do not attempt to bring them up to modern requirements. We never care to

change the furniture in our rooms – we probably don’t even think of it nor of the

pleasure such a change may be for the home people. In cooking, too, we pursue the

same regular habits, serve up meals in the same old way – it never occurs to some of

us to surprise our family by a change in the menu.

This indifference often follows us to the extent of affecting our personal

appearance, and we cling to certain modes of hair dressing and clothing, just because

we think they suit us. We never seem to wonder whether the “latest thing out” may

not adapt itself to our style just as well or better.

6. “A Host of Children to Eat her Bread” (1921)1129

The following article, unlike those that precede it, is written about rural women, instead of by or for them. It takes a decidedly more picturesque view of housework and the necessary conditions for personal fulfilment.

No housewife in America is so independent of the price of coal and oil as the

habitant woman of Quebec, with an out–of–door brick oven at her beck and call.

1128 From Woman’s Life Should Vary. (1915, December 1). The Melfort Moon, p. 3. 1129 From The Spell of Quebec’s Roadside Oven. (1921, June 3). The Grand Forks Sun, p. 2.

655

These roadside–ovens, – and nobody knows exactly what whim or fancy

possessed the Quebecois mind for carrying his baking apparatus so far from home,

unless it was fear of the roaring fire which must be set up in order to bake the large

quantity of bread necessary to fill the many mouths of the grande famille, – are not only landmarks in Quebec but indications of the habitant housewife’s hospitality.

They seem to say to the passer–by, “Now you know you are in Quebec, and Quebec is

the land of home–made bread.” Mais oui. “Entrez vous. For a mere song Madame will cut you some thick slices and bring out a pitcher of milk.” Oui, the grand oven is undoubtedly the symbol of Quebec! There is a friendly look about these old wayside

ovens which arises out of the fact that they are made by hand and fit in perfectly with

the landscape and the scheme of life in general obtaining in this province, so pre–

eminently the land of the home–made.

In many months of tramping in Quebec we have encountered scores of these

ovens. But because they are home–made, each one is different. Each architect builds

to suit his own fancy or else to come in to the possibilities as to shape and size

contained in the material at hand. Leaks are overcome with smudges of plaster and

added coats of white–wash, till the oven often resembles – a frosted cake. Or else an

extra roof is attempted with bits of old board, and then the oven resembles some queer

little maison… a doll’s house for the children to play in, or a large kennel for le chien that draws the little cart. Seeing these ovens for the first time you fancy yourself

somewhere in the Old–World. But then a similar fancy seizes you about everything

in Quebec, which in atmosphere, is all foreign and different. On all occasions, even in

the matter of these ovens, Quebec is just herself. It is a Quebec loaf baked here and

not the “little bread” of France, nor yet its “yardstick” just a four or five pound loaf

that will cut the generous slice that the child at play, or garcon helping with the hay, finds satisfaction in.

These ovens along the Quebec roadside stand for two important factors in our

national life. They stand for rural life, for farm life and the development of the country

parts. And they stand for family–life without which attempts at rural development

have proved vain. The women of Quebec are among the most hard working women in

Canada and among the most contented. Given a little house with a curved roof, a tiny

balcony and an out–of–door oven by the roadside, your habitant woman asks nothing

more of life except a host of children to eat her bread. Every day may be “baking day”

for all she cares with grain growing in her own fields, for flour, and an oven of

character that can always be stretched to hold another loaf1130.

1130 A prairie writer sarcastically agrees: “Don’t try to please your wife. / […] / Don’t help care for the

children – that is what you got her for. / […] / Don’t fail to invite company for Sunday dinner without

letting her know so she can have a day for rest. / Don’t fail to ask your wife if she wants you to do all

the housework if she asks you to put some wood in the stove. / Don’t wonder that your food has a

peculiar flavor, for it is seasoned with blasted hopes and sighs of disappointment.” Some Don’ts For

Farmers. (1916, October 4). The Western Globe, p. 7.

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Housework in Verse Two poems, published months apart in the same column, highlight the difference in expectations between women and men regarding housework.

7. For the Sake of Being Supported (1896)1131

The first poem is from a married woman’s point of view.

I wish I had a dozen pair

Of hands, this very minute;

I’d soon put all the things to rights–

The very mischiefs in it.

Here’s a big washing to be done–

One pair of hands to do it–

Sheets, shirts, and stockings, coats

and pants,

How will I e’er get through it?

Dinner to get for six or more–

No loaf left o’er from Sunday;

And baby cross as he can live–

He’s always so on Monday.

And there’s the cream, ‘tis getting

sour,

And must forthwith be churning;

And here’s Bob, wants a button on–

Which way shall I be turning?

‘Tis time the meat was in the pot,

The bread was worked for baking,

The clothes were taken from the boil–

Oh dear! the baby’s waking!

Hush, baby, dear! there–ah–ah!

I wish he’d sleep a little,

Till I could run and get some wood,

To hurry up that kettle.

1131 From CONFUSED HOUSEKEEPERS. (1896, October 2). Moose Jaw Herald Times, p. 6.

Oh dear! oh dear! if John comes home,

And finds things in this pother,

He’ll just begin, and tell me all

About his tidy mother!–

How mice her kitchen used to be–

Her dinner always ready

Exactly when the noon–bell rang–

Hush, hush! dear little Freddy!

And then will come some hasty word,

Right out before I’m thinking–

They say that hasty words from wives

Set sober men to drinking.

Now isn’t that a great idea,

That men should take to sinning,

Because a weary, half–sick wife,

Can’t always smile so winning?

When I was young, I used to earn

My living, without trouble–

Had clothes, and pocket money, too,

And hours of leisure, double.

I never dreamed of such a fate,

When I a lass was courted–

Wife, mother, nurse, seamstress, cook,

housekeeper, chamber–maid,

laundress, dairy–woman and scrub

generally, doing the work of six,

For the sake of being supported!

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8. Isn’t it enough? (1896)1132

The second poem is from the point of view of a married man.

Sing a song of cleaning house!

Pocket full of nails!

Four–and–twenty dustpans,

Scrubbing brooms and pails!

When the door is opened,

Wife begins to sing–

“Just help me move this bureau here,

And hang this picture, won’t you dear?

And tack that carpet by the door,

And stretch this one a little more,

And drive this nail, and screw this screw;

And here’s a job I have for you–

This closet door will never catch,

I think you’ll have to fix the latch;

And oh, while you’re about it, John,

I wish you’d put the cornice on

And hang this curtain; when you’re done

I’ll hand you up the other one!

This box has got to have a hinge

Before I can put on the fringe;

And won’t you mend that broken chair?

I’d like a hook put up right there;

The bureau drawer must have a knob;

And here’s another little job–

I really hate to ask you, dear–

But could you fix a bracket here?”

And on it goes, when these are through

With this and that and those to do,

Ad infinitum and more too,

All in a merry jingle

And isn’t it enough to make

A man wish he was single? (almost)

1132 From A SONG OF CLEANING HOUSE. (1896, August 14). The Moose Jaw Herald Times, p. 2.

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Housework and the Canadian Male The burden of housework fell almost entirely upon women and girls, but there were some situations where men and boys were expected or required to perform household tasks.

9. What the Boy can do at Home (1911)1133

Some households – rare exceptions that prove the rule – saw boys help with household tasks, just as their sisters did. The following article discusses the phenomenon and addresses the common fear that boys sharing this responsibility would grow into effeminate men.

I know of a family, which consists of two brothers and a sister, all unmarried.

The sister does not stay home to do the housework; she is a business woman with an

office of her own downtown. And yet her brothers expect her every morning, before

she leaves for work – and it is earlier, let me assure you, than they leave – to tidy

their rooms, make their beds, do all the odds and ends that no servant – and they

keep only one – ever thinks of doing. When she gets home, tired out, at night, she is

only too likely to find thrown across a chair in her room one of John’s shirts, with a

request that she sew a button on it, or to be greeted at the door by William, with a

bunch of undarned socks in his hand. Her Sundays are chiefly spent in picking up

after her brothers, doing the things that all week have been left undone.

And she does it all. Why? Oh, because when she was a little girl her mother

started her that way. She was taught that, as a girl, she was distinctly subordinate

to the aggressive masculinity represented by her brothers and that her tenure in the

home depended on the amount of coddling and caring for she bestowed upon them.

That may have been do in her mother’s time – “’tis true, ‘tis pity, and pity ‘tis

‘tis true” – but it certainly isn’t so now. That she should perform all of the menial

tasks expected of her by two perfectly strong, sane and able–bodied men is perfectly

ridiculous. But she can’t do very much to help it now, unless she has an Ibsenesque1134

scene and leaves them. You see, they weren’t trained properly as boys.

That is the whole secret. Another family that I know of brings this to my mind.

There are two boys here also and four or five girls. The question of household duties

– for the family is not a rich one – is always present, but it has been solved by the

children, under the wise direction of their parents. The lighter household tasks – the

chamberwork, the dusting, the silver cleaning, the table setting – fall to the lot of the

youngsters, but they are apportioned on the basis of age and occupation, not on that

of sex. After each child was 8 years old he or she had charge of bed and bedroom.

Other duties came with each succeeding year – never heavy enough, of course, to

1133 From WHAT THE BOY CAN DO AT HOME. (1911, March 9). The Wainwright Star, p. 3. 1134 Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House (1879), famously ends with the protagonist, Nora, leaving her husband, household and children with a slam of the door. While acknowledging her duties to them,

she considers she has another duty, “just as sacred” – her duty to herself.

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interfere with school work or the necessary play. Those boys would as soon think of

allowing one of their sisters to make his bed as she would think of allowing one of

them to make hers. The question of “boy or girl” has never entered into the matter at

all.

And those boys are not effeminate! The older one is in high school, a member

of the football team and president of his class, which means a great deal in a school

of manly boys. The younger showed me proudly the punching bag he got for last

Christmas, and made me see how far he could send it. “I’ve got MUSCLE!” he

exclaimed, bending his little arm with an air of huge pride.

And this is perfectly reasonable. We are learning more and more that there is

nothing inherently feminine about housework that consecrates and necessarily

devotes it to the female side of the household. There is no more reason why a boy

should consider it “sissy” to dust the rungs of the parlor chains or polish the table–

spoons any more than to put on his own stockings or brush his hair. It’s all personal

service, and the family is part of yourself almost as much as your own body is. There

are families where the parents may consider it preferable to have the girls do this

lighter indoor work and the boys the taking up of coal, shoveling snow, painting back

fences, etc. That is a matter for individual decision, but I do insist that a boy should

take care of his own bedroom and his own mending just as much as a girl should. His

time is no more occupied than hers, and if anything, he has rather more reserve

strength.

And don’t be afraid the other boys will make fun of your son because he helps

his mother. If he’s the right sort of boy, they won’t do it more than once.

10. ‘Batching’ or, Life as a Bachelor (1898)1135 A man living alone would perforce have to either do the housework himself, or hire someone else to do it for him.

One of the greatest curiosities of this wonderful country of ours is batching.

Batching is a thing so totally inexplicable to the average feminine mind that

perhaps a short explanatory article may interest some of our readers of the gentler

sex. We fear we can expect but little sympathy from them on the unfortunate state

that renders the adoption of the system a matter of necessity or choice. Man it is true

was not made to live alone, and most batchelors look upon as a sort of Elysium the

comfortable quarters of married friends. Ladies are always full of pity for the

unfortunate, when they do not share the misfortune, and are, we might say,

invariably kind to poor lonely batchelors, so that batchelors quarters transformed by

the presence of a divinity into the ideal of comfort, peace, plenty and prosperity strike

hard at the resolutions of even the mysogamist1136. […]

1135 From BATCHING. (1898, December 15). The Calgary Weekly Herald, p. 5. and BATCHING. (1899, January 5). The Calgary Weekly Herald, p. 4. Written by John J. Young (ca. 1867 – 1923). 1136 One who hates marriage.

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The Wetaskiwin sage made a remark in his paper1137 that the worst of batching

is having to make one’s bed before retiring for the night, and we can imagine the

horror such a vista of untidiness and carelessness of appearances will create in the

mind feminine. What batchelor’s quarters were ever in a state to receive lady visitors

when the visitation was unexpected? In some odd instances after say 3 p.m. the

recluse might not have occasion to blush for his house keeping, but before that time–

––––.

The editorial we was once called upon about 11 o’clock on a Sunday morning

by a young married couple. We were just up. Fortunately the dog who batched with

us attracted our attention to the fact that someone was coming in by our side gate,

and we caught the sound of the pit a pat of feminine footsteps accompanied by a

solider tread. To put on our coat was the work of a moment, we shut all the doors,

pulled down the blinds, kicked the dog to quicken him and pretended to be at church

and not at home. But it wouldn’t work. The lock of the door was out of repair, and we

had just time to inexorably bar the way to prevent feminine eyes from discovering

our batchelor misery. We knew well the solider head would not hesitate to unfold to

the view of the feminine footstep the interior of the establishment and so discover us

pretending to be at church. What an awful position! We had to leave to the

imaginations of the feminine footsteps an interior in preference to the exposure of the

reality.

How women can cheerfully get up and wash dishes after a meal is one of those

things few men can understand. It is true they don’t usually smoke a pipe and dish

washing may be a sort of substitute, but it must be a poor one. Now we have tried

sundry methods to avoid this crockery question. We have got a regular outfit and

washed up when the whole lot was dirty, but then we found that usually when we

were awfully hungry, or in a hurry, that a wash up had to be done, and we slunk off

to the Alberta and got another hole punched in our meal ticket. Sometimes Lundy

wanted to punch two, when we had been in the hungry state, and were filled. But

then some of the regular boarders don’t eat much which equalizes matters.

Then we tried the racket of just having enough dishes for a meal and then if

we had an exceptionally good supper with potatoes and such luxuries we had to get

up in the middle and wash dishes. If any of our kind readers will suggest a solution

of this question short of matrimony we have no doubt other editorial we’s beside

ourself will be grateful. This commissariat1138 is an awful problem. To buy bread at

one place, to beg milk at another, and then to find that we had to go over to the store

and take chances on the butter. We have known men who have batched it for years,

but there always seemed the same difficulty. A respectable citizen without a wish to

be more than decently “tony” with both hands full of sugar, tea, pepper, dried apricots,

canned salmon, coal oil, and some patent business to save labor is indeed a pitiable

sight. Talking about commissariat the general impression seems to be that we

1137 Probably the Free Lance, Wetaskiwin’s first newspaper. It was published from 1897 to 1898 by John H. Walker, who is presumably the ‘sage’ referred to. 1138 Supply of food. From the word used to describe the army department in charge of feeding the

troops.

661

batchelors just hover on the verge of starvation. The Alberta Tribune either

sarcastically or mistakenly reported that we were suffering from an attack of gout,

and another contemporary remarking on the report ascribed it to “batching.” Fancy

a man getting gout through batching and a newspaper man too. It might it is true be

“poor man’s” gout, but an editor suffering from “rich man’s” gout is indeed an

anomaly, although such an anomaly is not unheard of in this extraordinary country.

Then the sweeping out of the house not to mention scrubbing. A batchelor can

sweep out his quarters even twice a week and yet when he hangs his best trousers on

the floor they receive an imprint of dust. That is one of the biggest “chores” he has to

face. Women seem to enjoy shoving the furniture about and raising a dust – literally

and not metaphorically, and we have met married men who in the spring and fall,

and in fact at all times of year suffered a house cleaning at their wife’s hands. It often

struck us that ladies house cleaned at times to get even with their lieges and

personally we cannot imagine a more terrible revenge. In the dim past when we had

a home, or belonged to a house, this turning things topsy turvey used to catch us in

the neck, and we now have vivid recollections.

We once knew (this is fact) an old mai– unappropriated blessing, who used to

house clean every week. At that time it used to be a great mystery, but we have often

thought since that it was her way of showing her contempt and hatred for the

trousered sex.

Now this sweeping out business can be got down to a fine point, and rugs and

hides are a great help. The principal matter that we sweep up consists of match ends,

tobacco ash and spilt tobacco, bones left by the dog and whatever he chooses to pack

in, bits of paper and dust. Fellows often come in to see us in our lonely cell, and

sometimes the more reckless ones share our humble fare. They nearly all smoke and

it has been a matter of observation to us, the different way they dispose of their match

ends. Most of them just throw them anywhere on the floor, or table, or on the bed or

anywhere, some few throw them at the stove, and we have seen men who have put

them in an ash tray flower pot, or into the stove. Some housekeepers we believe sweep

as often as twice a day (especially when the male contingent occupy a little extra time

over the after dinner pipe), but we have heard that on those extra occasions they only

sweep the match ends and debris under a convenient mat or rug.

Now the preventative for this sweeping nuisance and a palliation of its hardships is

to have as little furniture as possible, and all that placed round and in the corners of

the room, leaving a clear space in the centre. Remove the floor covering if you have

one and shake, then take the broom and sweep out the ring. Replace floor covering

and prepare to receive company.

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A Bachelors’ Picnic (c. 1920)1139

1139 From an anonymous photograph in the Anthologist’s collection.

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11. Bachelor Bread (1907)1140 The housework of men was held to a different standard than that of women (especially married women). The following article provides an interesting contrast to our earlier piece on Quebec’s roadside ovens.

Batchelor’s bread is made in many ways, with flies and without. Young ladies

who come to the country now mostly get it without. When trying to raise that bread

in the pan there are many receipts told of, the most popular was “sour dough.” Sour

dough was made with a little flour and a little water and a little molasses, usually

put into a tin pot till it became sour; then it was the leaven that leaveneth the whole

lump. Some used a wooden crock for making sour dough but in time this became too

strong for some palates.

To make bread by the sour dough method it was only necessary to use a little

of the mixture in a larger lot of flour and water, leaving it to stand overnight in a

warm place, and if the cat got up and slept in the middle of the dough so much the

better for she kept it warm and rose with the bread. Of course baking powder bread

was usually to be had, but it is insipid stuff beside sour dough and soon goes stale.

There is no accounting for taste though and we remember two old miners who lived

near the mountains and each made his own bread because one would only eat baking

powder bread while the other wouldn’t touch it. Had they been man and wife they

couldn’t have agreed to differ better, but had they been man and wife, in America,

the man would have eaten the bread the woman liked. Another dodge for making

bread was with sour milk and soda, too much soda turns the bread yellow or brown.

Some batchelors got so many flies in the dough that when some young ladies came to

tea they thought they were eating currant buns till they discovered the mistake. But

it was not with bread that all the mistakes were made, for on one occasion, some

ladies were having tea at a batchelor’s residence, and, thinking the tea tasted funny,

when the host went out a minute they peeked into the pot and curiosity met its

reward, for lo! and behold! there was a dead mouse in the pot and no one knows how

long it had been there. They did not ask for third cups, though there was little left of

the dear thing except bones, the rest having gone in to tea, for it would have been

worse than Bill Aldridge’s1141 barley bread, that he tells of in the early days of the

West, when barley was ground hulls and all, trying to swallow it was “like swallowing

a rasp.”

1140 From Barker, E.N. (1907, August 9). SOME SPUTTERINGS OF AN OLD FRYING PAN. The Claresholm Review, p. 3. Written by Edward Neale Barker (1859 – 1942). Though this piece was published in 1907, it refers to events in southern Alberta during the mid–1880s. 1141 Possibly the same William Aldridge that in 1886 helped start one of Alberta’s first oil enterprises,

near Waterton. The oil was extracted by John George Brown and William Aldridge (his ranch hand)

from trenches dug in the Cameron Creek oil seeps. Ford’s ‘Model T’ was decades away; their oil was

sold for use in illumination and lubrication.

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12. “More Unhappy, More Unhealthy” (1893)1142

There are no more amiable, industrious, unfortunate and persevering persons

amongst the rural population of Manitoba than those who are known as bachelors;

generally excellent men, existing in considerable numbers in various portions of the

province, but becoming poorer, more unhappy, more unhealthy and more desolate as

years roll by. These hermits have not been disappointed in love; they have met with

no serious misfortunes; they start to make homes on good farms, intending to settle

down when they have made things comfortable around them, but instead of becoming

better matters become worse; nor can it be otherwise.

The young man rises in the morning, leaves unmade the bed that has perhaps

not been made for weeks; he then feeds his horses, and in the unswept and dusty

house prepares a hasty and ill–cooked breakfast, which is eaten from off unwashed

dishes. The bread is generally sour, or hard, or dry, the butter salty and rancid, the

coffee worthless, the meat burned on one side and raw on the other. The breakfast

table is left covered by dirty dishes and slops, where a million flies gather to feed in

undisturbed peacefulness. The unrefreshed bachelor goes to the field lonely,

miserable and dyspeptic. At noon he drives his team to the stable out of the hot sun,

and then goes into his shanty and builds a hot fire in order to get dinner. Heated by

hard work under a blazing sun, a good wash, a cool room and a well cooked meal is

what he requires but he cannot have. At supper it is the same thing over again.

His underclothing – seldom washed – becomes clogged by perspiration, and his

bedclothes are in the same unhealthy condition. When he is in the distant field at

work the hawks soar around the forsaken house and catch the chickens in the yard;

the pigs get into the garden if he has one; the calves get out of the enclosure and suck

the cows. Sometimes the deserted house burns down from a spark that may drop from

a neglected stove. When the bachelor is visiting the grocery store, the mill, or the

blacksmith shop, cattle get into his grain fields or pull down his stacks and there is

no one to let the dogs loose, and the marauders ramble at will undisturbed. So the

years go by, the man becomes poorer and has that peculiar neglected look common to

men who live alone. Health soon becomes impaired, and the mind often sympathizes

with the body.

What the bachelor requires in his home is a broad shouldered, stirring wife,

that will keep the house in order, as well as the husband who owns it, and who will

see that the clothing and blankets are made clean and are of her own making, and

delicious butter of her own churning; who will see that groceries are good and that

the proper value has been received for the money expended; who will wash and mend

her husband’s clothing and remove the shingle nails that have been used as

substitutes for buttons; who will look after the hens’ nests, and see that the dairy is

kept in order, and who will place the Bible on the table when the day’s work is done.

The once dejected and forlorn bachelor will then be transformed into one of the lords

of creation. His bearing will be erect, his eye clear and his purse full, his garden will

1142 From BACHELORS. (1893, August 11). Moose Jaw Herald Times, p. 3.

665

have flowers and his shirt have buttons. Instead of dead flies, stale crumbs and grease

spots, there “will be a clean cloth on the table and strawberries and cream in the

dishes.”

A Typical Ranch in the Foothills of Alberta (1915)1143

13. A Grass Widower’s Ranch Batching (1910)1144

The writer of this account was a ‘grass widower’, temporarily separated from his wife while he worked at the Fairview Ranch in Alberta, and she visited Washington.

My first week’s experience in batching.

Monday July 11th; got up, made fire, put on oatmeal for porridge, went out to

milk, separated, fed the calves, hogs, chickens, cut an armful of wood, came in and I

thought the house was on fire, grabbed a bucket of water, threw it in the direction of

the stove, opened doors and windows and found it was only the porridge burning. Got

breakfast, went to break, came home and got dinner and went to work. Came back,

got supper, milked, fed calves, horses, pigs, washed dishes, swept floor and went to

bed.

July 12, same role except didn’t burn porridge.

1143 Photograph taken from Eliot, E. M. (1915). MY CANADA. Toronto: Hodder and Stoughton. 1144 From Fairview Ranch Red Lodge. (1910, July 28). Back to the Ranks of the Bachelors. Bowden News, p. 8. and Fairview Ranch Red Lodge. (1910, August 4). Back to the Ranks of the Bachelors. Bowden News, p. 3. The letter appears to have been printed verbatim by the newspaper. I’ve added paragraph breaks to the original, and some obvious spelling mistakes have been silently corrected.

666

July 13, same role but had to churn. Well the wife told me to put the cream in

the churn and churn it so I did, filled it up, at it I went and churned for half an hour

and had two buckets of cream more than I had when I started but no butter. In about

an hour it came so I had to make two churnings of the deal. I got 16 lbs.

July 14th. I tried to bake a lemon pie so I mixed up some dough for pie crust

and when I rolled it out I had enough to side a house, got the receipt book and it said

season to suit your taste with a small pinch of salt so I did and put in some allspice,

but the woman had put cayenne pepper in the allspice can. When we went to eat the

pie I looked at Mortie1145 and asked him what he was crying about, he said because

Ma was not here to get a piece of that pie; soon the tears began to roll down my cheeks,

so Mortie said Dad what are you crying about, I said because Ma hadn’t some of that

pepper it was as hot as ‘Hades.’

July 15. It rained in the forenoon and went to Berndale picnic to get a square

meal. I saw a pie that resembled ours so I put it gently by. We had a lovely time and

all we could ask for. There were horse races, girls and boys races, jumping, football,

ladies’ horse racing was fine and the men’s half mile race. Soon as it was time to go

home, I went back by Red Lodge to get the mail and some grub as the preacher was

to be up for dinner Sunday and the hardware man also and I was in a stew to know

what to get for you know those preachers are big eaters so when I arrived home to

my surprise, Mrs. ––––– put in a nice big cake in the buggy; my thanks to the kind

ladies.

Saturday 16th. Comes the time of war, churning, washing, baking, scrubbing,

and a thousand other things which I will give in detail. Up at five o’clock put on meat,

porridge, milked, fed the calves and pigs and then I remembered there was five

setting hens to feed so I went to work and fed them. I took food to first one, she flew

in my face and nearly scratched my eyes out; at least I got her by the neck; I don’t

think the eggs will hatch now. Went in and Mortie had breakfast ready, so I got the

boiler on to wash to heat while I churned. Got the churning done and went into tub

washing. I remembered seeing my wife put in lye, so I dropped in a dose and you

should have seen it boil. I had to weaken the water to get the washing out it was too

strong. I then printed the butter and mixed down the bread. My hands now looked

awfully pale and I thought I must be getting sick; thought of sending for Dr. G–––––

but when I looked in the glass and saw my face was natural the scare passed off. I

know now how the ladies have such white hands, it must be from working butter and

baking bread. Now I had the scrubbing to do so I got at it. Got the scrubbing brush

and commenced; got down on my knees which I hated awfully to do and the first thing

off my suspender buttons. Looked round and there was the bread running over, so I

quit the floor and mixed it into pans. Then I thought I had better black the stove so I

got a brush and put shoe polish on and the smoke run me out of the house.

I be ––––– if I will go to so much bother again if the king was coming. I thought

it was no bother to batch; and now I burned my fingers, it is not what it is cracked up

to be. So Mr. Editor will you keep a space in your paper for a want ad. I may have to

use it soon if the old lady does not soon return from visiting in Washington.

1145 The author’s young son.

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Labour–Saving Innovations

14. Making Woman’s Work Easier (1918)1146

The early 1900s were a time of great labor–saving innovation for both the farmyard and farm home. As this article points out, adoption of these innovations was typically much faster outside the home than within it.

We men of the farm are too prone to look only to lightening our own work in

the fields and about the farms and granaries. We provide ourselves with riding tools

for the fields, with manure spreaders, litter carriers for the barns, grain elevators for

the granaries and systems of water works that put the water just where we want it.

In the house, where woman’s work is done, too often there has not been a new thing

added that makes work easier since the household was established1147. Many times a

desire to economize on the part of the woman herself makes this condition frequent.

The good wife thinks her husband needs all his new tools and equipment in order to

make money, while she feels that inasmuch as her part of the work is not exactly the

producing end she should get along with what she has, or rather, what she has not.

Too often – many, many times too often – the man of the family does not realize

the load of work and detail his wife and the mother of his children is carrying until it

is too late to make amends for it. Many times the man sees nothing wrong until illness

compels the calling of a doctor. The physician explains that an operation is necessary;

that hard work year in and year out, perhaps all this time doing washing for a large

family by the old–fashioned tub and washboard route and carrying the water with

which to do it from a well several rods away, has so undermined the constitution that

never again will the wife and mother be any better than an invalid. It is then that the

husband and father realizes what has happened and the real cause of its happening,

but it is too late to help his companion and co–worker, the one who has helped him

pile up his modest fortune, none of which can undo what overwork and drudgery has

brought on, or bring back health that has been sacrificed in a spirit of false economy.

We of the farm have no distance to look for investments when the house is

without water, when there is no power save the weakening strength of mother to run

the washer, and when the kitchen is without the numerous improvements and step

saving helps that may be so easily and cheaply provided. The man who buys a

mortgage on a neighbor’s land, with his wife working away her health carrying water

in buckets from a well or struggling on with a washer that requires all her strength

is not a real man.

1146 From Making Woman’s Work Easier. (1918, January 30). The Melfort Moon, p. 8. 1147 From a 1915 survey of 400 Canadian households: “Only two farmers out of every hundred have

bathrooms in their homes. Only 6.2 per cent. have water closets, only 2.5 per cent. have a complete

service, and only 2.2 per cent. have electric light. In these 400 homes, only 16.5 per cent. have the

water piped to the house, and but 17.5 per cent. have furnaces in the home.” Farm Home Conveniences.

(1916, August 23). The Melfort Moon, p. 2.

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Now and then a woman will be found who does not seem to desire the modern

things that so greatly lessen her labors. Perhaps her husband will mention getting

an engine to run the washer or wishes to pipe the water into the house and buy other

things that will make kitchen work easier, but the wife, still putting economy above

health, says, “no,” arguing that since she has always got along without those things

she guesses she always can. So, sometimes, it is not because of the man’s objection or

refusal that woman’s work is not made easier, but it is a foolish old–fashioned whim

of the woman herself that prevents. Here at this point is where the man should

overrule any objection, and should see that his wife has her labor lightened with the

modern things that lighten it, the same as he provides improved machinery for

making his work easier.

15. Five Valiant Servants Wanting Country Employ (1912)1148

It is not always the farmer’s fault when his wife works herself into an early

grave or the insane asylum. It not unfrequently happens because neither he nor his

wife know any alternative from the terrible drudgery which has been her share of

farm work. Time was – and not so very long ago – when woman slavery on the farm

was inevitable and was calmly accepted as being so by the male portion of the farming

community. I venture to say that if men had women’s work to do there would have

been machinery invented to do nine–tenths of it ages ago. But mind you, we are not

going to be unfair enough to blame the men for inventing machinery to lighten their

own burdens instead of exercising themselves over the burdens of others.

But long strides towards better things have been made in the older districts

during the past five years. More household machinery is invented every year and

more women are becoming acquainted with what is already invented.

I set out the other morning with the object of discovering up to date what

household conveniences were available for farm use and here is part of the news I

gleaned in a round of various shops.

The thing that interested me more than all others was a power washing

machine which can be run by gasoline engine, horse, steam or tread and which,

should all sources of power fail unexpectedly some day, can be turned by hand as

easily as an ordinary washing machine.

I thought back to the country washdays I had known when the thrifty

housewife arose at four o’clock in the morning and heated the boiler on the back of

the stove while she got breakfast on the front, with the double object of economizing

time and fuel. This wash–day I had in mind continued in a long nightmare of rubbing

on the board or turning the wringer1149 until two or three in the afternoon, and if the

1148 From Beynon, F. M. (1912, June 26). The Country Homemaker. Grain Grower’s Guide, pp. 13,36. Written by Francis Marion Beynon (1884 – 1950), an early Canadian feminist. 1149 “The wringer is a comparatively recent invention, yet it is quite indispensable to the modern

washerwoman. Before that all–important machine came into use the wringing of blankets was a rather

kittlesome job. It took two women to do it. Each folded an end of the blanket over a stick – the spurtles

used for stirring the clothes in boiler – and began to twist the stick. Considerable force could be applied

669

family was large, probably until five. After this there was mopping up to be done and

a hot supper to be prepared for the hungry men and children.

I thought to myself what it would mean to all the women in the country to have

just this one weary day struck off the weekly calendar.

THE NEW POWER WASHER

This new power washing machine robs wash day of its drudgery and shortens

the labor of a long working day to that of an hour. It does practically everything for

the housewife but hanging on the line.

The clothes are soaked over night. The next morning they are put through the

power wringer and dropped into the machine. Boiling suds are then poured in, filling

the tub up to within a few inches of the top. The lid is closed and the washing

commences. The housewife may sit down and knit, if she pleases, while the work is

being done. In five to ten minutes, according to the condition of the clothes, they are

ready to be fed through the wringer again into the rinse water.

As both the washer and wringer can be operated at the same time, those

already washed can be wrung out of the rinsing and blueing water and hung on the

line while the second lot of clothes is being washed.

Detail from an ad1150 for a Power Washer (1912)

HOUSEWORK MINUS DISH WASHING

Probably next to laundry work the greatest drudgery in the household is

washing dishes. The piles and piles of greasy dishes which have to be gone over with

in this way, so that the blankets sometimes came off very badly. A somewhat curious story is told of

an incident of this kind in Scotland. Jean Macfarlane was a servant at a farm–house, and did not live

on very good terms with her mistress. One day the two were scouring blankets, and when they started

to wring them, there was a glorious piece of twisting. Neither would say she was tired; so the one

twisted and the other twisted till they twisted the blanket in two.” How They Used to Wring Blankets.

(1897, May 28). Moose Jaw Herald Times, p. 3. 1150 Canadian Swensons Limited. (1912, April 10). STUMP, TREE AND BUSH PULLERS

[Advertisement]. The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 10. Image edited by C. Willmore. (The cut–off ‘easier’ and ‘you’ are in the original.)

670

monotonous regularity three times a day are appalling when one faces years and

years of it. Then there are threshing times when dish washing wastes hours of

valuable time that can ill be spared from baking and cooking.

This second horror of the housewife has been laid by the invention of a really

effective dish washer. It is called the kitchenette family dish washer and sterilizer

and is so simple in construction that the wonder is nobody ever thought of it before.

The dishes are piled around a central perforated tube, the plates and cups below and

the cutlery on a rack above. A pump is worked which brings the boiling water up from

the cavity below and sends it spurting all through the dishes. The washing and

rinsing is only the work of a few minutes and the dishes when dried are ready to go

back on the table.

Oh, ye housewives of half a century, or of five years ago for the matter of that,

what would you say to having the whole arduous task of washing dishes taken off

your hands? If any of our readers are sufficiently interested to write us about this

new dish washer it will be a pleasure to give them further particulars.

Detail from an ad1151 for a Vacuum Cleaner (1912)

A PRACTICAL AND INEXPENSIVE VACUUM CLEANER

Up to the present hand run vacuum cleaners have not been a success. They

have been big and clumsy and heavy, equally as hard to use as the old fashioned

1151 T. Eaton Co. Ltd. (1912, June 26). Let this Splendid Little Vacuum Cleaner Do Your Sweeping

[Advertisement]. The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 36. Image edited by C. Willmore.

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broom and no more satisfactory in results. But quite recently a new one has been

invented which revolutionized the vacuum cleaner business.

It is a little wonder of a machine, not much bigger than an ordinary carpet

sweeper and just a trifle heavier. It could be carried upstairs and down under one

arm by the ordinary woman and run with one hand. There may be pieces of down or

fluff on the carpet which this sweeper will not pick up but it draws out of the carpets

all the fine grey dust which invariably eludes the broom and settles all over the

furniture and walls of the room and upon the head of the sweeper. The handle of this

sweeper can be let down flat so that it can be run under a bed or sofa and save much

moving about of furniture on sweeping days.

Detail from an ad1152 for a Hoosier Kitchen Cabinet (1913)

1152 Hoosier Mfg. Co. (1913, December 10). A “HOOSIER” [Advertisement]. The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 51. Image edited by C. Willmore.

672

HOOSIER KITCHEN CABINETS

The Hoosier kitchen cabinets are very aptly called kitchenettes. They are

pantry and baking table and cupboard all in one and a really ornamental article of

kitchen furniture into the bargain. Starting at the bottom and working up there is a

cupboard with a commodious place for pots and pans. The door of this cupboard is

fitted with racks for pot lids. The deep bottom drawer is divided into two big tin lined

boxes for cake and bread and keep the contents moist and fresh. It is fitted with a tin

cover which shuts automatically with the closing of the drawer. In the upper cupboard

there isn’t an inch of space wasted. Three glass jars on the left door are provided for

tea, coffee and salt. Two racks on the right hand door contain ten crystal jars for

spices.

It contains a flour bin with a capacity of sixty–five pounds, which is poured in

through the top and comes out through the sifter at the bottom. The sugar bin, also

metal lined, is fitted with a dust proof lid. The sugar falls down, a ladleful at a time,

into a little dust protected basin at the cook’s right hand.

There is yet another cupboard above this and on the inside of one of the doors

is a clock, not marked with the time of day, but with the common needs of the kitchen

to which a hand can be pointed as a reminder to the housekeeper when she sets out

to town. In this cupboard is room for dishes and bottles and other essentials of the

kitchen.

Does this description sound inviting to the housewife who makes a dozen trips

from kitchen cupboard to pantry, and dining room to kitchen every time she does a

little baking?

THE FIFTH SERVANT IS THE GASOLINE STOVE

I am not prepared to say that the gasoline stove as it is today will be the

gasoline stove of the future, for it is like the automobile and the aeroplane, still in its

growing stage. Its great danger at present is that a draught may blow out the flame,

in which case the room will fill with gas and if a match is lit in it an explosion will

follow. But people who are careful will guard against this evil and will probably use

their stoves for a lifetime without accident.

There is no question of the added comfort to the housewife in not having to

keep a big wood stove booming away all day with the thermometer at a hundred in

the shade. It is a real labor saving device, too, because it saves trotting out for wood

and chips every few minutes of the day. I know several unselfish country housewives

whose gasoline stoves you couldn’t beg, borrow or buy from them.

16. “Her fairies do the housework” (1911)1153

The clever woman laughs today as her fairies do the housework. She has all

her cleaning finished in about the time her mother took to think about starting the

process, for mechanical cleaners have gone down in price considerably. She has all

sorts of little appliances that lighten her labor and make drudgery a thing to smile

1153 From THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD. (1911, February 5). The Victoria Colonist, p. 11.

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at. Tea and coffee are made at table on neat spirit lamps, dishes are easily kept hot,

and quite a number of nice plates can be cooked in a chafing–dish. It is not a difficult

matter to make toast and to have it done to a turn. A room may be heated now with

an oil stove without any risk of disagreeable odor, for the latest carbon wick needs

cleaning once in three weeks instead of every day. Clothes are aired over a neat

folding square frame placed above a lamp. When a spirit lamp is used in the nursery

there is no danger, for she has a new one that may be turned upside down, when

burning, without the slightest risk.

When cooking of a more substantial nature has to be done, the kitchen is fitted

with the latest aids placed on the market by scientific designers. The nice tinned

meats, fruits, and even vegetables stored in her larder are at her service almost as

soon as she looks at them, so speedily does the tin–opener of today do its work. She

peels her potatoes with a patent peeler, and she cuts them for chips by pressing the

vegetables over a special frame. When she makes a pudding she sifts her flour and

grates her bread by mechanical contrivances. If she has soup or any sort of puree to

prepare she selects one out of sixteen flat sieves to fit into her frame. If beef–tea is to

be made, the beef is cut down and put into a sealed metal pot, which is then set within

a second one, so that water never touches the meat. Cakes are beaten by machinery,

and in most households ice–cream is freely used because the American freezer is so

quickly and so easily managed.

A mayonnaise is not so difficult to make as it use dot be, for the last thing in

whisks is fitted with a patent that lets the oil through in measured drops as the eggs

are beaten. One person can work this with excellent results. The roast or the chicken

in the oven all but cooks itself, for the roasting pan is a self–basting one. […] All

canisters, basins, jugs, cans, and other articles in use in the kitchen are enameled, so

that not only is the flat neat and dainty, but breakage is a thing that rarely happens

as the mechanical brownies1154 go about their daily tasks.

17. An Electrical Age (1930)1155

The gathering of over five hundred women at the Crystal Garden banquet hall

yesterday afternoon proved that the art of cooking has by no means lost any of its

interest in spite of appliances and equipment which seem to make the preparation of

meals almost automatic. Miss Frances E. Thompson, late official lecturer for the

London County Council, is giving a series of addresses this week, accompanied by

cooking demonstrations, under the auspices of the Canadian General Electric

Company, the B.C. Electric Company, and the Murphy Electric Company, sponsored

by the Colonist. A delightful woman, with a keen sense of humor and a particularly

attractive personality, Miss Thompson presented her opening lecture in a most clear

and very appealing manner. She had come across the Dominion from Halifax,

1154 In this context, a type of fairy. 1155 From Electrical Cooking Stove Demonstrated to Women. (1930, March 18). The Daily Colonist, p. 7.

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lecturing on the way, and reached Victoria with a feeling of “home–coming,”

expressing herself “thrilled with this lovely Spring and feeling of home.”

AN ELECTRICAL AGE

In her introductory remarks she told of the growth of electricity as applied to

household uses. “We are living in an electrical age,” she continued, and from a

reference to some of the uses of electricity went on to deal chiefly with its effect upon

cooking arrangements. The new Hotpoint electric range was explained in detail, the

improved “element” being minutely described and its advantages over the earlier

improvements pointed out.

Detail from an ad1156 for a Hotpoint High–Speed Range (1930)

1156 Canadian General Electric Co. Ltd. (1930, June 12). DESIGNED BY WOMEN [Advertisement].

Didsbury Pioneer, p. 4. Image Edited by C. Willmore.

675

No longer must the busy housewife forgo her pleasures to return to the home

in time to prepare the meals. She no longer needs to stand over the stove, fearful lest

the oven grow too hot, or the fire go out altogether. Cooking is now automatic, and,

with the exception of the necessity of preparing the food for the oven, she may leave

the house in the morning, having set the oven to the time when the food should

commence cooking, and return later in the evening to find dinner almost ready for

the table.

The introduction of the new high speed “elements” which are such an

important feature on the new ranges has done away with the heretofore [common]

complaint of the slowness of the old electric range. On the new coil, a quart of water

will boil in eight minutes, it was explained by Miss Thompson.

As a first demonstration Miss Thompson made a layer cake1157, which, she

explained, may be used as a foundation for many cakes, which may be varied by

different flavorings, frosting, etc. This was as follows: Half a cup of butter, one cup of

sugar, two eggs, two cups of flour, four teaspoons of baking powder, a little salt, one

teaspoon of vanilla, and about three–quarters of a cup of milk. The oven was set at

350 degrees and was turned to 375 degrees as soon as the cake was put inside.

The raisin muffins1158 were made up as follows: A quarter of a cup of butter,

half a cup of sugar, two cups of flour, four teaspoons of baking powder, one egg, three–

quarters of a cup of raisins and about the same amount of milk. For these the oven

was set at 450 degrees.

THE REFRIGERATOR

The great advantage of the electric refrigerator in connection with the

preparation and preservation of food was explained by Miss Thompson, who was

emphatic that fruit such as rhubarb, and vegetables such as celery, lettuce, etc.,

should be covered while in the refrigerator to prevent them losing their crispness.

The placing of food in the refrigerator was also an important matter.

Miss Thompson demonstrated the making of shortbread cookies1159, which

need not be rolled out laboriously. This recipe was as follows: Three–quarters of a cup

1157 Compare this to a pre–electric Canadian recipe from 1888: “Try this layer cake. Five eggs, their

weight in fine flour: and also in sugar, and half their weight in butter. Melt the butter and mix it with

the sugar, adding the yolks of the eggs, one by one, beating all the time, and then add the whites,

which have been beaten to a stiff froth, adding the flour last. Bake in four jelly–cake tins. Marmalade

or quince–jam is spread between the layers.” LAYER CAKES. (1888, September 6). Qu’Appelle Progress, p. 2. 1158 A muffin recipe from 1887 omits the raisins – and the egg. “Two cups of milk, a teaspoonful of lard

or butter, three cups of flour, half a yeast cake, a teaspoonful of salt sifted with the flour, heat the

milk; stir in the shortening, and when blood warm add half the flour and beat hard for three minutes;

let it rise in a moderately warm place all night; in the morning work in the rest of the flour and the

salt; make into balls and let it rise in greased–muffin rings; set on a floured board. When light slip a

cake–turner under each and transfer to a hot griddle well greased. Turn when the under side is done.

Eat warm, pulling them open to butter them.” RAISED MUFFINS. (1887, May 22). The Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 5. 1159 A recipe for Scotch Shortbread from 1912: “Four ounces of butter, five ounces of flour, two ounces

of ground rice, two ounces of powdered sugar and a pinch of salt. Put all the ingredients on a baking

676

of butter, one–third of a cup of sugar, two cups of flour, flavoring, and a little salt. All

should be worked into a pliable dough, molded into a long roll, wrapped in waxed

paper and set in the ice box. Last evening Miss Thompson took the roll from the

refrigerator, showing that it had become firm, sliced it into cookies and baked them,

the result being deliciously crisp, short biscuits.

Detail from an ad1160 for General Electric Refrigerators (1930)

DEMONSTRATION TODAY

The demonstrations continue again today. The subject, as yesterday, will be

the correct method of utilizing the electric range. This afternoon includes the cooking

of an oven dinner, the use of surface elements for cooking fruits and vegetables and

board in separate heaps, knead the butter and sugar together until all the sugar is used, then knead

in the ground rice next, then the flour slowly. After all the flour has been kneaded in and the dough is

quite smooth make it into one or two rounds, using the rolling pin a little. Make the edges high and

pinch them. Prick all over with a fork through and through and bake on a floured baking tin in a

moderate oven for twenty minutes or longer, according to the thickness. A piece of paper should be

placed under the shortbread when it is cooked in a gas oven. Cool the shortbread for a few minutes on

the tin before lifting it. For afternoon tea shortbread [cookies] roll out the dough a little thinner and

cut with a fancy cutter.” MABEL. (1912, May 2). MABEL’S CHITCHAT. Westminster Daily News, p. 7. 1160 Calgary Power Co., Ltd. (1930, September 11). The General Electric Refrigerator [Advertisement].

The Wetawiskin Times, p. 3. Image Edited by C. Willmore.

677

the use of the broiler. To cook an oven dinner, which includes roast beef, green beans

and baked potatoes, will be shown. The dessert, Brown Betty1161, is made as follows:

Four large apples, 1–4 cups of butter, 1 1–2 cups of soft bread crumbs, one cup sugar,

juice and rind of one lemon, a few browned crumbs. Peel and slice apples, melt the

butter, and mix with breadcrumbs, sugar and grated lemon rind. Butter a deep dish

and coat it with browned crumbs. Put in a layer of mixture, then a layer of apples;

repeat until the dish is full. Bake at 400 degrees for 60 minutes.

The use of surface elements in the cooking of fruit and vegetables without the

use of water, will be shown. Those chosen will be spinach, beets1162 and carrots.

Prepare vegetables and put into casserole or saucepan to conform with the size of the

surface unit. Add a small piece of butter. Cover, turn switch to low and cook for twenty

to forty minutes, depending on the age of the vegetables.

The use of the broiler will be shown by the cooking of broiled steak, sliced

tomatoes and potato chips.

This programme will conclude the afternoon session, commencing at 2:30. At 8

o’clock they will re–commence, continuing the same subject; and the cooking of roast

chicken, the use of surface elements and the use of the broiler will be further

demonstrated.

The recipe for dressing of poultry1163 will be given as follows: Four cups of bread

crumbs, one teaspoonful of salt, one cup of chopped celery, quarter–teaspoonful of

pepper, one ounce of melted butter. Mix all the ingredients, moisten with a little hot

water or milk. The use of the economy cooker will be shown in relation to the cooking

of vegetables. Surface elements will be demonstrated as follows: Use shallow utensils

1161 A Brown Betty recipe, from 1894, in verse: “Go gather the apples that ripe red are lying, / And cut

all the cores and the peelings away; / Then slice them, just as one would slice them for frying. / And

we’ll bake a brown betty for dinner today. / Then get a deep pan with a close–fitting cover, / Alternately

apples and crumbs in it lay; / With sugar and cinnamon sprinkle them over, / O we’ll bake a brown

betty for dinner today. / Now go fill the pitcher with milk that is creaming, / And carry brown betty

along on a tray; / An odor deliciously spicy comes steaming – / O we’ll have a grand feast on Miss Betty

today.” Brown Betty. (1894, October 25). Qu’Appelle Progress, p. 2. A more prosaic recipe was published earlier the same year: “Brown breadcrumbs in the oven. In a greased dish place alternate

layers of crumbs and chopped apples with cinnamon and brown sugar. Bake one hour.” SEVEN GOOD

PUDDINGS. (1894, June 21). The Brandon Mail, p. 3. 1162 From 1897: “A vegetable should always be perfectly fresh. It takes twice the time to cook if it is

stale. If at all wilted it should be placed in cold water in the ice box for half an hour or longer, according

to its condition. It should be thoroughly washed to remove all foreign substances. It should never be

salted until entirely or nearly cooked. Those who have never tried this method have lost half the

delicious sweet flavor of fresh corn, pleas, asparagras, beans, carrots, onions, etc. […] The water should

be boiling fast before the vegetable is placed in it. It should then boil more gently and the kettle should

not be covered. […] Beets – One hour if young, three hours if old. […] Spinach – Twenty minutes.”

ABOUT COOKING VEGETABLES. (1897, April 16). The Moose Jaw Herald, p. 7. 1163 The same newspaper, in 1908, gave the following recipe for poultry dressing: “Cut white bread

(stale bread is best) in cubes, then crumble fine, mixing one egg and enough melted butter to have it

crumbly and moist in the hand, seasoning highly with pepper and salt, some sage and, if liked, raw

liver chopped, an onion, and a little thyme, with one tablespoon of mixed powdered herbs, a pinch of

ground mace and one dozen mushrooms and oysters, drained from their liquor and chopped fine. Other

seasoning, such as chopped apples, celery, raisins or parsley may be used if desired.” TRIED RECIPES.

(1908, February 7). The Daily Colonist, p. 8.

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with close–fitting covers, again choosing receptacles that conform to the size of the

surface unit. Use little or no water, no more than half a cup at any rate and cook on

low heat, stirring occasionally. Broiling of chops and vegetables will complete the

session.

Canned Food for Unexpected Guests The turn of the 20th century saw rapid improvement in another set of labor–saving technologies: ready–to–eat foods. The following articles chronicle changing expectations for an ‘emergency pantry’ from the 1890s to the 1910s.

18. “Absolutely Nothing” in the House (1897)1164

There is scarcely a house where company does not come unexpectedly

sometime or other, especially if the family is sociable and enjoys society. Sometimes

these unexpected guests come at the most inconvenient time when there is

“absolutely nothing” in the house. This can never quite be the case on a farm house

but it happens frequently in town houses. The housewife wishes to make her guests

feel as welcome as possible and it certainly would make them uncomfortable to see

that they have put her to inconvenience. The stock on hand may not result in as fine

a spread as would have been provided had the guests been prepared for, but a capable

housekeeper can, with the aid of some canned goods, make quite a palatable and

delicious dinner or lunch with what she has in the house.

With butter, cream, milk and eggs to draw upon, and a few canned articles to

help her out, a housewife need never feel that her hurriedly prepared dinner will be

a failure. The wise housekeeper will stock a corner of her pantry with canned

vegetables, fruit, pickles, jams and jellies in case of emergency. Besides these she will

have some cans of either salmon, shrimps, lobster, sardines, etc., which are all very

nice if there is no time in which to cook meat. Oysters come in cans during winter and

keep nicely for some time, and for those who are fond of clam chowder, that put up in

cans is quite as good as fresh.

In the poultry yard may be found chickens, turkeys, geese and ducks, but all

these require time to prepare and when in a hurry, the canned goods quite answer

the purpose. The ham and cheese which are generally found in the storeroom of a

farmhouse may be used for many a dainty and appetizing dish. Then dried and

shredded codfish put up in packages or sold by the pound keeps well and should find

a place among the stores.

If there is no fresh bread or cake in the house, delicious biscuits may be made,

providing there is a hot fire. Into a quart of sifted flour mix very thoroughly three

tablespoons of baking powder and a small one of salt. Work into this two heaping

tablespoonfuls of butter; then add a pint of milk. Mix and roll out. Cut and bake in a

moderate oven.

1164 From PREPARE FOR EMERGENCY. (1897, December 17). Moose Jaw Herald Times, p. 7

679

Or if wheat muffins are desired they may be made quickly as follows: One and

a half cupfuls of entire wheat, two level teaspoonfuls of baking powder, one cupful of

milk, one beaten egg, one–half teaspoonful of salt, one tablespoonful of melted butter.

Mix the beaten egg with the milk, pour it over the flour mixed with the other dry

materials, add the melted butter and beat thoroughly. Pour the batter into hot,

buttered gem pans and bake about half an hour.

If one has nothing especially nice for dessert a fresh cake seems especially good.

One that is simple to make is baked in layers and spread with jelly. Beat up an egg

lightly with one cup of sugar and a lump of butter the size of an egg. Add one cupful

of rich milk, and enough flour to make a light batter. Two teaspoonfuls of baking

powder should have been added to the flour. Bake quickly in two or three layers.

When cooled spread jelly between.

Detail from an ad1165 for Dr. Price’s Cream Baking Powder (1897)

If there are enough cold boiled potatoes and the hostess does not wish to serve

them fried to her guests a delicious dish is made in this way: Slice them up and put

a layer in a buttered dish. Sprinkle a little grated cheese over it. Continue this until

all the potatoes are used. A little salt should also have been used. Melt a lump of

butter the size of an egg and pour over. Sprinkle a handful of crisp bread crumbs over

top and set the dish in a hot oven for ten minutes or until golden brown on top. Plain

boiled potatoes will be much daintier if forced through a colander with a potato

masher. They will make a dish of light, snowy flakes, and it takes but a few minutes

longer to prepare them.

1165 Price Baking Powder Co. (1897, November 11). DR. PRICE’S CREAM BAKING POWDER

[Advertisement]. Qu’Appelle Progress, p. 4. Image edited by C. Willmore. The full ad reads, “Awarded Highest Honors – World’s Fair, Gold Medal, Midwinter Fair. A Pure Grape Cream of Tartar Powder.

40 YEARS THE STANDARD.”

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If the housewife wishes to make a can of salmon appear to best advantage, she

can make croquettes, which are delicious. Flake one can of salmon; rub the yolks of

three hardboiled eggs to a paste and mix well with the salmon, adding the soft crumbs

of a thick slice of stale bread, with pepper, salt and celery salt, moistening with lemon

juice. Shape into finger rolls, dip in beaten egg and fine bread crumbs, in egg again

and fry in hot lard.

Cooked ham can be used for ham patties, which are very nice served with

potatoes in any form. To a pint of chopped ham add a cupful of crisp bread crumbs, a

little pepper and moisten the whole with milk. Put this batter into gem pans, break

an egg over each and add a small piece of butter. Sprinkle with fine crisp crumbs and

bake until brown.

For dessert, fresh or canned fruits with cake and tea or coffee will top off any

dinner satisfactorily. The housewife who will utilize the resources at hand, and who

keeps her little store of goods to fall back upon in case of emergency need never worry

when the unexpected guests make their appearance. She always bids them a smiling

welcome knowing that so far as her table is concerned they will fare well.

19. “I will be glad to have you any day” (1913)1166

How often we housekeepers say cordially, “Drop in any time for luncheon. I

will be glad to have you any day.” Now there are few housekeepers, perfect though

they be, who have not at some time found themselves in a dilemma when their cordial

invitations have been accepted and the chance guests have arrived. There are a few

of us who would be glad at all times to have visitors at luncheon or dinner time.

Long ago the wise housewife provided for just such emergencies, and her

pantry held a collection of foods with which to transform the simple meal into one

both delicious and dainty. The unexpected guest held more terror for the one–time

housewife than for us, as the first emergency shelf knew but few of the many

delicacies that the modern hostess may have at hand.

Time was, for example, when salt codfish came only in solid pieces of cod steak

that required long hours of soaking or boiling to prepare it for the table. Modern

invention has found two delicious ways of preparing this nutritious food so that the

housewife may keep it on her emergency shelf for instant use. One of these is in

shredded form. It is ready for baking in ten minutes; there is no soaking, no boiling

and no odor. More than that it contains much food value, and a ten–cent package will

be sufficient to serve five people. Codfish balls, creamed codfish, and codfish and eggs

may all be easily and quickly prepared.

The other way in which this food is now prepared for sale is one that appeals

to every lover of good cooking. The fresh fish are boiled, lightly salted and put up in

ten and fifteen–cent cans within a few hours after being taken from the sea. These

boneless fish flakes may be used in many ways, and as the fish requires no cooking it

is ready to use as soon as the can is opened.

1166 From Of Interest to Women. (1913, May 3). The Week, p. 9

681

Another supply for the modern emergency shelf lies in the various soups put

up in dry, cube form. One cube makes a cup of appetizing bouillon, or they may be

added to some simple soup or gravy, improving these greatly. Even the simplest

luncheon takes on company airs with the addition of this soup. To accompany it there

are tins of excellent dinner and luncheon biscuits that keep fresh and crisp in their

waxed wrappers.

Ad1167 for OXO cubes. (1913)

Another emergency help that the housewife of today has on her shelf is a can

of lemon pie filling. This is put up in ten–cent cans, one can making four pies. It is a

guaranteed pure food. The firm manufacturing this filling also offers orange and

lemon sugar. These sugars are iced for orangeade or lemonade, flavoring for sauces,

cake fillings and so forth and cost but ten cents a box. They are most economical.

Onion salt is another article which should be found on the emergency shelf ready to

season salads, soups or meats. It comes in ten–cent shakers, and the contents of one

shaker is equal to one quart of onions in flavoring value.

A date–nut butter that comes in ten– and fifteen–cent jars is a delicious

sandwich filler as well as being a most wholesome and nutritious sweet. It is a

specially prepared combination of dates and nuts and is delicious for afternoon tea or

luncheon sandwiches, as a cake filler or for school lunches.

1167 OXO Cubes. (1913, November 15). Every one a Meal! [Advertisement]. The Edmonton Capital, p. 4. Image edited by C. Willmore.

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And what pantry would be completely stocked without a plum pudding? Fancy

having a delicious plum pudding always on hand. These puddings come in one, two

and three–pound tins, the one–pound tin making five generous portions. These

puddings may be had at prices varying from twenty–three cents to forty cents per

pound, and to accompany them is an excellent pudding sauce (suitable by the way for

any pudding) which comes ready to serve at fifteen cents a jar.

One new York firm, famous for over half a century for the purity and quality

of their goods, make these puddings and sauces and are also offering this year a

wonderful combination of fruits that make a delicious foundation for an easy and

quick fruit punch for social affairs. It is put up in one–half pint, pint and quart jars,

the quart jar for making four quarts of punch. These jars are not expensive. With this

fruit as a basis a most tasty punch may be prepared in five minutes.

No modern shelf would be complete without several cans of evaporated milk

and cream or a bottle of malted milk tablets for children. High–class stores are filled

with aids to good and quick housekeeping, and each day seems to show some article

of food prepared in a new way ready to serve with but a few moments’ preparation.

Once a veal loaf meant an hour’s work. Now veal, ham or beef loaf may be had ready

to heat and serve at fifteen cents a tin. Delicious deviled chicken at nineteen cents a

can, succotash or golden wax beans ready to serve at thirteen cents a can and

spaghetti and cheese at fourteen cents a can are a few of these many modern aids to

the housewife.

The modern housewife not only has such well–known, ready–to–serve foods as

baked beans, jars of sliced meats, canned soups, etc., in her pantry, but she has cake

icings, and fillings in jars, salad dressing, crystallized ginger at ten cents a jar,

appetizing and wonderfully prepared herrings at ten and twenty–five cents for jars

and tins, and tomato paste or strained tomato at only five cents per jar.

French mushrooms at twenty–five cents a glass are kept in readiness to make

the steak into a company dish. Luncheon cheese in picnic size jars at fifteen cents,

peanut butter at ten cents per jar for sandwiches or soups, salted peanuts at ten cents

to change plain salads into fancy dishes – all these are on her shelves.

She has learned to keep gelatin on hand for use in making a perfect

mayonnaise dressing or to beat up in her whipped cream. She no longer has to boil

peas, beans or lentils many hours to obtain one of these nutritious soups. From

Germany we get them as pea, bean or lentil flour done up in the quaintest packages

or rolls. These may be had from ten cents for a quarter–pound roll up to thirty–five

cents for a one–pound package.

This same firm also offers soup squares at ten cents and consommé cubes at

thirty–five cents per can. With the countless kinds of crackers that may be had at

small expense the housewife may, at small cost, plan several complete luncheons or

even dinners to be kept on her shelf for the unexpected guest.

There is one word of warning that every housekeeper needs to take to herself.

Beware lest you depend on your emergency shelf not in emergencies but as an easy

way of escaping work; for in case of real emergencies you are apt to find, like Old

Mother Hubbard, that the cupboard is bare, and then the poor guest would have none.

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Ad1168 for Mooney’s Biscuits (1913)

The Changing Craft of Laundry Laundry was often counted among the most arduous tasks in the household. The way in which clothes were washed changed considerably from the late 19th to the early 20th centuries.

20. June and the Laundry Woman (1892)1169

The first June days are welcome to the good laundry woman. No artificial

bleachers do such work as the green grass and sunshine. Winter clothes are quite

likely to have acquired something of a yellow hue. They may now be bleached to a

snowy whiteness and acquire the fragrance of clover.

Household linens, which no housekeeper allows to be frozen, will bleach in a

few days if spread on the green grass in the bright sun and sprinkled three or four

times a day. No bleaching but this is strictly safe, though the market abounds with

bleaching fluids and bleaching powders. No prudent housekeeper uses a soap or fluid

1168 Mooney’s. (1913, December 5). MOONEY’S PERFECTION SODA BISCUITS [Advertisement]. The Raymond Leader, p. 6. Image edited by C. Willmore. The ad reads in part: “TOO MUCH BAKING HAS KILLED MANY A WOMAN. Too many hours over a hot stove – too few for recreation. MOONEY has

changed all this. MOONEY’S BISCUITS are made especially to replace home baking – to give the tired

woman a chance.” 1169 From The Laundry. (1892, June 30). Qu’Appelle Progress, p. 3.

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of such strength that it eats the dirt out of the clothes without rubbing. The rubbing

board remains to–day as much of a necessity as it was the day before washing

machines were invented.

One great labor–saving machine has been given to the laundry which actually

does its work better than it can possibly be done by hand, and that is the wringer.

There appears so far no possible way of inventing a machine to take the place of hand–

rubbing, one that will select out the spots that need rubbing and will soap and rub

them especially, giving the remainder of the garment merely a general washing. It is

quite true that a washing machine does the work quite as intelligently as the

unskilled washerwoman who does her work with no regard to the necessities of the

case, but this is no recommendation.

There is a great deal to be said about soaking clothes over night. If they are

merely plunged in cold water it is better to leave them unsoaked, but if each garment

is carefully looked over, the fruit and coffee stain removed with boiling water and all

the other stains treated as they should be and the clothes then soaked in cold water

over night, a little soap being rubbed on the wristbands and other parts of the

garments which are especially soiled, it will prove a success. The careful laundress

puts her coarse clothes in one tub and her finer clothes in another and she begins by

washing her fine clothes.

Where the water is hard1170, as it is in certain parts of the country where the

water supply comes from mountain springs, it will be necessary to add a certain

amount of ammonia or borax to soften it. Two tablespoonfuls of ammonia to a gallon

of water or half a pound of borax to five gallons of water is fully sufficient. This should

be used in the rubbing water and again in the rinsing water. There should be an

amount of melted soap put in the boiler and this will probably soften the water

sufficiently for boiling. It is a great mistake to allow clothes to boil for any great length

of time. As soon as they are fairly boiling they should be removed to the rinsing water.

Too much cannot be said in regard to the necessity of thorough rinsing. If the clothes

are thoroughly rinsed they may be slightly blued and, though this is not a necessity,

it gives a pearly tint when properly done which is very desirable. Some good

laundresses blue their clothes every other time they are washed. This is by far the

best plan as it forestalls any attempt of the laundress to cover up the stains by the

use of blueing1171. In order to treat the different sets of clothes washed in alternate

weeks let the first two weeks’ washing be blued and then omit the blueing during the

next two washings. With plenty of fresh air and sunshine and a little good judgment

even washing day may not be always so sorry a day as it is usually pictured.

1170 Water is ‘hard’ if it is high in dissolved minerals, especially calcium. 1171 Blueing or ‘bluing’ is a blue pigment added to laundry to counter its natural yellowing.

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21. “Blame it on the Soap Suds” (1909)1172

If I bore you this week blame it on the soap suds. If I am cranky and vicious and generally no pleasant or fit companion for ladies in their drawing rooms, it is

because the steam from the kitchen, arising from the boiling of clothes on the family

wash–day, has driven me into a perspiration of cantankerousness.

Wash–day is an invention of the devil. Had I my way it should never obtrude

itself in the peace and tranquility of my little home. I dislike that early morning

shuffle to get breakfast over so that the boiler may queen it alone on the front of the

range. I am unqualifiedly down on eat–me–quick breakfasts. For my own part I like

to linger over my morning papers and coffee. It’s the only loitering I ever can count

on in the twenty–four hours of the day. I am in despair as I gaze at my pleasant little

maid’s countenance take on the look that shrieks at me: “It’s wash–day. Beware!

Beware! My temper won’t stand for much! Take care; take care!”

I am fond of that little maid, and I like her as all good little maids should be,

happy and cheerful. But anyone that can be cheerful on washday’s a jewel, an

uncanonized saint.

Listen to the confusion.

“Small Boy, have you changed your flannels?”

“Dad, dear, have you gathered up all your handkerchiefs?”

“Yes, change the baby’s clothes, of course, put in all the table–linen.”

Whir–r–r–r–r.

It’s enough to drive a perfect lady mad.

Luncheon on such a day is a farce of cold, untempting pick–ups, seasoned with

the sweet flavor of soap–suds. I would abolish it all.

In Germany some one tells me, they wash three times a year. Then never in

the home.

To Germany for mine. I never realized before the call or lure of the Vaterland.

It must have been this.

22. A Bachelor’s Laundry (1907)1173

Many problems confronted the old timer and one of the deepest and most

unfathomable was the washing of his clothes. He could find time for almost anything,

and time was around in plenty, but when it came to the washing of clothes even the

strongest man will weaken. Indians then did not understand this phase of

civilization, and Chinamen had not come in. Women who have to wash clothes have

our deepest sympathy. All batchelors had different ways of going about their washing,

so periods between washing days varied in every household and with each individual.

1172 PEGGY. (1909, November 13). THE MIRROR. The Saturday News, p. 7. Written by Gertrude Balmer Watt (1879 – 1963). 1173 From Barker, E.N. (1907, September 14). TRIBULATIONS OF THE MALE HOUSE KEEPER.

The Saturday News, p. 1. Written by Edward Neale Barker (1859 – 1942).

686

Different methods […] led to different results, but in whatever case, however

attained, the main idea was cleanliness, the labor a necessity or it might never have

been performed. The ultimate ratio of success varied in degree.

“JUMPED” SOCKS.

Washing was usually confined to personal and under garments with mending

an extra not included in the washing bill. Mending socks was easy for in serious cases

the hole, if a large one, could be tied round with a piece of string, and, if the heel was

very bad, then the sock would be “jumped.” Jumped socks are new to the fresh comers

and are mysteries to careful housekeepers, in fact unknown probably east of

Winnipeg. But as time is precious to those leading the strenuous life, and the

Westerner prefers the most direct way to anything, a piece of string tied round a hole

in a stocking is a much quicker way of mending than darning the stocking in

duplicate, that is with a needle and by word of mouth at the same time, for the morals

of the public should always be attended to. When the heel was tied up with a string

it was better to sew the sock round and wear the hole tied in a bunch at the top of the

foot, for, as we usually wore high boots with high heels, they had a tendency to take

off the hide when walking at any time but which faculty was increased when the sock

was jumped.

Some batchelors had washing days regularly, others washed when they felt

like it or the spirit moved them, kept a good many clothes and had a “bee” at intervals.

THE RIVER AS A WASH–TUB.

Others went round the job, evading the deepest mysteries of the art, a common

plan being to gather the dirty clothes then tie them round the middle of the bundle

with a picket rope, drive a peg into the river bank and leave the clothes into the

middle of the river to wash themselves by the natural flow of the current. After a time

in the river the bundle was hauled ashore and the clothes rung out and hung on the

bushes for the sun and wind to finish the job. This method was simple and saved

much time, but if the owner of the clothes was called away and left his clothes too

long in the river, they had an unfortunate faculty of accumulating green slime which

was hard to get off and consists of mineral plant life, we believe called by the scientists

algae. When the clothes became much coated it led to a great deal of inconvenience

for it necessitated “boiling” water and using soap. Hot water is bad for flannels.

DISADVANTAGES OF SHEETS.

Sheets were dispensed with entirely in batchelor households and were

considered a decided superfluity, besides which they do not look well if the owner or

another has been to bed in them with his boots on. Dirt shakes out of a blanket but

not so well out of a sheet. In addition to this sheets are cold in cold houses and give

the owner a dismal, sudden chill and are bad for the liver. […]

EXPERIMENTS IN IRONING.

[…] We did yearn for fresh pocket handkerchiefs. These we could wash fairly

clean but the ironing was a stumper. Fertile imaginations suggested many things but

substitutes were poor. The last resort was to fill a baking powder can with hot coals,

but, just at the crucial moment, when the first handkerchief looked as if it was just

going to be ironed, the solder melted out the bottom of the tin and the coals spread

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all over the handkerchiefs. All that saved the linen was kicking the coals onto the

floor and the last state of that man was worse than the first, and, as many are called

but few are chosen, the experiment was given up.

One of the boys later told his best girl about the trouble with these

handkerchiefs, very gently and with considerable diffidence, but the lady saw no joke

in the matter and tartly replied: “Why, you goose, why didn’t you wash the

handkerchiefs then spread them out to dry on a looking glass or something smooth,

then they wouldn’t have needed ironing.” And Peter went out, found some congenial

spirits and set ‘em up. […]

BILLY’S STREAK OF INDUSTRY

On this subject the temptation is to run off the trolley wire but we must revert

to the washing of clothes and leave the ironing which was a failure. One of our

neighbors was getting on in years and had a distinct aversion to washing clothes yet

would feign be clean, but the temptation to put off the evil day was often too strong

and energy would accumulate till the overflow had to find an outlet. So one day Billy

came back from a ride, cut himself a lot of wood, boiled some water and proceeded to

wash. As he proceeded, pride in his work tended to make him better tempered so he

wound up in a blaze of glory, hung the clothes on the fence and lit his pipe surveying

the work with a very superior and contented air looking down from a height on

common mortals.

In a little while his partner rode up, surveyed the work Billy had done, then,

not being a diplomatists with the faculty of keeping the mouth shut at difficult periods

of the world’s history, he exclaimed enthusiastically, “Why, Billy, you are a Hades of

a good chap, you’ve been and gone and washed MY clothes,” Billy hissed like a soda

water fountain, and grabbed for a club ready to wreak his vengeance on the first thing

that came in the way, so the partner, taking the hint, climbed the hurricane deck of

his cayuse and left till Billy cooled off. From this contretemps Billy never quite

recovered with the bitter experience a damper to his spirits for many years and it was

not a subject to be carelessly approached.

We now roll up our clothing at the end of the week and send it to the steam

laundry that gives special rates for family washing.

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23. Winnipeg’s Options for Urban Laundry (1911)1174

Where do you have your clothes washed? Are you of the home stamp and cling

to the boiler, tub and washboard? Do you have your soiled clothes put in a bag and

have the steam laundry rig call for them? Are you a believer in John Chinaman’s1175

skill and reliability? In one of these three columns you must be if you are normal;

those who are outside of them are out of the ordinary – pretty much in a class by

themselves.

Of course, the day of the boiler, washtub, scrubbing board and flat–iron are

pretty well passed away. The housewife who does her own washing is conspicuous in

modern life chiefly because there are so few of her, and when it comes to finding a

washerwoman who will come in and do the weekly wash, the person who essays this

task has Hercules backed off the boards for taking on a job that nobody wants and

few can do. Experience has taught the housekeeper of today who doesn’t feel right up

to the work of doing her own washing and ironing, that it would be a deal easier to

raise a flock of white crows than it is to find a washerwoman who knows how to wash,

who will wash, and who will come two weeks running to do the work. To her very

great sorrow, the housewife has found that the average washerwoman is an autocrat

at her work, and a quantity as unstable as the water in which she was the family

linen – when she washes at all. Such a thing as a washerwoman who is at once skillful

and reliable has never been discovered, or – supposing such a miracle to have taken

place – her identity has been kept a dead secret from a waiting world; if she were

placed on exhibition, the show would attract more patrons than a real mermaid. The

problem of finding a washerwoman of this type is too difficult to be solved and too

grievous to dwell upon; housewives have wrestled with it in tears and tribulation and

house husbands have had it thrust upon them. Some have taken it up blithely and

have gone forth as conquering heroes, armed with […] the spears of business

procedure. Others, wiser than their brothers, have kindly but firmly refused to take

any hand in the game and all have come to the same end – nothing doing in

washerwomen.

LAUNDRY FILLS LONG–FELT WANT

Into a world bereft of the old fashioned washerwoman, the laundry comes as

an angel of light. It has the bulge – several of them, maybe – on an old–fashioned

washerwoman. It is never ill. It is as systematic as the sun, moon and stars. It is

cleanly. It has sanitation, writ large, in every process. And it takes the work of

washing and ironing out of the home, to the everlasting relief of the housewife and

the betterment of the house and all who live in it, for, however we may hark back

upon the trail of oldtime processes to praise them and hold them up as examples of

what is best in life, candor compels the admission that not all of the things that were

done by our fathers and mothers were [wise]. For instance: No house, nor the people

in it, were ever bettered by having the place deluged with steam once a week nor was

1174 From Washing the Clothes of a Large City. (1911, May 31). The Raymond Rustler, p. 8. 1175 John Chinaman was an offensive generic name for male Chinese people.

689

any woman’s health ever made more robust by getting her body all heated up over a

washtub and then going out to hang the clothes to dry in a temperature so low that

they froze as they touched the line.

There are laundries and laundries, to be sure, and some are better than others

but it may be set down with some degree of certainty that all laundries in these piping

times of peace and prying health officers are pretty well up to the mark of sanitary

perfection and that competition is a force to make them good from a business point of

view.

A STEAM LAUNDRY AT WORK

Let us take the steam laundry as an example. Here is an institution that has

grown out of the daily accumulation of soiled clothes and the dearth of washerwomen.

Steam is the natural enemy of dirt; it is keen, penetrating, disinfectant. It drives the

dirt out by contact, drives machinery for washing, heats water, dries clothes, does dry

cleaning, takes the place of electricity when that mysterious juice gives out, as it

occasionally does; in fact, steam is the real thing in a laundry and a steam laundry is

the last analysis of the modern mechanical washerwoman that has taken the place of

her lesser predecessor.

The steam laundry is a strictly modern product to fill modern demands. There

is no record that Adam wore a biled shirt1176 even after excess knowledge led him to

adopt the fig–leaf fashion plate as his standard of taste in clothing. Even if Adam had

come to that stage of bodily distress, Eve would have fixed the thing up for him by

tying the thing to a bush overhanging a running stream and letting Nature do the

work or washing while Eve herself sat on the mossy bank and bashed the head of

every snake that came her way for making her so much extra work around the house.

But the case of the modern Adam and Eve is another story. Adam’s biled shirts must

not only be clean but they must be as glossy as starch and skill can make them. Eve’s

clothes – the washable ones – take a good bit of work and care, too, and the little

Adams and Eves have their share in the family wash, so that the pile mounts high

and fills a sizable bag for the laundrymen to take away each week and return a few

days later, after the steam laundry has put the clothes through a course of cleansing

sprouts.

To meet the multiplied demands of thousands of families, the steam laundry

has evolved after long study and persistent trials of methods and machines. Out of

this study and experiment, the finished product emerges, clean, methodical,

marvelous in its appointments and execution. Every appliance that ingenuity has

suggested and practice has perfected for forwarding the work of the modern laundry

is in use, and the system by which clothes are collected, washed, ironed, and then

resolved into their individual parts, is no less surprisingly complete than the laundry

itself is in its mechanical parts.

WHEN THE LAUNDRYMAN CALLS

1176 “In the mining camps, and rough parts generally, a white shirt is called a “biled shirt” to

distinguish it from the usual woollen garment, which cannot be boiled.” Anonymous. (1874). The Slang Dictionary. London: Chatto and Windus.

690

The first step is getting the clothes together. For this purpose the laundry has

a number of collection rigs, proportioned to the business done. These rigs are well

kept, cleanly and smart, and the men who drive them are required to keep themselves

in good care as to clothing and general appearance. They are paid from $48 to $80 a

month, and need to be somewhat of diplomats besides having the ordinary

qualifications of drivers of city collection and delivery rigs – knowledge of the city, of

driving, of carefully collecting and as carefully delivering the goods entrusted to his

care. The laundry rig driver’s diplomacy comes in when he meets up with customers

of an un–angelic disposition and when he has to deal with the errors which will creep

into any system where the human mind and memory has to do with the case. It is set

forth in the gospel of experience that mistakes will occur, even in the best regulated

families, and it is no hallmark of excellent regulation that a family sends its washing

to the laundry; in fact, quite the opposite is sometimes the case and explanations are

in order which must be handled by the driver of the laundry rig, with discretion and

patience if he wishes to keep his trade intact. And he must collect money and make

change, so he must be exact and trustworthy, too.

But let us suppose that everything is lovely and that the driver has annexed

the laundry bag of the Robinson family. He stows it carefully in his rig with bags of

washing from the Smiths, Joneses, the Wrights, the Wrongs, the Smarts, the Stupids,

the Quicks, the Slows, and all the rest of his customers. Not all of the washes are in

bags, by any means; many are tied up in one of the larger pieces of the wash itself,

but they all go into the laundry rig and are taken to the laundry. Arriving there, the

bundles are taken into the marking and counting room and are delivered to a young

woman who makes an entry of receiving each parcel in a big book kept for the

purpose. This book checks up the driver and the customer. At once it shows whether

the driver has turned in a given parcel and shuts off any possibility of a claim by him

that he did when he really did not. It has happened in the history of steam laundries

that it was not he who lost it but some other department. The big book has claims as

this forestalled and beaten out in advance. The book also shows the weeks when Mrs.

Robinson sent her wash and the weeks when she did not, and it is a part of the system

to find out why Mrs. Robinson omitted to patronize the laundry and to remove the

reason if it is possible to do so. This checks up on the driver again, in case he has been

a bit neglectful of Mrs. Robinson’s laundry requirements and serves to put the

management in possession of the facts at first hand.

COUNTED AND MARKED WITH CARE

In these first processes of the steam laundry, the clothes are counted and

marked with care. If the count does not agree with the customer’s slip, the laundry

counter goes over the bundle again, and if the discrepancy will not down by repeated

counts, she makes a note of the difference and the customer is notified that his or her

count set forth the presence of six collars or seven towels, the laundry counter is able

to locate no more than five collars or six towels. It is generally the case that the

laundry count is right because it is done by girls who become experts at the work and

who are not disturbed by the fact that the laundryman is waiting for the wash – as

Mrs. Robinson may very likely have been when she made her count at the very last

691

minute the law allowed. The marker looks at each piece of Mrs. Robinson’s wash to

see if it has the laundry mark on it and if not, she puts the mark on – R.19, maybe,

and this mark is what makes it possible for the laundry to sort the goods and send

each piece back to its proper owner. To save numbers, laundry marks begin with the

decimal .01, and R.19 shows that Mrs. Robinson is the nineteenth customer in the R

division of marks. The contents of Mrs. Robinson’s laundry bag are thus checked and

double checked at the very start of her week’s wash along the path of steam laundry

processes to ultimate cleanliness and ironed–ness.

Having been thus well started, Mrs. Robinson’s wash goes merrily on its way.

After leaving the counting and marking room, it loses its identity for the time being.

It is not practicable to keep hundreds of washings separate in the steam laundry and

in the washing room, the clothes all come together and go through the big washing

machines in lots that are limited only by the quantity of each kind on hand. Thus, all

of the white goods are in one lot and the colored in another. Collars and cuffs and

shirts make another division, and so on. There are always enough of each kind to

make a division in itself, and the steam laundryman is as careful in his methods as

our old friend, the washerwoman of our earlier days.

Washing clothes in a steam laundry is in a class by itself for obtaining the

maximum of cleanliness at the minimum of manual labor. No rubbing of knuckles on

washboards until the skin comes off or gets so calloused that no amount of hard work

can start it. No wringing until the wrists ache, nor any dribbling of clothes to and

from a boiler set on a kitchen stove and pouring forth steam in clouds, and of that

peculiar, depressing, washday [odor]; redolent of hard labor and reminiscent of wash

water to be brought and tubs to be empty of their murky contents. Here is plenty of

water – fifty thousand gallons a day, if need be. Here is soap by the barrel. Here, too,

are machines, driven by electricity and heated by steam, that take the clothes about

as fast as men can feed them in, wash them clean and white, and then whirl them

out in centrifugals that drive the water out just as similar machines in a sugar

refinery drive the moisture out of sugar that has been dropped into them from the

boiling pan.

SPECIALLY PREPARED WATER

In some, at least, of the large steam laundries, the water that is used for

washing is treated in a softening plant especially put in for that purpose. The

hardness of city aqueduct water is a quality well, and unfavorably, known to all

citizens – and citizenesses – who have to do with it in washing or heating processes.

It is loaded to the breaking point with carbonate of lime and has what is known by

some as fifty–three degrees of hardness. Another term – perhaps more in line with

modern science – is that the water has 510 parts to the million of minerals which

produce the effect known in common talk as hardness; either way of putting the case

will do and either comes to the same end in the case of our civic water supply – the

end of a water free from unhealthful germs but poorly adapted for washing purposes,

unless it is put through a softening process. This is done by treating the water with

lime that, mixed with the water by a gravity process seeks its chemical affinity,

carbonate of lime, finds it and immediately proceeds to annex it after the manner of

692

affinities generally and especially those of a chemical nature. Having thus secured

its grip on the hardening particles that are in the water, the lime carries it away and

both solids are deposited where the sludge can be taken away. This process reduces

the fifty–odd degrees of hardness to eleven, or according to the modern analyst, it

takes 220 of the 510 parts of hardness out of the water.

Rate it either way, and the water is soft and good for washing after the

softening plant has done its work. Every housewife who has used hard water for

washing will appreciate the change that converts the hard artesian well product into

what is practically rainwater. The laundryman finds his greatest saving in soap, an

accident which stopped the softening plant having shown him that it took six barrels

of soap more than was used for a like period with softened water. The largest

laundries use two tons of soap a week, so that it pays to save as much soap as possible.

Mrs. Robinson may not perceive so clearly the economy of having her washing done

in softened water, but if she [kens] that caustic soda is often used to make unsoftened

water do its work, she would know at the same time that her clothes and linen will

last much longer having been washed in softened water than they will when treated

with such a vigorous chemical as caustic soda.

PLENTIFUL PURIFYING PROCESSES

All clothes in a steam laundry go through numerous processes. From five to

seven waters represent the water route they take to cleanliness. The first process is

that of putting the clothes into the washing machines. These machines are cylinders

that turn three times one way and then reverse. Shelves inside hold the clothes until

the cylinder gets to a certain point, and then releases them to drop gently into the

water below. This, repeated enough times to take all the dirt out, is the smooth and

seductive method of the steam laundry to make Mrs. Robinson’s clothes clean without

wear or tear. Then the centrifugals drive the surplus wet out of them by the same

process that sugar, wet from the vacuum pan, is treated in a sugar refinery, and the

clothes are taken to the drying room. Here Mrs. Robinson’s wash and its companion

washes go through a steam drying stunt that is calculated to remove any germs that

haven’t been drowned out or scalded out by the washing machines. The temperature

of the drying room runs up to the sultry height of three hundred degrees and self–

respecting germs are said to shed their ambition to multiply and replenish the earth

– and air – at about two hundred and twelve – the boiling point of water. Fans drive

the steam–heated air among the clothes and give them a thorough drying and

purifying at the same time – so thorough that the London Lancet is quoted as

authority that no case of contagious disease has ever been traced to a well–conducted

steam laundry.

From the drying room Mrs. Robinson’s wash goes its ways to the ironing

machines. Starched clothes have a side trip to the starching machines before they

come to the ironing machines and starched pieces and plain pieces pass through

different machines. The ironing room is, indeed, the most attractive part of a laundry

plant. The clothes are clean and good to see when they get thus far on their return

trip to their several owners and the room where the finishing touches are given is a

big, airy, well–lighted place. Neatly–dressed girls and women are at the machines

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and the scene is altogether interesting and instructive to those unaccustomed to

steam laundry work.

Larger pieces, such as table–cloths and doilies, go through a steam mangle and

come from the rollers of this machine as white and smooth as modern laundry art can

make them, which is equivalent to saying that they are perfectly done. Shirts are put

on a form and stretched tight by deft fingers. A metal plate is placed over one half of

the bosom and another metal plate that is fixed to the machine covers the other half.

This machine is in two sections and the shirt in one is being steam–pressed while

another is being placed in the other section. A half whirl of the machine releases one

shirt and places the other in place to be ironed. There is no rubbing and consequently

no wearing out, and a steam–pulsator keeps the shirts from sticking to the plate and

being scorched. Another machine irons the cuffs, and the body of the shirt is done by

hand, a large number of girls and women being employed with hand electric irons to

do this part of the work.

THOUSANDS OF COLLARS AND CUFFS

Another machine that does its work smoothly and almost cleverly is the collar

and cuff ironer. Collars and cuffs go between rollers and one passing through toes the

business for cuffs, but collars are different.

Turned down collars are run through a creasing machine that passes a wet

string over them just where the fold comes. This takes the starch out of that part of

the collar in short order, or rather it softens the starch so as to make the collar fold

easily, this being done by a shaping machine after which the collar is dropped into a

cylinder which holds it in the shape into which it was pressed, until it is set and then

drops the collar through into a basket beneath from which the collars are taken to be

sorted according to their marks. “Whitewings” collars – the kind with the corners

turned down – are done in a breathing space by a little machine that grips the corners

and presses them into place with hairline precision. Of course, those collar machines

require feeding, but this is done by young women who become experts at the trade,

and, with one to tend it, the collar and cuff ironing machine will run through its four

or five thousand a day and never turn a hair.

It is after the smooth–running machines and their tenders have worked their

will on Mrs. Robinson’s wash that the real work comes to the front. This is sorting

and resolving the mass of washing into its parts according to the marks that are on

it. Machines will not do this and the task is accomplished by sorters whom practice

makes perfect – or nearly so. The sorter’s task is made somewhat easier by having all

pieces of given kinds placed in compartments from which they are taken to be

scrutinized for marks and placed in their rightful parcels.

Thus Mrs. Robinson’s wash has gone through the steam laundry. It has taken

from three to five days from the time of collecting to that of delivering, and the work

has been done on a scale of prices that is far from high, quality and service considered

– plus the blessing of getting the washing done away from the home, where it is never

less than an annoyance and usually a nuisance.

The steam laundry of today is the evolution of the science of sanitation out of

the necessity of clean clothes. There are five steam laundries in Winnipeg and they

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do a big business. It takes fifteen or twenty rigs, going all the time, to make the

collections and deliveries of each of these laundries, and they employ five hundred

hands, all told. Men with inclinations statistics–ward have figured it out that these

steam laundries of Winnipeg have three hundred thousand dollars invested in their

plants and that they pay out sixteen thousand dollars every month in wages, besides

digging up another two thousand for soap – and item of debit account which ought to

stand for some cleanliness, and does.

Truly, the steam laundry is a remarkable and beneficent institution; it makes

the washingless home possible and washes for the homeless. It destroys drudgery and

promotes peace of the sort which comes of having clean shirts and collars, and

shirtwaists, and white shirts, and table linen and bed linen, without breaking the

housewife’s back or boiling her face and hands to a fiery red. It saves money, mind

and muscle. It is sanitary, serviceable, speedy and, as often as any contrivance of poor

humanity may hope to be, satisfactory. The steam laundry has come to be an

institution of modern city life and will doubtless keep its place as such while men

wear boiled shirts and women love lingerie.

HOW JOHN CHINAMAN LAUNDERS

John Chinaman has his own ways and means of washing. There are one

hundred and twenty–five Chinese laundries in Winnipeg, and probably something

like six hundred Chinamen work in them. Generally speaking, there are no more than

three or four men in a place, although there are cases where as many as six or eight

work together. Some of these places are as clean and light as the most fastidious could

wish to see them, but truth compels the statement that others leave something to be

desired in the way of cleanliness and order. There is a city bylaw, however, framed

especially to keep the Chinese laundry within the pale of cleanliness and health, and

an energetic health department sees to it that the regulations are lived up to fairly

well. This bylaw has been in force two years, and previous to its enactment the

Chinese laundrymen did about as they pleased, and did not always please to do very

well. Now, the regulations keep them in fear of a call from the health officers, and

John Chinaman is a deal too clever to be caught with the goods on, so he staves off

such a happening by keeping his place well read–up and displays an ever–present

desire to understand the law and live up to it.

The civic bylaw compels all laundrymen to have sleeping and eating

apartments separate from their work–rooms, and to have work–rooms that are clean

and sanitary. As most of the Chinese laundries are in buildings that were constructed

for dwelling–houses, it is not always practicable to hold the laundrymen to the details

of the cement floors and specifications of this sort, but the new regulations have

worked a great and good change in the Chinese laundries of the city.

PLENTY WORK; NOT MUCH PLAY

John Chinaman takes up his task of washing and ironing with plenty of

industry, if not a surplus of enthusiasm. He works early and often at the tub and the

ironing table. What he lacks in machinery and modernity, he tries to make up in hard

work and perseverance. He washes by hand and irons most things the same way,

although the most progressive have a machine for ironing collars and cuffs, and

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sometimes shirts. These machines are run by hand, and heat is supplied by a gasoline

burner. Electricity and steam are just a trifle too far ahead of John Chinaman’s

notions of proper progressiveness for him to use them in laundry work. A few have

telephones, though, and more will have them as the laundries come under the

management of Chinamen who speak good English and who have a broader education

than their fellows lately from China.

Chinese laundrymen practise much the same system of marking as their

brethren of the steam laundries; a variation lies in the fact that your Chinaman gives

you a slip of paper that has some marks on it which – to the Occidental eye – have all

the appearance of tracks made by a drunken hen. In reality, though, these marks are

clear enough to the man who made them, and indicate to him that such a ticket

belongs to such a parcel. This keeps the articles that go in that parcel so that they

can be identified easily, and it is a well–known fact that John makes very few

mistakes in his assignments of pieces to their several places. The identification of

parcels is made easy and accurate by tearing the tickets in halves and giving the

customer one while the other is attached to the parcel. John is properly particular

about the return of the customer’s half of the ticket, and his ultimatum, “No tickee,

no washee,” is famous in many parts of the world.

WASHERMEN WELL PAID1177

Contrary to a rather prevalent belief, Chinamen do not do much laundry work

in China, that branch of household duty being left pretty much to women, as it used

to be here in the olden days. When he comes to the New World, John Chinaman finds

it washerwomanless and so much in need in this respect that there is good money

going for laundry work. With ready industry, he takes to the work that pays him best

and at which he can always find employment. In Winnipeg he is paid from five to

twelve dollars a week and his board, and if he is smart and business–like he may

start a laundry of his own – there is no great difficulty about that, and plenty of work

to be had.

There are no union hours of work in the Chinese laundry. John takes all the

work he can get and then goes about doing it. If he can finish working ten or eleven

hours, all right; if not, he finishes anyway, and often puts in a good deal of overtime

doing it. But he does what he undertakes and makes his twice a week deliveries to

his customers. As many as he can, he delivers by handing out the parcels in return

for tickets and pay; others he carries to the houses where they belong, and humbly

imitates his brethren of larger ways by going about with a bag over his shoulder and

gathering up clothes to be washed and ironed.

His prices are about the same as those of the big laundries. He admits that the

steam laundries can do family washing cheaper because they have machinery, but he

1177 In 1906, New Westminster’s Chinese laundry workers went on “strike for higher pay, and as a

result the bosses propose putting up their washing rates in order to meet the demands of their

employees. […] Hitherto the laundry worker has worked long hours for the munificent sum of from

$15 to $20 per month and board, and he now demands [$25] or bust. The rate for house washing has

been 35c per dozen, big and little, but hereafter there will be a graded scale, and the sheet will cost

more than the pocket handkerchief, and papa’s nightie will cost more than little Bobbie’s.” The Worm

Turns. (1906, November 13). The Daily News, p. 1.

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claims to do shirts and collars and cuffs a little cheaper and a little better. “Just a

little wax and plenty work,” is what John says produces the gloss on shirt bosoms,

cuffs and collars which he irons, and he has the same pride in his work that any other

artist has. He is a hard worker, and – if you meet the right individual – a sober,

steady, sensible man; one who has a keen mind and a ready sense of humor. Probably

few accord John Chinaman these virtues, but few know him, and we are likely to

judge the mass by some inferior individual we have come to know.

Thus the city’s family washing is in competent hands, despite the revolution of

the washerwoman. She has revoluted herself pretty well out of existence, and will

soon be classed with the dodo and other extinct birds. Nothing has been evolved to

take the place of the dodo or the auk – whatever their places were in the economy of

things – but the steam laundry and John Chinaman are doing very well, indeed, in

the place formerly filled to slopping over by the washerwoman of our daddies.

A Winnipeg Steam Laundry (1911)1178

1178 Wash Room in One of Winnipeg’s Big Steam Laundries [Photograph]. (1911, May 31). The Raymond Rustler, p. 8. Image edited by C. Willmore.

697

XI. Women and Paid Work

698

On Women and Work

1. Woman’s Sphere (1887)1179

What is a woman’s sphere? Decidedly, in the present day, it is a very undecided

thing. Every few weeks some new writer comes to the front and endeavors to establish

a fixed standard. But “thus far shall they go and no farther” does not seem to have

the desired effect upon constantly advancing woman. And now we ask again, who will

or can define a woman’s sphere?

That sphere was once considered to be bounded on all sides by the circle drawn

round the domestic hearth. Nobody seemed to reflect that there were some women so

unfortunate as to have no special domestic ties of their own. Such miserable creatures

were directed to seek womanly employment among the families of their married

relations. Why should a single woman unsex herself by going out into the world when

her brother or sister had a houseful of obstreperous children to look after? Why,

indeed?

In these times all is changed, however, thanks to the persevering ones who

have hacked and hewed a way to competence through thorny paths, leaving the road

comparatively clear for those that follow.

“No head for business” says some man, “A woman’s proper sphere is

housekeeping.” Let us see! No head for business! Very little head for accounts! Well,

perhaps the last proposition is true in the main, but it is purely for want of practice.

Ask any business man, who employs a woman bookkeeper whether his accountant is

competent or not?

There is certainly one point on which the women can yield the palm to the men

(no doubt they will do it gracefully and willingly) and that is the number of betrayed

trusts. Let him who reads the daily papers say what per cent. of women employed as

accountants and handling large sums of money, pocket the half of it and flee to

Canada.

“No head for business.” Leaving aside the scores of women employed in

business houses, there is hardly a thing in the world that calls for a clearer head for

business than the intelligent management of a household.

Not the scrubbing and the scouring, though even in these the more brains one

can bring to bear upon them the better, both for the occupation and the persons

engaged therein. But the management of all the details, the being able to consider

each separate detail, and see the result of the great whole, at the same time.

Why to be a successful housekeeper a woman must understand, let us see –

baking, washing, ironing, cooking, sewing, that is four trades without the minor acts

of dishwashing, sweeping, dusting, etc. But a woman to be a true mistress of her

house must absolutely become accomplished in four trades that require no mean skill,

any one of them, and three of them trades that men practice. Men bake, men cook,

1179 From WOMAN’S SPHERE. (1887, July 24). The Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 5.

699

men sew. Do they unsex themselves when they practice in their households, three of

the trades in which men have been successful? How is it anyway?

Taking all the facts into consideration, we think “woman’s sphere” is the same

as that of man, i.e., to do cheerfully and well the work that comes to her hand, whether it be with a pen, a surgeon’s knife, a dentist’s drill, a pair of scissors or a

broom.

2. All Honor to the Girl Who Works (1909)1180

“The girl who works – God bless her.” She is brave and active; she is not too

proud to earn her own living; she is not ashamed to be found at her daily task; she is

studious painstaking and patient; she smiles from behind the counter or the desk;

her smile is the reflection of celestial grandeur and eternal bliss; there is a memory

of her own sown into each silken gown; she is like a beautiful mountaineer; her

character is as pure as the bubbling springs, strong as the rock from which it flows,

and as high as the mountain’s topmost pinnacle. The sight of her should be a fine

inspiration for us all. Her hands may be stained by dishwashing, sweeping, factory

grease or printer’s ink, but are honest and helping hands; they stay misfortune from

many homes; they are a shield that protects many a forlorn family from the asylum.

All honor to the girl who works.

3. “The Bumps and Clicks of the Day’s Work” (1911)1181

In this great city of Montreal there is an ever–increasing army of wage–earning

women. These girls and women are employed in schools, offices, shops, private homes,

and other places too numerous to mention. They pour into our city from the country

districts of Canada, from the smaller towns and villages. They come across the ocean

from the motherland, and in small numbers, from the south. Here they gather to work

and to live. They have to work and they have to live as best they can.

Further than accepting freely of their work Montreal has, thus far, done little

for this class of her population. And Montreal is just beginning to realize that she is

in debt. Shortly before Sir Thomas Shaughnessy went abroad a few gentlemen, most

of them in the ever expanding millionaire class, sat in the smoking room of the Mount

Royal Club. The question of society’s duty to the working girl arose. The president of

the Canadian Pacific jumped to his feet, paced around the room a couple of times, and

thus expressed himself:

“The young men of our day have everything. They have club houses, they have

well stocked reading rooms, they have comfortable and convenient meeting places.

Our young women hear the bustle and roar of business about their ears nine hours a

day for six days a week. The rest of the time they spend in the back hall bedroom of

1180 From THE WORKING GIRL. (1909, October 14). Cranbrook Herald, p. 6. 1181 From WILL ERECT CITY HOME FOR GIRLS FROM COUNTRY. (1911, April 11). The North Vancouver Express, p. 5.

700

a boarding house thinking about it. The more pleasant and quiet you can make your

employees’ surroundings the more cheerful work you can get out of them. We consider

money well spent on the C. P. R. if we can eliminate noise entirely. The other day I

had several noiseless typewriters installed. Some of the girls objected because the

touch did not suit them. Some genius invented an attachment which made the touch

similar to any standard machine a stenographer happened to be accustomed to. It

cost us money and it cost the typewriter people money to make the change, but the

change took a useless click out of life. If a man would invent an attachment that would

make a train noiseless I would have it if it cost a fortune. It’s the bumps and clicks of

the day’s work that make us weary.”

It was this little speech, spoken on the spur of the moment, which sowed the

seed for larger things. A real home for working women was suggested – a home

embodying all that dear word really means. These same millionaires got their heads

together, an architect and a contractor were summoned, plans and specifications were

called for, inquiries were made as to how other cities coped with the problem, and the

ball was set rolling. Montreal is to have a half million dollar hotel exclusively for

women. It will be an Adamless Eden, so to speak, and just as unique and tranquil in

many ways as the one and only original Eden.

4. The Greatest Extravagance (1916)1182

While I know that money is tight and that many people are obliged to live on

a tithe of what they have been spending during recent years, I also know that

generally speaking there is very little poverty in Victoria, and very little practice of

the virtue of self–denying. One has only look at the enormous number of new

automobiles on our streets, at the extravagance in ladies’ dresses which is so

conspicuous, at the amount expended on luxuries, at the high prices paid at all

auction sales for first class articles, and at the keen competition for the same, to

realize that we have not yet begun to learn our lesson of thrift. At an auction sale

held this week there was the keenest competition for such luxuries as Queen Anne

silver articles and Sheffield plate. But I really think that the greatest extravagance

is when work girls, and not a few of them either, go to business in taffeta silk dresses,

silk sweaters, and the highest priced boots. Yet this is the rule, and not the exception

in Victoria. I took the opinion of a lady well versed in values as to the probable cost

of the outfit of a young girl not over fifteen who was walking in front of us, and who,

I know, is a stenographer in receipt of not more than $30 a month. The opinion was

that such of the outfit as was visible could not be purchased for less than $60. Let me

give another instance – I saw four young girls get off the car on Monday with their

books under their arms, obviously returning from school. One of them had on a pair

of Seattle putty–coloured boots, which I am informed cost from $10 to $15, and a long

black velvet coat trimmed with expensive fur, about as unsuitable a garment for a

young school–girl of fourteen or fifteen as could possibly be imagined. I am not

1182 From THE LOUNGER. (1916, April 22). At the Street Corner. The Victoria Week, p. 3.

701

suggesting that all the extravagance is on the part of our girls. No doubt many of

them copy the example of their mothers, but I sometimes wonder when, if ever,

Victoria will follow the example of Hamilton, which has a “Fur Club” to which ladies

donate their furs, to be sent to soldiers at the front, who are fighting in the snow.

Conditions of Life and Work

5. “Here is a Working Girl” (1906)1183

Here is a working girl whose duties keep her on her feet for the most of eight

hours of the day in a crowded, none too well ventilated shop. She owes herself an hour

at least in the fresh air each evening – a walk with her mother or a friend, or in fine

weather a street car ride in good company into the suburbs. But she hurries to her

little room after the evening meal on one pretext or another, shuts herself in and,

extricating from the depths of her bag a book which she would not show to her mother,

falls into a sort of trance over it and, if there is no sister to share her bed, reads till

sleep overpowers her. It is probably long after midnight when she creeps into bed,

mumbling a prayer which is almost worse than none. She has by no means had

enough of sleep when she is called for breakfast in the morning. She goes about her

work all day tired, stupid, preoccupied, is reprimanded now and then and forgets that

she is herself to blame when by and by promotion seeks her alert companion and

passes her by.

6. “Button Holes for Sale” (1901) 1184

“Button Holes for Sale Here” is a sign which peers out through a rather dirty

window of a lower floor tenement on the east side. In view of the possibility that it

might mean just what it said and that the dealer really sold holes for buttons a

Tribune reporter investigated.

A woman whose dress was a mixture of bathing suit and ball gown answered

his knock.

“You sell buttonholes here?” was asked.

“Naw, we make ‘em!” she exclaimed, with as much disgust as a very squeaky

voice was capable of showing.

“Well, the sign in the window says” –

“Never mind the sign!” she snapped back. “What do you want with me?”

She was persuaded to tell something of her new business.

“You see, it’s this way,” she began.

“The working girls who live over here have to dress pretty well and do it on

little money. Most of ‘em makes their own clothes, but they have not too much time

to do the work in. Now, if you was a woman, you’d know that it was mighty hard to

1183 From The Working Girl. (1906, September 29). The Mount Pleasant Advocate, p. 7. 1184 From “Buttonholes Sold Here.” (1901, November 30). The Independent, p. 7.

702

make buttonholes, specially by hand. Poor girls can’t afford buttonhole machines.

They make up the dresses and bring ‘em over to us, and we put in the buttonholes at

so much a hole, ‘cording to the kind of stuff and how well they wants it done. And

that’s all there is to it.”

7. “Indifferent in the Matter of Food” (1912)1185

Surely it must be a survival from the days when women were admired for being

lackadaisical, delicate and helpless, when we find them very proud of having very

small appetites and inclined to plume themselves on “not caring twopence what they

eat.” Perhaps it is a little difficult for them to forget altogether that there was a time,

not so very long ago, when men expressed a dislike to seeing women eat (so

disillusioning). We are free to admit ourselves that anything approaching to

greediness is ten times worse in a woman than in a man.

All the same, women would do well to take to heart the advice of Sir James

Chrichton Browne, an eminent authority on health and feeding, who tells us that it

is the greatest mistake to be indifferent in the matter of food. For food that is taken

without enjoyment does not do nearly the same amount of good as food which is eaten

with a relish. It is physiologically true that food taken against the grain has a poor

chance of being properly digested. And we must not get into the habit of skipping

meals just because we don’t feel inclined for them, or yet of unduly hurrying over

them – a truly feminine weakness.

“If you don’t want food your body does,” remarked a well known specialist.

That is just the point. Good work cannot be done by a starved brain and an ill

fed body and one reason why our women workers are more liable to break down than

men workers is the fact that by habit and inclination women are so much more

careless and indifferent in these matters than the average man. We don’t often find

men satisfying their hunger with cakes, tea and sweets if there is the smallest chance

of getting anything better; whereas women, if left to themselves, will make anything

do. A glance into any purely feminine household will soon prove this. Even the cooks

take but a faint interest in cooking for their own sex.

The same thing permeates all classes. Look at well–to–do households. If the

husband is away the wife will often forego the customary late dinner, and make what

she calls an enjoyable meal off tea and cakes, ending the day with a scrappy supper

– just something on a tray. Oh! this “something on a tray” business! It has much to

answer for. The principle becomes serious when applied to our professional and other

working women, our girl clerks, secretaries, typists, and all the industrious

sisterhood, not over well paid, who earn money by their brains.

If women are going to busy themselves with men’s work, they must take the

same means to keep themselves fit for it.

The habit of ages has taught them to take delight in providing as good fare as

possible for their men kind. Now they must learn to do the same good offices for

1185 From WOMAN – AND MEALS. (1912, May 28). The North Vancouver Express, p. 2.

703

themselves and for each other. It is one of woman’s idiosyncracies to enjoy any little

saving in the commissariat department.

This has something to do with the poor meals they often give themselves. They

would rather spend the money in a way which makes more show, on something pretty

to wear, perhaps, or on books and flowers.

But let them take timely warning: our workers especially.

They must not consider a pause of fair dimensions in the day’s work and leisure

to enjoy a proper meal in any way a waste of time. It is one of the safeguards against

“nerves” and hysteria.

8. “The Girls do not Need to be Reformed” (1916)1186

Miss Laura Hughes made her revelations before an audience of twelve hundred

persons at the People’s Forum of Toronto. The subject of her address was “Women’s

Work.” Speaking of her work in Toronto mills, she said that not until she came to sit

at the machines did she realize the position of women workers. She had been asked

by a friend to go into the factories and look into things. When she went down in the

early morning to be employed the people who interviewed her treated her as though

she were a criminal. She went in to look into the work on militia contracts as these

were given out by the government, therefore they could refuse to give more contracts

if conditions were not satisfactory. She worked standing all day trimming threads

and underwear at 5 cents per dozen. By working all day and throughout the noon

hour she found she could almost complete 14 dozen. She worked almost as fast as any

other girl and earned 70 cents at the end of the day. Many of the girls in the factory

were “under the doctor,” they were so run down that they spent much of their money

on medicine.

Terrible Conditions.

In another factory where she worked on a power machine with a strong light

playing upon it she said that at 3 o’clock in the afternoon her eyes became very

painful, her head and back ached and at the end of the day she was absolutely

numbed. Her mind would not work. She could not reason. She understood then why

some girls fainted at the machines. If employers only realized these conditions, she

continued, she felt sure they would not continue. She did not believe they deliberately

did this. It was due to ignorance and stupidity. It had been proved that more and

better work was being done now with an eight–hour day than when they worked from

7:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. […]

“There is no use in people who want to help working girls forming clubs to

‘reform these girls,’” continued Miss Hughes. “The girls do not need to be reformed. I

found these girls took me in as one of themselves. They lent me anything I needed.

One of the girls called me over to see her. She said I looked lonely, so she read to me

in the noon hour and asked me where I lived so that she could visit me on Sundays.

That splendid girl could give points to many people on the reforming line. Give them

1186 From Gutteridge, H. (1916, February 11). THE WORK OF WOMEN DISCUSSED BY MISS

HUGHES. The British Columbia Federationist, p. 4. Written by Helena Rose Gutteridge (1879 – 1960).

704

enough to live on decently. It is a wonder how some of them manage to exist on from

$4 to $6 a week.” […]

Miss Hughes has certainly grasped in a short time, the necessity for

reformation of women’s wages and working conditions, not only when working on war

contracts, and she probably knows now by inference, if not from experience, that such

conditions and low wages are the usual lot of the working woman, not only in Toronto,

but throughout the Dominion, Vancouver included.

Anything for Profit.

Miss Hughes, however, does not yet realize that so far as employers of labor

are concerned, employees are just pieces of machinery, that employers are not in

business for anything but profit, and as to whether the employees can live and be

healthy on the wages they receive, does not concern them, if one falls sick get another.

The remedy does not lie, as Miss Hughes imagines, in appealing to the

humanity of the employer, and opening his eyes to something he is already aware of.

The remedy is in the hands of the workers themselves, and they like the employers

have already done, must realize the identity of interest amongst themselves and

effectively organize. In unity alone is the strength for the workers. “Workers of the

world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains,” becomes more and more

obvious every day.

9. An Excellent Plan (1911)1187 The following article is remarkably frank as it discusses the reasons why it may be difficult for working women to save. These include demands and expectations placed upon women by culture and family, in addition to the noticeable wage gap between men and women. The author recommended government annuities as a savings vehicle.

There were never before so many women wage earners as there are today, and

perhaps, on the whole, better wages are paid now than at any previous time. Yet it is

very hard for a woman to save. Board is dear, and the woman who wishes to be well

dressed must be prepared to spend a great deal of money. Then, for one reason or

other, the duty of supporting or helping others often devolves on the female wage–

earner. Many a bright faced girl buys gowns for her mother or frocks for her little

sisters, relieving her father of a burden and giving others a happiness that every

woman will appreciate. The post office could reveal many a secret of money sent to

aged parents or invalid relatives by many a woman who is known among her

companions and employees only as a hard worker and careful spender. Yet, whether

spending or giving there are few women who know how to save. Demands for money

are so constant and so insistent, the temptations to spend are so irresistible that

wages, whether scanty or generous are, as a rule, spent by young women. In a few

years a husband usually relieves the girl of the necessity of spending her own living

and of making provision for the future. Yet not many workers in these days count

1187 From HERE AND THERE (1911, November 17). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 8.

705

upon this. Let pessimists say what they will, there were never so many love matches

as in this twentieth century. Financial independence is sweet to women, and only at

the call of affection will the girl who has once enjoyed it yield to any one. It is said,

however, that the proportion of women who do not marry is greater now than

formerly. Whether this is true in Canada is open to question. However this may be,

it is certain that every woman may need money in her old age. Nothing is more certain

than that the wage earner who lives to be old will be unfit for work. We know, too,

that the most carefully protected wife or the mother who is most tenderly loved may

find herself in want when old age comes, and husband and children have gone before

her.

Men provide for the future by insurance, and by investments. Women seldom

do anything of the kind. It is true enough that their wages are comparatively small,

but this does not relieve them from the obligation of laying aside something for the

future. The woman who does not marry is sure to need all that she can save. Many a

woman who is married will be happier, if after she is sixty she has a small income of

her own.

The government annuities scheme makes it possible for the young woman who

is at work in Canada and who is earning more than a bare living to make provision

for the future. Few young women can live on $25 a month. Any old woman who has a

home of her own will find it possible to do so. The woman who works from twenty–

three to sixty, and who during that time contributes to the annuities fund $3.27 a

month will if she lives after that time draw from it $300 a year, or if she prefers it

$75 a quarter. Should she die before she is sixty her heirs will receive all that she put

in with 2 per cent. compound interest. This, in the case of a woman of 58, would

amount to $2,425.77 or $1,052.37 more than the amount of her payments. If she is so

unfortunate as to be alone in the world she can under another plan ensure a larger

income by forfeiting her money in case of death.

There are business women who by fortunate investments secure much larger

incomes than this. But to know positively that no matter what changes of fortune

may take place such an income is certain in the closing years of life gives a sense of

security that would make many a woman happier. It is well worth while enquiring

into the merits of this scheme, and a woman has only to address the superintendent

of Canadian government annuities at Ottawa to secure a full explanation of the plan

devised for the independence of the aged men and women of Canada.

10. Women in Offices (1898)1188

In a recent article the writer speaks of lady clerks in offices, and the

disadvantages attendant on employing them. One point raised is that they do not

realize their position. My object is to give a plain statement of the case from the

standpoint of a woman clerk, to speak of her ideas of the advantages and

1188 From ONE OF THEM. (1898, October 29). WOMEN IN OFFICES. The Metropolitan, p. 11.

706

disadvantages, and her excuses for not realizing her position. As the article referred

to ladies of birth and culture, who are compelled to earn their living in offices with

men, I will confine my remarks to them.

It must be remembered that most of these young women are brought up in the

homes of well–to–do parents, and accustomed all their lives to be made much of. They

are persons of consequence at home, and petted and fussed over as they grow up by

their father’s friends. No one exercises authority over them outside their own homes,

no one is in a position to criticize their acts and manners, at least not in their hearing,

and they only meet men in society, where attentions and politeness and not strict

business rules and manners prevail. They are very little prepared for the other side

of the shield which is presented to them when money and position take wings to

themselves, and they, like well–meaning girls, make an effort to become self–

supporting.

Getting a position at all is not as easy as it sounds when the girl says she has

decided to take a position in an office; but suppose she is lucky enough to get one.

Perhaps her employer may be a man who knew her father and may have been at her

house in the old days. She starts out – naturally enough, poor girl – without an idea

that anything will be different. She may have heard vaguely about girls’ lives in

offices, but it has not occurred ot her how far she herself is adapted to the work, and

for the life it involves. She has no idea very often that she can’t chat with her employer

pleasantly about their common friends, and certainly it surprises him much to have

her explain his mistakes and come to him with her difficulties. She is injured and

insulted that he doesn’t open the door for her, and even sometimes keeps his hat on

in her presence. She makes – unless she is abnormally sensible and well–balanced –

no allowance for the many cares on a business man’s mind, and broods over his

curtness and feels injured that he should ask her to be more careful with her work.

As time goes on she learns much and becomes more sensible. She knows that a

business man doesn’t want to hear what a lot of trouble she had in getting or doing

certain things, he only wants to know that they are done. He doesn’t want to listen to

excuses for a mistake; it is sufficient to know it was committed. He isn’t expected to

know that she had a bad headache and didn’t feel like working – he expects the work

done. All this is very hard for a girl unaccustomed to a business life to understand.

She feels the brusqueness of some of the men she is associated with as a personal

matter, and frets over slights which are merely the result of a preoccupied mind.

The conduct of some of the men in whose offices young women are employed is

hardly what the young women have been accustomed to, and for a girl brought up

among well bred people to be sent for to take work in a roomful of men who sit

smoking with their hats on, is a mortifying thing. Men who would be horrified at the

idea of swearing when dining out or at a dance, have no scruples about swearing

before their clerks, and it is not uncommon for a girl to stand to take work while the

men in the room remain seated, apparently without noticing the position of affairs.

To take dictation from a man who sits with feet on the table is a familiar experience,

and no one could dream of manifesting any feeling of resentment. There are very

707

many men to whom none of these remarks apply, but the experiences given are by no

means uncommon.

Probably it would startle some business and professional men to hear the

description of themselves given by their female clerks. Their virtues and faults, their

manners and habits are all noticed and criticized. Acts of courtesy and consideration

are remembered with gratitude, and irritating and rude ones felt and resented.

When gentlemen at their club over the walnuts and the wine discuss their lady

clerks, they may rest assured the clerks freely discuss them, for if no man is a hero

to his valet, still less is he a hero to his stenographer.

When a lady enters the business world she must make up her mind to many

drawbacks. She must remember that no allowance will be made for the fact that she

is of gentle birth and breeding. She is a clerk, an employee, and no matter how often

her sensitive pride is hurt in small matters, if she intends to become a sensible

business woman she will take that as part of the discipline. She may be jarred by the

want of refinement of her fellow–clerks – this is one of the pin–pricks to be borne. She

must learn that Mrs. Grundy exists in the business part of the town as well as in

society. That her dress and manner are noticed by people of whose existence she is

unaware, and that the way of this world is to think the worst where there is a choice.

She is judged by appearances, with none of the allowances made by her friends. She

must learn that business waits for nothing, and not follow the example of a girl of my

acquaintance, who, after many efforts on the part of her friends to secure her a certain

position, sent word on the day of her appointment to meet the manager, that it was

too stormy to go out, but she would try to go on the next day if the weather cleared.

There are, on the other hand, many advantages in a business career for a girl.

She sees another side of life, and types with which she has not hitherto been familiar.

Her views become enlarged. She learns business–like habits of promptness and

accuracy and absorbs much general knowledge. She meets for the most part kindness

and justice from the men with whom she is associated, and may be sure that if her

work is painstaking and conscientious, it is appreciated and noticed. She learns to be

independent and self reliant and also becomes too sensible to make herself

uncomfortable over snubs and slights which are sometimes imaginary, and when real,

generally the result of ignorance and not worth being troubled over. If the ladies who

are compelled to work in offices would forget that they are ladies – not by losing their

refinement, but by thinking of themselves as business women only – if they would

adapt themselves to their new life and not expect all the rough edges to be rubbed off

to suit them, there would be less reason for the complaint that they do not realize

their position.

708

11. Typists Declare “Movies” Have Libelled Them (1913)1189

For lo, these many years, the girl stenographer has been pictured to the public

as a saucy and flighty miss, a chronic chewer of gum, an extravagant exponent of the

latest in peek–a–boo waists and superfluous hair.

The public has actually grown to believe that this is a composite likeness of all

stenographers. And now that the moving–picture shows are displaying them in this

character, it would seem the die has been irrevocably cast.

But three thousand girl stenographers in Montreal have revolted. They have

signed a statement protesting against their portrayal in moving–pictures as chewers

of gum and wearers of “rats.” The protest was sent to the makers of moving–picture

films.

Let us hope it will have some effect and cause more truthful representations of

the faithful, hard–working, intelligent young woman who is supposed to take her

employer’s dictation and transcribe it exactly, when in truth she shapes her grammar

so it will stand the test of criticism, and puts courtesy into phrases that were curt

when uttered.

The girl stenographer finds it advantageous to look as attractive as possible;

also to be as refined as possible. There’s money in it. No matter how well able she is

to attend to her employer’s correspondence, he doesn’t want her to be slouchy or

course. He won’t pay a decent salary to a good–looking girl who can’t do his work, but

he will pay all he can afford to a good stenographer who is also good to look at.

Also, even a coarse man likes refinement in a woman, and he frowns down

exaggerated hair dressing, cheap jewelry, and gum–chewing in his office. The wide–

awake young woman soon discovers that, and even though she began her working

career with wrong notions, she soon corrects herself.

The stenographer forms a considerable part of our great and increasing army

of employed women.

She is a valuable part of our business equipment.

She draws a substantial salary, with which she lives respectably and

sometimes supports those dependent upon her.

She works hard and conscientiously and where there is one stenographer who

flirts with a married man or employer, there are a hundred – indeed, a thousand –

who’d cut their right hands off before they’d give any wife cause for unhappiness.

Take the libel off the stenographer.

It isn’t true to life.

1189 From MONTREAL GIRLS REVOLT. (1913, July 9). The Wainwright Star, p. 3.

709

Maids’ (and other) Aprons (1908)1190

1190 The Robert Simpson Company. (1908). Women’s Aprons. Spring and Summer Catalogue (No. 107), p. 41.

710

Domestic Servants (ca. 1910)1191 1191 Fergusons [Photograph]. (ca. 1910). From an anonymous photograph in the Anthologist’s

collection.

711

The Domestic Help Problem

12. “There is a reason” (1915)1192

It was at a crowded reception, where the chatter of voices rose and fell like the

waves of the sea, beautifully gowned women talked together in animated groups.

Suddenly the guest of honor appeared at the door, and a great hush fell on the

room. Into the silence was projected a loud pitched voice, whose owner had not seen

the guest at the door, and so went on talking in the loud tone, calculated to overcome

the hum of many voices, and these were the words that fell clear and distinct on the

perfumed air:

“And, of course, I dismissed her on the spot!”

THE PROBLEM

Everywhere it is talked about, where women congregate, for it is a real

problem, and it is quite true that capable, reliable domestic workers are hard to get,

but as in the case of Grapenuts, “there is a reason.” If house work were systematized

as other work is, if there was a certain standard required and lived up to by both

employer and employee, such as regular hours, and specified duties, and if the social

standing of the girl who does housework was raised to what it should be, I believe,

many capable and reliable girls would come into the service.

As it is now, girls will take poorer wages in stores or factories, because the

social standing is higher, and they have the companionship of others. They also have

their Sundays and their evenings free. They know when their work is done.

Housework should be the most respected, and valued of all the avenues open

to women. It is the real genuine simon pure woman’s sphere that we hear about, and

which is so strongly commended by anti–Suffragists. It is a sheltered life far from the

pitfalls of life. It is highly respectable. Then why is it placed at the bottom of the social

scale?

WOMEN THEMSELVES TO BLAME

That housework is not more highly thought of, is the fault of women’s low

valuation of themselves and their work. Women have never set a high enough value

on themselves, and it is true that the world takes everyone at their own valuation. If

you say you are a poor, no–account miserable failure, no one will contradict you, quite

properly reasoning that you would know.

Women have been greatly to blame in this matter of having housework

regarded as a menial occupation – and if now they suffer by having to do with

incapable and second–rate helpers, they have only themselves to blame.

Let me say right here with emphasis that housework requires more brains,

more originality, and good judgment, than many occupations that are more highly

regarded. Work in factories and stores is largely mechanical; so is the routine work

1192 From McClung, N. L. (1915, October 2). The Domestic Help Problem. The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 3. Written by Nellie Letitia McClung (1873 – 1951), Canadian suffragist, author, feminist and

politician.

712

of an office. Yet the factory worker, or the office girl feels she has climbed several

rungs higher on the social ladder than the girl who prepares meals.

LACK OF SOCIAL LIFE

Every human being, who is normal, craves companionship, but what social life

has the average domestic worker? What welcome is given to her friends if they come

to see her?

“Have you any followers?” sternly asks the lady when the new maid is

undergoing her examination. “I never allow my maids to have followers,” the lady

declares virtuously1193, so if the maid enters that kitchen she knows she has to leave

her companionship behind.

Some mistresses are a bit more lenient and allow the maid to entertain her

callers in the kitchen. Now, I do not blame a girl for not liking a kitchen real well as

a place of entertainment; of course in the larger houses, where it is possible to have

a sitting room for the maids, the difficult is overcome, but the great majority of houses

have no such room, and I know that this is one of the difficulties that many girls feel.

They do not like to entertain their friends in the kitchen. Now, why shouldn’t the

maid have the use of a sitting–room, say, one evening a week? The very thought of it

makes some grand lady shiver! But look at it squarely. If you consider the girl good

enough to prepare meals for you and your family, then she is good enough to use any

room in your house on occasion.

PUT YOURSELF IN HER PLACE

It would be an illuminative proceeding if some of the mistresses served a week

in the kitchen, and endured even for that short time the loneliness, the drudgery, the

social ostracism, which she unthinkingly has been handing out to her maids for years;

the hours from six to eight or nine, with occasional late dinners which keep her

working until eleven or twelve without extra remuneration; the only communication

with her family being the orders given in direction of the work, or the fault–finding

when things go wrong; and always always that great gulf fixed between her and other

members of the household, reminding her that she is made of coarser clay. The maid

is always expected to be clean, cheerful, and ready. She must never be lonely, sick or

sad, or out of temper. The lady may indulge in any of these, but not the maid! There

is one belief of the after life which seems very fair and reasonable, which is that we

will get back in the world come what we give in this life. The man who has been cruel

to his horse, will be turned into a horse in the next life, and have just such a master

as he was. If this distribution of jobs is carried out, I know some women who will be

appointed to the position of maid in their own house, with no chance if giving a

month’s notice – and they will learn a lot the first week!

1193 A mistress to a prospective servant: “’’Have you any followers? I’m very particular about followers.’

‘Do you mean beaux, ma’am? No, I haven’t one.’ ‘I’m thankful to hear that; I don’t permit followers. You never can tell but what they may be burglars. I always feel uneasy if there is a man in the kitchen.”

Kingsley, F. M. (1904). The Singular Miss Smith. New York: McMillan. This novel, by Florence Morse Kingsley (1859 – 1937), is referenced in other places in this article. Among other things, it is the story

of the impoverished Annie Smith’s attempt to gain a situation as a live–in servant in charge of general

housework.

713

Florence Morse Kingsley has a fine story, which reads so true one is forced to

believe it has actually happened. She tells of her experience when she went to answer

an advertisement for a “General.” The first question the lady asked her was: “Are you

honest?” “I am perfectly honest,” the prospective maid replied. “Are you?” The lady

almost fainted at such impertinence. When the maid was shown to her room, it was

down in the basement, cold, damp, dirty and musty, ill–lighted and “mousey.” “Would

you like to sleep here?” the new maid asked, and for this impertinence she was

“dismissed on the spot!”

She got another place where she slept in a cold attic room, which was also used

as a storeroom, where she had to climb over trunks to get to her bed. But she

determined to stay for a week to try it out. Her dismissal came suddenly. Her mistress

mislaid a ring, and burst into the kitchen accusing her of theft, and insisted upon

searching her trunk, and all her belongings. The ring, was afterward discovered to

have been sent to the jewelers to be made over, and the mistress did not even

apologize!

Another place she went, the provisions were all kept locked to prevent her from

eating between meals.

TEN PER CENT

Out of ten situations, she found one where she was given a comfortable room,

and courteous treatment. She tells how sorry she was to leave her kind mistress, and

how she had to take the lady into her confidence to show why she must pass on. When

some time afterward the story of “Ann Smith, General Servant” was published it

created some excitement, and there were many indignant women. They did not enjoy

having the mirror held up to them.

There are many kind and sympathetic mistresses, and we may thank them for

having still many good conscientious, capable girls in domestic service. Most women

who treat their maids badly do it from thoughtlessness more than from deliberate

meanness; they also act as they do because someone else does. Women are gregarious

creatures – they go in flocks. If the Colonel’s wife makes her maid sleep in the

basement, other women take it that is the “correct” place for her. Women are terribly

afraid of losing their social position if they show kindness to the maids, and the more

unstable their own social standing is, the more they will lord it over the unhappy

maid. Social position is like your dress. If you are sure it is all right, you will think

no more about it. If your social position is such that you have to sit up nights with it,

you had better let it go!

What women need is a little more imagination, to lay firmly hold of the idea

that these women and girls who come to work for us are women of like passions with

ourselves; that they grow tired, lonely, discouraged and cross, even as you and I; that

they need companionship, and encouragement, and the real red blood sympathy and

understanding; they need to have their self–respect confirmed and deepened. Make

them respect their job by showing them that you respect it! If women can be made to

see this and do it, most of the trouble will be over, for ninety–eight per cent. of people

want to do the square thing. We are all poor human beings, with great limitations,

714

and we should not be hard on each other. Rudyard Kipling put it well when he said

that the “Governor’s Lady and Judy O’Grady are sisters under the skin!”

NELLIE L. McCLUNG.

13. “Labor Must Expect to Produce” (1920)1194

I have a friend who for a time had much difficulty in getting suitable “help” for

her household. I happen to know that in this case it is not her own fault. Girls are

treated with every courtesy and consideration; in fact in most cases the girl’s claims

come first with regard to “time off,” etc. Be that as it may, however, on her last “hunt”

for a woman to keep house, I happened to be there when a woman telephoned. She

said:

“You want some one, to keep house?”

“Yes,” replied my friend. “What salary are you asking?”

“Oh, I thought about $50.00 per month.”

“Yes,” said my friend.

“Oh,” said the applicant quickly, “Have you any children?”

“I have two.”

“Oh……….!” sighed the applicant.

“Why?” asked my friend, “Don’t you like children?”

“Oh yes, I love them,” came the response over the telephone, “but I was

thinking about the work they made.”

Now what in the world do you suppose that woman expected to do for fifty

dollars a month? She surely did not think that anyone was going to pay out $50.00

and have no work to do! I wondered what she would have done had she been married

to some poor man where she had to make ends meet, and care for four or five children,

and receive no fifty dollars per month! Or even $25.00.

It is all well to expect good wages and comfortable living conditions. But surely

those who provide both these things have a right to some return and some

consideration for their outlay. Even in these days when so much is being conceded to

labor, labor must expect to produce before it gets returns. For instance, that woman

surely did not intend to be made an idle member of the household and in return,

receive her board, room, and $50.00 per month! There has been a great deal said in

favor of the poor working girl, but methinks that there is something to be said for the

poor, longsuffering housewife also, and we do not think that the faults are all on the

one side. Of course, there are tyrannical, overbearing women who treat those who are

unfortunate enough to work for them in an unkind and selfish manner, but I do not

think they are in the majority. As a rule women are so glad to get competent help

when they need it that they do their utmost to make things easy and comfortable and

when the girl hies herself away to pastures new it is usually because she is restless

and wants a change of some kind; or perhaps she has an opportunity to make more

money.

1194 From Women’s Corner. (1920, September 22). The Gleichen Call, p. 3.

715

14. “No Future Before Her” (1913)1195

Women expect too much of their maids, but I would like to add that they very

rarely get it. They want to make human machines of them which will begin action at

four or six in the morning and not run down until eight at night. In return for this

important and untiring service they want to give the lowest possible wages. They

usually have no labor saving devices in the kitchen, and it is often laid out as

inconveniently as possible. It is true, too, that the girl doing housework has no

definite hours. She may be called upon at any time to come and perform some extra

service for the mistress, so that in many places none of the time she spends in the

house is counted her own. The maid’s individuality is often cramped by having to put

things where the woman of the house thinks they ought to go, instead of keeping them

where she finds it convenient. A business man never arranges his secretary’s desk,

and why should a woman arrange her maid’s kitchen? But she often does.

On the other hand, the mistress has too frequently to put up with stupid and

incompetent help. The maid smashes into her best dishes right and left with a

recklessness that can only come from complete indifference to the owner’s property

rights.

She goes serenely on her way, not sopping to listen to instructions and

consequently getting them all bungled up and preparing a dinner for four when she

has expressly been told that there will be seven. She is not concerned about the

mistress’ embarrassed apology to the guests for the shortage of the food supply. She

slips the frying pan back on the hook without washing it, and sweeps the dust under

a sideboard. She loosens the pearl handles of one’s fruit knives by throwing them into

hot water, and scorches one’s daintiest blouses. I am speaking now from painful

personal experience.

The trouble is that housework is not a profession, and the majority turn to it

without either inclination or training, but because they have never been trained to

do anything else. There is no inducement for them to make themselves proficient

because the wages are so low, and advancements so rare and so small that the girl

who goes into domestic service sees no future before her.

15. The Mary Janes of Edmonton (1908)1196

Mary Jane is a public institution. In Edmonton she is also a vexed and vexing

problem.

It is inevitable that in a country as new as the West, the Mary Janes of many

lands flock, and flocking, form an interesting chapter in the history of the life of the

country. Because of this I am moved to write my experiences of “Mary, as I have found

1195 From Beynon, F. M. (1913, June 4). THAT HOARY OLD SERVANT PROBLEM. The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 9. Written by Francis Marion Beynon (1884 – 1951). 1196 From Peggy. (1908, August 15). THE SERVANT PROBLEM. The Saturday News, p. 7. Written by Gertrude Balmer Watt (1879 – 1963).

716

her,” leaving other Mary Janes in distant parts, but with eyes turned Westwards to

draw a moral, which may perhaps be of use to them when they themselves strike out

to make their fortunes in the Promised Land.

“The old–time Mary Jane who used to spend a life–time in one family, helping

to rear the babies, beloved by all, has passed away,” is a common saying now the

world over. Out West, except in very rare circumstances, she has never existed. The

“new issue” of which our grandmothers speak so contemptuously has arisen to take

her place, until she is no longer the “new issue” but the general type that prevails

commonly – the Mary Jane with her problem, a problem which is not the least of the

many confronting us in Western Canada to–day.

She is a big problem because we are a busy people; a people too engrossed in

multitudinous duties to very often be able to do our own domestic work. She is a very

vexed and vexing proposition because she mostly misunderstands us, this partly no

doubt because she is for the most part a stranger in a strange land, but also because

she comes to us with the most extravagantly ridiculous notions as to what is her

rightful due, our unparalleled and unlimited incomes, and lastly our supposed

ignorance as to how things should be done – because some misguided creatures have

assured her that she’ll be snapped up by an eligible young homesteader in marriage

before she has time to say Jack Robinson, and because, fatal error, she has a half–

contempt as to what need be done for a mistress in the wild and woolly West.

Who is responsible for the misunderstanding I don’t pretend to know, but the

general idea seems to prevail that in these newer provinces, gold blows about the

street in place of dust. Just as at one time other self–deluded mortals on hearing that

Johannesburg was paved with the waste from the gold fields in which a small

proportion of free gold still remained, rushed thither, firmly believing the city was

literally paved with the precious metal.

In the case of ignorant foreigners one can forgive these Arabian Night’s

dreams, but for ordinary individuals to cherish such remarkable ideas, strikes one as

just a bit ridiculous.

Because it is a country I am describing so great and wonderful in its

possibilities, that it can afford to have the plain and honest truth of it fairly delivered

to you, I may here venture to remark that the day of the hold–up in domestic and

other service, like the reign of the cow–boy, and the imperial sway of the One and

Only Company, has passed away forever. Good wages are always available for good

service, much, very much in advance of what could be obtained in the old lands, but

“we’re from Missouri” to use a slang phrase, when it comes to being help up for

preposterous wages for crude and inadequate service.

In so far as I have reason to believe that the present book is destined to travel

rather widely overseas, where Western conditions are not begun to be appreciated, I

may be forgiven for dwelling at some length on this point. Now, we all know that

there is a general impression abroad that out West the formalities are entirely

dispensed with, and that the inhabitants live, so to speak, very close to nature. Which

is entirely and utterly absurd as far as the towns and cities are concerned. Intending

immigrants of course who propose to homestead or go beyond the railway limits can

717

live, needless to remark, pretty much as they please, but Western cities are as much

in the know and a good deal more up–to–date in most respects, than the very much

older and closely–settled eastern communities. What people seem to lose sight of, is

the fact that the population of the majority of the Western towns, is composed of the

best young blood of the most highly civilized lands on the face of the globe; and not of

men and women who have been living practically cut off from their kind for

generations.

To–day the swarthy fur–trader of the north is as much a curiosity in Edmonton

as the menagerie in a circus. To be sure, he drops in on us once in a twelve–month,

when he brings down his yearly catch of furs, but his coming is an event, and the

going of him is like the following up of an Arab’s tent.

From all of which you may gather, that domestic service in a city such as

Edmonton, is required to be, to be able to command high wages, of as proficient a

class as in any part of the world. On the other hand, very few families employ any

but a general or two domestics, a cook and housemaid. There is a small field for lady

companions and capable housekeepers – but it is a limited one. It wouldn’t be, if lady

companions generally remembered their places, but as things are, they are generally

considered more bother than they are worth.

The great mistake that most girls make in coming to Western Canada is in

starting out by demanding exorbitant wages.

In the Old Country they are told that Canadians are easy, with the result that

they don’t imagine we know the value of money. Strange to the country and new to

our ways, they ask us, who will have to do a great deal of training, to start them on

wages, say at fifteen dollars a month, this for absolutely crude service. As a matter of

fact fifteen dollars a month or £5 in English money is considered a very fair wage for

competent help.

In England the girl who asks fifteen here, would probably command, so English

women inform me, six or seven dollars and have to work harder.

While the general wage–earning capacity of business men is undoubtedly very

much greater out West than in the older communities, so in a great measure in

proportion are living expenses higher, and so in like respect can we not afford to pay

for domestic help at a fabulous rate. House rent for modern dwellings is a big item,

fruit and vegetables are dear proportionately, also a great many of the necessities of

life. Taking her board and lodging into account then Mary Jane comes high at any

price in these communities, and entering into service she should remember this.

In three years out west I have known Mary Jane in five languages: Cynthy, a

h–––––; Mary, the Galician; Florence, who owns to calling Germany home; Jean, from

la belle France, and Victoria from England. As regards one of them the story is soon told. Mary Jane wasn’t cleanly, though

she had a fixed predilection for dressin’ up. Mary Jane was extravagant but a good

cook. Mary Jane commanded eighteen dollars as a monthly remuneration, but had to

be chased almost hourly to ensure our being given even a half–chance to be healthy.

Plainly there was nothing to do but release her.

718

In her place came Mary The Second. Candor compels me to here confess that

Number Two was not exorbitant in what she asked, six dollars to start in on and her

entire training.

For two weeks we stood each other, Mary “pongerskering” and “paroskying”

and “Missus” pointing at dishes and repeating monotonously “plate, Mary,” “jug,

Mary.” Then there were lessons on how to address strangers at the door and so forth.

The Master of the House being called into requisition to ring the bell while Missus

attended her to the door. The plan seemed feasible, but “sit down” shouted at a guest

in lieu of the more customary, “Won’t you be seated,” didn’t take well, with the people

one didn’t know, and as, by this time, the innocent (?) child had taken very naturally

to walking out with men she just picked up on the street – an English custom, I have

heard tell – one joyful night I bade her an eternal farewell.

Followed by three other types who had one point in common: their demand for

a high wage without the necessary qualifications to earn them. If one was a good cook,

she couldn’t keep the house decently liveable in, another just “lifted” things, without

taking the trouble to conceal the fact. I have sat in fascinated wonderment while my

Sunday–best cut–steel belt cavorted round the table clasped about the buxom waist

of My Lady Slavey.

Another M. J. had an extremely aggravated case of desiring to attend church,

every evening. At first I acquiesced, but then, even churches shouldn’t keep a maid

out until twelve–thirty and one in the morning. After all, one can’t burn the candle

at both ends, and the most good–natured mistress may be reasonably excused for not

relishing having to arise at six a.m. to call her maid in time to get breakfast.

Again the lack of even the commonest courtesy between the maid and her

employer is another cause of contention. I am not speaking of the exceptional girl who

is a lady under every condition, but of those others, unhappily too numerous a class,

who “talk back” on every occasion, announce their going out and coming in at their

own sweet pleasure, use the drawing–room for their own friends the minute your

back is turned, and are generally insubordinate and unruly. Dishes smashed galore

and no mention made of the fact, luxuries appropriated without a “by your leave,” no

real interest in the household which employs her, and a fixed idea to get the most she

can, and give the least, would seem to be the fixed policy of a good half of the girls at

present in service in the west.

Realizing that a goodly proportion of the Mary Janes are foreigners, and that

mistakes consequent on their different up–bringing and environment are at first only

natural, one still would raise the plea, that those who come out know the rudiments

at least of domestic service, and that they be possessed of that saving of common

sense and nice feeling which can always retrieve a difficult situation.

The real remedy, of course, lies even back of Mary Jane, and is to be found in

the teaching of domestic science in all the schools. As manual training is an essential

necessity to almost every boy at some time in his life, so a grounding in the science of

housekeeping is, should be, one of the most important subjects in every school the

world over.

719

Out West a great cry has gone up for competent Mary Janes; in the country

John and Henry are equally in demand – but until they show their mettle, would it

not be well for John and Mary to be modest, to remember that fortunes are not made

in a day even in so promising a land as Canada West, and for our governments to get

busy and make manual training and domestic science compulsory studies in our

schools?

16. “There’s millions in it.” (1901)1197

What British Columbia needs and needs badly just now is for someone to

import from the east about 2000 girls for domestic service. The Chinaman does not

fill the want. In many cases he is now a necessity, but he is not satisfactory. There

are hundreds of good, strong working girls in the east who are anxious to secure better

positions. They are working for little more than their board, and would welcome the

opportunity to improve their condition. But, they have no money and cannot come

west on a speculation. The Herald would like to see a Domestic Help syndicate

formed, and girls brought out to this province under its care and protection and places

furnished to them at a reasonable cost. There’s millions in it.

17. “Partiality for the Chinese.” (1900) 1198

Do the lady residents of Vancouver prefer the service of the heathen Chinese

to that of a girl of their own race in their household?

A working girl declares to The Province that much of the misery – much of the

shame of the girls of this country who would be willing and glad to work hard for an

honest livelihood, is directly the result of partiality for the Chinese.

“The ladies would rather have the Chinaman,” she says, “at the same wage a

good white girl asks. Why? Well because a Chinaman looks more stylish and servant–

like about the place; because being a man he can do heavier work; and, most of all,

because women can do and say things before the Chinese (think because he’s a

Chinaman that he doesn’t notice) that they would be ashamed to do before a lady of

their own race, no matter how humble her origin.

“What is the result? What is it likely to be? A woman’s got to live some way.

“And then they raise the cry of indignity of their having to brush skirts with

the happy sisterhood passing them on the street!”

The arraignment is a severe one – it is worthy of consideration and self

interrogation by the ladies who employ “help.”

None would willingly do aught that would precipitate a sister into the abyss of

degredation – yet may not the sin against a sister and society be committed

sometimes all unconsciously?

1197 From A FEW OBSERVATIONS. (1901, August 1). The Cranbrook Herald, p. 1. 1198 From THE SERVANT QUESTION. (1900, December 29). Industrial World, p. 4.

720

This working girl called upon by The Province asserts with feeling that fully

two hundred women and girls in this city would gladly do their part in solving the

servant question if mistresses would give them the same opportunities that they do

the Chinese to earn the same wages for performing the same work.

18. If You Can’t Beat Them… (1897)1199

A “Working Girl” writes the Rossland Miner that she went there last spring to get employment, but found it impossible, owing to all the domestic positions being

taken up by Chinamen. She became almost disheartened, but luckily learned that

there was a big demand for men. “I conceived the idea,” she writes, “that I should don

male attire and masquerade as a man. I weigh 165 pounds, am tall and have been

used to hard work all my life. With the exercise of a little caution I secured a suit of

men’s clothes, and then I had my long hair cut off pretending that I was afflicted with

headache. In three days after I had donned male attire I had secured a job at $2.50

per day, and have a steady engagement. I have my own clothes locked up in my trunk

and will resume the wearing of them when I return to Toronto with a stake. I have

saved nearly $200 since I assumed men’s attire in the beginning of June. I have had

one glass of beer in a saloon since I donned coat and vest. I went in just for the sake

of seeing what a saloon is like. I feel quite happy. My advice to other young girls who

are strong, hearty and young is to do as I have done if they wish to get on in life. No

one suspects that I am a woman.” This enterprising young lady does not give away

her identity, which is prudent, for a woman is liable, under the Canadian law, to be

clapped into jail for wearing men’s clothes in public. The petticoat is a danger signal

which male man is justified in demanding shall always be displayed on the female.

19. “Women are a Decided Success” (1917)1200

Women workers have been so successful in the factories in Great Britain that

they are being tried in the great workshops of Canada. Everywhere they are proving

themselves to be keen rivals of men, and it is now evident that the home is not the

only place where a woman may excel in work calculated to advance the welfare of

mankind. The Canadian Pacific Railway Co. has sent thousands of its male employees

for service in Europe, and as a consequence male workers have become scarce in

various departments of industry. In 1915 women workers were introduced into the

Canadian Pacific Angus Shops at Montreal. At present there are two hundred of them

engaged in the shops.

These women workers have been organized and work under the supervision of

Mrs. J. W. Bell, wife of Mr. Bell, superintendent of the Montreal Windsor Street

Station building. Mrs. Bell is enthusiastic over the success of the efforts of those

1199 From NOTE AND COMMENT. (1897, October 9). The Prospector, p. 5. 1200 From ORGANIZER OF WOMEN’S LABOR. (1917, March 14). Red Deer News, p. 4.

721

entrusted to her charge, and considers that the field of manual labor requiring skill

and application is one in which women will yet exercise a wide influence.

A visit to the women workers in the Angus Shops is inspiring. The women

punctually begin their labors at 7.15 a.m., and finish at 4.45 p.m. Allowing for the

lunch hour, between 12 and 1 o’clock, they work eight and a half hours a day.

Watching the women trip along cheerfully to the scene of their exertions one might

feel that he is observing the world march away from the old era of prejudice and

convention and entering a period of freedom and common sense. The spheres of the

activity of the Angus Shops women workers are made cheerful and comfortable as it

is possible to make them. Each woman has a locker in which she places her belongings

before donning her overalls and cap. At the outset of the experiment it was difficult

to induce some of the women to take kindly to the garments which tradition had

marked out as male preserves, but after a little while every woman found these

working dresses were more convenient than skirts. The overalls have three distinct

recommendations: they are tidy, they are sanitary, and they are safe, allowing their

wearers to move amongst the machines without danger of being drawn into

machinery clutches.

The women work on the piece system, and they are paid at the same rate as

their brothers. They work amongst the men with the harmony that prevails in offices

where there are female and male clerks. In the Angus Shops the women are to be

found sweeping, coach washing, coach painting, working on drills, at lathes, at

various kinds of machinery, filing and drilling in the brass shops, brass polishing,

operating nut–tapping machines, cleaning dynamos in the electrical department,

assisting in the steamfitting centre, and making mattresses and pillows. No woman

is asked to do heavy work.

The women bring the material for their lunch with them, and this they may

prepare in the lunch room which accommodates two hundred. Soup and bread are

provided by the Company at cost price. Attached to the lunch room is a rest room,

and near the rest room is a first aid room, where any accidents that may occur are

treated. No less than seventeen of the women workers hold certificates of proficiency

in first aid work. Should any accidents occur the services of these trained women are

very valuable.

There has been no scarcity of applications for work at the Angus Shops.

Hearing of the liberal treatment which they receive women have been anxious to

secure work there. But only those who are specially in need of employment are taken

on. Many of the workers are widows, soldier’s wives, and women who are the sole

means of the support of dependants. These plucky and industrious women lessen to

a considerable extent the strain on the Patriotic, Red Cross, and other charitable

funds.

Mrs. Bell makes a thorough investigation of the circumstances of each woman

before she is given employment, and a close watch is kept on each worker for the first

few days after her appearance in the workshops. This is done so as to guard against

the danger of alien enemies, for many nationalities are represented among the female

employees of the Angus Shops. Mrs. Bell says that every effort is made to have each

722

woman placed at the task that is most congenial to her tastes and ability. Those who

show exceptional talent and skill are promoted. There have been instances where

girls entered as coach washers and in a short time found themselves installed as office

assistants. “Many of the women,” says Mrs. Bell, “are one hundred per cent efficient,

and this efficiency is in no small way due to the suitable conditions under which the

women perform their tasks. The women are reliable and models of punctuality, and

only in cases where there is illness of the worker or some member of her family do

workers absent themselves from duty. Women are a decided success in the Angus

Shops.”

20. Women and Paid Farm Work (1916)1201

“I don’t believe in this education for girls – it takes them out of the home and

right off the farm. Look at ours now – we need her at home, but there she’d rather be

off teaching.”

The doctor looked thoughtfully. He was the chairman of the high school board

in the little town which was the business, educational and social centre of the

surrounding community, and it was not the first time he had heard this very same

complaint from the men on those farms. He inquired casually:

“What does she get?”

“Four hundred dollars a year – that’s what tickles her,” said her father half

proudly.

“Why don’t you offer her that to stay at home?”

“Doctor! Why it’s out of the question; I can’t afford it. The farm income won’t

stand it.”

“Give her a share in the farm, then. Make her a business partner,” suggested

the doctor.

“There are only two hundred acres, doctor. I have to set up the two boys –

they’ll want to get married one of these days. And I have to look out for myself.”

A queer little smile came on the doctor’s face.

“Then why should you complain because she wants to look out for herself? She

finds no opportunity on the farm. On the one hand she finds her work here considered

to be worth only her board and clothes. On the other, she finds herself worth four

hundred dollars a year to a community to teach perhaps a score of its children. Are

you giving your girl a square deal?”

The other man hitched a little uneasily.

“Don’t know as I am – never thought of it just that way before.”

Soon after this conversation took place, in the reception room of a city boarding

house a daughter of the same community sat talking to a visitor from home.

“You have a nice position here now, Ray.”

1201 From Guest, E. J. (1916, January 12). Give the Girl a Chance. The Melfort Moon, p. 7. Written by Emily J. Guest (1871 – 1936)

723

“Yes, I have a good position – I like it, too. But–“ quickly – “I don’t propose to

spend all my life cooped up in a city office – it’s back to the farm for mine!”

Her caller looked at her in surprise.

“You see,” with a little flush of pride. “I’m going to marry the nicest young

farmer ever seen, and I’ll have my own horse and carriage, maybe my own runabout

after a while, live in my own house and be a partner in my own business firm instead

of an employee in another. Oh, we’re going to make as well as a living up there, Elmer

and I.”

The two incidents are illuminative in their bearing on the problem of the girl

on the farm – or perhaps it would be better to say off it, for the absence of the girls

from rural districts is striking, and with them is going much of the charm, the

brightness, the sociability and the strength of the neighborhood. Naturally the young

men either follow their lead townward or sink into lonely, unprogressive

bachelorhood. The girl is one of the assets not only of the farm but of the nation, yet

we have given her case far too little consideration.

Ideas of womanhood have undergone rapid evolution, or perhaps revolution, in

recent decades, until the girl of today is persistently and insistently thrusting herself

in our faces, pulsing with dissatisfaction, craving life and freedom, almost

dangerously inclined to throw off mother and home spheres of action; for great as it

is to be a mother, the girl of the hour is silently, obstinately convinced that there is a

greater and more desirable thing, and that is to be a great, fully expressed human

being herself. This conviction of hers is at the root of many of our problems and must

be reckoned with before they can be satisfactorily settled. She demands a square deal

from life. Can this be achieved on the farm?

So often parents say: “My daughter has everything necessary. What more can

she want?” No soul can decide for another just what the “necessary” is. In the

development of every healthy, normal person there comes the stage of independence,

of egotism, of the search for the new, the trail of the unknown. This is the spirit which,

rightly guided, makes for progress. It wants to do things, to earn money, to spend it

in its own way. The girl finds, as the boy does, a joy in the earning and handling of a

cash income, pride in a growing bank account, and self realization and happy

development in its expenditure and investment.

There are few other business establishments where this can be so satisfactorily

arranged as on the farm. She can be given either a separate department, such as bees,

poultry, garden, fruit, or she can be made a partner in the general management on a

percentage basis. She can at the same time have the freedom to experiment that she

craves and the benefit of sager counsel. She can swing out and try the new things

that each generation contributes as its quota to the world’s progress, yet remain in a

firm characterized by safe conservation and experienced management.

Two sisters last year made a net income of six hundred dollars from the bees

in their father’s orchard. They did the housework as well, and it was a pleasure to see

their father’s interest in their experiment. When it came to a time demanding

pressing attention to the bees they worried a little over the housework. “Oh, attend

to your bees; the work indoor can wait a bit, the bees won’t!” was his quick advice.

724

Zeal and interest were added to his own life in watching and planning with his girls,

for this was a line that had never been taken up on that farm before except in a small

way for family needs.

In another case the father divided his farm equally between his two sons and

two daughters, who became business partners in a general way. In yet another

instance a sister learned to manage her brother’s stock farm while he was absent on

government work, and now since his death is its sole manager and proprietor.

The girl on the farm has a right to a square deal in education, so she may know

not only how to make a living but how to live. In this day of efficient and accessible

high schools, business colleges, correspondence schools and extension lecture courses,

her individual talents should not be allowed to lie dormant. The path of progress is

the path of happiness. The girl of all round development, given remunerative outlet

for her energies, will not justify the old farmer’s complaint that “education takes the

girl away from the farm and the home.” She will find her opportunities and happiness

there.

Play is another big factor in a satisfying life. We crave the warm, throbbing,

human comradeships that give variety, color and joy to life.

Fair consideration for the girl on the farm, then, involves such freedom of

opportunity as shall allow her the fullest expression possible of her powers and

capacities in such a way as to meet the economic and social needs of a growing,

expanding human being.

Egg and Butter Money Rural housewives were traditionally expected not only to care for poultry and dairy cattle, but to trade the surplus product for cash or store goods.

21. A Complaint (1887) 1202

The ‘egg and butter’ trade of rural households was largely informal, and therefore unregulated. Early Calgary merchants saw this as an unfair advantage, since sellers in the formal labor market had to pay license fees.

Complaint has been made that the merchants have no protection against

hawkers, who, it is said, frequent the town in considerable numbers and do a good

deal of business from which the town derives no benefits. If such is the case the

council should deal with this matter at once by imposing a license fee on itinerant

tradesmen. It is not right that the merchant should be obliged to pay heavy taxes for

the privilege of doing business in his own building while other traders are allowed to

go from house to house with their wares free of duty. We presume the council has

power to impose a fee on hawkers; if it has not it ought to.

1202 From COMPLAINT. (1887, April 15). The Calgary Weekly Herald, p. 4.

725

22. “Far from Pleasant” Hawking (1887) 1203 One of the informal ‘hawkers’ explains the situation from their perspective.

SIR:– In your weekly edition, published Friday, 15th of April, I see a notice to

the effect that the store keepers think it very hard that the settlers can hawk their

things round the town without a license. It is as well to know both sides of the

question. Many of the settlers have tried to deal with the store keepers, with what

success? What happened last season with regard to butter? Numbers of people went

to great expense and spent all their spare cash in buying dairy cows, milk pans, etc.,

thinking there was sure to be a certain market for their butter. For a few weeks all

went well. Of course, they knew the price must come down in time and did not expect

more than 30 cents per pound, but when it was more scarce they thought the price

would go up. What happened? They took their butter in and were offered not more

than 20 cents. Why? Because one firm sent down east or to Manitoba and bought

some hundreds of pounds very cheap. Now, we cannot expect to compete at present

with Manitoba. This is a new place and everything is very dear to the settler. Even

when the store keepers do buy from you at reduced rates they expect you to take out

the amount, in goods, at their shop and many won’t take your goods unless you so

deal. Now, as a rule, farmers’ wives only have the butter and egg money for their

clothes, or extra things in the house1204, and it may so happen that you want some

drapery or something from the hardware store with your butter money, but no, you

can’t get the money, so the store keeper makes money two ways – on your butter and

on the goods he sells you.

One firm are more liberal–minded than the rest of the store keepers and they

have always done their utmost to help the settlers. In many cases, it is the women of

the house who will have to take the goods to Calgary to sell and it is far from pleasant

to hawk the goods from house to house. No one thinks of the trouble and anxiety the

farmer has in growing his things. They are only intent on buying things cheap of the

settler and beating him down.

Now do the store keepers sell cheap? Certainly not. On the first chance they

raise their prices. What about meat this winter, what about coal and wood? Where

the butchers offer $50 per head for cattle on large ranches they offer $40 on the small

ones and seem surprised that you don’t care to “give” your cattle away. If the store

keepers work against the farmers, why the farmers must form an association to get

their goods in other ways and kill or sell their meat among themselves.

It is quite time we had a market and market day in Calgary and when the

bridges are built there should be no difficulty about it. This would be a great

1203 From ONE OF THE HAWKERS WHO ARE TAKING THE TRADE FROM OUR STARVING

STOREKEEPERS. (1887, April 29). GIVE THE SETTLERS A CHANCE. The Calgary Weekly Herald, p. 4. 1204 “The egg money from time immemorial has always belonged to Mother to buy herself and the

children the little things that mean so much to her.” “MOTHER” HAS CHANCE TO HELP HERSELF.

(1925, April 8). The U.F.A., p. 15.

726

convenience all round, a great help to the settlers, and ladies in Calgary could be

always sure of a good supply of butter, eggs and vegetables. Let there be a certain

price fixed for certain seasons of the year for butter and eggs, say 45c. in winter, from

November to April; from April to end of May 35c; June, July and August, 25c. to 30c.;

September and October, 35c. to 40c.. In England the supply regulated the prices in

the country towns. Eggs are always dear till after Easter, 50c.; from Easter they drop

to 40 and 35c. and so on down to 25c. a dozen, till they get scarce again. The good or

bad season must regulate the price of vegetables and if the store keepers would buy

from the settlers and pay cash down or weekly, or monthly transactions, instead of

sending to British Columbia for stale things, it would be a real help and a regular

trade would be established.

There is one hint I could give. Let the store keepers keep a boy to go round for

orders. I have known plenty of people go without potatoes, vegetables & c., because

they could not spare time to go and order them. There is surely room for a good green

grocer’s store now with an errand boy attached. No one expects the late high prices

to keep up and most of us would only be too pleased to have a certain market for our

goods.

With regard to vegetables there is nowhere you can sell them except the hotels

or private houses. Settlers would only be too thankful if they could find a regular

market for their things. If they had plenty of money they would never come here to

live and many of them have a hard struggle for existence for the first few years. Many

things fail and they have to start again and again, but no one helps them and

everyone grinds them down. There are very few things they can make ready money

at to carry them through the summer – only butter, eggs and vegetables and it is on

the kindness of the private people in dealing with them that they rely.

Another suggestion I would make. There is need of a monthly market for the

sale of surplus stock, like they have in English country towns. I know people who

hunted for milk cows and pigs last autumn for weeks and who were sent miles round

the country with little or no result. A certain place just outside the town should be

kept for it, with pens for the animals. It should be held on a market day when the

town would be full. At the same time and place hay and corn could be contracted for.

This would bring money to Calgary, and do good in many ways, and every one would

know they could get what they want on a certain day – cows, calves, horses, pigs etc.,

could be bought or sold.

Surely I have said enough to show that it would be absurd to expect us to pay

for a hawker’s license with the present difficulties we have to contend against.

Trusting in fairness to the settlers you will publish this letter, I am,

ONE OF THE HAWKERS WHO ARE TAKING THE TRADE FROM OUR

STARVING STOREKEEPERS.

727

23. In Payment of Taxes (1889) 1205

Egg and Butter money was usually considered a rural housewife’s discretionary income for personal and child–related expenses. In times of hardship it would be drawn upon to pay common charges, such as taxes. In at least one case, this taxation came with a proposal for representation in local government.

Sir, – It has been suggested here that we elect a set of old women for councilors

for the Municipality of Wolseley for the coming year, and last night my woman and I

was quietly discussing the question whether she might not run for a place in the

council. She asked me what were the qualifications. I said an old– Well. I did not get

any further, for as she was cutting some meat at the time and had the butcher knife

in her hand, I saw her hand tighten on the handle and I said no more. Now, sir, editors

are supposed to know everything (especially by us poor ignorant farmers), so I

thought it would be best to ask you for the necessary information at what time in a

woman’s life might the term old be applied without danger of hurting their feelings.

If you would kindly answer this you might save some poor fellow’s hair. Our reasons

for putting in old women for officers are to keep down taxes, and as the women have

to pay the taxes out of their butter and egg money1206 here this year we think that

they will work more economical than our old councilors did, and if you would just

answer this in your next issue you would oblige the Municipality of Wolseley, of which

I am an elector.

A SUBSCRIBER.

(A woman may be called old after her 101st birthday. –Ed.)

24. “The Farmer’s Wife Still Comes to Town” (1915)1207 The egg–and–butter barter still took place during the Great War.

“There used to be the greatest rivalry in our store,” related an ex–general

merchant to the writer recently, “to get the farmer’s wife to spend all her butter and

egg money when she came to the town. If we didn’t get the surplus above what she

had decided to take out in trade it either found its way into some other store or into

the bank next door.” […]

Grocers and general merchants of today are in the same position. The farmer’s

wife still comes to town every Saturday and sometimes during the week with her

butter and eggs and she either goes out of the store with money or goods.

1205 From A SUBSCRIBER. (1889, December 20). CORRESPONDENCE. Qu’Appelle Progress, p. 1. 1206 “At one time egg money was small enough to pass unnoticed into the maternal exchequer, but now

that it amounts to something it is going, more and more, to buying chewing tobacco and pay taxes.”

Women should stand up for their rights! (1939, June 22). The Redcliff Review, p. 2. 1207 From MERCHANTS SHOULD ADVERTISE. (1915 March 17). The Red Deer News, p. 4.

728

Tending Chickens on the Prairie1208

1208 Undated, unattributed photograph in the Anthologist’s collection. Date is ca. 1908 – 1912, based

on other photographs in the same collection.

729

25. Marketing Farm Produce (1917)1209

Perhaps one of the biggest problems on the farm is the marketing of the

produce profitably. It is a phase of farming in which we need help and instruction just

as much as in growing crops or raising live stock. The laws of supply and demand,

the art of selling, and the regulation of prices need to be studied just as much in

farming as in mercantile businesses of any kind.

Marketing is where the farm women most often fall down. They may raise

poultry or make butter, but if they cannot afford to market their produce profitably,

the most of their work goes for nothing. In a new country like the west, it is long

before staple prices and reliable markets get established; meantime, selling and

buying are rather haphazard and a real worry to both producer and consumer.

The problem of the woman far from town is different from that of the woman

who is within easy reach of city markets. The woman in country places depends on

the country store for a market. Now, the country storekeeper has his problem just as

well as the farmer’s wife, and if we are ever to get at the root of the matter, we must

consider both sides of the question.

Take the matter of butter. How few women really make first–class butter. We

all know the woman who keeps her cream too long before churning, and, when it turns

out “nippy”, remarks that it is not very good and she will just send it to the store!

What can the storekeeper do with it? He has to sell it for cooking butter, because the

woman who sent it in may be one of his best customers and he cannot afford to offend

her by refusing to take it. The loss falls, not on the woman who made this poor butter,

however, but on the other woman who makes good butter that will sell for a price that

can cover the loss on the bad butter. This woman did not realize that every pound of

poor butter sent to the store lowered the price of all the butter to the seller, and raised

it all to the buyer. She ought to have kept the “nippy” butter at home, and the home

critics would not have been long in voicing their opinions as to quality. That this is a

common state of affairs everyone knows.

Last summer I asked at a country store if they had any good butter. They said

they had not a pound of eatable butter in the place, and they had lots of orders they

could not fill. Now, one thing is certain; as long as butter goes to the stores of no

uniform good quality, there can be no good prices to the producer. The storekeeper

cannot give one woman a better price than her neighbor, for they tell each other, and

his life would not be worth living after they found out.

1209 From Mrs. McBeath. (1917, July 20). Marketing Farm Produce. The Crossfield Chronicle, p. 5. Written by Margaret McBeath (1850 – c. 1925). “Mrs. McBeath, a fine old Scotch lady, who has been

in this country 40 years […] is one of the people who are never too old to learn. She was the first person

in Western Canada to introduce the new method of canning at home, in tins as well as glass jars, by

what is known as the cold pack method, a great improvement both in labor and quality on the ordinary

way.” Home Canning Problem Now Solved. (1916, December 1). The Bow Island Review, p. 5. By reputation, she was “Mrs. McBeath, the well known woman farmer of Headingly [Manitoba], who is

always to the front in any movement calculated to improve the domestic conditions of this country”.

Important Home Canning Points. (1915, September 23). The Bassano Mail, p. 6.

730

The same can be told of the egg trade. One woman is short an egg to make a

dozen, and puts in a doubtful one. That one bad egg comes back like a boomerang and

hits the price of the whole lot. The women who do business in this style usually

demand the highest price. They are unbusinesslike from first to last. The difficulties

of getting produce of uniform quality is the main reason for the almost universal

movement towards co–operation. With creameries to take the cream daily, a uniform

good quality of butter is produced which will bring a much better price than mixed

lots of butter gathered at the stores.

The same with egg circles. Where the eggs are gathered regularly every day,

they can be sold at better prices with little danger of rotten eggs getting amongst

them. Therefore, in country places it seems the very wisest policy to encourage co–

operative movements. It relieves the women of a good deal of heavy work, makes for

better prices, and relieves the country storekeeper of one of his biggest difficulties.

There is also another way in which country districts can co–operate, and that

is in producing specialties. In most communities, every one follows his or her own

fancy in choice of stock or poultry, etc. Consequently, when buyers come they find

difficulty in getting big enough shipments of any one kind. To illustrate what I mean,

let me tell you of the experience of the fruit growers in the Okanagan Valley, B. C.

Every settler who went in there started to plant apples of every variety. They did not

know much about it, but planted trees of all sorts and kinds. When the trees came

into bearings, they were quite discouraged to find that they could not tell the fruit.

At last they sent down to Oregon for an expert to come and go over the situation. He

was not long in telling them what was the trouble, for the Oregon folks had gone

through the same experience. He advised them to root out their trees and only keep

well–known standard apples, and when an order came they could ship several

carloads of those sorts instead of mixed cars of 150 different kinds, worth very little.

[…]

Were creameries, egg circles, and poultry–fattening stations established

generally, there would result a standard market and standard prices in place of the

uncertain prices and hap–hazard selling, which are the discouragement of most

country women today.

The disposing of produce near the city is quite different, however. There is a

larger market to cater to, and many articles can be sold that the far–off country

woman cannot send in.

The city woman likes to get fresh and good country produce a little more

moderate than the price asked in the store, while the country woman is glad to supply

when she finds a good customer; but the producer and consumer must get together

and understand the situation thoroughly, or efforts in this line will fall through. […]

What the city woman needs to know is that when the cost of living has gone up

so much, the prices of farm produce have automatically gone up, too, since the high

cost of living hits the farmers just as much as the city folks. Eggs that used to pay a

fair profit at 30c will not pay a cent of profit at 50c. Even in places like California,

where egg ranches are by the hundreds, and where the winters are like summer, the

eggs have been 60c a dozen this year, even before the tourist season started, and why?

731

Because grain in the States is just as dear as here, and to get eggs you must feed your

hens grain, while the poultry woman here has to contend with the extreme cold, as

well. Perhaps some of you may have noticed that the first shipment of eggs from

Winnipeg went to Britain the other day – a million dozen. The wholesale price of eggs

now is 4s1210 the dozen, so that it can readily be seen that when there is a market like

that calling for an unlimited supply, the prices here are going to soar.

Poultry has been high in price, too, for the same reason – the high price of feed.

Poultry cannot be fattened without grain and milk, and these are the most costly

things on the farm today. The same with milk and butter; with bran and shorts at

$28 and $30 a ton, it is impossible that milk and butter should be produced cheaply.

So the town folks must not blame the farmer unduly for the high price.

Our stumbling block to the city folk is the difference in prices asked by

producers. This is a difficult thing to arrange, for some women ask an exorbitant

price, while others who have never calculated the cost of production may ask so little

that they lose money on every single transaction. This is where we need instruction

to be able to calculate what our produce really costs, so that we can charge a

reasonable profit and establish a standard price that would be fair to all. The city

woman is rather discouraged by her essays in buying direct from the country folk,

and I believe it is principally because people in town do not understand that if it is

hard times in town, it is equally hard times in the country.

It is well known that one of the principal causes of high prices is the cost of

delivery, which in the end, of course, is paid by the consumer. To offset this, the Public

Market is open and the “Cash and Carry” system is one of the best features. To the

ordinary householder, these markets should prove a boon, as they have in other

places where the Public Market movement is steadily increasing. There is a limited

market just now for extra good products sent by Parcels Post. We are not yet

accustomed to the convenience of this method, but it is especially suited to producers

who have a limited amount to sell, and to buyers who like the very best and freshest

of articles. […]

Our own Postal authorities here are busy extending the rural system, and on

the routes already established there is quite an increasing business in postal

packages – eggs, butter, fowls, turkeys, cuts of meat, etc. All go quite nicely by mail.

The cost is less than express, and if our authorities would extend the limit of the

cheap rate from 20 miles to, say, 50, there would be a much bigger trade done.

I may mention the success of some of my neighbors with the Parcel Post. One

woman has been shipping new laid eggs all winter by mail. In January she shipped

sixty dozen, mostly for invalids, as one customer told others, and she cannot possibly

supply the demand. In summer she sent milk–fed chickens for which she has standing

orders, also turkeys. Another woman sent roasts of pork and cuts of beef, sausage,

meat, etc. and several others shipped eggs. So far there has not been a complaint,

which says a great deal for our Postal Service. I dare say you all have some experience

in the use of Parcel Post these times1211 in sending things to your boys at the front,

1210 Four shillings, or one fifth of a pound. 1211 This article was written during World War I.

732

and have been surprised by what you could send, so that you can realize what a

simple method you have right at hand to help out your marketing.

I may tell you that lately the Post Office in Winnipeg had a shipment of two

carloads of mail boxes for the Rural Routes, something like 2,000 boxes, so the

possibilities of wider markets are before you.

All produce nowadays must be put up in attractive form if it is to command a

good price, but the variety of containers now to be had is endless. As a rule they are

mono–service, which does away with much trouble and worry over the returning of

crocks or cases.

A good plan is adopted by people who club together and send orders to the

country. This is a capital plan, and in some instances I know of has worked out very

satisfactorily. The idea was started in the States by an apple grower who thought

that there were possibilities of selling to men in offices, so he started in by putting up

nice cartons of picked apples with the motto: “An apple a day keeps the doctor away,”

and delivered them in the offices. This led to other farm stuff being clubbed in the

same way.

The saving comes in the amount sent, as express charges are less on the bigger

quantity, and the produce is easily divided up on arrival. In offices this has been tried

where there are several employees. One person acts as a secretary, collects the orders

on a certain day, with the payments, sends them off, and on arrival of the goods

distributes them. In only one or two cases have I heard of dissatisfaction, but a change

was made and another producer gave complete satisfaction. And these little circles

are becoming more common. Their motto is “Fresh Goods, and Cash With Order.”

For those who live on an automobile route there are many chances of disposing

of small quantities of produce. Many of the ordinary things on a farm are dainties to

the city folks, and there are many inquiries from passers–by, for eggs, butter, cream

buttermilk, chickens, sweet corn, rhubarb and berries when in season. If the use of

bulletin boards naming the articles for sale became general, much more business

could be done in this way.

There is also the matter of private customers in town who get in produce by

express or delivery. Opinion differs as to this method. In many cases it is

unsatisfactory, because the promised supply falls just when it is expected to go on –

quality is sometimes not up to standard – difficulties of delivering on set days comes

in when the horses happen to be extra busy on the farm. Then there are difficulties

on the other side of collecting payments and getting returned empties sent back, and

so on. It is not an uncommon thing, too, for the country woman to be done out of her

goods. I heard of one woman who had fresh eggs sent to her, and after some months

wrote to say she would not pay the price, as half the eggs were rotten! Just lately, I

heard of two cases where crocks of butter had been sent in. One woman kept her crock

in a damp cellar and said the butter was mouldy and refused to pay. The other kept

hers next to a steam pipe and declared her butter went rancid, and she refused to

pay. Well, there is a very simple remedy for offenders in both cases. “Cut them out,”

and stay only with those who deal fairly.

733

While some customers are unsatisfactory, there are others with whom it is a

real pleasure to do business; considerate, punctual and efficient; there is no trouble

at all in dealing with them. I know of one such, who on receiving the poultry sent in,

returned two cents a pound more than the price asked, because the quality was so

good, and another gentleman who paid three cents a pound for turkeys more than

was asked, for the same reason. Little wonder there is satisfaction on both sides there.

It was a pleasure for those buyers to show their appreciation in that way, and the

farm woman could not fail to feel pleasure and encouragement, which might show

itself in an extra pot of cream or some other dainty popped in with the next order.

In trading, as in any other line of life, we should remember the Golden Rule:

“Do to others as you would be done by” – and many of the present difficulties in

marketing would disappear.

How Some Women Earn Their Money

26. “Male and Alien Hands” (1892)1212

It is exceedingly aggravating to find women discarding work just as it becomes

financially profitable and men taking it up. Yet this happens in numberless cases. As

soon as one employment becomes of serious import and of value enough for men to

adopt it, women are quite likely to discard it, or are frightened out of competition with

their stronger brethren. Several centuries ago, when the mass of mankind was

occupied with feats of arms, women were the only leeches1213 known. It was

considered a most womanly act to study the virtues of herbs and medicines, and even

to acquire the art of surgery. Yet, within the last score of years, it has been a common

thing to sneer at a woman physician, as those who have stepped out of the limits

prescribed for their sick. Gradually the prejudice against the woman physician is

being overcome.

Many other cases might be instanced where women have gone back into

lucrative employments from which they had been pushed by the superior force o f

men and made a success of them. The most conservative thinker could hardly say

that butter–making was not a woman’s employment, but as soon as butter–making

is conducted in a large creamery, where it becomes a matter of a thousand pounds a

week instead of fifty, and is conducted on scientific principles so that the result is

sure, it is done by men. The fact is that our farmers’ wives, with their long experience

in butter–making, are being driven out of an excellent and lucrative employment by

the engagement of male and alien hands. No one doubts that the business of

creameries is a success, yet it is to be regretted that in woman’s peculiar sphere she

has not made the success her own, and has allowed the middlemen to come between

her and the market.

1212 From The Work of Women. (1892, June 23). Qu’Appelle Progress, p. 2. 1213 In this context, medical professionals.

734

Why should not farmers’ wives and daughters in a large neighborhood organize

and establish a co–operative creamery, to which they would all furnish the cream?

There are abundance of farmers’ daughters seeking employment in the cities,

studying art, studying what not, who could do all the work of such an establishment

except the work of lifting heavy buckets, which ought to be done by a male employee.

There is no essential part of the work of butter–making which may not be better

entrusted to woman’s hands than to men’s. The establishment should, of course, be

conducted on strict business principles. There should be agencies for the sale of butter

in all cities and villages where it will command the best price, and such agencies

should be in charge of daughters of those interested in the co–operative scheme.

There is no possible reason why many of the army of unemployed women who are

continually drifting to the cities for work should not be aided by such a project as this.

There is always a demand for home–made bread and cake, home–made pickles and

home–made preserves, at prices which will compete with the inferior produce of this

kind now for sale. Canning and pickling establishments of a similar kind might also

be conducted on the co–operative plan by unemployed women.

It is not our purpose to add to the many burdens of the farmer’s wife. It is not

a question so much of whether she finds enough to do, as whether what she does gives

the best result. There is no use of farmers of limited means educating their daughters

for teachers, for the ranks of teachers are over full. There is little more use in

educating them to write poetry as a remunerative profession. What they need is

practical employment, which will bring a practical money return.

27. The Staff of Life (1894)1214

In some of our smaller towns there seems to be a great demand for good home–

made brown bread. The bakers’ supply of white bread usually holds out, but their

supply of graham or brown bread never reaches the demand. In one of our eastern

towns, a maiden lady has made a good, comfortable living for two years making this

bread and delivering it to customers. Until two years ago she was a day laborer in a

manufacturing establishment, but one fatal night fire wiped the whole plant out of

existence, throwing one hundred men and women out of employment, and this one

among the number, with a dependant aged mother to support. Fortunately, she

owned her humble home. She made her own bread and supplied a few of her

neighbors, all the time: her mother was not so feeble but she could aid in the baking.

After the fire, she immediately set out to find more customers. She found no trouble

in securing customers among the foreigners, as they are great lovers of brown bread.

In a little while her trade increased, and in less than one year she had, by the strictest

economy, saved enough to buy a second–hand delivery waggon and an old horse. With

these she opened a trade with another town three miles distant, and delivered her

bread twice a week. In a little over a year, the old horse and wagon were sold for what

she could get and a new horse and a new canopy toy baker’s wagon took its place. A

1214 From The Staff of Life. (1894, October 5). The Moose Jaw Herald Times, p. 2.

735

man was hired to run the wagon and deliver the bread, and a trained baker hired to

assist in the baking.

She says the bread is much more easily made than white bread, as there is so

much less labor in the manufacture of the loaves, as the laborious kneading and

mixing is done away with in this kind of bread. When viewing her huge mixing

troughs I made the remark: “You have enough dough to last a week, have you not?”

“No indeed,” she says. “This will all be gone by to morrow night and I must bake every

morning and sometimes in the afternoon.”

The material used in this bread is one–half graham flour and the other half

white flour and sweetened slightly with molasses. This dough was stirred together

with large wooden spoons, in wooden bowls and mixing troughs; the dough was soft

when poured in the tins and placed in the ovens. They baked much more quickly than

white bread would, and as fast as the oven was emptied it was filled again, and this

was kept up every forenoon, and sometimes every afternoon for a whole week at a

time.

Now, it seems to me that this would be a much more remunerative employment

for many a woman and girl that is looking about her to find something to keep soul

and body together, than seeking positions in stores, factories, etc., at starvation

wages, for as long as the cry is sent up that it is “hard times” people will not and

cannot buy anything but the necessaries of life, and it is best to labor for only what

people must have, and “bread is the staff of life.”

28. Opportunities for Work (1913)1215

COVERS FOR FURNITURE

A friend earns money making covers for worn–out furniture. She makes the

covers out of pretty designs of denim to match the paper on the wall.

MAKING OVER SLEEVES

One can earn money making over–sleeves for business office wear. One pair

can be made out of a yard of goods. The goods cost 3 or 4 cents a yard. They sell for

15 cents a pair.

CLOTH BAGS FOR BANKS

A woman for many years has been earning money making cloth bags for

several savings banks of Chicago. They are easy to make. Though made of strong

material they soon show wear and have to be replaced.

GLOVE WASHING PROFITABLE

A young girl earns $3 to $5 a week washing silk and chamois gloves for the

ladies in her neighborhood. She does the work carefully so that the chamois gloves

are soft and the light silk ones do not fade or turn yellow.

INITIALS FOR TOWELS

1215 From Beynon, F. M. (1913, January 15). HOW SOME WOMEN EARN MONEY. The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 10 and Beynon, F. M. (1913, January 29). HOW SOME WOMEN EARN MONEY. The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 10. Written by Francis Marion Beynon (1884 – 1951).

736

A friend crochets strips of square mesh about one and one–fourth inches wide,

and in the centre of each strip crochets in the initials of the purchaser. She inserts

them in guest towels and gets $1 apiece for them. They are original and the towel

only costs 28 cents. Patterns for initials can be picked out by anyone from a crochet

book or from a cross–stitch alphabet.

RECIPE FOR DOUGHNUTS

One friend made delicious donuts and sold them to groceries. She received 12

cents a dozen and could make several hundred each day. This is her recipe:

One egg, pinch of salt, one cup sugar, two cups sweet milk, two tablespoons

melted lard, two heaping teaspoons baking powder, enough flour to make dough stiff

enough to roll. Fry in hot lard and roll in powdered sugar.

The following is a seasonable recipe and can be made and sold with

considerable profit:

One quart cabbage chopped fine, one quart boiled beets chopped fine, two cups

sugar, one tablespoon salt, one teaspoon black pepper, one–quarter teaspoon red

pepper, one teacup grated horseradish. Cover with boiled vinegar an dkeep from air.

Put salt on cabbage and let it drain. Then mix all ingredients thoroughly. Fill

glass bottles and cork. Have made quantities and sold dozens of bottles.

WASHING FINE WOOLLENS

So many housewives dread the washing of fine

woollens, as it requires much carefulness in washing and wringing. A woman can

make a neat sum by advertising for such work, having first learned and applied the

best methods of handling woollens, so that the work will be easily done. The prices

charged for such work are $1 a pair for fine blankets, 50 cents for woolen shawls and

heavy undergarments, and 25 cents for small pieces. The work is heavy, but the

remuneration is good.

29. “Profitable Fields of Undertaking” (1897)1216

There are reasons innumerable why so many women of to–day are earning

their own living, or if not that altogether, are helping toward it, and it is safe to say

that with but comparatively few exceptions no woman would care to battle with the

world, were she not compelled to do so by circumstances and not so much from the

inclination to be independent. Of course it is a great pleasure to have “pin money,”

and rather than go without it, many women seek some employment. A capable woman

may occupy almost any position to–day which formerly only men could enter, and it

is a credit to her that her work is just as carefully and conscientiously done. […] No

matter what work a person does, she must like it sufficiently well to take interest in

it, or success will not follow. It never does when work is performed in a half–hearted

matter. And no matter what is chosen, there is plenty of hard work and study about

it to require one’s best efforts.

1216 From HOW SOME WOMEN EARN MONEY. (1897, October 8). Moose Jaw Herald Times, p. 6.

737

Among the most profitable fields of undertaking for women living in the

country is poultry–raising. But, like in everything else, the woman who will succeed

must give it her whole attention and take sufficient interest to make it flourish.

“Rome was not built in a day,” neither was a profitable poultry business. Time and

patience combined with some hard work will at first be required. The woman desiring

to take up poultry culture must decide upon a special branch of it, and make a

specialty of it, for that has been found the most profitable. If poultry are kept for eggs,

let the best egg producers be purchased; if for table use, then the breeds best adapted

for that purpose should be kept. Then, again, one may go into the business of raising

purebreds for the fancier’s trade. All of these require different care to a certain extent,

and the selection of food for them also varies. No one can expect to succeed without

help from some source, and probably the best and cheapest way of obtaining it is to

subscribe to some good poultry journal. One is then given the benefit of experiments

and can profit by others’ experiences and failures. The demands of the market and

the distance from the same should to some extent determine what branch of the

poultry business would be the most profitable.

A lucrative employment for the woman adapted for it, is taking care of the sick.

This does not mean in the capacity of a professional nurse, although that is well–

paying work when one has taken the long course of training. The woman who is

adapted for nursing must be patient, cheerful and neat. She must understand how to

serve a sick person, how to care for the room and prepare the meals which the sick

one is to eat. Many women who have been compelled to do something to support

themselves or their little ones have become very successful nurses. Doubtless their

first attempts have been among friends, and the remuneration has been small, but

experience costs something, too. Then, when some good recommendations have been

obtained, they have placed them together with their names with some doctor who

would be willing to recommend them.

The woman who would become a nurse cannot be nervous or excitable, as

nothing is worse for a patient; and of course cheerfulness is absolutely necessary, as

impatience or ill humor may be very detrimental to the one who is sick.

One woman who has been especially successful is generally always busy. Her

engagements are for only two or three weeks at a time, and she has $10 for every

week she works. She is a neat, cheerful woman, who enjoys here work. She is a nice

cook, and if there is no servant in the family she cooks the meals, and keeps the rooms

in order. Of course her attendance upon the patient requires considerable of her time,

so not only the very necessary work in the house is looked after. If there is an infant

to take care of, she attends to it. Professional nurses do nothing but attend to the sick

and prepare their meals. They usually have from $15 to $25 a week, according to their

experience or the case they are called upon to attend.

A family in good circumstances some years ago were through some financial

failure suddenly brought face to face with poverty, and something had to be done to

keep starvation from the door. It happened that the wife was an excellent bread baker

and had always received considerable praise for her baking. It occurred to her that

probably the bread she baked would be more acceptable to the family who depended

738

on bakers’ goods than what they would buy, so she made a number of one–pound

loaves, daintily browned, placed them in a basket lined with clean white cloth and

went to some people that she knew depended upon bakers’ bread. They bought it

eagerly and were willing to pay her a trifle more than they were in the habit of doing

at the baker’s. She informed those who bought that she would take orders for bread

and rolls from all who would send them, and assured her friends the bread would

always be the best.

To–day she supplies a great hotel with bread and rolls of all kinds, besides

serving a large private trade. As she became known her orders grew so numerous

that help was required. The basement in her house has been turned into a model

bakery. The walls are of smooth white boards and lined with shelves. Great stout

tables provided with drawers for flour are placed up to the walls, and everything is

immaculately white and shining. Great porcelain–lined pans are used for setting the

sponge, and the best flour is always used. An immense stove with capacious ovens

has taken the place of the former ordinary stove. Three cows are kept to supply the

necessary milk. This woman’s husband attends to all the ordering and delivery,

having purchased a horse and neat buggy for the purpose. Lately these people have

added cakes and pastries to their list, and are very successful.

In the same way that this trade has been established, others are earning

money by preparing certain dishes that they are especially successful in making.

Delicious home–made pickles, jellies and preserves are always in demand, especially

in towns where housewives do not know how, or do not care to put them up at home.

Anything that is made to sell must be well prepared and especially good if a profitable

price is to be demanded for them. If one is only earning “pin money” there is no

necessity for devoting a great deal of time or much work to such an undertaking, but

if one’s living is to be earned from it, of course it demands considerable hard work.

During the summer women in the country can earn considerable money by

selling vegetables, that is, if they live near a town. A nice little woman comes

regularly to her customers and they are always waiting for her because her vegetables

are so crisp and fresh. She has a neat wagon and a horse and drives in every day. She

sells all kinds of vegetables except potatoes, for which she says she has not room, and

eggs and poultry. Her prices are reasonable considering the quality of her goods, and

no doubt she makes money. Last summer she made a specialty of sweet corn, and

sold a great wagon load daily. Nowhere in the market could better table corn be

purchased than she sold. She says she believes in taking her produce to the nearest

market and selling it as cheaply there as it is sold in the large cities. Besides, she

does not have any commission to pay, and no worry that her goods will be damaged

or lost.

During the winter there is great demand for mushrooms, and high prices are

paid per pound for choice ones. Raising mushrooms is a remunerative business, and

for the woman who wants to earn “pin money” it is an inviting field. Like many other

things it takes some study and attention at first, as certain conditions are necessary

for success. If one cannot learn from actual experience and observation how to grow

739

them, no doubt some successful grower would willingly tell if requested through the

columns of an agricultural paper.

Raising choice plants, seeds and slips for sale has been the means of making

money for many women. Slips of choice plants rooted in tiny pots and sold for small

sums would please many. Fresh, home–grown seeds of fine flowers are always in

demand, providing they are clean and carefully sorted. A woman living within twenty

miles of Chicago carries into the city to a florist two great baskets of choice cut

blossoms every day. At first her business was conducted on a very small scale, but

through perseverance it has become quite remunerative. Her little greenhouse is

carefully attended to, and she finds the employment both healthy and delightful.

Although there are dressmakers and seamstreses to be found in every town,

there are few who can do “white” sewing neatly. Nowadays one may be able to buy

underclothes at very reasonable prices, but neither the material nor the work are

equal to well–sewed garments made at home. There are doubtless a great many busy

women with a number of little ones to sew for who would gladly pay a dressmaker’s

price for a “plain” sewer1217. The woman who enjoys working on muslins and is a neat,

quick sewer can certainly make a success of it.

A young lady visiting a girl friend some time ago remarked how beautifully she

was sewing, and asked her to help with some she wanted done. This was the first

attempt at sewing for some one else but through this, requests came from several

women who needed similar help. From that time this young woman was almost

constantly employed in families to sew. Children’s cotton dresses, boys’ waists, aprons

and muslin underwear she sewed very daintly, and although she did not earn more

than a dollar a day, it paid her well to do it. She would commence to work about eight

in the morning and at six she put her work away, and luncheon and dinner were

always taken with the family she worked for.

A Living Wage for Women

30. “How Much do you Pay your Girls?” (1900)1218

The following conversation took place not long ago between the writer and a

large employer of woman labor:

Said he: “You agitators must stop saying we do not pay living wages to our

women employees.”

In reply, the writer said: “I will leave you to answer as to the truthfulness of

our statements; how much do you pay your girls?”

Said the employer: “Many of my girls get $8 to $9 a week.”

When pressed to state the number, he had to confess that there were only six

or eight in the three hundred. In reply to the question, how many get only from $1 to

$3 per week, he said there was a considerable number of those, but they were

1217 In this context, ‘one who sews’. 1218 From Ex. (1900, March 31). WOMAN’S WAGES. The Independent, p. 2.

740

apprentices, or girls who were unusually slow, and therefore they were exceptions

and should not be counted; then he was made to confess that the very high wage girls

were also exceptions for the reason that they were experts and far above the possible

average in speed. It was then agreed that the large majority of girls were average

workers and their wages was $4 per week. Then the question was put:

“Do you think the girls educated in our city schools can live as they ought to

live on $4 per week?”

He replied: “No, they can not; but,” said he, “many girls do not depend entirely

on their wage for a living; most of them live at home or have brothers or relatives who

assist them.”

“Then,” I said, “it follows that you are not paying a living wage; you are not

paying all the labor cost of making your goods. These girls’ relations and friends are

paying part of it.”

He said that he never looked at it in that light. We then asked:

“Where do the girls go for work who are compelled to pay all their living

expenses with their wages,” and in reply to this, he said: “God only knows; they do

not come to this factory.”

This is a true picture of woman’s labor to–day. The women who take the places

of men in our stores, offices and factories are largely girls who get part of their living

elsewhere, and they can afford to work for from $1 to $3 per week. The women who

depend on their own efforts for their whole existence are compelled to work in some

one’s kitchen or sell their virtue for part of the price of existence. If the good people

who so much deplore the rapid demoralization of woman, both in virtue and in love

of home, and motherhood, would change the tendency, they must begin at this point.

The husband’s and father’s ability to keep the woman in the home where she belongs

is diminished by woman’s taking his place in the shop at less wages, thereby cutting

his wages and reducing his chances for a job, the women themselves making wages

by that means drive the weaker natures to sell their persons for a better existence,

and he who blames them is both cruel and unjust.

31. “Women Regard Business as a Makeshift” (1913)1219

I know a liberal minded man, the father of two grown daughters and the

manager of a large business, who has been very enthusiastic in his efforts to give

women employment, and not only does he advocate giving them work, but he also

claims that they should be paid an amount equal to that a man would receive for

labor of like character. One time I asked his son, who is also connected with the

business, what he thought of the plan and imagine my surprise when he said:

“I do not like it at all. Why? Well, there is no doubt that women are capable of

filling these positions, for they are intelligent, ambitious to learn and pleased at the

chance of making money. But when woman has become proficient in her work, and

we are beginning to feel that our training was all placed, lo, she marries! and then

1219 Miss Chinook’s Cheerful Chat With Girls. (1913, August 9). The Greater Vancouver Chinook, p. 6.

741

we find she was only doing this work until her sweetheart should be in a position to

support her. Or, perhaps, she has no sweetheart now, but who will dispute the fact

that there is a lingering hope in every girl’s heart that the “knight on the iron gray

steed” will yet appear1220. You see, our office becomes a training school in which much

valuable instruction is wasted. Women regard business as a makeshift, whereas with

a man it is the business of life, other matters being secondary, and by close attention

and diligence he hopes for promotion in his chosen time.”

One cannot but admit there is some truth in his assertions, as it is natural for

a woman’s heart to yearn for home and attachments, but nevertheless I think that

most men who employ women agree that they are quite equal to men in most positions

accorded to them.

If it becomes necessary for you to work for your daily bread, then you must

cultivate a personal interest in your labor. If possible, select the work for which you

are best fitted, and never feel above it. Bid false pride adieu when you go out into the

business world, and instead pride yourself on your capability, remembering that

behind the counter of the book keeper’s desk you can be as much a gentlewoman and

as truly a lady as in the parlor at home.

You should be proud of the fact that you are self–sustaining. How many there

are who envy you whose family pride interferes and who are forced to lead miserable

lives of dependency, which are more wearing than long years of active labor.

Of course, promptness and accuracy are necessary requirements, and

inattention cannot be too strongly condemned. You are paid to put spirit in your work

as well as for the time you give.

Look your prettiest, but study to dress suitably. A plain face can be made

attractive by immaculate neatness and becoming clothes. Simplicity of dress is most

desirable. Do you know that it arouses suspicion in the minds of your own sex, as well

as among men, to see a salaried girl with diamonds on her fingers and furbelows that

are only suitable for the evening when you go out or sit with a few friends? Work is

honorable; it is the idle girl who yields most readily to temptation.

To the girl who sews from day to day or works in other ways in the shut–up

workroom of some establishment – you who see so little of the outside world that your

life seems bare and uneventful – don’t become morbid over what seems a hard lot.

Contentment is the keynote of happiness, whatever the notes and chords of the

harmony. No position is so unattractive that someone would not regard it as a haven

of rest after other trials. You are not alone in the fact that you work hard, most of us

1220 The following, probably apocryphal, story illustrates a case where steady work was preferred to a

steed of doubtful lineage: “Recently one of our most fastidious young men bought a pair of overalls and

found in them the name of the girl who made them. He very promptly wrote her a letter with all the

effusiveness necessary to such a case and in due time received reply, which, however, was void of the

romance usual in such cases. Here it is: “I am a working girl, it is true, but I make a good living and I

do not care to support a husband, as I would probably have to do, if I married some silly noodle who

gets mashed on a girl he never saw. Permit me to further say that I do not know how my card got in

that pair of overalls, and that when I do marry if ever, it will be some fellow who can afford something

better than a forty–seven cent pair of breeches.”” Grace, A. B. (1912, January 27). Thoughts from the

Editorial Pen. The Cranbrook Prospector, p. 4. Written by Andrew Benjamin Grace (1845 – 1915).

742

work in one way or another. Do you not know some little woman who is struggling

with poverty as you are? She is not off duty at six in the evening, and on again after

breakfast. She has to rise early to prepare the morning meal, she cleans the house

and cares for the little ones, she washes the clothes and sits up till the late hours of

night to do the sewing and the mending, after all her labor does she always receive

remuneration as you do? Oh, me! Are not her efforts often repaid with want and

sometimes abuse? You gain in your independence and you live an honest life, so try

to be content without the gaieties and luxuries denied you.

Do not let contact with the outside world cause you to lose the modesty of

manner and speech that is a woman’s greatest charm, the loud girl with her slang

and boldness may attract the attention of some men, but it is a good rule to live by,

that the men who are thus attracted are not worthy your friendship. Nor are these

words to the working girl only, the girl in any position, at home or elsewhere, loses

her womanliness when she stoops to such methods to make herself popular.

You will have many temptations – many more than those who are closely

sheltered at home – and you have need to be more discreet than any other class of

women, for it is only of late years that we hear much of the business girl. Will you not

be womanly, so modest, and withal so attractive, that you will add gems to the crown

of civilized womanhood? We can be good housekeepers and true mothers – that is

conceded, let us also prove that we can be brave and able workers in the different

fields that are daily opening to women.

32. The Girl’s Side of the Question (1913)1221

I went to work on a farm this spring and she wanted me to paint the kitchen

on all sides, top and bottom. She said she wouldn’t know what she had for me to do

when I got that done, unless I would make the garden and raise chickens. I told her

she didn’t want a girl at all, she wanted a man. Then what did she want to pay?

$15.00 per month. I am a capable hand, can go ahead and cook for a dozen all summer

and do it well, but I am no $15.00 or $20.00 per month girl. And another thing, when

you get your work done and have a little time for the much needed rest, and which

you take, then they will tell all of the neighbors that you do nothing but sleep.

They want you to do all the work, then if you have a little spare time, turn in

and be nurse and take care of some cross baby till time to get supper, then they will

come and take it and tell you to get supper. And how much do they pay? They would

like some cheap girl. But if the girls would only make up their minds, they wouldn’t

be made a cat’s paw of. I would tell them I am to do the work and what time I have

when my work is done is my own. I don’t believe in any mother leaving her children

with the help. If she doesn’t want to take care of them, she should hire a governess

or nurse. Now just think of them attending mothers’ meetings and leaving their

children home with the girl to look after them. Then another thing, you mustn’t make

them mind; no, that would never do.

1221 MISSOURI. (1913, June 4). THE GIRL’S SIDE OF THE QUESTION. The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 9.

743

I get up at half–past four and work hard until about three. Then I am tired and

have to take care of some cross baby. No, not I.

I wouldn’t work unless I could have that time. I call that my own. Don’t you

think we need it? What do farmers’ wives think we are? They all claim they are all

done up and out, but I am not going to be for some time yet, for I am going to have

that rest or quit. For you see, I know I can do the work. I got $30.00 per month last

year, and I am going to get it again1222.

33. “Do you Live at Home?” (1917) 1223

There are other employers besides the fifteen–cent stores who do not

give their employees a living wage.

Professional men, doctors and dentists only pay the girls in their offices $20 a

month.

One doctor, besides the monthly $20, offered ten per cent. commission on any

of his bad debts that the girl might be lucky enough to collect. These men all ask the

same question as the department stores, viz.: “Do you live at home?” Which just

means that the girl’s father, a working man, must, by boarding his daughter, pay half

the wages of the professional man’s office help1224.

What becomes of the girl who is refused the position because she does not live

at home? It never occurs to the employers to ask. The girls to whom I refer are not

actually trained nurses. It seems that only some of the doctors employ trained nurses.

Those girls probably had some hospital training, and they are generally

expected to wear a uniform. They must have personality and good handwriting, and

a knowledge of office work, besides other things. A dentist in Denver considered a

knowledge of German and Spanish essential.

1222 “The grievance which bites into the heart of the average domestic servant is that she has no time

to herself. She is never mistress of her own leisure. She cannot finish her work, and then go out to

enjoy herself, as can her sister who works in a shop, a restaurant or a factory. The shop girl and the

factory girl have every evening at liberty; the domestic servant gets only a couple of evenings, often in

a grudging fashion, and feels that she is to a certain extent under espionage while she is out spending

her own time and her own money. Consequently, if the mistress is going to compete with the

shopkeeper for the best class of girls, she must meet this competition in the matter of fixed hours and

personal freedom.” HOURS OF A DOMESTIC. (1907, March 8). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 3. 1223 From J.B. (1917, October 26). Some Comment Called Forth By Events of the Passing Show. The British Columbia Federationist, p. 7. 1224 “The claim so often made that girls in department stores do not require a living wage, because they

are living at home, has been punctured again by an interesting research made by Montreal young

women, says the Survey. […] Out of the 2,471 women employed in elevn stores in the city: Seven per

cent. were the sole support of their family. Sixty per cent. were aiding in the family support. Thirty

per cent. were living alone and supporting themselves. Three per cent. worked only for pin money or

clothing, making no contribution to the finances of the home. The fact that a girl is living at home may

mean that she is protected in her recreations and social engagements, but […] it does not mean that

she can depend on others for her support and thus work for less than a living wage.” GIRLS IN

CANADIAN STORES. (1914, March 18). Red Deer News, p. 6.

744

Some times there are two doctors sharing the same waiting–room and paying

the girl between them. In one case there were three doctors, but that girl was specially

fortunate. She received the munificent salary of $25 a month. The extraordinary

thing is that for one such vacancy there were sixty applicants. How can a professional

man, taking in the money that doctors and dentists make, have the nerve to offer a

girl $20 a month, especially when by so doing they actually become the recipient of

charity from the girl and her father of the exact amount of the withheld wages? Even

if there were so many women out of work, is that any reason why a professional man

should exploit the girl he employs? He has chosen the most refined, most intelligent

and best educated out of sixty, or even some times a hundred. How can any girl board

for $20 these war times? It cannot be done, and if it could where is the money for car

fare and laundry, including uniforms? And how is the girl to get clothes? If a man

cannot afford to pay a living wage to his office assistant, the only honest way would

be to do without help till he can afford it. And why is it that there are so many women

out of work when we were told that women would be needed to take the places of men

gone to the war? The reason is that girls who do not need to work have come into the

labor market and are taking the bread out of the mouths of the working girls and

calling it patriotism. It is said this is the case with regard to the banks. Dr. Shaw,

writing in the Ladies’ Home Journal for November, says to these would–be patriotic

women: “If you have other means of support do not take war work for wages unless

you are sure you are not depriving some other woman.”

Those girls in the doctors’ and dentists’ offices belong to no union. They cannot

go on strike when there are so many others waiting to take their places. Until the

government enforces a minimum living wage the only thing to do is shame those

employers who are guilty of such exploitations. They ought to be ashamed.

34. “There is another angle” (1921)1225

In a discussion in the Legislature at the last session it came out that women

in the civil service of the province are paid the same wages as men for equally good

work performed in equal amount.

The same condition of equality in pay is coming to apply everywhere, in private

as in public employ. And as between man and man, and man and woman, as

employees and as contributors to the world’s productive effort, the rule is fair.

But there is another angle from which the question of wages has not got, either

in public or private employ, the amount of attention it deserves and will some day

have to get. In the civilized scheme of things it is the duty of the man to provide not

only for himself, but for a woman and their children. Every man is a husband and

father, and the supporter of a family, either in fact or in prospect. A woman is not,

save in very rare cases, the supporter of a family, either in fact or in prospect.

Is no account to be taken of the vast difference between their respective

obligations in fixing the pay of men and women, and of married and single men? Fair

1225 From Wages – And Some Other Things. (1921, February 24). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 9.

745

as it may seem that a young man and a young woman doing the same work and doing

it equally well should draw the same wages, is it fair that a man with a family to

support should receive only the same wage as a young lady who has only herself to

support, and who probably will be relieved of that responsibility in a more or less

brief period? Or as a young man whose family responsibilities are all in the future?

The error is that the question of wages has hitherto been considered only from

the standpoint of the employee as the doer of a certain amount of work. There has

been left out of the calculation the far more important fact that men and woman are

by nature and custom allotted certain functions in the scheme of things, which they

must perform if the race is to be perpetuated and social conditions remain wholesome.

It used to be argued, as equalizing matters, that “two could live as cheaply as

one;” that a husband and wife could maintain themselves on the wages necessary to

an unmarried man – or woman. Nobody who has the qualification of experience to

discuss the subject is under any such delusion today. Two cannot live as cheaply as

one, unless they live on a lower standard than either of them has been used to when

single. It is doubtful if a couple can today set up housekeeping and live equally well

as man and wife in a city on less than the amount of their combined wages before

they marry.

It cannot be forgotten that the “equalizing up” of pay all round reflects itself in

an increase of prices of everything necessary to family life. And, what counts equally,

the general increase in pay has cultivated an all round demand for a higher standard

of living.

It is not the men only, or chiefly, who feel the “pinch” if married men get no

higher pay than single men or women. That “pinch” is felt also by women – the women

who are married to the men, and by their children. The husband and father, if he is

worthy the name, will make light of the economies big and little that are forced upon

himself by the elevation in the cost of living. But what of the woman and the children

for whom he has undertaken to provide, who cannot help themselves, who are

likewise forced to “scrape and save,” and whom he is for the time powerless to help?

If men, whether married or single, and women are to get the same pay for an

equal amount of service, with no consideration given to the different responsibilities

that nature and civilized custom have imposed on them, one of two things must

happen. Either wages generally will have to be boosted until an unmarried person

draws twice the pay that he or she needs to live on; or else men and women with

common sense will cease to marry and undertake the impossible task of living “as

cheaply as one.”

It is not desirable that either of these things should happen. How to avoid

them? It will have to be recognized that men and women are not simply workers, and

as such entitled to draw pay according to the exact contribution each is able to make

to the world’s productive effort. Nature has assigned peculiar functions and

responsibilities to the sexes, which it is in the highest degree desirable that they

should be enabled and encouraged to perform.

The married man, just because he is a married man, needs more

pay than an unmarried man or an unmarried woman requires, whether he is able to

746

do more work or not. If that fact is recognized in the economic scheme of things, the

effect upon the social and moral conditions of the community is obvious.

35. “Why should she not have equal pay for equal work?” (1921)1226 This letter was written in reply to the previous article.

Sir, – I read with interest the article on Wages and some other things in

Edmonton Bulletin, Feb. 24. I should like to give a woman’s point of view. In the first

place, I do not think the market will ever be glutted with women wage–earners,

because in every woman’s heart, is planted that love for husband and home, and

though a woman has been ambitious and worked herself into a responsible position,

she will relinquish it, to marry a man she loves or she may want to hold it down until

she gets a little more ahead to make her home comfortable, preparing for the time

when she knows she will have to stay home. Now, while she has been doing this, she

has had her one man in view, and I guarantee that every dollar she spends is for some

necessary article of clothing etc., or something for the home, or prospective home.

Now, you can not say that some man is not going to get the benefit of this. Why

should she not have equal pay for equal work?

Now we will take the single man. He is not generally supposed to save until he

has a girl in view. He must have pocket money, which he often spends on girls. Notice

the plural – and the girl is kept waiting until he can get a home together.

Equal pay for equal work means that an employer can please himself whether

he engages man or woman to fill a vacancy, as sometimes a woman is engaged

because she gets a lower rate of pay for the same work. To my mind, it seems that

only the real business woman would be employed, and that leaves more vacancies to

be filled by men, and the pin money girl can stay home and help her long suffering

mother.

ONE WHO KNOWS.

1226 From ONE WHO KNOWS. (1921, February 28). WOMEN’S EMPLOYMENT. The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 9.

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British Columbia’s First Minimum Wage The first minimum wage in British Columbia applied only to women, and was meant in part to reduce the wage gap that had been made clear by women’s employment in traditionally male occupations during the Great War. Rather than setting a single rate, the Minimum Wage Board set a different minimum rate for each industry, based on the expected cost of living for a single woman with no dependents working in that field.

36. Women Approve Minimum Wage (November, 1918) 1227

Mrs. Ralph Smith1228, who introduced the bill at the last session of the

Legislature and piloted it through its various stages to its successful passing and

incorporation in the statute law of the Province, received a hearty reception when she

declared that the aim of the measure is to benefit the women wage earners and the

children. […] She deprecated the attitude of some women wage earners who, because

they have passed through the low wage scale and are now securing more ample

remuneration, appear to consider that they have no further interest in the matter.

Their active co–operation would materially assist in securing for their less fortunate

sisters better pay and working conditions.

ASKS CO–OPERATION

Many employers, Mrs. Smith said, were giving their full support to the

principle of the Minimum Wage Act and are willing to pay such wages as may be fixed

by the board. The employer who could sell his goods at a less price than his

competitors was generally the one who was paying less for his help, she said, as she

recited the progress of similar legislation elsewhere, in the United States, in various

Dominions of the Empire, and in Canada. British Columbia was the second province

of Canada to initiate such legislation1229, and its incorporation in the statute law of

the Province would undoubtedly be followed by further advanced legislation along

lines conducing to the greater welfare of the people and the state.

“We are beginning to appreciate more and more human values,” declared the

woman member for Vancouver. “Before we were all pieces of machinery in the

industrial world, but we are beginning to realize that woman is gaining a place in

industry, a realization vastly accentuated by this war. Woman is in industry to stay,

and we must see she is receiving the same remuneration as the man. Any woman or

girl who did not do war service was a slacker. I want to say that I know right here in

Victoria of women and girls who bravely went out and took the place of menfolk

overseas, but, it is shameful to say it, they got about one–half what the men were

1227 From WOMEN APPROVE MINIMUM WAGE. (1918, November 29). The Daily Colonist, p. 1. 1228 In 1918, Mary Ellen Smith was the first woman to be elected to the B. C. legislature. Her husband

had been a liberal M.P.P. for Vancouver in 1898, 1904 and 1908. When he died in February 1917, he

was B.C.’s Minister of Finance. 1229 Alberta was the first, in 1917. See Derry, K. & Douglas, P. H. (1922). The Minimum Wage in

Canada. Journal of Political Economy, 30(2), 155 – 188.

748

given. Some of our banks today are paying women less than half what they paid men

before the war. Even if a girl has a home and parents, it is not fair that employers

should make that an excuse for paying competent help less than it is justly worth,

thus forcing those parents to make up the difference.”

A PASSING CONDITION

Quoting figures to show that in some industries the “magnificent” wage of $6

per week1230 is being paid women, and expressing the conviction that such a

condition will not be longer tolerated by the public of British Columbia, Mrs. Smith

declared that it is small wonder that when one considers how short a distance the few

dollars per week received by many girl workers will go that there are some who go

astray. The average girl of today is not content to stay at home and be fed by her

parents; she wants to be independent. If her services are worth it, she has a right to

be paid a living wage, declared Mrs. Smith.

The principle of the Minimum Wage Measure is not a new one, Miss Helen

Stewart1231 stated, who referred to the gradual growth of the principle of protection

of the working classes, and especially the women and children workers since that

time, one hundred years ago, when Lord Shaftesbury1232 called attention to the peril

to the nation through the unrestricted exploitation1233 of woman and child labor. A

recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United Sates put the finis to a long

dispute1234 when it held that the physical condition of the worker depended upon

adequate wages and that legislation to that end should receive the support of the full

power of the commonwealth.

There were three objections usually brought against such a bill as the

Minimum Wage Act1235: first, that the passing of the measure would force out the

inefficient women, who would then become a burden upon the country; second, that

the cost of production would be so increased that the public would be called upon to

1230 $93.53 in 2018 dollars. (1918 CPI = 8.5, 2018 CPI = 132.5) 1231 Helen G. Stewart was a librarian at the Carnegie Library, which is still located at the corner of

Yates and Blanshard streets. The library has been a recognized historic site since 1979. 1232 In the 1830s and 1840s, Anthony Ashely–Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, was the force behind

important reforms to British law regarding the employment of minors (not to be confused with his

1842 reforms to the employment conditions of miners and colliers). 1233 “The transfer of work from men to women is continuing steadily, and every invention that

facilitates or makes possible the change is a source of profit. But the change not merely brings back

the undesirable feature of primitive conditions; the imposing of the burden of work on women, but the

injurious feature of modern industry; the pace that wears out the human element regardless of its

value to the race. The increase in productive capacity made possible by modern inventions has not

resulted in less onerous industrial conditions, but in more trying speed and more injurious tasks.

Under such conditions it is necessary to impose restrictions on hours and conditions of work for women

and children.” WOMEN’S NEW OCCUPATIONS. (1916, May 3). The Melfort Moon, p. 4. 1234 A possible reference to Wilson v. New, 243 U.S. 332 (1917), in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled

in favor of the ability of Congress to establish an eight–hour work day and a minimum wage. 1235 The full text of the act was reproduced in the first Report of the Minimum Wage Board of British

Columbia, which in turn was included in the Report of the Department of Labour for 1918. The ‘Act

to Fix a Minimum Wage for Women’ starts on page 74 of the archived version, hereafter referred to as

(BC, 1919): Province of British Columbia. (1919). Annual Report of the Department of Labour for the Year Ending December 31st 1918. Victoria: William H. Cullin.

749

pay a higher price for the product, and third, that legislation which fixes a definite

rate of wages would interfere with the liberty of contract and with the principle of

democracy.

ANSWERS OBJECTIONS

Miss Stewart enlarged upon these points, admitting there might at first be

some personal hardship, but experience in countries where such legislation has been

in operation showed that there had been little dislocation in industry, and matters

quickly readjusted themselves. There were certain girls, “pin–money girls,” she called

them, who need not work for a living, and who might be forced out of employment,

but that, Miss Stewart believed, would not be a very grave national peril. No person

had any right to go into any work unless prepared to take the responsibilities that go

with that work, and it was that very sort of girl, she declared, who created a false

standard and doubly hurts those girls who must work for a living. Then, too, it might

mean the married woman working for wages might have to go, and also that class of

inefficients, the product of whose labor costs more than it is worth. But this latter

class must be trained and those that could not must be maintained by the state, Miss

Stewart argued. Such inefficients should not be permitted to compete against the

normal man and woman.

To this objection that such legislation will result in increased cost of production

and consequent increased cost to the consumer, Miss Stewart held that increased cost

was very often more apparent than real; that an industry paying higher wages would

get more efficient work done and receipts would be larger. But even if the public had

to pay more for the product, could that be advanced as an argument that the public

should be subsidized at the expense of the worker? More paid to assure a decent living

by the workers would mean less time spent in jails, reformatories and other similar

public institutions, Miss Stewart maintained.

FREEDOM OF CONTRACT

On the point of interference with the freedom of contract Miss Stewart inquired

what freedom now exists between a girl earning $4 per week and the large

department store proprietor. The principle now recognized is that personal liberty

goes only so far as it does not interfere with the community welfare. There is the great

principle which places human labor on lines of industrial citizenship rather than as

an element to be haggled over as if it were the price of cattle.

37. Laundry Workers to get Fair Wages (December, 1918) 1236

Female laundry workers, according to the decision arrived at by the Minimum

Wage Board after an all–day conference at the Court House yesterday, are to be paid

not less than $13.50 per week, or 75 cents more than the same board decided recently

should be the minimum wage for women employees in stores. The following is the

recommendation adopted by the board before its adjournment at 6 o’clock that

evening:

1236 From LAUNDRY WORKERS TO GET FAIR WAGES. (1918, December 19). The Daily Colonist, p. 5.

750

“Be it resolved, that this conference on the laundry, cleaning and dyeing

industries in the Province of British Columbia, meeting in the Court House, in the

City of Victoria, B. C., on the eighteenth day of December, 1918, do hereby make the

following recommendation to the Minimum Wage Board of the Province of British

Columbia:

“That it shall be unlawful for any employer in the Province of British Columbia

to employ or pay female employees of 18 years of age or over, engaged in the laundry,

cleaning and dyeing industries, less than 21 1–3 cents per hour and less than $13.50

a week.” […]

In addition to the members of the conference, […] there were present a number

of employees and employers as voluntary witnesses, and their evidence and

arguments formed a very interesting part of the discussion. Each person present was

handed one of the blank forms for filling in “a fair estimate of the amount required

yearly by a prudent, self–supporting woman employed in a mercantile, mechanical or

other industrial establishment in order to maintain herself in reasonable comfort,”

and as the various estimates were brought in the figures were jotted down and

comparisons and criticisms made.

A slight difficulty arose over the fact that of 47 employees’ estimates submitted

35 had reached the board direct through one of the employees’ delegates while 12 had

been delivered into the hands of a representative of the Trades and Labor Council to

be delivered to the board.

It was the suggestion of one of the employers, Mr. Barrett, that the two

estimates were averaged and the results taken as the basis of the subsequent

discussion, the figures showing that the sum of $902.50 was the estimate by

employees of the amount required per annum by a woman laundry worker to

maintain herself in reasonable comfort. This sum worked out at a weekly average of

$17.32, so that the decision of the board to place the minimum wage at $13.50 was

$3.82 less than the amount estimated by the employees. All the members at the

conference, however, employers and employees and the public alike, seemed perfectly

satisfied with the decision reached. […]

VARIANCE OF OPINION

The witnesses were not entirely in accord as to the amount required for specific

items named in the questionnaires. In the matter of cost of meals and room it was

apparent that no definite or very satisfactory statistics were available. Mrs. Merrow

contended that car fare and board and lodging should be considered together. If a

worker lived in the city and so near her place of employment that she did not require

to pay car fare, she had to pay more for board and lodging. If she lived some distance

out in order to get cheaper board and lodging she had a bigger expenditure in street

car fares.

Miss Hartney’s evidence was of value from the aspect of the employee who is

insuring herself against the time when she will be sick and unable to work or

incapacitated through age. Miss Hartney contended that laundry employees should

be given sufficient to enable them to keep up their insurance payments, but a

question from Rev. Mr. Connell elicited the information that the benefit lodges from

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which she would draw an annuity in the event of old age were not available to all

employees. From one lodge along she would receive $7 weekly and from another $5

per week. Her annual premiums amounted to $27.

NOT LESS THAN $14

That she had been instructed by the laundry workers in Vancouver to ask for

not less than $14 per week was the testimony given by Miss Cruikshanks when called

upon by the chairman to speak.

A letter from Miss Marlatt, of the local Y.W.C.A. 1237, named from $30 to $35

per month as the lowest sum at which a working girl could be expected to procure

board and lodging. Miss Gutteridge contended that this could not be taken as a basis,

as many women workers would prefer their independence to living in an institution,

no matter how comfortable that institution might be. But she also claimed that the

anticipation that prices would be dropping now that the fighting was over was a little

premature, as the facts did not support the assumption. She also referred to the effect

which the discussion of a minimum wage for girls over eighteen had had.

Advertisements were already appearing in the papers1238 for “girls not over

eighteen.”

WEAR AND TEAR

More than one witness contended that the laundry workers’ minimum wage

should be higher than the store employees because of the greater wear and tear to

which boots and other clothing were subject owing to the nature of the employment.

Mr. Woodward, representing the Retail Clerks’ Union, Victoria, announced

just prior to the midday adjournment that he had been delegated to report that the

organization for which he was spokesman did not want the decision of the board with

respect to the laundry workers to be based on the decision of the retail clerks in

Vancouver, who fixed $12.75 as the minimum which should be asked for. The local

organization thought that at least $15 should be given. Mr. Woodward contended that

influences were trying to bring about a biased view.

BOOTS AND GLOVES

The discussion of boots and gloves elicited from Mr. Barrett the comment that

the laundry worker was in fact in a better position with respect to the former article

of apparel than the girl in the store, because the girl in the laundry could wear old

shoes during her working hours, while the store clerk had to wear smart boots. Miss

Gutteridge contended that the laundry worker should not have to wear bad boots,

being so many hours daily on her feet. As it was the conditions were bad, and old

1237 The Young Women’s Christian Association was very active in this period, and was an advocate of

inexpensive, regulated shelters for ‘working girls’. 1238 I was able to find only one ad of this type in the Victoria Colonist before 1950. It reads in its entirety: “WANTED – GIRL, NOT OVER 17 YEARS of age, to take two children out daily to Beacon

Hill Park. Apply Box 115 Colonist.”. WANTED [Advertisement]. (1911, June 2). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 18. Far more often, ads around the time of this meeting would specifically request girls over 18: “OFFICE girl wanted, over eighteen years, one living at home preferred, must be quick and

accurate in figures and write plain, but experience unnecessary. Reply fully in own handwriting first

letter. You will be judged by your application. Box 2014 Colonist.” Office [Advertisement]. (1916,

February 25). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 14.

752

laundry workers were usually crippled and flat–footed from standing so constantly.

Mrs. Mitchell contended that it was poor economy for the worker to save in the boots

she wore during her working hours. It would be better to economize on the boots worn

during rest times when one was not on one’s feet.

Mrs. Morrow and Miss Gutteridge disagreed on the item about gloves, the

former contending that a pair which she had bought four years ago for $1.35 were

still giving service, while the latter stated that a pair for which she had paid $3.50

four weeks ago were practically done for already.

BOARD AND ROOM

The evidence on the subject of board and lodging was resumed at the afternoon

session. Mrs. Courtney said she knew some of the girls in one plant in Vancouver

were paying only $6 weekly for board, and seemed perfectly satisfied with their home.

Mrs. Gutteridge suggested that in order to arrive at some just estimate of the

matter of board and lodging expense it would be well for the board to appoint some

person unknown to the general public to go about and answer advertisements so that

no prepared or biased quotations would be given with a view to influencing the

estimates. In this view Mrs. McGill concurred.

Some amusing evidence in connection with the cost of umbrellas was given.

Mrs. Morrow, referring to the estimate for this item, viz., $3.75, said that it

seemed to her too high. A person could not want a new umbrella every year “unless

it was to hit some one over the head with.” Mrs. Gutteridge, on the other hand, stated

that during the noon hour she had walked through one of the Victoria stores, and any

umbrella she had seen at that price was but a poor article which would hardly last

for the time required.

Mr. Graham remarked that $27.90 (the amount estimated for shoes and

rubbers) was more than he thought necessary. In his plant girls between five and six

o’clock changed from their working boots into footwear such as he could not afford to

give his own wife.

Mrs. Morrow reminded those present that it was a minimum wage which was

under consideration. A worker with ability should certainly be able in time to earn

more than this amount, leaving some margin for saving.

38. Minimum Wage for House Workers (May, 1919) 1239

After receiving evidence at Vancouver from employers and employees, a

minimum wage of $14 a week for a 48–hour week for females over 18 years of age

engaged in public house–keeping occupations was established by the Minimum Wage

Board of the Province. The finding will come into effect in about 60 days and covers a

considerable number of employees.

A public housekeeping occupation is defined as including the work of

waitresses, attendants, housekeepers, janitresses, cooks, kitchen help in restaurants,

hotels, light lunch stands, and other places where food is cooked, prepared and

1239 From MINIMUM WAGE FOR HOUSE WORKERS. (1919, May 31). The Daily Colonist, p. 18.

753

served, for which a charge is made; and the work of chambermaids in hotels, lodging

houses, and apartments where lodging is furnished, whether or not such

establishments are operated independently or in connection with any other business;

and the work of all female elevator operators.

Where room and board are provided, a deduction of $3 a week for the room and

$6.23 for board will be allowed except in the case of hotels, where $3 a week will be

allowed off for a room and $5 for board.

A strong fight was put up by the waitresses and chambermaids for a

compulsory six–day week. Out of consideration for the small hotels the board made

no ruling with regard to a six–day week, but ordered that the hours be 48 per week,

except in cases of emergency, when they may be stretched to 52, but in that event

time and a half overtime must be paid for the extra hours. […]

HIGH COST OF LIVING

Some of the waitresses and chambermaids suggested to the board that the cost

of living for a woman maintaining herself comfortably could only be met by a wage of

$5 a day or $1,400 or $1,500 a year, while one of the more moderate estimates, as

worked out on the cost of living table, came to about $985.

One instance was given of a hotel where five chambermaids were employed

who only received $11 a week, worked seven days a week, and had to pay for their

own board and room.

That the Y.M.C.A. is running a hundred–room hotel at Field, B.C., with two

waitresses and two chambermaids, who work from twelve to sixteen hours a day and

receive $25 a month pay was the evidence given by C. H. Chisholm.

Mr. George Haddon, secretary of the general hospital, appeared on behalf of

the hospital board with the claim that working conditions at the hospitals were so

different from in private institutions that it would not come within the scope of the

board. No decision was made.

On behalf of a department store where the waitresses only worked 28 or 36

hours a week, it was pointed out that consideration should be given to that fact. With

them the pay was $8 a week with breakfast, luncheon and tea. It was explained that

these positions were mostly filled by married women who liked the short day so that

they could return home.

This gave rise to an outburst from one of the waitress representatives that the

worst competition the single, self–sustaining woman or widow with children had to

meet was that of childless married women who had husbands to support them, but

both went out to work. The rejoinder from another woman was that so many of the

men were paid insufficient wages, it was necessary that the wife should go out to

increase the family income.

754

39. A Working Girl’s Complaint (1922) 1240 In 1922, Edmonton would establish its own Minimum Wage Board. Though three years later and in a different province, the letter below echoes the sentiment of Victoria’s waitress representative.

Reading with much interest the report of the information given the “Minimum

Wage Board,” I found some things not mentioned which are of vital importance to

some of the girls who might find themselves in the same position as myself. I will try

to explain how hard it is for girls like myself, and would be pleased if your valuable

paper could suggest a remedy for the following evil.

Being a girl who is alone in this unkind, wicked old world, coming from good

parents and a nice home at one time, but through death visiting me, I am as above

stated. Have had an average education, but find it impossible to compete with

married women who are now holding good positions in this city, being well paid and

having husbands who likewise hold good positions through political pull and

otherwise.

Referring to what was said about girls only receiving $9 per week and having

only one dollar left for clothing and incidentals.1241 In some cases stenographers are

not any better off. Many of the public will wonder at this but there is nothing to

wonder at when we have labor officials, newly weds in this city who have their wives

out working, drawing down a good large salary, and their positions held open for them

while away on their honeymoon, while we poor unfortunate girls are asked to work

for nothing or face starvation1242, or worse still “ruin,” and then the yawning abyss

which sometimes looms uppermost in one’s mind to get rid of it all.

We listen to certain co called labor leaders trying to better our conditions, but

I say it would be better if we tried to watch these labor leaders who are continually

bettering themselves for political reasons, as above mentioned.

There are certain boards in this city which have labor representatives thereon,

but we never hear them reprimanding their fellow labor officials for having their

wives employed, keeping us girls out in the cold.

I conclude by saying thank you for the space in your valuable paper. Yours for

justice,

ONE WHO KNOWS.

1240 From ONE WHO KNOWS. (1922, November 7). A WORKING GIRLS COMPLAINT. The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 9. 1241 “It was pointed out by one of the girls that the store she represented started girls to work on nine

dollars a week. She said that when she started work there it would cost eight dollars for her room and

board. Then there was her washing and other incidental expenses after that.” Technical School

Delegation Replies to Criticisms Made At Minimum Wage Board Hearing. (1922, November 4). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 8. 1242 ”What this board is trying to do is to keep girls in stores alive. We want to see that they are paid a

sufficient wage to enable them to live decently and not be dying of starvation at their jobs”. Technical

School Delegation Replies to Criticisms Made At Minimum Wage Board Hearing. (1922, November 4).

The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 8.

755

40. The Minimum Wage Act and Wages (July, 1924) 1243

Employers of female labor in British Columbia are generally paying their

workers at a rate above the legal minimum prescribed by the Minimum Wage Act.

[…] The average wage paid for experienced female labor in the Province last year was

$17.14 a week, the report shows. While this average does not take account of a small

proportion of inexperienced help, or of girls under eighteen years of age, it shows for

the most part a larger wage than that set as a minimum by orders of the board, which

ranges in different occupations from $12.75 to $15.50 a week.

A Brief Respite (1908)1244

1243 From Minimum Wage Act Helps Girls, Report Says. (1924, July 25). The Daily Colonist, p. 18. 1244 The Robert Simpson Company. (1908). Women’s Suits (Detail) [Illustration]. Spring and Summer Catalogue (No. 107), p. 4.

756

XII. Money and Banking

757

When Halifax Ran on Doubloons (1820) In 1820, Nova Scotia found itself with too little specie to conduct ordinary business. The cause of this shortage was a change in the relative price of high–value doubloons, which drove out other currencies. Immediate relief came from the issuing of paper notes by private citizens. This was cumbersome, controversial, and discussed at length in the Acadian Record newspaper. The pseudonymous ‘Senex’ wrote a series of articles that present an unusual and illuminating view of the nature of money in pre–Confederation Canada.

1. Senex’s First Letter (September 13)1245

I am an old man1246; and although I have not reflected a great deal on the

passing events of life, I have not been altogether inattentive to their progress. My

business has been, whenever any difficulty occurred for which I could not account, to

suspend my judgment, till I was instructed by the issue. This caution, or rather want

of confidence in my own opinions, has made me somewhat of a skeptical and

hesitating turn of mind; and the lines of mistrust and thinking are strongly marked

at the outer angle of my eyelids. – The general expression of my countenance is grave

and sedate, blended a little with a suspicious cast of which I am so conscious that I

try to soften and conceal it by a simper, and sometimes by a smile. In fact, I am an

old, cautious and snug cit1247, that has made any little money I possess by hard labour, incessant application, and have almost no inclination to enjoy it now in my old age. I

have been thus minute in giving a description of myself, that your readers, from this

insight into my character, may be the better to judge of what I am to say and predict

about the present state of our currency, and this dreadful inundation of little bits of paper1248, of all shapes, of all names, of all values from fifteen pence1249 to a dollar. I am no philosopher, no politician, no arguer, no fine writer, but a plain downright

citizen, retired from the restlessness of business, and calmly viewing the tide of

events on which I was formerly borne by adverse or prosperous fortune. My interest

has no connection with what I have to state, for while any sense remains, I shall not

keep past me a note, bearing the best or the worst name of the community. My countenance I shall never give to what, I fear, shall turn out to the loss and

1245 From Senex. (1820, September 16). The History not of SILVER, but of PRINTED fifteen pences:

Chapter I. Acadian Recorder, 8(38), p. 2. 1246 ‘Senex’, the author’s chosen pseudonym, is the Latin word for ‘old man’. 1247 Possibly British slang for ‘someone who lives in a city’. 1248 Promissory notes, or IOUs. Individual citizens would issue their own ‘currency’. One surviving

merchant’s note from Halifax in 1820 reads: “Halifax Nova Scotia. 1820. ONE DOLLAR. I Promise to

pay the Bearer on demand, FIVE SHILLINGS Currency in GOLD OR PROVINCE NOTES. Value

received.” [Name and signature of the merchant torn off.] An image of the note may be found on page

98 of Powell, J. (2005). A History of the Canadian Dollar. Canada: Bank of Canada. 1249 A reference to British currency of the time. There were twelve pence to a shilling, and twenty

shillings to a pound. Shillings and pence are abbreviated s. and d. respectively, with the ‘d’ standing

for denarius, the name of the Roman penny.

758

disappointment of my fellow creatures. Old age, perhaps, may have made me gloomy

and distrustful; but I shall give my reasons to the public for this my opinion and

determination.

Before I enter on my main argument, I shall shortly and patiently state what

I have always considered as the case of this difficulty about small change for

managing the ordinary transactions of retail. For the last three years the precious

metals, which abounded among use from the prosperous trade created by the late

war, have been leaving us as fast, or faster than they ever flowed in. Our dollars

disappeared like magic; and were attracted by an irresistible influence to the States

– that bottomless gulph which swallowed them all up with insatiable avidity. Some

of our merchants in the very height of their wisdom, and with a profound regard to

the principles of political economics, meant to stay the mighty ruin; and nobly

resolved to save a sinking province. Bent on bold designs, they called a meeting of all

the respectable mercantile class, and with a sober countenance proposed to raise the

value of the currency – doubloons to £4; dollars to 5s 6d; guineas to 25s; and other

coins in proportion. This was a very sapient measure truly; for the Yankees would be

completely outwitted of their flour at a lower rate, and be compelled to either leave

our money behind them, or take West India produce in exchange. Now, Gentlemen,

my opinion is, that if this plan had taken effect, it would have been quite harmless,

and done neither good nor evil. – A guinea is a guinea, and a dollar is a dollar by

whatever denomination you call them. They possess an intrinsic value, stampt on

them by the preciousness of the metal, that cannot be affected by any arbitrary

distinctions to which they may be subjected. A dollar may pass at Boston for 5s, at

New–York for 8s, and at Halifax for 5s 6d, or 6s if you please, without altering its

essential value. In all these places it would be still a dollar, and purchase its worth,

and no more, of any commodity at market. The division of it into 5, 6 or 8 shillings is merely a new mode of calculating it, without in the least changing its relative value

to the other coins. If this be true of a dollar, it is true of all other pieces of gold and

silver. No change in their denomination can affect their value in the great market of

the world; and a guinea at Canton will sell according to its weight and purity,

although, instead of being divided as now into 21s, the English government were to

raise it to 42s. After this nominal elevation of its price, it would still buy the same

quantity of tea and silk; and the Chinese merchant would smile at being told, that we

must give double the quantity of these articles, because the English called it now by

double the number of shillings.

The scheme then of raising our currency was quite idle and illusory; and could

have had no influence in detaining the precious metals here. We wanted flour, and

we must pay for it. This necessity would have drained us of our dollars, although we

had counted them 20s, and ail all the other coins in proportion. The American

merchant would have demanded 5 or 6 dollars for the barrel, and given himself no

trouble about our new and ignorant arrangements.

In this meeting of commercial wisdom, publicly convened and numerously

attended, the subject of raising the currency was without laughter discussed. Guided

by the common curiosity, I stept in with others, leaning on my staff, and wondering

759

within myself what all this would end in. I heard different opinions, listened to the

arguments advanced by powdered heads and big bellies, and thought I saw political

sagacity nodding in the one, and heaving in the other. There was a great commotion

among these sages of the earth, but as my opinion of the matter was not then fixed

(for as I told you before, I am cautious in forming it,) I sat quietly down in a corner,

and opened not my lips. After a great deal of noise it was “Resolved to be very

dangerous to intermeddle with the ordinary coins in circulation, but quite safe to

raise the doubloon to £4 currency, and leave all the rest as they stood.” Now, Sirs, I

argue, that this was the very cornerstone of the folly. Had they raised all the coins,

no evil would have accrued; except obliging the clerks to use a few more figures in

their accounts: but to enhance ONE of them above its intrinsic value was a

masterpiece of absurdity. Was it not plain to any thinking man that, if a doubloon

was at 16 dollars at Halifax, and less at every other place, they would come here from

all quarters to be exchanged for the other coins, till none of the latter remained? The

even proved the fact. The Americans carried on a very advantageous trade at our

expense, and swept away every dollar, half and quarter, while we were fools enough

to give them in barter for doubloons. Now we are reduced to the sad condition of

having nothing else in circulation but these cumbrous and unmanageable pieces of

gold. They are higher than in the Canadas and the States; and while things continue

thus, we shall enjoy the blessed monopoly of them.

In this chapter I have arrived at two conclusions;

1st. That raising or lowering the nominal denomination of coins has no effect,

either good or bad, on their intrinsic and essential value.

2d. That raising any one of them individually and not others, creates a demand for it; and of consequence, and eventually banishes all the rest. The doubloon has

taken exclusive possession of our currency because we enhanced it above its market

price; and by a like measure, we could again displace it and substitute in its room

guineas, joes or Louis d’ors. Make it the interest of men to bring any of these coins to

Nova Scotia, and they will soon fill up and engross the circulation.

2. Senex’s Second Letter (September 22)1250

I was conducted to two conclusions last week, which may be considered as the

foundation of that superstructure I mean now to build? If they be unstable and

insecure, the fabric must fall to the ground; and it is necessary, therefore, to review

and examine them, that all doubt about their soundness may be excluded from the

mind.

The first – about the intrinsic value of the precious metals – has long been recognized as an axiom of political economy; and by it the exchanges, in all parts of

the world and in all periods of commercial history, have been regulated. The weight

and purity of silver and gold in the coins of Monarchies and independent States, have

1250 From Senex. (1820, September 23). The History not of SILVER, but of PRINTED fifteen pences:

Chapter II. Acadian Recorder, 8(39), p. 2.

760

been the only circumstances taken into account, to fix the standard of their value –

not the wavering and arbitrary names by which they have been called, or the variable

and fanciful divisions into which each nation has distributed them. The silver dollar

in the United States is divided into 100 cents, and these represented by coppers; here

it is divided into 120 coppers, and that quantity given in change for it; in N.–York it

is reckoned by 8s. and in Massachusetts by 5s.; and yet in all these places a dollar is

of equivalent worth. The truth is, it is nearly an ounce of silver of a known fineness,

and this circumstance alone gives it stability and permanence. Increase or lessen it

in bulk at the mint, and you instantly affect its power over the commodities of life.

Foreign nations will give more or less for it, when they ascertain the change it has

undergone, by weighing it in the balance, and assaying it by tests. But the arbitrary

denominations by which it passes in different countries, or the accidental divisions of

it which vary with the whims and convenience of mankind, are absolutely

disregarded, and can neither elevate nor depress it. The scheme, therefore proposed,

of raising our whole currency and counting the pieces on an increased scale, was

hollow in principle, and would have been inefficient in operation. In our exchanges

with the states for agricultural produce, it would have had no sort of influence;

because a barrel of flour must have been paid for by the same quantity of gold and

silver. It is the weight and value of the metal to which the American looks; and he

cares nothing about our method of reckoning it. – He must carry back so many

guineas, joes, eagles, or so many Spanish dollars, to render his speculation safe, and

these he must have else he will not continue to supply us.

But the case is totally different if we raise one of the coins which forms part of

our currency, and leave all the rest unaltered: and this new view of the subject will

both strengthen what has gone before, and throw light on our future reasoning. It is

the real weight and purity of the metal, as we have said, that stamp the value of the

pieces of money, and all those at any time floating in the circulating medium are

ascertained by, and brought to this standard: we give so many silver dollars for the

English, Spanish, French and Portuguese coins according to the quantity of gold they

are known to contain; and this is determined in all countries by a reference to penny–

weights and grains. The scales are as necessary in dealing in the precious coins, as

in sugar and tea; and the same general principle of valuation is recognized in both.

Let us suppose then, that a people, without any mint of their own, had a variety of

foreign coins passing indifferently in their currency, and all of them estimated

according to their intrinsic value. Let us suppose further, that by the convention of

the merchants, one of these was selected and exalted in price above the common

standard, I ask what would be the effect? Obviously the expulsion of the rest from

circulation, and the rushing of that particular coin from surrounding countries. It

became all men’s interests to send every other coin out of the place, and to bring that alone into it which had acquired a fictitious and conventional preponderance. This has exactly been our situation. The doubloon at £3 17 61251 was rather above than

below its fair level, but we resolved to heighten it to £4 0 0 or 16 dollars. From that

moment individual interest began to operate, and doubloons poured in here from all

1251 Three pounds, seventeen shillings, six pence.

761

quarters while we had another coin to give in exchange for them. No American would

except them in payment at this enhanced rate, and guineas, eagles, joes, dollars, and

even shillings were in a state of requisition. At first they were obtained from the

simplicity of the holders in the mere change of doubloons; they then rose to a

premium; and now they are so completely swept, that we have none to give. Our whole

circulating medium consists of doubloons; and if any other solitary piece strays into

the fingers of our merchants, it is seized and sold for private emolument1252.

Now, it happens that the doubloon was the most injudicious piece we could

have raised, because it is unfit for all the purposes of retail. The weekly wages of the

labourer, the common articles of consumption, and every thing estimated by shillings

and pence, cannot be paid in it. Small change soon came into demand, from the

operations of the principles which I have described; and nothing was left to answer

the end. Even seven pence half–penny’s had vanished; and the worthless coppers,

which had been cried down by common consent, acquired an undue importance.–

There was a want of small change which could not be satisfied; and we fell at last on

the ruinous and mad expedient of private paper money. Mr. W. Lawson1253 set the

first pernicious example, Mr. Barry quickly followed, John Brown could not resist

putting his sickle into the golden harvest, and Adam Esson1254 and J.D. Hawthorn1255

brought up the rear. These however will not long be the sole adventurers in this

gambling trade. Every individual, who is either so presumptuous or so necessitous as

to pass his notes for money, will launch into this untried ocean of uncertainty; and

such is the wretched condition of the province for change, that notes of any character, or of no character, signed by a man in town or country, redeemable either by private gentlemen, West India merchants, store–keepers; repaired bankrupts, or grog1256–

sellers will pass current.–It is the raising of the doubloon and the consequent

banishment of all other coins, great and small, which has been the fruitful parent of

all this embarrassment. And we know not what is to be the end of it. Some of these

note–makers will become insolvent or die; and in either case the public must submit

to the inconvenience, and sustain the loss. I predict, and I wish my words to be

treasured in the memory, that on the present small notes already issued, to say

nothing of those that are in progress, in this community, before they are redeemed,

will lose from 10 to 20 per cent. and unless the system be checked to deter others from

1252 Gain obtained from one’s position or employment. 1253 Probably William Lawson (1772 – 1848). He was the first president of the Bank of Nova Scotia,

which still exists under the name Scotiabank. 1254 A confectioner. His business passed to his nephew, John Esson. Upon his death in 1854, Adam

Esson’s estate included at least 1,800 acres of land. (Source: To be sold at Public Auction. (1854, March

23). The British Colonist [Halifax], p. 3.) 1255 Possibly the J. D. Hawthorne listed as a shareholder of the Shubenaccadie Canal Company in

1829. Chartered in Nova Scotia, its purpose was “opening and making a Navigable Cut, Canal, or

Water Communication, between the Harbour of Halifax and the Basin of Mines, by, along, or near to,

the course of the River Subenaccadie”. Shubenaccadie Canal Company. (1829). Charter and Bye Laws of the Shubenaccadie Canal Company; with the Acts of the General Assembly of Nova Scotia, Relating to the Canal. Halifax: The Board of Directors. The canal had a troubled history, starting construction in 1826, finally finishing in 1861, and then closing in 1871. 1256 Rum, or rum mixed with water.

762

engaging in it, I cannot foresee the extent of the mischief. There is however no

available relief, so long as the doubloon maintains its present price. It has banished

all the other coins, and will keep them out of the province, till it is reduced to its

proper level.

3. A Replacement for Senex’s Third Letter (September 28)1257 Senex’s third letter was never printed. It named names, and could have caused legal difficulties. This letter, from ‘HALIFAX,’ was printed instead.

Having read in the two last numbers of the Recorder, “Senex,” on “the history

not of silver, but of printed fifteen pences,” I have no hesitation in saying that I assent

to the theory he offers; and which, I suppose is too well established for any person to

dispute. There is however no principle of political economy, which may not be

objectionable under particular circumstances. – What may well apply to a sovereign

state, will not always meet the exigencies of a dependent colony.

Such is the fact, as respects the circulating medium of Nova Scotia. We have

neither bank or mint, established by law, but must rely on the influx of foreign coins,

for this indispensable agent. Out of the absence of these institutions, arises the

necessity of giving to metallic money, a fixed current value; which perhaps may at

times, or always be somewhat above its intrinsic value. But, no one can doubt that

whatever this value may be, it ought to be adjusted by a standard, equally applicable

to every species of coin in circulation; and this being granted, no person will deny the

inconsistency of raising the doubloon from £3 17 6 to £4 0 0 and leaving the other

coins at a currency, already under the doubloon. If an advance was necessary, it

should have been general.

This necessity is not admitted by “Senex.” That is, if the advance had been

general, it would have been innocent and delusive; but if partial it must banish those

coins not elevated. Now, though I admit the latter, I deny the former, as the influx of

coins produced by various causes during the war, has now subsided; and we are left

to our own local resources, among which we cannot enumerate a Bank. From such an

establishment, would be drawn, the exact amount of paper required for daily

circulation; which sum must now be obtained from some other source, as paper or

specie are the only convenient representatives of less portable property.

The question then is, where is this source of specie to be found, which will

afford not only a sufficient supply for domestic circulation, but to meet the demands

for foreign Flour? To this, I reply, in the West Indies, which being the only market for

the produce of our fisheries, is the only place, from whence our merchants can order

money. This money or bullion, when brought in doubloons, they are willing to part

with at first cost, say sixteen dollars, sinking freight, commission and insurance. A

greater sacrifice, certainly our West India trade cannot bear. But, the importers of

dry goods, who pay every attention to the gratification of their fashionable customers

1257 From Halifax. (1820, September 30). For the Recorder. Acadian Recorder, 8(40), p. 2.

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of all ranks, without materially benefitting any, are unwilling, that the supporters of

our Fisheries and Navigation, should be allowed to pay their doubloons at a greater

value, than the Commissary General1258 is willing to receive them at in payment for

Bills of Exchange on London.

If the West India merchant concedes this point, he does not know to what

extent it may be carried; as the same reasoning would apply, as regards the

Commissary and the importer, for a depreciation of twelve shillings and six–pence,

as two shillings and six–pence: And further, let us suppose, that the Commissary had

chosen to refuse province notes, in payment for bills of exchange, would any person

contend, that the importer or the public, have the power to coerce his acceptance of

them? This, if I remember rightly, occurred with a late Commissary, and till he was

relieved from what he considered an undue responsibility, he continued to reject

them. On the other hand, let us suppose that he should think proper, to give the

private notes of one man, a preference, which he refused to those of another, could

the proprietor of the rejected notes, or the public interpose with any effect? Certainly

not. The Commissary, is placed beyond the control of either; therefore his office

cannot be considered a criterion for the value, or currency of any money whatever.

It appears to me that the interest of the public at large in this matter should

be regarded as paramount to every other. That interest, seems to be, that every liberal

and proper encouragement should be given to those, who are willing to assist, in

furnishing materials for a circulating medium; without which, first embarrassment,

and then ruin attend every man, who has a livelihood to attain.

I have already stated, that my opinion is, that all coins should have been

advanced, in the same ratio as the doubloon. If even, one other had been, the

mischievous “note system” would not have existed. I mean the dollar. This description

of coin had ceased to circulate singly, before the doubloon was raised, as the importers

of them have long been in the practice of selling this coin in quantities as imported

(as also the collectors of them) to the merchants in the United States trade, for a

better price than they can pay them to our mechanics, fishermen or labourers at. This

tide can hardly be turned, I think, as “Senex” predicts, by a depression of two shillings

and six–pence on four pounds, the current value of the doubloon. Make the dollar

current, at that rate, and we shall very soon be able to dispense with the paper favors,

with which the public have been indulged, or a great proportion of them: though I

admit there are names amongst the issuers of notes, in which the most cautious,

might with safety confide.

It might have been foreseen, and probably was by many, that if one person

commenced the issuing of paper, and succeeded, that many would follow without

considering, whether all had equal pretensions to public confidence. But, it must be

acknowledged there are objections which will apply to any note, intended to form part

of our circulating medium, if made in the form of those lately issued – giving only an

individual liability.

1258 The Commissary General is the person in charge of a specific army service. From the present

context, it appears that in 19th–century Nova Scotia, the Commissary General performed many of the

traditional duties of a viceroy.

764

“Senex,” seems to be of opinion, that the reducing of the price of the doubloon,

would make dollars sufficiently plenty, but I am fearful, this experiment would

merely make doubloons scarce, as a dollar was rarely to be seen when the doubloon

was first raised, owing to the demand for the U. States; to which country, we must

make large remittances, till our now prosperous Agriculture shall render us

independent. Giving to a dollar a higher current value, will not prevent its

exportation to the U. States; on the contrary, I agree with “Senex,” that as much silver

would be demanded for a barrel of flour, after the advance as before; but, it is evident,

that dollars would then circulate individually, and to the exclusion of the private

notes: And the importation of them, would then, probably, fully equal the exportation.

Smaller change in this event, would require an equal advance, and which is now

extremely scarce.

It may be said that the Commissary would make the same objection to

receiving the dollar if raised from dry goods importers, that he does to the doubloon.

Be it so; a partial interest must not preponderate against the general good, and our

interest too if judged by its own merits not claiming any particular indulgence. Such

a course, only accelerates the day when Nova Scotia shall consume no more fine

goods, than her exports to England, will pay for. At the same time no unnecessary

impediment to that branch of trade should exist, if the importers can get it removed.

Let them unite, and endeavour by proper measures, to remove from the Commissary

any risk in receiving coins at their current value. This is their own special business,

but there cannot be a doubt, it would meet with general support.

It is sufficient for the public, as respects the doubloon, that it is received at the

excise–office, and paid at the treasury for four–pounds, when it weighs, 17 dwt.1259

8 gns.1260 add to this, the circumstance of several respectable persons having bound

themselves by their signatures, to receive and pay them at this rate; and their having

requested the merchants of New Brunswick, to join in the measure, and in which

measure they acquiesced – the doubloon being current at £4 0 0 in N. Brunswick. It

therefore, is an unwarrantable proceeding on the part of the dry goods importers, to

agitate the question, thereby creating in the public mind an unnecessary alarm,

which has already been productive of much mischief: And, it is to be lamented, that

they appear to have the countenance of such a writer as “Senex,” whose abstract

principles of political economy, may be perverted, to favor their plan. It can hardly be

expected, that any of those persons who signed the agreement, will act so

inconsistently and so dishonorably as to join this combination against the West India

trade: the only natural channel, by which a regular supply of specie can be obtained,

for replenishing the constant drain on our circulating medium. Persons who may

intend to refuse the doubloon at £4 0 0, should remember, there is no standard

established by law for this coin, and that custom at present gives to it that value –

1259 An abbreviation for ‘denarius weight’, or pennyweight, a unit of weight equal to about 1.56 grams (1/20 of a troy ounce). Recall that a denarius was a Roman penny. 1260 Possibly a typo. In British English of the time, ‘gns.’ was the abbreviation for ‘guineas’, which were

British gold coins worth 21 shillings. It is a unit of value, not weight, but the author may have meant

the weight of eight such coins.

765

Therefore, the refusal of a formal tender at this rate, might occasion (these hard

times,) more inconvenience than profit; notwithstanding, some persons think

doubloons much too plenty.

Another reason may be offered for not reducing the doubloon. Large sales on

credit have lately been made in this town, of flour, corn, &c. on account of American

merchants. If the purchasers can be compelled to pay the doubloon at £3 17 6, the

American will have received an extra profit at the expence of this community, equal

to the reduction.

In conclusion, I will remind “Senex,” that his advocating the depression of the

doubloon, is hostile to his arguments against the note makers, as no one can seriously

think, that two shillings and six–pence taken from this coin, will attract a single

dollar to this community, but the want of both, will open a still wider and more

inviting field to the paper speculators of

HALIFAX

Halifax, 28th Sept. 1820.

NOTE – Note–making two or three years since, had arrived at a ruinous height in St.

Johns, Newfoundland. The effect of which were severely felt, both at home and

abroad. Almost every person who thought his credit good for fifteen pence, issued his

note. The merchants at last found, something must be done to save their property as

well as their reputation. Their determination was to raise the Spanish dollar from 4s.

6d. stg. To 5s. stg.–This brought change in abundance, and the bubble broke. But its

effects were felt in this town, twelve or eighteen months after, several merchants

having had to pay large sums to make good the amount of bad notes received and

paid on their accounts in sales and purchases.

4. Senex’s Fourth Letter (October 6)1261

I cannot say that I was pleased with your note to correspondents last week;

and I do think, it was taking too much liberty with my 3d chapter, first to suppress

it, and then pass such a censure on its contents. Exceptionable, you say, it was;

because it mentioned names. And how, I would ask, was I to distinguished the issuers

of printed fifteen pences without naming them? Surely there is no secret in the matter; for the men have come boldly forward as PRIVATE BANKERS, and have

written their own names without the least blush of concealment. Allow me,

gentlemen, to tell you plainly, that you may, if you please refuse a place in your

columns to this 4th chapter also, but the 3d shall never be corrected nor new modelled

by me. It needs no correction, and contains neither more nor less than an honest

appeal to the good sense of the community against these manufacturers of paper

dollars. I averred then, and now I repeat it, that this currency is fraught with

manifold dangers, and will and must terminate in a loss to the public, first, by the

insolvency of some of them; secondly, by the death of others; and lastly, by the nature

1261 From Senex. (1820, October 7). The History not of SILVER, but of PRINTED fifteen pences:

Chapter IV. Acadian Recorder, 8(41), p. 3.

766

of the conditions on which they are to be redeemed. I wish to injure the credit of no

man, and I would not be sufficiently base to throw out insinuations against the

stability of any one individual, whose paper is now afloat; but in perilous times, like

these, when trade is at such an ebb, and when capital, even in the hands of the most

prudent, is rather diminishing than encreasing, it is imbecility to shut our eyes on

the hazard of bankruptcy among so many already embarked, or about to embark in

this gainful traffic. The sun shall not perform a complete revolution, ere these words

of mine shall be verified; and yet I confess, I have no particular knowledge of their

private affairs, but utter this prediction on the faith of the regular march of human

events. The whole system of individuals issuing paper, on their single and

unsupported responsibility, is radically wrong; and no present wealth can justify it.

Every man is liable to misfortune, whatever may be his discretion; and the most solid

and seemingly durable fabric of opulence may totter to its base, and be levelled to the

ground, by some sudden and fearful whirlwind of adversity.

But suppose for a moment that this risk, from the prudence or acknowledged

affluence of the parties, were of little or no account; I demand, as in my 3d chapter,

what security have we against the changes of their death? – Who would retire their

notes, if such an emergence were to happen? The friends or heirs might not, the executors would not, and their circulation must stop instantaneously, notwithstanding the present urgent necessity for small change. The mechanic, the

labourer, the widow and the orphan, in short, the lower and poorer classes would

sustain a serious, and to many of them, an intolerable inconvenience. – To this it is

no answer; that similar evils and derangement result to the creditors on the death of

every merchant; because in all commercial transactions there is a profit on sales to

cover such risks; but there is no profit in accepting a paper dollar in place of a silver

one. The circulating medium of every country should have either an intrinsic value

by which it is set above all suspicion; or it should carry an internal credit – broad –

stable – permanent – and secure from the common accidents of humanity.

The conditions too, on which many of these notes are redeemable, have been

obviously framed for the very purpose of protecting the issuer, and throwing the loss

on the public. – I shall not a second time offend by an open mention of names or men,

who have thus imposed on our simplicity or necessity; but he must be blind who sees

it not already, and the blindest of us will see it clearly, before these notes are

withdrawn.

I proclaim then in the face of Nova Scotia, and I defy the arrantest1262 dupe1263

to dispute it, that the present paper system is the worst that could be devised, that it

is big with mischief, that it ought to be readily and vigorously opposed, and that no

remedy, which would arrest the progress of the disease, is too desperate to be tried. I

care not for the feelings of individuals; the public good is with me the paramount

consideration. The citizens of Halifax are treading on the edge of a precipice, which

has been dug for them by the selfishness of a FEW, and their unjustifiable thirst of

gain. Some see not the danger; others are just beginning to dread the slipperiness of

1262 ‘The most arrant’ = ‘The most complete and utter’. 1263 Someone easy to deceive.

767

the ground; but all are driven to the brink by an invincible and uncontrollable

necessity. We have only gold doubloons, and paper dollars, half dollars and fifteen pences. All the small coins of every description have left us, and we are now draining

the dregs of that bitter cup, which our profound ignorance of political economy has

mixed and prepared for us. The conventional and artificial value we set on the

doubloon has been the poisoned source that has corrupted our currency.

This is denied; and therefore I shall be at a little pains to prove it. I concede,

first of all, that Spanish dollars, before any rise on the doubloon, had travelled at a

quick pace to the westward in payment of flour, and that few, very few remained at

the date of this eventful measure. The demand for dollars was universal, in the

States, in the Canadas, and in these provinces, and originated in the wants of the

East–India trade; but the fractional parts of the dollar were exempt from this

extraordinary drain, never bore a premium, and therefore would have circulated long here had the price of the doubloon remained stationary. They were not needed at

Boston or New York by the East–India importer; and would have remained with us –

subject, no doubt, to the gradual diminution which our specie has felt, and must feel,

while the means of our consumption are drawn from abroad. So also with our guineas,

half guineas and thirds; our joes, sovereigns and eagles; our Portuguese and English

shillings and sixpences; the whole have left us without any exception, but the

doubloon of £4 value. Why have all these coins taken their departure, I would ask?

Because at their current price they were more valuable than the doubloon at its new

and increased rate. Every man leaving the province, and every man remitting out of

it, had a direct interest to seize and possess himself of the other coins which would

pass in other countries without loss, and to leave us that which had been enhanced by the wise resolution of our merchants, and elevated here to a factitious importance.

We have thus expelled every thing, in the shape of gold or silver, that would answer

the purpose of small change; and raised by our stupid policy the only coin which is at once inconvenient, burdensome, and unfit for retail transactions. Hence the origin

and necessity of these worthless bits of paper with which we are inundated; hence

individuals have obtained a public credit, unwarranted by their circumstances; and

hence the present and the future mischiefs necessarily inwoven in this system.

Is there no remedy for this state of things? My next chapter shall inquire into

the matter.

I am, gentlemen, your most obt.1264

SENEX

1264 Obedient.

768

5. Senex’s Fifth and Final Letter (October 12)1265

To my astonishment you published the 4th Chapter, and thus exposed in your

pages the consequences of that short–sighted measure, which has opened the flood–

gates of present and future mischief.

The paper manufactory still flourishes; and we are threatened, I hear, with a

new brood of printed dollars from what the world would call, a respectable quarter.

“A wise and good man, says the proverb, will not set an example, which fools and

knaves can misinterpret, and may imitate.” It is a hopeless task to give advice, where

self–interest speaks so powerfully; as most men will promote at any time their own

advantage, and at the expence of the public. We have not yet seen the end of this

paper system; and if not timely checked, it will be carried to such a prodigious extent

as to call for the interference of the legislature, The malady has now insinuated itself

into the body politic, and will require, I fear, violent remedies to expel it.

In the whole compass of expedients; I see only two modes, by which we can

escape from our alarming difficulties; and these are, either the issue of small notes of

sure and indubitable character, or an advance of some coin fit for change. The first of

these modes may be accomplished two ways: either the legislature may issue small

notes under the same circumstances, and with the same security, as the present large

ones: or a number of individuals may combine into a body, and issue on their joint

credit. Both of these plans are liable to a crowd of objections; and no true and

enlightened patriot would wish to see either realized. It would be beneath the dignity

of the government to render its credit so cheap and contemptible; and no banking

establishment in England or Scotland has yet attempted so little and so paltry a

policy. If discreditable in the government, the measure would be dangerous in any

association. A body of men would thus become vested with a large capital created by

the mere wants of the currency, and would exercise an undue and partial influence

on all future questions which would affect that interest. These men would be

benefitted by banishing gold and silver, and would oppose the establishment of a

bank, to which all classes must continue to look, as our ultimate and sure resource.

No associated body should ever have the power of issuing paper but in the way of

discounts; for as paper is always less secure than specie, it should never be taken by

the people, unless they have a direct interest in its circulation. Bank paper thrown

out for the accommodation of commerce, agriculture, and fisheries has an undoubted

claim on our indulgence, because the community is reaping the benefit of the created

and factitious capital, in the loans made to its merchants and farmers: but the Team

boat paper, although in itself perfectly safe, ought to be discouraged, because the

inhabitants of Nova Scotia have neither act nor part in the matter. It is a measure of

private convenience, and private emolument, yields a gain to that company at the

public expense, and on these accounts, was wisely interdicted by the provincial

government. If this be true with regard to a company so rich, and respectable, it comes

with tenfold force against the motley horde of dollar manufactures, who all, whether

1265 From Senex. (1820, October 14). The History not of SILVER, but of PRINTED fifteen pences:

Chapter V. Acadian Recorder, 8(42), p. 2.

769

wealthy or needy, are seeking their own interest without a particle of convenience to

the public, and who, besides, offer no security for the redemption of the notes which

is anywise satisfactory. The death of any one of them would burst the illusive bubble,

add to the sum of individual suffering, and be followed by the moans and hisses of the

lower class.

To what hand shall we then turn for relief, since there is no safety in any small

notes now in circulation? This question I shall examine with calm impartiality, and

contemplate it on all sides.

I observe, first of all, that our evils cannot be redressed by retracing the steps

we have taken, and reducing the doubloon to its former value of £3 17 6. By this

expedient we would merely hold out facilities for its transportation in payment of

flour, without bringing back the small coins in exchange for it. At £3 17 6 it is rather

above, than below its value; and no person, in the neighbouring provinces or in the

States, in order to get possession of it, would bring hither the fractional parts of the

dollar or other silver coins. Even by lowering it to £3 15 0 no great effect would be

produced in our currency, because, generally speaking, the doubloon can be

purchased out of Nova Scotia at less than that price. The only consequence, that

would result from a moderate reduction, would be the rapid disappearance of this – the only gold piece left amongst us: but if we were to go a little further, and lower it

to 14 dollars, it would flow out of the province as quickly as it flowed in, because

private interest would instantly be at work to exchange it for other coins, and make

a profit out of this, our second folly. Under these circumstances the doubloon must

remain as it is.

There is another reason which powerfully supports this policy. In consequence

of the advance of price, the number of doubloons in the province are as ten to one at

least, of what they were formerly. Our capitalists and all our wealthy merchants hold

them and nothing else; our whole currency, in fact, is made up of these coins; and the

loss now would far exceed the private profit gained by individuals at the time of their

advance. The principle therefore of self preservation would prevent the community

from agreeing to this reduction, because it would entail upon many, and these of the

greatest influence, a heavy loss. The claims too of the West–India merchant should

be respected, who sometimes disposes of his fish for this species of money, and he

would naturally wish to part with it here at what it cost him. Evils, as is well known,

are not always healed by removing the cause: and although the elevation of the

doubloon has brought our currency to this fearful crisis, and on that account should

be held up as a beacon for our future guidance, its depression now would not replace

the circulating medium, as at the date of this infatuated measure.

If the fundamental maxims, which I have laid down in these chapters, be at all

correct, it occurs to me that the path to be pursued, and the remedy to be applied are

open to us. We have had a redundancy of doubloons, in comparison of the other coins,

because we raised their price; and the same cause will always produce the same effect.

We have only to select a coin, which will answer all the purposes of business, and

pass it at an encreased rate. This will do away the necessity for small notes; and their

issuers will be forced to take them up, as every man would prefer a metallic currency,

770

carrying with it intrinsic value, to these miserable paper tokens which circulate by

sufferance, and are the subject of universal murmur1266.

The only questions that remain are; what coin shall we select and what value

shall we put on it?

It must be apparent on all hands, that we have not a gold coin of any Sovereign

State that can come in aid of the retailer. Louis d’ors1267, guineas1268, sovereigns1269,

eagles1270, joes would all be unsuitable; and we have already sufficiently proved the

doubloon to be so. It must be a silver coin divisible into fractions; and that coin is the

DOLLAR. By any other selection we may palliate, but cannot cure the mischief; for

gold, compared with its bulk, is intrinsically too valuable to issue from the mint in

very small portions. The retail of all countries is managed by silver.

What advance then shall we put on the dollar? An inquiry into the present

worth will furnish a solution to the question. Spanish dollars for some time past have

borne a premium of 6 per cent in the whole of North America, whether belonging to

the Union, or to the British Empire. Merchants, therefore, possessed of silver dollars,

never dreamed of paying their debts with them, but first sold them at this premium

which is nearly 3d¾ on each. This advance, however, would be extremely

inconvenient on all the fractional parts; and on that account, the nearest to it, which

admits of equal division, should be preferred. Four–pence approximates so close to

this, and is so easily divisible, that against it I can see no weighty or serious objection.

The half dollar would could at 2s. 8d. the quarter at 1s. 4d. the eighth at 8d. and the

sixteenth at 4d. Fifteen silver dollars would be equal to sixteen printed ones, and also to a gold doubloon. – This second measure would remedy the folly of the first, would

1266 Preference for silver over paper would continue to be an issue decades later, albeit in somewhat

different guise: “The last speculation of the Canadian Chartered Banks is to endeavor to depreciate

English Silver Coins about four per cent from their ordinary value; the largest portion of these coins

having been imported by these very banks, and put in circulation at the higher conventional rate.

Twenty English shillings have circulated under this system as a good representative of twenty–five

shillings currency, and the Banks have done a nice business of importing, and circulating this

description of coin. […] The Banks have two objects in view, the first is to turn an honest penny by

subjecting the owners of silver coin to a sweating operation to which they would fain, but dare not

subject the coin itself; and the next is to substitute for this metallic currency, their own shin–plasters

as a circulating medium, by persuading the people that lamp–black and rags are better and less

fluctuating representatives of value than good honest coin. […] “If four English shillings are worth

only four shillings and ten pence, what is the intrinsic value of a Bank Bill for One Dollar?” A

description of arithmetical enquiry which we do not think it is the interest of our Chartered Banks to

provoke; and one the tendency of which would not be to drive silver out of competition with paper even

if people took the freak to call three English shillings more than value for a paper promise of a Dollar.

The Banks have lost nothing by English silver circulating above its real value, but on the contrary

have made money out of it, at the expense of the inhabitants of the country who are willing that for

convenience it shall continue to pass as heretofore, and therefore, have no reason but their sheer greed

for making the change they are attempting.” CURRENCY. (1858, February 11). The Stanstead Journal, p. 2. 1267 A French gold coin first issued in 1640 under Louis XIII. 1268 A British gold coin worth 21 shillings. 1269 A British gold coin first issued in 1817, with a face value of one pound sterling. 1270 A United States gold coin worth ten dollars. Eagles were minted from 1792 to 1933.

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equalize our metallic currency and introduce a principle of correction into our present

disordered system.

The commissary, in place of selling his dollars as during the last year, for a

premium, would pay them to the troops; the West–India merchant would import them

and give them to the fisherman; and the creditor of Newfoundland would order his

debt to be remitted here in silver dollars. In a very short time we would be greeted

with the face of our old friend; and his agreeable chink on the counter would enliven

the hearts of all men. In order to possess any thing we must pay its price: and we cannot expect to be revisited by the dollars, unless we give them a courteous

reception. This advance would bring them back to us by innumerable and unseen

channels; and before the lapse of two short months, we would have abundance for the

purposes of change. Small notes and printed fifteen–pences would retire before them

in confusion, and the issuers would be compelled to take up these worthless bits of

paper by which our patience has been abused. I think too, the commissary would

accept the dollar at 55s. 4d., because, as he could pay it away at the same rate, or sell

it at a nearly equivalent premium, no possible loss could accrue form his compliance.

– The interest of the importer of British goods would be thus as much consulted as

that of the West–India merchant, for he would be furnished with a currency that

would be exchangeable for bills, and of course relieved from the present loss and

inconvenience arising from doubloons. This measure would harmonize all classes by

healing their differences, and would rectify the present disorders by the reflux of the

precious metals. This remedy is not the idle fiction of an adventurous and speculative

economist, but suggested by the wisdom of experience. Lately in Newfoundland

private notes, as with us, were issued by individuals to an alarming extent. They were

substituted in the room of the precious metals, and constituted almost the whole of

their currency. The evil rose to such a height, that the merchants resolved at all

hazards to put an end to it. – They met, and wisely determined to elevate the dollar,

which is the most convenient and most divisible of all coins, and they fixed it at 5s.

sterling. On the passing of their resolution dollars appeared, and the small notes

rushed in on the owners. Distress was felt, and several bankruptcies grew out of this;

but the dollar triumphed over every opposition; and since that time till now it has

formed the principal medium of exchange in that island.

“Go thou, and do likewise”

I am, gentlemen, your most obedient

SENEX

6. A More Practical Complaint (October 19)1271

An old fellow has been writing in your paper about printed fifteen pences and

said a great deal more about them than I pretend to understand; but he has not stated

above the half of the grievances the public suffer from this trash of paper that is

passing from hand to hand. This morning I went to the green market to buy a bunch

1271 From Davidson, P. (1820, October 21). For the Recorder. Acadian Recorder, 8(43), p. 2. Written by Peter Davidson (d. 1884).

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of carrots, one of turnips, a squash, and two cabbages, and I carried with me a

province note of 20s. – after I had made my bargain I offered my note in payment.

First, one said he could not change it; another shook his head and shrugged his

shoulders, uttering with a foreign accent “me no small and money, will keep my

cabbage till you pay them;” a third who had the squash, began to fumble in his

waistcoat pocket, and emptied out of it, coppers, ragged bits of paper and one solitary

sven–pence–half–penny in silver; “my squash, sir, if I change the note is 6d. but only

3d. if you give me new coppers – change the note, said I, and the d–––l take it; for I

am tormented.” Well, gentlemen, he began to count the 19s. 6d. of change that should

come to me; and after consuming full 10 minutes, and spreading the stall all over

with the vilest dregs of our currency, he at length looked up and said “I believe it is

all right.” I began to take it up; and for the information of others, and probably for

the benefit of posterity I shall faithfully set down what I received in this trifling

transaction :–

1st, George Legget and Wm. Lawson's note each 5s. £0 10 0

2d, H.H. Cogswell's team boat note for 0 1 0

3d, Adam Esson and John A. Barry, each one for 1s.3d. 0 2

4th, Wm. Smith, for three 7½d. in his notes, 0 1 10½

5th, In silver 0 0 7½

6th, In coppers, 0 3 6 £0 19 6

I had thus 8 paper notes, 1 silver piece, and 84 coppers – in all 93 separate

things before I could get vegetables for my family’s dinner – For Gold’s sake,

gentlemen, let us get back our

DOLLARS!

and send these plaguy doubloons to the Yankees, although we should sell them with

a loss. What is the reason that we have now no dollars? I shall briefly tell you, and I defy any man to contradict it. Whenever a dollar, I mean a silver one, is in any one’s

possession, he keeps it till it brings him from 5s.4d. to 5s.6d. in real value, either by

selling it to another, or paying it away himself in trafficking at that rate. Flour can

be regularly purchased out of the American vessels at 5 or 5¼ dollars per barrel,

payable in silver, whereas they ask 5½ or 5¾ payable in doubloons. A Spanish dollar

can never appear in change at 5s. when it is worth 6 or 7 per cent. more to any

merchant. If I could pay them away at 5s 4d. or 5s.6d. I believe I should be tempted

to put my hand into my chest and break upon 1500 that have lain there without

seeing the light for the last 3 years; and save myself from this pest of small notes that

are now down to 7½d. or ere long I suppose will be printed for 3½d. or, peradventure,

for a single copper.

I tell you the “Haggis will burst, and scald many who are little expecting it.”

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7. A History of the Bank of Montreal (1917)1272

Twice as old as the Dominion of Canada, the Bank of Montreal has seen

practically all the history of present day Canada in the making. It had its share in

the upbuilding of these British Dominions in the troubled times when Upper and

Lower Canada were separate provinces. It played its part in the great enterprises

that preceded and followed Confederation. Its history, in brief, is the history of the

Dominion, and it is probable that no single factor wielded a greater influence upon

the upbuilding of Canada, financially and commercially. It has seen the population

of Montreal grow from 20,000 to 750,000 and that of Canada from 400,000 to

7,500,000.

Looking back into history, one may readily place together a picture of the

dramatic and picturesque incidents that gave all the elements of romance to the birth

and settlement of Montreal from narrative and tradition. But financial history is not

so handed down, and so it is extremely difficult to find an authentic description of the

economic environment of the founders of the Bank of Montreal one hundred years

ago. At that time British North America consisted of the two Canadas, now Quebec

and Ontario, and the three Maritime Provinces. Lower Canada was almost entirely

French, and British immigrants were regarded with enmity and suspicion. The war

of 1812 had been successfully passed, but the agitation that resulted in the rebellion

of 1837 was already in the air.

This much may be said of economic conditions. Quebec exported timber and

Montreal, furs. Manufactured products were largely imported. Domestic trade was

carried on mostly by barter and exchange. Shopkeepers who bought from the

merchants were compelled to give long credit to the settlers and the latter almost

invariably made payment in farm products. Roads were bad and few, distances

between settlements were great, and the voyage from England often took three

months to accomplish. The country was too poor to afford the luxury of a gold or silver

circulating medium, and the various kinds of money in circulation, including English,

French, American and even Spanish and Portuguese coins, made the exchange

problem complicated and unsatisfactory.

It is probable that the deficiency of specie, and the loss and difficulties

attending exchange, through the use of these varieties of money brought about the

earliest attempts to found a bank in Lower Canada. Prior to 1817 there had been two

unsuccessful attempts to establish banks. In that year nine Montreal merchants got

together and launched what was then known as the “Montreal Bank”. The Articles of

Association were signed June 23, 1917.

Under these articles the capital stock of the company was to be £250,000

divided into 5,000 shares of £50 each. Directors were to be elected when £5,000 had

been paid in, and business begun when £25,000 had been paid in on account of stock

subscriptions. The first meeting of stockholders was held August 7, 1817, when

1272 Hundredth Anniversary Bank of Montreal. (1917, November 3). The Daily Colonist, p. 13.

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directors were elected as follows: John Gray1273, who became president; Thomas A.

Turner1274, who became vice–president; John Forsyth1275, George Garden1276, George

Moffat1277, Horatio Gates1278, Frederick W. Ermatinger1279, John McTavish1280,

Austin Cuvilier1281, James Leslie1282, Hiram Nichols, George Platt1283 and Zabdili

Thayer1284.

At that period St. Paul Street was the business and residential centre of

Montreal. The new bank secured the use of a residence on St. Paul Street, occupied

by Robert Armour1285, paying a rental of £150 a year. Robert Griffin was appointed

cashier of the bank, and given a staff of six, including a porter. Plates for printing

bills were ordered from Hartford, Conn., and also a rolling press. The first £1 bill

carried a cut of the local prison, the most modern building in the city. There being as

yet no police force in Montreal, the Governor of the city was asked to station a sentinel

at the bank, from the local British garrison. It is interesting to note that the directors

fixed days of discounts for Tuesdays and Fridays, days still reserved for the semi–

weekly board meetings of the bank. On November 3, 1817, the bank opened its doors

for business.

EARLY EXPANSION

It is another interesting fact that from the very beginning the directors

embarked on the agency system which has done so much to make the Canadian

banking machine the most elastic in the world. The first agencies were opened in

Quebec, Kingston and York, and although the Upper Canada agencies were later

closed for a time, due to adverse legislation by the Legislature of that colony, they

1273 John Gray (1755 – 1829). In 1801, the Montreal Water Works, a company he founded with two

members of the North West Company was granted a 50–year monopoly on distribution of water

through pipes in Montreal. 1274 Thomas A. Turner died in 1834. 1275 John Forsyth (c. 1762 – 1837). He had a varied career in business, first competing against the

North West Company in the fur trade, and later running a very successful import/export wholesale

business. 1276 George Garden (1772 – 1828). He was once a fire insurance agent with London’s Phoenix Assurance

Company. 1277 George Moffat (1787 – 1865). Like many of his peers, he was once involved in the fur trade a

member of the XY Company. 1278 Horatio Gates (1777 – 1834). During the war of 1812, he smuggled food from New York and

Vermont to the British troops. 1279 Frederick William Ermatinger (1769 – 1827). An early member of the Montreal Library, and (in

1802) the secretary of the Board for the Encouragement of the Cultivation of Hemp. 1280 Possibly John MacTavish (1787 – 1852), the son of a North West Company family who would later

become British Consul to Maryland. 1281 Austin Cuvilier (1779 – 1849). A prominent auctioneer and a Member of the Legislative Assembly

of the Province of Canada from 1841 to 1844. 1282 James Leslie (1786 – 1873). He was vocal in his opposition of the Act of Union that united Upper

and Lower Canada into one province. 1283 Possibly the George Platt who ran a Montreal foundry, married Elizabeth MIttelberger in 1805,

and was a Member of the Legislative Assembly for Lower Canada starting in 1815. 1284 Possibly the crockery merchant Zabdiel Thayer, active at this time. 1285 Robert Armour (1781 – 1857). A partner of the Quebec Steamboat Company, and King’s Printer

for Montreal from 1827 to 1832.

775

were promptly reopened when the ban was removed. No doubt the motive of the

directors in opening these early branches was to promote free circulation of the bank’s

bills. Some idea of the courage required to open and maintain distant agencies at that

time may be gathered from a brief description of the transportation difficulties of the

day. Stage coaches over all but impassible roads formed the chief method of travel,

although in Summer, steamboats operated on the St. Lawrence, making the round

trip from Montreal to Quebec in ten days. One of the bank’s early presidents, the Hon.

John Molson1286, had a steamboat on the St. Lawrence as early as 1809, eight years

after the first practicable steamboat was built on the Clyde. The despatch of money

was arduous and risky and despite great precautions the wrought–iron chests, in

which the money in transit was stored, were broken into and looted.

The first charter of the bank was granted by the Legislature of Lower Canada,

May 22, 1822. It thus appears that for nearly five years the institution had been

conducted without duly constituted authority. The fact had been recognized, however,

by the Governor of the colony, who left the bank undisturbed believing that restriction

would result in more harm than good. Under this charter the name “Bank of

Montreal” was adopted. The charter was to run until June, 1831.

From 1817 to 1841, when Upper and Lower Canada were united under one

Legislature, the history of the Bank of Montreal is representative of the financial

limitations and slow, chequered growth of Lower Canada. Favored with a capable

management, the bank escaped or overcame the serious difficulties that constantly

appeared. The cautious policy of the directors and management during this trying

period is illustrated by the fact that with the exception of two years, 1827 and 1828,

an average dividend of 6 per cent per annum was paid to the shareholders. Financial

depression and barren political strife combined to make this era a dark one for the

colony.

BANK HELPED IN LARGE UNDERTAKINGS

The value of the Bank of Montreal’s enterprise should not be measured by its

success as a joint–stock undertaking, by the amount of its capital or the size of its

dividends, but by the security it has given to those who have trusted it, the facilities

it has furnished for the exchange and the increase of commodities, and the assistance

it has given to the development of the country. In the latter category fall some

important banking transactions of this early period.

In the year 1821 the Lachine Canal, an important link in Canada’s great inland

waterways chain, was begun. It was completed in 1825 at a cost of £110,000 and to

this work the Bank of Montreal gave important financial assistance. But even before

this time the bank had made its influence deeply felt in the financial affairs of the

country.

At the end of the first year’s business the directors proposed to the Governor of

Canada, the Duke of Richmond, who controlled the British monies “that the bank be

given the right of supplying the Government in this country with such monies as may

be wanted by the different departments in Upper and Lower Canada”. These

negotiations terminated favorably and inaugurated the connection between the bank

1286 John Molson (1763 – 1836). Active in the meat and beer trades.

776

and the Government, first of the two provinces, and later of the Dominion, which

continuing to this day “has brought honor and profit to the bank and has been of the

greatest value and service to the Canadian nation.”

The charter was continued by the Legislature in 1839 to June 1, 1837. In the

political troubles of the thirties, conducted along racial lines, the Bank of Montreal

was bitterly attacked by the followers of Papineau. In the rebellion of 1837 the first

to raise a volunteer force to repel the rebels was the Hon. Peter McGill, then president

of the bank. At this time, too, financial stringency in the United States, coupled with

crop failures in Canada, led the banks to suspend specie payments until 1839.

It must not be supposed that all this time the bank was doing business in its

St. Paul Street home. A few weeks after starting business the directors purchased for

£2,000 the site of the present general post office on St. James Street, and there a

building was completed in 1819. It was the head office for thirty years, and cost

£8,750.

The Bank of Montreal was the largest dealer in exchange in the two Canadas,

maintaining agents in New York. It also remitted bills direct to England against its

own imports of specie, colonial imports of goods or adverse balances. The plan of using

New York as a market for sterling bills and a centre for the employment at call of

portions of the bank’s funds, has been followed by the larger banks since its inception

by the Bank of Montreal.

NEW CHARTER OBTAINED

About the time of the union of Upper and Lower Canada in 1841 there became

a betterment in business conditions in the country. It is worth mentioning, merely by

the way, that in the first election after union, the Bank successfully supported its

cashier, Benjamin Holmes, as candidate to the Legislature for one of the Montreal

districts. Under union the bank obtained a new charter to run 21 years, and was

authorized to increase its capital to £740,000. The double liability1287 clause was also

imposed on shareholders.

Immigration increased apace, and in the flow of prosperity extensive public

works were undertaken, these including the completion of the Welland Canal and

improvement of navigation on the St. Lawrence. Now free to do business in Upper

Canada, the bank established a large number of agencies there, and its business grew

so rapidly that the capacity of the head office was taxed. The adjoining site, that now

occupied by the bank, was purchased from La Fabrique de Montreal for £10,000, and

a handsome building erected. The old site was sold to La Banque du Peuple. Removal

to the new premises was effected in 1848.

Hardly was the new building opened, when another wave of depreciation

struck the country. A variety of causes led up to this, including a bank crisis in

England, due to excessive speculation in railways. Canada was hard hit, and the

Bank of Montreal was obliged to diminish its rest, which had been established at the

1287 In most cases, if a corporation fails, its shareholders are only liable up to the amount of their

investment in the company. Under Canada’s double liability (used in lieu of deposit insurance), a

bank’s shareholders were liable for twice their investment in the company if the bank failed. This made Canada’s bank shareholders unusually cautious.

777

end of the first year’s business, by £60,000. But once more recovery was rapid. The

Upper Canada branches exhibited a vigorous growth. The Allan Line, which played

so great a part in bridging the Atlantic, started its operations in 1852. The Grand

Trunk and Great Western railways were commenced. The reciprocity treaty of 1854

stimulated trade, and harvests were abundant. In 1853 the bank increased its capital

to £1,000,000 and two years later to £1,500,000. In 1855 the bank established an

agency of its own in New York. The first savings department was established in 1856.

The history of those times is one of periods of prosperity rapidly followed by

periods of reaction. Another commercial crisis in 1857 caused Canadian banks to

cease to discount. The late fifties saw a hard struggle for Canadian business, and

through this era the Bank of Montreal maintained its position but now saw its profits

diminished. But the years immediately preceding and following Confederation told

another story. The bank paid dividends of 10 per cent, and the rest was increased by

large amounts to £1,500,000. Its fiftieth year found the Bank enjoying not only a

substantial measure of success but also a remarkable prestige. It had nearly a fourth

of the banking assets. It was the Government’s depository and fiscal agent, and

enjoyed peculiar advantages as the sole issuer of provincial notes. Its capital was

$6,000,000; rest, $1,500,000; assets, more than $20,000,000.

In the impetus given to Canadian progress following Confederation, the Bank

of Montreal played a most important part. The new Dominion experienced a period

of great prosperity and expansion lasting until 1872. Among the great enterprises of

the day were the building of the Intercolonial Railway and the Canadian Pacific

Railway. In each of these projects the Bank of Montreal assisted to a marked extent.

BANK OPENS OFFICE IN LONDON

In 1879, an important milestone in the history of the Bank was reached with

the opening of an office in London. Through the course of years the Bank has attained

a unique position among the colonial banks in London. It has been instrumental in

negotiating public loans on behalf of Canadian Government, municipal incorporation

borrowers totalling hundreds of millions of pounds. In December, 1892, the Bank was

appointed fiscal agents for the Government of the Dominion of Canada. The present

office is at 47 Threadneedle Street, E. C.; and the Bank has a sub–branch in Waterloo

Place, Pall Mall, where the requirements of Canadian visitors in London are given

special attention.

Through a period of reaction beginning in 1873 and lasting until the

development of the West was begun, the Bank of Montreal maintained its position,

distributing dividends averaging 12 per cent on a capital of $12,000,000.

THE BANK’S IMPREGNABLE POSITION

In the first year of its existence the Bank started building up an ample reserve,

and initiated a policy it has ever since rigidly adhered to, of keeping a large part of

its funds liquid, so that it might at all times and under any circumstances be in an

impregnable position and be ready to meet any emergency. Today its reserve fund

amounts to no less than $16,000,000 while its authorized capital is $25,000,000. The

public deposits in April last were reported at $324,000,000, and its proportion of

778

liquid assets to liabilities 75 per cent. The Bank now has branches in every part of

the Dominion, and important branches in the United States and in London.

Banks and the Farmer

8. Why Farmers Borrow Money (1915)1288

The function of the bank is to make loans which are required for a few weeks

or months to finance the farm operation. The farmer always has to wait, sometimes

for a year or more, before he receives a return for his labor and for his expenditure

upon raw materials. He plows1289 in the fall, harrows1290, seeds and packs1291 in the

spring, cuts in summer, and threshes1292 in the fall and receives not a cent for his

labor and the labor of his hired help until later in the year when he delivers his wheat

at the elevator. Meanwhile he has many expenses to meet, for food, seed and

twine1293, for hired help and for living expenses. Under these circumstances, when

the harvest is reasonably assured, the farmer is fully justified in borrowing a

moderate sum from the bank to pay wages, buy twine and meet other necessary

expenses. He has increased his wealth, but is not in a realizable condition and he is

merely anticipating the sale of his crop. Again, the farmer has a bunch of young cattle

or hogs which are ready for fattening and need feeding for a few weeks to fit them for

market. He may have no feed and no cash to spare with which to purchase it, and it

is good business for him to borrow money with which to buy feed. Or the reverse might

be the case and the farmer has a quantity of hay or low grade grain fit only for feed,

but no stock to feed it to. His best course is to buy cattle or hogs and market his crop

on the hoof. A loan for such a purpose is a perfectly legitimate and reasonable thing

and a reliable man should always be able to borrow from the bank under these

circumstances. The principle which should underlie all loans, big and small, long and

short, is, that the operation or improvement for which it is borrowed should itself

provide the repayment of the loan, with interest, and also return a profit to the

borrower.

9. Promissory Notes as the Farmer’s Collateral (1915)1294

The farmer who borrows from the bank usually gives as security a promissory

note, signed by himself and sometimes endorsed by a friend as an additional security.

That is called by the bank an “accommodation” or “loan bill.” Or the farmer may have

in his possession the notes of others which he has received in payment, in part or

1288 From FARM FINANCE. (1915, October 13). The Grain Growers’ Guide, p. 26. 1289 To break the ground in preparation for planting seeds. 1290 After ploughing, a harrow is dragged across the field to break up clumps of root and soil. 1291 Covering the seeds with soil after planting. 1292 To remove the grain from the rest of the plant. 1293 Thin rope needed to tie together bundles of wheat stalks after they have been reaped (cut). 1294 From FARM FINANCE. (1915, October 27). The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 22.

779

whole, for horses or other things which he has sold to them. If he wants to turn those

notes into cash he offers them at the bank for discount and in that case endorses them

himself. This is known by the bank as a “trade bill” and is generally considered

superior to the accommodation bill as a banking security.

NOTES AS COLLATERAL

Another method of using notes of others is to deposit them with the bank as

“collateral”1295 security for an accommodation loan. A man for instance may have sold

a bunch of horses and taken notes from the purchasers aggregating $2,000. The bank

may not care to lend the full amount, or the customer may not wish to borrow so

much, and it is therefore arranged that the $2,000 worth of notes are deposited with

the bank and a loan of a less amount is made on the customer’s own note with the

other notes as collateral, or additional security. When the original notes fall due they

should be paid at the bank and they will thus extinguish the indebtedness of the

bank’s customer, and when all are paid these will provide an amount standing to his

credit.

BORROWER’S STATEMENT REQUIRED

The customer who wishes to borrow from the bank must interview the manager

of the branch and make his request. The banker will want to know what the money

is needed for, the financial position of the borrower, where the money is coming from

to repay the note, and so forth. He has a right to this information and it is his duty to

satisfy himself thoroughly as to the reliability of the customer and of the likelihood

of getting the money back before he sanctions the loan. It is customary to require a

written statement of the customer’s financial position, showing all his assets and

liabilities. This statement is made in the form of an affidavit and to give a false

statement is a criminal offence punishable by a heavy penalty. The manager, being

satisfied that the loan is for a proper purpose and likely to be repaid promptly, will

make out the note and place his initials upon it before handing it to the clerk who

pays out the money.

THE FORM OF NOTE

It is important in giving a note, whether to a bank or to anyone else, and also

in taking one, to see that it is properly made out. The note must state where the

money is to be paid and should show the rate of interest. The usual form is:

Due January 1st, 1916.

Doeville, Man., Oct. 1, 1915

Three months after date I promise to pay to the order of Richard Roe, at The

Prairie Bank of Canada, here $100.00 (One Hundred Dollars) with interest at 8 per

cent. per annum, for value received.

John Doe.

1295 “Chartered banks in Canada are not permitted by law to lend money on the security of real estate

and large amounts needed for the purpose of making permanent improvements, should be borrowed

for a term of years on mortgage from some other source.” FARM FINANCE. (1915, October 13). The Grain Growers’ Guide, p. 26.

780

GET THE FULL AMOUNT

The borrower should always insist on having the rate of interest shown on the

face of the note, and when he borrows one hundred dollars should see that he gets

that amount and no less. Bankers are fond of omitting the words “with interest at 8

per cent. per annum” (or 7 or 9 per cent., as the case may be) and deducting the

interest from the amount of the loan. Eight or ten per cent. per annum is $2.00 on

$100 for three months, and a common practice with bankers is to take a note for $100

and hand the borrower $97.75, altho he is charged interest on $100, and men who are

in the habit of standing up for their rights always insist on receiving the full $100

and paying the interest at the maturity of the note when making payment of the

principal. Banks have never been known to pay interest on deposits in advance and

it is hard to understand why they should receive interest on loans before they are

made.

Reference has been made to the practice of having a second signature or

endorsement on promissory notes. This is not always required, depending on the

standing of the borrower with the bank. When a man endorses another’s note, he

makes himself responsible in the event of the other failing to pay when due. If

payment of a note is not made by three o’clock in the due date, the bank at once takes

steps to hold the endorser or endorsers and formally notifies each of those who have

signed the note that it is unpaid and that the bank looks to them for payment. This

is known as “protesting” the note and is done in a certain prescribed form thru a

notary public. Sometimes endorsers formally waive protest, but if this is not done and

formal protest is not made by the bank the endorser is not liable after the due date of

the note.

10. Who Will Finance the Farmers? (1921)1296

Addressing the last Retail Merchants’ Convention, at Moose Jaw, Arthur W.

Maybee, manager of the Bank of Commerce at that point, handed out some pertinent

advice to merchants in respect to the granting of credit. […]

“The banks do not lend money to country merchants to lend to the farmer. I

want to make myself clear on that point. It is not the intention of the banks to lend

money to the country merchants to pass on to the farmer. But doesn’t he do it when

he buys from the wholesaler at thirty to sixty days and hands his merchandise over

to the farmer on credits extending over eight months? What do you call that, except

lending money to the farmer?

If you lend your goods to the farmer it is exactly the same thing, and the banks

are not willing to extend large credits to merchants who transact business in that

manner.

1296 From Maybee, A. W. & Exchange. (1921, May 26). Who Will Finance the Farmers in 1921? The Wetawiskin Times, p. 3. Written partly by Arthur W. Maybee (1886 – 1940).

781

We have branches to lend money to farmers to carry on their business and to

pay their living costs. If the bank is willing to finance the farmer, he is perfectly

willing to provide him with sufficient money to meet the necessities of life until the

next crop is harvested. Now, if that is the case, is there a reason why the country

merchant should burden himself with the hundreds of thousands of dollars, as he

does every year, by extending credits to farmers who could just as well borrow enough

money to pay cash on a thirty day basis?

There is no reason why the banks could not advance the money to farmers for

the purpose of paying your account, but if you extend credit to a farmer and do not

require him to pay for months, it means that the money represented by the goods is

locked up there, and you cannot make a second profit out of it, whereas if you had

your business on a thirty days’ basis, you would have this capital to re–invest.

I cannot speak at all for the other banks, but I know what the policy of our

institution is, and I can see no reason why a country merchant doing business with

the bank should put on his books a single charge account against any farmer, whose

credit, fi it is good enough for him, should not at the same time be good enough for

the bank.”

The foregoing makes it perfectly plain that the banker takes the stand, “I am

here to loan money, which is my business. If you merchants assume this function by

granting credit, then we cannot finance you.” It sounds reasonable, and it is

reasonable, but what of the hundreds of farmers to whom the banks will not advance

money? They are utterly dependent upon the crop that lies in the future. Unless they

can either obtain credits or borrow money, they cannot carry on.

For every farmer financially equipped to borrow from a bank, there are ten

others who could not obtain accommodation, yet these small farmers are doing their

part in the development of our country. They are farming on a “hand to mouth”

principle, true, but that possibly is not their fault, and decidedly not their wish. Give

these men a good crop, and most of them would be only too willing to settle all

obligations, but in order to get the crop they must have help.

Such men, in spite of what Mr. Maybee says in respect to lending money to

farmers, do not go to the bank for accommodation, for they have not the security to

offer which the banks would expect, consequently they look to the retailer for credit.

The coming season will again throw the burden on the merchant, a greater

burden than before, and this at a time when conditions make it doubly heavy. Last

year, hundreds of these farmers did not get a crop. Many of them owe accounts from

one to three years past due, money owing to merchants, not banks. Would there be

any use of such farmers making application to any bank for a loan to carry them

through until fall?

The merchant is less able to grant credit this year than ever before. He has

been hit hard, himself. Merchandise he bought at peak prices has depreciated in

value, he is overstocked with unseasonable goods which must be sold at a loss. He is

heavily indebted to the wholesalers and is unable to effect collection of his own

782

outstanding accounts, yet as surely as day follows night, the average western

merchant is going to be overwhelmed with applications for credit from now on.

Every retailer would doubly welcome some system such as that outlined by Mr.

Maybee, whereby the farmer would pay cash for all he required to use. Merchants

understand only too well the risk and worry entailed by a credit business, especially

in a district where settlement depends entirely upon the uncertainty of a grain crop,

but he has to take the chance with the majority of his customers because a large

proportion of them would not be good for sufficient accommodation from the bank to

carry them through the summer.

“If,” as Mr. Maybee says, “the farmer’s credit is not good enough for the bank,

it is certainly not good enough for the merchant.” Very true, but how many of your

customers are good for, say, $500 at the local bank? A brief survey will show perhaps

50 per cent this year. What of the other 50 per cent?

The bank is in business to loan money – to those whose financial standing

warrants it – it does not want the business of the man without assets who is striving

tooth and nail to put himself in a position where he can got to the bank and be

reasonably sure of a favorable hearing. These, it will be remembered, are in the great

majority here in the west; they are the men who made the west. Some of them grew

big in the making, but many did not, and they have to be considered. […] The farmers

would like to pay cash; the merchant would prefer to have them do so, but will the

banks make good?

11. Coupons for Money (1932)1297

“If the banks won’t lend any money, make your own money,” farmer co–

operators at Le Roy, Sask., say.

Last summer they had a cheese factory which had run several years ago but

closed down when the price of wheat was high and farmers stopped milking cows.

They also knew how to make good cheese.

They wanted to reopen and buy milk to make cheese, but cheese is a commodity

that is not immediately ready for sale. It must mature for several weeks.

They tried to borrow money from the banks on the security of their cheese, but

banks are not interested in agricultural produce at present.

So they printed coupons paying 50 cents per 100 pounds of milk with the

promise or redemption when the cheese was sold. As the cheese was sold, these

coupons were redeemed and these farmer–financiers were able to pay themselves an

interim dividend of 30 cents, and a final payment of 17.9 cents per hundred that the

farmers got for their milk. All the coupons were redeemed within two weeks of the

time the last cheese was sold.

1297 From Coupons for Money. (1932, March 9). Oyen News, p. 6.

783

12. Creditors, Debtors and the Ability to Pay (1894)1298

The deplorable condition of affairs in Manitoba, whereby debtors are being

absolutely robbed of their property without their creditors being benefited or their

debts being paid, has called forth objection from a most unexpected quarter, namely

the jobbers’ union, comprising most of the wholesale dealers of Winnipeg. On Friday,

January 12th, a deputation from the union including Jas. H. Ashdown, president, and

most of the leading wholesale men of Winnipeg, interviewed the provincial

government to recommend certain changes in the laws respecting debtors and

creditors, which would prevent as far as possible a recurrence of the hardships

complained of. The Free Press report says:

“The ministers were first addressed by Mr. Ashdown, who stated that the

general object of the deputation was to urge the government to amend the debtor and

creditor laws, with the view of putting an end to the costly and disastrous system of

seizure and sale and enormous loss entailed by the law as it stands at present. He

especially urges that exemptions now in force be so amended as to make the

exemption absolute, and contended that the present exemptions act entirely failed of

the object the legislators had in view in enacting it. The law had become simply an

instrument for burdening the farmer with ruinous law costs. In closing Mr. Ashdown

urged that the power to cover the exempted chattels by mortgage be abolished.”

The rest of the deputation agreed with the propositions of Mr. Ashdown, and

Mr. Howell, Q. C. argued the legal bearing of the proposed changes and showed that

good precedent existed for making them.

It seems strange that the men who are certainly the heaviest creditors of the

farmers of Manitoba should be the men to demand that the power of forcing the

collection of debts beyond a certain point should be abolished. And yet there are sound

business reasons for their doing so, based on the same principle of exemptions that is

contained in the Magna Carta. The principle of exemptions is that it is not to the

general advantage that a person who is in the way of providing his own living should

be deprived of the power to do so by being deprived of the tools or requirements of his

calling or profession; for if he is he will be reduced to a condition in which he becomes

a burden on the public. It is held that it is right that the private creditor should suffer

loss which he has risked for profit rather than that through his trying to retrieve

what he has risked, the community should have destitute people, for whose

destitution it was not responsible, thrust upon it. It is held to be a state necessity that

every individual in the community should be in a position to provide his livelihood.

This is the principle of the law which permits an artizan to retain the tools of his

trade, or the farmer to retain such portion of his stock and implements as shall enable

him to provide his livelihood. The merchantile community transacts its business on

the basis of this law, content to lose a portion of its dues in many cases, and in some

1298 From DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. (1894, January 18). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 2.

784

cases the whole, in order that production may be continued, and business still be

done, even with the debtor, as it could not be were the exemptions not allowed.

But there are other classes of the business community who are not content to

do business under the exemption law, notably the private bankers and implement

dealers. These people avoid the exemption law by taking chattel mortgages and lien

notes in security for their accounts. The situation then takes on this shape. The

farmer who has only a little property over his exemptions owes the merchant say

$500 for the necessaries of life supplied from time to time, for which the merchant

has a note in security. The merchant knows that this note is not good against the

farmer’s exemptions; but he is satisfied that the farmer should retain his exemptions

in the hope that as times improve he will be able to pay the note, and at any rate he

will be able to do business to a greater or lesser extent with the merchant as time

goes on. The same farmer owes say $100 to an implement firm, being the balance due

on say a binder which he could have done without, but which he was persuaded to

take by the agent under promise of lenient treatment as to payments, and for which

he has given a lien note which not only covers the article purchased but also other

articles properly covered by the exemption law. Or he may have borrowed say $100

from a private banker, perhaps to make a payment on his land, and the banker has

taken a chattel mortgage on the very articles which are exempt from execution on

judgments in favor of the merchant’s note. If the implement man or banker hands a

bundle of these lien notes or chattel mortgages to his solicitor for collection, and says

“I want my money” the latter has only one course to take, namely to seize and sell.

The result to the merchant is that not only is the power to pay the more necessary

debt destroyed, but he is deprived of his customer, not temporarily but permanently,

and he has the future satisfaction of knowing that if by any chance the debtor should

again get a start in life, if any balance remained unpaid it would be the lien note and

chattel mortgage creditors who would have the first pull on it.

That this state of affairs should not be satisfactory to the merchants is not

strange, nor is it strange that they should demand that an exemption which operates

against them should operate against others as well. The justice of their demand is

made all the more plain when it is considered how much more necessary it is that the

farmer should have credit for articles of food and wearing apparel than for anything

else, however desirable it may be. It may be said that the merchant has the same

opportunity to secure himself by chattel mortgage as any other dealer. But although

this sounds plausible, without going into an argument on the subject, as a matter of

fact he has not. And if he could do so there is no sound reason why he should be put

to that inconvenience. It would be much more fair to make exemptions absolute; then

if the banker or the implement man could not get the security they desired they need

not sell implements or advance money, and in most such cases the community as well

as the individual would be the gainer. The purchase of implements and borrowing of

money beyond the means of the individual is a manifestation of enterprise which

under favorable circumstances may assist in the more rapid development of the

country, but under unfavorable circumstances, such as exist in Manitoba to–day,

certainly retard that development, and cause extreme hardship as well. Enterprise is

785

a good thing but enterprise on a basis of lien notes and chattel mortgages which strip

the debtor of his means of livelihood is not enterprise, it is rank foolishness on the

one hand if it is not straight robbery on the other, and should not have the sanction

of law.

13. What Farmers Should Know About the Bank Act (1910)1299

In tardy compliance with my promise given to the executive of the

Saskatchewan Grain Grower’s Association, I present the following for the

consideration of the members of the Association generally, and for those composing

the delegation to Ottawa in particular.

I note that a Bill has already been introduced this session by M. J. Demers to

amend the Bank Act. It is “designed to compel directors of banks to make more

detailed reports as to their affairs, and to provide for inspection by the government.”

It is generally supposed that the Bank Act cannot be amended oftener than

once in ten years, and if this were so, the first amendment to be introduced this

coming year which sees the expiry of all our bank charters, should be an amendment

striking out such an arbitrary limitation of legislative powers. I find however, that

the Bank Act was amended in July 1899, and again in July, 1900. By the amendment

of 1900 the charters or Acts of Incorporation of all banks enumerated in the schedule

are repealed in all but a few particulars and “the Bank Act and any amendment

thereof and this Act form and are the charters of each of the said banks until the first

said day of July, 1911: Provided always, that the said charters or Acts of incorporation

and Acts in amendment thereof are hereby continued in force only in so far as they

or any of them, are not forfeited or rendered void under the terms thereof, or of the

Bank Act, or of this Act, or of any other Act passed or to be passed, by reason of the

non–performance of the conditions or by insolvency, or otherwise.”

If by the above it was possible to prevent the passage of any Act or amendment

before July, 1911, enlarging or limiting the powers of banks, care should be taken

that the amendment which must be passed in 1911 to define the charter rights,

powers, and obligations of the banks for another ten of years, contains no such

limitation of the right of parliament to extend, alter, or curtail the powers of banks

at any time it appears expedient to do so.

It seems highly desirable that banks should be kept keenly alive to the fact

that the continuation of their privileges is dependent upon the satisfactory nature of

the services rendered by them to the general public. Under such circumstances there

is not likely to be any recurrence of an arbitrary curtailment of general credit such as

was experienced three years ago.

INCORPORATION AND ORGANIZATION

The capital stock of a bank shall not be less than $500,000 divided into shares

of $100 each. A sum not less than $500,000 must be bona fide subscribed, and a sum

not less than $250,000 must be paid into the hands of the Minister of Finance before

1299 From Partridge, E. A. (1910, December 14). The Bank Act The Grain Grower’s Guide, p. 7. Written by Edward Alexander Partridge (1861 – 1931), editor of the Grain Grower’s Guide.

786

the provisional directors can take steps to provide for the election of fully qualified

directors. No bank can issue notes or do business until a certificate is obtained from

the Treasury Board and directors elected; and the provisional directors must give the

shareholders four weeks’ notice of the meeting at which directors can be elected.

If the promoters of the bank are unable to comply with all conditions and

secure the certificate within one year from the date of incorporation they lose their

charter and as a consequence all the time and money expended for organization

purposes. All the provisions recited are such as to make the organization of banks

extremely difficult except for persons of large means, and tend to keep their control

in the hands of capitalists who can thus employ their own augmented millions and

the many millions represented by the aggregated deposits of persons of small means

to dominate the commercial and industrial activities of the Dominion, exploit its

natural resources, and levy and inordinate toll upon those whose labor supplies the

things and conditions upon which human well–being depends.

INTERNAL REGULATIONS

The shareholders, among other things, by by–law may determine the number

of directors, being not less than five nor more than ten; the qualification of directors,

except as provided for by law; the remuneration of president, vice–president and

other directors; and the amounts of discounts or loans which may be made to

directors, either jointly or severally, or to any one firm or person, or to any

shareholder or to corporations. Directors should be elected annually. A director shall

hold capital stock of the bank on which not less than from $3,000 to $5,000 have been

paid up (according to the capitalization of the bank). New issues of stock must first

be offered to the then shareholders pro ratio to their holdings before being offered to

the public.

No person other than a director shall be allowed to inspect the accounts of any

person dealing with the bank.

All these conditions relating to internal regulations are favorable to capitalistic

control and manipulation in the interest of the few at the expense of the many.

CERTAIN LIMITATIONS AND PRIVILEGES

Not more than eight per cent. per annum can be paid in dividends till the rest

or reserve, which is undivided profits, equals at least thirty per cent. of the paid up

capital.

Not less than fifty per cent. of the cash reserve must be in Dominion notes. The

balance must be in notes of the bank apparently.

Banks may put into circulation their bills or notes up to an amount equal to

their unimpaired paid up capital, that is to say, money invested in a bank is

practically doubled by law. This doubling of an investor’s capital, however, has

attached to it the risk, a small one by the way, of double liability. The Act reads: “In

the event of the property and assets of the bank being insufficient to pay its debts

and liabilities, each shareholder of the bank shall be liable for the deficiency to an

amount equal to the par value of the shares held by him, in addition to any amount

not paid up by such shares.”

787

The holders of the bank notes find their further security in a deposit, by each

of the twenty–nine banks in Canada, of five per cent. of its average note circulation

with the Minister of Finance to form a “Redemption Fund” for the redemption of notes

of an insolvent bank.

This deposit bears interest at the rate of three per cent. per annum.

“The bank shall have a privileged lien for any debt or liability for any debt to

the bank, on the shares of its own capital stock and on any unpaid dividends of the

debtor or person liable and may decline to allow any transfer of the shares of such

debtor or person until such debt is paid; and the bank shall, within twelve months

after such debt has been accrued and become payable, sell such shares, etc.”

The bank shall not be liable to incur any penalty or forfeiture for usury.

BUSINESS AND POWERS OF THE BANK

“The bank may open branches, agencies and offices, and may engage in and

carry on business as a dealer in gold or silver coin and bullion, and it may deal in,

discount and lend money and make advances upon the security of, and may take as

collateral security for any loan made by it, bills of exchange, promissory notes and

other negotiable securities, or the stock, bonds, debentures, and obligations of

municipal and other corporations, whether secured by mortgage or otherwise, or

Dominion, provincial, British, foreign and other public securities, and it may engage

in and carry on such business generally as appertains to the business of banking; but

except as authorized by this Act, it shall not either directly or indirectly, deal in the

buying, or selling, or bartering of goods, wares and merchandise, or engage or be

engaged in any trade or business whatsoever; and it shall not, either directly or

indirectly, purchase, or deal in, or lend money, or make advances upon the security

or pledge of any share of its own capital stock, or the capital stock of any bank; and it

shall not, either directly or indirectly, lend money or make advances upon the

security, mortgage or hypothecation of any land, tenements, or immovable property

of any ships or other vessels, or upon the security of any goods, wares and

merchandise.”

“The bank may lend money to any person engaged in business as a wholesale

manufacturer of any goods, wares and merchandise, upon the security of the goods,

wares and merchandise manufactured by him or procured for such manufacture.”

“The word manufacturer includes, maltsters, distillers, brewers, refiners and

producers of petroleum, tanners, curers, packers, canners of meat, pork, fish, fruit or

vegetables and any person who produces by hand, art, process or mechanical means

any goods, wares or merchandise.” An amendment of 1900 makes the word

“manufacturer” to include “a manufacturer of logs, timber or lumber.”

In order to make things still more satisfactory for the “timber wolves” who have

grabbed our national heritage of immense areas of timber lands, and who are

unmercifully exploiting those who are striving to establish homes for themselves

upon the bleak, treeless plains of the Prairie Provinces, a further amendment of the

most brazen and indefensible nature was passed in the same year.

FAVORS SPECIAL PRIVILEGE

788

While the bank is prohibited from lending a poor devil of a farmer money on

the security of his half grown steers or fattening pigs or growing grain, by this

amendment it was empowered to “lend money upon the security of standing timber

and the rights or licenses held by persons to cut or remove such timber,” apparently

with the object, and certainly with the effect, of enabling those who had been allowed

to “cinch” the peoples’ common heritage to hold till the necessities of the people drove

them to pay the extortionate prices demanded for lumber.

“The bank may also lend money to any wholesale purchaser or shipper of or

dealer in products of agriculture, the forest, quarry and mine, or the sea, lakes and

rivers, or to any wholesale purchaser or shipper or dealer in live stock or dead stock

and the products thereof, upon the security of such products, or of such live stock or

dead stock and the products thereof. The bank may allow the goods, wares and

merchandise covered by such security to be removed and other goods, wares and

merchandise mentioned in this sub–section to be substituted therefor, and those so

substituted shall be covered thereby: provided always, that such goods, wares and

merchandise so substituted are of substantially the same character and of

substantially the same value as, or of less value than, those for which they have been

substituted.”

“The bank may take, hold and dispose of mortgages and hypothecations upon

real or personal or moveable property by way of additional security of debts

contracted to the bank in the course of its business and the rights, powers and

privileges which the bank is by this Act declared to have or to have had in respect of

real or immovable property mortgaged to it, shall be held and possessed by it in

respect of any personal or movable property which is mortgaged or hypothecated to

it.”

“The bank may acquire and hold any warehouse receipt or bill of lading as

collateral security for the payment of any debt incurred in its favor, or as security for

any liability incurred by it for any person in the course of its banking business;” – As

might be expected, the expression “warehouse receipt,” “includes receipt given by any

person in charge of logs or timber in transit from timber limits, or other lands, to

their place of destination.”

Through all this we see the hand of “Big Business” guiding the fingers of those

who write the laws.

THE CANADIAN BANKER’S ASSOCIATION

The Canadian Bankers’ Association embraces in its membership all the

banks in Canada and is in effect a combine of the financial interests with power to

dictate to its members and enforce its will by penalties.

Its by–laws must be approved by the Treasury Board which is composed of

several ministers of the Crown under the chairmanship of the minister of finance.

Considering the tremendous hold that “Big Business” has acquired over

parliamentary existence, and in the face of the fact that a finance minister may be

made the public recipient of a gift subscribed to by both big business interests and

banks without provoking a storm of protest from the so–called representatives of the

789

people, the supervision of the Treasury Board is scarcely a guarantee that the acts of

the association will not be tyrannical and monopolistic in their character.

The leading banks may make it most difficult for any of the weaker banks to

avoid being placed at some time in a position where they may temporarily be unable

to redeem their notes or other obligations in specie or Dominion notes, although

entirely solvent.

Then, under the provisions of the 1900 amendment, the Bankers’ Association

has power to forthwith appoint some competent person (hereinafter referred to as the

curator) to supervise the affairs of such bank (in a bank which has suspended for ever

so short a time, payment in specie or Dominion notes of any of its liabilities).

The supervision of one’s concerns by an enemy or business rival is not a

pleasant condition of affairs to contemplate, and for a bank which has fallen under

the displeasure of the Association, the appointment of a curator to pry into its internal

affairs and direct its activities, may be regarded as the beginning of the end.

There is undoubtedly much food for thought in the banking situation and much

desirability of free discussion, to the end that there may be evolved a condition of

greater equality of opportunity in financial matters.

I do not think that the present delegation to Ottawa have as a body done

sufficient fundamental thinking in connection with the matter to do more than

suggest some mildly palliative legislation, therefore I shall refrain from further

comment or any proposal of a constructive nature and content myself with some

rather voluminous quotations from Cotton’s Weekly immediately following:–

“BANKING ABILITY”

“To those who know the inside working of banking privileges the idea that

bankers make money by their superior ability is ridiculous. Unless it be the ability to

get franchises from politicians who are just aching to give them away, unless it be

ability to bleed a nation which is anxious to be bled, there is very little ability in

banking.

“First of all you plunder labor and appropriate unto yourself a goodly share of

what labor should have. This is easiest done by going to your friends the politicians

and have them give you a railroad or a coal mine or the people’s money with which to

build a dock or a steel mill. Having got this unpaid labor from the workers, you

proceed to organize yourselves into a bank. You pay over to a company, which is

yourself and friends under a fictitious name, the tokens of value you have stolen from

labor. Having paid over these tokens of value you are said to have paid up stock and

a complacent government immediately allows you to issue credit notes called bank

bills, the promises to pay of yourselves under the fictitious name of the bank company,

to the extent of your paid up capital.

“If you have paid in one million dollars, you can issue one million dollars of

promissory notes and have them accepted by the public at their face value. You will

have thus doubled your available capital. You will not let your bank bills go out

without the parties who get them giving security. You will not let them go out to be

used unless the people who get them give you a promissory note in return by which

they promise to return your bank bills in three months together with interest at seven

790

per cent. With the discount and the various little tricks the banks know how to work

the interest amounts to eight or nine per cent. The bank bill of the bank is nothing

but a promissory note. The bank gives its promissory note without interest, and the receiver of the bank’s promissory note gives his promissory note in return with interest at eight or nine per cent. The million dollars of bank notes therefore means that the bank issues a million dollars promissory notes without interest and gets in

return a million dollars promissory notes at big interest. In this one little flim flam

game the banks clean up six or seven million dollars a year. In March 1910 the paid

up bank capital stood at ninety–five million dollars and the bank notes outstanding,

the I. O. U.’s of the banks, amounted to over seventy–eight million dollars.

“Another trick is to borrow money from the people without interest and to loan

it back to the people at interest. A bank is an institution which lives on the interest

of its debts. The banks have on demand deposit from the people of Canada

$247,000,000. This the banks lend back to the people at seven per cent. at least. Here

is an income of seventeen million dollars.

“Then the banks borrow money at low interest and lend it at high. This is

business by which you deposit your money with the bank and get three per cent., and

if you want to borrow it back again you pay eight per cent. The banks clear up four

per cent. on the deal. There are $515,000,000 deposited in this manner. Four per cent.

on this would bring in twenty million dollars. So the incomes of the banks must come

up to forty or fifty million dollars.

“That is a nice income to draw from just handling the funds of the people.

Nobody but a bank can do banking business. If you attempt it you will be arrested

and jailed. The Bank Act gives the banks the right to charge seven per cent. interest,

and the banks increase that by pickings.

“Were people allowed to do banking business then the banks would not get

their big interests. It is not private ability which allows the banks to get fifty million

dollars a year from handling the abstract tokens of a nation’s finance. It is monopoly and privilege granted by the Dominion government which allows the banks to make fortunes in a year and to bear with heavy weight upon the parasites on the backs of

the workers. The banker need have little ability. All he has to have is the government

monopoly, and the backing of the Bankers’ Association, to make money and lots of it.

“A COMBINE”

“The banks of Canada are a combine. There are twenty–nine of them and there

is a Bankers’ Association through which the banks can make rules and regulations

governing them all if they want. One of the rules the banks have made is that a person

cannot borrow from more than one bank. He can deposit his money with as many as

he likes. But he can borrow only from one bank.

“The twenty–nine banks act as a unit. The Sovereign Bank tried to fight the

combination and was squeezed out of existence.

“These twenty–nine banks act together when their interests dictate. But when

it comes to protecting the interests of the public, the public may go hang.

“Since 1865 depositors have lost $40,000,000 through bank failures. Flat

money has not always allowed the banks to go the pace and depositors have suffered.

791

“Not only are the banks in a legalized combine, but that combine is secret.

“No government agent is allowed to examine the books of the banks. No public

agent is allowed to say how the money shall be lent out to the people.

“The people are forced to deposit their money with the banks. The people

deposit $800,000,00 with the banks.

“The banks have the complete say as to how those deposits shall be used, how

they shall be turned back into productive enterprises.

“EXTINCTION OF BANK CHARTERS”

“A peculiar thing about the bank charters is that they all expire on July 1st,

1911. This is declared in section 4 of the Bank Act. So if new charters are not granted,

the banks would all have to go out of business. One would naturally suppose that the

representatives of the people would hasten to avail themselves of this opportunity to

give back to the people the power over the Canadian medium of exchange.

“But nothing like that will take place. The banks have too soft a snap. The

banks are drawing such nice revenues for the labor thieves that the representatives

of the people will hasten to give back to the banks their graft.

“There are numerous senators and members of parliament on the directorates

of the banks. The Bank of Commerce with ten millions of capital and deposits of

$100,000,000 of the people’s money, has three senators on its directorate, Cox, Jones

and Edwards. Senator Geo. A. Cox is or was until recently, president of the Canada

Life Assurance Co., Western Assurance Co., British American Assurance Co.,

Western Loan and Savings Co., and the Toronto Savings and Loan Co., as well as

being a director of The National Trust Co., Can. Gen. Electric Co., the Dominion Iron

and Steel Col., the Toronto Railway Co., and the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway.

Senator L. Melvin Jones is or was until recently, president and general manager of

the Massey–Harris Co., pres. Bain Waggon Co., director Verity Plow Co., Nova Scotia

Steel and Coal Co.

“The Bank of Hamilton has Senator Wm. Gibson on its directorate. Gibson is,

or was until recently, president of the Hamilton Gas Light CO., the Keewatin Power

Co, director of the Canada Screw Co., the Canadian Life Assurance Col., and of the

Hamilton Provident and Loan Society.

“The Imperial Bank of Canada has Senator Robert Jaffray as vice–president.

This senator is director of numerous railways, insurance companies, land

corporations and other enterprises. He is president of the Globe Publishing Co., which

publishes the Toronto Globe.

“It would make too long a story to go into all the affiliations of senators and

members and provincial politicians with the banks, and to describe the other

activities of these politicians in the industrial affairs of Canada. The Banque

d’Hochelaga has as vice–president Robert Bickerdike, M.P. The Montreal Bank had

as its president until his death, Sir Geo. E. Drummond. It also had as director Senator

Robert Mackay. The Bank of Nova Scotia has R. L. Borden as a director. The Northern

Bank has Premier Roblin of Manitoba as director.

792

“The $120,000 given to W. S. Fielding, Minister of Finance by his “friends”

shows how Canada is being run. The largest contributors to this fund were the

Dominion Coal and Steel Company and the Bank of Montreal.”

14. How Banks Provide Currency for Crop Movement (1906)1300

There are two features of the Canadian banking system which, more than any

other, play an important part in enabling the Canadian crops to be marketed with an

entire absence of that financial stress which is sometimes a characteristic element in

the fall of the year in the United States. These are:

(a) The bank note currency.

(b) The system of bank branches.

Bank note currency in Canada forms by far the largest part of the cash handled

in the course of ordinary business; indeed, for denominations of $5 and upwards it is

practically the sole currency of the country. As the issue of bank notes for smaller

denominations than $5 is forbidden by law, Government legal tender notes, together

with silver and bronze coins for fractional parts of the dollar, form the money for

small change. Gold is rarely seen, being employed only for the reserves of the banks.

It is true that there are government legal tender notes of larger denominations than

the ones, twos, and fours in common use, but few Canadians have ever seen them.

They belong almost entirely to a special issue for use only between banks and are

practically gold certificates employed in clearing house settlements.

At the risk of repeating what is familiar to many, some description will now be

given of some of the principal provisions of the law under which bank notes are issued.

This law, known as the Bank Act, is enacted in Parliament for a period of ten years.

At the end of this period it is either re–enacted or revised, and in this way an

opportunity is given for the introduction of any improvements which the experience

of the previous decade may have suggested.

Every bank is permitted to issue circulating notes for denominations of $5 and

multiples of that sum to the extent of its paid–up capital.

These notes form a lien on the assets of the issuing bank in the event of failure,

and are in addition secured by the combined guarantee of all the banks chartered

under the Act, operating through a bank circulation redemption fund, which is held

by the Government of Canada. This fund consists of a contribution from each bank of

a sum equal to five per cent of the average amount of its notes in circulation during

the previous year, this average being ascertained and adjusted annually in the

manner provided by the Act. The whole of the fund may be called upon to redeem the

notes of any failed bank which is unable within a period of two months after

suspension to make other arrangements for the redemption of its notes.

The part played by bank branches in moving the crops and facilitating the

general commerce of the country is a very important one. In the little towns and grain

centres which are springing up as if by magic in the Canadian West, we find branches

1300 From Trigge, A. St. L. (1906, September 18). HOW CANADA PROVIDES CURRENCY FOR CROP

MOVEMENT. The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 9. Written by Arthur St. Lawrence Trigge (1869 – 1957).

793

of the powerful financial institutions of the country ready and willing, when the strain

comes, to bend every energy to the task of facilitating the movement of the crops.

In addition to this, the branch system and the bank note currency are

interdependent for successful working to an extent which is only to be accounted for

by the fact that they have grown up together along with the country in which they

are found. The branches facilitate the successful operation of the bank note currency

by providing facilities for maintaining supplies of notes at the active rural centres

where the notes are actually required to pay for the crops. And not only is the issue

of the notes thus facilitated, but their redemption likewise. The more complete the

banking facilities in any given district of the country, the less is the strain on the

bank note currency to perform the work allotted to it.

It will probably be well at this point to give some description of the manner in

which the bank notes are withdrawn from circulation as soon as their work is done.

That the Canadian banking system provides against the possibility of undue

expansion in the circulation is often overlooked by writers in the United States who

have obtained their knowledge of Canada’s banking system in other ways than by a

practical acquaintance with its everyday working. They are not perhaps to be blamed

for their ignorance, for the provision to this end is embodied in no law, nor is it found

in any bank charter. It is purely the result of competition between the banks for

whatever profit is derivable from the issue of notes.

It is the custom of the Canadian bank, in order to obtain for itself as large a

share as possible of this profit, to pay out at all its branches only its own notes, and

to send in for redemption the notes of other banks which it may receive in the ordinary

course of business. There is thus a constant struggle in progress all over the country

between the various banks, each one striving to issue as many as possible of its own

notes, and all its competitors in all parts of the country returning these notes for

redemption as soon as they come into their hands. This process has of late years been

suspended for a short time during the height of the crop–moving season, when most

of the smaller banks reach the margin of safety on this side of the legal limit, beyond

which they dare not go for fear of incurring the heavy penalties for overissue

prescribed by the Bank Act. But no sooner does the strain relax than this automatic

safeguard resumes its normal function of limiting the volume of the circulating

medium to the actual needs of business at the moment.

We now turn to the manner in which this machinery is applied to the moving

of the crops.

The greatest grain–producing district of Canada is the far inland section which

forms the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. The larger part of the

Canadian crop finds a market abroad, and has to be transported to the Atlantic

seaboard. In the case of grain grown in Ontario or the eastern provinces, this is not a

difficult matter, for the distance is shorter, and the means of communication are

numerous. But between the provinces we have mentioned and the seaboard, the only

links of communication are one or two vast stretches of single track railroad

supplemented by water communication from the head of the Great Lakes. But

navigation usually closes in these northern waters during November, and the period

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between the harvesting of the crop and the close of navigation after allowance is made

for the time consumed in threshing, and marketing the grain, is all too short. Hence

the rush to ship which takes place in the fall of every year, and hence, too, the

immense storage elevators which have sprung up at the lake ports of Port Arthur and

Fort William, at the head of navigation. Once these outlets are closed, there is nothing

but the long and expensive railroad haul to fall back upon.

Long before the movement of the crops is due, the banks make arrangements

to accumulate large supplies of notes at convenient points, Winnipeg being naturally

the chief centre for that purpose. At Winnipeg the large milling and elevator

companies which handle most of the grain crops have their headquarters, and it is

the Winnipeg branches of the banks which are most conveniently situated to

replenish the tills of the country branches, and to provide funds for the country

storekeepers who cash the grain tickets issued by the wheat buyers. Scattered along

the railroad lines in the west at the little wayside stations are the tall buildings of

the grain elevators, and here are to be found the buyers for the Winnipeg grain firms.

To them the farmer brings his wheat, receives a voucher called a grain ticket,

specifying the weight of the grain he has sold and the price to be paid for it. These

tickets are cashed at the local banks, or, if there is no bank by the country

storekeepers, arrangements for supplying the latter with notes for this purposes

having been made by the companies in Winnipeg. Cheques are seldom used in

transactions of this kind with the farming community. At this season of the year, the

business of a country branch bank, even in very small places, will be very active, and

large sums are daily paid out over the counter.

The Canadian banks are specially empowered under the Bank Act to acquire

warehouse receipts, and bills of lading as collateral security, and to lend money to

wholesale shippers, or purchasers of, or dealers in agricultural products upon the

security of such products. So the banks readily make advances to the grain dealers

on the security of the grain in their possession1301. Then, when it is shipped by the

wholesale dealer, the advances are retired by drafts on the purchasers, with bills of

lading attached. If the grain is to be exported, the bill of lading is usually replaced at

the port of shipment by an ocean bill of lading, which is in turn attached to a bill of

exchange on the foreign dealer. This exchange is then purchased by the bank, the

previous drafts having been retired, and forwarded to its correspondents abroad. The

1301 “The banks of Alberta are loaning a great deal of money to the grain growers on grain in the field

and in the privately owned bins of the farmer. This is the information learned from a prominent

Calgary banker. “Perhaps the banks have not until recently loaned great sums of money on grain on

the farm, as permitted by section 88 of the Bank act, but lately there has been a great increase in the

amounts to be loaned,” said the bank manager. “The reason for the much larger amounts so loaned

now as compared to formerly is that until this season few farmers had grain on the farm on which to

borrow money. Also, the farmers this year had little call to borrow money on their grain until the

transportation facilities got so that the grain could not be moved to market and sold. But lately there

is such a congestion of grain at terminals, and so few cars and so little motive power, that the farmers

cannot sell and must borrow money. And the first ones they come to are the banks; and the banks loan

them money when the banks can do so safely; when the farmer has a character and standing that will

warrant it; he need not have grain if the manager has found him to be a man of his word and of

excellent character.”” Alberta Banks Loan Money on Grain. (1916, March 8). The Melfort Moon, p. 10.

795

bank finally receives credit for the proceeds in London or European centres. By this

time, the bank notes originally issued for the purchase of the grain have come in for

redemption, and the issuing bank, to obtain funds to meet its clearing house

settlements, will be forced to sell sterling or New York funds, or else to import gold.

As the balance of trade between Canada and the United States, most of which is

finally discharged in New York, is against Canada, there is a fairly steady demand

for New York funds in the financial centres, and there will usually be some bank

willing to buy. But as the proceeds of the grain shipments are still in Europe, the

selling bank will provide cover for its drawings on New York by selling sterling or

other foreign exchange in that market against the credit balances acquired abroad by

means of the bills of exchange which in the first place its notes were issued. If gold is

imported, the resulting transactions are very similar, as New York is the point from

which it is usually obtained. In this connection, it is interesting to note that some of

the Canadian banks are amongst the largest dealers in foreign exchange in New York,

where the credit of their bills is unexcelled. So extensive are there foreign

transactions that several of the Canadian banks maintain their own offices in New

York, and even in London, for the purpose of looking after their own interests at these

points.

We have now traced the series of transactions involved in the issue of bank

notes for the purchase of grain up to the redemption of these notes in Canada, and

the final liquidation of the whole matter in New York and London. Bearing in mind

what has been said as to the shortness of the season for marketing the grain of the

vast fields of the West, it will be readily understood that tremendous note currency

takes place in the course of a short period.

A study of these fluctuations is most interesting, and the regularity of their

yearly recurrence remarkable. The redemption of the notes issued to pay for the crops

is completed in January of each year, and this month marks the lowest level of the

year. There is a second slight dip during spring, and a third culminating about mid–

summer. For thirty years prior to 1896 the lowest point of the year had been reached

regularly in May or June, but since that date, it has with equal regularity been

transferred to January. In 1905, however, the difference in level between January

and May was very slight, the note circulation dropping to $58,021,000 in January and

$58,136,000 in May. January is a month usually marked by a lull in business. The

holiday trade is over, winter has set in steadily, and some outdoor occupations are

suspended for a time, while the majority of business men, in both wholesale and retail

trade, are taking stock. As winter wears on, business becomes much more active, and

the note circulation rises for a time, to experience a slight fall in early spring when

factories close down for repairs and the lumber camps in the wood are closed, and the

men discharged, and other winter employments come to an end. It resumes its

upward course as summer occupations begin again, navigation on the Great Lakes

re–opens, and general business gets into full swing. Midsummer brings a slight

falling off, as might be expected, but soon the heavier movement of farm produce

begins and the note circulation at once responds.

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The rise is somewhat gradual at first, but as cattle buyers, cheese factories and

finally grain buyers look to the banks for notes with which to pay the farmers, it

increases in velocity, and the volume of the circulation mounts by leaps and bounds

to reach its height at the end of October or the beginning of November, when every

nerve is being strained to hurry as much as possible of the western crops to market,

and to the seaboard before navigation closes on the inland waterways. The period of

rapid expansion covers the three months of August, September, and October, and

probably part of November, as the exact figures are only available at the end of each

month, and during this period the increase in volume has ranged of late years from

20 per cent to 35 per cent, according to the size of the crop to be marketed. A period

of contraction even a little more rapid than the expansion now follows, and lasts until

the end of January,, when the lowest level of the year is reached. During this period

of between two and three months, winter has set in, sealing some of the outlets for

the varied activities of the human race, and at the same time opening up others, and

bringing with it that invigorating influence which renders the cooler months of the

year the most active in general business.

Canada’s Banking System

15. Branches and the Cost of Banking (1917)1302

There is one small local bank in Saskatchewan, the Weyburn Security Bank.

This bank was started by six wealthy Americans who had large business interests in

the Weyburn district, while the general manager has had a wide banking experience

in Wisconsin and Dakota. This bank grades its interest rates according to the class of

its customers. Some loans are made at 7 per cent, but the majority draw 8 per cent.

The customer who gets his money at 8 per cent must be a depositor, and must show

promise of becoming a first–class customer later on. The borrower who does not

deposit is charged 10 per cent, while the man who cannot pay his account when due,

that is, if he must be carried over for another year, is charged 12 per cent for renewals.

The Canadian Bank of Commerce has carried many a farmer over from year to year

in this district at a 9 per cent rate.

It is often asked why the interest rate is higher in the West than in the East.

There are two reasons. In the first place, it costs at least two per cent more to do

business in the West, and in the second place, especially in the newer districts, the

risk of loss, and I may add the actual loss of the banks, is much greater. For instance,

I know of one country branch in the West that has lost more money since it was

established than the average farmer owning a section of land is worth. […]

The total cost of operating a small bank in Kansas is less than the salary paid

to many managers of small branches in Western Canada, and these managers do not

1302 From West, F.W. (1917, June 1). THE CANADIAN BANKING SYSTEM. Claresholm Review– Advertiser, p. 8. Written by Frank Wilson West (1877 – 1954), a banker for the Canadian Bank of Commerce.

797

consider themselves overpaid. I wonder what the clerks get down there. That is a

point for which Canadian banks are often criticized – the small salaries paid to their

clerks. […]

A small local bank such as they have in Kansas, cannot be established in

Canada, owing to the fact that a bank must have at least a subscribed capital of

$500,000, of which $250,000 must be actually paid up before it can begin business.

[…] In view of the history of the Sovereign Bank, the Famers’ Bank and The Bank of

Vancouver, […] examples of bank failures in Canada, I think the limits are too small.

In the case of the Farmers’ Bank, it was afterwards revealed that they did not have

the quarter million actually paid up, but that a large part of this amount, which they

claimed to have, was borrowed. Should the Bank Act ever be changed so that small

banks may be started in Canada, I predict that a great many of the stockholders in

these institutions will lose their money, and also some of the depositors. The small

bank is apt to serve the interests of a certain clique of the stockholders.

There is no favoritism in the Canadian banks. Every application for credit is

dealt with on its merits, and the question of whether to lend or act is decided by the

manager or by the head office or by the directors without any personal bias. […] It is

often said that the manager of a Canadian bank cannot serve the needs of his

customers as well as a man who has always lived in the district, and who has all his

interest there. Why not? It would be just as reasonable to say that a school teacher

cannot teach the children of any district unless he has grown up there, or that a

merchant cannot sell goods in a town unless he was born there. A bank manager is

not appointed until after years of training at various branches and in various kinds

of work. He is sent to a branch to make a success of the business and he knows that

he cannot build up a business unless he takes a vital interest in the affairs of that

district, and unless he makes an intimate study of the needs and problems of the

people. […]

Now that Canada has attained the position of being the world’s fourth largest

producer of wheat, the marketing of the Canadian crop has become an important

factor in the world’s markets, and it is clear that it would be to the advantage of the

Western farmers if they could market their grain gradually instead of throwing it all

on the market at once and thus depressing prices. The banks recognize this, and it is

now their policy to finance the farmers as far as possible so as to enable them to

market their grain by degrees. […]

I should like to deal fully with that hardy perennial of which we hear at every

election, the crime of the Canadian banks lending money on Wall Street. I wish

[critics] would explain how a safe system of banking can be carried on without

keeping a certain percentage of the liabilities in the shape of liquid assets, that is,

assets that can be readily converted into cash. Of course, the actual gold could be

carried, but that would be wasteful, and since there is no broad market in Canada

where stocks can be readily realized on, Canadian banks carry a portion of their

reserves in the shape of call loans in New York. This is not done because higher rates

are obtainable there, as many people suggest, but simply because it is more profitable

and more economic than hoarding gold. The average rate realized on call loans in

798

New York is less than 2¼ per cent, while the rate on commercial loans in Canada

ranges from 5½ to 8 per cent. Moreover, the Canadian banks have large deposits

outside Canada, […] and at the time of the panic in the United States in November,

1907, the loans outside Canada, including call loans in New York, were sixty–four

millions, while the deposits of the Canadian banks outside Canada were sixty–seven

millions, that is, at a time when the rates on call money were high, the banks were

employing in this country three millions of funds belonging to foreign countries, more

than the total loaned in those countries. As Sir Edmund Walker says: “The object of

the loans in the United States is not to enlarge the profits of the Canadian banks, but

to enable them to do justice to their customers in time of stress. Such loans are an

evidence of caution and wisdom in the interests of Canada, and the policy should be

the subject of praise by critics of Canadian banks, and not of dispraise.”

16. “Grievances of Two or Three Classes” (1907)1303

Recent letters to the financial editor have voiced the grievances of two or three

classes of people who are interested in high money rates. One of these people with a

grievance is the depositor who gets three per cent. interest and thinks that that is not

enough in these piping times of prosperity, when money is in such demand that the

banks can loan his money cut at 7 per cent. on call, and can show net earnings on

capital in their annual statements of from 10 to 20 per cent. and over.

Another man with a grievance is the stock holder and his would–be client, who

are unable to buy stocks on margin because the banks are “loaned up to their limit,”

and not only refuse to extend their Canadian call loans, but are making steady efforts

to reduce the amounts they have already so loaned.

Still another man with a grievance is the Canadian merchant or manufacturer

who wishes to make hay while the sun shines and increase both his business and his

profits with borrowed capital, but who finds just now that the banks are not

apparently desirous of expanding their commercial loans.

The fourth chap with a grievance is the man on the street who hears the

complaints of the other three classes and adopts their grievances as his own. He it is,

probably, who writes the letters to the newspapers.

A favorite bete noir of all these aggrieved ones is the amount of money which the Canadian banks loan on call in New York. […] “Why,” asks the patriotic

Canadian, “should I be unable to borrow money from a Canadian bank on good

security, when that privilege is accorded to the heathens of Wall Street?” Canada for

Canadians and Canadian money for Canadians, or words to that effect.

Of course, it is only in times of monetary stringency like the present that this

cry is heard. Ordinarily, if the banks have enough money to lend here, nobody cares

how much they lend abroad, but in times like the present it is different.

The answer given by bankers is, as has been often stated before, that in reality

the foreign call loan account is a mighty handy institution, in that if the Canadian

1303 From THE CANADIAN MONEY MARKET. (1907, September 10). The Western Globe, p. 3.

799

bank with a good round sum loaned on call in New York has a hurry call for a million

or so, it can get it right away without disturbing conditions at home. It creates less

disturbance, in short, to take a dipperful out of a hogshead in New York than it would

to take the same quantity out of the bucketful in Toronto.

“Many people,” said a banker, “seem to think that we ought not to lend money

in a foreign country. They think, apparently, that we ought to keep a few millions

lying idle in our vaults here, weigh it out to our Canadian customers when they wish

to use it, and let it lie idle the rest of the time. The amount of the Canadian banks’

foreign call loans is a mere bagatelle, if the sense of proportion is considered. Our total assets are some $918,000,000, of which sum only some $60,000,000 are placed

in foreign call loans.

“The charge that we are starving Canadian industry and retarding Canada’s

development is utterly unjust, and the boot is altogether on the other leg. […] It is no

time,” went on the banker, “for the wholesaler to be extending his credits. Let him

tone up his business and strengthen his position. If he’s making so much money, let

him get hold of some.”

“Well,” queried the reporter, who up to now had been letting the banker talk,

“if your position will not allow you to lend more money, why not increase your

capital?”

“The answer to that is,” said the banker, “that the market won’t stand it. We

have to consider our shareholders, and there are lots of them who are in no financial

position to subscribe for new stock. I think myself,” he went on, “not that we are too

strict now, but that we have been too liberal before. We have loaned too freely,

especially to municipalities, expecting them to issue debentures to pay us back, but

now we find, and they find, that there is no market for their debentures, and so we

must continue to carry their loans.”

“All this, however,” ventured the reporter, “doesn’t answer the plaint of the

depositor who only gets three per cent.”

“Well,” said the banker, “candidly and in confidence, I don’t mind giving you

my personal opinion that the depositor ought to get a little better return, but I’m one

and others may not agree with me.”

Another banker approached on the subject of the depositor’s grievance declared

that as long as the government postal savings banks only allowed 2½ per cent.

interest, it was not reasonable to expect the banks to pay more. If the government

raised its rates to 3, the banks would raise theirs to 3½, and he recalled the time

when the government lowered its rate from 2½ to 2 during the hard times around

1896 and was promptly followed by the banks, who lowered their rate

correspondingly.

The banker, too, didn’t think the depositor had much of a grievance. “If he has,”

said he, “let him draw his money out and lend it elsewhere. I know where he can get

5 and 6 per cent. for it and more on first class security.”

The monetary stringency, it appears, while blamed on the banks, apparently

cuts both ways. The story is floating around the streets of how a local institution not

long ago found it had loaned out so much money at attractive rates that it hadn’t

800

enough cash to pay its half yearly dividend, just due. The management hastened to

raise the needful, and among the expedients resorted to, called for more margins on

a line of bank stock they were carrying for a broker. The broker could not respond,

and the company went to the bank whose shares were in peril and asked for a loan,

without indicating to the bank that its own shares were in danger. The bank refused

the loan, the company accordingly sold out the line of stock, and the price broke about

ten points in the course of the selling. Had the bank known what was going to happen,

it would probably have gotten some director or friend of the bank to advance the

money. But the bank didn’t know.

17. The Powers and Business of Canadian Banks (1910)1304

Banking in Canada is done upon the plan commonly called the branch bank

system, installed on the theory that, having the ready money of the country in the

hands of a few large banks with branches scattered over the country, money could be

rushed to any point where the deposits did not equal the demands for loans. Branch

banks are more separate offices of the principal bank, and are distinct from agencies,

the main difference being that agencies collect a commission upon the amounts

collected or cashed for their principal while branch banks charge nothing against the

branch sending them a collection, their expenses being borne by the bank as a whole.

Accounts kept at the different branches of a bank may be consolidated and a sum

payable at a branch may be paid by the head office although for the purposes of notice

of dishonor and payment of a cheque branches are treated as distinct banks.

The Act under which Canadian banks are now working was consolidated and

altered in 1906, and is known as Chapter 29 of the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1906,

shortly cited as the Bank Act. This Act is practically the result of the development of

the banking statutes of Upper and Lower Canada. Since Confederation, 1867, the

Parliament of Canada has had sole power to grant bank charters, and the banks

previously organized, as their charters expired, have been renewed by the Dominion

government. The only Canadian bank now existing which is not wholly subject to the

Bank Act is the Bank of British North America, incorporated by royal charter, with

its head office in London, and having a corporate existence independent of the Act.

The sections which do not apply to that bank are specified in the Act.

A “bank” may be defined as a corporation which in the ordinary course of its

business receives money, which it repays by honoring the cheques of the persons from

or on whose account it receives the money, and a ‘customer’ as one who has an account

with a bank. Private persons or corporations may engage in the business of banking

provided they do not use in their business or sign the words, “bank,” “banking

company,” “banking house,” “banking institution” or similar phrases. They are also

prohibited from using paper currency.

1304 From Edouard, J. (1910, August 21). The Powers and Business of Canadian Banks. The Victoria Colonist, p. 26. and John Edouard. (1910, October 9). A Criticism of the Canadian Banking System. The Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 26. Written by John Edward Sears (1889 – 1950), a B.C. barrister, under the pseudonym ‘John Edouard’.

801

The organization of a bank in Canada is not complicated or difficult provided

you have sufficient money or can raise it. Those who intend forming such an

institution first elect provisional directors (not less than five or more than ten) to look

after the opening of stock books, and the obtaining of subscriptions and payments

thereon sufficient to comply with the act, which requires that the subscription must

amount to at least $500,000, with not less than $250,000 paid up and handed over to

the Minister of Finance. As soon as this has been done, the provisional directors call

a meeting of the stock subscribers to elect directors for the ensuing year, and the

functions of the provisional directors then cease, as they are merely the active

organizers of the corporation. Within a year following the bank must apply to the

Treasury Board of the Dominion for a certificate to do business. The charters of

Canadian Banks all expire at the same time, no matter when the bank was formed,

and they must be renewed every ten years, the next renewal taking place in 1911.

The bona fide subscription of $500,000 of capital and the payment of $250,000

thereof to the Minister of Finance are two of the conditions precedent to a new bank’s

commencing business. Its object is to obtain a safe minimum of subscribed and paid–

up capital as evidence of good faith, and acts as a deterrent to the formation of small,

weak banks. Upon the issue of the certificate from the Treasury Board the minister

repays to the bank the amount deposited with him, without interest, after deducting

the sum of $5,000, which is retained as a security for the notes issued by the bank.

The whole amount is returned if no certificate is issued.

This $5,000 goes into what is known as the Bank Circulation Redemption

Fund, established for the payment of the notes of any insolvent bank with interest at

5 per cent every annum from the day of suspension until such payment.

The fund scheme is shortly this: Upon the formation of a new bank, $5,000 is

retained for the fund, and a readjustment is made as soon as possible after the 30th

of June in each year in such a way as to make the amount paid into the fund by a

bank equal to 5 per cent of its average note circulation for the year previous, or, in

the case of a new bank, up to the time of adjustment. If a bank becomes insolvent the

payments made from the fund are made without regard to the amount contributed

by the bank; but any amount paid out of the fund in excess of the amount contributed

bears interest at 3 per cent, payable out of the insolvent bank’s assets. Outstanding

notes of an insolvent bank bear interest at 3 per cent per annum.

Bank notes, which we (if we can) handle every day, are lawfully issued by a

bank up to the amount of its unimpaired paid up capital. That is, if a bank has an

unimpaired paid up capital of $500,000 it can get the use of an added $500,000

without cost by issuing bank notes. This applies to all Canadian banks except the

Bank of B. N. A.1305, which can only issue notes up to 75 per cent of its paid up capital.

It is provided, however, that a bank shall not issue or re–issue notes during a period

of suspension of payment of its liabilities, or without the authority of the curator or

Treasury Board after the ceasing of the suspension, and at no time are notes to be

issued for a less sum than five dollars or a sum which is not a multiple of five dollars.

1305 The Bank of British North America was established by a Royal Charter in 1863. In 1918, it merged

with the Bank of Montreal.

802

Likewise it is forbidden to pledge, assign or hypothecate1306 its notes, and no

advance or loan made on such security is recoverable from the bank or its assets,

though should they come into the possession of an innocent holder, he could enforce

payment by the bank, and if it proved insolvent, claim against its assets and the

Circulation Redemption Fund.

After a bank has issued notes it must make arrangements for their circulation

at par in every part of Canada, and towards this purpose the bank must establish

agencies for their redemption and payment at the cities of Toronto, Montreal, Halifax,

St. John, Winnipeg, Victoria and Charlottetown, and at such other places as are, from

time to time, designated by the Treasury Board. Up to the present no other places

have been designated by the Board, as Canadian banks redeem each others’ notes at

par anywhere, though legally speaking they are only compelled to accept legal tender

and their own notes in payment of a debt. The section of the Act compelling the banks

to guarantee a par redemption was passed in 1890, as it had become the practice to

pay notes at a discount when they were circulating at a distance from the office where

they were issued. A person receiving money from a bank may demand Dominion notes

up to the sum of one hundred dollars, and no payment out of a bank, whether in

Dominion or bank notes is to be made in bills that are torn or partially defaced by

excessive handling.

Each Canadian bank note before being put in circulation must be signed by the

person authorized by the directors to do so, and these persons are limited to the

cashier, assistant cashier, or officer of the bank or any director not being the president

or vice–president. The signature may be made by machinery, if at least one signature

to each bill is in the actual handwriting of a person authorized to sign. It sometimes

happens that a counterfeit bill is presented to a bank official, and it is then his duty

to stamp the bill with the word “counterfeit,” “altered” or “worthless”: but should he

happen to wrongfully so mark it, he must redeem it at its face value.

The purposes of a bank are, primarily, to provide a safe place for the public to

keep its money and other valuables, to lend its own money and that of others

deposited with it (if not specially deposited) at a profit, to act as agent for the

remission and collection of money, and to provide a convenient currency in the shape

of bank notes. These purposes can, perhaps, best be stated by setting out the section

of the Bank Act, which reads as follows:

“The bank may–

(a) open branches, agencies and offices;

(b) engage in and carry on business as a dealer in gold and silver coin and

bullion;

and take as collateral security for any loan made by it, bills of exchange,

promissory notes and other negotiable securities, or the stocks, bonds,

debentures and obligations of municipal and other corporations, whether

1306 To pledge as collateral. In a typical home mortgage, the borrower hypothecates their house, and

the Spanish word for mortgage is in fact ‘hipoteca’.

803

secured by mortgage or otherwise, or Dominion, provincial, British, foreign

and other public securities; and

(d) engage in and carry on such business generally as appertains to the

business of banking.

2. Except as authorized by this Act, the bank shall not, either directly or

indirectly,

(a) deal in the buying or selling, or bartering of goods, wares and merchandise,

or engage or be engaged in any trade or business whatsoever;

(b) purchase, or deal in, or lend money, or make advances against the security

or pledge of any share of its own capital stock, or of the capital stock of any bank; or

of any lands, tenements or immovable property, or of any ships or other vessels, or

upon the security of any goods, wares and merchandise.”

Subsection (c) of part 2, prohibiting the lending of money upon land, etc., will

cause rather a surprise to the man on the street, for which it is a common idea that

in the lending of money upon lands a bank makes most of its profits. This provision

was made to prevent the locking up of the assets of a bank and making them

unavailable either for mercantile purposes or for the purposes of meeting claims of

depositors and of redeeming notes. It does not, however, trouble the banks very much,

for, though a bank is prohibited from originally taking a mortgage upon real or

personal property, there is nothing to prevent it taking a mortgage by way of

additional security for debts contracted in the ordinary course of its business, as the

objection of tying up capital does not apply when a loan has already been made. Often

a mortgage is taken contemporaneously with the discounting of a bill or note, and in

such case it would be a question of fact for the judge or jury to determine whether the

note was given solely as a blind to cover the illegal transaction of taking a mortgage.

A bank is allowed only to hold real estate for the purpose of its business and to

purchase property, real or personal, offered for sale, (a) under execution, or in

insolvency, or under the order of a decree of court, as belonging to any debtor of the

bank; (b) by a mortgage having priority over a mortgage held by the bank: or (c) by

the bank under a power of sale given to it for that purpose. Property thus acquired

and not required for the bank’s business cannot be held longer than seven years,

which period may be extended to twelve years by the Treasury Board, and if not then

sold it is liable to forfeiture to the Crown.

Normally a bank is the debtor of its customer, and must discharge its

indebtedness by honoring its customers’ checks. This necessitates the acting as

collecting agent of its customer, and a bank must collect the check and orders

delivered by the customer to be credited to his account, and in doing so it must use

due diligence in collection, for if a customer loses through the fault of a bank, as by

failing to present a bill for acceptance where acceptance is necessary, it is liable for

all loss suffered by the customer. It is different in the case of a bill of exchange made

payable at a bank and accepted by a customer, as the bank is not bound to pay the

bill, though it generally does so to the extent of the customer’s balance or to the

804

amount agreed upon between them. Circumstances again change where money is

paid to a bank with its assent to meet a bill. In such a case, if payment is refused, the

holder may sue the bank for damages. A bank undertaking to collect an accepted bill

must not part with it or permit it to be tampered with until paid, or if a conditional

payment is made, until the condition has been accepted by the principal.

The greatest profit in banking comes through the lending of money in the form

of allowing overdrafts on current accounts and in discounting bills and notes. The

money which a bank has available for this lending is made up of the cash paid up on

subscribed notes and the borrowed capital made up of the notes in circulation, the

deposits of customers, and the money received for drafts, letters of credit, etc., which

are to be paid at a future time. Thus the difference between the amount a bank earns

on its capital, its exchange and collection charges, charges for keeping accounts and

for acting as depository of valuables; and the amount it pays to its depositors,

expenses of the bank and deductions for bad debts, form its profits out of which to

pay dividends and bonuses and create a rest or reserve fund for contingencies.

The interest which a bank may stipulate for is limited by the Act to 7% per

annum. Always looking for profits, the banks soon found that there was no law in

force rendering them liable to incur any penalty for forfeiture for usury, and that they

could therefore, notwithstanding the Act, stipulate for any rate of interest or discount

they chose without invalidating the contract of loan or pledge. The only consolation

left a borrower is that should he compel his bank to sue for interest, such bank cannot

recover more than 7% and even when the bank retains or debits his account with

interest in excess of 7%, he is entitled to recover the excess so long as it was not paid

voluntarily by him.

In addition to discount a bank may retain the following collection or agency

charges on negotiable paper to run

(a) for less than thirty days, one–eighth of one per centum:

(b) for thirty days or over but less than sixty days, one–fourth of one per

centum:

centum; and

(d) for ninety days or over, one–half of one per centum.

A bank is not entitled to charge any discount or commission for cashing an

official check of the Government of Canada or of any of its departments, whether

drawn on the bank cashing the check or on any other bank.

A feature of banking not generally known to the public is the double liability

of bank shareholders. When a man pays up a share in an ordinary limited company,

his liability ceases, and should the company fail the creditors cannot call upon his

private funds for the payment of its debts. The law governing banking is different. In

the event of the property and assets of a bank being insufficient to pay its debts and

liabilities each shareholder of the bank is liable personally for the deficiency to an

amount equal to the par value of the shares held by him in addition to any amount

not originally paid up on such shares. Which means that, if a bank fails and has no

805

assets to meet its liabilities, a shareholder, in addition to paying his initial one

hundred dollars per share, must pay another one hundred dollars under the “double

liability clause”.

Another peculiar position arises when the holder of a bill loses it by fire or

otherwise, he being entitled to have it redeemed in full by giving indemnity.

Redemption of this sort very rarely happens, as it is exceedingly difficult to identify

a lost note unless the holder knew the number.

Everybody knows that there is a distinct understanding between the Canadian

banks as to the rate of interest to be paid depositors, the lending of money, and other

important matters, this understanding being brought about through the Canadian

Bankers’ Association, composed of representatives from the banks. The Association

is incorporated under Dominion charter, and governs what is probably the strongest

trust on the American continent, the Canadian Bank Trust. Among other things it

establishes and regulates the clearing houses of Canada, supervises the banks, and

in any case of bank insolvency appoints a curator to look after its affairs. Having such

great powers, it goes ill with a bank that does not fall in line with the opinions of the

majority of those composing the Association. The official journal of the banks, the

Journal of the Canadian Bankers’ Association, is published by the Association.

One of the strongest points in the Canadian banking system is the provision

for monthly returns required by the Government from each bank, and one its weakest

points is the method of inspection, as the inspector is an officer of the bank and holds

his position through the influence of the men who he is supposed to watch. […]

banking in Canada is done upon the plan commonly called the branch bank

system. This system, though it has many good points, is in some particulars one of

the worst methods of banking extant. It was installed on the theory that having the

ready money of the country in the hands of a few large banks with branches scattered

over the Dominion, money could be rushed to any place where the deposits did not

equal the demands for loans. But is this theory ever used in practice? Have they ever

rushed money from Montreal or Toronto to Victoria, Vancouver, or any other Western

community where it is badly needed? No! On the contrary, money is sent from the

West to Toronto and Montreal, and most of that not loaned there is passed on to New

York for speculative purposes. In fact, as it has many times been stated, the banks of

Canada are not a reservoir from which streams of money are dispersed to all parts of

the country for the use of the manufacturer, but are suction pipes draining the

country of its money and making the few richer and richer.

The working of this system provides that all moneys deposited in a branch and

not needed for the use of the till shall be shipped to the head office, and, as in the

whole of Canada there are only twenty–nine different banking institutions with about

two thousand three hundred and thirty branches, each one of which has to despatch

the money not needed for immediate payments out of the till, to the head office, the

method of banking constitutes a tremendous drain on the ready money of the outlying

communities. The branch banks in British Columbia number one hundred and fifty

one, none of them having their headquarters in the province, the Bank of Vancouver,

806

which recently commenced business, being the only true British Columbia

institution.

This shipping of the ready money of the country to the several head offices

(most of them in Toronto and Montreal) places it under the control of a few

Easterners, which accounts for the unreasonable amount of Canadian money loaned

to foreign enterprises and speculations. During the great financial stringency of 1908,

the Canadian Bank Statement for January, shows that $38,000,000 was despatched

to the aid of Wall Street, thereby working great hardship upon the people of Canada,

who were in need of funds. It was during that period that the Canadian Government

had to go to the aid of the farmers of the Middle West, lending them money which the

banks in the ordinary course of business should have done. In one of the largest cities

in British Columbia it was impossible during that stringency to obtain loans from any

of the banks, although in the branch of one bank alone certain people, after depositing

in the savings department to the limit allowed by the law, had for investment by the

bank a further sum aggregating upwards of two–thirds of a million dollars. When

corporations and men of integrity and of the highest financial standing applied for

loans, they were met by the statement that the manager’s power to make loans had

been suspended by the head office until further notice. It appears to have been the

same with all the banks. Later it was learned that British Columbia money (badly

needed locally) was being used in the East.

This banking system which forwards most of the money of the branches to the

head office is open to further criticism in that it retards the even development of a

country. The only industrial and commercial projects which are in a favorable position

to obtain the loans necessary for their institution and development are those situate

in or near the headquarters of the banks. The consequence is that in Canada, with a

population of six or seven million inhabitants, there are two great cities in or

surrounding which is a commercial and industrial population of over one million

people, who control the trade and carry on the principal manufactures of the country.

This evil of the branch system is further emphasized in Australia, which has also a

branch bank system, where, out of a population of a little over four millions of people,

more than a million of these are congregated in or about the great cities of Melbourne

and Sydney, which have appropriated to themselves a still greater control of the trade

and manufactures of that country. In countries not wedded to the branch bank

system, as England and the United States, we can find scores of cities of the first rank

and innumerable cities numbering their citizens by tens of thousands, situated in all

parts of the country, each fostering its appropriate manufacturing firms. This

condition of affairs is brought about because each town has its couple of banks, with

citizens as officers, all with an interest in their town and anxious to see it flourish. A

man applying for a loan is personally known to them, and they wish to help him as

well as make money for themselves. Under the branch bank system as carried on in

Canada, the branch manager is only nominally manager, and has no interest in the

city wherein the branch is situated, for it generally happens that as soon as he has

had time to become well acquainted, the head office transfers him to another city.

The branch manager is further crippled by being unable to make a loan of any

807

magnitude without a consultation with the head office in Toronto or Montreal, as the

case may be. This means at least a week’s delay to Westerners, and there are

hundreds of men in Canada who have lost good business opportunities because the

head office could not see fit to make a loan on the recommendation of its branch

manager, or approved of a loan too late to materially improve the condition of the

borrower.

A certain prominent bank manager to whom the above facts were stated, said

that it is true that the only businesses having a good opportunity to borrow money

from the banks of Canada are those established in or near the cities of the head

offices. The people of Vancouver lately recognized this, and as a result the Bank of

Vancouver has been incorporated, although Vancouver has branch banks upon nearly

every street corner in the business quarter of the city. The only conclusion that can

be drawn is that the strong and even development of all parts of a country may be

attributed in a great measure to a wise monetary system which retains the surplus

wealth of each section of a country for the further development of that section, instead

of permitting it to be drained off for the benefit of the older and stronger communities.

Any banking system like the Canadian system must provide for an

incorporated central governing board to manage the consolidated banking interests.

It is a part of the system. In Canada this body is known as the Canadian Bankers’

Association, composed of representatives from each of the twenty–nine banks and

duly incorporated by act of parliament. The association draws up a schedule of certain

charges to be made by the Canadian banks, thus making competition impossible. To

show the close bond in which the Canadian banks are united, I will quote the words

of Mr. X, formerly manager of a bank doing business in Dawson City during the

Klondike boom:

“During the rush,” said this gentleman, “the banks having branches in the

Klondike did business at an enormous profit. When I had charge of the Dawson

branch orders came from headquarters to charge 32% discount for loans.”

“I suppose you didn’t do much business at that rate?” said a friend. “A borrower

would only need to step across to the ––––– bank to get a loan at normal rates.”

“They could do no better for him at the –––––,” answered the manager; “we all

charged the same rates.”

Here we have clear evidence of the combination which can be effected under

the Canadian scheme of banking, and which is making the banks so autocratic, by

preventing them from being taught by competition to respect the wants of each

community. The population of Canada has increased enormously during the last ten

years, and this should warrant the establishment of more banks; but the Canadian

institutions are practically the same in number as they were two decades. Why? As

soon as a new bank has developed one of the older and stronger banks absorbs it, and

competition is nipped in the bud. This amalgamation, besides lessening competition,

808

means curtailment of banking facilities to the public, for duplication of branches is

bound to occur. When the Royal Bank absorbed the Union of Halifax a few months

ago, ten branches had to be closed through duplication, and this is bound to cause the

lessening of monetary advantages in those places where duplication occurred.

A serious defect in the Canadian Banking Act is the lack of a clause compelling

the banks to hand over to the Government all monies which are in the bank to the

credit of a customer who has not been heard of, and in respect of whose account

transactions have ceased to take place for a period of years, say, ten. Several of the

banks have unclaimed deposits, some of which amount to over $10,000, and have

heard nothing of the depositor for ten or twenty years. A few cases have happened

where large sums of money have been paid into a bank in one deposit, and the person

who made the deposit has entirely disappeared. It is true that there is a clause in the

act calling for a yearly return to the Dominion Government, showing all dividends

which have remained unpaid for more than five years and all amounts or balances in

respect of which no transactions have taken place, or upon which no interest has been

paid during the five years prior to the date of such returns; but the act should go

further and provide for the paying over to the Government of such moneys for the use

of the country, rather than leave it under the control of private corporations. If a

claimant appeared for the money the Government could hand it over to him upon

satisfactory proof of his right to ownership.

A few words as to inspection: If we look over the history of Canadian bank

failures, we find that none of the banks have met with disaster suddenly, but, on the

contrary, the process has been gradually brought about by resorting to malpractices

in the hope that through some lucky turn enormous profits would be gained. The only

safeguard we have against such practices is the provision in the Bank Act providing

that information shall be given to the Government by the banks themselves as to the

condition of their affairs; experience has shown that in some cases the bank returns

have been inaccurate to a startling extent. Outside of these returns there is no

method of inspection whereby the interests of Canadian bank shareholders and

others interested in such corporations may be efficiently protected, although several

times clauses providing for public bank auditors and inspectors have been introduced

in the House of Commons. Each time the scheme has been successfully opposed by

the bankers on the ground that it would be absolutely impossible for any inspector or

auditor to make a reliable estimate of the assets of a bank; they argue that an

inspector could not ascertain the real value of the customers’ paper discounted by a

bank or even trace or count the cash; that an inspection of accounts without a

valuation of assets would be worthless, and that it would be impossible for a

Government inspector or auditor properly to inspect a Canadian bank on account of

its many branches and the multiplicity and variety of the commercial paper in its

assets. Many persons, they say, would make deposits upon the faith of an official

report which would be more or less illusory. It is better, in their opinion, to rely on

the careful organization of the bank, the vigilance of directors, and the inspection by

trained men of its own staff traveling from branch to branch and reporting to the

general manager. Why a Government inspector cannot do this they fail to explain.

809

Mr. McLeod, the general manager of the Bank of Nova Scotia, recently resigned

his position in order to work in the public’s interest and call attention to the necessity

of a system of Government inspection of chartered banks. He has issued a pamphlet

treating of banking abuses through lack of inspection, and setting out the procedure

whereby he would remedy them. It is submitted, however, that his proposals do not

go far enough. His scheme is that a board of fourteen auditors (four of whom shall

form a quorum) shall be appointed by the Bankers’ Association, and that the board

so appointed shall make an annual inspection of each bank, an if, in such audit, the

annual statement to the shareholders is found to be a fair and conservative

representation of the bank’s condition, the chairman of the Board of Auditors is to

certify it, and no statement is to be issued without this certificate.

One of the particulars in which Mr. McLeod’s scheme falls short is that it does

not propose to give the inspectors power to obtain information under oath from the

officials of the bank. In England, where, by a statute known as 25–26 Vict., c.89, s.

69, a special system of inspection of limited banking companies is provided for, the

provision giving the inspectors power to put the banks’ officers upon oath has been

found necessary in order to enable them to make their work of inspection thorough

and effective.

Above has been set out the impressions of the Canadian banking system gained

from the viewpoint of a fault–finder. Perhaps, after all, it is not the system which is

at fault, but rather the method of carrying out the system. Perhaps the seeming faults

are really blessings in disguise. Perhaps–––––.

810

XIII. Appendix

811

The Annual Hops–Picking Migration For decades, the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific coast were highly valued workers in the hops–picking industry. This was seasonal work, and each year would see a migration to the harvest fields. The following articles chronicle the industry of these Indigenous migrant workers, as perceived by settlers.

1. “Mostly done by Indians” (1884)1307

EDITOR COLUMBIAN. – As quite a number in British Columbia have been

making enquiries of me and others in this vicinity, how times are on Skagit River and

Puget Sound generally, I would ask permission of you to give a statement of affairs

in your widely circulated paper. I must say that times are extremely dull on Skagit

river, and in fact the whole Sound. Old Puget Sounders say it is the worst they ever

saw, and I know myself that times are a great deal worse than they were five years

ago, as I was on Puget Sound then. There are ten working men in the country now

for every one that was there then. There is scarcely anything doing here now. Hop–

picking and harvesting is about all that there is; the former is mostly done by Indians

as the whites cannot compete with them. Harvesting wages are from $1 to $1.50 per

day, and this is one of the worst harvests experienced by the farmers for a number of

years. In a great many places large quantities of grain lie rotting on the fields. Heavy

crops and rain do not work together at all. Logging is almost suspended and the

loggers are not able to pay their men on account of there being no demand for logs.

The biggest portion of the camps men have a piece of paper (an order), some a lien;

and some of them I have noticed offering to sell their orders or liens for half what

they call for, to raise a little money to leave the territory. Some are desirous of going

to B. C., but most of them go to California. There are hundreds of men in the hotels

all over the Sound with not a cent to their names – men who came from the east last

spring with little means on the strength of the Seattle newspaper boom. Those who

are in B. C. with even small wages had better stay and be contented with their lot.

B. C. is more of an even thing, but on Puget Sound it is either feast or famine. It is

here as the Dutch doctor said, an extreme case. Hoping to be back to B. C. in a few

days, I remain yours &c.,

CHAS. M. Nicholson,

Late of N.W.1308

2. “Sublime Effrontery” (1888)1309

A New Westminster paper complains that agents of hop growers in this

territory and Oregon were sent to the Fraser river to induce the Indians in the employ

1307 From Nicholson, C. M. (1884, September 27). From Washington Territory. The British Columbian, p. 3. Written by Charles Malcolm Nicholson (1858 – 1932). 1308 New Westminster. 1309 From NOTES AND COMMENTS. (1888, September 13). The British Columbian, p. 1.

812

of the canneries to go across the line and work for them during the hop–picking

season, and had the sublime effrontery to go right into the canneries and among the

men where they were at work. Well, brethren, retaliation is the fashion; you are

welcome to invade this territory and try the seductive wiles of Canadian currency

upon S––––h hop–pickers. Who ever heard of a Puget sound Indian going north to

accept tribute of the “King George” men!

3. “No More Prosperous Natives” (1889)

August 71310: “Every year about this time Indians come down with their households

to Seattle and Tacoma from all along the coast as far north as Queen Charlotte’s

Sound, in light cedar canoes, to engage in hop–picking in the White river, Snoqualmie

and Puyallup valleys. They bring with them abalone shells and woven grass trinkets,

and go back in the fall with red blankets and money. Each year fewer come to the

fields, for two reasons: The hop country is becoming surrounded by a dense

population, which supplies white pickers, and the whites are building up industries

which employ the Indians at home. It is thought that the Indians will not return at

all next year, owing to the action of the Oregon Improvement Company1311 in covering

with steel rails their favorite camp down by the Ocean dock.”

August 301312: “Upwards of 200 Indians who have been coining money on the Fraser

during the salmon run, arrived over by the Rithet yesterday, with their “ictas.”1313

They leave by the Sound steamer this morning for the Puyallup and White River hop

fields. The Indians are in high spirits over the results of the season’s fishing, some of

them having earned from $1,000 to $1,200 apiece during the fishing run. They will

make good wages during the hop picking season as well, and consequently have

nothing to grumble at over the wages question. Fishing and hop picking appears to

be far more profitable than gold mining.”

September 141314: “A large party of Indians arrived down from Pitt Lake this morning

bringing an immense quantity of cranberries, the first large receipts this season. The

berries were disposed of to Mr. W. H. Vianen, who paid the Indians about $200 for

them. This neat little sum was the results of about 10 days’ work of the klootchmen

and children, the men spending the most of their time in shooting grouse and duck

hunting. Cranberries are reported to be very plentiful this year, and the surplus crop

for exportation will be larger than usual. Between salmon fishing, hop picking,

hunting, cranberry picking and farming, the Fraser River Indians make large wages

every year, and no more prosperous natives can be found anywhere.”

1310 From Migration of the R–– man. (1889, August 7). Daily British Columbian, p. 1. 1311 A U.S. coal and freight company that operated in the Pacific Northwest from 1880 until 1896, when

it merged with the Pacific Coast Company. 1312 From Lucky Indians. (1889, August 30). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 4. 1313 Chinook trade jargon for “things”. 1314 From Hiyu Solemic. (1889, September 14). Daily British Columbian, p. 4.

813

4. Of Horses and Custom Houses (1890)

October 21315: “The season being about over, the Indians who have been engaged in

the Puyallup and other hop–picking districts on the Sound are beginning to return to

their homes to settle down to the comparatively unrelieved monotony of winter. Last

night the City of Kingston1316 brought over 130 of them and the North Pacific1317 20.

Apparently some of them are sportively inclined, for they brought with them two race

horses, which, those who saw them say, are of considerable value and apparently

have a good deal of go about them. The party went up North by the Boscowitz1318,

which left last night, and it is possible that some of the earliest advices may tell of

how one of their horses outraced the others and how the blankets and other

paraphernalia of the S–––––hes, with their financial belongings, have been melted

over the races that have been inaugurated.”

October 301319: “Do the custom house officers know that the Indians who go South to

engage in hop picking, when the season is over, make extensive purchases in the

Sound cities and take the goods home in their own canoes without paying a visit to a

custom house either in the States or in British Columbia? We are told that thousands

of dollars were expended by the hop pickers in this way this year. Is it fair that the

Indians should be allowed to import goods free when every one else pays heavy

duties? They receive many benefits from being under British rule, which they

appreciate, why then should they be exempt from paying for those benefits? The trade

of the country is injured by this smuggling business. Would it not be well for the

custom house authorities to hire a steam launch for a week or two at the right season

in order to intercept the S––––h craft on their way home? If they once were convinced

in a forcible way that they could not expect to enjoy the benefits of British rule

without bearing the burden of British subjects, they would either enter their goods at

the custom house or buy their supplies at home.”

5. “About 50 Canoes” (1891)1320

There is quite a colony of visiting West Coast S–––––hes in the city just now,

en route to the salmon canneries on the Fraser. About 50 canoes, filled with families

and household goods, each one containing besides the provisions, tents and bedding,

from one to a dozen papooses, not to mention dogs and cats, arrived early Sunday

1315 From Back from the Hop Fields. (1890, October 2). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 5. 1316 An American steamship launched in 1884 and lost in a non–fatal accident in 1900. 1317 One of the earliest steamships in Puget Sound, it was in operation from 1871 to 1903. The North

Pacific saw heavy use during the Klondike gold rush of 1897 – 1898, taking prospective prospectors

from Seattle to Alaska. 1318 The Barbara Boscowitz, a steamship, was built in Victoria, B.C., in 1883. The Boscowitz remained

in service until a fatal wreck in 1904 (detailed later in this section). 1319 From Sargison, A. G. (1890, October 30). EDITORIAL COMMENT. Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 4. Written by Albert George Sargison (1862 – 1929), then member of the Colonist’s editorial staff. 1320 From WEST COAST S––––HES. (1891, June 30). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 1.

814

morning, and tied up at the reserve, just above the railroad bridge. Many pitched

their tents on the land while others rigged up a shelter by stretching canvas over a

ridge pole put up in the canoes. The colony attracted considerable attention during

the afternoon, and many visitors wandered about and inspected the camp.

True to their proclivities many of the S––––h braves loaded up on vile whiskey,

and awoke yesterday morning in the calaboose1321. About a dozen of them were

arraigned in the Provincial Police Court and fined various amounts. All of them paid

up, and the provincial treasury was enriched to the extent of $167, including the fines

of Chiefs Harry and William, who were fined $50 each, last Saturday.

From now on the S–––––hes will have a harvest, as the salmon fishing begins

at once and will last up to hop–picking time. The industrious Indian can keep himself

pretty busy from now until the middle of October, and be able to earn considerable

money for his labor.

6. A Smallpox Scare (1892)

August 141322: “The season on the Skeena has been one of the wettest known for years.

The canneries having completed their packs, are giving their whole attention to the

cold storage business, and tons of fish are being frozen for the Eastern market. The

remainder of the season, it is expected, will be occupied in this way. The Indians

refuse to come down for hop picking this year, as they are all much scared at the

reports of smallpox which have been brought by those who left here when the

epidemic first began.”

August 181323: “The latest advices from the North are to the effect that the Indians

are recovering from their smallpox scare owing to later and favorable reports

received, and that they will probably come down, as usual, to attend the hop picking

on the Sound.”

August 251324: Every fall hundreds of British Columbia Indians have been accustomed

to cross the line into Washington state for the purpose of picking hops, and after the

hop picking season is over return to British Columbia. They will do so no longer if

information published in the Port Townsend Leader is correct. The paper across the

Sound states the case thus:

“While these Indians spend a portion of their money before they return, still

they take out of the State between $7,000 and $10,000 every year. The Indians thus

usurp the rightful employment of resident whites, who would be glad of an

opportunity to do the work; especially would such employment this year be a timely

Godsend to a great many people.

1321 Jail. Probably from the Spanish calabozo, or ‘dungeon’. 1322 From THE CARIBOO FLY. (1892, August 14). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 10. 1323 From Will Come Down. (1892, August 18). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 1. 1324 From THE LETTER OF THE LAW. (1892, August 25). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 2.

815

“The United States inspector of immigration who resides in this city, Mr.

Thomas N. Fisher, has so constructed the lex scripta1325 as to make the employing of British Columbia Indians a violation of the alien labor law. Accordingly he wrote to

the department yesterday concerning it, asking for instruction. Yesterday he received

advice from the Bureau of Immigration which fully corroborates his interpretation.

The letter from the department sets forth that the Government knows no distinction

of class among the aliens coming into this country under a labor contract. It cites the

case where forty Canadian Indians, who were brought into the northern New York

hop fields, were deported.

“Mr. Fisher was instructed to spare no expense to enforce the law which

provides for the deportation of aliens coming into this country under a contract for

labor expressed or implied, parole or written, or where money is advanced, or

encouragement is given by any other than their immediate family. Mr. Fisher will

take steps to have the Indians informed of the law before they start for the hop fields.

“This ruling of the department will make considerable difference to hop

growers this season – and coming upon them at so late an hour previous to the hop–

picking season is apt to considerably disturb their calculations, which, of course, were

based upon Indian labor for harvesting their crops.

7. On Savary Island (1893)1326

Some S–––––hes and a Klootchman called at Manson’s on Oct. 28th and said they

had left all the white men drunk at Green’s place on Savary island. They had left

there early in the morning and were in a hurry. These Indians, one a half n––––1327,

had returned from hop–picking. On the way to the village where they belonged the

officers met some Indians who alarmed those at the village by firing their guns as if

they had been out for the purpose. The father of the h––––– seemed very much

frightened. He said his son had come from the hop fields two months before, but that

he did not know where he was at that time.

8. The Destruction of Nootka (1894)

July 121328: “Mr. Knox has also a small experiment in hand near Kelowna. Last season

$3,000 was paid out in wages to s––––h pickers; the sum will be increased this year

to over $5,000. The cost of picking represents about one–fifth of the value of the crop.

[…] If hop picking is any test of character the klootchman is of a more saving nature

than the noble r–– man. It was noticed by those who paid hop pickers last season that

the klootchman would change their tickets for cash as soon as they had picked a box

and save the money, while the b––––s accumulated theirs and gambled for them

when the picking was over.”

1325 Latin for ‘written law’. 1326 From The Savary Island Murder. (1893, November 13). The Pacific Canadian, p. 5. 1327 An offensive term for a black person. 1328 From Okanagan Mission Notes. (1894, July 12). The Advance, p. 3.

816

September 291329: “ELECTRIC storms have been very severe and frequent on the

west coast of Vancouver island recently, and the steamer Maude which returned to

port yesterday reports the entire destruction late in August of the Indian village of

Nootka as a result. The exact date of the occurrence of the fire which swept the little

settlement out of existence is not known, as it was at the time all but deserted by its

inhabitants, the great majority being away for the salmon fishing or the hop picking.

The village was situated on an island in Nootka sound and the population was

composed exclusively of natives, many of the S–––––hes being engaged in seal

hunting on the “white man’s stick–ships.” Included in the ruins of the fire are the

wrecks of eight large rancherie1330 houses, in which were contained many of the

choicest treasures of the tribe.”

9. “Color and General Picturesqueness” (1897)

September 241331: “Visiting Indians to the number of fifty or more are at present

camped on the Songhees reservation, at the end of the railway bridge, giving a charm

of dirt, color and general picturesqueness to the locality. The majority of the campers

are Cowichans who have just returned from the hop–picking on the American side,

and now have money to invest in the seductive corn juice. While they remain in the

city blank slates in the police court are not to be looked for.”

October 61332:

“A young Nit–Nat S––––h named Jack,

from the hop–picking recently back;

neatly painted the town in a color not brown,

till the peelers were hot on his track.

He knew that “possession” came high,

so he soon drained the mickey quite dry;

and he winked his dark eye, and looked happily sly –

just $5, no jail life to try.”

10. “An Epidemic of Measles” (1898)1333

Some forty–four British Columbia Indians returned yesterday from the season’s hop–

picking in the Washington fields. Pickers were scarce this season and good wages

1329 From THE CITY. (1894, September 29). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 5. 1330 Community buildings built of cedar by the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest. The word

‘rancherie’ was also used to refer to Indigenous villages in general. 1331 From THE CITY. (1897, September 24). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 5. 1332 From THE CITY. (1897, October 6). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 5. 1333 From Back from Hop–picking. (1898, September 28). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 5.

817

ruled, the growers being occasioned considerable loss and inconvenience through an

epidemic of measles among the red people, no fewer than seven natives from this

province dying.

11. New Metlakahtla (1899)1334

Some distance south of Fort Simpson, British Columbia, which is just across

from the Alaska line, near the Portland canal, is Old Metlakahtla. About forty–two

years ago William Duncan1335, a short, energetic young man but recently arrived from

Manchester, England moved to this spot with a band of Tsimshean natives. […] In

the fall of 1887 they settled on the west side of Annette Island, at a place called Port

Chester. In remembrance of their old home they named this settlement New

Metlakahtla. […] They have a sawmill, waterworks, which have cost $9,000, a

cannery wherein they packed this season 12,400 cases, and a shop wherein they build

boats. […]

These natives are a hard working and reliant people. Mr. Duncan can give

employment in his sawmill and cannery and boathouse to not more than 5 per cent.

of his people. They make no attempt at the cultivation of the soil, nor do they attempt

stock–raising. The great majority of them scatter through British Columbia and

Southeastern Alaska, working in the sawmills, canneries and salteries. Many go to

the state of Washington in hop–picking season. Under present conditions they cannot

be confined to Annette island and support themselves. In the fishing season, when

they go with their boats and seines to fish beyond their own limits, they clash up

against their neighbors, who tell them to ‘go back and stay on their reservation, where

they belong.’ It is the same in cutting timber.

12. Trade at the Turn of the Century (1900)

September 291336: “There were about 400 Indians in town the other day, after the

hop–picking, purchasing supplies.”

1334 From Brady, J. G. (1899, December 9). THE NEW METLAKAHTLA. Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 7. Written by John Green Brady (1847 – 1918), then–governor of Alaska. 1335 William Duncan (1832 – 1918) was a controversial unordained missionary who occasionally made

the news for overstepping his authority. “H.M.S. Clio has been making a very successful raid among

the Indian whiskey sellers along the North–west coast; and it will also be observed that Mr. Duncan,

J. P., the Missionary at Metlakatlah, has been industrious in bringing the culprits to justice. […] This,

Mr. Duncan has done beyond all precedent – some of the men who were brought before him having

been sentenced to a fine of £800 or eight years’ imprisonment! […] It is not the first time that attention

has been called to the rather fantastic tricks of this missionary magistrate, who appears to exercise

an autocratic power up North considerably more rigid than the ruler of the Russian Possessions. It is

time that some curb should be placed upon the gentleman or some action taken by the British

Columbian authorities that will relieve the people along the Northwest coast – Indians as well as

whites – of the dread of being burned alive or subjected to some equally horrible punishment for

interfering with Mr. Duncan’s rather extensive trade with the Indians.” MAGISTERIAL FREAKS.

(1865, December 29). The British Colonist, p. 2. 1336 From IN CHILLIWACK VILLAGE. (1900, September 29). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 8.

818

October 91337: “The rate war between the steamers Rosalie1338 and Utopia1339 grows

apace. The runners for the rival companies make things interesting nightly at the C.

P. N. wharf, where they watch for prospective travelers. Last night the Rosalie had

to go to the quarantine station soon after her arrival at 5 p. m., and this gave a chance

to the boosters for the Utopia, who did not fail to take advantage of it. The Rosalie

brought five S–––––hes who had been hop–picking on the Sound, and because of the

fear that the hop–pickers may possibly have been liable to contagion in the affected

districts on the Sound, the health officers sent them to quarantine for a brief space.

The Rosalie did not return from the station until about half an hour before her sailing

time.”

November 71340: Lying at her moorings in the upper harbor is the steam auxiliary

schooner Delta, which is back from Knight’s Inlet with a cargo of salt salmon for local

merchants. This vessel, which looks like a cross between a Chinese junk and a lumber

scow, with its square ends, is one of the few remaining vessels which go like floating

stores to the Indians of the North. Capt. Joe Quadros, her owner and master, is a

trader in every sense of the word. He had a store at Knight’s Inlet, where he makes

his home – when at home – but owing to the continued absence of all but the younger

Indians, who have gone potlatching, hop–picking, fishing, trapping, etc., he has closed

the store and carried the commodities which find a sale among the Indians to them

wherever they are to be found. He visits all the S––––h trapping camps, and in the

springtime his vessel usually comes down laden with mink, marten, wolverine, bear

and other skins found on the British Columbia coast between here and the north end

of Vancouver Island. These skins he buys for cash or in trade with the Indians, and

finds a market for them here. During the fishing season he puts up salt salmon,

oolichans, etc., and combines everything, in fact, in his day’s work. His vessel was

caught in the recent southeaster in the Gulf, and had her mainsail ribboned.

Capt. Quadros, speaking of the complaints made of illegal trading, whiskey–

selling, etc., in the north, says that he has from time to time found in his visits to the

northern rancheries such instances of lawlessness. Often he has found American craft

trading with the British Columbia Indians. Regarding the whiskey–sellers, he says

there are a number of them in the North. He relates an incident which came under

his personal observation at Gilford Island. He was lying off there with potatoes, flour,

cottons, etc., to trade, when a sloop came in from the northward. The Indians had a

dance that night, and the men from the visiting sloop attended. Next morning he

went over to the sloop to pass the time of day. He thought they were trappers, and

asked them how they were doing. One of the men took a bottle of whiskey from the

cabin and asked him to take a drink. The man wanted him to take a drink on the deck

1337 From THE RATE WAR. (1900, October 9). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 2. 1338 The Steamship Rosalie was in service from 1893 to 1918, when she was lost in a harbor fire. 1339 A wooden steamship built in 1893 and scrapped in 1926. She was featured in a silent movie directed

by Frank Lloyd – 1925’s Gold Rush epic, Winds of Chance. 1340 From A COAST TRADER. (1900, November 7). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 3.

819

of the vessel, so he would be in full view of the Indians. The bottle was exhibited so it

could be seen for purposes of advertisement. That night the sloop men went ashore

and put up a tent, and, looking through his binoculars, Capt. Quadros saw that they

had a light in the tent, which reflected in shadow panorama the actions of the men in

pouring liquor from a case into bottles and handing them to the Indians.

13. “Indians Wanted” (1902)1341

A. B. Weed, the representative of the hop–growing company of North Yakima,

is staying at the Dominion hotel. He is here trying to induce Indians to go over and

help bring in the harvest. The hop season opens on September 8 in Washington and

lasts three weeks. Transportation to Yakima and $1 per box for the hops picked are

the terms offered to the Indians. These are far better terms than the terms offered in

Oregon, viz., 80 cents per box.

14. Playing Ball (1903)

September 61342: “The Fernwoods have been trying to get a match with the Songhee

Indian team. Unfortunately, the Indians have had to go to Washington State for hop

picking, but on their return on the 25th inst., another endeavor will be made to bring

off the fixture.”

September 191343: “The usual number of Indians not being available for hop–picking

at the Coldstream ranch, Vernon, this season, two carloads of Chinese have been

imported in their stead.”

15. The Wreck of the Boscowitz (1904)

September 231344: “A big party of Indians were encamped at the rear of the public

market yesterday. They arrived in town the previous evening after the hop picking

season in Washington, and at once selected the camping ground, where they spent

the night in the open. Yesterday forenoon they were engaged in purchasing supplies,

and by the time they were through a very substantial pile of miscellaneous goods was

conspicuous. The party, with their belongings, left by the evening train for Saanich.”

October 81345: Word reached here Thursday evening of the wreck on Saturday night

of the steamer Boscowitz, on the north side of Harbledon island, about twelve miles

the other side of Alert bay. There were over one hundred Indians on board the vessel,

1341 From Indians Wanted. (1902, August 28). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 5. 1342 From SPORTING NEWS. (1903, September 6). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 6. 1343 From Local and Provincial. (1903, September 19). The Nelson Economist, p. 1. 1344 From An Indian Encampment. (1904, September 23). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 5. 1345 From S. S. BOSCOWITZ WRECKED. (1904, October 8). The Delta Times, p. 3.

820

who were returning to their homes after the hop–picking season, among whom were

a large number of women and children. A heavy fog hung over the water at the time

and while the boat was feeling its way into the landing on Harbledon island they ran

against the rocks. An attempt was made to release the boat, but all to no avail, and

when the tide went out the vessel rolled over and broke in two. She is a total loss

along with her cargo.

A stampede occurred among the Indians when the ship grounded and all was

excitement. The captain and crew did all in their power to control the crowd, and got

the women and children ashore first, but the terror–stricken braves were every man

for himself and jumped from the decks to the small boats, which were swamped,

drowning four.

16. The Nez Perce and ‘Poaching’ (1905)1346

Because in past years they slaughtered great quantities of British Columbia

game, and in order to prevent a recurrence of their poaching efforts, between eighty

and ninety Nez Perces1347 Indians from the Colville reservation of Washington State

will leave the Okanagan valley, says a Vancouver dispatch, under a provincial police

escort. They will be taken to the boundary line, from where they will return to their

homes on the Washington reservation.

An arrival from Vernon brought the news of the “personally conducted” exodus,

and stated that all arrangements for it had been made by Mr. A. Bryan Williams,

provincial game warden of Vancouver, who was in the Okanagan Valley early in the

week, attending to the case of the depredatory Indians.

The Indians, who are the remnants of the notorious tribe of Nez Perces, which

was driven out of Oregon after the Oregon massacre1348, are not S–––––hes. They are

plain Indians, tall, straight and lithe–limbed fellows with the Roman nose so

characteristic of the prairie aborigines. When driven out of Oregon, the Indians were

pushed on the Colville reservation1349. They have lived there so long that they years

1346 From POACHING NEZ PERCE INDIANS ARE SENT SOUTHWARD. (1905, October 16). The Ladysmith Daily Ledger, p. 1. 1347 The Nimiipuu people, whose traditional territories stretch across the U.S. states of Idaho, Oregon,

Montana and Washington. 1348 Also known as the Nez Perce War of 1877. The Treaty of Walla Walla, signed in 1855, guaranteed

to the Nez Perce over 7 million acres of their traditional territory, and the right to hunt and fish as

formerly on any ceded land. By 1877, the United States government saw the treaty as an obstacle to

settlement. They demanded that the Nez Perce relocate to a reserve in Idaho. The Nimiipuu people

refused. This led to an armed conflict between the Nez Perce and the U.S. Army which the army

eventually ‘won’. Over 400 Nez Perce surrendered, and more than 200 fled to Canada. “General Miles

[of the U.S. army] says Chief Joseph [of the Nez Perce] is the best specimen of an Indian he ever saw,

and that he conducted against the whites a careful, skillful and humane campaign. The General shares

in the opinion that the Nez Perces were defrauded and forced into the war. Now they have lost

everything but their clothing, arms and blankets. One of them, an old man, had $30,000 when the war

began, $6,000 in cash.” American Mail. (1878, January 4). The Daily British Colonist, p. 3. 1349 A reservation in Washington state that dates back to 1872. It is home to the Confederated Tribes

of the Colville Reservation, among which are members of the Nez Perce.

821

ago cleaned out all the game in that country and for the past three or four years they

have been in the habit of riding into the Okanagan Valley to engage in hop–picking

at Coldstream ranch, which belongs to Lord Aberdeen1350 and is situated a few miles

out of Vernon.

Riding into the valley the Indians work diligently through the hop–picking

season, and then when on their way southward they sweep the entire width of the

valley for game in order that they may lay in their winter supplies of food. This

poaching has been going on for several years without interruption. The result is that

after the Indians have swarmed through the valley not so much as a jack–rabbit is

left to tell the story of the Okanagan game massacre.

Mr. Williams determined to stop the unlawful slaughtering of game in the

valley this year, so he went to the Coldstream ranch early in the week, sought out the

Indian chiefs, told them the law, had it further explained to them by Mr. Ricardo,

manager of the ranch, and then arranged to have a provincial police escort travel with

the Indians to the international boundary line to see that they killed no game on their

journey.

The trek southward will commence today. Enroute the Indians will be allowed

to remain for several days at a camping ground at the head of Okanagan Lake, where

they annually hold horse races and bet among themselves all the money they made

in the hopfields. The races continue till one man has all the money and the others all

the experience. Then they are called off, and it is back to the reservation. After leaving

the head of the lake, the Indians will only be allowed to camp one night in any one

place – they must keep moving.

17. The E. Clemens Horst Hop Co. Camp (1906)

August 181351: “A small army of Indians and their wives and families came in from

the Vancouver cannery on Wednesday evening, that cannery having closed down for

the season. A number of them came into the city on a scow, towed by the Fraser while

others came in on the Transfer. The representative of the Horst Hop Gardens rounded

up the bunch and offered them inducements of such a characters that by noon

yesterday the whole cavalcade had vanished. Some went by water and the balance

went by train to Harrison and thence to the scene of the action at Sardis, where they

will engage in hop picking.”

September 221352: Sir, – My attention was called to–day to a paragraph in your issue

of the 13th inst.1353 which, from the misstatements it contains, is calculated to

prejudice the people of the cities of New Westminster and Vancouver against the hop

1350 John Hamilton Gordon (1847 – 1934), 1st Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair. At the time this

article was written, he was styled the Earl of Aberdeen. 1351 From Indians Go to Hop Fields. (1906, August 18). New Westminster Daily News, p. 3. 1352 From Ogle, J. (1906, September 26). New Westminster Daily News, p. 7. Written by Joseph Ogle (1839 – 1920). 1353 To the best of my knowledge, this issue has not survived.

822

pickers who on their return to their homes up the coast have to remain short periods

before they can take the boats for their homes.

I would say that so far from it being true that there has been a serious outbreak

of measles in the Chilliwack camps, in the camps of the E. Clemens Horst Hop Co.

there has not been this year a solitary case of measles or any other contagious disease.

In these camps, containing some 1,200 Indians of all ages, from the baby at the breast

to the decrepit old great grandparents, there have been but four deaths – one young

man who was dying of consumption when he came here; one infant from teething; one

child from concussion of the brain caused by accident, and one infant from summer

complaint. In the four weeks they have been in the camps the mortality has been

much smaller than in the comfortable homes of the white citizens of this locality.

The paragraph in question would cast an unjustifiable reflection on both the

business acumen and the humanity of the proprietors of the hop yards of this district.

This year both H. Hulbert and the E. C. H. Hop Co. have had wooden tents prepared

for the pickers, and they have been more comfortably housed than at any time since

hops have been raised in the valley. Great pains have been taken to supply them with

good water, and the sanitation of the camps has been carefully attended to. The fact

that some 1,500 hop pickers have been together for a month and not a death occurred

from contagious disease and not a case of typhoid fever has occurred, demonstrates

not only the healthfulness of the district, but indicates the paternal care that has

been exercised by the proprietors of the hop ranches. The writer is an old resident of

Sardis and has known the conditions that have obtained at every hop picking season

since 1892, and I take great pleasure in testifying to the continual kindness of the

hop ranch proprietors and solicitude for the moral and material welfare of their

employes; and I would also testify to the good behavior of the pickers. Not a solitary case of disorder or drunkenness has been called to my attention, and in no case has

the services of a constable been needed. After stating such a condition of affairs, it is

needless to say there is no bar where strong drink is dispensed.

On their return to the coast I would bespeak for these people who have been so

orderly and law abiding courteous treatment, and an effort on the part of those in

authority to find them a place to camp.

Thanking you, Mr. Editor, for the space for this communication, I am, yours

truly,

JOSEPH OGLE, J. P.

Sardis, B.C., Sept. 22, 1906.

18. “Interesting and Picturesque” (1907)1354

An interesting and picturesque sight was that presented yesterday on the

shores of the Songhee reserve in the neighborhood of the E. & N. railway bridge,

where hundreds of Indians of all ages and descriptions were camped, having arrived

in parties within the past few days from the salmon fishing on the Fraser river. From

1354 From INDIANS ARRIVE HERE FROM FRASER RIVER. (1907, August 31). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 2.

823

here they will cross the straits to the state of Washington, where they will engage in

hop picking, after which they return to their homes, which are for the most part on

the west coast. The Indians crossed from New Westminster in all kinds of craft, each

laden with several natives and the usual equipage incidental to Indian life. The

smaller boats were drawn up on the beach, while the larger sailers rode at anchor.

About the shore lay, sat or squatted the members of the party, the male members as

became superior beings taking things easy, while for the most part the females were

busy with the work incidental to such life or looking after their respective offspring.

Early yesterday morning the inevitable potlach took place and those who had

occasion to be out about 4 o’clock or later might have heard the yells of the braves as

they whooped her up. The racket continued until well on in the forenoon yesterday,

but later in the day when any of the natives were asked about the celebration their

only answer was an “Umph, umph.” They were not discussing the performance with

outsiders.

19. “A Poor Season” (1908)1355

“From the standpoint of the Indians the past season has been poor indeed,”

remarked W. F. Robertson, Indian agent at Duncan, who arrived up the line

yesterday. He stated that the members of different tribes were beginning to return to

their homes from the different places where they have been engaged in fishing, hop

picking and other pursuits. Their fall work, he stated, had not brought them as much

return as usual. In fact, many were in debt, while the majority reported little better

than the payment of expenses. While this was the case Mr. Robertson did not think

that there would be any distress among the natives during the winter months. As far

as he could gather they would be fairly comfortable until the advent of spring.

Those who went fishing on the Fraser river, Mr. Robertson says, did not do

well by any means. Most of them earned a little over 25 cents a day, which, perhaps,

paid expenses. Others were not that successful and as a result were in debt.

As a result of the poor returns obtainable from that source a large number had

gone to the other side to engage in hop picking. Indians from the west coast had joined

in the annual pilgrimage to Washington and, consequently, the labor market was

flooded. The natural outcome was that the employers had reduced the remuneration.

Usually they offered $1 for every box filled with hops by the Indians. This year they

had reduced the payment to 80 cents a box. Hence those who had gone to the other

side had not done as well as they anticipated.

Besides, Mr. Robertson asserts, that the Indians are unanimous in the

statement that the extent of the Washington hop fields is decreasing every

twelvemonth. One of them, in discussing the question, had said that territory which

formerly had been utilized for the cultivation of hops was cut up into lots and was

covered with buildings. This development had curtailed the field of labor on which

1355 From INDIANS HAVE A POOR SEASON. (1908, October 28). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 7.

824

they depended, so that, not only was there more labor than usual, but the crop was

lessened to an appreciable degree.

On the whole, however, Mr. Robertson does not believe that the situation is

serious. As stated, he thinks that the Indians will pull through the slack season

without trouble with the possible exception of sickness among their numbers. This,

he avers, is more pronounced than in the past and the indications are that it will be

more than usually prevalent.

20. “Labor is Scarce” (1909)

August 61356: “C. Speedman, of Vernon, was in the valley this week endeavouring to

procure Indians for hop–picking. The hop crop in the Okanagan is quite large this

year and labor is scarce.”

September 11357: “The noble r–– man is having the time of his life at present in

Victoria. Dozens of the Indians who have been working at the canneries and at the

annual hop–picking work are now sojourning in the city, and their presence is being

forcibly impressed upon the authorities. Were it not for the erratic antics of a trio of

b––––s on Johnson street last night, the police would have had a clean slate. The

three were filled to the limit, and besides had a liberal supply cached away in their

clothing, but when they awake in the morning their only remembrance of the

overnight debauch will be a headache.”

September 301358: “One of the features of the Fall Fair at Vernon was an Indian “pow–

wow,” given by the Indians who were hop picking in the district. It was the first time

many of the white people had seen the Indian war dance, and the spectacle proved

highly entertaining. They were treated afterwards to an address by the chief.”

October 11359: “The hop picking season in the upper valley has concluded, and the

Indians are returning to the city en route for the canneries, where more work awaits them. The Beaver will bring down a large party on her next trip, arrangements

having been completed to that end yesterday.”

October 211360: “Several Indians returning from hop picking at Vernon passed

through here yesterday on their way back home to the Columbia River district. In the

evening they gave a pow–wow in the exhibition park, a good attendance being

present. Gaily dressed in feathers, they performed all the rites and ceremonies of

their race greatly amusing the audience assembled. The greatest amusement

however, was after the dancing was over, when they squatted around the fire built in

1356 From LOCAL NOTES. (1909, August 6). The Nicola Herald, p. 4. 1357 From Too Much Fire Water. (1909, September 1). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 6. 1358 From News of the Valley. (1909, September 30). The Orchard City Record, p. 2. 1359 From CITY NEWS. (1909, October 1). The New Westminster Daily News, p. 8. 1360 From Several Indians. (1909, October 21). The Orchard City Record, p. 1.

825

the middle of the track and dealt with the proceeds. The chief of the tribe was one

Charlie Will Polken, who informed us that about three times the number would

perform next year.”

21. “An Interesting Sight” (1910)

August 231361: “The Indians are now converging from all parts of Southern British

Columbia and Washington upon Vernon for the hop–picking season. About fifty long–

haired members of the Napero tribe from Southern Washington were camped in

Penticton today, and will continue their journey by easy stages to Vernon tomorrow.

Their encampment made a picturesque scene, the men with their bright colored shirts

and the women with their no less brightly colored cheeks. It is reported that there

will be a splendid harvest of hops on the Coldstream ranch this summer.”

September 11362: “A band of Nez Perce Indians from Idaho, passed through the town

last Thursday afternoon, to the great delight of the boys. They were a large band some

150 to 200 strong, and with their large numbers of pack horses and their picturesque

attire were really an interesting sight, and a good mark for the amateur

photographer. They were on their way to Vernon for the hop–picking season.”

September 41363: “It is estimated that there are upwards of seven hundred Indians

engaged in the hop picking in the Agassiz district.”

October 111364: “Many of the Indians who for the past month have been engaged in

hop–picking in the Agassiz fields returned to the city yesterday and are camped in

the market square. They will spend some of their money here and then leave for their

homes up the coast and on the island.”

22. Experimenting with Machinery (1911)

October 11365: Hop picking in the district is almost finished. On the Clements Harts

company ranch, 1000 acres in extent, 1000 hands have been employed, comprising

about 700 Indians, the others being chiefly Hindus and Chinamen. Hop prices range

from 40 to 45 cents per pound and the yield this year averages about 1440 pounds to

the acre.

This year an experiment with three hop picking machines has been tried. They

are stated to be capable of picking a box of hops in five minutes and to effect a

considerable saving in labor, but it is alleged they do not pick as clean as hand

operators.

1361 From HOP–PICKING SEASON. (1910, August 24). The New Westminster Daily News, p. 1. 1362 From Town and Country. (1910, September 1). The Orchard City Record, p. 2. 1363 From PROVINCIAL HAPPENINGS. (1910, September 4). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 20. 1364 From CITY NEWS. (1910, October 11). The New Westminster Daily News, p. 8. 1365 From HOP PICKING OVER. (1911, October 2). The New Westminster Daily News, p. 1.

826

Hop farmers at Sardis and Agassiz intend to lay more land under cultivation

next year. The hop pickers are preparing to leave the district.

October 121366: “The S–––––hes held a Potlach at Sardis to celebrate the end of the

hop picking season.”

23. A Strike (1912)

August 241367: “Between the mouth of the Fraser and New Westminster, there are

1200 Indians working in the canneries. When the bulk of the salmon is packed, they

all take part in the hop picking at Sardis and Agassiz.”

August 291368: Hop–picking opened today at Sardis and by the beginning of

September will be in full swing. To open the season, 200 Indians are employed and in

a few days their numbers will have increased to 1000 men, women and children

engaged in stripping the poles of their trellises of light–green hops.

Hop growing has been practiced at Sardis since the early nineties and although

the years have brought varying harvests, there has been no real failure and there is

the amplest evidence of the suitability of the soil for this branch of agriculture. The

principal grower is the B. C. Hop Company, which has about 250 acres in cultivation,

and another forty acres are brought to their present state by Mr. Hulbert, who has

been in the business here for several years. A good average crop is promised this year.

Off Mr. Hulbert’s fields a ton an acre is expected and his are an early English variety,

with which the picking starts.

Indians are now congregating at Sardis from many parts of the province. The

B. C. E. R.1369 has had to run special trains to carry them to Sardis.

The hops grown at Sardis go all over Canada and occasionally shipments have

been sent to England. A duty of 16 cents a pound effectually stops their entry into the

United States. There is not enough beer brewed in British Columbia to take the crop

of ten acres and hop growers declare regretfully that less and less are hops being used

and the beer so much more impoverished.

September 21370: The four hundred Indian hop pickers gathered at Agassiz for the

season’s operations demonstrated their lordly independence of the white man by

going on strike for better pay last week, when the hop picking commenced. This is a

customary procedure with the r–– men and the officials of the B. C. Hop Company

here are not greatly concerned, affirming that the pickers will be back to work in a

day or two. The Indians demand $1.25 a box as the reward for their labor. The

1366 From Western Float. (1911, October 12). The Ledge, p. 1. 1367 From Concentrates. (1912, August 24). The Phoenix Pioneer and Boundary Mining Journal, p. 2. 1368 From INDIANS ATTACK SARDIS HARVEST. (1912, August 30). The New Westminster Daily News, p. 3. 1369 The British Columbia Electric Railway, in operation from 1897 to 1979. 1370 From HOP PICKERS STRIKE. (1912, September 7). The Delta Times, p. 2.

827

company will pay, as last year, $1.00 a box for picking ordinary hops, and $1.25 a box

for tent hops. Of the latter, the quantity is small. The company state that these are

the prices being paid at Chilliwack, where picking is in full swing, and they consider

that it is a fair remuneration.

September 121371: A band of Nez Perce Indians from the Washington reserve passed

through town last Saturday. They numbered in all about 100 and with their horses

were ferried over from Westbank. Their picturesque appearance attracted camera

enthusiasts in large numbers. They left during the afternoon for Vernon where they

will engage in the hop picking. It is probable they will come through Kelowna on their

way back and give us the usual pow–wow.

September 121372: A most interesting and picturesque sight was to be seen last

Saturday and Monday when large numbers of Indians passed through the district on

their way to take part in the hop–picking at the Coldstream Ranch near Vernon. All

conditions and kinds these were, from the venerable old “tyees”1373 to the “tenas

papoose”1374. From as far south as central Washington they come, riding their

“cayuses” and leading or herding along the pack–horses loaded with blankets, food,

and cooking outfits, camping by lake or stream, wherever night finds them. This

annual excursion to the hop fields of the Coldstream Ranch partakes the nature of a

vacation or holiday to them, and also a means to procure the ever necessary

“chickamen.”1375 It is interesting to watch them file by – the “s–––––s”1376 with their

vari–colored garments and the “b––––s” with their deerskin coats and “chaps.”

Civilization has wrought its changes amongst them; but there is still much that clings

to these “children of nature” of their aboriginal state, and this glimpse we have of

them once a year reminds us of the first dwellers of British Columbia, a race which

will ere long have all passed over the “Great Divide,” to the “Saghalie Tyee”1377

beyond.

24. How Hops Were Picked (1913)1378

Immense fields of hops in the Fraser valley around Agassiz and Chiliwack are

now being populated with an army of pickers, men, women and children, who look

forward to this harvest as the greatest opportunity they have for outdoor life, and

combine business and pleasure.

1371 From Town and Country. (1912, September 12). The Kelowna Record, p. 4. 1372 From Okanagan Centre. (1912, September 12). The Kelowna Record, p. 5. 1373 Chinook trade jargon for “chiefs”. 1374 Chinook trade jargon for “small child”. 1375 Chinook trade jargon for cash (or specie). 1376 An offensive term for Indigenous women. 1377 Chinook trade jargon for “Deity”. 1378 From THOUSANDS BUSY IN VALLEY HOP FIELDS. (1913, September 8). The New Westminster News, p. 3.

828

Many families with no settled income go to the hopfields yearly, making wages

which go far in keeping them through the winter. Earnings of from $5 to $8 a day,

and even higher, are made by some of these families, all depending upon the number

and ability of the pickers and the abundance of the hops.

Indians make good pickers, and flock to the yards in large numbers every year.

There are fully 3,000 of them in the hop fields this season.

It is not unusual to see white men, women and children, Indians with their

papooses and negroes with their pickaninnies, all employed in the same yards. Each

nationality forms a group by itself, however, both in the situation of the living

quarters, and in the part of the field occupied, and they rarely come into any but the

most casual contact.

In the largest yards several hundred pickers are employed; while in some

sections where the yards are small, the picking becomes a neighborly affair, the wives

and daughters of prosperous farmers taking part in it as a matter of course.

Growth is Beautiful.

A healthy, vigorous hop field, under good cultivation, is a beautiful sight. The

wires stretched from pole to pole bear their lovely burden of dark green vines in long

rows, from end to end of the field. Scattered over these, and depending in graceful

clusters, are seen the lighter green of the cone–shaped hops, like flowers among their

leaves. The odor is pungent and healthful, and many semi–invalids work at hop

picking upon the advice of their physicians, that they may inhale this odor, and also

be in the open air.

The care and cultivation of the crop affords work to all in the vicinity who wish

it. Beginning with the preparation and cultivation of the ground, through twining the

young vines on the strings by women and children; training them on the wires by the

men, and the entire season’s care up to the gathering of the crop, which gives work

for all from the time of blossoming to the harvest is only about six weeks.

Busy Times in the Fields.

A hop field at picking time is a very busy place. Boxes, baskets and grain bags,

open by inserting a barrel loop at the top, form the receptacles for picking, these being

emptied later into the boxes provided by the growers. The size of these boxes varies

in different yards. In some the box is a large one, containing twenty–six and one–half

bushel grain measure, for which the picker receives $1.00; in others a box holding

nine bushels brings 50 cents in payment, while in others $1.00 is paid for 100 pounds.

Some growers pay a 5 per cent. bonus to those pickers who remain with them during

the entire harvest.

Most growers seek to employ only respectable persons and discourage

drunkenness and lawlessness, both for the purpose of making the work desirable to

the better class of pickers and because it is for their own interest to have things quiet

and peaceable.

CALL FOR HOP–POLE MAN

Should you visit one of these fields, you would hear the frequent cry of “hop–

pole! hop–pole man!” which might puzzle you, until you saw a man coming carrying

a long pole. This terminates in a knife and a hook in one end, and by a quick deft

829

twist, it lifts the wire on which the hops are trained off the supporting post, and down

within easy reach of the pickers. One man thus covers a large portion of the field.

When a box is filled the picker calls “Ticket! Ticket!” when the “ticket man” or

inspector answers. He looks the box over to see if it is clean and of good measure and

if satisfactory a ticket is given for the amount due for the work. The ticket is marked

with the name of the picker and the number of the box. This is done so that if the box

is found deficient in any way it may be traced to the picker who filled it.

Two strong young fellows, called “rustlers” then appear. These wear straps

over their shoulders to help them in lifting the heavy boxes, which are carried to the

side of the road, after first heaping the hops high in the centre as a sign to the drivers

that they are ready to be taken to the kilns. Twelve or fifteen boxes are loaded on a

wagon at once and taken to the kilns for their final preparation for the market.

AT THE KILNS

At the kilns the hops are shoveled into the dry room and spread about two feet

thick over an open lattice–work floor. The room is very tightly built, and when the

door is shut the heat in the furnace beneath is turned on being allowed to reach 140

or 150 degrees. Several pots of sulphur are also lighted in the furnace rooms, the

fumes entering with the heat and bleaching the hops. After being kept in this heat

for twenty–four hours the hops are shoveled out into the adjoining room where the

final process, that of baling, is performed. This is done by machinery. The press is

lined with the canvas for each bale, and when the bale is turned out the canvas is

sewed on and it is ready to be hauled to the warehouse to await shipment.

25. A Prelude to Wartime (1914)1379

The Indians who have been working in the various canneries down river are

beginning to migrate. Yesterday a carload left for the Fraser valley where they will

join in the hop picking annually carried on around Sardis and Chilliwack.

26. The Agassiz Hop Fields (1915)

September 31380: “Fifty–eight of the Indians from Chulus and other reserves left on

Monday morning for the hop–picking at Agassiz, the majority entertaining at Merritt,

the remainder at Coutlee and Lower Nicola and other stations towards the Bridge.”

September 241381: In view of the recent departure of some seventy Indians from

Chulus reserve and other points of the Valley to Agassiz for the hop picking season,

the following should interest our readers.

The Agassiz hop fields, a few miles out of the town, lie along the shores of the

Fraser River.

1379 From Indians Will Pick Hops. (1914, August 27). The New Westminster News, p. 4. 1380 From Local Jottings. (1915, September 3). The Nicola Valley News, p. 4. 1381 From Local Indians Now Camped at Agassiz Hop–picking. (1915, September 24). The Nicola Valley News, p. 1.

830

In two fields, of about 1000 acres, more than a thousand Indian men and

women are engaged in picking, earning from $2.00 to $4.00 per day. This is the

annual harvest for the Indians.

With their children the Indians live in camps arranged like barracks, some of

wood, some of canvas, but all perfectly clean and well ventilated.

In central aisles are huge cooking ranges on which they cook their salmon,

beans, potatoes and bread.

Miles of clothes line provide for the laundry of the camp in which an Indian

village is magnified but concentrated.

Socially the tribes make the very best of their stay in the camp as every evening

the young men and women dance to music of their own on a large platform in the

open.

27. “A Boon to Local Merchants” (1916)

September 31382: “With the advent of the hop–picking season in the State of

Washington there has been initiated the annual migration of Indians from the

various reserves on Vancouver Island to points across the Sound. Yesterday about

125 Indians from various Island points, especially from the West Coast, arrived in

Victoria and today and tomorrow they will take the boat for Seattle, whence they will

be distributed through the hop–growing districts of the adjoining territory. Several

hundreds of Indians from this side will leave for the hop–fields.”

October 241383: When the C. P. R. steamship Tees left for the West Coast on Saturday

night she carried 160 Indians, part of the number who have been spending the past

ten days or two weeks in Victoria, on their way home from the hop fields of

Washington, where they were engaged in the annual hop–picking operations which

yearly attract a large number of British Columbia aborigines.

In all there have been almost 1,400 Indians pass through Victoria, all with

more or less money. In spite of the attractions which the city always presents to the

Indians, the conduct of the visitors this year, as in the past, has been exemplary, only

a very few getting into trouble and then only because of liquor supplied to them by

whites or Chinese.

The presence of the Indians in the city proved a boon to local merchants, as the

visitors spent their money freely. A considerable number of the males secured road

work in Saanich.

Dominion Indian Constable Thomas O’Connell, who is in the city looking after

the Indians is loud in his praises of the good behavior of his wards.

1382 From Off to the Hop–Field. (1916, September 3). The Daily Colonist, p. 6. 1383 From MANY INDIANS IN CITY. (1916, October 24). The Daily Colonist, p. 5.

831

28. Reduced Operations (1917)1384

Few of the Coast Indians took a hand in the hop–picking operations owing to

the smaller crop this year, due to reduced acreage and reduced yield. This work was

handled chiefly by the Interior Indians and those of the districts in which the hop

fields are located. Some of the Coast and Island Indians went over to the State of

Washington for the hop–picking work there, chiefly members of the Saanich and

Cowichan tribes. The West Coast Indians were not represented in as large numbers

on the Fraser as formerly, owing to the good fishing on the West Coast of the Island.

29. Gatherings (1920)1385

The Indians, after having spent the past month or six weeks at the hop fields

in the State of Washington, have returned to their respective reserves. This year saw

a larger exodus from the local reserves, their villages and camps here being almost

completely deserted. In the Indians there seems to be an inborn love of “gatherings,”

whether it be a “hee–hee,” the fishing on the Fraser River, or the hop–picking. In

their gatherings there seems to be a fascination that they cannot resist. And when

the time arrives for their departure, with bundles and “ictas” galore, the entire family,

from the old, half–blind grandmother to the infant in arms, will form a part of the

procession. This year many of the Cowichan Indians went over to Yakima in the State

of Washington, while a few went to the big fields in the vicinity of Puyallup. The

Indians returning from Yakima report that they just experienced one day of rain. In

Puyallup there was considerable rain.

30. Conditions are Bad (1921)1386

Reports of bad conditions and low wages in the Hop fields near Chilliwack have

been received by the Federationist. Wages as low as thirty cents per hour and the

accommodation provided for men and women engaged in hop picking are almost

beyond description.

One report is to the effect that at one place, where Indians, Japs, Hindus,

Chinamen and a few white men and women are engaged in this work, that teamsters

are paid thirty five cents per hour, and that men working in the kilns, at a

temperature of 140 degrees, 10 hours per day, receive the magnificent sum of $3.00

per day.

The Indians have been seeking to secure a higher rate of pay, they being paid

only $1.25 per box for picking, fast pickers only being able to pick a box per day, after

some trouble this price was raised to $1.50.

1384 From INDIANS ASSIST IN INDUSTRIAL WORK. (1917, October 11). The Daily Colonist, p. 10. 1385 From HOP–PICKERS RETURN. (1920, October 13). The Daily Colonist, p. 9. 1386 From CONDITIONS BAD IN HOP FIELDS. (1921, September 23). The British Columbia Federationist, p. 4.

832

One white worker, who showed signs of revolt at the treatment handed out,

was ordered off the job. The Indians heard what had taken place and stated that if

the white man was fired they would quit. The white man stayed and the individual

who had ordered him off the job was the one who apologised and stated that “it was

all a mistake.”

The conditions under which the hop pickers have to live are even worse than

the wages. There are no sanitary arrangements, worthy of that title, and the shacks

are unfit for human habitation. Workers are warned to keep away from this district,

as there is little chance of any improvement in the conditions, as the older element

among the Indians is too conservative or scared to protest.

31. “Wishes to Employ All White Labor” (1926)

August 261387: “The call has come to the Employment Service of Canada in Vancouver

and Victoria for the enrollment of pickers, with the prospect of a start at the work

about September 1. The Canadian Hop Growers, Ltd., is a new organization and

wishes to employ all white labor.”

September 11388: “There has been a great exodus of the local Indians to the hop picking

this year. Many have gone to the State of Washington, where they find employment

in the big hop fields around Puyallup, and others have gone still farther afield to the

hop yards at Yakima, Wash. Agassiz and Chilliwack hop fields also drew a large quota

from here this year. Hop picking season continues about three weeks.”

1387 From HOP–PICKERS WANTED FOR MAINLAND FIELDS. (1926, August 26). The Daily Colonist, p. 8. 1388 From Indians Go Hop Picking. (1926, September 2). The Daily Colonist, p. 16.

833

Settlers and the Songhees Nation For many years, the Songhees First Nation reserve was located across the harbour from downtown Victoria, B.C. Some settlers of the provincial capital saw this as an obstacle to the city’s growth, and tried to find ways around the nation’s treaty rights. A relocation was finally negotiated with the Songhees Nation in 1910.

32. The ‘Problem’ of the Songhees Reserve (1908)1389

The spectacle of a community of 30,000 souls being baffled in their endeavors

to remove from their path a great obstacle to civic growth and expansion by a small

group of Indians, is sufficient warrant for some attempt at comprehending the exact

situation as it is today in respect to the Songhees reserve problem and the duty of the

people of Victoria in regard thereto.

At various times during the last quarter of a century determined efforts have

been exerted by certain public bodies in Victoria and agents of the Government to

consent to take up another domicile and accept adequate remuneration for the

relinquishment of their present abode. While these attempts have all proved abortive,

it has never been suggested, either by the Indians, or those acting in their behalf,

that the city was not justified, in view of all the circumstances, in pressing for the

opening of the reserve. There is, indeed, absolute unanimity among all parties on a

most important point – the wisdom and desirability of the remaining members of the

Songhees tribe – about 100 in number – removing from the confines of the

municipality.

It has, of course, been universally recognized that, inasmuch as the Indians

were granted the use of the land in question by the terms of a solemn treaty, the legal

difficulties to be overcome were of the most serious character. It would be extremely

foolish for a layman to attempt to unravel any legal tangle, or seek even to state the

exact status of this case in respect to the Indians’ rights, but one may with confidence

assume that a correct pronouncement upon this phase of the matter is the following

opinion forwarded the mayor and council on January 17, 1905, by W. J. Taylor1390, K.

C., city barrister, who, by the way, enjoys more than a local reputation as a very able

and learned lawyer:

Victoria, B. C., January 17, 1905.

His Worship the Mayor, Victoria, B. C.

Sir :– I have the honor to acknowledge receipt of your letter containing request

for an opinion as to the respective rights of, (a), the Indians; (b), The Provincial

Government; (c), The Dominion Government; (d), The City of Victoria, to the land

1389 From Gregg, C. A. (1908, January 12). The Problem of the Songhees Reserve. Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 25. Written by Charles A. Gregg (d. 1917). 1390 William John Taylor (1859 – 1944), buried at Royal Oak Burial Park Cemetery. In 1908,

Henderson’s City of Victoria and Suburban directory lists him as a partner for the law firm of Eberts

& Taylor, and living at the Union Club at 912 Douglas Street.

834

commonly known as the Songhees Indian Reserve, together with my views as to the

best means of bringing about the removal of the Indians.

In reply I beg to state that in the year 1850 a tract of land within which the

land now known as the Songhees Reserve, was evidently intended to be included, was

conveyed by certain Indians to the Hudson’s Bay Company.

For convenience of reference, the document of transfer is set forth and reads

as follows:

“Know all men, we the chiefs and people of Kosampson Tribe who have signed our

names and made our mark to this deed on the thirteenth day of April, one thousand

eight hundred and fifty, do consent to surrender entirely and forever, to James

Douglas, the agent of the Hudson’s Bay company, in Vancouver Island, that is to say,

for the Governor, Deputy Governor and Committee of the same, the whole of the lands

situate and lying between the Island of the Dead in the Arm or Inlet of Camoson and

the head of the said inlet embracing the lands on the west side and north of that line

to Esquimalt, beyond the inlet three miles of the Colquitz valley and the land on the

east side of the arm enclosing Christmas hill and lake and the lands west of those

objects. The condition of or understanding of this sale is this, that our village sites

and enclosed fields are to be kept for our own use; for the use of our children and

those who may follow after us; and the land shall be properly surveyed thereafter. It

is understood, however, that the land itself with these small exceptions becomes the

entire property of the white people forever; it is also understood that we are at liberty

to hunt over the unoccupied lands, and to carry on our fisheries as formerly. We have

received as payment fifty–two pounds ten shillings sterling1391.

“In token whereof, we have signed our names and made our marks at Fort

Victoria on the thirtieth day of April, one thousand eight hundred and fifty.

(Sgd) Hookoowitz his X mark and 20 others

“Done in the presense of (Sgd.) Alfred Robson Benson, M. R. C. S. L., Joseph

William McKay.”

This treaty extinguished the Indian title to the land. It will be noted that the

description of the land in this document is vague, but sufficient definiteness appears

to make it operative. The Western boundary line of the tract has since the treaty been

definitely surveyed, the shores of Victoria harbor forming the remaining boundary

lines.

While the verbiage of the document varies from that commonly used in

conveyance, it must be remembered that the document is not an ordinary conveyance

but a treaty and the language used, was, under the circumstances, doubtless

appropriate to the understanding of all parties to the compact.

It will also be noted that the tract was conveyed subject to certain reservations

in favor of the Indians, namely a right to occupy and enjoy their village site and

enclosed lands together with a right of hunting over the unoccupied portion of the

tract conveyed with certain appurtenant rights of fishing.

In the year 1867 (3rd April) the Hudson’s Bay company re–conveyed (with

certain exceptions not material to this inquiry) Vancouver’s Island to the Crown.

1391 About £6,060 in 2018 after adjusting for British inflation, which translates to about $10,700 CAD.

835

At this period, namely, the year 1867, the crown became possessed of the land

occupied by the Indians subject to the Indians’ rights therein.

By clause 13, of the terms of the union, under which British Columbia entered

the Confederation of Canada, it was provided as follows:

“13. The charge of the Indians and the trusteeship and management of the

lands reserved for their use and benefit shall be assumed by the Dominion

Government and a policy as liberal as that hitherto pursued by the British Columbia

government shall be continued by the Dominion Government after the union. To carry

out such policy, tracts of land of such extent as it has hitherto been the practice of the

British Columbia government to appropriate for that purpose shall from time to time

be conveyed by the local government to the Dominion Government in trust for the use

and benefit of the Indians, on applications of the Dominion government; in case of

disagreement between the two governments respecting the quantity of such tracts of

land to be so granted, the matter shall be referred for the decision of the secretary of

state for the colonies.”

By section 91 of the British North America Act, all crown lands within the provinces

were vested in the respective provinces subject to the interests already created

therein.

At this time (1871) the land in question became the property of the province

but had not then been definitely set apart as an Indian reserve by the province being

merely crown land held in right of the province subject to the occupation rights of the

Indians. The procedure prescribed by clause 13, for the creation of a reserve after

confederation is set forth in the latter part of the clause and is shortly as follows.

(a) Application by the Dominion therefor to the province.

(b) Absent of the province thereto.

reference to the secretary of state for the colonies.

Since confederation, so far as I have been able to ascertain upon enquiry and

search at the government offices, Victoria, the Dominion has never formally made

application to the province for a conveyance of the land nor has the province ever

executed a conveyance therefor to the Dominion nor yet set it apart as an Indian

reserve. As a matter of fact, ever since confederation, the Dominion government has

exercised administrative control of the Songhees Indians without the reserve having

been formally created for such purposes. However it has been judicially declared that

neither the province nor the Dominion are bound by alleged acts of acquiescence on

the part of various officers of departments which are not brought home to or

authorized by the proper executive or administrative organs of the respective

governments and are not manifested by order–in–council or other authentic

testimony; so that acts of control over the Indians by the Dominion in no wise affect

the question of title.

The Hudson’s Bay company as absolute lords and proprietors of the territory

(subject only to the sovereign dominion of the crown) accepted surrender of the

Indians’ claim of title upon certain terms.

836

The crown having subsequently accepted a conveyance from the Hudson’s Bay

company of the land and revoked the Hudson’s Bay company’s charter, recognized

the treaty terms and vested the proprietary rights in such land in the province subject

to the Indians’ rights. * * * * *

Upon the faith of an undertaking given by the predecessors in title of the

province, the Indians were induced to relinquish title to the land. One term of the

undertaking was that the Indians, their children and children’s children and so

indefinitely for as long a period as any of the tribe survived, should be permitted to

occupy certain parts of the land. Assume Thellusson’s Act, (an act which limits the

period for which an estate may be entailed) in force at the time. Its existence must

have been unknown to the Indians. A law shortening and interfering as it would, with

the period of enjoyment of the lands preserved to the Indians by the words of the

treaty, could never have been in contemplation of the Indians else they would not

have surrendered their claim for so phantomlike a consideration. To get land in

consideration of preserving part thereof in perpetuity for the use and benefit of the

grantor, and then repudiate the consideration, for technical or other reasons, savours

too much of obtaining property under false pretences, to be seriously considered. The

Hudson’s Bay company when it accepted surrender of the Indian title, entered into

an honorable agreement to fulfil the terms upon the faith of which the surrender was

made. The company did fulfil those terms. The province as its successor in title, did

likewise. The Dominion assented to, assumed and undertook to continue a similar

policy of liberal and fair treatment and has never questioned its obligation or sought

to infringe upon the rights and privileges of the Indians as set forth in the treaty or

to subtract from or restrict those rights by anything outside the plain words of the

treaty.

Any such interpretation would be so contrary to the policy of amity, good faith

and conciliation observed by the crown as represented by either the Dominion or

province in all dealings with Indians, as to warrant a conclusion to the contrary. Prior

to confederation, the province in its dealings with Indians never attempted to apply

such a canon of construction to the terms of the treaty as would eliminated the words

“and those that follow after us” upon the ground that such words were inoperative in

view of the principles against perpetuity set forth in Thellusson’s Act1392. The

Dominion having undertaken to continue a policy with the Indians “as liberal as that

hitherto pursued by the British Columbia Government” lends strength to the

conclusion, that courts would adopt a broader principle of interpretation in construing

the effect of the treaty, than ordinarily derivable from a narrow legal construction of

its mere words, qualified by rules outside its terms. An interpretation to be arrived

at after considerations of policy as practiced by one government without express

1392 The Accumulations Act, 1800, created in response to Thellusson v. Woodford (1799). In his will,

Peter Thellusson granted his estate, with accumulated interest, to the last survivor among those

children, grand–children and great–grand–children alive at the time of his death. The bequest was

ruled valid. The Thellusson Act limited accumulation of property for the purpose of bequest for longer

than (for example) 21 years after the death of the grantor.

837

obligations but a policy which nevertheless was resolved into definite undertaking by

statutory assumption thereof as a duty by another government i. e. the Dominion.

The reasons applied in order to exclude as against the Indians the operation of

the rule against perpetuity of estate do not it seems to me apply to questions relating

to the disposition of such estate. In one case the Indians were treated as an

independent body upon a plane of equality for the purpose of contracting whereby

The Hudson’s Bay company secured the good will of the Indians as well as title to the

land. The Indians in turn by the words of the treaty secured certain rights and

privileges for themselves and their descendants. After the treaty the Indians passed

under the control, became wards of and dependent upon the crown for protection and

fulfillment of those rights. One privilege retained was a personal right of occupation

of the land possessed by each Indian. Neither within the terms of the treaty nor

without its terms under existing law, may an Indian or number of Indians dispose of

the rights of other Indians, whether in ease or in future. Even if every Indian living

should sell his or her respective occupation right and the Dominion government, as

trustee should approve of such sale, the title to the land would still remain subject to

a prospective encumbrance in favor of any Indian child born after the date of such

sale.

For the foregoing reasons, in my opinion, the status of the Songhees reserve is

as follows:

(a) The title to the land is vested in the province.

(b) The Indians have rights of occupation and incidental rights of hunting

thereover together with fishing rights in adjacent waters.

of of their rights and privileges.

(d) The city is without status in the premises, save as a public corporation

in the exercise of its police power empowered to preserve law, order and morality in

the community and the fact that the proximity of the Indians’ settlement is a menace

to the city’s welfare.

(e) Under the existing state of the law, the land cannot be alienated, so as

to transfer a marketable title. The consent of all the Indians living together with the

consent of the Dominion and Provincial governments i. e. the executives, would not

be sufficient to overcome this difficulty, as any remedy necessitates concurrent

legislation by the Dominion and the province.

(f) One method of relief would be to obtain the consent of all Indians living,

to a transfer of the land; then have the Dominion pass a statute authorizing a

disposition of the rights of the Indians whether in esse or in future, and the province

pass a statute authorizing the sale of land free from encumbrances.

Provision would have to be made for the approval of the governor–in–council

and lieutenant governor–in–council respectively, of any proposals for the removal of

the Indians, so as that, in any scheme of rehabilitation of the Indians elsewhere,

privileges and advantages should be secured for them equal, at least, to those now

enjoyed. I have the honor to be, Sir. Your obedient servant,

(Signed) W. J. TAYLOR.

838

It seems to have been conceded by all those who at any time have been engaged

in an attempt to attempt to arrange a settlement with the Indians that, in any event,

and at any period, whether it be tomorrow, or fifty years hence, no adjustment of the

difficulty can be final without legislation both by the provincial and federal

governments formally dispossessing the Indians.

But the monumental fact staring the people of Victoria in the face is that the

Songhees Indians have shown that they do not wish to remove from the reserve. They

have not only repeatedly refused the most generous offers of compensation and

rehabilitation, but have indicated by their whole attitude that they are anxious to

avoid reaching an agreement, rather than to aid in the bringing of one about.

Now, no one disputes that in this they are acting within their exact rights, nor

that, except for the gravest reasons, would it be justifiable to suggest that they should

be interfered with in attitude. But they themselves tacitly admit, by their consent to

the opening of negotiations, that such grave reasons exist. And the question naturally

arises, How long, under these circumstances, will a situation working such a serious

disability to the community be permitted to continue?

Quite recently we have been told that it would be most unwise and impolitic at

the present juncture to discuss publicly this matter; that negotiations looking to a

settlement were still being carried on by the federal government, and that a harsh

word at this time might undo all that has been accomplished in the direction of

solving a very delicate problem.

One has but little difficulty in discovering what is hinted at here – and this is

that if an attempt were made to force a settlement, the faith of the whole of the Indian

population of British Columbia in the government of Canada might be shattered. He

would, indeed, be reckless who would advise any action calculated to create so

dangerous a situation.

But has the time not arrived when it is permissible to ask, in all seriousness,

whether the necessities of a community of 30,000 white people should not be placed

in the scale against the whims of a few Indians? To put it another way – going on the

ground of those who now cry “hush” – is it less desirable to satisfy Victoria’s legitimate

demands – nay, meet its actual requirements – than to so proceed as to ensure that

the faith of the Indians shall remain unshaken?

The present situation is simply intolerable, and to put it baldly, is a glaring

advertisement via an appalling apathy on the part of the people of Victoria. We have,

in characteristic fashion, merely toyed with a question which ought to have elicited

unanimous action of the most aggressive sort.

It may be said that aggressive action is not wanted. It is wanted. We have no choice. We do not desire to rob the Indians of a single penny. We are, on the contrary,

willing, nay, determined, that in any settlement which may be arrived at they shall

be munificently remunerated and provision made for the complete preservation of

their every right. Why, then, should we have any hesitancy in adopting a course of

action which we can defend on every ground and which we know will be universally

pronounced fair and honorable and just?

839

We were told the other day in a semi–official way that negotiations looking to

a settlement were proceeding nicely, and that it would probably be brought about at

an early date, but in view of the disappointments of the past we are justified in

attempting to ascertain what ought to be our course of action should there be

indications that a solution of the difficulty is to be delayed still further.

Of course, it is quite apparent that if the Dominion government takes the

position that the consent of the Indians must first be secured to any proposed terms

of settlement, and if the Indians absolutely refuse to give that consent, we are quite

powerless to secure any remedy until there shall be a change of government at

Ottawa. But one is inclined to harbor the thought that perhaps the Dominion

government might not be inclined to take such attitude in defiance of the wishes of

an important city of 30,000 people.

With these considerations in mind, then, let us indulge in a little speculation

as to what might result if a certain course of the procedure were to be adopted.

Suppose that the people of Victoria – not a little set of politicians, but the people of

Victoria – were to outline the entire case to the federal authorities and say to them:

“We ask that you will be good enough to arrange to have the Songhees reserve thrown

open as a portion of the area within the bounds of the city by July 1st. 1908. The

situation is utterly intolerable. The time has arrived when the preservation of the

rights of the Songhees tribe of Indians on their reserve in the heart of the city conflicts

with and works an injury to the interests of the entire people.” And suppose that a

delegation of leading citizens made the trip to Ottawa and in person presented this

proposal to the government, is it not reasonable to think that a great light would

dawn on the government and that so reasonable a demand would be met?

There would be nothing savoring of the hysterical about such a line of

procedure – on the contrary, it would exhibit what has been lacking up to this very

moment – a determination on the part of the people of Victoria to resist the

perpetration of what can only be characterized as an abominable and grievous wrong.

Is it conceivable for an instant that an equal number of white men bound to a

similar possession by exactly the same solemn treaty as are the twenty–five Songhees

Indian men, would be treated with the consideration shown the latter? Why, their

position would be declared untenable in short order; but because those in possession

of the reserve are Indians, and not white men, there is an atmosphere of mystery and

sentimentalism thrown around them which has been permitted to entirely obscure

the real issue.

One is hardly called upon to offer any argument to show how serious a need

exists for the immediate opening of the reserve so that it may become part and parcel

of the municipality. Dotted here and there with a number of shabby structures which

are the most glaring eyesores, immune from any supervision on the part of the

authorities so that sanitary facilities could be applied, a favorite rendezvous for

tramps and vagrants, frequently the scene of unseemly proceedings, it is at once a

menace to the pretty suburb of Victoria West, which it so closely adjoins, and a blot

on the civic landscape.

840

33. “After More than Fifty Years of Trying” (1910)1393

Unless something entirely unforeseen and unexpected occurs, one of the oldest

“points of interest” in Victoria will have passed away within a month or two, when

the Songhees Indians depart from their old stamping grounds. For many years the

reserve across the harbor and, to all intents and purposes, almost in the heart of the

business district of the city, was a show place for visitors. Set along the waterfront,

bordered by a fringe of dugouts and Indian craft of every description, the first row or

two of community houses afforded the tourist a real taste of Indian life within a

stone’s throw of the steamer docks. It was like a perpetual section of a world’s fair,

and its interest to the newcomers and the itinerant cheechakos was never failing.

The arrangement of satisfactory terms with the Indians by Messrs. J. S. H.

Matson and H. Dallas Helmcken, K.C., who acted on behalf of the Provincial

Government, constitutes what will unquestionably prove to be one of the most

important events of local history. While the old reserve was picturesque and

interesting to those unacquainted with Indian custom, it was a source of regret to

those interested in the development of the city. By the successful arrangement now

arrived at, the Indians will have better homes, and the impediment to the city’s

progress which has existed for more than half a century will be removed.

Many a story of interest might be told about the reserve soon to be vacated.

Some of the biggest potlatches ever held on Vancouver Island were staged there. In

the early days, not long after the Indians had been placed on the reservation, bad

blood arose between them and the whites, and there are men living in Victoria today

whose memories take them back to certain days when fighting men stood in readiness

to repel expected attack by the Indians.

One of the chief features of the reserves from the point of view of the tourist

was the large group of Indian hieroglyphics done in black on a background of white

and spread over the broad side of one of the largest community houses facing the

water1394. Many were the explanations made of this mysterious group of figures.

Every tourist with a camera made a picture of it, and it is safe to say that counterfeit

presentments of it are scattered over the civilized globe. Not very long ago, The Colonist received a letter from a young man in the middle Western States asking for further light on the question of hieroglyphics. This young man enclosed a copy of a

picture he had made of the sign during a visit to Victoria, and he also gave some of

the details of the “explanation” given him by some party or parties unknown about

the said sign. In the group on the wall an eagle is represented with a whale in its

talons, while sharks also form a part of the picture. “I understand,” wrote the young

man, in perfect sincerity, “that the picture is a warning placed there by a dissatisfied

hop–picker. The eagle, representing the United States, is shown with a bull whale in

his claws in the act of ‘peddling the bull’ to the Canadian Indians who have come to

the States for the hop season. Nearby the sharks that lurk to steal the Indians’ money

1393 From DELATE KLOSH WA–WA. (1910, November 6). The Colonist Sunday Magazine, p. 1. 1394 Described in detail elsewhere in this collection. See “Tribes thus United” (1908).

841

are also seen. But in trying to explain the thing to friends here, I cannot make out

what stands for the Indian.”

The young man sought information, and we turned his letter over to the proper

authorities. As nearly as the group can be explained, it may be said to represent a

dream of a West Coast Indian whose only daughter was drowned years ago in the

Fraser River during the salmon–fishing season. The huge sign was placed there by

the father, Jacob Chip, a Cloo–ose native, who, although he is said to have swam for

seven hours in an effort to reach shore with the girl, was unable to save her life1395.

By this sign he informs his brothers of the West Coast of the tragedy.

To the tourist fancy the Indians of the reserve while away the sunny days

sitting about the doors of the big community houses or visiting from lodge to lodge.

One pretty little Eastern school ma’am even had a faint notion that the braves hunted

the beaver all day in birchbark canoes while the women hoed corn or chopped wood.

Wide and strong is the influence of “Hiawatha”!1396

As a matter of fact, many of the men of the reserve work in the city, in canning

factories and on the wharves. Others cultivate small farms, raising hay and

vegetables, while many more are fishermen. It is one of the sights worth seeing to

watch the Songhees fleet of fishing boats starting for the Fraser in tow of a strong tug

when the salmon run begins.

On the new reserve new houses will be built, of course, and it is expected that

they will be great improvements on the old structures. It is likely that among the

older people who will live on the upper portion of the new reserve, some distance from

highway or railroad track, the community house will prevail still, while the younger

members of the band will probably erect separate cottages. The new reserve, while it

will be only a short distance from town, will, by reason of its location, be difficult of

access to visitors. The Indians, especially the older ones, do not take kindly to

intrusion, and it is likely that the tourist will find them a much more rare curiosity

than formerly.

The reserve from which the Songhees have agreed to depart now after all the

years marked by futile attempts to have them move, comprises 112 acres and lies just

across a narrow arm of the harbor from the main waterfront of the port of Victoria.

Yet it is not altogether surprising that the Indians sought to cling to this piece of land

as long as they did. In history it dates back to the earliest days of the settlement; it

1395 “On Thursday afternoon Chipps, with his daughter and her child and three other Indians, while

off Point Grey, west of Vancouver, were upset from the boat in which they were travelling and all were

thrown into the water. Chipps’ daughter with her infant clasped to her breast, was thrown some

distance from the boat. Her father went to her assistance and succeeded in grabbing her, but was

unable to reach the upturned boat to which the other three were clinging. Perceiving his inability to

do so, Chipps, after divesting himself of his clothes, including even his boots, started for the shore

holding his daughter with one arm and her infant with the other. The accident happened about 5

o’clock in the afternoon and from then until midnight Chipps swam shorewards, only to find on

arriving there that those whom he had made such wonderful efforts to save had died from exposure.”

RISKS HIS LIFE TO NO PURPOSE. (1907, July 14). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 2. 1396 The Song of Hiawatha (1855), an epic poem by the American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 – 1882).

842

had its origin in the first ordered attempts to centre civilization at the point where

the city of Victoria now stands, and it was the birthplace and lifelong home of

practically every member of the band now residing upon it. More than half a century

ago the Songhees, who, when the great Hudson’s Bay Company came to Vancouver

Island, occupied and hunted over the whole southern portion of the Island, were

gathered together by Sir James Douglas, representing the company, and placed upon

the reserve opposite the present–day city of Victoria. Up to that time their village had

been at Cadboro Bay, now a charming residential suburb of the city. Then, about

1850, the band entered into an agreement with the company whereby they

transferred all their land save the reserve on which they had been placed to the fur

traders for a small sum approximating fifty–two pounds ten shillings sterling.

By 1859 Victoria had grown into a town of some importance, and an effort was

made to have the Songhees move. The legislative council of Vancouver Island

petitioned Governor Douglas in the matter, and he advised them that it would be

impolitic to break the engagement entered into with the tribe by removing them

summarily. The attempted removal fell flat, and from 1859 down to the present time,

attempt has followed attempt, all with no result until now. In 1873 Indian

Commissioner Powell was instructed by the Government to take up the question. He

recommended the purchase of an island about 20 miles from Victoria for the use of

the Indians! This was approved of by all but the Indians. They declined to move, and

nothing was done further.

In the year 1881 Commissioner Powell reported that a majority of the Indians

had agreed to remove to Cadboro Bay, their old camping grounds, provided suitable

land could be obtained for them there. The Hudson’s Bay Company agreed to sell the

land needed, more than 1,000 acres, for $56,250, and this arrangement was urged by

Mr. Powell as there was already an offer of $60,000 for the old reserve. However, this

attempt too came to nothing because it was considered that the offer for the old

reserve was insufficient.

Three years later, Mr. Powell and Reserve Commissioner O’Reilly were

instructed to take steps to ascertain on what terms the best site for the Songhees

could be obtained. Two years later these gentlemen replied recommending the

purchase of two lots in the Metchosin district – now a fertile ranching country – but

the Deputy Superintendent General reported against their purchase until a sale of

the Songhees reserve was assured. Sir John A. Macdonald1397, who was then minister,

concurred in this. Up to 1888, correspondence in respect of this proposed arrangement

was continued with no effect. Meanwhile, Mr. R. Dunsmuir1398, acting for the

Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway Company (since acquired by the C. P. R.) offered

$60,000 for the reserve. He was authorized to treat with the Indians for the sale, but

he failed to gain their consent to move. It would be tedious to trace in detail the

serious attempts that ran through the years. The removal of the Songhees became a

standing problem inherited from generation to generation. Visits were made to

Ottawa, Ottawa made visits to Victoria; elections were won or lost on the reserve

1397 Sir John Alexander Macdonald (1815 – 1891), first Prime Minister of Canada. 1398 Robert Dunsmuir (1825 – 1889), coal baron, politician and railway magnate.

843

settlement issue; the Indians themselves made proposals which were unsuitable, and

those interested on the other side made proposals which the Indians would not accept.

The list of names of those who set themselves to the task of settling the vexed question

would look like a section of the voters’ list. At times settlement seemed so near as to

be almost assured, but invariably something would go wrong at the last moment until

the problem seemed hoodooed. Now, after more than fifty years of trying, success has

been achieved!

One of the most gratifying points about the solution of the long–standing

problem is the fact that the Songhees themselves are eminently satisfied. They were

ready to “trade fair” long since, but the results show that they needed to be treated

with consideration. At all events, nothing but praise of the men who brought about

the settlement is to be heard from the Indians, who describe the arrangement as a

“Delate cloosh hoy–hoy kinamox Boston–man pi Songhees.”1399

1399 Chinook trade jargon. In more standard spelling, the phrase becomes “Delate kloshe huy–huy

kimtah (?) mox Boston–man pe Songhees”. In English, this becomes “Exquisite bargain after double

Boston man and Songhees.” Historian John Sutton Lutz has translated the phrase loosely as “Very

happy with the agreement”.

844

The Evolution of Chop Suey in Canada to 1949 It was not unusual for early Chinese immigrants to Canada to start restaurants. For a long time, these ‘Chinese restaurants’ prepared mostly western dishes for a western clientele. Chop Suey was one of the first dishes to break through the cultural barrier, starting in the early 1900s.

34. A Rare Banquet (1907)1400 An Edmonton reporter was shocked to discover the depth of traditional Chinese cuisine, when given the opportunity to sample it at a formal banquet. At this meal, the Chop Suey was “a rare meat salad such as the real chop suey is, with chicken and duck, young bamboo, mushrooms, celery, water chestnut and Chinese oysters cut in mushroom shape.” The starch was in the form of “dainty cones of rice” served on the side.

“We live and learn.” There are times when the old truism stands out in letters

of light before us. As they did two evenings ago when a group of Edmonton folk picked

their way off Jasper on dusky Namayo1401 and presently took their places at a Chinese

banquet.

“Mine host” himself was a native of the Celestial Empire, which statesmen the

world over are watching in curiosity now at the hour of its awakening. Heartily in

sympathy with his country’s intention to rival Japan, with a brother among the

13,000 students selected by the Emperor to receive a modern education in literary

and industrial matters – Mr. Wah naturally has acquired much of Canadian modes

and manners. His guests on the other hand were just beginning to realize, not afar

off but directly at hand, some of the excellent points of the old, old Chinese

civilization; a civilization that was old while our British ancestors were still wearing

skin garments.

They perceived that their host was courtesy and dignity itself and recalled

tales heard of Li Hung Chang’s1402 tour in Canada, and that potentat’s tact and skilful

repartee. Then although the table linen and cutlery were unmistakably English the

pots of stately white Chinese lilies, the quaint sauce vessels (sometimes used for wine)

and the dainty Chinese dishes of almonds and sweet pickles were first evidences of

another civilization.

1400 From A RARE BANQUET. (1907, January 12). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 2. 1401 Jasper and Namayo were two streets in Edmonton. The latter has since been renamed 97 Street.

The intersection is the current site of the Hardware Grill and Passport Canada.

1402 Probably 李鸿章 (Li Hongzhang) (1823 – 1901). He was an diplomat of the Qing court, and

instrumental in negotiating the end of the Boxer Rebellion. Li Hongzhang visited Canada in 1896,

where he advocated for more permissive immigration policies.

845

But when the dishes came on, brought to us by a Chinese waiter in an

immaculate white suit with jade bracelets clinking on his wrist – those exquisite

dishes! What have we to teach the Orientals in dietetics or cooking? ‘Tis we who are

crude. They are the connoisseurs, the chefs.

Hey, the memory of it – “Won’t you have some more young bamboo?” Why, who

could refuse, even though there rose a vision of Chinese codes of etiquette forbidding

a second serving? It might not be polite – but who could resist the poetry of that dish?

Leaf–shaped slices of the young bamboo, Chinese oysters, lichen, from mountain

trees, flesh of the wild boar with piquant flavors. It was a poem of Nature – this moy–

fa–bow1403, and one ate it recalling the haunting melody of an old Japanese song that

runs something like this: “Dark on the face of a low full moon, Swayeth a tall bamboo

. . .”1404

Course after course, came in increasing elegance, until we began to recall tales

of 16–course banquets and remembering, grew afraid. But our host had anticipated

this and limited the courses to six. First was brought to us the favorite dish of Li

Hung Chang’s, bird’s nest soup, a sago1405–like soup in bowls with cold white of eggs

and a circle of pink ham of the wild boar floating on top of each. Both eye and palate

were satisfied with the daintiness of this course, and I observed the pretty young

matron opposite me look yearningly on the old China bowls.

Women have a weakness for china. It is characteristic, and I fancy some of the

elusive flavors of the next course – duck with almonds – were almost lost in

contemplation of the dish as its contents were served and its own beauties revealed.

Almonds and ham and boned duck, overlaid with the skin of the duck and garnished

with these accompaniments – it looked formidable to the Canadian, the guest of honor

who was to “divide the dishes,” but an inherent skill for carving stood him in good

stead.

Course three comes in what seems a semblance of bird’s nest soup, but is really

boned partridge, mountain tree lichens and pink garnishing of ham. Then came

course four – the moy–fa–bow in mound shape, with young bamboo, mushrooms and

water chestnut, making with wild boar and Chinese oysters a piece de resistance.

“Ah,” sighed the man at the head of the table, “I knew [I] had enough – until

this came.”

Then came the famous chop–suey – no stew of coarse Occidental meats, but a

rare meat salad such as the real chop suey is, with chicken and duck, young bamboo,

mushrooms, celery, water chestnut and Chinese oysters cut in mushroom shape. It

came borne on a superb platter, where birds of paradise hovered about the chop–suey

and Chinese couples in bowers discussed – Chinese politics possibly. With it dainty

cones of rice were served.

1403 I’ve been unable to identify this dish, but it is described below. 1404 Actually a quotation from a poem by Mary McNeil Fenollosa (1865 – 1954), better known as the

American poet and novelist Sidney McCall. Her ‘To a Japanese Nightingale’ reads in part, “Dark on

the face of a low, full moon / Swayeth the tall bamboo. / No flute nor quiver of song is heard, / Though

sheer on the tip a small brown bird / Sways to an inward tune.” 1405 A starch extracted from manioc or the heart of certain palm trees. The manioc version is used in

the production of bubble tea’s ‘tapioca pearls’.

846

But it was here the tea was brought on – such tea as only Chinese know, of

which to this restaurant of Hung Tei1406 only two small boxes come yearly, and over

which Mah Deb keeps careful guard. It is as expensive as champagne, and each tiny

packet of young leaves will supply an infusion for one cup only.

It was quite worth of Lo–Za’s1407 eulogy, as one of the guests interpreted to us

– truly a beverage that –

“Tempers the spirit and harmonises the mind, dispels lassitude and relieves

fatigue, awakens thought and prevents drowsiness, lightens and refreshes the body

and clears the perceptive faculties; exhilarates without intoxicating.”

So the Chinese sage has spoken, and so we agreed as we looked on the covered

bowls on copper stands, in which a delicious beverage was being infused, and which

only a Goth would mar with cream or sugar.

After the last course of Chinese cherries, oranges and California [peach]es,

came the tea–drinking, which is quite a stately ceremony to be sure. And then so well

did the [unreadable] of the East and West blend in harmony, it seemed not

inappropriate for the man at the end of the table to make even there a joke upon

Calgary, brought with him from His Excellency’s1408 levee at Ottawa on New Year’s

day1409. It was an ancient Chinese banquet surely; but the thought of the new China

rivalling Japan rendered our western humor not in–apt.

Then acceding to a request from the guests of the banquet in came Loo Low

himself, the artist–chef who had evolved the exquisite dishes. Again this might not

be Celestial etiquette to personally thank the cook, but it was the desire of the guests,

and the courteous host knew no will but theirs.

Loo Low in white garments; Hung Tei with the air of a man of state; Mah Deb

all smiling courtesy; Jim Mah Wah1410, a radiant disciple of the new Chinese regime

– they made an interesting group, and the picture they made followed us as we went

out from the lighted room to the dusk of Namayo with Jasper avenue lights beckoning

us ahead.

It had been a rare treat, and an expensive one for our host, but our appreciation

had been unstinted.

1406 Probably Hong Tei, proprietor of the Hong Tei & Co., Chinese merchants. In 1908 the business

was located at 150 Namayo Avenue.

1407 陆羽 (Lu Yu) (733–804), known as the Sage of Tea. The following quotation is from the opening

chapter of his masterpiece, 茶经 (The Classic of Tea). 1408 Albert Henry George Grey, 4th Earl Grey Governor General of Canada from 1904 to 1911. His wife

was Lady Sibyl Grey. 1409 “The first ball at the Federal Capital this year would seem to have been a decidedly pleasant affair.

It was given in the old Racquet Court by the May Court Club, of which Lady Sibyl Grey is May Queen,

in aid of the three hospitals at Ottawa. The hall was beautifully decorated with flags, holly, smilax

and electric lights. The ball took place on New Year’s eve.” SOCIAL. (1907, January 10). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 10. 1410 In 1906, Jim Wah was 20 years old and lived in Edmonton with five male Chinese boarders ranging

in age from 16 to 38. He emigrated to Canada from China in 1900.

847

35. By Appointment to His Majesty the King (1936)1411 Eventually, even the King of England would (allegedly) enjoy chop suey made with chicken and mushrooms.

Working as a rush–hour cook in a downtown Toronto restaurant, where meals

start at 25 cents, is a Chinese chef whose chop suey King Edward, then Prince of

Wales1412, pronounced “lovely, wonderful.”

“Prince like my chop suey so well he ask Lady Lougheed1413 to call me into

conservatory – very magnificent place, all beautiful flowers and gold–fish – and say:

‘Chin, that was a wonderful dish. Please have it next time I come.’

“He did not act like prince at all. He talk quick, he act quick, but he talk to

everyone, just like plain man,” was Chin Ping Yen’s description of King Edward,

whose dinner he had prepared when the then Prince of Wales was luncheon guest at

the home of Sir James and Lady Lougheed of Calgary in 1922.1414

Lady Lougheed had asked him not to serve turkey or some item of food which

was placed before the prince everywhere he went.

“Her ladyship tell me to serve something different, so I make chop suey of

chicken and mushroom sliced very fine. I make it to suit my own fancy, with maybe

20 different Chinese stuff. I can’t remember now all I put in but prince like it much,”

said Chin Ping Yen, who said he was 38 “counted Chinese”1415, but 37 according to

English reckoning.

1411 Liked Chinese Dish. (1936, October 22). The Crossfield Chronicle, p. 5. 1412 Edward VII (1894 – 1972) was King of the United Kingdom for under a year in 1936, before

abdicating in favor of George VI. 1413 Lady Isabella Clarke Hardisty Lougheed (1860 – 1936) was of Métis descent, and married to

Senator (later Sir) James Lougheed. She organized Calgary’s Local Council of Women in 1894. 1414 Probably a reference to Prince Edward’s visit to Alberta in 1923. “His Royal Highness the Prince

of Wales will for a month or so become a simple Canadian rancher. That he will travel incognito on his

coming to Canada does not mean that he will travel in disguise but that he will not take part in official

functions or make official visits, and when approached with regard to his stay in the Canadian

Dominion he has always stated that his time will be fully taken up by the affairs of the E. P. ranch.

The Prince of Wales exhibits a deep and marked interest in the ranch he purchased near Calgary”.

Prince of Wales was a Canadian Rancher. (1923, August 30).The Stony Plain Sun, p. 6. 1415 Traditionally, all Chinese people become one year older on the Lunar New Year, regardless of their

day of birth.

848

36. A ‘traditional’ recipe (1910)1416 The writer of this recipe employed a Chinese cook, asks for Chinese Sauce and wheat sprouts and assumes the reader has access to Chinese stores.

This Chop Suey recipe came long ago from our Chinese cook :–

The meat from eight pork chops, cut, not chopped, into small lumps and fried

brown in hot olive oil. To this add two cups of mushrooms, two large onions chopped

fine, a stalk of celery chopped, a cup of wheat sprouts, and three small tablespoons of

corn starch and two of sugar blended in water, and mixed with the rest. To this is

added three tablespoons of Chinese sauce1417, and all cooked over a very hot fire for

one hour, constantly stirring. The wheat may be sprouted at home, and

Worcestershire can be used in place of the Chinese sauce, though these may be

obtained at any Chinese store.

37. “This recipe is splendid” (1910)1418 The same year, an alternate recipe suggested the inclusion of convenience foods available in western food markets – a package of spaghetti and a can of tomato soup.

Chop Suey1419. – One and one–half pounds of chopped beef and one–half pound

of sausage meat cooked together, six large onions fried in butter brown, one package

of spaghetti cooked in salt water, can of tomato soup; put as much water as soup and

thicken with a little corn starch; add a little celery, salt1420, pepper, and salt [sic.] and

one tablespoon of sugar; fry onions real brown in butter and then fry the meat. When

all are cooked put in one dish and cook five minutes. This recipe is splendid.

1416 From Health Club. (1910, January 14). The Western Call, p. 3. 1417 Probably soy sauce. 1418 From HOME. (1910, June 23). Enderby Press and Walker’s Weekly, p. 3. 1419 An early version of this recipe was published in Victoria in 1908 as ‘Chop Suey of Beef’: “Break

into a kettle half a package of spaghetti, cover with salt water and boil. When almost tender add half

a can of tomatoes. Put butter in frying pan and fry in it three large onions, sliced, till brown. Add two

pounds of beef run through the machine. When all is nicely browned add the spaghetti and tomatoes,

stir, boil for a few minutes and serve hot.” HOUSEHOLD RECIPES. (1908, April 23). Victoria Daily Colonist, p. 8. 1420 Possibly a typo for ‘celery salt’, which would explain the redundant ‘and salt’ later in the sentence.

Celery salt was a popular seasoning available domestically at least as early as 1887, when it was

marketed by Toronto’s Pure Gold Manufacturing Co.

849

38. An Edmontonian Chop Suey (1923)1421 This recipe dates to the first year of the Chinese Immigration Act, which is popularly known as the Exclusion Act, and prohibited Chinese immigration to Canada until 1947. Since Edmonton had a significant Chinese population, the writer of this recipe may have had first–hand experience with Chinese cooks and restaurants. This is evident in the notes on ‘Shoyu Sauce’ and the care taken to write instructions on cooking rice in the Chinese style. In a nod to convenience, canned mushrooms are allowed as a substitute for fresh ones.

2 lbs. fresh pork,

2 cups sliced onions,

2 cups sliced celery,

1 – 2 cups chopped green peppers.

1 cup sliced canned or fresh mushrooms.

2 tablespoons Soya Sauce.

1 teaspoon cornstarch or ½ tablespoon rice flour.

2 cups stock (made from bone in pork)

1 cup rice.

From the pork, cut off every bit of fat; cut the meat in tiny thin slices, and put

bones on in four cups cold water to cook 20 or 30 minutes.

PLENTY OF RICE

Fry the fat until crisp, then add onions and cook without browning for five

minutes. Add meat, cook 10 minutes, add pepper, mushroom, cornstarch or rice flour

diluted with cold water, add stock, cover closely and cook 30 minutes. Serve on a

platter surrounded with rice which has been cooked dry.

A LA CHINESE

The Chinese add twice as much cold water as rice, a teaspoon of salt to each

cup of rice, and cook in a kettle closely covered 10 minutes or until the water has

disappeared. Then place kettle where rice will steam, but not burn, for 20 minutes.

It should be dry, and kernels distinct.

SOY BEAN SAUCE

The Shoyu or Soyu Sacue is the Worcestershire of China. It is made from the

soy bean and gives the characteristic flavor found in Chinese food. If it cannot be

purchased, use Worcestershire, one tablespoon, and a little salt. The Soyu Sauce is

salty, and where used, no other salt is required.

1421 From CHOP SUEY. (1923, February 1). The Edmonton Bulletin, p. 4.

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39. Calgary–style Chop Suey (1929)1422 This recipe assumes the reader has access to labor–saving appliances (food chopper, oven) and relies on commercial ingredients – packets, cans and prepared spices. Soy sauce is absent.

Chop Suey. – Put through food chopper, not too fine, ½ lb. pork steak and ½ lb.

veal steak; fry brown in butter; chop fine 1 celery root and 2 medium onions, and fry

slightly in butter; boil in salt water until tender 1 packet fine egg noodles, and drain.

Mix ingredients together, adding 1 can tomato soup, ½ teaspoon celery salt, salt and

pepper to taste, and bake in slow oven 1 ½ hours.

40. Canadian Chop Suey (1936)1423 The main innovation in this explicitly Canadian recipe, which also requires a food chopper, is the introduction of bacon.

Three–quarter cup uncooked macaroni

Three slices bacon

One–half pound round steak

Once cup chopped celery or cabbage

One–half cup chopped onions

One and one–half cups tomatoes

One–half cup boiling water

Salt and pepper to season

Cut bacon very fine, or put through food chopper and put in a hot pan until it

begins to brown. Add beef steak cut very fine and cook until brown. Then add onions

and celery. Cover closely and cook ten minutes. Add tomatoes, water and seasoning

and cook for twenty–five minutes. Add macaroni previously cooked and let all simmer

for about twenty minutes and serve very hot.

1422 From Mrs. G.F.R. (1929, September 16). Seasonable Recipes. The U.F.A., p. 19. 1423 From Mi Lady. (1936, August 6). Canadian Chop Suey. Crossfield Chronicle, p. 4.

851

41. Name Brand Soda Wafers (1939)1424 This recipe was almost certainly an uncredited advertisement. It replaces the usual starch, rice or pasta, with Christie’s Soda Wafers. The only seasoning is in the form of salt and pepper; there’s no soy (or Worcestershire) sauce to be seen.

2 lbs. lean pork, diced

2 tablespoons fat

Salt and pepper

1 cup celery chopped

1 green pepper shredded

18 Christie’s Soda Wafers1425

1 ½ cups meat stock or hot water.

Brown pork quickly in hot fat in frying pan. Season and add vegetables and

cook covered over a low flame until tender, adding a little water occasionally to

prevent sticking. Crumble Soda Wafers fine and pour over them the hot stock or

water. When meat and vegetables are tender combine with Soda Wafers. Serve hot.

Six portions.

42. “Around a mound of Rice Krispies” (1940)1426 Our first wartime recipe replaces rice with Kellogg’s Rice Krispies and returns soy sauce to the list of ingredients. Bouillon cubes are substituted for meat stock.

2 cups boiling water

3 bouillon cubes

3 tablespoons Soy Sauce

1 pound diced fresh pork

1/3 cup flour

½ cup mushrooms

1 cup sliced onion

3 cups celery strips

3 tablespoons butter

4 cups Kellogg’s Rice Krispies

Pour boiling water over bouillon cubes and Soy Sauce to make stock. Brown

meat well in heavy frying pan. Blend in flour; remove from heat and stir in stock

slowly. Add mushrooms and mushroom juice, onion and celery. Cover and cook slowly

1424 SELECTED RECIPES. (1939, July 6). The Carbon Chronicle, p. 4. 1425 William Mellis Christie, ‘Mr. Christie’, founded Christie, Brown & Co. in Toronto in the late 1800s.

Its soda wafers (a type of cracker) were available at least as early as 1932, when David Spencer’s

Groceteria in Victoria, B.C., advertised them on sale for 9 cents a package. 1426 From SELECTED RECIPES. (1940, December 18). The Gleichen Call, p. 2.

852

about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking. Combine melted butter

and heated Rice Krispies. Serve hot Chop Suey around a mound of rice krispies. Yield:

Four servings.

43. Chop Suey Moderne (1945)1427 The previous recipe proved popular enough to repeat, minus corporate sponsorship, in the last year of the war. Interesting changes include a cheerful introductory blurb, an increase in the number of servings from the same ingredients, and assurances that the mushrooms can be from a can, or skipped entirely.

Once a week, for a real change of scenery, why not introduce a foreign dish into

your menus? For an oriental touch serve chop suey. It is a meal in itself – needs only

a salad to complete the picture.

CHOP SUEY MODERNE

2 cups boiling water

3 bouillon cubes

1 pound diced fresh pork

1/3 cup flour

½ cup mushrooms (4 oz. can)

1 cup sliced onion

3 cups celery strips

3 tablespoons butter

4 cups oven popped rice cereal

Pour boiling water over bouillon cubes and soy sauce to make stock. Brown

meat in heavy frying pan. Blend in flour, remove from heat and stir in stock slowly.

Add mushrooms and mushroom juice, onion and celery. Cover and cook slowly about

30 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking. Melt butter, pour over oven—

popped rice and heat thoroughly in oven or over low heat, stirring frequently. Serve

Chop Suey around a mound of hot buttered oven–popped rice. Yield: 5 one–cup

servings.

Mushrooms may be omitted.

1427 From SELECTED RECIPES. (1945, May 9). The Gleichen Call, p. 5.

853

44. The Study of China (1948)1428 Chinese immigration to Canada was restored with the repeal of the Chinese Immigration Act in 1947. One year later, there was renewed interest in Chinese culture – and chop suey.

Members of St. Luke’s Parish1429 Guild met recently. Following the business

meeting an instructive period was devoted to the study of China when all aspects of

Chinese life were discussed. An interesting article on the mass weddings conducted

in China was read by Mrs. A. McShane. The evening was concluded by the serving of

refreshments consisting of chop suey, rice, Chinese sauce and other Chinese dishes.

45. Menu Suggestions (1949)1430 By 1949, a major British Columbian newspaper suggests dinner menus of “Consomme, Chinese chop suey, boiled rice, green peas, apple and celery salad,

mayonnaise, lemon chiffon pudding, coffee”1431 and “Chicken chop suey, parsley potato balls, green beans, cucumber salad, sour cream dressing, strawberry ice

cream, coffee”1432. Their recipe for Chinese Chop Suey requires soy sauce and canned bamboo shoots. These are listed without comment, suggesting they are readily available and familiar to the paper’s readers.

CHINESE CHOP SUEY – One–half pound lean pork, 1 cup chopped celery, 1 green

pepper (chopped), 2 large white onions (chopped), 1 cup of meat or chicken stock, 1

small1433 can bamboo shoots cut in cubes, 2 tablespoons sugar, 1 tablespoon soy sauce,

1½ tablespoons flour or 1 tablespoon cornstarch, 3 tablespoons cold water. Use the

pork cut into strips; add enough salad oil or cooking fat to cover the bottom of the

pan, make very hot and then add the meat, celery, peppers, onions and cook in the

oven until everything is tender. The stock, bamboo shoots, sugar and soy sauce should

be added. When this is done, pour in the mixture of flour and water and reheat until

it has thickened. This can be served with extra soy sauce and with boiled or steamed

rice. Mushrooms and bean sprouts can be added for greater variety.

1428 From Clubs and Societies. (1948, May 13). The Daily Colonist, p. 7. 1429 The parish served by St. Luke Anglican Church in Victoria, B.C.’s Cedar Hill neighborhood. 1430 From This Week’s Menu Suggestions. (1949, March 1). The Daily Colonist, p. 9. 1431 Ibid. 1432 From This Week’s Menu Suggestions. (1949, July 21). The Daily Colonist, p. 9. 1433 This implies there is more than one size available to consumers.

854

46. How Brennan Got A Cook (1910)1434 This short story, by a Canadian poet and journalist, provides insight into the interaction between threshing and domestic work.

Joe Brennan stood in his shack door and looked out on his fields dotted thickly

with shocks of golden grain. His air of gloom deepened. Here was he in sore need of

the money this same grain would bring if delivered at Masters’ elevator on or before

the fifteenth, and not able to get his threshing done.

“Is it with a face as long as last week’s washing you’re contemplating such a

harvest?!” exclaimed a voice with a happy–go–lucky ring to it, and his nearest

neighbor, old Clive Doney, came into view, carrying a young wolf–hound in his arms.

“No, I’ll not be sitting; just dropped in on my way from town to show you the pup.

Fine one, if I do say it. Look at his head, mark his ears and eyes, see the feet of him.

I paid Mr. Brown, the vet., a ––––– no, I’ll not tell you what I paid. My old woman

might worm it out of you some day.” Then, looking up from his prize to the young

man’s troubled face. “What’s wrong with you, lad?”

“Things going wrong,” answered Joe. “Masters’ man came along yesterday to

say they’d ship on the fifteenth. I can’t get my grain ready ––––– .”

“This is only the tenth,” interrupted Mr. Doney. “Carson promised to thrash

you out as soon as he finished at May’s, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” with a frown of impatience, “but an hour ago he sends me word that his

boarding car is out of use, owing to the Chinese cook breaking a leg, and going into

the hospital at Red Deer for repairs, and that owing to this he’ll have to pass me by

and go on to the Mounteer place. Mounteer has agreed to furnish a cook. He is keen

to get his grain in for this shipment, and as his thrashing will mean a lot more than

my one–horse place can furnish, Carson seems –––––.”

“Between ‘em they’re kind of jockeying you, eh? Now, look here, youngers, don’t

you stand for it.” In his earnestness Mr. Doney let the pup slide to the ground, and

immediately it disappeared inside the shack. “There’s an unwritten law in the West

that the thrasher and the farmer act fair and square with each other, and we mustn’t

let Carson start any funny games because a man’s place ain’t so big as some others

and he happens, in the contrariness of his nature, to locate himself a dozen miles from

anywhere ain’t a reason he shouldn’t get fair dealing.”

“Mounteer is at the back of it,” muttered Joe. “He holds the mortgage on this

place. I’m due to hand him over eleven hundred dollars in two weeks’ time, and –

well, he’d rather I didn’t; that’s all.”

“Whew! Wants the fun of foreclosing, does he? Owns a thousand acres more or

less and yet – Say, the land fever if allowed to run on unchecked is mighty bad for a

man’s morals.” Mr. Doney paused to ponder the situation over. “I have it!” he

1434 From Blewett, J. (1910, September 5). A RED DEER LOVE YARN. Red Deer News, p. 7. Written by Jean Blewett (1862 – 1934), editor of the Toronto Globe’s Homemakers department from 1898 to 1925. The title (‘How Brennan Got a Cook’) is the original story’s subtitle.

855

exclaimed. “Hitch up that roan you’re so proud of, ride along to May’s, and tell Carson

to move right over here. You’ll have to turn cook and feed the men.”

“Me!” cried poor Joe, too excited to mind his speech. “I can’t cook. The men

would mutiny if I dished up one of my messes. No, I’ve lost my chance, and –––––”

“Yep, lost it a couple of years ago,” broke in the old man, with a laugh. “Name’s

Thyrsa, looks nothin’ to write home about, disposition kind, but independent – most

too much so. No use scowling, Joe; all the fun old fellows have is showing you young

chaps the error of your ways. Now, if you had a nice capable little woman in that

kitchen of yours, you could snap your fingers at Carson’s Chinese cook. Thought you

knew it all, didn’t you? Listen, Joe. A long spell ago, when this world was too new for

wheat belts, land–grabbing and the rest of it, a wise man said of a good wife that her

price was above rubies, and though once and awhile some young fool lets on he don’t

believe it, the truth of it grips him some time. Don’t you forget it, Joe Brennan.”

“It won’t be your fault if I do. You’re always rubbing it in,” returned the lectured

man ungraciously. “The West is no place for a woman.”

“Maybe not, but a woman we’ve got to have, and that in a hurry. I’ll go home

around by May’s – it’s only a couple of miles out of my way – and speak with Carson,

and do you drive to Red Deer and get hold of someone, man or woman, who can dish

up a good square meal to a score of hungry men. The day’s not lost yet.”

Joe began to regain his courage. Surely in the busy town referred to, he could

find a cook. It was not too much to ask – a cook, “just a plain cook,” he said aloud.

“The plainer the better,” chuckled Mr. Doney, “and listen here, Joe, if so be you have

to take a female cook, just send the boy over and Mrs. Doney will be along to keep her

company. Indeed, only that she’s so ridden with rheumatism, it is herself would be

attending to everything. Man, it’s a grand thing to have a woman of one’s own, and

be as independent as – all right, all right, I’m off, and you mind the wee doggie. I’ll

let him stay. The wife’ll maybe see ‘is good points with a clearer eye if she makes his

acquaintance on a neighbor’s step instead of her own. You mayn’t have noticed it, but

if there’s one thing a woman is more prejudiced against than her man’s pipe it’s his

dog, or his crony. She’ s built so, and it can’t be helped. Well, be off, and good luck to

you!”

There was no good luck for poor Joe, or so it seemed. It was the scarce season

for help of any kind. As the man at the employment agency explained, with

unsympathetic cheerfulness, “What the farmers haven’t picked up, the railway

construction camps have, and there you are.”

It was the same story wherever he went. Once or twice hope rose high. Mine

host of the Alberta told him of a McAlister who had been discharged from his position

of chef in a Ross avenue restaurant on account of a habit he had of breaking dishes

every time he got in a temper, which was once a day on an average. Joe was not

apprehensive about the dishes, but though he chased his quarry all the way to the

Great West Lumber mill, it availed him nothing. McAlister scorned to leave town

until such time as he had evened his account with the restaurant man. Neither bribes

nor entreaties could move him, and force was out of the question seeing the big red

Scot would make two of Joe.

856

When thoroughly discouraged Joe turned to Franks, the hardware merchant.

People had a way of turning to this same Franks when things went wrong. His genial

optimism was full of tonic properties, his sympathy of the invigorating kind. He

looked at Joe and laughed, and straightway Joe felt that it was a good old world, even

if the demand for domestics did exceed the supply.

“Let me see,” cried Franks at length, “there’s an advertisement in The News

which may suit your turn. Here it is: ‘Lady well qualified wants position as mother’s

help.’” He looked at the sunburnt young farmer and laughed. “Doesn’t sound exactly

promising, but never mind; nothing venture, nothing win. Find out what she says,

anyway.”

Joe found out without delay; afterward he wished he had not. The lady’s sense

of propriety was so outraged that she shut the door in his face, but not until she had

voiced her candid opinion of him.

Well, he had done his best and failed. Being desperate, the idea of doing the

cooking himself came to him. With this thought in mind he went into a store and

bought five pounds of rice, the same of raisins and a lot of canned stuff. Coming down

Gaetz avenue, too intent on his troubles to pay attention to his path, he ran fairly

into a plump young woman hurrying in the opposite direction. Away went the rice to

scatter itself over the broad pavement; away went the raisins, as well. But he held

fast to the tin cans, that is, until he got a good look at the girl. Then he let them fall,

and held out both hands.

“Thyrsa!” he cried, and the joy of the sudden meeting put failure, debt, and all

other depressing things out of mind. “I thought you were back East; never dreamed

of running across you here in Red Deer.”

“Running into me, you mean,” laughing to cover her confusion. “Oh, look at the

rice and raisins!”

“Who cares! What’s that – ‘Wilful waste makes woeful want.’ Don’t you believe

it. I’ve been the carefulest soul you ever saw and bit fair to be a beggar in the end.”

He was still holding out his hands. The very streets of Red Deer – that pretties of

Alberta towns – was no place for a conference. “Come for a drive,” he urged then with

sudden masterfulness. “Of course you will. I’ll be back with the rig in a jiffy.”

Across the bridge which spanned the river flew the roan. Out along the country

road, with the sky coming down on the golden fields like a great inverted bowl, all

turquoise flecked with rose and rimmed with copper.

The old road, the old glad company of two. It might be only yesterday.

“Now, tell me what you’re doing away from the farm at this busy season?”

asked the girl by way of breaking the dangerous silence.

“II thought it was to hunt a cook, but now I know better. It was to meet my old

chum.” There was a tremble in his voice. After all, he was only a lad – a lad who had

known more of loneliness and discouragement than were good for him, maybe, and

this Thyrsa was the girl who had – but never mind. His grain might go unthrashed,

his debts unpaid, but he would have had one more ride along the country road with

her. It was worth while.

857

“Tell me all about everything,” she was saying. He told her. It wasn’t the story

he had meant to have ready for the telling; there was much of failure in it, but he was

too honest to alter an item.

“And this year when I’ve bumper crops and a fair show of paying every cent I

owe, I’ve got to see my chance go because I’ve no one to prepare the thrashers’ meals,”

he ended up ruefully. It hurt his pride to let his grey–eyed girl into his poor little

secret. She had called him a ne’er–do–well on the occasion, yes, on THE occasion. Of

a sudden he was resentful. A ne’er–do–well; so he was, but she ––––––

“Joe,” she was saying in matter–of–fact tones, “I can cook. You used to say I

was the only one could beat your Aunt Harriet making biscuits and apple pie. Don’t

you remember?”

Could she mean – the bare possibility took his breath. Joe’s brown hand

reached out greedily to clasp the girl’s firm, white one. “No,” he told himself grimly,

“it won’t do, Joe Brennan; it won’t do.”

“I came back to Red Deer to take a position as stenographer, but I don’t know,”

reflectively. “I’d about as soon do housework as anything. I’m just aching to get at a

bake–board. If you should engage me, Joe, I’ll guarantee to feed those thrashers so

well they’ll wish you had enough grain to keep them a month. What wages will you

pay?”

“Look here,” he said roughly, “you’re only talking to hear yourself talk. You

couldn’t come out to Lonesome Hollow even to help your old friend out of a hole. Folks

would make remarks.”

“Oh, very well. I had my mind made up to go, but if you don’t want me–“ A toss

of the brown head finished the sentence.

“Thyrsa!” he said, and she had the grace to blush. Then after a silence: “You

didn’t marry the storekeeper, after all, Thyrsa?”

“No,” cheerfully. “We fell out. He was too well off, for one thing. I don’t like

prosperous people.”

“Look here, if it’s a poor man you want, you’ll – but no, little girl. When I had

a good home to offer you, you laughed at me.”

“You were such a boy, such a self–satisfied, conceited boy,” she told him. “It

took the hard times and hard work to make a man of you. Let go my hand, Joe

Brennan, I’m not proposing to you; merely applying for a position.”

“Thyrsa, there’s only one girl in the world for me. I’ve never quit thinking of

you and loving you – never will, but I’m scared stiff to take you home with me.

There’re dirty dishes everywhere, no furniture to speak of. Honestly, it’s no place for

you, but” – her grey eyes smiling at him melted every stern resolve, every fear – “if

you’ll come I’ll thank the Lord on my bended knees every day of my life. Will you

marry me to–day, Thyrsa?”

Then on the public highway, in the very shadow of the Indian school with dear

knows how many stolid little s–––––s and r––––– looking on, he kissed her. Thyrsa,

all rosy with blushes, was driven back to town at the roan’s best speed. “The

Presbyterian minister is a friend of mine,” said Joe, “But if you’d rather have

Methodist –––––”

858

Thyrsa remarked that she supposed it made no difference. And it really didn’t.

They were married in the brick church with the bell tower and many windows just as

sunset was making a golden glory about the altar, and up and down the quiet aisles.

They came out looking very young and very solemn.

“I used to think in the old days we’d make quite a splurge over our wedding,”

said Joe, almost in a whisper, “but nothing could beat this. We don’t want a lot of folk

and finery, eh? Just the two of us, little girl.”

“And we scattered our rice beforehand,” she said, and both laughed.

The shack, with its unlighted windows, looked meagre and lone standing by

itself in the wide field. “You are sure you won’t be sorry?” asked Joe earnestly, as he

lifted his young wife from the rig. Her face – a sweet face it was, and true – was lifted

toward the sky, where the first star showed tremulously through the pale twilight.

“Joe,” she said softly, “this is going to mean home and happiness to us both.”

“But not a living thing to welcome you!” he exclaimed, and just then came the

young wolf–hound with every demonstration of joy. He had been alone for four long

hours; besides, he was hungry. But he had a welcome, and to spare, for the new–

comer.

“The beauty!” Thyrsa had him in her arms and was patting his head. “May I

have him for my very own, Joe?”

“He’s yours, darling, from this time forth and forever,” Joe assured her.

Mr. Doney happened to come around the bend in the path at that moment, and

heard his property disposed of in such high–handed fashion.

“Well, I’m–“ he stopped, went back and began over again. “Well, I’m surprised.”

“Not half as much as you will be, old friend,” laughed the graceless Joe; “come

here and be introduced to the new cook. No, not Thyrsa Goodland, Thyrsa Brennan.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Thyrsa Brennan? Name your own price for the pup,” he added

in an aside.

“She’s welcome to the bit doggie,” came the answer. “It is well that someone

had the wit to provide a wedding present.” He started down the lane, but turned to

say, “Your luck’s turned; laddie, the best is coming your way. God bless ye both!”

He was away for good, leaving Joe and Thyrsa alone in the little house set fair

among the yellow stubble – alone with their hopes and their happiness – and as he

went he remarked, sorrowfully: “I wish it had been anything but my wolf–hound. I’ll

never see his like again. But it’s like a woman to fasten on the best a man has. It is,

that.”

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Mother’s Hens (1915)1435

47. CHAPTER I.

The following article is the first of a series of practical talks on farm poultry raising, written by a farmer’s wife who has successfully kept poultry. The advice contained is essentially actual experience, written in a pleasing, understandable manner, and it is hoped our readers will obtain a very large amount of valuable information thru reading this series.

Young Mrs. Hazelton hummed a love–song softly as she laid the supper table.

She had only been married six weeks and had come straight from England to her

prairie home. Everything was delightfully new and strange to her. It was early

springtime and the ravines were full of rushing water caused by the melting snow

and only a few blue crocuses had ventured to peep thru the almost bare ground. Will,

her husband, had been on the harrows for the first time that day and seeing him

pulling in, she slipped on her bonnet and ran down to the barn to “help”. Strictly

speaking she was more of a hindrance than a help, for the bronchos were trouble

enough to unhitch at any time, without having a coquettish apron fluttering around

them in the wind. But Will would not have hinted at it for worlds. She wielded the

pumphandle vigorously and laughed as the spirited animals pranced around.

“That will do,” said her husband, keeping a firm grip on the lines. “You run

along indoors; I’ll be up in a minute or two.”

True to his word, in a very short time they were seated at the supper table.

“I wish I could get my letters every day, Will,” Margaret remarked as she

poured out his third cup of tea. “That’s really the only thing I don’t like about living

in the country, getting your letters only once or twice a week.”

“Call it mail,” laughed her husband. “I shall never make you into a Canadian,

I can see. Here comes old Billy. I expect he’s got it. I asked him as he went towards

town if he would. Fed the hens since breakfast?”

Margaret nearly dropped the teapot.

“Good gracious! I quite forgot them again. Some of them were s–––––king

around the door just now, but I “shoo–ed” them off. I suppose they were hungry, poor

things. I did remember to look for my eggs after dinner, but there wasn’t many, and

one old hen pecked me like anything, and that turkey gobbler looked so fierce I ran

away.”

She showed the pecked hand, which was promptly seized and kissed, just as

old Billy drove up to the door. He was much too shy to come indoors and after

commenting on the price of wheat and the weather, drove off again to his lonely shack,

vaguely wondering how many years had passed since he was a smart, well–set up

chap like Will Hazelton.

1435 By Mrs. Fannie Elizabeth Shepherd (1864 – 1937). Published in the Grain Grower’s Guide from March to May, 1915.

860

“There you are, pet,” he said, tossing them into her lap, “three letters for you

and three for me – fair division, eh?”

“I don’t care how many or how few there are,” replied his wife, “so long as

there’s one from your mother; it does seem too bad to think that in that dreadful

railway accident you and I should have escaped scot free, and she should have

suffered so terribly and been in hospital ever since.”

“Just like mother,” laughed Will, “always taking the brunt of things herself,

but you bet she’s just as happy in that hospital, being made such a lot of by those

nurses, as she would be here, if it wasn’t for worrying about her old hens. But open

the letter, it seems a good fat one; she always was fond of letter writing.”

Margaret perched herself on the arm of her husband’s rocking chair and read

as follows:

“My Dearest Children – For I look on you as one of my own, Margaret, although

I saw so little of you before this dreadful accident – Well, you will be glad to hear I

am getting better, tho slowly, and have coaxed my favorite nurse to let me sit up for

just ten minutes every day to write to you about my Biddies. I am getting so anxious

about them, as I know you don’t know the first thing about chicken raising, so I will

write a short note every day and nurse will post it for me once a week. I expect it will

be two months or more before I come home again, but if you will follow my directions

carefully, I can assure you you will earn as much actual profit as Will does on his

wheat.”

“That’s so,” admitted Will, albeit rather grudgingly. “She made close on $500

with those darned old hens last year and they never seemed to be any trouble either.

We had no idea how much she was getting, although we knew that for the first time

there was always comfortably enough money and no store bill running, but when she

showed us her account book towards the beginning of September we were astonished

– but go ahead.”

“Now, when you get up tomorrow morning,” Margaret continued reading, “get

Will to throw about two gallons of those screenings all around outside the hen houses

and open the doors wide. They need to be shut up at nights because of the coyotes and

stray animals, but get the doors open as soon as ever you can in the morning. And if

he does that for you as he goes past them on his way to the barn, you will know they

are alright until after your own breakfast. Directly after breakfast – (no, don’t stop to

wash the dishes or clear up the room, or you may forget them altogether) – put on

your bonnet, and a pair of old gloves, get a pail of clean, cold water and an old hoe

without a handle (you will find one on a nail outside the kitchen window), and go over

to the poultry houses and scrape their troughs and drinking vessels nice and clean

and fill them with water. Do this again about four o’clock in the afternoon, for you

know, dear, an egg is composed of 80 per cent. water, so water is quite as necessary

for them as food, if not more so. Then take a dry pail and your fire–shovel and go to

the granary. Here you will find sacks of shorts, bran, oat chop and corn meal. Put in

your pail a shovel of bran, another of shorts, oat chop and corn meal, mix these lightly

together as you put them in and fill every hopper, except the small one in each house,

that is for their oyster shell.”

861

“Is that those boxes on the side of the walls of the chicken–houses, that run out

at the bottom?” inquired Margaret.

Her husband laughed and nodded and she continued:

“You see, sometimes the weaker ones, or the layers, are not on hand when you

are feeding them, but if they can go to the hoppers and get something to eat without

being pushed around, they manage alright until feeding time comes again without

getting over hungry.

“Now about the nest boxes. I daresay they are pretty mussy. Get Will to bring

you over a big armful of hay, unhook the nests – they are only boxes hung on nails –

empty them and knock the dust out. I did give them a good lime washing the last

thing before I came away. Put in a good handful of fresh hay and a clean nest–egg

and hang them up again. Always move gently when among the hens; don’t fluster

them, talk to them sometimes to get them used to your voice. They will soon get tame

and then you can handle them or do anything you like with them. Collect the eggs

twice a day now and three times a day presently when the weather gets warmer. Now

you know, my dear, the eggs are my special hobby. You will find most of the neighbors

take theirs to town and trade them for groceries, etc., but you will find it a much

better way to send them to ––––– as I did last year. The railways charge very

reasonable rates for farm and dairy produce. You get a higher price per dozen and it

is cash instead of trade, and cash is generally a pretty scarce article on most farms

during the summer months. But if you send them away, you must be sure and pick

out all the best looking and the largest eggs that are laid. Give the menfolk all the

small ones. Never mind if they grumble, let them have an extra one, and after that

wash the dirty ones to use for cooking; but you won’t have any dirty ones if you keep

plenty of clean hay in the nests, and you will have very few small ones if you keep the

hens well supplied with oyster shell. Above all things be sure and don’t put any eggs

in with those you send away which came from a stray nest – they may be partly set

on, or stale, and you want to be able to guarantee your eggs as being absolutely new

laid. All eggs, when they are first laid, are so delicious, it is a pity to let them

degenerate all thru a little carelessness in handling. Send as man brown–shelled ones

as you can; the better class of people will pay more for a large brown egg than they

will for a small hay–stained white one, and I don’t blame them. Treat your merchant

fair and square, and then he will depend on your eggs and place them with his very

best customers without fear of any complaint by them. Next year I want to get some

cardboard boxes to hold a dozen eggs each and write my name on them.

“Now I want you to send right away to the Secretary, Department of

Agriculture, Victoria B.C., and ask them for their Bulletin No. 55. It is free and

contains very valuable information about poultry. Send also a postcard to Prof.

Herner, Manitoba Agricultural College, asking him for his bulletin on “Farm Poultry

in Manitoba.” It will tell you far more than I possibly can and just what you want to

know. Read all you possibly can on the subject of poultry raising, whether you only

intend keeping just a few or just a few hundred.

“By the way, go down the cellar and see if you can find a few turnips left. If so,

put one in each hen–house every day as long as they last. There is no need even to

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cut them open; the chickens will attend to that. Give them a good feed of the best

wheat you have around every afternoon about an hour before sunset. A small handful

to each hen is generally enough, but sent them to roost with their crops full. If they

do not pick it quite all up before going to bed, they will hunt it up the following day.

All thru the winter I give them a hot breakfast and supper, but it is hardly necessary

now it is getting warmer.

“You will see my hens are all White Wyandottes. I chose them after giving a

lot of thought to the matter, but I wanted Black Orpingtons pretty badly. For one

thing the Wyandottes look so much nicer when dressed than a black bird, then they

are good layers of nice brown eggs. They are good mothers, too, not so inclined to be

flighty as Leghorns. Last of all they are the most popular breed at the present

moment and you will be able to sell quite a few settings of eggs presently at fancy

prices if you put an advertisement in your local paper. Last year I sold quite a few

day–old chicks. There is never any trouble selling any of your poultry productions if

you keep pure bred stock, but if you keep mongrels you cannot make nearly as much

money out of them, and after all, I suppose that is what you are after. In the latter

case your eggs will be all sizes, shapes and colors and when you want to pick your

early hatched cockerels out for broilers, you will have nothing but a bunch of scrawny,

long–necked fellows only fit to be made into scarecrows.

“Poultry raising in any of its branches is not hard work, very little of it beyond

an average woman’s strength, neither is it monotonous by any means; but it is

continuous and you should not leave your birds many hours at a stretch, especially

during the hatching season. ‘Live with your hens’ was the advice given me once by a

very experienced poultry keeper. And although this does not necessarily mean you

must go to roost with them, it does mean you must always be what is called ‘pottering

around’ after them. I don’t often bother the menfolk to help me, except for the actual

killing, but if any of them come along and want to help for half an hour, I can always

find them something to do.

“And now my dear Margaret, I must close as I have over–stepped my ten

minutes every day. Next week I will give you detailed directions as to how to set your

broody hens and your incubator.

“Believe me, my dear children,

“YOUR LOVING MOTHER”.

“Well, Will, isn’t that fine?” said Margaret, as she finished reading. “I must

keep mother’s letter where I can read it at odd times thru the day. I do hope the

letters – no, mail – will come on time next week.”

863

48. CHAPTER II.

Last week Mother’s letter told how to spring clean and care for the flock in readiness for setting. If you did not read the first article you should do so at once. A very profitable sideline can be made use of if poultry is properly looked after on the farm. The writer of these stories is just telling how she has been able to make money with her “biddies” on a farm in Western Canada. These stories are the best possible kind of educational material for our subscribers to read, and it is hoped that everyone will appreciate the large amount of very valuable information which they contain.

Mrs. Hazelton, Junior, greeted her husband with a puzzled expression on her

face as he came in to dinner. “Oh, Will, I am so glad you’ve come,” she exclaimed, “for

I am afraid two of my hens are sick; they won’t come off their nests to eat or anything,

and when I took one of them on she made such a funny noise and just laid still.”

Her husband laughed unfeelingly, “What a dear little greenhorn you are,” he

said, “ I expect they’re cluck – broody – you know what I mean – want to set.”

“Well, I never,” was the rather awed response; “fancy it being that. Whatever

shall I do?”

“Do?” and Will laughed louder than ever. “Why, put thirteen eggs under ‘em,

only give me my dinner first. I believe I could eat that number right now.”

Margaret dished up the tempting dinner in silence, thinking deeply.

“Well,” she said at last, “one of them has got six or seven eggs under her

already, and pretty dirty they are too, looks like several had been broken there. Now

I wonder if I made it up to thirteen if that would be all right? Will, thank goodness,

Mother’s letter will come today. Will dear,” she added coaxingly, “don’t you think I

could have Frisky and go and get the mail myself? I don’t know what I would do if

Billy forgot to call for it.”

“No, you sure couldn’t,” was the hasty reply. “She would frisk you all over the

section, if you met an automobile, but I will spare you Maud for once.”

“Oh, Maud,” and she shrugged her shoulders, “isn’t she rather slow?”

“You bet she is,” grinned her husband, “but she’s sure, and the only horse I

would trust my precious wife with.”

Margaret at last agreed, and shortly afterwards Will went to fetch the old

mare, while his wife put on her prettiest dress, for it was quite an event going to town

all by herself for the first time.

She arrived safely, and hastily securing her letters turned into the Rest Room

recently started in the town.

“It’s no good, I simply can’t wait until I get home,” she said to herself, “I must

just skim them thru.” And comfortably ensconcing herself in one of the big rocking

chairs, she began on her Mother’s letter first.

“My dear daughter – I am going to start right into business and tell you all

about myself at the end of the letter if there is time. I am sure by now you will be

getting quite used to my Biddies, and begin to know them one from the other. I have

been wondering whether Will has shown you the incubator yet. It is stored away in

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the attic. If not, I want you to ask him to get it down for you, and fix it up for you in

my little parlor, opening out of your dining room. I always run it in there, it is so

handy, and I like to be able to watch it. It is a more regular temperature there, too,

than in the dining room or kitchen, and the cellar is inclined to be damp. Of course,

a special room built for the purpose is best, but a little–used room does almost as well.

There will be no smell from the lamp if you clean it and trim it once a day the same

as you do your ordinary lamps. Give your incubator a thorough good scrubbing with

hot water and a little carbolic soap, leave the door wide open to dry and sweeten. The

next day, close the door, light the lamp in the machine and sit down and study your

book of directions carefully. Now, don’t say you are afraid you can’t manage it, they

are so simple a child can understand them, but naturally anyone like yourself who

has never seen one at work cannot expect to have quite such big hatches as an old,

old woman like me, for instance.”

Margaret smiled to herself, as she called to mind the face of her husband’s

mother.

“I believe you are one of those women who never get old,” she murmured,

scanning once more the closely written pages.

“Now place your incubator tray on the kitchen table, and get your last two or

three days’ supply of eggs laid out there too. Pick them out very carefully, only the

very best of them, no rough or uneven shelled ones, and no very large or very small

ones. Mark them with an X on one side and the date they are to come off on the other,

and when your tray is full place it in the machine, and close the door gently. Do

nothing but fill and trim your lamp every morning, and keep your thermometer at

102 for 48 hours. After this you will have to turn the eggs once every day. If the

weather is hot and dry draw a piece of flannel dipped in warm water over the eggs

before and after turning them, but you need not do this in showery weather. You

should really read your little book of directions every day during your first hatch. You

know you must not mind taking a little time and trouble over this business, as you

will find the money come in so very handy by and bye.

“Now with the setting hens you will have to go to work a little differently. North

of the house you will find an old granary. It has only the earth for a floor and that is

why I always use it for a setting–house, and it always answers fine. It is nearly dark

in there and broody hens like semi–darkness at such times, and eggs of any kind

always hatch better from an earthen floor than any other way. With your ever–useful

handle–less hoe scrape a little hole in the corner of the granary (you can increase

your nests all along the four walls as time goes on) about two inches deep and twelve

inches square. Line it with nice fresh hay and make it nice and comfy, and put four

or five china eggs in it. Put a jam pail full of cracked corn or whole sound wheat in

the middle of the floor, and another one full of fresh water close to it, also half fill an

old bath with ashes sprinkled plentifully with flowers of Sulphur, and put it where it

will catch the sunshine from that crack in the wall. This is for the hens to dust

themselves in to free themselves from lice. A handful of wheat thrown in it will

encourage them to use it. Hens and, indeed, poultry of any kind are clean things if

they have half a chance, but what can the poor things do, when kept with no litter in

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their houses, and only the bare prairie to dust themselves in? Your coal ashes are one

of the most valuable possessions you have got. You should put them on the south side

of your hen houses every day as hens won’t lay and cannot thrive when infested with

lice – only be sure your ashes are cold. I nearly set my place alight once with them.

Gee! I was scairt.”

Margaret laughed as she fluttered over another page. She could just imagine

the little old lady scurrying around with a wet sack.

“Then in the evening when it is nearly dark, take your cluck hen very gently

off her nest with both hands, tuck her under your arm, carry her to the granary and

place her on the china eggs – if it is too dark for her to see much, and she is nearly

asleep, ten to one she’ll stay there all right. In the morning as soon as she can (long

before you are awake, my dear) she will probably get off for food and water, then go

back and hug her china eggs again, and that evening have ready thirteen eggs of that

day’s laying if possible. Mark them with the date of day of hatching (never forget to

do this, it is one of the most important little things connected with hatching, and

poultry raising is chiefly composed of little things) and when it is so nearly dark you

can hardly distinguish anything, slip your hands under your hen, take away the china

eggs and give her the genuine article. If she is very pecky wear a pair of old gloves,

but after a day, if you stroke her, and talk to her, and pet her up a little, she will get

as tame as anything and that is very handy if you want them for show birds later on.

“As your other birds become broody, bring them in, in the same manner.

Having their nests all on the floor, even if you have a dozen or twenty hens, the last

one off will generally take the vacant nest without any fuss. It won’t make any

difference to the eggs. Never forget to fill up their food pail and give them fresh water

every day, but you will need to peep at them several times a day to see they are all

right. If, after all your care, you get an old hen that won’t go back to her nest – no,

sirree, that she won’t – don’t worry yourself or her, just open the door and let her go,

resisting the temptation to throw all creation after her. Pick up the discarded eggs in

your apron, carry them very gently into the house and put them into your incubator.

There is no refusing to work here. It is always on the job. I would not bother you with

such a detailed account, my dear daughter–in–law, only I want your first hatches to

be a great success, for it is from the pullets from these early hatches you will get your

winter eggs when they are 45 cents a dozen. Wyandottes, Plymouth Rocks, etc., must

be hatched in April or the early part of May. Leghorns a little later perhaps.

“Now I must really close as Nurse is waiting at my bedside with a stamped

addressed envelope in her hand, and stern determination on her face. Next week, if

all’s well, I will tell you how to feed the little chicks when they arrive, and how to care

for them and their mothers the first week or ten days (the most critical time) of their

lives. Also how to store your eggs for winter use, they are probably around 15 cents a

dozen now in the stores, and a nuisance to the storekeeper at that. If you can keep

them until December by my method, you will find these same storekeepers begging

you for “just one more crate.” So “au revoir” until next week.”

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49. CHAPTER III.

If you want to read a really practical article on how to make money from your poultry, you should not miss any of these articles. The first story told how to spring clean the houses and get things ready for setting. Last week, hatchlings, both with the incubator and with mother hens, was carefully described, and now the care of the hatching is dealt with. The writer has made money with her poultry on a farm in Saskatchewan and these stories are the outcome of practical experience. It is hoped that they will be read from week to week with a great deal of appreciation.

Ting–a–ling–ling–ling–ling, went the telephone in the Hazelton’s pleasant

dining room the following week. Margaret laid down the sock she was knitting for the

soldiers and rose to answer it. “Yes, it’s me – Oh, is it you, Mrs. Creighton? – What

do you say? – You want to know if you shall bring our mail out? Why, sure, I should

be awfully pleased if you would. I have been wondering all morning how I should get

it. I shall make you stay to tea – Good–bye.” She hung up the receiver and, sitting

down in her little rocking–chair, picked up her knitting again, her face wreathed in

smiles. “Well, now, did you ever?” she remarked to herself. “There I have been

worrying all day as to whether old Billy had sense enough to remember to ask for it.

Get down, pussie. You tangle up all my wool.”

Presently Margaret, having finished that intricate, exasperating part of her

sock known as “turning the heel,” proceeded to lay the cloth for her visitor’s arrival.

Just as she finished the dog barked, and on going to the door, she found Mrs.

Creighton, one of her nearest neighbors, and, like herself, a city girl, just getting out

of the buggy. They greeted each other warmly, and proceeded to unhitch.

“Fur the land’s sake,” exclaimed Mrs. Creighton, as she entered the tiny parlor,

“ain’t you English the dreadfullest people to make your rooms pretty. I never seen

such a dear little place. Germaniums in full bloom, too, and trailing ivy in every

corner of the room. And this is the incubator, is it? And it don’t smell neither (sniffing)

– but it doesn’t seem natural tho, do it, to hatch the poor little things out by the

hundred and no mother nor nothing?”

“Well, I don’t know,” replied her hostess. “From what I can hear about the old

hen, she is just as likely to smash them as flat as a pancake as she is to look at them,

but if you will excuse me, may I open Mother’s letter? I never can wait a minute. Will

gets awful cross with me about it and I have known him not open his letters for an

hour or more on purpose to tease me. Take off your hat and make yourself a home.”

Putting a good chunk of chewing gum into her mouth, her visitor sat down to

listen. “Go right on,” she said affably, “I’d like to know how the old lady is. She sure

is the wonderfullest hand with chickens I ever did see. Why, I called here one day last

spring, the day after that thing come out, and if she hadn’t got one of her best blankets

laid out on this very Davenport and six or eight little boxes about a foot square, all

lined with flannel and cotton batting, good enough for a casket, and about ten or a

dozen yaller chicks in each of ‘em, and another blanket covered over them all, tucked

867

in like a baby. Cute! You bet they looked cute.” But Margaret could wait no longer

and began reading.

“The hardest part of lying here is not being able to talk with you, my dear

daughter – but I suppose I must be thankful I can write, so I will begin where I left

off. I will not waste time or space telling you more about the incubator. Read your

directions every day or two and follow them to the letter, but you must not expect it

to hatch out better than the hens. Really expert poultry raisers think they do pretty

well if they raise eight chickens from every thirteen eggs. (I don’t think that is quite

enough myself, but they often have to put up with hired help.) So you must not expect

to get ninety–eight live, healthy chickens out of your hundred eggs. You will probably

have had ten or a dozen infertile ones tested out, a few with half–formed dead chicks

in them, and several fully formed dead in the shell. These casualties cannot be

avoided altogether, but it is up to you to make them as few as possible. With

absolutely new laid eggs, from fowls on unlimited range, you should not have so very

many. Talking about unlimited range, have you ever noticed what a short distance

most of your hens go away from their houses? The land around them must be very

tainted after four or five years. When they build you that new chicken house in the

fall, (I will send you plans and directions later on about it), get them to put it twenty

or thirty rods away from the present one; not necessarily farther away from your front

door, but in quite a different direction to where it is now, so they will have sweeter

ground. If the present site could be plowed up and turned into a kitchen garden you

could take all the vegetable prizes at the different shows, but I doubt if even you could

chase the men–folk around to that extent.

“I expect you have been getting your hen coops ready; if not, you will find them

at the back of the implement shed. I always put them there in the fall or else they are

sure to be stamped on by some horse or other during threshing time. I want you to

learn to use a hammer and nails, dear. It is such a nuisance to have to ask one of the

men every time you want any little job done, and once you learn to hit the right nail,

and that is not the one on your thumb, you will be all right. Will is a rough carpenter

all right, very rough, only don’t tell him I say so.

“You will think my coops look like dog kennels – they are so big – but they are

the very latest thing in coops, and always used in most of our universities and

experimental farms. They are about three feet long, two feet wide, and two feet high.

See they have not cracked or warped. If they have, cover them all over with tar paper,

nailing the corners and edges well down. You will notice the front is made out of half

of an ordinary window, instead of the ordinary laths, fixed so that it slides open or

shut on grooves. This is for warmth and protection from wind and rain. I used a

brooder several years with very great success – and they are the most profitable,

because with them you can let the hens go, and they soon commence laying again.

But for an ordinary farmer’s wife, with all the work she generally has to do in the

summer time, the garden to hoe, calves and pigs to feed, to say nothing of looking

after the babies, well it is a help to get the chicks right off your mind when they are

about ten days or a fortnight old, which you can do if you feed them my way, when

they are running with their mothers.

868

“Now when your incubator begins to hatch out you will get quite excited, but

don’t lower your lamp even if your thermometer registers 103 or 104. It is only caused

by the moist heat generated by the chicks themselves. I am always glad mine has got

a glass door. I am afraid I waste an awful lot of time those days watching the pretty

little things bursting out of their shells. First one and then another egg will show a

tiny three–cornered crack in it. This gradually spreads all round it, until presently it

breaks right open and the little head and wings come popping out like a jack–in–the–

box, looking rather damp, but bright and perky; then they struggle on the top of the

other eggs, and soon dry off, and look just like yellow balls of fluffy wool. I meant to

have told you last week, that what broody hens you get a week or ten days previous

to your incubator coming off, to keep china eggs under them all the time instead of

real ones. Then the evening after your hatch is over, choose two of the strongest–

looking chicks and slip them under the wings of one of them, at the same time taking

away the nest eggs. I never had a hen refuse to take newly hatched chicks when given

to her that way when nearly dark. Quite early the next morning, tuck her under your

arm, and put the two little chicks in one of those little flannel–lined boxes. (You will

find quite a lot of them up in the attic.)”

The two women looked at each other and smiled.

“Put the hen right at the back of the big coop, and give her a big handful of

cracked corn or wheat, and some water in a very shallow vessel. I generally use a

sardine tin. They do as well as the most expensive water fountain. When she has had

enough she will settle down and begin to ‘cluck’ for her chickens. Give them to her

again, slipping them under her wings. In about an hour’s time go out again with about

four more chicks and a few breadcrumbs; while she is fussing around trying to get

the first two to eat, slip the others under her, and thank your lucky stars she can’t

count. Do this several times during the day to as many hens as you have got chickens

for until each hen has twenty chickens under her; this is as many as she can

comfortably cover – at least so early in the season.”

“Well, well,” said Margaret, laying the letter down on the table. “I guess we’d

better leave off and get a cup of tea. I see she goes on to say something about raising

little turkeys, and if I once start reading about them I shall not want to leave off.”

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50. CHAPTER IV.

Eggs are cheap now. The best thing to do with any you do not require for hatching purposes is to “put them down in lime water.” This week’s “Mother’s Hens” contains directions as to preserving eggs for sale at Christmas, and also tells how to successfully hatch turkeys. Have you read the previous chapters? All these stories describe practical experience with poultry on a Western farm. Every farmer’s wife should read them and take advantage of the chance of learning how to make poultry pay.

While they were having their tea they chatted and gossiped on the thousand

and one things women are always interested in, knitting for the soldiers being the

chief topic of conversation, Mrs. Hazelton considering it best to use all her spare time

that way, while Mrs. Creighton was equally certain it was better to deny herself a

new hat she had set her heart on and send the money it would have cost to buy some

tobacco and cigarettes for them. At last Margaret jumped up.

“Well, now, I suppose it is time to feed the hens and hunt the eggs. Will you

come with me?”

“Sure I will. I want to see your buildings,” was the emphatic reply, “my hens

always roost in a corner of the barn, and the language Jim uses when he goes to feed

oats or brush out the buggy is something fierce.”

“I am afraid you won’t think much of my ‘buildings’,” said Margaret, leading

the way to them, greeted by her feathered flock rushing to her from all parts of the

farmyard. “You see they are only made of sod. Will says his mother says they are

warmer than any other kind. They are made very thick and will last for years, only

you have to be careful to see it doesn’t let the wind in between the top of the walls

and the roof, which you see is only odd bits of lumber, then tar paper, then one layer

of sod, last of all a lot of flax straw put on slant ways to shed the rain. There is nothing

expensive here. Most of the coops she made herself.”

Mrs. Creighton nodded. Her quick eye had noticed several of them were

covered with discarded cloths from the kitchen table.

The eggs were collected and admired, and after proudly writing them down in

her little account book, sixty–four in all, Mrs. Hazelton proceeded to finish her

mother’s letter.

“And now about my precious turkeys. I think every farmer’s wife dislikes to

raise turkeys, for the simple reason they are so much trouble, but I really think my

turkey hens are not quite so much bother as some people’s. I fix some apple barrels

firmly at the back of the henhouses, and put in them some nice hay and several china

eggs, and they generally lay there. If one strays away and makes a nest somewhere

else, get Will to put one of the largest coops over her nest while she is off feeding. This

will protect her from the heavy rains we get sometimes. I don’t believe in trusting too

much to nature. She is rather inclined to play tricks with us sometimes. About dusk

put a couple of handfuls of grain close to where each one is setting, and beyond looking

at them once a day they will be no further trouble.

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“Now, when they begin to hatch out – I am sure you will think they are the

prettiest little things you ever saw – as soon as they are dry bring them indoors and

put them in the nursery of the incubator, that is the space underneath the egg tray,

only leaving the turkey hen about two to keep her happy. Get Will to lift one of the

wagon boxes off its wheels onto the ground and put a big coop in it. Next morning

early put her and the two little ones in the coop and shut her in good and tight, give

her a good feed of grain and a very shallow tin of water, and the rest of her hatch at

odd times during the day, one or two at a time. She will never peck you. I like turkeys,

they are so gentle.

“Feed them the same as you do chickens, an egg boiled hard and put thru the

mincing machine and half a cup each of rolled oats, breadcrumbs, bran and shorts

mixed all together dry. No wet mashes for little turkeys, my dear, but if you have any

money knocking around – somehow the money all seems to go for plow shares or

blacksmith’s coal or some other uninteresting thing – get yourself a bag of good chick

meal. You can use it sometimes when you are extra busy.

“You can let the mother turkey get out and in the wagon box at will after three

days, but be sure and keep the little ones in at least two weeks. They will peep, peep,

peep, and look so miserable, but be hard–hearted and tell them it’s only their fancy

thinking they want to get out. Anyway you will be able to call the roll every night and

they will all be there, whereas, if you let them go while they are so very young the

weaker ones straggle behind and get lost altogether. Be sure and never leave any

water around in pails where little turkeys are. All summer I use an old road scraper

for the general poultry, but little turkeys seem to have a positive mania for

committing suicide by drowning.”

“And that’s so, too,” interjected Mrs. Creighton. “Last summer I lost five about

six weeks old, drowned themselves one after the other in a pail about half–full of

water I had stood just outside the back door.”

“Didn’t enter your head to throw it away, I suppose?” laughed Margaret.

“Nope,” replied her visitor, “not until I was fishing out the last one; I tried first

aid, too, put it in the oven to dry it out and I think it would have revived only I forgot

about it and shut the door.”

“Poor little thing,” murmured Margaret sympathetically.

“I think it was poor little me,” said her visitor ruefully. “I was going to have

two of them for Thanksgiving, two for Christmas, and the other one for my birthday.

But hurry up, or I shall have to be going.”

“Now, the next thing I want to tell you is about storing your surplus eggs for

winter use. You will be getting any amount of them, and the price will be dropping

right along. They are only a nuisance to your storekeeper, who has to forward them

to a big town where there is a cold storage plant, so I simply put them down in lime

water and sell them in December, when the storekeeper is only too glad to get eggs of

any sort or kind. You will need two good sized barrels, into one of them put from five

to ten pounds of good hard, chunky bits of lime, and immediately pour over it several

gallons of very hot water. Cover it with a cloth and leave it an hour or two, looking at

it occasionally to see if it has absorbed all the water. If it has, add more. After several

871

hours add more water until the barrel is half or three parts full. Stir well with a stick.

The next morning fill the other barrel about half full of the clear lime water from the

first barrel, and gently drop your eggs in every day as they are laid. Be very sure not

to put in a single one you are not absolutely sure of, because if you do it will

deteriorate and spoil the others. So will a cracked one, but if they are as near

perfection as it is possible to get an egg when they go inside the lime water, they will

come out in splendid condition. I have helped my father to put thousands away like

this long before the days of cold storage were dreamed of. Well, keep on putting your

eggs in, always seeing there is about two inches of water on top of them, adding more

and more lime water as needed. A little of the sediment won’t matter a bit, and, when

it is nearly all used up, you can use the sediment to limewash your coops and perches.”

Mrs. Creighton glanced at the clock. “Well, I guess Jim’ll have to get his own

supper tonight, all right,” she remarked complacently. “I don’t mean to get out of this

chair until you’ve finished that letter, and there’s another page or two yet.”

51. CHAPTER V.

Do you know that little ducklings require different food to that given to chicks? If you don’t, just read what “Mother” advises as the best feed. Then the ducks require looking after to keep them growing all the time, and this week’s article tells how to make a chicken “creep.” Success with farm poultry depends upon attention to little things, and this story is full of odd pointers all of which help to make poultry profitable.

“Won’t he mind?” enquired Margaret. “Will can’t bear me to be away

mealtimes. If I am, he just goes to the cupboard and gets some bread and jam or a

slice of cake and waits for his supper proper until I come home.”

“Ah,” sagely replied her friend, “don’t you begin by spoiling him like that. You

just make him wait on himself and hang up his own hat and jumper, too,” she added,

glancing round the immaculate room. “Old Ma Hazelton, she just used to wait on

them boys hand and foot and made herself a regular slave to them.”

Margaret smiled softly to herself as she answered quietly, “Ah, well, I don’t

believe a little petting and spoiling hurts anybody. I think all men like having a lot

of fuss made over them. You see, if I tell Will what an awful good husband he is, why,

he just has to be good to keep up his reputation, partly because he would hate to do

anything mean and so disillusion me.”

And the cat jumped up in her lap and curled himself up comfortably as she

reached out her hand for the interrupted letter.

“And now, my dear,” she read,, “I want you to try and make for yourself what

I call a creeper, for the chicken to feed out of. You will need it all summer. Get a dry–

goods box from your grocer – a good big one – about two feet square and eighteen

inches high or thereabouts. Knock out all four sides, leaving the top and bottom –

replacing the sides with laths about two inches apart. Find an old, firm–standing

saucepan, one that will not tip over easily, nevermind if there is a hole or two in it,

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and fill it with a mixture of bran, cracked corn and cracked or whole wheat and place

it in the middle of your creeper. See the latter is big enough so that the hens cannot

reach it when they poke their heads thru, or the ducks, either, when they happen to

come around, as their necks are longer. You will never believe how soon the little

chicks learn where to come directly they feel a little bit puckish, and if the old mother

hens are always sure of finding food there for their little family they will hang around

and not drag them all over the place trying to find a grain here and a grain there for

each hungry brood. Of course, you will still feed them night and morning close to the

coops where they sleep.

“You see, Margaret, what you are after is to get your cockerels into market

condition as soon as you possibly can, and your pullets to develop properly. They

cannot do this unless you feed them well. What I mean is, don’t make them hunt all

over the farm yard for their living, running every bit of flesh off their little bones and

getting pushed all over the place and trampled on when you go and feed the other

birds. You see, you want broilers and fryers before any of your neighbors have begun

to think about them, and you will have them, too, if you keep your saucepan in the

creeper always full until they are about six weeks old. I will tell you what to do with

them after that time.

“Now about my ducklings. The old ducks have probably been laying some time.

When you get two good big hens broody, put eight duck eggs under each of them. They

will be four weeks before they begin to come out, but be sure and sprinkle lukewarm

water on the eggs about two days before they are due. Do not disturb the hen on any

account while she is actually hatching. It is often two days after you hear the first

faint “cheep” before they come out of the shell, but don’t take them out to see how

they are getting along. Never help a duckling out of its shell, although you may do

this with a chicken occasionally, but not often even with them. When they have all

been out about 24 hours, share them up evenly between the two hens and put them

in their coops on the green grass with a little boarded run in front of them. This is

necessary because they are so very apt to stray away and never seem to have sense

enough to find their way back again, for all their looking so wise. I make the run out

of a box the same size as the front of their coop by knocking out the top, bottom and

one side. This does fine and takes no time – always such a consideration with me.

Push them up close and at the end of the season you can chop them up for firewood.

“They require different feed to chickens or turkeys. Their food must be sloppy.

An egg, very finely minced, and some bread and milk fed in a herring–tin or

something similar, and clean water in another close by. After a day or two see all the

table scraps are kept especially for them. Ducklings seem to need a little meat of some

kind or other. In about a week you can give them all to one of the hens and send the

other one back to the egg factory. When you get thirty or forty of them around you

about a month or so old, get a bunch of beef lungs from the butcher, boil them several

hours and put thru the mincer. When you feed anything like that you can fairly see

them grow. There is another thing I do; put about a quart of shorts into a basin. Pour

over it some of the hot liquor you boiled the lungs in, stir it until it is as hard as a

baseball nearly, then throw little bits around as you walk among them and just see

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them run. I think I get as much fun out of feeding my ducklings as I do out of anything

– but they are quite a lot of bother. Do not forget to move their coops on to fresh

ground every day, they soon soil the ground. There is one thing about them, when

they are ten weeks old you can kill and market them – they are the first return from

your labors, and I suppose that is really what we are after.”

“You bet it is,” emphatically remarked Mrs. Creighton. “What I see about

poultry raising is it’s so much easier than gardening. That old hoe sure does make

your back ache.”

“Why don’t you get Jim to put it on a fresh piece of summerfallow every year?”

laughed Margaret. “Will says he wouldn’t have a garden at all if he couldn’t have it

that way.”

“Well, now the letter’s ended,” said Mrs. Creighton. “I suppose I’d better be

going home or that husband of mine will think he’s got to get his own breakfast

tomorrow morning as well as his supper tonight.”

52. CHAPTER VI.

This, the sixth chapter of “Mother’s Hens,” tells of some of the difficulties which cause an inexperienced poultry keeper a good deal of trouble. Just as with every other line of work, success with poultry is obtained thru experience, and the recounting of that experience, as told by Mrs. Shepherd, is what constitutes the value of these articles to our readers. If you want to make money from your chickens you should read all these chapters.

When Mrs. Hazelton came back from taking her husband’s lunch one day the

following week she saw a strange buggy standing at the door and on going inside she

found a sweet–faced elderly woman seated in her own particular rocking–chair,

evidently waiting for her return. Margaret immediately stretched out both hands in

welcome.

“I know who you are,” she exclaimed. “You are Mrs. Robinson, I am sure.”

“And I know who you are,” replied her visitor. “You are young Will Hazelton’s

wife. I heard you were worrying about your poultry, and as I had just two hours to

wait in between trains I thought I would run up and see you. Now we won’t waste a

lot of time talking about a lot of things we are not interested in, but get right down to

business. See, I have kept my hat on, let’s go out and walk around. I can always talk

better out of doors.”

Margaret led the way to where she had arranged her coops in a neat long row.

“There,” she said proudly, “they are all ready. I hope in about a week they will have

a nice lot of chickens in them.”

Mrs. Robinson looked dubiously around. There was quite a wind on and it had

tilted her hat to a rakish angle, while Margaret tied her sunbonnet on tighter yet.

“But my dear child,” she expostulated, “why, oh why, have you put them right

out here in the open? The winds will surely blow them over.”

Mrs. Hazelton looked surprised.

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“Why,” she said, “I thought everybody said chickens wanted plenty of fresh air.”

“So they do,” replied her visitor, “but they will get plenty enough in some more

sheltered place. You seem to have quite a lot of granaries around. Get Will to hitch

on and pull two of them together to form an angle to make a shelter from the north

and westerly winds. Put your coops there facing south and your chicks will grow twice

as well.”

“Alright,” said Margaret, “only I don’t like bothering Will when he comes in to

dinner; he is tired and the horses are tired, too.”

“My dear child,” sagely remarked the elder woman, as she laid her hand on

Margaret’s shoulder, “when you have been married as many years as I have you will

never ask a man to do anything for you when he comes in to his dinner, but make him

something extra special for supper some evening. Then coax him to do it before he

takes the harness off his horses. Me! oh my! If there is anything that wants more

careful handling than a newly hatched chicken you are just taking out of the shell, it

is a husband; but you know the old saying, ‘Feed the brute’.”

Margaret laughed merrily as she opened the door of the old sod house where

her setting hens were. They passed in very gently so as not to disturb them.

“There they are,” said Margaret, satisfied that here at least her visitor could

find no fault; “there are twelve of them, aren’t they beauties? See, I can stroke them

or do anything with them,” suiting the action to the word.

“Oh, you naughty hen!” she exclaimed. “Whatever have you been doing? I only

gave you thirteen eggs and you must have got twenty nearly.”

The big Wyandotte was trying in vain to cover them all, while her next door

neighbor was disconsolately hugging the remaining six. Mrs. Robinson sat down on

an old box.

“She has been stealing them,” she remarked severely, “and if you don’t do

something different here pandemonium will reign when they start hatching. You will

have to get some shallow boxes with neither top nor bottom and slip over each hen –

if you haven’t got any, get some six or eight inch boards and knock some together. If

you don’t, they will often leave a whole nest full of even ‘pipped’ eggs to get hold of

one that is running around. I always take the chicks away as fast as they are hatched

and keep them in an old hat at the back of the stove until they are all out, leaving the

old hen with about two to keep her quiet until next morning. Of course you don’t raise

her right off the nest to get them, only slip your fingers under her. Be sure and take

away the empty egg shells, too, or they will sure telescope over the remaining eggs

and smother the later hatching chicks. Have you any turkey hens setting yet?” she

enquired.

“Oh, yes,” said Margaret gleefully. “You just come and see her, she is sitting on

that flax pile over there. Will said ‘Leave her alone, she knows more about where she

wants to set than you do.’”

“H’m, h’m,” said the more experienced woman, looking doubtfully at the clouds

racing across the sky. “When this wind drops it is going to rain some and then that

flax will heat and rot and spoil all those eggs. I lost a whole setting of early turkey

eggs that way once. Hay, wheat or oat straw does not seem to matter so much, but

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flax straw – never again. You be persuaded by me, dear, and this very evening, quite

late, make a big comfortable nest right in one of the corners of your setting house and

transfer her there, eggs and all. If she has been setting a week or ten days the germs

have settled a little and if you handle them very, very gently it won’t hurt them a bit.

No, she won’t forsake them. Turkey hens are the very best setters and mothers of any

kind of poultry.”

Margaret willingly agreed to do as advised and the two women wandered

around by the garden.

“You can’t see anything yet,” said the younger woman, poking among the dry

earth for some sign of life, “but most of the seeds are in. Will said it was no good

cropping it too close to the hens as they would only scratch things up as fast as they

came thru, so there won’t be anything for a rod this side.”

Mrs. Robinson looked around her with a critical eye. The wind swept prairie,

with only a few buildings scattered around the farmyard, did not appeal to her as an

ideal place to raise several hundred chickens.

“I am afraid you will think me a very fault–finding woman,” she said, “but you

really should have more shelter. You see you have no bluffs or anything.”

“Yes, I know,” admitted Margaret, coloring slightly, “but I am afraid we can

hardly afford the lumber–“

“Now that is where people make a big mistake,” interrupted her visitor. “Hens

are not any happier and what is more to the point, don’t lay any more eggs just

because they have elaborate buildings. If you have plenty of money, get them by all

means, but if you are like most people, only got a very little, put it all into your stock

and the feed for them. All you want here is a pound of sunflower seeds – they only

cost ten cents. It is getting rather late now, so you had better soak them in water

twenty–four hours. Plant them in rows two feet apart and thin out to two feet apart

in the rows. They will make you the dandiest shelter all summer long. Then, when

they are ripe, bend them over and the chickens will pick out every bit of seed. Even

then they are not done with. The last thing in the fall chop them off close to the root,

dry them well, tie them up in bundles and stack them against one of the buildings.

They make the best of kindling when you are in a hurry, and are easy to chop, too,”

she added feelingly, “besides which they are so pretty. They look from a distance like

a beautiful grove of trees. Now for one peep at the incubator and I must be going,”

and they hurried toward the house.

“Yes,” said Margaret, looking at the thermometer, “just 103. They should be off

in about three days. There are 100 eggs, just what I put in. I didn’t test any out

because I was afraid I might throw away some good ones.”

“Oh, but that will never do,” laughed her visitor. “An infertile egg does not

warm up like a good one. The same with a bad or partly developed egg. Besides, they

affect the other eggs surrounding them. Let us take some of them down to the cellar

and test them now.”

She quickly transferred about twenty into one of the little boxes and they went

down into the cellar with a lamp and an egg tester.

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“Isn’t this a splendid tester,” said Mrs. Robinson. “I think it is wonderful the

way the government helps people who really want to learn. Only fancy all you have

to do is drop a post card saying please send me your egg tester free of charge and

address it to Department of Agriculture, Livestock Branch, Ottawa, and away it

comes. Now look here,” she continued, adjusting it over the lamp, “this egg is dark all

over except the airspace, no doubt it will hatch out fine, and this, and this; but this

one, do you see that rim of light all round it? Well, that evidently reached a certain

stage and then died. This one looks as bad, or worse; this, you see, is quite clear, but

you need not throw the clear ones away. On the other hand, don’t give it to the hired

man for his breakfast, he might not like it. The storekeeper does not appreciate them

as much as one would wish, but you can boil them real hard and feed them out to

your little chickens when they hatch out. Now I really must run,” she finished, “or I

shall lose my train. Goodbye.”

She clambered into the buggy and they shook hands warmly. “Don’t thank me,”

she laughed, “I wanted to see you in the worst possible way. Give me that good long

switch down there. Thanks, awfully. Now go ahead, girlie. You only belong to the

livery keeper anyway,” and off she went in a cloud of dust.

53. CHAPTER VII.

Money is very welcome to the farmer’s wife during the summer time. In this article the writer tells of a way to make some ready money by fattening broilers. There is nothing theoretical about these articles. They are just stories telling the actual experience of a wide awake farmer’s wife who lives in Saskatchewan. Anyone of our readers can do the same if these chapters are closely followed.

“Will! Will!” Margaret’s voice floated across to Will as he sat on the seed drill,

“stop, I want you.”

He pulled up his team and waited as Margaret sprang lightly over the plowed

land.

“Oh, Will,” she panted, as she came closer, “they’re coming out and running all

over each other. Do come home and look at them.”

Will leaned over and kissed the flushed upturned face. “What, the sheep?” he

inquired. “Well, open the pasture gate and drive them back again, they drive easy

enough.”

“Sheep nothing,” retorted his wife, who was quickly picking up the Canadian

expressions, “it’s my chickens in the incubator, and they look so sweet; do come.”

“Not on your life,” was the decided reply. “What, leave off in the middle of

seeding? I shall never make a farmer’s wife of you, I can see. There, now, don’t be

cross,” as she turned pouting away. “Here’s something that will make you smile. Jim

Davis brought it out,” and he drew a bulky letter from his jumper pocket and held it

just out of her reach.

Margaret stretched out her hands for it with a little squeal of delight.

“Mother’s letter, oh, do give it to me, don’t be such a tease.”

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“There you are, then,” he laughed, handing it to her, “now run off or my team

will go to sleep. ‘Giddup’,” and he shook the lines.

Halfway back Margaret sat down on a huge buffalo stone and opened her letter.

“My dear Margaret,” it began, “I have been thinking so much about you and

your little downy chicks, which should be coming out by this time. They will soon be

growing their feathers and not looking nearly as pretty, but you must not neglect

them on that account. Try and imagine each cluster of chickens is the only one you

have got and feed and care for them accordingly. You will soon be able to tell which

are the cockerels. Their tail feathers are shorter and their legs thicker and longer

than the pullets. You must pick out a dozen or fourteen of the biggest and best from

your earliest hatched broods and put leg bands on them; they are for your breeders

next year. You may not need quite as many as that, but there is sure to be a neighbor

or two who will want to trade one of their pure bred mongrels for one of your birds. I

always oblige a neighbor in that way. I think one can do quite a bit of good by

distributing high class stock in that way. Only – come closer and let me just whisper

this: After your neighbor has departed with one of your pets, give Will the one she

brought you in exchange, get him to take it around to the wood–pile and gently but

firmly apply the axe. An extra chicken pie is better than letting him run around with

your better flock and next spring have your chickens come all the colors of the

rainbow.

“Now, after having picked out your breeders, take every coop you are not using

and put them in a quiet spot, north of the plantation, down in the ravine, or back of

the big granary, anywhere away from the other hens, and that night, after they are

asleep, go the round of the chickens and pick out all the biggest cockerels you can

find, putting four or six in each coop. Now you want to fatten them as quickly as

possible. You will find several long shallow troughs around. Fill these with a thin

gruel made of shorts and warm separated milk and a little sugar. Keep the coops as

dark as you can. The last thing at night fill their troughs up again with the same

mixture. Then, directly it is day–break they will be up and have their breakfast while

you are still having your beauty sleep. Keep looking to them about every two hours

during the day. They will generally be ready for something or other – a little oatchop

mixed with buttermilk, some clean water, a little grit or perhaps charcoal to keep

them in condition, meat scraps, or a handful of rolled oats scattered along their

troughs. In about two weeks you will hardly know them, they will be so plump.

“It is quite a bit of trouble fattening broilers, but you cannot sell to the higher

class shops and get the best prices if you simply pick them up just as they come from

the farmyard. Besides, on a wheat farm like yours $10 in July or August seems worth

more than $20 or $30 in October when the wheat money comes rolling in. Perhaps

you might like to get a few private customers for your produce. If so, get the paper

published in your nearest town. Choose about twenty names and addresses of hotels,

restaurants and institutions. Write to them and tell them what you have to sell and

the price. If you enclose a stamped envelope for reply you will make sure of getting

one. I followed this plan several years. Just sent weekly hampers to private

customers. I used a thirty–dozen egg crate, putting fifteen dozen eggs in one side and

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chickens and butter in the other. You get better prices that way, but I really think it

is easier to do as I do now. Just send a weekly consignment every week regularly, in

time for their Saturday’s trade, to the best store there is in your nearest big town.

They send your cheque and return your hampers with clockwork regularity.

“Now about killing the broilers. I really can’t tell you how to kill, pick, truss

and pack them by letter. I tried to, but it took about three pages of foolscap. So you

had better drop a postcard to Prof. Herner, Manitoba Agricultural College, Winnipeg,

asking him for his Farm Poultry in Manitoba Bulletin, No. 6, and on pages 22 to 27

you will find out exactly how to do it, so much better than I can tell you. Write also to

the Department of Agriculture, Regina, for W. A. Wilson’s Bulletin, No. 25 – Fleshing

chickens for market. Will, of course, will have to do the actual killing. No woman

should have to do that, and you had better get old lady Thompson to help you with

the stubbing – I was able to do her a kindness once and I know she will return it. I

don’t want to put too much work on you, little woman, only it seems a pity to let such

an opportunity for earning a good sum from the unavoidable waste on a large wheat

farm slip by. When packing in the hot weather, see your birds are well fasted, and

keep them in the cellar until the last possible moment. Be sure and let the party you

are sending to know every time you send your crate off, then he can be on the look

out for it and unpack it at once.”

“Well,” said Margaret, “that seems all about that subject. I guess I’d better be

getting home to see if the lamp has gone out. It does seem too bad to be making

preparations for killing them the very day they are hatched tho.”

54. CHAPTER VIII.

The question of marketing farm products is a complicated one. During the course of the year many complaints are received stating that prices paid by local dealers for farm produce, particularly chickens and eggs, are so low that no profit can be made from these by–products of the farm. The writer of “Mother’s Hens” does not agree with this, however, and she shows in this article how she is always able to obtain profitable prices for all her produce. Readers cannot afford to miss the advice which is given in this chapter. If the principles taught throughout this series of articles were applied generally throughout the farmer’s whole business, there would be a great many more contented homes throughout the West in a very short while.

“And now, dear, if you have finished your dinner, come and have a look at my

beauties,” and Margaret led the way into the little sitting–room, from whence issued

a succession of cheerful “peeps.”

Will rose obediently and followed her, and she proudly threw back the dark

blanket she always kept hanging in front of the incubator window.

“There, now,” she asked, “don’t they look sweet; look at that little monkey over

there, only just come out.”

Will looked at them a moment thoughtfully, quizzically.

879

“Cover them up, cover them up,” he hastily said at last. “Nasty little things,

nasty, ‘orrible little things. I remember the first time mother used that machine. She

simply couldn’t resist opening the door when about half of them were hatched, and it

checked them coming out. And ma, she just hated to see them die like that, so she

took the tops off all the rest of the eggs, lifted their heads out and laid them out in

rows just like a lot of wounded soldiers. You never saw such a lot of wrecks, but most

all of them got alright by next morning. I’m afraid I’ve no use for chicken. Now, if they

were only colts–.”

His wife dropped the blanket indignantly. “There, go out and get on with your

harrowing. You never say a good word for chickens unless they are fried. Your mother

must have been very fond of boys to have brought you up at all.”

She chased him out of the house and read her letter over again.

“And now, Margaret dear, your one aim and object must be to so feed and care

for your entire flock and press them on, so as to be able to market them early, when

prices are high, instead of keeping them around, as most people do, until Christmas,

when prices are sure to drop – and drop heavily. Kill your ducklings when they are

ten weeks old, after picking out six or eight of them for your next year’s breeding pen.

You had better get a good drake from a good reliable poultry firm and not trade

around for one. It will be more satisfactory. You will find the ducklings rather a job

to pick, but you must take it as being ‘all in the day’s work.’ Don’t tear the skin and

keep the feathers separate for your own special pillows or to make a nice present of a

sofa pillow or something similar.

“Your turkeys should be good weight by Thanksgiving. Kill them every one for

that day, keeping back three or four of the smallest ones to grow bigger for your own

use at Christmas. Your same breeding pen will do, as they are quite young birds. You

had better sell a 10 or 12 pound turkey at Thanksgiving for 25 cents a pound than

keep him another eight weeks when he may perhaps weigh 14 or 15 pounds and only

get 18 cents. Last year I sold mine for 23 cents, head and feet on and undrawn, but,

of course well fasted, the first week in October, while my neighbors, who kept theirs

until Christmas, could only get 15 cents neck and feet off and drawn ready for table.

“Now about the roosters. Directly you finish setting, shut up your roosters.

Feed them all they will eat for about two weeks, then kill them and send them all at

once to your dealer. Tell him just what they are, but poultry will be scarce about then

and you will get a fair price. You will find you have around a hundred laying hens.

Now, as they become moulty, you will probably think the best thing to do is to kill

them, too, as they will not lay while they are moulting, but that is wrong. A hen that

moults early will get over it and lay during the winter, while the later moulting ones

will be shivering around until December and not lay until March. So as your hens

show signs of losing their feathers, catch them on the perch after they have gone to

roost and put a leg band on them, until you have got about 40 or 50 done, and kill the

rest of them as you see fit. Do not keep any over that have scaly leg or blemishes of

any kind. Keep only the best. I would kill them at the end of September if I were you.

They will have had the run of the farmyard during threshing time and be in better

condition than if kept till a month later. Keep up your weekly supply regularly to

880

your buyer. He will then rely on it and can always depend on them for his best

customers, but for Thanksgiving kill all you can possibly find time to pick. But when

you pay him a surprise visit during the holidays and see the chicken he has paid you

18 cents a pound for marked ‘Very choice – 23 cents,’ and your precious turkeys he is

that day giving you 23 cents for, labelled ‘From our own farm, only 27 cents per

pound,’ don’t kick. Your buyer has heavy expenses – rent, taxes, etc., and quite a few

bad debts, whereas he takes just as many or as few as you choose to send, always

providing your offering is properly killed and dressed – sends you your check and you

have no further bother.

“I commence selling my limewater eggs the first week in November. Never sell

any of these at your local store. Always sell your genuine ‘new–laid’ eggs there. But

dealers in the big towns, where they depend almost entirely on cold storage eggs, will

be glad to have them. Get Will to take them out of the limewater barrels for you and

bring them upstairs. It is an awful cold job and the lime is so hard on one’s hands.

Cover them well with clean, cold water and stand close to the stove to get the chill

off. Then, with a soft dish–cloth, wash every egg and lay them all on the table to dry.

Pack them in thirty dozen egg crates and send them off. Be extra careful to see they

look nice and do not get dusty in transit. If it is very cold, put your carriage heater in

the sleigh and wrap them up in a couple of horse blankets. They are worth taking

quite a bit of trouble over. Thirty dozen eggs at 45 cents a dozen come to – let me see

– how much? I never could reckon without pencil and paper; and you should have

nearly 3,000 in your two big barrels.”

55. CHAPTER IX.

All good things must come to an end some time and, with this chapter, “Mother’s” letters about her hens will close. This week, after referring to the kind of house which is suitable for use in this Western country, “Mother” describes the preparation which every would–be successful poultry keeper should make for the winter feeding and care of the flock. The advice contained in this article is very valuable and even if none of the preceding chapters have been kept, this one should be carefully put away to read over again in the fall.

“And now, dear girl, I am going to say something I am sure you will not like.

My pretty nurse and the new doctor have decided to be ‘all in all to one another,’ but

she wishes to be married in her own home, Australia, so as money seems no object to

them, and they have both taken quite a fancy to me, nothing will do but I must come

along too and act as chaperone. I am really almost well anyway, only must lie on my

back most of the time in the next three months. So I shall make an ideal chaperone,

shan’t I?

“This will be my very last letter, as we start next week, but I wanted to give

you a few suggestions about your new chicken–house for the winter. You will find any

amount of plans in the bulletins you wrote for, but don’t choose a too elaborate one.

You will probably have to wait until the wheat is hauled before Will can build it, but

881

don’t let him put it off too long as the nights will be getting very cold. Decide on one

about seven feet high in front sloping to five feet at the back, with a shanty roof, I

think they call it. Half glass and half unbleached calico front, door in centre of front

facing south, of course. I had porch put on one year and liked it well. Cover it on the

north, east and west with tar–paper, closely lathed, or, if you can afford it, a double

ply of lumber. This will depend on the crop, probably, but the inside is really more

important than the outside. Copy the one used at the University and read carefully

the principles contained in Prof. Herner’s article on page 8. You may be sure those

people who have made a lifelong study of poultry keeping know more than you and I

know. Try and get yourself one or two new galvanized hoppers to take the place of

those home–made ones. There is one called six–in–one I was going to buy. Have an

earth floor, since you have no rats. I don’t care for cement ones, they are so cold; but

when I say earth I don’t mean bare earth, but – and this is one of the most, if not the

most important item in poultry keeping – always keep it covered with at least a foot

of straw from the strawpiles.

“Every time Will fetches a load of wheat straw for the barn, get him to leave a

few fork–fulls in the chicken–houses as he goes past. He will probably forget it half

the time, but you must keep on at him. Then I want you to do one thing very

particularly. Get Will to haul a wagon–box on the stoneboat to the nearest straw pile;

choose a nice warm afternoon – of which we get so many in the fall – take a pail or

two, a fire shovel and a thick, warm pair of gloves, and go down there and pick up all

the loose grain, chaff and rough stuff lying around where the separator stood. It is

not hard work, and, being on the stone–boat, not too high to reach, and before you

know where you are you will soon have your wagon–box full. Do this as soon as you

can after the threshers have gone, before all the pigs in the neighborhood get there. I

like pigs all right in their place – which is fixed up good and tight in a sty – but I have

no use for them around my chicken–houses, nor around the strawpiles either, until

after I have been there. Visit all the strawpiles on the farm this way, but if you can

get a little help so much the better. You will not have so much trouble to get the men

to rake the fields directly after threshing. Make them put the rakings in the stackyard

and feed this out in the spring. One way and another you should have plenty of feed

for a hundred hens until February without touching the wheat bin, especially as

during all the cold weather you will give them a hot breakfast composed of shorts

with boiling water poured over it, adding a saucepanful of tiny potatoes and all the

odds and ends of kitchen refuse.

“Ah, me! Chicken raising is a keenly interesting, profitable business, but if

anyone ever asks you if they should quit everything and go in for poultry farming

entirely, you give them Punch’s advice to those about to be married – don’t. It is ideal

on a farm as an extra. Your feed is of the cheapest. A ravine full of rosebushes and

your stubble will nearly keep your turkeys after they are six weeks old. Your ducks

will dabble in the big slough and get half their living, and, keeping them all on free

range, they are as healthy as it is possible for them to be. Dear, dear, I remember

when I used to keep one or two in a rabbit hutch in a tiny back yard about eight by

ten, or even at times in the attic, when we lived in the old country.

882

“One thing more and then I am really done. You probably wonder how much

money I actually make one year with another. I think the simplest way would be to

look right at the back of my writing desk and find my last year’s account book. You

will find it pretty correct, as I was rather on my mettle. None of the family would

believe there was anything but a lot of hard work in it – unless it might be unlimited

fried chicken and eggs – but I proved conclusively, both to their satisfaction and my

own, that there was money in it too, and lots of it. But of course you must go at it in

a business–like way. A woman said to me once: ‘Ah well! I sit all the broody hens I

can get and what extra chickens I have in the fall proI’m that much ahead, they rustle

along somehow.’ But I am sure, my Margaret, that you will not be like that.”

As Margaret read the few remaining lines of her letter full of love for her “boy”

and his young girl–wife, tears sprang to her eyes as she thought of the lonely woman

even now on the ocean speeding away to the far–distant country and, reaching out

for her close–at–hand knitting, she mentally resolved she would show her dear Will

she would follow his mother’s directions as closely as possible and see how far

enthusiasm could take the place of experience.

THE END.

883

Acknowledgments

“Where does he get those wonderful toys?”

–Sam Hamm, Batman (1989)

While assembling this collection, I benefited immeasurably from the inspiration and support provided by others. Librarian Tina Bebbington of the University of Victoria knows more about the history of Canada, and how to access it, than anyone else I’ve met. She has been an essential source of knowledge and expertise, and I am exceedingly thankful for her advice and guidance. I am also indebted to Ms. Ye ‘Dawn’ Yuan, who provided useful comments on the articles dealing with Chinese immigration. Dr. Andrea Eidinger’s insightful comments on the first edition were the inspiration for chapters IX, X and XI, and much besides. Krista Kienapfel provided valuable input on the chapter on housework. The section on farming technology and the history of the combine harvester was inspired by an illuminating conversation with staff of the National Toy Museum of Canada.

The Department of Economics at the University of Victoria was an unfailing source of help and assistance. In particular, I would like to thank Graham Voss for his encouragement, and Karen Crawford for her ability to make things happen. I am also indebted to Kinga Menu, of the Geography department, for putting me in touch with the geographers who created the original maps for this volume.

Finally, this work was only possible because of the efforts of the Universities of Alberta, British Columbia and Victoria. I relied heavily on their digital archives of Canadian newspapers, and I am grateful to them for having made these chronicles of Canadian experience available to the world.

Christopher Willmore Victoria, B.C. Summer 2019

884

Index of Named and Pseudonymous Authors

A FARMER, 522 A Mining Expert, 360 A NORTHWEST WOMAN, 644 A RECENT VISITOR TO THE NORTHWEST, 452 A SUBSCRIBER, 632, 727 Agnes Christina Laut (1871 – 1936), 514 Agnes Deans Cameron (1863 – 1912), 136, 244 Albert George Sargison (1862 – 1929), 813 Alfred James Hall (1853 – 1918), 215 Alice Rix (d. 1930), 399 AN IRISHWOMAN, 640 Archibald Dale (1882 – 1962), 509 Arthur St. Lawrence Trigge (1869 – 1957), 792 Arthur W. Maybee (1886 – 1940), 780

B.W., 68 Baccalieu, 33 BI–METALLIST, 51 Britton Bertrand Cooke (1890 – 1923), 469

C.S., 182 Charles A. Gregg (d. 1917), 833 Charles Avery Dunning (1885 – 1958), 576 Charles Canniff James (1863 – 1916), 563 Charles Lewis Shaw (1863 – 1911), 161 Charles Malcolm Nicholson (1858 – 1932), 811 CHRISTIAN, 204 Christy Harding (1872 – 1943), 80 CUHELYN, 370 Cy Warman (1855 – 1914), 490 Cyrus Cuneo (d. 1916), 240

David Horn (1849 – 1933), 571 David Williams Higgins (1834 – 1917), 363, 373 DESPAIR, 70 Donald Ross (1840 – 1915), 533 Dylis Bennet Laing (1906 – 1960), 248

Edgar William Dynes (1886 – 1957)., 427 Edward Alexander Partridge (1861 – 1931), 785 Edward Neale Barker (1859 – 1942), 566, 663, 685 Edwin Jacobs (1854 - 1920), 345

Eliza Ord (1831 – 1893), 380 Emily Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) (1861 – 1913), 244 Ernest Ingersoll (1852 – 1946), 84 Ethel Maude Gibson Rupert (1891 – 1912), 648 Ex., 739 Exchange, 780

Fannie Elizabeth Shepherd (1864 – 1937), 636, 859 Francis Marion Beynon (1884 – 1950), 668 Francis Marion Beynon (1884 – 1951), 629, 630, 632, 638,

642, 715, 735 Frank G. Carpenter (1855 – 1924), 109 Frank Wilson West (1877 – 1954), 796

George Byrnes (1840 – 1899), 276 George Eulas Foster (1847 – 1931), 589, 600 George Fisher Chipman (1882 – 1935), 512 George Tate (1877 – 1940), 120 George White Stockton (1872 – 1947), 596 Georgina Binnie–Clark (1871 – 1947), 619 Gertrude Balmer Watt (1879 – 1963), 685, 715 Gertrude Luard (1869 – 1957), 652 Grahame, T. L. (died before 1909), 229

H., 38 H.G.–W., 611 Halifax, 762 Harold Sands (1873 – 1935), 354, 358 Hay Strafford Stead (1871 – 1924), 199 Helena Elizabeth Oakes Smith (1872 – 1947), 218 Henri Charles Wilfrid Laurier (1841 – 1919), 464 Herbert Francis Shade (1875 – 1953), 274 HERBERTA, 636

Isaac Cowie (1848 – 1917), 143, 408 Isabel Beaton Graham (d. 1950), 648 Isobel. See Isabel Beaton Graham (d. 1950)

J.B., 743 J.H., 208 James Murray (1843 – 1900), 55, 57, 59, 61, 63, 64, 66 James Walker (1848 – 1936), 177 Jean Blewett (1862 – 1934), 140, 854

885

Jean E. Thompson Stevenson (1862 – 1939), 633 John Alexander McDougall (1854 – 1928), 179 John Anderson (1855 – 1930), 56 John Chantler McDougall (1842 – 1917), 127 John Charlton (1829 – 1910), 528 John Edward Sears (1889 – 1950), 800 John Green Brady (1847 – 1918), 817 John J. Young (ca. 1867 – 1923), 659 John McLean (1851 – 1928), 241 John Murray (ca. 1833 – 1905), 323 Joseph James Hargrave (1841 – 1894), 408 Joseph Lister Rutledge (1883 – 1957), 593 Joseph Ogle (1839 – 1920), 821

Kathleen Redman Strange (1896 – 1968), 536, 542

Legislative Assembly of Nova Scotia, 36 Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874 – 1942), 238

MA, 645 Maquinna (d. 1901), 216 Margaret McBeath (1850 – c. 1925), 729 MARTEN HUNTER, 152 Mary E. McGowan (1862 – 1954), 524 Mi Lady, 850 Miss Chinook, 740 MISSOURI, 742 Mrs. G.F.R., 850 Mrs. McBeath. See Margaret McBeath (1850 – c. 1925)

Nellie Letitia McClung (1873 – 1951), 711 NORTH DAKOTA, 509

Observer, 37

ONE OF THE HAWKERS WHO ARE TAKING THE TRADE FROM OUR STARVING STOREKEEPERS, 725

ONE OF THEM, 705 ONE WHO KNOWS, 746, 754

P.S., 384 Peggy. See Gertrude Balmer Watt (1879 – 1963) Peter Davidson (d. 1884), 771

Reginald B. Beatty (1858 – 1928), 124, 133 Richard H. Little (1869 – 1946), 503 Robert Rogers (1864 – 1936), 591 Robin Rustler. See John McLean (1851 – 1928)

Senex, 757, 759, 765, 768

Thomas H. Clover (1829 – 1920), 408 Thomas R. Henry (1886 – 1952), 548 TOPSY, 634 TRIXEY, 635 Truth, 45

Walter Redfern Smith (1845 – 1921), 47 Warwick Reynolds (1880 – 1926), 369 William Christie McKillican (1884 – 1964), 567 William D. Thomas (1867 – 1945), 605 William Epps Cormack (1796 – 1868), 20 William Frederick Osborne (1873 – 1950), 492 William M. Taylor (1857 – 1944), 598 William Mackenzie (1849 – 1923), 479 William Wallace (1862 – 1942), 608

A QUICK NOTE
I. Newfoundland

The Bait Act and its Aftermath
Factors Influencing the Price of Cod
The Crash of 1894
Our Staple Product: The Letters of James Murray

II. Fur

Beavers and their Fur
Fashion and the Beaver Hat
Edmonton and the Fur Trade
Fur Farming
Freight and Transportation
Traders and Trappers

III. The Treaties, and After

Starvation, the End of the Buffalo, and Sitting Bull
Land and the Treaties
The Potlatch
The Oolichan
Settler Perceptions of Indigenous Women
“Back and Forth from Time Immemorial”

IV. Chinese Immigration

Changing Perspectives on a Chinese Head Tax
The Head Tax of 1878
The Occupations
The Fall of Kwong Lee
Standard of Living and Way of Life
Victoria: Opium Smuggling Central
The Business of Opium
The Beginning of the End for the Opium Industry
Supply and Demand of Chinese Workers
Chinese Participation in the Gold Rush

V. Gold

1. A Song of the Cariboo Gold Rush (1864)
The Gold Fields of British Columbia
The Rossland Mines
The Cariboo in ‘62
Eliza Ord, Cariboo Entrepreneur

22. Tumultous Times (1866 – 1868)

Roads to Gold (or Lack Thereof)
The Klondike Rush
Gold on the Saskatchewan
Nellie Cashman
Kate Ryan

VI. Railways

The Canadian Pacific Railway (C.P.R.)
Land Grants and the C.P.R.
Sir John Lister–Kaye and the C.P.R. Lands
Manitoba vs. the Canadian Pacific Railway
The Canadian Northern Railway (C.N.R.)

VII. The American ‘Invasion’

A Sudden, Massive Movement
Personal Stories
“What classes does Western Canada welcome?”

VIII. Wheat and Farming

Early Farming
Harvest Help
Technology and Farming
New Strains of Wheat
From Farm to Market
The Wheat Board of 1919
Women and their Farms
Ready–Made Farms and the Woman Farmer

IX. The Status of Prairie Women, 1912 – 1916

The Country Homemakers
Guardianship of Children
Homesteads and Land
Financial Dependence

X. Housework

The Nature of Rural Housework
Housework in Verse
Housework and the Canadian Male
Labour–Saving Innovations
Canned Food for Unexpected Guests
The Changing Craft of Laundry

XI. Women and Paid Work

On Women and Work
Conditions of Life and Work
The Domestic Help Problem
Egg and Butter Money
How Some Women Earn Their Money
A Living Wage for Women
British Columbia’s First Minimum Wage

XII. Money and Banking

When Halifax Ran on Doubloons (1820)

1. Senex’s First Letter (September 13)
2. Senex’s Second Letter (September 22)
3. A Replacement for Senex’s Third Letter (September 28)

Banks and the Farmer
Canada’s Banking System

XIII. Appendix

The Annual Hops–Picking Migration

3. “No More Prosperous Natives” (1889)
4. Of Horses and Custom Houses (1890)
6. A Smallpox Scare (1892)
8. The Destruction of Nootka (1894)
9. “Color and General Picturesqueness” (1897)
12. Trade at the Turn of the Century (1900)
14. Playing Ball (1903)
15. The Wreck of the Boscowitz (1904)
17. The E. Clemens Horst Hop Co. Camp (1906)
20. “Labor is Scarce” (1909)
21. “An Interesting Sight” (1910)
22. Experimenting with Machinery (1911)
23. A Strike (1912)
26. The Agassiz Hop Fields (1915)
27. “A Boon to Local Merchants” (1916)
31. “Wishes to Employ All White Labor” (1926)

The Evolution of Chop Suey in Canada to 1949

47. CHAPTER I.
48. CHAPTER II.
49. CHAPTER III.
50. CHAPTER IV.
51. CHAPTER V.
52. CHAPTER VI.
53. CHAPTER VII.
54. CHAPTER VIII.
55. CHAPTER IX.

Acknowledgments
Index of Named and Pseudonymous Authors