ships that plied the Great Lakes terminated their long runs; the traveler could, if he had the time and money, deviate from the normal rail route which traversed northern Ontario, go instead to Toronto and onward to Windsor on the Detroit River, board a luxurious steamer and spend several delightful days transiting Lakes Huron and Superior, disembarking at Fort William to resume the rail trip west to the Pacific.
In the summer of 1897 a constant horde of gold-seekers boarded the trains at Fort William for Winnipeg and Calgary, and the Luton party, seeing such men close up for the first time, judged them to be an ungainly lot, single men mostly, although some came in groups of three or four from some small town in places like Ohio or Michigan, with an occasional man and wife, the woman always big and strong and capable. A surprising number of the Americans who joined the caravan had been in the United States only briefly; they were Germans and Scandinavians, with now and then an Irishman and very rarely an adventurous Frenchman. They were men on the move, most of them in their late twenties or early thirties, sometimes a few in their grizzled forties and fifties. With their rough clothes, pasteboard suitcases and blunt language they were not an appetizing lot.
Some hours before the Englishmen arrived in Winnipeg, where they rested overnight, their train finally emerged from what had seemed to them an endless landscape of dark trees, still lakes and rock, brightened only by the flash of a silver birch tree and an occasional waterfall. Even Blythe, enamored at first with the wildness of this vast forest, had tired of it during the second day. Now the forest had stopped and the prairie stretched unbroken to the far horizon, and they began to comprehend fully both the immensity of Canada and its radical difference from any other part of the British Empire. “It really is a continent,” Trevor said as he pored over maps, “and we’re barely halfway across,” but Luton dampened this uncritical enthusiasm by asking: “Does a thousand miles of empty prairie with no history, no culture, equal a hundred miles in an historical corner like Germany, Holland and Belgium?” He could express little interest in the vital sprawling new capital of Manitoba, and was unimpressed by the new electric streetcars which rumbled through the city, to the evident pride of its citizens.
West of Winnipeg, when the train halted at towns with names like Moose Jaw, Swift Current and Medicine Hat, the Englishmen saw that the passengers who now boarded the cars bore almost no similarityto types they had known in England and little to those in eastern Canada. Here no one spoke French, and English seemed no more commonly spoken than the foreign tongues of Baltic nations. There were no men’s suits from fashionable London shops. These were men who plowed the prairie, tended cattle, and ran small country stores, and their women looked as competent as their husbands. A surprising number of women were traveling alone or in pairs.
Adding to the jumble of nationalities already on the train were the large numbers of gold-seekers who had come north from the western United States, big uncouth men with squarish faces indicating Slavic origins, or with light-blond hair indicating northern Europeans. Now every car in the train was crowded with would-be miners, many carrying with them all their family goods; the white-and-gold dining car was filled with dialects not heard before, and Fogarty’s Colonial Car was so jammed that he had to share his bed aloft with a Swede who said he came from Montana.
The other Englishmen in his party were amused by the effect of this flood of newcomers on Lord Luton: “My word, they’re a vigorous lot! No wonder they wanted to steal Oregon from us and half of Canada. Wonder the old marquess was able to hold them off, because these chaps could fight if they had to.” Studying the Americans aloofly, he thought: They’re either
In the summer of 1897 a constant horde of gold-seekers boarded the trains at Fort William for Winnipeg and Calgary, and the Luton party, seeing such men close up for the first time, judged them to be an ungainly lot, single men mostly, although some came in groups of three or four from some small town in places like Ohio or Michigan, with an occasional man and wife, the woman always big and strong and capable. A surprising number of the Americans who joined the caravan had been in the United States only briefly; they were Germans and Scandinavians, with now and then an Irishman and very rarely an adventurous Frenchman. They were men on the move, most of them in their late twenties or early thirties, sometimes a few in their grizzled forties and fifties. With their rough clothes, pasteboard suitcases and blunt language they were not an appetizing lot.
Some hours before the Englishmen arrived in Winnipeg, where they rested overnight, their train finally emerged from what had seemed to them an endless landscape of dark trees, still lakes and rock, brightened only by the flash of a silver birch tree and an occasional waterfall. Even Blythe, enamored at first with the wildness of this vast forest, had tired of it during the second day. Now the forest had stopped and the prairie stretched unbroken to the far horizon, and they began to comprehend fully both the immensity of Canada and its radical difference from any other part of the British Empire. “It really is a continent,” Trevor said as he pored over maps, “and we’re barely halfway across,” but Luton dampened this uncritical enthusiasm by asking: “Does a thousand miles of empty prairie with no history, no culture, equal a hundred miles in an historical corner like Germany, Holland and Belgium?” He could express little interest in the vital sprawling new capital of Manitoba, and was unimpressed by the new electric streetcars which rumbled through the city, to the evident pride of its citizens.
West of Winnipeg, when the train halted at towns with names like Moose Jaw, Swift Current and Medicine Hat, the Englishmen saw that the passengers who now boarded the cars bore almost no similarityto types they had known in England and little to those in eastern Canada. Here no one spoke French, and English seemed no more commonly spoken than the foreign tongues of Baltic nations. There were no men’s suits from fashionable London shops. These were men who plowed the prairie, tended cattle, and ran small country stores, and their women looked as competent as their husbands. A surprising number of women were traveling alone or in pairs.
Adding to the jumble of nationalities already on the train were the large numbers of gold-seekers who had come north from the western United States, big uncouth men with squarish faces indicating Slavic origins, or with light-blond hair indicating northern Europeans. Now every car in the train was crowded with would-be miners, many carrying with them all their family goods; the white-and-gold dining car was filled with dialects not heard before, and Fogarty’s Colonial Car was so jammed that he had to share his bed aloft with a Swede who said he came from Montana.
The other Englishmen in his party were amused by the effect of this flood of newcomers on Lord Luton: “My word, they’re a vigorous lot! No wonder they wanted to steal Oregon from us and half of Canada. Wonder the old marquess was able to hold them off, because these chaps could fight if they had to.” Studying the Americans aloofly, he thought: They’re either
Similar Books
