96 * THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
by weather conditions than was the case in the early days. 
Ontario, or Upper Canada, had been famed in the early half of 
the century, for its great wheat producing powers. Fall wheat was 
and still is grown in Western Ontario and spring wheat in Eastern 
Ontario. In the seventies the millers reported that Ontario spring 
wheat had quite suddenly lost its milling quality. Either new seed 
had to be obtained or spring wheat growing had to cease. Mr. R. C. 
Steele, of Steele Bros., Toronto, in 1876, went to Manitoba by way of 
St. Paul, Minnesota, and succeeded in securing 857 bushels of Red 
River Valley Fife Wheat of “hard” quality, which he brought down by 
rail and water. This was the first exportation of Western Canada 
wheat to the East. 
The wheat crops of Manitoba grew in acreage, and drew settlers 
from the East and the South. Wherever a settler built his shack and 
turned the rich, black soil to the sun and air a crop of heavy, hardy 
wheat matured; such as for years had been grown about the scattered 
Hudson Bay Posts. From remote Fort Chippewayan came the wheat 
to the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia, that surprised thou- 
sands of eastern people. The Golden West had been discovered and 
the people of Canada began to realize the dream of the first transcon- 
tinental railway, which was finally completed in 1886. Mean- 
while, during the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, 
wheat growing had been rapidly extending west, and the Portage 
Plains and Brandon became familiar names: in Eastern Canada. 
Following the shipment of seed grain in 1876, referred to above, 
there gradually developed a trade from the West to the Ontario 
millers by way of Port Arthur and the Great Lakes. It was in 
1884! that Mr. Thomas Thompson, of Brandon (now of Winnipeg), 
made what is generally considered as the first through shipment by all- 
Canadian route of a carload of wheat across the Atlantic to Glasgow. 
Mr. Thompson’s own statement will be found in the Appendix. 
The completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway opened the door 
to the Great West. The world was calling for bread, prices were favour- 
able and a steady stream of easterners poured into the open areas of 
the prairies, and by 1910, had nearly nine million acres in wheat. 
We may now introduce a statistical table of wheat production in 
Canada in the past six years. 

! Mr. George Johnson in his ‘‘Alphabet of First Things in Canada” states that 
the first exportation of wheat from Manitoba to Europe took place in October, 1877, 
and that the first train of wheat, 16 cars, left Portage la Prairie for Montreal in 
December, 1885; see appendix. 
