Ontario of the birch-bark canoes and the shining, tawny 

 yellow Peterboro canoes, that one learns to love as one 

 loves a fine living thing; of that land beyond, the land 

 of quiet, and blue and ochre distance, where the glint of a 

 wet paddle, across the wind-brushed lake, alone announces 

 another human being there; of the trails that are only for 

 portaging the canoe from one waterway to another, trails 

 different from any other trail of the continent, the brush 

 close at the ground but cropped away about five or six 

 feet up, for the passage of a man carrying a canoe, over- 

 turned, on his back. 



The Inventory is Inevitable 



Does this develop into an inventory ? The inventory 

 is inevitable. The catalogue is only dipped into. Away 

 north, far beyond, are the lonely posts of Hudson's Bay 

 with all their strange history, blent of the sophisticated 

 far from home and of the barbaric; and beyond again are 

 Chesterfield Inlet and Coronation Gulf, where whalers 

 from Dundee lie ice-bound the winter through, and a lone 

 patrol of mounted police (mounted only in name there), 

 for the sake of the Eskimos and humanity and civilization 

 in general, keeps the peace beneath the Aurora. 



It can't all be put in one book. In a little article, 

 like a string of beads, it may be suggested. Beyond, to 

 west, are lumbermen again, as in New Brunswick, and 

 prospectors looking for oil, and Indians trapping; and 

 south of them are the Great Plains, once dotted with 

 buffalo herds, more recently with the long-horned steers, 

 and now with the grain elevators. 



Then the flat plain begins to slope upward, and anon 

 it rolls and is like the land round Salisbury, toward Stone- 

 henge, and little creeks twist and whirl in the dips; and 

 farther on trees rise in the dips, but, for a long way still, 

 only in the dips. There the talk is not of canoes or to 

 the tune of: "How many pounds dat dog he pull, heh ?" 

 There are the horses with the high saddles, such as "the 

 movies" have made familiar in other lands, horses whose 

 sires came up from Mexico, strayed (or stolen) from the 

 herds of Cortes and Coronado horses and cattle (still a 

 few long-horns left among them, but the sleek little Jerseys 

 numerous, and men now churning and cheese-making in 

 place of "punching cows"), and the motor-cars. The car 

 goes everywhere, even where there are no roads, bobbing 

 up and down over the swells of that part of the earth as a 

 boat careens in a billowy sea. 



There the front of the great wall of the Rockies takes 

 the sunrise every day like a mirror flashing; and the ways 

 of life again change, the speech of the people changes yet 

 again, the phrases of common talk are drawn, yet again, 

 from other employ. 



The Sign of the Maple Leaf 



And it is all Canada. The sign of the maple leaf is 

 still their sign; but what worlds away is the Kicking Horse 

 Pass from Yonge Street, Toronto ! Through the moun- 

 tains are clusters of shacks in bends of sandy rivers and men 

 washing for gold with sluice and long-handled shovel, or 

 with hydraulic apparatus like a fireman's hose; and a 

 little way on, over another range of peaks, under the 

 glaciers of which the big grizzlies and the little coneys 

 live, there is no sand at all, but gold in the white quartz, 

 silver and lead sparkling in the chunks of galena, or copper 

 with its dull glint in amalgams made through the ages. 



And up the rivers from the west come the salmon in 

 their season. To tell of them is to run the risk of being 

 ranked with Maundeville or even with Munchausen. 

 Would they believe on Tweedside, or on Speyside, tales of 

 rivers where the "saulmon" run in such wise that the rivers 

 seem to be almost as much of fish as of water, and the 

 Indians half wade in water, half slide about on the slippery 

 fish, and toss them out on to the banks ? Over smoky fires 

 they hang them to prepare the store of winter food. 

 Every year the canneries bustle with renewed activity. 



" The Land of Little Sticks " 



Everywhere, over all, through the balsam woods, or 

 in "the land of little sticks," on the level plains, the 



rolling plains, or down the linked waterways, even in the 

 cities, there is a sense of the bigness of the land. It 

 almost appals the voyager through the desolate beauty 

 of The North Shore (Superior); at the call of a loon break- 

 ing the silence awe fills the heart there; it quickens the 

 pulse through Southern Alberta, especially if some great 

 show of Nature be afoot, such as that of the tumble-weed 

 in a south-west wind bush after bush blown away, 

 brittle, from its stem, bobbing from horizon to horizon 

 with an effect as of loping coyote packs. Always there is 

 this sense of vastness, by lake and plain and on into the 

 mountains, where electric storms, when little rain follows, 

 set the woods alight so that one whole range is as a bonfire; 

 and still on to where the great luscious peaches grow in the 

 Okanagan. 



There I have sat down to rest, and recall my journey 

 of the last six months. These are the pictures on which 

 I meditate, and I know what lies beyond, westward still: 

 the lumber camps, the sound of the axe in the high woods 

 of the Coast Ranges, the warning call of "Timber!" and 

 then the dull thud. The logs go down to the mills that 

 send up their white feathers of steam along the inlet sides 

 in clearings among pines and firs, and circular saws come 

 up at a pull of the lever through slots in the moving plat- 

 forms that carry the logs along, and then "buzz!" the 

 shrill sound breaks out, mounts to a scream, dies away to 

 a hum. 



Let no one foolishly ask: "When will the Shakespeare 

 of Canada arise to tell it all!" It will take a thousand 

 voices from a thousand parts to tell of it all. Only after 

 they are dead many, many years, may some one lump 

 together the work of them all, and inform the credulous 

 that it was the work of one, and make him a bugbear 

 to all future Canadians telling the tale or singing the song 

 of their own corner of the vasty land. That is the only 

 way to get "the greatest writer" out of the wide 

 Dominion. 



The Value of Exhibitions 



By W. Ashley Edwards, Exhibition Branch, C.P.R. 



With the steady growth of industrial and 

 agricultural enterprise the value of exhibitions 

 as a significant factor in the promotion of trade 

 relations has come to be recognized. With its 

 main object of exciting public interest in manu- 

 facture, agriculture and art, both the expert and 

 the "man in the street" owe much to the 

 educational facilities afforded by the modern 

 exhibition, be it local, national or international. 



"There is not an artist or inventor who once 

 obtaining thus a public recognition of his ability 

 has not found his reputation and his business 

 largely increased," proclaimed a committee 

 early in the nineteenth century in making a 

 survey of the results achieved by an exhibition 

 of a national character. In this decision was 

 represented the secret of the success which this 

 form of modern advertising has so notably 

 achieved, namely, the personal touch. The 

 people came, they saw, and were conquered by 

 the appeal which a display of the products of 

 industry, agriculture and art made to them 

 through their visual sense. They appreciated 

 the fact that the development of these products 

 predicated the improvement of their individual 

 and national life. With this motive conveyed, 

 and with motives creating interest, the growth 

 of the exhibition idea was assured. 



55 



