Dominion, New York, Chicago, Boston, Phila- 

 delphia, St. Louis and every other United States 

 centre. Europe was represented in buyers from 

 London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna; Asia, in dealers 

 from Vladivostok, Pekin, and Yokohama; and 

 Australasia, in purchasers from Sydney. 



Montreal Originally a Fur Centre 



A Canadian fur sale fills a need which has 

 been insistent since earliest history. Montreal 

 was originally a leading fur trading centre, but 

 when the Hudson's Bay Company inaugurated 

 the shipping of furs to England and established 

 the later renowned London sales, the Cana- 

 dian city began to decline in importance. 

 For many years Canada then occupied, and was 

 contented to occupy, a minor role as London 

 developed into the fur market of the world 

 largely on account of the volume and beauty of 

 the Canadian contributions. The Great War 

 practically put an end to shipments of furs 

 across the Atlantic, and Canada herself being too 

 engrossed in the affairs of War, New York and 

 St. Louis seized the opportunity to establish fur 

 markets and attained an abnormal degree of 

 importance in this regard during the war years. 



Emerging from the period of hostilities, 

 Canada was conscious of a new status born of her 

 achievements among the other nations of the 

 ' world, which prompted her to greater independ- 

 ence of action. The fur trade offered an unique 

 opportunity for asserting this spirit. For years 

 Canada had been supplying the world with its 

 richest and most voluminous pelts, had seen 

 them go to foreign countries for auction where 

 Canadian manufacturers bought back a portion 

 of these same skins for manufacture. The force 

 of argument was clear in the success of the first 

 sale which brought Montreal, in a single bound, 

 back to its old eminence as a fur centre. 



Market Now Firmly Established 



The Montreal fur auction ranks with the 

 premier pelt market of the world. The United 

 States markets in the past year suffered severely, 

 but this was entirely due to the great slump in the 

 fur trade and not to any extent to the rivalry of 

 the Canadian sales. The American auctions it 

 is confidently expected even hoped for the sake 

 of competition will continue to operate, but 

 their activities normally rank as local marketing 

 centres, drawing the raw product from the areas 

 to which they act as collecting points. 



Winnipeg, similarly, where local sales have 

 been organized, will act more in the capacity of a 

 barter centre for local wholesale houses and not 

 appreciably interrupt the flow of furs from the 

 North-West to the Montreal depot. London's 

 position as a fur centre will probably never be 

 seriously assailed for reasons of sentiment as well 

 as business. 



Montreal, from the inception of Canadian his- 

 tory, has been the Canadian fur centre and logic- 



ally so, merely denied this'eminence from force of 

 circumstances and the dependent situation in 

 which the country existed. It had no difficulty 

 in re-establishing itself furs, and buyers of furs 

 from the very first have been attracted from the 

 corners of the earth. A Canadian fur market 

 may be considered firmly established, and with 

 part of the Dominion's hinterland a permanent 

 source of fur supply, and the increasing develop- 

 ment of the domestic ranching industry, might 

 well, at not distant date, possess the distinction 

 of the world's first fur market. 



Across Canada Sherbrooke 



The city of Sherbrooke is the commercial and 

 social capital of the Eastern Townships of Quebec, 

 a fact which may not appeal as particularly im- 

 pressive to those who do not know this area until 

 it is appreciated that this section of the French 

 Canadian province has the distinction of leading 

 the world in two products, asbestos, of which it 

 produces eighty-five per cent of the entire world 

 supply, and maple sugar, of which its output 

 exceeds eight million pounds annually. In every 

 respect its location is a most enviable one from an 

 economic point of view, situated in a rich mineral- 

 ized and agricultural area, at an equal distance 

 from Quebec, the provincial capital, and Mont- 

 real, the Dominion's metropolis, and in the heart 

 of countless towns and small villages. 



In addition to its position of commercial 

 strategy, the location of the city is charmingly 

 picturesque in its setting of typical Quebec scen- 

 ery, with both the Magog and St. Francis rivers 

 carrying their waters through it. The civic 

 area has been well planned with thoroughfares 

 laid out with a view to economic traffic and 

 future expansion and containing public build- 

 ings and residences which, its citizens claim, are 

 the equal in beauty and utility of any city of its 

 size on the continent. The area of intersecting 

 streets is frequently broken by public squares, 

 parks and recreation grounds. Educationally 

 Sherbrooke is an especially favored centre and has 

 created a name for itself in this regard ; Bishops 

 College and School lie within three miles, at 

 Lennoxville.with which it is connected by electric 

 railway. 



A Bi-Lingual Centre 



The population of that part of the province 

 of Quebec of which Sherbrooke is the hub is 

 about equally divided between the urban and the 

 rural and similarly between the English-speaking 

 and French-speaking. The agricultural section is 

 devoted principally to mixed farming and dairy- 

 ing in which it is exceedingly prosperous, as is in- 

 dicated in the fact that the largest agricultural fair 

 in Canada, with the one exception of that at To- 

 ronto, is held at Sherbrooke annually. Perhaps no 

 better indication of the popularity Sherbrooke has 

 won for itself in the past could be found than its 



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