266 Sport and Life. 



followed rather more swiftly than was expected, and, short-lived as 

 was the reign of this particular head of public works in British 

 Columbia, it was yet long enough to witness his discomfiture. 

 Within twelve months of the issue of the Crown grants for the 

 twenty-nine estates, in which form I had picked our 30,000 acre 

 grant, this minister of the Crown had to insert in the estimates 

 presented to Parliament a sum of 25oodols., wherewith to close up 

 the canal, which had cost the country 30,000 acres of the best 

 land in the district ! For it was feared that during an exception- 

 ally high water the Kootenay river might get the better of the 

 gates and lock, and take it into its head to carry out my original 

 scheme, and flow into the Columbia. 



I am rather impressed by the necessity of explaining the 

 rdison d'etre and history of this useless canal, for I feel no 

 desire to have this work, as carried out, go down to posterity as 

 either proposed or desired by me. The last w r riter on matters 

 British Columbian, Miss MacNab, makes the following remarks 

 about it : "A more useful work could hardly be imagined ; but the 

 way it was carried out rendered it speedily abortive. On my 

 return journey I went to see the ruins of this miserable little canal. 

 The only result of the canal at the present time is to render the 

 navigation of the Columbia river more difficult than before by 

 turning the water into the Kootenay." 



If critics, so blind to primary facts as is this good lady, are to 

 sit in judgment on one's deeds, another attraction will be added to 

 suicide by canal building. Whatever natural wonders Miss MacNab 

 discovered in her hasty skim through the province, the feat of the 

 waters of the Columbia being turned by the canal into the 

 Kootenay is by far the most remarkable ; for, as the Kootenay 

 is at least lift, higher than the Columbia, Miss MacNab wants her 

 readers to believe that water in British Columbia is able to climb 

 upstairs ! 



Those two years of canal building brought with them quite a 

 little crop of " experiences " ; let me relate a few for the benefit of 

 those attacked by that insidious malady, the pioneering fever. One 



