1915-16 DEPARTMENT OF LANDS, FORESTS AND MINES. 



107 



After the Canadian National Exhibition closed we established in our Im- 

 migration Office, 172 Front St. West, Toronto, a permanent exhibit, small but 

 representative of the field crops of Northern Ontario. The richness of the soil is 

 emphasized by a collection of samples of fodder crops, such as clover, alfalfa and 

 alsike, and by a number of native grasses (also good for fodder) that grow in pro- 

 fusion in the majority of the districts. These fodders and sheaves of fall wheat 

 and oats with large heads and straw five feet in length, give manifest proof that 

 Northern Ontario will not yield to any other part of Canada the first place in field 

 crop production. The exhibit was well advertised and was the means of interesting 

 hundreds of people regarding Northern Ontario. They seemed astonished at the 

 grain and vegetables the country produced and at the natural resources with which 

 it abounded. Here, at our own door of Ontario, t^iey remarked, is a wonderful 

 country, rich in land, timber and minerals, and where cloTer almost everywhere 

 grows as a weed, and all that advantage to be freely had at the low price of fifty 

 cents an acre. 



Perhaps few people are aware that in this ciiy the Government maintains an 

 institution that is something more than a turnstile through which settlers pass to 



Log Cabin, Canadian National Exhibition. 



their new heritage. The reception room is comfortable, with proper facilities to 

 accommodate women and children, and it is also a school where many things are 

 taught to the profit of citizen and settler. 



Exhibit at the Canadian National Exhibition. 



The Northern Ontario. Settler's Home at the Exhibition this year, with ex- 

 hibits from Timiskaming, Nipissing, Sudbury, Algoma, Thunder Bay, Rainy River 

 and Kenora, in charge of the District Representatives and their assistants and also 

 a representative from the Bureau of Colonization, was perhaps one of the most 

 attractive features of the big show. A log house or bungalow may often be seen in 

 Northern Ontario as well built as this one was. The heavy timbers were dove- 

 tailed together by an art almost unknown in the older parts of the Province, and 

 its choice for the display of products, tastefully arranged from an agricultural 

 standpoint, was as appropriate as it was effective. The logs were labeled, and some 

 spruce logs gave an idea of the wood so much used for paper-making and certain 

 classes of building. Thousands of people elbowed their way into this little log 

 house from all parts of Canada and the United States but, of course, chiefly from 

 our own Province. They evinced intense interest in the exhibits, and marvelled ak 

 the wonderful quality of grains and vegetables and at the country's enormous yield. 

 Every visitor was presented with a pamphlet on Northern Ontario and with those 

 that registered we are arranging correspondence that their interest may not be 



9 L.M. 



