24 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



Rivers of Canada 



By Prof. Coleman. 

 December 14, 1905. 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : About three months 

 ago I was in a country where the rivers are dry, many of them be- 

 ing but rivers of sand and rocks. The rivers I shall deal with to- 

 night, however, are not of that kind. 



There is no country in the world better watered than Canada. 

 Our rivers are of tremendous importance to us, not only through 

 their scientific aspect, but also from an industrial standpoint, for 

 the development of our west is carried on by reason of them. 



There would be no use of my describing all the various rivers 

 of Canada, so I shall take only those which are of the most interest 

 or the greatest importance. 



There is a peculiar thing about our language, — we have only 

 two modes of expressing a stream of running water, viz., creek 

 and river. In some parts of the coinitry if you can get across a 

 stream without wetting your feet it is a creek, if not it is a river. 

 In other parts of our country, however, this latter would not be 

 considered a river at all. Take British Columbia for example. 

 Here Kicking Horse Creek, so called, is so large that the only way 

 we could get across it was to swim our horses across and take a 

 boat ourselves. And the horses had quite a time swimming across, 

 too. That is called a creek in British Columbia. So, you see, 

 definitions are variable according to the countr}'. 



We have so many rivers in Canada that it will be necessary to 

 make some classification or distinction. They may be classed 

 according to the direction in which they flow. There are those 

 great ones in the east, the St. I^awrence, the Restigouche and the 

 St. John, which latter is noted for that peculiar reversing of the 



