Last year, when at Winnipeg, I called at the executive offices of “Canada’s International Exposition and Selkirk Centennial, 1914,” and there I learnt that preparations for the event were well advanced. The project was associated with £1,000,000. Half was expected from the Federal Government, most of the balance being provided by the following grants: £100,000 from the City of Winnipeg; £100,000 from the Canadian Pacific Railway; £100,000 from the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway; £50,000 from the Canadian Northern Railway; and £50,000 from the province of Manitoba. To complete the £1,000,000, the business men in Winnipeg were asked to take up stock to the extent of £100,000; which they promised to do. The directors undertook to lay out that million pounds to advantage; and it was estimated that buildings and exhibits provided by the various Canadian, British and Foreign Governments would represent a value equal to another million. So that persons who visit Winnipeg in the summer of 1914 are likely to have a good time and find plenty to see. As a matter of fact, if they saw nothing but Winnipeg itself their time and money would be well spent. It is a marvellous and a magnificent city. [Illustration: WINNIPEG OF TO-DAY] CHAPTER XIII KEY TO CANADA’S MINERAL WEALTH: A WARNING TO BRITISH CAPITALISTS One department of the Federal Government of Canada presents the stirring spectacle of many scientists working at high pressure and in high spirits. Savants in Great Britain are wont to act with a deliberation that might almost be called leisurely, the daily life of our learned societies being characterised by placidity rather than precipitancy. They have been investigating the minerals and the fauna and flora of their little country now for some centuries, and though there may be an insect or two still to be caught and classified, the matter is not pressing. An extremely opposite state of things obtains in Canada. It was only the other day, so to speak, that it set up in business as a unity and a nation, and at that time next to nothing was known accurately about its natural features. Soil, rocks, climate, fish, trees, birds—none had been properly overhauled. The farmers, the miners, and the railway constructors called urgently for information that could not be supplied. In a word, there was a bewildering lack of all the precise knowledge on which every large community unconsciously rests.