I cannot forbear in conclusion to quote the words used by the public-spirited directors to describe their achievement. “The Canadian National Exhibition,” they say, “is the one place to see Canada at a glance. It shows all that Canada makes, mines, and grows. It gathers the products of her homes, her farms, her forests, her waters, her mines and her industries, within the limits of the finest Exhibition Park on the North American Continent. It is recognised from coast to coast, and from the frozen north to the Gulf of Mexico, as the greatest of all annual Exhibitions, distinctly Canadian in its characteristics, and educational in its tendencies, and yet including so many high-class amusements and attractions as to make it the annual holiday centre for three-quarters of a million people drawn from all parts of North America. And the number is increasing every year.” Bravo, Toronto! CHAPTER VII MANITOBA: CLUES TO PRAIRIE FARMING Standing on high ground in Manitoba—and also, for the matter of that, in Saskatchewan and Alberta—you may gaze upon a vast encircling panorama of grey grass and gentle undulations, visible in the dry atmosphere and bright sunshine to a remote purple distance. That is one sort of prairie, the open sort, so suggestive of the sea. Also there is bush prairie, with trees and heavy undergrowth. A third kind is scrub—the resurrected bush after forest fires have swept it. But, whether you be on moor or woodland, you will see flowers and birds and bees. For Canada is a land of sunshine, blue sky, and beautiful perfumed blossoms. Only by hearsay do I know of the North-West when the ground is jewelled with violets, blue anemones, ladies’ slipper, and the bird’s-eye primrose. I know it well, and like it best, in the season of the prairie rose—surely the fairest flower anywhere to be found on the world’s circumference. It is petalled like our own wild rose, but of a sweet fragrance; the plant dwarfed and dainty, and nestling against the earth, with its upturned blossoms ruddy and conspicuous or of palest pink. I’m sure the fairies pluck buds of the prairie rose when they go to gather their posies. Indeed, I am sorry that the maple leaf—eloquently though it advertises the flaming glories of the autumn foliage—should have been chosen for the national emblem. Canada will always be to me the Land of the Prairie Rose.