Canada -- Economic conditions; Canada -- Emigration and immigration
On the journey of 300 miles odd from Winnipeg to Regina, the capital of
the central Prairie Province of Saskatchewan, the traveller sees the
prairie stretching out on either side of the line to the horizon. Early
in the summer it is a sea of green growing wheat; towards harvest time
it is a sea of gold, with the wheat to the height of a man; after
harvest the prairie presents the appearance of a vast encampment with
the wheat stooks waiting for the threshing. The threshing over, the
prairie glows at night with conflagrations as if a hostile army was
marching through the land destroying as it went, but all that is
happening is the burning of waste straw and refuse from the threshing,
the ashes being the only fertiliser that the soil has so far received.
There are brand-new towns and villages at every three or four miles,
each the centre of a rapidly-growing trade with the farmers and other
settlers in the district. What will most strike the English visitor,
however, is the succession of elevators along the line, resembling huge
square or oblong towers with a turret on the top. The elevators are the
receptacles of the corn ready for the market. Each will hold an enormous
quantity, ranging from scores of thousands to millions of bushels. Many
of the elevators belong to the wholesale buyers or to great milling
firms. A large number have been built, however, by the railway companies
to hold the grain until transport is available to convey it to the
markets. So great is the pressure between the harvest and Christmas time
that all the freightage rolling stock of the companies is called into
service, and all the elevators are crammed to bursting point with the
wheat and oats, and even then the farmers complain that wheat has to
remain in the fields week after week because the elevator accommodation
is insufficient. It is a revelation to the travelling visitor of the
inconceivable food-growing capacity of Central Canada, of which as yet
scarcely the half of the cultivable soil has been broken. It is easy to
understand and to believe the boast that Canada, when its cornlands are
fully cultivated, will be able to feed four-hundred-millions of the
world’s population.
This enormous agricultural production means, of course, great and
expanding demands for the products of manufacturing industries. In the
early years of the Prairie Provinces’ development the needs were all
supplied from the East, but the Prairie Provinces, like the Eastern
Provinces, have their own industrial ambitions, and they are setting to
work to become as far as possible manufacturing suppliers of their own
necessities. Let me describe as illustrations what is taking place at
Moose Jaw and Regina, the latter the capital of Saskatchewan Province.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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