We have little leisure out on the Western country-side, and get all the healthy exercise we need on the farm; but hundreds of country villages have their baseball and tennis clubs for summer, and hockey for winter. The cities and towns, of course, have their organized sports and healthy athletic clubs of all kinds, with enthusiastic musical and literary associations too. The churches and schoolhouses, in town and country alike, are centres of social activity. If there is one country school in the West where the children are not any day to be found playing and shouting as children should, I have yet to find it, and hope I never shall. Many school gardens are cultivated by the pupils; and large numbers of farm boys and girls are now active members of juvenile societies which give prizes for the best-bred and best-fed steers, heifers and hogs, or the best samples of grain. That youngster of eleven, captain of the soccer team, “pitched on” the hay of an eight-acre field the other day, by himself, when a sudden emergency called his father away and it “looked like rain.” Corps of Cadets and Boy Scouts flourish in scores of country centres, as well as in the larger towns. There are over 18,000 Boy Scouts in these four Provinces (that is more than the number in the East), besides 7,500 “Wolf Cubs,” or Junior Scouts. There are nearly 21,000 Cadets, in 340 companies, besides other organizations which likewise aim at helping each new generation to develop the health of mind and body Acquired for good citizenship. The Cadets are connected with our Department of National Defence; but they include in their programme lectures on citizenship, and organized games, as well as physical training, “first-aid” work, scouting and signalling. “We love peace as much as any Quaker,” says a Western war veteran who is now an enthusiastic officer in the Canadian Militia, “and warmly sympathize with every movement, international conference, or anything else, towards the abolition of war. Peace is the chief interest and foundation principle of our Empire—_pax Britannica_. If we train ourselves to be ready for emergencies, in the present state of a world we can’t help belonging to, we look forward persistently to the growth of commonsense and good feeling which will make emergencies few and far between.” As a matter of fact, we have no “standing army,” except a little force of 4,000 or so, for the whole of this vast Dominion. In the Western battalions of the ordinary “Non-permanent Militia” about 13,000 men are enrolled. CHAPTER XVI Up to the North and Home Again THE MUSIC of a foaming torrent mingles with the softened hum of mowers and roar of heavy trains rushing wheat to the steamers at Fort William, as we plane up—not down—to the south-east corner of the Province. The crisp music is the voice of Winnipeg River, busy making electric light and power for the city and the towns beyond.