Westward with the Prince of WalesNewton, W. Douglas (Wilfrid Douglas)
History
Westward with the Prince of Wales
Newton, W. Douglas (Wilfrid Douglas)
Canada -- Description and travel; Windsor, Edward, Duke of, 1894-1972
Canadian men dress with a conspicuous indifference. They wear anything
from overalls and broad-banded sweaters to lounge suits that ever seem
ill-fitting. In Winnipeg there is the same disregard for personal
appearance plus a hat with a higher crown. As we went West the crown
of the soft hat climbed higher, and the brim became both wider and more
curly.
There is, too, on the sidewalks of Winnipeg the conglomeration of races
that go to feed the West. The city is the great emigrant centre that
serves the farmers, the fruit-growers of the Rockies, the ranchmen in
the foothills, and even the industries on the Pacific Slopes.
Everywhere outside agencies there are great blackboards on which
demands for farm labourers at five dollars a day and other workers are
chalked.
To these agencies flow strange men in blouse-shirts, wearing strange
caps--generally of fur--carrying strange-looking suit-cases and
speaking the strange tongues of far European or Asiatic lands. Chinese
and Japanese (whom the Canadian lumps under the general term
"Orientals"), negroes, a few Indians, and a hotch-potch of races walk
the streets of Winnipeg, and Winnipeg deals with them, houses them,
gives them advice, and distributes them over the wide lands of Canada,
where they will work and working will gradually fuse into the racial
whole that is the Canadian race.
In the hotels, too, one notices that a change is taking place. The
"Oriental"--the Japanese in this case--takes the place of the Canadian
bell-boy and porter, and he takes this place more and more as one goes
West. There are, of course, always Chinese "Chop Suey and Noodles'
Restaurants," as well as Chinese laundries in Canadian towns; we met
them as early as St. John's, Newfoundland; but from Winnipeg to the
Pacific Coast these establishments grow in numbers, until in Vancouver
and Victoria there are big "Oriental" quarters--cities within the
cities that harbour them.
The "Orientals" make good citizens, the Chinese particularly. They are
industrious, clever workers, especially as agriculturists, and they
give no trouble. The great drawback with them is that they do not stay
in the country, but having made their money in Canada, go home to China
to spend it.
Most of the alien element that goes to Canada is of good quality, and
ultimately becomes a very valuable asset. But the problem Canada is
facing is that they are strangers, and, not having been brought up in
the British tradition, they know nothing of it. The tendency of this
influence is to produce a new race to which the ties of sentiment and
blood have little meaning.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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