This book is the fruits of a visit to Canada in which the author crossed the country from Montreal to Vancouver, and returned from Halifax, Nova Scotia. As a journalist and National President of the Brotherhood Movement, which advises Brotherhood emigrants going out, and arranges for their welcome by Canadian Brotherhood men, he found all doors open to him. He had countless talks with men of all classes, native Canadians and British settlers who had been in the country from two or three to forty

WHY PEOPLE GO TO CANADA Between 350,000 and 400,000 people every year enter Canada with the intention of making Canada their home: 60,000 of these cross the border from the United States. Probably 50,000 to 70,000 are emigrants from the various non-British countries. The remainder are from the British Isles, and chiefly from England, Scotland, and Wales. The Irish prefer to go to the United States, where some twelve millions of people of Irish blood are already settled, and nearly every Irish fa

THE HOME OF A NATION Canada is the splendid and spacious home of a great nation now in the making. It is not so much a country as half a continent. It marches conterminously with the United States for 4,000 miles at a latitude corresponding to that of the south of Europe. Its Eastern Provinces are washed by the Atlantic waves and blown on by the Atlantic breezes: 3,000 miles westward British Columbia and the Yukon territory face the Pacific: northward from the United States Canada stretches into

THE MAKING OF MODERN CANADA Though Canada, as a country explored and occupied by white men, is more than three centuries old, it is only within the last half century that its possibilities have begun to be realised even by its own settlers. There are reasons to explain this tardy awakening to the significance of the country. During the French occupation, which was decided on that dark night of 1759 when Wolfe’s army scaled the Heights of Abraham at Quebec and sent its crashing volleys into the r

THE ROMANCE OF RAILWAY CONSTRUCTION Modern Canada, as has been intimated, is the creation of railway enterprise. But for the railway, not only the Prairie Provinces and British Columbia, but the larger portion of the Eastern Provinces must have remained unpopulated and undeveloped. In pre-railway days population followed the banks of the St. Lawrence and the shores of the Great Lakes. There were a few small scattered inland villages kept in communication with the world by different “portages.” W

SETTLING ON THE LAND The largest proportion of emigrants to Canada go with the intention of settling on the land. The villages of England, Scotland, and Wales are sending out tens of thousands of labourers’ and farmers’ sons dreaming golden dreams of success in the mixed farming of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario, in the wheat growing and cattle raising of the Prairie Provinces, or in the fruit farming of British Columbia. They have been brought up in British methods of agricultur

CANADIAN INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT On the voyage up the St. Lawrence to Montreal a leading citizen of London, Ontario, discussed with me the question of Protection and Free Trade. We were passing French Canadian villages and towns on either side of the river in the Province of Quebec. The French Canadians now, as ever, are agriculturists, living a quiet rural life, raising their crops, fattening their cattle, breeding their pigs, which contribute so largely to their own larders. Said my London frie

“REAL ESTATE” Before leaving for Canada a word of advice was given to me by a Member of Parliament friend who had recently returned from a tour through the Dominion. “If you meet a Real Estate man,” he said, “and he wants to talk to you, get into the next street as soon as you can.” I bore the warning in mind, but the difficulty that presented itself in Canada was that there are not enough next streets in the whole Dominion in which to take refuge from the Real Estate man. He has his offices in

THE HOMES OF CANADA The people on the great ocean liners leaving the Clyde, the Mersey, and the Severn for Canada cross the Atlantic to make homes across the seas. The object of all business and agriculture is home-making. If Canada was simply a country in which money was to be made under uncomfortable conditions, people would soon get tired of going to Canada. There are countries under the British flag and under the flags of other colonising Governments which are simply money-making countries.