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25 chapters
PREFACE
PREFACE
It was on Friday, August 1, 1919, that "the damned reporters" and the Times correspondent's hatbox went on board the light cruiser Dauntless at Devonport. The Dauntless had just arrived from the Baltic to load up cigarettes—at least, that was the first impression. In the Baltic the rate of exchange had risen from roubles to packets of Players, and a handful of cigarettes would buy things that money could not obtain. Into the midst of a ship's company, feverishly accumulating tobacco in the hope
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CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
St. John's, Newfoundland, was the first city of the Western continent to see the Prince of Wales. It was also the first to label him with one of the affectionate, if inexplicable sobriquets that the West is so fond of. Leaning over the side of the Dauntless on the day of the Prince's visit, a seaman smiled down, as seamen sometimes do, at a vivid little Newfoundland Flapper in a sunset-coloured jumper bodice, New York cut skirt, white stockings and white canvas boots. The Flapper looked up from
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CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
When one talks to a citizen of St. John, New Brunswick, one has an impression that his city is burnt down every half century or so in order that he and his neighbours might build it up very much better. This is no doubt an inaccurate impression, but when I had listened to various brisk people telling me about the fires—the devastating one of 1877, and the minor ones of a variety of dates—and the improvements St. John has been able to accomplish after them; and when I had seen the city itself, I
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CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
Next morning in the train we were awakened to an unexpected Sunday. It was not an ordinary calm Sunday, but a Sunday with a hustle on, a Canadian Sunday. There was no doubt about the bells, though they were ringing with remarkable earnestness in their efforts to get Canadians into church. Lying in our sleeping sections, we were bewildered by the bells, and by the fact that by human calendar the day should be Saturday. Then we raised the little blinds that hung between our modesty and a world of
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CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
The first citizen of Halifax to recognize the Prince of Wales was a little boy: and it was worth a cool twenty cents to him. The official entry of His Royal Highness into Halifax was fixed for Monday, August 18th. The Dragon and Dauntless , however, arrived on Sunday, and the Prince saw in the free day an opportunity for getting in a few hours' walking. He landed quietly, and with his camera spent some time walking through and snapping the interesting spots in the city. He climbed the hill to wh
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CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
The Prince of Wales and his cruiser escort left Halifax on the night of Monday, August 18th, for Prince Edward Island, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, arriving at the capital of that province the next morning. Owing to the difficulty of getting across country, the Press correspondents were unable to be present at this visit, and went direct by train to Quebec to await the Prince's arrival. We were sorry not to visit this tiny, self-contained province of the Dominion, for we had heard much concernin
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CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
Quebec is not merely historic: it suggests history. It has the grand manner. One feels in one's bones that it is a city of a splendid past. The first sight of Quebec piled up on its opposite bluff where the waters of the St. Charles swell the mighty volume of the St. Lawrence convinces one that this grave city is the cradle of civilization in the West, the overlord of the river road to the sea and the heart of history and romance for Canada. One does not require prompting to recognize that histo
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CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
On Sunday, August 24th, His Royal Highness came under the sway of that benevolent despot in the Kingdom of Efficiency, the Canadian Pacific Railway. He motored out along a road that Quebec is proud of, because it has a reputable surface for automobiles in a world of natural earth tracks, through delightful country to a small station which [had?] a Gallic air, Three Rivers. Here he boarded the Royal Train. It was a remarkable train. Not merely did its construction, length, tonnage and ultimate mi
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CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
Toronto is a city of many names. You can call it "The Boston of Canada," because of its aspiration to literature, the theatre and the arts. You can call it "The Second City of Canada," because the fact is incontestable. You can call it "The Queen City," because others do, though, like the writer, you are unable to find the reason why you should. You can say of it, as the Westerners do, "Oh— Toronto !" with very much the same accent that the British dramatist reserves for the censor of plays. But
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CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
The run from Toronto to Ottawa, the city that is a province by itself and the capital of Canada, was a night run, but there was, in the early morning, a halt by the wayside so that the train should not arrive before "skedule." The halt was utilized by the Prince as an opportunity for a stroll, and by the more alert of the country people as an opportunity for a private audience. At a tiny station called Manotick farming families who believe in shaming the early bird, came and had a look at that r
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CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
Montreal was not actually in the schedule. In the program of the Prince's tour it was put down as the last place he should visit. This, in a sense, was fitting. It was proper that the greatest city in Canada should wind up the visit in a befitting week. All the same, as the Prince himself said, he could not possibly start for the West without making at least a call on Montreal, so he rounded off his travels among the big cities of the Canadian East by spending the inside of a day there. I wonder
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CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
The run on the days following the packed moments of Montreal was one of luxurious indolence. The Royal train was heading for the almost fabled trout of Nipigon, where, among the beauties of lake and stream, the Prince was to take a long week-end fishing and preparing for more crowds and more strenuosity in the Canadian West. Through those two days the train seemed to meander in a leisurely fashion through varied and attractive country, only stopping now and then as though it had to work off a ce
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CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XII
Early on the morning of Friday, September 5th, the train passed through the second tunnel it had encountered in Canada, and came to a small stopping-place amid trees. It was a lady's pocket handkerchief of a station, made up of a tool shed, a few houses and a road leading away from it. Its significance lay in the road leading away from it. That road leads to Nipigon river and lake, one of the finest trout waters in Canada. Even at that it is only famous half the year, for it hibernates in winter
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CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIII
We had a hint of what the Western welcome was going to be like from the Winnipeg papers that were handed to us with our cantaloupe at breakfast on Tuesday, September 9th. They were concerning themselves brightly and strenuously with the details of the visit that day, and were also offering real Western advice on the etiquette of clothes. formed the main headline, taking the place of space usually given to Baseball reports or other vital news. And pen pictures of Western thrill were given of lead
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CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XIV
From Winnipeg, on the night of September 10th, we pushed steadily northwest, and on the morning of Thursday, the 11th, we were in the open prairie, a new land that is being opened up by the settler. We were travelling too late to see the land under wheat—one of the finest sights in the world, we were told; but all the grain was not in, and we saw threshing operations in progress and big areas covered with the strangely small stocks, the result of the Canadian system of cutting the standing stalk
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CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XV
The Royal train arrived in Calgary, Alberta, on the morning of Sunday, September 14th, after some of the members of the train had spent an hour or so shooting gophers, a small field rat, part squirrel, and at all times a great pest in grain country. Calgary was a town that charmed at once. It stands in brilliant sunlight—and that sunlight seems to have an eternal quality—in a nest of enfolding hills. Two rivers with the humorous names of Bow and Elbow run through it; they are blue with the aston
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CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVI
In the night the Royal train steamed the few miles from Calgary and on the morning of Wednesday, September 17th, we woke up in the first field works of the Rocky Mountains. It was a day on which we were to see one of the most picturesque ceremonies of the tour, and slipping through the high scarps of the mountains to the little valley in which Banff station stands, we were into that experience of colour at once. Drawn up in the open by the little station was a line of Indians, clad in their hist
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CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVII
Vancouver was land after a mountain voyage. With the feelings of a seafarer seeing cliffs after a long ocean journey, we reached common, flat country and saw homely asphalt streets. There can be no two points of view concerning the beauty and grandeur of the mountain scenery through which the Prince had passed, but after a succession of even the most stimulating gorges and glaciers one does turn gladly to a little humanity in the lump. Vancouver was humanity in the lump, an exceedingly large lum
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CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XVIII
On Monday, September 29th, the Prince of Wales returned to Vancouver and took car to New Westminster, the old capital of British Columbia before picturesque Victoria assumed the reins. New Westminster was having its own festival that day, so the visit was well timed. The local exhibition was to begin, and the Prince was to perform the opening ceremony. Under many fine arches, one a tall torii, erected by Chinese and Japanese Canadians, the procession of cars passed through the town, on a broad a
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CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XIX
In cold weather and through a snowfall that had powdered the slopes and foothills of the Rocky Mountains the Prince, on Thursday, October 2nd, reached the prairies again. Now he was travelling well to the south of his former journey on a line that ran just above the American border. In this bleak and rolling land he was to call in the next two days at a series of small towns whose very names—McLeod, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Maple Creek, Swift Current, Moose Jaw and Regina—had in them a savour o
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CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XX
Cobalt is a fantasy town. It is a Rackham drawing with all its little grey houses perched up on queer shelves and masses of greeny-grey rock. Its streets are whimsical. They wander up and down levels, and in and out of houses, and sometimes they are roads and sometimes they are stairs. One glance at them and I began to repeat, "There was a crooked man, who walked a crooked mile." A delightful genius had done the town to illustrate that rhyme. And the rope railways that sent a procession of emoti
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CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXI
The best first impression of Niagara Falls is, I think, the one the Prince of Wales obtained. Those who really wish to experience the thrills of grandeur and poetry of this marvel had better delay their visit until a night in summer, and make arrangements with the railway time-table to get there somewhere after dark. Upon arriving they must hire a car, and drive down to the splendid boulevard on the Canadian side. They will then see the great mass of water under the shine of lights, falling eter
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CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXII
The Prince had had a brief but lively experience of Montreal earlier in his tour. It was but a hint of what was to happen when he returned on Monday, October 27th. It was not merely that Montreal as the biggest and richest city in Canada had set itself the task of winding up the trip in befitting manner; there was that about the quality of its entertainment which made it both startling and charming. Even before the train reached Windsor Station the Prince was receiving a welcome from all the sma
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CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIII
My own first real impression of the United States lay in my sorrow that I had been betrayed into winter underclothing. When the Prince left Ottawa on the afternoon of November 10th in the President's train, the weather was bitterly cold. I suppose it was bitterly cold for most of the run south, but an American train does not allow a hint of such a thing to penetrate. The train was steam-heated to a point to which I had never been trained. And at Washington the station was steam-heated and the ho
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CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXIV
There was no qualification or reservation in New York's welcome to the Prince of Wales. In the last year or so I have seen some great crowds, and by that I mean not merely vast aggregations of people, but vast gatherings of people whose ardour carried away the emotions with a tremendous psychic force. During that year I had seen the London crowd that welcomed back the British military leader; the London and Manchester crowds, and vivid and stirring crowds they were, that dogged the footsteps of
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