القرن التاسع عشر ، رقم ١٨٢، أبريل ١٨٩٢ [و‎‎٧‎١] (٢٤٤/١٤٦)

1892
G31
IMPRESSIONS
THE CANADIAN
T hough the 'Great Lone Land' is no longer a to the
reading public at home, there is not enough known about Manitoba,
Assiniboia, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia by the
people of the United Kingdom. This is a pity; as I am persuaded,
after a pretty extensive tour through those regions during last
autumn, that if anything like full and true information of the real
extent, fruitfulness of soil, and unequalled advantages of this immense
and interesting portion of the Empire were in possession of the public
of Grreat Britain and Ireland, the North-West would not long remain
so thinly populated.
Want of fuller information is not the only obstacle to the creation
of a deeper interest in the subject of these countries. There is a
good deal which must be unlearned about Manitoba and its adjacent
provinces before a true estimate of their worth and attractiveness
can be formed. The means and methods employed to colonise them
have not been the happiest in plans or most fruitful in results. A
generally wrong impression is conveyed in the pictorial representa
tions of Canada, in which she is invariably represented to Europeans
as a female, attractive-looking of course, but always clad in furs and
living in a land of snow shoes and ice palaces. The climate of North
western Canada is little, if any, colder than that of north Minnesota,
north Dacota, and other portions of the United States ; but we never
find the practical Americans giving a figurative representation of
their country suggestive of perpetual winter in any part of their
great Republic.
Manitoba, which has been given a very bad climatic reputation,
has not an average of more than a few degrees more cold than
western Nebraska. Frosts are earlier, it is true, and the injury with
which they menace the wheat harvest is the one real drawback and
danger to the farming industry of an otherwise exceptionally favoured
land. But this is a danger which is certain to decrease, in proportion
to the growth of population and the singular but sure influence
which the tillage of the soil, the erection of dwellings, and the other