CALGARY AND QUEBEC
By MRS. WALTER ELLIOT
y WENT almost straight to the West. I landed in Halifax, spent I a week on the way in Ottawa and Toronto, and then moved on to Winnipeg—the gateway to the prairies, the most Canadian of Canadian cities, the start of the new country. Winnipeg is one of the most independent-minded of cities. The Winnipeg Free Press and The Winnipeg Tribune are, for instance, probably two of the best papers in North America. They are both, by the way, published in the evening. I inquired why there was no morning paper. I was told that The Free Press and The Tribune are so good that no one will buy a morning paper. This is no doubt true, but seemed to me to leave part of the question unanswered. However, the spirit of Mr. Dafoe, the great editor of The Winnipeg Free Press, still broods around, and Mr. George Ferguson has put on his mantle with ease and skill. The Free Press is still The Free Press. Like The Man- chester Guardian, it still keeps its reputation.
Here begin the Prairies—miles and miles of Manitoba ; miles and miles of Saskatchewan. Vast flat country with horizons that look a hundred miles away. They were covered with snow when I was there. In Regina snow is looked on as worth a million dollars a fall. Right beyond Saskatchewan lies Alberta. Still vast prairie plains— flat, flat, completely flat—punctuated by great wooden towers, the rows of grain elevators along the railway stations. Castles of grain, the bases of the fight against famine. Every day I read in the papers of the struggles of the world's politicians to find food for the world's populations. Out in the prairie lands of Canada I could see and touch the great stores of grain, and hear the clanking of the freight cars as the endless railway trains chugged their way back to the East and the waiting grain ports. In 1946 it is hard to imagine the world of 1932 when grain was not wanted and the prairies were sunk in depression and drought. But that memory is still vivid in the minds of the grain-growers. It has to be reckoned with even today.
Calgary, Alberta, is still the pioneer city of the West. Once a year the cowboys come down from the ranches and the Rockies, and ride in the great " stampede." Broncho-busting, ten-gallon hats, steer- riding—all the paraphernalia of the Wild West movies come to life. But is it only once a year? I had a feeling that in Calgary that current still runs all the year round, in spite of the magnificence of the Palliser Hotel, of the Hudson Bay Company's Store, of the great Imperial Oil Company's pipes and tanks. In fact, in spite of man's remarkable swatievement in creating this magnificent modern city in 6o years, there is still the feeling of the pioneers. The " West " is everywhere. I shouldn't have been in the least surprised to see cowboys riding down the streets any time.
Here, late one evening, I met a real " old-timer." He had come, long ago, sixty years ago, from the borders of Scotland, from my own village curiously enough—a Turnbull of Rulewater—from one of the farming families who live in that valley today. I sat and had a cup of tea with him, and he told me how he had left Scotland in 1885.
He landed in Pennsylvania, and worked his way across the States.
There was no railway through Canada. He reached Calgary when there was nothing but a post office and a few log shacks on the great plain. It was the year the railway came, but the bridges had not been built. He put down ten dollars, and they gave him 160 acres. He built himself a log cabin and started to ranch. The Indians passed by him on the trail once a year. Bear's Paw, the chief, was a friendly man. He sent his two sons, Moses and David, to bring greetings to the Scotsman pioneering in a new land, and to smoke a pipe of peace.
He lived all alone. In the summer he got some help to cut prairie hay. He never broke any land. His cattle multiplied. He bought out another rancher and ranched Brag Creek. He rounded up his cattle once a year in the autumn, and drove them down to Calgary to be sold, fording the rivers. On one occasion he and some friends set out on the gold rush to the North. They took a waggon and drove down north, crossing the rivers when the ice was just breaking. They got to a point where the waggon could go no further. They cut down trees and sawed out planks and built a canoe. Some of them went on north by the river. Turnbull came back with the team. He had a terrible journey home. This was the first time any wheeled vehicle had gone over this country. The old man sat and talked of these adventures as though it was yesterday. In his lifetime he had seen Calgary grow from a few log huts to a great modern city. Here is the West—the whole of its history in the lifetime of one old man.
Canada is the straddle between its East and its West—a straddle in space but also a straddle in time. Montreal is a city of two nations. It has a cosmopolitan certainty which compares with New York, Paris, Rome or London. It dates back to 1600. Older still are the steep narrow streets of Quebec city. On the cliffs above the St. Lawrence is France—where there has never been the French Revolution. The Grande Allie is eighteenth-century, or is it earlier? In and out of narrow streets with convents and monas- teries, monks and nuns walk in their habits with an assurance un- changed since the days of Cardinal Richelieu. Here is French civilisation coming straight down from le Roi Soleil. It has known no Napoleon, no 1848, it has not had its land devastated in 1870, in 1914, in 1940. Here is history, a tapestry being woven on a loom almost undisturbed for 400 years.
Laval University was founded in 1663. It is based on the Classics. It is based on the Law. Here is a university where the King's representative is also the Cardinal Archbishop. French is its mother tongue, indeed its only official tongue. My particular ploy was with the Faculte des Sciences Sociales. This is a modern development, started in 1932 only, but already with a team of skilled clerics. Father Lesvesques and Father Poulin, trained in Lille and in Washington, bring to the university the learning of both the old and the new worlds. Here within the ancient walls of Laval University workers are being trained for the new sociology of our times. They are being trained, for instance, for a family case-work agency, which deals specially with the problems of the returned soldier. A new study of the problem of housing in Old Quebec city has been made by the students in the social-service class as part of their studies. I had the opportunity of lecturing to a class of students in social work on some of our club work among adolescent boys and girls in Great Britain. The leaders, who in this case are the teaching orders, and the students were all deeply interested, and asked that someone should come out and give a course of lectures on this.
Here in French Canada all the youth work is, of course, done within the Catholic Church. I visited the " Jociste " movement, which includes the Jeunesse Ouvriere Catholique, the Jeunesse Agricole Catholique, the Jeunesse Etudiante Catholique and many more sections. These organisations are growing. Their leaders were most anxious to hear everything about our youth service. What specially interested them was the fact of the fifteen indivi- dual organisations, each with its individuality and its traditions, co- operating with each other and with the State in the recreation and education of our boys and girls. All this, both in French-speaking and in English-speaking Canada, was the purpose of my visit—to meet people with common interests and to learn, as well as to tell, of the work being done by and with young people on both sides of the Atlantic.
French Canada in this, as in everything, retains its individuality. It is old France. I didn't feel entirely strange. Do we not in Scot- land boast a traditional kinship with old France? But this is 190- Calgary and Quebec are both Canadian cities. One has been made in the lifetime of living men ; the other in four centuries. Over
both the indefatigable Mr. Mackenzie King has been elected Premieirfor 25 years. There are many remarkable things about Canada and many great achievements. To join these so-different elements is the greatest yet. To hold them and fuse them will be th ! greatest of all.
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