LETTERS TO THE E1)1T011.
'bares of the length of one of oar leading paragraphs are Oct, more read. and therefore more effective, than those tvlach fill treble Stir 111101,j -- THE rim WEALTH OF BRITISH COLUMBIA.
To SRC Enema or THE " SPECTATOR.") FIR,—In the Spectator of December 21st is a very long anonymous letter to which pleme permit a reply. The communication is not only anonyinous, but after "the wilful diffusion of much error as to matters of fact," the writer gives no further clue to his habitat than the words " West Coast, Vancouver Island," an island over three hundred miles long. It is little wonder, 1.owever. that your correspondent, who declares that the rain- tell on Vancouver island is 190 inches, " and the further north the heavier," shrouds in anonymity his name and place. I have received from Mr. Wade, the newly arrived Agent- General for British Columbia, the Government figures show- ing the rainfall. For Victoria, the capital of the inland, the rain-gage resisters 27.37; for Alberni, the only town on the west coast I know personally, the rainfall is 07. Mr. Wade, ho came through Prince Rupert, which is the fishing metro- polis of British Columbia, only n few weeks since, tells me it is safe to quote the average earnings of 'the fishermen, last season. at 5900 (13101 per month. If this is not evidence of the " wonderful wealth of the ocean," what will satisfy the anaemic person who subscribes himself "A Render "P A slay or two only after these lines reach you one of the treat " Empress " liners rails from here rid the Panama Canal for Vancouver and Prince Rupert to-return to their homes two thousand officers and men. British Cidumbia has done splen- didly by the Empire. Out of a population of considerably less than four hundred thousand souls she sent fifty thousand to the Colours. Every man of the fifty thousand when rubbing elbows with our men on the various war fronts has advertised the beauty and the resources of British Columbia in every quarter of the Empire. Why should this anonymous jeremiad be enlarged nt just this time when tens of thousands of our young fellows are making up their minds where they intend to settle under the British fine I have travelled the British Empire quite as extensively ns my fellows, and I consider a settlement in Vancouver Island the very beet the Empire has to offer. Or again a colony in the Charlotte Islands, its chief industry its fisheries, offers to our sailors and soldiers a home where the entire environment is as nearly perfect as we find it here below. I hope then the wailings of your correspondent who " fires into the brown" of Vancouver Island will not divert one emigrant from that objective. Or, if not Vancouver, let 1110 recommend Bassett on Graham Bdew/, the largest of the " Charlottes." The mean temperature at Bassett in December is 409 Fehr., and in July is 55.; its average annual rainfall 311 inches. Could there be a more attractive location for is " Service" colony than Bassett, sense sixty miles west of Rupert, with all the cold-storage equipment of that growing city in which to market fish, a full trainload (450 tons) of fish running east every other morning. I affirm once more that the fish wealth of those waters in a hundred lend-locked harbours north and south of Hecate Straits is unsurpassed. Professor Prince, of the Dominion Fish Commission, apparently holds with me. /le e rites:—
" The fisheries are amongst the most prolific and valuable in the world, and they are capable of immense expansion. Their leading feature is that they can be carried on in waters per- fectly land-sheltered. Hecate Straits, Dixon's Entrance, Queen Charlotte Sound, and the Straits of Georgia, with innumerable sleep inlets, bays, and arms, are so shielded from the ocean as to furnish unique conditions for the pursuit of fishing. . . . The greatest spawning and feeding grounds in the world for herring, rod, plaice, halibut, and numerous other food fishes occur within this vast and sheltered area, which covers nearly thirty thousand square miles."
I take this entry from an old note-book : "June 26th, 1908: The ' Manhattan' (one of the New England Fishing Company's boats) has got 350,000 lb. of halibut in two days." At that time the G.T.P. Railway was not yet within a thousand miles of Prince Rupert, and halibut were selling at three cents a porind. At the present price for these fish in Prince Rupert (fourteen cents) this two days' catch, all with a hook and line, would be worth nearly 8I0,000.
I enclose you the full "log" of the `James Carruthers,' a vessel fishing out of Prince Rupert this summer. You will note that her catch between March 2nd and August 7th was two and a quarter million pounds, and that each member of her crew—men with no capital, but giving their services in return for a one-fifth share from the capitalist owner—received for the six months 51,846 (.2400). And I believe these B.C. fisheries are, given ordinary care, inexhaustible; that they contain numerous "banks" not less permanent than the cod- banks off Newfoundland. Our fish consumption in the British Isles is less than a million tons. Professor Elliott, in a paper for the U.S. Senate, estimated the fish consumption of the Pribyloff Islands seal herd off the Alaskan coast at six million tons.Your
correspondent also rudely contradicts my figure of the cost of cottages. In my letter to you when quoting the cost of four-room colleges at .2100 for a fisherfolk settlement, such as I suggested on "The Charlottes," I had before me a con- tractor's offer. through Mr. S. Harrison, of Prince Rupert, to build a hundred cottages at that figure for a Prince Rupert land company. This was a pre-war price, and may now doubtless be somewhat too low.
There is an old Persian proverb which says "Under the Lamp darkness," and I have really 110 patience with a citizen of British Columbia who, sitting under a lamp no wonderful, hugs shadowinnd in some " West Coast" niche. That is sn ocean perhaps wealth-endowed beyond others, but perhaps not any richer than is the Labrador. I wish Lord Morris would tell in your columns the tale of that colossal untapped food supply at our very doors. But the amenities of life in British Columbia—the things that make life worth living— what is there to compare with that I have said something of the fisheries of a Province which has seventy-five million acres of untondicil forest, and has, on the Skeeaa River, one of the great anthracite coal deposits of the world, as well as over eight million horse-power in as yet updeveloped "white coal." Such are its seas, its forests, its mines, its waterfalls. The late Premier, Sir Richard McBride, declared that British Columbia had more agricultural land than there is in all Japan; and in a recent Scribner Mr. Duncan Macpherson
writes that the area of arable lands in British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan still available for settlement "is over three hundred and fifty-seven million acres, of which less than six per cent. is at present cultivated." Three hun- dred millions! Here in Great Britain we have thirty!
Let me leave the letter of " A Reader " to the judgment of the body of your readers, remarking in conclusion that thirty- five years ago, when I firet landed where the beautiful city of Vancouver now stands, there was not so much as a log hut, only an unbroken expanse of forest. What will not be the development, in the thirty-five years ahead, of that splendid Province with now three great completed systems of railways, with the Panama Canal open, with the surface of its resources
hardly scratched?—I am, Sir, &c., Ifongron FREW.. Carlton Club.
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