CHAPTER XXI

THE NORTHERN METROPOLIS-continued

It is pretty generally admitted that if the Hudson Bay route is a success, the Pas should become a very large city, because of its geographical position at the entrance from the north to the immense territory comprised in that portion of Western Canada, spreading out from it in fan-like shape. It is pointed out that for a hundred miles or so, east and west, it is the only spot where the Saskatchewan River can be crossed at a relatively small expense or at all; it is argued that it is in the same position to Fort Churchill and Port Nelson on Hudson Bay as Winnipeg is to Fort William and Port Arthur on the Great Lakes. While the country between the Pas and the bay is replete with natural resources of every kind, which sooner or later will require development, it is explained that the Hudson Bay Railway, with possibly a few feeders branching out into the interior, will long suffice to take care of the traffic which will offer, and that in case the new territory develops beyond present expectations, the Pas will still be the pivotal point about which all interest will continue to gather.

Prettily located on the south shore of the Main Saskatchewan River, at the point where this beautiful stream, after receiving the waters of the Carrot River which have made it expand to the size of a majestic lake about three miles long and a mile wide, suddenly contracts itself to a strait over which the

1 In French a pas." Otto Klotz's report of 1885 at page 17 ff. of Tyrrell's and Dowling's reports op. cit. says: 'The action of the water in the course of time is well illustrated here. Forty years ago a lad could throw a stone from the banks of the parsonage across the river where it is now 14 chains wide. Within a few years an island upon which the Hudson's Bay Company's powder magazine was kept, has disappeared. The banks where formerly houses of the company stood (in front of the present post) have been washed away. The same fate is rapidly approaching the parsonage close by." If Mr. Klotz were to come back, he would find not only that it has been found necessary

850 feet bridge of the Hudson Bay Railway has been constructed, the Pas occupies no doubt one of the best townsites that may be imagined. The evergreen, the poplar, the cottonwood abound, giving the surroundings an aspect of freshness which is nowhere else equalled. The ground is uniformly level, sloping gently towards the River Saskatchewan on the north side, Pasquia Lake and River on the west side, and Regina Lake on the east side. The soil, being still in a primitive stage, is covered with a heavy carpet of moss, varying in depth from a few inches to several feet. Centuries of decayed vegetation have accumulated, retaining the wet of the snows and the rains which cannot drain away, but percolates with considerable difficulty through to the heavy clay subsoil often covered with extensive beds of limestone. The least ditch, however, causes the moss to dry and disappear. It takes little labour and expense to lay out streets and boulevards.

The inhabitants of the Pas have an unbounded confidence in the future of their town, and are preparing for the great things which they believe the future has in store for them. Both the Town Council1 and Board of Trade 2 are composed of progressive men who spare neither time nor money to make known to the world advantageous features of their place, either by the building of permanent public improvements of the first order or sane publicity from which exaggeration is jealously banished.

They say that once the Hudson Bay route is fully in operation, the grain of Western Canada will all, or almost all, pass to move the parsonage, but that the trees, which no doubt had been planted at the time it had been erected, are fast falling into the waters of the River Saskatchewan. Chas. R. Tuttle in Our North Land, 1885, also writes: Forty years ago a lad could throw a stone across the river at the Pas, now it is 900 feet wide."

"

1 The first Municipal Council of the town of the Pas was elected on June 20, 1912, and consisted of H. Finger (Mayor), W. Carrière, J. E. Rusk, J. F. Hogan, C. E. Senkler, W. H. Bunting, and J. Fleming.

2 The Pas Board of Trade was formed on February 5, 1913, with A. H. de Trémaudan (President), J. H. Gordon (Vice-President), H. H. Elliott (Secretary-Treasurer), G. Halcrow, sen., G. N. Taylor, J. E. Rusk, S. V. Davies, J. P. Jacobsen, T. S. Leitch, J. Fleming, and Captain H. H. Ross (Councillors).

through their town because a saving of about 1000 miles will be available to the farmers, who will be prompt to understand what that will mean to their bank-book. Taking Saskatoon as an example, they show the following figures:

Sarnia to Montreal (estimated)

595

Montreal to Liverpool, 2760 miles by Belle Isle,

Even if the route by the strait is to be considered impracticable, the people of the Pas say that their town is on the only route which may be used alternately with that of the Great Lakes, and as proof their figures are the following:

Land Water Total miles miles miles

Route by the Great Lakes (from previous page) Saskatoon to the Pas

Pas to Port Nelson

Port Nelson to Port Nottaway

1960

287

410

635

128

A saving of miles over the lake route

They go further: they smile when they are at times told that the Hudson Bay Railway is still in the experimental stage, and that it is not at all sure that it will ever be completed, or, if completed, whether it will ever be of any utility as a grain-carrying route: for they say they have forests and mines; they have lakes and rivers full of fish and handy for going from place to place and distributing the goods of the older provinces and the old world to the remote posts of the north. They show the visitors with pride over the magnificent sawmill of the Finger Lumber Company, about which the reader of these pages has read something in another chapter; they take them to the primitive docks and wharves on the Pas River and let them examine the four steamboats of the Ross Navigation Company; they introduce them to the managers of the different stores of their fast-growing town and obtain for them the opportunity of sizing up the wealth contained in the immense packs of valuable furs piled in the warehouses; they show them, at a distance of a few hundred yards, the beautiful plains which extend south-westerly and assure them that at the Pas begins a mixed farming territory which is not duplicated in the Dominion and in which settlers are only commencing to settle from the Melfort end. And they add: "We are not at all depending on the Hudson Bay Railway to make a city of the Pas. The natural resources of the country are numerous and big enough to take care of this. Under ordinary circumstances, and independently of the Hudson Bay Railway (in which, by the way, we believe because we know, being on the spot), we have here the making of a city

and we are getting ready for it." And to see the large number of substantial buildings of all kinds which are everywhere erected, it is evident, even to the casual observer, that the people of the Pas are building with the idea that their town will soon be a city, and a large city at that. They have the spirit that does things, that moves mountains, if need be. Invigorated by the hardy climate of the north, they laugh at cold winter blisters and scorching summer burns, and keep on going ahead doing things, in the belief that they have struck the one spot on earth where there is a future for the fellow with a determined will: being strong believers, they will make what they desire perforce come true. At least they have fully decided to give the project a good manly trial. And why should they fail?

Why should they fail, when in days that knew not the many things that this age is simply playing with a man did not hesitate to establish a Petrograd in the last spot in his kingdom where any one else with less vim would have dreamt of throwing the foundations of an empire's capital? Petrograd, built on a marsh, is exactly 3° further north than Port Nelson, and 3° further south than the northerly part of Hudson Strait. Its average temperature is 40° above; yet it is the capital of all the Russias. It has a population of almost 2,000,000 inhabitants, and a commerce of almost 100,000,000 rubles in grain and other natural products. Thirteen thousand boats, large and small, enter its port, Cronstadt, 16 miles distant, laden with produce of field and forest, although the navigation of the northern portion of the Baltic Sea, on which it is situated, is obstructed by ice four months in the year and descending ice from Lake Ladoga forces the authorities of the city to remove most of the bridges twice a year. Of course it was built by Peter the Great, a man who was not to be stopped by marshy bogs, ice, and climate, when he saw his opportunity to create one of the cities of the world!

Why should they fail when they have the examples of the farms of Holland conquered from the sea, of a Chicago firmly built on marsh and lake, of part of a Boston also built on a