r
the past ten years has been appalling. Northward of Churchill River is
a region of chains of lakes--the Lesser Great Lakes, they have been
called--and these are the only untouched inland fisheries in America.
To the exporter they are ideal fishing ground. The climate is cool.
The fish can be sent out frozen to American markets. Of Canada's
thirty-four million dollars' worth of fish in 1912, one and one-half
million dollars' worth came from the three prairie provinces.

Under the old boundaries, the three prairie provinces compared in area
respectively Manitoba with Great Britain; Saskatchewan with France;
Alberta, one and a half times larger than Germany. Under the new
boundaries extending the province to Hudson Bay, Manitoba is fifty-two
thousand square miles larger than Germany; Saskatchewan extended north
is fifty thousand square miles larger than France; and Alberta extended
north is fifty thousand square miles larger than Germany. And north of
the three grain provinces is an area the size of European Russia.

We talk of Canada's boom as "done," but has it even begun? Strathcona
used to say that the three prairie provinces would support a population
of one hundred million. Was he right? On the basis of Europe's
population the three provinces would sustain three times Germany's
sixty-five millions.

VI

In British Columbia one reaches the province of the greatest natural
wealth, the greatest diversity in climate and the most feverish
activity in Canada. East of the mountains is a climate high, cold and
bracing as Russia or Switzerland. Between the ranges of the mountains
are valleys mild as France. On the coast toward the south is a climate
like Italy; toward the north, like Scotland. Of Canada's entire timber
area--twice as great as Europe's standing timber--three-quarters lie in
British Columbia. Fruit equal to Niagara's, fisheries richer than the
maritime provinces, mines yielding more than Klondike--exist in this
most favored of provinces. While the area is a half larger than
Germany, the population is smaller than that of a suburb of Berlin.[12]
Of Canada's thirty-four million dollars' worth of fish, thirteen
million dollars' worth come from British Columbia; and of her products
of forty-six millions of precious and fifty-six millions of
non-metallic minerals in 1911 easily half came from British
Columbia.[13]

Instead of that repose which marks the maritime provinces, one finds an
eager f