its own free will turned
its parade into a guard of honour, which lined the fine Rideau and
Wellington streets for his progress between Government House and
Parliament Square.

As far as I could gather Labour decided upon and carried this out
without consulting anybody. Streets were taken over without any
warning, and certainly without any fuss. There seemed to be few police
about, and there was no need for them. Labour took command of the show
in the interest of its friend the Prince, and would not permit the
slightest disorderliness.

It was a remarkable sight. Early in the morning the Labour Parade
appeared along Rideau Street, mounting the hill to the Parliament
House. The processionists, each group in the costume of its calling,
walked in long, thin files on each side of the road, the line broken at
intervals by the trade floats. Floats are an essential part of every
American parade; they are what British people call "set-pieces,"
tableaux built up on wagons or on automobiles; all of them are
ingenious and most of them are beautiful.

These floats represented the various trades, a boiler-maker's shop in
full (and noisy) action; a stone-worker's bench in operation; the
framework of a wooden house on an auto, to show Ottawa what its
carpenters and joiners could do, and so on. With these marched the
workers, distinctively clothed, as though the old guilds had never
ceased.

When the head of the procession reached the entrance of Parliament
Square it halted, and the line, turning left and right, walked towards
the curb, pressing back the thousands of sightseers to the pavement in
a most effective manner. They lined and kept the route in this fashion
until the Prince had passed.

It was thus that the Prince drove, not between the ranks of an army of
soldiers, but through the ranks of the army of labour. Not khaki, but
the many uniforms of labour marked the route. There were firemen in
peaked caps, with bright steel grappling-hooks at their waists;
butchers in white blouses, white trousers, and white peaked caps; there
were tram-conductors, and railway-men, hotel porters, teamsters in
overalls, lumbermen in calf-high boots of tan, with their rough socks
showing above them on their blue jumper trousers, barbers, drug-store
clerks and men of all the trades.

Above this guard of workers were the banners of the Unions, some in
English, some proclaiming in French that here was "La Fraternite Unie
Charpenti