Westward with the Prince of Wales Part 11

That is what happened. Montreal was given about four hours of the Prince. Montreal is a progressive city; it has an up-to-date and "Do-It-Now" sense. Confronted at very short notice with those four hours, it promptly set itself to make the most of them. It packed about four days' program into them.

It managed this, of course, by using motor-cars. The whole of the American Continent, I have come to see, has a motor-car method of thinking out and accomplis.h.i.+ng things. Montreal certainly has.

Montreal met the Prince in an automobile mood, whipped him from the train and entertained him on the top gear for every moment of his stay.

II

He arrived at the handsome Windsor Station of the C.P.R. on the morning of Tuesday, September 2nd, and was at once taken to a big, grey motor.

His guide, the Mayor of the city, then began to show him how time could be annihilated and days compressed into hours.

In those few hours he was shown not a section of the great commercial city, not merely the City Hall, and a street or two, and a place wherein to lunch. He was shown all Montreal. He was shown the city of Montreal and the suburbs of Montreal, and verily I believe he was shown every man, woman, and certainly every child of flag-wagging age, in Montreal.

And when he had seen the high, fine business blocks of Montreal, and the pretty residential districts, where the well-designed homes seem to stand on terrace over terrace of the smoothest, greenest gra.s.s, he was shown the country-side about Montreal, the comely little habitant parishes and holiday places that make outlying Montreal, and the convents and the colleges where Montreal educates itself, the Universities where that education is rounded off, and the long, wide, straight speedways over which Montreal citizens get the best out of their motor-car moments--and he was shown how it was done.

And after showing him the rivers that make the hilly country about Montreal beautiful, and the little pocket villages, he was swung back out of the green of the summer country and shown more business blocks, and just a hint of the great wharves and docks that fringe the St.

Lawrence and give the city its great industrial power and fame. Then when they had shown him all the things that man usually sees only after weeks of tenacious exploration, they spun him up a corkscrew drive that goes first among charming houses, then among beautiful deep trees and gra.s.s, and sat him down in a glowing pavilion on the top of this hill, Mount Royal--the Montreal that gives the city its name--and gave him lunch.

There, as he ate, he looked down over one of the great views of the world. Below him was the splendid vista of a splendid city; the ma.s.s of tall offices, factories and the high fret of derricks and elevators along the quays that covered the site of the Indian lodges of Hochelaga that Jacques Cartier first found; the ma.s.s of spires from a thousand churches, the swelling domes and hipped roofs of basilica and college that had grown up from the old religious outpost, the nucleus of Christianity in the wilds that was to convert the wilds, the Ville Marie de Montreal that Maisonneuve had founded nearly three centuries ago.

And beyond this swinging breadth of city that was modernity, as well as history, the Prince saw the grey, misty bosom of the St. Lawrence, winding broad and significant beneath the distant hills.

III

Truly it had been a mighty day, worthy of a mighty city. And a day not merely big in achievement, but big in meaning also. In his drive the Prince had covered no less than thirty-six miles in and about the city, and on practically the whole of that great sweep there had been crowds, and at times big crowds, all friendly and with an enthusiasm that was French as well as Canadian.

There were naturally tracts of road in the country where people did not gather in force, but almost everywhere there were some. Sometimes it was a family gathered by a pretty house draped with flags. Sometimes it was a village, making up with the flags in their hands for the hanging flags short notice had prevented their sporting.

On an open stretch of road the Prince would come abreast of a convent in the fields. By the fence of the convent all the little girls would be ranked, dressed, sometimes, in national ribbons, and anyhow carrying flags, and with them would be the nuns. Or if the convent was not a teaching order, the nuns would be by themselves, forming a delightful picture of quiet respect on the porch or along the garden wall.

Boys' schools had the inmates gathered at the road-edge in jolly mobs, though some of these had a semi-military dignity, because of the quaint and kepi-ed uniform of the school, that made the boys look like cadets out of a picture by Detaille.

The seminaries had their flocks of black fledglings drawn up under the professor-priests, and the sober black of these embryo priests had not the slightest restriction on their enthusiasm.

There were crowds everywhere on that extraordinary ride, but it was in Montreal itself that the throngs reached immense proportions. From the first moment of arrival, when the Prince in mufti rode out from under the clangour of "G.o.d Bless the Prince of Wales" played on the bells of St. George's Church, that hob-n.o.bs with the station, crowds were thick about the route. As he swung from Dominion Square (in which the station stands) into the Regent Street of Montreal, St. Catherine Street, crowds of employes crowded the windows of the big and fine stores, and added their welcome to the ma.s.s on the sidewalks.

Short notice had curtailed decoration, but the enthusiastic employes (mainly feminine) of one tall store strove to rectify the lack by arming themselves with flags and stationing themselves at every window.

Balancing perilously, they waited until the Prince came level, and then set the whole face of the tall building fluttering with Union Jacks.

From these streets, impressive in their sense of vigour and industry, the procession of cars mounted through the residential quarter to Mount Royal Park. Here in the presence of a big crowd that surrounded him and got to close quarters at once, the Prince alighted and stayed a few minutes at the statue of Georges Etienne Cartier, the father of Canadian unity, whose centenary was then being celebrated, since the war forbade rejoicing on the real anniversary in 1914.

Cartier's daughter, Hortense Cartier, was present at this little ceremony, and she was, as it were, a personal link between her father and the Prince, who is himself helping to inaugurate a new phase of unity, that of the Empire.

From this point the Prince's route struck out into the country districts that I have described, but the crowds had acc.u.mulated rather than diminished when he returned to the streets of the city, about one o'clock, and he drove through lanes of people so dense that at times the pace of his car was r.e.t.a.r.ded to a walk.

The crowd was a suggestive one. All ranks and conditions were in it--and conditions rather than ranks were apparent in the dock-side area, which is a dingy one for Canada. But in all the crowds the thing that struck me most was their proportion of children. Montreal seemed a veritable hive of children. There were thousands and thousands of them.

The streets were bursting with kiddies. And not merely were there mult.i.tudes of girls and boys of that thoroughly vociferous age of somewhere under twelve, but there were ranked battalions of boys and maids, all of an age obviously under twenty.

Quebec is the province of large families. Ten children to a marriage is a commonplace, and twenty is not a rarity. A man is not thought to be worth his salt unless he has his quiver full. And the result of this as I saw it in the streets gives food for thought.

That huge marshalling of the citizens of tomorrow gives one not merely a sense of Canada's potentiality, but of the potentiality of Quebec in the future of Canada. With a new race of such a healthy standard growing up, the future of Montreal has a look of greatness. Montreal is now the biggest and most vigorous city in Canada, it plays a large part in the life of Canada. What part will it play tomorrow?

A good as well as great part, surely. Discriminating Canadians tell you that the French-Canadian makes the best type of citizen. He is industrious, go-ahead, sane, practical; he is law-abiding and he is loyal. His history shows that he is loyal; indeed, Canada as it stands today owes not a little to French-Canadian loyalty and willingness to take up arms in support of British inst.i.tutions.

French-Canada took up arms in the Great War to good purpose, sending 40,000 men to the Front, though its good work has been obscured by the political propaganda made out of the Anti-Conscription campaign. Sober politicians--by no means on the side of the French-Canadians--told me that there was rather more smoke in that matter than circ.u.mstances created, and in Britain particularly the business was over-exaggerated.

There was a good deal of politics mixed up in the att.i.tude of Quebec, "And in any case," said my informant, "Quebec was not the first to oppose conscription, nor yet the bitterest, though she was, perhaps, the most candid."

The language difficulty is a difficulty, yet that has been the subject of exaggeration, also. Those who find it a grave problem seem to be those who have never come in contact with it, but are anxious about it at a distance. Those who are in contact with the French-speaking races say that French and English-speaking peoples get on well on the whole, and have an esteem for each other that makes nothing of the language barrier.

Concerning the Roman Catholic Church, which is certainly in a very powerful position in Quebec, I have heard from non-Catholics quite as much said in favour of the good it does, as I have heard to the contrary, so I concluded that on its human side it is as human as any other concern, doing good and making mistakes in the ordinary human way. As far as its spiritual side is concerned there is no doubt at all that it holds its people. Its huge churches are packed with huge congregations at every service on Sunday.

On the whole, then, I fancy that that part of Canada's future which lies in the hands of the children of Montreal, and the Province of Quebec generally, will be for the good of the Dominion. Certainly the att.i.tude of the people as shown in the packed and ecstatic streets of Montreal was a very good omen.

The welcome had had its usual effect on the Prince. The formal salute never had a chance, and from the outset of the ride he had stood up in his car and waved back in answer to the cheering of the crowd. When standing for so many miles tired him, he sat high up on the folded hood, with one of his suite to hold him, and he did not stop waving his hat. In this way he accomplished the thirty-six miles ride, only slipping down into his seat as the car mounted the stiff zig-zag that led up Mount Royal to the luncheon pavilion.

The slowness of this climb was, in a sense, his undoing. As his car neared the top of the hill, two Montreal flappers, whose extreme youth was only exceeded by their extreme daring, sprang on to the footboard and held him up with autograph books. He immediately produced a fountain pen, and sitting once more on the back of the car, wrote his name as the car went along, and the young ladies from Montreal clung on to it.

This delightful act was too much for one of the maidens, for, on getting her book back, she kissed the Prince impulsively, and then in a sudden attack of deferred modesty, sprang from the car and ran for her blushes' sake.

From the luncheon pavilion the Prince was whirled to the Royal train, and in that, after a recuperative round of golf at a course just outside Montreal, he set out for the comparative calm of the great West.

CHAPTER XI

ON THE ROAD TO TROUT

I

The run on the days following the packed moments of Montreal was one of luxurious indolence. The Royal train was heading for the almost fabled trout of Nipigon, where, among the beauties of lake and stream, the Prince was to take a long week-end fis.h.i.+ng and preparing for more crowds and more strenuosity in the Canadian West.

Through those two days the train seemed to meander in a leisurely fas.h.i.+on through varied and attractive country, only stopping now and then as though it had to work off a ceremonial occasionally as an excuse for existing at all.

The route ran through pleasant, farmed land between Montreal and North Bay and Sudbury, and then switched downward through the bleak nickel and copper country to the beautiful coast of Lake Huron on its way to Sault Ste. Marie. From this town, which the whole Continent knows as "Soo," it plunged north through the magnificent scenery of the Algoma area to Oba, and, turning west again (and in the night), it ran on to Nipigon Lake.

It was a genial and attractive run. We sat, as it were, lapped in the serenity of the C.P.R., and studied the view. Wherever there were houses there were people, to wave something at the Prince's car. At one homestead a man and his wife stood alone near the split-rail fence, the woman curtsying, the man, who had obviously been a soldier, flag-wagging some message we could not catch, with a big red ensign; an infinitely touching sight, that couple getting their greeting to the Prince in spite of difficulties. On the stations the local school children were always drawn up in ranks, most of them holding flags, many having a broad red-white-and-blue ribbon across their front rank to show their patriotism.

At North Bay, a purposeful little town that lets the traveller either into the scenic and sporting delights of Lake Nip.i.s.sing, or into the mining districts of the Timiskaming country, there was a bright little reception. North Bay is a characteristic Canadian town. It was born in a night, so to speak, and its growth outstrips editions of guide books. Outside the neat station there is a big gra.s.s oblong, and about this green the frame houses and the shops extend. Behind it is the town so keen on growing up about the big railway repair shops, that it has no time yet to give to road-making.

The ceremonial was in the green oblong, and all North Bay left their houses and shops to attend. The visit had more the air of a family party than aught else, for, after a mere pretence of keeping ranks, the people broke in upon the function, and Prince and Staff and people became inextricably mixed. When His Royal Highness took car to drive around the town, the crowd cut off the cars in the procession, and for half an hour North Bay was full of orderlies and committee-men automobiling about speculative streets in search of a missing Prince, plus one Mayor.

Sudbury, the same type of town, growing at a distracting pace because of its railway connection and its smelting plants, had the same sort of ceremony. From here we pa.s.sed through a land of almost sinister bleakness. There were tracts livid and stark, entirely without vegetation, and with the livid white and naked surface cut into wild channels and gullies by rains that must have been as pitiless as the land. It was as though we had steamed out of a human land into the drear valleys of the moon, and one expected to catch glimpses of creatures as terrifying as any Mr. Wells has imagined. So cadaverous a realm could breed little else.

It was the country of nickel and copper. We saw occasionally the buildings and workings (scarce less grim than the land) through the agency of which came the grey slime that had rendered the country so bleak. They are particularly rich mines, and rank high among the nickel workings in the world. They were also, let it be said, of immense value to the Allies during the war.

Pus.h.i.+ng south, the line soon redeems itself in the beauty of the lakes.

It bends to skirt the sh.o.r.e of Lake Huron, a great blue sea, and yet but a link in the chain of great lakes that lead from Superior through it to Erie and Ontario lakes, and on to the St. Lawrence.