Westward with the Prince of Wales Part 14

CHAPTER XIII

THE CITY OF WHEAT--WINNIPEG, MANITOBA

I

We had a hint of what the Western welcome was going to be like from the Winnipeg papers that were handed to us with our cantaloupe at breakfast on Tuesday, September 9th.

They were concerning themselves brightly and strenuously with the details of the visit that day, and were also offering real Western advice on the etiquette of clothes.

"SILK LIDS AND STRIPED PANTS FOR THE BIG DAY"

formed the main headline, taking the place of s.p.a.ce usually given to Baseball reports or other vital news. And pen pictures of Western thrill were given of leading men chasing in and out of the stores of the town in an attempt to buy a "Silk Lid" (a top hat) in order to be fit to figure at receptions.

The writer had even broken into verse to describe the emotions of the occasion. Despairing of prose he wrote:

Get out the old silk bonnet, Iron a new s.h.i.+ne on it.

Just pretend your long-tailed coat does not seem queer, For we'll be all proper As a crossing "copper"

When the Prince of Wales is here.

The Ladies' Page also caught the infection. It crossed its page with a wail:

"GIRLS! OH, GIRLS! SILVER SLIPPERS CANNOT BE HAD!"

and it went on for columns to tell how silver slippers were the only kind the Prince would look at. He had chosen all partners at all b.a.l.l.s in all towns by the simple method of looking for silver slippers. The case of those without silver slippers was hopeless. The maidens of Winnipeg well knew this. There had been a silver slipper battue through all the stores, and all had gone--it was, so one felt from the article, a crisis for all those who had been slow.

A rival paper somewhat calmed the anxious citizens by stating that the Silk Lid and the Striped Pants were not necessities, and that the Prince himself did not favour formal dress--a fact, for indeed, he preferred himself the informality of a grey lounge suit always, when not wearing uniform, and did not even trouble to change for dinner unless attending a function. The paper also hinted that he had eyes for other things in partners besides silver slippers.

These papers gave us an indication that not only would "Winnipeg be polished to the heels of its shoes" at the coming of the Prince, but to continue the metaphor, it would be enthusiastic to well above its hat-band. And it was.

II

Certainly Winnipeg's welcome did not stop at the huge ma.s.s of heels--high as well as low--that carried it out to look at the Prince on his arrival. It mounted well up to the heart and to the head as he left the wide-open s.p.a.ce in front of the C.P.R. station, and, with a brave escort of red-tuniced "Mounties," swung into the old pioneer trail--only it is called Main Street now--toward the Town Hall.

The exceedingly broad street was lined with immense crowds, that, on the whole, kept their ranks like a London rather than a Canadian throng for at least two hundred yards.

Then this imported docility gave way, and the press of people became entirely Canadian. The essential spirit of the Canadian, like that of the citizen of another country, is that "he will be there." Or perhaps I should say he "will be _right_ there." Anyhow, there he was as close to the Prince as he could get without actually climbing into the carriage that was slowing down before the das among trees in the garden before the City Hall.

In a minute where there had been a broad open s.p.a.ce lined with neat policemen, there was a swamping ma.s.s of Canadians of all ages, and the Prince was entirely hemmed in. In fact only a free fight of the most amiable kind got him out of the carriage and on to the das. The Marine orderlies, and others of the suite, joined in an attempt to press the throng back. They could accomplish nothing until the "Mounties" came to their aid, forced a pa.s.sage with their horses, and so permitted the Prince to mount the das and hear the Mayor say what the crowd had been explaining for the past ten minutes, that is, how glad Winnipeg was to see him.

It was the usual function, but varied a little. Winnipeg has not always been happy in the matter of its water supply, and the day and the Prince came together to inaugurate a new era. It was accomplished in the modern manner. The Prince pressed a b.u.t.ton on the platform and water-gates on Shoal Lake outside the city swung open. In a minute or two a dry fountain in the gardens before the Prince threw up a jet of water. The new water had come to Winnipeg.

Through big crowds on the sidewalks he pa.s.sed through an avenue of fine, tall and modern stores, along Broadway, where the tram-tracks fringed with gra.s.s and trees run down the centre of a wide boulevard that is edged with lawns and trees, and so to the new Parliament Buildings.

Here there was a vivid and s.h.i.+ning scene before the great white curtain of a cla.s.sic building not yet finished.

In the wide forecourt was a ma.s.s of children bearing flags, and up the great flight of steps leading to the impressive Corinthian porch was a bank of people, jewelled with flags and vivid in gay dresses. Against the sharp white ma.s.s of the building this living, thrilling bed of humanity made an unforgettable picture.

The ceremony in the s.p.a.cious entrance hall was also full of the movement and colour of life. In the ma.s.sive square hall stairs spring upward to the gallery on which the Prince stood. On the level of each floor galleries were cut out of the solid stone of the walls. Crowded in these galleries were men and women, who looked down the shaft of this austere chamber upon a grouping of people about the foot of the cold, white ascending stairs. The strong, clear light added to the dramatic dignity of the scene.

The groups moved up the white stairs slowly between the ranks of Highlanders, whose uniforms took on a vividity in the clarified light.

The Prince in Guard's uniform, with his suite in blue and gold and khaki and red behind him, stood on the big white stage of the stair-head to receive them. It was a scene that had all the tone and all the circ.u.mstances of an Eastern levee.

But it was a levee with a fleck of humour, also.

As he turned to leave, the Prince noticed beside him a handsome armchair upholstered in royal blue. It was a strange, lonely chair in that desert of gallery and standing humanity. It was a chair that needed explaining.

In characteristic fas.h.i.+on the Prince bent down to it to find an explanation. The crowd, knowing all about that chair and understanding his puzzlement, began to laugh. It laughed outright and with sympathetic humour when, abruptly handing his Guards' cap to one of his staff, he solemnly sat down in it for a second instead of going his way.

The chair was the chair his father and grandfather had sat in when they came to Winnipeg. Silver medallions on it gave testimony to facts.

The Prince had not time to adopt a fully considered sitting, but he was not going to leave the building until he, too, had registered his claim to it.

In the big Campus that fronts the University of Manitoba, and ranked by thousands in a hollow square, were the veterans in khaki and civies who had fought as comrades of the Prince in the war. To these he went next.

It was a lengthy ceremony, for there were many to inspect. There were Canadian Highlanders and riflemen in the square, as well as veterans dating back to the time of the North-West Rebellion of '85. And there was also the regimental goat of the 5th West Canadians, a big, husky fellow, who endeavoured to take control of the ceremony with his horns, as befitted a veteran who sported four service chevrons and a wound stripe.

Here, too, the crowd was the most stirring and remarkable feature of the ceremony. It began with an almost European placidity of decorum, standing quietly behind the wooden railing on three sides of the Campus, and as quietly filling the seats in and about the glowingly draped grand stand before the University building. As the ceremony proceeded, however, the crowd behind the stand pressed forward, getting out on to the field. Soldiers linked arms to keep it back, soldiers with bayonets were drawn from the ranks of veterans to give additional weight, wise men mounted the stand and strove to stem the forward pressure with logic. But that crowd was filled with much the same spirit that made the sea so difficult a thing to reason with in King Canute's day. Neither soldiers nor words of the wise could check it.

It flowed forward into the Campus, a sea of men and women, shop girls not caring a fig if they _were_ "late back" and had a half-day docked, children who swarmed amid Olympian legs, babies in mothers' arms, whose presence in that crush was a matter of real terror to us less hardened British--an impetuous ma.s.s of young and old, masculine and feminine life that cared nothing for hard elbows and torn clothes as long as it got close to the Prince.

Before the inspection was finished, before the Prince could get back to the stand to present medals, the Campus was no longer a hollow square, it was a packed throng.

And the crowd, having won this vantage, took matters into its own hands until, indeed, its ardour began to verge on the dangerous.

As the Prince left the field the great crowd swept after him, until the whole ma.s.s was jammed tight against the iron railings at the entrance of the Campus. The Prince was in the heart of this throng surrounded by police who strove to force a way out for him. The crowd fought as heartily to get at him. There was a wild moment when the throng charged forward and crashed the iron railings down with their weight and force.

There were cries of "Shoulder him! Shoulder the boy!" and a rush was made towards him. The police had a hard struggle to keep the people back, and, as it was, it was only the swift withdrawal of the Prince from the scene that averted trouble; for in a crowd that had got slightly out of hand in its enthusiasm, the presence of so many children and women seemed to spell calamity.

This splendid ardour is more remarkable, since, only a few months before, Winnipeg had been the scene of an outburst which its citizens describe as nothing else but Bolshevik.

That outcrop of active discontent--which, by the way, was germinated in part by Englishmen--had a loud and ugly sound, and its clamour seemed ominous. People asked whether all the West, and indeed, all Canada, was going to be involved. Was Canada speaking in the accents of revolt?

Well, on September 9th, there arose another sound in Winnipeg, and it was but part of a wave of sound that had been travelling westward for more than a month. It was, I think, a most significant sound. It was the sound of majorities expressing themselves.

It was not a few shouting revolt. It was the many shouting its affection and loyalty for tried democratic ideals.

When minorities raise their voices our ears are dinned by the shouting and we imagine it is a whole people speaking. We forget those who sit silent at home, not joining in the storm. The silent ma.s.s of the majority is overlooked because it finds so few opportunities for self-expression. Only such a visit as this of the Prince gives them a chance.

It seemed to me that this display of affection had a human rather than a political significance. It impressed me not as an affair of parties, but as the fundamental, human desire of the great ma.s.s of ordinary workaday people to show their appreciation for stable and democratic ideals which the peculiarly democratic individuality of the Prince represents.

III

Winnipeg is a town with a vital spirit. It has a large air. There is something in its s.p.a.ciousness that tells of the great grain plains at the threshold of which it stands. It is the "Chicago of Canada," and hub of a world of grain, Queen City in the Kingdom of Bakers' Flour.

And it is mightily conscious of its high office.

It springs upward out of the flat and brooding prairies, where the a.s.siniboine and the strong Red River strike together--the old "Forks"

of the pioneer days. It sits where the old trails of the pathfinder and the fur trader join, and its very streets grew up about those trails.