Western Canada and its Great Resources
The Testimony of Settlers, farmer Delegates and high Authorities

WESTERN CANADA AND ITS GREAT RESOURCES. ___ PREFACE. — The object of publishing this pamphlet is not so much to give a detailed description, of Manitoba and the North-west, now known as “Western Canada,” for that would be impossible in. so short a space, but to lay before American Farmers, and those in Eastern Canada and elsewhere, a few facts concerning this truly great country, its wonderful fertility, and its unparalleled adaptability to stock-raising, as testified to by farmers from Minnesota, the Dakotas, Michigan, and other portions of the United States, who have visited the country, and many of whom are now happily and comfortably settled there. Beyond a narrow strip along the Red River, in the vicinity of where the city of Winnipeg now stands, this great prairie region, stretching for nearly 1,000 miles from east to west, from the border of the Red River valley on. the east to the Rocky Mountains in the west, was practically a terra incognita up to 1870, when Manitoba and the North-west became a portion of the Dominion of Canada, and when it still remained to open this great country to settlement. In. 1879 the first railway tapped its fertile plains, and from that time onward settlement has grown apace; great plains have been transformed into fields of golden grain, producing the famous “ Manitoba No. 1 hard ” wheat; while cities, towns and villages have sprung into existence, and divers railway lines now bid for the traffic and trade of the farmer. An idea of the progress made in ten years may be gathered from the following figures relating to the prairie section only :— 1881. 1891. Population.................................. Grain crop in bushels....................... Railway mileage............................ Number of elevators........................ Elevator capacity........................... Number of post offices...................... Number of schools.......................... 40,000 720,000 150 0 0 153 85 260,000 55,000,000 4,000 100 9,000,000 600 720 These figures show a part only of what was actually accomplished in a decade, but they serve as an index, though incomplete, to what may and doubtless will be accom- plished as the country’s capabilities become better known and understood. Western Canada includes an area of some 2,500,000 square miles, but the scope of this publication is limited to the four provinces of Manitoba, Assiniboia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. These four provinces are wholly within the fertile prairie region, and contain an area of some 440,000 square miles, or about 280,000,000 acres. In contemplating the bewildering extent of this realm of prairie many have pictured it in their minds as a dreary, lonesome expanse of a dead sea level. Nothing can be more erroneous. The country, though termed prairie, is by no means a treeless plain, devoid of hills and other topographical features pleasing to the eye. The surface varies