Westward with the Prince of Wales Part 7

When one thinks of a great organization animated from the lowest worker to the President by so lively and extraordinarily human a spirit of loyalty that each worker finds delight in improving on instructions, one must admit that it has the elements of greatness in it.

My own impression after seeing it working and the work it has done, after seeing the difficulties it has conquered, the districts it has opened up, the towns it has brought into being, is that, as an organization, the Canadian Pacific Railway is great, not merely as a trading concern, but as an Empire-building factor. Its vision has been big beyond its own needs, and the Dominion today owes not a little to the great men of the C.P.R., who were big-minded enough to plan, not only for themselves, but also for all Canada.

And the big men are still alive. In Quebec we had the good fortune to meet Lord Shaughnessy, whose acute mind was the very soul of the C.P.R.

until he retired from the Presidency a short time ago, and Mr. Edward W. Beatty, who has succeeded him.

Lord Shaughnessy may be a retired lion, but he is by no means a dead one. A quiet man of powerful silences, whose eyes can be ruthless, and his lips wise. A man who appears disembodied on first introduction, for one overlooks the rest of him under the domination of his head and eyes.

The best description of Mr. Beatty lies in the first question one wants to ask him, which is, "Are you any relation to the Admiral?"

The likeness is so remarkable that one is sure it cannot be accidental.

It is accidental, and therefore more remarkable. It is the Admiral's face down to the least detail of feature, though it is a trifle younger. There is the same neat, jaunty air--there is even the same c.o.c.k of the hat over the same eye. There is the same sense of compact power concealed by the same spirit of whimsical dare-devilry. There is the same capacity, the same nattiness, the same humanness. There is the same sense of abnormality that a man looking so young should command an organization so enormous, and the same recognition that he is just the man to do it.

Both these men are impressive. They are big men, but then so are all the men who have control in the C.P.R. They are more than that, they can inspire other men with their own big spirit. We met many heads of departments in the C.P.R., and we felt that in all was the same quality. Mr. Calder, as he began, "A. B." as he soon became, was the one we came in contact with most, and he was typical of his service.

"A. B." was not merely our good angel, but our good friend from the first. Not merely did he smooth the way for us, but he made it the jolliest and most cheery way in the world. He is a bundle of strange qualities, all good. He is Puck, with the brain of an administrator.

The king of story tellers, with an unfaltering instinct for organization. A poet, and a mimic and a born comedian, plus a will that is never flurried, a diplomacy that never rasps, and a capacity for the routine of railway work that is--C.P.R. A man of big heart, big humanness, and big ability, whom we all loved and valued from the first meeting.

And, over all, he is a C.P.R. man, the type of man that organization finds service for, and is best served by them; an example that did most to impress us with a sense of the organization's greatness.

II

If I have written much concerning the C.P.R., it is because I feel that, under the personality of His Royal Highness himself, the success of the tour owes much to the care and efficiency that organization exerted throughout its course, and also because for three months the C.P.R. train was our home and the backbone of everything we did. If you like, that is the chief tribute to the organization. We spent three months confined more or less to a single carriage; we travelled over all kinds of line and country, and under all manner of conditions; and after those three long months we left the train still impressed by the C.P.R., still warm in our friendship for it--perhaps, indeed, warmer in our regard.

There are not many railways that could stand that continuous test.

Of the ten cars in the train, the Prince of Wales occupied the last, "Killarney," a beautiful car, eighty-two feet long, its interior finished in satinwood, and beautifully lighted by the indirect system.

The Prince had his bedroom, with an ordinary bed, dining-room and bathroom. There was a kitchen and pantry for his special chef. The observation compartment was a drawing-room with settees, and arm-chairs and a gramophone, while in addition to the broad windows there was a large, bra.s.s-railed platform at the rear, upon which he could sit and watch the scenery (search-lights helped him at night), and from which he held a mult.i.tude of impromptu receptions.

"Cromarty," another beautiful car, was occupied by the personal Staff; "Empire," "Chinook" and "Chester" by personal and C.P.R. staff. The next car, "Canada," was the beautiful dining car; "Carnarvon," the next, a sleeping car, was occupied by the correspondents and photographers; "_Renown_" belonged to the particularly efficient C.P.R.

police, who went everywhere with the train, and patrolled the track if it stopped at night. In front of "Renown" were two baggage cars with the 225 pieces of baggage the retinue carried.

At Three Rivers a very cheery crowd wished His Royal Highness _bon voyage_. The whole town turned out, and over-ran the pretty gra.s.s plot that is a feature in every Canadian station, in order to see the Prince.

We ran steadily down the St. Lawrence through pretty country towards Toronto. All the stations we pa.s.sed were crowded, and though the train invariably went through at a good pace that did not seem to matter to the people, though they had come a long distance in order to catch just this fleeting glimpse of the train that carried him.

Sometimes the train stopped for water, or to change engines at the end of the section of 133 miles. The people then gathered about the rear of the train, and the Prince had an opportunity of chatting with them and shaking hands with many.

At some halts he left the train to stroll on the platform, and on these occasions he invariably talked with the crowd, and gave "candles" to the children. There was no difficulty at all in approaching him. At one tiny place, Outremont, one woman came to him, and said that she felt she already knew him, because her husband had met him in France.

That fact immediately moved the Prince to sympathy. Not only did he spend some minutes talking with her, but he made a point of referring to the incident in his speech at Toronto the next day, to emphasize the feeling he was experiencing of having come to a land that was almost his own, thanks to his comradeship with Canadians overseas.

Not only during the day was the whole route of the train marked by crowds at stations, and individual groups in the countryside, but even during the night these crowds and groups were there.

As we swept along there came through the windows of our sleeping-car the ghosts of cheers, as a crowd on a station or a gathering at a crossing saluted the train. The cheer was gone in the distance as soon as it came, but to hear these cheers through the night was to be impressed by the generosity and loyalty of these people. They had stayed up late, they had even travelled far to give one cheer only.

But they had thought it worth while. Montreal, which we pa.s.sed through in the dark, woke us with a hearty salute that ran throughout the length of our pa.s.sing through that great city, and so it went on through the night and into the morning, when we woke to find ourselves slipping along the sh.o.r.es of Lake Ontario and into the outskirts of Toronto.

CHAPTER VIII

THE CITY OF CROWDS. TORONTO: ONTARIO

I

Toronto is a city of many names. You can call it "The Boston of Canada," because of its aspiration to literature, the theatre and the arts. You can call it "The Second City of Canada," because the fact is incontestable. You can call it "The Queen City," because others do, though, like the writer, you are unable to find the reason why you should. You can say of it, as the Westerners do, "Oh--_Toronto_!" with very much the same accent that the British dramatist reserves for the censor of plays. But though it already had its host of names, Toronto, to us, was the City of Crowds.

Toronto has interests and beauties. It has its big, natural High Park.

It has its charming residential quarters in Rosedale and on The Hill.

It has its beautiful lagoon on the lakeside. It has its Yonge Street, forty miles straight. It has the tallest building in the Empire, and some of the largest stores in the Empire. It is busy and bright and brisk. But we found we could not see it for crowds. Or, rather, at first we could not see it for crowds. Later a good Samaritan took us for a pell-mell tour in a motor-car, and we saw a chauffeur's eye view of it. Even then we saw much of it over the ma.s.sed soft hats of Canada.

We had become inured to crowds. We had seen big, bustling, eager, hearty, good-humoured throngs from St. John's to Quebec. But even that hardening had not proofed us against the ma.s.s and enthusiastic violence of the crowd that Toronto turned out to greet the Prince, and continued to turn out to meet him during the days he was there.

On the early morning of Monday, August 25th, in that weather that was already being called "Prince of Wales' weather," the Prince stepped "ash.o.r.e" at the Government House siding, outside Toronto. There was a skirmishing line of the waiting city flung out to this distant station--including some go-ahead flappers with autograph books to sign.

It was, however, one of those occasions when the Prince was considered to be wrapped in a robe of invisibility until he had been to Government House and started from there to drive inland to the city and its receptions.

A quick automobile rush--and, by the way, it will be noticed that the Continent of Hustle always uses the long word for the short, "automobile" for "car," "elevator" for "lift," and so on--to the Government House, placed the Prince on a legal footing, and he was ready to enter the city.

Government House is remarkable for the fact that it grew a garden in a single night. It is a comely building of rough-dressed stone, standing in the park-like surroundings of the Rosedale suburb, but in the absence of princes its forecourt is merely a desert of grey stone granules. When His Royal Highness arrived it was a garden of an almost brilliant abundance. There were green lawns, great beds packed wantonly with the brightest flowers, while trees, palms and flowering shrubs crowded the square in luxuriance. A marvel of a garden. A realist policeman, after his first gasp, bent down to examine the green of the lawn, and rose with a Kipps expression on his face and with the single word "Fake" on his lips.

The vivid lawn was green cocoanut matting, the beds were cunning arrangements of flowers in pots, and from pots the trees and shrubs flourished. It was a garden artificial and even more marvellous than we had thought.

The Prince rode through Rosedale to the town. The crowd began outside Government House gates. It was a polite and brightly dressed crowd, for it was drawn from the delightful houses that made islands in the uninterrupted lawns that, with the graceful trees, formed the borders of the winding roads through which he went. Rosedale was once forest on the sh.o.r.es of the old Ontario Lake; the lake has receded three miles and more, but the builders of the city have dealt kindly with the forest, and have touched it as little as they could, so that the old trees blend with the modern lawns to give the new homes an air of infinite charm.

As the Prince drove deeper into the city the crowds thickened, so that when he arrived in the virile, purposeful commercial streets, the sidewalks could no longer contain the ma.s.s. They are broad and efficient streets, striking through the town arrow-straight, and giving to the eye superb vistas. But broad though they were, they could not accommodate sightseeing Toronto, and the crowd encroached upon the driveway, much to the disgust of many little boys, who, with their race's contempt for death by automobile, were running or cycling beside the Royal car in their determination to get the maximum of Prince out of a short visit.

The crowd went upward from the roadway also. We had come into our first city of sky-climbing buildings. One of these shoots up some twenty stories, but though this is the tallest "yet," it is surrounded by some considerable neighbours that give the streets great ranges upwards as well as forward. The windows of these great buildings were packed with people, and through the canopy of flags that fluttered on all the route they sent down their cheers to join the welcome on the ground floor.

It was through such crowds that the Prince drove to a greater crowd that was gathered about the Parliament Buildings.

II

The site of the Provincial Parliament Buildings is, as with all these Western cities, very beautifully planned. It is set in the gracious Queen's Park, that forms an avenue of green in the very heart of the town. About the park are the buildings of Toronto University, and the avenue leads down to the dignified old law schools at Osgoode Hall.

The Canadians show a sense of appropriate artistry always in the grouping of their public buildings--although, of course, they have had the advantage of beginning before ground-rents and other interests grew too strong for public endeavour.

The Parliament Buildings are of a ruddy sandstone, in a style slightly railway-station Renaissance. They were draped with flags down to the vivid striped platform before the building upon which the reception was held. Great ma.s.ses of people and many ranks of soldiers filled the lawns before the platform, while to the right was a great flower-bed of infants. A grand-stand was br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with school-kiddies ready to cheer at the slightest hint, to sing at command, and to wave flags at all times.

It was a bustling reception from Toronto as parliamentary capital of Ontario, and from Toronto the town. It was packed full of speeches and singing from the children and from a Welsh choir--and Canada flowers Welsh choirs--and presentations from many societies, whose members, wearing the long silk b.u.t.tonhole tabs stamped with the gold t.i.tle of the guild or committee to which they belonged, came forward to augment the press on the platform.

These silk tabs are an insignia of Canadian life. The Canadians have an infinite capacity for forming themselves into committees, and clubs, and orders of stout fellows, and all manner of gregarious a.s.sociations.

And when any a.s.sociation shows itself in the sunlight, it distinguishes itself by tagging its members with long, coloured silk tabs. We never went out of sight of tabs on the whole of our trip.

From the Parliament Buildings the Prince drove through the packed town to the Exhibition ground. We pa.s.sed practically through the whole of the city in these two journeys, travelling miles of streets, yet all the way the ma.s.s of people was dense to a remarkable degree. Toronto, we knew, was supposed to have a population of 500,000 people, but long before we reached the end of the drive we began to wonder how the city could possibly keep up the strength on the pavements without running out of inhabitants. It not only kept it up, but it sprang upon us the amazing sight of the Exhibition ground.

In this long and wonderful drive there was but one stop. This was at the City Hall, a big, rough stone building with a soaring campanile.

On the broad steps of the hall a host of wounded men in blue were grouped, as though in a grand-stand. The string of cars swerved aside so that the Prince could stop for a few minutes and chat with the men.