The picture is over-drawn. True womanhood and clean
life are still the keynotes of the great majority of Canadian
homes.
Yet very striking is the contrast with the old days of household
economies, the days of the ox-chain, the sickle, and the leach-tub.
All of these, some happily and some unhappily, have been swept
away by the besom of Progress. But in any case life was too
serious in those days for effeminate luxury, or for aught but
proper pride in defending the country, and in work well done.
And it is just this stern life which must be lived, sooner or
later, not only in the wilds of Athabasca, but in facing
everywhere the great problems of race-stability--the spectres
of retribution--which are rapidly rising upon the white man's
horizon.
For the rest, and granting the manhood, the future of Athabasca
is more assured than that of Manitoba seemed to be to the doubters
of thirty years ago. In a word, there is fruitful land there,
and a bracing climate fit for industrial man, and therefore its
settlement is certain. It will take time. Vast forests must
be cleared, and not, perhaps, until railways are built will
that day dawn upon Athabasca. Yet it will come; and it is well
to know that, when it does, there is ample room for the immigrant
in the regions described.
The generation is already born, perhaps grown, which will recast
a famous journalist's emphatic phrase, and cry, "Go North!" Well,
we came thence! Our savage ancestors, peradventure, migrated from
the immemorial East, and, in skins and breech-clouts, rocked the
cradle of a supreme race in Scandinavian snows.
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