Though the land is within the Arctic Circle, it is rich. I talked with a traveller who had just returned from this area, and he spoke of the superb tall crops of grain he had seen on his journey. It will be magnificent land when it is opened up, and can accommodate the population of a kingdom. The growing season, of course, is shorter, but this is somewhat balanced by the longer northern days and the intense sunlight that is proper to them. The drawbacks are the very long winters, loneliness and the difficulties of transport.
Edmonton, sitting across the gorge of the Saskatchewan, feeds these districts and reflects them. Because of this it is a city of anachronisms. High up on the cliff, its site chosen with the usual appositness of Canada, is the Capitol building, a bright and soaring structure done in the latest manner. Right under that decisively modern pile is a group of rough wooden houses. They are the original stores of the Hudson Bay Company, standing exactly as they did when they formed an outpost point of civilization in the Northwest.
It is obviously a town in a young land, pushing ahead, as the Prince indicated in his speech to the Provincial Government, with all the intensity and zest of youth, having all the sense of freedom and possibility that the rich and great farming, furbearing and timber-growing tracts give it.
The keen spirit of the city was reflected in the welcome it gave the Prince. It was a wet, grey day, but the whole town was out to line the streets and to gather at the ceremonial points. And it was a musical greeting. Edmonton is prone to melody. Brass bands appear to flourish here. There was one at every street corner. And not only did they play as the Prince in the midst of his red-tuniced "Mountie" escort passed by, but they played all day, so that the city was given over to a non-stop carnival of popular airs.
At the Parliament Buildings the crowds were as dense as ever. They showed the same spirit in listening to addresses and reply, and the same hustling sense of "getting there" when entering the building to take part in the public reception. The addresses of welcome were a novelty. Engrossed on vellum, it had been sewn on the purple silk lining of a yellow-furred coyote skin, a local touch that interested the Prince. There was another such touch after the reception. A body of Stony Indians were presented to His Royal Highness. These Indians had travelled from a distance in the hope of seeing the son of the Great White Chief, and they not only saw him but were presented to him. He talked with particular sympathy to one chief whose son had been a comrade-in-arms in the Canadian ranks during the war and who had been killed in the fighting.