To these agencies flow strange men in blouse-shirts, wearing strange caps--generally of fur--carrying strange-looking suit-cases and speaking the strange tongues of far European or Asiatic lands. Chinese and Japanese (whom the Canadian lumps under the general term "Orientals"), negroes, a few Indians, and a hotch-potch of races walk the streets of Winnipeg, and Winnipeg deals with them, houses them, gives them advice, and distributes them over the wide lands of Canada, where they will work and working will gradually fuse into the racial whole that is the Canadian race.
In the hotels, too, one notices that a change is taking place. The "Oriental"--the Japanese in this case--takes the place of the Canadian bell-boy and porter, and he takes this place more and more as one goes West. There are, of course, always Chinese "Chop Suey and Noodles' Restaurants," as well as Chinese laundries in Canadian towns; we met them as early as St. John's, Newfoundland; but from Winnipeg to the Pacific Coast these establishments grow in numbers, until in Vancouver and Victoria there are big "Oriental" quarters--cities within the cities that harbour them.
The "Orientals" make good citizens, the Chinese particularly. They are industrious, clever workers, especially as agriculturists, and they give no trouble. The great drawback with them is that they do not stay in the country, but having made their money in Canada, go home to China to spend it.
Most of the alien element that goes to Canada is of good quality, and ultimately becomes a very valuable asset. But the problem Canada is facing is that they are strangers, and, not having been brought up in the British tradition, they know nothing of it. The tendency of this influence is to produce a new race to which the ties of sentiment and blood have little meaning.
It is a problem which Britain must share also, if we do not wish to see Canada growing up a stranger to us in texture, ideals and thought. It is not an easy problem. Canada's chief need today is for agriculturists, yet the workers we wish to retain most in this country are agriculturists. Canada must have her supply, and if we cannot afford them, she must take what she can from Eastern Europe, or from America, and very many American farmers, indeed, are moving up to Canadian lands.