Returning through the town, something went wrong with the procession. Many of the automobiles forcing their way through the crowd to the train--which stood beside the street--found there was no Prince. We stood about asking what was happening and where it was happening. After ten minutes of this an automobile driver strolled over from a car and asked "what was doing now?"
We consulted the programs and told him that the Prince was launching a ship.
"He is, is he?" said the driver without passion. "Well, I've got members of the shipbuilding company and half the reception committee in my car."
In spite of that, the Prince launched a fine boat, that took the water broadside in the lake manner, before going on to Fort William.
Fort William had an immense crowd upon the green before the station, on the station, and even on the station buildings. Part of the crowd was made up of children, each one of them a representative of the nationalities that came from the Old World to find a new life and a new home in Canada. Each of them was dressed in his or her national costume, making an interesting picture.
There were twenty-four children, each of a different race, and the races ranged from France to Slovenia, from Persia to China and Syria. There were negroes and Siamese and Czecho-Slovaks in this remarkable collection of elements from whose fusion Canada of today is being fashioned.
The Prince drove through the cheering streets of Fort William, and paid visits to some of the great industrial concerns, before setting out for Winnipeg and the wide-flung spaces of the West.
We had a hint of what the Western welcome was going to be like from the Winnipeg papers that were handed to us with our cantaloupe at breakfast on Tuesday, September 9th.
They were concerning themselves brightly and strenuously with the details of the visit that day, and were also offering real Western advice on the etiquette of clothes.
"SILK LIDS AND STRIPED PANTS FOR THE BIG DAY"
formed the main headline, taking the place of space usually given to Baseball reports or other vital news. And pen pictures of Western thrill were given of leading men chasing in and out of the stores of the town in an attempt to buy a "Silk Lid" (a top hat) in order to be fit to figure at receptions.