Hunting the Canadian Wolf

Hunting the Canadian Wolf

By Jno A. Hope.

Illustrated by Warwick Reynolds.

From The Wide World Magazine June 1911, Vol. xxvii.—17.

Digitized by Doug Frizzle, March 2018 for Stillwoods.Blogspot.Ca 

A rousing account of sport with rifle and snow-shoe in the great forests of Canada. In the school of wood-craft and cunning, says the author— himself a veteran hunter—the wolf has no four-footed equal. Mr. Hope describes the happenings of a three months’ hunt in the winter of 1908-9.

It is only in recent years that the great, gaunt, grey-coated wolf (Canis lupus)—found throughout the unsettled portions of Canada, from the Atlantic to the Pacific—has come to be regarded by big-game hunters as a sporting animal. “And,” they very pertinently ask, “why not? Did not the Kings of France and England, centuries ago, keep great packs of hounds specially bred and trained to hunt wolves for sport? And do not sportsmen hunt them, in various ways, in several European countries to-day? Moreover, have we any animal harder to see, to outwit, to outmanoeuvre and shoot, than the wolf?”

Certainly not here in North America. Hunting wolves from horseback behind a pack of nondescript dogs is, of course, not a new sport on our vast, level prairies of the West. But in the still vaster forested regions of Northern Quebec and Ontario wolf-hunting as a sport is in its infancy; and here horse and hound must give place to rifle and snow-shoe in a rough, rugged country, intersected like a chequer-board by innumerable lakes, rivers, and streams, covered with from two to three feet of snow, and with the thermometer anywhere from ten to thirty degrees below zero. Therefore plenty of stamina and endurance is required to face these conditions, with a keen interest in the sport—more especially as wolves in numbers must be sought for well back in the deep, silent forests, miles from the nearest railroad or settlement. Men with these qualifications are not numerous.

By many people wolf-hunting is considered a science. At the end of twenty-seven years hunting of various kinds of big game, including the wolf, in different countries, I have no reason to dispute this statement. It matters not what method one employs to hunt wolves in a forested or mountainous country, stratagem and cunning must be freely used to outwit cunning—combined as it is with faultless wood-craft and extreme cowardice—when trying to get them within range of the sportsman’s rifle. Only those who make a close study of wolves and their habits throughout the year can hope for success. All the men in Canada who do this, however, can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

In the school of wood-craft and knowledge of how to keep out of danger wolves have no four-footed equals. The fox is a dunce in comparison, the coyote—or prairie wolf—a fool, and the rest nowhere. The giant moose, king of the Canadian woods, is the most difficult of all the deer species to stalk in the fall months; but, nevertheless, it is often stalked successfully and shot by amateurs. Not so the wolf. Knowing this, and that true sport must combine a maximum of exertion and even danger to a minimum of destruction (though nothing would be said about the destruction of too many wolves), also that there was more honour to be gained in outwitting and shooting one wolf than a dozen easily-stalked and innocent deer, the writer organized a wolf-hunt for the winter of 1908-9, built three log-cabins some miles apart, and invited sportsmen to participate.

During the three midwinter months they came into camp in twos and threes for a week or ten days’ hunt. To all of them the sport was new, healthful, and exciting, not to say dangerous, considering the quarry sought and the risk of breaking through thin ice on lakes and rivers in its pursuit.

As soon as the first hunters arrived—in December—we shot several wood-hares and ruffed-grouse. These we placed at rocky points round the large lake, infested with wolves, on which the cabins fronted. A couple of nights later half a score of wolves—judging by the way fur and feathers, legs and wings, heads and tails, were scattered over a wide area of the snow-covered ice, punctuated in between with thousands of their footmarks—must have had a glorious scrimmage over these dainties; yet not a particle of either grouse or hares had been eaten! This was subsequently repeated on several occasions, which goes to disprove the hitherto accepted statement that “wolves are always hungry”—at least, they are not here in Canada.

Some three days later, while coming down the lake at midday from No. 3 camp, a ringing chorus of “yi-ki-hies” burst on our ears; from among the timber-covered ridges some half a mile away on our left. It came from a pack of wolves in full cry after a deer.

The writer, an old fox-hunter, could distinguish no difference between these wild hounds giving tongue under the arches of a virgin forest far from civilization, and the civilized foxhounds of his youth making merry music in the British Isles. Presently they gave tongue only intermittently; then the sounds ceased altogether. They had killed, we decided, and so continued on our way, which was in the same direction, as the pack were running.

We were mistaken, however, in supposing they had killed the deer, for on rounding a point a few minutes later we noticed, at the distance of about fourteen hundred yards (being a thousand feet above sea-level the air is rarefied and clear, therefore objects appear closer than they really are), a dark-grey animal come out from among the trees and move along the edge of the lake. Almost immediately it was followed by another and another, until fourteen of what subsequently proved to be wolves were moving round the lake in single file.

For years, in all parts of Canada and the Western States, I had heard wolves howl and give tongue; but here was the first pack I had ever seen in plain view. For fully two minutes we crouched behind the snow-covered rocks on the point and watched them. Between us and them was a deep, wide bay, so that there was no way of getting to them without being seen. The range was too far to make accurate shooting, and the intense cold gave us notice to move on. What should we do?

“Walk straight towards them,” suggested one sportsman, “and see if they will attack us.”

This speculative policy was agreed to and acted on. Advancing towards them across the bay, they took no notice of us for the first hundred yards. Then they suddenly bunched together, sat up on their haunches, and watched us intently. Wondering what they would do, we continued our advance. Would they really attack us—as all kinds of backwoods literature, white men, and Indians said they would—or seek cover?

In less than thirty seconds our doubts on that point were set at rest. Six of the bunched-up animals got off their haunches and, springing clear of the rest, headed straight towards us. The others quickly tailed on behind, and down they came in long, low, steady jumps that carried them over the level ice with a speed and swiftness I had not credited them with possessing.

As they approached they spread out like a lady’s fan, so as to outflank and encircle us. This, though distinctly disconcerting, was nothing compared with the deadly silence they maintained throughout, and which unnerved us much more than their sudden attack had done. Every moment we expected they would burst into merry music, as they had been doing only a short twenty minutes before among the timbered ridges; but evidently wolves, when in sight of their prey, run it down in perfect silence.

“Curse the brutes!” muttered someone. “Why don’t they give tongue, or even howl?”

Such a course would certainly have relieved our nervous tension. As it was, all the blood-curdling stories. I had ever read or heard about wolves flashed through my mind. But did they know we were men, or had they mistaken our three indistinct figures, so far away, for deer? Seconds would now decide the question. Down went our small packs, snow-shoes were kicked off, and cartridge-belts pulled round to be handy for instant use.

Glancing up, I noticed that they had covered half the distance, though hardly a minute had elapsed since they had started—a good twelve hundred yards away. At five hundred yards or so we could not only see how swiftly and smoothly, with a hardly-perceptible up-and-down motion, they could get over level ice or ground, but also their mode of surrounding and pulling down their prey. For they were bearing down like the Spanish Armada, in the shape of a half-moon, the two outer points of which were three hundred feet apart, and widening as they came.

At three hundred and fifty yards the white teeth and gleaming eyes of a large dog near the centre caught and held my attention. Being in the middle of my companions that dog— according to the code of field sports—was mine. “Don’t shoot until they are close up,” I whispered; “then each of you attend to the outer wings.”

I had thrown my powerful Mauser forward to align the sights on the big dog when the whole pack suddenly wheeled round, without stopping, and headed at full speed back the way they had come. My bullet, however, caught the big dog as he turned, nearly cutting him in two, while a second sprang high in the air, shot dead by the rifle on my left. Two more dropped under the rapid fire, just as they had straightened out for the “home run.”

One, with its hind leg broken, got up again and limped after the rest, but a second bullet put it out of pain. The remainder, with heads well down, to escape the showers of frozen snow and ice that the high-power bullets ripped up and sent over them at five, six, and seven hundred yards, sped back with the same long, low, smooth bounds that quickly carried them to the edge of the woods, into which they disappeared.

Curiously enough, even when badly wounded they never once uttered a sound.

Whether they charged down at us as human beings or deer is a problem difficult to solve. Taking into consideration, however, their wheeling round so quickly, with an unmistakably crestfallen air, and before a shot was fired, and the fact that we were carrying small packs strapped to our backs and wearing whitish-grey Eskimo hunting-shirts, and were also forcing our way with bent bodies against a sharp wind driving a slight flurry of snow, I incline to the latter belief; otherwise they would have charged home. Built for strength and speed, this strong pack—above the average in numbers— could have torn the three of us to pieces in as many seconds. Therefore I maintain—and I have no reason to change my opinion either from former experience or since—that, for once, a pack of wolves had really charged three men in mistake for deer.

It mattered not which cabin we occupied, we were at some part of the night “serenaded” by long, dismal howls of one or more wolves. And let me say here that a wolves’ “concert” held at night in the dark, gloomy pine-forests of Canada is the most spirit-depressing music ever listened to. Even when shut up securely in a cabin, it sends a cold shiver of some impending calamity through the frame of the stoutest man.

One night, about ten o’clock, at No. 2 camp, a longer and more dismal howl than usual broke the quiet stillness of the surrounding woods, lit up by countless thousands of sparkling stars and a bright moon, nearly at the full. The howl came from the point of a penin­sula nearly a mile distant across the lake. Instantly from a ridge behind and to one side of the cabin, came a short, sharp answering howl. The echoes had barely died away when from the same quarter of the ridge the main pack broke into a chorus of “yi-ki-hies” that sounded like a volley of rifle-shots. Then down they came past the cabin and out on to the lake.

Opening the cabin-door let in a volume of yelps so deafening that for the moment we thought the cabin was full of tongue-giving wolves. But, looking across towards the peninsula, we could see about a dozen swiftly-moving black dots out on the ice, which lay shimmering like molten silver under the bright, frosty moon, the “yi-ki-hies” becoming fainter and fainter after they had passed under the shadows cast by the tall conifers on the peninsula, finally dying away completely.

That the long, dismal howl of the lone wolf had carried a message—even if unintelligible to man—to the main pack there could be no doubt, and to this the clean-picked skeleton of a deer, found on the far side of the peninsula the next morning by following their trail, clearly testified. And this trail, after it entered the woods, proved to be very interesting from the fact that it showed only too plainly that the instinct of these wild hounds in knowing how to outmanoeuvre, surround, and pull down their prey is infinitely superior to that of the trained hound. Although, as I have tried to point out, wolves are possessed of wonderful speed, they depend more on their brains than their legs, for while part of the pack had stopped behind to drive the deer forward, the rest had outflanked it to right and left, forcing it to go in the direction wanted, when the deer was finally encircled and pulled down. I venture to say from experience that no pack of domestic hounds ever bred and trained by man can run down their quarry as quickly and intelligently as do these wild hounds from their own natural instinct.

It was about midnight when we lay down on our bed, composed of balsam and pine needles —but not to sleep; we were too excited after witnessing such a novel hunt in the moonlight. Instead, therefore, we lit our pipes, put out the light, and lay smoking and discussing wolves and their habits for over an hour, when suddenly our conversation was interrupted by a prolonged shrill scream, ending in a caterwauling “meow.”

Before I had-time to explain that it came from the great Northern lynx (Felis canadensis), its mate answered from somewhere near by the cabin, which brought us sharply to our feet. I was just in the act of lighting a match when again came the shrill scream, answered, not by its mate, but by wolves, singly, in pairs, and all together, from several parts of the lake.

“Merciful powers!” exclaimed one of my companions, nervously. “I’d rather be out on the lake than shut up in here listening to such weird, mournful brutes. It makes one think of death and the grave” —which explains the feeling created better than the writer can.

As trying to sleep was out of the question, I suggested dressing again and walking across to the peninsula to see if they had more courage to attack us at night than they had in daylight. Being very still, freezing hard, and bright as day, one could see to shoot perfectly. We had not advanced very far out on the ice when every howl ceased. That all the keen-eyed brutes saw us, however, was quickly made apparent, for presently a sharp “wouff-wouff” came from an unseen brute on a point slightly behind and to one side of us. Then another, in the same key, from the peninsula, followed by others, until one grand chorus swelled up from the weird orchestra.

When we were back near the cabin one of my companions—a New York gentleman—suddenly faced round and emptied his magazine rifle at the nearest point, exclaiming angrily as he did so: “You cowardly brutes! You keep our nerves on the rack all night, and when we come out and challenge you to fight it out, you won’t show a hair!”

It was very tantalizing, certainly. Complete silence followed the rifle-shots, however, and we slept peacefully until late in the morning.

A few days afterwards my two companions left for home, and three fresh hunters arrived in their place. Then what I had been waiting for set in—a January thaw! I could now make a blood-trail, and see if wolves would follow it, as if they did the problem of how to get them within accurate rifle-range was solved.

The blood of a dozen wood-hares (locally, rabbits) made a trail about two thousand yards in length, running past two points jutting well out and across the bay fronting on No. 2 cabin, and finishing at a point some three hundred yards away, in plain sight from the door. Two mornings later, the weather keeping soft and our taint having gone from along the trail, we were awakened from a sound sleep by what sounded at first like a band of music, but which turned out a moment later, when we were fully awake, to be a troop of ten wolves giving tongue.

Rushing to the little window and looking out we could see them as they swept across the bay on the blood-trail, in extended order. Being well within range, we managed to get in a dozen or so shots before they rounded the nearest point. But this was because one of us ran down to the edge of the ice and whistled sharply. Thereupon the whole band stopped for a moment to investigate the unusual sound. That investigation cost them two of their number, and started the rest off at full speed for the nearest cover. Before they reached it, however, a third dropped, rolled over, got up, and then lay down for good. Subsequently several more were shot on other blood-trails; but further details would only be a repetition of the foregoing.

Measuring and weighing the wolves secured—the animals are shown in the photographs— they were found to average eighty-seven pounds in weight, six feet from nose to tip of tail, and to stand twenty-eight inches at the shoulder; which is a fair average size and weight for the timber-wolf found throughout Canada.

The Town That Was Born Lucky

The Town That Was Born Lucky

By W. LaceyAmy (aka Luke Allan—author)

From The Wide World Magazine, Vol. xxv, No. 148. July 1910

Digitized by Doug Frizzle, Nov. 2014 for Stillwoods.Blogspot.Com

“The town that was born lucky” was the striking title applied by Rudyard Kipling to Medicine Hat, a little city in Western Canada that—to continue the great author’s forceful description—possesses “all Hades for a basement.” Medicine Hat, to be explicit, lies in the centre of a vast natural-gas area, with the result that every wheel that spins, every light and furnace, derives its energy from gas that is always ready at the turn of a tap, and which costs so little that the people leave their lights burning all day. Mr. Amy tells the romantic story of the first finding of gas, and describes the wonders of this fortunate city.

OUT on the prairie of Western Canada, with no town nearer than a hundred miles and only two within two hundred, and with not even a hamlet north or south for a hundred leagues, a small city of six thousand people lives its life, independent of the great world around it. Owning the whole of its public services, it possesses within itself the means of operation and a source of revenue that takes all the worry from municipal financing.

Medicine Hat is a name that sticks in one’s memory—as it did in Kipling’s when he made this city one of his five stops in his last visit to Canada. When that inventor of catchy phrases applied to Medicine Hat the title of “The town that was born lucky,” the citizens seized upon the phrase as the tribute of a famous man, and incorporated the term in all their publicity literature.

The Kiplingesque sub-title—“all Hades for a basement”—is an appropriate description of the reason why Medicine Hat was “born lucky.” Underneath the whole city, and extending for miles in every direction so far as tests have been made, lies a vast sea of natural gas, only awaiting tapping with a tiny pipe to light, heat, and operate anything that man requires.

In that fortunate city of Medicine Hat every machine-wheel that spins, every light, every stove and furnace and heater, derives its energy from a six-inch pipe that is always ready at the turn of a tap. It is the only supply of power and light and heat that is independent of workmen, of strikes, of weather, of laws, of trusts; that is as simple of operation to a child as to a man; that carries with it no danger from inattention or carelessness; and that is under perfect control every instant of the year.

The discovery of natural gas in Medicine Hat is an interesting story. As far back as 1883 the Canadian Pacific Railway, while boring for water at Carlstadt, a point about forty miles west of the city, came across the first gas, but no practical use was made of the small supply met with, other than to light and heat the section-house in the vicinity. Early in 1891 Sir William Van Horne, then president of the railway, lent to the city of Medicine Hat a drilling outfit for the purpose of ascertaining whether there was coal within reach. When the drill had reached six hundred and sixty feet gas was struck, but the moisture in it necessitated more trouble in the matter of interception tanks than was profitable. In 1905, however, the city determined to dig deeper in the hope of securing a larger, drier flow.

A by-law was passed to raise the necessary money. Medicine Hat was then only a town of a couple of thousand people, and the expenditure was a terrible drain upon its finances. As the well sank deeper and deeper the fund grew smaller and smaller. The citizens and the members of the council gathered by the little pipe day by day and watched, with eagerness and foreboding, the drill drop—drop—drop within the pipe. But nothing came except a few little puffs of gas that promised nothing. Lower the drill sank; fewer grew the dollars. Finally the money was all gone, and the town was face to face with bankruptcy or a serious tax-rate. The councillors went home sadly, amid the mutterings of the people.

That night a special secret session of the city officials was convened. The treasurer held up an empty purse, and they knew well that not another cent could be drawn from the people. Into the earth had been sunk thousands of dollars that would return nothing, and the citizens threw the blame for the non-success of the venture on the officials. The well-driller begged for a few more feet. The mayor considered. Then, with the inspiration of a prophet, he turned his back on the legal technicalities and ordered the well-boring to proceed. Already it was down a thousand feet; it was a terrible risk to spend more money, and illegal to boot, but he took the risk.

Next morning the miracle happened. To this day they tell of it. At nine o’clock the citizens were electrified at the sight of the mayor, coatless and hatless, rushing from his harness-store up the centre of the road, vainly striving to overtake a workman in better training a hundred yards ahead. The citizens, scenting something unusual, joined in the chase. At the well everything was going up in the air. At just one thousand and ten feet a terrific flow of dry gas had been struck—a flow that registered when they got it under control a hundred pounds pressure in eighteen seconds, a hundred and fifty pounds in forty seconds, two hundred and fifty pounds in one minute and twelve seconds. Their eyes began to bulge as the register ran up three hundred, four hundred, five hundred, and finally stopped at six hundred pounds to the square inch. That mayor is living yet; but he smiles when you ask him what would have been his chances of escape from the infuriated citizens, with one train a day out of Medicine Hat, if the gas had not come. That is merely one of the chances they take in the Canadian West.

Now there are eighteen wells in all, of which ten are too shallow to escape the moisture and are simply held in reserve. Five are in the hands of private owners, while the city draws its supplies from three deep wells. Another is being sunk by the authorities with the intention of striking the terrific flow that is known to exist at about two thousand feet. Of the private wells, one is owned by the Canadian Pacific Railway, three by brick-yards on the outskirts of the city, and a shallow well belongs to a man who derives revenue by supplying all the houses in one block. The city will not allow him to cross the streets with his pipes, which would interfere with the civic monopoly.

Gas has been obtained every time a well has been sunk, proving that it does not lie in “pockets,” as is the case in the only other Canadian and all the United States areas. Four miles away the Canadian Pacific Railway in the search for oil, met a pressure which their machines could not stem. With improved machinery they drilled thirty miles to the southwest, and there, at a depth of nineteen hundred feet, tapped an area that is producing no fewer than eight million cubic feet a day, at eight hundred pounds pressure. Inspired by Medicine Hat’s good fortune, every village and town within two hundred miles has jumped to the conclusion that it is located within the gas-fields, but no results worth mentioning have been met with in boring. Lethbridge sank a lot of money and obtained nothing. Calgary spent thousands of dollars and was rewarded with just enough gas to keep the men warm while they worked. Maple Creek is trying; but Medicine Hat stands by, warming its hands, working its machines, and chuckling at the vain efforts of its neighbours.

From the wells within the city there can be drawn nine million feet every twenty-four hours, the capacities of the different wells varying from two hundred thousand to three million cubic feet. In round figures this is equal to four hundred and fifty tons of anthracite coal per day. But nobody values coal there. Within a mile of the city it lies exposed along the river banks in seams ten feet wide, ready to be pulled out with pick and shovel. Mines that were started before the gas came closed down, and have reopened only lately, when the profits of shipping presented themselves. At the mines the rancher and farmer buy their coal for one dollar seventy-five cents a ton.

The gas is supplied to the ordinary consumer at thirteen and a half cents a thousand feet, and to manufacturers a by-law provides that it must be sold for five cents. As a matter of fact, a manufacturer can secure it free. One large sewer-pipe plant which is being erected is having a well sunk for it at the city’s expense—a gift of about seven thousand dollars in the sinking alone.

Low as is the price of the gas, the city is reaping an annual revenue of over forty-two thousand dollars, of which thirty-three thousand dollars is clear profit. Only three men are required to attend to the controllers and street lights and to read the meters, the remainder of the expense going to repairs. This revenue is placed to public account, with the result that the tax-rate is the lowest in Canada.

The cheapness of the gas leads to extravagances that make gas-users in less-favoured parts raise their hands in horror. In the streets the gas burns day and night, as the city authorities do not see the necessity of paying the wages of a man to turn off and on taps that consume what costs nothing. It is of little use to reason thus with men who live in districts across the border which have been depleted of gas by sheer waste. But there is more in it than that. The greatest expense of up-keep is the cost of mantles, which are necessary to bring the best light from the gas-flame. The expansion and contraction of mantles caused by the turning off of the street lights during the day would greatly increase the cost from breakages. So it is that they are kept burning continually; and when the tourist steps out on the railway platform in broad daylight and faces a row of lamps along the quarter-mile platform he wonders who forgot to turn them off.

This waste has been the cause of much consideration on the part of the city, the Provincial Government, and the owners of private wells. Influenced by the warnings of travellers, the Western Superintendent of the Canadian Pacific Railway got down from his special train one day and ordered the station lights to be extinguished every morning. The railway owns its own gas well, and the innovation was to be an example to the city. The City Fathers only grinned. Three days later the railway official, who had been in and out of the station several times during that period, boarded his train, leaving orders with the local superintendent to do as he pleased. There had been no noticeable improvement in the local train service because a score fewer lights were burning, and the local expense had increased.

Out at Dunmore, four miles east of the city, where the railway bored for oil and struck a flow of gas too strong to combat, the escaping millions were lighted to prevent accident. For months the country-side for miles around was never in darkness. The Board of Trade pretended to get excited over the waste of gas, and made several attempts to secure the interference of the Provincial authorities, who were not in session at the time. Before any coercion could be applied the railway cut off the fifty-foot flame by capping the well. They then drilled a well thirty miles away, came across an eight-million-foot flow, and allowed it to throw an eighty-foot flame for several weeks. In the light of it a snap-exposure photograph of a barn half a mile distant was quite successful. Thousands of feet of gas hiss every day from faulty joints in the gas mains, many of which, in the outlying districts, are laid along the surface of the ground. In the houses it is easier to throw up a window than to turn off the tap, and lights burn over the entire house, many continuing through the day under the belief that mantles cost more than gas.

The cost of heating and lighting an eight-roomed house, even with all this private waste, is less than fifty dollars a year. With ordinary care it could be reduced to almost half that amount. A large hotel burns less than one dollars’ worth of gas a day in the coldest weather, whereas the same hotel consumed six dollar’s worth of coal in the same time when something interfered with the gas flow. There is no handling of coal or ashes; a woman can manage the heating as well as a man. In many houses thermostats control the gas-tap so that from November to April nobody needs to approach the furnace. Families leave the city for a month’s vocation in mid-winter, with the gas blazing in the furnace, certain that nothing will have suffered when they return. The convenience of it all must be experienced to be appreciated.

Of the use of gas the Canadian Pacific Railway has made a close study. Every piece of work in the large car-shops is carried on by gas —heating, lighting, riveting, power, smelting, welding, and so on. The engine fires are prepared with gas in a quarter of the time required for oil-firing. For this purpose a large U-shaped pipe, with many perforations, is thrown into the fireplace and the gas turned on, the blaze making a live bed of coals in a few minutes, and starting the steam at the same time. Thousands of dollars have been spent in experimenting. Sand has been burned into glass in record time. The best-known engineers in the service have visited the Alberta City for the purpose of making the best use of the gas. With a view to experimenting for gas-run yard engines, an old engine was placed on a platform of revolving wheels, and for two weeks a prominent engineer tested the value of natural gas as a propelling power in the ordinary locomotive. The results were so satisfactory that it may not be long before the yard engines are fitted with gas-tanks.

The most important use to which the gas has been put outside of the shops is in the train which runs down the Crow’s Nest branch from Medicine Hat to Kootenay Landing, a distance of four hundred miles. The ordinary Pintsch gas-tanks are charged with natural gas at Medicine Hat, and for the return run—eight hundred miles, occupying a day and two nights—the supply is amply sufficient, and the light a great improvement on any other in use on the system. Were  there points of replenishment even a thousand miles apart the entire railway system would be lighted by natural gas, with saving to the company and greater comfort to the passengers. The railway saves in its shops, by the use of natural gas, more than sixty thousand dollars a year. Valves and machinery are used in the works to regulate the pressure from five hundred and fifty-seven pounds at the well, when everything is running, to eight ounces, as it is used in lighting and for various other purposes.

The city itself has taken advantage of its opportunities. As has been said, every engine, every stove and furnace, every light, is gas-operated. Power costs through a gas-engine the ridiculous sum (at the five-cent rate) of only two dollars and ten cents per horse-power per year, and in powerful engines the cost is less. The wells in the city have a capacity equal to almost forty thousand horse-power. The waterworks system is operated by two large English gas-engines, which require the employment of only two men for night and day service. A small engine is maintained in the office of the Publicity Commissioner, and power can be turned on in a moment. Around the top of the stand-pipe, one hundred and twenty-five feet above the lower town, a row of lights provides a beacon for forty miles around. Tourists are entertained by exhibitions of the use of gas. One of the illustrations shows a new gas-well lighted for the edification of a party of visitors—a blaze that shot up sixty feet into the air and consumed more than two thousand two hundred feet every minute it was permitted to burn. Experiments have been undertaken to test the value of natural gas in replacing gasolene for automobiles. With only an ordinary tap as controller on the tank in the front of a car a speed of twelve miles an hour was obtained, at the trifling cost of a twentieth of a cent a mile.

Several brick-yards around the city have their own wells, and irrigation schemes for market gardening on surrounding land are made possible by small gas-engines. When the Government undertook to push to completion in the winter time an eleven-hundred-foot steel bridge over the river, the city piped gas to the workmen, kept them warm, heated the rivets, and generally made work comfortable in terrible weather.

The growth of the city has been slow, in spite of the presence of the greatest convenience and money-saver any city could possess. The reason for this is that the rancher has, until the past two years, held the surrounding lands for the wide ranges necessary for his herds. His persistent “knocking” of the district as farming land has retained for him miles of free ranch land, which the terms of his lease from the Government throw open for the homesteader at a couple of years’ notice. But the rancher has seen his day pass. Gradually he has been driven out by the cultivated quarter sections, until he has discovered the money he is losing by missing his opportunities. He is now making the best of conditions by buying up section after section—not enough for ranging, but sufficient to sell to the settler at a profit that makes him a “booster” rather than a “knocker”; but Medicine Hat is now beginning to come into its own as the country settles. Villages are springing up in the surrounding districts, for the manufacturers are beginning to realize that in power alone they can save sufficient on a small plant to pay for a migration to this wonderful gas city —“the town that was born lucky.”

Railway Building in the Wilderness -Part 3

Railway Building in the Wilderness -Part 3

By Lacey Amy

From The Wide World magazine, Vol. XL, November 1917. Digitized by Doug Frizzle, October 2014.

When men set out to drive a railway through virgin territory they find themselves confronted with all sorts of difficulties and dangers, and almost every mile of the steel pays a toll of human life. In these absorbing articles Mr. Amy describes the construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific, the second great transcontinental line to pierce the Canadian Rockies. The road had to be carried across practically unknown country, through hundreds of miles of mountains that had never been named, never even been seen save by a few daring explorers and Indian hunters. The Author gives us a vivid idea of the human side of this great achievement, and the countless perils that swelled the casualty lists before the work was finally accomplished.

FROM Fitzhugh we slowly and laboriously climbed the Yellowhead Pass along the Miette River. Ours was the first train of passenger cars to cross the summit of the Rockies on the new transcontinental railway, the Grand Trunk Pacific, then under construction. In front were three cars of “bohunks,” and at the rear three private cars, one belonging to the Government, one to the superintendent of the division, the third—an overlong affair for such an untried railway—contained a canoe, supplies for a month, and the fishing and hunting outfit of my own little party of three.

That night, after the engineers and officials had departed on the motor-boat down the Fraser to inspect an engineering difficulty that was the reason for their presence, I crept back two miles from the construction camp to the engineers' camp pitched close to the end-of-steel village for that section of line—Mile 51, as it was termed officially; Sand Creek, as it was called by the citizens and “bohunks.”

Soon after darkness fell, in company with an engineer, I clambered down the gravel bank to the village in search of new experiences. I was not disappointed!

The night life of the place was only just commencing. “Bohunks” were wandering in by scores from the end of the street nearest the construction camp, and the “merchants” were busy hanging out their lamps and extending the word of greeting that would entice their prey within. As we approached a brightly-lighted “restaurant,” a small crowd was leisurely gathering before the door. Just as we reached its edge two madly-fighting men came plunging and staggering out, biting, tearing, and kicking, in wilderness fighting the vanquished stands a good chance of never being able to fight again.

There was no interference from the crowd, and no undue excitement, although it was composed of the mates of one of the combatants, a “bohunk,” while the other—the owner of the restaurant—was one of the human vultures who preyed on them all. For a couple of minutes the pair struggled on the steps of the store, panting, cursing, trying by every means, fair and foul, to disable one another. Suddenly the restaurant proprietor heaved his opponent aside, reached swiftly inside the door, and drew out a piece of wood resembling a rough chair-leg. The “bohunk” saw his peril too late. With a crash that seemed to be the expression of every ounce of strength in the wielder’s arms, the heavy club descended on the “bohunk’s” head, and he sank to the ground without a murmur. The victor merely shook his disturbed clothing into place, and stepped calmly back into his store, while the unconscious “bohunk’s” friends carried him silently and dispassionately across the street to a foul-looking shack with a sign reading, “Free Bunk House.”

My engineer friend took me by the arm with a short, nervous laugh and led me away.

“You’ll have to get used to it,” he warned me, “if you’re going to make the acquaintance of the end-of-steel village. I’ve seen uglier things than that many a time. To interfere would be your death, and not a man of the crowd but would say it served you right.”

Next morning I wandered down into the village with my camera. Never was there a quieter, more respectable hamlet. Scarcely a sign of life showed in the streets, and most of the windows were covered with heavy cloths to exclude the light. Sand Creek, by day, was asleep—getting ready for the night’s operations. The “bohunks” were somewhere miles away, yawning over their picks and shovels, but looking forward to the coming night’s revelry.

A cowboy cantered up the almost trackless street—a strange sight in the mountains, hundreds of miles from the nearest ranch. He pulled up beside me, and I learned that he was one of the cattle contractor’s men, occupied with the care of a herd of five hundred cattle, which he and his mates had driven in over four hundred miles of prairie trail and mountain “tote road” to feed the railway workers.

That night I determined to obtain a closer acquaintance with the village life. At its farther end stood one of the usual restaurants, a mere blind for what went on inside. Mingling in the darkness with a group of “bohunks,” I entered a side door and found myself in a large room filled with men seated at card-tables. As inconspicuously as possible, I slid into a chair near the door and looked about me. For a minute I seemed to be unnoticed. There were a dozen tables in the room, and the air was already thick with smoke, the abrupt words of men who must play together though ignorant of one another’s language, harsh laughter, and the clinking of bottles. The tables were home-made, the cards inconceivably filthy, and before most of the men stood bottles or tin cups.

A silence had fallen on the table nearest me, but it was the entrance of the proprietor with a tray of bottles that seemed to direct general attention to me. I recalled immediately that whisky was forbidden in the Pass, and no one had yet given me a passport to the confidence of these men. Low murmurs began to cut off the loud talk and laughter, and, looking about as carelessly as I could, I noted that every eye was on me. The proprietor was standing with the loaded tray, staring at me malignantly. Abruptly he turned and passed back to the unseen regions whence he had come. Instantly voices were raised in a dozen languages. Not a man was playing. I began to feel the barometer falling ominously, and mentally calculated the distance to the door.

From a distant table a burly “bohunk” rose impetuously and ploughed angrily towards me, upsetting a couple of chairs on the way. Somehow, even in the menace of the moment, his movements seemed theatrical, exaggerated. Then I saw that he was a Pole whose wounded leg I had the day before bound up. With violent gesticulation and thunderous talk—not a word of which I understood, of course—he towered over me. The others in the room were adding to the hubbub. In the midst of it the Pole managed to mutter anxiously, “You go! you go!” Dropping his hand heavily on my shoulder, he pushed me with seeming roughness to the door, and a moment later I was out in the dark, only the lights farther up the street reminding me that I was in uncongenial surroundings.

The next day I discovered a different atmosphere greeting me throughout the village. Someone—I suspect the engineer, subtly assisted by the Pole—had spread the word that I was safe, and the first merchant I met revealed that my mission in the Yellowhead Pass was known and understood. After that I came and went almost as I wished, every door open to me, everyone eager to put himself out of the way to furnish me with information.

The end-of-steel village is, I suppose, known nowhere else in the world except America, and nowhere else in America except where a railway is cutting its way through untracked wilds. The real end-of-steel village in all its glory cropped up only along the grade of the Grand Trunk Pacific. Its predecessor, the Canadian Pacific Railway, was constructed at a different period in Canadian history, and in the time of the Canadian Northern, which closely followed the Grand Trunk Pacific, the law had had sufficient experience to cope with the evil.

As its name intimates, the end-of-steel village is built at, or near, the “end of steel,” the phase of railway construction where the rails end for the time being until the grade ahead is prepared for a further extension. The grade which precedes the laying of steel advances much more slowly, of course, than the rails themselves. A stretch of twenty to twenty-five miles of grade may occupy thousands of men six months—I refer to the work through the Rocky Mountains—while the steel, when the time comes, will overtake it by modern methods in a fortnight.

The rails are laid by a mechanical tracklayer known as the “pioneer.” This consists of a train that lays its own rails as is advances, sometimes at the rate of three miles a day.

The “pioneer” is a crude-looking but really wonderful mechanical invention. The car which does the major part of the work is at the front of a train on which is carried every piece of material necessary, from the sleepers to the “shims” that temporarily level the rails and the spikes that fasten them in place.

With a sufficient stretch of completed grade ahead of it to justify its operations, the “pioneer” takes up its work, and when it has overtaken the labouring gang ahead it lies up for five or six months until another stretch of grade calls it again into action. Where the “pioneer” rests there springs up the end-of-steel village.

Somewhere within a few miles is the construction camp that houses the thousands of “bohunks” working on the grade—the source of patronage for the village. Canadian law dictates that the head contractors shall have complete jurisdiction in wild lands over everything within a mile radius of their camps, and the end-of-steel village, therefore, establishes itself somewhere as close to the limits of that area as conditions of water and other surroundings permit.

Ostensibly made up of stores or legitimate amusements only, the sales of merchandise are trifling to the amount of money expended in the village. Three or four general stores may make a very good living from the sale of boots and clothing, cheap confectionery, and tobacco, always at extortionate prices; but the score of other places of business are almost always ‘‘restaurants.” I put the word in quotation marks because the sale of food is but an advertisement for the front eighth of the space within. Behind a rough, oil-clothed counter is a limited array of leathery pies and a few cups for recklessly brewed tea, but the real business is done farther back.

Sand Creek, for instance, boasted of three general stores, half-a-dozen announcing the sale of tobaccos, candies, and “soft” drinks, and twelve “restaurants.” There was also a bath house—“Larson’s Bath House, Price 50c.,” and later reduced to twenty-five—but bathing does not figure extensively in the life of the “bohunk,” and the bath house finally closed through lack of patronage. Larson must have been an optimist.

The small area of the shacks devoted to the restaurant business was always backed by a pool or card room, sometimes by both. In Sand Creek there were eight “pool halls,” the total number of tables in the village being something like forty. Six of the restaurants were merely entrances to pool halls, three to card rooms, the other three were careful to offer no opportunities for examination.

There was one common offering of every building in an end-of-steel village. Anyone known to the proprietor, or obviously a “bohunk,” could poison himself with the vilest alcoholic beverage human ingenuity ever concocted. It was prepared not so much for deception—the “bohunk” was too experienced to be deceived— but to provide in the least amount of liquid all the sensations of a glorious “spree.” After results were immaterial. The “bohunk ” entered the shop, threw down a handful of money on the counter, and proceeded to incapacitate himself and ruin his constitution. After a very few glasses, before the stock in hand was seriously depleted, he was beyond the worries of this life.

At this stage began the usefulness of the only other structures in the village—the “Free Bunk Houses." These were Samaritan efforts on the part of the contractors to sustain the “bohunk” for further work on the grade. There were two in Sand Creek—mere piles of logs roofed with earth, and fitted inside with straw-covered bunks. Into these, when the “bohunk" became incapable of imbibing or paying for more liquor, he was carried by his less helpless mates. Usually he was in condition to imitate a labourer in the morning, for his interior had been calloused by a life of such risks. The contractors acknowledged their inability to deal with the situation in any other way, and the “bohunk” saw no reason for a change. There was nothing else in all the wide world of his experience but to spend his money on that which gave him momentary sensations that seemed pleasant, and nobody was to blame if these sensations were certain to make a physical wreck of him in a few years.

The appearance of an end-of-steel village is illuminating as to its character. Simplicity is the keynote—simplicity meaning neglect of every convenience that it is possible to do without. Trees grew everywhere in the Yellowhead Pass, and the construction of a shack merely meant the felling of a few spruce trees and their preparation with an axe. When a village was abandoned the most important parts for the next village, the canvas roofs, were lifted off, rolled up, and carried to the new site. In the Rockies there were three end-of-steel villages of the lawless type—one at Mile 5, five miles beyond the summit, the next at Mile 29, and the one I knew in its prime, at Mile 51. Each deserted one stood as it was left, save for the canvas roofs.

Of course there were end-of-steel villages before the summit was reached, but the mounted police of the prairie provinces saw to it that the law was decently observed. At the summit, the boundary of British Columbia, the jurisdiction of the mounted police ended, and thereafter the end-of-steel village flourished and grew fat.

The one at Mile 29 is reputed to have been the worst of the lot. When I was in the Pass it was still operating, but the business had passed along to Sand Creek, and Mile 29 was dying a slow death. What reason there was for its continued existence was not apparent its only open trade was with a near-by engineers’ camp, and with the wandering “bohunk” on his way in or out. Its real trade was underground, and it died hard. I visited it first on a Sunday afternoon. A number of young fellows lounged before a store, and a few were tossing a baseball about the street. A quarter of a mile from its outskirts a lonely police hut edged the path, an indolent policeman yawning in the doorway as a memory of days when life was swifter and more exciting.

There was, however, another village that sprang from a combination of conditions. It was not, strictly speaking, an end-of-steel village, for it did not owe its origin to the “pioneer.” But it included every other characteristic to its worst form, and was sufficiently near to the main construction camp at Mile 53 to provide counter-attractions to Sand Creek. Indeed, on Saturday nights Sand Creek almost closed up to move over to Tête Jaune Cache to join in the fun.

Tête Jaune Cache—pronounced locally “T. John”—was an offspring of the old Indian village of that name which had been located in the Tête Jaune Valley, between the Rockies and the Selkirks, long before the coming of the white man. The collection of tepees invited the advances of the early white man looking for a location whence he could prey on the “bohunk," and there arose a new village bordering the Indian one. It was practically a one-night-a-week place. Its “mayoress”—self-appointed, of course—was a stalwart negress. The village was more than a mile from grade, but its location on the tote road brought it custom long before the steel arrived, and the promised coming of the next transcontinental, the Canadian Northern, close by its doors, gave it reason for continuing in active operation even when the best trade from the Grand Trunk Pacific had passed.

The weekly event that drew every “bohunk" almost every human being within ten miles who could secure the means of getting there—was the Saturday night dance. For this every conveyance in the camps was called into service, and those who could not ride started early on foot. The fare by wagon from Sand Creek, only two miles away, was two dollars, a sum willingly paid by many times the number who could be accommodated. The female portion of the gathering consisted of the dance-hall girls and the few other women of the surrounding camps and villages. There was no class distinction there; now and then even the engineers went. The affair lasted from eight at night until weariness came with daylight, something like six o’clock the next morning.

The mistress of ceremonies was the negress, and her income for the night must have run into hundreds of dollars from the dancing alone. In addition she ran an open bar and other things that give such a village its reputation. Usually she was capable of handling the uproar and riot without more than the consequences to be expected, but sometimes her art failed.

I heard from a variety of sources the story of a fight that must have been a record even in the Yellowhead Pass. One day I was attracted by a huge figure of a man swinging down the railway towards me, six feet four, square-shouldered and heavy-jawed, handsome and clear-eyed. He wore no coat, and his khaki trousers were thrust into high prospector’s boots. In every movement was tremendous strength and agility. We met on the bridge spanning the McLellan River, then under construction, and I learned to know much of him in the days that followed. This man, a bridge foreman, was the hero of the story.

One Saturday night he secured a seat in the Sand Creek rigs and joined the crowd at the Tête Jaune Cache dance. I suppose his handsome face and easy manner won him any partner he wished; at any rate, the “bohunks,” egged on by the negress, began to feel the pangs of jealousy. He was the man to revel in it, recklessly, laughingly, and revenge came swiftly. Someone sneaked up behind him and banged him over the head with a weapon too thick for his skull, and he went down unconscious. In that condition they kicked him out.

The following Saturday he was on hand again, this time with a powerful engineer friend as companion. The row commenced early. Then, back to back, the only two “white men” in the room faced the mob of murderous “bohunks.” Their salvation, counted on beforehand, was that the very density of the crowd prevented the use of guns, and they were prepared for anything else. One after another they laid out the attacking “bohunks” with their fists, both being experienced boxers and possessed of enough muscle and weight to make one blow sufficient for each opponent. Against the one or two knives that appeared they used their feet, but some sense of fair play held back weapons of that kind.

Seeing her business interfered with, the negress with a scream of rage hurled herself against the bridge foreman. It seemed that he was waiting for that. He caught her round the waist, threw his muscles into the heave, and slammed her up against the board partition at the side of the room. With a crash the whole wall fell, and in a minute the room was empty save for the two victors and the groaning negress. The two men trudged home satisfied. The “bohunk” requires his lesson periodically.

Spite of the hideous nature of the life they led, the citizens of the end-of-steel village retained for it a peculiar affection and loyalty, as well as a frank pride in the notoriety they assisted in winning for it. That it shifted its location every six months did not lessen the feeling. The proprietor of the largest store in Sand Creek grew sentimental when recalling past glories and the imminent completion of the railway. For two years he had been reaping the inordinate profits of his trade among the “bohunks,” and his little family had grown and increased since he had come up from a western American town. The big sign that fronted his store—painted away back in civilization for a store of more pretentious proportions—was a matter of personal pride to him. Neglecting no opportunity for augmenting his earnings, he had attached in conspicuous places about the doorway additional evidences of varied aptitude and offerings, the laborious products of his own uneducated hand: “Cider,” “Shooting Gallary,” “Resturant,” “Shoes Repared Here." With kindly pride he begged me to call upon him for anything I wanted. The limit of his fraternity came when his little boy brought to the engineers’ camp for me a specially baked blueberry pie, with the scrawled dedication,

“Four the nu man. John S—.” But these things happened in the light of day, when the end-of-steel village was just like any other hamlet of such modest pretensions.

There will never be another end-of-steel village in Canada worthy of the name. The smuggling of liquor is now more difficult in a country that has “gone dry” almost from coast to coast, and Governments have learned that something more than law enforcement by trust or proxy is necessary where thousands of the most undisciplined races of the world are shut off from the subduing influence of civilization and thrown on their own resources. And soon the most lurid chapters in Canadian development will be but a memory to those well-intentioned officials who were forced to accept conditions as they found them, as well as to those few of us from the “outside” who unofficially looked on in the feverish days that started and ended with one of the greatest works of railway construction in history.