THE CANADIAN MAGAZINE. VOL. XII. NOVEMBER, 1898. WHERE SUMMERS ARE LONG. A Comparison of Canadian and European Summers. PERHAPS no country suffers abroad from misconception in regard to its climate as does Canada. Mr. Rudyard Kipling's well meant but unfortunate allusion to the Dominion as "Our Lady of the Snows"-scarcely an appropriate one to a country where in east, west and south at almost any time in winter as large an area as England is bare of snow, and several times that area has but a scanty covering is but a natural re-echo of the opinions which have been expressed during the centuries since the snowy gateway of the St. Lawrence was first entered by the French. Exaggerated ideas of the cold of Canada are continually being expressed in books and in leading periodicals, and often by generally wellinformed men. A prominent member of The British Association, while sailing down Lake Ontario, referred to the scene he supposed the lake would present when frozen over. The late General Benjamin Butler, in an article in a leading American review not long ago, said that Canada could easily be invaded in winter by crossing Lake Ontario on the ice. A writer in a popular English magazine tells of the mercury being constantly below zero at Quebec for over four months every winter, whereas a period of two days when such is the case, even in that city, is uncommon. McCulloch's Commercial Dictionary of an old date refers to what are now our boundless wheat fields of the North-West as No. I. "situated in an inhospitable climate, and worth very little, excepting as hunting grounds "an opinion happily well dissipated at the present day. Some of the queer misstatements made are, to say the least, amusing. Sir Francis Bond Head, a former governor of Upper Canada, in a volume on the country, indulging in a little "romancing about the climate, said, amongst other things, that often in writing his dispatches to the Home Government, in his warm offices in the Government House, Toronto, he has found the ink cease flowing, and on examination discovered a ball of frozen ink formed under his pen. Another writer on settlement in the mild Western peninsula of Ontario gravely tells of horses having to be cut out of the ice formed from the overflowing of the troughs at which they were being watered. And the London Illustrated News, on the occasion of Prince Arthur's visit to the lake region, comforts its English readers by the assurance that "Canada has plenty of bearskins and deerskins to clothe her own children and the Queen's son, too." Even the most serious and authoritative of publications make similar singular mistakes. Chambers' Encyclopædia, for example, in its article on North America, says that the basin of the St. Lawrence, i.e., of the Great Lakes and the River, is, in winter, not only relatively, but absolutely, the coldest portion of the conti nent, its low level constituting a depression into which flows the cold, and, therefore, heavy air of the interior of the continent. Unfortunately for this theory the basin is in general much milder on the same parallels of latitude than the Mississippi Valley. And notwithstanding that December, January and February have been known to pass with the water constantly lapping the innermost wharfs of Toronto Bay, "Encylopædia Britannica," in a tabular statement, unable to conceive the final opening of navigation in the harbour occurring one year so early as January, sets down the opening as taking place in June! It is refreshing to turn from these arctic pictures to the impressions of America given in one of the great London monthly reviews by an Englishman who at St. Paul is assured that the date palm flourishes in the Red River Valley in northern Minnesota, so very close to Manitoba, as that former gateway to our prairies, St. Vincent. These wrong ideas prevalent as to the Canadian climate have been exceedingly detrimental to the country, and probably have done more to retard immigration, especially of well-to-do agriculturists, than all other causes combined. Many Canadians, too, influenced by foreign misconceptions so often expressed, underrate the relative merits of our seasons when compared with those of northern and central Europe. This wrong impression of the comparative length of the summer is aided by the fact that in the most thickly-inhabited portions of old Canada, such as southern and eastern Ontario, fall wheat harvest is generally over in July, and all cereals, excepting maize, are garnered but little if any later. Partly, too, the very considerable and sensible difference in temperature between May and June, and between August and September aids this error, though May in several Canadian localities is as warm as the English June. Then, too, both at home and abroad, the impression made by a cursory glance at the maps of the two hemispheres tends to the disadvantage of Canada. The Gulf of Mexico, in the minds of most, is associated with the latitudes of the Mediterranean. New Orleans is contemplated as being in about the same latitude as Marseilles or Nice, and Algiers and Morocco as Cuba. The general absence in North America, through occasional winter frosts extending as far south as the Gulf of Mexico, of certain characteristic trees of southern latitudes further confirms this impression. Hence we have "Far north Canada,” and hence, too, even southern Ontario is mentally removed far up into the latitudes of north Germany and the south of England, and prejudged adversely whenever the length and generous warmth of its summers are thought of in relation to those of France, Austria, South Germany, and even of countries somewhat further north. A little readjustment of mental impressions in regard to relative latitudes will do much to correct ideas in regard to our summer seasons, and also in regard to our winters, though it is always to be borne in mind that our position on the eastern side of a continent makes our winters colder than those of the west of Europe in the same latitudes, just as the winters of China, Korea and Japan and the east of Asia generally are colder than those of similar latitudes on the Pacific coast of North America. The Mediterranean, where it laves the delta of the Nile, is further north than New Orleans, while the same south shore of that sea curving past Tunis is as far north as southern Illinois, and only 250 geographical miles further south than Pelee, in Ontario. The northern part of the Mediterranean is largely in the region of the Great St. Lawrence lakes; its most northern shore, in the Adriatic, corresponds in latitude with the north shore of Lake Huron, leaving Lake Superior the only one of the great lakes wholly north of the Mediterranean. Lake Erie in latitude corresponds with the Mediterranean off Barcelona, in Spain, and reaches south to within a few miles of the latitude of the north coast of the Ægean. |