Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 58, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 March 1904 — WESTERN CANADA’S RESOURCES [ARTICLE]

WESTERN CANADA’S RESOURCES

Panning Very Successful. By Western or Northwest Canada is usually meant the great agricultural country west of Ontario and north of Minnesota, North Dakota, and Montana. Part of it is agricultural prairie, treeless in places, park like in others, part i 3 genuine plains, well adapted to cattle ranches; part requires irrigation for successful tillage, most of it does not. The political divisions of Ibis region are the Province of Manitoba and the territorial district of Assinibola, Saskatchewan, Alberta and Athabaska. At present, however, the, latter is too remote for immediate practical purposes. The general character of the soil of Western Canada is a rich, black, clay loam with a clay subsoil. Such a soli is particularly rich in food for the wheat plant. The subsoil is a clay, which retains the winder, frost until it is thawed out by the warm rays of the sun nnd drawn upward to stimulate the. growth of the young wheat, so that even in dry seasons wheat is a good crop. The clay soil also retains the heat of the sun later in the summer, and assists in the early ripening of the grain. It Is claimed that cultivation has the effect of increasing (lie temperature of the soil several degrees, as well as the air above it.

• Western Canada climate Is good—cold in winter, hot in summer, but with cool nights. Violent storms of any kinds are rare. The rainfall is not heavy. It varies with places, but averages about seventeen inches. It falls usually at the time the growing crops need It. The Department of the Interior, Ottawa, Canada, has agents established at different points throughout the United States, who will be pleased to forward an Atlas of Western Canada, and give such other information as to railway rate, ete., as may be required. That agriculture in Western Canada pays is shown by the number of testimonials given by farmers. The following is an extract made from a letter from a farmer near Moose Jaw; “At the present time I own sixteen hundred acres of land, fifty horses and a large pasture fenced, containing a thousand acres. These horses run out nil winter and come In in the spring quite fat. A man with money judiciously enp (, I 1 d ( '<l will make a competence very' shortly. I consider in the last six years the increase In the value of my land has netted me forty thousand dollars.”