And wheat is not the only product of the three prairie provinces. On
the borderland between Manitoba and Saskatchewan are enormous deposits
of coal which have not yet been explored. Canoeing once through
Eastern Saskatchewan and Northern Manitoba, I saw a piece of almost
pure copper brought down from the hinterland of Churchill River by an
Indian, from an unknown mine, which no white man has yet found. On the
borderland between Alberta and British Columbia is a ridge of coal
deposits which such conservative experts as the late George Dawson
estimated would mine four million tons a year for five thousand years.
These coal deposits seem almost nature's special provision for the
treeless plains.

It is well known that the decrease in white fish in the Great Lakes for
the past ten years has been appalling. Northward of Churchill River is
a region of chains of lakes--the Lesser Great Lakes, they have been
called--and these are the only untouched inland fisheries in America.
To the exporter they are ideal fishing ground. The climate is cool.
The fish can be sent out frozen to American markets. Of Canada's
thirty-four million dollars' worth of fish in 1912, one and one-half
million dollars' worth came from the three prairie provinces.

Under the old boundaries, the three prairie provinces compared in area
respectively Manitoba with Great Britain; Saskatchewan with France;
Alberta, one and a half times larger than Germany. Under the new
boundaries extending the province to Hudson Bay, Manitoba is fifty-two
thousand square miles larger than Germany; Saskatchewan extended north
is fifty thousand square miles larger than France; and Alberta extended
north is fifty thousand square miles larger than Germany. And north of
the three grain provinces is an area the size of European Russia.