We talk of Canada's boom as "done," but has it even begun? Strathcona
used to say that the three prairie provinces would support a population
of one hundred million. Was he right? On the basis of Europe's
population the three provinces would sustain three times Germany's
sixty-five millions.

VI

In British Columbia one reaches the province of the greatest natural
wealth, the greatest diversity in climate and the most feverish
activity in Canada. East of the mountains is a climate high, cold and
bracing as Russia or Switzerland. Between the ranges of the mountains
are valleys mild as France. On the coast toward the south is a climate
like Italy; toward the north, like Scotland. Of Canada's entire timber
area--twice as great as Europe's standing timber--three-quarters lie in
British Columbia. Fruit equal to Niagara's, fisheries richer than the
maritime provinces, mines yielding more than Klondike--exist in this
most favored of provinces. While the area is a half larger than
Germany, the population is smaller than that of a suburb of Berlin.[12]
Of Canada's thirty-four million dollars' worth of fish, thirteen
million dollars' worth come from British Columbia; and of her products
of forty-six millions of precious and fifty-six millions of
non-metallic minerals in 1911 easily half came from British
Columbia.[13]

Instead of that repose which marks the maritime provinces, one finds an
eager fronting to the future that is almost feverish. If Panama is
turning the entire Pacific into a front door instead of a back door,
then British Columbia knows the coign of vantage, which she holds as an