to the farmers in the more thickly settled districts, and at the same time to cover the varied climatic and other conditions which influence agriculture in Canada. The central experimental farm is situated at Ottawa, near the boundary line between Quebec and Ontario, where it serves Experimental farms. as an aid to agriculture in these two important provinces. One of the four branch farms then established is at Nappan, Nova Scotia, near the boundary between that province and New Brunswick, where it serves the farmers of the three maritime provinces. A second branch experimental farm is at Brandon in Manitoba, a third is at Indian Head in Saskatchewan and the fourth is at Agassiz in the coast climate of British Columbia. In 1906–1907 two new branch farms were established. One is situated at Lethbridge, southern Alberta, where problems will be investigated concerning agriculture upon irrigated land and dry farming under conditions of a scanty rainfall. The other is at Lacombe, northern Alberta, about 70 m. south of Edmonton, in the centre of a good agricultural district on the Canadian Pacific railway. Additional branch farms in different parts of the Dominion are in process of establishment. At all these farms experiments are conducted to gain information as to the best methods of preparing the land for crop and of maintaining its fertility, the most useful and profitable crops to grow, and how the various crops grown can be disposed of to the greatest advantage. To this end experiments are conducted in the feeding of cattle, sheep and swine for flesh, the feeding of cows for the production of milk, and Of poultry both for flesh and eggs. Experiments are also conducted to test the merits of new or untried varieties of cereals and other field crops, of grasses, forage plants, fruits, vegetables, plants and trees; and samples, particularly of the most promising cereals, are distributed freely among farmers for trial, so that those which promise to be most profitable may be rapidly brought into general cultivation. Annual reports and occasional bulletins are published and widely distributed, giving the results of this work. Farmers are invited to visit these experimental farms, and a large correspondence is conducted with those interested in agriculture in all parts of the Dominion, who are encouraged to ask advice and information from the officers of the farms.
The governments of the several provinces each have a department of agriculture. Among other provincial agencies for imparting information there are farmers’ institutes, travelling dairies, live-stock associations, farmers’, dairymen’s, seed-growers’, and fruit-growers’ associations,
Agricultural organizations
and education.
and agricultural and horticultural societies. These are all maintained or assisted by the several provinces. Parts of the proceedings and many of the addresses and papers presented at the more important meetings of these associations are published by the provincial governments, and distributed free to farmers who desire to have them. There are also annual agricultural exhibitions of a highly important character, where improvements in connexion with agricultural and horticultural products, live-stock, implements, &c., are shown in competition. The Dominion government makes in turn to one of the chief local agricultural exhibition societies a grant of $50,000 for the purposes of the national representation of agriculture and live-stock. The exhibition receiving the grant loses its local character, and thus becomes the Dominion exhibition or fair for that year.
There are several important agricultural colleges for the practical education of young men in farming, foremost amongst them being the Ontario Agricultural College at Guelph. Agricultural colleges are also maintained at Truro, Nova Scotia, and Winnipeg, Manitoba. In most of the provinces are dairy schools where practical instruction and training are given. Since the beginning of the 20th century agricultural education and rural training in Canada have been greatly stimulated by the munificence of Sir William C. Macdonald of Montreal. A donation by him of $10,000, distributed to boys and girls on Canadian farms for prizes in a competition for the selection of seed grain, as recommended by Professor J. W. Robertson, led to the Macdonald-Robertson Seed Growers’ Association. This soon assumed national proportions in the Canadian Seed Growers’ Association, which, with the seed branch of the department of agriculture mentioned above, has done much to raise to a uniform standard of excellence the grain grown over large areas of the Canadian wheat-fields. The Macdonald Institute at Guelph, Ontario, the buildings and equipment of which Sir William provided at a cost of $182,500, and the Macdonald College at Ste Anne de Bellevue, 20 m. west of Montreal, have been established to promote the cause of rural education upon the lines of nature study, with school gardens, manual training domestic science, &c., which on both sides of the Atlantic are now being found so effective in the hands of properly trained and enthusiastic teachers. The property of the Macdonald College at Ste Anne de Bellevue comprises 561 acres, of which 74 acres are devoted to campus and field-research plots, 100 acres to a petite culture farm and 387 acres to a live-stock and grain farm. The college includes a school for teachers, a school of theoretical and practical agriculture and a school of household science for the training of young women. The land, buildings and equipment of the college, which cost over $2,500,000, were presented by Sir William Macdonald, who in addition has provided for the future maintenance of the work by a trust fund of over $2,000,000. In connexion with the public elementary schools throughout Canada, where the principles of agriculture are taught to some extent, manual training centres, provided out of funds supplied by the same public-spirited donor, are now maintained by local and provincial public school authorities. (E. H. G.)
History
About A.D. 1000 Leif Ericsson, a Norseman, led an expedition from Greenland to the shores probably of what is now Canada, but the first effective contact of Europeans with Canada was not until the end of the 15th century. John Cabot (q.v.), sailing from Bristol, reached the shores of Canada Discovery. in 1497. Soon after fishermen from Europe began to go in considerable numbers to the Newfoundland banks, and in time to the coasts of the mainland of America. In 1534 a French expedition under Jacques Cartier, a seaman of St Malo, sent out by Francis I., entered the Gulf of St Lawrence. In the following year Cartier sailed up the river as far as the Lachine Rapids, to the spot where Montreal now stands. During the next sixty years the fisheries and the fur trade received some attention, but no colonization was undertaken.
At the beginning of the 17th century we find the first great name in Canadian history. Samuel de Champlain (q.v.), who had seen service under Henry IV. of France, was employed in the interests of successive fur-trading monopolies and sailed up the St Lawrence in 1603. French colony. In the next year he was on the Bay of Fundy and had a share in founding the first permanent French colony in North America—that of Port Royal, now Annapolis, Nova Scotia. In 1608 he began the settlement which was named Quebec. From 1608 to his death in 1635 Champlain worked unceasingly to develop Canada as a colony, to promote the fur trade and to explore the interior. He passed southward from the St Lawrence to the beautiful lake which still bears his name and also westward, up the St Lawrence and the Ottawa, in the dim hope of reaching the shores of China. He reached Lake Huron and Lake Ontario, but not the great lakes stretching still farther west.
The era was that of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), and during that great upheaval England was sometimes fighting France. Already, in 1613, the English from Virginia had almost completely wiped out the French settlement at Port Royal, and when in 1629 a small English fleet appeared at Quebec, Champlain was forced to surrender. But in 1632 Canada was restored to France by the treaty of St Germain-en-Laye. Just at this time was formed under the aegis of Cardinal Richelieu the “Company of New France,” known popularly as “The Company of One Hundred Associates.” With 120 members it was granted the whole St Lawrence valley; for fifteen years from 1629 it was to have a complete monopoly of trade; and products from its territory were to enter France
