Primary tabs
Transcription
[Page 67]
-36-
see the house where Mary Pickford, the successful Picture actress was born, and although many towns might claim her, we were begged to remember that here with the number plainly visible, was the bona fide spot.
Leaving Toronto at night I travelled for the next two days and nights, passing Winnipeg. For all that time there was little of interest in the Prairie lands beyond the tremendous production, for all were planted with crops, and it is to these largely that Canada owes its successful Settlement.
It was not till we got to Calgary that we came into the beauty of the well-famed Rockies, then there were soul satisfying scenes that baffle my poor descriptive powers. Towering mountains capped with snow in the background and ridges and domes in wonderful formations, with firs, peculiar to them, growing. The roaring torrents rushing over huge boulders. The mighty water falls, the deep and wondrous canyons, the flowering foliage, all making the sublimest picture of Nature's ordering. All the way there is no diminution of interest, look where you will there is, hour after hour, the same magnificence.
I met many travelling companions, and among them an American lady and her daughter, who usually spent their summers at Bautt [Banff] where I had arranged to spend a day. She most kindly took me under her wing, and included me in the motor that awaited her, to drive by the noted Bautt [Banff] Springs Hotel. That built hundreds of feet high among the mountains is one of the wonders of Canada, and a tourist resort of world wide fame patronised often by Royalty. The Duke and Duchess of Connaught with Princess Patricia, during their sojourn in Canada, spent many delightful vacations there.
On my arrival I found there Mrs. and Miss Falkner, with whom I parted on the Mauritania. My newly found friend constituted herself my hostess during my stay, and drove me to several places of interest and through her I met some of the habitues, not so numerous as formerly because many had remained in New York to continue their war work, and keep in touch with those who were at the war.