Miles away, secure in her sea-girt isle, is old London,
port of all seas; miles away, breasting the beat of the Atlantic,
sits New York, capital of the New World, and mart of the world,
Old and New; far away to the west lie the mighty cities of the Orient,
Peking and Hong Kong, Tokio and Yokohama; and fair across the highway
of the world's commerce sits Winnipeg, Empress of the Prairies.
Her Trans-Continental railways thrust themselves in every direction,
--south into the American Republic, east to the ports of the Atlantic,
west to the Pacific, and north to the Great Inland Sea.
To her gates and to her deep-soiled tributary prairies she draws from
all lands peoples of all tribes and tongues, smitten with two great
race passions, the lust for liberty, and the lust for land.
By hundreds and tens of hundreds they stream in and through this
hospitable city, Saxon and Celt and Slav, each eager on his own quest,
each paying his toll to the new land as he comes and goes, for good
or for ill, but whether more for good than for ill only God knows.
A hundred years ago, where now stands the thronging city, stood
the lonely trading-post of The Honourable, The Hudson's Bay Company.
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