Volume 2 - ElectricCanadian.com

200 HISTORY OF THE BANKThe Canadian Bank of Commerce began the twentiethcentury with a system of sixty-seven branches, of whichforty-five were in Ontario, fourteen in British Columbia andthe Yukon, five in the United States, and the remaining threein Winnipeg, Montreal and London, England, respectively.Its paid-up capital was $8,000,000, its reserve fund $2,000,000and its total assets in round figures $64,000,000. The earliestdevelopments in western branch extension occurred in 1902,when the bank, its sense of proportion challenged, decided toenter the unoccupied territory between Winnipeg and theRockies, and thus revealed its understanding of the futurethat lay before the North-West Territories. It must not beassumed that the guiding minds of the institution had previouslybeen blind to what was about to take place in thatregion. A belief in the future of the West had been one of themost strongly cherished convictions of Sir Edmund Walker,when he was general manager, and he had been at pains toimpress it on the members of his staff. Some of his presentassociates recall that in the early "nineties," when pessimismprevailed in eastern Canada as to this country's future, andmore business men than to-day would care to confess it wereinclined to think the late Goldwin Smith right in his view thatCanada's destiny lay in becoming a subordinate part of theAmerican Republic, Sir Edmund Walker was sounding anentirely different note. Agricultural depression, the fall inland values, and heavy emigration of farmers' sons to theUnited States, tended to promote in financial circles pessimismas to Canada's national outlook, but Sir Edmund's analysisof the situation and optimistic forecast of the future were tojustify themselves in less than fifteen years. To the pessimistsamong his associates he would prophesy, "Wait till the last ofthe free lands in the United States have been taken up, andyou will see a great movement of immigration into our North-West."The last of the free lands in the United States were takenup with amazing rapidity on the opening of the Oklahoma