Volume 2 - ElectricCanadian.com

204 HISTORY OF THE BANKwhich Sir John Aird believed to be a promising point, althoughanother institution was already in the field. It was merely adivisional point on the railway and the trading post for theranchers of that part of southern Alberta. For miles in everydirection, save for an occasional herd of cattle, there were nosigns of human habitation. American ranchers, forced outof their own country by the encroachments of farmers, weremigrating into the district in the belief that it was a countrythat would be free for all time to come from that great sourceof annoyance to cattle-men, the settler's fence. In the autumnof 1902 the two streets of Medicine Hat were alive withpicturesque cowboys, and money seemed so plentiful that therepresentatives of The Canadian Bank of Commerce decidedthat there was room for a second bank. When, shortlyafterwards, a third came in, it seemed to those in occupationof the territory one too many, but within a few years therewere seven.At that time Calgary was a centre of recognized importance,although its population was less than 7,000. Fivebanks were already established there, but the visitors decidedthat there was no ill-luck in even numbers and proceeded toopen a sixth.They rented premises on a ten-year lease at afigure which seemed over-generous to some, but within fiveyears the rental value of the property exceeded the stipulatedrent three or four times over. Since then the population ofCalgary has grown to over 60,000, and it has fifteen banks,several of which maintain more than one branch.The future of Edmonton was less apparent in 1902than that of Calgary. At that time Alberta had not acquiredautonomy and the selection of the northern city as the provincialcapital had yet to come. Edmonton had not longemerged from the status of a Hudson's Bay Company's post,though it had long been and still is a point of great importancein the fur trade. In 1901 it had a population of 2,600, spreadalong the bend of the Saskatchewan river. It was reachedby a single train each day from Calgary, which consisted of