THE PRAIRIE.
_The Canadian Prairie...._
[Illustration:
CANADA, “THE BREAD-MOTHER OF THE WORLD”.]
[Illustration:
STEADY, THERE!]
The Canadian Prairie may be compared to a vast stage set through the
length of three entire provinces for the enactment of one great epic
entitled “WHEAT”.
Wheat is the greatest piece of realism staged in Canada. And its
companion-piece, in point of size and importance, is “Fish”--The
Maritime. Taken together they seem to point to Canada as the living
parable of “the loaves and the fishes.” The ovens of Quebec as well as
the ovens of all the other Provinces look to the Prairies for
fulfilment.
But the wheat of the Prairie Provinces does not confine itself to, nor
is it used up by these home ovens! rather it overflows to other ovens
overseas, converting Canada by a sweet yet subtle power into a symbolic
character--the bread-mother of the world. The thousand-mile wave of
tawny grain from Thunder Bay to the foothills of the Rockies is a
rippling voice; the voice of a most pleasing personality; a voice that
carries across the stage in accents at once assured and winning,
speaking to the world at large, so that it penetrates to remotest nooks
and corners of the earth, speaking as the finest voices do, to the heart
and the individual. One has only to follow the long Prairie trail to see
how many and varied are the ears that have heard the magic call of
Canadian wheat.
On the Prairie, Englishman, Scotchman, Irishman, American, have one and
all hit the trail in the train of wheat. On the Prairie, too, are to be
found other followers in that train, men from the wheat-lands of Old
Europe and men who never saw a field of wheat until coming
here--Icelanders, Poles, Ukrainians, Austrians, Finlanders, Swedes,
Bukowinians; and how many others? Talking with the old-timers, the
pioneers, the prairie schooner, the ox-cart, the buffalo herd, are still
vividly within the memory of men now living beside the main highway of
railway tracks with fast fliers from Halifax to Vancouver passing and
re-passing several times a day.
Nowhere is the quick development of Canada so evident as here on the
plains. Yet the steady voice of wheat is still calling; and to her voice
are now added other important voices, and still others. Men and women
with families are still coming and will come. The Prairie is big and
generous and it _gives_. At the same time it admits that what it needs
is more people; on the principle that the bigger the stage the more
people are on demand in the chorus. The individuals who have listened to
the call of the Prairie and followed its pipe have one and all brought
with them their own individuality as well as some of the fundamental
things which were theirs by reason of the old life back in the rural
parts of Europe.
They are now giving these, the best of themselves and of the old lands,
to the Prairie Provinces. As a class the foreigners are now known as
“New Canadians”. The tiny homes which these built when they first came
to Canada out of saplings and such wood as the country roundabout
afforded, are in many instances little gems of architecture. The sides
of these houses outside the framework of wood are plastered--usually by
the women of the household--a yard or two at a time, each yard of
plaster being scrupulously whitewashed as it goes along. Sometimes the
roofs are sodded and masses of wild-flowers not infrequently bloom
thereon. But more frequently the steep little roof is built of
split-by-hand shingles, rough and artistic.
Inside these little houses, so strongly resembling their quaint cousins
of Quebec, are all the handmade things and furnishings which mark the
century-old French homes of Eastern Canada. There are, first of all, the
same little windows flung open to the breeze, the same manifestations of
art-reds and blues in paint over doors and windows. Inside, in the
living room are handmade wooden benches, many with lines distinctly
Russian; on the floor, hand-loom carpets and about the walls, a bit of
the same home-weaving in tapestry effect, lined, perhaps by a frieze of
empty egg-shells with bizarre patterns in red and black, almost
Egyptian. So fragile are some of these simple things, so passing their
reign in the rapid prosperity overtaking the children of the older
generation that it seems to be a question as to whether these abilities
to create a house and artistic furnishings out of almost nothing will
survive to enrich the national life as in Quebec.
In the dooryard of these houses there are strange contraptions of wood
for holding a log in place while it is being sawn. So easily manipulated
are these things, that stepped into Canada as an idea from somewhere in
the Carpathians, that even a small boy operates them successfully.
In these yards, too, are _wells_ with big wheels and artistic roofs of
hand-split shingles of a foreign steepness--wells, whence women with
plotoks on their heads, call as sisters, to the women at the wells in
Nova Scotia, in Cape Breton, in the Madeleines.
Here in many instances are to be seen the same rodded fences as occur in
Newfoundland, each of course, with its touch of individuality, some
fairly straight and others serpentining about the little garden of
flowers which the old-timers love. In many cases too there is the same
little patch of tobacco, as that met with in the _jardins_ along the
Saint Lawrence. In the kitchens of these houses are homemade wooden
spoons, stirring-sticks and wooden forks. Some of these are given a coat
of red or blue paint. Lemon yellow is a favourite colour for the wooden
benches that stand against the walls.
It speaks well for the sturdy character of many of these oldtime places
that some of them have been able to hold their own within thirty miles
of Winnipeg--not being obliterated by the wave of modernism of which the
great capital city is the crest.
The New Canadians, representing many lands and widely separated sections
of Old Europe, have contributed to the Prairie Provinces a variety in
the way of Church architecture. Cupolas and domes distinctly Eastern,
almost Turkish, startle one above the tops of Manitoba maples or the
bush of the river-banks. These architectural figures of the landscape,
apart altogether from their religious significance, are centres where,
crossing the threshold on Sundays, one has an opportunity of hearing
Swedish music or the rich, deep chanting of the Russian responses; and
of viewing at close hand the artistry that goes to make up the interior
appointments of these churches transplanted from the East to the West.
Here, too, silhouetted against the sky, is the little separate
bell-tower and perhaps the three-barred Cross of the Eastern Christian
Church. Here and there in the corner of a wheat-field, at the
cross-section of a Prairie highway, one sees, as in Quebec, the tall,
uplifted Crucifix set up. It is indeed a mosaic of vast dimensions and
great breadth, essayed of the Prairie.
_Genre_ of wheat is no less distinct than _genre_ of the
’longshore road. Here is the Sower, here the Reaper, here the
Stacker-of-the-big-Sheaves--_the Stooker_ as the Prairie calls him. He
may be a man from the East, a Sioux, or a townsman out to lend a hand.
With his brown water-jug and his bronzed face, he is almost a symbolic
figure, building the golden sheaves in stacks of five for the playing
breeze and warm sun to give the ripening touches to the _grain_ that
makes Canada--the bread-giver of the world.
[Illustration:
“THE STOOKER,” AS THE PRAIRIE CALLS HIM.]