Little Irish Ned was scarcely three months old when his mother died.
His grandmother reared him, and a hard fight she had to do it. All went
well for a time after his mother's death, but when Ned was about five
years old he lost the love and guidance of his father, and his
grandmother was deprived of her only support. Ned's father was employed
as a motorman by the Winnipeg Street Railway Company. He was steady and
prosperous; when suddenly a "strike" was called, and then there were
riotous times in Winnipeg's streets. Matters went from bad to worse,
until at last the Mayor called out the soldiers, and they came with all
the pride and pomp of war and with a great Gatling gun to overawe the
rioters. A hot time was in process on Main Street, three cars had been
smashed to atoms, the police with drawn batons had charged the crowd,
when Ned's father, who had entered a car to get his overcoat, left
there the night before the strike, was arrested as he was leaving the
car. No explanation was asked or taken. A "striking motorman," he was
caught in the act; and accordingly he was sentenced to a long term of
imprisonment in Stony Mountain Penitentiary. Then began the hard
struggle against poverty and disease, the hard struggle in which
thousands have already been worsted, the battle against fearful odds
which so many are now fighting. With no one to support her and little
Ned the old woman was forced to go out and scrub offices and to do a
day's work wherever it could be got, in order, as she said, "to get a
bit an' a sup an' a few rags to keep the boy in dacency."
Selkirk Avenue was not then the congested district that it is to-day.
Then happy homes, not many on the street, but each with a nice large
plot of ground and its own garden shaded with maple trees, covered the
district where now stores and offices and tenement blocks are trying to
shut out the sunshine. Never did a braver, more generous,
kinder-hearted people dwell together than those of North Winnipeg in
the good old days when each was known to all and all to each. The
hungry and the destitute never pleaded then in vain. Like the Green
Isle from which they sprung, "their doors opened wide to the poor and
the stranger"; like the land of their adoption, Canada, the broad and
free, their hands and purses were ever open to the call of charity.
Among them these two friendless ones found friends indeed. They lived
in a little home just east of where the Exhibition Buildings now stand.
A cleaner and neater one, though poorly furnished, could not be found
in all the city. On the walls were a few pictures, and the one Ned
loved best was that of Archbishop Machray, the great prelate who had
done so much for Western Canada in general and Winnipeg in particular.
Often he would sit for hours to hear Granny tell of the deeds of the
early pioneers in this great "Lone Land," and especially, so far as she
knew, those of the great Saint whom Ned was proud to claim as his hero.
Often on a summer's evening, when the darkness was beginning to fall,
and Granny had rested a little after her day's work, she and the child
would walk down towards the church. Not a handsome edifice, merely a
frame shell on a stone foundation. Not old and fragrant with ancient
memories, like the churches of the "Dear Isle" so far away, where tired
and weary workers, after long and dreary toil, in the evenings would
step in and reverently kneeling would lose sight of the world and its
weariness, in prayer and communion with God--a custom of the people
which gave them the strength and fortitude to bear a burden unknown to
the boys and girls of this Canada of ours. No, not grand and old and
magnificent, but still to these two sacred and hallowed because it was
God's House and theirs. They knelt on the chancel step--the old woman
and the little boy. There they knelt and prayed--ay, prayed for the
mother and the daughter now dead and gone; "for all who are any way
afflicted or distressed in mind, body, or estate"; and for one so dear
to them suffering, after the example of his Saviour, punishment for a
crime he did not commit.
Ah, would to God we had more like these; would to God the evenings were
hallowed with more such visits to our city churches; would to God that
more hungry hearts were eager for such quiet communion with their
Heavenly Father in His own House! What a beautiful picture it made: The
setting sun shining through the western window falling on the gray hair
and wrinkled, upturned face of the old woman, and on the sweet young
head and innocent countenance of the little child so close to her side.
Ah, often has the Rector, standing in the shadow, gazed with love and
gratitude on this scene--a scene of heaven upon the earth, a picture
artists love to paint, a sermon without words, an evening incense, the
strong, prevailing prayer of Youth and Age.