THE HOMES OF CANADA
The people on the great ocean liners leaving the Clyde, the Mersey, and
the Severn for Canada cross the Atlantic to make homes across the seas.
The object of all business and agriculture is home-making. If Canada was
simply a country in which money was to be made under uncomfortable
conditions, people would soon get tired of going to Canada. There are
countries under the British flag and under the flags of other colonising
Governments which are simply money-making countries. The climate is
unhealthy or enervating, the conditions of life are such as are
uncongenial to those who have been brought up in this great homeland of
the world. It used to be thought that Canada was not the kind of country
in which it would be possible to settle down to such home life as is the
ambition of men in Old England, in Germany and France, and in the older
cities of America. It was a legend that Canada for a great part of the
year was a country under the dominion of unbearable cold—a country in
which the thermometer went down to arctic depths, in which the icy
atmosphere cut as with dagger stabs to the marrow of the bones, a
country that was buried under fathomless depths of snow. Well, during
three or four months of the winter—from the end of November to the
middle of March—the greater part of Canada is decidedly cold. The
thermometer _does_ sink to many degrees below zero, and the earth is
hidden by a thick wintry white mantle. Canadians, however, laugh with
huge enjoyment when they are asked whether they feel the cold—whether
they ever keep warm in winter. They declare to a man and a woman that
they never feel a quarter so cold in Canada as they do when they visit
the Old Country, whether the visits are in an English winter or in a wet
and cold summer. They resented Rudyard Kipling’s description of Canada
as “Our Lady of the Snows.” This, they said, conveyed an entirely false
impression of their country. As a matter of fact, they regard the winter
as the most enjoyable season of the year. The virgin whiteness of the
snow, the clear crisp air, the sunshine that floods the country week
after week and month after month, the blueness of the sky, make it joy
to be alive. The most pessimistic of curmudgeons feels happy and hopeful
during the Canadian winter. His blood circulates briskly, his lungs
drink in air of such purity that he feels almost as if he were walking
on air with light and springy step. I met many Canadians who told of
having experienced temperatures as low as 40 deg. F. below zero, and
yet, they said, they kept warm and never experienced that
marrow-chilling feeling that they get during an English December or
March or even during an English summer, with its leaden skies, with a
temperature somewhere in the 40’s or early 50’s, and the gusts of wind
that search out every weak place in the body. The air is dry and still,
and with these conditions it does not matter how low the thermometer may
sink. The temperature is not only tolerable, but enjoyable, providing,
of course, that the right clothing is worn, that the house is equally
warmed, and that reasonable precautions are taken.
[Illustration: PLOUGHING AND HARVESTING.]
As to houses, an indispensable institution of Canadian home life is the
heat-raiser—the stove apparatus in the basement which supplies the
steam-pipes carried through every room and also through every passage in
the house. The heat-raiser has been carried to the last pitch of
perfection to meet the needs of the Canadian winter. As a Montreal
resident said to me, it would not do to go out of a room heated to 60 or
70 degs. into a passage where the temperature was below zero. It is this
equal heating that prevents Canadians feeling cold in their homes, and
Canadians coming to this country always complain of the coldness of our
houses, and especially of the coldness of unheated bedrooms. English
visitors to Canada, on the other hand, always complain that the houses
are too hot, and still more that the railway trains, which are heated in
the same fashion, are too hot. My own experience of railway travelling
in Canada, of many nights spent sleeping in Pullman cars, confirms the
testimony of English travellers. The temperature at times in the railway
trains is almost unbearable, and it was a delight when the train stopped
for five or ten minutes to alight on platforms sprinkled with snow and
to breathe the clear crisp air. I have no doubt that the train-heating
is as necessary as the house-heating having regard to the conditions.
Canadians adapt themselves to the conditions, and what is abnormal to us
becomes normal to them. The English visitor to Canada misses the open
grate; the Canadian, and especially the Canadian housewife, testifies
that the absence of the open grate is the greatest boon to the Canadian
householder. It means cleanliness, saving of trouble, doing away with
alternations of temperature which mean colds and general _malaise_. The
cooking arrangements of Canadian home life are simplified, as are the
heating arrangements, and in view of the difficulty—which is
practically an impossibility—of obtaining domestic servants it is
necessary to adopt every kind of labour-saving appliance on the market.
The heating and cooking apparatus of Canadian homes is due mostly to the
inventiveness of American manufacturers. Generally speaking Canadian
home conditions are, as the Scots would say, “homologated” to the
conditions prevailing on the American side of the border.
With regard to the domestic servant difficult, I had many talks with
Canadian housewives on the question. The problem is solving itself by
American ladies doing their own housework and simplifying their domestic
arrangements accordingly. The wives of men of high social position do
most of their own housework and seem to enjoy it. All this has its
effect on the social etiquette. Ladies visiting each other in the
afternoon, for instance, do not expect to be asked to tea, though of
course if a lady chooses to ask her most intimate friends to tea there
is nothing to prevent her. It is understood, however, that to get tea
for visitors means that the hostess herself must prepare the meal and do
the necessary washing-up afterwards. The servant problem is responsible
also for Canadians of good social position living in houses much smaller
than people in the same station would occupy at home. Driving round the
“bon-ton” suburbs of rising cities in the Prairie Provinces I was
surprised at the bijou residences in which I was told prominent citizens
who were credited with fortunes of half a million to a million dollars
were content to live. You must never judge of a man’s wealth in Canada
by the size of his house and the style of his living. It is a question
of the impossibility of getting servants, and Canadians are sensible
enough to realise that the impossibility has its advantages. They have
neither the time nor the inclination to create a lot of social duties
such as are considered necessities of social suburban life at home,
which would mean in Canada not only vast expense, but the eating up of
invaluable time without any adequate compensation in the way of real
social enjoyment. Well-to-do Canadians do not often invite mere
acquaintances as guests to their homes. What they do is to put their
guests up at a good hotel—and good hotels are plentiful enough, even in
towns which have sprung up on the Prairie during the last twenty years.
There is a surprising number of excellent hotels with a cuisine,
attendance, and bedroom arrangements that any reasonable man should be
satisfied with. When religious or other conferences meet in a Canadian
town the delegates are not, as in this country, placed out with hosts
who give them a bedroom, breakfast, and supper for three, four or more
days, but the hosts send them to hotels. This practice has mutual
advantages. It is not always convenient for a man to take in a stranger,
though he may be an angel unawares; very often, as hosts in this country
know to their cost, he is far from being an angel. But though he might
be the most desirable of guests, the host, if a business or professional
man, might feel it irksome to give his guest the attention he felt was
due from him. On the other hand, the guest is free in the hotel to enjoy
himself in his own way with fellow delegates. At several towns where I
stayed there were groups of delegates to synodal meetings of religious
denominations, trade conferences and the like, and it struck me that
their informal conferences over the tables were contributing a good deal
to the success of the meetings which had brought them to the towns.
[Illustration: STRATHCONA MONUMENT AT MONTREAL.]
A distinction has to be drawn between cities and towns of Old Canada and
the cities and towns of the Prairie Provinces and British Columbia. In
Old Canada, at Quebec, Montreal, Toronto, London, Hamilton, and many
other cities life has settled down; there are traditions going back
through several generations. There are old families and family
relationships, old churches, institutions, colleges and schools. The
life in these old cities has plenty of social intercourse and social
enjoyments, and yet there is a freshness and exuberance which are
missing in the crowded cities of the Old Country with their sharp social
distinctions and their social problems. In these old cities there is
culture of literature, art and music. The Toronto University and the
McGill University at Montreal draw their thousands of students, who
receive an education that covers all the departments of learning. Young
men and young women are brought together in the various colleges,
friendships are formed, wits sharpen wits. These young men and women are
trained to become leaders of thought and action in every department of
business, professional and social activity. Cultured English people
settling in Old Canada might find to their surprise a keener appetite
for artistic and intellectual interests than is at all common among the
suburbanites of London and the other British provincial cities. The home
life of these Canadian cities, judging by what I saw of it, is very
charming. During the summer the fullest advantage is taken of the
opportunities which are offered for holidays, week-ends and picnics on
the rivers, lakes, and among the hills and woodlands of the beautiful
Provinces of Quebec and Ontario. Canadians grew enthusiastic as they
told of holidays spent canoeing on the rivers and lakes, camping out in
the woods, fishing and shooting—getting, at a trifling cost and in a
few hours of railway travelling, right away from civilisation into the
heart of primeval forests, or camping in tents or living in huts in some
Eden of an island embosomed in a lovely lake; and then in the winter
there are endless sources of enjoyment such as we in the Old Country
have to spend expensive winter holidays in Switzerland to be able to
indulge in. I was in Montreal when the first snow of winter fell. It was
a blizzard, with heavy flakes driven before a fierce wind. The blizzard
began on a Sunday evening and continued throughout the night. In the
morning the snow had ceased, but the appearance of the city was
transformed. Every tree glittered outlined in dazzling whiteness, every
building was pointed and glistening with the lodging snow. There was a
foot of snow of crystal purity in the streets. The people of Montreal
were as cheerful as if they had just come into fortunes. They recognised
the snow as an old and welcome friend returned to them. There was a
hunting out of “rubbers,” goloshes in which to envelop the boots. There
was a tinkling of bells in the streets, reminding one of the “Alpine
chimes” heard on the pastures of Switzerland when the cattle are let
loose to browse as and where they will. All wheels had been taken off
vehicles, and sledge methods of conveyance adopted in their place.
Wheels would not appear again until the end of March. My Montreal host
regretted that I could not remain in the city, for he was promising his
family the most delightful sledge outing over the new fallen snow.
Drays, tradesmen’s traps, automobiles, taxis, handcarts, every kind of
vehicle was running on sleighs, and bells were jingling from the neck of
every horse and from every vehicle. Sleighing is an ever-exhilarating
pastime during the Canadian winter. Then, again, there are toboganning
and all sorts of winter sports to be enjoyed at home, and not as the
rare luxury of the rich, who can afford to break away from business and
put up at expensive Swiss hotels. Skating, of course, is an enjoyment
within the reach of the poorest, and it is an enjoyment available at
least four months of the year, and not, as in England, the rarest of
accidents following on a four days’ frost and put an end to by the thaw
that inevitably comes when the skates are being looked out from the
place they were put three years ago and polished of the gathered rust.
Out in the Prairie Provinces, where new cities and towns are “rising
like an exhalation,” there is plenty of summer and winter enjoyment,
although, of course, many of the people are far too busy in laying the
foundations of their future prosperity to be able to sacrifice much time
to mere recreation. Prairie dwellers told me, however, that the winter
is to them, as to the people of the Eastern Provinces, the playtime of
the year. The harvest of the prairie has been got in. There is a
slackening down of business until the spring. The people in the rising
cities have more time at their disposal to foregather at all sorts of
meetings for social enjoyment. The young man is a great institution of
the prairie town. He goes out in his thousands from the Old Country; he
crosses over from the United States. The Y.M.C.A.’s (which are run in
Canada on the broadest and most progressive lines) cater for the young
man. They and the churches, which appreciate the value of the young man
and realise that he will not be content with purely religious meetings
alone, cater generously for him. The Y.M.C.A.’s are splendid clubs
provided with gymnasia, swimming baths, facilities for the playing of
billiards, basket-ball, and other competitive recreations. Then football
has solidly established itself in Canada, as cricket has done during the
summer months, and the sportively inclined young man of Regina, Medicine
Hat, or Calgary is as keen on playing or watching a good game as the
young man in Old England, though I believe he does not allow his
interest in such games to become so absorbing as to distract his
attention from his business, in which he sees the means of forcing his
way to the front in the new country of his settlement. The young man of
the Prairie Provinces is a great camper-out in the summer and finds
plenty of interest on the prairies, whether in watching the rapid growth
of the harvests, in studying the varied flora (which is exquisitely
beautiful), or in the Nimrod pursuit of wild birds and wild animals. For
the bookish young man there are literary societies even in towns that
are not a dozen years old, and it is a very “one-horse” prairie town
indeed that does not possess a theatre and an opera house, while the
picture palace is everywhere.
Returning to home life: One does not have to be long in Canada before
discovering that nothing is more unpopular in the Dominion than
rent-paying, whether for land or for a house. Every householder wants to
own his home, and the powers that be in the State Governments and in the
municipalities encourage this ambition. It is this desire to own the
home that accounts for the ubiquity of the Real Estate agent, who swarms
all over Canada. No sooner is it decided to lay out a town, and the
municipality is created and invested with authority, than the Real
Estate man puts in an appearance. He snaps up the tit-bits in the way of
lots along the lines of the streets and the roads that are being laid
out in the town planning. He is waiting for the influx of population and
knows that there will be an increasing “home” hunger. Store-keepers will
come, with wives and children; building contractors with their foremen
and staffs of workmen; banks with their managers, cashiers and clerks;
branches of Insurance and other companies; lawyers, doctors, and the
like; all sorts and conditions of men, middle-aged and young, migrate
from the older Canadian cities, young fellows irresistibly attracted
westward by the fascination of the new, emigrants from the States, Great
Britain and the Continental countries. The married men will want
comfortable houses as soon as possible. The young bachelors will want
“diggings.” “Rooming-house” keepers will be laying themselves out to
attract boarders of both sexes. There is no fear that suitable lots for
homes will lack inquirers. There will be quarters for cheap houses,
better houses, and the best houses, to suit the various social
positions. If there is a river running through or by the town, the
bankside lots, away from the business or industrial quarters, will be in
demand for villas with gardens—the villas in the Prairie capitals, and
such cities as Medicine Hat and Calgary, following very likely
“bungalow” or Californian models. On the cheaper lots, at first, the
houses may be only “frame,” run up at small cost, to be replaced later
by brick and stone. On the outskirts of the towns tiny frame cottages
may be built by two or more young fellows who will do their own
housekeeping, enjoying the independence and the Robinson Crusoe
conditions. This is an excellent way of learning how to do without
things, and many such young fellows, by having to cook, clean, and do
everything for themselves, are in training for model husbands, ready to
help their future wives in the most diverse and practical ways. The Real
Estate man knows them all, and caters for all. His voice quivers with
sympathetic sentiment when he dilates on the ideal situation of the lot
for a home—five minutes from a projected public park or recreation
ground, and only three minutes from the street car line. Some purchasers
of lots put up houses to let furnished, and in a new Prairie city they
make a very good thing of it, but every Canadian wants to be his own
landlord as soon as he can manage it.
The Canadian’s determination to own his own home at whatever cost, and
to own the land on which he builds his office, his store or his factory,
accounts for the apparently extravagant prices cheerfully paid for these
lots. A contributory cause is the ease with which at present, and in all
likelihood for years to come, money can be made in developing the
inexhaustible resources of this rich country. Canadians admit that they
are frightfully extravagant. Money comes easily and goes easily. If a
man makes up his mind to build his home in a certain situation that has
taken his fancy, no price, apparently, will stop him. He must have that
lot of 30 or 50 feet frontage with its 120 or 130 feet depth, whether he
has to pay $10 or $50 a foot frontage. Perhaps he has hesitated over the
purchase of land that had previously taken his fancy—he was asked $20 a
foot frontage and was not at the moment disposed to go beyond $15. Three
months after he has changed his mind, has gone to the agent and has been
told that it has been disposed of at $40 a foot frontage, or that it is
still available, but that it cannot now be parted with under $45 or $50
a foot frontage. The man, let us suppose a young man getting on rapidly
with a new business or occupying an improving position in a bank or a
business house, wants to get married and wants to get his house ready at
the earliest possible moment; whether it is $100, or $200, or $300 extra
does not matter if he can only get what he has set his heart on. He
secures the wished-for lot, sees an architect, has planned for him a
picturesque bungalow or bijou villa, with the inevitable verandah, and
has the happiest of times in watching the home grow up. Most of these
homes (the property of their owners), standing on their own lots, are
detached. The streets of detached houses are characteristic of the new
cities and towns and of the new suburbs of the older cities. Canadians
do not like the continuous unbroken line of houses of our English towns.
As to this ownership of his home by the householder, a resident of
Berlin, Ontario, a city of some 14,000 people, told me that 64 per cent.
of the houses in that flourishing town belonged to their occupiers.
The furnishing of Canadian homes is tasteful and practical. There is not
the crowding and the heaviness apparent in the furnishing of many homes
in the Old Country. I gather that the Canadians like variety and
artistic merit in their furniture. They do not go in for suites and
extreme substantiality, if I may so express it, although one or two
visits I paid to the furniture departments of great departmental stores
showed that, while the furniture as a whole looks lighter in effect than
English furniture, it is well made and calculated to stand a lot of wear
and tear. The manager of a furniture department of a great departmental
store at Toronto told me that New England models are popular in Canada.
The old New Englanders developed styles of their own, which lend
themselves admirably to modern imitation and fit in well with the scheme
of the Canadian house, with its usually smaller rooms than those of an
English house of a middle-class family; but old English and old French
styles of furniture compete with the New England models, so that there
is plenty of material on which the Canadian man and the Canadian woman
can exercise taste in choosing furniture for the use and ornament of the
home.
[Illustration: A SASKATOON SCHOOL (ACCOMMODATING 1,500 CHILDREN).]
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