Transcribed from the 1886 T. Fisher Unwin edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
NOTE TO PAGE 56.
Sir Charles Tupper tells me that I was totally misinformed. I am sorry
to have been led astray, and have pleasure in making the correction,
which was received, unfortunately, after the chapter had been worked off.
[Picture: Dr. Barnardo’s Distributing Home for Children, Peterborough,
Ontario]
PICTURES
OF
CANADIAN LIFE
* * * * *
A Record of Actual Experiences
* * * * *
BY
J. EWING RITCHIE
AUTHOR OF ‘EAST ANGLIA,’ ‘BRITISH SENATORS,’ ‘ON THE
TRACK OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS,’ ETC., ETC.
* * * * *
_WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS_
* * * * *
London
T. FISHER UNWIN
26, PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1886.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Introductory.—Canadian Territory and 1
Population
II. Off With The Emigrants—The Voyage Out—The 16
‘Sarnia’—The Cod-Fishery
III. Arrival at Quebec 33
IV. At Montreal, and on to Ottawa—Interviewing and 45
Interviewed
V. Toronto—The Town—The People—Canadian 74
Authors—The Leader of the Opposition
VI. Off to the North-West—Niagara—Lake 104
Superior—The Canadian Pacific Railway—At
Winnipeg
VII. Life on the Prairie 148
VIII. Amongst the Cow-Boys 174
IX. In the Rockies—Holt City—Life in the Camp—A 194
Rough Ride—The Kicking Horse Lake—British
Columbia
X. Dangers of the Rockies—Prairie Fires—The 225
Return—Port Arthur—Emigrants
XI. Back to England—Canadian Hospitality—The 245
‘Assyrian Monarch’—Home
XII. Colonization in Canada 255
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
Dr. Barnardo’s Distributing Home for Children, _Frontispiece_
Peterborough, Ontario
Falls of Montmorenci—Quebec—Junction of the River 48
Ottawa and St. Lawrence, Montreal
King Street, Toronto 78
Second Year on a Prairie Farm, Canadian North-West 134
Calico Island, Saskatchewan River, Canadian 135
North-West
Hunting Scene on the Souris River 145
Souris Valley, Manitoba 147
Pioneer Store at Brandon in 1882 162
Harvesting on the Bell Farm—Indian Head, N.W.T. 172
Mount Stephen in the Rocky Mountains, On the Line 197
of the Canadian Pacific Railway
Thunder Bay, Lake Superior 242
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.—CANADIAN TERRITORY AND POPULATION.
Lunching one day in Toronto with one of the aldermen of that thriving
city (I may as well frankly state that we had turtle-soup on the
occasion), he remarked that he had been in London the previous summer,
and that he was perfectly astonished at the idea Englishmen seemed to
have about Canada. He was particularly indignant at the way in which it
was coolly assumed that the Canadians were a barbarous people, planted in
a wilderness, ignorant of civilization, deficient in manners and
customs—a well-meaning people, of whom in the course of ages something
might be made, but at present in a very nebulous and unsatisfactory
state. It seems my worthy friend had gone to hear a popular Q.C.—a
gentleman of Liberal proclivities, very anxious to write M.P. after his
name—deliver a lecture to the young men of the Christian Association in
Exeter Hall on Canada. Never was a man more mortified in all his life
than was the alderman in question. All the time the lecture was being
delivered, he said, he held down his head in shame. ‘I felt,’ said he,
rising to a climax, ‘as if I must squirm!’ What ‘squirming’ implies the
writer candidly admits that he has no idea. Of course, it means
something very bad. All he can say is, that it is his hope and prayer
that in the following pages he may set no Canadian squirming. He went
out to see the nakedness, or the reverse, of the land, to ask the
emigrants how they were getting on, to judge for himself whether it was
worth any Englishman’s while to leave home and friends to cross the
Atlantic and plant himself on the vast extent of prairie stretching
between Winnipeg and the Rocky Mountains. What he heard and saw is
contained in the following pages, originally published in the _Christian
World_, and now reproduced as a small contribution to a question which
rises in importance with the increase of population and the growing
difficulty of getting a living at home.
As a rule, the English know little more of Canada than that it belongs to
us—that it is very cold there in winter and very hot in summer. I
happened to be on board the _Worcester_ training-ship on the last
occasion of the prizes being given away, and was not surprised to find
that Canada was especially referred to as illustrating the defective
geographical knowledge of the young cadets. In the _London Citizen_ a
few weeks later there was still grosser display of ignorance on the part
of a writer who had gone to Montreal to attend the meetings of the
British Association there, and who complained bitterly of the lack of
garden-parties and champagne lunches. This victim of misplaced
confidence owned that he had to put up with tea and coffee and
non-intoxicating beverages when he did so far condescend as to accept
Canadian hospitality. Yet the writer of that letter was a barrister, at
this very time a candidate for Parliament. Had he an atom of
common-sense, he might have known—this distinguished barrister and
ornament of the British Association for the Advancement of Science—that
Canada is a young country; that its wealth is still undeveloped; that the
greater part of it is prairie; that the settler—in his heroic efforts to
subdue Nature, to make the wilderness to rejoice and blossom as the rose,
to build up a grand nation in that quarter of the globe, to spread in a
region larger than the United States the Anglo-Saxon laws and
civilization and tongue—has to renounce luxury, to scorn delights, to
live laborious days. Canada is not the place for members of the British
Association who long for the flesh-pots of Egypt or the champagne-cup.
In Canada one has to live simply and to work hard. He who does so work,
though in England he may die a pauper, there becomes a man. Canada
offers to all independence, a fertile soil, a bracing air. At present
there is little chance of the majority of its people being enervated by
luxury or demoralized by wealth.
Canada is a country, however, with room and scope for millions who must
starve and die in Europe. Its area is 3,470,392 square miles, and its
most southern point reaches the 42nd parallel of latitude. It possesses
thousands of square miles of the finest forests on the continent, widely
spread coal fields, extensive and productive fisheries, and rivers and
lakes of unequalled extent. The country is divided into eight provinces,
as follows: Nova Scotia, containing 20,907 square miles; New Brunswick,
27,174; Prince Edward Island, 2,133; Quebec, 188,688; Ontario, 101,733;
Manitoba, 123,200; the North West, 2,665,252; British Columbia, 341,305.
Newfoundland lies outside the Dominion, for reasons best known to itself.
According to the census taken in 1881, the population at that time
numbered 4,324,810, distributed as follows: Nova Scotia, 440,572; New
Brunswick, 321,233; Prince Edward Island, 108,891; Quebec, 1,359,027;
Ontario, 1,923,228; Manitoba, 65,954; the North West, 56,446; British
Columbia, 49,459. These figures must be much added to if we would get an
idea of the growth of population, especially in the North West, which has
increased by leaps and bounds. Up to 1870 it was as it had been since
the charter of Charles II.—the happy hunting-ground of the Hudson Bay
Company. As late as 1870 it had no railway communication, no towns or
villages, few post-offices, and no telegraph. There must be a million of
people settled there by this time, and yet it is a wilderness almost
untrod by man. The origins of the populations are returned as follows:
891,248 English and Welsh; 957,408 Irish; 699,863 Scotch; 1,298,929
French; 254,319 Germans. The balance is made up of Dutch, Scandinavians,
and Italians. A large number of persons who were born in the United
States are to be found in Canada—and why not? They have in Canada a
government quite as free as in the United States, though the Canadians
prefer to have a holiday on the Queen’s birthday rather than the 4th of
July, and an English Viceroy—who at any rate is a gentleman—to an
American President. Anywhere in Canada the Englishman is at home. The
people have an English look. Directly you pass the border into the
States you see the difference. There is an astonishing contrast between
the healthy Canadian and the lean and yellow Yankee.
Canadian history is one record of toil and struggle—of the advance of the
whites, of the retreat of the native races. Foremost in suffering were
the French. In 1608 the first permanent settlement in Canada was made by
Champlain, who founded Quebec, and afterwards discovered the lake which
still bears his name. It was he who taught the Iroquois to stand in awe
of gunpowder; but, alas! familiarity bred contempt, and the Red Indian
was more than once on the point of exterminating the white man. It was
only by the intercession of the Saints that the feeble colony was
preserved. At Montreal, for instance, the advanced guard of the
settlements, some two hundred Iroquois fell upon twenty-six Frenchmen.
The Christians were out-matched eight to one, but, says the Chronicle,
‘the Queen of Heaven was on their side, and the Son of Mary refuses
nothing to His holy Mother. Through her intercession the Iroquois shot
so wildly, that at their first fire every bullet missed its mark, and
they met with a bloody defeat.’ No wonder the French were animated with
renewed zeal. Father Le Mercier writes: ‘On the day of Visitation of the
Holy Virgin, the chief Aontarisati, so regretted by the Iroquois, was
taken prisoner by our Indians, instructed by our fathers, and baptized;
and on the same day, being put to death, I doubt not he thanked the
Virgin for his misfortune and the blessing that followed, and he prayed
to God for his countrymen.’
It was no common faith that led the French monks to seek to make Canada
theirs. Their sufferings from cold, from starvation, from the savages,
from want of all the comforts of life, seem to have been as much as
mortal men could bear. But they made many converts. On one occasion,
when the French Chaumont had delivered an address, his Indian auditors
declared that if he had spoken all day they should not have had enough of
it. ‘The Dutch,’ said they, ‘have neither brains nor tongues; they never
tell us about paradise or hell. On the contrary, they lead us into bad
ways.’ Nothing could daunt the Jesuits—not the loss of all they had, nor
protracted suffering, nor cruel death. ‘The blood of the martyrs is the
seed of the Church,’ said one of them; ‘and if we die by the fires of the
Iroquois, we shall have won eternal life by snatching souls from the
fires of hell.’
Let us listen to Chaumont again, as he stands before his savage
hearers—he and his companions having first, with clasped hands, sung the
‘Veni Creator’: ‘It is not trade that brings us here. Do you think that
your beaver-skins can pay us for all our toil and dangers? Keep them, if
you like; or, if any fall into our hands, we shall use them only for your
service. We seek not the things that perish. It is for the faith that
we have left our homes, to live in your hovels of bark and eat food which
the beasts of our country would scarcely touch. We are the messengers
whom God has sent to tell you that His Son became a man for the love of
you; that this man, the Son of God, is the Prince and Master of men; that
He has prepared in heaven eternal joys for those who obey Him, and
kindled the fires of hell for those who will not receive His Word. If
you reject it, whoever you are—Onondaga, Seneca, Mohawk, Cayuga, or
Oneida—know that Jesus Christ, who inspires my heart and my voice, will
one day plunge you into hell. Be not the authors of your own
destruction. Accept the truth; listen to the voice of the Omnipotent!’
Wonderful miracles sustained and renewed this ardent faith. In the
autumn of 1657, there was a truce with the Iroquois, under cover of which
three or four of them came to the Montreal settlement. Nicholas Godé and
Jean Pière were on the roof of their house, laying thatch, when one of
his visitors aimed his arquebuse at Saint Pière, and brought him to the
ground like a wild turkey from a tree. The assassins, having cut off his
head and carried it home to their village, were amazed to hear it speak
to them in good Iroquois, scold them for their perfidy, and threaten them
with the vengeance of heaven; and we are told they continued to hear its
voice of admonition even after scalping it and throwing away the skull.
During a great part of this period, the French population was less than
three thousand. How was it they were not destroyed? Mr. Parkman tells
us for two reasons. In the first place, the settlements were grouped
around three fortified posts—Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal—which, in
time of danger, gave an asylum to the fugitive inhabitants; and secondly,
their assailants were distracted by other wars. It was their aim to
balance the rival settlements of the Hudson and the St. Lawrence. It was
well for Canada when France lost hold of her. In 1666, Louis the Great
handed her over, bound hand and foot, to a company of merchants—the
Company of the West, as it was called. As, according to the edict, the
chief object in view was the glory of God, the Company was required to
supply its possessions with a sufficient number of priests, and
diligently exclude all teachers of false doctrine. It was empowered to
build forts and war-ships, cast cannon, wage war, make peace, establish
courts, appoint judges, and otherwise to act as sovereign within its own
dominions. A monopoly of trade was granted it for forty years, and
Canada was the chief sufferer; but at any rate the peopling of Canada was
due to the king. Colbert did the work and the king paid for it.
Protestants were objected to. Girls, to be wives to the emigrants, were
sent out from Dieppe and Rochelle. In time, girls of indifferent virtue,
under the care of duennas, emigrated to meet the growing demand for
wives. ‘I am told,’ writes La Houtan, ‘that the plumpest were taken
first, because it was thought, being less active, they were more likely
to keep at home, and that they could resist the winter cold still
better.’ Further, such was the paternal care of the king for Canada,
that he attempted to found a colonial noblesse, and offered bounties for
children. The noblesse were a doubtful boon: industrious peasants were
much more to be desired. Leading lazy lives, many of the gentilhommes
soon drifted into the direst poverty. The Canadians had one
advantage—their morals were well looked after by the priests, who kindly
took charge of their education as well. Compared with the New England
man, the habitant had very much the advantage. He was a skilful
woodsman, able to steer his canoe, a soldier and a hunter. Nevertheless,
when Wolfe’s army had scaled the heights of Abraham, and won Canada for
the British, it was the beginning of a new life.
‘England,’ writes Mr. Parkman, ‘imposed by the sword on reluctant Canada
the boon of rational and ordered liberty. A happier calamity never
befell a people than the conquest of Canada by the British arms.’ But it
was not till the American Revolution had broken out, and the royalists
left the States to found in Canada a strong colony attached to the
British Crown, that Canada may be really said to have been a part and
parcel of the Empire, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. It was
necessary to move many of the French Canadians elsewhere; and those who
remained, still for long looked with an unfriendly eye on England and her
rule.