Winter in Ontario--Flax-working in the old time--Social
gatherings--The churches are centres of attraction--Winter
marriages--Common schools--Wintry aspect of Lake Ontario.
Our fathers spent their winter evenings and days of winter storms in
working at the flax. It was the universal custom for each householder in
our fathers’ time to raise a piece of flax, and, during the enforced
housing of the winter, it was broken, scutched and spun around the big
cavernous open fire. The distaff in those days was ever upon the floor
in the common dwelling room, and as much an article of furniture as the
family table. Quite a few of these old distaffs are yet bundled away in
garrets, dust and cobweb laden. My own people did not fail to bring the
distaff along with them when they came from Massachusetts in 1792, and
this one was in constant use until machinery got to be common and the
necessity for home manipulation to supply the family clothing no longer
existed. To-day all that is changed, and during these midwinter days our
people of this part of Ontario have no such occupation to fill in their
leisure hours.
The days of wood-getting, logging and timber-making, too, are past; and
at this day this people have to develop a new order of civilization to
meet the new condition of affairs. Our people read far more than
formerly, and very many of their hours of winter leisure are spent over
the printed page. In nearly every house one enters, too, in this part of
our province to-day, one finds quite a number of volumes of books, as
well as the general stock of newspapers. So the taste and knowledge of
our people is steadily on the gain; and we are, as a people, taking the
benefit of the respite from enforced hours of weary labor at the flax
from which machinery has relieved us. Very serious accidents used to
occur, too, in those days of hand labor at the flax, even simple as the
work may seem. Very frequently the flax would be hung in bunches around
the living room of the family, in which the great fireplace was. This
flax, having been broken and scutched with the swingle, and ready for
spinning, was perforce quite as ready to light as tinder. There were
numerous instances of most dreadful fires occurring by this suspended
flax igniting from some sparks dropping on it from the open fire. In one
instance, not far from where my own house now is, a woman stepped to the
road, only five or six rods away, leaving two small children in the
room, and before she could get back to them the whole room was ablaze,
and they perished, with the total destruction of the house.
Social gatherings largely make up to-day for the hours spent formerly in
work at home. Among themselves the people of Ontario are eminently a
social and hospitable lot. Almost nightly our folks gather among their
fellows and spend their evenings in harmless chat.
But the great pivot upon which our social system revolves in Ontario is
the church. At the church our amusements mostly cluster, too; for our
ministers are shrewd enough to keep some meetings to come off in the
future, which the people look forward to and talk about among
themselves. Maybe it’s a lecture, or a musical treat, or some dissolving
views, or what not; and these, added to the usual sermons from the
pulpit, keep the people continually centred, as it were, about the
church. Again, our churches are invariably well lighted and seated, and
the air is pure; and, on the whole, they are attractive and pleasant.
Hence our young folks even, as well as older ones, choose to be about
our churches instead of finding amusement elsewhere. I am not speaking
of the devotional part of the matter; our people continue to attend the
churches, for that follows as a matter of course. Again, our ministers
are shrewd enough to know that they could not hold the people at the
churches two or three nights per week as well as Sundays for the
devotional part alone; for, without detracting one jot from the purely
religious aspect of the matter, our ministers know quite well that the
devotional part alone would not hold our people without diversions.
Indeed, our ministers are to be most highly commended for so cleverly
managing our people as to keep them so at the church’s dangling
apron-strings, as it were, to use a homely simile. Many, many times
better at the church’s dangling apron-strings than spending the evening
at the bars, in throwing dice, or at any such questionable gatherings.
And I take it, too, as self-evident, that our people’s faithful
following of the church has a quality of the intellect as well as of the
heart. A remark of Castellar’s, the great Spanish statesman and orator,
illustrates the difference of standpoint that prevails in various
countries as to religious observances. He said, “The Protestant religion
would freeze me with its iciness.” Compared with the sensuous and
fascinating cathedral worship of Europe, our ceremonials, whether
Protestant or Catholic, are indeed plain and unadorned. But they attract
as intelligent, self-respecting, law-abiding and decent a lot of people
as can be found anywhere.
Most marriages are celebrated during our winter months. It is quite
manifest that social gatherings and meetings, brought about by the
enforced hours of idleness, are very conducive to match-making; and
this, perhaps, accounts for the matrimonial activity of the winter
season. Not infrequently the expectant bride and groom, having procured
a license of marriage, call upon the minister at his house for him to
tie the knot. Ludicrous stories are told of the bashfulness of many
persons who come on such errands. Some of our clergy yet require the
responsive service, and the groom, when asked the question so necessary,
“Wilt thou have this woman to be thy lawful wedded wife?” sometimes
replies, “I came on purpose.” Well, that’s a good answer, and shows his
honesty of purpose, even if it be a little comic. The fellow’s not to be
laughed at, however, even if he does make this response, or even if he
does pull off his gloves, in order to save them, the moment the ceremony
is over and they are pronounced man and wife.
During these midwinter days in central Ontario, our school-boys are
trudging through snows and amidst frosts to the Common School. Many an
urchin these days declaims on the usual Friday afternoon:
“The bluebird and the swallow,
From the sweet south grove,
The robin leaves its quarters
In the deep pine grove;
I know from whence they started
On their happy homeward track;
To-night you’ll hear them answer
With their clack, clack, clack.”
Or those who are more advanced, the more ambitious, essay:
“On Linden when the sun was low,
All bloodless lay the untrodden snow.”
Glorious Common Schools! and our own quite up to any in the world. And,
without a shadow of a doubt, too, these urchins who are to-day, during
this midwinter, so declaiming, will become our future orators, and their
voices will resound in great halls of legislation or fill pulpits in our
land. Let us hope that when they grow to manhood they may never become
food for powder, and, so far as their military education is concerned,
let it be conspicuous by its absence; and yet no loss will be felt, for
it will not be among the things needed. Happy Ontario! If we were
Germans or Frenchmen, we must serve three years in the army whether we
would or not. This is only one more instance named to prove to us all
that our own country is the happiest and the freest in the world, and
that our people are generally well-to-do and comfortable in their homes,
in food and clothing.
The mornings of late autumn, as the nights get longer, begin to have a
nipping air. Ponds of water are covered with a glare and safe coat of
ice, and our youngsters get out their skates, so carefully laid away
last season. The children trudge away to school, and their color is
heightened by the morning frost and wind; but gradually the human system
is getting accustomed to the change of the season, and the dry, pleasant
cold is enjoyable. Immense ice hummocks form upon the banks of our large
lakes. They are conical and steep, or blunt and rolling, with a flat
place here and there among the convolutions. Daily, as the cold
strengthens and the winds dash the billows upon the ice-banks as if they
would destroy them, they gather from each wave a little more frozen from
it, and so work out from the shore, solid and immovable, as if to
entirely close over our inland sea’s surface; but they do not, and they
never succeed in effecting any permanent lodgment more than eight or ten
rods from the shore. Somehow in freezing they invariably leave holes
here and there. Now, let a storm come on and the breakers be driven
against the ice-banks and under them--for they do not reach the bottom
in any deep water--the pent-up water under the banks, driven up with
terrific force by each incoming sea, tries to find an escape. These
holes, in a measure, serve for an escape. Sprays or jets of water will
be forced up through these holes twenty feet into the air, only to fall
upon the surrounding ice and be frozen as hard as its neighboring
globules in their icy immobility. The blow-holes of a whale furnish a
good analogy to the blow-holes in the ice. Indeed, the most powerful
whale can scarcely expel the water from his blow-holes higher than a
storm forces it up among the ice-dunes. And as they get too high or too
heavy near the outer edge, they break away in great lumps and go
floating upon the surface. A change in the direction of the wind sails
them away, and we see upon our inland seas ice islands sometimes many
miles in extent. Look again for the ice islands in a few hours, and not
a trace is seen. The waters are a deep blue, in strong contrast to the
white snow upon the shore or the ice upon the edge. Stand upon an
eminence and look along the shores and outer edge of the ice-bank, so
firmly rooted to the margin. It is jagged and furrowed, and honeycombed,
and awful, and withal so still. Not a bird is wheeling over the surface
of the water, not a sail is upon it. The voice of Nature is effectually
hushed to rest. While you are still observing, let the sun shine upon
the ice and water, and you can with difficulty take your eyes off the
picture--as fine a picture of the Arctic as we can get, even if it be in
miniature. What a contrast from our golden autumn! Those of us who are
not particularly subject to lung troubles and who are well fed and clad,
really enjoy our dry and beautiful cold and the glint of the Arctic
regions which these pictures afford us. Clearly defined and unmistakable
is this our winter.