HOME-LIFE IN CANADA
The English visitor to a Canadian city finds things much as they are at
home: there are different names for articles in common use; the hotel
elevator goes faster than the lift at home; the trams are street-cars,
the streets are not so clean; the traffic is not so well managed; and
the public buildings and parks are newer, and lack the grace and beauty
of the old land architecture. The houses all have verandas, on which,
in summer, the people spend a great part of their time, even eating and
sleeping there; and most of the houses have lawns unprotected from the
street by walls or fences. The houses are kept much warmer in winter
than is the English custom, and ice is everywhere used in the summer.
All well-to-do people in the towns, and many in the country, have
telephones. Other minor differences there are, but you would soon feel
quite at home in a Canadian house.
The stranger visiting a Canadian town is at once struck by the keenness
of the local enthusiasm. That is to say, the people who live in that
town are immensely proud of it, and consider it the finest and best
place to live in in all the world. They are very fond of pointing out
the advantages which it enjoys, and never neglect the smallest
opportunity of boasting of its beauty or wealth or public spirit, or
whatever it may be that it excels in. The governing authorities of the
town, as the Mayor and Town Council, vote money from time to time
expressly to advertise their town, in the hope of attracting strangers
to come and live there. Then the citizens form themselves into clubs
for the purpose of helping the population to reach as soon as possible
20,000, or 50,000, or 100,000, as the case may be; and these clubs bear
the strange titles of the Twenty Thousand Club, the Fifty Thousand
Club, the Hundred Thousand Club, and so on.
The houses in the towns, and even many houses in the country, are not
considered properly furnished if they have not the telephone fitted up
inside them. The Canadians--women, and even children, as well as
business men--use the telephone pretty well every day of their lives.
Does a lady want to know how her neighbour's little girl's cut finger
is getting on, she rings her neighbour up on the "'phone." A lady does
her shopping at the grocery store, or orders her joint for dinner "over
the 'phone." A boy asks his classmate how much history they have to
learn for their home-lesson to-night. Indeed, in a Canadian home the
telephone is used as much and as frequently as the poker is for
stirring the fire on a cold winter's day in any English home.
In many of the thinly inhabited districts the place where people meet
and gossip and pick up the news of what is happening in the
country-side is not the weekly market or the church, because very often
neither the one nor the other exists, but it is the "store." This is
not a barn or similar building in which people put their hay or corn or
other produce till they wish to sell it. The word means "a shop," and
the country store, the focus and centre of the life of the district, is
almost always a shop where pretty nearly every conceivable thing is
sold, from iron wedges (for splitting logs) to oranges, from ready-made
suits of clothes to note-paper. And the storekeeper is nearly always
the postmaster as well. Thus, if you want to find out all about a
district, you are most likely to obtain the information you seek from
the storekeeper. He can tell you what land or what farms there are for
sale in the locality, and the prices that are being asked. He knows
the names of everybody within a range of a good many miles, and often
knows a great deal more about people than their names alone.
In the older parts of the country, life on the farm is much the same as
elsewhere; the houses are built of stone and brick, with verandas and
lawns, heated by furnaces, and furnished with all that comfort, even
luxury, demands. But far back in the newer parts of Ontario or New
Brunswick we see in a small clearing in the forest or on the edge of a
lake or stream the "log-cabin," with the blue smoke curling up from the
chimney at one end. If we come up to the door we are sure of a
welcome; that is the rule in the wilderness. We enter, to find the
house of two rooms, and perhaps an attic above; the big iron stove for
both cooking and heating stands at one end, and the rifle, guns, and
fishing-tackle, and the dried skins on the wall, tell of the pleasures
of forest life. Perhaps the owner greets you with a fine Scotch or
Yorkshire "twang," and you need feel no surprise if you see last
month's _Punch_ or the _Weekly Times_ lying on the table. These hardy
settlers make their living in part by the battle with the forest, in
part by what they shoot or trap, but largely by working in the winter
for the large lumber (timber) companies who have bought the pine in the
woods from the Government; sometimes, too, they act as guides in the
summer and autumn for the tourists or amateur huntsmen. Their life
teaches them to be strong, active, and self-reliant, with a fine
disdain for the city man, who is so helpless on the trail or in a canoe.
On the prairie the life is quite different. Here the settler is
content with the little wooden cabin of double boards with tar-paper
between, which he erects himself; his supplies he brings in the form of
flour, bacon, and canned goods from the nearest town many miles away.
His nearest neighbour may be ten miles away, his railway-station
twenty; all around to the horizon stretches a vast plain, like the sea.
His horses are hobbled at night to keep them from straying, for there
are no fences; he cuts their hay for the winter in the "slews" or
"swales"--low-lying, marshy spots on the prairie. He is fortunate if
there is within reasonable distance a poplar thicket, where he can cut
some firewood. From morn to night he follows the plough through the
rich black soil, which has waited for it from time immemorial; his
whole life is the wheat. A lonely, hard existence, but the reward
comes so fast that in a few years of good crops he may spend his
winters in the South, while his sons and daughters attend college.
Now, a peep at the home of the "habitant"--the French-Canadian farmer
in the Province of Quebec. A tiny white house in the shadow of a
little church, whose spire is tipped with a golden cross, overlooking a
mighty river; a narrow strip of farm, every inch in cultivation; a
group of many dark-eyed children chattering in a picturesque patois;
you close your eyes and you are in Brittany. Hard-working,
home-loving, religious, but light-hearted, these people preserve
throughout centuries without change the virtues and customs, the speech
and the religion of their ancestors. They grow most of what they eat;
they make everything they wear; and little money means wealth. Their
sons are found in the factory towns of the New England States, and in
the lumber woods of the North.
"We leev very quiet 'way back on de contree:
Don't put on same style lak de big village."
or--
"De fader of me was habitant farmer,
My gran'fadder too, and hees fader also.
Dey don't mak' no monee, but dat isn't funny,
For it's not easy get everything, you must know,"
as Drummond the habitant poet quaintly says.
Most of the schools in Canada are public, which means just the opposite
to what it means to the English boy who knows Rugby, Eton, or Harrow;
they are like English Board-schools, free to all, and attended by both
boys and girls. Then there are high schools, where students may be
prepared for college, and there are private schools, corresponding to
the English public schools; of these the oldest and most noted is Upper
Canada College, which is like the Eton of Canada. There are
Universities in all the provinces, and Toronto and McGill University in
Montreal are as large as the great Universities at home.
The English boy or girl coming to Canada will find the money quite
different from what he has been accustomed to; it is measured in
dollars, and a dollar is about equal to four shillings. There are 100
cents in a dollar, and there is a copper coin for 1 cent, value one
halfpenny, usually called a "copper," and silver coins for 5, 10, 25,
and 50 cents; but for large sums bank-notes in denominations of 1, 2,
5, 10 dollars and more are used. As the decimal system is used, it is
really simpler than pounds, shillings, and pence, and one soon becomes
accustomed to it, though for some time one fears that one is paying too
much, especially as prices for small articles are often higher in
Canada.