TORONTO, NIAGARA FALLS, AND A NEGRO PORTER
From Montreal to Toronto is a pleasant run through a southern part of
Canada. One passes orchards and woods and Smith's Falls, where
bricks are made, and Peterborough, which has the largest hydraulic
lift-lock in the world. The Union railway station at Toronto, when I
got there, was a seething mass of people and baggage, with an
occasional railway official hidden in the vortex. I spent an hour
trying to put a bag into the parcel-room, and after that gave up
trying. Canadians are singularly patient in matters of this kind.
Laden with heavy bags, they will collect in crowds outside the small
window of a parcel-room, and burdened thus will wait there for hours
without a murmur, while the youth inside lounges about at his
leisure. My temper has frequently been stretched to the limit in
Germany when I have had to wait perhaps ten minutes for a penny stamp
while the Prussian {82} postal official behind the glass slit curled
his moustaches in imitation of the Kaiser. I think the methods at
that parcel-room in Toronto were even more trying. I will admit that
it was Labour Day, and that Toronto was also in the throes of the
World's Fair. But in a city of that size one would expect some
preparation to be made for forthcoming throes. The truth seems to be
that throughout Canada important events, attracting immense crowds,
are brought off without any extra provision being made. Montreal
managed to contain its Congress hordes pretty well, but Toronto
during the World's Fair had a general air about it of sleeping six in
a bed, if it slept at all. I kept coming across the same sort of
thing at other places. Calgary, I remember, looked for the few days
I was there like the Old Kent Road on a Saturday night, so crowded
was it with people who had come in to witness the return to its
native heath of a victorious football team. Regina was overrun with
the Canadian bankers who, in massive formation, were touring the
North-West. In one or two small places in the Rockies enormous
trainloads of Canada's leading merchants, who were inspecting British
Columbia with an eye to its future, were deposited for a day in
passing, and caused as much {83} confusion as the canoe-loads of
savages must have done when they descended on Robinson Crusoe's
island.
Labour Day is in the New World very different from what it is with
us. In Canada, if you like, you may for three hundred and sixty-four
days labour and do all that you have to do, but the three hundred and
sixty-fifth is Labour Day, and no manner of work--except
transportation--may be done that day. Transport work is necessary,
because by way of observing Labour Day it is the thing to go
somewhere in great multitudes, preferably by rail, and pursue the
sort of pleasure that is only to be obtained by those who seek it
multitudinously.
Toronto was on this occasion a chosen spot for people to rollick in.
This, added to the fact that the World's Fair was also in progress,
prevented me from being able to get a room for the night, though I
applied at five different hotels. At the sixth, which was full of
excited commercial travellers, I was granted a bed on a top landing.
I did not mind so much because I was seeing Toronto in a lively
state. Ordinarily, I imagine, Toronto is the least bit too decorous,
not devoid of cheerfulness, but not joyous either. There is nothing
Parisian about Toronto, you would say. This stands to reason, {84}
because if there is any Parisian air in Canada at all it belongs to
Montreal, and Toronto would be the last place to imitate Montreal in
any manner. The extraordinary rivalry that exists between the great
East Canadian cities never leads to imitation. On the plains it is
different. Winnipeg is the great model for all the little towns on
the plains. But while Quebec resents the idea that Montreal is a
much more important city than itself, and Montreal regrets that the
seat of Government should be at so small a place as Ottawa, and
Toronto considers Montreal ill-balanced in spite of its wealth, each
of them would only consent to expand its own real superiority along
its own particular lines and in its own particular manner.
Still on Labour Night Toronto was quite gay. It did not look like
the Boston of Canada at all, though it has substantial grounds, I
read somewhere, for making this claim. I could realise that it was
entitled to make this claim if it wanted to. If one shut one's eyes
to the crowds, one could feel an air of brisk sobriety permeating it;
and everything that one reads about it goes to show that a brisk
sobriety is what it aims at. It keeps the Sabbath, for example, most
strictly, though it hustles or almost hustles the rest of the week.
I should {85} guess Toronto places briskness next to godliness, not a
very bad second either. Its industries and its opulence are too well
known to be worth detailing here. What struck me as most interesting
about Toronto was that it seemed to represent more than any other
place in Canada what we mean in England when we talk of Canadians.
We do not mean the French Canadians of Quebec Province, nor the
American Canadians and English public-school boys who are to be found
in such numbers in Alberta and the plains. The sort of people we are
thinking of are people who have been born in Canada, who have even
spent generations there, but are, nevertheless, British by descent
and British in tongue. There are people of this sort in other parts
of Canada. The inhabitants of the Maritime Provinces are such, in
spite of the fact that Mr. Bourassa has claimed that within fifteen
years they will have become French in language and Roman Catholic in
faith. Mr. Bourassa has made the same claim, to be sure, with regard
to the inhabitants of Ontario. In the meantime, it would be truer to
describe the inhabitants of Ontario as Canadians in the English
sense. And Toronto is their capital. It is, of course, the home of
the United Empire Loyalists who {86} settled here when the States
broke away from our rule. The temper that made any rule but
England's and any liberty that was not English liberty unendurable
still remains, and I think Mr. Bourassa will have his work cut out to
Gallicise them. Still even the sternest traditions of loyalty do not
prevent--nay, even encourage--a certain change in the character of a
people.
It is probable that Ontarians are less English now than they were,
just as Quebeckers are less French. Which have the right to be held
more essentially Canadian may be questioned, but I repeat that when
we in England talk of Canadians we have in mind a type of men to
which the Ontarians correspond more than any others. It would be
absurd, no doubt, to look for the English type in a metropolis like
London, and perhaps it is absurd to look for the Ontarian type in a
metropolis like Toronto. But it is less absurd, I think, and anyhow
I did look for it there. What did I find? Well, I hope elsewhere to
go cautiously and delicately into this matter of what a typical
Canadian is like. Here I will only say that if you can imagine a
Lowland Scot, cautious and self-possessed, outwardly resisting
American exuberance and {87} extravagance, but inwardly by slow
degrees absorbing--and thereby moderating--that hustling spirit of
which these things are manifestations, you have something not unlike
the Canadian of Toronto. Remember that Toronto is the southern
gateway of Canada. It fronts on the States. It deals with the
States. Between it and the States there is constant intercourse. It
pursues the same industries, following in many cases the same
methods. Many American managers of men are to be found in Toronto.
It is not unnatural that some of the American spirit should dwell
there also, and even tend to breed there.
Now for the Fair. Fairing is a pretty old thing, and I have done a
good deal of it, but fairing at Toronto struck me as being somehow
new. I do not mean in the way of the exhibits one saw. They were
nothing out of the way to any one who has seen the more famous
exhibitions of the Old World, and the arrangements struck me as poor.
The grounds by the lake are fairly extensive, but the buildings are
second-rate. I thought when I saw the fruit exhibit in one of them
that the whole display was little better than at a little English
village flower show. But the keenness of the crowd visiting the
ground! There was the {88} novelty. They did not glimpse at things
in our blasé European way, and then sink into seats to listen to the
band. They did listen to the band, but that was because the band was
part of the show; and they wanted to do the show, every inch of it.
Whole families camped for the day on the grounds. They brought meals
with them in paper bags and boxes to fortify themselves lest they
should drop before they had seen everything. Not that there was any
lack of smartness either. The ladies had on their best hats and
frocks, and the Canadian best in these respects is very fine. But
one did not suspect them, as one would have suspected ladies at the
White City or the Brussels Exhibition, of being there merely to show
themselves off. Their frocks were in honour of the Fair. The Fair
was the thing. It was a scene of the greatest enthusiasm under a
tolerably hot sun. I had been asked to note if any English firms had
taken the trouble to exhibit, and I am bound to say that I saw very
few. It seems a pity when one considers the sort of people who visit
the Fair--not merely a crowd amusing itself for an hour or two with
glancing at the exhibits, but a crowd trying to find out what there
was to buy--a crowd with dollars in its pockets and plenty of dollars
in its banks. {89} I dare say there are difficulties in the way.
There was not, for example, indefinite room for more exhibits, nor
are Canadian manufacturers, with rumours of reduced tariffs going
about, to be presumed eager to encourage competitors. Still, it
seemed a pity.
I clove my way to bed that night on the top landing through a horde
of keen commercial travellers joyfully discussing all the business
the exhibition would bring them. Next day I went to Niagara, by
steamer, across the great lake. Toronto owes at least half its
greatness to the Falls, and there should be, but I do not think there
is, a really big monument to their discoverer, Father Louis Hennepin.
Very likely, though, the discovery of Niagara was its own reward,
especially for so inquisitive a man as that friar. He has himself
confessed how, in the old days, when he was only a begging friar,
sent by the Superior of his Order to beg for alms at the seaport of
Calais, he used, in his curiosity, to hide himself behind tavern
doors and listen to the sailors within telling of their voyages,
while their tobacco smoke was wafted out and made him 'very sick at
the stomach.' In the end he was the first white man to see the
Falls, in the winter of 1687....
They were framed in a most gorgeous sunset {90} when I saw them on an
August day. The green and white foam swooped from a mountain of
clouds all grey and gold--clouds piled fantastically into the
furthest sky. No one seeing them in such a light could be
disappointed with them, but I would forbid any more writers to write
about them. Every man should be his own poet where the greater
sights of the world are concerned. On second thoughts it is
permissible to read Mr. Howells on the subject, and even Dickens,
provided one is never likely to see them with one's own eyes. I saw
the Falls at sunset, by starlight, and in the sunrise, and I can
commend them at all these times. The river that drowned Captain Webb
and was crossed by Blondin on the tight-rope, though extraordinary in
its way, seemed to me comparatively unbeautiful and uninteresting.
Any big sea on the Atlantic or Pacific is a finer sight and grips a
man harder. I like a river quiet myself. Moreover, the villas above
Niagara River give the landscape a domestic air in which its mad
swirl seems only like an attempt to show off malignantly.
One of my pleasantest recollections of Niagara is a conversation I
had with the porter at the hotel where I stopped on the Canadian
side. He was an American negro, extremely urbane {91} and chatty.
He told me that he guessed I was an Englishman. It was pretty easy,
he said, to tell that. I did not feel sure whether to feel flattered
or not, but I felt sure later, when he introduced me to the
lift-boy--a typical little stunted anæmic street arab from one of our
northern cities--with a wave of the hand and the remark, 'Thar's one
of your fellow-countrymen.' Afterwards, in self-defence, I steered
the conversation towards Canada, and the porter, who regarded himself
as an American citizen only, told me that the Canadians were a slow,
stupid people, who could not be trusted of themselves to do anything
but cultivate a little land badly.
'Look at Toronto,' he said; 'do you think there'd be any hustle in
that place if the Canadians had been left to themselves? No, sah.
But we came along and lent them our brains and our enterprise, and I
guess now it's a big fine city.'
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