James Ritchie - Pictures of Canadian Life - A Record of Actual Experiences

‘Young men are coming by each steamer. Many of them are introduced to us with excellent recommendations, and have occupied good positions in England. Some have left their situations on the representation of railway and steamboat agents as to the opportunities in this country. We find it absolutely impossible to secure employment for them in many cases, business in every department has been so dull. Almost all the houses have been employing hands that they could dispense with. Reports from the West show the market glutted as bad as in Montreal.’ And I fear things have not improved since.

It is cruel to get such young men out of England. They are worse off here than they would be at home. It is curious to note, in connection with emigration, the evident desire of the educated mechanic to keep his rivals out. ‘By all means bid them stop at home,’ he cries, ‘or wages will be lower in the colonies.’ Already I have been interviewed by a working-class official here, and that is his cry. And I give it for what it may be worth, merely remarking that such illustrations as he gave in support of his views turned out to be the merest moonshine.

Now let me speak of Montreal, which I entered with pleasure, and leave with regret. It is the chief city of Canada, and is built on the northern bank of the St. Lawrence, where the muddy Ottawa, after a course of 600 miles, debouches into it. You arrive by a grand railway bridge, which is one of the wonders of this part of the world. The population is nearly 200,000, of which two-thirds are French or Irish, and Roman Catholic. It abounds with every sign of prosperity, and, as a city, would be a credit to the old country. The river front is lined with steamers loading for England. The principal thoroughfares contain lofty buildings, and shops as spacious as any of our best, whilst its hotels altogether throw ours into the shade; and then, in the suburbs the merchants live in palaces, whilst handsome churches attest the wealth, if not the piety, of all classes of the population. I fear Mammon worship is the prevailing form of idolatry, yet I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that the early settlement of the place was the result of religious enthusiasm, and that it was an attempt to found in America a veritable kingdom of God as understood by the Roman Catholics; but all that is past, and the chief topics of interest are the prices of pork, or the state of the market as regards butter and cheese. Let me remind you that such is the goodness of the cheese of Canada, all made in factories, that nearly as much cheese finds its way into the English market from Montreal as from New York.

One thing especially strikes me, and that is the muscular character of the young men. Montreal is a great place for athletes. Montreal has hundreds of such, as it is not only a centre of commerce, but the most important manufacturing city in the Dominion – 3,000 hands are employed in the manufacture of boots and shoes. Then there are here the largest sugar refineries and cotton mills and silk and cloth factories in Canada, and the result is that, as these factories are nursed by Protection, the towns are unnaturally crowded, and the people all over the country have to pay high prices for inferior articles, and the Canadians, who ought to be making cheese and butter, and growing corn for the artisans of Lancashire, are doing all they can to reduce their best and most natural customers to a state of starvation. ‘It is a shame,’ said a Canadian manufacturer to me, only in language a little more emphatic, ‘that England allows any of her colonies to put prohibitory duties on British products.’ And I quite agree with my friend that it is a shame. However, as long as the present Canadian Government are in power, there is no chance of Free Trade. It was the Protection cry that placed the Conservatives in power. With so many French as there are in Canada, vainly dreaming of a restoration of French rule, it is idle to talk of the interests of the mother country. Nor does Great Britain deserve very well of the Canadians. Up to almost the present time it has held them to be of little account, and, as we all know, it is not so very long since it suffered Brother Jonathan to annex that part of Maine in which Portland is situated, and thus to deprive Canada of its only winter harbour.

For one thing Montreal is to be highly commended, and that is on account of its hotels. The Windsor Hotel, in Dominion Square, is one of the finest hotels in America, and as you enter you are quite bewildered at the magnificence of the entrance-hall. A curious thing happened to me there. Mr. Hoyle and Mr. Barker, of the U.K. Alliance, had come there after a pilgrimage in the States, and it was determined to give them a reception. I had a ticket, and went for about an hour, chatting pleasantly with readers, who had known me by repute, and were glad to shake hands with me. Imagine my horror when, in the next morning’s paper, I read that the reception had been got up by Temperance friends for me, as well as Messrs. Hoyle and Barker, and that my humble name figured first on the list. Perhaps this was meant as a consolation to me. I had been interviewed on the previous day, and the papers had spoken of me in such complimentary terms that I felt almost a lion.

Alas! in America interviewing is quite a common-place affair, and it gives no éclat to be interviewed. People sat smoking in the hall as I passed, utterly unconscious of the fact. Yet the reporters did their best. One of them called after I was gone to bed. He said he was not going to be scooped out by the other fellow, whatever that may mean. Virtue in his case was not rewarded. I kept to my bed, and left the enterprising reporter to do the best he could.

I ought to say a word of the hotel at which I stopped – the Lawrence Hall, in James’s Street – which I strongly recommend to all, especially to such of my friends as may be contemplating a visit to Montreal. The bedrooms are beautifully clean, the cooking is excellent, and the service is admirable. It enjoys a tremendous amount of support. I was there just forty-eight hours, and I counted as many as two hundred names of arrivals after me, and yet, in spite of the crowd, there was ample accommodation for all, and I and my friends dined as comfortably and quietly as if we had been at home. The proprietor, Mr. Hogan, is a gentleman with whom it is a pleasure to converse. Nor are his charges high.

It is a sight to sit in the hall and watch the ever-shifting crowd, or to stray into the shaving apartment, where a dozen barbers are always hard at work. I own I became a victim, and paid a shilling for a performance which in London only costs me sixpence; but in London I simply have my hair cut, here I was under the care of a ‘professional artist.’ I quote his card: ‘Physiognomical hairdresser, facial operator, cranium manipulator, and capillary abridger.’ I could not think of offering so distinguished a professor less than a shilling. But the fact is, you can’t travel cheaply either in Canada or the United States.

It goes sadly against the grain to pay fivepence for having one’s boots blacked, and the way in which your change is doled out to you is not pleasant, and adds materially to the difficulties of the situation. For instance, I had a certain American coin the other day pressed into my reluctant hands on the express understanding that it was to go for ten cents. I paid it to a ferryman, who said it was only worth eight, and then, on that supposition, he managed to cheat me; and I had to appeal to a friend of mine, who told me that I had not the right change, before I could get the man to give me my due; directly, however, the mistake was pointed out he rectified it, thus acknowledging, in the most barefaced manner, his attempt to cheat; and the beauty of it was, I was with a great man of the place, who witnessed the whole transaction, and never said a word, apparently looking upon it as a matter of course.