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

I fear there is a good deal of villainy in the world, and that it is not confined to America. Travellers are bound to be victimised, and the best thing you can do is to laugh. I own I did so at Liverpool the other day, as I was waiting for the tugboat to take me off to the Sarnia . I knew that I had not made a mistake, I knew that the tug was sure to come; yet four big hulking fellows with brazen faces would have made me believe that I was too late for the tug, and that my only chance of getting on board was for me to let them row me out. In that case the attempt was the more rascally, as from a small row-boat I could never have boarded the Sarnia had I tried. Yet there they stood – sullen and expectant – for a quarter of an hour, taking me, possibly, for a bigger fool even than I look.

‘It is a pity,’ said a Canadian lady to me, ‘that Queen Victoria’ – for whom all Canada prays that long may she reign over us, happy and glorious – ‘fixed upon Ottawa as the site of the Government.’

I am very much inclined to a similar feeling. At Montreal the change of water affected me very disagreeably. At Ottawa I was completely floored. It is a curious fact that almost everyone who goes to Ottawa is taken ill. I was complaining of my first terrible night to Sir Leonard Tilley, the Finance Minister, and he said that when he first came to Ottawa it was the same with him.

A lady told me that Lady Tupper, who has just left the Colony for England, where, it is said, her lord and master hopes to find a seat in the Imperial Parliament – a consummation devoutly to be wished, as to my mind it is clear that all our colonies should have representatives in Parliament – made a similar complaint as to the effect of the place on her children, and I have it on the best authority that scarcely a session passes but an M.P. pays the penalty of a residence in Ottawa.

In my case I was preserved, as the man in the ‘Arabian Nights’ says, for the greater misfortunes yet to befall me by the use of Dr. Browne’s far-famed ‘Chlorodyne’ – an indispensable requisite, I am bound to say, when an emigrant takes his trial trip to Canada. I know not who is the inventor – I believe it is what we call a patent medicine – that is, a medicine not sanctioned by the faculty – but, as has been observed of the Pickwick pen, it is indeed a boon and a blessing to men. I used ‘Chlorodyne,’ and was soon all right. Sir Leonard Tilley told me he did the same, and no one should go to Ottawa without having a small bottle of it in his carpet-bag.

Yet Ottawa is not without a certain freshness of beauty that one associates primâ facie with perfect health. The stately Government buildings, all of grey stone, are placed on a hill, whence you have a peerless view of river and country and distant hill, and far away forests all around. A more picturesque site it would be assuredly most difficult to find. As to the town itself, it is a curious compound – almost Irish in that respect – of splendour and meanness. There are magnificent shops – and then you come to wooden shanties, which in such a city ought long ere this to have been improved off the face of the earth. If on a rainy day, unless very careful, you attempt to cross the streets, you are in danger of sticking in the mud, which no one seems to ever think of removing, and in many parts there are disgraceful holes in the plank pavement on which you walk, which are dangerous, especially to the aged and infirm.

In Ottawa the contrasts are more violent than I have seen elsewhere. Everyone comes to the place. It is the headquarters of the Dominion. I met there statesmen, adventurers, wild men of the woods, or prairie, deputies from Manitoba, lawyers from Quebec, sharpers and honest men, all staying at one hotel; and it seemed strange to sit at dinner and see great rough fellows, with the manners of ploughmen, quaffing their costly champagne, and fancying themselves patterns of gentility and taste. In one thing they disappointed me. Sir Charles Tupper was to leave for England, and his admirers met outside the hotel to see him off. There was a carriage and four to convey him to the station, and other carriages followed. There was a military band in attendance, much to the disgust of the Opposition journals – and yet, in spite of all, the cheers which followed the departing statesman were so faint as to be perfectly ridiculous to a British ear, and seemed quite out of proportion to all the display that had been made. Certainly they seemed quite childish compared with those which greeted a certain individual, whose name delicacy forbids my mentioning, when, on the last night on board the Sarnia , he ventured humbly to reply to the toast of the Press which had been given in the smoking-room by a Quebec artist returning home from study in Paris.

In Ottawa, certainly, there is no demand for emigrants, unless it be good female servants, who are wanted much more, and can have much more comfortable living, at home. A lady asked me to send her a few good servants from England. I replied that my wife wanted them as much as she did, and that it was my duty to attend to her requirements first.

It is curious the airs the raw servant-girls from Ireland give themselves out here. One day, when I was at Peterborough, one of the head-quarters of the lumber trade – which yesterday was a dense forest, and is now a town of 8,000 people – I heard of the arrival of a lot of girls from Galway. The drill-hall was set apart for their use, and there they were respectfully waited on by the chief ladies of the district in need of that rarest of created beings – a good maid-of-all-work. In this particular case one of the arrivals was fixed on.

‘What can you do?’ said the lady.

The girl seemed uncertain on that point.

‘Can you wash?’

‘Oh no!’

‘Can you cook?’

‘Oh no!’

‘Can you do housemaid’s work?’

Well, she thought she could.

Then came the question of wages.

‘Will you take eight dollars a month?’

No, she would not. Would she accept of nine? Oh no! Would she take ten? Certainly not.

‘What do you want?’ said the lady, beginning to be alarmed.

‘They told me I was to have twelve dollars a month,’ said the girl, and that put a stop to the negotiation.

When I state that an English sovereign is worth at this time four dollars and eighty-six cents, I think you will agree with me that this charming daughter of Erin somewhat overrated the value of her services. The Canadians are a well-to-do people, but they cannot afford twelve dollars a month for a mere housemaid. I think it would be well if the respectable young women – of whom there are thousands in England who do not care for the pittance given to a governess, and who prefer the life of a lady-help – were to come out. They would soon be appreciated.

The average girl selected to be sent out to the colony, so far as I have seen her, is not a model of loveliness or utility. Were I a Canadian mother, I would sooner have a lady-help. Nor need the lady-help be afraid of the roughness of her lot. In Ontario, all the difficulties of the pioneers of civilization have long since disappeared. One hears strange tales of what those brave men and delicately nurtured ladies had to suffer.

I have seen two – whom I had known when a boy – who were familiar with the best of London literary society, who figured in all the annuals of the season, who were famous in their day, whose sires came over with William the Conqueror. They were sisters, and married two officers, who had land allotted to them in Canada, and brought out these wellborn and delicately nurtured women into what was then a waste, howling wilderness, where they had to slave as no servant-girl slaves in England, and to fight with the severity of the climate in a way of which the present generation of Canadians have no idea. Only think, for instance, of your joint roasting at the fire on one side and freezing on the other! In the settled parts of Canada, such horrors are now amongst the pleasant reminiscences of the past.