John Bealby - Peeps at Many Lands - Canada

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.

or —

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.

As soon as the ground is covered with snow, and the snow gets hard enough, every boy and girl in Canada fetches out his or her flexible flyer, bob-sleigh, or other form of child's sleigh, and dragging it to the top of an incline, sets it off gliding to the bottom.

The flexible flyer is a small sleigh that will not carry more than one big child or two very small ones. The rider lies stretched out on the sleigh, flat on his stomach, with his legs sticking out behind. A bob-sleigh is larger – often made, in fact, by fastening a piece of board across two sleighs running one behind the other. The riders on this go down in a sitting attitude, with their legs sticking out on each side of them, while one of them steers with his feet. And jolly fun it is to see them flying down like an express train, laughing and shouting, with red, rosy cheeks and bright, sparkling eyes. What matters an occasional spill in the snow? That only adds to the fun, and makes the game all the merrier.

While the children enjoy this "coasting," as they call it, the young men strap on their snowshoes and race across fields and fences, leaping or rolling over the latter, until they arrive at some appointed inn, where they partake of a good meal, with plenty of singing of rousing, lusty choruses and other kinds of jollification. Then on they strap their snowshoes again, and, with many a whoop and shout, stretch out in Indian file on their homeward journey. If there is no moon they carry torches, and the ruddy, flickering light adds picturesqueness to the long belted blankets or tunics and tasselled tuques of the snowshoe runners.

"A pretty picture it is as the snowshoers turn down into a gully, some slipping, some recovering from a threatened upset by a feat of balancing, and then, still in Indian file, getting over the fence, every man in his own peculiar way. Some take it at a leap, others climb it cautiously; some roll over sideways in a lump, pitching feet and snowshoes before them. Some are too slowly careful, and, catching a shoe on the top rail, measure their full length in the snow. There is no stopping here, for we are far from road and railroad, out in the open country, with several miles of field before us, and twenty fences in the way. Most of the farmers, with fellow-feeling, have left a few rails down, so that there is no obstruction. But a tramp is as tame without a tumble as without a fence, so here goes for your five feet ten! Never was there charger could take a high fence like a snowshoer! As an old song of the Montreal Snowshoers' Club runs: