COLD WINTERS OF YORE.
Old men tell us that our winters are less severe now than they were fifty or sixty years ago. The long unbroken spells of extreme cold which they used to experience in the early days of our history, are not known now. It is true we do get a cold spell during the winter, now and again, and sometimes deep snow; but these cold spells soon break, and the deep snows do not remain all winter. Not long since I was talking with one of the Grand Trunk Railway conductors, who had been on the line for over twenty years. He said that when he first came on the line it was not at all unusual to have the snow even with the car steps for miles. At other places, he said, they would for long distances pass through tunnels of snow piled or drifted as high as the car tops, whereas now the railway company seldom send out their snow-plough at all, nor does the snow seriously hinder the running of the trains.
It may be that the snow does not now lie as deep as it did before the land was cleared, but is more drifted. This no doubt is true, in a measure, but then if we got as much snow as our fathers used to, and this drifted, the consequences would be most disastrous, and would be an effectual bar to locomotion.
The winter’s cold of former years can be best illustrated by the relation of an anecdote. An old gentleman, still alive and approaching his fourscore years says he was one day driving through a seventeen-mile belt of woods, in this province, with one horse drawing a jumper. The jumpers of those days were made by using two green saplings for runners, bending them up for the crooks. Beams and uprights were made of green saplings, like the runners. An axe and an auger were the only tools used in their construction, and generally there was not a particle of iron in any shape. Rude as they were, they served their purpose admirably, and lasted well enough through one winter. The day was intensely cold, so cold that it was dangerous to leave any part of the body exposed for a moment. He saw a man sitting bolt upright in the snow on the path before him. His first thought was “What will this man be doing here alone, sitting down in this awful cold.” Coming up to him, he reined up his horse, and called to the man; receiving no answer, he tapped him with his whip, and, to his astonishment, the blow resounded as if he were striking a piece of marble. The poor fellow was frozen solid through and through. He was a settler, who lived some thirty miles farther on, and who had set out to go to some settlement, but becoming exhausted by the long weary tramp in the snow, sat down for a few moments’ rest, became drowsy from the soporific effects of the cold, and froze as he sat.
To convey to the younger generation of Upper Canadians an idea of some of the difficulties which our forefathers encountered in subduing the dense forests of our Province, I will relate a true instance of an occurrence about sixty years ago:
A man and his wife, with two children, moved into the Township of Ops, into a dense forest, eight miles from the nearest settler. For months he chopped away at the forest trees, all alone, and succeeded at length in making a clearing in the forest, and erecting a log-house for himself and his family. The logs were peeled and notched at the ends, and laid up squarely, each tier making the house the diameter of a log higher. A hole was cut through for a doorway, and another for a window. To form a door he split some thin slabs from a straight-grained cedar, and pinned them with wooden pins to cross slats. The most ingenious parts of the construction, however, were the hinges. Iron hinges he had not, and could not get. With the auger he bored a hole through the end of a square piece of wood, and, sharpening the other end with his axe, he then bored a hole into one of the logs of the house, constituting in part a door-jamb, and drove the piece of wood into this hole. This formed the top part of the hinge, and the bottom part was fashioned in exactly the same way. Now to the door, in like manner, he fastened two pegs of wood with holes bored through their ends. Placing the ends of the hinges above one another they presented the four ends with holes leading through them, the one above the other. Next he made a long pin with his handy jacknife, leaving a run at one end of it, and making it long enough to reach from the top to the lower hinge. Through the holes at the ends of the hinge this long pin was placed, and thus the door was hung.
The roof of the log-house was perhaps the greatest curiosity. Hollow basswood (linden) trees were generally used. These were first cut the length required, then split through the centre, each half forming a trough. A layer of these troughs was laid lengthwise from the ridge-pole to the eaves, all over the house-top, upon their backs, the bark side down. Over these was laid a second layer, reversed, or bark side up, and the edges of the upper layer fitted into the hollows of the lower one. In this way the settler made a roof for his house quickly and easily. Such a roof shed water tolerably well, too, until the logs began to rot.
This primitive house built, the settler put in a small crop in the tiny clearing. At this period in the country’s history the virgin soil produced bountifully, and the crops once put in were almost sure to give fair returns. When autumn came with its gorgeous colors—the leaves of the forest in the north temperate zone rivalling in beauty anything the tropics can show us—the settler’s crop was a good one.
Unfortunately, however, he was confined to his rude bed, too ill to gather in his harvest. Eight miles away his nearest neighbors followed the “blazes”[A] on the trees through the woods and came and secured the settler’s crop for him, then departed, leaving him and his household all alone in the deep, silent forest. Days and weeks rolled along and no one came again, while the poor man got perceptibly worse. Winter at last set in with the severe cold of those days. Snow, deep and lasting, soon fell, and covered all things animate and inanimate with a pure white mantle. To have a huge pile of logs at the door was the custom of those days, to supply the winter fire in the great capacious open fire-place. Our settler had not neglected to secure the traditional and useful pile of logs before his illness. Many dreary days passed over this little snowed-in household, the husband and mainstay still sick, and gradually growing weaker. Wolves howled around the door nightly. Seeing no one out of doors, they gradually became bolder and would approach to the very door of the cabin.
[A] Marks on the trees made by the axe to indicate a path or way from one spot to another in the woods.
To the poor disconsolate wife’s inexpressible grief, the husband died and left her alone in her solitary loneliness with her two children, the eldest of whom was only eight years of age, and the second one just able to walk. What dreadful isolation this, with no one nearer than eight miles to help her perform the sacred rites of sepulture! Among the tools in the house was an old mattock, used in grubbing up the forest roots in the clearing. With this she attempted to dig a grave. Unfortunately for her, however, the snow had fallen later than usual in the autumn, after the ground had become frozen quite hard. All her efforts failed to penetrate through the deeply frozen crust, and she almost feared she could not bury her husband at all. To place the body out of doors she dare not, for it would only become food for the prowling wolves, and the idea was so revolting to her that she could not entertain it. Some solution, however, must be sought for the difficult problem, and this clever, self-reliant woman finally solved it.
Remembering that the pile of logs at the door beside the house had been put there before the frost came, with the aid of a hand-spike she rolled one back away from the side of the house. It was a large log from which one above it had been removed for the daily burning on the hearth. To her joy, under this log the ground was scarcely frozen, being under the pile and sheltered by the side of the log cabin. There with the mattock she dug a grave, dragged her husband’s body to it, rolled it gently in, and covered it over with the soil she had taken out. Then back again over the grave she rolled the log, to protect it and prevent the wolves disinterring the body. She then went to the settlement, leading her youngest child by the hand, the other following in the track made in the deep snow.
A harrowing tale is this, but it is a true one. It was by just such people that the Province of Upper Canada was made what it is, and by their sufferings, buffetings and privations we enjoy the privileges which we have to-day. Let us drop a kindly tear to the memory of this brave woman, and look back with fond remembrance to our pioneer ancestors who, although often unlettered and uncultured, did so much for us.
ROGER CONANT TRADING WITH THE INDIANS FOR FURS.
BARCLAY, CLARK & CO. LITHO. TORONTO
CHAPTER VI.
Discontent in Upper Canada—Election riots—Shillelahs as persuaders—William Lyon Mackenzie—Rioting in York—Rebellion—Patriots and sympathizers—A relentless chase—Crossing Lake Ontario in midwinter—A perilous passage—A sailor hero—A critical moment—Safe on shore—“Rebellion Losses Bill”—Transported to Botany Bay—Murder of my grandfather—Canadian legends—A mysterious guest.
Land of the forest and the rock,
Of dark blue lake and mighty river,
Of mountains reared aloft to mock
The storm’s career, the lightning’s shock;
My own green land for ever.
—Adapted.
VOICES of discontent had been heard for many months previous to the actual outbreak of the rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada. Meetings were held, at which the wrongs inflicted on the country by the Family Compact were discussed. Responsible government had not then been granted to Canada by the Imperial Government; prior to the rebellion the country was under the rule and the heel of an oligarchy who had foisted themselves upon the people.
It would be impossible and it is indeed unnecessary for me to refer to the causes of the outbreak in Upper Canada. Most persons’ minds have already been fully made up pro and con on the subject. It is not my purpose to do more than relate such incidents as came within the notice of my father and grandfather, or had an influence on their lives or surroundings.
The elections of candidates for the Legislature were conducted differently from what they now are under responsible government, a change hastened by the rebellion, and finally secured by the able Report of Lord Durham.
At Newcastle, Durham County, an election was being held, ostensibly to elect a member of the Parliament. For one whole week electors were asked to ascend a flight of steps to a booth erected in the open air, and there verbally announce the name of the candidate for whom they would vote. The Family Compact took good care that all timorous ones voted for them, or did not vote at all, if an opposition candidate was nominated.
A participant in that election told of a waggon-load of green shillelahs brought to the grounds for the purpose of gently (?) persuading the electors to vote for the Government nominee. Whiskey could be had for the asking, without money and without price, and ab libitum. The ordinary price of whiskey at that date and for many years later was tenpence per gallon. Fights were of hourly occurrence during the election, and for six days a pandemonium of riot reigned. It is superfluous to add that the Government candidate won the contested seat, as he did very generally in other constituencies throughout the Province.
William Lyon Mackenzie, the hard-headed little Scotch reformer, who was several times elected and expelled the House, exposed these acts in his paper and some of the sons of the Compact threw his type into York (Toronto) bay. The destruction of his type and the consequent revulsion of feeling secured justice, and damages assessed for the loss being paid to Mackenzie from the fines exacted of the lads who committed the depredation enabled him to continue the publication of his paper, and through it rouse his sympathizers into open rebellion. No government over English-speaking subjects has yet succeeded long in curtailing the liberty of the press. In Canada this remark was as true as elsewhere.
My father at this time was captain of one of his fleet of ships, and was not on shore to participate in the excitement. Freights that fall (1837) were exceedingly high on Lake Ontario. Salt, for instance was one dollar a barrel from Sodus, New York, to Whitby, Upper Canada, that being the nearest port to Oshawa, his home, four miles away. Flour was one dollar a barrel from Oshawa and Whitby to Kingston. It was an exceedingly mild winter, and succeeding so well, he did not put his ship into winter quarters in November, as is the custom on the Great Lakes, but continued his trips until the day after Christmas, when he reached Whitby, unbent his sails and stowed everything for the winter.