Patience is required when attending prairie meetings. What with the immense distances, varying clocks, and unexpected obstacles on the trails it is difficult to get anywhere to time. In this case we waited an hour for the organist, whose car had stuck in a mud hole. Winifred rose to the occasion, and was just making her way to the organ when the belated car was heard and the big bronzed young farmer hurried in.
The elders of the Union church preceded the vicar and his churchwardens up the aisle. The service was a shortened form of evensong, interspersed with many hymns. The sermon was a clear but non-controversial exposition of the Apostles' Creed. It was remarkable to notice how the preacher held the attention of all present, from the child of five to the old lady with grey curls. One hoped that this united worship might pave the way for union on Christian essentials, so that Christian teaching might be agreed upon for the schools and a united stand made against materialism and the many so-called Christian sects.
After service I was called upon to address the congregation. I had to speak from before the altar rails, there being no other place from which to command the congregation, except the pulpit, which I did not wish to occupy. As there had been a fairly long service, and the church was very full and very hot, I thought that a ten minutes' address would be sufficient. So I spoke briefly on the importance of religious education, leading up from the wonderful way in which Canadians had helped in the War, to the need for their help in warfare against evil. Christian soldiers must be trained, and a young country needs a Christian foundation. It is extraordinarily easy to hold the attention of a prairie congregation, and I was told afterward that they wished I had gone on longer. It is indeed a preacher's paradise.
The vicar had to leave at once for his next service. He motored about eighty miles each Sunday and took four services. But the rest of us held a kind of social gathering outside the church, where we had opportunities of studying the prairie fashions. Most of these gorgeous garments are ordered by post from Timothy Eaton's store in Toronto. His enormous illustrated catalogue is sent yearly to every house, and is commonly called "The Prairie Bible." The children know it by heart, and amuse themselves on winter evenings by cutting out and colouring the fashion plates, with the embarrassing result that when they see a neighbour in her new spring costume they remark, "Oh, Mrs. So-and-So's new hat is on page 603, price so many dollars."
We had a washing-day on the Monday. When near a farm they allowed us to take our blouses, etc., and wash them with their apparatus, as the Chinks, who did our heavy washing, ruined the finer things.
On the Tuesday we went to Swanson by train (the trains only ran on certain days in the week). This had been one of the centres of the Railway Mission, and was worked with Birdview, but they had had no services for about a year, owing to the scarcity of clergy, and they felt the privation very much. The Railway Mission had now come to an end, and there were no clergy to supply these districts. We went to see the leading church people, with a view to taking Swanson on our return journey if it seemed possible to start a Sunday School there. We were told that there was no Sunday School of any kind thereabouts, and were advised to go to the day school and beat up recruits, which we did with great success. A farmer's wife promised to gather the people together for us when we came again, so that we could hold a demonstration school and a parents' meeting.
We wished to visit Birdview, but no train ran there that day. Our friend Mrs. T., however, said that her son should drive us in a car. A terrible sandstorm blew up, and we were almost blinded in the open car. We realised once more the advantage of a caravan. Great drifts of sand lay on the trail, and the car skidded from side to side, but we got there. Mrs. T. had arranged by telephone that we were to stay the night with a storekeeper and his wife. There were not many church people in Birdview, so I wanted to go out to a little mission church in the centre of outlying farms which used to be worked by the Railway Mission. The only way to get there was by car, and the storekeeper thought that no hired car would face the storm. But, happily, the wind dropped and the sand subsided, and we found a car to take us. So the storekeeper's wife and I started off.
We were now in one of the "dried out" areas. There are certain belts of land in Saskatchewan which, when first taken up, nearly twenty years ago, proved very fertile. But over-cultivation, though advised by the Board of Agriculture in order to conserve the moisture, had rendered the soil so fine that most of it had blown away. It had been of no great depth to start with, and the sand below it had come to the surface, and now blew in great drifts. As the wheat came up, the flying clouds of sand cut it down, and even buried the scrub. Little vegetation was visible, and what wheat there was the grasshoppers devoured. They were enormous things, 3 inches long. They flew into the car with a great "plop," and even jumped down my clothes. The farmers hereabouts were ruined, and nobody would take their farms. They had not sufficient capital to start again. Yet with all this they kept up their courage and hoped for better days.
When we reached the little church we stuck fast in a big drift, but I took the wheel while the man pushed, and at last we got out. We went on to the leading farmer's, where they welcomed us warmly. They had had no services there for a very long time. I explained that we should like to visit the place on our way back if they would collect the people to meet us. The farmer's wife expressed great delight at the idea. They had been so long without a clergyman, and had so much appreciated services when they had them. She found it very difficult, she said, to keep Sunday when there was nothing to remind her of the day. They felt their spiritual privation, especially now that their material troubles were so great.
I noticed here, as in many other places, an almost conscience-stricken look on the parents' faces when I mentioned the necessity of religious instruction for the children. It was not that they did not wish their children to be taught religious truths, but that they themselves were so cruelly overworked that they had no time for the care and forethought which the preparation of a lesson entails. When you work all the week from 5 a.m. to 10 or 11 p.m. you are exceedingly tired on Sunday; and yet there is still some necessary work to be done if you live on a farm. But give these parents some idea of how and what to teach, with a suitable book to follow and pictures to illustrate the subjects, and they will do their very best, often making most excellent teachers. It is in places like this that the Sunday School by Post helps so greatly, especially in winter, when the children cannot attend a Sunday school at a distance.