After about four years of strenuous work, Aylmer Bosanquet fell ill, and was obliged to go into a nursing home at Toronto for a serious operation. In the quiet time of convalescence her thoughts were busy with the work so dear to her, and she began to consider the problem of the many children in the enormous diocese of Qu'Appelle, who had no Sunday school, and who could not be reached by rail or buggy from the existing centres. She felt that the future of the Anglican Church in Canada depended upon the religious training of these children, and an idea came to her whereby these isolated places might be reached. Her plan was that trained women should go out on to the prairie, two and two, in caravans during the season when the trails are passable. They would gather the children together and start Sunday schools, training teachers to carry them on. In the winter they would return to some central town, whence they would keep in touch with the quite isolated children by means of the Sunday School by post. They would also lecture locally and give demonstration lessons.
Many of these trained women would be needed if all the children on the prairie were to be reached. It would be necessary at first to recruit from England, but later it might be possible to develop a movement already started, but which had had to be temporarily abandoned for lack of a suitable head—namely, a training college for the Dominion of Canada on the lines of St. Christopher's, Blackheath.
Aylmer Bosanquet wrote to me describing her new plan. She was very anxious to see it in operation, for the diocese of Qu'Appelle alone covers 92,000 square miles (about twice the size of England), and two women, though with the best will in the world, could do comparatively little in that immense area.
The project of caravanning on the prairie in the interests of religious education appealed to me very strongly, and as Aylmer Bosanquet soon afterwards came home to England to recuperate, we were able to discuss the matter together. Her idea was to have a horse caravan which should be moved on from place to place by the farmers. But as I have lived all my life in an agricultural district, I knew the difficulties consequent on wanting the use of farm horses in seed-time and harvest—the very seasons when the trails are open—and I also knew that horses could never cover the necessary distances. In my own diocesan work, which took me to little out-of-the-way villages among the fells of Cumberland and Westmorland, I had found it necessary to use a car, and I therefore felt it would be best to have a motor caravan.
It would be worse than useless to take a motor-car on to the rough prairie trails unless one had had long driving experience and done a considerable amount of running repairs. To learn to drive one year and to go out the next would probably mean finding yourself in a tight corner. As I had been allowed to use our cars throughout the War, in connection with my Sunday school work and a V.A.D. hospital, I had fortunately gained a good deal of practical experience, especially as it was necessary to drive in all weathers, day and night, over the steep hills of the Lake District. When these hills were covered in ice your car would run backwards or skid and come down sideways, and these happenings were a useful preparation for the steep, sandy banks of the trail, where the wheels could not grip. Then, too, as our chauffeur was called up and mechanics were scarce, we had to do our own repairs.
The diocese having consented to my being absent for six months, I found a substitute to carry on my work, and began my preparations for the prairie tour.
CHAPTER II
PREPARATIONS AND DEPARTURE
The first idea was to buy one of the Red Cross motor ambulances then being sold off in London, but transport difficulties made it impossible to take one across. Meanwhile Aylmer Bosanquet, having returned to Canada, found that the Saskatchewan Bible Society had a Ford caravan in which a man could live and sleep, travelling about the province with Bibles. Also, Archdeacon Burgett, the Diocesan Missioner for Qu'Appelle, was having a Ford caravan built for two of his mission clergy. She sent me details of these vans, and I asked her to order me a similar one, the interior fittings to be decided upon when I came out in the spring.