Homes and Careers in Canada

by Harry Jeffs

With regard to the domestic servant difficult, I had many talks with Canadian housewives on the question. The problem is solving itself by American ladies doing their own housework and simplifying their domestic arrangements accordingly. The wives of men of high social position do most of their own housework and seem to enjoy it. All this has its effect on the social etiquette. Ladies visiting each other in the afternoon, for instance, do not expect to be asked to tea, though of course if a lady chooses to ask her most intimate friends to tea there is nothing to prevent her. It is understood, however, that to get tea for visitors means that the hostess herself must prepare the meal and do the necessary washing-up afterwards. The servant problem is responsible also for Canadians of good social position living in houses much smaller than people in the same station would occupy at home. Driving round the “bon-ton” suburbs of rising cities in the Prairie Provinces I was surprised at the bijou residences in which I was told prominent citizens who were credited with fortunes of half a million to a million dollars were content to live. You must never judge of a man’s wealth in Canada by the size of his house and the style of his living. It is a question of the impossibility of getting servants, and Canadians are sensible enough to realise that the impossibility has its advantages. They have neither the time nor the inclination to create a lot of social duties such as are considered necessities of social suburban life at home, which would mean in Canada not only vast expense, but the eating up of invaluable time without any adequate compensation in the way of real social enjoyment. Well-to-do Canadians do not often invite mere acquaintances as guests to their homes. What they do is to put their guests up at a good hotel—and good hotels are plentiful enough, even in towns which have sprung up on the Prairie during the last twenty years. There is a surprising number of excellent hotels with a cuisine, attendance, and bedroom arrangements that any reasonable man should be satisfied with. When religious or other conferences meet in a Canadian town the delegates are not, as in this country, placed out with hosts who give them a bedroom, breakfast, and supper for three, four or more days, but the hosts send them to hotels. This practice has mutual advantages. It is not always convenient for a man to take in a stranger, though he may be an angel unawares; very often, as hosts in this country know to their cost, he is far from being an angel. But though he might be the most desirable of guests, the host, if a business or professional man, might feel it irksome to give his guest the attention he felt was due from him. On the other hand, the guest is free in the hotel to enjoy himself in his own way with fellow delegates. At several towns where I stayed there were groups of delegates to synodal meetings of religious denominations, trade conferences and the like, and it struck me that their informal conferences over the tables were contributing a good deal to the success of the meetings which had brought them to the towns.

STRATHCONA MONUMENT AT MONTREAL.

A distinction has to be drawn between cities and towns of Old Canada and the cities and towns of the Prairie Provinces and British Columbia. In Old Canada, at Quebec, Montreal, Toronto, London, Hamilton, and many other cities life has settled down; there are traditions going back through several generations. There are old families and family relationships, old churches, institutions, colleges and schools. The life in these old cities has plenty of social intercourse and social enjoyments, and yet there is a freshness and exuberance which are missing in the crowded cities of the Old Country with their sharp social distinctions and their social problems. In these old cities there is culture of literature, art and music. The Toronto University and the McGill University at Montreal draw their thousands of students, who receive an education that covers all the departments of learning. Young men and young women are brought together in the various colleges, friendships are formed, wits sharpen wits. These young men and women are trained to become leaders of thought and action in every department of business, professional and social activity. Cultured English people settling in Old Canada might find to their surprise a keener appetite for artistic and intellectual interests than is at all common among the suburbanites of London and the other British provincial cities. The home life of these Canadian cities, judging by what I saw of it, is very charming. During the summer the fullest advantage is taken of the opportunities which are offered for holidays, week-ends and picnics on the rivers, lakes, and among the hills and woodlands of the beautiful Provinces of Quebec and Ontario. Canadians grew enthusiastic as they told of holidays spent canoeing on the rivers and lakes, camping out in the woods, fishing and shooting—getting, at a trifling cost and in a few hours of railway travelling, right away from civilisation into the heart of primeval forests, or camping in tents or living in huts in some Eden of an island embosomed in a lovely lake; and then in the winter there are endless sources of enjoyment such as we in the Old Country have to spend expensive winter holidays in Switzerland to be able to indulge in. I was in Montreal when the first snow of winter fell. It was a blizzard, with heavy flakes driven before a fierce wind. The blizzard began on a Sunday evening and continued throughout the night. In the morning the snow had ceased, but the appearance of the city was transformed. Every tree glittered outlined in dazzling whiteness, every building was pointed and glistening with the lodging snow. There was a foot of snow of crystal purity in the streets. The people of Montreal were as cheerful as if they had just come into fortunes. They recognised the snow as an old and welcome friend returned to them. There was a hunting out of “rubbers,” goloshes in which to envelop the boots. There was a tinkling of bells in the streets, reminding one of the “Alpine chimes” heard on the pastures of Switzerland when the cattle are let loose to browse as and where they will. All wheels had been taken off vehicles, and sledge methods of conveyance adopted in their place. Wheels would not appear again until the end of March. My Montreal host regretted that I could not remain in the city, for he was promising his family the most delightful sledge outing over the new fallen snow. Drays, tradesmen’s traps, automobiles, taxis, handcarts, every kind of vehicle was running on sleighs, and bells were jingling from the neck of every horse and from every vehicle. Sleighing is an ever-exhilarating pastime during the Canadian winter. Then, again, there are toboganning and all sorts of winter sports to be enjoyed at home, and not as the rare luxury of the rich, who can afford to break away from business and put up at expensive Swiss hotels. Skating, of course, is an enjoyment within the reach of the poorest, and it is an enjoyment available at least four months of the year, and not, as in England, the rarest of accidents following on a four days’ frost and put an end to by the thaw that inevitably comes when the skates are being looked out from the place they were put three years ago and polished of the gathered rust.

Out in the Prairie Provinces, where new cities and towns are “rising like an exhalation,” there is plenty of summer and winter enjoyment, although, of course, many of the people are far too busy in laying the foundations of their future prosperity to be able to sacrifice much time to mere recreation. Prairie dwellers told me, however, that the winter is to them, as to the people of the Eastern Provinces, the playtime of the year. The harvest of the prairie has been got in. There is a slackening down of business until the spring. The people in the rising cities have more time at their disposal to foregather at all sorts of meetings for social enjoyment. The young man is a great institution of the prairie town. He goes out in his thousands from the Old Country; he crosses over from the United States. The Y.M.C.A.’s (which are run in Canada on the broadest and most progressive lines) cater for the young man. They and the churches, which appreciate the value of the young man and realise that he will not be content with purely religious meetings alone, cater generously for him. The Y.M.C.A.’s are splendid clubs provided with gymnasia, swimming baths, facilities for the playing of billiards, basket-ball, and other competitive recreations. Then football has solidly established itself in Canada, as cricket has done during the summer months, and the sportively inclined young man of Regina, Medicine Hat, or Calgary is as keen on playing or watching a good game as the young man in Old England, though I believe he does not allow his interest in such games to become so absorbing as to distract his attention from his business, in which he sees the means of forcing his way to the front in the new country of his settlement. The young man of the Prairie Provinces is a great camper-out in the summer and finds plenty of interest on the prairies, whether in watching the rapid growth of the harvests, in studying the varied flora (which is exquisitely beautiful), or in the Nimrod pursuit of wild birds and wild animals. For the bookish young man there are literary societies even in towns that are not a dozen years old, and it is a very “one-horse” prairie town indeed that does not possess a theatre and an opera house, while the picture palace is everywhere.

Returning to home life: One does not have to be long in Canada before discovering that nothing is more unpopular in the Dominion than rent-paying, whether for land or for a house. Every householder wants to own his home, and the powers that be in the State Governments and in the municipalities encourage this ambition. It is this desire to own the home that accounts for the ubiquity of the Real Estate agent, who swarms all over Canada. No sooner is it decided to lay out a town, and the municipality is created and invested with authority, than the Real Estate man puts in an appearance. He snaps up the tit-bits in the way of lots along the lines of the streets and the roads that are being laid out in the town planning. He is waiting for the influx of population and knows that there will be an increasing “home” hunger. Store-keepers will come, with wives and children; building contractors with their foremen and staffs of workmen; banks with their managers, cashiers and clerks; branches of Insurance and other companies; lawyers, doctors, and the like; all sorts and conditions of men, middle-aged and young, migrate from the older Canadian cities, young fellows irresistibly attracted westward by the fascination of the new, emigrants from the States, Great Britain and the Continental countries. The married men will want comfortable houses as soon as possible. The young bachelors will want “diggings.” “Rooming-house” keepers will be laying themselves out to attract boarders of both sexes. There is no fear that suitable lots for homes will lack inquirers. There will be quarters for cheap houses, better houses, and the best houses, to suit the various social positions. If there is a river running through or by the town, the bankside lots, away from the business or industrial quarters, will be in demand for villas with gardens—the villas in the Prairie capitals, and such cities as Medicine Hat and Calgary, following very likely “bungalow” or Californian models. On the cheaper lots, at first, the houses may be only “frame,” run up at small cost, to be replaced later by brick and stone. On the outskirts of the towns tiny frame cottages may be built by two or more young fellows who will do their own housekeeping, enjoying the independence and the Robinson Crusoe conditions. This is an excellent way of learning how to do without things, and many such young fellows, by having to cook, clean, and do everything for themselves, are in training for model husbands, ready to help their future wives in the most diverse and practical ways. The Real Estate man knows them all, and caters for all. His voice quivers with sympathetic sentiment when he dilates on the ideal situation of the lot for a home—five minutes from a projected public park or recreation ground, and only three minutes from the street car line. Some purchasers of lots put up houses to let furnished, and in a new Prairie city they make a very good thing of it, but every Canadian wants to be his own landlord as soon as he can manage it.

The Canadian’s determination to own his own home at whatever cost, and to own the land on which he builds his office, his store or his factory, accounts for the apparently extravagant prices cheerfully paid for these lots. A contributory cause is the ease with which at present, and in all likelihood for years to come, money can be made in developing the inexhaustible resources of this rich country. Canadians admit that they are frightfully extravagant. Money comes easily and goes easily. If a man makes up his mind to build his home in a certain situation that has taken his fancy, no price, apparently, will stop him. He must have that lot of 30 or 50 feet frontage with its 120 or 130 feet depth, whether he has to pay $10 or $50 a foot frontage. Perhaps he has hesitated over the purchase of land that had previously taken his fancy—he was asked $20 a foot frontage and was not at the moment disposed to go beyond $15. Three months after he has changed his mind, has gone to the agent and has been told that it has been disposed of at $40 a foot frontage, or that it is still available, but that it cannot now be parted with under $45 or $50 a foot frontage. The man, let us suppose a young man getting on rapidly with a new business or occupying an improving position in a bank or a business house, wants to get married and wants to get his house ready at the earliest possible moment; whether it is $100, or $200, or $300 extra does not matter if he can only get what he has set his heart on. He secures the wished-for lot, sees an architect, has planned for him a picturesque bungalow or bijou villa, with the inevitable verandah, and has the happiest of times in watching the home grow up. Most of these homes (the property of their owners), standing on their own lots, are detached. The streets of detached houses are characteristic of the new cities and towns and of the new suburbs of the older cities. Canadians do not like the continuous unbroken line of houses of our English towns. As to this ownership of his home by the householder, a resident of Berlin, Ontario, a city of some 14,000 people, told me that 64 per cent. of the houses in that flourishing town belonged to their occupiers.

The furnishing of Canadian homes is tasteful and practical. There is not the crowding and the heaviness apparent in the furnishing of many homes in the Old Country. I gather that the Canadians like variety and artistic merit in their furniture. They do not go in for suites and extreme substantiality, if I may so express it, although one or two visits I paid to the furniture departments of great departmental stores showed that, while the furniture as a whole looks lighter in effect than English furniture, it is well made and calculated to stand a lot of wear and tear. The manager of a furniture department of a great departmental store at Toronto told me that New England models are popular in Canada. The old New Englanders developed styles of their own, which lend themselves admirably to modern imitation and fit in well with the scheme of the Canadian house, with its usually smaller rooms than those of an English house of a middle-class family; but old English and old French styles of furniture compete with the New England models, so that there is plenty of material on which the Canadian man and the Canadian woman can exercise taste in choosing furniture for the use and ornament of the home.

A SASKATOON SCHOOL (ACCOMMODATING 1,500 CHILDREN).