Pictures of Canadian Life: A Record of Actual Experiences

by J. Ewing Ritchie

We are a very miscellaneous company on board, chiefly Toronto traders and stalwart boys from Manitoba, who have been enjoying a holiday in Upper Canada, and emigrants. Gloves are unknown, likewise hats and shirt-collars are the exception rather than the rule. As to having one’s boots blackened, that is rather an expensive luxury, when you recollect the charge is fivepence a pair, and no one on board apparently has had his boots blackened for the last week or two; and I question much whether I shall require any of Day and Martin till I get back to Toronto again—an event which will take place apparently about the time of the Greek kalends. Hitherto I have managed the blacking difficulty most effectively. As far as Toronto I travelled with my London friend, who, aware of the custom of the country, had provided himself with the needful materials for the fitting amount of polish, and who generously permitted me to reap the benefit of his superior knowledge. My first attempt, I fear, was a failure. In my bedroom at the hotel I set to work, and soon acquired the requisite amount of polish; but, alas! I had forgotten the effect of blacking on clean sheets, and to my horror I discovered the bed-linen was, at any rate, as plentifully covered with blacking as ‘them precious boots.’ However, I did not regret the catastrophe, as I hoped it might teach the landlord it would be cheaper to get the boots of his guests blackened in an efficient manner, than to leave such unskilful amateurs as myself to do it on their own account.

Life on board the Algoma is as agreeable as can well be imagined. We have three good meals a day. I am writing in a magnificent saloon, nearly three hundred feet long, and if the nights are cold, as they always are on the lakes, I have a cabin all to myself, and by heaping the bed-clothes for two berths on my bed, and throwing a heavy great-coat over them, I manage to keep myself warm for the night. The scenery by day is magnificent, as we sail in and out among a thousand isles, all richly wooded to the water’s edge, with here and there a little village, or small settlement, where the woodmen ply their calling—the results of which may be seen now in a raft being towed by a tug, to be shipped lower down to Liverpool or Glasgow, or in stacks of planks along the shore. Further behind is the mainland, with rock and wood in endless succession. At Sault St. Marie, the river is celebrated for its fish, and as you pass through the canal, you have plenty of Indian canoes paddling about, with a man at the stern to seize the fish by a hand-net: the white fish of Lake Superior is held to be a great delicacy. After a day and night, we get into the open lake, out of sight of land, and then we land at Port Arthur, whence we take the train to Winnipeg, where I hope to hear a scrap of English news.

I have but one complaint to make, and that is, on the Sunday we had no service of any kind. I am not, nor ever was, a stickler for forms; but there are times, especially as many now on board may be planted far away from any religious observance, when it seems to me a simple service might be the means of strengthening old impressions, and perhaps planting new ones. One thinks of that fine old hymn of Andrew Marvel’s:

‘What can we do but sing His praise,
Who guides us through the watery maze?’

And an hour or so thus spent, surely may be quite as helpful to the higher life we all dream of, at any rate, as the favourite occupation of the majority—smoking and spitting, or the study of the maps of the district to which we are all rapidly approaching. I had a queer chat this morning with an old Canadian farmer who landed at Le Sault. He was pleased to hear that I had been at Yarmouth in Norfolk. His mother was a Clarke of Yarmouth. Did I know any of the Clarkes of Yarmouth? I replied that I had not that pleasure, but that I knew many of the Clarkes, and that they were a highly-respectable family indeed.

Well, I have now done with Ontario, and you ask me what I think of it? I reply that it is a beautiful country, and that it has room for any amount of farm labourers and servant girls. I have been talking with a gentleman this morning, who tells me that he pays his groom about £6 a month, and that he boards him as well. He tells me of a Scotch labourer who came out without £1 in his pocket, and who has just died worth £12,000.

At Ottawa I saw a large lumber-yard worth many thousand pounds, which was the property of one who came from England as a working man. As to mechanics, I fear the case is different. In Ontario, in all the towns, the mechanics have strong unions, and they do all they can to keep out emigrants of that class, fearing that their own wages will be reduced. This dog-in-the-manger policy prevails everywhere, and many mechanics, directly they land, are thus frightened by them, and want to get back to England at once. There are two sides to every question. All I can say is, that while a mechanic’s representative, at Montreal, was telling me that there was no room for mechanics, and was doing all he could to induce those who came out with me to return to England at once, I saw an advertisement with my own eyes in a local paper (I am sorry I have forgotten the name) for five hundred mechanics, who were immediately wanted. A man who has got a good situation in England would be a fool to give it up and come out; but I believe a mechanic who has a head on his shoulders—who is young and in good health, and knows how to take advantage of his situation—may find a living even in Ontario. This is my deliberate conviction, after all I have seen and heard, and with the full knowledge that in Montreal, and Ottawa, and Toronto, there is a pauper class as badly off as any of the denizens of our London slums. The people I most pity are the young fellows who in England have had the training of gentlemen, and who are sadly out of place in Canada, and whom the Canadian mothers dread, fearing that they may corrupt the native youth. Many of them, however, are decent fellows; but nevertheless, there is no room for them, unless they go out to Manitoba, and get some farmer to give them board and lodging for their work. I parted with quite a pang with one such on Friday, at Toronto. He was the nephew of a well-known noble lord, and really seemed a very decent sort of fellow. ‘What can you do?’ I said to him. ‘Oh, I can row and play cricket,’ was his reply. Unfortunately, Canada is not much of a country for cricket—the summer season is too short; and I felt that my young friend, unless he could turn his hand to something more useful or lucrative, had better have remained at home.

The pleasant steamship journey ended, I landed at Port Arthur—a town situated in one of the loveliest bays I have yet seen, almost surrounded by weird and fantastic rocks—with a view to run by the Canadian Pacific as far as Winnipeg. As I landed a bill met my eye: ‘Wanted, a hundred rock-men and fifty labourers;’ and that seemed to me an indication that emigrants need not go begging for work in that particular locality. Port Arthur, which stands near the ancient Hudson Bay Company’s station of Fort William, was in a state of intense activity. Every one was building wooden houses and shops who could do so. According to all appearances, it is certainly a busy place; but architecturally I cannot say that it is of much account. The main street opens on to the railway, along which the engines, ringing a doleful bell in order to bid passengers keep out of the way, pass every few minutes. Then there are wooden shops and wooden hotels, and the usual concourse of rough, unwashed, half-dressed loafers in the streets. Behind them is the forest and in front the bay, with its waters almost as clear as those of the Baltic, and almost as blue as those of Naples. Yet I certainly got very heartily tired of Port Arthur, and so, I am sure, did all my travelling companions, who sat on the planks or on the wooden pavement, which, being raised above the road, made passable seats, or on the bits of rock which the railway builders had been too busy to remove, wondering at what hour the train would start. I pitied the poor emigrants, with their children, and their beds, and their household furniture, as they sat there, hour after hour, in that hot and sandy street. We landed at eleven, having made the whole distance from Toronto—a run of about eight hundred miles—in exactly two days and two nights—not quite so long as Jonah was in the whale’s belly, but we certainly got over more ground than he did. When were we to start? No one knew. It takes a long time to get out £4,000 worth of freight and passengers’ luggage, and that is what the Algoma had on board. The worst of railway travelling in Canada is that there is no one of whom you can ask a question. There may be a station-master, there may be a whole herd of officials, there may be an army of porters, but Canadians in one respect resemble the Americans—and that is, that they think it inconsistent with their manly dignity to wear any kind of garb which can in any possible way distinguish them from the crowd of lookers-on, always to be met with in a railway station, so that the railway traveller is always in a perplexity. When we got on shore we were told that we should start in half an hour. Then came word that we were to be off at half-past one, and so, as soon as the cars were made up, we joyfully climbed into them—and the steps are in many cases so high that it is hard work climbing into them; but still we were no further on our way, and it was not till a little before four that, after many false starts, we could fairly believe that we were off. Oh, it was wearisome work, but then it may be asked, Whoever travels on a railway for pleasure? It is true these big American cars have certain advantages ours lack. You can change your position; you can talk without breaking a blood-vessel; and you can see more of the country, especially as they do not go the pace we are accustomed to at home; but there is such a confusion of persons in them, that to one accustomed to the society to be met with in an English first-class carriage, the result is anything but pleasing. In the Canadian first-class carriage Jack and his master ride side by side, unless the latter takes a berth in a sleeping car, for which he has to pay extra. As I did not feel inclined to give three dollars for a night’s unquiet rest, I took my chance with the first-class car company, and I can assure you that by the time the dim grey of morning glimmered on the horizon, I had heartily repented of my decision. The night was so cold that everything in the way of ventilation was stopped up. The car was quite full, and few of my fellow travellers seemed to have had much regard for soap and water. It is true there was a lavatory attached to the car, but there was neither water nor soap nor towels, and the neatness of the lavatory in other respects only seemed to me to make matters worse. I must say that the car, which was built in Canada, was a remarkably handsome one, with its dark wood panels beautifully carved, and its seats all lined with red velvet; yet when I left it in the morning it was in a filthy state. I also found in it agreeable society, but there were many who could not truthfully be included in such a category—rough men and women with whom in England you would not care to travel in a third-class carriage: but I am an Englishman, and may be pardoned for not knowing any better. It is to the same defect, perhaps, that I may trace the disappointment I felt at the refreshment sheds, in which we were permitted to snatch a hasty meal, waited on by a man in shirt-sleeves. Certainly we do that part of our business better at home. The Canadian Pacific have a dining-room of their own at Winnipeg, and there, if possible, the traveller should endeavour to secure a meal.

But oh, that ride! I shall never forget it. Burns tells us that Nature tried her ’prentice hand on man

‘And then she made the lassies, oh!’