Pictures of Canadian Life: A Record of Actual Experiences

by J. Ewing Ritchie

I cannot leave Canada without speaking of its Grand Trunk Railway, which meets the emigrant at Port Levi when he lands at Quebec, and which he will undoubtedly often patronise if he tarries long in the land. It has built the Victoria Bridge at Montreal, one of the wonders of Canada—a tubular structure of magnificent proportions, which spans the St. Lawrence, and gives uninterrupted communication to the western traffic with that of the United States. Including the abutments, the bridge is 9,084 feet in length. The tubes rest on twenty-four piers, the main tubes being sixty feet above the level of the river. It may well be called the Grand Trunk Railway, as it operates under one management over six thousand miles of first-class railway road. Having close connection at Port Huron, Detroit and Chicago with the principal Western American lines, it offers great advantages to emigrants to all parts of the compass. At Montreal I had the pleasure of a long chat with Mr. Joseph Hickson, the general manager, who takes a deep interest in the subject of emigration, and Mr. W. Wainwright, the assistant-manager, to whom I am indebted and grateful for many acts of kindness, especially welcome to the stranger in a strange land. It is the Grand Trunk that takes the traveller over Niagara Falls—on the International Suspension Bridge connecting the Canadian Railways with those of the States. This structure, which is 250 feet above the water, commands a fine view up to the Falls. It is to be feared that as long as Canada and the United States have separate tariffs there will be not a little smuggling along this bridge. When I was there I heard of a Canadian judge, who with his family had been stopping at one or other of the hotels on the Canadian side. One fine morning some of the ladies of the party walked off to the American side, and returned laden with bargains which had paid no duty. In their innocence they boasted of the little transaction to the judge. ‘How can I,’ said he indignantly, ‘punish people for smuggling, if I find my own family do it?’ and the ladies had to pay the duty, so the story goes, after all.

CHAPTER XI.

BACK TO ENGLAND.—CANADIAN HOSPITALITY.—THE ASSYRIAN MONARCH.—HOME.

My time was up, and I had to be off, after we got a look at pleasant London in the wood, as my Canadian friends who have been to England call it. I came back from Chicago to New York, and had again to encounter the horrors of nights in a Pullman sleeping-car. Why cannot the railway authorities separate the part of the car devoted to the gentlemen from that part inhabited by the ladies? The way in which the sexes are mixed up at night is, to say the least, unpleasant. I shall never forget my last experience in a Pullman sleeping-car. An ancient dame with blue spectacles, my vis-à-vis, as the shades of evening came on, gave me the horrors. In my despair I began undressing, thinking that the outraged female would rush away in disgust. Alas! she had stronger nerves than I calculated, and there she sat gazing serenely with her tinted orbs till I plunged myself behind my curtained berth, to encounter, early in the morning, once more those eyes.

New York and Boston are full of fairy forms. Why don’t they travel? The change would be pleasant for sore eyes like mine.

No wonder I sat all that night thinking of the great kindness I had received in Canada, and regretting especially that I had refused an invitation to dine that evening at the home of one of the leading barristers of Toronto, to meet some clergymen there who were familiar with my name, and who wished to meet me.

Surely I did wrong to leave Toronto, with all its friendly faces and kindly hearts. It will be long ere I cease to remember how the Canadians made me at home, as I met them on the rail, or on the boat, or in the hotel.

Said a London Evangelist to me: ‘You will find the Canadians a cold people, who will show you no hospitality. While I was there not one of them invited me to have a cup of tea.’

All I can say is, I found the Canadians quite the reverse. But then my friend went on a mission, and is a man of very serious views, while I travelled merely to see a land of whose wonders I had heard much, to talk to sinners as well as saints, and to learn from them what I could.