In the "eighties" the city of Montreal spent large sums over their Winter Carnival. It attracted crowds of strangers, principally from the United States, and it certainly stimulated the retail trade of the city. The Governor-General was in the habit of taking a house in Montreal for the Carnival, and my brother-in-law was lent the home of a hospitable sugar magnate. The dining-room of this house, in which its owner had allowed full play to his Oriental imagination and love of colour, was so singular that it merits a few words of description. The room was square, with a domed ceiling. It was panelled in polished satinwood to a height of about five feet. Above the panelling were placed twelve owls in carved and silvered wood, each one about two feet high, supporting gas-standards. Rose-coloured silk was stretched from the panelling up to the heavy frieze, consisting of "swags" of fruit and foliage modelled in high relief, and brilliantly coloured in their natural hues. The domed ceiling was painted sky-blue, covered with golden stars, gold and silver suns and moons, and the signs of the Zodiac. I may add that the effect of this curious apartment was not such as to warrant any one trying to reproduce it. The house also contained a white marble swimming bath; an unnecessary adjunct, I should have thought, to a dwelling built for winter occupation in Montreal.
The Ice-Castle erected by the Municipality was really a joy to the eye. It was rather larger than, say, the Westminster Guildhall, and had a tower eighty feet high. It was an admirable reproduction of a Gothic castle, designed and built by a competent architect, with barbican, battlements, and machiocolaions all complete, the whole of gleaming, transparent ice-blocks, a genuine thing of beauty. One of the principal events of the Carnival was the storming of the Ice-Castle by the snow-shoe clubs of Montreal. Hundreds of snow-shoers, in their rainbow-hued blanket suits, advanced in line on the castle and fired thousands of Roman candles at their objective, which returned the fire with rockets innumerable, and an elaborate display of fireworks, burning continually Bengal lights of various colours within its translucent walls, and spouting gold and silver rain on its assailants. It really was a gorgeous feast of colour for the eye, a most entrancing spectacle, with all this polychrome glow seen against the dead-white field of snow which covered Dominion Square, in the crystal clearness of a Canadian winter night, with the thermometer down anywhere.
Another annual feature of the Carnival was the great fancy-dress skating fete in the covered rink. The Victoria Rink at Montreal is a huge building, and was profusely decorated for the occasion with the usual flags, wreaths of artificial foliage, and coloured lamps. An American sculptor had modelled six colossal groups of statuary out of wet snow, and these were ranged down either side of the rink. As they froze, they took on the appearance and texture of white marble, and were very effective. Round a cluster of arc-lights in the roof there was a sort of revolving cage of different coloured panes of glass; these threw variegated beams of light over the brilliant kaleidoscopic crowd below. Previous Governors-General had, in opening the fete shuffled shamefacedly down the centre of the rink in overshoes and fur coats to the dais, but Lord and Lady Lansdowne, being both expert skaters, determined to do the thing in proper Carnival style, and arrived in fancy dress, he in black as a Duke of Brunswick, she as Mary Queen of Scots, attended by her two boys, then twelve and fourteen years old, as pages, resplendent in crimson tights and crimson velvet. The band struck up "God Save the Queen," and down the cleared space in the centre skimmed, hand-in-hand, the Duke of Brunswick and Mary Queen of Scots, with the two pages carrying her train, all four executing a "Dutch roll" in the most workman-like manner. It was really a very effective entrance, and was immensely appreciated by the crowd of skaters present. I represented a Shakespearean character, and had occasion to note what very inadequate protection is afforded by blue silk tights, with nothing under them, against the cold of a Canadian February. One of the Aides-de-Camp had arrayed himself in white silk as Romeo; being only just out from England, he was anything but firm on his skates. Some malicious young Montrealers of tender age, noticing this, deliberately bumped into him again and again, sending his conspicuous white figure spinning each time. Poor Romeo's experiences were no more fortunate on the rink than in the tragedy associated with his name; by the end of the evening, after his many tumbles, his draggled white silk dress suggested irresistibly the plumage of a soiled dove.
A hill (locally known as "The Mountain") rises immediately behind Montreal, the original Mont Real, or Mount Royal, from which the city derives its name. This naturally lends itself to the formation of toboggan slides, and one of them, the "Montreal Club Slide," was really terrifically steep. The start was precipitous enough, in all conscience, but soon came a steep drop of sixty feet, at which point all the working parts of one's anatomy seemed to leave one, to replace themselves at the finish only. The pace was so tremendous that it was difficult to breathe, but it was immensely exciting. The Montreal slide was just one-third of a mile long, and the time occupied in the descent on good ice was about twenty seconds, working out at sixty miles an hour. Every precaution was taken against accidents; there was a telephone from the far end, and no toboggan was allowed to start until "track clear" had been signalled. Everything in this world is relative. We had thought our Ottawa slides very fast, though the greatest speed we ever attained was about thirty miles an hour, whilst at home we had been delighted if we could coax fifteen miles an hour out of our rough machines. The Lansdowne boys were very expert on toboggans, and could go down the Ottawa slides standing erect, a thing no adult could possibly manage. They had fitted their machines with gong-bells and red and green lanterns, and the "Ottawa River Express" would come whizzing down at night with bells clanging and lights gleaming.
I can claim to be the absolute pioneer of ski on the American continent, for in January, 1887, I brought my Russian ski to Ottawa, the very first pair that had ever been seen in the New World. I coasted down hills on them amidst universal jeers; every one declared that they were quite unsuited to Canadian conditions. The old-fashioned raquettes had their advantages, for one could walk over the softest snow in them. Here, again, I fancy that it was the sense of man triumphant over Nature that made snow-shoeing so attractive. The Canadian snow-shoe brings certain unaccustomed muscles into play, and these muscles show their resentment by aching furiously. The French habitants term this pain mal de raquettes. In my time snow-shoe tramps at night, across-country into the woods, were one of the standard winter amusements of Ottawa, and the girls showed great dexterity in vaulting fences with their snow-shoes on.
A Canadian winter is bathed in sunshine. In the dry, crisp atmosphere distant objects are as clear-cut and hard as though they were carved out of wood; the air is like wine, and with every breath human beings seem to enter on a new lease of life.
It is not so in the lower world. There is not a bird to be seen, for no bird could secure a living with three feet of snow on the ground. Nature is very dead, and I understood the glee with which the children used to announce the return of the crows, for these wise birds are the unfailing harbingers of Spring. With us Spring is undecided, fickle, and coy. She is not sure of herself, and after making timid, tentative advances, retreats again, uncertain as to her ability to cope with grim Winter. In Canada, Spring comes with an all-conquering rush. In one short fortnight she clothes the trees in green, and carpets the ground with blue and white hepaticas. She is also, unfortunately, accompanied by myriads of self-appointed official maids-of-honour in the shape of mosquitoes, anxious to make up for their long winter fast. As the fierce suns of April melt the surface snow, the water percolates through to the ground, where it freezes again, forming a sheet of what Canadians term "glare-ice." I have seen at Rideau Hall this ice split in all directions over the flower-beds by the first tender shoots of the crocuses. How these fragile little spears of green have the power to penetrate an inch of ice is one of the mysteries of Nature.
Would space admit of it, and were paper not such an unreasonably expensive commodity just now, I would like to speak of the glories of a Canadian wood in May, with the ground flecked with red and white trilliums; of the fields in British Columbia, gorgeous in spring-time with blue lilies and drifts of rose-coloured cyclamens; of the autumn woods in their sumptuous dress of scarlet, crimson, orange, and yellow, the sugar-maples blazing like torches against the dark firs; of the marvels of the three ranges of the Rockies, Selkirks, and Cascades, and of the other wonders of the great Dominion.
As boys, I and my youngest brother knew "Hiawatha's Fishing" almost by heart, so I had an intense desire to see "Gitche Gumee, the Big-Sea Water," which we more prosaically call Lake Superior, the home of the sturgeon "Nahma," of "Ugudwash" the sun-fish, of the pike the "Maskenozha," and the actual scene of Hiawatha's fishing. To others, without this sentimental interest, the Great Lakes might appear vast but uninteresting expanses of water, chiefly remarkable for the hideous form of vessel which has been evolved to navigate their clear depths.
One thing I can say with confidence. No one who makes a winter journey to that land of sunshine and snow, with its energetic, pleasant, and hospitable inhabitants, will ever regret it, and the wayfarer will return home with the consciousness of having been in contact with an intensely virile race, only now beginning to realise its own strength.