The Fair Dominion: A Record of Canadian Impressions

by R. E. Vernède

CHAPTER VII
A HABITANT VILLAGE AND ITS NOTAIRE

'Il trotte bien.'

The second time I made use of this simple compliment I was again being driven by a French Canadian, and again it was on an extraordinarily bad road. But the vehicle was a sulky, and the road was a country road—about halfway between Quebec and Montreal. I had been already two days in the Habitant country which the ordinary Englishman misses. Tourists in particular will go through French Canada too fast. Their first stop after Quebec is Montreal, and the guide-books help them to believe that they have lost nothing. It may be that they do lose nothing in the way of spectacular views or big hotels, but on the other hand they have undoubtedly lost the peaceful charm of many a Laurentian village, and they have seen nothing at all of the life of the French-Canadian farmer. That is a pity for the English tourist, because they too, the Habitants, belong to the Empire, and we ought to know them for what they are apart from their politics—courteous, solid, essentially prudent folk, often well to do, but with no disposition to make a show of themselves.

I had spent my two days at the villa of a most hospitable French lady, in one of the older villages on the St. Lawrence. It was not exactly a beautiful village—rather ramshackle in fact—but remarkably peaceful, and the great smooth river running by must give it a perennial charm, such as comes from having the sea near. I had missed my train going from that village, and had passed the time by taking lunch at a little inn near the station. It was Friday, and the landlord gave me pike and eggs for lunch. I had seen my pike and several others lying in a sandy ditch near, passing a sort of amphibious life in it, until Friday and a guest should make it necessary for one of them to go into the frying pan. The landlord came and chatted with me while I had lunch, and was grieved to find that I was not a Catholic. I was English, but not Catholic? I said that was so, and he shook his head sorrowfully. But there were Catholics in England, he asked a little later. I said, Oh yes, certainly. Many? I said that there must be a good many, but I could not tell him the exact numbers. Would a tenth of the English at least be Catholics, he next demanded? I said I thought at least that number, but I left him, I fear, a disappointed man. He had hoped more from England than that, and even my strenuous praise of the fried pike did not draw a smile from him.

My compliment about the horse drawing the sulky—to go back to that drive, obtained a better response. The driver replied in the French tongue: 'Monsieur, he trots very well, particularly in considering that he has the age of twenty-eight years.'

I said that this was wonderful, and the driver replied that it was, but that in French Canada such wonders did happen. He was intensely patriotic, and this made the drive more interesting. He was all for French-Canadian things, excepting, I think, the roads, which were indeed nothing but ruts, some of the ruts being less deep than the others, and being selected accordingly for the greater convenience of our ancient steed. I liked his patriotism. It was at once so genuine and so complete. For example, when I said that I had not seen any Jersey cows on the farms we had passed, the driver said: 'No. The cow of Jersey is a good cow and gives much milk. But the Canadian cow is a better cow and gives still more milk.' I was unable to make out what the prevailing milch-cow was in that part. Canada has, I believe, begun to swear by the Holstein, but this can hardly as yet be claimed as the Canadian cow. Still it passed the time very pleasantly to have my driver so enthusiastic, and of what should a man speak well, if not of his own country? He articulated his French very slowly and distinctly, so that I was able to understand him more easily than I should have understood a European Frenchman. I was surprised at this, because one is usually told that French Canadians talk so queerly that they are very hard to follow. Perhaps my obvious inferiority in the language caused those Habitants I met to adapt themselves to my necessity. I can only say that from a few days' experience of conversation with all sorts and conditions, I carried away the impression that French-Canadian was a very clear and easy language. As for the country, I should call it serene and spacious in aspect rather than fine. The farmhouses are pleasant enough and comfortable within, but their immediate surroundings are apt to be untidy. Very seldom of course does one see a flower garden, and vegetables do not make amends for the lack of flowers. On the other hand, the tobacco patch that is so frequently to be seen in the neighbourhood of the small farms is pleasant to look at, especially for one who thinks much of smoke. There is not much satisfaction to the eye in the small wired fields, nor would either the farming or the soil startle an English farmer. I think that the maple woods are the one thing that he would regard with real envy.

Nevertheless, no one would have denied that it was a really pretty village, to which my driver brought me at last in the sulky. It was built all round an old church in a sort of dell, behind which the land rose steeply to a wood of maples. I had been given an introduction to the curé, and we drove to his house by the church, only to be told by the sexton (I think it was the sexton) that Monsieur le Curé had, much to his regret, been called to Quebec, but had begged that I would go over to the notaire, who would be pleased to show me everything that was to be seen. We went to the notaire. I think he was the postmaster too—at any rate he lived in the post office, and a very kindly old gentleman he was. I do not know one I have liked more on so short an acquaintance, though he did start by giving me Canadian wine to drink. It was a sort of port or sherry—or both mixed—and was made, I think he said, in Montreal. It had the genuine oily taste, but also a smack of vinegar. That in itself would not have mattered so much, if the notaire had not said it was best drunk with a little water, and provided me with water from a saline spring which had its source in his backyard. These saline springs seem not uncommon in Canada, and must be considered as a distinct asset. But not mixed with port. Some local tobacco which was very good, as indeed much of the tobacco grown in Quebec province seems to be, took the taste away, and after that the notaire proposed that he should take me out to see one of the huts where they boil down the maple water in the early spring. He told me that my own horse and driver should rest, and that we should go on the carriage of Monsieur Blanc which was, it appeared, already in waiting, together with Monsieur Blanc himself. Monsieur Blanc was the local miller, and solely for the purpose of showing the village to a stranger from England he had put himself to all this trouble. After we had all bowed to one another and exchanged compliments, we started for the maple wood, and all the way the notaire explained to me the economy of the village. It appeared that the farms round averaged eighty acres of arable land, and a man and his son would work one of that size. Each farmer would also have rights of grazing on pasture land which was held in common—not to mention his piece of maple wood. All the farmers belonged to a co-operative farmers' society, which saved much when purchasing seeds, implements, and so forth. The notaire himself was secretary of this society. I believe he was also secretary of pretty well everything that mattered, and might be regarded as the business uncle of the parish in which the curé was spiritual father. As we drove along, avoiding roads as much as possible, because the fields were so much more level, he greeted everybody and everybody greeted him, stopping their field work for the purpose. Jules left hay-making to show us the shortest cut to the nearest hut; Antoine fetched the key. It was a tiny wooden shack, the one we inspected—standing in the middle of the trees—with just room in it for the heating apparatus and the boilers to boil the maple water in. The cups which are attached to the trees in the early spring, when the sap begins to run—the tapping is done high up—hung along the wooden walls. The notaire explained the whole process to me. In the spring, when all is sleet and slush and nothing can be done on the farm, the farmer and perhaps his wife come up into the wood, and tap the trees and boil the water up until the syrup is formed. It takes them days, very cold days, and they camp out in the hut, though it hardly seemed possible that there should be room for them. But it is all very healthy and pleasant, and they drink so much of the syrup, while they are working, that they usually go back to their farms very 'fat and salubrious.' So the notaire said, and he also assured me that seven years before another English visitor who spoke French very badly (he put it much more politely than that though) had come to the village in the spring, and slept in one of the huts for days, and helped make the sugar and enjoyed himself thoroughly. I told the notaire I could quite believe it and wished I had come in the spring too. I am not sure that I shall not go back in the spring some day, for the simplicity of the place was fascinating, even though the railway had come closer, and land had doubled in value, and the farmers were more scientific than they used to be and made more money, though even so—as the notaire earnestly declared—they would would never spend it on show. I remarked that the notaire, even while he was recounting these modern innovations, such as wealth, was not carried away by the glory of them as a Westerner would be. He took a simple pride in the fact that the village marched forward, but he was prouder still that it remained modest. And when we got back to the post office, he told me that what he liked best was the simplicity of it all. People used to ask him sometimes why he who spoke English and Latin and Greek, for he had been five years at college, qualifying to become a notaire, should be content to live in such a small out-of-the-way place, instead of setting up in Quebec or Montreal. They could not understand that to be one's own master, and not to be rushed hither and thither at the beck of clients, contented him, especially in a place where the farmers looked upon him as their friend, and he could play the organ in the village church. He made me understand it very well, even though his English was rusty (for I think the syrup-making Englishman had been the last he had talked with), and he had a scholarly dislike to using any but the right word, and he would sometimes bring up a dozen wrong ones and reject them, before our united efforts found the only one that conveyed his precise meaning.

I think I understood, and many times on the way back, seated behind the twenty-eight year-old horse, I said to myself, that altogether the notaire was a very fine old gentleman, and if there were many such to be found in the French Canadian villages, I hoped they would not change too soon. To make the money circulate—after the fashion of the Toronto drummer—is a virtue no doubt; but courtesy and simplicity and prudence are also virtues that not the greatest country that is yet to come will find itself able to dispense with.