Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West;
or The Experience of an Early Settler
by MAJOR STRICKLAND, C.M
EDITED BY AGNES STRICKLAND,
Author of “The Queens of England,”, etc.
And when those toils rewarding,
Broad lands at length they’ll claim,
They’ll call the new possession,
By some familiar name.
Agnes Strickland.—Historic Scenes.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty.
1853.
PREFACE.
No one can give an adequate view of the general life of a colonist, unless he has been one himself. Unless he has experienced all the various gradations of colonial existence, from that of the pioneer in the backwoods and the inhabitant of a shanty, up to the epoch of his career, when he becomes the owner, by his own exertions, of a comfortable house and well-cleared farm, affording him the comforts and many of the luxuries of civilization, he is hardly competent to write on such a subject. I have myself passed through all these grades. I have had the honour of filling many colonial appointments, such as Commissioner of the Court of Requests, and Justice of the Peace. My commission in her Majesty’s Militia, and my connection with the Canada Company, have also afforded me some opportunities of acquiring additional information. I was in the Company’s service during the early settlement of Guelph and also of Goderich, in the Huron tract. I am, therefore, as intimately acquainted with those flourishing settlements as with the townships in my own county of Peterborough.