“CHAPTER VII.
“Section 1—Hereafter no person shall obtain a license for the importation of any negro or other person who shall come or be brought into this province after the passing of this Act, to be subject to the conditions of a slave; nor shall any voluntary contract of service be binding for a longer term than nine years.
“Section 2—This clause enables the present owners of slaves in their possession to retain them or bind out their children until they obtain the age of twenty-one years.
“Section 3—And in order to prevent the continuance of slavery in this province the children that shall be born of female slaves after the passing of this Act are to remain in the service of the owner of their mother until the age of twenty-five years, when they shall be discharged.
“Provided that in case any issue shall be born of such children during their servitude or after, such issue shall be entitled to all the rights and privileges of free-born subjects.”
By this simple Act of our first parliament our country was effectually rid of this pest without the shedding of a drop of blood or the expenditure of a single dollar in money. All honor to our forefathers for their wise act, and a cheer for our banner free province.
Our forefathers at this time, and long after, had no stoves in their log-houses. All cooking, as well as heating, was done by the fireplace. A crane swung on hinges into this great fireplace and could be swung out from the fire at pleasure. Attached to this crane was an iron, having notches therein, and fitting over this pendant iron rod was another shorter iron, with a link as of a chain on the end thereof. This link fitted into the notches on the first-mentioned iron. By this means the lower iron could be raised or lowered into or above the fire at pleasure. Thus our forefathers did their first cooking in Upper Canada. The corn cake, or wheaten cake, when they had it, was baked in the ashes, and wonderfully sweet old persons thought it. The fact that it was covered with some loose ashes did not detract from its sweetness, as they were soon brushed away, leaving the toothsome cake within.
The first improvement in the culinary art of our forefathers came with tin bake-ovens. These were tin trays, as it were, open on one side. They would be set before the fire-place, with the open side fronting the fire. Thus the rays of heat would be collected, and in a measure confined within the oven, and the bread or cakes within were soon nicely browned and baked. It was considered an immense stride by our forefathers when they got these bake-ovens, and for years they did not aspire to anything better.
Ovens out of doors were built by some of stones. They were generally conical in shape and open in the centre. An immense fire would be built in this out-door oven, and when burnt down to real live coals, would be all drawn out. Its stones would thus be thoroughly heated. Into the cavity in which the fire had been, the bread would be inserted and the door stopped up. Enough heat would remain in the stones to thoroughly bake at least two batches of bread. But this was done at a fearful waste of wood, which, of course, was of no account at that time. The advent of stoves changed all that, and now a fireplace of wood in an Ontario home is more a luxury than a necessity, and but few are to be found. But many of my more elderly readers will remember the huge gaping fireplaces of the past when a great “back-log,” two feet or more in diameter, would be drawn in with a horse into the house, and the horse unhitched, leaving the log before the fireplace. Once at the fireplace it was an easy matter, with handspikes, to
