FIREPLACE AND HOUSEHOLD EFFECTS IN USE IN UPPER CANADA IN 1813.
(By permission from the J. Ross Robertson collection.)
KITCHEN UTENSILS. UPPER CANADA, 1813.
(By permission from the J. Ross Robertson collection.)
roll it to the back side of the fire. Since matches were not then invented, the fire was something to be closely guarded, lest it might go out. But this big back-log would usually keep a fire on for some three or four days, being covered up at night with the ashes and embers that it might smoulder all the night.
Wild leeks were then used as an article of food. As soon as the snow disappeared in the spring they would be found in abundance in the forests, and were gathered as the first spring vegetable. Their unsavory smell, or that imparted to the breath of the eater thereof, seemed to be no bar to their use. When all partook of the leek not one could detect the odor from the other. Likewise the cowslip, a little later in the season, which grew in shallow ponds, furnished a dish of greens to our forefathers.
To show how difficult it was at this early day for the poor settler to obtain money, I will relate an anecdote of about 1807. Levi Annis was living at this time with his father, in the county of Durham. During the summer and fall of 1806 they had chopped and burnt a fallow of thirty-one acres, which they sowed with fall wheat. As a preparation for sowing, the land was not ploughed at all, but it was loose and leafy and ashy from the burning. The wheat was sown broadcast by hand among the stumps. It was covered by hitching a yoke of oxen to the butt end of a small tree, with the branches left hanging thereto. The oxen drew this to and fro over the fallow among the stumps, and thus covered the wheat. This was called “bushing in,” and was the first harrow used by our forefathers among the stumps. However, the fallow upon which the wheat was so brushed in produced as fine a crop of fall wheat as ever grew, falling not much below thirty bushels per acre. Now this wheat could be exchanged for store goods at will, but not for money. Levi Annis, however, took the first load of it to Bowmanville, and was told by his father that he must get $5.50 on account of the whole crop to pay his taxes, for he must have the money to pay his taxes, but the rest he would take store pay for. The merchant with whom he dealt actually refused to advance the $5.50, saying he could get all the wheat he wanted for goods. The young man had to drive to another merchant and state his deplorable case to him and his urgent need of $5.50, and that if he would advance him the money he should have the whole crop of thirty-one acres. Finally the second merchant took pity upon the young man in his dilemma and advanced the money. Thus it was with the utmost difficulty that he could get $5.50 in cash out of thirty-one acres of wheat. This shows us to-day how difficult it was for our forefathers to get money.
Most of the refugees from the United States at the time of the American Revolution of the last century, who sided with Britain, and came to Canada and this section, came by way of Niagara. This north shore of Lake Ontario was then a wilderness, with no clearing or settlements at all. Where Toronto now is was an Indian camp when some of those refugees came through and over its present site. Of course, such refugees are termed “United Empire Loyalists,” and right well they deserve the name, for many of them left lands and houses and goodly heritage in Massachusetts to come over here and live under the old flag. The Royal grants which they received were given to them ostensibly for their loyalty to the Crown, but I sometimes think that our Royal governors at those times used them as a means of peopling the country, and it would almost appear that this consideration had as much to do with the grants for loyalty as for real bona fide settlers. The United Empire Loyalists came around the head of Lake Ontario, and stopped first beside the various creeks which flow into Lake Ontario, for two reasons: one, to enable them to catch the plentiful salmon in those creeks; and the other, that they might cut marsh grass for their cattle at the marshes formed at the streams’ mouths. There was no grist-mill nearer than Kingston, and these refugees had to go in bateaux with their grists (when they had any) all this way. They skirted close along the shore, and pulled their boats up at night and slept in them. Twice per year was, for many years, the greatest number of times they would go with the grist. Rather hard lines for those who had left the comforts and civilization of the Eastern States for the wilds of Canada.