Life in Canada

by Thomas Conant

In barley and marrowfat peas we have a monopoly. On account of the money we get for the clover-seed itself we are again ahead of them, and are more than ahead of them in raising horses and cattle, which feed upon our clover. There is something in our climate, soil and feed which produces horses large and strong, which are ahead of the West by far. Hence the westerners continually buy from us to get our stock.

To prove that wheat does not pay, I will instance that the rent of land in Ontario County is usually $5.00 per acre. No matter if one owns his own farm, it is worth that as well. Seed, again, is worth $2.00 per acre for wheat, and the cultivation and harvesting is worth another $7.00 per acre, making the acre of wheat cost $14 per acre. Now, at an average yield of twenty-five bushels per acre, and this sold at 75 cents per bushel, it yields $18.75 per acre, or only $4.75 more than the crop cost. It’s no pay, and there’s no other way to look at it, and hereafter we ought to raise wheat enough only for our own use, as long as it’s such a drug on the market, especially so when we can do much better with peas, barley, cattle and horses. Let those interested ponder over this point.

It might be thought that we shall raise too much clover-seed for the market. It is used as a dye in Great Britain for certain cloths, we are told, and all of our seed is not sown. Hence it is hardly probable we shall produce too much. In the matter of peas, we have never yet produced more marrowfat peas than Europe will take from us. Recollect, but few other countries can produce marrowfat peas. Some places have the bug and mildew, and can’t grow the peas at all, and we have this crop almost to ourselves. Barley, it seems, the Americans will buy from us as long as we grow it, for it’s the best. And in fruit we all know we can produce the best keepers in the world, so that our outlook in Ontario is bright for the future.

When July comes some portions of our province sometimes suffer slightly from drouth. Seldom, however, has the drouth been severe enough to cause anything like a failure in crops, although late sown crops here and there have been occasionally light. This, however, is not so general as to apply to the whole province, for in some sections you may see that our fields never smile more sweetly upon us than they do at this season. In July fall wheat is just turning and beginning to look like fields of gold. In spots in the fields the wheat has been winter-killed, and many pieces are ploughed up entirely. Looking over those fields which were ploughed up and sowed with some spring crop, they present a rather odd appearance, for the vitality of the fall wheat is so great that in many places the ploughing did not kill it, and consequently we see tufts of great tall heads of fall wheat now ripening among the still green and much shorter crop of spring grain. Those who are not familiar with fall wheat could scarcely get an idea how it occurs that fall wheat can be ripening in and among a spring crop, quite green as yet.

Barley in July is in full head and just commencing to turn yellow. Fields upon fields of this grain are passed as one drives on our highways. Those who have not driven much upon our roads, and closely observed, can scarcely believe how general the barley crop is in Ontario at this season. Almost invariably it is looking well, and if it be not as a whole an extremely heavy crop, yet it will be a paying one, and one we must grow. Laying aside all matters of temperance and Scott Act, ours is a barley country, and barley we must grow. Peas are now mostly in full blow, and are rank and of the deepest green. A more luxuriant growth than our pea crop in most seasons cannot be found in any country. If you would judge of the unsurpassed fertility of our soils, just go and see our pea crops. Ontario alone can furnish the soup basis for all the navies of the world.

Our spring wheat is just now putting forth its ear. Oats are just beginning to head. The drouth seems to have affected oats more than any other crop so far. They may, however, if we get some rains, head up heavy, but in any event the straw will be rather short.

We live in a garden here in Ontario. No one who drives about our roads can come to any other conclusion. There are no blanks, and but little broken land; but few swamps, and scarcely a break. Only a few days ago I drove twelve miles without passing a hill higher than forty feet, or seeing an acre of broken land; just one mass of green in the fields. There was positively not one foot of broken land for the whole twelve miles, and I feel that I have a right to say that we live in a garden. Those who are at home most of the time do not realize that they are living under the most favorable conditions in the world. During a lot of travel in every State of the American Union, I have never yet seen anything over there to approach our own country. Of course, out West one can traverse miles upon miles of corn fields, but it’s all corn; but here it’s a general variety, which is so pleasant to the eye, and which also brings in our great returns. And our fruits are upon every hand, from the grape to the strawberry, to the apple and pear, and all succeeding. The only parallel that I ever saw to Ontario is in the plains of Hungary, say, about Buda-Pesth. There is a country very much resembling Ontario, but, of course, not anything like it in size. It was from this locality that we got our present roller process of making flour. I am only making this comparison with Hungary to let our Ontarians know that we have, in truth, the finest country in this world, that we may all be spurred on to cultivate our lands better, for we are only yet in our infancy. Let us all realize that our lands never refuse, when properly cultivated, to produce anything which will grow in the north temperate zone. Famed Geneva or Leman cannot surpass our beautiful Lake Ontario; and then as to size and extent, there’s no comparison to be made. And yet it is beautiful around Lake Leman, and locations along its shores are much sought by all Europe, and command unheard-of prices. Our shore is just as beautiful, and our waters just as limpid and just as cool. About Constantinople is the only other place I can name as being at all worthy of comparison with our Lakes Ontario and Erie shore for residences. Now, it is beautiful about the Bosphorus, and charming beyond measure, and Constantinople must always be a great city, no matter who possesses it. Yet, somehow, just a little digressing, we would all like to see Britain owning it, but Russia never. Then, I say, about Lake Leman and the Bosphorus are the only parallels to our places and resorts along these north shores of our Great Lakes. On the whole, the north shore of Lake Ontario has the preference, for it’s never so hot here at any time as it is about Geneva or Constantinople. We have in Ontario great inland, fresh-water seas, having pure, limpid waters, and a soil which will discount any in the world beside them, and an equable climate. If it does get warm for a day or two, it never remains too uncomfortably so for long, and our evenings are generally cool and pleasant from the lake breezes. Going down into a cellar like the Dakotans to escape hot breezes, which there become insufferable, we never think of. Already along the north shore of Lake Ontario, from Niagara to Kingston, our people gather during the summer months by thousands. Between Hamilton and Toronto, and down as far as Belleville, there are hundreds of summering camps. As one passes along the roads near the lake one sees thousands upon thousands of ladies dressed in white, and gentlemen in shirt-sleeves sporting in the groves, on the green along the shores, or boating about bays and inlets.

People dot the landscape for a couple of hundred miles, and flit to and fro among the leafy bowers. It would, indeed, be hard to find a prettier sight than that of our people summering along the lake banks these July days. While other persons south of us, over in Uncle Sam’s dominions, are sweltering with the thermometer at 104° in the shade, our people are pleasantly cool along our northern lake shores. The consequence is that summer heats do not deplete us. Saffron yellow faces, with high protruding cheek bones, accompanied by dark circles under the eyes, such as are found in hot districts where the thermometer will persist in getting up to 104° and staying there, we know not of at all. Ontarians are a plump, well-developed people, and have, as a rule, fair complexions and good skins. Our ladies are just stout enough to be attractive under these conditions, and developing their physique as they do along our lakes, by picnicking and rowing and games, are the peers of any in the world. Yea! to make a quick and perhaps unseemly comparison, I wish to say that the same causes and the same equable cool temperature which cause our ladies’ cheeks to burnish red and brown, produce for us in our fields the finest barley in the world and the best peas. So Nature has been prodigal to us in her gifts. About Toronto, of course, the greater population centres, and within a radius of thirty miles or so, along the lake on either side, the greater number of summer saunterers are to be seen. As Toronto gets on up to a quarter of a million of inhabitants, as it must, all available points upon the lake shores will be seized upon for outing for its citizens. The day, moreover, must be far distant when we shall be much crowded for space along the lake banks. But it does not need a very far-seeing prophet to see that a dense population must centre in Ontario along our lakes. Think what it was, and you will conclude that rapid as our progress has been, for the next twenty-five or thirty years our progress and increase in population will be five-fold what it was in the past twenty-five or thirty years. Ontarians need not go to Cacouna, or Murray Bay, or anywhere else for a summering. We can do better at home along our own waters. As time goes on we must get more and more of our American cousins from the region of 104° in the shade to come and summer with us. Ontario, in fact, must ultimately be the great summer resort of this continent. Take the readings of the thermometer in Toronto alone, and you will find that it possesses the most equable climate of any city in America east of the Rocky Mountains; and beautiful, and clear, and healthy as it is, it must be, as it now is, and far more so, the great metropolitan city of our country. Ontarians, let us cherish our homes and our birthrights.

As the fall season comes to us in Ontario the result of the last summer’s bountifulness is visibly apparent. On every side the steady, unremitting drone or hum of the threshing-machines daily falls upon the ear, and well we know that for every hour the thresher runs, bushels upon bushels of grain are being gathered into the farmers’ granaries. Dust-begrimed, sweaty men, with forks in hand, are all the time endeavoring to stop its spacious maw, but never succeeding, for its capacity of digestion is inexorable, and after each forkful it is quite as ready again for another, and so the work goes on by the hour (and the hum comes to the listener two miles away, on the wind), giving the husbandman an abundance for the season. There is scarcely a cessation until the noon hour arrives, when the shrill, ambitious scream of the piping engine which furnishes the motive power gives the welcome warning that dinner is ready. The noon hour past, again a scream from the ambitious engine, as if it would try to be entered among the fellowship of its greater brother engines in our manufactories and upon our railways. With their shirts half dry the farmers again tend to the machine’s voracious maw, knowing full well that it’s only a question of a few minutes, when the increased perspiration will wet them as fully as before.