Life in Canada

by Thomas Conant

Already Michigan has much of its lands parcelled out in 40-acre farms, and if Ontario land gets divided into smaller holdings, so that the maximum of her farms is less than 100 acres, it will support double its present population. This calls to my mind what I have seen in Germany. The lands along the Rhine River were originally surveyed facing the river with a narrow frontage, and running back a long distance, in some instances as much as a mile. Upon the death of the farmer his narrow strip is equally divided lengthwise among his several sons. These are again divided among his sons in their turn. It is not uncommon, as the result of such divisions, to see a strip of land on the Rhine only six rods wide and a mile long. This shows the reader how it comes that Germany is so densely populated. Again, the area of United Germany is near 210,000 square miles, and it supports a population of at least forty millions of people. Ontario has at least half as much more surface, and is only supporting two millions to-day. As to the comparative quantities of waste land and productiveness between us and Germany, Germany is scarcely fit to be compared with us at all, and Ontario has many millions of acres to be brought under cultivation yet, and these added to the smaller farms will soon double our population. Horace Greeley said on 100 acres two men were enough; on 50, four men; on 25, eight men. Without a doubt our fertile soil will quickly be densely populated and every rood cultivated. Investments to-day are as safe in Ontario as in any quarter of the globe, and its farm lands will rise as the population increases.

Some years ago the Century Magazine published a beautifully illustrated article on “Canada as a Winter Resort.” This magazine is widely circulated, and the publishers boasted that they had printed 180,000 copies of that particular number, which was, of course, widely read in Europe. Now, this article was all about snowshoes, toboggans, toques and ice-palaces, and would lead the stranger to infer that Canada is a land of snow and ice. The premises are false, so far as Ontario is concerned, and no one would think of building a snow-palace in Toronto, because during the days required for its construction a thaw would probably occur, which would demolish the ice-palace faster than it was ever built. Out of two millions in Ontario, I think I am safe in asserting that not more than 5,000 of its inhabitants ever stepped upon a snowshoe. As to toques and toboggans, they are scarcely thought of. Our youngsters do some coasting down the hill-sides when we have some snow, and this is the extent of our tobogganing. It is undeniable that we do have some cold weather in Ontario, but such periods are only for a few days, and are invariably followed by mild weather. The four feet of snow on the level, which they consider the proper thing for Quebec and the Maritime Provinces, we know not of in Ontario. Our farmers were ploughing on the 10th of December next before the appearance of the article referred to, and this is not unusual; generally the farmers do not take up their turnips before the middle of November. It is usual for us to have some frost, and perhaps a little snow about the Christmas holidays, and during January we look for our sleighing, if we are to get any, for the season. But even during this midwinter month a thaw is almost certain to take place, and generally clears off the snow, and during this particular January the ponds of water were all open. A small chance, then, for an ice-palace. During February the cold is not so intense, for the days have become longer, and it will almost invariably thaw during the middle of most February days. The month of March is, by all means, the most disagreeable month in Ontario, not on account of its cold, but because it is windy and blustery. Our snow, if we get any in this month, usually drifts at the fences and impedes trade. In April we get freezing nights and thawing days, so that the hubs frozen during the preceding night turn to mud. Some farmers sow in April on land prepared in the fall. It may be that the frost is not quite out of the soil down below the surface, but if the Ontario farmer can get enough loose soil to kindly cover his wheat, he can sow without fear. May is our general seeding month for lands not prepared previously and sown in April. But little chance, the reader will note, for an ice-palace in Ontario.

Without a doubt, the fact that Ontario is surrounded by the immense lakes gives it its exceptionally mild climate. The isothermal line drawn through central Ontario passes through the centre of France and the southern part of Germany. No one thinks of speaking of France as a land of snow and ice, and no more should Ontario be put in that class. Montreal may, no doubt, get tourists sometimes in the winter by means of an ice-palace, and it pays her; but for the impression to get abroad that ice-palaces and snowshoes and the like are the rule in Canada is calculated to do us harm. The emigrant who is perhaps debating in his mind whether he will emigrate to Canada or Australia, is quite likely to choose the latter country if he thinks he must needs learn snow-shoeing as perhaps the first element to success in Canada. We are glad to have our Governor-General and staff at Ottawa enjoy themselves tobogganing down the artificially-made slide of boards and scantling near Rideau Hall, and no doubt the ladies do look attractive by the glare of torches, dressed in blanket cloaks, toques, fezzes, and the like. Such peculiarities, however, do not add to the wealth of our country. The Ontario farmer during these winter months is making manure by feeding his cattle, and drawing it out in heaps upon his land. He is busy, and is every day adding to the productiveness of his lands. He utilizes the snow in getting some rails or posts for his fences, and does not hibernate or fritter away his time. During the few exceptionally cold days he may stay by the fireside, but generally he is thoroughly busy preparing for the coming summer, and there is plenty of work for him to do. While the Quebec farmer passes his time in indolence, the Ontario farmer is daily adding to the cash value of his property and also to its productiveness. When summer does come we find that Ontario far outstrips Quebec in the quantity of grain grown per acre and also in the total quantity produced. And yet Quebec was well settled when Ontario was a howling wilderness.

Now, if the people of Ontario were spending their winters, when not hibernating, in tramping on snowshoes or riding down declivities on toboggans, then might such sport be considered peculiarly applicable to us. To show unmistakably the great difference between the Quebec peasant, who hibernates during the winter, and the Ontario farmer, who works at the same time, look at the effort the Ontario farmer makes to rot his straw, while in many parts of Quebec straw is carefully guarded and husbanded. In Ontario it is the constant effort to get it all used up and made into manure. If we get too much open winter in Ontario, the farmer has as much as he can possibly do to get his straw worked down, because the cattle do not use up enough of it. Hence we frequently see large stacks of straw left over. In this part of Ontario it is more a question how to get the straw rotted than it is how to save it. Then, drawing the comparison between us and the land of toques, where straw is sparingly produced on soils not well farmed, and what do we want with any of that toque and snowshoe business!

Mr. Grant Allen, the eminent writer, who, although born here, was an Englishman by residence and education, having revisited Canada and the United States after an absence of eleven years, took occasion some years since to give utterance to some remarks on our country in the Pall Mall Gazette. His remarks should never have been allowed to pass unchallenged. I cannot go into the matter very fully for fear of too great length, but I must needs touch on the more salient points, and it will be necessary for me to inscribe Mr. Allen’s words here and there as a text for my remarks. He says: “Looking at America with a geological eye, I was impressed as I had never been before with the enormous extent to which the country has suffered from the ice-sheets of the glacial period.” And after making this remark he goes on to say that England has suffered less from this great cause. Now, this remark of his refers to Canada and the United States indiscriminately, and without a doubt it is true to the letter. While I accept the statement as true, I at the same time want very distinctly to qualify it so far as Ontario is concerned. Ontario has measurably suffered from the glacial action, but it has as a whole suffered far less than any one of the other provinces or any of the northern United States, taken as a whole. I am referring to old Ontario alone, and not the new portion lately acquired to the west. Take old Ontario: The moraines have been frequent enough to give us the most alluvial soil of any country of like extent on the habitable globe. This remark does not apply to the more northerly portion of our province, which is as yet but little occupied, for we cannot controvert the fact that this portion did suffer sadly.

Mr. Allen evidently did not know Ontario well enough, or he would have excepted from his general remark the garden of the world. In a former chapter I made the remark that if a line be drawn from Belleville to the Georgian Bay, all that part of Ontario west of that line contains the most alluvial land and the richest of any in the world, with the fewest breaks and the least waste land. My own observation, begot by travel and reading as well, gives me the courage to fearlessly make this remark unqualified.

Mr. Allen goes on to say: “In the valleys there is soil enough, but even there the ice has worked almost as much mischief as it has done on the hill-sides, by heaping up and mixing in a most heart-breaking way enormous masses of boulders, which are almost the despair of the agriculturist.” Now, this remark is true, but sweeping as it is, still I must again except our own portion of Ontario, where there are no “heart-breaking, enormous masses of boulders.” New York and Pennsylvania would come in for a place under this remark, for those who have given the subject much thought and observation have seen that those two States do possess a vast amount of waste land, and even their best alluvial lands are in no sense equal to ours. To forcibly illustrate: A New Englander came to this locality about 1820, and settled on an excellent farm. During the troubles of the rebellion, he felt annoyed at the troubles some ultra-Loyalists gave him on account of his American origin, sold out, moved to Pennsylvania and bought a farm there. A neighbor here went down to see the old man just before his death, when he told his boys in the neighbor’s presence, that they must sell out and get back to Ontario. And he was a pushing man and located on an average Pennsylvania farm.

“America bears an immense harvest, yet the immensity of the harvest only corresponds to the immensity of the area from which it is reaped. Acre for acre, the Old World yields heavier crops than the New,” again says Mr. Allen.

In regard to our immense annual crop in America it is true that it is really garnered from a tract as big as all Europe. Then, since America has not a population to consume its crop, even if the crop be a light one and the yield per acre low, we in America must annually have an immense surplus, and America is looked upon as the granary of the world. This fact alone establishes my exception in Ontario’s favor from Mr. Allen’s remark, and I feel that I need not say more on this point. But let the Old World recollect that America is yet in its infancy, and when we begin to approach the Old World in density of population, and work our lands better, in spite of the “heart-breaking” boulders, America will surprise the world and prove to it that it is only beginning to do what it can. That it is capable of feeding the whole world there isn’t a doubt, and we want no doctrine of Malthus among us at all. I do believe it is true, acre for acre, the Old World is ahead of us. And yet we have in places soils which would put anything the Old World can produce to scorn, even if we cannot apply the remark generally. It must be recollected that Europe has been drained and its waste places reclaimed, and but few of ours have, so that we have America just as nature gave it to us. Fortunately in Ontario we have but few wastes to reclaim, for, as I have said before, it is the garden of the whole. The only parallel that I ever saw in the Old World to compare with Ontario is in Hungary, which very much resembles our country. Then, again, as to extent, Hungary is nowhere when compared with us. As to remarks about the hard life of farmers in America, it may be to some extent true. Especially is it true for the women; want of domestic help is the trouble, and for the present we cannot remedy this evil until our population becomes greater. Would that Miss Rye and others would send us out more girls.