It is but a step from the Markets of Quebec to the markets of Ontario in a matter of miles, but in atmosphere you step from Old France to Old England.
Here in Kingston or Brantford is the old Market Hall that might be in Nottingham or Newark or any other English market-town. And here the market-men are of the English type—Old-Country fellows or United Empire Loyalists. Here is the canvas-covered farm-wagon looking like the spiritual ancestress of the prairie schooner. There is a change from women to men as salesmen. There is not the customary tumultuous chatter of the French. But there is more sunlight, more massed dashes of cadmium, larger splashes of greens, reds, and purples thrown out by the Ontario peaches, cucumbers and watermelons, netted baskets of tomatoes, grapes of the Peninsula Vineyards.
CHAPTER XXII.
ONTARIO.
NTARIO is so modern, and, to use a popular term, “up-to-date”, that some years ago we were told by Torontonian after Torontonian that if we were on the quest of the romantic we would not find it in Ontario.
We did not know what to make of it at the time, having in mind a number of quaint old field-stone houses which we had seen along the road from the car window in coming through from Montreal.
About these houses there was that certain unmistakable “something” which for lack of a better word is called “atmosphere”. “Atmosphere and story” just seemed to radiate from all their old windows.
I see yet, the picture made by their old, yellow-brown stone sides and their steep roofs; all, in a clump of Lombardy poplars and smooth, rolling fields, with here an apple orchard, and here a sprinkling of sheep grazing on the rounded knolls, and cows standing with feet in the brook.
Then I tried to make my Toronto friends see those old stone-houses. “U-u-mph,” they said, “but they’re damp.”