The making of a man

by W. D. Flatt

A young man with an intense love for nature, who had heard and answered the call of the wilderness, who knew the silent places, the forest giants, who associated with the birds and the rippling streams and revelled in it all, could not be content even in the little town which York was in those days. If Robert had lived to-day he would not have been content to spend his life in the heart of a city. He would have been an engineer or a surveyor or something which would have taken him out into the mountain solitudes or into the forest. He would have loved to struggle with the elements, to have studied nature’s moods and to have watched her ever-changing pictures.

“ONE MORNING A YOUTH STARTED OUT ALONG
THE MISSISSAGA TRAIL.”

Early one morning a youth, now grown to twenty-one years and more stalwart and sturdy than when we first met him, started out with a good-sized pack on his back along what was known as the Mississaga trail. In his pack was his all, a tent and an outfit to allow him to live in the forest. This was arranged so that he could make his home where night overtook him, pack up again by daylight and start on again. He wasn’t on a trapping expedition this time, however. When the lad had left his Orkney home four years before he had had a definite purpose in mind which had stayed with him steadfastly during the intervening time. The main thing he had come to Canada for was that some day he might have a home of his own and be in a position to help those whom he had left behind. His mind was filled with pictures of the log cabin he had passed on his way to Little York, and he was setting out now to search for a suitable location so that the picture might be materialized. The Mississaga trail ran westerly along the lake shore from Little York in about the same place where the Toronto to Hamilton highway now provides passage for thousands of motors. How different the scene was then, however. Nowadays we sweep along on this concrete pavement as luxuriously as in Pullman cars, at twenty to thirty miles an hour. Robert passed over the trail, which was not by any means so straight as the highway, and up and down the hills, which at that time no one ever dreamed would be smoothed up by engineers a hundred years later, slowly though steadily, all the while on the lookout for a location for his home-to-be. His ideal included several things. First of all he wanted his cabin on a height so that he could have a commanding view of the water such as had been so great a delight in his boyhood days in the far-away Orkney home. He wanted a place, too, where he could have nature’s hills and valleys—glens with the wooded giants which he had learned to look upon for protection and to furnish the fuel which he knew was so necessary in the Canadian climate. Robert’s eyes were brighter than they had been during his journey from Fort Garry a little time before. He had nothing now to worry him. His responsibilities were light. His mind was full of plans and hopes of the finest type for the future, and as, during the hours which passed he formulated further plans, his face lighted up again and again with the joys of anticipation. Again, his notice was attracted by the splendid forest trees all along the trail. He thought of the value these magnificent trees would show if they could only be taken across the sea. Little did he imagine, however, that years afterward his own son would be engaged in just such a business, having these knights of the forest cut, dressed and transported to his father’s old home. Perhaps reasons which Robert did not appreciate and which he could not understand were driving him through the forest trails. The ordinary young man would have wanted to stay in the town where such life and liveliness as were known in the new country were evident. Robert had liked life in Little York, some of which appealed to him very strongly. For instance, he had not seen a white woman since he had left his Orkney home until he walked around the streets of the village the day after his arrival. It had been a pleasant experience to associate with good men and women who talked his own language and who liked to converse about matters he was familiar with across the sea, but underneath his longing for the comforts and pleasures these conditions offered there lay a spirit and a longing which drove him unwittingly out on the trail.

“HE COOKED HIS SUPPER OVER THE FIRE.”

As he passed along he occasionally met Indians. These seemed better men physically than those he had known in the West, but their dialect was entirely different and they were not able to understand him when he tried to speak to them. He wanted to know the conditions of the country, whether there were settlers ahead of him, where the type of location he had in mind was likely to be met with; and when he kindled a fire, after pitching his tiny tent, and stood looking into the coals, after his plain and humble supper had been prepared and eaten, when the thoughts of his ideal cabin and his prospective home occurred to him, he seemed to see dancing in the shadows a girlish figure beckoning him on. With this came pictures again of the interior of the cabin, with a warm fireplace where he could sit during the long winter nights and where happiness would be supreme, where the maiden would be the queen of the home and where he would be the king. So engaged was he with these thoughts that he did not notice the fire was dying down until the howling of wolves was heard around him, and with this the snarling of the wild cats. Quickly the fire was kindled anew, and with his feet toward the blaze he lay down to enjoy pleasant dreams.

In the morning, as he passed along the trail, he began to come into pleasing sections, and here and there he cleared away the snow between the trees and chopped into the freezing earth to examine its quality. He was in no hurry, because when he had located and erected his cabin he wanted to be finally satisfied. However, he knew from the size of the timber and the abundance of the forest growth that the land where he was standing would, if cleared, grow splendid, golden grain. Occasionally, too, he saw another cabin, which told him that pioneers were selecting locations in the district. As the trail approached the lake he saw log cabins on the other side of a clearing, and looking over the tops of the trees from a hill he noted a sweep of sand across a narrow section of the lake, with a good-sized bay beyond it. He was gazing for the first time at what we now know as Burlington Bay. He liked the situation, perhaps for one reason because it was more like his Orkney home than any part of the country he had travelled previously. He decided that somewhere in the district would be the ideal spot for his home and for a time, because he wanted to be careful and satisfied about it, he scouted through the district. As he went a little further west he discovered a section of rolling land, of hill and dale, very much like his island home in the Orkneys. Climbing one of the higher hills he found a commanding view of the bay and also found a spot where a cabin could be built amid the beauties of the forest. Amid the silence the ripple of water came to his ears, and walking a little distance down the hill he came to a spring of pure water rising out of the earth as cold and clear as crystal, so that even the winter’s frost could not prevent it flowing freely. He was satisfied. He knew in a moment that his search was over. He had discovered his idea for the future, for the home of the queen of his dreams.

Next morning Robert lost no time in beginning to carry out the practical part of his dream, and here again was put in practice some of the training he had received in the wilderness in the Hudson’s Bay Company’s employ. He selected a score or more of the forest giants in the vicinity and went to work to fell them. During his short stay in Little York he had made himself familiar with the principles used in building these useful log homes and consequently knew exactly what to do. For two or three weeks he was engaged in squaring the logs and cutting them to the proper lengths, and finally, after having made arrangements with a few of the nearest settlers, he was able to get his home together. Robert had a bigger outlook than the ordinary settler of that day. For instance, his cabin was built twenty by thirty feet, which was considerably larger than those which were usually erected. He made it one and a half stories in height and provided for a living-room with two comfortable bedrooms on the first floor. Needless to say, he did not forget the fireplace in one end of the living-room, and as this was constructed he saw pictures of the splendid fires that would be found there in the future and which would cast a cheerful glow throughout the cabin. Again, other settlers had been satisfied to build their homes from the timber most convenient. Robert had chosen for his walls oak logs and the roof was covered with shingles of split oak. Through all this he thought of the queen of the home he had not yet met, who in the future was to occupy this cabin home with him. Day after day he continued to work. Every crack was carefully chinked. The log floor was hewn as smooth as hard muscle and skill could make it. He remembered that someone else would have to keep this floor clean in the days to come, and he wanted it as smooth as possible so that this duty would be light.

The home itself finished, his attention was turned to the preparation of furniture, for in those days the pioneer had no opportunity of sending an order to the departmental store for everything he wanted.