In Winnipeg we appreciated the virtues of central heating, for the wind made the whole universe extraordinarily cold. Up to this I had considered central heating a stuffy subject, and I am yet not fully converted, for though there are those who say it can be controlled quite easily, I have yet to meet the superman who can do it.
All the same, steam heating has its virtues. On those cold days in Winnipeg we lived in a world that knew not draughts. It was almost a solemn joy to sit in a bath, and to feel that though half of one was in hot water, the other half was also comfortable and not the prey of every devilish current of icy air such as sports itself in those damp refrigerators, the British bathrooms. Naturally, since we are staying in a Canadian hotel of the up-to-date kind, a bathroom was attached to our bedroom as a mere matter of course. But if we had had to wander Anglicanly along corridors in search of a bathroom we should still have been draught free, for central heating deals with corridors, and stairways, and halls and lounges with one universal gesture.
Not merely in so fine an hotel as the "Royal Alexandra," but in the private houses and the "apartments" (English—"flats"), central heat and good bathrooms are items of everyday—though many Canadians burn an open fire in their sitting-rooms for the comfortable look it gives.
These things are not merely for comfort, but they are, with the hardwood floors, the mail chutes in "apartment" houses and the rest, part of the great science of labour-saving, which the whole of America practises.
One realizes the need of labour-saving when one sees in a theatre vestibule the following notice:
"ALL CHILDREN NOT LEFT WITH THE
MATRON MUST BE PAID FOR"
As nurses are rare, and servants are rare, the Americans have to organize themselves to simplify the task of housekeeping.
The "apartments" are compact and neat, arranged for easy handling. The rents are not cheap. One very pleasant little "apartment," "hired" by a newly-married couple, was made up of three rooms, a kitchen and a balcony. It was in the suburbs. The rent was thirty-five dollars a month, say eighty-four pounds a year, for a flat, which, under the same conditions (rates included) could be obtained for thirty-five pounds a year in England in pre-war days. For this, however, central heating and perpetual hot water are included. My friend told me that his electric light bill came to three dollars a month, and his gas bill (for cooking) to rather less than that. In Calgary a friend of mine had a pretty "apartment" even smaller in a suburban district, was paying about ninety-six pounds a year over all, i.e., rent, light and gas (central heating being included). Most of these "apartments" have an ice house (refrigerator) attached, blocks of ice being left on the doorstep every morning, just as the milk is left.
Winnipeg is an attractive town to live in. It has plenty of amusements, including several good theatres and music halls—fed, of course, mainly from American sources. Mrs. Walker, whose husband owns the Walker Theatre, told me that Laurence Irving and his wife acted on their stage just before sailing on the ill-fated Empress of Ireland. She went up to his dressing-room to say "Good-bye" to him, the night before he left, and in answer to her knock he suddenly appeared before her, dressed in black from head to foot, for the character he was playing that night. His appearance filled her with dread—it seemed to her, as she looked at him, that something terrible was to happen. Both Laurence Irving and his wife were, however, in excellent spirits. Canada treated them royally, and they were going back home full of optimism, confident that the play that Laurence Irving was then finishing—one dealing with Napoleon—was to prove the greatest success of their careers.
We met at Winnipeg, also, a number of the brilliant men and women journalists whose energy and brains are responsible for the many fine papers that focus in this city. We had met such companions of our own dispensation in other cities, in Ottawa, Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto and Quebec. They were not merely keen and accomplished craftsmen, but their hospitality to us was always of the most delightful generosity.