Pictures of Canadian Life: A Record of Actual Experiences

I am sorry to say, as regards some of the better class of emigrants, the long delay at Quebec gave them an opportunity of getting drunk, of which they seemed gladly to have availed themselves. The future of some of these young fellows it is not difficult to predict. In a little while they will have exhausted their resources, and will return home disgusted with Canada, and swearing that it is impossible to get a living there. There was no need for them to go to an hotel at all. In the yard there was a capital shed fitted up for refreshments. I had there a plate of good ham, bread-and-butter and jam, and as much good tea as I wanted – all for a shilling. It was a boon indeed to the emigrants we had landed from the Sarnia to find such a place at their disposal.

As to myself, I need not assure you I was glad enough to find myself in a Pullman car, bound for Montreal. I shed no tears as we left Quebec far behind, and glided on under a cloudless, moonlit sky, serenaded by those Canadian nightingales, the frogs. At first I felt a little difficulty in retiring to rest. As a modest man, I was inclined to object to the presence of so many ladies, although we had been on the best of terms during our voyage out. It is true that they had their husbands with them, but nevertheless I felt uncomfortable, and vowed I would retreat to the smoking-room. However, I was over-persuaded, and lay down with the rest; though more than once that eventful night I was awoke by awful sounds, reminding me rather of the hoarse roar of the Atlantic in a storm than of the peaceful slumbers of a Pullman car.

CHAPTER IV.

AT MONTREAL, AND ON TO OTTAWA – INTERVIEWING AND INTERVIEWED

One discovery I have made since I have been here is that Canada has its clouded skies and its rainy days, and that a Canadian spring may be quite as ungenial as an English one. Yet it is, I still see, the country for a working man. And I write this in full knowledge of the fact that here at Montreal the charitable, on whom the poor depend – for there is no poor-law in this country, and let us hope, seeing what mischief has been done by poor-laws, there may never be one – have been sorely exercised this winter how to feed the hungry, and to clothe the naked, and to find the outcast a home. But, mind you, I only recommend the place for the poor agricultural labourer or artisan; and already I find the larger portion of such who have come out with me are in full work, and are thankful that they have come, but they had to take anything that was offered. It is clear this is not the country for clerks and shop-lads, and the secretary of the Young Men’s Christian Association – which I find here to be a flourishing institution – writes:

‘Young men are coming by each steamer. Many of them are introduced to us with excellent recommendations, and have occupied good positions in England. Some have left their situations on the representation of railway and steamboat agents as to the opportunities in this country. We find it absolutely impossible to secure employment for them in many cases, business in every department has been so dull. Almost all the houses have been employing hands that they could dispense with. Reports from the West show the market glutted as bad as in Montreal.’ And I fear things have not improved since.

It is cruel to get such young men out of England. They are worse off here than they would be at home. It is curious to note, in connection with emigration, the evident desire of the educated mechanic to keep his rivals out. ‘By all means bid them stop at home,’ he cries, ‘or wages will be lower in the colonies.’ Already I have been interviewed by a working-class official here, and that is his cry. And I give it for what it may be worth, merely remarking that such illustrations as he gave in support of his views turned out to be the merest moonshine.

Now let me speak of Montreal, which I entered with pleasure, and leave with regret. It is the chief city of Canada, and is built on the northern bank of the St. Lawrence, where the muddy Ottawa, after a course of 600 miles, debouches into it. You arrive by a grand railway bridge, which is one of the wonders of this part of the world. The population is nearly 200,000, of which two-thirds are French or Irish, and Roman Catholic. It abounds with every sign of prosperity, and, as a city, would be a credit to the old country. The river front is lined with steamers loading for England. The principal thoroughfares contain lofty buildings, and shops as spacious as any of our best, whilst its hotels altogether throw ours into the shade; and then, in the suburbs the merchants live in palaces, whilst handsome churches attest the wealth, if not the piety, of all classes of the population. I fear Mammon worship is the prevailing form of idolatry, yet I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that the early settlement of the place was the result of religious enthusiasm, and that it was an attempt to found in America a veritable kingdom of God as understood by the Roman Catholics; but all that is past, and the chief topics of interest are the prices of pork, or the state of the market as regards butter and cheese. Let me remind you that such is the goodness of the cheese of Canada, all made in factories, that nearly as much cheese finds its way into the English market from Montreal as from New York.

One thing especially strikes me, and that is the muscular character of the young men. Montreal is a great place for athletes. Montreal has hundreds of such, as it is not only a centre of commerce, but the most important manufacturing city in the Dominion – 3,000 hands are employed in the manufacture of boots and shoes. Then there are here the largest sugar refineries and cotton mills and silk and cloth factories in Canada, and the result is that, as these factories are nursed by Protection, the towns are unnaturally crowded, and the people all over the country have to pay high prices for inferior articles, and the Canadians, who ought to be making cheese and butter, and growing corn for the artisans of Lancashire, are doing all they can to reduce their best and most natural customers to a state of starvation. ‘It is a shame,’ said a Canadian manufacturer to me, only in language a little more emphatic, ‘that England allows any of her colonies to put prohibitory duties on British products.’ And I quite agree with my friend that it is a shame. However, as long as the present Canadian Government are in power, there is no chance of Free Trade. It was the Protection cry that placed the Conservatives in power. With so many French as there are in Canada, vainly dreaming of a restoration of French rule, it is idle to talk of the interests of the mother country. Nor does Great Britain deserve very well of the Canadians. Up to almost the present time it has held them to be of little account, and, as we all know, it is not so very long since it suffered Brother Jonathan to annex that part of Maine in which Portland is situated, and thus to deprive Canada of its only winter harbour.

For one thing Montreal is to be highly commended, and that is on account of its hotels. The Windsor Hotel, in Dominion Square, is one of the finest hotels in America, and as you enter you are quite bewildered at the magnificence of the entrance-hall. A curious thing happened to me there. Mr. Hoyle and Mr. Barker, of the U.K. Alliance, had come there after a pilgrimage in the States, and it was determined to give them a reception. I had a ticket, and went for about an hour, chatting pleasantly with readers, who had known me by repute, and were glad to shake hands with me. Imagine my horror when, in the next morning’s paper, I read that the reception had been got up by Temperance friends for me, as well as Messrs. Hoyle and Barker, and that my humble name figured first on the list. Perhaps this was meant as a consolation to me. I had been interviewed on the previous day, and the papers had spoken of me in such complimentary terms that I felt almost a lion.

Alas! in America interviewing is quite a common-place affair, and it gives no éclat to be interviewed. People sat smoking in the hall as I passed, utterly unconscious of the fact. Yet the reporters did their best. One of them called after I was gone to bed. He said he was not going to be scooped out by the other fellow, whatever that may mean. Virtue in his case was not rewarded. I kept to my bed, and left the enterprising reporter to do the best he could.

I ought to say a word of the hotel at which I stopped – the Lawrence Hall, in James’s Street – which I strongly recommend to all, especially to such of my friends as may be contemplating a visit to Montreal. The bedrooms are beautifully clean, the cooking is excellent, and the service is admirable. It enjoys a tremendous amount of support. I was there just forty-eight hours, and I counted as many as two hundred names of arrivals after me, and yet, in spite of the crowd, there was ample accommodation for all, and I and my friends dined as comfortably and quietly as if we had been at home. The proprietor, Mr. Hogan, is a gentleman with whom it is a pleasure to converse. Nor are his charges high.

It is a sight to sit in the hall and watch the ever-shifting crowd, or to stray into the shaving apartment, where a dozen barbers are always hard at work. I own I became a victim, and paid a shilling for a performance which in London only costs me sixpence; but in London I simply have my hair cut, here I was under the care of a ‘professional artist.’ I quote his card: ‘Physiognomical hairdresser, facial operator, cranium manipulator, and capillary abridger.’ I could not think of offering so distinguished a professor less than a shilling. But the fact is, you can’t travel cheaply either in Canada or the United States.

It goes sadly against the grain to pay fivepence for having one’s boots blacked, and the way in which your change is doled out to you is not pleasant, and adds materially to the difficulties of the situation. For instance, I had a certain American coin the other day pressed into my reluctant hands on the express understanding that it was to go for ten cents. I paid it to a ferryman, who said it was only worth eight, and then, on that supposition, he managed to cheat me; and I had to appeal to a friend of mine, who told me that I had not the right change, before I could get the man to give me my due; directly, however, the mistake was pointed out he rectified it, thus acknowledging, in the most barefaced manner, his attempt to cheat; and the beauty of it was, I was with a great man of the place, who witnessed the whole transaction, and never said a word, apparently looking upon it as a matter of course.

I fear there is a good deal of villainy in the world, and that it is not confined to America. Travellers are bound to be victimised, and the best thing you can do is to laugh. I own I did so at Liverpool the other day, as I was waiting for the tugboat to take me off to the Sarnia. I knew that I had not made a mistake, I knew that the tug was sure to come; yet four big hulking fellows with brazen faces would have made me believe that I was too late for the tug, and that my only chance of getting on board was for me to let them row me out. In that case the attempt was the more rascally, as from a small row-boat I could never have boarded the Sarnia had I tried. Yet there they stood – sullen and expectant – for a quarter of an hour, taking me, possibly, for a bigger fool even than I look.

‘It is a pity,’ said a Canadian lady to me, ‘that Queen Victoria’ – for whom all Canada prays that long may she reign over us, happy and glorious – ‘fixed upon Ottawa as the site of the Government.’

I am very much inclined to a similar feeling. At Montreal the change of water affected me very disagreeably. At Ottawa I was completely floored. It is a curious fact that almost everyone who goes to Ottawa is taken ill. I was complaining of my first terrible night to Sir Leonard Tilley, the Finance Minister, and he said that when he first came to Ottawa it was the same with him.

A lady told me that Lady Tupper, who has just left the Colony for England, where, it is said, her lord and master hopes to find a seat in the Imperial Parliament – a consummation devoutly to be wished, as to my mind it is clear that all our colonies should have representatives in Parliament – made a similar complaint as to the effect of the place on her children, and I have it on the best authority that scarcely a session passes but an M.P. pays the penalty of a residence in Ottawa.

In my case I was preserved, as the man in the ‘Arabian Nights’ says, for the greater misfortunes yet to befall me by the use of Dr. Browne’s far-famed ‘Chlorodyne’ – an indispensable requisite, I am bound to say, when an emigrant takes his trial trip to Canada. I know not who is the inventor – I believe it is what we call a patent medicine – that is, a medicine not sanctioned by the faculty – but, as has been observed of the Pickwick pen, it is indeed a boon and a blessing to men. I used ‘Chlorodyne,’ and was soon all right. Sir Leonard Tilley told me he did the same, and no one should go to Ottawa without having a small bottle of it in his carpet-bag.

Yet Ottawa is not without a certain freshness of beauty that one associates primâ facie with perfect health. The stately Government buildings, all of grey stone, are placed on a hill, whence you have a peerless view of river and country and distant hill, and far away forests all around. A more picturesque site it would be assuredly most difficult to find. As to the town itself, it is a curious compound – almost Irish in that respect – of splendour and meanness. There are magnificent shops – and then you come to wooden shanties, which in such a city ought long ere this to have been improved off the face of the earth. If on a rainy day, unless very careful, you attempt to cross the streets, you are in danger of sticking in the mud, which no one seems to ever think of removing, and in many parts there are disgraceful holes in the plank pavement on which you walk, which are dangerous, especially to the aged and infirm.

In Ottawa the contrasts are more violent than I have seen elsewhere. Everyone comes to the place. It is the headquarters of the Dominion. I met there statesmen, adventurers, wild men of the woods, or prairie, deputies from Manitoba, lawyers from Quebec, sharpers and honest men, all staying at one hotel; and it seemed strange to sit at dinner and see great rough fellows, with the manners of ploughmen, quaffing their costly champagne, and fancying themselves patterns of gentility and taste. In one thing they disappointed me. Sir Charles Tupper was to leave for England, and his admirers met outside the hotel to see him off. There was a carriage and four to convey him to the station, and other carriages followed. There was a military band in attendance, much to the disgust of the Opposition journals – and yet, in spite of all, the cheers which followed the departing statesman were so faint as to be perfectly ridiculous to a British ear, and seemed quite out of proportion to all the display that had been made. Certainly they seemed quite childish compared with those which greeted a certain individual, whose name delicacy forbids my mentioning, when, on the last night on board the Sarnia, he ventured humbly to reply to the toast of the Press which had been given in the smoking-room by a Quebec artist returning home from study in Paris.

In Ottawa, certainly, there is no demand for emigrants, unless it be good female servants, who are wanted much more, and can have much more comfortable living, at home. A lady asked me to send her a few good servants from England. I replied that my wife wanted them as much as she did, and that it was my duty to attend to her requirements first.

It is curious the airs the raw servant-girls from Ireland give themselves out here. One day, when I was at Peterborough, one of the head-quarters of the lumber trade – which yesterday was a dense forest, and is now a town of 8,000 people – I heard of the arrival of a lot of girls from Galway. The drill-hall was set apart for their use, and there they were respectfully waited on by the chief ladies of the district in need of that rarest of created beings – a good maid-of-all-work. In this particular case one of the arrivals was fixed on.

‘What can you do?’ said the lady.

The girl seemed uncertain on that point.

‘Can you wash?’

‘Oh no!’

‘Can you cook?’

‘Oh no!’

‘Can you do housemaid’s work?’

Well, she thought she could.

Then came the question of wages.

‘Will you take eight dollars a month?’

No, she would not. Would she accept of nine? Oh no! Would she take ten? Certainly not.

‘What do you want?’ said the lady, beginning to be alarmed.

‘They told me I was to have twelve dollars a month,’ said the girl, and that put a stop to the negotiation.

When I state that an English sovereign is worth at this time four dollars and eighty-six cents, I think you will agree with me that this charming daughter of Erin somewhat overrated the value of her services. The Canadians are a well-to-do people, but they cannot afford twelve dollars a month for a mere housemaid. I think it would be well if the respectable young women – of whom there are thousands in England who do not care for the pittance given to a governess, and who prefer the life of a lady-help – were to come out. They would soon be appreciated.

The average girl selected to be sent out to the colony, so far as I have seen her, is not a model of loveliness or utility. Were I a Canadian mother, I would sooner have a lady-help. Nor need the lady-help be afraid of the roughness of her lot. In Ontario, all the difficulties of the pioneers of civilization have long since disappeared. One hears strange tales of what those brave men and delicately nurtured ladies had to suffer.

I have seen two – whom I had known when a boy – who were familiar with the best of London literary society, who figured in all the annuals of the season, who were famous in their day, whose sires came over with William the Conqueror. They were sisters, and married two officers, who had land allotted to them in Canada, and brought out these wellborn and delicately nurtured women into what was then a waste, howling wilderness, where they had to slave as no servant-girl slaves in England, and to fight with the severity of the climate in a way of which the present generation of Canadians have no idea. Only think, for instance, of your joint roasting at the fire on one side and freezing on the other! In the settled parts of Canada, such horrors are now amongst the pleasant reminiscences of the past.

But I must return to Ottawa, where the universal testimony of all the heads of the Government was to the effect that Canada is the place for the poor, hard-working man. There is an emigration-office in every town, where the emigrant is sure to hear of work, if work is to be had.

Canada is a charming place for the traveller. He sees friends everywhere. Mr. John H. Pope, Minister of Agriculture, and Mr. John Lowe, Secretary, were especially useful in aiding me. As I called on the Minister of Finance, he insisted on my seeing the Premier – Sir John Macdonald – who came out of a Council to give me a friendly chat for half an hour, and who kindly asked me to call on him again on my return. In Canada the Council sits almost daily, and the sitting generally lasts from two till six, as all the business which is left in England to the departments, in Canada is transacted in the Council. Sir John seemed to think that a good deal of time was wasted in speeches in Parliament, which were intended not for the House, but for the constituents outside: in this respect the Canadian Parliament much resembles a more august assembly nearer home.

I had also the honour of an interview with the Marquis of Lansdowne at the Government House, in a pretty park about a mile out of the town. His lordship enjoys his residence at Ottawa very much, and said he should leave it with regret. His idea seemed to be that now was the time for English farmers with a little capital to come out to Ontario, as the old farmers are selling off their farms and going further, to take up large tracts of land in the North-West; and I think many English farmers would be wise if they adopted some such plan. The Province is called the Garden of Canada.