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Chapter 3: Lakefield
It was not until late the next morning April 19th that we saw anything of the town of Peterborough, it is particularly clean, of moderate size, & a brisk business like air characterised & its people. The weather was fine, but unfortunately we had such bad colds, that we were not able to enjoy the first few days. My husband took long walks to see the farms in the neighbourhood, & to Lakefield where some friends we had made in crossing the Atlantic lived, by their advice, he took a small house in this pretty village 9 miles from Peterborough.
We remained at the Hotel about a week & on the Saturday paid our first visit to a Canadian market, as we went in, there were 3 butcher's shops on each side of us, & when we came to the exterior of the building the other side, we saw what interested us most, about 30 farmer's wives sitting upon benches on two sides if the market, with their baskets of butter, eggs, poultry, & vegetables on a kind of table before them, we were quite amused at the price of those commodities, being so much less than in England. Eggs 9 cents or 4 ½d per dozen, butter 25 cents or 1sh per lb., it was the season when butter was most scarce. On the Sunday we went to the English church, & had a well conducted service, the exterior of the building was more to be admired than the interior, which was old fashioned & uncomfortable, there was a week day service, which we attended, held in what we supposed to be a school room, there they used the familiar Ancient & Modern Hymns.
I think it was Thursday April 22nd that we took possession of the little house at Lakefield, it contained 2 sitting rooms, one opening on to a small verandah, a fair sized kitchen with tiny pantry & scullery opening into it, this with 3 bedrooms was the whole, how small it seemed to us then, but writing as I can in a shanty, I can but picture what a commodious dwelling we should now think it. The first week I was ill & felt thoroughly home sick & miserable, but the next was able to enjoy with the others, the beauties of this dear little place.
The Otonaba a broad winding river runs through the middle of the small town, a wide bridge is built over it & the water being damned up in several places rushes down like a cataract. There were good stores of all kinds & everything was remarkable cheap, this may be imagined when I say that our expenditure during the month we were there was only 12 £ including the rent & necessary furniture for our house. Groceries were the only things we found more expensive than England. Meat was remarkably cheap ribs of beef only 10 cents per lb. & a large tongue I bought to pickle for 20 cents. The rector we were pleased to find an Englishman & most kind. There was a very good church & nice services, the greatest drawback being the smallness of the choir. Many of the residents had large houses & prettily laid out gardens & pleasure grounds, yet the whole of this part of the country was a few years ago a forest; it was interesting to hear the account of those who had come from England with their parents about 50 years ago & had spent their lifetime in handling the chisel this hard work had in some cases prematurely aged the men, but others were apparently none the worse for the hardships they had endured; now many of the owned farms & several houses, some built with every convenience. Their fathers had been weavers or employed in some of the English factories & when they reached Peterborough the church was the only place where the immigrants could be houses, & here they stayed with their goals piled in the pews, until they went to live in the forest, the men at once felled a few trees & put up a rough shanty, without either door floor or windows, there they lived & for two or three years, their privations must have been very great, frequently they had to walk twenty miles with a bag of flour, & carry it back on their shoulders, I heard of one woman walking nineteen miles for a bottle of milk when her husband was ill. Then their stories of shanty life in recent years, when the wife stayed at the farm with the children to take care of the cattle, & the husband with thirty or forty men went into the bush in November & remained until March; one man acting as cook the whole time, their tea they took in a bushel bag & other provisions in the same proportions, they spoke of the life as a very pleasant one & had not suffered from the cold as we imagined, for however low the thermometer may be, in the bush they are so sheltered from the wind as to be almost unconscious of the extreme cold outside.
The 2nd week in May we received letters from our friend in Manitoba which made us decide to continue our journey at the end of the month for which time we had taken the house. Meantime we were anxiously expecting a box belonging to my sister which we had omitted to claim at Halifax, we had in fact not seen it, since the label "not wanted" was put on it at Liverpool, much to our relief two days before our departure, we heard that it had arrived at Peterborough & there we found it, with only the label addressed to Liverpool & "Lakefield Ont." written in pencil on the back, this was the first & last difficulty we had with our 22 boxes. The last Sunday was whit Sunday, we attended the morning service, which was the only one that day, the rector going to take a duty at a distant parish, it was a lovely morning & we went for a walk by the river taking the dogs with us, we reached 3 or 4 miles, & enjoyed it immensely, coming here laden with tiny cedar, balsam, & maple trees, which we had uprooted to take to Manitoba being told there were none of these in that country. The next 2 days were spent in packing, & preparing for our journey of 2,000 miles. We had met with great kindness during our stay at Lakefield, & felt quite sorry at once more having to "move on" the rest too had been so very acceptable, after the turmoil of the previous months, more especially we regretted leaving the little church, as we could not expect to find on with a church of England clergyman in the New Country to which we were going.
