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Chapter 15: Conclusion
May 30th. I have now given to the best of my ability a short account of the first year spent by us in the N.W.T. At this time so many are leaving dear old England to seek a house in other lands & to these at least I hope it may be interesting, from it they will be able to understand a few of the difficulties that have to be met by all settlers in a new country although the experience of every family must vary; it may too be a satisfaction to know how happy English people really are when away from the comforts & luxuries to which they have all their lives been used to. In Canada you do not so much realize that you are in a strange land, being still under the English flag & all the people or their ancestors having come from the British Isles, & it is pleasant throughout the whole country to hear the affectionate way in which the Canadians speak of the "Old Country" & the interest they take in hearing anything we can tell of our life there. There are many English people settled in the Little Saskatchewan & I have not heard of one who dislikes the North West. Many would naturally prefer living amongst their friends for it is indeed a severe wrench to break up a house & leave people & places that we have been warmly attached to from childhood still I think they agree with me that being out here is preferable to living in England on a small income, where a certain amount of appearance seems necessary to be maintained & where there is so little prospect of providing for our children or our own old age. Here there is every probability of the difficulties & disagreeables decreasing each year, our life compared with those who first took land in this settlement shows a decided improvement during the three years, flour had then to be brought from Portage la Prairie & many things could only be obtained in Winnipeg, now we can procure every necessary & even some luxuries at Minnedosa which is only 10 miles from the centre of the settlement. This little place which last summer could only boast of a few houses is now a County town & a railway is expected to pass through it next year, when we shall be able to reach Winnipeg in as many hours as it has hitherto taken days & it will we hope considerably lessen the cost of groceries & all manufactured goods. Living in such small houses & the absence of servants is a thing not pleasant to contemplate when sitting in an English dining room, but before the little house is reached there is so much to be gone through that people are only too glad to have a home of their own once more & it is really a great pleasure to plan & contrive to make that little home as comfortable & convenient as possible & the thought that it is really your own & that at any time you may build a more commodious dwelling when funds & time admit, help you to make the best of a small beginning. & when you see others contentedly doing the work that each day brings & there is no one to do it for you naturally do the same & take a pride in doing it well what in England you scarcely ever thought about, still it does need a cheerful uncomplaining spirit not to weary of the monotony, for each week brings much the same routine & there are many things in a colonial life totally at variance with our English ideas & which it takes some time to get reconciled to. I have written this from a wife's point of view, for it is especially necessary for her to be cheerful & energetic & to do anything & everything that comes in her way to the best of her ability & without grumbling, it needs too more forbearance to live in a small house than a large one, where so many are constantly together as they necessarily are here during the winter months & my sister & I have often felt how acceptable one quiet hour during the day would have been & how little we appreciated the boon of being alone in the years gone by. My husband is, I am pleased to say, quite as well satisfied at present as I am, the soil is all that can be desired, he has not had a fair opportunity of judging of the crops, last year the summer & autumn being exceptionally cold & wet, those who have been seven years in the country say they never knew the frost early enough to injure the wheat until the last 2 years, barley is always a sure crop, I believe also potatoes.
It is stock raising my husband particularly advocates, the herbage is most luxuriant during the months from May to Sep & the young cattle are frequently left out during the winter, he says he never saw any cattle thrive so quickly as the herd feeding on the prairie just now, since the 12th of this month they have shown a rapid & marked improvement & there is no expense in keeping them, only the trouble of making sufficient hay from the natural hay meadows, for their consumption during the long winter, hay making is not play work for the mosquito, sand fly, black fly & every other kind of fly is there most tormenting & a smudge had often to be made close to the mower. Ploughing too is hard work, but there is the consolation that if the bodily exertion is great, the mind is comparatively at rest there being no "payrights" "rates or taxes" to think about or the half yearly rent audit to attend which has given so many farmers such days & nights of anxious thought during the last few years.
I sincerely hope nothing I have written will alone induce anyone to come to this country & regret doing so, those best suited are I think the small tenant farmers, who with their wives, sons, & daughters have all been accustomed to work, if only they could get here, in a few years they would be independent & their children well off. Many of the young men from Ontario take up l& without any capital & by working for their wealthier neighbours earn sufficient to buy oxen & make improvements on their own l& put up a shanty & by industry become each year in a better position. The older settlers are this spring buying reaping machines, self binders I believe & when we have these & moving machines & other implements, farming in the far west will lose much of its laboriousness. The difficulty in obtaining Education has been a great drawback, there being only schools established in the towns as yet, but it is hoped that each settlement will soon have its own, though that will not enable the children to attend who live at a distance owing to the cold in the winter & the sloughs in the summer, the trails at present being very bad in many parts, as yet nothing has ever been done to make them otherwise. Meetings are now being held in this district to propose the worst places being bridged over & if all unite in remedying the Evil I think we may hope for an improvement soon. Could we see England as it was in the time of Julius Caesar or even Queen Elizabeth I doubt if we should complain, of the North West, where neither time nor money have ever been expended on the roads to make them better, certainly the constantly getting your feet wet is most detrimental to shoes, & the water & the scrub combined wear out the best made boots in a few weeks, so that it is quite the custom for children to go barefoot at least 6 months during the year. I noticed this in Ontario too & suppose it was a practice continued by the Scotch & Irish & adopted by others, but to English ideas shoes seem as necessary as bread. Of the climate I am not a competent judge, as last summer was unusually cool & the winter exceptionally mild. I can therefore only say I liked the winter & thought the summer perfection had it not been for the mosquitoes. Many Ontario people tell me they prefer this climate to that of Eastern Canada, the heat in summer not being so sultry & the nights always cool & although the temperature is several degrees lower in the winter the air is so dry that they feel the cold less here than there & it is certainly most healthy, there have been only 5 deaths I believe during the past winter, there are very many who have good health here, who in England & Ontario were almost invalids, one young man whose family came on account of his suffering from hemorrhage of the lungs when in Toronto, is now a fine well built fellow & apparently as strong as others. It is those who have always lived in a town who find this life the hardest as the mother of a large family said to my sister. "Its hard work & roughing it every day & all day here, is so different to what always I have been accustomed to" for they had always been well to do, & only came to the North West for the sake of their children as many other have done. I am quite sure that £500 does as much here as £1000 in England & young men with plenty of energy & small capital cannot do a wiser thing than come to the N.W.T. of Canada. There is however one great disadvantage to be considered before bringing a family to such a new country & that is the absence to a great extent of all religious privileges, we scarcely know how much we value the frequent services at our parish churches at home until we come to a land where there are none, it scarcely seems Sunday without the dear old bells & with no special place of worship, the Presbyterian & Methodist ministers do their best to hold a service at each end of the settlement once every month, but what is that to the 2 or 3 every Sunday in which we have so long been accustomed? We earnestly hope The Bishop will appoint a clergyman of the Episcopal church to reside at Minnedosa soon & then we may expect another monthly service, which will leave only one Sunday in each month without any, & surely they are much needed where the lives of all are so engrossed with the many duties & occupations which each day brings, that there is great danger of our forgetting Him who said "For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world & lose his own soul". It must be many years before each settlement has its own pastor in such an extensive Territory as this.
Before laying down my pen I must own that my journal was not continual after we left Lakefield so that the latter part of this is written entirely from memory, excepting that I referred to my husband's short diary for the exact dates & hours of our journey from there to Winnipeg & I would beg of those inclined to criticise severely its many imperfections to remember that it is written from a log shanty 16 feet X 14 feet where four children are doing their lessons & with my attention constantly divided between baking, churning, cooking, washing, & every other domestic duty & that which now lies before you.
N.B. I have the greatest pleasure in recommending all intending to emigrate to take their passage in The Allan Line vessels, this is not only from my own experience of one short voyage, but of all whom I have met; those who came out in these steamers were in every way satisfied & could not speak too highly of their accommodation.
ELA.
