Victoria Hayward

“ In other words, danger is its charm, the danger that lies so near, around the corner of every bay and tickle; danger of hidden rocks, of sudden gale, of fog, of bergs, washed by some fanciful twist of ocean current out of the beaten track. Romance follows danger as a twin sister. So, on the Labrador, many “figures” strut across the little stage.
There is the little Eskimo that paddles off to the steamer in his kyak, to dance on deck, while the ship rides at anchor off some port. That he ever reaches the ship or the shore again in the little scallop-shell he calls “boat” is a miracle. ”

“ One cannot very well hang back when Romance takes one’s hand. So you think, when some bright summer morning you motor down to Lower Fort Garry with your clubs, “Here is another old Fort given up to Golf.” And at once you recall the morning you tramped the Fort Mississauga links, fanned by the breezes of Lake Ontario. Strange, the eternal kinship of the Romantic in Canada!
It is a far cry from an Old Fort to truck farms. Yet Winnipeg changes from one to the other with the ease of a dancer of the minuet coping with the jazz of the moment. ”

“ How else could the barrels discovered everywhere at harvest time in Bluenoseland be considered romantic? Yet that romance sits on every barrel-head in the Gaspereau Valley, in Paradise, ’longshore from Lunenburg to Sydney, and on the wharves at Halifax, no one who has seen them, would ever doubt. Trade, itself, here waits on the barrel. How can apples go to market if there be no barrel? Lives there a man who has ever heard of shipping potatoes in a—box? How could mackerel swim in brine, out of Halifax, to the ports of the world, were it not for the barrel? ”

“ It is a signal, when the mud-line begins, to all the clam-diggers of the countryside to come out with shovels, forks, rake-hoes, or any old garden tools that can be used to dig clams. Sometimes one sees here some old woman alone, using a rake-hoe as a staff, her skirts blowing in the wind and a genuine joy in her heart every time an oozy squish is emitted by her old boots. The tide of life has come and gone for her to the accompaniment of the ebb and flow of the waters of Fundy. ”

“ But the respite enjoyed by the old women in the carts is not for long. Their gossip and chat and calling back and forth from cart to cart, is cut short by a rising-tide of housewives arriving to buy in a heat for the noon dinner. Ten o’clock sees the tide of trade in flood, with women behind stepping on the heels of women ahead and tumultuous streams of purple beets, the chrome of carrots, the spring-green of lettuce, the pearl of onions, the fruity bloom of peach or plum, cascading into waiting basket or bag. ”

“ It is but a step from the Markets of Quebec to the markets of Ontario in a matter of miles, but in atmosphere you step from Old France to Old England.
Here in Kingston or Brantford is the old Market Hall that might be in Nottingham or Newark or any other English market-town. And here the market-men are of the English type—Old-Country fellows or United Empire Loyalists. Here is the canvas-covered farm-wagon looking like the spiritual ancestress of the prairie schooner. There is a change from women to men as salesmen. There is not the customary tumultuous chatter of the French. ”

“ OMANTIC Canada is never halted by natural obstacles. Like the true diplomat, she wins over hindrances to become aids. High mountains, large rivers with swirling rapids and falls, immense lakes, inland seas, have thus become to Romance, mere stepping-stones. So the cold of the Great Northland, from being a barrier of conquest, has simply inspired Madame Romance to call for her heaviest and finest furs, her dog-team and sled, her snow-shoes, and a supply of good pemmican. Snow is to her but Nature’s cosmetic for rosy cheeks. ”

“ The Russian woman’s flax-wheel is light so that she can easily take it under her arm, spinning here or there, as she wishes, indoor{235} or out. In the heat of the midsummer day, when work in the fields is only pursued early in the morning or in the late afternoon, you find her spinning in her bedroom or on the porch. Or she sits out of doors among the flowers abloom in her dooryard enjoying the blossoms and the shade thrown by peach-trees—laden boughs bending, a symphony in fruit, to lay themselves across the heart of their Earth-mother. ”

“ Thus the day, begun in Winnipeg, found us in the late afternoon driving down a tree-lined Mennonite village street, with the prairie-wind scattering golden, autumn leaves in the car and under our wheels.
The Mennonite village here is the most perfect bit of camouflage in the world. It is located in a wood and as no house is visible it differs in no respect from any of the bluffs in sight, until you come right upon it. Even in the wood the houses are all set back from the street and a little tree-lined lane leads into the yards. Nothing can surpass the privacy thus obtained for each family. ”

“ Driving through the steep, narrow streets, our two-wheeled Caleche, itself the voiture of other centuries, seems a talisman, unlocking the gray, steep-roofed, admirably-preserved houses, churches, monasteries, convents, colleges, public buildings, tiny shops, all of them of unmistakably French aspect, which flank our goings up or down the steep ascents, which are the Quebec streets.
Romance clings to the old in architecture. Nowhere does she more frankly look out upon the Canadian world roundabout, than from the casement windows of Old Quebec. ”

“ Five, six, seven thousand pilgrims in a day became the order and still they came, overflowing the pensions, spreading out on the benches in the yard, eating lunches under the maples in the garden and washing down the big slice with copious draughts of water from the big Fountain—Saint Anne’s fountain.
“Saint Anne’s” became as well known in the land as Ottawa, Quebec or Montreal, more popular than Halifax, Saint John or Vancouver. Why? It is the Capital of Faith, the Place of the Miracle. And faith lies very close to the human heart. Hence the Pilgrims by the thousands. ”

“ Over there, there is the instinct of the camel, the desert knowledge of the man, and the light of the stars to guide—but out here on the sands of the Magdalens it is a woman’s hand that holds the reins of the lead horse. Her cart may be made of bits of driftwood and in the half-barrel tub, in the waist of this semi-sea craft, a rusty three-pronged homemade digging fork, and a lantern by her side, may be the only gauges to a rising tide. ”

“ But it is not until you cast off upon its waters yourself that you realize how constant is the stream of vessels using this ocean highway! That material galore for picture and story hourly runs to waste here, is not the fault of the Grand Canal.
Cross this water-street when you will, schooners, “two”, “three-masters”, with big mildewed mainsails still hoisted, wait at anchor off Port Hawkesbury for a fair wind to carry them through, the while fleet-winged schooners from the Gulf, like the “Birds of Passage” that they are, take it, literally, “on the run”. ”

“ Even when you pass one of these out-of-doors pots, whose fires are extinct until wash-day or dyeing day comes round again, you unconsciously feel at once through the pot’s suggestion that in that little farm-house, over there by the barn, dwells a woman with initiative; some strong capable soul—some mother of invention—who turns every simple object at her command into a tool of service. ”

“ Many great names are written in, many striking figures illumine the Ontario log. And as one wanders about in present day Ontario as in Quebec, memories of this fine past are constantly creeping out at unexpected moments to convince one that the past is ever present.
Great men and great events do not die. To these early days belong many an old fort and earthwork whose frowning severity is now time-softened and mellowed by the touchstone of romance. ”

“ In addition to her fishing industry and tale of ships, Nova Scotia enjoys a pastoral side no less rich in genre. Farms are here. In following the highways and little by-paths rambling among apple orchards and gardens, potato fields and hay meadows—paths etched in Spring by the pink flush of apple-blossoms, or in autumn by boughs curving to earth under weight of rosy Baldwins or creamy Bellefleurs—one follows everywhere hard on the heels of romance. It is her hand that beckons into every little cottage snugly tucked away in valley and glen ”

“ Despite her great age, the old woman has all her faculties and is really an interesting personality, dyeing some of the roots and straw and weaving fancy patterns into her basketry. In the room on the opposite side of the cracker-box partition, another woman kneels before a crude loom, on which hangs a half-woven blanket. From out the gloom of distance the man interested in the rice fetches an armful of sticks and under their influence the fire leaps into a big blaze, revealing more compartments in which women work, or sick children lie in bed looking wistfully at the leaping fire. ”

“ One could sit here forever and watch, fascinated, the cooper at his work, so clean, so redolent of the winter landscape in its hand-cut and split birch rods, the air filled with the peculiar, refreshing incense of the toasting staves, the barrel all completed in the mind of the cooper before it materializes in his skilful hand—the barrel, a new barrel, appearing as if by magic every six minutes. What visions one sees through the old door of the men who have come in the carts to its threshold ”

“ As one steps along the factory-floors between the long rows of women, figures just made by Nature for the kimona and the smooth shiny ebon-elegance of the Japanese coiffure, these plump little women with their brown-eyed babies on their backs are indeed a picturesque contribution to the genre appearing on the vast stage from Atlantic to Pacific that is—the Dominion. Nor is canning the fish the limit of the Japanese woman’s usefulness. Not all of them work in the factories. Figures of the wharf-side and of the platform-yards by the flowering banks of the canals are the great seines a-drying. ”

“ As all Lorette roads lead to l’eglise, so they ramble their lane-like ways away from it, wandering first by the little village grocery occupying a cottage—once an old homestead and neat as a new pin—picking a tree-lined way between little whitewashed maisons in yards, flower-filled, up to a grande maison with steep pretentious French roof, vine-covered porch and dormer windows—a house that was once an H. B. C. Post, according to village tradition. One can readily believe it. ”

“ The thousand-mile wave of tawny grain from Thunder Bay to the foothills of the Rockies is a rippling voice; the voice of a most pleasing personality; a voice that carries across the stage in accents at once assured and winning, speaking to the world at large, so that it penetrates to remotest nooks and corners of the earth, speaking as the finest voices do, to the heart and the individual. One has only to follow the long Prairie trail to see how many and varied are the ears that have heard the magic call of Canadian wheat. ”

“ The canals of Ontario are pivotal as the Province is pivotal. Without them the Great Lakes would never come to the sea or the sea to the Great Lakes.
Romance gets aboard the canal-boat of Ontario no less than aboard her sisters of the Richelieu. Nor does she stop to question whether it be a thousand-ton freighter, or a mere barge with picturesque windmill-sails to the pump and a line of family wash strung out from the caboose; or a blackened line of hulks with coal, “bound up”, or “bound down”, she steps aboard. Romance is true blue. ”

“ The women take turns at the cooking, a week at a time, and as there are usually six or seven women in each village, no woman is worn-out at the stove, but each has a six-week interval before the wheel of time brings her turn round again.
In this time her spare moments are filled with knitting, making rugs for her room, spinning and weaving, and embroidering her own or her children’s plotoks or kerchiefs. The Doukhobor women are especially clever at all work of this kind, showing exquisite taste in the selection and blending of colours in their rug-making. ”

“ Each little homestead and ranch stands for a family uprooted from old associations, whether Eastern Canadian, British or Foreign, transplanted here to the West, on the edge of things; but now—within the past ten years—coming to a consciousness of itself as no longer on the edge of wilderness and remoteness, separated from its fellows of the East by the great barrier of the Mountains, but a part of the beautiful curve of the World-circumference of the British Empire. ”