Part 16

Gradually things improve as the neighbourhoods get settled, though the great farms of the exclusively wheat-growing districts “make few neighbours.” The more so, because many a Western farmer develops a passion for adding field to field—or “quarter-section to quarter-section.” The Smith farm, for instance, grew to be “seven miles” round; and the husband was often working a mile away from home, but after the first few years he managed to get a man and his wife to live on the farm. Despite the isolation, Mrs. Smith did not regard the life as a hard one. She “liked the farm very much,” she said, and thought the women in the West had “easier times” than those in the East, for the regular “hired men” lived in the bunk-house, though they came to the house for their meals, and after the first two years she did not have to cook for the harvesters and threshers, whose meals were provided from “a cook car.” She was, however, fortunate in having a husband who was both considerate and capable.

As to the social aspects of life, she had been used in her girlhood, though that, too, was spent on a prairie farm—near Regina—to go out a great deal in the evenings “with her musical brothers” to meet other young people, and no doubt she felt the change to the new district, where, of the few women who could be counted neighbours, some were very rough. But soon there were alleviations. From the first there was a church only five miles away, and later there were services in the school-house, which, by the way, in that section at least was very much of a social centre.

Mrs. Smith usually boarded the lady who taught there, and the section had “fine teachers,” who brought on the little flocks of from sixteen to twenty-six children most successfully, lent books to the readers of the community and got up the summer picnics in connection with the school—the more enjoyed, perhaps, because other entertainments were so few and far between. These consisted of a Sunday school Christmas tree, an occasional concert, or a public dance to which “nice women” did not go—at least, in that particular district—as it was open to everyone who could pay, and was attended by men of the rougher sort, who thought it impossible to enjoy themselves without much whiskey.

By the help of the neighbours, the mail was usually brought from the post office, ten miles distant, three times a week, and the Smiths subscribed for several magazines and newspapers. The telephone, when it came, was “a great help”; but, when “the children began to want to see people” and to need somewhat better education than could be gained in the little country school, this family moved into one of the gay, bustling little prairie towns. Mrs. Smith’s experience, it must be remembered, was that of a pioneer, and there are districts in the provinces where that kind of life is becoming a thing of the past, though pioneers are still plentiful.

In the particular town to which the Smiths moved (and I have reason to believe it not exceptional) there is a high proportion of young people in the population and brides are often numerous, whose trousseaux are, perhaps, accountable for setting the pace in a style of dressing which is costly, and which seems almost incongruously handsome in comparison with the tiny houses in which many of the young couples dwell. But money is easily earned and quickly spent by the eager optimistic Westerner; and, doubtless, if domestic servants were easier to get and to keep, more well-to-do folk would turn their attention to building larger houses.

In the rural districts of the older provinces there are plenty of somewhat isolated farmhouses; but there are also many farming communities where the families are close enough together to enjoy a good deal of social life; and where this is the case the country life is a delightful one, for young folk especially. The boys and girls on the farms learn early to do the work of men and women; but it is work which, if not overdone in amount, is healthful for mind and body; and the informal country merry-makings have a charm of their own.

A sleigh ride of several miles, on a moonlight night, through a lovely snow-covered landscape of hill and woods and valley, does not detract from the enjoyment of an informal carpet dance, especially when the vehicle is a big box sleigh, filled with a dozen lively lads and lasses, whose songs and laughter ring out above the jingling bells. A wedding feast or a barn-raising bee, a church social, or a school concert, a “strawberry festival” or a “Christmas tree”—country folk know how to enjoy all these things; as they enjoy chance meetings in the store or at the church door—and now there are in most provinces Farmers’ Clubs and Women’s Institutes to aid in the good work of drawing together country neighbours of all the different denominations. Above all, the country is the place for the little ones, where they may spend their first years amongst the animals and birds and flowers, which the normal child loves, leading a simple, outdoor life.

But one of the needs of Canada is more women (she has some already) who shall appreciate the country and know how to make the best of it for themselves, their families and their neighbours. She wants women of any race, British or foreign, who are strong enough and wise enough to discover ways of developing the fine possibilities of country life, and counteracting any tendency towards its degeneration into dulness and stagnation. To-day the trend of the population of this new and supposedly agricultural country citywards is a fact which is at once remarkable and rather disquieting. Perhaps it is due in part to “the earth hunger” that besets many a farmer, and inclines him to sacrifice to it the comfort of his family and the possibilities of congenial society. Whatever its cause, women may, perhaps, do quite as much as men to stem the current and make country life what it ought to be.

The woman Canada asks for, by the official voice of the Dominion Immigration Department, is the domestic servant, and when necessary the government assists the girl with a loan of £4 for her passage money. Now there is no question that from coast to coast there is a demand for the woman who will help with domestic work. A healthy, intelligent, industrious girl, if she has had any experience in general housework, can command wages of from $10 (£2) to $16 (£8 4_s._) a month in the East up to $80 in the West, in both cases with room and board included, whilst a housekeeper or a competent cook gets $30 (£6) or $35 (£7) or even more. For domestic servants the demand is practically unlimited both in town and country. The wages are not quite so high in the rural districts, but in many cases the girl in farm and country houses is treated like a member of the family, so far at least as having her meals with her employers; and not infrequently a good girl is actually treated like a daughter of the house, taking her share in whatever little festivities there may be.

Perhaps, however, an “Old-Country” girl, brought up amongst the servant-keeping instead of the service-giving class, and coming to Canada to act as “home-help” or “lady-help,” is sometimes deceived into expecting too much by the phrase of “being treated like one of the family.” In the first place, if, as sometimes happens, the mistress, who unreservedly treats her domestic help as “one of the family,” is herself not a highly-educated woman, the “lady-help” too frequently assumes a condescending attitude towards her employer, and the connection naturally proves unsatisfactory. In the second place, a “young lady” from England often hardly understands what hard work really means, and she is too apt to feel that she ought—in virtue of her education—to be excused from various necessary household duties. But if a girl intends to take a “home-help’s” position in Canada she should make up her mind not to think any task beneath her dignity which some woman of the house must do. No one really wants a “lady-help” for an ornament, though a lonely woman here and there may desire to have one partly for the sake of companionship. When, indeed, the “help” really makes it her business to “help,” the relationship may be very satisfactory; and when she has proved both her usefulness and her refinement she will usually be able to get a situation which ought to satisfy her. Often, however, this will be where the mistress is elderly, or invalided or widowed, for there is not much demand for this kind of assistance in families consisting largely of lively young people. If a lady desires a position as “home-help,” I believe it would be well for her to obtain introductions, if possible, to ladies in the province where she is going, as friends often know of each other’s needs in such a case, and will gladly assist in bringing the would-be “help” and prospective employer together.

There is a generally good though rather intermittent demand for charwomen and occasional helpers in towns, cities, and the settled rural districts; and the wife of a man who has obtained employment on a farm may often add considerably to the family resources by washing and doing other work for the farmer’s wife or neighbours. The wages in the East range from about $1 (4_s._) a day in the country, to $1·25 (5_s._), always with meals, in the cities. Some little time ago an enterprising party of young Scotch women, who had come to Toronto to be ordinary servants, clubbed together, took a room or two, and went out working by the day, with the result that they earned more money and had their evenings and Sundays to themselves. They had no difficulty in obtaining as much work as they desired; and their experiment points towards one probable solution of the domestic help problem; but, of course, there are great risks for unprotected girls in every city; and in most Canadian cities the rent of rooms and the cost of living is very high.

Apart from housework, in any form, immense numbers of immigrant girls find employment in shops and factories, and not a few as typists. In Toronto, a typist coming out through the colonization department gets an initial wage of $10 (£2) a week, and one who is also a stenographer gets from $11 (£2 4_s._) to $15 (£3) the week. In Winnipeg (where there are said to be “ten thousand lady stenographers and book-keepers”) “the wages run from $35 (£7) to $75 (£15), or even $100 (£20) per month.” The saleswomen in shops do not receive nearly so much, and good wages are very necessary in the towns if a girl is to live under proper and healthful conditions. Women’s work is not as yet much organized in Canada, though in Montreal and other cities there are a few women’s labour unions.

There is perhaps nearly as much demand for competent dressmakers as for domestic servants, either to make dresses at home or to go out by the day. This demand comes not only from the cities, such as Toronto, where, for example, good dressmakers can earn, in addition to their meals, from $1·50 to $2 (6_s._ to 8_s._) the day, or Winnipeg, where their charge is $2 or $2·50 (8_s._ to 10_s._) the day; but from country towns and rural districts. In the latter they can earn $1 or $1·25 (4_s._ to 5_s._), with board and lodging, for the time of their engagement; and I think it would be well worth while for girls who understand dressmaking to try their fortune in some village in a good farming country. I know that there is a large demand for their services in such places, and though they would not receive city prices for their work, neither would they have to pay city prices for the rooms which they would need as headquarters. In a good village two sisters or friends might very well make the experiment together; or a girl understanding dressmaking, whose parents were coming to the country, might easily work up a good business connection. I should not forget to say that the farmers’ wives are quite willing to send a “buggy” or carriage a considerable distance for the dressmaker.

There is a great demand in Canada for teachers, and a father who comes out with a family of young people might well endeavour to get some of them (if they show any aptitude for the work) trained for teachers. It is desirable that the students should finish their preparation and pass the necessary examinations in the province where they intend to teach, as professional teachers’ certificates only hold good in the province where they are granted, though temporary “permits” to teach may be given in other provinces.

The rate of salaries varies somewhat in different parts of the Dominion, the salaries given in the West being generally higher than those in the East. There are not many openings for private governesses, though a few find employment in ladies’ schools, and there is a small demand in the households of the rich for nursery governesses for very little children.

Girls coming out with the intention of entering any occupation (except that of domestic servants) should have a little money in hand to support them whilst looking for employment; but for women, as for men, there are numerous opportunities in Canada for the alert, intelligent girl—“on the spot”—who knows how to work.

With regard to the acquirement of land, opportunities in Canada are by no means as favourable for women as for men. In a general way women can only obtain land by purchase, and are shut out from the advantage of homesteading; but, as already mentioned, they are permitted in British Columbia to take up pre-emptions on practically the same terms as men. The laws, by the way, concerning the civil rights of women vary in different provinces; but from the women’s point of view Canada lags behind some of the States of the Union, in the fact that not one of the nine provinces of the Dominion has, as yet, accorded parliamentary representation to women. Even the people most strongly averse from the change are, however, beginning to prophesy dolefully that “it has got to come.”

In educational facilities, the women of Canada are treated liberally. In the public and high schools co-education is general, and usually the universities admit women on the same terms as men. The medical profession is open to women; and in some provinces that of the law also. There are many women journalists and writers who are banded together into an organization for the Dominion—“The Canadian Women’s Press Club.”

A very active and comprehensive organization in Canada is the “National Council of Women,” with which many other women’s associations are affiliated. Among these may be named the Women’s Institutes (which, in Ontario alone, have over twenty thousand members), the Women’s Art Association, the Girls’ Friendly Society, the Victorian Order of Nurses, the Canadian Suffrage Association, the National Historical Society, the Peace and Arbitrations Society, etc., etc. There are many other extremely important women’s organizations, such as the Missionary Societies (called by different names) of the several churches, which, besides supporting foreign missions, make an especial effort to aid religious work in the newer sections of the Dominion. There is also the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, which has for long been engaged in effective work against the liquor traffic.

It may be asked what has all this to do with “the woman Canada needs,” and with opportunities for women? My answer is that such a list (which might be much lengthened) shows what the women of Canada are thinking about and working for; that what has been done, may be done again; what is being done now, may be multiplied enormously with the advent of more workers. That these organizations are flourishing suggests the need and the opportunity there is for the work of public-spirited, true-hearted women in Canada—in helping to refine the rough, to smooth down the rugged, to hold up the higher ideals of life in this new land; to fill its towns with pleasant, beautiful homes, and to make its solitary places blossom like the rose.

Canada has scope for the employment of the energies of all of the best types of women, and we have got beyond the notion that there is only one noble type of woman; but if one goes back to that severely practical document, the Census Report, it really looks as if the woman which Canada needs above all is the wife and mother, who is awaiting in the Old Land the chance to rejoin her immigrant husband; and the “marriageable girl.” “The Imperial Home Reunion Associations” already mentioned are doing good work in bringing out the former, with her children; but it is a more delicate matter to settle the latter in regions where her best opportunity lies. In the early French times, the authorities managed this matter with business-like frankness, shipping out consignments of girls and marrying them in haste on their arrival in the colony. Such a method is distinctly out-of-date, but more might be done to encourage the immigration of families and of young women (under proper conditions and safeguards), for in the West especially, behind the opportunities for girls as workers in household service and shops and factories and offices, many of them find the opportunity of taking up the _rôle_ of the wife, the mother and the “home-maker.”

Unfortunately it is a common assertion, that a considerable proportion of girls “in business” are so occupied with the probabilities of “having homes” of their own, that they regard their work at the typewriter or in the office as a mere stop-gap, to be performed perfunctorily. Let us hope this is a slander; and at any rate some business men testify that the girl clerk is, as a rule, quite as conscientious, steady-going and dependable as the boy clerk, if not more so. However that may be, the fact remains that there is a need for the coming out to Canada of a good type of girls, more in proportion than at present to the numbers of the male immigrants, if the Dominion is to be, in accord with the best Anglo-Saxon ideals, a nation of homes.

XVIII HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS

IN the foregoing pages, I have tried not to be led by my real belief in the country into over-statement of the advantages of Canada and to under-statement of difficulties and disadvantages. I know that when all possible care is taken, it is difficult to convey to anyone exact impressions of an unknown country, for the reader or listener naturally translates what is said in terms of his own experience. Now I should like here, before bidding farewell to any reader who has some notion of making a home in Canada, to add one or two suggestions which may save him (or her) some discomfort.

The first is an awkward matter to mention, but I will venture to speak plainly, only reminding the reader that if my remarks are offensive, Canada cannot be held responsible for them, for I am myself an Englishwoman.

I have said, and I firmly believe, that the immigration of people from the British Isles is much desired in Canada; but an individual may not always get that impression, and I should like to ask him to consider whether it may not sometimes be his own fault? It is, unfortunately, a fact that many new arrivals from England (by no means all, of course) have a way of stroking the Canadians the wrong way, if one may use the phrase. Sometimes I wonder whether the phrase in our old school books—the “British Possessions”—has anything to do with the condescending frame of mind in which many a British immigrant lands in the Dominion, and begins cheerfully setting affairs right on his first walk through the seaport town which receives him. Again and again it has been a fine thing in British history that the English people have a way of identifying themselves with their national institutions, but if a Briton will persist on feeling, and making it known, that he is a kind of pocket edition of all that the great British Empire stands for, while the Dominion is “one of our colonies,” and the Canadians are just “colonists,” he will probably get into trouble in a week with the men whom he undertakes to work for or amongst. He ought to try to realize that, in the main, Canadians are Britons like himself, and that, being “chips of the old block,” colonists have many characteristics in common with the stay-at-home Britons—amongst them, a rooted objection to a treatment which seems to imply that they are a nation of inferiors.

Perhaps there is something in the invigorating air of this young country which gets into the heads of newcomers, and makes them “apt to teach” if they never were so in their lives before; but many an immigrant would find his first few months here much smoother, if he could resist the temptation to put into words his wonder “at the way they do things here. Why, in England——” etc., etc. Of course, if he is an intelligent man, he has his contribution to make to the common stock of knowledge and wisdom, and the time may come when it will be welcome in Canada. In many instances, however, the newcomer does not wait to ascertain whether or not there may be a sound reason, in some peculiarity of climate or circumstances, to account for the practice he condemns, but at once jumps to the conclusion that it is un-English and therefore wrong, and proclaims aloud his discovery at the top of his voice. The “canny Scot” is much less prone to hasty, outspoken criticism, and consequently settles down a little more easily than do Englishmen of a certain type.

It may be said that this blunder on the part of English people is so rare and so limited to the wholly uneducated as to be unworthy of serious attention. But I believe it is common. I know I have heard Englishmen criticizing the shortcomings of “the Canadians” in Canadian houses, where they were guests, with a freedom that accounts for a good deal of prejudice against the new arrivals. Others perpetually grumble during their first months in the country.

Happily this kind of thing soon wears off in all but the very worst subjects, and those usually end by returning home, and continuing their criticism of matters Canadian where they cannot be easily answered. Happily, also, some English immigrants, blessed with a little imagination and the sympathetic power of seeing how things will affect other minds, are free from the disease. It has been suggested that a good and practical rule for an Englishman would be to make up his mind to refrain, for at least a year after his landing, from criticism of the things in Canada that displease him, whether these happen to be manners or methods, municipal regulations or country roads.

Later, when he has got his bearings, if he chooses to attempt to lead a reformation, he will find plenty of native-born Canadians to back him; for, however it may appear in the heat of argument, in nine cases out of ten, they are just as convinced as the newcomer that neither the country nor themselves are anywhere within sight of perfection. In twelve months he may be beginning to feel that he has some part and lot in the Dominion, and the honest criticism of one who is anxious to improve conditions which he has tested and believes to be capable of improvement is a very different matter from the superior and comprehensive grumblings either of “a fish out of water,” or a mere “bird of passage.” For convenience I have used the masculine pronoun, but the woman-immigrant is not free from this sin of rash and ill-mannered criticism.