CHAPTER X.

Winter in Ontario--Flax-working in the old time--Social gatherings--The churches are centres of attraction--Winter marriages--Common schools--Wintry aspect of Lake Ontario.

Our fathers spent their winter evenings and days of winter storms in working at the flax. It was the universal custom for each householder in our fathers’ time to raise a piece of flax, and, during the enforced housing of the winter, it was broken, scutched and spun around the big cavernous open fire. The distaff in those days was ever upon the floor in the common dwelling room, and as much an article of furniture as the family table. Quite a few of these old distaffs are yet bundled away in garrets, dust and cobweb laden. My own people did not fail to bring the distaff along with them when they came from Massachusetts in 1792, and this one was in constant use until machinery got to be common and the necessity for home manipulation to supply the family clothing no longer existed. To-day all that is changed, and during these midwinter days our people of this part of Ontario have no such occupation to fill in their leisure hours.

The days of wood-getting, logging and timber-making, too, are past; and at this day this people have to develop a new order of civilization to meet the new condition of affairs. Our people read far more than formerly, and very many of their hours of winter leisure are spent over the printed page. In nearly every house one enters, too, in this part of our province to-day, one finds quite a number of volumes of books, as well as the general stock of newspapers. So the taste and knowledge of our people is steadily on the gain; and we are, as a people, taking the benefit of the respite from enforced hours of weary labor at the flax from which machinery has relieved us. Very serious accidents used to occur, too, in those days of hand labor at the flax, even simple as the work may seem. Very frequently the flax would be hung in bunches around the living room of the family, in which the great fireplace was. This flax, having been broken and scutched with the swingle, and ready for spinning, was perforce quite as ready to light as tinder. There were numerous instances of most dreadful fires occurring by this suspended flax igniting from some sparks dropping on it from the open fire. In one instance, not far from where my own house now is, a woman stepped to the road, only five or six rods away, leaving two small children in the room, and before she could get back to them the whole room was ablaze, and they perished, with the total destruction of the house.

Social gatherings largely make up to-day for the hours spent formerly in work at home. Among themselves the people of Ontario are eminently a social and hospitable lot. Almost nightly our folks gather among their fellows and spend their evenings in harmless chat.

But the great pivot upon which our social system revolves in Ontario is the church. At the church our amusements mostly cluster, too; for our ministers are shrewd enough to keep some meetings to come off in the future, which the people look forward to and talk about among themselves. Maybe it’s a lecture, or a musical treat, or some dissolving views, or what not; and these, added to the usual sermons from the pulpit, keep the people continually centred, as it were, about the church. Again, our churches are invariably well lighted and seated, and the air is pure; and, on the whole, they are attractive and pleasant. Hence our young folks even, as well as older ones, choose to be about our churches instead of finding amusement elsewhere. I am not speaking of the devotional part of the matter; our people continue to attend the churches, for that follows as a matter of course. Again, our ministers are shrewd enough to know that they could not hold the people at the churches two or three nights per week as well as Sundays for the devotional part alone; for, without detracting one jot from the purely religious aspect of the matter, our ministers know quite well that the devotional part alone would not hold our people without diversions. Indeed, our ministers are to be most highly commended for so cleverly managing our people as to keep them so at the church’s dangling apron-strings, as it were, to use a homely simile. Many, many times better at the church’s dangling apron-strings than spending the evening at the bars, in throwing dice, or at any such questionable gatherings. And I take it, too, as self-evident, that our people’s faithful following of the church has a quality of the intellect as well as of the heart. A remark of Castellar’s, the great Spanish statesman and orator, illustrates the difference of standpoint that prevails in various countries as to religious observances. He said, “The Protestant religion would freeze me with its iciness.” Compared with the sensuous and fascinating cathedral worship of Europe, our ceremonials, whether Protestant or Catholic, are indeed plain and unadorned. But they attract as intelligent, self-respecting, law-abiding and decent a lot of people as can be found anywhere.

Most marriages are celebrated during our winter months. It is quite manifest that social gatherings and meetings, brought about by the enforced hours of idleness, are very conducive to match-making; and this, perhaps, accounts for the matrimonial activity of the winter season. Not infrequently the expectant bride and groom, having procured a license of marriage, call upon the minister at his house for him to tie the knot. Ludicrous stories are told of the bashfulness of many persons who come on such errands. Some of our clergy yet require the responsive service, and the groom, when asked the question so necessary, “Wilt thou have this woman to be thy lawful wedded wife?” sometimes replies, “I came on purpose.” Well, that’s a good answer, and shows his honesty of purpose, even if it be a little comic. The fellow’s not to be laughed at, however, even if he does make this response, or even if he does pull off his gloves, in order to save them, the moment the ceremony is over and they are pronounced man and wife.

During these midwinter days in central Ontario, our school-boys are trudging through snows and amidst frosts to the Common School. Many an urchin these days declaims on the usual Friday afternoon:

“The bluebird and the swallow, From the sweet south grove, The robin leaves its quarters In the deep pine grove; I know from whence they started On their happy homeward track; To-night you’ll hear them answer With their clack, clack, clack.”

Or those who are more advanced, the more ambitious, essay:

“On Linden when the sun was low, All bloodless lay the untrodden snow.”

Glorious Common Schools! and our own quite up to any in the world. And, without a shadow of a doubt, too, these urchins who are to-day, during this midwinter, so declaiming, will become our future orators, and their voices will resound in great halls of legislation or fill pulpits in our land. Let us hope that when they grow to manhood they may never become food for powder, and, so far as their military education is concerned, let it be conspicuous by its absence; and yet no loss will be felt, for it will not be among the things needed. Happy Ontario! If we were Germans or Frenchmen, we must serve three years in the army whether we would or not. This is only one more instance named to prove to us all that our own country is the happiest and the freest in the world, and that our people are generally well-to-do and comfortable in their homes, in food and clothing.

The mornings of late autumn, as the nights get longer, begin to have a nipping air. Ponds of water are covered with a glare and safe coat of ice, and our youngsters get out their skates, so carefully laid away last season. The children trudge away to school, and their color is heightened by the morning frost and wind; but gradually the human system is getting accustomed to the change of the season, and the dry, pleasant cold is enjoyable. Immense ice hummocks form upon the banks of our large lakes. They are conical and steep, or blunt and rolling, with a flat place here and there among the convolutions. Daily, as the cold strengthens and the winds dash the billows upon the ice-banks as if they would destroy them, they gather from each wave a little more frozen from it, and so work out from the shore, solid and immovable, as if to entirely close over our inland sea’s surface; but they do not, and they never succeed in effecting any permanent lodgment more than eight or ten rods from the shore. Somehow in freezing they invariably leave holes here and there. Now, let a storm come on and the breakers be driven against the ice-banks and under them--for they do not reach the bottom in any deep water--the pent-up water under the banks, driven up with terrific force by each incoming sea, tries to find an escape. These holes, in a measure, serve for an escape. Sprays or jets of water will be forced up through these holes twenty feet into the air, only to fall upon the surrounding ice and be frozen as hard as its neighboring globules in their icy immobility. The blow-holes of a whale furnish a good analogy to the blow-holes in the ice. Indeed, the most powerful whale can scarcely expel the water from his blow-holes higher than a storm forces it up among the ice-dunes. And as they get too high or too heavy near the outer edge, they break away in great lumps and go floating upon the surface. A change in the direction of the wind sails them away, and we see upon our inland seas ice islands sometimes many miles in extent. Look again for the ice islands in a few hours, and not a trace is seen. The waters are a deep blue, in strong contrast to the white snow upon the shore or the ice upon the edge. Stand upon an eminence and look along the shores and outer edge of the ice-bank, so firmly rooted to the margin. It is jagged and furrowed, and honeycombed, and awful, and withal so still. Not a bird is wheeling over the surface of the water, not a sail is upon it. The voice of Nature is effectually hushed to rest. While you are still observing, let the sun shine upon the ice and water, and you can with difficulty take your eyes off the picture--as fine a picture of the Arctic as we can get, even if it be in miniature. What a contrast from our golden autumn! Those of us who are not particularly subject to lung troubles and who are well fed and clad, really enjoy our dry and beautiful cold and the glint of the Arctic regions which these pictures afford us. Clearly defined and unmistakable is this our winter.