Page:Everywoman's World, Volume 7, Number 7.djvu/14

A Baby Town in the Canadian North-West, where a bit of prairie is settled and a town springs up overnight. They are patriotic, too, these pioneers; note the Union Jack floating from the flag pole.—Punmichy Sask.

HOW GRANDMOTHER LIVED IN PRE-
CONFEDERATION DAYS

By FRANK YEIGH

The Old Gage Homestead on the Stoney Creek Battlefield, near Hamilton, used as Military Headquarters in the War of 1812–1814 when the British and Canadian Militia drove back the United States force. The property is now a Government Park, and the Gage Homestead is preserved as an example of early Canadian architecture, and is open to the public as an historical museum. An obelisk commemorating the Battle of Stoney Creek stands in the Park.

HOW did our grandmothers live in pre-Confederation days?

What kind of a country was Canada away back in the fifties and sixties? What features marked the national, community, home, and domestic life? And and what are the outstanding differences between then and now?

It is a fitting time to ask and to attempt to answer such questions in this year that closes a half-century in the life of Canada, a half-century since she became a Dominion under the Confederation of 1867. It is, moreover, worth while recalling those earlier formative years and bringing back to mind the worthy members of a generation that has passed away, to honour their memory for the life they lived, the part they played, and the contribution they made their native or adopted land. The further opportunity is also presented of comparing the two periods and the span between and to take note of the progress made in all departments of human life and activity. These were, in truth, the good old days; but there are, in equal truth, the better new days bringing in their train larger privileges and opportunities and a more advanced and highly developed civilisation.

One effective way of describing those middle years of the nineteenth century is by recalling the improvements since then and inventions our grandparents had, perforce, to do without. Just bring to mind the long list of things that have come into existence since Confederation; the telephone, both wire and wireless; electricity applied and unapplied; phonographs and gramophones ("What's the difference between them? "Grandmother would have asked); fireless cookers and gas ranges; apartment houses and "flats" therein; patent breakfast foods and other pre-digested articles of diet ("I'll do my own digesting, thank you," Grandmother would have asserted)

And Grandfather would be mightily interested in scores of inventions: motor cars and boats; traction and gasolene engines; electric street cars; typewriters; departmental stores; aeroplanes—fill out the list yourself.

Instead of "Posty" bringing the letters, as in these days of the Rural Delivery, and depositing them in the little tin post-office dangling at the end of a pole right in front of the farm gate, Grandfather and Grandmother welcomed the excuse to hitch up old Bess and drive to the Corners, and to have a visit with the neighbour folk at the same time. The Rural Delivery is not very neighbourly when you come to think of it, but it is mighty convenient!

Think, too, of what Grandmother missed in parlour and kitchen! There were, at that time, oil lamps and candles; but gas and electricity were as yet unadvertised! However did she curl her hair, in her girlhood days without modern electric curling tongs? Well, she did the curling all right; for evidence look at the very curls themselves showing in the dear old daguerreotype that is your most precious possession. No wonder Granddaddy lost his heart and his head to hear, when he went acourting Miss Lavinia Thompson in the long, long ago.

No fireless cookers or electric stoves occupied a place in the kitchen with the painted floor, but the old stove did fairly well at the business when a wood fire crackled under the four black lids and showed its flames through the door frames and front grate.

How Grandfather would have laughed at a sulky plow—riding lazily at his work, the very idea! And if a modern tractor had suddenly appeared on the townline road, he would have taken to the woods in sheer fright.

When he and Grandmother drove to town on market-day they were happily content with horse and top buggy as their transportation system. What the skittish man would have thought of a modern automobile making twenty miles an hour or a panting, puffy motor-cycle, is difficult to imagine. But our travellers of long ago would, undoubtedly, have taken to a modern express train, a trolley car, or a limousine, with keen delight.

When they reached the county seat each transacted business and shopping in ways that, since the dawn of time, have differentiated the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve. Shopping was done leisurely; buying groceries in a grocery store; medicine in a drug store; linen in a dry goods store, and a treat of oysters or oranges in the fruit store 'round the corner. Had they been told that, some day in the then future, all their shopping could be done in one store and under one roof, their surprise would have shown some incredulity.

If, in addition, we could place the road they traveled over in 1867, say, with a modern "good roads" highway, even the faithful old family horse would welcome the improvement and wish he were living now when the task of drawing his load would be greatly lessened.

But let us come a little closer, and in a more positive way, to the dear old folk in the dear old homestead. Let us draw back the curtain of time and peer in, without offensive intrusion, as they sit in the living room on, say, a winter night. How "comfy" the place is; how homy the homespun carpet; how clean table spreads and curtains and linen. Why, it represents the original "Spotless Town"!

The stove is singing a song in tune with the kettle, for they have ever been fast and warm, indeed at times, hot friends.

The chores are done (milking ten cows; feeding and bedding four horses; giving supper to fourteen squealing pigs, a score of less blatant sheep, and a flock of chattering hens); supper is over, lamps or candles are lighted; Grandmother, and Mother too, have their knitting; Grandfather is reading the one weekly paper, which is his political and almost his spiritual guide, though nothing takes the place of family prayers. And who shall estimate their value or their importance in the quiet and yet well-ordered economy of their life? We, of more modern days, have little time or place for this old-fashioned custom. We praise them for observing it while, at the same time, we disregard it—who is right?

If you peep into this rural home on another night, it is alive and alight, even the spare-room and the parlour are lighted and filled up, as is every other apartment. (Continued on page 28)

Belles and Beaux of fifty years ago. The position of the hands is to steady the sitters, as the time exposure for a good daguerreotype was three or four minutes.

These Modern Belles are out for a good time, giving more thought to the health and enjoyment resulting therefrom than to finery of appearance.