The Habitant (or Happy Peasant) 1909

Baking Bread in Rural Quebec.

This article, titled the Habitant is from Canada West in 1909. Funny, there were plenty of French Canadian immigrants to the West. As well as the French who lived there. This article seems odd. But it does give a sense of how the people of the time realized they were in an era of gallopping change. Most rural Quebecois still do not speak any English, although most English Quebeckers today can speak French.

“These early years of the twentieth century, when the Giant Progress is striding in seven league boots to the uttermost parts of the earth, reducing peoples and habits and customs to a dead level of sameness, it is refreshing to find an accessible corner to whcih he has not yet penetrated.

French Canada is, today, almost untouched as it was a century ago by the changes which are bringing even the dreamy mystics of the Far East into line with the more practical and adventurous spirit of the Occident; and the tourist who seeks the health-giving air of the St. Lawrence will find along its shores a people as private as the heart of a poet could desire. The inhabitants of the little picturesque villages which cluster on the banks of the might river of the north are purely French. as far as their language, laws, and customs are concerned, might be the very same people Jacques Cartier left to face the rigors of a northern winter three hundred odd years ago, they have retained their characteristics as they never would have done in revolutionary France, for the easy British rule has left them almost entirely to their own devices. Imagine thousands of British subjects, in the most loyal of all the British colonies, living under the protection and enjoying the prestige of the Union Jack, yet unable to speak a word of English. The consequence of this isolation is that they have become far and away the most interesting race in North American.

Life in these quiet places is delightful primitive. Remote from the marts of men, the habitants are dependent upon their own resources for many of the necessaries of life. Every house has its outside bake oven, a thing of brick and mortar, with a rude lean-to to protect if from the weather. The spinning wheel is as necessary an article as the sewing machine in a more modern equipped home. And the floors, often rough hewn, are covered with catalongs, the rag carpets beloved of our grandmothers.

Patient, frugal, sober and God-fearing, never troubling their heads about the rest of the world with its fashions and follies, never caring to go beyond their own parish, content to end their days in the low, white-painted dormer windowed houses that sheltered their grandfathers, and thereby escaping the heart-burning and misery that so often fall to the lot of a more ambitious people.

The Northern Englander

I come from Yorkshire farmers, or at least one side of me does. That branch went off to Malaya rather than emigrate to Canada’s West. Still, my dad, born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaya ended up in the West, during the war, flying for the RAF (RCAF). he was brought up British and sent to a Prep School at 5, but in many ways, he was a man without a nationality. Such was the plight of children of the Raj.

It was widely supposed, in 1910 Canada, that the UK farmer was the best potential home-steader material. This Maclean’s article dares to suggest otherwise.

“No position in the social structure is impossible to a Canadian. He recognizes no caste nor much pprecedence, at times not enough. He does not feel handicapped by the thought that his grandfather or his father was a horse-thief. Canada lies before him a world where nothing is as yet established. He can pick and chose his work. The one fact before him is that he must work and work harder than the next man, or else wake some morning to find that the next man has outstripped him and stands in the way of his progress….

The spirit of the old feudal system still survives in important parts of the old land. The people have been taught to be more or less dependent upon the land-owner.

But the Old Countryman, of a certain class, arriving in Canada finds this very difficult to learn. He does not know the meaning of the word initiative. He has always left that to somebody else. If he learns the lesson, he prospers. If he doesn’t, he fails to become all that the opportunities are worth. The city-bred man may be quicker in this regard. He is more accustomed to accepting new conditions; his mind is trained to see things quickly. But the farm labourer can only stand “mazed”..

Well, the myth begins: Canada as meritocracy. But has it ever been so. Only in excellent economies.

Peopling the West, 1910

Ruthenians. “Raw material in the making of Canadians” from Maclean’s 1910.

There was a debate about who would make the best home-steaders. Northern Englanders were generally deemed most preferable, (well, after Americans); second on the list, other hardy Northern Europeans, Scandinavians at the top of that group.

However, one article I read suggested that these Yorkshire farmers were slow learners and set in their ways and used to being protected by the feudal system, so poor pioneering material. City people, who were adaptable, would make better Canadians, the same article claimed. That point of view was not Canadian policy: the LAST people on earth Canada wanted was the wretched poor from Britain’s overcrowded cities, weaklings and criminals all. One hardy farmer type not wanted in the West, either, was the American Negro.

In 1910, Herb Nicholson was transferred from Saskatoon to Regina.

The King’s Hotel Regina Canada
Oct 15, 1910

Dear Father,

I arrived here last night. Am going to start work here Monday with the Northern Crown Bank as teller. I worked in the Saskatoon branch for about ten days as teller. They have a nice building of their own here and a large office. I was out looking for a room this morning saw a lot of them but they are very expensive. Did not see any for less than 12.00 and they were small and some not very clean looking. This is the finest city that I have seen yet in the West with the exception of Winnipeg which is I think the makings of the finest and best in Canada. The streets are very wide and also very clean. I am to get 700 salary which is not enough to keep me in the West. That is I do not think I will stay out here for the money very long as living is more expensive and I think I can get as much as that in the East. “

And here’s a bit from the 1910 Maclean’s about the West.

“The people of the West are the chiefest of its outward differences. They are more varied than the climates, more picturesque than the mountains. Nowhere else is all the world can be found such an assortment of human beings, such differentiations of the human element… The tramp of the incoming multitudes is not poetry alone. There is fact for it. Nor is this movement of people merely a stage in the process of a land settlement: it is a chapter in world history and a study in world psychology. Can you explain it – the drawing, the gripping, the tearing-up, the moving, the settling down, the new living? To know the inner workings of the average immigrant mind, before and after, would be as entertaining as a day with Dickens. 40 different languages may be heard in the course of a walk on the streets of Winnipeg. The Englishness of Winnipeg is still pre-dominant, but it has its Babel, as has every other city in the West. The Whole West, indeed, is a Babel.”

Many of the women graduating from McGill Normal School went out west. (English teachers were definitely needed!) The Nicholsons even considered it. Edith wanted to go, for a summer a least, but she did not have a diploma.

Refining the Cruder Elements of Canadian Society

Granary on the Montreal Harbour, 1912. These ugly buildings have been part and parcel of the Montreal landscape in the 20th century. Wheat was being shipped overseas. In the 1912′s, they didn’t only refine flour, they refined people too. New Immigrants. In an article in the Canadian magazine, this process is described. You didn’t use mills, you used schools, and churches.

The article, titled The Refining Process, by George Chipman, opens by describing a typical post celebration scene in the immigrant quarters: drunken men is sheds, on sidewalks and in ditches, men and women walking wounded with chunks bitten out their ears, faces gashed, with bandages of all sorts and colours… Therefore, “the patriotic people of Winnipeg are on the defensive in endeavoring to educate and ‘Canadianize’ the new immigrants.”

“More foreign homes are being reached by the schools than by any other medium. Several thousand children from foreign homes meet together with children from Canadian homes and soon the common language of all is Anglo Saxon. The foreign children are quick to pick up the English words and soon they are more proficient in English than the parents.

Winnipeg Kindergarten Kids. Hebrews, Germans, Poles. Ruthenians,Hungarians, Bohemians, Russians,Roumanians, Icelanders, Swedes, Danes, Norwegians and Syrians. The Jewish adults flock to the night schools. Juvenile offenders are not treated like hardened criminals, but dealt with in a special juvenile court “that can do immeasurable good for the younger generation.”

In addition to the ordinary work of the schools, the boys have the advantage of the manual training work above grade four, and this has a splendid disciplinary effect upon them and has the tendency towards usefulness. Military training has become an important feature of training at the public schools of Winnipeg, preparing them to take a full share in the work of the community and country to which they belong.

The girls receive regular lessons in sewing and cooking. If they can go home and improve the manner of living, provide better food and clothing from the same material, raise the moral tone of the home, the great task is already half accomplished.

The Ultimate Canadian Race

Black spinster in US. With a little training, could this woman make a good wife for a home-steader out West, Maclean’s Magazine asks in 1911?

A few blogs ago I wrote about Marion’s school trip in 1905, to see Booker T. Washington and hear him speak. And I scoped the Montreal Gazette to find articles that might have influenced her ideas about the Black Community in Montreal, some of whose children she likely taught in her school in Little Burgundy.

Then I went on to writing about the Fannie Farmer Cook book. Well, what would fall out of Marion Nicholson’s edition of the 1912 cookbook but a poem.

The Negro’s Dog

Upon his playful hands the great hounds leap,

They fawn around his knee and eye his face,…

Do they not see the Man is Black? etc.

And then yesterday, I discovered some Maclean’s Magazines from the era, posted on archive.org (public domain) and noticed a 1911 article on the Canadian Negro.

I read it and cringed. I know from my previous research that this article isn’t an anomaly. It reflects the entrenched beliefs of the day.

The article starts out in a promising way:

“To be perfectly honest with ourselves, there is no such thing as a Canadian. Canadian so far is a geographical and political term. There are English Canadians and French Canadians, Galacian Canadians, Icelandic Canadians, Yellow Canadians, Red Canadians, Black Canadians. And one day, all these people’s may mix their blood and become a Canadian Race.

Then the author, a Britton B. Cooke, writes: The simplest division that could be made is the division of colour. There are white Canadians and the rest.

The article then talks about the Underground Railroad, already a legend in 1910, and the Southerners who are heading out West.

And then the ugly stuff starts, a deconstruction of the character of the negro (the stereotypes) leads the author to claim that the Negro is not right for assimilation in Canada and in the making of the Ultimate Canadian Race. (Neither, he says, is the Yellow man, as it has been proven in B.C.)

Hmm. This is history I think we need to know. White-washing the past (to use a poor pun) doesn’t help future generations deal with the present. Remember, the Canadian Government was actively seeking Americans to come to Canada to work the land out West, preferring these nearby immigrants over the others from overseas.

Canadians can be smug about their past, largely because they don’t know it. We often feel ourselves superior to the US, a kinder more inclusive country. But are we?

The Servant Problem: I’ve written about it on http://www.tighsolas.ca/. Many suffragist sympathizing rich women were hypocrits when it came to the women they employed. Indeed, many of the recommendations of the Royal Commission were designed to solve the servant problem.

The Jewish Question in Montreal Schools 1903-1913

A detail of 1914 Summer School for Teachers in Lachute. Edith is there. And likely some Jewish girls too.

Well, I attended an elementary school in Montreal called Royal Vale and my particular class was comprised mostly of Jewish kids and yet it has taken me to this day, 45 years, to learn about why this was. Imagine, why didn’t they just teach it in school?

Apparently, it was in 1903, two years before Marion Nicholson went to McGill Normal School, that it was decided that Jewish children could be educated in the Protestant system. And it wasn’t until 1913, the year my Flo in the City novel comes to an end, that the Protestant Board agreed to allow Jewish teachers into the system, although at their disgression and it was stipulated, these teachers would not be allowed to teach the scriptures. (Hmm, there were two dissenters, one an Alderman Fraser. Is this the same guy who pleaded so eloquently against the heavy tax on street vendors, most of whom were Greek, Syrian and Italian?)

Jewish children were only allowed to attend the Protestant schools in 1903 so long as the Protestant system “would remain unchanged with regard to its religious character and constitution, believing that any change would have the ultimate effect of destroying the Christian character of the schools.”

(In the 60′s, my elementary school was pretty secular, although on my first day I was brought up to the head of the class to read a piece from the Bible, and it was very embarrassing, as I couldn’t read. (It was November and I had just come from Labrador and I had not attended Kindergarten.) I recall the passage, “They who go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters.” My teacher whispered the words in my ears. (What a way to make a kid self-conscious on her first day EVER at school!)

Of course, I was a little pagan. Anyway, I also recall that there must have been prayers or something at the start of class, because one girl, a Jevhovah’s Witness, always left the room, and stood outside. This seemed weird to me. I mean I was a pagan and I stayed in the room. So did the Jewish kids. .. Anyway…)

Somewhere in the Tigholas era, 1908-1909 ish, a Finnie Bill was introduced, that, if I understand it, was to allow Jewish parents to fully participate in the Protestant Board’s running. And this of course brought out the bigots and such… Some letters to the editor claimed that Jews were unsanitary,which is ironic, as the Jewish families had the lowest incidence of infant mortality in the city, due to superior hygiene…

Anyway, here I learned that the Jewish graduates of McGill Normal School, who couldn’t find jobs in Montreal Schools, despite the fact that 30-40 percent of the students were Jewish, were hired to make home visits to new immigrants, “to give instruction to the children in the manners and customs of this country and impress upon the strangers the ideas and principals of Canadian civil and social life and direct them to observe recognized standards in cleanliness, clothing and comfort.”

So, I have some important background to my Flo in the City story. No mention, of course, is made of this controversy in the Nicholson letters, http://www.tighsolas.ca/ although Marion and Flo had to have known of it. How will I fit it in? I do not know. A Dr. Barclay, School Board Commissioner, apparently called the Jews Infidels and Thieves, which is interesting because this MAY be the same Reverend Barclay who is a prominent Prebyterian Minister. But I have to double check….Yes, the Canadian Jewish Times has a full account. Rev. Barclay of the Presbyterians softened his accusations by saying that he considers ‘the infidel and the thief his brother, but he would not want them teaching his children.” He claims to speak for the Anglicans and Methodists too, but Finnie, mocks him saying he only speaks for the Presbyterian clergy. Barclay replies by saying that Lay people and Clergy are represented on the Protestant Board.”

Oh, wow. This is interesting with respect to Flo in the City, my novel in progress based on the letters of http://www.tigsholas.ca/