Girl Life in Canada

BY

JANEY CANUCK

 If you leave out France, Canada is as large as all Europe; which means that the girls of our Dominion live under climatic, domestic, and social conditions that are many and varied. It is of the girls in the newer provinces I shall write--those provinces known as 'North-West Canada'--who reside in the country adjacent to some town or village.

It is true that many girls who come here with their fathers and mothers often live a long distance from a town or even a railroad.

Where I live at Edmonton, the capital of the Province of Alberta, almost every day in the late winter we see girls starting off to the Peach River district, which lies to the north several hundred miles from a railroad.

How do they travel? You could never guess, so I may as well tell you. They travel in a house--a one-roomed house. It is built on a sled and furnished with a stove, a table that folds against the wall, a cupboard for food and dishes, nails for clothing, and a box for toilet accessories. Every available inch is stored with supplies, so that every one must perforce sleep on the floor. This family bed is, however, by no means uncomfortable, for the 'soft side of the board' is piled high with fur rugs and four-point blankets. (Yes, if you remind me I'll tell you by and by what a 'four-point' blanket is.)

The entrance to the house is from the back, and the window is in front, through a slide in which the lines extend to the heads of the horses or the awkward, stumbling oxen.

A Travelling House

You must not despise the oxen, or say, 'A pretty, team for a Canadian girl!' for, indeed, they are most reliable animals, and not nearly so delicate as horses, nor so hard to feed--and they never, never run away. Besides--and here's the rub--you can always eat the oxen should you ever want to, and popular prejudice does not run in favour of horseflesh.

Oh, yes! I said I would tell you about 'four-point' blankets. They are the blankets that have been manufactured for nearly three hundred years by 'the Honourable Company of Gentlemen Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay,' known for the sake of conciseness as the 'H.B. Company.' These blankets are claimed to be the best in the world, and weigh from eight to ten pounds. The Indians, traders, trappers, boatmen, and pioneers in the North use no others. They are called 'four-point' because of four black stripes at one corner. There are lighter blankets of three and a half points, which points are indicated in the same way. By these marks an Indian knows exactly what value he is getting in exchange for his precious peltry.

After travelling for three or four weeks in this gipsy fashion, mayhap getting a peep at a moose, a wolf, or even a bear (to say nothing of such inconsequential fry as ermine, mink, beaver, and otter), the family arrive at their holding of 160 acres.

It does not look very pleasant, this holding. The snow is just melting, and the landscape is dreary enough on every side, for as yet Spring has not even suggested that green is the colour you may expect to see in Nature's fashion-plate. Not she!

But here's the point. Look you here! the house is already built for occupancy, and has only to be moved from the sled to the ground. There is no occasion for a plumber or gasfitter either, and as for water and fuel, they are everywhere to be had for the taking.

Presently other rooms will be added of lumber or logs, and a cellar excavated. But who worries about these things when they have just become possessors of 160 statute acres of land that have to be prepared for grain and garden stuff? Who, indeed?

Here is where the girl comes in. She must learn to bake bread and cakes, how to dress game and fish, and how to make bacon appetising twice a day. She must 'set' the hens so that there may be 'broilers' against Thanksgiving Day, and eggs all the year round. She has to sow the lettuces, radishes, and onions for succulent salads; and always she must supply sunshine and music, indoors and out, for dad and mother and the boys.

Perhaps you think she is not happy, but you are sadly mistaken. She is busy all day and sleepy all night. She knows that after a while a railroad is coming in here, and there will be work and money for men and teams, which means the establishment of a town near by, where you may purchase all kinds of household comforts and conveniences, to say nothing of pretty blouses, hats, and other 'fixings.' Oh, she knows it, the minx! She is the kind of a girl Charles Wagner describes as putting 'witchery into a ribbon and genius into a stew.'

But let us take a look at the girl who lives in the more settled parts of the country, near a town.

If she be ambitious, or anxious to help the home-folk, she will want to become a teacher, a bookkeeper, Civil Service employee, or a stenographer. To accomplish this end, she drives to town every day to attend the High School or Business College. Or perhaps she may move into town for the school terms.

Of all these occupations, that of the teacher is most popular. Teachers, in these new provinces, are in great demand, for the supply is entirely inadequate. As a result, they are especially well paid.

If the teacher is hard to get, she is also hard to hold; for the bachelor population being largely in the majority, there are many flattering inducements of a matrimonial character held out to the girl teacher to settle down permanently with a young farmer, doctor, real estate agent, lawyer, or merchant. You could never believe what inducements these sly fellows hold out. Never!

In town our girls find many diversions. She may skate, ride, play golf, basket-ball, or tennis, according as her purse or preference may dictate.

If there be no municipal public library, or reading-room in connection with the Young Women's Christian Association, she may borrow books from a stationer's lending-library for a nominal sum, so that none of her hours need be unoccupied or unprofitable.

In Canadian towns and villages the Church-life is of such a nature that every opportunity is given young girls to become acquainted with others of their own age. There are literary, temperance, missionary, and social clubs in connection with them, some one of which meets almost every night. In the winter the clubs have sleigh-rides and suppers, and in the summer lawn-socials and picnics much as they do in England, or in any part of the British Isles.

Compared with girls in the older countries, it is my opinion that the Canadian lassie of the North-West Provinces has a keener eye to the material side of life. This is only a natural outcome of the commercial atmosphere in which she lives.

A Girl Captain

She sees her father, or her friends, buying lots in some new town site, or in a new subdivision of some city, and, with an eye to the main chance, she desires to follow their example. These lots can be purchased at from L10 to L100, and by holding them for from one to five years they double or treble in value as the places become populated.

As a result, nearly all the girls employed in Government offices, or as secretaries, teachers, or other positions where the salaries are fairly generous, manage to save enough money to purchase some lots to hold against a rise. After investing and reinvesting several times, our girl soon has a financial status of her own and secures a competency. She has no time for nervous prostration or moods, but is alert and wideawake all the time.

Does she marry? Oh, yes! But owing to her financial independence, marriage is in no sense of the word a 'Hobson's choice,' but is generally guided entirely by heart and conscience, as, indeed, it always should be.

Some of the girls who come from Europe or the British Isles save their dollars to enable the rest of the family to come out to Canada.

'Wee Maggie,' a waitress in a Winnipeg restaurant, told me the other day that in three years she had saved enough to bring her aged father and mother over from Scotland and to furnish a home for them.

Still other girls engage in fruit-farming in British Columbia, or in poultry-raising; but these are undertakings that require some capital to start with.

An increasingly large number of Canadian girls are taking University courses, or courses in technical colleges and musical conservatoires, with the idea of fitting themselves as High School teachers or for the medical profession.

In speaking of the girls of Western Canada, one must not overlook the Swedish, Russian, Italian, Galician, and other Europeans who have made their home in the Dominion.

The Handicrafts Guild is helping these girls to support themselves by basketry, weaving, lace and bead making, pottery, and needlework generally. Prizes are offered annually in the different centres for the best work, and all articles submitted are afterwards placed on sale in one of their work depositories. This association is doing a splendid work, in that they are making the arts both honourable and profitable.

While this article has chiefly concerned itself with the domestic and peaceful pursuits of our Canadian girls, it must not be forgotten that in times of stress they have shown themselves to be heroines who have always been equal to their occasions.

Our favourite heroine is, perhaps, Madeleine de Vercheres, who, in the early days when the Indians were an ever-present menace to the settlers on the St. Lawrence River, successfully defended her father's seignory against a band of savage Iroquois.

Her father had left an old man of eighty, two soldiers, and Madeleine and her two little brothers to guard the fort during his absence in Quebec.

One day a host of Indians attacked them so suddenly they had hardly time to barricade the windows and doors. The fight was so fierce the soldiers considered it useless to continue it, but Madeleine ordered them to their posts, and for a week, night and day, kept them there. She taught her little brothers how to load and fire the guns so rapidly that the Indians were deceived and thought the fort well garrisoned.

When a reinforcement came to her relief, it was a terribly exhausted little girl that stepped out to welcome them at the head of the defenders--Captain Madeleine Vercheres, aged fourteen!

Yes, we like to tell this story of Madeleine over and over.

We like to paint pictures of her, too, and to mould her figure in bronze; for we know right well that she is a type of the strong, brave, resourceful lassies who in all ranks of our national life, may ever be counted upon to stand to their posts, be the end what it may.

Gentlemen, hats off! The Canadian girl!