Pictures of Canadian Life by James Ewing Ritchie

Lunching one day in Toronto with one of the aldermen of that thriving city (I may as well frankly state that we had turtle-soup on the occasion), he remarked that he had been in London the previous summer, and that he was perfectly astonished at the idea Englishmen seemed to have about Canada. He was particularly indignant at the way in which it was coolly assumed that the Canadians were a barbarous people, planted in a wilderness, ignorant of civilization, deficient in manners and customs-a well-meaning people, of whom in the course of ages something might be made, but at present in a very nebulous and unsatisfactory state. It seems my worthy friend had gone to hear a popular Q. C. -a gentleman of Liberal proclivities, very anxious to write M. P. after his name-deliver a lecture to the young men of the Christian Association in Exeter Hall on Canada. Never was a man more mortified in all his life than was the alderman in question. All the time the lecture was being delivered, he said, he held down his head in shame. ‘I felt,' said he, rising to a climax, ‘as if I must squirm! ' What ‘squirming' implies the writer candidly admits that he has no idea. Of course, it means something very bad. All he can say is, that it is his hope and prayer that in the following pages he may set no Canadian squirming. He went out to see the nakedness, or the reverse, of the land, to ask the emigrants how they were getting on, to judge for himself whether it was worth any Englishman's while to leave home and friends to cross the Atlantic and plant himself on the vast extent of prairie stretching between Winnipeg and the Rocky Mountains. What he heard and saw is contained in the following pages, originally published in the _Christian World_, and now reproduced as a small contribution to a question which rises in importance with the increase of population and the growing difficulty of getting a living at home.

As a rule, the English know little more of Canada than that it belongs to us-that it is very cold there in winter and very hot in summer. I happened to be on board the _Worcester_ training-ship on the last occasion of the prizes being given away, and was not surprised to find that Canada was especially referred to as illustrating the defective geographical knowledge of the young cadets. In the _London Citizen_ a few weeks later there was still grosser display of ignorance on the part of a writer who had gone to Montreal to attend the meetings of the British Association there, and who complained bitterly of the lack of garden-parties and champagne lunches. This victim of misplaced confidence owned that he had to put up with tea and coffee and non-intoxicating beverages when he did so far condescend as to accept Canadian hospitality.