Arrival in Canada

Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.

From Adventures in Canada; or, Life in the Woods by Cunningham Geike, 1882.

Our landing at Quebec was only for a very short time, till some freight was delivered, our vessel having to go up to Montreal before we left it. But we had stay enough to let us climb the narrow streets of this, the oldest of Canadian cities, and to see some of its sights. The view from different points was unspeakably grand to us after being so long pent up in a ship. Indeed, in itself it is very fine.

Cape Diamond and the fortifications hanging high in the air—the great basin below, like a sheet of the purest silver, where a hundred sail of the line might ride in safety—the village spires, and the fields of every shape dotted with countless white cottages, the silver thread of the River St. Charles winding hither and thither among them, and, in the distance, shutting in this varied loveliness, a range of lofty mountains, purple and blue by turns, standing out against the sky in every form of picturesque beauty, made altogether a glorious panorama.

Of course, the great sight of sights to a Briton is the field of battle on the Plains of Abraham, where Wolfe, on the 13th September, 1750, won for us, at the price of his own life, the magnificent colonies of what is now British North America. Wolfe's body was taken to England for burial, and now lies in the vault below the parish church at Greenwich. That of Montcalm, the French general, who, also, was killed in the battle, was buried in the Ursuline Convent, where they showed us a ghastly relic of him—his fleshless, eyeless skull, kept now in a little glass case, as if it were a thing fit to be exhibited. It was to me a horrible sight to look at the grinning death's head, and think that it was once the seat of the gallant spirit who died so nobly at his post.

His virtues, which all honor, are his fitting memorial in every mind, and his appropriate monument is the tomb erected by his victorious enemies—not this parading him in the dishonor and humiliation of the grave. It is the spirit of which we speak when we talk of a hero, and there is nothing in common with it and the poor mouldering skull that once contained it.

Quebec is, as I have said, a beautiful place in Summer, but it must be bad enough in winter. The snow lies till well on in May, and it is so deep that, in the country, everything but houses and trees and other high objects are covered. The whole landscape is one unbroken sheet of white, over which you may go in any direction without meeting or seeing the smallest obstacle. But people get used to any thing; and even the terrible cold is so met and resisted by double window-sashes, and fur caps, and gloves, and coats, that the inhabitants seem actually to enjoy it.

When we got to Toronto, we found that my brother Robert, who was already in the country, had been travelling in different directions to look out a place for us, and had at length bought a farm in the township of Bidport, on the banks of the River St. Clair. We therefore stayed no longer in Toronto than possible, but it took us some time to get every thing put right after the voyage, and we were further detained by a letter from my brother, telling us that the house on the farm could not be got ready for us for a week or two longer. We had thus plenty of time to look about us, and strange enough everything seemed.

The town is very different now-a-days; but, then, it was a straggling collection of wooden houses, of all sizes and shapes, a large one next to a miserable one-story shell, placed with its end to the street. There were a few brick houses, but only a few. The streets were like a newly-ploughed field in rainy weather, for mud, the wagons often sinking almost to the axles in it. There was no gas, and the pavements were both few and bad. It has come to be a fine place now, but to us it seemed very wretched.

While we were waiting, we laid in whatever provision we thought we would need for a good while, everything being much cheaper in Toronto than away in the bush. A month or less saw us moving, my sisters going with Andrew and Henry by water, while Frederic was left behind in an office; Robert, my Canadian brother, and I going by land, to get some business done up the country as we passed.

The stage in which we took our places was a huge affair, hung on leather springs, with a broad shelf behind, supported by straps from the upper corners, for the luggage. There were three seats, the middle one movable, which it needed to be, as it came exactly in the centre of the door. The machine and its load were drawn by four horses, rough enough, but of good bottom, as they say. The first few miles were very pleasant, for they had been macadamized, but after that, what travelling! The roads had not yet dried up, after the spring rains and thaws, and as they were only mud, and much travelled, the most the horses could do was to pull us through at a walk. When we came to a very deep hole, we had to get out till the coach floundered through it.

Every here and there, where the water had overflowed from the bush and washed the road completely away in its passage across it, the ground was strewn with rails which had been taken from the nearest fences to hoist out some wheels that had stuck fast. At some places there had been a wholesale robbery of rails, which had been thrown into a gap of this kind in the road, till it was practicable for travellers or wagons. After a time we had to bid adieu to the comforts of a coach and betake ourselves to a great open wagon—a mere strong box, set on four wheels, with pieces of plank laid across the top for seats. In this affair—some ten feet long and about four broad—we went through some of the worst stages.

But, beyond Hamilton, we got back our coach again, and for a time went on smoothly enough, till we reached a swamp, which had to be crossed on a road made of trees cut into lengths and laid side by side, their ends resting on the trunks of others placed lengthwise. You may think how smooth it would be, with each log a different size from the one next it—a great patriarch of the woods rising high between "babes" half its thickness. The whole fabric had, moreover, sunk pretty nearly to the level of the water, and the alder bushes every here and there overhung the edges.

As we reached it late at night, and there was neither moon nor stars, and a yard too much either way would have sent coach and all into the water, men had to be got from the nearest house to go at the horses' heads with lanterns, and the passengers were politely requested to get out, and stumble on behind as they could, except two ladies, who were allowed to stay and be battered up and down inside, instead of having to sprawl on in the dark with us. This was my first experience of "corduroy roads," but we had several more stretches of them before we got to our journey's end. I have long ago learned all the varieties of badness of which roads are capable, and questions whether "corduroy" is entitled to the first rank.

There is a kind made of thick planks, laid side by side, which, when they get old and broken, may bid fair for the palm. I have seen a stout, elderly lady, when the coach was at a good trot, bumped fairly against the roof by a sudden hole and the shock against the plank at the other side. But, indeed, "corduroy" is dreadful. When we came to it I tried every thing to save my poor bones—sitting on my hands, or raising my body on them—but it was of little use; on we went, thump, thump, thumping against one log after another, and this, in the last part of our journey, with the bare boards of an open wagon for seats once more. It was bad enough in the coach with stuffed seats, but it was awful on the hardwood.

But we got through without an actual upset or breakdown, which is more than a friend of mine could say, for the coach in which he was went into so deep a mud-hole at one part of the road, that it fairly overturned, throwing the passengers on the top of one another inside, and leaving them no way of exit, when they came to themselves, but to crawl out through the window.

It was fine weather, however, and the leaves were making the woods beautiful, and tlic birds had begun to flit about, so that the cheerfulness of nature kept us from thinking much of our troubles. It took us three days to go a hundred and fifty miles, and we stopped on the way besides for my brother's business, so that the rest of our party had reached our new home, by their route, before us.

Geike, Cunningham. Adventures in Canada; or, Life in the Woods, Porter & Coates, 1882.

Cunningham Geike

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