by Cecily Ross
MARCH 1, 1834
The crowded conditions—four adults and three little ones—make me long for better weather so that we can spend at least part of the day outdoors. But when I venture beyond the protection of these four walls, I am, as always, diminished by the incomprehensible forest that surrounds us on all sides. There is nowhere to look except straight ahead into the unending undergrowth or straight up at the distant sky.
Winter persists. And construction of our own cabin goes slowly. Moodie has hired three men, and Sam helps when he can with advice and muscle and tools. Kate and I nurse the children and wash and cook and mend. She takes real pleasure in tasks that I consider mere drudgery: kneading coarse flour into a lumpy dough, boiling lye for soap, the mindless labour of churning milk into butter, dipping rags in tallow, rendering pork fat, and gutting the rabbits and squirrels the men bring home. I admire her industry, but more than that, her ability to distract herself with tiny triumphs, whether it’s a pan of muffins or labelling jars of dried herbs and arranging them in careful rows on the kitchen shelves. I admire her refusal to succumb to the mire of homesickness that I can’t seem to extricate myself from. This morning, as I watched her rolling out pastry on the flour-covered table, I had to tell her how much I respect and envy her perseverance.
“Oh, but I have so much to learn.” She blushed, and wiping her forehead with the back of her forearm, she straightened to look at me. “We would not have survived without Sam’s help, and the others—the Hagues, the Caddys, Emilia Shairp. You will meet them all. The Chippewa too. Chief and Mrs. Peter. They know the secrets of the forest. They are the spirit of this land. They have a great deal to teach us.”
For a moment, I wondered if she might have a fever. The lilting mystical tone was new.
“I’m sure I will be a very poor student,” I said. “Remember how Cook always said I could burn water if I put my mind to it?” I had a vision then of the kitchen at Reydon Hall. Cook’s suet puddings, Sarah’s brown bread, Tom with gooseberry jam smeared all over his face. I cried out loud at the thought of my littlest brother. “Tom, away at sea,” I said. “We will never see any of them again, Kate. Sometimes I can’t . . .”
She passed me a biscuit cutter and a tray. “Susanna, that life is behind us. Think of something else. The best defence is staying busy.” Her expression was animated by determination, the task at hand. She paused to tuck a stray wisp of hair behind her ear. “I will never forget England. Of course not. But I will remember it with joy, not regret. We have new challenges. You must keep a steady heart.”
At that moment, as I looked around her rough cabin, evidence of that steady heart was everywhere abundant. The children played at our feet. Hector watched us from his place by the hearth. I felt a sort of gladness then. My natural pessimism resists Kate’s view of our situation, but it is impossible not to be affected by her good spirits.
“You must work at happiness, Susanna. Make room for it.” She stopped and smiled at me. Kindly. “Now, shall I add some currants to this last batch? What do you say about that, James? Currants?” She stooped to pick up her little son and held him, covering his dirty face with kisses while he giggled and squirmed.
I am trying. And if I pay attention, sometimes I am struck by an unexpected and surprising joy at the simplest things—the sound of sap dripping into a bucket, the smell of freshly baked cornbread, the evening sun sinking into the shining lake—and always by the persistence of another life turning inside me. (I am certain this babe will be a boy.)
Bathed in Kate’s goodness, my homesickness is changing from a dull, hopeless ache into an almost comforting nostalgia. Katie adores her aunt, who has fashioned for her charming little dolls out of scraps of wool and cloth. My sister listens long and patiently to my daughter’s childish sermons, and acquiesces to baby Addie’s insistent demands for attention with amused equanimity and a genuine interest that I cannot find within me.
News arrived yesterday from Agnes that Uncle Charles, our mother’s brother, fell from his horse in July and never recovered from his injuries. He was dead within weeks. Mama is stricken but resigned to the loss. “He was the youngest, her favourite brother,” Agnes wrote, “and the most successful of all the siblings. He had a penchant for risk-taking that served him well in the law but obviously proved his undoing in less cerebral pursuits. I have always believed that riding to hounds and whisky are not entirely compatible.”
Uncle Charles died without heirs, his wife and only daughter succumbing scarcely a year ago to smallpox, which means my sisters and I are the beneficiaries of his modest estate. It seems unjust to benefit from another’s misfortune, but this legacy is nevertheless the answer to our prayers. Seven hundred pounds!
When I told him, Moodie could not speak. He simply threw back his head and laughed out loud.
MAY 30, 1834
My sister’s garden is nearly planted. Potatoes, peas, onions, and we shall have cabbages in the fall. Today, I helped her sow the “three sisters”: corn, beans and squash. It is an Indian technique Kate has adopted along with her moccasins and medicinal herbs. I admit I am eager to see the outcome: the cornstalks supporting the bean vines, which in turn nourish the soil. The broad leaves of the squash shading the roots of all three from the summer sun. The sight of those mounds of earth, their implicit bounty, the streaks of sweat on my sister’s forehead, the little ones playing in the dirt, the heaviness in my belly—all have aroused in me eager anticipation for what lies ahead that I have not felt in a long time.
I am sewing new shirts for Moodie from the bolt of flannel Agnes sent from home. I detest making shirts with their collars and cuffs and straight seams, but my husband’s work clothes are already in tatters and it is only the end of May. Most of the ready-made wardrobe we brought from England is still packed away: tailored woollen suits and dresses, trimmed capes and jackets entirely unsuited to the hot Canadian summers. And too fine to be subjected to the work we do here. It is endless, this mending and making of clothes for my family. We wear our dresses and breeches and shirts until they are too tattered to be respectable, then take them apart to use as patterns for new ones. I am becoming very adept with a needle and can whip together a dress for myself or a child’s pinafore in the time it takes to bake biscuits. (I am a better seamstress than cook.)
Despite this never-ending occupation, I try to keep up with my writing. Agnes, in her last letter, urged me to produce amusing tales of life in Canada, with the promise of certain publication in England. But when the daily work is done and I am sitting at this table, quill in hand, with nothing to distract me but the blue jays calling in the pines and the smell of burning cedar on the breeze, I am unable to squeeze a single syllable from my sluggish brain. The paper sits before me like a foreign land. Never in my life have I been at such a loss for words—me, for whom the pen has always been a lifeline to my imagination, through which images and ideas and colourful stories run like water over a precipice. But nothing will come. Perhaps I am too close to it. The humorous sketch that has been percolating in my mind, of Old Joe and the dead skunk in the cupboard and a house overrun with vermin, amusing and pathetic as it is, arouses in me only a familiar sadness, and disgust that all the hopes of my youth should come to that: a rotting carcass in a cupboard. Someday, I will be able to laugh about it, but I need more distance.
A word about Mr. Traill. The hard physical labour of homesteading has improved his previously sallow and frail physique. He looks almost rugged now. But his mental state does not seem to have responded with the same vigour. When he and Moodie return from their day’s work, Traill sits in his chair and says nothing. He is never hungry and must be coaxed to come to the table for meals. My husband has given up trying to engage him in conversation. Even the ebullient Sam’s tolerance is wearing thin.
“He’s like an old man, Susie,” my brother said to me yesterday as we watched Mr. Traill unhitching the oxen at the end of the day. “A beast of burden, without even the will to rebel. How does Kate en
dure it?” I told him I have tried to talk to her, but she insistently attributes her husband’s despondency to the long winter, and expects his mood will soon lift. She cannot let go of her determination that all will be well. It’s as if she thinks she can will not only her own happiness but everyone else’s as well.
JUNE 1, 1834
Emilia Shairp. I met her yesterday for the first time when she stopped in at Westove on her way from Peterborough to her bush farm, where she will spend the summer. I confess I have felt some apprehension and a twinge of jealousy at the thought of meeting this person Kate says is like a sister to her. Like a sister.
Mrs. Shairp is fair-skinned and thin as a poplar, and her energy is like that of a reined-in colt. All this time, she has hovered in my imagination as a reincarnation of Anna Laura. But unlike our departed friend, she is neither quiet nor fragile.
A prickle of electricity filled the room as she entered, obscuring the fact that her features are unremarkable, even plain, but animated nevertheless by a liveliness that I wanted to reach out and touch. She was wearing a very smart tweed riding jacket that was out of place in our present context. But it set off her narrow waist nicely and complemented her light brown hair, which she had pulled back into a hasty coil from which stray wisps escaped, framing her face in a happy riot of curls. She fairly danced into the small parlour, her long arms reaching out to pull Kate into a laughing embrace.
“Oh, my heavens. I am so happy to see you.” She straightened and, closing her eyes, drew in a long breath through flared nostrils.
“How I have missed this air, and the quiet. You have no idea what a pestilential pit Peterborough can be when the weather gets warm. The smells . . . ugh.” She wrinkled her nose and then laughed. Laughter like wind chimes. “Oh yes, I am so glad to be back.” She threw the parcel she was carrying on the table and, placing her hands on her hips, executed a half turn one way and then the other. “Do you like it? The cloth comes straight from Savile Row. Made by Peterborough’s finest—all right, only—tailor.”
She began pulling apart the brown paper parcel. “I know, I know. Ridiculous. Such fine cloth in the middle of nowhere. A riding habit to wear milking cows. Anyway, I don’t care. A girl has to have her little indulgences. And look, I’ve brought five yards for you, Kate.” She unrolled the bolt of textured wool and let it billow over the back of a chair. “A pair of trousers for Mr. Traill. A fine new suit for little James. There.” She dropped the tweed and turned her breathless attention to where I was standing with Addie on my hip, both of us struck dumb by the force of her considerable personality.
“You must be Susanna,” she said, and her eyes—such pale eyes—were quieter. “Welcome to the backwoods. Are these your angels?” Abruptly, she sat down on the floor, crossed her legs under her skirt like an Indian and reached a closed fist out to where little Katie was peering through the spindles of a kitchen chair. “I have something for you,” whispered Mrs. Shairp. “But first you must tell me your name.”
“Katie,” my daughter whispered back. She let the pretty stranger drop a cluster of sweets into her tiny upturned palm.
“There you are. Candied violets.” Mrs. Shairp stood up, wiping her hands on the front of her skirt. “My mother makes them. Reminds her of England, I suppose. Now, let’s have some tea.”
With the introductions over, my sister asked her friend if her husband (Lieutenant Alexander Shairp) had returned yet from his business in the United States.
Mrs. Shairp shrugged her thin shoulders and grew serious for a moment. “No, and I don’t know when to expect him.” Then she added lightly, “Perhaps he has gone for good.”
“Emilia, really,” said Kate.
“Oh, don’t worry, darling. It’s all right. He’ll come back. He always does.” She turned to me. “Your sister does not entirely approve of me, I’m afraid.”
“Emilia, that is simply not true and you know it. It’s just that I wonder how you manage on your own.”
“Well, you needn’t. I am perfectly able to tend a garden and chop wood myself. Now, Susanna, when will your house be finished? You must be eager to move in.”
After she left, I asked Kate about Lieutenant Shairp and his absences, but she professed ignorance (my sister does not approve of gossip). Then, when I related what Moodie had already told me about Shairp’s reputed fondness for whisky, Kate said, “Nonsense. Emilia would have said something.”
“Maybe you should ask her. Maybe she needs a confidante.”
“Susanna, it is none of our business. I urge you to stay out of it. You heard her. She can take care of herself.”
Perhaps she can. In any case, I find myself drawn to this fine young woman’s energy and good humour. Though she is nearly a decade younger, I hope we shall be great friends. I told Kate as much.
“I knew you’d love her, Susie,” she said. “My two favourite people in the world. I am so pleased.”
JUNE 2, 1834
I am feeling more hopeful every day. But still, the Canadian spring seems interminable: days of bright sunshine that set the brooks singing and the spirit soaring are followed by icy rainstorms and bitter winds, and even snowstorms in April, in a cycle of hope and despair that lasts for months. Then, without preamble, summer, with its torpor and insects, descends like an itchy blanket. The brutality of winter is forgotten instantly, and one longs absurdly for relief from the inescapable heat. Lacking the temperate influence of the great lake to the south, the climate here in Douro is colder in winter and hotter in summer than what we knew in Hamilton Township. The land is rockier and the vegetation miserly by comparison—all except the colossal brooding pine trees, some more than one hundred feet tall with trunks five or six feet around.
Although every square inch of this land seems to be covered in forest and the giant pines glower down upon us from the edge of the clearing, there is no shade to be found in the vicinity of the Traills’ stifling shelter, every single one of the surrounding trees having been cleared to make way, I have been assured, for some form of agriculture. This morning, seeking a little coolness, I strolled with Kate, Addie toddling along behind (she took her first steps a week ago and has been in perpetual motion ever since), through a plantation of stumps to reach the water’s edge. Lake Katchewanooka, which means “lake of the waterfalls” in Chippewa, is long and narrow, about five miles from end to end and one mile across. Every week, another man-made clearing such as our own springs up along its verdant shores as settlers continue to arrive. The shoreline here is muddy and shallow, and we removed our shoes and stockings and waded among the weeds until the girls were covered in muck and the mosquitos finally drove us back to hot, dry land. In quiet times like these, I can’t help but reflect that it is the shimmering lakes and pure streams, the eternal forests, at once beautiful and terrible, and all around them the formidable inhuman silences—in short, all the things we defile with our relentless will to survive and prosper—that I find most inspiring about Canada, and that move me to take up my pen in praise and wonder.
Moodie goes off each day to supervise the construction of our cabin or to trade, borrow or buy the necessary equipment and materials. He is becoming well known in Douro for his gregarious nature and willingness to make a deal. His capacity for the company of others seems inexhaustible, and he returns in the evenings covered in grime and itchy red welts but bursting with plans and schemes. Give this man a project, I have learned, and he is happier than a hog in a wallow. The same compulsion to busyness infects my sister Kate, who putters endlessly from dawn to dusk. As I write this, she is in the forest, gathering wild plants and flowers for a book she plans to write about Canadian flora. Yesterday, she took me down the lake to where the Chippewa have set up their summer camp. We took with us flour and eggs and a few yards of flannel to trade. Several young squaws ran out to greet us, smiling with obvious delight and a great deal of incomprehensible chatter. They were dressed in animal skins and red leggings, their long black hair hanging in mats to their shoulders. It
is obvious that Kate has become a favourite with the band, and her own affection for these strange people is just as clear. She introduced me to her friend Mrs. Peter, the chief’s wife, whose dark face is as creased as the bark of an ancient willow, and her daughter Ayita (it means “first to dance”), who has shown Kate all the best places to pick berries and harvest rice. Mrs. Peter has also taught her to identify many medicinal herbs. I admit I was wary of these people at first; their black eyes, their heavy, inscrutable features and their heathen ways frightened me, and I hung back while Kate met them like old friends. But knowing that Agnes and the others would be eager for details about these “noble savages,” I soon overcame my hesitation. We exchanged our goods for a pair of decorative baskets and a deerskin headband embroidered with beads that Kate insisted I should have. I will never wear it in a million years, but I was very taken with a doll-sized miniature canoe Ayita had fashioned from birchbark. I think Sarah will treasure it, and it will give me comfort to picture it adorning the mantelpiece in the library at Reydon Hall. Now that I have survived our first encounter, I no longer fear that these strange natives might murder us in our sleep; they seem to be a friendly, ingenuous breed.
My sister, in the meantime, has embraced their ways with her whole heart, even forsaking her sturdy English shoes. She has taken to wearing deerskin boots decorated with brightly dyed porcupine quills and laced almost to her knees. She carries little James as the squaws do, on her back, swaddled onto a rigid frame called a papoose, an arrangement she maintains leaves her hands free to garden and bake and quilt and mend in an endless round of meaningful activity that leaves me exhausted just thinking about it.
JUNE 7, 1834