by Cecily Ross
This morning, as they watched me shaping dough into loaves, standing on their chairs, scribbling with their fingers in the loose flour on the table, Katie pushed a ball of dough at me. “Make a pig,” she said, laughing. Addie squealed and clapped her hands. “Pig, pig,” she chanted. And for a moment, something in me shrank from their happy insistence. As though they were trying to claim me, to stake me out, to make me theirs, or some part of me I might never recover. The moment passed. But here I am again, trying, trying not to separate, like cream rising to the top. It is no use.
Six of our best hogs have wandered onto the ice and drowned. Moodie is certain they were deliberately driven to their death by an Irish ruffian who has been squatting in the workers’ shed by the cedar swamp. The animals were to furnish us with meat for the winter.
James Caddy has brought word that Emilia is safely delivered of a son, Henry Alexander, at her parents’ home in Peterborough.
FEBRUARY 27, 1836
The Chippewa band has returned and pitched their wigwams down by the dry cedar swamp near the sugar bush. Their presence is an indication that the sap will soon be running, a sure sign of long-awaited spring. Chief and Mrs. Peter paid us a visit yesterday, tramping across the frozen lake with snowshoes fashioned from strips of deer hide woven onto curved cedar frames. Chief led the way while his good squaw followed, pulling a “toboggan” laden with baskets and other goods. My husband invited the Indians to join us at the table for an impromptu meal of potatoes, salt pork and coffee, something we would never have done had our servant girl still been with us, as it surely would have caused a rebellion.
The gentle savage, a short, swarthy man with a prominent brow and heavy features, was much taken with a ceremonial Japanese sword belonging to my husband, as well as a survey map of local lakes and rivers that hangs on our parlour wall. He offered the decorative basket his wife was carrying in exchange, and when we demurred, he said in halting, stentorious English: “I give many furs, also blanket.” He pointed to the colourful woven shawl covering Mrs. Peter’s thick, tangled hair. When I explained that we did not wish to part with either the sword or the map, Chief produced a large haunch of meat from one of his baskets. “Venison,” he said, dangling it before us. This item Moodie and I sorely coveted, as it has been many weeks since fresh meat has graced our plates.
I picked up a small silver spoon, the only thing of value I had to offer, and held it out to Mrs. Peter, who smiled politely but shook her head. I shrugged, and as my vision of Sunday’s roast began to dissolve, she approached me, lifted the hem of my skirt and pointed to my quilted petticoat. Clasping her hands as though in prayer, she spoke a few quick and urgent words to her husband and then to me.
I know I will dearly miss the warmth of that petticoat, but the immediate appeal to my deprived appetites was more than I could resist.
Moodie has begun work on a book about emigration to Upper Canada in hopes it will elicit as much interest from London publishers as did his Ten Years in South Africa. An advance such as that my sister received for her book would be most welcome just now, as the small payments I receive from Mr. Fairfield do not even cover the cost of pen and paper.
Shocking news from home: Sarah has eloped with Mr. Robert Childs, dissenter, phrenologist, peculiar little troll. Beauty and the beast. Mama’s hopes for a good match for her most eligible daughter are dashed. “She has taken to her bed again,” Agnes wrote.
MARCH 8, 1836
My brother Sam is pessimistic about the future. After a family supper of pea soup and bacon at Homestead last night, while Mary, Kate and I cleared the plates and served a pudding of dried fruit and suet, the men discussed the dire situation facing bush farmers as land prices, according to Sam, continue to plummet.
“The economic boom that brought us all to Canada has ended,” he said, blaming the slump on the crop failures of the last two years, the availability of free land in the United States, and our own government’s failure to encourage emigration and improve transportation. “I am as loyal to the King’s representatives as the next man, but Toronto is a long way from the lakes and rivers of Douro. We need to make ourselves heard.”
“Like our friend Mackenzie?” my husband asked.
“Of course not,” said Sam. “He’s a madman and would sell us out to the Americans in the blink of an eye, but . . .” He paused to draw on his pipe, and the room went silent as we waited for him to finish his thought. “The seeds of such extremism are nurtured in the soils of discontent. The government should take heed before the contagion spreads and rebellion breaks out.”
Had they cared to ask my opinion, I would have agreed with Sam. The government in Toronto has shown little regard for the needs of settlers such as ourselves, but we can hardly throw our lot in with the likes of Mackenzie.
Thomas Traill remained silent. In fact, he seemed about to fall asleep. His eyelids drooped, his face a blank. Moodie paced the room, stopping to jab a forefinger at Sam.
“You’ve been spending too much time among the Irish rabble, Brother. To my mind, Bond Head and his Anglican compact are the best hope for advancing our fortunes, and I, for one, pledge my allegiance to the Lieutenant-Governor and his distinguished appointees in Toronto.” He raised his glass of whisky and pulled out his flute.
I suspect my husband’s Loyalist bluster is a way of bolstering his own sagging convictions—and mine. He is doing his best to keep all our spirits afloat. But does he really believe that the Lieutenant-Governor and his minions give settlers like us a second thought? As I listened to Moodie play his rousing little tune and watched the others raise their glasses in salute, the doubts Sam had raised drifted away with the fading light, and we were once again united in support of King and country. Despite my reservations, I joined in. The traitor they call “Little Mac” and his followers are monsters and enemies of all we hold dear.
MARCH 28, 1836
Moodie butchered the children’s pet pig yesterday. Spot, as it was called, was adopted by Katie last summer when it was just a shoat, the runt of the litter. She nursed the little weakling for weeks, and the playful animal soon became part of our household, a source of endless merriment, particularly in its friendship with Hector. The two became inseparable and, when they weren’t chasing one another all over the clearing, were likely to be found curled up together by the fire, sleeping on one of Moodie’s old coats. Kate and Addie are bereft; little Dunnie is too young to understand, and yet his tears fell as copiously as the girls’. However, their grief was not so great as to come between them and the ribs we enjoyed for supper. Loyal to the end, only Hector refused to gnaw on the bones of his old friend.
Agnes has written to say that Kate’s long-awaited Backwoods of Canada is garnering glowing reviews in England. My elder sibling will also intervene on her little sister’s behalf in order to sort out copyright. Kate’s efforts to wring further royalties out of Charles Knight have so far proved fruitless. The book is to go into a second printing next year, and she has yet to receive a cent beyond the original advance, or hold a copy in her hand.
MAY 26, 1836
A brother for Dunnie. We have named the new baby Donald. Although she is due to deliver soon herself, Kate assisted me in my labour, which was blessedly short, only three hours from beginning to end, though the pains were hard and close together. The boy is hale and hearty, a blessing since we have little in the way of amenities to ensure his continued survival. My condition has prevented me from working alongside Moodie in the fields these last weeks, and so the wheat and potatoes are not in the ground. The cows have not calved yet, so no milk for the children. If not for Kate’s help and Mrs. Caddy’s contributions of bread and eggs, and the bass and muskie Moodie pulls from the lake on good days, we should be forced to go hungry. This morning, I left my bed and managed to plant a few rows of carrots and peas. Tomorrow, corn and squash.
I can tell that Moodie is worried I may slip into the bog of sadness that sometimes attends the births of my children. He tak
es great pains to remind me of our relative good fortune. “All over the township, settlers are starving,” he says, “or taking refuge in the solace a whisky bottle offers.” The idea that I should be cheered in some way by the misfortunes of others only makes me sad. This morning, he took his newborn son into his arms and cupped the baby’s small head with a rough hand. “He has your chin, Susie. He will prevail.”
JUNE 30, 1836
A daughter for the Traills, Katherine Agnes (another Kate). Mr. Traill’s old friend Dr. Hutchison from the Highlands rode out from Peterborough to attend the birth. Kate says he administered laudanum to ease her pain, and that Hutchison would not accept payment from them. When I consider that I have brought forth each of my babies in paroxysms of agony barely blunted by doses of whisky with the certainty I would surely die before it was over, I fervently wish we had such a friend. Mother and babe are doing well.
Mackenzie and his rabble-rousers have been thoroughly trounced in the recent elections in Toronto. The Family Compact controls the legislature and with it this country’s inviolable connection to the English Crown. The threat of American republicanism is over.
Hard work and hunger are an anaesthetic. The losses and longings, resentments and regrets that once colonized my mind have fled like milkweed silk in a breeze. This place is overtaking me, as hard as I try to outrun it. I haven’t the energy to dwell on the past or contemplate the future. Our lives are an accumulation of days. Every act is essential. The petty quarrels of the past are inconceivable now. Cracked kettles, girlish jealousies, imagined slights, infatuations, daydreams, desire. In the early morning, if I can, I slip down to the lake, and looking into that rippled mirror, at the bottomless sky, the unending forests all around, I can see in my own watery image the distortion of all that I was. I am disappearing. This land is erasing me, and beginning to remake me in ways I never anticipated.
And so I cling to the moment. The weight of a fat bass at the end of a fishing line; three carefully wrapped silver coins falling out of a letter from home; a perfectly plucked grouse; potato plants in bloom; the sound of children laughing; a strong back, dexterous fingers; my sister’s maple cakes; Moodie, Moodie, Moodie, for all his foolishness—these are the things that make my days.
NOVEMBER 12, 1836
Mrs. Peter appeared at our door early this morning in a state of desperation. She managed to convey, in a torrent of her own language peppered with English words and frantic gestures, that an accident or illness of some kind had occurred at her people’s campsite down the lake. Why she came for me and not my sister Kate, I do not know, but she was clearly imploring me to accompany and assist her in whatever way I could. Leaving Moodie with the children, I followed her back along the shore of the lake until we could hear Indian voices coming from one of the cluster of low houses of animal skins stretched over wooden frames. At first, it sounded like a tuneless chant, but as I approached the wigwam, I noted with satisfaction that the Indian women, who have only recently converted to Christianity, were singing “Rock of Ages” in broken English.
Mrs. Peter hurried me to the entrance of her hut, chattering urgently as she did so. I bent down to enter and was assaulted by the putrid odour of rotting flesh mixed with pine needles and smoke. In the dimness, I could make out the shadowy outline of a young man lying on the ground, covered in deerskin robes. Fighting the urge to retch, I knelt and examined the motionless form of what I realized was one of the squaw’s sons, a boy of no more than twelve. The heat from the cooking fire was intense and his brow glistened with sweat. He did not appear to be breathing, but when I placed a hand on his chest, he stirred slightly and moaned. Kneeling beside me, Mrs. Peter, who was weeping loudly, raised the hide covering her son’s right leg, causing him to cry out in pain and lurch to one side. I almost fainted at the sight of the grotesquely swollen and discoloured limb. Just above the knee, a suppurating wound girdled his thigh, and even in the shadows, I could make out the lurid green-and-purple lips of torn flesh. His sister Ayita knelt on the other side of his body, rocking back and forth without making a sound. Beside her, an old man wearing an elaborate headdress of skins and antlers was chanting softly and swinging a polished stone at the end of a rawhide string over the boy’s injured leg. In front of him on a woven rug was a clay pot containing a salve smelling strongly of pine resin, which I assumed had been administered to the wound.
“White man medicine? Please,” said Mrs. Peter, kneeling beside me. She placed her palms together in an attitude of prayer and bowed her head. “White man God,” she mumbled into her chest. She wanted a doctor, a pastor, anything to save her boy. But even I, who know little of medicine and too much of religion, could see it was too late for either. I stood and crouched and, taking her arm, scuttled out of the ghastly shelter. Outside, the morning air was like a gulp of clear spring water.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s too late. I am not a doctor. I cannot help your son.”
Mrs. Peter understood. I had been her last hope, and a faint one at that. She sank to the ground, and as she did, a wail of agony rose from inside the wigwam and was picked up by the women and children gathered outside until the sound reverberated across the water and through the forest.
There was nothing I could offer in the way of comfort, and so I left them to their sorrow and walked home alone. After all Mrs. Peter had done for me and my family, I was abject at the thought I might have been able to help that youth, who is said to have fallen from a tree and broken his leg about two weeks ago. The bone broke through the flesh and soon became infected, causing him great pain. I thought of the times she had come to my aid, the gifts of food and medicine for my children. But I could only watch helplessly as her son died. At least his misery is over. When I described the scene to Moodie, he consoled me, saying that such an injury would have finished any of us, and there was nothing that white man’s medicine or God could have done.
MAY 1, 1837
Our new girl, Jenny, arrived yesterday. Though to call her a girl is misleading, as she is at least twenty years my senior. Illiterate and uncouth, she is nevertheless a welcome addition to our household as she claims to be able to do the work of two men. She has offered her labour in return for food and lodging, and seems more than satisfied with the arrangement, one that is a far better situation than her last. Jenny comes to us from the house of Captain and Louisa Lloyd, where she served as a loyal servant for ten years. But she has been homeless a fortnight since the captain, in one of his drunken rages, beat her severely with the iron ramrod of his gun and has refused to allow her to return. Mrs. Lloyd and the children are now at the mercy of his unpredictable outbursts.
Despite her rough ways, Jenny manages the children with a gentle but firm hand. I have been without help since Lizzie left, and the household has lapsed into a state of benign anarchy. Some days, I would gladly trade them all for a flock of chickens. Even little Donald, only a year old, is turning into an unruly tyrant. This morning when his sister Katie prevented him from stealing Hector’s bone, my determined baby went rigid with anger, and with his little fists clenched, his teeth gritted, he growled at the dog until it crept away in surrender.
Moodie is in the fields from dawn until dusk. The children hardly see him, as he falls into bed almost immediately after supper. It seems all we talk about, when we talk at all, are debts and crops and unpaid wages, and broken tools and droughts and deluges. It has aged him, this life of endless toil. His hair and beard are streaked with grey. His faded eyes look at me from nests of deep lines. His forehead is etched with worry and his stoop is that of an old man. But he seldom complains, and his natural ebullience seems to rise to the surface even under the weight of our debts and our precipitous slide into poverty. Sometimes I think that the only things that bind us are the invisible chains of mutual hardship. So little joy. So much sweat and tears.
Once again, he is writing letters to the Lieutenant-Governor in Toronto, petitioning him for employment of some kind, anything that might provide a
stipend to help lighten our financial burdens. He and Mr. Traill have forgotten their disagreement, a moot point since my brother-in-law’s appointment as JP was not renewed last year. Thomas Traill talks only of selling and leaving this place.
The Shairps will be taking up summer residence at their cabin in a few days. I cannot believe it is nearly eight months since I last saw my friend.
JULY 16, 1837
My monthly visitor is two weeks late. I left the children with Jenny and walked over to Westove this morning to ask Kate for help. I know she will not approve; her third child is imminent, an event she anticipates with unequivocal joy despite her circumstances. I admire her fortitude, but with four children under six, I don’t know how I will manage another so soon.
After hearing me out, my sister sighed and pulled a small brown paper packet from one of the carefully labelled slots in her herb cupboard. “Blue Cohosh” it said. My face must have collapsed with relief as she handed it to me. Her children played quietly on the rug in front of the stove: four-year-old James and little Katherine Agnes, who is the same age as my Donald. Watching them, I felt terrible, but it did not stop me from stuffing the envelope into my pocket.
“It’s not what you think, Susanna. That I cannot bring about. But if your menses are delayed, this will bring them on. Not too much, or you may do yourself harm. Make a tea from two cups of boiled water and one spoonful of the powder. Take a small amount two to four times a day until they begin.”
I thanked her with tears in my eyes.