by Cecily Ross
“Children are blessings from God,” she said, leaning heavily on the door frame as she watched me leave.
JULY 30, 1837
A second son and third child for Kate and Mr. Traill. Thomas Henry (Harry) made his appearance this morning just as the sun was rising. As usual, my sister was attended by Dr. Hutchison, who arrived in the middle of the night, in time to deliver the infant. Kate accomplishes childbirth with the same ease and competence she brings to all her domestic activities: a few hours of concentrated effort and then the finished product, perfectly formed. She does not believe she needs the doctor’s help, but Mr. Traill, who is as squeamish as he is somnolent, insists.
What a dynasty we Stricklands are establishing in the New World: my four, Kate’s three, and Sam the proud father of five!
And yet.
Emilia arrived today to find me out behind the cabin, vomiting into a patch of milkweed. The bleeding started this morning but had tapered off by then.
“Dear God, Susanna, are you all right?” She had her son, Henry, with her, a solemn little boy of eighteen months. He has his mother’s long neck and square face, and from his father, a shock of dark hair and huge long-lashed black eyes that gaze out of his child’s face with adult knowingness. I wiped my face with my skirt and leaned against a fence post.
“It’s nothing. A little nausea.”
Emilia smiled. “Number five?” My friend has embraced motherhood with the same energy and delight as my sister. I could never tell her the truth.
“I dearly hope not,” I said, pushing the hair out of my eyes and reaching for her hand to steady myself. As I did, my stomach clenched again. I bent double and groaned.
“Susanna . . .”
“It’s all right. I just need to rest. And some water. I’ll be fine.”
She shifted Henry to one hip, putting her other arm around my waist, and together we limped around to where Kate and Addie were helping Jenny hang out the laundry. Dunnie and Donald, playing in the dirt, didn’t look up. Hector raised his head and wagged his tail, then stretched out in the sun. I am barely visible to my own family. Even so, and despite my misery, the scene struck me as an island of civility in the oceanic void that surrounds us. Yes, we have accomplished something, but how much longer can we keep it together?
As Emilia settled me into my bed, her son stared at me with the unedited frankness of infancy, a look that made me shiver and turn my face to the wall.
SEPTEMBER 17, 1837
The air crackled with anticipation. Everyone—adults, children, even the dogs—seemed charged with energy, surrounding the horse and cart as we pulled into the broad clearing at Young’s Point, cheering and tossing hats and bonnets in the air.
“Mac, Mac, Mac,” they chanted, crowding our wagon until I feared the rowdier boys might be trampled, then dashing off when they saw their hero was not among our party. Moodie eased our way through the carnival, stopping on the far side of the mill, where Mr. Young stood watching the event unfold: women spreading blankets in the sun, unpacking their baskets of food; babies wailing; men clustered under the river willows, tipping back bottles of ale, their rough laughter rising and falling. The miller grabbed Bones’s bridle.
“A fine day, a fine day,” he bellowed as Moodie and Mr. Traill jumped down to tether the cart and horse we share between our two families now. Sam and his brood pulled up beside us in a bright red farm wagon drawn by a pair of Belgians.
“You may not agree with him,” Mr. Young said, “but the spectacle is not to be missed.” He surveyed the crowd. “His worship had better show up soon or this bunch might storm the ramparts. Have you ever seen such a party? It’s like this wherever he goes.”
“Matt—” he turned and called to his son, who appeared in the doorway of the big house with a young woman on his arm—“it’s Sam Strickland and his family. Give us a hand here with these horses, the ladies, little ones.”
As if on cue, the crowd erupted in cheers punctuated by a smattering of catcalls, even a few boos. Evidently, there were others who, like us, came primarily out of curiosity to see the rabble-rouser at work. We were outnumbered, however, by legions of enthusiastic supporters jostling to get close to Mackenzie as he was escorted by a contingent of burly youths toward a hay wagon set at the top of a knoll in the clearing. The young men picked him up and bore him on their shoulders the last few yards, depositing their hero on the makeshift dais like precious cargo. Mackenzie brushed at a few shreds of straw clinging to his trousers, then straightened and faced the multitude. He stood there smiling, silent, letting his eyes travel over the assembly for what seemed an eternity. He was short and barrel-chested with thick red hair and a beard that bristled around his ears and under his chin, giving him an ape-like appearance. His arms were long, his legs short and bowed, his features unremarkable—thin lips, a straight nose—except for his eyes, which burned with intensity even before he uttered a word. He placed his hands on his hips and spread his legs apart in an attitude of defiance, then raised his arms in the air.
“Canadians!” he roared. The crowd exploded. Mackenzie waited for the din to subside and continued, his voice soft now. “Canadians. You and you and even you,” he said, pointing to a little girl sitting on her father’s shoulders. “All of you are citizens of this great land. And all of you. All. Of. You. All of you deserve a share in its riches. All of you deserve to prosper and grow. You came here seeking a better life, and now that life is being denied you, denied by people who consider themselves your betters, who are doing all they can to further their own interests at the expense OF YOURS.”
More cheers and pitchforks raised in salute. From off to the side, someone yelled, “Kill the bastards.”
Mackenzie raised his hands again, palms downward, gesturing for calmness. He waited for the murmurs to die down. “They call themselves the Family Compact, a self-styled aristocracy. But they are no better than you or I. Indeed, they are much worse. Corrupt and greedy, the Boultons, the Jarvises, the Powells, and of course their leader, Sir Francis Bond Head, that puffed-up tyrant who perches on his mahogany throne and dispenses favours and positions to his cronies while they swallow his bribes like sweet morsels of OUR FLESH.” Little Mac pummelled the air with his fist, his voice shrill and angry, as he went on to enumerate the many sins of Queen Victoria’s representative in Toronto. He had the crowd in the palm of his hands; they actually seemed to sway to the rhythm of his ravings, which alternated between jarring and mesmerizing. Moodie held my hand tightly. I could tell he was rapt and disgusted at the same time.
“The time has come,” Mackenzie howled. “The time has come for change. They say we are on the verge of a revolution. I say it is ALREADY HERE!”
Later, at Sam and Mary’s, over chicken stew and brown bread, my brother expressed his fears for the future. “A dangerous man, that Mackenzie. He is playing with fire. The people are restless and hungry . . .”
“And angry, I would say,” added Moodie. “The revolution of which he speaks may not be so far off.”
Mr. Traill spoke for the first time. “Surely it will not come to that. Bond Head and his friends may be motivated by self-interest, but they are not the French court. And Mackenzie is no Robespierre, nor we starving peasants. Cooler heads will prevail, I am certain.”
It’s true, my brother Sam’s warm hearth and generous table on this fine September night belie the very idea of unrest. And yet, as I sense the shiver of another winter in every rustling leaf, the prospect of starvation is not the distant cousin it once was. Later, as we walked back to Melsetter, a harvest moon, huge and yellow in the eastern sky, cast peculiar patterns on the forest floor. I asked Moodie what he thought of Mackenzie’s exhortations against the government in Toronto.
“Will they ever do anything to help us?”
“Believe me, Susanna, our best hope lies in the continuance of order and good government. We must do everything we can to stop that little baboon and his band of thugs.” He stopped to pull Katie’s sleeping a
rms tighter around his neck. Addie trotted along beside us. An owl hooted somewhere over our heads. I imagine he is right, but his words seemed as slippery as the shadows underfoot.
NOVEMBER 23, 1837
I am certain Moodie has broken his leg. He insists it is nothing, a little gash and a bad bruise, that he will be fine by tomorrow. But when he tries to put even the slightest weight on it, he cries out in pain, and all day long, his only means of getting around has been on one leg with my assistance. Although he won’t admit it, he is in great discomfort and has finally fallen asleep thanks to a generous dose of rum. If he is not better in the morning, I will see if Kate has some laudanum put by.
He was ploughing the upper ten acres when the blade hit a large boulder and recoiled against his shin. It was all he could do to crawl home, leaving the oxen tethered to a bush, where I found them later. Mercifully, the gash is not deep, and I pray the bone is merely cracked, not broken in two, and that with time and rest, it will be as good as new. How we will finish the fall planting, I do not know.
DECEMBER 7, 1837
I was just finishing Katie’s reading and arithmetic lessons yesterday morning when young James Caddy brought word that Mackenzie and an army of rebels had marched on the legislature in Toronto. Breathless and agitated, the boy had been running up and down Douro Township, brandishing a proclamation from the Lieutenant-Governor calling upon all loyal militia in Upper Canada to shoulder arms and help quell the insurgency. Thomas Traill and my brother Sam have already left for Peterborough and will go on to Port Hope, where they will await further orders. Thank heavens, they have persuaded Moodie not to accompany them, as his leg is still very weak. But he has been thrashing about like a caged lion since the other men left, declaring that, injured or not, he must rise up and defend this country in the name of the new Queen.
“Toronto is burning,” he thunders from his couch as he whittles a crutch from a length of green ash. “They say Bond Head has been taken hostage or worse. Indians are slaughtering women and children. The Yankees are preparing to invade. It will take every man and musket to stop them. I must go. It’s my duty.”
“But, Papa, what if you are killed? What will become of us?” Little Katie sitting quietly in the rocker with baby Donald on her lap gave voice to my thoughts exactly. I abhor the traitor Mackenzie, but I love my family more.
DECEMBER 8, 1837
He is gone. Throwing a pack over his shoulder, armed with nothing more than his old gun, he hobbled away from us before dawn on a hand-hewn crutch, with only a bowl of porridge to sustain him. Is it possible that the last of my words ever to fall upon my husband’s ears will be the shrill, hysterical ravings—“I hate you! I hate you! I do not care if you ever return!”—hurled into the frigid morning darkness as he disappeared from sight? Is this how he will think of me as he lies bleeding to death on the battlefield?
The fool! He means to walk the eleven miles to Peterborough. With a broken leg. He says he will borrow a horse from Emilia’s father and ride alone to Toronto to intercept Mr. Traill and Sam.
As soon as he left, the snow began falling in thick and indifferent gusts, obliterating his footsteps. I knew I could not go through this alone; there is no firewood, no water, not enough flour to last until Christmas. What if the rebels come this far? And so I bundled the little boys onto the toboggan and, with Katie and Addie and loyal Hector, trudged along the slippery path to my sister’s house. She is as distraught as I am. We will remain here until our men return.
DECEMBER 9, 1837
The first blizzard of the season has trapped us, frantic with worry, within these four walls. The children, sensing our distress, are subdued and uncomplaining. To pass the time, I am writing a new poem. I call it “An Address to the Freemen of Canada,” a call to arms to Canadians to rise up in defence of freedom and our never-to-be-forgotten homeland.
By all the blood for Britain shed
On many a glorious battle field,
To the free wind her standard spread,
Nor to these base insurgents yield.
With loyal bosoms beating high,
In your good cause securely trust;
“God and Victoria!” be your cry,
And crush the traitors to the dust.
And so on.
Kate has pronounced it “stirring” and is certain I will have no trouble placing it somewhere.
Reading the verses over once more, I cannot help but observe that words once committed to paper take on a life of their own. I am not certain I actually feel such patriotic fervour; sometimes it is as though the act of writing imbues these sentiments with a power of their own, and that an invisible hand, one I have little control over, guides my pen. Of course, my loyalty to the Crown and her Canadian envoys goes without question. Still, it has occurred to me that although we are inextricably connected by breeding and education to the governing Toronto oligarchy and the distinguished families they represent, we are as excluded from their world by virtue of our poverty as are the Irish paupers and Scottish labourers who are our unavoidable neighbours. Would it be treasonous of me to suggest that our political masters might do more to encourage emigration and to improve roads and shipping in the backwoods? Sometimes, I can feel Little Mac’s anger as though it were my own.
But outweighing such partisan considerations is the unthinkable possibility my husband may not survive the insurrection. That and the fear we will all be murdered in our sleep by some crazed rebel.
Kate tries to quell my anxieties. “God will watch over them. You must have faith, Susanna.”
I do, I do have faith—faith that we are all doomed. The worse things get, the more resilient she seems . . . and the more I love her. At least these tense times have thrown us back into one another’s arms, though now our mutual enemy is more sinister than a bossy older sister.
DECEMBER 11, 1837
Mr. Traill and Sam have returned from Port Hope without seeing action (to our great relief and their reported dismay). There is no word from Moodie, who, good as his promise, proceeded directly from Peterborough to Toronto, where he would have joined forces against the “Great Rebellion” had it not petered out before he arrived. It seems the cowardly Mackenzie and his ragged band of farmers and field hands armed with clubs and pitchforks turned tail and ran as soon as they faced the muskets of our brave militia. The little traitor has fled across the border, and there is a price on his head.
My sister and I are relieved beyond measure at the news. We hitched Bones to the Traills’ sledge, and Kate drove me and the children back to Melsetter through the snow-bound forest. We laughed and sang as we haven’t for many months, and I recited my fiery poem while the babies clapped their hands and stomped their little feet. I think there is nothing like a common cause to lift the most leaden spirits. Kate and I pledged that no matter what it takes, we shall make this the best Christmas ever. We have invited Emilia and her little son, as Lieutenant Shairp is in Toronto and will not return until the new year.
DECEMBER 14, 1837
Moodie has been made a captain in the Queen’s Own Regiment! He is to report for duty in Toronto right after Christmas. Despite its swift suppression, the recent rebellion has raised fears of further unrest. And so my knight in shining armour has returned home triumphant, though his stay will be brief. On hearing his news, the miller agreed to extend our credit, and my returning hero brought with him a supply of flour and tea.
“You see, Susanna, my haste has paid off,” he boasted. “Men with military training are in great demand right now. I put myself in the path of opportunity and it found me.”
He will have a salary of fifteen dollars a month. I wept openly at the news, and I did not ask how he will manage with a leg that is still very weak. He is not strong enough to chop wood or haul water up from the lake, but he does manage to limp about the cabin playing rousing marches on his flute for the children’s entertainment.
Moodie has obtained a team of oxen from James Fowlis, but only by signing a
nother note, which will come due in six months. How we will honour it, even with his militia pay, I do not know, but the animals are sorely needed if we are to sow any crops next spring.
DECEMBER 27, 1837
Our Christmas celebrations were bittersweet. On the one hand, there was the promise of better times ahead; on the other, the knowledge Moodie would be leaving the next day to take up his duties with the Queen’s Own, and now the prospect of my getting through the winter alone.
My sister managed to pull together, under the circumstances, the most extraordinary feast. Kate festooned her little house with ropes of cedar bound up with strings of bright red cranberries. Her table fairly groaned under the weight of three roast ducks (a gift from Sam) and all manner of preserved vegetables. There were maple candies for the children and, to Moodie’s delight, treacle beer, a treat Kate has been secretly brewing these past weeks as a surprise. Moodie declared it delicious after toasting the Queen and the new year.
Mr. Traill tried to rise to the occasion, but it was clear the black dog was upon him. He sat in his usual chair by the fire and observed the gaiety with dull eyes. In addition to his understandable disappointment at not receiving a military commission, he was nursing a sprained ankle he’d sustained falling from his horse. While Kate, Emilia and I bundled up the children to go tobogganing, our two lame husbands could be heard discussing the futility of trying to farm this unforgiving land of rocks and swamp. At least they agree on something. Shairp is still in Toronto, and when I asked Emilia about his return, she admitted she did not know when he would be back. It was impossible for me to talk to her alone, but I have a feeling the Shairps’ truce may be at an end.
Later, after we had returned home pulling the children through the woods on their new toboggan, Moodie was unusually ruminative and, perhaps for the first time, entirely candid about our situation. He told me he has realized for a long time that he is completely unsuited to farming in the bush but has been unable to admit it to me or to himself. He said he has been determined not to entertain the possibility of defeat, fearing that if he did, what strength he has left would desert him entirely. For a long time, he has felt he had no choice but to put his doubts aside and carry on.