A Prairie as Wide as the Sea

by Sarah Ellis

  August 29

  Glamour

  Today was a swell day. Miss Lorayne LaMott was in church with Doctor Johnstone and Mrs. Johnstone. After church when all the ladies were chatting Miss LaMott started to talk to Elizabeth and me and then she invited us over for tea. I could tell that Mother was about to say no. (Do parents like saying no?) If she had I would have given way to transports of grief and despair. But when Mrs. Johnstone said please, Mother said yes.

  It was lovely. Lorayne (she said we should call her Lorayne) told us that after Cosmetology School she is going to work until she saves enough money to go to Hollywood, California. She wants to be a motion picture actress. After tea she got out her Photoplay magazine. Lorayne knows everything about motion pictures. When she found out I was from London she wanted to know what pictures I had seen. I was glad that Auntie Lou had taken us to the pictures. Lorayne knew all about which actors and actresses were in them. I told her about going to the pantomime and she said that many famous movie stars got their start on the stage or in vaudeville. She showed us a picture in Photoplay of her favourite actress, Renee Adoree, who got started in the circus. Renee is very pretty. She looks a bit like Lorayne. She was in pictures like Cape Cod Folks and The Big Parade. Lorayne told us that Renee is under contract with Louis B. Mayer. Under contract is a good thing to be. Lorayne said that movie stars often come from places like Regina or even Milorie and then they get discovered. Then she offered to show us how to put on make-up but Mrs. Johnstone said no, that our mothers would not approve. Then Lorayne said that it didn’t matter because we didn’t need it because Elizabeth had such smooth skin and I had good bones. “Good bones last,” she said. I’m not sure what good bones are but I’m glad I have them. Lorayne said we should come and visit anytime.

  On the walk home I decided that Lorayne is like a leghorn and the rest of us are like plain chickens. I know that I have said that Lorayne is like a horse and a chicken but sometimes animals just are prettier than people.

  August 30

  The Mystery of Goodness

  This morning I asked Mother if she didn’t think Lorayne was pretty. She made a harrumphing noise and said that she looked like she was no better than she ought to be.

  What does that mean? No better than you ought to be isn’t bad, is it? Mostly we’re all not quite as good as we ought to be. How good ought we to be? We ought to be as good as the Ten Commandments, not coveting or killing or that. But who would be better than that? Only saints I guess, like Florence Nightingale. But then all that means is that Lorayne is not a saint. There was no point in asking Mother. She would just say I was answering back. In this family the eleventh commandment is “Thou shalt not answer back.” Besides, whilst thinking about this I let the porridge boil over and Mother said I was sent to try her.

  I don’t care. I have good bones.

  The rest of today was wash day. There is nothing interesting to say about wash day. I’ll be happy when school starts.

  September 2

  News from Overseas

  Letter from Ethel today. They went to the seaside for their holidays but it rained every day. Her brother Ronald is getting married! Ethel is going to be a bridesmaid. Lucky. She drew me a picture of Chivers on the back garden wall. I will write back and tell her about Dot. I’ll use the Magic Key Line Drawing and draw a picture of Dot’s head. (Wouldn’t be able to manage legs.)

  Ethel sent a joke. Why did the man eat sardines for his tea? So that he would wake up oily in the morning.

  I’m going to wake up oily on the first day of school. Four days!!!!

  September 3

  Lorayne Leaves

  BIG SECRET: Today the Homemaker’s Club met at our house. Mother spent the morning getting ready and making cakes and a loaf and then after lunch she told us that she didn’t want to see hide nor hair of us. William had a day off from the store so he took the twins off to the swimming hole. They’ve got a rowboat down there now and William is taking some tools and wood down to help fix it. Maybe the boys will be nicer to him when they find out how good he is at carpentry. Maybe that would be as good in stupid boy-thinking as killing gophers.

  But I didn’t feel like going. So I sneaked back into my room by climbing up onto the roof of the summer kitchen. I thought as long as I was hiding my hide and hair it would be all right. Then I listened down the hole. Here’s what I found out. Lorayne has disappeared. And so has Howard Ellingson. Everybody thinks they have gone off together to Regina. But Howard Ellingson has been engaged to Lois Fizzell for two years. They were only waiting until Howard got his own quarter section and then they were going to be married. Mr. and Mrs. Fizzell are furious. Mr. and Mrs. Ellingson are mortified. Mrs. Johnstone is so embarrassed that she didn’t even come to the Homemaker’s Club. (Although somebody said, “It is not poor Edna Johnstone’s fault. How was she to know?”) Lois Fizzell is so upset that she has gone to stay with her married sister in Swift Current. Then all the voices said that they weren’t surprised, that Lorayne was fast and a flirt and a flapper and no better than she looked. They said that that’s what comes of going off to Regina to study cosmetology, that that’s what comes of going to too many moving pictures, and that Lois Fizzell was better off without Howard Ellingson because a man who could throw his whole life away on a well-turned ankle was not worth having anyway.

  I don’t know. I guess it’s wrong to steal somebody’s fiancée. But it’s not like he was kidnapped like Catharine. He must have wanted to go. So why is Lorayne the bad one? Anyway, I want to write this down. I like Miss Lorayne LaMott. I wish she had stayed longer. She is pretty and kind and interesting and she made me feel like somebody. I hope she gets to Hollywood and gets to be in pictures.

  September 4

  School Barn

  The BIG SECRET made me forget about school for one whole day but today I went into town with the Mullers and Elizabeth and I went over to the school. First thing I noticed was a sign on the school barn saying “No Girls Allowed.” I asked Elizabeth where the girls stable their horses. She said that girls are allowed to go in the barn before school, for ten minutes at the beginning of lunch hour to feed their horses, and at the end of the day. Otherwise, like at recess, it is boys only.

  I asked what was so great about the barn and Elizabeth said did I want to see. So we went in. Big deal! A few stables, lots of manure and a loft full of junk, like pieces of tin, old boards, tops of desks. Why would the boys want to spend time here anyway? It smells dreadful.

  We looked in the windows of the school. It is just one room. There are rows of desks for two and blackboards on three walls.

  In the schoolyard there are some swings.

  I can’t wait till school starts.

  September 6

  A Happy End to Adversity

  (I stole this from Mrs. Traill)

  I finished Lost in the Backwoods. Catharine was rescued. After three years they all get home safely. Later on Catharine and Louis get married. It seems to me that she is going to find it a bit dull, cooking breakfast and washing nappies.

  September 7

  First Day of School

  Finally! I’ve been wondering about school ever since we came to Canada. The best thing was riding Dot. As we were riding along the road I thought of Ethel starting the term at Sandringham Road School and I wished that she was sitting on a fence along the road looking at me go by. Ivy Weatherall, barefoot Canadian farm girl, riding a horse to school! Second-best thing was our teacher, Miss Hutchinson. She’s lovely. She has bobbed hair, very clean fingernails and a soft voice. She welcomed “our English newcomers.” Gladys and Harry were a bit scared because it is their very first day of school and Miss Hutchinson was kind and jokey with them.

  Here is what the school is like. When you go in there is a porch with a shelf to put your lunch pail. If you forget and leave it on the floor gophers come in and steal your lunch. Elizabeth told me that last year people’s lunches started disappearing and everyone was blaming everyone else. It
turned out that the little boy who lives across the street was wandering in and helping himself to the nicest things.

  In Canada they have grades, not forms, and I am in grade six. The other grade sixes are Elizabeth, Klaus Berg, Toffee-Nose and the home-run boy with the pig, Abel Butt. I get to sit with Elizabeth. Harry and Gladys sit together. Gladys didn’t know that she was supposed to stay at her desk so she kept coming over to sit with me. When Miss Hutchinson said she had to stay at her desk she cried so Miss H. said she could sit with me just for one day. By lunchtime she was feeling happy. She stood on her head in the schoolyard and her knickers showed.

  At the front of the classroom is the teacher’s desk on a little stage. Today there was a jam jar with flowers. Miss H. decorated the tops of the blackboards with birds and flowers in coloured chalk. She is a good artist.

  At the back there is a black stove and at the side is a bench with a pail of water and a tin cup.

  We started off with the Lord’s Prayer, just like home. Then we sang “The Maple Leaf Forever,” which is different. Then we got our readers and rearranged the desks.

  We didn’t do much work. We got our new scribblers. Mine is called a Red Monarch and it has a lovely picture of a lion on the front. On the back it has weights and measures. This is useful because I can never remember all that about pecks and bushels and rods and furlongs and miles. This year I am going to be very neat.

  The grade eight boys, Lars Hansen, Ralph Battrum, and Hans started to act like they knew it all and were making noise and answering back and then Miss Hutchinson did something very remarkable. She took the strap out of her desk. We were shocked. We thought she was going to strap them. But instead she threw it in the stove and said, “If anybody disrupts the class so that we cannot learn, what will happen to them will make them wish I had kept the strap.” Well! That made even Lars, Ralph and Hans be quiet as mice.

  September 8

  Mistake

  I’ve cooked my goose with Toffee-Nose. And I didn’t even mean to. Today she was talking about how she had been to Regina to visit her older sister and they had been to the cinema. She told us that she had seen a picture called The Pilgrim with Charlie Chaplin. And I jumped in without thinking and said that I had seen it too and wasn’t it funny when Charlie Chaplin pours pudding sauce all over that man’s hat? Toffee-Nose got very quiet and said that I couldn’t have seen it because it had just come to Regina. So then I said that I had seen it in London before we came here. Then she said that I must be lying. Then she said that there wasn’t any bit with pudding sauce. Which is a real lie. What a sneak! So I said that there certainly was and I described in detail all about the hat and why Charlie Chaplin, who is a crook disguised as a minister, thinks it is a pudding and how he put whipped cream and decorations on as well. Then she just flounced away. Who cares? Good riddance. All day she kept giving me cold looks and at the lunch hour she had her lunch with Florence Gilmour and Nellie McLaren and she looked over at me and said something and laughed. Then they all laughed. I ate with Elizabeth and the twins.

  Here is the important thing that I forgot: Never take attention away from a show-off. This is true in England and Canada.

  September 9

  School Barn Secrets Revealed

  I found out a bit of what goes on in the school barn. Today Ralph came in from recess with an eye full of tomato seeds. The junk in the loft of the barn isn’t just junk. It is forts, one at each end. And there are two gangs. At recess the gangs have battles. They take their slingshots and they attack each other with rabbit droppings and pieces of mud and, today, tomatoes. Ralph was hiding behind a desk top and looking out the inkwell hole and a tomato got him right in the eye. Miss Hutchinson washed it out with two cups of water. Nyla looked down her toffee nose at the boys and said they were barbarians. But, secret: I would like a slingshot. I know they are not ladylike. I’ll bet Catharine could use a slingshot if she needed to.

  September 11

  Flies Are Not My Friends

  I’m not so keen on milking anymore. There are a lot of flies and they land all over me. Flies can make me very annoyed. They torment Daisy and she uses her tail to shoo them away. But then her tail slaps me on the back of the head.

  September 14

  How Long Is Canada?

  Today Miss Hutchinson said that as a special treat all the grade sevens and eights could come in and out the windows instead of using the door. Harry is fit to burst with envy. He asked me how long it is till grade seven. I told him six years. He said, “Is that as long as Canada?”

  It was very hot in school today. Everybody was going over to the water bucket every other minute. The school smells like varnish.

  September 15

  An Enemy

  Somebody doesn’t like us. On the way to school there is a place by the side of the road that is sandy. This morning somebody had written “Britishers Go Home” in the sand. I stopped Dot dead in her tracks. I was surprised and then really cross. I got off Dot and rubbed it out. The twins wanted to know what it said. I told them it was nothing. Which it is. Just words. All the same it gave me a funny stomachache feeling all day.

  September 16

  The Enemy Continues

  It was there again this morning. But bigger. I rubbed it out again.

  Who?

  Why?

  September 17

  Enemy Identified

  The sand writer strikes again. This morning whilst I was rubbing out the insult Elizabeth and the boys came by in their wagon. I told them what was up. Elizabeth says it is obviously Nyla. The clues are that she comes in on this road, she gets to school early and she is a sneaky, mean person. Then Hans said that she is the sort of person who would use the word “Britisher.” They think we should reply. Harry thought this was a great idea. He had a suggestion right away but it was very rude. I don’t care to write that word in my diary. Where did Harry learn it? Has he been going in the school barn at recess?

  We’re all going to think about it until tomorrow.

  September 20

  Revenge

  We did it. It was Gladys who thought of it. Elizabeth and Hans think Gladys is brilliant. She is. This morning we left for school early. When we got to the right place we wrote, “N.M. is a Congenital Psychopathic Inferior Person. Signed: The Britishers (and friends),” in the sand.

  Nyla gave me some black looks today but I just smiled back in a cheery way.

  September 22

  This is a quiz:

  Who likes puddles?

  1. Ducks? (correct)

  2. Makers of galoshes? (correct)

  3. The twins? (correct)

  4. Dot? (extra correct)

  Last night it rained. There were puddles all over the road. Dot walked around them carefully and then just before we got to school there was a huge one that went all across the road. All of a sudden Dot just lay down. The twins and I had to jump off in a big hurry before she rolled right on top of us. But we ended up in the puddle anyway. We were covered in mud. Harry even had mud in his eyebrows. Everything went flying. Our books, our lunch pails, Dot’s food. She just rolled in the mud looking happy, happy, happy. Then she stood up, gave a shake and looked around at us as though she was saying, “Time to go.”

  But there was no fence to climb up so we couldn’t get back on. Besides we didn’t want to get up on her muddy back. So we walked the rest of the way, leading Dot.

  When we got to school Miss Hutchinson said we should sit outside until we dried. Then she brushed us off. At recess I cleaned Dot.

  Good thing about mud puddles: There was no message in the sand today.

  September 26

  How to Be a Saint

  Today in church Mr. Quigley gave a sermon about saints. He said that anybody can be a saint. You don’t have to be a fisherman in sandals or burnt in a fire or sit on a pole for twenty years or stuff like that. You can be a saint by being patient or generous or turning the other cheek. But I don’t think I’m going to try to be a s
aint. It’s hard enough to be good in the regular way.

  September 27

  Poor William

  Dad and William are away. They both have jobs on a threshing rig in some town called Stanton. Mr. Burgess is managing without William because he knows that threshing is a well-paid job.

  I wish I could get a job. Dad said that when we came to Canada there would be lots of proper jobs but so far it is just like home with a bit of this and that. Dad has been a farm worker, a blacksmith’s helper, a grain elevator cleaner and a railway track repairman. Mother has been an egg lady. Mr. Burgess has been very kind to us but William is the only one with a proper job. Hope we don’t end up like Uncle Alf, owing money and living in a dirt house.

  If we were at home William would be out playing conkers with his school friends on Halley Road. Here he is working like a grown-up man. This makes me feel a bit sad, as though he is a stranger.

  September 28

  A Hero

  Hans wasn’t in school today because he is working on the harvest. Ralph Battrum and Lars Hansen were away too.

  In my reader today I read all about Edith Cavell, who was a heroic nurse in the Great War. She cared for all the suffering and wounded soldiers and then she helped some Belgian soldiers escape from the Germans. The Germans found out and they put her in prison and then they shot her. She was a “noble character.” I think she sounds like a saint.