Author’s foreword – First Published 1949

When the publishers very kindly suggested that I should write a foreword to the new edition of Confessions of an Immigrant’s Daughter I had not the wit to foresee the inhibiting difficulties ahead. For after all what can one say of a self-portrait, and more especially a portrait of a young self one knows to have existed, as have seasons past whose gay and gloomy aspects are now no more than a faded dream.

But dreams have a vitality which outride time and to that incontestable fact I must pin my hope that the substance of this book has merit pertinent to the future. In this hope I am further encouraged by the many United Kingdom reviews which, almost without exception, found the book a singular departure from the usual autobiography. This I take to mean that I may have succeeded in what I tried to accomplish: namely to make of a personal chronicle a more subjective and therefore more sensitive record of an age now happily past. For that past was difficult indeed for the immigrant who had the temerity to value his own traditions and dared to dream of justifying those traditions to the enrichment of his adopted country.

Today our attitude is less insular, and I cannot help but feel that any newcomer to our Dominion has only himself to blame if he fails to find some measure of human satisfaction. How many opportunities he will find which did not exist in the days of which I write in this book! Opportunities to make the most of himself whatever his talent or bent. Books on every conceivable subject; extension courses within the range of the most meagre purse; all sorts of study groups where the give and take of considered opinion is freely encouraged. Priceless things unknown in the recent past which I for one rejoice to bury without a single tear.

Then why write a book about it? Why not let it lie in dusty peace with all the other debris of disenchantment and frustration? For the same seemingly obscure reason which prompts an old Salt, cheerfully contemplating a calm sea, suddenly to launch into a tale of stress and storms and black tribulation. The means may be devious, but is not his inference well founded? Is he not saying, through the medium of hardships overcome: How little there is to fear for the voyager of tomorrow!

So there it is. To the best of my ability I have tried to show that a little courage and a lot of humour go a long way towards the fulfilment of even the most impossible. Lastly be it confessed that it was of the dreamer I was principally thinking. The lonely underprivileged dreamer, so seldom understood, and even more seldom successful in the things of this world. But should he therefore despair and doom to failure the timeless things of the heart? Should he not rather ask himself of what substance are those treasures of human culture which alone of man’s creation time cannot destroy? The answers will be comforting. For when all is said and done it is by reason of its dream that nations live and mankind advances from the brute to human structure.

Finally, as it has been my own comfort, let me pass on to other obscure dreamers the sturdy motto of my ancient house: To the strong in heart there is no defeat!

Winnipeg, October 1948
L.G.S.

1939 edition
Respectfully dedicated to
DR. HENRY CHOWN
for his devotion to the poor

1949 edition
Respectfully dedicated to
DOROTHY BRADSHAW
good companion and devoted friend