8 Exile
Unfortunately for us, the zeal of the immigrant agents somewhat outstripped their veracity. The tales they told had less point in truth than fiction. But, to my adventure-thirsting father, the glowing recital was a potent inspiration and the answer to all his boredom and perplexity. Why, if even one-tenth of the report were true, a man should prosper in that far dominion! And how good it would be to be done with carping criticism.
Mother seems to have agreed willingly enough. What had she to lose? As it was, she was effectively cut off from her own people. Only once, and that when the old dean lay dying, had she set foot in her home. A tragic occasion, rendered the more bitter because of her obvious poverty. Even her beloved riding-horse had gone the way of other possessions, and she was forced to borrow a shaggy mount, as well as her habit.
What little remained of household effects and farm animals was sold at auction—a dreary transaction which she watched from a green knoll, three small children at her knees and a newborn infant in her arms.
The ship that was to have borne them to Scotland did not put in at lsafjordur as had been promised. Those were days of uncertain sailings between Iceland and the British Isles. No one seems to have had any definite information to offer as to why the vessel had not arrived, or when another might be expected. Their home disposed of, father decided that his best course was to move to Bolungavik, where he could enter the fishing fleet while they waited for transportation. Poor mother could only pray that the miracle might happen before their little money had vanished.
The heavenly ear may have been dulled by too many needy pleas. At any rate, when, on the 9th of June 1887 they eventually sailed for Scotland, en route to Canada, their sole resources were bedding, personal effects, and four small children.
The ship that had been chartered to take the immigrants across the stormiest of northern seas was a disreputable tub, called the Kamoens, that creaked in every timber, and was otherwise remarkable for its distinctive trade odours. It had been used to transport horses! In Glasgow they were transferred to slightly better quarters aboard a so-called transatlantic Allen liner. In actual fact, however, there was little to commend the latter ship, except that it was larger, less dirty, and quite seaworthy.
Four families, irrespective of size, were allotted to a cabin, each of which was furnished with four empty bunks and a bare board table. Food for children and adults alike consisted of meagre rations of beef and badly baked bread, The unfamiliar, tasteless diet might have been endured without disastrous effects if the cabins had not been so unconscionably overcrowded that all attempts at cleanliness were defeated, and even the comfort of sleep became impossible. As if to make sure that these miseries worked their utmost havoc the ship ran into heavy weather, through which it battled for days, only to find when the storm lifted a little, that it was far off its course and, apparently, heading into a freshly rising gale. Incredible though it may seem in this day and age of scientific seamanship, air patrol, and radio, the hapless ship remained lost for six ill-fated weeks!
The inevitable result was a violent outbreak of ship’s fever, a pestilence feared and familiar in those times of wretched travel. Few, indeed, on that miserable ship, escaped the disease. It was a harrowing experience for all concerned, and even those who feared the best shuddered in retrospect.
Mothers, too ill themselves to move from their improvised beds upon the floor, saw their little ones die, and, too weak for tears, watched dry-eyed as their tiny forms were shrouded in canvas for the saddest of all burials.
Out of the unhappy beings that crowded their particular cabin only mother kept on her feet, comforting as best she could the delirious, starving children. But neither prayer nor selfless ministry were availing. As the dreadful days dragged on she realized that her two youngest babies could not survive. So short a while ago sweetly plump and rosy, they were pitiful skeletons, whose trusting infant glances and futile pleading gestures turned her soul to ice. There was only one cry left in her heart. If only God would spare her that melancholy ritual at sea—somehow, the thought was intolerable.
The ship had found its course, and, striking utmost speed, was hurrying westward with its load of human misery. In mute despair, mother watched the little ones, her faith fiercely fixed upon that one forlorn hope. But even that was not to be. Three days before the ship reached land the elder child was consigned to the sea, and, as they docked at Quebec, the infant died.
It was a prophetic beginning—a foretaste of the high cost my parents were to pay for the rights of citizenship in the new country. Indeed a cruel introduction to a chosen homeland. And yet, what little kindness my mother was to receive by way of comfort or welcome in this new country was experienced here, in the old French port, where she was never to be known, and which she was never again to see.
She used to speak of it sometimes, with gentle wonder. Sitting there, alone with her dead, unheeding the life around her, she had suddenly heard a kind voice, and felt a gentle touch upon her shoulder. It was an old priest in rusty habit who stood beside her, a little stooped and worn. Although she could not understand his speech, her frozen heart melted under the kindness of his face. How good it seemed, in that foreign place, to behold once more a minister of comfort, whose sympathy was not a forced gesture, but the expression of natural sympathy. How healing to her wound was that moment of pity. For here was a man who looked upon her as a sorrowing fellow being, not as an immigrant to be stared at with ill-concealed curiosity. Wakened to this kindness, she became aware that other kindly folk drew near, and that their eyes were full of honest commiseration. It was then that the hard ring of misery compressing her heart loosened. It was then that she wept.
That other dear one had been given to the sea with no better shroud than a shawl and a piece of dingy canvas. But now, through the efforts of the immigrant agent and the sympathetic port officials, this second child was given a decent burial.
‘They understood, those good people,’ she used to say. ‘The little coffin was the finest—white and lovely as the little boy it received.’
Nearly forty years later I stood amidst a gossiping crowd on the terrace of the Hotel Frontenac overlooking the beautiful harbour, but my thoughts were not on what was said. I was trying to see the city through my mother’s eyes, trying to relive her gratitude for that understanding generosity. I wanted to forget the palatial hotel behind me, and all those other modern improvements that had altered, but not quite obliterated, old Quebec. I wanted to envision and recapture for my own innermost memory the ancient city fronting the grey river; to feel, as she had felt, the healing inspiration of the faintly mauve Laurentian hills in the background—gentle hills against the gentle blue under whose shadows life had moved in softer tempo, and where God had spoken through a shabby priest for the healing of an overburdened heart.
There is no point in labouring the long journey from Quebec to Winnipeg. The Canadian Pacific Railway had by now spanned the Ontario wilderness, and, compared to the route former immigrants had been obliged to follow, the new mode of travel was considered in the light of a miracle. The railway carriages were, however, not much improvement upon the prairie schooner and Red River carts. Wooden benches lined the box-like coaches, which were open to wind and weather, to showers of wood ash and flying sparks. As the decimal miles dragged on, their jolting discomfort was in some respects harder to endure than the lumbering progress of the outmoded schooners had been for former settlers. They had at least enjoyed a more companionable adventure. At night there were welcome bivouacs beside cheery fires, where the tired traveller might stretch his aching muscles and renew his spirit in hopeful conversation and aspiring dreams. But here, in the close confinement of carriages that ground on and on, even the friendliest soul grew taciturn, and the hardiest of mortals succumbed to a listless fatigue that almost amounted to stupor.
One of my father’s sisters, a graduate midwife, had come to the country previously, and was now living on Younge Street, in Winnipeg. The family joined her, and set up joint housekeeping as best they could. The prospects were far from bright. Father was still suffering from the effects of ship’s fever. Even in normal health, he was not fitted for, nor accustomed to, hard manual labour, which was the only work freely available for the immigrants. It was thought, however, that outdoor activity might be of real benefit, and so it was with hopeful eagerness that he joined a threshing gang bound for Dakota when the harvest season opened. The hope was not justified. He fell seriously ill, and, after six weeks in bed, tormented by anxiety for his family, he returned to Winnipeg, where he worked at odd jobs throughout the winter.
My aunt was a practical, highly ambitious woman, and, although happily married had no intention of confining her life to domestic drudgery. She was a born nurse, if there ever was one, and she had determined to resume that profession so soon as she had acquired the language and could pass the required examinations. She heartily disliked every form of housework, and yet, because she wanted to learn the ways of this country, as well as its speech, she went out cleaning by the day.
Knowing my aunt as I do, I can imagine how the women who attempted to patronize the ‘queer foreigner’ must have fared. Elizabeth of England was not more certain of her divine birthright than Haldora Gudmunsdottir! Without a particle of vanity, she permitted no infringement upon her self-respect, which epitomized a lively individualism and an unassailable belief in her own judgement. Whatever clashed with her own opinions she dismissed with cheerful urbanity, not to say contempt. ‘Ridiculous person!’ she once exclaimed at a fault-finding employer. ‘Fussing and fuming over a bit of dust on some worthless bric-a-brac, but no thought for the pantry! For what do you think I found there? Sour beans! Let me tell you, I thrust them under her stupid nose.’
Mother was taking care of the house, and contributing towards the budget by what she earned at knitting. She would have preferred to have followed her sister-in-law’s example, but some one had to assume responsibility for the children—her own two little ones and aunt’s two small boys. What worried her more than anything else at the time was the lack of fresh milk. To her way of thinking, a child was starved without it. When she heard that a certain farmer who was said to be too mean to hire needed help was throwing gallons to his pigs, she offered to do the milking. It meant a daily walk of nearly three miles over a gumbo trail, which, in wet weather, became a river of slippery glue. The farmer was loud in verbal gratitude for her service, but when it came to concrete recompense he thought that two quarts of milk was quite sufficient. After all, he had the pigs to consider.
It must have been galling to think of her old home in the deanery, where the meanest beggar found a welcome hospitality, as she trudged that wilderness trail of an evening, with her little pail of begrudged milk. I know that this, and many similar incidents, embittered her outlook and hardened her into the unswerving Icelander that she remained to the day of her death. A woman who rejected assimilation in any degree with a people whose sensibilities she doubted, and whose culture she therefore refused to admit.
At this time, however, she thought little of the incident. She was young, and magnificently healthy, and with a spirit not easily depressed. The milk would benefit the children, and if only the colour returned to their cheeks the task was worth it. Indeed, as the weeks passed they took heart. The crisp autumn weather, with its brilliant sunshine, inspired cheerfulness, and the pastel beauty of the turning leaves made the landscape a vibrant poem.
The people might not be friendly, nor the tale of ready opportunity more than a myth, but the land itself was cast in a titantic mould, and one day must surely inspire greatness in its children. When the sun flamed red along the limitless horizon, and the winds swept down from untrammelled wastes, it was impossible not to believe that unseen forces brooded over its destiny. Avarice and ignorance, and all the vicious snobberies transplanted from slave-bred civilizations might endure for a day, but in the end they must give way before a wider conception of existence.
These comforting dreams, and the high expectation of peaceful days ahead, were rudely shaken one wintry morning, when father was brought home unconscious from the harness shop where he had found employment. The doctor’s verdict was not encouraging. Father was rushed to the hospital: he should have had medical attention long ago. That was the trouble with people, said the doctor crossly. They let things go, and then expected miracles.
It was true that father had been sick. He had been subject to attacks of severe pains in the head, maddening jabs of burning intensity, that left him faint and dizzy, and increasingly fearful lest he be found lagging at his bench. A friend explained these things, and added, indignantly, that if his condition was serious, the sweatshop system under which men laboured in this land of publicized liberty was certainly not blameless.
‘Perhaps not—perhaps not,’ the doctor muttered, and amended hastily: ‘None the less, it would have happened eventually, my good woman.’
His reaction and reasoning were sound enough. His attitude, if not his words, belied what he honestly believed, and for the best of reasons refrained from saying. There was nothing to be gained by putting rebellious ideas into the heads of immigrants, who must, as a matter of course, sweat for their daily bread. No sense in setting the slave against his master, when every good Christian knew, on biblical authority, that obedience was the prescribed duty of the one, and the power of life and death the prerogative of the other. Furthermore, any reasonable person understood what sacrifices an employer made when he invested capital in an enterprise that afforded a livelihood for others.
How true! Something certainly must be said of the overwhelming sacrifices involved in this particular instance. And yet, since truth is generally such an affront to the best people—and, of course, in the very worst taste—I must refrain from mentioning actual names. I shall call the gentleman Mr. Brant, and his philanthropic institution ‘The Saddlery.’ To further ease the strain on tender sensibilities, be it marked that the good man has long since departed this life for fields of wider, if vaguer, possibilities.
Mr. Brant was a native of Ontario, and admirably fitted the picture of most so-called supermen of industry. He was shrewd, intelligent, though uneducated, ruthless in principle, and utterly indifferent to criticism. He was a harness-maker by trade, though not a very good one—a detail that in no way affected his career, for his first stroke of genius was the selection of a partner who furnished both skill and capital for their initial undertaking. His own contribution was superb executive ability and the iron heel of the born aggressor.
Shortly after his arrival in Winnipeg he set up a small shop, which, due to the nature of the times as much as to business ability, grew with amazing rapidity. It must be remembered that transport was still largely dependent on ox, mule, and horse power. Freighting into the territories and up the lakes, to mention nothing else, was a highly profitable occupation that commanded hundreds of teams, with all that that implies. In other words, harness shops and harness-makers were as essential to that mode of life as the petrol vendor to-day, and required no more genius to exploit their wares.
Every hamlet and town had its harness-maker, who, before the ultimate rise of Mr. Brant, derived a steady though modest living from his trade. These brother craftsmen of the future leather luminary differed from him in little, save their point of view. Which is to say, they were simple souls who valued existence apart from business, whereas to Mr. Brant anything without a dollar mark, plus one hundred per cent profit, was as worthless as a prairie sunset.
When my father entered his employ the business had been moved to an old shop on the market street. It was an abandoned skating-rink, long, low, and gloomy, with small-paned windows that admitted inadequate light and no ventilation. In summer the rain leaked down through the rotting roof, and in winter the frost coated the walls. Mr. Brant, with his eye on a fortune, found better uses for his profits than to squander them on emasculating comforts. If some weakling was always keeling over, that was his own misfortune, and no concern of the Winnipeg Saddlery. All that was made very clear to each applicant. Mr. Brant assumed no obligations whatsoever, aside from the payment of wages agreed upon. This varied from seventy-five cents to a dollar for a ten-hour day. Piece-work, which was naturally urged upon the uninitiated, was priced so low that, however proficient a man might be, it was impossible to earn more than sixty or seventy cents a day. A six-foot trace of heaviest leather, which had to be doubled stitched by hand, brought thirty cents. No holiday was paid for, nor the slightest favour granted to any one. The oldest, most faithful employee was fined if a moment late, whatever his justification. As might be expected, Mr. Brant instantly and effectively killed every effort to unionize the shop. He had no intention of permitting anarchy to take root in his establishment, nor had any need of advice on matters of organization and management. He had perfected a highly satisfactory, not to say ingenious, system whereby his power and profits increased from year to year. It was really a beautiful arrangement, for it cost him nothing financially, and the burden of its operations rested upon his luckless employees.
It was not a new, but a trusty sweat-shop manoeuvre ever dear to the autocrat, whose opportunity is the extremity of others. He kept a sharp watch for arriving immigrants, and hired as many as possible. These unskilled surplus hands were utilized in odd jobs, for which they received a pittance, and free instruction in a lucrative trade. The instructors were, of course, chosen from the best, and, so far as it applies, highest-paid men, who thus dug their own economic graves. For so soon as the new-comers qualified for the jobs, they got them, at a lower wage. And out went the old-timers, unless they accepted a similar reduction.
Because of his skill as a saddle-maker father had not experienced any difficulty in getting his job. The difficulty then and years to come, was to keep the family alive on the wages. To those who benefited by the times, this may sound like an overstatement, born of malice and resentment. For it is seldom that the fortunate are willing to concede that a combination of circumstances that favoured them might have ruined others. Yet the truth is that even in those days of supposedly easy opportunity it required some capital to take advantage of them—or, if not capital, its equivalent in unhampered and unencumbered energy. But, without money, the man who had dependents, stood no better chance of attaining to financial security in old Winnipeg than did his fellow workers in other cities of the world.
A little plain arithmetic may absolve me from willful heresy. Mr. Brant’s wage scale, it has been seen, made it almost impossible for a piece-worker to earn more than five or six dollars a week. Which, at the most, adds up to twenty-four dollars a month. From that, at least five dollars must be deducted for house rent; another three or four for firewood and kerosene during moderately cold weather, and usually twice that amount in the bitter winter months. At best, then, that leaves only fifteen dollars to spread over the needs of an entire family—that is to say, for food, and clothing, and medical services, and such incidentals as even the poor cannot evade.
But food, we sometimes hear it said, was so plentiful and cheap that no one need have suffered any actual lack. The inference being, that none save the thriftless sinner could have escaped luxury. So far as I remember, however, the Icelandic immigrant was neither given to idleness nor excess, yet his table was restricted to the plainest, most meagre fare. What meat he had was usually pickled sheep’s head—for these could be bought at five cents each at the slaughter house (it was not called abattoir then!)—or shank bone for the soup kettle, or now and then a bit of liver, when onions were on hand to dress the dish. As for other commodities: flour sold at $2.50 the hundredweight; sugar at fourteen pounds for the dollar; butter from fifteen to twenty-five cents a pound; lard, five cents; and green coffee, which every housewife roasted in her own bake oven, sold at six pounds for the dollar.
A little quiet speculation on these seemingly low prices, as seen in ratio to the wages paid, will prove, I think, that the average immigrant family that strove to maintain some sort of respectability under these conditions might just as well have dreamed of a mansion on the moon as of sharing in the many profitable opportunities which were open to men of a little means.
I remember that one of the few grievances that my amiable father nursed against fate was that when lots were selling at five dollars on Nina Street (now Sherbrooke) he could never manage to scrape up the money. In a few years those lots were selling for hundreds of dollars, and by the time I had reached my teens many a tidy fortune had been made from those city blocks. But to me, the wonder was, not that the family fell short of financial grace, but that it should have survived those awful early years, unaided and intact.
