I have interviewed many settlers in the various provinces, and their testimony admits of being focused into three statements of well-nigh universal application—of application, indeed, to all save persons who are exceptionally lucky or exceptionally stupid. These three statements are: (1) Life in Canada involves work, and hard work. (2) The first year, and perhaps the first two years, will be a time of stress and of struggling with difficulties. (3) Then there comes the “turning of the corner,” with assured prosperity to follow as the result of continued effort. Nothing, indeed, is more sure than that, in Canada, work commands an ample reward. But my three generalities, after all, leave all the details unstated; and I cannot fill in those details more convincingly than by reproducing the actual personal experiences, as chronicled almost from day to day, of a typical English family who settled in Canada. But the story of what befell Mr. and Mrs. Rendall must be preceded by a word of explanation. They were members of the large party who, in the spring of 1903, emigrated under the auspices of the Rev. I. M. Barr—a party whose affairs were destined to attract some attention from the English Press by reason of special difficulties involved in an isolated location. Nowadays plenty of free land can be found within twenty miles of a railway; but the Barr colonists were destined to begin their new lives in a situation far more remote from means of quick transportation. Thus, if Mr. and Mrs. Rendall were typical English immigrants, their early experiences give an exaggerated impression of what the average settler has to expect. “With my family,” Mr. Rendall wrote, “I left England on April 8th, 1903, on the _Lake Simcoe_, as I was unable to settle up my affairs in time to join the Barr party on the _Manitoba_. I may say that I had been a farmer in the Old Country all my life. The place I rented in Devonshire had been farmed by my forefathers for over two hundred years. I was paying rent at the rate of over £2 an acre, in addition to rates, tithe, taxes, and wages. A crisis came. The landlord would not reduce the rent or do any repairs to the dwelling-house or out-buildings, all of which were falling into ruin; so I determined to throw up the life of slaving for others and strike for independence in Canada. “Having obtained from head-quarters all necessary information respecting free-grant lands in the North-West, I applied for a homestead for myself, and another for one of my men, Barnes, who had determined to throw in his lot with mine. Then, with my wife and two children (aged two and four), I left the Old Country, with many a heartache at parting, yet with a strong determination to face all difficulties, and to succeed in the end.