Country Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago: Personal recollections and reminiscences of a sexagenarianHaight, Canniff
History
Country Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago: Personal recollections and reminiscences of a sexagenarian
Haight, Canniff
Frontier and pioneer life -- Ontario; Ontario -- Social life and customs
The bed rooms were always small and cramped, but they were
sure to contain a good bed--a bed which required some ingenuity,
perhaps, to get into, owing to its height; but when once in, the great
feather tick fitted kindly to the weary body, and the blankets over you
soon wooed your attention away from the narrowness of the apartment.
Very often the roof projected over, giving an elliptic shape to one
side, and the projection of about six feet formed a cover of what was
then called a long stoop, but which now-a-days would be known as a
veranda. This was no addition to the lighting of the rooms, for the
windows were always small in size and few in number. The kitchen usually
had a double outside door--that is a door cut cross-wise through the
middle, so that the lower part could be kept shut, and the upper left
open if necessary. I do not know what particular object there was in
this, unless to let the smoke out, for chimneys were more apt to smoke
then than now; or, perhaps, to keep the youngsters in and let in fresh
air. Whatever the object was, this was the usual way the outside kitchen
door was made, with a wooden latch and leather string hanging outside to
lift it, which was easily pulled in, and then the door was quite secure
against intruders. The barns and out-houses were curiosities in after
years: large buildings with no end of timber and all roof, like a great
box with an enormous candle extinguisher set on it. But houses and barns
are gone, and modern structures occupy their places, as they succeeded
the rough log ones, and one can only see them as they are photographed
upon the memory.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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