Pioneer Life among the Loyalists in Upper CanadaHerrington, Walter Stevens
History
Pioneer Life among the Loyalists in Upper Canada
Herrington, Walter Stevens
Frontier and pioneer life -- Ontario
Tomatoes were not considered fit for human food until after the middle
of the nineteenth century. If grown at all, the fruit was used merely
for purposes of ornamentation, suspended from strings in the windows
under the name of "love-apples". Many believed that they would cause
cancer in those eating them—a notion that is not even yet wholly dead in
some places.
Although our fresh waters abounded in fish of a superior quality, the
Loyalists were not what we would call a fish-eating people—perhaps no
people ever were or are as a matter of choice. Most of us enjoy a fish
dinner once in a while; but few, if any, of us would care to accept it
as a steady diet, or as a substitute for meat. The rigors of our
climate and the outdoor life of hard work seemed to call for something
more sustaining. The bays and rivers teemed with maskalunge, bass,
salmon, pickerel, and pike, and in the late autumn months the whitefish
and herring were very plentiful. The "mascos" were speared at night by
the aid of a jack-light; they were even shot from the shore as they were
lazily swaggering along in the shallow water. In the early spring, a
mess of pike could be secured at any time with very little effort; every
inlet and creek seemed to be alive with them. The whitefish always has
held first place among our merchantable fish. In the summer season they
were caught in nets upon the shoals of the Great Lakes, and in October
and November the seines were thrown across their path as they were
running up the lesser bodies of water. I have heard an octogenarian,
whose truthfulness even in a fish story I had no reason to doubt,
declare that he had frequently, when a boy, speared fifty or sixty
whitefish in one night.
If we examine the map of any of the first townships, we find that the
road allowances are in straight lines, intersected at right angles by
cross-roads, also in straight lines. About the only exceptions are the
roads along the waterfront, which of necessity must conform to the
irregularities in the shores. How few, however, of the roads in actual
use are straight! We find them twisting and turning in every direction
and intersecting each other at various angles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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