Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West: The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) — John Shaqi
Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West: The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I)Strickland, Samuel
History
Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West: The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I)
Strickland, Samuel
Ontario -- Description and travel
But let the steady, the industrious, the cheerful man go forth in hope,
and turn his talents to account in a new country, whose resources are
not confined to tillage alone—where the engineer, the land-surveyor,
the navigator, the accountant, the lawyer, the medical practitioner,
the manufacturer, will each find a suitable field for the exercise of
his talents; where, too, the services of the clergyman are much
required, and the pastoral character is valued and appreciated as it
ought to be.
To the artizan, the hand-loom weaver, and the peasant, Canada is indeed
a true land of Goshen. In fact, the stream of migration cannot flow too
freely in that direction. However numerous the emigrants may be,
employment can be obtained for all.
That the industrial classes do become the richest men cannot be denied,
because their artificial wants are fewer, and their labours greater
than those of the higher ranks. However, the man of education and
refinement will always keep the balance steady, and will hold offices
in the Colony and responsible situations which his richer but less
learned neighbour can never fill with ease or propriety.
The Canadian settler possesses vast social advantages over other
colonists. He has no convict neighbours—no cruel savages, now, to
contend with—no war—no arid soil wherewith to contend. The land is,
generally speaking, of a rich quality, and the colonist has fire-wood
for the labour of cutting, fish for the catching, game for the pleasant
exercise of hunting and shooting in Nature’s own preserves, without the
expense of a licence, or the annoyance of being warned off by a surly
gamekeeper.
The climate of Canada West is healthier and really pleasanter than that
of England or Ireland. The cold is bracing, and easily mitigated by
good fires and warm clothing; but it is not so really chilling as the
damp atmosphere of the mother-country. Those who have not visited the
Canadas are apt to endow the Upper Province with the severe climate of
the Lower one, whereas that of Western Canada is neither so extremely
hot nor so cold as many districts of the United States.
Emigration to Canada is no longer attended with the difficulties and
disadvantages experienced by the early settlers, of which such
lamentable, and perhaps exaggerated accounts have frequently issued
from the press. The civilizing efforts of the Canada Company have
covered much of the wild forest-land with smiling corn-fields and
populous villages. Indeed, the liberal manner in which the Company have
offered their lands on sale or lease, have greatly conduced to the
prosperity of the Western Province.
If the facts and suggestions contained in the following pages should
prove useful and beneficial to the emigrant, by smoothing his rough
path to comfort and independence, my object will be attained, and my
first literary effort will not have been made in vain.
CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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