At the beginning of this century the Province was almost a vast wilderness, with open spaces here and there, cleared by the settler’s axe. Even as late as 1812, at the time of the American war, we had only just begun to emerge, as it were, from the dark towering forests that were intersected by only the Indian footpaths. It is almost astounding when one stops to consider that even within the memory of those now living our Province has been made. Our cities have been built, our canals dug, our forests subdued and Ontario made a garden, all well nigh within the compass of a man’s lifetime. When Governor Clinton, of New York State, first made the assertion that he would bring the waters of Lake Erie to Albany, and float a boat on their surface by means of the Erie canal, there are persons now living who said they would be willing to die when that was done. But it has been done, and these old persons in our midst, so slow to believe, seem not anxious to be hurried to abide by their wish even at this late day. Many a farm in Ontario was paid for by money earned by Canadians while working on that Erie Canal. Low as the wages were at the time, it was cash, and gained at a time when our resolute workers could not earn cash at home. They brought it back to Canada, and laid the foundation of the prosperity which many Canadian families now enjoy. Among the stories of my boyhood days is one of an Episcopal Church minister who came out from England to this Province at a very early day, and settled upon a farm a couple of miles from the church. He neither was nor could be much of a farmer, and never at any time let himself down to any abandon, nor did he ever cast off his long clerical coat, even when about his home or when tossing the fly in his trout-stream. A man of cultivated tastes, he seemed literally to love the ease and quiet of a country life. For him it was just one long holiday. He had erected a substantial stone house on the bank of a trout-stream which meandered through his farm. In those days trout were plentiful, and with his well filled library, and an ample income from England, it is not to be wondered at that to him life was worth living. He had married above him in England, it appeared, but on both sides it had been a genuine love-match. The irate father had banished his daughter from his presence, which was the real cause of their domiciling in Canada. During the father’s lifetime the annual stipend of three hundred pounds sterling came as regularly as the seasons went by, and I leave each individual reader to judge for himself or herself if he could fancy a pleasanter position, or a place in which life could be more fully enjoyed, than fell to the lot of this parson and his family.