Across The Prairie In A Motor Caravan Part 1

Across the Prairie in a Motor Caravan.

by Frances Halton Eva Hasell and Iris Eugenie Friend Sayle.

Dear Miss Hasell,

I happen to have read the proof sheets of the little book which is to record the story of your work and Miss Ticehurst's in the prairie tracts of Canada, and I should like to tell you how glad I am that the account of these eventful journeyings should be accessible to the public. People realise too little what are the opportunities and responsibilities of pioneer days in those incomparable regions. The perseverance, the indomitable energy, and the buoyant hope which your pages record and inspire will have a place in the annals of that vast seed plot and cradle of a great nation that is to be.

I am,

Yours very truly,

RANDALL CANTUAR.

_October 5th, 1922._

CHAPTER I

THE CALL OF THE PRAIRIE

The diocese of Qu'Appelle, in the province of Saskatchewan, Western Canada, is so named from the Indian story which tells of the maiden who lay dying, calling piteously for her lover. He, far off in his canoe on the Saskatchewan River, suddenly heard a voice, and answered: "Qu'Appelle." The voice came again, and then he knew it for that of his beloved, and made all speed to her side. But, alas! when he reached her she was dead.

_Qu'Appelle_ is a suggestive t.i.tle and indicative of the call which so many have heard from the prairie provinces, a twofold call, urging some to earthly and some to spiritual husbandry. Some account of the Western Canada of to-day may be useful here.

The exigencies of life on the prairie tend to make men think rather of building greater barns than of that day when their souls shall be required of them. When a man with little capital takes up a prairie "section" he is gambling with fortune, the welfare of his nearest and dearest being at stake. At the same time it is a worthy venture, a response to the age-old command to till the earth and subdue it; and it is often the only way whereby a man may become his own master, a landowner, and one who, in developing the treasures of the earth, adds materially to the well-being of his fellows. For the wheat from the prairies of Western Canada is the hardest and finest in the world.

The prospective settler buys a section (640 acres), a half or a quarter section, as the case may be, and, helped by a loan from the Government for the purchase of implements, ploughs and sows the virgin soil, building a shack for himself and his family. The first three years are touch and go. Drought in early summer or torrential storms in harvest will effectually ruin the crops, but when once a good crop is raised the profit is very satisfactory. The perils of drought and storm, however, always remain, though with increasing capital the risk is lessened. The life is one long wrestling-bout--man's brain and muscle pitted against the forces of nature; but when he is victorious the reward is great.

It is a virile country peopled with virile men (for only the strong can "make good" out there). But these men have already realised that man cannot live by bread alone. Close to nature, man feels the presence of G.o.d. The wide sweep of the prairie, enamelled with a thousand flowers or gilded with the ripened corn; the vast dome of the sky; the glorious sunsets and awful storms--all make men conscious of the power and might and majesty of the Supreme Being. So that beneath the feverish search for wealth there is a deep, if unrealised, thirst for the things of G.o.d.

But many of these sheep have been for years without a shepherd, and such knowledge of religion as they once possessed has been choked by the cares of this world; and their children--the men and women of the future on whom so much depends--are growing up in many places without any religious teaching at all. One result of this state of things is that there is no Christian public opinion on which to start this new country.

It is even said that it is not unusual to hear men boast: "We cheat others before they cheat us."

Another terrible result is that, unrestrained by spiritual forces, the animal instincts have gained the upper hand and immorality is rife. In the _Bulletin of Social Service in Saskatchewan_ for June 1, 1920, under the heading: "Some Measures Urgently Needed," No. 10 runs: "Higher standards in our laws regarding s.e.x offences. Ours are the lowest in the Empire, due to the Senate's repeated rejection of amending measures."

A disintegrating factor in the religious and moral life of Western Canada is no doubt to be found in the mixture of races and the resultant intermarriages. Almost every race and sect is represented. There are about eighty different religions, including many eccentric and obscure sects such as "Daniel's Band," "Doukhobors," and "Holy Rollers."

According to the census of 1916 the Christian churches in Saskatchewan are numerically strong in the following order: Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, Methodist, Anglican, Lutheran, Greek Church, Baptist. The proportion of Anglicans has probably increased since then.

In 1910 the Archbishop of Rupertsland appealed to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York to send out clergy to attend to the needs of the numerous British settlers who were pouring into the country. (Between 1900 and 1920 one million two hundred and fifty thousand persons have emigrated from Great Britain to Canada.) The Archbishops' Western Canada Fund was the answer to this appeal. The cause interested me extremely, and I became one of the collectors for the diocese of Carlisle. This diocese raised 3,000 and built St. Cuthbert's Hostel in Regina, and later raised another 1,000 towards the 50,000 needed for the endowment of the Western Canada missions.

Three missions were started by the Fund in Edmonton, Southern Alberta, and Saskatchewan respectively, but we are only concerned with the latter. In this province many small towns had sprung up owing to the great influx of immigrants (mostly British) and to the rapid railway construction, while the surrounding prairie was dotted with isolated farms and hamlets. It was with the special needs of these people that the Regina Railway Mission had to deal. Accordingly, several clergy and laymen went out from England, made the hostel at Regina their headquarters, and visited the surrounding country. They lived in one-roomed shacks, doing their own "ch.o.r.es," and often driving about eighty miles on a Sunday in order to take four services a day. They returned to the hostel once a quarter for spiritual refreshment, rest, and discussion of their work with the head of the Mission and with each other.

Meanwhile, a pioneer movement was on foot in the Old Country. At St.

Christopher's College, Blackheath, a specialised training in the matter and method of religious education had been inaugurated for women prepared to undertake this branch of social service. I was asked to become Diocesan Sunday School Organiser for the diocese of Carlisle, and went to train at St. Christopher's in 1914. There I met Miss Aylmer Bosanquet and Miss Nona Clarke, and was naturally very interested to find that these new acquaintances were anxious to go out to Regina and do Sunday-school work in connection with the Railway Mission. A firm friends.h.i.+p resulted from this common interest.

Aylmer Bosanquet's plan was to go out with Nona Clarke and live on the prairie, working amongst the children and supplementing the work of the clergy in any other possible way. She proposed to finance the expedition entirely herself. At first the Secretary for the Archbishops' Western Canada Fund was very dubious about accepting her generous offer, having been out in Canada himself, and knowing that life in a prairie shack is exceedingly hard for gently nurtured women. But Aylmer Bosanquet was so urgent that at last she won the day, and she and Nona Clarke went out to Regina in 1915. They established themselves at Kenaston, where they lived in a three-roomed shack and did all their own work, even to the grooming of the buggy horses.

The women missioners went up to Regina once a quarter, when the clergy and laymen met to discuss their work. They brought valuable contributions to the matter in hand. They had found great ignorance amongst the children, some of whom did not even know the Lord's Prayer.

At their first Christmas they found several children who had never heard of the birth of Christ. All that the holy season meant to them was contained in the nursery legend of Father Christmas.

This ignorance is largely due to there being no Scripture teaching in the public elementary schools, although there is a clause in the Saskatchewan Education Act which says that the last half-hour of every day may be given to Scripture teaching if the trustees are agreed.

Unfortunately, they seldom do agree in this matter, as they usually belong to different religious bodies. Nor is there any religious teaching in the collegiate schools (which correspond with English high schools), even in Regina, the capital of the province. The following answer was given by a collegiate girl in a secular examination: "When William the Conqueror went to England he found no code of laws, and so he drew up the Ten Commandments."

After about four years of strenuous work, Aylmer Bosanquet fell ill, and was obliged to go into a nursing home at Toronto for a serious operation. In the quiet time of convalescence her thoughts were busy with the work so dear to her, and she began to consider the problem of the many children in the enormous diocese of Qu'Appelle, who had no Sunday school, and who could not be reached by rail or buggy from the existing centres. She felt that the future of the Anglican Church in Canada depended upon the religious training of these children, and an idea came to her whereby these isolated places might be reached. Her plan was that trained women should go out on to the prairie, two and two, in caravans during the season when the trails are pa.s.sable. They would gather the children together and start Sunday schools, training teachers to carry them on. In the winter they would return to some central town, whence they would keep in touch with the quite isolated children by means of the Sunday School by post. They would also lecture locally and give demonstration lessons.

Many of these trained women would be needed if all the children on the prairie were to be reached. It would be necessary at first to recruit from England, but later it might be possible to develop a movement already started, but which had had to be temporarily abandoned for lack of a suitable head--namely, a training college for the Dominion of Canada on the lines of St. Christopher's, Blackheath.

Aylmer Bosanquet wrote to me describing her new plan. She was very anxious to see it in operation, for the diocese of Qu'Appelle alone covers 92,000 square miles (about twice the size of England), and two women, though with the best will in the world, could do comparatively little in that immense area.

The project of caravanning on the prairie in the interests of religious education appealed to me very strongly, and as Aylmer Bosanquet soon afterwards came home to England to recuperate, we were able to discuss the matter together. Her idea was to have a horse caravan which should be moved on from place to place by the farmers. But as I have lived all my life in an agricultural district, I knew the difficulties consequent on wanting the use of farm horses in seed-time and harvest--the very seasons when the trails are open--and I also knew that horses could never cover the necessary distances. In my own diocesan work, which took me to little out-of-the-way villages among the fells of c.u.mberland and Westmorland, I had found it necessary to use a car, and I therefore felt it would be best to have a motor caravan.

It would be worse than useless to take a motor-car on to the rough prairie trails unless one had had long driving experience and done a considerable amount of running repairs. To learn to drive one year and to go out the next would probably mean finding yourself in a tight corner. As I had been allowed to use our cars throughout the War, in connection with my Sunday school work and a V.A.D. hospital, I had fortunately gained a good deal of practical experience, especially as it was necessary to drive in all weathers, day and night, over the steep hills of the Lake District. When these hills were covered in ice your car would run backwards or skid and come down sideways, and these happenings were a useful preparation for the steep, sandy banks of the trail, where the wheels could not grip. Then, too, as our chauffeur was called up and mechanics were scarce, we had to do our own repairs.

The diocese having consented to my being absent for six months, I found a subst.i.tute to carry on my work, and began my preparations for the prairie tour.

CHAPTER II

PREPARATIONS AND DEPARTURE

The first idea was to buy one of the Red Cross motor ambulances then being sold off in London, but transport difficulties made it impossible to take one across. Meanwhile Aylmer Bosanquet, having returned to Canada, found that the Saskatchewan Bible Society had a Ford caravan in which a man could live and sleep, travelling about the province with Bibles. Also, Archdeacon Burgett, the Diocesan Missioner for Qu'Appelle, was having a Ford caravan built for two of his mission clergy. She sent me details of these vans, and I asked her to order me a similar one, the interior fittings to be decided upon when I came out in the spring.

The next thing to do was to find a fellow-worker for the tour; and this was by no means easy, for she must not only have been trained at St.

Christopher's and be physically strong, but she must be prepared to pay her own expenses, there being as yet no fund to finance the venture.

Fortunately, however, an experienced ex-student, Miss Winifred Ticehurst, offered to go. She had trained at St. Christopher's soon after its foundation, and had since had considerable experience in Sunday-school and parish work.

Then came the difficulty of getting pa.s.sages and pa.s.sports. These would never have been granted had we not been able to prove that we were going out to work. After the trials consequent on a visit to Cook's agent the following incident in the current _Punch_ seemed peculiarly apposite.

Scene: The office of a travel bureau. Clerk (helping nervous-looking lady to fill up form): "And the address of the nearest relation to whom the body may be sent if found dead?"

I intended to travel via New York, in order to visit some cousins. I had heard of the fame of the U.S.A. Sunday-schools, and wished to see some of them. I also hoped to meet Dr. Gardner, the Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Department of Religious Education for the American Episcopal Church. It was therefore necessary to get my pa.s.sport visaed at the American Consulate, and on presenting the customary letter of recommendation from a clergyman I was much amused when the clerk eyed me suspiciously and remarked: "A letter from a clergyman is nothing to go by. They are so easily taken in."

The question of equipment had taken considerable thought, and the result seems worth setting down, in view of its possible service to others. The chief items were: a motorist's 1919 tent with bamboo poles, sleeping-bags, a double Primus stove and a Tommy cooker, a ferrostate flask and two thermos flasks, canvas buckets, clothes both for winter and summer (landworkers' suits for driving the caravan, which, unfortunately, the Canadians regarded as displaying an undue amount of "limb"!). Then, for use in the prairie schools, sets of Nelson's pictures and Sunday School Inst.i.tute models (given me by the Girls'

Diocesan a.s.sociation for Carlisle diocese), and a case of books of graded lesson courses and a quant.i.ty of postcard pictures of "The Hope of the World" and "The New Epiphany." A tip from an experienced traveller proved most useful. This was to fasten the packing-cases with bands of tin nailed on, instead of with ropes, as the latter frequently break when the cases are swung aboard s.h.i.+p, scattering the contents on deck.

In February, 1920, we embarked at Liverpool for New York. Winifred Ticehurst was to meet me at the boat, and my feelings may be imagined as the time drew on, the friends seeing me off had to leave, and still no fellow-traveller appeared. At last, five minutes before they raised the gangway, she ran up, breathless. Her pa.s.sport had not been dated in London, and they had sent her back from the boat to get it dated at the American Consulate in Liverpool. It was an ill-omened opening for her voyage, which proved one of great discomfort, as she was more or less ill for a week. She managed to write descriptive letters, all the same, and the following extract is a vivid portrait of our fellow-travellers (we went second-cla.s.s to save expense).

"The young men and maidens . . . sit about on one another's laps, and the correct way to get ready for lunch is, when you hear the gong, to part yourself from your companion, pull a comb out of your pocket and do your hair--then you are ready."

I did not suffer from sea-sickness myself, and never missed a meal.

Indeed, the waiters seemed greatly intrigued at my appet.i.te, and I fancy, from the way they pressed the various courses, that they were betting on how much I could eat!