Not far from the centre
of the American Continent, midway between the oceans east and west,
midway between the Gulf and the Arctic Sea, on the rim of a plain, snow
swept in winter, flower decked in summer, but, whether in winter or in
summer, beautiful in its sunlit glory, stands Winnipeg, the cosmopolitan
capital of the last of the Anglo Saxon Empires,--Winnipeg, City of the
Plain, which from the eyes of the world cannot be hid. Miles away,
secure in her sea-girt isle, is old London, port of all seas; miles
away, breasting the beat of the Atlantic, sits New York, capital of the
New World, and mart of the world, Old and New; far away to the west lie
the mighty cities of the Orient, Peking and Hong Kong, Tokio and
Yokohama; and fair across the highway of the world's commerce sits
Winnipeg, Empress of the Prairies. Her Trans-Continental railways thrust
themselves in every direction,--south into the American Republic, east
to the ports of the Atlantic, west to the Pacific, and north to the
Great Inland Sea.
To her gates and to her
deep-soiled tributary prairies she draws from all lands peoples of all
tribes and tongues, smitten with two great race passions, the lust for
liberty, and the lust for land.
By hundreds and tens of
hundreds they stream in and through this hospitable city, Saxon and Celt
and Slav, each eager on his own quest, each paying his toll to the new
land as he comes and goes, for good or for ill, but whether more for
good than for ill only God knows.
A hundred years ago,
where now stands the thronging city, stood the lonely trading-post of
The Honourable, The Hudson's Bay Company. To this post in their birch
bark canoes came the half-breed trapper and the Indian hunter, with
their priceless bales of furs to be bartered for blankets and beads, for
pemmican and bacon, for powder and ball, and for the thousand and one
articles of commerce that piled the store shelves from cellar to roof.
Fifty years ago, about
the lonely post a little settlement had gathered--a band of sturdy
Scots. Those dour and doughty pioneers of peoples had planted on the Red
River their homes upon their little "strip" farms--a rampart of
civilization against the wide, wild prairie, the home of the buffalo,
and camp ground of the hunters of the plain.
Twenty-five years ago,
in the early eighties, a little city had fairly dug its roots into the
black soil, refusing to be swept away by that cyclone of financial
frenzy known over the Continent as the "boom of '81," and holding on
with abundant courage and invincible hope, had gathered to itself what
of strength it could, until by 1884 it had come to assume an appearance
of enduring solidity. hitherto accessible from the world by the river
and the railroad from the south, in this year the city began to cast
eager eyes eastward, and to listen for the rumble of the first trans-
continental train, which was to bind the Provinces of Canada into a
Dominion, and make Winnipeg into one of the cities of the world. Trade
by the river died, but meantime the railway from the south kept pouring
in a steady stream of immigration, which distributed itself according to
its character and in obedience to the laws of affinity, the French
Canadian finding a congenial home across the Red River in old St.
Boniface, while his English-speaking fellow- citizen, careless of the
limits of nationality, ranged whither his fancy called him. With these,
at first in small and then in larger groups, from Central and South
Eastern Europe, came people strange in costume and in speech; and
holding close by one another as if in terror of the perils and the
loneliness of the unknown land, they segregated into colonies tight knit
by ties of blood and common tongue.
Already, close to the
railway tracks and in the more unfashionable northern section of the
little city, a huddling cluster of little black shacks gave such a
colony shelter. With a sprinkling of Germans, Italians and Swiss, it was
almost solidly Slav. Slavs of all varieties from all provinces and
speaking all dialects were there to be found: Slavs from Little Russia
and from Great Russia, the alert Polak, the heavy Croatian, the haughty
Magyar, and occasionally the stalwart Dalmatian from the Adriatic, in
speech mostly Ruthenian, in religion orthodox Greek Catholic or Uniat
and Roman Catholic. By their non-discriminating Anglo-Saxon fellow-
citizens they are called Galicians, or by the unlearned, with an echo of
Paul's Epistle in their minds, "Galatians." There they pack together in
their little shacks of boards and tar-paper, with pent roofs of old
tobacco tins or of slabs or of that same useful but unsightly tar-paper,
crowding each other in close irregular groups as if the whole wide
prairie were not there inviting them. From the number of their huts they
seem a colony of no great size, but the census taker, counting ten or
twenty to a hut, is surprised to find them run up into hundreds. During
the summer months they are found far away in the colonies of their
kinsfolk, here and there planted upon the prairie, or out in gangs where
new lines of railway are in construction, the joy of the contractor's
heart, glad to exchange their steady, uncomplaining toil for the
uncertain, spasmodic labour of their English-speaking rivals. But winter
finds them once more crowding back into the little black shacks in the
foreign quarter of the city, drawn thither by their traditionary social
instincts, or driven by economic necessities. All they ask is bed space
on the floor or, for a higher price, on the home-made bunks that line
the walls, and a woman to cook the food they bring to her; or, failing
such a happy arrangement, a stove on which they may boil their varied
stews of beans or barley, beets or rice or cabbage, with such scraps of
pork or beef from the neck or flank as they can beg or buy at low price
from the slaughter houses, but ever with the inevitable seasoning of
garlic, lacking which no Galician dish is palatable. Fortunate indeed is
the owner of a shack, who, devoid of hygienic scruples and disdainful of
city sanitary laws, reaps a rich harvest from his fellow-countrymen, who
herd together under his pent roof. Here and there a house surrendered by
its former Anglo-Saxon owner to the "Polak" invasion, falls into the
hands of an enterprising foreigner, and becomes to the happy possessor a
veritable gold mine.
Such a house had come
into the possession of Paulina Koval. Three years ago, with two children
she had come to the city, and to the surprise of her neighbours who had
travelled with her from Hungary, had purchased this house, which the
owner was only too glad to sell. How the slow-witted Paulina had managed
so clever a transaction no one quite understood, but every one knew that
in the deal Rosenblatt, financial agent to the foreign colony, had lent
his shrewd assistance. Rosenblatt had known Paulina in the home land,
and on her arrival in the new country had hastened to proffer his good
offices, arranging the purchase of her house and guiding her, not only
in financial matters, but in things domestic as well. It was due to
Rosenblatt that the little cottage became the most populous dwelling in
the colony. It was his genius that had turned the cellar, with its mud
floor, into a dormitory capable of giving bed space to twenty or
twenty-five Galicians, and still left room for the tin stove on which to
cook their stews. Upon his advice, too, the partitions by which the
cottage had been divided into kitchen, parlour, and bed rooms, were with
one exception removed as unnecessary and interfering unduly with the
most economic use of valuable floor space. Upon the floor of the main
room, some sixteen feet by twelve, under Rosenblatt's manipulation,
twenty boarders regularly spread their blankets, and were it not for the
space demanded by the stove and the door, whose presence he deeply
regretted, this ingenious manipulator could have provided for some
fifteen additional beds. Beyond the partition, which as a concession to
Rosenblatt's finer sensibilities was allowed to remain, was Paulina's
boudoir, eight feet by twelve, where she and her two children occupied a
roomy bed in one corner. In the original plan of the cottage four feet
had been taken from this boudoir for closet purposes, which closet now
served as a store room for Paulina's superfluous and altogether
wonderful wardrobe.
After a few weeks'
experiment, Rosenblatt, under pressure of an exuberant hospitality,
sought to persuade Paulina that, at the sacrifice of some comfort and at
the expense of a certain degree of privacy, the unoccupied floor space
of her boudoir might be placed at the disposal of a selected number of
her countrymen, who for the additional comfort thus secured, this room
being less exposed to the biting wind from the door, would not object to
pay a higher price. Against this arrangement poor Paulina made feeble
protest, not so much on her own account as for the sake of the children.
"Children!" cried
Rosenblatt. "What are they to you? They are not your children."
"No, they are not my
children, but they are my man's, and I must keep them for him. He would
not like men to sleep in the same room with us."
"What can harm them
here? I will come myself and be their protector," cried the chivalrous
Rosenblatt. "And see, here is the very thing! We will make for them a
bed in this snug little closet. It is most fortunate, and they will be
quite comfortable."
Still in Paulina's
slow-moving mind lingered some doubt as to the propriety of the
suggested arrangement. "But why should men come in here? I do not need
the money. My man will send money every month."
"Ah!" cried the alert
and startled Rosenblatt, "every month! Ah! very good! But this house,
you will remember, is not all paid for, and those English people are
terrible with their laws. Oh, truly terrible!" continued the solicitous
agent. "They would turn you and your children out into the snow. Ah,
what a struggle I had only last month with them!"
The mere memory of that
experience sent a shudder of horror through Rosenblatt's substantial
frame, so that Paulina hastened to surrender, and soon Rosenblatt with
three of his patrons, selected for their more gentle manners and for
their ability to pay, were installed as night lodgers in the inner room
at the rate of five dollars per month. This rate he considered as
extremely reasonable, considering that those of the outer room paid
three dollars, while for the luxury of the cellar accommodation two
dollars was the rate. |