This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on April 15, 1939.
Even under the heavy covering of snow, the Ontario countryside has a certain austere beauty. I have seen it in the autumn when the maples were burning red, and I’ve seen it in spring when the crops were showing green. But in March this year, Ontario lay smothered in a dress of white, grey and blue. Never since 1922 has so much snow been seen.
Horses and cutters were seen along the market road, but in some parts of the country, not a car ran on the highways for weeks. A conductor on the railway voiced his grievance: “They are glad enough of the trains now, but as soon as the snow goes we’ll not see one of these people until next winter.”
On the first day of spring, March 21, a change came on quietly, and the huge snowdrifts began to melt imperceptibly at first, but by night there were little streams running in the ruts of the road, and in the farm yards I could see the hens very busy with plans for the future. They knew that spring had come and certainly it was time for a change.
The train tore by so fast I could not hear their chatter, but I know there was in it a highly critical note. They were telling the world that things would have to be different from now on. If they knew how, they could write letters to the paper about it and certainly letters to their members of Parliament.
There is a type of house in Ontario that I hope will last forever. They are probably not the best kind of houses, but they are picturesque and full of memories. They are the red brick houses with a sharp gable in front, edged with wooden trimming, and with squares of red, blue and yellow glass over the front door.
Hair wreaths and seed-wreaths hang on the walls, and what-nots are in the parlour, with starfish, clove-apples, and shell boxes set on the shelves. There are pictures of Sir Wilfrid Laurier or Sir John A. Macdonald (but not both), and Ayer’s Almanac once hung beside the wash basin in the kitchen, and it was consulted, too, before a pig was killed, or seeds planted.
The steps of the stairs are worn into saucers, and the pitch is sharp and the stair lifts high. Perhaps they creak a bit now, and no shame to them, for many feet have gone over them in the heavy years. I know even the smell of these old houses, made up of cabbage and mothballs, and blankets put away with camphor balls; all this, and something else, which is just age. They are old, and inconvenient to work in, but they stir old memories that are poignant and precious.
These first spring days, with that merciless sun that shows every unlovely thing in the house and out, drives the tidy housekeeper into a frenzied bout of house-cleaning. I see curtains billowing on the lines already, and mats hung from veranda railings.
What a pity it is that the campaign ends when the houses are clean. There will still be the drooping, sagging fences, the littered streets, the unpainted buildings, the untidy trees, and the winter’s accumulation of dead leaves. The service stations on the corners, in their fresh paint, are the bright spots in the villages, making the surrounding houses more sombre and depressing by contrast. Some day, some enterprising paint manufacturer will paint one house in each village and offer a prize for the most attractive place in each county.
Our little towns in Canada could be made as pretty as the Swiss villages, where every stone seems to be freshly whitewashed. Fresh paint, tidy grounds, would have a psychological effect on our people, too. Every woman knows the invigorating sensation of well-being which comes when the house has all been cleaned — every window, every radiator, even the drawer in the kitchen that holds the cookbooks and the string.
All over Canada, people are asking what can we do to help our country? Never has been a more sincere desire on the part of the people to actually help. We are tired of talk, criticism and fault-finding. We want to use our energy in some practical way. A great revival of cleaned streets, back yards, lanes, more tree planting, more seeds sown, would furnish outlets for our energies and enthusiasms, and the reformation would not end there.
Miss Macphail has been criticized for urging that women become angry enough to do something. She is quite right, though perhaps anger is not the right word. Certainly we have suffered from being too complacent. We need to have the calm waters of our comfortable lives troubled. But we cannot do much until we become critical of ourselves.
We have been confessing other people’s sins too long. That is no longer “news.” If every woman in Canada would put her own house in order, literally, and spiritually, we would soon solve our problems.
I am sorry to appear to lay the burden on women. But we know the unit of humanity is the family, and in the family the mother is the golden cord on which the other members are threaded. She must hold firm.
Let us take this for the beginning of our spring thinking.
