From Alice Waters Cairns to her cousin, May Waters (February 21, 1908)

Poplar Grove, Saskatchewan

Feb. 21st, 1908 

Dear Cousin May, 

I am so glad you enjoyed my last letter, now I’ll try another. How delightful it would be if you could all come to Canada for a visit! I believe Uncle Ben could easily stand it, travelling is so rapid and comfortable, and remarkably cheap. Fred Gravener came down just before tea. I wanted to start this letter so I came in the room right after I finished and left the others talking at the table – subject of conversation – education in public schools, children should not have home lessons (Bob thoroughly agreed with that opinion) only elementary things should be taught in these little country schools, scientific subjects should be only taught in higher grade schools. Just now I went out to help Janet with the dishes, F.G. had the dish towel and was wiping away at the cups and plates at the same time discussing the Asiatic question. 

I had an invalid hen, she had a swelled head – roup – Tom begged for her, So Bob caught her, Tom killed her, then cut little holes in her flesh, put strychnine in those slits, tied a rope to her legs, got on horseback and dragged her up to a strawstack nearly a mile away (still on our land) put the poisoned bird up on the stack where he saw wolf tracks. A day or two afterwards he went up again on old Nellie (the oldest horse we have) and found a large wolf stark and stiff, the hen was gone. 

I try to bake bread only once a week, sometimes I have to twice. Tomorrow is Saturday, Tom will take the two horse big wagon, go to a big slough and chop out lumps of ice, bring them to the door and dump them out, handy for me to get. Janet will iron handkerchiefs, collars, table napkins, company pillow cases and towels, her pongee blouse, a white fancy apron and such like. I’ll get Papa to bring me up a nice roast from the granary, get Bob to bring up a pail of suet, then I’ll make two suet puddings, one with black currants one with gooseberries, (some like the one and some the other), then I bake the meat, steam the puddings, boil turnips and potatoes, make a good gravy with onions, that is our usual Saturday dinner when Janet, Tom and Bob get their only hot dinner in the week, they take their dinners to school, and Sundays we do not get up in time to have three meals, and have not time to cook a dinner. After dish washing Janet sweeps every room and the porch, then we scrub the kitchen floor; then we scold everyone who puts a foot on it till it dries, most of the scolding falls on Papa and Tom, they seem to lose their wits and wander all over the floor, in an absent minded aimless way, looking for a hammer or a boot or a needle which are never in the kitchen anyway. 

When the floor is dry I put the big wash boiler on the range, put some of the ice in it to melt for Monday’s washing – slough water is very alkaline, but the ice on the water is nice and soft, our well water is hard too; when the ice melts, I ask John to carry a tub in the kitchen, I put two chairs together set the tub on it; put the melted ice in it. Janet comes home every Friday Friday is our mail day, Janet’s school is a mile from the post office, SO John, Tom or Papa go up to the office to take the letters and get the mail. Janet comes to the office with some of her pupils (the mail gets there from Wapella about 

3 o’clock in the afternoon) then home they come; about half past four I begin to look across the prairie, then the word comes, “They’re coming.” Then I light the fire in the room, Janet comes in lugging a pillow case of mail and a valise of her own goods and chattels, also her leather dinner satchel, the two dogs get under her feet, she chatters to them, they try their best to talk back, then the mail-bag (i, e, flour bag, often used for pillow case) is emptied on the table, we pick out our letters, put away those belonging to the ones who are not in. 

I fry potatoes which I prepared right after dinner, Janet sets the table, I have a pot of baked beans in the oven, she puts dough-nuts in the warming oven then tea is ready. Sunday we are up late, have coffee, cold meat, buns or toast and porridge for breakfast about eleven o’clock. Then we hurry, hurry to get ready for church up at Janet’s school-house nearly four miles away; having only two bed-rooms, one for women and one for men, i the boys take turns getting ready and so do we. Monday we are up by times, Janet has to be taken back to her school, she puts up her lunch of bread and butter, a little glass of preserves, piece of apple pie, graham wafer, piece of cold meat, then she hurries up Papa, and away she goes in the big sleighs with two horses. Till Christmas she drove herself in the one horse cutter or buggy, and came home every day. 

Then the boys go to school, Bob feeds and waters the hens, Tom milks a cow, feeds a calf, feeds three pigs, harnesses his horse, drives off with Bob. Then I do the dishes, set the fire in the room, sweep the room and kitchen, go get another tub brought in and set on chairs, put my white clothes in a third tub in the porch and then I rub, rub, rub from 2 to 5 hours according to the size of the wash. I give the men only soup or something easy, the first man who comes in the house at dinner time has to set the table and take up the dinner and I rub, rub, rub. I hang the clothes on the hay-rack and on the various pieces of farm machinery with which the field behind the house is strewed. Papa or John empties the tubs, then I tidy up the kitchen, do the beds and upstairs work, wash and tidy myself, get the tea, then drop down exhausted in the most comfortable chair in the room, a chair my father bought for my mother the last time he was home. On Wednesday or Thursday I bake about twelve or fourteen loaves of bread. On Tuesday I bake pies or fry dough-nuts, or make a large white loaf-cake, which Janet will ice with a fudge icing on Saturday. We nearly always have some of the bachelor folks on Sunday after church, So we like to have an extra nice cake. Mr. Dickie, our post-master is the usual one now. I think Janet is flirting with him. He is a Nova Scotian, has a good buggy and cutter; a buggy or cutter are considered to be valuable adjuncts to a bachelor man, indeed, some say a poor bachelor has no chance at all to get a wife without them. F. Gravener often says he will get a buggy. 

The school where Amy has taught ever since she began sent after her again, because they could not get another teacher very easily so she went for three months. I think work is a great blessing but I would like a little more leisure to sew. 

“Frank” is just like other men, who say, “What do you want to sweep or bake or wash or scrub” (as the case may be) “Why don’t you leave it? I would not do it.” Yet they would feel much abused if there were nothing cooked, or the bed not made or the fire out! Miss McRae hopes to come back, but her mother is not very willing. Billy Kinch has gone back up North. You say a house in the town is so difficult to keep clean, I wish you could be in a log house on the prairie for a while! Dust is just dreadful! and then the fine black earth like ashes to sift over everything, like the sand used to get in your clothes hanging out in Hoylake. Tuesday of this week John and clifford (the hired man) skinned the wolf in the kitchen (in the evening) that made a dark spot on the kitchen floor. Then I had a beef’s head and a liver brought up from the granary put in a holey pan, and set on the kitchen floor, so they might thaw. They thawed and the blood leaked out and made a dreadful mess, they took two days to thaw. John cut up the head and got the tongue out, and I boiled up head, liver and a diseased hare for the hens. Then the men tracked in manure and earth (we have very little snow this winter) and to cap all, John cleaned the range for me! You cannot imagine such a dirty floor; of course I washed up some of the blood. 

Janet keeps taking down our little rags of curtains for me to wash whenever she thinks I’ll submit. Now here we cannot go shopping every whip-stitch, but we want things just the same, so we shop by mail; nearly always we send to Eatons at Winnipeg or Simpsons at Toronto; they send out 2 large catalogues and some small ones each year. If we want to shop we sit down peacefully with a catalogue. 

I have to leave my wash out all the week to dry as everything freezes so stiff, then when things limber up, Bob brings them in, and I hang them up in the room over two rough boards standing up against the end of the organ next the box stove which protect the organ from the heat. There are nails in the logs on the ceiling in our room, and sometimes there are 4 guns laid up on them. I suspend our laundry all around the room sometimes when they won’t dry outdoors. It looks funny, I try to disguise the nature and form of some of the articles. I am afraid you have encouraged me to write long silly letters. 

March 17, 1908 

This is a continuation. Tom got another wolf, poisoned with snow birds, he shot the birds and put poison in them, now he wants to get over to a Mr. McMillan – 15 miles away who is secretary of local improvement for our district; he will pay Tom $1.00 each for the killing of them, a bounty, still Tom will have the skins, Mr. McMillan will split the ears. Janet, 

Tom and Bob have been having great times skating; every Saturday evening they go up to Poplar Grove somewhere near where Janet teaches and skate on a slough which some of the boys have swept clean of snow; they light a fire, and seem to enjoy themselves. One evening nearly twenty of them were in one sleigh box when it upset, no one was hurt. 

Mr. Cairns and John have got the wheat shipped. We have a new station two miles and a half away built last summer, on a new line, though the railway is not open for passengers, the farmers can get cars at their own risk and send them to Port Arthur. We only had about 900 bushels of wheat, everyone around here had no crop or very small last year. This has been the hardest winter in money matters for a long time in the west. Everybody wants money and no one has any. 

I’ll send you a letter from Amy to me. Mr. Tingle is an educated gentleman who lives almost like a hermit in a little hut, he never does any work, he must have a little money for he pays his taxes, under protest. He eats some kind of bread which he bakes out of the poorest grade flour. Amy boards at the post office, Mrs. McDonald’s. Mr. Tingle always goes there for some paper to read, Amy says he goes for a good meal. Mr. Tingle is an old man, people think there is a mystery about him, I think he is a little crazy. Amy does not like to drive slowly. She has only engaged to teach till the middle of April, she hopes a niece of Mr. McMillan will come and take the school. 

March 19th: Tomorrow is Friday and mail day, so I will finish. 

I do not think any of you could endure the life we live here, so cramped for house room and so utterly without conveniences, one has to be very fond of sport or “sporty” I think the English boys call it. The English boy we have now stutters so dreadfully I cannot find out much about him, his name is Clifford Revelle, his father is a metal-smith in Birmingham. I fried pancakes for tea tonight; he asked me if I had such a thing as a lemon in the house. I had one in the cellar, it has been there since Xmas, he and Mr. Cairns had it on their pancakes. We do not often use lemons with pancakes in Canada, anyway they are too expensive for the West. 

I have just been reading over 8 of your letters, trying to make them suggest something more for me to write you. Fred Gravener has not been down to see us since the evening I began this letter. I think he will come on Saturday. How I wish I could give you a picture of him in his fur coat, a pair of feet and the top of a cap showing! He is only equalled in ludicrousness by my appearance when I go for a long drive in the winter. I wear a man’s fur overcoat over my own fur coat. 

With love to all, I remain 

your affectionate cousin 

Alice Cairns