From Alice Waters Cairns to her cousin May Waters (March 8, 1914)

by Chris Evans | March 8, 1914 5:03 pm

Langbank, Sask.

March 8th, 1914 

Dear Cousin May, 

I do miss Amy very much, she was always rather masterful in the household affairs, and that was a comfort to me, for if things got in a jumble, I just took it easy, till she straightened them out. I had to cry every day for a while after she left, I felt so forlorn. Mulligan is a dreadful name, but little, fair-haired, blue eyed “W.O.” as Amy calls him is a “Mulligan” in name only, not in looks. Bedford is only 8 miles out of Halifax, Mr. Mulligan preaches in Bedford, he is Presbyterian, he has not quite finished his studies, so he attends classes in Hix this winter as well as preaching, he is a B.A. but is getting a M.A. He gets $900 a year for preaching and $4.00 a week for writing news to a Winnipeg newspaper, he is very fond of journalistic work, indeed, he put himself through college with it. 

He gives Amy $10.00 a week for household expenses, I think she ought to do well on that, in Nova Scotia. Amy got very few new things for her wedding, because she would have had to make a special trip to Winnipeg, 250 miles, just to buy a new hat, etc., so she just got two new dresses – one brown and the other red, she is very fond of brown, she already had two, and I could not tell the three apart! Then she had no gloves to match, I had a new pair of tan dogskin, they did. Then for a hat: she had one she got three winters ago, trimmed with marabou [type of down feather] that Charlotte Gilpin gave her, she took a piece of that bead trimming I had on a black silk, perhaps you remember it; and put that around the hat. Then for boots – Well, Janet bought a pair before she was married, they were too small for Janet, she sold them to Amy as Amy has smaller bones than Janet; but Amy is fatter, they did not fit Amy comfortably, still she wore them, as they were the least worn of any she had. Amy’s coat was a good one, but three years old. So there, you have her wedding outfit! She had plenty of print housedresses though. 

Then as they went down to Nova Scotia she bought cloaks, dresses, hats, boots, gloves, etc. in the different cities they stopped off at, in Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, till by the time she got to Bedford, she was quite respectable, I hope. Mr. Wrangham took some snaps of the wedding, I’ll send some. Amy had a friend, Miss Hamilton, staying with us the week she was married, who helped her fix the dresses and hats – oh yes, she made a brown Billie Burke hood, faced with brown silk. So off we started, 2 hours before sunrise on Jan. 6th, 1912, a mild morning for here, about 6 degrees above zero. 

Tom and Mr. Wrangham in one big sleigh, Papa, Miss Hamilton, Amy, Bob and I in another big sleigh. Miss Hamilton and Amy had a carbon foot warmer, I had a foot muff, menfolks are supposed never to have cold feet. Bob drove our conveyance. 

We must have appeared a funny wedding party. We drove nearly 20 miles and got into Whitewood about half-past ten. Amy said the ceremony was not to be till half-past eleven, but I knew Mr. Mulligan said eleven, we gave in to Amy and went to a hotel and were comfortably sitting around the radiator in the hotel parlour when Mr. Mulligan came running upstairs telling Amy it was to be at eleven, and that his friend, the Presbyterian minister, Mr. Gilmour wanted us to go to their house for dinner. 

I was annoyed, because we had had ordered dinner at the hotel, where we could all be together, and we did not all like to go to Mr. Gilmour’s. However, off we rushed to the church, Amy protesting to the last minute that she did not want to get married. Then after the marriage in an almost empty church, for people out here are not used to people getting married in churches, and think they are intruding if they go uninvited, we went to Mr. Gilmours to dinner. Amy said, “I haven’t got to walk beside him, have I?” We told her she had to; Miss Blunt who lives in Poplar Grove and who was at Janet’s wedding, went in Whitewood some days before, so she could be at the marriage, was invited to go to Mrs. Gilmours too. So there we took dinner, Amy and W.O., Papa and I, Ailee (Miss H) and Lesbia (Miss B), Mr. and Mrs. Gilmour. 

We had a nice turkey, plum pudding, wedding cake, potatoes, cranberry sauce etc. The boys had to be at the hotel for their dinner. The train was to leave soon after one, so we went to the station and Amy put in a bad quarter of an hour. Mr. W. went and got rice, and some children, overhead in the station house, threw down wheat on us out of the window, people stared and said “there must be a wedding”. They threw rice and kept it up till she was nearly on the train, the conductor told them to stop, it was very nice of him. Mr. Wrangham was the worst, he always gets out of bounds when he is near a hotel bar. He gave Amy a nice brooch as soon as we got in town. Amy would not tell she was going to get married till about four weeks before, and then she only told me and I was bound over to keep the peace, but when W.O. came up from Nova Scotia, it had to be told. W.O. went East over a year ago, he was in Princeton, N.J. all last winter, Princeton Theological Seminary, so not being around here for nearly two years, people had almost begun to think Amy was not to be married. They were engaged for about five years. He is about 32 and Amy 25. She is much nearer May now than when we lived there. 

We thank Uncle Ben for the Liverpool Post he sent us. Lord Strathcona was a wonderful man for all the advantages he had. We have had a wonderfully mild winter, only about a fortnight when the thermometer went down to 40 below zero whenever it felt like it. Now the trails are horrid the horses go down through the soft snow where there is snow, and slip on the ice, and rumble over bare ground. The cattle go out to the prairie every day, come home at night full up with the hay that makes itself without being cut. 

You know grass in this land makes good hay if left uncut, the horses stay out all the winter and dig it from under the snow; all the mares and horses over a year old that are not working are turned out on the prairie for the winter, never a sign of shelter, day and night, wind and storm. The owners round them up about the middle of May. There will be quite a number of new born foals among them, all doing well. Cattle cannot dig, so they have to be fed at the stables, but when the snow goes, they feed in the fields as in summer. 

That was a wolf skin we sent you, I am glad to hear of its usefulness, for years it was on the back of an easy chair with us, what adventures it could tell, if it could only talk! 

You say “Jack comes home as black as a tinker”. You can then imagine what threshers are like, a doz. men or more covered with black grease! One man was working here for 2 weeks at threshing he used to wash sometimes, but perhaps never thoroughly – for when he came some time after threshing I did not know him! And when I am surprised, my tongue is apt to say the first thing that comes into my head, SO I said, “Oh, your face is clean!” 

The hens laid 5 doz. eggs yesterday. 

The boys say if there is a good crop this year Papa and I can go for a trip next winter down to Nova Scotia. I wonder if you would like our life out here, it is very rough, truly the “simple life”. 

With love to all, I remain 

your affectionate cousin 

Alice Cairns 

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