Englishmen in the West.

Williams, William H.

The Englishman with his gun, his dogs, his projects and his ambitions, is the subject of much of the romance of the west. There is no doubt that in many cases he determined to turn soil and climate to his purposes and that the bent of nature was too strong for him, and his elaborate plans dwindled into pitiful failure. He has found that be cannot reproduce ancient England amid pioneer conditions, that nature is arbitrary, and that fortune gives her hand only to those who woo her wisely and in sympathy with her imperious moods.

At Calgary they will tell you many yarns of the Englishman who came out, not with a settler's idea and a settler's outfit, but with leggings, shooting jacket, and dogs. The mountains are 50 or 60 miles from Calgary, but looking across the prairie, distance is very deceptive. And upon bright, clear days they seem very near at hand. It was a favourite trick of the humourist to start the Englishman with his dogs out on foot for a day's shooting in the Rockies. But as he advanced the towering rock receded, the mountains would not come to him and he could not get to the mountains.

There is a yarn of two young Englishmen, just arrived in the country, who, under the inspiration of the local wags, started out from a wayside station on the prairie to shoot bears. Late in the afternoon they returned for a waggon. In reply to the wondering inquiry as to what they intended to do with the waggon, they, of course, said that they wanted to bring in the bears. In a moment the story was in everyone's mouth, and half the village started out with the team to bring in the bears, or rather to rejoice in the discomforture of the Englishmen when it was found what they had shot. But the Englishmen led to the finish. It was found, so the story goes, that the hunters had actually shot two bears, although no one before had seen a bear in that neighbourhood.

It is told--but this story belongs to Manitoba --that an English family were found planting potatoes in October. It was suggested that the village shopkeeper should tell the family that it was useless to plant potatoes in the Fall. But he protested against any such attempt to injure his business. He explained that he had sold the seed, and that the sale probably could not have been made if he had explained that it was not wise to do Fall planting.

There is a good deal of "varnish" on this piece of timber. There was pictured to me an Englishman with a yoke of oxen, clad in the remains of a dress suit and a silk hat, ploughing in the early Fall, as the first snow was flying across the plains, and addressing his oxen, "haw; no, I beg your pardon, gee." But we could probably find people even the West who would not believe this story.

The fact remains, however, when one has heard all these yarns--all the stories of the young Englishman who spent two or three months of summer on the homestead and put in the rest in towns, living well, and talking, as it was described to me, the "large language of the earlier gods"--all the discouraging history of the remittance men who were transplanted from the home estate to the Western prairie in the hope that they who failed at home could succeed abroad--when one has heard all this, the fact stands that the Englishman has a wide influence in the Territories and British Columbia, that we owe much to his capital and much to his pluck that he gives character to the social life of many of the Western communities. The best gift we can ask from the old land is that she will still send out to us the children of her loins, that they may unite with us in the task, and share with us in the glory of building up a British civilization on these rich alluvial valleys and far-spreading plains.

William H. Williams was editor of the Toronto Globe. This article appeared in the Calgary Tribune, October 26, 1895.