This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on Aug. 26, 1939.
We had a picnic in the park last week. We ate at long tables under the gnarled oaks that make a pattern against the sky. They have a historic significance, too, for it is generally believed that all the oaks on Vancouver Island were planted by Drake and his men, a hundred years ago.
Great green lawns (kept green by watering) run down to the sea. Across the straits, we looked at the stately Olympics, snowcapped and blue with shadows. We could hear the boats coming into the harbour, sending out their deep-throated whistles, and could see the little boats rocking in the wash they left behind, like white butterflies.
Out on the waterfront, the benches are always full of people who spend the afternoon there, with their books and string bags. Many of them are prairie farmers and their wives, who promised themselves through their busy years that they would some day go and look at the sea as long as they liked. There must be years of longing in that rapt silence and complete detachment.
In the coves below, children play, and in the evenings beach fires burn. No matter how still the day is, waves break into foam as they slap the rocks, and always there are seagulls waiting to see if the bench-sitters won’t share with them the contents of the string bags.
Farther around the shore to the east, Ross Bay Cemetery lies, protected from the sea by a stone wall. Every day, there are visitors there, laying flowers on someone’s grave, and at the gate, cars bearing foreign licences, are parked. I think of that line in Maeterlinck’s Bluebird, where he says: “No one is dead if anyone remembers.”
Much poetry has been written by our local people (some of whom were with us at the picnic) about these historic places, and quotations broke out, naturally, as we sat beneath the oaks.
When my turn came, I had to “pass,” for the only verse I could remember was a bit of doggerel describing the last resting place of eminent Victorians, beginning:
“Peacefully here in this hallowed ground
They sleep alone, and they all sleep sound.”
But I could not lower the tone of the meeting with this.
However, I did get in when the theme shifted to Beacon Hill Park, for I remembered James Morton’s lovely verses, where he compares the golden broom on the hills to the burning bush that Moses saw.
There were half a dozen of us, who, for various reasons, were exempt from service, and so we sat on the benches letting other people carry us ham sandwiches and cherry pie.
The conversations turned to picnics in the abstract, and it was generally agreed that picnics are not what they used to be. They are too easy now, with tea brought in great shining thermos vats — and with people eating from paper plates and spoons that need no washing.
We liked best the picnics where a fire was built on stones, and a blackened pot suspended on a bent pole, in which the water was boiled, so that the tea had the odd willow leaf in it when it was served. We liked the cups, too, that had red or blue yarn on the handle to show ownership, and where there was a certain healthy rivalry in the matter of cooking.
I wished I could get one of Mrs. MacCharles’ raspberry tarts or Nellie Henneberg’s lemon cookies. That was picnic fare that lives in memory.
Picnics then had dramatic possibilities, local colour, even scandal. I remember a neighbourhood quarrel that began when one woman accused another of going home from a picnic with “a full basket.”
The Pioneer picnic at Manitou, Man., held on July 1, with a concert at night in the skating rink, was an event that shook the neighbourhood. It began at 10 in the morning, and if a dance followed the concert, ended at sunrise the next morning.
One of our company declared that picnics have no chance of survival, and we could not talk her down. She said that picnics belonged to the era that is passing, and will be revived only once in a while for anniversaries and pageants in old home week, like maypoles and hoop skirts, for there is a new conception of comfort forming in the minds of people today.
Why should any person listen to speeches at a picnic, when they may be heard more comfortably at home on the radio? Even children do not need picnics any more, school work is made so pleasant for them that every day is a picnic.
In the future there will be no sharp division between work and play in any one’s life. The whole level of life, she said, will be raised so high that special occasion will disappear. Television will do away with visiting, or going to the theatre, or public meetings of any kind, for why should anyone walk or drive to see a friend or a play if you can achieve the same result by turning a dial. She was sure all telephones would soon be equipped with scanners. …
“We will probably all be living in community houses, and eating our food in pellet form, and so there will be no work to do, and no excuse for wanting a change or a rest.”
The pessimist in our party said we needn’t ever worry about the level of living being too high — war would attend to that. What with Germany and Italy in Europe, and Japan in the Orient ready to take us over.
Seven o’clock came then, and the two dissenters left us to go over to a car and hear the news, and we settled down to enjoy the fragrant beauty of the evening, letting no mournful yesterday or menacing tomorrow disturb us.
As this was a gathering of prairie people, we talked about the beauty of the land we had left, the ripening grain, the wild goose going south, as Edna Jaques says: “A silver arrow etched against the night.”
And then someone quoted Anne Marriott’s description of the young wheat in the spring. We examined these quotations, as quilt-makers look at the prize-winning quilt at a fair, and we approved of them in design, colour and stitching.
And so you see it was a pleasant time we had at the picnic. The place, the quiet evening, the fellowship of old friends, all contributed. But above all else, it was a pleasant time because there was good talk.