This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on June 14, 1941.
I know not what the future holds of marvel or surprise! So wrote John Greenleaf Whittier many years ago, and we are making his words our own, even now, in this advanced age of invention and scientific discoveries. To think of all we have, and wonder what more there can be!
But the days bring revelations. Nothing stands still, and now the prairie has made a contribution that deserves a place in the history of development.
To many, even the word, prairie, brings a vision of vast distances, with a few scattered, weather-beaten houses, lonely, remote, heroic, but somewhat pathetic. The long period of dry years and wind has given the abundant prairie a bad name.
The worst offender was the wind, the scouring, searching wind, which filled the houses with dust — buried the gardens and swept the soil ahead of it like a giant’s broom. Poems have been written about the prairie winds — the best of them by people who live in pleasanter places.
But now the wind has been harnessed to serve the need of the people who suffered most from its depredations. I do not know to whom the credit should be given in Canada, but from the first mention of using wind to generate electricity seems to have come from the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen. He tells of setting up a windmill on his ship when it was locked in the ice.
A western writer, Sara Emerald Nelson, tells in Onward of the two smart boys in Iowa who, having read of Nansen’s experiment, proceeded to work with a few odd parts of old automobiles and at last were able to show their neighbourhood that the wind would work for them; and now there is a factory in Sioux City, turning out complete farm-light machinery.
The farmers of our Canadian prairies have been making their own. At small cost, sometimes not more than $50, they have been able to light their buildings.
And the coal-oil lamps are put away — not too far away, for there are times when something goes wrong with the new plant and it is well to have them handy. The passing of the coal-oil lamp, and the super gasoline lamp, with its frail “mantle” marks the end of an era. The people who cleaned them will have no regrets. The chimneys had to be polished (with newspaper), the wicks trimmed, oil added with the use of a funnel, and then they were ready to be set on the lamp shelf.
Now the lamp shelf probably is given over to the radio, and light comes by pulling a cord. The wind, which was the great enemy of the prairie farmer, has become a producer of power and light. It turns the wheels of the cream separator and the washing machine, and so is lifting some of the burden from the busy housewives. And, as one woman writes: “It does not cost us a cent — we have plenty of wind.”
Now our poets have a new theme in this transformation of The Wind our Enemy.
With couch grass and dandelions now in demand for their medicinal qualities — with the Germans buying Bibles in greater numbers than they did before the time of Hitler — with a high-rating Nazi coming to Britain of his own accord (and who knows how many we may have when this appears in print), we surely have still something to wonder at.
Couch grass gave us our first surprise when we learned it had been crossed with wheat by a Russian agriculturist and had become a perennial plant of great hardiness, and considered food value — but its value as a medicinal plant seems to be still a matter of doubt, the doubt welling in the fact that there do not appear to be any facilities for handling it even after it is gathered and dried. However, that does not decrease our wonder that this little crabbed pest is really good for something.
A writer in a western periodical has some wise words for those who might have a notion of raising or harvesting medicinal drugs. He quotes from a letter received from an old timer, who has had experience with ginseng, golden seal and mushrooms, and his final word is this:
“Any person going into drug-plant growing or collecting, should make it a lifetime job — should raise a family, train the children in the work. Some worthwhile operators should appear in the third generation.”
He says, further, that he is not embittered by his experiences. Indeed, he gets some fun out of it, and a good deal of light reading in the offers he gets from enterprising firms all over the continent who are willing to start him in a lucrative business, for a consideration. Drug growing is highly specialized, and as painstaking as growing registered seeds. It requires knowledge, patience and time.
This is the season when students are released from their classes and are standing looking at a new world. The old boundaries are removed, the fences are down — no longer are they guided by the routine of classes, bells and “periods.” What does the world hold for them of “marvel and surprise”?
We cannot disguise the fact that we are worried about the state of adult education in Canada. Adult education has been offered in many enticing forms in the last few years — short courses, radio programs, even recreational studies, and yet there are many adults who successfully evade them all. Democracy depends on education. It depends on education freely given and taken.
What can we do to give our young people the desire?
The Fascist-Nazi world has definite plans for its youth. They leave nothing to the individual to decide. It’s all written down, and accomplished by routine, and a drastic discipline. We see the evil in all this fanaticism and mass-hysteria and false ideals. Eleven-mile marches for boys of 13, carry packs of 11 pounds; long hours of work collecting waste material, overtime and nights have resulted in the breakdown of the weaker ones. Meningitis and rickets have taken a terrible toll and the parents can do nothing.
We see how wrong this is, how cruel and wasteful. But it is consistent with the Nazi belief that man is an animal, with no rights as man, except to serve the state and so contribute to German dominance.
We believe man is made in the image of God, that this soul must be free, and that all men have an equal right to happiness.
But we do not put the enthusiasm into our beliefs that the Nazis put into theirs. For selfish, ugly, brutal reasons, they work harder to enslave the world than we do to liberate it. And that is a great menace of this brittle hour.
How can we impart the “marvel and surprise” to our young people — how can we show them what it means to follow the gleam, to sacrifice ease and pleasure for the things that are eternal? Our armed forces have shown that they are ready to die for freedom, but what about us who are still safe at home?
I wonder if the men overseas think of us and wonder if our way of life is worth dying for? At the best I know it is. I know people, men and women, some in positions of authority, and some obscure and unrecorded people — simple, sincere, self-sacrificing — doing the best they can for everyone around them — whose way of life is worth dying for; for in it there is hope for the homeless, joy for the workers, God’s grace for everyone.
I wish every person, young and old, could read, or rather would read, the story of Marie Curie, that wonderful Polish woman and scientist. I think it would light a flame in any heart — a flame of desire to make a contribution to human welfare. The picture it gives of her struggle against poverty, her shining faith, her love of humanity, would lift anyone to higher levels of thought.
That is our great need.
Some of McClung’s columns from the 1930s and 1940s have been collected in a book, The Valiant Nellie McClung: Selected Writings by Canada’s Most Famous Suffragist, by Barbara Smith.
