This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on Jan. 7, 1939.
A day like this would stir anyone’s heart. Winter on the prairie at its shining best, and in Manitoba at that, between Brandon and Winnipeg, where every lap of the road is familiar and dear.
Here are the rolling sandhills near Carberry immortalized by Ernest Thompson Seton’s Trail of the Sandhill Stag, every outline softened by a great fall of snow; the wide, plowed fields of the Portage Plains steel-grey and ribbed; the frills of snow along the fences where the winds have tossed it in scallops edged with grey; children coming home for school, with a dogsled to carry their books and dinner pails; the snowy roofs of houses and barns; snow on the fences; snow on the evergreens, weighing down their branches.
There was a poem in a school reader by James Russell Lowell that described a day like this in sweetly flowing words, which have in them not only the beauty but the weight of new snow.
“The meanest rail on the garden fence wore ermine too deep for an earl,
And the poorest twig on the old oak tree was ridged inch deep with pearl.”
It might be because I live on the Pacific Coast now, where snow is a draggled and troublesome thing, that this crystalline beauty brings back tender memories. Snow was an integral part of our life in Manitoba. It played a role in the drama of our existence.
Plenty of snow gave promise of a good crop. Sometimes, it became the villain in our story, and did us an injury. It stopped trains, and cut off the world, and caused the destruction of our livestock. But as I think of it now, its ill-deeds are forgotten, and I remember only the good sleighing and the merry music of the bells.
Closely associated with the snow in my memory is the social life of the little town where we lived for 20 years. It is 100 miles from a city, and there were no radios then to bring the world to us, but we did not feel slighted or isolated. Looking back at it now I see we owed much to the activities of the WCTU, and these initials, I hasten to explain, stand for Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and not “Women Continually Torment Us” as some have believed.
It was the WCTU that planned debates and spelling matches and ran a reading-room, wherein the Review of Reviews, and Scribner’s and McClure’s magazines could be read, along with the Family Herald, the Witness and others.
They were a resolute band of women, these early crusaders, and I am always glad I met them and fell under their influence at an early age.
A composite picture of the leaders at that time would show a tall, thin woman with her hair parted in the middle and waved back into a bun at the back of her well-shaped head, a crisp white frill fastened with a cameo broach, a hunting-case watch pinned on her left shoulder, secured by a gold chain around her neck; black henrietta cloth dress, black stockings and a white handkerchief, a white bow of ribbon, probably tied on the watch chain; clear eye, a light hand with cakes, and not afraid of anything.
The rank and file of the sisterhood sometimes had fears. For the WCTU was never in any danger of inheriting that “woe” which is pronounced against those “of whom all men speak well.” Little Mrs. Durban found that out the day she joined, and went home wearing the bow of white ribbon.
Mrs. Chisholm of Winnipeg had given an address in the Methodist Church, and under the spell of her eloquence, Mrs. Durban had paid her dollar, signed the pledge and had the bow pinned on her.
But when she got home, her husband, James Durban, being a man of the world, engaged in the fuel business, saw danger in this innocent little white bow. He knew it might endanger his trade with the Ellis House, licensed to sell malt and spiritous liquors. Once every week, Mr. Durban delivered fuel to the Ellis House, and got his money “right on the nail.”
This being in the 1890s, when men were masters in their own house, James Durban commanded his wife to lay aside her white ribbon bow and go no more to the meetings of the WCTU, and Mrs. Durban obeyed.
But there was not the end. Mrs. Durban still paid her dues, still considered herself a member of the society pledged to rid the world of the curse of alcoholism, but she worked behind the lines.
She made cakes for the socials; made candy for the Band of Hope; minded Mrs. Brown’s two children on Monday afternoons when she led the singing at the Loyal Temperance Legion. There were other unseen members who worked quietly for peace’s sake, but were all part of the Maginot line of defence against the invader — the WCTU had tact as well as courage.
The WCTU trained young orators and reciters, and gave medals for the winners, and people travelled long distances to attend these gatherings. They also got permission to give temperance talks in the schools, and studied charts and diagrams to make their lessons “stick.” They explained the circulation of the blood, and the effect of alcohol on the stomach, and showed why athletes do not drink even mild intoxicants, and had the children figure out how many pairs of boots and little red sleighs a man could buy with the money he spends on a daily glass of beer.
At the Band of Hope, they gave badges and pins, and taught the children a marching song of which the refrain was: “Tremble, King Alcohol! We will grow up!”
They did grow up — these young people — and it looked like victory, for there were definite signs that the evils of intemperance were being curtailed.
Then came the war; and the Band of Hope boys went out to fight for democracy and some did not return — and some of these who did were shattered and disillusioned and embittered, and King Alcohol did not tremble any more. Not even when women received the vote.
Other societies came into being and the WCTU found its ranks thinning, though it has never rested from the conflict.
There is only one left of the old guard: Mrs. Ruttan, who lives in Winnipeg. The others are gone — Mrs. Chisholm, Dr. Youmans, Mrs. Hislop, Mrs. Gordon, Mrs. Vrooman, Mrs. McClung (my mother-in-law), Mrs. Stewart, Mrs. Dolsen and many more. They are all gone. But their memory is still vivid in hearts made better by their presence.
