LIFE IN WINNIPEG.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 74, 30 March 1910, Page 8

LIFE IN WINNIPEG.

Sir Thomas Shaughnessy"s scheme for producing ready-made farms for fcettlers in Canada will make Winnipeg stand for London in the minds of many newcomers to the prairies of the West, for Winnipeg, though nearly a thousand miles away, i.s thp metropolis of that part of the Dominion. The women who go out will want to know what life is in that capital, und how the girl whose young days may include a sojourn there will be able to enjoy herself (observes a London writei). Her Canadian sister lives, let us say, in the best residential quarter of Winnipeg, at Riverbend, near the banks of the swift, muddy Athabasca. The house is one of the many stately mansions iv that quarter, whose wooded grounds are undivided by wall or hedge from those of the next property, or from tho public avenue — here we of the "old country" uotice at once one of the several pleasant features of American residential life which Western Canada has adopted. If in this palace, which is beautifully furnished and made to look as old and nettled as possible, though it is &o new, there are bu{, two, or at the most three, servants, and if even thp daughter of the house herself turns to domestic it \ at times, her English sister must not wonder. For maids are few ; they command double the wages, or more, that the British housewife is act-ufctoniod to give ; cooks jeceivo from £60 to £84 per annum, and housemaids from £40 to £45. The work may bo hard, but faults are often of necessity condoned, "followeis*' arc fively -allowed, and many other little concessions are made by the Canadian mistress, who has to fear far more than we have the difficulty of obtaining domestic servants. Iv the afternoon our typical girl puts on her sktites, or goes sleighing or tobogganing, and we may envy Tier enjoyment. Iv the evening, no doubt, there is a dance ; there are plenty in Winnipeg, in the hall of the huge Royal Alexandra Hotel at the Canadian-Pacific Railway "depot,'.' or elsewhere, mostly by subscription. Here our friend* gyrate to measures so slow that the English girl will have difficulty in filling out the time with the steps, be it waltz or two-step. The girl at the dance leads us to think of her cavaliers. She will have no lack of them. They outnumber her. Therefore (not at dances merely, but nt all times) the Western Canadian girl expects and obtains something more of male society than does her English nister. Canadian girls are allowed more freedom generally than are the English, and v. ith men they urc more generally "hail fellow, well met" than English maidens arc. If a man be bidden to spend a holidHy or a week-end nt a hou^e where the daughter is his friend he will, as a matter of course, biiug her a gift — chocolates, perhaps, or flowers — and at Winnipeg, dependent as the city is on the hothouse in winter, fifty cents (two shillings) for a single bloom is no uncommon price for a man to pay. Canadian girls and theii parents accept young men at their face value ; their antecedents do not much matter so long as. they themsehes pass muster. While it is not to be supposed for a moment that matiiiiioiiy is regained less seriously than in Enginnd, the preliminaries certainly are. A giil, for example, who becomes engaged to and breaks with three men in succession, und finally makes up her mind all over again, and marries the first of thorn, evokes no mote than a passing comment. Engagements beem in many cases to be rejjarded lather uh a trial trip than as the starting point of a long journey. And if the first trip is a failure, there aie plenty of men iv the West with whom a girl may make another :

Mr. 11. Ernest Lcighton report* a ?uod attendance at bis Ilutt -tock sale, held M»sterdu\. Cows ueur profit sold from '£6 10. to £3 10-> per head and weancrs 30* per head. Co«s out of profit were hard to quit. Hortei vtera rtry iloa. to sell..