58 RURAL LIFE IN CANADA 



rich farm lands of the Chateauguay Valley in Quebec, 

 goes vividly back to the year 1869. A shy and visionary 

 boy, I watched the tradesmen at their work while other 

 schoolboys strove upon the playground. In that year 

 the ashery, unused for years, was dismantled the 

 scene of an earlier, already vanished industry. In 

 the sawmill work was being urged with pressing haste. 

 Night shifts were often employed. At the grist mill 

 farmers contested for precedence as they brought great 

 loads of fine-hulled white oats to be kiln-dried and 

 ground into round Scotch oatmeal, with sleighloads of 

 which they then drove to distant Montreal to market. 

 This mill was a few years later enlarged to meet the in- 

 creasing local demand for its output of flour. Near the 

 centre of the village stood the tannery, one of our 

 largest buildings. All manipulations, from flesher to 

 currier, were by hand; and from the bark-mill in the 

 broad shed to the harness-shop in the upper storey the 

 establishment was a scene of busy industry. The portly 

 tanner who then initiated his boy follower into the 

 mysteries of bark-pit and ooze I learned in later years 

 to know as an excellent Shakespearean scholar. Near- 

 by was the principal cabinet-maker's shop. A sweep 

 horsepower in the basement drove the turning-lathe at 

 which bed-posts and spindles were fashioned. At the 

 side benches apprentice and journeymen worked, while 

 at the front bench the proprietor a village philan- 

 thropist and the patriarch of the temperance forces of 

 the Province wrought in walnut or bird's-eye maple 

 the bridal suites of furniture for the community. The 

 six wood-working shops of the village were each dis- 

 tinctive in character. At the oldest of the house-car- 



