BATTLING THE WILDERNESS 
Tom Gregory is of the true settler type, 
young, strong, and intelligent; a hunter, 
trapper and woodsman by birth and 
training, he was led to the struggle with the 
wilderness by the same insistent call which 
brought his sturdy Scotch parents over seas 
to battle for a homestead in the wilds of 
Algoma. In the calm gaze of his blue eyes 
is mirrored the courage and resourcefulness, 
the intelligent optimism which makes him 
and his kind the hope and mainstay of a 
new country. 
He came alone to the upper Blanche in 
the fall of 1900, secured his grant of 160 
acres and built his hut of logs under the 
specifications of the Homestead Law. Be- 
fore spring had opened with its tumultuous 
rush of waters he had brought his wife and 
three children from the frontier and set 
himself to those ‘‘improvements” which 
the law exacts and which form his pro- 
tection from preemption. ‘‘I had no spare 
time in those days,’’ he told me in one of 
our conversations, ‘‘to wonder whether I 
had made a wise move or not. It was just 
a plain case of necessity to keep the wife 
and children well fed and warm, clear the 
land and get my little crop started between 
the stumps and harvest it before the freeze- 
up came. I hunted only for fresh meat and 
didn’t have far to go at that, and had a 
short line of traps to tend that yielded well 
in the time I gave to it—but I never got 
far from my clearing that first year.” 
Other settlers began to come in, however, 
and though Gregory’s cabin continued to 
be the farthest limit of human habitation, 
he had neighbors, as he called them. At 
the time of my coming the nearest of these 
was some fifteen miles distant, but there 
was frequent intercourse between them. 
The long, lone winter of the North makes 
distance a slender barrier to an interchange 
of hospitalities, and in the other seasons the 
river, that highway of the pioneer, renders 
communication natural and easy. 
During my brief stay with this interesting 
family little emphasis was put upon the 
hardships they had endured and I saw no 
evidences of dissatisfaction with their lot. 
There was plenty of plain, wholesome food, 
the children were healthy and normal, con- 
tentment reigned under the roof of bark 
and between the rough walls of logs; the 
107 
future held no shadows. To be sure there 
was little of what we call comfort in their 
lives: I saw no beds, no closets and little 
other furniture; there were few books, few 
pictures, few toys or the many conveniences 
of ordinary life. The children were wrapped 
up in a huge moosehide upon the floor at 
night as cozy as mice in their nest, the baby 
slept with its parents on a couch of furs in 
the corner, while the visitor crept into his 
sleeping bag on the floor of the room 
adjoining. But it was all their own: there 
was no harrowing concern of rents, of bills 
payable or the thousand and one penalties 
which convention exacts from the city 
dweller. 
We were talking of these and kindred 
subjects one morning when Mrs. Gregory, 
with a fine color rising in her cheeks, said, 
“Why, I wouldn’t exchange this free life of 
ours for anything they could offer me out at 
the front”—and she meant what she said. 
Yet this woman—and she had much of a 
certain refinement and sensitiveness in her 
make-up—had passed through experiences 
that would equal in heroism and hardship 
many of those which figure in the history of 
our own forbears. 
The previous November she had left the 
cabin on the Blanche and with her husband 
and three children made the journey by 
canoe to New Liskeard, sixty miles distant. 
To better understand what this meant to a 
woman approaching confinement it should 
be stated that there are perhaps twenty 
difficult portages on the trip varying in 
length from 200 yards to half a mile, each 
demanding the laborious transport of canoe, 
tent, bedding, provisions and the children 
through ravines and over ridges slippery 
with recent rain. The trip down-river 
occupied four days and the weather was 
unusually cold and stormy. ‘The following 
fanuary, with a month-old infant in her 
arms, this brave woman made the return 
journey on snowshoes, her stalwart husband 
dragging the children and camp outfit 
before her on the toboggan. The last dozen 
miles were made in the worst snowstorm of 
the season and the little party did not reach 
the log hut on the Blanche until two in the 
morning. 
Not long after this, while Tom was away 
upon his line of traps, Mrs. Gregory had 
