Upper Canada’s favored situation--Our Great Lakes--Cases of apparent tides on Lake Ontario--Canadians as givers--Oshawa’s generous support of churches and charities--Life insurance--Amusing incidents of a railway journey--A “talking machine.”
“I glory in the spirit Which goaded them to rise, And form a mighty nation Beneath the western skies. No clime so bright and beautiful As that where ne’er was slavery; No land so fertile, fair, and free As that of Upper Canada. Hurrah!” --_Adapted._
A glance at the outline map in this volume will show how this Province is surrounded by the Great Lakes, or tideless oceans, the peers of any in this world.
Now, with a fertile soil, a most salubrious climate, the best form of government, and a working, thrifty, sober people, success and the goal of wealth being ours is not to be marvelled at. Our working habits and abstemiousness are so strongly inculcated that our young men have always had the best places given them when they have gone to seek work in the great neighboring Republic.
I have called the Great Lakes tideless oceans, and they are. Still, sometimes one would almost think they had tides. That the surface of Lake Ontario very frequently and very suddenly rises and again falls, within one or two hours, is very well known to close observers.
Indeed, the records of the Jesuit fathers, who were the first real observers of Lake Ontario, have frequent accounts of sudden rufflings of the water, and of waves on which by some unknown cause their canoes were rocked. As a pointed illustration of this fact, my father, who was one of the earliest shipowners on the lake, had a large vessel ashore about Frenchman’s Bay. They had kedged the anchors and drawn the cables as taut as it was possible to do, and still the ship would not move. After making every effort to move it they lay down upon the beach by the ship exhausted, wondering what next to do. Suddenly, from a perfectly calm surface, there came a swell and a rise of two feet of water, when the vessel immediately, with the strain upon her chains, slid off into deep water.
Here, without a doubt, was a tide, but I feel certain that at some remote part of the lake a heavy thunderstorm was passing, with a high wind, or there was some such local cause to produce this swell and apparent tide. No one has yet been able to prove that there are lunar tides upon Lake Ontario. It is unfortunately true that no very close and persistent observations have been made, yet even casual observers who live upon the lake-side know positively that these tides are not regular, are governed by no fixed law, and can never be foretold as are the lunar tides upon the ocean. I would designate these Lake Ontario tides “barometrical waves,” as they are truly caused by sudden barometrical changes at different points upon the lake; for we must never forget its great size, and that a storm or a gale may be raging over one area and at the same time the lake be perfectly calm in another.