Wild About Writing

Fenelon Falls is a pretty village in central Ontario that embodies everything traditional in Canadian life: an orderly main street, lots of churches, and 1,800 largely Conservative-voting residents who are almost entirely white and mainly of British descent.

I went there on a November Saturday for the launch of Barbara Wiliams’ updated edition of A Gentlewoman in Upper Canada (University of Toronto Press), the classic (1950) compilation of Anne Langton’s pioneering letters, watercolors and sketches covering life in the Kawartha Lakes area in the mid to late 19th century. The book was originally edited by Hugh Langton, one of Anne Langton’s nephews.

Ms. Williams, who has spent years studying Langton’s life, has updated this beautiful book with an explanatory introduction and more of her subject’s artwork and her writings on family life, women’s role, and rural and social life.

The launch was held in the Immanual Baptist Church, a tidy outpost of faith in this secular age, with about a hundred people in attendance. The ladies of the church had baked cookies and these were served with tea after Barbara’s talk.

This was a quintessentially Canadian affair, reflecting the traditional values of home, community and church that no longer represent the mainstream of Canadian life. These are the people who know the answers to questions like what countries were on the other side in World War I, what did the Canadians do in that war, and so on. They’re now a vanishing minority, due partly to the disinclination of the Canadian education system to teach Canadian history and values, and partly due to the large scale immigration we’ve had over the past thirty or forty years.

I make these comments in a purely non-judgemental manner. I ascribe neither good nor bad to these changes. It’s simply the way things are.

Anne Langton arrived in Upper Canada in 1837. She came here to join her brother John on his farm near Sturgeon Lake. Her parents came after, economic refugees following the demise of the family business.

John Langton went on to a successful political careeer, becoming the MP for Peterborough and later Auditor General of Canada under John A. Macdonald. He also was one of the earliest vice-chancellors of the new University of Toronto.

The book Barbara Williams has edited makes it clear that Anne Langton was of tough pioneer stock. Raised in upper class comfort, she chose to join her brother in the Canadian wilderness rather than take up a comfortable teaching job near London. Once in Canada, she set to looking after her parents, her brother, his wife and many children. They named their homestead Blyth Farm after Blyth Hall, the spacious residence the family had owned backin Yorkshire.

Blyth Farm – Anne Langton, Fenelon Museum

Anne was a highly skilled artist. Her sketches, watercolors and miniatures that adorn the bookprovide a precious insight into wilderness Canada of a century and a half ago.

In Anne Langton’s time, Fenelon Falls and its neighbor village of Bobcaygeon were surrounded by vast pine forests. Farmers who had to clear the land cut the trees and burned them, there being no local market for surplus wood. When a lumbering industry sprang up fortunes were made shipping wood to the U.S. and Britain. By the First World War, the land was mostly logged out of the big trees and what were bustling villages settled into the placid routine that still applies today — expect in the summer.

Today, Fenelon Falls is a bustling summer vacation town serving tourists and boaters who come through lock 34 of the Trent-Severn Waterway. It calls itself the “Jewel of the Kawarthas.”