Becoming Canadian, Becoming American

Catharine Parr Traill
(1802-1899)

As I recently noted on Facebook, we have been doing some research into cake recipes of the mid-19th century in preparation for Alice’s birthday party in September. One of the most interesting sources we found is a book called The Female Emigrant’s Guide by Catharine Parr Traill, first published in 1854. Traill’s book is similar in some ways to the domestic guides being published around the same time in Great Britain, such as Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, and in the United States, such as The American Woman’s Home by Catharine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe. But Traill’s book is unique in that it was written from a specifically Canadian perspective, and was intended as a guide for women who were emigrating from the British Isles to Upper Canada (later known as Canada West, and now the province of Ontario).

Catharine Parr Strickland was born in 1802 to a middle-class family in Suffolk, England. Her brother, Samuel, emigrated to Upper Canada in 1825, and in 1832, Catharine, her new husband Thomas Traill, her sister Susanna, and her brother-in-law John Moodie followed him there. The families settled on Rice Lake, north of present-day Peterborough. The Stricklands were a literary family, and Traill had already written a novel set in Canada while still living in England. Thus, when the Traill family was in need of money, it was natural that Catharine would turn to her experiences in Canada for material. Her first nonfiction work was The Backwoods of Canada, published in 1836, and based on the first few years of her life in Canada.

Illustration of a Canadian log house
from The Backwoods of Canada

By the 1850s, the Traill family was living in much more settled conditions, and Catharine had many more years of experience to draw upon. Traill had two audiences in mind when writing The Female Emigrant’s Guide (or The Canadian Settler’s Guide, as it was called in later editions). One was women like herself, who came from genteel, middle-class backgrounds and who did not necessarily have the skills that they would need in the more remote regions of Canada—knitting, making candles and soap, baking bread (which might require making one’s own yeast as well). The other potential readers were women who came from more modest backgrounds and had limited resources, and who already had these basic household skills, but would need advice that was specific to Canada. These included how to grow and cook with corn, how to make maple sugar, and how to find and prepare local foodstuffs, such as “Indian rice” and wild berries.

Alice’s mother, Louisa Saunders, immigrated to Canada with her family in 1849. She was twenty years old, and thus was part of the group to whom Catharine Traill often directed particular advice. She urged “the daughters of the intending emigrant to acquire whatever useful arts they think likely to provide serviceable to them in their new country,” and cautioned them not to feel that it was unbecoming to a “lady” to engage in practical household tasks. Traill also reminded girls that one of their most important jobs was “cheering and upholding their mother in the trials that may await her.” 

Panorama of London, 1855
From the London Historic Maps Collection

The Saunders family—parents James and Jane, and eight of their nine children—settled in London, which was a rapidly growing city. In 1846, it had a population of about 3500 people, and boasted a theater, ten churches, and a weekly newspaper; by 1855 it had a population of 10,000 and was officially incorporated as a city. So they would not have experienced the kind of frontier or “backwoods” conditions that Traill described. Still, making the journey from England to what was then the western limits of Britain’s North American colony would have required some adjustment to new circumstances (including learning the difference between English and Canadian pumpkin pie!). 

Like many immigrants, the Saunders family traveled to Canada with friends from their home town. The Skinners were also from Crediton in Devon, and the two families would soon be united—William Skinner and Emma Saunders would marry shortly after their arrival in London. The families also would have been able to join a strong Wesleyan Methodist community. This support system undoubtedly helps to account for the relative rapidity with which members of the Saunders family were able to achieve positions of prominence in Canada.

In the 1880s, Alice and the rest of the Trainer siblings would themselves become immigrants, moving from Ontario to the United States. Given her own family history, it may seem surprising that Alice later embraced the Colonial Revival movement, which was in many ways nativist and saw immigration as a potential threat to “American values.” But for Alice and her contemporaries (both in the US and in Canada), there was a great deal of difference between immigrants like themselves—English-speaking, of British descent, white, and Protestant—and those who were coming from southern and eastern Europe. The early 20th century was also a period during which some Americans were trying to strengthen the ties between the US and Britain by emphasizing their shared cultural heritage. Thus there was no resistance to someone of Alice’s background claiming American identity. 

In future blog posts, we’ll tell more stories of the Saunders and Trainer families, and further explore these issues of national identity. 

Sources:

Most of Catharine Parr Traill’s books are available in digital form through sites like Google Books and the Internet Archive. A recent print edition of The Female Emigrant’s Guide, edited by Nathalie Cooke and Fiona Lucas, includes extensive supplementary material, including modernized recipes. Library and Archives Canada has put together a website of material—including original letters and other documents—on Catharine Traill and her sister Susanna Moodie.