The habitant on the
seigneuries of Lower Canada continued to farm as his grandfather
had farmed, finding his holding sufficient for his modest needs,
even though divided into ever narrower ribbons as le bon Dieu
sent more and yet more sons to share the heritage. The
English-speaking settler, equipped with ax and sickle and flail,
with spinning wheel and iron kettle, lived a life almost equally
primitive and self-contained. He and his good wife grew the
wheat, the corn, and the potatoes, made the soap and the candles,
the maple sugar and the "yarbs," the deerskin shoes and the
homespun-cloth that met their needs. They had little to buy and
little to sell. In spite of the preference which Great Britain
gave Canadian grain, in return for the preference exacted on
British manufactured goods, practically no wheat was exported
until the close of this period. The barrels of potash and pearl-
ash leached out from the ashes of the splendid hardwood trees
which he burned as enemies were the chief source of ready money
for the backwoods settler. The one substantial export of the
colonies came, not from the farmer's clearing, but from the
forest. Great rafts of square pine timber were floated down the
Ottawa or the St. John every spring to be loaded for England. The
lumberjack lent picturesqueness to the landscape and the
vocabulary and circulated ready money, but his industry did
little directly to advance permanent settlement or the wise use
of Canadian resources.
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