The Henson Journals

[53]

15th Sunday after Trinity, Sept 15th, 1912. Winnipeg.

The weather is milder, though we are still glad of the fire. By some error the carriage ordered overnight failed to arrive, & we hurried to church in some anxiety as to reaching it in time. However we were at Holy Trinity at least 3 minutes before service time. Archdeacon Fortin took the service, which included a special litany designed to prepare the way for the 'Mission of Help' which is to begin next week. There was a very large congregation, including (as I observed with satisfaction) a large proportion of men. I read the lessons, & preached from the words: "As the hart panteth after water–brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God". After I had suppressed the coughing of a choir–man, there was silence, and attention. After service, I spoke shortly to the choir–men & women. Outside the Church a young couple claimed acquaintance – Mary Ashmole & her husband – now citizens of Canada. They had heard me last 15 years ago, in Ilford! There was a reporter in church scribbling away, but I doubt whether he could make much of what I said, probably the words were in many cases unfamiliar & unintelligible.

A newspaper telephoned for the loan of the M.S. of the sermon, & – anticipating my fate at the hands of reporters – I granted it.

[54]

After lunch we walked out for an hour, & then returned to the house. After tea I wrote letters to Bryce, Ed. Moore, Gilbert, & Fleet. Also a card to Lionel Box.

Divers folks came to supper, mostly relations of Lois, but including one couple – Mr & Mrs Weir– the first a Presbyterian & the last a Papist – which interested me. Mr Weir had, like most of the Canadians one meets, the most vehement antipathy to the Americans (i.e. the people in the States): yet, he admitted that war between Great Britain & the Republic could not be looked on as a possible contingency. He enlarged on the care with which the Canadian Government watched the immigration, but admitted that so long as railway construction on a large scale was proceeding, it would be necessary to allow the entrance into the Dominion of such persons as would consent to work as navvies i.e. mostly Italians & Galician Poles. He gave an excellent character to the Mormons, who have a considerable colony in the neighbourhood of Lethbridge; & spoke highly of the Mennonite Germans, who appear in some districts to provide most of the leading citizens. It is not a little humiliating to observe that the relative incompetence of the Englishman as a colonist appears to be rather an assumption than a matter for question. Yet I am not quite sure whether this circumstance is altogether so disgraceful to the English character as might appear.

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