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In the summer, life was much easier than in winter.

We always had the old swimming-hole in the warm days, or Mount McKay to climb, or possibly a freight train to swing onto when the trainmen were not looking. Most of us boys ran wild. Our fathers were occupied with the ever-present necessity of earning a living for their wives and little ones, and frequently considered it beneath the dignity of fathers to be on a too familiar footing with their children. The mothers (at least in my own case) were of a sweet, gentle, patient disposition which prevented their asking wild young sons to make efforts that too often were resented, and as a rule were satisfied with the care of our physical needs. So long as the mothers thought that their children were safe from unnecessary dangers, and so long as we could succeed in hiding from them the foolish risks which we took, they were, as mothers have been since time immemorial, content to be rewarded by seeing their boys come safely home at night. Yet, from such an environment many have come into prominence in a better day and, perhaps, in a better Canada, in spite of the physical and moral dangers involved.

As a result of spending most of our summer days in the water, all of us became expert swimmers, and often dared each other to long and dangerous swimming contests, sometimes when the water was really too cold for such efforts. In one such contest I nearly lost my life after swimming nearly a mile in water that was much too cold for such a feat. Although I had never before taken cramps, I somehow realized that cramps were coming upon me, and yelled to two chums, Ed and Don Deacon, some little distance away in a rowboat, to come to my assistance. They did this just in time to permit me to pull myself into the boat before my legs and arms stiffened out in the most painful type of cramps—the experience teaching me why even good swimmers occasionally go to the bottom. It was one of many narrow escapes from drowning.

One of our most dangerous games was that of “Follow the Leader,” in which some daring youth would carry out the most foolhardy stunts, and all the rest of the “gang” were expected to follow suit. Extraordinary things were done by us in those days, either following the leader or leading the gang, and many a time lives were risked in the most reckless fashion, demonstrating so well that youth always seems to value life much less than does age. As a medical practitioner in later years, and during war service, I have realized over and over again that the closer one comes to the grave, the less one wants to deprive himself of the few remaining years of existence that he may enjoy. Shakespeare was right when he said:

The weariest and most-loathèd worldly life

That age, ache, penury and imprisonment

Can lay on nature, is a paradise

To what we fear of death.

Very many years later I was attending, during her illness, a Sister of Charity who was well on in age.

“Why should you care so much? You will go straight to Heaven,” I said to her jocularly after she had expressed her anxiety for recovery.

“Oh, yes,” she replied, “but Heaven is always there, and I am in no particular hurry.”

Lake Superior had always a great attraction for us youngsters, and repeatedly, both in winter and summer, we risked our lives on its broad bosom. When the ice formed in the early winter, before the snowfall, we would venture over the glassy surface far beyond the safety zone, the ice bending downward beneath our gliding feet, only the speed with which we flew saving us. The water of Lake Superior is almost ice-cold at all times of the year, and therefore, except in the shallows near the shore, we had to confine our swimming to the river, though now and then we dived out of a boat near some of the islands, but these dips never lasted more than a minute or two. Because of the icy temperature of the water the body of a man drowned in Lake Superior does not come to the surface, since the gases of decomposition which ordinarily bring a body to the surface are prevented from forming by the refrigerating temperature of the lake.

After a long trip on the lake, often in a boat or canoe to which we had no rights of possession, we would search about on some favourable point to gather up the materials for a feast. Some would collect turnips and potatoes from a near-by garden; others would be given the duty of getting a chicken which was appropriated from any chicken-raiser in the neighbourhood; and with these we would make what we called “bouillon,” but what was really a chicken stew. We enjoyed this feast as only hungry boys could enjoy it, and it is doubtful whether any of the banquets attended since have given me the pleasure of those “stolen-fruit” bouillons of boyhood years!

In my earlier years in that section, churches were conspicuous by their absence and schools by their primitive character. Religious services were performed by missionaries, who visited us about once a month, usually in the homes of the people. My earliest memory of such a missionary was that of old Father Baxter who, during a very long life, visited his scattered flocks in an area as large as the British Isles, frequently carrying on his back medicines and fresh foods for some far-off white or Indian child. His name was a synonym for Christian charity during those early days in that section of Canada. Our only school at that time was a parody indeed on modern schools, and most of our early teachers were unsuitable. There comes back vividly one of them who had probably lost his former positions through liquor. He was an old man, no doubt an excellent scholar, but dissolute habits had deprived him of any ability to impart knowledge to the few wild young animals who attended the one-room schoolhouse. Often he would arrive late after lunch, obviously the worse for its liquid accompaniments. Then he would propound a very difficult mathematical problem which none of us could solve, and doze contentedly in his chair for an hour, during which almost anything was likely to happen in the schoolroom. He chewed tobacco, and our boyish admiration was great for his ability in shooting the juice down the hot-air register!

Needless to say, we learned little from him or from some other teachers of less learning, so that in our early years only the barest rudiments of education were acquired. But one recalls that Lincoln—of whose life I have been a fascinated student—when asked the story of his youth, stated that it could all be written in one line of Gray’s Elegy, “The short and simple annals of the poor.” One remembers that, due to his family poverty, he had but three months of schooling, yet he is recognized as the highest type of manhood produced in the great American Republic. His Presidential messages and speeches are couched in classical diction and express the noblest thoughts—proving that real education often comes after school days, if one has the desire to know something of the history and literature of past ages.

As the years rolled on and the town developed into a small city, the schools of course vastly improved, so that even before our “high-school” age, some of the teachers were of the most competent type. I look back with gratitude and appreciation to “Andy” McCullough and John Morgan for the splendid instruction and for the inspiration they gave us. Foolishly, I did not take full advantage of the opportunities that these teachers offered, for the higher classes demanded an amount of “homework” which was childishly resented. As a result of the labour involved in more and more of the much-disliked homework, I left school at about fifteen, against the wishes of my parents, and until eighteen filled various positions, from teamster up through office and store clerk, insurance agent, and finally reporter on a small daily which had sprung up in our midst. It was a short-sighted policy on my part, but one had a boyish notion that he was advancing in this way. My general reading was of the dime novel variety, and I read in those few years perhaps hundreds of these thrillers. To my mind they are not as harmful as they are usually painted, and it is altogether likely that from some of them, which dealt with college life, the inspiration was implanted in my mind to aim at a college course. This ambition my father and mother, who had become quite well-off in the intervening years, encouraged. Dime novels were not always easy to obtain in our hard-up times, so another chap and I worked out a scheme of getting three copies of the paper-covered blood-curdlers for the price of one, by inserting two of them among the leaves of the third. This scheme worked for a long time, until the storekeeper one day grimly extracted the hidden copies, much to our pained surprise! No longer could we improve our young minds at his expense!

The town developed, and more scientific and systematic games came into vogue, hockey in winter replacing shinny, with lacrosse, Canada’s national game, our favourite summer sport. Being of an active temperament, possessing a particularly strong frame for my age, and skilled in running and jumping a little above the ordinary, I early took my share in these games and in other athletic contests. Among my proud possessions are a number of medals won in foot-races, swimming, lacrosse and hockey. The training obtained in those contests is most valuable, for games teach the necessity of co-operation or team-play, of unselfishness, quick-thinking, patience, and good temper. These necessary qualities are difficult of attainment without that youthful experience of playing games. Of recent years in public life I have known rather intimately two statesmen of outstanding ability, neither of whom ever consistently took part in games, as a consequence of which they lack a good deal of that team-play spirit which is so necessary in public life, that skill in “playing the game” with their fellow-workers without which a public man’s character is not quite complete.

In all-round athletics I was above the average in my neighbourhood. In running various distances up to a quarter of a mile I won a few local championships, and on one occasion this gave me the opportunity of running against one who, had he so chosen, might well have been the world’s hundred-yard champion. A well-known promoter of local athletic contests, during one of my holiday periods from college, informed me that there was a runner in the city who wished someone with whom to compete for training purposes.

“May I tell you at once,” he said, “that this man is a much better runner than you are, so don’t be surprised at his showing you his heels.”

That afternoon we three drove out to a quiet spot on a hard country road where we could measure off the hundred yards. My competitor was one of the handsomest of athletes, being six feet three inches in height, and being built like a Greek god. We stripped, dressed in running togs and spiked shoes, and he told me to take a five-yard start before the gun was fired. In a hundred-yard race this is a pretty good handicap, but after the gun went off, while making my best speed, he passed me so easily at about the fifty-yard mark that I burst out laughing, so much did he give me the impression of standing still. For a few days I took him on for training purposes, and learned that his habit was to float around under an assumed name from one city to another, boast a bit in the hotels as to his running abilities, and thereby succeed in getting up a contest with the best local runner in each city for perhaps fifty dollars a side. There are always those in each community who strongly believe that their own local champion is a “world-beater.” The first race would likely be almost a dead heat, but the local runner usually nosed out a victory. Then, after a good deal of squabbling and disagreement as to his having stumbled or slipped, another race would be arranged for perhaps five hundred dollars a side, in which invariably the Greek-god athlete carried off the money. Not being fast enough at my best to challenge anyone who might be a professional, I had been chosen only for training purposes to run against this chap, whom we will call Bill. But as I could then do a hundred-yard dash in a little under eleven seconds, it was clear that my opponent was of the world’s best, and I asked him why he did not make a world record.

“Why, there is no money in that, old man,” he laughingly replied, “for if I made a record such as you suggest, which I think I could easily do, my opportunities for making easy money would be gone.”

He passed on to other cities, but another year came back to my home town, and the usual gold-brick game was put over, with the result that some good money changed hands in his favour. The game was, of course, a very dishonest one; and some three or four years later in a western American city he was shot and killed by one of his victims in a drunken row after the contest. A great athlete had allowed his love of money to destroy his love of clean sport, and had paid a severe penalty for his lapse.

In the absence of theatres or other similar forms of amusement, one of the chief pastimes of the town was in putting up “jobs” on each other, usually harmless, but as a rule those which would give a hearty laugh to the local population. One old bar-keeper, short-sighted and bad-tempered, was the butt of many a joke, and on one occasion two citizens played a trick on him which has given on a couple of occasions much amusement to audiences to whom I have been speaking, when the story fitted appropriately into the circumstances. A story that is not apropos to a speech is (as the French express it) like a hair in the soup. The two friends obtained from a men’s clothing store one of those dressed-up plaster dummies, or lay figures, which are put into show windows, and walking one on either side of the dummy they came into the bar-room of old Jerry. All three leaned up against the front of the bar and drinks were called for. Jerry served them. The two jokesters drank theirs, departed, and left the dummy to pay the shot. Jerry waited a few moments, and then asked the manikin if he were going to pay for the drinks, to which, of course, Jerry received no reply. Getting a little angry, he repeated his query, but still no reply.

Stooping down behind the bar, he picked up a beer bottle, and once more demanded payment for the drinks. Then he flew into a rage, hitting the figure a heavy blow on the side of the head and knocking it over. The two younger men, who had been peeping in at the front window to see what would happen, rushed in.

“Jerry, you have killed this man,” they said.

“I don’t give a damn,” replied Jerry, “he drew a gun on me!”

It was not until I studied medicine that I really knew anything, from a scientific viewpoint at any rate, about the use of habit-forming drugs, such as opium and cocaine. In my boyhood years there came into our midst some of the misfits of life—those unfortunate people who are bent upon their own destruction, from which intention nothing seems to divert them—who used one or other of these drugs instead of whiskey. Of late years the eating or smoking of opium has been so common in all countries that the League of Nations has a special branch whose duty it is to study methods by which its use for other than medical purposes may be restricted; but long before the League of Nations was thought of there was the occasional hanger-on about the hotels, and later the drug stores, who was the victim of this habit, which is even less controllable than the liquor habit. The use of cocaine as a snuff was not uncommon, in fact those who used it came to be called “snow birds,” because of the fact that cocaine used for this purpose was in the form of a white powder. I saw more of this later while practising my profession when occasionally young men, who had in some low dive learned the habit, came into my office and pleaded, with a trembling, furtive look, “for God’s sake” to be given something to relieve the terrible craving from which their nervous systems were obviously suffering. On some occasions, to get them out of my sight as gently as possible, I played the rather unkind trick of giving them some boracic acid powder, which had sufficient resemblance to cocaine to take them off.