Up the Gatineau! Article
This article was first published in Up the Gatineau! Volume 4.
Going Home
From the book by "Yarrow" (Mary McKay Scott) — “From the Gatineau Hills”
It was just a word in a busy office to one of the clerks, “Are you going home?" but it awakened a train of thought in our mind. Home! Think of it. In the whirl of a busy day, with typewriters banging and overhead the noise of a great wholesale drygoods store. Home; with the little station house in the country, the walk along the highway with a path through the grass on either side; the greeting of the “kent folk," the walk through the village, with here a salutation from the man in the grocery store and a "Glad to see you" from the blacksmith, who has just come to the doorway for a breath of air. On to the end of the village to the little white fence and the lilac bushes bending over to see who is coming. With a dear old face, crowned with white hair, and glasses pushed up on the forehead, smiling a welcome. With the tea-table set and the old-fashioned china and a bowl of spring flowers in the middle of the table. The homely pancakes with maple syrup from the trees in the back lot. The tea-kettle hissing and bubbling its welcome and the Jersey cream and butter awaiting an onslaught. Yea — we are going home, where we can breathe fresh air and live our own life, where we have time to think. As one of our brave Canadian soldiers said, on his way home from South Africa, when they dragged him through a round of sight-seeing in England, “I would rather see the sun shine on one of the puddles in my father's pasture up the Gatineau". Yes, we are going home.
July, 1902.