Saturday Half Holiday - June 1883

The Idle Spectator: Takes a Holiday and Tells His Experience: Captain Jackman’s Exploit – A Race on the Bay – How the Girls Fish – A Day at Burlington Beach

Where is the man who introduced the Saturday half-holiday? Where is he that we labourers, who were wont to work twelve hours a day and get shaved on Sunday, may trot him out and crown him with a floral wreath or present him with something, even if it is a free tickets to the baths? Where is he that we may send his name to the minstrel of Middlesex, and have him worked up in verse? Whoever he is, he deserves well of us. He stops the engine, the loom, the trip-hammer and the printing press, and sends us off to play, and we all bless him for it. The Idle Spectator saw them all on Saturday as he made his way to the landing stage to go to the Beach. The labourer in his Sunday suit, his hands bearing indelible soils of honest toil; the artisan dressed in his best, with his girl by his side; the silent philosopher who sits all day on the wharf watching a cork, and calls it fishing; the red-faced lady with two small babies and four large baskets; the young lady in spotless muslin, upon which a fly would be afraid to light; the dude who poses for the admiration of the ladies on the upper deck; the small boy who runs and howls and helps with the boat lines, and his vagrant dog, who loves the small boy, and follows him like the idle wind. The Queen Victoria lay at her moorings waiting for the crowd. Her whistle shrieks; her gangplanks clatter as they fall. Swish! Swish! “Let go that stern line”, “Hand in”, “Let her go”, “All right”. Her paddles churn the water into foam and she is off. The dock-walloper blinks at her as she passes and turns lazily over and goes to sleep again. Who owns those two old hulks off the James Street wharf, and why are they allowed to lie there and disfigure the harbour; why doesn’t the harbour commissioner or some other official dynamite them and remove their boilers as dangerous impediments to navigation; why are they not broken up instead of being preserved as examples of decay? Capt. Jackman says he doesn’t know, Alex. Burns says he doesn’t know, Billy Swift says he doesn’t know, the dock-wollopers don’t know, nobody knows. As soon as somebody who does know can be found they will probably be removed. Capt. Jackman says it is a pretty bay; but the people are not old enough yet to appreciate it. The Idle Spectator agrees as to the beauty, but is reserved in his opinion of the other part. The captain is an extraordinary looking man; but his experience of sailing has been very great, and many a lusty yarn he can tell. He was the first man to sail from a Canadian lake across the Atlantic. It was a brave day for Capt. Jackman when he hoisted his sailing flag, fifteen years ago, on the Seagull in Toronto bay and cleared for Port Natal in South Africa. People went down to the wharf to see the vessel and captain who were going to brave the Atlantic. Everyone said he would not come back. He reached Port Natal with his cargo. The customs house officer didn’t know where Toronto or Canada was. Was it in Italy?  No, it wasn’t in Italy. Well, where was it? A map was produced and Capt. Jackman pointed out the place whence he came, a mere spec in the middle of a continent. The customs house officer immediately fainted. When he came to, he shook the captain by the hand, called him a brave fellow, treated to Santa Cruz rum, presented him with two monkeys and a parrot, and told him, for goodness sake, to start for Canada as soon as possible else he would be an old man before he got there, he had such a long way to go. Sixteen or eighteen months afterward, the Seagull passed the western light of Toronto harbour, Canada, under full sail. Capt. Jackman, somewhat weather-beaten, stood on the deck, the monkey swung by the tail from the rigging, the crew were glad. The parrot swore, and Dandy, that is the captain’s yellow dog, who had worried everything on four legs in Natal, howled with delight at getting back home. People came down to the wharf and cheered the captain who had seen the Boer in his native lair and the Hottentot in his jungle. That is the story of Jackman, the master of the Queen Victoria. He is modest, and doesn’t like to tell it, but it is true and he bears the reputation of being one of the most trustworthy seamen on the lakes. There is a cheer. The Southern Belle has come from her dock and is bearing away for the channel. It is a race. The deck hands, ship trimmers, cooks, waiters, stokers and engineers are all interested, and poke their heads over the gangways and cheer. The Belle has caught the Victoria with only seventeen pounds of steam. Up she comes, her diminutive paddles beating the water in a most impatient way. Now they are stem and stern. The captains salute each other. The small fry on the lower deck wave their hats. The Belle heaves ahead. She passes alongside, the distance of a pistol shot away. However, no one needs a pistol to try. It is exciting for a few minutes. The Belle shows her stern, smothered in flossy waves. It’s all over. The deck hand goes back to his seat on a barrel, the bar-keeper resumes the lever of the beer-engine, the hurdy-gurdy man strikes up the Last Rose of Summer, the Queen runs up alongside the wharf and we are at the Beach. The great dock fisheries were in animated operation, maids with sunburned noses, matrons of satisfactory proportions, men of all hues and sizes, and, boys of every variety, from fine cut to plug, were gazing over the pier-edge practising base deception on the graceful denizens of the water. Have you ever seen a girl fish? The Idle Spectator leaned against a spile on the wharf on Saturday and took in the whole show. She was a pretty, willowy girl, with large, lustrous, melting eyes. The man who was with her carried the worms. She took a line out of one pocket, a hook out of another, a float out of another, a piece of string out of another. Then she put a joint rod together. After she had it all put together, she discovered that she had not put the line through the eyes, so she unjointed it again. Then she fixed the float and made a cast. After about five minutes, she discovered that she had cast without bait. She called to the man and he came up submissively with a worm. As the worm writhed on the hook, she asked him if it hurt the little thing much. He answered that as he had never been a worm and had never been impaled in that way, he could not give an opinion on the subject. Then she made another cast, shook the reefs out of her dress, and began flirting with a man in a yacht hard by Just then she noticed that her float had disappeared. “Oh. Oh, Charlie, I’ve got one,” she cried. Then she gave her line a tug that would have snagged a stump. A fish flew straight in the air, to the utmost limit of the line. Then it fell with a flap upon the wharf, gasped a couple of times, and gave up the scaly ghost, no necessity for a club to kill her fish. Then she dropped the rod, clapped her hands, said it was a pretty, called all the other girls to look at it, and the Idle Spectator left them admiring the proportions of the monster. Meanwhile, Charlie put a new worm on, and went away with beer in his eye.

The piazza of the Ocean house and the seats on the front platform were filled with loungers and saunterers, getting fat and comfortable on the life-giving ozone which came to them on the lake breeze. Over the bowling alley the employees of the cotton mill, who had excurted thither early in the day, were enjoying a dance. The temperature of the room was high, but the boys and girls danced up and down with great activity. Above the sonorous notes of the Jumbo violin could be heard a little man with a big voice calling “for’ard an’ swing,” “for’ard again and dress,” “swing partners,” “Shassay right an’ left,” and other mysterious words, but which the assembly seemed to understand thoroughly. Out on the beach, young ladies with attractive hose were soaring skyward on the swings, while young men sat afar off ostensibly perusing newspapers, but in reality contemplating the landscape. Little children with their robes gathered high around them splashed along the sandy beach, while mammas and papas smiled approval. Oh for the abandon of youth!, sighed the Idle Spectator; oh for just one day'’ roll in the sand with the boys, to go home with gravel in the stockings and burrs in the hair, a fish in the pocket and a mud turtle on a string. As he turned homeward, a peewee perched on a lofty branch sang the requiem of the day, and that strange stillness which comes with the night was making itself apparent. Weary, and laden with the spoils of the day, the children trooped to the boat, baby carriages and baskets were safely stowed away, the lines were cast off and the precious cargo deposited on the James Street wharf. The moon came up over the city to blend its light with the flaring flambeaux of the market square peanut vendors, casting sparkling luster upon good and bad alike, upon the man who spoke of God’s goodness upon one corner, and upon the itinerant nostrum vendor upon the other.