Brantford from Tutela Heights is a pleasant panorama of roofs and spires, with a river meadow lying between the heights and the town. The spot is famous as the home of Alexander Graham Bell, and the municipality has secured thirteen acres of what was the Bell homestead as a public park.
A long, high hedge makes a sort of green tunnel to the front verandah of the quaint little white-washed house, and within you are shown a dreary refreshment room, flanked by models of certain unaccepted designs offered by various sculptors to the Committee of Selection for the Bell Memorial.
The Grand River, perambulating its gentle course from the blue hills near Georgian Bay to Lake Erie, has been loved by Indians, generations of settlers and decades of artists. But never in its joyous course through the loveliest lands of Ontario does it pass a more interesting spot than just here, at the turning of these heights, where half a century ago a pale boy, still in his twenties, used to haunt a quiet grape arbour and look down on the river. Behind his father’s garden, [page 141] across a little orchard, and so to the ravine-like bank he wandered with a great problem tormenting his mind night and day—that of the transference of the human voice through space, by means of what was then called ‘electric speech.’
Dr. Bell’s own words at the unveiling of the Memorial in his honour in 1917 tells the story. “I came to Brantford in 1870, having been given six months to live. I am glad that I survived to witness the unveiling of this Memorial. As I look back in time, I recall the Brantford of those days, The Grand River, my dream-place on Tutela Heights, where the vision came to my eyes. I never thought I would see such a Memorial as this erected here, to me, and to the invention itself. I cannot claim to be the inventor of the modern telephone. That is the product of many minds. I but initiated the transmission of sound. It was initiated here. So much has been said about it being invented in Boston. The telephone was invented here. It only acquired a physical existence in Boston…Too little is said of Brantford in the United States, for here, between Brantford and Paris, Ontario, the first message was sent over the first long distance line.”
Farther down the river, eight miles or so, there is [page 142] another historic house where a little later lived a genius of quite a different order. This is “Chiefswood,” where on the ancient reserve of the Six Nations Indians their Chief, Onwanonsyshon, the father of Pauline Johnson, established this house.
This Brotherhood of what was originally known as the Five Nations is bound up with the early history of Canada. It was founded by Hiawatha four centuries [page 143] ago in Jacques Cartier’s time. When the early French explorers and missionaries came the name Iroquois cropped up. Yet Pauline Johnson’s grandfather, a firm ally of the British both in French and Colonial feuds, was known as the Mohawk Warbler.
It was a romantic household, for Onwanonsyshon had married an English lady, one of the Howells, of whom the American descendant, W. D., is best known, and her surroundings must have been in picturesque contrast with her traditions. The Indians at this time still wore their native dress, and the ancient industries of weaving and basket-making prevailed. Their daughter, a princess of the tribe, Tekahionwake, her English name Pauline Johnson, loved the legends and poetry of her race, and through her personality and lyric gift made her impress on her day and generation. She made her dêbut in the early nineties as a poet-reciter, and many appearances in Great Britain, the United States and Canada followed. Thrilling was her effect. Dramatic the appeal of this dark-hued girl who seemed to personify her race. “It was the Indian who spoke,” says one who heard her recite, “the Indian woman, as with intense passion she voiced the cry of her kindred.”
From the Mohawk Chief, Joseph Brant, the town took its name. Shortly ago the world of art was [page 144] reminded of him in the search for the portrait by Romney, painted in London about 1776. It was acquired by the Earl of Warwick, a friend of Brant, and hung in Warwick Castle for nearly a century. Finally, after keen competition, it was bought at Christies for the Canadian Government, and now hangs in the main gallery at Ottawa.
In his hunting dress, with white sleeves, colored sash, head-dress of red feathers and tomahawk in his hand, he was a picturesque subject for the brush of one of the greatest of portrait painters. As well as a warrior Brant was a statesman, and a sincere patriot. He had gone to England on a mission that appealed to English hearts at the time, to raise funds for this beloved (English) Mohawk church in Upper Canada.
And so it is fitting that he should sleep here, in the quiet of the little churchyard all fenced about with iron as befits a Chief, and just beside him, Onwanonsyshon. Nothing in Canada is more unique than the wooden church itself, made by the Mohawks themselves in a simple, almost austere design, and dedicated by them to the Christian God. A silver communion service given to her loyal subjects by Queen Anne is still in use.
It was here, in the meadow just beyond this peaceful churchyard, that in 1869 an extraordinary ceremony [page 145] was observed when Arthur, Duke of Connaught, then a young lad, was made and still remains the only living white Chief of the Six Nations Indians.
An interesting story is told of the occasion when, beside the English boy in his state carriage, rode Onwanonsyshon, on his jet black pony, “garmented in full native costume, buckskin and beaded moccasins, head band of feathers, silver ornaments and scarlet blanket,” and how, riding along the dusty roads, the English Prince and the Chief ate grapes together joyously. And then on reaching the church the son of Queen Victoria suddenly found himself surrounded by braves and warriors of what must have seemed, to his English eyes, a truly ferocious type; their copper-coloured skins gleaming in the sun, brilliant with paints and gorgeous dyes, and carrying tomahawks and bows and arrows. An appalling war-whoop arose as the young guest stepped forward to meet them, then more deafening war cries, as hundreds of Indians filed by, preparatory to the inaugural ceremony performed by an ancient chief who had fought under Sir Isaac Brock at Queenston Heights in 1812.
In this ceremony the Constitution that Hiawatha had formed four centuries before was broken. For he decreed that fifty chiefs, no more no less, should form the Council of the Six Nations, and this day the first [page 146] and last addition was made whereby Arthur of Connaught alone bears the right of the fifty-first title of the Iroquois.
Towards the centre of the town the Bell Memorial by Walter Allward has been placed: a great work in granite and bronze perpetuating the inventor and his accomplishment. Giant figures, the Speaker and the Listener, suggest the patience and the endurance of Man the Creator, who is symbolized in the panel on the crest of the Memorial, awake to his new found power to transmit sound through space. He sends out his thought in three floating figures: messengers of Knowledge, Joy and Sorrow.
A stone’s throw from the Memorial one finds a large old fashioned house with a garden full of flowers. In the pleasant drawing-room there hangs a life-sized portrait of a young girl with serious eyes who is emphatically the courageous Sara Jeanette Duncan, the late Mrs. Everard Cotes, author of “An American Girl in London” and other stories that made her famous while she was still in her twenties.
Norman Duncan, also a native of Brantford, is not related to Sara Jeanette. In no estimate of Canadian literature can his work be overlooked. A master of genre, his “Dr. Luke of the Labrador,” and “The Mother” are among his finest novels. [page 147]
Against a background of the Brotherhood of the Six Nations modern figures seem like youth dancing in a moment of time. But figures of certain men and women are never shadows dancing, but rather the living spirit of the environment in which their youth was spent. Brantford is romantic, though she is a busy and influential industrial centre, because of her backgrounds and her interesting personalities. [page 148] |
