Letters from Windermere, 1912-1914
Written primarily by Daisy Phillips, with a few by her husband Jack,to her family in England, these letters describe the creation of ashortlived English home in the Windermere Valley of southwesternBritish Columbia. Not given to introspection, Daisy registers herimmediate and frank reactions to her new environment and startling newway of life. From her letters we learn of the experiences of thePhillips and their neighbours in settling the newly opened land and oftheir attempts to grow fruit in an area with limited agriculturalpotential.
The contrast between middle-class British mores and those ofCanadian pioneer society -- largely classless and multi-ethnic incharacter -- was to Daisy a challenge to be overcome. Requests toEngland brought in return a flood of British consumer goods whichhelped her to duplicate in her dress and household furnishings the morecultivated surroundings and manners of home. While such affectationsseemed incongruous in a frontier setting, Daisy learned to work tomaintain them and mastered tasks unknown in England to one of herstation. Between her first request for a pamphlet on launderinghandkerchiefs and her departure less than three years later, shelearned to cook on a wood stove, sew, clean house, and wash clotheswithout running water or servants. There is also evidence that prior totheir abrupt return to England at the outbreak of war, the culturalbarriers were breaking down as the Phillips became more involved insharing the experience of being pioneer Canadians.
Jack's early death on the battlefield gives Daisy's lettersan added poignancy. Not only do they constitute a valuable historicaldocument but they also convey with simple directness the story of ahappy marriage, of the intersection of an English dream with theWindermere Valley, and something of the story of all immigrants to anynew settlement in Western Canada.
One of the many values of Letters from Windermere is the light they shed on the experiences of a middle-class woman emigrant .... The letters will be a gold mine for those interested in the domestic taste of the period.
As for the letters themselves, they are, quite simply, splendid. Thanks to Daisy's penchant for detail we are treated to a day-to-day account of the lives of these expatriate gentlefolk. We learn what they ate, what they wore, what they read ... We begin to see how they thought and how they viewed their world. Altogether, Letters from Windermere has an intimacy and immediacy that sets it above the usual ruck of immigrants' memoirs.
This poignant tale of thwarted hope has been transformed into a most attractive book ... It is a very interesting individual story, and a valuable set of primary documents well supported by R. Cole Harris’s helpful introduction.
Illustrations
Introduction
Text of the Letters
Index
