My Dear Maggie: Letters from a Western Manitoba Pioneer

Eileen Goltz is Public Documents Librarian at Laurentian University.

Maggie Wallace remained in Scotland when, in 1881, her father, Peter,
and her brothers, William and Andrew, moved to Manitoba, Canada. William
wrote to his sister every three or four weeks, addressing her as “My
Dear Maggie,” beginning in March 1881, while aboard ship, and ending
in 1904, when Maggie and her husband immigrated to Canada. The letters
are a readable account of the pioneer environment within which the
Wallace men functioned, and within which they, and other settlers,
formed a rural Manitoba consciousness and identity.

Coates (of B.C.’s University of Victoria) and Morrison (of
Ontario’s Lakehead University) have edited the first five years of
William’s correspondence, written when settlement in Manitoba was
predominantly British. They identify three themes that appear in
William’s letters and are common to early Manitoba settlers: the
element of chance in the choice of property, the alternation between
optimism and despair, and the great physical effort required of the
settlers. Besides these, two themes are unique to William’s letters:
the shortage of money and his consequent need to borrow from Maggie, and
his desire to have Maggie join the family in Canada. He frequently
expresses his disappointment at the continued separation.

Coates and Morrison introduce the letters, which record a vital period
in the history of Manitoba, by relating them to the happenings of the
wider world beyond the Wallace farms. They close the volume with an
epilogue that briefly describes what happened to the family between 1886
and 1948, when the last member died. Between these two chapters are
William’s letters to Maggie, and with these the editors have tampered
as little as possible. They have placed explanatory notes at the end of
each chapter, and have illustrated the book with maps and photographs.
The lack of an index is disappointing, and it is to be hoped that if
Coates and Morrison publish further volumes of William’s letters, they
will index them.