The Rural Voice, 1986-06, Page 38r
1
THE SAGE OF EKFRID
Writer, humorist, and philosopher, Peter McArthur, was nationally known
and loved for his twice weekly column in the Toronto Globe from 1909 to
1924.
Peter McArthur, probably
Canada's best -loved farmer in the
early 1920s, could be called the
Gisele Ireland of his day. While
McArthur's satire was gentler than
Gisele's and while he concentrated
more on animals and nature than
human frailties, the two writers
share some very important traits.
Both are farmers, both are
humorists and philosophers and
both share that very rare talent of
being able to laugh at themselves.
"Government
scientists ... gazed
at awe at the farm
where I raised a
crop of newspaper
articles."
Peter McArthur once wrote that
he farmed primarily "for my
neighbours' amusement." It cer-
tainly wasn't the Middlesex Coun-
ty native's skill behind the plow
that made him nationally known
and loved. Instead, it was his twice
weekly column on the joys and
perils of farm life, published in the
Toronto Globe from 1909-1924,
that made McArthur's farm a mat-
ter of discussion at both rural and
urban dinner tables.
Now McArthur's early career
bore little relation to farming.
True he was born on an Ekfrid
Township farm, just outside the
village of Appin. And after his
father's death, McArthur did
mortgage his 25 acres of the family
farm for the funds to finish his
high school education and study at
the Strathroy Model School (a
teachers' college). But from his
teenage years, McArthur's sights
were set on glittering city lights.
After a very short stint as a
Toronto Mail reporter, in 1890
by Alice Gibb
McArthur headed to New York
City, where he survived by writing
jokes and short articles for a varie-
ty of magazines and shared the
Bohemian lifestyle of other young
writers. Over the next 19 years he
edited a New York magazine that
failed; moved to London, England
and wrote for Punch and publish-
ed the humorous and now very
rare work Taken With Salt; Being
An Essay On Teaching One's
Grandmother To Suck Eggs, a
satire on American, Canadian and
British relations. His last ill-fated
venture, before returning to the
family farm, was running an
advertising agency in New York.
At age 41, when most men are
pretty settled in their chosen voca-
tions, McArthur wrote: "Hurled
back, defeated like a child I
sought, The loving shelter of my
native fields." The two great cities
had proved to be cruel masters:
McArthur concluded rural Ontario
was the best place to raise his fami-
ly and combine his new role of
farmer with his former career of
writer. Almost immediately he
landed contracts to write columns
on farming in both the Toronto
Globe and in The Farmer's Ad-
vocate, published in nearby Lon-
don, Ontario. Those columns
eventually became a series of
popular books that included In
Pastures Green (1915); The Red
Cow and Her Friends (1919);
Around Home (1925) and Friendly
Acres (published posthumously).
In the foreword of The Red
Cow, McArthur explained why he
kept on writing after taking over
the family farm. "This book," he
wrote, "is dedicated to all city men
who feel sure that they could farm
at a profit. If each one buys a copy
I can afford to keep on farming."
Poking further fun at himself, in
another essay he told readers,
"Government scientists came out
of their way to see me and gazed
with awe at the neglected farm
from which I had raised such a
crop of newspaper articles."
McArthur earned the grand sum of
$15 for each of his Globe columns.
Peter McArthur's writings,
while humorous, are also strong
pleas for a way of life — and that
life is farming. Even in the 1920s,
McArthur was concerned that
cities were eating up southwestern
Ontario's farmland, and that cash
cropping and mechanized farming
methods were going to allow more
city slickers to move to the coun-
try, to the detriment of agriculture.
Many of McArthur's attacks,
while delivered in lighthearted
vain, were nonetheless bitter in-
dictments of railway policy, of
bankers and bank -lending policies
and of big business, which
McArthur believed profited from
the hard and financially -
unrewarding work of the country's
farmers.
"Hurled back,
defeated like a
child, I sought the
loving shelter of
my native fields."
In one essay, supposedly written
about the search for a stray calf,
McArthur wrote, tongue-in-cheek,
"After the chores were done, I
took a pail that was as empty as a
political platform and she (the
calf) followed me right back to the
pen, just like an intelligent voter."
McArthur was saddened that
Canada was fast changing from a
farm -based society to an industrial
economy. He was also worried that
too many farmers themselves were
turning into land -hungry
speculators, concerned only about
the "value of crops, stock and in-
vestment" rather than about their
36 THE RURAL VOICE