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By Root 1192 0

Susanna had found some outlets for her creativity but hadn’t secured any income. And, despite her temporary triumphs, she was still subject to intense bouts of homesickness. She felt trapped by her babies and her circumstances, unable even to visit her sister near Peterborough because travelling was so difficult for most of the year. On the occasions when Agnes’s letters arrived, her tears would flow for hours. Thanks to John’s mismanagement, they were running out of money, and the farm was nowhere near providing them with a livelihood. John was digging himself deeper and deeper into debt with the Cobourg moneylenders in order to buy equipment and hire men. He worried con-stantly that soon they would be unable to afford to feed themselves. And he felt helpless as Susanna raged that her feelings for Canada were the same as those “the condemned criminal entertains for his cell—his only hope of escape being through the portals of the grave.”

A drawing of a goldfinch and thistle by Susanna. Although she didn’t share her sister’s interest in natural history, flower painting was a relief from the hard work of pioneering.

Desperate to make Susanna happy, and convinced that they needed a new start, John made a snap decision. They must move. Had he spent the next few years getting the Hamilton farm working well, his investment would have paid off handsomely. Despite the short-term problems, the farm was a prosperous one in a desirable location. John could have participated in the growing export of wheat to England, and he would have watched land values climb. But John didn’t give it a chance. Once he had decided something wasn’t working, he was always impatient to move on. After barely a year in Hamilton Township, he elected to sell the property.

Leaving Susanna and the two little girls at Melsetter, John made the difficult journey to visit Sam and Catharine and their families on Lake Katchewanooka. He still had not taken advantage of his right to a free land grant, so now, impetuous as ever, he got his brother-in-law Sam Strickland to secure sixty-six uncleared acres on the banks of the lake, close to the Traills. On his return, he set about to convince Susanna that they should uproot themselves from Hamilton Township. Title to military land grants, he argued persuasively, expired unless the land was settled within two years of purchase. They had better get moving. Besides, if they left the Front, they could say goodbye to their unpleasant American neighbours who had jeered at their manners. Around Peterborough, Moodie insisted, the state of society was “more congenial to our European tastes and habits.”

In an unexpected volte-face, Susanna suddenly had second thoughts about packing up all their possessions. By now she had “nested” at Melsetter: “It was a beautiful, picturesque spot and … I had learned to love it; it was much against my wish that it was sold.” Unlike her husband, she probably had a better business sense for Melsetter’s potential. But she was never able to resist her husband’s enthusiasms. “To the Woods! To the Woods!” sang out John, seizing Susanna in his arms and waltzing her round the kitchen. In late 1833, each of the six Strickland sisters had received a much-anticipated seven-hundred-pound legacy from an uncle in England. This was a fortune for Susanna and Catharine in Upper Canada, where labourers earned sixty pounds a year and two hundred pounds was considered a comfortable annual income. It allowed John to pay off most of his debts to Yankees, grasping land speculators and unforgiving merchants in Cobourg, and begin to daydream about his new “estate” amongst the gentry of Douro Township.

In the early weeks of 1834, John and Susanna waited impatiently for the snow on the road north to be packed sufficiently hard for them to travel. John booked the local carrier to transport them in two wagons, mounted on runners. One morning, in the chilly pre-dawn darkness of early February, John, Susanna, the carrier and his son loaded the two little girls, the maidservant, kitchen table and chairs, farming implements,