it appeared that there were whole families trudging along the road, wives and children straggling along in the rear, ragged, thin, and scowling.
They were like grey shadowy wraiths on the road, haunting the lanes with their cheekbones jutting in reproach. What work could these thin ghosts find in a land that was still being wrested away from the trees, and whose soil was so recently broken to the plow? No one would hire these men, Luke knew, even if there hadn’t been fear of the diseases they brought.
It was well after noon when the coach halted at a stop in order to water the horses. Luke climbed down, weary from the ride, and walked across the road to where a large oak tree offered a shady place to sit. As he left Galt, the good Mrs. Howard had pressed a box on him. Now he opened it to discover most of a loaf of bread and a large wedge of cheese wrapped in cloth.
As he lowered himself down on the soft grass, he noticed a woman and a boy sitting in a heap beside the watering trough. The woman seemed exhausted and indifferent to their arrival, huddled into the tatters of clothing that hung off her. But the boy eyed him curiously, his eyes widening at what had been hidden by the cloth. Luke was ravenous, and stuffed a huge piece of the crusty bread into his mouth. But he was disconcerted by the boy’s stare. He pulled another chunk from the loaf and held it out.
“Are you hungry?” he asked. “Would you like this?”
The boy jumped to his feet and ran forward, snatching the bread from Luke’s hand. He returned to the woman, tore the bread in two, and handed her a piece.
Roused from her apathy, the woman looked up.
“Go raibh mile maith agat,” she called in a lilting cadence. “Bless you, sir.”
“Is your name Gallagher by any chance?” Luke called. A woman and a boy travelling alone didn’t exactly fit the description of Henry Gallagher’s brother, but it was worth asking in case they knew of the missing Irishman.
The woman shook her head and turned her face away.
Luke returned to his meal, but he couldn’t bring himself to eat it all. When it appeared that the coach was ready to continue its journey, he wrapped another chunk of the bread and a small piece of cheese in the cloth and handed it to the boy before he once again boarded the stage.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” the lawyer said. “If that’s the way you’re going to go on, you’ll have every beggar in the Canadas following you about.”
“It’s only one boy,” Luke said, “and he looks starved.”
The lawyer grunted, but remonstrated no further. The woman glared at him, and pulled herself as far into the corner as she could.
Chapter 4
After an overnight stop in the town of Norval, where Luke spent an uncomfortable night in the open woodshed behind the stagecoach inn, he and his travelling companions finally reached Toronto. Luke located the wharves without difficulty; most of the traffic in the city was headed either to or away from the waterfront. A burly man waiting with a wagonload of tanned hides directed him to a wooden building where he was told he could arrange for his steamer passage, but the agent who manned it was flustered and abrupt, and after he had sold Luke his ticket, he went rushing out the door.
Luke followed him down toward the water. There were numerous wharves along the front, protected by the long arching peninsula of land that kept the swells and winds of Lake Ontario from reaching ships anchored in the harbour. Each of these wharves was bustling with arrivals or departures or transfer of goods. He watched for a time before he realized that there were three hours yet before his own vessel was due to leave, and now that he had his ticket in hand, he was free to explore at least a portion of the city.
It was by far the largest he had ever seen, and as he walked along the margins of the lake, he marvelled at the number of three- and even four-storey buildings of solid brick and stone beyond the jumble of wooden sheds and storehouses. As he turned to look north, he could see church spires thrusting skyward through a dense cluster of commercial buildings, manufactories, offices, and houses.
He wandered along the lakefront, unwilling to stray too far lest he become lost. As long as he could see the lake, he decided, he would know where he was. Farther along the shore there were more wharves, and as he walked a sailing steamer chugged into one of these and tied up.
Luke was a little taken aback when he saw the number of passengers that had been crammed onto the deck of this ship. He had been looking forward to his voyage down the lake. He had never ridden on one of these steamers before. Now he wondered if he had made a mistake and should have gone by coach instead, for this steamer carried far more bodies than he expected and it looked as though each was allotted little more than a couple of square feet.
As he drew closer, he was appalled at the state of these bodies, as well. Many of them were dressed in rags, and all of their faces were thin and pinched, their arms bony, their eyes glazed, but whether with exhaustion or hunger or disease, he had no way of telling. They must be emigrants, he realized, ferried up the lake to look for work, like the haggard groups he had seen on the Guelph Road.
A man in uniform boarded the vessel, evidently to direct the disembarkation of the passengers. Only a few at a time were allowed onto the pier, and these were shepherded to an area that had been cordoned off.
They stood, confused and blinking, while a fussy-looking man with a bushy moustache bustled over to the group and, assisted by a woman in a nurse’s uniform, began peering into their eyes and feeling their foreheads, directing them to open their mouths wide as he looked for evidence of disease. When he had finished, he would send each person to either the right or the left, depending on what he felt about their condition. Judging from the cries that greeted each culling, husbands were being separated from wives, fathers from sons, mothers from daughters.
Several of the women were waiting with ragged bundles in their arms, and it was only when one of these began to wail that Luke realized they were carrying infants. The women were required to unwrap the bundles for inspection. When Luke saw how small some of the babies were, he realized that they must have been born during the long journey across the ocean, or after their mothers had arrived in Canada. He didn’t give much odds for their survival under the circumstances.
The group that had been shuffled to the doctor’s right were herded away and loaded into carts. The wailing increased as the carts drove away.
“Now, now, there’s no need to carry on like that,” one of the uniformed men said. “They’re being taken to hospital where they’ll be looked after. If you’ve friends or family in Toronto that you can go to, you’re free to leave now. The rest of you will be fed directly and you can stay in the city for twenty-four hours. After that, you’ll have to move on to another port.”
Here and there groups of people detached themselves from the crowd and began to walk north along Simcoe Street.
Those who were left muttered their disapproval, but there appeared to be little real resistance to the directive. Constables walked up and down on the periphery of the mob, truncheons in hand, and this was enough to quell any protest.
Then Luke saw another man in uniform, although he didn’t appear to be a constable, begin zigzagging though the crowd. Twice Luke saw him stop to speak to someone, and then he emerged with two young women in tow. He led them down a side street, little more than an alley, really. Curious, Luke followed them.
Tucked around a corner, where the alley intersected another street, a
