TRANSCRIPT

Every year some district gets hail... On more than one occasion have seen the farmer in his wheat- field, when it was near maturity, pluck a few heads of wheat, rub it in his hands, blow away the chaff, and look joyfully at the fast ripening kernels and say - 'Ready to cut in a day or two,' and before an hour had passed, it was but a broken and bruised field of empty straw.... he wondered how the bairns were to be fed and clothed until another crop could be reaped or how the store bills now due were to be met.

The advertisements and glowing descriptions of the Canadian West are pictured in pamphlets, lectures and even in Government Atlas', but none of the difficulties or hardships from hail or frost or drought are mentioned. Only one side - the pleasant side, is told and described, and it is not to our credit that the difficulties and set-backs and even hardships are not fairly and honestly told to prospective settlers. Partial truth is the worst form of deception.

A dramatized reading of H. B. Adshead's story published in Pioneer Tales and Other Human Stories. 1922, p39-40