Written primarily by Daisy Phillips, with a few by her husband Jack,
to her family in England, these letters describe the creation of a
shortlived English home in the Windermere Valley of southwestern
British Columbia. Not given to introspection, Daisy registers her
immediate and frank reactions to her new environment and startling new
way of life. From her letters we learn of the experiences of the
Phillips and their neighbours in settling the newly opened land and of
their attempts to grow fruit in an area with limited agricultural
potential.
The contrast between middle-class British mores and those of
Canadian pioneer society -- largely classless and multi-ethnic in
character -- was to Daisy a challenge to be overcome. Requests to
England brought in return a flood of British consumer goods which
helped her to duplicate in her dress and household furnishings the more
cultivated surroundings and manners of home. While such affectations
seemed incongruous in a frontier setting, Daisy learned to work to
maintain them and mastered tasks unknown in England to one of her
station. Between her first request for a pamphlet on laundering
handkerchiefs and her departure less than three years later, she
learned to cook on a wood stove, sew, clean house, and wash clothes
without running water or servants. There is also evidence that prior to
their abrupt return to England at the outbreak of war, the cultural
barriers were breaking down as the Phillips became more involved in
sharing the experience of being pioneer Canadians.
Jack's early death on the battlefield gives Daisy's letters
an added poignancy. Not only do they constitute a valuable historical
document but they also convey with simple directness the story of a
happy marriage, of the intersection of an English dream with the
Windermere Valley, and something of the story of all immigrants to any
new settlement in Western Canada.
