Judge, Haliburton has preserved for us a description of the husking, apple-peeling, berrying and log-rolling "frolics" which amused the colonials of a hundred years ago, and of the "pickinick stirs, with chicken-fixings, ham trimmings and doe-doings, besides pies, notions and sarces," that beguiled summer days.
Now-a-days, the pie social is the most typical of Provincial merry-makings. On an appointed evening, sundry pies contributed by the housewives of the neighbourhood are auctioned in a public hall for the benefit of church or charity, the bids being affected by the reputation of the baker, or by her personal popularity. If a maiden is very beautiful, even the pallid and juiceless product of her hands may bring a top price. After the auction, Terpsichore reigns, and to the rasp of the fiddle the belle of the "social" perhaps agrees to make pies for Just One for the rest of her life.
On the First of July, Dominion Day, the Highlanders of western Cape Breton rally for orgies of Scotch dancing, and drinking (of Scotch), and for athletic tourneys which may resolve—usually do resolve—into a roaring onslaught of one coterie of Gaels against another. Judique, on the way to Inverness, is the seat of a fighting clan who brawl for the love of it. Taking their position in the centre of a field these husky warriors, many of them several inches over six feet in height.
