Harry’s father had a long career in Embro, at varying times clerk and treasurer of Embro, magistrate, clerk of the Division Court, and postmaster, but his main occupation was as proprietor of a general store. He was also secretary-treasurer of the Bible Society for some forty years.
Harry’s mother (Elijah John’s first wife), Margaret Louisa Torrance (1842–83), was of Irish descent, born in Dublin. Her parents, Henry Torrance (1814–98) and Margaret (1826–1904), settled first in Woodstock and later in Galt.
Embro in the early 1870s was a comfortable rural community, with a population of about five hundred, mostly farmers (some of them Harry’s cousins), storekeepers, clergy, and schoolteachers. For railway connections, one had to go to Beachville six miles to the south on the Grand Trunk line. The village was almost entirely Protestant. The four churches (Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, and Congregational) were all of the evangelical variety. The Congregationalists had established Ebenezer Church in 1872 and built a new church in 1877 on St. Andrew’s Street. Since there was no Anglican church in Embro, Harry’s mother attended the Congregational church. She wrote to Harry in 1881, “Mr. Silcox [the minister] continues to preach splendidly and his sermons are very instructive to the young people.”2
North Oxford, in which Embro was located, had a strong Grit tradition. Harry later claimed that in the general election of 1878 when the National Policy came in, there were only seven Conservative votes polled in Embro.3 Harry’s parents were Tories, as were the Torrances in Galt. When Elijah met John A. Macdonald at a local Tory convention, John A. said it did his heart good to meet a Tory from Grit North Oxford.4
While Embro villagers travelled to nearby Woodstock and Galt to attend football tournaments, political meetings, and so on, Embro itself was not without culture. The presence of Protestant clergy in the village, especially the Scottish Presbyterians, made for stimulating discussion, at least for the more literate citizens. Harry later recalled, “My grandmother was Scottish and the early life of the place was very much like what Ian Maclaren has described in sketches from Drumtochty, where the intellectual interests were very keen and there was a good deal of plain living and high thinking. From my earliest years, I can remember discussion in the Public Library on matters theological and philosophical, literary and political.” In letters to Harry in 1881, Mrs. Cody reported the organization of a library fund and Elijah wrote of the setting up of a Mechanics’ Institute. In 1882, when Harry was at school in Galt, Elijah asked him to bring home readings for use in a Christmas concert organized by the “Entertainment Committee.”5
There was also the usual round of private parties. Elijah reported in March 1882, “Miss Beales ‘that was’ is married and Mrs. Macaulay is giving a grand party this evening in honour of it.” There were other private amusements the Codys considered less respectable. Elijah complained to Harry in October 1881, “No local news of any account a great deal of whiskey drinking going on in the village.”
Like other progressive villages, Embro had an elementary school. The original frame structure had been succeeded in 1876 by the “new” school on a different site. Harry attended both schools. E.J. Jamieson, the principal, wrote to Harry (now in Galt), reporting that the school had a large attendance with forty or fifty pupils in the class Harry had been in, of whom a few were studying Algebra and Euclid.6 Jamieson’s students had formed a debating society, while he had established a night school for the study of penmanship, bookkeeping, arithmetic, and composition. The quality of Jamieson’s work was indicated by the fact that Harry’s initial report after he had entered Galt Collegiate indicated that he was “very well-grounded in Euclid.”7
In 1880 Harry had gone to Woodstock, the county town, with a group of Embro students to write the entrance examinations. Having passed with flying colours, he went to Galt in the autumn of 1881 to live with his Torrance grandparents and attend Galt Collegiate. The Torrances reinforced the influence of Cody’s parents, particularly that of his mother. They were very Tory and very Anglican.
Harry was one of the boys of exceptional ability produced by small-town Ontario. From the first he did brilliantly at school. His relations with his parents seem to have been very happy. The Codys had only the one child, and the relations within the small family circle were quite exceptionally affectionate. Harry was considerate and performed his small household tasks well, such as splitting the kindling. When he left for Galt, he left a supply which lasted his parents for over a month. By modern standards, the letters that passed between Harry and his parents were effusive, typically beginning (from Elijah) “My dear little son,” “My darling little son”; (from Mrs. Cody) “My precious boy,” “My own darling Henry”; and (from Harry), “My own dear darling Papa.”
After Harry had gone to Galt in September 1881, his parents were lonely, but by October Mrs. Cody was beginning to adjust. Clearly, though, she was concerned with his welfare. On October 27 she adjured Harry (in the third person) “that he will never write his letters on Sunday if it can be avoided – that he will not neglect to wash his feet every night well and that he will eat porridge sometimes.” There was always a religious emphasis in Mrs. Cody’s letters and to a lesser extent in her husband’s. During Harry’s first autumn in Galt she urged him to join the Bible class run by one of his teachers, Mr. Carscadden, in the Methodist Sunday school, adding hopefully, “You may find the boys better behaved there and it is so near home.” She was concerned he had not already joined a Bible class but was glad he was joining a class in Greek on Sunday mornings, “as it will not only be a benefit to you, but you will have the chance of studying the scriptures.”8
Elijah said less about Harry’s spiritual welfare than about his political development. He urged Harry to go and hear Mr. Meredith (the Conservative provincial leader), who was to speak in Galt, and reported his own attendance at Tory conventions. One of his big moments was his brief chat with John A. at the Conservative Convention in 1882.
Harry’s parents were immensely proud of his early academic achievements. In returning to Harry the first report he had received from the principal of Galt Collegiate, Elijah wrote, “He spoke very highly of my darling little son” (September 1881), and after a second report (February 17, 1882), “I am so well pleased with your last report ... It is such a comfort to pay fees, when I hear such good reports from my little son.”
Harry’s correspondence in this period indicates that he was a friendly boy who got on well with his contemporaries. His friends wrote to him when they went on visits or had jobs outside Embro and Galt. Hugh Munro wrote chatty letters when he visited Fort Worth, Texas: “Cotton is coming in here every day in bales”; “I go to the Baptist Sunday School here the rest of the boys call the teacher ‘Joe’ and yell out ‘Say Joe, what is this?’ and the like of that.”9 Perhaps the best letter to Harry in this period came from Bob Duncan, who wrote from Embro on October 9, 1885. Duncan captured the spirit of a small Ontario town, describing a fall fair in Embro, the establishment of a debating club, a large purchase of books by the Mechanics’ Institute, and plans for making a roller-skating rink. The letter went on:
We had an amusing time the other day. The crowd was composed of as follows Messrs. E. Cody, Dickson Stuart, Kam J. Stuart, Halesham and Duncan Pell and the object of the fun was Milton Payne. Well your worthy governor [Elijah] prevailed on Milton to come over to Hank Kam’s barber shop and he (Kam) would play a tune and Milton would dance. We all went over and got Milton on the floor and of all the dancing you ever saw he only could shuffle his ponderous no. 1 and 2’s. We told him it was the best dancing we saw in years while our sides were breaking with laughter.
I have been out hunting one or two days and we have been feasting on partridge pie the last week. Man and boy who can possibly loan a gun is out shooting no harm done except the expenditure of powder and shot.
Bigger than Embro, Galt in 1873 had a population of nearly four thousand. According to Lovell’s Gazetteer, it possessed an impressive array of facilities: extensive water power, six churches, three branch banks, several insurance companies, two newspapers, twelve hotels, several large flour mills, an array of factories,