Part of the central European workers' escape from the grade - part of the rhythm of their lives - was the return to immigrant ghettos, like Winnipeg's north end, to rest among family and friends. A novelist, Ralph Connor, drew a forceful and instructive picture of that part of the city: "Slavs of all varieties from all provinces and speaking all dialects pack together in their little shacks of boards and tar-paper, with pent roofs of old tobacco tins or slabs or that useful but unsightly tar-paper, crowding each other in close irregular groups. During the summer months they are found...out in gangs where new lines of railway are in construction, the joy of the contractor's heart. ...But winter finds them once more crowding back into the little black shacks in the foreign quarter of the city, drawn thither by their traditionary social instincts, or driven by economic necessities. All they ask is bed space on the floor, or for a higher price, on the home-made bunks that line the walls, and a woman to cook the food they bring her; or, failing such a happy arrangement, a stove on which they may boil their varied stews of beans or barley, beets or rice or cabbage, with such scraps of pork or beef from the neck or flank as they can beg or buy at low price from the slaughter houses, but ever with the inevitable seasoning of garlic, lacking which no Galician dish is palatable."
