Meeting of the Sleigh Club at the Barracks, Saint John, New Brunswick, ca. 1833.
A party of officers and their female guests is about to set out on a mid-winter expedition. If an officer serving in Canada was to be fashionable he had to own a team of fine horses, a sleigh and all the trappings, including fur rugs for warmth. In summer, similar parties set out to have picnics in the woods. According to Lieutenant Richard George Augustus Levinge (1811-1889), the artist upon whose work this engraving is based.
The meeting of the Tandem Club was a very gay affair; twice in each week, twenty sleighs, painted of the most gaudy colours, and decked with furs of all kinds, trimmed with fringe of different colours, drove off from the barracks or other rendezvous. The last married lady was selected as a chaperon, and there were plenty of fair candidates for the drive. The brass band and merry bells added not a little to the cheerfulness of the scene.
Levinge was especially proud of his own sleigh, depicted in the right foreground. The Tandem Club in Halifax organized similar outings and the officers stationed there participated in the activities. For a view of their festivities, examine Canada's Visual History, volume 37, illustration 25.
