The Study of Hygiene in Canada
How do we study personal hygiene in Canada before the 1830s? There aren’t many illustrations or written accounts from this early period to shed light on the subject.

As a result, we must instead look at how grooming and personal hygiene were handled during the same period in France and England: the two countries which had the most influence on Canada at the time. We can also study documents relating to the colonial period — including lists of goods imported from Europe, legal documents such as trial proceedings, newspapers, and inventories taken after death in lieu of an actual will. Death inventories are particularly useful, because they suggest the social status of the deceased, and list the objects they possessed. The other documents only tell us that the objects existed in the country, without providing us with details on the kinds of people who used them.

The Situtation in Europe
From the Middle Ages to the end of the eighteenth century, personal grooming in Europe was "dry", meaning that water was not usually part of the process. Cleanliness was ensured instead by the use of cosmetics and frequent changes of clothing. As in many other areas, there were also important differences between the upper classes and the general population.

The General Population
Most people were content with washing their hands and face from time to time with water. Although they occasionally changed their shirts, most were also used to sleeping in clothing still damp with the sweat of the day's labours. They did this because the transmission of disease was poorly understood at the time, and many were afraid of water's effect on health. At the time, water was considered the principal vehicle for cholera, the plague, and many other forms of disease. These beliefs and habits changed little before the end of the eighteenth century.

The Upper Classes
For the nobility and a portion of the middle classes, practices related to personal hygiene were more complex. On one hand, they cared for a greater number of body parts, including the hands, face, hair, ears, teeth and, sometimes, the feet. On the other hand, appearance and fashion were so important that they were often confused with actual cleanliness.

Until the middle of the eighteenth century, cleanliness among the upper classes was, above all, a matter of appearance. The variety of fabrics and colours had multiplied; wildly extravagant wigs were created; hair was powdered and perfumed, rather than combed; and powders and pomades proliferated. Certain cosmetics, designed to mask the strong odours of unclean bodies, also contained toxic substances such as white lead, although it was many years before their danger was recognized.

After 1750, thanks to a radical reduction in epidemics and the evolution of medical knowledge, water was gradually rehabilitated in the public mind. Public baths, closed since the beginning of the seventeenth century for reasons of public health and morality, were once more in fashion. Cold water, it was said, invigorated the body, closed the pores and stimulated the spirit, and it was increasingly used for partial ablutions. These practices did not, however, touch more than a portion of the upper classes — documents bear witness to the rarity, even among the nobility, of bathtubs, bidets and washbasins.

Appearance remained important, although clothing was no longer enough to ensure cleanliness, as it had been in the past. Clothing now became more associated with health than with social convention and fashion. Accordingly, clothing was changed more often; fabrics were lighter; and wigs — which had been veritable nests of lice and fleas — were simplified. Strong perfumes were replaced with lighter versions based on flowers, fruits and herbs, designed more to seduce than to purify the air or camouflage unpleasant odours.

The Situation in Canada
Since water was both abundant and readily available in Canada — more so, at least, than in Western Europe — people began wondering if it couldn't be used more often in personal hygiene.

After a hard day's labour under the hot sun, did early pioneers throw themselves into the water to bathe or to refresh themselves? Did the coureurs de bois and voyageurs bathe regularly in cold water — in imitation of Native peoples — as was mistakenly reported by the author Jean-Jacques Rousseau? No actual firsthand accounts from the period exist to confirm or deny these possibilities.

To begin puzzling out the answers to these questions, it is thus necessary to investigate documents which may shed light on how, and with what, early French settlers may have bathed.

Swimming and Public Baths
During the eighteenth century, some wealthy people possessed their own baths. Most, however, washed and bathed in Canada's many lakes and rivers. In general — as in the United States, France and England — very few people took a full bath. This custom did not become widespread until the beginning of the nineteenth century, even among the nobility.

Around 1810-1820, people in Europe began to frequent seaside resorts more and more. The number of public baths multiplied in the principal cities of North America, and bathtubs were introduced in the larger and grander hotels of Canada and the United States, as well as in the homes of the richest citizens. But the majority of the population remained content to remove the worst of the dirt by wiping a cold, wet towel across their faces and hands. Until the dressing table was expanded to include a formal washstand after 1825, any old basin would serve this purpose.