Maritime provinces of Canada

“ The first division of the Eastern region now comprises the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, which, formerly, with a large portion of the State of Maine, were best known as Acadie, [2] a memorial of the Indian occupation before the French régime. These provinces are indented by noble harbours and bays, and many deep rivers connect the sea-board with the interior. They form the western and southern boundaries of that great gulf or eastern portal of Canada, which maritime adventurers explored from the earliest period of which we have any record. ”

“ The French Canadians remained where they were. Most of the new Anglo-Canadians settled in the Maritime Provinces or moved west into what is now Ontario. A few settled in rural Quebec on lands outside the line of seigneuries. The Eastern Townships, that part of the province lying east of the Richelieu and nearest the American frontier, absorbed many English, Irish, and Scots, as well as a good many Americans who were attracted by cheap land. Ontario, or Upper Canada, received still more Americans, who were to be a thorn in the side of the British during the War of 1812. ”

“ You know there are great coal mines to the east and great timber limits to the north; you may even smell the imprisoned fragrance of the yellowing lumber being loaded for export, but it is as the land of winter ports and of seamen for the navy that you will remember the maritime provinces as factors in Canada's destiny. ”

“ They do not talk about the simple life in the maritime provinces because they have always lived it, and the land is famed for its diet of codfish, and its men of brains. Frugal, simple, reposeful living—the kind of living that takes time to think—has sent out from the maritime provinces more leaders of thought than any other area of Canada. ”

“ The fishery question is not one that can be treated in the space at our command. Naturally Canada sees it from its point of view. To a considerable portion of the maritime provinces fishing means livelihood, and the view is that if the United States shares in it we ought to open our markets to the Canadian fishermen. Some, indeed, and these are generally advocates of freer trade, think that our fishermen ought to have the right of entering the Canadian harbors for bait and shipment of their catch, and think also that Canada would derive an equal benefit from this ”

“ The great English colony which stirs the pages of more than two centuries of history has for its capitals such proud and notable cities as Montreal, Quebec, Toronto, Halifax, and many others, to distinguish the progressive civilization of the region east of Lake Huron—the older provinces. But the Canada of the geographies of to-day is a land of greater area than the United States; it is, in fact, the "British America" of old. A great trans-Canadian railway has joined the ambitious province of the Pacific slope to the provinces of old Canada with stitches of steel across the Plains. ”

“ But they offer to man wealth such as he cannot elsewhere win from the sea. The fisheries of the Newfoundland Banks were the earliest inducement which led Europeans to frequent those seemingly inhospitable shores. The Maritime Provinces were more easily accessible than Canada, for they abounded in commodious inlets where ships could enter and lie secure. ”

“ But, perhaps, the west of Canada is more willing to depart from the established order than the east. Then, again, the conditions are different. The maritime provinces have been living in peace and amity with their neighbours for many years. The immigration problem, carrying with it different races, conflicting ideas and unsatisfied ambitions, does not present itself in the same way. Halifax and Quebec, where immigration is concerned, are mainly ports of entrance, and intending settlers are generally Europeans. ”

“ The British North America Act, referred to above, provided for the division of the Dominion of Canada into four provinces named Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and also made provision for the admission of Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, British Columbia, etc., when such admission should be deemed advisable. ”

“ Of the nine provinces of Canada only three have no coast line on salt water, Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan, and the first may soon be extended to Hudson Bay. Ontario has a seaboard only on Hudson Bay’s southern extension, James Bay, and there is no probability that the shallow harbours of the latter bay will ever be of much importance for shipping, though Churchill Harbour on the west side of Hudson Bay may become an important grain port. What Ontario lacks in salt water navigation is, however, made up by the busy traffic of the Great Lakes. ”

“ It has not been thought important to establish regular governments in all the provinces, so called. Such governments are established only in the Canadas, Nova Scotia and Cape Breton, New Brunswick, Prince Edward's Island, and Newfoundland. The Canadas consist of Upper and Lower, or Canada West and Canada East, and embrace the principal amount of the population and productive resources of that whole northern world. ”

“ It had minor subdivisions, but the country as a whole was governed by territorial officials with headquarters at Regina. As the flood of immigrants began to spread over the West, the people of the wheat belt decided that they wanted more than a territorial government and so brought the matter before the Canadian parliament. As a result the great inland provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta were formed. They are the only provinces in the Dominion that do not border on the sea. ”

“ The eastern provinces are Ontario and Quebec, which lie along the St. Lawrence River and its Great Lakes, and extend along Hudson Bay as shown on accompanying map. The central provinces are Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, which occupy the prairie area lying between the wooded region of eastern Canada and the Rocky Mountains. The western or Pacific province is British Columbia, which lies between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Coast. Northern Canada is the territory lying between the northern limits of the eastern, central and western provinces, already mentioned, and the Arctic Ocean. ”

“ Nowhere on the continent is there a sanctuary quite like it. It is the Abbey of the Provinces, the shrine of primitive Canada. To muse in its stiff wooden seats, to meditate among its tombs is like sitting at the feet of an oracle to learn of history and stirring deeds. ”

“ Several great steam-ship lines cross the Atlantic, another connects the Pacific coast with Japan and China—a line is projected to Australasia—others carry on trade with the eastern and western coasts of America and with the West Indies. The instincts and conditions which have made British people a maritime and trading race are renewed in {144} the Dominion. Canada's interest is to retain the national connection which gives her commerce the best opportunities, her fleets the surest protection in all parts of the world. ”

“ The islands and other districts within the Arctic circle became a portion of the Dominion only in 1880, when all British possessions in North America, excepting Newfoundland, with its dependency, the Labrador coast, and the Bermuda islands, were annexed to Canada. ”

“ By 1871 the new Dominion has bought out the rights of the Hudson's Bay Company in the West and Manitoba joins the Eastern Provinces. By 1885 a railway links British Columbia with Nova Scotia. By 1905 the great hunting field of the Saskatchewan prairies has been divided into two new provinces, Saskatchewan and Alberta, each larger than France.
Such is barest outline of Canada's past. What of the future for this Empire of the North? That future is now in the making. It lies in the hands of the men and women who are living to-day. ”

“ It isn't the one or two hundred dollars these fishermen clear in a year—and it may be said that one hundred dollars cleared in a year is opulence—that holds them to the wild, free, perilous life. It is the call of the sea in their blood. Of such men are victorious navies made, and if Canada is to be anything more than the hanger-on to the tail of the kite of the British Empire, she, too, must have her navy, her men of the sea, born and cradled and crooned and nursed by the sea. That is Newfoundland's first importance to a Greater Britain Overseas. ”

“ Mistress of a zone of territory favourable for the maintenance of a numerous and homogeneous white population, Canada must, to judge from the increase in her strength during the past, and from the many and vast opportunities for the growth of that strength on her new Provinces in the future, be great and worthy her position on the earth. Affording the best and safest highway between Asia and Europe, she will see traffic from both directed to her coasts. With a hand upon either ocean she will gather from each for the benefit of her hardy millions a large share of the commerce of the world. ”

“ The opening years of the 20th century were marked by a prolonged period of great prosperity. A steady stream of emigrants from Europe and the United States, sometimes rising in number to 300,000 in a single year, Canadian expansion. began to occupy the vast western prairies. So considerable was the growth of this section of the Dominion that in 1905 it was found necessary to form two new provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan, from the North-West Territories, the area of each being 275,000 sq. ”

“ Upon the declaration of war, the government of the United States despatched as skilful an officer, as they had, to arm the American vessels on Lake Erie, and on Lake Ontario, with the view of gaining, if possible, the ascendancy on those great inland waters, which separate a great portion of Canada from the United States. ”

“ With reference to the fisheries and the navigation of the internal waters of the continent, the British Provinces are willing that the existing regulations should continue in effect; but Canada is ready to enter into engagements with the view of improving the means of access to the ocean, provided the assurance be given that the trade of the Western States will not be diverted from its natural channel by legislation ”

“ The disparity between the population and the wealth of the two provinces is annually on the increase.
The progress of Upper Canada is something perfectly astonishing, and bids fair to rival, if not exceed, that of her gigantic neighbour. Her communication between the Lake district and the Atlantic is practically more economical, taking the whole of the year, and, as British emigration has tended chiefly to the Upper Province, the population is of a more homogeneous character than that of the States. The climate also is more favourable than that of Lower Canada. ”

“ O call sounded by the pipes of this New Era is more insistent than that of the Canadian Sea-coast. One sometimes wonders if Canadians as a whole even yet realize the important gift bestowed, when Heaven gave to Canada so magnificent a coastline as that which the constant sword-play of land and sea traces from Saint John, New Brunswick, to the Newfoundland-Labrador Boundary? ”

“ SECTION 4.—Political and social conditions of Canada under confederation. At the present time, a population of probably five million four hundred thousand souls inhabit a Dominion of seven regularly organised provinces, and of an immense fertile territory stretching from Manitoba to British Columbia. This Dominion embraces an area of 3,519,000 square miles, including its water surface, or very little less than the area of the United States with Alaska, and measures 3500 miles from east to west ”

“ The famous Royal North West Mounted Police of Canada, whose record constitutes a strikingly romantic chapter in the history of Canada, was called into being in 1873 to preserve British law and order in the vast wildernesses lying between the Great Lakes and the mountain ranges of British Columbia. The newly-formed Dominion of Canada had but recently acquired these huge preserves from the Hudson’s Bay Company, subsequently to convert them from the Northwest Territories into the Provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. ”

“ It is a Canada whose nine provinces stretch almost unbroken from ocean to ocean. But the Canada of a generation earlier was far other. On the map it covered half a continent, but in reality it stopped at the Great Lakes. There was little national spirit, little diversity of commercial enterprise. Hundreds of thousands of our best-born had been drawn by the greater attraction of United States cities and farms, until one-fourth of the whole Canadian people were living in the Republic. ”

“ Most of the crew and all the officers were to be British subjects—an important point when British seamen were liable to be 'pressed' into men-of-war in time of national danger.
The change of rule in 1763 meant that Canada left an empire that could not enforce its navigation laws and joined an empire that could. Whatever the value of the laws, Canadian shipping and sea trade continued to grow under them. In the eighteenth century {70} there was little internal development anywhere in America; and less in Canada than in what soon became the United States. ”

“ Lawrence than a resident in the Valley of the Mississippi, even if a tithe of its fabled future should ever come to pass. There is no reason why the Canadas should be regarded with less favour than the Western States, although the winters are long enough: in the prairie there is a want of wholesome water in summer, and a scarcity of fuel for cold weather, which tend to restore the balance in favour of the provinces. ”