The Canadas

“ If the Canadas are of that importance which I think them, there are no means which we should not use to attach them to the mother country—to make them partial to monarchical institutions—and to identify them with the British empire. ”

“ If what I have stated be correct, and I am convinced of its truth myself, it will be evident that the Canadas, independent of every other consideration, become a most important outpost which we must defend and hold possession of. Let it be remembered that every loss to us, is an increase to the power of America—an increase to her security and to her maritime strength; that whatever her assertions may be, she is deadly hostile to us, from the very circumstance that she considers that we prevent her aggrandisement and prosperity. ”

“ The next question to be considered is, whether, independent of their being important to us as an outpost to defend our transatlantic possessions, the Canadas are likely to be useful to us, as a colony, in a commercial point of view. ”

“ They feel that if the British Government intends to maintain its hold of the Canadas, it can rely on the English population alone; that if it abandons its colonial possessions, they must become a portion of that great Union which will speedily send forth its swarms of settlers, and, by force of numbers and activity, quickly master every other race. The French Canadians, on the other hand, are but the remains of an ancient colonisation, and are and ever must be isolated in the midst of an Anglo-Saxon world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Let us now inquire what are likely to be made the future prospects and produce of the Canadas as the population increases, and the resources of the country will be developed.
Lower Canada is a sterile country; not that the land is in itself bad, but from the severity and length of the winters. The climate of Lower Canada is precisely the same as that of Russia, and so might be its produce. The winters are tedious, but not unhealthy, as they are dry. The summers, like all the summers in the northern regions, although short, are excessively hot. ”

“ Notwithstanding that Canada was settled first, and, unlike New England, for a long series of years enjoyed the fostering care of the mother country,—notwithstanding that, as Charlevoix tells us, it had more of the ancient noblesse among its early settlers than any other of the French colonies, and perhaps than all the others together,—there are in both the Canadas but 600,000 of French descent to-day,—about half so many as the population of Massachusetts. The whole population of both Canadas is but about 1,700,000 Canadians, English, Irish, Scotch, Indians, and all, put together! ”

“ Another important reason which the Americans have for the possession of the Canadas is, that they are the means of easy retaliation on the part of England in case of aggression. They render them weak and assailable in case of war. Had they possession of the Canadas, and our other provinces, the United States would be almost invulnerable. As it is, they become defenceless to the north, and are moreover exposed to the attack of all the tribes of Indians concentrated on the western frontier. ”

“ I am of the same opinion respecting the Canadas. I consider that, even as two provinces, they are too vast in territory already. Whether it be a woman looking after her servants and household affairs, or a captain commanding a ship, or a governor ruling over a province, large or small as may be the scale of operation, one of the most important points in good legislation, is the eye. A governor of a vast province cannot possibly be aware of the wants of the various portions of the province. He is obliged to take the reports of others, and consequently very often legislates unadvisedly. ”

“ Forty years has made as great a difference in the state of society in Canada as it has in its commercial and political importance. When we came to the Canadas, society was composed of elements which did not always amalgamate in the best possible manner. ”

“ Without reference to the Far West, or the Far North-West,—without regard to the Red River and Assiniboia or to British Columbia, there is before us the great fact, that out of the Canadas, and the British North American Provinces and dependencies, can be created a powerful Confederation attached to this country, and capable of the grandest development in spite of climatic influences. ”

“ Nothing could have proved more unfortunate to the American desire of obtaining the Canadas than the result of the late rebellions. Should the Upper Canadians, from any continued injustice and misrule on the part of the mother country, be determined to separate, at all events it will not be to ally themselves with the Americans. ”

“ But do the views of the Americans extend no further? Would they be satisfied if they obtained the Canadas? Most assuredly not. They are too vast in their ideas—too ambitious in their views. If Canada fell, Nova Scotia would fall, and they would obtain what they most covet—the harbour of Halifax. New Brunswick would fall, and they would have then driven us out of our Continental possessions. Would they stop then? No; they never would stop until they had driven the English to the other side of the Atlantic. Newfoundland and its fisheries would be their next prey ”

“ 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. ”

“ No, Canada is loyal to the British Empire of which she forms a part. Let England see to it that she, too, is loyal.
Canada has two hundred millions of arable acres south of the Saskatchewan. North of this river, in the pleasant valleys of the Peace, are one hundred million acres more. If Canada were as thickly populated as the British Isles it would have a billion people. The mind reels and the imagination staggers in thinking of the future of this rich land. God has intended this to be the cradle of a new race, a race born of the diverse entities now fusing in its crucible. ”

“ Canada to-day is a young sleeping giant which has not yet felt its power, nor yet risen to consciousness of its own importance, wealth, power and grandeur. Our future no one can read. While we are proud to be a part of the great British Empire, and glory in it, we are none the less Canadians first, and we must never forget it. Some deep political thinkers and far-seeing statesmen have said that the white man’s governments and the flags of Anglo-Saxondom will some day be unified and made to wave over all the continent of North America north of the Rio Grande. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The men from that cultivated, rolling country of Southern Ontario, from New Brunswick and the plains and the coast and a quota from the neat farms of Quebec have met face to face, not on railroad trains, not through representatives in Parliament or in convention, but in billets and trenches. Whatever Canada is, she is not small. She is particularly the land of immense distances; her breadth is greater than that of the United States. All of the great territorial expanse of Canada in its manhood, in the thoughts of those at home, was centered in a few square miles of Flanders. ”

“ At that supreme moment in our country's history, when Canada was at the cross roads of her destiny, she was indeed happy in the possession of the man who gathered in and marshalled, with a speed and noble energy seldom, if ever, equalled, the hosts of willing but untrained civilians who came rushing from the Pacific Coast, the Rockies, the grain-belt, the Western Prairie, and the fields and forests and cities of the East, to offer themselves to the Empire in her hour of need. ”

“ The record of Canada, as compared with that of the English colonies in America, is much more a series of biographies, much less a chronicle of a community. Of the great men, whose lives and doings make up Canadian history in French times, it may be said that some created Canada, while others were Canada's own creations. In other words, some were in but not of Canada; they came out from France to make, to rule, to save, or to try to save, the French colony on the St. Lawrence ”

“ 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. ”

“ If Canada had not been a French colony, and had been inhabited by coloured men alone, or if Canada, as a French colony, had been in a different continent from the British North American colonies, the task of construction or re-construction would have been infinitely easier. It would have been easier, too, if the French Canadians had been the only inhabitants of Canada. But, as it was, one white race conquered another white race, which in its turn had secured mastery over a coloured race, and in the land of that coloured race had not merely conquered or traded, but settled and colonized ”

“ French Canada.The vast but empty French colony of Canada had not more than one-sixth of the population of the British colonies in North America, then thirteen in number; but it was much better governed, fortified and equipped for war. Our colonists were never united amongst themselves, and did not want to be. They were none too loyal to the Mother Country, while the French Canadians were thoroughly loyal to France. That is why, between 1740 and 1758, the French were able to press our people in America so hard. ”

“ In the seventies the idea was to restore the old French-Canadian life so as not only to make Canada proof against the disaffection of the Thirteen Colonies but also to make her a safe base of operations against rebellious Americans. In the eighties the great concern of the government was to make a harmonious whole out of two very widely differing parts—the long-settled French Canadians and the newly arrived United Empire Loyalists. ”

“ We have everything in a material point of view to make Canada a great country—unlimited territory fertile and rich, an increasing hardy and intelligent population, immense fisheries, minerals of every description, ships and sailors ”

“ You cannot offend the modern Canadian more than by describing him as a “Colonial.” He is a Canadian—an Imperialist, a man who claims his full share in the concerns of the British Empire—a man who has firmly convinced himself that within a hundred years Canada, so far from being a British Dependency, will be the most stalwart protector of the Mother Country. The epoch-making offer of a gift of seven millions for the addition of three super-Dreadnoughts to the British Navy is the first expression of the Canadian sense of Imperial destiny. ”

“ But in and through and above all, it opened to me the high heart of the Canadian, the undaunted faith in established principles, and the patriotism that is a veritable passion.
"O Canada, my Canada!" an old French Canadian once exclaimed to me as we sat by the box-stove in his little "cabin". "There is no land like it; no land where they live at peace as we do here; no land where they are so content by their own fireside." ”

“ The Americans should not have tried to take Canada. Canada was, as Henry Clay once said, a persimmon a trifle too high for the American pole, and it is the belief of the historian, whose tears have often wet the pages of this record, that in the future Canada will be what America is now, a free country with a national debt of her own, a flag of her own, an executive of her own, and a regular annual crisis of her own, like other nations. ”

“ We must remember that between various parts of the Dominion nature has set up very formidable barriers, great lakes, high mountains, and wide expanses of uncultivated territory. We must not forget, furthermore, that there are two distinct races in Canada, different in religion, sympathies and general characteristics. Thus it will be seen that without compactness in territory and without a homogeneous spirit among the people, Canada is not a united country. She needs the United States and, by the same token, the United States needs Canada. ”

“ What else is Canada for, one may well ask, but to provide adventurous souls with the opportunity of landing penniless on her shores and ultimately becoming wheat, cattle or lumber kings, of taming wild horses on her illimitable plains, fighting and laying low camp bullies, or tracking evil-doers to the edge of beyond in the ranks of the North-West Mounted Police? ”