THE HOME OF A NATION
Canada is the splendid and spacious home of a great nation now in the
making. It is not so much a country as half a continent. It marches
conterminously with the United States for 4,000 miles at a latitude
corresponding to that of the south of Europe. Its Eastern Provinces are
washed by the Atlantic waves and blown on by the Atlantic breezes: 3,000
miles westward British Columbia and the Yukon territory face the
Pacific: northward from the United States Canada stretches into the
Arctic Ocean. It is curious to think that the first English hold on what
is now Canada was limited to three or four forts and trading stations on
the Hudson’s Bay. Trading stations are still there in charge of servants
of the Hudson’s Bay Company, but that Company has been shorn of its
glory, although it is still doing a prosperous trade between its
collection of furs from the Indians, its Stores in the Prairie
Provinces, and the selling of its lands. North Central Canada, however,
with the development of its Prairie Provinces, ceased to be the mere
commercial backyard of the Hudson’s Bay Company. It has ceased also to
be a collection of British “Colonies.” 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. That offer will certainly be
only the first of many Canadian contributions to Imperial defence and
British supremacy on the seas. It was not merely inspired by the feeling
of men of all political parties in the Dominion that the Atlantic and
Pacific coasts must be safeguarded against foreign attack and the
blocking up of the outlets and inlets of Canadian trade, but by the
over-mastering consciousness of the Canadian people that they are a
Nation of Destiny and that in the near future they will play a great and
increasing part in the shaping of the industrial and political history
of the world.
Already there is the keenest sense of nationality in the Canadian
people. There has grown up in recent years an interest in the history of
Canada which would have surprised the fathers and grandfathers of the
present generation. An illustration of this interest is the arrangement
by Dr. Lock (the very able Public Librarian at Toronto) of gatherings of
school children two or three times a week to hear stories from Canadian
history told in ways that will make the future citizens proud of being
Canadians. In talks that I had with public men in all the Provinces the
necessity of keeping the Anglo-Saxon type and Anglo-Saxon ideals
dominant was continually urged. Canada opens wide its doors to men of
all nations seeking a larger life and richer opportunities in the
spacious Provinces and the freer air of the Dominion. But there is the
firm resolve that in the composite nation now in its infancy the
Anglo-Saxon type shall not be swamped or weakened by the infusion of
foreign blood. This is why the Dominion and Provincial Governments give
the heartiest welcome to immigrants from the American side as well as
from Great Britain. At least 100,000 Americans are pouring yearly into
the Prairie Provinces and British Columbia. They bring with them
Anglo-Saxon ideas, Anglo-Saxon religion, the Anglo-Saxon spirit of
democracy, Anglo-Saxon energy and inventiveness in industry, and
Anglo-Saxon solid and scientific methods of agriculture. The Americans
in three or four years are blended with the native-born population, and
the blend is considered the finest possible from the point of view of
the development of the Dominion along Anglo-Saxon lines. As a matter of
fact, the Americans a few years after arrival are almost more Canadian
than the Canadians themselves—it is the Americans rather than the
Canadians who show jealousy at the flocking in of people of other
nationalities and raise the cry of “Canada for the Canadians.” There is
ample room, however, in the Provinces (most of which equal or exceed in
size the area of France or Germany) for immigration from every nation
under the sun, and there is no reason why the process of assimilation
should not be even more complete than it has been in the United States.
Canada believes in churches and schools. The Governments of the Dominion
and of the Provinces see to it that the schools are put up among the
first buildings that arise in the new towns and that they are richly
provided with all the equipment they need and all the funds that ensure
their being carried on in the highest state of efficiency. These schools
catch the children of the immigrants and manufacture them into citizens
with Anglo-Saxon democratic ideals. The people themselves provide the
churches. I was surprised during my tour in Canada to find how many
churches there are, and how fine are the church buildings even in cities
that cover what twenty years ago was virgin prairie. The Canadians are
fully alive to the part played by religion in the development of
nationhood and civilisation. The churches catch the immigrants,
especially the bright young fellows and young women who are settling in
the Dominion. They are not only spiritual hearths, but they are social
centres, and nothing is more needful than social centres of the right
kind in a new country with a rapidly flowing-in population. It is in the
churches that the ideals are held up and kept alive which will save
Canadian nationality from being materialised in its cradle. There is a
possibility that the very richness of the resources of Canada, the
variety and greatness of the opportunities it presents for getting on in
the material sense, may lead to a coarsening of the national fibre which
would prejudice the whole future of Canada. Canadians must be made to
realise that a nation, like an individual, “lives not by bread alone,”
that it has a soul to be saved as well as a body to be fed. Canada must
be preserved from the national tragedy of growing to be a giant in bulk
with the strength of a giant—but a giant without a soul.
* * * * *