THE MAKING OF MODERN CANADA
Though Canada, as a country explored and occupied by white men, is more
than three centuries old, it is only within the last half century that
its possibilities have begun to be realised even by its own settlers.
There are reasons to explain this tardy awakening to the significance of
the country. During the French occupation, which was decided on that
dark night of 1759 when Wolfe’s army scaled the Heights of Abraham at
Quebec and sent its crashing volleys into the regiments of Montcalm,
Canada was as badly governed as any dependency of a Western nation has
ever been. So far from encouraging colonisation and laying the
foundation of a French nation on American soil, the French Government of
Canada did everything, both positively and negatively, to strangle the
child in its cradle. The France of Louis XV. especially did worse than
neglect Canada. It sent to Quebec and Montreal men who were not merely
incompetent, but who ruthlessly pillaged the Canadians by every legal
and illegal means. The story told by Parkman and other recent historians
who have examined the contemporary historical material of the way in
which, with the connivance of the Quebec Government, the people were
almost flayed alive by the malpractices of agents and contractors, is
unparalleled in the history of wholesale robbery and corruption. The
Verres of Cicero’s impeachment was a heaven-sent benefactor of the
Sicilians compared with the Canadian Intendant of Finances, Bigot. The
Canadian farmers had not only no encouragement to wring its riches from
the soil, but they were punished for their success. They were made to
pay over and over and over again for everything that was necessary to
agriculture in order that the Governor-General, the Intendant, and their
swarm of male and female satellites might strut as in a miniature
Versailles, mimicking alike the manners and the morals of Versailles.
The French Colonials fought well, in spite of all they suffered from the
French Government, for the French dominion of Canada, but when, after
the capitulation and the Treaty of Peace, the horde of ruffianly
officials were sent back to France, they soon reconciled themselves to
the British Government. They found that the alien Government was at
least a Government and not a systematised official brigandage, and they
settled down to their farming and to the enjoyment of their legal
parochial self-government and of their complete liberty for their Roman
Catholic worship. The French Canadians to-day number two millions,
mostly concentrated in the Province of Quebec, though there is an
increasing movement westward of the young French-speaking Canadians who
have had their appetites whetted by the stories of fortunes to be made
in the Prairie Provinces. The old folk at home and the Roman Catholic
parochial clergy look askance at this movement of population, as they do
at the increasing proportion of British and other non-French settlers in
the Province. It is useless for them to fight against it. Quebec
Province contrives to combine the most intense conservatism with regard
to religion, language, methods of farming and manner of life with
political Liberalism of a peculiar kind. The French claim that they are
the real Canadians. “We were here before you,” they say to the English.
They are proud of the fact that a French Canadian, Sir Wilfrid Laurier,
was Prime Minister of the Dominion for fourteen years, and that during
his term of office the country sprang forward by leaps and bounds. They
are the backbone of the Liberal Party of the Dominion, they are
Imperialists of the Imperialists, and yet at the same time they are Home
Rulers of the Home Rulers. A saying of a French Canadian has been often
quoted, that “The last rifle fired in defence of the British dominion in
Canada will be fired by a French Canadian,” and yet it is the French
Canadian Liberals who have made it an article of their political creed
that the future Canadian Navy shall be a Canadian Navy and not an
integral part of the British Navy; that is, that it shall be built,
manned, and be under the control of Canada and not be regarded as merged
in the ships of and directly controlled by the British Admiralty. By a
curious reversion of position, Liberalism in Quebec Province means
Provincial Home Rule carried to the extreme limit, while Liberalism in
the Prairie Provinces means the maintenance of Dominion control of the
Provincial land tax, and Prairie Province Conservatism means Provincial
control of land tax raised in the Province.
[Illustration: QUEBEC FROM THE RIVER.]
The French Canadians have good reason to be satisfied with British
government, for under it they have privileges with regard to
self-government and the maintenance of their religion such as are not
possessed by any section of the population in any of the other
Provinces. There is no country in the world where the Roman Catholic
Church is in such complete possession as in Quebec Province, where it
has a parochial system so thoroughly and so completely worked, and the
people are so submissive to the parish priests, that the priests
generally, to use a vulgarism, “boss the show.” One of the difficulties
at present confronting the Dominion Government is the marriage law in
Quebec Province. The Catholic Hierarchy of the Province have put into
force the _Ne Temere_ Decree of the Vatican, designed to check marriages
between Roman Catholics and Protestants, and the Supreme Court of the
Province has had to bend, as always, to the will of the Hierarchy. The
Dominion Government desires to unify the marriage law throughout the
Dominion, but it is brought up against the stone wall of the Roman
Catholic Hierarchy and of Home Rule in Quebec Province. At present there
seems no way of getting over the difficulty, but it is pretty certain,
as years go by, that the strong grip of the Hierarchy will be relaxed,
as it is already relaxing with the broader ideals with which the minds
of the young French Canadians are infused as a result of travelling
outside the Province, and so many of them seeking careers in the
English-speaking Provinces.
It was fortunate for British supremacy in Canada that the French
Canadians had been so often at war with the Yankees that at the War of
Independence they were all instinctively on the side of the Power that
was hostile to the Yankees. The French Canadians could have wished for
nothing less than incorporation with the Puritan New England States and
the Quaker State of Pennsylvania. They were already feeling the good
effects of English government and were settling down to the peaceful
development of their lands. There might have been danger of them
instinctively favouring France in future wars between England and
France, but the Revolution of 1789 put an end to all that. The
Revolution was the end of the ancient _régime_ in France and with it of
the colonial domination of the Gallican Catholic Church. The French
Canadians belonged to the ancient _régime_ and had been preserved from
the worst vices and corruptions of the Roman Catholic Church in the Old
Country. Canada offered a refuge to a large number of priests and
_émigrés_, and the French Roman Catholics brought with them appalling
stories of the horrors and blasphemies of the Revolution. The French
Canadians regarded the English, during their long war with the Republic
and then with Napoleon, as the restorers alike of Royalty and
Catholicism in France, and they thanked heaven every day that they were
living under the Union Jack rather than under the Imperial standard of
the Corsican usurper.
When in 1812 the United States declared war against Great Britain, the
French Canadians fought as patriotically and valiantly as the English
Canadians against the Yankee invaders, and shared in the glory of
driving back the Americans and defeating them on their own soil. A long
period followed in which little interest was taken by the Old Country in
Canada. England attached small value to its Dominion across the
Atlantic. Then there came political troubles which might have led to
serious insurrection and civil war between the English Colonials and the
French Canadians. The population was increasing and the French were not
satisfied with the share they were taking in the government. The
troubles were settled by a wise measure of conciliation which led to the
laying of the foundation for the federation of the Canadian Provinces in
the present Dominion. Now, though the French Canadians still keep
themselves very much to themselves and regard their religion and their
language almost as superstitiously as savages their fetishes, the only
rivalry between the French and English-speaking Canadians is rivalry as
to which are the best Canadians, the most fervent patriots, and the most
loyal British Imperialists.
One reason for the late development of Canada was the flow of
immigration during the greater part of the nineteenth century to the
United States. The States had nearly three centuries start of Canada.
Since 1772 they were an independent nation. They governed illimitable
areas of cultivable land. Centres of manufacturing industry were early
established and grew at an amazing rate. There was enormous railway
development, facilitating intercommunication between the various States
and encouraging settlement along the lines of railway construction.
Along both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts there was an interminable
seaboard offering farmers and manufacturers harbours and rivers for the
carrying on of sea trade. The great emigrant nations of the
world—Ireland, Scotland, Italy, Germany—found the United States a
congenial country in which to settle their surplus population, and those
already settled sent home glowing stories of the prospects and much
money for their relatives and friends to follow them. The United States
grew populous, rich and great by these feeders from the Old World.
Canada, on the contrary, held out few inducements for settlement. Its
people were satisfied with a moderate degree of comfort and showed
little disposition to welcome new-comers. So Canada would have remained
till to-day had it not been for the opening up of the country by railway
construction, to the story of which a future chapter will be devoted.
Somehow the idea had got into the mind of the world that Canada was a
country of intolerable cold, covered in the Eastern Provinces with
monotonous and depressing woods and practically a desert as to Central
Canada, while only the Indians and a few Scotsmen of iron constitution
in the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company endured the terrors of the
arctic North. Certain novelists, who had drawn their material partly
from the facts of the life of the Canadian Far West, but mainly from
their fertile imaginations, conveyed the impression that Canada was
infested with tomahawking Indians and that no man’s life and no woman’s
life was worth much if they settled outside the bounds of Old Canada.
The Hudson’s Bay Company, during its hold of the Far West, rather
encouraged such ideas. It did its utmost to keep immigrants at arms’
length and to prevent any rivalry with its profitable fur trade, even
from enterprising Scotsmen and French Canadians at Quebec and Montreal
who were not disposed to recognise the rights which Charles II. lightly
gave away when he granted the charter to the Hudson’s Bay Company in
1672, conferring on them the lordship of all lands watered by streams
running into Hudson’s Bay. Fort Garry, where now is Winnipeg, the
capital of the Prairie cornlands, was the western boundary of known
Canada, and to get even to Fort Garry before the Canadian Pacific struck
across the continent was a most tremendous adventure. When the Canadian
Pacific pioneers, however, opened up the country, and the Red River
Rebellion, inspired by the unfortunate half-breed Louis Riel, was
suppressed by the expedition in which Sir Garnet Wolseley’s name first
became known to fame, the Hudson’s Bay Company saw the days of its
supremacy at an end. Its rights were bought out, though it received
magnificent concessions as the price of surrender, and very soon the
incalculable possibilities of the prairie and of British Columbia began
to be realised and the stream of immigration set in which is now
gathering strength every year. Within the last five years the rate of
annual immigration has increased from 300,000 to nearly 400,000. The
population of Canada is still under eight millions, but even cautious
Canadians predict that in less than twenty years it will be twenty
millions, and that by 1930 the immigrant population will exceed the
native-born population.
English interest in Canada naturally grows with the growth of English
immigration into the Dominion. There are tens of thousands of families
now represented in the Dominion where a dozen years ago such families
might have been counted by hundreds, and the type of immigrant is
changed. Time was, not long since, when Canada was considered the most
suitable dumping ground for the social wreckage of Great Britain.
Immigrants might have been divided into two classes. First there were
the scapegraces of good families—young fellows who had gone the pace at
home and had either gone to Canada to keep out of the clutches of
creditors or the police, or were sent to Canada by relatives who were
none too fond of them, but were glad to be rid of them even though it
meant sending remittances to keep them going in the new country until
they settled down to something honest, if they developed any disposition
to try work for a change. Then there were the out-of-works, the
unemployables, the “social problems,” the men of the proletariat who
were the despair of the Old Country and whom the Salvation Army and
other philanthropic societies got hold of, and sent to Canada with the
optimistic belief that men who had failed in the Old Country might
possibly succeed in a new. Canada proved a good testing ground for
emigrants so sent out. If they were caught young and had received some
moral training and some training in industry before they were shipped
they did well; but men whose moral backbone had been broken, and whose
physical stamina was weakened by self-indulgence at home, too often
found that success to a moral and physical weakling was no more possible
in Canada than in England. During the last few years the Dominion and
Provincial Governments have been setting their faces sternly against the
making of Canada a dumping ground for the scapegraces and social
wreckage of Great Britain and the world, and they have given strict
instructions to societies and institutions receiving grants and
commissions from Canadian Government funds that only suitable men must
be sent out, while an eye is kept on unsuitables who get in with a view
to returning them, after a couple of years or so, as undesirables, to
the countries of their origin. It is quite easy to understand the
dislike which not only the Dominion and Provincial Governments, but
Canadians as a whole, have of immigrants of the types referred to. They
give a bad name to the country and prejudice it in the minds of people
at home and people in other countries in whose estimation the Canadians
desire to stand well. Canada requires and desires immigrants of the best
type—physically, intellectually and morally—to contribute towards the
making of the Canadian nation that is to be. Only such men can play a
worthy and valuable part in developing the amazing resources of the
country and making the population of the great cities which are
springing up in all the Provinces. During the last few years emigrants
have been going out from the best families in the Old Country—young men
of education and with a certain amount of capital at their disposal.
Canada offers to these a career unequalled in its opportunities, while
at the same time such men are a contribution to the future prosperity of
Canada even more valuable than the placing in Canada of British capital,
which is flowing into the Dominion in ever deepening and widening
streams.
[Illustration: A COUNTRY SCENE IN OTTAWA.]
That inflow of British capital into Canada is one of the most
significant of the developments of the last few years. British noblemen,
who have found it increasingly difficult to get profits out of the land
in the Old Country, have been prospecting in Canada. They have bought up
large blocks of land along the lines of railway development, and have
been making large profits out of the reselling and the settlement of
their estates. Not that Canada will tolerate in the Dominion the
creation of a feudal land system such as we have in the Old Country.
Land ownership, not tenancy from a landlord, is the rule in Canada, and
if there were any danger of landlord monopoly being created in Canada
public opinion would soon force the Dominion and Provincial Governments
to put a stop to it, but in land purchase and the reselling, in railway
construction and in the development of the rapidly-growing industrial
concerns of Canada, hundreds of millions of British capital have already
been absorbed and the cry is still for more. Everywhere on my tour in
the Dominion I heard the complaint, “All we want is capital. We have all
the natural resources that any country could desire, but for years to
come every penny we can get hold of has to go into capital expenditure.”
The head of a great firm of agricultural implement manufacturers at
Hamilton told me that his firm, a branch of an American firm, has spent
within five years something like five million dollars in opening
branches at various centres, and he said, “I might almost say we have
not yet got back a dollar. The farmers are making large profits, but
they have no money to spend. As soon as they sell their wheat they need
money to increase their holdings, to buy machinery and stock, and we
have to let them have our machines on long credit, or to be paid for on
the instalment principle. But,” said my informant, “we are absolutely
sure that we shall reap our reward, and a very rich reward, within a
year or two.” The commercial travellers told me the same story. They are
doing a great and increasing trade in the new cities that are springing
up at the rate of one a day along the lines of railway construction.
“But,” they said, “at present the traders, the farmers, the business
men, have to be putting all the money they can make or borrow into the
land, into building and into stock. They will give us their orders on
condition that we allow them a year, two years, three years to pay for
the stuff. We know they will pay and we let them have the stuff,
confident that we are getting in our footing for a trade that will be
enormously and increasingly profitable as years go by.” Travellers of
Canadian and American firms told me that here is where British firms are
being beaten just now. They have not taken the trouble to understand the
conditions in which trade has to be done in a new country with a rapidly
increasing population and with its resources only beginning to be
developed. British firms want to do trade as in the Old Country and with
their European continental customers on practically cash down or short
credit terms, and if they cannot do trade on these terms they do not
think it worth while doing it at all. The consequence, so the Canadian
and American commercials assured me, will be that the trade will be
almost monopolised by the Canadians and Americans and European firms
that recognise the necessity of meeting Canadian customers on their own
ground. Long credit and easy instalment terms must be regarded in the
light of initial capital expenditure. Waiting for the money for what
seems to English traders an exasperating and inordinate time is the only
condition on which Canadian connections can be built up. British traders
will have only themselves to blame if they refuse to conform to the
conditions and find within five years or so that the ground has been
hopelessly cut from under their feet.
The increasing immigration of British young people into Canada, the
increasing inflow of British capital, are of course making Canada a
country of surpassing interest to people in the homeland. My hope in
these chapters—based on my personal observation and on talks with a
large number of men “in the know” in all the Provinces of the
Dominion—is that this book will prove useful to British readers. There
is an earnest desire alike on the part of those who are considering
Canada as a country offering careers to bright and energetic young men,
and on the part of those with capital to invest, and who want a larger
profit than capital usually yields in our own country, to learn what are
the real facts about Canada—the country, the people, the resources, the
development, the prospects. My desire is to make this book thoroughly
practical, with a view to meeting the wants of such readers.
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