I
WHY CANADA IS BRITISH
AFTER a pleasant voyage up the St. Lawrence, between the lines of the
long French settlements on its banks, each having as its most important
feature a tin-covered church spire, glinting in the sun, I remember very
well coming at last through the channel between the Isle of Orleans and
the northern bank to the point where, in full array, were visible the
walls and towers surmounting the mighty Rock of Quebec. It was about
sundown, on a glorious September evening, and the city, the river banks,
and the shipping in the basin were here lit up with glowing light, there
deep in warm shadow. It was in itself one of those scenes, which, for
their beauty alone, fasten themselves in the memory.
But we English boys and girls, fresh from school, if we knew little else
about Canada, had been thrilled by the brave story of Wolfe’s victory
and death on the Plains of Abraham; and so that lovely sunset scene of
rock and tower, and shining water, seemed to link the history of the
land we had left with the promise of the all but unknown country whither
we were bound.
Never again can we see Quebec as we saw it then; yet added knowledge of
its place in the story of the Empire and of Canada does not lessen its
interest; and there is no spot more suitable for the telling of the
reasons why it came to pass that Canada is a British land than that
beneath the shadow of Cape Diamond. I am sure that the question is of
interest to many a newcomer, who has preferred to emigrate to Canada,
just because it is British, rather than to the United States. If,
however, he has already given his attention to the subject, it will be
easy to pass over this brief sketch of one phase of Canada’s very
interesting history to the chapters dealing more particularly with the
Canada of to-day.
The name Canada, which now stands for half a continent, once belonged
only to a small region, on the St. Lawrence; and at first the Canadians
in general were of French race and language. A little over three hundred
years ago Samuel Champlain founded Quebec, which for one hundred and
fifty years was the capital of New France. Meanwhile the English
colonies, which afterwards leagued themselves together to form the
United States, were also growing gradually stronger through this century
and a half; and almost from the beginning there was great rivalry
between the French and English for the control of the eastern part of
North America.
The English, neglected by their home government, and having to depend on
themselves, proved the better colonizers; advancing gradually, step by
step into the wilderness, and generally holding what they gained. The
French, on the other hand, though excellent explorers and traders and
fighters, pushed far afield, and the population of New France grew
slowly compared to that of the English colonies. There was endless
fighting between the representatives of the two races, both of which at
times sought help from the Indians. The result was a peculiarly
merciless warfare, in which women and children were murdered, prisoners
tortured, and the little unprotected settlements on the frontiers
constantly exposed to dreadful night attacks and the burning of their
buildings and crops. The mother countries of both French and English
colonists joined frequently in the struggles, and at last (as every
British schoolboy knows) Quebec was taken and Canada was conquered.
But it is not so well-known by those who have made no special study of
its history that the French in Canada had for years suffered sad
misgovernment, many of the officials sent out from France being bent
only on making money by fair means or foul. In contrast to these men,
the British officers, whose duty it became, on the conquest, to govern
the Canadians, seemed eminently fair and just; and the lower classes at
least felt that the change was for the better. Many of the gentlemen
left the country, but others remained, and the early British governors
took great pains to conciliate them and the Roman Catholic priests. By
the Quebec Act, which came into effect in 1775, the free exercise of the
Roman Catholic religion was secured to the French Canadians as well as
the retention of their old system of civil law; but in criminal cases
English law was to be followed.
The Act was passed when the “Thirteen Colonies” to the south of Canada
and Nova Scotia (which had become a British colony early in the
eighteenth century) were on the eve of revolt, and before many months
had gone by the United Colonies sent an invading army to try to force
Canada to make common cause with them. But the leaders of the Canadian
people proved loyal, and the invaders, though they kept up the siege of
Quebec through the whole of one winter, were driven out of the country.
At that time the British inhabitants of Canada were very few, but the
Revolutionary War was to do a great deal to make it strongly and
positively British. Many of the people of the Thirteen Colonies were
much averse from the breaking of the ties with England; and numbers of
them took up arms on the royal side. When the fortunes of war went
against them, many of these United Empire Loyalists were eager to leave
a land which had thus cast off the old allegiance that they held dear;
and the triumphant revolutionists, partly in fear of their strength,
partly in hate born of the long and bitter warfare—in which both sides
had been betrayed into many cruel and unjustifiable deeds—were just as
eager to thrust them out.
The British government paid vast sums in compensating the Loyalists in
some measure for their losses, and in settling them in new homes. Some
of them went to England; but thousands made their way to Canada and Nova
Scotia, and their coming forms the best answer to the question—“Why is
Canada British?”
It is British because its older English-speaking colonies were founded
on the idea of “Loyalty” as some of the New England colonies were
founded on a demand for religious liberty. The two colonies of New
Brunswick and Upper Canada (as Ontario was named at first) owe their
existence as separate provinces to the influx of Loyalists towards the
close of the eighteenth century; and Lower Canada, Nova Scotia and
Prince Edward Island all received large additions to their population.
The number of settlers who thus came in from the former British colonies
has been estimated at about 45,000.
It should not be forgotten, however, that these people, who had suffered
so grievously for their adherence to their old allegiance, were not in
the main blind and servile upholders of the throne for its own sake (as
many of the royalists of the Stuart times had been), though
unquestionably the severance of the Thirteen Colonies from Great Britain
had been due in part to the efforts of George III. to become an
autocratic monarch. The title bestowed on these Americans who settled in
Canada—which is still a matter of pride to their descendants—was that
of “United Empire Loyalists;” and always in their minds loyalty to
country and empire and their ancient political institutions was
associated with their loyalty to the throne.
Not a few of the leaders of the Loyalists had been men of great
influence in the older colonies, and it is not surprising that almost
from their arrival in what is now the Dominion of Canada, they began to
agitate for representative government, and for the British institutions
to which they had been accustomed. They were a liberty-loving people;
and those who had settled on the St. Lawrence stoutly objected to being
obliged to live under the French civil laws, which gave such
satisfaction to their Gallic neighbours. They besieged the British
government with petitions for a division of the Province, and for the
benefit of British law; so in 1791 the old French Province was divided
into Upper and Lower Canada. The newcomers thus gained the opportunity
to build up a new province on British lines in the almost uninhabited
western wilderness; and, having the opportunity, I think they did
wonders with it.
In a hundred ways, besides the determination not to accept any
limitation of their political liberty, they showed their force and
energy of character. The task that faced Canada’s first British pioneers
was more strenuous than that which has faced any pioneers since, though
the opening and subduing of a new land to the uses of civilized man is
always a task that tests to the utmost the manhood and womanhood of
those who essay it.
The land was thickly covered with huge trees, and in many places the
soil, which the sun’s rays could scarcely ever reach through the shadowy
verdure of the woods, was cold and wet and swampy. When the Loyalists
came, there were no roads in Upper Canada or New Brunswick. There were
no steamboats on the lakes or rivers, no railroads even dreamed of. The
monarchs of the forest appeared to those first settlers in the light of
enemies, to be put out of the way by axe and fire as speedily as
possible, and in many districts the land was savagely stripped bare of
woods, in a fashion that those who have come after cannot help
regretting. It was only the ashes of the majestic maples and beeches and
walnuts which had any value in the eyes of the pioneers. Made into
potash these would fetch a little ready money, hardly to be obtained in
those early days for any other commodity. Even for wheat, only
“store-pay” could usually be obtained, and but a small allowance of
that, for the great world’s markets were utterly inaccessible to
Canada’s early farmers, and the local demand was very small.
It was the age of home industries, when every man was by turns builder
of his own log-house; cabinet-maker of such rude attempts at chairs and
tables as he could turn out; farmer of patches of grain amongst the
slowly rotting stumps of forest trees; roadmaker, of ways “slashed”
through the bush and stretches of corduroy over the swamps.
Meanwhile his wife was not only dressmaker, but spinner and weaver of
stout “homespun”; not only housekeeper, but maker of candles and soap;
not only cook of the daily meals, but baker of bread, when flour could
be got, and contriver of some substitute for it when pounded maize or
Indian meal had to be used instead.
And these lists might be extended indefinitely. The people drank tea
made from a wild plant growing along the edges of the swamps, and
sweetened it with sugar made by boiling the sap drawn in the spring from
their own maple trees. Such articles as spoons were cut from bass wood.
Shoes were fashioned by the father of the family from the skins of the
animals he killed. The arrival, or the making, of the first wheeled
vehicle in some settlements was an event, the only kind of conveyance
used at first being a rude “sled” drawn by oxen.
Chapters might be written on the means by which the Loyalists came to
Canada. Often their journeys from their old homes took weeks. Many came
by sea from New York to the Maritime Provinces, and a piteous sight they
presented, on their arrival, in worn and often positively ragged
clothing. Others came in canoes or heavier wooden boats, making long
roundabout voyages up one stream and down another to Lake Ontario, but
in places having to carry both boats and goods across a long “portage.”
Yet others, of the more fortunate class, who had saved something from
the wreck of their fortunes, travelled in big covered wagons, which
served for tents at night for the women and children; and some brought
in a cow or two as well as the horses or oxen that drew their vehicles.
Many of the Loyalists had lost all, and depended for their new start in
life entirely on the bounty of the government. Others had some means of
subsistence left, not a few having served as officers during the
Revolutionary War and drawing half-pay. They were of all classes, from
ex-officials of the revolted colonies, clergymen, doctors, lawyers, and
merchants to private soldiers, labourers, Indians and even negro slaves.
Many of them were men and women of good education, and one of the most
difficult problems to be faced in the new settlements was the education
of the children. Soon many tiny log school-houses were put up, and the
demand for teachers was so great that anyone who had a smattering of
knowledge had a good chance to be put in charge of a little school.
Often, however, it fell to the mother to give her boys and girls their
first lessons in reading and writing by the hot light of the great fires
that roared up the chimneys on a winter’s evening.
Books in the settlements were few, but generally well read, newspapers
were non-existent, and there are traditions in more than one settlement
of an obliging postmaster, who used to carry the whole “mail” of a
district about with him in his hat, so that he might distribute the
letters as occasion offered.
Amongst these pioneers laboured missionaries of different denominations,
whose experience of toilsome journeys and perils by land and water
resembled those of the Apostles. In canoes, on foot or on horseback they
tried courageously to serve the needs of parishes that are now counties;
and great was the rejoicing when at last some little log-church was
built, though it might have no seats but rough boards set on short
pieces of tree trunks.
In these years of hardship the courageous spirit and the useful
experience of the Loyalists triumphed, and well and truly did they lay
the foundation of a new British nation in the north. Some Americans of
adventurous turn of mind, but not of their political creed, early found
their way into the land; but when in June, 1812, there broke out between
the young American Republic and England a war, which had grown out of
the struggle of the last-named nation with Napoleon, it was the old
spirit of the Loyalists which dominated Canada; and in a long three
years’ conflict they again and again beat back the invaders across their
frontiers. They were indeed well aided by the French of Lower Canada,
and by newcomers from the British Isles; but, whoever might falter, the
Loyalists were determined that their new country should remain British.
This, of course, tended to draw other immigrants loyal to the Empire to
Canada. Of these later immigrants something will be said in dealing with
the separate provinces; but Canada as a whole has never lost her
heritage of loyalty, nor of the independence of spirit which has come to
her from the descendants of the men who forced the Great Charter from
the reluctant tyrant John, and of those who extorted the assent of King
Charles to the Bill of Rights.
As the years went on, it was found difficult in practice to evolve a
system by which the new British-American colonies should have the full
liberty they demanded without weakening the tie binding them to the
Mother-land. When Upper and Lower Canada were separated,
Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe congratulated the former province on
possessing a “transcript of the British constitution,” but the measure
of self-government given was much less than that which the men of the
British Isles had attained; and there was difficulty and blundering and
heart burning, there was even an actual rebellion in the Canadas before
a really satisfactory system of colonial government was worked out.
It is interesting that, to a large extent, the political institutions of
Canada, like those of the Mother-land, are not what might be described
as an invention of any statesman, or group of statesmen, but rather
resemble a living organism, which, in order to survive and grow, has had
to adapt itself to its environment. At first, after the rude shock of
the secession from the Empire of the Thirteen Colonies, British
statesmen were nervously apprehensive that the growth of the new
colonies in wealth and power would inevitably result in their separation
from Britain. Then there arose a school of statesmen, who were prepared
to acquiesce with eagerness in any step on the part of the “overseas
dominions” in the direction of independence. But after more than a
century of dangers and vicissitudes the Canadian provinces are British
still; and the politicians in England who wish to bid them farewell are
no longer numerous.
[Illustration: QUEBEC FROM THE CHÂTEAU FRONTENAC]
That they are British (to return to the point whence we started) is due
above all to the sturdy spirit of the brave old Loyalists who formed the
earliest large accession of British immigrants to Canada. They had their
faults; they were not free from the bitterness and cruelty with which
they charged their victorious opponents. They were martyrs of a lost
cause, and as a class were never remarkably patient sufferers; but they
were undoubtedly fine material for the building of a new nation, and the
debt that Canada owes to them is not to be lightly estimated.
When it appeared (as it soon did appear) that the form of representative
government granted to the colonies was only a shadow of the popular
government of the Mother-land, the liberty-loving colonists began a
persistent and long-continued agitation for a change. The flaws in the
colonial form of government were that at first the representatives of
the people had no control over the finances of the several provinces;
and that the government was administered by the officials of what was
called the “Executive Council,” who were appointed, and could only be
removed, by the royal governor representing the Crown, and were not in
any way responsible to the electors of the colonial Assemblies. The
executive councillors were in a position to bid defiance to the popular
branch, especially as the Legislative Council, or Upper House, of the
colonial legislatures, composed of men appointed by the governor,
usually made common cause with them against the Assemblies. In fact, in
the Canadas many men had seats in both councils; and in Nova Scotia and
New Brunswick one council had both legislative and executive functions.
After a short period, even the governors sent out from England were at a
great disadvantage compared with the councillors, many of whom had spent
the greater part of their lives in the colony. A newly-arrived governor
naturally looked to his councillors for advice and information. It was
they and their families who formed the most important part of his little
court, and if he did not speedily fall under their influence, he had
many difficulties thrown in his way. In Lower Canada the political
troubles were aggravated by the fact that almost all the members of the
legislature and Executive Councils belonged to the small
English-speaking Protestant minority.
For nearly half a century the disputes between the different branches of
the government continued; but at last, after the rebellion of 1837-38,
Lord Durham was sent as High Commissioner to Canada, and though his
conduct of affairs was severely criticized at home, he managed to probe
to the bottom the chronic state of discontent in the colonies; and the
remedy he recommended was that the executive in the colonies should be
made, as in England, responsible to the people, and that the body of
officials in the several provinces should only continue to rule while
they could command the support of a majority in the Assemblies. His
advice was followed, and within a few years all the provinces had
“Responsible Government.”
Thus was forged another link which bound the colonies to the Empire, for
at last the people felt that the Mother-land could no longer be blamed
for any blunders and wrong-doing in the administration of the
governments on this side of the ocean; and the electors knew that if the
government was not so good as it might be, it was at least as good as
those who put it into power deserved to have. The system had also, like
its British model, a flexibility and a capacity for readjustment to new
situations or more advanced views, which made it peculiarly suited to a
land where conditions are constantly changing.
The government has remained to this day essentially British in its
underlying principle of the ultimate responsibility of the cabinet to
the electors, though in some respects, since the confederation of the
provinces, it has had in outward appearance a considerable resemblance
to the government of the United States.
[Illustration: BREAKING THE PRAIRIE BY TRACTOR
AT VEGREVILLE, ALBERTA.]
II
THE DOMINION OF CANADA
HISTORICALLY, the Dominion of Canada was evolved from the separate
provinces; but it will be more convenient here to consider it as a whole
before giving some account of each of the nine provinces separately. In
this chapter, and generally throughout the book, when I speak of Canada,
I mean the Dominion of Canada, though the name was first applied to the
French province on the St. Lawrence, which was sometimes also called New
France. Afterwards, for three-quarters of a century, from 1791 to 1867,
the province now known as Quebec was called Lower Canada, or Canada
East; and that now known as Ontario, Upper Canada, or Canada West.
The immense area of Canada is one of its most striking features. Its
size is one of the reasons that it is a land of great opportunity; it is
also the root of many of the most difficult problems of its government
and development. In area it is over 3½ million square miles; that is to
say, it is a little larger than the United States, or than Europe would
be without France. It stretches from the Atlantic Ocean on the east to
the Pacific on the west, and from the United States boundary on the
south to the Arctic Ocean on the north. The distance from Halifax in
Nova Scotia to Vancouver in British Columbia is about 3,660 miles,
whilst that from Halifax to Liverpool is only about 2,820; and the
traveller, wishing to go from Victoria in Vancouver Island to Dawson in
the Yukon District, has to make a journey by land and water of over
1,500 miles.
It is just as well for the intending immigrant to try to realize that
Canada is a land of “magnificent distances”; otherwise, on his outward
journey, perhaps to some point in the far west, it may seem that the
distance he is putting between himself and his old home is interminable.
With modern conveniences of travel, however, the immigrant of to-day can
come from England and cross Canada to Vancouver in a shorter time than
it took the Loyalists to go from New York to Toronto.
The most southern point of Canada, a little islet in Lake Erie, is only
about the same distance from the equator as is Valladolid in Spain,
whilst Toronto is in nearly the same latitude as Florence, and the new
town of Prince Rupert, far up on the Pacific seaboard of the Dominion,
is not much farther north than Liverpool.
The vast extent of country and the variety in its physical features
cause considerable differences of climate; but generally the interior is
rather colder than the same latitudes in the west of Europe, and the
summer, though hot and dry, is shorter than in Europe. The climate in
the region near the Atlantic is colder than the countries on the
opposite side of that ocean, owing to a cold current which flows
southward along its shores from the Arctic regions; but the Pacific
Coast, which has the benefit of the warm Japanese current, has a climate
very much resembling that of the British Isles.
Upon the whole, however, it may be said that one of the strongest points
of the Canadian climate generally is its amount of sunshine and clear
weather. Even in the high latitudes the summer, though short, is warm,
and, of course, as one goes further north, the possible number of hours
of sunshine in the day during the summer increases, so that growth is
extremely rapid. Thus results the ripening of crops of grain and
vegetables and certain kinds of fruit much farther north than a mere
glance at the map would lead one to expect. There has as yet been little
systematic experiment as to what crops can be grown in the higher
latitudes; but for generations vegetables have been cultivated in the
gardens of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s factors, and also at many a
mission station in the northern wilderness; and it is an interesting
circumstance that the imaginary line beyond which profitable farming has
been supposed impossible has again and again been pushed farther north.
Till within the last half century, indeed, the “North-West Territories”
were held by the Hudson’s Bay Company, and as agriculture and fur
trading are hardly compatible industries, it was not to the interest of
this powerful fur trading corporation to advertise the agricultural
possibilities of the country, nor to set right the popular misconception
of British North America as a land of nothing but snow and ice. It is
quite true that it has snow and ice in plenty; but there is a golden
side to the shield as well as a silver one; and Canada might just as
fairly claim the title of “Our Lady of the Sun” as that of “Our Lady of
the Snows.”
A feature of the Dominion, of which the ordinary small-scale map gives
little idea, is the diversity of surface. Every map indeed suggests in
the west the bold line of the Rocky Mountains, but even in that case
scarcely hints at the fact that between the Pacific Ocean and the
prairie regions, the mountain barrier is ranged rank behind rank, peak
above peak.
In the ordinary map, moreover, the eastern provinces look as level as
the prairies; but they are not so. The Maritime Provinces, Quebec and
Ontario, may be described generally as a land of plains and valleys and
hills, which, in some regions, rise to an elevation deserving the name
of mountains—a word which is used somewhat freely in Canada.
The map usually does make clear to a careful student of it the fact that
the Dominion upon the whole is a land of noble rivers and of lakes, some
small, some large enough to deserve the name of inland seas, though they
have neither the salt of the sea nor its tides; and that Canada does
actually possess one great inland sea, a thousand miles long and six
hundred miles broad, in Hudson Bay. This thrusts itself deep into the
heart of the country, and for a couple of centuries was, as it may soon
be again, a recognized gateway to the interior.
Of course, altitude and “the general lie of the land” have a great
influence on climate as well as latitude. The prairie country is more
correctly a series of plateaux than a great plain; and though one hardly
realizes the fact when travelling across it, there is a great difference
of level between the region about Winnipeg, and that where it approaches
the foot hills of the Rocky Mountains. The altitude of Winnipeg is only
seven hundred and fifty-seven feet above the sea-level, whilst that of
Calgary is actually two hundred feet higher than the topmost peak of Sea
Fell, England’s highest mountain; and perhaps the elevation of much of
the country accounts not only for its being colder than some
corresponding latitudes of the old world, but also for the buoyant
atmosphere in the west, and for the characteristic hopefulness and
eagerness and energy of the people.
A great part of northern Canada is still a wilderness, only partially
explored; and at brief intervals comes news from east or west or north
of some fresh discovery of minerals or water powers; or amazingly
fertile soil, in some region where no one had dreamed hitherto of
reaping a harvest.
This kind of thing gives a curious interest to life in Canada. No doubt
it is akin (on a smaller scale) to the spirit of expectancy and
readiness for adventure which reigned in Europe in the years immediately
following the discovery of America.
But it has been proved over and over again that the gifts of the
wilderness are only to be won at great cost of toil, and struggle, and
loneliness; and few men or women are cut out for the _rôle_ of pioneer.
In Canada hundreds of people every year venture to undertake tasks for
which they are not fitted either by knowledge or previous experience or
natural tastes, and the result is a vast amount of unnecessary suffering
and disappointment, and often loss of health and even life; but I shall
have more to say on this matter when dealing with the subject of the
opportunities for immigrants. Here I would only add that there are
numerous openings for people willing to work in the more settled
communities as well as on the very frontiers of civilization; and that
Canada has a great variety of opportunities to offer on easier
conditions than actual pioneering.
If any one is attempting to obtain a true idea of the resources and
opportunities of the Dominion, he should be very particular to bear in
mind exactly what part of the country his informant is discussing. It is
so large a country that persons talking loosely of what there is or is
not “in Canada,” though their remarks may be perfectly accurate with
regard to one district, may be totally misleading with regard to
another. For example, in the Eastern Provinces, ivy and holly and broom
are never seen growing in the open air, though the first-mentioned plant
is often grown in pots as a house plant; but in Vancouver and Victoria
ivy-covered buildings are as common as in England, and so are hedges and
bushes of glossy holly. It is the same in matters other than vegetation.
There are differences of manner and custom in different localities.
French Canada is a quaint old-world land—how old-world the visitor must
penetrate into the country to discover. But the “habitants,” speaking
their French patois, scarcely differ more in many of their
characteristics from the “go-ahead” English-speaking “Westerners” and
the stalwart Nova Scotian fishermen, than do these two latter types
differ from each other. You may find that your copper coins will not
pass current in a new prairie town, but even a little further east a
“cent” will buy a few things, including an enormous morning newspaper,
excepting on the train.
It is not indeed surprising that there are many cases in which you
cannot judge fairly or accurately of one place by another two thousand
miles or more distant, even if both happen to be in Canada. Perhaps,
indeed, one of the most general characteristics of the country is what
some people might call its incongruities. Take a few instances at
random. Canada has cities, where its richer folk live in luxury, and its
poorest inhabit genuine slums (more’s the pity). It has, too, small
villages and backwoods settlements and country communities, where class
distinctions are of little account. In some towns you may see a smart
up-to-date motor car, cheek by jowl with an ox wagon. It has a goodly
list of well-equipped hospitals, but there are many remote settlements
where a doctor is hardly to be had in direst emergency for love or
money.
The observation that is true in some well-settled districts may not hold
in the depth of its unbroken unexplored woods. One may know “Canada” as
a land of quiet hills and valleys, but perhaps the name stands to his
brother for a “sea of mountains,” with hundreds of “unconquered peaks”
luring the Alpine climber to triumph or disaster. It may be that your
Canada is the wide, open prairie country far inland, beautiful in its
season, with a wealth of bright flowers or square miles of waving wheat;
while the name for me means a rugged coast, where the great Atlantic
rollers beat on cliffs of granite, or toss the white-sailed fishing
boats in too-rough jest or fury.
“Canada” means all these things and many more. Its life is too complex,
its resources too various to be presented satisfactorily in a single
sketch; and yet behind all diversity the name does stand for a real
unity and a growing national consciousness.
[Illustration: 1. BREAKING THE PRAIRIE WITH OXEN,
THUNDER HILL DISTRICT.
2. SETTING OUT FOR THE NEW HOME IN THE WEST.]
III
CONFEDERATION
NOW and for many a year past the whole vast country has been under one
government, and this is a fact that is of a good deal of importance
outside merely political circles. Unlike the Federal Government of its
great neighbour, the several states of which united to resist pressure
from the mother country without, “Confederation” in the case of the
Dominion resulted largely from troubles within the provinces.
After the rebellion of 1837-38, the two provinces of Upper and Lower
Canada were united under one government, with one legislature in which,
though the population of the latter province was considerably larger
than that of the former, each province was represented in the House of
Assembly by forty-two members elected by the people, and in the
Legislative Council by ten councillors appointed for life by the
governor. The French naturally objected to this arrangement. They also
objected to the assumption by the new province of the debts of both
older ones, when the debt of Lower Canada was much smaller than that of
Upper Canada; for, though part of the debt of the latter had been
incurred in making canals and other improvements likely to be of
advantage to the country generally, the French Canadians had, of course,
never been consulted about the spending of the money.
In process of time, however, the relative position of the
uneasily-yoked-together provinces altered.
In 1853 a bill was brought in, increasing the number of members of the
Assembly from forty-two for each province to sixty-five. By this time
the population of Upper Canada had outstripped that of the Lower
Province, and there arose a demand amongst the English-speaking people
for representation in proportion to population.
It is not surprising that the French Canadians, who had at first been
the party to suffer by the forced equality of membership, resented and
resisted the agitation for “Rep. by Pop.,” as it was often called. At
that time it seemed as if the long-desired boon of responsible
government were going to prove a failure in Canada, for the
representatives of the people were split up into so many different
groups—French and English; Reformers and Conservatives, both moderate
and extreme, none of whom could arrive at any means of working
harmoniously together. Any one of the numerous parties, standing alone,
was sure to be outvoted; and it sometimes happened that opponents would
unite to drive a third party from power, but not to give strength to any
government.
The rivalry between the representatives of the French and English
provinces was most dangerous to the principle of responsible government,
for it could, and did happen, that measures affecting only one of the
provinces were forced upon it by a majority drawn chiefly from the other
province; and this caused very bitter and angry feeling. For instance,
in this way a number of separate public schools for the Roman Catholics
were firmly established in Upper Canada. Some people asserted,
therefore, that it was the duty of a government to resign office if
outvoted on a particular measure by the representatives of the province
chiefly concerned, even though the majority of the whole House might be
with it.
Another grave difficulty was that it led to grievous waste of the public
money, for if money were voted for some public work in one province, an
equal amount, whether needed or not, was usually voted for the other.
These complications absolutely paralysed the working of the system of
Party Responsible Government. Ministers rose and fell; dissolution of
parliament succeeded dissolution; but there was no sign of any end to
the confusion.
In different parts of British North America the plan of a Confederation
of the Provinces, with one central government to control matters common
to all, and provincial legislatures to manage local affairs, was
advocated from time to time. The Maritime Provinces of Nova Scotia, New
Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island had their own problems and
difficulties, and in 1864 their statesmen agreed to meet at
Charlottetown, in Prince Edward Island, to discuss the question of a
union amongst themselves.
By that time affairs in United Canada (was there ever a greater
misnomer?) had reached a positive deadlock. At the beginning of the
year, in succession to a reform ministry, which had only weathered the
political tempests for a few months, Sir Etienne Taché and Mr.
(afterwards Sir) John A. Macdonald had formed a Conservative government.
Even at first they had a bare majority and presently they were outvoted
by a majority so narrow that there was not any reasonable ground for
hope that if they resigned, their opponents would be less helpless, or
that if parliament were dissolved parties would be less evenly balanced.
A dissolution seemed inevitable, however, when there arose a sudden
light in the darkness.
George Brown, the leader of the English-speaking reformers, came to the
rescue and promised the support of himself and his party to the
ministers, if they would seriously set themselves to find a way out of
the difficulty. Macdonald and his coadjutors met their old opponents
half way. A coalition government was formed, and it was decided to try
to form a federal, in place of a legislative, union, including all the
provinces or the two Canadas alone. It is needless here to dwell on the
delays and difficulties with which the project was beset. In October,
1864, representatives of Upper and Lower Canada, and of the Maritime
Provinces, including Newfoundland, met at Quebec to formulate a scheme
of confederation; but neither of the two island provinces made part of
the Dominion of Canada, as it commenced its existence on July 1, 1867.
Prince Edward Island came into the union six years later; but
Newfoundland stands aloof to this day.
The British North America Act of the Imperial parliament, which finally
gave effect to the desire of the provinces for union, embodied, with
little alteration, the scheme agreed upon at Quebec in 1864. The act
provided for the admission into confederation of other provinces besides
the original four, and, as has already been mentioned, the Dominion of
Canada now consists of nine provinces besides some large tracts of
unorganized and sparsely populated territory in the north.
The Dominion parliament has power to make laws for “the peace, order and
good government of Canada,” except with regard to certain matters put
under the jurisdiction of the provincial legislatures. The parliament
consists of the King (represented by the Governor-General), an Upper
House, or Senate, and a Lower House, or House of Commons.
The Senate consists of eighty-three members, who are appointed for life
by the Governor-in-Council, but no man who is under thirty years of age,
or not by birth or naturalization a British subject, is eligible for
appointment. He must also be possessed of real or personal property
worth $4,000 (£800), and must be, and continue to be, a resident of the
province for which he is appointed.
The House of Commons consists (at present) of two hundred and fourteen
members, elected with regard to a fair representation of the relative
population of the different sections of the country by the following
plan:—The province of Quebec has always sixty-five members, and the
other provinces have a number of members bearing the same proportion to
their populations as sixty-five bears to the population of Quebec. The
representation is adjusted after every decennial census—the last census
being taken in 1911. The population of the West naturally increases much
faster than that of the older provinces, and consequently every census
requires a readjustment in favour of the West. For instance, during the
decade following the census of 1891, Ontario had ninety-two members and
Manitoba had only seven, but since 1901 the number of Ontario’s members
has dropped to eighty-six, while that of Manitoba has risen to ten, and
the next readjustment, which is already overdue, will show an even
greater change in the balance of population.
In the Dominion, as in the provincial parliaments, the principle
followed is that of responsible cabinet government; and in this
important respect it resembles the British system, and differs from the
government of the United States. In the latter country, the appointment
of all the chief executive officers rests with the President, subject to
the consent of the Senate. Thus, as Professor Goldwin Smith puts it,
“instead of a ministry responsible to the legislature and dependent for
existence on its vote, America has a ministry independent of the
legislature and irremovable during its term of four years.” But, in
Canada, when a man takes office in the ministry he must go back to his
constituents for re-election; and though the normal life of the House of
Commons is five years, it may be dissolved at any time by the
Governor-General on the advice of his ministers. Of course, if a cabinet
is defeated it must resign and give place to one which has the
confidence of the House. In this way, the will of the people (or it
would be more correct to say of the men, for women have as yet no voice
in the election of members to parliament) is supreme in Canada; and they
must, in the last resort, hold themselves responsible for the doings of
the men whom they put or retain in office.
[Illustration: THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT, OTTAWA]
The qualifications entitling persons to vote are the same with regard to
the Dominion House of Commons and the provincial legislatures. Women are
excluded from voting on any but municipal elections, and males must be
of the age of twenty-one years and be British citizens by birth or
naturalization. In Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British
Columbia the vote is given after a term of residence varying from six to
twelve months (practically to every adult male citizen, though he may be
utterly illiterate and ignorant of either the English or French
tongues). In the Maritime Provinces even an adult male citizen cannot
vote, unless he has been resident for twelve months in the province, and
has qualifications “based” on ownership of real property, position as
teacher or clergyman, personal property or income. The same applies to
Quebec, except that in that province the would-be voter may qualify in
one month’s residence.
By the British North America Act, the Dominion parliament has control of
all matters not specially assigned to the provincial legislatures. This
is another respect in which the Canadian constitution differs from that
of the United States, where “the residuum of power” was retained by the
States which entered into the Federal Union. In other words, in the
United States all matters not specially put under the jurisdiction of
the central authority remain to be dealt with by the individual states;
while in Canada the authority of the Dominion parliament extends to all
affairs not specially reserved to the jurisdiction of the provinces.
In general terms, the Dominion parliament has power to make laws
regarding affairs that concern all the provinces, but a number of
matters are specially enumerated as being within the jurisdiction of the
central government. These are as follows:—Public debt and property;
trade and commerce; taxation (any system) and the borrowing of money on
the public credit; the postal service; the census and statistics;
militia, military and naval service and defence; the fixing of salaries
for government officers; lighthouses and coast service; navigation and
shipping; fisheries; quarantine; currency and banking; weights and
measures; interest; legal tender; bankruptcy, and the general financial
and commercial system; patents and copyrights; Indians and reserves for
Indians; naturalization; marriage and divorce; the criminal law and
penitentiaries; the territories not within the boundaries of any
province and the establishment of new provinces.
The matters put under the control of the provinces are:—The amendment
of the provincial constitutions (except as to the lieutenant-governor);
direct taxation and borrowing of money on the provincial credit for
provincial purposes; provincial officials; management and sale of
provincial public lands and forests; regulation of asylums, hospitals,
charities, reformatories and jails; municipal institutions; shop, tavern
and other licences; solemnization of marriage; property and civil
rights; constitution and maintenance of provincial courts of civil and
criminal jurisdiction; the appointment of magistrates and justices of
the peace; education, with certain exceptions as to the separate schools
of religious minorities; and local works and matters of a merely private
nature in a province.
With regard to immigration and agriculture, both Dominion and provincial
parliaments may legislate, but in case of conflicting legislation the
Dominion Act overrules the provincial. The Governor-in-Council of the
Dominion may disallow an Act of a provincial parliament, within one year
of its passing, and the Imperial government in like manner may disallow
an Act passed by the Dominion parliament within two years after its
receipt by the Secretary of State for the Colonies; but the power of
disallowance is used very rarely. If an Act passed by the Dominion or a
provincial parliament exceeds, as sometimes happens, the powers given
under the British North America Act, the courts may declare it _ultra
vires_—that is, “beyond the powers” of the legislature which enacted
it. The provinces may neither organize nor maintain a provincial
military force; and here again the constitution of Canada differs from
that of the United States, under which each State may have a military
force.
The revenue of the Dominion is obtained from taxation (largely in the
form of duties on imported goods), “from receipts from the sales of the
crown lands, from the post office, from railways, canals and other
sources.” Upon their entrance into confederation each of the provinces
resigned its right to levy indirect taxes; and in place of this each
province receives a subsidy from the Dominion.
The Dominion at the time of Confederation took over the public debts of
the several provinces; and further debts have been incurred in the
building of canals, railways, and other public works. To set against
these the Dominion possesses immensely valuable assets in her millions
of acres of ungranted lands and in her state-owned railways, canals, and
public buildings for various purposes.
Since Confederation the provinces have also incurred public debts,
largely in constructing works to improve communication, and in the
erection of public buildings.
The capital of the Dominion is the city of Ottawa, beautifully situated
on the right bank, or Ontario side, of the Ottawa river, which forms a
considerable part of the boundary between the provinces of Quebec and
Ontario.
Ottawa was founded by a gallant English officer, Colonel John By, after
whom the original little village built at the point where the Rideau
river falls into the Ottawa, was called Bytown. The name—quaintly
suggestive of the _Pilgrim’s Progress_—would not have been as
euphonious a title for the metropolis of the Dominion as is Ottawa; but
one cannot help regretting that this tribute to By should have been
swept from the map, for he certainly deserves remembrance. He came to
Canada in 1802, when he had just reached manhood, and was stationed for
nine years in the picturesque old capital of Quebec. He was recalled to
serve in the Peninsular war, but in the spring of 1826 received orders
to go again to Canada to superintend the construction of the Rideau
canal. The experiences of the war of 1812 had made the authorities
desirous to open another route for the transportation of troops and
supplies to the upper country than that by the St. Lawrence, which was
much at the mercy of the Americans, and so it was decided to construct a
system of canals and dams and locks to connect and improve the natural
waterways and give communication between the Ottawa river and Kingston
on Lake Ontario.
The task was a difficult one. The country was then scarcely inhabited,
and the work had to be carried through tracts of swamp and morass, where
the surveyors and workmen frequently contracted fever and ague; but By
refused to be discouraged. For six years his stalwart, soldierly figure,
often mounted on a coal-black charger, was a familiar sight in the
mushroom village which sprang up on the southern bank of the Ottawa or
Grand river.
Besides civilian workmen, he had at his command a company of sappers and
miners, a fact recalled to-day by the name of the “Sappers’ Bridge” at
Ottawa; and traditions still linger of his perseverance, his
determination to accept no scamped work, and his kindness of heart. One
all but completed dam went down before an ice-jam, and a new bridge was
swept away by a spring flood; but the indomitable colonel took these
disasters merely as a challenge to build more strongly, and at last the
whole waterway, one hundred and twenty-six miles in length, with its
twenty-four dams and its forty-seven locks, was open for navigation.
In the same year the colonel was called home, not to receive praise and
honour for his achievement, but to serve, it has been said, as “a
scapegoat” for the government, which had been attacked for spending
public moneys without the authority of parliament. The blow was
crushing, and falling into “low spirits,” the gallant gentleman could no
longer triumph over misfortunes, but died a few months later in his
fifty-third year.
But Bytown prospered. Till the St. Lawrence canals were completed the
whole trade between Upper and Lower Canada passed through the rough
little village, and to visitors it seemed that Bytown folk were too busy
to pave their streets or to think of gardens or flowers. The Upper and
Lower towns on either side of the hill, then crowned by the barracks,
now by the parliament buildings, were separate villages. Then, as now,
it was a great lumbering centre, and there were wild doings when gangs
of lumber-jacks came down from the woods for business or pleasure.
Whiskey was deplorably cheap, and the woodsmen often fought savagely
amongst themselves, or with the Irish “shiners” who rafted the lumber
down the river; and sometimes they made “felonious assault” on
unoffending citizens. But despite the rude accompaniments of the lumber
trade, it was building up Bytown, which was incorporated as a town with
six thousand inhabitants fifteen years after the completion of the
Rideau canal. Eight years later it became a city, and changed its name
to Ottawa.
In the fifties, there was an inconvenient arrangement, by which the
cities of Toronto and Quebec served alternately for four years each as
capital of Upper and Lower Canada (then united), but in 1857 Queen
Victoria was asked to name a permanent capital. On account of its
central position with regard to the two provinces, its distance from the
international boundary line; and above all, perhaps, because of
descriptions which she had heard of the striking beauty of its site, Her
Majesty made choice of Ottawa. The erection of the beautiful parliament
buildings was soon afterwards begun, and at Confederation the city
became the capital of the Dominion, whilst the rank of provincial
capital was restored to the larger city of Toronto.
Ottawa, with its suburbs, now has about one hundred and twenty-five
thousand people and its chief interests are still lumber and
legislation. A little army of its breadwinners finds employment, in some
capacity or other, in connection with the business of government. Each
of the departments of state has, of course, a large staff, from experts
of various descriptions down to clerks and office boys.
The official residence of the Governor-General is Rideau Hall. This
long, low, rambling erection is hardly picturesque, though it is
decidedly old-fashioned. It stands in pleasant grounds, and its nucleus,
“the Castle,” as it was called, was built in 1838, by a Scottish member
of parliament, named McKay. The original house had a score of rooms, but
the present-day Hall has over a hundred, which have been added from time
to time to suit the convenience of its noble occupants. For instance,
the great ballroom dates from Lord Dufferin’s time; while the racquet
court was built by the Marquis of Lorne, a studio by the artistic
Marchioness, and the chapel by the Earl of Aberdeen.
Other places at Ottawa of national interest, either for what they are or
for what they may become, are its museums, its National Art Gallery, its
Royal Mint and the Archives Building, which houses a collection of
extremely valuable historical documents.
IV
LANDS AND THE PEOPLE
IN my last chapter I mentioned the ungranted public lands as amongst
the assets of the Dominion. Apart from the vast area of land north of
the limits of the provinces, the Crown, according to a recently
published official estimate, still holds the title to many millions of
acres of “ungranted, surveyed public lands in Manitoba, Saskatchewan,
and Alberta in addition to a vast quantity of good land yet unsurveyed.”
The public lands in the Eastern Provinces are owned by the provinces,
but in every section of Canada lands may be obtained by the _bonâ fide_
settler, either as free grants, or at a very small rate of payment. This
matter will, however, be referred to again later.
Lands offered for settlement in the provinces of the middle west are
laid out in blocks six miles square, called townships. Each of these
townships is divided into thirty-six sections of one mile square. The
sections are again divided into quarters; and the homesteads offered as
free grants by the Dominion government on certain conditions as to
residence upon and improvement of the land; each contain one-quarter
section, or one hundred and sixty acres. (For the land regulations as to
free grants and pre-emptions, see Appendix, Note B, p. 297.) Within a
certain area two sections in each township have been allotted to the
Hudson’s Bay Company, two are reserved for the support of schools,
sixteen are held for sale or have been given as land grants in aid of
colonization railways, and the remaining sixteen are, or have been, open
to homesteaders.
During the fiscal year of 1911-12, over thirty-nine thousand heads of
families, or single men, made homestead entries, taking up over six and
a quarter millions of acres. In the same year the railway companies and
the Hudson’s Bay Company sold between eighteen and nineteen million
acres of land; and it is predicted that before another decade has gone
by “Canada’s balance of population will be west of Lake Superior.” This
may or may not be true, for there is no province in Canada that is not
well able to support a much larger population than it has at present;
and in every province new opportunities are offering themselves.
In connection with its ownership of the crown lands, the Dominion
government assumed at Confederation the guardianship of the Indians,
descendants of the ancient lords of the soil. In the drama of Canadian
history, especially in its earlier scenes, the Indians play a part that
is tragically interesting, whether regarded from the point of view of
the settlers, or from that of the wild people themselves, as they were
driven deeper into the wilderness, and sank gradually from the position
of being reckoned with and feared into that of a comparatively feeble
folk, bewildered by the necessity of adaptation to new conditions.
The Canadian Indians, though of many different tribes, have been placed
by ethnologists in three or four chief groups. The largest group
numerically, and the most widespread, was the Algonquin, to which belong
the Micmacs of Nova Scotia, the Ottawas and Ojibways of Central Canada,
the Crees of the Middle West, and many other tribes.
A second group—the Huron-Iroquois—was, in many respects, remarkable.
The Iroquois tribes are notable for having entered into a confederation
from which they were often called “The Five Nation Indians.” This
alliance gave them a vast advantage over isolated tribes in their savage
warfare; and made them for the best part of a century a menace and a
terror to the French. They occupied a very advantageous position in what
is now New York State, upon a “Height of Land” from which flowed streams
in every direction, serving as waterways for their canoes and enabling
them to descend with ease and rapidity into the enemy’s country. They
were usually friendly to the English colonists; but again and again
during the early days did their utmost to destroy the infant settlements
of the French and to annihilate the latter’s Indian allies.
Many years later the famous Mohawk, Brant, and others of the Iroquois
sided with the English in the Revolutionary War, and at its close were
granted lands like other loyalists in Canada. The city of Brantford, on
the Grand River, was named after the chief, and near to it is the
“Mohawk Reserve,” comprising over forty-three thousand six hundred
acres, where some four thousand Indians still dwell.
[Illustration: THE PRAIRIE AT ELSTOW, SASKATCHEWAN]
Akin in race and language to the Iroquois, but in a constant state of
hostility to them, were the Hurons, living near the Georgian bay.
Amongst them, in the seventeenth century, the Jesuit fathers from France
established, at great sacrifice of ease and comfort, a flourishing
mission, but in 1648-49 the mission villages were swept out of existence
by hordes of Iroquois; many of the missionaries were martyred, and the
Hurons, utterly broken, were driven to seek refuge near the French
towns.
The Iroquois and Hurons were in some respects more advanced than the
Algonquin tribes. They had the art of making strong palisades about
their towns, of several concentric rows of tree trunks planted upright
in the ground, and they used shields of skin and a curious armour of
twigs interwoven with cords, which formed a great protection against
arrows. They also cultivated the ground to some extent, grew maize and
sunflowers, and kept hogs. The Algonquins, on the other hand, trusted
for food entirely to hunting and fishing, and to what they could gather
in the woods.
None of the Indians had a written language, but some practised
picture-writing, that is, making rude drawings on bark or skins for the
conveyance of information; and they used also to weave shell beads,
called “wampum,” into collars and belts of curious devices, which
represented certain ideas. These belts were used as mementoes and
records of matters of importance, such as a treaty made with another
tribe; and were given into the custody of old men who were expected to
remember and explain their signification.
In this connection it is interesting to recall that about the middle of
last century, a Methodist missionary, Evans, invented a method of
writing the Indian languages, which can be learnt by an Indian of
ordinary intelligence in a very few lessons. The signs represent
syllables, not letters to be combined into syllables. This system of
reducing the languages to writing has made possible a very large
circulation of the Bible, or parts of it, amongst Indians, who would
have had no opportunity of learning to read by such methods as our own.
Liberal provision, however, has been made for the education of the
Indians dwelling in the more settled regions.
A third great group of the aborigines of Canada comprises the Indians of
the western mountains and the Pacific Coast and islands. These tribes
were generally fierce and warlike; and were remarkable for their huge
canoes, each made from the trunk of a single tree; for their enormous,
grotesquely-carved totem poles; and for many singular customs.
Scattered along the thousands of miles of Canada’s northern coasts are
the Eskimos—“eaters of raw flesh”—or Innuits—“the People” as they
call themselves. From a consideration of some of the resemblances in
their implements and ornaments, made of bone and antlers and teeth of
animals, and decorated with spirited drawings of men and beasts—some
scientists believe them to be akin to “the Cavemen,” of whom traces have
been found in France and Great Britain. Their hovels (often half
underground) of earth and turf resemble caves; but they have been known
to turn bones to account for building material, and everyone knows of
their habit of making a temporary shelter of snow built up in blocks
into a curious beehive-like shape. They are a stout, sturdy people, who,
living under conditions which the white races find almost unendurable,
are remarkable for cheerfulness and good humour.
In 1871, when the first Dominion census was taken, it was estimated that
the Eskimo and Indian population numbered a little over 102,000. In
1912, the number of Indians was returned at 104,956, an increase of
nearly 1,300 since the census taken in the previous year. In some
districts the Indian population is decreasing; in the older provinces,
where the Indians are more civilized, there is an increase. That it is
very difficult to form an exact estimate of the numbers of the wild
people of the Dominion is shown by the very recent discovery of a
hitherto unknown tribe of Eskimo, in the Coppermine River district, east
of the mouth of the Mackenzie.
Upon the whole the early French settlers and rulers treated the Indians
with more consideration and generosity than did the English colonists.
In many instances, indeed, the French bushrangers and their leaders
(though the latter were not infrequently of gentle birth and education)
carried their complacency to the Indians so far as to adopt their
manners and habits of life, sinking themselves almost to a state of
savagery. The better aspect of the situation, however, appealed to the
men who conquered Canada, and the British government of the country has,
in the main, like its predecessor, treated the Indian with consideration
and justice.
As the land has been required for white settlement, the government has
entered “into treaty” with its Indian possessors, setting apart reserves
for them and making allowances of money for their support and education.
The Indians of the Dominions are in very different stages of
civilization; in fact, a small minority are still pagans, practising
polygamy, and various heathen rites. There are in different parts 325
Indian schools, having on their rolls the names of 11,300 pupils. A few
of the more progressive Indians have taken advantage of provisions in
the law by which they may obtain the electoral franchise; but many are
still content to remain “the Wards of the Nation,” a position which some
people think not wholly desirable for adults of any race.
From the consideration of the ancient people of the land, it is a
natural transition to the newcomers. In the history of the Dominion
there has been a recurrent high and low tide in the coming of settlers.
But its flood has never before reached such proportions as within the
last decade; and the most recent year for which the figures are
attainable shows an immensely larger number of new arrivals than ever
before. Of the total number of immigrants in the sixteen years ending
March 31, 1912, nearly three-quarters were English-speaking people from
the British Isles and the United States; but the remaining quarter
represents an amazing number of nations, peoples and languages, the
absorption of whom is one of the most difficult problems which Canada
has to face. In the year of 1911-12, 82,406 foreigners came into the
country.
In every large city it is coming to pass that there is a markedly
foreign quarter; and many of the older people remain foreigners to all
intents and purposes. The women especially, mixing less with their
neighbours than the men, are usually slow to learn English; but the
children pick it up quickly, and with it some at least of the ideas
(good and bad) of the new land. Some of the foreigners come to Canada
with the hope of making money and returning to their native countries;
but many are anxious to remain. An alien, before making entry for a free
grant of land, must declare his intention of becoming a British subject;
and is obliged to be naturalized before he can receive a legal patent to
the land upon which he has done homestead duties. But he must live three
years in Canada before he can be naturalized.
The American immigrants are usually of a class which the Dominion
particularly needs, many of them being farmers, who have had experience
under somewhat similar agricultural and climatic conditions in the
north-western States. They frequently bring not only experience, but a
considerable amount of capital and stock; and altogether, being in a
position to make the best of the country, they win success for
themselves and demonstrate the capabilities of the land, in a fashion
which the man from the “Old Country,” especially if he be town-bred, can
rarely at once attain. Their methods have the advantage also of giving
an object-lesson to other less experienced immigrants, which save the
intelligent and those willing to learn from making blunders.
As to the political view of the matter, the coming of these farmers from
across “the line” does not as a rule give much anxiety to Canadians with
regard to its effect on the permanence of the British connection, for
the newcomers generally are satisfied that they have as much liberty
under the Canadian system of government as under the American; and the
most restless of them are more keenly occupied with money-making than
with politics. Sometimes, however, the galling of the protective tariff,
which presses unequally on different classes, provokes loud protests
from the agricultural populations, particularly in the West; and there
are signs that these protests will grow more vigorous and insistent with
time.
The city-bred British immigrant is distinctly at a disadvantage with
regard to experience, but if he is willing to take measures to learn
before embarking in farming or any other enterprise with the details of
which he is unfamiliar there is no reason why he, too, should not
succeed. If the British immigrant has the appearance of being likely to
“make good,” no one is more gladly welcomed than he; but no immigrant of
any nationality unlikely to succeed gets a welcome at all.
The question, “Are Canadians loyal?” with reference to such matters is
sometimes much discussed. From long experience in the country, I should
answer the question broadly in the affirmative. I should be even
inclined to think that the Canadians value the British connection more
highly to-day than twenty or thirty years ago; and that the strength of
sentiment towards the British sovereign and “the Empire” has increased
with the increase of the liberty granted by the Mother-land to the
Dominion to work in her own way towards her ideal of nationhood.
Whatever may have been the case in the past, at present I firmly believe
that that ideal is one of a free nation within an Empire, bound together
by those ties of kinship and similarity of ideal and sentiment (let us
not blush to use the word) without which the coarser ties of common
governmental institutions and commercial enactments become very brittle
and often vexatious.
As a nation, Great Britain has long ceased the attempt, which ended so
disastrously with her older American colonies, to exploit her
“possessions” in the interests of her merchants and shipowners, and, of
late years, she has adopted a very sympathetic attitude towards the
natural desire of the free-born British peoples in the “overseas
dominions” to be permitted to come of age nationally, and to have at
least some control over their connections with the outside world. That
this desire for control of their own affairs should involve
responsibility for their own defence, Canadians are beginning to
realize; but what direction the acceptance of this responsibility will
take is yet undecided.
But to return to the immigrant. Strenuous efforts are made to bar the
Dominion’s doors against undesirables, including the physically and
mentally unfit, and those so poor as to be in danger of becoming a
burden on the community. Some people feel that the immigration
regulations are too stringent, and are sometimes applied to individuals
in an over-drastic fashion. It may be that in the anxiety to avoid
possible burdens, the doors are sometimes shut against those who, given
a chance, would prove a source of benefit to the new land, whose vast,
empty acres cry aloud for people.
But whether or not the existing regulations could be improved upon,
while they are in force, no wise man intending to settle in Canada will
neglect to find out before starting what they are, and whether he can
satisfy the requirements.
Many Canadians view the rapid influx of immigrants with anxiety, lest
the Dominion should fail to assimilate these streams of new arrivals
pouring in annually; and in a measure the severe restrictions on
immigration are due to this anxiety. It is true in every land that the
mistakes or successes of one generation may profoundly affect the
well-being of generations to come; but in a country like Canada the
public-spirited feel that blunders of to-day, possibly only affecting a
mere handful of people, may be bringing misery on populations multiplied
a thousandfold to-morrow. Happily it is not only blunders that are
subjected to the process of multiplication and magnification; and in
quietness and patience (scarcely noticed amidst the buzz of advertising
and boasting of the great things to be) some people are earnestly
labouring to begin the building of the new nation well; and perhaps are
actually building better than they know. In the social freedom of the
new lands, men and women of strong character count for much in either
good or evil.
Upon the whole, the people of the Dominion are law-abiding. Unlike the
republic to the south, the punishment of criminals has been made a
matter of Dominion (instead of provincial) concern. The criminal law is
one for the whole country, and justice is administered with a steady
hand. In the prairie provinces, the North-West Mounted Police force,
organized in 1873, has proved its efficiency in maintaining law and
order through leagues of wilderness, in the lumber camps, and in the
mines which draw together the roving and adventurous from every part of
the globe. In 1913 the force consisted of some 50 officers and 576 men,
distributed in 73 detachments in Alberta, 83 in Saskatchewan, 8 in the
Yukon and several in the North-West Territories.
Compared to many European nations, Canadians are a temperate people, and
in many municipalities there is “prohibition.” Setting the present
situation with regard to drunkenness against the state of things sixty
or seventy years ago, the comparison is immensely in favour of the
present day; for, in that early time, whiskey was manufactured in rude
distilleries all over the country, and could be bought by the gallon for
a few cents. Strong drink was expected by men working in the harvest
fields or coming together in a threshing or raising “bee”; and many were
the tragedies which resulted from this pernicious custom. Gentlemen
counted drunkenness no disgrace, and it was a common fault of the
officers of the garrison at Halifax and elsewhere.
In comparison, however, with conditions a few years ago, the showing is
not satisfactory. In fact, it has been stated recently that “Canada’s
drinking and criminal record is increasing faster than the population.”
Some observers think that this is owing in part at least to the number
of newcomers from less temperate countries, and “to the concentration of
population in the large cities of the Dominion,” but, at the same time,
“progress towards the general adoption of prohibition is certain and
rapid.”
Taking Canada as a whole, excellent provision is made for education. The
systems vary a little in the different provinces, but the common schools
are everywhere free; and there are comparatively few native-born
Canadians who cannot at least read and write.
In 1910-11 Canada had over 1,197,000 pupils in her schools, and a small
army of thirty-four thousand teachers, a very large proportion of whom
are women. The schools are the chief of all the forces for the
Canadianizing, if not of this generation of adult foreign immigrants, at
least of their children. The central government spends hundreds of
thousands of dollars annually on the education of the Indians, and in
each province a very considerable proportion of all money devoted to
public uses is spent for education. In the prairie provinces millions of
acres of land have been reserved by the Dominion government to be sold
gradually for the support of schools. All schools below the grade of
High Schools are free to children between the ages of five and fifteen;
and High Schools in all the cities and large towns are free to resident
pupils. The number of children for whom a school district can be
organized in the western provinces varies from eight in Alberta to
twenty in British Columbia.
With the exception of Prince Edward Island, which can take advantage of
the universities in neighbouring provinces; and of British Columbia,
which has colleges at Vancouver and Victoria affiliated with McGill
University, and has recently set apart two million acres of public land
for the endowment of a provincial university—each province has one or
more universities. The University of McGill at Montreal is the richest
of Canada’s universities; and that of Toronto, with over 4,100 students
in 1913, is the largest.
An interesting fact in connection with all Canadian universities is that
a large proportion of their students are drawn from classes by no means
wealthy; and numbers of the undergraduates are “putting themselves
through,” as it is sometimes called. Many of these, having been engaged
as teachers or in some business, have saved a sum of money for the
payment of the expenses of part of their course. To eke this out, they
seek employment in the long summer vacation, which, happily for them,
coincides with the busy season, when men are in demand for every form of
work; and a resolute student usually finds something to do. If he is not
of the physique to go into the harvest fields, he may find employment as
a timekeeper over a gang of foreign labourers, a waiter in a summer
hotel, or a teacher in some scattered settlement which can only aspire
as yet to a summer school. Given reasonably good health, a determined
man will usually find or make a way to earn something in the summer; and
such are the men who make the most of what can be gained from their
hard-won courses of instruction in the winter.
At intervals people lift up their voices in protest over the readiness
with which poor men’s sons can rise into the professional classes, and
imagine that it accounts, in part at least, for the continuous movement
townward from the country districts; but there would surely be more loss
than gain to Canadian life in general if any class of young people could
be shut up by lack of wealth or other disability to the vocation of
their fathers. Canada, though it has a growing wealthy class, and, alas,
a growing submerged one, is a long way yet from the fixed “caste” idea.
The healthier recognition of a possible connection between the
aspiration for college education amongst country-bred youths and the
deserted farms in some of the older provinces, is the attempt made to
lift agriculture to its true position amongst the great industries as a
scientific profession. For long years agricultural societies have been
working to stimulate the ambition of farmers in their own line of work.
But this was not enough. It is possible for a dullard and an ignoramus
to pick a meagre living from amongst the weeds of a neglected farm; but
it takes not only brains, but cultivated brains, to farm well. No man is
too good, whatever a “smart” lad may think, for the foundation industry
of the world; and no farmer can have a too good educational equipment
for this work. Perhaps the people of the Dominion, when reviewing what
has been done in this country for education, have a reasonably good
right to look with pleasure on the effort to bring well-trained minds to
bear on agriculture. At sixteen different points in the Dominion, there
are Government experimental farms, and the result of their work in
testing seeds and methods suitable to various soils and conditions,
finding out good stock and so forth, are at the free service of the
farmers. Nor is this all. For nearly forty years Ontario has had in the
Agricultural College at Guelph, a school, at once practical and
scientific, for farmers; and this is only one of several agricultural
colleges, while in the new University of Saskatchewan, one of the first
departments to be organized was that of agriculture.
In connection with the colleges and universities are short courses—in
England they would probably be called “University Extension”
lectures—on agriculture and subjects related to the farm, especially
designed for the benefit of dairymen, threshermen, housewives,
beekeepers, etc., etc. The imparting of the special knowledge to make a
scientific instead of a blundering amateur “thresherman” fits in oddly
at first sight with one’s preconceived notions of a university; but why
should the extension downward in such utilitarian directions—the
striking deep of its roots into the common earth—prevent a great
educational institution flowering freely in the higher realms of science
and art and philosophy?
There is another aspect to the case. I was much interested, a few months
ago, on a chance conversation in a train with an old western farmer of
rugged aspect, by his remark that the institution of college and
university courses in agriculture would tend to raise the young fellows
of the farming classes in their own eyes and in those of other people,
and would also enable them better to hold their proper place in the
country. (I give the substance of his remarks, not his words.) Now, it
is a fact that the Canadian farmer is, as a rule, a much less
self-assertive and a more retiring being than his brother—the doctor,
the merchant, the manufacturer, the lawyer or the politician, as the
case may be; and sometimes his interests suffer on account of his
modesty. Nevertheless, there are not a few men amongst the farmers who
are of excellent intellectual capabilities. They are men who think,
moreover, and some day, now that they are beginning to organize
themselves, the result of their thinking will have considerably more
effect on the public life of the Dominion than it has had hitherto.
In the various provinces there has been a widespread movement of late
years in the direction of the formation of farmers and country-women’s
clubs or institutes, which not only serve as a means for the
dissemination of information, but give a much-needed stimulus to the
social life of thinly settled districts, where hitherto (in the case of
the women especially) the churches have been the chief social factor.
The churches will continue, both in town and country, to be of account
in the social side of life, apart from their primary importance as
definite religious agencies. According to the latest census there were
in Canada over 2,833,000 adherents of the Roman Catholic church, which
gains immense strength from its solidarity. The Protestants, on the
other hand, though stronger numerically, are split up into numerous
divisions, and in hundreds of little villages throughout the Dominion,
there are three or four churches of different denominations, whilst
numberless other places have no church at all. This over-lapping adds
immensely to the toils, and perhaps detracts from the efficiency, of the
country ministers and missionaries as a body. But projects of union are
in the air, and there is hope that the several great Protestant churches
may devise some plan of working together much more than has been done
hitherto, even if they do not accomplish the corporate union which many
of their adherents desire. In numerical strength the Protestant churches
come in the following order:—Presbyterians, Methodists, Anglicans,
Baptists, and a large number of smaller organizations. Apart from
definite efforts by the churches themselves to arrive at some basis of
union, there are numerous inter-denominational associations which are
tending towards unity. One of the most notable of these is the organized
effort, known as the “Laymen’s Missionary Movement,” to arouse the
interest of business men in missions. This organization, first started
in the United States, has resulted in largely increased giving for
missionary purposes.
The immense immigration to Canada of foreigners and others necessitates
constantly increasing effort on the part of the churches to keep abreast
of their duties and opportunities; and amongst the numbers of newcomers
there is much call to foreign missionary work within the borders of the
Dominion, if it is to remain, in anything more than name, a Christian
country. For instance, Montreal and Toronto each have thousands of
Jewish citizens, many of them from Russia and other foreign lands.
Galicians, adherents of the Greek Church, are numerous in the prairie
provinces; and there are over fifteen thousand Mormons in Canada,
chiefly in Alberta and Ontario. As farmers they are said to be excellent
settlers; whether or not they will be equally successful in sowing the
seeds of their distinctive tenets, so degrading to women and to the
sanctity of home life, yet remains to be seen. It is, however, only fair
to add that the Mormons in Canada do not, as in Utah, practise polygamy
openly.
In British Columbia, and to a less extent throughout Canada, are to be
found numbers of quiet, industrious Chinamen, working on the railways,
in the hotels of the West, in the canning factories of the Pacific
Coast, and in laundries from Victoria to Halifax. Despite the heavy head
tax of $500 (£100) on each newcomer, no less than 6,083 Chinamen came to
Canada in a recent year. Amongst them are very few women; but a number
of young boys have recently been brought out by their relatives to
attend the public schools, with a view to their learning English and the
“Western learning” that goes with it.
The records of the British and Foreign Bible Society are suggestive in
connection with the influx of foreigners into the Dominion. In 1912
sales were made of the Bible, or portions of it, in 44 languages in
Toronto alone; and of 110 languages in all Canada. The earliest foreign
version of the Scriptures issued by the Bible Society in its first
year—1804—was, by the way, that intended for the Mohawk Indians in
Canada. Many organizations, such as the Women’s Christian Temperance
Union, the Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations and the
Salvation Army are doing their useful work all over Canada. There is
indeed great scope for such organizations, for the Dominion is full of
young people and friendless strangers, who in their loneliness are in
great need of a helping hand.
But constantly fresh districts open beyond the reach of the churches and
philanthropic agencies, and here the need is for individuals whose
Christianity is deep enough to stand the hard test of isolation. Many
immigrants (so-called Christian), when deprived of church services and
the influences of old days, seem to forget their faith. But to those who
hold fast their religion under the new trials may come the reward of
giving an uplift to, and stamping a Christian character upon, a whole
community. Indeed, a neighbourhood often reflects for years the type of
its earlier settlers.
[Illustration: THE BIG TREE, VANCOUVER]
V
INDUSTRIES AND TRANSPORT
THE most important industry of Canada is, of course, agriculture,
which employs nearly twice as many people as any other class of
industries, and has a greater annual product. With comparatively few
exceptions, the farmers of Canada own their own land. Considered from
the point of view of its returns, the greatest crop is wheat.
Saskatchewan ranks first as a wheat-growing province; Manitoba and
Alberta coming respectively second and third. In the older provinces the
farmers are going in to a great extent for mixed farming, and for the
raising of apples and other fruit. British Columbia is also giving much
attention to the fruit industry. At present many of the prairie farms
are devoted solely to the growing of grain; but already the leaders of
the agricultural world of the Dominion are urging the extension of
“mixed farming,” for the sake of saving the fertile soil from exhaustion
and for the simplification of the labour problem, which is aggravated by
the crowding of all the work of the farms into a few brief weeks of
summer.
The second great industry of those depending directly on natural
resources is lumbering. When the French settled on the St. Lawrence,
they perceived at once the value of the forest wealth of the land,
reporting to the home government that the colony would prove a rich
source for the supply of masts and spars for the royal navy; and soon
“stringent regulations were issued for the preservation of the standing
oak.” The early British governors were also instructed to take measures
for the preservation of lumber likely to be useful for the navy.
The export of Canada’s forest products began, it is said, in 1667, when
the first shipload of lumber was sent to Europe. For years forest
products came first in value on the list of exports. During the earlier
part of the nineteenth century, Canada’s lumber went chiefly to Great
Britain; but during the last forty years much has been exported to the
United States. This has, however, been offset in part by considerable
imports of American lumber into Canada.
In Canada there is, of course, an immense domestic demand for wood. Over
half the people live in wooden houses, immense quantities of wood are
still used as fuel, our thousands of miles of railway tracks are laid on
wooden ties or “sleepers;” fleets of wooden ships and boats still ply on
our coast and inland waters—in fact, it has been said that “our
civilization is built on wood. From the cradle to the coffin in some
shape or other it surrounds us as a convenience or necessity.” Our
childhood’s toys, our furniture, the very paper on which the news of the
day is printed, are forest products strangely transmuted. No sane person
would dispute the value of the forests, and Canada is richly endowed in
this respect; though, perhaps, hardly so richly as some estimates would
lead us to believe.
In time past there has been most reckless waste of the Dominion’s forest
wealth. In early pioneering days, perhaps it was unavoidable that the
immigrants, far from markets, and hemmed in by great woods, should treat
the trees as natural enemies, and clear them off the face of the earth
as rapidly and as thoroughly as they could. So, in Ontario, were
destroyed millions of magnificent trees; in many instances of kinds that
would now be of immense value for the making of the better kinds of
furniture; but black walnut trees were used to make fences of, and
beeches and maples, too heavy to raft down the lakes to the seaports, as
was done with the pine, were drawn together and burned in great heaps so
that the settler could plant his first little crops of corn and
vegetables amongst their stumps, and could turn an honest penny by
selling the potash he made from their ashes.
Not only the pioneers, however, have been responsible for the
destruction of trees. The Indians and hunters of game in the woods, the
lumbermen, leaving their great heaps of dry brush and other inflammable
refuse, only needing a chance spark from the lighting of a pipe, or a
camp fire carelessly left burning, to turn it into kindling, ready laid
for a great conflagration; the railways with the unguarded smoke stacks
of their engines, have all had their share in the destruction of the
forests; and it has been estimated that more timber has been destroyed
in the Dominion by fire than by the axe. The nation is, however,
awakening to the seriousness of the situation. For the last fourteen
years the Canadian Forestry Association, with branches all over the
Dominion, has been doing excellent work in disseminating information and
rousing public interest concerning the preservation of the forests, and
a new governmental policy has been inaugurated. Large areas of land have
been set apart in Ontario and other provinces and by the Dominion
government, where it has direct control, as “Forest Reserves.”
In 1909 there was established the non-partizan “Conservation
Commission,” upon which each province is represented in the person of
the cabinet minister most definitely connected with the administration
of natural resources. Ontario’s representative, for instance, is the
Minister of Lands and Mines. The several universities of Canada are also
represented. The functions of the Commission are advisory and
educational, and its members are carefully studying the various natural
resources. But it is recognized that the people are the greatest asset
the country possesses; and while the Commission endeavours to devise
plans for avoiding wasteful methods in lumbering and mining, to prevent
the depletion of the fish in the waters and the game in the woods, it is
concerned above all to discover means of stopping the fearful waste of
human life by industrial accidents, unhealthy conditions, preventable
diseases, and the ignorant treatment of infants and young children,
which last results in such appalling mortality in the first five years
of life.
It must not, however, be inferred from this reference to infant
mortality that the climate of Canada is by any means unhealthy. The
experience of immigrants from the British Isles and from all European
countries shows that it is well fitted for Europeans; and, as a general
rule, the children especially enjoy the cold months, finding delight in
the sports that winter brings. Often the snow is too firm and powdery
for that favourite sport of British youngsters—snowballing! But little
ones who have not long learned to toddle alone can find amusement with
their small sleighs, and for bigger children and young boys and girls
there are the endless delights of “coasting” and toboganning and skating
and snow-shoeing and ski-ing.
Of course, here the country children have the best of it. But if one
wants to realize the delights offered by a brisk winter’s day, he cannot
do better than visit some open hilly spot within the limits of one of
Canada’s cities—especially on a Saturday afternoon when the fathers
have time to join in the fun. Then the white hillside is fairly alive
with children in gay blanket-coats (often of scarlet) and knitted
French-Canadian “tuques” ending in saucy bobs on the top, or long
bag-like arrangements finished with dangling tassels; but it is the
eagerness of the children and their quaint attitudes which give the
picture its chief interest. A favourite way of making the descent is
prone on the little sleighs, head foremost, legs stuck stiffly up from
the knees, or trailing out behind, as an excellent rudder. Sometimes two
“bob-sleighs,” connected by a long board, form a more ambitious vehicle
for half a dozen boys and girls at once, and loud are the shrieks and
the laughter, as the “bobs” jolt over some rough bit of the track or
shoot their passengers off at last into some heap of snow. As a rule,
the mothers see that the youngsters are warmly clad in woollen garments
from head to heel, and then no one is hurt by a roll in the soft snow.
But all this is, I am afraid, a long digression from the serious subject
of industries. Canada’s mineral products come next after those of the
forest, and make a various list. It includes gold and silver, copper,
nickel and lead; coal and iron; petroleum, natural gas, cement, clay
products and building stones. These are widely distributed, and every
day fresh discoveries are being made of deposits of useful minerals. In
several instances the cutting of railways has led accidentally to such
discoveries. This was the case with the copper ores at Sudbury and the
silver at Cobalt; but scientists sent out by government and prospectors
are always busily searching for new mineral fields. The central
provinces of Canada import immense quantities of coal; though both in
Nova Scotia to the east, and Alberta and British Columbia to the west,
there are immense coal beds, which are being worked at the present time.
Government has made great efforts by the giving of bounties and by
protective legislation to stimulate the manufacture of iron in this
country. The result is that Canada, which in 1883 had only three or four
small blast furnaces, had in 1913 eighteen furnaces, many of them large
and of an up-to-date type, employing 1,778 men.
The fisheries of Canada are one of her greatest assets. In fact, it has
been claimed that they are the most extensive in the world. But here, as
with lumber, untold recklessness has reigned for generations, with the
result that in some of the great lakes the fisheries are of much less
value than they used to be. It is so with Lake Ontario, in which case
the Americans must share the responsibility of depletion with the
Canadians. Accounts of the catches of salmon and white fish made in the
lake in the pioneer days read now like fables.
But the coast waters of the Maritime Provinces and British Columbia, and
hundreds of the lakes in the interior, still abound with fish, and for a
number of years “conservation” of the fisheries has been receiving
careful attention. There are close seasons in fishing, regulated by act
of parliament, to prevent reckless destruction, and there are now
forty-one fish-breeding hatcheries.
Government has endeavoured to stimulate the fishing industry by a system
of bounties; by establishing intelligence bureaux, with reporting
stations along the coasts of the Maritime Provinces, which give “timely
warning to the fishermen of a strike in of fish, of the weather and of
other facts, early information about which is important to success.”
Cold storage establishments at different places for the keeping of
supplies of bait have also been helpful to the fishing industry.
In the year 1911-12 the value of the fish taken and of fish exported was
greater than ever before, but the figures of the returns do not by any
means represent the whole value, for fish is used extensively as food,
wherever it is caught. In order of value, salmon, caught chiefly on the
Pacific Coast, comes first on the list of Canadian food fishes, the
worth of the catch last year amounting to $10,333,000 or about
£2,067,000. Next in order come cod, lobsters (of which fifty millions
were caught in the year), herring, halibut, and oysters. In addition to
fish, 1,244 whales were taken in Canadian waters. Canada’s inland
sea—Hudson Bay—is said to be one of “the richest whaling grounds in
the world.” It is also believed to be richly supplied with valuable fish
of many kinds, but its fisheries are yet inaccessible to markets and are
undeveloped. The great northern lakes are full of valuable freshwater
fish. Nearly a hundred thousand men, including those who work on shore,
find employment in the fisheries.
From the fisheries the next step is naturally to the shipping interests.
1912 was a year of great expansion in the industry, and Canada moved
from the tenth to the ninth place in the list of shipping nations; but
she was fifth in the year 1874, at which period many ships were built in
her yards. The reason for the falling off was the change from wooden to
iron and steel ships. But the shipbuilding industry is beginning to
revive, and at seven different points on the Atlantic, the Pacific, the
St. Lawrence, and the Great Lakes, there are large dry docks for the
construction and repair of vessels. In this connection it may be of
interest to remark that the first vessel to cross the Atlantic under
steam the whole way was the “Royal William,” built at Wolfe’s Cove, near
Quebec, in the winter of 1830-31. Her historic voyage was made in 1833
from Pictou, in Nova Scotia, to London.