The famous citadel of Quebec stands on top of the steep hill that
dominates the junction of the Saint Charles River with the Saint
Lawrence. That is Cape Diamond--a natural stronghold. Indians and
French, and British, and Americans have fought for that coign of
vantage. For a century and a half the Union Jack has floated there,
and under its fair protection the Province of Quebec, keeping its
quaint old language and peasant customs, has become an important
part of the British Empire.
The Upper Town, on the high shoulders of Cape Diamond, with
its government buildings, convents, hospitals, showy new shops,
and ancient gardens, its archiepiscopal palace, trim theological
seminary, huge castle-like hotel, and placid ramparts dominating
the _Ile d'Orleans_ with rows of antiquated, harmless cannon
around which the children play--the Upper Town belongs distinctly
to the citadel. The garrison is in evidence here. A regimental band
plays in the kiosk on Dufferin Terrace on summer evenings. There
is a good mixture of khaki in the coloring of the street crowd,
and many wounded soldiers are seen, invalided home from the front.
They are all very proud of the glorious record that Canada has made
in the battle for freedom. Most of them, it seems to me, are from
English-speaking families. But by no means all. There are many of
unmistakable French-Canadian stock; and they tell me proudly of
the notable bravery of a certain regiment which was formed early
from volunteers of their own people--hunters, woodsmen, farmers,
guides. The war does not seem very far away, up here in the region
of the citadel.
The Lower Town, with its narrow streets, little shops, gray stone
warehouses, dingy tenements, and old-fashioned markets, is quite a
different place. It belongs to the slow rivers on whose banks it
drowses and dreams. The once prosperous lumberyards are half empty
now. The shipping along the wharfs has been dwindling for many
years. The northern winter puts a quietus on the waterside. Troops,
munitions, supplies, must go down by rail to an ice-free port. The
white river-boats are all laid up. But a way is kept open across
the river to Levis, and the sturdy, snub-nosed little ice-breaking
ferry-boats buffet back and forth almost without interruption. There
is a plenty of nothing to do, now, in the Lower Town; pipe-smoking
and heated discussion of parish politics are incessant; an inconsiderate
quantity of bad liquor is imbibed, _pour faire passer le temps._
Suddenly--if anything can be said to happen suddenly in Quebec--bad
news comes from the Lower Town. A riot has broken out, an insurrection
of the French-Canadians against the new military service act, an
armed resistance to the draft. Windows have been smashed, shops
looted. A mob, not very large perhaps, but extremely noisy, has
marched up the steep curve of Mountain Hill Street, into the Upper
Town. Shots have been exchanged. People have been killed. The
revolution in Quebec has begun.
That is the disquieting rumor which comes to us, carefully spread and
magnified by those agencies which have an interest in preventing, or
at least obstructing the righteous punishment of the German criminals
in this war. Can it possibly be true? Have the French-Canadians gone
crazy, as the Irish did in 1916, under the lunatic incantations of
the Sinn-Feiners? Are they also people without a country, playing
blindly into the hands of the Prussian gang who have set out to
subjugate the world?
No! This riot in the old city is not an expression of the spirit of
French Canada at all. It is only a shrewdly stupid trick in local
politics, planned and staged by small-minded and loud-voiced
politicians who are trying to keep their hold upon the province.
The so-called revolutionists are either imported loafers and
trouble-makers, or else they are drawn from that class of “hooligans”
who have always made a noise around the Quebec hotels at night. They
shout much: they swear abominably: but they have no real fight in
them. They can be hired and used--up to a certain point--but beyond
that they are worthless. It is a waste of money to employ them.
The trouble below Cape Diamond froths up and goes down as quickly
as the effervescence on a bottle of ginger beer. Before you can
find out what it is all about, it is all over. It has not even
touched the real French-Canadians, the men of the forests and the
farms. They are loyal by nature, and slow by temperament. You have
got to give them time, and light.
What is happening in Quebec now? Just what ought to happen. The
draft is going forward smoothly and steadily, without resistance.
Sons of the best French-Canadian families are volunteering for the
war. Recruits from Laval University are coming in, stirred perhaps
by the knowledge that forty thousand Catholic priests in France
have entered the army which fights against the Prussian paganism.
The petty politicians who have sought to serve their own ends
by putting forward the mad notion of secession and an independent
“Republic of Quebec” have gone to cover under a storm of ridicule
and indignation. M. Bourassa's iridescent dream of French-Canadian
nationalism has disappeared like a soap-bubble. M. Francoeur's
motion in the Quebec legislature, carrying a vague hint that the
province might withdraw from the Dominion if the other provinces
were not particularly nice to it, was snowed under by an overwhelming
vote. The patriotic and eloquent speech of the provincial Premier,
M. Gouin, was received with every sign of approval. The political
cinema has shown its latest film, and the title is evidently
_“Fidelite de Quebec.”_
Meantime a Catholic missioner has been in the province. The visit
of Archbishop Mathieu of Saskatchewan was probably made on the
invitation, certainly with the consent, of the hierarchy of Quebec.
That intelligent and fearless preacher brought with him a clear and
ringing gospel, a call to all Christian folk to stand up together
and “resist even unto blood, striving against sin”--the sin of
the German war-lords who have plunged the world in agony to enforce
their heresy that Might makes Right.
Such a message, at this time, must be of inestimable value to
the humble and devout people of the province, attached as they are
to their church, and looking patiently to her for guidance. The
parish priests, devoted to their lonely tasks in obscure hamlets,
may get a new and broader inspiration from it. They may have a vision
of the ashes of Louvain University, the ruin of Rheims Cathedral,
wrought by ruthless German hands. Then the church in Quebec will
measure up to the church in Belgium and in France. Then the village
cure will say to his young men: “Go! Fight! It is for the glory
of God and the good of the world. It is for the Christian religion
and the life of free Canada.”
“Well, then,” says the gentle reader, of a sociological turn of
mind, who has followed me thus far, “what have you got to say about
the big political problem of Quebec? Is a French-speaking province
a safe factor in the Dominion of Canada, in the British Empire? Why
was Quebec so late in coming into this world war against Germany?”
Dear man, I have nothing whatever to say about what you call the
big political problem of Quebec. I told you that at the beginning.
That is a question for Canada and Great Britain to settle. The
British colonial policy has always been one of the greatest liberality
and fairness, except perhaps in that last quarter of the eighteenth
century, when the madness of a German king and his ministers in
England forced the United States to break away from her, and form
the republic which has now become her most powerful friend.
The perpetuation of a double language within a state, an _enclave_,
undoubtedly carries with it an element of inconvenience and possibly
of danger. Yet Belgium is bilingual and Switzerland is quadrilingual.
If any tongue other than that of the central government is
to be admitted, what could be better than French--the language of
culture, which has spoken the large words, _liberte, egalite,
fraternite?_ The native dialect of French Canada is a quaint
and delightful thing--an eighteenth-century vocabulary with pepper
and salt from the speech of the woodsmen and hunters. I should be
sorry if it had to fade out. But evidently that is a question for
Canada to decide. She has been a bilingual country for a long time.
I see no reason why the experiment should not be carried on.
Quebec has been rather slow in waking up to the meaning of this war
for world-freedom. But she has been very little slower than some
of the United States, after all.
The Church? Well, the influence of the Church always has depended
and always must depend upon the quality of her ministers. In
France, in Belgium, they have not fallen short of their high duty.
The Archbishop of Saskatchewan, who came to Quebec, preached a
clear gospel of self-sacrifice for a righteous cause.
But the plain people of Quebec--the _voyageurs_, the
_habitants_, my old friends in the back districts--that is
what I am thinking about. I am sure they are all right. They are
very simple, old-fashioned, childish, if you like; but there is
no pacifist or pro-German virus among them. If their parochial
politicians will let them alone, if their priests will speak to
them as prophets of the God of Righteousness, they will show their
mettle. They will prove their right to be counted among the free
peoples of the world who are willing to defend peace with arms.
That is what I expect to find if I ever get back to my canoemen on
the _Sainte Marguerite_ again.
SYLVANORA, July 10, 1918.