[Frontispiece: SALMON FISHING IN THE FAR WEST (MORICETOWN, BRITISH
COLUMBIA)]
CANADA
THE SPELLBINDER
BY
LILIAN WHITING
WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS
IN COLOUR AND MONOTONE
LONDON & TORONTO
J. M. DENT & SONS LTD.
MCMXVII
_All rights reserved_
TO
CHARLES MELVILLE HAYS
whose foresight and energy, whose courage and genius lifted Canada's
pioneer railway to a very high level of service and success; extended
its operations from the Atlantic to the Pacific; opened thousands of
miles of new scenic beauties and prepared a region which will ere
long become a vital centre of population and strength to the British
Empire; and whose passing to the larger and more significant
activities of "the life more abundant" (by the tragic wreck of the
s.s. _Titanic_, April 15, 1912) has left an unforgettable breach in
the official family of the Grand Trunk System, an irreparable loss to
his associates, to whom he was a beloved, constant, and forceful
inspiration--this effort to interpret something of the romantic charm
and richness of the resources of the Dominion is inscribed by
LILIAN WHITING.
"The shadow of his loss drew like eclipse
Darkening the world. We have lost him; he is gone;
We know him now; all narrow jealousies
Are silent; and we see him as he moved,
How modest, kindly, all-accomplished, wise,
With what sublime repression of himself."
TENNYSON.
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. The Creative Forces of Canada
II. Quebec and the Picturesque Maritime Region
III. Montreal and Ottawa
IV. Toronto the Beautiful
V. The Canadian Summer Resorts
VI. Cobalt and the Silver Mines
VII. Winnipeg and Edmonton
VIII. On the Grand Trunk Pacific
IX. Prince Rupert and Alaska
X. Prince Rupert to Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle, and the Golden Gate
XI. Canada in the Panama-Pacific Exposition
XII. Canadian Poets and Poetry
XIII. The Call of the Canadian West
Index
List Of Illustrations
Salmon Fishing in the Far West (Moricetown, British Columbia) ....
Coloured Frontispiece
Falls on Grand Forks River
Cape Santé (Quebec), St. Lawrence River
Sunset on Canyon Lake
A Canoeing Party, Ontario
Dufferin Terrace, Quebec, from the Citadel
Harbour of St. John, New Brunswick
Interior of Notre Dame, Montreal
Montreal City
Ottawa--Showing the Parliament Buildings and Château Laurier
The Bigwin Inn, Lake-of-Bays, Ontario
Sir Arthur and Lady Conan Doyle and Party
View in Jasper Park
Cobalt, Ontario
Union Station and Fort Garry Hotel, Winnipeg
Mount Edith Cavell and Cavell Lake
Charles Melville Hays
Hudson Bay Mountain and Lake Kathlyn, Bulkley Valley
Indian Totem Pole, Alaska
Junction of Skeena and Bulkley Rivers, British Columbia
Indians spearing Salmon in Bulkley Cañon
Prince Rupert, British Columbia
Pure Bred Jerseys, Western Canada
Mount Robson, British Columbia
Looking towards Mount Munn from the Valley of Flowers
Bulkley Gate (150 feet high), Bulkley River
Canoeing on the Fraser River
Breaking Camp
Mount Robson, at a Distance of Ten Miles
Mount Robson Glacier
Farming in Shellbrook District, Saskatchewan
Threshing Wheat, Manitoba
After the Bear Hunt--Moose River Forks
{1}
CANADA THE SPELLBINDER
CHAPTER I
THE CREATIVE FORCES OF CANADA
"All parts away for the progress of souls,
All religion, all solid things, arts, governments--all that was or
is apparent upon this globe or any globe, falls into niches
and corners before the procession of souls along the grand
roads of the universe.
Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand
roads of the universe, all other progress is the needed
emblem and sustenance."
WALT WHITMAN (_Song of the Open Road_).
"The flowering of civilisation is the finished man, the man of sense,
of grace, of accomplishment, of social power--the gentleman. What
hinders that he be born here? The new times need a new man, the
complemental man, whom plainly this country must furnish.... Of no
use are the men who study to do exactly as was done before, who can
never understand that to-day is a new day."--EMERSON.
Against a background of bewilderingly varied activities which
projects from the earliest years of the sixteenth well into the
twentieth century and reveals itself as a moving panorama of
explorers, pioneers, adventurers, traders, and missionaries, there
stands out a line of remarkable personalities whose latter-day
leadership has largely initiated as well as dominated the conditions
of their time and the bequest of century to century. {2} Among these
were men, lofty of soul and tenacious of high purpose, who saw the
potential Empire in a vast and infinitely varied region which seemed
compact of unrelated resources. They were kindled by the growing
achievements of the constructive genius that had already projected
the wonderful steel highways carrying civilisation into the trackless
wilderness. This constructive genius bridged the mighty rivers;
created extensive waterways by means of canals connecting lakes and
flowing streams; in still later years this genius commanded the
cataracts and rapids to transform their ceaseless motion into motor
power for traction, and lighting, and other service of industrial and
economic value.
Each successive civilisation of the world, indeed, has shown an
unbroken line of exceptional personalities in whom has been focussed
the power of their epoch. They are the centres through which this
power becomes manifest in applied purposes and special achievements.
Civilisation itself is but the evolutionary representation of
successive conditions of increasing enlightenment. With each
succeeding age does man recognise more and more clearly his relation
to the moral order of the universe. The guidance of unseen destiny
leads him on, and in the records of no country is this working out of
the invisible design more unmistakably shown than in those of the
Dominion of Canada. This golden thread discloses itself to
retrospective {3} scrutiny through a period of three centuries of
time. "Man imagines and arranges his plans," says Leblond de Brumath
in his biography of Bishop Laval; "but above these arrangements
hovers Providence whose foreseeing sets all in order for the
accomplishment of His impenetrable design.... Nor must man banish
God from history, for then would everything become incomprehensible
and inexplicable."
The creative forces of an Empire include various and varying
agencies. If to the courage and heroism of the original discoverers
of the land too great recognition can hardly be given, yet to those
who have made these discoveries of value by bringing the resources of
a continent into useful relations with humanity recognition is not
less due. John and Sebastian Cabot, Jacques Cartier, Champlain,
Mackenzie, Fraser, and La Salle, were great pathfinders. But the
very greatness of their achievements required such men as James
McGill, Donald Smith (Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal), Sir George
Etienne Cartier, the Right Honourable Sir John Alexander Macdonald,
Sir Charles Tupper, and others, to stamp the early life of the
pioneer with the seal of statesmanship and education. Here were vast
areas of land; enchanting rivers, noble lakes, majestic mountains;
untold wealth in minerals and in the boundless potentialities of
agriculture; a marvellous country that is not only a land of promise,
but a veritable Promised Land. Yet are {4} its possibilities like
those of the ether of space, until it is rendered accessible to
restless, struggling humanity by the indomitable power of great
spirits, of wise and forcible leaders of progress who are perhaps the
pioneers of the physical world in a degree similar to that of lofty
beings in the realms unseen. It is such as they who create the
conditions which render all these immeasurable resources of practical
value to humanity. Such men as Sir William Cornelius Van Horne and
Charles Melville Hays; men who have courage as well as vision; who
see beyond all barriers; men who dare do that which weaker souls fear
to attempt--such men are as truly among the creative forces of their
country as are its original discoverers.
[Illustration: Falls of the Grand Forks River]
Little reference to these earliest years of Canadian history could be
made, even in the mere outline which alone is possible in these
pages, without a vivid recognition of episode and adventure so
startling, so often brilliant and romantic, so often tragic in its
heroic endurance and ultimate fatality as to illuminate the horizon
of history with a flame not unlike the dazzling lights in Polar
skies. There were miracle hours that condensed experiences as
significant as those often diffused throughout an entire cycle of
time. Mingled with these were the long, slow periods of patient
labour. It is not with sudden leaps and bounds alone that life
progresses, but by the steady, normal advance of persistent
endeavour. Nor can demands for improved {5} conditions be always
unmingled with some measure of judicious compromise. James Mill,
referring to his experiences while in the London office, engaged with
the affairs of India, says: "I learnt how to obtain the best I could
when I could not obtain everything. Instead of being indignant or
dispirited because I could not entirely have my own way, to be
pleased and encouraged when I could have the smallest part of it; and
when that could not be, to bear with complete equanimity the being
over-ruled altogether." Something of this philosophy the makers of
Canada were compelled to accept. The incomers from France, the
incomers from Great Britain, represented two distinct, even if not
unfriendly nations. There were differences of race, of language, of
creed. There were differing convictions as to institutions and laws.
Until the Confederation the interests of the people were largely
local rather than united. The unifying of a country of such enormous
geographical extent and including such vital differences among its
widely scattered inhabitants, must always prefigure itself as one of
the signal feats in the statesmanship of the world.
The very magnitude of the resources and the infinite riches of Canada
presented themselves in the guise of difficulties and obstacles to be
conquered. Nature provided the vast systems of lakes and rivers; but
these required vast schemes of engineering construction to render
them of fullest service as continuous waterways. The broad rivers
{6} must be bridged. Triumphs of construction have arisen, such as
the Victoria Jubilee Bridge across the St. Lawrence at Montreal, a
marvellous feat of engineering, and the splendid steel arch bridge
over the Gorge of Niagara. Again, in the interests of
transcontinental transit, the mountain ranges, whose peaks seem to
pierce the sky, must be overcome. Unmapped tracts of almost
impenetrable forests; wastes of rocks, and swamps, and the
treacherous muskeg; or immense plains, still inhospitable to the
destined tide of settlers, must all be subdued in the interests of
the advancing civilisation and the development of a country bordering
upon three oceans with an extent of coast-line exceeding that of any
other country in the world. Then there were incalculable mining
possibilities, precious metals, copper, iron, coal; there were
unlimited resources of lumber, but the trees must be felled, and
there must be railways or waterways to transport the timber. Canada
offered water-power enough to turn the wheels of all the
manufactories of Europe, but this power was useless until harnessed
by the constructive genius of man. Another valuable asset was the
pulpwood, the vastness of which suggested this country as the very
centre of the pulp and paper manufacturing industry; but between the
thousands of acres covered with white spruce trees, and the lakes and
rivers contiguous ready to furnish the power, what marvels of
mechanism must be duly constructed to bring {7} the pulpwood and the
water-power into service of man. As an indication of the proportions
to which this industry has already grown it may be cited that for the
fiscal year ending on June 30, 1916, the Canadian pulp print
papermakers shipped to the United States alone seven hundred and
ninety-four and a half millions of pounds, an increase of one hundred
and eighty millions over the amount shipped to the States in the
preceding year.
Here, indeed, was a country rivalling any other in the world in the
largess of nature, but whose every aspect was a challenge to the
constructive enterprise of man. Nature, with unsurpassed lavishness,
presented the raw material; it rested with man to stamp it with
value. Thus the stimulus to industrial and commercial activities was
second to none other in the history of nations.
These were the conditions that confronted, as well as rewarded, the
early discoverers and pioneers. Did some prescience of all this
potential wealth awaiting the centuries to come drift across the
ocean spaces and touch minds sensitive to its impress?
"The Future works out great men's purposes."
John and Sebastian Cabot were impelled by a destiny as unrevealed to
them as was that of Columbus. Each bore a magic mirror turned
forward to reflect the promise of the future. In the hand of each
was carried the lighted torch. It was passed {8} from each explorer
to his successor. Cartier, who navigated the St. Lawrence to Quebec
and then on to Hochelaga (the name given to the primitive Indian
village on the site of which now stands the stately and splendid city
of Montreal), carried the lighted torch still farther, and passed it
on to Champlain who, three-quarters of a century later, came to found
a trading-post on the island of Montreal--"La Place Royale" it was
then called, the picturesque mountain that rises in the midst of the
modern city of to-day having been named by Cartier "Mont Royale,"
from which is derived the present Montreal. There followed La Salle,
Marquette, Joliet, and others. Sieur de Maisonneuve consecrated the
site of Montreal as the first act of his landing. It is little
wonder that the visitor to this entrancing city to-day feels some
unanalysed and mystic touch pervading the air, something that must
forever haunt and pervade his memories of stately, magnificent
Montreal. No other city on the continent has this indefinable
element of magic and of charm.
The seventeenth century was an almost unbroken period of bold and
daring adventure and of missionary activities. All over the world,
at this time, was there manifested the passion for exploration. It
prevailed over the entire continent of Europe. It recorded its
progress on the new continent of North America.
The discovery of Hudson Bay has been placed by {9} some statisticians
as early as 1498, when it is surmised that Cabot may have reached it;
but the absolute and authentic date still lingers somewhat in the
region of conjecture and mystery. It was in 1607 that Henry Hudson
is known to have first seen it as he sailed in search of the North
Pole. Intrepid adventurer! He found, not the goal of his quest,
but, instead, that "undiscovered country" we shall all one day see.
"Hudson's shallop went down in as utter silence and mystery as that
which surrounds the watery graves of those old sea Vikings who rode
out to meet death on the billow," says a Canadian historian. Hudson
Bay became a centre of intense interest to all the exploring
navigators. Admiral Sir Thomas Button sailed in search of Hudson, or
of some tidings of his fate. He returned without the knowledge he
sought for, but with much information regarding all the western
coast. Still later came Foxe and James. In 1631 Foxe discovered a
fallen cross which he judged had been erected by his predecessor, the
English Admiral, and he raised it and affixed an inscription and the
date.
An organisation that was pre-eminently one of the creative forces of
Canada was that of the Hudson's Bay Company, which traces its origin
to a voyage of adventure made by two Frenchmen, Pierre Esprit de
Radisson and Menart Chouart sieur Degroseillers, who were allured by
rumours of the "inexhaustible harvest of furs" that awaited
enterprising traders. Baffled for the time by {10} obstacles that
seemed insurmountable, they returned to England to ask the assistance
of King Charles II., and in 1666 was formed a company that included
Prince Rupert (a cousin of the king), the Duke of Albemarle, the Earl
of Craven, Sir George Carteret, and other noblemen and merchants, as
the incorporators, to whom, in 1670, the king granted a charter to
comprise "the whole trade of all the seas, bays, rivers, and sounds,
in whatever latitude, ... and territories of the coasts which are not
now actually possessed by any of our subjects, or by the subjects of
any other Christian prince or state." In the following year two
vessels were sent out within a short period and there sprang up a
group of trading posts. Radisson remained for life in the service of
the Company.
Against the living background of Canadian history in all its varied
activities, no one contributing factor stands out with such
prominence as that of this Hudson's Bay Company which, for two and a
half centuries, dominated the country and whose commercial importance
played so large a part in her development. Let no one mistake the
purpose of the Company, however, as one inspired by purely
philanthropic or patriotic ardour. The dominant aim was by no means
primarily that of the development of the new and almost unknown
country. The servants of the Company were not braving the terrors
and hardships of the wilderness on exclusively altruistic
inspirations. On the contrary, it was {11} their policy to conceal
the existence of the vast riches of the land and to represent it as
inaccessible to any one beyond Indians and hunters. Even as late as
the comparatively recent date of the decade of 1860-70, the pupils in
Canadian schools were taught that all the Hudson Bay region was
uninhabitable; that it was a desolate "No Man's Land," so to speak,
covered with ice and snow. No effort to change this impression was
made by those concerned with the administration of the Company, but,
rather, they were more or less untiring in assisting to confirm it.
They had their occult reasons for not being averse to the
representation of the entire North-West as being quite valueless for
the purposes of civilisation. The impression, if not the conviction,
was well authorised that the climate rendered the region quite
impossible for habitation; and the region in which now lies the most
wonderful wheat-growing belt of the world, and whose fertility under
cultivation renders it capable of supporting a population as large as
that of the entire United States at the present time (estimated at
one hundred millions), was assumed to be a region only capable of
sustaining wild animals, Indians, and the most hardy hunters and
traders. Now it is traversed by three transcontinental railways
which have opened an immense business of travel and traffic; and
beside dozens of prosperous young towns and villages it contains
Winnipeg with its quarter of a million people; Edmonton, Calgary,
Saskatoon, {12} Regina; the important new terminal seaport of Prince
Rupert, and the still older and more developed port of Vancouver; to
say nothing of the scenic grandeur through all the Mount Robson
locale, that has captured the enthusiasm of the world. The tradition
of the rigours of climate has become so popularised that even as late
as the summer of 1915 a New England tourist faring forth for a trip
through the great North-West of Canada was urged to provide himself
with furs and rugs enough to fit out an expedition to the Polar
regions. As a matter of fact the only embarrassment encountered as
to temperature was that of trying to discover sufficiently thin
clothing for Winnipeg in the opening September days, where the
sunshine poured down just then with a flood of radiance that fairly
rivalled that of a summer in the Capital city of the United States.
Yet, even in all this splendour of sunshine and discomfort of heat,
that wonderful quality of the Canadian air was not wanting--a
peculiar invigoration which one who has visited the Dominion misses
for a long time after leaving the country. Edmonton repeated the
same wonderful luxuriance with the same delicious coolness at night;
and the journey on through the magnificent mountain scenery to Prince
Rupert had the exquisite temperature of an Italian spring.
The Hudson's Bay Company, however, was not organised on the basis of
a bureau of publicity for {13} the general benefit of the country and
of posterity. Their aim was the gaining of wealth and it was one
signally successful. Immense quantities of valuable furs were
shipped homeward every year; the shares in the Company became more
and more valuable as magnificent dividends were continually declared.
They controlled a territory exceeding an area of two million square
miles. It was peopled only by the Indians. Yet all through the
seventeenth century run the records of that self-sacrificing and
heroic band, the Jesuit missionaries, whose devotion to the Christian
ideal led them on with a faith and fervour that consecrates their
memory.
[Illustration: Cape Santé (Quebec), St. Lawrence River]
The ambition of the Company to extend their trading posts still
farther and farther inland incited still more explorations into the
unknown North-West. They builded better than they knew, for while
their aim hardly went beyond that of increasing their own revenues,
the results were inevitable factors in the development of the
country. That this is true is not in any wise, as has already been
said, to be regarded as in the nature of philanthropic or patriotic
zeal. They regarded the country and its wealth in the light of a
personal perquisite for their exploiting and financial benefit. They
circulated the information that this was a "Great Lone Land," as
undesirable as it was inaccessible. From motives of self-interest,
if not entirely those of humanity, the Company had treated the
Indians with kindness and justice and had thus made the British flag
something {14} to be held in respect by the tribes. Thus they had
built up a strong reliance for themselves of friendliness on the part
of the dusky natives. One of the eminent historians, George
Bancroft, of Boston, U.S.A., calls attention to this attitude of the
Hudson's Bay Company, saying that both the officers and the servants
of the corporation "were as much gentlemen by instinct in their
treatment of the Indians as in their treatment of civilised men and
women." Thus, whenever they should wish to exclude, as enemies,
those who came among them representing any other enterprise, they had
strong supporters and coadjutors among the tribes. "No trespassers
allowed" was practically their motto. Explorations, or the extension
of trade, were alike vigilantly discouraged. "Notwithstanding the
efforts put forth by the Company," says one chronicle, "it was
realised that unless the active co-operation of the Indians could be
secured, white trespassers would inevitably make inroads into the
trade of the Territory. Steps were therefore taken to unite the
tribes against all whites not officially connected with the Company.
The means adopted were worthy of the object desired, but could only
have been the outcome of an extraordinary disregard of the ordinary
amenities of life. The Indians were told that these outsiders would
rob and cheat them in the barter of their furs." Still, the very
prominence of the Company was its own enormous and inevitable
advertisement, so to speak, of untold {15} resources connected with
the mysterious regions, and both trade and further exploration were
stimulated.
The first quarter of the eighteenth century had but just passed when
(in 1727) Pierre Gaultier de Varennes (Sieur de la Verendrye), who
was stationed on Lake Nipigon, became imbued with ardour regarding
the great question of the day, the North-West Passage; and in 1731
he, with his three sons and an armed force of about fifty men, left
Montreal for the West, reaching the shores of Lake Superior within
two months, and pushing on--trading and exploring meanwhile--through
the all but impenetrable wilderness until he sailed up the Red River,
and in the autumn of 1738 established a fort near the site now
occupied by the city of Winnipeg.
The great profits accruing to the Hudson's Bay Company inspired
rivalry, and in 1795 its keen competitor, the North-West Company, was
formed under the leadership of Simon M'Tavish, a Scottish Highlander,
of "enormous energy and decision of character." Still another
company came into being, organised by two merchants of Montreal, John
Gregory and Alexander Norman McLeod, which during its brief life was
known as the X Y Company, to whose purposes was attracted a young
Scotsman who was destined to be immortalised by his remarkable
explorations and his discovery of the great river which perpetuates
his name. This young man was Alexander Mackenzie, who came to Canada
in 1779, and immediately entered the fur trade. He became {16}
connected with the North-West Company and the X Y Company and left
for the west to take charge of the Churchill River district. Later,
owing to personal dissensions and conflicts of the Company with
another of its agents, Mackenzie was commissioned to the Athabasca
district, and it was there, apparently, that his project of
exploration to the Arctic Ocean took possession of him. From the
Indians he heard traditions of a mighty river like that of the
Saskatchewan, and in June 1789 he had crossed Athabasca Lake and
reached the Peace River which "displayed a succession of the most
beautiful scenery," as he recorded. He journeyed to Great Slave Lake
after encountering immense difficulties--rapids, long portages,
boiling caldrons, and treacherous eddies that threatened to engulf
his barque; but at the end of the month he found himself on the river
that now bears his name, and on the 12th of July he first sighted the
Arctic Ocean. Then there intervened a visit to England before his
second expedition in 1792. His memorable inscription on a rock, on
the coast near Vancouver: "Alexander Mackenzie from Canada by land,
22 July, 1793," tells its own story. It is not, however, with the
long-familiar details of his expeditions that we are here concerned,
but with the recognition of their result as one of the constructive
factors of the Dominion. The story of these undertakings, of the
adventurous journeys of the many explorers, inclusive of Hudson, La
Verendrye, Mackenzie, {17} Henry, Thompson, Fraser, Franklin, is a
part of the story of Canada. To trace out the contributing causes
and the influences investing each of these would be to throw a new
illumination on the inter-relations of the factors that have sprung
into activity over a long series of years as involved in the
evolution of a wonderful country whose great destiny impresses the
civilised world.
[Illustration: Sunset on Canyon Lake]
The opening years of the nineteenth century were marked by a noble
project that apparently ended in failure at the time and yet whose
significance is not lost. In every worthy purpose, cosmopolitan,
national, or individual in its scope, there is the germ of vitality,
and dying in one form it is resurrected in another. Truly of such
purposes may be said, in the sublime words of the apostle, that they
are "sown in weakness, but raised in power."
"The good, though only thought, has life and breath."
Such a project was that of the Earl of Selkirk to assist numbers of
his poorer countrymen by founding a colony for them in the Hudson Bay
Territory, where they should find homes and engage in pleasant and
profitable agricultural work. With Lord Selkirk it was not the
dazzling opportunities of the fur trade that impelled his journey,
when, in 1815, he with Lady Selkirk and their son and two daughters
landed in Montreal, having already sent out three parties of his
country people to the tract of land whose area was that of a hundred
and ten {18} thousand square miles which he had purchased in the Red
River Valley. His scheme for the betterment of these people included
free transportation and temporary support for the settler until he
could begin to make his own way, together with a free gift of the
land. It was in 1810 that Lord Selkirk had matured his scheme and
purchased the land; but on arriving with his family he found himself
assailed with charges of conspiracy, condemned to the payment of
fines that he contended were totally unjust, and confronted with a
strange network of alleged misrepresentation and accusation. It
would seem that his chief desire was that of generous and noble aid
to his countrymen. His experience is not without its parallel
pervading all history in the lives of men whose single-hearted aim
has been to make the world a better place. Who shall penetrate the
spiritual mystery in that he whose efforts are noble and unselfish
not infrequently confronts the same results as might properly belong
to him whose objects were quite the reverse of these? "And that all
this should have come to you who had meant to lead a higher life than
the common, and to find out better ways," exclaims George Eliot's
Dorothea to Lydgate, in the great novel of _Middlemarch_; and the
heroine adds: "There is no sorrow I have thought more about than
that--to love what is great and try to reach it and then fail."
Lord Selkirk took this experience greatly to heart. However much to
be regretted is the failure of {19} sufficient courage and faith to
enable one to stand strong, "and having done all, still to stand,"
before a flagrant injustice or the pain of misconception, it is yet
hardly to be wondered at that a sensitive spirit, conscious of its
own integrity and unmeasured good-will, falters and faints before so
unfortunate an experience. To the Scottish Earl it seems to have
been more than he could endure. In 1818 he returned to Scotland, and
soon after died, at the early age of forty-nine, in Pau, having gone
to southern France in search of renewed health. The Red River
settlement that he founded was in the neighbourhood of the present
city of Winnipeg.
Historians differ, however, as to the motives of Lord Selkirk, some
authorities taking a view quite opposite to the one cited here, and
gathered, too, from trustworthy sources. The truth may lie somewhere
between the two extremes. It is as unnecessary as it would be futile
to endeavour to invest every leader of a movement with a golden halo
like that of the mediæval saints of the Quattrocentisti. The world's
progress has always been carried forward by mixed forces and both
ideas and institutions owe their vitality to complex aims and to a
variety of conditions.
In the spring of 1821 the Hudson's Bay Company and the North-West
Companies united. This marked an epoch in Canadian progress; and in
1838 occurred another event, unnoted as of any significance at the
time, yet which proved to be the advent of one of the {20} greatest
of the creative forces of Canada. "Any one watching keenly the
stealthy convergence of human lots," says George Eliot, "sees a slow
preparation of effects from one life on another, which tells like a
calculated irony on the indifference or the frozen stare with which
we look at our unintroduced neighbour. Destiny stands by sarcastic
with our _dramatis personæ_ folded in her hand." Surely the arrival
at Montreal of a Scottish lad of seventeen years of age could hardly
be held as bearing any direct relation to the future development and
the cosmopolitan importance of Canada. Yet what a romance of history
lies between the unnoticed landing of Donald A. Smith, in 1838, and
the solemn grandeur of the scene in Westminster Abbey, in January of
1914, when representatives of the Crown, with the peers, the
statesmen, the scholars, the social leaders of London; with a great
concourse drawn from all ranks, met for the memorial service for
Donald Alexander Smith, first Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal. "The
memory of ten centuries of England's illustrious dead haunted the
scene."
Donald Smith crossed the Atlantic in a small supply craft belonging
to the Hudson's Bay Company and took up his duties as a clerk in one
of the most unimportant branches of the service. He made the 1200
miles' journey from Montreal to Labrador. He was stationed in a
place where only once a year could any tidings reach him from the
outside world. Was he lonely in this exile? He himself said that he
{21} never knew what the feeling of loneliness was. He had books; he
had thoughts. Such a psychologist as the late William James, who to
his profound grasp of psychology and philosophy added the unmapped
power of spiritual divination, would have found, in these long,
solitary years of meditation and thought, the key and clue to the
lad's future greatness. In the infinite and unmeasured force
generated by thought-vibrations lies power that may transcend a
universe. "Mind with will is intelligent energy," declares a recent
scientific writer, who adds: "intelligent energy is enough to supply
a cause for every known effect within the limits of the universe."
Sir Oliver Lodge has recently said that life is simply "utilised and
guided energy to produce results which otherwise would not have
happened." If the distinguished British scientist had been seeking a
phrase to define the life of Donald Alexander Smith he could hardly
have created one more felicitous. That the results that were called
into activity for a period of over fifty years, of momentous
importance to Canada, by the causes set up by the young Scotsman,
matters that would never have happened but for him, is evident to all
who study closely the modern history of the Dominion. Lord
Strathcona's biographer, Mr. Beckles Willson, introduces the reader
to a long record of interesting details of the early years of Donald
Smith, all of which contributed to the development and the {22}
nurture of the marvellous qualities which rendered him one of the
most determining of the forces that shaped the destiny of Canada.
The brilliant John Jay Chapman, writing of the remarkable man who may
be said to have initiated the abolition of slavery in the United
States, remarks of his subject: "Garrison plunged through the icy
atmosphere like a burning meteorite from another planet." Not thus,
however, did Donald Smith enter on his great career. Exiled in a far
and frozen region, his service in Labrador lasted for thirteen years
"with no companionship save a few employees and his own thoughts,
learning the secrets of the Company, how to manage the Indians, and
how to produce the best returns."[1] Thirty years had passed since
his landing in Canada when, in 1868, on the death of Governor
Simpson, of the Hudson's Bay Company, whose office was in Montreal,
Mr. Smith was appointed by the London office to succeed him. He was
then in his forty-ninth year. Born on August 6, 1820, he died on
January 21, 1914, in his ninety-fourth year. The forty-five years
which preceded his passing from the physical realm were the years in
which Canada entered on her great destiny, and of this momentous
period Lord Strathcona might well have said, "All of which I saw and
part of which I was." His devotion and loyalty to the Empire was as
intelligent and wise as it was ardent and powerful. The history {23}
of Canada and his personal biography during those years might almost
be interchangeable terms. The Hudson's Bay Company, although
organised and conducted on a financial basis, was the soul of loyalty
to the Empire. The splendid courage, endurance, and persistence that
characterised its entire tenure entered into the very structure of
the nation.
[1] _Lord Strathcona; The Story of His Life_. Beckles Willson.
Methuen and Company. London, 1902.
About the middle of the nineteenth century a man who has been termed
"an uncrowned king" by some of the more enthusiastic, if not more
discriminating of his followers; a man who was, at all events, an
influential political leader and who especially espoused the cause of
Upper Canada, opened a crusade for the acquisition on the part of the
government of all the territorial rights of the Hudson's Bay Company.
This man was George Brown, the founder and at that time the editor of
the Toronto _Globe_. He was a member of Parliament, and he was also
one of the band of great editors in which the journalism of that
period found its most potent expression. This order of editorial
influence was represented in the United States by Horace Greeley of
the New York _Tribune_; Charles A. Dana of the New York _Sun_; and
Samuel Bowles of the Springfield (Massachusetts) _Republican_, whose
spirit and influence continue to manifest themselves in the high
quality of that journal to-day. This dominant editorial influence
still survives in the States, in the {24} personality of the
brilliant and splendidly-endowed Colonel Henry Watterson, the
proprietor and editor of the Louisville (Kentucky) _Courier-Journal_,
and it was evident in the New York _Evening Post_, under the conduct
of Horace White, whose death (in September, 1916) was a signal loss
to the American press.
There is ample authority for the assertion that George Brown's
newspaper "had an influence on the populace such as no other had in
Canada." It was under his administration of the Toronto _Globe_ that
this journal issued its first bugle call regarding the desirability
that Canada should possess herself of all the wide sweep of the
Hudson Bay territory of the west. This demand aroused from the
Company a storm of emphatic declarations that the "Great Lone Land"
was not worth the acquisition of the state; that its climate and its
conditions rendered it forever useless to the interests of
civilisation. Through nearly two decades had this agitation
continued; but in 1869 the Government purchased the vast holdings of
the Company at the price of three hundred thousand pounds and the
further grant of one-twentieth of the fertile belt of land, and of
forty-five thousand acres in addition adjoining various
trading-posts. This transaction threw all the North-West into an
excited state and Governor MacDougall was sent out to Fort Garry to
still the commotion. Then came on the Rebellion incited and led by
Louis Riel, the story of which is so familiar {25} to all readers of
Canadian history. The conditions became disastrous and alarming, and
Governor MacDougall was not permitted to move on to his appointed
post. Under these circumstances Donald A. Smith decided to go
immediately to the Red River country. He was not the man to hesitate
when he heard the call of duty. He was at once invested with the
authority of Commissioner by the Dominion Government, and the story
of his success, and of the end of the first rebellion under Louis
Riel, is too well known to require extended allusion. Soon after
this Mr. Smith was elected to Parliament as the first representative
from Manitoba. It was to his astute knowledge, his skill as a
tactician, the great confidence that he inspired, and to his ability
as a Parliamentarian that the successful settlement of the affairs
between the Government and the Hudson's Bay Company was primarily
due. Meantime the problem of the consolidation of the Provinces
became more evident as one that focussed the interest of the time.
The epoch-making solution of this problem came in 1867 when the
Dominion was formed.
Canada was fortunate at this critical time in having a Premier of
remarkable qualities, who was the man for the hour. John Alexander
Macdonald (afterwards knighted and invested with the honour of a
Grand Cross of the Bath) was a Scotsman by birth whose family removed
to Canada in his early childhood. With the sturdy qualities of his
race he {26} thus united the influences of Canadian environment and
training, the family arriving in Canada in 1820, when the future
Prime Minister was but five years of age. In his earliest youth, as
a lad of fifteen, circumstances forced him into the world to earn his
living. Life itself became his university. He developed in his
first contact with the world that initiative, that instant perception
of the situation and the facility to meet it, which so signally
distinguished his statesmanship in after years. The family had
landed at Quebec and journeyed to Kingston where they settled and
lived until the death of the elder Macdonald in 1841, leaving the
household in straitened circumstances. The Ontario of those days was
very different from the smiling and prosperous Province of the
present time. All Upper Canada (as it was then known) was covered
with dense forests, and all means of transportation were primitive
and slow. "Railways, of course, were unknown," writes Sir Joseph
Pope, the authorised biographer of Sir John Alexander Macdonald, "and
macadamised roads, then looked upon as great luxuries, were few and
far between. The climate, too, was more severe than, owing to the
cultivation of the soil, it has since become." In 1842, at the age
of twenty-seven, Macdonald made his first visit to England, largely
for the purpose of purchasing his law library. Quoting a letter
written by him at this time to his mother, his biographer (Sir Joseph
Pope) adds:
{27}
"Forty-two years passed away and again John Alexander Macdonald stood
within the portals of Windsor Castle; but under what different
circumstances! No longer an unknown visitor, peeping with youthful
curiosity through half-open doors; but as the First Minister of a
mighty Dominion, he comes by the Queen's command to dine at her
table, and, in the presence of the Prime Minister and of one of the
great nobles of England, who alone have been summoned as witnesses of
the ceremony, to receive from the hand of his Sovereign that token
and pledge of her regard which, as such, he greatly prized--the
broad, red riband of the Bath."
An omnivorous reader and endowed with a winning and impressive
personality, Macdonald at once became a significant and an
influential figure in Canadian life. Among the creative forces of
his adopted and beloved country he holds a place never to be
forgotten. He first took his seat in the Assembly of 1844; the new
Parliament met in Montreal in the November of that year. Complex
problems confronted the sessions of that period, in that Canada felt
she had no potential voice in the administration of affairs. Every
measure of the Assembly must secure the approval of the Legislative
Council, the members of which were appointed for life by the
governor-general, and added to this the measure must then receive the
royal assent before it became operative. The conditions were also
aggravated by the large majority of Canadians of French descent,
sensitive and high-spirited, who rebelled against the invariable
English rule of an English governor-general. These questions and
other agitations made the political life on which {28} the young
member entered one of peculiar intricacy. The Canada of that day was
one of undeveloped resources and of internal dissensions. It
consisted only of those territories which we know as the Provinces of
Ontario and Quebec. Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward
Island were in the same position politically as Newfoundland is in
to-day, while the North-West provinces were a wilderness. With
Macdonald's rise to prominence in the political world the idea of
confederation began to engage the attention of all those who had at
heart the good of the country. The far-seeing leader of the
conservative party began a campaign for the confederation of Quebec
and Ontario with Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward
Island, believing that the best course was to bring about this
preliminary union, leaving it open to extension if time and
experience should prove it to be desirable. Owing to the closeness
of party divisions, successive governments vainly attempted to carry
on the work of the country. It was a critical period, and the manner
in which a solution for the national troubles was found will remain
one of the most striking episodes in the history of the times.
Sir John Carling was the means of bringing together the conflicting
elements. He was a power in the affairs of Ontario and an
enthusiastic supporter of Macdonald, while he also enjoyed the
friendship of the Honourable George Brown, who was recognised as the
Liberal leader of Upper {29} Canada, and who, for many years, had
been the opponent of Macdonald. But the veiled and shrouded figure
of Destiny hovered near. Did she bear a magic wand, concealed but
potent? At all events she ordained that Brown and Carling should
journey together from Toronto to Quebec on their way to attend a
meeting of the Legislative Council. In their discussion of public
affairs George Brown remarked: "Macdonald has the chance of his life
to do great things for his country and these can only be done by
carrying confederation." To this Sir John rejoined: "But you would
be the first to oppose him." To Carling's surprise Brown replied:
"No, I should uphold him as I feel that confederation is the only
thing for the country." What a significant moment was this in the
history of the future Dominion! Forces, determining but unseen, were
in the air. The finely-balanced mind of Sir John Carling instantly
grasped the importance of this psychological moment. "Would you mind
saying to John A. Macdonald what you have just told me?" eagerly
asked Sir John. "Certainly not," replied George Brown, and his
companion lost no time in bringing the two leaders together. The
result is well known to all; the coalition ministry was framed and
carried to a successful conclusion the great task with which it had
been entrusted.
From that time until his death on June 6, 1891, the energy, the
genius, the influence of John Alexander Macdonald were among the most
potent of {30} the creative forces of Canada, and for the proud
position that the Dominion holds to-day she is largely indebted to
this great leader. One of the most important of his powers for
national service lay in his ability to co-operate with strong men.
When the movement for confederation was initiated the situation was
extremely critical, and it was to the personal influence of the
eminent French-Canadian, George Etienne Cartier (who was born in St.
Antoine, Quebec, in 1814 and who died in 1873), that the support of a
reluctant Province was won for the unification of Canada. Cartier
was educated at the Seminary of St. Sulpice, Montreal; he was called
to the bar, and as a follower of Papineau he fought against the Crown
in 1837, and for some time after sought refuge in the United States.
On the restoration of peace he returned to Canada and resumed his
practice of law, attaining a high position, and subsequently he
became the attorney for the Grand Trunk Railway. He was elected to
Parliament in 1848 as the recognised leader of the French-Canadians
and when, in November of 1857, John Alexander Macdonald succeeded
Colonel Taché as Premier of the Province of Canada, Cartier was
invited to a place in his cabinet. Later he was created a baronet of
the British Empire. From 1858 to 1862 the Cartier-Macdonald ministry
held its onward course, though steering its way through quicksands
and tumult.
To Sir George Etienne Cartier is ascribed valuable {31} aid in the
construction of the Grand Trunk Railway and the Victoria Bridge,
important influence in the promotion of education, and signal service
in bettering the laws of Canada. When, in 1885, a statue to his
honour was unveiled in Ottawa, Sir John Macdonald in his address said
of him: "He served his country faithfully and well.... I believe no
public man has retained, during the whole of his life, in so eminent
a degree, the respect of both the parties into which this great
country is divided.... If he had done nothing else but give to
Quebec the most perfect code of law that exists in the entire world,
that was enough to make him immortal...." To Lord Lisgar the Premier
wrote of Cartier: "We have acted together since 1854 and never had a
serious difference. He was as bold as a lion, and but for him
confederation could not have been carried."
Another of the strong forces in constructive statesmanship was Sir
Charles Tupper, who, almost unaided, engaged in the great struggle to
overcome the opposition of Nova Scotia, his own Province, to the
scheme of confederation. In this famous group of colleagues, Sir
John Alexander Macdonald, Sir George Etienne Cartier, Sir Charles
Tupper, and the Honourable George Brown, conspicuous ability and
wonderful directive power were united with an optimistic courage, a
depth of conviction in the success of important measures for the
country, that rendered them practically invincible among the creative
forces of Canada. Nor could any mention {32} of this progress be
complete that did not include the name of Sir Samuel Leonard Tilley,
many years Minister of Finance, a worker for confederation, whose own
distinction of character and tenacity of purpose determined the
attitude taken by his Province of New Brunswick in her wavering and
tardy decision, only crystallised into adherence by the patriotic
zeal of Sir Leonard. "It is perhaps the highest of all tributes to
the genius of Macdonald," says George R. Parkin,[2] "that he was able
to draw to his support a group of men of the weight and worth of
Cartier, Tupper, and Tilley, and retain through a long series of
years their loyal devotion to him as a leader. Each in his own way a
commanding personality, they were of one accord in following
Macdonald with unswerving fidelity through all the vicissitudes of
his fortune. Along with him they grasped and held tenaciously the
idea of a great and united Canada forming an integral part of the
Empire, and to that end devoted the work of their lives."
[2] "Sir John A. Macdonald," _The Makers of Canada_. Morang and
Company, Limited, Toronto.
An interesting and graphic picture is preserved, in the literature of
the time, of the visit of Sir John Macdonald, in 1879, to Lord
Beaconsfield at Hughenden. He was received as Canada's most
illustrious citizen and leading statesman. After dinner Lord
Beaconsfield conducted his guest to the smoking-room at the top of
the house which was hung with {33} old portraits of former Premiers
of England. The host and his Canadian guest exchanged fragments of
personal reminiscences and experiences, and Lord Beaconsfield greatly
interested Sir John by his brilliant description of some of the
notable personalities whom, in former days, he had met at Lady
Blessington's, who had a matchless gift for drawing around her the
celebrities of her time. In bidding Sir John good-night, at the end
of a long and delightful evening, Lord Beaconsfield said: "You have
greatly interested me both in yourself and in Canada. Come back next
year and I will do anything you ask me." The next year duly came,
but Beaconsfield had passed away, and Gladstone was the Premier. It
was during this visit that the classics were discussed somewhat at
length between Beaconsfield and his guest, the Premier of England
dwelling, in the most fascinating manner, upon the poets,
philosophers, and orators of Greece and of Rome.
[Illustration: A Canoeing Party, Ontario]
For nearly fifty years the influence of Sir John Macdonald was a very
pillar of the Dominion. He represented a united Canada that forms so
important an integral part of the mighty British Empire. Lord Lorne
said of him that he was "the most successful statesman of one of the
most successful of the younger nations."
On his death Canada paid him her highest honours. Queen Victoria,
most gracious of Royal sovereigns, wrote a personal letter of
condolence to Lady Macdonald, and caused her to be elevated to the
peerage {34} with the title of Baroness Macdonald of Earnscliffe. An
impressive memorial service for the dead Premier was held in
Westminster Abbey, and later his bust was placed in St. Paul's and
unveiled by Lord Rosebery. Almost every large city in the Dominion
is adorned with a statue of Sir John Macdonald.
One of the most important services to Canada, on the part of the
Premier, had been his early recognition of the immeasurable
possibilities of the North-West. As early as in 1871 he saw that the
construction of a railway to the Pacific coast was a matter
absolutely essential to the Dominion for the development of this
portion of the country. In April of that year, while Sir John
Macdonald was absent in Washington (U.S.A.) attending the proceedings
of the Joint High Commission, Sir George Cartier moved a resolution
in Parliament for the construction of such a road. The resolution
was supported by Sir Alexander Galt and was carried. Sir Hugh Allan
and Donald Smith had long held commercial relations, and the
extensive and accurate knowledge of all this region that Mr. Smith
had acquired was of inestimable value to the project. Into this
intricate problem attending the decision and the subsequent
fulfilment of it in the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway
(completed on November 7, 1885) entered a group of important and
forceful men. The magnitude of the work offers material for many
chapters of Canadian history. Among this group {35} of dominant
personalities stands out that of William Cornelius Van Horne
(afterwards knighted) and who was particularly well characterised by
James Jerome Hill who said of him: "There was no one on the whole
continent who would have served our purpose so well as Mr. Van Horne.
He had brains, skill, experience, and energy, and was, besides, a
born leader of men." The completion of this great highway was
another of the events that closely linked the life of Canada's great
Premier with the forces that were creating her destiny. The first
through transcontinental train on this line left Montreal on June 26,
1886, for its journey of 2905 miles through what was then an almost
trackless wilderness. On the completion of the road Queen Victoria
had sent a telegram characterising the achievement as one "of great
importance to the British Empire."
The Grand Trunk was, however, Canada's pioneer railway and it was the
first railway in the British Empire outside the United Kingdom. One
of the leading factors in the varied group of the creative forces of
Canada, it is one of the monumental illustrations of her claim to
foresight and enterprise in thus early recognising that the art of
transportation goes before and points the way for advancing
enlightenment. The transportation service is, as one of the eminent
officials of this line has said, "the advance guard of education."
In 1914 the Grand Trunk System, led by the vision {36} and foresight
of Charles Melville Hays, completed its transcontinental lines.
President Hays had predicted that the Grand Trunk would be able to
handle the harvest of 1915, and his prediction was realised. His
forecast for the future included steamer lines from Prince Rupert to
Liverpool, by way of the Panama Canal, and further extension of lines
to Australia, Japan, China, and Alaska. In fact, the Canadian
prevision of unmapped possibilities of commerce that would be
afforded by means of the new canal that thus connected two oceans was
far more alert and engaging than that of the United States.
Beside the great enterprises involved in the conquering of nature,
there were others, not less important, that contribute to the
building up of human life. The claim of industry and economics is
not greater than the claim of intellectual development, of
scholarship, of that knowledge and refinement that leads to the
highest social culture of a nation.
When the Honourable James McGill of Montreal left at his death (in
1813) a large bequest to found the university that bears his name he
added another to the galaxy of Canada's benefactors and creators.
Mr. McGill had amassed large wealth in the fur industry, and the
college, after encountering some years of difficulty, entered in 1885
on an era of prosperity that has continually increased as the years
have gone by. This era of prosperity was largely due to the securing
as Principal a gifted and {37} remarkable young man, John William
Dawson, who is now so widely known to the world of science and
scholarship as Sir William Dawson. For thirty-eight years he served
as Principal of McGill. He found it a struggling college with less
than a hundred students. He left it with more than a thousand
students and with from eighty to ninety professors and lecturers.
Finding it with three faculties, he doubled that number, and as
within fifteen years he recognised the necessity of higher education
for women, there was opened (in 1883) the Donalda Department,
generously endowed by Lord Strathcona, which has since developed into
the Royal Victoria College. Lord Strathcona gave, first and last,
many millions of dollars to McGill; Sir William Macdonald gave to the
Engineering department one million, including with this the schools
of physics and chemistry, and he also equipped the Macdonald College
at Saint-Anne-de-Bellevue which is incorporated with McGill. Peter
Redpath, a public-spirited merchant of Montreal, presented the museum
that bears his name (now rich in collections) and he also gave the
Library building which houses, for McGill, the largest library in
Canada save that of Parliament. These liberal gifts of Mr. Redpath
were still further increased by Mrs. Redpath's generous
contributions. The unsurpassed opportunities at McGill place her
graduates on equality of scholarly prestige with those of Oxford and
of the other great universities of the world. No {38} consideration
of the creative forces of Canada could fail to include this
inestimable contribution that makes for nobler life offered by McGill
University.
To the intellectual development and liberal culture of the Dominion
the universities of Toronto and of Laval render priceless aid. The
former is noted somewhat at length in a subsequent chapter. Laval
University, founded in Quebec in 1852, by the Quebec seminary, dates
back, through that institution, to its founder, François de
Laval-Montmorency, the first Bishop of Quebec, who landed in Canada
in 1659, and founded the seminary in 1663. This great
French-Canadian university, fairly enshrined in sacred tradition and
archaic history, is an object of pilgrimage to all visitors in
Quebec. To its vast resources of scholarship it adds the
perpetuation of the name of one of the most remarkable prelates that
the world has known. A son of the crusaders, a true successor of the
apostles who shared the life of Jesus Christ, a man of boundless
charity, of intrepid heroism, of a life so consecrated to the Divine
Service that its passing from earth in the May of 1708 cannot efface
the vividness of his image nor dim the brightness of the atmosphere
which enshrines his memory, he was deeply concerned with the
education of his people. Monseigneur Laval specified that he desired
that his seminary should be "a perpetual school of virtue." The Abbé
de Saint-Vallier of France bequeathed to this Seminary in 1685 the
sum of forty-two thousand francs, and {39} Bishop Laval himself left
to its maintenance his entire estate. The museums, lecture halls,
and the library of Laval University are open to visitors. It is rich
in historic portraits and in many fine examples of French art. On
the visit of the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII.) to Canada in
1860, the heir to the British throne founded the Prince of Wales
Prize, which has remained one of the features of the university.
In the equalisation of educational opportunities to an unusual degree
Canada is especially strong. While the fiftieth anniversary of the
consolidation of the Dominion will not be celebrated until July 1, of
1917, and while as a nation she is not yet half a century old, her
educational privileges are recognised as among the best in the world.
Not a single province is without its fully equipped educational
system. Free public schools, high schools, colleges, and
universities abound. There are already twenty-one universities in
Canada. The standard of instruction is very high; the schools of
applied science, law, medicine, and technical instruction are among
the best in the world. They offer all late modern appliances for
chemical, metallurgical, and electrical experiment: civil, mining,
and electrical engineering are offered with unsurpassed opportunities
for practice and research. The Royal Military College at Kingston
presents a complete course in Engineering and in all branches of
military science. The Royal Naval College at Halifax offers {40}
equally complete opportunities for naval training.
Not even the most fragmentary survey of the creative forces of the
Dominion could fail to emphasise the notable and beneficent work of
Archbishop Taché, who, born in Quebec in 1823, became identified with
the Far West in 1845, where he remained, an heroic and impassioned
figure, until his death, in 1894. The Archbishop's mother was a
daughter of Joliet, the explorer; the same intrepid spirit that led
this pathfinder on through the wilderness characterised the great
prelate in a remarkable degree. At the age of twenty-two he had been
admitted to the priesthood; he received his training in Montreal and
was, from the first, "stirred to the soul by missionary zeal"; he
eagerly embraced the call to the hardships, the most insurmountable
difficulties, of the pioneer missionary. He traversed the country
for four hundred miles around from St. Boniface (across the river
from Winnipeg) where he was stationed; his journeys were by canoe and
dog sledges; he encountered physical hardships which seem incredible
for human endurance. When the slender financial support of his
mission threatened to fail he pleaded that just sufficient revenue be
continued to provide bread and wine for the sacrament, saying that
for himself he would "find food in the fish of the lakes, and
clothing from the skins of the wild animals." In his later years he
was made the Bishop of Manitoba and he was present, a venerable and
honoured figure, on the opening of the first Assembly {41} of that
Province in 1870-71. Archbishop Taché was one of the nearer friends
and associates of Lord Strathcona, also when the latter, as Donald A.
Smith, was so long the dominating personality in the North-West. The
life and work of this great Archbishop of the Catholic faith are
forever bound up with the history and development of Manitoba. There
are other notable Catholic prelates, a remarkable group: his Eminence
Cardinal Taschereau, the first Canadian prelate to become a Prince of
the Church; Archbishops Bourget and Fabre of Montreal; Archbishops
Lynch and Walsh of Toronto; Archbishop Cleary of Kingston; and Bishop
Demers of Vancouver are all among the great religious leaders whose
influence for the general advancement of the people, as well as for
the progress of religion, has been wide and invaluable.
Bishop Strachan of Toronto, a priest of the Church of England, whose
life fell between 1778-1867, was a strong force both in church and
state. No servant of God within the entire Dominion has left a
nobler record. When (in 1832) the scourge of Asiatic cholera swept
over Canada, it was he who inspired courage, administered the
sacraments to the dying, and sustained the survivors. His aid, both
legislative and otherwise, to the cause of education, and his
activity in promoting all progress in Ontario, are among the most
precious records of that province. One passage from his personal
counsel may well be held in memory:
{42}
"Cultivate, then, my young friends, all those virtues which dignify
the human character, and mark in your behaviour the respect you
entertain for everything venerable and holy. It is this conduct that
will raise you above the rivalship, the intrigues, and slanders by
which you will be surrounded. They will exalt you above this little
spot of earth, so full of malice, contention, disorder; and extend
your views, with joy and expectation, to that better country."
Nothing in all religious advancement is more impressive than the
great work of the Methodist denomination in Canada. Their vital and
fervent spirit has kindled the zeal of the people with the flame of
the living coal on the altar. One of the remarkable contributions to
the lofty order of creative forces was made by the Reverend Doctor
Egerton Ryerson, the celebrated Methodist leader, and the organiser
of the Public School System of Ontario. In 1841 Doctor Ryerson
became Principal of Victoria College; in 1844 ne was appointed
Superintendent of Public Schools in Upper Canada, and he brought to
bear upon educative work the enduring impress of his ideals. "By
education I mean not the mere acquisition of certain arts," he said,
"but that instruction and discipline which qualify men for their
appropriate duties in life, as Christians, as persons in business,
and as members of the civil community." Doctor Ryerson lived until
the year 1882, and he thus was enabled to see much of the fruit of
his wise and untiring endeavour.
Although the Right Honourable Sir Wilfrid Laurier is still, happily,
dwelling among his countrymen {43} and lending to many notable
occasions the rare distinction and the prestige of his presence, the
gratifying fact that he is a factor in the life of the hour cannot
constrain one to fail to express the recognition of Canada's
indebtedness to his splendid services during her more recent past. A
native of Quebec (born in 1841) his unqualified devotion has been
given to the Empire without regard to restriction of race or
language. His political career as a member of the House opened
before he was thirty years of age; six years later he was called to
the Cabinet; and in June, 1896, at the age of fifty-five, he became
the Premier of the Dominion. When the Diamond Jubilee of Queen
Victoria was celebrated, one special feature was the invitation
extended to all the Prime Ministers of the British Empire to honour
it by their presence. Among these Ministers Sir Wilfrid was singled
out for many special attentions. He was distinguished by being made
a member of the Imperial Privy Council; he was appointed a Knight of
the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George; he was
invested with honorary degrees by both Oxford and Cambridge; he was
made an honorary member of the Cobden Club which awarded to him a
gold medal "in recognition of exceptional and distinguished services
to the cause of international and free exchange." Sir Wilfrid
Laurier visited President Faure and the President of the French
Republic named him as a Grand Officier of the Legion d'Honneur. {44}
In 1902 Sir Wilfrid was invited to the Coronation of Edward VII. and
his presence at this imposing ceremonial reflected distinction of the
highest order on Canada by his brilliant and impressive addresses
made on Imperial interests and affairs. England could not but
realise that in the Parliament of the vast country over the sea there
were orators who would add new lustre to her national eloquence and
splendid traditions.
Well, indeed, has Canada been called the country of the Twentieth
Century. To no inconsiderable extent the appliances that introduce a
new order of life have been either invented or first experimentally
considered in the Dominion. Indeed, as if already under the spell of
Destiny, these great modern miracles of communication--the railways,
telegraphs, and telephones will be forever associated with the name
of Canada; the country that cradled James Jerome Hill and Samuel
Rogers Calloway; in which William Cornelius Van Horne and Charles
Melville Hays gave the best years of their lives to building and
improving transportation facilities; in which Alexander Graham Bell
initiated his experiments and where he still makes his summer home;
and in which Thomas Alva Edison worked as a telegraph operator on the
pioneer railway, where he printed and issued _The Grand Trunk
Herald_, the first newspaper ever printed on a railway train.
In the light of the eventful period that has passed since that
momentous date of August, 1914, it would {45} seem to be a curiously
prophetic glimpse that rose, like a mirage on the far horizon, before
Sir Wilfrid Laurier when, in response to a toast at the banquet given
on June 18, 1897, by the Imperial Institute in London in honour of
the Colonial premiers, he said:
"... England has proved at all times that she can fight her own
battles; but if a day were ever to come when England was in danger,
let the bugle sound, let the fires be lighted upon the hills, and in
all parts of the Colonial possessions whatever we can do shall be
done to help her.... I have been asked if the sentiments of the
French population of Canada were those of absolute loyalty towards
the British Empire. Let me say ... it was the privilege of the men
of our generation to see the banners of France and of England
entwined together victoriously on the banks of the Alma, on the
heights of Inkermann, and on the walls of Sebastopol."
Seventeen years had but passed--from 1897 to 1914--when again the
banners of France and England were intertwined; and since that
fateful midsummer's day what treasure and sacrifice has not Canada
poured out with a courage and unflinching heroism for which words
furnish no adequate interpretation. The future of the Canadian
Dominion is seen, in the words of the poet, as "along the grand roads
of the universe." Her citizens realise that "To-day is a new day" and
the hand of Destiny is leading her on to exemplify to the world a new
and a more glorious civilisation.
{46}