Do not imagine that I spend much time at once in Ottawa. I have never
liked the kind of play-house that politicians have made on that
glorious plateau in a valley of wonderland with a river of dreams
rolling past to the sea. Where under heaven is any other Capital so
favoured by the great scenic artist? On what promontory do
parliamentary towers and gables so colossally arise to enchant the
vision? The Thames draws the ships of the world and crawls muddily and
lazily out to sea wondering what haphazard of history ever concentrated
so much commerce, politics and human splendour on the banks of one
large ditch. Ottawa's house of political drama overlooks one of the
noblest rivers in the world, that takes its rise in everlasting hills
of granite and pines.
One, Laurier, used to dream that he would devote his declining days to
making Ottawa beautiful as a city as she is for the site of a capital.
To him as to others, Rome, London, Paris, Vienna, Washington, should
all in time be rivalled by Ottawa the magnificent. But the saw-mill
surveyors of Ottawa spoiled that when they made no approach to
Parliament Hill to compare to the vista seen from the river. Ottawa
was built for convenience: for opportunity: for expediency.
Parliament is its great show. Politicians are the actors. Time has
seen some interesting, almost baffling, dramas on that hill. No other
Parliament stands midway of so vast a country. But there are people
who prefer Hull, P.Q., to Ottawa, Ont. We have had some mild Mephistos
of strategy up there: some prophets of eloquence: some dreamers of
imagination: giants of creative energy scheming how to draw a young,
vast country together into nationhood so that the show-men on
Parliament Hill might have an audience.
But the Ottawa of to-day is a strange spectacle for the prophets. The
great new Opera House is all but finished, when no seer can tell
whether the plays to be put on there by the parties of the future will
be as epical and worthwhile as those staged by the actors of the past.
Imagination was not absent when Ottawa was created. But it needs more
than common imagination to foresee whether these political playboys of
the northern world are going to be worthy of the great audience soon to
arise in the country that converges upon Ottawa.
Sometimes in Parliament you catch the vibration of big momentums in a
nation's progress. Voices now and then arise in speech that reflect
some greatness of vision. More often the actors are sitting
indolently, hearing the clack of worn-out principals whose struts and
grimaces and cadences are those of men whose cues should lead them to
the dressing rooms, or to the wings, or somewhere into the maze of the
back drop where nobody takes part in the show. Or they listen to men
whose big informing idea constantly is that all we need to make
economic happiness for everybody is to turn out the company now in and
get another from the furrows. These latter believe that a nation is a
condition of free trade--mainly on behalf of the farmer whose average
idea of industry is a blacksmith shop on a farm.
One's head inclines to ache by reason of listening to the
three-cornered claque on the Tariff as it was in the beginning, is now
and ever shall be. Now and again we are inclined to study the men who
are elected to Parliament and some of those who gravitate towards
Ottawa without the bother of elections. They stimulate interest and
challenge criticism, not less because the interest and the criticism
come from a seat in the audience rather than from "behind the
scenes"--which is not always a disadvantage. While the
parliamentarians perform "Promises and Pie Crusts", the wives have
their own play--"Petticoats and Power". The stage here is a
triangle--Rideau Hall, Chateau Laurier, the Parliamentary Restaurant.
At the cafe tables women from all the counties and electoral districts
of Canada--many of them French--chatter about the great masquerade up
at the Castle, the little-king show which at its best is worth more to
Canada than the Senate. The homes of Ottawa are little shows whose
players imitate the manners and the accents of the fine people in the
Castle, the Restaurant and the Chateau.
"Nothing but a prinked-up panorama!" says the rugged Radical in a
coonskin coat, member of a deputation with a railway ticket as long as
his pocket. "Poor show! What we want down here is more plain farmers'
wives----"
He pauses. This man's first cousin broke away from the farm a
generation ago because farmers' wives were too plain, and farmers did
so little reading, and the big thinkers and doers all seemed to live in
town. As he talks, up dashes a sleigh, jangling its bells and dangling
its robes, and from behind the bearskinned driver alights a company
that makes his coonskin coat feel clumsy and uncomfortable. He glances
up at the great pile of walls on the hill. The hill is alive with fine
people. In one of the sleighs a lady bows and smiles--at him! He
touches his cap and takes his pipe from his mouth.
"That lady?" he replies to his sleeping-car mate. "Oh, that is the
wife of a Senator, used to live in our town. Clever little woman she
is, too. They tell me she's writing a novel and that Lady Byng is
taking her up. Lady Byng--oh, yes, she writes novels. Good idea.
Likely her books won't be quite so rough as some of our Canadian novels
are. I like style in a book, all that fine manners stuff; takes your
mind off the humdrum of everyday life. Byng--say, that was a wise
appointment if ever there was one. My way of thinking, Lord Byng has
'em all beaten since Dufferin. Kings' and queens' uncles and cousins
and brothers don't suit this democratic nation like a man who got
acquainted with this country before ever he set eyes on it, through the
boys he commanded out yonder. Great man! Fit to be Governor-General
of a great country, and I won't deny it. No snobbery. Seventh son of
an earl, all his life a soldier and a worker. A real man, such as any
of us could present to our constituents with pleasure and pride. Tell
you what--listen!"
His sleeping-car mate feels a heavy clutch on his arm.
"Remember the old debate we used to have about 'The pen is mightier
than the sword'? Well, say--when you get the pen and the sword united
in one outfit--what about it? Oh, it's a great show, sure enough. I
used to think government was a plain, plugshot business of trade
statistics, card indexes and ledgers. But I've come to the conclusion
that this old town has to make it a good bit of a social compromise and
a show, or it can't be carried on, no matter who does it."