I
Three hundred miles north of Toronto, the Cobalt mining country
surrenders its daily toll of silver to the world. In that region there
is mostly rock. Where woods exist, the trees are gaunt and defiant, as
though resentful of the approach of man; in winter they stand like
white-shrouded ghosts, and the wind howls dismally through them until
in the little settlements across Lake Timiskaming men draw closer to
the fire, and women croon comfort to frightened children, yet
half-believe, themselves, the Indian legend that another soul is on its
way to the Great Unknown.
Five miles north of Cobalt the town of Haileybury straggles down a hill
to the lake, on the other side of which can be seen the blue shores of
Pontiac, Quebec, where lies the sleepy little hamlet known as Ville
Marie, possessed of its church, its wayside public-house, "Les
Voyageurs," and a few vagabond frame buildings. The ring of the
blacksmith's anvil can be heard throughout the day, for there is little
else to drown the noise. But when the lumber-jacks come in from the
woods, or the river-runners from their convoys of logs, there is always
the sound of a noisy chorus from "Les Voyageurs," led (in the times we
write of) by Pierre Generaud, who knows that singing a constant
fortissimo stimulates thirst in participants and auditors alike. On
Sunday there is the sound of the organ, and the villagers walk about in
ill-fitting garments of respectability: a simple God-fearing community,
knowing no world but their own, and finding their joy of life in mere
existence.
It was gathering dusk, one summer evening in the year 1914, when the
figure of a young officer wended its way towards "Les Voyageurs."
He had crossed from Haileybury on the afternoon boat, causing not a
little comment by the uniform he wore. All in the mining country knew
him as "Dug" Campbell, manager of the Curran Like Mine--they were
hardly prepared for the sudden transition from his usual costume of
riding-breeches, brown shirt, and lumberman's boots, to the trappings
of a British officer. He was a young man of big stature, with broad,
restless shoulders that seemed to chafe under the bondage of a tunic,
and he had a long, loose-limbed stride oddly at variance with the usual
conception of military bearing. His eyes were light blue, his hair an
unruly brown that flirted with red--and his name was Campbell. Such men
do not wait for the second call when there is war.
Wherever civilization is forcing her right of way, wherever she is
fighting for her existence, the descendants of Scotland will be found.
When a new railroad struggles over unnamed rivers and through untrodden
forests, somewhere ahead there is always a son or a grandson of old
Scotia, whose eyes are a humorous blue and whose hair has more than a
tinge of red. There is no part of the world to which the Scot is a
stranger, but he rises to his best in a new country where waterfalls
must be harnessed to give power; where great rocks must be blasted from
age-old foundations; where rebellious nature in her primeval state must
be taught that the world was made for man.
On that August evening in that most fateful of years, the figure of
Captain Douglas Campbell, tall and somewhat rugged, like one of the
northern trees, might have served as a sculptor's model for the spirit
of Scotland confirming and strengthening the purpose of young Canada.
Rich in tradition as she is, what glory of her past can Scotland have
that is greater than this--that, strong in the manhood which seems to
spring from the soil of her country, she sent her sons to every corner
of the world; and when the shadow of war fell upon her--they came back!
Sons, grandsons, those to whom their Scottish blood was little more
than a family legend, _they came back_.
Scotland needs no other monument than those three words.