The Tree of Freedom
THAT BUGLE again! You cannot hear it, but I know it is calling, for
to-morrow is the birthday of the giant twins, Alberta and Saskatchewan.
One more night under the stars, a brisk morning ride, and we canter up
to the old fur-trading post. Paul Kane’s 139 people, “all living within
the pickets of the fort” and not a white woman among them, have grown to
14,000, and, from their clothes and complexions, they might be in London
or Toronto.
In all the big crowd, gathered to hear the Governor-General of Canada
proclaim the birth of a new Province with Edmonton for capital, we look
in vain for beaded redskin or shaggy voyageur. We discover one cowboy,
got up for the occasion, in buckskin coat and fringed leather shaps, and
he looks as singular in such a gathering as a canary among sparrows—or
a sparrow among canaries—for the ladies’ dresses and the fluttering
Union Jacks make up a scene as bright as anything in the bird creation.
And side by side with the cowboy’s bronco stands—an automobile. If we
ask for the Hudson’s Bay Company, we are directed to a modern department
store; yet, on investigation, we discover the old fur-trading Edmonton
still busy behind the scenes. A million dollars’ worth of furs pour in
every year from a multitude of outposts in the north, to be sorted and
packed for the markets of the world.
Settlers look longingly up the trail by which the furs come down, and
already all the surveyed land for eighty miles north, except the heavy
brush, is taken up. In fact, pioneers are squatting twenty miles beyond
the survey. But many of the late arrivals at Edmonton are men of some
means who will buy land within easy reach of a railway. Among them are
scores of families who have abandoned California, many good Dutch
farmers from Pennsylvania, and hundreds from the Western States. At the
same time, the “Galicians” are being largely reinforced, and they cannot
afford to be as particular. They take brush land without hesitation,
clear it, and, having spent much toil transforming it into farms, take
root as firmly as the toughest willows they have just pulled out.
Our ear catches fragments of many tongues, therefore, in this expectant
crowd, till the platform fills and the ceremony begins.
* * * * *
Think of what this ceremony means, both here and at Regina, which to-day
becomes the capital of the new Province of Saskatchewan and will have
its own festivities as soon as the Governor-General can arrive.
It is the blossoming of a tree of freedom, planted many years ago. In
early days the Hudson’s Bay Company was the autocratic ruler of the
West; but in 1835, finding it difficult to keep order in the growing Red
River Settlement and along the frontier, the Company formed fifteen
leading residents into a “Council of Assiniboia,” which appointed
justices of the peace and organized a volunteer force. In 1870, as we
have seen, southern Manitoba became a Province, electing its own
legislature for local affairs and members of parliament to share in
making laws for the whole Dominion. Its Lieutenant-Governor, appointed
by the Federal Government, was also Governor of the territory beyond,
from Manitoba to the Rockies.
In 1876, this territory was put under a separate Lieutenant-Governor,
with a Council, in which elected representatives of the people had a
share in the law-making. Battleford was chosen as the capital. In 1882,
the southern part of the territory was divided into three Provisional
Districts—Assiniboia, Saskatchewan north of that, Alberta west of both,
and Athabasca in the north-west; Regina, which could now be reached by
rail, became the capital. In 1888 a regular Legislative Assembly was set
up, all its members being elected, though without complete provincial
powers. And now, in 1905, the old districts have been abolished, and the
land is divided between two full-fledged Provinces, ranking with the
older Provinces of the East, with Manitoba, and with British Columbia,
which has been a Province ever since it joined the Federation in 1871.
This tree of freedom—how shall we cultivate it? This power to pass our
own laws, to make and unmake our Governments—how shall we use it? The
Tree of Freedom must have constant care and cultivation, or it cannot
yield good fruit; just as an orchard tree needs water, and fertile soil,
and eternal vigilance against devouring parasites. The orchardman has to
study, and learn the best thing to do, and do it with energy, or his
trees will die, and his business too.
Human beings—ourselves—are more interesting to us than anything else.
The art of politics, which is the art of free human beings living
together, is therefore the most interesting of all arts. It can only
seem dry and dull to us if we don’t see what it is and how it concerns
us.
We can’t possibly “keep out of politics,” for as long as we are alive we
have to live in the same world with all sorts of other people, who don’t
all like the things we like, and can’t all earn their bread in the same
way; and the art of arranging for different kinds of people to live and
work in harmony together is simply “politics.”
“Good politics” is unselfish. Even if there were only one family in the
world, its members would not all think alike, or have exactly the same
interests. They would constantly have to give in to each other. If each
member insisted on its own likes and interests, the family would break
up at once. No man can “be a law to himself” alone; nor can a country,
still less a part of a country. We are all “our brother’s keeper,” and
bound to think of his interests as well as our own.
Step by step, our great human family has made great progress in the
first essential art of civilization, the art of living together. The
tribes of England, for instance, after hating and fighting each other as
fiercely as the tribes of Canada did a few years ago, not only made
peace, but united in one English nation. The tribes of Scotland did the
same; even the Highlanders and the Lowlanders, speaking different
languages, saw the folly of fighting, and united in one Scottish nation.
England and Scotland went on fighting each other, but presently they too
saw the folly of it, and united to form one Kingdom. Each country, each
county, each village, may have its own ideas, even its own conflicting
interests, but recognizes these as small compared with the joint
interests of the whole, and allows no local or sectional desire to
lessen its overwhelming loyalty to the duty of Union.
In Canada we have learnt the same lesson, though we meet some
individuals who have not yet completed their education in the art of
good citizenship. In the earliest days, Quebec was jealous of Montreal.
Later on, Lower Canada, including both Quebec and Montreal, was at
daggers drawn with Upper Canada, or Ontario. The Maritime Provinces were
reluctant to federate with “the Canadas”—but did. It was a magnificent
step forward when our whole country became united from sea to sea, and
no step backward now can be dreamed of without shame.
British Columbia has some interests and ideas which are not shared by
the Prairie Provinces; the desires of the western and eastern ends of
the prairie are not always the same; the West as a whole has many
discussions with the East as a whole, just as various parts of the East
have still great differences among themselves. For that matter, two
cities or two districts in the same Province, either East or West, often
have differences, sometimes petty and sometimes grave. But every
difference between district and district, Province and Province, East
and West, however great it seems when we think of our individual
interests alone, is small in comparison with the greater interests, the
nobler duties, which unite us all. No difference can be allowed to
interfere for a moment with the supreme and sacred duty of Union. And
every difference can be settled, with difficulty or with ease according
as we are careless or enthusiastic in the devotion of thought, study,
ingenuity and unselfish good-will, to perfecting ourselves in the
essential art of living together.
A greater union is ours to-day, greater even than the union of all our
Provinces in one Dominion. We may be a long way yet from “the Parliament
of Man, the Federation of the World”; but we must set our faces steadily
in that direction, for the nations of the world cannot go on jostling
and “daring” each other without disaster. No nation can ever again be
absolutely “independent” of the rest, even if that were a high ideal,
and not, as it is, a low one. The nations must learn the art of living
and working together. Recognizing others’ interests as well as their
own, they must join to study and perfect arrangements which will make
the idea of war between them as absurd as it would be to-day between
England and Scotland, Kansas and Iowa, Alberta and Saskatchewan, or
Canada and Australia.
We have our feet securely now on the first well-tested step of the
ladder. We have the priceless possession of a united commonwealth of
self-governing nations which we call the British Empire; and what we
have we shall hold. No force of reaction and dissension can rob us of
that firm footing and separate us from our sister-nations, unless we
fall asleep. We are trying a second step, the League of Nations, and
hope it will bear; we must do our best to strengthen it; but meanwhile
we have our own British league of nations, and that has stood the test
of the hardest knocks in history.
The next step may be an arrangement between our Empire and that of the
United States—which is just as much an “empire” as ours, if anyone is
bothered by mere names. This West of ours, containing so many thousands
born or long resident in the United States, can do much to strengthen
the ties between these two empire-commonwealths. But, until our
neighbors awake from the dream of irresponsible isolation, and come
forward boldly to take their sister-empire by the hand, we must all make
it perfectly clear to them that neither bribes nor boycotts can break
our union or shake our independence.
In the future an international patriotism will flourish, to the
confusion of strife-makers and to the great satisfaction of the
peace-loving mass of mankind, whose essential one-ness is already an
axiom of science and religion. Until we can have the greater patriotism,
let us carefully cultivate the less.