Canada: the Empire of the North | Page 2

to the Canadian
Archives since 1886; to the special historical issues of each of the
eastern provinces; and to the monumental works of Dr. Kingsford.
Nearly all the places described are from frequent visits or from living
on the spot.

{v}
INTRODUCTION
"The Twentieth century belongs to Canada."
The prediction of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Premier of the Dominion, seems
likely to have bigger fulfillment than Canadians themselves realize.
What does it mean?
Canada stands at the same place in the world's history as England stood
in the Golden Age of Queen Elizabeth--on the threshold of her future as
a great nation. Her population is the same, about seven million. Her
mental attitude is similar, that of a great awakening, a consciousness of
new strength, an exuberance of energy biting on the bit to run the race;
mellowed memory of hard-won battles against tremendous odds in the
past; for the future, a golden vision opening on vistas too far to follow.

They dreamed pretty big in the days of Queen Elizabeth, but they did
n't dream big enough for what was to come; and they are dreaming
pretty big up in Canada to-day, but it is hard to forecast the future when
a nation the size of all Europe is setting out on the career of her world
history.
To put it differently: Canada's position is very much the same to-day as
the United States' a century ago. Her population is about seven million.
The population of the United States was seven million in 1810. One
was a strip of isolated settlements north and south along the Atlantic
seaboard; the other, a string of provinces east and west along the
waterways that ramify from the St. Lawrence. Both possessed and were
flanked by vast unexploited territory the size of Russia; the United
States by a Louisiana, Canada by the Great Northwest. What the Civil
War did for the United States, Confederation did for the Canadian
provinces--welded them into a nation. The parallel need not be carried
farther. If the same development {vi} follows Confederation in Canada
as followed the Civil War in the United States, the twentieth century
will witness the birth and growth of a world power.
To no one has the future opening before Canada come as a greater
surprise than to Canadians themselves. A few years ago such a claim as
the Premier's would have been regarded as the effusions of the
after-dinner speaker. While Canadian politicians were hoping for the
honor of being accorded colonial place in the English Parliament, they
suddenly awakened to find themselves a nation. They suddenly realized
that history, and big history, too, was in the making. Instead of Canada
being dependent on the Empire, the Empire's most far-seeing statesmen
were looking to Canada for the strength of the British Empire. No
longer is there a desire among Canadians for place in the Parliament at
Westminster. With a new empire of their own to develop, equal in size
to the whole of Europe, Canadian public men realize they have enough
to do without taking a hand in European affairs.
As the different Canadian provinces came into Confederation they were
like beads on a string a thousand miles apart. First were the Maritime
Provinces, with western bounds touching the eastern bounds of Quebec,

but in reality with the settlements of New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia,
and Prince Edward Island separated from the settlements of Quebec by
a thousand miles of untracked forest. Only the Ottawa River separated
Quebec from Ontario, but one province was French, the other English,
aliens to each other in religion, language, and customs. A thousand
miles of rock-bound, winter-bound wastes lay between Ontario and the
scattered settlement of Red River in Manitoba. Not an interest was in
common between the little province of the middle west and her sisters
to the east. Then prairie land came for a thousand miles, and mountains
for six hundred miles, before reaching the Pacific province of British
Columbia, more completely cut off from other parts of Canada than
from Mexico or Panama. In fact, it would have been easier for British
Columbia to trade with Mexico and Panama than with the rest of
Canada.
{vii} To bind these far-separated patches of settlement, oases in a
desert of wilds, into a nation was the object of the union known as
Confederation. But a nation can live only as it trades what it draws
from the soil. Naturally, the isolated provinces looked for trade to the
United States, just across an invisible boundary. It seemed absurd that
the Canadian provinces should try to trade with each other, a thousand
miles apart, rather than with the United States, a stone's throw from the
door of each province. But the United States erected a tariff wall that
Canada could