The Canadian Commonwealth | Page 4

Canada's national consciousness that reveres law next to
God. Canada passed through the throes of purging her national
consciousness from 1815 to 1840, as the United States passed through
the same throes in the sixties, but the process cost her half a century of
delay in growth and development.
While the union of Upper and Lower Canada put an end to the evils of
special privileges in government, events had been moving apace in the
far West, where roving traders and settlers were a law unto themselves.
Red River settlers of the region now known as Manitoba were
clamoring for an end to the monopoly of the Hudson's Bay Fur
Company over all that region inland from the Great Northern Sea. The
discovery of gold had brought hordes of adventurers pouring into
Cariboo, or what is now known as British Columbia. Both Red River
and British Columbia demanded self-government. Partly because
England had delayed granting Oregon self-government, the settlers of
the Columbia had set up their own provisional government and turned

that region over to the United States. We are surely far enough away
from the episodes to state frankly the facts that similar underground
intrigue was at work in both Red River and British Columbia, fostered,
much of it, by Irish malcontents of the old Fenian raids. Once more
Canada's national consciousness roused itself to a bigger problem and
wider outlook. Either the far-flung Canadian provinces must be bound
together in some sort of national unity or--the Canadian mind did not
let itself contemplate that "or." The provinces must be confederated to
be held. Hence confederation in 1867 under the British North American
Act, which is to Canada what the Constitution is to the United States. It
happened that Sir John Macdonald, the future premier of the Dominion,
had been in Washington during one period of the Civil War. He noted
what he thought was the great defect of the American system, and he
attributed the Civil War to that defect--namely, that all powers not
specifically delegated to the federal government were supposed to rest
with the states. Therefore, when Canada formed her federation of
isolated provinces, Sir John and the other famous Fathers of
Confederation reversed the American system. All power not
specifically delegated to the provinces was supposed to rest with the
Dominion. Only strictly local affairs were left with the provinces.
Trade, commerce, justice, lands, agriculture, labor, marriage laws,
waterways, harbors, railways were specifically put under Dominion
control.
IV
Now, stand back and contemplate the situation confronting the new
federation:
Canada's population was less than half the present population of the
state of New York; not four million. That population was scattered over
an area the size of Europe.[1] To render the situation doubly dark and
doubtful the United States had just entered on her career of high tariff.
That high tariff barred Canadian produce out. There was only one
intermittent and unsatisfactory steamer service across the Atlantic.
There was none at all across the Pacific. British Columbians trusted to
windjammers round the Horn. Of railroads binding East to West there

was none. A canal system had been begun from the lakes and the
Ottawa to the St. Lawrence, but this was a measure more of national
defense than commerce. Crops were abundant, but where could they be
sold? I have heard relatives tell how wheat in those days sold down to
forty cents, and oats to twenty cents, and potatoes to fifteen cents, and
fine cattle to forty dollars, and finest horses to fifty dollars and
seventy-five dollars. Fathers of farmers who to-day clear their three
thousand dollars and four thousand dollars a year could not clear one
hundred dollars a year. Commerce was absolutely stagnant. Canada
was a federation, but a federation of what? Poverty-stricken, isolated
provinces. Not in bravado, not in flamboyant self-confidence, rebuffed
of all chance to trade with the United States, the new Dominion humbly
set herself to build the foundations of a nation. She did not know
whether she could do what she had set herself to do; but she began with
that same dogged idealism and faith in the future which had buoyed up
her first settlers; and there were dark days during her long hard task,
when the whiff of an adverse wind would have thrown her into national
bankruptcy--that winter, for instance, when the Canadian Pacific had no
money to go on building and the Canadian government refused to
extend aid. Had the Kiel Rebellion of '85 not compelled the Dominion
government to extend aid so that the line would be ready for the troops
every bank in Canada would have collapsed, and national credit would
have been impaired for fifty years.
Meanwhile, a country of less than four million people set itself to link
British Columbia with Montreal,