The Canadian Commonwealth | Page 6

the opening of the twentieth century has the same population
as the United States at the opening of the nineteenth century.[1] Has the
Dominion any material justification for her high hopes of a world
destiny? Switzerland possesses national consciousness to an acute
degree. Yet Switzerland remains a little people. What ground has
Canada for measuring her strength with the nations of the world?
Having remained almost stationary in her national progress from 1759
to 1859, what reason has she to anticipate a progress as swift and
world-embracing as that which forced the United States to the very
forefront of world powers? It takes something more than high hopes to
build empire. Has Canada a foundation beneath her high hopes? No
nation ever had a more passionate patriotism than Ireland. Yet Ireland
has lost her population and retrogressed.[2] Why will the same fate not
halt and impede Canada?
It may be acknowledged here that Canadians have no answers for such
questions and short shift for the questioner. They are too busy making
history to talk about it. It is only the woman insecure of her social
position who prates about it. It is only the nation uncertain of herself
that bolsters a fact with an argument. Canada is too busy with facts for
any flamboyant arguments. It is an even wager that if you ask the
average well-informed business man in Canada how many miles of
railways the Dominion has, he will answer on the dot "almost thirty
thousand." But if you ask if he knows that Germany, for instance, with
nine times denser population has barely twice as much trackage--no,
your Canadian business man doesn't know it. He is too busy building
his own railroads to care much what other nations are doing with theirs.
Likewise of the country's trade increasing faster almost than the
Dominion can handle it. He knows that imports have increased one
hundred and sixty-three per cent. in ten years, and that exports have
increased almost fifty per cent.; but he doesn't realize in the least that
the Dominion with seven million people has one-fourth as large a
foreign trade as the United States with a hundred million people.[3] He
knows that immigration has in ten years jumped from 49,000 a year to
402,000; but does he take in what it means that his country with only
five million native born is being called on to absorb yearly a third as
many immigrants as the United States with eighty million native

born?[4] He has been so busy handling the rush of prosperity that has
come in on him like a tidal wave that he has not had time to pause over
the problems of this new destiny--the fact, for instance, that in two
more decades the newcomers will outnumber the native born.
II
Unless the edifice be top heavy, beneath it all must be the rock bottom
of fact. Beneath the tide is the pull of some eternal law. What facts is
Canada building her future on? What pull is beneath the tide of four
hundred thousand homeseekers a year? What has doubled population
and almost doubled foreign trade?
It is almost a truism that the farther north the land, the greater the
fertility, if there be any fertility at all. There is first the supply of
unfailing moisture, with a yearly subsoiling of humus unknown to arid
lands. Canada is super-sensitive about her winter climate--the depth
and intensity of the frost, the length and rigor of her winters; but she
need not be. It should be cause of gratitude. Frost penetrating the
ground from five to twelve feet--as it does in the Northwest--guarantees
a subterranean root irrigation that never fails. Heavy snow--let us
acknowledge frankly snow sometimes banks western streets the height
of a man--means a heavy supply of moisture both in thaw and rain.
There is second the long sunlight. An earth tilted on its axis toward the
sun six months of the year gives the North a sunlight that is longer the
farther north you go. When the sun sets at seven to eight in New York,
it sets at eight to nine in Winnipeg, and nine to ten in Athabasca, and
only for a few hours at all still farther north. It is the long sunlight that
gives the fruit of Niagara and Quebec and Annapolis its "fameuse"
quality; just as it is the sunlight that gives western fruit its finest
coloring, the higher up the plateau it is grown. It is the long sunlight
that gives Number One Hard Wheat its white fine quality so
indispensable to the millers. So of barley and vegetables and small
fruits and all that can be grown in the short season of the North. What
the season lacks in length it gains in intensity of sunlight.