The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People | Page 5

few places like York or other centres of intelligence;
but they forgot to make allowance for the difficulties that surrounded
these settlers. The isolation of their lives had naturally the effect of
making even the better class narrow-minded, selfish, and at last
careless of anything like refinement. Men who lived for years without
the means of frequent communication with their fellow-men, without
opportunities for social, instructive intercourse, except what they might
enjoy at rare intervals through the visit of some intelligent clergyman
or tourist, might well have little ambition except to satisfy the grosser
wants of their nature. The post office, the school, and the church were
only to be found, in the majority of cases, at a great distance from their
homes. Their children, as likely as not, grew up in ignorance, even
were educational facilities at hand; for in those days the parent had
absolute need of his son's assistance in the avocations of pioneer life.
Yet, with all these disadvantages, these men displayed a spirit of manly
independence and fortitude which was in some measure a test of their
capacity for better things. They helped to make the country what it is,
and to prepare the way for the larger population which came into it
under more favourable auspices after the Union of 1840. From that
time Canada received a decided impulse in everything that tends to
make a country happy and prosperous. Cities, towns and villages
sprang up with remarkable activity all over the face of the country, and
vastly enlarged the opportunities for that social intercourse which is
always an important factor in the education of a new country. At the
same time, with the progress of the country in population and wealth,
there grew up a spirit of self-reliance which of itself attested the mental
vigour of the people. Whilst England was still for many 'the old home,'
rich in memories of the past, Canada began to be a real entity, as it
were, a something to be loved, and to be proud of. The only
reminiscences that very many had of the countries of their origin were
reminiscences of poverty and wretchedness, and this class valued above
all old national associations the comfort and independence, if not
wealth, they had been able to win in their Canadian home. The
Frenchman, Scotchman, Irishman, and Englishman, now that they had

achieved a marked success in their pioneer work, determined that their
children should not be behind those of New England, and set to work to
build up a system of education far more comprehensive and liberal than
that enjoyed by the masses in Great Britain. On all sides at last there
were many evidences of the progress of culture, stimulated by the more
generally diffused prosperity. It was only necessary to enter into the
homes of the people, not in the cities and important centres of industry
and education, but in the rural districts, to see the effects of the
industrial and mental development within the period that elapsed from
the Union of 1840 to the Confederation of 1867. Where a humble log
cabin once rose among the black pine stumps, a comfortable and in
many cases expensive mansion, of wood or more durable material, had
become the home of the Canadian farmer, who, probably, in his early
life, had been but a poor peasant in the mother country. He himself,
whose life had been one of unremitting toil and endeavour, showed no
culture, but his children reaped the full benefits of the splendid
opportunities of acquiring knowledge afforded by the country which
owed its prosperity to their father and men like him. The homes of such
men, in the most favoured districts, were no longer the abodes of rude
industry, but illustrative, in not a few cases, of that comfort and
refinement which must be the natural sequence of the general
distribution of wealth, the improvement of internal intercourse, and the
growth of education.
When France no longer owned a foot of land in British North America,
except two or three barren islets on the coast of Newfoundland, the
total population of the provinces known now as Canada was not above
seventy thousand souls, nearly all French. From that time to 1840, the
population of the different provinces made but a slow increase, owing
to the ignorance that prevailed as to Canada, the indifference of English
statesmen in respect to colonization, internal dissensions in the country
itself, and its slow progress, as compared with the great republic on its
borders. Yet, despite these obstacles to advancement, by 1841 the
population of Canada reached nearly a million and a half, of whom at
least fifty-five per cent. were French Canadians. Then the tide of
immigration set in this direction, until at last the total population of