Canada

THE DOMINION’S DESTINY

For those who mark the current of events, Canada’s great destiny is written plain. Canada in a few decades must possess more people and more realised wealth than Great Britain. Whether the centre of Imperial control will then cross the Atlantic is a point on which prophecies differ. Memories enshrined in Westminster Abbey will tend to conserve the ancient seat of government. Yet there is weight in the surmise that the logic of numbers will ultimately prevail.

Canada’s future is foretold in the past growth and present might of the United States. The same traditions, the same climate (over areas of chief significance), the same resources, and—most important of all—the same method of expansion, will produce, and are producing, the same result.

The history of the United States is contained in one word—immigration. That country has absorbed myriad migrants from northern regions of the eastern hemisphere; and it has absorbed most of them in recent times. Screw steamships are responsible. The population of the United States was about 17,000,000 when the first regular Atlantic service was founded by Samuel 


Cunard—the father of modern America. Only seventeen millions—less than the present population of Brazil! Such was the American nation when Charles Dickens visited it. The growth of population has gained in momentum with the increase and improvement of liners. We now have 92,000,000 cousins. Twenty millions—or nearly a quarter of the huge nation—date no farther back than Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. The numerical strength of the Republic has more than doubled since the Tichborne trial.

Immigration, of course, rests upon advertising—a process which is far from being as modern as it sounds, the word occurring in the Bible (Numbers xxiv. 14 and Ruth iv. 4). The United States, ever since their foundation, have been sedulously advertised throughout Europe, partly by books and news-sheets, mainly by private correspondence. The prosperous settler writes to relatives and friends in the Old Country, urging them to come out; and such letters are the most potent stimulus that immigration can receive. They constitute advertising in its most convincing form. They represent an ever-expanding force working silently and unseen. I talked of this matter with Mr. J. Obed Smith—an authority—and he had the right word for what takes place. Those who go in advance “beckon” to those who follow. The United States are still receiving about a million immigrants every year—the result of beckoning.

But a change has come over the transatlantic exodus. Previously there was only one destination—now there are two. Down to a few years ago the average person, when he spoke or thought of emigrating, had only the United States in his mind. It was called “going to America.” Nowadays the word 


emigration, when you see it in print, is apt to suggest Canada. Of course there is no abatement in the great automatic movement that is of cumulative force. The millions who were beckoned to the United States are themselves beckoning other millions. But the thousands who have gone to Canada are also beckoning—and with more reason.

Simultaneously the attractions of the Dominion are being proclaimed through the machinery of publicity. Modern means of stimulating public interest, no less than modern means of quick, safe and cheap transportation, give the present day a great advantage, so far as populating a distant country is concerned, over an era when newspapers cost fourpence and passenger ships were innocent of steam. When the United States were at an early stage of development, and urgently needing people, there was no halfpenny press through which to communicate with the democracy of Europe, for the democracy of Europe had not learnt to read.

Canada was discovered by Canada about fifteen years ago, by the United States a little later, by England—well, England is discovering Canada now. For we are a slow, if sure, people. One day England will discover the British Empire. Meanwhile we are ruled by a generation which was taught at school that Canada is one of our Colonies.

In thinking of Canada the earnest and logical man in the street has been led inevitably into a gigantic misconception. As a matter of fact, without a sense of humour it is difficult to make head or tail of the history of North America. Every schoolboy has been taught that Canada existed before the United States were created. Yet the United States have grown to be a mighty and wealthy nation of 92,000,000 people; while 


Canada, with a slightly larger area, still has a population of only 8,000,000. Naturally enough, the man in the street concluded there was something wrong somewhere with Canada.

One can, of course, only elucidate the position by stating facts which seem, on the face of them, quaint, not to say funny. As the upshot of a fierce war that took place a century and a quarter ago, part of North America became an independent country, while another part remained in allegiance to the English sovereign; and the curious circumstance has to be noted that, ever since then, Great Britain has been sending out millions of men, not to the country she retained, but to the country she lost. To be strictly accurate, those people were not sent—they went. They succumbed to the spell of the newly arisen United States. As though to heap coals of fire on the heads of those who had revolted from our rule and beaten us in battle, we set to work to make them mighty among the nations of the earth; British contributions to that end heavily outweighing those of other peoples. Meanwhile—there being apparently no end to our self-abnegation—we were content to leave our own part of North America practically unrecruited by emigrants from the British Isles. Nay—the daughter becoming, as would seem, infected by the mother’s magnanimity—our own part of North America made generous contributions to the neighbouring population, it being the strange fact that during the past fifty years 3,250,000 people have gone from Canada to the United States—indigence sparing of its poverty to increase the riches of affluence.

Of those developments, which wear so quixotic an aspect in the retrospect, the explanation lies, of course, in the truism that unity is strength. For nearly a 


century North America consisted of two sections—the United States and the Ununited Provinces. Union, consolidation, federation—those are the masterful words in the story of nations. What sort of position in the world would Essex have attained had Essex acted independently of Cumberland and the other English counties? Where would Perthshire have been without the political link with Cork? Similarly, how would Massachusetts have ever become a big power single-handed, and who would care a rap for the Stars and Stripes if they waved only over Pennsylvania? The separate States might have asked for people and respect, but their individual voices would not have carried across the Atlantic. It was only because they spoke in unison that they were audible all over the world.

And here we come to close quarters with the misconception still lingering in the popular mind. The man in the street has confused two Canadas—historic Canada, which dated back to the sixteenth century and comprised only portions of the existing Eastern provinces, and modern Canada, which extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and is less than forty years old. It is as though the name England had originally applied merely to portions of Kent and Sussex. The federation of the distinct countries of British North America began in 1867, and was not completed until 1873. Thus the reason why Canada did not, until recent years, begin to grow is because Canada, until recent years, did not exist. Previously, owing to circumstances that will be traced in a later chapter, little was known of the bulk of the country. The setting up of the Federal Government opened the way to knowledge. That knowledge is still incomplete, being representative rather than general. But already—as this book will, I 


hope, help to prove—there is justification for the belief that the attractions and resources of Canada are not inferior to those of the United States . . . .

And now, being through with our prologue of broad facts, let us pass to personal experiences of the voyage to Canada. That week’s imprisonment in a travelling hotel is, surely, the ideal holiday. Thrice have I crossed in the saloon and once in the steerage—and a button for the difference! In the great liners of to-day there are comfortable quarters and wholesome meals for everybody, whether he pays £18, £10s. 5s., or £5 15s. As a rule I find third-class emigrants more interesting to talk to than first-class poker-players. On the other hand, grand pianos are preferable to concertinas, and it is wondrous pleasant, when at sea, to stroll on Turkish carpets amid alcoves of growing ferns, palms and flowers; while I personally am alive to the advantages of a spacious smoking-room panelled in carved oak, a well-stocked library, and a writing lounge furnished with necessaries and taste (to glance at a few features of such floating temples of luxury as the Royal George). But air, sea and sky—the common property of all classes—are of chief account.

Let me dip among the memories of my first crossing, which happened nearly nine years ago.

For two days our ship was followed by a dozen gulls—strong birds, with yellow bodies, and having black tips to their long wings. By day they hovered in our wake, eager for whatsoever the cook might discard through a porthole; by night—I was invited to believe—they snatched a little slumber in the rigging. But those sturdy aviators did not accompany us all the way to Canada.

You cannot see, you can only infer, that the 


Atlantic Ocean is large. At no time in any direction does the eye behold more sea than is visible from Hastings pier. During the long, luxurious day and all through the night the vessel goes on, on, and still on. The throbbing propeller makes with splashing water the music that lulls you to sleep at night, that greets your waking in the morning. For ever the sea is rushing by in frothy confusion. We career through a path mottled with foam. Between the whirling splashes and streaks of white the eye pierces a slatey-green, with the myriad tiny bubbles ascending as a grey cloud.

You look in grateful silence upon the Atlantic skies—purples and lemon-yellow in the east, gold and flaming crimson in the west. Later joys are the moonshine and the phosphorous glowing on the busy, musical, unseen waves.

One afternoon a little bird came to us, perching awhile on the bridge stairs. I did not see him, but they told me of his grey feathers fluttering deranged in the breeze, and the balance of testimony proclaimed him a sparrow. Wondrous welcome little visitor from the land. For to live nearly a week on the boundless sea is to find yourself with tender recollections of meadow and dell, of oak trees and the bumble bee.

Not always did white crests figure in the wide circumference. Once the surface sobered to a polished blue, and as we loitered in the burning sunshine the decks felt hot underfoot. Waggish Nature chose that tropical interlude for an Arctic exhibition. We saw icebergs and whales.

In this enlightened age it may seem superfluous to describe either. I shall give my impressions of both, and for this reason: each was wholly otherwise than 


I had expected to find it. The whale at sea is very unlike a whale. In our first experience—a creature some two miles away—again and again we saw the jet of water rise as a column of white fluffiness out of a little area of surface commotion. It was easy to infer some animal was causing the upheaval, but for long he abstained from presenting any part of his anatomy to our view. At last he so far satisfied our curiosity as to show us a few yards of the top of his back. The oblong, rounded piece of conspicuous blackness performed a sort of greasy curve, a large and handsome fin travelled round the upper edge, and then Mr. Whale, again wholly immersed, playfully re-engaged in squirting part of the Atlantic Ocean up in the air.

Icebergs in the sunshine are superlatively beautiful. I had expected an iceberg to look like ice. It suggests, rather, a mountain of loaf sugar or alabaster. It is white with the tender, dazzling whiteness of a swan’s breast. Its surface is of milky, silky snow. Moulded in soft contour, it is rich in fanciful, protruding shapes.

A distant berg, floating towards Newfoundland, was revealed in our glasses as two prodigious Egyptian pyramids. Another was half a mile away, aground off Belle Isle. It exhibited, as a conspicuous feature on the windward side, a great seal snorting the air. When we came to leeward the entire mass was seen to be a headless lion, the hind legs adjusted to a squatting attitude, the spinal vertebræ visible up the mountain slope of the creature’s back.