E-text prepared by Al Haines
by
Author of
Lords of the North, Pathfinders of the West,
Hudson's Bay Company, etc.
Indianapolis
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
Publishers
Copyright 1915
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
An empire the size of Europe setting out on her career of world historyis a phenomenon of vast and deep enough import to stir to nationalconsciousness the slumbering spirit of any people. Yet when you cometo trace when and where national consciousness awakened, it is likefollowing a river back from the ocean to its mountain springs. Fromthe silt borne down on the flood-tide you can guess the fertile plainswatered and far above the fertile plains, regions of eternal snow andglacial torrent warring turbulently through the adamantine rocks. Youcan guess the eternal striving, the forward rush and the throwback thathave carved a way through the solid rocks; but until you have followedthe river to its source and tried to stem its current you can not know.
So of peoples and nations.
Fifty years ago, as far as world affairs were concerned, Japan did notexist. Came national consciousness, and Japan rose like a stardominating the Orient. A hundred years ago Germany did not exist.Came national consciousness welding chaotic principalities into unity,and the mailed fist of the empire became a menace before which Europequailed. So of China with the ferment of freedom leavening the whole.So of the United States with the Civil War blending into a union thediversities of a continent. When you come to consider the birth ofnational consciousness in Canada, you do not find the germ of anambition to dominate, as in Japan and Germany. Nor do you find a fightfor freedom. Canada has always been free—free as the birds of passagethat winged above the canoe of the first voyageur who pointed his craftup the St. Lawrence for the Pacific; but what you do find from the veryfirst is a fight for national existence; and when the fight was won,Canada arose like a wrestler with consciousness of strength for newdestiny.
Go back to the beginning of Canada!
She was not settled by land-seekers. Neither was she peopled byadventurers seeking gold. The first settlers on the banks of the St.Lawrence came to plant the Cross and propagate the Faith. True, theyfound they could support their missions and extend the Faith by the furtrade; and their gay adventurers of the fur trade threaded every riverand lake from the St. Lawrence to the Columbia; but, primarily, thelure that led the French to the St. Lawrence was the lure of areligious ideal. So of Ontario and the English provin