The Project Gutenberg eBook, Canada (1535-Present Day), by James Munro

BELL'S ENGLISH HISTORY SOURCE BOOKS

General Editors: S. E. Winbolt, M.A., and Kenneth Bell, M.A.

CANADA

(1535—PRESENT-DAY)

CANADA

(1535—PRESENT-DAY)

BY

JAMES MUNRO, M.A.

LECTURER IN COLONIAL AND INDIAN HISTORY IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

LONDON
G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.

1913

INTRODUCTION

This series of English History Source Books is intended for use with any ordinary textbook of English History. Experience has conclusively shown that such apparatus is a valuable—nay, an indispensable—adjunct to the history lesson. It is capable of two main uses: either by way of lively illustration at the close of a lesson, or by way of inference-drawing, before the textbook is read, at the beginning of the lesson. The kind of problems and exercises that may be based on the documents are legion, and are admirably illustrated in a History of England for Schools, Part I., by Keatinge and Frazer, pp. 377-381. However, we have no wish to prescribe for the teacher the manner in which he shall exercise his craft, but simply to provide him and his pupils with materials hitherto not readily accessible for school purposes. The very moderate price of the books in this series should bring them within the reach of every secondary school. Source books enable the pupil to take a more active part than hitherto in the history lesson. Here is the apparatus, the raw material: its use we leave to teacher and taught.

Our belief is that the books may profitably be used by all grades of historical students between the standards of fourth-form boys in secondary schools and undergraduates at Universities. What differentiates students at one extreme from those at the other is not so much the kind of subject-matter dealt with, as the amount they can read into or extract from it.

In regard to choice of subject-matter, while trying to satisfy the natural demand for certain "stock" documents of vital importance, we hope to introduce much fresh and novel matter. It is our intention that the majority of the extracts should be lively in style—that is, personal, or descriptive, or rhetorical, or even strongly partisan—and should not so much profess to give the truth as supply data for inference. We aim at the greatest possible variety, and lay under contribution letters, biographies, ballads and poems, diaries, debates, and newspaper accounts. Economics, London, municipal, and social life generally, and local history, are represented in these pages.

The order of the extracts is strictly chronological, each being numbered, titled, and dated, and its authority given. The text is modernised, where necessary, to the extent of leaving no difficulties in reading.

We shall be most grateful to teachers and students who may send us suggestions for improvement.

S. E. Winbolt.
Kenneth Bell.

NOTE TO THIS VOLUME

For liberty to reproduce the more recent of the extracts here quoted, I have to acknowledge the kindness of Miss E. Pauline Johnson of Vancouver (No. 52); of Mr. Charles G. D. Roberts (No. 57); of Mr. F. A. Talbot and Messrs. Seeley, Service & Co., author and publishers of The Making of a Great Canadian Railway (No. 55); and of Messrs. Constable & Co., the publishers of the late Lord Wolseley's Story of a Soldier's Life (No. 48). To several of the sources quoted I was directed by the volume of selections published in 1907 under the title Canadian Constitutional Development, by Professor H. E. Egerton of Oxford and Professor W. L. Grant of Kingston, Ontario, both of whom have also made other helpful suggestions, as has Mr. H. P. Biggar, the representative of the Canadian Archives Office in this country. Finally, the task of finding what one wanted has been very greatly facilitated by the sympathetic aid of Mr. P. E. Lewin, who never loses a chance of making the superb collection over which he presides in the Library of the Royal Colonial Institute useful to anyone who may be interested in the Britains overseas.

J. M.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CANADA
(1535—Present-day)

1. A GREAT LAND OF RIVERS AND LAKES.

Source.—A Speech delivered by Lord Dufferin at Winnipeg, quoted in Round the Empire, by Mr. G. R. Parkin. London, 1893.

As a poor man cannot live in a big house, so a small country cannot support a big river.

Now to an Englishman or a Frenchman the Severn or the Thames, the Seine or the Rhone, would appear considerable streams; but in the Ottawa, a mere affluent of the St. Lawrence, an affluent, moreover, which reaches the parent stream six hundred miles from its mouth, we have a river nearly five hundred and fifty miles long, and three or four times as big as any of them.

But even after having ascended the St. Lawrence itself to Lake Ontario, and pursued it across Lake Erie, St. Clair, Lake Huron, and Lake Superior to Thunder Bay—a distance of fifteen hundred miles, where are we? In the estimation of a person who has made the journey, at the end of all things; but to us, who know better, scarcely at the beginning of the great fluvial systems of the Dominion; for from that spot, that is to say, from Thunder Bay, we are able at once to ship our astonished traveller on to the Kaministiquia, a river of some hundred miles long. Thence, almost in a straight line, we launch him on to Lake Shebandowan and Rainy Lake and River—a magnificent stream three hundred yards broad and a couple of hundred miles long, down whose tranquil bosom he floats to the Lake of the Woods, where he finds himself on a sheet of water which, though diminutive as compared with the inland seas he has left behind him, will probably be found sufficiently extensive to render him fearfully sea-sick during his passage across it.

For the last eighty miles of his voyage, however, he will be consoled by sailing through a succession of land-locked channels, the beauty of whose scenery, while it resembles, certainly excels, the far-famed Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence.

From this lacustrine paradise of sylvan beauty we are able at once to transfer our friend to the Winnipeg, a river whose existence in the very heart and centre of the continent is in itself one of Nature's most delightful miracles—so beautiful and varied are its rocky banks, its tufted islands; so broad, so deep, so fervid is the volume of its waters, the extent of their lake-like expansions, and the tremendous power of their rapids.

At last let us suppose we have landed our traveller at the town of Winnipeg, the half-way house of the continent, the capital of the Prairie Province.... Having had so much of water, having now reached the home of the buffalo, like the extenuated Falstaff he naturally "babbles of green fields" and careers in imagination over the green grasses of the prairie. Not at all.... We take him down to your quay and ask him which he will ascend first—the Red River or the Assiniboine—two streams, the one five hundred miles long, the other four hundred and eighty, which so happily mingle their waters within your city limits. After having given him a preliminary canter up these respective rivers, we take him off to Lake Winnipeg, an inland sea 300 miles long and upwards of 60 broad, during the navigation of which, for many a weary hour, he will find himself out of sight of land, and probably a good deal more indisposed than ever he was on the Lake of the Woods, or even the Atlantic.

At the north-west angle of Lake Winnipeg he hits upon the mouth of the Saskatchewan, the gateway of the North-West, and the starting-point to another 1500 miles of navigable water flowing nearly due East and West between its alluvial banks.

Having now reached the foot of the Rocky Mountains, our Ancient Mariner—for by this time he will be quite entitled to such an appellation—knowing that water cannot run uphill, feels certain his aquatic experiences are concluded.

He was never more mistaken. We immediately launch him upon the Athabasca and Mackenzie Rivers, and start him on a longer trip than he has yet undertaken—the navigation of the Mackenzie River alone exceeding 2500 miles. If he survives this last experience we wind up his peregrinations by a concluding voyage of 1400 miles down the Fraser River, or, if he prefers it, the Thompson River, to Victoria in Vancouver, whence, having previously provided him with a first class return ticket for that purpose, he will probably prefer getting home via the Canadian Pacific.

Now, in this enumeration, those who are acquainted with the country are aware that, for the sake of brevity, I have omitted thousands of miles of other lakes and rivers which water various regions of the North-West: the Qu'Appelle River, the Belly River, Lake Manitoba, Lake Winnipegosis, Shoal Lake, and others, along whose interminable banks and shores I might have dragged, and finally exterminated, our way-worn guest.