Canada under British Rule by Sir John George Bourinot (story reading txt) 📖

has been a steady intellectual growth on the part of the Canadian people, and that it has kept pace at all events with the mental growth in the pulpit, or in the legislative halls, where, of late years, a keen practical debating style has taken the place of the more rhetorical and studied oratory of old times. The intellectual faculties of Canadians only require larger opportunities for their exercise to bring forth rich fruit. The progress in the years to come will be much greater than that Canadians have yet shown, and necessarily so, with the wider distribution of wealth, the dissemination of a higher culture, and a greater confidence in their own mental strength, and in the opportunities that the country offers to pen and pencil. What is now wanted is the cultivation of a good style and artistic workmanship.

Much of the daily literature of Canadians--indeed the chief literary aliment of large numbers--is the newspaper press, which illustrates necessarily the haste, pressure and superficiality of writings of that ephemeral class. Canadian journals, however, have not yet descended to the degraded sensationalism of New York papers, too many of which circulate in Canada to the public detriment. On the whole, the tone of the most ably conducted journals--the Toronto _Globe_, and the Montreal _Gazette_ notably--is quite on a level with the tone of debate in the legislative bodies of the country.

Now, as in all times of Canada's history, political life claims many strong, keen and cultured intellects, though at the same time it is too manifest that the tendency of democratic conditions and heated party controversy is to prevent the most highly educated and sensitive organisations from venturing on the agitated and unsafe sea of political passion and competition. The speeches of Sir Wilfrid Laurier--the eloquent French Canadian premier, who in his mastery of the English tongue surpasses all his versatile compatriots--of Sir Charles Tupper, Mr. Foster and others who might be mentioned, recall the most brilliant period of parliamentary annals (1867--1873), when in the first parliament of the Dominion the most prominent men of the provinces were brought into public life, under the new conditions of federal union. The debating power of the provincial legislative bodies is excellent, and the chief defects are the great length and discursiveness of the speeches on local as well as on national questions. It is also admitted that of late years there has been a tendency to impair the dignity and to lower the tone of discussion.

Many Canadians have devoted themselves to art since 1867, and some Englishmen will recognise the names of L.R. O'Brien, Robert Harris, J.W.L. Forster, Homer Watson, George Reid--the painter of "The Foreclosure of the Mortgage," which won great praise at the World's Fair of Chicago--John Hammond, F.A. Verner, Miss Bell, Miss Muntz, W. Brymner, all of whom are Canadians by birth and inspiration. The establishment of a Canadian Academy of Art by the Princess Louise, and of other art associations, has done a good deal to stimulate a taste for art, though the public encouragement of native artists is still very inadequate, when we consider the excellence already attained under great difficulties in a relatively new country, where the great mass of people has yet to be educated to a perception of the advantages of high artistic effort.

Sculpture would be hardly known in Canada were it not for the work of the French Canadian Hebert, who is a product of the schools of Paris, and has given to the Dominion several admirable statues and monuments of its public men. While Canadian architecture has hitherto been generally wanting in originality of conception, the principal edifices of the provinces afford many good illustrations of effective adaptation of the best art of Europe. Among these may be mentioned the following:--the parliament and departmental buildings at Ottawa, admirable examples of Italian Gothic; the legislative buildings at Toronto, in the Romanesque style; the English cathedrals in Montreal and Fredericton, correct specimens of early English Gothic; the French parish church of Notre-Dame, in Montreal, attractive for its stately Gothic proportions; the university of Toronto, an admirable conception of Norman architecture; the Canadian Pacific railway station at Montreal and the Frontenac Hotel at Quebec, fine examples of the adaptation of old Norman architecture to modern necessities; the provincial buildings at Victoria, in British Columbia, the general design of which is Renaissance, rendered most effective by pearl-grey stone and several domes; the headquarters of the bank of Montreal, a fine example of the Corinthian order, and notable for the artistic effort to illustrate, on the walls of the interior, memorable scenes in Canadian history; the county and civic buildings of Toronto, an ambitious effort to reproduce the modern Romanesque, so much favoured by the eminent American architect, Richardson; Osgoode Hall, the seat of the great law courts of the province of Ontario, which in its general character recalls the architecture of the Italian Renaissance. Year by year we see additions to our public and private buildings, interesting from an artistic point of view, and illustrating the accumulating wealth of the country, as well as the growth of culture and taste among the governing classes.

The universities, colleges, academies, and high schools, the public and common schools of the Dominion, illustrate the great desire of the governments and the people of the provinces to give the greatest possible facilities for the education of all classes at the smallest possible cost to individuals. At the present time there are between 13,000 and 14,000 students attending 62 universities and colleges. The collegiate institutes and academies of the provinces also rank with the colleges as respects the advantages they give to young men and women. Science is especially prominent in McGill and Toronto Universities--which are the most largely attended--and the former affords a notable example of the munificence of the wealthy men of Montreal, in establishing chairs of science and otherwise advancing its educational usefulness. Laval University stands deservedly at the head of the Roman Catholic institutions of the continent, on account of its deeply interesting historic associations, and the scholarly attainments of its professors, several of whom have won fame in Canadian letters. Several universities give instructions in medicine and law, and Toronto has also a medical college for women. At the present time, at least one-fifth of the people of the Dominion is in attendance at the universities, colleges, public and private schools. The people of Canada contribute upwards of ten millions of dollars annually to the support of their educational establishments, in the shape of government grants, public taxes, or private fees. Ontario alone, in 1899, raised five millions and a half of dollars for the support of its public school system; and of this amount the people directly contributed ninety-one per cent, in the shape of taxes. On the other hand, the libraries of Canada are not numerous; and it is only in Ontario that there is a law providing for the establishment of such institutions by a vote of the taxpayers in the municipalities. In this province there are at least 420 libraries, of which the majority are connected with mechanics' institutes, and are made public by statute. The weakness of the public school system--especially in Ontario--is the constant effort to teach a child a little of everything, and to make him a mere machine. The consequences are superficiality--a veneer of knowledge--and the loss of individuality.


CHAPTER X.


CANADA'S RELATIONS WITH THE UNITED STATES AND HER INFLUENCE IN IMPERIAL COUNCILS (1783--1900).

I have deemed it most convenient to reserve for the conclusion of this history a short review of the relations that have existed for more than a century between the provinces of the Dominion and the United States, whose diplomacy and legislation have had, and must always have, a considerable influence on the material and social conditions of the people of Canada.--an influence only subordinate to that exercised by the imperial state. I shall show that during the years when there was no confederation of Canada--when there were to the north and north-east of the United States only a number of isolated provinces, having few common sympathies or interests except their attachment to the crown and empire--the United States had too often its own way in controversial questions affecting the colonies which arose between England and the ambitious federal republic. On the other hand, with the territorial expansion of the provinces under one Dominion, with their political development, which has assumed even national attributes, with the steady growth of an imperial sentiment in the parent state, the old condition of things that too often made the provinces the shuttlecock of skilful American diplomacy has passed away. The statesmen of the Canadian federation are now consulted, and exercise almost as much influence as if they were members of the imperial councils in London.

I shall naturally commence this review with a reference to the treaty of 1783, which acknowledged the independence of the United States, fixed the boundaries between that country and British North America, and led to serious international disputes which lasted until the middle of the following century. Three of the ablest men in the United States--Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay--succeeded by their astuteness and persistency in extending their country's limits to the eastern bank of the Mississippi, despite the insidious efforts of Vergennes on the part of France to hem in the new nation between the Atlantic and the Appalachian Range. The comparative value set upon Canada during the preliminary negotiations may be easily deduced from the fact that Oswald, the English plenipotentiary, proposed to give up to the United States the south-western and most valuable part of the present province of Ontario, and to carry the north-eastern boundary up to the River St. John. The commissioners of the United States did not accept this suggestion. Their ultimate object--an object actually attained--was to make the St. Lawrence the common boundary between the two countries by following the centre of the river and the great lakes as far as the head of Lake Superior. The issue of negotiations so stupidly conducted by the British commissioner, was a treaty which gave an extremely vague definition of the boundary in the north-east between Maine and Nova Scotia--which until 1784 included New Brunswick--and displayed at the same time a striking example of geographical ignorance as to the north-west. The treaty specified that the boundary should pass from the head of Lake Superior through Long Lake to the north-west angle of the Lake of the Woods, and thence to the Mississippi, when, as a matter of fact there was no Long Lake, and the source of the Mississippi was actually a hundred miles or so to the south of the Lake of the Woods. This curious blunder in the north-west was only rectified in 1842, when Lord Ashburton settled the difficulty by conceding to the United States an invaluable corner of British territory in the east (see below, p 299).

The only practical advantage that the people of the provinces gained from the Treaty of Ghent, which closed the war of 1812--15, was an acknowledgment of the undoubted fishery rights of Great Britain and her dependencies in the territorial waters of British North America. In the treaty of 1783 the people of the United States obtained the "right" to fish on the Grand and other banks of Newfoundland, and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and at "all other places in the sea, where the inhabitants of both countries used at any time heretofore to fish", but they were to have only "the liberty" of taking fish on the coasts of Newfoundland and also of "all other of his Britannic Majesty's dominions in America; and also of drying and curing fish in any of the unsettled bays, harbours, and creeks of Nova Scotia (then including New Brunswick), Magdalen Islands, and Labrador, so long as the same shall remain unsettled."