JOHN A. MACDONALD
Lastly, was John A. Macdonald, the young lawyer who had pleaded the defense of the patriot trials at Kingston in 1838, now a leading politician of the United Canadas, weary of the hopeless deadlocks between Ontario and Quebec. With almost a sixth sense of divination in reading the signs of the times in the trend of events, John A. Macdonald saw that Canada's one hope of becoming a national power lay in union,—confederation. The same thing was seen by other leaders of the day, by all that grand old guard known as the Fathers of Confederation, sent from the different provinces to the conference at Quebec in October of 1864. There the outline of what is known as the British North America Act was drafted,—in the main but an amplification of Durham's scheme, made broad enough to receive all the provinces whenever they might decide to come into Confederation. The delegates then go back to be indorsed by their provinces. By some provinces the scheme is rejected. Newfoundland is not yet part of Canada, but by 1867 Confederation is an accomplished fact. By 1871 the new Dominion has bought out the rights of the Hudson's Bay Company in the West and Manitoba joins the Eastern Provinces. By 1885 a railway links British Columbia with Nova Scotia. By 1905 the great hunting field of the Saskatchewan prairies has been divided into two new provinces, Saskatchewan and Alberta, each larger than France.
Such is barest outline of Canada's past. What of the future for this Empire of the North? That future is now in the making. It lies in the hands of the men and women who are living to-day. In the past Canada's makers dreamed greatly, and they dared greatly, and they took no heed of impossibles, and they spent without stint of blood and happiness for high aim. When Canada lost ground in the progress of the nations, as in the corrupt days of Bigot's rule during the French régime, or the equally corrupt days of the family compact after the Conquest, it was because the altar fires of her ideals were allowed to burn low.
It has been said that the past is but a rear light marking the back trail of the ship's passage. Say rather it is the search light on the ship's prow, pointing the way over the waters.
FATHERS OF CONFEDERATION, 1867. (From the painting by Robert Hariss)
To-day Canada is in the very vanguard of the nations. Her wheat fields fill the granaries of the world; and to her ample borders come the peoples of earth's ends, bringing tribute not of incense and frankincense as of old, but of manhood and strength, of push and lift, of fire and hope and enthusiasm and the daring that conquers all the difficulties of life; bringing too, all the outworn vices of an Old World, all the vicious instincts of the powers that prey in the Under World. Canada's prosperity is literally overflowing from a cornucopia of super-abundant plenty. Will her constitution, wrested from political and civil strife; will her moral stamina, bred from the heroism of an heroic past, stand the strain, the tremendous strain of the new conditions? Will she assimilate the strange new peoples—strange in thought and life and morals—coming to her borders? Will she eradicate their vices like the strong body of a healthy constitution throwing off disease; or will she be poisoned by the toxins of vicious traits inherited from centuries of vicious living? Will she remake the men, regenerate the aliens, coming to her hearth fire; or will they drag her down to their degeneracy? Above all, will she stand the strain, the tremendous strain, of prosperity, and the corruption that is attendant on prosperity? Quien sabe? Let him answer who can; and the question is best answered by watching the criminal calendar. (Is the percentage of convictions as certain and relentless as under the old régime? What manner of crimes is growing up in the land?) And the question may be answered, too, by watching whether the press and platform and pulpit stand as everlastingly and relentlessly for sharp demarkation between right and wrong, for the sharp demarkation between truth, plain truth, and intentional mendacity, as under the régime of the old hard days. When political life grows corrupt, is it now cleansed, or condoned? Let each Canadian answer for himself. If the altar fires of Canada's ideals again burn low, again she will lag in the progress of the world's great builders.