V
As to why Canada has no distinctive and great literature—I confess frankly I do not know. England had only Canada's population when a Shakespeare and a Milton rose like stars above the world. Scotland and Ireland both have a smaller population than Canada, and their ballads are sung all over the world. Canada has had a multitude of sweet singers pipe the joys of youth, but as life broadened and deepened their songs did not reach to the deeps and the heights. Something arrested development. They did not go on. Why? It may be that literature rises only as high as its fountain springs—the people; and that the people of Canada have not yet realized themselves clearly enough to recognize or give articulation to a national literature. It may be that Canada is living her literature rather than writing it. If Scott had not found appreciation for his articulation of Scottish life and history in poems and novels, he would not have gone on. In fact, when Byron eclipsed Scott in public favor as a poet, Scott stopped writing poetry. It may be that Canada has not become sufficiently unified—cemented in blood and suffering—to appreciate a literature that distinctively interprets her life and history. It may be that she has been swamped by the alien literature of alien lands, for the writers of English to-day are legion. Or it may be the deeper cause beneath the dearth of world literature just now—lack of that peace, that joyous calm, that repose of soul and freedom from distraction, that permits a creator to give of his best.
One sometimes hears Canadians—particularly in England—accused of crudity in speech. I confess I like the crudities, the rawness, the colloquialisms. They smack of the new life in a new land. I should be sorry if Canadians ever began to Latinize their sentences, to "can" their speech and pickle it in the vinegar pedantry of the peeved study-chair critic. Because it is a land of mountain pines and cataracts and wild winds, I would have their speech smack always of their soil; and I would bewail the day that Canadians began to measure their phrases to suit the yard stick of some starveling pedant in a writer's attic, who had never been nearer reality than his own starvation. I can see no superiority in the Englishman's colloquialisms of "runnin'," "playin'," "goin'," to the Canadian's "cut it out," "get out," "beat it." One is the slovenliness of languor. The other is the rawness of vigor.
VI
When one comes to consider woman in a nation's life, it is always a little provoking to find "woman" and "divorce" coupled together; for there never was a divorce without a man involved as well as a woman. The marriage tie is not easily dissolved in Canada. Divorce pleas must go before a committee of the Federal Senate. Without legal fees, it costs five hundred dollars to obtain a divorce in Canada; with fees, one thousand dollars; so that Canada's divorce record is 1,530 for 7,800,000 of population in 1913; or one divorce for every 5,000 people. This seems a laudably low record, and Canada takes great credit to herself for it. I am not sure she should, for her system makes divorce a luxury available only to the rich. Divorce is not a cause. It is a result. I am not sure that people ill-mated do not do more harm to their children staying together than separating; and marriage is not for the man or the woman, but for the race. This opinion, however, would be considered heresy in Canada, and a great many factors conspire to help woman's status in the Dominion. To begin with, there are half a million more men than women. A woman need never give herself so cheaply as to spend her life paying for her precipitancy. She is not a superfluous. Another point in which some other countries could emulate Canada is in the protection of women and children. A woman ill-mated has the same protection under the law as though she were single. Infringement of her rights is punishable with penalties varying from seven years and the lash to death. A man living on a woman's illicit earnings is not coddled by ward heelers and let off with light bail, as in certain notorious California cases. He is given the lash and seven years. Such offenders seldom come up for sentence twice.
On the other hand, compared to punishments for property violations, the protection of women and children is ridiculously inadequate. A man abducting a girl is liable to sentence of five years; a man stealing a cow, to sentence of fourteen years. Counterfeiting coin is punished by life imprisonment. Misusing a ward or employee is punished by two years' imprisonment. This remissness is no index to a subordinate position by women in Canada. It is rather simple testimony to the fact that before the influx of alien peoples certain types of crime were unknown.
There is little of sex unrest in Canada. In fact, sex as sex is not in evidence, which is a symptom of wholesome relationships. Perhaps I should say there is little of that feminine discontent and revolt so strident in older lands. This I attribute to two facts: an overplus of men, and boundless opportunity and freedom for the expenditure of unused energies. In certain sections of England, women over-balanced men before the war as ten to one. What the over-balance will be after the war, one can only guess. When women who want to marry are not married, or married to types different from themselves—which must happen when the sexes are in disproportion—unhappiness must result. Woman is at war, she knows not with what. When women who are full of energy and ability have nothing to do, there is bound to be unhappiness. In Canada a woman has perfect freedom to do anything she chooses. Her opportunity is limited only by her own personality. What she wills, she may, if she can. If she can't, then her quarrel must be with self, not with life. Children can not choose their parents; but a woman can choose the parent of her child; and when her choice is high and wide and happy, it bodes better for the race than when conditions have forced her into an alliance that must be more or less of an armed truce on a low plane.
As an example of the fairness of marriage laws in Canada, if a fur-trader marry an Indian woman—according to the custom of the tribe, simply taking her to wife without ceremony, she is his legal heir, and her children are his legal heirs. This was established in a famous trial in the courts of Quebec. A trader became contractor and politician. When prosperity came, he discarded his Indian wife and married an English girl. On his death the Indian wife and children sued for his estate. It was awarded to them by the courts and established a precedent that guaranteed social status to the children of such unions. This is one of the things that easterners can not comprehend. I have never heard the opprobrious phrase "squaw man" used on the Canadian frontier; and descendants of the MacKenzies, the Isbisters, the Hardistys, the Strathconas, the Macleans, the MacLeods—blush, not with shame but pride, in acknowledging the Indian strain of blood.
The fact that some of the western provinces notoriously ignore a woman's property rights in her husband's estate—is sometimes quoted to prove the unfairness of Canada's laws to women. I am no defender of those lax property laws. They ought to, and will soon, be changed; but let us give even the devil his dues; and the devil in this case was the mad real estate speculation. When thousands of adventurers poured in from everywhere and began buying and selling and reselling property, it impeded quick turn overs to reserve the absent wife's third. Sometimes, as in the case of a famous actor, the wives numbered four. Ordinarily in Canada—certainly in eastern provinces—a third is the wife's reserve unless she sign it away. How four wives could each have a third was a poser for the speculator and the knot was cut by ignoring the wife's claims. Now that the fevered mad mania of speculation is over this remissness of the law in two provinces will doubtless be remedied.