While seventy-five per cent of Canada's wheat-farmers are either Canadian, American, or British-born, and of the class that preserves the homogeneity of the race, every country on the map pays tribute to the plains. Austrians are here and Galicians, Hungarians and Belgians, Dutch and French and Germans, Italians and Polish, the Russian Doukhobortsi, Finns and Danes and Icelanders, Swedes in thousands and stalwart Norwegians. South Africans and West Indians are coming in with Bermudians and Jamaicans and the bearded Spaniard. Far off on the Pacific Coast, strangers are knocking at the western gate,—Chinese, Japanese, and Hindoos.
Doukhobors Threshing Flax
There is no Established Church in Canada; it is the freest land in the world. On his one hundred and sixty government-given acres, the new arrival may worship his God in his own way. The Greek Church in Winnipeg has a Bishop who one day each year makes holy water of the Red River when the Czar is performing the same blessing on the Neva. Down in Southern Alberta refugee Mormons from Salt Lake grow sugar-beets, revere the memory of Brigham Young, and multiply after their kind. Until within two years ago the expatriated Russian Doukhobors maintained a commonwealth of ten thousand souls, eschewing liquors and flesh-meats, making the prairie blossom into bumper harvests, and holding all things in common.
Winnipeg has three thousand Icelanders who, every August, take a day off to celebrate the fact that the Danish King, in 1874, granted a constitution to Iceland. When you ask them why they came to America, they say, "Did not our Lief Ericcson discover this continent, why shouldn't we come?" The Icelanders boast two members in the Manitoba legislature. A Mennonite is a member of the Parliament of Alberta. The first graduate of Wesley College in Winnipeg to find a place on the staff of his Alma Mater is also a Mennonite. Winnipeg has several, Roman Catholic Polish lawyers. Statistics prove that the young Jewish people of Western Canada patronise the public libraries more than any other class or race. All the citizens-in-the-making are closely interested in politics. Recently there was chronicled the formation in Winnipeg of a Syrian Liberal Club and a Syrian Conservative Club. Up in Edmonton the Galicians (Ruthenians?) have just organised a corps of volunteer militia to serve the Canadian country of their adoption.
Sir William Van Horne, First President of the Canadian Pacific Railway
The Americanisation of Canada? During the past seven years over three hundred and fifty thousand people have come to us from the United States. Is this American invasion to be feared politically? Western Canada has no more desirable citizens than those who come to us from the south. They are not failures, but are people who have made good, intent on making better. One generation at the most,—sometimes but a few years,—converts these into Canadian voters. The troubled English brother should remember that when "American" farmers in Canada pronounce on Canadian matters they do so constitutionally at the polls and as Canadian citizens. As Canadians we believe that our national institutions, though far from perfect, are in some respects superior to those of the United States. We believe they are at once more elastic, more responsive to the popular will, and more stable because more elastic. The west is gaining in political power as it gains in population and prosperity, and fortunately our government machinery has been well tested before it is called upon to feel the strain of our rapidly-increasing population. Canada may construct where older nations must reconstruct, and if we borrow an American institution or two, provided it be a good one, let no man hold up hands in holy horror. Japan has borrowed nationally whenever she saw, lying around loose, something she could use, and Japan is as Japanese at heart as she was in the days of the Tycoon and the two-sworded Samurai. Belgium to-day, after centuries of contiguity and intercourse, is not exactly France; and little Switzerland, surrounded by the Powers, will be Switzerland till the last curtain-fall.