One’s first impressions of Quebec yield a joy that cannot be recaptured on subsequent visits; yet the better you get to know that old city, the more you love it.
There was no moon shining when, nine years ago, a ship that had voyaged for days across the sea, and for hours through the night, brought me suddenly into view of an escarpment aglow with myriad friendly lights. And soon a quaint old Frenchman in a white hat was driving me in a quaint old carriage up quaint, steep streets where lamp-light gave glimpses of walls of naked rock and mellow brickwork, of venerable gabled houses with green shutters, of noble buildings grey with antiquity, and of stately monuments standing amid leafy gardens, with here and there a moss-grown cannon peeping out of its crumbling embrasure. Nor was it long before, in the garden of the Château Frontenac—that huge, handsome hotel—I was stealing nasturtium blooms.
Next day revealed how beautiful is the situation of Quebec. Standing on Dufferin Terrace—that superb promenade running along the brow of the cliff—you look out upon the great blue river sweeping through a landscape of purple mountains. Quebec has been well defined as “a small bit of mediæval Europe perched upon a rock,” and Charles Dickens wrote of “its giddy heights, its citadel suspended, as it were, in air; its picturesque steep streets and frowning gateways.”
The old French capital is a pleasure resort. Thousands of American tourists visit it every year; golf is played on the battlefield where Wolfe fell victorious; and the city’s ice carnivals and other winter frolics are famous. The old French capital is also of growing commercial importance, and its industries must receive a great impetus from the new St. Lawrence bridge—the largest cantilever structure in the world—and the projected dock extensions. But the old French capital commands admiration mainly for its age and its associations. Of all the fine Canadian cities it is the finest and the least Canadian. Quebec even possesses two slums—the only two slums, I verily believe, in the entire Dominion; and they are far too picturesque to be demolished.
It is surprising to find such an obvious piece of the Old World at the threshold of the New World; and Quebec’s antiquity is emphasised when, on travelling through the Dominion, one notes the modern aspect of the other cities. Clues to that contrast will be found in Canada’s lop-sided history.
Indeed, to look at the Dominion through the historian’s telescope is to be baffled by a picture that will not get into focus. An eastern portion is full of background, middle-distance and foreground; southern and western strips reveal nothing but foreground; a central northern region has detail only in the middle distance; and the bulk of the area is equally without definition here, there and beyond. In other words, one part of the Dominion has much history, other parts have some, and many parts have none.
As I have already hinted, the word “Canada” is a territorial ambiguity, since it applies both to a little old country (with a history commencing in the year 1000, when Icelandic settlers in Greenland discovered Labrador) and to a large new country (with a history commencing in 1873, when Confederation was completed). In reviewing the evolution of the Dominion, therefore, it is difficult to keep history in anything like a proportionate relation to geography. Ancient Canada, being so rich in material for the historian, is apt to monopolise nearly all his space. Beginning with events contemporaneous with the Saxon era in England, he plods through the centuries, peppering his pages with memorable dates, unrolling a long scroll of illustrious names, tracing the varying fortunes of two races and three nationalities in their struggles for supremacy, and recording bloody battles innumerable. When he has done all that, he finds himself with latitude for only vague and brief mention of the bulk of the Dominion; and his readers, thinking they have been reading a history of Canada (whereas they have only been reading a history of a fraction of Canada) are left with an unfortunate impression that Canada is an old, instead of a new, country.
To follow the course of events, one must eliminate existing geographical boundaries from one’s mind, and think of eastern North America (stretching along the present seaboards of Canada and the United States) as a whole.
Voyagers from England and Portugal got there first, towards the close of the fifteenth century; but France and Spain took the lead in forming colonies. The situation soon resolved itself into a rivalry between the French and the English.
In 1535 Jacques Cartier explored the St. Lawrence (which he named), and advanced as far as an Indian town that he christened Mont Royal (since corrupted into Montreal); and afterwards there came other French expeditions, whose attempts to found settlements were frustrated by Indian hostility. At the opening of the seventeenth century, however, Samuel de Champlain established in Acadia (now Nova Scotia) the first European colony that took root within the boundaries of the present Dominion; and in 1608 he visited the St. Lawrence and founded the City of Quebec. Thus was brought into being “New France”—a large territory which included eastern Canada of to-day and stretched south across the existing international boundary line. There was also a rival colony, known as “New England,” which extended north from Virginia.