Studies in the South and West, with Comments on Canada

by Charles Dudley Warner

The feeling about the English is illustrated by the statement that there is not more aping of English ways in Montreal and Toronto clubs and social life than in New York, and that the English superciliousness, or condescension as to colonists, the ultra-English manner, is ridiculed in Canada, and resented with even more warmth than in the United States. The amusing stories of English presumption upon hospitality are current in Canada as well as on this side. All this is not inconsistent with pride in the empire, loyalty to its traditions and institutions, and even a considerable willingness (for human nature is pretty much alike everywhere) to accept decorative titles. But the underlying fact is that there is a distinct feeling of nationality, and it is increasing.

There is not anywhere so great a contrast between neighboring cities as between Quebec, Montreal, and Toronto. Quebec is mediæval, Toronto is modern, Montreal is in a conflict between the two conditions. As the travelling world knows, they are all interesting cities, and have peculiar attractions. Quebec is French, more decidedly so than Toronto is English, and in Montreal the French have a large numerical majority and complete political control. In the Canadian cities generally municipal affairs are pretty much divorced from general party politics, greatly to the advantage of good city government.

Montreal has most wealth, and from its splendid geographical position it is the railway centre, and has the business and commercial primacy. It has grown rapidly from a population of 140,000 in 1881 to a population of over 200,000—estimated, with its suburbs, at 250,000. Were it part of my plan to describe these cities, I should need much space to devote to the finest public buildings and public institutions of Montreal, the handsome streets in the Protestant quarter, with their solid, tasteful, and often elegant residences, the many churches, and the almost unequalled possession of the Mountain as a park and resort, where one has the most striking and varied prospects in the world. Montreal, being a part of the province of Quebec, is not only under provincial control of the government at Quebec, but it is ruled by the same French party in the city, and there is the complaint always found where the poorer majority taxes the richer and more enterprising minority out of proportion to the benefits the latter receives. Various occasions have produced something like race conflicts in the city, and there are prophesies of more serious ones in the strife for ascendency. The seriousness of this to the minority lies in the fact that the French race is more prolific than any other in the province.

Perhaps nothing will surprise the visitor more than the persistence of the French type in Canada, and naturally its aggressiveness. Guaranteed their religion, laws, and language, the French have not only failed to assimilate, but have had hopes—maybe still have—of making Canada French. The French “national” party means simply a French consolidation, and has no relation to the “nationalism” of Sir John Macdonald. So far as the Church and the French politicians are concerned, the effort is to keep the French solid as a political force, and whether the French are Liberal or Conservative, this is the underlying thought. The province of Quebec is Liberal, but the liberalism is of a different hue from that of Ontario. The French recognize the truth that language is so integral a part of a people’s growth that the individuality of a people depends upon maintaining it. The French have escaped absorption in Canada mainly by loyalty to their native tongue, aided by the concession to them of their civil laws and their religious privileges. They owe this to William Pitt. I quote from a contributed essay in the Toronto Week about three years ago: “Up to 1791 the small French population of Canada was in a position to be converted into an English colony with traces of French sentiment and language, which would have slowly disappeared. But at that date William Pitt the younger brought into the House of Commons two Quebec Acts, which constituted two provinces—Lower Canada, with a full provision of French laws, language, and institutions; Upper Canada, with a reproduction of English laws and social system. During the debate Pitt declared on the floor of the House that his purpose was to create two colonies distinct from and jealous of each other, so as to guard against a repetition of the late unhappy rebellion which had separated the thirteen colonies from the empire.”

The French have always been loyal to the English connection under all temptations, for these guarantees have been continued, which could scarcely be expected from any other power, and certainly not in a legislative union of the Canadian provinces. In literature and sentiment the connection is with France; in religion, with Rome; in politics England has been the guarantee of both. There will be no prevailing sentiment in favor of annexation to the United States so long as the Church retains its authority, nor would it be favored by the accomplished politicians so long as they can use the solid French mass as a political force.

The relegation of the subject of education entirely to the provinces is an element in the persistence of the French type in the province of Quebec, in the same way that it strengthens the Protestant cause in Ontario. In the province of Quebec all the public schools are Roman Catholic, and the separate schools are of other sects. In the council of public instruction the Catholics, of course, have a large majority, but the public schools are managed by a Catholic committee and the others by a Protestant committee. In the academies, model and high schools, subsidized by the Government, those having Protestant teachers are insignificant in number, and there are very few Protestants in Catholic schools, and very few Catholics in Protestant schools; the same is true of the schools of this class not subsidized. The bulky report of the superintendent of public instruction of the province of Quebec (which is translated into English) shows a vigorous and intelligent attention to education. The general statistics give the number of pupils in the province as 219,403 Roman Catholics (the term always used in the report) and 37,484 Protestants. In the elementary schools there are 143,848 Roman Catholics and 30,401 Protestants. Of the ecclesiastical teachers, 808 are Roman Catholics and 8 Protestants; of the certificated lay teachers, 250 are Roman Catholic and 105 Protestant; the proportion of schools is four to one. It must be kept in mind that in the French schools it is French literature that is cultivated. In the Laval University, at Quebec, English literature is as purely an ornamental study as French literature would be in Yale. The Laval University, which has a branch in Montreal, is a strong institution, with departments of divinity, law, medicine, and the arts, 80 professors, and 575 students. The institution has a vast pile of buildings, one of the most conspicuous objects in a view of the city. Besides spacious lecture, assembly rooms, and laboratories, it has extensive collections in geology, mineralogy, botany, ethnology, zoology, coins, a library of 100,000 volumes, in which theology is well represented, but which contains a large collection of works on Canada, including valuable manuscripts, the original MS. of the Journal des Jésuites, and the most complete set of the Relation des Jésuites existing in America. It has also a gallery of paintings, chiefly valuable for its portraits.

Of the 62,000 population of Quebec City, by the census of 1881, not over 6000 were Protestants. By the same census Montreal had 140,747, of whom 78,684 were French, and 28,995 of Irish origin. The Roman Catholics numbered 103,579. I believe the proportion has not much changed with the considerable growth in seven years.

One is struck, in looking at the religious statistics of Canada, by the fact that the Church of England has not the primacy, and that the so-called independent sects have a position they have not in England. In the total population of 4,324,810, given by the census of 1881, the Protestants were put down at 2,436,554 and the Roman Catholics at 1,791,982. The larger of the Protestant denominations were, Methodists, 742,981; Presbyterians, 676,165; Church of England, 574,818; Baptists, 296,525. Taking as a specimen of the north-west the province of Manitoba, census of 1886, we get these statistics of the larger sects: Presbyterians, 28,406; Church of England, 23,206; Methodists, 18,648; Roman Catholics, 14,651; Mennonites, 9112; Baptists, 3296; Lutherans, 3131.

Some statistics of general education in the Dominion show the popular interest in the matter. In 1885 the total number of pupils in the Dominion, in public and private schools, was 908,193, and the average attendance was 555,404. The total expenditure of the year, not including school buildings, was $9,310,745, and the value of school lands, buildings, and furniture was $25,000,000. Yet in the province of Quebec, out of the total expenditure of $3,102,410, only $353,077 was granted by the provincial Legislature. And in Ontario, of the total of $3,904,797, only $267,084 was granted by the Legislature.

The McGill University at Montreal, Sir William Dawson principal, is a corporation organized under royal charter, which owes its original endowment of land and money (valued at $120,000) to James McGill. It receives small grants from the provincial and Dominion governments, but mainly depends upon its own funds, which in 1885 stood at $791,000. It has numerous endowed professorships and endowments for scholarships and prizes; among them is the Donalda Endowment for the Higher Education of Women (from Sir Donald A. Smith), by which a special course in separate classes, by University professors, is maintained in the University buildings for women. It has faculties of arts, applied sciences, law, and medicine—the latter with one of the most complete anatomical museums and one of the best selected libraries on the continent. It has several colleges affiliated with it for the purpose of conferring University degrees, a model school, and four theological colleges, a Congregational, a Presbyterian, an Episcopalian, and a Wesleyan, the students in which may supplement their own courses in the University. The professors and students wear the University cap and gown, and morning prayers are read to a voluntary attendance. The Redpath Museum, of geology, mineralogy, zoology, and ethnology, has a distinction among museums not only for the size of the collection, but for splendid arrangement and classification. The well-selected library numbers about 30,000 volumes. The whole University is a vigorous educational centre, and its well-planted grounds and fine buildings are an ornament to the city.