The Annual Exhibition of Arts and Manufactures of the Province of Ontario for 1883 was held at Toronto. The formal opening was on Sept. 15th, and His Excellency, who was invited to open it, and who was received with the greatest enthusiasm, spoke as follows.
Ladies and Gentlemen,—I only wish my voice were strong enough to carry to each of you the thanks we owe to every citizen of Toronto, for nowhere have we received more kindness, and nowhere have we had occasion to feel greater gratitude for receptions accorded us, than in your city. These farewells I feel to be very sad occasions. I know that if the matter had rested with the Princess she would have wished to postpone them for another year—(cheers)—for we have spent many happy days in Canada, and would have wished to prolong them. That, however, could not be. The time for departing, I am sorry to say, has very nearly come. For my part, I feel as if the sands of the last days of happiness had nearly run out. (Cheers.) I beg to thank you, sir, for the reference which you have made in your address to the visit of Prince George of Wales. (Loud cheers.) It is now nearly twenty-four years, I think, since his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales (loud cheers) came here, he being at that time, nearly of the age which Prince George has now attained. I have often heard from him of the kindness and loyalty with which he was greeted in Canada. (Cheers.) I know it has been a matter of regret to him that he has been unable in recent years to repeat his visit. I know how he watches with the greatest interest and sympathy the progress of this country, and how he hopes at some future day he may possibly revisit it. (Loud cheers.) In the address you desire me to convey to Her Majesty the assurance of your loyalty—an assurance which we shall deliver, not that any such assurance is needed—(Cheers)—the reverence and loyalty with which Her Majesty is regarded is well known to me, but we will faithfully carry out your commission. It is a message of devotion to the Throne and Empire coming from a great community. (Loud cheers.) I do not know anything more remarkable in the recent history of this great continent than the story of this populous and extensive Province, whose shores are washed by the beautiful waters of Erie, Huron, and Ontario. Within the lifetime of a man, indeed only sixty years ago, nothing but an untouched growth of wood was visible throughout this wide region, where there are now myriads of happy homesteads—(cheers,) and, while this remarkable result has been accomplished in so short a time, we see no diminution in the progress and prosperity of the Province. During the last few years Ontario may be said to have become a Mother Country, for she has sent out colonies to the West by tens of thousands, and yet, owing to the rapid and natural increase of her people, and to the manner in which the void occasioned by the departure of these has been filled up from across the seas, we still see the population constantly increasing—(cheers)—and I believe the next census will show as great an increase as the last, and that, I believe was 18 per cent. (Loud cheers.) I was very much struck some time ago by the manner in which some men, comfortably situated here, wished, nevertheless, to see the West. I had occasion to ask for the services of two men for a friend of mine who had taken a farm in Manitoba. One was got immediately, and an Ontario gentleman, to whom I applied, came to me and said: "You will be surprised to hear who the second man is whom I have obtained for your friend; he is a man having a large farm and a very comfortable homestead, and, while he does not wish to leave the Province permanently, he desires to go to the North-West to see the country, and has volunteered to go as a hired man for a year to Manitoba." He left for that year his wife and child at home. I hope by this time he has been able to rejoin them. I do not think the desire prevailing amongst you in Ontario to go westward need cause the men of Ontario one moment's anxiety. Your ranks will be quickly refilled. Numbers are now coming in from the Old Country—and I beg to congratulate the Government of Ontario on the successful way in which they have put forward the attractions, I may say the great attractions, of this Province as compared with those of the West, with the view of arresting some of those who were on their passage farther west. (Cheers.) I had a conversation only yesterday with a gentleman who is at the head of the Agricultural Science Department of South Kensington, in London; and to show you there is a wide field open for the surplus population of a class you wish to attract, I would like to quote that gentleman's words. He is a great authority, a Government official, and I am sure his name is known to many of you—Professor Tanner. (Cheers.) He told me that over 7,000 men are studying agriculture in Great Britain at the present time; that over 6,000 had passed last year the examination provided by Government; that of those 6,000 there certainly would not be an opportunity in Great Britain for the employment of more than one-tenth; that is to say that nine-tenths will assuredly, if they wish to follow out the course which their studies would indicate as the career they seek to pursue, have to find a place outside the limits of the old country. I would certainly recommend them to come here. (Cheers.) I have made such recommendations often at home. Sometimes I have been told that I incur a great responsibility for doing so. (Cheers.) I shall be very glad to assume the responsibility for the rest of my days. (Renewed cheering.) I shall only ask of Ontario societies when they invite women to come here, to back me in advising the old country people not to send too many instructresses of youth—(hear, hear)—for wherever I have made a speech in England advising women to emigrate, I have always received about 500 letters on the succeeding day from people who said they were perfectly confident that there was an opening for a good governess in Canada. (Laughter and cheers.) I wish to emphasize the fact that there is hardly any opening, for we grow our own stock in that respect—(Loud cheers),—and I believe in the Exhibition of which we shall soon be making an examination strangers will see that among the objects placed in the most honourable position is the school desk, the school bench, and the school book. (Renewed cheers.) They will find these exhibited along with the best products of the factory, the forest, the field and the mine. I say, I shall continue to recommend this Province, for you have inspired me with additional confidence—(Cheers)—perhaps because the community have confidence in themselves. (Renewed cheers.) I will say nothing more, for I feel I might expatiate at too great a length upon your prospects. (Continued cheers.) I beg now formally to declare the Toronto Exhibition of 1883 to be open to the public. (Loud and continued cheering.)
The following is the Governor-General's reply to an address presented in the Queen's Park, Toronto. Several thousand persons had assembled although the rain had descended in torrents for some hours.
Mr. Mayor and citizens of the city of Toronto,—Ladies and Gentlemen of this great Province of Ontario,—I have again to thank you for a loyal and affectionate address, conveying your reverence and love to the Queen. Already several of the Queen's children have visited Canada. On this occasion you have been welcoming, kindly and cordially, a grandson of her Majesty. (Cheers.) On all occasions on which members of the Queen's family have visited this country they have met with a welcome which evinces your determination to sustain the Empire in which Canada occupies so large a place. I thank you, sir, for what you have stated with regard to my term of office. You have had the good fortune to enjoy five years of prosperity and progress. I would, if you will allow me, take the words you have addressed to me as not in any sense conveying a personal compliment, but as expressing your appreciation of the value of the office which I have had the honour to hold for five years, and your wish to maintain its dignity. I confess that I am not so desirous of any personal popularity, but I am jealous for the position of the Governor-General. I need not tell you, who know it already, the value of the constitutional rules under which its functions are exercised. They who disparage the office by telling you that it is one of no influence would be the first to cry out against its powers, and they would be right to do so, should those powers be used in excess of constitutional privilege. It is sufficient that the ministers, both of the last Government and the present, regard the office as valuable, and desire its continuance. There is, however, one point in connection with it which I should wish to impress upon you. In some quarters, although not, I am satisfied, by the people at large, the presence of a Governor-General is held to imply something called "etiquette"—(Laughter),—and implies also the establishment of a "court." I wish to say from my experience in Canada I am sure that this is by no means the case. Etiquette may perhaps be defined as some rule of social conduct. I have found that no such rule is necessary in Canada, for the self-respect of the people guarantees good manners. (Cheers.) We have had no etiquette and no court. Our only etiquette has been the prohibition of any single word spoken by strangers at the Government House in disparagement of Canada. (Cheers.) Our only court has been the courting of her fair name and fame. (Cheers.) Now, ladies and gentlemen, you ask me why it is I am so enthusiastic a Canadian. I believe I am perhaps even more of a Canadian than some of the Canadians themselves. I ascribe it to the very simple cause that I have seen perhaps more of your country than have very many amongst you. I know what your great possessions are, and to what a magnificent heritage you have fallen heirs. I know that wide forest world out of which the older Provinces have been carved. I know that great central region of glorious prairie-land from which shall be carved out future Provinces as splendid or yet more splendid than those of which we now proudly boast. I know also that vast country beyond the Rocky Mountains, that wondrous region sometimes clothed in gloomy forest, sometimes smiling beneath the sun in pastoral beauty of valley and upland, or sometimes shadowed by Alpine gorges and mighty mountain peaks—the territory of British Columbia. And in each and all of these three immense sections of your great country I know that you have possessions which must make you in time one of the foremost among the nations, not only of this continent, but of the world. (Cheers.) It is because I have seen so much of you and of your territories that I am enthusiastic in your behalf, and that the wish of my life shall be the desire to further your interests; and I pray the God who has granted to you this great country that he may in his own good time make you a great people. (Loud cheers.)
On leaving Ottawa, an address was presented by the Corporation of the city. The Governor-General replied as follows:—
Mr. Mayor, members of the Corporation, and citizens of Ottawa—We both thank you most cordially for your words, which are so full of kindness.
It is indeed a sorrowful thought to us that the present must be our last meeting for all time, as far as any official connection between us is concerned; but we shall hope that it will not be the last occasion on which we shall again be brought together, for it would be indeed a melancholy prospect to us were we not able to look forward to some future day on which we might revisit the scenes which have been so much endeared to us, and witness the continuance of that progress which has been so marked in the Dominion during the last five years.
You kindly wish us God-speed, and hope that our future career may be happy; but we can never again have a happier or more fortunate time than that spent amongst you; indeed, whenever, in the future, life's path is darker, we can take comfort and refreshment from the recollection of the bright days passed under the beautiful clear sunshine of the Canadian seasons.
If in any way we have been able to please you in the personal intercourse which it has been our happiness to have experienced on civic occasions, and in social meetings at Government House, we shall certainly leave with the feeling that there is no community more easy to please. The interest and affection we have for you will always endure, and I hope that when any of you visit the Old Country (should I happen to be there) you will let me again see you.
But, gentlemen, however pleasant may have been the friendships begun during the last few years, or the official relations at my office, it is important that we should not over-value individual likings. So long as the Governor-General follows the example set by our beloved monarch as a constitutional sovereign, so long should the favour he finds with the people endure, and any personal popularity is a thing of no account. You have been pleased to endorse afresh the system under which we live and which you think infinitely preferable to that which obtains among our neighbours to the south of us. But my constitutional governorship is nearly over, and now that I am practically out of harness, I mean to assume autocratic airs, and confess to you that I have sometimes wished for the benefit and adornment of your city to become its dictator with plenary power of raising federal and local taxes for any object which may have seemed best to my despotic will. But I have faith in popular rule, and believe that when I next visit Ottawa I shall see the city not only embellished by the completion of some of the good buildings which are now rising, or about to be erected, within its limits, but that I shall see every street, and especially those which are widest, planted with flourishing shade trees. I shall probably see a new Government House, from whose windows the beautiful extent of your river shall be visible, as well as the noble outlines of your Parliament Buildings. Leading from this to the city I shall mark how the long, fine avenue planted in 1884, an avenue which will stretch all the way along Sussex street past New Edinburgh to Government House, has sent forth beautiful branches of the foliage of the maple, which perhaps at intervals may mingle with a group or two of dark fir-trees. I am sure I shall see any boulders now lying by the wayside broken up to form the metal for excellent roads, and of course no vestiges of that burnt wooden house at the corner of Pooley's Bridge will remain. Indeed, I shall see few tenements which are not of brick or stone both in Ottawa and Hull, and last, but not least, I am sure we shall find the Ministry and Supreme Court properly housed in official residences such as are provided for those functionaries by most of the civilized nations of the world.