The effect of confederation on the Canadians was very remarkable. The small Provinces were all merged into a great Dominion. The Provincial idea was gone. Canada was now a country with immense resources and great possibilities. The idea of expansion had seized upon the people, and at once steps were taken looking to the absorption of the Hudson’s Bay Territory and union with British Columbia.
With this came visions of a great and powerful country stretching from ocean to ocean, and destined to be one of the dominant powers of the world.
[CHAPTER II]
CANADA FIRST PARTY AND HUDSON BAY TERRITORY
It was at the period when these conditions existed that business took me to Ottawa from the 15th April until the 20th May, 1868. Wm. A. Foster of Toronto, a barrister, afterwards a leading Queen’s Counsel, was there at the same time, and through our friend, Henry J. Morgan, we were introduced to Charles Mair, of Lanark, Ontario, and Robert J. Haliburton, of Halifax, eldest son of the celebrated author of “Sam Slick.” We were five young men of about twenty-eight years of age, except Haliburton, who was four or five years older. We very soon became warm friends, and spent most of our evenings together in Morgan’s quarters. We must have been congenial spirits, for our friendship has been close and firm all our lives. Foster and Haliburton have passed away, but their work lives.
| The seed they sowed has sprung at last, And grows and blossoms through the land.[1] |
Those meetings were the origin of the “Canada First” party. Nothing could show more clearly the hold that confederation had taken of the imagination of young Canadians than the fact that, night after night, five young men should give up their time and their thoughts to discussing the higher interests of their country, and it ended in our making a solemn pledge to each other that we would do all we could to advance the interests of our native land; that we would put our country first, before all personal, or political, or party considerations; that we would change our party affiliations as often as the true interests of Canada required it. Some years afterwards we adopted, as I will explain, the name “Canada First,” meaning that the true interest of Canada was to be first in our minds on every occasion. Forty years have elapsed and I feel that every one of the five held true to the promise we then made to each other.
One point that we discussed constantly was the necessity, now that we had a great country, of encouraging in every possible way the growth of a strong national spirit. Ontario knew little of Nova Scotia or New Brunswick and they knew little of us. The name Canadian was at first bitterly objected to by the Nova Scotians, while the New Brunswickers were indifferent. This was natural, for old Canada had been an almost unknown Province to the men who lived by the sea, and whose trade relations had been mainly with the United States, the West Indies, and foreign countries.