At this great gathering of Reformers and Conservatives in which both are equally active, I may be permitted to express at the outset a hope that there will be no attempt in any quarter to make party capital out of this historic event, or out of anything which may be said or left unsaid either in my own case or that of any other of the speakers. . . . As the Dominion grows in population and wealth, changes are inevitable and must be faced. What are they to be? Some of you hope for Imperial Federation. Failing that, what then? Shall we give away our great country to the United States as some—I hope not many—are saying just now? (Cries of “Never.”) Or when the time comes for some important change, shall we go for the only other alternative, the creation of Canada into an independent nation? I believe that the great mass of our people would prefer independence to political union with any other people. And so would I. As a Canadian I am not willing that Canada should cease to be. Fellow Canadians, are you? (Cries of “No.”) I am not willing that Canada should commit national suicide. Are you? (Cries of “No.”) I am not willing that Canada should be absorbed into the United States. Are you? (Cries of “No.”) I am not willing that both our British connection and our hope of a Canadian nationality shall be for ever destroyed. (Cheers.) Annexation necessarily means all that. It means, too, the abolition of all that is to us preferable in Canadian character and institutions as contrasted with what in these respects our neighbours prefer. . . . But I don’t want to belong to them. I don’t want to give up my allegiance on their account or for any advantage they may offer. . . . I cannot bring myself to forget the hatred which so many of our neighbours cherish towards the nation we love and to which we are proud to belong. I cannot forget the influence which that hatred exerts in their public affairs. I don’t want to belong to a nation in which both political parties have for party purposes to vie with one another in exhibiting this hatred. I don’t want to belong to a nation in which a suspicion that a politician has a friendly feeling towards the great nation which gave him birth is enough to ensure his defeat at the polls. . . . No, I do not want annexation. I prefer the ills I suffer to the ills that annexation would involve. I love my nation, the nation of our fathers, and shall not willingly join any nation which hates her. I love Canada, and I want to perform my part, whatever it may be, in maintaining her existence as a distinct political or national organisation. I believe this to be on the whole and in the long run the best thing for Canadians and the best thing for the whole American continent. I hope that when another century has been added to the age of Canada, it may still be Canada, and that its second century shall, like its first, be celebrated by Canadians unabsorbed, numerous, prosperous, powerful, and at peace. For myself I should prefer to die in that hope than to die President of the United States. (Cheers and applause.)
Sir Oliver’s biographer, C. R. W. Biggar, says of this speech:
Quoted and discussed by almost every newspaper in Canada from Halifax to Vancouver, and also by the leading journals of Britain and the United States, Sir Oliver Mowat’s speech at the Niagara Centennial Celebration sounded the death-knell of the annexation movement in Ontario.
While Sir Oliver was speaking I was sitting close behind him, next to Mr. Wm. Kirby, who was a staunch loyalist and keen Imperialist. He was delighted and whispered to me, “Mr. Mowat has stolen your thunder,” and again, “He is making your speech.” I replied, “Yes, there will not be any need for me to say much now.” And when I was called upon to speak after him I made a speech strongly supporting him but very brief, feeling, as I did, that he had done all that was necessary in that line.
He was always impressed with the feeling of hostility in the United States. As I had been speaking upon that subject for years in unmistakable language, and was often abused for my outspoken comments, I was delighted on one occasion some years before at a Board of Trade banquet in the Horticultural Pavilion, Toronto, to hear him say positively “that the United States was a hostile nation.” Afterwards in the cloak room I congratulated him warmly upon his speech, and thanked him for speaking so plainly about the hostility of the United States. Sir John A. Macdonald was standing by, and he turned playfully towards Mr. Mowat, and, shaking him by the shoulders, said, “Yes, Denison, did he not do well, the little tyrant?” This was in reference to the opposition papers having sometimes called him “the little tyrant.” Mr. Mowat seemed highly amused, and I was much impressed by the evident kindly, almost affectionate, personal feeling between the two rival statesmen.
The decided position taken by Mr. Mowat certainly had an immense influence upon the Liberal party, and in this he was ably seconded by the Hon. G. W. Ross, who on many occasions sounded a clear note in favour of British connection and Imperial consolidation.