One glance at a map of the Western Hemisphere is all that is needed to show the splendid situation of Eastern Quebec and the Maritime Provinces of Canada as the natural summer recreation centres for the people of a continent.
Communicating with the world’s greatest system of inland waterways; washed by the salt spray of the rolling Atlantic; blessed with innumerable lakes, majestic rivers, dashing waterfalls and sparkling brooks; clothed with noble forests; featured by towering mountain chains, and swept by cool health-bringing breezes—these delightful domains are surely the summer provinces of all America.
Who has not read with fascination and delight the thrilling pages of Canada’s romantic history; or has not been stirred with deep emotion over the adventures of that trio of great explorers: Cabot, Cartier and Champlain!
The desperate struggles of the early colonists with the savage Iroquois Indians; the long and fluctuating conflict for supremacy between France and Great Britain; the incursions of the New England Colonists; the mixed settlement of Colonial Loyalists, French, English, Scotch and Irish; the Acadian Expulsion—all have combined to make Quebec and the Maritime Provinces a field that is rich in interest and quite unlike any other part of the continent.
Here buried treasures of legend and story are on every hand, promising rich reward to the happy discoverers.
There is a fascination in seeing places where the people of long ago have lived, and where epoch-making events have occurred; for there we may learn at first hand and from personal observation many things that cannot be read in the printed page.
How delightful to stand where Jacques Cartier planted his symbolic cross with its emblazoned shield bearing the royal lilies of France, and to remember that here his banners were first unfurled to the breezes of this western land. And while the loyal sons of St. Denis saluted the fluttering flags as the guns were discharged in joyful salvo to mark the birth of an empire beyond the seas did the wondering Indians understand the full meaning of the ceremony, or realize that this handful of men was but the advance guard of a mighty host propelled by a still mightier force—the power of civilization—that would compel the poor “sons of the forest” to give way before the irresistible onrush?