Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights

by Kelly Miller

Another five centuries were, however, to pass before John Cabot, sailing from Bristol, in the days of Henry Bolingbroke, brought the first British ship into a Canadian port. After him the fishermen of Europe came in increasing numbers to the great banks, with the result that little by little, as their tiny vessels touched the American shores, the great continent began to be known to the people of Europe.

DOMINION'S FOUNDATIONS LAID.

It was not really, however, until the year 1534 that the foundations of the Dominion may be said to have been sunk. In that year Jacques Cartier sailed from the port of St. Malo, with two little ships, intending to attempt the northwest passage to Japan. Francis the First was then ruling in Paris, and there was great adventure in the air of France. Cartier did not make the northwest passage, but he did touch the coast of Canada, or, to be more exact, the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland. It was then the 10th of May, and having sailed around the island, he steered south, and crossing the gulf entered the bay which, by reason of the great heats of midsummer, he named Des Chaleurs. Holding along the coast, he came to the little inlet of Gaspe, and here, at the entrance to the harbor, he erected a huge cross surmounted by the arms and lilies of France. He could find no passage, however, to the northwest, and so he turned his ship, and sailed back to St. Malo.

The Court in Paris heard his story with interest. His cause was taken up by the King; and, as a result, in the succeeding May, he sailed again to the new world with three well found ships. On the day of Saint Lawrence he entered the great bay, to which he at once gave the name of the Saint, and passing on came, in September, to anchor in the Isle of Orleans.

REAL FOUNDER OF CANADA.

The man, however, with whose name the early history of Canada is most fully connected, had not as yet been born. Nor was it until the year 1567 that, at Brouage in Saintonge, Samuel de Champlain came upon the scene. In the year 1603, when Elizabeth was ruling in England, and Henry of Navarre in France, Champlain came to Canada. He had been a soldier of le Bearnais, in the great wars with the League, an officer of marine, and a man with no little knowledge of natural science, as knowledge was then accounted. He came now in command of an expedition, fitted out by the merchants of Rouen, with the idea of forming a Canada company, as England had her Barbary Company, her Eastland Company, her Muscovie Company, or her Turkey Company. And in this way the French came into Canada.

Thus there began those American wars between the two countries, divided at home only by the English Channel, which went on century by century, largely through the employment of the Indian tribes, until that September night when Wolfe's boats drifted in, from the fleet to the shore, and the battle on the Plains of Abraham permanently settled the question of domination in favor of the British.

The British conquest of Canada did not, however, mean the cessation of fighting. There came, presently, the war between Great Britain and the American colonies, one of the most amazing exploits of which was the marvelous march of Arnold and Montgomery through the forests of Maine to the St. Lawrence, ending in the wonderful siege, of the year 1775, and the heroic failure to storm the defenses by scaling the rocks from the river bed. Eventually the boundary between the United States and the British possessions was settled by the Treaty of Paris, in 1783, just twenty years after an earlier Treaty of Paris had recorded the surrender of Canada by France to Great Britain.

CANADA, FROM COLONY TO DOMINION.

For the last century and a half the story of Canada has been the story first of a British colony and then of a British Dominion. A great flood of new colonists had come into the country after the victory of the States in the War of Independence, when many of the royalists of New England crossed the border. As a result, there had grown up the two new provinces of Upper Canada, now known as Ontario, and New Brunswick. The relations between all the provinces were, however, far from harmonious, with the result that what between quarrels among themselves and risings against the British authority, the condition of Canada was anything but promising, when, after the Rebellion of 1837, Lord Durham was sent over to try to evolve order out of chaos.