Professor Robertson took me to see Dr. Parkin, of Upper Canada College, Toronto, another of the best-known writers of the Dominion; his most widely read work being The Life of Edward Thring, the great reformer of boys’ schools, whose devoted admirer the Doctor is. Upper Canada College is like Eton, Harrow, or Charterhouse. It is a magnificent building, and everything seemed charmingly arranged.
Dr. Parkin is a delightful personality, a great scholar, a kindly teacher, and a staunch friend; he now lives in England, having been appointed—about two years after my visit—the organising representative of the Rhodes Scholarship Trust.
At his house I met Colonel George Denison, who had just written Soldiering in Canada, a book as well known on this side of the Atlantic as on the other. It was his grandfather, a Yorkshireman, who went out to Canada and founded “York,” now known as Toronto. The Colonel is an interesting companion and a good raconteur.
Sir William Macdonald may perhaps be said to have been the chief mover of education in Canada for many years. He was justly proud of McGill University in Montreal, and must have been gratified at the success of the manual training schools in different parts of Canada, which owed so much to his generosity. To him also Canada is indebted for the Macdonald Agricultural College at Ste. Anne de Bellevue, which he established and endowed at enormous cost.
No word on Canada, however brief, would be right without reference to Goldwin Smith.
Born in 1823, he died at a ripe age a few weeks after King Edward, to whom he had once been tutor in English history, and of whom the teacher said admiringly:
“He never once let me see he was bored, therefore I gathered he would successfully fulfil the arduous duties of royalty.”
After leaving England for the United States in 1864, Goldwin Smith saw something of the great Civil War. Later he came to Toronto, and there lived out his days in a charming old house called “The Grange.”
He told me emphatically in 1900 that “within ten years Canada would be annexed by the United States.” Goldwin Smith died just a decade later, and Canada seemed then more Imperial, more British, more loyal than ever. But a few months later came this wheat business in Washington, and up sprang the old cry of annexation.